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Bret Stephens · In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch

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I'm Rabbi Ammi Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, and
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you're listening to In These Times.
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Today's podcast was recorded live in our sanctuary several weeks ago.
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It's my pleasure to welcome Bret Stephens, the prolific New York Times
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columnist who writes about foreign policy, domestic politics, and cultural affairs.
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He's also the editor-in-chief of SAPIJournal,l.
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which I have had the honor of being published in twice, including in the
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most recent volume a few weeks ago.
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If you're not reading Sapir, you should be.
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It's critical for anyone who really wants to understand what's
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going on in the Jewish community.
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Bret is the former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post and Pulitzer Prize winner
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for his work at the Wall Street Journal.
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In so many columns recently and in so many ways, Bret has voiced and articulated
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what many of us are feeling about Israel.
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Bret, thank you for who you are, for what you do, and for
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giving us an hour of your time.
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So let's give it up for Bret Stephens.
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Let me
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ask you first, uh, just a general question.
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How are you doing now?
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How are you feeling?
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When I saw you a few minutes ago, you asked me how am I doing and
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it was hard for me to answer.
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How are you doing?
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Uh, you know, it's depend, uh, as my Israeli friends say.
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But, look, uh, I think the Jewish world is in a bad way.
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And because I'm now so connected to the Jewish world, I feel it
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acutely, and I feel it emotionally.
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I'm just kind of down a lot of the time, not only because of what happened
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or what is happening, but because of a trend line that really disturbs me.
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Maybe it isn't even a trend line.
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It's a certain kind of mood, uh, both among
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israel's critics and haters, uh, and as well as among its defenders.
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One of the things that I've noticed about the hatred of Israel is that
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there was always a kind of restraint.
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You knew it was there, but it was being held back a bit by a
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perception of what was permissible.
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And now I think the perception is that everything is permissible.
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And so the nature, for example, of the anti Israel protests has turned so, in
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such a nakedly anti Semitic direction.
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I wrote about this last week, and the writing was sparked by a scene that
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was filmed at the Berkeley City Council of an 89 year old Holocaust survivor
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standing up, simply to petition the city.
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Mothers and fathers to have a Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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About as anodyne a request as anyone could make on behalf of the Jewish community.
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And she was heckled and shouted down.
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Another woman speaking at that same meeting complained that her
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seven year old son, Jewish son, was told by other children at
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the school that Jews are stupid.
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To which the people in the audience screamed, Zionists are stupider.
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Um, a third guy yelling something like, You cowards, you money
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grubbers, or something like that.
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In a way I guess this shouldn't be entirely surprising because it's Berkeley.
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But what is surprising is that I'm the only guy who wrote about it.
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I mean in a major newspaper.
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As far as I know.
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Just imagine if it were some other religious or racial
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minority that was being treated.
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that way in, uh, say, a Southern city, it would be national news for ages.
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Charlottesville was national news for ages because it was an openly anti Semitic
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protest by hideous white supremacists.
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But what we're seeing now just almost like passes, uh, notice.
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Except, you know, in the usual places like this, the Jewish community.
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So I think that our enemies and the most vitriolic anti Semites in America
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feel like the light is green and it's going to continue to be green.
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And in the meantime, I look at what's happening in Israel and I see a government
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that is failing to meet any of its goals.
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And, um, an Israeli military that reminds me of General Westmoreland talking about
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how many Viet Cong were killed that
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day
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without any sense of what the strategic objectives are.
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So I guess I'm a, I'm a Jewish optimist.
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Uh, yes, things can get worse.
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Let me ask you Bret, um, and we're not going to talk specifically about any
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media outlet or, colleagues of yours.
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But generally in the media world, and even in the high-level media
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world, Do you find the same thing?
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Do you find that there is a kind of a gloves off, there's more is permitted
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by commentators and even journalists who supposedly are reporting straight
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news than say before October 7th?
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Yeah.
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Since we're not talking about any specific news organizations, um, Um, uh, look,
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the media, as long as I can remember, and I've been in the thick of the story
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for 25 years, has been anti Israel.
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I mean, on, on, on balance, it's been anti Israel, but it was anti Israel,
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at least certainly when I was at the Jerusalem Post, because it saw, say,
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they didn't like right wing Israel.
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Okay.
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They didn't like Sharon when I was living there.
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Or, uh, Bibi, obviously.
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And Bibi is easy to dislike, especially if you're a normal person.
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But it did like left wing Israel, right?
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I mean, it held on to its Israeli heroes, Shimon Peres, a certain idea
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that there was a good Israel and more had to be done to let that good
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Israel express itself politically.
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Now you have a sense increasingly that there's no good Israel.
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That's.
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It's kind of the overall tenor of, I think, media commentary.
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Obviously, I'm generalizing here, and there are all kinds of exceptions.
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But it also used to be the case that there were the good Palestinians who
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were struggling for peace and then the bad Palestinians who were Hamas.
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Now, Hamas has become Palestine, and you see it, I think, most starkly in the
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nonchalant way in which casualty figures in Gaza are cited as authoritative.
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We don't take, in the media, Russia's word for it when they tell us about their
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casualty figures or the casualty figures that they're inflicting on Ukrainians.
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We don't even take Ukraine's word for it, by the way.
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We're skeptical, rightly so, because people lie about those sorts of figures to
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give themselves propagandistic advantages.
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And yet we know that Hamas lies.
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We know they lie about everything.
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We know they don't distinguish between civilian and military
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numbers and their casualty figures.
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We know that we were embarrassed by what happened back in, was
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it October or November with the rocket that fell to ground on the
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parking lot of the hospital in Gaza.
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And the purported 500 Palestinian casualties or deaths, which turned
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out to be nothing of the kind.
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And yet we cite these figures.
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And now even the president of the United States says 30, 32, 000 Palestinian dead.
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How does something like that happen?
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How did we become so willfully unskeptical about the numbers and the,
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and the claims that Hamas, uh, provides.
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I have my own thoughts about why that happens, but, um,
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let's move on.
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Well, let me just ask you just either in your world or what you see on the
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street and what you, uh, describe, where does that come from to what do you
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attribute the change since October 7th?
