STRENGTHENING AMERICA'S SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST ACT OF 2019--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, what is before us right now is S. 1. For those who are here today watching or who are at home or will watch this later and are wondering what the Senate is doing, other than coming down here and giving speeches, what we are trying to do is start debate on a bill, on S. 1.

S. 1 is the Senate effort to respond specifically not just to general events that are happening in the Middle East but, in particular, the decision made a few weeks ago that the United States would be leaving Syria and our presence there.

At the time when the decision was made, I told everybody I thought it was a bad idea. A lot of people agreed, and there are a lot of reasons why it was a bad idea. Although I do think it is important anytime we ask the American people to send their young men and women abroad--in the case of Syria, it is about 2,000 special operators working alongside tens of thousands of Kurdish and Syrian democratic forces. Anytime we spend money or send Americans abroad to risk their lives, the American people deserve for us to go to them and justify why it is we should be doing it or continue to do it. That is certainly the case with Syria.

So I don't agree with the decision, but I do think it has given the Senate and those of us who disagree with that decision an opportunity to go out and tell people why it is that it is important. That is a broader topic, and I will have more to say about that in the days to come, but one of the reasons why it is important is because the U.S. withdrawal from Syria will have a dramatic impact on the security of Israel.

Now, again, anytime we ask the American people to support another country with money or diplomatic support or anything that it might be-- weapons--we should justify it. We should never take for granted why it is that it is important that we support that other country.

In the case of Israel, at a time when very few things enjoy bipartisan support, support for Israel has wide bipartisan support in Congress and across the country, and rightfully so. Our support of the State of Israel is founded both on morality and our national interest.

On the issue of morality, the State of Israel is very unique. It was founded for a very specific purpose in the aftermath of the holocaust, in which millions of Jews lost their lives. It was vowed that never again would the Jewish people not have a place to go and seek refuge or live in a place of peace and security. The State of Israel was established to be that homeland for the Jewish people. It is unique in the fact that it was given birth by an international organization. It is unique in the world in that regard.

The second reason we should support Israel is because it is in our national interest. Israel is everything we wish more countries in the Middle East and around the world were. They are a pro-American, free enterprise democracy. I would ask you, for a moment only, to imagine what the world would be like, how much easier our foreign policy would be if there were more countries in that part of the world that were pro-American, free enterprise democracies. We have one, the Jewish State of Israel. That is why we should support it.

From its very birth, Israel has faced threats to its very existence, but I would say today that the threats it faces are the greatest ones it has had to confront in almost a half century. The impetus for much of that threat comes from one place, and that is Iran, a country which almost as a matter of course as a government chants ``Death to America'' and ``Death to Israel'' on a regular basis. It is one of the stated purposes of that government, to destroy the State of Israel, but they aren't just words; they are actions.

I have a map of Iran and Israel. Of course, notice that Israel is the tiny little area on this map. At its narrowest point, Israel is 9 miles wide. This is not a large country in terms of the map area. It is unreal how much of the world's attention, both from international organizations and international debates, focuses on this one tiny country, but there it is, the very small nation that you see right there in yellow.

There is Iran. It is, clearly, larger in terms of on the map and in reality. Iran isn't simply a rhetorical enemy of Israel; it is taking action to encircle Israel and to threaten its security.

It begins with engagement in its missile program. Iran is developing and has developed ballistic missiles with a range that reaches every part of Israel. Here is the bottom line: Iran can lodge ballistic missiles that reach any city in Israel right now, which is why their nuclear ambitions are so dangerous.

Imagine that at some point in the future, Iran is able to attach a nuclear warhead to one of those ballistic missiles--a country whose leaders on a regular basis chant ``Death to Israel'' with a nuclear weapon that can reach Israel. Well, that is a proposition nobody wants to see come about. That is why the Iranian ambition to have nuclear weapons is so dangerous. They already possess that as it is today. But they don't simply directly target Israel; they also--I believe directly--they hide behind surrogates in the region, who do their bidding. These surrogates have for many years been found in southern Lebanon among Hezbollah. We will talk about them in a moment. They are a surrogate that works at the behest of the Iranian Government.

