Mr. Speaker, today we commemorate the 66th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, which comes one week after the commemoration of the Shoah, which I observed last week on the March of the Living in Budapest and at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
It is sometimes said that if there had not been a Holocaust, there would not have been a state of Israel, as if the establishment of a state can ever compensate for the murder of six million Jews, but the reality is the other way around. If there had been an Israel, there might well not have been a Holocaust or the horrors of Jewish and human history.
Israel, at its core, is the embodiment of Jewish survival and self-determination, the reconstitution of an ancient people in its ancestral and aboriginal homeland.
May I conclude with the age-old Hebrew prayer for peace:
[Member spoke in Hebrew as follows:]
Oseh Shalom Bimromov, Who Yaaseh Shalom Alenu V'al Kol Israel, V'imeru.
Amen.
[English]
May God, who establishes peace on high, grant peace for us all. Amen.
May the 66th anniversary usher in a real, just, and lasting peace for Israel and all peoples of the Middle East.