Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is there still hope for peace？ Joel Pollak discusses Israel and the Middle East with Ezra Levant

00:00:00.000 Tonight, we catch up with Joel Pollack, Senior Editor-at-Large of Breitbart.com.

00:00:05.220 You're watching The Ezra Levant Show.

00:00:07.380 You're ready for freedom! 0.96

00:00:10.220 Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:00:21.680 Well, just a few months ago, the Rebel News held what we called our Abraham Accords

00:00:27.400 journalistic mission to Israel in the United Arab Emirates.

00:00:31.180 We went to Israel for about a week, and then we tacked on three or four days in the UAE,

00:00:36.260 going to their cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

00:00:39.000 The Abraham Accords, as you know, was what Donald Trump dubbed his peace plan for the Middle East.

00:00:45.000 Abraham, of course, being a patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

00:00:51.440 It was an amazing trip.

00:00:52.580 It was a fun trip, very educational, and I left very hopeful.

00:00:56.360 In fact, I was sort of touched and moved by what appeared to be the genuine friendship

00:01:01.420 in the United Arab Emirates towards not just Israel, but the Jewish people.

00:01:05.160 We saw a Holocaust museum in Dubai run by a local Emirati.

00:01:10.300 We went to a complex in Abu Dhabi where the government created three almost identical religious

00:01:18.540 houses of worship, a Muslim mosque, a Catholic church, and a Jewish synagogue, all three of

00:01:23.520 which are actually used.

00:01:25.660 And myself and the, I don't know, about 40 people we had with us came back, I know, so

00:01:31.300 hopeful and feeling for the first time that maybe the age-old dispute between Jews and

00:01:36.340 Arabs can be solved.

00:01:38.500 Well, last, it was short weeks after that, on October 7th, that Hamas launched a medieval, 0.81

00:01:44.220 barbaric, rape, torture, murder, and arson attack on Israel, specifically targeting civilians,

00:01:52.280 taking women and children hostage back to Gaza, live-streaming their barbarity. 0.71

00:01:57.480 And not just that, but around the world, that was like a starter pistol for anti-Semitic hate,

00:02:02.320 the likes which I've never seen.

00:02:04.220 In fact, it really felt to me, as I said at the time, like the Holocaust museum had come

00:02:09.560 to life, but this time in full color, replete with Holocaust denial, by the way.

00:02:15.100 People who, despite the live streaming of the torture and rape, deny it and, of course,

00:02:20.260 blame the Jews themselves.

00:02:22.300 Well, someone who was on that Israel UAE trip with us, who is not a rebel and was not one

00:02:29.340 of our guests, but rather one of our celebrity guests on that trip, is our friend Joel Pollack,

00:02:34.760 the senior editor-at-large of Breitbart.com.

00:02:37.840 He was with us in that, I would call it almost a healing trip of hope, and he's been reporting

00:02:44.560 on the war ever since it began.

00:02:46.800 Joining us now via Skype is Joel Pollack from Breitbart.

00:02:49.920 Joel, great to see you again.

00:02:50.780 How are you?

00:02:52.100 Great.

00:02:52.540 Good to be with you, Ezra.

00:02:53.520 Thank you, you too.

00:02:55.580 This war has not just been a military conflict between Israel and Hamas.

00:03:00.560 I think it has really called on the diaspora of Islamic extremists around the world, as

00:03:08.120 well as their new allies on the progressive left, to launch, really, an anti-Semitic propaganda

00:03:15.240 war against the Jewish state and against Jews, not just Israeli things, but Jews and Jewishness

00:03:22.100 itself is under attack in a way that I don't think has been the case since the Second World

00:03:26.940 War.

00:03:27.180 What do you make of that?

00:03:27.840 Well, terrorists and, I should say, even mainstream Palestinian leaders have often viewed

00:03:36.220 anti-Semitism as a form of leverage over Jewish communities and over Western policymakers.

00:03:44.440 I was told about 20 years ago, when I had breakfast with the Palestinian ambassador to South Africa,

00:03:50.300 Africa, we met in Cape Town, and he warned me that if the United States didn't change its

00:03:56.900 policy toward Israel, that there could one day be a Holocaust in the United States.

