The Daily Signal - Ted Cruz Discusses Recent Trip to Israel, How Hamas Uses Civilians as Human Shields

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

Sen. Ted Cruz joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss his recent trip to Israel to observe the fighting that's been occurring in the region between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group. We discuss how Hamas has a headquarters in the basement of a hospital, effectively using innocent people as human shields. "It's their own terrorists killing their own people, because they wanted to kill Israeli civilians, but they just weren't very good at it, and shot their own people instead," Cruz, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal. "The press utterly ignores that," Cruz said. "The other civilians that are injured are predominantly the result of a decision that Hamas made to use Palestinians as human shields. So, they deliberately fire their weapons, fire their rockets from heavily populated civilian areas into heavily populated civilian areas. "It's actually a double war crime. Shooting in a civilian area is a war crime, but shooting from civilian areas is also a war crime," the Texas Republican lawmaker said. "The Hamas headquarters was in the basement of a hospital in Gaza," Cruz said, adding: This is a Palestinian hospital. And here's the calculation Hamas is making: It's a win-win. Either the [Israeli Defense Forces] will refrain from attacking their headquarters, in which case, that's great. That's what they want. Or in the alternative, if the IDF does attack the headquarters, it will kill a significant number of Palestinians, and they're literally using Palestinian women and newborn babies.We also cover these stories: The Supreme Court rules unanimously Monday that immigrants who came into the country illegally and were subsequently allowed to stay under temporary protected status can't get green cards or lawful permanent status. The Supreme Court declines to hear arguments in a case that could have required women to register for the military draft. As usual, the court did not specify why they chose to punt on the case, but did say they defer to Congress on the issue.  Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, and his brother Mark will be traveling to space on the inaugural crewed flight of New Shepard, a rocket system created by Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin.  “The Daily Signal Podcast” is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, and Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You also can write to us at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, June 8th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Dildudis. Senator Ted Cruz just returned from a trip to Israel to visit the area amidst unrest that's been happening in the region between Israel and Hamas. We discuss how Hamas is a headquarters in the basement of a hospital using their people as human shields. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave your review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Today's interview was recorded at the Heritage Foundation's Resource Bank Conference in Austin, Texas, so please excuse any background noise and chatter. But first, let's discuss our top news of the day. The Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 on Monday that immigrants who came into the country illegally

and then were subsequently allowed to stay in the country due to humanitarian issues will not be permitted to become permanent residents. Justice Alana Kagan wrote that the decision was a straightforward application of America's law, and per the Hill, could affect over 400,000 people who came into the U.S. under temporary protected status from countries such as Syria, Yemen, El Salvador, Haiti, and Somalia. The Supreme Court has declined to hear arguments for a case that could have required women to register for the military draft. As usual, the court did not specify why they chose to punt on the case, but did say they defer to Congress on the issue. The National Coalition for Men

filed the petition for the Supreme Court to hear the case, arguing that since women can now fight in military combat, they should be included in the draft. The Selective Services system, which operates the draft, opposed the Supreme Court hearing the petition and cited the fact that the court has previously deferred to Congress's judgment on the draft. America's modern-day draft system was adopted during World War I. Under the Military Selective Services Act of 1948, nearly all U.S. men 18 to 25 are required to register for the draft. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a statement on the decision that, at least for now, the court's longstanding deference to Congress on matters of national defense and military affairs,

cautions against granting review while Congress actively weighs the issue. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon and his brother Mark will be traveling to space on the inaugural human flight of New Shepard, a rocket system created by Bezos's aerospace company Blue Origin. In a video posted on Instagram, Bezos said, ever since I was five years old, I've dreamed of traveling to space. On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. July 20th is the 52nd anniversary of the Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, 1969 Apollo Moon Landing.

Now stay tuned for my conversation with Ted Cruz. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about one of my favorite podcast. Heritage Explains is a weekly podcast that breaks down all the policy issues we hear about in the news at a 101 level. Host Michelle Cordero and Tim Desher mix in news clips and music to tell a story, but also bring in heritage experts to help break down complex issues. Heritage Explains offers quick 10 to 50 minute explainers that bring you up to speed in an entertaining way. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. We even put the full episode on YouTube.

