On Dec. 21, 2012, a UN resolution on “Entrepreneurship for Development” was proposed by Israel, along with 97 co-sponsors.
The resolution encourages private and public sector entrepreneurship, “developing new technologies and innovative business models, and enabling high, sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth while protecting the rights of workers as the best way to deal with the challenges of poverty and job creation.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, said the following:
“The Israeli spirit of entrepreneurship and creativity prevailed at the UN today. As a state that was founded in difficult circumstances, we have been able to create opportunities for talented people and have become an enterprising superpower. Creating a culture of entrepreneurship can work miracles and drive economies forward. Investing in human resources is a real message that Israel conveys to the developing world.”
The UN adopted it by a vote of 141 in favor to 31 against, with 11 abstentions.
What’s interesting about this? If you recall, there was a huge row over comments during the US Presidential campaign suggesting that Israeli culture is a major factor in the state’s economic and social prowess in the region.
Many commentators on the far left (including the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ contributor Rachel Shabi) scolded those who would suggest a connection between culture and success – imputing racism to such arguments.
Shabi characterized the broader narrative that Israeli culture may be more conducive to success than Palestinian culture as “standard-issue superiority complex racism”.
To those so easily manipulated by au courant post-colonial causation, the stubborn reality of Israeli success (as with Western success more broadly) must be explained by “systemic” injustices.
To the far-left crowd, the word “racism” – which refers to a belief in the inherent, immutable, biological or genetic inferiority of a group, race, or people – has been defined so expansively as to even impute such bigotry to those observing intuitively that some cultural habits are necessarily inimical to economic achievement and social development.
Now, take a look at the countries who voted against the Israeli resolution advocating “entrepreneurship for development”.
Algeria, Bahrain, Bolivia, Comoros, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Yemen.
Do you see a pattern?
A strong majority of these states are plagued by poverty, under-development and despotism.
Oh, and also: The majority of these states are opposed to Israel’s very existence, and some have a shameful history of having ethnically cleansed their Jewish citizens in the twenty years following 1948.
The resolution, based on the most intuitive reasoning, was opposed because it was the Jewish state which proposed it.
By obsessing over Israel, refusing to concentrate on the real problems plaguing their societies, and working to instill the liberal cultural habits necessary to alleviate their poverty and throw off the yoke of tyranny – and ignoring the lessons on how a small, innovative, Jewish country accomplished so much in just six and a half decades – they ensure that little progress will likely be achieved.
Those in the West who continue to indulge such nations in the fantasy that their anti-Zionist delusions are justified, even righteous, are complicit in condemning millions to poverty, tyranny and hopelessness.
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