I want to recognize Consul General, Meir Shlomo, and thank him for the terrific job he has done representing Israel in the Southwest these past 4 years.
I also want to recognize another Meir who is in the audience, Meir Klifi. He is a retired general who served as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military secretary. I was privileged to work with him in Jerusalem, and I am honored that he is here today.
I also want to thank Dennis Prager. There are few people with sharper minds, sharper pens and sharper tongues. Dennis, I thank you for employing your prodigious talents for so many decades in defense of the Jewish people, the Jewish state and our common civilization.
I am thrilled that my wife, Rhoda, came along with me to San Antonio. With five children under the age of 11, it’s rare that she accompanies me on a trip. But it gives me an opportunity to thank her in front of this intimate crowd for the sacrifices she has made to let me serve Israel and still have terrific kids.
Now Pastor Hagee, I thought we were friends. So how do you put a nice Jewish boy from Miami Beach in front of 5,000 Spurs fans?
Truth is, standing at this podium, a Miami Heat fan feels like he’s in hostile territory. But an Israeli Ambassador feels right at home.
Pastor Hagee, this is a night you honor Israel. But this should also be a night for Israel to honor you.
The bible tells us there is no prophet in his home town. So I came here to let the people of San Antonio know how much the people of Israel appreciate your unwavering support.
And ladies and gentlemen, Israel needs that support more than ever because we face a gathering storm.
That storm is the march of militant Islam. Its dark clouds loom over the entire Middle East, casting a shadow over Libya and Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and nearly everywhere else in the region.
But militant Islam is not simply a threat to Israel and Jews alone.
Ancient Christian communities in the Middle East have been decimated as survivors flee for their lives. Kurds and Yezidis are hunted down and sold into slavery.
Militant Sunni and Militant Shia massacre each other and even their own, if their subjects do not heed their unforgiving creed. That is why the most numerous victims of militant Islam are Muslims themselves.
But the clouds of militant Islam are not confined to the Middle East. There are beheadings not just in Iraq but in Oklahoma. Brutal murders not just in Sinai and Benghazi, but in Ottawa and Fort Hood.
Still, the murder and mayhem we are witnessing today would pale in comparison to the horrific hurricane that would be upon us if the forces of militant Islam are ever permitted to develop nuclear weapons.
It’s one thing to have these fanatics armed with axes, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. It’s another thing to have them armed with nuclear weapons.
That danger is getting closer as the world closes in on a nuclear deal with Iran.
Folks, I don’t know if there will be a deal on Iran’s nuclear program next month. But Israel is very concerned.
We’re concerned because a year ago some hoped that the tough sanctions regime on Iran would be dismantled only if Iran’s nuclear weapons program were dismantled.
Today, the international community is prepared to make a deal that would suspend and ultimately lift the sanctions.
But no one is talking about dismantling Iran’s nuclear weapons program anymore.
You don’t have to be a nuclear expert to understand that reducing pressure on the world’s most dangerous regime and leaving it on the threshold of developing the world’s most dangerous weapons is not a good deal.
The international community is prepared to leave Iran with thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium – when Iran doesn’t even need a single centrifuge to have peaceful nuclear energy.
We’re told not to worry, that UN inspectors will prevent Iran from breaking out or sneaking out to build the bomb.
Well, I’m sure you all feel as safe as I do knowing that a few Inspector Clouseaus at the UN is all that stands between fanatic Ayatollahs and nuclear bombs.
Some people are also trying to calm us by telling us that there’s a new Iranian Sheriff in town. He’s a moderate, they say, whose name is President Rouhani.
Well let me tell you about Sheriff Rouhani. He’s about as powerful in Iran as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltraine is in Hazzard County.
The real power in Iran is another man, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
And make no mistake about it, he’s no Boss Hogg. He’s not just a corrupt official looking to line his own pockets.
He’s a wild eyed fanatic looking to rule the world.
He presides over rallies in which tens of thousands chant Death to America.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
You owe it to your children and your grandchildren to see these chants with your own eyes.
