[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 64 (Friday, May 17, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E833-E834]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


GABRIEL EREM'S ``LETTER FROM THE BALCONY'' ON THE CRISIS FACING JEWS IN 
                       EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 16, 2002

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I recently received an insightful essay 
entitled ``Letter From the Balcony'' from my dear friend Gabriel Erem, 
the editor and publisher of Lifestyles magazine and a prominent 
journalist. In this document, Mr. Erem discusses the current situation 
facing Jews in Israel and in Europe and their treatment by their Arab 
neighbors in the Middle East and their treatment by their fellow 
citizens in western Europe.
   The American people have watched in horror and dismay as the people 
of Israel have suffered terrorist attack after terrorist attack. We 
have voiced our outrage at the increasing number and violence of the 
racist atrocities that have been perpetrated against Jews by our allies 
in western Europe. As Americans, we have a responsibility to support 
those who uphold the institutions and the principles of democracy--and, 
as we have repeatedly emphasized, Israel is the only democracy in the 
Middle East. There is a commonality of values that binds us 
inextricably with the people of Israel. As Americans, we have a firm 
commitment to tolerance and understanding, and for us the brutal 
intolerance we have seen from our European allies toward their own 
citizens is truly sickening.
  Mr. Speaker, the tone of Mr. Erem's essay is sorrow, not anger. He 
brings to this discussion a personal feeling that I understand at the 
most fundamental level. Gabriel Erem lost 186 relatives in the 
notorious Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz. He has suffered first-
hand the horrendous consequences of intolerance and hate.
  Sadly, our world has not seen the end of such intolerance and 
violence. As we continue the struggle against the forces of chaos, 
prejudice and terrorism thrust upon us by the tragic events of 
September 11th, we have seen the blind and vicious hatred against 
Israel increase. We have seen anti-Semitism in Europe erupt. We have 
watched in amazement as the governments of our European allies have 
supported the perpetrators, not the victims, as blood and horror are 
unleashed against our democratic ally, Israel. We have watched as these 
same European governments have stood silent while their own Jewish 
citizens have been targeted and abused and as Jewish institutions and 
businesses are attacked by mobs.
  Mr. Speaker, Gabriel Erem's essay, ``Letter From the Balcony'' is of 
great significance, and I would like to share it with my colleagues in 
the House. I ask that it be placed in The Record. I urge all of my 
colleagues in the House to read and carefully consider his valuable 
words.>

                       ``Letter from the Balcony''

                            by Gabriel Erem

       I can't sleep tonight. It is a rainy, gloomy night in 
     Basel, Switzerland. I have just seen heart-breaking news 
     photos of the funeral of the 18-year-old niece of Israel's 
     soft-spoken United Nations Ambassador Yehuda Lancry, victim 
     of the recent suicide bombing in Haifa. She was a pretty 
     girl. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now she 
     is one of 466 victims of Arab terror murdered in cold blood 
     since former Prime Minister Barak offered Arafat a deal for a 
     Palestinian State. The response from Arafat and his ilk has 
     also been 3,827 innocent Israelis maimed for life while they 
     were in cafes, supermarkets, pizzerias and buses.
       I step out to take a deep breath. I am standing on the 
     balcony of the 976-year old Drei Konige Hotel, on the exact 
     same spot where Theodor Herzl once stood back in 1896. At the 
     time, as a journalist, he was covering the infamous Dreyfus 
     trial and was so revolted by the rabid anti-Semitism of 19th 
     century Europe that he wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish 
     State), the book that became the blueprint for the creation 
     of the modern State of Israel. Who would have thought that in 
     2002 Jews living in the former Soviet Union and Poland and 
     Germany are safer than those living in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv 
     and Haifa?
       I am looking at the murky waters of the Rhine, thinking of 
     how little the world has changed. Behind me in my hotel room 
     a strange Arabic language music video is blaring on my TV 
     set. I return to the room to watch how Egypt's Nile TV (one 
     of at least eight Arabic language channels offered via 
     satellite in Switzerland) is repeatedly running a strange 
     video clip backed by a hundred-piece orchestra, with a singer 
     in a wailing voice extolling the struggle of Palestinian 
     ``freedom fighters.'' In a masterfully edited video montage, 
     Israeli soldiers are firing at innocent Palestinian children 
     as if they were target practicing. A Palestinian child is hit 
     by a hail of bullets and in grainy, documentary-like slow 
     motion falls to the ground to the wailing sounds of the 
     orchestra in the background.
        The lead singer weeps and a new ``martyr'' is born.
       I flip the channel. There is an Arabic language 
     documentary, showing a Palestinian suicide-kindergarten, 
     where the curriculum focuses mainly on marching to patriotic 
     war songs and preparing children for ``martyrdom operations'' 
     against the Jewish enemy. The classroom walls are wallpapered 
     with posters of young Palestinian youngsters who blew 
     themselves up as human bombs. In one shot there is a placard 
     next to the blackboard, depicting a swastika and the Star of 
     David dripping in blood side by side.
       On the next channel, the master media manipulator Saeb 
     Erakat is shouting at the camera, with a wall-size poster of 
     Jerusalem behind him, declaring Yasser Arafat the 
     ``democratically elected leader of his people.'' And the 
     world believes him!
       The kaffiyeh-clad commentator on the Kuwaiti channel is 
     shedding crocodile tears for their suffering Palestinian 
     brothers, conveniently forgetting the fact that his country 
     promptly cleansed itself of nearly all of its Palestinians in 
     the wake of the Gulf War in which Yasser Arafat 
     characteristically took the side of Saddam Hussein.
       The next news item is more cheerful however; it speaks of 
     the upcoming opening of Villa Moda, a super-luxury shopping 
     mall, one of the most opulent in the Middle East, owned by 
     the Majed al Sabah, the nephew of

