BREAKING: Jack Smith Brings Unseen Evidence Against Trump

Breaking news today on Sekulow.

Jack Smith, he's back and bringing unseen evidence against President Trump. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Alright folks, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls.

1-800-684-3110. Jack Smith last night laid out his new January 6th case against President Trump. The big question is how much of those 200 pages that he filed of facts and legal argument on why Donald Trump, even after the US Supreme Court case, they granted so much rightful immunity to Presidents and said, you know what, yeah, they keep their immunity from the official acts they made as President when they're no longer President. You can't just say, oh, we're going to wait until they're no longer President and then they have no more immunity so we can sue them in US courts.

Imagine that if you were a President that had to go to war. What would happen to people who then would want to sue? So of course the Supreme Court said that. So Jack Smith is trying to work around that. He has to show that somehow these actions taken while President Trump was President of the United States were not actually official actions, which is not an easy bar. Maybe it's a little bit easier in Washington, D.C. at the district court level.

But here is actually what is more, I'd say, disturbing, Logan. This is what Jack Smith is trying to do. We are 39 days from the election. He's filed this. The Trump defense team now has 14 days to file opposition to what Jack Smith wants to use as evidence, saying, you know what, I think you're wrong. That should be covered by the immunity case. So they have 14 days. The prosecution then gets to respond. They could use up to seven days in opposition to what the Trump's team said.

That gets you to October 17th. If the judge were to rule immediately, which is not usual, but maybe in a case when you have the election coming up so close, if she's trying to impact the election, which may be. If the judge were to rule immediately, it would come out just over two weeks, Logan, about 19 days before the election. This would be a redacted version of all the charges that Jack Smith would like to bring against President Trump. But by the way, none of these and the evidence, but of course, none of these he's been convicted of. And the case hasn't started.

So why does Jack Smith get to tell the world the evidence he has to try to make Donald Trump look bad, even though President Trump hadn't had the opportunity to beat Jack Smith in court? I mean, look, it tells you, it's not that the DOJ is going banana republic. It's already gone full. It's already there. You'll only be a couple of weeks away from the general election well after.

I might as well get paid by the Harris-Waltz campaign. Yeah. And at this point, I mean, this is a brand new situation, a brand new issue. I think those who are watching, because we just had a big spike in numbers, you need to explain this is not an old show.

This is not a Jack Smith. This is they're starting over so he can get back in the news. But they're starting over primarily not because they want to start the court case.

That's not going to happen before the election. They're starting over because they hope that Judge Chuck will allow them to release a redacted version of all the evidence they have against President Trump and why they believe they can prevail. And by the way, when we get redacted documents from the government, you know, it's like you get full pages that are blacked out. I think what you're talking about here with Jack Smith is just contact information for people who provided evidence who might be need to be protected. Other than that, it's going to be the entire evidence.

It's gonna be all the evidence laid out. So Jack Smith is just trying to do this to interfere with the election. Not only does the Department of Justice, Logan, have a policy against this, that Merrick Garland, by the way, the weakest AG in U.S. history, is letting Jack Smith completely flout. This is a guy who loves to take down people politically, and he doesn't care that he always gets reversed on his convictions.

He's horrible when he goes to the appeals court, but he has ruined people politically. And we've got to be ready to fight back, and we're going to at the ACLJ. We need your support because we want to be able to respond right away on the next show, which will be Monday, to fight back on every one of these issues and all the information. Go to ACLJ.org.

We are only 26 champions away from meeting our goal of 60. ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Sekulow. One of our top folks joining us now, Rick Grenell, former, again, acting director of national intelligence, as well as former ambassador to Germany, is a senior member of our team here at the American Center for Law and Justice. And, Rick, we know that Jack Smith last night has filed his superseding indictment. It's got the same four counts. It's weird because two of the counts were thrown out for other folks involved with January 6 who actually went into the building, and the Supreme Court said you can't bring those counts. That violates the Constitution. I have no idea why he's still including these counts with President Trump because he did not do that. So, again, two of the counts seem like they should already be taken out.

