[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 63 (Thursday, April 19, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E795]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




HONORING M.J. ROSENBERG AND THE SENTIMENT OF HIS ARTICLE ``BLESSED ARE 
                           THE PEACEMAKERS''

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. LOIS CAPPS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 19, 2007

  Mrs. CAPPS. Madam Speaker, I rise today to commend the sentiments 
expressed in the following article by M.J. Rosenberg, the Director of 
Israel Policy Forum's Washington Policy Center, and a tireless advocate 
for peace in the Middle East. In the column, entitled ``Blessed are the 
Peacemakers,'' he skillfully highlights the need to engage in 
aggressive diplomacy if we are to achieve peaceful results in the 
region. I applaud Mr. Rosenberg for his bold stance for peace and would 
encourage my colleagues to inform themselves of his valuable insights.

                      Blessed Are the Peacemakers

       You know what they say: no good deed goes unpunished.
       That is certainly the case with Speaker of the House Nancy 
     Pelosi and her visit to Syria.
       At a time (the Easter-Passover recess) when dozens of House 
     members and Senators are visiting foreign capitals and 
     discussing policy with foreign leaders, Pelosi is being 
     skewered for, in the words of the Washington Post's editors, 
     ``substituting her own foreign policy for that of a sitting 
     Republican President.''
       The Post accuses Pelosi of ``try[ing] to introduce a new 
     U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East.''
       Heaven forefend! Things are going so swimmingly in the 
     Middle East that the last thing anyone needs is for the 3rd 
     highest official in the United States trying to resuscitate 
     diplomacy.
       The specific objection is to her meeting with the Syrian 
     leader, Bashar Assad. Of course, few could object to what she 
     told Assad--that he should stop trouble making in Iraq and 
     Lebanon, that the Israeli government is ready for 
     negotiations, that Israel has no bellicose intentions toward 
     Syria and that Syria should use its influence to free Israeli 
     prisoners.
       In fact, David Hobson, a Republican from Ohio who 
     accompanied Pelosi, said that the Speaker did not stray very 
     far from Bush administration policy. Hobson said Pelosi ``did 
     not engage in any Bush bashing she did not . . . bash [Bush] 
     policies as they relate to Syria.''
       Instead, Hobson said, Pelosi urged Assad to curb the number 
     of suicide bombers who cross the Syrian border into Iraq to 
     ``murder our troops and the Iraqi people.''
       Republican House leader, John Boehner, admitted that there 
     was nothing wrong with legislators in general visiting Syria. 
     ``It's one thing for other members to go,'' Boehner said, 
     ``but you have to ask yourself, `Why is Pelosi going?''
       The answer isn't that hard. She went for the same reasons 
     as Tom Lantos (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on 
     Foreign Affairs, as Henry Waxman (D-CA), the most senior 
     Jewish Member of the House, as Keith Ellison (D-MN), the 
     first Muslim-American in Congress, as Louise M. Slaughter (D-
     NY), Rules Committee Chair, as Nick J. Rahall II (D-WV), the 
     senior Arab-American in Congress, and Senior Defense 
     Appropriator David Hobson (R-OH). She went to advance US 
     interests in the Middle East, believing that we can perhaps 
     get more out of Syria by engaging it than by shunning it.
       The critics are feigning outrage because they don't like 
     Pelosi (CNN, in particular, seems to have a problem with a 
     female Speaker) and because, by visiting Syria, Pelosi has 
     revived one of the Baker-Hamilton Report's prescriptions for 
     ending the Iraq war: engaging Iran and Syria.
       Baker-Hamilton recognizes that Syria and Iran can do more 
     to impede the extrication of our soldiers and marines from 
     Iraq than any other countries on the planet (with the 
     exception of Iraq itself).
       On the other hand, if they choose to, they can ease our way 
     out of Iraq and help prevent that country's further descent 
     into chaos and civil war.
       The Israeli government added to the Pelosi controversy by 
     saying that Pelosi did not carry any private messages from 
     Jerusalem to Damascus. But the Israelis have been using 
     intermediaries to convey information to the Syrians for a 
     long time. It is inconceivable that the highest ranking 
