Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to thank Tess Kuenning, president and chief executive officer of the Bi-State Primary Care Association for her contributions to the work of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to expand access to primary care for all Americans.

Tess Kuenning, clinically trained as an advanced practice nurse, has led Bi-State Primary Care Association for nearly 30 years. During this time, she has worked tirelessly to support community health centers in Vermont, New Hampshire, and around the country as a member of various boards, committees, and panels focused on expanding access to primary care.

Primary care is the backbone of our healthcare system. Community health centers make up a major portion of that backbone, especially for low- and moderate-income Americans. Yet Congress continues to severely underfund this critical work.

Community health centers provide affordable, quality primary medical, dental, and mental health care, as well as access to low-cost prescription drugs to over 30 million people in the United States. In Vermont, nearly one out of every three people receives their primary healthcare through a community health center across 73 sites, something that I and my fellow Vermonters are very proud of and has happened in no small part due to Tess's efforts.

Over the past year, I worked very hard as chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to increase funding for community health centers. Working day and night alongside me was Tess Kuenning. Simply put, she has done more for health centers this past year than just about anyone else in the Nation. Tess uses creativity, innovation, perseverance, and her vast network of health center contacts across the country to lift up and garner support for the community health center program. She is steadfast in her efforts to build connections and demonstrate the vast needs and even greater potential of our health centers.

To my mind, Tess Kuenning's work represents the kind of effective engagement all Americans should have with their Members of Congress. Each of us should be lucky enough to have people in our home State who understand the needs of everyday people and are willing to tell us what we need to know to provide our constituents with the help they need. I am very grateful for Tess's dedication to improving our healthcare system and the health of millions and all those who believe that healthcare is a right--not a privilege--owe her our thanks and respect.

Mr. President, some of my Republican colleagues held a press conference today, criticizing President Biden for his decision to stop sending additional bombs to Israel due to the Netanyahu government's apparent decision to launch a major military assault on Rafah.

One of my Republican colleagues even said:

Joe Biden objectively favors a Hamas victory over Israel.

It's just that simple.

Which sounds rather amusing given the fact that, for the last 40 years, there has probably been nobody here in Washington, DC, more strongly supportive of Israel than Joe Biden, as a Senator and a President.

We all know that President Biden has been very clear about his opposition to an attack on Rafah for many, many months and for good reason: An offensive--a major military offensive--in Rafah would worsen an already horrendous humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

I am not quite sure--I know a little bit about politics, but I am not quite sure whom my Republican colleagues think they are speaking for when they attack the President.

The truth of the matter is that the American people--Republicans, Democrats, Independents, progressives, conservatives, moderates--are increasingly sick and tired of the massive destruction that is now taking place in Gaza. That is not Bernie Sanders' opinion; that is what poll after poll after poll shows. What those polls show is that the American people want an immediate cease-fire, and they do not want more U.S. military aid going to the war machine of the rightwing extremists' Netanyahu Government.

Let me just take a second to mention a few of the polls that are out there showing where the American people are on this issue.

Just this week--a few days ago--a Data for Progress poll found that 70 percent of voters, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, support the U.S. calling for deescalation and a cease-fire in Gaza. Deescalation is not a massive assault on Rafah, and a majority of voters, including 68 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of Independents, support suspending all U.S. arms sales to Israel until it stops blocking U.S. humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

An April 14 POLITICO/Morning Consult poll: 67 percent of Americans support the U.S. calling for a cease-fire.

An April 12 CBS poll: 60 percent think the U.S. should not send weapons and supplies to Israel. Those are all, for my Democratic colleagues, disproportionately higher among Democratic supporters.

An April 10 Economist/YouGov poll: 37 percent support decreasing military aid to Israel; just 18 percent support an increase. Overall, 63 percent support a ceasefire, and 15 percent oppose.

So I am not quite sure where my Republican colleagues are coming from and who they think they are representing.

Let me just take a moment to tell you why the American people are opposed to more military aid going to the Netanyahu Government.

Almost 35,000 Palestinians have already been killed in the 7-month war, and more than 78,000 have been wounded, over two-thirds of whom are women and children--two-thirds of whom are women and children. As we speak right now, according to humanitarian organizations, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children face the possibility of malnutrition and starvation.

No. The American people do not want to see an increase in destruction in Gaza. They want to see an end to this horrific war.

Mr. President, as I am sure you know, the Netanyahu government has already destroyed the civilian infrastructure of Gaza. There is virtually no electricity, virtually no clean water, and raw sewage is running through the streets, spreading disease.

The housing infrastructure of Gaza has been demolished. Over 60 percent of the housing units have been damaged or destroyed, including 221,000 housing units that have been completely decimated, leaving more than 1 million people homeless--almost half the population of Gaza.

The healthcare system has been systematically annihilated-- healthcare--at a time when you have tens and tens of thousands of people who have been injured, 26 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza have been made inoperable, and more than 400 healthcare workers have been killed.

The educational system in Gaza has been virtually destroyed. Every one of Gaza's 12 universities has been bombed, 56 schools have been destroyed, 219 have been damaged, and 625,000 children have no access to education.

Some of my Republican friends think that this is not enough violence, that this is not enough destruction? They want Netanyahu to go into Rafah and kill more people, making it impossible for humanitarian aid to get out to starving people. Maybe some of my Republican colleagues think that is a good idea. I do not believe the American people agree with them.

Last year at this time, the population of Rafah was about 300,000. Today, it is about 1.3 million. In other words, the population has quadrupled--quadrupled--in a 7-month period, with people who have been driven out of their homes throughout Gaza now landing in Rafah. That is why an attack on Rafah would make an unspeakable humanitarian disaster even worse. There are 1.3 million people, including 600,000 children, sheltering in that area. That means there are some 50,000 people per square mile. It is enormously densely populated.

This is also Rafah, where the vast majority of humanitarian aid is received and distributed and where most of the few remaining medical facilities are located.

In other words, at a time of massive humanitarian disaster throughout Gaza, an attack on Rafah would not only greatly add to the death toll, it would severely hinder the ability of humanitarian aid to get through to desperate and starving people.

Let me conclude by saying this: The United States does and should stand by its allies, but our allies must also stand by the values and the laws of the United States of America. That is what an ally is.

We must now use all of our leverage to prevent the catastrophe in Gaza from becoming even worse, and that means holding back all offensive military aid, including billions in recent funding, until the Netanyahu government withdraws from Gaza, restores humanitarian aid to people who are now facing starvation, ends the disastrous war, and stops killing Palestinians in the West Bank.

The United States of America must not be complicit in this atrocity.

With that, I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to S. Res. 670, which, in my view, does, in fact, not go far enough to address the very serious crisis of bigotry taking place all over this country.

Let me be very clear. Anti-Semitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and in the last century resulted in the deaths of at least 6 million people, including some in my own family. I strongly and unequivocally condemn all forms of anti-Semitism.

In addition, it is imperative that Congress, representing the American people, make clear our strong opposition to all forms of bigotry in this country, whether on college campuses or elsewhere, including Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, and the growing attacks against the Asian-American community.

Our goal must be to bring people together as one Nation regardless of our religion, regardless of where we were born, regardless of the color of our skin.

And the resolution that I am offering, which I hope will be accepted, makes that abundantly clear: no to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia, no to all forms of racism and bigotry.

And as we do our best to combat racism and all of its ugly manifestations, we must also hold our heads high and with pride as we honor the First Amendments to our Constitution, brilliantly developed by the Founders of this country.

And let me simply read, because some may have forgotten what the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or

abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the

right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition

the Government for a redress of grievances.

That is what a free country is about--the right to disagree with government and the right to protest. And those are rights that every Member of Congress should respect, no matter what one's political point of view may be.

I happen to believe that protesting injustice is part of the American tradition, going back to the very Founders of this country, and has played a fundamental role in recent decades in the fight to overcome racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination.

I would remind my colleagues, for example, that the success of the civil rights movement was due in large part to sit-ins and occupations where young Black and White Americans bravely took up space in private businesses demanding an end to the racial discrimination of segregation that existed at that time.

I would also remind my colleagues that during the Vietnam war, students and millions of other Americans, including myself, joined peaceful demonstrations demanding an end to that war. Maybe--just maybe--tens of thousands of American lives and countless of Vietnamese lives might have been saved if the government had listened to those demonstrators.

And further, let us not forget those who demonstrated against the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe those protesters should have been listened to as well.

You know, despite what some people think here, government policy regarding war is not always right. In fact, in recent history, it has mostly been wrong.

I do find it extraordinary, both tonight, in listening to my colleagues,

and what I have heard for many months now, that this body is very quick to bring forth bills and resolutions condemning student protesters, but there has been minimal discussion about what these young people are protesting. And that is rather extraordinary. I didn't hear one word of it tonight.

What are they out demonstrating about? What have millions of people gone to the streets and are talking about?

So let me take this opportunity to do just that.

We all know, as has been stated correctly this evening, that on October 7, 2023, Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this war with an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 innocent men, women, and children, and took over 200 people captive, many of whom are still in captivity tonight. I think all of us believe--and I know that all of us believe--that this horrific attack must be unequivocally condemned, and I believe that all of us understand that Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas. But I certainly do not believe, nor do a strong majority of the American people believe, that the rightwing, extremist Netanyahu government has the right to wage an unprecedented, all-out war against the Palestinian people.

And what these protests are largely about and what public opinion is showing is outrage that, since October 7, the Netanyahu government has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and injured more than 78,000, 70 percent of whom are women and children. That is over 5 percent of the 2.2 million people living in Gaza.

And that is what the vast majority of people in this country who are protesting are talking about. Protesters and the majority of the American people are outraged that 1.8 million people, 80 percent of the population of Gaza, have been forced out of their homes--80 percent forced out of their homes and sent to overcrowded and dangerous locations.

Protesters, and the American people in general, are deeply concerned about the destruction of over 200,000 housing units--destroyed, leaving more than a million people in Gaza homeless. The American people and protesters are deeply worried, concerned about what happens to these people in the future. They have got no home. Where do they go? How do they live?

The American people and protesters are outraged that the civilian infrastructure of Gaza has been devastated, with approximately 60 percent of water and sanitation facilities damaged or destroyed and electricity almost entirely shut off. Raw waste is now seeping into the streets throughout Gaza because their wastewater systems have been destroyed.

The American people and the American doctors I have talked to who were in Gaza are shocked that the healthcare system of Gaza has been systematically destroyed, with 26 hospitals knocked out of service and more than 400 healthcare workers killed.

When we talk about college campuses--and I understand that is the discussion here tonight--I want everyone to know that there are no protests on the college campuses in Gaza. Nobody is feeling discomfort. Do you know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed.

And as we speak against explicit and repeated warnings of President Biden, Israel is attacking Rafah, where over a million Palestinians have sought refuge. And that situation will only accelerate the crisis that Mrs. McCain and others in the humanitarian world have talked about; and that is that famine is imminent in Gaza, and God knows how many children are already dying of malnutrition.

The fact of the matter is that some 67 percent of Americans, according to recent polls, support the United States' calling for a cease-fire, and 60 percent oppose sending more weapons to Israel. And that is what the protesters are talking about. They are asking why it is that we are complicit in the humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza; and why, when we have got hundreds of thousands of people homeless throughout this country, we are giving $20 billion more to the rightwing, extremist Netanyahu government.

So, no, it is not just protesters on college campuses who are upset about U.S. policy with regard to Israel and Gaza. Increasingly, American people want an end to U.S. complicity in the humanitarian disaster that is unfolding there.

Mr. President, I will therefore be offering an alternative resolution to the one that Senator Scott offered which does the following--and I hope it would gain unanimous support: No. 1, it strongly condemns the rise of anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti- Asian, and any other form of discrimination on the campuses of schools and institutions of higher education across the United States.

So it does what Senator Scott proposes, but it does more.

No. 2, it strongly affirms Congress's support for the First Amendment of the Constitution and freedom of speech and dissent.

No. 3, it strongly supports the right of students and all Americans to peacefully protest.

No. 4, it urges the Department of Education to take necessary actions to ensure that schools and institutions of higher education are complying with title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to provide all students--including students who are or perceived to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, or Palestinian--a school environment free from discrimination based on race, religion, color, or national origin.

And lastly, it strongly urges school leaders, college administrators, and local, State, and Federal leaders to take all necessary steps to protect students' safety and civil rights, including their right to peacefully assemble and protest.

Therefore, I object to this resolution.

Mr. President, well, I would agree with the Senator from South Carolina on one point: People are disgusted with politics. And maybe the reason they are disgusted with politics is, despite what the vast majority of the American people want, the U.S. Government is continuing to provide billions of dollars in military aid to the rightwing, extremist Netanyahu government. The Senator from South Carolina said it is a coalition government. It is. It is rightwing extremists in coalition with out-and-out racists. That is the coalition. And people are disgusted because they don't want to see their money going to kill more women and children in Gaza.

Now, the Senator from South Carolina says that I am muddying the waters. Really? Well, I would suggest that the Senator from South Carolina remember what happened a number of months ago in November, I believe, of 2023. Three young Palestinian college students were shot at close range in my city. Islamophobia in this country is on the rise. If you are a Palestinian walking the streets, you better be careful.

So the idea that we should not, as a nation and as a Congress, come together to address anti-Semitism--absolutely. But Islamophobia? We have, as you know, some people out there talking about the Chinese flu and ``kung flu.'' If you think that does not provoke anti-Asian behavior on the part of some, you would be mistaken.

