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Shimada Sonjuku Study Israel Tour Report

 

The Shimada Sonjuku visited Israel for July 12 to July 19, as part of its program of visiting foreign countries and areas which we usually do not have much opportunities but highly valuable to study and learn from them to acquaint ourselves with the heterogeneity of the world.

We have been discussing for the last several months as to where to visit, and after discussions, the majority of Sonjuku members opted to visit Israel, and we decided to visit Israel. Out of 17 students of the Juku, three of them were unable to join. Thus 14 students, 2 observers and myself went on the trip.

The itinerary of the trip was as follows:
July 12:
 Leave Tokyo in the morning by Turkish Airlines
 Arrive Tel-Aviv via Istanbul in midnight
 check in West Boutique Hotel Tel Aviv

July 14:
 Tour to Jerusalem
 Visit of Yad Vashem
 Walking old town of Jerusalem
 Visit of Church of the Holy Sepulchre
 Visit of Wailing Wall
 Enjoy dinner at the Bedouin tent

July 15:
 Visit of Masada fortress
 Enjoy Dead Sea

July 16:
 Discussion forum at COMAS, Tel Aviv
 Visit of Jaffa

July 17:
 Visit of Chaim Weizmann Institute
 Visit of Tel Aviv diamond exchange

July 18-19:
 Return to Japan

All of us enjoyed this trip fully and learned a great deal. This experience must remain in the minds of Sonjuku members as precious hints for them to think and determine something important to do their global business in the future.

This incredibly valuable trip could not have been possible without a warm,thoughtful and powerful assistance and guidance provided by our respectful friend Mr.Elchanan Harel and his family.

Mr.Elchanan Harel is a successful business leader of Israel and has a profound understanding and splendid human network in Japan. His son,Eran Harel spent some years after his military service in Japan, particularly attending my seminar at Keio University. Mrs.Elchanan Harel, Tali, is a specialist in medical service and a great mother of the Harels. They all helped us greatly to make our trip to Israel meaningful. I would like to dedicate with my colleagues of the Sonjuku most grateful thanks to their warm reception and friendship.

I also would like to thank the splendid guidance provided to us throughout the trip by Ms. Efrat Sharoni who gave a lot of information with her exceptional passion and devotion in depth, in detail and in wide perspective with her splendid and eloquent English, which she told me that she learned amazingly by watching English drama in TV repeatedly. Much of the contents of what I write below was given by her instructions.

Ⅰ. High-tech companies in Tel Aviv and Haifa

In the morning of July 13, we went on the bus to visit Haifa area. On the way from Tel Aviv to Haifa, there appear one after another along the street office buildings of global high tech companies such as Intel, Micro-soft, Google, Yahoo etc as well as Israel high-tech companies such as Elbit. This scene eloquently exhibits the recent remarkable development of Israel economy in the area of high tech IT industry.

In preparing our trip, we studied books and materials about history as well as most recent developments of Israel. One of the books describing recent developments of Israel industry was Dan Senor & Saul Singer "Start Up Nations"(Da2012). Incidentally, Israel ambassador to Japan Hon.Amb. Nissim Ben Shitrit carved out his precious time to visit our workshop in May to give us a lecture to introduce Israel and kindly gave each of the Sonjuku members a copy of this book. The book emphasizes that Israel smart young people are excited to start up creative high-tech companies and many high tech global companies have begun to locate their offices here in Israel to work with them or buy their venture companies. This scene along the street from Tel Aviv to Haifa vividly shows us such viable developments in Israel.

Ⅱ. Camp Atlit

On the way to Haifa, we stopped by the area called Atlit, where there exists remains of the camp which accepted and contained Jewish refugees who came largely from Europe around the time of World War II, particularly escaping from cruel suppressions of the Nazis. The camp was operative from 1930 to 1947, the year before the independence of Israel.

In the empty ground along the sea, there remain a few dozens of barracks which were used to examine and contain the refugees. The camp is said to have enrolled from a few hundreds to a thousand or so of refugees at a time. The camp was under the control of British military. They were in fact quite strict and stringent to accept the refugees. They tried to limit the number of refugees to accept because of their policy to limit the incoming Jews to the area of Palestine concerned about resentment of surrounding Arab nations.

