Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas, the chairman, for yielding, and I thank the ranking member and his staff and the entire staff of the Foreign Affairs Committee for their diligent work on this, for working all last week, for working through the weekend, and for the conversations.

On this one, it is important to note that I do believe that there is significant bipartisan agreement that we need to take action and stand with one voice in this country, the United States of America, to send a strong signal to not just the International Criminal Court but to the international community generally. We cannot stand by and allow the court to do what it is doing.

Let's remember why we are here. We are here because the International Criminal Court is seeking to issue warrants on the Prime Minister of Israel. It merits letting that just sit out there and marinate for a second that that is what we are dealing with. The Prime Minister of Israel is engaged in defending his country after the horrific October 7 attacks, which we have talked about in great detail on this floor--the assaults, the rapes, the beheadings of babies, the killing of innocent civilians. Israel is responding to what occurred and what happened to our Jewish brothers and sisters and others in Israel on October 7, and it is taking the attack to Hamas.

We recognize the difficulty of Hamas being fully intertwined with the civilians in Gaza. Israel is taking steps to send text messages, drop 15 million or more leaflets, leave voice messages, give 2 weeks' advance notice, do what they can to try to make sure that there are protections for civilians, keeping the overall civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio below historic norms by most accounts, including third- party observation.

Looking at Rafah, the international community is saying you can't go into Rafah. You go into Rafah and find 50-plus tunnels--now, I think it is 75 or more tunnels--that we know were being used to carry out attacks on Israel.

Israel is under assault right now, with missiles being fired with regularity by Hamas into Israel. This is Israel. This is not some random entity. This is Israel, our close ally, and you have a body, to which we have no sovereignty, for this country, that is being given to the International Criminal Court because we are not a party to it. We are not undermining our sovereignty. We are not going to do that as America.

That is what this stands for. That is what this says. This says that we should not be allowing the International Criminal Court to not just go after the Israeli Prime Minister but the door that that opens to go after our own servicemembers, to go after our own generals, to go after America's interests.

What happens here is going to be coming at us and our country. That is why it is important to speak with one voice, with authority, with force.

We have been working in good faith, and again, I want to compliment the ranking member and Democratic staff. Again, we were working through the weekend. I do believe there were amendments that we could have agreed to. There were changes that we could have agreed to that would have had bipartisan support here. I understand that the White House did not agree to that, and I think that is a shame.

I think the White House made the wrong call, plain and simple. I think the White House got this wrong, and I just hope that we will be here today united as a body, putting aside partisan differences, and that we will move this bill forward and send it to the Senate, where the Senate can work its will.

If the Senate wants to modify it and send it back to the House and try to address any of the concerns that have been raised by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle or this side of the aisle, great, the Senate can do that. They can send it back to us, and we can send a product to the President.

We need to address this, and we need to address it quickly. If we allow this to fester, then we undermine our own national security, and importantly, at this moment in time, we give credence and power to an international body to which we are not a party, to which Israel is not a party, and that is being used to flex political muscle by targeting the Prime Minister for defending his own country. That we cannot stand for.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that my colleagues support H.R. 8282.

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