So I think what is appropriate is for us to condemn anti-Semitism, which is exactly what my resolution does, but make it clear that all forms of bigotry in this country are unacceptable.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of my resolution, which is at the desk; further, that the resolution be agreed to; that the preamble be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, some of us have been out of school for a while, and we may have forgotten our American history. But I did want to take a moment to remind some of my colleagues about a document called the U.S. Constitution and, specifically, the First Amendment of that Constitution.

So for those who may have forgotten, here is what the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or

abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the

right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition

the Government for a redress of grievances.

First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Let me also take this opportunity to remember our late colleague, the former Congressman John Lewis, for his heroic role in the civil rights movement. Now, I know it is very easy to heap praise on Congressman Lewis and many others decades after they did what they did, but I would remind my colleagues that Mr. Lewis--later Congressman Lewis--was arrested 45 times for participating in sit-ins, occupations, and protests--45 times for protesting segregation and racism.

I would also remind my colleagues that the lunch counter protest at Woolworth's and elsewhere which helped lead to the desegregation of the South and the ending of apartheid in the United States were, in fact, sit-ins and occupations where young Black and White Americans bravely took up space in private businesses, demanding an end to the racism and segregation that existed at that time.

Further, as I hope everybody knows, we have also seen, in recent decades, protests--some of them massive protests--against sexism, against homophobia, and the need to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel in order to save this planet. In other words, protesting injustice and expressing our opinions is part of our American tradition. And when you talk about America being a free country, well, you know what? Whether you like it or not, the right to protest is what American freedom is all about. That is the U.S. Constitution.

And let me also remind you that exactly 60 years ago--ironically, exactly 60 years ago--student demonstrators occupied the exact same building on Columbia University's campus as is taking place right now-- ironically, the same building 60 years ago.

Across the country, students and others--including myself, I would say--joined peaceful demonstrations in opposition to the war in Vietnam. Those demonstrators were demanding an end to that war; and maybe, just maybe, tens of thousands of American lives and countless Vietnamese lives might have been saved if the government, at

that time, listened to the demonstrators. And I might also add that the President at that time--a very great President, Lyndon Johnson--chose not to run for reelection because of the opposition to him that occurred as a result of his support for that Vietnam war.

And, further, let us not forget those who demonstrated, went to the streets, and protested against the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe those protestors should have been listened to as well. Shock of all shocks, government policy is not always right.

I noted recently that a number of my colleagues in both parties--not just the Republican Party but the Democratic Party as well--as well as many news reporters--TV, newspapers--they are very concerned--very, very concerned--about the protests and violence we are seeing on campuses across the country. So let me be very clear: I share those concerns about violence on campus or, for that matter, anyplace else. And I condemn those who threw a brick through a window at Columbia University. That kind of violence should not be taking place on college campuses.

I also am concerned and condemn the group of individuals at UCLA in California who violently attacked the peaceful encampment of anti-war demonstrators on the campus of UCLA.

So let me be clear: I condemn all forms of violence on campus, whether they are committed by people who support Israel's war policies or by people who oppose those policies.

Further, I would hope that all of us can agree that, in the United States of America, all forms of bigotry must be condemned and eliminated. We are seeing a growth of anti-Semitism in this country, which we must all condemn and work to stop. We are also seeing a growth of Islamophobia in this country, which we must all condemn and stop.

And in that regard, I would mention that in my very own city of Burlington, VT, three wonderful young Palestinian students were shot at close range on November 25 of last year. They were visiting a family member to celebrate Thanksgiving, walking down the street, and they were shot.

And let me make an additional point. I have noted that there is an increasing tendency in the media and on the part of some of my colleagues here in the Senate to use the word, the phrase, ``pro- Palestinian'' to suggest that that means that people who are pro- Palestinian are pro-Hamas. And, to my mind, that is unacceptable, and it is factually inaccurate.

The overwhelming majority of American people and protestors understand that Hamas is a terrorist organization that started this war by attacking Israel in an incredibly brutal and horrific way on October 7. To stand up for Palestinian rights and the dignity of the Palestinian people does not make one a supporter of terrorism.

And let me also mention something that I found rather extraordinary-- and I have been in politics for a while, but I did find this one particularly extraordinary and outrageous--and that is, just a few days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the rightwing, extremist government in Israel--a government which contains out-and-out anti-Palestinian racists--Netanyahu issued a statement in which he equated criticism of his government's illegal and immoral war against the Palestinian people with anti-Semitism. In other words, if you are protesting or disagree with what Netanyahu and his extremist government are doing in Gaza, you are an anti-Semite. Well, that is an outrageous statement from a leader who is clearly trying to do something--and I have to tell you, I guess he is succeeding with the American media--and that is, to deflect attention away from the horrific policies that his government is pursuing in Gaza, which have created an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

So let me be as clear as I can be: It is not anti-Semitic or pro- Hamas to point out that in almost 7 months, the last 7 months, Netanyahu's extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000--70 percent of whom are women and children; 5 percent of the 2.2 million people in Gaza have been killed or injured, 70 percent of whom are women and children. And to protest that or to point that out is not anti-Semitic. It is simply factual.

It is not anti-Semitic to point out that Netanyahu's government's bombing campaign has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza; that is, over 60 percent of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, leaving more than 1 million people homeless--about half the population. No, Mr. Netanyahu, it is not anti- Semitic to point out what you have done in terms of the destruction of housing in Gaza.

It is not anti-Semitic to understand that Netanyahu's government has annihilated Gaza's healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 healthcare workers. At a time when 77,000 people have been wounded and desperately need medical care, Netanyahu's government has systematically destroyed the healthcare system in Gaza.

It is not anti-Semitic to condemn Netanyahu's government for the destruction of all of Gaza's 12 universities. They had 12 universities; they are all destroyed. It is not anti-Semitic to make that point, nor is it anti-Semitic to make the point that 56 other schools have been destroyed; hundreds more have been damaged; and, today, 625,000 children in Gaza have no opportunity for an education. Not anti-Semitic to make that point.

It is not anti-Semitic to note that Netanyahu's government has obliterated Gaza's civilian infrastructure. There is virtually no electricity in Gaza right now, virtually no clean water in Gaza right now, and sewage is seeping out onto the streets. Not anti-Semitic to make that point.

It is not anti-Semitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian organization that functions in the Gaza area in saying that Netanyahu's government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, and they have created the conditions under which hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza face malnutrition and famine.

It is not anti-Semitic to look at photographs of skeletal children who are starving to death because they have not been able to get the food they need.

It is not anti-Semitic to agree with American officials and U.N. officials that parts of Gaza could become famine districts in the not very distant future--famine.

Anti-Semitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people for hundreds of years-- including my own family, I might add--but it is outrageous and it is disgraceful to use the charge of anti-Semitism to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies that Netanyahu's extremist and racist government is pursuing. Furthermore, it is really cheap politics for Netanyahu to use the charge of anti-Semitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment he is facing in Israeli courts.

Bottom line: It is not anti-Semitic to hold Netanyahu and his government accountable for their actions. That is not anti-Semitic. That is precisely what we should be doing because, among other things, we are the government in the world that has supplied over a period of years and most recently billions and billions of dollars to Netanyahu in order for him to continue this horrific war against the Palestinian people.

I would also point out that while there has been wall-to-wall TV coverage of student protests--I think that is about all CNN does right now--I should mention that it is not just young people on college campuses who are extremely upset about our government's support and funding for this illegal and immoral war. And I would point out that just last week--just last week--this Senate voted to give Netanyahu another $10 billion of unfettered military aid to continue his war. But it is not just the protesters on college campuses who disagree with that decision; it is the American people.

Let me just quote from a few polls that have recently been taken.

April 14, a poll from POLITICO/Morning Consult: 67 percent support the United States calling for a cease-fire.

This is at a time when Netanyahu is threatening now to expand the war into Rafah.

April 12, CBS poll: 60 percent of the American people think the United States should not send weapons and supplies to Israel, as opposed to 40 percent who think the United States should.

For my Democratic colleagues, as you well know, those numbers are disproportionately higher among the Democratic community.

April 10, the Economist/YouGov poll: 37 percent support decreasing military aid to Israel, and just 18 support an increase. Overall, 63 percent support a cease-fire, and 15 percent oppose.

It is not just protesters on college campuses who are upset about U.S. Government policy regarding Israel and Gaza. Increasingly, the American people want an end to U.S. complicity in the humanitarian disaster which is taking place in Gaza right now. The people of the United States--Democrats, Republicans, Independents--in large numbers, do not want to be complicit in the starvation of hundreds of thousands of children.

Now, maybe this is a very radical idea. Here is a really, really, really radical idea: Maybe it is time for the U.S. Congress to listen to the American people. Maybe it is time to rethink the decision that the U.S. Senate recently made to provide Netanyahu with another $10 billion in unfettered military aid. Maybe it is time to not simply worry about the violence we are seeing on American college campuses but to focus on the unprecedented violence we are seeing in Gaza, which has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000, 70 percent of whom are women and children.

So I suggest to CNN and maybe some of my colleagues here: Maybe take your cameras, just for a moment, off of Columbia and off of UCLA. Maybe go to Gaza and take your camera and show us the emaciated children who are dying of malnutrition because of Netanyahu's policies. Show us the kids who have lost their arms and their legs. Show us the suffering that is going on over there.

Let me conclude by saying this: I must admit that I find it incomprehensible that many Members of Congress are spending their time attacking the protesters rather than the Netanyahu government, which has caused and brought about these protests and has created this horrific situation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Senate will soon vote on a $95 billion supplemental spending package, and $95 billion--that is a lot of money, especially at a time when many Americans are unable to afford their rent or pay their mortgages, pay their bills, afford healthcare, struggling with student debt, and many other needs. Mr. President, $95 billion is a lot of money.

All told, this package includes tens of billions of dollars in additional military spending and major policy changes, many of which are controversial, many of which are disagreed with by the American people. Yet, unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate will not have the opportunity to hold separate votes on the various components of this bill.

I have heard from many of my Democratic colleagues--and I agree--who talk about the dysfunctionality taking place in the House of Representatives. In fact, I don't know if we are quite sure who the Speaker of the House will be in a couple of weeks or whether the extreme-right wing is going to get rid of Mr. Johnson. But what we can say about the House is that they at least gave their Members the opportunity to vote yes or no on funding for Ukraine, yes or no on aid to Israel, yes or no on TikTok, and yes or no on aid to Asian countries. That is more than can be said for the U.S. Senate right now.

I remind my colleagues that this is supposedly the greatest deliberative body in the world--except we don't have very many deliberations around here. You have one bill, up or down.

We need to have a serious debate on these issues. I think the American people want us to have a serious debate on these issues, and that is why I am trying my best to secure amendment votes, which, in my view, will significantly improve this bill.

As it happens, I strongly support the humanitarian aid included in this bill, which will save many thousands of lives in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and many other places. Strongly support it. I strongly support getting Ukraine the military aid it needs to defend itself against Putin's Imperialist war. I support the Iron Dome to protect Israeli civilians from missile and drone attacks.

But let me be very clear: I strongly support ending the provision which will give $8.9 billion in unfettered offensive military aid to the extremist Israeli government, a government led by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is continuing his unprecedented assault against the Palestinian people.

I also strongly oppose language in this legislation that would prohibit funding for UNRWA, the U.N. organization that is the backbone of the humanitarian relief operation in Gaza and the only organization that experts say has the capability to provide the humanitarian aid that is desperately needed there.

And I have filed two amendments to address these issues. These amendments would not touch funding for the Iron Dome and other purely defensive

systems to protect Israel against incoming missiles.

As we all know, Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this war with a horrific attack on Israel that killed 1,200 innocent men, women, and children and took more than 230 captives, some of whom remain today in captivity.

As I have said many times, Israel has and had the absolute right to defend itself against this terrorist attack, but Israel did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which is exactly what it is doing.

Regarding offensive military aid to Israel, what we will be voting on is pretty simple: First, has Netanyahu and his government violated U.S. and international law in Gaza? Which, if he has, should automatically result in the cessation of all U.S. military aid to Israel. That is a pretty simple question.

Second--maybe even more importantly--as U.S. taxpayers, do we want to be complicit in Netanyahu's unprecedented and savage military campaign against the Palestinian people? Do we want to continue providing the weapons and the military aid that is causing this massive destruction? Do we want that war in Gaza to be not only Israel's war, but America's war?

On the first question, the legal issue, the answer is very clear. Netanyahu and his extremist government are clearly in violation of U.S. and international law and, because of that, should no longer receive U.S. military aid.

International law requires that warring parties facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need. That is international law. Israel has clearly not done that. Only in the last several weeks, after pressure from President Biden, has aid access begun to improve somewhat; though, it is still grossly insufficient given the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe.

Maybe more importantly is that U.S. law on this subject is extremely clear. There is no ambiguity. The foreign assistance act says that no U.S. security assistance may be provided to any country that ``prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.'' That is the law. Israel is clearly in violation of this law. For 6 months, it has severely limited the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza. The result has been a catastrophic humanitarian disaster with hundreds of thousands of children facing malnutrition and starvation. Israel's violation of this law is not in debate. It is a reality repeatedly confirmed every day by numerous humanitarian organizations. Israeli leaders themselves admit it.

At the start of this war, the Israeli Defense Minister declared a total siege on Gaza, saying--this is the Israeli defense minister:

We are fighting human animals and we [are acting]

accordingly.

There will be no electricity, no food . . . no fuel . . .

Everything [is] closed.

And they kept their word on that. In January, Netanyahu himself said that Israel is only allowing in the absolute minimum amount of aid. For months, thousands of trucks carrying lifesaving supplies have sat just miles away from starving children--trucks with food miles away from children who are starving. And Israel has kept these trucks from reaching people in desperate need.

