tv U.S. Senate Sen. Sanders Against Israel Aid CSPAN April 27, 2024 2:12pm-2:39pm EDT
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happens to be one that's proven impervious to fraud, corruption, money laundering and grift or not. because how it's spent is going to have a very direct, very real potential outcome on the american people. we cannot pretend anymore that we have the money to do this, that the economic cost is free or that the military risk is free. none of them are. shame on us if we don't turn this around. shame on us if we pass this tonight. shame on us if we do this without taking any steps to secure the integrity of our own border. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i ask that t quorum call be vitiated.
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the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sanders: mr. speaker, here is the good news. a few weeks ago the approval rating for congress was 10%. it has gone up to 14%. according to a recent poll, 14% approve of what congress is doing and 68% oppose. i would tell my friend on both sides that it's about equal, on who people want to elect it's about half democrats and half republicans. why is that? why do we have a 14% approval rating? it might have something to do with things like we are witnessing today and the degree to which the congress is completely out of touch with where the american people are. let me read some other polls not on favorability but on people's feelings toward the role the
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united states is now playing in the war in gaza. april 10, economist pew golf poll, 37% report increasing military aid to israel. 18% support an increase. and to my democratic colleagues, i would say 48% of democrats support decreasing aid, 10% support increasing aid. then there's a march 29 poll from axios ipso telemundo, 16% latino said the united states should continue supporting israel. 39% said the u.s. should not be involved in the conflict. march 27 gallup poll, 36% of americans approve of israel's military action. 55% disapprove. among democrats, 18% approve.
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75% disapprove.poll. march 27, more aid is opposed sending to israel 52% oppose it, 39% support more aid. democrats, 63% oppose sending more military aid, 25% support. march 27, 52% said that weapons should be halted from being shipped. they say pretty overwhelmingly that the american people do not want to give more military aid to the netanyahu war machine to continue its horrendous destructive policies in gaza.
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that's what the american people are saying. earlier today i tried to bring up two amendments dealing with the crisis in gaza. one of them basically said that the united states should not support -- should not supply anymore offensive -- offensive military aid to the netanyahu government. i support defensive emissions, the iron dome, the israeli people have a right to not be attacked with missiles and drones. that amendment not only -- that amendment could not even get a vote. that's the united states senate today. people overwhelmingly are in opposition to more u.s. aid, we cannot discuss this issue and have a vote. mr. president, why are the american people, as opposed as
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they are to more aid for the military in israel? well, among other things, it may have something to do with what some of the israeli leaders are saying and, in fact, who they are. and i think the american people are catching on that what we have today in israel is not the israel of golda meir, it is a government now significantly controlled not only by right-wing extremists, but by religious zealots. mr. president, today what we are seeing is a situation where netanyahu himself has never favored a two-state solution and he has made that very clear and has worked to systematically to
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undermine the prospects for a deal. i might mention a two-state solution is the policy of the united states government. netanyahu's party founding charter says quote, that between the sea and the jordan river there will only be israeli sovereignty. end quote. for many years before october 7, netanyahu told his allies in private that it was important to bolster hamas to ensure that the palestinians could never unify and form their own government. in january, in terms of the humanitarian crisis in gaza, netanyahu said, and i quote, quote, we provide minimal humanitarian aid if we want to achieve our war goals, we give the minimal aid. end quote. the rest of the government, or many others in that government
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is similarly extreme. at the start of the war the israeli defense minister declared a total siege saying quote, quote, israeli defense minister, we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly. there will be no electricity, no fuel, no food, everything is closed. end quote. another minister, the start of the war, posted a picture of a devastated area in gaza saying it was, quote, more beautiful than ever. bombing and flattening everything, end quote. another israeli lawmaker said quote the gaza strip should be flattened and there should be one sentence for everybody there, death. we have to wipe the gaza strip off the map. there are no innocents there. end quote. several officials have openly talked about re-establishing
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israeli settlements in gaza. the current intelligence minister, among others, often talks about permanently displacing palestinians from gaza. israeli national security minister, who oversees the police has long advocated for the forceful expulsion of palestinians from the region. this is the current israeli national security minister. finance minister, responsible for much of the occupied west bank has likewise long expressed long racist views and called for the expulsion of palestinians from their lands. he called for segregated hospital wards for jews and arabs because, quote, arabs are my enemies, end quote. as a younger man he was arrested by israeli authorities on suspicion of anti- -- mr.
