Censuring Representative Rashida Tlaib for promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and for calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I have images of three politicians in my office: Abraham Lincoln, Robert F. Kennedy, and Samuel H. Bellman, who was the first Jewish person ever elected to the Minnesota Legislature, a great champion of civil rights and civil liberties in the Constitution and of the creation of the

State of Israel, the Jewish democratic state in 1948. He was my grandfather.

He was elected at a time of terrible anti-Semitism, not unlike today. Minneapolis was actually called the anti-Semitism capital of America, and my grandpa told me a story I will never forget.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Republican Caucuses both had their annual retreats at a country club that did not allow Jews or Blacks to enter. My grandfather complained privately to the speaker about the fact that he wouldn't be able to go to his own retreat. The speaker apologized but said that it was a tradition.

So my grandfather, the only Jewish person in the chamber, spoke on the floor about anti-Semitism. He was booed and jeered at, and members left as he tried to speak.

When the minority leader asked me to manage our time today, I thought about my grandfather and how he must have felt on that day. I rise here not in spite of the fact that I am a Jewish American who supports the Constitution and the Jewish democratic state and hates all the anti- Semitic tyrants and terrorists of the world, from Putin in Russia and Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia to Hezbollah in Hamas. I am here because of these things and because of everything that I believe in and stand for.

At this moment when democracy is under siege all over the world, America must stand tall for the Constitution of the United States. This resolution is about one thing and one thing only: the punishment of speech.

We have the chance to show the world what the American Constitution means and how we hold fast to our core principles even when we are drawn away from them by our passions and our righteous anger.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and the very heart of it is our First Amendment, which protects every citizen's freedom of speech and says Congress shall make no law abridging it.

The freedom to speak includes the freedom to disagree, the right to think radically differently from the majority about important things, or else it is no freedom at all. It is easy to defend freedom of speech for people when you agree with them. The test for each Member today is whether you can defend freedom of speech for people when you most fundamentally and vehemently disagree with them.

The First Amendment is like an apple, and everybody wants to take just one little bite out of it--leftwing speech, rightwing speech, sexist speech, feminist speech, homophobic speech, pro-LGBTQ speech, anti-war speech, pro-war speech, religious speech, sacrilegious speech. Everybody wants a bite out of the apple.

At the end of the day, after everybody has taken his or her bite, do you know what is left? Nothing. There is nothing left.

If you want to save the apple, you have to learn to tolerate not just the speech you love the most but the speech you hate the most.

Now, like the First Amendment, the Speech or Debate Clause embodies this central value in the proceedings of this body. It states that Members of Congress ``shall in all cases, except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.''

In the two-and-a-half-century history of this great Chamber, Members have been overwhelmingly censured for their actions, not for their speech--actions like participating in the violent assault against Charles Sumner of Massachusetts; assaulting Representative Grinnell, of Iowa, with a cane; selling military academy appointments; taking bribes; engaging in mail fraud and payroll fraud; improper spending of campaign funds; embezzling congressional money; engaging in sexual misconduct with a House page.

Do you see the difference? It is not what they said. It is what they did.

I can find only three categories of cases where speech is the sum and substance of the charge, and all are exceptions that have been ratified by the Supreme Court:

One, violent threats against other Members of this body, which the Court has found, as recently as April, are not protected by the First Amendment.

Two, fighting words: the use of unparliamentary or aggressively insulting language on the House floor that constitutes a direct affront to another Member. The Supreme Court has said that fighting words are not protected.

Three, speech advocating or promoting treason, secession, or insurrection, all of them outside of the First Amendment because of numerous provisions in our Constitution condemning and opposing insurrection.

That is it: violent threats against other Members, fighting words on the floor, speech inciting insurrection.

The resolution offered against the gentlewoman from Michigan is all about censuring her for her political speech and literally nothing else. No actions, no conduct, is being alleged or punished. The entire motion is about her speech and how much we hate it and how wrong we think it is, and all of that is fine for all of us to express individually on the floor, in the media, on social media.

I have said to Ms. Tlaib myself that the phrase ``from the river to sea'' is abhorrent to me, even with her published explanation of what she means by it, which is very different from what Hamas says about it and how Hamas uses it, but I would never think of punishing her or disciplining her because we disagree about that.

The resolution proposes to condemn her for quoting this objectionable phrase in her video, a video which is indisputably protected speech under the First Amendment.

Unlike the gentleman from New York, Mr. Santos, whose proposed expulsion by members of the majority was rejected by a commanding bipartisan majority last week because he has not been convicted of either the criminal or the ethics charges outstanding against him, Ms. Tlaib has been criminally charged with nothing. She has been civilly sued for nothing. She has no ethics charges outstanding before the Ethics Committee in any way.

