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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, while the Senate was away from Washington, we received some sobering reminders about the challenges facing America and our friends in a dangerous world and about how to meet them.

In Gaza, innocent people continue to suffer with the cowardice and hateful violence of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Just last week, as Israel continued the difficult, necessary, and existential work of eliminating the terrorist threat, the tragic consequences of this war were brought once again into focus. The misidentification that led to the deaths of seven aid workers in an IDF strike was a gut-wrenching reminder that even when a sovereign nation exercises the utmost restraint in the face of enemies to use violence as a first resort, even as our ally Israel takes great pains to minimize casualties among the innocent civilians who its enemies exploit at every turn, war is still hell. And for people in Gaza over the past 17 years since Hamas seized control, life has been its own sort of hell as well.

For years, the supposed authorities in the enclave have spent their time burrowing under the homes and mosques of innocent families and the schools of innocent children. They have used concrete and building supplies intended for civilians to build military bunkers instead. They have brazenly stolen the humanitarian aid their civilian subjects depend on. They have thrown Palestinians loyal to the political rivals off of buildings, and they have continually traded innocent lives for one more day to wage a war on Israel.

Iran's terrorist proxies in Gaza are responsible for the horrors of this war. Their hatred for Jews--and refusal to acknowledge the existence of the Jewish State of Israel--is the reason for this pain and suffering of the last 6 months.

America cannot afford to lose moral clarity about the conflict. But I am afraid that too many of our leaders are. President Biden expressed outrage at last week's deadly accident--an event his own administration acknowledges was a tragic accident--which begs the question of whether he is also outraged at the way Israel's terrorist aggressors violate international law by turning hospitals and schools into fighting positions.

Instead of welcoming Israel's swift investigation and efforts to hold personnel accountable for their mistakes--accountability that has been sorely lacking during President Biden's own administration--the President caved further to domestic political pressure.

He indulged his radical base and called for an immediate cease-fire. He embraced an alternate reality in which cease-fire wasn't exactly the state of play that Hamas exploited on October 7. A fantasy world in which leaving Hamas intact doesn't lead to further terrorism against Israelis and Palestinians alike. Unfortunately, the Democratic party has become unmoored from a long tradition of bipartisan support for Israel.

According to one headline this week:

Democrats fear Netanyahu may have undermined Biden's image among voters.

Apparently, the leftwing activists who can't seem to distinguish between terrorism and self-defense aren't just calling the shots at the White House but also on the President's reelection campaign. They don't seem to care that it isn't just a sovereign ally's leader they disagree with, but the overwhelming majority of Israeli public who believe Hamas must be defeated.

Meanwhile, President Biden is reportedly taking a cue from the odious Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and considering labeling goods from Israel's settlement communities in order to ramp up the pressure on the Israeli Government.

Of course, this sounds like child's play alongside the claim of one of our own Senate colleagues made just yesterday, that on legal grounds, Israel's campaign against Hamas is genocide.

What on earth should other friends of America think when they see the way we treat allies under attack? How should they square the Biden administration's pledge to support Ukraine's defense ``as long as it takes'' with support for Israel that is, apparently, as soft as the will of the most radical elements of the Democratic Party?

This cannot be the message America sends to the world. Leadership means standing up for America's interests--from the Indo-Pacific to Europe to the Middle East--even when the most active members of one's political base aren't willing to.

Right now, Congress has an opportunity to model this obligation for a President who clearly doesn't understand it. The House has an opportunity to pass the national security supplemental, and America has an opportunity to show our allies and partners that they can count on our support and show our adversaries that they can count on our relentless intention.

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