Conflict in the Middle East

Floor Speech

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, the scenes from Gaza are horrendous, and people want the fighting to end. Some call for a cease-fire. Hamas needs to hear those calls and agree to free the hostages and turn over its rockets, and then we can have that cease-fire.

There was a cease-fire on October 6. Hamas broke it and killed 1,400 Israelis.

What would happen if we had a cease-fire leaving the rockets and arms in Hamas' hands?

Today, Ghazi Hamad, a high-ranking Hamas official, said exactly what would happen. He said: We will repeat October 7 one, two, three, four, five times, as many times as it takes, until Israel is annihilated.

We need a true cease-fire, and we can achieve it only if Hamas is disarmed.

I have been a pro-Israel activist for 60 years and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee for nearly 30. Israel has one friend in the world. Hamas knows that. America is divided and partisan. Hamas knows that. The terrible scenes in Gaza show that Hamas is willing to die for one thing, and that is to put those scenes on American television to undercut support for Israel to make sure that that support is not bipartisan.

Last week, we showed bipartisan support, with 97 percent of the Democrats and 99 percent of the Republicans voting for a strong resolution. Unfortunately, our Speaker has decided to undercut that and, in doing so, help Hamas achieve its most important geopolitical objective.

For 60 years, when an Israel resolution comes to this floor, it passes overwhelmingly with support on both sides of the aisle. Tomorrow, that changes because the Speaker is bringing a nakedly partisan version of the support for Israel bill to this floor.

Mr. Speaker, you have only been in office for a week and already you are achieving Hamas' geopolitical objectives. Why? Supposedly, to pay for the cost of aiding Israel, they are going to slash the IRS budget. CBO today just indicated that that will cost us over $26 billion in revenue and will increase the cost of aiding Israel.

I am here to say, as the co-chair of the Bipartisan CPA Caucus, as someone who has taught tax law at Harvard Law School, and as someone who headed the second largest tax agency in this country, that that CBO number is way too low. The long-term effects will be devastating on our ability to collect taxes.

We need a bipartisan bill before this floor, not a bill that supposedly is going to help Israel but actually is designed to hurt Israel, help Hamas, and die in the Senate.

Now, the numbers coming from Gaza about casualties are something that a CPA should look at. We know what happened at Al Ahli Arab hospital. They dramatically overstated the casualties. Then, America said, with a high degree of confidence from our intel community, that that was a rocket fired by Hamas or Islamic jihad that failed to reach its target and instead fell on a Palestinian hospital.

Even if you accept Hamas' statistics, our press goes further and exaggerates their number.

First, Hamas will tell you that they include in their statistics dead Palestinian combatants, and so our press reports the number as if that somehow is Israel's fault.

Hamas will tell you that they include in those statistics those who die from the one-third of Hamas rockets that crash into Gaza, yet our press will report that statistic as if that is a number Israel is responsible for.

As to those who die from Israeli ordnance, keep in mind that is because of Hamas' use of human shields. They were in Israel and could have stood and fought the Israeli Defense Forces. Instead, they quickly retreated behind their human shields.

Finally, those who say that we have more deaths in Gaza than in other terrible events happening in the world, this is clearly false. We have had over 600,000 deaths in Ethiopia. The press didn't report it, but it still matters.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an open letter dated November 1, 2023, from the Association of University Heads, Israel, to accompany my speech on the floor today.

Dear Colleagues:

We, the leaders of Israeli universities and research institutions, write to express deep concern over the discourse emanating from academia following the devastating Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the inadequate response, in many cases, by academic leadership.

On that darkest of days, in a tragedy unprecedented in Israel's 75-year history, the Hamas terrorists infiltrated into the country and murdered more than 1,400 people, including infants, children, students, and senior citizens-- Jewish, Muslim, and Christian alike. The attack also included the abduction of 240 civilians of all ages into Gaza; additional missing persons have not yet been identified and accounted for. In the aftermath of these horrific events, we find it disturbing that certain narratives from academic institutions misrepresent the situation, or, in the worst cases, actively target Israelis and Jews.

We find ourselves facing a war on two fronts: one against the atrocities of Hamas, and another in the global arena of public opinion. Regrettably, we have noticed an alarming trend in which Israel, despite its right to self-defense, is mischaracterized as an oppressor. This is a false equivalence between the actions of a murderous terrorist organization and a sovereign state's right to defend its citizens, which unfortunately results in the loss of innocent Palestinian lives. Any attempt to justify or equivocate Hamas's brutal and grotesque actions is intellectually and morally indefensible.

It's unsettling to note that many college campuses have become breeding grounds for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments, largely fueled by a naive and biased understanding of the conflict. It is ironic that the very halls of enlightenment in America and Europe, ostensibly the bastions of intellectual and progressive thought that are your campuses, have adopted Hamas as the cause celebre while Israel is demonized. Universities, as hubs of enlightenment and rational discourse, must take responsibility for the views they perpetuate.

There is no moral equivalency here. Let's be clear: Hamas shares no values with any Western academic institution. Hamas is an organization that has repeatedly pledged to annihilate Israel and its people.

Its ideology is antithetical to the values of human life and the liberal values we hold dear. Hamas funnels international aid into armament rather than to the welfare of its citizens. While Israel uses its weapons to shield its citizens, Hamas uses its citizens as shields for its weapons--which it hides in hospitals, schools, and mosques. It is crucial to distinguish between Hamas' terrorist objectives and the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for statehood. The conflation of the two only serves to fuel hatred and ignorance.

Academic institutions stand as lighthouses in the intellectual landscape, and we ask you to illuminate them. Your roles as leaders of these institutions confer upon you an extraordinary responsibility: to guide the moral and ethical development of your students, to imbue them with the ability to think critically and to discern the nuances that separate right from wrong. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of academic freedom, but it should not be manipulated to legitimize hate speech or to justify violence.

We urge you to delineate the boundaries between constructive discourse and destructive propaganda, and promote evidence-based, nuanced thinking that challenges simplistic narratives. Expose the falsity of justifications for acts of terror; expose and condemn disingenuous statements; and reject hypocritical voices that justify murder, rape, and destruction in the name of ``resistance''.

Moreover, we expect that Israeli and Jewish students and faculty on university and college campuses will be accorded the same respect and protections as any other minority. The principles of inclusivity and campus safety must unequivocally extend to include Israeli and Jewish members of your academic communities. Just as it would be unthinkable for an academic institution to extend free speech protections to groups targeting other protected classes, so too should demonstrations that call for our destruction and glorify violence against Jews be explicitly prohibited and condemned.

What the world witnessed on October 7 were not methods to help disadvantaged peoples build better futures for themselves. The events of this terrible day should be taken as a wake-up call to all of the dangers of nihilistic organizations like Hamas and ISIS that represent the very opposite of freedom and liberty.

As leaders of Israeli universities, we have been heartened by clear statements of solidary and support for Israel, which are, at their heart, statements in solidary with humanity, enlightenment, and progress. At the same time, we are calling for a sea change in clarity and truth in academia on the matter of Israel's war against Hamas, so that light will triumph over dark, now and always.

Signed,

Prof. Arie Zaban, President of Bar-Ilan University, Chairperson of Association of University Heads--VERA;

Prof. Daniel A. Chamovitz, President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev;

Prof. Alon Chen, President of Weizmann Institute of Science;

Prof. Asher Cohen, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem;

Prof. Leo Corry, President of the Open University of Israel;

Prof. Ehud Grossman, President of Ariel University;

Prof. Ariel Porat, President of Tel-Aviv University;

Prof. Ron Robin, President of University of Haifa;

Prof. Uri Sivan, President of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

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