     American in memory to visit Damascus would visit Israel, en 
     route to Syria, and not be asked to convey a message to 
     President Assad from Prime Minister Olmert.
       One can only hope that she was carrying messages from 
     Israel. Why wouldn't the Israelis seize that opportunity?
       Pelosi's visit strengthened America's position in the 
     region, and likely helped Israel on prisoners, on Hezbollah, 
     and in its effort to avoid another war like last summer's. It 
     was a gutsy move by the new Speaker and one that deserves 
     commendation, not criticism from those who are committed to 
     the whole litany of failed policies of recent years. One 
     would think that some of these pundits would look at the 
     sheer carnage they delivered in Iraq--the 3200 American dead 
     and the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians--and be 
     shamed into shutting up. But no such luck.
       In this context, and on this Good Friday, it is worth 
     recalling Jesus' words in Matthew 5:9, ``Blessed are the 
     peacemakers for they will be called the children of God.''
       That is not exactly what the critics are calling Pelosi. 
     But, the New Testament notwithstanding, peacemakers are 
     rarely praised in their own time while the cheerleaders for 
     unnecessary wars are never, held accountable for them.
       Pelosi is too smart to expect plaudits for trying to deter 
     war rather than simply standing firm behind a status quo that 
     will inevitably produce the next one.
       Readers of this column know that I like to hearken back to 
     the great missed opportunity of 1971. That was when Prime 
     Minister Golda Meir rebuffed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's 
     call on Israel to pull back from the Suez Canal. Sadat said 
     that in exchange for a pullback of just a few miles--which 
     would enable Egypt to re-open the canal--he would begin 
     negotiating a peace agreement with Israel.
       This week Yediot Achronot revealed new information about 
     the missed opportunity. Zeev Tzahor reports that then-
     American Secretary of State, William Rogers, was so disturbed 
     by Golda's rejection that he enlisted Israel's first Prime 
     Minister, David Ben Gurion, to try to persuade her to, at 
     least, seriously consider the offer.
       Let the Yediot columnist, Zeev Tzahor, tell the rest of the 
     story:
       ``The 85-year-old Ben-Gurion was retired . . . His 
     relations with Golda were poor, and he was not particularly 
     eager to speak with her. Rogers implored him. The Egyptian 
     initiative is a one-time opportunity, he said, but Golda has 
     taken a dismissive, supercilious view of it. She admires you, 
     maybe she'll heed your advice. Ben-Gurion acquiesced, and 
     asked his aides to put him in touch with Golda in Jerusalem.
       ``The brief conversation between them was acerbic. The 
     people present in the room heard Ben-Gurion repeat why she 
     ought to begin negotiations with Egypt . . . While the people 
     present in the room could not hear what Golda was saying on 
     the other side of the line, it was clear to them that she was 
     not interested in promoting the Egyptian initiative.
       ``Ben-Gurion lost his patience, lambasted Golda and said 
     she was leading Israel to catastrophe, and terminated the 
     conversation. For some reason, he placed the receiver down on 
     the table and not in its cradle. The people present in the 
     room heard Golda calling, ``Ben-Gurion, Ben-Gurion,'' but he 
     refused to pick up the telephone again. He just kept 
     repeating, ``war is going to break out soon, war is coming.''
       It did. Israel lost nearly 3,000 men. Ben Gurion died a few 
     weeks later. Israel ended up relinquishing not just the west 
     bank of the Suez Canal, as Sadat had demanded but every last 
     inch of the Sinai peninsula.
       Until this week, I had never heard that Secretary of State 
     William Rogers tried so hard to help Israel avert 
     catastrophe. All I recalled about him was that the pro-Israel 
     community despised him because he was thought to have applied 
     pressure on Israel.
       Little did I know that the pressure was in the form of the 
     wise counsel of David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the Jewish 
     state.
       I hope Pelosi is not daunted by the criticism emanating 
     from all the usual suspects. Her delegation's visit to the 
     Middle East advanced America's interests and Israel's too. As 
     they like to say in that region: the dogs bark but the 
     caravan moves on.

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