The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Alan Dershowitz Defends Israel

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

Alan Dershowitz has been called 'the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer' and one of its 'most distinguished defenders of individual rights,' 'the best-known criminal lawyer in the world,' 'the top lawyer of last resort,' and 'America's most public Jewish defender.' He is the author of forty books including seven bestsellers.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99. Raw comedy, formerly Raw Dog, and wherever you get your podcasts. Dan Natterman here, comedian. They announced that change of the channel on X, formerly known as Twitter, but go ahead. Okay. And we have Noam Dorman, the owner of the Comedy Cell, the ever-expanding comedy cellar. This always seems to be in the headlines somewhere.

We have Periel Ashenbrand with us as well. We haven't got much time. Let's get to it. So you were saying that you thought that Periel was saying that Aaron Mate deserved to be thrown off the train, the reporter, because he was... Harassing. Because he was... Harassing. Peppering the senator.

Which senator was it? I forget his name. With questions... About Gaza. Saying, would you... About his support for Gaza. Yeah. What about the... peppering the senator, which senator was it? I forget his name, with questions. About Gaza, saying, would you- About his support for Gaza. Yeah, what about the- Well, was he peppering or was he harassing? He, by any definition, he was harassed. You might say he was harassing for a righteous cause,

but it was harassing- It was supposed to be the quiet car or something. Okay, well, even more so. I don't know if he wasn't being quiet, but this is what's so impossible about you, Perry. I remember back when people like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and various people who worked in the Trump administration were being harassed and not with questions, but like people coming in their faces while they're eating dinner and pointing at them and screaming at them. And I was like, you know, I think I don't really think that's a good idea. I think that people have a right to go out to dinner and be left alone.

And you're like, really? But, you know, they're committing all sorts of crime. They hate gay people and black people and Mexicans and they should be harassed. Well, that's true. Right. So, and, you know, and I am actually, there are limits. It's kind of, you know, when you see it, but the idea that a reporter, a journalist,

gets access to a senator on a train and asks him questions is the way the game is played. It's not asking him questions. And as I said, one man's aggressive journalist, one man's obnoxious journalist is another man's freedom fighter, right? On certain issues of our time, certain issues that you cared about, like if this was a senator. This is an issue I care about. If this was a senator who was against gay marriage. And

the reporter from The Advocate wanted her to say, well, how could you be against? Yeah, they should bother them. No, I don't think I would not be happy if somebody was harassing Norman Finkelstein. No, no, no should bother. No, I don't. I don't think I would not be happy if somebody was harassing Norman Finkelstein. Brother. No, no, no, no. Don't try to make me into a hypocrite. You are, but you are a hypocrite. So that doesn't mean.

Well, so what do you think? What do you think Amtrak should have done? I don't know. I wasn't there. I'm saying that maybe they were right for throwing off. Oh, they were right. No, no. Amtrak can be right for throwing him off,

but that doesn't mean I think Mate was wrong for doing what he did. Amtrak has its policies. Like I might do in the olive tree. I might throw him out of the olive tree too if he did that because I'm protecting my customers. That's my job. I'm not here as a defender of free speech. I'm here to protect my customers.

But as a journalist, to be a little aggressive, if he has access to a guy on the train and ask him a few questions, I'm like, yeah, that's a hard ball. That's where it should be. He asked a question. The senator said, please stop bothering me. Well, it's harassment. And you would throw, if somebody looks at a celebrity downstairs the wrong way, out they go. You rush in over there, your people, and they... No, don't. You can't breathe. You can't breathe on Ray Romano. Yes, but you understand that

people harassing stars. If somebody started screaming at you on the train for letting Louis perform here, I would not think that was okay. I'm just trying to get you to understand that the press has a certain important function in our society. Okay.

If you call the grays on the press, but I'll grant you that. Yeah. And journalism has a very, very vital function in our society. And the powerful do everything they can to insulate themselves from having to answer questions. So the press very often has to be a little aggressive and insert itself to try to get answers. And very often viral videos that we see go on or important videos are of an aggressive reporter badgering a guy on the street and he answers the call or following someone down a hall. Fine, I accept that.

It's the way the game is played. I don't see it. Well, this was badgering for the sake of badgering. The senator was like, I'm not talking to you. Please leave me alone. He said it several times.

You think after the third or fourth time. You only know his side of it. You only know his side. Have you heard Aaron's side of it? What's Aaron's side? I don't know. I can tell you Aaron's side. He's trying to go viral

and he succeeded. That's Aaron's side. What a cynic. Anyway, I'm not defending it. I wasn't there. I might have. go viral and he succeeded. That's Aaron's side. Oh, what a cynic. Well, anyway, I'm not, I'm not defending it. I wasn't there. I might've, I don't even know what you guys are talking about.

Yeah, I know that we knew that. I'm just saying, um, in some way, Dan, I fear that your position here comes in some way from the fact that Aaron Mate is a vehement,

uh, pro fire breathing supporter of Hamas. Is he really? He might, you know, maybe I shouldn't have said supporter of Hamas, but it does seem that way. You know, I did think that to myself. I thought that same thing. I said, what if this guy was civil rights and he's confronting Senator Wallace on the train and saying,

you know, why do you say separation now, separation tomorrow, separation or segregation? How would I feel about it then? Before it. Well, I'd be more sympathetic. Why are you having somebody who's a fire-breathing supporter of Hamas? Because I like to argue. No, Hatem, who hosts the other show I do,

asked me if I would do this thing with him. Hatem is Egyptian. And I said, yes, I'm regretting it already. Yeah, so am I. Only because it's emotionally taxing for me. But it's also like, look, part of the thing that's interesting is talking to people and actually having like a back and forth conversation. Right. Yes. Right. Yes.

Right. So, I mean, somebody, a self-described supporter of Hamas. It's a nom described. He didn't self-describe it. Self-described means he said it. I mean, I don't think he would agree with that character. I'm not sure. He definitely not.

Is he an anti-Semite? I mean, he's Jewish. I think his father is also like he is. Right. His father is another guy. I can't fucking deal with these people who are Jewish and support Hamas. Like, I cannot fucking deal with these people. Don't they understand?

