The necessity of standing up for Israel’s rights

...Dan Margalit, a leading left-wing Israeli journalist who is very close to Hotovely on a personal level, said he often tells her: “You are right, we have rights to the land, but the Palestinians also do! Why not discuss this as well?” Hotovely answers: “I have never heard Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas talk about Israel’s rights to the land. Why should I talk about theirs?” Instead of trying to be neutral, and shying away from controversial issues, Israel’s diplomatic corps need to be pro-Israel. It might sound self-evident, but it is not. Israeli officials are not UN officials, they are here to advocate for the Jewish state, to defend its rights and protect its interests. In order to do so, they must stand up for Israel’s rights, and only Israel’s rights.

Dan Illouz..
Fresh Perspective/JPsot..
04 June '15..

Imagine if there was a country you had no personal connection to that people accused of being an apartheid state. This state was constantly condemned all over the world, and in the UN, for war crimes and human rights violations. Imagine if this country was claimed to be founded on colonialist principles, and was accused of systematic racism.

In its defense, this state simply emphasized the fact that it is a leader in hi-tech and innovation, and that it invented things such as the cherry tomato, ICQ and the flash drive.

Whose side would you be on? This is Israel’s image as seen in today’s world.

When thinking about the Jewish state’s public diplomacy, one must think about what the unengaged, ordinary person sees, not what the educated activist sees. Today, Israel is violently attacked by its haters through vicious delegitimization campaigns; these are of course based on lies, but the ordinary, unengaged person does not necessarily know that. Israel’s response to this campaign is simply unconvincing.

Israel needs to refocus its message and debunk the lies thrown at it, such as these accusations of war crimes, apartheid and racism. It must cultivate a parallel ethical discourse, one that is no less passionate than the one promoted by the supporters of the Palestinians, based on the principles of freedom, historical justice and legal justice. This discourse is the only way to compete with the lies thrown at Israel because, although they are lies, they base themselves on the deepest levels of human conscience and cannot be rejected without proposing an alternative ethical foundation.

The moral case for Israel is a strong one; however, no one seems to be making it. As such, a moral person who doesn’t actively educate himself on the conflict is fed a narrative which leads him to oppose Israel virulently.

An opportunity to start reframing the narrative around reality rather than fantasies

...Despite the disturbing chaos of Israel’s new government, there’s an opportunity now for Israel’s Foreign Ministry to start reframing the narrative around reality rather than fantasies. The problem is that much of the West no longer knows the difference.

Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely.
photo credit:MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/
THE JERUSALEM POST

Melanie Phillips..
As I See It/JPost..
28 May '15..

Israel's new deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, has caused a sensation, not least in her own ministry. She has told the truth.

She said Israel must not hesitate to assert that the entire Land of Israel, including the West Bank, belongs to the Jewish people.

That right, she said, came from the Hebrew Bible. She referred to Maimonides, who asserted that Genesis began with the creation of the world in order to provide a riposte to foreign nations accusing the Jews of stealing the Land of Israel.

Israeli diplomats were aghast. “It’s the first time anyone has asked us to use verses from the Torah for public diplomacy abroad,” one was quoted as saying.

It is true that the hostile West (and many Israelis) may write off Hotovely as just another religious zealot who wants to annex the West Bank.

In fact, she also said she is committed to a two-state solution along the lines laid down by Prime Minister Netanyahu: that Israel would support a Palestine state established to live in peace alongside Israel.

But Hotovely’s point was of far deeper importance. For she asserted that Israel should be telling the world it had justice, morality and law on its side.

Well, hallelujah. For the first time that I can recall, the Israeli foreign service is being told to deliver a message that is not only demonstrably correct but which tackles the very core of the Western animus against Israel.

This is driven by the belief – fueled by ignorance and a five-decade propaganda campaign based on a total inversion of history – that the Jews in Israel are interlopers into a land that historically belonged as of right to Palestinian Muslims.

In fact the Jews are the only people, as a people, for whom Israel was ever their national kingdom. In the 1920s, the international community acknowledged this in the Mandate for Palestine.

This committed Britain to restore the Jewish national homeland by settling the Jews in what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza (and, until the British split Palestine in 1921, Jordan). That legal Jewish right to settle all the land has never been abrogated.

Infamously the British reneged on this treaty obligation, closing the doors of Palestine to Jewish refugees while offering their Arab attackers part of the Jews’ entitlement to the land (the original two-state solution). Which they refused, as they have done ever since.

Incentivizing in this way a war of extermination while punishing its victims has remained the West’s policy to this very day.

This is the principal reason why the Arab war against Israel continues without end.

Defending Israel? Talk About Rights. Not Just Security

...But while the Likud Knesset member is swimming against the tide of international opinion as well as the culture of the ministry she’s running, she is right. Though many in an international community increasingly influenced by anti-Semitism and misinformation about Israel will never accept such arguments, as the Palestinians have demonstrated over the last generation, talk of rights always trumps security.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
22 May '15..

Israel diplomats were reportedly shocked this week when their country’s new deputy foreign minister asked them to speak up about Israel’s rights in the conflict with the Palestinians rather than just its security needs. As the Times of Israel reports, Tzipi Hotovely raised more than a few eyebrows when she told a gathering of the country’s diplomatic personnel that it was a mistake to downplay the country’s own territorial claims when seeking to counter complaints about Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The very idea of quoting the Torah when speaking of ties to the biblical heartland of the Jewish homeland seemed to strike them and left-wing commentators who howled about it later as absurd. Indeed, as the left-wing Haaretz put it, the world may find the minister “hard to swallow.” But while the Likud Knesset member is swimming against the tide of international opinion as well as the culture of the ministry she’s running, she is right. Though many in an international community increasingly influenced by anti-Semitism and misinformation about Israel will never accept such arguments, as the Palestinians have demonstrated over the last generation, talk of rights always trumps security.