There have been conflicts--in fact, wars--between Israel and Hezbollah in which there have been massive military attacks coming from Lebanon, rocket strikes into Israel and Israel's response. The last one was in the 2005-2006 time period, and it could happen again. In fact, I believe the conditions are ripe for it to happen again. It could happen at any moment for a variety of different reasons that will have to be part of another speech because time doesn't permit. Suffice it to say, it is a dangerous proposition.

How does Hezbollah get this weaponry? They get this weaponry from Iran. It is shipped through Syria. The U.S. disengagement from Syria will make it easier for Iran and the IRGC and Hezbollah to bring those weapons into southern Lebanon to strike at Israel at some point in the future. In addition to that, Iran is also present on the ground in Syria, which, as you see, borders Israel. So not only does Iran help Hezbollah, but Hezbollah and Iran are in Syria, on Israel's very border in the same region in the south, and a U.S. withdrawal will make it easier for Iran to grow their presence there. So now Israel faces a threat from Hezbollah, from southern Lebanon, and a threat from Iran and Hezbollah in Syria.

We also see that the Iranian influence has grown in Iraq. The second leading political movement in the current Iraqi Parliament is a Shia group, directly aligned in Iran, with growing political influence. They want to kick America out of there. Believe me, they want to turn Iraq into another base of operation from which Israel can be targeted.

Down here in Yemen, the Houthis are an agent of Iran. You may say: Well, that is kind of far. It isn't in the sense that those missiles and rockets could reach there as well, but it also allows them the opportunity to shut off transit here at this chokepoint on the bottom of the Red Sea, which could directly impact, ultimately, the ability for trade and commerce for Israel and for the region writ large.

Obviously, we see a growing Iranian presence in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Suffice it to say that Iran is carrying out an effort to grow its influence and encircle who it views as its enemies--the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia but more than anyone else, the Israelis.

This is not the only threat, by the way, that Israel faces. It also faces growing violence and resistance in the Judea-Samaria region-- often called by some the West Bank--and Gaza, where there have been upticks in violence.

I failed to mention that in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah routinely builds tunnels from Lebanon into Israel. The purpose of that is to be able to sneak fighters right into Israel through those tunnels so they can conduct commando raids and kill civilians--not military personnel but civilians.

The threats Israel is facing are growing every single day.

I want to talk specifically for a moment about the missile threat to Israel. Here are the ranges of these rockets. There was an Israel- Hezbollah war. The next one will be far deadlier. It will be far deadlier for a couple of reasons.

The first is that Hezbollah can build these rockets; they no longer need to ship them in. Over the last decade and a half, they have built the capability to construct these rockets themselves.

The second is that they have more of them. That matters because Israel has a very good missile defense system, but you can overwhelm a missile defense system with volume, meaning 100 rockets are launched, and you knock down 99 of them, but 1 of them gets through and hits a population center and kills 10,000 people. Hezbollah now has that capability.

These rockets are also precision-guided. They are not just lobbing them over and they hit what they hit. They can launch precision-guided munitions to target specific areas within Israel. The ranges of these rockets they now possess are stunning. As an example, if you look at this little ring here, it tells you how many seconds it would take from launch to impact, meaning 10 to 25 seconds before they could hit, for example, the area of Nazareth and Tiberias. Moving farther down, you see 35 to 50 seconds. Farther down, around Tel Aviv, 75 seconds. Jerusalem, just south of that is probably another 10 seconds added, 85 seconds. A hundred and twenty seconds. A hundred and fifty-five seconds.

