Standing Shoulder to Shoulder with Israel

Floor Speech

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

What we are watching is a complete foreign policy failure on the part of the Biden administration. And we are watching it on two fronts. We are watching it in Eastern Europe where peace prevailed under the last administration, and it is no coincidence that shortly after this administration bungles the withdrawal from Afghanistan that Mr. Putin invades Eastern Europe.

Then on October 7, Hamas--after this administration actively interfered with an internal discussion they were having about their court system--Hamas, again, detecting weakness, launched that horrific inhumane attack on Israeli civilians on October 7 where they take over 200 hostages.

Mr. Speaker, the latest news, literally just coming out today, is in the negotiations. The Israelis were willing to negotiate a cease-fire, Hamas just has to release 40 hostages--Israeli hostages--and Hamas says they don't even have 40 Israeli hostages anymore.

Now, there are only two possible explanations for that. Hamas is lying, and they have more than 40. Actually we heard in the rule debate today from the other side of the aisle they said: Well, we should be talking about this, there are 133 hostages. Well, Hamas says there aren't anymore. So they are either lying that the hostages aren't there, or even worse, they killed the hostages. These are civilian hostages. These are not uniformed members. These are civilians.

I wore the uniform of the country. You put on the uniform of the country, and let me tell you something, you understand you could be taken prisoner, you could be subject to violence during war, but you don't expect it in this unprovoked attack on October 7 on civilians.

So furthermore, this administration, which couldn't even get a withdrawal from a war correct, they couldn't even withdraw from a war correctly, they are trying to tell the Israelis, who are under an existential threat--Mr. Speaker, we don't understand that in America because we have two oceans on two sides and two friendly nations to the north and south. We don't understand what it is like to live in a neighborhood where some of your neighbors have said: Death to your country, that your country shouldn't exist. We don't understand that.

Yet this administration and this Pentagon is attempting to tell Israel how to win this war. And what they want after the war is a two- state solution. Well, look, I want peace and I want utopia and I want all that too, but let's investigate.

What do they mean by a two-state solution? Wait a minute. Gaza was a two-state solution.

Gaza got its independence, its ability to govern itself, humanitarian aid by the hundreds of millions of dollars, including from the United States which pours into Gaza to make life good for the citizens. They bring water in, bring all the infrastructure in, and the only infrastructure Hamas built were tunnels under the city so they could launch an attack and have a place to hide when Israel responded to the attack.

That is what they did, that is what a two-state solution looks like in Israel.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know if you had the privilege to visit Israel and land at Ben Gurion Airport. Ben Gurion Airport is between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and if you look at the map of Israel and you look just to the northeast of Ben Gurion Airport, there sits a piece of the West Bank--what the Palestinians want; they want to claim that territory.

If you look at that--and we visited one of those places--it is on an elevation. From that piece of the West Bank, you can look down in the valley and there is Ben Gurion Airport.

The people who took me up there said: Tell me why a two-state solution doesn't work, because if this is a second state, a single shoulder-fired rocket at an incoming jumbo jet--because these jets are big that come into that airport--can destroy that airplane. The effect of just that one shoulder-fired rocket would be bringing the economy of Israel to its knees because you would disable--no international flights would go into Ben Gurion. Of course, they wouldn't go into Ben Gurion.

You don't think that can occur? Of course, it can occur. Israel has to be able to defend its territories. It has sworn enemies.

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the body that at that protest in Michigan over the weekend, they weren't chanting only ``death to Israel,'' they were chanting ``death to America.''

This protest didn't occur in Riyadh. It didn't occur in Jordan. It didn't occur in Tehran. It occurred in Michigan; people in this country calling for death to America. If we think people in this country are calling for death to America, imagine what they are thinking about in Tehran where they really want to bring death to America, where they are weeks away from a breakout on three nuclear weapons. We know what the damage of only one nuclear weapon can do.

They are weeks away from a breakout on three nuclear weapons. This all happened under this administration's watch where we think the appropriate response to Iran is to send them another pallet full of $6 billion with them promising, Oh, it is only for humanitarian aid-- ignoring the fact that money is completely fungible.

Of course, that administration in Tehran is going to say: Oh, well now we don't have to buy food here. We can use that American money to buy the food, and we are going to spend that money to send to Hezbollah in the north, with tens of thousands of rockets that could rain down on northern Israel to Hamas and Gaza, to the militia that surround them in Syria, the Iranian-backed militia.

How naive can you be about the dangers of this world? How naive can you be? Well, we know how naive you can be because you just have to go to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to find it. Where in this election year, they are putting the security of one our best allies in the country up for bid for electoral votes. That is a real shame.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) for giving me the few minutes because our friends in Israel deserve the full, unqualified support of the United States to win their war. It is not our war; it is their war. Existential threats to one of our best allies, they deserve our help, not our criticism.

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