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One, what is motivating this intensity of animosity towards Israel
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that either was suppressed before.
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And was there, but didn't come out, therefore it wasn't realized or wasn't
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there and materialized since October 7th.
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Well, I think it was there.
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I think this was more of a question of opening the lid over a sore,
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taking off the bandage on a.
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gangrenous wound, rather than something new happening, except as
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I described it, the kind of glee.
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Um, look, there's a line I've used before, which is that of those of whom everything
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is expected, nothing is forgiven.
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And of those of whom nothing is expected, everything is forgiven and
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everything is expected of the Jews.
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So you've seen it now in the coverage of the it's a tragic and heartbreaking strike
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on the convoy, on the, on the aid workers.
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You know, you can look back at the many, many times under presidents, Biden,
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Trump, Obama, just about any president.
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You can think of American troops have accidentally fired on civilians or
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accidentally fired on our own people.
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Friendly fire, everyone knows what that means, but nobody says Biden is He's a war
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criminal because 10 Afghans were killed in a strike that was supposed to be against
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the people who attacked the Kabul airport.
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Nobody says, well, you know, where's the accountability there or
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Obama for a strike on a hospital.
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I think it was a medicine, some frontier hospital in an Afghan city in 2014, 2015.
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But not everything is expected of the United States when it comes to the Jews.
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When it comes to Israel.
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It's, uh, reminds me of a kind of the old pass fail in college.
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Typically, if you got a book C, you passed.
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Israel has to get an A plus or it fails.
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And so that is a form of anti Semitism.
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You know, Eric Hoffer in 1968 wrote a famous op ed in the L.
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A.
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Times where he said, um, Israel is the only country in the world expected
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to behave like a Christian nation.
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And
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And that is antisemitism.
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So you think, you don't see any way to separate views about
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Israel from views about Jews.
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People cannot, they can't look at Israel in the same way as they look
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at any other country in the world.
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No, look, obviously there are differences, okay?
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And there are a lot of people who, here in America, you know, revile
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Israel, hate Netanyahu, think Zionism is wrong, want to, in a million years,
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consider themselves anti Semitic, or behave in an anti Semitic way.
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In their mind, there is That distinction, just as there is a distinction in
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the mind of a lot of white Americans who are perfectly friendly with their
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black neighbors, right, and would would reject the suggestion that
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they're remotely racist, but will hold this or that view, which is racist.
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And people don't have a kind of a full sense of what it is that they
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think and how opinions they have on matters they regard as political
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reflect some kind of prejudice.
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This happens all the time.
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And those are prejudices that are sort of so subterranean that they're difficult
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for anyone who holds them to see.
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Now, what I think is distressing to me is that I suspect that if a white liberal
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had views that were in fact racist and some person, particularly a black person,
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were to say to them, let me explain to you what's wrong with that particular point of
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view, they would listen very attentively.
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And more likely than not, rethink the way they talk and think.
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But the Jewish community has been trying to tell so many Americans, hang on a
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second, when you are singling out Israel, uh, for condemnation or a level of
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scrutiny that applies nowhere else, That is the double standard that has always
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been the calling card of anti Semitism.
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They'll say, that's just a bunch of whataboutism, and it has nothing
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to do with me, and how dare you.
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I mean, they, they, they reject it very emphatically.
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And that's problematic for us.
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I mean, it used to be the case up until 20, 30 years ago.
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I don't know when, but Jews told stories and people listened.
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Spielberg did Schindler's List, people watched.
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That, that's something else that I think no longer exists.
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Uh, no longer happens.
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And by the way, much as I love her, Dara Horn, I think is wrong.
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People no longer love dead Jews.
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Look, she's such a superb essayist and great, great thinker.
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I think the world of Dara, but she wrote this book before October 7th.
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People love dead Jews.
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Reflecting on how everyone wants to make a monument for Anne Frank, but
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nobody wants to point out that there's a world out there that would make Anne
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Franks of every one of us in this room.
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Uh, and, and right now, the dismissal of Israeli loss and pain on October
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7th is, it's just very striking to me.
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Maybe I should write an essay.
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People no longer love dead Jews.
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Take, take us back to October 7th.
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Do you remember where you were when you heard the news?
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Oh, absolutely.
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Could you tell us?
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Oh, I received a frantic note from my dear friend, Jessica Kazmer Jacobs.
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Jessica was a, um, girl from Boston who came to me after NYU, and I
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hired her the Wall Street Journal.
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She was a book editor.
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And then she became just very friendly with my family.
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She used to babysit for my kids when they were little, and
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we've just become very close.
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Jessica moved to Israel and married Uri Tibon, who is the younger brother
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of Amir Tibon, the higher order.
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Amir was at his kibbutz, I think it's Nacharos, on October 7th.
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When the terrorists came and they went to their safe room and Amir called
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his father, Noam Tibon, former general who said, this is my profession.
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Nothing can stop me.
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I'm coming to save you.
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So Jessica called me immediately to let me know this was happening.
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This was early in the morning.
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And so I followed it with my throat and my heart until Noam
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arrived and saved his family.
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The reason the New York Times had the story is because I thought it
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would be better to write this story.
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By giving the story to Patrick Kingsley, our bureau chief there
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for me to write it as a column.
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And so that's how it became a famous story.
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It's an amazing
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story, by the way.
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If those of you who haven't read it, you should definitely read it.
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It's one of the things that actually does give me hope.
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You know, which is that on October 7th, when the state
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failed, the people succeeded.
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What is the 66, 67 year old man gets in his car with his wife.
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And a pistol drives down into a war zone, rescues wounded soldiers, takes their
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M16s, joins his old unit, and fights his way back into the kibbutz to save his
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son, daughter in law, and grandchildren.
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And I love when his, I don't know who, uh, brought out this quote, but his franchise.
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Saba.
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Saba higaiyah, I knew that Saba, which is grandfather, I knew
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that he would come and save us.
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Yeah, he says the, the, the, the little girl whom I know, I mean,
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I'm very close to the family.
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She's this tall.
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She went, Saba higaiyah Grandpa's here.
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As time rolls on, we will find out there are hundreds of stories of people who were
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living up in the north, just knew that the state wasn't there, got in their cars.
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And, and they rolled.
