In debating Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I-VT) amendment not to define criticism of Israel as antisemitism, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) spoke about the possible consequences of using that definition and pointed out the powers of the DoE.
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00:00what the goals are of each of us in discussing this. My goal is to further the debate and have
00:05a very intellectual and informed debate over this. So there are 11 examples that are listed
00:10that could be anti-Semitism. One of them says that claiming the existence of the state of Israel
00:17is a racist endeavor. Well, what if I repeat that Netanyahu says that Israel is a Jewish state?
00:25Well, Jewish is a race. And if he says it's a Jewish state, just by repeating Netanyahu,
00:31could I be guilty of anti-Semitism? So, you know, the thing is, is there are questions. There are
00:37valid questions that can people ask. So if you're a settler on the West Bank and you're Jewish, you
00:42get to vote in the Israeli elections. If you're Arab and you live on the West Bank, you don't.
00:46So is that fair? Or is that me condemning, you know, you know, the citizenship or making
00:56allegations that are going to be, you know, limited by this bill? So these are really important.
01:01And this is really the main objections that have come to this. If we did a standard sort
01:04of we condemn anti-Semitism, it'd probably be passed with everybody voting for it. But instead,
01:10we are listing all these things that have opened Pandora's box and realize that the police are
01:15behind this. The Department of Education has police. You may not know this, but the Department
01:19of Education actually has armed police. So they can send people to the campus to police this type
01:25of speech. And, you know, seriously, there, it is the, it is actually advocated by the current
01:34government of Israel that it be a Jewish state and always remained a Jewish state. That is a racial
01:39statement. That's not my statement. That's their statement. So is it going to be disallowed by this
01:45bill for a student to say that on campus? So the, um,
01:50I would call the question.