00:04:02.420 Now, he was exploiting fears among Jews that even in the United States, which has been the

00:04:11.520 most welcoming country to Jews out of any country outside of Israel and perhaps Canada, he was

00:04:18.400 reacting or exploiting those fears that Jews still have, because Jews were very much at home in 0.98

00:04:25.000 Germany, for example, before the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party. And Jews often fear that something

00:04:30.660 like that could happen again, no matter what other society they're living in. That's why Jews feel safer and

00:04:35.340 more secure when Israel is safe and secure. But in his mind, that was something to be exploited, that the

00:04:40.720 discomfort of Jewish communities in the West could be used to convince Israel not to be aggressive against

00:04:48.020 Palestinian terrorism, because after all, Israel would not want to do things that would harm fellow Jews around

00:04:53.740 the world. So I think there is actually an unspoken strategic element to some of the anti-Semitism. Some of it is

00:04:59.420 purely ideological and radically nationalist. There have been many attacks, for example, in even New York

00:05:07.640 City, which is a city where Jews are very much a part of the cultural landscape, attacks on Israeli

00:05:13.520 restaurants, restaurants that serve falafel and hummus, because according to Palestinians, Israelis

00:05:18.800 aren't allowed to enjoy those foods or to serve them in Israeli-style restaurants, because those foods are

00:05:24.340 from the Middle East, and they view Israel as not being indigenous to the Middle East. Everything Israeli is

00:05:29.100 fake and borrowed, never mind that the very Palestinian narrative itself of a Nakba, a disaster as the 1.00

00:05:35.720 founding of their nation, is borrowed in its own turn from the way in which the Holocaust preceded the

00:05:42.920 creation of the State of Israel, although the pieces were already in place for the creation of the State

00:05:47.120 of Israel before the Second World War. But the idea is to delegitimize Israel. And what you can say at best

00:05:56.000 is that the academic institutions and some of the leading political institutions, and certainly the

00:06:02.160 media institutions, are indifferent to the death of Jews in Israel. As the saying goes, Jewish lives don't 0.98

00:06:11.100 matter. And of course, the opposite is true for other minorities, for whom the establishment bends over

00:06:18.060 backwards to show how much they care and how much they empathize, even with perceived suffering,

00:06:21.680 suffering, if perhaps the objective reasons for suffering might be a matter of differences of

00:06:27.280 opinion. There's no regard for the suffering of Israeli Jews. And you see that at the United

00:06:32.560 Nations, where the UN's Women Organization ignored the attempted mass rape of Israeli women and the

00:06:41.500 allegations, credible, and some of them on video, of the sexual violence against Israeli women. So

00:06:48.260 there is an anti-Semitism. Some of it is strategic and political, and some of it

00:06:53.880 does go back to very old and very ugly prejudices against Jews that are simply religious prejudices or

00:07:01.020 ethnic prejudices. And in many cases, in many ways, the Arab and Muslim diaspora has borrowed some of

00:07:08.640 these anti-Semitic ideas from European anti-Semitism. And in some ways, they are indigenous to Islamic 0.83

00:07:16.240 attitudes toward minority faiths in the Muslim world in general. Jews and Christians were never

00:07:20.640 full citizens in the Muslim empires. They were second-class citizens. They may have had it better, 1.00

00:07:25.460 especially Jews, at some points in Islamic history than they might have in Christian Europe,

00:07:29.040 but they were never full citizens. And there is a powerful anti-Semitism that comes from within

00:07:35.180 Islam, as well as from within the totalitarian ideologies of Europe or the authoritarian regime of

00:07:43.380 Tsarist Russia, which originally promulgated the fraudulent text, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

00:07:49.180 So a lot of anti-Semitism comes into this mix, and the leading academic lights in the United States

00:07:57.280 failed to speak out forcefully against it. They failed to describe the nature of the problem. They

00:08:03.200 treated anti-Israel and anti-Semitic speech as if it were a First Amendment problem, merely a matter of free

00:08:07.860 speech. In fact, it's not even clear that calls for genocide, for example, are protected by the First

00:08:14.260 Amendment. Certainly, calling for the destruction of Israel is an infringement on religious liberty

00:08:18.680 because Israel is at the center of the Jewish faith and has been for thousands of years. And so if

00:08:23.300 you're calling for the destruction of Israel, you're calling essentially to make it impossible or much

00:08:27.440 more difficult, at least, for Jews to practice their faith. Many Jews feel that Judaism itself would not

00:08:32.260 survive without the modern state of Israel because of the Holocaust. And so there's been a kind of

00:08:37.760 failure, not just a moral failure by Arab and Muslim immigrants to the West who have brought with them 1.00

00:08:45.480 some of the anti-Israel prejudices that they were steeped in, perhaps, in their upbringing, but there's

00:08:49.580 been a failure of the North American and European institutions to stand up for their own values, to stand

00:08:54.800 up for American history. The very basis of religious liberty in the United States, going back to George

00:09:00.380 Washington, is not just tolerance, but a complete assertion of the independent religious liberty of

00:09:08.300 Jews. George Washington wrote a letter to the Jewish community at Newport, Rhode Island, promising

00:09:12.680 them that Jews would always be safe in the United States. And that letter also says that people don't

00:09:18.000 enjoy their religious liberty on the sufferance of others. It's not just that Jews are tolerated, but 0.60

00:09:22.560 Jews have an independent God-given right to religious liberty. And Washington wrote that just a few

00:09:27.500 months after he became president. And that reflects the spirit in which the First Amendment was adopted.

