In a speech at a reception
for Israel Independence Day, President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman cited quotes
from the Koran and the Hamas charter that testify to the violent nature of
Islam. The speech was posted on the Czech government website. Many
thanks to Gemini for the translation (courtesy of MAD is Dead blog, madisdead.blogspot.com) When the Organization of Islamic Cooperation called for an
apology, the ironic reply from a spokesman for the President said, ““President Zeman
definitely does not intend to apologise. For the president would consider it
blasphemy to apologise for the quotation of a sacred Islamic text."
“It is necessary to clearly name the enemy of human civilization."
"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?"
"Let us throw away political correctness and call things by their true names."
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.
 |
| Milos Zeman, President, Czech Republic |
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.
— Miloš Zeman, president of Czech
republic, Hilton Hotel, 26th of May 2014
