By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/oecd1israel030810.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 8 -- While Israel's Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom predicted to the Press on Monday that his country with "finally join" the OECD at its meeting in May or June in Paris, he would not provide Israel's response to OECD's critique of including settlers but not Palestinians in Israel's statistics.
Inner City Press asked Shalom, twice, if both groups were and would be included in Israel's submission to the OECD. Shalom said, we will comply with the rules, and then referred to other issues that have arisen in the last few years. Video here, from Minute 21:27.
Another issue is whether wine and other products coming from Israeli settlements should be labeled as such. As one pro-Israel source told Inner City Press after its questions, "it's all politics."
Following up on Friday's Security Council meeting and press statement, Inner City Press asked Shalom if he understand, as the Palestinian Observer put it, that the "provocations" decried in the Council's press statement includes Israel's National Heritage List.
Shalom took this as an opportunity to hearken to the Bible, with its "first chapter" referring to patriarchs as in the Cave of the Patriarchs. We have been there 3700 years, he said, not 130. And then he left the stakeout.
Later, it was argued to Inner City Press that the United States delegation had not agreed to the Council's press statement of March 5. An even more pro-Israel source, however, blamed the U.S. not objecting on the fact that the "U.S. number one Ambassador was not there. The number two, who closely follows the Middle East, was not there either. The number three is sharp about Kosovo, but not the Middle East."
The source compared the two U.S. positions -- not objecting to the press statement and then claiming that it had -- to "Obama's record in the Senate, of not taking positions on some hard votes." That's what the source said. But if the U. S. Mission wants to claim it didn't agree, and blame the "inexperienced" Gabonese presidency, it should come forward with facts. Watch this site.
