Thank you, CUFI. Good afternoon. It’s great to be here. I want to thank Pastor John Hagee and his wife, Diana, for all that they’ve done to stand with the state of Israel to mobilize millions and millions of Christians, not just in the United States, but even around the world, to make sure we’re standing with our friends in Israel. You all have done an incredible amount of service over many, many decades, and God bless you both, and God bless this organization. I recently traveled to Israel to celebrate Israel’s 75th anniversary. It’s an interesting thing, because Israel on the one hand is thousands of years old, and yet only 75 years young with the modern rebirth. But it allowed us to reflect on the fact that the rebirth of modern Israel has been one of the most exceptional developments in the modern history of our entire world.

(01:07)
People at the time, like Winston Churchill, recognized this. Churchill said that the founding of Israel needs to be viewed from the perspective not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of 1,000, 2,000 or even 3,000 years. Indeed, it was a major moment in world history. Today, 75 years later, Israel has weathered repeated attempts at annihilation. It has had to face enormous security threats, and yet it stands strong as a beacon of freedom and a home to amazing achievements and advancements, the likes of which other countries cannot match. We should all thank God for these 75 years. So the question sometimes I’m asked is, “Man, you’re a stalwart for Israel and a strong US Israel relationship. Why? Why Israel?” Well, it’s something that’s personal to my wife, Casey, and to me. It comes from our faith in God. It comes from the visits. And I’ve done a number of visits to Israel over the years, where you can walk with a Bible in your hand, read the Bible, and stand right where people like David and Jesus stood thousands and thousands of years ago.

(02:41)
The Bible comes to life when you’re in Israel. It also comes from us knowing historical facts and historical truths about the thousands and thousands of years of connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. It comes from us knowing that the United States and Israel are in the same fight against the same tyrannical forces, including forces fueled by international terrorism, and it comes from the recognition that the United States of America was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The United States and the state of Israel have a unique bond, and I will always stand with the state of Israel. Now, just as it wasn’t the pastor’s first rodeo when he was given the benediction in 2018 at the embassy opening, my support for Israel is not my first rodeo either.

(03:51)
我是一个美国国会议员在几个条款Potomac there. I have recovered from that experience. I have not been wounded. I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. But one of the things we did was we stood for Israel and a strong US-Israel relationship every day. I was one of the leading opponents in the entire United States Congress of the Obama-Khomeini nuclear deal with Iran, which was a total disaster. I fought to defund tax dollars going to Palestinian Arabs, because they do not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and we should not be funding anybody who doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. We led efforts to combat the so-called BDS movement against Israel, Boycott, Divest, Sanction. And here’s the thing about BDS. You’re free as a person to have whatever views you want on foreign policy, different types of policy.

(04:59)
Maybe you don’t like some of Israel’s policies. To each their own. But when you concoct a movement that focuses all of your ire at the only Jewish state in this world, at the exclusion of all these other things that are going along, you don’t care about boycotting the CCP, you don’t care about boycotting all these rogue regimes, you only care about applying disfavored treatment to the state of Israel, that is antisemitism, and that is wrong. We also spoke very clearly and forthrightly about the fraud that is typically perpetrated in international organizations like the United Nations. They spend so much of their time sanctioning Israel and ignoring all these other significant problems throughout the world, and we led efforts to defund UN agencies like UNRRA that are fomenting terrorism and that are antisemitic and anti-Israel.

(06:12)
我们也总是站起来对以色列的国防nd itself. They are besieged with terrorism. You have Iran looming. You have all these problems that they have to face. And yet when they act to defend their own people, you have all these people in the cheap seats that are criticizing Israel just for having the temerity to defend their own people. They have a right to self-defense. We must recognize that right. I was also the leading voice in Congress to urge both the Obama and Trump administrations to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And that has been finally done, and we need to keep that. And probably one of the most fun things that I got to be involved with was we recognized and were very strong in saying that Jerusalem is the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish people, and US policy must recognize that as such.

