[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 29, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H3279-H3284]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CURRENT EVENTS AFFECTING AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield to my dear friend, Dr.
Virginia Foxx.
Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Congressman Gohmert, my classmate and friend. I
appreciate very much you yielding time.
Mr. Speaker, last week, I had the opportunity to visit a remarkable
public school in Kernersville, North Carolina. In addition to preparing
students academically for college, the North Carolina Leadership
Academy is publicly committed to giving their 400 students ``the
opportunity to develop true leadership qualities and become creative
thinkers and problem-solvers while retaining a sense of responsibility
for their families, their community, and their country.''
NCLA has an ambitious mission, and they are executing it so well that
last year this charter school had over 700 applicants for 95 openings.
The wait list has over 600 names, and is growing.
{time} 1630
It was a privilege to spend time with the remarkable students and
faculty of NCLA. I was truly impressed by their commitment to
scholarship, by the leadership skills of the students, and by the
remarkable academic progress that was on display.
All NCLA students in grades 7-12 participate in Civil Air Patrol, a
program established by Congress in 1946 that uses military-style
uniforms, customs, courtesies, ceremonies, and drill in order to
improve student leadership skills, fitness, and character. This program
is working.
NCLA places a strong emphasis on family involvement; and the level of
commitment demonstrated by parents, families, and the Piedmont
community at large was impressive.
Community engagement is a key to success of any school, and the
community's support for NCLA is a good reminder that decisions about
the education of our youth should remain local.
I have been a strong supporter of charter schools for my entire
legislative career. In the North Carolina State Senate, I supported
charters as one of the best hopes to genuinely reform our school
system.
In Congress, those of us who support charter schools should express
that support by ensuring that Federal policy encourages States to adopt
expansive charter laws.
Further, we need to ensure that Washington does not put up
bureaucratic roadblocks that would keep State, city, and county
governments from experimenting with new ideas and establishing
effective charter school programs.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot say enough about how impressed I was to spend
time with the educators of the North Carolina Leadership Academy,
individuals who seek daily to impress upon the students the values
encapsulated in the school motto of ``Scholarship, Leadership,
Citizenship.''
I expect many good things from the remarkable young scholar leaders
currently being educated by this wonderful school. The community will
reap the benefits of having this school in its midst for years to come.
Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate so much my colleague from North Carolina.
Having been a president of a university, she knows all about education.
It is certainly one of the areas where we are failing American youth
these days, and you would have thought that, if the Federal Government
were the answer to everybody's problems, then when President Carter
started the Department of Education, everything would have gotten
instantly better; but over 35 years later, it turns out the Federal
Government is not the answer to better education.
I have talked with enough high school students who also say the
Federal Government is not the answer to their food problems. I have met
with cafeteria workers and leaders who say that kids are not eating the
food. They are required to choose from lists of foods to put on the
plates that they had heretofore not heard of before that students don't
want, don't like.
The football players were saying last fall: How in the world can we
go to football practice and all we get is this piddly little bit of
meat and other stuff we can't eat?
So obviously, education, food has not been helped, certainly not
according to my constituents in east Texas, the vast majority; and
education itself does not seem to have made all that great or
remarkable progress since the Carter administration started the
Department of Education and Congress began putting strings on virtually
everything they did in the way of educational support.
The 10th Amendment had some real meaning and was really visionary. It
was the last of those first 10 Bill of Rights and, in essence, said
everything that is not specifically enumerated as a power of the
Federal Government is reserved to the States and the people; that is
because the genius of our
[[Page H3280]]
Founders collectively was the best answers are found locally, not by
bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
I was shocked to go online years ago and see that one of my school
districts was bragging that, gee, about half of their employees were
actually teachers. I was shocked. I would have thought that, if we
really cared about education, the big bulk of employees would be
teachers.
So I did further investigation and found out that before the national
Department of Education was created under Jimmy Carter, there was
between 70 and 80 percent of the Texas educational employees who were
teachers.
Naturally, when Washington gets involved, there are more requirements
for the State agency--education agency in each State; then with more
State education accountability and requirements to Washington, there
became more bureaucrats there, which meant there had to be more
bureaucrats in the local school districts.
