[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 7]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 9730-9731]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




ADDRESS OF MAJORITY LEADER TOM DeLAY ON RECEIVING THE FRIEND OF ISRAEL 
                                 AWARD

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 10, 2003

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call the attention of my 
colleagues to an outstanding speech given by Majority Leader Tom DeLay. 
His remarks were made when he received the ``Friend of Israel Award'' 
at the Washington Briefing of Stand for Israel--an organization under 
the aegis of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. This 
statement is of unmistakable importance in its application of American 
values and moral clarity to the political problems of the Middle East.
  Mr. Speaker, the acts of terrorists--blowing up school buses, bombing 
markets, killing innocent children--are unmatched in their cowardice. I 
fully share Congressman DeLay's belief that murderers should neither be 
trusted nor rewarded for their crimes. He eloquently stated: ``As a 
friend of Israel, and a lover of liberty for all God's children, we 
must reject any suggestion that its government negotiation from 
weakness, stand on an even moral footing with suicide bombers or trust 
the promises of terrorists.'' These words should serve as the 
foundation of U.S. Peacemaking in the Middle East.
  Majority Leader DeLay understands that there can be no such thing as 
evenhandedness between good and evil. As Americans we can do nothing 
less. America did not waver when our British friends were imperiled by 
Nazi force during World War II. We did not tremble when Stalin and his 
successors threatened the destruction of our NATO allies in Europe. Mr. 
Speaker, as America confronts evil at home and around the world, we 
must stand with the democratic State of Israel and against the 
terrorist scourge that threatens its people and its existence.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to read Congressman DeLay's 
principled statement.

  Speech of Majority Leader Tom DeLay at Stand for Israel Washington 
                    Briefing Dinner, April 2, 2003.

       Thank you. I'm not a great award recipient. There are so 
     many people that need to be thanked that worked so hard for 
     so many reasons to support Israel. It's great to see so many 
     of my friends in the audience that came to be with us 
     tonight, and all the others that I haven't met yet, I just 
     say to you and you'll understand when I say, to God belongs 
     the glory.
       So I really want to thank you for this honor and I 
     especially want to thank my good friend Tom Lantos for being 
     here and he greatly deserves this award for his longstanding 
     work in the Congress as well as work with Israel. He stands 
     like a rock on behalf of Israel and has always stood that way 
     and you can tell the worth of a man by the woman who stands 
     beside him, and Annette is here tonight. She is always by 
     Tom's side, and they work as a team and we greatly appreciate 
     them. I just really have the utmost respect for Tom Lantos 
     and have become closer to him over the last year or so, and 
     greatly appreciate my friendship with him, and I do love him. 
     He is really a wonderful, wonderful man.
       As we meet here tonight, something extraordinary is 
     happening on the other side of the world. Hundreds of 
     thousands of trained and dedicated volunteers, an army of 
     virtue, are liberating a nation. Pretty Amazing. Mile by 
     mile, a blood-thirsty dictator's grip on a noble people 
     slips. Town by town, Iraqi families realize what smiling 
     people in camouflage uniforms have won for them. And day-by-
     day, children wake up for the first morning of their lives to 
     God's freedom. This is the meaning of Operation Iraqi 
     Freedom.
       We all know greater love hath no man than this, than he lay 
     down his life for his friends. Yet today, in Iraq, liberating 
     armies are risking their own lives in a land and for a people 
     they have never before met. Decades long Iraqi pleas for 
     freedom and justice will soon be answered. But my friends 
     theirs is not the only voice that cries out in the desert. 
     For as we meet tonight, in that same part of the world, 
     violent men plot the deaths of school children. These men 
     view innocent human life as a means to an end and murder as a 
     propaganda technique. These

