Latest / Centrally Speaking / What is the Danger of Antisemitism?

Transcript

What is the Danger of Antisemitism? · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, it's the Central Schreinfeller Church's podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology of the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cstfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Today we're talking about what's the danger of anti-Semitism.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: And we're very fortunate to have H.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: Randall Morgan Jr.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: with us today.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: Randy is an international communications expert who's provided language and intercultural services and training for the past 35 years.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: From Moscow to Tel Aviv and from Afghan villages to the halls of Congress, Randy has bridged the relationships between peoples of various cultures, politics, and faiths as he helps to facilitate mutual cooperation.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: Over the past decade, Randy has spent uh months at a time at Mock Villages with 300 Afghan employees providing the U.S.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: military with cultural immersion experiences prior to their deployment.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Speaking Pashto and Dari while donned in Afghan garb, Randy and his team tended and slaughtered livestock, prepared halal meals, ranked toward Mecca five times a day, and presented scenarios from village life under the Taliban shadow in order to help prepare the military to win hearts and minds and avoid unnecessary dangers.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: In one of his current roles, uh right now, Randy serves as chairman for the Maryland Israel Sister State Committee, working in concert with Maryland's office of the Secretary of State.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: Randy has organized programs to foster ties between the two states on governmental and also diplomacy levels.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: On a personal level, Randy is a practicing Christian who leads a very Jewish lifestyle.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: And he's just celebrated 27 years of marriage, interfaith marriage.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: Randy and his wife Lynn are the proud parents of three Jewish children, each of whom spent a high school semester studying in Israel.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: Two of their children, a son and a daughter, are currently studying at Cornell, where uh anti-Semitism, of course, has uh appeared just recently.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: Randy's not a Cornell alum.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: He went to Dartmouth and majored in Russian, uh, but only after discovering his talent for languages at the Haverford School, where he and I both studied together a number of years ago.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: I won't say how many years ago, Randy, but uh it's uh great to connect with you uh and to talk about uh this issue of anti-Semitism.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you very much.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, Drake, and thank you, Dave, for having me on here this afternoon.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Drake, it it just reminds me the last time I remember you and I put together a production was uh about uh a play about the Kebler, uh the Keebler cookie uh in sixth grade.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: Too long ago, I was thinking of our times uh uh as uh wrestling partners in uh in the middle school together.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I think you got the better of me with that.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm I'm sure a number of our uh listeners would be very interested in your experience in Afghanistan first, Randy.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh not often that we have uh time to talk about uh something like that.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: But um in our church, could you share something about uh that experience and how it exposed you to a Muslim perspective?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: It would be very uh helpful.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, among other things, I provide translation and interpretation in over 120 languages.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, I don't do them all myself.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_04: I have a network of experts around the world.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_04: But in 2010, a friend of mine called me and he said, uh, Randy, you still doing that language thing?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_04: I said, yeah.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_04: He said, Well, do you think you might be able to pull together a few hundred Afghan language speakers and bring them into the deserts of New Mexico for five weeks?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_04: And as any self-respecting entrepreneur would do, I thought two seconds and said, Of course.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um I ended up discovering what he really wanted me to do was to recreate Afghanistan in the United States, and so uh for several years, beginning in 2010, I created and populated mock Afghan villages in New Mexico and other sites around the United States, and then the Green Berets, the Navy SEALs, and and the the first armored division out of Fort Bliss, these groups would come in and take turns training with us.
