WEBVTT - The Munich Conference, The Mullahs, and Gaza 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.720 Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College All Things 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.440 Hillsdale Hillsdale dot ed or. I encourage you to take 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:08.920 advantage of the many free online courses there, and of 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:11.280 course I'll listener to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of them 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:14.560 at q for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple, 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:20.560 iTunes and Hilldale. Welcome back, America. I'm you, Hewitt, so 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:23.759 please to welcome back. Aviv Rettig Gore. Aviv is the 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:26.680 Middle East correspondent for The Free Press. He's also the 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.920 host of Ask Aviv Anything. I'm a member of his 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:32.800 Patreon community. I recommend that you become that because it's 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:35.879 really some of the smartest conversations in the world. Ask 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:38.880 Aviv Anything podcast is completely for you. I don't miss 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:39.640 an episode. 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:40.600 Haveviv. How are you? 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:42.560 I'm good. 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:43.200 I'm good. 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:43.920 How are you, Hugh? 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:45.000 I'm good. 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:48.760 I greatly enjoyed the interview with Jonah Platt, though I 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:51.720 did not know who he was until you sat down 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:55.320 with him. I was a little bit amused because Jonah's 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.880 despairing that there isn't enough great Jewish content in Hollywood 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.360 is like every conversation I've had with an evangelical Christian 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:05.640 for the last thirty years I lived in Hollywood, saying 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:09.080 we don't have enough evangelical You know, Hollywood makes what sells. 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:12.360 I thought it was very interesting, but I also thought 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.440 you rebuked him. You people are going to argue, this 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.960 is the most privileged set of Jews in world history, 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:20.040 and you're going to be upset. 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:25.759 Yeah, Look, there isn't enough of the Jewish experience in Hollywood. 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:28.959 The Jews kind of in America are too easy to 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:31.240 I think, in my opinion, are too easy. 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:32.560 They're too quick. 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:36.560 To dismiss themselves, dismiss their experience, seed the ground to 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:40.319 everybody else. And I don't think that's very different from 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:44.240 Evangelicals and from Catholics and from other faith groups. By 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:48.120 the way, religion is hugely popular when Hollywood actually goes 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.840 around gets around to doing it. Look at Steven Spielberg's 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.520 Prince of Egypt. These are things that kids remember all 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.680 their lives. And so it's a shame that the stories 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:03.640 of these groups, minorities not so minorities, aren't aren't told 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:06.680 in Hollywood. Hollywood's not producing all that great stuff lately. 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:08.120 I mean, no. 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:10.080 Offense to the MCU, but what the heck is the 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:11.399 MCU You know what I mean? 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:13.920 Yeah, Well, I'm with you because I used to be 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:16.840 a two movie a week guy, and now I've turned seventy. 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:18.440 I would be a three movie a week guy if 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:20.000 I had the time. But there are any movies, so 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:23.040 we're not aviv. I have two serious questions and then 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.000 some big questions. First one, I just don't know. It's 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:31.000 about Gaza. Prior to the nineteen sixty seven war, was 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:33.760 Gaza considered the people who lived there? Were they considered 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:38.040 to be part of the Egyptian tribe writ large. 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:44.280 No, they're They're different from Egyptians. They don't share Egyptian 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:47.480 national identity, which is very very cohesive. Egyptians have a 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:50.960 whole story about themselves as being you know that that 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:54.720 group of people who come from ancient Egypt through Hellenistic 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:59.720 Egypt and Gozins are not part of that story. They 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:03.240 very very much were either considered themselves local local tribes, 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.040 local people living in conjunits or Gazza city or whatever, 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:07.120 or Palestinian. 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:14.320 Did the identity as Palestinians arise in recent decades because 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.200 I remember Napoleon carrying out a massacre in Gaza which 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.360 is horrific. So Gaza has been there a very long time. 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.560 What was was there identity with the other native peoples 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.240 of the land after the Jews had been forced out. 