It is easy to see why. She cannot face criminal punishment or civil liability for her speech because, in the United States of America, we don't punish people for their political ideas, no matter how wrongheaded or offensive we think they are. The majority might think they are, or it might not, but in any event, it doesn't make any difference.

She won reelection with 71 percent of the vote in Michigan's 12th District, and if anyone is going to punish her for her political ideas or performance, it must be the people of her own district who sent her here to represent them.

Mr. Speaker, the disciplinary process should never be used to punish the political speech or viewpoints of a Member of this Chamber just because the majority disagrees.

The punishment of political viewpoints will mean that Members will be censured just for being in the minority rather than in the majority, and that will come to stifle our dialogue and haunt all of our work.

For example, the good Speaker of the House, who is my friend from the Judiciary Committee, has taken positions in the past arguing that sex between consenting gay adults should be a crime, that the Supreme Court was wrong to strike down sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas and wrong to give gay people the right to marry in Obergefell, a right that he said is ``the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.''

The vast majority of Americans reject these positions as extreme in public opinion polls and believe all citizens should have the freedom to pursue their own love lives and to marry.

If the House majority changes hands, should we actually censure the former Speaker of the House for his constitutional apostasy and thought crimes against the rights of millions of Americans? I sure hope not because the gentleman from Louisiana is absolutely entitled to his political and religious views, no matter how far outside the constitutional and American mainstream they are.

Under the First Amendment, extremism is in the eye of the beholder, but how will we resist the temptation to punish him in the future if we set a precedent today that Members can be censured and canceled simply for their

political heresies in the eyes of the majority controlling the House?

If we say the gentlewoman can be punished because her views of history are wrong, as I heard my friend say, can we then punish Members of this body who refuse to vote to take down in our Halls the statues of Members of Congress from the 19th century who joined the Confederacy and committed treason against the Union, people like John Breckinridge, a former Vice President and U.S. Senator who was expelled from the Senate after he defected to the Confederacy? Should we use the disciplinary process to impose historical orthodoxy?

If anything, there is a stronger constitutional case for punishing the 120 Members of the House who voted against taking down statues of Confederate traitors because multiple provisions of the Constitution explicitly forbid and punish participation in insurrection. Do Members who voted that way want to risk being censured in the future by establishing that divergent minority views on history are a legitimate matter of institutional discipline?

What about the Members who defended conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and stated that Sandy Hook and Parkland mass murderers of dozens of schoolchildren were staged by Hollywood to generate support for gun safety? That is not even a matter of opinion but adjudicated positive fact, and still, the Constitution protects your right to be wrong about facts unless you are deliberately defrauding or cheating someone out of something like money or campaign contributions.

What about all of those Members who have followed the former President in advancing the big lie that he actually won the 2020 election? Should we convert the 60 Federal and State court decisions rejecting claims of election fraud and corruption into discipline and punishment of Members who still cling to that view?

What about the 11 Members of this body who lost the 405-11 vote in 2019 recognizing that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I was a genocide? Does their denial of the genocidal character of the deaths of more than 1 million Armenians qualify them for collective punishment today, institutional punishment?

Can we convert differing interpretations of history into the basis for disciplinary action?

Well, perhaps you say political dissent should be uniquely punishable when it comes to foreign policy. Of course, the First Amendment doesn't distinguish between speech having domestic or foreign policy content. All of it is protected. If not, every Member of this body who has voted against aid to Ukraine and praises Vladimir Putin, as the former President did for his ``genius'' and his ``savvy,'' or says Putin is not our enemy, as a number of Members have, could be censured for it by this body.

This resolution not only degrades our Constitution but cheapens the meaning of discipline in this body for people who actually commit wrongful actions like bribery, fraud, violent assault, and so on.

When people are punished for their political ideas and expression, they will wear it as a badge of honor. They will fundraise on it. Millions of dollars will flow to people who are punished that way, and they will join the public in mocking the new speech censors of Congress.

A secure constitutional republic, which actively protects the freedom of dissenting speech to allow for serious debate and growth as society, shows its strength, not its weakness.

As Thomas Jefferson, whose beautiful statue is right outside of this room, put it: ``If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.''

Now is a moment when we will get to see who in the House of Representatives believes in the freedom of speech, even the speech they hate, versus those who want to impose a new political straitjacket of cancel culture on America and Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Pressley).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the ranking member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 10 seconds to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Ms. Bush).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bowman).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Carson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Ramirez).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Omar).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Buck).

