[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 55 (Thursday, May 1, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3896-S3898]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      A SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENT

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, there are times when I listen to the 
remarks of another Senator that I realize the statement being made is 
most significant. That was my feeling recently as I sat next to the 
junior Senator from Massachusetts. Senator John Kerry spoke to the 
national meeting of AIPAC--The America-Israel Political Action 
Committee--here in Washington, DC. This was a bipartisan meeting of 
AIPAC members from throughout our Nation.
  In a strong worded presentation, Senator Kerry made an appeal for the 
United States to be a true friend of Israel. I, particularly, agreed 
with my friend as he forcefully said:

       As a democracy, Israel has both the burden and the glory of 
     a vigorous public square. We as Americans must be the truest 
     and best kind of ally--both forthright enough to say what we 
     think--and steadfast enough to stay the course during the 
     hard passages as well as the easy ones.
       Herzl's famous words--``If you will it, it is no dream''--
     signify the promise and the greatest power of Israel--and the 
     hope, after half a century, that a fair and secure peace is 
     finally within reach. For our part, we must leave here more 
     committed than ever to support Israel in the exacting, 
     essential, and sometimes tense search for that dream. I think 
     its fair to say that the ashes of Holocaust victims were 
     scattered on the wind.
       But that wind also carries on it their prayers and 
     purpose--above mountains and sea, across hundreds or 
     thousands of miles, so that the pain of history is redeemed 
     in the land of Israel. It is a sacred place--for them, for 
     their people who live there, and for all the world. So let us 
     now resolve again that the day will never come for Israel 
     when the redemption is put at risk--when any of us would ever 
     have to repeat Schindler's cry and say: We could have done 
     more.

  Mr. President, the days seem to be disappearing when a Senator 
compliments another Senator who sits on the other side of this aisle by 
making the Senate aware of a significant accomplishment of a colleague. 
For myself, I would like to restore that tradition.
  Senator Kerry's statement was one of the best I have heard. Mr. 
President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kerry's speech to AIPAC 
be printed in the Record. It is one, I believe, all Members of Congress 
and many citizens of this great Nation of ours should read, 
contemplate, and discuss.
  There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

 Senator John F. Kerry--Address Before AIPAC--Washington, DC--April 7, 
                                  1997

