[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 80 (Wednesday, May 16, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E666-E667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      A TRAGIC DAY FOR PALESTINIAN RIGHTS AND AMERICAN LEADERSHIP

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BETTY McCOLLUM

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 16, 2018

  Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, Monday's events in Jerusalem and Gaza will 
long be remembered as the day the U.S. formally abandoned its role as 
mediator and peacemaker in the conflict between Israel and the 
Palestinians. The Trump administration's decision to move the U.S. 
Embassy to Jerusalem was a grave departure from internationally 
recognized norms regarding the final status of Jerusalem. Monday's 
opening ceremony of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem will prove to be 
a historic mistake that will haunt future U.S. presidents long after 
Donald Trump has departed the White House.
  The ceremony marking the Embassy's opening was made for television, 
as well as the right-wing voters in America and Israel the policy was 
intended to appeal to. The prospects of peace were discarded and no 
consideration was given to the existence of millions of Palestinians 
living under Israeli military occupation or the fact that just miles 
away from the new Embassy more than 60 Palestinian protesters were 
being killed by Israeli snipers. The extremist, homophobic, and racist 
televangelists--John Hagee and Robert Jeffress--were invited by the 
Trump administration to offer prayers on behalf of the America people 
at the ceremony. Their presence and prominent roles can only be 
described as an insult to American and Christian values.
  Israel is a nation that enjoys security and military superiority 
largely as a result of the generosity of American taxpayers. The rights 
and freedoms enjoyed by Jewish citizens of Israel are not enjoyed by 
non-Jews who suffer discrimination as second-class citizens. For the 
millions of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation there 
are no human rights, only repression, violence; and the constant 
pressure of having their land, water, and dignity taken from them.
  I believe in the critical role of the U.S. as a global leader for 
advancing human rights and justice. It should infuriate and illicit 
outrage among Americans to witness the Trump administration abandoning 
such leadership in exchange for a payback on political debts to right-
wing special interest groups. For the Israelis and Palestinians who 
still believe that diplomacy, dialogue, and reducing conflict are the 
only path to peace, I will state clearly that the Trump administration 
cannot and must not be trusted with the future of your children or your 
countries.
  I include in the Record a column by Michelle Goldbert from the New 
York Times entitled A Grotesque Spectacle in Jerusalem that outlines 
the day that destroyed U.S. leadership in the Middle East. The more 
than sixty Palestinian protesters who were killed by Israeli snipers 
and soldiers have been buried. Their families and friends grieve. For 
Americans who believe the U.S. is a force to advance human rights, 
equality, and justice, we also grieve because Monday's spectacle in 
Jerusalem placed the U.S. on the side of oppression and repression of a 
people seeking basic human rights, freedom and self-determination. It 
was a truly grotesque spectacle.

                [From the New York Times: May 14, 2018]

                         (By Michelle Goldberg)

                   A Grotesque Spectacle in Jerusalem

       On Monday, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and other leading 
     lights of the Trumpist right gathered in Israel to celebrate 
     the relocation of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, a 
     gesture widely seen as a slap in the face to Palestinians who 
     envision East Jerusalem as their future capital.
       The event was grotesque. It was a consummation of the 
     cynical alliance between hawkish Jews and Zionist 
     evangelicals who believe that the return of Jews to Israel 
     will usher in the apocalypse and the return of Christ, after 
     which Jews who don't convert will burn forever.
       Religions like ``Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism'' lead 
     people ``to an eternity of separation from God in Hell,'' 
     Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor, once said. He 
     was chosen to give the opening prayer at the embassy 
     ceremony. John Hagee, one of America's most prominent end-
     times preachers, once said that Hitler was sent by God to 
     drive the Jews to their ancestral homeland. He gave the 
     closing benediction.
       This spectacle, geared toward Donald Trump's Christian 
     American base, coincided

[[Page E667]]

     with a massacre about 40 miles away. Since March 30, there 
     have been mass protests at the fence separating Gaza and 
     Israel. Gazans, facing an escalating humanitarian crisis due 
     in large part to an Israeli blockade, are demanding the right 
     to return to homes in Israel that their families were forced 
     from at Israel's founding. The demonstrators have been mostly 
     but not entirely peaceful; Gazans have thrown rocks at 
     Israeli soldiers and tried to fly flaming kites into Israel. 
     The Israeli military has responded with live gunfire as well 
     as rubber bullets and tear gas. In clashes on Monday, at 
     least 58 Palestinians were killed and thousands wounded, 
     according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
       The juxtaposition of images of dead and wounded 
     Palestinians and Ivanka Trump smiling in Jerusalem like a 
     Zionist Marie Antoinette tell us a lot about America's 
     relationship to Israel right now. It has never been closer, 
     but within that closeness there are seeds of potential 
     estrangement.
       Defenders of Israel's actions in Gaza will argue no country 
     would allow a mob to charge its border. They will say that 
     even if Hamas didn't call the protests, it has thrown its 
     support behind them. ``The responsibility for these tragic 
     deaths rests squarely with Hamas,'' a White House spokesman, 
     Raj Shah, said on Monday.
       But even if you completely dismiss the Palestinian right of 
     return--which I find harder to do now that Israel's 
     leadership has all but abandoned the possibility of a 
     Palestinian state--it hardly excuses the Israeli military's 
     disproportionate violence. ``What we're seeing is that Israel 
     has used, yet again, excessive and lethal force against 
     protesters who do not pose an imminent threat,'' Magdalena 
     Mughrabi, Amnesty International's deputy director for the 
     Middle East and North Africa, told me by phone from 
     Jerusalem.
       Much of the world condemned the killings in Gaza. Yet the 
     United States, Israel's most important patron, has given it a 
     free hand to do with the Palestinians what it will. Indeed, 
     by moving the embassy to Jerusalem in the first place, Trump 
     sent the implicit message that the American government has 
     given up any pretense of neutrality.
       Reports of Israel's gratitude to Trump abound. A square 
     near the embassy is being renamed in his honor. Beitar 
     Jerusalem, a soccer team whose fans are notorious for their 
     racism, is now calling itself Beitar ``Trump'' Jerusalem. But 
     if Israelis love Trump, many Americans--and certainly most 
     American Jews--do not. The more Trumpism and Israel are 
     intertwined, the more left-leaning Americans will grow 
     alienated from Zionism.
       Even before Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu helped 
     open a partisan divide on Israel in American politics, where 
     previously there had been stultifying unanimity. ``Until 
     these past few years, you'd never heard the word `occupation' 
     or `settlements' or talk about Gaza,'' Jeremy Ben-Ami, 
     president of the liberal pro-Israel group J Street, said of 
     American politicians. But Ben-Ami told me that since 2015, 
     when Netanyahu tried to undercut President Barack Obama with 
     a controversial address to Congress opposing the Iran deal, 
     Democrats have felt more emboldened. ``That changed the 
     calculus forever,'' he told me.
       The events of Monday may have changed it further, and 
     things could get worse still. Tuesday is Nakba Day, when 
     Palestinians commemorate their dispossession, and the 
     protests at the fence are expected to be even larger. 
     ``People don't feel like they can stay at home after loved 
     ones and neighbors have been killed for peacefully protesting 
     for their rights,'' Abdulrahman Abunahel, a Gaza-based 
     activist with the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, 
     told me via email.
       Trump has empowered what's worst in Israel, and as long as 
     he is president, it may be that Israel can kill Palestinians, 
     demolish their homes and appropriate their land with 
     impunity. But some day, Trump will be gone. With hope for a 
     two-state solution nearly dead, current trends suggest that a 
     Jewish minority will come to rule over a largely 
     disenfranchised Muslim majority in all the land under 
     Israel's control. A rising generation of Americans may see an 
     apartheid state with a Trump Square in its capital and wonder 
     why it's supposed to be our friend.

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