Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and
Torah related topics with our esteemed guests.
By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find
addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues
and inspire a return to the fundamentals.
Enjoy the show. Thank you Professor Rosenbaum
for joining the Judaism Demystified podcast.
Before we begin, I'd like to 1st give a thank you to our friend
Dave Chaverti, who introduced us to you.
It's an honor to have you on and by first.
Like with most of our guests, we always we usually ask if you
could tell us a little bit about yourself before you begin.
Well, Ben and Benzie, thanks for including me tonight's
broadcast. You have a really great podcast.
You had some great guests and I'm happy to be part of the
roster. My name is Dane Rosenbaum.
I am a novelist and a law professor.
I was born in New York City. My parents were Holocaust
survivors. They moved to Miami Beach, FL,
where I was largely raised. I have lived in New York for
many years. I was a Wall Street lawyer.
I've been a law professor for 35 years.
I've published 5 literary novels that have post Holocaust themes
to them. So it, my career is sort of, you
know, not common because I'm, yes, I'm a law professor.
But even my non fiction books, like the one I think we're going
to discuss today, beyond proportionality, they're written
for people. They're not written for
academics. I don't write for academics.
I have a weekly essay that comes out in the Jewish Journal of Los
Angeles. It's usually picked up in the
Jewish News Syndicate. It comes out every Sunday and
again, I write for people and all the non fiction books that
I've written. Also five are not scholarships
scholarly works. So I sort of somewhere between
although I've been affiliated with universities and I'm now a
distinguished university professor at Turo University,
but I had been in at NYU law school.
I've been at Fordham Law school. I'm I'm old, I've been around.
So I have a, you know, a career that is a little different
because I, I people say, you know, yes, I'm a professor, but
I think of myself as a public intellectual because I don't,
I'm really here for the public, not for scholarship, although
I've been a teacher for many years.
You know, the fact that I, you know, that I write novels.
I have a nonprofit, the Forum on Life, Culture and Society, which
is called folks.org. And it's a talk show.
And then it's just a talk show for, you know it and all kinds
of topic topics, including culture and most everything that
I've done. You can find it on
famerosenbaum.com my my website. Yeah.
And you've interviewed, for those who don't know, you've
interviewed the, you know, some of the biggest names in the
world. This is true.
I appreciate the way you describe it.
Yes. Nobel Prize winners, Tony
winners, Oscar winners, Golden Globe winners, Pulitzer Prize
winners, National Book Award winners, Supreme Court justices,
President Clinton, governors, US Senators and again and, and
people in the cultural world so and, and in books.
So yes, thank you for pointing that out.
There amazing, amazing. So I want to begin by asking if
you can walk us through your experience publishing and
promoting your book Beyond Proportionality and how it
relates to the current anti Zionist sentiment.
Well, I it it you, this starts earlier than the 2023 war.
It's actually starts the genesis of it started in the last Gaza
war back in 2014, because it was in that time that I wrote an
op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and talked about the the
way Palestinians, Gazans were being spoken of as innocent
civilians. And I wrote as the law
professor, I said, look why? They could be civilians, but
they're not necessarily innocent civilians.
And, and I said the Geneva Convention had never imagined
Gazans who would not evacuate homes, who would be prepared to
sacrifice their children as human Shields.
This is not how the Geneva Convention understood the
behavior, the psychology of civilians.
So, you know, you can be a civilian, but you can also be
an, a complicit civilian. You know, So I that essay got an
enormous amount of attention, all negative for the most part.
And but it was an honest essay, but it got it was picked up
around the world because, you know, you're not supposed to
question how Palestinians die if they die.
And the only people who seem to get killed in Gaza are children.
They don't seem Israel can't seem to kill anyone else but
children. It's just so preposterous.
So that I wrote an honest essay that that got an enormous amount
of negative attention. So shortly after the 2023 war
started, literally within weeks, I got a call from an editor who
said I saw, I remember that essay you wrote.
This is going to get much worse. He predicted.
It's going to be much worse. The anti Zionist crusade is
going to be much worse. He had no idea the war would go
that long, but he just predicted.
He said, I think we should do a book.
And I, I balked for a number of reasons at first.
First of my family didn't want me to do it.
I already get death threats as it is.
For years, my family didn't want me to do it.
My agent refused to represent the books.
I had to fire her. I ended up deciding to do the
book. My agent for 30 years, she
published, we published 10 books together.
She refused. She's Jewish, but literally
refused to be part of the process.
So I fired her. I, I spoke at her husband's
funeral. That's how ridiculous this is.
You know, I spoke at her husband's funeral.
I took him to his surgeries when he had this, this is the
relationship. So I fired her.
I'm and I'm thrilled that I fired.
This is the, this is the I was told before the book came out
that no bookstore would carry the book.
You can only get it online, Amazon or barnesandnoble.com or
ingram.com. But no bookstore would hold
carry it because their employees would quit.
So this is this is what I was told even before the book came
out. And many events that were
scheduled were canceled. So when, you know, there wasn't
a thought of a book tour, but there were many even events, you
know, that were public events were flat out cancelled by some
instances of Jewish institutions that just did not like the
threats that they were receiving.
And so I was getting calls constantly.
And even the events that I did, there was no promotion of it
online. So I did events that normally
would be promoted online, but instead became more intimate
gatherings like in a synagogue that would normally promote it
decided not to promote it because they didn't want the the
response, the backlash. So, you know, the book, it's,
it's gotten, you know, really good reviews.
And I I know that Ben See read it and seems to.
Appreciate it, fantastic book. Well, thank you, but the book
was already sabotaged early on that the idea was to not call
attention to it. And I was telling you before we
got online, I, I, you know, a very, a good friend of mine was
a very famous actress and I won't mention her name.
She wouldn't, she refused to even have me send it to her.
She doesn't want to have it in her house.
And this is an intelligent person.
And I said, I don't, I don't understand what you're talking
about. I want to send it to you.
You could read it. We can discuss.
I don't want it. And that it to me represents
really the theme of what's happened since October 7th,
which is we have an opportunity to hate Jews now.
This is a golden opportunity. We're not going to have it
anymore. This is an opportunity that we
can blame it on Jews because we are social justice warriors and
crusaders. We are human rights activists.
And so we have the moral authority to now hate Jews.
And because of what Israel's done, and we don't want to hear
anyone. We don't want to hear a rational
as you know, Ben C for having read beyond proportionality.
It's calm, it's measured. It just takes you through the
history, the anecdotes, as you know.
I even talk about movies. You know, you know I Ben Hur
Exodus. Patriot, I believe.
The Patriot. Yeah, I'm trying to remember
that other film with Peter O'Toole.
It'll come to me. But anyway, it is it is is.
That Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah, Lawrence of Arabia.
I talk about Lawrence of Arabia the book.
As I said, you know, my writings are really for people.
They're not for academics. And if a person read this book,
if any of your listeners read it over a weekend, you will, you
will be shocked at how little you'll never hear this stuff.
No one covers it. No one tells you any of the
things that I point out, the history, you know of that area,
the laws of war, the Internet, laws of humanitarian
international law, the laws of armed conflict, the laws of war
manual. You know the things, the sense
of what international law and how people should understand
Israel's just war in Gaza. And instead of what you would
get out of my book, you only hear one word, genocide, which
is just utterly preposterous because it's the only time that
the word has been used in the context of a war.
