feel, will won't feel scared to walk outside to be with their friends, to play outside and not to be scared to be, like, to go to the store and to have fun, just continue life and be a regular human. well, i don't want them to be scared, so thank you, everyone. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. my name is suha, i'm the mother of tareq. i cannot tribe the pain that i felt seeing my beloved son held in an israeli prison without charges, denied medical care and suffering from a brutal beating given to him by the israeli

police. when i first heard about his vicious attack he faced at the hand of the us rail hi police, i saw -- israeli police, i saw his bloody face and his swollen face and his unconscious body in the hospital. i feared for his life. i didn't know whether my son was going to survive or not. i could not bear to watch the video of his beating. what if he was screaming for help? i could not be by his side to comfort him. when i arrived at the hospital to see him, there was an israeli police officer guarding his door. he refused to let me in at first and i pleaded to him, i told him, but i'm his mother until my

husband convinced him finally to let me see my son. when i got the chance to go in and see him, before i got in the israeli police officer told me that i could not get near him, touch him or speak to him. when i looked over at him, it was like looking at someone i didn't know, i was meeting for the first time. his face was distorted. he just, he did not look normal. um, he was sleeping, and i wasn't used to seeing him sleep at that time because he liked to stay up and, you know, with his friends. we were on vacation, and it was midnight, and i knew that he always told me, mom, you know, can i stay up. so when i saw him in that state, i thought he was dead.

i fell into a state of shock, and my husband took me off to the side, and i told him to stay in the hospital because i didn't know what could happen next. he was handcuffed to the hospital bed as well. i finally, i went home. the next day josh wagner from the u.s. consulate had contacted me and told me he had made an appointment at the jailhouse to visit tareq. so we all went. when we got this, we were told that we weren't allowed to see him. josh wagner proceeded to tell them that he had an appointment, and he was persistent, and he told them that he wasn't going to leave until he was able to see tareq that day. he called the u.s. embassy and the israeli embassy for three hours back and forth be until finally they let him in by

himself to see hah reek. to see tareq. i told him a couple of things before he went in. i said, please, make sure he's okay. make sure he's getting his antibiotics, because i was told he was given antibiotics, but they were in hebrew, and he doesn't read hebrew. so at that point he was in the jail with the people, the same people which were the israeli police that beat him, so i didn't know what to expect from them next. were they going to give him the antibiotics that he needed? were they going to comfort him with the comfort that he needed? because they took him out of the hospital just a few hours after his little bit of medical attention that he received. and with his condition, he needed comfort. he needed to be in an air-conditioned, comfortable bed with people who could comfort him.

and be able to take his medication. i'm grateful to be back in america safe with my son, but i know palestinians go through what my son faced every day of their lives. tariq was not able to grieve his cousin's death. as a result of the beating israeli police gave him that same day that his cousin was brutally murdered by israeli extremists. as we are still grieving today. instead of the police protecting us, they taunted us and told us that mohamed was just the first to be killed and that 300 palestinians would be killed for the three israeli teenagers that were killed. we did not kill those three israeli teenagers. why were they doing this to us? my son and family have been very

traumatized by this whole experience. our cousins are still in jail til this day, and the only reason tariq got out was because he was an american, and his beating was caught on tape. while some israeli officials try to justify the vicious beating my son received by smearing his name, my son has never been charged with any crime. the lack of sympathy that they showed towards my son's beating was just unbearable for me. nothing, nothing can justify restraining the hands of a 15-year-old child and beating him unconscious. and even after he was unconscious, they proceeded to kick him in the face. although as americans we enjoy great freedom in america, in jerusalem we felt treated worse than second class citizens by the israeli government.

they treated us differently because we had a different religion and ethnicity. like my palestinian cousins, i felt that my family had no rights. my son was viciously attacked while in custody. he was in jail for four days. we were forced to pay $1,000 bond, and my son faced nine days of house arrest away from his family although he committed no crime and faced no charges. this ruined the rest of his vacation. when we left america, israeli police raided the family home we were staying and arrested all the males in the household. they are still being held today without any charges. the israeli police involved in the beating of my son must be held accountable. no mother, no other mother must

go through the pain that i went through. most of the officers involved in the beating and denial of medical care have yet to face any repercussion. my son still suffers from body aches and pain and headaches, not to mention the emotional trauma he must now struggle through. i just pray that america and the world can have the same sympathy for the countless children who are wrongfully arrested or even killed by israel who do not carry a u.s. passport like my son, tariq. nub of this -- none of this would have happened if the israeli goth valued the life of my son and other palestinian muslims and christian chirp in the same -- children in the same way they value the life of israeli children. right now in gaza so many

children are dying, mostly women and children. someone needs to take a stand and stop this now. not later, not tomorrow, now. if it was the other way around where israeli civilians were being killed, this would have been dealt with differently. it's not fair. the life of a palestinian in gaza should be valued as much as the life of any human being. thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much for those beautiful words, and thank you all for coming. i really appreciate everyone's sacrifice in squeezing in. congressman ellison, the many respected guests, tariq's father who just walked in, welcome. we would also make a request that whoever's in the hallway,

can you just make sure everybody in the hallway is quiet so that people can hear without interruption? and, again, thank you for everyone's patience in reading. my name is hassan shibley, i'm an attorney and executive director of care florida and attorney for the khdeir family. care florida is probably the largest civil rights advocacy organization that has full-time lawyers that help all victims of discrimination in florida and victims of government harassment regardless of their race and religion. as an american attorney, what happened to tariq at the hands of a nation that claims to be a democracy and claims to be an ally of the united states and receives billions of dollars of foreign aid really boggles my mind. i mean, because what i've seen happen to tariq, my client, and what i'm seeing right thousand happen to his cousin and family members in retaliation is just unconscionable for somebody who's grown up in a legal system such as ours that respects the

judicial process, innocent until proven guilty and so forth. there are three things that really disturb me from a legal perspective in how tariq and his family have been treated and are currently being treated. first, that the israeli police can brutally beat a child whose arms are restrained without all the officers involved being brought to justice. you can watch the video. you can go to careaccording and watch the video of tariq's brutal beating. they restrained his hands. one sat on hip, the other kept kicking him, continued to kick his unconscious body and then dragged him by holding his hands behind his back. you can see the pool of blood left where they beat him. so far only one of those officers has faced any reper cuts, and that's a 15-day suspension. he may face criminal charges, we don't know for sure yet. none of the other officers involved face be any charges. at the same time, the police

department which denied him proper medical care for six hours and then took him to see a doctor very briefly, the doctor said tariq has internal bleeding, he has blood in his urine and he needs to see a specialist, and he needs to go immediately. the israeli police denied him that request. the request of their own doctor, threw him back in jail for another four days without proper medical anticipation. so none of those officers have been sent to jail or wrought to justice. -- brought to justice. what kind of message does that send? it shouldn't matter whether he's a citizen or not to. it's enough that he's a child. and yet none of those officers or maybe only one of those offices faces any sort of repercussion. it almost gives the green light for the police to continue to treat the palestinian people in such an inhumane way. i'm sure they did not know he was american when they did that, nor did they realize the repercussion that would come. this will only escalate the violence because the palestinian people will see the israeli

officers can do whatever they want to them. and while nothing can ever justify terrorism, it only pushes people towards destructive engagement. when the government that's supposed to protect them is actually brutally attacking them without any repercussions. so we need to insure that there is, that those officers who attacked tariq are brought to justice and that u.s. taxpayer dollars are not funding those kinds of police forces. second, the second issue that really disturbed me is that the israeli police can indefinitely detain without detention palestinian children in jail without charges. tariq went through all of this, to this day he's faced any charges, nor has he done anything wrong, nor will he be facing charges. three of his cousins were beaten p and arrested with him. they're still in jail to this day. it's unconscionable that a country can lock up children indefinitely without charges and that we are funding that nation. so this is something that we as lawmakers in this country, as

the american public really need to reconsider. third, that the israeli officials can with impunity retaliate against the family of tariq khdeir by arresting his uncle and cousins the night he returned to the u.s. the night he left, they went in the home where they were saying, and they ransacked the place -- we have the pictures available -- and they arrested his uncle and cousins. they're still in this stale today without -- still in jail today without any charges. what has become manifestly clear to me in my representation of the khdeir family and that the israeli government has an open, double standard that a treats a whole class of people worse than second class suicides because they have a different -- citizens because they have a different ethnic background and a different religion. that's what this is all about. pal stint jas -- palestinians are not treated equally before the law. another example is the double

standards we see in home demolitions. we know that those who brutally attacked tariq's cousin, mohamed, their homes, not only did they attack him, but they burned him alive. that is terrorism. now, their homes were not demolished, and thank god because i do not believe the homes of any suspect should ever be demolished. that's collective punishment. it's against international law, certainly u.s. law. yet the homes of those terrible terrorists who brutally killed the three teens, they were demolished because they were palestinians. this kind of double standard is not helping alleviate the conflict. our government cannot continue to fund israeli police and military so long as israel continues to engage in gross human rights and civil rights violations and continues to treat an swire group of -- an entire group of people differently because they are of different ethnic or religious origin to. not only because such funding is immoral, but because it is contrary to u.s. national security as victims of israeli