This video is not from 1979. It’s not from 1989, 1999, or even 2009. It’s from March of this past year.
So when Iran tries to dress up like a moderate, responsible country this Halloween, remember the monster behind the mask.
That monster is not a friend. He’s not a partner. He’s an enemy – of America, of Israel, of Christians, of Jews, of freedom, of tolerance, of everything that we cherish.
And if we are to safeguard our common future, America and Israel must never let this evil man and his evil regime get nuclear weapons.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I know that people are deeply concerned about Israel’s future. They worry about a nuclear Iran.
They worry that the world is ganging up on Israel to try to force it to make concessions that will endanger its security. They worry about a rising tide of anti-Semitism across the world.
But while there is plenty to worry about, I am supremely confident of Israel’s future.
I’m confident for many reasons:
Because of the strength and leadership of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Because of the brave men and women of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Because of the resolve of the Israeli people, who have withstood thousands of rockets, hundreds of suicide bombers, and decades of war and terrorism.
Because of the genius of Israeli innovators, who have made Israel a global leader in technology and science, water and agriculture, medicine and cyber.
I’m confident because of all these things.
But also because of something that Eric Hoffer pointed out a half-century ago.
You may have heard of him. He was a long-shoreman who was a self-taught man, a philosopher.
In an interview in 1967, he said that the birth of Israel gave meaning to history.
And he said that Israel cannot perish because history must have meaning.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I believe in Israel’s future because I believe that history has meaning.
I see that meaning in the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.
We who are privileged to witness the miracle of this restoration should understand how rare it truly is.
Israel is 66 years old, but the Jewish people are nearly 4,000 years old.
And yet Jews have been a sovereign people for only a small fraction of that time.
The first period of Jewish sovereignty lasted for some eight centuries. You can read all about it in a book you’ll find inside the nightstand drawer of almost every hotel room in America.
You can read about Joshua leading the people of Israel across the Jordan.
You can read about judges and warriors like Gideon and Samson.
You can read about the first kings of Israel, Saul and David, and the last King of Judea, Zedekiah.
The first period of Jewish sovereignty ended in 586 BC when the King of Babylon, Nebucadnezzer, destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon.
The Jewish people would have to wait over 400 years until the second century BC to regain sovereignty in our homeland.
The spark that led to independence began when a father and his five sons stood their ground against religious persecution in the village of Modiin.
The father’s name was Mattityahu, and his son Judah Maccabee courageously lead his brothers and his nation into a revolt against Hellenistic Greece.
They faced impossible odds that pitted few against many. But they won their freedom and restored our national independence – a restoration that Jews celebrate each year on the holiday of Chanukah.
That second period of Jewish sovereignty lasted until 63 BC when the Roman General Pompey laid siege and conquered Jerusalem.
It would be another 130 years before the Second Temple would be destroyed in 70 AD. But after Pompey, the Jewish state had effectively become a vassal of Rome.
The second period of Jewish sovereignty had ended only a century after it began.
The Jewish people would have to wait 2000 years to see sovereignty restored again.
2,000 years of persecution and massacres, expulsions and crusades, blood libels and pogroms, culminating in the effort by the Nazis to annihilate our people.
Before the Holocaust, there were 18 million Jews in the world. 6 million were murdered. One-third of the Jewish people.
Think about that. One-third of your people. That’s the equivalent of 100 million Americans.
And if 100 million is a hard number for you to wrap your mind around, imagine a 9/11 every day for a century -- that’s what the Holocaust did to the Jewish people.
So if you are looking for meaning in history, imagine that moment of jubilation 66 years ago when the Jewish people emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz to establish the State of Israel and to begin the third period of Jewish sovereignty.
And if you are looking for more meaning in history, see how a sovereign Jewish state has enabled Jews to return to their ancestral homeland from the four corners of the earth.
It enabled tens of thousands of Jewish refugees to leave behind the killing fields of Europe, and hundreds of thousands more refugees to leave the Arab lands from which they were largely expelled.
