[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 5138-5139]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        CELEBRATING THE 68TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. E. SCOTT RIGELL

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 26, 2016

  Mr. RIGELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to submit a statement on behalf 
of my constituent, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman. Rabbi Zoberman is the 
Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, 
Virginia. Rabbi Zoberman asked me to submit the following remarks:

       As we celebrate the 68th Anniversary of the State of 
     Israel, heir to the Jewish people's long and proud legacy of 
     the spirit uplifting humanity, it remains an enlightened 
     Western island of progressive values retaining its democratic 
     essence in a wide sea of barbarism and backwardness 
     begrudging the survival of the world's only Jewish state.
       In fact, no other democratic nation-state's very existence 
     is questioned except Israel's. This is in spite of its 
     enduring roots in its historic land, and world renowned 
     accomplishments in the arts, sciences, and high- tech 
     industries. It proved an unrivaled ability to rise from two 
     millennia of exile, oppression, and an unparalleled Holocaust 
     consuming a third of the Jewish people. Israel's renewed 
     emergence against great odds is an affirmation of the 
     transforming power of hope, and the rightful restoration of 
     the Jewish people's human dignity and standing in the 
     community of nations. It is the divine fulfillment of 
     prophetic promise, with the challenging mandate and 
     expectation to create a model society.
       Today's troubled Middle East, home of humanity's inspiring 
     Biblical Exodus, is in dire need of replacing degradation 
     with dignity, and unremitting terrorism with humane 
     teachings. We remain mindful of the unabated genocidal Syrian 
     tragedy of President Bashar Al-Assad's making with critical 
     Iranian and Russian support. The recurrence of brutal 
     Palestinian terrorism which constantly claims Israeli lives 
     is cruelly rewarded by the Palestinian Authority's 
     leadership. On numerous occasions, terrorists are honored as 
     martyrs while they totally disregard human life.
       One of the many victims, 29 year old Taylor Force from 
     Lubbock, Texas, a non-Jewish graduate student from Vanderbilt 
     University, was knifed to death in Jaffa, close to where 
     visiting Vice President and Mrs. Joseph Biden were dining at 
     the time. Force, a graduate of West Point, served combat 
     tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. When confronted with a tragic 
     Jewish terrorist attack on the Palestinian Dawabsheh family, 
     which claimed three lives, there was rightly shocked 
     condemnation from all echelons of Israeli society. Will 
     President Mahmoud Abbas finally reach out to Prime Minister 
     Benjamin Netanyahu's call for direct negotiations for a two-
     state solution to the festering conflict in a raging region, 
     with a demilitarized Palestinian State and a recognition of 
     its neighboring Jewish State? For the sake of all, let not 
     the Palestinians miss this opportunity too. This past 
     November 4, 2015, we observed the 20th Anniversary of Prime 
     Minister Yitzhak Rabin's watershed assassination. With its 
     profound lessons, I reflected by reading this verse:

     ``Rest in peace,
     Guarded by the stones
     You liberated thrice-
     Twice in war
     And once in hope.
     Jerusalem is thy faithful
     Wall that won't breach,
     Friend of Shalom.''

       Last February I attended the 127th Annual Convention of the 
     Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform), which meets 
     in Israel every seven years, to attest to their abiding bond 
     with the State of Israel. I joyfully participated in an 
     egalitarian worship service at the Southern extension of the 
     Western Wall which has been allotted for non-Orthodox Jewish 
     practice. This compromised arrangement was government 
     sanctioned, while hurdles unfortunately persist. Significant 
     progress toward pluralistic religious Jewish expression has 
     been made due to Israel's Supreme Court intervention.
       Much is at stake, acknowledging the courageous and 
     tenacious struggle for acceptance by the Women of the Wall. 
     There is, however, a fringe but dangerous Jewish group 
     calling to replace Israel's democracy with a ``Judean 
     Monarchy.'' It is a wonder that Israel, saddled with 
     existential concerns that few other countries deal with, 
     remains a shining exemplar of light and perseverance. The 
     recent rescue, of 17 Jews, with American aid, including Rabbi 
     Suleiman Bin Yaqoub, from war-torn Yemen, one of Jewry's most 
     ancient communities, tells of the difference Israel makes. 
     Surely its vital bond of shared values and common interests 
     with the USA is an essential one for both democracies.
       I am particularly alarmed by Iran and its proxies, the 
     deadly global reach of ISIS, the destructive Boycott, 
     Divestment and Sanctions movement, European anti-Semitism, 
     and the United Nations' double standard against Israel. The 
     poignant words of the late Prime Minister Golda Meir are 
     revealing, ``We owe a responsibility not only to those who 
     are in Israel but also to those generations that are no more, 
     to those millions that have died within our lifetime, to Jews 
     all over the world and generations of Jews to come. We hate 
     war. We don't rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new 
     kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in 
     Israel.''
       I speak as a refugee born in Chu, Kazakhstan (USSR) in 
     November 1945, to Polish Holocaust survivors. There I spent 
     my early childhood in Displaced Persons Camps in Austria and 
     Germany before moving to Israel in 1949. The current 
     suffering of millions of refugees from Syria, Iraq, 
     Afghanistan and elsewhere should move us all to caring action 
     with caution, but not allowing for moral paralysis. Innocent 
     sufferers are closest to God's aching heart. I am connecting 
     my own family and people's anguish with that of the Syrians' 
     plight:

     ``My mother, a Holocaust survivor,
     Was young like you
     Scared Syrian sister,
     When she too got scarred
     By the pain of stinging tears,
     The beauty marks of refugees.
     May you also find peace
     At this confounding time,
     In a world abandoning you
     Too lonely child.''

       We remember the million and a half Jewish children who were 
     murdered in the Holocaust only because they were Jewish and 
     held a promise for a noble future.

     ``My two year old first cousin,
     Rachel-Leah,
     Whose great-
     grandmother, and mine,
     Rachel-Leah,
     Was first cousin to
     President Chaim Weitzmann's mother, Rachel-Leah,
     Was too young to
     Know the family bond,
     But not too young to die
     By toasted hand grenades
     Led to the pits of slaughter
     In August 1942
     With older brothers Aarale and Yisrael
     And parents Bas-Malka and Shechina,
     In Sarny, the Ukraine,
     By those who begrudged our Jewish people's pedigree.''

       President John F. Kennedy coined this immortal message, 
     ``Israel was not created to

[[Page 5139]]

     disappear--Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child 
     of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken 
     by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the 
     shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.''

                          ____________________