[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 14586]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          DR. ISRAEL ZOBERMAN

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. E. SCOTT RIGELL

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 11, 2014

  Mr. RIGELL. Mr. Speaker, I have just returned from an extraordinary 
experience in July, 2014 in Israel, the land I first came to in 1949 at 
the tender age of three and a half, already a refugee, from post-World 
War II Europe. Yet nothing could have prepared me for the surrealistic 
reality of approaching rockets and wailing sirens, a frightful scenario 
that Israeli citizens of all ages in its south have had to contend with 
for fourteen long years, with only fifteen seconds to find protective 
shelter. I will long remember being awakened by the sirens' piercing 
sounds of war alert at 3:15 a.m. in Haifa, Israel's northern city, far 
away from Gaza or as proven rather close, and moving quickly with my 
mom, a ninety-two year old remarkably resilient Polish Holocaust 
survivor, to the best possible room in her apartment to await whatever 
might happen with our hearts pounding. Luckily the rocket was 
intercepted by an Iron Dome installation that the United States has 
gratefully financed.
  No nation would have done less than Israel to fulfill a basic mandate 
of protecting one's population and all nations would have done more 
early on. Restrained by its legacy of Jewish and humanitarian values, 
ever conscious of the double standard applied to its conduct, Israel 
has exercised an admirable measure of caution to save lives even from 
the midst of a firing hostile territory controlled by Hamas, a 
recognized terrorist organization whose covenant unabashedly calls for 
Israel's destruction and criminally has used children, women and men as 
human shields; it shot 3500 rockets and also mortars from schools, 
hospitals, mosques, homes and U.N. facilities with the clear goal of 
indiscriminately killing and maiming Israelis.
  When Hamas and the host of other Arab terrorist organizations will 
care more for their children than the death of its ``enemy's'' 
children, will there emerge new hope for the long-awaiting to be 
transformed Middle East. When Israel's insistence on the sacredness of 
human life--all human life--will become the inheritance of the entire 
troubled region, replacing pagan human sacrifice, will the yearning of 
modern Israel and its biblical prophets for that essential though 
elusive Shalom, Salaam, Peace, reemerge as a potent force for the sake 
of all. How could Hamas, tragically and ironically elected into power 
by Gaza's misguided and long-suffering people, following Israel's 2005 
withdrawal from Gaza at an enormous cost, squander its donated material 
resources away from the declared purpose of creating a supportive and 
necessary infrastructure toward establishing a terrorizing war machine 
with attack tunnels reaching into Israel with a goal of surprising 
Israel someday with mortal death blows? We are duty-bound to remember 
that Iran supplied Hamas with the smuggled weaponry and that Hamas is 
but Iran's proxy, alerted by Iran's stubborn search for a nuclear 
capability that will make all the difference. Sadly Qatar is not an 
innocent by-stander, offering Hamas vast financial support.
  I was deeply touched by Israel's courageous people coming together in 
a heart-warming display of national unity in the face of a mighty and 
unique challenge, while maintaining its enviable democratic impulse of 
cherished freedom to express a variety of views that could not take 
place in Gaza. Israel is weeping for its heroic defenders as well as 
the innocent victims on the other side held hostage by an ideology 
alien to what we in the West will never willingly give up.
  Make no mistake. Israel represents the American democratic heritage 
with common purpose and interest, in a part of the world disdaining it 
and in which Radical Islam increasingly makes disastrous inroads as the 
shameful slaughter in Syria and Iraq continues while self-righteous and 
callous Europe with its growing anti-Semitism fueled by Islamist forces 
looks aside, expecting the Israelis to be like past Jews who could not 
defend themselves and paid such a high price for it. Let all Americans 
say with one voice for the sake of all that is sacred and sane in a 
triumphant message that dare not be misunderstood, ``Never Again!''
  Rabbi Israel Zoberman is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth 
Chaverim in Virginia Beach.

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