Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 13: John Spencer on war, morality, politics and the fight for the future.

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

After a delay (Haviv got a bad flu), we're happy to share a great panel with Haviv and Prof. John Spencer that took place at the Woodbury Jewish Center in Woodbury, New York on May 7.Thank you to Rabbi Jason Fruithandler and Rob Dwek for hosting, and to the Malin family for sponsoring the speaker series this event was part of.Haviv and John talked about whether victory was in the cards against Hamas, what it would require, and whether Israeli society would persevere; about claims of starvation and genocide and the role of propaganda in conflict; about whether Gazans all support Hamas; about the distinction between civilian and combatant and what it might mean for the IDF to be, as many Israel defenders say, the "most moral" army; about Netanyahu's leadership and politicking over the past 19 months; about whether Israel could go it alone on Iran; and finally, about what the rise of a new American antisemitism might mean for the biggest diaspora Jewish community in all of history.Lots and lots of topics, so it went on a bit longer than our usual episodes.This episode is sponsored by someone who asked to remain anonymous and to dedicate the episode to someone who fell on October 7. We are dedicating the episode to Yoram Bar-Sinai, architect, kibbutznik and grandpa, who died age 75 in a gunbattle with Hamas terrorists while defending the home of his daughter Ruti in Kibbutz Be'eri. Yoram died in that firefight, but not before forcing the Hamas gunmen to give up on the house, saving his daughter and grandchildren who were inside. May his memory be a blessing.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠ If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[e-mail]⁠.A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Hello, friends. Welcome to another episode of Ask Khaliv Anything. Thank you for joining me. Apologies for my voice. I had a flu for a few days in between flights. And so we are late on this latest episode. My voice kind of had to recover. But it's good to be with you.

Don't worry. This is not what this episode is going to sound like. This is actually a special episode, recorded live on Wednesday, May 7th, at the Woodbury Jewish Center and Woodbury, New York. I shared the stage with my friend and teacher, Professor John Spencer, who has also appeared on this podcast. The event was part of the Malin Family Speaker Series at the synagogue, and thank you to them for sponsoring the event.

And the discussion was moderated by our very gracious host, Rabbi Jason Fruit Handler and Rob Dwake of the Woodbury Jewish Center, who also kindly allowed us to post the conversation, onto the podcast. A lot of it I found really interesting. The questions that came up were critical. We talked about whether Israel has a kinetic military option for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program without American support, something that is a really hot topic at the moment, whether Israeli soldiers are guilty of war crimes in Gaza and whether we can trust international discourse about these kinds of issues because so much of it seems so ideologized and politicized.

We even got into the future of American Jewry. Professor Spencer did not opine too much on that question. That one was mostly fielded to me in this moment where American Jews are experiencing. We know double-digit percentages of them from polls say that they're experiencing a huge rise in anti-Semitism. And we also know that a great many Americans into the 60s, according to one poll that I saw,

believe that anti-Semitism is on the rise in America and what it actually means for America. So it was very wide-ranging. Professor Spencer is a serious guy, and I'm glad to be able to bring his voice once again, and thank you to the Woodbury Jew's Center for enabling that. And let me just say that from my end,

from the Ask Haviv Anything podcast end, we have a sponsor for this episode who asked to remain anonymous, but did something that has become a tradition here, which is to dedicate, an episode to the memory of someone who passed away on October 7. In this case, it's to the memory

of Yoram Bar-Sinai, a noted architect, a man who designed many of the public buildings in the communities around Gaza. He was killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 at the entrance to his daughter, Roti's

home. 75 years old, Yoram heard gunshots in Kibbutz Be'Iri that morning. He reached into his closet for an Uzi submachine gun that his father had kept from wars of decades past. He bicycled to his daughter's home, still carrying his little coffee cup, because Kibbutznikim are not allowed outside the house without a coffee cup. It's the law. And he found his daughter, Routi, sheltering with his grandchildren.

He entered the house and stood his ground at the entrance, and killed enough of the seven-man Chamas squad trying to enter the house to make the squad decide to leave the house and go try somewhere else. And Routi and the grandkids survived. And unfortunately, Yoham did not. Yoran died there in that battle. Thank you for joining me.

Apologies again for this voice. It'll be much better in the next episode. And thank you for your patience with a delay. and now our conversation from last week at the Woodbury Jewish Center. This is like an unbelievable treat for me. I cannot imagine that I'm sitting here with you too. Besides all of the things that you have done, you remind me how little I've done.

So thank you for all that you do. And I want to get right into it. I want to start where I suspect many of our hearts and souls are, which is with the hostages. Tell us what you know about. the current situation. Is there hope for bringing them home? Is there a chance that I know President Trump made an announcement today or yesterday recently? Where are we and what's the reality? I'll start. You can hear me okay? All right. Hello. Thank you so much for having me,

for having us. The hostages. We're starting sad. I'm sorry. Prime Minister Netanyahu about a week and a half ago said something that was, for the very first time, profoundly true about this question, which was he delineated explicitly just this past week, the goals of the war. And he said the main goal of the war is the destruction of Hamas and the secondary goal. and you have to prioritize because sometimes they conflict is the rescue of every last hostage. And he got a lot of flack, and he got a little bit of flack for me for taking so long to say what he has been thinking and doing for 19 months. I have a lot of close friends on the left, in the anti-government protest, and in the families of hostages. who not so much want one policy over another

because they don't know what'll get all the hostages out quickly, but want to think and believe that they're being dealt with honestly. So he said it. And I have to tell you, I'm going to lose some of you now, I apologize. We taught our enemies that hostage taking at a massive scale was our Achilles heel. and we have to teach our enemies that it isn't. And we have gotten out many.

We have lost many. But Hamas' destruction has to be fundamental because there is an unknown future hostage taking that has to be prevented. And so sometimes these are not going to all be doable all at once. What Trump said was that there are 21 known living, not 24. I don't, he might be going off Israeli intelligence.

We assume some of the 24 are dead. The government has not, to my knowledge, and I have been, you know, maybe 12 hours I haven't seen the news. The government of Israel has not, to my knowledge, told families that there are more dead. So I don't know more than that. For me, as a military guy, I take what the political leadership says,

but I also take military says. And head of the IDF said, no, the hostage is the number one priority of our operation. They announce operation Gideon's Chariot, which is an increase. Just announcing it is trying to increase pressure on Hamas to try to make some type of, you don't want to say deal, but budge on their position that they're going to never come to the table again. And there's a lot of yes, knowing going on now. But I have a lot of confidence in my engagement with the IDF that that is the number one priority for them.

And even this operation and what his plan is to do is, This is the complexity as the urban guy. I have to give people, it's a lot of hostages. Yes, it's a very small area, but it's very dense urban terrain and they can be in a place where the idea might know where they're at but can't get to them without massive new operations that will cause IDF soldier lives. So it's the wicked problem that Hamas knew they were creating. I'm so confident that the IDF can return some of the hostages and that this pressure,

because all war, and we were talking about before, is a contest of will. And unfortunately, over the last 18 months, Hamas has been sent many signals to just hold the every hostage as long as you can, you'll get what you want. And that message changed recently, and this is what all this is is about convincing them that there's no hope that they'll win. And if they want to return hostages to try to foot forth their strategy, fine, but you have to send the signal to them that there's no winning for them in this. And I agree a signal to the rest of the world that there is no advantage taking hostages. There's consequences that will be generational.