Many of the desperate refugees were in fact rejected to land and chased away by the British coast guard and Navy vessels. Many of refugees were eventually compelled to death even though they barely escaped from the massacre by the Nazis. Empty remains of the barracks silently tell us about such a sad past. Within the barracks, beds, torn clothes, hand trunks and other living materials just to show the shabby and uneasy life of refugees of the time. On some of the walls of the barracks, there remain small boards where names and short messages of the refugees were written. The refugees apparently tried seriously to let their families and friends know that they were there.

In the oppressed days of Camp Atlit, there was an episode of revolt of refugees which many Israels proudly remember. In 1945, a group of refugees led by Yitzhak Rabin revolted against British watching soldiers and escaped from the camp to join Kibbutz Carmel near Mt.Carmel. When the refugee families were running away, people living in the neighboring village of Beit Oren came out to receive and join them so that chasing British soldiers were unable to identify the escapers. This revolt was a stepping stone for the movement of Israel for acquiring Independence later on. Mr.Yitzhak Rabin became a commander in chief of people's army and later became the prime minister of Israel.

Ⅲ. Bahai Temple and Park

We then went to a well known tourist site of a beautiful hill park where Bahai temple, the global center of the Bahai faith is located. The park is full of well gardened greens and lovely flowers. On the top and at the slope of the hill, located were buildings of the Bahai temple, halls and offices.

Bahai faith was initiated in 1844 by an Iranian merchant by the name of Siyyid Ali Muhammad who claimed that he could communicate with an Imamu and called himself "Bab". Bahai, however, was prohibited him to preach and solicit people in Iran. Bab was executed in 1850. The believers were forced to move to Iraq, Turkey, and Akko, the historic port city of Israel. Currently Bahai faith claims to have 6 million believers scattered around the world.

From the top of the hill, we can see a broad view encompassing the historic port city of Akko(or Acre) . Having enjoyed a delicious lunch at the hill top restaurant overviewing the sea, we went to visit the historic city of Akko.

Ⅳ. Akko

This is a historic old city of port since almost 4000 years ago. This place is located at the east end of Mediterranean sea and has been viewed as a strategic pivoting point for moving between Africa, Europe and India and Asia. From ancient times, this place was inhabited by the Jews, then by the Romans after the Roman Empire conquered ancient Israel, and then for a few hundred years in 12 and 13th centuries by the European crusaders. Since then the city was under the control of Moslems, and after the independence of modern Israel in 1948, this city was controlled by Israel.

Because of this history of control by different nations and rulers in different ages, buildings, city structures, tools and accessories of the city of different historical stages remain as an accumulated strata just as though the compiled tiers of sandwiches. The old city remains as the underground structure below the structure of surface which was built at a later era. We are thus able to see structures of different historical stages just as watching the historical exhibition in a museum.

Ⅴ. Yad Vashem-"Holocaust Museum"

In the morning of July 14, we left our hotel in Tel Aviv and went on to Jerusalem to visit the holocaust museum and also see around the old town of Jerusalem where remain historic and sacred ruins of three religions, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The holocaust museum was standing calmly on a hill surrounded by green trees. This is a new museum which was built in 2005. The old one was built shortly after the independence of modern Israel, which was replaced by this new museum.

The museum preserves and exhibits the sad and cruel historical evidence of suppressions, oppressions and eventually the massacre of as many as 6 million Jews by the Nazis led by Adolf Hitler during the time of World War II. While there is no doubt that Adolf Hitler and a handful of men who closely worked with him were the most dreadful and sinful criminals of human history, shocking is the fact that dozens of tenth of thousands of German officers, soldiers, and police, who would otherwise be normal citizens participated to this horrible mass crimes.

The exhibition starts by showing many pictures and scenes of Jewish citizens who had been enjoying their lives peacefully in cities, villages, working and gathering in festivals or weddings etc in many European countries in the 1930s prior to the breakout of the European War.