Well, first of all, they don't characterize themselves as supporting Hamas. OK. I'm sure they would take issue with that characterization. Well, Finkelstein did. Yeah, in a weird way, he did. He said, I can't bring myself to condemn them. No, not at that. He said he was thrilled.

Well, he was likening them to Nat Turner's rebellion. No, he said that he was exhilarated by it when he heard it. I don't think he said he was exhilarated. He said he couldn't bring himself to condemn them. And then another time he said something. I noted it. I don't remember the exact word. I noted it. I don't remember the exact word. I noted.

I think I think. Yeah, he I. His heart soared like a hawk. He didn't say that's what the Indian, the Native American says in a little big man that doesn't happen. But he did say that he couldn't bring himself to condemn them like an event in that Turner. He absolutely said more than that. I don't know. I don't know if it's because I like Mr. Finkelstein or because.

Yeah. Or because I felt like you could actually have like a conversation with him. Like when I said to him, well, what if you're wrong? And he allowed for that possibility. So you can have different opinions from people. Perio put so much stock in that. He's not going to say, I can't be wrong. No. He could have absolutely said like he could have said many things.

All right. Okay, whatever. Go ahead. Finish your point. No, I just, I can't deal with these fucking people who are, I don't know why you're having this guy here. It's actually infuriating. Why do you need a Hamas supporter coming in here and talking on anybody's show?

Well, let's see if he's a Hamas supporter coming in here and talking on anybody's show. Well, let's see if he's a Hamas supporter. But the fact is that these people have millions and millions of people listening to them. And to the extent that we can chisel away at, you know, we live in an environment now, which is quite different than it was even 10 years ago, where people can live their entire life figuratively in terms of interacting with,

with media and information in a bubble where they never actually ever hear anything contrary to what they believe, nor do they even have anyone to tell them that what they're hearing is not true. I mean, this is not particularly insightful on my part. This is an issue that we're all dealing with. And in the past, when there were three networks and a few newspapers, everybody got their information from the same place. So the op-ed would have various opinions and there'd be various opinions on the TV show and whatever it is. So everybody was, was forced to kind of, to, to, to eat, to, to swallow a little bit of what they didn't think that they were inclined to

agree with. That's not the case anymore. So I think that it it's quite important that if I have, I don't know if I'm up to the task, but if people like Maté or Finkelstein will agree to talk to people like me, and they have that, at least their followers get to hear somebody say, you know, that's bullshit. You said, like I got to say to Finkelstein, you said that Iron Dome didn't work, and you said that Hamas was shooting up firecrackers you said that Iron Dome didn't work and you said that the Hamas

was shooting up firecrackers, that the Hamas rockets didn't work. That's a conspiracy. Everybody's in on it. And he changed the subject really quickly. But some people say, oh, you know. Right. Okay. You know.

Fair enough. Finkelstein also said, by the way, that the tunnels weren't for terrorists. I didn't get to play that one in that debate. I'm going to play it with Aaron. So there were other points that were scored on Finkelstein, and it's impossible to know what got through and what didn't because he has those rabid followers that write the comments on YouTube. But you can tell by the tone of those comments that these people were never going to be persuaded by anything. Let alone facts.

Let alone facts. But there is a certain percentage of people who are open to hearing facts. And maybe what they hear me say doesn't convert them or change their opinion, but it's a straw on their back as a camel. And at some point people say, oh, you know, I heard Dom say that, or they'll go and they'll read about something. I mean, listen, this is the fiction

that our country is based on, is that debate and cross-examination is the best way to arrive at truth. Well, I give you credit for that. I do give you credit for that. I'm not sure about your camel example, though, given what we're talking about. Camel.

Well, actually, the Jews were only allowed to ride donkeys. Well, you know, on a related note, Dino Badal is there having an Arab American comedy festival. And like in the ad, they have a camel. And I was about to write like Dean, come on, a camel for the Arab American comedy festival. But I didn't feel it was my place. Why not camel they ride camels in the middle east well it just seems so obvious like a slur against like israelis and against arabs isn't there some like ethnic

slur that a camel have you been to the middle east there's camels everywhere yeah okay so what that doesn't mean that it's also not like, I don't know. I'll look it up. I'll get by the word. I'm not going to say the word is, there is a word that involves. You're thinking of camel toe.

No, he's not. She's not. But that is actually one of my favorite things to say. Yeah. A good camel toe. That's a good name. He should call it that.

He should call it camel toe. Camel toe comedy. What time is there coming? He should be here. Well, no, he wraps exactly at six. Hold on. Let me ask for the Dershow. The Dershow. I call the Dershow because it's spelled D.E.R. S.H.O.W. Yeah, I show. But in my head, it's Dershow.

Dershow. It's a Dershow. I know it's a Dershow, but in my head, I'm thinking it's. So he didn't write back yet. That's very out of character for him. Hold on. I'm going to text him. What's his number? Let's dox him. Alan Dershow thinks that the pro-Palestinian

people should be doxed, right? Didn't he say something like that? I don't know. He didn't say that. He didn't say that. Well, I was having this discussion with you the other day about the video of the woman taking down the the flyers you know the the the kidnap yeah i'm okay with that okay i was surprised that you were okay with that because i i just figured you know you you just generally don't like the internet mob as a tool of justice i don't but if you are well i guess i guess i'm far they take it but uh is that him but um you know if you if you if you rob a candy store and somebody catches on video they

post it so why if you take it on the flyers uh you know you're you're you're you're you're choosing to publicly commit an act as opposed to as i don't think people should be doxxed from things that they intend to when they when doxed from things that they intend to when they're engaged in something that they intend to be private or they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I signed an anonymous letter. I feel like you have a right to sign an anonymous letter. If we find you out, I don't believe in doxing you. But if you on the street do something that's probably some sort of violation as well. That's on you. Why? Why? We don't have to respect your privacy.

