Daphne Anson: Robert Cohen

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 Robert Cohen. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 December 2019

From Bethlehem, A Wanderer Returns

On a few-holds-barred Zionist blog, a trenchant look at recent anti-Israel bleatings of blogger Robert Cohen. Married to an Anglican vicar, he's a favourite with certain Israel-bashing as-a-Jew Christians (should that, perhaps, be Christian as-a-Jews?) such as a certain woman who is a lay reader at her local church on Wales, and he's a favourite, too, of churchy campaigners against Christian Zionism like Jeremy Moodey and Stephen Sizer.

And now he's no longer the vicar of Virginia Water but the CEO of the so-called Peacemakers Trust, the latter (an old mate of ours, since we were the blog that broke his heinous 9/11 Facebook post) is, it seems, as peritatetic as ever in his support of Iran and derision of Israel.

No wonder he stays so slim.

Here he is (above) in the last day or so with Elias D'eis, project manager of the so-called Holy Land Trust.

That's the same Holy Land Trust (HLT), founded and directed by US-born Sami Awad, that avowedly

“Through a commitment to the principles of nonviolence ... seeks to develop spiritual, pragmatic, and strategic approaches that will empower the Palestinian community to resist all forms of oppression, and engage this same community in making the Holy Land be what it is supposed to be: a global model and pillar of understanding, respect, justice, equality and peaceful coexistence.”

Sani Awad, NGO Monitor tells us, has stated that non-violent demonstrations are

“not a substitute for the armed struggle”. Awad has also minimized Israel’s legitimate security needs as a “manipulation” of the fear of another Holocaust. In a speech given at the “Christ at the Checkpoint” Conference in 2010, Awad stated that “the [Israeli] soldier now, who’s gone through that trauma experience [of visiting Auschwitz] now is trained in this weaponry all of a sudden is also put at a checkpoint inside the West Bank, between Palestinian areas.”In 2013, Sami Awad published demonizing rhetoric in Amos Trust’s Bethlehem Packet stating “No matter where you stand in Bethlehem, you can see the effects of the cold grip of this brutal and humiliating occupation.”

Moreover, HLT, we're told, inter alia,

"Conducts highly politicized tours of Israel and the West Bank promoting the Palestinian narrative and targeting church leaders and the international community, claiming to provide “cross cultural and experimental learning opportunities in both Palestine and Israel.” Suggests that its participants “limit information” given to Israeli airport security and hide the reason for their visits.....

Supports anti-Israel BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions), including signing a petition in May 2005 calling for the academic boycott of Israel.

[Is] Signatory to the 2005 “Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS,” which calls for an end to Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” and promotes a right of “Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.”

Accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and signed an “Urgent call to action” during the 2014 Gaza conflict accusing Egypt of “complicity in Israel’s genocide of the people of Gaza.”...

In 2011, HLT produced a film called “Little Town of Bethlehem,” a 77-minute documentary that tells the story “of three men of three different faiths and their lives in Israel and Palestine. The story explores each man’s choice of nonviolent action amidst a culture of overwhelming violence.” Using a façade of multiple viewpoints, however, the film actually presents a single narrative of Palestinian victimization and Israeli violence.

In 2013, HLT sponsored a festival in London called “Bethlehem Unwrapped,” featuring “a comedy show called “Stand Up Against the Wall,” a “Bethlehem Christmas dinner,” and a debate titled “Both sides of the Barrier – Separation or Security?” that featured Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.”

The main purpose of the barrier — to protect Israelis from suicide bombings — was erased. The festival was co-sponsored by charities that have exploited the language of morality and human rights to attack Israel for many years, including Amos Trust, Interpal, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)-UK, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and War on Want...."

In June 2017, was a signatory to an “Open Letter” from the National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine to the World Council of Churches that accuses Israel of “Discrimination and inequality, military occupation and systematic oppression.” The letter calls upon the WCC to “recognize Israel as an apartheid state,” and “unequivocally condemn the Balfour declaration as unjust, and that you demand from the UK that it asks forgiveness from the Palestinian people and compensates for the losses.” The letter also defends “our right and duty to resist the occupation creatively and nonviolently,” through “economic measures that pressure Israel to stop the occupation…in response to Israel’s war on BDS. We ask that you intensity those measures.”

HLT also supports the Kairos Palestine document.

