Speaker Boehner Reaffirms US Support for 'Safe and Secure Israel'

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- On the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the joint meeting of Congress Tuesday morning, House Speaker John Boehner is set to deliver an address to AIPAC Monday night, where he will reaffirm America’s support for a “safe and secure” Israel, while rejecting the notion that the U.S. is “too pro-Israel,” calling that suggestion an obstacle to peace in the region.

“The work of achieving a safe and secure Israel has never been easy, but the cause is right, and let me tell you -- that cause has my one hundred percent support,” Boehner, R-Ohio, pledges according to a copy of his prepared remarks obtained by ABC News. “Israel has demonstrated time and again it seeks nothing more than peace with its neighbor.  In a negotiation, both sides need to make serious compromises.  And like every prime minister before him, Prime Minister Netanyahu knows this and accepts it.”

Boehner will also call on the White House and Congress to provide a better understanding of U.S. national security policies and goals in order to alleviate any concern from allies about where America’s priorities stand.

“Some people complain that the United States is too pro-Israel.  Let me tell you what I think: Doubts about what America stands for -- and who America stands with -- slow the search for peace and stability,” Boehner is set to say. “The president and the Congress should work together so that the American people -- and our friends, and yes, our enemies -- understand our national security policies and our goals.  And so that our allies, allies like Israel, have no cause to doubt that we will be with them through thick and thin.”

Boehner also will speak to the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, noting that Iranian officials have undoubtedly “taken notice of how the United States has responded to Libya -- versus how it has responded to North Korea,” and suggesting that anyone who doubts the Iranian regime’s quest for nuclear weapons is “awfully optimistic.”

According to Boehner, the top solution to the Iranian threat is a political uprising by the people of Iran, similar to those taking place across the region the past few months.

“We should make it clear -- clearer than it has been for the last two years -- that America is on the side of those who yearn and struggle for their freedom,” Boehner adds. “That is our historic and moral responsibility as a great and free Nation and we should never apologize or be ashamed of that role.”

Boehner says that the Arab Spring marks “an overdue rejection of corruption and police states” while the people “battle for the region’s political identity.”

“Will they now build governments that respect human life and dignity, that uphold human rights, and where the people rule?” Boehner asks, “Or will we see women and religious minorities repressed and fundamental rights abridged.”

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