In honor of Israel’s Independence Day, Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, considers its significance:
Israel’s independence has a strength that cannot be known by those who have not had to struggle for their freedom. What is the meaning of this independence?
It means that Israel’s right to exist is not to be sanctioned by the peoples of the Middle East or by the leaders of the Western world. It is to be determined only by the Jewish people who, throughout the millennia, have fought, suffered, and died for that inalienable right.
It means that Israel is not to have its borders imposed by international bodies or by foreign states, no matter how powerful they might be. It means that Israelis are not to be dictated to about where they can and cannot settle in their land. It means that Israel is not to be told how it may or may not defend the lives of its people under the sovereign independence of the law. It means that Israel is not to be lectured or scolded about human rights by those who have no glimmer of understanding of what human rights truly are.
The civilized world has an obligation to respect this independence just as it respects the independence of other free, democratic nations.
Israel has shown mankind how a besieged nation—against all odds—can survive and flourish, decide its own destiny, and unwaveringly retain its honor, its decency, its dignity, its integrity, and its compassion. It was not for nothing that the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described the Jewish people as “beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.”
Today not just Israel but the whole of civilization should celebrate the independence of the nation that continues to shine a beacon of light onto that world.
Read more on Israel Hayom: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16053