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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as the Senate convened this week, our colleagues negotiating on border security were still at the table making slow and steady progress. They are chipping away at years of failure to enact basic commonsense border security policy. Reaching an agreement that can pass Congress and become law is easier said than done.

But I am very grateful to Senator Lankford for sticking with it. Our colleagues' effort to address the glaring national security challenge here at home is the foundation of our broader responsibility to meet the linked threats we are facing around the world, from the Indo- Pacific to Europe, to the Middle East.

Needless to say, it is a particularly dangerous time for nations that care about protecting their sovereignty from totalitarian thugs and savage terrorists. The headlines are filled with evidence that America's most dangerous adversaries are demonstrably not deterred, and it might have something to do with the Biden administration's penchant for deterring itself instead.

America is a global superpower, but far too often, our Commander in Chief has conducted our foreign affairs with hesitation and weakness. Remember his administration's overwrought fears of ``escalation'' that kept essential capabilities out of Ukrainian hands or the feeble half measures in response to an ongoing surge in attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria.

Reports that the Biden administration now wants to constrain Israel's efforts to destroy Hamas are disappointing but not surprising. Two months ago, the administration was encouraging Israel to slow down its response before entering Gaza. Now, it is telling Israel to hasten its operations and wind them down to a close.

America cannot afford to lose sight of reality. We must not blur the boldface line between a sovereign democracy that takes great pains to avoid civilian casualties and a terrorist organization that steals humanitarian aid from vulnerable Gazans to fuel its war of hate.

Israel did not choose this conflict. It ended the occupation of Gaza nearly two decades ago, but its policy of seeking to lower tensions was rewarded on October 7 when Hamas unilaterally shattered the cease-fire with rape, torture, terror, and murder: Hamas, the terrorists who diverted mountains of foreign assistance intended for civilian infrastructure to build miles of elaborate terror tunnels instead; Hamas, the cowards who intentionally hide their fighters and weapons in schools and hospitals.

Hamas has repeatedly faced the choice between improving the lives of Palestinians and killing Israelis. Every time, to date, it has chosen violence. And if Hamas survives with its military capabilities and leadership intact, it will make that choice again and again.

This is the reality Israel faces. Its war cabinet knows they must see this fight through. It is the same reality that recent American Presidents have confronted in the fight against al-Qaida and Isis. But for Israel, the determined terrorist threat is on its very borders and its own citizen soldiers are on the line.

So I will repeat what I have said so many times before. Our responsibility as an ally is to provide the time, space, and support Israel needs to finish the job, to condemn shameful attempts at moral equivalence to excuse the genocidal violence of Hamas terrorists and apply double standards to Israel and to offer counsel to our ally in private, not in front page genuflections to the President's leftwing base.

Administration officials and world leaders who care about the Palestinians would do well to focus less on constraining Israel in the short term and more on the challenge of ensuring Palestinian leaders and organizations in Gaza and the West Bank actually care about improving the lives of their fellow citizens in the long term.

Palestinians deserve better than Hamas's cult of death in Gaza. They deserve better than a corrupt and sclerotic Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

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