Am I the only person wondering why Israel isn't included in the G20? Could it be the extra cost of the Kosher food?
According to their own description, the G20 is composed of "systemically important industrialized and developing economies" that come together to "discuss key issues in the global economy."
Recognizing that emerging economies weren't adequately represented, the group was created as a mechanism to bring more voices and perspectives to conversations about global financial stability and governance.
Well, Israel is clearly an economic powerhouse, both in the region and globally. It has clearly moved from an emerging economy to an industrialized one, and that swift transformation gives it a unique and valuable perspective.
Israel is on fire with entrepreneurship. They have the second-highest number of startups in the world after the United States (with a tiny population of only 6,200,000.) It has the largest number of NASDAQ-listed companies outside of North America. It's the place Intel and Microsoft both chose to construct their first overseas R&D centers, and last year, Buffet's first non-U.S. acquisition was an Israel company called Iscar.
Then there's Israel's geopolitical significance, and the fact that it's got the nukes Ahmadinejad lusts after. In terms of being "systemically important" to the global economic architecture, how about the potential of an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, and the resulting impact on oil prices and the world economy?
So what gives? It's hard to argue that Israel doesn't deserve a seat next to Canada and Australia and Italy and Indonesia and South Africa. Sure, they're larger economies, but it's not like they exactly represent a model for the future.
The answer is obvious. It's the same double-standard of hypocrisy that routinely puts Israel on the losing end of one United Nations resolution after another, while brutal autocracies that murder their people and lack a semblance of a judicial system are continually enabled.
The world has no fondness for Israel (that's a polite way of putting it). In fact, every poll I've seen shows overwhelming global antipathy. The country is radioactive. And because the power brokers at the G20 don't want to deal with the controversy and consequences of inviting Israel in, they take the chicken-shit route of shutting them out.
Which is too bad. I think the G20 might actually learn more about healthy economics from a country that turned nothing into something, than from countries like the U.S., which are in rapidly turning something into nothing.
That said, I was not surprised though of course, dismayed to see as responses a number of factually inaccurate, and even anti- Semitic attacks on Israel.
Israel is the one country in the world whose destruction is endlessly called for by other U.N. states without the slightest bit of moral outrage on the part of so- called 'human rights' groups. Is it hated so because it is the one democratic country in the Middle East? or because its Arab minority has a level of democratic freedoms and social benefits no other minorities have in the Middle East? Or because it has despite the perpetual attempt to villify and undermine it, survived and grown economically? Or because it makes a real technical and cultural contribution, despite its smallness, to humanity?
Rather, Israel is constantly criticized in the UN, by the majority of nations on earth (including the US) for it's violently enforced colonial settler movement, Which is, by definition, taking place OUTSIDE of it's internationally recognized borders.
Calling for the end of this atrocity is just and good, good for Israel, Good for the Palestinians, good for the region, for the US and the world. The majority of Israelis would like to see them gone as well.
One can't start to use religious or political "quotas" in such a forum as G20. If one did, deciding what kind of quota would be impossible to agree on. It would diminish the point of the whole forum and by that, it's legitimacy.
In 1998, according to an agreement with the Clinton Administration and Congress, Israel voluntarily requested to decrease its financial dependence on US economic aid by phasing it out over a period of 10 years.
Israel is an economically, technologically, and militarily advanced country, with a per capita rate of $14,000, which is higher that that of all neighboring Arab countries, including the oil-rich Saudi Arabia. It is ranked as the world's sixteenth wealthiest country.
In 1998, Israeli, congressional, and Administration officials agreed to reduce U.S. $1.2 billion in Economic Support Funds (ESF) to zero over ten years, while increasing Foreign Military Financing (FMF) from $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion. Separate from the scheduled cuts, there was an extra $200 million in anti-terror assistance, $1.2 billion to implement the Wye agreement, and the supplemental appropriations bill assisted for another $1 billion in FMF for the 2003 fiscal year. For the 2005 fiscal year, Israel received $2.202 billion in FMF, $357 million in ESF, and migration settlement assistance of $50 million. For 2006, the Administration has requested $240 million in ESF and $2.28 billion in FMF. H.R. 3057, passed in the House on June 28, 2005, and in the Senate on July 20, approves these amounts. House and Senate measures also support $40 million for the settlement of migrants from the former Soviet Union and take note of Israel's plan to bring remaining Ethiopian Jews to Israel in three years.
Finally, to help Israel out of its economic slump, the U.S. provided $9 billion in loan guarantees over three years, use of which has since been extended to 2008. As of July 2005, Israel had not used $4.9 billion of the guarantees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-United_States_relations
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1032932.html
When Israel can stand on it's own, then we'll talk. Until then, sit at the kiddie table where you belong.
The terr'or that the settlers have inspired has cost the region and the US countless billions and dollars and thousands of lives.
Perhaps that's why they are not part of the G20.
The gift of permitting dual citizenship? the American shield? The mad support of Christian Zionists with the delusion that the Israeli state is needed to bring on the end of the world? The water diverted from Palestinian homes and farms?
Much was given. Much was taken. Much was stolen.
What Israel has made of it is not admirable, at all, at all.