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I mean, we, we remember 9 11 and that one guy on the plane who said,
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let's roll with the other passengers.
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You know, they are central to our redemptive story of 9 11.
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There are thousands of such stories in Israel.
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Yeah.
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And it's really inspiring.
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I see some people who were with us on our recent mission last week.
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We met with Rami David.
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You don't, if you remember, you know, you know, that No, this is a guy who.
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He got some kind of WhatsApp.
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He said some kids need some help.
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He was living in the area and, uh, he says to his wife, I'm going
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out to save somebody, uh, I'll be back, uh, make coffee for me.
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And he ends up spending two days, 48 hours saving what he estimates to be 750 people.
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It was so prominent that channel 12 news actually followed him for
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much of that day on the first day.
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And, uh, shame
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about the coffee.
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Well, he said when he got back after 48 hours, he, uh, he
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said, is the coffee still warm?
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But it just amazing stories.
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And there's something uniquely Israeli about that.
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I think, you know, it's funny, there are governments that are better than
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their people and there are people who are better than their governments.
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And, uh, I'd rather be in the second type of society.
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So let me, uh, ask you about, um, where Israel stands now?
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It's been six months.
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The war aims were to dismantle Hamas, or at least deprive it of
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its military capacity to do harm.
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Return of all the hostages, and on the day after, Hamas is not ruling Gaza.
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None of those objectives have been achieved.
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Now six months later, how do you see the situation currently?
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I, I reject a certain kind of fatalism that was expressed in the foreword the
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other day that Hamas is unbeatable.
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Because it rests on, I think, some kind of a cliché that Hamas is unbeatable
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because you can't defeat an idea.
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Nobody's trying to defeat the idea of Hamas, right?
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They're trying to defeat a military organization that,
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uh, gained political control.
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I mean, Nazism, National Socialism, is an idea.
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It was undefeated after May 1945 because there were plenty of people in Germany
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who, in their hearts, remained Nazis.
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Um, they just figured out that it was probably not a good way
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to go, politically speaking.
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So the idea was discredited, not because people lost affinity for this ideology,
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but because it looked like a loser's game.
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Um, Egypt figured out in after 1973, that an ideology that argued
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for the destruction of the state of Israel was a loser's game.
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It doesn't mean that Egyptians love Israel.
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At all.
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But the government had to make a strategic decision to change tack and go to Camp
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David in order to recover the Sinai.
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So Hamas is beatable, but the Israelis still haven't done it.
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And I think it's a combination of factors, but most of the blame as I
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see it rests with the prime minister.
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You know, the American Jewish community, at least the precincts.
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I'm most friendly with had a fit when Chuck Schumer called for BB, effectively
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called for him to step, step down.
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I think the speech was misjudged because I think it actually
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did BB a political favor.
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You had guys like Naftali Bennett, no, no friend of his coming to
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the prime minister's defense.
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But the truth is he's absolutely right.
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This is a catastrophic prime minister.
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It's a prime minister who fails to take even the most basic responsibility.
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for a series of failures and, uh, dreadful strategic mistakes
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that led directly to October 7th.
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And I don't just mean the, the year that preceded it with divisions
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over quote unquote judicial reform.
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I mean the strategic decision to keep Hamas entrenched in, in Gaza because
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it served as ideological purposes.
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That was to say, look, we can't give away the West Bank because
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Look at Hamas in Gaza, right?
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And to that purpose, he, he, he lulled himself into the belief that
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Hamas was essentially contained behind a 21st century Maginot line.
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Turned out he was wrong.
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The fact that he then turned around and blamed the Shin Bet, I mean, sure,
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the Shin Bet and the other Israeli security forces have a lot to account
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for, but he's the prime minister and has effectively, with a year's hiatus,
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been prime minister for 15 years.
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So Schumer was right.
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Israel will be a better place, but he's no longer the prime minister.
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And I think in a thousand years, the Jews will remember Netanyahu and go bad guy.
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Do you think looking down, uh, six months from now, when we mark the year
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anniversary from October 7th, do you want to speculate if not, you know,
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where would you think will be at least what are the various possibilities of
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where we may be six months from now?
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You know, I hate questions like that because you'll remember the answer.
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Um,
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it'll be recorded.
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Well, that doesn't matter so much, but, but you'll actually remember it.
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Uh, um, look, a number of possibilities.
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My own belief is that there's a better than even chance that Israel
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will be in a war with Hezbollah.
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Um, it's intolerable that 60, Israelis from Kiryat Shmona and other places
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in the north, um, have no home.
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They're refugees.
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They're living in hotels.
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And it's intolerable that Israel can't sufficiently secure its peripheries
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to make it possible for Israelis to live up to the last millimeter
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of sovereign Israeli territory.
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And so something has to give.
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Hezbollah is now a stage three cancer.
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It's only going to get worse.
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And the Israelis have to act, which is why I think they were wise and correct
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to strike the target in Damascus.
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Because those, those IRGC commanders were not only supplying Hezbollah with,
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with missiles, rockets, and so on.
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My understanding is they're effectively building a third army of conscripts and
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people from Shiites from Afghanistan and elsewhere to create yet another front.
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On the Golan against Israel.
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So I think there'll be a wider war.
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I think it will be war on a scale that dwarfs what we've seen so far.
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I think the heart of Israel will be a target.
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Ranaana, Tel Aviv, Haifa.
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It'll be a war that Israel hasn't seen the likes of since 1948.
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By the way, it's a war Israel will win.
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So, so let me ask you, do you think Israel's Western allies, and in
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particular, the United States will be supportive of Israel in that war.
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Yes.
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For a couple of reasons.
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First of all, as much as I don't like the moon music lately from the white house,
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generally speaking, I think the president has been outstanding in his support.
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And, you know, you have to look at Biden's support in the context
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of past American presidents.
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You know, George W.
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Bush was supposed to be a great friend of Israel.
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But after 34 days of war with Hezbollah, he pulled the plug on it effectively,
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just as Obama did in 2014, Reagan during the Lebanon crisis, the Ford
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administration with its so called reappraisal of relations with Israel, uh,
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Eisenhower, in fact, the only president really stood by Israel as well as Biden
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has was Richard Nixon, takes all kinds.