In no other case, even the Bosnian genocide, the world
recognized it was largely a civil war.
And only this, the one incident of Sabrensia is considered
genocidal in Bosnia because everyone recognizes if you're in
a war, you're not in a you're not in, you're not in in a
genocidal environment. And the death, the very
definition of genocide just right off the bat like this is
if a person, if you want to shut up, a stupid person who's
screaming in your face. If there's a lot of people who
are very stupid, ignorant, they haven't read anything, they
don't know anything and they're just screaming the word
genocide. The the, the definition of
genocide that was passed by all the world's nations through the
Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of Genocide, which
was through the United Nations, means that you have to have a
specific intent to eliminate a people in whole or in part.
You have to have the intent to do that.
So if you're in a war, your intent is not to eliminate
people in whole or in part. You're fighting a war.
And the minute, in Israel's case, the moment you had
evacuation warnings and humanitarian corridors,
evacuation warnings and humanitarian corners, it's ball
game. It's over, right?
It's over because the minute Israel's saying, look, we're
fighting a war against terrorists that attacked us on
October 7th and we're creating humanitarian corridors for
civilians to go and we're warning them in advance, we're
doing something no army would do, which is telling Hamas this
is what we're going to do tomorrow.
We're giving you our playbook. No army actually predicts,
telegraphs what they're about to do.
Israel's saying this is what we're going to do tomorrow.
And we are going to show, we're going to send messages to all
the civilians by way of so many methods, leaflets, cell phones,
text messages. They send down broadcast signals
on parachutes in Arabic, essentially telling people in,
in Arabic, it comes down from the sky.
And it says if you live in such and such a building tomorrow at
4:00, it'll be eliminated. Your specific humanitarian
corridor is located over there, right?
These steps, again, evacuation warnings and humanitarian
corridor in the context of war means it cannot be called the
genocide. It cannot because the the actual
definition. And let me just say, genocide
scholars know this, international lawyers know this.
They don't care. This is not rocket scientist.
I'm just giving you something that's pretty basic.
Everyone knows this. So they've decided to change the
definition of genocide in order to hate Jews.
So before we get into more of that, because I think it's very
important people understand the whole proportionality argument.
That's very important. And also besides, besides the
term genocide, there's also ethnic cleansing is thrown
around. But before we get into that, I
actually want to understand more about, you know, the Jewish
friends of yours that you kind of, you know, they kind of
turned your back, their backs on you and the psychology behind
that. Because I understand how someone
who is an outsider could be captured when propaganda is
everywhere on social media and you don't know what to believe.
And, and it's just like, you see, you know, kids on campuses
and you, you get riled up. I get that.
But what I don't understand is how is it that these, what, what
is the psychology behind these Jews who are like, I don't even
want to read your book. I don't even want to hear the
arguments. What, what do you think this
comes from? Is this just fear of them
getting cancelled or is it actual?
Have they been convinced as well that that we've been the the
Israelis are evil and so on? I look, I think Jews by and
large have very low self esteem. I think it's a problem in the
people they want most Jews want to sit at the cool kids table in
high school, and they're not invited to do it.
And so they will do. They will do and say anything to
be accepted by their neighbors and friends and their roommates.
And this is just what I call moral narcissism.
Look at me, Look at me. I'm a Jewish person, but I hate
myself. I hate my people.
I hate Israel. Look at me, Look at me.
I planted a tree in Israel when I was 10 and now I can't love
Israel anymore. Look at me.
What a good person I am. They do this in order to sell
themselves, to promote themselves to their communities.
I don't believe. Yes, there are some people, you
know, who are, yes, progressives.
The Donald Trump factor has a lot to do with it because many
Jews who are Democrats, like Democrats, hate Donald Trump
more than anything else they can think of.
It's the most important thing. They don't.
It's the most important thing in their identity.
And, and so because they hate him so much, they can't focus on
anything else. So it's shocking to me, Like I
run into people all the time and they're like you, they're always
very either critical of me or, you know, they, they see my
essays or the book as as a racist book because you can't
possibly defend Israel. You'd be in a terrible person in
order to do that. And I often times say to them,
but I don't know with you guys. I say, look, I if I know them, I
say, but you have two daughters and they look at me like they
don't understand. I'm saying, I said, do you
understand what would have happened to your two daughters?
I said, I have children who who went on gap years, one of whom
definitely would have been there.
Now, how is it that you don't understand that what happened on
October 7th? This is not like the attack on
Pearl Harbor when you're knocking out military vessels
and aircraft, you the level of barbarism that took place.
Gang raping teenage girls, mutilating their genitalia, you
know, torching and burning alive babies, right?
This is not how wars normally start.
Everything about it is just utter barbarism, right?
The taking of hostages, everyone who was killed was largely A
civilian, either elderly. So you know when you think of
wars and how war starts, they don't start like this.
And that's what's really so shocking about this.
You would think that after what happened on October 7th, young
people around the world would said they were in a music
concert and this happened to people our age.
And boyfriends were were required to watch their
girlfriends gang raped and then they were killed after they
watched their girlfriends being gang gang raped and babies were
being burned alive and Grant and grandmothers were being, you
know, taken hostage. We are outraged by this.
We are gonna fly right now to Egypt and to insist that we
fight Hamas. We're not.
This could have been us. Nobody was willing to identify
with the young Jews that scanned.
They were all civilians. And so that's why you saw very
early on the tearing down of the posters as if to say we will not
show any sympathy to you. We won't even look at the photos
of who the hostages are. We're going to deny the rapes
because really real only interested if you kill a brown
skinned person who's a Muslim. We're only going to get
interested. We are not interested in what
happened on October 7th because as they said, you don't get to
decide how we resist or those are the terms of art or what's
the other one. By any means necessary.
By any means necessary is used as a sentence, as a phrase to
say, of course we needed to gain rape Jewish girls, of course,
because that would that means was necessary.
Of course we needed to cut off their breasts.
Of course. Violence is resistance as.
Violence is resistance. These terms were created in
order to justify the barbarism. They they knew they had a little
problem there. You know, even on yon Sinwar, ya
ya Sinwar was surprised at the level of barbarism.
He even was surprised because what people don't remember is
6000 people invaded southern Israel on October 7th, right?
But 2000 of the 600 were civilians.
So stop talking about innocent civilians.
This is nonsense. There really aren't any real
innocent civilians in Gaza. I think I think one of the most
glaring and eye opening things, and I think part of it has to do
with the fact that I don't think Israel has done a great job
with, you know, getting their message across to the world.
I think focusing on, on it's a separate topic really, But I
think what, what is really glaring about what happened is
that, you know, you hear in, in in Germany or you know what,
during the Holocaust, you heard, you always heard that there were
these non Jews who hid Jews and, and, you know, in their
basements and so on in their attics.
And you know, they were, there were some great people who
risked their lives and and protected Jews and try to help
them. And you, you don't, you didn't
hear one story. You have all these, all these
witnesses, you have all these hostages who said that they,
they treated us so horribly and not one person tried to help.
And I think that's. Right.
Well, that's an as you, as you said, Ben, to me, that is a, you
know, exhibit A indictment of the Gazan people, right, that
there are nobody who would have hit and Frank nobody, not a
single person. If anything, they're saying we
have we're civilians, but we're happy to take us hostage and
sexually assault a hostage. If you we're happy to keep them
in luck. You know, we're happy to not
feed them. We're happy to be part of this
in any way. And we're not we have you know,
we're all gonna either. We're not even bystanders.