• 4:55
  unknown: Wow.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: So when the SEAL team would come in, for example, have the master chief sitting on the floor of a building having tea with the elders, hearing about how the Taliban had burned down the school because heaven forbid they'd been teaching girls in it.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: Uh or or the well had been poisoned.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: They needed help from the SEALs to redig the well.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_04: And while that's going on out in the street, I'm running a food riot, uh maybe an honor killing down on the corner.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_04: And at midnight, I came running out of the hills with my Taliban role players, uh, shooting up the place with AK-47s with blanks.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_04: It was more excitement than I thought I'd be having in my streets.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: That's for sure.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_04: But the the purpose of it was to uh give uh an opportunity to help our heroes in uniform be that much safer when they got to Afghanistan.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_04: This was a cultural immersion opportunity.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_04: And when uh a team would come in and say, Take take us to your leader, uh, while the master chief is in with the elders, for example, uh the the guys would go out and do perimeter security and and stage people up on the on the buildings, and my villagers would run out and shake their fists at them just instinctively.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_04: It was not scripted, just you know, and and yelling at them in Pashtoo, and and uh the military would come to my interpreters and say, Well, why are they yelling at us like this?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, uh, they said, Well, because your men up there could be staring down at our women from up there.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, you know, the women were in full burqa.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_04: There was not a whole lot to look at, but it was the principle of it that uh would educate uh our military on the kinds of issues they needed to be sensitized to before they got over there.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_04: My my relationships with these people uh grew over over the years, uh built on trust, respect and love.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I really have gained uh an enormous amount of respect and and love for uh the Afghan uh people that I worked with.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I, you know, the the trust went both ways.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_04: Uh specifically, I I want to share the the Afghan Muslims that I knew never expressed anti-Semitism.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, I remember when we were slaughtering our first sheep in halal fashion, uh, because we we made everything as authentic as possible with uh authentic cuisine, which was delicious by the way, and livestock in the streets, and uh praying towards Mecca five times a day.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_04: But when it came time to eat, we had to slaughter our livestock in halal fashion.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_04: And I was given the knife and I was told Randy John, they said, and John is a term of endearment that you you give to someone when you uh are showing them love and respect.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: They said, Randy John, you can do this.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_04: I said, Well, you know, I'm not even Muslim.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: I I'm uh I'm Christian.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_04: And they said, it is okay, they said, uh, as long as you are a person of the book, meaning Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, you can do the slaughtering and and the food will be halal.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: It will pass our uh our our ritual uh observance requirements.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, that that kind of respect was uh extended to explanations to me about how how much they revere prophets uh like Moses, uh Jesus, they consider uh a prophet they respect as well.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: And again, I never I never heard them express any anti-Semitism.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting to hear about so I mean it's uh helpful just to even think about uh not all Muslims uh are anti-Semitic, is what you're uh suggesting um uh so far.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, there were centuries of Muslim uh rule in different parts of Asia uh and Eurasia, where Jews held uh special position in society and had um no problem, had had little had few problems with the Muslims.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_04: They were protected, they were taken care of.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_04: The anti-Semitism that is in the Arab world at this point is a more modern uh occurrence, unfortunately.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: Randy, are you still in contact with your Afghan friends currently?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: And how are they responding to this current conflict between Hamas and Israel?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, thank you for asking about that, Drake.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_04: I you know, I was a little unnerved when I went online and found one of my friends posting uh Palestinian flag and and standing with uh Palestine was the note.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but I shot a comment back saying, you mean with the Palestinian people, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_04: Not with Hamas.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, he responded, yes, the Palestinian people, Randy John.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I I find that my Afghan friends largely sympathize, they have a faith-based sympathy with Muslims in Gaza, as many Muslims in in the U.S.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_04: do.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_04: They're also scared of the backlash of Islamophobia.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: They see innocent people getting hurt on both sides, and the majority do not agree with me about the necessity to invade Gaza.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_04: But importantly, my Afghan friends do not support terrorism, they do not support Hamas's terrorism, they do not support terrorists of any kind.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: But here's the catch.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_04: They're not sure Hamas really committed the rapes, the murders, the beheadings.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_04: I can tell you that Hamas really did those things.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_04: We have a family friend who was at the music festival.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_04: It took 10 days for Israeli authorities to identify her among the dismembered and scorched remains.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_04: But many of my Muslim friends are not certain they can believe it.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_04: First of all, there's a lot of disinformation out there.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_04: I've mentioned already, uh, but also they do not necessarily trust the military or the U.S.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_04: government to be telling them the truth.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_04: And it's understandable from a standpoint how they would feel that because how of how they've been whipsawed on the butt end of U.S.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_04: politics over the last several decades.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_04: They they believe that there are bigger forces at play beyond what the media is telling.