Sivan Rahav meir
Sivan Rahav meirצילום: ללא קרדיט

1.

Do we only want to hear bad news about ourselves? Whenever a minor official in the EU turns his nose up at Israel, it becomes headline news here. When a member of the Trump administration merely drops a hint about demands on Israel, we discuss it incessantly. Why is this so? And why, when the reverse is true, do we totally ignore the news?

Two impressive senior female politicians gave important and moving speeches this week, and we did not hear about them at all except for Arutz Sheva.. The first was Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister who spoke in London at a dinner marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. One of the attendees told me that he wanted to send his family the links to the speech. He checked the leading news websites in Israel but could not see any mention of it. He could not understand how not even one sentence of her speech made the headlines. "PM May delivered a profoundly pro-Israel speech in which she expressed her unwavering support of Israel. A pleasure to listen to. Yet she was not quoted in any news outlets."

So I decided to look for the text of her speech on the Prime Minister's official site and bring excerpts from it. In her opening remarks, May said that the Declaration was "one of the most significant letters in history. A letter which gave birth to a most extraordinary country."

Abu Mazen recently asked Great Britain to apologize for the Declaration, and May replied: "So when some people suggest we should apologize for this letter, I say absolutely not. We are proud of our pioneering role in the creation of the State of Israel. We are proud to stand here today together with Prime Minister Netanyahu and declare our support for Israel. We also remain absolutely committed to Israel’s security. For it is only when you witness Israel’s vulnerability that you truly understand the constant danger Israelis face – as I saw on my visit in 2014, when the bodies of the murdered teenagers Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah were discovered. So I am clear that we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself.

There can never be any excuses for boycotts, divestment or sanctions on Israel: they are unacceptable and this government will have no truck with those who subscribe to them. Neither can there ever be any excuse for anti-Semitism in any form. And yes, this means recognizing that there is today a new and pernicious form of anti-Semitism which uses criticism of the actions of the Israeli government as a despicable justification for questioning the very right of Israel to exist. This is abhorrent and we will not stand for it.

So let me be clear. Criticizing the actions of Israel is never – and can never be – an excuse for questioning Israel’s right to exist, any more than criticizing the actions of Britain could be an excuse for questioning our right to exist. And criticizing the government of Israel is never – and can never be – an excuse for hatred against the Jewish people. There never has been – and there never will be.

And let me say this too. We will never forget where that hatred and prejudice can lead. That is why it is right that the United Kingdom will have a permanent and fitting National Memorial to the Holocaust standing next to Parliament together with a learning center that will teach the lessons of the Holocaust for society today and act as a voice against hatred in the modern world."

2.

A few days later, Nikki Haley stepped up to speak at the Washington Congress Center and was applauded as if she were a rock star. The US ambassador to the United Nations was addressing the Israeli-American Council conference and was warmly greeted by the large audience, who did not stop clapping for many minutes. I googled her name and the conference to find the text of the speech, in vain. Once again there was no mention, other than a full report on Arutz Sheva. So I asked the conference spokesman to send me the video of the address.

Below are excerpts.

"In June, I had the great pleasure of visiting Israel for the first time.

I went to Israel to see first-hand the country the United Nations spends half its time on. Unfortunately, I’m not kidding. It’s ridiculous. It seems like the rough breakdown at the UN is half the time on Israel, and half the time on the other 192 countries. I walked inside the terror tunnels coming from Gaza. I visited the Golan Heights and saw the Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon. One of the most memorable things we did was take a tour of the country by helicopter with one of the top IDF Generals. It was eye-opening to see how small the country is. It’s no secret that the UN is a hostile place for Israel. But what I saw just before I became the U.S. Ambassador was a shameful period in which the United States became a part of that hostility.

It was last December, almost exactly a month before my confirmation, when the United States stood by and allowed – some would say encouraged – the Security Council to pass Resolution 2334. Resolution 2334 branded Israel as a violator of international law. To me, Resolution 2334 wasn’t about the settlements issue. The United States and Israel have long had our differences on the settlements. That’s ok. Friends can have disagreements and still be friends. What happened with 2334 was a betrayal of our friend in the very forum that has been one of its cruelest and most hostile foes. America was far from being a friend to Israel on that day.

As long as I was US Ambassador, such an act of betrayal would never happen again. As long as I am at my post, the United States of America will never again desert our friend in its hour of need.

Thank you and God bless."