Speeches

Statements by Senior

Embassy Officials

Remarks by Ambassador Richard H. Jones
Open University Symposium Marking the Publication of a Hebrew Textbook on The United States: An Ongoing Democracy
Monday, March 24, 2008

Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to speak at this Symposium. It is a pleasure to visit your beautiful campus once again. As an American and as the American Ambassador to Israel, I’m honored to have this opportunity to speak to you about my country’s vibrant democracy.

L-R: Dr. Gadi Taub, Ambassador Richard Jones, Dr. Avriel Bar-Levav, and Prof. Eyal Naveh Photographer: Gideon Markowicz

But first, as they say, a word from our sponsor. Through the efforts of our Public Diplomacy section, the U.S. Embassy has been working to build and sustain American Studies programs in Israel, and we have a long and strong relationship with Professor Eyal Naveh, whose Hebrew language book The United States: An Ongoing Democracy” we celebrate today. I congratulate you, Professor Naveh, for this valuable addition to American Studies in Israel. The American Embassy appreciates your efforts. In fact, our Embassy is so committed to promoting American Studies that we funded the Shalem Center’s Hebrew translations of five key American texts including Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Kissinger’s Diplomacy. The Embassy also supported the development and publication of American History: a Conceptual Approach, which is a new textbook for high school students in Israel. And we make both Hebrew and Arabic translations of the U.S. Constitution available for students, organizations and other interested groups and individuals in Israel.

Now, on with the show! This is an exciting year, both here and in the U.S. Israel is celebrating its 60th Anniversary, and the United States is in the midst of a presidential campaign. The United States and Israel are also celebrating together 60 years of bilateral relations, and this anniversary presents us with an opportunity to reflect on the significant changes that have taken place in both countries since Israel’s founding.

When President Truman decided to recognize Israel, nearly everyone around him was against it, including Secretary of State George Marshall, who threatened to resign. Marshall was so popular at the time, that his resignation could have cost Truman the upcoming election. But, President Truman had a more important reason for recognizing Israel: he thought it was the right thing to do to help a people so recently liberated from bitter oppression. So, Truman ignored his advisors and instructed his Ambassador to the United Nations to vote for the partition of Palestine, establishing both a Palestinian and an Israeli State. And later, on May 14, 1948, when Israel was born at the stroke of midnight, local time, the United States announced its recognition of the new nation only 11 minutes later. For his moral courage and decisiveness on this and other issues, Truman has gone down in history as one of the greatest American Presidents of the 20th century.

It goes without saying that Israeli democracy has undergone many changes since this historic moment in 1948. However, I would argue that America’s democracy has also evolved considerably and perhaps even more rapidly than at any other time in its history. This evolution has led us to the unprecedented situation where a female Senator and an African American Senator are now vying to lead the Democratic Party in the next Presidential election. Who would have imagined such a turn of events at the time of the birth of Israel?

Remember, in 1948 there was no Civil Rights Act, in fact, there was no civil rights movement to speak of, no Voting Rights Act, no McCarran-Walter Act, which allowed first generation Japanese Americans the right to become citizens. It took a landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education in 1953, to begin integrating America’s schools.
Yet, already, in the Declaration of Independence, America's Founding Fathers had laid out very clearly the basis for the “American Dream.” They wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." And in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, they wrote: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union... ”

“Pursuit of Happiness”
“A More Perfect Union”

Wise men indeed, they did not guarantee Happiness or a Perfect Union, but rather the pursuit of happiness and a “more perfect” union.

The 19th century’s greatest President, the forward thinking Abraham Lincoln believed, as do most Americans, that: "You can have anything you want – if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose." This is the American Dream defined.
Today, Americans of all backgrounds can and do participate in the American dream, the American project, American democracy. And as they pursue happiness, they contribute to social harmony and a more perfect union. But for some Americans the promise of democracy envisioned very early in America’s history had to wait until after 1948 to be realized.

For example, in 1870, relatively early in America’s democracy, the Fifteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provided that no government in the United States may prevent a citizen from voting based on that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This was a formal extension of voting rights to former slaves, but it took until the civil rights movement, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to remove other impediments and end the intimidation of black voters. Think about that: 1965, only 43 years ago – and in the current Presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama is arguably the leading candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination.

