Canada's number four!

Editorial

The United Nations Human Development Index is published each year and, each year, there are few surprises.

This year's Index, which was issued this week, places Canada at number four, behind Norway, Australia and Iceland. The index does not recognize the catastrophic fall from economic grace experienced by Iceland last year because the statistics upon which the index is based are largely from 2007. That noted, and other things being equal, Canadians could proudly chant, were we not so characteristically modest, "We're number four!"

Canada's standing is significantly higher than the United States, which comes in at number 13, and that of Israel, which is at number 27.

The Human Development Index (HDI), which began in 1990, considers factors beyond gross domestic product to measure a country's worth, attempting to identify a measure that better reflects the social well-being of a state. The HDI measures three aspects of human development: life expectancy, which is a composite measure of health, education (as determined by adult literacy and student enrolment) and standard of living (as measured by purchasing power parity and income). The authors stress that the HDI does not measure such factors as gender or income inequality or concepts like human rights and political freedom.

Most interesting, of course, are the countries further down the list. The "Occupied Palestinian Territories," as they are referred to in this report, come in at 110 (out of 158). Now, before the world begins pointing fingers at Israel for keeping the Palestinians downtrodden, it is worth noting that Syria comes in only marginally better at 107. Lebanon fares still better at 83 and Jordan is at 96. Egypt comes in worse, at 123.

Of the 22 Arab League nations, not one comes in the top 30. Of those in the top 75, only the oil-blessed Gulf States and Libya appear. In short, the entire Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, is doing a below- to far-below-average job of promoting their citizens' health, education and standard of living. This fact is most atrocious given the billions of dollars that have poured into these countries in the past three decades. Saudi Arabia currently receives more than 90 percent of its export earnings from oil – roughly the same proportion as in the 1970s. In other words, for the tsunamis of petrodollars that have drenched the parched sands of the Arabian Peninsula since the 1970s, the kingdom has made effectively no progress whatsoever in diversifying its economy or preparing for a life after oil. Indeed, the only notable things Saudi Arabia exports besides oil are the most extremist version of Islam and terrorism.

What this all speaks to is a sort of pride in failure. Just as Canadians might crow "We're number four!," the Arab world seems to take an almost perverse pride in its backwardness, as if this is proof of their rejection of imperialist criteria of success.

The early Zionists assumed – imperialistically, of course – that the return of Jews to the Levant would raise the standard of living for all in the region. This is the problem.

Success – as measured by such criteria as the HDI, the Democracy Index, the Index of Economic Freedom and so forth – are signs of capitulation with the hated West: the Zionists being the closest and most detested case in point. And so, instead of improving the lives and conditions of their people, three generations of Arab leaders have ensured that their countries reject any knowledge that comes from the Zionist entity, including such things as desalination, desert agriculture and advanced health research.

Israel has been more than willing to share this know-how; it has been overwhelmingly rejected. Recall recent natural disasters in which Muslim countries have rejected the assistance of the world's foremost first-responders because they are Jews. A particularly illustrative incident was the earthquake in Bam, Iran, in 2003, which killed 26,271 people and injured 30,000 more. Israel offered immediate help and was rebuffed. How many hundreds or thousands of Iranians died, it is fair to ask, because of their own leaders' anti-Semitism?

This is perhaps the most evident of the anti-Israel bloc's insistence on cutting off their noses (or, at least, the noses of their ordinary citizens) to spite their faces. But the HDI is another, less obvious, example.

Had the Arab world welcomed Israel's creation and joined forces to create a regional economic force, imagine how the world would be different. Instead, Israel enjoys one of the world's highest standards of living, economic progress, human freedom and political stability. What typifies its neighbors? The misallocation of oil billions, gaping disparities between rich and poor, economic stagnation and corruption, human repression of the worst form, including the utter subjugation of the half of the population who are women, and political stability, if it exists at all, that is enforced by an iron fist.

At least they can take pride in having successfully inoculated themselves from the "poison" of Zionism.

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