OPINION:
Even in the face of terror, globalism and bad leadership, free people around the world are still passionately fighting for individual liberty and national sovereignty. That’s the message I heard loud and clear last week at CPAC Israel in Tel Aviv.
I’ve just returned from our first CPAC Israel where over 2,000 people attended the event in Tel Aviv, just days after President Biden’s disastrous trip to the region. An Israeli journalist who spoke at the gathering said it was the “biggest conservative” event in Israeli history.
You wouldn’t know about the event from the U.S. media, who breathlessly covered CPAC Hungary earlier this year with rancid insinuations that CPAC had embraced “antisemitic authoritarianism.” Vice, Vox, The Guardian and MSNBC were conspicuously absent in Tel Aviv.
We saw first-hand how the Israeli people fervently hope to restore positive relations with the United States, a topic that was top of mind after Mr. Biden had the Israeli flags removed from the presidential motorcade on his second stop in Jerusalem.
To add insult to injury, the president came to the region primarily to try to secure a commitment for more oil from Saudi Arabia, something he failed to accomplish.
CPAC Israel occurred just as Russian President Vladimir Putin visited a newly emboldened Iran. Mr. Biden is currently poised to give Iran more than $100 billion. Mr. Biden and his allies in the liberal media relentlessly smeared former President Donald Trump as a supporter of Mr. Putin. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. The billions Iran will receive if Mr. Biden signs a new nuclear deal will directly help Iran send more drones to Russia, giving the enemy more resources as Ukraine desperately fights to push back Russian invaders.
CPAC Israel speaker Jason Greenblatt explained that Mr. Biden “doesn’t understand” that the Iranian threat “won’t be solved through diplomacy.” Iran continues to pose a threat to the existence of Israel and to American troops in the region.
Like America, the threats to Israel aren’t just external. Keynote speaker Ben Shapiro delivered his first address in Israel and urged Israelis to learn from the American Right and fight against socialist economic policies in their country.
Both countries, however, can learn from each other. “America has one major thing to learn from Israel,” Mr. Shapiro told CPAC Israel. “That a nation-state must at its heart have a nation.”
We can’t fight the globalists if we don’t rally around a shared history and common culture. This is why the left so relentlessly attacks our Founding Fathers.
The left-wing movement is heavily financed, highly unified and well-coordinated around the world. And our partners in dozens of countries experience the exact same “wokeism,” socialism and globalism that we are battling in America.
We’ve started hosting CPACs in countries throughout the world, such as Brazil and Hungary, because we need to be just as unified as the left.
People who stand for freedom, liberty and decency do not have scores of billionaires supporting our efforts. We do not have the power to control policies across borders like the European Union, the United Nations and the World Health Organization. We do not control social media, traditional media or large financial institutions. The left controls them all.
The one thing we do have is truth.
To have a chance to save freedom for our children and grandchildren, like-minded patriots must band together, regardless of where they hail from, to fight against the system that’s been rigged by the left.
We need allies in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia and the Americas to leverage one another’s strengths to preserve God’s gift of freedom.
Like Israel itself, we are now at the point where we are fighting for our very survival.
• Matt Schlapp is the chair of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, the nation’s original grassroots conservative organization.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.