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president, this is a significant part of netanyahu's government. that -- those are some of the people whose war we are subsidizing. we can pretend to ignore all of this. we can pretend that today's israel is the israel of 20 or 30 years ago, but that is just not the case. and the reason i raise these issues and talk about some of the people in the israeli government is to understand that what is happening today in gaza is not an accident. it is a bringing forth, a doing of what many of these people have wanted to do for a long time. it should come as no surprise that this extreme government in israel right now is not simply
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waging a war against hamas and israel has a right to defend itself from the terrorist organization hamas, but it is at war with the entire palestinian people and fighting that war in a deeply reckless and immoral way. and that is why the netanyahu government has consistently ignored president biden's requests that they do more to men miez civilian -- minimize civilian casualties, that they be more targeted in their approach and they let more humanitarian aid in. and so, mr. president, given the attitude and the belief, the racist beliefs of a number of people in netanyahu government, let us take a look and see what is happening today in gaza. we all know that hamas, a terrorist organization, began this war with a horrific attack
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on israel that killed 1,200 innocent men, women, and children and took 230 captives, some of whom are still in cav activity -- captivity today. and as i said many times and repeated a moment ago, israel has the right to defend itself but it does not have the right to go to war against the entire palestinian people, including women and children. mr. president, let's take a deep breath and listen to some of these facts, and no one disputes these facts. war is about six and a half months old. more than 34,000 palestinians have been killed and 77,000 have been wounded. 70% of whom are women and children. 70% of whom are women and children. that means that 5% -- 5% of the
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2.2 million people in gaza have been killed or wounded in a six and a half month period. that is an astronomical figure. a number of people dead and wounded, the percentage of them, 70% are women and children, it is almost beyond comprehension. mr. president, 19,000 children are now orphans in gaza, 19,000 having lost their parents in this war. and when you think about the children in gaza, literally it is hard to imagine. imagine a 7-year-old in an area where the whole community has been flattened, where there is massive debt, no food, no water, into schools, your parents may or may not be alive, relatives are dead, that is what the
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children in gaza are going through right now and i doubt that any of them will ever fully recover from the sidekick trauma, the terrible, unbelievable trauma they are experiencing at this moment. mr. president, the killing has not stopped. over the weekend, 139 palestinians were killed and 251 were injured. of these, 29 were killed in and around rafah, including 20 children and six women, one of whom with was pregnant. just today -- today more news emerged from mass graves found by palestinian health authorities and u.n. observers at the hospital. so far more than 300 bodies have been found. u.n. human rights office reports that the dead include elderly people, wounded and some have
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been found stripped of their clothes and some apparently had their hands tied, the u.n. said. mr. president, what can we say about this horror? roughly 1.7 million people, and it's, again, hard to understand. members of congress, think about your own state and what this would mean and look like in your own states. we're dealing with a population of 2.2 million people, which is three and an of half times the size of the state of vermont. roughly 1.7 million people, over 75% of the population, have been driven from their homes. it's not a community which has been forced to evacuate in order for a military action to take place, this is three-quarters of the population driven from their homes.
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satellite associate shows -- data shows that 62% of the homes have been damaged or destroyed, including 231,000 housing units that have been completely destroyed. a number of months ago in vermont we had a terrible flood and dozens of houses were destroyed and i saw the impact of what the destruction of dozens of houses in my small state meant. we're talking about 221,000 housing units that have been completely destroyed. but it's not just housing. mr. president, gaza's civilian infrastructure has been devastated. there is little or no electricity apart from generators or solar power. most of the roads are badly damaged. more than half of the water and sanitation systems are out of commission. clean water is severely limited and is sewage, raw sewage is
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running through the streets creating disease. but it's not just housing and civilian infrastructure. and this is quite unbelievable, but there is a reason, i think, for all of this. none of this is happening by accident. mr. president, israel has systematically destroyed the health care system in gaza. we're not talking about an occasional accidental bomb that destroys a medical unit or a hospital. those things happen. what we are talking about is the reality that 26 out of 37 hospitals are completely out of service. they have been bombed and attacked in all kinds of ways. the 11 hospitals that are remaining are partially functioning but they are being overwhelmed by tens of thousands of trauma patients and they are short on medical supplies.
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see, 77,000 people who have been wounded and you've got almost all of the hospitals out of commission. and i met recently with a group of american and british doctors who recently returned from gaza where they had gone, bravely risking their own lives, tro try to help -- to try to help alleviate the terrible suffering taking place there and it is difficult to relate the unspeakable things they witnessed. they saw thousands of patients, many young children, killed or maimed in israeli bombings. they operated on little children already orphaned on dirty hospital floors. on many days they had no morphine. on other days the water -- no water or clean gloves. they knew many victims, even if they survived the week would die of infection without access to sanitary environments or ante biotics. they reported that the israelis would not allow them to bring in
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wheelchairs or syringes. they witnessed israeli forces cutting off food, electricity and water to hospitals and b abduct medical workers. they reported that israeli soldiers destroyed medical equipment like mri's, oxygen tanks for no reason. these are american doctors who witnessed these things. overall 84% of health facilities have been damaged or destroyed and more than 400 health care workers have been killed. an extraordinary number. but we're not just talking about housing being decimated. we're not just talking about physical infrastructure being decimated. we're not just talking about a health care system being decimated. mr. president, gaza is a young community, a lot of children live there.