The Kairos Palestine document calls for BDS against Israel, denies the Jewish historical connection to Israel in theological terms, and blames Israel solely for the continuation of the conflict. It also characterizes terrorist acts of “armed resistance” as “Palestinian legal resistance.”

Its purpose is to rally churches globally to support BDS, delegitimization, and demonization directed at the State of Israel....."

HLT partners with Amos Trust and a number of other highly politicised Israel-demonising groups including, inevitably, Sizer's Peacemakers outfit.

That Sizer has returned from Bethlehem as zealous as ever to continue the mission of weakening support for Israel within Evangelical ranks is indicated not just by that big smile under the Christmas tree but by his newly posted video here

Meanwhile:

Wednesday, 6 December 2017

Spanners in the Works

The rather distinguished-looking gentleman pictured left is a former editor of the British Christian magazine Third Way, founded in 1977.

As his choice of neckwear suggests, he is hardly a warm admirer of Israel.

In fact, he is a stalwart of Bath Friends of Palestine, and founder of its Facebook group.

Among the Bath Friends of Palestine's recent events was this forum:

There was also this of late:

And among Mr Spanner's recent activities was the following:

Mr Spanner is a freelance writer and editor.

Among his most recent articles was this, for the long-established (1863) Anglican newspaper Church Times, not to be confused with the even longer established (1828) Church of England Newspaper, which I understand is the more conservative of the two :

Inter alia, the article, based on Mr Spanner's interview with the Israel-bashing blogger Mr Cohen (Micah's Paradigm Shift, Pantheos) at the Viva Palastina restaurant in north London, tells us:

'.... Although he "wanted to have a conversation with other Jews", he has found that that is easier said than done. "Those who do read me tend to be those secular, left-wing Jews who would agree with me, and perhaps like the fact that I have a slightly more Jewish spin on things than them. I don’t think I’ve made any inroads into the mainstream, though I can’t believe that I’m not on their radar. I am very much an outsider in my own community."

The unpopularity of his standpoint is exacerbated by his own biography. One pro-Israel activist who reads his posts "and then wades in" calls him a Jino: a "Jew In Name Only". Cohen says: "He tells me I don’t have the right to talk about Israel because I’ve married out, my children are Christian, and my wife is a vicar." ....'

Of course, Mr Cohen's choice of marriage partner is his own business, and it does not invalidate his status as a Jew. Nor would he cease to be a Jew in the eyes of Halachah if he were to convert to Christianity or any other religion, which he has not.

But it does seem unconscionable when Jews who have converted to another religion, and people who, though associated in no meaningful way with Jews and Judaism (and indeed may be adherents of another faith) but happen to have a Jewish mother (the sine qua non of Jewishness as far as Halachah is concerned), or indeed happen to have any fairly recent Jewish forebear, decide to describe themselves as Jews for the sole purpose of demonising Israel.

There are, of course, a number of people like that, including high profile serial Israel-bashers.

In one case known to me, the "Jewish" Israel-basher in question happens to have had a Jewish great-grandfather and is no closer to Jews and Judaism than he is to Burmese and Buddhism or Chinese and Confucianism.

I also know of at least three non-Jewish women who have never converted to Judaism under the auspices of any Beth Din whatsoever, Orthodox, Reform or Liberal, but who, being the wives of leftwing Jewish Israel-bashers, join their husbands in signing "As-a-Jew" denunciations of Israel.

These women are feisty independent professional women. I can think of no other cause in which they would so readily attach themselves to their husbands' bootstraps.

So very duplicitous. So very meshugge. So very sad.

Saturday, 4 November 2017

"Just 67 Words": Theresa May Extols the Balfour Declaration While the Usual Suspects Twist & Shout

A video nearly 30 minutes long, and well worth it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KsfMjCPzpo

But oh, what gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands from those who hate Israel and curse the Balfour Declaration.

What odious distortion from Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University's Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, for instance:

'Predictably, Khalidi limited the "indigenous population" to Arabs and ignored the Jewish people's historical claim to the land as recognized in the Balfour Declaration. Instead, he maintained "the Zionist Movement was a colonialist enterprise in search of a metropolitan sponsor" that was "implanting" and "fostering" the Jewish people "at the expense of the Palestinians."

