Mitch McConnell Hammers Biden For Withholding Israel Aid, Questions His 'Ironclad' Support

4 months ago

During remarks on the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spoke about Biden's withholding of military aid to Israel.

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Transcript

00:00 War is hell. It tears apart societies. It alters the course of entire civilizations.

00:11 And innocent noncombatants suffer. Try as we might, humanity has not eradicated war or stripped

00:27 it of its horrors. But in the modern world, civilized nations hold themselves to the highest

00:37 standards and take deliberate care to minimize harm to civilians. The United States is first

00:47 among these nations, but even we make mistakes. On this administration's watch, precision military

00:58 strikes have inadvertently killed civilians in multiple theaters of operations. Our ally Israel

01:09 goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. Over decades of grinding conflict to preserve its

01:19 security, a circumstance most Americans can hardly imagine. Israel routinely accepts great risk to

01:31 its own soldiers to avoid endangering innocent civilians. But the forces sworn to erase Israel

01:44 from the earth follow a different code. To Hamas, civilian casualties are not tragedies. They're

01:57 tools of the trade. To these savages, kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder aren't crimes. They're

02:11 tactics. For terrorists around the world, human suffering is the weapon of choice. And Hamas seeks

02:20 to magnify it. These are the facts. And any serious conversation about the war in Gaza needs to start

02:31 here. If war could be avoided entirely, so could its terrible cause. Israel tried to avoid this war,

02:42 negotiated a ceasefire with the savage terrorists bent on destroying the Jewish state, all to try

02:50 to avoid the war. The terrorists used this ceasefire to plan and prepare for war. And on

02:59 October 7th, Hamas launched it. They also chose how Israel would be forced to fight it, putting

03:09 fighting positions in hospitals, schools, and United Nations facilities, directly attacking

03:17 humanitarian aid crossings. This doesn't just contravene the laws of war. It exploits human

03:25 suffering. Why does Hamas behave this way? Because it works. Because they know the media will cover

03:37 it. If it bleeds, it leads. Because they know it creates an international rush, rush to blame

03:47 Israel. Because leftist fifth columnists and useful idiots on university campuses will play

03:57 a revolution and express solidarity with the terrorists. Because the President of the United

04:04 States will be forced to choose between his supposedly ironclad commitment to an ally under

04:10 attack and the will of his leftist political base. And because they bet that the President

04:18 would choose the latter. Well, it would seem that Hamas bet correctly. President Biden is

04:28 withholding urgent military assistance to Israel. But he cannot have it both ways. He cannot claim

04:35 his support for Israel is ironclad while denying Israel precisely the weapons they need to defend

04:43 themselves. The President's old enough to remember 1968. But he seems to have learned the wrong

04:51 lesson from that pivotal year. Caving to the college radicals will only whet their appetite

05:00 to spend the summer demanding further anti-Israel concessions at his party's convention. I fought

05:10 for months to secure passage of the national security supplemental to support Israel, Ukraine,

05:17 and vulnerable Asian partners, and to make important investments in our own military. I

05:23 stood up to the opposition in my own party to do the right thing. If the commander in chief can't

05:32 muster the political courage to stand up to the radicals on his left flank and stand up for an

05:38 ally at war, the consequences will be great. Other allies who rely on ironclad guarantees

05:46 from America will question our commitment. Nations on the fence in the middle of a major

05:56 power competition for influence will look elsewhere for their own security and our enemies

06:05 will be emboldened.

06:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Mitch McConnell Hammers Biden For Withholding Israel Aid, Questions His 'Ironclad' Support

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