Milo¹
Zeman, the president of Czech Republic, gave the following speech last
Monday at a reception to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day. Many
thanks to Gemini for the translation from the official text posted at the Czech government’s website.
Speech by the president of the Czech Republic at the reception held to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day:
May 26, 2014
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let
me thank you for the invitation to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day.
There are dozens of days of independence being celebrated every year in
the Czech Republic. Some I may attend, others I cannot. There is one I
can never miss, however: it’s the Israeli Independence Day.
There
are states with whom we share the same values, such as the political
horizon of free elections or a free market economy. However, no one
threatens these states with wiping them off the map. No one fires at
their border towns; no one wishes that their citizens would leave their
country. There is a term, political correctness. This term I consider to be a euphemism for political cowardice. Therefore, let me not be cowardly.
It is necessary to clearly name the enemy of human civilisation.
It
is international terrorism linked to religious fundamentalism and
religious hatred. As we may have noticed after 11th of September, this
fanaticism has not been focused on one state exclusively. Muslim
fanatics recently kidnapped 200 young Christian girls in Nigeria. There
was a hideous assassination in the flower of Europe in the heart
of European Union in a Jewish museum in Brussels. I will not let myself
being calmed down by the declaration that there are only tiny fringe
groups behind it. On the contrary, I am convinced that this xenophobia,
and let’s call it racism or anti-Semitism, emerges from the very essence
of the ideology these groups subscribe to.
So let me quote one of their sacred texts to support this statement: “A tree says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. A stone says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
I would criticize those calling for the killing of Arabs, but I do not
know of any movement calling for mass murdering of Arabs. However, I
know of one anti-civilisation movement calling for the mass murder of
Jews.
After all, one of the paragraphs of the statutes of Hamas says: “Kill every Jew you see.”
Do
we really want to pretend that this is an extreme viewpoint? Do we
really want to be politically correct and say that everyone is nice and
only a small group of extremists and fundamentalists is committing such
crimes?
Michel
de Montaigne, one of my favourite essayists, once wrote: “It is
gruesome to assume that it must be good that comes after evil. A
different evil may come.” It started with the Arab Spring which turned
into an Arab winter, and a fight against secular dictatorships turned
into fights led by Al-Qaeda.
Let
us throw away political correctness and call things by their true
names. Yes, we have friends in the world, friends with whom we show
solidarity. This solidarity costs us nothing, because these friends are
not put into danger by anyone.
The real meaning of solidarity is a solidarity with a friend who is in a trouble and in danger, and this is why I am here.
— Milo Zeman, president of Czech republic, Hilton Hotel, 26th of May 2014
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