2023-12-10 15:52:23
The State of Israel should be offered membership in the EU. Micha Brumlik, a German-Jewish intellectual, suggested this a few years ago. Germany could play a leading role in this. Brumlik argues that the state of Israel is culturally influenced by Europe even more than Turkey with its Ottoman roots.
Rainer Hank
Freelance economics writer for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
At first glance the idea sounds absurd. Especially in these times. But only at first glance.
Now we don’t know whether Israel would even be interested in EU membership. Or perhaps the 51st state of the United States of America would prefer, should there be a corresponding offer from Washington. In addition, I don’t know whether the requirements for EU membership include that the country geographically belongs to Europe. It is by no means objectively necessary: you could become a member of the Hanseatic League, a free trade alliance in the early modern period, even though the cities were far apart between Western Europe and Russia and had no common border. One could also belong to the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation”, although neither Roman nor German. Instead, concurrent political and economic interests were a prerequisite for admission.
An economic miracle that deserves the name
In addition, economically and politically, Israel could meet the requirements for EU membership much more quickly than Ukraine, where accession negotiations are due to open soon. In the Economic Freedom Index, a recognized measure of economic success, open markets and the rule of law, Israel ranks 34th, while Ukraine ranks 130th. The State of Israel has also been a member of the OECD, the club of the world’s rich industrialized countries, since 2010. The prerequisites are market economy and democratic structures as well as respect for human rights; free competition and free trade must be recognized and widely implemented.
Israel boasts one of the most fascinating economic miracles of the last hundred years, much more impressive than our post-World War II miracle of the same name. While in this country after the war there was already an industrial landscape that could be quickly rebuilt, and a workforce with technical intelligence that was able to build on the pre-war period, Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century found Palestine to be a country in which People lived in relative poverty under Ottoman rule. The Holy Land was not economically blessed. Industrialization, which had brought great prosperity to the Western world since the 19th century, had not taken place there.
This text comes from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
According to the socialist-Zionist ideology, collective and cooperative ventures (“kibbutzim”) played a major role in the early days of settlement. Until the mid-1930s, Jewish and Arab economic structures were linked. It was only an Arab uprising to boycott the Jewish economy in 1936 that forced the “Yishuv,” the Jewish community in Palestine, to develop independent economic structures.
#Israel #fits #Orient