Thank you. I appreciate your honest assessment on both accounts. Obviously, we hope and pray they come home, and we hope and pray that Khamas ever bears its head again. Look, you want to say something else? If we want to ask that question, I mean, that's what it would take to defeat Hamas? What would it take to? A lot. It takes a lot of time and a lot of resources.

And I've been saying, and I think when I talk to Heaviv, that's my fear is not that it's not possible. It's just, is Israel willing to pay the price in time and resources? Or will the Israeli society say, enough is enough? We already had the two camps of just give them what they want. They want our hostages home now. And then the others are saying you have to prioritize destroying them. And there was this other camp that the prime minister had to finally tell, that's not how this works, where you tell them that you're going to give them what you,

a deal, get all the hostages back and just renege on the deal and go in anyways, that they would guarantee some type of international concessions. But in order to destroy Hamas, Hamas doesn't have a military anymore, but in order to destroy their rule of the Gaza Strip, the rule of territory and people, it would take IDF soldiers deployed into Gaza for a while unless there are these other,

I don't think feasible plans, but these other options. When people say destroy Hamas, as a military analyst, that is a very achievable goal, but it comes out of great resources and war is a contest of rules within societies as well. Israel is a very vibrant political environment,

and you could see... Some of the way to point it to me. As in somebody who knows a lot more, the internal politics of Israel. But I know that many of war, you can win every battle, many wars have been lost from societies saying that they don't want to pay the price anymore.

Do you think Israel wants to price? Look, here's what's at stake. In 1948, we won. At great cost, 1% of the entire Yeshuae, of the entire Jewish community was killed. But the reason we won was that our enemies were completely incompetent and poorly led and badly coordinated. By 1956, eight years later, by that war, our enemies had unified, under a central command, had been armed by the Soviets, were now following this guy, Nasser, and had this grand. vision of pan-Arab awakening that was going to destroy us. And it felt like it was going to destroy

us. 1956, Israel had just stopped rationing eggs. It was a third world economy. And we felt terribly fragile. And that pan-Arab idea of all the Arab nations unifying to destroy us and reclaim Arab honor, how did it disappear? How did it go away? What killed Nazarism? And the answer was, we met their armies in the desert and we destroyed those armies. And then there was a new idea. This Algerian anti-colonial, we're going to terrorize you until you all leave because you're an artificial people

and you'll all flee back to where you came from. And they went at it for decades. And we destroyed it. We defeated it. And now there's a new idea. And that organizing idea is this Islamist particular strain of political Islam that says we will restore Islam and redeem Islam

from centuries of weakness by defeating the weakest thing that ever pushed Islam back, which is the Jews. That's what's at stake here. What's at stake here, if we can defeat the Islamist idea of Hamas, we also defeat the Shia version of it, because it's not working. We have to make it not work and make it look like it's not working. So the defeat of Hamas is worth it, and it's going to take a long time, but it's the defeat of this grand new idea around which forces have organized to destroy us.

So I don't think we have a choice in the grand scheme of things in our grand strategy, except to defeat Hamas. And one question I've wanted to actually ask, John, and I don't think I managed to ask on the podcast interview. I agree with you. We can get some out. And I also agree with you the IDF has structured this new offensive as pressure to get out hostages, as pressure for a deal. For example, they've said the offensive begin. They've already called up the 60,000 troops. But the offensive begins only after Trump's visit.

if Trump's visit doesn't produce a deal. That's been what the idea has been saying. So it's obviously pressure for a deal. But Hamas cannot possibly ever give up the last hostage, or the last 25 hostages, or it can't because then what leverage has it got? And so ultimately, at the end of the day, we will be forced to choose. And the choice has to be to defeat the latest version of this grand idea of destroying us. Great.

And despite what one lovely is, Israeli lady told me that she said you were the next prime minister. As far as I know, you are not yet in charge of all of Israel. So you have the will. Do you think the Israeli society has the will? Yes. Excellent. Guys, we just had a fifth or sixth call-up.

And they came. The young people leaving their kids, my brother-in-law, his first child, his daughter, was born when he was in Gaza and celebrated her first birthday when he was in Lebanon. and he was just called up again for the fifth time and he's going yes we will tear each other apart in peace-time but when the war comes there's this real sense that the enemy wants to destroy us And when the United States genuinely felt there was an existential enemy, the problem America had, okay, I'm really treading here on John's toes arm, I apologize if I get it wrong. But the problem America had in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I in Israeli see it, is that it wasn't existential. It was very far away. How much you're going to bleed and spend for something very far away? But folks, if Afghanistan was in Canada and Saddam building nukes, just work with me here, was in Mexico, then you would not have you would, there we go, you would not have left.

And that's Israel's situation. These are actually existential enemies. You got it. Go for it. I mean, this is good luck on the challenge of our conversation and not being questions to each other because it's so fascinating. Interesting on what has,

somebody who teaches war and really enjoys doing that as telling people what winning looks like. We won in Afghanistan in two weeks. We defeated the Taliban regime. Bin Laden got away. Al-Qaeda wasn't, didn't have a safe haven. We won in Iraq in two weeks. The Ba'ath party wasn't around. Saddam was in a hole. It's what winning looks like afterwards. It's really hard for nations to define. And we could talk about even in Gaza, what does that look like? what is the day after, what is winning look like in Gaza. There's lots of ideals about what that looks like,

what it should look like, what it can look like, because it's Israel. I have a paper on draft on my computer is what would America have done. Yes, absolutely, an existential threat. The world's only superpower gets attacked on this border. All those awful, horrible things happen.

That location wouldn't exist today. And we'd have everybody at home by now. But that's the sad story of the Israeli standard in war going back to 1946, 73, second and the father, first into part, like all of it. There's a different standard for Israel and that's not right. And that's why I've been really spending two years of playing whack a lie, rather whack a mole, whack a lie about war, a lie about Israel, a lie about what does winning look like in Gaza. Winning in Gaza.

So for Iraq and Afghanistan, I could argue whether we won. Clearly, we lost in Afghanistan. We lost in Vietnam. We did not lose in Iraq. And we could argue that. In Gaza, the definition of winning is all the hostages are brought home. Hamas does not have military or political power, and there's no threat that comes from Gaza ever again.

Those are clearly definable. But as you can tell in societies, they'll say they'll change that means. meaning of winning. They'll say, well, look at, it can't hurt us. It's destroyed, all these things. What winning looks like is always hard to answer. I think the whack-a-eye is a good transition. Another topic I wanted to take in, which is I want the pitch-bushcheek.