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I don't think that my colleagues have caught us in any kind of contradiction when they raised the case of Representative Gosar, who posted a video on social media depicting himself killing our colleague Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and also attacking President Biden. This was a true threat. These were fighting words. This is something that is totally within our First Amendment tradition.

Mr. Speaker, we live in a time of terror and war, great polarization and trauma across the world. We must grapple the rule of law to our souls with hoops of steel at this moment. In a time of all kinds of storms all over the world, the rule of law, the Constitution, is our shore, and now is a moment to hug the shore.

Let's defend the freedom of speech for today, for tomorrow, and going forward in the Congress of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of the privileges of the House and offer the resolution that was previously noticed.

Mr. Speaker, Representative Tlaib has repeatedly made atrocious statements against our ally Israel and in support of Hamas, a terrorist group responsible for the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Represent Tlaib has levied unbelievable falsehoods about our greatest ally, Israel, and the attack on October 7. Recently, she even falsely blamed them for bombing the Al Ahli Arab hospital, but all of our current intelligence shows that Israel was not responsible.

As stated in my resolution on November 3, Representative Tlaib said: ``From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.''

Mr. Speaker, let me break down the saying, ``From the river to the sea.'' The river is the Jordan River, and the sea is the Mediterranean Sea. This is a call for the complete destruction of Israel. It is disgusting when it is used in this context that was meant.

Representative Tlaib boycotted Israeli President Herzog's address to Congress, releasing a joint statement with Representative Bush that said: ``Bestowing President Herzog with the rare honor of a joint address to Congress while the Israeli apartheid government continues to enable and directly support racism and brutal settler attacks is a slap in the face to victims, survivors, and their loved ones. . . .''

This kind of hatred against our ally Israel is unacceptable. Israel has a right to exist. For thousands of years, the Jewish people resided in that land and, after being displaced for centuries, returned in 1948 after the Holocaust.

Mr. Speaker, we have seen the effects of the reprehensible rhetoric of Representative Tlaib across the Nation. At schools and colleges around the country, Jewish students have been forced to be on alert as their anti-Semitic peers have engaged in disgusting demonstrations, chanting anti-Semitic slogans.

At The Cooper Union, a private college in New York, Jewish students were forced to hide from pro-Hamas protesters in a library where they feared for their safety.

At George Washington University, just about a half mile from this building, students broadcast ``Glory to our martyrs,'' and ``Free Palestine from the river to the sea,'' on the side of a campus building.

Further, yesterday, in Ventura County, California, Paul Kessler, a Jewish man protesting for Israel, was killed in an altercation with pro-Palestinian protesters.

These anti-Semitic incidents are happening right now in America in 2023. Quite frankly, in my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like it.

The same Nation that defeated Nazism in World War II must now defeat an internal rot promoting the same senseless violence and hatred of Jewish people.

It is a sad fact, but this type of anti-Semitic hate is being promoted by a small group of Members in this body--chiefly, Representative Tlaib. We must hold her accountable.

This war in Israel is affecting everyone, whether it is innocent Palestinians at risk because of Hamas' actions; or our fellow Jewish Americans, who now have to worry each day about the possibility of an anti-Semitic attack; or Sergeant Elisheva Rose Ida Lubin, a young Jewish woman who was a member of the Israeli Border Police and grew up in Dunwoody, Georgia, and was killed by a Palestinian assailant.

For the safety and security of our Nation, we must continue to support Israel, a nation fighting for democracy, decency, and Western values.

Representative Tlaib has undermined U.S. interests with her statements and must be censured.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Fine speech. You talk about setting precedents. I think there is a precedent. You guys must have searched really high and far and long to find the people who voted against censuring Paul Gosar or Marjorie Taylor Greene. There is a precedent. You are right.

When you talk about freedom of speech and who protects that freedom of speech, you are talking to a marine, and you are about to talk to a Navy SEAL, people who would give their lives to defend the freedom of speech. I understand that probably as well as anybody.

Let me be clear. This is not about a First Amendment issue. Rashida Tlaib has the right to spew anti-Semitic vitriol and even call for the destruction of the Jewish state, but the House of Representatives also has the right to make it clear that her hate speech does not reflect the opinion of the Chamber. That is what this resolution is about.

When you talk about ``from the river to the sea,'' we talked about this with the Parliamentarian, and we talked about it with legal counsel. We talked about precedent. We got the Intel Committee to make sure the facts are straight. We did our homework on whether there is a precedent on this.

