Hello, again. Thank you for having us back. I guess the first panel went okay. Without further adieu, were going to welcome the senior senator from colorado, michael benn bennet. [ applause ] senator, thank you for [ cheers and applause ] i have to say, there are 85 students here from Colorado College. [ cheers and applause ] all right. More than any other delegation in the place. [ cheers and applause ] thank you for joining j streets panel on civility at baseball games, were thrilled to have you. Just kidding. We think thats stupid too. Weve been asking everyone its nice to see you guys, by the way. This place ran a lot better when you were here. [ applause ] now we have a podcast. Graduated to reading underwear ads, so things are going well. Were asking everybody this question, senator elizabeth warren, mayor pete buttigieg, we assume senator sanders have been open to the idea of conditioning aid to israel if they annexes the west bank or settlement construction. Curious where you land on whether or not you would consider holding aid i would say not probably where those guys landed. In making the decision, i would want to know and have a strong understanding of what the affect would be on the domestic politics in israel if we decided we were going to with hold that aid. Would that strengthen the position of the people whos actions we are objecting to which sometimes happened. When you live with Mitch Mcconnell, i would say i wouldnt want anybody i know to be as cynical as Mitch Mcconnell s but i do think we need to be as strategic as Mitch Mcconnell is and i think we need to be as strategic as Prime Minister netanyahu is and im not sure we always have been. Just to push you on this a little bit, it does feel like the context has changed. The status quo means more settlement construction, the potential of eliminating the possibility of a contiguous palestinian state because of that construction. Dont we need i dont have any disagreement with that at all. And i dont think they should be building settlements and i think we should be doing everything we can to limit the settlements that are being built. I wonder weather there are bigger ways for us to think about how to do that in terms of the totality of the relationship that we have. If we pick one instrument like that, in this town, that very quickly is going to become a partisan litmus test for where people are on israel and i think what we really need is a president whos confident enough in their leadership and confident enough in what were trying to do to push back. And i would push back, if i were president , on a range of dimensions in an effort to try to keep the settlements from being built, for the reason that you said, which is already, the chances of a twostate solution, both in terms of geography, but i would say in terms of politics, it has far less of a prospect today than it did the day that i joined the senate which doesnt mean we cant give up. Thats why what you guys are doing is so important. [ applause ] i want to approach this from two directions. The first will be this question of pressure and then the next question i have is more about affirmation. On the pressure side, you make a good point, senator, which is oftentimes when even the degree of pressure that president obama pursued which is largely rhetorical, can invite some retrenchment in israeli politics, at the same time given the direction of the status quo, the question becomes what are the levers available . Tommy talked about assistance. Another one we wrestled with was the u. N. Process. And at the end of the administration, we abstained on a resolution essentially, you know, critiquing israeli settlement construction along the same lines as what we would say in our own words, also condemned on the palestinian side. I know you were uncomfortable with that. Right. What are the what about the diplomatic International Context . Is there any way in which given that the u. N. Has been one sided on this issue, would you rule out that the u. N. Is a potential i would not rule it out. I would not rule it out. And i think that, you know, youve got a Prime Minister whos talking about annexation. Thats a different situation than we were confronted with before and we need to be paying attention to that now. In other words, we need to be thinking about of course we have no idea what the government is thats going to be formed. If he had been able to form the government and we went through on his Campaign Promises on annexation, thats a profound question for the United States to answer and i think we should be very careful about it, extremely deliberate about it and its a huge deal if you were to try to do Something Like that. I was thinking on my way over here, i was having some conversations with some people, that this is were about 25 years from the anniversary of the peace with jordan. There you had a case where, you know, you had in in king hussein and more so in clinton, people who had in effect domestic constituencies in each others countries and i think that was a powerful basis for the thats the affirmative way of thinking about, powerful basis of being able to create an enduring peace. Im not saying its not part of what a president would use. We are so off track now. These guys basically have a permission slip from the Trump Administration to do whatever they want and that is one reason among about a billion why this guy should be a oneterm president because we cant give them this permission slip. It sounds like you in you got to the extreme case of potential annexation, you would evaluate these different tools. The other way of looking at this too, though, you mentioned the political context in israel, for example, one of the things we struggled with was, you know is interesting by the end of the obama administration, barack obama polled at 70 or 80 at almost every country in the world with the exception of russia, israel and probably other countries in the middle east. And we