Then, exhibitions move on to new worrisome political developments in Germany where the Nazis led by Hitler gained the majority power in its parliament and equipped Hitler with an unlimited authorization of full control of political national decisions. Hitler, then, started a notorious campaign against the Jews claiming that the Jews are the inferior species in contrast to noble Germans, Jews are sub-human creatures with dirty blood, they give bad effects to the society and encouraged students and citizens to harass and tease Jews in schools, worksites and towns. The Nazis encouraged medical doctors and scientists to prove this horrible racial discriminatory notion by physical surgery, alive human anatomy and experiments.

European War broke out in 1939 by blitz aggression by the German army to countries around Germany. Jews in many countries were ordered to put star emblems or yellow ribbons on their breast, to show that they were legitimate citizens. Surprisingly, this order was made in many countries by the police of each country rather than the direct actions by the Nazis. I wonder if the Nazis and German military may have been perceived by neighboring countries at the time as irresistible menace or power. Soon afterwards, though, police of many countries particularly in northern European countries such as Poland, started to seize the Jews with this visible identification and forced them to contain in ghettos. Under the miserable conditions of lack of housing, food, clothes and care, most Jews were weakened, suffered from illness, and many died from infirmity.

The Nazis developed the insane and cruel and systematic crimes from suppression in ghettos to mass killing. First, the killing hole. The German executers forced the seized Jews to dig the hole and let them stand by the hole and shoot them by guns. This method was widely used in areas under the German control such as Russian regions.The Nazi's headquarter considered, however, this method of killing the Jews takes too much time and costs. They were planning to kill 11 million Jews estimated by them in entire Europe. They held a strategic planning meeting led by cold-blooded and crazy officers such as Rudolf Eichmann and decided a new and more effective method, namely, a killing facility by fatal gas.

They built many such facilities at various parts of European countries under their control, and the most large and well known killing plant was built in Auschwitz. Many Jews who were seized and captured were guided to leave the ghettos and get on trains. They followed the order hoping that they could be out of the most horrible situation in the ghettos. When they arrived at the destiny, they were advised to undress because they could now wash their dirty bodies by shower. And the shower was a fatal gas. After each killing operation, bulldozers push thousands of bodies into holes and cover them up with mud.

In May1945, German military was defeated by allied forces chiefly led by the United States and the suffered Jews were liberated. Most of them were under the bad health conditions due to poor nourishment and illness, and many of them lost mental power to reconstruct themselves. Even though survived and presumably freed, most of them lost their families, physical and spiritual power and could not figure out how to resume their life. Watching pictures and pictures of hopeless and desperate faces, I was pressed almost as though difficult to breathe. Many Jewish victims were not found and identified even now. A big hall was dedicated entirely to list pictures and names of found and identified victims. But much more than them were gone and still unknown.

At the end of the exhibition corridor, there open glass doors beyond which is a widely open view of green hills, forests and cozy housing developments. I passed the doors and stepped to the open terrace. I wished to recollect my thoughts. This was a second visit of myself to this museum. I could not find a word to express how I feel. Only thought emerged in my mind was that we, the human race, should not repeat this horrible deed, never again.

My friend, Elchanan Harel and our tour guide, invited us to see the trees planted outside of the museum to commemorate rare individuals who bravely saved the lives of suppressed Jews confronting against the fatal dangers such as Mr.Oscar Schindler and Mr.Chiune Sugihara. Mr.Schindler is a German businessman who saved about 1200 Jews working in his plant from the fatal difficulty. Mr.Sugihara was a diplomat who had been working in Japan's consulate in Lithuania during the war and issued many visas as many as 6000 in a few days even against the order of the Japanese ministry of foreign affairs at the time, to save the refugees who were desperately trying to escape from the fatal threat of the Nazis. The Japanese ministry of foreign affairs does not recognize officially this action by Mr.Sugihara even today.

Ⅵ. Visit of Old Town of Jerusalem

After having lunch, we spent a whole afternoon walking through many paths of old town of Jerusalem to visit sacred places and holly symbols as well as seeing the lives of people in this unique historic town.

The old town of Jerusalem consists of largely four areas in which peoples who believe different religions live. The largest area is inhibited by Moslems.Next areas are by Christians and Jewish. The smallest area is by Armenians.The old town of Jerusalem is indeed the most sacred place for all the believers of these religions.