It enabled us to airlift Ethiopian Jews out of Africa and to welcome a million Jews from the former Soviet Union after the Iron Curtain fell.
And if you still are looking for meaning in history, see how the Jewish people have stood their ground, decade after decade, in the most dangerous region in the world.
Sovereignty was never presented to the Jewish people on a silver platter. It was not handed to us by the Canaanites, conceded to us by the ancient Greeks or given to us by the United Nations.
We had to fight for it – for every inch of it.
And in modern times we’ve had to fight not only on the battlefield but also in the court of public opinion.
We have had to defend the truth in a world of lies.
A world in which Israel, a nation that shows unprecedented compassion against genocidal enemies, is itself shamelessly accused of genocide.
This summer, as thousands of missiles rained down on our cities, Israel surgically targeted terrorists who fired from hospitals and placed rockets in schools and mosques.
Faced with such a callous enemy, we dropped leaflets, made phone calls, sent text messages and broadcast evacuation orders in Arabic to give Palestinian civilians time to get out of harm’s way.
We even continued to treat Gazans in our hospitals, including the daughter of the leader of Hamas.
That’s Israel. What about our enemies?
Hamas’s genocidal charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide.
Its terrorists deliberately target our civilians by blowing up buses and restaurants,
kidnapping and murdering teenagers, and ramming cars into baby strollers - as they did a few days ago in Jerusalem.
That’s Hamas. What about the leader of the Palestinian Authority, President Abbas?
The Palestinian President wrote a dissertation denying the Holocaust, educates Palestinian children to hate Jews, and wants a Palestinian state free of Jews.
Now he has forged a pact with an unreformed Hamas.
In the nearly century long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, about 20,000 people have been killed on both sides.
And since 1967, the population of the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza has increased fourfold to between 3 to 4 million people today.
And yet President Abbas stands before the world at the United Nations and accuses Israel of genocide?
What a disgrace! What an embarrassment that anyone in the world embraces this man as a peacemaker.
Well, we should not be surprised. After all, the same people who embrace Abbas libel the soldiers of the IDF as war criminals.
Despite the fact that no army in history has gone to greater lengths to get the civilians of the other side out of harm’s way.
Despite the fact that we upheld the highest values even as Israel came under massive rocket attack and two-thirds of our population was forced into bomb-shelters.
Pastor Hagee, when I said this summer in Washington at your CUFI conference that the IDF deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, some people didn’t like it. So let me say it again. The soldiers of the IDF deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
Maybe some people don’t like the notion of an army receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, in my view, America’s soldiers should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945.
Because the young men who bravely stormed the beaches of Normandy did more for world peace than all the diplomats of the UN over the last 70 years put together.
And we live in a world where there is another Big Lie that goes unchallenged: The lie that the people of Israel are occupiers in the Land of Israel.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
When the people of Israel are in the Land of Israel, we’re not occupiers. We are home.
Before I leave you, I must confess that there is one more thing that gives me confidence in Israel’s future.
It’s not a miracle of the present, but a promise from the past.
Jews will read of that promise this week in synagogues throughout the world.
We will read of how our patriarch Abraham - fired by his faith in one God - left his country, his birthplace, and even his father’s house.
We will read of God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation.
We will read of the land that was promised them.
We will read of an everlasting covenant that was passed on through Abraham’s son Isaac, the father of Jacob, who would later be named Israel.
And we will read of the promise that God would bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him.
So Ladies and Gentlemen,
Do not despair about Israel and do not lose heart.
Israel is not some 66 year-old dry twig that will blow away in the wind.
Israel is a 4,000 year old oak that will survive any storm.
So when you hear Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and others threaten Israel with annihilation, just ask yourself this:
Where is the Ambassador of Nebukadnezzer’s Babylon? Where is the Ambassador of Ceasar’s Rome? Where is the Ambassador of Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich?
I am privileged to stand before you today as the Ambassador of Israel, the one and only Jewish state.
We in Israel face the coming storm with faith and courage.
And I know that as we do, all of you, and millions like you throughout this great country, stand strong by Israel’s side.