[Fwd: Remarks by Former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu before the GovernmentReform Committee, September 20, 2001]

[Guest guest]

Former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu

before the

Government Reform Committee

September 20, 2001

Chairman Burton,

Distinguished Representatives,

I want to thank you for inviting me

to appear before you today. I feel a profound responsibility addressing

you in this hour of peril in the capital of liberty.

What is at stake today is nothing

less than the survival of our civilization. There may be some who would

have thought a week ago that to talk in these apocalyptic terms about the

battle against international terrorism was to engage in reckless exaggeration.

No longer.

Each one of us today understands that

we are all targets, that our cities are vulnerable, and that our

values are hated with an unmatched fanaticism that seeks to destroy our

societies and our way of life.

I am certain that I speak on behalf

of my entire nation when I say - Today, we

are all Americans - in grief, as in defiance.

In grief, because my people have faced

the agonizing horrors of terror for many decades, and we feel an instant

kinship with both the victims of this tragedy and the great nation that

mourns its fallen brothers and sisters.

In defiance, because just as my country

continues to fight terrorism in our

battle for survival, I know that America

will not cower before this challenge.

I have absolute confidence that if

we, the citizens of the free

world, led by President Bush, marshall the enormous reserves of power at

our disposal, harness the steely resolve of a free people, and mobilize

our collective will - we shall eradicate this evil from the face of the

earth.

But to achieve this goal, we must

first however answer several questions: Who

is responsible for this terrorist onslaught? Why? What is the motive behind

these attacks? And most importantly, what must be done to defeat these

evil forces?

The first and most crucial thing to

understand is this: There is no international

terrorism without the support of sovereign states. International

terrorism simply cannot be sustained for long without the regimes that

aid and abet it.

Terrorists are not suspended in mid-air.

They train, arm and indoctrinate their killers from within safe havens

on territory provided by terrorist

states. Often these regimes provide the terrorists with intelligence, money

and operational assistance, dispatching them to serve as deadly proxies

to wage a hidden war against more powerful enemies.

These regimes mount a worldwide propaganda

campaign to legitimize terror, besmirching its victims and exculpating

its practitioners --- as we witnessed in the farcical spectacle in Durban

last month.

Iran, Libya, and Syria call the US

and Israel racist countries that abuse human rights?

Even Orwell could not have imagined

such a world.

Take away all this state support,

and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into

the dust.

The international terrorist network

is thus based on regimes - Iran,

Iraq, Syria, Taleban Afghanistan, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority

and several other Arab regimes such as the Sudan.

These regimes are the ones that harbor

the terrorist groups: Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Hizballah and others

in Syrian-controlled Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the recently mobilized

Fatah and Tanzim factions in the Palestinian territories, and sundry other

terror organizations based in such capitals as Damascus, Baghdad and Khartoum.

These terrorist states and terror

organizations together form a terror network,

whose constituent parts support each other operationally as well as politically.

For example, the Palestinian groups

cooperate closely with Hezbollah, which in turn links them to Syria, Iran

and Bin Laden.

These offshoots of terror have affiliates

in other states that have not yet uprooted their presence, such as Egypt,

Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Now, how did this come about? The

growth of this terror network is the result of several developments in

the last two decades: Chief among them is the Khomeini Revolution and the

establishment of a clerical Islamic state in Iran.

This created a sovereign spiritual

base for fomenting a strident Islamic militancy worldwide - a militancy

that was often backed by terror.

Equally important was the victory

in the Afghan war of the international mujaheedin brotherhood.

This international band of zealots,

whose ranks include Osama Bin Laden, saw their victory over the Soviet

Union as providential proof of the innate supremacy of faithful Moslems

over the weak infidel powers.

They believed that even the superior

weapons of a superpower could not withstand their superior will.

To this should also be added Saddam

Hussein's escape from destruction at the end of the Gulf War, his dismissal

of UN monitors, and his growing confidence that he can soon develop unconventional

weapons to match those of the West.

Finally, the creation of Yasser Arafat's

terror enclave gave a safe haven to militant Islamic terrorist groups such

as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Like their mujaheedin cousins, they

drew inspiration from Israel's hasty withdrawal from Lebanon, glorified

as a great Moslem victory by the Syrian-backed Hizballah.

Under Arafat's rule, these Palestinian

Islamic terrorist groups made repeated use of the technique of suicide

bombing, going so far as to run summer camps in Gaza that teach Palestinian

children how to become suicide martyrs.

Here is what Arafat's government controlled

newspaper, Al Hayat Al Jadida,

said on September 11, the very day of the suicide bombing of the World

Trade Center and the Pentagon:

"The suicide bombers of today are

the noble successors of the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S.

Marines a tough lesson in [Lebanon]... These suicide bombers are the salt

of the earth, the engines of history... They are the most honorable people

among us... ".

A simple rule prevails here: The success

of terrorists in one part of the terror network emboldens terrorists throughout

the network.

This then is the Who. Now for the

Why.

Though its separate parts may have

local objectives and take part in local conflicts, the main motivation

driving the terror network is an anti-Western hostility that seeks to achieve

nothing less than a reversal of history.

It seeks to roll back the West and

install an extremist form of Islam as the dominant power in the world.