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and their educational system has been destroyed. 56 schools have been bombed and completely destroyed, and 219 have been damaged. schools. the last of gaza's universities -- i think they had 12 universities in gaza. and the last one was demolished in january. now, i'm not quite sure how fighting hamas has anything to do with destroying universities, but it does lead to the fact that some 625,000 students in gaza have today no access to education. mr. president, just today, today, david satterfield, the u.s. special enjoy to the gaza humanitarian crisis said that the risk of famine throughout war-devastated gaza, especially in the north, issout -- un kwoet unquote -- is, quote, unquote,
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very high. quote, we always stress we're in a manmade situation. so on top of the destruction of housing, infrastructure, health kc care, and education, we're now looking at mass starvation and malnutrition. the united nations estimates that more than one million palestinians, including hundreds of thousands of children, face starvation. desperate gazians have been scraping by for months foraging for leaves or eating animal feed. at least 28 children have died of malnutrition and dehydration and that is a number that came out several weeks ago. there is a he no reason to believe that the real number is much, much higher. usaid administrator samantha powell said famine was already
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present in northern gaza. without feed, clean water, sanitation, or sufficient health care, hundreds of thousands of people are at severe risk of dehydration, infection, and easily preventable diseases. yet for months, thousands of trucks carrying lifesaving food, medicine, and other supplies have sat just miles away from starving children. got that? and i hope we all try to put that image in our minds. starving children over here. trucks loaded with food on the other side of the border unable to get through. and they were kept from entering gaza by israeli restrictions and a brutal war fought with little regard for civilians. but let us be clear. and i think this is the main point that i want to make this evening. this war stopped being about defending israel and going to
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war against hamas a long time ago. this is not any longer a war against the terrorist organization called hamas. this is now a war that has everything to do with the destruction of the very fabric of palestinian life. that is the goal of this war. it is impossible to look at these facts and not conclude that the israeli government's policy has been to make gaza uninhabitable. that's what some of their government leaders have wanted and that is in fact what is happening. these are not accidents of war, mistakes. this is calculated policy. indeed, this is what has been going on systematically over the last six months. these cruel actions are entirely consistent with the public statements of numerous israeli senior officials, including prime minister netanyahu
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himself. mr. president, that brings us to the united states' role in this horrific war. put simply, we are deeply complicit in what is happening. this is not an israeli war. this is an israeli-american war. most of the bombs and most of the military equipment the israeli government is using in gaza is provided by the united states and subsidized by american taxpayers. the u.s. military is not dropping 2,000-pound bombs on civilian apartment buildings. u.s. military is not doing that. but we are supplying those bombs. the united states of america is not blocking the borders and preventing food, water, and medical supplies from getting to desperate people. we are not doing that. but we have supplied billions of dollars to the netanyahu government which is doing just
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that. so this is not just an israeli war. this is an american war as well. and yet despite the massive financial and military support the united states has provided to israel for many years, netanyahu's extremist government has ignored urgent calls from the president and others to alter their military approach and to end this humanitarian disaster. in my view, the united states' unconditional, financial, and military support for israel must end. and that is why i offered an amendment to this bill to do in fact what a majority of the american people want us to do, and that is no longer to provide military aid to the destructive netanyahu government. mr. president, i would have welcomed the chance to vote for
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the humanitarian aid provision in this bill, terribly important that we start feeding people not only in gaza but in sudan and all over the word. it's an important provision. i want to support it. i believe very strongly that we should support ukraine and help them end, defeat the impeeralist ventures of putin and the russian army, but i'm not going to be able to do that because i'm going to stand with the american people today who oppose more money for netanyahu. so let me conclude, mr. president, by simply saying this. what we are doing today is very bad policy. we are aiding and abetting the destruction of the palestinian people. what we are doing today is not what the american people want.
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i say to my democratic friends, it is absolutely not what -- a lot of republicans don't want us to continue that as well, but a strong majority of democrats are saying enough with netanyahu's war. you just can't give him another $10 billion for unvetted military aid. i suppose as things happen in congress, we'll ignore the needs of the american people. we will not pay attention to what they want, and then they were shocked, just shocked that we have a 14% approval way have order? this is an extremely important day in the history of our country and of the free world. they're all watching, waiting to see what we would do. when putin escalated his war against ukraine, i told our colleagues that allies and
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