I'm joined today on the Daily Signal by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Senator Cruz, thank you for being back on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you. It's always a pleasure. So New York is the first state to have a government-issued vaccine passport. Can you tell us what your perspective of this is? Well, I think it's a mistake having a government-issued vaccine passport. I think a mandate for a vaccine passport is the wrong way to go. You know, my views on vaccines are simple. I believe in vaccines. I've personally been vaccinated for COVID. My wife has. My parents have. My wife's parents have. But I also think it's a question of individual choice. It ought to be up to each person to make a determination based on your life, your health conditions, what you think makes

sense. And the danger of a government mandate or even government issued vaccine passport is you end up having a potential for real discrimination in everyday life for people who, for whatever reasons making a decision not to get the vaccine, facing the potential of not being allowed to use public accommodations, not being allowed to get in an airplane, not being allowed to travel, or even potentially being fired from their jobs. We're seeing reports across the country of people facing termination because they didn't get vaccinated.

I introduced last week legislation in the Senate that would prohibit that, that would protect your medical privacy and protect your right to make a choice about whether or not to get a vaccine. I was actually going to ask you about the legislation next. Can you tell us a little bit more about the bill, what's in it, and how you want it to be implemented? Well, the way the bill is structured

is that it works with existing civil rights laws. And so right now, existing civil rights laws prevent discrimination based on race or sex or other characteristics. And what this does is likewise prevents discrimination based on your choice of whether or not to get a vaccine. And a vaccine that admittedly was developed incredibly rapid, in experimental circumstances. I'm grateful that it was. It's helped the economy open up. It's helped protect us and keep us safe, but there are risks that are entailed with that as well.

And so it builds on the existing situation. It builds on the Americans with Disability Act, landmark civil rights legislation that protects people that have disabilities from being discriminated against, and what it mandates is a reasonable accommodation from the employer. It doesn't mean you can never have a circumstances where job requirements might entail wanting someone to be vaccinated. Just like the Americans with Disability Act, if someone is blind, it doesn't mandate that they be the pilot for an airplane.

There are some jobs for which that's not the right mix, but there are a whole lot of other jobs that they can do even with a disability, even with a characteristic. And in this instance, likewise, it requires using the existing legal framework reasonable accommodations. Well, there are lawmakers both in the House and the Senate, from the Democrat side that want these vaccine passports that are talking about them, what would your message be to your colleagues because you have to your concerns about this?

You know, it's an open question whether we're going to see any Democrats willing to support protections of civil rights, protections of health privacy, protections ultimately of the right to choose the health care that you get. On the plus side, we've seen the Biden, say that they're not going to be mandating vaccine passports, that's positive. The fact that they feel the need to articulate that out loud is good to see. On the other side, particularly today's Democratic Party in Congress, that they are collectivists, they are statists, and they believe in government power. And so I'm certainly going to try to get other senators, Democratic senators, to support this legislation, but I expect that it's going to be an uphill path that right now,

I'm not hearing from Democrats in Congress a concern about protecting privacy, a concern about protecting individual choice. I'm instead hearing a much greater comfort with just the government forcing you to do what they want you to do. Well, you just returned from a trip to Israel, and you went there to observe all the unrest that's been happening there between Israel and Hamas. Can you tell us a little bit about the trip? Well, sure.

So I was there three days. I flew this weekend, got back yesterday, took the red eye flying back all night to to come here to be in Austin. It was very good to be there. It was the fifth time I'd been to Israel since I was elected to the Senate. And I went on this trip in particular because of the military conflict they just had, the rocket attacks from Hamas. We saw over 4,000 rockets fired from Hamas terrorists into Israel. And I wanted to go to really express America's strong and unyielding support for the state of Israel. I also wanted to go in particular because the current Democratic administration, the Biden administration, I think, is in very real ways responsible for this

Hamas rocket attack. You know, pause for a second and just step back. Nine months ago. Nine months ago, we were in a very different world. We had peace flowering in the Middle East. We had the Abraham Accords, historic peace agreements signed between Israel and multiple Arab nations. First peace agreements in the Middle East in decades. I was there at the White House the day the Abraham Accords were signed. Fast forward nine months later, and we've got war in the Middle East. And what changed, and what changed was several things, all of which the Biden administration did. Historically, Democrats and too many Republicans believe the right approach to the Middle East was deliberate and strategic ambiguity, was blurring the lines of sometimes we support Israel,

sometimes we support the Palestinians, we like both, we don't know. I think that is an absolutely failed approach. I think it has been demonstrated over and over again. It doesn't produce peace. It produces endless conflict and warfare. And what I have been urging for the nine years I've been in the Senate is clarity, unmistakable clarity to say, we stand with Israel, period, full stop the end. And that clarity produces peace. In the Trump administration, there were two decisions that set the foundation for the Abraham Accords. Number one, moving our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Number two, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. Both decisions were hotly contested within the administration in both instances. The State Department and Defense Department opposed making those decisions. And in both instances, I made the case directly and repeatedly to President Trump in the Oval Office, and he agreed with me in both times and overruled his own State Department, his own Defense Department. Those two decisions produced, I believe, the Abraham Accords on the day of the signing of the Abraham Accords. I spoke with foreign ministers and ambassadors from UAE and Bahrain. Both of whom said almost the exact same thing.

