[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 20, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S2451]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Israel

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, more than 5 months after the butchery 
of October 7, Israelis are overwhelmingly united behind their 
government's unity war Cabinet in support of ongoing military 
operations against Hamas. By contrast, some prominent American 
Democrats are increasingly vocal in their belief that Israel's unity 
government and Israeli voters are wrong.
  That is, after all, what we are talking about here. As much as some 
of our colleagues might like them to be, Democrats' egregious and 
hypocritical attempts to influence Israeli domestic politics aren't 
some simple or narrow critique of a particular Prime Minister; they are 
an affront to the very independence of the State of Israel--a sovereign 
nation, a robust democracy, and one of America's closest allies and 
friends; not a colony, not a vassal state, not some appendage of our 
own domestic politics.
  As I said last week, our Democratic colleagues don't have an anti-
Bibi problem; they have an anti-Israel problem. What else are we 
supposed to make of the way Democrats have fallen in line behind the 
position the Democratic leader expressed here on the floor last week? 
It is absurd enough for American Senators to masquerade as duly-elected 
members of the Knesset, as if their views should have any bearing on 
how Israel conducts its domestic politics. But unfortunately it now 
seems important to remind our President that he is America's Commander 
in Chief, not some supreme allied commander with authority over 
Israel's war operations.
  I was worried to see the U.S. intelligence community opine publicly 
last week on the stability of the Israeli Government. It seems to me we 
should ask our intelligence professionals to keep their assessments of 
our closest partners a bit closer to their chest.
  Think about just how embarrassing our colleagues would find this 
behavior if it was directed toward any other democratic U.S. ally. 
Think about how we might be received if the DNI or the CIA Director 
publicly commented on political tensions within Germany's coalition 
government or on the decision-making processes of President Macron or 
on the declining public support for the Trudeau government in Canada.
  America is best served when our intelligence professionals refrain 
from public comments on politics--both our own and our allies.
  The war thrust upon Israel by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad has 
already brought a host of profoundly embarrassing revelations to light.
  It has exposed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency as 
irredeemably corrupt and appallingly complicit in both the violent 
kidnapping of Israelis and the indoctrination of Palestinians in a 
culture of hate, violence, and terror.
  It has exposed the rank anti-Semitism that America's most elite 
universities have allowed to fester on their campuses and some of these 
institutions' weakening grasp on moral resolve.
  Now it is exposing Democrats as unwilling or incapable of resisting 
the political pressures of their radical base. Just look how our 
colleagues have staked out bizarrely vocal support for policies for 
which even the Israeli left has said it has no time.
  So membership in the U.S. Senate does not come with voting rights in 
the Knesset or the Bundestag. It certainly doesn't entitle colleagues 
who spent years decrying foreign interference in American politics to 
decide one day to flip the script on our allies.

  Let's get one thing straight: This violence and this humanitarian 
crisis rest entirely on the shoulders of Hamas. This entire conflict 
would end if the cowardly terrorists who rule Gaza from beneath schools 
and hospitals released their innocent hostages.
  And the people they oppress every day--the people of Gaza--have a say 
in the matter. They can turn on Hamas, turn in terrorist leaders like 
Yahya Sinwar, and turn over the hostages whose seizure by Palestinian 
terrorists started this conflict in the first place. Until then, the 
Israeli government ought to do what the overwhelming majority of 
Israelis expect of it: bring the innocents home; bring the terrorists 
to justice; and bring peace and security to its citizens.
  And, I might add, pay the peanut gallery no mind.