For Christians, this is the place where Jesus Christ was crucified and a few days later resurrected. The traces of Jesus of his last moment are kept inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For Moslems, Mohammad,the apostle of the divine god, Allah, went back to the god after his death, as symbolized by the Dome of the Rock. And for Jewish, this is the capitol city of their ancient home country where the huge and glorious temples were built by their kings the great.

The Torah, the most sacred book for the Jews which writes the myth and the history of the origin of their ancient home country, Israel, tells that the Jews who went to Egypt were captured and made slaves but they survived believing increasingly strongly that the God will save them by sending a Messiah. They were saved by Moses, an apostle, and arrived back to the region of their home, Palestine. The King David the Great beated enemies to establish the country, and his son built a magnificent temple. But the Jews later were beaten by Babylonians, temple was destroyed and they were again made slaves. Liberated from the slavery by Babylonians a century later, the King Herod the Great constructed a huge and glorious temple.

Currently, only a portion of the outside west wall which surrounded the basis of the structure of the temple remains. This is called "Wailing Wall" because many Jews come here to wail adoring their ancient holly great kingdom and home country which had prospered before the birth of Jesus Christ. We visited the Wailing Wall where many Jews and tourists were praying. Judging from the existing Wailing Wall which is only a remaining small portion of the west wall, the full wall which had been as long as some 500m and 10m high originally. One could imagine well how huge, great, glorious and dignified the temple was when it existed. The King Herod the Great, who built this temple, contacted closely with Emperors of Roman Empire, kings of Egypt and other major countries behaving as the great king of the great country, Israel. Later in the history, the Romans forced the Jews under their control, and the Jews revolted against them, and after fierce battles, Jerusalem was completely destroyed and Israel itself was terminated as a country by 70sAD. From that time on, the wall had been under the control of Romans, Arabs, crusaders, Ottomans and the British for nearly 1900 years in spite of painful and longing desire of the Jews to worship. It came back to the hands of the Jews only after the third Middle-east war, or "6 day war" as Israelis call, in 1967.

We visited the "Church of the Holy Sepulchre." This church was built in 325AD by empress Helena, mother of Roman Emperor Constantinus the first who built the capitol city of East Roman Empire, Constantinople, which is now Istanbul of Turkey. Because of this contribution, she is respected by the Christians as St.Helena. This church preserves the spots of Jesus in his last time. Those spots trace the 14 stages of the last moment of Jesus from the spot where Jesus was bound to the cross, the spot Jesus fell down and nailed to the cross until his death. Thousands of pious Christians visit this holly place and touch and pray at these spots every day from all over the world. We joined them to respect the sacred places.

We walked through much of the old town of Jerusalem. There were many markets along the narrow paths and stairways of old stones, which were filled with crowds. Many of them were apparently tourists, but there were many locals as well. The outlook and atmosphere of the paths, stores and people differ interestingly depending upon the dominant religion of the district.

Ⅶ. Separation Barriers

In late afternoon, we proceeded to the area of Dead Sea. The sun was beginning to set in the west. On the way, we passed by areas where there built long concrete walls and metal fences. This is called "separation barriers." Separation barriers are said to extend as long as 780km, and in some places the walls as high as 6-7m are built. These barriers were built to separate Palestinians living within Israel or the area under the control of Israel from the area where Israelis are living.

These barriers are a sad symbol of failure of Israel-Arab mutual understanding of co-existence. In August 1993, an epochal agreement was reached between the representatives of Israel, the then prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin and chairman Yasser Arafat of Palestine Liberation Organization, by the earnest intervening efforts of leaders of Norway and the United States. The agreement is named Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, and is often referred as "Oslo agreement," acknowledging the effort of Norway leaders.

The agreement aims to bring about peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians in the areas where both of them inhibit by admitting the legitimacy of PLO by the Israel government. Israelis say that the objectives of this agreement were not respected and observed by Palestinians by means of sporadic terrorism etc, and in 2002 to 2003, these barriers were constructed hurriedly to assure security of Israelis. Mr.Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated later (in 1995)by a young fanatic nationalist perhaps due to his impression that for Mr Rabin has given in to the Arabs. Israel waged major attacks to Lebanon and Gaza area in July 2006. Arabs claim that with these attacks, the Oslo agreement lost its meaning completely.