       I really want to share with you that I am honored to be 
     here tonight--and I'm privileged to stand up here tonight and 
     represent the Senate in bi-partisan fashion--because I share 
     your cause, and I also want to pay you respect for the way 
     that you fight the battle. The way that you do so literally 
     does honor to our democracy. The letters you write, the phone 
     calls you make, involvement in our campaigns, your 
     willingness to come to Washington, your commitment to, and 
     search for the truth, is the way it is supposed to be, and 
     you set an example for this country.
       I was delighted to participate just a few days ago with 
     Steven in Boston in a Washington club event. And I think it 
     renewed in me my sense, in the intimacy and in the exchange, 
     the dialogue, that meetings like that really give a 
     continuing vitality to a fundamental truth that Israel and 
     the United States do share great ideas as well as a great 
     alliance; and security of Israel is indispensable to the 
     security of the United States of America.
       But you know, in truth, our two nations really share 
     something much more than that, and I think you know it. As 
     Prime Minister Netanyahu stated so eloquently tonight--and 
     what a privilege it was to be able to listen to the truth 
     that he spoke this evening--Israel and the United States are 
     neither of us just a place in the land, a piece of geography; 
     both of us are founded on a shining vision of human dignity 
     and purpose.
       The Jewish people have taught the world much about dignity 
     and purpose because they have preserved their vision through 
     two thousand years of exile and persecution. And they had to 
     outlast history's fiercest fires of hate.
       Teresa and I watched Schindler's List as 25 million other 
     Americans did a few weeks ago. We were obviously left asking, 
     as anyone in their right mind and conscience would, why--
     why--why? But I remembered my trip to Israel, as we all do. 
     My first visit to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. And I will never 
     forget one sight there that stood out above all others--not 
     the documents or the photographs as stark as they are--but a 
     small child's single lonely shoe, which brought home to me 
     the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust expressed on the 
     most human of scales.
       Again, as I watched this movie about a handful who entered 
     the Nazi hell and returned, a small remnant who proved that 
     millions did not have to perish, I thought of the words of 
     Elie Wiesel about others who could have acted to prevent, to 
     stop, to oppose this crime of the century: ``Not all were 
     guilty,'' he said, ``but all were responsible.''
       Schindler himself was a rogue and a philistine, whose 
     transformation was heroic--but it was all too rare. Too many 
     of the God-fearing forgot God. And at the end of the movie, 
     after the Nazis have surrendered and Schindler is preparing 
     to escape, he cries that he had not done all he could have 
     done--or early enough. He could have done more--sold a watch, 
     a lapel pin, a car to secure the lives of others. And so many 
     could have done more in Germany and elsewhere--and yes, done 
     more in America, and in the highest places of power in 
     Washington.
       And as we know--and I say we, all of us, with connections 
     of any kind with Israel--anti-semitism did not disappear with 
     the ashes of Auschwitz. Over fifty years after the end of 
     World War II, the ancient evil still stalks our time--
     striking at Jews around the world and at the Jewish people 
     and the Jewish soul of the state of Israel. What Robert 
     Wistrich called the longest hatred continues to reach far and 
     wide. An explosion ruins a peaceful afternoon in a street 
     cafe in Tel Aviv. There are bombings in a Jewish Community 
     Center in Argentina; the rising popularity of the National 
     Front in France; the prevalence of Skinhead violence and 
     murders in Germany; the arson of Warsaw's last synagogue; the 
     anti-Jewish scape-goating and conspiracy of Louis Farrakhan 
     and the militia groups; the Nazi-like images of Jews in the 
     press in Egypt and Syria, and the blatant anti-Jewish hatred 
     of Hamas proclaiming: ``We worship God by killing Jews.''
       These are different sins, but they are rooted in the same 
     anti-Semitic temptation. Some cannot face the truth, or the 
     twisted hates in their own soul, even today in this country, 
     or the rationalizations for the sake of political advantage 
     or profit. As the youth of Europe ask about the Holocaust and 
     challenge their parents about what they did or didn't do, the 
     legacy of collaboration and oppression still emerges from 
     under the rocks of a hidden history. We have just witnessed 
     the end of the myth of Swiss neutrality--and we are beginning 
     to look anew at what happened to the stolen property of Jews 
     in Vichy France and Peronist Argentina.
       So the question must be asked: Would active resistance to 
     the Holocaust or the preceding anti-Semitism have made a 
     difference? I am not naive about the brutality with which the 
     Nazis often responded to dissent. But in recent years, from 
     the Philippines to Haiti to South Africa, to the former 
     Soviet union, resistance and dissent--and pressure from the 
     outside--changed the course of events. And it is no excuse 
     for citizens or the Church or other leaders of the world to 
     say that it would not have worked. For the most part, they 
     did not even try--and that is the shame of a century.
       So the millions who watched ``Schindler's List'' must 
     contemplate, then amid the tears and heavy hearts, the deeper 
     lesson that we carry out of this blood-stained century. 
     Speaking out against injustice, acting to end bigotry, 
     raising our collective consciousness and looking honestly 
     into the unsparing heart of conscience, and standing up for 
     what is right and hopeful. This is the collective burden--the 
     collective burden and I say privilege of all of us who live 
     today. It is a collective responsibility that we must meet--
     in our own country--and for so many of us, in the other 
     country of our hearts--the land of Israel.
       So we need AIPAC's unwavering voice on this long and 
     winding road to peace in the Middle East. And the journey is 
     harder now than it was a year ago, harder than it was a month 
     ago, harder than it was a few weeks or days ago because we 
     must remind the world that peace is more just than a piece of 
     paper; it is the replacement of death with life, of danger 
     and violence with the laughter of children whose 
     playgrounds no longer need to be guarded with guns, Arab 
     or Israeli. Oh yes--the peace process has delivered a 
     certain amount to Israel--diplomatic, economic, and 
     political benefits--but again in a simple truth--it has 
     not delivered full or real security. It is not peace when 
     seven Israel girls are murdered at the Jordanian border. 
     It is not peace when three more innocent people are killed 
     on the eve of Purim in

