The worst thing for left-wing anti-Israeli organizations is not war or terrorism, but the cutting of foreign financing. If it is cut, they disappear. And the draft on foreign residents by the party Our Home Israel is directed at this. It was presented to the Knesset on Wednesday. Trying to prevent the coming danger, the leader of the party of MERETZ, Zehava Gal-On, threw herself on a pillbox. The best defense is attack. In the Knesset she stated that I and Our Home Israel (OHI) were foreign residents. We are agents of… Azerbaijan.
I remember a well-known story of 1937. NKVD officers decided who is going to be what kind of spy and find out what languages a person speaks. And graduates of high schools become ‘Latin agents.’ Gal-On has the same approach, but a different criterion: what countries a person has visited. If she decided on languages, I would be a Romanian agent then. But now I am an Azerbaijani agent. It is rather exotic as well.
The crap spoken by the super activist from MERETZ confirms her ignorance and rudeness. She has always had a reputation as not a very wise person, even in her own party. The late Shulamit Aloni, and I was a fan of hers, was right when she warned her supporters that Zehava must have learnt a lot before becoming a member of Knesset.
The senseless speeches by Zehava Gal-On make us understand that she doesn’t realize the importance of relations with Azerbaijan for Israel at all. This is not a surprise. All her views in the sphere of international policy and security come down to the fact that any claim by Palestinians should be accepted – without understanding the strategic threats which are covered by such an approach. This is a typical method of left-wing radicals: they repeat their dogmas, any reasonable arguments and the demands of reality cannot influence them. A doctor has said to take you to a mortuary, so let’s go to a mortuary!
However, her statements on Azerbaijan can disorient people who are smarter than her, but who have no information to fully assess the importance of Israeli-Azerbaijani relations. Azerbaijan is situated inside a triangle which has been a place of interaction and an arena of conflicts of three powerful empires – the Russian, Ottoman and Persian ones – for centuries. A Jewish community has been living in the country since the Babylonian Exile. Even though it is a Muslim Shiite country, Jews have never known pogroms or anti-Semitism there. From the cultural and historical point of view, it is a Shiite Muslim state, but from the point of view of a way of life and a political structure, it is a secular state which is improving friendly relations with Israel all the time. And there is another important moment: Azerbaijan has a long, 440-km long border with Iran.
Our specific relations with Azerbaijan started their development since the reconstruction of independence in the republic in 1993, when the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin immediately assessed the importance of full-scale development of these friendly relations for Israel and signing a strategic union with Azerbaijan.
I used to be the Foreign Minister, the Minister of Strategic Planning, and the head of the Knesset Commission for Foreign Affairs and Defense. So I am not guessing or assuming, but know quite well what I am talking about: everybody who has been involved in the formation and implementation of the policy of our state and its defensive capacity agrees that our strategic relations with Azerbaijan should be supported and improved.
It is also important to note that 20 million Azerbaijanis live in Iran – a quarter of the country’s population. That’s why all activists, including Western ones, who dare to criticize President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev must remember that the only alternative to the current regime in the country is a regime of ayatollahs.
Considering all these facts, I can only be proud that Mrs. Gal-On calls me one of the architects of our strategic union with Azerbaijan.
Obviously, OHI cares primarily about the security and interests of Israel at top official positions, at the Knesset, as a responsible political party – it does the opposite things to the activity of Gal-On and her supporters in MERETZ, who are slandering our army, its soldiers and our country all over the world day and night.
They are well paid for this ‘job’ by foreign sources, trying to hide these sources and the volumes of their benefits. That is why Mrs. Gal-On and her supporters from the ultra-left camp rushed to criticize our draft on foreign agents, which was aimed at making things that they tried to hide publicly known. Their statements on repressions of human rights activists are an attempt to deceive Israeli society and the international community. Our draft is identical to the law which has been operating in the USA for decades. If it is approved and important for the greatest democracy in the world and the most powerful superpower, then Israel, which has to protect itself from numerous enemies, needs it very much.
And in conclusion I would like to speak about the slander which has been spread by Gal-On about my friends from OHI. It is the best confirmation of the truthfulness of the ancient Jewish and Russian proverbs about those who shout ‘stop thief!’ loudly, and that guilty mind is never at ease. Once Zehava Gal-On spent 13 hours at questioning in the Police Department for Anti-Corruption and Anti-Fraud Struggle, being suspected of asset misappropriation when she was the acting director of the International Center of Peace in the Middle East. It was Mrs. Gal-On, against whom a criminal case on bribery from the EU was shut down due to a lack of evidence, even though the government’s legal advisor clearly detected that she received 80 thousand euros from the EU for organizing an event which apparently hadn’t been arranged. It seems she has no moral right to discuss anybody’s involvement in corruption.
There is another ancient proverb which suits Gal-On and her friends well: the dogs bark, but the caravans move on. They will continue barking, and we will work in favor of Israel, improving its defensive capacity and international prestige. From each according to his or her ability.