human rights violations may hold the u.s. accountable for the crimes committed by israel that are made possible by our tax dollars. in light of the billions of dollars congress authorizes annually, we're calling on members of congress and the executive administration to do everything in their power to, one, insure all officers involved in tariq's beating are brought to justice so as to insure this doesn't happen to any child again. it doesn't matter whether they're israeli, palestinian, jewish, christian, muslim, it doesn't matter. all children should be treated equally under the law. two, we're calling on the state department to help secure the release of tariq's cousins and family members who were wrongfully arrested in retaliation for tariq speaking out. three, we must condition further aid to israel on israel adopting laws and practices to insure all people in israel, gaza and the west bank are treated equally before the law regardless of their race or religion. four, we are calling on the state department and congress

and the executive branch to do everything within their power to pressure israel to insure that all people have basic due process. there should not be a country in the world -- especially not a country that calls itself an ally of the u.s -- that can indefinitely detain children or any person without due process and without charges. failure for the u.s. to take strong action to insure that individuals who attacked tariq are brought to justice and the policies and practices which led to the beating are changed will only escalate the conflict. think about what kind of message that sends the world. insuring all people have due process is in everyone's best interests. in fact, the best way to support israel to insure that it abides by the high standards of due process and the law. what happens to all the officers involved in tariq's beating and the retaliation against his family and what action the u.s. takes will be very telling as to whether israel tolerates the treatment of palestinians on an institutional level and whether the u.s. will tolerate that sort

of behavior. may god bless america and israel with leadership that values all human life equally regardless of race, religion, ethnic origin or nationality. that will bring peace to the world. thank you, god bless america and god bless you all. [applause] >> so thank you. it's, it's refreshing, i think, in the times that we're working in now and living to see a full room here and and to have people flowing out into the hallway. it's a bit refreshing for the work that we're all involved in and the things that we're consumed with day-to-day. i'd first like to thank everybody for being here, sharing stories. they are awful difficult to speak to about. you know, i can't imagine. i think as an american with the privilege that we do have and the rights and freedoms that we

take for granted to think about a proto longed occupation -- prolonged occupation that's gone on since 1967 where soldiers live near communities regularly, settlements -- it's okay -- settlements cut throughout the west bank, east jerusalem. they, the occupation is unjust. that's all. i mean, that's it. at the heart of it, it's systemic impunity, right? you have arrests where teens, palestinian teens are targeted in particular communities where, that are located near settlements, military bases, roads used by israeli settlers, really anything where the occupation has infrastructure, has its teeth, this is where palestinian children particularly are impacted.

so my organization, i work for defense for children international palestine. we're the only palestinian human rights organization that focuses specifically on children. so we started in 1991 as an organization that provided legal aid to palestinian children charged in the israeli military courts. in east jerusalem children, palestinian children, children generally are brought within israeli civilian courts. but the treatment is very much the same across the occupied territory, the west bank including east jerusalem. tariq's case is horrific but it's not exceptional. his case is a typical case. we document hundreds of cases each year. we provide legal representation to kids, and you really have a system that provides very little legal protection, very little legal rights to children. children are arrested from their homes in the middle of the night by heavily-armed soldiers.

they're blindfolded, their hands are tied with plastic cords generally behind their back. in 75% of cases we document, there's some form of physical violence in varying degrees during the arrest, transfer and interrogation phases. so this system really, it's set up to control people. and the military law, the military framework really, it's not a justice system. it's a system of control. and you see that in the way that arrest play out. you don't see very many kids being arrested in the center of ramallah, right? but if you go in the northern west bank, if you go to the southern west bank where you have military presence, where you have settlers, where you have settler roads, these are the communities being impacted. from the cases that we document, the kids that we represent it doesn't matter if you throw stones or not. it really doesn't because the system isn't based on evidence.

it's not based on the rule of law. it's not based on international juvenile justice standards or any international standards at all really. you have kids that based on the location in the west bank, maybe it's a village that has weekly demonstrations against the occupation against, you know, the confiscation of land, the root of the separation law. they, these communities are impacted, these communities are where kids like tariq, the same age, are violently abused, run through a criminal justice system that provides very little legal protection. so just briefly, we take for granted the right to counsel in the u.s. everybody can probably recite the miranda warnings or at least you should be able to because they're privileges that we enjoy that protect us. maybe not all the time, but in theory they should.

those rights don't exist, right? a child's arrested from their home in the middle of the night, brought to an interrogation center, you know? if they're arrested at two a.m., they may show up at an interrogation center in the west bank in an israeli settlement being interrogated by an israeli police officer or a military intelligence officer say, nine a.m., ten i'm. during that six, seven-hour transfer period, they've within in the back of -- they've been in the back of a jeep bound and blindfolded, beaten. they've been taken out of that jeep, brought to a military camp, they're placed outside in the rain. they don't have a jacket, they might not have shoes. this is the sort of systematic, ill treatment that has been documented by our organization and also other organizations, u.n. agencies, really everyone for over a decade. and you still have very little practical changes. when there are practical changes to the military law system, they don't really affect anything.

there is a change, it used to be chirp -- children were considered anyone below 16 under military law. so if you are 17, 18, you're an adult. under israeli law it was anyone under 18 was considered a child. right? sort of the basic definition of discrimination. you're treating people differently based on their identity. so that's been changed. what did it do? not much. it didn't affect sentencing provisions, so if you're a 16 or 17-year-old, you can still be sentenced as an adult. it didn't affect time periods for when you have to be brought before a military judge for the first time. so if you're 12, 13 be, 14, 15, you can be brought, you have to be brought before a mill care court judge within 48 hours, but if you're 16, 17, it's four days which is the same as an adult. so really practical changes haven't happened. and that's why we need to really push for challenging the

systematic impunity that exists as part of the occupation. because i think when people think of military law, international law, the occupation, i think there's a strong focus on laws, but there's not much focus on rule of law, implementation of law, what those protections actually mean and what they're necessary to provide. and that's one thing that our organization works to do. in may we documented the case of two palestinian teenagers shot with live ammunition while they were at a demonstration: they were killed. it was caught on video, and, you know, at the time this, like a significant shock. people will listen. it can't be worse than this, you know? the evidence for this case is just insurmountable. we have so much. it's on video, come on. let's, you know, there has to be some type of accountability.

to this day the soldiers that are responsible for those actions, for killing those two kids have not been brought to justice, have not even had any accountability of any sort produced by the israeli military, by the israeli government. the investigation is ongoing. it's closed. there's a gag order. can't talk about it. there's no information about it. but what we do know from representing kids, from documenting violations of palestinian children throughout the occupied palestinian territory, there's very little accountability, and that's really the heart of the problem. the occupation is impunity. attacks in gaza, i can't say enough. it's systematic impunity. kids are dying, kids are being bombed, kids have been shot, shelled, bombed for years. the siege of gaza, it violates international law.

yo -- and you see governments not standing up to them and not pressuring for an end to the humanitarian crisis. a ceasefire these to happen immediately, but that ceasefire needs to be accompanied with an actual lifting of the siege, because the status quo is not sustainable. children will continue to bear the brunt of the violence as long as the status quo is perpetuated. so it's been depressing. so you bring a smile to my face because this room is full, and i just want to thank you for being here, for listening and, please, talk, do something. thank you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you, everyone, for coming today. perhaps if folks in the hallway could keep it down, that'll help for the media in the room. my name is sanjiv berry, i'm the mideast director for amnesty international usa. it's my privilege to join all of you here today in these very dark and troubling times. i want to thank the members of the press who are here, folks in the community who have been concerned, congressional staff as well as congressman keith ellison. thank you for being here. thank you for your opinion piece in in "the washington post", thank you for calling for a lifting of the blockade under which palestinians have suffered greatly for seven years. thank you. [applause] these are very challenging times, and in my brief comments

i'm going to talk about the human rights violations that are happening across israel and the occupied palestinian territories. we've heard the terrible story of the experiences of tariq, his mother and their extended family. sadly, they are not alone in their experiences, and israel and the occupied palestinian territories -- which includes the west bank and east jerusalem as well as gaza -- are in a human rights crisis of massive proportions. first, it's worth talking about the crisis that i think has brought us all into this room today, and that is what is happening in gaza right now. the latest numbers are terrible. 1400 pal stint whereases -- palestinians, perhaps many more at the time i'm speaking now, killed. some 50 or more israeli soldiers, three civilians in israel killed and perhaps a quarter million or more palestinian civilians in gaza displaced from their homes, some numbers going much higher than that. some 10% of gaza's 1.8 million civilians now having fled their homes and sitting and lying

huddled in u.n. schools and other facilities across the gaza strip. this is a terrible time for human rights not only because hamas rockets are flying into israel, and these are indiscriminate rockets that do not discriminate between civilians or combatants, not only because those rockets are being fired, but also because the israeli government is engaging in likely war crimes this the gaza strip. these likely war crimes against a backdrop of blockade which for seven years has deprived palestinian civilians of opportunities to live and work. every time you see a press release by the israeli government praising itself for allowing humanitarian shipments into gaza, remember the following: gaza palestinian civilians do not want humanitarian shipments, and the only reason shipments are come cooing boo -- into the gaza strip is because the israeli government has shut down the gaza economy, and as a result, gaza palestinians no longer have factories to work in, they no

longer have jobs. .. can't charge their phones, if they can't turn on their computers because they don't have power, how is the world going to know what is happening in gaza today? this is the problem that is faced by 1.8 million civilians living in the gaza strip.