Ⅷ. Bedouin Tent and Their Hospitality

As the sun is setting in the west horizon, the bus pulled to a side road away from the main street to go up a hill where there is a Bedouin style tent apparently built to entertain tourists. On tables in and outside the tent, foods and drinks were arrayed and drums and music devices were prepared. From the hill, there extends an increasingly dim and blur scene of Dead Sea in the purple dusk of the time.

Staff of the tent invited all of us to play drums together and play tricks together. This was a fun. There we started drinking, picking some foods. Time passes with relaxed conversations. In return to Bedouin music, we sang a song "Furusato(Home land)" together. I also sang some Japanese love songs. Then, a belly dancer appeared. After some dances, she invited some of us to join to dance together. One young member was particularly chosen to dance together on the table, which was a fun. She told me that her dance is of Egyptian style. She gave me her name card which was written in Arabic. She told me that her name was Karen. Joyful party went on to much later than 10 o'clock. When we arrived the hotel, Daniel Dead Sea Hotel, it was almost midnight.

Ⅸ. Masada Fortress

In the morning of July 15, we departed the hotel to visit Masada fortress. Masada fortress is built on the top of a steep rocky mountain which is about 500m high from the ground. Since the Dead Sea is 420m below the sea level, the Masada is in fact 55m above the sea level.

Many tourists walk to climb up the slope, we chose to use the rope way. On the top of the mountain, we were able to view all around broadly. This Masada fortress is a very important historic ruin for the Jews because this was the place where the Jews finally ended their fight against Romans and after the fall of the fortress, ancient Israel terminated its history.

As I wrote earlier, the Jews revolted against the Romans around 66AD and Jerusalem, the capitol city of Israel, was completely destructed and ruined in 70AD. Their wars are elaborately described by a Roman /Jewish writer - Josephus Flavius, of the time in his monumental book, Paul L. Maier translation "The New Complete works of JOSEPHUS." A handful of soldiers and their families who were living in the Masada fortress fought even after the fall of Jerusalem for three years.

The Roman soldiers as many as 100 thousands were deployed around the Masada in 8 major camps. They attempted attacks a number of times using arrows, fire arrows, spears, large stones thrown by big throwing devices, huge stone hummers to destruct fences and walls, and also constructing slopes by piling up rocks so that they could reach the fences of the fortress. The Romans often used Jew hostages to carry and pile up such rocks so that it was difficult for Masada soldiers to attack them. The Jewish soldiers guarding the fortress, nevertheless, fought well to defend themselves against attacks of the Romans as long as 3 years.

Finally, there remained only 960 Jewish in the fortress. Many of them were in fact families of soldiers, namely,women and children. In front of overwhelming power of the Roman corps, the Jewish chief-commander of the fortress decided to cease the battle without surrender, namely, suicide. The soldiers went back to their families and killed wives fearing that they would otherwise be raped and abused, and then killed children fearing that they will be slaves and deprived from freedom. And finally, ten soldiers were selected to kill all the others and after that they committed suicide. All took place in the mid-night. When the Roman commander rushed into the fortress next morning, what he saw was a pile of hand weapons and arrayed dead bodies. This story was told by a few women who miraculously survived the killing in the darkness of the night.

Masada fortress was built by King Herod the Great as a mountain palace in the most luxurious way. It consists of three tiers. The top tier was used for living sectors of officers and families, baths of many kinds, and storage space etc. The construction was made obviously in Roman style, using the most advanced technology and designs. The second tier is a guest house which protrudes at the slope so that guests can enjoy marvelous views. The third tier is the palace, which also has a wide open terrace to overview the whole region below the palace.

Amazing is the fact that quite a few people were able to enjoy their life on the top of the mountain in this very dry area. The most important supply is obviously water, which looks most difficult to secure here. The entire structure is designed so well and delicately that any drops of rain in a year or even the slight dew on the rocks and walls gelled due to changes of temperature can be led together along well designed ditches and pipes to flow into reservoirs so that people living there can always enjoy sufficient supply of water for cooking and baths.