Israel's blockade pushed the United States--this is rather incredible--to extreme measures, including airdropping supplies and the construction of an emergency pier in order to get food to starving people. In other words, the President and the United States did the right thing. Children are starving. We are trying to do airdrops, build a pier. In other words, we are now in the absurd situation where Israel is using U.S. military assistance to block the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid to Palestinians. If that is not crazy, I don't know what is; but it is also a clear violation of U.S. law.

Given that reality, we should not today even be having this debate. It is illegal to continue current military aid to Israel, let alone send another $9 billion with no strings attached.

Let me take a moment to describe what is happening in Gaza right now to further explain why these amendments are absolutely necessary and why we must end U.S. complicity in Netanyahu's war in Gaza.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and 77,000 wounded since this war began; 70 percent of whom are women and children--70 percent of whom are women and children. That means some 5 percent of the 2.2 million residents of Gaza have been killed or wounded in 6\1/2\ months--5 percent of the entire population in 6\1/2\ months have been killed or wounded. That is a staggering, rather unbelievable number.

Mr. President, 19,000 children in Gaza are now orphans--19,000 children are orphans--having lost their parents in this war. And I might add, for the children of Gaza, the psychic damage that has been done to them will never cease in their lives. They have witnessed-- little kids; Gaza is a young community, a lot of children--they have witnessed unbelievable carnage, destruction of houses. They have experienced hunger, thirst. They have been thrown out of their homes. What is being done to these many hundreds of thousands of children is unforgiveable.

And the killing has not stopped. Over the weekend, 139 Palestinians were killed and 251 were injured. Of these, 29 were killed in and around Rafah, including 20 children and 6 women, 1 of whom was pregnant.

Roughly 1.7 million people, over 75 percent of the population, have been driven from their homes in Gaza. Satellite data shows that 62 percent of homes in Gaza have been either damaged or destroyed, including 221,000 housing units that have been completely destroyed-- 221,000 housing units completely destroyed. That is more than 1 million people made homeless by Israeli bombing.

Not only housing, it is Gaza's entire civilian infrastructure that has been devastated. In Gaza today, there is no electricity, apart from generators or solar power, and most roads are badly damaged. More than half of the water and sanitation systems are out of commission. Clean drinking water is severely limited, and sewage is running through the streets spreading disease.

Israel has not only destroyed the housing stock in Gaza, not only destroyed the infrastructure, they have systemically destroyed the healthcare system in Gaza. Mr. President, 26 out of 37 hospitals are completely out of service in a country which now has tens and tens of thousands of people who are sick and wounded. Only 11 hospitals are partially functioning, but they are overwhelmed by the many, many people who are sick and injured, and they are all short of medical supplies. Doctors have had to perform countless surgeries without anesthesia or antibiotics, only three hospitals are now providing maternal care in Gaza, where 180 women are giving birth every day. Overall, 84 percent of health facilities have been damaged or destroyed in Gaza, and more than 400 healthcare workers have been killed.

But it is not only the housing that has been destroyed, not only the infrastructure, not only the healthcare system, the education system in Gaza has collapsed, with 56 schools destroyed and 219 damaged. The last of Gaza's universities was demolished in January. Some 625,000 students now have no access to education. I really do not understand what the military utility of destroying a university is. Mr. President, above and beyond the destruction of homes, the destruction of the infrastructure, the destruction of the healthcare system, the destruction of schools, universities, and the educational system, unbelievably, there is something even worse now taking place in Gaza, and that is that more than 1 million Palestinians, including hundreds of thousands of children, face starvation.

People in Gaza are foraging for leaves. They are eating animal feed or surviving off the occasional aid package. At least 28 children have already died of malnutrition and dehydration. The real number is likely much, much higher. But without sustained humanitarian access throughout Gaza, it is impossible to know. Recently, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said that famine was already present in northern Gaza.

Without food, clean water, sanitation or sufficient healthcare, hundreds of thousands of people are at severe risk from dehydration, infection, and easily preventable diseases.

I keep hearing discussion from the pundits and the experts about the ``day after in Gaza,'' when the war is over. But what kind of ``day after'' can there be amidst this incredible destruction? Gaza today can barely sustain human life.

Hamas started this war. That is true. But this war stopped being about defending Israel a long time ago. What is going on now is the destruction of the very fabric of Palestinian life. It is impossible to look at these facts and not conclude that the Israeli Government's policy has been quite deliberately to make Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians. And, clearly, there are powerful voices in Israel's extreme-rightwing government who have been quite open about their desire to drive the Palestinian people out of both Gaza and the West Bank.

This is not the Israel of Golda Meir. Netanyahu's government is beholden to outright racists and religious fanatics who believe that they have exclusive right to dominate the land.

That is why we must end our complicity in this terrible war. That is why we should support the amendment I am offering to end unfettered military aid to Netanyahu's war machine.

Let's be clear: Cutting military aid to Netanyahu's government is not just my view. It is what the American people believe and are demanding. The American people, in fact, are fed up with Netanyahu and his war. They do not want to see their taxpayer dollars support the slaughter of innocent civilians and the starvation of children.

A recent Gallup poll showed that just 36 percent of Americans approve of Israel's military action, with 55 percent disapproving. A Quinnipiac poll showed that U.S. voters oppose sending more military aid to Israel by 52 percent to 39 percent. An earlier YouGov poll also showed that 52 percent of Americans said the United States should stop sending weapons to Israel until it stops attacks in Gaza.

Maybe--and here is a very radical idea--maybe it is time for Congress to listen to the American people. I would urge strong support for my amendment.

Mr. President, my second amendment would remove the ban on funding for UNRWA, a U.N. organization with 30,000 employees that is delivering essential humanitarian aid in Gaza and supporting basic services in other neighboring countries, including Jordan. Millions of people rely on those services.

Israel has said that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 terrorist attack. These are serious charges and, obviously, any involvement with Hamas by UNRWA employees is unacceptable. That is why every year UNRWA provides Israel with a list of its staff and goes to great lengths to cooperate with Israeli authorities. UNRWA learned about Israel's accusations from the media, and immediately fired the accused employees while the U.N. launched an investigation.

Thus far, Israel has refused to cooperate with the U.N. investigation. I should add, importantly, that most major donors have now restored funding to UNRWA and are satisfied by the agency's protocols to ensure independence from Hamas.

The U.S. National Intelligence Council, meanwhile, said that Israel's claims were plausible but could not be confirmed, and noted that Israel has tried to undermine UNRWA for years. In the last 6 months, Israel has harassed UNRWA employees, blocked shipments of supplies including medicines, frozen its bank accounts, and killed 181 U.N. staff.

UNRWA plays a critical role both in Gaza and across the region. Whatever the investigation shows in the end, it is my view that you do not deny humanitarian aid to millions of people because of the alleged actions of 12 UNRWA employees out of a workforce of 30,000.

And, by the way, when we talk about investigations, maybe--just maybe--we should not just be talking about investigating UNRWA. Maybe we should also investigate what is going on in the West Bank. Last weekend, after an Israeli teenager was killed, large groups of armed Israeli settlers--vigilantes--rampaged through 17 villages, shooting dozens of people and burning homes. Israeli soldiers watched the attacks unfold, doing nothing to stop them. No arrests have been announced. Maybe we need an investigation there as well.

This past weekend, the Israeli military killed 14 more Palestinians in the West Bank. An ambulance driver was shot and killed as he tried to recover people wounded in another violent attack by Israeli settlers.

Since October 7, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 470 Palestinians in the West Bank, including more than 100 children. But for some reason, I don't know why, I just don't hear any of my colleagues calling for an investigation of that.

We are in a critical moment, not just in terms of what is happening in Gaza but, in many ways, what is happening right here in America and what is happening here in the U.S. Senate. Given the fact that a majority of the American people now want to stop funding for Netanyahu's war machine, I find it incomprehensible that we are not going to be able to vote on that issue.

I find it outrageous that, at a time when Netanyahu's government has clearly broken the law, Members of this Congress, Members of the Senate, are not going to be able to vote as to whether or not they want to continue providing billions more of unfettered military aid to Netanyahu's war machine.

So I would hope that we will have the decency to allow a little bit of democracy here in the U.S. Senate. I would hope that we will allow the Members to vote on some of these very, very important issues, and I certainly hope that we will pass these amendments.

I yield the floor.

I rise finding myself in the unusual position of supporting Senator Lee's effort of opening this bill up to amendment votes. I don't often agree with Senator Lee. I know that it is a radical idea. But, maybe, in the greatest deliberative body in the world, we might, on rare occasion, actually have debate and votes on major issues.

To that end, I plan on offering two very important amendments to this legislation. Members can agree with me on these issues or disagree, but they should be voted upon.

My first amendment would ensure that we are not providing any more offensive military aid to Netanyahu's war machine while he continues to violate U.S. and international law.

This amendment would not touch funding for the Iron Dome or other purely defensive systems, but it would end aid to a war machine which has already killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded 77,000, 70 percent of whom are women and children. And, right now, as we speak, hundreds of thousands of children face starvation as a result of that war machine.

Poll after poll shows that the American people are sick and tired of seeing their taxpayer dollars support the slaughter of innocent civilians and the starvation of children.

And while there is strong Republican support for ending aid to Netanyahu's war machine, the support, I should tell my Democratic colleagues, is overwhelming.

The second amendment that I am offering would remove the prohibition on funding for UNRWA, the backbone of the humanitarian relief operation in Gaza and the only organization that experts say has the capability to provide the humanitarian aid that is desperately needed.

Israel has alleged that 12 UNRWA employees out of 30,000 were involved in the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. That is being investigated.

I ask unanimous consent for 30 seconds.

That is being investigated, and it should be. But you don't allow thousands of children to starve because of the alleged violations and actions of 12 people.

The bottom line: We are debating one of the most serious issues we have faced in a long time. The American people want us to vote and debate these issues, and we should be able to do so.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, here is the good news: A few weeks ago, the approval rating for Congress was 10 percent. It has gone up to 14 percent. According to a recent YouGov poll, 14 percent approve of what Congress is doing and 68 percent oppose.

And I would tell my friends on both sides that it is about equal. In terms of whom people want to elect, it is about half Democrats, half Republicans. Why is that? Why do we have a 14-percent approval rating? Well, it might have something to do with things like we are witnessing today and the degree to which the Congress is completely out of touch with where the American people are.

So let me read some other polls, not on favorability but on people's feelings toward the role the United States is now playing in the war in Gaza. April 10, Economist YouGov poll, 37 percent support decreasing military aid to Israel; 18 percent support an increase.

And to my Democratic colleagues, I would say 48 percent of Democrats support decreasing aid; 10 percent support increasing aid.

Then there is a March 29 poll from Axios-Ipsos-Telemundo poll of Latinos--Latino people: 16 percent of Latinos said the United States should continue to support Israel with arms and funds; 39 percent said the U.S. should not be involved in the conflict.

March 27 Gallup poll: 36 percent of Americans approve of Israel's military action; 55 percent disapprove. Among Democrats, 18 percent approve; 75 percent disapprove.

March 27 Quinnippiac poll: Overall, voters oppose sending more military aid to Israel by 52 percent to 39 percent--52 percent oppose more aid; 39 percent support more aid--Democrats, 63 percent oppose sending more military aid; 25 percent support it.

March 11, YouGov: 52 percent of Americans said the United States should hold weapons shipments to Israel until it stops attacks in Gaza.

So you got a whole bunch of polls. They differ a little bit, but they say, pretty overwhelmingly, that the American people do not want to give more military aid to the Netanyahu war machine to continue its horrendous destructive policies in Gaza. That is what the American people are saying.

Earlier today, I tried to bring up two amendments dealing with the crisis in Gaza. One of them basically said that the United States should not support--should not supply any more offensive--offensive-- military aid to the Netanyahu government. I support defensive measures--the Iron Dome. The Israeli people have a right not to be attacked with missiles and drones. That amendment not only--that amendment could not even get a vote. That is the U.S. Senate today. People overwhelmingly are in opposition to more U.S. aid. We can't even discuss this issue and have a vote.

Why are the American people as opposed as they are to more aid for the military in Israel? Well, among other things, it may have something to do with what some of the Israeli leaders are saying and, in fact, who they are. And I think the American people are catching on that what we have today in Israel is not the Israel of Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin. It is a government now significantly controlled not only by rightwing extremists but by religious zealots.

Today, what we are seeing is a situation where Netanyahu himself has never favored a two-state solution, and he has made that very clear and has worked to systematically undermine the prospects for a deal. And I might mention that a two-state solution is the policy of the U.S. Government. His party's--Netanyahu's party's--founding charter reinforced in the current coalition agreement says ``between the Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty.'' For many years before October 7, Netanyahu told his allies, in private, that it was important to bolster Hamas to ensure that the Palestinians could never unify and form their own government.

In January, in terms of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Netanyahu said:

We provide minimal humanitarian aid. If we want to achieve

our war goals, we give the minimal aid.

The rest of the government or many others in that government is similarly extreme. At the start of the war, the Israeli Defense Minister declared a total siege, saying:

We are fighting human animals, and we are acting

accordingly.

There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything

is closed.

Another minister, at the start of the war, posted a picture of a devastated area in Gaza, saying it was ``more beautiful than ever, bombing and flattening everything.''

Another Israeli lawmaker said:

[T]he Gaza Strip should be flattened, and there should be

one sentence for everybody there--death. We have to wipe the

Gaza Strip off the map. There are no innocents there.

