Thursday, June 17, 2010
[This excellent piece announcing a new initiative of heavy-hitters, by Jose Maria Aznar, is posted in full from today's UK Times.]
Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West's best ally in a turbulent region
For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion.
In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.
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.
Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival. Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment's peace.
For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.
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.
The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation. It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East. 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.
Israel is our first line of defence in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down.
To defend Israel's right to exist in peace, within secure borders, requires a degree of moral and strategic clarity that too often seems to have disappeared in Europe. The United States shows worrying signs of heading in the same direction.
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.
This cannot be allowed to happen. Motivated by the need to rebuild our own Western values, expressing deep concern about the wave of aggression against Israel, and mindful that Israel's strength is our strength and Israel's weakness is our weakness, I have decided to promote a new Friends of Israel initiative with the help of some prominent people, including David Trimble, Andrew Roberts, John Bolton, Alejandro Toledo (the former President of Peru), Marcello Pera (philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate), Fiamma Nirenstein (the Italian author and politician), the financier Robert Agostinelli and the Catholic intellectual George Weigel.
It is not our intention to defend any specific policy or any particular Israeli government. The sponsors of this initiative are certain to disagree at times with decisions taken by Jerusalem. We are democrats, and we believe in diversity.
What binds us, however, is our unyielding support for Israel's right to exist and to defend itself. 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 upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.
José María Aznar was Prime Minister of Spain, 1996-2004
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Jose Maria Aznar: Support Israel: if it goes down, we all go down.
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The initiative promised in Jose Maria Aznar's influential essay (see: Jose Maria Aznar: Support Israel: if it goes down, we all go down) now has a web site and is soliciting signatures: FriendsofIsraelInitiative.org: Stand for Israel, Stand for the Wes... Read More
...where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?
I am very interested in supporting this initiative and know others who would like to do the same.
Please let me know how to email Mr. Aznar directly without it being posted publicly on this site.
Thank you.
Robert Sarner
rsarner@roots.com
You defend isreal because of the common ugly
colonial feature of both of you....israel have no right to exist on palastenian ground as your country also have no right to occupy a big area of morroco.....you were so blind as you assisted g.w.bush to occupy iraq....we have a long ...very long history...we are sure spain. usa, as well as israel will leave every inch our land....our resources,what you,re keeping to stall will be fairly compensated....time and roots are with us...
YOU have a long history? Well so do the Jewish people.
And Israel is their homeland.
PS: let me ask. Are Arabs indigenous to Africa?
If not doesn't their presence there indicate "colonialism?"
Don't answer this before you confer with the Berber and other African people.
Arabs back to Arabia. Please end the Arab and Muslim occupation of the Levant, Maghreb, and Fertile Crescent. Free Kurdistan and Constantinople. Return Persia to the Persians. Muslims out, Zoroastrians in. Andalusia will never be again.
I'm short on time, normal egyptian racist, and won't take any more to respond to your normal egyptian lies. So take your hypocritical horse-shit and peddle it at another souk. Maybe you can spare a few tears for roots of the Coptic Christians that you Muslims have ripped up and are attempting to destroy. Yachrai bet'cha.
Isrealis' existance is not the matter..its what they do with thier existance which is far from western values unless we talking about 200 years ago. palestinians have right to exist. the bottom line is we should all side with the justice.
Khadar, off course Palestine has the right to exist. Most of Israelis thinks so, and in 2000 and 2008 they gave to the Palestinians the opportunity to build their own state. Abu Ammar and Abu Mazen refused.
Why?
liers hang out with liers
this idiot presedent with the shoe w bush are to the garbage of history. along with Bliar.
by the way where are the WMD in iraq mr. jose anzar.
liar son of a lier along with Shoe w bush.
where is bin laden in afganistan? oh they found 1 trillion dollar of minerals in afghanistan. bwahahaha.
but they didnt find bin laden.
but the rope of lier isnt long as the say......
god will overturn thier lies and disgrace will remian thier legacy
i dont have except the words of Imam turki bin faisal poem.
sleep has ran away from my eyes and fled
I have woken of my sleep emergensies acuring to my mind
and woken all who are around me
Go on oh pen and write!
the best of greetings to my cousin mishary(jailed in egypt)
when every friend forsakes his friend....I have taken al ajrab(the rusty, his sword) as a friend
i have clothed nejd after its naked
i have taken it forcifully with cruelty and kindness
and shareeah law is wandering in its lands
the shiekh recites in it the noon lessons daily without salaries
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/04/19/106267.pdf
will see my friend.........
we ride horses with dignity and pride
either it comes easily or through struggle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eufc-Id9aYE&feature=related
and hang out with your coptic friends .
it appears the Mr.anzar , since he is the last person to be consulted on war and peace matters, is heading a PR campiagn to save his country (part of the PIGS of europe who are suffering financially) to get zionest financial support for his country.
