The Megyn Kelly Show - The Rise in Anti-Jewish and Anti-Asian Violence in America, with Ron Dermer and Ying Ma

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.800 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, and happy Friday.

00:00:16.520 So excited today to have the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.

00:00:22.380 Big, big fan of his. He came on The Kelly File a bunch of times.

00:00:25.900 He is with us to talk about the increasing and disturbing rise of attacks against Jewish Americans,

00:00:33.460 against Jewish people in Europe and beyond in the wake of this conflict that has now entered a ceasefire.

00:00:40.380 But the attacks have not, sadly.

00:00:42.420 And we've been seeing, you know, from coast to coast here in America, disturbing tape of Jewish Americans just going about their business getting attacked in very violent, upsetting ways.

00:00:50.880 So we're going to get into that. And also I'll ask him whether he thinks the ceasefire is going to hold.

00:00:55.080 And then we're going to be joined by Ying Ma. She's great.

00:00:58.700 She's written such good stuff, and she's just kind of fearless in talking about these issues.

00:01:03.200 She's an author of a book called Chinese Girl in the Ghetto, because she talks about getting to know freedom from post-Mao China to moving to Oakland, California,

00:01:11.640 which she did when she was 10 years old, experienced a lot of a lot of anti-Asian sentiment out there,

00:01:17.560 but sort of nose to the grindstone, worked her way up, went to Cornell, went to Stanford Law School,

00:01:22.180 and has been instrumental in fighting against some of this anti-Asian bias that we're seeing,

00:01:27.980 whether it's at universities or some of these attacks that have been increasing in the past year.

00:01:33.320 However, we've seen a lot of black on Asian violence in the past few months and years,

00:01:39.240 and the mainstream media doesn't want to touch it.

00:01:41.180 They don't want to seem like they're condemning all black people, which, of course, we're not either.

00:01:44.720 We just have to look at the dynamic here when it comes to these violent attacks and figure out why.

00:01:49.520 And why does the mainstream media keep telling us that that's white supremacy?

00:01:52.980 So we're going to have a good talk about it.

00:01:56.420 I think you're going to enjoy both of our guests today.

00:01:59.180 To Ambassador Dermer first in one second, but first this.

00:02:08.220 Ambassador, how are you?

00:02:09.900 I'm fine. How are you?

00:02:11.160 I'm great. Great to hear your voice again.

00:02:12.900 Thank you.

00:02:13.900 Okay, so let's start with the latest news,

00:02:16.320 and then we'll get to what seems to be a very clear rise in the anti-Semitic attacks,

00:02:21.180 not just here in the United States, but in Europe and beyond.

00:02:25.240 But I'd love to get, as the man who was the ambassador from Israel to the U.S. for eight years,

00:02:30.760 I'd love to get your thoughts on the ceasefire.

00:02:33.720 It's a bilateral ceasefire as of last Friday.

00:02:36.380 It's holding for now.

00:02:38.060 What's your confidence level that it will continue to?

00:02:40.760 Well, I'm pretty confident that it will hold for some period of time.

00:02:44.700 I think the question is how long, because this, as you know, is the fourth round that we've had.

00:02:49.800 We had a round of violence in 2008-2009, where we had a lot of rockets fired into Israel.

00:02:56.440 It happened again in 2012.

00:02:59.360 It happened the third time in 2014.

00:03:02.500 And now it happened the fourth time at this level in 2021.

00:03:06.120 We had several rounds in between those rounds that were smaller.

00:03:09.780 But in terms of major hundreds and thousands, really, of rockets fired at Israel,

00:03:15.360 those were the four rounds.

00:03:16.220 So I think the question is, is Hamas deterred?

00:03:19.240 Because our military objective in this operation was to exact such a heavy price from Hamas that

00:03:24.860 it would regret having started this in the first place when they lobbed rockets into Israel.

00:03:30.380 And it also would think not twice, three or four times, but 10 times before doing it in the future.

00:03:35.540 And so we degraded a lot of their capabilities.

00:03:37.660 We took out about 200 terrorists.

00:03:40.260 We took out about 80 or 90 percent of their manufacturing capability of their weapons.

00:03:45.660 We took out a subterranean tunnel network.

00:03:49.280 It's sort of like an underground city in Gaza with all of these tunnels where they move fighters

00:03:54.340 from one place to the other and arms from one place to the other.

00:03:57.060 And we took out a good chunk of that as well.

00:03:58.980 So they paid a heavy price.

00:04:00.300 Now, is it heavy enough that they will keep their powder dry for a significant period of time?

00:04:08.440 I don't know.

00:04:09.240 I think there'll be some period.

00:04:10.400 I don't know how long it's going to be.

00:04:11.780 A lot of it depends on also how Israel responds.

00:04:14.580 Because if they fire one rocket or two rockets, are we going to treat it in a very serious way?

00:04:19.660 Are we going to treat every rocket fired at Israel and put it in the same category?

00:04:23.600 Meaning they don't have to fire at Tel Aviv.

00:04:25.360 Even if they fire at Serov, which is a community several kilometers away from Gaza, are we going

00:04:30.660 to treat that rocket fire the same way we would treat rocket fire at Jerusalem or Tel Aviv?

00:04:35.160 That's one question.

00:04:36.220 And Israel's government has made it clear that it will treat it the same.

00:04:39.720 So hopefully they will be turned by that.

00:04:41.380 And the second thing, which I think is even more important, are we going to act to prevent

00:04:45.960 Hamas from rearming?

00:04:47.680 Because what they do during these periods between these major conflagrations is they rearm themselves.

00:04:55.360 And they upgrade their capabilities.

00:04:59.000 And so are we going to take action to stop that?

00:05:01.160 How do they do that?

00:05:01.700 How do they do that, given the Israeli control of Hamas at the border and the water?

00:05:07.980 How do they get weapons in there?

00:05:09.540 They do two things.

00:05:10.700 First of all, you mentioned that we control stuff going into Gaza.

00:05:14.540 That's on one side.

00:05:15.460 The Egyptians actually close it on the other side.

00:05:18.580 Nobody actually goes after Egypt for doing it.

00:05:21.180 They just go after Israel.

00:05:22.260 But what they do, one thing they do, and they did in the past, is they smuggled weapons

00:05:27.120 through, it was years ago, they were going, weapons that come from Iran, that were going

00:05:33.500 to Sudan, that would then go up through the Sinai.

00:05:36.880 And ultimately, through the several kilometers of the border between Gaza and Egypt, in the

00:05:42.820 Sinai, they would smuggle it into hundreds of tunnels, underground tunnels that they have,

00:05:46.920 all of these rockets.

00:05:47.800 But they got a little bit smarter about it, and instead of smuggling those rockets in,

00:05:53.140 because we worked to prevent that, and the Egyptians actually helped prevent it, and we

00:05:57.480 worked to interdict it at different places along that path, they started learning how

00:06:02.060 to manufacture it themselves.

00:06:03.680 And with Iranian support that sent them experts, sent them a lot of money, they learned how to

00:06:09.680 actually build these rockets.

00:06:11.340 That's what they do.

00:06:12.200 That's the expertise that they've developed.

00:06:14.500 And then that they need supplies, right?

00:06:16.540 They need iron.

00:06:17.920 They need different things to build their war machine.

00:06:19.980 They certainly need concrete, because that whole underground terror tunnel network, the

00:06:25.380 subterranean tunnel network that I spoke about, that was largely with concrete.

00:06:29.680 Well, how do they get that concrete?

00:06:30.940 Well, what happens is the world, after it finishes bashing Israel, says, you know, Israel, you've

00:06:35.620 got to let all these humanitarian supplies in.

00:06:37.940 And so we would like to see Gaza rebuilt, and to have schools, and to have hospitals, and to

00:06:42.400 have all this.

00:06:42.800 But what happens is you bring those humanitarian supplies in, and they take the concrete and

00:06:47.540 the steel, and they use it to build their war machine, because that's what they're interested

00:06:53.080 in.

00:06:53.480 And we can decide to not let anything in.

00:06:56.540 But then you're dealing with a humanitarian, a very difficult humanitarian situation in Gaza.

00:07:01.320 And when we let it in, and we tried the best we can to try to put restraints on that, so

00:07:07.040 the UN officials will say, yes, we need X amount of concrete, and it's going to go to

00:07:11.280 build, you know, these 100 houses and these five buildings and everything.

00:07:15.560 And you try to monitor it.

00:07:16.760 But you're dealing with a terror organization that is running this whole show.

00:07:20.160 So we just saw President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, say, who's been in the Middle

00:07:26.220 East this week, he said that he informed Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, and Netanyahu

00:07:31.860 of Israel, that the United States will seek an additional 75 million in Congress for the

00:07:36.200 Palestinians.

00:07:37.480 They said, in total, we are in the process of providing, this is the United States, more

00:07:40.680 than 360 million of urgent support for the Palestinian people.

