{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.wicker.senate.gov/2024/7/senator-wicker-urges-support-of-israel", "Senator Wicker Urges Support of Israel", "2024-07-25", "2024", "2024-07", "Republican", "Senate", "MS", "Roger F. Wicker", "W000437", "www.wicker.senate.gov", "wicker", "https://www.wicker.senate.gov/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the highest-ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, spoke on the Senate floor, urging the Biden administration to support our ally Israel. Senator Wicker also highlighted how Iran\u2019s proxies perpetrated the October 7th attack.\n\nSenator Wicker further called out congressional Democrats and the Biden administration for their failure to welcome Prime Minister Netanyahu and signal a strong commitment to Israel\u2019s defense.\n\nSenator Wicker\u2019s remarks followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s joint address to Congress.\n\nRead the remarks as delivered below or watch them here.\n\nThank you very much, Madam President.\n\nWe stand here today having had the opportunity, in a joint session of Congress, to hear one of the most powerful and profound and significant addresses that has ever been made to a joint session of Congress.\n\nWe have a few people listening in right now. I notice we have a number of our pages on the floor. Madam President, I'm glad that our young people, our rising seniors in high school who work for us, were able to be there and to be here in Washington, in this Capitol, and see and listen to this magnificent speech today by Benjamin Netanyahu the Prime Minister of the state of Israel \u2013 our steadfast ally. The only democracy in that section of the world. And I will say, I doubt if we will very often see remarks that were as powerful and as important.\n\nIsrael has been our steadfast ally for over seven decades. It was a Democratic president, Harry Truman, postwar that put his administration behind the recognition of the Jewish state in Palestine as Israel. And we became one of the earliest countries to recognize Israel. That has stood for over seven decades.\n\nThe recognition by the United States, on a bipartisan basis, has recognized an important fact: that the Jewish people are certainly not colonialists in the Holy Land.\n\nThe place where Israel exists now is the place where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Esau were born and lived in the era 5,000 years ago. To say that the Jewish people are colonialists in Israel is the big lie.\n\nThe big lie is something that our enemies have used down through the years. You say something so unbelievable and so unimaginable that [if] you say it long enough, and people will start to believe it.\n\nThe Jewish people are no colonialists in the Holy Land. The holy land is their ancestral home, and they deserve \u2013 the world's Jewish people deserve \u2013 a Jewish state so they can avoid the centuries of discrimination and anti-Semitism that they have endured over time.\n\nThe Jewish people, as I say, the Israeli people \u2013 which includes, of course, people that are not Jewish by heritage \u2013 have had the only democracy in the area for the longest time. And they've been surrounded by people who want nothing less than the destruction of Israel. And they don't make it \u2013 they don't make any bones about it.\n\nSupport in this Congress \u2013 support in the United States \u2013 for Israel, Madam President, has for these seven decades always been bipartisan. And it breaks my heart, and I think it should come as a shock to all Americans, that that bipartisan support seems to be fracturing on the other side of the aisle, among my Democratic colleagues.\n\nIt is a shame that the Vice President of this country \u2013 the Vice President of the United States \u2013 Kamala Harris, declined to fulfill her duties to preside over the session. She found an excuse in another state to be at a meeting that could easily have been rescheduled.\n\nIt's a shame that our Vice President \u2013 that the future nominee of her party for President of the United States \u2013 would make that statement, that she was unwilling to preside over a joint meeting addressed by the Prime Minister of Israel. The President pro tempore of the United States Senate refused to attend. Many members of this body on the Democratic side of the aisle, many members of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives boycotted this speech by our steadfast ally of 70 years or more.\n\nI noticed when the Prime Minister of Israel came down through the center aisle there in the House of Representatives, shaking hands on from both sides. And he rounded the corner, Madam President, and the Majority Leader of this body \u2013 the senior senator from New York, Senator Schumer, declined to extend his hand to the Prime Minister of our steadfast ally.\n\nWe also need to remember, as my colleagues have stated already, that in the region where Israel is the only democratic government in the Middle East, exists the Islamic Republic of Iran.\n\nThey are a sworn enemy of Israel, and they're a sworn enemy of the United States of America. \u2018Death to America\u2019 is what they say. And they want to start with \u2018Death to America\u2019 by pronouncing \u2018Death to Israel.\u2019\n\nMore than that, they have proxies \u2013 at least three proxies \u2013 that we've been talking about recently: the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah to the north of Israel, and Hamas, the terrorist group that perpetrated the October slaughter on the people near Gaza.\n\nHamas has one reason to exist. One stated, admitted reason, and one reason only: the complete destruction of Israel. And they demonstrated their ruthlessness on October 7th. Rapes, beheadings, babies being burned. Unspeakable acts of violence.\n\nAnd Prime Minister Netanyahu was correct to point out that people protesting outside this building on behalf of Hamas should be ashamed of themselves, in protesting on behalf of a group that was so violent.\n\nMadam President, Hamas uses civilians as human shields. That is a violation of international law. By contrast, contrary to what people have been told in the press, Israel is doing the best job that any combatant has ever done in protecting civilians while trying to root out terrorist groups.\n\nI am calling on people on both sides of the aisle, in conclusion, to return to our bipartisan support of the right of a people to exist somewhere, and to have one place on the face of the Earth, where they know they could be safe in their own beliefs, in their own population, and for the first time in centuries and millennia, to be safe and have their own homeland.\n\nSo, I congratulate the Prime Minister of Israel. I congratulate the members of Congress who received him well. And I invite my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to remember the importance of bipartisan support for Israel.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:24:45Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.wicker.senate.gov/2024/7/senator-wicker-urges-support-of-israel"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8800574578344822, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}