[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 6, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S20-S21]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        ISRAEL AND GRIFFIN BELL

  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise for a few moments to address two 
subjects, the first will be about Israel and the second about the 
passing of Griffin Bell.
  All of us are deeply concerned with the conditions in the Middle 
East, most recently in the last 12 days, the actions in Gaza, the loss 
of human life and the conflict.
  But there is a necessary perspective we all must understand. In 
November of 2007, I stood at the last Israeli outpost overlooking Gaza. 
In fact, if you watch Fox or CNN or NBC or ABC tonight, where you will 
see those reports coming from, I stood on that very spot just a little 
over a year ago.
  Also, I went to Sderot, the Israeli settlement outside Gaza, that 
since mid year last year has received 1, 2, 3, 10, 15 missile attacks, 
random attacks coming out of Gaza dropping on this Israeli settlement 
for no reason at all but the absolute ability or desire to terrorize 
the Israeli people and destroy that settlement.
  What Israel has done by moving into Gaza is a major military 
operation. In some reports that you see on television or you read about 
in the papers, you would think it was unprovoked and unnecessary. The 
opposite is true. It has been provoked for 15 months by Hamas in Gaza. 
The Israelis have finally drawn a line in the sand and they have moved 
in to try to protect the best interests of their citizens.
  For perspective, Gaza and Sderot are a little bit like Arlington and 
Washington. You are not talking about a large land mass, you are 
talking about a very narrow, tight area. It would be similar to South 
Carolina and Georgia lobbing missiles back and forth.
  What would happen if one of those States did it? We would immediately 
react to protect our citizens and protect their lives and their 
livelihoods. That is what Israel is doing.
  I pray every night that somehow and some way we can be a catalyst for 
ultimately a lasting peace in the Middle East. But surrendering to 
terrorism or the acts of terrorism such as Hamas has been taking out on 
the Israeli people is no way to go. I support the Nation of Israel. I 
believe they are doing the right thing to confront head-on the terror 
that has been imposed on them.
  It should not be lost on any of us that the supplies that have gotten 
into Gaza through what is known as the Eisenhower Passageway, which is 
from Egypt into Gaza, have been military materials being flown in and 
then taken in through tunnels basically by operatives of Iran. Just as 
what happened in Lebanon a year ago with Hezbollah and the Lebanese, 
the same thing is happening today between Gaza and the Palestinians and 
the Israelis.
  The catalyst for the conflict is another nation, Iran. It wants to 
diffuse the focus on its producing of nuclear weapons and instead keep 
turmoil in the Middle East to use it to its benefit.
  As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I take very seriously 
my responsibility to look upon every nation in this world as a nation 
we should respect, as a nation we should dialogue with, and as a nation 
we should work with. But we cannot and we must not turn our head away 
from a nation that is causing terror to be invoked against innocent 
people such as Iran is doing against Israel through the Palestinians in 
Gaza.
  So I hope and pray these difficulties end tonight. I hope and pray 
there is not another loss of life. But as long as Hamas is unwilling to 
enter into a meaningful peace, a meaningful effort to stop the terror, 
one that can be trusted and verified, then Israel is doing precisely 
what it should be doing in the best interests of its people. It is 
doing no less than we in this Congress and America would do were we 
attacked in the same way in the same time. In the first part of my 
remarks, I stand in solidarity with the people of Israel in hope and 
prayer that the hostilities end but not because of surrender; because 
ultimately we confront terror and get people to lay down their arms, 
not for a day, not for a cease-fire but for generations to come.
  The second subject is, for me, a very sad subject but also a subject 
that brings a lot of joy to my heart. There is a great American by the 
name of Griffin Bell, known to many people in this room. I know you, 
Mr. President, being a former Attorney General in the State of 
Colorado, are familiar with Griffin Bell's record and jurisprudence in 
the United States for the last 75 years.
  Griffin Bell first rose to prominence in America when Jimmy Carter 
brought him from Georgia to become the Attorney General of the United 
States of America. He brought him in at a critical time in our 
country's history because Griffin Bell had done unbelievable things as 
a lawyer during difficult times in the South.
  Griffin Bell was the man whom Andy Young and the civil rights 
leadership of Atlanta and Ivan Allen, the mayor of Atlanta, turned to 
to write the plan for the desegregation of the Atlanta public schools. 
It was Griffin Bell who, as a lawyer but more so as a human being, 
worked through the difficult stress of those times of integration and 
the enforcement of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, to see to it 
that separate but equal ended and equal access to education prevailed 
for all.
  He did it in a way where Atlanta was one of the few major cities in 
America that had no violence, no conflict, and no academic loss because 
of the imposition of the desegregation guidelines that were imposed by 
the courts.
  Griffin Bell did something no one thought could be done. It was 
because of his ability to do that and find common ground and find 
understanding that Jimmy Carter brought him to Washington, DC, and 
appointed him Attorney General.
  When Griffin left and went back to his law firm of King & Spalding in 
Atlanta, there was not a single thing that happened in our major 
capital city and our State for four decades that Griffin Bell was not a 
major player and a major part of.
  During Olympics, when they came to Atlanta in 1996 and there were 
difficulties, to whom did the Olympic committee go to weed through the 
minefield of Washington to get the security assistance necessary for 
the Olympics and Atlanta? It was Griffin Bell.
  When there was a company that was in need of a forensic audit by a 
legal man who would come in and clean up a problem in their company, 
such as E.F. Hutton did, whom did they call? They called Griffin Bell. 
For the better part of the last six decades, Griffin Bell has been the 
most prominent lawyer in the State of Georgia and I would suggest one 
of the most prominent lawyers in the United States of America. His mark 
has been left on countless hundreds of thousands of lives in our 
country. Sadly, at 9:45 a.m. yesterday morning in Piedmont Hospital, 
Griffin Bell passed away. I know where he is now. He is in heaven and 
he is looking down. He would be the last person to want anybody in the 
Senate or the House or anywhere else bragging about him. But I sing his 
praise for the greatness he did for our State and the greatness he did 
for his country.

[[Page S21]]

  To his children and to his wife, I pass on my sincere condolences and 
my thanks for the support they gave to a great father and a great 
Georgian, Griffin Bell.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REED. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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