that's why amnesty international is deeply concerned and is calling for bold and significant moves that need to happen. one, u.n. security council needs to immediately establish an arms embargo on all of the parties to the conflict. that includes israel, hamas and palestinian armed groups. until the u.n. security council does so individual nations and parties they're supplying weapons to the party to the conflict must stop immediately. here in the united states, amnesty international u.s.a. is calling on u.s. government to stop supplying weapons, arms, military equipment and military aid to israel. israel is a major party to the conflict and it is time to stop u.s. supplied weapons, arms and military aid to israel. it's ridiculous that u.s. secretary of state john kerry is talking about the cease-fire while simultaneously the u.s. government is releasing more artillery shells and other forms of munitions to the israeli government. just yesterday amnesty international released the latest information on some

$275 million worth of arms, equipment and other forms of military aid that had been released over the past two and a half years ranging from rival parts and rifle cartridges to missile parts and rockets to the israeli government. those $276 million that had been supplied in arms and munitions to the israeli government cannot include the big ticket items like jets and naval equipment and other sorts of high technology. all of this needs to stop. all countries supplying weapons to israel, hamas or palestinian armed groups need to stop immediately and that includes the united states. in addition to that we need to see with regard to the u.n. security council in the referral of the entire met in a binding security council resolution to the international criminal court. so there could be a prompt investigation of potential prosecution of everyone involved in violations of international law and international human rights law whether we're talking about israeli soldiers are those who are firing artillery which by its very nature it indiscriminate and untargeted

intense civilian areas or talk about hamas militants firing rockets into southern population initial. everyone who is violating international community, international law and human rights law needs to be held a couple and the u.n. security council should do that immediately. now want to move to the question of what is happening in other parts of the occupied palestinian territories, specifically the west bank including east jerusalem. what we are today is just one example of many in which palestinian civilians have suffered greatly under israeli occupation and the conduct in the west bank and the occupied palestinian territories. earlier this year in february of 2014, amnesty international released its latest report with regard to this called trigger-happy. there's some copies outside and have a copy with me on the tab table. in our report we documented how israeli soldiers and forces have violated their obligations under international human rights law

by using excessive force to stifle defense and freedom of expression result in a pattern of unlawful killings and injuries to civilians including children of the occupied west bank including east jerusalem. so the report shows how the israeli forces have been permitted to do so with virtual impunity and with perhaps just one exception, none of the soldiers are combatants involved in some of these violations of basic human rights have been prosecuted by the israeli government. to give an example of some of the numbers were talking about, between january 2011 and december 2013, from china 2011 to december 2013, over 8000 palestinians including 1500 children were injured by means other than live ammunition. other than live ammunition including rubber coated metal bullets and the reckless use of tear gas. in addition to the 8000 who were injured by means other than live

ammunition, 261 palestinians including 67 children were seriously injured by live emanation fired by soldiers. in 2013, some 27 palestinians were killed and occupied palestinian territory west bank including four children, eight were killed and 2012, 10 killed in 2011. what we are seeing india 2013 was a number of deaths due to excessive use of force by israel security forces that was more than 2011 and 2012 combined. i want to be clear about what numbers are not included in this. these numbers do not include cases of killings are injuries and context such as search and arrest operations and report also does not cover israel's use of excessive force against palestinian protesters in the gaza strip such as in the buffer zone that is guarded by israel. we're talking about number of deaths and wounded outside of those numbers.

this internally to situation in which you have no accountability in which israeli soldiers and security forces are never held accountable with perhaps just one exception that i know of for these grave abuses. all of this happens against the backdrop of repressive laws to which you have a racist dual-track system of law in the west bank where palestinians eventually the under israeli military law while israeli settlers living in illegal settlements that are of a war crime under international law while the israeli settlers live under civilian law. to give you a couple of examples of the laws palestinian civilians live under that they are forced to violate simpler by engaging in freedom of expression, military order 101 regarding the prohibition of acts of incitement and hostile propaganda issued by the israeli army commander in the west bank region in 1967. that lott has remained in place since 1967.

military order 101 prohibits all gatherings of 10 or more persons both for political purposes or for a matter that could be interpreted as political or even quote to discuss such a topic unless they have received authorization in advance under permit issued by the israeli military commander in the area. let me break that down for you. under israeli military order 101, in the occupied territory it is illegal for palestinian civilians to peacefully protest the occupation they live under without the permission of the israeli military commander enforcing the occupation. when palestinians to violate military order 101 they are at high risk of becoming one of the 8000 or more palestinians over the past three years u.s. experienced serious injury to bullets, rubber coated bullets, tear gas or other forms of violence in the occupied palestinian territories. one more example. i'm sorry, forgot to mention the penalty for breaking order ones are one.

anyone preaching the order faces imprisonment for up to 10 years and/or a hefty fine but these are the penalties for engaging basic freedom of expression in the occupied palestinian territories. this is what we're up against and what to flak for f1 before i leave the microphone one last case. that is a case of them employment a you're going to participate in amnesty international's research mission to the occupied palestinian territories, specifically the west bank. i visited a village which is a palestinian village whose main road has been blocked by israeli soldiers so in neighboring summit can expand into its farm territory. i sat in the living room of the a man who is a cumulative who has been leading peaceful protests against the settlement and enforcement of the settlement by the israeli military. he is now in jail, in jail under combination of false charges for supposedly throwing rocks and supposedly inciting others. but also he's also being held right now by the israeli security forces for a

demonstration without a permit which is an example of how palestinian civilians face harsh crackdowns from israeli security forces simply for peacefully protesting the very reality of the occupation. for the u.s. government today, the time is coming for it to start holding the israeli government accountable. this should happen a long time ago but now with world opinion shifting a new direction with the images of so many dead babies, dead children, flooding he pulls twitter account and in boxes, it's time for schedule shift in the way the u.s. government approaches this issue. u.s. should stop buying weapons to the israeli government, you should start holding allies accountable and just should start standing up for the basic rights of civilians, be they israeli, palestinian, jewish, whatever their ethnicity, nationality or religion. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. thank you for joining us here

today. my name is laila el-haddad, i'm a palestinian on the and social activist from gaza city. i live in columbia, maryland. and my tax dollars killed eight members of my family this morning. i would like to just take a moment to read their names. they were fleeing their home when the second israeli missile followed them and killed them. i would just like to take a moment of silence and prayer, please come for these fallen, and the thousands of others. thank you.

i would like to talk to you a little bit about gaza. because after all that's what we're all here. i'd like to start by giving you a little bit of context. because all too often we hear about this as the latest cycle of violence. as a response, as a justified retaliation by israel, as self-defense. to the killing of three israeli teens. the reality is, gaza right now is being bombarded. it is completely blocked out, beseiged and blockaded. this is a situation unheard of in modern history. for a population that is already largely refugees, that is already deceased, that is already stateless to then be bombarded mercilessly with no intervention. gaza is roughly twice the size of washington, d.c.

it has a little over 1.5 million inhabitants, 1.7, going on 1.8. most of those inhabitants are under the age of 18. they are under the age of 18. three quarters of them are refugees, meaning they are not from the place they are compelled to live. they are from towns and villages, many of them depopulated, distorted, ethnically cleansed prior to 1948. they sought refuge in gaza and they were beseiged in gaza and they're not allowed to return to their native lands. now, unlike the unhcr that has a mandate to provide or these refugees, it does not have a protection mandate. so these palestinians that are falling, but in targeted literally have nowhere to run. we've heard that over and over again but it bears reminding. and no one to protect them. no one to protect them. there are no bomb shelters. there are no sidelines.

there is no one to protect them. this leads many to refer to gaza as the world's largest open-air prison. this assumes of course that there is a crime that is punishable. so i would like to refer to it more of an internment camp are as different award for human rights watch called it a zoo, a holding bin for animals where it's open season 24/7, where the question of freedom of inhabitants is never raised. the question of freedom never raised. gaza still legally occupied. we hear about, you know, israel disengaged in 2005 at the left everything to what more do they want? rockets are still flight out of gaza. the reality is all of gaza affected markers of sovereignty are still controlled by israel. the borders, the airspace, that's the, there's a naval blockade on gaza. the population registry, the tax system to any child who was born in gaza must be registered through israel.