I want to pitch of both of you some of the things be here in our media or you read in wherever And you hopefully tell us that they're not true, but tell us if there's any truth to them or where they're coming from or where they're deciding to make. So let's start at the top and work away granulary, which is Israel committing genocide in Gaza. I can. Yeah, no.

Right? Yeah, that's no. So I actually just put out the top seven lies. So there are probably many of the ones you're going to ask. In a, I was an army guy, not a Marines. I don't draw on crayons, but we try to. We tried to make a picture of it. Absolutely not.

This is where, again, Wackamol has been, you can't redefine the definition of a word. Genocide has a definition agreed upon by the Geneva Convention or the Genocide Convention. You're trying to destroy in whole or apart a group and there's definitions. And these four acts being a part of that, both intent and act and Israel has done neither of those.

They've actually done the complete opposite. it is horrific to even have to answer that question. Absolutely not. And it's crazy that it even got started the conversation about it, that the farce of the United Nations and the courts even entertained the conversation. And the South African government that took Israel to the ICJ is quite close with quite a few world leaders who committed genocides like Assad. They had perfectly comfortable diplomatic relations with actual genocides.

And what was it, Ireland, submitted a brief to the ICJ, asking them to accept a different definition of genocide so that the case could keep moving forward? I quite enjoyed that. That was fun. No, and it's really important to say that doesn't diminish even slightly the suffering of the Gazan civilians. That doesn't diminish even slightly the costs of the war, which are enormous. But the idea of genocide, it's a lot like the question of starvation. There has unquestionably been real hunger in certain areas in pockets, specifically caused by certain military operations.

They've been temporary. They've been momentary. There is a huge amount of aid. There is now a full blockade on Gaza well over two months, and nobody has yet died of starvation. We have been told for 19 months that everything is about to fall in, collapse into mass death from starvation, and the people who have told us that the United Nations and a whole bunch of NGOs, we really should be able to trust in this world.

We're lying. And also, Gazans have been suffering terribly. Kids don't have school for 19 months. Families are moving between tent encampments to avoid airstrikes. They're actually suffering terribly. But they have to invent this more urgent, more sexy-sounding kinds of catastrophes as part of a propaganda war. And the troubling thing with it is that when you now...

come to Israelis and say, guys, we're two months into the blockade. We have to seriously think about the IDF distributing aid. What are the Israelis saying? For 19 months, everyone has lied to us on this question. Lying has consequences. You have not helped Palestinians by lying about what's going on in Gaza. Genocide is a similar point to that. There have been genocides in our region in the last decade and nobody gave a rat's pituit. I went to high school in Wisconsin. And so to now both ignore when it is happening in Sudan, folks, just go to chat GPT and ask chat GPT what's happening in Sudan. Never mind that all the numbers or orders of magnitude higher than Gaza. The point of it is genocidal. There are actually genocidal elements legally in what's happening in

Sudan. Nobody cares. But the Gaza is a genocide. In other words, something bad is happening and an inability to trust the most fundamental moral judgment of the international community on the most fundamental moral questions is not a cost we should be paying. It's not worth it just to sign with Hamas. But the other side is choosing to do that. It is surging with approximately 200 trucks moving into Gaza each day since the brief pause began. And the United Nations says 129,000 liters of fuel, into Gaza today. Right.

IDF targets hospitals on purpose to cause pain and suffering to the Palestinian people. I don't think these things are there. There hasn't been a single targeting of a hospital by the IDF that I have looked into, and I've looked into, I don't know, three or four

of these claims over the last 19 months. There have been dozens of these claims, so I don't, I'm not saying this is comprehensive, where it was wasn't simply a battlefield where the enemy wasn't deeply enmeshed in the hospital. No one has yet demonstrated that it has been targeting of hospitals independent of the actual war fighting. When America went into Baghdad, it bombed the maternity hospital in Baghdad.

I think the British bombed the hospital in Kunduz in Afghanistan. Hospitals sometimes get bombed its collateral damage by accident. Hospitals that have enemy combatants in them are not hospitals. is functionally for war. And so, no, I, I, to my knowledge, I haven't checked every claim at every moment, but to my knowledge, no. So that you've been embedded with the, a few times.

I have. The IDF have not been to a single hospital in Gaza that has been used for military purposes. Hospitals are protected under the laws of war. They can lose their protection when the enemy uses them for military purposes. Every hospital in Gaza has been used for military purpose. In the pursuit of Hamas and Strat,

of using what we call law affair, that's been their crowned pinnacle of it, is headquarters, planning operations, tunnels, weapons, storage, you name it in Gaza, even if there's an area that's been cleared, and this is from al-Shefa to Nasser to Ransi to, you name it, even if it's been cleared once, and that is their choice location to go back into Hamas

and utilize and use the maternity, the children, the sick and the wounded has their shield and their strategy. And it be right, there's been almost every urban battle that I can show where we, like in Missou, drop 2,000 pound bonds on hospitals that the enemies were using as their headquarters and flattened hospitals. The problem was at the very beginning, people like the doctors without borders or world health organization and others trying to convince people what the law doesn't say, that hospitals hospitals are untouchable.

Hospitals are protected. And the number one thing that should have been happening is condemnation of Hamas stop using the hospitals over and over and over again. Even the battle, the first real battle they have in a hospital in Gaza is the second battle of al-Shifa. Even the first time, what they do is they surround the hospital, call everybody out, and then try to get the enemy and then capture the enemy that's there. in the second battle, the enemy, they did that.

They surrounded it, evacuated that the wounded gave like a week. And then the Hamas was firing from outside the hospital. So it's unequivocal, no, but it is this inversion of reality that you're even having to ask these questions because we should be asking the question is, why does Hamas use every hospital for a military purpose and put not only the hospital risks, but the staff and the wounded? So a number of people have asked about the difference between Hamas and the citizens within Gaza. I think we've all heard stories coming from the hostages where nobody had any interest in helping them or even attempting to help them yet. We've heard many stories from Nazi Germany of civilians helping.

So the question is, what is the difference? real delineation between Hamas and the Palestinian citizens of Gaza. I'm going first. I can go first. Okay. I mean, I'm going to take the non-Israeli, non-Jewish, just how does war work? War 101. There is the enemy, Hamas, both the political and military apparatus.

If you're a card carrying member, you're a legitimate target. In my terminology, after October 7th, the vicious invasion. by a terror army and Israel declares war against Hamas and Gaza, then you have not Hamas and civilians, you have combatant, legal target, and non-combatten. Any civilian in Gaza, whether they're radicalized, and it is one of the most radicalized populations on the planet. That's not my, that's pretty much a fact.

I mean, they run summer camps in the summer with 100,000 children, 5 to 15, teaching them how to kill the Jewish people and hate, Israel, let alone their school books and everything. But when it comes down to the war, any civilian can turn themselves into a target when they partake in the hostilities. That can be, of course, shooting at the IDF. That can be providing intelligence for Hamas about the idea.