Several officials have openly talked about reestablishing Israeli settlements in Gaza. The current Intelligence Minister, among others, openly talks of permanently displacing Palestinians from Gaza.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, has long advocated for the forceful expulsion of Palestinians from the region. This is the current Israeli National Security Minister.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, responsible for much of the occupied West Bank has, likewise, long expressed the extreme racist views and has called for the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands. He has called for segregated hospital wards for Jews and Arabs because ``Arabs are my enemies.'' As a younger man, he was arrested by the Israeli authorities on suspicion of anti-Palestinian terrorism.

That is the man who is the current Israeli Finance Minister.

This is a significant part of Netanyahu's government. Those are some of the people whose war we are subsidizing.

We can pretend to ignore all of this. We can pretend that today's Israel is the Israel of 20 or 30 years ago, but that is just not the case. And the reason I raise these issues and talk about some of the people in the Israeli Government is to understand that what is happening today in Gaza is not an accident. It is a bringing forth the doing of what many of these people have wanted to do for a long time.

It should come as no surprise that this extreme government in Israel, right now, is not simply waging a war against Hamas--and Israel has the right to defend itself from the terrorist organization of Hamas--but it is at war with the entire Palestinian people and fighting that war in a deeply reckless and immoral way. And that is why the Netanyahu government has consistently ignored President Biden's request that they do more to minimize civilian casualties, that they be more targeted in their approach, and that they let more humanitarian aid in.

And so given the attitude and the beliefs--the racist beliefs of a number of people in the Netanyahu government, let us take a look and see what is happening today in Gaza.

We all know that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this war with a horrific attack on Israel that killed 1,200 men, women, and children and took more than 230 captives, some of whom are still in captivity today. And as I have said many times and repeated a moment ago, Israel has the right to defend itself; but it does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, including women and children.

Let's take a deep breath and listen to some of these facts--and no one disputes these facts. The war is about 6\1/2\ months old. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, and 77,000 have been wounded--70 percent of whom are women and children. That is 70 percent of whom are women and children. That means that 5 percent, 5 percent of the 2.2 million people in Gaza have been killed or wounded in a 6\1/2\-month period. That is an astronomical figure--astronomical. The number of people getting wounded--70 percent are women and children--is almost beyond comprehension.

Mr. President, 19,000 children are now orphans in Gaza--19,000-- having lost their parents in this war. And when you think about the children in Gaza, literally, it is hard to imagine.

Imagine a 7-year-old in an area where the whole community has been flattened, where there is massive death, where there is no food, there is no water, no schools. Your parents may or may not be alive. Your relatives are dead. That is what the children in Gaza are going through right now, and I doubt that any of them will ever fully recover from the psychic trauma--the terrible, unbelievable trauma that they are experiencing at this moment.

And the killing has not stopped. Over the weekend, 139 Palestinians were killed and 251 were injured. Of these, 29 were killed in and around Rafah, including 20 children and 6 women, one of whom was pregnant.

Just today, more news emerged about mass graves found by Palestinian health authorities and U.N. observers at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. So far, more than 300 bodies have been found. The U.N. Human Rights Office reports that the dead include elderly people, women, and wounded people, and that some had

been bound and stripped of their clothes. Some of these bodies apparently had their hands tied, the U.N. said.

What can we say about this horror? Roughly 1.7 million people--and it is, again, hard to understand. Maybe think--Members of Congress, think about your own State and what this would mean and look like in your own States. We are dealing with a population of 2.2 million people which is about 3\1/2\ times the size of the State of Vermont.

Roughly 1.7 million people--over 75 percent of the population--have been driven from their homes. It is not a community which has been forced to evacuate in order for a military action to take place. This is three-quarters of the population driven from their homes.

Satellite data shows that 62 percent of the homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including 221,000 housing units that have been completely destroyed.

A number of months ago in Vermont, we had a terrible flood, and dozens of houses were destroyed. And I saw the impact of what the destruction of dozens of houses in my small State meant. We are talking about 221,000 housing units that have been completely destroyed.

But it is not just housing. Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been devastated. There is little or no electricity apart from generators or solar power. Most of the roads are badly damaged. More than half of the water and sanitation systems are out of commission. Clean water is severely limited, and sewage--raw sewage--is running through the streets, creating disease. But it is not just housing and civilian infrastructure.

And this is quite unbelievable, but there is a reason, I think, for all of this. None of this is happening by accident. Israel has systematically destroyed the healthcare system in Gaza. We are not talking about an occasional accidental bomb that destroys a medical unit or a hospital. Those things happen. What we are talking about is the reality that 26 out of 37 hospitals are completely out of service. They have been bombed and attacked in all kinds of ways. The 11 hospitals that are remaining are partially functioning, but they are being overwhelmed by tens of thousands of trauma patients, and they are short on medical supplies.

So you got 77,000 people who have been wounded, and you got almost all of the hospitals out of commission.

I met recently with a group of American and British doctors who recently returned from Gaza where they had gone, bravely risking their own lives, to try to help alleviate the terrible suffering taking place there. And it is difficult to relate the unspeakable things they witnessed. They saw thousands of patients, many young children, killed or maimed in Israeli bombings. They operated on little children, already orphaned, on dirty hospital floors. On many days, they had no morphine; on other days, no water or clean gloves. They knew that many victims, even if they survived the week, would die of infection without access to sanitary environments or antibiotics.

They reported that the Israelis would not allow them to bring in wheelchairs or syringes, claiming they might have some military use. They witnessed Israeli forces systematically cutting off electricity, food, and water to hospitals and abducting medical workers with no affiliation to Hamas. They reported that Israeli soldiers destroyed medical equipment, like MRIs, oxygen tanks, and CT scanners, for no apparent reason. These are American doctors who witnessed these things.

Overall, 84 percent of health facilities have been damaged or destroyed, and more than 400 healthcare workers have been killed--an extraordinary number.

But we are not just talking about housing being decimated. We are not just talking about physical infrastructure being decimated. We are not just talking about a healthcare system being decimated. Gaza is a young community. A lot of children live there, and their educational system has been destroyed. Fifty-six schools have been bombed and completely destroyed, and 219 have been damaged--schools. The last of Gaza's universities--I think they had 12 universities in Gaza, and the last one was demolished in January. Now, I am not quite sure how fighting Hamas has anything to do with destroying universities, but it does lead to the fact that some 625,000 students in Gaza have, today, no access to education.

Just today, David Satterfield, the U.S. Special Envoy for the Gaza humanitarian crisis, said that the risk of famine throughout war- devastated Gaza, especially in the north, is ``very high'' and that more aid must reach those areas.

He said:

We have always stressed that we were in a man-made

situation, and it can only be addressed by political will and

decisions.

So, on top of the destruction of housing, infrastructure, healthcare, and education, we are now looking at mass starvation and malnutrition. The United Nations estimates that more than 1 million Palestinians, including hundreds of thousands of children, face starvation. Desperate Gazans have been scraping by for months, foraging for leaves or eating animal feed. At least 28 children have died of malnutrition and dehydration. That is a number that came out several weeks ago, and there is no reason to believe the real number is not much, much higher. USAID Administrator Samantha Power said that famine was already present in northern Gaza.

Without food, clean water, sanitation, or sufficient healthcare, hundreds of thousands of people are at a severe risk of dehydration, infection, and easily preventable diseases. Yet, for months, thousands of trucks carrying lifesaving food, medicine, and other supplies have sat just miles away from starving children. Got that? I hope we all try to put that image in our minds: starving children over here and trucks loaded with food on the other side of the border that are unable to get through and kept from entering Gaza by Israeli restrictions in a brutal war fought with little regard for civilians.

But let us be clear, and I think this is the main point I want to make this evening. This war stopped being about defending Israel and going to war against Hamas a long time ago. This is not any longer a war against the terrorist organization called Hamas. This is now a war that has everything to do with the destruction of the very fabric of Palestinian life. That is the goal of this war.

It is impossible to look at these facts and not conclude that the Israeli Government's policy has been to make Gaza uninhabitable. That is what some of their government leaders have wanted, and that is, in fact, what is happening. These are not accidents of war--mistakes. This is calculated policy. Indeed, this is what has been going on systematically over the last 6 months. These cruel actions are entirely consistent with the public statements of numerous Israeli senior officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu himself.

That brings us to the role of the United States in this horrific war. Put simply, we are deeply complicit in what is happening. This is not an Israeli war; this is an Israeli-American war. Most of the bombs and most of the military equipment the Israeli Government is using in Gaza is provided by the United States and subsidized by American taxpayers. The U.S. military is not dropping 2,000-pound bombs on civilian apartment buildings. The U.S. military is not doing that, but we are supplying those bombs. The United States of America is not blocking the borders and preventing food, water, and medical supplies from getting to desperate people. We are not doing that, but we have supplied billions of dollars to the Netanyahu government, which is doing just that.

So this is not just an Israeli war; this is an American war as well. Yet, despite the massive financial and military support the United States has provided to Israel for many years, Netanyahu's extremist government has ignored urgent calls from the President and others to alter their military approach and to end this humanitarian disaster.

In my view, the U.S. unconditional financial and military support for Israel must end. That is why I offered an amendment to this bill--to do, in fact, what a majority of the American people wants us to do, and that is to no longer provide military aid to the destructive Netanyahu government.

I would have welcomed the chance to vote for the humanitarian aid provision in this bill. It is terribly important that we start feeding people not only in Gaza but in Sudan and all over the world. It is an important provision, and I support it. I believe very strongly we should support Ukraine and help them end--defeat--the imperialist ventures of Putin and the Russian army. But I am not going to be able to do that because I am going to stand with the American people today who oppose more money for Netanyahu.

Let me conclude by simply saying this: What we are doing today is very bad policy. We are aiding and abetting the destruction of the Palestinian people. What we are doing today is not what the American people want, and I say to my Democratic friends, it is absolutely not. A lot of Republicans don't want us to continue that as well, but a strong majority of Democrats is saying: Enough with Netanyahu's war. You just can't give him another $10 billion for unfettered military aid.

But I suppose, in a little while, as things happen here in Congress, we will ignore the needs of the American people; we will not pay attention to what they want. Then we are shocked--just shocked--that we have a 14-percent approval rating.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as most everybody knows, Iran recently launched several hundred drones and missiles at Israel. Fortunately, there were no fatalities. This attack was Iran's response to an Israeli airstrike on their consulate in Damascus, Syria, on April 1--an attack which killed seven Iranian officials. I applaud President Biden for doing what he can to make sure that this conflict does not get out of hand, does not escalate, and does not create what would be a disastrous regional war.

But while we pay attention to this developing Israeli-Iran crisis, I hope very much that we will not lose sight of the unprecedented humanitarian disaster now taking place in Gaza. We must not lose sight of that disaster.

As I am sure all Americans know, the war in Gaza began on October 7, when Hamas, a terrorist organization, invaded Israel, killed some 1,200 innocent men, women, and children, and took over 230 people into captivity, many of whom are still being held.

It has always been my view that Israel had a right to defend itself, respond to this attack, and to go after Hamas. It is also my view that Israel does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which is exactly what the Netanyahu government is doing.

Let us take a deep breath and understand that what is happening right now in Gaza is horrendous, it is inhumane, and it is in gross violation of American and international law. It is driven by extreme, rightwing Israeli Government officials and a government which is increasingly dominated by religious fundamentalists. That is who is driving this humanitarian disaster in Gaza.

What should be most troubling to the American people is that we as Americans are complicit because it is U.S. taxpayer dollars that have helped create this unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

Let me briefly describe what is going on in Gaza because it is so easy, in a world full of problems--the media focuses on this, focuses on that. Congress focuses on this and that. It is so easy to turn away from the tragedy in Gaza, but we must not do that.

There are about 2.2 million people living in Gaza--2.2 million-- mostly poor and struggling people. Before the war--before the war--Gaza was a very poor and desperate area. Let us not forget the important fact that before the war, some 70 percent of young people in Gaza were unemployed. That was before the war.

Since this war began, over 33,000 Palestinians have been killed and 77,000 wounded. Unbelievably, 5 percent--5 percent--of the residents of Gaza have been either killed or wounded in a 6-month period--5 percent of their entire population. Two-thirds of those who have been killed or wounded are women and children.

Since the war began, 1.7 million people--over 75 percent of the population of Gaza--have been driven from their homes. Let me repeat it. Three-quarters of the population have been driven out of their homes. These people--poor, and many of them are children--do not know whether they will ever return; pushed out, not knowing where they are going to go, where they are going to sleep--three-quarters of the people of Gaza.

Over 60 percent--60 percent--of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. This housing destruction is unprecedented in the modern history of the world--60 percent of housing units damaged or destroyed.

But it is not just housing. Israel has systematically destroyed the healthcare system in Gaza. Gaza had 36 hospitals before the war. Now just 11 are partially operational despite the tens of thousands of injuries and hundreds of thousands of ill people. Persistent attacks on healthcare facilities have killed more than 1,200 workers.

I have spoken with several American doctors who have returned from missions to Gaza. They tell of operating for hours on end in crowded hospitals with little electricity or clean water or medical supplies. They have had to perform surgeries--including on children--with no anesthesia. They have to try to sterilize and reuse medical gauze. Thousands of women have had to give birth in these inhumane and dangerous conditions, and healthcare workers report a major increase in miscarriages. It is a healthcare nightmare.

But it is not just housing and the healthcare system that are being destroyed by the Netanyahu government; it is the physical civilian infrastructure in Gaza as well. More than half of the water and sanitation systems have been put out of commission. Only one of three water pipelines is operating. Clean drinking water is severely limited. Sewage, raw sewage, is running through the streets of Gaza, spreading disease. As we speak tonight, there is virtually no electricity in Gaza.

But it is not just housing and healthcare and infrastructure that are being destroyed. There are 12 universities in Gaza--12 universities. Unbelievably, each and every one of them has been either damaged or destroyed--universities. In addition, primary and secondary schools have also been completely disrupted. Over 600,000 children have no access to education.