Similarly, universal suffrage for women was granted in 1920’s 19th Amendment, but while many women had successfully run for office and served at the state level, Representative Geraldine Ferraro was the first serious female contender for the Vice-Presidency in the 1984 election. And now, almost ninety years after the 19th amendment, Senator Hillary Clinton is the first woman to be a serious contender for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Neither candidate should be particularly identified with the civil rights or women’s movement, but the achievements of these two historical struggles are certainly part of the background which makes their candidacies possible. Similarly, America’s democracy has enabled successive waves of immigrants and minority groups to make their voices heard within the U.S. political system, and to use their political power to enact wide reaching political and social change.

From the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, to current debates about the war in Iraq, individual rights in the “war on terror,” and immigration, democracy in the United States is continually responding and adapting to new challenges. By any measure, the degree of freedom that U.S. citizens have achieved and enjoy today, including the ability to participate in politics and government and to choose their leaders, is exceptional.

How is it that over the last sixty years, the lifetime of Israel, American democracy has moved at such a pace? A brief look at the role of the U.S. Supreme court in shaping the American democracy since 1948 may help us understand this phenomenon.

The Supreme Court is best known as the ultimate guardian of the U.S. Constitution. Although often termed the least democratic branch of the federal government, the Supreme Court has maintained its legitimacy by representing the Constitutional view to Congress, the President, and the country as a whole. However, history shows it often reflects the will of the people too. For all the invective initially generated by Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed school segregation, the decision was supported by more than half of the American population at the time. Many of the most famous decisions by the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts similarly reflected the popular will: a survey of eighty eight civil rights and civil liberties cases between 1953 and 1994 found that, in most instances, the Supreme Court was generally in step with public opinion. When public opinion opposed a particular rights claim, so, by and large, did the Supreme Court. This is not to say that the court’s decisions were politically motivated, but rather that they made common sense to generations of Americans steeped in the knowledge of the rights guaranteed in their Constitution. Since 1948, by relying on one key document, the Constitution, the Court has maintained its integral role in the American democratic experiment

As Justice John Roberts put it in his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his nomination hearings, “Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” Of course, there’s a big difference between the complexity of life and a sporting contest. It’s no wonder that umpires can render their judgments in seconds while judges can take months or even years to develop innovative judicial concepts – such as the “Right to Privacy” used to provide the basis for the Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion, or Brown vs. the Board of Education’s realization that separate can never mean equal, or the Miranda ruling’s finding that ignorance of one’s constitutional rights shall not be allowed to deprive a person of those rights.

Of course, the Supreme Court is only one branch of the U.S. Government. Congress and the Executive branch have also played important roles in the evolution of our democracy over the years – after all, they have the power to make changes in the rules. My point in focusing on the Court’s interaction with the Constitution in furthering America’s democratic evolution is to show that even with fixed rules, American democracy can transcend political ideologies and the issues of the day to meet the people’s needs as they pursue the American dream of happiness, and often does so in surprising and innovative ways. Another way to look at this is that democracy rests on what we believe are universal principles of governance and justice, applicable to all people, always and everywhere. Our democratic instabilities enable these principles to interact with popular opinion and current issues to produce innovative, legal solutions to people’s real problems – problems which they do not hesitate to bring to their government’s attention because they believe in their right to the pursuit of happiness.

We think our democratic experience can help others find solutions to the problems they face. That is one reason why we at the Embassy are working to strengthen American Studies programs in Israel and elsewhere in the region – when I was Ambassador in Kuwait we had a comparable program with Kuwait University. It is why we believe that Hebrew language books on American democracy such as Professor Naveh’s are so important. It is why we fund book translations and why we provide schools with free Hebrew and Arabic translations of the U.S. Constitution.

In closing, I’d just like to add that for all Israelis, whatever your national origin, religion, ethnicity or race, the United States has been and will continue to be committed to helping realize your dreams of life, liberty and yes, the pursuit of happiness.

Thank you.