00:07:44.200 We'll work with our partners to ensure that Hamas does not benefit from these reconstruction

00:07:47.980 efforts.

00:07:48.560 So he, Blinken says he's trying to do exactly what you're speaking of, help the people,

00:07:53.700 not the terrorist organization running Gaza.

00:07:57.660 Do you have faith that will actually happen?

00:07:59.920 I have faith in this and their sincerity.

00:08:03.140 I mean, I think they want it to happen, but it won't fully happen.

00:08:07.360 You know, the question is, what percentage are they going to be able to siphon off?

00:08:10.960 Is it 10 percent, 20 percent, 50 percent?

00:08:13.060 I don't know.

00:08:13.520 It really depends what happens.

00:08:14.760 And it gets to the point that I said before.

00:08:16.820 If Israel has intelligence that there is a manufacturing facility in Gaza that is building

00:08:23.860 missiles, you know, a thousand rockets that are going to be fired on Tel Aviv, everything

00:08:27.780 is calm, right?

00:08:28.720 No one's even focused on Gaza.

00:08:30.460 If Israel's military says, you know what, we're going to take that out because we're

00:08:33.420 going to preempt the next round.

00:08:34.820 When we fire that rocket and we share that intelligence, when we fire precision guided

00:08:39.720 missiles to take out that manufacturing facility and we share that intelligence with the United

00:08:43.480 States, will America back us?

00:08:46.260 Will the rest of the world back us?

00:08:47.980 Or will they say now we're starting a conflict?

00:08:50.540 You know, that's one of the tests that we'll have moving forward is not just our response

00:08:55.120 to their attacks, but do we actually preempt their ability and prevent their ability to

00:09:01.840 rebuild their war machine?

00:09:03.340 And we should have partners in the international community.

00:09:05.940 But again, we've got a terror organization running that network.

00:09:09.200 You know, if you're putting it in American terms, you know, imagine the mafia and these

00:09:12.720 guys are much worse than the mafia, right?

00:09:14.520 They're terrorists.

00:09:15.500 They target civilians.

00:09:17.100 They use civilians as human shields.

00:09:19.180 They're also, by the way, a genocidal force.

00:09:21.040 They call for the murder of Jews across the world.

00:09:23.900 People don't like to talk about that because it's uncomfortable for them.

00:09:26.500 This is an organization that celebrated on 9-11 and actually mourned the death of Bin

00:09:31.940 Laden.

00:09:32.260 That's what we're dealing with.

00:09:33.180 But let's say you have mafia that controls an area.

00:09:36.440 So you think all the concrete is going to go exactly where you want it to go.

00:09:40.840 So it becomes a question of what mechanisms do you put in place to limit it?

00:09:45.400 So I don't think it's going to be 100% effective.

00:09:48.460 I hope that you'll have partners to make it as effective as possible.

00:09:52.460 And we have to think about it or else we're going to be in round five very fast.

00:09:56.160 It won't be years, certainly won't be decades, and might even be several months.

00:10:01.500 Do you think Hamas, of course, has declared victory in this conflict?

00:10:05.420 And in some ways, I see their point because I feel like the media was much more skeptical

00:10:13.060 of, to put it charitably, of Israel this time around than they were.

00:10:17.080 I mean, they in large part ignored what Hamas did to kick this thing off, which let's not

00:10:21.420 forget there were tensions in Israel, but they were the ones who fired the rockets first.

00:10:25.360 They were the ones who went to death and destruction first.

00:10:29.300 And you tell me what you think of how the media, especially here in the States, has portrayed

00:10:35.380 what just went on in these 11 days.

00:10:37.940 I think it's frankly pretty shameful when you're dealing with a terror organization on one side

00:10:43.040 that has no value for human life, not the life of their own people, not the life certainly

00:10:49.080 of Israelis.

00:10:49.740 It doesn't matter to them.

00:10:51.100 Jews, Arabs, it doesn't matter.

00:10:52.440 That they just are indiscriminately firing rockets and they're embedding all of their

00:10:57.220 military terrorist infrastructure in civilian areas.

00:11:01.020 You know, they have a headquarters underneath the hospital.

00:11:04.360 Why do they do that?

00:11:06.080 Because they think Israel's evil?

00:11:07.800 No, because they know that we're not going to attack the hospital and kill all these people.

00:11:11.540 And they put their facilities and rocket launchers and all sorts of weapons of war right next

00:11:18.000 to schools, right next to mosques, because they put us in this impossible dilemma, which

00:11:23.220 is they're going to attack us and we have to go after them.

00:11:25.700 And even in the most surgical way, we can't attack them and hit them without having any civilian

00:11:32.000 casualties.

00:11:32.620 And we do everything.

00:11:34.080 And I think no country in the history of the world, and it's not an exaggeration, no country

00:11:40.400 in the history of the world has taken such measures to put the civilians of the enemy

00:11:45.360 out of harm's way.

00:11:46.820 It's never happened before.

00:11:48.020 Even the numbers are coming in about what happened and the number of people died.

00:11:51.040 And it looks like there will be more terrorists who were killed than civilians and non-combatants,

00:11:57.360 meaning a greater than one to one ratio.

00:11:59.480 Now, you probably know about the ratios when you're fighting in dense areas like in Afghanistan

00:12:05.340 and Iraq.

00:12:06.080 Sometimes it's nine to one, meaning nine civilians for every terrorist, because all the terrorists

00:12:10.660 do this all over the world.

00:12:12.840 And it's not just a question for Israel, meaning when the media turns against Israel, it's not

00:12:17.940 just a problem for Israel.

00:12:18.860 Of course, it is a problem for us, but you're actually giving license to all these terrorists

00:12:23.000 around the world to start using civilians as human shields.

00:12:25.900 And the media here has an important responsibility and a real responsibility here, because the

00:12:32.140 game that Hamas plays, they fired us, we respond.

00:12:36.380 And when innocents are killed, then all the pressure comes to bear on Israel.

00:12:41.220 They are relying on that last step, that all the pressure comes to bear on Israel.

00:12:45.100 That only works if the media lets them get away with it.

00:12:48.180 The media becomes the key player there in this whole game that Hamas plays.

00:12:53.420 If the media, I'm not suggesting that the media doesn't show the pictures, doesn't tell

00:12:57.320 the stories.

00:12:58.680 I'm suggesting that they blame the terror organization that are putting those people in

00:13:02.560 harm's way and not blame Israel.

00:13:03.900 And you have some, you know, people in the media.

00:13:06.400 You have, I saw, you know, John Oliver and Trevor Noah.

00:13:09.860 And it's just total nonsense.

00:13:12.460 It's almost obscene what they've done and how they're treating this conflict.

00:13:17.740 And they're saying, well, well, it's not really a fair fight.

00:13:20.420 You know, Israel's much stronger than Hamas.

00:13:23.800 I mean, really, is it a fair fight between the United States and Al-Qaeda?

00:13:27.160 Is it a fair fight between the United States and ISIS?

00:13:30.840 Maybe they should just allow like hundreds, thousands of Americans to die because America

00:13:35.400 is much more powerful.

00:13:36.500 I mean, it was sickening.

00:13:37.660 I was listening to these people and it's, there's an expression, and you've probably

00:13:43.000 heard it before, called a brilliant idiot.

00:13:45.100 And there's definitely moral idiocy with what I saw.

00:13:50.520 20 times as many Germans died as Americans in World War II.

00:13:56.600 Does that mean that the Nazis were right?

00:14:00.220 And I think it's sad.

00:14:01.800 It is really, I think, a mark of a decline in the culture that people will go on the air

00:14:09.700 and give and say, well, you know, there's one side is Israel and one side is Hamas, and

00:14:16.080 they should be treated equally.

00:14:17.620 It's shameful.

00:14:18.900 Now, the problem that I see, and it's a deep problem in the culture and the educational system,

00:14:25.040 is we live in a world, Megan, where young people think might makes wrong.

00:14:29.180 That's their view.

00:14:30.640 Anything that is powerful is bad.

00:14:33.360 Power and justice to them are like buckets in the well.

00:14:35.640 Now, that's a problem for Israel, which is a powerful country because we're no longer

00:14:41.900 a powerless, stateless people.

00:14:43.500 We now have power.

00:14:44.580 And the Palestinians have succeeded in convincing much of the world that they're the David to

00:14:49.160 Israel's Goliath, which in itself is absurd.

00:14:52.140 But it's also, I will say you more than that, this idea that might makes wrong, this is a

00:15:00.240 danger for Jews, not just for Israel, because Jews are in a position of influence in the

00:15:06.740 United States.

00:15:07.440 You know, they're not living at 10 to a room on the Lower East Side like they did a century

00:15:11.980 ago.

00:15:12.920 And in a world where anybody who has influence, anybody who has, in this perception of what

00:15:18.460 power is, power is bad.

00:15:20.880 That's a very, very dangerous world.

00:15:22.620 And the same forces who are attacking Israel, there's a reason they're going after Jews as

00:15:28.040 well.

