Transcript for July 30

MR. GILLERMAN: First of all, Tim, this is a horrible, devastating, bloody Sunday, and it’s a horrible morning, and we grieve the deaths of those civilians and children. But it is very, very important to stress that they may have been hit by an Israeli bomb, but they are victims of the Hezbollah.  If Hezbollah wasn’t there, this would never have happened.

And I wouldn’t put it beyond that vicious, brutal, cynical terrorist organization to have held those people there against their will after we’d repeatedly asked them to leave, so that they would actually be used as human shields, and maybe even, as farfetched as this may sound, for this to happen, because this serves nobody’s purpose, except Hezbollah and Iran.

And the demonstrations today in Lebanon should not have been targeted at the U.N. They should have been targeted at the Hezbollah, because the Hezbollah that have infested and invaded and held the Lebanon hostage is responsible, directly responsible for what has happened today. And this is why Israel will not agree to a cease-fire, because we cannot allow this horrible terror organization to continue to fester in this cesspool of terror. And if we do allow it to remain the way it is, armed with this great arsenal of weapons which they have amassed, this kind of thing could happen again tomorrow or the week after. We must put an end to the Hezbollah, make sure that it’s disarmed, exactly in order to prevent horrible tragedies like the one that happened this morning in Qana.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Ambassador, you heard Richard Engel say that in his view, many of the people there in Qana could not leave because they had no automobiles, they did not have any money, they were forced to stay there. And what has happened around the world, as you know, you heard the Lebanese prime minister say this is Israeli massacre, Israeli are war criminals. The European Union said today nothing can justify this attack. The Arab League said this is Israeli aggression. King Abdullah of Jordan said it’s an ugly crime. Mubarak of Egypt said it’s irresponsible; the French said unjustified; the British said dreadful and appalling. Are you losing world opinion against Israel in a rather dramatic fashion this morning?

MR. GILLERMAN: There may be a very serious blow to Israeli—to the Israeli public opinion and to world opinion towards Israel this morning, but this is exactly what the Hezbollah wanted. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was scheduled and targeted exactly to happen while Secretary Rice is there. Every time, Tim, every time we get that near to a settlement, there are extremists who will snatch it away from us, who will snatch hope away from us. We have to create a reality of hope rather than a reality of violence. We have to create a reality where those Lebanese children would have been at school today instead of being sheltered and held hostage in that building, and where Israeli children in Qiryat Shemona could go to school without fear of Katyusha rockets.

I must remind you that today alone 115 Katyusha rockets were fired at Israel.  The difference is that they fire them specifically to target civilians. We fire in order to destroy Hezbollah strongholds. That is the difference between us. For us, every dead Lebanese child is a horrible mistake and a tragedy. For them, every dead Israeli child is a victory and a cause for celebration. This cycle must stop; this horrible reality must stop. And therefore, public opinion and world opinion is very important. But what has happened today and those reactions which you’ve just spoken about are exactly what the Hezbollah wants, are exactly what Iran wants. Also, in order to divert attention from itself, because tomorrow the Security Council is going to vote on a resolution against Iran on its nuclear quest.

This is part of the war against terror. We are fighting this, not just for ourselves, but for the rest of the world. And when we have brutal and cynical enemies who use children and women as human shields, who use homes in order to fire missiles from, there will not be peace. There will not be peace until the terrorists learn to love their children more than they hate us.

MR. RUSSERT: You said on--12 days ago, “The Hezbollah needs to be totally eliminated.” Is that still the policy of Israel, the total elimination of Hezbollah?

MR. GILLERMAN: When I said eliminated, I really meant totally disarmed. I, I meant that it should not be able, ever again, to rise its ugly head and to terrorize not just us but Lebanon. And I do believe that we will not be able to reach any kind of solution, any kind of real, lasting solution, both for us and for the Lebanese people, until Hezbollah has been totally disarmed. And when I look at Lebanon today, believe me, my heart bleeds. I still remember Lebanon 30 years ago as a thriving, vibrant, fun-loving entrepreneurial country. It’s been taken hostage by the Syrians in the north and by Hezbollah in the south. It’s been strangled. And what we’re seeing today is a direct result of the horrors which Lebanon is experiencing because it has allowed the Hezbollah to fester within itself.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Ambassador, as you well know, there’s been a lot of criticism about Israel attacking the Beirut airport, a Lebanese Air Force base. The Lebanese government, not Hezbollah, the Lebanese government, has put out this map which indicates that they say where the Israelis have bombed throughout Lebanon, and all those red dots indicate there’s bombing been, not just in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah strongholds, but throughout the entire country. Do you dispute that?

MR. GILLERMAN: No, I don’t dispute that. But I believe that after me you will have as a guest my esteemed Lebanese colleague, the special envoy from Lebanon. He’s the one who went on American television only last week and said, and these are his words, “You cannot distinguish between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon, between Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese.” In his words, Hezbollah is everywhere in Lebanon. It has become part of Lebanese society.  Hezbollah is not just in the south, Hezbollah is everywhere, including in Beirut, including in southern Beirut. It is controlling most of Lebanon. It has headquarters and logistics centers and arms caches all over Lebanon.

That is why it is so difficult to distinguish, and that is why we had to go for Hezbollah strongholds and headquarters in places far beyond southern Lebanon, because we had to try and cut off the arms supply. The arms come from the two main sponsors of terror in the world, from Iran and Syria, who, together with the Hezbollah, form the world’s most horrible, ominous, lethal axis of terror. And I think that even on this horrible, horrible difficult day, most of the world, including some of our neighbors, who have to say what they’re saying today, deep down inside realize that we are fighting this war not just for ourselves, but for them. We may be doing the dirty work and paying a very high price, but we’re doing it for the rest of the world, to rid it of this danger directed from Tehran and from Damascus, not just at the hearts of our children and our citizens, but at the heart of civilization as we know it.

MR. RUSSERT: Noah Feldman in today’s New York Times Magazine—he’s a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations—talked about what the catch for Israel is, and he writes this, “The catch for Israel is that, taken too far, the strategy of making all Palestinians and all Lebanese pay for the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah may well backfire. Destroying the economic prosperity that had begun to return to Lebanon is likely to generate fresh hatred of Israel, and Palestinians under the gun have in recent years tended to become more radicalized, not less. ... Hamas and Hezbollah may have sparked this round of fighting, but the bombs raining down on their cities and the soldiers in their bases still come from Israel, and no one likes to be bombed.”

Have, in fact, the actions of the Israelis, despite, as you would describe, your intentions to try to clean out Hezbollah, backfired and radicalized not only people who dispose for Hezbollah, but Christians and Sunni Muslims in Lebanon who now hate Israel more than they hate Hezbollah?

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