 So we are outside of Representative Jamie Raskin's office. He's a very progressive congressman on everything but Palestine. We know that the congressman just got back from another APEC trip. This is the third time that he has traveled to Israel. Two times with APEC. Since 2017. He's been to Israel three times in less than three years. It's like there are how many countries are there in the world? 192 maybe? Why does he keep going to Israel and why do you go twice with APEC? So we filed a complaint with the office house ethics about the APEC trips to Israel. We think that it's a sham. Because you're not allowed to lobby us and not allowed to organize trips for congresspeople. And so they create this fake group. The American Israel Education Fund and pretend that it's APEC. It's not. It's not separated from APEC in any way. Along with being housed in the same building. They don't even pay their staff. APEC pays their staff. And it is APEC staff that go on these trips. So sounds a bit fishy to me. It's two thirds of all the foreign trips have been trips to Israel and they're with APEC. And it's a total sham. And these are Disneyland trips. These are trips to see the one side of you of Israel. And to keep justifying spending $8 billion of our tax dollars on this apartheid state. So we know that the congressman is a constitutional lawyer. We would like his help in moving. And he's on the oversight committee. And we would like his help in moving this forward to a real investigation. Because it really is totally a fraud against the taxpayers. That a lobby group would be able to take all of these trips. And somebody like the congressman who I've known for many years before he was even a congressman. And have loved for all of his great work especially around constitutional issues. And I'm glad he's on the oversight committee. I think he should help us. We have kind of a checklist of what it would mean to be to support basic Palestinian rights for somebody who's so aware of this situation and we know that he is. And for somebody who is so close with APEC. And the first most obvious one is adding his name as a co-sponsor on House Resolution 496. It actually doesn't mention the word Israel at any time in the resolution. It just affirms our right to nonviolent boycotts. John Lewis is one of the original co-sponsors of this bill. Because even though he is a great supporter of Israel, he recognizes that boycotts are an essential part of our history. The next one is HR 2407. This is Betty McCollum's bill to end the detention and abuse of Palestinian children. And we know that his constituents have met with him and asked him to add his name to this. And we know that Representative Braskin has spoken out against children being in cages here in the United States. Well, that should apply to all children everywhere across the world. Around 700 Palestinian children every year are arrested and detained by Israel. They are usually beaten. They are almost always blindfolded. Even against the Israeli military's protocols, they are forced to sign confessions in Hebrew when they speak Arabic. They are denied access to an attorney. They are not able to have their parent present. They are arrested as young as the age of 12. Especially, as you said, given how good the congressman is on the border issues, the separation of families, children are children no matter where they are from, and we really think he should be on this bill. HR 2407 calls for reports to be formed to see that none of our $3.8 billion a year goes to the detention of Palestinian children. And if it does, then there needs to be consequences. We also have the fact that he has spoken out against the denial of entry of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. He has held one way to oppose, to support them, to say, as even A-PAC has said, Israel should not be denied members of U.S. Congress. It would be to say, I refuse to travel to Israel for a Disneyland one-sided trip forever. But in the meantime, for the immediate until Israel stops this policy. We're very worried about another war, and we've talked to the congressman about this. And we think that A-PAC and Israel, part of their work has been to get the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal. And Israel, Netanyahu government has been pushing for the U.S. to actually go in and bomb Iranian nuclear research facilities, because Iran has no nuclear weapons, where Israel has a lot of nuclear weapons. We are both Jewish background, and we know the congressman as well. We feel a special obligation to be good on this issue. And he is a co-sponsor of the bill to stop an unauthorized war in Iran. But we feel he can go further, especially with his contacts in Israel. Right. And if you have all of those contacts in Israel, if you care about the Middle East that much, you have to stop another war in the Middle East. So we think he could be speaking out against the sanctions. That now it's come out that there's stopping cancer patients from getting medicine. People are dying because of these sanctions. The food prices have skyrocketed. 80 million people are suffering because of these very severe economic sanctions. We almost were on our way to another war with the seizing of the boat, the tanker. And it was the U.S. that pushed the U.K. that pushed Gibraltar to seize that boat. The U.S. is still trying to get that boat in international waters, which is an act of piracy. It's also, I would say, an act of war. And so we would like the congressman to speak out against us and say, you know, first of all, the economic sanctions are collective punishment. They are not helping. They should be lifted. And there should definitely not be acts like this that are the kinds of things that lead us into another war. The congressman could support conditioning, military aid. This would relate both to Betty McCollum's legislation and the detention of Palestinian children, as well as the denial of entry for Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Senator Bernie Sanders made this exact statement. He said, you know, if a country that receives $3.8 billion a year, if they don't want to let our congresspeople in, maybe they don't want to get that money anymore either. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out in support of conditioning, military aid. CNN analyst and author Peter Bynart has spoken extensively about this at this point. It's nothing new. This was done under Reagan. It was done under Carter. It was done many, many times before. And why aren't we doing it again? Why are we giving this blank check? And let's be real. This blank check was increased under the Obama administration, so we can't blame this on Trump. I myself would be happy to reach out to Peter and see if he would have a conversation with the congressman. And as I'm sure many others would do as well, to talk to him about what this would look like and why it is so important, why it's important for Jews. He said, we democracies have to stick together, meaning the U.S. and Israel. I don't think Israel is democracy. There are around 5 million people that live under Israeli rule, that are controlled entirely. Their entire lives are controlled by Israel. I'm referring to Gaza and the West Bank, who have no right to vote. Sound like a democracy to you? No. East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel. They built their separation wall to bring in East Jerusalem. And the people that live there, were they given citizenship? No. Now they can vote in municipal elections, but will they vote next month for Knesset? No. Sound like a democracy to you? No. What about if there are two different citizens who commit the same crime? Well, if they're Palestinian versus Israeli, if they're Israeli Jews, or if they're Palestinians in the West Bank, they are subject to two entirely different legal systems. Israelis, Jews who live in Jewish only, sounds like apartheid to me, settlements in the occupied West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law, just like we would be. If I get arrested, I go to civilian court. Probably a pretty good system for them? Yeah, pretty decent, pretty similar to the U.S. In fact, the protections for children are quite similar. You have to have a lawyer present. You can't interrogate a child without their parent. Anybody arrested under Israeli civilian laws to go promptly before a judge. Now to Palestinians in the West Bank, when they get arrested by Israel, because there's no sovereignty, do they go to civilian court? They go to military court. These are civilians, including children, who go to military court. In fact, Israel is the only country in the world that has a juvenile military court system. Military law has such things as military order 101, which says protest is illegal, peaceful protest is illegal. Military law 101 specifically says that 10 or more Palestinians, it's illegal for them to gather for the purpose of discussing politics. Just discussing politics. Peaceful protest is of course included within it. It's also illegal to hold a Palestinian flag in the demonstration. Sound like democracy to you? No, not at all. Sounds to me like apartheid. Two sets of laws for two groups of people. Now Congressman Raskin, because he went with J Street, we can assume that he has been to the West Bank City of Hebron because they take the Congress members there. Hebron literally has separate walkways where as you approach them, they ask you your faith. And if you're a Jew, go on one side. And if you're a Palestinian, go on the other. Now I have personally experienced this. I have personally walked with Palestinian friends and been sent to one side and had my Palestinian friends sent to the other. And asked if we could have this not happen, if we could walk next to each other. And we didn't even bother asking if the Palestinian could walk on the Jewish side because that's a given. But I was not even allowed to walk with my friends. I walked with a fence between us down the road. I kid you not. Separate but equal. Separate but unequal, because in fact the Palestinian side is not maintained. It's broken pavement. And there are in that neighborhood, because it's a Palestinian neighborhood right by the Ibrani Mosque, that neighborhood has a number of people who are disabled, who live there, who live in wheelchairs. And they have to be carried over the broken pavement to use their walkway. Is an exception made for them to be on the smooth pavement? Absolutely not. There's also a gate to enter there that has a bar that you have to step over. So the wheelchair has to be lifted up and over. And what about roads? All throughout the West Bank we have Jewish-only roads. Beautiful, well-maintained roads. Making it very, very quick, you can travel rapidly from Tel Aviv to your settlement. In fact, sometimes you don't even know you're in the settlement. You just keep driving on the road and getting, and you end up in the settlement. Now did you know that if you're taking the bus from, say, Tel Aviv, it is less expensive to go to a settlement all the way in the West Bank than it is to go to a town right nearby inside of Israel because it's subsidized. And I have Israeli friends that sometimes, young college student age, that sometimes if you take the bus through the settlement to go all the way back in, it takes much longer to save the money. And that's because Israel subsidizes the settlements, including the public transportation system, to them. Now down below that often, you have poorly-maintained roads for the Palestinians. Israel is not a democracy. And we would encourage the congressman to stop speaking in those terms because that gives the whole, sort of sets the whole vision of how to deal with Israel. If you're dealing with it thinking that it's democracy, then you might say, well, they're in a tough neighborhood. They need the $3.8 billion. If you look at Israel for what it's really like, you say we need to stop giving them military, our tax dollars to keep up this militarized apartheid system.