00:09:32.280 So we've really lost a sense of not just what it means to live in a tolerant society, but we've lost

00:09:38.260 a sense of where our own liberties come from. And we've allowed, in some cases, migrant communities to 1.00

00:09:43.660 bring these illiberal ideas with them, but we haven't even stood up for our own ideas through our own

00:09:50.000 institutions.

00:09:50.480 Yeah. You know, it was incredible. And I haven't done a show on the subject, but the presidents of

00:09:57.220 MIT, Harvard, and Penn, three leading universities, just were incredible how they just would not bring

00:10:05.080 themselves to condemn calls for genocide. I think there was one point where they said, well, if it

00:10:10.540 turned into action, we would say something. But just calling for death to the Jews is not enough to 0.97

00:10:18.200 trigger our harassment. They condemned calls for genocide, but what they wouldn't say is that calls

00:10:24.500 for genocide would be punished by the university. What they tried to say was that it's a First

00:10:29.060 Amendment issue. It's a free speech issue. People have the free speech to call for genocide.

00:10:33.340 Well, if you go to any of these campuses, you don't actually have freedom of speech. You can't

00:10:37.780 misgender someone. You can lose your job for misgendering somebody. You can be brought up on

00:10:43.040 administrative sanctions or whatever it is for all kinds of speech offenses, but somehow calling for

00:10:47.940 the genocide of Jews is uniquely privileged as a form of freedom of speech. And of course, under

00:10:52.540 First Amendment doctrine, incitement to immediate physical violence is not protected by the First

00:10:57.680 Amendment. And in a lot of these contexts where you have crowds of anti-Israel demonstrators saying

00:11:02.360 things like, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, which is a call to genocide, and Jewish 1.00

00:11:06.560 students have to make their way through this, that is an incitement to harm. And I've told my wife many

00:11:10.860 times that had those protesters existed on campus when I was there, I probably would have been

00:11:15.320 expelled for fighting because those are fighting words. How are you expected to go to class surrounded

00:11:21.120 by people who hate you and go into class and be interrupted in class by people? That's another

00:11:25.320 problem at Harvard, that people are interrupting classes. And this is being tolerated. It's not being

00:11:29.820 punished. If at all, it's very minor punishment. And the university isn't speaking out. The university

00:11:34.980 can also make its own views much clearer. The university has freedom of speech, and they are not speaking

00:11:41.280 out on behalf of the right of Israel to exist. The idea that Israel could be dismantled shouldn't

00:11:46.200 even be a topic of debate. It's really not a legitimate position. If there are people who

00:11:51.100 want to advocate for that position, that's fine. But the university doesn't have to endorse that

00:11:54.180 position. I myself have my Harvard reunion coming up in a few months, and I am not going. And I've

00:11:59.000 actually put a notice in the alumni bulletin that goes out to all the classmates that I will not

00:12:04.320 participate in any Harvard activities as long as the university continues to subsidize the groups that

00:12:09.520 signed a joint statement on the weekend of October 7th, blaming Israel for the terrorist attacks.

00:12:14.600 They can say that in Harvard Yard. They can say that on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts,

00:12:18.920 but they do not have the right to access university funds for their activities if that's the point of

00:12:24.020 view they want to express. So I don't think we have to subsidize these views. And the university

00:12:28.920 hasn't been forceful enough. And I think they've actually done their own students a disfavor.

00:12:33.000 Many Americans have now waded in. There are efforts to expose the names of students who've taken

00:12:37.840 anti-Israel views. I've actually been against that. I don't think that students who have stupid

00:12:42.500 views when they're undergraduates should suffer for the rest of their lives. I was on the left 1.00

00:12:45.760 when I was a student at the undergraduate level anyway at Harvard. But I think the university

00:12:51.120 should have rebuked them and shown the rest of the country and the rest of the world that the

00:12:55.300 university itself was managing this, that this was part of the educational process, that these

00:12:59.120 students were speaking without a knowledge of history or without concern for the consequences of

00:13:04.200 their words. But the university just said, no, this is free speech. And so it left these students

00:13:07.860 defend for themselves, which I think was an abdication of responsibility by the university.

00:13:12.320 Eighteen-year-olds don't show up on campus as fully formed adults, ready to understand what

00:13:17.240 they're saying, to make coherent arguments, and to deal with the consequences of whatever they're

00:13:22.220 doing. I know we've gotten rid of the idea of in loco parentis, that the universities are

00:13:26.380 sort of substitutes for the parents. But I do think the university in this case,

00:13:30.260 by rebuking the students, would have actually protected them from what they're now experiencing.