If we want to ever get back to having the best education that we can
get for our dollar, we need to get back to observing the 10th
Amendment. The best educational accountability comes not from some
bureaucrat on his buttocks here in Washington, but from those who are
there locally that see what is happening in the school.
We have done enough damage. One of the disagreements I had with
former President George W. Bush, who I like and admire--I think it
unfortunate that people do not appreciate either his intelligence or
his very, very clever wit.
Unlike Mr. Gore, who seemed to have trouble being able to make good
enough grades to stay in graduate programs, former President Bush
didn't have any problem getting through and getting an MBA from
Harvard; though obviously, Harvard is not what it used to be when it
would embrace and allow debate from all sectors. Now, it is the liberal
sector, or they don't really appreciate you.
So, anyway, No Child Left Behind was a big mistake. When Governor
George W. Bush pushed accountability at the State level, he was acting
within the bounds of the Constitution.
I had hopes that this administration would actually keep the promise
that they would dismantle No Child Left Behind. It has been eased, but
not nearly what should have happened.
It turns out that the administration has been so busy with other
aspects that, apparently, it has not had the time to devote to
dismantling No Child Left Behind, as they might have hoped.
We have this story from today, April 29, 2014, Washington, D.C., from
Judicial Watch, ``Benghazi Documents Point to White House on Misleading
Talking Points.''
The article says that--as a release from Judicial Watch, that they
announced today that, on April 18, 2014, it obtained 41 new Benghazi-
related State Department documents.
They include a newly declassified email showing then-White House
Deputy Strategic Communications adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama
administration public relation officials attempting to orchestrate a
campaign to reinforce President Obama and to portray the Benghazi
consulate terrorist attack as being ``rooted in an Internet video and
not a failure of policy.''
Other documents show that State Department officials initially
described the incident as an attack, a possible kidnap attempt.
The documents were released Friday as a result of a June 21, 2013,
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against the Department of
State to gain access to documents about the controversial talking
points used by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for a series of
appearances on television--Sunday news programs--on September 16, 2012.
Judicial Watch had been seeking these documents since October 18,
2012. The Rhodes email was sent on Friday, September 14, at 8:09 p.m.,
with the subject line, ``Re: Prep call with Susan: Saturday at 4 p.m.
ET.''
The documents show that the prep was for Ambassador Rice's Sunday
news show appearances to discuss the Benghazi attack. The documents
list as a goal, ``to underscore that these protests are rooted in an
Internet video and not a broader failure of policy.''
I might insert parenthetically here that, actually, this must be
taken in context in 2012 because there was an election only weeks
following this incident, and the big campaign line that Osama bin Laden
is dead, GM is alive, al Qaeda is on the run, didn't look nearly as
tantalizing if it turns out al Qaeda--al Qaeda may be on the run, but
if they are, they are running toward American interests and killing an
American Ambassador and other State Department personnel.
This article goes on to say:
Rhodes returns to the ``Internet video'' scenario later in
the email, the first point in a section labeled ``Top-
lines.''
And here is the quote:
We have made our views on this video crystal clear. The
United States Government had nothing to do with it. We reject
its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and
reprehensible, but there is absolutely no justification at
all for responding to this movie with violence, and we are
working to make sure that people around the globe hear that
message.
Mr. Speaker, it also should be noted here that it was not only
sending Susan Rice out to mislead the American people before the
election into believing that this was not a failure of policy by the
Obama administration, which it clearly was, but actually, it was all
about a video.
To perpetuate this misleading, some might argue, fraudulent
presentation of anything but facts included producing a commercial with
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying the United States had nothing
to do with that video, repeatedly making the point to add cover to
their cover story that it was not a failure of policy by the Obama
administration that caused and failed to suppress the attack at
Benghazi, but it was some video by some lone person out in California
who must be stopped.
They spent tens of thousands of dollars running this commercial in
foreign countries to help give cover to what were the true facts, the
true facts being that this was nothing about a video; it was all about
a planned concerted attack, which it turns out may have even utilized
weapons that the United States provided to these rebels over many of
our objections on this House floor, and with the President saying he
really didn't need congressional support because he had Islamic
countries and France wanting us to get in there and provide weapons and
air cover to the al Qaeda-backed rebels.
