In March of 1918, King Hussein, the king of all the Arab armies, writes an op-ed in the Al Qibla newspaper. He writes there, "If we, the Arabs, want the Europeans to honor our claims to our ancestral homelands, then we cannot deny the Jews claim to their ancestral homeland." "They," he said, "are the original sons of that land." Nine months later, in December of 1918, his son, Prince Faisal, he would become installed as the first king of Iraq, at banquet in his honor, turns to the Jews in the audience and he says, "To my Jewish friends, I say to you, welcome back home." The truth of the matter is that if we go back 3,200 years ago, there is only one people who still speaks the same language, who still practices the same religion, who still passes to their children and grandchildren the same names, and who still lives and governs in the same land as they did, 3,200 years ago. And those are the Jews who live in Israel.

Because I am an American who loves this country with all my heart and who understands that, throughout history, time and again, societies that allow the conspiracy theory of Jew-hatred to metastasize are societies that are sick and dying. Look at the Russia of Kishinev in 1903. It had been around for hundreds of years. Fourteen years later, it was gone. Look at the Germany of Kristallnacht in 1938. The thousand-year Reich. Seven years later, it was dead. Again, not because I’m a Jew, but because I’m an American, I recognize that we have an obligation to root out this nonsense now. Because if we are not careful, it will bring the entire house tumbling down on all of us, not just your Jews. And that’s why I spend all of my free time fighting this fight. People say, “Well, how do you do any judging?” You know, all the extra minutes in your day when you do things that aren’t work? Those are lovely moments, I’m sure. I have none of them. I have given it all up. And I’m happy to do it because I want to see a country for my children and his children and my grandchildren that’s like the one I grew up in—a country that knows what’s right and what’s wrong. A country that knows what’s true and what’s false. A country that knows that the bad guys are the terror army that invades peaceful border communities in our closest regional ally and beheads, burns alive, and mutilates women, children, and the elderly; that rapes—violently rapes—dozens of women and little girls, mothers on the same bed as their daughters; that takes 251 innocent people hostage, stolen from their homes—not soldiers (some soldiers, yes), but mostly septuagenarians, octogenarians, Holocaust survivors, and two dozen infants and toddlers stolen from their cribs—brings them into deep, dark dungeons in Gaza, and holds them there for hundreds of days without food, without medicine, without water.

My grandfather’s final lesson for me came during the the last conversation I ever had with him. My grandfather, Izu, was dying of cancer. I was a junior or senior in college and my father told me that if I ever wanted to see him again that this was my last chance. So, I came back to Venezuela. If you know Venezuelan history, you know that in 1998, we had a dictator, Hugo Chavez, who came to power. And the Constitution said, you could run for one five-year term. As a self-respecting autocrat, what did he do? He packed the Supreme Court with a bunch of his buddies and they ruled that he could run again as many times as he wanted, which is exactly what happened. The day after that ruling came down, a hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest the dictatorship and that happened to coincide with my last trip to Venezuela to visit my grandfather. He was very ill. He was in a wheelchair. My grandfather said, “Take me out onto the balcony.” And the people were all below us protesting on the street below. And he said, “Your father tells me you want to go to law school.” I said, “I do.” He asked me, “What kind of lawyer do you want to be?” I said, “Well, I don't know. I'm just in college.” And then he lifted his very bony finger, and he pointed it out at the crowd and he said, “Always remember, this is what happens to a country when good people don't serve.” Maybe a week or two later, he was dead. So, for me when I was 34, and the President was going to nominate me to be a federal judge, and all these people came and said, “Oh, you’re way too young, you got your whole life ahead of you to make money,” I remembered my last conversation with my grandfather and all the wonderful blessings that have been provided to us in this country that welcomed us with open arms. It has been the great honor of my life to serve and it was a no brainer from the start.

I was in a bomb shelter in Be'eri with 18 federal judges from America. A young woman who had grown up in that kibbutz in a peaceful border community told me that on October 7th she was at her army base and all the members of her family had gathered in this house in the bomb shelter for safety. She said, "They all died here." She asked us to come inside of the bomb shelter. The entire house was charred black and burned to the ground and the bomb shelter was still standing. We were standing in the rubble of this home around this bomb shelter. She was inside and so a couple of us went in. She said, "No, all of you." So then a couple more went in. She said, "No, all of you." And then all 18 of us federal judges got into this bomb shelter where she had slept as a little girl. It used to have pink and purple walls and unicorn pictures. And we were packed in like sardines. She said, "A terrorist opened the window and threw in a grenade. And all eight members of my family—grandparents, parents, and children huddled together— were blown to pieces." It took weeks for them to take all the physical material off the walls and the ceilings. And they did this house after house after house. Hundreds of houses.