How, the skeptics asked, could Israel absorb Jews from scores of countries with different languages, political traditions, cultural norms, and religious practices? How could Israel forge a democratic state when so many refugees came from non-democratic Arab lands and communist societies — and in a region, the Middle East, where there was absolutely no tradition of free, open societies? How could religious and secular Jews coexist? How could Israel absorb over 100,000 Ethiopian Jews, who hailed from villages that had no electricity or other modern accoutrements? And how would non-Jews, especially a large Arab community, fare as citizens of the State of Israel?

These are all works in progress, but, 64 years after the rebirth of Israel, it can be said that the centripetal forces binding the state together far outweigh the centrifugal forces at work — and that’s no mean feat, given the magnitude of each of the challenges.

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As many first-time visitors have commented, they had no idea that Israel was so small or its security challenges so complex.

They had no clue that Arabic was an official language and Israeli Arabs, even those opposed to the state’s very existence, have been elected to the Israeli parliament.

They were unaware that churches and mosques are found everywhere, with full freedom of worship protected.

“Indeed it is difficult for all other nations of the world to live in the presence of the Jews. It is irritating and most uncomfortable. The Jews embarrass the world as they have done things which are beyond the imaginable. They have become moral strangers since the day their forefather, Abraham, introduced the world to high ethical standards and to the fear of Heaven. They brought the world the Ten Commandments, which many nations prefer to defy. They violated the rules of history by staying alive, totally at odds with common sense and historical evidence. They outlived all their former enemies, including vast empires such as the Romans and the Greeks. They angered the world with their return to their homeland after 2000 years of exile and after the murder of six million of their brothers and sisters.

They aggravated mankind by building, in the wink of an eye, a democratic State which others were not able to create in even hundreds of years. They built living monuments such as the duty to be holy and the privilege to serve one’s fellow men.

They had their hands in every human progressive endeavour, whether in science, medicine, psychology or any other discipline, while totally out of proportion to their actual numbers They gave the world the Bible and even their “savior.”

Jews taught the world not to accept the world as it is, but to transform it, yet only a few nations wanted to listen. Moreover, the Jews introduced the world to one God, yet only a minority wanted to draw the moral consequences. So the nations of the world realize that they would have been lost without the Jews… And while their subconscious tries to remind them of how much of Western civilization is framed in terms of concepts first articulated by the Jews, they do anything to suppress it.

They deny that Jews remind them of a higher purpose of life and the need to be honourable, and do anything to escape its consequences… It is simply too much to handle for them, too embarrassing to admit, and above all, too difficult to live by.

So the nations of the world decided once again to go out of ‘their’ way in order to find a stick to hit the Jews. The goal: to prove that Jews are as immoral and guilty of massacre and genocide as some of they themselves are.

Nothing could be more gratifying for them than to find the Jews in a struggle with another people (who are completely terrorized by their own leaders) against whom the Jews, against their best wishes, have to defend themselves in order to survive. With great satisfaction, the world allows and initiates the rewriting of history so as to fuel the rage of yet another people against the Jews. This in spite of the fact that the nations understand very well that peace between the parties could have come a long time ago, if only the Jews would have had a fair chance. Instead, they happily jumped on the wagon of hate so as to justify their jealousy of the Jews and their incompetence to deal with their own moral issues.

When Jews look at the bizarre play taking place in The Hague , they can only smile as this artificial game once more proves how the world paradoxically admits the Jews’ uniqueness. It is in their need to undermine the Jews that they actually raise them.

The study of history of Europe during the past centuries teaches us one uniform lesson: That the nations which received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that the nations that have tortured and oppressed them have written out their own curse.”

The left wing movement Peace Now on Monday filed a complaint to the police against the right-wing movement Im Tirzu, following their activities on Jerusalem Day, Army Radio reported.

According to Peace Now, Im Tirzu activists posed as Peace Now activists and waved Palestinian flags in the name of the movement.

Im Tirzu responded to the complaint saying, “Peace Now is an organization that pretends to be an Israeli organization, yet operates - funded by foreign states - to transfer the sovereignty of the Temple Mount to the Palestinians. Unfortunately, they do not understand that freedom of expression includes the right to ridicule their positions.”

Photojournalism: What’s Behind the Image?

Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities

Palestinian Authority Arabs launched several attacks against Israeli targets in Samaria on Wednesday evening, according to a report in the Tazpit agency.

In one incident, terrorists hurled at least 10 firebombs at a road near the Arab village of Az-Zawiya, southeast of Kalkilye. No injuries or damage were reported.

Earlier on Wednesday, security forces arrested two Arabs who were armed with knives at the Yitzhar junction. IDF forces also captured an Arab with a gun near the community of Ofra. The gun was confiscated and the Arab was arrested.

In addition, PA Arabs hurled rocks at Israeli vehicles traveling on Route 55 near Azzun. Two vehicles sustained damage. IDF soldiers searched the area and discovered a pipe bomb. As the soldiers were conducting the search, Arabs fired flares at them, causing some thorns to catch fire. Firefighters were called to the scene.

An emergency medical crew narrowly escaped being lynched this week while responding on the scene of an injurious car accident near Jerusalem, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.

The fateful call came on Tuesday; a car carrying a group of Palestinian youths from east Jerusalem swerved off the road and hit a safety barrier near the village of Hizma.