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:36.240 So I mean identity is a funny story. Okay, Arabs 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:40.280 living under Ottoman rule for four one hundred years thought 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.920 of themselves as Ottomans, even if the term refers kind 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:48.119 of to Turks. But the eats of Gaza, the elites 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.160 of Jerusalem, the elites of Jaffa, the Arab Muslim elites 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.360 were diplomats of the Ottoman Empire in France, you know, 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:57.720 they they were part of the system. They saw themselves 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.400 as Muslim before anything else. But Gazza as an ancient heritage, 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:05.120 that's Christian, that's Jewish. There's some important Jewish mystics that 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:10.160 lived and worked and published in Gaza. And so whether 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:13.400 they consider themselves a different period's more Muslim or Arab 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:16.680 or This word Palestinian really comes to be used around 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:21.080 World War One to identify a specific group of people 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.240 in the modern national sense that, by the way, is 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.960 not in the rasure of their identity. Germans didn't call 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.880 themselves Germans until there was a political union under Bismarck 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:33.719 in eighteen seventy as part of a war with France. 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.599 You know, these nations come into being in the modern 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:41.240 sense a particular moment in history. So these identities are complicated, 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.360 they're layered. But one thing Gozins have never been is Egyptian. 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:47.000 And the reason you're asking that question, it's a good question, 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:49.800 is that Gaza was ruled by Egypt and kind of 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:55.320 claimed by and dominated by Egypt until sixty seven, and Jordan, 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:57.440 of course ruled in that time the West Bank, Jordan 0:04:57.520 --> 0:04:59.640 called it, gave it that name, the West Bank. 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:00.599 Live in Jordan. 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:02.640 It's the other side of the river. It's the west 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:08.080 bank of the river, and Jordan annexed it, claimed it's 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:13.679 Jordan gave them citizenship in Jordan, and Palestinian elites gathered 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:18.200 in the famous Jericho Conference to confirm their Jordainian ness. 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:23.719 And so identity is in flux. It's complicated, but there's 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:27.200 still Palestinians in the simple sense that they're their own people. 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.720 They're an Arab people, a Muslim people. By and large, 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:32.640 there are almost no Christians left among Palestinians. There are 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:37.640 within Israel, among Palestinian Israelis Israeli Arabs, but they're declining 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:42.480 in the West Bank and Gaza, and they're not us, 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:44.400 they're someone else, and so they're two people. 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:46.719 I hope at some point you devote and ask Aviv 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:48.920 anything to the history of Gaza, because you know your 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:51.680 history and you find good experts. And all I know 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:55.240 are little episodes and even the I'm an empire I 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.200 could use some education on. It's just not something I'm 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:03.000 familiar with. Second big question that's specific the Heredom, the 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:08.400 ultra Orthodox. Do they believe that their prayer work upholds 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:12.800 the state of Israel's foundations? 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:18.839 The Old Orthodox are a diverse group of people. The 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.640 Hassidic and what they call them Ysnagge or the Lithuanian 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:23.440 are non Hasidic. 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:24.400 They're not sort of. 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.960 Spiritualists in the same way. They're very different groups. Among 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:30.919 the Hassidic groups, there are a lot of different sects 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.479 and divides, and sometimes they work together and sometimes they 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:37.359 hate each other. It's big and complicated and different, and 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:39.880 all of that's just the Ashkenazi Horeadium. There's also the 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:43.120 Safardi Colaradium, and all of them have different answers to 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:47.880 these questions. What they do genuinely and authentically believe all 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:51.120 of them. By definition, that's who they are, is that 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.400 they are the survival of the Jews, because they are 0:06:55.040 --> 0:07:01.080 the most stringent bearers of the bookshelf, of the Jewish bookshelf, 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:04.799 from the Torah itself, the revelation and everything that proceeded 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:07.680 from it over the millennia. And so they do see 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:12.560 themselves as the carriers of Jewishness and Judaism, and therefore 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:17.120 anything that endangers their ability to study Torah as a 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:22.840 profession full time majority of the men endangers Jews and 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:27.440 Jewishness strategically over the long arc of Jewish history. And 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.440 that's why they should sit and study all day and 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:30.600 not serve in a military. 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:32.200 I should say. 