00:13:36.160 Now the university is stepping in to protect the anti-Israel students who are being exposed and

00:13:40.500 denied jobs and things like that. And it's doing more to protect those students than it has done

00:13:45.080 to protect the Jewish students who are under physical threat and can't leave their dorms at

00:13:49.000 the University of Pennsylvania, and so forth. Just one more thing, Ezra, before we go on.

00:13:53.520 You had a really nice introduction about our time in the United Arab Emirates. And I should say that

00:13:58.500 there is still a silver lining in all this, which is that the United Arab Emirates has remained part

00:14:03.280 of the Abrahamic courts, as have all the other Arab countries that made peace with Israel. Nobody

00:14:07.660 has dropped out. And the United Arab Emirates continues to, as far as I can understand anecdotally,

00:14:13.760 continues to be welcoming to Jews, to Israelis. They lit Hanukkah menorahs in Dubai. I have text

00:14:20.480 messages from members of the Jewish congregation in Abu Dhabi, where the government built the synagogue,

00:14:24.820 the first synagogue in the Emirates. And they're still having weekly Sabbath services. They're

00:14:29.380 having Hanukkah menorah lightings. So there is, behind all of the conflict, there is still

00:14:34.180 a relationship that exists between Israel and some of these Arab states. Part of the reason the Hamas 1.00

00:14:39.660 terror attack happened is that Iran is trying to disrupt those relationships. Iran is trying to 0.75

00:14:44.600 break the peace that had begun to set in. I think Iran has been partially successful in that it's turned 1.00

00:14:50.220 public opinion in the Middle East and in the world against Israel. But I don't think it has been

00:14:56.020 successful in that it hasn't actually broken the Abraham Accords. Those countries, especially the

00:15:00.780 United Arab Emirates, they're still very much working with Israel. And in fact, the Dubai Port Company is

00:15:06.640 now allowing Israeli trucks to take goods from Dubai across Saudi Arabia and across Jordan and into Israel

00:15:13.540 as a way of bypassing the Houthis in the Red Sea, who have caused problems not just for Israeli 0.84

00:15:18.460 shipping, but global shipping. So there is a productive relationship that's still going on.

00:15:23.360 Wow. Well, you've said so many things that I want to weigh in on, but I don't want to

00:15:26.280 go back in time. But I do want to show that exchange in the U.S. Congress between Representative

00:15:32.480 Stefanik and these university presidents. And for those folks who are having trouble saying,

00:15:37.420 well, what's wrong with it? Imagine if you had, and by the way, in Toronto, so many of the Hamas 1.00

00:15:43.160 activists are masked. So imagine you have people wearing a Klan hood shouting, kill the blacks, 0.99

00:15:50.480 lynch the blacks, insane things like that. And the university saying, yep, that's free speech 1.00

00:15:56.280 until they actually start to kill or lynch anyone. That's free speech. Let me show you the exchange

00:16:01.360 between Stefanik and these presidents, just because I know that was about five minutes ago in our

00:16:05.140 conversation. But I think it was important for our viewers to see it. Dr. Kornbluth, at MIT,

00:16:11.940 does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and

00:16:18.660 harassment? Yes or no? If targeted at individuals, not making public statements. Yes or no?

00:16:26.140 Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment? I have not heard calling

00:16:31.400 for the genocide for Jews on our campus. But you've heard chants for intifada. I've heard chants,

00:16:37.240 which can be anti-Semitic depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.

00:16:43.560 So those would not be according to the MIT's code of conduct or rules?

00:16:48.600 That would be investigated as harassment, if pervasive and severe.

00:16:53.860 Ms. McGill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?

00:17:06.360 If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.

00:17:10.240 I am asking, specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?

00:17:19.140 If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment.

00:17:22.600 So the answer is yes.

00:17:25.220 It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.

00:17:27.880 It's a context-dependent decision. That's your testimony today. Calling for the genocide of Jews 0.99

00:17:32.800 is depending upon the context. That is not bullying or harassment. This is the easiest question to answer.

00:17:40.020 Yes, Ms. McGill. So is your testimony that you will not answer yes?

00:17:46.260 If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.

00:17:53.820 Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide? The speech is not harassment? This is unacceptable, Ms. McGill.

00:18:01.260 I'm going to give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer.

00:18:06.340 Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment?

00:18:13.480 Yes or no?

00:18:17.160 It can be harassment.

00:18:19.340 The answer is yes. And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

00:18:30.680 It can be, depending on the context.

00:18:33.740 What's the context?

00:18:35.360 Targeted as an individual. Targeted at an individual.

00:18:38.540 It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?

00:18:46.260 Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism?

00:18:51.440 I will ask you one more time.

