Transcription
[Music] Thank [Music] you.
U.S. lehy foreign aid laws state that defense departments have been forbidden to fund foreign security units which have severely violated human rights. According to this law, the U.S. shouldn't have aided Israel with $17.9 billion of military aid since October 7th. However, one person bypassed this law: Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State but also as a Jew. I understand on a personal level. Anthony Blinken, as the representative of a nation that positions itself as modern, democratic, and a staunch advocate for human rights, chose to emphasize his Jewish identity in the midst of a conflict that has seen the devastating loss of tens of thousands of Palestinian lives.
Mr. Secretary, can you come and talk to us?
Anthony Blinken's Jewish roots go back to Ukraine. His great-grandfather, Mir Blinken, was born in a town near Kiev in 1879. In 1904, he immigrated to the U.S. with his family. His son, Maurice Blinken, was a fervent Zionist and a supporter of Israel. We could learn the rest from his grandson's speech at AIPAC, the American Israel Public Relations Committee.
"My grandfather Maurice Blinken, who founded the American Palestine Institute after the Second World War, initiated a report before independence that argued the Jewish state was indeed possible. That report helped convince many skeptics, including within the United States government."
Donald Blinken, Maurice Blinken's son and Anthony's father, studied law and joined the U.S. Army during the Second World War. He later managed funds, did retail business, and got married to Judith Fredman, a Jew like himself. From this marriage, Anthony was born in 1962.
Donald Blinken served as the ambassador to Hungary during Bill Clinton's presidency. After his parents divorced, his mother got married to Samuel Pizar, a renowned lawyer who is a Holocaust survivor and was rumored to be linked with Israeli intelligence.
And my late stepfather, Samuel Pizar, he was one of 900 children in his school in Bisto, Poland, but the only one to survive the Holocaust. After four years in concentration camps, at the end of the war, he made a break from a death march into the woods in Bavaria. From his hiding place, he heard a deep rumbling sound; it was a tank.
"You know, when I saw that huge American tank with a white star, the vision – my first vision of freedom – and that black G.I. who climbed out of the hatch, he got down on his knees and said the only three words that he knew in English that his mother had taught him before the war: ‘God Bless America.’ That's who we are."
In May 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken publicly received Israel's gratitude amid ongoing U.S. military support, which was providing significant assistance to Israel in the defense industry. This support included Iron Dome replenishments – a quarter of a billion dollars that you personally shepherded through the system very quickly. We remember it, and we're very grateful to you.
Defense and industrial technology needs have long been Blinken's professional turf. Before his role as Secretary of State, he co-founded West Exec with Michelle Flournoy, who was the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense. West Exec is a consultancy firm staffed by former defense industry and tech executives specializing in advising defense firms that supplied products abroad.
On October 7th, 2023, Israel launched a brutal war on Palestine. Blinken defined the Hamas-led attacks as horrifying and expressed how sorry he was for the dead Israelis. "Of course, as a Jew, it's hard to find the right word. It's beyond what anyone would ever want to imagine, much less actually see and, God forbid, experience."
During his eight consecutive visits to Israel, Blinken consistently met with Israeli hostage families, expressing solidarity and empathy for their loss. In stark contrast, families of the at least 43,372 Palestinian civilians killed in the Israeli attacks have yet to receive any acknowledgement of their suffering from him.
"Thank you, Lincoln. Thank you, Lincoln. Thank you, thank you, Lincoln."
After the Israelipager attack in Lebanon on September 17th and 18th, calling the weaponization of communication devices a war crime, like the UN statement, where the explosion of pagers, two-way radios, and other electronic devices reportedly killed at least 37 people, including two children, and injured more than 3,400 people in Lebanon alone, leaving many with permanent disabilities.
The simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals violates international rights. Blinken's only comment was a repetition of the words he had previously said against similar attacks by Israel: namely, "Israel has a right to defend itself."
He also faced criticism for not informing Congress about reports of Israeli forces blocking U.S.-sponsored humanitarian aid to Gaza. This has raised concerns about compliance with U.S. laws which mandate suspending armed shipments to any country that obstructs the flow of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid.
"Shame on you all. Listen, you will be remembered as the butcher of save the children of Gaza, a war criminal – the slaughter of 40,000 people on hand is Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State of the United States of America or of Israel."