For the past 226 years, the 14th of July has been commemorated as "Bastille Day", the day that the infamous Parisian prison fell into the hands of the people who, rebelling against King Louis XVI, stormed its gates during the French Revolution of 1789. The fall of the Bastille symbolizes the fall of the French monarchy and its despotism, and the establishment of the Republic, the nation of the people, based on liberty, equality and fraternity. This is France's national holiday. The French Revolution became a model for many other peoples who took their destiny into their own hands, and it is therefore ffitting to view the 14th of July, 1879, as the day that ushered in the democratic era, the rule of the brave people who defeated despotism, destroyed a dictatorship and founded the democratic framework in which a citizenry runs its own affairs, with liberty and freedom for all.
On the very same day, 226 years later, the 14th of July 2015, representatives of several democracies – one of them France – together with representatives of less democratic countries, Russia and China, signed an agreement in which the democratic world capitulated to the despotic dictatorship that is Iran. The world, in effect, authorized Iran's plans to achieve regional, and possibly greater than regional, hegemony, while ignoring the destructive role the land of the Ayatollahs plays in countries like Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. » | Dr. Mordechai Kedar | Wednesday, July 15, 2015
