A resolution urging the governments of Europe and the European Union to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization and impose sanctions, and urging the President to provide information about Hizballah to the European allies of the United States and to support to the Government of Bulgaria in investigating the July 18, 2012, terrorist attack in Burgas.

I thank the gentlelady for your guidance and your leadership the last couple of years. It was a joy serving with you in Foreign Affairs.

I rise today in support of House Resolution 834 and urge the EU and member states to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is called ``the A Team'' of international terrorist organizations by terrorism experts. Hezbollah was created by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force in 1982, and is a primary terrorist proxy of Iran. Hezbollah receives weapons, training, monies, and support from Iran and Syria.

Hezbollah has left its bloody fingerprints around the world in the last 30 years. Hezbollah has been implicated in numerous deadly terrorist attacks against Europeans, Americans, and Israelis:

In 1983, the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people; the 1983 bombing of the U.S. and French barracks of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen and 58 French soldiers; the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people; the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people; the suicide bombing on July 18, 2012, that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver in the town of Burgas, Bulgaria, that had all the hallmarks of a Hezbollah attack.

Hezbollah has created violence and instability in Lebanon. In addition to terrorist attacks and political assassinations, it has launched thousands of rockets and missiles at Israel from within Lebanon. Hezbollah supports Bashar al-Assad's brutal, ongoing violence against the Syrian people.

It's long past time for the EU and its members to join the U.S. and other allies and list Hezbollah as a terrorism organization. I would ask the EU as a recipient of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to please wake up. The U.S. designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the late 1990s. Canada and Australia, as well as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, both EU members, also list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Failure to recognize and designate Hezbollah allows it to continue evading law enforcement, intelligence, and security services, and it endangers the people of Europe. Hezbollah cannot claim to be a legitimate political party or provider of social services when it refuses to abandon its terrorist agenda. Both the United States and the EU must be united in our fight against Hezbollah.

This resolution, H. Res. 834, urges the EU and member states to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and to prevent Hezbollah from using EU territories for fundraising, for recruitment, for training, for propaganda, and any other activities. It urges the EU and its members to impose sanctions on Hezbollah for supporting the Assad regime's brutal violence against the Syrian people. It affirms our support for the Bulgarian government in its investigation of the July 18, 2012, terrorist attack, and urges our President to support that investigation. It urges the President to provide information to our European allies regarding Hezbollah's terrorist activities, subversion of democracy in Lebanon, and support of Assad's violence in Syria. This Congress has and will do all it can to urge the EU to do the right thing and list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

In September, my good friend Gus Bilirakis from Florida, Mr. Deutch, Mr. Israel, Mr. Sires and I led a bipartisan group of 268 House Members to send a letter to the President and the 27 ministers of the European Commission urging the Commission to include Hezbollah on the EU terrorist list. I might mention Mr. Deutch and I had talked one day walking into our offices about how well our staffs have worked together to forge this letter, to put it together. And we do things in a lot of bipartisan ways. I think sometimes it gets lost in the wash of other things that are going on. I especially want to thank all those members of the staffs and also one of my staff members, Mr. Isaac Fong, for the tireless work he put in.

Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 613, which also urges the EU to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization. H. Res. 834 has over 80 bipartisan cosponsors. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H. Res. 834. It's time to recognize Hezbollah for what it is. If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. This is a terrorist organization. It needs to be recognized and designated as one worldwide.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 834 and yield myself as much time as I may consume.

This important resolution urges the nations of Europe and the European Union to designate Hezbollah has a terrorist organization and to impose sanctions on it. We know from our experience with Iran that sanctions and, in fact, all diplomacy are most effective when they are multilateral--the more multilateral, the better.

We are particularly strong in such matters when we and our friends and allies in the European Union stand shoulder to shoulder. That's why Europe's seemingly inexplicable refusal to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist group has been so disappointing over the years.

Hezbollah is a charter member of the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in the United States. It's crimes are legion, spread over many continents, and far too numerous to list here. They begin in the early 1980s with deadly bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine and French Army barracks in Beirut, and they have continued up to the present day. I still remember Ronald Reagan, President Reagan talking about it after so many of our marines were murdered in Lebanon.

Let me mention just a few of the other lowlights: countless kidnappings of Americans and Europeans in the 1980s and 1990s; the Khobar Towers attack that killed 19 Americans in 1996; the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, again, with multiple killings; the murders of Americans in Iraq and the training of other Iraqi militants; and countless assassinations in Lebanon, including, most likely, that of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. In 2006, Hezbollah's unprovoked murder of three Israeli soldiers caused a war, during which Hezbollah rocketed civilian targets in Lebanon and used Lebanese civilian as human shields.

Over the past 2 years, it has staged attacks from Turkey to Thailand. Today, it has forces in Syria fighting on behalf of Assad and the murderous Assad regime and helping to train Assad's thugs. In addition, this year Hezbollah twice has been directly implicated in terrorism on European Union territory--in Bulgaria, where a suicide bomber killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian, and in Cyprus, where an apparent Hezbollah terrorist attack was thwarted.

The failure of most European nations to designate Hezbollah has been based on the flimsiest of reasons; namely, that Hezbollah provides social services to the Shiite community and participates in electoral politics in Lebanon. In fact, Hezbollah takes a very novel approach to electoral politics--using a militia to intimidate voters into voting for them. By the way, it's a lesson that Hamas has learned very, very well.

But Europe's failure to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group is not merely a problem because it accords legitimacy to a terrorist organization. Rather, it has important operational consequences as well. The failure to designate makes it more difficult to prosecute cases against Hezbollah crimes committed in Europe. It allows Hezbollah to use EU territories to fund-raise, recruit new members, propagandize, and train. And thus, the freedom Hezbollah enjoys in Europe ultimately affects non-Europeans as well. The European Union obviously will make its own decisions on this matter, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the EU's failure to designate Hezbollah undermines both Europe's security and ours as well.

The State Department's top counterterrorism official recently said that he's ``cautiously optimistic--at last--about the prospects for an EU designation of the group.'' I hope his optimism is justified. Until it is borne out with an actual terrorist designation, however, it is important that we join the Senate in going on record as urging the European Union to make that designation, which would be so beneficial to the fight against terrorism worldwide and to our own national security.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

I yield the gentleman 1 minute.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, so I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 834) urging the governments of Europe and the European Union to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization and impose sanctions, and urging the President to provide information about Hizballah to the European allies of the United States and to support the Government of Bulgaria in investigating the July 18, 2012, terrorist attack in Burgas.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous material into the Record on this measure.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Resolution 834, introduced by my good friend and colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly).

The resolution before the House condemns the ongoing violence perpetrated by Hezbollah. It urges the European Union to classify Hezbollah as a designated terrorist organization.

Now, in March of 2005, the House voted on a similar resolution urging the European Union to add Hezbollah as a designated foreign terrorist organization; yet here we are again, Mr. Speaker, nearly 8 years later, calling for the EU to take this long overdue action.

As the purveyor of one of the most expansive extremist networks in the world, Hezbollah has engaged in nearly three decades of attacks against Americans, Europeans, Israeli civilians, in addition to plots and attacks on nearly every continent. Among the most egregious examples of Hezbollah attacks against innocent civilians abroad were its bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in March 1992 and the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Hezbollah has never missed an opportunity to target innocent civilians, especially innocent Israelis, as the 2006 conflict in southern Lebanon illustrated, while using innocent Lebanese as human shields. Hezbollah has even turned its weapons on Syrians and against other Lebanese, as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has uncovered. And most recently, Mr. Speaker, Hezbollah attacked innocent Israeli and Bulgarian civilians in Burgas, Bulgaria.

Mr. Speaker, given Hezbollah's long and grisly record, it is no surprise that many of our allies--from Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand--have designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, because that is what it is.

In this respect, it defies comprehension that our allies in the European Union continue to purposely omit Hezbollah from their list of designated terrorist organizations. The logic of the European Union's decisionmaking on this matter is, at best, baffling, particularly against the backdrop of our mutual efforts to address the threats of Hezbollah patrons Iran and Syria.

By simply designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and stating the obvious, the European Union could deprive Hezbollah of access to millions of dollars in European banks and other financial institutions, while making an enormous contribution to regional stability, saving hundreds of lives that would otherwise be Hezbollah's future victims.

Again, I strongly support this Kelly resolution, and I urge all of my colleagues to do the same.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly), an esteemed member of our House Foreign Affairs Committee and the author of this bill.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I also have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

First of all, I want to begin by thanking the chair and the ranking member for their commitment to security, to Israel and to the region. I want to thank Mr. Kelly for his commitment, similarly.

