Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I oppose this measure.

Like everyone on this floor, we want--we all want the conflict in Gaza to end as quickly as possible. The reality is, Hamas has the ability to do so right now by releasing all the hostages and immediately laying down their weapons.

Let me say that again. We can have a cease-fire immediately, but it takes Hamas to do it. Hamas refuses to do so.

Hamas has the duty to do this. They started this. The entity that started this needs to end it, and they can end it by simply stopping the fighting and releasing the hostages. They refuse to do that and continue constant attacks. They have the duty to start this cease-fire.

Every starvation, every injury, every death, every single thing that happens in this conflict is the fault of Hamas.

On October 7, when this invasion by Hamas started, Israel was doing nothing to deserve this. Instead, Hamas invaded the country. They killed 1,200 people. They took 251 hostages.

If that wasn't enough, the torture that they committed on that day was horrific. For those of you who haven't seen the film of what they did, I strongly recommend you don't look at it because you won't sleep. It is inhuman, what Hamas did to the Israeli people.

The Israeli people believe they have to defend themselves and they have to eliminate Hamas.

Worse, Hamas has used previous pauses in humanitarian aid convoys to resupply their attacks at the expense of the Palestinian people, to include looting at gunpoint the majority of the trucks that crossed into Gaza.

This is pure evil. They show pictures of women and children starving. Those women and children are starving. They are not being starved by Israel; they are being starved by Hamas. The Hamas fighters you will see in the photography are well fed, well taken care of. They steal the food that is supposed to go in there and go to the women and children, who are not fighting.

This resolution fails to even mention this threat from Hamas, much less recognize the terrorism as the root cause of this conflict.

Additionally, we should be very cautious against getting ahead of the negotiations of both our President and our democratic ally Israel, who are working diligently to resolve this conflict. In fact, the administration has worked with Israel to establish a new system of aid distribution that prevents diversions by terrorists.

More aid was delivered into Gaza last month than in almost any other month of the past year. There is no blockade. Food is getting in. Hamas is stealing it, and what they steal, they either eat or they sell.

This resolution is incomplete, it is misleading, and unfortunately it is partisan.

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