00:18:54.480 Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

00:19:02.400 Anti-Semitic rhetoric.

00:19:03.560 And is it anti-Semitic rhetoric?

00:19:05.980 Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct and we do take action.

00:19:17.520 So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard's code of conduct. Correct. 0.98

00:19:24.560 Again, it depends on the context.

00:19:29.240 It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes. And this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.

00:19:37.080 And the reason I think that's important is because it's not just, it's everyone in authority.

00:19:43.440 Most mainstream media in Canada will not call Hamas a terrorist group. They won't. They claim that they don't want to take sides.

00:19:49.640 But of course, that is taking a side. That's saying we're not going to call them terrorist groups.

00:19:53.180 Most police forces in Canada have, like, for example, just a couple of days ago in Toronto, a masked man in a mall said, I'll put you six feet under.

00:20:03.760 I'll put you six feet under, shouting at, I presume, what were Jewish shoppers. 1.00

00:20:08.980 A cop was standing right there and did nothing. Here's a quick clip of that.

00:20:11.460 What I think we're seeing is that the pro-Hamas forces, whether they're organic or stimulated by Iran, which there's evidence that that's happening certainly in Canada or whatever it is,

00:20:40.480 because they're trying to test the limits. How far can they go? And so far, they have not found the limit.

00:20:47.320 And I find it deeply depressing because there is no authority in Canada from what Daniel Pipes calls the five Ps, the professors, politicians, the press, the police, or the prosecutors.

00:20:58.680 None of these institutions have stepped up and said, whoa, we are on the wrong track.

00:21:04.000 At least in Canada, at most, you have sort of a silence. And in too many cases, I mean, Canada, for example, voted for the pro-Hamas ceasefire motion in the United Nations the other day.

00:21:16.880 There's just no countervailing force. I find it deeply depressing.

00:21:20.320 Well, what's encouraging is that Israel is continuing to fight regardless. 1.00

00:21:25.760 And the reports every day from the battlefield are that Israel continues to make gains.

00:21:30.700 They continue to find tunnels. They continue to destroy Hamas terrorists and the weapons that they've stockpiled. 0.59

00:21:38.980 So I think Israel is winning anyway. But the West really has a stake in this fight. 0.97

00:21:43.360 And the analogy to Nazi Germany, I mean, we mock people who use Hitler analogies, but the analogy in this case is perfectly appropriate. 1.00

00:21:50.660 The German people were broadly supportive of the Nazi regime and the Allies bombed German cities.

00:21:57.080 They caused a lot of suffering to German civilians, but they had to dislodge the Nazi party from power permanently.

00:22:03.320 The goal was unconditional surrender. That's the goal in the war against Hamas. 0.75

00:22:07.060 And Hamas has a similar ideology to Nazi Germany. 0.98

00:22:10.000 They want to kill all the Jews, not just in Israel, but all around the world. 0.79

00:22:12.820 Well, if you're comfortable with a group like that maintaining its weapons and maintaining its power, 0.96

00:22:17.760 then you ought to have been comfortable with a partial peace in the Second World War that left Hitler and the Nazis in power, 0.70

00:22:25.940 as long as they promised not to do anything bad to the Jews again, which was against their ideology.

00:22:29.960 Of course, they were going to do things like that again, just like Hamas says. 0.97

00:22:32.260 Of course, it's going to repeat October 7th.

00:22:33.660 So I think there's a failure in the West to stand up for our own values and for our own interests.

00:22:39.340 And, you know, there's this new coalition.

00:22:42.200 Canada has joined the United States in this coalition to counter the Houthi threat to shipping in the Red Sea.

00:22:47.900 I call it the coalition of the unwilling because they're unwilling to attack the Houthis in Yemen

00:22:53.060 to take out the military installations, the ballistic missiles, the pirates in the harbor

00:22:58.960 that would actually be relatively easy to hit.

00:23:01.600 And they're unwilling to do it for fear of widening the conflict.

00:23:04.940 But Iran doesn't seem to fear widening the conflict.

00:23:06.820 Iran's widening the conflict all the time.

00:23:08.980 And there's this fear somehow of confronting Iran.

00:23:11.840 And Iran senses that fear.

00:23:13.340 And so it pushes for more.

00:23:14.880 What really would be the threat of confronting Iran in Yemen? 0.75

00:23:17.860 The supply lines between Iran and Yemen are not short.

00:23:20.980 They're long.

00:23:21.920 The United States, Canada and other nations would easily win any military confrontation with the Houthis 0.56

00:23:26.260 who come from one of the poorest countries in the world, a country that has no business 1.00

00:23:29.020 firing ballistic missiles or drones at anybody.

00:23:31.500 It doesn't invent those drones itself.