Then you're not trying to be private. That to me is the difference. That doesn't. Why is no, it makes sense. It makes sense. But it makes sense. But, you know, I don't know. You're creating a potential for a punishment in excess of the crime, depending on how bad you view the crime. Well, yeah, that's I agree with that. I hope, um, I don't think, I don't think people should be fired and stuff for that side there. I mean, look, I don't know. It is pretty ugly to take down.

Yeah. These posters of sympathy. I mean, they have now become political, but that's because the people tearing them down, turn them into a poster of a kidnapped baby. Be political when I mean, there are people who are saying this is fake. This is Israeli propaganda, right? Like that these people don't exist. So like what? there's some big

fucking- Now you're describing it, why it's political. Okay. But you know what I mean? It's just the stupidest thing in the world. There are like thousands of family members all in the streets. Like this is made up, like this is like one big conspiracy theory. Like how stupid do you have to be to believe that regardless of what you think politically? Well, conspiracy theories are another pet peeve of mine with a lot of conspiracies conspiracy theories that have been too much tolerated for too long you know and that's that's one thing i've been pretty consistent about even with people i agree with like with you know i don't like the conspiracy theories and we're coming from it now is that Is that him, Nicole?

Okay, good. All right. We're about to be joined by Alan Dershowitz, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. Emeritus? I think so. It's Nabokov. And one of the foremost experts on constitutional law.

One of them. I guess. I don't know. The enough kick. And. One of them. I guess. I don't know. The enough kick. And here he is now, I think. I'm around. Here I am. Oh, hey, Alan.

Good to have you back. Before we get into it, is this an emotionally trying time? I've been feeling some severe ups and downs during all this. How are you feeling? No, it's emotional for me. You know, The fact that I taught students for 50 years at Harvard, and now some of these same students and same faculty members that I was colleagues with are praising Hamas for their wonderful military action in raping, beheading, burning, and kidnapping babies. These are guys I sat next to at lunch. I had no idea they held those obnoxious views. You know, now they say, oh, it's a ceasefire that they want. But they

started this before there was any fire to cease. Most of these attacks on Israel came the day after the brutal murders on October 7th. The National Lawyers Guild, for example, one of the most despicable anti-American, anti-civil liberties groups in America, the National Lawyers Guild, on the 8th of October, issued a statement really commending Hamas and talking about how it was a wonderful military action, and talked about how Israel should free all the Hamas prisoners, including the mass murderers, but didn't say a word about the hostages, and said that America should not normalize relationships with Israel, and basically called it a genocidal state. This is the National Lawyers Guild, people I've worked with over the years. And from my mind, these are

Hitler's youth, some of these in colleges. They're making such outrageously bigoted and anti-Semitic statements that it really gets me upset. I don't talk about October 7th. Everybody else is talking about October 7th. I talk about October 8th because that's where the real tragedy existed. And I have a new book coming out. It's called War Against the Jews. There's the cover with an endorsement by the president of Israel. And, you know, it deals with October 8th and what happened after October 7th, primarily because everybody knows about October 7th.

But people don't know as much about what's going on on college campuses and all over the world. So, Alan, you may remember one of our last conversations, but for a long time I had been feeling that, you know, when the Jews were complaining about the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene said something about a space laser and that Donald Trump said the Jews need to be more concerned about Israel. And this was, you know, five alarm fire anti-Semitism to our to our Jewish brothers and sisters. has been the bulwark for us on Israel for a very, very long time, which has been allowing the Jews to indulge their social justice id on the left among progressives under the sway of a doctrine of an ideology of intersectionality, which was axiomatically anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Axiomatically. And now this has really come

out into the open. Am I right? You're absolutely right. And the villain is not only, it's part of intersectionality, but the villain is this new reckoning that occurred after the murder of George Floyd. And we needed a reckoning. But what happened is university spent billions, not millions, not hundreds of millions, billions of dollars creating a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel bureaucracy called diversity, equity, and inclusion. Now, the goal of diversity, equity, and inclusion is not to have diversity, no diversity of ideas, only diversity of skin color, no equality. Equity is the opposite of equality. It means preferential treatment based on identity, politics, and exclusion. In fact, these bureaucracies explicitly exclude Jews.

Jews are not part of the DEI experiment. That's one thing. The other thing I want to do, and I'm on a campaign for this, and I think many of your listeners and viewers will disagree with this, I want to abolish every single ethnic studies department in every major university. I don't want black studies. I don't want women's studies. I don't want gay studies. I don't want Jewish studies. I don't want women's studies. I don't want gay studies. I don't want Jewish studies. I don't want any ethnic studies departments. These ethnic studies departments have been at the forefront of anti-Semitism, bigotry, and stupidity, lack of education. The idea of a critical race theory, it's not critical. Critical race theory just says whatever Blacks do is good, whatever Blacks don't do is bad. The perfect manifestation of it was the Attorney General

of New York when she was talking about the Trump administration. She said they were too male, too pale, too pale, and too stale. Can you imagine a white candidate running against the black administration saying too dark, too female, and too young? Nobody would allow them to get away with that. But now with this double standard created by these university bureaucracies that teach bigotry, we're destroying our universities. I agree with you. This kind of casting aspersions on, we've heard enough of white men and white this and whatever. It was never because I was particularly offended that it hurt to be called, not that I even identify with being white, but that it was horrible to see the intellectual basis of the civil rights movement, because there was a profound intellectual basement that a child understands. It's wrong to judge

people by the color of their skin. That had been undermined and thrown out, and now people were left to blow in the wind that it's okay to judge anybody you want by any standard you want, as long as it's not, as long as it's white, not, not black people. Much worse than that. Today, it is an aggression to quote Martin Luther King, who said, I dream of a time when my children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That is now an aggression. That is called racism. If you say equality or meritocracy, you can be fired by this D-E-I bureaucracy. It's turned everything on its head, everything upside down. And people have no sense of right and wrong. That's why they can

say, well, Hamas, they're just freedom fighters. Yeah, they have to rape women. They have to cut off the heads of babies. They have to burn people. They have to kidnap people. They have to murder families together. Yeah, but, you know, that's the same as what Israel does. No, it's not. It's like saying what Nazi Germany did was the same as what the Allies did when they bombed Dresden or when they bombed Berlin. No, there's right and there's wrong. And our college students and our university students are being taught the opposite, that everything is based on identity politics, on skin color, on whether you're privileged. You know what group is the most privileged on universities today? People who are in the diversity, equity,

inclusion group. And the least privileged are Jews, Asians, Judeo-Christian supporters, and American patriots. Those are the ones who are least privileged on American campuses today. So let's turn to, because we don't have you for that long, to Gaza. Right now, as we're recording this, Israel is in the middle of its operation in the al-Shifa hospital. I'm very, I'm on pins and needles about it because, and you can explain it to us in a scholarly way. Hospitals are an allowed target of last resort. There's a high standard, as I understand it, to allow anybody to attack a hospital. And if the hospital is being used for military use, then it might be attackable, but it still has to be weighed against the strategic importance of the target against how many people are innocent people are going to die.

