Senator Marco Rubio took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to provide perspective on the Gaza conflict and to respond to a letter from the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Senator Rubio responded by stating:

I hope the United States continues to be firmly on the side of Israel, because there is no moral equivalency here. What is happening between Israel and Hamas is totally 100 percent the fault of Hamas. There is no moral equivalency here. All of the blame lies on Hamas. And for this crisis to end, Hamas must either be eliminated as an organization, or they must lay down their weapons and adhere to the true precepts of peace. Which is the desire to live peacefully with their neighbor Israel.” [Emphasis mine]

The difference between the death of the three Israeli youth and the death of the young Palestinian is clear. In the case of the death of the three Israelis the Palestinians began celebrating the kidnapping and giving out candy. The PLO took no action against the perpetrators of this heinous kidnapping and murder.  In the case of the young Palestinian Israelis mourned, the Israeli government gave aid and succor to the family and the perpetrators were captured and await trial for the murder.

Ayn Rand wrote, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” Senator Rubio is standing with the civilized man, he is standing with Israel. Rubio notes, “Don’t tell me both sides are to blame here? Because it’s not true. It isn’t true.”

Watch Senator Rubio’s full 15 minute floor speech on Thursday, July 24, 2014:

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio
Senate Floor Speech (Excerpt)
July 24, 2014
http://youtu.be/C3JpkdF0qCU

“So please don’t come to me and say that both sides are to blame here. That’s not true. This crisis would end tomorrow if Hamas would turn over its rockets and stop bombarding people. This would end tomorrow, by the way, if the Hamas commanders were not such cowards. And I’ll tell you why they’re cowards. Because while they’re on TV asking their people to go to the rooftops of these buildings, you know where they are? They are hiding in the basement. They are hiding in their basement command center, which by the way is located, as I said, in the basement, underneath of a hospital. This would end tomorrow, the civilian deaths could end tomorrow, if they stopped storing rockets in schools, including a U.N. school – where by the way, when the U.N. discovered these rockets, you know what they did with them? They turned them back over to Hamas. 

“Don’t tell me both sides are to blame here? Because it’s not true. It isn’t true. This is the result of one thing and one thing alone: Hamas has decided to launch rockets against Israel. Hamas has decided to build this extensive network of underground tunnels so in a moment of conflict they can get these commandos into Israel and kill Israelis. And what is Israel doing? What any country would do.

“Of course this is not an excellent example, but imagine for a moment if one of our neighboring countries decided to start hitting us with rockets?  What would the United States do? Would we sit there and say, ‘Boy, we really have to be restrained and hold back here?’ We would not tolerate that. Imagine if in your city, every night and every morning sirens were going off because rockets on their way in, and you spent the better part of the day running in and out of shelters and taking cover. What would you say? You would say, ‘Take care of this problem once and for all.’ Why would we ever ask Israel to do anything less than we would do, if we were in the same situation? 

“And that’s what they’re doing. And in the process of taking care of the situation, tragically, civilians are dying. And you know why? Because Hamas is deliberately putting them in the way. And I just read you these quotes. Hamas is asking their people to do what their leaders themselves won’t do, asking their own people to get in harm’s way, to act as human shields. Because they want these images to be spread around the world. They are willing to sacrifice their own people to win a PR war. And I think it is absolutely outrageous that some in the press corps, domestically, and most of the press corps internationally, is falling for this game. So please don’t tell me that both sides are to blame here, and please don’t tell me that this was caused by Israel. 

“In my time here in the Senate, I have had the opportunity to visit multiple countries. I have never met a people more desirous of peace than the people in Israel. But peace cannot mean your destruction – and that’s what they’re facing here. An enemy force that wants to destroy them, that wants to wipe them out as a country. And so it’s impossible to reach any sort of peace agreement with an organization like that. That’s what Israel is facing here. 

“So, Mr. Ambassador, what I would ask of you is that you go back to your government and you ask them to separate completely from Hamas, to condemn what Hamas is doing to your own people, to condemn the use of human shields. That’s what I ask you to do. Stop writing letters to U.S. senators and being angry at us when, by the way –  we shouldn’t be doing it because the law says that no money should be going toward any organization linked with Hamas. It is the United States that has been helping you stand up your security forces in the West Bank through our taxpayer money. Don’t be writing letters to the U.S. Congress complaining to us about what Israel is doing when the people you just created a unity government with is launching rockets against civilians in Israel and using its own people as human shields. 

“I think you need to take responsibility for your own people, for your own part of the world. And if you truly want peace, peace begins with laying down your arms and stopping these attacks, and condemning those that are conducting these attacks and using innocent civilians as human shields. If you want peace, that’s what you should spend your time doing. Not trying to rally public support around the world for the idea that Israel is responsible for war crimes. 

“And from our perspective, I hope the United States continues to be firmly on the side of Israel, because there is no moral equivalency here. What is happening between Israel and Hamas is totally 100 percent the fault of Hamas. There is no moral equivalency here. All of the blame lies on Hamas. And for this crisis to end, Hamas must either be eliminated as an organization, or they must lay down their weapons and adhere to the true precepts of peace. Which is the desire to live peacefully with their neighbor Israel.”

As Israel is under attack from Hamas in the Gaza strip and BDS — Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — right here in America, Bill Whittle makes the historical and moral case for Israel, and shows just who, indeed, are the tyrants and aggressors in the Middle East.

TRANSCRIPT:

Even before the recent Israeli ground and air operations in Gaza, the BDS movement – that would stand for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – was gaining traction… not just in France, or Germany, or Oman: right here in America.

BDS is being sold – as everything evil and stupid is being sold these days – as a moral good. The argument goes like this: Israel, a nation formed in response to the cold, concrete reality of extermination, has let its economic and military power go to its head. They, now, are the oppressors; they now are Goliath in a main battle tank facing a brave Palestinian David with a rock in his hand; they now are the racists. They now – Israel – are the Nazis.

Are they?

Here is Israel at the time of its formation by the United Nations in 1948. Actually, you can’t see it on this map because it’s so small – smaller than the state of New Jersey.

On that same year, the Arab nations surrounding the new country attacked what was then mostly small farming communities and tried to drive the Jews into the sea.

But The Israelis won.

The Arabs tried it again in 1967. The Jews beat them again. Then, in 1973, the Arabs tried again, launching a sneak attack on the holiest Jewish holiday – and the Jews won again.

Israel’s territorial gains did not come from Israel attacking the Arabs. They came from Israel being attacked by the Arabs.

And Israel has always tried to give the land back in exchange for peace, as it did when it voluntarily returned the Sinai Peninsula – which is bigger than Israel itself – back to the Egyptians who had tried to attack them from the Sinai, and likewise, they gave the Gaza Strip back to the Palestinians who had attacked them – from the Gaza strip.

Since then, thousands – thousands! — of rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel from schoolyards and orphanages and hospitals in — Gaza.

How many rockets and mortars would you allow to fall on your house by neighbors that have been swearing to kill you for 65 years? How many times will someone keep hitting you before you hit back?

The Palestinians daily call for the Jews to be driven into the sea. The Jews have one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. They could drive the Palestinians into the sea any time they wanted to. They don’t.

The instant that Hamas or Hezbollah get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they will do with it what they do every day with their rocks and mortars and missiles. They will use it. On Israel. The Israelis have an estimated 500 nuclear weapons and could destroy the Arabs any time they chose. They don’t.

Those are not Nazis. Those are moral, civilized people.

Israel is an island of civilization in a sea of barbarity, and that is why it is being targeted. Uncomfortable with those words, “civilization” and “barbarity?” Well, in Israel women can do whatever they please – including leading the state of Israel. In the surrounding Arab nations women are treated as chattel. They’re just property: useful for creating sons and carrying things.

In Israel, homosexuals are tolerated and celebrated as individuals – why, just as if they were real people! In the surrounding Muslim nations they are hung from construction cranes in public squares. In Israel, scientists at the University of Haifa are studying In-homogeneous tachyon dynamics. The latest scientific invention in the Arab world is a buzzer that goes off when a Muslim falls asleep against his prayer rug.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was used, in the main successfully, against racist South Africa. Racist South Africa used brutal force to suppress people along racial lines.

Israel, on the other hand, is the only nation in the entire Middle East where Arabs have a free and fair vote. Israel allows Israelis of any ethnicity to be elected to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament – including Arabs. So: If you’re in favor of equal rights for women, legal protections for homosexuals, advances in science, the arts and medicine, and political access and personal rights guaranteed by law — you definitely should support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – for every nation in the region EXCEPT Israel.

Finally, I’ll just say this – because this is really what drives this whole thing. It is absolutely true that criticizing the actions of the State of Israel is not in itself anti-Semitism. Israel is as subject to criticism and condemnation as any other nation on earth.

But you cannot understand Israel’s actions without understanding the pervasive, unrelenting, hate that surrounds that outpost of civilization. From Hezbollah rockets made in Iran, to BDS sanctions made in Berkeley and Santa Monica, the attacks on this country and its people cannot be understood without getting to the bedrock essence of the nasty, petty, small and mean-spirited emotion that drives anti-Semitism.

And that emotion is Envy.

Genesis, Chapter 26, verses 12 through 16:

And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.) And Aby melech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”

That was thousands of years before there was a religion called Islam. And when the Israelis, as a gesture of peace and goodwill, turned over the Gaza Strip in 2005 the first thing these modern-day philistines did was smash the windows of the greenhouses that had been handed to them by other people’s labor. Once again, they filled wells in the desert with sand.

Prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, by far the safest home the Jews have ever known was here in America. No doubt there was anti-Semitism here, but with a few exceptions it was golf-course anti-Semitism: disgraceful, but a long, long way from the pogroms and the death camps. Why was America such a safe home for the Jews? Well, because up until very recently — 2008 let’s say – envy was not admired here in America. “Coveting” wasn’t sold here as a virtue, either.

So,  to those American Jews who watched through the 1930’s and 40s and ask, “how could they have let that happen?” I would simply say, “How can you let this happen? Why do so many of you vote for this to happen – pay for it to happen?”

Tea Party Conservatives, like me – genuine friends of Israel and the Jewish people – look at you and think “It’s obvious you’ve lost your minds. Have you lost your souls as well?”