families come tens of thousands of palestinian families are split apart, including my own, because one half of the number of them is a resident of gaza under israeli law and the other is not an israel denies them the right to be able to visit, to live. my husband as a refugee. is not allowed to come visit me when i go to gaza to go to his own land where his father was born, his ancestors lived. so didn't all of gaza's effective markers of sovereignty are controlled by israel. gaza has been subject to some form of closure for more than two decades. we hear of it being sort of a result of our response to hamas election and target hamas is a red herring. and blockaded in its most stringent form started prior to the election of hamas. i was there at the time. i was a reporter but it started after israel's disengagement in

2005. right after that they shut down your letter all other commercial crossings resulting in billions of dollars of lost to the palestinian economy, plunging into unprecedented humanitarian crisis according to amnesty and it is. this is before hamas was elected to power. they cut off gaza from the rest of palestine, from the rest of palestinians and for the world because it is not just gaza. gaza cannot survive on its own. it is part of the greater palestinian nation a source of west bank, east jerusalem and others as we'll were denied the right to turn. this is a siege by the with its got more and restriction over the years that is not a siege that targets hamas or whoever the israeli say it is targeting but it is in the israeli architect own words those who designed the siege. and on which it was designed to target gaza's protective -- productive sector. denied in the most basic human rights.

and this is i quote when pressed by the high court a few years ago about the purpose of the siege. they came back and said the tenants are no development, no prosperity, no human can crisis. in other words, the siege is intended to stifle devoted. stifle prosperity, but not to get things so bad that it creates immediate outcry and a human can crisis. so in the foodstuffs and goods are not into gaza, a trickle conscious enough to keep them teetering on the edge. that was a caloric equation, just enough calories allowed in to make sure that there's food for the population. food that because of the universal unemployment, impoverished and, people cannot access. this has resulted in mass a dependence come something like 80% of palestinians are now food insecure means that rely on some sort of food ration to be able to survive. this should not be the case. it is artificial, purposeful,

deliberate, calculated, malicious. beseiged is also in the words of the israeli army intended to further fragmentation of the palestinian people and separate them from one another. from their counterparts in the west bank. and on the outside. it is a siege that has restricted houses phishing zone. it is a coastal territory, the three nautical miles. oslo gave palestinians the right eisai restricted it to 20 nautical mile to their about to finish three michael miles. as you go as it did to the fishy markets in gaza, all of the fish the josie are about this big. there's nothing for them to fish anymore. it is a siege that restricts farmers ability to reach the farmland, after which is along the border area that is now under israeli control, part of the buffer zone. restricts the ability to reach the farmland at the risk of being shot, at the risk of being

incarcerated, which we often hear. you don't hear of these palestinians being killed. these fishermen been shot at, these farmers, the shepherds. this is what is happening. it is a siege that racetracks, bands palestinian students in gaza from going to study in the west bank in east jerusalem and other universities. remember, they make up the majority of gaza's population. it is a siege that bans largely banned the export of any of gaza's goods outside of gaza. the movement of people and then of gaza as well as the import of construction material to be able to rebuild the fact is, homes. this is after the operation to the result is universal male unemployment which in turn has resulted in increased poverty rate, massive a dependence of food insecure to into because there's no shortage of food in gaza, just radically a purposefully reduced access to food.

almost zero purchasing power. this is happening while israel preserves its right to be speaking of the status quo, the status quo, distracted as at any moment, to strike any facility come anywhere to assess at will to incarcerate them to blockade gaza. it preserves this right. palestinians are asked remain silent in the face of all of this, in the face of these unspeakable brutalities, extermination and slow, silent strength relation. with only the right to remain signed. wants this picture is painted you can then begin to understand what life is like, what life has been like for palestinians in gaza and that no sane person would tolerate, no sane person would tolerant, no people coverage is status quo comprised of such a succeeding conditions carefully designed to crush their will to survive, their normalcy and their freedoms and productivity. nobody, nobody, nobody would accept this.

i spoke about the fishermen. i spoke about the farmers. wind farm i met in 2010 was at a farm in workshop put on by a union tried to learn how to rebuild his life because palestinian in gaza don't sit quietly and resigned themselves to the status quo. they want to survive. they want to continue to exist because of the existence is a form of resistance. i asked him what he was there, what had happened and he said 500 acres of this land were systematically razed to the ground by bulldozers and 50 of his beehives. he was trying to make a difficult decision of whether he should replant those trees that they choose to become fruitful and in the meantime become a dependent or resort to our culture or some other method of into the icy farmers all the time. i saw a farmer planting not once, twice, for the third time is all that growth happen with a spot on his face. saying they operate all of his

olive trees it is going to continue to go and plant his land because this was his way of surviving, of resisting peacefully. fishermen who counter the naval blockade have freshwater fish farms which is -- this is the ingenuity of the population. that continue to survive and be resilient. on to the current situation, i'll close with a. we got some of the biggest in 1400 palestinians killed and it's not just figures and statistics. more than 55 families, 55 families in their entirety, in their entirety completely eviscerated by the way. families huddled together in their homes, children like my family members running for safety. and thousands and thousands maimed and traumatized. more disturbing our accounts which are of owners schools taking direct hits despite multiple reports to the israelis of their location being given to the israeli army.

this is as recent as two days ago. and, of course, what about the power plant being bombed, which i'm very active on twitter and immediately after was bombed, 24 hours later that gaza twitterverse went silent, silent. there was hundreds, this is what marks this from others. hundreds of eyewitnesses giving minute by minute account as young as 15 and 16 as they're being bombarded, as they were fleeing, what was happening. they went silent. so you can draw the connection there. i like to just end with this account from and who is a physician and a women's human rights activist in gaza. she was seeing a couple of young children in a tertiary clinic being sent from the main hospital which was flooded and she gave this account to me in this in a yesterday morning. she said first of again with the start of an unnamed child we call number six. he was around three years and

ahead identify stickers on his arm saying unknown and number six. i was shocked. i asked the nurses and then with drivers what his name was but i was told no one knew. no one knew. they counted in a mass of destroyed houses. he was the only survivor of his family. he had a head injury and wounds to other parts of his body. dimitri i asked does anyone remember where the house was? they said it was immediately with accounting at all the buildings were destroyed, and mixed up with one another and sometimes children are thrown from one area to another so nobody knew where he lived. nobody knew. and then i realized, my aunt said, he is number six and that means there were five other unknown children before him. and many, many more children after him. i stop asking questions because i needed to do my work. second is a story of a six-year-old. he arrived in the extra unit. she has in him also and she used

to have a family. she was the only surviving member. she lost her parents and all of her brothers and sisters, and she was injured in the head. these are just two small examples of what is being done in gaza. now hear a lot of talk of israel's need to defend itself, its right to defend itself. israel's security. but israel's security can never be derived from imprisoning, bombarding, systematically incarcerating, demolishing houses and repressing the indigenous population of palestine. we're talking gaza today that gaza is just a symbol of the broader palestinian struggle. it is a brutal lesson, a pilot project. and i will end with this. a spokesperson has said on twitter that after the israeli attacks on the first human school there've been two others since this tweet. you in schools turned shelters,

using military a communist military aid. we should all hang our heads in shame. but from a shame it should come justice and dignity. and i should add security, freedom and accountability for the palestinian people. if you so much applause met. >> -- thank you so much. [applause] >> before we take a few questions, i'd like to ask congressman keith ellison to come up and deliver some remarks. [applause] >> i was and the like to welcome all of you to capitol hill, ask you to continue to come here.

this is your house, the people's house, and for whatever answers might be found here, given the u.s. involvement in this matter that you would knock the doors and walk the halls, talk about the cases and talk about the people. i want to give a special thank you and congratulations tariq who very bravely told his story eloquently, and honorably committee came and visited me yesterday. i want to thank you for visiting making but also want to thank your mother and father. i am a father of fo four myself, and i don't know what i would do if i saw my sons face looking like that. i guess i'd be grateful that he is still alive, but i'd be heartbroken. so i would just say, my prayers are with you, and certainly with you, mamma. so that's all of want, what you think our experts to give good test would. i want to say if there's one

thing that we really need to do to occupy and be in this space on capitol hill much more. we are contemplating another meeting, a briefing, after the august recess. and hopefully we get a bigger room. thanks. [applause] >> thank you very much, representative ellison. we really appreciate all of your courageous work and standing for a cease-fire and a lifting of the blockade as sunjeev mentioned it in a few minutes with left i'd like to open this up for a very brief questions from the audience. and i'd like to turn over the floor to any congressional staff people or media who may have questions. what we'll do is we'll take maybe three at a time and then the panelists can decide which

particular one they would like to answer. i asked the panelists to speak into these two microphones when they respond because those are the ones that pick up the sound. so with that, are there any questions? yes, please. [inaudible] >> okay. yes, please. [inaudible] >> a lot of people give, for example, when they call our office is hamas is firing rockets into israeli -- [inaudible] i mean human rights violation and just that is an atrocity but how do you counter that rex basically framing it in such a way that israel is not the victim in this situation, that