But that's really not what we're focusing on. We're 39 days out from the election, and he has filed with Judge Chutkin a, quote, redacted version, Rick, of the evidence they want to present against President Trump before Judge Chutkin has a chance to say that some of that actually can't be used because of the Supreme Court decision. I mean, Rick, to me, this is not anything about prosecuting. This is Jack Smith attempting to interfere with the election. It's like he's being paid for by the Harris-Wall campaign. Yeah, look, Kamala Harris' campaign should tell them to knock it off when you're five weeks from an election and you find a way to repackage an indictment with salacious details that mean nothing, that are nothing of substance to the campaign, but you just want to throw out partisan red meat. It's really frustrating.

It's frustrating to watch because we're the United States of America. We're not supposed to have a system like this. We're not supposed to have, you know, people who are totally partisan with the entire power of the court system in their hands, and that's what Jack Smith has. Jack Smith, if he wants to continue prosecuting, doesn't have to release this to the public. If he was a real prosecutor, what does he care about the public, right?

He's trying to get a conviction of his defendant. It's not that he's supposed to be telling the world, hey, this is who you should or shouldn't vote for, but it's exactly what he's doing because, Rick, when you look at the dates, so the Trump team has 14 days to file in opposition, okay? So that's from starting when he filed last night so that the clock is counting.

That puts you at October 10th. The prosecution then has seven more days to respond, puts you at October 17th. And let's say the judge ruled immediately, which in a normal case like this involving a new Supreme Court precedent, it would not happen, but I would not put it past a Judge Chutkin at this point to try and do it at least between one and two days. That would come out just about 19 days before the election, a little over two weeks.

So right around there, the American people would be reading all of Jack Smith's evidence that he'd like to present against President Trump, but that has not been tested in court. Well, look, you've got to give it to the Democrats and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris because their timing is impeccable. They waited for a long time to make these charges. They waited because they wanted to get it close to the election and their timing is impeccable.

Their timing is going to be literally two weeks before an election where they throw out a whole bunch of salacious, ridiculous charges. But this was the plan all along, Jordan. This is what they wanted to do. That's why they waited.

They lied in wait and then they pounced right at the right time. What, again, I just have to say, I think it's worth saying, you know, every single time we get on the United States of America should not be in a situation where the weaponization of the courts and the legal system against your political opponent is allowed. Kamala Harris must speak out. She's not going to say anything, though, because she actually really likes it. She likes what's happening. She likes the fact that, you know, the courts are doing the dirty work here, but it is a low point for America.

Yeah. And Rick, when you have these moments and we are only a few weeks away now from the election, you're talking under 40 days, it does kind of, you know, you have to reset. You have to really be thinking about this when the media starts portraying all of this, because you can become, if you're the average listener or viewer of cable news or any of these outlets, you can become down about it.

It becomes a little, you become desensitized and a little almost depressed by it, but we have to encourage people to stay engaged. Well, look, I would say that what you have to see when you're faced with the weaponization of your government against political opponents, when you're watching in real time, people try to destroy our country and our liberties. I think it's time that you get really involved. You should get mad. You should get really focused on the election. You should talk to every single person, you know, and make sure that they get focused and they get out there and vote for Donald Trump. You know, Rick, the other issue, and again, I just want to bring this up, you didn't bring it up, but President Zelensky has been making some news this week, attended a Democrat event and his ambassador also from Ukraine was there.

Mike Johnson's asked for that ambassador to be recalled because they should not be attending Democrat fundraisers and events. But I did see that when President Trump was meeting with President Zelensky, who did I see? I said, hey, that's the ACLJ's Rick Grenell right there in that meeting. I don't know what you can say about it, Rick, but maybe just like a, maybe kind of like a 10,000 feet if you could do that about what it was like. Well, I just left President Trump at Trump Tower.

I'm in New York and you're right. I was in the meeting with President Trump and President Zelensky. And I think, you know, President Trump was very good.

He was in listening mode and they had a very good discussion. And President Trump made clear that this war never would have happened if President Trump were in charge and that this war needs to end. And that was the entire focus of President Trump. I'm really proud if Americans could see inside these meetings where the candidate for President of the United States, the former President of the United States, that I think the future President of the United States completely focused on trying to solve wars and have peace. And remember, we had peace. All Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had to do is follow the Abraham Accords and all of the policies of Donald Trump.