Judaism prescribes that the life of people is determined by the God, which implies that a human cannot terminate his or her own life. Therefore, the suicide committed by the guardians at the fortress of Masada cannot be justified by the rules of Judaism. For this reason, the extra-ordinary contribution of these guardians to protect the honor of their country has not long been officially respected by the Jews. However, their brave actions to protect the honor of the country and freedom from slavery or abuse is recently well respected not only by the Jews but also by many peoples of the world. The legend of Masada became a national Myth, and the saying “Masada-Never Again” became the reason and source of Jewish survival.

Ⅹ. Dead Sea

Coming back from Masada fortress, we went to the shore of Dead Sea to enjoy floating on the salty water. As written above, the level of Dead Sea is probably the lowest water level on the earth, which is 420m below the sea level. Because of the limited inflows relative to outflows of water, the surface level of the Dead Sea is said to have been lowered as much as 33m for the last 110 years, and consequently, the density of salt in the water must have risen considerably during the period. Indeed, Dead Sea was divided by a sand spit recently between north and south Dead Sea because of decline of the water level. On the other hand, there are many plants along the seashore which extract various types of minerals for industrial use.

Last time I came here, I found that the salt crystalized at the bottom of the water grew to be the shape of sharp corns and can hurt the foot easily if foot is not protected properly. Learning from this experience, I brought with me this a part of time good sport shoes. Thanks to this protection, I was able to enjoy floating near the shore very much by reading a newspaper on the water.

Having enjoyed Dead Sea and good lunch, we got on the bus to come back to Tel Aviv. Because of a lot of walking, learning, enjoying, and perhaps with exposure to deadly salty water, we all slept like dead on the way back.

ⅩⅠ. Discussion at COMAS

On July 16, we visited in the morning a business college in Tel Aviv, named COMAS(The College of Management Academic Studies).Mr.Elchanan Harel who is member of the board kindly arranged the seminar at this school with professors and some graduate students. This business college is well-known in Israel enrolling as many as 11000 students for developing creative research and providing excellent teaching in business particularly entrepreneurship, leadership and innovation.

The format of the seminar they had proposed to us earlier was a series of lectures by the professors on various subjects relating entrepreneurship, leadership and management education etc and some discussion which will follow the lectures. Since I wanted as much as possible mutual communication and understanding, I sent them a counterproposal to spend full two hours for discussion and squeeze the part of lectures. I was not, however, not quite confident if this ambitious goal of achieving meaningful results through discussions.

We have studied a widely read book Dan Senor & Saul Singer "Start-up Nations," prior to this trip. The book emphasizes that start ups in Israel is most vigorous. The ratio of business start ups to the size of population is by far the highest in the world. By the way, Japanese business start ups have been low and even declining recently. Many major global corporations, particularly of advanced IT, invest and locate part of their operations in Israel. It seems that Israel emphasizes such business trend as a national brand. The book suggests several reasons why high-tech business start-ups are so vigorous: namely, innovative mind of Israelis, mind-set to seek exit by selling the business once succeed, military experience of handling high-tech weapons and severe training, government financial support to start-ups, and national crisis consciousness etc. Our question is whether this is an unique feature of Israel, or will it change as time passes, and most importantly if this can be transferable to other countries such as Japan.

I wondered if discussion of Sonjuku members and Israelis professors and researchers can be meaningful to examine and find out any answers to these questions. Except some members who are quite proficient in English, many others are not quite capable in English speaking. However, most of the members have already good experiences in their businesses and have keen interest to think and evaluate, and must make decisions based on their judgement. They are in such businesses as financial investment, real estate finance, whole-sale and consumer services, water purification, tax management of wealthy customers, concierge services and capital transactions, consulting service, IT service for teachers, financial management of publication business etc. It was my hope that the members with this much of variety of experiences will have some issues to pursue meaningfully with Israel professors of business.