We're we want to be accomplices, which is why I'm saying that
when you think about the complicity and the what, what
you know under the laws of war, if you are assisting in
providing material aid and comfort, you've what the term of
art is. You've joined the fight.
You don't have to have an official card that says Hamas.
If you are providing material aid and comfort, if you are
assisting in the ways that Gazan people did, not just in keeping
hostages, but you know, when the Israelis were going through
Gaza, they couldn't find almost any apartment that didn't have
guns hidden underneath the floorboards, some cases of the
floorboards of the children's rooms.
Every house was set up that Hamas could end up coming into
it and could reload, rearm. Everyone was involved in some
way. If your apartment or your house
is used as a communication or command center, you've joined
the fight. And if your house is blown up,
you have to understand why that happened.
And you don't seem to care because you don't, You seem to
think that being a martyr is more important than saving your
children's lives. But the problem is, which is the
problem with my agent, most people are just ignorant.
They don't know and #1 and #2 they don't want to know.
They want to believe that everyone that's their neighbor
on Park Ave. or in Brentwood, CA or wherever they are, that
they're the all people are the same, right?
I don't know anybody who would martyr their children.
Well, their argument will be not that everyone is the same, but
given the same opportunity. Like, for example, just playing
devil's advocate, but they're there.
They would say that, you know, they've been raised these
children and mostly young people, you know, teenagers
fighting in Gaza. You know, they were raised by,
by Hamas. So they don't have.
We didn't really have a choice in the matter.
And there's all these excuses. But like at the same time no.
But they were raised by their parents.
They weren't. Raised and that's what I wanted
to say they. Were raised by parents who
supported Hamas. Hamas after October 7th was had
never been more popular. So it's not like the Gazans said
holy crap I can't believe what Hamas and some civilians just
did. We don't want this under our
name. This will be a stain on our
people for eternity. No one said that they had never
received. Remember when the hostages were
brought in, people were spitting on them.
Corpses were being dragged in the streets.
On camera. On camera.
On camera, dragged through the streets, corpses.
One of the anecdotes in the book that is the most horrific 1 is
that a man who owned an ice cream parlor in Gaza City kept
the head of a, of an Israeli frozen in the ice cream because
he wanted to sell the head for $10,000, right?
Who does? Who does this?
So yes, my, my agent again, who's ignorant and doesn't read
anything and believes that everybody is the same.
I don't know anybody in my building in Park Ave. who would
do this. So then therefore it must be the
case. She, she had a trouble within
the book. I said, you know, it says
Israelis value life more than Palestinians.
And she said, I can't be part of something like that.
And I said, you said that and I said I didn't say that.
They say that's what they're saying.
You just don't want to believe them because you don't let it's
very unflattering to the Palestinians and you don't want
to accept the possibility that that's exactly how they feel.
And because this makes you uncomfortable, you distance
yourself from it. So again, people really weren't
looking at look taking an honest look at the Gazan people, an
honest look, an honest look what happened on October 7th and
said, I mean, I say in the book, and I take you through all
again, laws of international humanitarian law, laws of armed
conflict, Geneva Convention. When you look at the barbarism,
the rocket fire that continued even after the barbarism, the
rocket fire was headed where to Israeli civilian population
centers. The promise repeatedly by many
in Hamas, not not the day after, but for months.
We are going to do October 7th again and again and again.
They use the words again and again and again.
The complicity of the people, the taking of the hostages, the
fact that the Red Cross was not permitted to see the hostages.
The fact that there was no talk of ceasefire or surrender or
laying down weapons. Under the laws of war, Israel
could do almost anything it wanted to, to fight back
anything they wanted to right. And I take you through the laws
of war, the law, what's called just war theory, and show you
how Israel conducted itself. And in my view, they conducted
itself way more morally and honorably than they needed to
because, as I said, if. You, I think you, I think you
even. I think you even mentioned that
you thought that they were too soft like to fault that they
were acting morally. Absolutely.
Yeah, I remember. This in the book.
No, I I just said if you look at what happened on October 7th and
look what was continually said after that, Hamas is still
recruiting people, right? They're not done.
So Israel may have vanquished them, but not really the the,
the under, under the laws of war, Israel has no
responsibility to leave Gaza until the threat is removed and
established and established deterrence.
And if Hamas is still recruiting terrorists, we have not
established the Terrance. And I, I, I, I for one, was
critical. I do not think Israel should
have withdrawn from Gaza. I think there were still
terrorists that needed to be killed.
And let me just say this, if you were a civilian who gang raped
an Israeli girl, you must be made dead, right?
This is you are part of this. This is well, you don't get a
pass because you were. There's no justice.
Right. So I, I, I, I have been very
clear. If you gang raped or beheaded a,
a baby and your, your, your excuse is that you're not Hamas,
you must be made dead. And this war cannot be made over
until you are made dead. And so that so, so as I said,
Israel conducted itself under the laws of war to a tee.
But I would also stand. We can go through that if you
want. But I can say that given what
happened and what continued to happen and what is still
happening, the idea that Israel was required to a ceasefire is
nonsense under an international law.
Nonsense and also again, under laws of international
humanitarian law. Israel, you know, when they
responded, they were always looking, they have lawyers in
the room for each time rockets were fired, missiles were fired,
drone strikes. They were using the what was
called the precision weaponry. They had to pick the right
weapon for the right target, right?
And it, they had to judge it on the basis of military necessity.
This is not like Israel had gone, you know, did whatever
they wanted. No, they, they followed the laws
of proportionality and they were looking at the basic standards
of international law. Do we have verifiable
intelligence that what we're firing at is a target that has
significant military value, Right.
What does, what do we have? Again, Hamas didn't care.
They were just beheading babies and gang raping girls and they
fired rockets and civilians. Israel didn't do that.
Israel was saying, do we have intelligence that what we're
firing at? The question is always for under
international law, what are you aiming at?
What are you aiming at? Because if it has military
value, if there's a military necessity, it doesn't matter
that civilians are going to be killed.
You may not like the way that sounds, but under under laws of
armed conflict, the only reason civilians are there, that's the
other thing. You know, 30% of the civilians
are friends and family of the terrorists and half of the
people that were killed were terrorists.
So that means 80% of the people that were killed in Gaza are
either terrorists or their friends and family.
And the friends and family, we're not going to humanitarian
corridors. So yes, they were killed, but
that doesn't violate international law.
Why? Because the targets were had
high significant military value and necessity.
And that's the question then becomes do we have the
verifiable intelligence? We know where we're shooting at,
firing at, and are we using the right weapon, And Israel has
lawyers that play that role to make sure that the rate, the
blast radius of the weapon is appropriate for the size of the
military target and the possibility of collateral
damage. There was all this propaganda
that they were dropping, Israel dropping like these dumb bombs.
And they said, look, they showed these images of Gaza being
destroyed and like 70% of the buildings were destroyed.
But if less than 5% of the population were killed and 70%
of the buildings were destroyed, that means that Israel's really
doing its job and getting people to safety and, and not, you
know, just haphazardly knocking down buildings while people are
inside. I think, I think the especially
now with the people are buying the numbers by the Gaza Ministry
of Health, which is Hamas now. We're slowly starting to see
that the truth is coming out and you know, the numbers are much
lower in terms of civilian casualties and the ratio of
civilian to combatant is is is very low.