{time} 1645
We knew there was al Qaeda involved. As we said on the floor back
during those days, we just don't know how extensive it is. We think we
ought to wait until we know how extensive the al Qaeda involvement is.
But this administration wouldn't have that. They moved ahead. They
furnished weapons. And it could very well turn out that there were
people in our party that said, okay, all right, if that is what you
want to do, but it certainly wasn't this congressional body that did
that.
The President got his will. They furnished weapons to rebels that
included al Qaeda. This administration refused to provide the security
that was requested by more than one person, but including Chris
Stevens, himself. It refused to provide it.
How bad would that look right before the election: A mere matter of
weeks before early voting started, and it turns out that not only did
they not provide security as requested, when it was requested, heck,
they may have even provided the weapons to the rebels who killed our
Ambassador. It was the first time an Ambassador had been killed since
the Jimmy Carter administration, and here it was happening again.
This administration knew exactly what would happen when America finds
out that an administration is toothless, is ineffectual, and has
actually brought assistance to radical Islamists becoming in charge of
a country. Because, after all, it was the Carter administration that
did as this administration did with Mubarak and Qadhafi in saying they
have got to go, pushed an ally out. It was not a very nice one by any
stretch, but an ally.
And then President Carter welcomed the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of
peace. So then for the first time in what was a long period, a radical
Islamist got control of a major country. That opened the door to many
thousands and thousands and thousands of Americans being killed in the
[[Page H3281]]
decades ahead. That kind of ineffectual foreign policy that Jimmy
Carter had saw the results at Benghazi.
But this article goes on to point out that:
Among the top administration PR personnel who received the
Rhodes memo were White House Press Secretary Jay Carney,
Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest, then-White House
Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Deputy
Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, then-National
Security Council Director of Communications Erin Pelton,
Special Assistant to the Press Secretary Howli Ledbetter, and
then-White House Senior Advisor and political strategist
David Plouffe.
The Rhodes communications strategy email also instructs
recipients to portray Obama as ``steady and statesmanlike''
throughout the crisis. Another of the ``goals'' of the PR
offensive, Rhodes says, is ``to reinforce the President and
Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with
difficult challenges.'' He later includes as a PR ``top-
line'' talking point:
``I think that people have come to trust that President
Obama provides leadership that is steady and statesmanlike.
There are always going to be challenges that emerge around
the world, and time and again, he has shown that we can meet
them.''
The documents Judicial Watch obtained also include a
September 12, 2012, email from former deputy spokesman at
U.S. Mission to the United Nations Payton Knopf to Susan
Rice, noting that at a press briefing earlier that day, State
Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland explicitly stated
that the attack on the consulate had been well planned.
The email sent by Knopf to Rice at 5:42 p.m. said:
``Responding to a question about whether it was an
organized terror attack, Toria said that she couldn't speak
to the identity of the perpetrators but that it was clearly a
complex attack.''
In the days following the Knopf email, Rice appeared on
ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX News, and CNN still claiming the assaults
occurred ``spontaneously'' in response to the ``hateful
video.''
And it is worth noting, there were people that used those words,
``steady'' and ``statesmanlike.'' And certainly this would have
appeared to be a real problem for the administration that someone
speaking soon after the attack and the murder, the assassination of
Chris Stevens and three American patriots, Ms. Nuland, not knowing that
she was supposed to use talking points and mislead the American public
and the world, spoke the truth because she hadn't gotten the email, the
talking points to mislead Americans and the world. So she spoke the
truth.
It was very clear, as it was to those in Libya, that this was a
complicated attack. It was well planned, well coordinated, and it had
nothing to do with the video.
This article goes on:
On Sunday, September 16, Rice told CBS's ``Face the
Nation":
``But based on the best information we have to date, what
our assessment is as of the present is, in fact, what began
spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had
transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as
you know, there was a violent protest outside of our Embassy
sparked by this hateful video.''