[[Page S3897]]

     Tel Aviv, with fifty more injured--among them many 
     children--cut and bleeding from broken glass and nails 
     embedded into the bomb. It is not peace when people cannot 
     get safely on a bus and arrive home to the embrace and joy 
     of family.
       No--that is not peace--but I state emphatically--it is a 
     reason why the peace process must go on--not naively, not in 
     a rush, not on a fragile foundation--but it must go on in a 
     genuine search for real peace--and for the real security 
     which defines peace.
       So frankly, we all have to work harder, we have to work 
     harder to make real the peaceful dreams of millions of 
     Israelis and millions of others in the world, who look to 
     part of the world for peace. And all of us cannot continue to 
     be held hostage to Hamas and Hezbollah. We must all of us 
     reject the absurd, dishonest and cruel approach--the 
     propaganda, if you will--from some Palestinians--the attempt 
     by some Arafat advisers--to equate terrorist attacks with 
     Israel's decision to construct new housing in Jerusalem, 
     however controversial that decision may be. It is one thing 
     for the Palestinians and others to hear Prime Minister 
     Netanyahu say it, but I want to say it also: Terrorism is an 
     incontrovertible evil, and an unacceptable response. The idea 
     that every bitter dispute between Israelis and the 
     Palestinians can justify Palestinian violence, or justify 
     Arafat's winking at it, or should warrant the release of yet 
     most Hamas leaders, or could excuse the PLO's failure to 
     rewrite its covenant--all this reflects a moral blindness, a 
     failure of courage that only encourages the cowards, the 
     haters and the killers. As Israel is assailed with almost 
     unrelenting fury and Prime Minister Netanyahu is all but 
     demonized by the world press, the parting cry of Schindler--I 
     could have done more--that cry ought to resonate in this 
     room. Are we speaking up enough against a one-sided 
     enforcement of the Oslo Accords? Are the supporters of Israel 
     who did not support Netanyahu now less willing to rebut 
     inaccuracies and attacks than they were when Rabin and Peres 
     were in office? Did too many people just breath a sign of 
     relief when Israel in a single day carried out the withdrawal 
     from Hebron rather than shouting their support in words, 
     letters and op-eds? Will we demand again and again that Iran, 
     Iraq, and Syria be held accountable for Hezbollah and Hamas? 
     Will we insist, over and over, that our Arab friends must 
     move forward with full diplomatic relations with Israel? Will 
     we make clear that the reinstitution of the Arab boycott of 
     Israel is not only morally repugnant but unacceptable to all 
     Americans?
       Let me say to you with humility and respect that this all 
     must happen first of all in AIPAC--or it will not happen at 
     all. Now I know that not everyone in this room completely 
     shared the vision of Rabin or Peres about the peace process. 
     Just as I know that not everyone in this room today shares 
     the vision of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Nor is that diversity 
     of opinion here different from what is going on in Israeli 
     living rooms or in the Knesset. There is a distrust of the 
     process, of Arafat, and there is division over how to 
     proceed--or in some quarters whether to proceed at all. But 
     one thing is clear, you know and we know it, an overwhelming 
     majority of people--there and here--seek, work and pray for 
     peace--not a passing illusion--but the reality of a solid, 
     meaningful, secure and reliable peace. As Americans, we owe 
     it to our Israeli partners to stand with them so that they 
     can negotiate from greater strength--to be an ally beside 
     them, not an ally that undermines them. Israel will and 
     should choose its own leaders, its own policy, its own 
     bargaining position; and the United States cannot and should 
     not dictate the outcome.
       Let me state it as plainly as I can: The U.N. Security 
     Council has no right to impose insecurity on Israel. 
     President Clinton was right to veto the Security Council 
     resolution on Har Homa--and the United States can and should 
     veto any other similar, one-sided measures that bring 
