[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 110 (Wednesday, September 15, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9265-S9266]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ANTI-SEMITISM

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, today my subject is going to be one which we 
had hoped would not be facing us. But it still faces us today, and that 
is the age-old plague of anti-Semitism. Like so many other diseases, we 
thought it had been wiped off the face of the Earth. But it has 
returned in new and, unfortunately, virulent forms.
  In July of this year, Australia's largest synagogue in the west coast 
city of Perth was defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti that read ``6 
million more please with fries.'' Recently, in the United States, and 
at least 14 other countries, anti-Semitic incidents have been recorded, 
and the trend is not promising. Mass expulsions, forced conversions, 
bans on land ownership, job and housing discrimination all mark a 
people who have been singled out, not because of what they have done 
but because of who they are--Jews.
  Now, many of us who came of age in the post-World-War-II era harbored 
the illusion that the last remnants of anti-Semitism perished in 
Hitler's gas chambers. Many believed that what American GI's discovered 
in Nazi concentration camps was so horrendous and shocking that it 
finally put an end to what historian Robert Wistrich had dubbed ``the 
longest hatred''--that of anti-Semitism.
  Unfortunately, we are witnessing a rapid re-emergence of anti-
Semitism. From the Middle East where sermons from mosques single out 
Jews for death; to Paris, where Jewish schools are firebombed and 
Jewish children are routinely attacked, to the conference against 
racism in Durban, South Africa, which quickly became a carnival 
attacking Israel; to the inordinate number of anti-Israeli resolutions 
in the U.N. General Assembly, to U.S. college campuses, where anti-
Israel rallies become forums with chants that disintegrate into cries 
of ``Death to the Jews'', anti-Semitic acts have become commonplace and 
even fashionable once again. As Natan Sharansky wrote in Commentary 
magazine, November 2003, ``Israel has become the world's Jew and anti-
Zionism is simply a substitute for anti-Semitism.''
  In Washington, the recent attacks on Doug Feith and the so-called 
neo-conservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle charging 
Jewish DoD officials with manipulating U.S. intelligence in order to 
``force'' the United States to take out Saddam in Iraq contain familiar 
anti-Semitic overtones. The fact is the Senate Intelligence Committee, 
after an exhaustive review of pre-war U.S. intelligence, found 
absolutely no evidence of pressure being put on intelligence analysts 
to change their official assessments by any officer of the 
administration.
  The Jewish state has tried in earnest to sacrifice ``land for 
peace''. We witnessed Prime Minister Barak's offer to Chairman Arafat: 
shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, Muslim control of the Temple Mount, 
97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, and a land swap in the Negev for 
a corridor around Jerusalem that couldn't be given away, a ``right of 
return'' for thousands of Palestinian refugees, and a compensatory 
package for those that couldn't be re-absorbed. The offer was so 
generous that many were privately apprehensive about what would become 
of Israel if Arafat were to have accepted it. Yet, Arafat walked away 
from the negotiating table and responded with violence which has 
remained unmitigated ever since. Over 1,000 innocent Israelis have lost 
their lives for simply riding on buses, or going out to eat pizza with 
their families.
  Under Article 51 of the U.N. charter, a nation's primary 
responsibility is to protect the lives of its citizens. When Israel 
tried to do that, by building a defensive barrier to keep out 
terrorists, which has resulted in a 90 percent decrease in terrorist 
attacks, the U.N. General Assembly voted to refer it to the 
International Court of Justice, in the Hague. The ICJ declared Israel's 
security fence ``immoral'' and demanded that it be removed. The 
security fence will disrupt the Palestinian's travel, but inconvenience 
is not final, death is.
  The ICJ decided that only Israel should be singled out for moral 
opprobrium--for building a security fence to defend the lives of its 
civilian population. This is occurring while Muslims with less dark 
pigment in their skin are systematically murdering Muslims with more 
dark pigment in their skin, in the Darfur region of the Sudan, to the 
tune of 1,000 a week. When a Jew or Israel is judged by a different, 
more stringent standard than that used to judge any other person or 
nation, there is just one term for it: anti-Semitism.
  Unfortunately, the scourge of anti-Semitism is prolonged when the 
institutions we depend upon for community and regional stability are 
infected by it. Take for example the United Nations Relief and Works 
Agency, UNRWA.
  The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was established in 1949 to 
provide humanitarian services to Arabs who left their homes during the 
war against Israel's independence. UNRWA is the only U.N. agency 
assigned to serve only one class of people, and the

[[Page S9266]]

only refugee agency whose mandate does not include the resettlement of 
its wards. Fifty-four years after its founding, UNRWA is providing 
assistance to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who 
left. Soon it will be providing services to the grandchildren of the 
grandchildren. All other refugees are the responsibility of the U.N. 
High Commissioner for Refugees; who serves 21.8 million persons in 120 
countries with the aim of resettling them.
  This situation, unintended at first, is perpetuated now by a 
combination of naivete, inertia and ill design. It is responsible in 
large measure for the intractable nature of Palestinian and Arab claims 
against the State of Israel, and makes the Palestinians tools in the 
continuing Arab struggle to delegitimize and ultimately eliminate 
Israel. The difficulties created for the Palestinian people by this are 
legion.
  With the exception of Jordan, Arab states in which they live have 
refused to grant citizenship to them or to their descendants born after 
1948.
  In some countries, Lebanon in particular, laws strictly limit the 
professions these persons may enter, the schools they may attend, or 
the places they may live.
  UNRWA schools, according to the State Department, provide children 
with textbooks that ``contain anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish content.'' 
This is a mild statement. In fact, many of the texts contain 
exceptionally lurid and hateful propaganda.
  UNRWA-administered camps are filled with weapons, as has been 
acknowledged by UNRWA personnel in statements to the media. The 
Government of Israel has charged that UNRWA warehouses have been and 
are being used to store weapons and bomb making material.
  Each year UNRWA-financed projects, such as the Union of Youth 
Activities Centers, sponsor gigantic ``right of return'' rallies 
throughout the West Bank and Gaza, encouraging people to believe the 
existence of Israel is temporary and will be reversed by the U.N.
  UNRWA is financed by voluntary contributions and, according to U.N. 
records, the United States has consistently contributed about 25 
percent of UNRWA costs. In 2002, that amounted to $110 million. UNRWA 
is funded annually, providing an opportunity for countries to examine 
the mandate, propose changes, and decide whether or not it will renew 
funding. It is time to initiate a thorough investigation into the 
finances of this agency. We must work to eliminate institutional hatred 
as exemplified by the anti-Semitic culture resident within UNRWA.
  Some will say that America would not be targeted by terrorism if it 
did not support Israel to the degree that it does. If we stand by and 
witness this hatred without intervening or supporting our democratic 
ally then we would become as venal as the rest of the world. 
Appeasement of hatred and murder would only come back to haunt us just 
as appeasement to terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s did on 9/11. Giving 
in to the prevailing, fashionable wind of anti-Semitism and anti-
Zionism would directly contradict the ideals that this country has been 
founded upon.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.

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