(The Center Square) – At a one-year anniversary event commemorating the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said those calling for a ceasefire between Israel and its enemies are “siding with genocidal maniacs carrying out Nazi ends.”
The event was hosted by the nonprofit America for Israel in Dallas.
Cruz said that ahead of his flight to Dallas and on other flights, he hears people saying, “please, we need to cease fire now,” including on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7.
He said he replies: “Really? Tell me why is it that you side with genocidal maniacs carrying out Nazi ends? How do you look at what happened and say, the murderers and rapists are the ones we stand with?”
Cruz said over the past year, pro-Hamas rioters have targeted his home in Houston. “Month after month after month, every Saturday morning at 7 AM, I had anti-Israel, anti-Semitic protestors in my front lawn, screaming, yelling, ringing cowbells, blowing whistles, screaming expletives at the top of their lungs, waking up my daughters, waking up my neighbors and their young children week after week after week.”
Cruz is one of only two Texas Republican members of Congress, both Hispanic Christians, who’ve been targeted by pro-Hamas protestors, The Center Square reported.
Cruz described some of the Oct. 7 atrocities, saying Hamas terrorists “deliberately targeted civilians, the elderly, women, children, and even toddlers and infants, and they murdered them for one reason – because they were Jewish.
“October 7th is the single worst mass murder of Jews in a day since the Holocaust; 1,195 people were murdered. On October 7th, 251 people were taken hostage. On October 7th, we saw terrorists using rape as a deliberate tool of terror, raping women, raping young girls.”
He also said he watched videos of the attack posted online with other U.S. senators, saying Hamas terrorists “were proud of what they did. They were there to murder and rape and their only regret of the day is that they did not murder more.”
The war Israel faces is “between good and evil; a contest between civilization and barbarism.” It presents an opportunity for “everyone holding elected office to make a choice,” he said. “Do you stand with Israel or do you stand with the terrorists? Well, as for me in my house, we will stand with Israel.”
He also discussed “vicious antisemitism” occurring on U.S. college campuses over the past year, saying it stemmed from “the fruits of cultural Marxism” and leftist ideology “that divides the world into two categories: oppressors and victims. For the modern-day leftists, they have defined Palestinians as victims and Jews as oppressors.
“I didn’t say Israelis, I said Jews, because the target of their enmity is not just those who live in Israel, but any Jew anywhere on the face of the planet. … Once you have someone defined as an oppressor and as a victim, our children are taught to favor the violent revolutionary overthrow by the victims of the so-called oppressors to cheer on the violence.”
Multiple congressional hearings and investigations were launched after U.S. college and university leaders allowed violence to occur against Jewish students. One year later, the majority of Jewish students say they still feel unsafe on U.S. college campuses.
Cruz said one solution should have been expulsion and deportation of violent foreign students. “No one has the right to threaten the safety of another student, and if you threaten to harass another student because they are Jewish, you should be arrested, you should be prosecuted, you should be expelled, and if you’re a foreign student, you should be deported,” he said.
However, he noted that half of those arrested on college campuses weren’t students. “They just came in to agitate and threaten violence. … about half of them are either radical Islamist or Marxist or just anti-American paid violent thugs.”
Cruz also expressed support for Israel’s goal to eliminate the Islamic terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, saying it is “unquestionably in the national security interest of Israel and unquestionably in the national security interest of America.”
“American policy should very simply be we stand unequivocally with Israel for as long as it takes,” he said, adding that preventing another October 7th attack involves targeting Iran.
Instead, “in the last four years, the U.S. government has funneled over $100 billion to Iran,” he said, which funds more than 90% of Hamas and Hezbollah.
“If you are giving a hundred billion dollars to Iran, you are giving the money to the terrorist who are committing these atrocities,” Cruz said.
“The enemies of Israel are enemies of America. Those who hate Jews, hate Christians,” Cruz said. “If any sanity comes from the aftermath of October 7th, it is that we should agree to come together and cut off all of the funds for Iran.”
