Never was So-Needed the Presence of Our Christian Zionist Friends
Speech by Shimon Samuels
Basel, 28 August 2022
Thank you for this invitation from the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ). On behalf of the 400,000 members of the Wiesenthal Centre worldwide, I bring you greetings as we are here to extol the wisdom of Theodor Herzl.
As a journalist in Paris, covering the Jew-hatred of the Dreyfus case, he was led to believe that the Jews will only be safe when returning to Zion, the Land of Israel.
An ancient Jewish debate speaks of two interactions with the world:
- We are a people that dwells alone, ostracized, marginalized, ghettoized, victimized;
- or we are a light unto the nations, a barometer and an alarm bell, a participant, even a role model.
What our mentor, Simon Wiesenthal, would say: “What begins with the Jews never ends with them.” They are an early warning system.
Herzl was correct in observing that the only safe nation for the Jews is Israel.
On the 25th anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds, we learned that, in one day, 5,000 died and 27,000 were injured for life.
Facing them, I claimed that “I was here before,” as a Jew exiled to Babylon, a few kilometres away from Iran – a genocidal state that holds cartoon competitions denying the Holocaust while intent on making it a nuclear reality.
Just as the democracies, right now, are preparing another “Munich 1938” under the cover of “Peace in our time”... A repeat of “Munich,” renamed “Tehran” as the ground is shaking under Zion.
Our fathers stated:
- “If I am not for myself, who will be?
- But, if I am only for myself, what am I?
- If not now, when?”
We can add here in Basel:
- “We will be there for you, just as we know you will be for us.”
Christian Zionists are a force to impress on their countries’ leaders, the dangers “in the early warning system!”
That then must be the Gospel of the ICEJ.
Please see brief video clip: Basel_2022.mp4
I will close with a mission:
An Israeli father is taking his son as a Bar-Mitzvah gift, a trip across classical Europe.
The father tells the boy: “Most of the people abroad are not Jewish, they are Christians.”
Landing in Athens at the Parthenon, the boy asks: “Aba, are all these people Jewish?”
“No,” repeated the father, as they crossed Europe.
At the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the boy said: “Aba, I feel so much for the Christians. They are spread all over the world.”
You, our Christian Zionist brethren, we need you all over the world.
Thank you.
Dr Shimon Samuels