Daphne Anson: Boris Johnson

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)

Showing posts with label Boris Johnson. Show all posts

Saturday, 11 August 2018

The Blond, the Berks & the Burqa

Regarding Boris Johnson's recent remarks about the burqa, condemned by Theresa May and a bunch of trembling Tories as well as the usual suspects, I was looking at this Twitter page admiring the forthright views of true feminists such as the page owner herself when I spotted this:

Corbyn's an atheist. Strange to see him at prayer. But has he been traduced? Here's more on that story.

Among Suzanne Evans's tweets and retweets regarding Boris's criticism of the burkha, such as those by Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who's in a spot of trouble over one tweet, there's this delight:

Splendidly, British broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer tells a Muslim female caller that the burqa's "a horrible, ghastly dehumanising garment" and a lot else besides.

A fabulous set of arguments on Julia's part! She's clever, polite and relentless!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-hiphhw0PY

Meanwhile, Guardianista columnist Polly Toynbee, an atheist, parades her "Islamophobic" credentials yet again. Too bad she lumps Judaism and Christianity in with the "primitives".

"The pens sharpen - Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions (and most others) are much the same - Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women's bodies. There are ritual baths, churching, shaving heads, denying abortion and contraception, arranged marriage, purdah, barring unclean women access to the altar, let alone the priesthood, letting men divorce but not women - all this perverted abhorrence of half the human race lies at the maggotty heart of religion, the defining creed in all the holy of holies."

As Taj Hargey, an imam in Oxford put it, inter alia, in a letter to The Times:

"Boris Johnson should not apologise for telling the truth. His evocative analogy is unfortunate but he is justified in reminding everyone that the Wahhabi/Salafi-inspired fad of female facial masking has no Koranic legitimacy. It is, however, a nefarious component of a trendy gateway theology for religious extremism and militant Islam. The burka and niqab are hideous tribal ninja-like garments that are pre-Islamic, non-Koranic and therefore un-Muslim. Although this deliberate identity-concealing contraption is banned at the Kaaba in Mecca it is permitted in Britain, thus precipitating security risks, accelerating vitamin D deficiency, endorsing gender-inequality and inhibiting community cohesion."

Update:
O, the irony! Al Beeb (among others) reports:

"Christine Hamilton has been removed as a charity ambassador after comparing burkas to the hoods of the Ku Klux Klan. The broadcaster and wife of UKIP Welsh Assembly member Neil Hamilton sparked outrage on Twitter with her comments. Muscular Dystrophy UK said it opposed "prejudice and discrimination" and had severed all links with Mrs Hamilton."

"Prejudice and discrimination", eh? For the prejudice and discrimination against women involved in enforced veiling try this for size, and be sure to look at the comment that links to this: http://www.faizaneraza.org/islamic-article-read.php?article_id=31

Sunday, 4 March 2018

David Singer: Prince William Visit Will Advance Jordan-Israel Two-State Solution

CLICK HERE for thread

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Kensington Palace’s carefully-crafted tweet announcing that “The Duke of Cambridge will visit Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the Summer” – could spark a diplomatic war with far-reaching implications.

The Palace clarified that:

“The visit is at the request of Her Majesty's Government and has been welcomed by the Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian authorities.”

This will be the first official Royal tour to the State of Israel since its establishment in 1948. Israel’s President Rivlin and Prime Minister Netanyahu have expressed their delight at this long-overdue announcement.

Jordan – visited officially by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 1984 – will enthusiastically welcome their grandson Prince William.

The British Government’s decision to also dispatch the Prince to visit the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” (“OPT”) – Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza – the last remaining 5% of the territory of the Mandate for Palestine where sovereignty remains unresolved between Jews and Arabs – is very intriguing.

The PLO and Hamas have been engaged in an internecine struggle for control in the OPT since 2007 – whilst the PLO has suspended negotiations with Israel over the allocation of sovereignty in the OPT since April 2014. Corruption and nepotism are rife and elections are long overdue. Murderers of Israelis are rewarded with financial payments for life.

PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas’s incendiary comments at the United Nations on 20 February claiming the British Government bears responsibility for the catastrophic consequences inflicted on the Palestinian people as a result of Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration – create a toxic environment for the Royal visit.

Indeed Abbas had earlier declared in the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016:

“We ask Great Britain, as we approach 100 years since this infamous declaration, to draw the necessary lessons and to bear its historic, legal, political, material and moral responsibility for the consequences of this declaration, including an apology to the Palestinian people for the catastrophes, misery and injustice this declaration created and to act to rectify these disasters and remedy its consequences, including by the recognition of the state of Palestine. This is the least Great Britain can do.”

Another Abbas demand in March 2017 that Britain apologise for the Balfour Declaration was swiftly rejected by the British Government.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – writing in the Daily Telegraph on 29 October 2017 – went even further:

“I have no doubt that the only viable solution to the conflict resembles the one first set down on paper by another Briton, Lord Peel, in the report of the Royal Commission on Palestine in 1937, and that is the vision of two states for two peoples.”

The Peel Commission recommended two sovereign independent States be established in Palestine:

1. An Arab State – consisting of Trans-Jordan (now called Jordan) – 77% of the territory of the Mandate for Palestine – united with part of the remaining 23% of the Mandate territory within which the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home was proposed in 1922

2. A Jewish State consisting of the remainder of the 23% of Palestine

The Arabs rejected the Peel recommendations.

However Jordan’s subsequent independence in 1946 and Israel’s in 1948 laid the groundwork for the Peel two-state solution applying in 99% of former Palestine between 1950 and 1967 after Jordan and Egypt had illegally invaded and occupied the OPT in 1948.

Great Britain in 1950 and the PLO on its establishment in 1964 recognized this two-state reality – which remains the key to resolving the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict.

Prince William’s visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territories ensures that resurrecting the Jordan-Israel two-state solution once again takes centre stage.

Thursday, 16 March 2017

David Singer: Netanyahu Sends Clear Message to Trump, Putin, May and UN

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has had a busy week meeting with UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson in Jerusalem, President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and then back to Jerusalem for a five hour meeting with President Trump’s Special Representative for International Negotiations – Jason Greenblatt.

The framework for these meetings was set by Netanyahu – who told Johnson:

“It’s evident that we agree on most things, but not on all things. And one of the things, I think the source of it when you analyze a problem, get to its roots and reason that we haven’t had peace for a hundred years is not the settlements, but the persistent refusal to recognize a nation-state for the Jewish people in any boundary. I think if you want to solve a problem, go to the core of the problem, and that is something I look forward to discussing with you further.”

Netanyahu’s claim is substantiated by the following facts:

1. Settlements were not the problem when the first two-state solution was proposed by article 25 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922.

That solution – which envisaged allocating the Arabs 78 per cent of Mandatory Palestine [Transjordan] and the Jews the remaining 22 per cent – was rejected by the Arabs but accepted by the Jews.

Iran – one of the 51 States then unanimously endorsing the Jewish people’s legal right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine – now seeks to destroy the Jewish State in 2017.

2. Settlements were not the problem in 1937 when the Peel Commission recommended partition of the territory of the Mandate into one Jewish State and one Arab State – again rejected by the Arabs but accepted by the Jews.

3. Transjordan remained part of the Mandate for Palestine until Great Britain granted it independence on 22 March 1946. 78 per cent of the Mandate territory was thus irrevocably transformed into an exclusive Arabs-only State contrary to Article 5 of the Mandate.

4. The United Nations recommendation to partition the remaining 22 per cent of the Mandate territory into one Arab State and one Jewish State in November 1947 was again rejected by the Arabs and accepted by the Jews – culminating in Western Palestine being invaded in May 1948 by six Arab armies and the forcible eviction of all Jews living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

5. Settlements were not the problem between 1948 and 1967 when another Arab State could have been created with the stroke of an Arab League pen in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza whilst not one Jew lived there.

