The Daily Signal - Warning From Knesset Member: Those Who Attack Israel ‘Are After the US Just the Same’

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Terrorists in the Middle East do not despise America only because the U.S. supports Israel, but because America is a Western society, according to Simcha Rothman, a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “But people that attack us, they are after the U.S. just the same,” Rothman says.  “The chant in Iran—‘Death to America, Death to Israel’—it’s not a typo that America comes first,” Rothman asserts, adding that terrorists in the Middle East view Israel “as part of Western society that is stuck in the middle of the Middle East.”  Because Western ideals threaten the radical ideology Islamic terrorists hold, this makes Israel, and America, an enemy, according to the Knesset member.  Within the Knesset, Rothman serves as the chairman of the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee and as a co-chairman of the “Land of Israel” caucus. Rothman joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what is driving the anti-Israel protests on America’s college campuses, where the hostage negotiations stand between Israel and Hamas, and how Israel should navigate the ongoing war with Hamas to ensure there is not another Oct. 7-style attack.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, May 3rd. I'm Virginia Allen. It's been seven months since Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people. And right now, what we're seeing in America over the past two weeks is widespread pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests on college campuses. Simca Rothman is a member of the Israeli Knesset. And he joins us on the show today to talk about from an Israeli perspective what they see among these protests. What is the ideology that is driving them? He also provides an update on where hostage negotiations stand and what Israel needs from America. Stay tuned for our conversation

after this. Hi, I'm John Carlo Canaparo. And I'm Zach Smith. And we host SCOTUS 101. It's a podcast where you'll get a breakdown of top cases in the highest court in the land. Hear from some of the greatest legal minds. And of course, get a healthy dose of Supreme Court trivia. Want to listen? Find us wherever you get your podcasts or just head to heritage.org slash podcasts. I am absolutely privileged today to welcome to the show Simka Rothman. He is a member of the Israeli Knesset. He serves as chair of the Constitution Law and Justice Committee and co-chair of the Land of Israel Caucus. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. I want to start by just asking. you, what brings you to Washington, D.C. this week?

So I was, I'm coming to the U.S. quite often, many times invited by either Jewish communities or organizations to speak. And largely over the past year and a half, it was about the judicial reform, which was the main event before the war in Israel. But now, of course, it changed focus. It changed focus to the situation of the war. It changed focus to the rising anti-Semitism globally and in the U.S. in campuses and mosques all around. So the focus a little bit changed. And now specifically I came, I participated, I made some meetings yesterday in Congress, and today there was the National Day of Prayer, so I was very lucky to be invited to, with people, and it's really heartwarming to see people here, tens of thousands of miles from everywhere that connects, that

actually care and pray for Israel from the bottom of their heart. It's very hardwarming. It reminds us that, I have to say, sometimes we need this reminder because we hear voices in the administration that goes to different direction, to the fact that the American people, the grassroots movements of the American people, supportive of Israel and support our war against Hamas and against the, global geotism, which is threatening us all. Do you think that the Israeli people feel that support from America right now? I mean, because as we speak, as we sit here just about 10 minutes down the road at George Washington

University in Washington, D.C., there are anti-Israel pro-Palestinian protests that are still going on among college students. So, of course, naturally, those protests, and you know what, I don't want to call them protest. Protests are when you are going against something you are demonstrating, you try to bring some new arguments to the debate, to the public sphere. Those are riots and some of them are actually acts of terror. If you do not let a Jewish student to go into your campus, you are not protesting anything. You are just anti-Semite. If you are blocking people from talking, you don't believe in freedom of speech.

You are a bully. And that's something has changed in the way the way protests are conducted. And we need to look deeper to see why is this change. I participated in a lot of protests in my time. In Israel, I am a right-wing politician, but I wasn't a politician. I was not born politician as a young teenager, and after that young adult, I protested the Oslo courts, the idea that sadly blew up in our faces that if you give weapons to

crazy terrorists, there are still crazy terrorists afterwards, and they will shoot at you. If you run away and leave land for terrorists, they will come and hunt you down. So I protested against it. But we protested. We protested near the Knesset. We protested near the Supreme Court. I participated in a hunger strike. It's not that I don't know what a protest means.

