Melanie Phillips: Three islands of exceptionalism in west's darkest hour
It is those liberal internationalists, after all, who are primarily responsible for the antisemitism and vilification of Israel now coursing through the Western intelligentsia.Haley: Hamas using ‘children as cannon fodder’ in Gaza
And these same British and American liberals are also busily vilifying Britain and America, trying to destroy and transform their culture and emasculate Britain as a self-governing nation, for a similar reason to their hatred of Israel – that these are nations with a strong sense of their own exceptionalism.
That, of course, is why so many millions voted for Brexit and Trump – precisely because, in opposition to these elites, they wanted Britain and America once again to uphold and defend their national and cultural identity.
And that’s why liberals have become hysterical about President Trump’s stated aim of making America great again. It’s why those who want Britain to remain in the EU are hysterical about Brexit. And it’s why British audiences have been weeping and cheering at screenings of Darkest Hour.
It’s because at some level at least they know how the free society in which they so passionately believe has been systematically degraded, undermined and weakened by those who choose to portray Western cultural particularism as a form of bigotry.
As a result, the image of Churchill using the poetry of the English language to breathe into his people the courage and resolve to stand alone and fight to defend their nation’s exceptional values is almost unbearably moving.
Britain, America and Israel form a triple lock as islands of western exceptionalism. And whether or not their people recognize it, it is upon these three nations that the fate of the free world now depends.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, lashed out at Hamas Thursday, accusing the Palestinian terror group of “using children as cannon fodder,” following the deaths of dozens of people in clashes with Israeli forces during protests along with border in the Gaza Strip.
“Anyone who truly cares about children in Gaza should insist that Hamas immediately stop using children as cannon fodder in its conflict with Israel,” Haley told a UN Security Council meeting convened to discuss the situation in the Middle East.
Ahead of the meeting, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem urged the Security Council to protect Palestinians taking part in the demonstrations on the border.
In an unusual move, the group’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad, wrote to UN Secretary General António Guterres, saying: “Preventing further loss of life is a responsibility that must be shouldered without delay.”
Hagai El-Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, at a press conference in Tel Aviv, February 5, 2016. (AFP/Jack Guez)
Tens of thousands of Gazans have taken part in Friday protests along the border with Israel, supported by the Hamas, which rules the coastal enclave. Hamas leaders say the ultimate aim of the demonstrations, dubbed “March of Return,” is to see the removal of the border and the liberation of Palestine.
B’Tselem gave a list of names and ages of 35 Palestinians it said were killed by Israel during the demonstrations.
The group described the victims as “unarmed” and said their deaths were “the predictable outcome of the manifestly illegal rules of engagement implemented during the demonstrations, of ordering soldiers to use lethal gunfire against unarmed demonstrators who pose no mortal danger.
Look How Palestinians Treat The Site Of Judaism's Holiest Place
A picture of the inside of the Dome of the Rock, which was built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the ancient Jewish Temples were built, reveals the respect that the Palestinians have for a place whose ground is the holiest spot on Earth for the Jewish people:
Palestinians have treated the area of the Temple Mount with disdain for decades. Often they have displayed an active desire to destroy any evidence that the site was where the Jewish Temples stood in an effort to discredit the Jewish claim to Jerusalem, which dates back roughly 3,000 years.
In September 2,000, the Muslim Waqf refused permission for any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then it removed 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount and deposited it into the garbage; that rubble included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods. For details see here.
A report in 2012 stated that the Muslim Waqf was continuing to destroy Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount.
As Dr. Gabriel Barkay, professor emeritus from Bar-Ilan University and recipient of the 1996 Jerusalem Prize for Archeological Research, stated last October, “Temple denial started in the 1990s, even though the Islamic Wakf itself in the 1920s and ’30s issued booklets which were given to visitors of the Temple Mount in which they said the existence of the Temples is beyond any doubt. It was accepted and in the Islamic literature through the generations there is a plethora of mentions of Solomon’s Temple and the Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem, so it is very strange that they deny it now.”