Dubai hypocrisy
Much has been made of the fact that Dubai Ports World, which stands to gain control of the operations of several major port facilities in the United States, appears to honor the Arab boycott of Israel, as initially reported by Michael Freund in the Jerusalem Post and broken on the Jewish blogsphere by Orthomom.
If anyone doubts whether Dubai is one of the good guys or not, consider the following quote from the official government tourism site:
“Nationals of “Israel” may not enter the U.A.E.”
The U.A.E. is the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part.
Presumably they object to the lack of civil rights for the Palestinians? It is true that between 2.4 and 3.7 million Palestinian Arabs who live in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza have no rights within Israel, which used to occupy the area and still has a security presence there. This would represent roughly one quarter to one third of the population of what was prior to 1948 the British Mandate of Palestine. Israel can not continue to rule this area and its people indefinitely without offering them civil rights as Israeli nationals, but that is for another post.
What I want to do here is to point out that Dubai has no right to complain about Israel. The CIA World Fact Book’s entry on the United Arab Emirates contains the following amazing statistics:
“Population 2,563,212 note: includes an estimated 1,606,079 non-nationals”
That’s right, 60% of the residents don’t have any citizenship rights! Other Persian Gulf states are almost as bad. I’ve seen nothing to contradict this. Perhaps the U.A.E. ought to look at itself before criticizing Israel.
Fat chance.
If anyone doubts whether Dubai is one of the good guys or not, consider the following quote from the official government tourism site:
“Nationals of “Israel” may not enter the U.A.E.”
The U.A.E. is the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part.
Presumably they object to the lack of civil rights for the Palestinians? It is true that between 2.4 and 3.7 million Palestinian Arabs who live in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza have no rights within Israel, which used to occupy the area and still has a security presence there. This would represent roughly one quarter to one third of the population of what was prior to 1948 the British Mandate of Palestine. Israel can not continue to rule this area and its people indefinitely without offering them civil rights as Israeli nationals, but that is for another post.
What I want to do here is to point out that Dubai has no right to complain about Israel. The CIA World Fact Book’s entry on the United Arab Emirates contains the following amazing statistics:
“Population 2,563,212 note: includes an estimated 1,606,079 non-nationals”
That’s right, 60% of the residents don’t have any citizenship rights! Other Persian Gulf states are almost as bad. I’ve seen nothing to contradict this. Perhaps the U.A.E. ought to look at itself before criticizing Israel.
Fat chance.
posted by Charlie Hall at 5:19 PM
1 Comments:
I do agree with the main thrust of the post, but I have to note that Daled Amos had an excellent post last night showing just how DP World does not in fact follow the boycott, even if officially they have to.
Another small note is that the number of foreign nationals isn't such a big deal: Israel has gobs of people who are not citizens - such as people who don't want to be enlisted, foreign nationals in the service industries, etc. You'd have to compare the number to other, similar countries. The UAE also may have more because they are (by and large) a very wealthy country, which may make it a bigger draw.
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