In my office, which I recently shut down because I'm not going to be in the next Congress, I had a pedestal on which rested a bomb fragment that I brought back from the village of Qana in south Lebanon. Qana is the place where Christ is said to have performed his first miracle. And Qana was also the place where a bomb dropped on an apartment building and killed about 50 women and children.

I brought a fragment of that bomb back and put it on a pedestal in the office. And within that pedestal I put the dog tags of three Israeli soldiers who were captured and kidnapped. I got the dog tags from their parents. I've had that in my office since 2006, when I first went to Lebanon to look at the effects of the war. And I have them together because they represent the parenthesis on a human tragedy.

But we're all concerned about Israel's security. I rose on the floor of this House when the war started to talk about putting immediately into effect a plan that would stop the war. I've been to south Lebanon and Israel on several occasions.

I want to add a word of caution here because what I'm concerned about, notwithstanding the best intentions of my friends who are taking a strong stand here, is the impact of this resolution on a United Nations force in Lebanon, UNIFIL. There are European troops there. Their mission is to enforce U.N. Security Resolution 1701 to end the hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.

UNIFIL has been working with Hezbollah to stabilize south Lebanon. And there are reports from the ground that they have helped to achieve a good measure of stability in that regard, even reports that Hezbollah has worked to help curb the work of terrorist cells of extremist bent. UNIFIL has, in effect, worked with Hezbollah. Peacekeepers have worked with Hezbollah. They've developed a relationship for future dialogue.

Now, I'm concerned that this resolution could make it even more difficult to enforce UN Resolution 1701 and that, if it's passed, one of the things that this Congress has to consider is that the Lebanese army, itself, has to be strengthened.

We have to look at the implications of this. If you have European countries who are essentially part of the UNIFIL presence in south Lebanon in furtherance of a U.N. resolution to end hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, to create safety for both the people of Israel and the people of Lebanon, we've got to be very careful here that we don't create a situation that is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. If this resolution passes--and unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to support it. But if it passes, we have to do something to strengthen the Lebanese army, because if the Lebanese army isn't strong enough, then you have a situation where the very thing that we are opposing here could come to pass and with great force.

So I would just urge your consideration of that, and I thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to put this forward. Again, I thank my colleagues for their constant support of Israel.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation, and thank my good friend Mr. Kelly for authoring it.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution urges the governments of Europe and the European Union to designate Hezballah a terrorist organization, so that it will not be able to raise funds and recruit operatives in Europe.

Since Hezballah is one of the most active, dangerous, ruthless, and evil terrorist groups in the world, this should be the most obvious thing in the world for the European governments to do--the minimum action which they should be in a hurry to do on their own, without any urging from anybody.

One reason many European countries have not done so is the ongoing presence of anti-Semitism in Europe. It's a very sad story, but it's undeniably true that in many European countries large minorities or even majorities of the population hold attitudes that can only be described as anti-Semitic. Regarding this I'd like to recommend to my colleagues a March 2012 study of the Anti-Defamation League on ``Attitudes Toward Jews in Ten European Countries.'' It is shocking but necessary reading--I will be happy to share it with any of my colleagues.

Further, in Europe anti-Semitic opinion doesn't hide its head furtively. Rather people who are not anti-Semitic accept various forms of anti-Semitic statement and attitudes into seemingly ``mainstream'' discussion, where it's allowed to influence government policy--that is, anti-Semitic public opinion limits what some governments are willing to say and do in fighting anti-Semitism.

So with this resolution we are also urging the European governments, and the European Union, to deal more pro-actively, much more pro- actively, with anti-Semitism in Europe. Denounce anti-Semitic actions and statements whenever they occur--this is a fundamental responsibility of every elected official. As elected officials, we always have a special responsibility to anyone in danger--and this resolution documents very well that Hezbollah is an extraordinarily dangerous terrorist group.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, I do want to recognize the many European parliamentarians who have worked hard in fighting anti-Semitism in Europe. I've worked with many of them over the years, particularly in the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE and in the Interparliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism.

This resolution, with its careful documentation of the extraordinary danger posed by Hezballah, will provide Europeans engaged in fighting anti-Semitism with a tool they can take to their governments and demand that they be much more pro-active against anti-Semitism. For it is anti-Semitism that creates the poisonous atmosphere in which Hezballah operates.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support this excellent resolution.