The Judicial Watch documents confirm that CIA talking
points that were prepared for Congress and may have been used
by Rice on ``Face the Nation'' and four additional Sunday
talk shows on September 16 had been heavily edited by then-
CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell. According to one email:
``The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable because they
seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the
CIA had warned about a specific attack on our Embassy. On the
SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had
taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be
happy to work with then deputy chief of staff to Hillary
Clinton, Jake Sullivan, and Rhodes to develop appropriate
talking points.''
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also contain
numerous emails sent during the assault on the Benghazi
diplomatic facility. The contemporaneous and dramatic emails
describe the assault as an ``attack.''
Just as State Department number two person in Libya said Chris
Stevens described it: We are under attack. There was nothing about a
video. The American people were duped right before the election, as was
the intent.
Back to the article:
September 11, 2012, 6:41 p.m., Senior Adviser Eric Pelofsky
to Susan Rice:
``As reported, the Benghazi compound came under attack and
it took a bit of time for the `annex' colleagues and Libyan
February 17 brigade to secure it. One of our colleagues was
killed--IMO Sean Smith. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was
visiting Benghazi this week is missing. U.S. and Libyan
colleagues are looking for him.''
Further down, it notes how much material is blacked out in so many of
the emails. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said: ``Now we know the
Obama White House's chief concern about the Benghazi attack was making
sure that President Obama looked good.'' ``And these documents
undermine the Obama administration's narrative that it thought the
Benghazi attack had something to do with protests or an Internet video.
Given the explosive material in these documents, it is no surprise that
we had to go to Federal court to pry them loose from the Obama State
Department.''
Well, that has led to this printing that I did of another Judicial
Watch FOIA request. This is an article from here in D.C.:
Judicial Watch announced today that on March 25, 2014, it
filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the
Federal Bureau of Investigation seeking agency records
related to the awarding of the Louis E. Peters Award in 2011
to Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland
Security Advisory Council. Elibiary is alleged to have close
ties to radical Islamist organizations, including the Muslim
Brotherhood.
And I will insert parenthetically here that, actually, when a Muslim
Brother, Morsi, was President of Egypt, a periodical there was bragging
about six top Obama officials who were Muslim Brothers, and one of them
was Mr. Elibiary from Texas.
This points out here:
Judicial Watch seeks the following documents in its June
24, 2013, FOIA request:
Any and all records regarding, concerning, or related to
the awarding of the Louis E. Peters Memorial Award to Mr.
Mohamed Elibiary on September 8, 2011.
Further down, it says:
Elibiary, who in his role as Homeland Security adviser has
regular access to classified information, most recently came
under fire in November 2013 for tweeting out the message that
America is an ``Islamic country with an Islamically compliant
constitution.'' In its December 2013 ``Special Report: U.S.
Government Purges of Law Enforcement Training Material Deemed
`Offensive' to Muslims,'' Judicial Watch identified Elibiary
as one of nearly a half dozen ``Islamist influence
operators'' within the Obama administration ``seeking to
advance an ideological agenda completely at odds with our
constitutional system.''
Of course, that was December of 2013 when actually it was December of
2012 when the Egyptian Muslim Brother-controlled government had a
periodical that talked about, a year before this, the six Muslim
Brothers who had such powerful influence and roles in this
administration.
This goes on to talk about Mr. Elibiary and his role in the Homeland
Security Department. Personally, I had an opportunity to question Janet
Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security more than once about Mr.
Elibiary.
And actually, on the night before one of our hearings, I had talked
to the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, a
great man, a great patriot, a former FBI agent. He understands what is
going on in this country. And he was alerted that Mr. Elibiary had
downloaded two documents from a classified database that Mr. Elibiary
only got access to because Janet Napolitano, to the best we can find
out, just unilaterally gave him a security clearance so he could go
into these Web sites. And he did it from his own computer, and he did
it at his home. They could tell all of this by the intelligence they
were able to gather, and it was clear he had downloaded two documents.
What was in an article and published was that the article writer said
that he had talked to someone in the national media who said that
Elibiary had shopped those two documents to this national media source,
and they didn't accept it. They were concerned about accepting
classified documents and printing them, and so they didn't.
{time} 1700
The next day at our hearing I brought this up to Secretary
Napolitano. She said she didn't know what I was talking about,
basically, and she would look into it. What she didn't know is that I
knew when she made those false statements that her chief of staff the
night before, her chief of staff had talked to Steve McCraw and had
told him, look, I know you are concerned--basically that is what he
said:
I know you are concerned, but I have given a full briefing
of what happened to the Secretary herself. She knows what is
going on. She is fully briefed on the matter.
So either Secretary Napolitano lied to me and the Congress in our
hearing
[[Page H3282]]
under penalty of perjury, or her chief of staff just completely made up
that he had just briefed the Secretary on this troubling security
breach.
I would like to think that if the Secretary, as here, had
unilaterally put what Egypt considered a member of the Muslim
Brotherhood into our very tight inner circle and given him a secret
security clearance without going through the normal vetting that is
supposed to be required, and if that person that she unilaterally got
that position had breached the protocol and downloaded documents from a
classified setting, that somebody, for Heaven's sake, would have
alerted the Secretary of Homeland Security. But she sat right there and
told me that, no, she didn't know anything about it.
The next time I asked her about it, however, she said she had looked
into it and there was nothing to it. Unfortunately for her, and
unfortunately for our country and its own security, no one had bothered
to properly look into the matter because the reporter who published the
article that he had talked to, a national media source, said Elibiary
tried to get him to publish the classified documents. Nobody called
that reporter. Nobody talked to that reporter. He probably wouldn't
have disclosed his source, but nobody bothered to even talk to the
reporter that knew Mr. Elibiary had shopped those documents.
If homeland security could be so poorly run at the highest level,
over its own security, is the rest of America really very safe? The FBI
in 2011 gave their highest civilian award, or one of the highest
awards, to this same person who was a featured speaker at the tribute
to the Ayatollah Khomeini. In fact, the tribute was entitled, ``A
Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary, Ayatollah Khomeini.'' Well,
there were no cameras allowed in that big tribute, so we don't know
exactly what Mr. Elibiary had to say in tribute to this great Islamic
visionary, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was responsible for kick-
starting this radical Islamic effort against the Great Satan, the
United States, from their way of thinking.
So he is entitled to the FBI's great tribute to civilians? It kind of
gives you a little insight, Mr. Speaker, into how in the world the FBI,
after the United States got two heads-ups from a foreign government
that was not necessarily our friend, that Mr. Tsarnaev had been
radicalized. They talked to Tsarnaev. The best we could get from the
hearings that we had when we questioned Director Mueller, the FBI
Director at the time--apparently they talked to Mr. Tsarnaev, and he
didn't confess to them that he had become radical. They talked to his
mother, and she didn't confess that he had become radical. And when I
said that you didn't even go out to the Muslim temples there in Boston
where the Tsarnaevs attended to ask questions--you can ask questions if
you had proper training. Oh, yes, that is right, because CAIR and ISNA
were identified by a United States District Court, that was upheld by
the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that CAIR and ISNA are front
organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood. Yes. CAIR and ISNA, they
regularly complain. They give instructions. They give insights to this
administration. And CAIR, particularly, had complained about things
that radical Islamists might find offensive in the FBI training
material, so they were purged.
A couple of us went through these documents that were purged, but we
were told the setting and the information was classified so I can't go
into it. But, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you it was shocking that some of
that stuff was purged. Some of it was stupid. It didn't have to be
there. But when, as one of our intelligence officers told me, we blind
ourselves to our ability to see our enemy, then when you go investigate
someone that you have been given a heads up is radicalized and is a
threat to kill Americans, you don't know what to ask. Because if you
knew what to ask, you would go to the mosque and say, who knew
Tsarnaev? Have you ever heard him talk about ``Qutb's Milestones,''
that publication he wrote, you know, the one that Osama bin Laden said
helped to radicalize him?
If you know about radical Islam, you would know the questions to ask.
But our FBI, our intelligence, they are not allowed to get that
information anymore because it might offend a radical Islamist. Thank
God for the moderate Muslims around the world who do not want radical
Islamists in charge of their country. And our friends that originally
helped to defeat the Taliban, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, are
in trouble because we have abandoned them, and this administration now
won't have anything to do with them. They fought the Taliban. They
defeated the Taliban, and the last great fight consisted of Northern
Alliance leader, General Dostum, a legend, riding with about 2,000
Northern Alliance tribesmen on horseback. Dostum said they had to go on
horseback because they knew soldiers on foot would never make it up the
hill, that mountain, to get to the Taliban stronghold. Their only
chance to get through the rocket-propelled grenades and the bullets was
to ride on horseback. And they knew many of them wouldn't make it, but
they really believed enough of them would that they could defeat the
Taliban. That is the kind of courage--and, yeah, they fight the Taliban
the way the Taliban fights. They are pretty tough folks. But they are
the enemy of our enemy, the Taliban.
So this administration doesn't really want to have anything to do
with the Northern Alliance that were our allies. Instead, they keep
wanting to cut some kind of a deal with the Taliban. And all the
Northern Alliance said was, Look, you know, you helped force this
constitution upon Afghanistan that centralizes the government when we
are really more tribal, we are more regional. But you gave us a
government where the president gets to appoint every governor, every
mayor, every police chief, most of the higher level teachers, a slate
of many of the legislators that has some powers of the purse. All they
ask is let us elect our own governors, mayors, and pick our own police
chiefs, and that way the Taliban just can't knock off the president or
co-op the president and take back over Afghanistan, which is what is
about to happen the way this administration has so poorly handled our
foreign policy.
They said that if you could at least push through an amendment that
let us elect our governors, mayors, and get our own police chiefs, then
we could be regionally strong. So maybe the Taliban gets one region,
but the rest of us could rise up and put him out of business again.
Mr. Speaker, why wouldn't that be a good strategy? We don't even need
Americans to carry that out. We don't need Americans sitting and
hoping, as John Kerry once said about Vietnam, that they are not the
last one to die leaving Afghanistan. I have been to too many funerals
of people who gave the last full measure for this country in
Afghanistan. We owe it to them not to let it fall immediately back into
Taliban hands, and we could prevent that without any more American
blood being shed.
We prop up financially the Afghan Government to the point that if we
put enough pressure on--and I know this administration always puts
pressure on the wrong people. Instead of the Palestinian terrorists, we
put pressure on Israel to keep giving away their security and safety.
In Afghanistan, we pressure the people of Afghanistan to give up their
security and safety because we want to cut a deal with the Taliban. The
thing to do is to empower the enemy of our enemy, and they will keep
our enemies at bay. That is what needs to be done in Afghanistan.
That is why it is so important lest anyone is attempted to ask the
question about Benghazi, what difference, at this point, does it make
how our four Americans were killed? Well, it makes a difference because
if we had learned the specific breakdowns and causes during the Clinton
years of two Embassies being attacked and Americans dying, then perhaps
we would have been better prepared at Benghazi. But since we didn't
learn the lesson under the Clinton administration because people in
that administration apparently were wondering what difference does it
make how or why these people died and let's just move on, and so
Americans died in the future. If we are going to stop that in the
future from here, we need to know at this point what happened in
Benghazi.
Now, not only is this administration continuing to thwart efforts to
get to the bottom of what happened at Benghazi, it also sends our
Secretary of State to insult the Israelis yet again.
[[Page H3283]]
This time, as this article from the Daily Beast, 4/27, points out:
The Secretary of State, that is John Kerry, said that if
Israel doesn't make peace soon, it could become 'an apartheid
state,' like the old South Africa. Jewish leaders are fuming
over the comparison.
If there is no two-state solution to the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming 'an
apartheid state,' Secretary of State John Kerry told a room
of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.
Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the
term 'apartheid' in reference to Israel, and President Obama
has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply
to the Jewish state. Kerry's use of the loaded term is
already rankling Jewish leaders in America--and it could
attract unwanted attention in Israel, as well.
It wasn't the only controversial comment on the Middle East
that Kerry made during his remarks to the Trilateral
Commission, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily
Beast. Kerry also repeated his warning that a failure of
Middle East peace talks could lead to a resumption of
Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens. He suggested
that a change in either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership
could make achieving a peace deal more feasible. He lashed
out against Israeli settlement building. And Kerry said that
both Israeli and Palestinian leaders share blame for the
current impasse in the talks.
Yeah, let's figure that out, Mr. Speaker. Israel and Palestinians
share the blame for the breakdown of Palestinian peace talks because
Israel says you just have to recognize we have a right to exist as a
Jewish state so we don't suffer another Holocaust.
{time} 1715
And the Palestinians say: you are the little Satan, America is the
great Satan, we intend to wipe you off the map. At no time will we be
willing to recognize your right to exist. So no, we are not going to
agree to allow you to exist, so the only agreement we will enter is if
you agree that we have to still plan on wiping you off the map.
And this is the kind of agreement that Kerry thinks should be made.
According to the 1998 Rome Statute, the crime of apartheid is defined
as:
Inhuman acts committed in the context of an
institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and
domination by one racial group over any other racial group or
groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that
regime. The term is most often used in reference to the
system of racial segregation and oppression that governed
South Africa from 1948 until 1994.
So let's see, in Israel, Palestinians get the best jobs anywhere
between their Palestinian area and Israeli area, and they are allowed
to hold those jobs, make the money, and go back into the Palestinian
area; and let's see, why does Israel want to protect itself? Oh, yes,
before they put up a fence, it made it too easy for Palestinian suicide
bombers to just walk into a school yard, walk into an area where
innocent children, women, and men are occupying or having a good time
and blow them up.
Finally, as a matter of their own self-security, they said: no, we
are going to have to have fences, so you can't just walk in and blow up
innocent people.
How have the Palestinians taken to that? Well, they have taken to it
by continuing to have, in their textbooks, references to Jewish people
as rats or vermin and other such references.
They elicit hatred from the little schoolchildren against Jews. They
name holidays and landmarks and monuments and streets after people who
have been able to kill innocent people in Israel.
You know, that is one thing about the United States, we don't
normally name holidays and streets and landmarks and monuments for
people who kill innocent other people. We name holidays and streets for
people like Martin Luther King, Jr., an ordained Christian minister who
said, by his life, you don't use violence to kill innocent people.
Those are the kind of people we respect here in America. Those are
the kind of people we name holidays and streets for, but not in
Palestine. Oh, no. Oh, no. And this Secretary of State blames Israel.
He does say there is some blame to share, but as the Prime Minister of
Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, said standing at that podium right there:
If the Palestinians lay down their weapons, there will be
peace; if the Israelis lay down their weapons, there will be
no Israel.
After World War II, when it was learned the extent of the Holocaust,
of killing 6 million or so Jewish people simply because of their race,
simply because of who they were, the world reacted so strongly and
appropriately, they said: we can't allow this to happen again, we need
to create the nation of Israel where Jews can go and be protected in a
Jewish state, the only Jewish country in the world.
Amazingly, people that had no concept of what the Bible were actually
carried out prophesies from the Old Testament, to the letter, by what
they did. Maybe there is something to that Old Testament and its
prophesies.
For those in this administration, perhaps they are hoping that is not
the case because this Secretary of State has, in essence, cursed Israel
more than once and that Old Testament that prophesied Israel would be
reborn, as it has been exactly, it says those who curse Israel will be
cursed and those who bless Israel will be blessed.
You only have to go back a year before or just last year, November
13, 2013. Here is another article about our Secretary of State from
Haifa, Israel:
America's Ambassador to Israel has been in damage-control
mode after his boss, Secretary of State John Kerry, wondered
rhetorically if Jewish opposition to peace negotiations with
Palestinians was driven by a desire for a third intifada.
Intifada is an Arabic word for uprising and was the term
given to intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence from 1987-
1993 and from 2000-2005.
Our Secretary of State is saying out loud in a foreign country that,
gee, he is wondering if the Israelis want an intifada again in which
hundreds and hundreds of Israeli citizens will be senselessly killed
again.
You know, there was a reason--and I was talking to one of my
Democratic colleagues yesterday about Secretary Kerry's remarks. There
was a reason the majority of the United States said: you know what, we
are concerned about some aspect of John Kerry. We don't want him to be
the spokesman around the world for the United States of America. So it
could be credited to President Obama, we will give him another chance.
