In this mailing:
- Geert Wilders: The First Amendment Is What We Need in Europe
- Michael Curtis: Where Persecuted Jews May Go
The First Amendment Is What We Need in Europe
by Geert Wilders
May 1, 2012 at 5:00 am
May 1, 2012 at 5:00 am
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Adherence
to religion must be a personal choice. No religion should demand that those who
leave it be killed; this makes it a totalitarian ideology rather than a
religion. A religion must never mandate the subjugation of those who do not
belong to it. A religion must be in accord with basic human rights. This
ideology also harms Muslims. That is why we have to end the biggest disease in
the world today, the cultural relativism which pretends that all cultures are
equal. If Israel falls, the West falls. That is why their fight is our fight.
We should support it.
I am happy to be in New York again, even though
in my country today it is Queen's Day, a national celebration. This is why I am
wearing my orange tie.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to
address all of you. It is always good to be among friends. It is an honor to be
here in the presence of so many people who care for the preservation of freedom
in our civilization.
It is great to be in America, the beacon of
liberty, the land of the free, the land where people are still allowed to speak
freely. I know what I am talking about. I was acquitted after a legal ordeal
that lasted almost three years. I had been brought to court for criticizing
Islam.
Though at the end of the day I was acquitted,
the court case was a disgrace. It was a time-, money- and energy-consuming
nightmare. This charade that happened in the Netherlands for the last few years
could not have happened in your great country, where the First Amendment
guarantees people the freedom to express their opinions.
The First Amendment is what we need in the
Netherlands and Europe.
I am in New York for the release of my book
"Marked for Death." It reveals how Islam has already profoundly
changed Europe in the last decades. It exposes the cultural relativism which
has affected Europe so deeply that many in Europe refuse to stand for liberty
and prefer to appease Islam. It explains why Islam is a threat to freedom.
As you know, people who speak out like me pay a
steep price for speaking these truths. Apart from legal attempts to silence me,
there are also the threats by radical Muslims to kill me. I have been living
under permanent police protection for almost eight years now. But I do not
regret one word. I see it as my duty to warn the West.
I have traveled widely in the Islamic world. I
have read the Koran. I have studied the life of Muhammad. It made me realize
that Islam is primarily an ideology rather than a religion. This ideology wants
to impose Islamic sharia law on the whole world, including us the Kafirs,
the non-Muslims. This ideology is also outspokenly anti-Semitic.
This ideology also harms Muslims. Islam
believes that everything men have to know can be found in the Koran. As such,
it is hostile to all forms of innovation. But without innovation there can be
no progress and people cannot prosper.
Many people unfortunately are blind to the
nature of Islam because they do not realize what Islam is, and mistakenly
believe that it is a religion just like any other religion.
I have written my book to inform them.
Islam fails four major tests that religions
should fulfill:
- Adherence to a religion must be a personal choice;
- no religion should demand that those who leave it be killed; this makes it a totalitarian ideology rather than a religion.
- a religion must never mandate the subjugation of those who do not belong to it;
- a religion must be in accord with basic human rights.
I have also written my book because I am not a
defeatist. The West is able to defeat totalitarianism just as it defeated
Nazism and Communism in the past.
My book is dedicated to freedom. It is inspired
by many freedom fighters, from previous generations but also people from our
age.
Fortunately, we are not alone in the fight for
freedom. We are in the company of heroes and friends. This gives us the
strength to continue.
In order to defeat Islam so, we must do four
things.
The first and most important is to speak the
truth, always and everywhere also about Islam. Like the Americans, the people
in the Netherlands and other European countries desperately need a First
Amendment.
That will allow them to tell the truth about
Islam and Muhammad. We must encourage Muslims to leave Islam and to choose
freedom and prosperity.
Secondly, we have to believe in the superiority
of our Western values. If we do not believe in our own Western values, we will
not be prepared to defend them. That is why we have to end the biggest disease
in the world today, the cultural relativism which pretends that all cultures
are equal. Our Judeo-Chrisitian, humanist civilization is more free, more
democratic, more tolerant than any civilization the world has ever seen. We
should not be afraid to say so.
Thirdly, we must stop the Islamization of our
societies by restricting immigration from Islamic countries, and expelling
those who violate our laws and commit violence. If you respect our laws you are
welcome to stay; if you don't, you do not belong here..
And fourthly, we must reassert our national
identities. The nation-state enables self-government and self-determination.
This insight led the Zionists to establish Israel as the homeland of the Jews.
Zionism teaches us one of the most important
lessons which the modern world needs today. Theodor Herzl argued that a Jewish
state would facilitate "a new blossoming of the Jewish spirit."
Today, we need our own respective nation-states to preside over a new
blossoming of our own Western spirit.
Our nations are the homes in which freedom and
democracy prosper. This is true for the Netherlands. This is true for America.
