On his pro-Israel work, the direction of the Democratic Party, and whether conditioning American military aid to Israel is a good idea
First, I believe deeply in the US-Israel relationship. I believe principally that it must remain bipartisan and that it’s essential to American national security. It had been brought to our attention that Hamas and Hezbollah were very active in recruiting on Twitter — brainwashing, proselytizing, aiming their ire at the United States of America, and promoting hate.
Twitter wrote us back a letter that said, in summary, “We have anti-terrorist policies. But when it comes to Hamas and Hezbollah, we decide which ‘handles’ and information is acceptable and which are not. And we try to basically keep the good actors” — of which, in my opinion, there are none. If you’re a part of Hamas, you are part of a foreign terrorist organization. Hezbollah has killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization except for al-Qaeda. There is no room for any American company to do business with or allow the content of a foreign terrorist organization.
They would not back down at first, so we said to them, “You have until November 1.” We were going to take action with the Justice Department and the State Department, given that [Twitter] was violating US law. There was no room to negotiate. We, as a bipartisan group, were determined to keep up the pressure publicly. I’m glad that they ultimately decided to agree to remove the terrorist content.
This is becoming a larger threat, given that drones can easily carry an improvised device or other weapon. Drones are cheap, they fly under radars, and they’re hard to detect. So there’s been a lot of technological advances on the defense side and we’re encouraging Israel and the United States to work together in order to jam and detect drones.
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