[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 171 (Wednesday, October 18, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5062-S5063]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ISRAEL

  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, earlier this year, I was with a 
bipartisan delegation. I traveled around the Abraham Accords countries. 
We were in Morocco, we were in Bahrain, we were in the UAE, and we were 
in Israel, talking about future advancement for peace. There was great 
optimism and engagement. There was economic activity, tourist activity. 
There was a lot of interaction with development on healthcare, on cyber 
protections, and cooperation together for energy and water.
  Literally, there were families meeting each other, some of them for 
the first time in generations, to be able to have a conversation about 
a future in the Middle East based around peace. It was based off of an 
agreement that started on September 15, 2020, with the signing of the 
Abraham Accords, and it has continued to advance.
  In fact, just as recently as a month ago, there was outspoken public 
support from Saudi Arabia and from Israel about advancing a 
normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel--what people 
thought would be unheard of just a few years ago.
  There was an advance of conversation about how we could increase 
peace. And then, on the 7th of October, 1 day after the 50th 
anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War, a group of terrorists 
from Gaza penetrated the wall separating Gaza and Israel, and

[[Page S5063]]

they slaughtered 1,400 Israelis, brutally, many in their bed--children, 
elderly, disabled--it didn't matter. Whether they were college students 
at a concert, whether they were people traveling down a highway, or 
whether it was children, literally, on their playgrounds, they murdered 
them where they stood. And then they took hostages and retreated back 
into Gaza, for some reason assuming that Israel and the world would 
just not notice their barbarism.
  Well, the world certainly noticed, and, as Americans, we obviously 
all lived in the shock and horror of the event with the Israelis and 
the rest of the world. Thirty-one Americans died in that attack, and 13 
are missing, presumed to be hostages inside Gaza. Many of those 
individuals were killed simply because they were Jewish--period.
  The pain of that has struck all of us over the course of the past 
several weeks now, and we have watched Israel rightly respond to the 
acts of terrorism, as we have as a nation, as well, when we were 
attacked on 9/11. We mobilized our forces. We identified al-Qaida, and 
we identified those who were harboring al-Qaida in Afghanistan and the 
Taliban and determined that type of attack would not happen again. And 
we, as a nation, determined we were not only going to stop the 
capabilities of al-Qaida to be able to attack us, but we were going to 
preemptively respond if we were attacked again. Our first goal, though, 
was to be able to prevent that kind of attack from coming at us again.
  Israel is entirely right when they have been attacked by a terrorist 
organization to be able to say: That organization cannot do that to our 
Nation again and to our people again.
  The United States has responded by sending two carrier strike groups 
to the Mediterranean, to literally park off the coast of Israel, to 
give a clear signal to Lebanon, to Iran: Do not engage in this.
  We understand fully, as most of the world does, that Hamas is funded 
by Iran. And while many in the Muslim world, in the Arab countries 
continue to be able to speak out on behalf of Palestinians, they also 
understand that 70 percent of the funding for Hamas comes from Iran.
  The weapons systems that Hamas has right now were fully funded by 
Iran, and the weapons systems in Lebanon, by Hezbollah, where they have 
been attacking Israel from the north, were fully funded and created 
and, many times, shipped directly from Iran.
  Iran is the destabilizing force in this entire region, and we, as 
Americans, have made very, very clear that we understand that Iran is 
the one who funded this, who supplied the weapons systems, who supplied 
the training and the munitions. Iran is the one who continues to 
destabilize that region.
  As Americans, we clearly speak out for the protection of all 
civilians in every nation around the world and in every conflict in the 
world, but we were also very clear that Israel did not initiate this 
battle in the last 2 weeks. Hamas did, and they pulled their hostages 
back into Gaza, as they continue to be able to hide them among the 
civilian population. It is a painful peace for us to be able to see 
internationally. For us in Oklahoma, we are like many others that are 
in this Chamber as well. It personally affects many families in 
Oklahoma. Israel is a nation so small that there is no one that has not 
experienced the pain of a friend or relative, someone whom they work 
with, they know people who have been directly attacked. But in my State 
of Oklahoma, we are in the same condition. Many people that I interact 
with talk frequently about family, friends that live in Israel or that 
travel back and forth.

  Quite frankly, last weekend, I worshipped with a Jewish congregation 
on Shabbat and heard the dialogue from many people about their travels 
back and forth and family and friends and what they personally 
experienced as a family based on this terrorist attack. Quite frankly, 
my State of Oklahoma has a very close bond with Israel, as the United 
States has a very close bond, close enough that we had many Oklahomans 
that were currently in Israel during that time of the attacks, and our 
office actively worked to be able to get many of those out, since many 
flights have been canceled out of Tel Aviv.
  So we have actively worked to be able to get many of those 
individuals back home to Oklahoma, and they have quite a story to tell, 
as you would assume.

                          ____________________