00:15:28.840 And I see this as a huge problem, and it has to be rejected because you can be powerful

00:15:35.020 and just, you can be powerful and unjust.

00:15:36.980 You can be weak and just, and you can be weak and unjust.

00:15:39.640 And I think America is the best example of a very powerful country that has been a tremendous

00:15:44.320 force for good in the world.

00:15:46.020 Ask all those people attacking Israel and attacking Jews in the streets, ask them if they think

00:15:50.540 America is a force for good in the world.

00:15:52.220 I bet you every single one of them thinks America is a force for bad.

00:15:55.420 That's the problem.

00:15:56.120 And when people get churned out of schools and believe in this nonsense, and they can

00:16:03.200 teach them that America is imperfect, just like every country in the world is, and Israel's

00:16:07.520 imperfect.

00:16:08.440 But if they no longer believe in the basic justice of the cause of a country, then there's

00:16:13.540 a much bigger problem at stake.

00:16:15.440 And I think a lot of this, a lot of the hostility to Israel comes because we're the low-hanging

00:16:22.860 fruit of a much broader problem in the zeitgeist, much broader cultural problem that is anti-Western,

00:16:29.520 anti-American.

00:16:31.880 You know, the zeitgeist that says, that preaches moral relativism, post-nationalism, and pacifism.

00:16:39.840 And every time Israel engages in a military action, you almost see all of this come to

00:16:44.640 the surface when we have to defend ourselves.

00:16:46.580 And I think the answer lies in the universities and the schools in the United States more

00:16:51.560 than in what Israel will do with this or that policy.

00:16:55.120 That's fascinating.

00:16:56.040 That's such a fascinating assessment.

00:16:57.860 It feels so right to me.

00:17:00.380 And, you know, we talk about the media coverage, John Oliver, Trevor Noah.

00:17:03.580 They mimic, they mirror what they hear from the far left, the far left in this country.

00:17:09.240 People like, let's take Ilhan Omar, who said, we need accountability for every war crime that

00:17:16.580 happened in this conflict.

00:17:17.500 Now, she's not talking about Hamas, right?

00:17:19.420 She doesn't even obey any of those rules.

00:17:21.860 She's talking about Israel.

00:17:22.900 And then you've got Cori Bush, who's her counterpart there, who says, ethnic cleansing continues

00:17:30.220 by Israel.

00:17:31.980 She means we must stop funding the apartheid status quo.

00:17:35.480 And you get that word a lot.

00:17:36.960 Rashida Tlaib here said, again, the ceasefire will not alone achieve equity for those who

00:17:41.420 live under Israel's apartheid government, AOC.

00:17:44.720 It's illegal for the United States to provide military aid to governments that are violating

00:17:48.800 human rights, right?

00:17:50.160 They all are very clear that Israel is the demon here.

00:17:54.360 Israel is the one to be condemned, and Israel is the one committing war crimes.

00:17:58.520 And that's accepted by many pundits in our public sphere here, who run media and have

00:18:05.780 a large microphone.

00:18:06.960 Uh, absolutely.

00:18:09.680 And you use the right word, demon.

00:18:12.840 The demonization of the Jews is a very, very old problem.

00:18:16.720 And these people have no, I mean, not only is it shameful and outrageous and moral idiocy,

00:18:23.060 but it's dangerous.

00:18:24.040 Because if you are saying that another country is an apartheid state or is in ethnic cleansing

00:18:30.280 or genocidal force, then you're basically saying you should attack that country and wipe it

00:18:35.200 out.

00:18:35.420 What does it mean?

00:18:35.940 You're saying that Israel's evil.

00:18:37.120 I mean, for those people who say Israel's an apartheid state, they should go to an Israeli

00:18:41.840 hospital where they'll see Jewish and Arab doctors working together to save lives.

00:18:46.800 They should go to an Israeli university where they'll see Jewish and Arab students learning

00:18:50.840 together.

00:18:51.320 They should go to the Israeli Knesset where they'll see Jewish and Arab members of the

00:18:55.520 Knesset or an Israeli courtroom.

00:18:56.860 It's outrageous.

00:18:58.540 But this is an attempt to demonize Israel.

00:19:01.960 And with those people who do it, whether they do it knowingly or not, in the case of

00:19:06.220 some of the people you mentioned, I think they do it knowingly.

00:19:08.440 They are setting it up for destruction.

00:19:10.820 That's what every, every attack against Jews, historically speaking, and I think people don't

00:19:16.180 understand anti-Semitism.

00:19:17.940 And part of the reason, frankly, Megan, is the Holocaust.

00:19:21.620 The Holocaust was such a seismic event in the history of the Jewish people.

00:19:28.500 We lost a third of our people in the Holocaust.

00:19:31.820 Six million Jews were murdered.

00:19:34.440 And if you're trying to understand that in American terms, that's over 100 million Americans.

00:19:40.520 And if you can't wrap your mind around that, imagine a 9-11 every day for a century.

00:19:45.880 That's what the Holocaust did to the Jewish people.

00:19:48.960 OK, so it is such a seismic event.

00:19:51.020 That it actually prevents us from recognizing the anti-Semitism that was there for 20, 25

00:19:58.840 centuries before the Holocaust.

00:20:01.140 It's almost like it's a blinding sun that blocks out all the stars in the sky.

00:20:06.960 And the stars are there.

00:20:08.160 You just can't see them with the sun.

00:20:10.180 And if you take the Holocaust out of the equation, you have century after century after

00:20:14.460 century of anti-Semitic attacks against Jews.

00:20:17.300 And across the world, it's across time, space, culture, civilization.

00:20:23.320 And Jews are attacked, you know, for anything that they're attacked for.

00:20:27.560 They're also attacked for the opposite.

00:20:29.040 So they're attacked for being the communists.

00:20:30.480 And they were attacked for being the capitalists.

00:20:31.980 They're attacked for being ethnic separatists and being ruthless cosmopolitans.

00:20:36.860 They're always attacked for everything.

00:20:38.600 And it's a, you know, it's an interesting question that you can't do in one podcast,

00:20:42.360 the nature of anti-Semitism or where it comes from.

00:20:45.140 But what these people are doing is they are demonizing the Jews.

00:20:49.700 And that's a very, very big powder keg.

00:20:52.340 What happened in the, where the journalists were, the AP journalists and the Al Jazeera,

00:20:57.120 right?

00:20:57.300 You saw that whole building, 15 stories came down.

00:21:00.860 You had Hamas intelligence that was in that building.

00:21:04.780 That makes it, according to the rules of war, a legitimate military target.

00:21:11.280 And what Israel did, because we are a society that values life, is we called and we told

00:21:16.560 everybody, get out of the building.

00:21:19.100 Yeah.

00:21:19.600 And when I see a 15-

00:21:20.140 We talked about this on the show last week.

00:21:21.460 And Netanyahu came out and said you weren't lucky.

00:21:23.560 The reporter said, we were so lucky we barely got out.

00:21:25.840 And he said, that wasn't luck.

00:21:26.720 That was us calling you.

00:21:27.820 Yeah, but when you, when I see a 15-story building come down and not a single person

00:21:32.640 killed, that shows me how, the concern that Israel has for human life.

00:21:37.720 Okay, but wait, but let me ask you about the numbers.

00:21:39.820 And then you have, I want to just say one thing about Trevor Noah, because I saw Trevor

00:21:44.500 Noah get on TV.

00:21:45.760 Also, the same moral idiocy.

00:21:47.780 And I saw him say, well, how should you respond if you're the more powerful party?

00:21:52.480 And then he talks about his brother, a young kid.

00:21:55.880 And, and how much am I going to fight back?

00:21:58.580 Really?

00:21:58.920 But let me ask you something.

00:22:00.100 I'd ask Trevor Noah this.

00:22:01.900 What happens if that young brother killed two of his siblings and then chopped his arm

00:22:06.820 off?

00:22:07.460 You think when your brother, young brother came at you as a knife, you're not going to

00:22:10.480 actually defend yourself?

00:22:11.800 I mean, please, we got Israelis who were murdered by this organization.

00:22:16.540 Let me ask you just a quick question.

00:22:18.140 Okay.

00:22:18.700 On the subject of Israel being an apartheid state, Alan Dershowitz was on the program last

00:22:23.360 week, and he was giving us some numbers.

00:22:25.860 The reason you can't say that even, even, you know, arguably about any other country

00:22:32.120 in the, in the neighborhood is because there are, there's no mix.

00:22:36.120 There is no mix of popular.

00:22:37.860 There are no Jews in the surrounding countries.

00:22:41.140 At least Israel's got what?

00:22:43.020 I think 2 million Arabs living inside of its border.

00:22:45.920 So there is a mix of people there.

00:22:47.480 Not to mention what's happening in Gaza and West Bank and all that.

00:22:51.280 I just thought it was an interesting point.

00:22:52.920 Like, why isn't anybody taking issue with the population in Jordan, right?

