Rep. Ellison Explains Anti-Iron Dome Funding Vote: ‘Because We Need A Cease-fire’ (VIDEO)

Over the weekend, both the Senate and the House approved $225M in funding for the Iron Dome. The bill passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and by a 395 to 8 vote.

Opposition to the funding of the Iron Dome demonstarted an unfortunate bi-partisan measure – four Democrats and four Republicans voted against it. The four Democrats were Keith Ellison (MN-05), Zoe Lofgren (CA-19), Jim Moran (VA-08), and Beto O’Rourke (TX-16); The four Republicans were Justin Amash (MI-03), Walter Jones (NC-03), Tom Massie (KY-04), and Mark Sanford (SC-01).

Rep. Ellison explains vote on “Meet the Press”: “Because a ceasefire is what we should prioritize now. A ceasefire protects civilians on both sides… I’ve been to Sderot, I have stuck with those people, talking about those rockets and that indiscriminate rocket fire, and I’ve also been to Gaza three times since 2009. And I can tell you, those people are absolutely devastated.. We need a ceasefire now.”

Rep. Keith Ellison, the only Sunni Muslim in the House of Representitives, on Sunday justified his vote against additional funding, despite his previous support for Israel’s defense shield system.

“Because a cease-fire is what we should prioritize now,” Ellison said when asked to explain his vote on “Meet the Press” program. “A cease-fire protects civilians on both sides — it doesn’t just say, ‘We’re only concerned about people on one side.’”

“I’ve been to Sderot, I have stuck with those people, talking about those rockets and that indiscriminate rocket fire, and I’ve also been to Gaza three times since 2009. And I can tell you, those people are absolutely devastated,” he asserted. “We need a ceasefire now.”

Ellison penned an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier this week calling on Israel to end the Gaza blockade.

Sanford, from Facebook:
... I wanted to explain this vote given the fact that I have always supported Israel’s unique tie to our country and I feel for the families and friends there whose very life in many instances hangs in the balance with Iron Dome. I do not take this in any way lightly, and consequently, not only have I always been a supporter of Israel, but I have also supported the Iron Dome system itself.

Here is the problem though, the bill’s cost wasn’t paid for, and as a consequence, its $225 million dollars were simply added to the tab that is represented by the national debt. Designating something as emergency funding has become near epidemic in Washington, because it is the way in which the House of Representatives gets around its own budget rules. The Budget Control Act that Congress passed only a few years ago requires that when you add new spending, you pay for it - either by cutting other parts of government or raising taxes. That’s an eminently sensible idea, but very often the things that enjoy a great deal of political support also allow representatives off the hook in subscription to their own rules. They can look the other way on their own budget rules because the votes will be there regardless, and that’s a real problem given those budget rules are there to protect the American taxpayer.

The importance of Israel as the only stable democracy in a tumultuous region cannot be overstated, which is why I’ve voted in the past for resolutions condemning Hamas and Hezbollah and sanctions against Iran. I have also voted in favor of funding the Iron Dome missile system, once last year, and also through the Department of Defense appropriations bill this past spring, which was not new spending.

All this is a long winded way of saying that I support helping our ally in defending itself, but we could have done it tonight as we had in the past and as I have supported those efforts in the past that would entail paying for this effort just as we did with the border security bill we voted on an hour earlier tonight. Doing so would ensure a win for the people of Israel threatened by rocket fire, and a win for a young person in our country who in time will have to deal with America’s great security threat – the National Debt.
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O’Rourke:
“I could not in good conscience vote for borrowing $225 million more to send to Israel, without debate and without discussion, in the midst of a war that has cost more than a thousand civilian lives already, too many of them children,” O’Rourke said in a statement.

O’Rourke also retweeted, and of course shortly later deleted, a tweet from mosh miller about voting no on this bill and stopping the funding of atrocities. Giving rise to questions about whether this vote was really about policy, or fiscal restraint.

A FIRST HAND TESTIMONY FROM ISRAEL

I feel like I weigh 500 pounds.

Everyone I know feels like they are walking through water. And sad.

We are all so very, very sad.

