<font color=red> I bet this religious fanatic is a friend of yours!<font color=black>
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Nation & World: Thursday, July 31, 2003
DeLay reaffirms support of U.S. in visit to Israel
By Megan K. Stack
Los Angeles Times
JERUSALEM — He delivered his words with the rolling cadence of a tent revival. He slipped the West Bank's Ramallah into a string of cities that included Auschwitz, Pyongyang and Damascus. He invoked Moses and Anne Frank. He mixed Old Testament language into the American civics-class lexicon of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
"I come to you with a very simple message: Do not be afraid," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told a rapt crowd of Israeli lawmakers, yeshiva students and academics here yesterday.
"We hear your voice call out in the desert, and we will never, ever leave your side."
<font color=red>EDIT. Damn it this guy is warped!<font color=black>
They may be talking peace and Palestinian statehood in Washington, but DeLay is touring the Holy Land with a message for Israeli hawks: The war is not over, and the United States is Israel's brother in arms in a pitched battle against evil.
"Standing up for good against evil is very hard work; it costs money and blood," DeLay told a thronged hall in the Israeli parliament building. "But we're willing to pay."
One of the most prominent leaders in the group of Christian Zionists who have grown in power in the post-Sept. 11 Bush administration, DeLay is a longtime friend to Israel. And his conservative audience had plenty of cause to be nervous.
The "road map" to peace is inching along. President Bush is pushing for a Palestinian state and a halt to Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was welcomed warmly at the White House last week.
All of this is anathema to many right-wing Jews — and also to many Christian Zionists, whose reading of the Book of Revelation fires a fervent devotion to Israel and a discomfort with Muslim claims on the Holy Land.
Instead of discussing reconciliation and compromise, DeLay lingered on apocalyptic images of battle and strife.
"There is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking," he said. "We fight humbly and proudly together. ... Brothers and sisters of Israel, be not afraid. The American people stand with you, and so does our president."
<font color=red>"As I shook his hand, I told Tom DeLay that until I heard him speak, I thought I was farthest to the right in the Knesset," quipped Aryeh Eldad, a right-wing lawmaker from the National Union party.<font color=black>
Bush's attempts to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace have caused a growing schism between his administration and the Christian Zionists who form a significant minority of the Republican vote.
"I've noticed a lot of nervousness about the road map (among evangelical Christians)," said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute at Akron University and a monitor of religious influence on politics. "I've had a lot of people remark to me that they're very worried."
<font color=red> Christian Zionist organizations encourage — and even bankroll — controversial Jewish settlements that the U.S. frowns on.<font color=black> The movement also opposes a Palestinian state on land they believe was given to the Jews by God. But a few hours after DeLay spoke in Jerusalem, Bush told reporters in Washington that a Palestinian state by 2005 is a reasonable goal.
The contrast wasn't lost on right-wing Israelis, who noted the gap between DeLay and Bush.
"We went for the road map because of President Bush; we've been persuaded to make moves that in our eyes are dangerous," Israeli Public Security Minister Uzi Landau said. "(These fears) were embedded in the speech we just heard. This is refreshing."
Palestinian officials are watching Christian Zionists too. Green estimates that as many as 15 million Americans are at the core of the movement and that 15 percent of the U.S. electorate belongs to related evangelical churches. The Christian faithful send "many millions of dollars" to Israel and its settlements, Green said.
"I'm very worried about them," Palestinian legal adviser Diana Buttu said. "I know they're not at all happy with President Bush's stand on the road map, and I think they're going to come and rear their heads."
Peace is a Palestinian responsibility, DeLay told his audience. If the Palestinians suffer, it isn't Israel's fault, he argued.
DeLay has criticized the push for Palestinian statehood, but yesterday was quiet on that topic. A spokesman for DeLay said the speaker didn't think it was the appropriate time to discuss it.
He called on Palestinians to rise up against terrorism and said the United States would help them if they renounced such violence. While audience members murmured in agreement, DeLay scorned the idea that terrorism can be "negotiated away" and sneered at a "paper-thin cease-fire."
Violence that has killed 2,421 people on the Palestinian side and 810 on the Israeli side in the past three years has declined sharply since the three-month truce was declared by the Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad on June 29. Arafat's Fatah movement declared a six-month cease-fire.
"Murderers who take 90-day vacations are still murderers," DeLay said.
He urged the isolation of the "pernicious enemy" Yasser Arafat and called Palestinian militants "so many desert scorpions."
Since Sept. 11, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has worked to link the Israeli bloodshed from the Palestinian uprising to the attack on the World Trade Center. DeLay, too, drew the comparison, assuring his listeners that Israeli security is integral to the U.S.-declared war on terror.
DeLay met a woman who lost her pregnant daughter in a bus bombing and visited the owner of a cafe bombed by Palestinian militants. He flew north to eat lunch with Israeli soldiers near the Syrian border. All the while, he assured Israelis that terrorism is terrorism, and their war is his war.
"Israel's fight is our fight. And so shall it be until the last terrorist on Earth is in a cell or a cemetery," DeLay said. Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat called DeLay's remarks "despicable and satanic."
"Our world is not divided between those who are pro-Israeli and those who are pro-Palestinian," Erekat said after hearing the text of DeLay's speech. "It is divided between those who are pro-peace and those who are against it, and DeLay truly deserves to head the camp of those who are against peace."
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.
Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times. |