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Um, so I think that that deserves to be.
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Recognize it especially deserves to be recognized by people like me,
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you know, aren't seen as greatly sympathetic to the administration.
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I think I should be the first to say this.
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Secondly, if you look at the menu of options available to the United
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States, the only thing that's going to mollify the Israel haters is
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like a complete American boycott.
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Do you really see the administration doing that either
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strategically or even politically?
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The United States were to absolutely boycott Israel.
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Cut off all arms supplies, like say Canada has.
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There are now zero Canadian canoes, uh, on their way to, uh
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That was, I think I read there was 112, 000 of military deals
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between Israel and Canada.
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We could make up the difference right here.
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Yeah, we could do a, we could do a, like a collection here.
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That's like 60 canoes.
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Uh, so, it would be political folly because it would be a
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gift to the Republican Party.
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There are a lot of Jews, by the way, who would actually pull the lever
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for the Republican Party if Biden took a hardline anti Israel turn,
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which he's not going to do, but it would, it would be a strategic error.
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Look, Biden came into office and he had this big show of making
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reappraisal provisions with Saudi
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Arabia.
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How did that work out?
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He ended up being humiliating for the president because then when
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oil prices shot up, uh, and we added huge inflationary issue in
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part energy related, he had to essentially go begging the Saudis.
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You know, Israel is a small country, but it's not an infant.
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It, it provides a whole set of goods for the United States.
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It is a genuine partnership between countries and, um, Israel has
27:05
options in the world just as the Saudis have options in the world.
27:09
What if, what if the Israelis were to say, Oh, I guess when you cut off arms
27:11
with us and you ended the bilateral arms treaty, you know what we're going to do?
27:15
We're going to start selling cyber technology to China.
27:18
Let's do that.
27:21
And this immediately because Israeli cyber tools would be grave threats
27:27
to American national security, which is why the administration is so upset
27:30
about the so called Pegasus program.
27:33
Now, I hope Israel doesn't do that.
27:35
God forbid it should be driven to do anything like that.
27:39
The relationship between Israel and the United States is not
27:42
because we feel sorry for the Jews.
27:43
It's because it's good for the United States.
27:45
Are you worried about some of the voices now in the Democratic Party that, at
27:50
the very least, want to condition, uh, weapons supplies on certain policies.
27:56
In particular, I thought it was noteworthy that I, uh, I saw that,
27:59
um, Nancy Pelosi joined that group.
28:03
What do you think that means?
28:04
How do you interpret that?
28:05
A large part of the Democratic Party has turned against Israel, and I think
28:08
in doing so, it's turned against the best traditions of the Democratic Party,
28:12
which are represented by President Biden.
28:14
Um, and that's why I think every Jew who is a Democrat has to work within
28:20
the Democratic Party to make sure that the candidates who are running for
28:24
congressional seats are like the Toms Hozis of the world, but you know, they,
28:29
they get it, you know, you can hate Israel for a million reasons, right?
28:33
And or deplore, not hate it, but deplore many Israeli policies.
28:37
But the only country that is remotely standing up for liberal and progressive
28:40
values in the region is Israel.
28:42
The only one, and it's, it's such a simple thing to say, but you don't
28:47
want to be an LGBTQI plus person in Gaza at any time or remote because the
28:54
treatment of, of gays and lesbians in the Palestinian Authority is horrendous.
28:59
You don't want to be a woman there.
29:00
You don't want to be a political dissident.
29:03
You don't want to be an artist expressing yourself freely.
29:05
All of the freedoms that progressives claim to champion here in the United
29:10
States These are precisely the ones that the Palestinians, both in
29:15
Fatah and Hamas, violently suppress, including freedom of the press.
29:21
I do not understand how the left has become not just a critic of
29:27
Israel, but in so many instances anti Zionist against the state itself.
29:33
I say this, by the way, as a center right guy, we need a revived left wing Zionism.
29:38
We need it.
29:40
Israel has not prospered by the collapse.
29:43
of the Labour Party and what it, what it has traditionally stood for.
29:47
But it has to be in the Zionist family.
29:50
The moment it becomes anti Zionist, it's, it's, it's out of the conversation.
29:54
It's useless and it's completely hypocritical.
29:57
Help us understand what's happening in the intellectual world, in
30:00
particular in universities.
30:02
Of course, it goes without saying, we have many, many families who
30:05
have kids in universities who are thinking about sending their
30:08
kids to various universities.
30:10
The kids themselves are looking at this, we're hearing reports that
30:14
they actually are looking more carefully at the atmosphere on campus
30:20
in connection with Jews or Israel in terms of selecting where they.
30:25
What is your advice to, um, parents, to young Jews, to the Jewish
30:31
community and the university scene?
30:37
Uh, yesterday I was speaking to a group of Yale students and somehow
30:44
Melville's story, uh, Bartleby the Scrivener, I raised the story.
30:49
All of you read Bartleby the Scrivener?
30:53
Okay, so I spoke to about 35 Yale students, not one of them had heard of it.
30:58
I mean, come on, you know, Yale.
31:00
Pathetic.
31:01
Pathetic, pathetic, that the cream of the crop, not one person even had
31:07
an intuition about the great American writer's greatest short story.
31:12
Um, and I just draw my own conclusions about the state of American
31:17
higher education from, from there.
31:20
These schools, I know this because I now have two, two of
31:22
my three kids are now in college.
31:24
So I, I glanced at what the questions were about, uh, when they had to apply.
31:29
The questions are all about, tell us about your victimhood
31:32
and tell us about your identity.
31:34
So the school self select for people who are either are or pretending to be
31:38
victims and for whom identity rather than character or achievement are the
31:44
driving criteria of, of self worth.
31:48
And I think it's just downhill from there, by the way, how surprising
31:51
that pro Palestinian movement has gained so much popularity.
31:54
such traction on campuses where victimhood in identity are
31:59
the calling cards of virtue.
32:01
I wanted to ask is what
32:02
is the connection
32:03
is there a connection?
32:04
Yeah, because, because Palestinians are seen globally as the most
32:09
victimized identity in the world.
32:11
Right.
32:11
And that's valorized on college campuses.
