 You've been kind of on the lonely end, certainly on the Republican side of several votes pertaining to Israel. This is but one example, House Resolution 771, which is entitled Standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists. And what I'm displaying here is a tweet from APAC, which is the Israel lobby, saying that you, Thomas Massey, are siding with the squad, with AOC and Rashida Tlaib and Ilan Omar and opposing, supporting Israel, opposing, condemning Hamas. You also were the sole vote against kind of a symbolic recognition of Israel and saying that anti-Semitism, or sorry, anti-Zionism equates to anti-Semitism. Could you just explain your stance on Israel, where you're coming from and what some of these, you think some of these critics might be missing about your position? Sure, that was the first of 19 votes. Today we're gonna take our 19th virtue signal vote here in Congress, but I guess I got off on the wrong foot early and have been voting consistently ever since. The title of that bill is wonderful. I have no disagreement with the title of that bill, but there are four or five pages that go after that title. Well, it's a resolution. The first objection I have to it was, there was an inside of that, an open-ended pledge of military support for Israel. We never declare wars anymore. The administration just kind of goes and does it and Congress keeps funding it, but they find the imprimatur for their activity right there in these resolutions. So the open-ended guarantee of support for that war that's contained in the text of that bill, but not the title, could have implied boots on the ground. And that may be the only vote we get to take in Congress on whether we're gonna do that or not. So number one, I don't support that notion. Number two, they were, in that resolution, they mentioned Iran. Okay, in the very first resolution, they're already trying to expand the war and incorporate as much of the Middle East as they can. There's some people that just can't wait to attack Iran and they wanna use this as the nexus to get there. So that was in the resolution, a condemnation of Iran. I think we should be trying to constrain the conflict, not to expand it in the first resolution of support that we passed. There were also, there was a part of that resolution, wanted stronger sanctions on Iran and I don't support sanctions, never voted to sanction a sovereign country in the 11 years that I've been in Congress. I think it leads to war. Sanctions actually create crimes only for US citizens because we're not gonna go put somebody in jail in another country who trades with Iran. What we're proposing to do when we pass a sanction is to make a federal law that would result in the imprisonment of a US citizen who trades with Iran. And it hurts the people who are in the country. I think it actually edges us closer to war instead of getting us out of war. So that and there were even more reasons to vote against that. Even though I support Israel and I condemned Hamas, I did that on my own. I put out a statement, I support Israel's right to defend itself and I condemn these attacks. But that wasn't enough. One that you took even more heat for was this one where you were the only vote against it. And it was what I guess you would describe as a virtue signal bill where essentially it's the house reaffirming the state of Israel's right to exist and to recognizing that denying Israel's right to exist is a form of anti-Semitism. Where are you coming from on these sorts of bills that aren't even really directly tied to any sort of military aid or anything like that? Well, I recognize Israel's right to exist, okay? Yeah. I have to preface all of this stuff with that because people would imply from a vote that I don't. But when they passed that, I said you're basically saying that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. And people argued with me that that wasn't Zionism. You know, that those words weren't a proxy for Zionism. Well, what's interesting is the next week, they passed almost the same resolution and they replaced Israel's right to exist with Zionism. So maybe I'm just giving them clues for how to write their bills more directly because the next resolution said that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. There are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who disagree with that statement. In fact, Gerald Nadler, who's the most senior member of Congress who's Jewish, went to the floor and gave a five-minute speech, which is a long speech in the House of Representatives. This isn't the Senate, but he gave a five-minute speech on why that's untrue to say that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Now, there are a lot of people who are anti-Semitic, who are also against the State of Israel, but you can't equate the two. And I think these 19 votes after today are sort of a, it's part of the war effort for Israel to make it hard for anybody in the United States to criticize what they're doing. Like every two or three days here in Congress, we're taking these votes, that a lot of what's in the resolution is just obvious and doesn't need to be stated. It's kind of like Black Lives Matter. Okay, you have to say Black Lives Matter. Now they're making, they're doing the equivalent with Israel now, Israel matters. And so I agree that Israel matters, but we don't have to take all these votes and some of them are going into campuses and trying to limit free speech by withholding federal money. If you allow anti, things that are considered anti-Semitic, by the way, let's take a second just to talk about that word. I've been called anti-Semitic for merely not supporting the money that goes to Israel. APAC ran an ad, they spent $90,000 in my district running ads, implying that I was anti-Semitic. And then in a tweet, said that I was anti-Semitic for not spending, not voting for the $14.3 billion to go to Israel. Even though I've not voted for foreign aid to go to anywhere, ever. Do people buy that talking point of APACs? The ad was not effective. Like when they run an ad in my district that said Thomas Massey was the lone Republican to vote against this resolution. And people are like back in my district, I have a history of being the only vote like that was a no vote, like on the CARES Act and explaining why it's a bad vote. And then a couple of years later, they find out, wow, why didn't everybody vote the way he did? So I've developed some trust with my constituents on those lone votes. I mean, Chuck Schumer has accused you of being anti-Semitic. He's blasted you on Twitter. I mean, here's the tweet. He said, Representative Massey, you're a sitting member of Congress. This is anti-Semitic, disgusting, dangerous, and exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my Senate address. Take this down. And what he's referring to is the Drake meme where he's saying, no to American patriotism, yes to Zionism, Congress these days. I mean, what was your reaction to having someone as prominent as Chuck Schumer accusing you of anti-Semitism? Well, we ratioed him on that pretty soundly. I quote tweeted him and said, if only you cared about half as much about our border as you care about my tweets. And he's got like over 10,000 comments now on his tweet to me. It's, I mean, it's just simply not true, by the way. And the replies to him, you'll find somebody who pointed out that of all 535 members of Congress, he received this cycle, he received more money from pro-Israel lobby according to opensecrets.org than any other member of Congress. So it just, it rings hollow when he says that. And he's even in disagreement with Gerald Nadler, for instance, on equating anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism. And I'll admit memes are not the most precise way to convey a point, but they can be effective. And that meme, it doesn't imply that there's nothing in that meme that implies those two things are mutually exclusive. And that wasn't my intent. I was just pointing out that you could, it's okay in Congress to be patriotic for Israel, but you can't be patriotic for America. That's considered nationalism, which is American nationalism is a dirty word. And I know it's loaded and there are a lot of people that have attached themselves to it. But if you take it in the generic sense, it's pride in your country. So I used the word patriotism. Pride in America is looked down upon right now. It's out of fashion, but pride in Israel is something we have to vote on two or three times a week now in Congress. Hey, thanks for watching that clip from our new show, Just Asking Questions. You can watch another clip here or the full episode here. New episodes drop every week. So subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to get notified when that happens or to the Just Asking Questions podcast on Apple, Spotify, or any other podcatcher. See you next week.