And we wouldn't be in these two massive escalating wars, one in Europe, one in the Middle East. You know, Rick, we just got word, just popped on the screen, that the Department of Justice has unsealed the indictment on the Iranian hackers that impacted a lot of individuals actually associated, I believe, with President Trump. And they've now released this information. What do you think that the American people should take away from the fact that Iran is so heavily investing in trying to take down President Trump's campaign? In a race that is still very close, it looks like, even though the Democrats would never want to say it, even their Department of Justice that they run, I'm not seeing a lot of Russian indictments being uncovered. I'm seeing a lot of, it's Iran, and they're going after President Trump. Well, if there's a 2019 New York Times story, this might be the only time I'm going to talk about the New York Times.

But I think maybe if we could have Will find this 2019 New York Times story and put it up on the ACLJ Facebook page or social media accounts, it would be really helpful. In 2019, the New York Times reported that because of Donald Trump's sanctions on Iran, that Hezbollah fighters were complaining that they were missing their paychecks. They weren't getting paid by Iran. Hezbollah fighters literally complaining to the New York Times, I can't get paid, we're not getting paid. But guess what? When Kamala Harris and Joe Biden came into office, not only is Hezbollah getting paid, they're getting bonuses because they're so flush with cash. This is a strategic blunder.

When you give money to Iran, you're going to get multiple wars and that's happening. Rick, we always appreciate you, even when you have a busy morning, meeting with President Zelensky, assisting President Trump, and again, being part of our team, to be able to get that information. Folks, think about what you just heard, just for a moment there, Rick.

I mean, there's not many other broadcasts that were going like that, where you can then get this insight into what was that meeting like, not sharing anything. Rick, he's good at that, he was the director of national intelligence. But Rick, that's what makes it so unique here at the ACLJ, whether it is our legal work, defending everyone, but having people like you on the team as well.

No one else has this right now. Yeah, look, as you guys know, I'm very concerned about transparency and holding government to account, not just talking about it and complaining about it, but actually taking action, filing court documents, taking people to court, using our great lawyers. You know, we have offices in New York and overseas. I just love being a part of ACLJ because it's action, not talk, and we were so frustrated with people who just talk. But when you're a part of the ACLJ, you're part of the team that puts together actionable information and actionable tasks, and that's what we're doing.

I'm really proud of it. Rick, we appreciate that. And folks, as you heard from Rick right now, our goal yesterday we set was 60 new ACLJ champions by the end of the week. We now only need 26, so 34 new champions yesterday, thank you. And those 26, we've got to get them by today, end of the day, their first donation will be matched.

So come on, we need you, champions, ACLJ.org. All right, folks, welcome back to Sekulow. If you're watching the show during the break, you saw I was down in Texas at a huge conference hosted by Jack Graham and our friend Jeremiah Johnson at Prestonwood Baptist Church, brought in students, parents, grandparents from all over the country and had 4,000 people watching live around the world who were part of their program, so about almost 10,000 people. And I spoke about Israel, two different ways.

One, why it matters, and the second one of this myth of Palestine and the attendance. It was amazing to see. And I use that to say you're going to see some more of that in the second half of the broadcast for you because, again, we just did this on Monday. And I want to go to Secretary of State Pompeo because, unfortunately, I got stuck on the tarmac a little bit there in Dallas and wasn't able to see it in New York, but I want to go to this breaking news, Secretary Pompeo.

We had members of our team there. Israel has just announced that a major strike inside Beirut was targeted at the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, who is someone who has been very difficult to locate, does not make many public appearances, but the IDF has been, as they are, very transparent about why they decided to carry out such a large strike in Beirut. Look, I've seen the reporting.

We'll have to wait and see what actually took place to confirm the strike that they took. But let's talk about Hassan Nasrallah for just a minute. He has been one of the closest advisors to the Ayatollah, to Qasem Soleimani, the IRGC terrorist leader, and now the current IRGC, inflicting horrors on the Israeli people and, frankly, horrors on the people of Lebanon as well.

