- 2 days ago
During remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke in support of two bills that would block Israeli arms deals.
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00:00Mr. President.
00:13Chair recognize the Senator from Vermont.
00:16Mr. President, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 2776 and in accordance with the provisions of Section 601B3 of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976,
00:30I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations of further consideration of S.J. Res. 41 and S.J. Res. 34.
00:39The motions are pending.
00:44Mr. President, let me begin by stating what the debate we're going to have this evening is about and what it is not about.
00:55It is not about whether anyone in this Senate disagrees that Hamas is a terrorist organization which began this war with a brutal terrorist attack on October 7, 2023.
01:16They killed 1,200 innocent Israelis and took 250 hostages.
01:26Everyone agrees with that.
01:30The International Criminal Court was right to indict the leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities.
01:40And I think most of us agree with that.
01:45There was also, I believe, no disagreement as to whether or not Israel, like any other country similarly attacked, had a right to defend itself.
01:57Clearly, it did.
01:59And in a certain sense, Mr. President, this debate is not really about Israel.
02:11It is about the United States of America and whether we will abide by U.S. and international law,
02:20or whether we will continue to contribute billions of dollars to an extremist government in Israel,
02:31which has caused an unprecedented humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
02:39This debate is whether or not the United States of America will have any moral credibility on the international scene,
02:49whether or not we will be able, with a straight face, to condemn other countries who commit barbaric acts if we don't stand up tonight.
03:04That is what we are debating.
03:09Mr. President, the vast majority of the American people and the world community understand
03:16that the Netanyahu government in Israel has gone well beyond defending itself from Hamas.
03:28Over the last 21 months, it has waged an all-out illegal, immoral, and horrific war of annihilation against the Palestinian people.
03:44This war has already killed some 60,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 143,000,
03:57most of whom are women, children, and the elderly.
04:05In a population of just over 2 million people, that's all that there are in Gaza,
04:13more than 200,000, have been killed or wounded since this war began.
04:23That, Mr. President, is 10% of the population of Gaza.
04:3010% of the population of Gaza in the last 21 months has either been killed or wounded.
04:38Mr. President, Mr. President, to put that into scale so that we as Americans can understand the enormity of what is happening there,
04:48if that kind of destruction happened here in the United States,
04:56if 10% of our population were killed or wounded in a war,
05:02it would mean that 34 million of us would have been killed or wounded.
05:12The toll on Gaza's children is unspeakable, and it is literally hard to imagine.
05:20The United Nations reports that more than 18,000 children have been killed since this war began.
05:31Just this morning, this morning, the Washington Post published a list of all of these children's names.
05:41And, Mr. President, I ask that these names be entered into the Congressional record.
05:49And here is...
05:50Without objection.
05:51Mr. President, here is the list.
05:54These are the names of children published in the Washington Post today
05:58that have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
06:02And I should mention that more than 12,000 of these children were under the age of 12,
06:18and more than 3,000 children in Gaza have had one or more limbs amputated.
06:27That is how this war has impacted the children in Gaza.
06:32But it is not just the horrific loss of life that is taking place there.
06:40New satellite imagery shows that Israel's indiscriminate bombardment
06:44has destroyed 70% of all structures in Gaza.
06:5270% of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed.
06:56The U.N. estimates that 92% of housing units have been damaged or destroyed.
07:06Most of the population is now living in tents or other makeshift structures.
07:14And let us not forget, over the last 21 months, these people, most of whom are poor,
07:25have been displaced time and time again, told to go here, told to go there, told to go there,
07:33that they're not going to die, told to go there, told to go there, told to go there, told to go there, told to go there, told to go there, told to go there.
07:45Mr. President, the healthcare system in Gaza has been destroyed.
07:50Most of the territory's hospitals and primary healthcare facilities have been bombed.
07:57More than 1,500 health care workers have been killed, as well as 336 UN staff.
08:08Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated,
08:14including almost 90% of water and sanitation facilities.
08:19Raw sewage now runs all over Gaza.
08:23Most of the roads have been destroyed.
08:26Gaza's educational system has been obliterated.
08:30Hundreds of schools have been bombed, and every single one of Gaza's 12 universities has also been bombed.
08:41And I should mention there has been no electricity in Gaza for 21 months.