They both said a variant of, we now understand that the United States stands unequivocally with Israel. We want to be friends with America. Therefore, we will be friends with Israel. So what did Biden do? He came in and immediately returned to that deliberate ambiguity. He immediately began undermining Israel within the first few weeks of his administration, he sent over $100 million to the Palestinian Authority

in violation of the Taylor Force Act that prohibits funding organizations that fund terrorists. The Palestinian Authority is in bed with Hamas and paying terrorists, the families of terrorists for murdering Americans and Israelis. The Biden administration set out their top foreign policy objective is re-entering the Iran nuclear deal and sending billions of dollars to the Ayatollah Khomeini. that combination emboldened Hamas because they knew when they fired rockets that the Biden administration and the press would side with them and blame Israel for defending itself. And so I wanted to go and express to Prime Minister Netanyahu, to the leadership of the government,

to the Israeli people that even if the current administration in Washington is not supporting you the way they should that the American people stand with you. Well, Senator Cruz, can you talk a little bit more about the personal story behind all this going on. You mentioned on Twitter that there was a woman who was a caregiver, another woman. She was trying to rescue her. Can you paint the picture of the personal situation of what's happening there right now? Sure. So the first day I was there in Israel, I went down to the Gaza border and I met with soldiers of the IDF. I met with the American generals down there with our military leadership working with the Israelis. I met with

numerous Israelis, we visited one home in particular that had been struck by a Hamas rocket. And it was a home that, not too far from Gaza, where there was an elderly woman living there, and she had a caretaker. And the home that we saw, the rocket came in through the roof and exploded the roof and largely demolished the house. And so when we saw it, there was wreckage everywhere. As I understand it, the woman, she escaped, but her caregiver didn't her caregiver was killed with the rocket strike. And the way the rocket strikes happen, and I talked with numerous Israelis, that there'll be a siren that goes off, a warning that the rocket is coming in.

They also have it on your cell phones. It's actually neat technology where it's connected to GPS, so your phone will go off and let you know that a rocket is incoming. But you typically have a matter of seconds to get out. Like the timing is not, these rockets are not terribly high tech, but they're not traveling that far. Now, the Israelis have developed missile defense technology, a system in particular called the Iron Dome, which is an incredible system.

And America's helped them develop that. We funded a lot of it. I went and visited one of the Iron Dome batteries where they have the launchers have 20 rockets built in the launchers. And the launchers, each rocket will go up and intercept an incoming Hamas rocket. And the Iron Dome interceptors have over a 90% intercept rate. So they're very effective. They've saved thousands of lives, thousands of Israeli lives, thousands of Palestinian lives. But a 90% intercept rate means there's about 10% that doesn't get intercepted.

And tragically, this woman's home was one of those 10%, that Iron Dome didn't intercept that rocket. And it killed her caregiver. Speaking of Israel, right now Senator Bernie Sanders, as well as Representative AOC and Reshita Talib, they're talking about a resolution to stop U.S. arms sales to Israel. And given everything that's been happening recently, what's your perspective of? this? You know, I think one of the most dangerous thing we've seen in today's Democratic Party is the rise of the extreme left, and on this issue, the rise of the angry anti-Israel left. Look, there have always been anti-Semitic views, but they used to be relegated to the fringes.

