That the United Nations is shamelessly antisemite is above question. Yet I am shocked once and again when see what they write about Israel. For example, the UN water site features a very small note on the dramatic drought in the Hassakah region of Northern Syria, where 400,000 hungry people has escaped and lives in freezing refugee camps. Side by side, you can read a large and detailed article about the terrible disaster caused by the Israeli Government sadistic rise of the price of the water. "Research conducted by the National Insurance Institute of Israel (NIOI) estimates that the price increase would cause a 0.3 percent increase in the poverty rate in Israel and that poorer sectors would be particularly hard hit." "Yedid, an NGO working to empower poorer sectors of society, is concerned the water price increase will widen the gap between rich and poor and increase poverty. “For people in the lower tenth [of society, financially] in Israel, this 50 NIS is crucial for buying needed medicine or food. This will harm the elderly, the working poor, people living on pensions, the unemployed, handicapped and more''.
Gentlemen of the United Nations! Two billion people all over the world have no drinking water at all, for any price, yet the United Nations water site writes extensively and condemns Israel for planning to increase the price of the water and so estimatively increasing Israeli poverty rate by 0.3%. The lack of balance and focussing on Israel is grotesque, absurd, antisemitic.
ON THE OTHER HAND, it occurs to me that the UN focusing on minuscule water events in Israel and not on the Biblical disasters elsewhere, may be less a consequence of innate antisemitism and more of innate laziness. We Jews produce fantastic amounts of literature and documents, in all languages and in high journalistic quality, for and against everything related to us, since we are a people deeply immersed in ourselves. Say I am the editor of that poorly written UN sponsored water internet site. I am in desperate need of content, of publishable material, all the time. There is almost nothing about the mass human disaster in Hassakah, moreover, no one knows where Hassakah is and no one ever heard of the place. A million Hassakeans may die of deshydration and be buried one by one in inaccessible mountain cemeteries, yet not a good picture nor a document fit to publish will be available. On the other hand, there are excellently written articles freely available on Israel, written by the always chattering Israelis from the left and the right, full of fascinating accusations of Israeli government crimes against humanity such as planning to increase the price of water. One NGO antigovernment Israeli went as far as to calculate the impact of the proposed measure on poverty (0.3%) and its disproportionate effect on oppressed racial minorities. (The fact that Beduins do not pay for the water is always forgotten, our Government keeps supplying them for fear of UN criticism). It is clear that we Jews ourselves are the origin of much of focusing on ourselves.
7 comments:
J, you are a water resource expert. Why don't you scam the UN system by posting some unflattering articles to them under the auspices of Peace Now; you could add colourful details such as the Bedu being forced to bathe in camel urine. The UN goons are impervious to morality or reason, one might as well make some money off them. I pay three to four times as much as the Malaysians from whom we buy water, in order to keep the reverse osmosis and desalination plants viable. The people of Hong Kong are blackmailed into buying water from the mainland Chinese at exorbitant prices. Yet the resulting fractional increase in poverty is all but ignored by the UN toadies.
Now that you point it out, I have NEVER seen a reference in United Nations sites to increases in water prices anywhere. It is amazing that a moderate increase in Israel is considered by the UN mandarins of such importance. The UN is reporting with much malice anything we few million Jews are doing, including an improbable 0.3% increase in poverty due to the increase of the price of water. Hundreds of millions are suffering the lack of water but the UN prefers to expand on the moderate and yet to be implemented increase of price in Israel.
The reason the UN focuses on Israel is twofold. The first is that much of that sorry bunch truly hates the Jews. The second is that on any issue of the day be it prostitution or migrant workers or pollution or food security, once they manage to tag the Israelis with malfeasance real or imagined all the other countries are off the hook. I saw this process most clearly at the so called anti-racism conference in Durban. One really cannot blame leftist scribblers in Israel for this state of affairs. The Judenhass is systematic and endemic within the UN system.
May be.
Ivan, I am trying to follow the reasoning by which condemning Israel for some kind of "water crime" the situation of the rest of the world is improved. It must be some magical reasoning.
Could anyone believe that "bad" Israel, by planning to increase the price of water in Israel, is causing water penury anywhere? Saying that Israel is "bad" is making others feel "good"? To Hell with all of them, I am spending too much time in this nonsense.
J, according to my latest water bill I paid $24.76 for 4,000 gallons of water here in Mesa.
Assuming that there are 3.78 liters per US gallon that leads to the following:
4,000*3.78=15,120 liters=15.1 m3
$24.76/15.1 = $1.64 per m3
I pay a similar amount for sewage service as well. So the $1.64 does not include the cost of disposing of all of this water.
In a previous comment you stated that the average family of four in Israel is given a basic allocation of 3 m3 per month at a cost of $1. To run the numbers that works out to:
$1/3m3=$0.33 per m3
Price of water in Israel: $0.33/m3
Price of water in Mesa: $1.64/m3
1.64/0.33=4.97
Bear in mind that part of my total water bill includes a fixed base charge to cover the city's overhead, so if I used a lot more water my actual cost per m3 would be lower. But if Israel were to implement a $13 base charge there would probably be riots in Israel.
This brings to mind the old aphorism here in the western US: Water will flow uphill towards money.
For soem reason I keep thinking that my figures above are wrong, so please double check them.
Post a Comment