Brian Mast: “I would respond to the gentleman by saying what greater calling for any government, what greater responsibility for any…”

“I would respond to the gentleman by saying what greater calling for any government, what greater responsibility for any government, than to protect its people. You speak at length about the protection that the United States of America owes to its people on the southern border. It is one of the things that you address so regularly. That carries over to what we are speaking about right here. I would add on this point simply to that: When I go back in time and say what brought about me going over to put on the uniform of the IDF, I was a student in Boston. At that time, a recent Gaza war was going on, back in 2014. What I witnessed there, aside from people who were protesting Israel--again, for going out there and defending herself-- were people also seeing U.S. servicemembers like myself. They were out there to protest Israel, but they started harassing people like me and my family because they could see I was a U.S. servicemember. So, that goes to the jump that they make when they layer the United States and Israel next to one another. But what I said to myself after those experiences was this makes absolutely no sense. This is total hypocrisy. If any one of our neighbors--Mexico, some Caribbean country, Canada--started lobbing rockets or lobbing mortars into the United States of America, my friends in the service would go and eliminate those enemies. Everybody in the United States of America would be grateful to them for doing so.…”