[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 99 (Tuesday, June 10, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3306-S3311]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Remembering Ralph Vigil
Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, in New Mexico, we practice querencia.
Querencia is a deep, even spiritual, connection to the land--a love of
place that demands that we care for what has been passed down to us and
protect it so we can pass it along to future generations.
Today, I stand on the Senate floor to pay tribute to a man who
literally embodied this idea. His name was Ralph Vigil. And Ralph grew
up along the Pecos River, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains, in Northern New Mexico.
With family roots extending hundreds of years, Ralph often called
himself ``a twelfth-generation Hispano in a state of Nuevomexicanos.''
He took pride in his Hispanic and indigenous heritage, and every aspect
of Ralph's life was really a testament to his commitment and connection
to our State and its people.
A parciante of his local acequia, Ralph often brought people in to
share acequia traditions, and this included Mark Allison, the executive
director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.
One year, Ralph and his family invited Mark for an annual acequia
spring cleaning. So all day, they shoveled and raked and cleared the
way for the water to be able to nourish the fields.
Once they were done, they went up and opened up the headgate. Ralph's
dad moved a few rocks, and Mark and Ralph stood and watched the water
come down to water the fields.
As mayordomo of the Acequia del Molino, Ralph determined the
allocation of water for each family like he did everything else, with
the resounding belief that in the acequia, as in life, everyone is
equal, bound together by water, by land, by tradition.
So Ralph carried these principles of equality and justice and
interconnectivity to literally everything he did. As chairman of the
New Mexico Acequia Commission for 19 years, Ralph fought to protect the
water and the needs of local communities.
In the words of Juan Sanchez, who worked alongside Ralph at the
commission, ``Ralph . . . helped communities who didn't really have a
voice, keep a voice.''
And when extensive mining proposals threatened the traditional way of
life along the Pecos River, Ralph stepped into action, helping to form
the Stop Terrero Mine Coalition.
This is where I really got to know Ralph, as we worked together to
craft and introduce legislation, the Pecos Watershed Protection Act--
legislation to defend our watersheds and designate over 11,000 acres of
national forestland as the Thompson Peak Wilderness Area.
At the Federal and State level, Ralph was a community leader in every
sense of the phrase, committed to protecting and nurturing the people
and places of New Mexico. He was also a farmer, a father, a
skateboarder, a mariachi, and a friend--one who let others know how
much they meant to him.
As described by one of his close friends and colleague he worked
with, Garrett VeneKlasen, ``Ralph was an old soul and a sage'' who
``radiated goodness and grace.''
His friend Robert Apodaca put it similarly:
Ralph . . . loved with his whole heart and soul. . . . [And
his] legacy lives on in every life he touched and every cause
he stood for.
Julie and I extend our heartfelt condolences to Ralph's family,
friends, colleagues, and community. And I know that we will all think
of Ralph every time we see the Pecos River.
May we all honor Ralph's memory by carrying on our own querencia for
the places and waters that have sustained our way of life, traditions,
and forged our communities.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. ROUNDS. I would ask unanimous consent to begin the rollcall vote
immediately.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Vote on Hughes Nomination
The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Hughes
nomination?
Mr. SCHATZ. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) and the Senator from North
Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.
Tillis) would have voted ``yea.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego),
the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff), the Senator from Rhode Island
(Mr. Reed), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily
absent.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 43, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 303 Ex.]
YEAS--51
Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Murkowski
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tuberville
Wicker
Young
NAYS--43
Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Padilla
Peters
Rosen
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--6
Budd
Gallego
Ossoff
Reed
Sanders
Tillis
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to
reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the
President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
The Senator from Oregon.
Gaza
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I have witnessed starvation up close.
Many years ago, I was visiting Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying in
Calcutta. The room had a series of cots,
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filled with men. There was a men's side and a women's side, and I was
on the men's side.
Many of the men, the priest told me, had come after they had reached
a point of malnutrition on the streets to which they had then
collapsed.
I was asked to tend to one young man, and his eyes were very bright,
and I asked the priest: It appears like he is really focused.
He said: No, no, no. This young man has been starving to death. His
body has started to damage its own organs, and there is no recovery.
All we can do is minister to his comfort.
That involved taking sections of grapefruit and wiping them across
his lips.
