We Owe the Jews

What follows is an edited version of a speech delivered by historian Andrew Roberts to the Friends of Israel Initiative in the British House of Commons on July 19, published in the National Post · Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010

From Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Caspian Sea to Aden, the 5.25 million square miles of territory belonging to members of the Arab League is home to over 330 million people, whereas Israel covers only 8,000 square miles, and is home to seven million citizens, one-fifth of whom are Arabs. The Jews of the Holy Land are thus surrounded by hostile states 650 times their size in territory and 60 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 Medal for bravery. Today Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted 20 times as long.

Jerusalem is the site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod. The stones of a palace erected by King David himself are even now being unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem. Everything that makes a nation state legitimate -- blood shed, soil tilled, international agreements -- argues for Israel's right to exist, yet that is still denied by the Arab League. For many of their governments, which are rich enough to have economically solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago, it is useful to have Israel as a scapegoat to divert attention from the tyranny, failure and corruption of their own regimes.

The tragic truth is that it suits Arab states very well to have the Palestinians endure permanent refugee status; whenever Israel puts forward workable solutions they are stymied by those whose interests put the destruction of Israel before the genuine well-being of the Palestinians. Both King Abdullah I of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt were assassinated when they attempted to come to some kind of accommodation with a country that most sane people now accept is not going away.

"We owe to the Jews," wrote Winston Churchill in 1920, "a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together." Although they make up less than half of 1% of the world's population, between 1901 and 1950 Jews won 14% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded for literature and science, and between 1951 and 2000 Jews won 32% of the Nobel Prizes for medicine, 32% for physics, 39% for economics and 29% for science. This, despite so many of their greatest intellects dying in the gas chambers. Yet we tend to treat Israel like a leper on the international scene, threatening her with academic boycotts if she builds a separation wall that has so far reduced suicide bombings by 95% over three years.

Her Majesty the Queen has been on the throne for 57 years and in that time has undertaken 250 official visits to 129 countries, yet has not yet set foot in Israel. She has visited 14 Arab countries, so it cannot have been that she wasn't in the region.

After the Holocaust, the Jewish people recognized that they must have their own state, a homeland where they could forever be safe from a repetition of such horrors. Since then, Israel has had to fight five major wars for her existence. Radical Islam is never going to accept the concept of an Israeli State, so the struggle is likely to continue for another 60 years, but the Jews know that that is less dangerous than entrusting their security to anyone else.

I recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. Walking along a line of huts and the railway siding, where their forebears had been worked and starved and beaten and frozen and gassed to death, were a group of Jewish schoolchildren, one of whom was carrying over his shoulder the Israeli flag. It was a moving sight, for it was the sovereign independence represented by that flag which guarantees that the obscenity of genocide will never again befall the Jewish people.

No people in history have needed the right to self-defence and legitimacy more than the Jews of Israel, and that is what we in the Friends of Israel Initiative demand here today.

Left? Right? A Clarification

Inspired by an article by Yehudit Desberg, published in Makor Rishon, 20.02.2009

In my old age I no longer have the energy or the patience to philosophize for hours at a time, searching for the essence of a concept or in a futile attempt to identify the differences between two opposing views.  Today I'm much more likely to read or hear someone else's moment of clarity and tap into it for the tools I need to make sense of the insanity I call reality.  In this week's Makor Rishon I read one such insight that I'd like to preserve in this monologue with myself.  What distinguishes some one or some idea or movement identified with Israel's political 'Left' from a person, movement or idea identified with Israel's political 'Right'?

Although it initially seemed superficial, after thinking through Ms. Desberg's arguments, I believe she has something to contribute to this particular question.  Her work was actually accomplished for her by one of the most iconic of Israel's political movements, my intention is 'Peace Now!'.

Ms. Desberg sums up her analysis of the arguments for and against the release of Gilad Shalit as expressed by Israel's 'Left and 'Right'.  The 'Left' argue - "release at any price!"  It does not matter how many hundreds or thousands of captured, tried and convicted terrorists you release, it is "impossible to stand in the face of a mother's tears."  They see the issue as one of the centrality of the individual.  The single individual and their immediate gratification are the paramount value in their world view.  Nothing else is important, or is as important as this primary overriding value.  It supersedes and determines all else.

The 'Right' don't lack sensitivity and don't feel the grieving mother's anguish.  What they have that the 'Left' doesn't have, is perspective.  They see the tears of one mother, Aviva Shalit, and they also see the tears of the countless other mothers who would eventually cry once hardened terrorists are released to return to their bloody campaign to kill Jews and destroy Israel.  Instead of releasing convicted terrorists, the 'Right' demand that every diplomatic, economic and military pressure be brought to bear upon the Hamas leadership in Gaza until they return Gilad, much like the Philistines returned the Ark of the Covenant.

The 'Left' has no eternity.  Their only interest is in the 'here and now'.  The collective, the "People of Israel", the "Nation" play a role in their public pronouncements, but in truth these concepts play no role in their value system on a day-to-day decision making basis.

The 'Right' sees the present as just one link in a chain of existence.  What we do with our "link", our moment, can positively or detrimentally affect the entire future of the chain.  Therefore our decisions must take into consideration not just the mother standing in front of us, but all the mothers yet to come.