his nation once was know as a land of peace were meimondies and Solomon ben Joseph ibn Gabirol, Bahya benJoseph ibn Pakuda, Abraham ben david Halevi ibn Daud, Judah Halevi many many good jewish poets flourished in islamic spain.andalusia
but he is scrweing it up. what could be expected of a presedint that joined bush and bliar in thier wars agianst humanity.
this is my letter to him
http://books.google.com/books?id=jO7OfURydycC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
hypocracy is first value of muslims , we all know what is written in quran "jews are pigs and monkeys" and sorth of shit , you can not foll as.
arabian dog, not only do I SLAP your face with my shoes, I then make you CLEAN my shoes.
INSHALLAH!
Aznar? Is he still free? I thought Spain had a democratic government now. He should be in prison, or dangling from a rope.
This ... technically-human creature - this monster - speaks of a "campaign of delegitimization against Israel". That's rich, coming from a "man" who has the blood of tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children on his hands. No, Aznar and his partners in crime didn't "delegitimize" Iraq. They just slaughtered its people en masse.
Aznar says that Israel is an "ally" of Turkey. As Aznar knows very well, Israel has no allies, and never has. Israel has not signed a mutual-defence treaty with Turkey or any other state.
Mark
A must read: Gaza, Iran and the Left's Double Standard, excerpt, emphasis added:
"It is surely one of the great paradoxes of this age that while many of our cleverest minds have fallen headlong in love with peoples whose causes are more or less entirely alien to us, we can find no stirring in our hearts for peoples whose greatest hope is to become . . . well, more like us.
"Thus we artlessly dispatched our hearts on a sentimental journey to Gaza designed for our benefit by the canny Islamists in Ankara and their bloodstained allies in Gaza; people who, in any other context, would treat our Western soft-heartedness and woolly-mindedness with undisguised contempt.
"And yet our hearts have no space whatever for the thousands of young Iranian students who, on Saturday, defied the threats of their government, the beatings of the extra-legal militias, and the pusillanimity of their erstwhile leaders, merely to ask for the right to have their votes treated with dignity, rather than being fabricated out of some dodgy Russian software in Iran's Ministry of the Interior."
A simple enough contrast - simple, yet profoundly illuminating and deeply telling of the muddled, mangled, mala fide and ultimately malevolent heart of the left.
h/t Maverick Philosopher
Come on. It's not really fair to characterize Mark (see previous comment) as one "of our cleverest minds."
No one referred to Mark Marshall as among the cleverest of anything; to the contrary, he represents one among the myriads - most often on the left - who offer a picknose contempt. What else is new?
Regardless, another excerpt from the same piece linked above:
"Fearless Western journalists, we are told, boarded the Gaza flotilla at hazard to their lives, the better to pen florid descriptions of the predations of the Israeli "hyenas"; sentences that could presumably have been written with equal vigour and no less accuracy from the comfort of their computer terminals.
"Yet presently there is not one solitary Western journalist, willing to risk the wrath of the Iranian security forces to file a report from Tehran in the open air. And so the job is left to the Iranians themselves ..."
Finally someone with a little back bone, not a lot of that left in europe, he certainly pissed the arabs off but then again thats not hard
I forgot to identify myself properly. I live in Toronto, in Canada.
Some people disagree with what I said. They speak of "picknose", they say I'm not intelligent. I may not be intelligent, I may be picknose, whatever that is. But I would like to know exactly what it is I said that they disagree with? Please tell me. Thank you.
Mark Marshall
Toronto, Canada
dear mr.Aznar I am very happy to know that ineurop there is one brave,intelligent man,i was born in one of hitlers camps my father (26) died but my mother and I survived ,thank God.since the muslims hate all jews and christians,than they must be theAnti Christ? dont they know what that means? they will learn ,but then it will be too late for them. nice talking to you all the Best .
Time and roots are with you?! Including the time and roots of a million of Arabic-speaking Jews that you kicked out.
Not one mention of Palestinians and their rightiful claim to the land; not one word about refugees ethnically cleansed by Israel; not one mention of the longest occupation and subjugation of an entire people; not one word about expropriation of land on a daily basis; not one word about state terrorism; not one mention of almost daily extra judicial killings. If these are the policies which the West should be linked to, then Mr. Aznar is right, the downfall of Israel will lead to the downfall of the West.
By the way, I reviewed my history books and discovered that the West was actually doing ok for several hundred years prior to Israel's creation. How come if Israel goes down so would the West? Very strange logic.
But why would he say any of those things when they're not true?
Mark Marshall, I simply gave you the same type of critique that you dished out yourself: a boorish contempt based upon poorly and superficially and mendaciously informed assumptions/allegations, rather common and rather similar to Ghias El Yafi's charges.
