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)

Tuesday 7 April 2015

By Their Words Ye Shall Know Them

And the pictures that they post, this (at left, and that at right below) by a co-founder of the "Free Gaza" movement.

 Remember the terrific article that British writer Howard Jacobson contributed to The Independent newspaper a couple of years ago about antisemitism and anti-Zionism?

Inter alia, it observed:
'....[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active anti-Semite 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. Of course, you don’t have to hate Jews to hate Israel, but tell 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, then it follows that there’s no Jew-hating left....
To those who ask why Israel alone of all offending countries is to be boycotted, the answer comes back loud and clear from boycotters that because they cannot change the whole world, that is no reason not to try to change some small part of it, in this case the part where they feel they have the most chance of success, which also just happens to be the part that’s Jewish....
I’d call this implicit racism if I were a citizen of those circumambient Muslim countries that aren’t being boycotted – a tacit assumption that nothing can ever be done, say, about the persecution of women, the bombing of minorities, discrimination against Christians, the hanging of adulterers and homosexuals, and so on, because such things are intrinsic to their cultures ...'
 Well, I thought of that just now, when I read this:


As one indignant reader of the article has remarked:
 'I have pointed out to Ben White on his FB page that in my paper I had intended to read out at the Southampton Conference "Sadat at the Knesset November 1977, tectonic shift or lost opportunity" there is a clear line between the warm welcome he gives to Israel as a state in the region and the 1993 recognition of Israel by Chairman Arafat to PM Rabin and the subsequent Arab League Conferences in Beirut 2002 and Riyadh 2007. We are by no means just depending on the Balfour Declaration and San Remo or even the UN General Assembly Resolution on Partition in 1947.
 With due acknowledgement to WSC [Sir Winston Spencer Churchill] and [1960s British Labour Party leader] Hugh Gaitskell this is what I am telling Ben White in response to his saying we are ducking a fight."We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in Southampton, we shall fight in social media and in the press, we shall fight with growing strength and confidence in the justness of our cause, we shall defend the existence of Israel with all our might; we shall fight on the Radio and on TV we shall fight on Campus and at Speakers’ Corner , we shall fight fight and fight again to defend the country which is the sine qua non of our existence"'
And to quote another:
'What an ass. How conveniently he manages to leave out the invasion of Israel by 5 arab armies in 1947/1948. How conveniently he leaves out facts such as: Czechoslovakia was an amalgam of two distinct nationalities and has devolved to such; the USSR was an amalgam of many distinct nationalities and has devolved to such. So what is this ass suggesting? Replacing Jews with arabs? Or coming up with some ludicrous "bi-national" state that has never existed anywhere else, let alone successfully, and which is belied by the fact of the devolution of the USSR and Czechoslovakia.He also conveniently leaves out the splitting apart of Yugoslavia, anything but voluntary, and a devolution clearly based on ethnic differences, language differences AND religious differences. How it would have been so much more convenient for all these haters and fools had Hitler been 100% successful.'

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