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Israel: A Normal Country

(Wall Street Journal) Jose Maria Aznar et al. - Israel is a Western democracy and a normal country. Nonetheless, Israel has faced abnormal circumstances since its inception. In fact, Israel is the only Western democracy whose existence has been questioned by force, and whose legitimacy is still being questioned independently of its actions. Attempts to question Israel's basic legitimacy as a Jewish state in the Middle East are unacceptable to people who support liberal democratic values. The State of Israel was founded in the wake of UN Resolution 181, passed in 1947. It also arose out of an unbroken Jewish connection to the land that stretches back thousands of years. Israel does not derive its legitimacy, as some claim, from sympathy over the Holocaust. Instead, it derives legitimacy from international law and from the same right to self-determination claimed by all nations. We must never forget that Israel is on our side in the battle against Islamism and terror. Israel stands on the front line of that fight as a bulwark of Judeo-Christian values. The belief that the democratic world can sacrifice Israel in order to placate Islamism is profoundly wrong and dangerous. Appeasement failed in the 1930s and it will fail today. This statement was signed by Jose Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain; David Trimble, former first minister of Northern Ireland; John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the UN; Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru; Marcello Pera, former president of the Italian Senate; Andrew Roberts, a British historian; Fiamma Nirenstein, vice-president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Italian Chamber of Deputies; George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Robert F. Agostinelli, managing director of the Rhone Group, and Carlo Bustelo, former minister of industry in Spain, as part of the Friends of Israel Initiative.
2010-07-09 09:22:19
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