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Floor Speech
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Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to express my strong--very strong--support for Israel. On October 7, Israel was suddenly and deliberately attacked by a group of terrorists. Now, they didn't attack military institutions; they attacked citizens--citizens in Israel. It has been described by some as Israel's 9/11 or Israel's Pearl Harbor.
They killed women and children. They filmed themselves, and they broadcast it on the internet. They were proud. They were very proud of what they were doing. They killed more than 1,400 innocent people. This includes more than 30 Americans. Sometimes that is forgotten by our mainstream media.
This is the largest terrorist killing of Americans since 9/11. More than 100 people--100 people--are still held hostage by Hamas, and this also includes Americans.
So we need to do two things: First, we need to get the hostages out. That is very, very important. It has been too long. Then, we need to ensure that this never happens again.
You know, Israel can do both of these things. Israel has a highly--a very highly--advanced military and a highly advanced economy. The only way to ensure that Hamas cannot ever attack again, as Israel says, is to wipe them from the face of the Earth.
This is Israel's mission, and we hear this from their leaders every day. The role of the United States in this conflict should be to support and supply.
So let's first talk about support. Over the last 2 weeks, we have seen the leftwing protest against Israel and support of Hamas. It is hard to believe, but it is very, very, very true. We have seen them overseas in London and in Sydney, but we have also seen them here in the United States on college campuses.
To me, that is absolutely disgusting. I will just mention a few examples. Students at Harvard--at Harvard, mind you--defended Hamas for what they did. Next, they will be complaining about not being able to get jobs. I wonder why they won't be able to get jobs, especially in places like Wall Street.
Students at the University of California, Long Beach, handed out fliers with pictures of Hamas. The list goes on and on. But this tells us a lot about the state of our education in this country.
I was involved in education for 40 years. I can understand it. These kids don't know the first thing about the Middle East or about foreign policy. A lot are not taught this. But they have been marinated in woke ideology since grade school at a lot of our public schools. Leftwing groups are siding with terrorists because of this.
Today, there are protests happening here at the Capitol, right here on Capitol Hill. The appropriations hearings with Secretary Austin and Secretary Blinken have been repeatedly--repeatedly--every few minutes, interrupted by leftwing, pro-Hamas protesters. Pro-Hamas leftists shut down a building in the House just a couple of weeks ago--shut it down. Now they want to shut down the Appropriations Committee. Many of these groups are funded by Democrat dark money groups.
These leftwing groups are calling for a cease-fire over in Gaza. This is like calling for a cease-fire after Pearl Harbor, as some of the leaders in Israel have said.
To me, a cease-fire is a surrender. A cease-fire means Hamas gets to kill civilians without any consequences after what they did on October 7. Every single Democrat in the Senate needs to condemn these leftwing groups--everybody. We all need to condemn these groups.
The left is making excuses for these terrorists. It is immoral, and it is un-American what is going on across our country and with these protests. We need to ensure that terrorists never ever attack anybody like this again. This requires, again, wiping off Hamas from the map. And as you listen to the Israeli leaders, that is exactly what they plan to do.
Israel is going to be able to do this. They are going to be able to do it themselves. They are not going to need our help, but they will need supplies. We need to ensure that they have what they need to wipe Hamas off from existence.
I support sending Israel more weapons if they need them. But, unfortunately, there is already an effort to tie Israel funding to Ukraine funding right here in this building.
President Biden sent over a request for a supplemental funding bill just this past week, and it includes $14 billion for Israel. But it also includes $60 billion for Ukraine. That is $230 million a day. That is four times as much for Ukraine than it is for Israel. The war in Ukraine has nothing do with the war in Israel. Israel is our No. 1 ally. Sometimes people forget that. Ukraine is not our No. 1 ally. They are not even in NATO.
The war in Israel is about killing terrorists who want to kill not only people in countries like Israel but also Americans. There is no reason Ukraine and Israel aid need to be in the same bill. I am against that. I am for funding Israel, first and foremost. So we need to vote on them separately. We ought to support Israel, and we need to supply Israel. We need to stand with them as they take on the terrorists. It is going to be a very, very tough and grueling job, but we support them.
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