[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 7, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S671-S672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. COTTON (for himself, Mrs. Blackburn, Mr. Braun, Mr. 
        Cramer, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Daines, Mr. Graham, Mr. Grassley, Mr. 
        Hagerty, Mr. Hoeven, Mrs. Hyde-Smith, Mr. Lankford, Mr. 
        Marshall, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Scott of Florida, Mr. Thune, Mr. 
        Wicker, and Mr. Young):
  S. 691. A bill to deter foreign financial institutions from providing 
banking services for the benefit of foreign terrorist organizations and 
from facilitating or promoting payments for acts of terrorism; to the 
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
  Mr. COTTON. Madam President, there is one foreign leader for whom the 
Democratic Party seems to reserve special scorn. Leading Democrats have 
called him a reactionary, a racist, an ethnonationalist. They have 
accused him of committing war crimes and of leading an apartheid state. 
President Biden has called him extreme and has said they don't agree on 
a damn thing. Strong words.
  Who is this monster, you may ask. Were the Democrats talking about 
Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or, perhaps, Ayatollah Khamenei? No. They 
were referring to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving Prime 
Minister and one of America's best friends.
  Once again, these Democrats have proven their party's tendency to 
coddle our enemies and condemn our friends. But the Democrats don't 
stop at mere words. They are working right now to undermine Bibi and 
his government.
  Yesterday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the State 
Department is funneling your tax dollars to Netanyahu's domestic 
opponents. Since 2020, the State has sent more than $38,000 to 
something known as the Movement for Quality Government, for so-called 
democracy education.
  So what is the Movement for Quality Government, and how good is this 
democracy education?
  This movement is an activist group that is fomenting unrest against 
the Israeli Government and demanding Netanyahu's resignation. In recent 
days, leftwing demonstrators associated with this group have protested 
the government's proposed judicial reforms. Last week, hundreds of 
protesters harassed Netanyahu's wife, forcing police to intervene and 
escort her to safety.
  Far from staying neutral in Israel's domestic affairs, Secretary of 
State Tony Blinken lectured Netanyahu about the judicial reforms to his 
face, tacitly siding with the demonstrators. Some Democratic Senators 
have also condemned the reform proposals, which is awfully rich coming 
from Democrats who have voted to shred this Senate's ancient rules to 
pack our Supreme Court and to rewrite our founding documents. I guess, 
when American liberals want to change the courts, it is the only way to 
save democracy; but when Israeli conservatives want to, it is a threat 
to democracy. Go figure.
  The State Department doesn't even deny it is funneling money to these 
leftwing activities, by the way, which is troubling because it is a 
clear violation of the usual State Department policy against funding 
foreign partisan organizations.
  Not only is this U.S.-funded organization subverting a foreign 
government, it is subverting the government of one of our closest 
allies. Secretary Blinken should immediately apologize to the Prime 
Minister of Israel, demand your money back, and open an investigation 
into how this happened. But then again, I suspect we already know how 
this happened. After all, the Democratic Party has been meddling in 
Israeli democracy to undermine Benjamin Netanyahu for more than a 
quarter century.
  By his own admission, President Bill Clinton intervened in the 1996 
Israeli election to support Netanyahu's opponent, Shimon Peres. Clinton 
met with Peres; dispatched his own campaign advisers; dangled policy 
shifts to Israel--all to get Peres across the finish line. Netanyahu 
prevailed nevertheless.
  Team Clinton intervened, yet again, in 1999. The Clinton White House 
reportedly urged Democratic donors to give money to Netanyahu's next 
opponent, Ehud Barak.
  And it didn't stop there. Clinton's political advisers again 
campaigned against Bibi while the Clinton State Department allegedly 
spread falsehoods about the Israeli Government and Netanyahu himself.
  Netanyahu lost this time around; though, he was more of a victim of 
his own success against Palestinian terrorism than Barak and Clinton's 
campaign against him. But Bibi returned to the Knesset just 3 years 
later and became Prime Minister again in 2009.
  The Obama State Department was, if anything, worse than Clinton's in 
its funneling of hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars to a group 
called the OneVoice Movement. Not coincidentally, OneVoice partnered 
with an organization running anti-Netanyahu ads that was advised by--
you guessed it--a top Obama campaign operative.
  Of course, the Democrats will insist they are innocent of these 
charges and aren't meddling in Israel's democracy, but Israelis know 
the truth. Obama's meddling was so pervasive that an astounding 62 
percent of Israelis thought he was interfering. Indeed, one Foreign 
Policy magazine headline read ``Obama is Pursuing Regime Change in 
Israel''--not in Iran--our mortal enemy--but in Israel, mind you.
  Now Joe Biden is simply following in Obama's footsteps by trying to 
sabotage Netanyahu. In 2021, the Biden administration reportedly 
pressured the United Arab Emirates to cancel an Abraham Accords 
Summit--all to deprive Netanyahu of a diplomatic victory ahead of that 
year's election. Then, after Netanyahu won the 2022 election, the Biden 
administration immediately sought to undermine his coalition government 
by trying to veto key Cabinet appointments.
  This most recent scandal is not an aberration, therefore. It has been 
the de facto policy of the Democratic Party for a quarter century to 
beat Netanyahu, though he keeps beating the Democrats. Though, it does 
provide more evidence, yet again, for the old saw that while it is 
dangerous to be America's enemy, it can be fatal to be America's 
friend--at least when the Democrats are in charge.
  Instead of trying to topple the democratically elected Government of 
Israel, I would suggest we should support it. Israelis are more than 
capable of managing their domestic affairs without Democratic meddling, 
but they need our help to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb; they 
need our help to achieve peace with their neighbors; and they need our 
help to defeat the terrorists who are threatening both of our nations.
  They don't get that from the Biden administration either. Iran is 
racing toward a nuclear breakout while the President dithers. His 
administration can barely utter the words ``Abraham Accords,'' and 
President Biden is

[[Page S672]]

breaking U.S. law to subsidize the Palestinian Authority's support for 
terrorism.
  A few years back, Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, which 
prohibits nonhumanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority until it 
ends its so-called martyr payments--a euphemism for bounties given to 
Palestinian terrorists or their families for maiming and killing Jews. 
So the administration has, instead, funneled tens of millions of your 
tax dollars to nongovernmental organizations to build roads, sidewalks, 
parking lots, and other infrastructure projects on behalf of the 
Palestinian Authority. As a result, since money is fungible, the 
Palestinian Authority can ignore these basic responsibilities of 
government and, instead, keep pouring more money into its pay-for-slay 
program.
  The contrast couldn't be starker. If the Palestinian Authority wants 
to bankroll terrorists and their families, the Biden administration 
will contort the law beyond recognition to fund the Palestinians; but 
if a center-right government gets elected once again in Israel, the 
Biden administration will work overtime to undermine it. This is 
exactly backward. We should demand the Palestinian Authority stop 
subsidizing terrorism before it gets another penny of your tax dollars.
  While we are at it, we should pass the Taylor Force Martyr Payment 
Prevention Act, which I am reintroducing this week, to sanction foreign 
banks that process these so-called martyr payments for the Palestinian 
Authority.
  Meanwhile, President Biden and his administration should quit 
treating Prime Minister Netanyahu like he is a rival or even an 
adversary and start treating him as he is--a war hero, a courageous 
patriot, a towering figure of modern Israel, and most importantly for 
us, a great friend of America.

                          ____________________