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The Danger From Dubai
The United Arab Emirates poses a different threat to Israel than Iran — but can do nearly as much damage.
Although it was reprehensible that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) refused to give Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer an entry visa for a WTA-sanctioned tournament and the world stood idly by, there might be a silver lining to the whole episode. It could serve as a wake-up call to remind the world of the dangers that the UAE poses to Israel — while most of the international attention is focused on Iran.
Many people — including prominent Jews such as Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, and David Rubinstein, co founder of the private equity firm Carlyle Group — believe that the United Arab Emirates is a moderate Arab state (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) and dismiss any concerns. Although NYU has many Jewish — and specifically Israeli — professors and students, Foxman supported NYU’s decision to build a branch in Dubai. He said in City Journal, “Abu Dhabi and Dubai are moving towards greater openness and tolerance.”
For sure, the current economic crisis and the low price of oil have blunted Dubai’s power, but that does not mean that they will not pose any economic threat to Israel in the future. Although the UAE might be quieter about it, the Arab League boycott of Israel is very much in effect there. The Jerusalem Post reported on their telephone conversation with Muhammad Rashid Adin, a member of the Dubai Customs Department’s Office for the Boycott of Israel. “Yes, of course, the boycott is still in place and is still enforced. If a product contained even some components that were made in Israel, and you wanted to import it to Dubai, it would be a problem.”
While it makes for great newspaper headlines when Netanyahu proclaims that “it is 1939 all over again” with regard to Iran, I am equally concerned that landmark days in Israeli history like February 17, 1982, will stop happening. February 17 was the date that the first Israeli company, Teva Pharmaceuticals, went public on the Nasdaq exchange. This exchange is now partially Arab controlled. If the Arab boycott were extended to the Nasdaq, the Israeli economy would lose an important source of capital.
The Nasdaq sold 20% of itself to Borse Dubai in a complicated swap involving the OMX Exchange in Sweden. Borse Dubai is a holding company created by the government of Dubai for their holdings in Dubai Financial Market and the Dubai International Financial Exchange (DIFX). When the deal was announced, Borse Dubai’s chairman, Essa Kazim, told the New York Times, “Our primary objective is to build a world class, growth oriented exchange out of Dubai and to become the center for capital markets activities in the emerging markets.”
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Laura Goldman worked on Wall Street for 25 years for such firms as Merrill Lynch and Paine Webber. She now owns her own money management firm, LSG capital, in Tel Aviv, Israel.
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19 Comments
1. Blackwater:Westerners have now turned on themselves. They can’t tell friend from foe anymore. I can’t believe there’s so many people living in Western countries that hate Israel with a passion and fervently apologize for the islamists. It has a generational effect. Those people leave their far left colleges to run companies and governments which actively screw over ourselves and our allies. Just look at our current president.
Feb 25, 2009 - 6:10 am 2. LynnS:“The other shareholders/owners will blithely defer to Dubai out of laziness or greed.”
You forgot; willful blindness
The spider is quietly spinning a web. Will we (the United States) have a chance during this pause in the market to make wise choices? I am not confident that we will, but it is good to be prepared.
Feb 25, 2009 - 6:23 am 3. Mary Madigan:Saudi Arabia and the UAE have always been supporters of the Sunni branch of worldwide jihad, but they are protected by America’s misguided alliance with them.
Israel can best defend itself by using any intelligence it can gather on UAE-Saudi terror support to discredit this alliance. Although our government has always been happy to call these gulf-state terror supporters friends, the American people are starting to question this idiocy.
Dubai and other Gulf state economies are currently being destroyed by low oil prices, a fact that they’re trying to suppress by threatening journalists and anyone else who reveals the truth. If Israel could get the news out about Dubai’s current economic disaster (and the current state of the Gulf), Israel could diminish Dubai’s influence. Wealthy Gulf oil ticks only have the friends they buy. Without money, they’ve got nothing.
