GAZA
December 20, 2024
Comments by Senator Merkley in the Congressional Record:
Senator Merkley Highlights Devastation in Gaza on U.S. Senate Floor
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-170/issue-190/senate-section/article/S7249-1?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22merkley%2C+Gaza%22%7D&s=6&r=1
On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bTQoehuYd8&t=369s
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
GAZA
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, we are all here, getting ready to leave after we fund the government and return home to our families. We get pretty excited about this time of year thinking about the holidays to come. We are heading home to our loved ones. We know there will be extended family gatherings. There will be games with the children. There will be exchanges of presents. There will be food. There will be awesome food ham, turkey, all kinds of wonderfully crafted vegetable dishes and there will be so much that we can drink. Oh, yes. There will be wine varieties. There will eggnog; perhaps some of it will be spiked. There will be carbonated apple juice or cranberry juice for the kids. We will put it into glasses, and we will have a toast. We will really celebrate life. We will celebrate life with a roof over our heads, with our loved ones close by, and with our cupboards well-stocked.
Also in these holidays, there will be time for reflection in every religious tradition. For those of us who are fortunate to have that roof over our heads and food in the cupboards and our loved ones close by, we will recognize that, for so many, that is not the case. For so many here in the United States, who by virtue of economic conditions or the ravages of disease or mental afflictions, they will not have a roof over their heads; they may not have family members close by; they may not even have a cupboard, let alone one that is well-stocked. We will ponder our responsibility to try to improve those conditions.
We will ponder the landscape across the broader globe, knowing that in many places, people have been so ravaged by natural disasters, so affected by conflict and war. I am sure we will see programs and commentary about Sudan, where millions have been displaced by civil war and by drought and by famine; or in Burma, where so many are suffering escalating violence; or in Ukraine, where people are brutalized by Putin’s invasion, in the efforts to defend their country.
No matter where you look, there is no shortage of suffering, but the place that weighs the heaviest on my heart this season is the Middle East. We have the families of Israel continuing to grieve the losses of 1,200 of their own loved ones on October 7, 2023. We have families in Israel who continue to not know the fate of their loved ones taken hostage whether they are alive, whether they are dead, whether they are being cared for, whether they are suffering. Will they be released? And there will be an empty chair at the table.
The victims in Israel weigh on my heart, but the Palestinian victims also weigh on my heart, individuals in the West Bank Palestinians who have suffered from decades of occupation, of the economic constraints and indignity that come from checkpoints, that come from land lost to settlements and to outposts, to olive orchards bulldozed down, to lives lost and injuries suffered from increasing violence by settlers against Palestinian villagers.
But, by far, the most devastated communities are the Palestinian communities in Gaza because of the extraordinary level of devastation. And it weighs on my heart because of the connection between the United States and Israel, our close connection with our ally, where we share security strategies, where we provide economic and military assistance. We share intelligence on the issues of the world. We are so closely connected that we are connected to the devastation in Gaza.
Since October 7, 2023, more than 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza have died. More than 100,000 have been severely injured. The vast bulk of those injured and those who have died are women and children and seniors people who have no connection whatsoever to Hamas, which conducted the raids on October 7 of 2023. The devastation is massive.
This same picture, taken in North Gaza, could be almost copied for community after community from north to south of Gaza.
Of the 2.1 million people, the Palestinians in Gaza, some 1.9 million almost everyone, that is are without a home, either because their home has been blasted into smithereens or because they have been forcibly moved to a different location within Gaza forced relocation.
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