Twelfth-rate academic Juan Cole notes that in the latest UN World Happiness Report, Israel ranks as the ninth happiest nation in the world and the Palestinian Territories ranks 122nd out of 146 rated areas.
The per capita income of Palestinians is $3751 a year. The UN estimates that the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian territories has taken out $57 billion since 2000 from their economy that would otherwise have been there, spurring growth. The Palestinian gross domestic product would be 3 times bigger today without that interference.Israeli per capita income is $34,185 nearly 10 times greater than that of Palestine. Some of that income is produced by usurping land and resources from the Palestinians.
There you go! Jews are stealing Palestinian happiness!
Palestinian life expectancy in 2019 was 74 years. Because Israel declined to vaccinate most of the people living under its military occupation against COVID-19, it has likely fallen.Live expectancy in Israel is about 83 years. Again, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett rules both people, directly administering 60% of the West Bank and using the Palestine Authority as his policeman for the other 40%. Yet some of the population he rules drop dead 9 years before the others.
There you have it. The Jews are not only stealing Palestinian land and life expectancy and freedom and money, but they are stealing Palestinian happiness!
Don’t let actual facts interfere with Juan Cole’s fevered hallucinations.
The number of deaths per million from COVID-19 for the Palestinian territories is 1004 per million. For Israel, it is higher – 1117 per million. So much for that theory.
When the entire Palestinian territories were under direct Israeli rule from 1967-2000, Palestinian life expectancy increased from 54 to over 70. It has gone up since, too.
Cole implies that somehow Israel is fully responsible for Palestinian health. But Israeli laws do not apply to the Palestinian health sector. This is international law under the Oslo accords.
The Lancet noted in 2020:
With respect to the West Bank, the Oslo Accords state that health is under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority. As such, it is only in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority that health professionals in Israel can provide assistance to people in the West Bank. Sadly, the Palestinian Authority has decided on a general policy wherein opposing steps, which are claimed to represent so-called normalisation with Israelis, override such cooperation by forbidding Palestinian health-care personnel from working with their Israeli colleagues. We all have Palestinian associates who have privately expressed an interest in working together, but are afraid to stand out.
Other factors that could affect life expectancy (and happiness) that elude the distinguished idiot professor is that a higher percentage of West Bank Palestinians smoke than in Israel (27% vs. 20%), Arabs tend to have more obesity and diabetes, and in recent years, the Palestinian Authority has banned its people from being treated in Israeli hospitals.
The biggest proof that Cole is an idiot comes from looking at the happiness index of other Arab countries that border Israel.
While the Palestinian ranking is 122, it is higher than that of Egypt (129), Jordan (134) and Lebanon(145.) (Syria isn’t ranked, but it certainly would also be lower than that of the Palestinians as well.)
Why would those people be unhappier than the Palestinians? None of the factors that Cole lists applies to them – yet they are worse off than the Palestinians that Cole says are practically enslaved by Israel! Apparently, “occupation” actually enhances happiness compared to Israel’s non-occupied neighbors!
Cole’s hate for Israel colors everything he writes about. It is rarely as clear as it is here.
{Reposted from the EoZ blog}
