Daphne Anson: A French Intellectual In Praise Of Israel: "J’aime être en Israël, et j’aime le peuple israélien".

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Wednesday, 8 June 2011

A French Intellectual In Praise Of Israel: "J’aime être en Israël, et j’aime le peuple israélien".

Unlike so many members of the "intelligentsia" in his country and elsewhere in the West, French economist and writer Guy Millière, who teaches at the University of Paris, is a staunch public champion of Israel:

"J’aime être en Israël, et j’aime le peuple israélien .... Je rentre en Europe, et en entendant ce que j’entends dire sur Israël, j’entends parler d’un pays où je ne suis jamais allé et où je ne puis me rendre, parce qu’il n’existe que dans la tête malade de ceux qui parlent."

Perhaps it's no accident that he's also a conservative.

What follows are extracts, in translation from the French, of his impressions of Israel following his recent visit there for an academic conference:

"I just spent a week in Israel. It was a very short stay, and it will give me a good reason to come back - but do I need reasons to come back? The answer is no, because I love being in Israel, and I love the Israeli people.

This trip was an opportunity for me to give several lectures and meet hundreds of people. I know many of those who wanted to come hear me talk with me and could not for lack of space. I tell them this: it will only be postponed....

Being in Israel gave me the opportunity to meet friends, many, but also to immerse myself in places full of meaning. I cannot be in Jerusalem without thinking about all the spiritual past with which this town is loaded and without feeling that the harmonious beauty that is its is a much more harmonious beauty: the pervasive and palpable trace of more than two millennia of history.

I cannot take the road from Tel Aviv and not feel embraced by emotion at the thought of those who fought in the valley and the mountains to the rebirth of the country ... I can only ponder the immensity of the progress in so little time ... [now] one of the most modern, most innovative countries in the world.

.... The proximity of so many hostile countries around could not leave the mind. Near the edge of the Red Sea in Eilat there are three countries: Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The [Israeli] population lives calmly as if there was no threat, and one feels a quiet and determined strength in [Israel], far removed from the foolish and vile talk we can hear about it in France and Europe.

.....At the height of the Dead Sea, the road goes back between the Kingdom of Jordan and the Palestinian West Bank. It crosses Jewish villages and Arab villages. We glimpse, as elsewhere in Israel, very few police and a few soldiers. Again, the reality is far removed from the foolish and ignoble speeches you hear in France and Europe....

Arriving at Lake Tiberias ... I decided to go through Nazareth, and I see that the Christian church ... is surrounded by speakers spouting verses from the Koran, and placards predict the worst punishment for those who do not join the Muslim faith: traces of proselytism, the spirit of conquest and Islamic intolerance.

Along the road to Haifa, I encounter the signs of various companies, reminders that Israel is not only modern and innovative, but the first country in the world, per capita, in terms of technological innovations in several crucial areas ranging from biotechnology to medical artificial intelligence. One sees that in Israel, as in the Silicon Valley in the United States, there is rich creativity.

On the coast, cities like Netanya and Ashdod evoke in me their equivalents in California ... the difference is that California is now bankrupt while Israel was not affected by the economic and financial crisis existing since 2008....

I spend an hour at Yad Vashem: I’ve already been. I come back every time, because it should never be forgotten. Strictly never.

... I go to Ofra, a Jewish town in Judea and Samaria - the first Jewish town in Judea and Samaria to have been rebuilt after Judea and Samaria were liberated from Jordanian occupation. Itamar, where the Fogel family was murdered, is nearby.... The people I meet at Ofra are kind, intelligent, forthcoming, extremely different from what is said about them in foolish and ignoble talk in France and Europe. One of them is a historian and wrote several books on Eretz Israel.

On ascending a hill, one sees throughout the region: there is land to cultivate, to build villages, huge empty spaces. Jewish villages protect themselves. If the Arabs were not impregnated with hatred and fanaticism, they could live in peace and cooperation with the Jewish villages, and they [the latter] would not have to protect themselves. I cross several times the security fence, and I write it here: it is aptly named. It is a barrier erected for safety. Hatred and fanaticism involve barrier and security measures.

I have read and listened to the inadmissible statements by Barack Obama regading "1967 borders". I am mindful of the news: these statements do not surprise me at all. I know, since the time of the 2008 election campaign, Obama is an enemy of Israel and a friend to Islamists.... Netanyahu’s response and speech seem the least we can do ... a legitimate reaction ... In France and Europe, Obama is being cheered and Netanyahu booed. This is terrifyingly logic: it is consistent with the logic that I expose in Comme si se préparait une seconde Shoah.

I returned to Europe, and hearing what I hear about Israel, I hear about a country I’ve never been and where I cannot go, because it exists only in the sick head of those who speak of it.
[My emphasis]

There is hatred and fanaticism inculcated in the territories occupied by the Palestinian Authority, and the hatred and fanaticism make two victims: Israel must protect itself, and Arabs who are taught hatred and fanaticism, rather than live their lives, are transformed into wild animals and into barbarians.

There is also, in Europe, the United States, up to the White House, accomplices of hatred and fanaticism.
I consider those describing Israel as a militaristic police state as frauds and those who, since then demonise Israel and intend to strangle Israel in terms of "1967 borders" as antisemites: some of them are Jews .... There are even antisemitic Jews in Israel.

I consider those who speak of "Palestinian people" as frauds, too.

I consider those who speak of the Palestinian Authority as a "partner for peace" and turn a blind eye to hatred and fanaticism as useless idiots...

I returned to Europe, and I feel like I'm returning to a vast insane asylum. I will return to Israel to discover the truth..."

© Guy Milliere for Drzz.fr
For the full article in French see http://leblogdrzz.over-blog.com/article-retour-d-israel-par-guy-milliere-74698084.html
And to read the remainder of this article in English see http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2011/06/07/guy-milliere-back-from-israel/
(Here and there, some of the translation on that blog has been slightly altered by me for this; the pictures were added by me; the main picture is from www.drzz.info)

6 comments:

Juniper in the Desert8 June 2011 at 20:08
Thank you so much for this, Daphne! Shared!
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Daphne Anson8 June 2011 at 20:47
OPleased to be of service, Juniper!
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roger8 June 2011 at 23:25
Excellent words from this Frenchman. I can relate to everything he says. It's called reality. And his comment that Europe is like an insane asylum rings so true. I'm surrounded by this bigotry and ignorance regarding Israel and it's truly psychotic...and sometimes very depressing. I also have to return to Israel for some therapy.
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Daphne Anson8 June 2011 at 23:34
And there was me thinking it's chiefly in Europe's offshore island that the demonising chatter occurs, Roger!

I could not quite make head or tail of his last paragraph or two - it seemed possibly too idiomatic, and the translation on Ruthfully Yours seemed a tad dodgy, so I admitted it.
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Skipping Girl9 June 2011 at 23:31
Not only Europe is insane. Just pop along to a Friends of Palestine meeting in Australia for a look at the cuckoo's nest.
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Daphne Anson9 June 2011 at 23:43
My blood pressure would rise to dangerous levels, SG!
And there's this nasty piece in the Canberra Times (h/t Shirlee):
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/stop-blind-support-of-israel/2190222.aspx
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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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