Back to Ambassadorial Speeches - Ambassador Zalman Shoval

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.)