Mike McCaul

As a Korean American with family members who fled North Korea, this is an issue that is deeply personal to me, and I have great empathy for these families.

The ayes have it. The motion is agreed to.

I support the objective of the bill, which is to see that aid to Palestinians in the future goes through organizations that are benign, rather than through UNRWA.

I suggested that to the author. We were not able to reach an agreement. But if this bill became effective on December 31, I would be a yes vote.

The noes have it. The amendment is not agreed to.

I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 7152, and I yield the balance of my time.

I have no love for UNRWA. I would have supported this bill if it had been a bit more practical.

The United States has no better friend than Israel, and Israel has no better friend than the United States.

Time is running out to make family reunification a reality, so we must treat this issue with urgency.

So we need to pivot now. And believe me, there are organizations, we have mustered and brought together forces in the past to ensure that humanitarian crises are met and they are met effectively.

It makes no sense to make a State out of an entity that we would immediately have to designate a foreign terrorist organization.

Let's stop funding them.

Can't defend what they did, but want to continue supporting them.

UNRWA which, again, is a massive entity that wants Israel utterly destroyed.

We need, without a doubt, to shift the money.

Nobody disagreed that Israel is our ally. Nobody disagreed that Palestinians are not our ally.

Palestinians are enemies of Israel and enemies of the United States of America.

We have donated more than a billion dollars to UNRWA since 2021.

It is not about humanitarian aid. We can get it to them through other means. This is an excuse to be soft on Iran.

This is a consistent pattern for the Biden Administration. Whether the border with the cartels, in Gaza with Hamas, with UNRWA, or in Yemen with the Houthis, this Administration constantly uses short-term humanitarian concerns to justify…

What responsibility is it of the American people to pay for the health care or the sole source of income for any Palestinian?

We are not going to stand with them. We are going to designate them a Foreign Terrorist Organization because that is what they are.

It is important that the United States of America pick a side.

This Administration, the Biden Administration in particular, is so desperate for a nuclear deal with Iran that they are going to be on both sides of this war.

Why any American taxpayer should be supporting an organization like UNRWA.