32:15
So first of all, I think Jews have to stop becoming slaves to prestige.
32:20
The prestige that we once knew about, you know, Where does your son go?
32:27
He was at Harvard.
32:29
I'm like, come on.
32:30
They don't say that.
32:30
They say, I went to school in Boston.
32:33
No, they say, I went to school near Boston.
32:35
Uh, Uh, We have to move away from that.
32:40
Um, did you hear about the violent anti Israel protest
32:43
at the University of Nebraska?
32:46
Did you hear about it?
32:47
No.
32:48
Yeah, because it didn't happen.
32:51
There are lots of places where you can get a terrific education.
32:53
You can get a terrific education at Purdue, another school where you don't
32:56
hear anything like that, uh, uh, happen.
32:59
We can try to go to schools that are making a conscious effort
33:04
to reach out to Jewish students.
33:07
Washington University, Tulane are two that come to mind.
33:11
And by the way, there's going to be a huge opportunity.
33:14
Almost, I'm almost reluctant to say this, almost like a kind of
33:18
a private equity opportunity.
33:20
I don't know how that plays on 68th Street on the west side.
33:24
If I were over on the 68th on the east side, we'd be talking here,
33:27
but, uh, First of all, we have all types here, and secondly, they're
33:31
tolerant.
33:31
They're very tolerant.
33:34
This is what I mean.
33:35
There are a lot of college campuses on America, I think
33:37
between three and four thousand.
33:40
The U.
33:40
S.
33:40
is facing a demographic cliff because starting in 2008, the financial
33:44
crisis, people stopped having babies.
33:46
So demography is like, moving like this, and you know, the Harvards
33:51
and Yales of the world with large endowments are going to be fine, but
33:55
there's a whole universe of schools with beautiful campuses and nice histories.
33:58
I'm not going to mention some of the campuses I have in mind because I might
34:17
insult someone, but there are at least 50 schools in New England that fit this bill.
34:25
Um, what if we made an effort to approach these schools, say we want
34:30
a critical number of seats on your board, you want to appoint a president
34:35
who believes in the value, I don't mean of Jewish education, I mean of
34:39
a true liberal arts education, right?
34:42
That believes in free speech, that, um, Uh, uh, exercises real vigilance
34:48
about the difference between speech and conduct and becomes a place where Jewish
34:52
students are going to flourish and are not going to feel afraid to wear a kippah
34:56
or a star of David around their necks.
34:58
And let's start with a minion.
34:59
Let's start with 10 colleges and go from there.
35:02
The history of Jews in America is that when the cool kids didn't want
35:07
us at their table, we went to another table and then we were the cool kids.
35:14
Mainstream banking didn't want us.
35:16
So we came up with investment banking, you know, we weren't
35:19
always wanted in the arts.
35:21
So we went to, you know, Southern California and started
35:23
this thing called Hollywood.
35:25
One thing or another in one industry or another where we were not liked, where
35:30
there were quotas against us, where we were told to sort of stay in our
35:33
lane, we went elsewhere and we applied this kind of spirit of independent
35:38
thinking and entrepreneurialism.
35:40
And many Jews took incredible risks.
35:43
In their private lives with their finances to start thriving businesses.
35:47
We should be doing that philanthropically, not on behalf of ourselves,
35:52
but on behalf of the collective Jewish community and our children.
35:56
And, uh, I assume that that applies to philanthropic.
36:02
Okay.
36:02
Support of some of these institutions of higher learning then are not
36:06
sympathetic to the Jewish community.
36:09
Look, I mean, I have great admiration for guys like Mark Rowan who are
36:13
trying to change the culture at the University of Pennsylvania,
36:16
which historically was a school.
36:18
Every other Jewish parent I knew had a kid
36:20
at
36:21
Penn.
36:22
Maybe every parent here has a kid at Penn.
36:25
That's a knowing
36:25
laugh out there.
36:27
Uh, right.
36:29
And, and my experience of university administrators is that their central, uh,
36:35
central characteristic of their being is.
36:38
Um, and then the third one is cowardice.
36:41
They are cowardly towards whoever they think scares them the most.
36:45
And for a long time it was the DEI bureaucracies in a lot of these schools.
36:49
And now they're terrified of wealthy donors who aren't going to provide,
36:53
you know, the next 50 million, uh, you whatever, whatever state of the art,
36:57
building or endowed share and so on.
37:01
And so by all means, particularly wealthy Jews with influence in these institutions
37:06
who care about Jewish issues, they should be exercising that influence
37:09
to change the tenor of those colleges.
37:12
But I think that unless you change, um, Um, frankly, unless you get rid of
37:16
tenure, you have such an entrenched, I'm not going to name names here, but I am
37:21
on a, um, somehow bizarrely on an email collective of about 20 names, most of whom
37:28
are professors at a school near Boston.
37:31
Okay.
37:34
And the subject has lately turned to Israel.
37:38
And I am alarmed by what passes as intelligent commentary about
37:44
Israel and really saddened by it.
37:47
By the very brilliant, lovely people whose views on the subject are, you
37:52
know, make Bernie seem like a Likudnik.
37:54
Um, uh, so, so you have a problem that goes much deeper than, you know,
38:00
getting a president who is going to, you know, show up at the Hillel house.
38:05
You know, say the right things.
38:08
These institutions in my mind are so rotten.
38:11
Look at Harvard, Harvard has now cashiered or, or, or had two resignations of the
38:17
head of their anti Semitic task force.
38:19
How hard can it be to get an anti Semitic task force that submits
38:24
a report that says, you know, making Jews feel unwanted is bad.
38:30
Okay.
38:31
And we will endeavor to do better, but they can't do it.
38:35
So, that tells you something about the culture that they're dealing with.
38:39
It's not simply a matter of, of putting in a handful of new people at the top.
38:44
That can do a lot.
38:45
And I look at university leaders like Daniel Diermeier, a friend at Vanderbilt.
38:50
You know, who sets the right tone, but I suspect that at every university,
38:54
they're dealing with rock that goes to the foundations of the very house.
38:58
You aren't saying, or are you, that Jews should kind of walk away from
39:03
these elite Ivy League soldiers?
39:05
Yeah, of course I'm saying that.