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.520 That that's a new idea. That is a new idea. 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.640 Until the seventies, the horeadium of Israel served in the military. 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:43.080 They lost soldiers in the forties, and it's also grown 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.960 to become these just astonishingly huge numbers. The founding of 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.840 the State of Israel, four hundred young men got exemptions 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.520 to go study Torah in the same way that a 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:57.120 couple hundred athletes and very great artists. Because if you 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:02.040 take somebody who's an extremely who was extraordinary at something, 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.520 whether it's sports or arts or tourist study, and you 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:08.040 take them three years into military service, they're going to 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:10.640 lose a great deal of what it is that they 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:12.840 contribute and what it is that they can give. And 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:16.560 so there are these exemptions for extraordinary people to the military. 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.679 It was four hundred students at the time. Today it's 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.080 tens of thousands in every cohort. 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:23.280 And so it's just. 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:28.440 Become a ridiculous, you know, draft dodging by a population 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:31.960 that relies on a special welfare state because half the 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:34.840 men refuse to work as a cultural choice, never mind 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:38.000 military service, they also don't work, and so it's it's 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:41.600 it's gone way. It's no longer seriously a religious debate. 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:43.360 This isn't actually about religion. 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:45.960 It's the exactly inject there. 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:48.960 I listened to you, I listened to Yoshi kleinel Avy 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:51.640 and Donille Hartman. I listened to Michael Oran, I listened 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:55.640 to Dan Senor with his guests. Nobody gives the Haridam 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.480 the time of day to their argument. And what I'm 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.720 asking is, do they have an argument based either on 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:07.760 their preservation Jewish Jewishness or upon their appeal to Hashem 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:10.160 to protect the state. Do they have an argument whether 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:12.160 or not it's correct? But do they have an argument 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:14.440 they claim? 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.280 They claim. I don't think they themselves take it seriously. 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:23.400 They claim that because they study, is there a win's wars? 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:25.920 And the reason I don't think they take it seriously 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.520 is that Jewish law says the opposite. If you sit 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:30.720 and study when we need you at war, when it's 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:34.480 a command a war of commandment, a defensive war, a 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.080 war that's legal in Jewish law. You can't just have 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:39.360 random aggressive wars, but you can have defensive wars. And 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:42.040 when there is a defensive war, you are required to 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:45.080 go fight that war. That's not something you're And there 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:47.720 are all these laws in Jewish law about how if 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:50.280 you can work but refuse to work and go study, 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.880 only study and live off other people's money. My monot 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:55.880 thees rules that that's a that's a kind of a crime. 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:59.839 I think it calls it an abomination. They they make 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.360 these claims, but they only make them politically. I don't 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.000 take it seriously. What are they in their own view? 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:07.880 How did this actually come about? Sort of in the 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:12.920 sympathetic version of this the Holocaust is the basic story. 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:15.840 This is still an aftershock of the Holocaust. Everybody when 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:17.480 they think of the Holocaust in the West, thinks of 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.080 Anne Frank, or thinks of, you know, people who look 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:23.720 like Westerners. But in fact, eighty five percent of the 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.320 Jews killed in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers. They didn't 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:30.200 look like Anne Frank. They looked like the Galician Jews 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:34.600 of the Hungarian you know, rural provinces. They looked Haredi. 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:39.960 And the Kardi religious world was wiped out, was destroyed, 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:45.559 was erased in the Holocaust. And the primordial fundamental impulse 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:47.600 of Horadi society at the beginning of the state of 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:51.880 Israel literally in the late forties, was to rebuild what 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.440 had been lost. And so they set about building these 0:10:55.559 --> 0:11:00.480 very tight knit communities and institutions and have this in 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:04.360 culture that everything depends on them, having the kids teaching 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.520 the Torah, rebuilding the institutions and the cultural you know. 