Editor’s Note: The following excerpt of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech to J Street on April 18 was taken from a transcript provided by the U.S. State Department.
By John Kerry
WASHINGTON (Press Release) — I think J Street has long embraced the absolute necessity of pursuing justice, the urgency of pursuing peace, and the vital importance of diplomacy in doing both.
That is why J Street was, in the end, despite all the difficulties – and we all know how difficult it was – why you were such a strong and vocal advocate for the nuclear – the Iran nuclear agreement. (Applause.) The politics may have been complicated, but all of the noise of last summer could never obscure the critical fact, the undeniable fact: JCPOA, as it’s known, remains by far the best way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)
And already, by any measurable standard – a restriction on enrichment of only 3.67 percent for 15 years, the tracing of every single track of uranium produced for 25 years, legal access to any suspect facility for the lifetime of the agreement, a stockpile of enriched material that has gone from 12,000 kilograms, enough for 10 to 12 bombs, down to 300 kilograms, not enough for even one – those are the facts which make it clear – (applause). A country that was two months away from the potential of breaking out is now at least a year away and we have the capacity to know what they are doing.
And despite the skeptics’ most dire predictions, we are in a place that some people thought was unimaginable and others unacceptable. Do you remember the debate over how much money Iran was going to get? You heard – sometimes you hear some of the presidential candidates putting a mistaken figure out of 155 billion. I’ve never heard – we never thought it would be that. Others thought it would be about a 100 billion because there was supposedly 100 billion that was owed and so forth. We calculated it to be about $55 billion when you really take a hard look at the economy and what is happening. Guess what, folks; you know how much they have received to date as I stand here tonight? About $3 billion. So what we said to people was true.
And this audience understands this as well as any anywhere. You recognize that diplomacy should always be exhausted before we ever choose to ask our treasure to go to war. (Applause.) We should always – especially when a solution which is thought out and verifiable can actually be enforced.
The same commitment to the hard work of diplomacy also explains why J Street has never wavered in its support of a lasting peace between a Jewish, democratic Israel and an independent, viable Palestinian state. (Applause.) And despite the fact that we have spent time and effort to try to get there in these last few years, I can tell you for these next nine months we will not stop working to find a way. (Applause.)
And we were starkly reminded of this imperative earlier today when we saw reports of a bomb explosion on a bus in Jerusalem, and our thoughts tonight are with the 21 innocent men and women wounded, and their families. And this certainly bears all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms. Such outrages – (applause). These outrages are intended solely to instill fear, but I think everybody here knows – history has proven and we know it in our hearts and in our guts – they will never succeed in intimidating the Israeli people. (Applause.)
But what this this tragedy also does is underscores the importance of ending this conflict, so that Israelis and Palestinians can once and for all live side by side in peace and security. And you can rest assured that we understand that dynamic that’s needed to make it happen. You can’t just keep condemning the other side and then not try to change lives and build up the capacity to be able to change choices. You have to work at this. And so we will continue to advance a two-state solution as the only solution, because anything else will not be Jewish and it will not be democratic – and we understand that. (Applause.)
So I close by just saying to you as we honor these three warriors for peace {Lou Susman, Sam Kaplan, and Alan Solomont}. I just want to say that we know that finding peace will require strength and it’s going to demand courage. Last November marked 20 years since an assassin took the life of a leader had courage and had strength – Yitzhak Rabin.
On that fateful night in November of 1995, Rabin was a picture of optimism and resolve. And he told a crowd in the square that now bears his name, “Peace is what the Jewish people aspire to… Peace entails difficulties, even pain. Israel knows no path devoid of pain. But the path of peace is preferable to the path of war.”
If Rabin were here tonight, I have to tell you I know he would be heartened by this gathering. But most importantly, he would be heartened by the knowledge that, no matter how many times we hear people tell us the goal is unattainable, they can’t do it, they’re not ready, I remember the words of Mandela: “Nothing is impossible until it is done.” The fact is that this community, your community, you the people here who are part of J Street, refuse to betray the hope – the ha-tikvah – of a free nation living at peace with its neighbors, secure in the Jewish homeland, committed to the basic dignity of all of its citizens.
Rabin would celebrate the fact that, no matter how dark the landscape at any given moment, this great constituency for peace still burns bright in the United States of America, in Israel, and around the world.
And I thank you, J Street, for everything that you do, and congratulations again tonight to our honorees. Thank you so much. (Applause.)
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