[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 87 (Friday, June 20, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1283-E1284]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         ISRAEL--A CORNERSTONE OF U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL P. FORBES

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 20, 1997

  Mr. FORBES. Mr. Speaker, I submit for my colleagues' consideration 
remarks I made June 8, 1997 before the Great Neck Synagogue Men's Club. 
My support for Israel is no secret among my friends in Congress. We 
cannot ignore the challenge that has been placed before us if we are to 
see Israel survive as a free and flourishing democratic state. Israel 
has always been, and must remain, a cornerstone of United States 
national security policy.

          Israel and the Middle East: A View From Capitol Hill

       Good morning ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to be 
     here among so many friends at a congregation known throughout 
     the greater New York area for its strong ties to the Land of 
     Israel. Your record of generous giving to Israeli causes and 
     your commitment to a strong U.S.-Israeli relationship are 
     well known.
       Your congregation has always embodied the essence and 
     vitality of ``Am Yisrael Chai'' and the sharing, giving 
     spirit ``Tikkum Olam.'' By your very example you have been a 
     light unto our community. Through good times and bad, times 
     of sadness and hope, the Great Neck Synagogue has stood by 
     Israel in its eternal quest for peace with security.
       Though many of you share different political opinions about 
     how peace in the Middle East might finally be achieved, you 
     stand united--indeed America stands united--on the need to 
     maintain Israel's economic and military strength as a hedge 
     against the uncertainties of the future.
       My friends, we can never allow politics of the moment to 
     obscure three essential facts of our time: first, that Israel 
     exists today as a sovereign, democratic, and Jewish state 
     precisely because it has never allowed its fundamental 
     security interests to be compromised; second, that peace, 
     particularly in the Middle East, has never flowed from 
     weakness; and third, that support for a strong, self 
     confident Israel has always been, and must remain, a 
     cornerstone of United States national security policy.
       Israel exists today not because of the world's caring or 
     generosity toward the Jewish People, but in spite of its 
     neglect and indifference. We must never forget the basic 
     truth.
       As we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Marshall 
     Plan this week, we must remember that the United States 
     stepped forward to rebuild Europe after the war--and 
     particularly Germany--a full year before it gave any thought 
     to relief for Germany's victims through the creation of a 
     Jewish state. The lesson is clear: Israel's fate must always 
     rest with Israel and with those who care for her; it can 
     never be entrusted to the presumed good will of others.
       History, my friends, is sometimes a cruel, but honest 
     teacher. I am particularly honored to be here today to share 
     with you some thoughts on the state of U.S.-Israeli 
     relations, the Oslo process, and events unfolding in the 
     Middle East, from the vantage point of Capitol Hill. At the 
     outset, I must confess that I stand before you with more than 
     a little concern.
       Concern because a century after the First Zionist Congress, 
     nearly 50 years since the founding of Israel, 30 years after 
     the miraculous triumph of the IDF in the Six Day War, 20 
     years since Camp David and 4 years since the Oslo process 
     began--Israel still does not know peace.
       As we sit here this morning amid these comfortable and 
     serene surroundings, Israel is facing perhaps the greatest 
     threat to her survival yet experienced. It is a threat born 
     not only of external enmity and aggression, but sadly, of 
     internal division, social strife, political indecision and 
     confusion, and the calamity of peace gone unfulfilled.
       It is an unfortunate consequence of Israel's proud, but 
     troubled history that we have grown all too accustomed to the 
     hatred which her enemies harbor for the Jewish State--a state 
     whose very existence continues to be the anathema to the 110 
     million Moslems who surround her.
       Terrorist bombs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the murder of 
     Jewish school girls on a class outing, the knifing of Yeshiva 
     students on their way to the Kotel--these sights have become 
     as familiar to the younger generation of Israelis as the 
     weekly Vietnam body count was to my generation. My friends, 
     we are living a tragedy today with no satisfactory end in 
     sight.
       Lamentably, we have learned the sad truth that weapons and 
     military might alone can not bring peace. Sadder still, we 
     have learned that a peace reluctantly born and brazenly 
     violated by Israel's enemies is not peace either. There are 
     no good choices left for Israel today. She has been cheated 
     of the very hope, Hativka, for which her people proclaim in 
     song and for which all Jews everywhere yearn.
       Like you I have tried to make sense of the many 
     contradictions that have arisen as a result of the Oslo 
     process. I say Oslo process, and not peace process, because 
     while there exists today only one process, I believe that 
     there are many paths to peace--and I am a fervent believer in 
     peace. But for it to be real, it must be lasting; for it to 
     be lasting, it must be honest; for it to be honest, it must 
     demonstrate at every turn the resolve of all of the 
     parties to abide by the commitments they made on the day 
     of the signing and in the subsequent agreements. 
     Tragically, for all concerned, this has not happened.
       Those Palestinians who had the chance to share in the 
     prosperity of a reconstructed Middle East, and in doing so to 
     accept something less than the full measure of their 
     political demands, have opted instead for a more sinister 
     path. They have chosen to use the dove of peace to conceal 
     their more menacing intentions, just as Mr. Arafat, himself, 
     chose to conceal a pistol beneath his jacket when he appeared 
     before the United Nations General Assembly in the mid-
     seventies.
       This song of peace is well worn in tune. Born of Hitler's 
     deception at Munich in the 1938, it survives today in the 
     guise of those who would have peace at any price, even if it 
     meant admitting the Trojan Horse of the PLO terrorism inside 
     the gates of the city. If we are to begin to understand what 
     is now happening to Israel and to grasp the historic forces 
     now at work to undo the dream of the last 100 years, we must 
     first see that there is a distinction between negotiation and 
     extortion, between reality and illusion, and between trust 
     and deception.