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_04: For example, the U.S.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_04: armed and trained Afghan fighters in the U in the 80s to dispel the Soviets from Afghanistan, but then labeled many of those fighters the enemy after 9-11.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_04: Then the U.S.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_04: went after the Taliban for decades, which my role players were grateful for, but then the U.S.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_04: pulled out.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_04: And among the reasons I hear from Afghan friends is that the U.S.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: had finished mining the major deposit of uranium in the mountains there and does not need Afghanistan anymore.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_04: In some of their words, the big boys have their own agenda in Israel, Gaza, they expect the same is true.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_04: That's what that what is really going on as a matter between the US, Iran, the Saudis, and the other big boys, and we really don't know what the true agendas are.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, as uh we're now moving towards thinking about anti-Semitism, of course, this uh word has been used so frequently within uh the media lately, um it's almost difficult to know how to define it uh precisely.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: So uh maybe you could give a try at it.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh for this for the sake of our conversation today, how would you define uh anti-Semitism, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: Well, uh I'd like to give you my simplified version, Drake, of what the U.S.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_04: government uses.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_04: And they in turn borrow this definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the IHRA.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_04: Antisemitism is the expression of hatred against Jews.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_04: That's the simplified version.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_04: And the IHRA provides 11 examples, including calling for eating or justifying the killing uh or harming of Jews in the name of ideology or religion, calling for genocide of Jews, denying the Holocaust existed, accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or a group.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but this definition also says that anti-Semitism is the expression of hatred against Jewish institutions because they're Jewish.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I I want to highlight that because uh people often ask me, you know, what if you want to criticize Israel?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_04: Is that anti-Semitic?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_04: Not necessarily, because I myself disagree with Israel on some of its government policies.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: I think the chief rabbinant, for example, should not have any legal authority over divorces.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_04: I don't agree with the current administration and the way that it's handled the judicial reform and settlement expansion.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_04: But if someone criticizes Israel because they don't believe Jews should have a sovereign state, that's anti-Semitism.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: That's delegitimization, which is one of the 3Ds that Natan Sharonsky warns about.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_04: He was a Soviet dissident from Ukraine, and he became a leader in Israel, political leader, and he helped Soviet Jewry to immigrate to Israel when they were finally let out of the Soviet Union.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_04: He continues to be an outspoken human rights advocate today.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, his three Ds that characterize why anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism include demonization of Israel and Jewish people, delegitimization, which I mentioned, as though Jews do not have a right to self-determination, and double standards.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Even before the October 7th attack, anti-Semitism's been uh on the rise.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and it's been documented in several places.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and of course, now it's uh uh gone uh to great levels.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: But why was anti-Semitism rising before October the 7th?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh can you find uh a cause or suggest a cause for that?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_04: Is there any unfortunately I believe that uh leaders around the world, some leaders have not been stomping anti-Semitism out when it rears its ugly head.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_04: And I I apologize if this uh sounds too political, but I I feel, for example, that former President Trump seems to be playing both sides.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_04: He achieved a great win for Israel getting the U.S.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_04: Embassy moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, which no other president had had the guts or success to do.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: But he also has courted known anti-Semites with high-profile meetings at Mar-a-Lago.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_04: And it just gives some subliminal encouragement to people who feel marginalized among the populations that they can be part of something bigger, some secret movement, and they should consider trying on a radical ideology like anti-Semitism.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: Randy, that's a very helpful definition of anti-Semitism.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now, maybe you could ask, answer uh, how danger how dangerous do you find anti-Semitism uh to Western society uh today?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: And why is it so?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_04: In any age, Drake, when anti-Semitism is on the rise, it's a warning sign.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_04: It indicates that the surrounding society is breaking down.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_04: And rather than having leadership and a culture that works towards engendering trust and respect between people, like I spoke about in my relationships with my Afghan friends, uh, instead, society focuses increasingly on the plight between the powerless versus the powerful.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_04: And when this happens, quite often the Jews are the convenient scapegoat.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, the Jewish people are uh a people who generally prioritize education.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_04: They have a strong work ethic and a strong community ethic.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_04: So they tend to advance to prominent positions in society, even though their religious lives might separate them from the rest of the community and mark them as the other.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_04: So in public life, when trust and respect goes out the window, it becomes easy to arouse suspicion about people who seem mysterious on one hand, yet are rising into uh positions of power on the other.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_04: By example, I'll you know, I'll mention German society suffering in the 1930s.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_04: They were weighed down by reparations and debts that they owed because they had lost World War I.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_04: So Hitler and the Nazis were meant able to uh leverage the ancient myth about a worldwide Jewish cabal that was behind it, behind their suffering.