Imagine for a moment that you are visiting Israel or live in Israel or are a student studying there--whatever it might be--and one of these launches comes in, a barrage of 1,000 rockets launched. You literally have 35 to 50 seconds--less than 2 minutes. There is no country in the world that can mobilize people to get out of the way in 2 minutes. These are their population centers. This is the threat that faces them right now, and that is just from Lebanon. Imagine that same capability I just described also existing in Syria. Imagine it all being launched simultaneously from Syria, from Lebanon, and from Iran. Now you begin to see the construct of a plan to destroy this tiny nation and why it is so critical that the United States support them in fighting for their existence. The threat is extraordinary.

There is one more element to it. There is now a global effort called boycott, divestment, and sanctions, BDS. It is designed to wage economic war on Israel--in essence, to pressure companies to boycott Israeli companies and people who do business in Israel until they stop, to pressure investment funds and banks to no longer do investments in anything related to Israel, and to pressure governments around the world to sanction Israel. That is what this effort is about. It is to undermine them economically as well. It is economic warfare and being waged at every level. It is working. People are adopting this around the world, and there are some who advocate for it here. We have recently seen in the news a number of companies that decided not to do business in certain parts of Israel because of the pressure from that movement.

By the way, I would point out that they are not just boycotting the economy; there are people who won't do concerts, and they won't play the Israeli sports teams. They want the Israeli Government kicked out of the international committee for different sports, including soccer-- the Olympic committee. They boycott cultural events. They boycott universities. They are pressuring universities to cut ties with any university in Israel over all this. It is an effort to destroy Israel culturally and economically in a way that works in combination with the effort to destroy it physically. It is a very real threat.

We have tried to confront both of these issues in bipartisan legislation. I have up here a chart, and I will talk about it in a moment. Twenty-six States in this country have tried to do something to condemn BDS. I will get to that in a moment before I tell you the ``what.''

I told you why it is so important that we stand with Israel and the threats that Israel faces. Now I will describe what this bill does. This bill has four components to it. One deals with the human rights violation in Syria. We will discuss that further, perhaps tomorrow. The second component of this bill deals with Jordan, which is one of the neighbors that Israel has that is actually critical to its security. One of the best things that happened to Israel security was the deal with Jordan and Egypt that allowed them, at their periphery, to have countries that at least recognize them and are not out to destroy them. Jordan faces its own threats from some of the same actors, by the way. And add ISIS to that.

The other two elements are we took these two bills that have bipartisan support--cosponsored by Republicans and Democrats--we combined them with the other two bills, which also had such support, into one bill. That is S. 1. We viewed it as an opportunity for the Senate and for Congress to weigh in on foreign policy at a time when we believe that all of the threats to Israel that I just described are made worse by the decision to withdraw from Syria. That is the bill that is before us.

Today, I want to talk about the two components that impact Israel directly. The first is basically the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act. That is a fancy title for a bill that I coauthored with my very good friend and another strong supporter of Israel, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who sits on the other side of the aisle. Again, I told you this is a bipartisan issue.

This bill has 72 cosponsors here in the Senate. It passed overwhelmingly by a voice vote. We didn't even have to have a rollcall vote. It was just voice-voted out, meaning there was unanimous consent--no one objected--on the 1st of August of last year. It passed in the House, with an amendment, on September 12. Then it was hotlined for a potential voice vote here on October 11, 2018.

What does this bill do? The first thing it does is it lays out a statement of policy. Let me tell you why that is important. People say: Statement of policy words--why do they matter? They matter in the region because one of the things that would encourage Hezbollah or any of Israel's enemies to perhaps attack it is the belief that the United States is no longer as committed to Israel's security as we once were. They could miscalculate. They read these headlines about one or two people in America saying something negative toward Israel, and they think that somehow we are weakening in our resolve. I know that sounds silly to us, but to people involved in that over there, it is not. They read into this, and they miscalculate it. They make errors. A miscalculation here could lead to an all-out war that could cost the lives of thousands of people and potentially lead to the destruction of Israel, along with other nations in the process.

