[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 89 (Wednesday, May 22, 2024)]
[House]
[Page H3412]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            PROTESTS AT UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT MILWAUKEE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I would like to comment on a controversy 
affecting the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee this past week.
  Wisconsin at Milwaukee, like many universities in America, has been 
the site of bizarre protests in favor of Hamas. Milwaukee is the second 
largest university in the State of Wisconsin. While the response to 
these protests by universities around the country can best be described 
as pathetic, Milwaukee is one of the worst.
  Israel has suffered an attack almost unprecedented in its brutality 
in which Hamas and its supporters reveled in the horrific deaths of 
civilians, including young children. Israel's response can best be 
described as very measured, particularly given that Hamas has decided 
to hide among hospitals and other civilian locations.
  Certainly, Israel's response was more measured than our response 
during World War II when you look at what was done to Tokyo and 
Dresden, so by comparison, there is no comparison.
  Hamas could end this war tomorrow if they would surrender, show 
Israel its tunnels and its arms, and surrender the hostages. They are 
entirely responsible for allowing this war to go on.
  The university's statement to the protesters appears to blame Israel. 
Even before the October attacks, it should have been obvious who wears 
the white hats here.
  Israel is a modern, prosperous, and tolerant country in which even 
Muslims can build mosques and are allowed to vote. In Gaza, from 
childhood on, children are raised to hate Jews. People from Thailand, 
the Philippines, and Latin America--non-Jewish people--flow to Israel 
to live and work there.
  Hamas' leadership, meanwhile, takes their foreign aid from Europe and 
lives in Qatar and Turkiye. The descendants of Yasser Arafat himself 
don't want to live in Gaza. They live in Paris.
  Even with this, UWM feels they should side with Hamas. The university 
has tried recently to amend their position, but they still display a 
moral equivalence in which they can't bring themselves to say there is 
a right and a wrong, a good and an evil, in this conflict. Their bias 
shows further in that their first impulse was to meet only with 
representatives of the protesters and not with the broader community, 
this despite the fact that public opinion polls consistently show the 
American public as a whole, including presumably the taxpayers who fund 
the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, have no problem figuring out 
who is good and who is evil.
  The university should apologize for developing their own foreign 
policy and spend some time with the broader community to learn what the 
vast majority of Americans and Wisconsinites think.

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