Remarks at an Israel Policy Forum Dinner in New York City

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 15, 2001

January 7, 2001

Thank you very much. Thank you. I want to thank all of you for making me feel so welcome tonight and also for making Hillary and Chelsea eel welcome. I thank Michael Sonnenfeldt, who, like me, is going out after 8 years--[laughter]--and will doubtless find some other useful activity. But he has done a superb job, and I'm very grateful to him.

I thank my friend Jack Bendheim for his many kindnesses to me and to Hillary. Yesterday he had a birthday, and now, like me, he's 54. Unlike me, he has enough children to be elected President of the United States. [Laughter] And he's had a wonderful family and a wonderful life, and I'm delighted that he's so active in the Israel Policy Forum. I'd like to thank Judith Stern Peck for making me feel so welcome and for her leadership.

I thank Lesley Stahl. It's good to see you, and thank you for your kind remarks. I thank the many Members of Congress who are here and also the members of my Middle East peace team. Secretary Albright and Sandy Berger and others have been introduced, but Secretary Dan Glickman is here, and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo is here, and I thank them for being here.

I want to thank the New York officials who are here--Carl McCall, Mark Green, and any others who may be in the crowd--for your many kindnesses to me over the last 8 years. New York has been great to me and Al Gore and even greater to my wife on election day, so I thank you for that.

We just reenacted her swearing-in at Madison Square Garden. And I was reminded of one of the many advantages of living in New York: Jessye Norman sang; Toni Morrison read; and Billy Joel sang. Meanwhile, at least at half time, the Giants were ahead. [Laughter] And so I said, I felt sort of like Garrison Keillor did about Lake Wobegon. I was glad to be in New York where all the writers, artists, and sports teams were above average--[laughterl--and all the votes were always counted. [Laughter]

Let me also say a word of warm welcome and profound respect to the Speaker of the Knesset, Speaker Burg, for his wonderful and kind comments to me, and to Cabinet Secretary Herzog, for his message from the Government of Israel. I want to say a little more about that in a moment.

I want to congratulate Dwayne Andreas, my good friend--I wish he were here to-night--and thank him for his many kindnesses to me. Congratulations, Louis Perlmutter; Susan Stern, who has been such a great friend to Hillary, and you gave a good talk tonight. I think you've got a real future in this business. And your mother sat by me, and she gave you a good grade, too. [Laughter]

And Alan Solomont, who has done as much for me as, I suppose, any American, and he and Susan and their children have been great friends, and I thank you for what you've done, sir. I thank all of you.

I'd also like to say how much I appreciated and was moved by the words of Prime Minister Barak. He was dealt the hard hand by history. And he came to office with absolute conviction that in the end, Israel could not be secure unless a just and lasting peace could be reached with its neighbors, beginning with the Palestinians; that if that turned out not to be possible, then the next best thing was to be as strong as possible and as effective in the use of that strength. But his knowledge of war has fed a passion for peace. And his understanding of the changing technology of war has made him more passionate, not because he thinks the existence of Israel is less secure--if anything, it's more secure--but because the sophisticated weapons available to terrorists today mean even though they still lose, they can exact a higher price along the way.

I've been in enough political fights in my life to know that sometimes you just have to do the right thing, and it may work out, and it may not. Most people thought I had lost my mind when we passed the economic plan to get rid of the deficit in 1993. And no one in the other party voted for it, and they just talked about how it would bring the world to an end and America's economy would be a disaster. I think the only Republican who thought it would work was Alan Greenspan. [Laughter] He was relieved of the burden of having to say anything about it.

But no dilemma I have ever faced approximates in difficulty or comes close to the choice that Prime Minister Barak had to make when he took office, He realized that he couldn't know for sure what the final intentions of the Palestinian leadership were without testing them. He further realized that even if the intentions were there, there was a lot of competition among the Palestinians and from outside forces, from people who are enemies of peace because they don't give a rip how the ordinary Palestinians have to live and the/re pursuing a whole different agenda.

He knew nine things could go wrong and only one thing could go right. But he promised himself that he would have to try. And as long as he knew Israel in the end could defend itself and maintain its security, he would keep taking risks. And that's what he's done, down to these days. There may be those who disagree with him, but he has demonstrated as much bravery in the office of Prime Minister as he ever did on the field of baffle, and no one should ever question that.