José María Aznar

Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the
West’s best ally in a turbulent region

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.

José María Aznar was Prime Minister of Spain, 1996-2004