So The thing is, we live in the age of information and the news
comes out so fast. And but nobody verified those,
No one verifies, right. So none of the major mainstream
media, unlike they didn't do their jobs.
They took whatever the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Now, when the Henry Jackson's Think Tank Society, their think
tank took a look at Gaza's own numbers, right?
This is not outside verification.
This is the numbers reported by the Gaza Health Ministry.
They discovered that 11,000 of the victim of the casualties
were unidentifiable. That we didn't, you know, they
had the numbers themselves, didn't have the right IDs,
birthday names, women named Muhammad were listed as women
being killed. Children that were named, that
were people that were military age, they were given instead.
So someone who was 50 years old was all of a sudden a child,
5000 of the of the people that were killed died of natural
causes. A woman who is being treated for
cancer in a hospital in Gaza was treated as killed by Israelis.
She was being treated for cancer.
She's still alive, but the gods and health ministry listed her
as dead. So yes, the numbers were
preposterous. But this is not the first time
this has happened with the gods and health and ministry.
It happened in 2014 and it happened in 2009.
Everyone immediately publishes the numbers Hamas gives.
And then later, when everything calms down a little, we
discovered the numbers have been falsified.
So, you know, the, the very fact that children were being that
were listed as children were actually males, women were being
listed as dead who were actually males.
And there were 11,000 people that we, there was no
identification for them at all. They could have been anybody.
And is that and as I said, Israel continues to insist that
at least 50% they they're not saying 50%.
At some point when they said that the numbers are 40,000,
Israel said our numbers are that we've killed 20,000 terrorists.
It's possible that the numbers are actually much higher than
50%. But again, it wouldn't make a
difference because under the Law of war manual, the party that
places civilians near the fighting assumes responsibility
for their injury or death. If you put the civilians there,
Israel doesn't put them there. Israel's telling the civilians
to leave. So under the under international
law, under the law of war, Emmanuel, whoever's placing
civilians near the fighting assumes responsible for their
injury, injury. So blaming Israel for civilian
casualties in Gaza, again, it is is is inconsistent with
international law, but you won't hear anyone tell you that.
I think the, the sorry, just one, one last thing before
Betsy, you take it away. But one thing that's very
disturbing that people just ignore is like, I want to go
back to right after October 7th. You see these grandmothers in
the street giving out candy. It's kind of like what happened
after 911 and you see them elated like so some, some
mothers so happy that they're she's saying, I want my other
sons to be, you know, martyrs like that.
The it's such a different culture that it's almost sounds
unbelievable to people that, and it's crazy because, you know,
people would rather believe some conspiracy theory about, you
know, what is it that conspiracy after 911, the dancing Israelis
that was totally debunked. And they'll just hone in on that
instead of actually seeing like, how did, how did you know
Palestinians behave after that? And again, I, I do believe that
there's good people everywhere. There's that's not the point.
The point that you're making is that everyone is blowing this
whole thing out of proportion in terms of, you know, the civilian
casualties, because they are part of many of them are
actually part of this war and, and are very much involved and,
and want to keep doing this. And Israel, for whatever reason,
cannot get this message across. I don't know if it's just a lack
of good, you know, Hazbara or if you want to call it, but I feel
like it's really failing in this in this area.
And I'm wondering what you think could be done to change people's
minds. Is there?
Is it even worth trying? No, there's nothing that can be
done because we saw what happened very early on.
Everyone said this is about Israelis policy or Israel's
conduct of the war. But you know, restaurants were
being attacked in the United States, synagogues were being
attacked. There's no one who was asking
any of the Jews who they were attacking.
How you feel about the war? They were attacking Jews that
have no connection at all to what's going on in Israel.
For instance, one of the things that I talk about in the book,
there are 1,000,000 Muslims, they're called Uyghurs in China
who have been subject to concentration camps, false
sterilization, forced abortion. 1,000,000, right?
Not 10s of thousands but a million Chinese ethnic Muslims
are being tormented, persecuted and killed in China.
Has anyone attacked a Chinese restaurant in New York in or
anywhere in the American? Has anyone reached out and said
are you from China? Are you Chinese born and
attacked them on the streets because of what's happened to
the Uyghurs in China. That's why not.
You know, this is not this has nothing to do with Israel.
This is an excuse to be able to a license to hate Jews because
you know, most of the people that are being attacked, if
they're in, they're not there. They're not there in any Israeli
capacity. They just happen to be Jews
acting as Jews. Going to synagogue, attending,
going to a restaurant, going to a restaurant does not mean that
you have any position against Palestinians or that you believe
the war is being conducted properly.
And so, you know, that argument has lost itself.
It's lost all meaning because if you identify the people that are
being attacked, no one is attacking people based on their
views of the war. They're being attacked as
they're wearing a Yamaha. They're being attacked because
they know that they're Jewish or that they're being required as
Jews to public publicly disavow Israel, Chinese American that
you have to disavow mainland China or unless we won't let you
go to class, we won't let you go into this building.
So this is clearly based on anti-Semitism.
I don't think anything Israel could have done differently.
You know, I just think that yes, everyone always talks about has
bravo, but they're not factoring.
This is the world's oldest prejudice.
Anti-Semitism has been around older than any other hatred, and
when it resurfaces, it comes back in a vengeance.
And we're living through that time now, especially if you
looked at global Jewry, you know, the United States is only
waking up to what French Jews, British Jews, Belgian Jews,
Swedish Jews and and Italian and Spanish Jews have known for 15
years. You know, where there have been
violence against Jews by Muslims and governments throughout
Europe were refused to protect their Jews.
Why? Because the Muslims are violent
and there are a large number of the population now in Europe and
politicians were afraid to take them on.
That's why there are no go zones.
That's why there are sections of, of, of, of these major
metropolitan areas of Europe that have Sharia law courts,
right? These are supposed to be, you
know, Western democracies, but they're living in fear of
Islamic violence. And so I don't know, I, I'm not
sure what Israel could have done differently.
The first question you asked is just pathetic that Jews can't
stand up for themselves, that they're, they're interesting,
want to show the world that they're more righteous and more
virtuous and more moral than everyone else.
And the best way to show that is to say, look at me, I'm a Jew
and I hate my people and I will not defend them.
And the last thing is what you said before.
I mean, I think that, and I use that example with my agent.
There are people that simply live a very sheltered life and
they have no comprehension that there are mothers that are
prepared to make their children martyrs for some demented
Palestinian cause. It's incomprehensible.
That's why it's. It's it's inconceivable.
So it's so inconceivable that you just blame it.
You got to blame Israel. Why?
Because I can't blame these Palestinian mothers, because I
refuse to believe that they would do that.
So it must be the Israeli mothers that are responsible.
It's their fault. Yeah.
So we touched upon. Actually, we, we kind of
discussed a lot of things in the next two questions that we
wanted to ask. But I will ask you to reframe
something you guys touched upon it.
But I think it's worth it to to give it its own segment as well.
Because in the 1st chapter you convey what is, in your
estimation, the chief reason why propaganda against Jews and four
Palestinian people work so well in the West.
Why does it? Why does it seem to be so
effective, the propaganda that works for the Palestinian people
and against Jewish people? Well, look, the world doesn't
care. When Muslims kill Muslims,
Muslims kill Muslims all the time.