the pals -- palestinians are. >> do we have a third question? in the back. >> i'm wondering if the panelists considered what's going on in israel right now a violation of the 1976 arms control act. >> great. so i'm going to turn us over to the panelists. would anyone like the first question? >> i think in the context of what is happening now, we have to place it in the context of a seven-year long siege. i think it's not accurate to just situate it in the present. so when it comes to indiscriminate attacks, hamas is guilty of that, human rights watch, amnesty international go all the international human

rights agency, indiscriminate rocket attacks on his been published amount to a war crime. so it is targeting u.n. schools, so does the targeting hospitals, bombing civilian structures, targeting civilians directly, targeting children directly. those also amount to war crimes. so it's important to think about the context in gaza. someone else's war crime doesn't justify your war crime. international mentoring law is individual to the state. if another party to a conflict violates international law, that doesn't justify widespread attacks on the civilian population to both parties are obligated in both parties should be held accountable for international humanitarian law violation. sigh think that's a starting point. nobody is a victim. it doesn't matter about victims. it's about rule of law, about

implementing specific and precise calculations into can be targeted into can't. the civilian operation can't be a target no matter who the actor is. i think that's what is missing from a lot of the dialogue that surrounds the current conflict but also doesn't really raise itself within the broader context of the israeli occupation and the impact it has on the palestinian population. >> i've remember the first two questions. there was through the. the capture of the israeli soldier, the one on the question of rockets at the third -- so when the first question with regards to the capture of an israeli soldier. there are extensive provisions and protections under international law with regards to prisoners of war and captured soldiers. i don't have the full text of the geneva convention that applies to everybody. i will point out a few things

are not apply to soldiers captured in battle or combat and captured in battle. one, they should not be treated as a hostage. individuals captured on the battlefield should not be treated as bargaining chips or in other ways as hostage and this applies to all of the parties to the conflict, hamas, palestinian armed groups as well as the israeli military of those who it has captured. with regards to specific individuals who may been captured and others who may been captured, they should be allowed to committee for the with her family including sending and receiving letters. a need to be held in humane and dignified living conditions and the need to be given immediate access to the international committee of the red cross. there are more details in international law with regards to the treatment of prisoners of war and captured combatants that we could talk about later. with regards to the second question, no policymaker or elected official should be forced to take sides on the question of human rights. human rights means that everything should be protected

in the context of conflict and war. there should be no collective punishment which applies as a description to the gaza blockade, and policymakers and elected officials ought to have an excerpt from to stand up for human rights, whatever ethnicity, national our religion of the people in back. one way to think about this is the following. the u.s. government provides funding for the iron dome which protects israeli civilians from some rockets fired by hamas militants and palestinian armed groups. what is the iron dome for civilians in gaza to protect them against artillery fire and other munitions that are fired in the context of war crimes by the israeli military which is supplied by the united states? or is it the iron dome for the palestinians in gaza? that's the basic question is the u.s. government going to hold not just its perceived adversaries accountable but also its allies accountable for standing up for basic human rights? >> i think it's important that

the death tolls will speak for themselves. let's not forget that before any israel civilians were killed by hamas rocket or which, of course, we condemn against civilians, over 300 palestinians have been killed. at the time it was not a third of them put in children, four-fifths had been civilians. mostly women and children we really need to buy all human life is equally. i sincerely believe that that the lives of palestinian children been valued by the for the government, that they valued the lives of the jewish children would not have the high death tolls that we do. it's important to note right now that we are not funding hamas rocket fire. we condemn hamas rocket fire. we are funding israeli rocket fire that has killed over 1400 people, and let's not forget that the u.n., bodies of you have said israel is targeting civilians and civilian targets. is happening in our name as

americans because we are funding it and it's her duty to stand up against it. both for god and for international human rights law. >> don't let friends kill children. >> briefly on the question of the arms export control act, the uses to which u.s. weapons can be put by a foreign country are strictly limited to internal security and legitimate self-defense. i think what we've heard your very clearly is the use of force by israel is in no way legitimate self defense but it is being used to commit what we have heard of being likely war crimes and so forth. the challenge i think for this audience on capitol hill is to ensure that these laws are being applied. because no, israel should not be held to a different standard issue be held to the exact same standard that we have for other

countries. and for violating the arms export control act, there are clear consequences. a nation cannot receive any deliveries of arms or weapons or ammunition if it's in violation of this law. so if congress is a series about the laws in which it passes in these holes, but has to apply the law to issue. we have time for maybe two more questions. so let me do wan one and two ye. go ahead, please. >> so a lot of the justification for his attacks on the palestinian territories in the gaza strip is that hamas is hiding rockets into been controlled areas like hospital. what would your response be to document? >> given the fact that israel's iron home is successful in blocking rockets, is it correct to say that any rocket retaliation i israel is illegal

given the events of our in population in gaza? and that it should not launch any rocket, and, in fact, if it had not done so, it would have been better for its own security by not fomenting greater hatred, and in that way helping hamas. >> so i'll take the first question. i think it's similar to what i said previously. so the justification that human shields allow somebody to disregard civilian casualties, that's not international humanitarian law. that's wrong. right? if israel knows that the our missiles under a school, in the school, and hospital, they know

that civilians are there. and the presumption is that's not a military target. you can't attack that target. that's the calculation. i mean, each target needs to be evaluated in that way. you need to distinguish between military objects between sibling objects. what you do that, if that meant the object is going to cause a disproportionate impact his divine life, some instruction from someone infrastructure, you still cannot bomb that because there's a principle of distinction, principal of proportionality. and we see the attacks currently, previous attacks in november 2012 attacks, led by israeli military have really been characterized by complete disregard of international law. complete disregard of civilian life. and it goes back to the blockade. i think the blockade is characterized by complete disregard of civilian life. there's no distinction, very little proportionality in any of

this. did you want to add anything? >> you know, with regards to the question of the storage of hamas and palestinian armed groups munitions, amnesty international has been closely monitoring such reports. to date we have not seen any evidence of gaza civilians being compelled to be human shields as the israeli government has claimed. we're not seeing any evidence to support that, that hamas members have pushed or forced gaza civilians to act as human shields. we have noted incidents where hamas members have stored rockets near civilian areas, and there are of course the report of the several u.n. schools or facilities where rockets have been found. it's important to note though that those schools were not actively being used at that time. so with regards to the question of the extent of the questions focused on the following scenario of rockets being stored in or around actively civilian populated structures, amnesty

international has not found evidence to suggest that the are, in fact, munitions are rockets being stored in facilities where civilians are sitting as refugees or internally displaced people. >> meanwhile, i should add there is ample evidence, well document evidence by israeli human rights of israeli soldiers using palestinians as human shields. that's never discussed the enemy. i will just and by saying -- all of these children and their parents and grandchildren that were killed this morning had no weapons in the house but neither did the four young boys were playing soccer with journalists on the beach that were targeted, targeted as they ran for shelt shelter. >> that our opinions hamas hides weapons and active sowing areas has not only been demoted by amnesty international but its reseller to the weapons of mass destruction argument that we used against, you know, iraq,

which we still have not found those weapons but we still not found those weapons and i think nbc's reporter, he witnessed for children playing on the beach. there were no weapons anywhere around the. he saw those children blown to pieces. i have a four year old child. it on an agile. that talking point about hamas hiding those weapons is straight out of a playbook additional $50,000 to come up with talking points to win over a western audience. look at the realities. >> a similar story to read what they claim he was throwing molotov cocktails. is complete false. we have a georgetown university student who witnessed. it happened on his family fled he was not engaging in any act to the illegal activity. the police try to claim he was throwing molotov cocktails which what is relevant because nothing

can justify beating him. nonetheless, israel has a history of blaming the victim and fabricating lies. we documented that. >> i want to profoundly thank all of our panelists for their heartfelt words here, their expert testimony, there work for justice and for peace. tariq and suha abu khdeir, laila el-haddad, brad parker and sunjeev, thank you for attending. for more information about this issue, please see the website of the u.s. campaign to end the israel occupation at the endtheoccupation.org. thank you very much for coming. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] with members of congress beginning their five week recess, we're checking twitter to see what some of them are up to. senator bob corker's account says that senator and u.s. ambassador david shear are visiting the hanoi hilton prison where senator john mccain and u.s. pows were held in the vietnam war. and the republican and democratic congressmen are spending some vacation time together.

also rick crawford of arkansas tweet to getting ready to head out to make deliveries with ups in arkansas' first district. the truck passed inspection and wwe're on the road. even with members of congress on recess, live coverage today with the metropolitan junior basically calling that bobby bonds memorial symposium highlighting how baseball can be a tool to mentor, educate and encourage young african-americans. that's imposing gets underway live at one eastern here on c-span2. president obama this week welcomes african leaders to the nation's capital for a three-day summit with a focus on u.s. trade and investment in the region. the second south african president jacob zuma speak of the national press club at 2 p.m. eastern and we haven't live over on c-span. on our facebook page were asking whether you think the u.s. should invest more in africa go

to facebook.com/cspan to share your thoughts. >> while congress is on august break, c-span primetime programming will feature a wide range of political views and topics. this week programs into the nash association of latino elected officials, the western conservative summit and the net roots nation conference but will have a live update on 2014 u.s. senate races. c-span primetime monday through friday at 8 p.m. eastern. >> and all this week highlights from booktv in prime time here on c-span2. tonight to look at the middle east begin at 830 eastern with juan cole and the new arabs.