00:22:56.100 Where there's, there's no mix of population or people.

00:22:59.960 Because this is all about attacking Jews, Megan.

00:23:03.020 This is not being pro-Palestinian.

00:23:05.220 I'll explain to you what I mean by that.

00:23:06.860 It has nothing to do with the Palestinians.

00:23:08.980 This is just, you know, a canvas for people to go after Jews.

00:23:13.260 Look, Jews are people who care about their brothers all over the world.

00:23:18.380 So if Jews are being attacked in France, Jews care.

00:23:21.580 If Jews are being attacked in Britain, they care.

00:23:24.120 Israel has every day on the news about the attacks that happened in New York,

00:23:28.040 in Los Angeles, and other places in the United States.

00:23:30.600 And we feel a deep sense of solidarity with our Jewish brothers.

00:23:34.460 You know, we feel solidarity as, as fellow human beings, the tragedy's everywhere.

00:23:38.480 But when it's happening to your own cult religionists, there's an immediate sense.

00:23:41.700 Where is Palestinian protest?

00:23:44.900 And where is the solidarity with the Palestinians who are in Syria,

00:23:48.560 who were slaughtered en masse by Assad?

00:23:50.600 Where is the solidarity with Palestinians living in Lebanon,

00:23:53.660 who are not second-class citizens, they're fourth-class citizens,

00:23:56.440 who can't work, who are systematically destroyed?

00:23:59.460 I don't hear anything about that.

00:24:01.140 And where is it in Jordan with all the things that have happened there?

00:24:04.800 They don't.

00:24:05.440 It is only when it is Israel.

00:24:08.360 And people have taken this conflict and have blown it all out of proportion

00:24:13.200 in terms of what it means for international peace and security,

00:24:16.620 in a way that I think it's based on the demonization of the Jews.

00:24:22.920 Look, I'll tell you a brief story that I think will capture the point.

00:24:27.280 So I was ambassador.

00:24:28.280 You mentioned I was almost seven and a half years ambassador to the United States.

00:24:31.300 One thing that happens when new ambassadors come to Washington is they always ask for meetings

00:24:36.640 with other ambassadors, usually 10 by tradition.

00:24:40.320 So when I came, I met with the Egyptian ambassador, the Jordanian ambassador,

00:24:43.880 German ambassador, French ambassador.

00:24:45.760 So one day I have the ambassador of Burundi.

00:24:48.560 I sit down with this ambassador, very intelligent man,

00:24:51.960 and I start asking different questions.

00:24:53.620 What do you export there?

00:24:54.900 What do you make?

00:24:56.020 What do you produce?

00:24:56.840 What's your economy like?

00:24:57.920 What's your growth rates?

00:24:58.900 All these questions that you would ask, macro questions about an economy.

00:25:02.480 And then I asked him about what he's trying to achieve in the United States as ambassador.

00:25:06.040 What are the U.S. relations with Burundi?

00:25:07.800 And I asked him another question.

00:25:09.060 Do you have a security problem with Burundi?

00:25:11.180 He says to me, not since 2004.

00:25:13.980 I said, well, what happened in 2004?

00:25:15.620 He said, well, we had a kind of peace process or ceasefire because we had a decade of violence

00:25:21.280 that preceded it that spilled over from Rwanda.

00:25:23.560 The genocide in Rwanda spilled over into Burundi.

00:25:26.200 Again, we had a terrible decade.

00:25:27.980 And in 2004, that killing stopped.

00:25:30.740 And I asked him, you know, how many people, how many people died in that decade?

00:25:35.600 And he told me 300,000, right?

00:25:39.780 And I said to him, well, let me ask you something.

00:25:42.480 How many people you think have died in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

00:25:46.940 And this is a very intelligent person.

00:25:50.160 And he's thinking about it.

00:25:51.480 And he said 2 million.

00:25:53.760 A century of conflict between 1920, where the first violent attacks were till 2000, without

00:25:59.340 getting into who's right, who's wrong.

00:26:00.680 How many people you think have died?

00:26:03.700 And he said 2 million.

00:26:05.540 And I said, listen, you're close.

00:26:06.600 You're only off by about two zeros.

00:26:08.640 It's about 20,000, about 22,000, 23,000 on both sides in a century.

00:26:12.480 And he was so stunned.

00:26:16.300 He couldn't believe it.

00:26:17.460 He said, well, then why is the world so focused on this problem?

00:26:20.060 And I said, well, you've got to think about that very deeply.

00:26:23.220 Why does Israel generate this type of sentiment?

00:26:27.060 And it is an attempt, there's no question about it, to demonize the Jewish state, to cast

00:26:33.300 the Jewish state as a force for evil.

00:26:35.880 And the truth is, you know, Israel, it's not the cause or the cure for anti-Semitism.

00:26:42.660 The difference is that Israel gave the Jewish people the power to fight back.

00:26:47.500 That's the difference with the birth of Israel.

00:26:49.700 But the anti-Semitism has returned.

00:26:51.980 It's returned in full force.

00:26:54.000 And from what I've seen, and I have to commend President Biden, because I think President

00:27:00.660 Biden has spoke out forcefully against it.

00:27:02.800 But he not only backed Israel's right to defend himself, but he has spoken forcefully out against

00:27:07.380 anti-Semitism.

00:27:08.340 He's not, you know, he's old school, as we said.

00:27:12.240 And he's somebody who understands that problem.

00:27:14.620 But there are a lot of other people that at best, as you said, they're silent.

00:27:18.920 They're not willing to push back.

00:27:20.280 And it's the cultural players like Oliver and Noah.

00:27:23.500 They're the ones who I think are the most playing with fire.

00:27:26.680 Now, we're probably not even understanding it.

00:27:29.180 And I'm not even saying that, you know, you you can be anti Larry Summers, who was president

00:27:34.480 of Harvard, and he was your treasury secretary in the past.

00:27:36.940 He said you can be anti-Semitic in effect without being anti-Semitic in intent.

00:27:42.420 So I don't think Oliver and Noah were thinking that they were saying something anti-Semitic.

00:27:46.340 But the demonization of the Jews is a very, very dangerous thing to do.

00:27:50.420 Up next, the increase in attacks on Jewish people in America, in Europe and beyond.

00:27:58.440 What's causing it?

00:27:59.460 What's really causing it?

00:28:01.220 We'll get to that in one minute.

00:28:05.360 You've got people like Brett Stevens, columnist now for The New York Times, formerly The Wall

00:28:09.560 Street Journal, who said who pointed out that a lot of these same commentators, a couple

00:28:13.700 of whom you've mentioned, they had a very different message of allyship when it came to

00:28:19.920 black Americans and the police.

00:28:21.940 Right.

00:28:22.100 And Brett Stevens points out if there's been a massive online campaign of progressive

00:28:25.120 allyship with Jewish people, I've missed it.

00:28:27.480 Corporate executives with workplace memos reaching out to their employees who may be fearful.

00:28:32.640 No, missed it.

00:28:33.720 Academic associations issuing public letters denouncing the wave of anti-Semitism.

00:28:38.060 We're saying nope.

00:28:39.560 And what he said was, and I quote, in the land of inclusiveness, Jews are denied inclusion.

00:28:44.920 And there's a real trend now that we're seeing.

00:28:48.440 You just turn on the news any day now, and it's right there as plain as day, anti-Semitic

00:28:55.120 attacks across the United States from L.A. to New York and beyond, by the way, over in

00:29:01.180 Europe, in European capitals.

00:29:02.820 We're seeing attacks.

00:29:04.460 We're seeing the Star of David be desecrated.

00:29:07.260 We're seeing college students talk about being fearful to go on campus, Jewish college

00:29:10.680 students.

00:29:11.380 I'm just going to tick off a couple of examples.

00:29:13.140 Okay, so in 2019, more than 2,100 anti-Semitic incidents here in the United States, which

00:29:18.560 was more than any prior year.

00:29:20.240 In 2020, when most of us were home not doing anything, it went up.

00:29:23.640 It was the third highest on record.

00:29:25.180 Okay, so here's a couple of examples.

00:29:27.260 May 20th, New York City, Jewish man beaten by pro-Palestinian protesters.

00:29:31.420 This guy, he gets off of a subway.

00:29:34.300 These Palestinian protesters, I guess, start chasing him.

00:29:37.280 He gets surrounded by the mob.

00:29:38.460 They kick him.

00:29:38.960 They punch him.

00:29:39.480 They beat him.

00:29:39.960 They mace him.

00:29:40.920 They pepper spray him.

00:29:42.260 He gets a concussion.

00:29:43.240 He gets bruises.

00:29:43.860 He gets a black eye.

00:29:45.160 They called him, forgive me, a filthy Jew, a dirty Jew, said Hamas is going to kill all

00:29:50.380 of you.

00:29:50.680 Israel will burn.

00:29:52.680 And then this 23-year-old, Wasim Awada, was arrested, said, I would do it all over again.