tried to communicate to the israeli people, we were dealing with a Prime Minister who was working against president obama, particularly in the last few years, if you were president , given your long history on these issues, what would you try to do to reach israeli public opinion. I would go to israel and spend time in israel and i would meet with students and families and do whatever i could do to encourage peopletopeople relationship. The politicians cannot be relied on here. We have a president who ran for office saying i alone can fix it. Do you remember that . Thats what he said. Theres almost less american or unpatriotic that you could say and we were very careless with our democracy. We gave it up. We are each of us responsible for that and its never going to get back to where it needs to be unless we act and make sure we restore the democratic republic thats being eroded. I think we need to do the same thing in the peopletopeople relationship between us and israel. We have a Prime Minister of israel today who refers to donald trump as the best friend israel ever had. And we have never had, i dont think, as antiimmigrant a president as the one we have, we have never had as antirefugee a president , weve never had as antidemocratic a president , never had a president who didnt believe in the separation of powers, who didnt believe in freedom of the press, who didnt belief in all of the things that make us a plurlistic society and it says everything you need to know about what he views is important in the relationship, you have a president who supports his specific, you know, domestic ambitions and that cant be what the United States stands for. [ applause ] zoom out a bit for a second. I think in washington we often talk about the arab spring in the past tense. If you look at iraq, lebanon right now, look at sudan, recently, these are ongoing protest movements and the challenges that led to these movements whether its corruption or inequality or hunger for universal rights and freedoms, for example, those challenges still remain. How would you view your job as president to try to push those countries to loosen up or deal with corruption to try to let off some steam before these movements topple governments or create more instability or anything weve seen in the last decade. I think the most porimportan thing for us to do is set an example for the rest of the world. Its not necessarily to lecture the rest of the world. But i cant tell you a lot of people in this room know that my mom and folks were polish jews and spent two years there after my mom was separated from her parents during the war and so she called me when america was separating from the parents at the border saying what are you doing about this . I see myself in these kids. And they went to stockholm and mexico city for a year and then they came back here to america to rebuild their shattered lives and i have met migrants all over america, never have i met ones with as thick of an accent with my grandparents had, yet they were the greatest patriots i have ever known. And so personally i know how important it is for us to set a moral example of a free society. Not that weve been perfect. Weve never before perfect, but the whole world is still waiting for us to set that example and in the middle east, people are waiting for it more than anything else because thats where the violence is. I think we have an opportunity, if we can find it, to support those Little Pockets here and there of Civic Engagement in the middle east where there are universities and other organizations to help build some green shoots there. I think we should not be overly pollyannaish about how difficult its going to be. And its interesting the role social media has played in propping up tyrants. This is something that that generation of Colorado College kids out there and people like it are going to have to figure out how to process because we are still ten years later, ten years after the arab spring sprung, dealing with affects of social media that i dont think any three of us whoould have ev predicted back then. One of the issues we worked on was the iran nuclear agreement. Your vote on that was very important. You look like youre suffering some of the same ptsd as i did from those debates. Going forward, youve talked about the need to pursue an expanded agreement. Given the current status quo where the iranians have responded in kind, would you first try to get back to the existing agreement as a platform to then seek an expanded agreement or would you seek an entirely new kind of set of negotiations with the iranians i dont think first of all, in stating the obvious for this group, let me just state it because it wasnt obvious in 2016 when i voted for the Iran Nuclear Deal and i was the most vulnerable democrat who was up for election. And understanding how persuasive president obama can be, but back then, there was nothing the only thing i knew about the iran deal really was that if i voted for it and they attacked me for it, it was the one thing i couldnt recover from. And i still voted for it because i thought it was the right thing to do. I say all that only to say this, by the time donald trump was president , the things that couldnt have been known when i voted for it were known and not the least of which was our intelligence agencies and those all over the world said that iran was more than a year from breaking out to a nuclear weapon. They has been two to three months when we put the iran deal in place. Theres a bunch of other things that cascade from that. But thats a pretty important thing. First, catastrophic mistake and anybody here who thinks that hes intimidated iran by doing what hes doing, you only need to study the reports of the iranian attack on the Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure, the precision of that attack and how that region is now having to think about their National Security in the wake of a blown up Iran Nuclear