Open Letter to Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain

Not long ago, in support of the Palestinian cause in the Middle East, Prime Minister Zapatero appeared in public wearing a kafieh.  Furthermore, Spain has been at the forefront of critics of Israel and the "immorality" of the treatment of Palestinians. This inspired Ieoshua Levi from Israel to post the following open letter to the Spanish Prime Minister.  The letter was written in Spanish, and I took the liberty to translate it for publication in http://www.portalofideas.com/.  I took some liberties in translating, since the irony of the author is difficult to convey in English.  All credit for the letter belongs to Mr. Levi.  All mistakes or omissions are mine. 


Open Letter to Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain

In 1492 the Jews were expelled form Spain.  This was one of the "just and moral" decisions of the Spanish people towards the Jews, who had to flee leaving behind all their belongings and material goods.  The Jews were not only expelled, humiliated, and attacked; they were also robbed by the Spanish people.  Who knows what Spanish person resides in the house of my ancestors, or has the belongings of those ancestors.

...yet, we don't hate the Spanish people.

Let us remember that in the same period Spain also created an institution dedicated to "truth and morality."  This institution that remains in the memory of mankind for their promotion of "tolerance and freedom of religion" is none other than the Inquisition.  Those paladins of justice and morality imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands.  Us, the Jews, they burned at the stake just for being Jews.

...and even though my people, the Jewish people, never created such dignified institutions, despite the hatred, abuse, torture and assassinations we don't hate the Spanish people.  Despite the silenced screams of our murdered ancestors; we don't judge Spain's moral fiber.

Spain continued with the belief that they had not finished their spreading of human values.  Spain was so noble and ethical that they had to spread their influence around the world.  So they came to America.  Not only they arrived there, but they "discovered" it.  Nobody, including the natives of America were aware of their own existence.  And in order to control the discovery and to spread the gallant Spanish morality, so noble and proud, they assassinated hundreds of thousand, in one of the largest genocides in history.  They stole tons of silver and gold that they had "discovered."  Not to mention the destruction of the native cultures.

...yet we, the children of the Hebrews, we don't judge the morality of the Spanish people nor investigate the sources of its richness.  We don't hate the Spanish people.

Perhaps this historical review is looking too far into the past.  So far, that some might say, we shouldn't take it into consideration..  Well, I am a a son of the Hebrew people, and I have 5,700 years of memories.  Inclusive, I remember current history.  For example, the period of Franco where the Spanish morality found a friend in Nazi Germany.  The consequence of so much "justice and morality" does not require the memories of 5,700 years.  Six million Jews perished in this period that wearers of kafiahs, and you too Mr. Zapatero, seem to attempt to deny.

And so, the State of Israel was born in 1948.  After centuries without a homeland, persecuted and enclosed in ghettos, we created an independent state.  Spain, so full of morality, so just and against racism, decided not to recognize the new state.  After being so nice to the Jewish people, it took decades for the just and moral Spanish nation to recognize the new state.

...despite all this, we don't hate the Spanish people.  We ask for nothing.

And when our neighbors attacked and murdered us, we didn't ask Spain to opine or defend us.  And they didn't defend us, but opine they did.  When our roads were mined, and our buses were burned, when our towns were bombed, when we were forced to wage war, Spain gave us opinions based on its history so full of "pacifism and humanism."

When suicide bombers blew themselves up in our restaurants and commercial centers, killing men, women, children, the elderly and the young, Spanish morality was nowhere to be found.  But when we reacted, the Spanish mass media, so objective, so well balanced, so full of morality and justice, so intelligent; did opine.  But as usual, as is the Spanish historical tradition, the reaction was to oppose the Jews.  And it isn't because of racism, or the Inquisition, or tradition or morality.  The reaction was because we the Jews bother them.  And I never understood why. 

...despite all this we felt sorry and identified with the Spanish people when they suffered terrorist attacks.  We felt close to the victims, their families and their suffering.  And we didn't hate the Spanish people.

And when thousands of missiles fall on the towns and cities of Israel, and we have dead and wounded, and when our soldiers are kidnapped, and our synagogues are attacked, and our cemeteries destroyed, and while Satanic theories are impugned on us attempting to dehumanize the Jews, we, Jews, shouldn't respond.  We have to put the other cheek.  We have to allow ourselves to be murdered, just like in the historical period that Mr. Zapatero remembers from the perspective of a Spain that wasn't involved.  This gives him the moral high ground to criticize us.

Put on  a kafiah, Mr. Zapatero, but never a kipah.  Our dead don't count; just like in the fires of the Inquisition. 

