Genocide Accountability Act of 2007

GENOCIDE ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - December 05, 2007)

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Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Berman for bringing this legislation.

It is obvious we need such a bill, for America should never be a haven for people who commit crimes against mankind. And that is what genocide is, a crime against mankind. It is ironic that God's rightest creature, human beings, are the only species that God created that commits genocide. Animals attack each other out of need for food or for other reasons, but not to destroy and kill an entire other group of animals. Only man, with his ability to think, can create the most unhuman-like crime against mankind, which is the attempt to kill others because of ethnic differences. That is an irony and a shame. And the fact is that we should never be a country that does anything but try to make this world a better place. People should not find America a harbor when they escape from the area, whether it be Darfur or Rwanda or any other place where genocide has been committed.

As a Jewish person, I have known about genocide because we know about the Holocaust and Jewish people have had relatives and possible would-be relatives if our ancestors had not emigrated to this country who would have been victims of this Holocaust or who were. So many of us have been to the Holocaust Museum or Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, or other places or concentration camps and learned.

I would submit that this bill, as the previous bill about nooses, should make a strong statement from this Congress, Mr. Speaker, but to the American people and the educators of this country that what we need in this country is more education about tolerance, more education about the horrors that we have had in the past in history. Because if you don't learn from history, you will repeat it again. And here we are, almost 2008, talking about genocide and nooses and oppressive tactics used by groups to intimidate religious and ethnic minorities and people of different backgrounds.

I commend the authors for bringing the bill, and it is a bipartisan bill and that is what we need, but there are so many other aspects that we need to look into.

Elie Wiesel, who was cited just recently by a Member on the other side, said that people who hate, hate everyone. People who hate Jews hate blacks, hate Hispanics, hate gays.

We have had hate crimes come up in this Congress that have passed and hopefully we will have a hate crime that passes, because hate in any form, whether it is racial, religious, or sexual orientation is just that, it is hate, and it is un-American and it is something unfortunately unique to humankind that should be stamped out and abolished in this country, and this Congress should not allow it, countenance it, or in any way condone it.

And so I thank the chairman and Mr. Berman for their leadership and the other people who have worked on this bill, Mr. Forbes and others, and we should work together in a bipartisan fashion to make this country what it is supposed to be, and that is an area where we can work together and hopefully one day have the Age of Aquarius and a place where we don't have these problems that we have had in the past.

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