Now, of the 192 members of the UN, Israel has diplomatic relations with 156. The remaining 36 governments refuse to have such relations with Israel, some more vociferously than others. Quite a few go so far as to deny that Israel exists at all. The full story is told here.
As it happens, the countries that refuse to have diplomatic relations with Israel are, by and large, among the most corrupt in the world, some having a cleanliness score of no more than 1 or 1.5 out of ten. The average rating for these refusal countries is 3.16. (The US has a score of 7.1, Israel 5.8). Below are the scores of all the 36 governments that refuse to deal with Israel:
| Afghanistan | 1.50 |
| Algeria | 2.90 |
| Bahrain | 5.10 |
| Bangladesh | 2.70 |
| Bhutan | 5.70 |
| Bolivia | 2.80 |
| Brunei | 5.20 |
| Chad | 2.00 |
| Comoros | 2.40 |
| Cuba | 4.20 |
| Djibouti | 3.00 |
| Guinea | 2.20 |
| Indonesia | 3.00 |
| Iran | 2.70 |
| Iraq | 1.80 |
| Kuwait | 4.60 |
| Lebanon | 2.50 |
| Libya | 2.00 |
| Malaysia | 4.30 |
| Mali | 2.80 |
| Mauritania | 2.40 |
| Morocco | 3.40 |
| Nicaragua | 2.50 |
| Niger | 2.50 |
| North Korea | 1.00 |
| Oman | 4.80 |
| Pakistan | 2.50 |
| Qatar | 7.20 |
| Saudi Arabia | 4.40 |
| Somalia; | 1.00 |
| Sudan | 1.60 |
| Syria | 2.60 |
| Tunisia | 3.80 |
| United Arab Emirates | 6.80 |
| Venezuela | 1.90 |
| Yemen | 2.10 |
| average | 3.16 |
Very interesting. I think another way of looking at this is that Israel ranked 36th out of the 182 ranked countries, well above other Mediterranean democracies like Italy and Greece. There's obvious room for improvement, but on the whole, not bad.
ReplyDeleteI am prepared to gloat a bit from my lofty Canadian position. We're in the top 10 again, because Canada is the most wonderful country in the world, or at least would be if we could figure out a way to convince all our communists to move to Cuba or Venezuela.