And it was always that if a politician from the other side, the one that we were protesting against would go out and come to talk to us, immediately we formed a circle and we started to talk to him. Sometimes it was a heated debate. It was sometimes very emotional because we were very angry,

but we wanted to talk to him. That's the idea behind the freedom of demonstration, the freedom of protest. You want to have the public way to speak to his elected official, to his leadership, and say, we are not happy with what you're doing. Go back to the judicial reform. When the first demonstrations that were against me

and against the judicial reform, I tried to go out and talk to the people who demonstrate. They did not let me talk to them. They shouted. You saw a lot of hate in the faces. And they said, we will not let you talk. So I said, so why are you demonstrating? You want me to hear you?

I want to hear you. What do you have to say? And they didn't want to talk. So I think that what's happening now, and I saw the speaker of the house, came to Columbia University, if I'm not mistaken. And he tried to talk there, and you heard people trying to,

shot him up and trying to block his way to speak. So if you are blocking the elected officials that are coming to talk to you, maybe to explain, maybe to convince, and you are shutting them down, you are not for freedom of speech, you are not a demonstrator, you are not a demonstrator, you are not a protester, you are disruptor. You are a disruptor of, of discourse in the society. And what we see, the same way the terrorists use the fact that Israel respect the sanctity of human life and try to minimize civilian casualties and try to fight sometimes with one hand or two hands tied behind its back because, and the demand for humanitarian aid, all this. and terrorists use it to destroy Israel,

those people use the fact that we care about freedom of speech, and they're using this deep concern that Western society, the U.S. and Israel everywhere, have for freedom of speech to disrupt free speech. And that's something to take into account. That's something to be afraid of. But once college campuses are now the place, for an open debate and discourse, then where are you going to do it?

Where are you going to try new ideas, if not in a college campus? Where are you going to bring your intellectual wandering into action, if not in college campus? And I had a very interesting experience in Yale. It was two and a half month ago. I was there. I was invited by Shabthai, which is a Jewish secret society in Yale.

Not so secret after I said that. No, no, but they're so invited by them. And we spoke, and I spoke, I think there were 140 students and faculty in the room, and we spoke, and some people criticize me. It's okay. Some people were very hurt because they disagreed with my politics. Most of the people that come from Israel to study at Yale do not share my political background and affiliation. But we talked and we had a discourse.

And it's so refreshing the idea that you can sit in a college campus and actually talk about issues. Have a real conversation. Have a real conversation. And some people stood outside. sadly, there were Israelis, that protested the fact that I'm speaking there. And I was very happy that the organizer of the event, he just went out.

And he said, you don't have to stand here in the cold and shout, get in, say whatever you want, have a discourse. And some of them did it. And maybe that's something we all need to learn that we should not accept the destruction, of free speech that some of those riots try to do in college campuses and anywhere else. Considering that tension and what we're seeing on college campuses and also considering the comments and the conversations that President Biden has had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,

Biden has been encouraging Netanyahu to lessen the fighting and the campaigns and almost take the the gas off in the conflict. What is it that right now you think Israel needs most from America? What is the support that Israel needs? First, I think that we get support, as I said, from the public. We get support also just last week. The Congress approved a bill of aid. to the military effort, and it's important,

and we're thankful for it. We think, of course, that's maybe the term aid is not 100% correct, because it has been the case for many, many years, and it's been the case now, I think even more, that Israel, in some aspect is like the aircraft carrier for the U.S. in the Middle East, without American soldiers, without American soldiers need to risk their lives. But people that attack us, they are after the U.S. just the same.

And sometimes people are mistaken to think, and I think some parts of the U.S. administration hold this wrong way of thinking that the U.S. is being attacked because the way it behaved to Israel. And that's not a case. The chance in Iran, death to America, death to Israel,

it's not a typo that America comes first. they see us as part of Western society that is stuck in the middle of the Middle East and they attack us so if you are, you can look at it from a global point of view as a member of the religious Zionist party in Israel, I cannot not look at it from the religious Zionist

point of view. Sure. And they see that the shared ideas of the Jewish people and the Western civilization are risking the existence of the non-civilizations that surrounds Israel and the anti-civilization that surrounds Israel, the civilization of destruction and death. and there are terror cartels that are trying to export this death all around the world.

