Peter Welch: “the mass starvation in Gaza must end. The forced displacement of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza must end. We all condemn…”

“the mass starvation in Gaza must end. The forced displacement of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza must end. We all condemn Hamas. We support a Jewish independent democratic state. We want a cease-fire, and we want the hostages home. But a colleague in the other body stated what needs to be said. It is the most truthful and easiest thing to say that October 7 in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned but so is the humanitarian crisis and starvation happening in Gaza. And that is happening with U.S. complicity, and it is time for us to stop complying. Let's face it, let's face the facts and not ignore them. The starvation that we are seeing today, it is not unforeseen. It is not the unintended, unfortunate consequence of war. The starvation we are witnessing today is the self-conscious result of a military policy to concentrate the Palestinian population into an ever-smaller slice of land. The starvation that we are witnessing today, it is an advanced and accelerating stage of the military strategy that is being executed by the Netanyahu government to force Palestinians out of northern Gaza and to induce them to leave the territory altogether. And Palestinians, compelled by hunger and thirst, are being forced to make their way to a handful of sites, which our closest allies uniformly condemn as a drip feeding of aid. And, in fact, aid was totally cut off--totally cut off--by Israel for over 2 months. How in the world did they justify doing that?”