[[Page E1284]]

       I stand before you this morning as one who lives this 
     ordeal every day in Congress. My heart is heavy with the pain 
     and suffering endured by Israelis as together we struggle to 
     make sense of the turmoil that is gripping the region. And 
     yes, I grieve for the Palestinians, too, who have been 
     deceived by their leaders into believing that a terror 
     organization like the PLO can ever bring peace. It can't. And 
     the reason is simple. Terror and the ways of the gun are an 
     integral part of the PLO's identity, a past it can never 
     leave behind.
       The Palestinian community has yet to produce leaders whose 
     commitment to peace is more than simply a means of seeking 
     tactical advantage. It is a community which continues to be 
     dominated by revolutionaries, guerrilla fighters and 
     scoundrels of every stripe--and not true statesmen who 
     understand the art of compromise, are committed to a true 
     reconciliation, and tolerate dissent.
       I wish this were not so, but the record of the last four 
     years speaks of different reality. While Israel has 
     demonstrated a willingness to retreat from some of its most 
     cherished sites like Hebron and Shechem (Nablus), to accept 
     the presence of armed Palestinian militia at checkpoints 
     around the country, and to concede that a final status talks 
     will include Jerusalem, the PLO has only shown increasing 
     reticence to carry out its side of the bargain.
       The PLO has answered Israel's deeply rooted security 
     concerns with provocation after provocation, even questioning 
     whether there will even be room for a sovereign Jewish State 
     in the Middle East once the Oslo process is concluded. If you 
     doubt what I am telling you, you need look no farther than 
     the maps which the PLO uses at countless functions, both 
     official and unofficial, on its monuments, on its stationary 
     letterhead and on its television broadcasts.
       It is a map showing a sovereign State of Palestine 
     stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and 
     from the Banyas to Eliat, encompassing all of the present day 
     State of Israel. If this were not bad enough, the President's 
     own Special Coordinator for the Middle East, Mr. Dennis Ross, 
     has been photographed with Yasir Arafat sitting beneath these 
     maps apparently unmoved by the implication of their sinister 
     message.
       I believe that at no time during the Cold War would an 
     American diplomat ever have been found posing beneath a map 
     of the Baltic States, festooned in the colors of the former 
     Soviet Union. The same might be said for Berlin and 
     Afghanistan--for South Korea and Hong Kong in the case of 
     China--and for South Vietnam when it came to claims made by 
     the Hanoi Government before our withdrawal from the War.
       My friends, I am deeply concerned that Israel and the 
     United States are now living an Alice in Wonderland 
     existence, where up is down and down is up--where is good is 
     bad and bad is good. It is a contradiction that has bedeviled 
     me for the past four years about which I refuse to remain 
     silent.
       As the principal House sponsor of the Middle East Peace 
     Compliance Act of 1995, I tried to bring some sense to our 
     nation's Middle East policy. I asked my colleagues to 
     consider the folly of providing the terrorist PLO with $500 
     million in U.S. Government assistance while making virtually 
     no provision for the accountability of the funds and 
     providing no honest mechanism to assess whether the PLO was 
     in fact complying with the spirit and the letter of Oslo.
       For this I was widely chastised by many Members as well as 
     by Administration officials: for attempting to bar all 
     funding to the PLO, for insisting that no funds go to 
     individuals alleged to have killed or injured Americans or 
     for trying to prevent projects and activities that were not 
     strictly humanitarian in nature.
       Well, time has vindicated my position. Just two weeks ago 
     an audit conducted the PLO itself found that $350 million 
     dollars in international aid has been stolen from the 
     Palestinian coffers or misused by their leaders--many of them 
     took money to buy grand villas and fancy automobiles. At the 
     same time we see that incidences of PLO-inspired violence are 
     continuing to increase with not only Israelis being killed, 
     but also Palestinians who dare to sell land to Jews.
       Yasir Arafat continues to undermine Oslo by praising 
     Palestinian suicide bombers as martyrs and heroes and by 
     paying homage to Hamas leader Sheik Yassin. Arafat calls upon 
     his public to unite around the cause of Jerusalem--all of 
     Jersualem--as the capital of a Palestinian state.
       Would you believe that a senior Arafat official recently 
     leveled the absurd accusation that Israel sells gum in the 
     West Bank and Gaza laced with an aphrodisiac! Unfortunately, 
     this is but a mild version of the anti-Israel vitriol which 
     regularly pours out from the Egyptian Press and is frankly 
     indistinguishable from the anti-Semitic diatribes of medieval 
     European demagogues or Der Stuerner, the Nazi propaganda 
     paper.
       My friends, I can go on and on listing the PLO violations 
     of Oslo and Arafat's incendiary rhetoric. This is a matter of 
     public record and the record is indisputable. That is, unless 
     you hail from the U.S. State Department, which continues to 
     insist in report after report to the Congress that Arafat and 
     the PLO are in virtual compliance with their Oslo 