Since oil is the foundation of jihad’s power, Israel also needs to focus it’s high-tech interests on alternatives to oil. Long-term, that’s the best non-military way to take out jihad inc.
Feb 25, 2009 - 9:48 am 4. LynnS:….not to mention the accommodation to Sharia. I have heard others comment that it is no big deal and only in the financial market. I am always waiting for the shoe to drop and the foot in the door.
Feb 25, 2009 - 11:34 am 5. Charles Vaird:I have rarely read such complete nonsense. The UAE is a thriving, open-society where 80% of the working population are expatriates from all over the globe. It is liberal in its outlook and provided non-Muslims do not indulge in behaviour that is openly offensive to the cultural and religious tradition of the populace, there is no discrimination.
The UAE is an economic miracle thanks to the forward-looking ruling families who have created the most amazing cities and infrastructures anywhere on the planet. NY and LA eat your heart out! The media is comprehensively fair and unbiased in its reporting of world affairs and it offers more than six daily newspapers all of unusually high standard. And the UAE is highly, highly successful! Perhaps Ms Goldman is just a little jealous of that success, or perhaps she is just another blogger for Israel.
Does she even know that the UAE is the single largest market in the world for cut diamonds? If so, I wonder where she thinks that these gemstones are imported from ….
Wake up little Susie, wake up!
Feb 25, 2009 - 12:54 pm 6. Marc Malone:#5 Vaird – Your criticism is valid. The writer’s alarmist views are extreme. However, there is nothing wrong with pointing out where things could head if we’re not careful. Prevention must be started early for it to succeed.
I am fervently anti-Islam. The threat is real. I would not be bothered a bit if we decided to occupy the Arab oilfields and leave them all to starve in the desert. Still, in fairness, I grant your criticism its validity.
Feb 25, 2009 - 3:43 pm 7. LynnS:Yes, author and forget about the tennis player. It doesn’t mean a thing. Ther an open welcoming society. You have nothing to worry about. Go about your business. Everything is fine. Except about that tennis player….forget about the tennis player…
Feb 25, 2009 - 3:52 pm 8. Blackwater:#5
They’re carried by oil wealth and slave labor. Funny how people who would usually blast Westerners for using such labor practices don’t seem to mind when the UAE does it. Their entire economy is being built around the tourist industry since they’re running out of oil. And their bubble is doomed to collapse since it’s inevitable that islamists will carry out terrorist attacks in the UAE due to their embrace of non-islamic customs like bikini clad beaches and the sale of alcohol. Ironic how islam is the #1 enemy of muslims. It’s the old crabs in the basket effect. One crab will try to escape by crawling out of the basket of islamicofacism only to be pinched and pulled back into the abyss by the islamists.
Feb 25, 2009 - 5:30 pm 9. David Levavi:The Arabs are a backward and barbarous people grown fat on profits from petroleum which the civilized world needs to feed its internal combustion engines.
But the Arabs have become arrogant and dangerous and the civilized world is determined break its dependence on petroleum. The internal combustion engine–a fully matured technology fifty years ago ago–is slated for obsolescence.
I won’t see it in my day but I have every confidence that my children will live to see the sandblown ghost-towns of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Tall, elegant, modern structures designed by leading architects from around the world without running water or electricity. Abandoned sand-castles being slowly reclaimed by the desert.
Feb 25, 2009 - 6:14 pm 10. Omar:Daniel Pipes has a good article on this topic (and contrary to Mr.Vaird’s assurances, the UAE may not be so forward looking after all . . . (e.g. excluded Israeli tennis players, ostensibly based on “security concerns,” rote censorship, pending debtor’s prison, resulting in thousands upon thousands fleeing the country, etc., etc.):
“Dubai’s darmatic Drop”
http://www.danielpipes.org/6190/dubais-dramatic-drop
Feb 25, 2009 - 6:55 pm 11. Dawud Binyamin:This is a jewish blog.The truth is out there even if cover or refine it and you can’t get it out of the whole mankind even if you would exhaut yourself with all in your disposal i.e media,weapons,lobby,money etc. Its a pity on how you’ll continue to be consumed by your rage and jealousy.All of you should know this-you are going down in everything and for sure you cant get away with it,its just a matter of time which is certainly near.So if you like keeping on to your hatred,scheming and plotting plans against ISLAM and MUSLIMS.
