A Response from the Office of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to TIME Magazine
By Ron Dermer, Senior Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister
Dear Mr. Stengel,
I wanted to bring to your attention a recent article in Time entitled“Israel’s Rightward Lurch Scares Some Conservatives.” I hope that you will agree that the article’s obvious bias and numerous distortions are not worthy of the standards of your prestigious magazine.
Israel is depicted in the article as essentially sliding towards fascism. Your correspondent refers to Israel’s Shin Bet (the equivalent of the FBI) as a “secret police,” claims that the Israeli government “increasingly equates dissent with disloyalty,” and accuses the Prime Minister of “taking a page from neighboring authoritarian states.”
The evidence offered for these outrageous allegations includes a preliminary vote in our parliament that would require naturalized citizens to make a pledge of allegiance, a proposal to strip citizenship from Israelis convicted of espionage and terrorism, a motion to investigate foreign government funding of local NGOs, calls on Jews to not rent property to Arabs, and demonstrations demanding prohibitions of Arab boys from dating Jewish girls.
But your correspondent did not find it necessary to inform your readers of a few facts.
Oaths of allegiance are commonplace in most democratic countries, including the United States. Naturalized citizens in America swear an oath to its Constitution and to defend the country against “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Israel’s proposed pledge would require naturalized citizens to swear an oath to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, words taken directly from our Declaration of Independence.
Moreover, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy are just some of the many countries where citizenship can be stripped for various infractions that are defined as undermining “national interests.” Are these European countries not democratic?
In the United States, Senator Joe Leiberman proposed a bill last year to “add joining a foreign terrorist organization or engaging in or supporting hostilities against the United States or its allies to the list of acts for which United States nationals would lose their nationality.” Is American democracy threatened by such a bill?
As for questioning the legitimacy of foreign government funding of Israeli NGOs, mentioning America’s Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) may have presented a more balanced picture.
FARA requires that any organization engaged in lobbying in the U.S. that receives money from foreign individuals, let alone foreign governments, must among other things register as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice and permit the Attorney General to inspect all of its activities.
It is hard to imagine any democratic country accepting foreign governments intervening in its domestic affairs by funding domestic groups engaged not merely in criticism of a particular government’s policy but also attacking the very foundations of the State.
What would Britain do if the French government was actively funding a British NGO that sought to eliminate the monarchy? What would the United States do if the Iranian government was funding American NGOs pressing for a withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East?
There is a vigorous public debate in Israel, including within the Likud
party, over the best means to address the problem of foreign government funding of local NGOs. Proposals range from launching a parliamentary investigation to laws banning or restricting such funding to measures to ensure full transparency. Far from being a sign of Israel’s slide toward fascism, the current debate in Israel is a testament to how vibrant our democracy truly is.
Finally, contrary to the implication of your correspondent, Prime Mister
Netanyahu has publicly and forcefully condemned the racist sentiments that were mentioned in the article. For example, this is what the Prime Minister said at the opening of Israel’s annual Bible Quiz to an audience of mostly observant Jews a few hours after he learned of the letter calling on Jews not to rent apartments to Arabs:
“There are non-Jews among the citizens of this country. How would we feel if someone said not to sell apartments to Jews? We would have been outraged, and indeed we are outraged when we hear such things in neighboring countries or anywhere else. Such statements should not be made, neither about Jews nor about Arabs. They must not be made in any democratic country, let alone a Jewish-democratic country that respects the moral values of the Jewish heritage and the Bible. Therefore, the State of Israel categorically rejects these things.”
Contrast this unequivocal condemnation by the leader of Israel to the
Palestinian Authority law that mandates the death penalty for any one who sells land to Jews. Such laws are all too common in a Middle East in which Christians are persecuted, gays are hanged in public squares and women are stoned for adultery.
In Israel, things are different. Here, we protect the rights of women, gays and minorities, including the 20% of Israelis who are Arabs, who enjoy freedom of speech and religion and the protections afforded by independent courts and the rule of law.
Every decision in Israel is put under the microscope by one of world’s
largest foreign press contingents, the hundreds of human rights
organizations and NGOs that operate freely here, a famously adversarial local press and most critically, by a vociferous parliamentary opposition.
Israel has upheld its democratic values despite being threatened like no country on earth. In defending itself against wars of aggression,
unparalleled terror campaigns and continuous promises to annihilate it, Israel has a track record on the protection of rights that would compare favorably to the record of any democracy, much less democracies under threat.
Even in peacetime, other democracies enact laws that would be inconceivable in Israel. The Swiss ban on minarets and the French restrictions on headscarves passed in Europe, not Israel.
One final point regarding media coverage in the Middle East. In 2000, after an Italian television station (RAI) was threatened by the Palestinian Authority for broadcasting the film of a Palestinian mob lynching two Israeli soldiers, RAI issued a shameful apology. Similarly, in 2003, CNN admitted to burying negative coverage about Sadaam’s regime so that its personnel could continue working safely in Baghdad.