¿expropriation of land,from who the turkish or the british?.
Good for you Jose Maria aznar,thats the way to do it,and dont worry what the left in spain says,we know they are idiots¿but what can you do with simple minds like that? jajaja.Bien hecho campeón,regresa pronto España te necesita.
I'll try to address Ghias El Yafi.
The West hasn't actually been doing all that well if one looks at it from a moral standpoint and also at internal wars which have been frequent, extremely destructive and most recent big Western war - WWII - featured a genocide and the use of atomic weapons.
In other ways we've done very well. The West is materially successful and in many ways progressive politically and socially.
Nevertheless the most powerful, successful and arguably progressive states in the West have violent pasts and much of their wealth and power was built on slavery and exploitation of others as well as the dehumanization of people who were "different" including even members of different Christian sects let alone members of other races or religions.
However, WWII and the Shoah represented real low points in our history that were outgrowths of fault lines within Western Civilization, namely a propensity for major violence and also religious and other forms of bigotry.
We're still trying to deal with these problems: democracy vs totalitarianism, mass destruction/total war, and alienation, oppression and finally the extermination of people who are different.
The Jews have been victimized in the West for millenia if you go all the way back to incidents involving Greeks and of course Rome. The Shoah was merely the last and worst single incident of violence against Western Jews.
The West now prides itself on having learned from the Shoah and is more open and quite self-consciously aware of the bitterness of the past including the abuse of minorities and "the other," which term originally applied to the Jews.
However, this moral awareness is fragile. The progress obtained by minorities and women has been hard fought and is challenged by bigots. Gays continue to be discriminated against in fundamental ways and even the EU is threatened, both economically and in terms of the democratic status of various states especially the poorest ones.
Were the West to abandon or see the destruction of Israel, which represents an attempt to restore a nation serially abused and dispossessed, and also a nation built on democratic principles and rights for all its citizens, the West would die morally I think. All of our arguments in favor of human rights and open governance would be exposed as empty and meaningless.
I honestly don't know where we'd go from there.
Meanwhile, the destruction of Israel would do nothing for the East either. It would merely be another example of madness and inhumanity. The one open, creative and progressive government in the area is the target of such hatred and is constantly at war - thus creating reactionary elements within it - nevertheless what will be gained by its destruction?
What will replace it? What would stand in place of a destroyed Israel?
Even Turkey is starting to look reactionary lately - how would the destruction of Israel help other Eastern powers? Would it make them more democratic, more creative, less abusive of "the other", more tolerant of dissent, more accepting of equal rights for women and gays?
I really doubt it.
And - what would that say about the destroyers? Could they find honor in such a horror?
Thus, I beg people to stop inciting violence and hate and try to find ways to reconcile people.
There are solutions to the relatively manageable Arab/Israeli conflict but as long as it's hyped as the worst, most horrible situation in the world and as long as "solutions" include genocide and the destruction of a nation rather than negotiated accomodation and mutual security and respect, the outcome is likely to be tragic and catastrophic.
Well done Aznar,your words are good for Israel,Spain,and the world,please tell Zapatero.Thank you
HOPEFULLY THERE ANY OTHER EUROPEAN LEADERS WHO THINK THE SAME.
OTHER LEADERS THAT CAN SEE REALITY IN A GLOBAL CAPACITY . IT IS TIME FOR MORE PEOPLE TO SPEAK UP AND REALIZE THAT ISRAEL PLAYS THE ROLE OF THE "LAST BARIER" THAT PROTECTS EUROPE!!!!!
The palestinians have two countries.
One is Jordan and the other is Gaza. 75% of palestine became Jordan and 75% of it's citizens are palestinians. Jordan just revoked their citizenship, why haven't there been demonstrations, cries of outrage, and condemnations from the UN, like there would be if Israel had done that with it's arab citizens?
Israel is 8000 square miles and the 22 Arab League nations have 6 million square miles. That is not enough for you? If you are so concerned about the palestinians, why did you put them in camps instead of letting them assimilate? When the arabs expelled the Jews from their countries, they were granted citizenship in Israel. By the way, they left behind $30 billion in assets and land that amounted to many times that of Israel. You could have put them in the houses you stole from the Jews.
If they cared about the palestinians, why did the the UN and the PA refuse better housing offered by Israel? The palestinians could have had a country in 1948, when they were going to divide what was left of palestine, but the arabs refused. They could have had a state when Egypt and Jordan occcupied Gaza and the west bank, why not give it them then, if you were not going to grant them citizenship? After the signing of the Oslo accords, attacks on Israelis increased. Arafat was offered 97% of what he wanted with the 3% to be made up elsewhere, but he went to war instead, after having pledged not to. They could have had a state then, too.
It's not about land or the palestinians, it's about killing all the Jews, which your religion commands you to do.