(07:23)
And there was… Because there had been a lot of people that had promised to do it over the years. When the Trump administration came in, they did the waiver to put the decision off. And in Congress, I happened to be chair in a subcommittee that had oversight over the State Department, so we did a small delegation over to Israel. We scouted out all the potential embassy sites. We talked with different people in the State Department and the CIA. And interesting, and this shows you our bureaucracy, every single person I talked to from state or CIA claimed, “If you move the embassy to Jerusalem, there’s going to be World War III. It’s going to be nuts. Everything’s going to go crazy.” Every one of them was wrong about that. We knew that that was not going to happen, and we also knew it was the right thing to do.

(08:09)
So we did a big press conference at the King David Hotel, and I said, “The US is going to move this embassy. We’ve got different locations.” And thanks to the great work of people like Ambassador David Friedman, we were able to finally establish our American embassy in the capital of Israel, Jerusalem. I ran for governor in 2018, and I made a lot of promises about what I would do through the years. And one thing I can tell you, and I think folks in Florida would agree, is so many people run for office, and they promise big things, and then they under-deliver on their promises. That’s not what we do in Florida. In Florida, we do make bold promises, but we over-deliver on our promises. And so when we say we’re going to do something, we do it. And one of the things that I said was that if you elect me as governor back in 2018, that I would be the most pro-Israel governor in these United States, and we have kept our word and kept our promise on that.

(09:25)
我作为州长的第一年早在2019年,我们这d a massive trade mission from Florida to Israel. We had over 100 people on the delegation that went. I actually conducted a Florida cabinet meeting in the American Embassy in Jerusalem, which was a historic meeting for the state of Florida. We engaged in 20 memorandums of understanding between businesses, universities to really make that Florida and Israeli connection even stronger. And I was the first major public official to do public events in Judea and Samaria at places like Ariel University and in [inaudible 00:10:09]. Judea and Samaria are not occupied territory. These are some of the most historic lands going back to biblical times. The Arabs were offered a partition plan in 1948. They rejected the partition plan, and they went to war against Israel. And so I understand there’s still disputes, but Israel has the strongest claim of right to Judea and Samaria, and we have to be willing to say that, because it’s true.

(10:49)
We were also able to… And I fortunately have been able to see a lot of the important sites over the years, and I’ll tell you it made a big impression on me, just to see Christianity come to life. All these things I’ve studied over the years, all the things I believe, but then to actually walk there, it really does change your life. And the people that came on our trip, and I had been there before, you could tell when we got back how much of an experience it was. And we got to do a lot of stuff. One of the things that we did, though, do is we all were able to do some prayers at the Western Wall. And so you write the little note, you put it in the crevice there. And when I got back from doing that, I was asked by the media, “What did you pray for?”

(11:31)
Said, “I prayed that we don’t have any hurricanes this summer in Florida.” Well fast-forward a couple months, and we have a hurricane that developed in the Caribbean called Hurricane Dorian, and it was a category five, massive, massive hurricane barreling straight to the East Coast of Florida. And so it hit The Bahamas and was in places like Marsh Harbour. It was barreling across to Freeport and potentially hitting that. And when that path was there, there were some people that were snickering at me, saying, “Well, that prayer must not have gone very far.” And yet within 48 hours, that storm took a 90 degree turn to the north, and it did not hit the state of Florida. We were free and clear.

(12:30)
We also have stood strongly as a state against the BDS movement. When I got elected, and right even before I took office, Airbnb had enacted a policy to discriminate against Jews living in Judea and Samaria. So we said, “When I take office, this shall not stand. We’re going to take action.” I took office. We immediately moved to impose our anti-BDS sanctions against Airbnb, and lo and behold, they reversed their policy. We’ve also taken similar action against Unilever based on what Ben & Jerry’s was doing to go after Jews in Judea and Samaria. And this most recent year, legislative session, I was able to sign legislation expanding Florida’s anti-BDS law, because now what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to smuggle anti-Israel policies into this so-called ESG criteria.