I also visited a refugee center in Juba, in South Sudan, where the
children's level of malnutrition was measured by an armband. It is one
way of getting a quick sense of how little food they have had. It is
called a mid-upper arm circumference. It is color coded, green to
yellow to red, so aid workers can quickly see the severity of the
malnutrition--the extent, if you will, of the impact of starvation.
And I visited refugee camps in Somalia and in Kenya and in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, where families were fleeing conflict
and, quite frankly, fleeing starvation.
Starvation is sometimes the result of the chaos of war, sometimes the
result of natural disasters, sometimes agricultural disasters. But what
we are seeing now in the Middle East is a different form of disaster.
It is a failure of political will to provide food. There is starvation
in Gaza today because the Netanyahu government, which controls the
amount of food flowing in, has chosen to use access to food as a weapon
of war.
I have come to the floor tonight to say that this is immoral, that
this use of food as a weapon of war is wrong under any structure of
religion or moral code. I have come to the floor to say that it
violates human rights and to say that it violates international law,
and that all of us should join together and call for our government--
the U.S. Government--to use every leverage of influence we have with
our close ally Israel to have the Netanyahu government end this
strategy.
Over the last few months, public attention has turned away from the
ongoing war in Gaza because there is so much else going on here in the
United States and so much else going on around the world. Our
newspapers and news feeds are full of stories about the Trump
administration, about new tariffs, new Executive orders, new events
across the country, and, also, quite frankly, about heartbreaking
events of anti-Semitic violence against our American Jewish community.
Before I turn to deliberate further on the horrific use of food as a
weapon of war, I want to really note the importance of never allowing
criticism of the practices of another government or, certainly,
criticism of the Government of Israel--the Netanyahu government--to
blur into discrimination or persecution of anyone based on their faith
identity.
I abhor discrimination, abhor persecution. I abhor anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitic acts, including assault and harassment and vandalism, have
increased dramatically here in the United States. Across the country,
in 2024 and on into 2025, the highest level has been recorded since the
Anti-Defamation League started tracking the data in 1979.
On the first night of Passover, an arsonist set fire to the
Pennsylvania Governor's mansion, while the Governor, Josh Shapiro, and
his family were asleep inside.
Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, who met working at the Israeli
Embassy, were murdered here in Washington, DC, outside the Jewish
Museum.
And 12 people marching in support of the release of the hostages
being held in Gaza were attacked and injured in Boulder, CO, just a
week ago Sunday.
I condemn these acts of anti-Semitism and violence. We must root out
prejudice and discrimination. We must root it out of our hearts. We
must root it out of the public acts. We must stand arm in arm with our
Jewish community members whenever they are threatened.
With that emphasis, let me be clear. As we stand arm in arm with our
fellow Jewish citizens who are threatened by assault and harassment and
vandalism and discrimination, we should also be standing arm in arm
together against the use of the denial of food as a weapon of war,
including by the Netanyahu government using that strategy in Gaza.
We need an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, and I hope and pray every
day that we will have such a cease-fire, and with that cease-fire will
come the swift and safe return of all the remaining hostages.
We also need an immediate massive influx of humanitarian aid,
including water and medicine and, certainly, food.
But under the relevant rules of international humanitarian law, the
provision of food can never be tied to some other act like a cease-
fire. Every nation has the responsibility in conflict to make sure they
are not denying food in kind of a mass punishment of the other side.
And, therefore, food should not be contingent upon the cease-fire. It
needs to be provided under moral code, under religious code, under
humanitarian law, under international law--cease-fire or no cease-fire.
I have spoken previously about my concerns for the indiscriminate
bombing that has killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian
civilians in Gaza, including women and children and the elderly. Those
individuals are victims, as well, of the Netanyahu government's use of
food as a weapon of war.
I oppose and condemn this strategy, and I oppose and condemn the
failure of the United States to use our resources and our influence to
strive in every way possible to persuade the Netanyahu government to
abandon the strategy of starvation.
Following the horrific attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel had every
right to go after Hamas. But how you do so does matter, and starving
the civilian population of Gaza is morally reprehensible. Yet that is
the strategy the Netanyahu government has employed, with only a
periodic exemption, since the start of the war.
Two days after the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, then-Israeli
Defense Minister Gallant laid out this strategy, saying:
I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There
will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is
closed.
