Saturday, November 24, 2012

International Sympathy?



I just received this email with a message a Jewish woman in Britain sent Monday (19 November) to William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, and I just had to forward it.


Dear Mr Hague

You have stated that if Israel  tries to defend its population through a
ground offensive in Gaza ‘it  risks losing the sympathy of the
international community.’   

Let me tell you  something about the sympathy of the international
community Mr Hague.  My father was liberated from Buchenwald
concentration camp in 1945,  having lost his entire family but gaining
the sympathy of the  international community at the time. After 6 million
Jews had been  annihilated at the hands of the Nazi regime, the
international  community had plenty of sympathy for the Jewish people.
There is  always plenty of sympathy for victims.

Israel doesn’t need the sympathy  of the international community.
What it needs is to defend its  citizens.

When as a tiny country  it gained its independence in 1948 it had to
absorb 800,000 Jews who  were thrown out of Arab lands in the Middle
East, and it did so  without fuss and with dignity giving them shelter
and a place of  security in which their children could grow up to become
productive  citizens. When Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria tried to
destroy  Israel in 1948 and again in 1967 they took in hundreds of
thousands  of Palestinian Arabs, but did they give them dignity or
shelter? No  they left them to rot in refugee camps in order to maintain
a symbol  of grievance against Israel and use them as a political tool
against  the Jewish state. What has arisen in those camps is a
complicated  situation, but it is what has led to Gaza today.

So don’t lecture  Israel on international sympathy Mr Hague.
Not when Israel has just sent in  120 truck loads of food into Gaza to
feed the Palestinian people  there, because their own leadership is more
interested in using its  population as human shields, launching rockets
against Israel from  within major civilian centres.

Don’t lecture Israel on international  sympathy Mr Hague.
Not when Israel targets with as much military precision  as it can, only
terrorists and their bases, trying its utmost to  prevent civilian
casualties.

Don’t lecture Israel on  international sympathy Mr Hague.
Not when the Palestinian media  deliberately uses images of victims of
the Syrian civil war and  presents them as casualties in Gaza to gain
international  sympathy.

Go read your history books Mr Hague, go see that since the  beginning of
the twentieth century all the Arabs wanted to do was  destroy Israel. Go
look at the country of Israel now since the Jews  have established a
state there. Go read what advances in science,  medicine, biotechnology,
agriculture and high tech Israel has  developed, and dedicated that
knowledge to making the world a better  place for humanity. Can you
imagine any other country that after 60  years of continuously being
under attack could have achieved so  much.

So Mr Hague don’t lecture Israel on international  sympathy.
Israel will do whatever it takes to defend itself from outright  attack
on its citizens, whether it be from Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran or  any other
country or terrorist group that attacks it.

And if  it loses the sympathy of the international community so be it.  We
don’t need the international community’s sympathy. We don’t need  another
6 million victims.

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