If this is not worthy of censure, what is? When you can call for the annihilation of a country and its people, if that is not worthy of censure, what is?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Van Orden).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

If this was about calling for a cease-fire, we would not have these proceedings.

I was wrong, by the way, when I said that it must have taken a long time to find somebody who hasn't voted for censorship from the other side of the aisle. You didn't find it. The gentleman from the other side of the aisle actually did vote for censorship on a First Amendment right. I find it rather funny. We just researched it. Unless my sources are wrong, the vast majority of the other side of the aisle actually voted for censorship based on a First Amendment right.

I also wanted to say that my heart goes out to the Palestinian people--it truly does--especially those people who were bombed in the hospital, which my colleague knows wasn't from the Israelis.

Yet the statement is contrary to that, even though our intel was very clear, as was our President, very clear. That is what this debate is about.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bergman), a Marine Corps general.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Van Drew).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Miller), a marine.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lawler).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Fallon).

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert this article from 11 Alive News, titled: ``Metro Atlanta woman killed in Jerusalem: reports,'' dated November 6, 2023.

Mr. Speaker, I know there is a lot of passion today. I heard a lot of screaming. I heard a lot of accusations, you could say, on both sides.

I don't really care what race, religion, or gender orientation you are. Where I come from in the Marine Corps, we are all shades of green, and we all bleed red. That is the truth. I just care about the person who has my back.

When I was student body president at Morehouse School of Medicine, I was elected by my peers--60 percent females, 80 percent Black, 95 percent liberal. Why? I was elected because I love people. I love people of all sorts. This isn't about who you are. It is about what you represent, what this body represents. That is what this debate is about.

If this is not worthy of censure, I don't know what it is. Representative Tlaib has stoked anti-Semitism in this Nation and undermined our national security.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support this resolution to show the world, especially our adversaries, that the United States stands behind our allies and will not back down to terrorists.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am the only Palestinian American serving in Congress. My perspective is needed here now more than ever.

I will not be silenced, and I will not let you distort my words. Folks forget I am from the city of Detroit, the most beautiful, Blackest city in the country, where I learned to speak truth to power, even if my voice shakes. Trying to bully or censure me won't work because this movement for a cease-fire is much bigger than one person. It is growing every single day.

There are millions of people across our country who oppose Netanyahu's extremism and are done watching our government support collective punishment and the use of white phosphorus bombs that melt flesh to the bone.

They are done watching our government, Mr. Speaker, supporting cutting off food, water, electricity, and medical care to millions of people with nowhere to go.

Like me, Mr. Speaker, they don't believe the answer to war crimes is more war crimes.

The refusal of Congress and the administration to acknowledge Palestinian lives is chipping away at my soul. Over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed. The majority were children.

Let me be clear: My criticism has always been of the Israeli Government and Netanyahu's actions.

It is important to separate people and governments, Mr. Speaker. No government is beyond criticism. The idea that criticizing the Government of Israel is anti-Semitic sets a very dangerous precedent, and it is being used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our Nation.

Do you realize what it is like, Mr. Speaker, for the people outside of the Chamber right now listening in agony to their own government dehumanizing them, to hear the President of the United States we helped elect dispute death tolls as we see video after video of parents and dead children under rubble?

Mr. Speaker, do you know what it is like to feel rising hate crimes, to know how Islamophobia and anti-Semitism make us all less safe, and to worry that your own child might suffer the horrors that 6-year-old Wadea did in Illinois?

I can't believe I have to say this, but Palestinian people are not disposable. We are human beings just like anyone else. My sity, my grandmother, like all Palestinians, just wants to live her life with the freedom and human dignity we all deserve.

Speaking up to save lives, Mr. Speaker, no matter faith, no matter ethnicity, should not be controversial in this Chamber. The cries of Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me. What I do not understand is why the cries of Palestinians sound different to you- all.

We cannot lose our shared humanity, Mr. Speaker. I hear the voices of advocates in Israel, in Palestine, across America, and around the world for peace. I am inspired by the courageous survivors in Israel who have lost loved ones yet are calling for a cease-fire and the end to violence. I am grateful to the people in the streets for the peace movement, with countless Jewish Americans across the country standing up and lovingly saying: ``Not in our name.''

We will continue to call for a cease-fire, Mr. Speaker, for the immediate delivery of critical humanitarian aid to Gaza, for the release of all hostages and those arbitrarily detained, and for every American to come home. We will continue to work for real, lasting peace that upholds human rights and the dignity of all people and centers peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, censures no one, and ensures that no person, no child, has to suffer or live in fear of violence.

