Robert Smith: “I rise to make a statement on a matter that troubles me deeply. I do so with considerable reluctance. It concerns a good…”

“I rise to make a statement on a matter that troubles me deeply. I do so with considerable reluctance. It concerns a good friend of the United States, a country that for twenty years has been one of the bedrocks upon which the search of peace in the Middle East has rested, here I speak about the Arab Republic of Egypt. I am loathe to bring to this floor anything that mars the image of the country that produced a leader of the courage and vision of Anwar Sadat. I am told that the time is never right for such a statement. This is, as the experts always say, a 'critical moment in the Middle East,' a 'turning point,' or a 'cross-roads.' A wrong word here and a misplaced gesture there, I am told, and the pendulum may swing from tension to confrontation. Well, they may be correct. But then the time may never be right to speak out. The wrong that has been committed in Egypt on a daily basis is one with which we in the West sadly have far too much experience. Indeed, it is a wrong that mars our history at its very roots and is something that we can never work too hard to remove from our thoughts and our consciousness. But because I know how far we have come in ridding this curse from our minds and hearts, and because I have come to learn how much it has become daily fare in the newspapers, airwaves, and pulpits of Egypt, I have put aside my reluctance to speak out on this issue today. The issue is anti-Semitism.”