[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 173 (Friday, October 20, 2023)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1002]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





  DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS ARE INDOCTRINATING YOUNG AMERICANS WITH ANTI-
                    ISRAEL HATE IN MORAL MONSTROSITY

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                          HON. RITCHIE TORRES

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 20, 2023

  Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker Pro Tempore, Oct. 7th is a day 
that will live in infamy as the most gruesome terrorist attack in the 
history of the Jewish State.
  Thousands of Israelis were murdered, raped, tortured, and abducted as 
hostages. Ten percent of the members of an Israeli kibbutz, Kfar Asar, 
were massacred.
  About 260 young Israelis partying at a music festival were gunned 
down. Babies were butchered, burned and beheaded.
  The ONLY morally acceptable response to such incomprehensible terror 
is overwhelming outrage at the boundless barbarism of Hamas.
  While most of the civilized world, led by President Biden, rightly 
recoiled in horror at Hamas and condemned its terrorism immediately and 
unequivocally, Israel's ideological enemies here in the US found cause 
for celebration at the sight of dead Jews.
  Imagine, for a moment, the inconsolable grief of a Jewish mother 
whose baby has been butchered to death. Could you imagine anything more 
callous and cruel than telling that grieving mother: You had it coming. 
You and your people brought the terror upon yourselves.
  Those were the shocking sentiments of the New York City-Democratic 
Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), which wasted no time in holding a hate 
rally romanticizing the terrorism of Hamas as ``resistance.''
  The DSA was hardly alone in blaming the victims of terrorism rather 
than the terrorists themselves.
  Something is rotten in the state of America. When the institutional 
leaders in our country cannot condemn the cold-blooded murder of 
Israeli children and civilians with moral clarity, one must ask: what 
kind of society are we becoming?
  What does the silence and indifference and cowardice--from these so-
called leaders--tell us about the depth of anti-Semitism in America and 
the reckoning required?
  The time has come to confront not only the symptoms but the disease: 
a Democratic Socialist industrial complex that indoctrinates young 
Americans with an anti-Israel hatred so virulent that it renders them 
indifferent to the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
  Anti-Israel extremism, which has been given a veneer of mainstream 
respectability in law schools and legislatures, is aided and abetted by 
the sheer spinelessness of so-called ``leaders''--from public officials 
to the presidents of colleges and universities.
  Days of silence were often followed by words of cowardice, if there 
were any words at all.
  Northwestern University, for example, said it had no plans to ``put 
out a statement officially stating a University position.'' Imagine 
that: a university that cannot be bothered to take a position on a 
pogrom against Jews. Have we learned nothing from the long and ugly 
history of Anti-Semitism?
  There is nothing accidental about the disregard for Israeli life that 
revealed itself in the wake of Oct. 7. The dehumanization of Israeli 
victims follows inevitably from the hyperbolic and systematic 
demonization of Israel itself.
  Anti-Israel hate and hysteria have been allowed to fester freely in 
academia, social media, the political arena, and elsewhere. It has been 
propagated by Astroturf activists and academics, amplified by their 
enablers in elected office, and subsidized by government and civil 
society.
  When people are made to believe the most dangerous lies about 
Israel--that Israel is the root of all evil on earth; that it is a 
``75-year occupation'' that must be wiped off the map from the ``river 
to the sea''; that Israelis are not civilians but settlers who can be 
fairly targeted for ``resistance''; that Israelis are committing 
genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians and harvesting 
their organs and using the blood of their children; that Israel is 
always the aggressor and Hamas always the resister: when you tell so 
many lies and incite so much hate, what do you think will happen?
  How do you think the believers internalizing these lies will respond 
to the savage slaughter of Israelis? This is a moral monstrosity made 
in America, and one that America must unmake.
  The anti-Israel hate increasingly possessing the American mind is a 
demon that must be exorcised from our body politic. For America cannot 
long remain a decent society if the next generation of Americans are 
made to be indifferent to the barbaric butchering of Israeli civilians 
and children.
  I, for one, stand with Israel as it seeks to defend itself. Despite 
the profound pain of the present, Israel will emerge from it all better 
and stronger than ever before.
  It will outlive the pernicious lies and the dangerous demagogues who 
tell them. It will outlive the extremism of the DSA and BDS. It will 
outlive the terrorism of Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah.
  Israel will live on--for the next 75 years and beyond. Resilience is 
the DNA and destiny of the Jewish people and the Jewish State. It 
always has been and always will be. I am as certain of that as I am of 
anything. The Jewish Nation lives on (Am Yisrael Chai).

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