6. Offers by Israel in 2000/2001 and 2008 to another Arab State being created in Gaza and the West Bank were rejected by the Arabs.

7. In December 2016 UN Security Council Resolution 2334 declared that the Jewish Quarter and Kotel in East Jerusalem, the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem were “occupied Palestinian territory”.

UK and Russia shamefully failed to veto this Resolution.

8. Gaza is ruled by Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization governs Areas A and B of the West Bank. Both have held onto power without holding elections since 2006. Both refuse to recognize a Jewish nation-state in any boundaries.

Johnson told Netanyahu:

“I first visited [Israel] when I was – as I never tire of telling you – when I was 18.”

Netanyahu should never tire of telling world leaders that the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict will not be resolved until the Arabs recognise the right of the Jewish People to their own independent State.

Thursday, 23 June 2016

In Britain, A Cult of Saints with Feet of Clay

A Yorkshire councillor has been suspended after making a sickening comment relating to a fund opened in memory of murdered MP Jo Cox.

It's true, however, that Mrs Cox's murder is being used as a tool with which leftist elements in the "Remain" camp are beating outspoken supporters of Brexit, tarring them with the brush of hate and extremism and portraying them as almost beyond the political pale.

(Predictably, antisemites such as this fellow, followed avidly by certain members of the PSC, have also swung behind this outlook.)

They must not be permitted to suppress debate (Brendan O'Neill warned about that sort of thing here.)

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36602561

Now the ABC (Australia's answer to the BBC, and just as odiously leftist) is getting into the act. Consider this ABC Lateline item, for instance, with its cherry-picked images and its emphasis on the case against Britain leaving the EU interwoven with its linkage to Mrs Cox's murder:

'A divided Briton [sic!] will soon vote in a referendum on the nation's European Union membership under a cloud of grief for murdered politician Jo Cox.

Polls are on a knife-edge, with final campaigning underway for the vote that could see the UK leave the EU after 43 years.The deputy leader of the UK's Labour Party, Tom Watson, told Lateline the murder of his colleague and pro-EU politician Ms Cox is on everyone's minds, though he was unsure if it would affect the outcome.

From BBC

"Whatever happens on the result we're going to end up a more divided nation as a result of this debate and we're going to have to do a lot of healing and understanding," he said."We've had more sombre campaigning this week, so I think there'll be more cooler heads when it comes to referendum day [on Thursday local time] but I'm not sure it will affect the outcome or not."Mr Watson said the murder and the Brexit debate had highlighted the need for a more patient and kinder political culture....

Ms Cox was shot and stabbed to death in Leeds in England's north last Thursday, in an attack her husband said was politically motivated.Overnight, her family was to mark what would have been her 42nd birthday with an emotional river tribute and a rally in London.The commemoration in the city's central Trafalgar Square was set to include Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, with similar events to take place later in cities around the world, among them Beirut, Nairobi, New York and Paris.'

The atmosphere seems to be such that there is a growing cult of Mrs Cox, against which it is heresy to speak.

Mrs Cox, dare it be said, was for all her evident goodness of heart no more a saint than the rest of us. A former Oxfam employee, she was an anti-Israel activist close to the PSC and other anti-Israel groups, something that even some of my Anglo-Jewish friends with a deep interest in Israel's welfare have been unaware of, since it has been all but omitted from the mainstream media, including the Jewish media.

Mrs Cox's widower Brendan, who of course deserves profound sympathy in his loss, and is also becoming part of the cult, is also a leftist activist who has been involved with NGOs unfriendly to Israel.

(Hat tip: Nathan of Plaza)

As for Brexit:

Onya, Boris!

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Boris & BDS

Much publicity today about London Mayor Boris Johnson's uncomplimentary remarks about the BDS crowd.

Below, two press releases pertinent to his remarks:

The first is sure to raise the usual suspects' hackles, while no doubt we can expect more in the vein of the latter.

'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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