He has refused to comply with every agreement that he has made, and he has inflicted thousands and thousands of deaths on innocent civilians all across the region, and he's been a pain in America's rear end for an awfully long time, too. The leadership that has already been decimated from Hezbollah will have an impact on Hezbollah's fighting capability, which is exactly what the Israelis intended, and if it's the case that Nasrallah has been struck, this will make it more difficult for Hezbollah to reconfigure, re-energize, re-arm and re-equip. And it changes the paradigm. We saw that. Would you make it the comparison to, I mean, he's a different person than Soleimani, who led the Revolutionary Guard, but he's such a symbol of Hezbollah that if this were to be successful or that he has been, you know, it might take a long time to figure out if it's successful, but that if he's not appearing even to his members from underground, giving them orders or kind of making clear that he is still alive, that is this that kind of decimating kind of military move where they may try to say, oh, no, we're still fine. But in reality, we saw that Iran still has not really recovered from from losing Soleimani, but for the hundreds of millions they received of our taxpayer dollars back to Iran. Yes, and we had Iranian diplomats in New York this week being protected by the United States when they're trying to kill American leaders.

It's really quite something. Now, this would be this would be a massive indication not only of Israel's capability, but their determination. We all saw pieces of Prime Minister Netanyahu's remarks at the U.N. today. It was a fiery, forceful speech with real logic about why it's in the world's best interest, the Gulf's best interest, Israeli's best interest to take Hezbollah's threat down and having the ability to say, yep, we found Nasrallah. We took him off of the strategic battlefield.

He was the general commander of the forces in Lebanon. This would send a strong message to the Iranians that the Israelis are serious. I wish only it was the case that would send a message that the Americans were as well. You know, you have a new piece up, actually, at ACLJ.org making the case for why Tehran and Iran would rather Kamala Harris win the election. We saw just before you came on these hackers, Iranian hackers, the indictment against them has been unsealed, targeting members of the Trump campaign in his circle.

We know some individuals who got contacted by the FBI who said your devices have been compromised. The fact that it looks like, very openly, they want Harris to win this election. I mean, she's not asking them to do this, I'm not trying to imply that, but they think she'd be better for them. So if President Trump is elected in November instead, what's at stake for Iran? Look, if you're the Iranian leadership team, and I think about this broadly, it's clearly the Ayatollah who's in charge, but if you're the commander of the IRGC or you're part of the security establishment, you know that you will have the money that you need, the resources and wealth that you need to continue to perform global terror operations all across the world if Vice President Harris becomes President of the United States.

And your evidence for that is eight years of Barack Obama and four years of President Biden and Kamala Harris contrasted with the four years of the Trump administration. You'll have money, you'll be able to take hostages and extract real capital, you'll either get pallets of cash or $6 billion unfrozen, whatever it is you'd like. You can take Americans hostage and kill Americans on October 7th, and the response from the United States will be to demand that Israel cease its operations. That is a weakness that the Iranians surely prefer to the strength and cost that were imposed on Iran by President Trump. We did, in fact, look that article up in 2019, again, directly related to the sanctions that you and President Trump were successfully getting put on Iran, and this was a quote from an Iranian member of their military.

The golden days are gone and will never return, said a fighter with an Iranian-backed militia in Syria who recently lost a third of his salary and other benefits. Quote, Iran doesn't have enough money to give us. Now, they're in a very different situation. Oh, that's no, that's exactly true. And the fact that they had those resources and money is direct line causal to what happened on October 7th. It's a direct line to what's happening today in Lebanon. It's also a direct line today to the fact that we've got soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in the Red Sea that are under threat. Whatever Vice President Harris says about the fact we don't have soldiers in combat, I promise you those young men and women feel like they're under threat every day because, in fact, they are. Because the Houthis are now firing going to be soon Russian ballistic missiles if they haven't already.

The Biden administration has failed to put the pressure on Iran to deter them from exactly these activities. For that reason, I think they are actively trying to impact our election, whether they'll be successful or not, who knows, but trying to shape it in a way that increases the probability that they won't confront a strong, powerful America that understands its best interests. I've only got about 30 seconds here, but I did want to get your thoughts on this because President Trump is, you know, they constantly say he's going to be horrible for Ukraine. I think even some Ukrainian leaders have kind of accepted that from Democrats and the politics of the U.S. But this morning, President Trump met with President Zelensky, and I think that that alone shows that he's not all in on with Putin at all. I mean, that he's tried to get into the war so that Ukrainians stop getting killed after this invasion by a much bigger country and so that the cost of the war, which the U.S. is paying for most of, is no longer on the back of American taxpayers. So if we get a Trump victory, how does that war, how does that change the war on November 6th?