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:11.880 And and they were in that sense, rekindling the fire 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:15.040 that was destroyed. I mean, you know, the Allies remember 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:18.360 winning World War Two, the Jews remember losing World War Two. 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.200 The Nazis won their war against the Jews, the Jewish 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:25.360 European Jewish civilization was wiped out. It is no longer there. 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:28.319 It doesn't exist anymore. That the thousand year Yiddish civilization 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.880 is gone. And what the Harideem in Israel and also 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:33.439 a little bit in the US, but not quite in 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:36.600 the same sense of urgency, what the Haredim in Israel 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:39.840 have basically tried to do for seventy seven years is 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:43.439 rebuild what was lost. Here's the thing they've done that 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:46.480 they've done that. Above and beyond that, one of the 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:50.079 finest and greatest yeshivas of the Houridi world, the seminaries, 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:52.640 religious seminaris of the Hoidi world, is the Mir Yeshiva, 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.160 which is now in Jerusalem. It used to be in 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:58.560 a town called Mir in what is today Belarus, Mir 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.200 and Belarus. At it's this is one of the great 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.640 yeshivas of tours study in history. At its height it 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.599 had four hundred students a year. The Mere Yeshiva in 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.679 Jerusalem today has five thousand, and it is in elite. 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.200 It is the harvard of the Haredi world. And so 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:17.880 they have rebuilt massively. And the questions that are now 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.360 arising about the welfare state, about military service is because 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:24.000 they're thirteen percent of the population. We can no longer 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:27.320 afford to have half their men not work. It's the 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:32.000 questions we face now are banal the big giant, traumatic, 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.800 beautiful thing that they did, the restoration of what was 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:39.760 last that's over successfully, they've done it, and now we 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.560 have just sort of simple questions of how we live 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:45.960 together to answer, and they're not really equipped for that debate. 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:48.960 So they're still saying things like we're the only reason 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:51.480 there will be Jews left, you know, and like okay, yeah, 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:53.880 we get it, and you know you've built it out 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.839 and thank God and hello, and you're part of us 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:59.520 and you're our brothers. Now we have to talk about 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.959 this welfare state that you built around yourself that's unaffordable. 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:11.680 That is the most sympathetic and actually understandable explanation to 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:14.120 a gentile in the West, and I thank you for it. 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:17.680 Did they not have anyone out there making these arguments. 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:24.720 Israelis generally barely have the cultural ability to explain themselves 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.720 because they have a culture that says, you know, you 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:30.360 don't stand in judgment before the world, you don't excuse 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:34.560 your existence, and Haredine have an extreme version of that. 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.360 They barely explain themselves to other Israeli Jews. 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:42.160 Never mind, Okay, all right, now I have my hard questions. 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:44.679 I have to give an address. I'm looking forward to 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.240 giving an address at a Christian college in about a month, 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.000 and I'm going to talk about the obligation of Christian 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:53.800 colleges and Christian kids. These are the anti Semitism and 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:57.280 anti Zionism. And I know from decades of talks with 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.800 Dennis Praeger the difference between anti shpe and anti Semitism 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:04.800 and anti Zionism is overstated, and that the latter is 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.319 often a cover for the former. But when I want 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:11.119 to ask you, because you're independent of the American experience 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.800 except for your ears in Wisconsin, when do you understand 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:18.000 in human history anti Semitism to have begotten? 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:24.720 This is a debate. You know, there's anti Semitism in 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:28.240 ancient Egypt because there were some Jews in ancient Egypt 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:31.600 who came in from Judea and had a slightly different religion, 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:34.280 and some of the Egyptian priests were very upset about it, 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:39.440 and they wrote bad things about them. Anti Semitism, as 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:43.560 we understand it, the Western phenomenon that we're talking about. 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.040 Not just everyone in all of human history didn't like 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:48.800 the religion next door. That's not what we're talking about. 