Many of my libertarian friends are relentless critics of Israel. I have taken the liberty of translating this marvelous response by the Argentine writer Marcos Aguinis.

“In our postmodern times it is increasingly irrelevant where the good and the bad reside. Does it matter that the Israeli youth dream with being inventors and scientists, while the youth of Hezbollah and Hamas dream with being martytrs? Apparently not. Does it matter that in Israel children are not taught to hate the Arabs, while among the Arabs, the Protocols of Zion and Mein Kampf are best sellers, and that the Egyptian TV broadcast a repulsive series where the Jews would extract children’s blood for their rituals? Apparently this doesn’t matter either.

The only thing that matters is that Arabs and Palestines look weaker compared to Israel’s might. The victim is the weak; the perpetrator is the powerful; other reasons are irrelevant. That is why public opinion tolerates anything from Palestines and Arabs, and condemns everything that comes from Israel.

Yet Israel is the planet’s most vulnerable country, surrounded by a sea of fundamentalists, hallucinating preachers, and dictators who anxiously wish to erase it from the map. Ever since independence Israel was harassed, not so much for its Jewish character, but for being the embodiment of modernity and progress, democracy, pluralism, tolerance, free press, an independent judiciary, the alternance in power, the individual and human rights. It won Nobel prizes in sciences and literature, it invented effective irrigation systems, it educated eminent artists, and it contributed discoveries to the biological sciences.

Above all, Israel s tired of war. Already several generations of stoic Israeli citizens have defended the country with one hand while working with the other. Israel always wanted to be Athens but was forced to be Sparta. But this absurd postmodernity will never understand it.”