The life of a Muslim is very cheap in that part of the world.
Muslims kill Muslims all the time.
They never think twice. 500,000 Syrians were killed.
You know, we have Muslims killing in Africans, in Darfur,
in Ethiopia, the Tigrayans, you know, there's all kinds of mass
murder going on. Iran, let's not, let's not talk
about. Iran.
Yes, Iran. Something that's dear.
To both of your hearts, but 300,000 Tigrayans in Ethiopia,
400,000 Sudanese. When we talk about starvation,
rather blaming Israel for starvation, the the the number
of trucks that entered into Gaza with Israel's blessing was able
to feed every Gazan with 3000 calories a day, right?
And there was only reports of 32 Gazans that died of starvation.
Do you know how many Nigerians died of, of starvation?
18,000,000 right? This is the level of starvation
throughout Africa in Islamist attacks, in places like Sudan
and Nigeria and Ethiopia. Those attacks, nobody's paying
attention to, you know, civil wars in Western Sahara, in
Yemen. Nobody pays attention to that.
So there must be a reason why the the thousands of
Palestinians who were killed largely because of their own
complicity, their own participation in the war, has
been treated in this way as if Israel is an illegitimate
country. It has it really at its very
core is the is essentially a license to engage in
anti-Semitic violence because there's no other explanation for
parts of the world that have much larger levels of casualties
and collateral damage and no one is interested in it.
All Muslims can kill Muslims and the world would watch and not
care if a Jew is responsible or is killing a Muslim all of a
sudden it's a war crime. So, so OK, so.
That's for the the ones that are active in this anti-Semitic
propaganda. But what about, you know, the
average mom, you know, watching on TV and she's getting she, why
can't she understand this basic, the basic points that we laid
out? They can't, they can't, they
can't see the Palestinian people as complicit.
What's up with that? Well, some of that has to do
with the. Woke world that we've lived in,
that's what I want to get at right the.
You know the the worst. Thing that you could be now is
the colonialist a white oppressor and you deal in these
binary categories that was created through
intersectionality and and and and the new social the morays of
social activism is that we're basically told the world is
divided into white oppressors and dark dark skinned victims
and and and and and and and and so Israel, even though 50% of
the population are people of color, no one wants to accept
that you know that's why things like land theft that Israel
stole land is so preposterous right and the same time that
Americans like to talk about land acknowledgements that the
Indians were here first the Jews from the Old Testament were
clearly there first and there's no land acknowledgement about
that with that it's only Jews came to Israel only recently
only, you know, post Holocaust era.
It's just preposterous. So I do think now we're living
in a time where it's very easy, very simple to call people
racist and Islamic folks. And so I think when you're
saying, what about the mother at home, they're just being told
that Israel is an oppressor, colonialist enterprise, and so
therefore they're wrong. And the mother, the woman
doesn't read anything. She doesn't know anything.
She's just sort of watching the news.
The mainstream media has latched on to this narrative and that's
what she knows, that these are white colonialists that have
stolen the land of brown skinned people and brown skinned people
are being killed through Israel's superior military
force. What happened on October 7th
doesn't matter. The history of Palestinian
rejectionism of peace, land for peace, nobody knows that nobody
cares about that they don't want.
They either don't know or don't care.
The idea of blaming Israel, blaming Jews is too compelling
on its own. You know, but it's so
interesting because. Israel Jews have been living in
America for a long time. How much crime rate did they see
out of Jews in America? Very little.
Jews have always been model citizens.
You know, if you, I remember I even watched an interview, I
think it was Patrick and David was interviewing Nick Fuentes
and he asked him if you had to live in an Islamic neighborhood
in America or a like an Arab neighborhood or Jewish
neighborhood, where would you want to go?
And he admitted, he said, I'd rather be in the Jewish
neighborhood. Meaning meaning he's, he's
acknowledging like, you know, Jews have been model citizens in
America for a long time. How did we get to a point where
we became these like, like these monsters in everyone's eyes when
they've lived side by side with us?
And, you know, what has Jews really done to anybody in
America over the years that they can really come to such an
extreme position regarding the people we've lived together with
for many years and never had any issue?
Well, success widely. Disproportionate to our numbers
has a lot of has a lot to do with that.
You you're talking about a very small population of Jews that
are over represented in every field.
And it it builds on this idea of conspiracies.
You know, they're, they've, I think that there is an enormous
amount of resentment against Jews and that has that has
played a role in this. Look again, it is the world's
oldest prejudice. Even if when it's dormant, it's
dormant, it doesn't disappear, right.
People thought, you know, after Schindler's List and the
Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, they naively said, oh, you
know, anti-Semitism is over. No, it's not.
It's never over because we're seeing how easily it was revived
and revitalized in this post October 7th era.
Things that were just would be shocking when you think about
what's being blamed on Jews. So, you know, it must be that in
everybody. You know, it's not based on some
rational, you know what? I don't really think the Jews
have ever done anything to harm anybody.
You know, In fact, they seemingly have been model
citizens and have contributed to the growth of our, you know,
civilization in many different ways.
And I don't know why I hate them so much.
I don't know why I would automatically support
Palestinians when I have no idea about the history of that
region. And what I do know is that
Palestinians are widely connected to global terrorism.
Why would I immediately after 911, why would I default to
blaming Israel? Wouldn't I saying Islamists are
are the cause of 911? Global terror is only connected.
There's no terrorist activities around the world that are not
Islamic, right? It's pretty straightforward,
right? You know, there's the Hasidic.
Jews don't do this. Roman Catholics don't do this
right. There's only one people on earth
where you can get 10,000 people to come to a public square and
scream death to Israel, death to America, death to the Pope,
death the British novelist, death, death, death.
Who talks like this? It's only Muslims.
You don't see the Luxembourgian people screaming death to
France, death to France. This is only Islamist.
So why is there the the housewife that you're
describing, Benzie? I don't know why she immediately
said, well, this is Israel's fault.
Why doesn't she say, you know, it does seem to be that Muslims
and Islamists in particular are really violent around the world.
You know, they don't really like to have a conversation.
They like to blow shit up, you know, and that's pretty basic
observation. You don't have to be a genius to
say it does seem like, you know, when it comes to global
terrorism, it's Islamists and Muslims.
It's not anyone else, certainly not anymore.
And so why not, you know, people again, you know, you said
something was at our doorstep. Yeah, literally in the part.
Of new. York Here's something about 911
Benzie. That no one either remembers or
wants to know. And CNN won't help.
And this is this. Within the first hour of 911,
when the towers came down, there was footage in Gaza and in the
West Bank of Muslims, of Palestinians throwing candy in
celebration. And that was on.
CNN has the video. They have it.
They won't show it because it's, it's very part of the, as I
said, this kind of woke ideology of oppressor and oppressed.
We do not like to point out on flattering things of people in
color of color. The Palestinians cannot be shown
in a negative light. We cannot show them as
terrorists. We can only show them as victims
and, and only their children are victims, not terrorists.
And they don't have terrorists. Everybody, every life is this.
They count terrorists as if they're civilians, right.
It's this is the only war in which the military of the other
side is being counted as civilians.
So clearly it's actually crazy. Yeah, it's only crazy now.
No other war has the other side's military been counted,
meshed in, integrated in with everyone else.