One final aside:  Israel has a great deal of experience with the exchange of prisoners for the release of our soldiers and citizens.  Statistically more than 50% of the terrorists release return to terror.  More importantly.  The higher their rank in the various terrorist organizations, the more likely they'll return to kill, maim and destroy Jewish lives.  This is not an academic debate.  Our lives and the lives of our children are affected by it's outcome.

Open Letter to A Critic of Israel

[ YBA - I have no idea who Annie Lennox is, sounds like a SkyNews journalist.  Similarly I never met the author of this letter Mr. Lipschitz, but due to the severe time restraints of my current occupation, I could never find time to write anything as clear and to-the-point as he has, so I'm sharing this with you, my readers.  All emphasis has been added by myself! Enjoy!]

Dear Annie,

As a long time fan of yours, I must say that I was so disappointed to see you sitting under a Palestinian flag, in the company of “Red” Ken Livingstone, George Gallagher, etc, all of them unabashedly not only anti Israel, but anti Semites to boot.

As well as being beneath your personal dignity to sit with such people you are also placing yourself decisively behind and identifying with only one side in the conflict and have abandoned any pretense of impartiality whatsoever.

I definitely value your concern for human rights and my heart goes out to your obviously genuine heartache for the Palestinian suffering. As do ours. Where, however was that beautiful voice of yours when 6000, yes, 6000 rockets rained down on unprotected Israeli civilian villages, towns and kibbutzim, all of them purposely targeting civilians and only civilians. A whole population lived in fear, children suffering post traumatic stress, economies floundering, and for what?

We unilaterally pulled out of Gaza, uprooted enterprises of 30 years standing, which during that time had prospered and made the previously neglected desert bloom.

We pulled out with peace in our hearts, and the deeds to prove it. We left behind, intact, the most technically advanced hothouses in the world. We were prepared to train Palestinians and conglomerates of American Jews (please check the facts) were offering to do joint venture with these Palestinians to help them develop their economy. This would offer unheard of opportunities in the ‘refugee’ world which I might add would really defeat the aim of the Islamic nations who USE these poor people as pawns.

Gaza was presented an opportunity to have become a thriving tax free port city and we could have been living in peace and trading (this is the best method of peace) with a prosperous Gaza. The Gazans unfortunately strengthened the old adage “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” and alas, the hothouses were looted and wantonly destroyed and we were met with a barrage of rockets instead of joint ventures.

Foreign aid was spent on deadly weapons. Even when we had a “cease fire” rockets rained in on a daily business and the Hamas interpreted our incredible restraint as weakness. We pleaded, we threatened, until our threats had lost all meaning. Enough was enough.

Where were you (and Sky News for that matter) when we were shown gruesome live footage of an Israeli boy screaming on the floor of a Supermarket. Yes, a Supermarket where civilians do their shopping, subsequent to an unprovoked rocket attack.. His leg had been sheared off by an assault calculatingly and cynically targeting civilians. The stories are endless.

Military might doesn’t solve anything. The answer is in diplomacy suggests Miss Lennox. Annie, who with? The Hamas will neither speak to us nor even recognize our basic right of existence. Like their Iranian masters they steadfastly call for our utter and total destruction. Nothing less.

It is said that they are holding out for open border crossings.

They had open crossings till they started bombarding us. The crossings were never permanently closed but their temporary closures were vainly and ineffectively used as a deterrent. They even bombed the crossings!! Go figure.

Is all of this madness in order to gain what they already had, and could have had way back then by doing one simple thing. Stop bombarding us!

Israelis yearn for peace and have proved with deeds that we are prepared to pay a high price for this. Our peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt are living proof. The Gazans will not talk peace, at very best a truce. The last “truce” with Hamas was exploited in their smuggling weapons, building tunnels, training shock troops in Iran and building fortifications, as well as maintaining their daily bombardment of Israeli civilians. Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Quaida, etc. not only call for the destruction of Israel but mock the Western democracies, which they have also openly promised to demolish. These threatened Democracies call for even handedness in the region which is also perceived gleefully in their eyes as weakness. Did we learn nothing from Chamberlain? 

Why is it that you, and other “liberal” people like yourself so savagely condemn Israel , with its democratic government, vocal opposition, free press, a world respected legal system, rights for minorities, etc? In short the only people in the Middle East, who adhere by YOUR standards, are vilified whilst you defend the people who trample on democracy, human rights, woman’s in particular, freedom of religion, freedom of speech. Need I go on with the list?

We have tried restraint, negotiations through 3rd parties, (as they won’t speak to us) cease fires (albeit one sided) nothing worked, all the above were seen as weakness. Like feeding the proverbial lion in order to get him to leave you alone it only increased their insatiable appetite, and so the time had come to act, and act strongly. Was our reaction disproportionate? Maybe we should have emulated them. For every Kassam rocket fired indiscriminately into a civilian population, should we have replied by sending helter skelter a rocket aimed into civilian areas and trust to luck where it falls? What would you, Red Ken and the gang have said about us then?

Hamas is to be judged, not only by its hideous actions but also by the company it keeps, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, El Qaeda, all “giants of democracy and human rights,” all reviled by the democracies of the world, which nevertheless combine in a knee jerk reaction to malign Israel, when it eventually does what any other country would have done ages ago. Exercise its right of self defense and fulfill its obligations to its beleaguered citizens.

Annie, unfortunately you too, whom I so admired, must ultimately be judged by the company you keep.

Stanley Lipschitz

Jerusalem