00:29:59.020 And then Wasim was released on bail.

00:30:02.220 There is videotape of his friend hoisting Wasim up on his shoulders as he was released on bail

00:30:08.120 as they chanted, free Palestine and saying, this guy, and I quote, is a fucking hero.

00:30:14.500 We saw in LA on May 22nd, Jewish diners attacked by a pro-Palestinian group yelling racial slurs

00:30:19.280 in Brooklyn.

00:30:20.340 Fire was set to a synagogue in a Jewish school, put a Jewish teen in a chokehold for refusing

00:30:24.860 to repeat anti-Semitic slurs.

00:30:26.500 Another was chased with a baseball bat.

00:30:27.980 In Florida, Halandal Beach, Florida, a man dumped human feces in front of a synagogue

00:30:34.720 twice, shouting Jews should die.

00:30:37.280 In North London, a convoy of cars shouting F their mothers, rape their daughters.

00:30:41.280 We have to send a message.

00:30:42.800 Armed patrols have now increased and are protecting Jewish people in Los Angeles.

00:30:46.820 They've increased in New York.

00:30:48.240 They've increased in London.

00:30:49.980 And it just seems like hardly a day goes by that we don't see something like this.

00:30:55.660 And this sort of Twitter pylon, you know, sort of dovetails with it, right?

00:31:00.240 You've got, as you point out, a hashtag about Hitler.

00:31:04.820 Hitler was right.

00:31:05.680 There was another one, Hitler the Great, hashtag Hitler the Great.

00:31:09.520 We've had at least three journalists now be outed, lose their jobs for anti-Semitic comments.

00:31:15.040 There was one woman at the, let me see where it was.

00:31:18.440 I'm glad to hear that somebody lost the job.

00:31:20.360 I didn't know that.

00:31:20.980 That's the best news I've heard all day.

00:31:22.580 Well, I mean, you, you really have to go far.

00:31:24.400 I'll just give you one example.

00:31:26.520 Here is Adele Raja, CNN freelance contributor, who tweeted out, it turns out in 2014,

00:31:33.340 hail Hitler.

00:31:34.300 And in 2014, the only reason I'm supporting Germany in the finals is Hitler was a German

00:31:38.360 and he did good with those Jews.

00:31:40.340 And you might think, oh, well, maybe he was on drugs back in 14.

00:31:43.020 Maybe something happened to this person.

00:31:44.240 He hit his head and he got better.

00:31:45.300 No, May of 21, quote, the world needs a Hitler.

00:31:49.220 So that's, that's our American media.

00:31:51.780 Then there's a BBC investigative journalist who tweeted this month, um, Hitler was right.

00:31:58.560 Um, no, sorry.

00:31:59.860 This is from 2004.

00:32:00.960 Israel's more Nazi than Hitler before adding Hitler was right.

00:32:04.460 She tweeted Zionist can't get enough of our blood, stupid Zionist.

00:32:07.620 She's been hired.

00:32:09.340 She was hired by the BBC and has been covering this conflict in Gaza for the BBC.

00:32:14.420 I could go on.

00:32:15.700 So the, the, the problem runs deep.

00:32:19.080 I'm sure their coverage was perfectly fair with that woman in charge.

00:32:23.720 I'm sure.

00:32:24.480 I'm sure.

00:32:24.900 But does it, this feels to me like some, something of a watershed moment for American Jews, for,

00:32:31.380 for Jews in Europe who, you know, not, not perfectly, but have been living peacefully and

00:32:36.760 in love and with the support of their countrymen for a long, long time.

00:32:40.220 And now things seem to be, they just feel different to me, ambassador.

00:32:44.480 They feel different to me.

00:32:45.500 Well, in, in Europe, this has been going on for a long time.

00:32:48.880 There's been attacks against Jews in Europe.

00:32:50.740 I think it has accelerated in the United States, but I also, you know, want to put that in

00:32:54.780 perspective because a lot of this has to do with politics in the United States.

00:32:58.660 Unfortunately, I remember when we had this, this awful attack in Pittsburgh where 11 people

00:33:06.760 were murdered and the worst antisemitic violence in American history.

00:33:10.980 And I went there, I was a sitting ambassador and I went there right after the attack as any

00:33:16.360 Israeli ambassador would to the scene of this, of this horrific attack.

00:33:21.060 And I, and I, I was interviewed right after, and I was just there to express my solidarity

00:33:25.980 with the community.

00:33:27.120 And the first question from the journalists is, is Trump responsible for this attack?

00:33:32.780 That's what it was about.

00:33:34.520 And it was sort of shocking as if antisemitism started in May, 2015, when Donald Trump came

00:33:40.420 down an escalator, um, as I said before, we've had antisemitism for 25 centuries and it's a

00:33:50.740 constant problem.

00:33:51.780 And all people want to do, I was actually shocked at how fast this issue became politicized.

00:33:58.380 And then there were reports that came out in about the number, the rise in antisemitism

00:34:03.800 in 2017.

00:34:04.660 And there was a huge increase.

00:34:06.580 It would like went up by 25%, which was true and very disturbing.

00:34:11.780 And, and for most people, it was all about Trump, all about Trump.

00:34:17.040 And what they didn't tell you was that those FBI statistics that went up 25% in 2017, they

00:34:24.340 actually reached the level of every single year between 2000 and 2010 in terms of the number

00:34:31.080 of attacks, meaning back in 2017, we went back to what we had between 2000 and 2010.

00:34:37.380 It's just, it didn't fit a narrative.

00:34:39.560 When something fits a narrative for people, then they have a kind of intellectual filing

00:34:44.480 system.

00:34:45.020 They can put it in a file.

00:34:46.660 If it doesn't fit, then they have a problem dealing with it.

00:34:49.740 And now the issue is here.

00:34:50.980 No one, I think in their right mind is say, well, president Biden's responsible for the

00:34:54.980 antisemitic violence.

00:34:56.140 No, he's not.

00:34:57.700 And I don't think Trump was responsible for the antisemitic violence.

00:35:00.660 I think they're a leader has a responsibility to speak out forcefully against antisemitism.

00:35:06.160 And I said publicly, uh, at the time in 2017, I think Trump did not say the right thing after

00:35:12.760 Charlottesville happened, but after Pittsburgh, boy, did he say the right thing?

00:35:17.340 And boy, did he do the right thing where he went to Pittsburgh?

00:35:20.420 I was there to greet him as a sitting ambassador.

00:35:23.220 He went to Pittsburgh, the site of this attack.

00:35:25.760 And I remember no other American leaders were with him.

00:35:28.660 They were, it was a couple of weeks before the midterms and they were all out there campaigning.

00:35:33.980 And I said to myself, you have the worst attack in U S history and people can't put politics

00:35:39.720 aside and go and stand there with the president of the United States and send a message to the

00:35:46.620 antisemites that this is unacceptable.

00:35:48.260 And until you have people who are willing to call out antisemitism on their side of the

00:35:56.300 aisle, not just when it's on the other side and it's politically convenient, but on your

00:36:00.200 side of the aisle, you're not going to get beyond that.

00:36:04.000 And I think the demand has to come, has to come that people have to speak forcefully out

00:36:10.000 against antisemitism and as leaders do whatever they can to push back.

00:36:14.900 And the silence here is definitely, you had, you mentioned Congresswoman Omar.

00:36:19.640 I think a watershed moment was when her party did not reject what she said.

00:36:25.120 They wouldn't condemn her.

00:36:27.220 They would not condemn her.

00:36:28.700 And then leaders in her party will start taking pictures with her.

00:36:31.380 Oh yeah.

00:36:32.860 There's no pushback on the cover.

00:36:34.920 There's a difference, but there's one difference.

00:36:37.400 It's important not to be political about antisemitism because there's antisemitism on the right and

00:36:43.020 there's antisemitism on the left, but there is a difference.

00:36:45.820 There's a difference between David Duke and Louis and Louis Farrakhan, who is a raving antisemite.

00:36:51.780 You know what the difference is, Megan?

00:36:53.560 No one will take a picture with David Duke.

00:36:57.580 That's the difference.

00:36:59.100 That's a good point.

00:36:59.860 I know you've got Chelsea Handler tweeting out Louis Farrakhan videos like he's just some

00:37:04.060 regular pundit, like he's, you know, a CNN contributor way.

00:37:07.180 And even when it's called to her attention, what he said about, about Jewish people, termites

00:37:12.480 and so on, she doesn't care.

00:37:14.060 She doesn't care.

00:37:15.140 Can I ask you though, let me just ask you this because what the other side would say

00:37:20.100 is, well, you know, it's tough to say.

00:37:22.860 This is just about, all right, you know, people who defend, I don't know that anybody's

00:37:26.920 defending the anti-Semitic attacks.

00:37:31.320 But what people defending the Palestinians would say is their people are angry.

00:37:37.400 They feel that they've been treated unjustly.

00:37:40.540 They feel Israel's boot on the neck of the Palestinians who want to live freely in Gaza.

