[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 180 (Wednesday, November 1, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H5185-H5186]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
California (Mr. Sherman) for 5 minutes.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, the scenes from Gaza are horrendous, and
people want the fighting to end. Some call for a cease-fire. Hamas
needs to hear those calls and agree to free the hostages and turn over
its rockets, and then we can have that cease-fire.
There was a cease-fire on October 6. Hamas broke it and killed 1,400
Israelis.
What would happen if we had a cease-fire leaving the rockets and arms
in Hamas' hands?
Today, Ghazi Hamad, a high-ranking Hamas official, said exactly what
would happen. He said: We will repeat October 7 one, two, three, four,
five times, as many times as it takes, until Israel is annihilated.
We need a true cease-fire, and we can achieve it only if Hamas is
disarmed.
I have been a pro-Israel activist for 60 years and a member of the
Foreign Affairs Committee for nearly 30. Israel has one friend in the
world. Hamas knows that. America is divided and partisan. Hamas knows
that. The terrible scenes in Gaza show that Hamas is willing to die for
one thing, and that is to put those scenes on American television to
undercut support for Israel to make sure that that support is not
bipartisan.
Last week, we showed bipartisan support, with 97 percent of the
Democrats and 99 percent of the Republicans voting for a strong
resolution. Unfortunately, our Speaker has decided to undercut that
and, in doing so, help Hamas achieve its most important geopolitical
objective.
For 60 years, when an Israel resolution comes to this floor, it
passes overwhelmingly with support on both sides of the aisle.
Tomorrow, that changes because the Speaker is bringing a nakedly
partisan version of the support for Israel bill to this floor.
Mr. Speaker, you have only been in office for a week and already you
are achieving Hamas' geopolitical objectives. Why? Supposedly, to pay
for the cost of aiding Israel, they are going to slash the IRS budget.
CBO today just indicated that that will cost us over $26 billion in
revenue and will increase the cost of aiding Israel.
I am here to say, as the co-chair of the Bipartisan CPA Caucus, as
someone who has taught tax law at Harvard Law School, and as someone
who headed the second largest tax agency in this country, that that CBO
number is way too low. The long-term effects will be devastating on our
ability to collect taxes.
We need a bipartisan bill before this floor, not a bill that
supposedly is going to help Israel but actually is designed to hurt
Israel, help Hamas, and die in the Senate.
Now, the numbers coming from Gaza about casualties are something that
a CPA should look at. We know what happened at Al Ahli Arab hospital.
They dramatically overstated the casualties. Then, America said, with a
high degree of confidence from our intel community, that that was a
rocket fired by Hamas or Islamic jihad that failed to reach its target
and instead fell on a Palestinian hospital.
Even if you accept Hamas' statistics, our press goes further and
exaggerates their number.
First, Hamas will tell you that they include in their statistics dead
Palestinian combatants, and so our press reports the number as if that
somehow is Israel's fault.
Hamas will tell you that they include in those statistics those who
die from the one-third of Hamas rockets that crash into Gaza, yet our
press will report that statistic as if that is a number Israel is
responsible for.
As to those who die from Israeli ordnance, keep in mind that is
because of Hamas' use of human shields. They were in Israel and could
have stood and fought the Israeli Defense Forces. Instead, they quickly
retreated behind their human shields.
Finally, those who say that we have more deaths in Gaza than in other
terrible events happening in the world, this is clearly false. We have
had over 600,000 deaths in Ethiopia. The press didn't report it, but it
still matters.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an open letter dated November 1,
2023, from the Association of University Heads, Israel, to accompany my
speech on the floor today.
Dear Colleagues:
We, the leaders of Israeli universities and research
institutions, write to express deep concern over the
discourse emanating from academia following the devastating
Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the inadequate
response, in many cases, by academic leadership.
On that darkest of days, in a tragedy unprecedented in
Israel's 75-year history, the Hamas terrorists infiltrated
into the country and murdered more than 1,400 people,
including infants, children, students, and senior citizens--
Jewish, Muslim, and Christian alike. The attack also included
the abduction of 240 civilians of all ages into Gaza;
additional missing persons have not yet been identified and
accounted for. In the aftermath of these horrific events, we
find it disturbing that certain narratives from academic
institutions misrepresent the situation, or, in the worst
cases, actively target Israelis and Jews.
