[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 10293-10294]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      INJUSTICE AT HOME AND ABROAD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been a tough week, for all 
Christians in the country have lost three brothers and six sisters in 
the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South 
Carolina. The whole country mourns--well, probably not everybody. Evil 
has those who support it and wallow in it, as did the evil perpetrator 
of the killings.
  Our prayers continue to go out to the immediate family members and to 
the church family members for their peace and for their comfort because 
those of us who are believers know that those we have lost are at the 
foot of the Saviour in Paradise.
  I learned today that the President will be going to speak at the 
funeral. I recall a speech in Arizona, and so as I encouraged our 
prayer caucus tonight, we should be praying for the President to be a 
uniter as he speaks.
  I thought about the way a great President named Abraham Lincoln 
concluded his second inaugural address. The war was not over; there was 
great hatred and bitterness. Of course, he mentioned in his inaugural 
address--talking about North and South--both read the same Bible, both 
pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.
  He goes on to give what is one of the great theological treatises on 
the nature of God; he quotes from the Old Testament a couple of times, 
but with all the killing that occurred during the Civil War, he ended 
trying to encourage uniting. I know there are those who advise the 
President that he should not let a good crisis go to waste, but for 
many of us, the hope and prayer is that at this week's funeral, he will 
be a uniter.
  Mr. Speaker, President Lincoln closed his second inaugural with the 
words: ``With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness 
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to 
finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation's wounds, to care for 
him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, 
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
ourselves and with all nations.''
  Mr. Speaker, that was a man who sought to unite, who knew there was a 
Heavenly Father to Whom we could pray and Who would answer our prayers. 
I hope and pray that will be the outcome at the funeral of my brothers 
and sisters in Charleston, South Carolina.
  Of course, then there is the judge side of me. Having sentenced 
people both to prison and to death, the judge side of me says, from 
what we know, it sure cries out for the death penalty, but we will let 
the justice system in South Carolina take care of that.
  In the meantime, as we think about injustice, it is also hard not to 
think of our friends and our allies in Israel who have trouble finding 
any friends. They are persecuted on every side. We got this report from 
the U.N., an article talking about it from Marissa Newman of The Times 
of Israel: ``Israel slams `politically motivated and morally flawed' 
U.N. Gaza report.''
  The article says: ``Israel on Monday said it would `seriously' 
evaluate the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry on the Gaza 
conflict, while politicians from left and right slammed the 
international body for bias and declared that the international 
investigators lacked access to evidence.''
  The article goes on down further: ```The report is biased,' said 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response. `Israel is not 
perpetrating war crimes but rather protecting itself from an 
organization that carries out war crimes. We won't sit back with our 
arms crossed as our citizens are attacked by thousands of missiles.'''
  The article says: ``The Human Rights Council `in practice does 
everything but worry about human rights,' the prime minister charged. 
`The commission spends more time condemning Israel than Iran, Syria and 
North Korea put together.'''
  It seems that these are the times that cry out for a moral, 
pragmatic, and unified response to the anti-Semitism that is growing--
it is just unbelievable--in Europe and in the United States colleges 
and universities. It is incredible.
  Mr. Speaker, the Bible talks about times when right will be wrong and 
wrong will be right; perhaps we are entering such an era. A country 
like Israel is under attack from virtually every front, every side; and 
Palestinians, radical Islamists, and Iranians declare that they will 
see that it is annihilated.
  Their leaders make statements such as ``we are glad that they are 
gathered in Israel so that we can annihilate them all at once,'' and 
the U.N. basically sees somehow level parties on the same plane: 
terrorists and people who promote democratic beliefs and carry them 
out, allow people to vote, believe in the rights of women, and believe 
in equal rights.
  Israel is a place where Muslims can freely vote and don't have to 
worry about a radical Islamist killing them if he or she doesn't 
believe and perform exactly like their radical Islamist leader tells 
them to.
  The article says that the Israeli Foreign Ministry also castigated 
the U.N. Human Rights Council investigation for failing to distinguish 
between the Israeli military and Hamas:
  ``It is regrettable that the report fails to recognize the profound 
difference between Israel's moral behavior during Operation Protective 
Edge and the terror organizations it confronted.''
  ``Likud minister Yuval Steinitz compared the conflict to a 
Palestinian suicide bomber commandeering a bus full of Palestinian 
civilians and ramming it into an Israeli tank. `Many Palestinian 
civilians would die,' he told Army Radio. `But that doesn't mean the 
tank is to blame.' The U.N. panel's approach was `absurd,' he said, in 
that it would require Israel not to fire back when terrorists fire at 
its civilians `because the terrorists are hiding behind their 
civilians.'
  ``Steinitz also said the U.N. Human Rights Commission's obsessive 
focus on Israel points to anti-Semitism. Asked whether Israel would 
have done better to cooperate with the panel, he said, `You can't 
explain to people who are not prepared to listen.'
  ``Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid also rejected the idea that Israel 
should have cooperated, saying the panel had drawn its conclusions 
before it even began its probe.''
  It goes on to discuss the report from the so-called Human Rights 
Council.

[[Page 10294]]

The United Nations Human Rights Council is an abomination. It should be 
an affront as it is an outrage to anyone who cares about human rights.
  What has happened at the United Nations? We have had so many nations 
join the United Nations that don't care about human rights, and they 
don't care about women. Of course, they are so brutal in the treatment 
of those who would oppose it, that apparently it scares off feminist 
groups who are afraid to attack those who really are inhumane in their 
treatment of women, enough so the feminist liberal groups are afraid to 
take them on.
  Hopefully, some day, they will gain the courage to see where women 
are truly being abused in horrendous ways, and they will join with some 
of the rest of us in trying to stop that, instead of going after 
Christian groups or groups who believe that everyone, once conceived, 
should have a right to live.
  Maybe if some of those groups quit attacking those who are pro-life 
and spent a little time attacking those who are true abusers of women, 
then we would find common footing, and we would be able to work better 
together.
  There is another article here from Anne Bayefsky. This one is 
headlined: ``U.N. report denies Israel's right of self-defense, 
advocates arrest of Israelis instead.''
  It really is outrageous, and the United States, as has been suggested 
by some writers, should withdraw from participation in the Human Rights 
Commission. The ICC, International Criminal Court, obviously from its 
actions and its efforts, is quite anti-Semitic. The United States has 
no business supporting the efforts of those who support the effort and 
abuse of Israelis and the effort to eliminate them from off of the 
globe.
  Mr. Speaker, if there had been an Israel during the Holocaust, Jews 
would have had a place to go, and there would not have been 6 million 
killed in the Holocaust. This is no time for anyone who cares about 
world peace and the avoidance of suffering to stand up and decry 
Israel. This is a time to stand with Israel.
  Israel is an actual democratic republic in the middle of the Middle 
East that respects women like no nation around in the Middle East and 
supports the value of life and private property. How in the world are 
we not a better friend to them?
  I would like to see, as some writers have suggested, that we withdraw 
from anything that might lend our support to the International Criminal 
Court because of its anti-Semitic views.
  Mr. Speaker, I realized, as I was reading these articles about 
additional anti-Semitic efforts by the United Nations, that the U.N. 
has been overtaken by so many countries that don't believe in human 
rights for their people.

                              {time}  2030

  Many of them, they are abusive, have no problem with torturing those 
with whom they disagree, have no problem killing people who convert 
from, for example, Islamic beliefs to Christian beliefs--get the death 
penalty in some of these countries.
  You know, it is time to begin a new organization of democratic 
republics that respect the rights of women, men, children, and who have 
fair elections.
  Let's have an international community like that. Let's have an 
international group that, when it speaks, it is not with blood dripping 
off of the votes of its members. It would mean something.
  A human rights commission, for example, for a while had Libya as the 
head. Are you kidding me? This is outrageous.
  Mr. Speaker, I realized, in reviewing these articles, I have not yet 
filed the bill that I normally file, the U.N. Voting Accountability 
Act.
  What I have learned around this body is, if you keep filing a bill 
long enough, even if it requires somebody else putting their name on it 
to get it to the floor, you get that done; you get it passed, and you 
don't care who gets the credit.
  The U.N. Voting Accountability bill is very simple. It basically says 
any nation that votes against the United States more than half of the 
time in the preceding year would get no assistance from the United 
States of any kind whatsoever. As I have said for years, you don't have 
to pay people to hate you. They will do it for free. It is still true.
  It is time to leave that money here. It is time for this 
administration to stop sending weapons that it knows have continuously 
fallen in the hands of the Islamic State and made it extremely 
difficult for the courageous Kurdish fighters to fight and defeat the 
radical Islamic State.
  Let's start sending those weapons directly to the Kurds. Baghdad is 
not letting them get them. They cannot easily defeat the weapons, the 
up-armored vehicles, the things that we have sent that we knew 
ultimately were falling into Islamic State hands.
  As some Muslim friends, leaders in Middle Eastern states have 
continued to ask: Why is it that the United States administration keeps 
helping the Muslim Brotherhood? Don't they know that is who is at war 
with the United States?
  They ask: Why do you keep helping your enemies?
  It is time that we quit helping our enemies. It is time that we help 
those here at home.
  I applaud our conference passing the bills we did tonight. One is 
going to make it easier for seniors to get access to the health care 
that ObamaCare has made it very difficult for them to get, so there is 
some good news.
  Our prayers continue so that, by the end of the week, there will be 
even better news.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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