As horrible as all of this is, there is something happening now that is even worse, and that is what these photographs speak to. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children face starvation. The people of Gaza are struggling to survive from day to day, foraging for leaves, eating animal feed, or splitting the occasional aid packages amongst their family. Even in Rafah, where aid is consistently distributed, people are desperately short of basic supplies, including food and water. In the north, the situation is far more desperate. At least 28 children have died of malnutrition and dehydration already--28 children--but the real toll is likely much, much higher.

Without food and clean water, with sanitation systems destroyed, and with little healthcare available, hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are at severe risk of dehydration, infection, and easily preventable diseases.

Let me repeat once again. As we speak, hundreds of thousands of children are at risk of terrible deaths.

Let us be very clear. The conditions that the people in Gaza are experiencing today are the direct result of Israel's arbitrary restrictions on the aid getting into Gaza. This is not a matter of debate; it is an obvious reality that numerous--numerous--humanitarian organizations have repeatedly confirmed.

Israeli leaders themselves admit it. At the start of this war, the Israeli Defense Minister declared a total siege, saying:

We are fighting human animals, and we are acting

accordingly. . . . There will be no electricity, no food, no

fuel, everything is closed.

In January, Prime Minister Netanyahu said openly that Israel is only allowing in the absolute minimum amount of aid necessary.

Tragically, the Israeli Government has lived up to those words. For months, thousands of trucks carrying lifesaving supplies have sat just miles away from starving children, prevented from reaching their destination by unreasonable Israeli restrictions and a military campaign conducted with little regard for civilian life. Trucks with food a few miles away from children who are starving--Israel is stopping those trucks.

The world saw evidence of that several weeks ago when seven aid workers

with World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli airstrike. But such attacks have been frequent, and Israel has killed more than 200 humanitarian aid workers in 6 months--not just the World Central Kitchen; 200 humanitarian aid workers since this war began.

Israel's blockade of humanitarian aid pushed the United States and the international community to extreme measures, including airdropping supplies and the construction of a port, in order to get food to starving people. That was our appropriate response.

Blocking desperately needed U.S. humanitarian aid is obscene, and it is unacceptable. It is also a violation of American law. The Foreign Assistance Act is extremely clear: No U.S. assistance may be provided to any country that ``prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.'' That is precisely what Israel is doing, and Israel is clearly in violation of the law.

Following a tense, as I understand it, call between President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu 2 weeks ago, Israel committed to a number of steps to improve humanitarian conditions and aid access. These commitments include opening additional border crossings, increasing the number of trucks cleared for entry into Gaza, improving aid distribution within Gaza, and reopening some bakeries and a water pipeline to supply northern Gaza.

Two weeks later, where are we? Well, there has been a slight improvement in the volume of aid getting into Gaza. Since the beginning of April, an average of 181 aid trucks have crossed into Gaza per day. This is marginally higher than was the case over the last several months but far fewer than the 500 trucks per day that went into Gaza before the war and before the devastation of civilian life there.

Unbelievably, Israel continues to block many aid convoys from reaching those areas in Gaza that are most desperate. This morning, I spoke with a humanitarian aid worker who was in Gaza just last week, and he reported to me that humanitarian organizations continue-- continue--to face arbitrary Israeli restrictions.

Since the U.N. warned of imminent famine in early February, more than 40 percent of all food missions have been denied. Children are starving. More than 40 percent of food missions have been denied. Last week again, the U.N. reported that 40 percent of aid convoys to north Gaza were denied access.

Israel's violations of international law are not limited to Gaza. They are also breaking the law in the West Bank. Over the weekend, in response to the tragic death of an Israeli teenager, large groups of armed Israeli settlers rampaged through 17 Palestinian villages over 3 days. These vigilantes shot dozens of people, killing four, and burned numerous homes. Videos taken by human rights groups show Israeli soldiers watching attacks unfold and doing nothing to stop them. To the best of my knowledge, no arrests have been announced as a result of these attacks.

While this was a particularly violent weekend, this is a daily occurrence for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Israeli soldiers and settlers have now killed more than 460 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, including more than 100 children. That is the West Bank.

What Israel is doing today in Gaza and the West Bank is a defining moment for Americans because we are deeply complicit in everything that is happening. This is not some far-off situation that we have nothing to do with. We are directly complicit. Now, the U.S. military is not dropping 2,000-pound bombs on civilian apartment buildings. That is not what the U.S. military is doing. But we are supplying those bombs to the Israeli Air Force. The United States is not blocking the borders and preventing food, water, and medical supplies from getting to desperate people. That is not what we are doing. But we have supplied billions of dollars to the Netanyahu government, which is doing just that. The United States is not annexing occupied Palestinian land, but it is providing political protection for the Israeli Government as it does so.

Despite the massive financial and military support the United States has provided to Israel for many years, the rightwing, extremist government of Netanyahu has ignored increasingly urgent calls from the United States to end the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, to stop settlement expansion in the West Bank, and to lay out initial steps toward a two-state solution.

Members of Congress may not know it. We live in a somewhat different world. But the American people have had enough. The American people are increasingly fed up with Netanyahu's war against Palestinians, and they do not want to see their taxpayer dollars spent to support the slaughter of innocent civilians and the starvation of children. That is not Bernie Sanders speaking. That is what the American people are saying. A recent Gallup poll showed that just 36 percent of Americans approve of Israel's military action, with 55 percent disapproving. A Quinnipiac poll showed that U.S. voters oppose sending more military aid to Israel by 52 percent to 39 percent. An earlier YouGov poll also showed that 52 percent of Americans said that the United States should halt weapons shipments to Israel until it stops its attacks in Gaza.

That is what the American people are saying. And maybe, just maybe, the Congress might want to listen to the American people rather than powerful special interests.

The New York Times is what I would describe as a pillar of the establishment. This is not a fringe organization. This is the establishment. And the New York Times, just this Sunday, had an editorial entitled ``Military Aid to Israel Cannot Be Unconditional.'' I would like to read a few paragraphs and then ask unanimous consent that the whole editorial be printed in the Record.

This is what the New York Times says:

The administration--

Biden administration--

has tried many forms of pressure and admonition, including

public statements, reported expressions of frustration and

U.N. Security Council resolutions. None of them, so far, have

proved effective with Mr. Netanyahu. Military aid is the one

lever Mr. Biden has been reluctant to use, but it is a

significant one he has at his disposal--perhaps the last

one--to persuade Israel to open the way for urgent assistance

to Gaza.

Pausing the flow of weapons to Israel would not be an easy

step for Mr. Biden to take; his devotion and commitment to

the Jewish state go back decades. But the war in Gaza has

taken an enormous toll in human lives, with a cease-fire

still out of reach and many hostages still held captive. The

eroding international support for its military campaign has

made Israel more insecure. Confronted with that suffering,

the United States cannot remain beholden to an Israeli leader

fixated on his own survival and the approval of the zealots

he harbors.

New York Times, last Sunday.

Mr. President, the United States has offered Israel unconditional financial support for a very, very long time. In recent years, that has amounted to $3.8 billion a year, with numerous additional forms of support. Right now, against my vote, Congress is considering another $14 billion in military aid for Israel, $10 billion of which is completely unrestricted military funding.

That unconditional support for the Israeli military must end. Instead of begging Netanyahu's extremist government to protect innocent lives and obey U.S. and international law, our new position must be simple and straightforward: Not another nickel for the Netanyahu government if their present policies continue.

The United States must use all of its leverage to secure an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and across the region and demand that the massive amount of humanitarian assistance that is needed to prevent famine and widespread humanitarian suffering is able to flow into Gaza.

Mr. President, history will judge what we do right now. History will judge whether we stand with starving children, whether we uphold America's professed values, or whether we continue to blindly finance the Netanyahu war machine.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 11 a.m. on Wednesday, April 17; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 365, H.R. 7888.

Mr. President, for the information of the Senate, Senators will be sworn in as jurors in the Court of Impeachment at 1 p.m.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I move that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, as you may know, an arsonist set fire to my Senate office in Burlington, VT, endangering not only the lives of my staff, but many other people who work in the building. Within 2 days, a suspect was

apprehended and is now being held in custody.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the outstanding work of the Burlington Police Department; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Shelburne Police Department; the Williston Police Department; the Vermont State Police; and the U.S. Capitol Police--who did an extraordinary job in responding to the fire and arresting this individual.

Our first responders are under an enormous amount of pressure and regularly put their lives on the line to protect our communities. Last week was no exception. Let me thank all of them for the enormously important work they do.

Mr. President, we are currently witnessing one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history, and the United States is complicit. Anyone who turns on the television or opens a newspaper can see the unbelievable devastation now taking place in Gaza. We can see--if we choose to see--the images of starving, emaciated children. And that is because one of our closest allies, Israel--a country we have poured tens of billions of dollars into--has created a situation in which hundreds of thousands of people are slowly starving to death.

The United States of America cannot--and must not--be complicit in this unspeakable tragedy. We cannot be complicit in starvation as a military strategy. We cannot be complicit in the physical and emotional destruction of an entire generation of beautiful Palestinian children.

For months, the United Nations and other aid organizations have warned about imminent starvation and possible famine in Gaza. And now that is exactly what is happening.

How did we get to this point? How have we--the Congress of the United States--allowed this situation to reach this point?

Nobody disputes that Hamas--a terrorist organization--started this war with its barbaric, brutal attack against Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took more than 250 hostages.

And as I have consistently said, Israel had the right to respond to that attack and go to war against Hamas. But it did not--and it does not--have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which is exactly what it has done and what it is doing right now.

Almost 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, and almost 74,000 have been wounded, two-thirds of whom are women and children. So 1.8 million Palestinians--80 percent of the population of Gaza--have been driven from their homes. Nearly 70 percent of the housing units and more than half of all buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Nothing has been spared--not refugee camps, not schools, not hospitals, not U.N. facilities. All have been bombed.

In the wake of the Hamas attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared a total siege of Gaza. He said:

We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly

. . . There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel,

everything is closed.

Well, he has kept his word. In many parts of Gaza today, there is no electricity or fuel. Hospitals have been destroyed, and water infrastructure has been made inoperable.

Israel has also blocked communications networks, making it impossible for humanitarian organizations to safely coordinate aid deliveries.

In this context, over 4 months ago in November, the U.N. first began to warn of severe shortages of food and water in Gaza--4 months ago-- and of the imminent risk of starvation and possible famine. And aside from a brief pause in the fighting in late November which allowed aid to come in, very little has changed.

In December, the U.N. reported that Israel's blockade of food and water meant that a quarter of the population of Gaza--over half a million people--were one step away from famine.

In January, Senators Van Hollen and Merkley went to the Rafah Crossing from Egypt to learn what was preventing humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza. They saw miles of trucks waiting, often for weeks, to be cleared by the Israelis.

They reported that trucks are unloaded and reloaded repeatedly. And if a single item is rejected, the entire cargo must start the weekslong process all over again.

And they heard about items being rejected for no reason, such as tents, medical kits, and water filters. In other words, our colleagues saw a process that was completely broken and no Israeli interest in fixing it, despite the profound humanitarian crisis that was developing.

It is difficult to look at these facts and not see, at worst, an intentional Israeli effort to starve the people of Gaza of what they need to survive and, at best--at best--a complete disregard for Palestinian lives.

And sure enough, in January, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said at a press conference that ``we provide minimal humanitarian aid. . . . If we want to achieve our war goals, we give the minimal aid.''

The situation, as a result, has continued to get worse and worse and worse. In the north, almost no humanitarian aid has gotten through in February. The Israelis rejected most U.N. attempts to deliver aid to the north and then began actually targeting the police who escort U.N. aid trucks. Amid the desperation of north Gaza, this has led to incidents in which hundreds of starving Palestinians, desperate to secure food, were shot by Israeli troops or trampled in the chaos.

For 3 weeks now, reports have emerged of people eating leaves and animal feed to try to stay alive, and the first long-feared reports are coming in of children dying from malnutrition and dehydration.

A few aid convoys are now getting through to the north. Under intense U.S. pressure, Israel has allowed about half--half--of the requested humanitarian missions to proceed in recent weeks. But that is still nowhere near enough to reverse months of starvation and stave off a wave of deaths from malnutrition, dehydration, and preventable diseases.

Earlier this week, the U.N. and other humanitarian NGOs released a new version of their most comprehensive assessment of the food crisis, called the IPC. I would just like to read the headline here.

Famine is imminent as 1.1 million people, half of Gaza,

experience catastrophic food insecurity.

That is the headline. The report goes on to say that ``extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality [are] imminent for more than two-thirds of the people in the north.'' And that is a technical way of saying that more than 200,000 people are now starving to death and that if nothing changes, more than a million people could starve.

At least 31 people, including 27 children, have already died of starvation and dehydration. And the real total is much likely higher, as aid organizations and medical teams are unable to reach the hardest hit areas.

UNICEF said on Friday that nearly one in three children under 2 years of age in northern Gaza suffers from acute malnutrition.

We put billions and billions of dollars into Israel year after year. And today, nearly one in three children under 2 years of age in northern Gaza suffer from acute malnutrition.

Once a young child reaches that point, it is very difficult to reverse the process. The child's body consumes itself from within, and only through careful medical treatment can they be saved--treatment that is impossible without a functioning healthcare system, a system that certainly does not exist in Gaza today.

Let me repeat. We can hide our eyes. We can talk about a million other things. We can talk about this and that and everything else. But right now, the

reality is that tens of thousands of children are dying slow, painful deaths. And we are complicit in that reality.