From the start of the war through the first 15 months, until the
cease-fire of January 2025, the United Nations and international
humanitarian organizations have warned of the growing crisis over food
in Gaza.
Before the war began, an average of 500 trucks entered Gaza each day
to provide the basic food needed to feed 2.1 million people. That food
was supplemented by food that people in Gaza were growing.
When Senator Van Hollen and I visited the Rafah gate crossing, in
January of 2024, an average of only 150 trucks per day were getting
into Gaza to provide medicine, equipment, and food. While we were at
that gate, a doctor came out. He had just left through the Rafah gate
crossing, after treating patients for about--I believe he told me--3
weeks at the European hospital. So this was, essentially, 3 months into
the Gaza war.
He said: We are already seeing major changes in patients' ability to
recover because, he said, they are not getting enough nutrition. If you
don't have enough food, your body doesn't have the energy to recover
from a wound.
This was just months into that war.
For the following year, the number of trucks entering Gaza fell even
lower, to an average of 100 trucks a day, just a fraction of the amount
of food needed to provide civilians with sufficient nutrition. And the
ability to grow food in Gaza essentially evaporated under the
bombardment and the conditions of war.
Then there was a moment of hope that this atrocity was ending, the
discussion of the possibility of a lengthy cease-fire. But even as
those discussions progressed, the information was flowing about,
already, of the devastating effects of malnutrition. The Netanyahu
government's strategy of food depravation had inflicted massive
malnutrition and health problems on the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Malnutrition is devastating on the body. Malnutrition prevents the
body from recovering from bombing-induced injuries. Malnutrition
increases the
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risk of miscarriage. Malnutrition prevents mothers from being able to
breastfeed their babies because their milk dries up. Malnutrition
creates the possibility that babies will die because mothers who do not
have breast milk may not be able to get clean water or formula, both
being necessary for a baby to survive.
Adults, as well as babies and children, suffer from the collateral
effects of bodies weakened from malnutrition. And for those who do
survive, the long-term health injuries are vast. Children who endure
long-term hunger and malnutrition will have lifelong health damage,
including stunted growth and impaired cognitive development.
But then we had that break. Finally, after 15 months--January 2025--
the parties agreed to a cease-fire, including the return of 33 hostages
and a surge in humanitarian aid, including food. During that cease-
fire, 600 trucks a day on average entered Gaza with food and supplies.
This delivery showed that it is entirely possible to efficiently get
trucks into Gaza.
When Senator Van Hollen and I were at the Rafah gate in January of
the previous year, 2024, we witnessed a miles-long backup of trucks
parked along the road to Rafah gate. We kept hearing from the Israeli
Government: We just can't process these trucks and get them into Gaza.
And they blamed the international organizations for the challenge.
But it is clear: Once the Netanyahu government made a decision to get
the trucks in, they could get them in. We saw it during the cease-fire.
We knew it was possible all along. We knew it was an issue of political
decision making to keep those trucks out, to inflict this hunger, to
inflict this starvation on the population of Palestinians.
But that food that came in, those 600 trucks, for that limited time
period--a time period of 58 days--wasn't sufficient to make up for the
malnutrition of the previous 15 months. It didn't erase the ravages
that had been inflicted on the population. It certainly meant that
enough food was getting in for kind of a daily consumption at that
point, but it certainly wasn't long enough and didn't reverse the
impacts of those first 15 months.
And then, the interlude ended. On March 2, the cease-fire ended, and
the Netanyahu government resumed using food as a weapon of war,
blockading all humanitarian aid, including food and water and medicine,
from reaching civilians in Gaza.
The Netanyahu government's claims that not enough aid was delivered
during the cease-fire to compensate for the blockade to come simply was
false.
Repeated public reports from the United Nations, from credible news
sources, and from international humanitarian aid organizations all
raised the alarm, month after month, that widespread hunger,
malnutrition, and starvation had been growing as aid supplies ran out.
One way to determine if there is a shortage is to look at food
prices. When there is no shortage in food, prices are stable.
There is a tool that governments use and nongovernmental
organizations use called the Integrated Food Security Phase
Classification System--fancy words for a tool to evaluate prices and
how they reflect shortages. That tool provides reports from that, and
it reported that a 55-pound sack of flour, which sold for $17 in Gaza
in February 2025, in May 2025, after the blockade was reimposed, sold
for $520--not $17 but $520. Here at home in the United States,
restaurant all-purpose flour can be found on the internet for $18.69, a
50-pound sack, with free home delivery.