[[Page E834]]

     the Emir of Kuwait, where those believers--who no longer want 
     to mingle with the riff-raff and travel to increasingly 
     dangerous places like London, Paris and New York--can spend 
     their American petro dollars to buy the latest Chanel bags.
       Then there is a commentary on why the Kuwaitis and their 
     Saudi brothers should not allow the American ``infidels'' to 
     use Arab soil to attack their Iraqi brethren. It would upset 
     the peace of their own fiefdoms. CNN's commentator laments 
     Iraqi children dying of hunger due to food shortages. On the 
     next Arabic channel Saddam Hussein's recently increased 
     premium payments to suicide bombers' families and his 
     announcement to give $25,000 to each homeless Palestinian are 
     praised with admiration.
       I can't fall asleep, so I keep changing the channels. The 
     European television stations are showing news footage of 
     French synagogues being burned at the hands of unseen 
     perpetrators and the unbelievable news that the French 
     convict Jean Marie Le Pen, who called the gas chambers of 
     Auschwitz a ``detail of history,'' came in second in the 
     first round of the French presidential election. ``Austrians 
     remember the times when the mass media of Paris fell all over 
     themselves calling Austria a hopeless Nazi-land,'' remarks 
     the Austrian journalist Ernst Trost in a rapid-fire 
     commentary aimed at the French.
       There is an item on German TV about a young Hasidic man 
     beaten savagely by ``persons unknown.'' British commentators 
     on the BBC are giving lessons in morality to Israeli Jews who 
     ``militarily conquered other peoples' land.'' I wonder, 
     ``What a blatant double standard! What was Great Britain 
     doing two decades ago sending its fleet half a world away to 
     fight a war in defense of its claims of conquest on the 
     Falklands?''
       I turn off the TV set and try to make sense of it all. How 
     little has changed in more than a century, since the days of 
     Herzl and Dreyfus. Firebombs hurled at Jewish schools and 
     synagogues in France. A school bus carrying Jewish students 
     in Paris bombarded with stones. Protestors at a Rome 
     demonstration dressed as suicide bombers. Orthodox Jews 
     assaulted on the streets of north London. In France police 
     reported nearly 360 crimes against Jews and Jewish 
     institutions in the first two weeks of April alone. A kosher 
     butcher's shop was shot at. Teenagers on an amateur Jewish 
     soccer team were assaulted with sticks and metal bars. 
     Attackers broke into the Finsbury Park District Synagogue in 
     north London, smashing windows, painting a swastika on a 
     lectern and throwing holy books, skullcaps and prayer shawls 
     on the floor. A British flag was left on the altar, prompting 
     speculation that right-wing nationalists were responsible.
       German Jews appeal to authorities to stop a spiral of 
     violence against Jewish targets. An assailant threw a Molotov 
     cocktail at a synagogue, a homemade bomb exploded at a Jewish 
     cemetery and two Jewish women were assaulted at a Berlin 
     subway station. A Berlin police official suggests that Jews 
     should stop wearing religious symbols to avoid attacks.
       Vandals throw red paint at a Holocaust memorial in the 
     northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, in the second attack on 
     Jewish monuments in Greece. In Canada, the land of tolerance, 
     synagogues are burning, Jews are being beaten. The German and 
     British governments are imposing a quiet boycott of Israel. 
     The Swiss are talking of putting punitive tariffs on Israeli 
     goods in public. Arafat and Kofi Annan are speaking of moral 
     equivalency. And while 21 Arab states sit on their hands and 
     their petrol billions instead of trying to better the 
     conditions of their Palestinian brethren, the newly freed 
     Yasser Arafat is screaming hateful insults, calling Jews 
     ``Nazis''.
       President Bush called for an all-out war on terrorism. Yet 
     due to great pressures from America's un-democratic but oil-
     rich allies in the Middle East, his Secretary of State pays a 
     visit to the arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. Along 
     with many, Arafat regards Zionism as a way of making 
     Palestinians pay for the Holocaust. Just a decade after he 
     established al Fatah, the predecessor of the PLO, the 
     ``leader of the Palestinian people'' consistently stated the 
     purpose of his life: ``The end of Israel is the goal of our 
     struggle, and it allows for neither compromise nor 
     mediation.'' As he explained to Italian journalist Oriana 
     Fallaci in 1972: ``We don't want peace. We want war, victory. 
     Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing 
     else.''
       It is dawn in Basel. A young couple are walking their dog 
     by the Rhine. The pretty blond lady holding the leash is in 
     about her eighth month of pregnancy. I look at her from my 
     hotel window and suddenly I am filled with envy. That child 
     who is about to be born into the world of this tiny nation 
     will never see war. After all, there has been no war in this 
     part of the world for centuries. There is no September 11th 
     lurking in the future and their baby carriage will not likely 
     be blown up by anyone.
       I think of the hundreds of Jews who were murdered and the 
     thousands maimed by Arab terror since the peace deal that 
     they demanded was offered to them. I think of the Six Million 
     who died in the Holocaust. The world never learns.

     

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