While answering questions at his town hall in Estero, Florida, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) was asked about the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza, and his answer was met with anger from some attendees.
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00:00Here we go. We're going to give a Scott Nicholas and a foreign policy question.
00:06Scott Nicholas, you're going to hire us.
00:09What is your stance on Israel, war, and Gaza?
00:14Genocide! Genocide!
00:20All right, homophobic.
00:21Sir, I will let you finish the question, but before we continue, I just want to say the reason why we have...
00:28And that's not an issue, sir. The reason why we have the questions written down is because what we found initially when we did town halls is that people started shouting back and forth about their opinion of the question, and you end up having a large shout at that, and you don't get any more.
00:42So I just want to be clear. I'm asking him to clarify the rest of his question because he feels it wasn't fully...he didn't have time to finish it.
00:49I will also say I'm not going to do that in every question because if they give me the question and I understand the breadth of it,
00:57I'm going to have the right answer. Is everybody up there before I'm saying it?
01:00Yes.
01:00Okay. All right. Sir, please.
01:03Is that a problem?
01:04Of course. It's no problem.
01:05I'm going to retire a federal one that's a kid.
01:08The PI, the U.S.P.I.P., the office of the inspectors, and everything.
01:13And let me ask you another five.
01:19There's a big deal.
01:21I mean, a lot of people, you realize, there's a lot of people, you realize, there's a lot of people, you know,
01:27you realize, there's a difference between the German people and the South.
01:35Yes.
01:39The Israelis pretend to say, right now, first of all, the Israelis have 10,000 people for rights of the Senate.
01:48Children, children, children, children, who can kill 35,000 women and children.
01:54Right now, they're cutting off electricity, water, and food to the entire place, which according to the U.S., is the U.S., the I.C.C., the Geneva Convention is a war crime, all right?
02:15It's a war crime, clear-cut, you cannot cut off food, water, electricity to an entire population to punish the future.
02:27The question is, do you agree with that?
02:30Number one, if you don't, what are you going to do about it?
02:35And please do not say that the United States government has no sway over these rigs.
02:41That's my question.
02:45Well, a couple things.
02:54First things first, when it comes to the 35,000 casualty number, in our briefings, that is something that's come from Hamas.
03:10Is anybody here vouching for Hamas's accounting?
03:13Secondly, I'm not going to say this.
03:20Israel, throughout this entire conflict, which has now gone over close to 600 days, through this entire organ, Israel has tried to bring food and water into Gaza.
03:32You don't have to agree.
03:33I mean, I should have seen the briefings.
03:36I've seen the trucks myself.
03:37What happens is Hamas steals the aid.
03:41Hamas steals the aid.
03:44Israel has tried to bring aid into Gaza for the Palestinians.
03:49Hamas steals the aid.
03:50So how are you supposed to operate in a situation where you try to bring aid, and then the operational organization in Gaza, which is Hamas, steals it, uses it for themselves?
04:02Because it doesn't provide it to the people.
04:06Because here is, listen, at the end of the day, here is the situation.
04:10If you just give Hamas every access point to everything that it wants, it will continue to perpetrate the atrocities that were never done, I told you.
04:22There are still, I believe the number is 46, there are still 46 hostages in Gaza right now.
04:29If Hamas wanted to bring an end to hostilities, they could have returned the hostages.
04:34They could have done it a year.
04:35They could have done it two years.
04:37They have not.
04:41So the way I try to bring this situation to the American people is, if the drug cartel south of the border had Americans held hostage,
04:49do you think the United States government would sit by and passively negotiate with the Sinaloa cartel?
04:56No, we would not.
04:57But that is the same, it is called an analogy.
05:02The analogy is this.
05:05Should Israel, should Israel do nothing while their men and women and children have been realized, have been killed, and are currently being held hostage?
05:15Is that what we should do?
05:17I say no.
05:18What I say is, we should stand behind Israel 100%.
05:22We should do everything in this world as hostages from home.
05:27And as far as I'm concerned, Hamas has been in charge of the Gaza Strip for almost 20 years.
05:34Hamas has been in control.
05:36Hamas has had two decades to try to find ways to live in peace with Israel.
05:43Hamas invests themselves in hospitals.
05:46They put weapons systems in hospitals and in schools.
05:49That's a violation of the Geneva Convention.
05:51That is what they have to call us a law.
05:54That is a law.
05:55It is a law.
05:55Because unlike you, I've seen the intelligence reports.
05:58I've seen it.
05:59So, you are.
06:00Now, to the core of your question, sir, when it comes to something that's my stance on this conflict, my stance is sent by our ally, which is Israel.
06:10They are our ally.
06:11They will take their eyes on COVID-19.
06:13If you want to ask 45 minutes, I wish I had to bring this up to 47.
06:18I would sit there and play it, and I would love to see who it was actually sitting there today.
06:23And you can just bring it closer, but that's the truth.
06:26When it comes to food and water, Israel, number one, when they were doing bombing runs into Gaza, they were warning Kalisthenians about what was coming.
06:36That is how they had warned us that we are coming in, and we're bringing warfare to this area, and we will recommend that you leave.
06:45At the time, Egypt could have opened up the pass for Palestinians to leave and go into Egypt.
06:51The Egyptians said no.
06:52They didn't want them in Egypt.
06:54They didn't want the Palestinians in Egypt.
06:55That's a fact.
06:56Israel was saying, let's try to get the Palestinians to go into Jordan.
07:00The Jordanians said no.
07:02They don't want the Palestinians in Jordan.
07:03Israel has their citizens who are still sitting in tunnels buried beneath Gaza to this day.
07:13At least 20 of them are dead.
07:15At least 20 are dead.
07:17And Israeli citizens are saying, can we just get back the remains of our people who were moving who were dead?
07:22Because let's be clear, let's go back to my total 7.
07:25It wasn't Israel that incurred into Gaza.
07:28It was Hamas that incurred into Israel.
07:30That is a fact.
07:31The United States, if you were to ask me, Israel has had far more restraint than the United States did.
07:43That is also a fact.
07:45Israel has had a lot of restraint.
07:47But they were victimized.
07:49Their citizens were killed.
07:52Their pregnant women had the babies cut out of their womb.
07:56And the babies put in the oven.
07:58That is a fact.
07:59And so as far as I'm concerned, there is no moral equivalency here.
08:05Hamas started a separation.
08:07Hamas hides behind civilian populations of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
08:12They are using the Palestinians as human shields.
08:15That's what they're doing.
08:17And so are you supposed to abide by that and let that continue?
08:21I say that.
08:21If Hamas wants to do this, Hamas needs to be removed from the face of the earth.