National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel
Tel. (248) 557-4540 · Fax. (248) 557-4527 · E-mail: NCLCI@MSN.COM

Speeches from the 2002 Pro Israeli Washington Rally 

Washington Mall, April 15, 2002

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GOV. GEORGE PATAKI

Elie Wiesel

BILL BENNETT

Benjamin Netanyahu

MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN and REP. DICK GEPHARDT

Natan Sharansky

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz

MARK SOKOLOW and other victims of terrorism

JANET PARSHALL, Robert Goldberg and Sen. Harry Reid

RABBI MICHAEL MELCHIOR

REP. DICK ARMEY

Rudolf Giuliani

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER

Senator Barbara Mikulski

MR. MICHAEL GELMAN: On September 12th, the day after the terrorist attack on our country, my neighbor and friend, Bill Bennett, said to me, "Now we are all Israelis." (Applause.) Bill understood that the war our country will be fighting against terrorism was the same war Israel has been fighting for years. He understood that Israel and America are allies in that war and that America has to stand with Israel.

Since that fateful day in September, Bill has been steadfast in his support, both orally and in writing. Bill Bennett has served this country as the former chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, the former U.S. secretary of Education and the former drug czar, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

He is currently co-director of Empower America and the author and editor of over 15 books, including "The Book of Virtues." His most recent book, "Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism," was released by Doubleday last week.

It is my privilege to introduce to you a great friend of Israel, William J. Bennett. (Applause.)

MR. BENNETT: Thank you, Michael. I'm Bill Bennett and I'm from Brooklyn, New York. (Applause.) I'm a Christian, a Catholic, and it's an honor to be here at an Israel solidarity rally. (Applause.)

The truth is, this rally is long overdue. (Applause.) Israel rallied for us on September 11th. Their flags were at half-mast. By contrast, the Palestinian terrorists had their rallies that day, too. They honked their horns at American destruction. (Chorus of boos.)

September 11th was a moment of moral clarity. We saw the face, we felt the hand of evil. We were not responsible for the attack. We did not ask for it and we did not seek a war, but the war came.

Israel, of course, has known the hand of evil, too, ever since her miraculous founding. And she, not seeking war either, has been fighting terrorism for 54 years. (Applause.)

Moral clarity means nothing less than seeing things for what they truly are. It requires the understanding of distinctions, such as the distinction between a democracy and a dictatorship. (Applause.)

There is a difference, a real and substantial difference, between a democracy fighting for survival and its opponents fighting to push that democracy into the sea. (Applause.) And there's a distinction as well between civilization and barbarism, between decency and terror. And when we see things for what they really are, it means the time for moral equivocation and moral equivalence should be over. (Applause.)

We stand here today to stand with Israel. Israel, we need to remind some of our countrymen, is not asking us to fight for it. It is asking only for the right to be left alone to fight its own war on terrorism. (Applause.) And if we let Israel fight her war, we will be the beneficiaries. (Applause.)

Let us not forget what we owe Israel, who alone, and to the scorn of the world, girded herself and took out Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. (Applause.) This made the world a less dangerous place. It also helped us to liberate Kuwait a decade later.

Israel stands as the singular model of democracy in the Middle East. It has shown the way, and it has done so through untold acts of courage by Israelis, acts of courage like going to the grocery store, boarding a bus, attending synagogue. (Applause.)

There's a specter that has grown steadily over the past several decades. It has not been answered, and hence it has become louder. It is the specter of anti-Semitism. A Saudi newspaper recently published a story about Jews using Arab blood for their Purim celebration. Images of Jews depicted as less than human pervade the Egyptian press. We are reading reports from the Arab press that speak of "Hitler of blessed memory," closed quote.

Here in Washington DC, a few blocks away, is the Holocaust Museum. What we are seeing today, what Israel is feeling today, was not supposed to happen again. (Applause.) When you look at Palestinian and other Arab maps of the region, there is no Israel. When you read the statements of martyrdom from terrorists, you have to realize that it is no longer just the nation Israel that is targeted; it is now also the people Israel. And it must stop. (Applause.)

In sum, I am here as one of tens of millions of Americans who have seen, in the founding and flourishing of the Jewish state, the hand of the same beneficent God who attended our own founding and who has guided our fortunes until now. (Applause.)

Keeping faith with the people of Israel and their still- unfinished confrontation with evil is, to me, a species of keeping faith with ourselves; breaking faith, a species of self-negation. It is exactly that simple and exactly that difficult and exactly that consequential.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)