Seventy-one percent of Michigan Democrats support a cease-fire. You can try to censure me, but you can't silence their voices.

I urge my colleagues to join with the majority of Americans and support a cease-fire now to save as many lives as possible. President Biden must listen to and represent all of us, not just some of us.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the President to have the courage to call for a cease-fire and the end of killings.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the House.

The form of the resolution is as follows:

H. Res. 845 censuring Representative Rashida Tlaib for promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and calling for the destruction of the State of Israel.

Whereas, Israel has existed on its lands for millennia, and the United States played a critical role in returning Israel to those lands in 1948 immediately following the Holocaust and in recognition of its rights to exist as an indelible signal of our solidarity with the Jewish people;

Whereas, Israel is a critical ally to the American people and to our strategic national security interests in the Middle East;

Whereas, the people of Israel, including American citizens, were brutally attacked on October 7, 2023, by Hamas;

Whereas, Representative Rashida Tlaib, within 24 hours of the October 7 barbaric attack on Jewish citizens in the State of Israel, representing the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, defended the brutal rapes, murders, beheadings, and kidnappings, including of Americans, by Hamas as justified resistance to the apartheid state;

Whereas, Representative Tlaib's October 8 statement claimed that Hamas' October 7 attack on the Jewish people was partly attributable to the United States security aid provided to Israel which ignores the fact that the Iron Dome, a codeveloped air defense system, saved lives that day by intercepting rockets launched from the Gaza Strip against Israeli civilian targets;

Whereas, on October 18, 2023, Representative Tlaib continued to knowingly spread the false narrative that Israel intentionally bombed the Al Ahli Arab hospital on October 17 after United States intelligence, Israeli intelligence, and President Biden assessed with high confidence that Israel did not cause the explosion;

Whereas, on November 3, 2023, Representative Tlaib published on social media a video containing the phrase ``from the river to the sea'' which is widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the State of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea;

Whereas, Representative Tlaib doubled down on this call to violence by falsely describing ``from the river to the sea'' as ``an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence'' despite it clearly entailing Israel's destruction and the denial of its fundamental right to exist; and

Whereas, Representative Tlaib has repeatedly displayed conduct entirely unbecoming of a Member of the House of Representatives by calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and dangerously promoting false narratives regarding a brutal, large-scale terrorist attack against civilian targets inside the sovereign territory of a major, nonNATO ally while hundreds of Israeli and American hostages remain in terrorist captivity: Now, therefore, be it resolved that Representative Rashida Tlaib be censured.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for the time.

With respect to the gentleman from Maryland, I understand the perspective with respect to free speech, and I certainly wish to always stand aside the protection of free speech in this country, but this goes well beyond that.

We are not talking about restraining the gentlewoman from Michigan's ability to speak as an American citizen. We are not talking about punishing her and putting her in jail.

What we are talking about is whether a Member of the House of Representatives, a Member of this body representing this Nation, is justified in putting forward a defense of the actions of Hamas terrorists that murdered innocent Israeli citizens and are holding United States citizens and Israelis hostage. In her own language, she was defending on October 8--a mere 24 hours into the brutal and barbaric attacks in which babies were beheaded, babies were placed into ovens, literally. Moms were raped in a house while their babies were put in an oven. This is a documented account, video evidence, and this is dismissed as resistance to an apartheid state.

My problem is that the gentlewoman is also referring to Joe Biden supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people. The gentlewoman has put forward that by virtue of the United States of America funding, in solidarity the people of Israel in defense of their right to exist, that by virtue of our position as Americans standing in

front of that flag in this Chamber representing 330 million Americans, that by funding and supporting Israel, we are somehow perpetuating the call for violence that we saw unfold right before our eyes on October 7 in the most brutal and heinous acts that some of us have ever seen.

I do not doubt the gentlewoman's sincerity of her concern for her home people and concerns about the attacks on the people of Gaza.

I had some people who called into question that I would put out my public support for my former colleague, Justin Amash, who lost cousins in a church, receiving missile fire into a building next to a church.

I genuinely pray for the people of Israel, the people of Gaza, the people throughout the world that are now dealing with all of this.

The gentlewoman cannot, as a Member of Congress, be standing up and telling the world that what we saw unfold in attacking Israel is justified. We can't.

Free speech matters. I have grave concern right now about where this institution is going with respect to censures. I voted against the censure last week because I thought it had drafting problems and I thought it had significant concerns it raised.

Mr. Speaker, I believe the work that was done by my friend from Georgia, he put forward a resolution that is worthy of support. I support the resolution and believe that we should pass it.