My Fellow Americans.
On September 11, 2001, a date which will live infamy, 19 terrorists attacked this nation with hijacked airplanes, destroying New York’s World Trade Center, damaging the Pentagon, and nearly destroying the U.S. Capitol, save for the bravery of some heroic passengers.
Our response was to attack Afghanistan, where we were told the mastermind of the attack was hiding. He got away. We then attacked Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack on America. Our troops occupied Afghanistan for two decades and left a medieval religious dictatorship that hates us. Iraq, meanwhile, is closer to the terror center of Iran than it was then.
Thousands of Americans died for this result, and we killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, both Sunni and Shia.
The only positive thing we did, in all that time, was to continue the hunt for the attack’s mastermind. In 2011, I stood by as President Barack Obama gave the order to kill Osama Bin Laden, 10,000 miles away, in Pakistan. While there are many terrorist cells who claim their descent from Bin Laden’s group, Al Qaeda is no longer the threat it was.
Now, Israel
On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists tore through Israel’s border and murdered hundreds of Israelis, capturing hundreds more. It was Israel’s 9/11.
Since then, Israel has made the same mistake America made two decades ago. It has murdered tens of thousands of civilians, but it hasn’t taken out those who masterminded the attack. Those people aren’t in Gaza. The Israeli government knows this.
The result is the same one America experienced. Instead of making itself safer, Israel has created a generation of future terrorists, across the Middle East, who may now dedicate their lives to its destruction.
America is Israel’s sole remaining ally, its only friend on the international stage. But we can no longer stand by in the face of its suicide.
I am taking executive action to freeze military aid to the government of Israel, effective immediately. Instead, I am ordering our fleet in the Mediterranean, and the full efforts of our Department of Defense, to the feeding, housing, and medical aid of those in Gaza displaced by this catastrophe. I am asking chef Jose Andres to aid this effort with the temporary rank of Admiral.
In addition, I am directing this government to use all its efforts, diplomatic, economic, and military, to arrest the leaders of Hamas living outside Gaza, along with any commanders the Israeli Army has seized, for trial at the Hague on charges of crimes against humanity. Hamas can no longer exist as a terrorist force. It must be eliminated.
Finally, I am urging the people of Israel, through their democratic processes, to arrest those who caused the crimes against Gaza to occur, and to send them to the Hague to face trial alongside Hamas’ leaders. I am urging both Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate and find ways to live alongside one another without violence and devoting all American efforts toward this end.
These will be hard days. Neither the Israeli government nor the Palestinian people trust America and its intentions. But we cannot repeat the errors of the past and leave our grandchildren living in fear.
God bless the United States of America, and God Bless Our Troops.
