Daphne Anson: "I Share Israel’s Love For Freedom & Democracy; I Admire Its Tenacious Determination When The Odds Are Stacked Against It" (plus video of some who won't like that statement!)

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, 10 June 2015

"I Share Israel’s Love For Freedom & Democracy; I Admire Its Tenacious Determination When The Odds Are Stacked Against It" (plus video of some who won't like that statement!)

The UK's Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Sajid Javid, who as his name suggests is, incidentally, of Muslim heritage (see my earlier post about him here), has delivered a fine speech to at the awards ceremony of UK Israel Business, in which he unequivocally condemns BDS.

'Good evening, and shalom aleichem.

It’s a great pleasure to be with you tonight to celebrate the ties between our countries, and the very best of UK and Israel business.

Golda Meir said that Israelis only have one complaint about Moses.

That he led the Jews through the desert for 40 years – then finally stopped at the one place in the Middle East that doesn’t have any oil!

But I guess necessity is the mother of invention. Because over the past 67 years, Israel really has made business bloom in the barren desert.

It’s one of the many reasons I have long admired the country. I’ve travelled there extensively, both for business and with family. And over the years I’ve taken a great interest in its affairs. Because the values that have made Israel such a success are values that matter a great deal to me.

I share Israel’s love for freedom and democracy. I admire its tenacious determination when the odds are stacked against it. [Emphasis added here and below]

And, like millions of Israelis, I have a mother who’s still waiting for me to get a proper job!

So we have a lot in common. And that’s why I’m heartened at the growth of British and Israeli trade links.

Business has always been a part of my life, not just the 20 years I spent in international banking, but the heart and soul of my childhood, growing up in a small flat above the family shop.

And throughout that time I’ve seen how business can do a great many things.

It doesn’t just provide jobs and local growth. It lifts individuals, communities and even countries up to be the best they can be.

That’s why tonight we should celebrate the ever-closer business links between Britain and Israel.

The total value of trade and services between our 2 countries is now well over £4.5 billion a year.

Last year alone, 25 Israeli companies set up or expanded their operations in the UK. Israeli-owned CinemaCity amalgamated with the UK’s own Cineworld. The Helios Energy Fund committed £30 million to set up 30 biomass installations in the UK. The Noy Fund announced plans to invest £50 million in UK waste-to-energy projects.

There are now over 300 Israeli companies with a physical presence here, responsible for thousands of jobs.

But this is not a one way street. Great British businesses like Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Barclays, Rolls Royce and others have invested more than £1 billion in Israel. Our exports to Israel are increasing rapidly – and the UK is Israel’s second biggest export market.

In addition, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of Israeli companies showing interest in raising capital on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Nine Israeli companies carried out IPOs on the LSE last year – second only to the UK itself.

So the past few years have been a golden era for Anglo-Israeli business. But what really excites me are the possibilities offered by the years to come.

Collaboration on science and technology is the cornerstone of our shared relationship. As we all know, only Silicon Valley can rival Israel when it comes to developing leading-edge technologies.

We look towards Israel to benefit from its world-leading expertise in cyber security. And equally, we want to support Israel as it exploits recent discoveries of natural gas in its waters – through strategic partnerships, project finance and supply chains.

And we must continue to work together on achieving medical breakthroughs – whether through, the Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership (BIRAX), or as GSK and Technion are doing, or the National Health Service (NHS) and Teva Pharmaceuticals, through a £12.5 million joint-research agreement.

The UK-Israel Tech Hub in the British Embassy in Tel Aviv has also fostered promising collaborations in agriculture, water technologies and in finance, with 14 Israeli start-ups coming to London this March to meet major City players. And initiatives like the Israel Investor Summit are helping to bring together businesses in both our countries.

It’s a great relationship, and not one we should ever take for granted.

But sometimes we do. You may have heard that Britain’s National Union of Students recently passed a motion committing itself to a complete boycott of Israel. Last year the same body rejected a motion calling for a boycott of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which I think speaks volumes.

Last December, as Culture Secretary, I made a speech to Britain’s Union of Jewish Students. And I told them that I had no time for the boycott campaign. Because for me, freedom is an absolute concept.

At the time I spoke of artistic freedom. Today I talk of the freedom to trade, the freedom to go about your business in peace. Today I talk of the idea that underpins my entire political philosophy, that of free enterprise. It simply doesn’t make sense to say “I believe in the free market, but…”

Let me be very clear – I don’t believe in boycotts. Nor, I’m proud to say, does my party, my Prime Minister. Or, for the most part, my country.

On the contrary, my department – including United Kingdom Trade and Investment (UKTI) – will be working hard to boost Anglo-Israeli trade and investment. And, as Business Secretary, I’ll do anything I can to support and promote it.

So my message to you is clear. Where there are business opportunities, we should actively explore them – just as the winners of tonight’s awards have done to such great effect. And let me, if I may, single out Sir Harry Solomon for his award this evening: congratulations.

We look forward to working with our Israeli partners in the future.

Thank you, and todah rabah.

Here are some familiar fanatics, who will be distinctly unhappy at Mr Javid's grand remarks. These people were making nuisances of themselves outside the Goethe Institut in South Kensington yesterday, angry at the Institut's reception (to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Israel-German diplomatic relations) under the auspices of Eitan Na'eh, Israel's Deputy Ambassador in London, and Tania Freiin von Uslar-Gleichen, Germany's Deputy Ambassador there, at which the Israeli government sponsored SERET 2015 London Israeli Film Festival began with an exclusive preview of the film Farewell Herr Schwarz.

The fanatics explained on their publicity material:

'At the launch of last years Seret film festival Israel's ambassador to the UK Daniel Taub stressed the importance of "the role the Festival plays in providing a platform for spreading a more accurate picture of Israel across all communities". At the launch the programme director "said that the founders saw themselves as informal ambassadors for Israel". Another co-founder of the festival, Odelia Haroush, was previously the marketing manager of the Ahava shop in Covent Garden that sold stolen dead sea produce and was forced to shut down in Sept 2011 after a sustained campaign by human rights activists. She sees the film festival as a direct response to the boycott Israel campaign. The festival is also co-sponsored by occupation profiteers like Bank Leumi.

We have picketed the Seret film festival from its inception 3 years ago and we will be picketing it again this year.'

The soundtrack to the video has been provided by the intrepid "cinematographer" (my word, not his) of anti-Israel rallies in London, Alex Seymour (aka Seymour Alexander) but from 19:17 the speakers from Central Casting begin to do their party pieces. The first to perform is the woman with long grey hair who not so long ago used to hop on Tube trains to recite anti-Israel "poetry" to hapless commuters. She is followed by a woman who reads this letter from The Guardian newspaper signed by big and bigoted egos from the world of show business (Miriam Margolyes, Mike Leigh, Peter Kozminsky) demanding a boycott of the Israel Film Festivals. Two other Israel-demonisers, one a veritable staple at such rallies, follow.

And here's Shimon Peres in a video denouncing the BDS movement:

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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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Wednesday, 10 June 2015

"I Share Israel’s Love For Freedom & Democracy; I Admire Its Tenacious Determination When The Odds Are Stacked Against It" (plus video of some who won't like that statement!)

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