Daphne Anson

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)

Friday, 9 September 2016

David Singer: United Nations Must End Hamas and PLO Stranglehold On Power

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

He writes:

The United Nations' effort to create a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – has suffered another death blow following the Palestinian Supreme Court ordering the suspension of local elections in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip scheduled for October 8.

Hamas win, 2006: BBC image

No parliamentary elections have been held since the 2006 – which Hamas won – but which the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) refused to accept.

A bitter internecine struggle saw Hamas end up governing the Gaza Strip and the PLO controlling areas “A” and “B” in Judea and Samaria.

No Palestinian presidential election has been held since PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was elected in 2005.

Hamas boycotted the last Palestinian municipal elections in 2012 – but was due to participate this year.

In the absence of a popularly elected Government exercising complete authoritative and legislative control over the Gazan and West Bank Arab populations – any prospects of reaching a binding agreement with Israel in relation to Gaza and Judea and Samaria remains an impossible pipedream.

Both the PLO and Hamas have used the slogan “End the Occupation” to demand that Israel totally withdraw from Area “C” in Judea and Samaria over which Israel exercises complete administrative and security control under the Oslo Accords.

The United Nations has repeatedly reinforced that slogan by maintaining its flawed position that building in Area “C” by Israel is illegal in international law – completely ignoring that Jews have the legal right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Judea and Samaria under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations very own Charter.

The United Nations has allowed the conflict between Hamas and the PLO to career out of control for the last 10 years – allowing Hamas and the PLO to:

* consolidate their power structures and political dominance within their own separate fiefdoms

* allow corruption and nepotism to become entrenched and

* pursue policies of confrontation with Israel that have proved disastrous for their respective long-suffering populations.

The United Nations has failed to insist that elections be held to enable such stranglehold on power to end and allow the people to have their say on who should govern them – the “self-determination” the United Nations has long been demanding but is being denied by Hamas and the PLO.

Ramzy Baroud – editor of PalestineChronicle.com – summed up the hopelessness of the political stalemate between Hamas and the PLO as long ago as 12 November 2013:

“In an initially pointless exercise that lasted nearly an hour, I flipped between two Palestinian television channels, Al Aqsa TV of Hamas in Gaza and Palestine TV of Fatah in the West Bank. While both purported to represent Palestine and the Palestinians, each seemed to represent some other place and some other people. It was all very disappointing.

Hamas’ world is fixated on their hate of Fatah and other factional personal business. Fatah TV is stuck between several worlds of archaic language of phony revolutions, factional rivalry and unmatched self-adoration. The two narratives are growingly alien and will unlikely ever move beyond their immediate sense of self-gratification and utter absurdity.”

Nothing has changed.

These irreconcilable differences between Fatah – the dominant faction in the PLO – and Hamas – not a member of the PLO – are still omnipresent in 2016.

photo: almanar.com.ib

The United Nations should be demanding that Hamas and the PLO end their decade-long occupation of power by allowing their respective populations the right to vote in internationally supervised elections.

“End the Occupation” would then become a meaningful metaphor rather than a meaningless signpost that continues to lead nowhere.

Thursday, 8 September 2016

"BDS Works": Aussie BDSers Claim A Victory & Skew An Online Poll

Wednesday, 7 September 2016

Girls' Day Out in Yemen: "Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews" (video)

“Allah is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam”.

With that proud Houthi slogan prominent in the background, female fighters in Yemen strut their stuff.

Explains the uploader:

"A brigade of all-female Houthi fighters held a parade in front of a school in Sanaa on Tuesday.Hundreds of girls reportedly joined the fighters, who were heavily armed carrying machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The Houthi fighters reportedly received food and gold jewellery from supporters at the end of the parade."

Monday, 5 September 2016

"We Have a President Who Refuses to Identify the Enemy ... We Have to Take Back America" (video)

Notes strategic analyst Professor Efraim Inbar inter alia in a new briefing paper regarding the persistence of Islamic terror:

'The collapse of the Arab state system and the rise of political Islam have destabilized the Middle East and entrenched the region as the major source of global terror. Even the more stable states, such as Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, display strong Islamic tendencies and support radical groups that engage in terrorism. Not much can be done to change this situation. Accepting this unpleasant reality will entail a sea change in Western strategic outlook.

Several major developments in the Middle East will keep the region a wellspring of Islamic terror and a source of inspiration for Islamist radicals for the foreseeable future. Attempts to perpetrate acts of terror against the “enemies of Islam” should be expected to continue....

