War is terrifying. Because there are always innocent victims on both sides. But sometimes war is unavoidable, because war can be just. Nowhere is this more evident than in the war that Israel is fighting today against forces that seek to wipe not just the state of Israel but the Jewish people off the face of the earth.
Last Tuesday, Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. On Wednesday, Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets into Israel from Lebanon. Israeli forces have launched their first ground offensive in southern Lebanon since 2006 to neutralize Hezbollah terrorists.
Wars in the Middle East are rapidly escalating. But it is clear who is to blame, and it is equally clear whose side we must support. We support Israel because its enemies are evil and neutrality against evil is evil.
The war began almost exactly one year ago on October 7, 2023. This day will forever remain one of the most infamous in the history of Israel and the free world. We've all seen the horrific pictures of the Supernova music festival and the massacres in Jewish villages near the Gaza border. Hundreds of innocent people, including children, infants and the elderly, have been killed, kidnapped and raped by Hamas terrorists.
Everyone remembers how the body of 22-year-old German Jew Shani Luuk was paraded in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza City as people cheered and spat on her. . And there are more than 250 hostages, an estimated 100 of whom are still alive in the dark tunnels beneath Gaza after 363 days of captivity.
What happened a year ago was a wake-up call for Israel, but it was also a wake-up call for us, reminding us of Islam's founder Muhammad's deep hatred of Jews. These are his writings, the Qur'an (for example, Surah 4:47: “O you who have been given the book! Believe in what we have sent down before we wipe out your face.”) and the collection of works of Muhammad. It can be seen in the hadith. Words and deeds written down by contemporaries (e.g. Sahih Muslim 41-6985: “The Day of Judgment will not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews. Then the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and the trees will say, “O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.''
But almost as shocking as what happened a year ago is the terrifying surge in anti-Semitism and moral vilification in our country over the past 12 months.
Our cities have witnessed orgies of Jew hatred. Across the Western world, university buildings are being occupied and vandalized by activists demanding severing ties with Israeli institutions. Many universities have succumbed to this brutal demand. In Amsterdam, London and elsewhere, those who condoned and praised the rapists and murderers of October 7 attacked Jewish protesters.
In the Netherlands, some police officers have expressed a “moral objection” to protecting Jewish objects and events. In Brussels, city authorities canceled the Nations League soccer tournament between Belgium and Israel. And in France, in perhaps the worst case, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was brutally raped by three Muslim boys, ages 12, 13, and 14, for no other reason than that she was Jewish. .
Every day, Jewish schools, institutions, communities, and individuals are targeted by hate, discrimination, abuse, and violence. We seem to have gotten used to it. To add insult to injury, next Monday, exactly on the anniversary of the Hamas atrocities, left-wing groups are holding anti-Israel protests at train stations across the Netherlands.
Leaving Western Europe for Israel, the only place in the world that still feels safe, despite the fact that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the thugs controlling Iran have repeatedly planned to attack Israel. It's no wonder that more and more Jews are considering immigrating to the United States. .
Israel is hated by the left for the same reasons European patriots should support Israel. This is because it shows how important it is for a people to have their own nation-state with strong and protected borders.
Roughly 130 years ago, Theodor Herzl, the father of Jewish Zionism, wrote in his book: Jewish state: “Some may say that we should not introduce new differences between people. We should not establish new borders, but rather erase old ones. But think like this Men are lovable dreamers.”
Herzl believes that a Jewish nation-state is essential because only through a Jewish state with its own territory can Jews freely express their culture, practice their religion without hindrance, and defend themselves. he claimed. Without nation-states, autonomy, and self-determination, there can be no national security or identity preservation. This was the insight that led Zionists to strive for the restoration of the State of Israel. And this is the insight that leads Israel to defend itself.
What we need today is Zionism for the European countries. Europeans should follow the example of the Jews and protect the sovereignty of their nation-states.
As David P. Goldman has pointed out, the state of Israel was the first nation-state in history. The Jewish story recorded in the Old Testament is a long history of patriotism, from Gideon, Samson, and Judith to the Maccabees and the warriors of Masada.
“The state is the bearer of our immortality,” Goldman writes. That's why young people leave their families and sacrifice themselves on the battlefield to protect their country. In human history, humanity's hope for eternity has been concretely embodied in the eternal nation of Israel. ” The European nation-states that arose in the early Middle Ages were modeled after the old Davidic kingdom of Israel.
Having been a nation without a nation for 19 centuries and barely surviving the catastrophe of the 1940s, Jews understand more than Europeans the importance of territorial states with healthy borders to national survival.
This is why after World War II, Jews did the opposite of what Europeans did. While European political elites began to abolish European nation-states and dismantle them as supranational institutions, the Jewish people proudly reasserted themselves as sovereign nation-states and vigorously defended their borders. did.
That is exactly what Israel is doing at this moment. That's exactly why the left hates it. Because it is a nation-state reborn. That's why we support Israel. Not only because it is the front line against the totalitarian threat of Islam, and because it supports the Jewish homeland in its fight for survival, but also because it is a nation seeking to preserve its national identity. This is also because it is a lighthouse for many people.
Geert Wilders is the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), the largest political party in the Netherlands and the Dutch government coalition.