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: Similarly, in Russia, when the Tsars could not manage the masses who were bemoaning droughts and cost of foreign wars, the pogroms of the Jewish villages throughout the Pale provided a welcome diversion back farther during the the Crusades, the Crusaders uh on their way to the Holy Land, where uh many of them were a ragtag bunch, and to keep them focused, uh they spent half their time ransacking Jewish villages throughout Europe.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_04: And before that, the Catholic Church uh used the Jews as a scapegoat throughout the Middle Ages.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_04: And I I was going to remark that one of the root justifications for anti-Semitism is in the Gospel of Matthew, where uh it says that the uh the crowds uh had uh told Pontius Pilate, shouted to Pontius Pilate to uh free Barnabas instead of Jesus, which led to Jesus' uh execution.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_04: The Jewish people have borne a a guilt throughout the ages because that crowd was uh assumed to be Jewish, but so was Jesus, and so were his followers.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_04: So which Jews exactly are we would be blamed and for how long?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_04: So blaming all Jews is ludicrous, but still for centuries the Catholic Church persecuted Jews by exploiting that narrative until 1964, when the Pope himself absolved Jews of any part in Deicide and condemned anti-Semitism.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_04: But of course, by that time, a thousand years of persecution had gone by.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_04: Meanwhile, the the religious difference uh did make Jews a convenient and frequent scapegoat to a degree.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_04: They separated themselves from society by not worshiping the Christian Roman emperors, refusing to convert during medieval times.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, the observant Jewish community does traditionally congregate in communities where they can worship together, and that separates them from society, but that separation was further institutionalized with laws uh made by leaders and people who feared these others who were different.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_04: They forbade them to mix, they kept them from taking normal jobs in their towns.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_04: So the Jews had to find non-conventional ways to make a living, which gave rise to uh Jews' prowess in jewelry, for example, tailoring and finance.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_04: But then they got vilified for those achievements as well.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: And as you're well aware, uh America has been uh traditionally uh a pro-Israel nation since the late 1940s.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but now some Americans are siding with Palestinians.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: So uh why is this happening now at this point in time in history?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I think that there are several factors that are contributing to it.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uh for one, many Muslims have faith-based sympathy with Muslims in Gaza.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_04: So uh so Muslim uh populations in our country are are uh have that sympathy and they're scared of the backlash of Islamophobia, which is real too.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh then I I I I perceive a TikTok and uh uh touristy kind of fascination with jumping on the bandwagon.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_04: I uh one of my uh friends in Las Vegas uh uh told me that there was a protest out there with uh a pro-Israel uh side on one street and and pro-Palestinian on the other, pro-Hamas.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and he said homeless people were jumping in and tourists and drunks, and you know, they were they were jumping in on both sides, yelling um four-letter words at each other and taking selfie videos to get more followers.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_04: I also think there's a lot of misinformation out there.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_04: People are quick to make judgments, and everyone wants to root for the underdog.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_04: They don't see the Jews as the underdogs, they just see uh Israel for the past 75 years as the modern democratic state and and and what it's been able to do, but for much of her history, she's been the underdog.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_04: Jews have been the underdog many times, uh, the scapegoat.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_04: So so there is, I think, a uh jump to make judgments on the situation because of what they are able to see in the media uh happening to the the Palestinian people.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't think that everything being reported is accurate, but a lot of disinformation and misinformation is being disseminated as well.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_04: And then I think that there's a there's the issue of radical mutual aid between social movements.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it encourages advocates for one progressive cause to help out those of other progressive causes.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_04: There's a book uh called Mutual Aid by Dean Spade.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_04: He's a law professor and social justice advocate in Seattle, who describes how advocacy for a cause can grow and become a powerful and successful social movement through collective coordination, not just between individuals in that movement, but between social movements in general.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_04: So to an extent, I I see how that can be happening.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I I just want to put out there that I actually consider myself a social activist.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_04: I I believe, though, that change should come through modifying capitalism and democracy.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_04: But a lot of these movements believe more in um in eradicating them as uh they are signs of continued colonialism.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess some of what you said uh would find fertile ground on a college campus where we're seeing lots of uh protests uh now.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um would you agree that that's the case, that the college campus becomes um a spot where uh a lot of this dissidence uh uh can can be uh be created and promulgated?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_04: And my my oldest child, my my old my first daughter, went to Lehigh, Dave, and I understand you have a connection there as well, is that right?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, my my daughter attends there, she's a freshman.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_04: And and seeing any signs of anti-Semitism there?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm gonna say three weeks ago, four weeks ago, uh she was walking through campus and there was a large rally and uh of pro-Palestinian uh and I would even say pro-Hamas, uh, because they were chanting some things that were uh uh very anti-Semitic.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the Jewish population at Lehi is around 24-27 percent.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the the hate that was coming out of that rally uh then uh produced uh a letter from the uh the Jewish student uh organization to the president saying uh this should not be allowed to take place on our campus.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_04: I um am not as up to date on Lehigh since my daughter graduated there already, but uh I did visit Cornell University for Parents' Weekend last month, and my wife and I went to a Hillel event.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_04: Do you all know what Hillel is?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_04: It uh it's the largest uh Jewish student organization on college campuses, kind of like uh synagogue and youth group and community center rolled up in one.