It can be holding hostages in your house. That makes you no longer a civilian. You're a combat. Are there some civilians in Gaza who don't want anything to do with this for? I'm sure. are there civilians at this point since we've seen them protesting that they want nothing to do with Hamas yes does that mean they love Israel and don't want to destroy Israel no

but for me as a war guy is there's been this real big problem of you know combatant to civilian well now it's combatant non-combatant and who's the arbitrator to go okay that body that person was innocent like I don't want to be sexist but women can be combatants so every woman that has died in Gaza, although people I deal with say, John, but what about the women? Like, okay, that's, I don't understand.

I've had women shoot at me in combat. Women can be combatants. It's a radicalized population, but when it comes down to it, the law accounts for all that. Of course, Hamas violates all the law of war by not distinguishing themselves. And the analogy that I give is when I went into Ukraine so many times is that every civilian who wanted to fight back against the Russian invasion. and wrap the yellow or blue piece of tape around their arm. I don't know where they got all this tape,

but it's millions of people wrapping tape around their arm. Amaz deliberately wants you to think that every death is a civilian, and that's why they've never, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, not one member of Hamas has died. Look, at the more moral sort of cultural level, not the legal one, it's complicated. And the reason it's complicated is that when you ask about loyalties

and you ask about what Gazans want and who they support. And the end of the day, human beings, all of us, all human beings, even people on the other side of a terrible war, we live in stories. And what we have in Gaza are people who have a choice of several different stories about the meaning of their national movement, the meaning of their suffering, the meaning of their existence as a nation. And Hamas tells the best story. And the Hamas story is we are not weak, displaced, and the shame of Islam and apathetic people.

We are, in fact, the turnaround, the pivot, the place where centuries of weakness, we are that moment where Islam takes its stand and comes roaring back. And we are the sacrifice on which Islam does that. Now, that's a cool story. and a lot of Gazans share that story because it's powerful and because it creates that meaning. And a lot of those Gazans hate Hamas for ruining their lives. And so if you were to poll Gazans, it would prefer, you always say it depends what the question was, right?

We have polls where 70% of Israelis want one thing, but then 40% of Israelis want that one thing and it all depends on which pollster asked the question. If you ask Gazans, do they love Hamas? most do not. Do they blame Hamas for destroying their lives? Most, in one way another, do. Are they proud of October 7? Most are. And would they march with Hamas to a war? I don't know anyone who's asked that question, but I submit to you most would. And so in the same mind of the same person, Hamas is a terrible tyrannical organization that destroyed our lives. And well done them,

we're going to go off to war with them. Because it is in the same mind. It is all the bad things we know it is, but it also has this immensely powerful, dignifying story to explain the entirety of Palestinian existence. And that's the problem of deradicalization in Gaza. And nobody quite knows how to put it this way. Israel is not going to de-radicalize Gaza. That is not a place where a bunch of Jews can come in on a tank and tell them, hey, this dignity story, the story about Islamic reform and restoration, we're going to tell you

what to think about it. That's not going to happen. So, yes, they are all Hamas and they are also mostly not Hamas all at the same time. Marching through the devastated streets of Beit Lahia in the territories north. We are peaceful people. We want to live. It's the least we can ask for. So I want to stay here for another question or two. The Times about a month ago published, I think it was an op-ed that said they have 65 doctors that examined bodies and proved. that the IDF was effortfully targeting children in Gaza.

I would like to believe that's not true, so I'm hoping you will tell me that's not true. Please respond or give us some strength. I don't know to critique the specific article because I don't have that expertise. That's not the IDF I know. So 200,000, give or take, people cycle through Gaza. some of them are criminals.

Any group of 200,000 people, even in Woodbury, New York, which is beautiful and green. And nevertheless, among 200,000 of you, there's going to be some sociopaths. And by the way, this is a, and this is, don't start pointing fingers. All right. But this is a challenge in war.

You're sending massive numbers of troops into an urban battlefield with millions of civilians. you're going to have criminals. The question is not, there's this sense among a lot of the sense-making elites of the West that Israel is standing on trial, on moral trial, before the West. And the West gets to decide whether Israel is morally, sufficiently moral to, I don't know what exists, not exist, be legitimate.

What's a legitimate country? What's an illegitimate country? I don't even know what these words mean, but people genuinely think that they stand in judgment before us. and they identify a crime, they identify things that might be a crime that look like a problem, and they say, aha, Israelis, Jews, you, synagogue in Moncee, New York, explain this. Folks, there are definitely Israeli soldiers who are criminals. There's too many Israeli soldiers, so they're not to be.

The question is, is it systemic? Does it describe the war effort writ large? Is it something the Israeli army's culture and lack of discipline is intentionally inflicting on the civilian population purposefully? Those are the questions. And not only is there no evidence of that, everything we know from the death toll, everything we know from Hamas' own numbers in terms of the ages and genders of the dead tells us that this war was at its fundamental level fought morally at the systemic level. So I'm very interested in Israeli soldiers committing crimes. We need to find it. We need to look at it. We need to engage law enforcement about it, right? But I'm not interested in it when the debate is over the morality of the war or the morality of Israelis. There is no war without criminality. And if you expect this war to not produce criminals and that's how you're going to measure, whether it's a war that has to be fought or not, that's just a stupid discussion about, you know, your own moral feelings. It's not actually a discussion about the war. So I don't know to answer. So that I sure hope not.

It's not the army I know and experienced for many, many years. But I also think there's something bad about the discussion itself. Yeah. Since I have a special relationship with the New York Times, they tried really hard for a year to discredit my expertise. And I guess expertise is a bad thing nowadays. They have been chronic on telling lies by omission in their stories that they tell. And this one about these rogue IDF soldiers, not just one of them, but a lot of, though, targeting children and shooting children in the head, validated by some doctors in Gaza with some x-rays.

I've commented to Times of Visual did a really good reporting on this where I tried to highlight the errors in the body of evidence that is supposed to be so convincing in the story that the New York Times told about this allegation. like the fact that there are there's a child with a bullet in his head the idea I put it there because it's this type of weapon there are so many logical um and we have to again define what words are what is evidence you know TikTok videos are not evidence what yeah um that's it Western civilization just collapsed yeah oh is that a x-ray with a child and it sounds horrible with a bullet in his head is not evidence of IDF rogue soldiers targeting children. Who put the bullet there? How did a bullet get there, et cetera, is all the gaps in this logic.

And for me, there's a, as a, I spent a little time in the Army. And I agree with it to be soldiers do bad things. And we have our own history of soldiers doing bad things in war. But a professional, moral, ethical military also does some self-policing. And when somebody does something wrong, everybody else says, that's not what we do. But according to this story, there's a whole bunch of Israeli snipers doing this on purpose. One of the bits of evidence that lies by omission, but this is actually a lie, that because all of these rounds were a certain caliber, only the IDF carried that weapon. So clearly this means that

the IDF killed all these children. And I had to highlight, it just happened to be during the last hostage release, where you saw all the Hamas members with all those weapons from Israel and other places of that caliber. But there's this myth that they all carry AK-47s, and that wasn't, clearly that was an Israeli sniper that did that. There are so many gaps in that. There is not evidence that Israel soldiers are purposely shooting children in the head routinely or a single event that can be attributed to a soldier.

There's even things that ricochet and all these things, awful things happened in war. That was one of the boldest lies because it runs on the front of the, literally the program of record, but we used whatever they called New York Times, he runs on the front page. And they're really trying to tell you the story that without the logic isn't there, the evidence isn't there. And just because you have a doctor that doesn't like Israeli soldiers tells you something, doesn't make it true. Thank you. So I want to pivot to the other side because, We hear all the time from our own reporting that it's the most moral army in the history of the world, which I don't even know how you would like.

It's actually the second most. There's the Swiss army. They have knives. They make those scutland. And I'm not sure. The French have never won a war, I think. So maybe that also makes you more moral. I'm not sure.

but we could go Napoleon they won so many that's true that's true you know whatever never mind so tell us what does that mean what's the content

of this claim that makes I don't know about the most moral but makes the IDF an army that the Jewish people especially those outside the Israel who don't experience the training and the life of what that means

or don't even really understand Habiv when you said there's been five call-ups like that's not a phrase Like, it's not a phrase that makes sense to American Jews who haven't served. So what are the qualities and characteristics of the army that give, uh, that give evidence to this claim? John knows more than me. Let me just say, in principle, I reject the whole concept.

I reject the whole idea. I reject this whole idea that on the question of whether the Jews are moral or not, the West's own moral conscience must pivot. Can you curse in your synagogue? I cannot, but you definitely can't. Fuck you. The Israeli Jews are people. They're regular people.

They're not that special. Don't tell them that. They'll get very offended, but they're not. And the IDF is among the moral armies of the world in the sense that it belongs, just literally civilian to combatant death toll in Gaza. Probably the worst war Israel has fought in this regard because the enemy's fundamental strategy is the death of civilians is roughly Fallujah. And the Americans are extraordinary in this regard in low civilian to combatant death tolls.

The Israelis are fighting well enough. They need to do better because civilians die every time a soldier doesn't do something right. But they're right up there with Western armies. And the idea that we have to now, the idea that the idea is the most moral in the world is a response to the demand that the idea of stand in judgment. And no, I refuse to have the idea of stand in judgment because the West doesn't get to live its moral cartoons and self-creation and self-narratives on us. We're regular people living through real history. We are not protagonists in a moral story happening in the mind. of foreigners. And so I have no idea if it's the most moral army in the world. I need it to be

moral for me. I don't care what the world thinks. I don't trust the world. I don't trust the world. 85,000 children starved to death in Yemen six years ago and nobody knew about it in America. I need to trust America's moral judgment about something. No offense. I like America. But so I reject the premise and I don't need it to be the most moral for other people. I just wanted to know that it's basically moral for me. So I've actually gotten this a few times. And I have a friend, Colonel Richard Kemp, that did a really cool Prager University video where he says this.

Not that it was his phrasing of it that led to that. And I had always taken the question of like, Samus Savi, one of the, because I served in the military, Western military that was moral, ethical. And I had to have this debate on TV that I never thought I would have with a comedian. about war, but then we are not agreeing on what the word morality means. So we had to get very, which has even a religious foundation to it, a cultural foundation, a social foundation to it. What does it mean right and wrong?

And then how does that get contextualized to war? Like everything about war is wrong. But there's been lots of people from St. Aquinas to you name it, Emmanuel Kant, like they have wrestled with this. What is morality in war? One of the reasons that I've struggled with this question, like is Israel the most moral army in the world? I can't answer that because as a soldier and I'm not Israeli.

I can say it's definitely legal, moral, ethical. It follows the laws that we have in place, which actually enshrine questions about morality and war. They follow all of them and then do things to protect civilians that nobody's ever done to include the United States military. So if I want to evaluate morality by action, clearly the most moral army that's ever fought in any type of similar contact because they do more to do the right thing to protect civilians, to put themselves at risk while protecting the enemy's population, while feeding the enemy's population. I could make an argument. I agree by the very foundation of it's the wrong question to ask because clearly it's the right thing to do.

soldiers are not, everybody thinks that soldiers are killers. They have to use lethal force, but they're protectors. Israel and the defense force, it's in the title. It defends Israel. It defends its home to their back under a context that nobody else has to. Of course, it's a moral army that has to live with what it's doing to protect the rest of Israel. And unfortunately, which is ridiculous, fight for their existence. Thank you both.

I want to pivot to a little more politics, which is not a sentence I use on this Bima very often, but Israeli politics, which is, so since the war began, we've had one prime minister in Israel. I want to start with as much an open question as possible, which is how has Netanyahu been as the prosecutor of this war? They know that we have differing different let's say lenses of this. Of course, I've interviewed the Prime Minister now multiple times during the war

about his decisions in the war. Watch them on YouTube, by the way. It's fantastic interviews. You should totally watch that. Thank you. I have not because he does an interview to the Israeli press. Didn't he do Channel 14th?

He did Channel 14. It takes him three months at a time to get to Channel 14. Um, not that I'm bitter. Yes, I'm sorry. So this I, I know you all like as the kind of academic in me like evidence based, um, evaluating actions, not feelings. Um, based on the complexity of the war since October 7th. I don't know anybody else who would have done as good of a job negotiating the geopolitical chaos that came after October 7th from interacting with the United States political apparatus in an election. year and dealing with all these different fronts where a single decision had prime minister not made that decision like not attack hezbollah first or not to kill nashrallah all these things in reflection and in interviews i view him as charting an almost impossible strategic path that has

led to israel being in a stronger place today and it's been in a very long time with its enemies severely crippled, and there's only a few left even on the chessboard. I agree with that. I actually am someone who has repeatedly defended a lot of the most controversial decisions he has made. A lot of my complaints about him are hawkish complaints. I find myself agreeing with people to his right on questions of initiative and taking that initiative. And so he has managed to pull off, or just at least, permitted the extraordinarily capable Israeli defense apparatus to actually show its capabilities and actually threaten our

enemies or challenge our enemies in ways that they could be challenged. I think it could have been even more, but absolutely he has given those orders. My complaint about Nizeniel, you asked about his prosecuting of the war. So there's a wonderful book. by a professor at West Point, Elliot Cohen, called Supreme Command, in which Elliot Cohen argues that, I think he's Jewish. Anyway, in which he argues that civilian commanders

are a tremendous military asset, and he uses Ben-Gurian, Clemenceau, Lincoln, and I believe Churchill. And what they did was they came to the military, as the high command of the military, and they actually forced the military to rethink its ideas, paradigms, you know, sometimes if you have a certain force structure,

you have a lot of artillery, you're gonna use the artillery in the war. Maybe the artillery is actually not effective in the war. It doesn't matter, you've got it, so you're gonna use it. Right, so there's a lot of that happening in armies, and civilians who come from the outside are able to challenge that. Lincoln did this profoundly,

and it was a big reason the North won and the North prosecuted the war well when it did prosecute it well. And Ben-Gurion did as well. One of the things that civilian leadership can do is telegraph, explain the war, and challenge the strategy of the military and security echelons. And on those two questions, on explaining the war to the people, on having the people who are sacrificing in the war, especially in the people's army like we have, where so many families have to sacrifice so much,

having a basic sense of faith in the people making the decisions on the war is fundamental to morale and the prosecuting of the war and also challenging strategic concepts and challenging the conduct. And I think on those two points, Netanyahu has been a dismal failure. Netanyahu is somebody who has never not been politicking. And to a tragic extent, there are victims in this war he won't meet. Niroz, famously Kibbutz Niroz, one of the three great massacres of October 7, has invited him to visit. Everyone has gone to visit. People to the far right, it's a left-wing kibbutz, people to the far right of Netanyahu have gone to visit.

Sometimes there were shouting matches. Usually they ended in hugs. There's real trauma there. the kibbutz was either killed or taken hostage, many more wounded, and Netanyahu refuses to go. He won't interview to the Israeli press. That's not a joke. That's a very serious point. From Tel Aviv is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Welcome back to face the nation, sir. Thank you. Good to be with your Netanyahu. Thank you so much for joining us. Mr. Prime Minister, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you for coming. Prime Minister Netanyahu, thanks so much for joining me. That's my pleasure. He did this round when he put out a book. He did this round in America of all the podcast. So all my friends with podcasts in America all had Benjamin Netanyahu on the podcast. And I listened to the podcast and they all asked him questions. There were totally reasonable questions if you're an American podcaster. But I wanted them to ask him a few other questions and nobody was going to. They didn't even know to. Why would they? They don't speak Hebrew. They're living in a different world. So Netanyahu

has actively avoided discoursing with the Israeli public as he makes decisions on life or death. I think his call on hostages is correct. And that's the most painful call he's had to make and he's consistently made the correct call. But nobody, nobody. 60% of the country doesn't believe that he's making the call honestly because it's the right military decision, because it's the right strategic decision. They think he's playing politics with the lives of hostages. That's a tragedy. And I speak as someone who thinks he made the right decision. So Netanyahu has failed us miserably on some really fundamental things involved in leadership in wartime, and on the actual war has either made the right decisions most of the

time or allowed the security establishment to do what it knows how to do. Not getting in the way of a war is not a small accomplishment. I don't mean that as a joke. A leader who knows how to let the army do what it knows how to do is also an important thing to have. So it's complicated. I say I don't do politics, but war is politics by other means. Israel is a special political environment. I don't understand it all. I barely understand my own system of maintaining political power to prosecute the war. I definitely understand the Sib-Mil relationship. Even with that, when I ask the IDF, why aren't you explaining the plan? Well, you need to ask the politician. And you ask the politician, why aren't you explaining the plan? We need to ask

the military. And it's a special young country at war still figuring out this question of Sib-Mil or civilian leadership of the military question, I don't like the general that says, just stay out of my way, let me execute the war. And in this very war, there are a couple of, used to be generals who have said that something should have happened.

And my firm belief is, if Netanyahu would have made that decision like that, a lot of people would have died. So I want to, this process is probably more for Haviv, though I'd really love it if you answered too, John. It's up to you, which is, okay, So, but there seems to be one challenge is that no one looms as large in Israeli politics as Netanyahu. Let's say he stepped down tomorrow, which is not going to happen.

But let's say he did. Who fills in the vacuum? I mean, there's a war. My first choice is for him to do what he needs to do to properly lead the people the war and not to show us this unbelievable political cowardice when everybody else. and Israel's being unbelievably courageous. So that'd be my preference. And I'm not calling for elections.

Who would do better? The problem with who would do better, and it's the right thing for right-wingers to say, because the Israeli center left, the Israeli opposition, has really demonstrated utter and total incompetence over the last 19 months. A prime minister oversaw October 7, and the Israeli opposition has been unable to make

political headway on that is how bad the Israeli opposition. I'm sorry, it doesn't matter who you support in Israeli politics, I'm going to hurt your feelings right now. The opposition has been unable to move forward. I think the opposition should have massively doubled down on on flanking Netanyahu from the right and being very hawkish and calling for serious escalation vis-à-vis Iran and taking that hawkish tone. By the way, that's the classical Israeli left. domestic questions, left-wing, and very hawkish. All the wars in which Israel conquers, expands, succeeds massively, and crashes the enemy just in the battlefield, have all been fought by the left. And all the problematic, complicated wars in which nobody quite knows if we won

in the end up running away have been fought by the right. The left could have reclaimed the legacy and didn't. So it's absolutely correct to say, okay, but who would be better than Netanyel? Here's my answer. And it's not specific to Netanyahu. Anybody would have been better than Netanyahu. And I'll tell you why. There used to be a political culture in Israel of a weak prime minister and very powerful ministers. A prime minister would be in the middle of this coalition, and each minister would have

a real fiefdom. The minister of foreign affairs would actually be interfacing with the American president and be the foreign affairs of the country. The minister of defense would be the person running a war. The minister of the interior would be under Netanyahu over the last 15 years, most of the grand strategic functions of government have been concentrated around Netanyahu. Diplomatic relations that matter, for example, the United States, Emirates and Saudi and Turkey, all of that has either been moved to the National Security Council or the Mossad, which are directly under the prime minister. Who is the foreign minister of Israel right now? It is, sir.

I'm sorry? Did he answer? It was Katz. But what is he now? Guilla and Sal, but why did you, where's Katz? Why don't you know that? And I asked that because 20 years ago,

you would have known, if you would come to an Israel lecture, the foreign minister of Israel is the number two men in Israel, number three person in Israel. What do you mean you don't know? They're prime minister because they're about to be prime minister. Everybody knows who the foreign minister is. Defense minister. Everybody knows.

Now people don't know because they actually don't do anything. What's Giedon Tsar's actual remit? What is he actually charged with doing? Relations with Argentina, nobody quite knows what he's supposed to be doing because it's all been concentrated. Under Netanyahu, we've had a culture of concentration of power around him. By the way, things he doesn't have the bandwidth for don't happen. That's another problem. And that needs to change.

We need more ministers with more responsibility, more ministers who do more, and a weaker prime minister, That's the system that built the Israel that is this astonishing success story. So anybody? I ain't touching it. Okay. So you mentioned the eternal appropriate monster under the bed, which is Iran. I don't even know what question to ask. Iran, question about it.

Let me ask John a question. I have been assured by some Israelis that we can do quite a bit of, bit of damage in Iran to the regime, to the regime's economic foundation. The IRGC owns a lot of the energy sector. That's all exposed to us. But we can't actually set back the nuclear program in a serious way without American help. Is that correct? I don't think so, personally.

I mean, people, one, a lot of people like to talk. I have this thing called experts. I mean, they're on X and they think they're experts, but they're. Well, wait a second. That's everybody I know. I'm on X, but you know, this ideal that you can know and answer that question in the open class world versus, you know, like these people are designating the Houthi missile hypersonically we're talking about. I like, I don't think that's the way this works. And I haven't been that.

I think Israel could and has shown the capability to include what, and I have an article coming about what they did in Syria that kind of was a blip. but for me it was significant from a military capability. You can dig something deeper and deeper under the ground where a bunker buster can't reach it. And we do have bunker buster that have nuclear tips on them to go deeper and deeper. Nobody wants to see that, of course, because for some reason we've changed the acceptance level of the use of a certain type of munition. I believe Israel could do it that would set it back a certain amount of time.

Could they completely destroy it? There are a couple sites that are very deep, but that's, again, and all the assumptions go, well, you can only do it by air, It's all about political risk acceptance and what are you willing to do like when in 2018 you send a bunch of people into an Iranian site and steal all their plans and everything. That was a bold political risk. I think they could do it. For me, to answer the question on Iran though is I lost soldiers in Iraq to Islamic regime

and Iran forces in Iraq killing American soldiers. The foreign policy and sanity that's been going to. going on for a decade with the Islamic regime in Iran, no matter what they say, the fact that they have a countdown to the destruction of Israel in Tehran still, and that their goal is to destroy Israel, then America, and the pursuit of that is their nuclear weapons. The fact that all this is allowed to me is insane. Or the ideals, and it can apply to terrorism as well, but with the Islamic regime specifically, is that just give them things, they'll change their ways.

No matter what they say to you, they're really good people and they really want good things for their population. So just give them more money. It's insane. We've reached a point where something has to be done and a can can't be kicked down the road anymore. It's weaker than it's been in a very long time thanks to Israel with this proxy force where it's one thing it doesn't invest in.

One is luckily they invested in Russian air defense system. because that's a great sense that's a great um and Israel showed that was return to sender all that stuff but what Iran doesn't do is invest in its own defense it doesn't invest in its military doesn't have an air force it invest in subjugating this population so it's its main resources are for that and a nuclear weapon that they only want for one reason it has to be stopped and I think we've hit that point it hopefully. I hope it's not a strategy, but I also know that it's not black and white of

destroy it now, let Israel destroy it now, Israel and the United States destroy it now. I know it's not that simple, but it's come to the time when you cannot kick the can anymore. And just to underline and bottom line it, you are firmly of the belief Israel can do it without the United States. Not without the United States knowing. you can't overfly Iraq without sentcom knowing, but it has the capabilities of doing it

without American firepower and America riding shotgun on the attack. My answer is yes and it would come at a very big cost. This gets back to the awful situation Israel has to put itself in for its survival is what is it willing to sacrifice for the survival of the many?

Could you do it just by, can Israel do it just by air, although they just did things with F-35 that nobody thought was possible to include putting bombs on the winks that the Americans never envisioned. Could they do it only by air, I think unlikely?

I only do unclassified work. Could Israel do it by itself without U.S. help? Yes. But then it risk being alone. And this is again, Mike Tott with Netanyahu is the president of the United States yelling at the prime minister of Israel

saying, if you respond to Iran's attack, I will not help you in any way defensively. That's a level of risks that Israel had to take even to respond to the biggest cruise missile attack on another nation in history. Could they do it by themselves, yes, at a very great cost that I don't know they're willing to take?

Not just by air power, though. So that's what I'm trying to lead to. It's like, you could do it. There are a couple sites that would be hard to do by air. So you both said that we're at the moment. moment is to happen insanity we haven't gotten there and you said it but he implied it that he agreed with you I agree great I was catching now I was catching the vibe but as far as I know neither of you are in the room with the button to push to say go get the sites so do you think

that it is necessary but do you think there is will in the Israeli and American Insta uh... uh... administrations to make this happen now? Well, luckily you're not interviewing Tucker Carlson For like a lot of reasons, yes So you're asking what is the Americans will To do what's been necessary for a very long time I think it's there but this is the I almost actually don't disagree with showing the population

That you have tried everything else before you take that last step Which is a giant risk This isn't a last step as in it drags us into war It just comes with other risks that were not avoidable in any other way. You have to convince the American population like we were talking about Israel's population about communicating why it's a

national security threat to the United States for Iran to have a nuclear weapon and the intercom an ICBM program because why does it want that all these things but we have to show them that we showed the American population

to include our fringe elements that it was absolutely necessary. Is that the question? If I understood you quickly, you said, basically you're not sure, and you think if the administration want to do that, they would have to convince the American population that it's what needs to happen.

Is that a fair? I mean, I'm sure it needs to happen, John Spencer's opinion. Right, right, right. I'm sure, in order to do it, war is politics. We live in a political environment. there's always all these different costs of using force. You have to convince everybody that it was very necessary and there was no other alternative

because the alternatives have been tried. The problem here is the time factor because yes, you can economically sanction them and cripple them with the sanctions. You can get the snapback sanctions in Europe and you can do all these things. And then you can go into negotiations and you have inspectors

and you could drag this out another five years. that's why I don't want to see you in this convincing process. I just want to convince you tried, and there's been a lot of good leaders saying, we're not talking about not having a nuclear program. You're not going to have an enrichment program, period. I don't know. I don't know if there's a will. Every conversation I have with, I don't have deep sources in the American administration

or the federal government. It's not my beat, almost ever. But people who do don't know. And they don't think Trump knows whether he is willing to. You know, Marco Rubio, I think, understands the threat. But who is Trump listening to at any one time? And which part of the Republican Party is winning in Trump's White House? We simply don't know.

there does appear to have been. This is something we've heard from Israeli officials, and I don't know to tell you how true this is, how accurate it is, whether the nuances are correct, but that in the Netanyahu Trump conversations, what Trump was interested in, and again, this is secondhand, was what they called a home run.

In other words, Trump would be more amenable, allegedly, to a strike, to a shared strike of some kind, if the Israelis could show a serious plan in which this would be a massive visible success without massive long-term costs. And that would they call it home run. I don't know if Trump called it that or if people around Trump called it that in front of the Israelis would be something if the Israelis could present it that would be. Now, some of Netanyahu's people have been briefing Israelis and saying,

no, no, don't worry, Trump's with us. Whitkoff did what? No, no, Trump's with us. They just now decided to stop the fight with the Houthis because the Houthis suddenly ducked out of the fight with the Americans. And they're leaving the Israelis alone in the fight, which, by the way, I am totally okay with. I really enjoyed our last round with the Houthis. And if us keeping the Houthis busy, too busy to tolerate an American assault meant that the Houthis have suddenly stopped bombing international shipping, you're all welcome. And if a bunch of flowers, now, as J.D. Vance famously told the world on Signal,

only 3% of your actual imports go through the Straits of the Red Sea, the Red Sea, thank you. The Babel Mandab Straits. Only 3% of yours, but 40% of Europe's. So I'm expecting flowers from the German Chancellor any day now. but if that is right, what happened is that a signal that actually you're not with us on Iran, you are with us on Iran. Periodically, Trump keeps putting out these statements that says, me and BB, wow, we just talked. We agree on everything. It's a little too often.

And it's a little too on the nose, you know? And nobody asked. So I don't know. I don't know which way they're leaning. And I suspect Trump doesn't know. And Nizania keeps telling everybody, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. He's with us.