A critical historic trend in the Middle East that is feeding the terror phenomenon is the rise of political Islam. Islamic identity is deeply entrenched in the region, making the population susceptible to Islamist messages couched in traditional content. The Islamists have also capitalized on the Arab states’ inability to deliver decent services to their citizens by establishing educational networks as well as health and social services.

This has been a winning strategy for them, in that it has allowed them to capture popular support. When free elections are allowed in the Arab world, Islamist parties do very well. However, most Islamists are anti-modern and anti-Western. Radical Islamist circles advocate violence and terror in the interest of installing “true Islam,” first in Muslim lands and eventually everywhere else. Islamists despise “the decadent West” and believe it will inevitably fall under Muslim rule....'

Read more here

All the more reason, then, to heed the words of such speakers at last month's "Can Islam Co-Exist With Western Civilization?" conference in Los Angeles (sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance) as the witty and wise Admiral James ("Ace") Lyons USN (retd.).

"It's un-American, anti-Western. but pro-Islam, pro-Iranian, and pro-Muslim Brotherhood ... whose creed is to destroy us from within, with our own miserable hands,and replace our Constitution with draconian Sharia law," he declares bluntly.

Erdogan said it best ... "Islam is Islam. There are no modifiers. Democracy is the train we ride to our ultimate objective, which is to make Islam dominant throughout the world" .

He couldn't have said it any plainer ... Islam is a totalitarian ideology bent on world domination masquerading as a religion.... We have a national security crisis ... The greatest threat to our national security resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue... We have a president who refuses to identify the enemy ...

In November ... you got a pathological liar ... and you want to turn the security of this great country over to her? We must take back America. This is a watershed."

He also compellingly slams Obama's infamous "Iran Deal":

Also speaking at the conference, and discussing the Iran threat, was America's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton:

Saturday, 3 September 2016

Jewish, Joo-ish, & Shome Mishtake Shurely

"In our thousands, in our millions

We are all Palestinians,

We're all Palestinians now"

So runs a ditty composed and crooned by some chap (the name escapes me) with guitar who's become quite a feature of those little anti-Israel demos on the streets of London that typically begin with the impressive diction of our old friend Sandra intoning "We are here today outside the offices of ...".

Well, it would seem that for the purposes of demonising the Zionist Entity on a rather frightful Facebook page "We are all as-a-Jews now".

Or "Khazarians" as this fragrant female member of the group might say:

The Facebook group is called the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. (See the avowedly Jewish nature of its membership on its separate website here) Its banner profile picture is despicable, for they have appropriated to their vile cause the iconic photo of three Jewish heroines, young Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto pictured straight after their surrender to Nazi devils.

What obscene chutzpah for the IJAN to make propaganda use of these heroines of the Shoah in this way.

Especially as on their website they say "We protest Zionism’s exploitation and debasement of histories of Jewish persecution and genocide ..." !!!

And how very curious to find, in a group ostensibly composed of anti-Israel Jews, people who, unless they have had a sudden conversion, are not Jews, and indeed in a number of cases have displayed raw antisemitic views.

Thus, in addition to usual Jewish suspects such as Jeff Halper and Mondoweiss's Adam Horowitz, there are usual suspects such as Darlene Jones-Owens and the fragrant female in the above video, Pam Arnold (aka Pam Hardyment), as well as the occasional individual who falls, as it were, between two stools, such as Miranda Pinch, an Anglican anti-Zionist whose mother happened to be Jewish.

There are also many Muslims.

And, if I'm not mistaken, the Scottish SPC chief's non-Jewish partner:

Some of the members are well-known anti-Israel activists, many on campuses across the world. I spotted some (Christian) followers of Stephen Sizer, though have not checked for His Reverence himself.

Others are less well-known, but include people such as PhD student Roger Higginson, who according to his University of Sussex profile is "a former career civil servant with extensive experience in the cultural and communications sectors negotiating on behalf of the UK Government at the international level: in the EU, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and UNESCO".

Blogger Robert Cohen was a former employee of Al Beeb, incidentally. A group member called Simon Brace has "BBC Earth" below his name but is probably not an employee (careful, Simon, or you'll give Al Beeb a bad name for bias!)

There appear to be a number of Corbynistas among the members. As well as 9/11 troofers.

Still, the (genuine) Jews among the group don't appear to mind.

Any of these guys belong, I wonder? No doubt they'd be welcomed with open arms.

