[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 20]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 27884-27885]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     SUPPORT FOR THREE RESOLUTIONS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, December 8, 2005

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, under the assumption that 
the House would have adjourned for the year by Tuesday, December 6, I 
accepted a very important speaking engagement for that evening in 
Massachusetts. The event was the installation of a constituent, David 
Wluka, as President for the year of the Massachusetts Association of 
Realtors, an important organization with which I have worked closely on 
the issue of housing, which is one of those that is most important to 
me in my role on the Committee on Financial Services. My presence at 
this event had been advertised by the Realtors, and so when suspension 
votes were scheduled for Tuesday

[[Page 27885]]

night, I made this one of those rare occasions when I missed votes in 
order to carry out a responsibility in my district. All three of the 
votes taken were unanimous, so my absence obviously had no impact on 
the outcome. But I did want to make sure that my strong support for all 
three of those resolutions was noted. This is particularly true with H. 
Res. 438, which urged UN member states to cease their one-sided and 
unfair condemnations of Israel. The lack of balance in the UN with 
regard to the Middle East peace process has in fact been an obstacle to 
the success of that process, by increasing the fears of many in Israel 
that they will be unfairly treated. As a strong supporter of the 
ongoing peace process in the Middle East, I believe this resolution was 
an important one and I hope that the members of the UN will heed it.
  Similarly, the resolution honoring the late Israeli Prime Minister 
Yitzhak Rabin is another important affirmation of the great value we 
place on the peace process. Those who murdered this great man sought to 
murder the process of peace, and it is important for us to make it 
clear that they did not succeed in that latter effort, although they 
tragically did succeed in killing one of the great leaders of our time. 
Yitzhak Rabin's courageous efforts for peace, grounded in the heroic 
efforts he made during his lifetime to advance Israel's security, 
deserve not simply this commendation, but serious efforts to bring to 
fruition what he worked so hard to achieve.
  Finally, it is entirely appropriate that our colleague, the gentleman 
from California, Mr. Lantos, lead the House in recognizing the Fiftieth 
Anniversary of the extraordinarily brave, through tragic, effort by the 
Hungarian people to win their freedom from the brutal dictatorship 
imposed on them by the Soviet Union. While this ended badly with the 
deaths of so many brave people, it was an affirmation that the human 
drive for freedom cannot easily be snuffed out, and served as an 
extraordinary example for the later, successful efforts to break the 
tyrannical Soviet empire.

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