Israel’s OECD entry attracts media attention while Iran endorsement goes unreported
12 May 2010
Over the last week two global organisations announced that they had each accepted a controversial new member state. Both states will see their respective endorsements as a diplomatic triumph that will help to some extent untarnish their international reputations, but only one will attract the attention of the UK media.
Last week, The UN Commission on the Status of Women accepted the membership of Iran, despite the Islamic regime’s poor record on women’s rights. Then, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) accepted Israel, a country with both a free-market economy and a stable, well-regulated financial services sector, into its ranks. Only the latter event received coverage in the UK media, including negative opinion pieces on the Guardian’s Comment is free website.
On Monday 10 May, Israel, Slovenia and Estonia were all accepted into the OECD, with varying media focus on the efforts of anti-Israel campaigners to block the move. For example, BBC article ‘OECD members vote unanimously to invite Israel to join’, concentrated on the political controversy surrounding Israel’s admittance while still in occupation of the West Bank, opening with ‘Members of the group of rich nations, the OECD, have voted unanimously to invite Israel to join, despite Palestinian objections.’ By contrast, ‘Israel becomes OECD member’ by Financial Times Middle East correspondent Tobias Buck, did not mention the protests until the tenth paragraph.
These objections were also supported in two opinion pieces on Comment is free. Before Israel even gained membership, Seth Freedman voiced his opposition in ‘OECD is ushering Israel in far too easily’, arguing that ‘it is incumbent on organisations such as the OECD and EU to flex their muscles in a fashion that is measured yet firm […] but the OECD seems to be falling short of its own responsibilities.’ That the OECD should take account of Israel’s behaviour is due to the fact that ‘Economic pressure is one of the most powerful tools in the outside world's arsenal when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict.’
The theme that Israel’s acceptance into the OECD should depend on its political conduct rather than economic success was also the subject of ‘Put conditions on Israel’s OECD entry’ by Avi Shlaim and Simon Mohun, which argued that Israel was an inappropriate candidate for the organisation, since, according to them, ‘Israel's numerous breaches of human rights principles and of international humanitarian law, whether during the Gaza offensive in the winter of 2008-09 or through the continuous expansion of its settlement project in the West Bank’ contravenes the OECD’S stated commitment to ‘pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and the respect of human rights’.
No other country’s political behaviour has been subject to such scrutiny, or been viewed as an impediment to joining an organisation that is primarily concerned with the development of economic policies. Indeed, when the OECD was formed in September 1961, one of the initial members was Turkey, which at that time was being ruled by a military junta following a coup earlier that year. While Turkey’s human and civil rights record remains a stumbling block to it joining the European Union, which is as much a political body as an economic one, it has never been raised in relation to its continued membership of the OECD.
In contrast to this media interest in Israel’s admission into the OECD, there has been no coverage in the UK media of the appointment to the UN Commission on the Status of Women of Iran, a country where women face corporal punishment if their clothing does not meet the required standards of the religious authorities, and where there have been numerous allegations of the systematic use of rape on jailed protestors. While there is an appetite for opinion pieces that denounce the integration and normalisation of Israel in the international community, the juxtaposition of the aims of the UN Commission on the Status of Women with the behaviour of Iran has not been seen as noteworthy.