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:51.760 The specific idea that the Jews stands in the way 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:54.880 of the redemption of the world. I think, as far 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:57.400 as I can tell from the great professors I have read, 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:02.640 this is not my obviously original scholarship. Anything begins in 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.760 a subset of early Christianity, and it's a subset of 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:10.160 early Christianity that's grappling with a real big problem. And 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:15.480 the problem is Christ came to fulfill the redemptive arc 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.600 of the Jews and to spread that you know, that flame, 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:23.320 spread that light to the world, and the Jews, at 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.760 the heart of that story won't accept it, won't believe it. 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:32.440 And that was a gaping lacuna that was experienced by again, 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:39.120 not everyone, probably not most, but some, and justin Martyr 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:44.680 and Saint Augustine and not insignificant Christian thinkers and theologians 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:48.760 and leaders over the centuries. That was experienced as a 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:55.800 genuinely profound attack on Christianity, the Jews refusal to accept Christ. 0:15:56.440 --> 0:16:01.280 And Augustine writes explicitly the Jews he has this witness 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:03.720 theory of what Jews are, where he says the Jews 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:06.840 have to remain oppressed for all time. I'm paraphrasing, but 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:10.440 people can look this up as a message to my people, 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:14.000 to Christians, they fail to accept Christ, and therefore they 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.120 will be oppressed for all time. When Crusaders murdered the 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:19.360 Jews in the cities of the Rhine on their way 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:23.840 to the Holy Land, they left, we have diaries of 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:27.000 bishops who saved Jews in various cities who explained what 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:30.320 the Crusaders who were murdering Jews were saying. And what 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:33.960 they were saying was, we are the new Israel. We 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:38.240 superseded you, and you refuse to accept Christ, and therefore 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.960 you are preventing even this is not, you know, some 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:45.280 kind of Catholic dogma, but this is something that has 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:49.720 been said to Jews routinely throughout Christian Jewish relations. We 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.160 superseded you, and you are preventing the coming of Christ, 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:56.000 the return of Christ by refusing to accept Christ. And 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:58.720 so that's the heart of it. That's the core of it. 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.880 And this positioning of the Jew as the thing standing 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.639 in the way of redemption is what marks secularizes the 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:08.119 jew becomes you know, he has this whole vision of 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.880 class war and of capital. Well, the Jew becomes the 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:19.120 distillation the perfect capitalist and overclass and manipulative and not landed, 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.120 and the Jew is the thing standing in the way 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:23.359 of redemption. And Hitler, of course, the Jew is the 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:27.840 great threat to the folk. And because they're internationalist or something, 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:31.800 and so everyone, by the way, on today's university campus, 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.720 for some reason, Israel is the distillation of all imperialism 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:38.359 and all colonialism and all the sins of the West 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:40.200 in all of the Western history. And if you can 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.199 project all those sins onto Israel, you are now on 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:45.760 the right side of history. And that self hatred of 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:49.680 the West projected onto Israel allows you to suddenly be 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:52.720 okay with yourself. And so Israel is the worst thing 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.000 in the world. Even if literally five hundred miles away 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:57.520 there's a worse war with four times the death toll 0:17:57.520 --> 0:17:59.840 of Gaza, that doesn't matter, because that's not telling me 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:02.240 a story about myself. The Jews stand in the way 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:05.280 of redemption for all these different people, and it begins 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:08.320 in that problem of the Jews not accepting Christ among 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:09.919 that subset of early Christians. 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.280 Now I'm a post Vatican two Catholic, so John Paul 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.639 the Second and Benedict did a lot of expiation for 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.119 anti Semitism in the Catholic Church. That work went a 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:23.080 little bit backwards with Francis, but I'm hoping Leo picks 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.399 it up again. But that is to me, I'm just 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:30.960 a secular supporter of Israel, not a Catholic supporter of Israel, 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:34.320 but a secular American saying there are greatest ally in 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:38.120 the world. I would like to know when does anti 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:42.639 Semitism spring up? I mean, when does anti Zionism spring 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.960 up as a very poor but nevertheless often turn to 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.720 substitute for anti Semitism. I think Antizionism is just anti 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:53.280 Semitism with a Z instead of an S. 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:54.919 But when did that happen? 