Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Proposed Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Israel of Certain Defense Articles

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, on February 28, in coordination with and at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Trump attacked Iran without congressional authorization--that is, without the authority required under our Constitution. Almost immediately, Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, engaged in a battle with Israel. Now we have Israel invading southern Lebanon.

The Netanyahu government is exercising the same strategy they pursued in Gaza: Drop massive bombs, level entire towns, block routes for civilians to leave, and block access for humanitarian relief.

And the United States? We are partners in this. We are complicit in this--not just because we partnered with Israel to ignite the war with Iran but because we sold the bombs and the bulldozers that Israel is using. We didn't stop supplying the Netanyahu government with weapons years ago even when it became clear that they were deliberately targeting homes, schools, and hospitals; when they were blocking deliveries of humanitarian aid, including water, food, and medicine; when the result was mass malnutrition, particularly among mothers and children and the elderly.

We must not continue to be complicit in these tragedies by selling these tools of destruction--the bombs and the bulldozers--to Israel.

The administration says: Let's sell them 12,000 more 1,000-pound bombs.

Picture 12,000 1,000-pound bombs dropping on neighborhoods--that is what we are enabling--or a vast number of bulldozers to destroy homes and buildings. We have seen it in the West Bank--homes and villages bulldozed, ancient olive groves bulldozed--and now we are seeing it in Lebanon, with the Netanyahu government bragging about doing the same thing to Lebanon they did to Gaza: Make it uninhabitable.

Let's be clear. Bulldozers are not defensive weapons.

Recent satellite images of southern Lebanon show the Netanyahu government flattening towns, destroying bridges, cutting off civilian movement, and cutting off humanitarian access in a replay of the destruction we saw in Gaza, not to mention the Netanyahu government has supported settlers in their expansion, massive expansion, of outposts and settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank, in their mass increase in construction of homes and villages, and most disturbing of all, supporting the settlers in their violent attacks on Palestinian communities--all of this in the goal of creating a greater Israel by destroying any prospect of a Palestinian state.

Let's not forget, as my colleague from Maryland mentioned, it was a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Defense Forces that killed American citizen Rachel Corrie in Rafah in 2003--the first of 14 Americans citizens who have been killed by Israeli soldiers since then.

Approving this sale of the bombs and bulldozers deepens our responsibility for these tragedies and for the suffering.

Colleagues, when we became Senators, we swore an oath to take on the responsibilities designated to Congress in the Constitution, including the question of war.

As Madison summarized: The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. Thus, the Constitution has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.

That is the Constitution we swore an oath to, and it is the Constitution that President Trump violated by launching a war without congressional authorization.

In 1973, during the Vietnam war, Congress approved the War Powers Act to, in their words, ``fulfill the intent of the Framers of the Constitution'' and rein in the President from waging wars without congressional approval.

The War Powers Act does allow the President to respond to an imminent threat that is ``a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories, possessions, or its Armed Forces.'' But in this case, no such condition existed and thus the violation of the Constitution.

Yet, earlier today, my colleagues across the aisle voted to allow the President to continue to violate the law and violate the Constitution. When will we say enough is enough?
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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, let us today, all 100 Senators, uphold our oath to the Constitution. The indiscriminate use of American bombs in Iran and Lebanon and Gaza that targets civilians and infrastructure by Israel must end. We should not sell these bulldozers and these bombs to Israel.

I urge my colleagues to vote for these two joint resolutions of disapproval.

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