Hamas and Other Palestinian Terrorist Groups International Financing Prevention Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman and the submariner up front. That is a special kind of service, no doubt about it. I thank the chairman for his work on this legislation, for helping to bring it to the floor, and for his work in helping to make sure that in this body when those of us who are in here say never again in support of Israel and the Jewish state, that it is something that we are doing everything possible to make sure that never again is the truth.

You might ask what can this bill do in support of never again, and why. The ``why'' on it is very simple because October 7 didn't happen for free. October 7 didn't happen without planning. October 7 didn't happen without delivery of arms from multiple nations. October 7 didn't happen without the intelligence from multiple nations, nongovernment organizations, and individuals. This happened as a result of a great deal of all of the above.

This bill is specifically about sanctions, about making sure that we can get to the individuals, the states, the government agencies, the nongovernment agencies, or the companies that enabled October 7 to happen. It is about making sure that we cut off the material support, whether that is money or equipment or something that we might label here in Washington as a dual-use item, from making it to the Gaza Strip or the West Bank or into the hands of Hezbollah or somewhere else; from making sure that we cut off the technological support, whether it is intelligence or, literally, software or hardware or arms of propaganda; whether we are cutting off the financial support, the terror financing, the transactions, those that are engaging with the literal perpetrators of terrorism, doing it by blocking and freezing assets and funds, providing travel restrictions, export restrictions, and financial sanctions so that they can't use our banks or financial institutions. The list goes on.

That is the work that has to be done within these walls to make sure that we can say never again. That is the work that we can do in here to make sure that October 7 doesn't happen again, and it is the work that we have to do in passing this bill to make sure that we do everything possible to prevent the kind of terrorism, the barbaric acts that the chairman spoke so eloquently and so vividly about.

It is in that vein that I ask my colleagues to rise in support of this bill. Join us, vote unanimously in support of this bill.

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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I will address some of the comments that were brought up about the bill and exemptions, and exemptions that do not exist. I think it is important to recognize there are some exemptions. There are exemptions for food and medicine.

Those exemptions exist, but there are not exemptions for pieces of equipment that might be considered dual-use items that were used to knock over the barricades, the fences, and the barriers that were preventing the Palestinian terrorists from making it into Israel.

There are not exemptions to allow those kinds of pieces of equipment that might come in under agricultural exemptions in this bill. Why? Because they can be dual-use items. That is a reason to not have them.

When we look at this as a whole, I encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians, as is frequently said. I don't think we would so lightly throw around the term ``innocent Nazi civilians'' during World War II.

We are going to speak later about a bill related to Palestinian education and the fact that in their schools, schools run by the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, not Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, not Lions' Den, not any of the other groups run by the Palestinian Authority, they have anti-Semitic teachings that they put within their own schools.

The list goes on and on of the examples we could give of what somebody might call a rank-and-file Gazan or a rank-and-file person in the West Bank or just a Palestinian that maybe doesn't fall under that name of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad but by any classical definition would absolutely be considered a terrorist, somebody that in the last couple of weeks had been conducting kidnappings, murders, brutality that is nearly unspeakable.

As we look at this and what kind of exemptions should and should not exist, I ask that it be looked at through that lens, that there is not this far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians.

I haven't seen the videos of the innocent Palestinian civilians who were out there trying to protect the Israelis, who were out there trying to stop the attacks and trying to get the captives returned instead of being taken into the tunnel systems.

We need to look at that as well when we think about the equipment, whether agricultural or otherwise, that might be put in the hands of those terrorists.

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