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_04: And uh we met the provost there along with some 200 other concerned parents, and we said to the provost, hey, we would love the administration to please enforce campus policy to condemn the swastikas and hate speech graffiti that's been painted on a few of the sidewalks and buildings.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_04: But the refrain that we kept hearing back was the university stands by free speech.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_04: I remember all too well from my college days that even painting a statue to uh express school spirit before a football game would get you fined and maybe kicked out of college.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_04: Which it should.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_04: But there's a double standard that allows for the defacing of property in the name of free speech, depending on the politics.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_04: So we warned the provost, we said, this is this is hate speech because it's meant to intimidate and maybe even incite violence.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_04: But this kind-hearted man could not see how these symbols and phrases that were harmless to him were a true threat.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_04: Well, the very next morning, Cornell Jewish students woke up to see these posts online, and they were warned to stay away from the school's kosher dining hall because a 21-year-old junior uh anonymously threatened online to shoot up the building and rape Jewish students.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_04: The governor came into town, the the administration took it seriously, thank goodness.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but in general, the problem now is that the heads of these colleges and universities, except Dartmouth, I do want to point that out.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, Dartmouth is my alma mater's.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's being called the Ivy School that got it right.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_04: President Bailock has been a model of leadership in swiftly condemning anti-Semitism, also in seizing the moment as a learning opportunity to create a constructive dialogue between students and faculty regarding the Israel uh Hamas war and anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_04: But by and large, the prestigious universities have been too permissive, leading to an escalation of harassment and discrimination, intimidation, and even violence.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_04: You may have heard the university president speaking to Congress yesterday, and they were justifying uh their position because they said that calling for genocide of a people is against university conduct, but only uh according to context.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_04: And and I just I think that it's very hard to justify that position.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_04: Part of me thinks that perhaps these university professors are in a position now where they know there are gonna be some lawsuits coming down the line and they don't want to uh present a uh uh a difference of opinion with what they're gonna have to say.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: But in the meantime, there's been a four to seven hundred percent increase in anti-Semitism, depending on who you ask, from the left the record level the year before, during the same period.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_04: The professors are calling the Jewish kids out to huddle in the corner to feel what it's like to be a Palestinian right now.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, they've been spit on, they've been beaten with uh a Palestinian flagpole, they've been physically assaulted for putting up posters, remembering hostages taken by Hamas and hearing things shouted at them like gas the Jews, genocide for the Jews.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_04: You know, university campuses have been centers for progressive social and political experimentation for decades, uh, from hippies to apartheid protests.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I find a lot of what's come out of these campuses has been great, but some of it is dangerous.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm wondering though, and I I agree with you uh on this, Randy, um, but I'm wondering if some of the expressions from college campuses uh may be sympathies for innocent Palestinians or innocent people uh caught in the way between Hamas and Israel.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure we've all seen these pictures of young children, uh women uh uh caught uh between this, uh between Hamas and Israel.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: And how then can one show sympathy for the weak in this case without being uh seen as anti-Semitic?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: Might you provide some guidance uh for our listeners on that one?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, we should be sympathetic with innocent Palestinians, but how is shouting gas the Jews, genocide for Jews, being sympathetic to innocent Palestinians?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_04: You know the annual Passover Seder, which is what the Last Supper likely was, by the way.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_04: The Passover Seder meal has a uh a story, a liturgy that Jewish families read during the course of the dinner.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: And there's a whole section that traditionally expresses sympathy for the Egyptians and the Pharaoh.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_04: People who kept the Hebrews as slaves for generations.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_04: We pour out wine uh as sacrifice for their suffering, for the Egyptians' suffering, for the announcement of each of the plagues.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_04: Jewish people sympathize with innocent Palestinians.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_04: We should all sympathize with innocent Palestinians.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_04: We sympathize that they are suffering and dying.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_04: We also have sympathy for them because they are the permanent hostages of Hamas.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_04: Hamas has confiscated all their international aid for the past decade, used it to build their terror machine, brainwashed their children with hatred as a mainstay of their school curriculum and their culture.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_04: So it's my belief that if the IDF does not destroy Hamas, more innocent Palestinians are going to suffer and die in the long run.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_04: Make no mistake, I want the IDF to be held accountable for how they pursue this war effort.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_04: So far, from what I know of the IDF over the years, is that they take more time and trouble to avoid innocent casualties than any other military on earth.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_04: They shower uh areas that they're going to go into with leaflets saying they're coming in, that they're sending bombs.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_04: I think just like many Palestinian supporters, however, don't believe Hamas did uh the atrocious acts that they did, though.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_04: I don't believe the Hamas's numbers of casualties and cannot be sure that they aren't the ones killing their own people in many cases.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_04: But that does not stop me from being sympathetic with innocent Palestinians.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: We're very thankful for your time that you've taken uh with us, Randy.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm wondering if you could answer just one more question for us today as we think about uh anti-Semitism.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, what are some practical ways that uh each of us can help prevent anti-Semitism, uh, whether it be at our workplace or at the school or in the local community in which we live?
