Angela Merkel Quotes
For those who share my view that the Jews as a people have a right to self-determination, Zionism as a national movement of the Jewish people is the embodiment of this very right, which its opponents want to deny.
Merkel, Angela. Address to the Knesset. Knesset, 18 Mar. 2008.
He also expressed his pleasure with the British Balfour Declaration granting the Jews their own country in part of Palestine ({594001}). Wilson had earlier committed himself to support the Zionist claim for Palestine. See {585124}.
at the First World Zionist Congress, 1897
This is the first statement of a Jewish nation since Biblical Times.
Prior to 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel, there were large number of Jewish refugees who were stateless and, regardless of whatever moral rights they may have had, there was no politi.cal mechanism to enforce or claim these rights. For example, in 1956 Nassar expelled most of the Egyptian Jewish population. It was only the existence of Israel that gave these people the right to come to Israel and not depend on the good will of the world to help them as refugees. The difficulty for most refugees is that there is no state to demand, support, and enforce their rights.
This quotation is very surprising for most people. Reading the text alone, most of us would assume that it came from someone when the Zionist movement was fighting for a Jewish homeland in what is now Israel. Or just before the UN decision in 1947 to partition Palestine. However, it came from one of our founding fathers in Colonial times. Adams was by no means the only Founding Father with this point of view. Fundamentalist Protestants have put much credence in God’s granting the area for the Jewish People—then as today.
Since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1949, there has been compulsory military service for all except the ultra-orthodox. Initially, this was only a small handful of religious scholars, but the number had swelled to almost 70,000 man of draft age who were very vocal and active about how the nation should be run and its foreign policy but never had to risk their own lives of that of their children in fighting Israel’s wars. Finally, majority sentiment became overwhelming and the exemption was removed. The Degel HaTorah party was an ultra-orthodox Jewish minor religious party whose view of a Jewish State was very similar to the ultra-orthodox Muslims who believed that holy books of their religion are the only valid laws and must supersede everything else like man-made Constitutions or laws. For them there was NO separation between church and state. For Gafni, therefore, if a court ruling or law conflicted with the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament – The Law of Moses-- it contravened the notion of a Jewish State. The vast majority of Israeli Jews believed that the civil law must trump anyone’s particular interpretation of the Law of Moses as interpreted by the ultra-orthodox or anyone else. See {636124} for another instance where Gafni complained that Israel was no longer a Jewish State.
Angela Dorothea Merkel is a German politician serving as the chancellor of Germany since 2005. She served as leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 2000 to 2018. A member of the Christian Democratic Union, Merkel is the first female chancellor of Germany. Merkel has been widely described as the de facto leader of the European Union, the most powerful woman in the world and by many commentators since 2016 as the "leader of the free world".