So what does Israel need to find, in your view, for them to be on firm ground to saying they met the burden to justify this operations into the hospital? Absolutely nothing. They don't have to find anything. All they have to do is have a reasonable that they would find it. I just want to read you a little bit from a Wall Street Journal editorial yesterday. On December 8th, 2016, the U.S. government issued a statement, Coalition Strikes Mosul Hospital. The Islamic State was using the hospital, and they went in and they captured all the people. They were praised by Human Rights Watch. They were praised by Amnesty International. They were praised by

the New York Times for doing it. The people who were condemned were the ISIS fighters who were misusing the hospital. That's the war crime. It's a war crime to use a hospital for military purposes. Yeah, I understand. And I understand your argument. I'd actually thought of it myself that if they had a reasonable if they had reasonable if they had reason to think

it would be explainable, but that's a tough sell. But leaving that aside, what is what they found so far? If they had perfect knowledge and it was only what they found so far, would that have been sufficient?

They found a cache of weapons. They found some grenades. Were there tunnels, a network of tunnels underneath? Not yet. They have not uncovered the tunnels yet. I presume they will, but. No, they will.

Look, what Israel did in the al-Shifr Hospital will be taught by objective professors of international laws of war as the perfect way to go into a hospital. They went in not with the bombs. They went in with individual soldiers who risked their lives. There was a firefight outside. They killed some Ham firefight outside. They killed some Hamas people. They went inside. They interrogated young men to find out if they were members of Hamas. Very, very few people were killed. As far as I know, no patients were killed. And they went and they discovered this cache of weapons. And they are continuing to discover

more and more information, enough to know that the hospital was being used and enough to know that the doctors, and they're the real villains, the doctors in the hospitals who pretend to be the good guys, they're the ones who allowed Hamas to operate. And then they went on television and they lied through their teeth saying, we've been in this hospital 10 years. We've never seen a Hamas fighter. Israeli video showed yesterday a Hamas fighter carrying an RPG right into the hospital, walking right into the front door of the hospital. And everybody acknowledged that that was the case.

But these lying doctors who are complicit, as well as the UN is complicit. You know, you hear 200 UN people have been killed. Yeah, a lot of them are complicit with Hamas. They work closely with Hamas, just like the health authorities, the Gaza health authorities work closely with Hamas. If you look at the 11,000 alleged people who were killed by Israel. First of all, Hamas doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants. So among the 11,000 are people who perpetrated the massacre of October 7th. And if you start eliminating all the Hamas fighters, all the civilians who were complicit and who allowed their houses to be used, you're probably down to about 2,000 civilians, actual civilians

who were killed. And any actual civilian or young baby or child is a terrible, terrible tragedy. But it's all the fault of Hamas. Let me give you an example. Let's assume that I go to rob the bank and I'm caught and the police come in and start shooting at me and I grab you and I hold you as a hostage and I shoot from behind you and I start killing tellers and customers. And a brave policeman takes aim at me, tries to kill me, but kills you by accident. Who's guilty of that murder? Not not the police officer, even though the bullet that came out of his gun killed the person. The person holding the hostage is guilty. And the same thing is true

with Hamas. The fact that they're using human shields, it's Hamas that's guilty of the death of every single human shield, as long as Israel takes reasonable precautions to try to minimize the death of civilians. That's what the concept of proportionality is all about. So two things. First of all, as for the doctors, I hope that, I tend to agree with you, I hope that none of them just feel that they can't say anything because Hamas will slit their throat as soon as they find out.

Yeah, there's some of that. But there's also doctors who are complicit. And the UN, UNRWA. Let me give you an example. Israel offered to take all the babies from the NICU, from the ICU, and they were turned down. Now, you're telling me that Israel, maybe the most advanced medical care in the world, couldn't take babies safely into ambulances? Of course they could have. They didn't want to allow the babies to leave.

Israel brought in incubators to help transfer the babies. Also, they have arranged for a French hospital ship to be docked outside of Gaza and getting the people out of the hospital. Israel has the right to empty these hospitals and to treat them as if they were military command centers, destroy what is necessary of the buildings, go down into the basement, find out how many layers there are. Apparently there are seven levels, and Israel has gone down to two or three, but they haven't gotten down to the seventh yet. And we'll see what happens.

But I'm convinced that this will be a model of how a nation under attack should deal with terrorists who hide. Now, the International Criminal Court has never once, as far as I know, and I've argued cases there, has never once condemned a country for using human shields. They condemn the people who then go in and kill the human shields. But it's the people who take human shields, who use human shields. That's the core violation of the international law of war. That fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants. And that ought to be condemned. And I say one thing.

