McConnell Urges Senate To Reject Sanders Resolution, Stand With Israel
‘Those who mourn senseless human suffering should have no trouble assigning blame to the terrorists who exploit civilians, schools, hospitals, and mosques as cover. Those who seek peace should know better than to pretend we can achieve it while such savages hold power. This week, I hope the Senate will reject the Sanders resolutions, outright.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding national security priorities:
“Next year, it will fall to the Republican government the American people elected this month to shore up America’s position in the face of very real and directly linked threats to our interests.
“After four years of proposed net cuts to defense spending, it will fall to us to start investing seriously in the sort of hard power to contend with the coordinated efforts of Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China.
“Consider just the most recent evidence of the overlapping aims of the world’s authoritarians.
“Reports this week indicate that in operations against Iran-backed Hizballah in Lebanon, Israeli forces have uncovered caches of modern Russian weapons – the same sort of caches on which another butcher relied further east in Syria!
“Russia and Iran are strategic partners. Russia is using Iranian drones against Ukraine. It is not a mystery how these weapons made their way into terrorist hands.
“So in the wake of an Administration that squandered leverage over the world’s most active state sponsor of terror… Tied the hands of a sovereign democracy in the face of neo-Soviet imperialism…
“Browbeat a close ally fighting to restore its security against savage terrorists… And met the looming aggression of our greatest strategic adversary with toothless climate diplomacy…
“We’ll have our work cut out for us.
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“Of course, an executive-branch allergy to deterrence and the exercise of hard power is not our only challenge. Even after January 20th, we’ll still have to contend here in the Senate with efforts to weaken America’s commitments to our friends and constrain the authorities that keep our adversaries on their toes.
“This week, we’ll deal with exhibit A: resolutions from the senior Senator from Vermont to ban lethal arms sales to Israel.
“I could lay out, yet again, why Israel deserves the time, space, and support to restore its security… and why the aftermath of the deadliest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust requires moral clarity.
“But instead, I’d like to take the case Senator Sanders made in the pages of the Washington Post yesterday and respond to just a few of its most outrageous assertions.
“Our colleague began by characterizing Israel’s response to the horrors of October 7th as ‘all-out war against the Palestinian people.’
“There is, indeed a side in this conflict waging all-out war.
“But it’s not the sovereign democracy that issues evacuation warnings before striking targets, knowing that terrorist combatants will escape along with civilians.
“No. The side waging all-out war is the one for whom civilian casualties are the end goal – the side that butchered, raped and kidnapped Israeli civilians and continues to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. The side that pilfers humanitarian aid intended for its own citizens.
“Recognizing this distinction isn’t just important to this discussion. It ought to be the price of admission.
“Let’s take another of our colleague’s effort to blame Israel’s war efforts on a ‘extremist government’.
“Well, I suspect that would be news to the large shares of Israeli citizens across the political spectrum who have called for even more extensive operations against Hamas and Hizballah…
“To the opposition leader who criticized IDF retaliatory strikes against Iran as not sufficiently aggressive…
“Or to the diverse members who have served in Israel’s war cabinet and made consensus decisions about the conduct of a war thrust upon them by genocidal terrorists.
“How about another of his claims – that Israel is ‘becoming a pariah nation condemned by governments around the world’. This one has a shred of truth to it – but the hounding condemnations of the Jewish state are hardly news.
“Since 2015, the United Nations has adopted 156 resolutions condemning Israel.
“By comparison, the Iranian regime that chants for Israel’s extermination has attracted similar condemnation eight times, while the Syrian regime responsible for slaughtering its own civilians received eleven condemnations.
“Some might suggest these figures say more about the UN and the scourge of anti-Semitism worldwide than about Israel.
“Frankly, if Israel is becoming ‘a pariah nation’ specifically since October 7th, it’s because this attack on Jews unleashed a new wave of emboldened anti-Semitism across the West.
“And I worry that my colleague’s misplaced criticism only provides cover for disgusting antisemitism in our own country, most visibly on university campuses.
“Our colleague, for some reason, seems to take the UN very seriously.
“He points out that ‘UN bodies have called for an end to the arms shipments fueling the conflict.’
“Could it be that the senior Senator from Vermont wants us to get serious about Iran’s pipeline of support to [terrorist] proxies?
“Guess again.
“But as long as we’re discussing international organizations, the best way for the UN to prevent ‘fueling conflict’ would be to stop putting genocidal terrorists on its payroll!
“And as long as I have anything to say about it, not a single taxpayer dollar will foot UNRWA’s bills.
“Our colleague’s case is a maze of internal contradictions. Reasonable people have no need to grapple with it, point by point.
“Those who mourn senseless human suffering should have no trouble assigning blame to the terrorists who exploit civilians, schools, hospitals, and mosques as cover.
“Those who seek peace should know better than to pretend we can achieve it while such savages hold power.
“This week, I hope the Senate will reject the Sanders resolutions, outright.”
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Related Issues: National Security, Russia, Ukraine, China, Iran
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