This is true for Israel.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle
East. It is a beacon of freedom in an unfree region, a beacon of life in a
place of darkness. If Israel falls, the West falls.
Mothers in the West can sleep safely because
Israeli mothers at night worry about their sons in the army. Their fight is our
fight. We should support it.
Israel is, indeed, a vital outpost of Western
civilization. That is why Islam conditions the faithful to hate the Jewish
state and to view its destruction as an imperative. It is our duty to stand
with Israel.
In my book I explain how we can defend freedom
and oppose Islamization and cultural relativism in a non-violent and democratic
way. In fact, that is what my party, the Party for Freedom, is doing in the
Netherlands.
When I began to speak out against Islam 10
years ago, two things happened. Extremist Muslims from the Netherlands and all
over the world marked me for death, but Dutch people came to me to express
their support. In 2010, we became the third biggest party in the Netherlands.
Though the PVV did not become a coalition partner in the Dutch government, for
almost two years we supported a center-right minority government in return for
measures to roll back Sharia in Holland, stop the Islamization process, and counter
cultural relativism.
The Dutch government even had the audacity to
speak out against the powerful OIC, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
The OIC is an international organization of 57 Islamic countries, most of them
autocracies,.
This OIC constitutes the largest voting bloc in
the United Nation. It criticized the fact that Dutch judges acquitted me of all
charges in my court case. But the Dutch government made it clear to the OIC
that freedom of speech will not be muzzled in the Netherlands. It told the OIC
very bluntly: "The Dutch government dissociates itself fully from the
request to silence a politician." Never before had a European government
had the courage to confront the OIC in such a forceful way.
Unfortunately, last week, the Party for Freedom
decided to end its support for the government. As you can imagine, this was a
difficult decision for us, given the many things also on the subject of
islamization that we were still to achieve. Unfortunately, however, previous
Dutch governments – as governments elsewhere in Europe – have signed away a
significant part of our own sovereignty to the EU, the European Union, a
supranational institution run by unelected and undemocratic bureaucrats.
The EU controls our borders and decides over
most immigration rules. The EU also imposes a policy of austerity on our
country.
When the government, in order to comply with
the EU rules, decided to raise taxes and slash the budget at the expense of the
citizens rather than by trimming the government, my party had no other option
but to bring the government down and we did so last week.
We are now heading for elections, which will be
held on September 12th. Our electoral campaign will focus on the need to
restore our national sovereignty, because without our sovereignty we cannot
defend our identity and fight against islamization.
My friends, we continue our efforts. Our
opponents have not been able to bully me. They have not been able to silence
me. They shriek and yell, but we will never give in. One of my favorite
presidents Ronald Reagan once said: "The future doesn't belong to the
fainthearted." Reagan was right. The future belongs to us.
In 2008, I released Fitna, a documentary
about the true message of the Koran. Tomorrow, I release my book. I wrote it to
inform people, and also to encourage freedom-loving Muslims to leave Islam. And
to see Islam for what it really is.
I wholeheartedly support those who struggle for
freedom in the Islamic world. The Arab, Turkish, Iranian, Pakistani, and
Indonesian people have tremendous potential. If they could liberate themselves
from the yoke of Islam, if they would stop taking Muhammad as a role model, and
if they get rid of the Koran, they would be able to achieve amazing things.
As I say in my book – my message to them, to
all the Muslims all over the world, is clear: "Fatalism is no option,
Insh'Allah is a curse; Submission is a disgrace. Free yourselves. It is up to
you."
I receive hundreds of emails from all over the
world. From people in Islamic countries, and from people in Western countries
begging for help. They, too, want to fight for freedom and stop the
Islamization process. We have to advise and help.
I leave you with another Reagan quote: "We
need to act today, to preserve tomorrow." Indeed, my friends, there are so
many things which we can do. Things which we must do. But we can do them only
if we can count on each other. You can count on me. I spoke, I speak, I shall
continue to speak. I hope I can continue to count on your support.
We are fighting for the future of our children,
the survival of the Western spirit, the preservation of our liberty and
democracy, our Judeo-Christian and humanist heritage.
We must be brave and save our heritage and our
own constitution. The West is in danger, but we can still prevail. Even when we
are insulted, even when we are harassed and intimidated -- even when we are
marked for death -- we must stand up for our values, tell the truth and never,
ever, be silent.
Address before the Gatestone Institute, New
York City, April 30, 2012.
Related Topics: Geert Wilders
Where
Persecuted Jews May Go
In Memoriam, Benzion Netanyahu
(1910-2012)
by Michael Curtis
May 1, 2012 at 4:45 am
May 1, 2012 at 4:45 am
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The
logical conclusion for these critics is that Israel would be more democratic if
it were less Jewish. No Zionist leader would agree with this. These critics
also conveniently ignore the continual Arab rejection of any compromise
solution to the conflict and their repeated rejection of any partition
proposals and resolutions.
