Lies about Israel lead to lies about everything.

Why Israel Matters to Me – PragerU (Sebastian Cevallos)

Why would someone who lives in Ecuador — that’s me — be preoccupied with… Israel?

The countries are separated by two continents and an ocean.
Nothing that happens in Tel Aviv has much, if any, effect on what happens to me in Cuenca.

Except for this:
I always want to know the truth about things.
And I hate lies.

And there are more lies told about Israel than about any other place in the world.

I’ve come to realize that if you believe lies about Israel, you’ll believe lies about almost anything.
And if you know the truth about Israel, you’re likely to think straight about most things.

In other words, Israel is a kind of truth test.
Fail this test, and you’ve fallen into a fantasy world of untruth — a funhouse mirror of the real world.

That’s a bold statement, I know.
But I stand by it — and I’m not even Jewish.
In fact, only about 1,000 Jews live in the entire country of Ecuador.

How Israel Got on My Radar

So, how did Israel even get on my radar?
That’s easy.

Israel is hard to ignore, no matter where you live.
Did you ever meet someone who didn’t have an opinion about the Jewish state?

Sometime during my high school years, Israel got my attention.
So I started to do some research.

At first, I thought: “Wow, this is a complex issue.”
Was Israel the victim or the aggressor in the Middle East?
Did it oppress its minorities, or was it a bastion of civil rights?
Was it a colonizer of Palestinian land, or did it have a legitimate claim to that land?
Why did the United Nations pass resolution after resolution condemning Israel — but say nothing about Syria or North Korea?
Why did Israel’s neighbors pledge themselves to its utter destruction?

All this attention, focused on a country so small you have to squint to see it on a globe — a country one-tenth the size of my own, with half the population.
It was confusing.

So I kept digging.
And the more research I did, the clearer the picture became.

What I Found

Israel has free speech, a free press, and independent courts.
It has open and fair elections.
Its neighbors don’t.

Women in Israel have full rights and are active in every profession — including the military.
That’s not true of any of its neighbors.

Tel Aviv hosts one of the largest gay pride parades in the world — and the only one in the Middle East.

A fifth of Israel’s citizens are Arab Muslims.
They even have their own political parties.

The holy sites of all religions are protected within Israel’s borders.
Can’t say that about its neighbors.

The Palestinian Question

More research brought more revelations.
Israel has repeatedly offered the Palestinians their own state — and every time, those offers were rejected.

Why?
For one simple reason: the Palestinian leadership has never accepted Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

And that wall Israel built — the one the world condemns — was built for a reason: to stop suicide bombings.
And it worked. The bombings stopped.

The Truth Test

This isn’t hard information to find.

Nor is it hard to discover — despite little Western media coverage — that thousands of Syrians fled to Israel during the Syrian civil war to be treated in Israeli hospitals and have their lives saved.

That’s when I realized something deeper:
Israel is like a North Star of truth — a way to set your moral compass.
If you can’t locate this star, you’re guaranteed to get lost in a sea of lies.

How many rockets does Hamas have to launch?
How many times does Iran have to threaten to wipe Israel off the map before this becomes clear?

Why It Matters

Yes, life is complicated.
As young as I am, I know that.
There are shades of gray.
But some things are close to black and white. They just are.

Why anyone who values freedom and democracy wouldn’t wish Israel well — wouldn’t stand with it when it’s threatened — I find hard to understand.

I guess not everyone is interested in truth.

Well, I am.
And that’s why Israel means so much to me — even in Ecuador.

—  Sebastian Cevallos for Prager University.

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