Israel will not give in

Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t over powered by the UN’s decision, and he fights as Callimachus at Marathon: summoning the US ambassador on Christmas Day and canceling a meeting with Mrs.

May set to place at Davos in the coming weeks, as well as the visit of the Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. He also recalled Israel’s ambassadors in Senegal and New Zealand, and has interrupted interaction with both Venezuela and Malaysia, which have no diplomatic relations with Israel.

These are the countries that voted in favor of Resolution 2334, which condemned Israel. Israeli Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, who has evidence, explained that Obama himself was behind the forced schedule of the Resolution. Contact with important countries like Russia and China have been curtailed. Is Netanyahu’s right to take these steps? There is heated debate regarding his response in Israel, of course, even if all the Israeli are hurt by Obama’s move.

The US, in fact, has chosen to strike from the most hostile venue, the United Nations, which this year alone adopted 18 resolutions against Israel in the General Assembly and 12 in the Security Council, more than those against North Korea, Syria and Sudan combined. Netanyahu has his own very clear analysis of the situation, and it is an optimistic analysis.

First and foremost, it is necessary for Israel to raise its defenses in order to try and prevent additional steps that will probably take place from Obama and his administration regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue from now until January 20, when Trump will be in the White House. The Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to give with parameters that will be reflected in a new anti-Israel resolution: he may impose through another vote the US’s guidelines for peace in the Middle East.

Of course, it will be a totally pro-Palestinian posture. Additionally, Israel is preparing for another ambush in Europe with Paris January 15 so-called “peace” conference: this too has already dealt all the cards to the Palestinians. But it is the end of the game. Netanyahu believes that “this is the swan song of the old anti-Israel ideology.”

He believes that Trump doesn’t even conceive to undo the old Security Council Resolution 242, which speaks of “territories” and not of “the territories” conquered in 1967 as part of a discussion between the two parts whose result has all to be decided, and that he doesn’t dream of giving East Jerusalem, the Western Wall and other fundamental sites that are crucial to Israel’s identity and security to the Palestinians without negotiations. Therefore, the lie of the need to surrender all that is beyond the Green Line, is to be rejected, and who has accepted it – repeats Netanyahu – does nothing but deny the possibility of negotiations and therefore, of peace.

Secondly, Israel wants to handle this crisis without backing down, it doesn’t need to, it’s not South Africa or Libya: Israel has nothing to do with a “rogue state” without friends, science, and money nor is ita needy country, or even a country with civil rights or justice problems… on the contrary, it can help and already does, help many countries throughout the world and be an example of democracy for most of the democratic countries themselves.

Obama’s decision of hanging Israel out to dry at the UN with regard to the peace process is the position of the Israeli Prime Minister, has no future. The Israelis perceive this as nothing more than the stupidity of a man who wants to impose his own world vision and narcissism upon them, and the majority of the Americans feels the same.

Obama has violated democracy and common sense by setting himself up against American public opinion, which Trump, the winner has expressed by declaring that he will move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Americans see it that way, the American left is not at all reinforced by Obama’s strange, bizarre, exaggerate move, on the opposite the old American left is going into pieces.

On one side Obama kept denying, with an evident lie, Islamic terror and doesn’t take care of the killing field of Syria, he chose the Muslim Brotherhood, and accepted the cancellation of his red line about weapons of mass destruction, and on the other side keeps criminalizing Israel: it doesn’t work even for the most faithful of the Jewish networker democrat.

In recent days, an amazing Israeli campaign has already brought 3,000 wounded Syrians of any political side to Israeli hospitals, and is growing.

“We try to mitigate the suffering as much as we can” Netanyahu said commenting Aleppo’s slaughter. The work is done silently, out of pure generosity; Israel is a country that promotes coexistence, believes in solidarity based on the equality of any human being, teaches peace at school; all the opposite of the Arab citizens of the area, whose main value are not the one that inspire democracy, but religious believes even among the most secular people who believe in the “Islamic Ummah”. Israel will probably never be accepted because of the immense political and ideological gap with the Islamic world, and this has nothing to do with “territories”

. Israel sends its children to fight only when it is attacked, as history shows, but will not give up his security and his identity, and democracy, freedom of opinion and sexual behavior together with women rights, equality, liberal economy are part of that. Will this never be understood by the world?

Did Obama ever think that what really bothered him was that his liberality is so much smaller compared to the ability of preserving a democratic identity in decades of war and keep fighting against brutality and terror?

Will there always be forever someone who will be afraid of the phantom that persecutes the West, that of a world with an humanitarian conscience and the ability to preserve its people and its culture that Israel represents?

Netanyahu thinks that this is going to change, that the world is sick and tired of leaving in fear, in silence, in denial. Israel will not give in, thinks the Israeli Prime Minister, and hopes that the US probably now will feel more motivated than ever to maintain an existing deep friendship with a country that has been so hurt by a leadership just repudiated by the last elections.

Translation by Amy K. Rosenthal

This article originally appeared in slightly different form in Italian in Il Giornale (December 27, 2016)