Throughout history political systems have come
to an end when citizens of countries lose faith in them. The state of Israel
has not had to face this situation in the extreme, but it has been challenged
by so-called "post-Zionism." Among the themes derogatory towards
Israel are that Zionism -- the movement of Jewish self-determination which led
to the establishment of the state of Israel -- is a colonial enterprise; that a
Jewish state is by nature undemocratic; that it is basically immoral as it was
founded on the domination, or even the ouster -- by force and other means -- of
another people; that the creation of Israel caused a catastrophe for
Palestinian Arabs; that Israeli occupation of disputed territory is a violation
of human rights; that Israel is an imperialistic power and a threat to world
peace.
This criticism is deficient in many respects.
It is a quaintly insular view of Israel -- a country in a world of
globalization and complex interdependence, confronted by continual hatred so
that it must always be prepared to defend itself. Its proponents are singularly
naïve in their expectations of a perfect social and politically egalitarian,
secular society, and are guilty of prejudice against devout religious believers
in a way they are not toward followers of other faiths. Moreover, these critics
misunderstand Zionism, a word coined by Nathan Birnbaum in 1891, which in fact
includes a pluralistic variety of approaches.
What particular aspects of the different views
of Zionism are unacceptable to the critics? Do they want to eliminate the state
of Israel? Proponents of Zionism saw that Jews in the Diaspora had been
excluded from world history, and so believed it was necessary to establish a
state for the Jewish people as a national unit. The Israeli Declaration of
Independence speaks of "the natural right of the Jewish people to be
masters of their own fate like other nations." Advocates varied about the
solution: "territorialists," wanted any suitable areas including
Uganda where persecuted Jews might go; others demanded a state in Palestine or Eretz
Israel [the Biblical Land of Israel]; practical Zionists proposed
settlements; others urged a solution by political and diplomatic means;
socialists disputed with the political right; nationalists disagreed with
internationalists, and the religious coexisted with the free-thinkers.
The post-Zionists argue that Zionism is a
colonialist concept essentially founded on injustice towards the local Arabs,
and that the differences in Israel now in status, income, and rights between
Jews and Israeli Arabs means that the state is therefore undemocratic. The
logical conclusion for these critics would be that Israel would be more
democratic if it were less Jewish. Herzl and many others would have disagreed
with this conclusion. He wrote in his diary in1895 that Jewish settlement would
bring immediate benefits to the land, and that "we shall respectfully
tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and
their freedom with the harshest means of coercion."
The fundamental external reality -- which seems
to escape those who challenge the legitimacy of Israel -- is that many Arab
countries and Palestinians, having warred and engaged in constant hostility,
still refuse to recognize Israel's legitimacy. Necessarily, security is vital;
the problem is to what extent should this interfere with Arab claims to the
land and rights? The present mainstream view is that a secure Israel is better
than a territorially extended one.
Certainly a variety of opinions exist within
Israel on the nature of the economy and the free market, on the cultural
identities that make up the mosaic of its society, and on the inequalities both
within the Jewish community and between Jews and non-Jews. But to conclude that
Zionism is a colonialist or racist movement is to go far beyond rational
analysis, and to touch on the periphery of antisemitism.
Although attitudes toward the Arabs in the
territory differ, there never been any official policy to expel them from the
territory. In spite of this, critics of Israel persist in the allegation that
Zionism has promoted this view. They are mistaken in this belief as they are in
their aversion to the exercise of Israeli power to defend itself, while at the
same time shirking any realistic alternative proposals.
The main assertions of critics are that Israel
is too nationalistic -- that it should no longer be a Jewish state but rather a
democratic one, implying an incompatibility between the two; and that Israel
should end its occupation of captured territory, even as it stands threatened
by many countries that have repeatedly announced they would like to displace
it. These critics also conveniently ignore the continual Arab rejection of any
compromise solution to the conflict and their repeated rejection of all
partition proposals and resolutions. Post-Zionism tends to become anti-Zionism
-- the denial that Israel has a legitimate right to exist but comfortable with
the right to exist of other newly-created states, such as Moldova, or
Bangladesh.
It is therefore fortunate that the book, The
Founding Fathers of Zionism by Benzion Netanyahu, the recently deceased 102
year old patriarch of an important Israeli family -- including Jonathan the
celebrated hero who was killed while leading the mission to rescue Jewish
hostages held by the PLO at Entebbe airport on July 4, 1976, Benjamin, Prime
Minister of Israel, and Iddo, a prominent physician -- has been translated from
Hebrew and is being published for the first time in English. The author is well
known both as a renowned scholar, especially for his 1400 page, controversial
book, The Origins of the Inquisition in 15th century Spain,
dedicated to Jonathan.
