Barney Frank: “I do feel an obligation to talk about the situation in the Middle East, particularly the security of Israel and the…”

“I do feel an obligation to talk about the situation in the Middle East, particularly the security of Israel and the position of Israel vis-a-vis the United States, for 2 reasons. First, it is a subject both very important and very emotional. A large number of people in my district, as in every other, care deeply about this. I believe the people who feel the most strongly and the largest number are people who, like myself, have both an emotional attachment to Israel and also a strong intellectual degree of support for it. There are others who are troubled by what is happening in the Middle East and are somewhat critical or harshly critical of the Israeli government. I think it is an obligation of those of us in elected office when an issue is of this importance to explain ourselves, and I find here, given the complexity of the issue, I think it is an essentially simple one. I believe that simplicity consists of the fact that for more than 50 years, until maybe recently, and we still do not know this, there has been an unwillingness on the part of the Arab community in the Middle East to allow Israel to exist.”