Dave has posted the full text of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to AIPAC yesterday. I would encourage you to read or listen to the whole thing but I’m going to draw out two highlights.
I’ve written a few times about Netanyahu alluding to the words of Churchill in his speeches (Hugh Fitzgerald Follows My Lead, The Religion Of Blood And War) and yesterday was no exception. The following passage, towards the end of the speech is interesting:
We deeply appreciate the great alliance between our two countries. But when it comes to Israel’s survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate.
Two of the six volumes in his Second World War memoir are entitled “The Grand Alliance” and “The Hinge of Fate”. He’s hiding them a bit deeper this time.
The second passage should be the takeaway from the whole piece.
I’ve heard these arguments before. In fact, I’ve read them before — In my desk, I have copies of an exchange of letters between the World Jewish Congress and the United States War Department.
Here are the letters:
The year was 1944. The World Jewish Congress implored the American government to bomb Auschwitz. The reply came five days later. I want to read it to you.
“Such an operation could be executed only by diverting considerable air support essential to the success of our forces elsewhere…
and in any case, it would be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources…”
And, my friends, here’s the most remarkable sentence of all, and I quote:
“Such an effort might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.”
Think about that – “even more vindictive action” — than the Holocaust.
My Friends,
2012 is not 1944. The American government today is different. You heard it in President Obama’s speech yesterday.
But here’s my point:
The Jewish people are also different. Today we have a state of our own. And the purpose of the Jewish state is to defend Jewish lives and to secure the Jewish future.
Never again will we not be masters of the fate of our very survival. Never again.
That is why Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.