00:37:44.680 And yes, they elected a bad, bad organization for, you know, as leaders, Hamas.

00:37:49.240 But how does that make us feel better about the 10 year old girl whose home gets bombed

00:37:53.220 and she gets killed or her brother gets killed?

00:37:55.800 And, you know, the argument is that Israel to the to the Trevor Noah point, I'm just going

00:38:00.100 to, you know, tee it up.

00:38:01.360 Maybe not the way he put it, but that how can we justify the killing of what they say was

00:38:07.680 more than 100 women and children killed in Gaza, you know, so it wasn't all militants

00:38:12.540 based on the fact that we did get some militants firing weapons.

00:38:16.360 It doesn't make us feel better about the babies who were killed by Israeli bombs.

00:38:21.060 So to those people who are who are saying, I understand why those Palestinian activists

00:38:25.920 are mad on the streets.

00:38:27.100 I don't like what they said.

00:38:28.040 And I don't like violence, but I understand why they're upset.

00:38:31.760 What say you?

00:38:33.720 Well, first of all, everybody should be moved by civilians who are killed.

00:38:39.140 You have to have a heart of stone to not be moved by that.

00:38:42.340 And the last thing Israel wants to do is to kill civilians.

00:38:46.600 And we don't target civilians.

00:38:49.700 Our success in an operation, in a military operation, is when no civilians, no noncombatants

00:38:55.800 are killed.

00:38:56.420 That was the measure of our success.

00:38:58.340 And the more civilians who are killed, the worse the operation is, and the greater the

00:39:02.080 failure.

00:39:03.220 For Hamas, it's just the opposite.

00:39:05.680 If they fire a rocket and they kill one civilian, that's good for them.

00:39:09.280 If they kill five, better.

00:39:10.760 If they kill 10, 20, 30, they'll just be happier and happier.

00:39:15.100 And to not understand that moral difference is wrong.

00:39:18.500 And for people to say, look, look at these people out there and look at the pictures they're

00:39:23.480 saying and look, and you have to understand what they're facing.

00:39:27.340 Look, when Jews were being murdered in mass, okay?

00:39:32.700 You didn't see Jews attacking innocents around the world.

00:39:38.160 When a disco is blown up or a restaurant or a bus is blown up in Israel, you didn't see

00:39:45.380 mobs of Jews attacking Muslims in the United States for what other Muslims around the world

00:39:53.040 were doing, these terrorists.

00:39:54.380 They didn't do it.

00:39:54.960 So how can anyone in their right mind justify that now it's open season on Jews in America

00:40:01.160 because of what is happening in Israel?

00:40:04.320 And the problem, Megan, I'm going to get to it again.

00:40:06.840 It's the same problem.

00:40:08.620 If Trevor Noah and Oliver and other peoples in the commanding heights of the culture of

00:40:14.340 the United States accuse Israel of genocide, of war crimes, of ethnic cleansing, of apartheid,

00:40:22.660 then they are contributing to that open season on Jews.

00:40:27.360 They are saying these are people worthy of being attacked.

00:40:31.740 And those people who would proudly hold up an Israeli flag, they're proudly holding this

00:40:37.060 flag of evil to them.

00:40:38.700 That's how they're depicting it.

00:40:40.960 And so the onus is on them to not say that.

00:40:44.420 When a media lies about what Hamas is doing, when they don't pin the blame on Hamas for putting

00:40:50.660 those civilians in harm's way.

00:40:52.660 For putting those families in harm's way, then that can create an environment where these

00:40:59.280 fanatics will go out and do it.

00:41:00.800 But I think nothing justifies, nothing justifies somebody to cross a line and to engage in violence

00:41:08.660 against other people based on what is happening in the state of Israel.

00:41:13.560 And all it is is antisemitism coming to the surface.

00:41:16.880 This belief about Israel being some sort of demon, to use that term again, is trickling

00:41:23.920 down.

00:41:24.380 And we're seeing it on our university campuses now as well.

00:41:27.780 There was a piece that was prepared by Ami Horowitz, who he's an American conservative documentary

00:41:35.920 filmmaker and activist.

00:41:36.900 He went to some college campuses, in particular Portland State University, and pretended to

00:41:43.120 be an activist raising money for Hamas.

00:41:46.800 OK, so he goes up to these Portland State University students saying like, hey, I'm with

00:41:50.880 Hamas.

00:41:51.400 I'm trying to raise funds for Hamas.

00:41:53.740 And let me just play you a clip of what happened.

00:41:57.000 Listen.

00:41:57.140 I work for American Friends for Hamas, the type of operations we're talking about against,

00:42:01.600 you know, soft targets, schools and cafes and that kind of thing, make them feel it.

00:42:06.140 We're looking to wipe Israel off the map.

00:42:07.960 Yeah, we want, you know, we're looking to destroy Israel.

00:42:11.180 We don't want to dis-gaza.

00:42:12.180 We want to have all of Israel.

00:42:13.800 I've actually been learning about last, in this last school year, about everything that's

00:42:17.840 going on over there.

00:42:18.840 So I like the sound of what you're doing, it sounds like the right thing to do.

00:42:22.040 Totally against the Israeli genocide.

00:42:23.540 Awesome.

00:42:24.540 But we would love you to check out our website.

00:42:25.540 That would be wonderful.

00:42:26.540 Good luck.

00:42:27.540 Thank you.

00:42:28.540 If you feel like donating to help the cause, to fight back, that'd be great.

00:42:31.540 For sure.

00:42:32.540 Well, definitely.

00:42:33.540 Probably like 15 bucks.

00:42:34.540 15 bucks?

00:42:35.540 Oh, that'd be great.

00:42:36.540 I don't know, maybe like 10, 20 bucks.

00:42:37.540 15 to 20.

00:42:38.540 5 or 10 dollars.

00:42:39.540 Maybe like 10 dollars.

00:42:40.540 5 dollars.

00:42:41.540 10 bucks.

00:42:42.540 10 dollars.

00:42:43.540 5 or 10 bucks.

00:42:44.540 10 bucks.

00:42:45.540 Let's say 27 dollars, since that seems to be my Bernie donation.

00:42:46.540 Hamas, thank you.

00:42:47.540 I thank you.

00:42:48.540 Thank you.

00:42:49.540 Peace and love.

00:42:50.540 You believe peace is important, right?

00:42:51.540 Of course.

00:42:52.540 Of course.

00:42:53.540 But to get peace, you first got to destroy some stuff, you know?

00:42:55.540 See you, man.

00:42:56.540 I mean, and he said it, if you watch the whole clip, he goes on and he says, soft targets

00:43:05.540 many times.

00:43:06.540 Schools, cafes, that's what we're talking about.

00:43:08.540 And they're handing over money to help.

00:43:11.540 Yeah.

00:43:12.540 I mean, it's, it's, it's exceedingly dangerous.

00:43:15.540 But it starts, it starts in the battle of ideas.

00:43:18.540 It starts on campuses.

00:43:20.540 It starts when young people are taught.

00:43:23.540 It starts with what people in the media are saying.

00:43:28.540 And that has an impact.

00:43:30.540 That has an impact.

00:43:31.540 You know, and the rise, the return of antisemitism, this force, is a real issue.

00:43:38.540 And it's back.

00:43:40.540 And people have to understand what drives it.

00:43:43.540 And it is a very, very ancient hatred.

00:43:46.540 As I said, you take the Holocaust out of the equation.

00:43:49.540 You're talking about century and century after century of mass murder of Jews in different

00:43:55.540 places around the world for all sorts of reasons.

00:43:58.540 And it's back.

00:44:00.540 And the difference now, as I said before, is that now the Jewish people have self-determination

00:44:08.540 in a sovereign state.

00:44:10.540 And we have the ability to fight back against it.

00:44:13.540 And we have to, and we also have the ability to speak out against it, not begging others to

00:44:20.540 say something, not begging others to protect us, but have an army on the battlefield and also

00:44:25.540 the voice of whether it's a prime minister or an ambassador who can go and can speak out against

00:44:29.540 this.

00:44:30.540 And we hope that there will be people of goodwill across the political spectrum that

00:44:35.540 will stand in solidarity with us to push back against it.

00:44:38.540 But it really is a cultural and educational thing that's very deep.

00:44:41.540 You know, you mentioned that this boycott movement, this BDS movement.

00:44:45.540 I mean, this is a totally anti-Semitic movement because it's the singling out of Israel.

00:44:50.540 So when I was ambassador, people would come to me and say, well, what do you think about this,

00:44:54.540 these people trying to boycott or to, you know, calling for sanctioning?

00:44:57.540 Can I just interrupt you one second, Ambassador?

00:44:59.540 Can you explain that?

00:45:00.540 Can you explain what that is, the BDS movement?

00:45:02.540 That term gets thrown around.

00:45:03.540 I don't think most of us really understand it.

00:45:05.540 Yeah.

