Why does the world,
including now the U.S.''--I would submit, Mr. Speaker, not for much
longer--``single out liberal and lawful Israel but refrain from
chastising truly illiberal countries? Kerry has never sermonized for so
long about his plan to solve the Syrian crisis that has led to some
500,000 deaths or the vast migrant crisis that has nearly wrecked the
European Union. No one in this administration has shown as much anger
about the many thousands who have been killed and jailed in the Castro
brothers' Cuba, much less about the current Stone Age conditions in
Venezuela or the nightmarish government of President Rodrigo Duterte in
the Philippines, an ally nation.
``President Obama did not champion the cause of the oppressed during
the Green Revolution of 2009 in Iran. Did Kerry and Obama become so
outraged after Russia occupied South Ossetia, Crimea, and eastern
Ukraine?
``Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power was never so
impassioned over the borders of Chinese-occupied Tibet, or over
Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus.
``In terms of harkening back to the Palestinian `refugee' crisis that
started in the late 1940s, no one talks today in similar fashion about
the Jews who survived the Holocaust and walked home, only to find that
their houses in Eastern Europe were gone or occupied by others. Much
less do we recall the 11 million German civilians who were ethnically
cleansed from Eastern Europe in 1945 by the Soviets and their imposed
Communist governments. Certainly, there are not still `refugee' camps
outside Dresden for those persons displaced from East Prussia 70 years
ago.
``More recently, few nations at the U.N. faulted the Kuwaiti
government for the expulsion of 200,000 Palestinians after the
liberation of Kuwait by coalition forces in 1991. Yet on nearly every
issue--from `settlements' to human rights to the status of women--U.N.
members that routinely violate human rights target a liberal Israel.''
``When President Obama entered office, among his first acts were to
give an interview with the Saudi-owned news outlet Al Arabiya
championing his outreach to the most nondemocratic Islamic world and to
blast democratic Israel on `settlements.'
``Partly, the reason for such inordinate criticism of Israel''--well,
the article says ``sheer cowardice,'' but that might be inappropriate
for a Member to say about the President, so I am not even going to read
that part. ``If Israel had 100 million people and was geographically
large, the world would not so readily play the bully.
``Instead, the United Nations and Europe would likely leave it
alone--just as they give a pass to human-rights offenders such as
Pakistan and Indonesia. If Israel were as big as Iran, and Iran as
small as Israel, then the Obama administration would have not reached
out to Iran and would have left Israel alone.
``Israel's supposed Western friends sort out Israel's enemies by
their relative natural resources, geography, and population--and
conclude that supporting Israel is a bad deal in cost/benefit terms.
``Partly, the criticism of Israel is explained by oil--an issue that
is changing daily as both the U.S. and Israel cease to be oil
importers.
``Still, about 40 percent of the world's oil is sold by Persian Gulf
nations.''
And I might add parenthetically, when we have a new President, that
will drop even further because the United States will begin to produce
more of the energy that we have been blessed with.
Keywords matched
refugee migrant