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Remarks To the
Union of Orthodox Jewish
Congregations of America
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
March 12, 2003
(As Prepared for Delivery)
Thank you all for coming to Washington. This city needs
to hear your perspective.
As a Baptist from Sugar Land, Texas, I don't claim to be an expert on the
Orthodox Jewish community.
And while I’d like to be able to tell you that I carefully studied
comparative religion in college, let me just say that Baylor was the best
school I ever got thrown out of.
But here's what I do know: the infusion of Torah into the actions of daily
life is a compelling force for good in this world. To take the ordinary
and the mundane and -- through prayer, tradition, and custom -- elevate it
to something holy is remarkable. Jewish dietary laws are, perhaps, the
most well known example of this process. It’s the way something completely
common can become a vehicle for pursuing ultimate good.
Food is no longer simply a means by which the human appetite is satisfied.
Instead, food becomes a means by which we derive the energy needed to
understand and to obey the guiding hand of Providence.
In this way, what may seem be the extraordinary burdens of the religious
life are, in fact, the foundations of a life filled with direction and
purpose.
We’re meeting during a time of great stress on our governing institutions.
The prospect of going to war in a just and noble cause has to summon our
most somber reflection and attention.
I know the prospect of putting young Americans in harm’s way is weighing
heavily on the mind of our President. And there’s something you can each
do to help President Bush. You can ask, as I do, for God’s guiding hand to
be placed upon his shoulders as he decides the best way to confront evil.
Leaders who wrestle with these most difficult questions are strengthened
by the prayers of people they’ll never meet. The President told us this
last week. So, please continue to pray for President Bush and please
include those of us in the congressional leadership.
You’ll all be pleased to know that the Republican leaders I serve with are
all strong believers in the God who gives us meaning and direction. We all
know the empowering strength that comes from deep faith. One lesson that
Faith teaches is the importance of holding firm to our principles. We’re
seeing that at work through the incredible moral leadership President Bush
is asserting in the war against terror. Despite extraordinary opposition,
President Bush is standing firm on the need to defend this country by
confronting evil.
We’ve heard the seductive siren song of appeasement before. The appeasers
claimed that concessions to militaristic and evil regimes would bring them
into the orbit of civilized societies. Listen to Neville Chamberlain
vainly attempt to justify his conduct:
“One thing is I think clear namely that Hitler has concluded that we mean
business and that the time is not ripe for a major war.
“Therein he is fulfilling my expectations. Unlike some of my critics I go
further and say the longer the war is put off the less likely it is to
come at all as we go about perfecting our defenses and building up the
defenses of our allies.
“That is what Winston and Co. never seem to realize. You don’t need
offensive forces sufficient to win a smashing victory. What you want are
defensive forces sufficiently strong to make it impossible for the other
side to win except at such a cost to make it not worthwhile.
“That is what we are doing and, though at present, the German feeling is
it is not worth while yet, they will presently come to realize that it
never will be worthwhile, then we can talk.”—Neville Chamberlain.
But there was no talk. There was only reckless militarism and genocide.
And millions died as a consequence of Neville Chamberlain’s misguided
belief that evil could be converted to equanimity through the granting of
concessions.
The Appeasers were wrong sixty years ago but their destructive worldview
is still at work—sapping strength and weakening resolve today. The pursuit
of peace is always a noble goal.
But policies that, in a feckless attempt to treat two conflicting parties
equally, recklessly subordinate a country’s basic right to security, in
the face of endless violence directed at children, to a “process” are
inherently and fatally flawed.
We see it in the endless pleas for ever-longer applications of “diplomacy”
to problems that words simply have not and cannot solve. And we see it in
the reckless climate fostered by leaders in the other party which appears
to countenance remarks like those made recently by Representatives Moran
and Kaptur recently. They were wrong and every leader must reject their
moral equivocating.
When a tyrant or terrorist is determined to destroy free societies and
replace them with a dictatorship or a brutal theocracy, there can be no
reasoning with such people. There can be only defiance, and courage, and
through the strength of our Creator, ultimately victory for those free
people who refuse to surrender their liberty in the face of aggression.
Unfortunately, this lesson is lost on those clamoring to impose a
so-called “road map” on the men and women of Israel.
There is a confluence of deluded thinking between European elites,
elements within the State Department bureaucracy, and a significant
segment of the American intellectual community. This consortium of
complacency, these inadvertent servants of tyranny, and these
neo-appeasers share a common frame of reference. They seem to believe that
strains of violent aggression can be best constrained by concessions on
the part of free societies. The neo-appeasers are dead wrong about Iraq.
They’re dead wrong about Israel.
At this moment, this collection of fancy thinkers, is attempting to coerce
the President into accepting what they innocuously call a “Road Map.”