Khalidi's terminology reflected his past as a PLO propagandist. His use of "indigenous" echoed the fabricated claims of the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s Mahmoud Abbas that the Palestinians are descended from the Canaanites, who predated the ancient Hebrews. Similarly, his term "implanting" mirrored PA political commentator Fathi Buzia's allegation that Britain "creat[ed] and implant[ed] a fabricated, thieving entity upon the Palestinian land" and PA school textbooks, which refer to Israel "as an imperial colonial implant."

The lecture epitomized the politicization of contemporary Middle East studies: by twisting a legitimate topic—the Balfour Declaration—into anti-Zionist, anti-Israel propaganda, Khalidi distorted the past in order to influence the present. His ahistorical claim that the Jewish people are not the indigenous population of Israel is a transparent effort to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state. There should be no room in academe for such hucksterism masquerading as scholarship.' Read more here

Here's a bunch of Israel-haters blinkered to Arab rejectionism. What a surprise (not) that big trades unions, life blood of the Labour Party, are joining in the twisting and the shouting against Israel. Loathsome Ken Loach and schoolgirl Leanne Mohamad, inter alia, are also being trotted out:

Speakers at the rally [update: see my next post for the march] will include:

Dr Mustafa Barghouti / Ken Loach / Andy Slaughter MP / Mick Whelan General Secretary ASLEF / Gail Cartmail TUC / Matt Wrack General Secretary FBU / Margaret McKee President Unison / John Pilger / Senator Paul Gavan Sinn Fein / Leanne Mohamad / Hugh Lanning PSC / Asad Rehman, War on Want / Reem Kelani / Philipa Harvey NEU-NUT Section / Daoud Abdalah BMI / Ajmal Masrour Imam & broadcaster / Prof Manuel Hassassian / Tariq Ali / Salma Yacoub / Dave Randall / Hawiyya Dance Company / John Nicolson SNP – And many more to be announced.

Organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB), Friends of Al Aqsa (FOA), Stop the War Coalition (STW), Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).

Supported by Unite the Union, UNISON, National Education Union- NUT Section, GMB, ASLEF, RMT, FBU, UCU, PCS, CWU, Europal Forum, CND, Pax Christi, APCUK, Kairos UK, Friends of Sabeel UK, ICAHD UK, Olive, Amos Trust, APCUK.
https://www.palestinecampaign.org/events/national-rally-central-london/

Our old friend the vicar, meanwhile, has been visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem (he really does get around, doesn't he?!), where a number of anti-Israel events have been taking place:

More samples from the vicar's current Balfour-related postings (by no means all):

Mocking a wall that saves Jewish lives ... nice Christian way to behave, vicar.

(Daphne is far too ladylike to call our old mate a non-kosher prick.)

What a bummer, after all that effort, vicar!

Wednesday, 4 October 2017

Israel-Bashing English ChristiansTwinkling Among Tinkling Teacups

2 November 2017. Tick tock. Tick tock.

In the countdown to the centenary of the Balfour Declaration anti-Israel initiatives in the UK are coming thick and fast, and Christian Israel-bashers are joining in with gusto.

Our old friend Stephen Sizer, the ex-vicar of Virginia Water and now based in Southampton as CEO of the so-called Peacemaker Mediators organisation, has been very active, with Peacemaker Mediators leaving little doubt that it has Israel and Israel's supporters centrally in its sights.

Sizer has recently been to Amersfoort in the Netherlands for the Kairos/Sabeel Conference.

It was there that he presented his analysis of Walter Bruggemann's Chosen? that he'd begun in note form while in Kigali awaiting a delayed flight to Doha, sustained by cups of refreshing African tea. (Photo above)

Should you be so inclined, you can view the analysis here

One of his allies, Robert Cohen, who's married to an Anglican vicar (of the double X chromosome variety) and blogs against Israel at Micah's Paradigm Shift and Pantheos, was recently in posh Cheltenham for a churchy Israel-bashing shmooze which apparently had the local Conservative MP purring:

Funny of Cohen to term organiser Symon"brave"; I'm sure there were no Israeli suicide bombers on hand to vent disapproval).

From here:

Reverting to our old friend, in whose name the Balfour Project website was (and perhps still is) rumoured to be registered, he's been full of excitement over this. And so, evidently, has antisemite and 9/11 troofer Tony Gratrex, long associated with the Reading Palestine Solidarity Campaign:

(See more on that event, due to take place on 31 October, here)

Sizer gloats on the Peacemaker Mediators' website:

'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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