     discredit on nations such as France and Russia--whose own 
     anti-Semitic records now rebuke their anti-Israel votes.
       And I also say to you that for the parties to move ahead--
     and I believe they will--for the peace to proceed--and I 
     believe it will--AIPAC must be both vigilant and tireless. 
     Legitimate criticism of Israel should be heard, yes. But 
     malicious charges without foundation have no place in our 
     policy debates--as when a shameless Syria sought to blame 
     Israel for intra-Syrian terrorism in Damascus. Last month, on 
     national television, repeated media questions about Israel's 
     alleged failure to carry out its obligations in Hebron were 
     forcefully rebutted by the State Department's Dennis Ross. 
     But they easily could have been accepted by a less 
     knowledgeable guest. It is critical--and this is your role, 
     and ours, as we listen to you--critical that the American 
     public be kept accurately informed about the obligations of 
     Palestinians--and whether they are being fulfilled. What 
     Prime Minister Netanyahu calls lapses in reciprocity are not 
     side issues, but central ones. Such lapses wouldn't be 
     accepted in our arms reduction talks with Yeltsin, they 
     wouldn't be accepted in our trade negotiations with China. 
     How can they be ignored in the life or death arena of the 
     Middle East? Signed agreements have to mean something. They 
     build confidence. They are the road to future negotiations. 
     And broken commitments--or neglected ones--foretell other 
     betrayals to come. Both parties must be held to the same high 
     standard.
       In each of my visits to Israel, I have had the privilege of 
     seeing first-hand the special dangers of the Middle East, and 
     of beginning to comprehend the special nature of the Middle 
     East. On one occasion I became an honorary Israeli Air Force 
     pilot when I was allowed to fly an air force jet from the 
     Ovda Airbase. I want you to know it did not come easily. I 
     was frustrated, at one of those terrible, boring luncheons 
     when you're on those journeys, and this great colonel--he 
     was an ace in the war, several times an ace--was sitting 
     next to me, and I'm a pilot and I love to fly every chance 
     I get. And I kept saying, you're sure Tel Aviv won't let 
     me go flying? And finally I persuaded him to make a last 
     phone call, and he came back to me in the middle of a 
     meal, and said to me, ``Senator, I hope you haven't eaten 
     too much. We're going flying.''
       So I raced down to the tarmac, and they had a helmet and a 
     suit for me, and put me in the front seat. He said ``I don't 
     have time to do the run-up with you or anything, but the 
     minute we're off the ground, it's your airplane.'' And I 
     said, boy this guy is trusting. I didn't even tell him if I'd 
     ever flown a jet before. So we took off into the sky, he gave 
     me the airplane the moment we took off, and the next thing I 
     know, he says point-blank into my helmet, ``Senator, you are 
     about to go into Egypt airspace.'' So I immediately ground 
     the stick in and turned, and within a matter of minutes, this 
     United States Senator came close to violating the airspace of 
     Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. let me tell you something, I 
     learned a magical lesson: The promise of peace must be secure 
     before the promised land is secure on a thin margin of land.
       Back on the ground on that first trip, I, like so many of 
     my colleagues, toured the beautiful country from Kibbutz 
     Mizgav Am to Masada to the Golan. I stood in the very shelter 
     in a kibbutz in the north where children were attacked and I 
     looked at launching sites and impact zones for Katousha 
     rockets. And like many visitors, I was enthralled by Tel 
     Aviv, moved by Jerusalem and inspired by standing above 
     Capernum, looking out over the Sea of Galilee, where I was 
     bold enough to read aloud the Sermon on the Mount to those 
     who were traveling with me. And I met people of stunning 
     commitment, who honestly and vigorously debated the issues as 
     I watched and listened intently. I went as a friend by 
     conviction; I returned a friend at the deepest personal level 
     with new connections, new understanding.