It is important for us to make very clear that our commitment to Israel is unwavering. It is especially important in light of the decision to withdraw from Syria because what a lot of these countries-- including Iran--are reading into this is, U.S. commitment to the Middle East is no longer very strong. Not only are they not committed to being involved in the region, they are actually withdrawing any of the assets they could be using to be supportive of their allies in the region.

So these statements of policy are important. What we put in this bill lays out a statement of policy that says:

It shall be the policy of the United States to provide assistance to the Government of Israel in order to support funding for cooperative programs to develop, produce, and procure missile, rocket, projectile, and other defense capabilities to help Israel meets its security needs and to help develop and enhance United States defense capabilities.

What that means is, this is a cooperation. Israel may be developing some of these technologies because they have an immediate need. We would benefit from that technology too. If Israel develops the next generation of missile defense systems, we would use that as well in the case where we were threatened by it. That is that statement of policy.

The bill also authorizes U.S. security assistance in foreign military financing at no less than $3.3 billion a year for the next decade. That, by the way, is simply the language from a memorandum of understanding that was signed by the Obama administration and Israel. We put that in the statute, and we authorized it.

This is very important. It extends a war reserve stockpile authority and extends loan guarantees to Israel through 2023. Israel has never defaulted on a U.S.-backed loan guarantee, and this program helps provide rainy-day insurance on Israel's stability given the many threats it is facing.

It authorizes the President to transfer precision-guided munitions and related defense articles and services to Israel as necessary for legitimate self-defense. That means this weaponry wouldn't be sent, but it would be put on reserve status--assuming it doesn't impact our readiness--and it would be made available to Israel in case a war broke out and their reserves were quickly depleted. If they start running out of rockets, munitions, and defense apparatus, the United States has set aside weaponry that we are ready to rapidly send to them so they can defend themselves. They pay for this. But at least they know it is sitting there. We don't have to scramble to find it, it takes 2 weeks to get there, and by then, the war is over.

It has other requirements. It expresses the sense of Congress that the President should prescribe procedures for rapidly acquiring and deploying what we need to support production of these precision-guided munitions for our U.S. counterterror mission.

It requires the President to report no later than 120 days to the appropriate congressional committees on Israel's eligibility for the strategic trade authorization exception to certain export control licensing, including the reasons as to why Israel has not yet been included in the list of countries eligible for the strategic trade authorization exception.

This one is also very critical. This is a new threat that is emerging. It authorizes the President to enter into a cooperative agreement--meaning it benefits them and us--to counter unmanned aerial vehicles and the threat they pose. The reason for that is that on February 10 of last year, an Iranian drone was shot down by Israel. Everyone has every reason to believe that these unmanned aerial vehicles are the next threat that will be deployed both in the battlefield and potentially by terrorists. We would work with Israel, which faces an immediate threat, to develop counters to that. Today, we don't have good counters to that.

Above all else, it makes one more very clear policy statement that has been the linchpin of our support for Israel, which is that it is the policy of the United States to ensure that Israel maintains its ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military or emerging threat from any state or possible coalition of states or from nonstate actors while sustaining minimal damage and casualties through the use of superior military means possessed in sufficient quantities, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition states or nonstate actors.

Here is what this means: It is the policy of the United States to ensure that Israel's weapons and systems are better than anyone else's in the region. Whatever anybody else has we will sell to Israel and allow it to access and acquire something better so that it will always have an advantage. If anyone in that region believes it could beat Israel in a war, one will try to beat Israel in a war. That was the history from its very birth, and that was the lesson of 1967 and the lesson of 1973. We don't want that to happen again. That is what this bill does. That is why it has so much support. That is why it is so important for us to move to debate on this issue.

It also tackles this economic warfare. What is included in this is a bill we filed last year with Senator Manchin, called the Combating BDS Act. By the way, last year, the Banking chairman, Senator Crapo of Idaho, and the ranking member, Senator Brown of Ohio, discharged this bill from their committee, and they didn't even require a hearing. They did it late last year after running it by all of their members, and we tried to pass it in the Senate by a voice vote but were unable to because of one Senator who blocked it.

