MOSES WAS A VERY POOR GEOLOGIST

Moses trod the desert sand, looking for the "promised land." It was great campaign rap. A great lyricist, Moses vowed to plant his people in the land of "milk and honey." Finally, exhausted by 40 years of hiphop, Moses pointed to that patch of earth which would become Israel.

But there wasn't any milk and honey around. Just sand, storms and earthquakes. Worse yet, there wasn't any oil.

Comedians chide Moses for choosing the one place in the Middle East which contained nary a drop of oil.

But God and Moses turned out to be a lot smarter than the comedians.

Without the benefit of oil and other raw materials, the Israelis have had to live, work and die smarter than their oil-rich Arab neighbors.

Through the use of irrigation, Israel farmers made the desert bloom with fruits and vegetables while its neighboring Arabs were jockeying camels, pumping oil and going to religious school. Schooling which ignored mathematics and science.

Then Israel came from nowhere to become one of the world's preeminent high-tech centers. While about 26 percent of Europe's exports are high-tech, Israel's high-tech exports have reached an astounding 55 percent of its foreign sales. Israel boasts many world-class high-tech companies, Saifun, Amdocs, Check Point and Comverse among them.

In fact, Israel has more high-tech companies listed on the NASDAQ than anybody other than the U.S. and Canada. More than France, Germany and Italy -- which seem far more preoccupied with exporting subsidized cotton, sugar and wheat to poor countries. Big American companies like IBM, Motorola and Cisco have major research centers in Israel, which has been dubbed "the second Silicon Valley."

Without oil, Israelis had to stretch four ways:

• As glorious as "milk and honey" may sound, it doesn't produce much Gross Domestic Product. Instead, young Israelis are channeled toward high-tech careers. (It beats working a hot, dry Kibbutz.)
• Second, the government primed the high-tech pump with money, later adding a large dollop of Soviet scientists into the mix after the old Soviet Union collapsed. (There are lots of "Jews" in Israel who know Einstein but have never heard of Moses.)
• Third is the continuing high-tech talent sort conducted by Israel's army which grabs up everyone who turns 18. The army gives potential engineers and scientists projects to develop and lets them keep the intellectual property rights. As these talented draftees leave the army and enter the university system, they already are equipped with both desire and experience. (This gives them a big leg up on American students, who enter college based on grade point averages, SAT scores, legacy rights and soccer balls.)

Can you imagine Harvard or Oxford using the U.S. and British Armies to draft 18-year-olds and sort them into potential pools of scientists and engineers? It would be good for the country, but all those ultra-liberal professors would have hissy fits.

• Fourth is Israel's perpetual risk of attack by the Arabs. This is a risk which deals with threats against life itself. Compared with that, business risk seems pretty tame. As a result, Israel's young are driven by a culture of risk-taking, producing business startups out of all proportion to the population.

The result is a huge pool of startups and engineers. On an proportional employed population basis, Israel boasts more than twice the engineers found in the U.S., more than four times the engineers found in Britain and more than six times the engineers found in Singapore.

What is the result of all this? Let's talk money.

Israel's per capita Gross Domestic Product is $22,200.

How about all those countries benefitting from big oil reserves?

Saudi Arabia's per capita GDP is $12,900 and rapidly declining. (Fast-growing population doesn't help.)

Mexico's per capita GDP is but $10,000, and poorly shared.

Iran's per capita GDP is $8,000 and falling.

Venezuela's per capita GDP is $6,400.

Nigeria's per capita GDP is a tragic $1,000.

I think God realized that man was a weak and easily tempted creature. He knew that abundant oil reserves would result in extreme corruption, resource theft, cruel dictatorship, pathetic infrastructure management, mass poverty and rich Swiss bankers. (Climate warming in Switzerland is caused more by hot money than air pollution.)

The way things turned out, God did Moses and the Israelis a tremendous favor by guiding them away from all the oil lands.

Away from the oil curse.

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