       Who would have thought so much would have changed since 
     that first journey of 1986. But still the Middle East remains 
     a place of deep and disturbing contradictions. Israel's 
     oldest Arab peace partner--Egypt--has a press obsessed with 
     Nazi-like images of Jews and Israel. At the same time, a 
     Jordanian soldier murders seven Israeli school girls and 
     Jordan's King Hussein pays a personal, poignant, eloquent and 
     historic shiva call on their families.
       Through all these contradictions let no one doubt the 
     importance of the road we are on, for the truth is that 
     Hussein's beautiful gesture to a nation all too used to 
     mourning alone is a symbol of real progress. Without Oslo, it 
     would not have happened. It's not that sympathy calls make 
     the peace process worthwhile; it's that bridges between 
     leaders and their people are being built.
       Needless to say, there is a very long journey yet ahead of 
     us, and we must march through criticism abroad, and at home, 
     and internally, and in Israel.
       As a soldier in Vietnam, who came home to oppose the war, I 
     must say to you that I don't see that kind of criticism as 
     being un-patriotic. For nations like Israel and America that 
     are founded on principles and not just as places, dissent can 
     be the loyalist act of all, and lively debate the living 
     proof of freedom.
       As a democracy, Israel has both the burden and the glory of 
     a vigorous public square. We as Americans must be the truest 
     and best kind of ally--both forthright enough to say what we 
     think--and steadfast enough to stay the course during the 
     hard passages as well as the easy ones.
       Herzl's famous words--``If you will it, it is no dream''--
     signify the promise and the greatest power of Israel--and the 
     hope, after half a century, that a fair and secure peace is 
     finally within reach. For our part, we must leave here more 
     committed than ever to support Israel in the exacting, 
     essential, and sometimes tense search for that dream. I think 
     it's fair to say that the ashes of Holocaust victims were 
     scattered on the wind. But that wind also carries on it their 
     prayers and purpose--above mountains and sea, across hundreds 
     or thousands of miles, so that the pain of history is 
     redeemed in the land of Israel. It is a sacred place--for 
     them, for their people who live there, and for all the world. 
     So let us now resolve again that the day will never come for 
     Israel when the redemption is put at risk--when any of us 
     would ever have to repeat Schindler's cry and say: We could 
     have done more.
       I might say to you on a personal note that that imperative 
     has been clear since long before the Holocaust. I learned it 
     and I learned how long it has endured in an emotional moment 
     on top of Masada, when I stood on that great plateau where 
     the oath of new soldiers used to be sworn against the desert 
     backdrop and the test of history. I spent several hours with 
     my guide and friend Yadin Roman. On top, we argued, we 
     debated, at his insistence whether or not in fact Josephus 
     Flavius was correct in his account of the siege--whether 
     these really were the last Jews fighting for

[[Page S3898]]

     survival--whether they had escaped since no remains were ever 
     found. And we journeyed back and forth through the 
     possibilities and finally, after our journey through 
     history--which we resolved with a vote in favor of history as 
     recorded--Yadin motioned to me and said come over here and 
     stand with those that we were travelling with, and we stood 
     at the edge of the chasm looking out across the desert, 
     across to the mountains at the other side. And we stood as a 
     group, and altogether, at his command, we shouted across the 
     chasm--across the desert--across the silence--Am Yisrael 
     Chai. And back a slow, echoing voice speaking to us through 
     history came the word Am, Yisrael Chai. Israel lives. The 
     State lives. The people of Israel live. And that is the cause 
     of America, it is the cause of people of conscience all 
     across this planet, and that is why I am proud to be here 
     with you tonight.

  Mr. DeWINE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.

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