08:51Mr. President, all of this is a horror unto itself.
08:59But in recent months, the Netanyahu government's extermination of Gaza has made an unspeakable and horrible situation even worse.
09:10From March 2nd to May 19th, Israel did not allow a single shipment of humanitarian aid to come into Gaza.
09:24No food, no water, no fuel, and no medical supplies for a distressed population of 2 million people over a period of 11 weeks.
09:40Since then, Israel has allowed a trickle of aid to get into Gaza, but nowhere near enough to meet the enormous needs of a population besieged for so long.
09:55Mr. President, when you cut off all food to a population, what happens is not surprising.
10:05People starve to death.
10:09And that is exactly what Israeli policy has deliberately done.
10:14It is causing mass starvation and famine.
10:20Children and other vulnerable people are dying in increasing numbers.
10:27In the last two weeks, dozens of young children have died from starvation.
10:34Starving mothers cannot breastfeed their infants.
10:39And no formula is available.
10:42And certainly no clean water to make it in any case.
10:46Hospitals have run out of nutritional treatments.
10:50And doctors and nurses who are already treating the desperate, they themselves are going hungry and are fainting from hunger.
11:01The World Food Program says that the food crisis has reached, quote,
11:08new and astonishing levels of desperation, with a third of the population not eating for multiple days in a row, end quote.
11:18Just yesterday, the gold standard UN-backed food monitoring group, the IPC, issued a new report saying, and I quote,
11:28the worst case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip, end quote.
11:37When mass death from starvation begins, it is difficult to reverse.
11:45Aid groups say it will soon be too late to stop a wave of preventable deaths in Gaza,
11:54all of which is the direct result of the Israeli government's policies.
12:00Mr. President, what I'm going to describe now is gruesome,
12:05but I think it is important for us to understand what is happening to the children in Gaza.
12:12Mark Browner, an American doctor who spent two weeks in Gaza in June, described the situation.
12:22This is an American doctor who is in Gaza, quote.
12:25A lot of the children have already passed the point of no return, where their physiology has eroded to the point where even refeeding could potentially cause death itself.
12:38The gut lining has started to autodigest, and it will no longer have adequate absorptive capacity for water or for nutrition.
12:47Death is unfortunately imminent for probably thousands of children, end of quote.
12:54That's an American physician who was in Gaza in June.
12:59Mr. President, what the extremist Netanyahu government is doing now is not an effort to win a war.
13:09There is no military purpose in starving thousands and thousands of children.
13:18Let us be clear.
13:20This is not an effort to win a war.
13:23This is an effort to destroy a people.
13:27Having already killed or wounded more than 200,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, the extremist Israeli government is using mass starvation to engineer the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
13:44They are trying to drive a desperate people out of their homeland to God knows where.
13:53This is not my speculation.
13:56This is what Israeli ministers and officials are saying themselves.
14:02A few months ago, the finance minister vowed that, quote, Gaza will be entirely destroyed, end quote.
14:10Just last week, another current Israeli minister said, quote,
14:14All Gaza will be Jewish.
14:16The government is pushing for Gaza being wiped out.
14:19Thank God we are wiping out this evil, end quote.
14:22Another Likud member of the Knesset and former minister called for, quote,
14:27Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth, end quote.
14:31And in the West Bank, not Gaza, in the West Bank, we see this agenda being carried out clearly and methodically,
14:40with more than 500,000 Israeli settlers now illegally occupying land integral to any future Palestinian state.
14:51Earlier this month, the Knesset even approved a non-binding motion in favor of formally annexing the West Bank.
15:03This slow-moving annexation is backed by violence.
15:08Israeli security forces and settler extremists have killed thousands of Palestinians in recent years.
15:16Israeli settlers brutally beat a young American to death earlier this month.
15:22Just this month, just this month, an American citizen was beaten to death.
15:27The seventh American killed in the West Bank since 2022.
15:32Despite a demand from President Trump's ambassador to Israel, this is Trump's ambassador, Mike Huckabee.
15:39The President, no one has yet been held accountable for these deaths.
15:44Mr. President, people around the world, all over the world, are outraged by what is going on in Gaza right now.
15:52And countries are increasingly demanding that Netanyahu's government stop what they are doing.
16:02France and Canada have said that they will recognize a Palestinian state.
16:07The United Kingdom has said it will do so as well if Israel does not immediately end this war and surge humanitarian aid.
16:15And at the UN last month, 149 countries voted for a ceasefire resolution condemning the use of starvation as a weapon of war
16:24and demanding an end to Israel's blockade on humanitarian aid.
16:29But it is not just the international community.
16:33Just yesterday, Gallup, one of the best polling organizations in our country, released a new poll
16:42that shows that just 32 percent of Americans support Israel's military action in Gaza, while 60 percent oppose it.
16:5332 percent support it, 60 percent oppose it.
16:57To my Democratic colleagues here in the Senate, I would point out that only 8 percent of Democrats support this war.
17:07And I would also point out that just 25 percent of independents.
17:11And to my Republican colleagues, I would point out that more and more Republicans are beginning to speak out against the atrocities of this war,
17:22and the fact that billions and billions of taxpayer dollars are going to a government in Israel waging an illegal war.
17:34Further, Mr. President, recent economist YouGov poll shows that just 15 percent of the American people support increasing military aid to Israel,
17:44while 35 percent support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely.
17:51Just 8 percent of Democrats support increasing military aid to Israel.
17:58Mr. President, the American people are haunted by the images coming out of Gaza, and these are some of those images.
18:06These are desperate children with pots in their hands crying, begging for food in order to stay alive.
18:14And that's what the American people are seeing every night on TV, on the Internet, in their newspapers.
18:22These are emaciated children, their bodies in some cases barely more than skeletons.
18:28The American people are seeing miles and miles of rubble where cities and towns once stood.
18:35They are seeing innocent people being shot down while they wait on line to get food while they are starving.
18:47Mr. President, despite these war crimes carried out daily and in plain view,
19:02the United States has provided more than 22 billion dollars for Israel's military operations since this war began.
19:1222 billion dollars.
19:16One estimate based on Brown University research calculates that the United States has paid for 70 percent of the Gaza war.
19:27In other words, American taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb schools, kill civilians,
19:36and support the cruelty of Netanyahu and its criminal ministers.
19:41And that, Mr. President, is why I have brought these two resolutions of disapproval to block offensive arms sales to Israel.
19:52The U.S. J. Res. 34 would prohibit the U.S. taxpayer-financed $675 million sale of thousands of 1,000-pound bombs and many thousands of J.D.A.M. guidance kits.
20:07And S.J. Res. 41 would prohibit the sale of tens of thousands of fully automatic assault rifles.
20:18And very few people doubt that that is exactly what Israel is doing.
20:35If you want to obey the law, vote for these resolutions.
20:40The rifles in question will go to arm a police force overseen by far-right extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gavir,
20:48who has long advocated for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from the region,
20:53who was convicted of support for terrorism by an Israeli court,
20:57and who has distributed weapons to violent settlers in the West Bank.
21:01Ben-Gavir has formed new police units comprised of extremist settlers and has boasted about how many weapons he has distributed to vigilante settlers in the West Bank.
21:13And you want to give him more rifles?
21:16That's what one of these resolutions is about.
21:19These are rifles the Biden administration held back over fears they would be used by extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank
21:26to terrorize Palestinians and push them from their homes and villages.
21:33Mr. President, U.S. taxpayers have spent many, many billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government.
21:45Enough is enough.
21:48Americans want this to end.
21:51They do not want to be complicit in an unfolding famine and daily civilian massacres.
21:59And we here in Congress tonight, tonight, have the power to act.
22:06No more talks, no more great speeches, but tonight we have the power to act.
22:14The power to force Netanyahu and his extremist government to end this slaughter.
22:20The time is long overdue for Congress to use the leverage we have, tens of billions in arms and military aid,
22:30to demand that Israel end these atrocities.
22:33At a time when Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians trying to get food aid on a near daily basis,
22:40when extremist settlers are pushing Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank,
22:44and when Gaza is witnessing mass starvation as a result of Israeli government policy,
22:50the United States should not and must not be providing more weapons to enable these atrocities.
23:01of the United States.
23:02Mr. President, whatever happens tonight, history will condemn those of us who fail to act in the face of these horrors.
23:14Mr. President, and I would yield the applause.
23:17Mr. President, and I would yield the applause.
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