Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment, which prohibits the Department of Defense from contracting with entities that are engaged in a boycott of the State of Israel.

Last October, Israel faced an unprecedented attack by Hamas. Since then, they have been fighting for their very right to exist against a terrorist group that has committed brutal and horrific war crimes. Hamas is responsible for slaughtering babies, using children as human shields, raping Israeli women, and executing parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents.

These brutal acts of terror are often praised by my colleagues on the left. This is disgusting, and it is absolutely wrong.

I believe in standing with our allies. America's closest ally is Israel, and I have stood with them through countless attacks from the radical left. The boycott, divest, and sanction movement promotes anti- Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment around the world, and U.S. tax dollars should not be supporting entities that advocate for this disgusting practice.

The BDS movement is anti-Semitic. It is an anti-Semitic cancer that has spread throughout our college campuses and has been promoted by the Hamas caucus on the left.

Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. reached a record high in the last year. The Anti-Defamation League tracked 8,873 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2023, the highest number of incidents reported since the organization began tracking data in 1979.

Our Department of Defense should not be contracting with anti-Semitic entities or encouraging their behavior.

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