[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 132 (Thursday, July 31, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4966-S4968]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Gaza

  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, well, here we go again. Hamas is on the 
verge of defeat, so it has cranked up the propaganda machine once 
again. Now Hamas wants the world to believe that Israel has undertaken 
a campaign of deliberate starvation of the Gazan population, and as 
usual, Hamas can count on an international media and political chorus 
to fight their battles for them and try to bully Israel into 
submission. So I would like to set the record straight.
  First, let me observe that no decent person wants to see innocent 
children caught in the crosshairs of war and suffering and hunger and 
malnutrition. Israel agrees, of course. That is why, since Hamas 
started this war with its brutal atrocities, Israel has helped bring 
into Gaza approximately 96,000 trucks containing nearly 1.5 million 
tons of food, 46,000 tons of medical supplies, 60,000 tons of water, 
and around 170,000 tons of shelter equipment.
  Put simply, children in Gaza aren't going hungry because of lack of 
supplies from Israel; they are suffering because Hamas uses food and 
humanitarian aid as a weapon to stay in power.

[[Page S4967]]

  Now, you may see these easels next to me and believe I am about to 
show you heart-wrenching images of malnourished kids. That is what some 
more gullible Senators have done lately--and I am afraid to say, 
gullible might be a charitable way to describe their motives--much like 
the New York Times buying hook, line, and sinker the images of Gazan 
children afflicted with terrible diseases but passed off as 
malnourished.
  But, no, I have other images to show; namely, the immense volume of 
food that is being ruthlessly withheld from the children of Gaza. 
Pallets and pallets of United Nations aid are just waiting to be 
distributed to the children of Gaza. Some of these contain canned goods 
such as chickpeas, white beans, green peas, and carrots. But these 
supplies, at this very moment, are sitting and baking in the hot sun 
instead of feeding hungry kids.
  While the situation is shocking, it is not at all surprising. After 
all, Hamas's infiltration of U.N. aid mechanisms is well-documented. 
Time and again, we have seen Hamas terrorists divert aid shipments to 
themselves or loot delivery trucks, only to resell the supplies on the 
black market at outrageous prices.
  Last year, this terrorist-infiltrated aid system managed by the U.N. 
and others allowed Hamas to rake in more than half a billion dollars in 
profit--profits that fund Hamas's campaign of terror against Israel and 
its own people.
  How critical is this systematic theft to Hamas's grip on power? Well, 
one of Hamas's chief demands in recent cease-fire negotiations has been 
the dismantling of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new charity 
created specifically to end Hamas's stranglehold on aid and supplies. 
The foundation has even offered to distribute U.N. aid for free, 
despite the risk to its own people. And much of this aid, which is 
sitting in the sun and partly taxpayer funded, is already inside Gaza; 
it simply needs to be picked up and distributed.
  But the offer has fallen on deaf ears because Hamas uses humanitarian 
aid as a tool to fund, facilitate, and fight its war against innocent 
children, against Israel, against the civilized world. And Hamas's 
cheerleaders, apologists, and dupes in Europe, in America, and, sadly, 
here in the U.S. Senate once again turn a blind eye to Hamas's crimes, 
blaming, instead, Israel and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
  They demand that Israel agree to a cease-fire that preserves and 
rewards Hamas while also delivering even more humanitarian aid to Gaza 
for Hamas to steal and exploit. They expect Israel to feed the very 
people who attacked, raped, and murdered innocent Israeli men, women, 
and children on October 7 and--I would remind everyone--not a few 
American victims as well.
  Once again, Israel is facing demands placed on no other nation in the 
world. I don't recall from my history lessons, for instance, the United 
States providing humanitarian aid to Germany and Japan in World War II. 
On the contrary, the Allies imposed naval blockades that led to 
widespread shortages in those enemy nations.
  When, in the annals of history, has the victim of an unprovoked war 
of aggression ever been held responsible for the nutrition of the 
aggressor? Put simply, Israel doesn't have any responsibility to send a 
single loaf of bread to Gaza.
  I wonder why so many Senators, pundits, podcasters, and European 
politicians impose this unique standard on the Jewish nation. Why could 
it be? But despite all that, despite the brutal slaughter of nearly 
1,200 Israelis on October 7, despite Hamas's continued repression of 
its own people, Israel is still delivering aid to Gaza while Hamas rips 
it from the hands of hungry children.
  Once again we see very simply and very clearly in this war who is on 
the side of justice and who is on the side of evil. And I would ask 
anyone who places these singular demands on Israel: Whose side do you 
want to be on? And if you truly care about the children of Gaza, as I 
do, as Israelis do, as any decent person surely does, I would encourage 
you to support President Trump's statement of moral clarity and 
strength from earlier this morning:

       The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is 
     for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES.

  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I rise today in the wake of the ongoing 
humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before our eyes in Gaza. As we say 
in my church's preaching tradition, ``Let me make it plain!''
  It is wrong to starve children to death. It is wrong to starve people 
to death.
  Yet, in this moment, we are witnessing a famine unfold among children 
and innocent men and women in Gaza, the world's largest open-air 
prison, a pit of human misery.
  Reports estimate 18,500 Palestinian children have been killed in the 
conflict. Over 20,000 children were treated for acute malnutrition 
between April and mid-July of this year, and at least 3,000 children 
were severely malnourished.
  In Gaza today, starvation is being weaponized. Famine isn't a 
forecast but a fact, despite the denials of the Netanyahu government.
  So I rise today not only as a Senator but as a pastor, as a pastor of 
a church where Martin Luther King, Jr., served who told us that ``we 
are tied in a single garment of destiny caught up in an inescapable 
network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all 
indirectly.''
  I rise today as a father to say there is devastating starvation going 
on right now, and all of us--the State of Israel, the United States, 
and the world--cannot turn our eyes away. We must get to these people 
the food, the medicine, the dignity that their humanity requires.
  The images of mass starvation are sickening. Children with no family, 
bare feet, empty bellies, hollow eyes who are seeking aid only to be 
trampled to death by other desperate people. And in their most 
desperate moments, some have been met not with mercy or medicine but 
with malice. Young people seeking bread have been met with bullets.
  Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must stop using indiscriminate 
bombing and forced starvation and instead focus on lasting, moral peace 
that secures the return of the remaining hostages while respecting the 
dignity of Palestinian families and children who want the same peace as 
our Israeli brothers and sisters. All of us are children of the living 
God. In the eyes of suffering children, we see a glimpse of God's face.
  After an international outcry and public shaming, it was a welcomed 
announcement that Prime Minister Netanyahu would allow more aid into 
Gaza and enact military pauses to allow food to reach people, but what 
has been delivered so far is just a drop in the bucket of what this 
moment required.
  The people of Gaza deserve the same access to food and medicine we 
want--any one of us would want--for our own children.
  Now, there is no question that peace in the Middle East is a tough 
issue. If it were easy, it would have been resolved by now. And we 
cannot forget about what happened on October 7, and we must continue to 
call on Hamas to free the hostages. These folks deserve to go home. 
They deserve to be home with their families.
  So we call on Hamas to release the hostages. And as I have said time 
and time again, including in the wake of October 7, Israel has a right 
to defend itself.
  But what is happening now? Children are being wounded. Many of them 
have been orphaned. Pregnant and nursing mothers are having to navigate 
a war zone while nourishing their children. And beyond the obvious 
moral atrocity, the question is, How has this continuing bombing and 
mass starvation made our friend Israel safer? How has this made Israel 
safer? And at what cost?
  I urge President Trump, who has said that there is ``real 
starvation'' in Gaza,

[[Page S4968]]

to leverage American leadership to bring an end to this human 
suffering. Human lives are at stake, and America's moral credibility is 
on the line.
  Inflicting human misery for its own sake is not a strategy. Starving 
the people of Gaza has not released any hostages or gotten us any 
closer to a cease-fire. The current trajectory is unsustainable.
  I do not believe that the answer to death and destruction is more 
death and destruction. There is this phrase in Gaza. It is an acronym. 
WCNSF: Wounded child, no surviving family. I can't think of a worse way 
to begin your life than to be a child or a baby wounded with no family. 
This phrase takes on new meaning as we are hearing stories out of Gaza 
of parents starving to death to give what little food they have to keep 
their children alive.
  So here is what I believe. I believe in the humanity of all of God's 
children, and that is why I pressed the previous administration and the 
Netanyahu administration to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza. I 
voted to give $10 billion in humanitarian aid to Gaza and other 
humanitarian crises. And just this month, I joined more than 40 of my 
colleagues calling for the large-scale expansion of humanitarian aid, 
and I urged the Trump administration to resume diplomatic efforts to 
end this war.
  I also called on the administration to end the U.S. support and 
financing for the shady, private organization that has been connected 
to deadly violence against starving people seeking food in Gaza.
  We must instead resume support for the existing U.N.-led aid efforts 
with enhanced oversight to ensure that help reaches those in need. My 
North Star in this whole conflict is a world that embraces the children 
on both sides of this conflict because here is the thing that even 
mortal enemies have in common: All of us want our children to be OK. We 
all want our children to be safe.
  And I said this on the floor of the Senate when I called for the 
cease-fire at a time when folks felt like you couldn't even say the 
word. This pressure has prompted temporary pauses in violence and some 
aid, but it is clear that these piecemeal steps are failing.
  America is Israel's friend. However, being a friend to Israel does 
not mean being complicit in its government's immoral actions unfolding 
even as I speak. Israel's strength is rooted in its allies, but 
allyship--true allyship--involves accountability.
  Here is when I know I have got a good friend; good friends tell you 
the truth. We must tell Netanyahu he must change course. The Israeli 
Government's current path is hurting the country's global standing and 
support in the world.
  So in the end, this growing humanitarian crisis is not good for 
Israel. Good friends tell you the truth, and that is why, yesterday, I 
voted in favor of the joint resolutions of disapproval.
  I have been thinking of the words of my mentor, my hero, who happened 
to also be my parishioner, the late, great John Lewis. John Lewis said 
that when you see something is not right, not fair, not just, you have 
to speak up. So I am speaking up. I am speaking with my lips and my 
legs because the acid test of your faith is your commitment to the most 
marginalized members of the human family. We must work toward saving 
lives and centering our common humanity, returning the hostages home to 
their families, and securing peace and safety for all those in the 
region.
  Last year, I had the honor of meeting with the late pontiff, Pope 
Francis, at the Vatican. And I was struck by something the Pope said to 
me. He said to me that there was a small parish in Gaza that he called 
practically every night just to check on them, just to pray for them--
leader of Catholics all over the world. He called that little parish to 
pray with them.
  Well, the other day, that church was bombed. As it turns out, there 
was no sanctuary for them even in the sanctuary. So tonight, I am going 
to say a special prayer not only for the people of that parish but for 
the people all around me. I am going to pray for peace, but we don't 
just pray with our lips, we have to pray with our legs.
  We have to work for the world that we dream of for our children. 
History may not remember the debates that we had in these Chambers, but 
it will remember whether we acted when children were starving and 
hostages were languishing.
  Silence is complicity. Inaction in the face of famine is a choice. So 
let us choose life, dignity, and a peace worthy of the ideals we claim 
to pursue.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.