00:45:06.540 Yeah.

00:45:07.540 Because it's a BS with a D in the middle of it.

00:45:09.540 But I'll tell you what it is.

00:45:11.540 It's a movement that calls for boycotting, divesting, and sanctioning the state of Israel.

00:45:19.540 And it's been going on for probably a couple of decades.

00:45:23.540 And in order to put pressure on Israel and all the leaders of the movement, if anyone bothers

00:45:28.540 to ask them, they all want to eliminate the state of Israel.

00:45:32.540 Who are they?

00:45:33.540 Some people think it's just, well, it's different people.

00:45:36.540 It's largely started from Palestinians, but they have some, some moral idiots who are Jews

00:45:42.540 also, who would help in this movement thinking that this will, this will get Israel to change

00:45:48.540 this or that policy.

00:45:49.540 But the leaders of BDS, the people themselves, Barghouti was one of them, was one of the original

00:45:55.540 founders.

00:45:56.540 They want to eliminate the state of Israel.

00:45:58.540 And they say so openly when anyone bothers to ask.

00:46:01.540 But the reason why the BDS is an anti-Semitic movement, and I have, it's very rare that I

00:46:06.540 will accuse somebody or say that somebody is an anti-Semite.

00:46:11.540 You can look at everything that I said as ambassadors seven and a half years.

00:46:14.540 I think that's a big label.

00:46:15.540 To label somebody as an anti-Semite to me is a big deal.

00:46:19.540 So Jeremy Corbyn's an anti-Semite.

00:46:22.540 He was an anti-Semite and thank God he was not elected to be Prime Minister of Great

00:46:26.540 Britain.

00:46:27.540 But when I'm going to accuse somebody and put that scarlet letter A of anti-Semitism on

00:46:31.540 somebody or a movement, it's important to explain why.

00:46:35.540 Why is this movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel?

00:46:38.540 Why is it an anti-Semitic movement?

00:46:40.540 It's because it singles Israel out alone among nations of the world for these measures,

00:46:48.540 for boycott, divest and sanction.

00:46:50.540 I have to ask you this one last question for some perspective, especially from you as

00:46:55.540 a guy who you've got what your your mom was born in Miami, right?

00:47:00.540 Isn't that is that the story?

00:47:02.540 And you're my son of a Palestinian because that some people don't understand that because

00:47:08.540 the word Palestine, if your listeners don't know, that was the word that Romans gave the

00:47:13.540 territory of Judea.

00:47:15.540 We are Jews because we are the people of Judea.

00:47:18.540 And we lived in the land of Israel for well over a thousand years, for almost 2000 years

00:47:24.540 before in the second century, the Romans, after facing the Jews and Jewish revolts time

00:47:29.540 after time, they decided that they were going to separate the Jewish people from the land

00:47:34.540 of Israel by renaming Judea, Palestine.

00:47:37.540 Your dad was a trial lawyer, Democratic mayor of Miami Beach, and you have a degree from Wharton

00:47:44.540 and you now live in Jerusalem and you've been the ambassador of Israel to the United States.

00:47:49.540 So you understand both countries well.

00:47:51.540 You understand Americans well.

00:47:53.540 And so what I want to ask you is something I forgot to ask when we had a great, great

00:47:58.540 discussion about this whole issue with both sides represented the other day.

00:48:02.540 And that is I think most Americans care about anti-Semitic attacks.

00:48:06.540 They'll pay attention to that if it makes the news.

00:48:08.540 You know, they'll watch and say, gosh, I don't want that happening.

00:48:10.540 But when it comes to the larger conflict, why should they care?

00:48:14.540 Explain the importance to Israel of Israel to the United States and why, you know, somebody

00:48:20.540 going about their business, trying to raise their kids, focused on putting food on the table.

00:48:24.540 Why should they take the time to understand this conflict and appreciate what Israel's position is here?

00:48:31.540 Well, first, because I think and this is something new, I think Israel is going to be the most important

00:48:37.540 ally of the United States in the 21st century.

00:48:40.540 And I said that seven years ago or eight years ago in the first speech I was privileged to give

00:48:45.540 as a sitting Israeli ambassador in the United States.

00:48:47.540 And that sounds a little bit crazy from a guy who represents a country of about 9 million people

00:48:53.540 and the size of New Jersey.

00:48:54.540 How can you be a most important ally?

00:48:56.540 It's because of two things, security and technology.

00:48:59.540 It's not just about American interests that we share and what we can advance.

00:49:04.540 It's not just American values.

00:49:05.540 It's because we also share a sense of destiny.

00:49:10.540 America and Israel are not just countries.

00:49:13.540 We are causes.

00:49:14.540 It is hard for people who live in other countries to understand that.

00:49:18.540 I understand that because I was born and raised in the United States, and I'm sure you understand

00:49:22.540 it deeply.

00:49:23.540 We are causes.

00:49:24.540 And America was blessed.

00:49:26.540 I mean, by providence or history has entrusted her with securing liberty's future.

00:49:33.540 And it's been a great source of hope and a beacon of opportunity around the world.

00:49:38.540 Israel is a cause as well.

00:49:40.540 We are entrusted by history to secure the Jewish future with full rights for all our citizens,

00:49:46.540 Jews and non-Jews alike.

00:49:47.540 So we are not just countries.

00:49:49.540 We are causes.

00:49:50.540 And the only threat I see really, and I've been saying this for years, and now it's being

00:49:54.540 tested.

00:49:55.540 The only threat I see to the alliance between our two countries is that if either of us stop

00:50:00.540 believing that we are a cause.

00:50:03.540 In Israel, the forces of Israeli exceptionalism, you might put it, they're on the march.

00:50:09.540 In America, I think they're in retreat.

00:50:12.540 But I have great faith in America that they will actually be able to reverse this, to push

00:50:17.540 back against it, to make the changes culturally and educational, to stand up, and to recapture

00:50:23.540 that sense of purpose that has helped America lead the world for many, many decades and hopefully

00:50:29.540 will continue to lead the world, not just for decades, for centuries to come.

00:50:34.540 Hmm.

00:50:35.540 Ambassador Ron Dermer, so great talking to you.

00:50:37.540 Thank you so much.

00:50:38.540 Thank you.

00:50:39.540 I'm back to our guest in one second.

00:50:42.540 First, I want to bring you a feature that we have here in the MK Show known as Sound Up,

00:50:46.540 where we play you some relevant soundbite that we think you might be interested in hearing

00:50:49.540 that day.

00:50:50.540 And today, I just didn't think there was anyone to play other than this beauty from a man you

00:50:58.540 may know as Ronald Reagan.

00:51:00.540 Our president at the time, 1982, went to Arlington National Cemetery and spoke in front of a crowd

00:51:08.540 on Memorial Day about what the meaning of this day is.

00:51:12.540 As we head into this weekend, right, and we're thinking about seeing our friends and seeing

00:51:15.540 our family and maybe opening up the pool and going for a swim.

00:51:19.540 Don't forget what this is all about.

00:51:21.540 Teach your children.

00:51:22.540 Think about it yourself.

00:51:23.540 It's the least we can do for those who have served our country and have fallen.

00:51:28.540 I can't say it any better than the gipper, the great communicator.

00:51:32.540 Now, I should tell you what we're going to play is Ronald Reagan speaking.

00:51:37.540 And you will hear over the course of his remarks gunshots, which is a little alarming when you

00:51:43.540 can't see the video.

00:51:44.540 But the gunshots are just the military doing sort of salutes and no one gets hurt in this

00:51:49.540 particular clip.

00:51:50.540 It's just a bunch of inspiration.

00:51:52.540 So I give it away to Ronald Reagan.

00:51:59.540 In America's cities and towns today, flags will be placed on graves and cemeteries.

00:52:06.540 Public officials will speak of the sacrifice and the valor of those whose memory we honor.

00:52:13.540 I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who

00:52:23.540 gave their lives willingly for their country.

00:52:26.540 Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day.

00:52:30.540 For the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers

00:52:37.540 those who were loved and who in return loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

00:52:43.540 Yet we must try to honor them, not for their sakes alone, but for our own.

00:52:50.540 And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep

00:52:56.540 faith with them and with a vision that led them to battle and a final sacrifice.

00:53:02.540 Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough.

00:53:06.540 The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died,

00:53:12.540 must endure and prosper.

00:53:16.540 Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply.

00:53:19.540 It has a cost. It imposes a burden.

00:53:22.540 And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we,

00:53:28.540 in a less final, less heroic way, be willing to give of ourselves.

00:53:33.540 Each died for a cause he considered more important than his own life.

00:53:40.540 Well, they didn't volunteer to die.

00:53:43.540 They volunteered to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be.

00:53:49.540 The values which make up what we call civilization.

00:53:53.540 And how they must have wished, in all the ugliness that war brings,

00:53:58.540 that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience.

00:54:04.540 As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor,

00:54:13.540 shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation.