(13:35)
首先,环境、社会和治理是一个总欺诈,和我们的膝盖capped it in the state of Florida. And we need to kneecap it nationally, because they’re trying to use that as cover to use the economy and business to impose a radical left-wing agenda. It’s wrong, and it’s destructive for this country. One of the things that they’re doing, though, is they’re specifically targeting Israel, and so we made changes to our law to recognize that. And so today, I’m happy to make… And this law just took effect at the beginning of July. I’m happy to announce for everybody that Florida has formally instituted an investigation against Morningstar for violations of our anti-BDS law. We’re not letting them target Israel and get away with it. We’re using our tools to fight back.

(14:29)
So now we have a lot on our plate for the road ahead, and I think we’re in dire need of repairing the US-Israel relationship. What this Biden administration has done, I think, has been disgraceful. The way they treat a strong ally like Prime Minister Netanyahu has been disgraceful. What they’re trying to do to shoehorn Israel into bad policies has been disgraceful. You have different things that go on in Israel, like with this judicial reform. Biden needs to butt out of that and let Israel govern itself. I can tell you this: As president, I will welcome Prime Minister Netanyahu to come visit the White House, and we will welcome being able to go to Israel to have bilateral meetings. We have to reject the efforts of the Biden administration to undermine Israel’s claim to a unified Jerusalem, and they are trying to do that.

(15:39)
我srael has a right to a unified capital. This goes back to biblical times, and our country’s policy has been very clear on this in statute, and for them to try to undermine the progress that has been made is wrong. So we will be unequivocal that Jerusalem is the eternal and indivisible capital of the state of Israel. We also have to reject the Biden’s administration’s attempt to force a quote “two-state solution” with pre-1967 borders. First of all, those borders are indefensible. They want to carve up Jerusalem and all that. But here’s the thing. You can’t do peace with people that don’t believe you have a right to exist as a Jewish state.

(16:39)
正如我所提到的,我们必须拒绝那概念t somehow Judea and Samaria are occupied territory. The connections with the Jewish people go back thousands of years, and they have every right to have very strong communities in those areas. We’re also going to reverse Biden’s BDS policy of prohibiting funding for scientific cooperative projects in Eastern Jerusalem, the Golan, and Judea and Samaria. Think about this. They don’t want to fund those projects, which first of all, some of the greatest innovation in our world is coming from Israel. And I’ve asked people in Silicon Valley, “Is there more per capita innovation here or in Israel,” and they admit there’s even more in Israel. So there’s some potential great cooperative agreements that we could have here, yet Biden is saying not to do it. Yet, while he’s saying no support there, he’s bending over to provide sanctions relief for Iran and for funding projects with the Chinese Communist Party. How does that make any sense at all? It is wrong.

(17:55)
January 20th, 2025, with respect to our relationship with the United Nations, there will be a new sheriff in town. We are not providing tax dollars to United Nations entities that are targeting Israel. We reject things like the Human Rights Council that brings in all these really bad regimes, and they just attack Israel. We reject things like UNESCO that doesn’t even recognize the connection of the Jewish people to places like Jerusalem. Are you kidding me? So this shamefully targets Israel, and it promotes antisemitism. It is wrong, and it will come to an end in January 20th, 2025. We’ll also move very quickly to expand the Abraham Accords. If you look at where the Middle East is going, people… These Arab countries understand the top threat to the Middle East is not Israel. The top threat to the Middle East is Iran, and having a good relationship with both the United States and Israel means a much more peaceful and secure region.

(19:11)
Biden does not know what he’s doing. He has a horrible relationship with a lot of people there, but we should be able to do a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. We need to get that done. And it just shows you how the foreign policy elite in this town always missed the mark, because for decades they said Middle East peace goes through the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict. You can never have peace in the Middle East unless you quote “solve” that problem. I think the Abraham Accords showed just the opposite, and this is something that people like me had been saying for years. You go around. You want to make peace with these countries? Make peace with them. You don’t need to worry about Palestinian-Arab-Israeli conflict. Worry about the rest. And so we’ve done that to good effect with some of these countries. I believe if we do a US-brokered Saudi-Israel peace agreement, that that effectively ends the Arab-Israeli conflict for good. And that will be huge for the cause of a peaceful Middle East, so let’s get that done.