Or do you think it could already be over? Oh, look, there's no doubt there's a big shift. The Russians invaded Ukraine under President Obama. They invaded Ukraine under President Biden. They didn't do it under President Trump. I am very confident that a Trump administration will find a way to deliver the peace that the relative stability that there was in Ukraine for four years along the same model, which is we understand the things that really matter. We had to live under the Russia hoax, where the storyline was that Donald Trump was a Russian asset for most of the four years. That same storyline is being trotted out today, but it was the Trump administration that provided the Javelin missiles to Ukraine that Biden and Obama teams wouldn't do that. Vice President Harris will put the same restrictions on Ukraine capabilities that President Biden has, and that means a prolonged conflict with loss of life from Ukrainians, and you can't restore the order that necessarily needs to be done in order for Ukraine to get back and begin to rebuild its economy. Second half of pay-per-pay-o, thank you so much. We'll be right back.

Go to ACLJ.org and become a champion today. with President Trump meeting with Zelensky there as an aide to President Trump, who's also a member of our team at the ACLJ, Rick Grenell, and then follow that up with the former secretary of state breaking all this information down for us. That was just in the first half hour of the broadcast.

Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the U.N. this morning with a fiery speech, as Secretary Pompeo says. The first couple days of this week, I was down in Texas. A lot of you know Jack Graham, the pastor of Prestonwood Church and his ministry, obviously is worldwide reaching and nationwide reaching, and they put on this biblical worldview conference. Most of the speakers were talking about theology, faith, but they did not want to do a conference like that, have that many young people there, and not make sure they're getting educated about the issues they're going to face on college campuses and even high school campuses. So they asked me to come give one major address to the entire, all attendees, which was 5,000 in person and 4,000 online. The 4,000 online, we're in like 40 plus different countries.

So it's pretty amazing. And so my first set of remarks was about 20 minutes, and it was why Israel matters. Then I did three breakout sessions, which were attended by 400 to 500 people each time, and I love the demographics age-wise.

It was from, I'd say, 80 years old to 14 years old. But the most troubling questions I got, and they were great questions, were from the young people who didn't want to ask questions during question time. They came up at the end, Logan, and they said, listen, you know, I go to this Christian school, and it might not have been Prestonwood. And there were a lot of kids from all over, but I've got my friends, we even hear from some of the faculty that we should maybe be, or our church, rethinking about our just 100% support for Israel, that that might not be right anymore. Whether or not it's because they're not, it's not a Christian predominant country, so you've got some anti-Jewishness in there.

They forget that it, of course, promotes religious liberty and freedom for all to practice their faith. There's many Christians serving in the IDF right now, but it was, I wanted to make sure people saw what we presented, because it's different than we do a broadcast like this, where we're talking to people we know who are super informed. Right. You're going to see a lot of that coming up in this next few segments, so stay tuned for that. It's really, it's a very special show. I want you to stay tuned for it. I did want to encourage you also right now. Today is it for ACLJ champions, for brand new ACLJ champions, for your first gift to be doubled. Our goal yesterday was to hit 60 brand new champions. We got about halfway there, so we need you to join us right now. I'm sure some have come in during the broadcast. I think we were in the high 20s.

We're like 26 left. What's the minimum? It was like $5. It was like $5 to become an ACLJ champion, and that's just because of transaction fees. So you become an ACLJ champion, that's someone that's on a monthly recurring basis, and this is your final chance. So if you even give that $5, for the first time, it becomes $10, because another ACLJ champion's ready to match your first gift right now. So I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. You've heard the incredible work we're doing here.

You're about to hear even more from Jordan's speech this week. This is the time to do it. If you have not become an ACLJ champion, you've been on the fence, you've been thinking about it, maybe you've given a one-time gift, and look, we love those. That's the vast majority of people who donate. Donate, give a one-time gift, or give not on a recurring basis. But we are trying to get that recurring basis up, that recurring base, because it gives us that baseline number that we know each month we have a budget we can set based on that. So right now, about 21,000, a little bit more than that, have joined to become ACLJ champions.

