Israel

Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I come here to join my colleagues to talk about the events of the past 10 or so days in Israel and the horrible attacks.

I want to talk a little bit about two visits that I have made there over the past year or so, the most recent one back in February. But I want to start with holding our Members accountable here on Capitol Hill.

This was posted on social media, and it reads like false statements that we have seen from Hamas and other groups that want to foment hate and death in the region. It reads like this: Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital building, killing 500 Palestinians--doctors, children, patients--just like that.

That was within an hour or two of the bombing. Before we knew anything, before any of us could have possibly had a secured briefing, before we had gotten an assessment from the President of the United States or any of our intelligence sources here, before we could go down to the SCIF and actually understand the details, that statement was made.

You would think that would come from a member of Hamas, but it came from a Member of our Congress. If that Member of Congress wants to take responsibility for the protest that we now see in Beirut--good on you, in Jordan, in Amman, and in Egypt. This sort of leadership or failure of leadership has no place on Capitol Hill.

Now I want to talk about why I think Hamas is evil and why Iran is a part of this and why this is not surprising that the very details of this attack took place.

Earlier this year, in February, I was in--well, let me back up. A couple of years ago, I was in Israel, and we went down to the Gaza Strip. We saw a tunnel head. We actually walked into a tunnel that was discovered by the Israelis. We went to a Patriot battery or an armed dome battery that every day is prepared to shoot down missiles because that always happens. Before this attack, it happened almost on a daily basis. I have literally been in Israel when I am having lunch, in northern Israel--this was near the Golan Heights--and I am asking somebody to pass a plate of food, and a bomb goes off. And the people living in this kibbutz did not even miss a beat. Every day they have to live with this stuff.

So now, down in Gaza, we see the tunnel system that is in Gaza. If you go north to the Lebanese border, you will see an entire network of tunnels that the Israelis identified just in time. It had been a project, it was estimated to be, 10 years in the making, funded by Iran. Hezbollah is in Lebanon. Hamas is down in the Gaza Strip. They had developed these tunnel networks, and they were prepared to do the same thing in northern Israel that we saw in southern Israel over the past week and a half. They even want to design this to strike fear and terror in the Israeli people. They want them to think--they want their children to think that they are going to pop out of the ground and kidnap them and kill their parents. This is a part of the terror that they want the Israeli people to live with every single day.

The Iranians were absolutely responsible for funding Hamas to build that tunnel network in northern Israel, and they do the same thing with Hamas in southern Israel.

Ladies and gentlemen, first off, this has to end. Let us work with facts. If Israel doesn't abide by the rules of war, then we should hold them accountable. But what we are finding out now from additional intelligence sources is that it does appear as though this was not an Israeli strike; that it was probably a failed missile launch from Hamas.

Well, let the facts lead where they may, but here is what I do know: This congressional Member and others, before they can actually stand up to the Palestinian people--who I believe the majority of whom are good people who want to live free and live in democracy--they have to recognize that Hamas is evil, every single one of them. From their leadership down to their rank and files to the ones who flew the ultralights in to the people who came out of the tunnels and murdered over 1,200 people, they have to be held accountable. Their funder has to be held accountable. Their strategists in Iran have to be held accountable.

We in the United States have to stand by Israel and by freedom-loving Palestinians and freedom-loving members of the Middle East, but we cannot let this go. We cannot let this evil go unchecked.

We have to stand by Israel, and we have to make sure that we do everything we can to educate the American people on the facts and disabuse them of any notion that this congressional Member or anyone else has any place in communicating that misinformation to the American people and across the world. And the violence that can come from making people believe that, they have to own.

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