DeLay: U.S. Must Support Israel, Which Under Threat That Endangers Civilized World

WASHINGTON (AP) - Suicide bombings and other "evil tactics" used by Israel's enemies threaten the civilized world itself, the incoming House majority leader said Wednesday. He praised President Bush for "standing solidly with Israel." "We cannot allow the flame of democracy to be extinguished by a wave of aggression," said Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who as majority whip now ranks third among House leaders. "The terrorists attempting to destroy the state of Israel should know that America will never allow that to happen."

DeLay commended Bush for "resisting the constant calls to force Israel back to the negotiating table, where they will be pressured to grant concessions to terrorists."

"The free world must never negotiate with terrorists," he said in the text of a speech to be delivered Wednesday evening at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Winston Churchill gave his "Iron Curtain" speech a half-century ago.

"Suicide bombings specifically, and terrorism generally, are not a form of resistance - they are cold-blooded murder," he said. "This hellish strategy of destruction menaces far more than the state of Israel. It is a threat to the entire civilized world."

DeLay praised Israel as a "lone light of democracy" in the region, "fending off an orchestrated onslaught of death ... by groups committed to her complete elimination."

He denounced the Yasser Arafat-led Palestinian Authority as an "impediment to peace."

"During four decades of terrorism, Yasser Arafat has proven his total contempt for human life," DeLay said. Therefore, he said, "We should support Israel as they dismantle the Palestinian leadership that foments violence and fosters hate."

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., took a different tack when asked about U.S. policy toward Israel, saying he had advised Bush to exercise caution.

"We don't want to jump into the middle of this," Hastert said during a political trip to Birmingham, Ala. "The best type of intervention is peaceful intervention, trying to get people to the table. I think that's what needs to be done."

But DeLay said the United States should "drop the empty pretense that we can serve the region as a mere broker. Israel is resisting a campaign of death," and the United States must stand squarely against the terrorist organizations attacking Israel.

DeLay's support for Bush follows a weekend during which three senators - a fellow Republican and two Democrats - said the president must try harder to stop the violence.

"I think we need to move aggressively with the Arab countries, where we think the financing is coming from," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "I think there needs to be something dramatic done, and that means the president has to step up his involvement."

And Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., demanded "much bolder moves" by the administration, saying Bush should send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Middle East.

Reps. Lois Capps, D-Calif., and James Leach, R-Iowa, urged colleagues to join them in pressing Bush to send three former presidents to the Middle East. In a letter Wednesday, the two said "the only way out of the current crisis involves a comprehensive diplomatic effort" led by the United States.

They recommended former Presidents Jimmy Carter, George Bush and Bill Clinton for the task, with the president's father heading the delegation.

U.S. special envoy Anthony Zinni remains in the region, trying to work out a cease-fire. Vice President Dick Cheney was there last month, although on a mission originally planned to round up support for military action against Iraq.

In Europe today, there are chilling echoes of 1938.
The infamous pogrom known as Kristallnacht -- "the Night of Broken Glass" -- rocked Germany's Jewish neighborhoods on the nights of November 9th and 10th. Nazi youth gangs destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and businesses and more than a hundred synagogues were razed.
Item: In Brussels, a synagogue on Monday was firebombed by unknown assailants. No injuries were reported, but there was considerable damage.
Item: In Marseilles, the Or Aviv synagogue was destroyed Sunday night. It was burnt to the ground.
Item: In Lyons, during the wee hours of Saturday morning, over a dozen masked youths, in two stolen cars, crashed the gates of a synagogue, setting the cars ablaze in the inner courtyard. Thankfully, in this instance, firemen arrived in time.
But there's more.
Again on Saturday, a kosher butcher shop in Toulouse was fired upon by a gunman, while in Berlin, on Tuesday, two Jewish American tourists were beaten to the ground by a gang of Mideast assailants who first asked the couple if they were Jewish. The attackers remain at large.
In Strasbourg, arson destroyed the wooden doors to a Jewish prayer house, the fifth such attack in four days.
What's happening here?
For years, Europe had fostered a climate of anti-Semitism with its unabashed support for "Palestinian" nationalism and by its relentless Jew-bashing in the press (always, of course, in the clever guise of criticism of Israel).
Europe is reaping the whirlwind for blatant anti-Semitism -- that's what's happening here.
Yet, Europe still doesn't 'get it'. Despite the mounting evidence -- damning evidence -- implicating their darling golden-boy Arafat as a terrorist, they continue to mouth-off worn platitudes about a "peace process", demanding greater 'engagement' from us.
Meanwhile, Europe continues in its orgy of Sharon-bashing, even as waves of suicide bombers attack crowded Pizzerias, malls, shopping centers, buses and night clubs.
"Nie Wieder" is German for 'Never again'. Survivors of the Holocaust vowed that it would never happen again. Auschwitz -- never again. Treblinka -- never again. Birkenau -- never again. Buchenwald -- never again.
Without this historical background, it is impossible to understand Israel's gallant, dauntless determination to survive. Even in the face of international condemnation and censure, this tiny country remains resolute, unwavering, unflinching. Israel has been blacklisted, upbraided, lectured at, reproached, rebuked, castigated and decried, but her people remain tenacious as ever.
In fact, the louder the fulminations -- the more the world gangs up on her -- the stauncher, the firmer Israel's people become.
Small wonder they're not fooled by Arafat in the least. They know that behind that carefully crafted public persona, lies a terrorist.
And how right they are.
Arafat is a murderer, a cruel and pitiless brute bereft of even a smidgen of human compassion. He is the implacable archenemy of peace, if peace means tolerance or acceptance of Jews, whom he loathes with venom -- the poison of a thousand vipers.
Arafat is an insatiable cutthroat, a serial killer, whose voracious complicity in genocide marks him -- not as a statesman -- but an international war criminal, every bit like the cracked Nazi butchers he emulates.
From Arafat's deathly hands, drips the blood of innocents, spilled by a madman's unfettered hate, his animus to rout from his fiefdom all traces of Jewry.
Arafat is ethnic-cleansing-xenophobia personified, whose zero-tolerance vision is of "Palestine" purged of Jewish "infidels", where Jews are told to "get out, and stay out!"
To Arafat, this callous, caustic, cold-hearted fiend, Jews are not human beings.
You heard right.
I'll repeat: Jews, to Arafat, are not human beings.
Arafat is a preacher of hate. Like Hitler, he poisons young minds with fear -- fear of Jews. Like the Nazis, he wraps his "cause" in the cloak of victimization, of nationalist "struggle" against "Zionist" "oppression" -- the Jewish "menance". From Arafat's paranoid rantings, "Palestinians" are molded to think that Jews are "conspiring" to "rule" the world.
He wields this fear and hate as bridges to action. But before he can muster his stormtroopers into waves of suicide bombers, he methodically dehumanizes the "enemy" -- the Jews.
The process of dehumanization is enabled by Arafat's stranglehold monopoly over the media. In the "territories", the airwaves are saturated with torrents of anti-Jewish hate-mongering, laced in the ferver of radical Islam. Propaganda is everywhere. Radio and television, as well as newspapers, books and magazines all reinforce Arafat's message of hate.
Killing Jews is not only sanctioned, it is elevated to an act of religious duty, with promises of rich rewards in the "hereafter".
Bottom line: Israel followed every jot and tittle of the phony Oslo Accords. Israel offered "Palestinians" almost everything they said they wanted. But what did Israel get for her troubles?
Twenty-one months of murder, mayhem, death and destruction -- that's what.
It's not fair, it's not right, it's not moral.
And it will not stand.
Never again.
My two cents..
"JohnHuang2"

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.