This absurd scheme flows from an ethically obtuse obsession with
establishing moral parity between the lone fountain of liberty in the
Middle East and an apparatus of terrorism that was organized and deployed
to destroy the Jewish State. So, let’s drop the Foggy Bottom temporizing
and be perfectly clear about this.
As President Bush has made clear, there’s only one real road map to peace:
Free minds, free markets, free elections, and the freedom to worship.
The path to security and stability lies down the road that Israel has
already traveled. They don’t need directions. The Israelis don’t need to
change course. They don’t need to travel the path of weakness as defined
by the neo-appeasers.
Let’s consider who seeks to impose this thinking on the Bush
Administration. Morally-ambivalent nations that are more concerned with
their popularity among Arab dictatorships than the peace and security of
the free world.
The true “Road Map” is the road President Bush has described: Democracy,
Human Rights, and the Rule of Law. Israel is not the problem. Israel is
the solution. It is the model for what the rest of the nations in the
Middle East should be. The focus of the free world should not be directed
toward pressuring the freest, most prosperous, most advanced society in
the Middle East.
So let me ask, when the Europeans call on the Israelis to make
concessions, what exactly do they want Israel to concede: Her freedom; her
security, her existence?
This is no “Road Map” for peace. It is a “Road Map” for destruction. We
can’t reward terrorism with concessions.
The Jewish State has every right to reject proposals that will undercut
her fundamental ability to defend herself.
During the Cold War when liberty was besieged by tyranny, who asserted the
moral courage that defeated totalitarianism. It was the United States of
America. American leadership was the driving force that demanded the free
world make its stand against an Evil Empire. Once again, Europeans are
questioning America’s determination to confront evil. Fortunately,
President Bush has the wisdom to reject the counsel offered by these
neo-appeasers.
Why has President Bush consistently refused to meet with Arafat? It’s
simple. Arafat is a terrorist.
And President Bush is a man who honors the sanctity of innocent life and
rightly despises tyrants and dictators who end lives to further their
schemes of domination and destruction.
We were told time and again that, to shift world opinion to our side,
threatened democracies had to “take chances for peace.” What utter
nonsense!
During the 1990s, we had the so-called “peace process.” Israel, encouraged
by the United States, took chances for peace and what good has come of it?
Is the United States now treated with greater reverence or with greater
contempt in the capitals of Old Europe?
Have the terrorist groups targeting Israel been placated or are they now,
instead, directing more violent aggression against Israel?
Sadly, the negative answer is the unavoidable and undeniable response to
each of these troubling questions.
Will another cycle of piecemeal concessions make Israel more secure or
less secure?
My friends, this screenplay has already been written. It’s called the
“Road to Perdition.”
In the search for Mid-East peace, Russia, the European Union, and the
United Nations have been wrong. And they’re still wrong. The suffering of
the Palestinian people is not the product of Israeli democracy. Rather, it
is the consequence of corrupt Palestinian dictatorship. The Palestinians
who are truly committed to peace have been betrayed by a “process” that
tolerates and even funds terrorism against Israel.
By tolerating terrorism, the European Union and its fellow travelers are
perpetuating conditions that make peace between Israel and the Palestinian
people impossible.
The “Road Map” is a false promise because it cannot deliver progress
toward peace without enforcing accountability on terrorist elements within
the Palestinian leadership. Only one path can deliver true peace and
security to Israel. The acceptance by Arab states of core democratic
principles.
During the coming weeks, the U.S.-Israel alliance will be tested. And we
need to be certain that the Europeans and others understand that America
will never abandon our ally and friend.
Fortunately, we have a President who will leave no doubt.
On June 18, 1940, Winston Churchill rose before the House of Commons and
said the following:
"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the
war.
“If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the
world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
“But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States,
including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss
of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the
lights of perverted science."
My friends, the fanatics know that to defeat Israel would be to strike a
crippling blow against the whole free world. In this way, the Israel of
our day and the Great Britain of 1940 are remarkably similar. In the weeks
and months ahead, let us rededicate ourselves to our common mission, the
defense of freedom.
And let us pray, as Abraham Lincoln did, that we receive that Divine
Assistance without which we cannot hope to succeed, but with which success
is certain. Thank you and God bless you.
In addition to hearing from Mr. DeLay,
participants had productive meetings with their Members of the House (or
their staffers). At a Senate luncheon, the OU presented Sen. Orrin Hatch
with an award for his work in defense of religious liberty (speech text
attached) and heard from Senators Gordon Smith, Paul Sarbanes, Arlen
Specter, Chuck Schumer, Ron Wyden and Lindsey Graham on their views on
current issues in foreign and domestic affairs.
Off the record briefings at The White House covered the President's
faith-based initiative with its director James Towey, a range of domestic
policy issues with the President's senior aide Jay Lefkowitz, and an
extended conversation on MIdeast issues with Elliott Abrams, the National
Security Council's senior director for the Mideast.
The day closed with informal discussions with Israel's Deputy Ambassador
Rafi Barak.
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