So clearly someone is, you know, putting their finger on the
scale and saying we really want to blame the Jews.
We really want to blame Israel. We have a lot of evidence.
You don't have to be a genius to see it does seem like Muslims
are when it comes to death, death, death.
It's really just Islamists and Muslims that do this.
There's no other people. 9/11 Islamists around the world.
We see vast numbers of mass killings, Islamists in Africa,
in the Persian Gulf, in, in, in in the Middle East.
But instead what we're focusing on it a country that's fighting
in self-defense against terror. And that's why, as I said
earlier on, resistance is using words like resistance by any
means necessary. The reasons for that is to take
the criticism away from Palestinians, to not show them
in a negative light, and to show that whatever they do to Israel
is justified and whatever Israel does in self-defense is
unjustified. I think maybe, you know, I think
that. Oh yeah, go ahead, go ahead
then. I was going to say we'd be
remiss. Not to mention the phenomenon of
the horseshoe theory that's happening at woke also exists on
the right. And we, you know, people who are
considered wholesome to those everyday mothers like a Candace
Owens or Tucker Carlson are all of a sudden spewing things not
just against Israel, but about demonic Jews and, you know,
Francis and Sabatians and all these crazy things that they're
talking about. You know, that's a that's a huge
phenomenon that's occurring in right in front of our eyes.
And I don't think it's getting enough play, unfortunately, from
Jews. I mean, it is now recently, but
in the for two years, I didn't hear much.
Well, there was less of it. That's sure.
It's it's become more, you know, robust more recently.
But you know, I hear this horseshoe all the time.
I'm not somebody who thinks they're equivalent in any way.
The, the, the, the, the, the, the red green alliance on the
left is really where the danger lies.
It may be that in time, Tucker Carlson's audience will grow and
there will be violence from the right.
But the violence is all on the left.
It's all on Islamists. And Islamists are are identified
with the progressive Americans, socialists, left wing radical
politics in the United States. The Islamists are not aligned
with Nick Fuentes. So if you look at the violence,
the public demonstrations, the killings, this is an alliance of
red and green and that's number one.
Number two, yeah, there's a horseshoe, but they're you know,
they're they're the most important person they have is
Tucker Carlson. He's you know, when you can't
even compare the fact that the anti Zionist, anti-Semitic, post
October 7th alliance dominates universities, mainstream media,
publishing, museums, corporate boardrooms.
That's not true on the right. It's just not what really the
real the real energy and the real violence is coming from.
Look, you know, when in Dearborn, MI, which is now a
majority Muslim city, you know, it, it, it didn't get enough
attention when you started to for the first time see the
burning of American flags and death to America, right?
That kind of violence is something that we as you see in
Europe and that's now only recently coming to America.
So yeah, you're right. There is a, a a new wave of
anti-Semitism that has also been revived on the right.
But the violent dimensions of it still are on the left.
And it's this alliance between, you know, the radical far hard
left and the radical Islamists. Yeah.
But I also, I also think people. Are starting to, you know, see
how influential Qatar is in in kind of changing that
demographic on the right. And there is this alliance
that's brewing that's growing slowly and it's not small
anymore. It's no, no, no, I agree.
I agree. But I, I, I, I have still not
seen violence really associated with it in the same way that
we've seen it on the left. And until I see that, you know,
I'm not saying that this is not something Jews should be
prepared to combat. But at this point, you know,
when you realize how powerful the, you know, the the right
really has no control over American institutions.
The left runs the institutions. So when we talk about, you know,
why is Israel being treated so badly in the media?
That's not a right wing problem. That's a left wing problem.
You know why it is that, you know, 97% of faculty members are
anti-Semitic and hate Israel, even the Jewish ones.
That is a left wing phenomenon. That is not a, there are no
right wing professors on any campus.
You know, they've done studies. It's, it's less than 5%.
You know, 90 / 90% of people on university campuses are on the
far left. So, you know, in terms of who's
really running American institutions, it's not Jews,
it's the hard left. And the hard left has a in now
an alliance with Islam and and a real very openly vocal hatred of
Israel and Jews. How do you how do you understand
the nature? Of anti-Semitism, how do you
understand the the reasoning, the cause, the dynamic?
What what how do you understand anti-Semitism?
Why is this? Why is there anti-Semitism?
Well, remember. It's anti-Semitism has
historically been very shape shifting, right?
Right. Israel Jews were blamed for
killing Christ. Jews were blamed for the bubonic
plague. Jews were blamed for economic
catastrophes. Jews were blamed for in creating
impurity in Christian blood. Right?
Nazis, Nazi style anti-Semitism and now you know, you know, Jews
were using Christian children to make matzah.
You know, now we have we see variations of it.
There's a woman who teaches at Newark in in Newark at Rutgers.
And she wrote a book called The Light, the Right to Maine.
And she basically accused, without any evidence, accuses
the IDF of deliberately harvesting the organs of
Palestinians, deliberately poisoning the water supply in
Gaza and the West Bank, and deliberately shooting at the
legs of children. Right.
She won a book award for this. She travels around the country
and gets standing ovations. There's no sourcing in the book
when she's confronted with, well, where's your sources?
She said it may not be true, but it's essentially true, right?
Is it to say, you know, she now she's these, she goes to
universities, right? Universities are supposed to be
places of science and data and, you know, to actually know
knowledge. And when it comes to hating Jews
and Israel, we don't care. This woman will get a book award
because she came up with a really great idea.
Blame Israel for harvesting the organs of Palestinians, Blame
them for poisoning children. So what I would only say is
you're talking about thousands of years, at least 2000 years of
or more of, of organized systematic hatred of Jews for
various reasons that are all, you know, baseless.
They're all baseless. Is there a root?
Is there?
Is there, you know, monster tastes?
Terrible on its own. It doesn't need Christian blood,
you know, Like, you know, And by the way, you know, that's an
interesting thing about how now we talk about the, you know,
the, the, the precious Palestinian children.
It's because we, we now know that it's harder to sell people
on making matzo out of blood, right?
More modern or audiences are not going to believe that.
So this is easier to believe poisoning children, you know,
deliberately targeting the legs of children, right?
You know, this to me is exactly akin to what we saw with the
blood libels of making matzo out of the the blood of children.
We're seeing it again, but in a different category.
Now it's Israel targeting children deliberately.
So all I could say is, you know, Israel has Jews have had this
problem for, you know, certainly over 2000 years.
And I do think that some of it is related to a few things.
One is success. You know that it's hard for
people to understand the disproportionate amount of
success for such a small population.
And also, you know, the fact that, you know, when you hear
words like globalization and cosmopolitans, those are
surrogates for Jews. When people are, you know, when
you refer to cosmopolitans, there's a lot of resentment
about Jewish intellectuals, about culture.
You know, American culture is Jewish culture.
You know, the fingerprint. I wrote this for Sapir magazine
on the the the the imprint of Jews on American culture,
fashion, food, music, you know, comedy, comedy.
Movies. Right.
Five of the first seven movie moguls were Jews born in Europe,
right. Without Jews, you know, there
really isn't American culture. Without Jews, there's no blue
jeans. There's, you know, so the, the,
the, the, the, the way in which Jews have sort of functioned,
you know, throughout society and been present and open.
You know, they don't. They're always very visible and
there's always a reason to resent them.
And, and, and people will accept these excuses, these biases and
prejudices. What they'll eat it up, give
them something that they can use.