booktv tonight in prime time here on c-span2. next the reasoning on the health care law and federal subsidies to insurance providers, specifically lawmakers looked at risk borders which implement the gains and losses of insurance providers. this two-hour hearing was hosted by the house subcommittee on health. >> thing will come to order the chair will recognize himself for an opening statement at today's hearing is once again about protecting taxpayers and consumers from the consequences of a formal care act, namely a giveaway of taxpayer dollars to insurers under the aca and another round of planned cancellations in the group market. first section 1342 of the affordable care act created what are known as risk corridors, a

mechanism that would protect insurance companies from some of the financial losses they faced under the affordable care act. it works by decreasing payments to plant his expenses are below projections, those with healthier than expected in raleigh is, and redistricting those dollars to plans his expenses exceed projections, those with sicker than expected enrollees. they are mr. corker provision is in effect from 2014 through 2016. if done in a budget neutral fashion, taxpayers would have little to be worried about when it comes to risk corridors. but while the administration has paid lip service to the risk corridor program being budget neutral, it has also indicated that quote, regardless of payments and receipts, hhs will remit payments as required under section 1342 of the affordable

care act, end quote. opening the door to what would essentially be a taxpayer-funded bailout of health insurance. additionally, according to the congressional research service and a plain reading of section 1342, the law does not provide an appropriation for these payments. in the absence of a congressional appropriation, any payments are clearly an end run around congress and, therefore, illegal. the very idea of risk corridors assumes that ther they will be winners in the insurance industry whose games can be shifted to the losers. however, the president's decision to selectively enforce provisions of the aca, along with higher enrollment of older and sicker individuals and was originally projected could cause industrywide losses, putting the taxpayer on the hook are billions of dollars in payment.

the committee will consider legislation to protect taxpayer dollars from being unlawfully given to help insurance companies under the risk corridor program. second, as we've noted in previous in the president promised numerous times that if you like your health care plan you could keep it. however, millions experienced planned cancellations. in the individual market last fall. and millions more will likely lose their employer sponsored plans in the future your doctor cassidy's commonsense bill h.r. 3522, the employee health care protection act would promote a grandfather all group plans issued by health insurers that were in existence in 2013, allowing consumers to keep the coverage they like and giving small businesses better options than aca compliant plans. i'd like to thank all of our

witness for being here today to discuss these issues and i yield back the balance of my time to recognize ranking member five minutes when opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to reiterate what i said an hour earlier, and that is that we have ideas to bills that are the subject of the hearing today, and one of them, h.r. 3522 employee health care protection act, is already designated or noticed for the full committee markup on wednesday without even having been marked up in subcommittee. so what did i do want to object to the fact. i know this isn't, this isn't an issue where we can stop the hearing, by do want to object to the fact that we are proceeding to market that bill in full committee without regular order and having a subcommittee markup based on what's been noticed.

but beyond that today's hearing is nothing more than another episode of a series of republican attacks on the affordable care act and this time it's even harder to take seriously the words the gop have chosen to include in the title include illegal bailouts. it's quite ironic that because the provisions of the aca that are being attacked today on the very same policies republicans have reported in the past. it's no surprise since the passage of the aca of republicans of reverse course on so many ideas that were once the foundation of the health agenda. remember that the individual mandate, that was a republican idea as well. as we get close to election whether more and more about how the aca must be repealed and replaced, but i'm still waiting for the alternative and i haven't heard one from the other side of the aisle. risk corridors specifically are not made, not some major policy the democrats decided to use to give a handout to insurance companies.

trust me, no democrat has an interesting bailing out the insurance companies. these policies are in place for legitimate reasons and only because they are in the aca are the controversial and considered in this negative light by the gop. let's recap the importance of risk corridors. in order for insurance pools to keep premiums stable and cost low is critical to spread out risk. these types of risk sharing mechanisms are not a new phenomena. use all types of function, insurance systems. one good example is the use of the medicare part d program. in fact, the provisions of the aca were modeled after the part d program which, of course, was altered by the gop. if republicans had their way they would repeal this program and would effectively create chaos in the marketplace. so mr. chairman, there's a new study published in "the new england journal of medicine" new england journal of medicine last week estimated that 10.3 million uninsured adults can health care coverage following the first open the roman period in this health insurance marketplace. the uninsured rate for adults

ages 18-64 fell from 21% in september 2013 to 16.3% in april 2014. these results to include the more than 3 million young adults again health insurance coverage through their parents plan. we've done something pretty remarkable here with the aca. millions of people are just another. they are optional people who can now see a doctor. they can treat an illness that was otherwise going untreated, or better yet they can remain healthy and prevent illness in the future. women no longer will be charged more than infringers. insurance companies must offer robust health coverage so that when you do get sick or your hospitalized, you aren't left with thousands of dollars in debt. if republicans had their way we go back to the days when interest companies to drop someone for a preexisting condition. almost all of the aca key reforms and policies are now in place and the affordable care act is working. it's not perfect but guiding it

is not a way to perfect it. it's a way to score political points. i'm going to urge my republican colleagues one more time to stop the political stunt, stop trying to dismantle the aca success, and come together with democrats to strengthen and improve its historic benefits and protections. am i going to yield to any of my colleagues? did you want some time as i would yield to the gentleman from texas, mr. green. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i thank my ranking member for the time. i was hoping over the last few months we had kind of a vacation from efforts to attack the affordable care act and we are actually legislating and doing things that i think our committee could work across party lines. these bills today, it seems like we are back, dana, and how many times do we need to try to repeal the affordable care act? i know it's probably 50 or so, but maybe it's just election fodder that we need to have.

but i don't mind. there's a lot of successes over the last few months because of the affordable care act and we are seeing it everyday. and i would hope us not to throw a roadblock up in front of it, and i appreciate you giving me your time. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> the chair thanks the judgment and no acknowledges the ranking member of the full committee. >> we have a hearing on three bills today. all three bills are intended to undermine the affordable care act. that's exactly what they would do. i just want to point out that we have had over 50 votes on the house floor to repeal or undermine effectively repealing the affordable care act. don't we have anything better to do? we were promised by the republicans that they would come up with a replacement. and they're going to do that in

2011. then we heard it would come in 2012. then it was 2013. and it was supposed the early 2014. and then we were assured it would be a vote this summer. then it was the fall. and now we hear we may not see a replacement until 2015, or 2017. it's clear to me that they don't have any productive ideas of their own to offer. it appears that they decided to add to their 50 votes to repeal or undermine the aca. they certainly are working hard to secure their place in history as the least productive congress in the history of this nation. i oppose all three of these bills before us today. the first bill, h.r. 3522, says that any group health insurance plans on the market in 2013 can be sold in perpetuity. they don't have to change it.

now, they wouldn't have to adopt all of the key protections for consumers in the affordable care act, protections that went into place this year such as a ban on annual limits. insurance companies used to do that, they put a limit at how much you could spend each year. and then after that limit you pay for it all. well, they want to go back, continue those plans and have those limits. they want to continue to allow plans that would charge a small business a higher premium because an employee has a preexisting condition. those were changes we intended to make and did make in the affordable care act. we said if you want to keep your plan, you can keep it, and we provided for grandfathering in existing individual insurance plans that were for sale when the law passed. if they liked that coverage they could keep it, even though that

insurance might be inadequate by not covering all the things that were required under the affordable care act. earlier this year the president went a step further and said if a small business had changed plans or purchased a new plan after the law was passed, they could keep that new coverage unchanged into 2016. now, they are supposed to be going into the affordable care options and choosing and insurance plan that protects the consumer's and is offering a rate consistent with competition by other insurance plans that have to meet all those protections. the other two bills before us today relate to a premium stabilization program in the aca known as risk corridors. this is modeled after a nearly identical program in medicare part d that redistributes a

portion of profits and losses between insurance companies. this was drafted by the republicans on this committee as part of their part d legislation. they and the bush administration praised it repeatedly. it helps keep part d premiums stable and it has saved taxpayers money. ..