We want to get that number even higher. And right now, again, as of today, today is it to have your first donation match. So whatever you give, you say, hey, I want to give $100 a month. That becomes $200 for the first month. Again, not charged to you.

That becomes $200 in value to the ACLJ. It's really important. I encourage you to do it right now. Again, go to ACLJ.org, scan that QR code on your screen right now. And folks, you're going to see my remarks.

I got Jeremy Johnson, who's a good friend of ours at Preston Wood, to send those to me. They have 30 cameras there. We're editing our version too. But I wanted you to see this because it's so relevant this week, and it shows you just another aspect of what we do at the ACLJ. Couldn't have done it without a lot of team members here that helped prepare those speeches as well. While you see that, we're here.

If we need to come back live, we've got our studio on and ready to go. So stick with the broadcast, support our work, donate today. ACLJ.org, we need you. That's why God has sent Jordan Sekulow to speak to all of us. His message is going to be on page number 26. Let's go to page 26 in our book, Why Israel Matters to You. On Sunday at Preston Wood Baptist Church and all of our services, we prayed for the peace of Jerusalem. Jordan Sekulow, the executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice.

Good morning. Thank you all for inviting me here today to discuss a topic that I think we all know is of immense significance if you turn on the news even this morning or last night. Israel and why her safety and security are not only relevant to the Jewish people, but to the entire world, even those that don't realize it. Now on a personal level, Israel, it matters to me because I am a Christian and it is a sacred land of profound significance in our faith.

Because I'm of Jewish heritage and very proud of it, it matters to me that much even more as a place of safe haven if it was ever necessary for me and my family. In the book of Genesis, God says of Israel, I think many of you have heard this verse, but we have to always remember it. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse.

Pretty straightforward. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Not all the Jewish families of the earth shall be blessed. But in you, all the families of the earth who stand with Israel will be blessed.

Let's just get blunt for a second. I actually find the question of whether or not Israel matters to be completely ludicrous. Why? No one ever asks why Belgium matters. Anybody ever asks you why Sweden matters or any other country in the world? And yet the validity of the state of Israel has been debated, discussed, defended since the country's modern founding in 1948. And yet Israel, a nation born of an ancient past, earlier than most of today's world powers, and Israel yet today in 2024 remains a key player in the modern world.

And its importance can be viewed through many lessons. Israel holds deep religious, obviously, significance for millions. Not just Jews, but Christians and Muslims and Druze. But Israel also serves as a bastion of democracy in a very volatile region. It's interesting that it's the most censured country by the United Nations because it's the only country in the Middle East that follows the UN Declaration of Human Rights and provides those rights to its citizens, to choose their faith or have no faith at all, to choose their partner in life, whoever they may be.

To have freedom of speech, freedom to choose who to vote for, freedom to leave, freedom of travel. So it stands in this bastion of a very difficult region of the world, and yet the world doesn't see it as a testament of freedom, but instead we see it as this resilience after centuries of persecution. It's worth noting, if we look back through history, there's a clear pattern. Any group that has attacked Israel or seeks to destroy her people, whether it's the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, or all the way back to ancient Egypt, these were much larger armies, much stronger armies, but yet they all suffered as a great result. Some are still suffering today.

We see that in Europe. It would be no surprise if the same fate befalls her current enemies. Of course, that will depend greatly on those of us in the United States and in the United States government.

You may say, why? Israel needs allies, and the United States needs allies. More so than ever in a world where there are increasingly countries with powerful nuclear weapons, with expanding technology, who could turn those weapons, not just on Israel, but on the United States. We need allies and intelligence, security, front lines of terrorism.

I think we all who lived through 9-11 and the Islamic terrorism that followed through ISIS and other groups have realized that. Israel is on the front line of that fight, but that fight has come to the United States multiple times before. You can't set aside Israel's significance to our Christian faith, though.

It's essential to everything we believe, but I want to examine a little bit of its historical and practical importance to all people, not just people who are believers. To understand why Israel matters, we must first take a look at the long arc of history. Israel's history is undeniably crucial to the history of our entire world.