All of this is preventable. As of yesterday, 1,200 trucks were waiting to enter Gaza--more than 800 of which were carrying food supplies. Hundreds and hundreds of trucks carrying food is sitting just a short distance from starving children. And yet the United States and other countries have had to resort to airdropping supplies. They are trying to find ways to deliver aid by sea. In other words, we have put billions of dollars of aid--military aid--into Israel, and we are now trying to figure out a way to get beyond Israel's blocking at the borders by dropping food in the air or coming in through the sea, all of which is very expensive and very inefficient.

These contortions are absurd. There is no reason as to why trucks should not be able to drive across the border into Gaza, including through crossings in the north.

Looking at the situation this week, the U.N. senior human rights official said that ``Israel's continued restrictions on entry of aid into Gaza . . . may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war''--starvation as a method of war--``which is a war crime.''

The President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor--the whole U.S. Government--has been begging the Israeli government to change their approach for months now. Aside from opening one border crossing, there is nothing to show for all of that begging.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken the billions of dollars in military aid that American taxpayers have given him. He has taken our bombs and military equipment, and he has done exactly what he wants to do. We give him the money. We tell them what we think is right. He ignores us. He does what he wants to do.

Far from flooding the zone with aid--which has been the United States' position. We want to flood the zone with humanitarian aid, as is, in fact, necessary to avert mass death from starvation, dehydration and disease. The Israelis, this week, denied entry to Gaza for the head of UNRWA, the backbone of the humanitarian aid operation there.

Indeed, attacking UNRWA seems to be a primary concern of the Israeli Government. Tens of thousands of people are starving. UNRWA is trying to feed them, and the Israeli Government and its allies, like AIPAC, spend much of their time lobbying to defund UNRWA, the major organization which is feeding starving people.

Sadly, tragically, many Members of Congress seem to be happy to be part of this starvation caucus, happy to cut funding for UNRWA and make it harder to get aid to Palestinians in the midst this crisis.

Mr. President, as you know, the Senate passed a supplemental bill prohibiting funding to UNRWA against my vote, and it seems likely that the House will soon pass an appropriations bill containing additional provisions to defund this agency.

Israel has said that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 attack. These are serious charges, and they are being investigated in a serious way. UNRWA immediately fired the accused employees, and the U.N. launched an investigation, as it should. I should note, by the way, that Israel has refused to cooperate with the U.N. investigation.

UNRWA plays a critical role in getting desperately needed humanitarian aid to millions of Gazans, and it is essential to regional stability, not only in Gaza but in Jordan and in neighboring countries. Whatever the outcome of this investigation, you do not starve millions of people and hundreds of thousands of children because of the alleged actions of 12 UNRWA employees out of a workforce of 30,000.

We should remember, by the way, that the Israeli military has killed 171 U.N. staff since this war began. But somehow my colleagues here in Congress--or many of them--seem not to pay much attention to that.

I think that all over this country, there is a lot of anguish in the hearts and the souls of American people. Whether you are a conservative Republican, whether you are an Independent, whether you are a progressive, you do not want to see hundreds of thousands of children starve to death while food trucks sit a few miles away. I don't think there are many Americans who want to see that.

The American people do not want to see a situation in which a longtime American ally, Israel, is using U.S. weapons and equipment to block the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid, which, by the way, is against the law. Any country that blocks American humanitarian aid, by law, should have its funding ended.

The American people, in my view, no matter what your politics may be, do not want to be complicit in the slaughter of small kids who are bombed to death while they sleep.

The American people, in my view, do not want us to continue funding Netanyahu's cruel war.

I think maybe it is time we start listening to the American people. In my view, when we listen to the American people, what we have to do is stop begging the Israeli Government to end this humanitarian disaster. We have to stop begging them, and we have to start telling them that if they want U.S. aid, they are going to have to fundamentally change what they are doing.

The fact of the matter is--and no one disagrees with this--that if you want the kind of aid that is needed to prevent the starvation that is taking place, what you need is a massive process of sustained ground deliveries. That means many, many, many hundreds of trucks every single day getting into Gaza and going into the most desperate areas. If you want to feed people, that is the only way you can do it efficiently.

Israel must open the borders and allow the U.N. to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities throughout all of Gaza. Israel must stop military operations--cease fire--to allow that to happen.

The bottom line here is that the United States must make it absolutely clear to the rightwing, extremist Israeli Government led by Netanyahu that failure to open up access immediately, failure to allow starving children to get the food they need and the medical equipment they need will result in the complete shutoff of the full range of American assistance to Israel.

The American people are not stupid. They understand that you can't go around criticizing Netanyahu, attacking Netanyahu, doing this and doing that and then say: Oh, by the way, we were just kidding, because here is your check for $10 billion to continue your military assault against the Palestinian people.

History will judge what we do right now. History will judge whether we stand with starving children, whether we uphold American values or we provide massive aid to a war machine that is operating in an unbelievably barbaric way.

Mr. President, the United States must make it clear: not another nickel for Netanyahu's war machine.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I support the nomination of Moshe Marvit to be a Member of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission.

Mr. Marvit is currently a supervisory attorney-advisor in the Commission's Pittsburgh field office, where he has served since 2012. In this role, he writes decisions for administrative law judges and mediates cases between mine operators and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Prior to working at the Commission, Mr. Marvit was in private practice where he represented the United Steelworkers and employees in pension and discrimination matters. Mr. Marvit has written extensively on labor law, including co-authoring a book titled ``Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right,'' which explains the historical importance of the American labor movement, provides data on how current law fails to deter employer abuses, and compares U.S. labor protections to those of other developed nations.

Mr. Marvit has a B.A. in philosophy from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.A. in political science from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in history from Carnegie Mellon University, and a J.D. from the Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Mr. Marvit is a well-qualified nominee strongly supported by the United Mine Workers of America and the United Steelworkers, and I urge my colleagues to support his nomination.

Madam President, I think that as human beings, we have a tendency to try to avoid thinking about horrifying situations. Who wants to think about, focus on things that are painful and terrible?

But whether we like it or not, there is, today, a horrifying catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of children are facing starvation because of Israel's indiscriminate bombardment and unacceptable restrictions on humanitarian aid getting across the border.

And let me remind every American and every Member of Congress, this is not some faraway natural disaster that we as Americans have nothing to do with. This is not an earthquake in Japan. It is not a drought in Sudan. It is not flooding in China. The reality is that we as American taxpayers are complicit in this humanitarian disaster. And as Americans, we must end it.

First, let me briefly recap where we are today. Hamas started this terrible war with a brutal terrorist attack that killed 1,200 innocent Israelis and took 253 hostages--more than 100 of whom remain in Hamas's hands, including Americans.

And just the other day, the U.N. reported that there is strong evidence that Hamas also committed horrific sexual assaults against Israeli women of the worst kind imaginable. Nobody will or should forgive or forget those atrocities.

As I have said many times, Israel had the right to respond to that attack and go after Hamas, but it did not--and it does not--have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people. And that is what Israel has done.

For 5 months now, Israel has unleashed total war on Gaza, relying on widespread bombardment, including the use of 2,000-pound bombs. The results have been catastrophic.

In the last 5 months, Israel has killed nearly 31,000 Palestinians and injured more than 72,000, two-thirds of whom are women and children--two-thirds of whom are women and children.

The United Nations has had 165 staff killed by Israeli forces, more than in any other previous war. Some 364 health workers--people who are there trying to take care of the sick and the wounded--and 132 journalists who are reporting on the situation have been killed as well.

As this terrible photograph shows, the Israeli bombardment has left Gaza in ruins. Now, 70 percent--let me repeat, 70 percent--of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Unbelievably, 1.7 million people in Gaza have been driven from their homes--taken out of their homes--and sent away without really knowing where they are going to go or whether or not they will ever return or, in fact, be able to return to this disaster. And that 1.7 million people is 80 percent of the population of Gaza.

The civilian infrastructure in Gaza has been devastated, making life unbearable for the people who reside there. There is virtually no electricity and little running water. There is not a single fully functional hospital for the 2.2 million Gazans, despite the enormous medical needs that the bombardment has caused. People are getting injured, no place to go.

As horrible and as unspeakable as all of this destruction is, we are seeing something today that is even worse. For months, the U.N. has warned that because of the Israeli blockade of food and water, starvation and disease were growing threats. They warned in December that a quarter of the population of Gaza--over half a million people-- were one step away from famine.

Since then, the situation on the ground has only worsened. People have been reduced to eating leaves and animal feed. They are starving to death. They are starving to death.

And, in the last week, reports of children dying from malnutrition and dehydration have begun to emerge. At least 15 children have starved to death. Unfortunately, these reports are likely to be the first of many.

Despite this nearly unprecedented crisis, despite hundreds of thousands of children facing starvation, humanitarian access has actually deteriorated--deteriorated--during the last month. The needs are significantly greater, but the aid that is coming in is less.

In February, an average of 97 trucks got into Gaza each day, down from about 150 in January and well short of 500 trucks per day before the war.

The situation is now so desperate and so inhumane that many of the trucks entering Gaza are unable to reach their destination because they are set upon by starving people who are ripping food boxes from the trucks. In other words, people are seeing the trucks coming; they are unable to get to the destinations that they are supposed to because starving people are fighting for food.

Let us be crystal clear about why this is happening. It is happening because Israel is not letting in enough humanitarian aid. And it is actually that simple. They are not letting in the food, the water, the medical supplies, the fuel that desperate people need.

Israeli restrictions on aid mean that only a tiny fraction of what is needed is getting into Gaza today. And even when that aid gets in, we are seeing Israeli military activities that result in very little of that aid reaching the most desperate areas.

In the north, almost no aid has gotten through, leading to the terrible incident of last week, where desperate Palestinians, pulling sacks of flour off of the few trucks that got through, were met with gunfire from Israeli troops. Earlier in February, Israeli forces fired on a U.N. food convoy trying to reach the north, despite it having been previously cleared by the Israelis. And just yesterday, the Israeli military turned back a World Food Programme convoy carrying 200 tons of food to starving people in North Gaza.

None of what is going on in Gaza today is a secret. Anyone who wants to know does know.

And let me share with you what some of our leading U.S. officials have said about the war and the current situation.

President Biden has repeatedly called the Israeli bombing ``indiscriminate'' and called Israel's response in Gaza ``over the top.''

He said: ``There are a lot of innocent people who are starving. A lot of innocent people in trouble and dying. And it has to stop.''

President Biden this week said: ``There's got to be a cease-fire,'' and ``we must get more aid into Gaza.''

He also said: ``We're are going to insist''--insist--``that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need. No excuses, because the truth is aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough. Now, it's nowhere nearly enough. Innocent lives are on the line and children's lives are on the line.''

President Joe Biden. That is not Bernie Sanders. That is President Biden.

Vice President Kamala Harris said, on Sunday:

We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal

feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little

or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and

dehydration.

The Vice President also said:

The Israeli government must do more to significantly

increase the flow of aid. No excuses. They must open up new

border crossings. They must not impose any unnecessary

restrictions on the delivery of aid. They must ensure

humanitarian personnel, sites, and convoys are not targeted.

Vice President Kamala Harris.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have repeatedly emphasized these points to the Israelis, pushing and urging them to be more targeted, to protect civilian life, and to let food and water into Gaza so that children do not starve.

You have got the President, you have got the Vice President, you have got the Secretary of State, you have got the National Security Advisor saying over and over again: Israel must change its policies.

And in the midst of all of that, how has Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to those requests and those comments? Here is the American Government saying one thing. How has Netanyahu responded? Well, his response has not been complicated. He has ignored them. He has ignored what the President of the United States said, what the Vice President of the United States said, what many of us in Congress are saying, what the Secretary of State is saying, what the National Security Advisor is saying. He has ignored it all.

Despite all of this--despite Netanyahu's refusal to adhere to any of the requests and concerns that our government has conveyed to him, the United States continues to pull out all the stops to support his devastating war against the Palestinian people.

Year after year, we have provided $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel--U.S. taxpayer money. More recently, the administration requested and the Senate has approved--against my vote, I should add-- another $14 billion in military aid to this rightwing extremist Israeli Government. Ten billion of that money is completely unrestricted military aid that will buy more of the bombs Netanyahu is using to destroy Gaza.

Just today--today--the Washington Post reported that the United States has delivered more than 100 military sales to Israel since the war began. That is right. Despite the scale of the devastation, U.S. taxpayers continue to fund this war, and today we learned that the administration has been breaking up these arm sales into Israel into smaller tranches to avoid triggering congressional notification requirements. That is unacceptable, and that is a brazen violation of the spirit and intent of the law.

That is not the only way that the administration is refusing to adhere to U.S. law. Israel's interference in U.S. humanitarian operations is in clear violation of section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, and that law and its language could not be clearer.

I want everybody to hear what the law says:

No assistance shall be furnished . . . to any country when

it is made known to the President that the government of such

country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or

indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States

humanitarian assistance.

That is the law. The law is that if a country prevents humanitarian assistance coming to these starving children, it is violating the law. It could not be clearer than it is, and I think very few people doubt that Israel is in violation of that law. Yet the administration and the Congress do nothing.

The State Department doesn't even pretend to apply the Leahy law to Israel, refusing to properly track U.S. arms or even identify which Israeli units receive U.S. security assistance, a basic requirement of the law and a standard applied to every other country.

As I go around Vermont and around the country, it is my strong feeling that the American people are increasingly disgusted by the destruction of Gaza and the unbelievable misery that is befalling the Palestinian people who are there. The American people want it to end. They don't want to be part of seeing children go hungry. They don't want to be part of seeing entire communities literally destroyed.