It seeks to do this not by means of

its own advancement and progress, but by destroying

the enemy. This hatred is the product of a seething resentment that has

simmered for centuries in certain parts of the Arab and Islamic world.

Most Moslems in the world, including

the vast majority of the growing Moslem communities in the West, are not

guided by this interpretation of history, nor are they moved by its call

for a holy war against the West.

But some are. And though their numbers

are small compared to the peaceable majority, they nevertheless constitute

a growing hinterland for this militancy.

Militant Islamists resented the West

for pushing back the triumphant march of Islam into the heart of Europe

many centuries ago.

Its adherents, believing in the innate

supremacy of Islam, then suffered a series of shocks when in the last two

centuries that same hated, supposedly inferior West penetrated Islamic

realms in North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

It is time to establish a fixed principle

for the international community: any cause

that uses terrorism to advance its aims will not be rewarded.

On the contrary, it will be punished and placed beyond the pale.

Armed with this moral clarity in

defining terrorism, we must possess an

equal moral clarity in fighting

it.

If we include Iran, Syria, and the

Palestinian Authority in the coalition to fight terror -- even though they

currently harbor, sponsor and dispatch terrorists --- then the alliance

against terror will be defeated from within.

Perhaps we might achieve a short-term

objective of destroying one terrorist fiefdom, but it will preclude the

possibility of overall victory. Such a coalition will melt down because

of its own internal contradictions.

We might win a battle. We will certainly

lose the war.

These regimes, like all terrorist

states, must be given a forthright demand: Stop terrorism, permanently,

or you will face the wrath of the free world - through harsh and sustained

political, economic and military sanctions.

Obviously, some of these regimes will

scramble in fear and issue platitudes about their opposition to terror,

just as Arafat, Iran and Syria did, while they keep their terror apparatus

intact. We should not be fooled. These regimes are already on the US lists

of states supporting terrorism - and if they're not, they should be.

The price of admission for any state

into the coalition against terror must be to first completely dismantle

the terrorist infrastructures within their realm.

Iran will have to dismantle a worldwide

network of terrorism and incitement based in Teheran.

Syria will have to shut down Hizballah

and the dozen terrorist organizations that operate freely in Damascus and

in Lebanon.

Arafat will have to crush Hamas and

Islamic Jihad, close down their suicide factories and training grounds,

rein in his own Fatah and Tanzim terrorists and cease the endless incitement

to violence.

To win this war, we must fight on

many fronts. The most obvious one is direct military action against the

terrorists themselves. Israel's policy of preemptively striking at those

who seek to murder its people is, I believe, better understood today and

requires no further elaboration.

But there is no substitute for the

key action that we must take: Imposing the

most punishing diplomatic, economic and military sanction on all terrorist

states;

To this must be added these measures:

Freeze financial assets in the West

of terrorist regimes and organizations;

Revise legislation, subject to periodic

renewal, to enable better surveillance against organizations inciting violence;

Keep convicted terrorist behind bars.

Do not negotiate with terrorists;

Train special forces to fight terror.

And Not least important, impose sanctions

on suppliers of nuclear technology to terrorist states.

I've had some experience in pursuing

all these courses of action in Israel's battle against terrorism, and I

will be glad to elaborate on any one of them if you wish, including the

sensitive questions surrounding intelligence.

But I have to be clear: Victory over

terrorism is not, at its most fundamental level, a matter of law enforcement

or intelligence. However important these functions may be, they can only

reduce the dangers, not eliminate them.

The immediate objective is to end

all state support for, and complicity with, terror. If vigorously and continuously

challenged, most of these regimes can be deterred from sponsoring terrorism.

But there is a real possibility that

some will not be deterred- and those may be ones that possess weapons of

mass destruction.

Again, we cannot dismiss the possibility

that a militant terrorist state will use its proxies to threaten or launch

a nuclear attack with apparent impunity.

Nor can we completely dismiss the

possibility that a militant regime, like its terrorist proxies, will commit

collective suicide for the sake of its fanatical ideology.

In this case, we might face not thousands

of dead, but hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. This is why the

US must do everything in its power to prevent regimes like Iran and Iraq

from developing nuclear weapons, and disarm them of their weapons of mass

destruction.

This is the great mission that now

stands before the free world. That mission must not be watered down to

allow certain states to participate in the coalition that is now being

organized. Rather, the coalition must be built

around this mission.

It may be that some will shy away

from adopting such an uncompromising stance against terrorism. If some

free states choose to remain on the sidelines, America must be prepared

to march forward without them -- for there is no substitute for moral and

strategic clarity.

I believe that if the United States

stands on principle, all the democracies will eventually join the war on

terrorism. The easy route may be tempting, but it will not win the day.

On September eleventh, I, like everyone

else, was glued to a television set watching the savagery that struck America.

Yet amid the smoking ruins of the Twin Towers one could make out the Statue

of Liberty holding high the torch of freedom.

It is freedom's flame that the terrorists

sought to extinguish.

But it is that same torch, so proudly

held by the United States, that can lead the free world to crush the forces

of terror and secure our tomorrow.

It is within our power. Let us now

make sure that it is within our will