And then so a little like two minutes ago, you said something which reminded me of another point that I wanted to make that I've been making. You were discussing the children that die and you stopped to say, of course, every child that dies is a tragedy. Of course. And that, um, that has always been the way decent people spoke about even their, the, the,

the children of their enemies when in the tragedy of war. And that speed bump for the first time in my life is gone when it comes to the Jewish people who have died. And this is what has shocked me. You've had people, but you do condemn, you ask them, but you do condemn the fact that they dismembered the Israeli babies. I'm not talking about that. They can't even utter that, which means that they don't feel it,

and not even for appearances sake. They don't even think that they'll look bad to their peers by refusing to say. Well, if you're in the National Lawyers Guild, which is a despicable anti-civil rights, anti-human rights, anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel organization. If you're in the National Lawyers Guild, your comrades will cheer you if you support the killing of babies, as long as they're Jewish babies, and as long as it's done in the interests of national liberation and the anti-colonialism and all of that. Let me tell you about the National

Lawyers Guild. Is this the first time in your lifetime that you've seen such anti-Semitism in America? Yes. And I wasn't, you know, around in 1939 when the National Lawyers Guild, which started as a leftist organization, became a communist front organization. They supported the Hitler-Stalin pact. They were on Hitler's side. Most of the Jews at that point left. But then after that, when the Soviet Union started to attack Israel, the National Lawyers Guild for the first time turned against Israel, even though they had supported its establishment as a state. They followed the Soviet Union line. They were a communist front organization.

Now they're a Hamas front organization. That's their life work. They support Hamas and they're defending Hamas. And on the day after this event occurred, they were the first people out there on the 8th. They weren't calling for a ceasefire because there was no fire to cease. They were praising Hamas for beheading and raping and murdering. Anybody who belongs to the National Lawyers Guild has to ask themselves the question.

Spoke to somebody today who's a member of the National Lawyers Guild. He said, well, I'm a member of the National Lawyers Guild, but I don't support what they said about October 7th. I said, then quit the damn organization or issue a statement. You can't say I'm a member of the Nazi party and don't support the, the genocide of Jews. You can't get away with that. The national lawyers guild is the modern day version of the American Nazi party.

Dan Allen. Can I ask you, um, to what extent is, uh, international law allow you to prioritize the lives of your own people? Say for example, the bombing of Hiroshima could say for example the bombing of hiroshima

could have saved 20 american soldiers lives but killed a hundred thousand uh or so uh japanese civilians um is that is what what is the ratio say going in as you said israeli soldiers are going into the hospital they They're risking their lives. They could have just bombed the hospital without risking Israeli soldiers' lives. Is Israel obligated under international law to risk their soldiers' lives if that means saving a lot of civilians on the other side? Well, that's the concept of proportionality. You have to ask yourself two questions for proportionality. One, what is the value of the military target?

Chifra Hospital, it's very high because it was the command center. And how many civilians will die? And then you have to evaluate the potential deaths of civilians, you never know for sure how many, against the military value of the target. So if Hiroshima had been a place which had military value, you might be able to justify it. But Hiroshima was a civilian town. The purpose of the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Tokyo were to tell the people of Germany and Japan to reduce their kind of moral standing and to say it's going to be worse. But it wasn't a legitimate target. And so those were not legitimate actions.

But if you have to bomb, oh, for example, when they bombed the Nazi cold water facilities in Norway, a lot of civilians were killed, but it prevented the Nazis from getting the atomic bomb. And that was proportional. And the same thing is true. If Israel has to bomb the Iranian nuclear reactor and they put the Iranian nuclear facilities under a hospital, Israel has the perfect right to bomb that hospital to prevent itself from being destroyed by an Iranian nuclear arsenal. So that's what proportionality is about. What mechanism does Israel or any other country use prior to executing these operations? Is there a whole legal debate going on, or is it the generals themselves that make it up on the fly? No, no. As distinguished in the United States, the Judge Advocate General of Israel has the final decision. A general cannot overrule a lieutenant from the legal

provision. In fact, it was a joke. When Israel got its new planes, you know, they used to have one cabin for the pilot, one for the navigator. The cartoon showed three, one for the pilot, one for the navigator, and one for the lawyer. So the lawyer controls whether you can drop a bomb on a target that may include civilians. And in Israel, unlike the United States, the United States, the Judge Advocate Corps is advisory. Mostly the United States complies with it. But in Israel, it's mandatory. A general cannot overrule a lieutenant from the legal division, and that's how they do it. And I have been I've actually been in places where the Israelis have made a decision not to go after a terrorist because they see a child on the road or they see the potential of a civilian. British in Afghanistan, no army complies with this rule of proportionality and distinction between civilians and military. No army does a better job of it than Israel. Now, you know,

when you put your combatants among civilians, it makes it much harder. When you put them in hospitals, it makes it harder. But Israel has done a very good job in trying to distinguish between it, and it gets condemned more than any other country in the world. As I said, the United States killed between 270 and 320 civilians in Iraq, and over 70,000 in Afghanistan and Syria. How many were killed by, obviously, the Syrian government? But you don't see protests against that. Just the protests today around the world are reserved for Jews and the nation state of the Jewish people. This is a modern day manifestation of Nazi propaganda against Jews, and it has to stop.

And you're not a good guy if you're singling out only Israel and you're condemning the nation state of the Jewish people without condemning other countries that are far, far, far worse how I first met you, you were arguing against the Iran deal. One of the things I thought at the time was that as we were coming into an age where our leaders only read about the past in books, where the past had become kind of a black and white movie to the color of our present, that it became hard for people to conceive of terrible things happening anymore. Like my father was of the generation who saw them happening. So he was very, and you're like that. And now that this has happened, the first thing I thought about, one of the first thing I thought about, well, if they'd had a dirty bomb, if Hamas had had a dirty bomb, would they have thought twice about using it? Of course not. Of course. Or an atom bomb. And if they can smuggle in all these other things,

they can smuggle that in too. So should this cause us to triple our resolve to never let Iran get an atom bomb? Should we learn from this what's possible? I would take it much further. I would say Iran today deserves to have its nuclear capacity destroyed by Israel and the United States. They are the villains here. They're the head of the snake. They're the ones who basically commissioned, supported Hamas and Hezbollah, they declared war on Israel. Israel has the perfect right to retaliate by destroying their nuclear capacity. And I hope they do, because as you say, imagine Iran is the worst exporter of terrorism anywhere in the world, and regards America as the great devil, Israel as the small devil. Imagine Iran with dirty bombs or nuclear bombs and giving them to their surrogate,

Hamas, Hezbollah and others. And so I think Israel not only has the right but an obligation to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. It's going to have to take care of Hamas first, but I think the second step, I think the three things that will make Israel victorious in this war, destroying Hamas, destroying Iran's nuclear capacity, and making that deal with the Saudis, that was the real reason for the events of October 7th. Iran was determined to destroy any possibility of a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And that deal has to be made to show Iran that they're not going to win through terrorism. Now, let's talk about Barack Obama. He made a comment that really, really bugged me. He started out by saying what happened and what Hamas did to the Israelis is terrible.