[[Page 9731]]

     men act outside the boundaries of humanity and these men 
     support a career terrorist too long tolerated by the 
     civilized world.
       Tonight our thoughts are with the people of Israel, and it 
     is on their behalf, the courageous who live everyday in the 
     cross-hairs of such men, that I accept this award and proudly 
     count myself as a friend of Israel.
       You know after Operation Iraqi Freedom is won, and it will 
     be won, international attention necessarily focused on the 
     removal of Saddam Hussein's regime will disperse. There will 
     be the re-building of Iraq and its welcomed return to the 
     community of nations, there will be a simmering crisis in 
     North Korea, there will be strained relationships with old 
     friends to address, and a blossoming alliance with the 
     surging powers of new Europe to solidify.
       And there will be, as we all well know, calls on Israel to 
     set aside decades of experience and once again trust the 
     words and paper of a terrorist entity bent on her 
     destruction. Voices will call on the United States to serve 
     as an honest broker in negotiations between the Palestinian 
     Authority and the Israeli government. They will call on 
     Israel to take risks for peace. As a friend of Israel, and a 
     lover of liberty for all God's children, we must reject any 
     suggestion that its government negotiate from weakness, stand 
     on even moral footing with suicide bombers, or trust the 
     promises of terrorists. The United States stands for justice 
     and that means we stand for Israel.
       Our qualms are not with the Palestinian people, but their 
     self appointed leaders. Yasser Arafat and his thugs do not 
     serve the interests of the Palestinian people, they are 
     exploiters, in business today as always, only for themselves. 
     They perpetuate violence and misery in a country that has 
     known too much of both. Negotiating with these men who 
     sharpen their tongues like swords is folly, and any agreement 
     arrived at through such empty negotiations would amount to a 
     covenant with death as generations of Israelis have already 
     witnessed.
       Yasser Arafat and his cronies are enemies of peace and a 
     threat to the community of civilized nations. The Palestinian 
     people, used as pawns by Arafat's regime, do not desire this 
     existence. More and more of them are coming to realize the 
     barriers to this new life are not in Ariel Sharon's cabinet 
     but Yasser Arafat's compound. Palestinians and the Arab world 
     at large tragically have only their corrupt leaders to blame 
     for their economic depravation, not Americans and not 
     Israelis.
       Ladies and Gentlemen, in Iraq today we are making a stand 
     against oppressive terror. It is not the first time and it 
     won't be the last. The United States and it allies will no 
     longer live in fear of terrorist networks of global reach, 
     nor of their state sponsors. That is why we are in war 
     tonight in Iraq. We are disarming a dangerous regime because 
     it threatens the security of the world. The President has 
     directed his advisors to craft a plan, to do it with speed 
     and precision never before witnessed in the history of war. 
     The plan is working, the military is advancing, and the 
     under-informed talking heads of the media elite are just dead 
     wrong.
       We thank God every day that the President is a man of faith 
     and a man of confidence. But it must frustrate him to hear 
     the incessant carping of blow dried Napoleons hunkered down 
     in their air-conditioned studios night after night on the 
     twenty-four hour news networks. Peter Arnette thinks a war 
     plan that advanced hundreds of miles in a week, in less than 
     a week, is a failure. Geraldo Rivera drew a map in the sand 
     of American positions for our enemies to see. Well 
     thankfully, President Bush has also drawn in the sand. He has 
     drawn a line beyond which the civilized world will not accept 
     the behavior of evil men. We will free ourselves from 
     terrorist threats and free those who live under terrorist 
     regimes.
       Americans have defended our freedom for more than two 
     hundred years and Israelis have done the same for more than 
     fifty. We are opposed by many of the same enemies who use 
     many of the same tactics. Israel's fight is our fight against 
     terror and for humanity. The United States therefore can not 
     serve as a disinterested broker between an ally and its 
     terrorist enemy. There is no moral equivalence between an 
     aggressor and a man who defends himself against aggression, 
     just as there is no moral equivalence between terrorists and 
     the Israeli government sworn to stop them, despite the absurd 
