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Friday April 6, 2007

Pelosi wows them in speech at Israel’s Knesset

by uriel heilman & dan pine
special to j.

The moment Nancy Pelosi held up a pair of battered dogtags belongings to three captured Israeli soldiers, she had the Knesset at rapt attention.

The Israeli legislators knew the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was an ally in mind and spirit.

Pelosi told them how those dogtags are on display in her congressional office in Washington. She said they serve as a tangible reminder of her longstanding support for the Jewish state.

A few minutes later the Knesset fell silent when Pelosi was joined at the podium with the families of the soldiers whose capture led to last summer’s war with Lebanon.

That flair for the dramatic –– and the fact that Pelosi is the highest-ranking female U.S. politician ever to address the Knesset –– made for a memorable, even historic, few days in Israel for Pelosi and her congressional delegation.

In the Middle East for the second time since becoming speaker, Pelosi held closed-door meetings with Israeli leaders Sunday, April 1, and later went on to meet with leaders in the Palestinian Authority and Saudi Arabia before traveling to Lebanon and eventually to Syria on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 3 and 4.

“We must counter the terrorists’ vision of apocalypse and despair with our own pure path for hope and dignity,” Pelosi said Sunday night at a state dinner held in her honor at Israel’s Knesset after she addressed the legislature. “And we must do this with strength, but also with wisdom.”

The state dinner was part pomp and circumstance, part celebration. Israeli and American flags bedecked the Knesset’s Chagall Hall as Pelosi and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik entered the hall to thunderous applause.

In her remarks, the San Francisco representative called on the United Nations to enforce the resolutions it passed last summer to disarm Hezbollah, and said Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. But, she added, “The way to do it is through diplomacy –– with stronger sanctions and smarter policy choices.”

Itzik said she understood why Pelosi was going to Damascus, despite objections from the White House as well as many of Israel’s leaders.

“I believe in your worthy intentions,” she said. “Perhaps this step, seen as unpopular at this stage, which you plan to undertake when you leave our country, will clarify to the Syrian people and the Syrian leadership they must abandon the axis of evil, that they must stop supporting terrorism and giving shelter to terrorist headquarters, that they must make a real strategic choice that will give hope to Syria’s citizens and to the citizens of the entire region,” Itzik added.

Although Pelosi has been to the region before –– she was there in January on a trip that included Iraq and Afghanistan –– the latest visit marked several firsts.

It was Pelosi’s first speech to a foreign legislature. Both she and Itzik are the first female speakers of their respective legislatures, and Itzik is also serving as temporary president of Israel.

Pelosi also was traveling with a congressional delegation of Democratic colleagues, including Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), making this the first trip to Israel by America’s first Muslim congressman, and local Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo).

Another member of her group, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), said the delegation was visiting Damascus to confront President Bashar Assad directly on such issues as Syria’s support for terrorists, Hezbollah and Iran, as well as to press for the release of Israel’s missing soldiers in Lebanon.

“We met with the family members” of the missing soldiers, Waxman said. “We definitely will raise that with Bashar Assad and in Beirut. We want to impress upon him the U.S. commitment to a free and independent Lebanon.”

Lantos said the model of the Cold War should serve as a salient reminder for the benefits of talk, rather than mere shunning, when it comes to rogue states.

“We talked to the Soviet Union for over half a century, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the tremendous amount of interchange had something to do with the

collapse of the system,” Lantos said.

He noted his six visits to Libya helped bring Moammar Khadafi back into the community of nations, and that he would like to visit Tehran in an effort to do the same. Tehran has not extended the congressman, a Holocaust survivor, any welcome.

“I believe in talking to people,” Lantos said.

After arriving in Israel late Friday, March 30, the congressional delegation toured the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Western Wall and the Al-Aksa Mosque on Saturday and met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday. The group met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas later in the week before heading on to Beirut, Damascus and Riyadh.

For Ellison, the trip was a learning experience. “I can get behind a foreign policy based on diplomacy and negotiation,” Ellison said. “Nancy Pelosi is a bold, courageous, visionary leader.”

Rebuffing expectations that his position as a Muslim legislator from Israel’s strongest ally puts him in a unique position to build bridges between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, Ellison said: “I’m going to focus on learning as much as I can and on building contacts and on trying to spark some friendships. Anything more than that I’m grossly underqualified to do.

“In terms of whatever role I can play one day, today is not that day.”

Ellison said he was moved by his visit to the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount and by his meeting with the families of the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped last summer by Palestinians in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“Meeting with the parents of the captive soldiers was heartrending,” he said.

Back at the Knesset, after their speeches, some wine and cornish game hen, Pelosi and Itzik returned to the stage to clap along to “Hallelujah” and “Hava Negillah,” played by the Israel Defense Forces band. Then the pair worked the floor, meeting and greeting Knesset members, imams and priests, rabbis and Jewish organizational representatives.

As the night wore on and dessert was served, Itzik explained why she might seem a bit antsy: It was the night before Passover, and she still had some cleaning to do.

Uriel Heilman writes for JTA; Dan Pine is a j. staff writer.

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