00:23:33.300 It gets them from Iran. 0.97

00:23:34.160 But all of that money is being poured into weaponry instead of into the welfare of the people of Yemen

00:23:39.820 who need economic development.

00:23:41.420 And they're threatening global shipping.

00:23:43.000 We've completely inverted the world order.

00:23:44.860 We are unwilling to do what's necessary to stop evil from taking over.

00:23:48.600 So we are a coalition of the unwilling.

00:23:50.440 And only Israel is willing to stand up, as Lee Smith put it in a recent article in Tablet magazine,

00:23:57.020 only Israel is standing for life, for the idea that you have to protect what's valuable. 0.68

00:24:01.660 And sometimes, yes, that means going to war, but you don't go to war to cause death.

00:24:04.900 You go to war to protect life.

00:24:06.600 And Hamas is a death cult that is exacting a price that evidently too many countries in the West are willing to pay.

00:24:12.520 You know, I know you don't have a lot more time to spend with us, so I just want to ask you a question about

00:24:17.280 one of the things that has surprised me is that there is a difference in the United States between liberals and leftists.

00:24:25.240 Liberals are just, you know, people who aren't maybe conservative.

00:24:28.380 They're more, you know, they're softer, let me say.

00:24:33.720 Whereas progressives are hard-edged, woke, communist activists, if you want to be imprecise.

00:24:41.340 And so I've been pleasantly surprised to see people like Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania,

00:24:47.400 who was this goofy progressive, I thought, but he's actually quite principled standing up for Israel.

00:24:52.700 I see Antony Blinken, who's probably the most articulate defender of Israel's war to deconstruct Hamas in the world.

00:25:00.520 I see Bill Maher, the famous liberal from his HBO TV show.

00:25:05.360 I see even Alec Baldwin, who I've despised for a hundred reasons.

00:25:08.740 I see him on the street in New York pushing back at anti-Semites.

00:25:11.800 And I'm heartened by the fact that in America you can have liberals who I'm against on everything from gun control

00:25:18.060 to global warming to transgenderism, whatever. 0.90

00:25:21.440 But on this, they're able to see, you know, this is just Jew hate. 1.00

00:25:24.680 It's the same as someone who wanted to kill blacks. 1.00

00:25:27.320 You just want to kill Jews. 1.00

00:25:28.540 I'm impressed with them. 1.00

00:25:29.520 I mean, here, here's just a quick clip of Alec Baldwin.

00:25:31.440 I wouldn't be kidding.

00:25:32.460 It's not about standing up for Jews. 0.91

00:25:34.700 What has happened is that the pro-Palestinian movement has attacked institutions and ideas

00:25:41.320 that have nothing to do with Jews, but that are very important to Americans.

00:25:46.600 The pro-Palestinian activists, for example, have made a point of disrupting Christmas tree lightings across America.

00:25:54.100 They disrupted the lightings in Rockefeller Center in New York.

00:25:57.560 They threatened to disrupt the California Christmas tree lighting.

00:26:01.060 So Governor Gavin Newsom here made it a virtual lighting as if it were back in the days of COVID.

00:26:05.560 He didn't do an outdoor lighting because the Palestinian activists were going to disrupt it.

00:26:09.480 And they were very upset that he had deprived them of an opportunity to disrupt the Christmas tree lighting that they never wanted him to have anyway.

00:26:15.240 These are attacks on symbols of American culture.

00:26:20.780 And Palestinians are attacking them or the pro-Palestinian activists, anti-Israel activists are attacking them because they're not just attacking Israel.

00:26:29.020 They want to overthrow what they perceive as the dominant culture in the United States.

00:26:32.960 This is part of the Black Lives Matter Antifa attack on the core of American culture and cultural institutions. 0.99

00:26:39.680 Just this week, I learned today, the anti-Israel activists defaced the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. with red paint.

00:26:50.020 Now, where have we seen that before?

00:26:51.200 We saw it happen during the 2020 riots after George Floyd when Antifa went around defacing American monuments, including monuments to abolitionists like Abraham Lincoln.

00:27:02.120 They defaced the Lincoln Memorial then as well.

00:27:04.440 These are attacks on what they perceive as the complacency and bourgeois and pro-Western attitudes of their fellow Americans.

00:27:12.560 They want to disrupt American life. 0.85

00:27:14.600 In San Francisco, anti-Israel protesters blocked the Bay Bridge.

00:27:19.220 They sat across the highway.

00:27:20.760 They blocked the bridge.

00:27:22.140 And there were several ambulances that were carrying organs for transplantation to desperate patients that couldn't get across the bridge.

00:27:28.960 So when you start doing that, I mean, Alec Baldwin, you take Alec Baldwin, he was out for a walk.

00:27:33.620 He was trying to walk to an acting class that he was teaching, and he happened to encounter the protesters.

