| NETANYAHU'S SPEECH TO U.S. SENATE Continued...pg. 4 |
| But to assure that this evil does not reemerge a decade or two from now, we must not merely uproot terror, but also plant the seeds of freedom. Because only under tyranny can a diseased totalitarian mind set be widely cultivated. This totalitarian mind set, which is essential for terrorists to suspend the normal rules that govern a man's conscience and prevents him from committing these grisly acts, does not breed in a climate of democracy and freedom. The open debate and plurality of ideals that buttress all genuine democracies and the respect of human rights and the sanctity of life that are the shared values of all free societies that are a permanent antidote to the poison that the sponsors of terror seek to inject into the minds of their recruits. That is why it is also imperitive that once the terrorist regimes in the Middle East are swept away, the free world, led by America, must begin to build democracy in their place. We simply can no longer afford to allow this region to remain cloistered by a fanatic militancy. We must let the winds of freedom and independence finally penetrate the one region in the world that clings to unreformed tyranny. That in exercizing our basic right to defend ourselves Israel is condemned by Arab dictatorships is predictable. That today a Europe which sixty years ago refused to lift a finger to save millions of Jews has turned its collective back on the Jewish State is downright shameful. But my friends, I must admit. I expected no better from them. Yet the America I know has always been different. History has entrusted this nation with carrying the torch of freedom. And time and time again, through both war and peace, America has carried that torch with courage and with honor, combining a might the world has never known with a sense of justice that no power in history has possessed. I have come before you today to ask you to continue to courageously and honorably carry that torch by standing by an outpost of freedom that is resisting an unprecedented terrorist assault. I ask you to stand by Israel's side in its fight against Arafat's tyranny of terror, and thereby help defeat an evil that threatens all mankind. |