Israel is the birthland of our faith and no one writes more perceptively about it than Caroline Glick in this excellent summary of Israel’s reasons to be happy.

An excerpt.

“As Independence Day celebrations were winding down Tuesday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a guest appearance on Channel 2’s left-wing satire show Eretz Nehederet. One of the final questions that the show’s host Eyal Kitzis asked the premier was how he would like to be remembered after he leaves office.

“Netanyahu thought a moment and said, “I’d like to be remembered as the leader who preserved Israel’s security.”

“On the face of it, Netanyahu’s stated aspiration might seem dull. In a year he’ll be the longest-serving prime minister in the state’s history, and all he wants is to preserve our national security? Why is he aiming so low? And yet, the studio audience reacted to Netanyahu’s modest goal with a thunderclap of applause.

“After pausing to gather his thoughts, a clearly befuddled Kitzis mumbled something along the lines of, “Well, if you manage to make peace as well, we wouldn’t object.”

“The audience was silent.

“The disparity between the audience’s exultation and Kitzis’s shocked disappointment at Netanyahu’s answer exposed – yet again – the yawning gap between the mainstream Israeli view of the world, and that shared by members of our elite class.

“The Israeli public gave our elites the opportunity to try out their peace fantasies in the 1990s. We gave their peace a chance and got repaid with massive terror and international isolation.

“We are not interested in repeating the experience.

“We will be nice to leftists, if they are polite. We might even watch their shows, if there’s nothing else on or they are mildly entertaining. But we won’t listen to them anymore.

“This is why US President Barack Obama’s visit last month had no impact on public opinion or government policy.

“Obama came, hugged Netanyahu and showered us with love just like Bill Clinton did back in the roaring ’90s. He praised us to high heaven and told us he has our back. And then he told us we should force our leaders to give Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to our sworn enemies even as they teach their children to aspire to kill our children.

“And we smiled and wished him a pleasant flight home.

“Obama had no idea what he was getting into when he came here. Like Kitzis and his colleagues on Channel 2, Obama surrounds himself with people who, like him, prefer fantasy to reality. In Obama’s world, Islamic jihad is about the West, not about jihadists. In Obama’s world, the most pressing issue on the international agenda is apartments for Jews in Jerusalem and Efrat. And in Obama’s world, what Israelis need more than anything else is for leftist Europeans to love us.

“Talk about retro.

“But a lot has changed since the 1990s. Twenty years after Yitzhak Rabin shook Yasser Arafat’s hand on the White House lawn and so officially ushered in Israel’s Age of Terror, most Israelis don’t really care what the Europeans or the Arabs think of us.

“The Europeans prattle on about Israeli racism, and threaten to put yellow stars or some other nasty mark on Israeli goods. They ban Israeli books from their libraries in Scotland. They boycott Israeli universities, professors and students in England. In Italy they hold rallies for convicted mass murderer Marwan Barghouti at their national Senate. And in France they butcher Jewish children.

“And then the likes of Catherine Ashton expect us to care what they think about us.

“Well, we don’t.

“For their part, Americans are bemoaning the resignation of the unelected Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and insisting that he was a true partner for Israel, who just couldn’t make a go of it due to forces beyond his control. While most recognize Fayyad’s departure has nothing to do with Israel, some US pontificators have blamed Israel for Fayyad’s failure. Elliott Abrams, for instance, wrote, “Israeli governments also gave him less cooperation than he deserved.” To that we answer, Fayyad was nothing more than a Western delusion, like Arab peace with Israel.”