Let me start by thanking Senators Crapo and Brown for working hard to advance this bill last year, as well as for coauthoring with me last year the new Hezbollah sanctions law, known as the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act of 2018. We strengthened the sanctions on Hezbollah that we had passed in the 2 years previous.

First of all, let me tell you what it doesn't do. It does not outlaw BDS. If you are an American company and you want to boycott or divest from Israel, this doesn't make it illegal. It doesn't stop you from doing it. It only says that if there is some city or county or State in this country that wants to support Israel, it has a right to say it is not going to buy services or goods from any company that is boycotting or divesting from Israel. That is all it does. It gives cities and counties like these--26 States--the opportunity to have their elected officials who respond to the people of those States or cities or counties who elected them to make decisions that they are not going to do business with people who don't do business with Israel and boycott Israel. In essence, it allows us to boycott the boycotters.

Some say that it is an infringement on the First Amendment. First, I will tell you that the First Amendment protects speech and actions that function in the form of speech. This is not an effort to silence speech nor is this an effort, by the way, to defeat an effort per se. It is an effort to defend the right to counterspeak. The First Amendment is a two-way street. You have a right to express your views on something, but others have a right to respond. You have a right to boycott a country, and people have a right to boycott you. That is what this law allows them to do. It is that simple.

By the way, this is not some domestic debate. They are not trying to influence some law that we are passing here with BDS. They are not trying to influence your opinions on a topic. They are trying to influence the foreign policy of another country. This is not traditional free speech. The courts have weighed in on this in the past, and the courts have given Congress and the executive branch extraordinary discretion on the setting of foreign policy. When a company weighs in on BDS, it is not trying to influence a domestic debate or a topic of opinion here in the U.S. political system; it is trying to punish a nation-state so that the state changes its policies in another country.

There is an open question about whether the First Amendment even covers that. The bill basically says, notwithstanding whatever is in the bill, nothing in the bill shall be construed to invade or to hurt anyone's First Amendment rights. So anyone who hides behind the idea that this is designed to silence speech isn't being truthful.

This does not outlaw BDS. If you want to boycott or divest from Israel, you can. It is legal. We are not outlawing that as that would be an infringement. All we are saying is, if you are going to boycott Israel, those who support Israel will have a right to boycott you. That includes cities and counties and States that don't want to buy stuff from you. That is what this bill does. That is why it enjoys this broad bipartisan support.

Some have asked me to take it out of this bill and have said it is the reason we are not moving to it. At least, that is what I heard earlier. Now there is another reason. It is absurd. Vote against it and then justify it, but if you are trying to shield the boycotters, that is the de facto support of BDS, in my opinion, and I think it is important for us to pass it.

I emphasize again that this was not overly controversial 2 weeks ago. Look at the list of people who supported this bill last year: the majority leader, the minority leader, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, and the ranking member of the Finance Committee. Democratic and Republican leaders on multiple committees and at the very top of this Chamber support this bill. Yet, somehow, we can't even proceed to debate on this bill.

You may say, ``Well, wait until the shutdown is over,'' because that is the argument that is being used now--that we shouldn't move to anything until we deal with the shutdown. I don't like the shutdown. I hope it ends tonight or tomorrow morning. Yet this is not just any other issue. There is a credible argument to be made that there is a time sensitivity to this because the enemies of Israel aren't sitting around, waiting. This could happen at any moment. These aren't the kinds of things that build up. Hezbollah's desire to destroy Israel is longstanding, and what they choose to do about it will not wait for the U.S. Senate to deal with other topics. This is an immediate threat. It is right before us, and it deserves our immediate reaction.