00:27:37.900 He didn't go there to be a counter-demonstrator, but they accosted him as he was trying to walk by.

00:27:42.560 Now, I'm sure he probably crossed to their side of the street to see what the commotion was because he likes confrontations.

00:27:47.620 But the point is, people are trying to go about their business.

00:27:50.500 They're trying to have a Christmas.

00:27:51.640 They're trying to get to work and get to the hospital.

00:27:54.060 And the pro-Palestinian people are interfering with them.

00:27:56.440 And that's why you're seeing a reaction from Americans.

00:27:59.580 And the Palestinian cause is not about convincing hearts and minds.

00:28:03.680 It's about terror.

00:28:04.760 It's about terrifying people and disrupting ordinary life.

00:28:07.200 And it has hitched itself to the broader revolutionary project.

00:28:10.920 And that's why you're seeing some liberals push back.

00:28:13.860 Antony Blinken, I wouldn't give the benefit of the doubt because he's dictating terms to the Israeli war cabinet behind the scenes.

00:28:19.080 And that has to be watched very closely.

00:28:20.600 But, yes, the reaction you're seeing from some mainstream Americans is to the fact that the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian activists aren't just attacking Jews.

00:28:29.440 They're not just attacking Israel. 0.72

00:28:30.440 They're attacking Western society itself.

00:28:32.520 And more and more people are saying, we've had enough.

00:28:34.860 Here's a quick clip of Alec Baldwin on the streets of Manhattan.

00:28:38.160 Take a look.

00:28:38.640 And by the way, here's a quick clip of John Fetterman surprisingly standing up for Israel's right. 0.69

00:29:08.580 I understand that there's kind of a division between the younger voters, between Israel and Gaza.

00:29:17.920 And, you know, I really believe the president is very much on the right side of that.

00:29:22.860 And sometimes, you know, you may alienate some voters, but it's really most important to be on the right side on that.

00:29:29.900 I mean, that's where I'm at.

00:29:31.300 I do know that a lot of people are getting their perspective from TikTok.

00:29:34.560 And I think if you're kind of getting your perspective on the world on TikTok, it's going to tend to be kind of warped or not reflective of the history and actually the way things absolutely are.

00:29:45.620 And what is very clear is that Hamas started this and they actually broke the ceasefire.

00:29:51.320 And they attacked and murdered babies, children, women, attacked a music concert and everything.

00:30:00.780 It's outrageous.

00:30:30.760 There's a problem, by the way.

00:30:32.640 I'm on TikTok and I'm on Twitter and I can see the difference in the algorithm.

00:30:36.380 And TikTok is a, you know, superhighway of anti-Semitic content, whereas Twitter is much less so.

00:30:42.440 It's ironic that Elon Musk is getting pegged as the anti-Semite when TikTok is this Chinese government app that's feeding me anti-Israel propaganda.

00:30:49.460 Again, and I'm the same person.

00:30:50.520 The algorithms are just different.

00:30:52.540 But I think it's other than maybe low information voters who are being given a few slogans to chant.

00:30:59.080 I don't think the purpose of the pro-Hamas marches is to persuade.

00:31:03.840 It's not to make the case.

00:31:05.240 It's not to reason.

00:31:06.100 It's exactly what you say.

00:31:07.600 It's to become so harassing, so punitive, so stressful, so chaotic, to shut down roads and bridges and subway stations.

00:31:15.580 And who knows, maybe they'll shut down airports.

00:31:17.660 That people are fatigued by it and just give in to it, either give in to sharp terrorism, like there had been some terrorist threats in Canada, or just the slow wearing down, the fatigue and the demoralization, as Yuri Bezmenov would call it.

00:31:34.640 I think that we're allowing the demoralization of the West. 0.56

00:31:39.580 And some people are alert to it, but many people are not.

00:31:41.880 Last word to you, Joel.

00:31:42.680 The Israelis are also on TikTok, and the Israeli defense minister, I think it was, or one of the military commanders, told the soldiers in the field, you are the TikTok generation and you're fighting in Gaza.

00:31:58.740 The kids on TikTok in Israel are in the army, and they're risking their lives to protect their country, to protect the children of Israel from ever having to endure another October 7th.

00:32:08.800 There's nothing really fundamentally different about Israelis and Canadians or Americans.

00:32:14.560 The difference is that Israel suffered a direct terror attack, and so people had to put down their phones and go to war.

00:32:22.400 And the thing that we have to realize is that this assault on the West is going to become more direct if Hamas succeeds. 0.89

00:32:32.380 Other radical organizations will become emboldened to carry out terror attacks.

00:32:37.360 Look, they've already succeeded in some ways.

00:32:39.040 I mean, Harvard has become a place where it's uncomfortable, to say the least, to be Jewish and very difficult to be pro-Israel.