[[Page H5186]]
We find ourselves facing a war on two fronts: one against
the atrocities of Hamas, and another in the global arena of
public opinion. Regrettably, we have noticed an alarming
trend in which Israel, despite its right to self-defense, is
mischaracterized as an oppressor. This is a false equivalence
between the actions of a murderous terrorist organization and
a sovereign state's right to defend its citizens, which
unfortunately results in the loss of innocent Palestinian
lives. Any attempt to justify or equivocate Hamas's brutal
and grotesque actions is intellectually and morally
indefensible.
It's unsettling to note that many college campuses have
become breeding grounds for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic
sentiments, largely fueled by a naive and biased
understanding of the conflict. It is ironic that the very
halls of enlightenment in America and Europe, ostensibly the
bastions of intellectual and progressive thought that are
your campuses, have adopted Hamas as the cause celebre while
Israel is demonized. Universities, as hubs of enlightenment
and rational discourse, must take responsibility for the
views they perpetuate.
There is no moral equivalency here. Let's be clear: Hamas
shares no values with any Western academic institution. Hamas
is an organization that has repeatedly pledged to annihilate
Israel and its people.
Its ideology is antithetical to the values of human life
and the liberal values we hold dear. Hamas funnels
international aid into armament rather than to the welfare of
its citizens. While Israel uses its weapons to shield its
citizens, Hamas uses its citizens as shields for its
weapons--which it hides in hospitals, schools, and mosques.
It is crucial to distinguish between Hamas' terrorist
objectives and the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian
people for statehood. The conflation of the two only serves
to fuel hatred and ignorance.
Academic institutions stand as lighthouses in the
intellectual landscape, and we ask you to illuminate them.
Your roles as leaders of these institutions confer upon you
an extraordinary responsibility: to guide the moral and
ethical development of your students, to imbue them with the
ability to think critically and to discern the nuances that
separate right from wrong. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone
of academic freedom, but it should not be manipulated to
legitimize hate speech or to justify violence.
We urge you to delineate the boundaries between
constructive discourse and destructive propaganda, and
promote evidence-based, nuanced thinking that challenges
simplistic narratives. Expose the falsity of justifications
for acts of terror; expose and condemn disingenuous
statements; and reject hypocritical voices that justify
murder, rape, and destruction in the name of ``resistance''.
Moreover, we expect that Israeli and Jewish students and
faculty on university and college campuses will be accorded
the same respect and protections as any other minority. The
principles of inclusivity and campus safety must
unequivocally extend to include Israeli and Jewish members of
your academic communities. Just as it would be unthinkable
for an academic institution to extend free speech protections
to groups targeting other protected classes, so too should
demonstrations that call for our destruction and glorify
violence against Jews be explicitly prohibited and condemned.
What the world witnessed on October 7 were not methods to
help disadvantaged peoples build better futures for
themselves. The events of this terrible day should be taken
as a wake-up call to all of the dangers of nihilistic
organizations like Hamas and ISIS that represent the very
opposite of freedom and liberty.
As leaders of Israeli universities, we have been heartened
by clear statements of solidary and support for Israel, which
are, at their heart, statements in solidary with humanity,
enlightenment, and progress. At the same time, we are calling
for a sea change in clarity and truth in academia on the
matter of Israel's war against Hamas, so that light will
triumph over dark, now and always.
Signed,
Prof. Arie Zaban, President of Bar-Ilan University,
Chairperson of Association of University Heads--VERA;
Prof. Daniel A. Chamovitz, President of Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev;
Prof. Alon Chen, President of Weizmann Institute of
Science;
Prof. Asher Cohen, President of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem;
Prof. Leo Corry, President of the Open University of
Israel;
Prof. Ehud Grossman, President of Ariel University;
Prof. Ariel Porat, President of Tel-Aviv University;
Prof. Ron Robin, President of University of Haifa;
Prof. Uri Sivan, President of the Technion-Israel Institute
of Technology.
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