North Carolina lawmakers urge support for Israel, while Congress remains paralyzed

The reality of not having a House speaker became apparent Saturday as war broke out in Israel — a dark day for a close ally of the United States and the deadliest day for Jews, the Times of Israel reported, since the Holocaust.

“This is a premeditated, long-planned attack by terrorists of a sovereign democracy, and it is gruesome and it’s unacceptable,” said Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat from Greensboro, who is Jewish and co-chairs the House Bipartisan Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.

Manning — one of many state and federal lawmakers from North Carolina speaking out in support of Israel this week — talked to McClatchy by phone Monday. She detailed the horror of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip and is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, invading Israel by land, sea and air and targeting civilians.

Manning talked about the families who tried to hide in their safe rooms but were smoked out when Hamas set their homes on fire. She described the tragedy of 270 young people massacred at an all-night concert in the desert, with those who weren’t killed being taken hostage.

And then there were the rockets shot by Hamas into Israel.

“I want to emphasize that these are not militants,” Manning said. “These are terrorists, who literally went house-to-house slaughtering families in their homes.”

And their stories only got worse. On social media Tuesday, Sen. Thom Tillis detailed numerous reported war crimes.

“Hamas is pure evil,” Tillis wrote. “We must stand unequivocally in support of our ally and friend Israel.”

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden told the nation that more than 1,000 civilians had been “slaughtered,” including 14 Americans.

Israel launched a counterstrike against Hamas, killing hundreds of Palestinians. Around 1,900 people had been killed on both sides by Tuesday night, The Associated Press reported.

Gridlock in Congress with no speaker

But Congress has a potential problem.

An intraparty battle between Republicans stopped House members from passing any legislation after eight Republicans asked Democrats to join them in a vote to fire House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

And it worked.

For the past seven days, Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican from North Carolina, has been filling in as House speaker pro-tem. But there’s debate about whether this role is there only to facilitate the election of a new House speaker or if he can help legislate.

Immediately, McHenry recessed the House. He gave his colleagues a week off to regroup and figure out what to do next in terms of getting a speaker. No one expected the surprise attack in Israel to happen before they returned Tuesday.

As McHenry made his way off the House floor Tuesday morning, he told reporters that Israel is in his prayers.

“If we need to act as a government, we will,” he added.

A source familiar with McHenry’s schedule told McClatchy that McHenry participated in a White House-organized call Sunday night for bipartisan House leadership and top members from both parties of key committees.

Manning said she, too, had sat through several briefings on Israel.

A classified briefing was scheduled for House members at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Congressional action

Manning, who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Israel needs to know the United States stands firmly behind its ally and will help once Israeli leaders determine what its needs are.

“I believe that President Biden, and a wide variety of secretaries of state have stood firmly with the President, in saying that we stand wholeheartedly with Israel,” Manning said. “We will be there with them and we will give them the support they need to win this war.”

Tuesday morning, Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat from Snow Hill, filed legislation with Rep. Zach Nunn, a Republican from Iowa, to declare unwavering support of Israel.

“As members of Congress focused on bipartisanship, we remain unwavering in our commitment to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel in defense of those who seek her destruction,” Davis said.

The resolution:

More than two dozen members of the House from both parties signed onto the bill.

NC lawmakers react

Back in North Carolina, the state House took up a bipartisan resolution filed by Speaker Tim Moore urging Congress to support Israel “financially and otherwise for as long as it takes for Israel to bring justice in light of the unprovoked attacks on innocent Israeli civilians.”

Speaking on the House floor, Moore, who is not running for reelection and has not yet said if he will run for Congress or seek some other position, recalled visiting a kibbutz during a trip to Israel a few years ago. Over the weekend, he said he found out that the same community he’d visited, which was along the border with Gaza, was attacked by Hamas militants who had paraglided into the country. Moore said they killed many, including women and children.

“That is senseless violence. That is terrorism,” Moore said. “Just in the way that we as a nation were attacked on 9/11, so too Israel has been attacked, and we owe it to a freedom-loving democracy to stand with them in their time of need.”

Rep. Caleb Rudow, a Buncombe County Democrat, signed on to the resolution as a primary sponsor. Rep. Amos Quick, the House Democratic whip, spoke in favor of it on the floor, as did Rep. Marvin Lucas, a Democrat from Cumberland County, who said he believed in Israel’s right to exist, and felt the U.S. should “insist and assist” with that right.

Lucas added that he felt it was important for the U.S. to be “cautious in our haste to reach, or strike retribution,” and remember that most of the people in Gaza are innocent.

The resolution was ultimately adopted unanimously, by a vote of 104 to 0. Four Democrats had excused absences, and 12 did not vote.

Around the same time, over in the state Senate, lawmakers signed onto a statement that among other things condemned Hamas for the “cowardly act of targeting civilians, including children and the elderly” and affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself.

The statement, which was read into the record by Sen. Ted Alexander, a Cleveland County Republican, similarly urged Congress to “reaffirm that America stands with Israel against all who seek its destruction.”

It included the names of every Republican senator and all but four Democratic senators. (All the lawmakers listed on the statement signed it except for Sen. Mike Woodard, who had an excused absence while running for Durham mayor in Tuesday’s primary election.)

Antisemitism

Since the war in Israel began, the FBI has not received specific or credible threats to the United States stemming from the Hamas attacks, the bureau said in a news release. But it added that it’s closely monitoring the situation.

Manning said antisemitism is on the rise and she worries about it daily. She said it is carried out by the left and the right.

“There has been antisemitism on both extremes, because the unfortunate thing about antisemitism is it is based on conspiracy theories that attribute to the Jews whatever evils our society is confronting,” Manning said. “The Jews have always been a convenient scapegoat that societies could blame their troubles on with no back behind it, but just because Jews, a small minority, have always been an easy scapegoat.”

Manning’s great-grandparents emigrated from eastern Europe to the United States to escape religious persecution.

“We are very fortunate that President Biden put together a team of experts who have released the first ever National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism,” Manning said. “It’s a very comprehensive document. It has deliverables, it has timelines, it has accountability and we so far have had several meetings with members of the administration to make sure that they are moving forward on the things that are addressed in the national strategy.”

Manning said she is working on legislation that would help implement some of those strategies needing congressional action.

Prior to joining Congress, Manning served as the first female chair of the Jewish Federations of North America.