This is what I know right now, today:

The ugliness, the venom and sheer, violent hatred you are seeing in Paris, London, Berlin, LA, Boston, Denver…. This is just the beginning.

We Jews are the canaries in the coal mine for all of humanity. Today, they are throwing bricks at synagogues and smashing chairs and saying “Kill the Jews.”

Tomorrow it will be someone else.

Do the French really think these people will protect and safeguard the treasures of the Louvre?

Do Londoners really think these people will cherish the symbols of the British Empire?

Does anyone really think this is only about Israel and the disputed territories?

Today it is Israel, tomorrow it will be you.

Maybe that is why everyone gets so disproportionately annoyed about this conflict.

Because everyone knows after us it gets real personal…

Seeing these violent protests, hearing the sickening screams for death we Israelis understand better than ever we must fight for every square inch and with all we have.

It matters not how much better our military is, how much more precise our targets can be.

It only matters that when the smoke clears Hamas is disarmed, destroyed, disabled and defeated. Forever.

Hamas. NOT the people of Gaza.

The majority of Israeli citizens feels so very sorry for them. Sorry they were misguided and elected these lunatics.

Sorry that in their desperation they allowed Hamas to fill the empty bedrooms next to their children’s room with rockets. Sorry that their leaders have mansions and swimming pools and are sitting in air conditioning in another city while they are sweating and wondering where the roof over their houses went. (If not their house itself.) Sorry that they have been brought up with no inkling of who Israelis are nor what compromise is.

Defeating Hamas will be a big problem for the power brokers because shame and honor are all that matter in this part of the world.

Honor in the Middle East does not come from whether your children are literate, how successful you are, how much money you make, how civilized your community is, nor how many paved roads you have, and whether or not you have garbage collection and recycling.

Here in this part of the world- for Hamas,

Honor comes from killing Jews/Israelis and getting revenge each time we retaliate.

For them killing a Jew/ Israeli is everything.

For them killing Jews is the only thing.

Remember we left Gaza. There was no blockade. They were free to build a model democracy- the first successful shining, taste of the new, proud Palestine. But they didn’t want that kind of success…

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

We will not be fooled again.

We have nowhere else to go.

And the rockets won’t stop.

The folks living in the Southern parts of Israel up to Ashkelon, cannot shower, have a bowel movement, get more milk or walk a dog without wondering if they are taking their lives in their own hands.

There is another Gaza underneath Gaza.

Hamas could have built hundred of schools, paved thousands of roads, build hundreds of kindergartens with the cement and iron they got from Israel and which they have used to build these underground bunkers and tunnels.
(and you wondered why Israel put a blockade on bringing building supplies into the Gaza strip?)

These tunnels to hell are filled with ammunition.
And no women or children, not a single elderly person is brought to safety there.

They want them on the street- on the roof, standing right behind- nice and close to the terrorist firing the rocket.
Hamas has refused to let journalists out of Gaza.

Why? They need them to take pictures and record the carefully staged piles of bloody children and women. If the journalists leave they have lost the vehicle for distributing their bloody ad campaign.

Hamas asked for a cease-fire. And they broke it. They break every single one.

Israel set up a massive field hospital to treat our enemies. From a week ago and on, there is a working maternity ward, an operating room…a working hospital.
For who?… For our enemies.

We are going to lose more boys. We have lost more than 56 young men. Today the kidnaped a young officer. With each day we are going to lose more.

But everyone here now understands this is a fight to the death. It is them or us.

They don’t want to compromise and they don’t want peace or to share or to negotiate. They want to kill as many Jews as possible, even if it means killing their own people.

So we have to go in there and do things none of us want to do, but we have to.

So this is why we are all so sad.

Israelis want peace so badly.

But we also desperately want to live. We love life and we are not about to let anyone, let alone a bunch of deranged thugs take it away from us.

So yes, this is a fight to the death for both sides.
Remember, if they win, you are next.

When we will win, those symbols of civilization that everyone takes so for granted will remain standing and everyone will criticize and complain about disproportionate responses and war crimes and all kinds of other irrelevant nonsense, but secretly I think everyone will be heaving a sigh of relief.

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