     assertions of the State Department's newly released human 
     rights reports.
       This report just boggles my mind. This report is designed 
     to document human rights conditions in countries all around 
     the globe, however it compares the human rights record of a 
     free, tolerant, and pluralistic nation with that of a 
     terrorist network. There is no comparison and to assert one 
     is absolutely ridiculous. Israel is governed by 
     democratically elected representatives. The Palestinian 
     Authority is governed by a gang of murderers. Experience and 
     common sense lead to one conclusion about America's proper 
     role in the Middle East. We are absolutely right to stand 
     with Israel and our opponents are absolutely wrong. The moral 
     ambiguities of our diplomatic elites not withstanding, Israel 
     is not the problem, Israel is the solution.
       The House of Representatives said as much, they shouted in 
     fact, by a margin of 352 to 21, by passing the resolution 
     that Tom Lantos and I sponsored last year. The resolution 
     affirmed America's solidarity with Israel, supported Israel's 
     right to self-defense, urged all Arab states to denounce all 
     forms of terrorism and encouraged the alleviation of the 
     needs of the Palestinian people. Any viable plans for peace 
     must require the Palestinian Authority to do the same and to 
     permanently sever ties with those who do not.
       President Bush has laid out a bold vision to this extent. 
     He has made it clear Israel must have a right to defend 
     herself and that the Palestinian Authority must stop its acts 
     of terror once and for all. Certain parties to the peace 
     process, more interested in appeasing aggression than 
     combating terrorism, have forfeited their right to leadership 
     on this issue. The United States is the world's defender of 
     freedom, and Israel is one of our greatest allies. We won't 
     allow anyone to reward terrorists and terrorist acts, least 
     of all nations and organizations who appease Saddam Hussein 
     and who continue to appease Yasser Arafat.
       This struggle is one of good versus evil. Nations and 
     organizations who fail to distinguish between the two 
     disqualify themselves from input on this matter. The 
     President understands Israel must not be asked to negotiate 
     with the men terrorizing its innocent citizens even as speak. 
     The Palestinian Authority and their state sponsors must end 
     the violence. This must be an act of principle, not some 
     gesture of goodwill. The Palestinian Authority's words have 
     no meaning, their actions do. The violence must stop--period. 
     No negotiations.
       And when it does, and not before, the Palestinian people 
     will have a real, viable opportunity for peace. Thankfully, 
     President Bush understands that no peace process worthy of 
     its name can be obscured by appeasers or moral relativists. 
     He understands that process for its own sake is not the goal, 
     the security of our allies is the goal, and no quartet of 
     appeasement will obscure that fact.
       You know, though tested by generations of fire, the people 
     of Israel do not exhibit malice or even seek revenge. Much 
     like everyday Palestinians, they just want peace and the 
     security to live their own lives, free from want and free 
     from fear. They are not fools, and should not be expected to 
     bargain with murderers. But when a new generation of 
     Palestinian leaders arise, with a real and lasting peace as 
     their goal, and more importantly the authority and will to 
     deliver on it, a comprehensive solution may finally be 
     attainable. But Israel should not be expected to offer 
     substantive concessions while the Palestinian leaders offer 
     only empty promises. Israel should have the freedom to defend 
     its national security and to negotiate at a time and on terms 
     set by its democratic government, not those imposed by anyone 
     else.
       To be a friend of Israel demands no less than supporting 
     her through these very difficult days, as well as the better 
     ones we all know await her, and await her people in the 
     future. And despite decades of terror in the holy cradle of 
     faith, we must hope, as did a fifteen year-old girl hiding in 
     Amsterdam writing in her diary less than a month before she 
     was taken to Auschwitz, ``I somehow feel that everything will 
     change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that 
     peace and tranquility will return once more.''
       You know, Ladies and Gentlemen, through God's grace, the 
     friendship of the United States and Israel will endure to see 
     the dreams of that little girl fill the whole world with 
     light and truth forever.

                          ____________________