Upon reaching on the scene the crew began treating two young women who were hurt in the crash. But their efforts were interrupted with the arrival of the victims’ family members, whose misguided attempts to defend the women quickly turned violent.

“Suddenly, a Volkswagen came to a screeching halt and three Arab youths emerged,” said S., a paramedic. “They started to curse and tried to discern who hurt the women.”

The crew’s account of the accident failed to pacify the enraged men, who upped the verbal attack.

“They started cursing the IDF, Magen David Adom and everything affiliated with the state,” S. said. “They called us ‘maniacs and f***ing Jews.’ We were shocked by how angry they were.”

Meanwhile, more Palestinians gathered around them. When some began hitting the ambulance, the paramedic took charge of protecting his crew mates – a female driver and a 16-year-old male volunteer.

“I told them to lock themselves in the ambulance while I remained outside to deal with the situation,” S. said, “The attackers cursed and pushed me. At one point more than ten people surrounded me and began punching me in the ribs and the head.”

‘Never seen anything like this’

A security officer from the nearby settlement of Ma’ale Levona who was alerted to the scene said that the three youths started to hit S. once a Palestinian ambulance arrived.

“They said, ‘our ambulance is here. Get out of here.’ And then they began punching him with their fists,” the officer, Shlomo Zaarur said.

The mob was dispersed with the arrival of the police, who arrested the three assailants, all of whom reside in east Jerusalem and possess Israeli identification cards. They were to be arraigned on Friday, and are expected to be indicted.

S., who has served as a paramedic for 12 years, was treated at the hospital was later discharged to recuperate at home.

“I’ve been through many things and treated many Arabs who were injured in accidents. But I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said. “It hurts. My job is to help and save people. It’s really sad the way it ended.”

The terrifying thing is that the BBC really does seem to believe American Jews control the Presidency. That’s why they treat as a legitimate contributor to public debate an individual whose record is summed up by CAMERA thus:

‘Finkelstein has called for solidarity with Hezbollah, mocked Israel as a “lunatic state,” “an insane state,” and “a Satanic state” bent on war. He labels Jewish leaders involved in Holocaust restitution “gangsters” and “crooks,” terms Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel “the resident clown of the Holocaust circus.” He calls Israelis “Satanic, narcissistic people” and claims Israel committed a “slaughter, a massacre” in Gaza and “wants war, war and war.”’

With the BBC giving airtime to the kind of anti-Jewish venom that was once confined to neo-Nazis and their ilk, the demons of irrationality about the Jews are once again terrifyingly brainwashing the credulous. And just as in the 1930s, it is the high-minded and the highly educated who are leading Britain into this darkness — under the camouflage of hating the Jewish homeland.

This year Israel is celebrating … a series of accomplishments that have surely exceeded the expectations of its most visionary founders. It is one of the most powerful small nations in history… . [It] has tamed an arid wilderness [and] welcomed 1.25 million immigrants… . The Israelis themselves did the fighting, the struggling, the sacrificing in order to perform the greatest feat of all—forging a new society … in which pride and confidence have replaced the despair engendered by age-long suffering and persecution.

So Life magazine described Israel on the occasion of its 25th birthday in May 1973. In a 92-page special issue, “The Spirit of Israel,” the magazine extolled the Jewish state as enlightened, robustly democratic and hip, a land of “astonishing achievement” that dared “to dream the dream and make that dream come alive.”

Life told the story of Israel’s birth from the Bible through the Holocaust and the battle for independence. “The Arabs’ bloodthirsty threats,” the editors wrote, “lend a deadly seriousness to the vow: Never Again.” Four pages documented “Arab terrorist attacks” and the three paragraphs on the West Bank commended Israeli administrators for respecting “Arab community leaders” and hiring “tens of thousands of Arabs.” The word “Palestinian” scarcely appeared.

There was a panoramic portrayal of Jerusalem, described as “the focus of Jewish prayers for 2,000 years” and the nucleus of new Jewish neighborhoods. Life emphasized that in its pre-1967 borders, Israel was “a tiny, parched, scarcely defensible toe-hold.” The edition’s opening photo shows a father embracing his Israeli-born daughter on an early “settlement,” a testament to Israel’s birthright to the land.

Would a mainstream magazine depict the Jewish state like this today, during the week of its 64th birthday?

I was gratified to read the article by Kasim Hafeez, a former anti-Semite who had become a Zionist. I was particularly gratified to learn that my book, The Case for Israel, played a role in his conversion from irrational hatred to support based on his own observations of the reality of Israel.

Hafeez’s article came at a time when I was becoming skeptical of my own ability, and that of others who try to make the civil liberties case for Israel, to influence public opinion. The hatred for Israel in parts of Europe and on many university campuses has become so irrational that no evidence, regardless of how indisputable and powerful it may be, seems to be able to change closed minds hardened by years of unremitting falsehoods. These falsehoods take on an aura of undeserved credibility, particularly when espoused by people who identify themselves as Jewish or Israeli (or even formerly Jewish or formally Israeli.)

But whenever I get discouraged, I recall an incident several years ago at the University of California at Irvine, which is a hotbed of anti-Israel hate speech. This is the very same campus where radical Islamic students tried to prevent Israel’s moderate ambassador, Professor Michael Oren, from speaking.