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FINANCE MINISTER Yuval Steinitz hailed it as a “historic achievement.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw it as a “particularly welcome sign of Israel’s solid international standing,” noting that any one of the 31 member states “could have voted ‘no’ and vetoed our inclusion.”
They were talking about the unanimous vote at Chateau de la Muette in Paris by the 31 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to accept Israel – as well as Estonia and Slovenia – into its ranks.
It was undoubtedly a victory for the embattled Jewish state. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, evidently unperturbed by potential damage to ties with Israel as proximity talks got under way, had campaigned against Israel’s inclusion.
Israel’s impressive accomplishments are best appreciated when scrutinized by a forum of highly developed countries committed to democracy, liberalism, equal opportunity and the market economy using objective socio-economic criteria. In contrast, negative misrepresentations of the “Zionist entity” as a repressive, racist apartheid state belong to the fairyland world of hateful propaganda and a well-developed Palestinian victimization complex.