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: Have any practical um thoughts for us?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_04: Number one, create relationships and if possible, constructive dialogue.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_04: But there has to be relationship first.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_04: And Dartmouth College was the example I mentioned earlier.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, the constructive dialogue that they have had on campus has been built on top of years of relationship with Jewish studies and Arabic studies departments and faculty to respond whenever there's an incident.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_04: Schools need to discipline faculty, students, student groups like students for justice in Palestine, who are clearly violating campus policy and sometimes state and federal law.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_04: And for that matter, the DEI departments and officers should prioritize addressing antisemitism with the same force that they use for other forms of discrimination.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, I marched for Black Lives Matter.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_04: I marched for George Floyd when he was murdered.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_04: It was during the pandemic.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_04: But we were out there for every day for weeks, me, my family, our community, waving signs, marching with thousands of people of all faiths and colors of skin, condemning police brutality.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_04: And at first I said, Well, of course, all lives matter.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_04: Blue lives matter too.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_04: But you know what my child said?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_04: Dad, you shouldn't say that right now.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_04: You're minimizing this moment and the horrible injustices that our country has leveled on black people throughout our history.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_04: This is the time to recognize black lives matter.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_04: Don't water it down with anything else.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_04: So I applied myself, became less ignorant about systemic racism and inequity, and I remain active for social justice to this day.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: But now that it's my kids who are being harassed at school, I'm disappointed to see that there's not the level of reciprocity that I'd hoped for.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, I never expected anything in return when I marched for George Floyd, but I'm still surprised to see so few allies having our back.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_04: Meanwhile, whose backs are BLM protecting?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_04: You know, the uh Chicago chapter of BLM posted an image of a Palestinian terrorist paragliding into Israel to kill Jews with the caption, I stand with Palestine.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_04: And in my own town, the DC chapter of BLM posted that Israel is guilty of apartheid while sharing posts uh get this that cast doubt on the atrocities that took place on October 7th, including the beheading of babies.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so if there's any doubt about the source of the disinformation that's flooding social media, targeting minority populations and the younger generations, well, it could be one or more of these social movements in the US uh allying with Hamas.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_04: And and I mentioned earlier the the reason's simple.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the I consider myself a social activist, but I believe change should come through modifying capitalism and democracy, uh not eliminating those institutions.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_04: And unfortunately, there are many elements that that would eliminate them.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_04: Getting back to the the steps that I would recommend uh regulating protesting, uh regulating protest activities.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_04: They frequently spawn harassment and incite threats and violence.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_04: At least please do not let people wear masks at rallies.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_04: The pandemic is over.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_04: Uh that was something that was made illegal uh uh years ago in response to uh the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_04: And lastly, safeguard Jewish individuals.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_04: Uh invest in the added security protections that are needed at the moment.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_04: And I also want to say partner with Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel, and Fabad are invaluable resources on campus.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_04: And and I do want to add, Drake, uh Jews in the U.S.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_04: want to feel supported by their friends.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_04: By being silent, people are not helping.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_04: The minimum is to reach out to them and say, hey, I don't know all the facts, but I know you're going through something that's affecting you and ask how they're feeling.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_04: Do they have family and friends?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_04: How are they doing?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: People just want to be noticed.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_04: My daughter has friends who have said, you know, none of my non-Jewish friends have reached out to me, and it makes me really sad.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, I want to conclude here by just saying straight thank you for reaching out to me and asking me how I'm doing, how my family's doing.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_04: And that's why I'm here today.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, uh Randy, for that.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, Dr.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: David McKinley and I have both uh uh sent our very best to you and your family, and uh, we're uh certainly uh very interested in uh supporting uh those uh during this current time of uh crisis between uh Israel and Hamas.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you again for uh sending this interview.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lord's blessing to you.