(20:24)
And by getting that done, that’s going to put the United States, that’s going to put Israel, and it’s going to put other Middle Eastern nations in the best possible posture to counteract the top threat to the region, which is Iran. I was in the US Navy. I was assigned as an advisor to Navy SEAL Team One back in 2007, and we deployed to Iraq. And we were in places like Fallujah, Ramadi, other places in Al Anbar province, and that was a Sunni Arab-dominated part of Iraq. Most of the terrorism that was going on was fueled by Sunni Arab terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq that got a lot of press coverage. They did enact a lot of casualties on American troops. Ultimately, we were able to quell that. And so by the time the deployment was coming to an end, Al-Qaeda in Iraq had basically been eviscerated from Western Iraq, yet we were still suffering casualties as a country.

(21:28)
Where were those casualties taking place? They were taking place in Shiite-dominated parts of Iraq. Who was it funded by and directed by? Iran. Iranian militias, people like Qasem Soleimani, who’s no longer with us, thank God. They were funding this. They were directing attacks against American troops. I think it probably totaled about 1,000 US service people that have been killed at the hands of the Iranians during the Iraq campaign. But clearly, it was a significant toll that they took on us. They’ve taken every opportunity they have since the Iranian revolution in 1979 to hurt Americans. If they could hurt another 100,000 Americans, they would do it without question. So this is a hostile regime. This is a regime that wants to see the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel, and we cannot go on with policies that are appeasing this dictatorial and theocratic regime.

(22:37)
We have to recognize the threat. We also have to recognize when you have combined Islamist fanaticism with potential acquisition of nuclear weapons, we are on a different world entirely. Because they may very well understand that if they were to use such a weapon against Israel, that they could face a counterattack, and that may be something that they would want to live with, because it furthers their apocalyptic ideology. Biden is appeasing the Iranians. He’s giving them a free pass. Iran oil sales are now at a five-year high, and Iran is the number-one backer of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden is actually funding both sides of the conflict by empowering the Iranians. And now he’s trying to seek the reinstitution, maybe even worse than the Obama Iran deal, and maybe do it under the table where there’s not even a written agreement. That would do more to empower Iran than anything else that has happened, so this is the wrong policy.

(23:47)
With me on January 20th, 2025, on day one, the days of appeasing Iran will be over. We will stand with Israel, we will stand with our allies, and we will pursue a policy of accountability when it comes to this regime. So as we look forward, we should reflect on the miracle that has been the modern state of Israel. I think back to the Bible, one of my… So my son just turned five, and for last Christmas, one of the things that he wanted more than anything else was a slingshot, because he wanted to be like David fighting Goliath. First of all, I’m glad he’s asking me for that than a lot of other things. These kids are being indoctrinated. Thank God my kids are getting a good education on the right things. But when I was there for the 75th anniversary, I was thinking about him being really captivated by that story, and also just how really it can apply to what’s happened over the last 75 years.

(25:05)
No one would’ve thought that a little shepherd boy armed with some rocks and a slingshot could have slayed a giant. If they had betting odds back then, everybody in this room would’ve bet on Goliath. But David trusted in the Lord, and he had God on his side, and he was able to do what nobody thought was possible. The state of Israel in modern times have been able to achieve things that nobody thought was possible. If you go back to the founding 75 years ago, you would have bet that it would’ve failed. Those were the odds. They had hostile Arab armies surrounding them. They had international commendation, which only grew years and years and years in the future. Yes, they had an ally in the United States of America, but most true allies were few and far between. But they fought. They’d been willing to stand up for what’s right, and they’ve said that they are going to make sure that they are never displaced from the land of Israel ever again.

(26:11)
And so I am proud to stand here. I’m thankful that all of us Christians are standing here to stand with the modern miracle that is the modern state of Israel. We will never waver in our defense of Israel. We will stand strong for the Jewish people. May God bless all of you, may God bless the state of Israel, and may God bless these United States of America. Thank you. Thank you so much. God bless you all. We appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. God bless you. Take care.