Condemning Benjamin Netanyahu

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POCAN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak out against the genocide that is occurring in Gaza against the Palestinians.

I am not ignoring the outrageous attacks on October 7 that left at least 1,200 people dead and the dozens of hostages who remain. Nor am I ignoring the decades of isolation that Gaza has endured by the Israeli Government, essentially turning the small but densely populated region into an open-air prison from which few could easily come and go as they pleased.

However, it is simply outrageous what is occurring in Gaza right now, and not speaking out against the inhumanity could be considered complicity.

At least 64,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, including tens of thousands of mothers, children, and other innocent people. Sadly, it is likely that the actual death toll is even higher. The U.N. estimates that approximately 92 percent of residential buildings and 70 percent of all the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed.

Starvation is rampant, as is disease. Famine is no longer an imminent threat. It is happening now, and babies are dying. The killing of people in hospitals and those trying to get food aid, normally considered off-limits even in war, occurs regularly, with an official shrug when the Israeli Government is called out.

The definition of genocide by the New Oxford American Dictionary is ``the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.''

That is exactly what we are seeing in Gaza right now by the Israeli Government under Benjamin Netanyahu, an accused war criminal by the International Criminal Court.

This war isn't a targeted response against Hamas, guilty of the October 7 attacks and decades of violence. This is a wholesale attack on the people of Gaza.

Israeli groups like B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel have recently called what is happening genocide. International human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have as well.

Recently, the International Association of Genocide Scholars added their voices on the genocide. The United Nations' special committee said last November that Israel's war conduct in Gaza is ``consistent with the characteristics of genocide,'' including mass civilian casualties and using starvation as a weapon.

No weapons should be sent from the United States to Israel that could be used against the people of Gaza. Instead of photo ops with Benjamin Netanyahu, it is time for condemnation. Help facilitate the serving of an arrest warrant from the ICC to him.

Let's make him the international pariah he should be. Let's use our leverage to pressure him not to commit genocide in Gaza. People of good conscience must join in this denunciation of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. Funding Meals on Wheels

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POCAN. Madam Speaker, the Republicans in the appropriations process are leaving seniors to starve, underfunding the Meals on Wheels food assistance program by $600 million, a move that is likely to cost 1.9 million needy people their access to food. This follows the big, ugly bill, which all but three Republicans voted for, making it the largest cut to food assistance in our Nation's history.

By flat-funding the vital Meals on Wheels program for seniors in the Health and Human Services appropriations bill, Republicans are ignoring the real increase in food costs that Americans are experiencing due to a lack of action by the administration to lower costs.

With all of this talk of Republicans making food access harder and harder for millions and millions of Americans, what did they do this weekend at the White House? They held an extravagant dinner in the newly paved area that once was the Rose Garden and had a three-course dinner and drinks, featuring Rose Garden salad--at least we know where the plants went that once were there--steak, and a fudge-filled, seven- layer cake, making their cuts to food assistance even more tone deaf than ever.

A fudge-filled, seven-layer cake? I guess the theme of the White House event was ``let them eat cake.'' How fitting.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source