In other words, the shortage of food resulted in flour being about 27
times more expensive than it had been previously in Gaza a few months
before and about 27 times more expensive than what a pound of flour
costs here in the United States of America.
Those staggering prices tell you several things: first, that the
humanitarian feeding operations, after the blockade was reimposed, were
absolutely unable to meet the need for food. People who have their food
needs met don't pay that type of price--$520--for a sack of flour.
Second, it means that food was a luxury that only the affluent in Gaza
could afford, the few who had the ability to get funds from outside of
Gaza; and finally, that folks who did not have that money weren't going
to be able to buy flour to cook anything.
Then, on March 25, just 3 weeks into the blockade, the World Food
Programme reported that due to the Netanyahu government's blockade, all
25 of their bakeries had run out of flour and fuel.
So realize: March 2, the reimposition of the blockade, and within a
couple weeks, by March 25, the bakeries under the World Food Programme
had run out of flour and fuel.
According to the New York Times, those bakeries had produced ``enough
bread to supply about 70 percent of Gaza's population,'' but those
bakeries were shut down weeks after the blockade was reimposed.
The IPC also reports that Gaza's 177 hot-meal kitchens, run by
various aid organizations, exhausted their supplies at the beginning of
April, 1 month into the reimposition of the blockade. One of these aid
organizations was World Central Kitchen. World Central Kitchen is known
around the world for stepping into situations and helping out where
there are humanitarian disasters of all kinds and in this case, the
disaster of the restriction of food by the Netanyahu government.
World Central Kitchen's emergency meal services provide an estimated
400,000 to 500,000 meals per day, but on May 7, World Central Kitchen
announced:
After serving more than 130 million total meals and 26
million loaves of bread over the past 18 months, World
Central Kitchen no longer has the supplies to cook meals or
bake bread in Gaza.
Within weeks of the blockade being reestablished, the markets were
empty, the bakeries were shut down, and hot-meal kitchens were closed.
The effect on the people in Gaza, the Palestinians of Gaza, the 2.1
million Palestinians living there: devastating. Palestinian civilians
had been suffering from malnutrition from early on--as the doctor told
me, 3 months after the war had begun--and it just got worse and worse
over time with the deprivation of food.
UNICEF reports that the number of children suffering from acute
malnutrition increased 80 percent just from February of this year to
March of this year--80 percent increase. That is because children have
no food.
Parents have watched helplessly as they see clothes that once fit
their toddlers hang off their brittle bodies, their kids' bony ribcages
and shockingly thin limbs. Increased malnutrition means it is even
harder to recover from bombing-induced injuries, a higher risk of
miscarriages, a higher risk of mothers not being able to breastfeed
their babies. It means babies are weaker. It means adults are weaker,
children are weaker.
Often, it is not malnutrition--that is, starvation--that kills
someone; it is the weakened body dying from other diseases. And as
noted before, the impacts on the development of the brain and the
development of the body of the children can last a lifetime.
World Health Organization representative Rik Peeperkorn warned that
``without enough nutritious food, clean water and access to healthcare,
an entire generation will be permanently affected.''
I might add, the effects are not just those of malnutrition but also
the trauma of being under constant bombardment over the course of this
war, often without a home, often without electricity, often without
clean water, often without access to medicine, often watching your
family members die.
So these children--at a minimum, we should make sure they have food,
at a minimum--at a very minimum. We probably can't reverse many of the
traumatic effects that will affect their lives. Just like we know
trauma affects those who go to war, these are children and civilians
living through the effects of war.
The World Health Organization reports as of May 13 that almost 5
dozen children had starved to death in Gaza. If dozens of children have
died from starvation, how many thousands of children more are on the
verge of a devastating level of malnutrition and potential death from
starvation?
The headlines tell the escalating and devastating story to the world.
On March 2, the day the blockade began, the Washington Post headline
read:
Israel halts all aid to Gaza as ceasefire falters.
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On April 1, 1 month into the blockade, the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation said:
Fear of famine looms after all Gaza bakeries run out of
flour amid month-long Israeli blockade.
May 4, 2 months into the blockade, NBC News:
Starvation looms as Israel's total blockade on Gaza enters
its third month.
You start seeing the word ``starvation'' appear in story after story,
headline after headline.
If you or I could travel to Gaza right now, we would be absolutely
shocked to see the bodies of the adults and the bodies of the children,
but we can't travel there because it is closed to all of us. But
reports from credible news organizations have been alerting us to this
horrific disaster coming from using food as a weapon.
Starvation looms as . . . blockade enters its third month.
In mid-May, the New York Times had a headline:
In Private, Some Israeli Officers Admit That Gaza Is on the
Brink of Starvation.
So we have heard time and again from the Netanyahu government: Don't
believe international organizations--even though they are experts.
Don't believe because we are telling you there is no problem.
But even the Israelis are telling the world there is a problem, that
Gaza is on the brink of starvation.
Then, on May 16, President Trump, our President, ``acknowledges
starvation in Gaza as Israeli airstrikes kill more than 100.'' The
President said the United States will take care of the situation in
Gaza on the final day of the Gulf tour in Abu Dhabi.
Why don't we join together, Democrats and Republicans, and support
President Trump in having the United States take care of the situation,
address the starvation in Gaza? That is the moral thing to do. That is
the right thing to do under any religious code.
We have this incredibly close relationship with the Israeli
Government. We are their primary source of economic support. We have
close technological support. We have a close security relationship. We
share intelligence. We have many connections between members of our
government and our military and our intelligence community and theirs.
Why not support President Trump in using these connections to end the
starvation in Gaza?
You know, starvation happens many places in the world where we don't
have a close relationship with the government and it may seem very
distant, but here, we are complicit because we are so closely tied and
so supportive of the Israeli Government. So we have a special
responsibility to address this and use every leverage at our power to
end it.
Facing week after week of these horrifying headlines, world leaders
pressed Prime Minister Netanyahu to end this strategy and implement a
new plan. Only after, it was reported, ``Israel's closest friends,''
meaning U.S. leaders, warned the Israeli Government that it would lose
international support because allies could not handle pictures of mass
starvation did Prime Minister Netanyahu consider changing course.
On May 19--so now we are talking just about 3 weeks ago--after more
than 11 weeks of an all-out blockade, Prime Minister Netanyahu
announced that--and he used the word ``minimal''--a ``minimal'' amount
of food would be allowed into Gaza.
But that plan is hardly satisfactory. The new U.S.- and Israeli-
backed organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has taken
over aid distribution, working in partnership with the Israeli military
and private U.S. security contractors--they are distributing aid from
just four sites--one in central Gaza near the Netzarim Corridor and
three in southern Gaza in the Rafah area. Civilians have to get to one
of those four sites to obtain a box of food.
If you have visited Israel, you know that Gaza is about 40 miles long
from north to south. It is a thin wafer along the Mediterranean coast.
How do four sites, with three of them at the very southern end of that
40 miles, possibly get food to 2.1 million people? It needed hundreds
of kitchens before to get food distributed throughout the country.
So what you have is a formula that says millions of people are going
to descend on these four sites to acquire a box of food. The logistics
of that are impossible, and they are meant to be impossible. It is
deliberately designed not to work because there is no way that four
sites can handle handing out food to 2.1 million people. So it has
produced chaotic scenes, with desperate crowds--crowds of men, women,
and children--rushing toward boxes of aid to try to get one of those
boxes and then warning shots being fired--and not just warning shots,
shots that killed Palestinians. Warning shots don't kill people.
On Sunday, June 1, ABC News reported that 31 people were killed and
200 injured when the Israeli troops opened fire.
On Tuesday June 3, the BBC reported 27 civilians were killed by
military gunfire for ``deviating from the designated access routes''
while desperately trying to collect food.
On Wednesday, June 4, less than a week ago, the BBC called Gaza
``worse than hell on Earth,'' as the Israeli military closed its aid
distribution sites for the day, warning that roads leading to the sites
are ``combat zones.''
How do 2.1 million people get to the aid sites if the roads leading
to the sites are combat zones and if each time the food distributions
are open, people end up dying because they are shot?
On Sunday, June 8, the New York Times reports that about a half mile
from a distribution site, shots were fired and ``five people were
killed and 123 were wounded.''
Yesterday, morning--here we are on Tuesday--Monday, yesterday, June
9, the Associated Press reports ``14 people were killed'' on their way
to a food distribution center.
This is not a plan designed to address the hunger, to end the
malnutrition, to end the starvation. This is a plan to make it
virtually impossible for the Palestinians to get food while telling the
world: Don't worry, we have a distribution plan.
Everyone understands this is not a plan designed to provide food. It
is a plan designed to make sure that very little food gets just to a
small number of people so that the starvation continues and gets worse,
the malnutrition continues and gets worse, the impact on the ravaged
bodies of children and babies and women and seniors and all kinds of
folks who had nothing ever to do with Hamas continue to decline.
The New York Times interviewed many Gazans who said they go to the
distribution sites when they are closed despite the warnings of the
Israeli military because they ``are desperate for food . . . and
seeking to get ahead of large crowds.''
If there is only a few boxes and the site is only open for a few
minutes, you are willing to wait all night because your family is
starving. You want your kids to survive. You want your spouse to
survive. You want to survive yourself. Of course, you are going to try
to beat the crowd there, but you know it is impossible the food will be
sufficient for everyone to walk away with a box of food.
Yesterday, June 9, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation announced the
opening of an aid distribution center in a post on its Facebook page,
only to post again the center had completed distributions less than 20
minutes later and closed.
It was open for 20 minutes. Of course, you are going to try to beat
the crowds. It is only going to be open for a few minutes. There is
only going to be a modest number of boxes--nothing that could possibly
serve thousands of people, let alone hundreds of thousands, let alone
2.1 million people. Of course, you are going to try to go early.
And the foundation closed a second center ``because of the chaos of
the surrounding crowds.''
Whenever you have starvation, you are going to have chaos around food
distribution centers.
Early in this conflict, when I went to Rafah gate in January of 2024,
the International Aid Organization said we are pushing to make the
point that if there isn't sufficient food, eventually, the trucks
carrying food will be raided because people will be desperate. That
always happens when people are desperate--not as a particular condition
of the situation in Gaza, but wherever people are starving, they are
going to raid the trucks to get food.
They won't wait for a warehouse that has very little food in it to
open up in
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an orderly fashion because there isn't enough food for everyone, so
they are going to make that effort to get that food for their families.
So this chaos--this was understood that this would be this way. It is
not something that is, if you will, incidental to the plan. It is the
plan--not enough food, not enough distribution centers, not open long
enough--deliberate effort to make hundreds of thousands of people
compete with each other for a few boxes. That is chaos.
Aid groups say the Netanyahu government system will be ineffective in
reversing the widespread hunger because not nearly enough food is being
allowed in. The United Nations has called the food that is being let in
``a drop in the ocean.''
Food is being distributed far from where it is needed most,
especially for the elderly and people with disabilities.
How are they going to travel? It is a 40-mile-long strip of land. How
are they going to travel if they are disabled, if you are elderly, to
compete with hundreds of thousands of people trying to get to just four
distributions centers? It is impossible.
Dangerous and deadly chaos at food distribution sites is being fueled
not through some clever plan by Hamas, but by the deprivation of
starving civilians who hope to keep their families and their children
alive. And that desperation is the direct and inevitable result of
Netanyahu government's strategy of deliberately imposed starvation.
Even if civilians could make that dangerous journey safely, the
amount of aid in this new system is wholly insufficient. During the
cease-fire in the winter, 600 trucks a day entered Gaza. Only a few
hundred trucks have been allowed into Gaza over the last week, and the
World Food Programme reports only one-third of their trucks reached
their destination.
A handful of World Food Programme bakeries actually did resume bread
production on May 22, but the supplies were so limited that World Food
Programme Country Director Antoine Renard warned:
This is just a drop in the bucket of what is needed to
reverse the catastrophic levels of hunger.
We are in a race against time to prevent widespread
starvation.
The World Food Programme reports that:
Over 140,000 metric tons of food--enough to feed the entire
population for two months--is pre-positioned at aid corridors
and ready to be brought into Gaza at scale.
Just as I saw in January of 2024--trucks piled up for miles waiting
to try to get in. Here we have a World Food Programme reporting that
now, again, food is ready to move in, but the Netanyahu government is
blocking them.
On June 8, 2 days ago, Janti Soeripto, the CEO of Save the Children
told Face the Nation:
When we had the pause in fighting from January `til March,
as you will recall, we got trucks and trucks of supplies in
at scale, [and] we were able to deliver, [and] we treated
children with malnutrition, [and] we did vaccinations, [and]
we did medical care, [and] hospitals were operating . . .
So this current new mechanism doesn't seem to work. The
failings seem to play out exactly the way that we warned
against. It is also the militarization of aid--
I am continuing this long quote--
It is the militarization of aid--if you put men with guns
near a distribution point and you ask a desperate, desperate,
starving population to come and walk for miles to get boxes
of food . . . you're going to create crowd control issues and
increased risk of harm to an already incredibly desperate
population.
That is the end of the quote. And that is exactly what we are seeing
happen.
As CNN reported yesterday, June 9:
Aid to Gaza hangs by a thread amid looting and starvation.
Let's be clear: That trickle of aid is not about Prime Minister
Netanyahu ending food deprivation as a weapon of war. It is continuing
food deprivation as a weapon of war while deflecting just enough
international pressure to keep himself in power.
Jonathan Whittall, lead of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories, said May 28:
The newly developed distribution scheme is more than just
the control of aid. It is engineered scarcity. The new
distribution model cannot possibly meet Gaza's needs.
The same day, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority's
representative to United Nations, told the Security Council:
Children are dying of starvation. The images of mothers
embracing their motionless bodies, caressing their hair,
talking to them, apologizing to them--it's unbearable.
And on May 30, the New York Times reporting led with the headline:
In Emaciated Children, Gaza's Hunger Is Laid Bare.
Every moral and religious code says this is wrong--wrong to withhold
food, wrong to induce starvation. And under international law, it is a
crime.
Rule 53 of Customary Humanitarian Law states:
The use of starvation of the civilian population as a
method of warfare is prohibited.
It isn't prohibited because it was some bureaucratic decision. It is
prohibited because it is completely wrong under every religious and
moral code--people who had no role--no role--being punished
collectively; being punished the way that kills children, kills babies,
kills adults.
Other countries are speaking out in opposition to Netanyahu's
government's use of food as a weapon.
On May 19, the Governments of the United Kingdom and France and
Canada issued a joint statement saying that the amount of food the
Netanyahu government is allowing into Gaza is ``wholly inadequate.''
Even Israel's leaders from across the political spectrum are speaking
out that this is wrong.
Amit Halevi, from Prime Minister Netanyahu's Likud party, said:
This war is a deception [and it] is not succeeding in
destroying Hamas.
Yair Golan, the leader of Israel's Democrats party, said in a radio
interview:
Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South
Africa was, if we don't return to acting like a sane country.
A sane country [that] does not fight against civilians.
Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote in the newspaper
on May 27:
What we are doing in Gaza now is . . . indiscriminate,
limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.
He continued.
. . . Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.
Mr. President and colleagues, this use of food as a weapon of war
should never have happened, and it has to end. We know that the United
States has such a close relationship with Israel that we can apply
multiple levels to push the Netanyahu government to end it.
We have a moral responsibility that is heightened by our close
relationship between our two nations. We should have acted long ago to
end this strategy--the strategy of malnutrition and starvation. But
that provides no excuse for not acting now.
I pressed the Biden administration to act, and I will press the Trump
administration to act.
There was that moment of hope in December when Trump said we will
address this situation. Colleagues, I have witnessed the horror of
starvation in multiple countries around the world.
I believe that if the Netanyahu government would let us as Senators
go and witness firsthand, a bipartisan delegation going to Gaza, we
would come back and speak from the depths of our hearts, the ferocity
of our understanding of right and wrong, that we have to press for this
strategy of starvation to end. But we are not allowed in, so we have to
depend on the press reports that have come from international
organizations who have people on the ground in Gaza, from news
reporting, from competent international sources.
We have a profound responsibility to pressure the Netanyahu
government to end its strategy of starvation through food deprivation
and deliver a massive influx of aid immediately.
It is tempting to look away. There is a lot more going on in the
world. But it is wrong to look away. We must carry that responsibility
on our consciousness. We must speak and act forcefully to end the
Netanyahu government's strategy of deliberately starving 2 million men,
women, and children in Gaza.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
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