The conference started by my introductory remark, particularly to explain the objectives the Sonjuku and why we have come to Israel. Mr.Elchanan Harel spoke next largely to help bridge the Israel-Japan intellectual interactions by first emphasizing similarities of both nations naming it as "J(Japanese)-J(Jewish)" syndrome by pointing to such occasion features as perfectionism, emphasis on education, the fact that mother is the center of the family etc. He then proceeded to mention differences such as Japanese groupism vs. Israel individualism, Japanese formality vs. Israel informality etc. His speech put our subjects on a systematic perspective. Then, professor Dafna Kariv gave a short introductory lecture on outstanding features of Israel business particularly in such aspects as remarkable developments in high-tech IT businesses, entrepreneurship, innovations, and management challenges etc, which gave us excellent factual basis on which to develop our discussion.

Then, we started discussion session. Prof. Oren Kaplan who kindly arranged this whole conference in the past weeks took the role of chairmanship. Prof. Kariv suggested to divide the whole attendants into three groups so that every participant will have opportunity and time to speak up. This suggestion was very helpful for us to enjoy productive discussion with much contributions by every and all of the participants.

The first group one focused on such questions as what kind of hopes Israel young business people have for the future of the country, and what are the reasons behind their inclination to haste exits raised by Japanese participants. Israel professors kindly gave diverse and comprehensive comments. The second group focussed on such issues as the meaning of "failure" in business career in Israel vis-a-vis Japanese counterparts, and turning point of industrial strategy reflecting historical development of industries and economies. The third group discussed such questions as time horizon of business activities particularly of innovation and exits, and the importance of network.

The discussion went very well and productively. While many of them participate the process of discussion earnestly, the given time was used up. We were under the impression that had we had more time and opportunity the discussion could well have arrived at some concrete business ideas and policy suggestions.

ⅩⅡ. Jaffa

After lunch we went to the old city of Jaffa, which is located south of Tel Aviv. This is an old port city. In the area of ancient Israel, such materials as lumbers and constructive stone were uploaded from this port and carried to the old town of Jerusalem to build the temples. Since this is at a critical strategic location at the east end of Mediterranean sea, this city has been put under control of the rulers of the region such as ancient Jews, Romans, Moslems, British and even Napoleon Bonaparte took control at a time. From 1948, this city has been under control of modern Israel. Archeologists recently evacuated many of the ruins, and found precious remains of buildings, town facilities and even treasures of different historical ages.

The area of Jaffa is rather exceptional in this region to have abundant underground water so that agriculture was well developed. Since the mid 20th century Jewish population started to develop rapidly houses and city facilities to the north of Jaffa and gradually formed the current city of Tel Aviv.

We walked from Jaffa to north along the sea-side. The sun was begning to set, and nice breeze, and the calm sea were so attractive to watch, swim or sail. We then arrived at a restaurant in the woods with open sky. There, Mrs.Elchanan Harel, Tali, joined us. Since this was already almost the end of our visit to Israel, we enjoyed the dinner party till late.

ⅩⅢ. Haim Weizmann Institute

In the morning of July 17, we visited globally famous Haim Weizmann Institute. This is the center of advanced scientific research and education, which enrolls some 2500 scientists including researchers, professors and students. The institute currently covers a wide range of natural sciences such as mathematics, physics, nuclear physics, chemistry, bio-chemistry and other areas. The institute produced many nobel prizers and also many nobel prizers visit and study here from all over the world.

Many buildings of research and teaching facilities are built scattering in a wide space with many woods. Flat spaces among woods are covered well by lower trees of citrous. We walked the tranquil campus being guided by Dr.Judith Heldman, a senior research scholar of bio-chemistry and is a good friend of Mr.Elchanan Harel.

This institute started originally as early as 1934 by the leadership of Dr.Haim Weizmann and his colleague under the different name, and it was renamed as the current name in 1949. Dr.H.Weizman became the first president of the Institute till 1952, the year he passed away.

Dr.H.Weizmann was well known as a world leading scientist as a chemist, but perhaps is also well known as the first president of modern Israel. He was born in Russia and as he grew he spent various stages of his life in different countries as Germany, France and England. He acquired high prestige as a famous scientist in England particurally due to his invention of extracting Acetone from bacteria. Acetone could be used as important components of an explosive. He was well respected in British political community and had friendship with British leaders.

