Israel

Floor Speech

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Mr. FLEMING. I thank my friend and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schock).

The three of us here this evening spent really an awesome time in Israel during August. But I want to take you back in time, Mr. Speaker, in history 71 years to today. Literally 71 years to today, and what we see in the newsreels. And that was that Lord Chamberlain waved a stack of papers in front of the camera and he uttered, We have peace in our time. And what was he talking about? He had just come from a meeting with Herr Adolph Hitler, and along with France and a few other nations, but not Czechoslovakia, they had come to an agreement to cede to Hitler the Sudetenland, which at that time was the strategic part of Czechoslovakia that was so necessary for their protection. He ceded that. Of course, Hitler claimed that it was mostly populated with Germans, but, nonetheless, Lord Chamberlain and others agreed to let him have it. And we know that today as a policy of appeasement.

He also said that he actually went there for the purpose of honor and peace. And then Winston Churchill, who was in the Parliament, replied that he went there for honor and peace but he returned with neither. Because we know that within months, Hitler began a very aggressive campaign and went on to, of course, not only take Czechoslovakia but also Poland. And, of course, as we say, the rest is history.

And what is that history? The history is that there were 20 million people killed during World War II, Mr. Speaker; 6 million of them were Jews. And in visiting the Holocaust Museum in Israel, in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, something very interesting, I think, occurred in my mind that I never thought about until it was brought out.

We saw a lot of very interesting things there. A lot of personal stories about families who were broken apart, most of whom died in the Holocaust, people who were in death camps, a lot of personal letters and books and eyeglasses and things like that that told individual stories. We know the factual parts of this. We have all seen the documentaries that talked about the gas chambers and the ovens. And we, of course, have heard about and read about the Final Solution and Hitler's attempt to take executing human beings to a whole new scientific level, which he was able to achieve. Nothing before and nothing since has been done.

But the important thing, Mr. Speaker, about this that we must understand that really teaches us a second lesson today: The first one being the danger of appeasement, but the second is that while the Jews were being carted off to the death camps, and, of course, many of them attempted to reach safe harbor in the United States and many other countries and were denied that and, in fact, in many cases were thrown out of other countries, there was no one to speak up for the Jews. No one, not even the United States. Even we have the blight of having turned our backs on the Jews. And there was no state, there was no country to speak up for the Jews, who at that time lived in many places of the world. And because of that, after World War II and all the countries began to come together, it was decided that the Jews would have their own homeland.

And of course we know that the U.N. provided for that, and what was then called Palestine today is called Israel. Israel is a state, and that's so important because now Jews have a country to stick up for them. They have a people who will never back down from an evil dictator like Adolf Hitler. They will stand up for their people, and they will stand up as our ally against these things.

But the interesting thing is it's often said that what we don't learn from history is destined to repeat itself. And what we have today is a Hitler-like figure, Mr. Speaker, of course, Ahmadinejad, who is saying many of the same things that Adolf Hitler said in those days, giving the same threats.

Very few people took Hitler seriously when he said that he intended to kill the Jews, and that is what he did. Now we have Ahmadinejad who is making the same statements, and we watch before our very eyes he's building a nuclear arsenal.

And what are we doing, Mr. Speaker? Well, we are talking about sanctions. And how effective are these sanctions going to be when it's necessary to have Russia and China to help us with that? And of course, all we are getting from them is rhetoric. In fact, the only thing structurally that's been done in all of this discussion is we've given up missile defense in the Czech Republic and in Poland. So we are already beginning the appeasement process in this world while we have another Hitler-like figure out there beginning to plan the destruction of the Jews once again.

So I think we need to stand, Mr. Speaker, with our brothers and sisters in Israel, in their protection. Because in as much as Israel is so capable of taking care of itself--we all know just what a small strip of land that is--and while Israel can protect itself in many ways, there is no way that Israel can protect itself from an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, and that is precisely what Iran is doing today.

And apart from that, Iran is exporting terrorism around the world. We know that Hamas and Hezbollah; we, know that al Qaeda--who is providing al Qaeda, Mr. Speaker, with the weapons they are using to kill our own sons and daughters? Again, it's Iran. So Iran is emerging as, I guess--Ahmadinejad and certainly the mullahs behind him, are really, I think, showing a tremendous parallel to pre-World War II Germany.

And I think that we need to learn from the lessons of the past, and that is that number one, we should never allow a policy of appeasement. It never gets peace and it never gives honor. It always leads to war. It's always a matter of people overseas, folks who really are out for the destruction of others, it gives them an opening to attack other countries.

And then secondly, never again should Israel be without its own country and certainly without its friends around the world. Never again should we have a situation, Mr. Speaker, as we did during World War II that was a holocaust which, of course, we know that Ahmadinejad denies to this day.

And there are many that say, look, this is just a little strip of land out there in the middle of the desert. You've got Arabs out there and you've got Jews and they're fighting over this land. Really, if you think about it, the Jews occupied this land as far back as 3500 B.C. Islam didn't even come into existence until thousands of years later, and in fact, we know that Christianity started even before Islam.

So of course there have been three major religions that have existed there and still exist there today, and as far as I'm concerned, they can exist there forever. But I think that there's no reason to think that there isn't a legitimate right for Israel to claim that as its own state.

And in summary--and this is, I think, to kind of tie it all together, Mr. Speaker--we talked about the issue of the two-state solution, and Mr. Netanyahu believes that is the way to go. We should have two states: a Palestinian state and a Jewish state. But remember that Israel is a democracy, and just simply by being outgrown by Palestinians or Muslims, it could lose its status as a Jewish state. And I think that it's essential that we not only support this two-state solution in supporting Israel, but that we support the right for Israel to exist as a Jewish state and always will.

Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Will the gentleman yield for a question? Actually, both of my colleagues.

When we were there, we had an opportunity to visit a number of the settlements, and I have been distressed that our President, President Obama, has been almost dictating that Israel give up part of its sovereign nation, these settlements. We were there. We walked them. We saw the strategic location of them.

I wanted to get your impressions of what your thoughts were. Should Israel give in to that direction and give up its sovereign land, those settlements that it has today?

Mr. FLEMING. If the gentleman will yield back, I will just simply say that my first impression beyond the fact that Israel is such a lovely country--I mean, just gorgeous, right in the middle of the desert next to the Mediterranean Sea. And of course we were able to see the Dead Sea and many sites that are holy to us as Christians. But just how small that country is, like a postage stamp, as narrow as 5 miles at its waist. And we saw a patchwork of villages, one being Palestinian and one being Jewish, all throughout the country.

And even though, often cases there were checkpoints and there were fences between them, you couldn't really see that. All you could see looking over is you would see evidence of a Palestinian village and you would see evidence of a Jewish village all sitting there peacefully. It's almost difficult to believe how much war and how much violence has existed there for so long.

And of course with that we visited Sderot, which is, I guess, a flash point where there have been rockets hurled and that sort of thing.

So I think that was really what I found to be very impressive.

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