Its story begins thousands of years ago for Jews. Israel is not simply a homeland established after World War II by a stroke of modern diplomacy. Returning Israel to the Jewish people was just a fulfillment of the promises that stretch back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

It is the land where King David ruled, where the temple stood, where laws were made. Before there was a Europe, before there was an America, and before there was even an idea of a, quote, Palestine, Israel thrived as the ancestral home of the Jewish people. And the Jewish connection to Israel is one of the most unique and steadfast in possibly all of human history. Throughout centuries of exile, following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in A.D. 70, the Jewish people maintained a spiritual connection to their homeland. For two millennia, prayers for a return to Zion and Jerusalem have been central to the Jewish religious life, expressing the collective longing for return to their ancestral homeland.

No other people have maintained such a deep and enduring connection to a land over such a long period of time. But the establishment of the modern state of Israel was not just a fulfillment of spiritual learning. It was also a response to centuries, centuries of persecution, from targeted mass killings of Jews in Eastern Europe to the Holocaust.

Jewish suffering has been a constant, unfortunately, in modern history. The establishment of Israel in 1948 provided for the first time in centuries a place where Jews could go, live as free people in their own land, be able to defend themselves against the threats of anti-Semitism. The Zionist movement, which began in the late 19th century, was born of the understanding that Jews could not rely anymore on the goodwill of other nations to protect them internally.

Instead, the movement was led by visionaries, Theodor Herzl, who thought to create a Jewish state where they could guarantee the right of Jews and others and that they would be able to defend themselves and it would be their responsibility. So when the creation of Israel happened in 1948, it was monumental. And the continuance of Israel is monumental to our culture. It is the only Jewish state in the world, a place where Jewish culture, language, and traditions thrived for nearly 2,000 years. Jews lived as minorities in foreign lands, forced to assimilate or suppress our heritage. But in Israel, Jewish life is free to flourish in ways that are impossible elsewhere. Hebrew was once a language that was only spoken for prayer. So it was Jews at the establishment of Israel who spoke a lot of other language, but no one spoke Hebrew.

In fact, they had to come up with the idea and rewrite Hebrew into a modern language. Jewish holidays, music, and customs are celebrated as part of the nation's cultural heritage. And yet, as a true democracy, like in the United States, other faiths are not suppressed. They're free to worship and pray and live peacefully and fight alongside, join, run for office, political office. Not enough attention, likely in museum colleges and universities and even in the media, is ever given to the fact that in Israel, Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists live side by side, often share tables together, they work in the military together, they serve together, and Israel has always shown a willingness to try and work with its neighbors.

Through the Abraham Accords that were brokered by President Trump, we saw these new trade agreements with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, even Sudan. But moreover, Israel's also a center of technological and scientific innovation. So sometimes we don't realize how we benefited from a fairly small country population-wise, how it benefits us in ways, but we'll go through a few, just so you know.

Because we focus so much on the conflict. Tel Aviv is dubbed the Silicon Valley, the silicon in the desert. It's home to a thriving startup culture, technologies are born, Israeli scientists developed the technological breakthroughs that most everyone in this room has benefited from, from the PC microprocessor, the USB flash drive, flexible lightweight solar panels, and Israel created robotic exoskeleton so that people who were paralyzed and paraplegic could move around again, even walking up stairs.

Life-saving medical devices, agriculture in the desert, the list goes on. Support the work of the ACLJ. We're defending you.

ACLJ.org. Donate today. We'll be right back. A vibrant economy and a strong military.

What does that sound like? Hopefully what we have here in the United States. That's what we strive for here. Strong military, vibrant economy, true democracy, freedoms guaranteed. It's an important ally to the West, particularly the United States, but as you know, politics here plays a role in how Israel is treated internationally. As I pointed out, Israel is the most censured country by the United Nations. This week, the United Nations and the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency, UNRWA, which is for the Palestinians only. They're the only group in the world of refugees that has their own UN agency. You may have heard that many of their employees were working for Hamas. Do you know what the UN put through to the international courts and the US courts this week?

They have immunity. Their staff, some of which carried out the atrocities on October 7th, are immune from prosecution, but they don't believe US soldiers are. They don't believe IDF soldiers, Israeli soldiers, are immune from prosecution, but UN staff who were working with Hamas and part of Hamas and carried out these horrendous atrocities, the UN is asserting they have universal worldwide immunity.