But it's also true that the occupation is unbearable, which reminded me is like saying to my wife, honey, there's no excuse for the fact I cheated on you. But it's also true that living with you is unbearable. I mean, you can't, it's obvious. And he's just using the first statement to talk about the occupation. How could he do such a thing? Well, it's despicable. Let me tell you another example. What if some racist said, oh, you know, the lynching of blacks in the South was really unacceptable. But the fact that blacks have a high crime rate is also unbearable and unacceptable. You can't make those comparisons. You can't do that. First of all, the occupation is all the fault of

the Palestinians. I did Ramallah from time to time because I have- Can I stop you there because I want to get off Obama because I just want to ask you one more question about Obama, then tell me because it's important to me. Why would he do that? He knows he knows how raw everybody he could say this is what Hamas did to Israel is no excuse for it. I know there's issues about the occupation, but today is not the day to talk about that. That's what he should have done. Now, look, why doesn't he do it? Look, I've known Obama since he was a student. And then he called me in the eve of the reelection campaign. I was in Israel. He asked me to come to the Oval Office. We sat there, we talked, and he promised me he wanted my support for the reelection. He said, Alan, you know me well, you know I would never deceive you.

And I'm telling you, I have Israel's back and Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. And I didn't realize when he said he had Israel's back, he meant to put a target on. And then before he left office, he allowed the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution declaring the Western Wall to be illegally occupied territory. It was despicable. And I think his true self came out in that statement. I think he did a good job disguising his anti-Israel feelings during his first term in office when he needed support. But once he was finished with elections, he's allowed his true feelings about Israel to come out. And they are not at all positive. And, you know, you say, he said the occupation is unbearable. You go to a city like Ramallah, where I've gone because I've met with the prime minister,

the president of the Palestinian Authority. It's the nicest city in all of Israel. White, beautiful stone houses, Mercedes all over the place, high-tech stores with the fanciest equipment, the best restaurants in all of Israel. You don't even know there's an occupation. There isn't a single Israeli soldier. There isn't a single Israeli policeman. It could be the Palestinian state on the West Bank. Now, life is probably unbearable in Gaza, but that's not the fault of Israel. That's the fault of Hamas. Hamas has made it unbearable. When Israel left in 2005, they could have made Gaza into the Singapore and the Mediterranean. They have the most wonderful seacoast. They have fishing. They have farming. But instead, Hamas had a coup, killed the Palestinian authority leaders, took over Hamas and turned it into what people call

an open air prison. It's not Israel doing that. That's Hamas doing that. And so Obama ought to get his facts straight. But his facts aren't straight because his heart's not in the right place. They were both elected and there was a coup. I'm not clear on that fact pattern. Here's what happened. There were two elections, one for the executive, one for the legislature, and Hamas won the legislative elections with the plurality. They didn't have a majority, but they had a plurality. And that wasn't enough for them. They wanted to take over. And so they killed the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, which was the executive. They were running the country the way the executive runs her, and they killed them all and exiled the rest of them, and then they took over and turned it into a caliphate where, you

know, gays are thrown off the roof. You know, my son is a brilliant young man, and he has an idea. Do you know what Birthright is? Birthright is a program that sends Jewish kids to Israel to see what Israel is all about. So my son has an idea of Birthright Gaza, to send all these groups, gays for Hamas, feminists for Hamas, send them to Gaza to see how feminists do and how gays do and how transgenders do. And as he said, it would be very inexpensive because you wouldn't even have to get a return ticket. You know, the idea that these gays for Gaza, gays for Hamas, I mean, what does Hamas think of gays? And what do they think of feminists? Hamas allows honor killings. In fact, encourages honor killings. If you insult, dishonor your man,

you get murdered. And that's what feminists want. We had your old rival, Mr. Norman Finkelstein, on a couple of weeks ago. And may, I assume he's not one of your favorite people, but in any case, he made the point that as soon as Hamas was elected, Israel then imposed a blockade and his, he made the point that Israel didn't give Hamas a chance before imposing the blockade. An absolute lie. What happened was this. Hamas took over a coup. Then 6,000 rockets were sent from Gaza into Israel. I know because my cousin is the chief rabbi of Sderot. And it was only after the rockets were sent, after Hamas attacked Israel, that Israel said, we have to control the borders. They still didn't

send a single soldier in. They just said, we're not letting rockets go in. We're not letting other items that can be used to make rockets to go in. And so they gave Hamas a complete chance. And by the way, they could have turned it into a Singapore paradise even before Hamas took over. But Norman Finkelstein has been a longtime supporter of Hamas. He loves Hamas. He said on October 8th that it warms every part of his heart to see these murders, rapes and robberies and kidnappings. He's a despicable anti-Semite. And, you know, he loves to say his mother was a Holocaust survivor.

His mother was a capo. His mother admitted that she did terrible things to survive. So I wouldn't be citing his mother as a Holocaust survivor any more than I would cite George Soros as a Holocaust survivor. He helped gather the property of Jews and gave them to the Nazis. So be very careful of claims by anti-Semites and anti-Israel people or groups like Jewish Voice for Peace. Jewish Voice for Peace isn't Jewish. They just use the term Jewish as a beard, as a cover. Norman Finkelstein isn't Jewish. He's Jewish on his parents' side, but he's an anti-Jew. He hates Jews and Judaism, but he says, oh, I'm Jewish, and because I say Hamas is wonderful, it must be wonderful.

No, no, that's not the way you judge people's ideas. No, I think that Norman Finkelstein is beneath contempt. The idea that these rapes, murders and kidnappings warmed. You should get that quote. It was the day after October 7th warms every part of his heart to see what these people were doing to Israeli babies. That's Norman Finkelstein. Yeah. All right. Perry, I'll know. I have I have a question. Hi, Alan. You answered one of them because you said that you have to go to Iran to kill the head of we rid Hamas in Gaza, what happens next? You can't kill an ideology. We killed Nazism. And we killed Nazism when we killed the Nazis.

And not only that, but Germany become America's strongest ally. Do you know the two countries in the world that were ranked recently as the most popular country, the most favorite countries in the world, Germany and Japan? And it was only after the United States got them unconditionally to surrender, total victory, that they turned around. So yes, you can kill an ideology if you kill the people who are spreading the ideology, particularly when it's an ideology of violence and terrorism. So I think you can. That's good news. That's very good news.

Except it's an outpost for the ideology. The ideology is spread around the entire Middle East. And that's what's daunting. American university campuses, you know, next time terrorism comes to America, we're going to have another 9-11. I guarantee you, it's coming to a theater near you because Hamas's, quote, success, and it's regarded as discussed by the radicals, is going to promote terrorism in the United States. When that happens, these college students from Harvard and from Columbia are going to put on green headbands, and they're going to support the

terrorism in the way that the radicals tried to blow up the University of Wisconsin back in the 70s and the late 60s and the early 70s, the way in which the people on 12th Street, the weathermen, tried to blow up Fort Dix. We're going to see that coming to the United States if we don't defeat Hamas in the Middle East. And that's why that ideology has to be destroyed because it's spreading all over the world. And I believe that, you know, I think about my own students. I remember reading about a professor in Germany, a Jewish professor in Germany, who was the favorite. I think he was a chemistry professor. He was the favorite professor at the University of Heidelberg, I think.

And he the students loved him and he loved the students. And the end of the story is he's marched into a gas chamber by one of his students. And I think about that because I looked at these students. They came to my office. They asked me for advice. And now what they're saying is they're praising Hamas and saying, gas the Jews and clean. I love the phrase, clean the world of Jews. That comes directly from the Nazis. Jews are filthy. Their verb is kill the Jews and clean the country of the Jews. These are my students, and it breaks my heart to know that I taught these people, and look how they've turned against civilized values. This is not a war between Israel and Hamas. This is a war between civilization and barbarism and civilization has to win.

We're going to wrap it up. Let's, let's be clear. And it's not, and by the way, it can sound like I'm saying this, you know, just for appearance sake, it can sound like I'm saying this just for appearance sake. It's not. It's unbearable to know that so many innocent people are dying. I have close friends who feel it even more acutely than I do because they're Palestinian. And nothing that we're saying today should be confused for any lack of sympathy. One of the lessons I think we're learning is war.

We never really understood how awful war was. We gradually began to understand it with Vietnam, but now we're fully immersed in it. But obviously, this is the way every war has ever looked. And probably worse, probably worse. Other wars were worse. Other wars were much worse. Babies. Now, you know, on October 7th,

I usually don't work on Saturday. I'm not religious, but Saturday is my day of rest. But on October 7th, the Saturday, I sat down, dropped everything and decided to write a book. And in 30 days, I finished this book called The War Against the Jews. And it's actually available now on Amazon. You can get it.

It will be out in two weeks. I think I may be in the Guinness Book of Records for the fastest book ever produced. And it has the story of everything starting from October 7th till today. Alan, what motivates you? It can't be money. It can't be money. For example, I'm giving all the money from this book. All of it is going to Hatzalah, which is an Israeli ambulance service consisting of Jews, Muslims, Christians that go into every community in 90 seconds and save the lives of Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists, anybody else.

So all the money is going to Israel. I never do anything for money. I do it because I feel deeply about this. I love America. I love Israel. I love liberty. And I want to devote. I'm 85 years old.

Thankfully, the good Lord has given me a little bit of energy to continue to do this. And I hope to be able to do it as long as I have the energy to do it. And when I get a cause like this, on October 7, I'm going to drop everything. And I'm going to devote myself to being on programs like yours to writing books. I've written 20 op eds in the last 20 days. So that's what I do. I can't go and volunteer for the IDF if I were 40 years younger, maybe I would, but instead I just write and I talk and I try to make the case for Israel. That's fantastic. All right. Well, we thank you very, very much. My regards to Ilan. I don't know if you know, but he and I from time to time exchange messages.

He's great. One who came up with the idea for a birthright for Gaza. Yeah. And I would like to schedule a real debate in front of an audience at some point. But the question is, who would we debate? It's hard to find somebody. You don't want to debate Finkelstein, I don't think. No, but I'll debate somebody from the National Lawyers Guild. All right.

Glenn Yerkey, who's one of the heads who wrote an article calling me a McCarthyite, because I said that law firms that hire people who support rape and murder have to tell their clients that they might be represented just the way they would have to do it if they had hired somebody from the Ku Klux Klan who supported lynching. You'd have to tell your client, oh, by the way, the lawyer we've assigned you supports lynching. Yes, we know you're Black, but you can deal with that, can't you? No, I think that if you're telling a Jewish client that he's being represented by a National Lawyers Guild person, you have to give them the chance to say, no, I won't. I don't want that. So I would be happy to debate her or anybody from the National Lawyers Guild. What's her name? Ellen Yaroslavsky. You can look her up.

I will. We'll find her. In the National Lawyers Guild. She's a professor at Hofstra University Law School. And in fact, I challenged her to a debate and I haven't heard back. All right, Professor Joshua, thank you very, very much. much and soon i'll be on your show i love talking to you guys you guys are terrific thanks for having you thank you bye-bye but that was really illuminating now you're a dorshowitz fan huge you used to be less uh your father distributed his book 20 years ago yeah the case for israel which i still have somewhere in my apartment. Well, I think here's the thing, Noam.

I think a lot of the things that I thought on October 6th are different than what I thought after October 7th. The deafening silence of people. And I don't know if that's worse. Is this your way of telling me I was right? Say it Perrielle. No, no, no. And just like everybody who got a PhD in geopolitics

and Middle Eastern studies on fucking TikTok and the rabid anti-Semitism. I mean, it's just... Do you remember how frustrated everybody got with me when I would not admit that Trump was a dangerous anti-Semite? And I would say, what are you talking about? We never had...

This is not pro-Trump policy or whatever, or even support of a president. I'm just saying, what is with our people that they're naming a town... They named a town after Trump in Israel. Okay, but listen. And we were, we, when the left was

making every indication of obvious anti-Semitism. There's a woman's march. You couldn't even march with the Star of David at a feminist march. This is 6-7. That's disgusting. And Trump comes out and says, you know you Jews, you don't pay enough concern for Israel. And this, you saw literally headlines.

Trump says anti-Semitic comment. Or he went to a meeting with some, you know, Jewish business executives and he made some joke about negotiating. You people know how to negotiate. It's something stupid. And they laughed, of course, because it's funny, right?

But because it was Trump, we had to make it, oh, he hates Jews. Never mind that his daughter converted to Judaism and Jared Kushner is, like, it's so, this is how crazy we are. I'm not telling you to vote for Trump. I'm just saying. Because it's not so much him so much, I think,

as some of the right-wingers that support him are scary people. Yeah, but the point, yes, yes, they are, I think, as some of the right-wingers that support him are scary people. Yeah, but the point, yes. Yes, they are, I guess. Yes, of course they are because the right-wing anti-Semites. But isn't it obvious now, although I've been saying it all along, that the left-wing anti-Semites are much scarier? I love how he said, although I've been saying it all along. To me, the right-wing Nazis were a bunch of weirdos

still working at Blockbuster Video, living in their parents' basements. They had no influence. They don't have any jobs. They don't work in any institutions. I mean, look. They're dregs. That's not what's so upsetting to me.

But they will shoot up a place from time to time. That's why they're scary. Go ahead. For more reasons than that. But that's, that's the only reason they're scary because, because, because they're more likely to pick up a gun than these colleagues. Well, they're also more likely to like kill a trans person and be anti, like all of the things I'm saying.

They're more. Okay. Right. And anti-abortion and all of that. But the thing that's more upsetting, don't put anti-abortion in the thing. I am going to put it in. No, that's making a mockery of things. You cannot compare a murderer to somebody who opposes abortion.

I'm not comparing it. I'm just saying that those are the things that I care about. And what's more upsetting to me is to see people that I've been fucking making excuses for and being like, oh, they're not really anti-Semitic. And then to hear them like Linda Sarsour and garbage like that. Jesus Christ, you sound like Ben Shapiro. You defended Linda Sarsour? Yeah, I have defended Linda Sarsour.

And I heard her speech the other day and it was just fucking disgusting and so anti-Semitic. And it's just appalling. You know, Maya Angelou said one thing that always, the only thing that stayed with me was when people tell you who they are, believe them. Not I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing? No. You know, that's, you know, that this is, you gotta

get rid of partisan politics, get rid of all this nonsense and see the truth in things. Because the truth outs. This was bubbling up all around us. I think that you should lock the doors before that fire-breathing Hamas activist. All right, take it. And by the way, being pro-Palestinian is not being anti-Semitic.

God forbid. I never in a million years have ever, nor would I ever suggest something of the sort. I am very pro the self-determination of the Palestinian people. I think it's an absolute tragedy. Every civilian and child's death over there is fucking heartbreaking. I have, as you know, spent an enormous amount of time in that part of the world. I have many Muslim and Arab friends. You've slept with a few Arab guys, as far as I know. More than a few?

No, it's just like I would never say that. And it's actually infuriating that that is even a suggestion that people would make, that you can't be pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian, anti-fucking Hamas. Where do you see the line, and I've asked this question before, between just hating Israel and hating Jews? Well, I don't know where the line is, but far short of that line for the people who can't utter any word of sympathy or were invigorated, as Alan makes exactly the right point. It was before the reaction where people were cheering atrocities.

That's clear. It's sick. It's actually sick. And how come nobody makes any mention of the fact that Hamas has, talk about when people show you who they are, believe them, has said over and over and over again that they are happy for civilians to get killed, that they need their civilians to die, and at any given opportunity, they will repeat October 7th over and over

and over again. They have said they do not want a ceasefire. They want a war. I liked you better. I liked the old Perrielle better. Yeah, well, she was better for radio maybe. Yeah, yeah. Because you could make fun of her. This is kind of like what happened to Morning Joe, and all of a sudden Joe became a

Democrat. It's like the end of MASH and all of a sudden Joe became a Democrat. It's like the end of MASH where Winchester became friends with Hawkeye. No. There's no rivalry anymore. I am not going to give up. Hot Lips became a good person. I'm not going to give up considering myself a quite left-wing progressive and thinker

and let these fucking psychopaths... Wait, wait. Progressive left-wing, and thinker and let these fucking psychopaths... Wait, wait. Progressive left-wing, but a thinker? And fucking hijack... Like, these people are fucking psycho, not me. Which people? The people who think that they have, like, this left-wing ideology and are then out in the streets

marching for pro-Hamas. Well, this is, you know, this is part of the reason... We have to wrap you know, this is part of the reason we have to wrap it up. This is part of the reason I think that the even Roe versus Wade, which is not turning out that, but there's some states it is, but the number of abortions has not decreased. It's gone up. People are getting it, getting pills online. It's pretty clear that when referenda are out there, that abortion is going to be legal in places where it's tested in the voters. Some states will have more

restrictions. But however you want to slice it, to get this issue off the national agenda so that people like you can vote for less liberal candidates without feeling that you're selling out these issues that you deeply care about. I think this is very good because a lot of the reasons Jews feel trapped in this left-wing thing is because of issues like abortion. Like how can you vote for a Republican? They're pro-life. Well, and gay rights and women's rights. Now these issues are basically moot.

Gay rights is done. And gay rights, you know, was actually done with a conservative Supreme Court and a conservative lawyer. But anyway, but now abortion, racial preferences are ended. So there aren't really these hot-button issues anymore like there were. And hopefully that might allow a little reorganization of parties to a more reasonable center, I'm hoping. Anyway, that's that. Okay. Podcast at Comedy that's that. Okay.

PodcastatComedyCellar.com. Thank you. Bye-bye.