     commitments.
       Though the New York Times has only recently acknowledged 
     that the PLO has not changed its covenant calling for the 
     destruction of Israel, the State Department continues to 
     cling to the vain notion that Arafat's word is his bond. The 
     Administration still insists that the promise of the 
     Palestinian National Council (PNC) to change the covenant is 
     an adequate substitute for actually changing the covenant.
       We cannot ignore the challenge that has been placed before 
     us if we are to see Israel survive as a free and flourishing 
     state.
       To the extent that the United States is complicit in 
     helping Arafat achieve his objectives, we are obliged as 
     citizens, as friends of Israel, as Americans concerned with 
     the moral, political and strategic posture of our own 
     country, to act soon to restore common sense to our otherwise 
     misguided Middle East policy.
       These are the actions which I am now talking, and which I 
     intend to pursue in the weeks ahead, toward this goal:
       First, I have notified the Foreign Operations 
     Appropriations subcommittee, of which I am a member, of my 
     desire to suspend U.S. aid to the PLO until it meets the 
     compliance standards laid down in the Oslo Accords. Last 
     month I added my name to a bi-partisan letter co-signed by 15 
     House members urging the president to cut aid to the PLO;
       Second, I do not endorse the current effort by the 
     Administration to cut $50 million from Israel's aid package 
     for next year--aid which is sorely needed to maintain 
     Israel's strong defense posture in the face of renewed 
     threats by Syria and Iraq and vote to ensure that adequate 
     funds are made available to facilitate the eventual move of 
     the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as directed by 
     Congress in legislation last year;
       Third, I am continuing to support efforts to bolster 
     counter-terrorism cooperation between the U.S. and Israel. To 
     this end, I urge the Justice Department to conduct a review 
     of all cases in which current or past members of the PLO are 
     alleged to have harmed Americans or their property. I want to 
     know the level of cooperation that U.S. law enforcement 
     agencies have received from the PLO in their investigation 
     and in requests for extradition; and, urge the Administration 
     to examine the threat to U.S. security posed by the 
     increasing numbers of weapons pouring into the Palestinian 
     controlled areas. In particular, I am concerned by reports 
     that the PLO has acquired surface-to-air missiles which have 
     the potential to down civilian air traffic transiting through 
     the Middle East and elsewhere. With the cause of the TWA 
     disaster still unknown, I feel it is prudent to keep a 
     spotlight on this critical national security issue.
       Dear friends, let me conclude by saying that I feel 
     privileged to be able to lead the fight for a cause in which 
     I believe so deeply. For me, the U.S.-Israel relationship is 
     more than just a slogan, it is an historic commitment of two 
     nations to the cause of peace, freedom, and security, I don't 
     have to tell you we are living through difficult times. They 
     are difficult times for many nations around the world, 
     particularly for Israel, which continues to live under the 
     threat of war.
       Just last week Israel's Chief of Staff spoke publicly of 
     the increasingly menacing military build-up along the border 
     with Syria. Likewise, countries from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, 
     and Iraq to Iran, continue to acquire advanced long-range 
     weaponry, capable of striking anywhere in Israel, despite the 
     region's supposed move toward peace. Therefore, it is all the 
     more important that we not forget the history which brought 
     us to this point in time--and the lessons learned--as we 
     begin to build a new future.
       It was exactly 30 years ago this week that the Jewish State 
     found itself caught in a life or death struggle as the Arab 
     armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, backed by the Soviet Union 
     and its allies sought to destroy her. I remember those 
     terrifying hours of the 1967 war well, as do most of you in 
     this room. They are seared into our collective consciousness.
       Many of you probably can recall in vivid detail what you 
     were doing at precisely the moment when news flashed across 
     our television sets that the fledgling was now fighting for 
     its life against seemingly unsurmountable odds. Today, as we 
     recall those fateful hours, we must renew our pledge to fight 
     for Israel's survival, in our homes, in our places of 
     worship, in our State and on Capitol Hill.
       We must do everything in our power to see that the 
     insecurity of those years do not return. For my part, I am 
     committed to do whatever is necessary to perpetuate a strong 
     Israel and a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. It is my hope 
     that during the difficult weeks and months ahead I will be 
     able to call upon each and every one of you, your rabbis and 
     synagogue leaders, to guide me through the thicket of Middle 
     East politics so that I can better serve the cause of peace 
     and U.S.-Israel friendship. Together, we can achieve 
     miraculous things.
       Thank you for the opportunity to share a few thoughts with 
     you this morning. May the coming festival of Shavuot pass 
     peaceful for Israel. May you all know peace. Shalom.

     

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