Senator Wicker Urges Support of Israel

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the highest-ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, spoke on the Senate floor, urging the Biden administration to support our ally Israel. Senator Wicker also highlighted how Iran's proxies perpetrated the October 7^th attack.

Senator Wicker further called out congressional Democrats and the Biden administration for their failure to welcome Prime Minister Netanyahu and signal a strong commitment to Israel's defense.

Senator Wicker's remarks followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's joint address to Congress.

Read the remarks as delivered below or watch them here.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

We stand here today having had the opportunity, in a joint session of Congress, to hear one of the most powerful and profound and significant addresses that has ever been made to a joint session of Congress.

We have a few people listening in right now. I notice we have a number of our pages on the floor. Madam President, I'm glad that our young people, our rising seniors in high school who work for us, were able to be there and to be here in Washington, in this Capitol, and see and listen to this magnificent speech today by Benjamin Netanyahu the Prime Minister of the state of Israel - our steadfast ally. The only democracy in that section of the world. And I will say, I doubt if we will very often see remarks that were as powerful and as important.

Israel has been our steadfast ally for over seven decades. It was a Democratic president, Harry Truman, postwar that put his administration behind the recognition of the Jewish state in Palestine as Israel. And we became one of the earliest countries to recognize Israel. That has stood for over seven decades.

The recognition by the United States, on a bipartisan basis, has recognized an important fact: that the Jewish people are certainly not colonialists in the Holy Land.

The place where Israel exists now is the place where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Esau were born and lived in the era 5,000 years ago. To say that the Jewish people are colonialists in Israel is the big lie.

The big lie is something that our enemies have used down through the years. You say something so unbelievable and so unimaginable that [if] you say it long enough, and people will start to believe it.

The Jewish people are no colonialists in the Holy Land. The holy land is their ancestral home, and they deserve - the world's Jewish people deserve - a Jewish state so they can avoid the centuries of discrimination and anti-Semitism that they have endured over time.

The Jewish people, as I say, the Israeli people - which includes, of course, people that are not Jewish by heritage - have had the only democracy in the area for the longest time. And they've been surrounded by people who want nothing less than the destruction of Israel. And they don't make it - they don't make any bones about it.

Support in this Congress - support in the United States - for Israel, Madam President, has for these seven decades always been bipartisan. And it breaks my heart, and I think it should come as a shock to all Americans, that that bipartisan support seems to be fracturing on the other side of the aisle, among my Democratic colleagues.

It is a shame that the Vice President of this country - the Vice President of the United States - Kamala Harris, declined to fulfill her duties to preside over the session. She found an excuse in another state to be at a meeting that could easily have been rescheduled.

It's a shame that our Vice President - that the future nominee of her party for President of the United States - would make that statement, that she was unwilling to preside over a joint meeting addressed by the Prime Minister of Israel. The President pro tempore of the United States Senate refused to attend. Many members of this body on the Democratic side of the aisle, many members of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives boycotted this speech by our steadfast ally of 70 years or more.

I noticed when the Prime Minister of Israel came down through the center aisle there in the House of Representatives, shaking hands on from both sides. And he rounded the corner, Madam President, and the Majority Leader of this body - the senior senator from New York, Senator Schumer, declined to extend his hand to the Prime Minister of our steadfast ally.

We also need to remember, as my colleagues have stated already, that in the region where Israel is the only democratic government in the Middle East, exists the IslamicRepublic of Iran.

They are a sworn enemy of Israel, and they're a sworn enemy of the United States of America. 'Death to America' is what they say. And they want to start with 'Death to America' by pronouncing 'Death to Israel.'

More than that, they have proxies - at least three proxies - that we've been talking about recently: the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah to the north of Israel, and Hamas, the terrorist group that perpetrated the October slaughter on the people near Gaza.

Hamas has one reason to exist. One stated, admitted reason, and one reason only: the complete destruction of Israel. And they demonstrated their ruthlessness on October 7^th. Rapes, beheadings, babies being burned. Unspeakable acts of violence.

And Prime Minister Netanyahu was correct to point out that people protesting outside this building on behalf of Hamas should be ashamed of themselves, in protesting on behalf of a group that was so violent.

Madam President, Hamas uses civilians as human shields. That is a violation of international law. By contrast, contrary to what people have been told in the press, Israel is doing the best job that any combatant has ever done in protecting civilians while trying to root out terrorist groups.

I am calling on people on both sides of the aisle, in conclusion, to return to our bipartisan support of the right of a people to exist somewhere, and to have one place on the face of the Earth, where they know they could be safe in their own beliefs, in their own population, and for the first time in centuries and millennia, to be safe and have their own homeland.

So, I congratulate the Prime Minister of Israel. I congratulate the members of Congress who received him well. And I invite my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to remember the importance of bipartisan support for Israel.

Thank you, Madam President.

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