They get money and they sell death. And we need to fight them. And sadly, people do not understand it. They think that Israel is the reason that the Muslim Brotherhood people ranging from Hamas and Daesh and

ISIS and all this organizations they are focusing in Israel because Israel is there. If Israel was not there they would it would be harder

for them to go to it wouldn't be harder for them to go to anywhere else. So Israel is the forefront and Israel fights and Israel needs the support the unconditional support of the West because that's what the West need

the term the West is next is not a fear-mongering idea the West is next it's happening now you see in the campuses what would happen and that's the future in Europe it's already happening the strange death of Europe

as the title of the book I think Murray wrote this and that it's very strange because people in the European countries lost their willing, their will

to exist and the US is strong in the meantime I hope it will I hope and pray it will stay strong but the key

to remain strong is not to turn a blind eye if there is a lesson to learn from October 7th is that it's double lesson. One, that you should never turn a blind eye to terror. You should never turn a blind eye

to the ideologies that drives it, the jihadist ideologies that want to destroy everything that is not them. You should never turn a blind eye to. That's one lesson. The second lesson is how easy it is to turn a blind eye. If Israel could have turned a blind eye like we did, we did. We have to admit it.

We did turn a blind eye. We let the Hamas become stronger and stronger. We ran away in the disengagement in 2005. We ran away from terror. And we thought, because people promised that, including the U.S., said, that it will be okay. It wasn't. And if Israel standing, when you can, in my house, in my home,

I can hear the jihadist calls from the window every day. We hear it. It's in the back of a mind from shouting from mosques surrounding us. And when my children go to school, they have to drive in a bulletproof bus because the threat to distress exists everywhere. And if we could have turned a blind eye, it can happen to everyone.

So the lesson is double. First, never turn a blind eye. Second, remember, it's too easy to turn a blind eye. It will always be too easy because it's easier to postpone the dealing with problems and to actually dealing, because dealing with problems has its prices. It does, a high price often. I do want to ask you before we let you go, where hostage negotiations stand.

What do we know? So we don't know a lot. Just before I left Israel and came here, my party leader made a statement that a hostage deal, that as they speak about it now, for us it's unacceptable for my party so it's a delicate time I think that

I think that we need to be very clear on this and I think also you said before what do we need from from our friends all around the world in the US the pressure should go on the other side because the pressure we have enough internal pressure

I have a family relative who is hostage Everyone in Israel knows someone is there a hostage or in battle We have enough pressure from the inside We don't need the pressure from the outside Not to release hostages Not to end the war We do not start this war

We want to end the war in a way That we will not have a second war Just when we finish So we don't need pressure from friends We don't need pressure not from Biden Not from Lincoln To release the hostages

Netanyahu is not a problem to release hostages. Israel is not a problem to release hostages. The people who are holding the hostages are the problem. And Hamas need to be eliminated. The deal that's on the table now, even negotiating with Hamas, empower them, even negotiating and allowing Qatar,

which we did not mention until now, but Qatar is a big problem. Because Qatar hosts Hamas Hadd for many, many years supports terror. It's media

outlet, Al Jazeera, openly insights for terror. So they're not a mediator in this issue. And the fact that we, again, Israel turned a blind eye, a little bit. The U.S. still turns a blind eye to what Qatar is doing. I think it's dangerous. I think the world needs moral clarity. And the fact that we allow for a gray area to exist

on terror encourage the next terrorist. We cannot have it. So, the hostage deal now, if Israel accepts it. If Israel and Hamas gets to an agreement on the terms that people are talking now, it might mean the end of the war. It might mean that the threats for the next hostages that will not be released here now will become unbearable. It will be more dangerous. You can have a deal that might save few people while killing the rest, which is an immoral thing to do. And I think that Israel should accept only one kind of deal. The deal that the terrorists that hold a hostage will say, in order to save my life, I give you the hostages, that's the deal.

Anything else, without any demand, without any demand of stopping the war, returning to the northern Gaza, which means opening the gates for the next elaxa flood that will come from there. We cannot allow another October 7th.

And the hostage deal cannot bring us to a situation when we are endangering hostages, we're endangering the people who live next to Gaza, we are endangering the safety of the state of Israel, and we are actually endangering everyone all around the world because we are basically saying to kidnap Israel is a good deal to all terrorists, crazy terrorists going around the world. We cannot have it.

Yeah. I really want to thank you for your time today and appreciate you being willing just to walk through some of these issues and explain the latest. Thank you again for your time. Simkerothen. Thank you. I really appreciate it. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for being with us here on the Daily Segal Podcast.

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