On the recordOctober 18, 2023
Mr. President, I rise today as Israel is at war. They are at war in response to a genocidal assault by the Iran terrorist group Hamas, an assault against Israel and against America and against the citizens of dozens of other countries. The numbers are staggering: over 1,400 Israelis killed, thousands more wounded and tortured, over 199 kidnapped--alongside them, 30 Americans killed and about a dozen kidnapped, by far one of the deadliest attacks against Americans in history. And so our Israeli allies are rightly going to war to eradicate Hamas. We often hear that Israel and the United States share the same interests and the same enemies, that when Israel fights for its own security, they are also fighting for ours. Rarely in history has that been so explicitly, horribly true. And let us be clear about what they are fighting against. What we saw on October 7, in the early hours of Saturday, October 7, was pure evil unleashed, genocidal, exterminationist violence, Nazi tactics in pursuit of Nazi aims. Entire Israeli families were murdered in door-to- door horrors. Israeli babies were brutally slaughtered, burned, and decapitated. Women and young girls were systematically raped. In some homes, children were shot right in front of their parents. In other homes, parents were shot right in front of their children, and then the children were kidnapped--husbands and wives murdered in front of each other, holocaust survivors massacred.…





