The Iowa Standard was able to participate in Sen. Chuck Grassley’s “Capitol Hill Report” on Monday. We are sharing his answers to the questions individually.
The first question was about the brewing conflict in the Middle East:
“Obviously for two reasons we consider Israel an ally,” Grassley said. “One, for our national security interest because they are a friend that can work with us in the Middle East, which is volatile from two standpoints. One, terrorism, and the second one because of oil, the economy of the world and national security and the other one is the only democracy in the area and we ought to support democracies.
“Except for trying to get sides together to stop the shooting and to have peace like the last eight years, or if you can’t do that a shorter period of time, but peace where ever you can get it between the two groups. One thing we shouldn’t be doing is giving money to the PLO when that money can be used to buy the rockets that are going into Israel. (We help Israel as an ally), but I think Israel can take care of itself. It’s too bad the other side, Hamas, seems to be getting the publicity. I can’t tell you why except whether it’s in the United Nations or other international bodies or just countries individually, everybody seems to be ganging up on a country that houses Jews for the reasons that for 2,000 years this has been going on and I don’t understand it because Israel doesn’t start wars, Israel tries to prevent wars. It just defends itself and if the United States was attacked, you’d expect us to defend ourselves.”