(Videos: Simon Cobbs of Sussex Friends of Israel)

Thursday, 1 September 2016

In Australia, Allegations of Offensive Cartoons on a Professor's Door

"One speaks about the Holocaust at one's own personal peril. Institutions, in my view, are scared to death of being associated with me because I guess they are afraid of being accused of having some sort of Holocaust-denier in their faculty"

That's what Canadian-born Aussie academic Thomas A. Fudge reportedly told the vile (see its Holocaust-denying thrust here) Adelaide Institute back in 2005, referring back to the notorious 1993 Joel Hayward Affair.

As the antisemitic Institute explained the matter,

'Fudge had been commissioned to write an article about the impact on masters student Joel Hayward of the widespread condemnation of his 1993 thesis questioning the validity of the Holocaust. Hayward suggested the gas chambers used to systematically kill Jews and other minority groups could not have existed and questioned the number of people who died at the hands of the Nazis in World War 2. Hayward's mental health and job prospects suffered.

But university heads objected to Fudge's article, sacking the editor of department publication History Now and controversially destroying 500 copies that carried Fudge's article. Though the books were shredded, it became known as the "book-burning" scandal in academic circles. Fudge left New Zealand in November 2003, on leave, and later resigned [as a history lecturer at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand]. Hayward has also relocated overseas.

Speaking to The Press from Washington, Fudge said the Holocaust had become a modern taboo of such potency that any mention of it that was less than emphatically apologetic was unacceptable.'

Read Fudge's apologia for Hayward's thesis here

On the unsavoury Adelaide Institute's website here we read inter alia:

Fudge attributed the Holocaust taboo to the reach of the more radical factions of the powerful Jewish lobby.

"There are some radical Zionist-types that bring a lot of pressure.

"The roads of the world should not, and do not, run through Jerusalem."

For New Zealand-born Hayward (who had a Jewish granny, it seems), now a Sunni Muslim and a professor in the Arab world (his career prospered in Britain despite his thesis, the furore it provoked, and Fudhe's pessimism) see here

Hayward's "career highlights," we read, "include having been Dean of the [UK] Royal Air Force College, Cranwell for five years (2007-2011)".

Now Fudge, a full professor who has taught at the University of New England (in New South Wales) since 2012, has hit the headlines again. The Australian Jewish News (AJN) reports today that on his office door cartoons by Carlos Latuff, runner-up in the 2006 Iranian Holocaust cartoon competition, have allegedly been displayed.

(These pictured were the ones, reportedly.)

The university is investigating.

As the chair of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, himself an academic, observes:

"Imagine being a Jewish student, about to enter the office for a consultation, and being confronted with these disturbing and offensive posters which demonise and portray Jews and Israelis in a negative way....

Imagine the outcry if other ethnic, religious and cultural groups were depicted in such a way."

Meanwhile, read of current outbreaks of antisemitism in the "Lucky Country" here (trade union BDS activity) and here (cemetery desecration)

Monsieur Millière Warns The West: "France is completely lost ... Political correctness works" (video)

'Islam wants to conquer Europe and militant Muslims know they can succeed and I think they are right.

One of my friends who was a survivor of Auschwitz said to me: "The people who were pessimistic survived. The people who were optimistic died."...

France is completely lost ....

The French press lie all the time.... The media is largely in the hands of the Left....

The French don't know how to fight but they do know something: preemptive surrender....

Muslims use two tools to conquer Europe. First, attacks. Second, "Dawah": invitation to submit to Islam....

Political correctness works ...

The Left and Islam have something in common: they want to destroy Western civilisation.... Islam is a totalitarian political movement. ... Islam is fighting a war against the West, against freedom.... I am here [the USA, to which he emigrated two months ago] because I want to win.... We have to choose strength.'

The speaker is a French philosemitic pro-Israel intellectual, Guy Millière, about whom I have blogged before.

By "political correctness" he means the leftist-driven outrage against "Islamophobia" which has ensured that virtually nothing critical of islamifiction or of the current suicidal madness engulfing Europe gets published in book form, whereas there are now books a-plenty advocating for the Muslim-abundant Europe we are witnessing, from the jihadist aspects of which French elites seem to think France can be immune through the emergence a "friendly" sui generis French Islam.

This video (hat tip Vlad Tepes blog) shows his speech at last month's "Can Israel Co-Exist With The West?" conference in America.

See also this new article by Yves Mamou

Meanwhile, regarding Trump and Muslim immigration ...

'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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