Feb 25, 2009 - 10:51 pm 12. Gabi:Dawud Binyamin wrote: “… hatred,scheming and plotting plans against ISLAM and MUSLIMS”.
Personally, I’m simply opposed to “the 3-T’s”: terrorism, tyranny, and totalitarianism.
It doesn’t matter to me at all what excuse is used to justify such violence. I don’t believe that ANY group of people has a right to engage in terrorism, tyranny, or totalitarianism, regardless of their ethnicity.
If Islam and Muslims are acting in opposition to the 3-T’s, then they include themselves as members of common humanity.
However, if Islam and Muslims are acting in support of those 3-T’s, then they exclude themselves as members of common humanity.
Good luck to your belief-group to make what appears to be such a difficult decision, Dawud.
Feb 26, 2009 - 2:16 am 13. Omar:Dear Dawud:
Here’s some light reading, from a psychological standpoint, on the “paranoid style” which appears to predominate in some parts of the planet (that shall remain unnamed):
“An Example of the Paranoid Zeitgeist” (with accompanying commentary – posted Feb. 25 at 7:44 a.m.)
and;
“Malevolent Zeitgeist = Malignant Paranoid Style”
Posted on February 24 at 6:44 a.m.
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/
Feb 26, 2009 - 4:33 am 14. LynnS:“All of you should know this-you are going down in everything and for sure you cant get away with it,its just a matter of time which is certainly near.”
I prefer to think of it as a “pause”. A time to reflect on who we are, what we stand for, and how far we will go retain our lifestyle. I prefer to think that we can attain a good life without compromising our principles and letting greed become the over-powering force of our nature. Oh, and I like to question, and when things are moving very fast their is no time.
Feb 26, 2009 - 7:15 am 15. johngaltlives:Yes-who does The UAE pay huge bucks to so they will trash Israel and the west in speeches and print throughout the islamic world? Thats right, ex-presidents Jimmy Car Duh and Bubba bj Clinton. There is no such thing as a “moderate” moslem govt., they all support the destruction of non-moslem states. The Koran itself says they must, referring to non-mosles as either “infidels” or “kafirs”.The idiots like Car Duh and Bubba are nothing more than what there hero,comrade Lenin, referred to as “useful idiots”. Nice to know Comrade Lenin got the IDIOTS part correct.
Feb 27, 2009 - 1:13 pm 16. anonymous:The campus of NYU will be in Abu Dhabi, not Dubai. Abu Dhabi is the seat of government of the UAE, the largest and richest of the Emirates, and right next to Dubai.
http://nyuad.nyu.edu/
Feb 27, 2009 - 6:18 pm 17. Sylvie:To Charles Vaird @ 5 – The UAE … where would that thriving open society have been if not for that viscose liquid which was oozing out of their sands which those poor bedouins thought “so good for cooking”. Most probably still feeding their camels, donkeys and goats.
Feb 28, 2009 - 3:06 am 18. Sylvie:To Dawud Binyamin @ 11 – What’s this about an Israeli tennis player being denied a visa to play in a Tournament in Dubai which the WTA supported because she had qualified. Woefully, the gold-encrusted Dubai could even lose its Membership in the WTA next year over the ban on this Israeli tennis player Peer according to WTA Rules. Was it throuh [quoting you} “hatred, scheming and plotting plans” against the Jewish people for which Arab and Moslem Groups pay millions to propagate? Watch out you people, for you are going down slowly……
Feb 28, 2009 - 5:03 am 19. desertlover:You People are just like Arabs who come up with these elaborate Jewish-orchestrated conspiracies
Jul 29, 2009 - 7:38 pm