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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, following Hamas's brutal attack against Israel on October 7, some 5 months ago, Republicans and Democrats came together, along with the President of the United States, and declared our support for Israel. We all condemned the Hamas terrorists, as well as Iran, which is the main support for this proxy of the number one state sponsor of international terrorism.

We all watched in horror at the videos we saw of Hamas attacking innocent men, women, and children, and we all vowed to stand in solidarity with Israel as they did whatever they needed to do to defeat this evil.

As time passed, it seems like the roar of support among some of our friends across the aisle, including the Senate majority leader, has softened, to say the least. Some of our colleagues have even gone so far as to cast blame on Israel for the violence that is unfolding in the Middle East. They are blaming the victim, not the perpetrator. More than two dozen Senate Democrats have even joined with liberal activists to demand a cease-fire.

The quickest way to a cease-fire is for Hamas to lay down its weapons, but we know they are not going to do that because they are committed to the eradication of the State of Israel. ``Wipe them off the face of the planet'' is their goal.

This once rock-solid support on a bipartisan basis has slowly eroded, and it reached a new low last week when the Senate majority leader came to the floor to excoriate not Hamas, not Iran, but Israel and its leadership.

Israel, we know, is our single closest friend and ally in the Middle East, one of the very few democracies. Yes, they have messy politics. By the way, we have messy politics, too, here in this country, but we respect--we should respect--the sovereignty of that nation and their ability to make hard decisions on their own behalf without being lectured by the President of the United States and by the Senate majority leader.

The majority leader criticized Israel's response to the October 7 attack. He condemned Prime Minister Netanyahu's leadership, and he called--get this--he called for an election in Israel to replace him. In my time in the U.S. Senate, I have never seen anything quite like this. The majority leader's comments mark a sharp departure from his previous stance solidly in support of Israel. And, unfortunately, I presume for political reasons, he has decided to undermine our support on a bipartisan basis for Israel and to make it a partisan issue and to attack the leader of a sovereign ally and one dealing with the horrific aftermath of a terrorist attack.

Can you imagine, in the wake of 9/11, if our closest allies had called upon the American people to change our President to align with their political preferences? We would have been insulted. We would have been offended and completely outraged. The suggestion that the leader in a foreign country knows the needs of a country better than its own citizens is appalling.

On top of that, it undermines Israel's most critical job at this moment, which is to eliminate the terrorist threat against its own people. This is not like al-Qaida, thousands of miles away across an ocean. This is in the backyard of Israel. By browbeating Israel and criticizing its leaders, the majority leader has undermined the trust and confidence Israel needs in our commitment to continue to help them complete this job of eliminating the terrorist threat.

Yes, innocent people are getting hurt, but that is not the fault of the victim. That is the fault of the perpetrator of this violence. And, yes, maybe some of us would like to see different tactics chosen on the battlefield, but that is not our call. We have to trust our friend and ally Israel to make the best decisions in defense of its own sovereignty and its own existence. And, yes, we can all have private opinions about how they are going about it.

But the truth is America's role in this conflict should not be confused. We should not be saying: Well, on one hand, we support Israel. On the other hand, we think they are being too tough on Hamas.

We need to support our closest friend and ally in the region. It is just that simple. It is the choice between good and evil.

If you watch the videos of Hamas's attack against Israeli civilians on October 7--as I know the Presiding Officer has, and all of us have been exposed to it--you will recoil in horror as babies are killed, where women are sexually assaulted. I, actually, for the first time in my life, saw a video of a Hamas terrorist behead an innocent Israeli civilian--behead.

That is what we are dealing with. That is what Israel is dealing with.

There should not be confusion. We should be approaching this with complete clarity. For those of us who said we stand with Israel, we ought to lock arms on a bipartisan basis and reaffirm their right to exist and their right to make choices for their nation and their people, and we ought to support them as they go through what has to be a horrible experience for Israel.

It is not just Hamas. Again, as the Presiding Officer knows and we know, in Lebanon, in the northern part of Israel, Hezbollah--another proxy for Iran--is shooting into Israel and attacking Israeli Defense Forces. We know that Houthi rebels in Yemen are also supported by Iran. Iran is the octopus. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are the tentacles or the proxies they use to do their evil. Then there are the Shia militias who have attacked American troops hundreds of times in Iraq and Syria.

There should not be any confusion about this. There is the right side and the wrong side. There is the good, and there is the evil. America stands with Israel. The vast majority of Americans feel exactly as I do. We should trust the people of Israel to make decisions, certainly, about their own leaders.

I mean, we don't like it when foreign countries try to interfere with our elections. What is the speech of the majority leader but an attempt by a leader of a foreign government to interfere with their elections? We need to maintain our position that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, against Hezbollah, against any Iranian proxy or any entity or country or group that wants to destroy the Jewish State.

So I regret the fact that this has become, it seems, like a partisan issue. This is the last thing that our Israeli friends and allies would want. They don't want this to be partisan politics because we know what happens here when things become partisan. One side supports an action, and the other side reflexively opposes that action. We can't afford to play politics with the U.S.-Israel alliance. Our support for Israel must remain unwavering regardless of whom they choose for their own leaders. We must support democracy. We must support sovereignty. We must support the enduring bond and the common values shared between our two countries.

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