Just the other day--and I hope my colleagues in Congress hear this. Just the other day, a YouGov poll showed that 52 percent of Americans agree that the United States should halt weapon shipments to Israel until Israel stops its attacks on Gaza--52 percent. A lot of people were undecided, and those who supported it was much, much less--a small number. Fully 62 percent of respondents who voted for President Biden agreed the United States should stop weapon shipments until Israel discontinues its attack on the people of Gaza, while just 14 percent disagree. In other words, the American people, in general, and those who voted for President Biden, in particular, want this war ended. They want the destruction stopped.

The American people understand a simple truth that we here in the Nation's Capital continue to ignore, and that is that it is absurd and hypocritical to publicly profess horror at Netanyahu's inhumane war while, at the same time as we say how terrible it is, how awful Netanyahu is--at the same time--we ship tens of thousands of bombs to his army. It is absurd to criticize Netanyahu's war in one breath and provide him another $10 billion to continue that war in the next.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this disaster is the fiction we tell ourselves here in Congress, and that is that there is nothing-- just nothing--that we can do. Isn't this awful? My goodness, look at all of those buildings that have been destroyed--70 percent of the housing. It is terrible. Children going hungry--terrible. Children coming down with disease--terrible, terrible. Nothing we can do.

Really? Everybody knows what is happening. We see it every day in the news, and we see the pictures of the emaciated children, of people bombed while they sleep. And yet Congress pretends as if we are powerless to stop it.

Well, the fact is, this is not a natural catastrophe. This is a manmade catastrophe. And if we had the political will and if we had the courage to stand up to some very powerful special interests, yes, we could stop it. We could stop the destruction, and we could make sure that these kids do not starve to death.

But doing so will require that the U.S. Government and Members of Congress have the courage to stand up to Netanyahu and to use the incredible leverage that we have over the Israeli Government to secure a fundamental change in their disastrous policies.

Of course, we have the leverage. We are funding the war. And if that is not leverage, I don't know what leverage is.

The current reality is, frankly, embarrassing. I supported the President's decision to airdrop supplies to desperate civilians in North Gaza. Airdrops will buy time and save lives. I am glad the President did it. The truth is, there is no substitute for sustained ground deliveries and many, many hundreds of trucks every single day getting into Gaza.

Right now, we have the incredible situation where a U.S. ally is using U.S. weapons and equipment to block the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid. We are funding them to stop us from doing what we want to do. And if that is not crazy, I don't know what is.

It is far, far past time for us to stop asking Israel to do the right thing and to start telling Israel what must happen if they want the support of U.S. taxpayers. Israel must open the borders and allow the U.N. to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities. The U.S. Government should make it clear that failure to open up access immediately and feed starving people will result in the Netanyahu government not getting another penny of U.S. taxpayer military aid. The United States simply cannot allow hundreds of thousands of children to starve to death. Whether Netanyahu likes it or not, the United States must do what is necessary to get supplies into Gaza.

We all know that there will be a very long and tortuous road to achieve lasting peace in the region and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. The people of Israel have the absolute right to live in peace and security without worrying about terrorist attacks. The Palestinian people have the absolute right to self-determination, to live in peace, and to have a state of their own.

Madam President, I hope very much that there will be new leadership that will emerge on both sides within Israel and within the Palestinian community to make that happen and to achieve a meaningful peace process. But one thing is very clear: Given the unprecedented humanitarian disaster that is occurring in Gaza right now, the United States must end its complicity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for some reason that I do not fully understand, it always appears to me that the more important the issue, the less it gets discussed here in the Congress and in the media--more important, less discussion.

And today I want to say a few words about one of those issues, and that is the ongoing and unprecedented humanitarian disaster which is taking place in Gaza and which is getting worse every single day.

On October 7, as I think we all know, Hamas established and went forward with a brutal terrorist attack against Israel killing 1,200 innocent people and took 230 hostages, some 100 of them are still in captivity. And in my view as I said many times, Israel had a right to respond to that attack and go after Hamas.

But what Israel did not have the right to do and does not have the right to do is to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which is exactly what has occurred.

When I talk about issues that we in Congress do not fully engage in, discuss, appreciate, what we are talking about is that in Gaza right now some 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 70,000 have been injured since that war began. This is a country, an area, of 2.2 million people. Two-thirds of those who have been killed or injured are women and children.

Unbelievably, and I think this is another point that is not discussed very often--1.7 million Palestinians, 80 percent of the population--80 percent of the population of Gaza has been driven from their homes. The men, women, and children have been driven from their homes with no safe place to go and no idea as to whether or not they will ever return to their communities.

Imagine that for a moment. Little kids 5 years old, 3 years old--they don't know what is going on. Bombs falling, pushed out of their homes, they don't know where they are going or whether, in fact, they will ever, ever return to their communities.

The bombing of Gaza--and again it must be talked about over and over again--is almost unprecedented in modern history. Seventy percent of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Let me repeat that. Seventy percent of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. The civilian infrastructure of Gaza has been devastated. There is virtually no electricity. There are few supplies of clean water. There is not one functional hospital for 2.2 million residents of Gaza.

There is not enough food, not enough water, not enough fuel, and not enough medicine. And increasingly for the people of Gaza, there is no hope. This is the horrific reality. And I know here in

the Senate we deal with a lot of stuff, but this is the reality that cannot be ignored. It must be dealt with. The catastrophe unfolding in Gaza today, right now as we speak, is among the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history. And while this body was in recess--we had a 2-week break. While we were safely with our families, the urgency of this crisis only increased. We are truly approaching a point of no return.

For months, the United Nations and other aid organizations have warned that the constant bombing and the restrictions on humanitarian aid entering Gaza raised the risk of famine--of famine and disease.

Two months ago, the U.N. warned that the whole population of Gaza was hungry--people were going hungry--and that more than half a million people faced the most severe category of food insecurity. That is fancy terminology for talking about people in desperate need of food.

Now, today, the worst of those fears are becoming reality. Hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza, beautiful little kids, are starving to death. Last week, the World Food Programme reported that nutrition screenings found that one in six children under the age of 12 in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished and 3 percent are experiencing child ``wasting,'' a terrible, terrible term that talks about--that describes the destruction of human life for kids. These children will die without urgent treatment. In other words, if all of the aid in the world came in tomorrow, many hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza have been permanently damaged.

Malnutrition in children causes cognitive and emotional distress, physical distress. So let us contemplate that. Let us think about that for a moment. If nothing changes in the coming weeks, thousands of children in Gaza will begin to die of starvation and easily preventable diseases caused by the lack of food, medicine, and clean drinking water.

Was this a natural catastrophe? Was this a storm? Was this an earthquake? No. This is a manmade disaster. Already, some 90 percent of children under 5 in Gaza have one or more infectious diseases, according to the U.N., and 70 percent have had diarrhea in the past 2 weeks due to the lack of clean drinking water.

This is an urgent humanitarian crisis.

It cannot be ignored. It must be addressed. Without an immediate humanitarian cease-fire and an urgent--urgent--expansion of the relief efforts, even more people could end up dying from the lack of basic supplies than have been killed in the bombing. In other words, what we are looking at is thousands of people are dying, have died from the bombs, and now we are going to see more people die from starvation and diseases as a result of no clean water or sanitation.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University recently modeled what could happen over the next 6 months if nothing changes and concluded that some 85,000 more people could die in Gaza over that period and more from disease.

We cannot let this disaster continue. Let us be clear--be clear why this is happening. It is happening because Israel is simply not letting in enough aid, not enough food, not enough water, not enough medical supplies, not enough fuel. It is not more complicated than that. This is a manmade crisis caused by Israel, and it can be changed tomorrow.

Israeli restrictions on aid entering Gaza mean that only a tiny fraction of the food, water, medicine, and fuel that is needed can get into Gaza. Even then, once aid gets in, Israeli bombing and military activities mean that very little of that aid can reach beyond the immediate area around the Rafah border crossing from Egypt. What that means is that some of the most desperate areas of Gaza, that in those areas virtually no aid can get through at all. So it is not only that aid is not getting in, what aid that is getting in is not going to those locations where it is needed the most.

Even more distressing, aid convoys have been turned back or fired upon even after previously clearing their route with the Israeli military. In other words, the aid people tell the Israeli military where they are going, and the result of that is they, in fact, get bombed.

Bottom line. Despite the urgency of this crisis and the growing starvation of the people of Gaza, humanitarian access has actually gotten worse--worse--in recent weeks. About 80 trucks per day have gotten into Gaza over the last 3 weeks, down by roughly 40 percent from earlier periods.

Before the war, before the homelessness, and before the starvation, some 500 trucks per day delivered basic necessities into Gaza. Almost all aid deliveries to northern Gaza have been suspended. The Israeli Government has rejected most requests for access to the north, and the situation has become too dangerous for aid to be safely delivered. The reason that aid delivery has become increasingly dangerous is that the Israeli military has shown little regard for the safety of humanitarian operations.

Quite the contrary. Earlier this month, the Israeli military fired on a U.N. food aid convoy even though it had previously cleared its route and timing with the Israelis.

And here is something that I hope every American hears--that, up until now, since this war began, 161 U.N. staff and at least 340 health workers have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7. In other words, the people who are trying to help the desperate--the people who are trying to deliver aid, the people who are trying to provide healthcare--are being killed in large numbers.

The situation today is obviously desperate and getting more and more desperate; and as an indication of that desperation, humanitarian aid trucks that do get through to northern Gaza have been mobbed by starving people. That is the reality. When a truck manages to get through, aid is not distributed in an orderly way. Hungry people are mobbing the trucks to grab food to feed their kids. The U.N.'s leading expert on access to food, this week, said Israel is intentionally denying access to food. That is a war crime.

Unbelievably, in the midst of this humanitarian cataclysm, rather than work to improve coordination with the U.N. and get basic supplies to Palestinians in the war zone, there has been a concerted attack on UNRWA, the largest U.N. agency operating in Gaza and the backbone of the humanitarian aid operation. They are the ones who do the lion's share of the work in getting humanitarian aid to the civilian population. UNRWA runs schools, healthcare, water sanitation, and food assistance for Palestinians in Gaza as well as in the West Bank and the wider region. Israel has accused 12 UNRWA employees of taking part in the October 7 attack--12 employees. This is a serious allegation, and it is being investigated seriously, but you don't starve 2 million people because of the alleged actions of 12 UNRWA employees out of a total workforce of 30,000.

Despite UNRWA's indispensable role in addressing this unprecedented humanitarian disaster, Congress is now considering legislation--Senate- passed legislation--that would actually prohibit funding for this agency, which would only make a horrible situation even worse. Children are starving. People don't have water. People don't have medical supplies. The agency that historically has done the work of getting aid out to people is now being unfunded. The U.S. decision to pause its funding for UNRWA has left the agency at a breaking point. That decision must be reconsidered immediately.

That brings to us the United States' role in this crisis, because the point is: We are not just looking at some distant part of the world where terrible things are happening and we are just learning about it and we have nothing to do with it. It is quite the contrary. Simply, we are deeply complicit in the humanitarian disaster and the horror that is taking place in Gaza today. Most of the bombs and most of the military equipment that the Israeli Government is using in Gaza is provided by the United States and subsidized by American taxpayers. This is not just an Israeli war; this is an American war as well. We are providing the weapons for Netanyahu to wage this war.

I met earlier today with human rights experts from Amnesty International. Amnesty researchers have painstakingly documented the use of U.S. weapons in numerous Israeli strikes that break the international

laws of war. Most recently, Amnesty documented four unlawful strikes in Rafah in December-January that killed at least 95 civilians, including 42 children, and some of those attacks were done with U.S. weapons.

The U.S. has laws on the books intended to prevent these kinds of human rights violations that are being done with U.S.-provided weapons. The problem is that we have very rarely enforced them with any country, and we have never enforced them with Israel. For months, as I think all of us know, President Biden has been trying to get Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme rightwing government to scale back the indiscriminate bombing. So far, Netanyahu has not changed his tactics. In fact, humanitarian access has actually deteriorated. The situation is getting worse. Netanyahu makes polite sounds when U.S. officials visit him in Israel, and then he proceeds to do exactly what he wants. And what he wants increasingly seems to be the wholesale destruction of Gaza.

The United States is now focused on negotiating a cease-fire agreement that would allow for massive humanitarian aid and the freeing of the remaining hostages. I desperately hope that this deal comes together. I trust that all of us want the killing to stop and the hostages to be freed. But, once again, despite what President Biden is fighting for, Netanyahu is resisting. It appears that he and his extreme rightwing government are trying to prolong this war to hold onto their power and to avoid accountability. President Biden has repeatedly said that the only viable path to lasting peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike is a two-state solution. I agree. But, of course, Netanyahu has made it very clear that he is completely opposed to that outcome, and he has been opposed to that outcome for his entire political career.

On issue after issue, Prime Minister Netanyahu is deeply opposed to the goals of the United States. We want civilian life protected; he doesn't seem to care. We want more aid getting into Gaza; he won't allow it. We want a two-state solution; he is vigorously opposed. Given all of that reality--given the fact that with every aspect of this crisis, Netanyahu disagrees with what the U.S. Government wants to see happen--it is beyond comprehension as to why the United States is preparing to send another $10 billion in unrestricted military aid so that Netanyahu can continue the murderous campaign that we oppose.

Enough is enough. The United States cannot continue to be complicit in Netanyahu's war crimes. No more military aid for Israel. Whether Netanyahu likes it or not, the United States must continue working toward an urgent humanitarian cease-fire to allow for the release of the hostages and massive influx of humanitarian aid. We should join other countries all over the world to pass a cease-fire resolution at the U.N. Security Council that includes the release of the hostages and full humanitarian access as previous drafts have done.

