“VIVA ISRAELE!” - Long Live Israel!

      By Endre Mozes*

      14 July 2007

In his new book in Italy "Viva Israele" ("Long Live Israel"), Magdi Allam, Egyptian-born Italian journalist and author, editor of the popular Italian daily Corriere della Sera, expresses strong support to Israel's values and not less strong criticism towards certain teachings of fundamentalist Islam. Allam relates denial and even questioning of Israel's right to exist, by anyone, to the death cult disseminated by fundamentalist Islam.

Magdi Allam speaks of "the ethical erosion that has led to the denial of the supreme value of the sanctity of life". He sees Israel as "an ethical parameter" the relation to which "separates between lovers of civilization and those who preach the ideology of death".  Allam praises Israel for holding high, even amidst much hatred and death cult around her, the value of sanctity of life. This sanctity of life, he writes, "should apply to everyone, or to no one."

There is already a vivid public dispute about Allam's ‘Viva Israele', like on public talkback pages.  Many readers praise Allan Magdi as a very brave man with an important message for the whole world.

Others, however, question what is the difference between the outspoken critics on both sides; Magdi Allam vs. Ilan Pappe or Avrum Burg. ‘There are Quislings in all the nations', suggests an angry reader.

We accept that the question who are the brave whistleblowers serving progress, and who are collaborators with dark forces, or putting it rudely, who are the Quislings; is to be judged by the same objective rule for all sides. After my Talkback letter I am suggesting here this simple rule:

"In case somebody speaks up against the hate-culture of a brutal oppressive regime, risking his own life - he is a brave man or woman. If, on the contrary, somebody collaborates with an oppressive regime and hate-culture on the opposite side, against his own innocent people, gaining financial or other benefits, possibly also misusing freedom of talk in his own community - he may rightly be called sort of a Quisling. 

Let's apply the rule consistently to a few examples. Salman Rushdie and Magdi Allam speak up against fundamentalist Islam's hate culture and have to live under death threats because of this, in hiding or constantly accompanied by body-guards. On the other hand Ilan Pappe continues to get his undeserved salary from the university of Haifa in the full democracy - sometimes naively exaggerated - democracy of Israel, while selling well his phantasm's 'ethnic cleansing' blood-libels against Israel to clients interested to cover up the real ethnic cleansing cases, like that of Darfur. The test results clearly show Salman Rushdie and Magdi Allam are brave man, quester heros of the truth. By the same measure Pappe or Avrum Burg - similarly to certain British BBC journalists who besmirched their own government in the beginning of the Iraq war by using fabricated ‘evidence' - are collaborators with backwards forces; whether out of hatred, lack of genuine talent, greed, insatiable ambition, frustration, or in the best case a grain of naïveté also combined. Anyway, Pappe and Avrum Burg can rightly be called Quislings.

Recently Europe has started to find its way out of an era of appeasing Islamism and of hatred towards Israel which were so widespread in some elitist circles, towards genuine understanding. Any realistic search for lasting peace must be based on such genuine understanding. Magdi Allam contributes a great deal to this progress.

* E. Mozes is chairman of Take-A-Pen, multilingual grass-roots media-watch organization http://www.take-a-pen.org/

Recommended readings;

(1) a (in Italian)

(2) Saviona Man: Muslim, Italian and Zionist  - Haaretz, 2 July 2007 (in English)

Take-A-Pen's talkback letter: