[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23760-23765]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          AN ABSOLUTE VICTORY

  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Chair. First, I say to the leadership how 
much I appreciate the fact you are allowing me to bust in on a 
different subject. I think it is very significant at this time because 
something happened yesterday that I think makes it worthwhile to talk 
about this and maybe to do so at some length.
  Willie George was right. Lest some of you do not know who Willie 
George is, some people consider Willie George a preacher, but he is 
also a very able historian. As I listened to him and added some 
perspectives on what the attack on America was all about, I realized 
the inside-Washington mentality is sometimes and often flawed and that 
mentality that comes from Oklahoma reflects more of real America.
  The Apostle Paul gave us our marching orders in Ephesians 6, verses 
10, 11, and 12. He said:

       Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the 
     power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you 
     may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we 
     wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the 
     principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of 
     this darkness--

  About which we are talking--

     against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places.

  Make no mistake about it. This war is first and foremost a spiritual 
war. It is not a political war. It has never been a political war. It 
is not about politics. It is a spiritual war. It has its roots in 
spiritual conflict. It is a war to be fought to destroy the very fabric 
of our society and the very things for which we stand.
  Many of the wars in history have been fought because of human desire 
or greed, to have that of a neighboring country--to have mineral 
deposits, to have what some other country has. But this war is of a 
different nature.
  It is not just simple greed that motivated these people to kill. This 
war has been launched against the United States of America. It is a 
spiritual attack. It is an attack that was created in the mind and 
heart of Satan. It is a demonically inspired attack. It is not just the 
selfish ambitions of an egotistical leader. It is not just someone 
wanting to hold on to power. This is nothing more than a satanically 
inspired attack against America created by demonic powers through the 
perverted minds of terrorists.

[[Page 23761]]

  One may ask: What is it about our Nation that makes them hate us so 
much? Three things. First, in our country, we have the freedom and the 
right to choose the kind of worship we want. I am a born-again 
Christian. I have accepted Jesus Christ as my virtual Lord and Savior. 
I believe it is through Him that we will reach the Father. I believe 
every American has a right to choose whether or not to believe that.
  Some people have the notion that if you are a Christian who believes 
in the Bible, you are totally intolerant; you do not allow other people 
to have a choice. Nothing could be further from the truth.
  In nations of this world where Christianity is the dominant way of 
worship, we also find Jewish synagogues, Islamic mosques; we find 
freedom of worship. But we will not find the same kinds of freedom in 
the militant Islamic nations of this world. They do not allow Christian 
churches and Jewish synagogues to operate freely. They do not allow 
people the freedom of choice. In Sudan, they sell Christians into 
slavery.
  So one of the reasons America is hated so much is that we have 
allowed people through the years to choose what they are going to do. 
It is choice.
  The second reason we are hated is that we have opened the door for 
people to achieve their God-given place on this Earth. We have not 
restrained people. We have allowed people freedom of expression, the 
freedom to pursue dreams, the freedom to pursue goals. This is not true 
around the world.
  Freedom did not come cheap. One of my memories that I consider an 
advantage for me and that I hold over many others is when I first 
started my education in first grade, it was in a country schoolhouse. 
Not many people here know what they are. They are eight grades in one 
room out in the country. It was called Hazel Dell. In fact, I remember 
three brothers who rode on a workhorse to school every morning.
  We had a different sense of history at that time. I remember so well 
reading and learning history as a very young child in that environment. 
Keep in mind, that was the environment at the beginning of World War II 
when we had a sense of patriotism that is comparable to today.
  I remember my teacher said the Pilgrims did not come to this country 
for adventure; they did not come for excitement; they were not 
adventurous people. They came to this country to escape tyranny, to 
pursue freedoms--freedom of religion and economic freedom. Half of them 
died the first year. They knew it was going to happen. It was worth it 
to get these freedoms.
  They had freedom of religion and economic freedom. Each was given a 
piece of property to do with as they wanted, and he could work his land 
and reap the benefits of this property. And he prospered mightily, so 
mightily that in one of his letters back to England, Smith said: Now 
one farmer can grow 10 times as much corn as the previous farmers 
could.
  They were prospering so mightily. I normally tell young people when 
you have a good thing going, quite often someone is going to try to 
take it away from you. That is exactly what happened. The British came 
across the sea. They wanted in on this prosperity, and they started 
imposing laws, rules, and regulations so that the trapper on the 
frontier could not make a hat of the pelt he caught. He had to sell it 
to British merchants at British prices to be shipped to Great Britain 
on English ships to be made into a hat by English laborers to be 
shipped back and sold to the trapper, who caught it in the first place, 
at English prices. Guess what happened. God bless him, the trapper kept 
right on making his own hats.
  That was treason in those days. So they sent this great army to this 
country, the greatest army in the world at that time, to stop these 
things from occurring. They started marching up toward Lexington and 
Concord.
  I remember so well sitting in that little one-room schoolhouse and 
having this vision of what it was really like. Farmers and trappers and 
frontiersmen were up there. They were not well educated, but they were 
ready to stop this resistance, the greatest army on the face of this 
Earth. Most of them could not read or write. As the saying goes, they 
did not know their right foot from their left foot, so they would put a 
tuft of hay in one boot and a tuft of straw in the other boot and 
marched to the cadence of ``hay foot, straw foot.''
  While they were not greatly educated, they knew freedom, and they 
were going to keep that freedom. As they stood there knowing they were 
signing their death warrants, those soldiers, listening to the 
thundering cadence of the largest army in the world going towards 
Lexington and Concord, waited until they saw the whites of their eyes 
and fired the shot heard round the world, not knowing at that very 
moment a tall redhead stood in the House of Burgess and made a speech 
for them, made a speech for us today:

       They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so 
     formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will 
     it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are 
     totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed 
     in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and 
     inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance 
     by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive 
     phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand 
     and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make proper use of those 
     means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The 
     millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and 
     in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by 
     any force which our enemy can send against us.

  This is critical.

       Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There 
     is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and 
     who will raise up friends to fight our battles with us. The 
     battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the 
     vigilant, the active, the brave . . . Gentlemen may cry, 
     Peace, Peace--but there is no peace . . . Why stand we here 
     idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 
     Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the 
     price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God . . . 
     but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.

  He got both.
  These freedoms are not found in every nation. America is a great 
nation because we have magnified the rights of individuals, protected 
the rights of individuals in our culture. We are careful to allow 
people to have expression in our society, and we are hated for it.
  The third reason we are hated is because we are a nation of laws. We 
are a people ruled by laws. Lest one thinks that is common, do a 
careful study of the history of the world. Most of the world's 
countries do not have a 200-year-old Constitution. They are ruled by 
dictators. They are ruled by the whims of those leaders or by political 
parties as they change. The rule of law is what makes civilization 
possible. The rule of law is what makes an orderly society work. If 
there is no rule of law, the strongest, toughest bully is the one who 
runs the country.
  America is a country of law and order because of the philosophies of 
the people who founded this Nation. They believed in the rule of law 
because of what they knew from the Bible. Our Constitution and the 
constitutions of most of the governments in the world are similar and 
are indeed based upon the Ten Commandments. Our fathers knew that the 
Ten Commandments and the laws of God were a basis for all laws. They 
understood the concepts of absolute right and absolute wrong. There 
were not many who believed in what we today call situational ethics 
where things change according to our needs. They believed in absolute 
right and absolute wrong. America was founded on those principles. That 
is a reason we are hated so much as a nation. We are hated because of 
the fact we are a beacon of light, a beacon of freedom all the way 
around the world. We know contemporarily what this means.
  One of the greatest speeches of all times was ``A Rendezvous with 
Destiny'' made by Ronald Reagan before he was into politics. He talked 
about the atrocities committed in Castro's Communist Cuba and about the 
little boat that escaped and washed up on the southern shores of 
Florida. When the boat came up, a man who escaped talked about what was 
happening in Communist Cuba. When he was through talking about the 
atrocities, a woman said: I guess we in this country don't know how 
lucky we are.

[[Page 23762]]

  He said: No, no. It is how lucky we are because we had a place to 
escape to.
  What he was saying was, we were that beacon of freedom. Many, 
including the Senator sitting to my right, will remember 15 years ago 
when the Communists, then the Soviet Union, were trying to get a 
foothold in Nicaragua and the freedom fighters were fighting for their 
freedom. I remember going down there, watching them fight against 
impossible odds. There is no way they could win, by normal concept. 
They were fighting.
  There was a hospital tent in Nicaragua. It was half the size of this 
Senate Chamber. I remember so well, this is where the freedom fighters 
from Nicaragua would come in and get taken care of medically. There was 
an operating table in the middle of this giant tent. All they did was 
amputations. The problem was, of course, the mines. They had the beds 
of all the patients around the perimeter of this hospital tent.
  I went around and talked to the individuals. The average age of the 
fighter in Nicaragua at that time was 19 years old. All the older ones 
were either maimed or killed. I used to be a pilot in Mexico and I 
communicate well.
  I asked each one: Why is it you are doing this against impossible 
odds? Why are you doing this? Why are you fighting?
  I got to the last bed. Her name was Maria Gonzalez. I asked her that 
question. She was 18 years old, weighed 90 pounds, and this was her 
third trip back to the hospital tent. They amputated her leg that 
morning. Blood was coming through the bandages. That little girl said: 
We are fighting because they have taken everything we have, our farms, 
our houses, all that we have. Surely you in the United States don't 
have to ask that question because you had to fight for your freedoms 
against the same odds that we are doing today. And with God's help, we 
will win, as you, with God's help, won.
  That little girl didn't know whether our Revolution was fought 25 
years ago or 150 years ago. But she was brilliant in her knowledge of 
freedom. We were the beacon of hope. We were the beacon of freedom.
  Do you know the outcome? We are hated because we are the beacon of 
freedom for the rest of the world. We are hated because in America we 
have freedom of choice and freedom of worship, we have freedom of 
expression, and we are a nation of laws.
  Now, why was America attacked on September 11? Why did they single us 
out? America was attacked because of our system of values. It is a 
spiritual war. It is not just because we are Israel's best friend. We 
are Israel's best friend in the world because of the character we have 
as a nation. We came under attack and we are Israel's best friend.
  One of the reasons God has blessed our country is because we have 
honored his people. Genesis 12:3 says: I will bless them who bless you. 
I will curse him who curses you. This is God talking about Israel.
  Madam President, on the table where you sit is a Bible. You can look 
it up. He said: I will bless them who bless you. I will curse him who 
curses you. God is talking about Israel.
  One of the reasons America has been blessed abundantly over the years 
is because we as a society have opened our doors to Jewish people. 
Jewish people have been blessed in the United States of America. When 
the tiny State of Israel was founded in 1948, we stood in the beginning 
with Israel. We were the first country to stand up for Israel. Because 
we took a stand, other nations in the world followed after very 
quickly. The United States made it possible for there to be an Israel. 
We stood with Israel again and again and again in its fight to survive.
  Make no mistake. It is not just because of our support of Israel. It 
is what we believe as a nation that caused us to come under attack.
  Recently in the city of Durban, South Africa, there was a conference 
called the World Conference on Racism. African Christians are being 
slaughtered by the thousands today by Islamic fundamentalists in Sudan. 
You didn't hear a lot about that in the reports of this conference; you 
didn't hear about racism in South Africa. I have a mission in West 
Africa and have become pretty familiar with some of the atrocities and 
the ethnic cleansing going on in the world today.
  I can remember standing at this podium when we were under a different 
President. He was trying to get us to send troops into Kosovo, and used 
in his arguments in Kosovo all the ethnic cleansing and the difficulty 
going on. I said at that time, for every one person who is killed, who 
is ethnically cleansed in Kosovo, on any given day there are over 100 
who are killed and ethnically cleansed in West Africa alone. Do we hear 
about that? No, we didn't hear about that at the Conference on Racism. 
What you heard was how the nations of the world came together and 
decided all the attention should be focused on the tensions in the 
Middle East. They were appeasing the terrorists.
  Israel is under attack in the Middle East because it is the only true 
democracy that exists in the Middle East. There are more than 20 Arab 
nations in north Africa and in the Middle East. Virtually every Arab 
nation is run by either a king or a dictator. Israel is the only true 
democracy that exists in the Middle East.
  Madam President, did you know if you are an Arab and have an Israeli 
citizenship, you can vote in the country of Israel? Did you know the 
Arabs have parties in the Knesset, the Congress of Israel? Israel is 
the only true democracy that exists in the Middle East. It has a 
Western form of government based on the laws we see in the Bible. The 
laws of God that our country is based on are the same laws from which 
Israel gets its law. It represents the laws of God. That is the reason 
it is under attack.
  We ought to be Israel's best friend. If we cannot stand for Israel 
today, can we ever again be counted on as a beacon of hope, a beacon of 
freedom for oppressed nations? You may ask what does this have to do 
with the attack on America? We are under attack because of our 
character and because we have supported the tiny little nation in the 
Middle East. That is why we are under attack. If we don't stand for 
this tiny country today, when do we start standing for tiny little 
countries in the world that are right?
  Yasser Arafat and others do not recognize Israel's right to the land. 
They don't recognize Israel's right to exist.
  I will discuss seven things I consider to be indisputable and 
incontrovertible evidence and grounds to Israel's right to the land. 
You have heard this before, but it has never been in the Record. Most 
know this. We are going to be hit by skeptics who are going to say we 
are being attacked all because of our support for Israel, and if we get 
out of the Middle East all of the problems will go away. That is not 
so. It is not true. If we withdraw, it will come to our door and will 
not go away. I have some observations to make about that in just a 
minute, but first the seven reasons that Israel has the right to the 
land.
  Israel has a right to the land because of all the archeological 
evidence. This is reason No. 1. It all supports it. Every time there is 
a dig in Israel, it does nothing but support the fact that Israelis 
have had a presence there for 3,000 years. They have been there for a 
long time. The coins, the cities, the pottery, the culture--there are 
other people, groups that are there, but there is no mistaking the fact 
that Israelis have been present in that land for 3,000 years.
  It predates any claims that other peoples in the regions may have. 
The ancient Philistines are extinct. Many other ancient peoples are 
extinct. They do not have the unbroken line to this date that the 
Israelis have.
  Even the Egyptians of today are not racial Egyptians of 2,000, 3,000 
years ago. They are primarily an Arab people. The land is called Egypt 
but they are not the same racial and ethnic stock as the old Egyptians 
of the ancient world. The Israelis are in fact descended from the 
original Israelites. The first proof, then, is the archeology.
  The second proof of Israel's right to the land is the historic right. 
History supports it totally and completely. We know there has been an 
Israel up until

[[Page 23763]]

the time of the Roman Empire. The Romans conquered the land. Israel had 
no homeland, although Jews were allowed to live there. They were driven 
from the land in two dispersions: One was in 70 A.D. and the other was 
in 135 A.D. But there was always a Jewish presence in the land.
  The Turks, who took over about 700 years ago and ruled the land up 
until about World War I, had control. Then the land was conquered by 
the British. The Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany. The 
British knew they had to do something to punish Turkey and also to 
break up that empire that was going to be a part of the whole effort of 
Germany in World War I, so the British sent troops against the Turks in 
the Holy Land.
  One of the generals who was leading the British armies was a man 
named Allenby. Allenby was a Bible-believing Christian. He carried a 
Bible with him everywhere he went and he knew the significance of 
Jerusalem.
  The night before the attack against Jerusalem to drive out the Turks, 
Allenby prayed that God would allow him to capture the city without 
doing damage to the holy places.
  That day, Allenby sent World War I biplanes over the city of 
Jerusalem to do a reconnaissance mission. You have to understand that 
the Turks had at that time never seen an airplane. So there they were, 
flying around. They looked in the sky and saw these fascinating 
inventions and did not know what they were and they were terrified by 
them. Then they were told that they were being opposed by a man named 
Allenby the next day, which in their language means ``man sent from 
God'' or ``prophet from God.'' They dared not fight against a prophet 
from God, so the next morning when Allenby went to take Jerusalem, he 
went in and captured it without firing a single shot.
  The British Government was grateful to Jewish people around the world 
and particularly to one Jewish chemist who helped them with the 
manufacture of niter. Niter is an ingredient which goes into 
nitroglycerin, necessary to the war effort. They were getting 
dangerously low of niter in England at that time, so the chemist, who 
was called Weitzman, discovered a way to make it from materials that 
existed in England.
  It was coming from the new world over there, the niter was. But the 
German U-boats were shooting them down so it was all at the bottom of 
the Atlantic Ocean. When Weitzman discovered a way to make it from 
materials that existed in England, it saved the British war effort. Out 
of gratitude to this Jew and out of gratitude to Jewish bankers and 
financiers and others who lent financial support, England said we are 
going to set aside a homeland in the Middle East for the Jewish people. 
And that is history.
  The homeland that Britain said it would set aside consisted of all of 
what is now Israel and all of what was then the nation of Jordan, the 
whole thing. That was what Britain promised to give the Jews in 1917.
  In the beginning, there was some Arab support for this. There was not 
a huge Arab population in the land at that time and there is a reason 
for that. The land was not able to sustain a large population of 
people. It just didn't have the development it needed to handle all 
those people, and the land wasn't really wanted by anybody.
  I want you to listen to Mark Twain. Have you ever read ``Huckleberry 
Finn'' or ``Tom Sawyer''? Mark Twain--Samuel Clemens--took a tour of 
Palestine in 1867. This is how he described it. We are talking about 
Israel. He said:

       A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given 
     over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never 
     saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree 
     or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those 
     fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the 
     country.

  Where was this great Palestinian nation? It didn't exist. It wasn't 
there. The Palestinians weren't there. Palestine was a region named by 
the Romans, but at the time it was under the control of Turkey and 
there was no large mass of people there because the land would not 
support them.
  This is the report of the Palestinian Royal Commission, created by 
the British. It quotes an account of the conditions on the coastal 
plain, along the Mediterranean Sea in 1913. This is the Palestinian 
Royal Commission. They said:

       The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer 
     track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange 
     groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one 
     reached the Yavnev village. Houses were mud. Schools did not 
     exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. 
     The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many 
     villages were deserted by their inhabitants.

  The French author Voltaire described Palestine as:

       A hopeless, dreary place.

  In short, under the Turks the land suffered from neglect and low 
population, and that is a historical fact. The nation became populated 
with both Jews and Arabs because the land came to prosper when Jews 
came back and began to reclaim it. Historically, they began to reclaim 
it. If there had never been any archeological evidence at all to 
support the rights of the Israelis to the territory, it is also 
important to recognize that other nations in the area have no 
longstanding claim to the country either.
  Madam President, did you know that Saudi Arabia was not created until 
1913? Lebanon until 1920? Iraq didn't exist as a nation until 1932; 
Syria until 1941; the borders of Jordan were established in 1946, and 
Kuwait in 1961.
  Any of these nations who would say that Israel is only a recent 
arrival would have to deny their own rights as recent arrivals as well. 
They did not exist as countries. They were all under the control of the 
Turks. So, historically, Israel gained its independence in 1948.
  The third reason I believe the land belongs to Israel is because of 
the practical value of the Israelis being there. Israel today is a 
modern marvel of agriculture. Israel is able to bring more food out of 
a desert environment than any other country in the world. The Arab 
nations ought to make Israel their friend and import technology from 
Israel that would allow all the Middle East, not just Israel, to become 
an exporter of food. Israel has unarguable success in its agriculture.
  The fourth reason I believe Israel has the right to the land is on 
the grounds of humanitarian concern. You see, there were 6 million Jews 
slaughtered in Europe in World War II. The persecution against the Jews 
has been very strong in Russia since the advent of communism. It was 
against them even before then under the Czars.
  These people have a right to their homeland. If we are not going to 
allow them a homeland in the Middle East, then where? What other nation 
on Earth is going to cede territory? To give up land?
  They are not asking for a great deal. You know the whole nation of 
Israel would fit into my State of Oklahoma seven times. So on 
humanitarian grounds alone, Israel ought to have the land.
  The fifth reason Israel ought to have the land is because she is a 
strategic ally to the United States. Whether we realize it or not, 
Israel is a detriment, an impediment to certain groups hostile to 
democracies and hostile to those things that we believe in, hostile to 
the very things that make us the greatest nation in the history of the 
world. They have kept them from taking complete control of the Middle 
East. If it were not for Israel, they would overrun the region. They 
are our strategic ally.
  Madam President, it is good to know that we have a friend in the 
Middle East that we can count on. They vote with us in the United 
Nations more than England. They vote with us more than Canada, more 
than France, more than Germany, more than any other country in the 
world.
  The sixth reason is that Israel is a roadblock to terrorism. The war 
we are now facing is not against a sovereign nation. It is a group of 
terrorists who are very fluid, moving from one country to another. They 
are almost invisible. That is who we are fighting against. We need 
every ally we can get. If we do not stop terrorism in the Middle East, 
it will be on our shores. We

[[Page 23764]]

have said this and said this and said this.
  One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an 
attack against the United States of America is because the policy of 
our Government has been to ask Israelis and demand with pressure that 
they not retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes 
that have been launched against them, the most recent one just 2 days 
ago.
  Since its independence in 1948, Israel has fought four wars: the war 
in 1948-1949; the war in 1956, the Sinai campaign; the Six-Day War in 
1967; and in 1973 the Yom Kippur War, the holiest day of the year, with 
Egypt and Syria.
  You have to understand that in all four cases, Israel was attacked. 
Some people may argue that wasn't true because they went in first in 
the war of 1956. But they knew at that time that Egypt was building a 
huge military to become the aggressor. Israel, in fact, was not the 
aggressor and has not been the aggressor in any of the four wars.
  Also, they won all four wars against impossible odds. They are great 
warriors. They consider a level playing field being outnumbered two to 
one.
  There were 39 Scud missiles that landed on Israeli soil during the 
gulf war. Our President asked Israel not to respond. In order to have 
the Arab nations on board, we asked Israel not even to participate in 
the war. They showed tremendous restraint and did not. And now we've 
asked them to stand back and not do anything over these last several 
attacks.
  We have criticized them. We have criticized them in our media. Local 
people in television and radio offer criticisms of Israel not knowing 
the true issues. We need to be informed.
  I was so thrilled when I heard a reporter pose a question to our 
Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He said, ``Mr. Powell, the United 
States has advocated a policy of restraint in the Middle East. We have 
discouraged Israel from retaliation again and again, and again because 
we've said it leads to continued escalation--that it escalates the 
violence.'' He said, ``Are we going to follow that preaching 
ourselves?''
  Mr. Powell indicated that we would strike back. In other words, we 
can tell Israel not to do it, but when it hits us we are going to do 
something. That is one of the reasons I believe the door was opened. 
Because we have held back our tiny little friend. We have not allowed 
them to go to the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem--that 
is where we are going now.
  But all that changed yesterday when the Israelis went into the Gaza 
with gunships and into the West Bank with F-16s. With the exception of 
last May, the Israelis had not used F-16s since the 1967 7-Day War. And 
I am so proud of them because we have to stop terrorism. It is not 
going to go away. If Israel were driven into the sea tomorrow, if every 
Jew in the Middle East were killed, terrorism would not end. You know 
that in your heart. Terrorism would continue.
  It is not just a matter of Israel in the Middle East. It is the heart 
of the very people who are perpetrating this stuff. Should they be 
successful in overrunning Israel--they won't be--but should they be, it 
would not be enough. They will never be satisfied.
  No. 7, I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that 
it has a right to the land. This is the most important reason: Because 
God said so. As I said a minute ago, look it up in the book of Genesis.
  In Genesis 13:14-17, the Bible says:

       The Lord said to Abram, ``Lift up now your eyes, and look 
     from the place where you are northward, and southward, and 
     eastward and westward: for all the land which you see, to you 
     will I give it, and to your seed forever. . . . Arise, walk 
     through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of 
     it; for I will give it to thee.''

  That is God talking.
  The Bible says that Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the 
plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar before the 
Lord. Hebron is in the West Bank. It is at this place where God 
appeared to Abram and said, ``I am giving you this land,''--the West 
Bank.
  This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether 
or not the word of God is true. The seven reasons here, I am convinced, 
clearly establish that Israel has a right to the land.
  Eight years ago on the lawn of the White House, Yitzhak Rabin shook 
hands with PLO Chairman, Yasser Arafat. It was a historic occasion. It 
was a tragic occasion.
  At that time, the official policy of the Government of Israel began 
to be, ``Let us appease the terrorists. Let us begin to trade the land 
for peace.'' This process has continued unabated up until last year. 
Here in our own Nation, at Camp David, in the summer of 2000, then 
Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, offered the most generous 
concessions to Yasser Arafat that had ever been laid on the table.
  He offered him more than 90 percent of all the West Bank territory; 
sovereign control of it. There were some parts he did not want to 
offer, but in exchange for that he said he would give up land in Israel 
proper that the PLO was not asking for.
  And he also did the unthinkable. He even spoke of dividing Jerusalem 
and allowing the Palestinians to have their capital there in the East. 
Yasser Arafat stormed out of the meeting.
  Why did he storm out of the meeting? Everything he has said he has 
wanted all of these years was put into his hand. Why did he storm out 
of the meeting?
  A couple of months later, there began to be riots, terrorism. The 
riots began when, now Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, went to the Temple 
Mount. And this was used as the thing that lit the fire and that caused 
the explosion.
  Did you know that Sharon did not go unannounced and that he contacted 
the Islamic authorities before he went and secured their permission and 
had permission to be there? It was no surprise. The response was very 
carefully calculated. They knew the world would not pay attention to 
the details.
  They would portray this in the Arab world as an attack upon the holy 
mosque. They would portray it as an attack upon that mosque and use it 
as an excuse to riot. Over the last eight years, during this time of 
the peace process, where the Israeli public has pressured its leaders 
to give up land for peace because they're tired of fighting, there has 
been increased terror.
  In fact, it has been greater in the last eight years than any other 
time in Israel's history. Showing restraint and giving in has not 
produced any kind of peace. It is so much so, that today the leftist 
peace movement in Israel does not exist because the people feel they 
were deceived.
  They did offer a hand of peace, and it was not taken. That is why the 
politics of Israel have changed drastically over the past 12 months. 
The Israelis have come to see that, ``No matter what we do, these 
people do not want to deal with us . . . They want to destroy us.'' 
that is why even yet today the stationery of the PLO still has upon it 
the map of the entire state of Israel, not just the tiny little part 
they call the West Bank that they want. They want it all.
  The unwavering loyalty we have received from our only consistent 
friend in the Middle East has got to be respected and appreciated by 
us. No longer should foreign policy in the Middle East be one of 
appeasement. As Hiram Mann said, ``No man survives when freedom fails. 
The best men rot in filthy jails and those who cried `appease, appease' 
are hanged by those they tried to please.''
  Islamic fundamentalist terrorism has now come to America. We have to 
use all of our friends, all of our assets, and all of our resources to 
defeat the satanic evil.
  When Patrick Henry said, ``We will not fight our battles alone. There 
is a just God who reigns over the destiny of nations who will raise up 
friends who will fight our battles with us,'' he was talking about all 
our friends, including Israel. And that is what is happening, as of 
yesterday and I thank God for that. Israel is now in the battle by our 
side.
  That is what is happening. As of yesterday, Israel is now in the 
battle by our side, and I thank God for that. It is time for our policy 
of appeasement in the Middle East and appeasement to the terrorists to 
be over. With our

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partners, our victory must and will be absolute victory.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I was to speak next, but I ask 
unanimous consent that the Senator from Vermont be given 3 minutes and 
then I have the opportunity to address the Senate after that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Vermont.

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