Netanyahu's book is a series of essays on five
major writers -- Leo Pinsker, Theodore Herzl, Max Nordau, Israel Zangwill, and
Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky -- who contributed to the intellectual foundation
of Zionism and thus indirectly to the establishment of the state of Israel.
In earlier years, Netanyahu was an activist in
the Revisionist Zionist movement, for a time secretary to its founder,
Jabotinsky, and head of the U.S. branch of the movement during World War II. In
1940 he approved the campaign of Jabotinsky, who had formed Haganah in 1920 as
a separate fighting force, to create a Jewish military force to fight against
Nazi Germany, and to call for a Jewish state. Although he never renounced his
favorable opinion of Jabotinsky, his essays are eminently fair in their
evaluation of all of his five founders.
Netanyahu traces Zionism back to late 19th
century Russia and the rise in Eastern Europe of a national consciousness,
partly as an outcome of religious longings, but largely as a result of attacks
on Jews and the manifest anti-Semitism there.
It is of course true that some in the Jewish
community do not acknowledge the land that is now Israel as the necessary
homeland for all Jews. The founders in Netanyahu's book thought otherwise.
Their arguments, which played a major part of the intellectual foundations on
which the state of Israel was built, were based on the understanding, which
turned out to be prescient, that European Jews would be doomed without a Jewish
state in which they would be protected and could defend themselves. For
Netanyahu the motivation of Zionism, also as expressed by his founders was not
religious but political.
The declaration at the First Zionist Congress
that Herzl convened in Basel in 1897 was that "Zionism seeks to establish
a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law." This
implied an international charter for Jews to return to Palestine. The result,
Herzl believed, would be not only a state but also the ending of antisemitism.
Herzl emphasized the need for the Jewish people to rule, and to believe in
their own powers. Netanyahu sums up Herzl in three words: "believe, dare
and desire." In Herzl's novel, Altneuland, a character concludes,
"If you will it, it is no dream."
Herzl's contributions to Zionism, a combination
of realism and optimism, emphasized a principle post-Zionists tend to reject:
that Jews "are a people, one people." Affliction he said "binds
us together, and thus united, we suddenly discover our strength." He urged
the restoration of the Jewish state, in which a normal society could exist for
Jews. The new state, he said, with an insistence that underscored his
determined diplomatic efforts to get international approval, must have an
assured right of sovereignty, and a legal right recognized by the international
community.
Not surprisingly, the longest essay in
Netanyahu's book is on his hero Jabotinsky, orator, writer, and thinker with a
mastery of languages, literature, and history. That hero saluted Herzl, the
liberated strong personality who was a model of the proud, independent, Jew
able to command, and necessary in a new Jewish entity.
Jabotinsky called for both political and
military resistance to any concession of the rights to which Jews were
entitled, as individuals or as a people. To this end he championed Jewish
self-defense in Russia. As a private individual he created the Jewish Legions
in World War I and after the War the Irgun Zva'i Leumi (National Military
Organization). Netanyahu points out that he urged both a political and military
struggle against British rule. The political struggle should be one of constant
public pressure, going beyond diplomatic niceties. The military one would be a
way of educating Jewish youth; at an extreme it would be an armed uprising
against Britain.
Jabotinsky's most controversial argument was
his policy towards local Arabs. He predicted the Arab pogroms of April 1920
against Jews, and organized defense against it for which he was jailed for 15
years, although soon released. He recognized that Arabs would not voluntarily
consent to the fulfillment of Zionism, and would fight against Jewish immigration,
even though it would bring them cultural and economic benefits. Hence his
famous advocacy of an Iron Wall, a strong legal military and political force to
convince the Arabs that they could not force Jews to leave the area. For him
the land of Israel would be obtained only through force.
All the five writers called for a national home
for the Jewish people, and the creation of a sovereign state which could
exercise power. The inescapable internal problem is the presence of an Arab
minority that now comprises one fifth of the population. The Zionist pioneers,
aware of this problem, established individual and collective rights for this
minority.
Whatever the different formulations of Zionism,
all proponents share the view that the area is the birthplace and the ancestral
homeland of the Jewish people, linked by historical ties and by religious and
cultural traditions. Zionism did not and does not call for expelling the
non-Jewish population in the disputed land; and. despite the United Nations
General Assembly Resolution 3379 (XXX) of November 10, 1975 , revoked in 1991,
that Zionism was a form of Racism, Zionism a not a racist concept.
Netanhayu serves a valuable role in reminding
us of the need to establish a safe and secure state in which Jews can live a healthy
and normal life, rather than, as in the 1940s, having boatloads of refugees
turned away, leaving them to drown.
Michael Curtis is Distinguished Professor
Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University, and author of Should
Israel Exist? A Sovereign Nation under attack by the International Community.
Related Topics: Israel
| Michael
Curtis
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