True friends don't pander to mendacious lies against their friends
By Noam A. RotemLast week, in what became a widely discussed incident here in Israel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, in a discussion at the British Parliament, called Israeli construction in East Jerusalem “genuinely shocking”, while insisting at the same time, that he is a “great friend of Israel”. What's genuinely shocking, is David Cameron's historical ignorance, hypocrisy and utter lack of moral clarity.
From the Islamic theocracies of Iran and Saudi Arabia, through the Sunni-Shia blood baths in Iraq and Syria, to all the offshoots of the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Muslim brotherhood across the entire length of North Africa, the Islamic Mideast is producing some of the most horrifying levels of rampant murderous violence and persecutions the world has seen in the 21st century.
In the 20th century, the Arab and Islamic mideast, was ethnically cleansed of its Jewish population, that lived across many parts of the region for more than 2,000 years. Now in the 21st century, religious persecution of the remaining ancient Christian communities, along with other ancient minorities, are being brutally persecuted and ethnically cleansed, across many parts of the Islamic Mideast and Africa.
Israel is the only western liberal democratic country in the entire mideast, where minorities of all faiths, including Arab Muslims, enjoy democratic freedoms, unprecedented and unheard of anywhere in the entire region, and where Christians in particular are prospering and growing.
Under the Muslim Ottoman occupation, Jerusalem descended into a backwater forsaken city of little interest to the Arab and Muslim world. And under the Jordanian occupation of east Jerusalem in 1948, the Jewish Quarter in the Old City was destroyed, and its residents expelled. Over 50 synagogues, some of them hundreds of years old, were destroyed and looted. Jewish religious sites were desecrated and turned into animal stalls. The Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, where Jews had been burying their dead for over 2500 years, was ransacked, and thousands of tombstones were smashed and used as building material.
Contrarily, since 1967, when Jerusalem was liberated by Israel from Arab Muslim rule, there's been full freedom of religious practice for all faiths, and the holy sites of all religions are treated with utmost sanctity. Moreover, under Israeli rule, many holy sites in Jerusalem of all religions have been restored, and renewed.
By pandering to the question of the British Muslim MP, David Cameron, unwittingly or not, has aligned himself, with those perpetrating a systematic campaign of mendacious lies designed to undermine the Jewish State and rob it, of its more than 3,000 year old history to the land of Israel. Ever since King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel more than 3,000 years ago, the city has played a central role in Jewish culture, religion and existence. In all of history, Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab country.
In this unprincipled stance, David Cameron is leading Great Britain down the slippery slope of depraved multicultural political correctness, to a place where historical facts no longer matter, and where moral clarity is a pejorative.
This article was also published on the Op-Ed page of Arutz Sheva:
Op-Ed: David Cameron is no friend of the truth
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