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.600 Just to simplify, because you know it's pompl there are 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:05.200 some Jewish anti Zionists whose complaint about Zionism is that 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:08.639 there's a certain vision of how the Messianic age is 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:10.479 to come about. The Jews all come to the land. Well, 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:12.840 if they come to the land early, they delay that 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:16.520 Messianic return. And that's for example, the sotmar Hacidim of 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.320 New York believe that that is not bigotry. That is 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:24.359 a literally internal to the Jewish bookshelf, a theological debate 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:27.000 about the nature of history. That's that's something we can 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:31.240 set aside. There's all kinds of anti Zionisms, but the 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.840 anti Zionism we're talking about, the ideological anti Zionism, really 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.400 is this projection that I was talking about. It begins 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.560 in the sixties, especially after the sixty seven War, where 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.240 the Soviets had built up these vast Arab armies, and 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:48.439 these Arab armies were decimated by little Israel, and it 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:51.240 wasn't even in Israel, supported by the United States. Yet 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:54.080 it was in Israel fighting with you know, not very 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:59.520 good French weapons, and it wins this spectacular, spectacular victory. 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:05.080 And so the Soviets turn probably the most enormous, expensive 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:09.600 and competent and successful propaganda machine ever developed in the 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:14.480 history of the world. They spent billions upon billions on 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:19.280 developing these vast propaganda networks through trade unions and student 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:21.840 unions all over the non aligned world, all over the 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:26.919 Third World, and they built out Zionology departments they called it, 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:30.320 at these universities in Moscow that they invited the elites 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:32.560 of all of the Third World to study at and 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:36.119 the point of Zionology. The study of Zionism wasn't to 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:37.480 study Zionism. 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:37.600 In any way. 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.840 It was to transform this image of this jew this 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:44.520 thing that had defeated Soviet designs to push America out 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:48.040 of the Middle East by defeating those Arab armies, or 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:49.560 to push the West out of the Middle East by 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:53.960 defeating those Arab armies. To turn it into the most 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.400 evil thing that ever was, and so to frame these 0:20:56.680 --> 0:20:59.960 refugee people who survived only by you know, through solid 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:05.720 darity and gunction, into the distillation of all the evils 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:10.640 of imperialism and colonialism and every Western evil, capitalist sin. 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:15.919 And that propaganda machine today is basically the vocabulary on 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.440 campus in the entirety of the West about Zionism. And 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:23.439 so it has its origins in that Soviet propaganda world, 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:30.320 but it really it's psychologically important for the West's progressive elites. 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:35.679 It's Zoron Mumdani, for example, Zoran Mumdani repeatedly said on 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:38.400 panels over the last five years when he was talking 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:42.960 about defunding the NYPD, he said the NYPD learned to 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:46.879 abuse the minorities from the IDF. He was talking about 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:49.359 some kind of exchange program of twenty cops a year. 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:54.119 The NYPD has exchange programs with Singapore and Qatar and 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.680 Amman Jordan. It has an actual permanent office in Jordan 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:01.480 at Mexico, where there's thousands of extra judicial killings by police. 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.160 But for some reason, Mamdani thought that the thirty four 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:10.080 thousand officers of the NYPD, when they abuse a minority 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:14.600 person in New York, which happens sometimes, he literally would 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:17.200 have this favorite line of his. He would say on panels, 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:21.280 I've seen these videos. He would say, the NYPD abuses 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:22.879 minorities or whatever. And then he would say, and the 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:27.520 IDEF laced its boots. And it's this idea that how 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:31.080 could a twenty cop a year exchange program where they learn, 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:34.200 among other things, how to police multi ethnic areas, which 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:36.359 the Israel police has pretty a lot of experience in, 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:40.040 among other things, tactics for hostage situations. How could those 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:43.520 twenty cops come back to the thirty four thousand strong 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:44.560 NYPD and. 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:45.560 Teach them how to abuse. 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.879 I mean, do American police really need the Israelis in 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:53.879 principle to know that they can fail to serve minorities properly. 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:57.800