The annual event of the Friends of Israel (FOI) in Milan is always a notable affair. This year, over two hundred people attended, including Israel’s ambassador to Rome and the candidates running for election in the Milan mayoral race, who addressed the audience.
Prime Minister Netanyahu sent a warm message to the international organization that asserts, to quote ABC News, that “the campaign against Israel corrodes the international system from within, beginning with the United Nations.”
This year the Journalism Award was granted to the intrepid, talented journalist and writer Giulio Meotti, whose original analyses of world events and historical process, love of Israel and empathy for the Jewish people require the intellect, courage and integrity that he has invariably shown.
Meotti writes a much-read and quoted column twice weekly for Arutz Sheva, is a journalist at Il Foglio and the author of two books, “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter and “J’Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel” published by Mantua Books.
Below are excerpts from Mr. Meotti’s stirring acceptance speech:
“On the same day that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini approved the laws for the “defense of the race”, November 10th, 1938, the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi the Nobel Prize for his studies on molecular structure. Like many other scientists, artists and writers, such as Einstein and Chagall, Fermi had to leave the Europe of Hitler, Mussolini and Petain, in his case because his wife was Jewish.
“It was the cream of the European intelligentsia which left the continent under pressure from a cruel and insane persecution. Europe thus deprived itself of its best minds and geniuses. Seventy years later, the Jewish people once again contributes to the wellbeing of Europeans, because in Israel every day Jewish scientists make discoveries about cancer, Alzheimer, genetics and more.
“And again, a horrendous wind blows in Europe and affects Jewish academics. It is the boycott. BDS. Next week in Italy’s university of Turin an event will be held to demonize the Jewish State.
“Niall Ferguson, one of the greatest living historians, compared Israel to Vienna in 1683: both were fortified citadels on the frontier of Western civilization. Israel feels threatened exactly as the Viennese did in 1683.
“A few weeks ago, Israel stopped for Holocaust Day. Imagine that defenseless Jew, in the gas chambers.
“Could that defenseless Jew imagine that Israel’s population today would be nine times that of 1948?
“Could that defenseless Jew imagine that Israeli citizens would be much happier than those of all the European countries?
“Could that defenseless Jew imagine that Israel has the highest production of scientific publications per capita in the world and all the Nobel Prizes its citizens have won?
Could that defenseless Jew imagine that Israel has the highest worldwide publication of new books?
“Could that defenseless Jew imagine that Israel is the only nation which began the XXI century with a net gain in the number of trees?
“The Jewish State is the best that humanity has to offer. That is why the terrorists and their useful idiots in the West want to destroy Israel, because it is a light unto the nations.
“Thank you.”
FOI is the initiative of former Spanish Prime Minister and People’s Party leader José María Aznar, who gathered a group of international figures in Paris in the middle of 2010 to launch a new project in defense of Israel’s right to exist. The idea arose out of a sense of deep concern about the unprecedented campaign of delegitimation against Israel waged by the enemies of the Jewish State and, perversely, supported by numerous international institutions.
FOI’s website says that it is based on the firm conviction that Israel is part of the Western world, a democratic, open, and advanced nation like any other, one that sometimes errs, and that it should be perceived and treated as such. It does not support specific government policies.
Co-founders included such notable figures as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate David Trimble, Peru’s former president Alejandro Toledo, Italian philosopher Marcello Pera, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, British historian Andrew Roberts, former President of Czech Republic Vaclav Havel, billionaire financier, Robert Agostinelli and others.
The sponsors of this initiative, supported by donations from a host of Western countries, are convinced that Israel is of fundamental importance to the future of the West. Although they attach importance to the peace process, they write, the members of the Friends of Israel Initiative are even more concerned about the onslaught of radical Islamism as well as the specter of a nuclear Iran, both of which threaten the entire world.
Arutz Sheva joins those congratulating Mr. Meotti on the prestigious and well-deserved award.