This could rapidly escalate, but I am not going to take up another 30 minutes to describe all of the scenarios under which that could happen. Yet I will give you one that is not out of the realm of possibility. Now that they know that the United States is going to be withdrawing from Syria, the Israelis could decide--and, I believe, rightfully so-- that for their own defense, they will need to start attacking even more inside Syria. Regarding those supply lanes that Iran is using, every time they see a truck with rockets on it, they are going to blow up the truck. Every time they see IRGC or Hezbollah militias forming anywhere near their border, they are going to hit them. They are now going to step up those attacks because we are not there anymore. Iran is going to fill that void, so they are going to have to step up their attacks.

At some point, Iran and/or Hezbollah is going to respond to those stepped-up attacks with attacks of its own, at which point Israel is going to respond with even bigger attacks. Then the cycle of escalation will begin. Then very quickly--before you know it--in this region, we could have a shooting war, not a war of words and not a vote at the U.N., but rockets and missiles being fired at one another from Lebanon or from Syria into Israel, with Israel's responding back into Syria and Israel's responding back into Lebanon. In fact, Israel has said that all of Lebanon is on the target list since now Hezbollah and the current President of Lebanon have created a political alliance. You also have these other countries running around inside Syria, including the Russians now and the Turks up to the north. There is the potential that their troops would get caught in the firefight in their eliciting a response back to Israel. Before you know it, we could have a multistate, multiparty, all-out war in the Middle East. The possibility of that happening is not farfetched.

I say this to you today with no pleasure. There will be another Israel-Hezbollah war. It is just a matter of time. Yet the next one will be far more deadly. It is incumbent upon us to do what we can. There are things we cannot do, and there are things we can do. It is incumbent upon us to prolong it and to prevent it for as long as possible. One of the things we can do to help prevent that or to extend the time before that happens is to make it very clear to Hezbollah and Iran and everyone else that if they take on Israel, we will support Israel. That is what this bill is designed to do. It is not just to send that message but to put in place that reality.

Given the tinderbox that is the Middle East and given the unpredictability of the various actors involved, particularly those that hate Israel, why would we not move immediately to address something like that? Why are we not capable of voting on something that will probably get 80 votes here and still deal with the government shutdown?

The last time we had a government shutdown, we were still voting on bills that had nothing to do with the government shutdown. When the other party was in charge, we were doing that. There is no precedent for doing it. I believe that it is possible for us to do both, and that is what we should do. This isn't tax reform or healthcare reform. This is something that is urgent and immediate and requires our attention because of the unpredictability of foreign events today and because of the unpredictability of this part of the world.

I know, at some point here soon, that the leader will bring up for a second time a vote on the motion to proceed. It is not even a vote on the bill. It is a motion to begin debate on this bill. Nothing else is going on around here. Let them continue to meet and have a dialogue and talk about how to get us out of this shutdown. I hope we do. I hope that happens. Yet don't shut down the Senate, particularly on a topic of this importance, because these events will not wait for us. It is important for us to act.

Please don't go around asking people to stand up to this administration's foreign policies that we don't agree with--when we at least offer a counter or something to diminish its negative impacts-- and respond with obstruction and not just obstruction because of policy but with obstruction in order to make a political point or to avoid a vote that three or four Senators might not want to take. I don't think that makes a lot of sense.

I think, when it comes to the issues of national security and foreign policy, we should try, to the extent possible, to remove them from the daily grind and back-and-forth of American politics because the repercussions are dramatic. That is the one thing that makes national security and foreign policy different from domestic policy. You can always go back and change a bad tax law. You can always go back and change a bad healthcare law. You can always go back and make changes to a bad banking law. You can't undo history. You can't undo wars once they have started. You can't undo carnage once it has occurred. Foreign policy is often irreversible, and once mistakes are made, you have to do the best you can with the hand you have been dealt.

That is why I hope that on this one, we stop playing games, that we get on this bill, and that we pass it so that even as this debate about the shutdown continues, we will make clear to the world and we will make clear to her enemies that we stand with Israel. We always have and we always will across party lines. We may bicker and fight about many things, but when it comes to the support of Israel, we are united-- House and Senate Republicans and Democrats and the White House--in the support of our strongest ally in the region and of one of our strongest allies in the entire world.

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