>> well, mr. chairman, i think what we're seeing is more politics. maybe it's the stuff that gives, saves you in primary from the so-called tea party voters or whatever, but we ought to do something worthwhile on this committee instead of passing bills that just undermine the aca. it's working, finally, millions of people now have insurance. we ought to leave it alone. if it ain't broke, don't fix it. >> gentleman's time's expired. chairman thanks the gentleman. as usual, all members' written opening statements will be made part of the record. i ask unanimous consent to insert the following into the record: a memo from the congressional research service to the committee, an article from the l.a. times, an article from bloomberg bna.

without objection to, so ordered. on our panel today, we have three witnesses. let me introduce them in the order that they will testify. first, dr. stan vueger, american enterprise be institute. dr. john loadly, research professor, georgetown university, and mr. edmund hasslemeyer, senior research fellow at the heritage foundation. thank you very much for coming. we appreciate your time very much. your written statements will be made part of the record. you'll each have five minutes to summarize your time, and, mr. veueger, we'll tart with you. you're recognized for five .s for your -- minutes for your opening statement. >> first of all, i'd like to thank you for the opportunity to discuss insurance plan cancellations and material changes pursuant to the patient protection and affordable care about. act.

when obamacare became law four years ago, a central claim made by probe points of this deeply informative insurance reform was not that it would make some better off through redirection of resources and more stringent regulation, but it would do so without harming others. except, perhaps, through new forms of income and capital taxation. this claim was present today public by president obama, by many other prominent members of the democratic party, by the full committee's ranking member just now in colloquial terms such as if you like your plan, you can keep it, if you like your doctor, you can keep him, period. problem with that promise is that it is not true. and i'll discuss a few of the sort of more salient consequences of the legislation that undermine the ve it is ally of that claim -- veracity of that claim. up front in a certain sense, known as being able to keep the plan even if he or she liked it.

health insurance policies are no longer allowed to contain limits on lifetime reimbursements, for example. that may be a popular provision, but, of course, it drives up the cost of health insurance policies. so in a very narrow sense, the claim that you could keep your plan if you liked it is completely false. more central to the discussion today, i think, are plans that have incorporated some of the more be p.m. lahr provisions -- popular provisions like, you know, a ban on adjusting for pre-existing conditions or the lifetime reimbursements, the annual limits. so, but, so i'm going to talk mostly about plans that are still being used and paid for. first, what i want to note is by now i think everyone realizes that in the individual market millions of people who started out buying insurance there received cancellation notices announcing the ends of their current plans last year. and it may well be as many as

nine million people end up losing the plans they had before the affordable care act passed. it doesn't stop there though. a much larger group of americans enjoy employer-based health insurance, a total of about 170 million people. and many of those plans will change or disappear as well. of these plans, of these covered workers about 18% were for firms that are smaller than 50 employees and will not be subject to the employer mandate to purchase health insurance if it, when it kicks in, if it ever kicks in. in total, there's about 35-40 million coveredded workers who work for firms with fewer than 100 employees. in they're so-called small group plans. the remaining 30-35 million workers covered work for larger employees, and many of those self-insure. all those plans are affected in different ways by the new i

obamacare regulations. well, the most obvious way in which that happens is very similar to what happened in the individual market. many fully-insured plans that have changed a little bit since the law was passed no longer enjoy grandfathered status, and so they, the firms that used to offer them will now be forced to purchase plans that are subject to new requirements regarding benefits and premiums. the plan covers some, you know, 30 million workers in the small group market, about 75% of medium-sized firms and some 20% of large firms. in total, you know, that's about 45, 50 million people. how large it will be, it's hard to publish that root basis because all these plans are different, and it's unclear to what extent there'll be material effects abiding the new requirements. what we do know, as i said, only

very few plans are shielded from new rules and regulations due to their grandfathered status. there are other less direct reasons even why large insurance firms will be affected. for example, the cost of plans will increase due to new taxes like the reinsurance fee and the cadillac tax when that arrives. so even though when millions of people receive their cancellation notices in the individual market, the administration claimed that that would be it, you know? it's the a small, tiny portion of the population, everyone else is shielded. that is certainly not true, and there will be dozens of millions if not more people who have see their plans change whether they liked it or not. thank you. >> chair thanks the gentleman. now the chair recognizes mr. hoadley five minutes for an opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, ranking member, members of the committee. my name is jack hoadley, i'm a

research professor at georgetown university's health policy institute, and i do appreciate the opportunity to speak to the committee on issues relating to risk quarters in the affordable care act. there's been two times in recent history when congress has introduced new health insurance programs. in 2003 the medicare morneddization act -- in order in order earnization act, in 2010, the health insurance exchanges to expand health insurance coverage. in both cases congress was building a new kind of insurance program not previously in operation. also in both cases, policymakers were uncertain about how many plans would choose to participate in the new program and how many americans would sign up for coverage offered by these plans. specifically, policymakers were concerned that plans would be less likely to participate when they were unsure of how many enrollees they might attract and of the health status of the enrollees that they did obtain.

if plans did participate, they would likely set higher premiums to reflect these uncertainties. to address these ene uncertainties, the congress in both the modernization act and the affordable care act included a set of risk mitigation measures,s, risk adjustment, reinsurance, sometimes called the three rs designed to help the new markets run more predictably by encouraging the entry of new insurers and stabilizing programs that as they got started. risk adjustment a way to adjust payments to a plan based on the health status of the individual enrollees to insure no penalty if enrollees are sick or than average or rewarded if healthier-than-average enrollees come into the ram. it also deters plans from trying to avoid being chosen by people with more health risk. reinsurance is a mean of insuring the insurers by providing payments who incur

high costs such as more accidents or more cancer diagnosis than the average plan. as with risk adjustment, the plan is to insure plans are not penalized or rewarded and reduce incentives to avoid high cost individuals. risk corridors, sometimes referred to as risk sharing, involves creation of a fund so that plans with up usually high gains pay back some of those gains and those with unusually high losses are partially compensated. the idea is to keep premiums affordable during the first years of a program as the plans learn from experience about how to price themselves accurately. the risk corridors are designed on a two-sided basis to help limit losses and gains. if plans underestimate costs, they receive payments from the government to reduce but not eliminate the loss. if they overestimate costs, they make payments to the government to reduce but, again, not to eliminate the gain. thus, all plans maintain a share of the risk for any losses and retain an incentive to set

premiums as accurately as possible. these risk mitigation measures have been in use in part d for nine years now, so had they worked in part d where we've had time to look at the data, the best measure of their success is that participation by both health plans and medicare beneficiaries is still robust in the program's ninth year, and the program is popular with both plans and enrollees. among the stand-alone part d plans in 2011, risk adjustment scores ranged from 72% to 146% of the average plan's score. without risk adjustment, the plans at the high end would have either suffered significant losses or been forced to charge much higher premiums. the opposite would have been true on the low end. reinsurance payments for part d plans averaged about $40 per member, per month in 2012. as such, they helped discourage plans from trying to avoid enrollees with unusually high costs. the experience of part d suggests they've actually

protected taxpayers. in each of the program's first seven years, plans made net payments back to the government as a result of greater profits than expected from their bids as opposed to receiving payments from the government. in 2012, the most recent year for which data are available, part d plans paid a total of $1.1 billion back to the government, and in 2012 three-fourths of all part d plan sponsors made payments back to the government. in effect be, and perhaps contrary to what some expected, the risk corridors in part d have been protecting the government from excessive profits by health plans as opposed to protecting health plans against pricing too low. the three rs continue to operate in part d, and the affordable care act -- two of them -- are designed as short-term measures that will go away after 2016, although one could argue that the role of risk corridors and reinsurance could be eliminated in part d after nine years, we can make a case for the role they've

played. the part d experience also demonstrates it protected it from uncertainty both in the first years and beyond. >> chair thanks the gentleman. now the chair recognizes mr. haislmeyer, five minutes for an opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chair. i am senior research fellow and health policy at the heritage foundation, and thank you for the opportunity to testify before you in the committee today. the comments are my own, i'm not reflecting any institutional position. as i addressed in my prepared testimony, i think what we need to do is step back for a minute and look at these three programs and understand that these are different tools for different purposes. if you have a mechanic or a builder who's doing work for you, they're going to have a tool box full of things, you know, hammers, screwdriver, pliers, they'll use different tools depending on what the job is. so i'd like to follow be up on

dr. hoadley's comment by simply clarifying for the committee what i see are the different tasks that each of these three are designed to address. the reinsurance provision is essentially designed to address the kind of risks that we might call market election risk. in other words, you have a choice between markets -- this is true of people who are insured and uninsured. i won't go into great length, but suffice it to say that it is premised on the idea that the way this legislation is designed and works, there is an expectation that more people in poorer health status will gravitate towards this market and, therefore, it taxes the existing market and transfers the funds to subsidize the new individual -- or the expanded individual market on that market selection risk expectation. the second program, risk adjustment, is -- as dr. hoadley pointed out -- really about individual selection risk. i mean, everything could be fine

with the market otherwise, but we still don't know when people have the ability to pick and choose a plan, as all of you do in the federal employee program, who's going to pick what kind of coverage. there are a lot of things that might infliewnsz people's decision, and the concern is you don't want insurers to try to avoid people who are sicker and what not. so there is a risk adjustment mechanism. this is not new, this is, as dr. hoadley points out, has been around before elsewhere. the third and the one that is the subject really of your hearing is the risk corridor program x the question -- and the question that i would ask is, well, what is the risk that this is designed to address? because it was observed that this is designed to hold down premiums. well, no, it's not really designed to hold down premiums necessarily. it's not designed to make the market balance out. it's not designed to spread the