Is there anything more evil than that from the world government? So we have these moral and ethical dimensions, obviously, when it comes to Israel, but I don't think they're that difficult. Israel's very existence, it stands as a testament to the resilience of the Jewish people and the world's responsibility to ensure that those atrocities never happen again, but we saw those atrocities happen again on October 7th. Was it a failure of security?

Was it a failure by intelligence? Sure, Israel is not perfect, their military is not perfect, intelligence is not perfect, but let me tell you this. Hamas would not have had the capabilities to carry out what happened on October 7th without the hundreds of millions of dollars the Biden-Harris administration sent to Iran or unfroze for Iran just so Iran would begin to sit down with them and sip coffee and discuss getting back to a failed nuclear deal.

It has done nothing to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. As a nation born from the ashes of genocide, Israel is a living symbol of the triumph of the human spirit over unimaginable adversity. It's a place where the values of democracy, pluralism, individual freedom are upheld.

You have some of the most religious people, you have some of the least religious people united in one stand to defend their homeland and to defend each other. Israel's commitment to democracy is particularly remarkable given the region's political landscape. They are surrounded by countries that lack basic freedoms and yet they are not centered at the UN. Israel has managed to uphold the rule of law, protect minority rights, maintain a free press, a society again where Jews and Christians, Muslims and people of other faiths live, work and are friends together in peace, but yet they are centered. Those countries that surround them have none of those rights.

They are not centered. While Israel's achievements and its contributions to the world are undeniable, we know it will always continue to face significant challenges. Extremist organizations and hostile governments that continue to threaten Israel's very existence even right now. We see in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which has persisted for decades and of course with Hezbollah most recently which is an ongoing conflict that looks increasingly like it could become not just an air war but one on land. In fact, just to tell you how close Israel is when they are firing at Lebanon right now and firing at Hezbollah targets, they are firing from tanks.

So they are using air but when you are firing from tanks now, you are getting steps closer to going in. Because ultimately, as the U.S. knows with Al Qaeda or ISIS and Israel knows with Hamas or Hezbollah, if they aren't destroyed, this will just keep repeating itself. Over, they will do something outrageous, violent, Israel will have to respond, the world will for a couple of weeks give Israel some hope that, oh yes, that was horrible what happened on October 7th. And then two weeks later when Israel decides how to respond, the world begins to forget what happened on October 7th and the babies that were put in microwaves and filmed being killed. They forget that and they just focus on supposedly what Israel has done through the air.

Hamas on October 7th launched the worst attack on the Israeli people in modern history. Think about that for a moment. You lived it.

All of us here. You were alive for it. Over 1,000 innocent people were brutally murdered. Unspeakable ways.

I don't want to get into all of them here in this large session. But it was pure evil. The victims were slaughtered by the extremists while they attended a concert for peace and they were also in their homes. And over 40 of those murdered were our brothers and sisters, Americans. Another 251 victims of course we know were kidnapped.

That's down to less than 100 right now. Some Americans are still being held as, again, in the tunnels, in the dungeon tunnels as we call them, of Gaza. And yet we don't hear it enough from our administration. Get those Americans home.

Figure it out. These are not just Israelis. These are our brothers and sisters as Americans being held. So in conclusion, we must continue to support Israel as it strives to fulfill its promise as a homeland for the Jewish people. Not only because of its historical and spiritual significance to our Christian faith, but because Israel is a force for good in the world. May God bless the state of Israel. May God bless America. May God bless all of you as well.

But I wanted to do this with you because you're a pretty cool group and we've got a few seconds left here. There's a phrase in Israel. You can say it in Hebrew with me. I'll give it to you once and then we should all say it together. It's Am Yisrael Chai. I'll say it one more time. Am Yisrael Chai.

Can you say it back, you think, with me? Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel live. The people of Israel live. Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me. We're defending Israel, preparing for oral interventions at the UN next week on this UNRWA issue that UN employees who worked for Hamas are somehow universally immune from prosecution, even if they participated in the heinous acts of October 7th, which the ICC said the Hamas leaders should be prosecuted for. But what about their folks? No, they're universally immune.

I've never heard of this idea of universal immunity. But we have to fight that at the UN. And we do fight it. We need some folks to stand with us, those ACLJ champions. And if you do it these next two days, this first donation will be doubled. We're there for them because you're there for us. Go to ACLJ.org slash champions. Donate today and join us.