39:07
Yeah.
39:08
Rather than fight from the inside and try and change it.
39:11
You know, I don't know about you.
39:13
I mean, my education was great.
39:16
I went to the university of Chicago, one of the schools, I think that has
39:19
not lost its mind and always had a consistent set of, of, uh, principles.
39:25
And, and, and to this day, I feel the echo of my education at Chicago ring through
39:30
almost every column I write because it really taught me how to think, but for
39:36
the most part, 10 years after you're out of whatever Harvard yield, nobody cares.
39:42
Nobody cares.
39:43
And the addiction, I'm going to say this as a kind of a broad
39:47
statement, but I think that the Jewish addiction to these tokens of
39:52
prestige is harming our community.
39:57
It's harming our community.
39:58
You know what?
39:58
The greatest Jews all went to City College.
40:03
That's true.
40:05
And they were proud of it.
40:06
They were proud of it.
40:07
Okay.
40:08
I mean, you know, because they were the unclubbable ones.
40:16
I want to move on to, uh, other two other issues before we run out of time.
40:21
First of all, Ukraine, it's almost like a forgotten war.
40:25
Uh, I think I read, I think you mentioned you're banned from Russia.
40:28
Yeah, I was, I was banned for life from Russia in 2022.
40:32
One, why were you banned and two, how does that make you feel?
40:36
So, uh, when, when the order came down, I told my wife, she
40:40
was so proud of it that she.
40:42
Frame the notice and took down my Pulitzer and put it in place.
40:50
I felt so good
40:52
about it.
40:52
Absolutely.
40:53
I love
40:53
the one.
40:53
And why
40:54
were you banned?
40:55
Did they give you a reason?
40:56
I mean, look, the first anti Putin editorial I ever
40:59
wrote was actually in 1999.
41:02
My, my, my friend, Garry Kasparov.
41:04
He said, you know, first time I wrote an anti Putin 3rd, 2022.
41:09
And I said, mine was December 31st, 1999.
41:11
1999.
41:12
How about that?
41:13
So he's now jealous.
41:14
The only reason he has, uh, to be jealous of me.
41:17
Uh, I don't know exactly.
41:19
I mean, they didn't rush.
41:20
Government doesn't call you up and say, Hey, listen, you know, we're so sorry.
41:24
We considered your account.
41:26
I mean, they just, you're just put on the list and you're, you're barred.
41:28
I, I've been writing anti the Putin editorials for a very long time.
41:33
In fact, I wrote an article in 2006 in the wall street journal.
41:37
It was called Russia colon, the enemy.
41:40
For which I received no end of grief from, uh, Columbia
41:44
professors, as a matter of fact.
41:46
We're all sort of Putin apologists.
41:48
There was a lot of, let's face it, there was a lot of, a lot
41:51
of Putin apologies on the left.
41:54
Uh, some of you are probably subscribers to The Nation, that
41:57
wonderful magazine of ideas.
42:00
Quote unquote, in the tank for Putin for ages.
42:03
Katrina Vanden Heuvel's late husband, Stephen Cohen, I think
42:06
even won a prize for Putin.
42:08
I just point that out.
42:10
So those of you who think it's a terrific publication.
42:13
Um, uh, so look, I was banned because I've been consistently
42:16
anti Putin all this time.
42:18
I think one of the greatest disgraces, and it's not a disgrace for our time.
42:23
It's a disgrace for all time, is the Republican Party's dereliction
42:29
of duty when it comes to The need to support our great friends.
42:36
What do you think is at stake for the United States in the West?
42:39
What is at stake for the, what are the consequences of this derogation?
42:43
I think the free world is at stake.
42:45
Could you elaborate?
42:46
I think the collapse of Ukraine is going to be a geo strategic debacle.
42:51
First order.
42:51
It's going to encourage the Chinese to move on Taiwan.
42:54
It's going to lead to either a direct confrontation between.
42:58
NATO and Russia, if not now or soon, in a few years time.
43:02
And the abandonment by the United States of our commitments in Europe,
43:07
um, we are moving back to the America first mentality of Father Coughlin.
43:14
And we have our own Father Coughlin and the person of Tucker Carlson, who
43:18
is, you know, the, the chief whisperer to the, the demagogue who was and
43:23
likely is gonna be the next president.
43:27
I was gonna ask you a follow up, but that was too, uh, enticing to me.
43:31
Do you think Donald Trump is going to be elected president in November?
43:35
I
43:36
certainly hope not, and I will bend every effort I can to make that, you know.
43:40
But do you think, do I understand from your last answer that you
43:43
think that's more likely than not?
43:45
Look, again, I, you know, what was Neal's Polaris line, uh, prediction is very
43:50
difficult, especially about the future.
43:51
Yeah.
43:52
Um, uh, so I'd be.
43:57
Thrilled to be proved wrong.
43:58
Okay.
43:59
Um, but yeah, I think he's gonna win.
44:04
Why do you say that?
44:05
What, what are the, what are the key driving issues that are
44:08
gonna determine the election?
44:10
I, I, I think there are three major factors.
44:14
Number one, Americans think, was I better off in just before the pandemic?
44:18
I mean, people understand the pandemic was a kind of a unique circumstance, but
44:22
was I better off in 2019 than I am today?
44:25
And the answer is.
44:27
I'm worse off today.
44:28
I think quite frankly, liberals, there's a lot of liberal happy
44:31
talk about the state of the economy based on one factor, which is the
44:35
availability of jobs, which is great.
44:37
I don't want to, I don't want to downplay it.
44:40
Um, but when people say, well, inflation is cooling off, it doesn't erase
44:43
the fact that rent, the average, the median rent in the United States, uh,
44:48
I just, uh, To look this up 'cause I was just chatting with Ga Collins.
44:51
Um, yesterday, uh, the median rent to the United States is up by 20%
44:56
since the day Joe Biden took office.
44:59
The 30 year mortgage rate, which was at 2.7% when he came to
45:03
office, is now north of, uh, 6%.
45:06
So financing costs have, have gone way up and a basket of
45:10
groceries is about 25% higher.
45:13
Yeah.
45:13
You can say, well, wages are now beginning to rise, but that's, that's
45:17
they've lagged and they're still lagging.