We will let him speak for America, I will appoint him Secretary of
State.
And he has shown yet again, you know what, there really was a reason
that the American people did not want him to be the international
spokesman for America. It is time, I believe, he came home and ceased
being Secretary of State.
Here is an article from yesterday by Ben Shapiro. He is a Jew. He is
brilliant. He is a friend. He wrote yesterday an article titled, ``The
Anti-Semitism of the Obama administration.'' He talks about Kerry's
comment about the apartheid state. Ben says in his article:
This is pure anti-Semitism. Blaming Israel for its
incapacity to make peace with people whose stated goal is to
murder Jews cannot be construed as anything other than Jew
hatred. Likening the Jewish state to South Africa, despite
the fact that there are well over a million Arab citizens
with full voting rights and despite the fact that the
Palestinian territories are completely Judenrein, is more of
the same.
Upon tape of his remarks hitting the press, Kerry
immediately backtracked, stating, ``I will not allow my
commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly
for partisan, political purposes.'' He then disclaimed that
he ever said Israel was an apartheid state and said, ``If I
could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word
to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term
to have a Jewish state and two nations and two people is
through a two-state solution.''
Sadly, Kerry is simply not believable at this point. The
Obama administration has demonstrated a consistent pattern of
anti-Semitic rhetoric--even aside from their practical
undermining of any Israeli attempt to stop the Iranian
nuclear program with repeated national security leaks. It
peppers the top ranks of the Obama White House.
And then the article goes on to point out some of the leaks that were
done to hurt Israel.
But Secretary Kerry should be encouraged. Here is an article, ``Far
Left J-Street Defends Kerry's Apartheid Accusations Against Israel,''
posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, April 29:
J-Street calls itself the organization that
``gives political voice to mainstream American Jews and
other supporters of Israel,'' but it is far from a pro-
Israel group. In 2010, it was revealed that radical far
left billionaire George Soros donated $245,000 to the
leftist organization in 2008 and another $500,000 in
subsequent years.
Cofounder Daniel Levy was caught on tape telling an
audience that the creation of Israel was ``an act that was
wrong.''
Wow.
Yesterday, this far left anti-Israel group defended John
Kerry. Pro-Israel groups
[[Page H3284]]
blasted J-Street today after the far left Jewish group
supported John Kerry's apartheid accusation against Israel.
The Zionist Organization of America responded to J-Street's
comments: J-Street has again demonstrated that it is an
extremist group, hostile to Israel, by supporting Secretary
of State John Kerry's ``apartheid'' accusation against
Israel.
This is the administration that condemns, cajoles our friend Israel,
supports and coddles terrorists, radical Islamists in Afghanistan and
Palestine, that went rushing into Libya when many of us were saying:
look, this isn't a good idea. We know al Qaeda is supporting the
rebels. Let's wait and see how much of these rebels are al Qaeda.
But he helped them anyway, and now, we find out, here is an article
from today from The Blaze titled, ``The Massive Amount of Weapons Meant
for Libyan Rebels That Actually Ended Up in Terrorists' Hands.''
It is a good article from Sara Carter. The trouble is these weapons
were actually intended for the terrorists because we knew--we had
information there were al Qaeda terrorists that were part of the rebels
against Qadhafi.
I know I just have a couple more minutes, but let me mention, as some
of the leadership in the Senate and even some on the Republican side
here in the House is being encouraged and encouraging others, let's
have some kind of legal status, amnesty-type bill for certain people.
Or how about in the NDAA that we are going to take up, why don't we
put in there, if you are in this country illegally and you are willing
to go into the service, then we will claim you are legal?
Recent veterans are struggling to find jobs, and information
indicates our military members are being released from the military
right and left because of the dramatic cuts to the military, far more
than should ever have been allowed by this body, and they are having
trouble finding jobs.
The unemployment rate for our veterans ought to be much lower than
for anybody, and it is much higher than for the American population,
and this administration now and some of our own leadership wants to
encourage people illegally here to go take those jobs away from those
being bounced out of the military and let them compete and bring down
the level of wages for the middle class in America. It should not be
allowed.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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