The United States should begin the process of recognizing the Palestinian State as a full U.N. member state. This is both a fact-- Palestine is a nation recognized by 139 U.N. member states--and a moral imperative in the face of what amounts to illegal Israeli annexation.

President Biden should also make clear that he will not release any additional military funding for Israel without firm commitments that the cease-fire will be honored unless broken by Hamas and that full humanitarian access will be ensured; that funds for the Palestinian Authority will be released; and that illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories will cease.

None of this will be easy, but to my mind, it is absolutely morally unacceptable that the United States continue its complicity in the humanitarian disaster that is taking place in Gaza right now. The time is now to say no to the rightwing extremist government of Netanyahu--no more money for the Israeli military.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss a matter of enormous consequence that is not being adequately covered in the mainstream media nor here in the Senate, and that is, right now, today, in Gaza, we are witnessing one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history. It is unfolding before our very eyes, and we must not run away from that reality.

I am very sorry to say, but we in the United States are deeply complicit in what is happening in Gaza. What we do in Congress right now could well determine whether tens of thousands of people live or die.

Let us very briefly review what has happened in the last 4 months. On October 7, Hamas launched a horrific terrorist attack that killed 1,200 innocent Israelis and took more than 230 hostages and more than 100 of those hostages still remain in captivity today. That is what started this war.

As I have said many times, Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas terrorism, but it does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people. And that, tragically, is what we are seeing. As of today, Israel's military campaign has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians and injured some 68,000, two-thirds of whom are women and children.

Unbelievably, 1.7 million people have been driven from their homes, nearly 80 percent of the population. That is more than twice the population of my own State of Vermont. These people displaced have no understanding as to where they will go tomorrow or whether, in fact, they will ever return to their communities. That is where they are now: pushed out of their homes, hungry, desperate, no understanding of where they will be in the future.

The devastation caused by Israeli bombardments is unprecedented in modern history, some 70 percent of the housing units in Gaza being damaged or destroyed. The Israeli bombing attacks have destroyed most of the infrastructure in Gaza. There is no electricity there and very little clean water. There are virtually no places where people can buy bread or other basic necessities as most of the bakeries have been destroyed or shut down. Raw sewage is now running into the streets, and communication is extremely difficult because there is little or no cell phone service.

Despite the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been injured, there are no fully functional hospitals in Gaza, and just one in three is operational at all.

Amid repeated attacks on healthcare facilities, doctors and nurses with extraordinary courage are bravely working to save lives even with inadequate and sporadic electricity or basic medical supplies.

Israel bombing and the onerous restrictions placed on aid entering Gaza

means that only a tiny fraction of the food, water, medicine, and fuel that is needed can get into Gaza.

And even when supplies get across the border, very little of that aid can reach beyond the immediate area around the Rafah crossing from Egypt.

Let us take a deep breath and understand what all of this means for the men, women, and children who are in Gaza today, right now.

Not only have they been driven from their homes, not only have those homes been damaged or destroyed, not only are they unable to access the medical care or the clean water they need, but unbelievably and horrifyingly, hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza today face starvation.

Let me repeat: Hundreds of thousands of children face starvation. The United Nations says that 1 in 10 children under the age of 5 in Gaza is already malnourished, and the entire population is at imminent risk of famine.

What every physician knows is that malnutrition in small children causes permanent physical and cognitive damage. It stays with them for their entire lives.

In other words, even if the war ended today, large numbers of children in Gaza will have suffered physically from what has happened for the rest of their lives, and that is not to mention the extraordinary psychological damage that these kids have gone through.

Can you imagine what it means to be 5 years old, seeing buildings collapsing, people dying, suffering from hunger and thirst? That is what these kids are going through today.

If nothing changes, we will soon have hundreds of thousands of children literally starving to death before our very eyes, and believe it or not--believe it or not--the situation could become even worse.

Right now, 1.4 million people--more than half of the population of Gaza--are squeezed into the area around Rafah, right up against the Egyptian border. Rafah was a town of just 250,000 people before the war; now there are 1.4 million people there--more than five times the original population. These people are packed into crowded U.N. shelters or sleeping out in tents. It is a daily struggle for them to find food or water.

And in the midst of all of this horror and suffering, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the leader of Israel's extreme-right wing government, has announced that Israel will soon launch a major ground offensive against Rafah where 1.4 million people are located.

What that means is that Netanyahu will soon be forcing these people, already living in extreme desperation, to evacuate once again, and nobody--nobody--has any idea where they will go.

These families, already exhausted, traumatized, and hungry will once again be displaced with no plan as to how they will survive.

I struggle to find words for this cruelty. And let me state once again that what is happening in Gaza now is funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars. These are our bombs and our military equipment that is being used. We are complicit. This is not just an Israeli war; it is an American war.

Prime Minister Netanyahu says that all of this is necessary. He says that Israel will only accept ``total victory'' in this campaign. Yet asked recently what total victory would look like, he said, chillingly, that it is like smashing a glass ``into small pieces, and then you continue to smash it into even smaller pieces and you continue hitting them,'' Netanyahu.

The question that we must ask ourselves is, how many more children and innocent people in Gaza will be smashed by Netanyahu in the process? And why is the United States helping to fund this humanitarian disaster?

It is quite clear that beyond total destruction of Gaza, Netanyahu has no plan. This week, President Biden acknowledged the severity of the crisis. He said that Israel's response in Gaza ``has been over the top,'' and added that ``there are a lot of innocent people who are starving. There are a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying. And it's got to stop.''

The President is absolutely right. It does have to stop. But if that is the case, then why in God's name are we now contemplating legislation that provides $10 billion to the Israeli war machine to continue Netanyahu's war?

President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have been trying to negotiate an agreement where Israel pauses its military operation, Hamas releases the remaining hostages, and massive humanitarian aid comes in to help desperate people. We all hope that this deal comes together, but Netanyahu is resisting this proposal.

In my view, he is trying to prolong the war in order to cling to power. Most Israelis rightly blame him for creating this crisis and want him out. But if Netanyahu prolongs the war, he can avoid accountability for his disastrous leadership. And that is why Netanyahu is ignoring almost everything that President Biden and Secretary Blinken are saying.

He, this week, dismissed the hostage deal as ``delusional'' and brushed aside U.S. concerns about expanding the ground offensive to southern Gaza.

There is a simple question that must be asked. How does it happen that despite waging a horrific war, which has caused massive suffering, despite ignoring the wishes of the President of the United States and, in fact, virtually the entire world community, how does it happen that the U.S. Congress is about to send another $10 billion of unrestricted military aid to Israel, no strings attached?

It is beyond comprehension to me that Congress would reward Netanyahu even while he ignores everything the President of the United States says. Netanyahu is the leader of the most rightwing government in Israel's history, a man who has dedicated his political career to killing the prospects of a two-state solution, and yet this bill will give him a blank check paid for by the American taxpayer.

It is hard to believe, but that is exactly what this bill will do. And what is even harder to understand is that in the midst of this almost unprecedented humanitarian crisis, this legislation before us actually contains a prohibition on funding for UNRWA, the largest U.N. Agency operating in Gaza and the backbone of the humanitarian aid operation.

UNRWA is the organization that actually gets food throughout Gaza. Israel's allegations against UNRWA are serious, and they are being investigated seriously. But you don't starve 2 million people because of the alleged actions of 12 UNRWA employees.

The whole world is watching. Netanyahu is starving hundreds of thousands of children. We, in America, cannot be complicit in this atrocity.

As long as this bill contains money to fund Netanyahu's cruel war, it must be defeated.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history is now unfolding before our eyes in Gaza today--right now. And we, as the government of the United States, are complicit.

It has been 4 months since Hamas's terrorist attack started this war, and what we in Congress do right now could well determine whether tens of thousands of people live or whether they die. Already, the human costs of this Israel-Hamas war has been staggering. Madam President, 1,200 innocent Israelis were killed in the initial terrorist attack, and more than 100 are still being held hostage.

And as I have said many times, Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas terrorism, but it does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people. As of today, Israel's response has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians and injured more than 67,000-- two-thirds of whom are women and children. Let me repeat: Two-thirds are women and children.

Madam President, 1.7 million Palestinians have been driven from their homes, and, unbelievably, some 70 percent of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. This is an unheard of level of destruction--80 percent of people driven from their homes and 70 percent of housing units damaged or destroyed.

And while 1.7 million people are displaced from their homes, they have no idea where they will be tomorrow or whether or not they will ever return to their homes. And many of these men, women, and children have been displaced multiple times. They go here; they go there; they go there.

Most of the infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed. Very few water wells or bakeries are functioning. The electricity has been cut since the beginning of the war. Sewage is running into the streets. Cell phone service is spotty or nonexistent. Most of the healthcare facilities in Gaza are not operational. Bombs falling, people getting hurt; and yet healthcare facilities not operational. Many facilities have been damaged in air strikes, and numerous, numerous healthcare workers trying to keep children alive have been killed. The facilities that are operational today lack the basic medical supplies that heroic doctors and nurses need in order to save lives and treat their patients.

And as horrible as all of this is, let me tell you what is even worse. As a result of Israeli bombing and restrictions on aid entering Gaza, only a tiny fraction of the food, water, medicine, and fuel that is needed--desperately needed--can get into Gaza. Even then, very little of that aid can reach beyond the immediate area of Rafah near the Egyptian border.

And let us be very clear and take a deep breath and understand what all of this means. It means that, today, hundreds of thousands of children are starving and lack clean drinking water. The United Nations says the entire population of Gaza is at imminent risk of famine, and some 378,000 people are starving right now. According to the U.N., 1 in 10 children under the age of 5 in Gaza is now acutely malnourished.

And when malnutrition impacts young children, it often means permanent physical and cognitive damage that will impact them for the rest of their lives. In other words, if food got in tomorrow, healthcare got in tomorrow, damage has already been severely done to tens of thousands of beautiful, innocent little children. If nothing changes, we will soon have hundreds of thousands of children literally starving to death before our very eyes.

And, unbelievably, that situation could even get worse in the immediate future. Roughly 1.4 million people--more than half of the population of Gaza--are now squeezed into the Rafah area. That is right up against the Egyptian border. Rafah was a town of just 250,000 before the war. It is a very small area, roughly 10 miles by 4 miles. Most of the people there are now packed into crowded U.N. shelters or sleeping out in tents. It is a daily struggle for them to find food or water.

Yet Prime Minister Netanyahu, the leader of Israel's extreme-right wing government, says that Israel will soon launch a major ground offensive against Rafah, where all of these people currently are. He will soon be forcing hundreds of thousands of desperate people to evacuate once again. In other words, exhausted, traumatized, and hungry families will be driven onto the road with no plan as to where they will go, how they will receive essential supplies or protection for their physical safety.

I cannot find words to describe how horrific this situation is and could become. Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly said that the goal of Israel's military efforts is total victory. Yet asked recently what total victory would look like, he responded chillingly by saying that it is like smashing a glass ``into small pieces, and then you continue to smash it into even smaller pieces and you continue hitting them.''

And the question that we as Americans and as the U.S. Congress must ask is: How many more children and innocent people will be smashed by Netanyahu in this process? It is quite clear that beyond total destruction of Gaza, Netanyahu has no plan.

Yesterday, President Biden acknowledged the severity of this crisis, and I thank him for doing that. He said that Israel's response in Gaza ``has been over the top'' and added that ``there are a lot of innocent people who are starving. There are a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying. And it's got to stop.'' That is President Joe Biden.

President Biden is absolutely right. It does have to stop. It has to now, and that is in our hands. President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have been trying to negotiate an agreement where Israel pauses its military operation while Hamas releases the remaining hostages. All of us hope that this deal comes together. We all want the hostages freed and the slaughter ended. But Netanyahu is resisting this proposal. In large part, this is because he is politically weak at home. Most Israelis likely blame him for creating this crisis. And in my view--my view--he is trying to prolong the war to avoid facing accountability for his actions.

Netanyahu didn't even wait for Secretary Blinken to leave the region this week before he publicly dismissed the hostage deal as delusional and brushed aside United States' concerns about expanding the ground offensive in southern Gaza. The Associated Press called this a ``virtual slap in the face'' to Blinken and the United States--a virtual slap in the face--and they are right.

Unbelievably--unbelievably--despite all of this, the U.S. Congress is prepared to spend another $14 billion on military aid to Netanyahu's rightwing government--$14 billion more, and 10 billion of this money is totally unrestricted and will allow Netanyahu to buy more of the bombs he has used to flatten Gaza and to kill thousands and thousands of children.

This is American complicity at its worst, and it is really quite unbelievable. Does the U.S. Congress really want to provide more military aid to Netanyahu so that he can annihilate thousands and thousands more men, women, and children? Do we really want to reward Netanyahu, even while he ignores virtually everything the President of the United States is asking him to do? Do we want to give even more support to the leader of the most

rightwing government in Israel's history, a man who has dedicated his political career to killing the prospects of a two-state solution?

That is really hard to believe, but that is exactly what this legislation before us will do. And what is even harder to understand is that in the midst of this horrendous humanitarian crisis, the legislation before us contains a prohibition to funding for UNRWA, the largest U.N. agency operating in Gaza and the backbone of the humanitarian aid operation. Israel's allegations against the agency are serious, and they are being investigated seriously. But you don't starve 2 million children and people and women--you don't starve 2 million people because of the alleged actions of 12 UNRWA employees.

The whole world is watching. Netanyahu is starving the children of Gaza. We cannot be complicit in this atrocity. As long as this bill contains money to fund Netanyahu's cruel war, I will do everything I can to oppose it, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

With that, I yield the floor.