On the other hand, he was increasingly involved at the same time in the ideology and movements of Zionism. He worked increasingly closely with Theodor Herzl, an Austrian born Jew who was the ideological leader of Zionism claiming that the Jews must re-establish their own country. Making use of his fame and friendship with the British, Mr.H.Weizmann worked hard with them to get their support for this movement. In fact, he successfully obtained a declaration in 1917 from Arthur James Balfour, the first Earl of Balfour, known as Balfour declaration which admits the legitimate right of the Jews to build their own country in the area of Palestine. This declaration, however, never realized.

After a bitter and fierce struggle, modern Israel was finally established in 1948 by the declaration of independence by Mr.David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister who stayed in the position for 22 years. In spite of an exceptional contribution by Mr.H.Weizmann to have paved the way for international community to recognize the meaning and importance for the Jews to re-establish their country, even sacrificing the life of his son, an officer of British airforce, during the war, he was excluded from the leaders who signed the independence declaration, suspectedly with implicit confrontation with David Ben-Gurion, and later was given the title of president without substantive political power.

Walking in the campus of the Institute and visiting the Weizmann House located at the end of the campus, I felt a profound sense of respect to this exceptional intellectual leader of Israel, and some painful complex sympathy for his life which was spent for his nation in the most difficult age of modern global history.

ⅩⅣ. The Diamond Exchange of Tel Aviv

In the afternoon, we visited the diamond exchange of Tel Aviv, where the president and chairperson of the board of the exchange, who is a good friend of Mr.Elchanan Harel, welcomed us. The Tel Aviv diamond exchange is now the largest exchange in the world embracing 3400 registered members as contrast to some 2000 of NY exchange.

Diamond is perhaps the most highly valued jewelry. For us to get a diamond, there involves a series of tremendous labor inputs starting from digging and finding from mountains, rivers and from the sea, cutting, polishing and marketing. With this much inputs to get a piece of diamond, no wonder why expensive it is.

The quality of diamond is determined by four Cs: namely, carat, cuts, clarity and color. Each piece of diamond is carefully examined and evaluated against these criteria by skilled and experienced diamond craft man and traded with other traders or consumers with a certificate rigorously written by the examiner. Thus, each piece of diamond has a unique characteristic proven by the certificate not replicable by other diamonds. This is an outstanding feature of diamond in contrast to gold. Besides, diamond is very light and easy to carry and hide.

The Jewish have been dominating this diamond business at least for the last several hundreds years, most likely making maximum use of this feature. The quality of diamond can be certified almost exclusively by the skilled Jewish craftsmen and examiners. In a fatal hardship under suppressions, the holders of diamond can cross the border hiding diamond even among their teeth, and when they escaped from pursuers, they can sell diamond and could get money which could be good enough to support the rest of their lives.

I was particularly interested how proper evaluation and pricing can be made under such circumstances. It must be on the assumption that almost everywhere on the earth, there exist some people who can and will do this job fairly and trustfully. They are the Jews and the Jewish network. I admire the historical effort of Jewish people to develop such skills and network trying hard to live through the long, bitter and painful experience of "diaspora" for almost 19hundreds of years.

ⅩⅤ. Finale

Mr.Elchanan Harel received a request from one of the well read economic newspaper journalists to make an interview with me. After coming back to the hotel, I spent almost two hours answering her questions.

The members of the Sonjuku were already sitting around the table at the side of sea. The sun was setting and they are enjoying the comfortable ocean breeze. They were just waiting for us to join them. Elchanan and myself hurriedly joined them an hour later and a joyful farewell fiesta started. Elchanan asked everyone of them a few words about their trip to Israel. After listening to all the comments from the members, Elchanan said "I welcomed and guided many, many visitors from Japan, but you people are exceptional in your good preparation, sincerity, curiosity and strong will and wish to understand our country." I looked up the sky, an afterglow is already gone, and the moon was shining.

これからのビジネスとリベラルアーツ:なぜ広域地中海文化圏の古代史なのか?