Feb 22, 2018
A Lebanese journalist has conceded that looking back at a century of
history in the Middle East, the Arab world has failed where Israel has shined.
In a November 25, 2017
article marking the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration
published in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Lebanese journalist
Karam Al-Hilu compared the meager accomplishments of the Arab world in the past
century with those of the rest of the countries of the world, and particularly
Israel.
The Balfour Declaration
of November 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour
to Baron Rothschild stating that “His Majesty’s government views with favour
the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
Al-Hilu noted that
Israel’s supremacy in the areas of science, economy, society, and politics is
the source of its strength, as well as the source of the Arabs’ failure in
confronting it.
“A century after the
Balfour Declaration the Arabs have not managed to build a [a single] state
that possesses knowledge, justice, and the economic, social, and human
capability for confronting Zionism,” al-Hilu wrote, according to a translation
by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) recently published,
Arab Lack of Achievements
“One hundred years have
been squandered [by the Arabs], in all aspects; during them, the Arabs have
been confronting Israel while their cultural infrastructure was in crisis – in
the areas of knowledge, politics, economy, society and thought,” he charged.
According to a 2014 Arab
Knowledge Report published by the United Nations (UN), despite the existence of
500 Arab universities, with an enrollment of nine million students and
faculties of 220,000 lecturers, scientific achievements are meager in the Arab
world, which has failed to adapt to digital culture and other basic aspects of
human progress.
Expenditure on
scientific research for its part is negligible.
Scientists and research
output are a rarity in the Arab world, and the research that is published there
constitutes only 0.8 percent of the global average. The number of patents
registered to the Arabs in the past 50 years does not exceed the number of
those registered by Malaysia alone.
“Not a single Arab
university ranks among the 500 best in the world, while Israel supersedes the
Arabs at an astronomical rate, in inventions and in hi-tech export. Israel has completely wiped out
illiteracy [among its
citizens], while among the Arabs, 23 percent remain illiterate,” he further
noted.
Arab Law and Justice
The Arabs have also not
succeeded in building a single state of law and justice, he pointed out.
Transparency.org’s
Corruption Perceptions Index 2016, published January 2017, shows that six of
the 10 most corrupt countries in the world are Arab. Countries such as Egypt
and Tunisia are ranked 108th in corruption, and Lebanon is 136th,
while Israel takes 33rd place, which places it with the
developed countries.
“[The Arabs] have not
managed to establish a country [in which there is] economic justice; the class
gaps [among the Arabs] are very great and unemployment, particularly among
young people, tops out at 35.7 percent in Egypt, 32.1 percent in Iraq, and 45.3
percent in Mauritania,” he added.
For the Arabs to change
the course of history and rectify this situation, as part of the “resistance to
Israel,” they must start by “reading these numbers and these facts,” claimed
al-Hilu.
While the Arab world has
“spared no blood, martyrdom, or [self-]sacrifice” in its fight against Israel,
“it has been negligent in the areas of science, economy, society, and politics
that are the source of Israel’s strength – just as they are the source of our
failure in confronting it,” he concluded.
Arab and Muslim
journalists and commentators have previously expressed envy over Israel’s success in various realms, especially compared to
the stagnation of the Arab and Muslim world.
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