And Israel has provided a lot of really good reasons, especially
when you're talking about most people are ignorant about that
region. You know, most people don't know
that there's never been a country named Palestine.
You know, people don't know. People don't know that at the
time that Gaza was occupied by Egypt and Jordan occupied the
West Bank, nobody was talking about Palestinian self
determination. Nobody even was talking about
Palestinians. Most people don't know that most
Palestinians that live in Gaza in the West Bank only came in
the 20th century. And you know why they came?
Because Israel started, Jews started to buy land in the late
19th century. And as it's true of most Jews,
when they started to buy land in in Palestine, in Ottoman
controlled Palestine, they made cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa
great. They created jobs and
opportunities. People flocked from southern
Syria and Iraq. The Palestinians that claim are
Palestinians, they're not from Palestine.
Most of the vast majority of them are from southern Syria and
Iraq. And they're only there because
when Jews started to buy land in the 19th century, they did what
all Jews seem to do wherever they go.
And I've said this before, Jews make places better.
They just make it better. You know, Europe is on its way
to being a shit hole because they're losing their Jews.
Good luck to France. You, you gave you you gave Jews
an excuse to make Allianz to move to other places and let's
see what life is going to be like for you there.
And so again, Jews made Palestine better and that's what
drew, quote, Arabs that not Arabs that eventually became
Palestinians. This is so informative.
And before we go, we want to ask you if you have anything you
want to plug up? Any upcoming projects?
Well, I'm a novelist. So my next book will probably be
a novel, but I really would like, you know, because of I
said the the the boycott of this book.
I would love your audience to go to amazonorbarnesandnoble.com
and buy Beyond Proportionality. Israel's just 4IN Gaza.
Buy a copy for yourself and buy one for your son or daughter
because they need it. People are Jews are walking
around and and well meaning non Jews who want to defend Israel
but don't know what to say. They hear the word international
law but they don't know what that means.
People use the word I've already said this.
Whenever someone says to you under international law Israel's
violating something you should say to them.
What law are you talking about? They don't know the answer to
that. They just know the word
international law. If you read my book, you'll say
here are the laws. I now know what they are, right?
So I'm not going to let someone stupidly tell me Israel
violating international law. The best answer you should
always say to them, you'll see their face will turn red.
Say to them what law specifically you're talking.
They'll start screaming at you. They'll scream genocide.
They'll start screaming because they don't know.
So you sit, spend the weekend calmly reading my book, you'll
feel better about being a Jew. You'll feel better about being a
supporter of Israel, because you'll know Israel's not in
violation of any laws. You know, let's put it this way.
The taking of hostages is a war crime and violates international
laws, and the using your own people as human Shields violates
international law, right? Those are.
That's for flat out fact. No one's talking about that.
The taking of Israeli hostages violated international law, and
using your own people as human Shields violates international
law. And people are using the word
international law against Israel when Israel's using evacuation
warnings and humanitarian corridors.
It's twisted, it's inverted, it's perverted, right?
The side that's so obviously and overtly is violating
international law. No one is talking about those
war crimes and the side that is is trying to avoid civilian
casualties. They're the ones in violation of
international laws. And I said when people say that
to you, you should say to them what law specifically you're
referring to 'cause they don't know.
And I'm not talking about just anyone.
Even people that are academics, they don't know.
They don't know. That's why you should read my
book because then you'll know. And the last thing I want to.
Ask you is what is your, what is your message to young Jews,
young American Jews cause in Israel?
Obviously Jews defend themselves.
They don't. They're not victims here.
We could just had a Super Bowl commercial portraying Jews as
victims. I didn't like it so much.
I, I think that, you know, the messaging for the youth is
really like, like you said, read my book.
You'll get a lot of answers there.
But what would you advise to, to young Jews besides that,
obviously, how can they, how can they be more proud of their
Jewishness and get in touch with it with their Jewishness and
also learn how to stand up for themselves.
Well, standing up for yourself. Right, that's the main.
I said this before, I know it sounds harsh.
Jews have very low self esteem. They want to be accepted.
And Jewish kids, especially kids in college, they see where the
Zike, they see where the movement is going.
They see what the professors are saying.
They're seeing what their colleagues are saying.
Their colleagues are saying, we will not, we will not be your
friend anymore. People now cancel their friends.
You know, unless you say you hate Israel, we're not going to
let you hang out with us. And so people say, OK, I hate
Israel, right? When I was at NYU, you know,
they have a very large Jewish population.
When I was at NYU, because of my writings, I had no friends
because Jewish professors and students kept their heads down
because they nobody wants they're Jews that would stand up
for Israel, but they're afraid. And so I'm saying have some
spine, you know, have some spine.
These are people that are not your friends.
You think they're your friends. They're not your friends.
What they're asking you to do is not what a friend would make you
do. To deny who you are, to deny
your people, to deny your ancestry, to deny your ancestral
homeland, to deny all of these things, and to ignore all of
these other true human rights abuses around the world and only
blame your own people. Why are you so accepting of
that? Does that make sense to you,
that no one seems to be interested in violations around
the world? There's only one country that's
illegitimate. Only one.
Not Iran, not North Korea. It's the Western democracy where
where homosexuals can live and women have you equal rights and
the rule of law is obeyed and you don't have to.
You can be an apostate. You know, that's the country you
want to get rid of. There are 22 failed Arab Muslim
states in the world, failed under any criteria of democracy,
human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of
religion. 22 failed state. You want to get rid of the one
Democratic state and replace it with another failed state.
You're sitting in a university and you with a straight face,
you're saying that you're saying, yes, let's get rid of
the Jewish state and let's replace it with a terrorist
state. We need another Muslim state,
and this one we know for fact they're only interested in
terrorism. We need that state.
And you're a Jewish student and you're not saying whoa, whoa,
whoa, this is nuts. And I'm not part of this.
And if you don't want to be my friend, I'm fine with that.
I don't need you. I am not going to pretend that
what you're saying is right. What you're doing is openly
finding an excuse to hate Jews. And I'm not going to assist you
in that. That's your problem.
You want to hate Jews, go ahead and do it, but I'm not going to
help you. But again, look, it's easy, you
know, I, I've been, I've been shunned for 30 years.
So it doesn't, you know, so I, it's easy for me to say, but I,
I see this with my own friends. I see this with, you know, left
wing Jews. They are so quick to blame that
themselves blame Jews and blame Israel.
And they simply have no interest in defending Jews or defending
Israel, not just because they don't know what to say.
Yeah, they should read my book, but they don't have the impulse
to do it because they are afraid that they might get a backlash.
They're afraid, you know. Here.
Here's an interesting little anecdote.
I write this essay once a week. It I posted.
I have 6000 people on my mailing list.
Comes on the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, the Jewish News
Syndicate. It's on Facebook.
It's on every essay. Gets about 40 likes on Facebook.
That's it. 40 people on my birthday, 3000 people send me
happy birthday wishes. What?
Does that tell you? They're they're willing to read
the essay and they but not put the like, they're silently
cheering on the essay and they're saying we don't mind if
they hate Dane Rosenbaum. Let him be the one they hate.
But I don't want my son to see that I like this essay.
I don't want to see my college roommate to see it.
I have a stupid half with a cousin that at Passover Seders
is always the stupidest one at the Seder table.
He really is the the the fourth child who doesn't know and he's
loud and stupid and I don't want to get in a fight with my
cousin. My my cousin hates Jews.
He hates Israel. And if he sees on Facebook that
I like a thing, Rosenman, I say it's going to cause a problem.
And I'm saying really, you're afraid of your cousin.
You're afraid. So I I don't know what it takes.
I just know it's not natural to me to be silent.
It seemed to me after for for a while.
Look, I was just last thing I could say.
For six years I was the literary editor for Tokud magazine, which
is to the left of the nation. I'm not an I'm not a
conservative, I'm an independent.
I'm a free thinker. But I know that we're not living
in a time that recognizes classic liberalism where people
are able to have different views and discuss views and not attack
each other. And what part of this is a
cultural problem that we're living in, a time where people
feel intimidated by expressing their actual opinion?
So when you say, you know, what should kids do?
Yeah, they should become better informed.
But it would be good for them to challenge their friends because
some of the things that their friends are saying are just
idiotic. And if you spend any time
thinking about it, it's easily contradicted.
It's easily rebutted. But you don't want to do it
because you don't want to be Oscarson.
And I want I want to just end by saying.
That to just to address what Benzie asked before about, you
know, how could this happen? Remodel citizens, just go, you
don't have to go so far back to the Dreyfus affair where
Theodore Herzl, you know, came, came up with the concept of
Zionism to begin with because he saw the the Jew who reached the
highest level of society, you know, and he couldn't imagine
someone like that, you know, be put, be put to death.
And the the fact of the matter is it's just repeating itself.
It's just constantly happening, Benzie.
Knows because he just finished the book.
I start the book on the Dreyfus affair.
The book starts. The very first paragraph is the
Dreyfus affair. Why?
Because the Dreyfus affair is exactly like this.
Why? It was fueled by artists and
university people, the intellectuals.
The higher levels of Society of France became anti-Semitic.
It wasn't on the right wing. It was really the very similar
artists and intellectuals drove it and everyone was very easily
convinced that the Jew is the traitor.
It doesn't take much. And I think that that's the
thing that it has in common. What I said before about, you
know, nobody checks the numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry.
It's amazing what people will be easily accept.
They'll without ever verification if it's against
Jews, they'll accept anything. You can say anything.
You could say that they'll make matzo out of blood of children.
They'll they'll, they're poisoning water their, their
cause, the bubonic plague. It's amazing what when you're
when you're blaming Jews, it's amazing how gullible, how
willing everyone is to accept anything, anything you say.
And that's what I think makes anti-Semitism different racism
because you know, you have to justify some of this when it
comes to hating Jews, people just jump on the bandwagon.
They could care less that what they're following makes no
sense. We owe you a debt of gratitude.
You know, you said in the beginning that you're a public,
public intellectual. We need more of you.
And we're indebted to you for for standing up for for us, for
us all together. We didn't get into the
particulars and the details of international law on this
podcast, but as you said, the goal of this podcast is that
everyone should buy your book and they will get and they'll be
armed with knowledge and confidence.
Let me just quickly say, let me. Just to give your audience,
because I may, you may not invite me back.
So let me just quickly say under under under just war theory.
How do you determine you're fighting a just war?
First of all, as I said before, genocide is based on specific
intent and so therefore if the if the Israel's specific intent
is to fight a war and not eliminate a people, right And
how do you know that evacuation warnings and humanitarian
corridor knocks out the word genocide just knocks it out.
They're clearly that's very simple easy to eliminate.
Don't let any bad faith actor, any imbecile convince you
otherwise. Just say to them this is under
the UN Convention on the punishment prevention agenda.
This is the definition of genocide.
So that's knocked out because clearly the intent here is a
war, but always the standard under under the laws of
international humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflict
is what are you aiming at? What are you?
Are you aiming at something that is military necessity?
If you're aiming at something that military necessity, you're
not, even if civilians are killed, you're not engaged in
genocide. Are you trying to make
distinctions between civilians and combats?
Yes. Israel's not only trying to do,
remember the Palestinians. Hamas doesn't wear uniforms, all
right, but they are telling civilians to go elsewhere.
They're trying to make distinctions.
They're not. They're not willingly, just
firing like what Hamas does, firing rockets at civilian
populations of Israel's, aiming at Hamas.
They're aiming at weapons caches, command centers, places
where weapons exist and terrorists exist.
Are you using the right weapon, right?
Are you using the appropriate weapon for that target?
And are you using verifiable intelligence to convince you
that you're firing at the right target?
If you're if you have those four things, you are fighting a just
war under international law, right?
Very simple. It's incredibly scary.
It's. Incredibly scary how how how
basic that should be and how much everything has become
stretched into into non I just I just gave everybody.
A very quick international law answer overview.
Yep, very full of those 4 levels are right.
What are they again? Military necessity?
What are you aiming at? Are you trying to make
distinctions between civilians? Oh, and the last point was
proportionality, right? Proportionality doesn't mean one
to one. It means if the if the target
has military value, if you know you're firing a terrorist or
weapons or command centers, if you're firing something that has
value, the question is, and you're using the right weapon,
right? Is the value of the target
valuable enough to accept the number of casualties you have?
We reck we accept casualties. People get killed in war.
What are casualties of war? That means the collateral
damage. What is collateral damage is the
damage that's collateral to the war.
It's not the war. It's collateral to the war,
meaning we accept civilians are going to die in war.
That's why they're called collateral.
They're collateral to the main aim, fighting a war.
So proportionality means are you using the right weapon,
recognizing that you're going to have casualties, but they're not
going to be disproportionate because the the target is rich.
If the military target has value, and in each instance
Israel's firing away at high level targets, then you accept
disproportionate, you accept, you know, if you're using, you
can accept the number of casualties because the target is
valuable and that's what proportionality means.
And you give plethora of examples.
In the book of of military, military actions throughout
history that have that have shown this exact pattern of
proportionality, military target value and you know it.
It's always been a part of war, this type of right.
But let me just end with one last.
Anecdote. Because, you know, the book is
filled with anecdotes. Winston Churchill, their bombing
campaign of Dresden and other German cities, Winston
Churchill, unlike Israel when I said before, what's the military
necessity? Is it a high value target?
Are you making distinctions between Palestinian, between
combatants and civilians? Winston Churchill at the end of
the war wasn't following those rules.
He literally said to his generals, go after civilian
population centers, punish the Germans for what they did by
allowing the Nazis to take over. He literally some of the count
cities in Germany that they were bombing did not have high level
military significance, right? So, you know, say what you want,
but you know, Nagasaki and Hiroshima did not have great
military significance. And the precision of the weapon
was way beyond what you needed, right?
You had an atomic bomb. You didn't need the atomic bomb.
So you can't even compare Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki
to what Israel's doing those wars really did.
You could make an argument that they violated some of the laws
of wars in those instances, not in an Israel's case.
And thank you so much and. We, we implore our listeners to
buy your book. We will be promoting it on our
website and our Instagram and everywhere.
And we hope that in a few weeks you'll get a a few 100 or a few
that would be great. And that'll be.
Great and thank you SO. Much for coming on anytime your
service to the Jewish. People, thank you.
Thank. You for everything and your.
Website is www.thanerosenbaum.com.
Yeah, thanerosenbaum.com. It's got everything.
On it. Thank you.
Absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.
Music.