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Worth Repeating: Gordon Brown Addresses Knesset

8/1/2008

Full Text:

Everyday you meet in this Knesset you live out the hopes—the promises—of centuries. And I am especially pleased—as the first British prime minister to address the Knesset—to congratulate you at this sixtieth anniversary on the achievement of 1948: the centuries of exile ended, the age-long dream realized, the ancient promise redeemed—the promise that even amidst suffering, you will find your way home to the fields and shorelines where your ancestors walked.

And your sixty-year journey from independence is evidence for all to see that good can come out of the worst of times, and that the human spirit is indeed indomitable.

And let me tell the people of Israel today: Britain is your true friend. A friend in difficult times as well as in good times; a friend who will stand beside you whenever your peace, your stability and your existence are under threat; a friend who shares an unbreakable partnership based on shared values of liberty, democracy and justice. And to those who mistakenly and outrageously call for the end of Israel, let the message be: Britain will always stand firmly by Israel’s side.

For two thousand years, you had history—but not a home. For two thousand years, you lifted the artistic and cultural life and the scientific and political development of every continent—but had no home. For two thousand years, you endured pogroms—and then the horror of the Holocaust—because you had no home.

Yet for two thousand years, nothing—no prison cell, no forced migration, no violence, no massacres, not even the horror of the Holocaust—could ever break the spirit of a people yearning to be free. And you proved that while repression can subjugate, it can never silence; while hearts can be broken, hope is unbreakable; while lives can be lost, the dream could never die; that—in the words of the prophet Amos—“justice would roll down like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Never free of trouble, always facing adversity, yet what remarkable success Israel has achieved during these last few years.

You have created modern Hebrew as the language of your daily life. Eight of your citizens have been awarded Nobel prizes—and alongside Silicon Valley, you now have ‘Silicon Wadi.’ You have world-famous hospitals, like Hadassah, and leading centers of learning and research, like the Weizmann Institute for Science. With eight percent of your national income spent on education, you have one of the highest skilled populations on earth. From draining the swamps in the 20th century to pioneering electric cars in the 21st, your history of ingenuity is a lesson in the boundless capacity of mind and spirit.

No nation has achieved so much in so short a period of time. And to have accomplished all this in the face of the war, the terror, the violence, the threats, the intimidation and the insecurity is truly monumental.

And I am proud that the British Jewish community—and the British people—have had a distinguished place and a part in your great endeavor.

And today our partnership is strong and getting stronger. The best minds in our two countries are working together in academia and the arts, in sport and music, in science and technology—and Prime Minister Olmert and I were able to announce yesterday path-breaking academic and cultural partnerships. And I want to make clear that the British government will stand full-square against any boycotts of Israel or Israeli academics and their institutions.

And today and in the future, the people of Britain and Israel will continue to stand together in believing that history sides with those who fight for liberty—and if the great conflict of ideas of the 21st century is between those who believe in closed societies who would turn back the clock of progress and those who believe in open societies, then we are together on the side of openness—moving the world forward to what Winston Churchill called the “sunlit uplands” of prosperity, justice and democracy.

The British people see the threat your people encounter every day when they climb aboard a bus, have a cup of coffee at the café, or buy a sandwich. In our homeland—two thousand miles from your streets—we too have learned the grief when lives are lost through terror on a bus or at the airport or on a crowded underground train on the way to work.

So to those who question Israel’s very right to exist, and threaten the lives of its citizens through terror, we say: The people of Israel have a right to live here, to live freely and to live in security.

To those who are enemies of progress we say: We condemn anti-Semitism and persecution in all its forms. And to those who believe that threatening statements fall upon indifferent ears, we say in one voice: that it is totally abhorrent for the president of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world. •NER•

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