45:20
And so you've got a situation which Americans feel economically like
45:23
they're running to stand still, you know, to quote the old U2 song,
45:26
which is about a heroin addiction.
45:27
That's another story.
45:29
Um, the second factor is, I think, frankly, Democrats have been, uh, derelict
45:37
in, they're thinking about the border.
45:40
You know, you walk around here, I grew up in Mexico City.
45:44
The fact of my biography that people don't often know.
45:47
My family is from Mexico.
45:50
Left handed, right of center, Mexican Jew.
45:53
Um, uh, Well, you know, it's two things that I think rankle, a, it's
46:02
now a crisis in every city in America.
46:04
You know, go out to Bennett Field or all over here, you see, you see this
46:08
kind of Latin American style poverty.
46:11
Uh, second, we're not enforcing the law.
46:15
I feel keenly for these immigrants.
46:17
My heart goes out to them.
46:18
My mother was a refugee to this country, although my mother was a refugee
46:21
who waited for five years to get a visa under Harry Truman's Displaced
46:25
Persons Act in order to come here.
46:28
Um, and there's a feeling like there's contempt for the law and indifference
46:31
by the part of elite Democrats.
46:33
And I, I was very amused when DeSantis, who, you know, strikes me as a jerk of
46:38
the first order, flew a few migrants up to Martha's Vineyard and, you know,
46:43
the vineyard had a conniption thing.
46:45
Um, really?
46:48
Go to El Paso or any of these towns along the border when sometimes
46:52
10, 000 people a day are coming in.
46:54
Those people need to be housed, taken care of, you know, uh, fed, their kids
47:00
have to be at school at some point.
47:02
And I think Democrats have neglected the issue, you know, very badly.
47:05
And the third thing is, I don't feel as safe in cities in America as I used to.
47:13
Now you can say, well, it was worse in the 1990s, but most Americans
47:16
don't remember the early 1990s.
47:18
You have to be at least 40 years old to have any memory.
47:21
And I'm, I'm a six foot one, reasonably big guy, right?
47:32
I'm on the subway and I'm like this looking around, uh, and we
47:38
keep being told this story that Oh, streets have never been safer.
47:43
So something is amiss.
47:46
Something is wrong.
47:46
When the governor, a democratic governor deploys national guards to the subway.
47:51
And then tells us everything is fine and safe.
47:55
I don't quite know what that is, and I would love for criminologists to look
47:59
carefully at the data, but I think there is an interesting disparity between crime
48:04
that police reports and crime that the victimization surveyed by the FBI reports.
48:09
People self report much higher numbers of criminal acts, but
48:14
they're not taking it to the cops.
48:17
That, that's a, that's a hypothesis by the way, I could be, could be wrong,
48:22
but something is, is not right there.
48:23
And so all of this tells me that it's not going to go well for the incumbent.
48:27
Also, Trump has so many negatives, right?
48:33
The fact that his support for him is solid, that he's ahead essentially, or
48:39
even in all these polls, tells me that people have sort of priced it all in.
48:44
The noise, the craziness, the this and the that.
48:47
And they're still saying, better.
48:50
Oh, last thing.
48:52
It's heartbreaking to say this, but the president is feeble.
48:56
And anyone who's had relatives who've had dementia knows it's a
48:59
one way, uh, you know, it's not like he's gonna get better soon.
49:04
So they're worried about that.
49:08
You've taken a look at the voting patterns of American Jewry since
49:12
the end of World War II, FDR.
49:14
In very high numbers, in substantial majorities, American Jews have voted
49:20
for Democrats across the board, from the, from the president, down
49:24
on the, on congressional election.
49:27
And, uh, in 2020, 78 percent of American Jews, if I remember the
49:33
numbers correctly, voted for Biden..
49:35
Do you think that's likely to change this year and in future years?
49:41
Look, I'm going to vote for Biden.
49:43
What's the choice?
49:44
You know, if Nikki Haley were in Canada, I'd vote for Nikki.
49:48
But of course I'm going to vote for Biden.
49:50
It's against, you know, it's like you can have the kind of two day old, moldy
49:56
mayo sandwich, or you can eat, you know, You know, the dog shit with glass in it,
50:02
and I'll go for the sandwich, you know.
50:05
Um, I, I borrowed that line from David Sedaris, by the way, I
50:08
need to, but, but yeah, of course I'm going to vote for Biden.
50:13
I think most Jews will because they understand a couple of things.
50:18
They know a demagogue when they see one, and they know that even if this demagogue
50:22
was sympathetic to Israel in the first term, that he's a man with no loyalties.
50:27
And an isolationist president is eventually going to
50:30
turn on Israel as well.
50:31
At least Biden believes in democracy in the free world and
50:34
abides by the results of elections.
50:36
So I'll take it.
50:37
You know, my bigger fear is, is, is this, Ammi, which is that
50:42
Republicans and Democrats used to provide a pretty good home for Jews.
50:49
There were plenty of Republican Jews who thought, you know, this
50:52
is a better party in terms of its
50:55
lower taxes, less regulation, strong foreign policy, generally good on Israel.
51:01
I was one of those.
51:03
And then plenty of Democrats who said, yeah, but no good on
51:06
choice and other social issues.
51:09
And Democrats are pro Israel too.
51:11
But as the parties have moved to the extreme, Jews who I think are genuinely
51:15
closer to the center have become homeless.
51:17
It's very hard for Jewish pro Israel Jews to feel at home in a party where
51:25
at least the most visible voices, not necessarily the majority voices, but the
51:29
visible voices are people like AOC, right?
51:33
Or Jamal Bowman up in my, in my district.
51:36
And on the other side, on the Republican party, notice that
51:38
all the never Trumpers were Jews.
51:42
These were people who, you know, had positions in office, were big donors to
51:48
the party, and they feel homeless as well.
51:51
And so this is, I mean, we're getting back to the depressing
51:54
theme in this conversation.
51:56
We're becoming a community that is estranged from the two major
52:01
political currents in American life.
52:04
And I think most Jews desperately want to be players in those, those parties.
52:10
And we feel like we have a lot to say in long histories, but, but
52:14
they're, they're strangers to us.
52:16
Very, very difficult.
