U.S. Should Support Israel's Security Fence

U.S. SHOULD SUPPORT ISRAEL'S SECURITY FENCE -- (House of Representatives - February 26, 2004)

(Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday morning I was in Jerusalem, and I was within 100 yards of a bus on the number 14 route when a bomb was set off by the Alexa Brigades which are affiliated with the Fattah movement chaired by Chairman Arafat. The bomb was timed to destroy a bus and the people on it during the rush hour when schoolchildren were going to school, when men and women were going to work. Eight people, including two high school students, were killed, over 50 wounded. Chairman Arafat's group later claimed credit for this "successful military operation." That was in Arabic. Later during the day, of course, he condemned it in English.

Mr. Speaker, the bomber came in through a gap in the security fence which has not yet been built. The Israelis must finish that fence as a pure defensive reaction. To criticize the Israelis for building a security fence when any other country that was under the kind of sustained terror attack that Israel is under would not be building a security fence, but would be attacking with bombs and missiles, is the height of hypocrisy. Frankly, it reminds me of the criticisms of the Czechs in 1938 for endangering the peace of Europe by getting in the way of the peaceful territorial demands of Chancellor Hitler of Europe.

The Israelis should be applauded for trying to stop this carnage and the murder of civilians, not by invasion and by bombs and missiles, but simply by a security fence; and we ought to support it, and we ought to hail the Israelis for their restrained reaction instead of allowing hypocrites to, in effect, support the campaign of terror by opposing completion of the fence.