Editor’s Note: Following are highlights of the speech delivered last week at the Knesset by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex).
I want to take this opportunity to thank the citizens of Israel for their generous welcome and hospitality to my wife, Christine, and me over the last three days.
My traveling partner, Ander Crenshaw, and I look forward to bringing the lessons we’ve learned here back to America and to our colleagues in Congress.
I also look forward to sharing my experiences with President Bush, whose leadership and clarity make peace in the Middle East possible and victory in the war on terror inevitable.
In his comments yesterday, the president reaffirmed America’s support for Israel’s security and our commitment to fight ‘terrorism wherever it is found.’
He made clear that the prospects for peace are the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. They must maintain sustained, targeted and effective operations to fight terror and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.
After my time here, I have a new appreciation for the threat terrorism poses, and for the president’s sense of urgency in fighting it every day and everywhere.
It has been an amazing six days here. I know I speak for everyone who made this trip with me when I say none of us will never forget the things we’ve seen here or the people we’ve met.
I sat with former refuseniks, heroes who spoke truth to power and helped bring an evil empire to its knees.
I visited the Kotel, the ancient Western Wall of the Temple that still stands as a symbol of G-d’s infinite strength and love to billions of believers of many faiths all around the world.
I shook the hand of the owner of the Moment Cafe which was bombed last year. Today that cafe has been rebuilt. Moment Cafe is now open for business in defiance of terror.
And I listened to another woman who told me her story.
Just a few years ago, she was, like me, a grandparent, and excited with the news her daughter was expecting again.
Her daughter and son-in-law were on their way back from the doctor’s office where they had seen, in the sonogram image, the tiny form of their third baby.
On the bus ride back home from the doctor, their joyful path met the profound cruelty of a homicide bomber’s. The terrorist detonated his weapon, and this family and their baby were gone.
She told me this story this week in a park, surrounded by the play of children directly affected by Palestinian terror. She called two of them over, and introduced me to her two grandchildren who were orphaned that day.
Despite the story I heard, these children played, and laughed, and seemed as hopeful about the future as any child could be.
And despite my heartache, I smiled too, because hope was with us in that park.
Even now, I am filled with a gratitude and humility I cannot express, I stand before you today, in solidarity, as an Israeli of the heart.
The solidarity between the United States and Israel is deeper than the various interests we share. It goes to the very nature of man, to the endowment of our G-d-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is the universal solidarity of freedom. It transcends geography, culture and generations. It is the solidarity of all people, in all times, who dream of and sacrifice for liberty.
And in its name I come to you – in the midst a great global conflict against evil – with a simple message: “Be Not Afraid.”