Today, these are leading Democratic members of Congress who are virulently anti-Semitic. members of the so-called squad in the House of Representatives who stood up and accused Israel of committing acts of terrorism for defending themselves against terrorists themselves. And the problem is this has gone mainstream. So you're right in the House, AOC, and the Senate, Bernie Sanders, are introducing resolutions to block arms sales to Israel. And ironically, what they want to stop are precision munitions, which enable them to target the terrorists. directly. If you don't have precision munitions, you just got to drop a bomb which creates more civilian casualties. One of the things to understand, so a lot of the press coverage,

and when it comes to the Middle East, the press is wildly biased. A lot of the press coverage is focused on the differential of deaths between Israelis and Palestinians, and significantly more Palestinians died. There are numerous reasons for that. One of the reasons why the Israelis deaths were more limited. It's because of Iron Dome, because many of those rockets that were fired were intercepted. Now, Hamas is deliberately targeting civilians in Israel. That's part of the definition of terrorism, is deliberately trying to cause civilian deaths, civilian injuries for a political purpose. Israel doesn't do that. Israel doesn't target citizens directly. So Israel does defend itself against those terrorists. Why did more Palestinians die? Well, one significant

percentage of those Palestinians who died, died from Hamas rockets. They're not very good at this. They're fairly low tech. And so a significant percentage of the rockets that Hamas fires from Gaza landed in Gaza and killed Palestinians. So it's their own terrorists killing their own people because they wanted to kill Israeli civilians, but they just weren't very good at it and shot their own people instead. The press utterly ignores that. The other civilians that are injured are predominantly the result of a decision that Hamas made to use Palestinians as human shields. So they deliberately fire their weapons, fire their rockets from heavily populated civilian areas into heavily populated civilian areas.

It's actually a double war crime. Shooting a civilian area is a war crime, but shooting from a civilian area is also a war crime. And what they're doing. So, for example, the Hamas headquarters was in the basement of a high school. hospital in Gaza. This is Palestinian hospital. And here's the calculation of Masa's making. It's a win-win. Either the IDF will refrain from attacking their headquarters, in which case that's great, that's what they want, or in the alternative, if the IDF does attack the headquarters, it will kill a significant number of Palestinians, and they're literally using Palestinian women's

and newborn babies. There was a maternity ward in this hospital, newborn babies, as huge. human shields because they can count on the useful idiots in the media blaming Israel for doing that. And I will tell you, having meeting with the Israeli military, they take extraordinary steps to minimize civilian casualties. They target with great precision, the terrorists. They give warning. So if there's a building that they know there's a Hamas cell headquartered in. They'll drop a bomb that is a dud that just makes a big loud clang on the roof that is designed to tell the non-terrorist residents of the building get out of the building. And they'll wait typically 30 minutes, 60 minutes before actually bombing the building. They'll call them on their phones. I don't know of another military on Earth that calls the target

of a bombing raid to tell them get out of the building. But the Israelis do that because the Palestinians are sticking innocent civilians. They put their rockets. Hamas puts their rockets. They put them in a kindergarten. They've used Palestinian kindergarten children to hide their rockets. You know, one of the things Prime Minister Netanyahu said that I thought was really powerful, he said they use their citizens to protect their rockets.

We use our rockets to protect our citizens. And there's not a moral equivalency between the war. the two. Well, thank you for sharing that. Moving to the U.S. and your state of Texas briefly before we end and wrap up here. What's your perspective on the crisis at the border from when President Biden entered the White House in January to right now, what's your perspective on what's happened in such a short amount of time? It is an absolute disaster. Number of weeks ago, I brought a group of 19 senators down to the border. And I've been to the border many, many times. it's worse than I've ever seen it.

It is a humanitarian crisis. It is a public health crisis. It is a national security crisis. We saw streams of people crossing illegally. We saw in the tent city in Donna, Texas, this is a facility that's built to hold 1,000 people. With COVID restrictions, its capacity is 250. The day we visited, they had over 4,200 people in that facility.

These were the Biden cages. We heard on and on for four years about kids in cages, kids and cages. You notice the media doesn't care about kids and cages anymore? What they never told you is Barack Obama built the cages. And Joe Biden is building more cages. They're bigger and they're more full. We saw cage after cage after cage of little kids. They weren't six feet apart, as they should be during a pandemic.

They weren't three feet apart. They weren't even three inches apart. They're lying side by side. On the floor, no beds, no cots, no mattresses, touching. I mean, they're packed in as tightly as you can pack them in, wrapped in emergency reflective blankets. The rate of COVID positivity in the Donna Tent facility when we were there was over 10%. And the thing that is maddening is this is entirely manmade. Joe Biden caused this with three policy decisions he made. When he came into office, he halted construction of the border wall. He reinstated the failed policy. of catch and release, and he ended the successful remain in Mexico policy. That is producing this

crisis. It's getting worse and worse and worse. Biden wants to ignore it and hide from it. So does the media. And I think it is indefensible what's happening. There's a lot to do. Senator Cruz, thank you for being with us on The Daily Signal. It's great having you. Thank you. It's always a pleasure. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeart. Heart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members

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