Challenges before India and Israel and areas of co-operation

The greatest challenge facing any free society in a time of war—and make no mistake about it, that is exactly what time it is for the world—is to remain a free society while effectively fighting that war. As the great American statesman, Benjamin Franklin, once said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The worst thing we can do is to allow our enemies to dictate an agenda by which we sacrifice those qualities that we believe distinguish us from them.

So, how do we do that? I am neither Indian nor Israeli, although I have strong feelings for both nations; I am nothing more than an individual American citizen. As an American, however, what I have in common with the Indian and Israeli gentlemen on the dais with me is that I am a citizen of a free society that has been marked for extinction by the same global adversary: radical Islam. Let me repeat, our free societies have been marked for extinction by the same global adversary: radical Islam. Not terrorism, which is only a tactic; or unspecified radicals, militants, or whatever politically correct word is in fashion at the moment but radical Islamists. For the words we use are important. They can help us act, or they can hinder action. If we merely are engaged in a war on “terror,” then all we are doing is reacting to a tactic after it occurs. It means we are not engaged in a comprehensive effort to defeat the terrorists and those who send them. If our enemies are merely “the extremists,” it means we have decided to abandon the search for any ideology or force that unites those extremists and motivates them. That is why we hear simplistic analyses that say land disputes or poverty are the cause of these horrible acts. Read more