REMARKS BY AMBASSADOR SHOVAL AT THE
            NATIONAL RELIGIOUS BROADCASTERS PRAYER BREAKFAST
                  Washington, D.C. - January 30, 1991


AMBASSADOR SHOVAL: Mr. McIntyre (?) -- (bumps into microphone) -- oops, 
I already broke it -- (laughter) -- through you, sir; Vice President 
Quayle, a good and trusted friend of Israel; senators, congressmen, my 
friend Ed Meese, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.  I must 
first extend my warmest gratitude to the organizers of this event, the 
people who have made the National Christian Prayer Breakfast a fixture 
on the Washington calendar for ten years now.  You have once again made 
this a truly memorable and inspiring occasion.  I know I speak for all 
Israelis when I say thank you -- thank you for caring, thank you for 
your support, and thank you for taking the time and effort to express 
your love and your prayers for the state of Israel and the people of 
Israel.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to be here today, and to listen to such 
remarkable people say such remarkable things about my country and my 
people.  I don't have to tell anyone here that Israel has more than a 
fair share of enemies, more than a fair share of nations which would 
prefer that we no longer exist.  They will be disappointed.  (Laughter, 
applause.) But it is for this very reason that we treasure our friends -
- friends like you here today.

In Isaiah, whom we call Yishayahu (ph.), we find the following words: 
"L'ma'an tziyon lo ekhesheh (ph.)" -- "For Zion's sake I will not keep 
silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I [will] not rest until her vindication 
goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch." By your 
presence here today, and your good words on behalf of Israel, you have 
come to embody these precepts, and you have breathed new and invaluable 
life into them.

There is this man, Saddam Hussein, who has threatened and goes on 
threatening to turn Israel into a crematorium.  When this terror 
campaign against Israel and the Jewish people began, foreigners, 
newspapermen, were astonished at the apparent equanimity with which the 
average Israeli greeted the prospect of an attack by Scud missiles.  But 
then, the Scud missiles started raining down, and it took these missiles 
only several minutes to reach Israel, and their caretakers did not 
concern themselves overmuch with where they would land -- on the 
contrary, they wanted to hit innocent civilians.  They knew that there 
was no military objective or target for those missiles -- they wanted to 
kill Jews because they were Jews.  Also a few Arabs were killed or 
maimed, which just shows that the Iraqi dictator does not care for his 
own people either, and that all his speeches supposedly on behalf of the 
Palestinians were just empty words.

But by launching these missiles at Israel, Saddam Hussein has 
unknowingly, without realizing it of course, as was mentioned by one of 
my predecessors, reminded the world of a simple fact, a fact which all 
of you understood long ago, that Israel is not solely a concern for the 
Israelis or for the Jewish people, but a concern for the cause of 
freedom worldwide.  Our friends in the Christian world have known this 
for decades.  We must not forget that the whole notion of individual 
rights, civil rights, democracy, the dignity of the individual, the rule 
of law, the freedom of speech are the result of a specifically Judeo-
Christian tradition, a tradition which sprang from the soil of ancient 
Israel and can be traced quite easily to Europe and to birth of the 
rights of man, which culminated in the founding of the United States of 
America and the birth of modern Israel.

And we must not forget that when Saddam Hussein talks about the holy war 
and fulminates about infidels, he means Christians and Jew alike.  And 
he says this not because our religions are a threat to him, but because 
our greatest inventions -- democracy and the rule of law -- are a threat 
to him.  The very idea of the people with a voice, the people with a 
will to express themselves, to be heard, is utterly anathema to a man 
like Saddam Hussein, who must rely on terror to secure the support of 
his masses.  In Iraq today, it is a capital offense to speak ill of the 
tyrant.  Those who for years were saying that Iraq could be appeased 
into a pro-Western stand forgot that the very basis of Western 
government and Western society in and of itself threatens Saddam 
Hussein.

Saddam Hussein has also termed himself the new Nebuchadnezzar.  He 
should remember that man's end.  (Applause.) And this perspective helps 
us to put the present war against Iraq in historical context.  There has 
been much talk about the reasons for this war and a great deal of 
discussion in this country and other countries as to whether the cause 
is just or not.  There have been those who have said that you America 
are there for oil or for other such cynical causes.

We in Israel know what the real stakes are only too well.  We see the 
present conflict as a continuation of the battle between right and 
wrong, the battle which started over 50 years ago against Nazism in 
Europe and the battle which continued over the years for freedom in 
Eastern Europe, in the streets of Hungary and Poland and Czechoslovakia 
and elsewhere.  As those nations threw off the yoke of oppression and 
became nations again, we saw what we believed then and continue to 
believe now to be a movement that would not stop in Europe, the movement 
to freedom and democracy, the movement to peace worldwide.

So when this movement to peace and democracy began, we Israelis had 
hopes that it would somehow come to the Middle East.  I have heard it 
said that there is nothing so difficult as to stop an idea whose time 
has come.  And certainly the end of tyranny is an idea long overdue for 
much of the world and with one notable exception.  It has reached many 
parts of the world, not including, I am sorry to say, most of the Middle 
East.  This war therefore, ladies and gentlemen, is simply a battle in 
the ongoing fight between oppression and freedom. It is the fight 
between the rule of legitimate law and the rule of the jungle.  And 
there can be no linkage, and there will be no linkage between evil and 
good, between wrong and right.

Indeed, today the Middle East stands at a crossroads.  In one direction, 
there is continued anti-Westernism, radicalism, the coercion and 
intimidation of states, and the terror of indigenous populations.  On 
the other hand, there are people who look into other directions.  Maybe 
-- maybe -- a pro-Western Middle East may emerge as a result of this 
war, a Middle East in which moderate countries will be able to flourish 
in liberty, and embrace the brotherhood of free nations.  Peace between 
Arab and Jew, and no less importantly between Arab and Arab, may now 
become a possibility.  The Middle East can, in this scenario, settle 
into a role that it is uniquely suited to play, that of a bridge between 
the Third World and the West, that of bringing the impoverished nations 
of Africa and the subcontinent into the world economy, bringing their 
living standards up to a level compatible with human dignity.

Perhaps our area can become once again the Garden of Eden, for there it 
was where the Garden of Eden was originally situated.  This scenario 
holds for us the prospect and possibility of yielding a peace that is 
more than a piece of paper.  We want peace and security.  And perhaps 
now -- and this has also been mentioned -- with hundreds of thousands of 
Jews -- perhaps millions -- coming home from the Soviet Union to Israel, 
we will see in that not just a symbolic victory, historical victory of 
the spirit of Zionism over communism, but also, and perhaps first and 
foremost, the hand of divine providence.  (Applause.) And in this sense, 
my friends, the fates of the Israel and the United States are once again 
intertwined.  Our fortunes will continue to rise and fall with the 
fortunes of freedom we have both been fighting for and extolling for so 
many years.  Let me tell you from the bottom of my heart, that I, and 
every Israeli prays for your soldiers over there.  May God protect them.

I want to close with another quotation.  There are many which I could 
have chosen, but there was one in particular which caught my eye because 
it is so full of hope.  And perhaps hope is what we need more today than 
anything else. Again, from Isaiah.  "Violence shall be heard no more in 
your land, devastation within your borders.  You shall call your walls 
salvation and your gates praise."

We in Israel cannot have but faith that someday soon this prophesy will 
become a reality.  We believe in that, and you believe in that, and 
therefore it will become reality.  Next year, my friends, in Jerusalem.  
Thank you very much.  (Applause.)

Return to Ambassador Shoval's Speeches Page