Put on Kafiah, while you allow Moroccan Muslims to drown on the Mediterranean when they attempt to reach to Spain.  Mr. Zapatero, they are Muslims and they use a Kafiah.  Don't you identify with their suffering?

Keep on the kafiah.  While you remember the Spanish trains, keep the kafiah on.  It look good on you.  Wear it while you talk to us about morality, truth, justice and humanism.  Don't forget anything.  We won't.  We remember the expulsion from Spain, the Inquisition, the persecution, the behavior of Spain in the "New World."  We won't forget the murders, and the thievery and we will never forget the Spanish "opposition" to Nazism.  We will remember how Spain never spoke of morality while we were being attacked and assassinated.

Keep the kafiaah on, Mr. Zapatero, and keep lecturing on morality, justice and humanism.  Spain has really a lot to lecture about.

Talk, Mr. Zapatero, while we are being butchered.  You are a noble son to the Spanish historical tradition.  The kafiah looks good on you, and it allows you to ally yourself to Islamic fundamentalism, so full of love and so many universal values of freedom, freedom of thought and opinion and divine justice and morality.

And while we talk about morality to us.

...remember, despite everything, we don't hate the Spanish people.  We respect them, read their books, listen to their music, we talk to them, visit them and approach them.  We don't hate Spaniards, or Germans or Arabs.  We only want to live in peace.  But those who placed on you the kafiah, those from Septemeber 11, the Madrid and London bombings, those who teach hatred and lies and barbarism wont let us.

Ieoshua Levi

Israel

If Israel goes down, we all go down

Former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, has written an article for The Times of London in support of Israel. 

For those of you who have forgotten, Aznar lost the 2004 election when the cowardly Spanish elected Zapatero after the Madrid bombings.  Zapatero, as most members of the international left, has been a critic of Israel, while anti-Semitism is again becoming quite virulent in the land of Torquemada and the Inquisition.

Here is Aznar's article:

 If Israel goes down, we all go down

For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion. In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.

In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.

Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.

Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.

Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival. Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace.

For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.

The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.

The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation. It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East. Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.

Israel is our first line of defence in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down. To defend Israel’s right to exist in peace, within secure borders, requires a degree of moral and strategic clarity that too often seems to have disappeared in Europe. The United States shows worrying signs of heading in the same direction.

The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith. To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.

This cannot be allowed to happen. Motivated by the need to rebuild our own Western values, expressing deep concern about the wave of aggression against Israel, and mindful that Israel’s strength is our strength and Israel’s weakness is our weakness, I have decided to promote a new Friends of Israel initiative with the help of some prominent people, including David Trimble, Andrew Roberts, John Bolton, Alejandro Toledo (the former President of Peru), Marcello Pera (philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate), Fiamma Nirenstein (the Italian author and politician), the financier Robert Agostinelli and the Catholic intellectual George Weigel.

It is not our intention to defend any specific policy or any particular Israeli government. The sponsors of this initiative are certain to disagree at times with decisions taken by Jerusalem. We are democrats, and we believe in diversity.

What binds us, however, is our unyielding support for Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. For Western countries to side with those who question Israel’s legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel’s vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude.

Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.

ANTI-SEMITISM BEING TAUGHT IN SPANISH SCHOOLS TO KIDS AS YOUNG AS 5

Ha’aretz reports:

Israel yesterday lodged a formal complaint with Spain, charging that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are being instilled in elementary students across parts of the country.

The Israeli embassy in Madrid has received dozens of postcards addressed to the Israeli envoy – from students ages 5 and 6 – including hand-written messages such as “Jews kill for money,” “Evacuate the country for Palestinians,” and “Go to someplace where someone will be willing to accept you.”

According to sources in the Foreign Ministry, this is an organized campaign by officials outside the education system in Spain that have been given permission to work with the students.

The Foreign Ministry had originally planned to summon the Spanish envoy to Israel, Alvaro Iranzo, to rebuke him.

However, in an effort to prevent a diplomatic crisis, the ministry decided instead to discuss the matter with him via telephone.

Naor Gilon, the Foreign Ministry’s deputy director for Western Europe, spoke with Iranzo on Sunday and said, “Israel feels strong discontent over the postcards sent by school students and views the matter with utmost gravity.”

The Spanish envoy explained that the postcards were a private initiative, and not one that is part of Spain’s education ministry.

Gilon said Israel understands this is not a government policy, but stressed that these types of initiatives have no place in schools and that Israel requests action be taken to have the campaign stopped.