Deal and in the wake of their demonstrated capacity which we didnt understand before to that degree. And, therefore, i would get the parties back together and say, where do you want to start, including the iranians, including our allies and say, shall we start with the deal as it was. I would be happy to start with a deal as it was. Are there other things we would like to negotiate . As you know, i was never thrilled about the term of the agreement. President obamas argument which i think is totally legitimate was, if youre going to get something on ballistic missiles, you Better Believe theyre going to want something for that. So we should sit down with our eyes open and try to create the best deal we can. I think there are reasons to believe that there might be things that we could get that we didnt get before. There may be things iran would want that iran didnt get before, but i would not imagine that iran would be approaching this negotiation from a position of weakness, i think is the point i want to make. This administration has been so wrong when it comes to iran, when it comes both to blowing up the nuclear deal, not responding to the what iran was doing in the gulf or, you know, in saudi arabia, theyve created a very dangers stew of unpredictable not to mention what they just did in syria, which is obviously hugely beneficial to iran. Its complicated. Its complicated. You mentioned saudi arabia. It seems like the majority of this administrations policies have been run through saudi arabia. Jared kushner is whatsapping Mohammed Bin Salman and cooking up whatever idiotic thing hes cooking up and President Trump is claiming hes ending wars in the middle east while sending Service Members to the area. How would you think about right sizing the u. S. Relationship with saudi arabia, especially understanding the tensions between the saudis and iran . Thats the reason why hes having to not have to, but why hes sending 15,000 troops is because if he hadnt made the decision, trump, if he hadnt made the decision he made on the iran deal, he wouldnt be sending 15,000 troops to saudi arabia. And does anybody remember, you know well, let me just lets say how do i say it this way . We dont have a great history of having u. S. Troops in saudi arabia, i think is a way to think about this. And so its as if look, i think if i had to define the trump doctrine for you, you would be take really bad situations and make them as bad as you possibly can. Thats what hes doing. And tits why we have to get hi out. On saudi arabia, we shouldnt be sending those 15,000 troops and when an ally of ours or as the execution of a journalist who is based in washington, d. C. And who goes to turkey on a pretext and finds himself murdered by a crew of guys who have been sent there by saudi arabia, that needs to be answered by us. And not only has it not been answered, weve rewarded that kind of behavior. [ applause ] and, by the way, as with the Iran Nuclear Deal, pushing back on that is not a sign of weakness, its a sign of strength. It is an affirmation of who we are and the significant leadership position that this country needs to take in the world. That is something that has been completely undercut and eroded by donald trump, yeah, and you know by who else . The republicans in congress who let him get away with this over and over and over again. [ applause ] one last question. I think youve spoken very powerfulfully about the int interconnection of our democracy. And one of the things that has been troubling, its not just the United States where weve seen some erosion in the norms of our democracy, its also israel. How do you approach this issue in terms of how does the United States reset its democratic example, but go to a democratic ally like israel and try to revitalize our shared democratic example. How would you express concerns over some of the issues weve seen in israeli politics where there have been suggestions that minority rights should be downgraded, how do you address this issue of our shared democratic examples . I mentioned the word plurlism earlier, i think israel has challenges that we dont have look those regards because sectarian differences. But thats the ultimate goal of a democracy which is making sure that youre giving every citizen the opportunity to participate on the theory that the more voices you have the stronger you are. I dont think thats the way the Prime Minister views its, i dont think thats how the president view it. The founders of our country did not set out to create a country where we would agree with each other. Thats not the point. The point of living in a republic is that you would have disagreements with each other and their hope was out of those disagreements we would create more durable and more Imaginative Solutions than any kick or tyrant can come up with on their own. Thats how its supposed to work. [ applause ] we have lost that in our politics in america. I would say israel has lost that as well and where i would plead, again, is to the young people who are here. I was on a College Campus this weekend, theres a reason why democracy pours so poorly among young people in america, because theyve never seen a democracy that worked very well, and it pours poorly among them because our country has been at war for 20 years. And you have to look for the example in our past. Weve never been perfect. Those same founders were the ones who perpetuated human slavery in the United States of america. Other americans had to end that. And those people, i view as founders, like Frederick Douglass is a founder just like the guys who wrote the constitution. [ applause ] and the people that, you know, fought mostly women for my daughters to have the right to vote and for all the women here who have the right to vote, theyre founders as well. And what i would say to you guys and to others in israel is whether you like it or not, and i think you should like the, thats what all of you are too. This democrac