I can assure you that no matter how biased and unbalanced your
correspondents’ coverage of Israel, they will always be free here to write whatever they want. Of course, Time is also free not to print it.
Ron Dermer
Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister
BO,
Maybe you didn’t read my argument any too carefully. Unlike Mr Dermer, I’m not one of the righteous, nor do I even give a damn about righteousness. I agree exactly what Chancellor Bismarck said about 160 years ago, that the great questions of the age — any age — are settled by blood and iron, and not by parliamentary debates. The Jewish nation only got back its foothold in Aretz-Yisrael because we reached out and took it, then defended it with force when the issue was contested not only by the local Arabs but by all the nearby Arab states. Then, in 1967, Jewish armies clawed their way northeastward to Kuneitra on the Euphrates, southwest to Kuneitra on the road to the Nile. Alexandria and Cairo, and straight east to the Jordan. That was glorious precisely because the Jewish nation didn’t beg anyone for those lands; instead, Jewish soldiers killed some 10,000 enemy soldiers for it. The world holds in great contempt Jewish wheedlers, whiners and complainers. They they fear this new phenomenon of armed Jews who shoot to kill. Will they respect Jews for that? I couldn’t care less. Because the only righteousness there is in this life is the kind you enforce by dealing out death. Maybe that’s the secret that the God of Israel has been trying to teach his people for so many long ages. But nobody ever seems to listen to ha-Shem. They are all too busy trying to be accommodating to the goyim. And if that’s your game, all you will get is the contempt you deserve. Because the world is not a courtroom; it is a forcing ground in which the nations struggle with one another in the territorial imperative that rules the existence or extinction of all organic matter — which certainly includes the nations both great and small. The rule of life is that Israel must expand or it will die.
I say again. The only way Israel will hold east Jerusalem, Shomron, Yehuda and Golan is by populating these territories with Jews, and by killing anyone who comes in force to contest control of these lands by the Jewish nation.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris,
The fact that the unmentionable magazine is found in doctor’s and dentist’s offices, shows that somebody is reading it: Doctors and dentists do not go out of their way, so far as know, to get second-hand copies of sparingly-read publications. The fact that you only get your news from Fox, is echoed by the fact that others only get their news from comedy websites, comments from their hairdressers or romance novels. More and more, we are becoming a society of people who only read, see and hear the opinions of people who think exactly like themselves; and the “Time-minded” people, though definitely failing, as you say, are still with us — even in Wisconsin.
Thank you, Mr. Dermer, for putting in a word for the truth. In these wicked times, it is incumbent upon the righteous to do so.
What do you want? Victory of the Jewish nation over its enemies, or just to get even in a propaganda battle?
Shut to hell up, and start doubling the Jewish population of Shomron, Yehuda, eastern Jerusalem and Golan. Then when you get to that point, double it again. Then again. And during this process, buy out or expel as many Arabs as possible. Eventually, most of them will be gone.
A few hundred thousand obstinate Jews, plus the even more powerful forces of urban sprawl in a place hardly larger than two Wisconsin counties, can overpower all the nations ranked against Israel, including the anti-Israeli presidency of this African Moslem, maybe born in Hawaii but maybe not, Barack Hussein Obama.
Do all that, then you can look forward to seeing the utter dismay on all their faces at the UN, when they fully comprehend what you did to them.
You are on your own, and it’s about time you understand that. Because it’s not up to America. Or Europe. Or the diaspora Jews. It’s up to you. Build baby build.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Good for you BiBi. ENOUGH is ENOUGH. We need to take more of a stand. I have had one of those days where I have had to do that ALL DAY.
Last week, after a Palestinian woman died after inhaling tear gas that was fired by Israeli troops, 🙂
On the contrary, that trashy article is precisely worthy of the standards of Time. Time, along with the rest of the msm peddles in lies and propaganda. They are no longer legitimate news organizations but propaganda outlets for jihadist, leftist and other global forces determined to destroy western civilization.
I started reading the article but gave up after reading this:
“Your prestigious magazine”??
When was the last time most people even read a copy of Time Magazine, or Newsweek, or US News and World Report? The only places around Madison, Wisconsin that I even see these publications during the past 15 years or so has been in offices of various medical or dental clinics, piled on tables along with womens’ interest magazines, or those focused on modern science and technology, and above all, sports such as hunting, fishing, or spectator sports.
The majority of us get TV news — when we have time or occasion to tune it in — from Fox News. The liberals and leftists get theirs from fading ABC, fading CBS, fading NBC, MSNBC, and CNN. Those of us who want to read real newspapers are more likely to turn to a copy of the daily Wall Street Journal, than to the New York Times. And outside of Washington DC, I never have seen a copy of the Washington Post other than in a rack in the back of one of our public libraries.
The weekly news and photo magazines, which also included now-dead Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post, etc, began dying with the advent of television news. That in turn began dying with the advent of online websites.
So, all things considered, I’m not even certain how many people will take notice either of what Time Magazine thinks about Netanyahu and the growing power and nationalism of Israel as a Jewish state, or the response by Netanyahu’s press flunky.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI