The Israeli Blockade and the Flotilla

Floor Speech

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Mr. HIMES. I thank the gentleman from New York for his eloquent treatment of the facts, and I thank him for focusing on the facts at hand.

One of the most disheartening aspects of the flotilla situation was the extent to which the facts were initially set aside by much of the world, and instead, prejudice was allowed to emerge, a prejudice against our ally, Israel. And we subsequently learned, of course, that the facts are a good deal more complicated than perhaps we were led to believe initially. As my colleague from New York points out, this was a flotilla with more than one agenda, a flotilla with a clear intention of provoking the kind of response that was ultimately provoked. And make no mistake, there's not a person in this Chamber or anywhere else that isn't saddened by the loss of life in the Mediterranean.

But I'd like to step back for a moment, away from the immediate facts that Mr. Weiner did such a good job at articulating, to some larger issues that cannot be lost in the week-to-week, the day-to-day of our relationship with the State of Israel.

The best way I can encapsulate what I'm talking about here is that Israel, for the United States, is family. We speak of a special relationship with Great Britain. We have at least a special relationship with the nation of Israel. It is a relationship of family. In some cases, very literally. In other cases, and for this Nation as a whole, we are family because we share so many values, so many of these values that are incorporated into this building, into our constitutive documents, our Judeo-Christian values, to which we owe a debt of obligation to Israel. And, of course, it is the only democracy in a very, very dangerous region. For that reason alone, we would resonate with the State of Israel. And, of course, something that is all too often forgotten, the economic ties that we have, the economic similarities, economies based on innovation and creativity.

All three of these things make Israel family, and we can't lose sight of this as the facts are outed. As investigations are undertaken, we can't lose track of that underlying fact, especially in a world where our family is at risk--and this room is full of fathers and mothers, and we know what that phrase means.

I traveled to Israel last summer, and I stood at Sderot and saw how close and how severe the risks of Hamas, an entity dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel, how that is not abstract. In fact, that is barely an arm's length away from the State of Israel. To the north, of course, Hezbollah, another entity, sponsored by Iran, dedicated to the eradication of the State of Israel. And, of course, Iran itself, not far away and hell bent on the creation of weapons of mass destruction and leaving absolutely no ambiguity about what it would do with those weapons of mass destruction.

I'm not saying that any of that changes the facts that my colleague from New York has laid on the table that will be investigated, that will be considered, that will probably be most interestingly and comprehensively investigated by Israel herself. But we cannot, any more than we lose loyalty to our sons and daughters, our cousins, our brothers and sisters and our spouses, forget that we are talking about family, and that when family is at risk, we lean in to our family, and we remind the world that there is a reason why Israel is part of our family--a reason of values, a reason of democracy, and the reason that we stand here today to remind the world that Israel is our family.

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