00:32:45.960 The libraries, the sacred spaces have been disrupted.

00:32:48.580 So I think that we're going to need to see people in the United States and Canada stand up.

00:32:54.200 And, yes, we have TikTok to worry about, it's a Chinese-controlled app, and who knows what sort of propaganda they're feeding into our culture and so forth. 0.99

00:33:02.700 But individuals are going to have to stand up and take heart from the young Israelis who have the same apps that we do, but who put the phones down and did what they had to do, whether volunteering or picking up a gun or whatever it was they had to do as part of the war effort.

00:33:17.380 And they're out there fighting.

00:33:18.540 It didn't kill their will to fight, and nor should we allow it to kill ours.

00:33:21.600 There you have it, Joel.

00:33:23.820 Great to catch up with you.

00:33:25.600 Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.

00:33:28.300 And hopefully one day again, we'll do another journalistic mission to Israel to celebrate peace between Israel and its neighbors once, God willing, Hamas is defeated and Hezbollah too. 0.58

00:33:41.040 All right.

00:33:42.360 Stay with us.

00:33:43.260 It's good to see you.

00:33:44.300 Stay with us.

00:33:45.080 My final thoughts are next.

00:33:51.600 I like Joel.

00:33:52.120 He's a smart guy, and he has a lot of things to say.

00:33:53.900 I have about five things to say in response every time he answers, but the conversation has to move forward.

00:33:59.740 It can't just be me reacting to Joel.

00:34:03.120 But I did not do a monologue on those three college presidents, one of whom has since been sacked, the president of UPenn, University of Pennsylvania.

00:34:12.740 But I think because they've been places of woke, critical race theory and cultural Marxism for a generation, the reason they responded to this anti-Semitism the way they did is because they put Jews in the class of the oppressor and Palestinians in the class of the oppressed.

00:34:34.580 And so literally anything done by Palestinians against Jews, including rape and murder and torture and the most barbaric things, is called resistance, and it's approved. 1.00

00:34:45.140 And Jews, even though they have been historically victims, such as the Holocaust, and even more recently, all the Jews were kicked out of Arab lands.

00:34:52.960 There's a kind of Jew called a Sephardi Jew, basically an Arab Jew, for example, like Abiyamini, who were all kicked out of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq.

00:35:02.840 There were Jews all across these places, and they were all kicked out when the state of Israel was born, and they'd been refugees too.

00:35:09.480 But instead of, you know, wallowing in it, they built a new country.

00:35:14.760 And that's the sad part here is that Gaza was handed over to the Palestinians in 2005 with hope, with tremendous hope. 0.95

00:35:24.320 And actually, Israel handed over an enormous greenhouse industry.

00:35:30.140 I mean, the Jews who lived in Gaza were pulled out.

00:35:34.080 Many of them did not want to leave, and the Israeli military literally went in and physically pulled the Jews out and actually disinterred the graves and reburied.

00:35:43.380 Like, there was not a single Jew living or dead in Gaza, other than, of course, the hostages today. 0.55

00:35:48.640 Israel pulled out everything but left the Palestinians' greenhouse industry, and Hamas destroyed it all.

00:35:56.420 The Palestinians destroyed it all, lest that they take a gift from the Zionists. 1.00

00:36:00.100 What could have been a Singapore or a Dubai was turned into a terror state. 0.74

00:36:05.980 The amount of money per person given to Gaza is 10 times as much as the West paid to rebuild Europe in the Marshall Plan after the Second World War.

00:36:17.040 I don't know if you remember.

00:36:18.300 But after the Second World War, the United States poured hundreds of billions in today's worth of dollars into Europe to rebuild it and to, you know, to get, to rebuild the industry,

00:36:30.600 but also to win the hearts and minds of Europe that was pummeled to turn the West into a liberal democratic harmonious place again.

00:36:39.640 Gaza has received 10 times as much money proportionately.

00:36:43.660 They have more funds than any other refugee group around, and they're not really refugees, of course, because it's their own place now. 0.99

00:36:51.260 And Israel was born 75 years ago, so there are really no surviving people who may have been disrupted back then,

00:36:59.180 just as you could say that the Jews in Israel now are native to Israel, the Arabic Jews.

00:37:06.740 My point is they could have had a wonderful, beautiful seaside country in the Mediterranean that could have been a success,

00:37:15.820 but instead of choosing life, they chose death.

00:37:20.020 And, you know, there was a lot of bad news out there, but the one thing that Joel said is that Israel is actually winning the war on the ground is accurate. 0.96

00:37:30.400 That's our show for the day.

00:37:31.980 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - December 28, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is there still hope for peace？ Joel Pollak discusses Israel and the Middle East with Ezra Levant

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript