Israel, Zionism and the Media

Tag: Friends of Israel

Aznar in Washington – Is the tide turning?

I have previously written about the remarkable former Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar and his Friends of Israel initiative.

If Israel is to restore its standing internationally, defeat attempts to delegitimise the state and restore a reasoned and measured discourse about its policies and its importance to the region and the world, then it requires non-Israelis and, more importantly, non-Jews, to speak up for it.

But not just to speak up for it, but to tell the truth and dispel the myths, to enable Israel to be recognised for what it truly is and what it stands for. This implies that its enemies, their lies and their tactics and organisations that they have co-opted in the anti-Israel narrative of these times, must be exposed. Israel must be allowed the oxygen of truth not be suffocated by the poisonous exhalations of its enemies.

At a Friends of Israel conference in Washington DC on September 14th, this is what Señor Aznar had to say:

Thank you all for being here tonight in this first event in DC by the Friends of Israel Initiative.

I know that some of you have made an extra effort to be here. Between the upcoming mid-term elections and the High Holy Days, many of us should probably be somewhere else tonight. So, I really appreciate the fact that you are here with us.

Though for a Spaniard having dinner at eight is almost like a late lunch, I know that you have to start early tomorrow, so, I’ll be brief.

I also know that when a politician says “I’ll be brief” the audience should start trembling, but as a former politician I’m entitled to tell the truth, trust me.

I’m here tonight to present to you a work in progress, the Friends of Israel Initiative. An idea I have been promoting with the help of some friends, some of them are here tonight, like:
Former President of Peru, Alejandro Toledo
British historian, Andrew Roberts,
French entrepreneur, Robert Agostinelli,
Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton,
Spanish former industry minister, Carlos Bustelo,
And others who couldn’t make it tonight, such as:
Professor George Weigel,
Peace Nobel prize Lord Trimble,
Lord Weidenfeld,
Former president of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera,
Fiamma Nerestein, representative in the Italian parliament, and champion of human rights and democracy Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, the latest member of our growing Board.

They all answered my initial call, last May, because all shared with me the sense of urgency to do something about the growing trend of deligitimation of Israel.

Our first meeting took place in Paris the very same day Israeli troops stopped the Flotilla heading to Gaza. Very timely, as you can tell.

Our second event took place in calmer waters, in late July, in London.
And now, we are here in Washington D.C.

Why? Very simple: We believe in the West, In the values all we share . In the ties that bind free societies, and distinguish our democracies from those governments who have yet to give way to the rights of their people and the arc of history.

And, we know – better than many – that the West has been shaped, led and defended by America.
As a European, I don’t have any problem saying that America has been a force for good in the World, protecting peace, promoting liberty and human dignity, and expanding prosperity. Furthermore, America has been the best ally of Israel, and it should remain so. And America’s role as the Leader of the Free World, as the the spark of hope for a better life for countless souls the world over should be a source of pride for all Americans.

It certainly serves as an inspiration to us.

Many of us came from Europe. Most of us are not Jewish. And I am sure that many of you may be wondering what it is that we seek, and why we believe it so vital to stand up and be counted on this issue.
Hence, our interest to explain here what we want and why.

We defend Israel because we believe that is the best strategy in current times to defend the West.
When we started putting this Initiative in motion, the whole World was condemning Israel for reasons I don’t need to elaborate since you know them better than I do.

Now, the atmosphere has changed a little since direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians have resumed and the peace process is moving ahead. Despite all the difficulties the negotiations may experience, I think we all should recognize the value, the prospects, and the hopes they represent. I am sure that Israel wants peace, and I know that all true friends of Israel want to see her achive that dream of peace and security.

But as we made clear in our first statement (which should have been on your chair tonight, by the way), there are problems in the region greater than just an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Problems that will not go away even if a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is eventually reached.

While Israel has made peace with Egypt and Jordan, and her economy has strengthened in recent years, now not decades ago, Israel, is facing increasing dangers. She has been forced to defend her people from Hezbollah in the North and thousands of Hamas rockets in the South. And. perhaps most worryingly, Israel is increasingly threatened by the scenario of a nuclear Iran – something the world must certainly act urgently to prevent.

On top of that, Israel is under a new kind of attack. Not conventional war as in 1948, 56, 67 or 73. Not terrorism as we saw in the 70s, 80s and 90s. But a new kind of attack – an attack on Israel’s legitimacy, on her right to exist. A “soft-war”, where many of its adversaries are employing legal tricks, multinational bodies, and an army of dubious NGO’s to present internationally Israel as an illegitimate state, as a barbarian State, a State that should be isolated and converted into a pariah State.
We think this is intolerable. It is unjust, morally wrong, and a strategic risk — not only for Israel and its people — but for all of us.

Israel is an integral part of the West, and the weaker it is, the weaker the entire West will be perceived to be.

Even if we want to turn away from the traumas of 9/11, we simply do not have the luxury to choose our enemies. As Senators Baker, Dole, Daschle and Mitchell made clear in their latest report, published 5 days ago. by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the threat to our way of life from radical islamists is real, and it has not yet been eliminated.

Let me be clear. We don’t want in any case to defend any particular Israeli government or any particular set of policies or any particular party. Israeli institutions are mature enough to defend their choices. We want to stand up for the right of Israel to exist. Judeo-Christian values form the roots of our civilization. Delegitimizing Israel undermines our identity, warps our values and put at risk what we are and who we are.

So, dear friends, it is not only the threat that if Israel goes down, which, make no mistake, many of its enemies would like to see happen, we all go down. It is that letting Israel be demonized will lead to the deligitimation of our own cherished values. If Israel were to disappear by the force of its enemies, I sincerely doubt the West could remain as we know it.

So, I conclude: Is it craziness for a group, as I said before, of mostly Europeans and non-Jews, to say: Enough. Stop this non-sense of making Israel responsible for all the problems in the region, if not beyond? Enough of the short sightedness which refuses to see Israel as a corner stone of our Western civilization?

We do believe that far from it, it is vital. For America, for the West, for Israel. And for our children and grandchildren and the world they will inherit. Because there is still right and wrong in this complicated world. And if we allow those fundamentals to be blurred and eroded and confused, we will all be dangerously adrift.

Defending Israel today means strengthening the West, standing up for our values, and their right to exist as a normal country, a fellow democracy and a celebrated ally in our great western alliance.
I hope that you will share our vision, and will help us in bringing reason and decency back to the discussion concerning Israel.

Thank you very much

With friends like this, maybe, just maybe, enough people of good will and integrity can be brought together to fight with and on behalf of Israel, not on the battlefield but in the hearts and minds of decent people everywhere.

La Pasionara reborn and a Cid for our times: Pilar Rahola and José María Aznar

What’s happening in Spain? Two politicians, Pilar Rahola and former Prime Minister José María Aznar, have now made statements strongly supporting Israel. Maybe after the Madrid bombings they realise that Israel’s existential struggle, with all its flaws, is fundamentally just.

Pilar Rahola should not be supporting Israel. She is a far left politician; a position that normally defaults to vilification of Israel and unquestioning support of the Palestinians.

For Pilar Rahola the struggle of Israel is the struggle of the world. She has not made just one fine statement, but two, in support of Israel. Her website also highlights the middle east and anti-Semitism.

Tablet Magazine reports a translation of a conference speech against that conference’s anti-Israel stance. She points out the singling out of Israel when obnoxious regimes appear to get a free pass:

Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona?

Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam?

Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan?

Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel?

Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism?

Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist?

Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism?

The last point is of special note. The current Israeli maritime blockade is seen as a punishment of Gazans rather than as a defence against Hamas. The occupation of the West Bank justifies past terrorism and Palestinian incitement is ignored or given lip service.

And finally, the million dollar question: Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet?

To this question she has a subtle and compelling answer in another speech ‘Jews with Six Arms’ delivered at the Combating anti-Semitism conference in Spain:

The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag of freedom, wherever there was injustice. It was the depository of the utopic hopes of society. It was the great builder of future. Despite the murderous evil of Stalinism’s sinking the utopias, the left has preserved intact its aura of struggle, and still pretends to point out the good and the evil in the world. Even those who would never vote for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. As they have always done. Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, and converted into undercover fascists.

This historic treason to freedom, is reproduced nowadays, with mathematical precision. For example, the leaders of Hezbollah are considered resistance heroes, while pacifists like Noa, the singer, are insulted in the streets of Barcelona. Today too, as yesterday, that left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Tsahal, but applauds Hamas’ terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian victims, but scorns the Jewish victims, and when it is touched by Palestinian children, it does it only if it can blame the Israelis. It will never denounce the culture of hatred, or its preparation for murder.

So the far left has lost the international argument. It needs to find a cause to rally round, to find a victim and demonise the ‘oppressor’. And when that ‘oppressor’ is a successful, capitalist, free society then the far left is offended and threatened. When their demon state produces world class science and research they have to boycott it. When that society is open and democratic they only point to its failures and its occupation whilst ignoring the root cause of that occupation, namely Palestinian and Arab rejectionism.

This is no better demonstrated by the concept of ‘freedom’:

And then, to the concept of freedom. In every pro Palestinian European forum I hear the left yelling with fervor: “We want freedom for the people!”

Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hammas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom.

The demonisation is linguistic as well as conceptual:

When reporting about Israel the majority of journalists forget the reporter’s code of ethics. And so, any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide. So many stupid things have been written about Israel, that there aren’t any accusations left to level against her.

Almost a definition of demonisation.

And lurking beneath this hatred and obsessive demonisation is the old European hatred:

Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of antisemitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lie. If, also, we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of antisemitism, we conclude that contingencies may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian antisemitism and of the modern political antisemitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel. For example, the Medieval Jew who killed Christian children to drink their blood, connects directly with the Israeli Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want to dominate the World through the White House. Control of the Press, control of Finances, the Universal Conspiracy, all that which created the historical hatred against the Jews, is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, then, beats the western antisemite DNA…

And this finds a perfect resonance with Islamic Jew-hatred.

I urge you to read her speeches in full. She is certainly a voice in the darkness and a true latterday Pasionaria.

She is not alone.  In the Times this week former Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, wrote ‘If Israel goes down, we all go down’.

In this article Aznar puts the case for Israel and succinctly states the truth about Israel now lost in worldwide hysteria and malignity:

In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.

Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.

Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.

He then explains how the Israel/Palestine issue is not just a border dispute or a legal nicety:

The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.

… Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.

He mourns the decline of the West’s moral backbone which it exchanges for fashionable platitudes:

The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith. To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.

He then sets about describing his fight back against this attack on western values and democratic integrity by announcing a new Friends of Israel initiative.  I urge all of you who love freedom and righteousness to sign up. This is not about giving Israel carte blanche. Criticising Israel and its policies is everyone’s right. Willing her destruction, demonising its people and Jews generally is not acceptable. Recognising its achievements and working for a peaceful resolution of the conflict to benefit everyone in the region and making the world a safer place should be our goal. Making Israel the fount from which all evil flows can only be called one thing and we all know what that thing is.

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 upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.

VIva Rahola y viva Aznar.