risk evenly across the market. that's what the ore two were -- other two were there for. thisthis is a profit and loss r. this this is saying that we don't know, and neither you, the insurers, what the price of this product is going to be, and we could be -- we're paying for most of it. that was significance of part d, they were paying for three-quarters of it. we and you could be wildly off the mark. so what they do is the government, which is paying three-quarters of it, in effect, has a profit and loss sharing arrangement through risk corridors with the insurers. now, did that make sense in part d? i think it did. why? because it was an entirely new product. providing comprehensive prescription drug coverage on a stand-alone basis had not been done before. there was no really relevant or suitable example for insurers to work off of because, yes, there

was prescription drug coverage in the employer group market, but that was integrated, it wasn't stand-alone, and non-elderly people consume drugs at one-fifth the rate the elderly do. so there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding that. dr. hoadley's right, that was the a new program, but part d was also a new product. when we look at this, we see that it's an old program, but the product is a very told one. it's just being tweaked. so at the end of the day, i'm not sure there's really a rationale for this kind of profit and loss sharing when, in fact, it's not hard for the insurers to get within a tolerable rate. finally, i would point out that given that the transfer of funds that is going on in the reinsurance program is more than adequate to cover even some very egregious overunderestimation of premiums. if you look at the magnitude of the funds being transferred relative to the size of the

market, you're looking at a market that in 2014 was $28 billion, and you're going to dump another $10 billion potentially into it in 2014 in reinsurance programs. that's a huge amount of money relative to the size of the market. even if you assume that the ppaca doubles that market, it's still pretty substantial. so i think that those programs, the other two programs are more than adequate for the risks that are in the new program and that it really isn't necessary to have the risk corridor can program. thank you. >> chair thanks the gentleman. and thanks all the witnesses for their testimony. i'll begin the questioning and recognize myself five minutes for that purpose. mr. haislmaier, should taxpayers be concerned that they will be liable for some insurance company losses under the aca risk corridor program and please explain. >> well, the issue, mr.

chairman, is that unlike the risk reinsurance program which is a definitive amount of money or the risk transfer program which is required to operate on a neutral basis meaning it doesn't spend more than it takes in or it doesn't transfer more than it takes in, this program is not explicitly required to operate on that basis and, therefore, yes, that is a concern the taxpayers should have. >> the congressional research serve service's american law initiative issued a member questioning the ability of the administration to make payments under the risk corridor program for lack of, quote, valid appropriation, end quote. now, since it's congress' job to make law and the president's job to implement law and if the law needs to be to changed, it's our job to change it, not his. given that the administration has tried to rewrite the health

care law over dozens of times through regulations and executive orders and delays and so forth, should taxpayers be concerned that the administration will once again ignore the rule of law to prop up the president's health care law? >> well, i think the administration has taken different positions at different times on this particular provision. i believe at one point they said they would operate on a budget-neutral basis basis and n said they wouldn't. so if there's ambiguity, then, yes, mr. chairman, that's congress' job to clarify the ambiguity. >> thank you. dr. veuger, at the end of 2013, millions of americans received notices from health insurers that they would be unable to renew their health coverage under the aca. many supporters of the law implied that this problem was restricted only to the

individual market and would not affect employer-sponsored coverage. would you clarify for us whether american workers could be subject to nonrenewals by employer-sponsored plans often known as plan cancellations under the affordable care act? >> thank you, mr. chairman. yes, many american workers will, indeed, be subject to knop renewals -- nonrenewals as i described with a bit more detail in my written testimony. there'll be tens of millions of workers in sort of small group plans that will see those plans being phased out. as very few of them actually continue to have grandfathered status by the time the employer mandate kicks in. the administration's sort of mid-range estimate was that by 2016 88% of all small employer

insurance plans would have lost grandfathered status, so all of those plans would, in principal, receive the first treatment that individual market plans received last year. so they would be canceled. the process would go be through the employer, not the individual. so it may be slightly less salient, but it would certainly be the same fate that so many plans in the individual market had. and i find it surprising, honestly, that so many supporters of the law after being caught not being able to live up to the if you like your plan you can keep your plan promise on the individual side decided to continue with the same story for these plans that will ultimately suffer the same fate. >> some advocates of the aca said they were surprised about the plan cancellation issue at the end of 2013. wasn't a central feature of the aca to impose federal

requirements that many plans simply did not meet? so should anyone have been surprised about the plan cancellation issues on the aca? >> certainly not because the, to some extent beyond, you know, a lot of income redistribution, one of the central goals of the legislation was precisely to impose new requirements on as many plans as possible. some of those requirements are very popular among the general public, some of them, some of the community rating features, for example, much less so. but it was definitely always the intention to impose new rules and regulations, and to some extent it shows how insincere the promise was. >> my time's expired. chair now recognizes the ranking member five minutes for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i wanted to say at the outset

that, you know, risk corridors are mechanisms used inial kinds of insurance systems, and this wouldn't even be controversial if it wasn't part of the aca, so it just, you know, it just bothers me that anytime anything, part of the aca no matter how, you know, normal it is, it's just, it just becomes controversial in an effort by the republicans to destroy the aca. the driving principle behind the risk corridor bills we're considering today is that they will cost taxpayers more or cost taxpayers money. republicans don't have any evidence that this will happen, but they figure if they can scream bailout enough times, it might just seem true. the congressional budget office and the experience of part d showed just how silly the claims are. when the cbo looked recently, they said the collections from insurers would be $8 billion greater than payouts from the government, and that means that the program would save taxpayers $8 billion in just three years, and tsa not even counting the --

that's not even counting the savings on premiums and premium tax credits. the administration has made clear they will implement the program in a budget-neutral fashion and cbo has confirmed the budget will be neutral. so i just want to ask dr. hoadley, were there concerns that the medicare part d risk corridors would cost money, and what can you tell us about the actual impact on taxpayers, and what does that tell us about the impact of the aca risk corridors? >> the experience in part d, i think when the law was originally drafted, it was done as a symmetric kind of thing. if the ability of plans to estimate premiums accurately could be wrong in either direction. the experience, in fact, as i mentioned in my testimony is that every single year for which we now have data which is the first accept years of the program -- seven years of the program, plans have actually paid, made payments back to the goth. and i think if you add up all those figures across the seven

years, we're talking about a total of about $8 billion that have been made by plans back to the government. so it really has represented the taxpayer in the way it's played out in part d. >> and, again, you know, that's why i think this republican bailout argument is flat wrong, and it's a waste of this committee's time, and the republicans don't have the facts on their side. the aca and the be medicare part d both have risk corridor programs. they seem very similar to me but, again, my republican friends seem to hate the aca program and lo the part d program which seems so inconsistent. they claim the risk corridors are a bailout but the part d risk corridors have made the government money and are more generous to insurers that the aca program is. and, of course, the part d risk corridors are permanent whereas the aca risk corridors will only last for three years. i mean, all this, again, to the point that this is something that is, would not be

controversial at all if it wasn't part of the aca. can you say more about the similarities and differences between the aca and the part d risk corridors, and are these programs fundamentally different? >> no, i think you've really highlighted the different ways in which they're similar. the biggest difference probably is that the risk corridor program in the aca is time limited, and it's only designed to operate for three years. and part d it was set up for an initial i think it was three years at fairly broad corridor, then it was tightened down to be a little bit of a narrower corridor for the next three years and then cmas had the authority to regulate after six years but has chosen to keep them in operation, felt that they were still proving of value. and you can kind of see the value even potentially right now with some of the uncertainties around some of the new drugs that are on the market. and it's that kind of uncertainty that those risk

corridors are designed to do. the same system really applies in the aca. as long as we have a lot of uncertainty about how the program might operate, there's an interest in protecting in both directions, protecting the government from err or records made in one -- errors made in one direction and setting premiums to protect the plans in the other direction if that's the way it works out. >> yeah. republicans claim that the aca risk corridors are not just a policy, they said they're illegal. and i suppose it's not a surprise since they're current lu wasting taxpayer dollars to sue the president and they seem to have designs on impeaching him as well. the department of health and human services has provided the committee with specific answers to questions about its legal authority to implement the risk corridor program. the law authorizes the collection and payment of user fees to and from health insurers to operate the risk corridor program. that aligns with omb and jo guidance. the aca is the law of the land, this should not be a controversial program, mr.

chairman. >> the gentleman's time has expired. now recognize the gentleman from new jersey, five minutes, if or questioning. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i am the sponsor of the legislation to repeal risk corridors, and i do this because i believe it's bad public policy, and i certainly do not do it as a matter of some sort of intellectual exercise. and i'm deeply concerned about it. mr. be haislmaier, would you go into a little greater detail as to why you believe there is a difference between this program and the program designed roughly a decade ago for medicare part d? >> well, essentially, the risk corridor program is a deal between the government and the insurer that says we share the profits, and we share the losses.

it's, you know, you see commercial deals like that between two parties all the time as a joint venture. the question in my mind is, is that appropriate in each of these cases? i think the argument can be -- a stronger argument can be made that's appropriate in the case of medicare part d than can be made here, and i base be it on the following: in medicare part d, the insurers were being asked to do something they've never done before in a market they didn't understand with, you know, a totally new product that was not only a new -- [inaudible] it was a new product, the customers had never bought anything like that, etc. ..