52:17
I mean, I know plenty of liberal friends who on October 7th or October
52:22
8th, when the left really started coming unfit with Hamas, kind of looked
52:27
around and said, what just happened?
52:30
Right.
52:31
Which is just the way I felt when Donald Trump took over
52:33
the Republican party in 2016.
52:37
One very brief question before my last question, which is you
52:40
mentioned Gail Collins, uh, that, that, uh, exchange that you have
52:44
with her, is it on a weekly basis or?
52:46
Yeah, pretty much every
52:47
week.
52:48
It's just a fabulous thing.
52:49
I think at one point, several months ago, you mentioned to me
52:52
that, uh, that was a very, very, very, that's a very popular column.
52:55
Yeah, it is, it, it, it, our, our numbers, you know, because the Times
53:00
tracks these things very carefully.
53:02
Yeah.
53:03
Digitally, our, our numbers are phenomenal.
53:06
And do, do you think that says something about people's desire to
53:09
want to actually have a dialogue?
53:12
Yeah, look, I think, you know, if you look for our conversation on
53:18
social media, it's nowhere, right?
53:20
Twitter doesn't notice it because social media has algorithms
53:25
that are built for outrage.
53:27
And what we're in the business of doing is like just, you know, Shooting the breeze,
53:33
uh, two friends over a proverbial glass of wine, although we do it on Google Doc.
53:39
But we are, in real life, real friends who get together for real wine and
53:43
cheese, you know, just to giggle.
53:46
Um, and, uh, people are hungry for a different kind of conversation.
53:50
I think they miss period in American life when people could, uh, disagree agreeably.
53:57
Have a laugh and think that there's, there are more important things
54:00
in life than, you know, the earned income tax credit or whatever it is.
54:10
So my last question to you is, uh, are you optimistic?
54:14
What, give us an optimistic message of hope for the next phase of American Jewish
54:22
history that we're entering into now.
54:27
You know, this is the 370th year of Jewish life in North America, um, 1654 to 2024.
54:36
Uh, and so, uh, you know, I'm not going to do that.
54:41
I'm trying to come up with something nice to say, but it's just not in my mood.
54:46
I'm going to tell you something.
54:48
In 1922, the most important man in Germany was Walter Rathenau.
54:53
And the greatest philosopher in Germany was Husserl.
54:58
The greatest scientist in Germany was Albert Einstein, and the greatest doctor
55:01
of Germany was Otto von Meyerhoff.
55:05
That was 1922.
55:07
They were all Jews.
55:09
11 years later, the Third Reich.
55:12
So there's a pattern in Jewish history where our zenith comes
55:17
right before our, our precipice.
55:21
I worry not only about the kind of explosion of antisemitism.
55:26
Um, at a moment that should be a Zenith moment when the Senate Majority
55:30
Leader, Secretaries of State, Treasury, Homeland Security, Chief of Staff
55:35
to the President, so on, all Jewish.
55:37
But I worry about not just the, the, the new anti Semitism, I worry about
55:43
a culture in the United States that lends itself to thinking antisemitically
55:49
you know, we're a country riddled by conspiracy theories.
55:53
Very few of them are anti Jewish, but if you'll believe anything about anything.
55:59
Then you'll believe anything about the Jews and anti
56:02
Semitism is a conspiracy theory.
56:05
I worry about the way in which we now no longer talk about success in America.
56:09
We talk about privilege.
56:11
And so people who we used to admire as successful people who would pull
56:15
themselves up, um, we now see as privileged people who have more
56:19
than their fair share and that's dangerous for successful minorities.
56:23
I worry about the assault on independent thinking and heterodox thinking.
56:30
That has been the calling card of the Jewish people for so long, you know,
56:33
the gadflies, the dissidents, the no sayers, the think different people.
56:39
Now we have a kind of a, this highly censorious cancel culture world,
56:43
and it's taken its grip not here in this room, but among so many of our
56:48
children, products of, you know, Columbia, schools near Boston and so on.
56:54
Um, and I call those attitudes, not anti Semitic, but anti Semitic adjacent.
57:01
They are what lead to anti Semitism.
57:04
They're a step away from it.
57:05
I think that's one of the reasons we have the kind of problem that we do.
57:09
We don't just have to fight anti Semitism.
57:13
We have to restore America to what it once was.
57:17
We have to restore America to a country where the concept of
57:21
merit really meant something.
57:24
We have to restore America to a country where the belief that what
57:28
matters most of all is the contents of your character, not your identity.
57:33
We have to restore America to a country that believes in free
57:36
speech and, uh, free enterprise.
57:40
We have to renew faith in an America that understands that this country
57:46
is based on a set of values which centrally flowed, not just from the
57:53
Enlightenment, but from Jerusalem.
57:55
And that used to be America.
57:57
And so, I think the task is not simply to sort of fight our corner,
58:02
Of the battle against prejudice.
58:03
When it comes to prejudice against Jews, we have to fight for what we understand
58:08
America to be, because that was the America in which we used to thrive.
58:14
I think that's really the task before us.
58:18
I want to thank you for an exhilarating hour,
58:30
uh, and, uh, for who you are, Bret, and for your fierce honesty and your
58:36
fearless, uh, willingness to go out and tell the truth as you understand it.
58:41
And, uh, all of us are very inspired, uh, by your example.
58:46
And
58:47
can I say something nice about you?
58:51
We've stopped the podcast.
58:52
Turn it
58:53
back on.
58:55
So, uh, you know, there's an old line that, um, uh, no
58:59
man is a hero to his valet.
59:01
Uh, few writers are heroes to their editors, which is to say
59:06
that when your job is to edit.
59:09
people's prose, you get to see how they really think.
59:12
And most of the time it's dreck.
59:14
Um, and one of the joys now having edited Ammi twice is what a
59:21
beautiful, beautiful writer you are, not only in terms of the depth of
59:31
the depth of the, of the thinking, but in the clarity and energy
59:36
and eloquence of expression.
59:38
I really want to hand it to you because Every time I get a piece from
59:43
you, I don't have to worry about it.
59:45
It's good.
59:47
So I just want to thank you.
59:48
Alright, well, that's a good way to end
59:51
it.