But of course, he would be saying that if he knew he wasn't with us. So I hope so. I hope so. The last time the Americans struck a amazing deal, victory for peace and freedom and joy and happiness for all humanity was with North Korea. And 10 minutes later, they had a nuke because nobody dismantled the infrastructure. Well, there was another international deal,

which was with Libya where they dismantled the infrastructure. And Libya can't have a nuke. If it's not dismantling the infrastructure, it's not a deal. I hope the Trump people know that. I know the Trump people might not know that because BB said it in a public speech to addressing essentially the Trump people. So the Israelis are really trying to help them guide the Americans in this direction. It's a little bit of a chaotic administration.

I don't know if you guys have gotten that vibe out of your government. But we're experiencing it on our issues as well. It's a little bit of a chaotic administration that nobody quite knows where it. it's going to fall on any particular policy. So I want to pivot back to the most important thing, which is us. There probably are a handful of Israelis in the room, but by a large, we're a North American Jewish population. What would you tell us?

What do we start as simple? Like, are there places we should be going for news? But more importantly, what does it look like for a North American lover of Israel population to support Israel in this crazy time. It's a good question. What has struck me about this period, it's a very Israeli moment. It's telling you about yourselves. All right, let's do it.

What has struck me about this moment is there's just astonishing number of October 8 Jews. October 8 Jews is a name that October 8 Jews came up. with to describe a sense of sudden awareness of Jewishness that they know that's not that they didn't know but it didn't matter because there's life and I've been getting emails from every corner of America and some of my colleagues are getting more emails than I've been getting from people just trying to figure out what it means that there's suddenly anti-Semitism in America I mean raw the real thing I mean crazy people in love with Hitler, getting two million views on YouTube.

And it's here and it's back. There was a week, a single week, about a month and a half ago, where on Rogan, on Tucker Carlson, just insane anti-Semites. We're the number one viewed thing in America that week. Ian Carroll goes on Joe Rogan. That's bigger than Fox News. and the young men watching it,

are they getting that Joe Rogan would later explain? I was curious how one becomes a conspiracy theorist. So I brought on an insane anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. Doesn't that ever happen to you? You're like, I wonder what conspiracy theory is. Let's go to the closest neo-Nazi in the neighborhood. It's back. And that's not even the dangerous part.

The dangerous part is that they're now ideologies that sound much, much better and actually feel righteous in the elites of America that claim that there's something about the Jews that is just the most evil thing that can be in the world right now. For example, did you know Israel was an ethno state?

It's an ethno state, which is a really bad thing to be. And I read this wonderful little article by somebody who put ethno state into a Google search term search. where the use of a term is given the amount of times it appears in text. And it turns out that ethno state is a very recent invention and applied 98% of the time to Israel.

There's no such category as ethno state. It's not a thing. It's a epithet invented for Israel. You know what else is an ethno state? Palestine. You know what else is an ethno state? Just about every single European country. Did you know that the Greece not only has an official religion?

and an official identified nation, it has a diaspora that it recognizes in law and a law of return for them? Why? Because it's an ethno state. But nobody cares at Greece has an ethnicity in law, in its constitutional sense of itself. That doesn't matter because it's Greece. But Israel, oh my God, it's an ethno state. So there is now an ideology that is wrapping up around the Jews all the evils of the world and arguing that something about Zionism is the distillation of all bad things. And we need to be. to therefore fight it because everything is Palestine, by which they mean everything is Zionism, by which they mean everything is Jews. This is a very old idea. And it's an old idea of other

religions that took us and saw in us the thing holding back the redemption of the world. And it's this ancient, ancient idea and it's back. And what that has done is driven participation on college campuses by Jewish kids in Jewish groups on campus up from about 15% to about 40%. What that's done is sent about a third of all Jews in America. This was a poll out a couple weeks ago who say we have now gone to more Jewish community events, more Jewish community institutions. Folks, the October 8th is millions of people. I think that's awesome. I think we owe the anti-Semites the very bouquet of flowers that the Germans are going to send us for opening shipping in the Babelmandu Straits.

So I would like Joe Rogan to invite me on, any Jew on a rabbi, probably, if it's going to be a representative of Jews. I think you should invite us on, and we should have a chance to say thank you to the anti-Semites. Shad, would you also like to thank the anti-Semites? I do, because I do war for a living, and you need to know who you. your enemy is. And anti-Semitism is the enemy that's shown his head in America and other nations horribly, Canada, Australia, Germany, UK, you name it. Of course, you get a, we have to clean house ourselves.

The question is about Israel. Of course, we also have an attack on authority who are experts to listen to. We have an attack on institutions. Don't trust anything they need the institution, especially Israel, because it's Israel. So trust Hamas more you trust Israel. Trust, you know, said anti-Semite online more than you trust mainstream media. It's a major problem. And for me, an attack on critical thinking when I have a 12-year-old son who's got me as a dad

but come home and asks, is Hamas the good guys? That's a very endemic problem that's beyond being supportive of Israel, but also just, of course, as a war guy, I like when the enemy shows me where they are so I can direct and attack. And I think there's a lot of that happening. The big thing for people always wonder, what can I do? Of course, is to fight. So fight every lie, fight every creative narrative that gets spun, which is actually historical revisionism, trying to rewrite the history of Israel, rewrite the history of the other groups that are,

we could get into. Number one thing is to fight every story that you can, fight every lie and fight the enemy. And right now, in America, that's anti-Semitism through BDAs and student groups

and all these things within our communities. We have to all fight. Can I add to that? Because I think John just referenced one of the most amazing things about American Jews. Jews arrived in America and discovered in America

the first time ever in the history of Jews that they could actually become the local thing, America. In other words, you all feel American and you've already been feeling American for six generations

so you don't know that that's an absolutely unique experience in the history of Jews. Jews for centuries live in Russia but never got to be Russian. Jews for centuries or for a couple of centuries deluded themselves into thinking they were becoming German. No German was confused on this question. And that's true of Iraq and Yemen and Morocco. And then the Jews come to America.

And for the first time in the history of Jews, America says to them, welcome, you're American. America is different. And you don't see that anywhere more explicitly and clearly than in that Jewish experience of America. And now when American Jews suddenly feel what like Jews again, I know I just said, yay, that's a bad thing in the sense that American Jews are suddenly, maybe back in history, back in Jewish history. So maybe the takeaway, I'm just riffing off of what you said, the takeaway is fight for America.

Fight for Jews, great. I'm a big fan of fighting for Jews, invite me to speak. But fight for the America that for a century and 140 years or so, be. became a home to American Jews unlike any home the Jews had ever known. And so there is a culture war now. There is a big war for the meaning of America, whether you're allowed to love America. Yes, you are.

No compliment has ever been paid to any nation in the history of the world greater than the American Jewish experience of America. So maybe American Jews need to join that fight for what America is, for the character of America. Maybe that's the answer. Because you want to save yourselves, you've got to save America. If America remains what it is, you're fine.