00:54:19.540 And let us also pledge to do our utmost to carry out what must have been their wish,

00:54:25.540 that no other generation of young men will ever have to share their experiences and repeat their sacrifice.

00:54:34.540 Earlier today, with the music that we have heard, and that of our national anthem,

00:54:42.540 I can't claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world,

00:54:47.540 but I don't know of any other that ends with a question and a challenge as ours does.

00:54:56.540 Does that flag still wave or the land of the free and the home of the brave?

00:55:03.540 That is what we must be proud of.

00:55:06.540 Thank you.

00:55:08.540 Think about that.

00:55:09.540 Think about that.

00:55:10.540 Does that flag still wave?

00:55:12.540 Does that star-spangled banner still wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave?

00:55:19.540 Make sure it does on Memorial Day of all days.

00:55:23.540 Up next, Ying Ma, who has written a lot and acted a lot on behalf of Asian Americans

00:55:29.540 and just discrimination in general.

00:55:31.540 You know, she was instrumental in stopping that push in California to bring discrimination back.

00:55:37.540 Remember, they had a ballot initiative saying,

00:55:39.540 let's discriminate against people again.

00:55:40.540 We should make it lawful.

00:55:41.540 What they really mean is allow racial preferences for only one minority group,

00:55:45.540 and that would be blacks in academics and otherwise.

00:55:50.540 And the people of California said no.

00:55:52.540 They said no to that.

00:55:53.540 And Ying was important to that effort.

00:55:56.540 But Ying has written a lot on this issue,

00:55:58.540 and including on the issue of whether Donald Trump was really the one who inspired

00:56:02.540 this racially motivated violence that has largely been in heavily Democratic areas, right?

00:56:08.540 So does that seem likely?

00:56:10.540 We'll talk about it when she gets here, right after this break.

00:56:15.540 It's great to have you.

00:56:20.540 I've been watching you and reading you thinking there she goes.

00:56:23.540 She's fighting.

00:56:24.540 She's out there doing her thing.

00:56:25.540 And I applaud you because you're brave and you're not afraid to touch any third rail.

00:56:29.540 And I wouldn't know what that's like, but I somehow appreciate it from afar.

00:56:33.540 Thank you.

00:56:34.540 And thank you so much for having me on and giving me some airtime to discuss this topic.

00:56:38.540 Can you give us an overview?

00:56:40.540 Because what happened was, in my impression, the media started paying attention to some of

00:56:45.540 the anti-Asian crimes that we're seeing, hate crimes that we're seeing out there when

00:56:50.540 they decided it could be an issue they could blame on President Trump.

00:56:55.540 And that is my anecdotal observation.

00:56:58.540 But what what have you seen in terms of the coverage of this and the rise in these attacks?

00:57:04.540 Well, so I think you're absolutely right.

00:57:07.540 I agree with your observation.

00:57:10.540 I think that there are all kinds of people out there who who are very anti-Trump.

00:57:16.540 And during the beginning of the pandemic, it became very convenient for them to pin any

00:57:23.540 sort of racism against Asians against Trump.

00:57:27.540 Trump's own inflammatory rhetoric didn't help.

00:57:30.540 But but the issue is obviously much more complicated than that.

00:57:35.540 In terms of the rise of anti-Asian attacks, I think there has been an increase.

00:57:41.540 Some of it is COVID inspired.

00:57:44.540 I also think that's a big chunk of the incidents we see are actually very similar to attacks on

00:57:52.540 Asians that that we have seen for a very long time, perhaps even decades in urban areas.

00:57:59.540 And it is because many of those attacks have just gone ignored over the years due to political

00:58:06.540 correctness and political inconvenience.

00:58:08.540 And and when the pandemic started, a lot of the people who had been ignoring those attacks decided

00:58:15.540 it was now politically convenient.

00:58:18.540 I would also note that the attacks are now more noticeable because we do have more widely

00:58:23.540 available footage from smartphones and surveillance cameras, which we didn't have to nearly the

00:58:29.540 same extent just maybe 10 years ago.

00:58:32.540 I don't like I can you explain that?

00:58:34.540 Because I'll tell you, I when I started to see these attacks go up, I was like, I don't get

00:58:38.540 this or at least coverage of the attacks, you know, the ones that made the news.

00:58:41.540 I'm like, I don't it never it would never occur to me.

00:58:44.540 I mean, I don't mean, of course, I that I would have any anti-Asian bias.

00:58:47.540 I mean, it wouldn't even occur to me that because we had the Wuhan lab and the coronavirus coming

00:58:54.540 out of China, that people would target Chinese Americans like to me, it doesn't make any sense.

00:59:00.540 So I didn't anticipate it.

00:59:01.540 And when I've been reading your articles in preparation for this in particular, I'm like,

00:59:06.540 oh, I get it.

00:59:07.540 It's that that didn't necessarily happen.

00:59:10.540 But this is we may just be shining a light on a bias, a problem that's been there for

00:59:16.540 a long time that we didn't much care about prior to, you know, Wuhan flu and all the stuff

00:59:22.540 that Trump said.

00:59:23.540 Right. I think the problem has always been there.

00:59:26.540 It's been there for decades.

00:59:27.540 And in fact, there is a law, you know, law enforcement officials in New York City, in San

00:59:33.540 Francisco, they have said off the record that that these attacks are nothing new.

00:59:40.540 And there's one official in San Francisco who even referred to these anti-Asian attacks

00:59:44.540 as the San Francisco Bay Area's dirty little secret.

00:59:48.540 So the problem has always been there.

00:59:50.540 However, the problem has been exacerbated due to the pandemic and certainly also due to

00:59:55.540 the rise in crime.

00:59:57.540 And we've seen a massive increase in homicides in major American cities last year.

01:00:02.540 And and I think that sort of problem, you know, problems having to do with the reduction

01:00:11.540 in police resources, BLM riots, so on that has also contributed to the crime problem.

01:00:17.540 So there's a lot of things all wrapped in one.

01:00:19.540 But at the core of it, I do think that what the media misses is that this is a problem that

01:00:25.540 has been ignored and that now that they've decided it's politically convenient to cover

01:00:30.540 it, they're still covering it in a very dishonest way.

01:00:34.540 Well, they're blaming it on white supremacy.

01:00:36.540 And that doesn't seem to be the case.

01:00:38.540 I mean, what we've seen over and over in these attacks is that it is a black perpetrator attacking

01:00:42.540 an Asian American.

01:00:44.540 And the the media, when confronted with that reality, has decided that, too, is white supremacy,

01:00:52.540 that that the white man is in the business of keeping any one, quote, other down and that

01:01:00.540 that the white sort of supremacists have pitted these two minority groups against one another.

01:01:05.540 And therefore, if a black person attacks an Asian person on the streets in New York, that,

01:01:09.540 too, is to blame on some random white person in their living room who may not have had any

01:01:15.540 anti minority bias.

01:01:17.540 But because they were born with white pigment with lighter pigmentation, they're to blame.

01:01:21.540 If you ask Robin DeAngelo, we're all white supremacists.

01:01:23.540 I mean, this is basically how it how it's come down, has it not?

01:01:27.540 Yeah.

01:01:28.540 And I would separate the the the so-called hate incidents in a couple of categories.

01:01:35.540 I would first refer to there's a category of sort of nonviolent harassment, people saying racist

01:01:41.540 things to Asian people.

01:01:43.540 That's very different from the horrific violent attacks that we've seen over and over again

01:01:49.540 in America's urban areas.

01:01:51.540 And so many of them have been perpetrated on the elderly, too.

01:01:54.540 And that is what makes it more horrific.

01:01:57.540 And and and so I do think that in the former category, plenty of non black people, plenty

01:02:04.540 of white people have engaged in that kind of hostility, at least from what we see sort of

01:02:10.540 documented in the public sphere.

01:02:12.540 Now, in the second category, the truly horrific attacks that the violence, the murders, I think

01:02:21.540 those are, in fact, the far more serious ones that we need to tackle.

01:02:26.540 But those are the incidents where this, you know, this entirely ludicrous rhetoric about

01:02:32.540 white supremacy comes into play.

01:02:35.540 And and so, you know, even though time and time again, the the attacks that we find so

01:02:40.540 despicable and so horrific are perpetrated by black suspects, the media covering these attacks

01:02:47.540 oftentimes can't even bring themselves to utter the word black.

01:02:50.540 Yeah, right.

01:02:51.540 They're so terrified that any open discussion about the racial dynamics or ethnic dynamics

01:02:57.540 here is going to make you a racist.

01:02:58.540 Meanwhile, it's like, well, we have to talk about it.

01:03:00.540 We have to it doesn't mean God knows you're not condemning all black people just because

01:03:04.540 we're being honest about the fact that the latest speed of violence has been perpetrated

01:03:08.540 for the most part by black perpetrators.

01:03:10.540 That doesn't that's not a condemnation of black people.

01:03:13.540 We have to get honest.

01:03:14.540 It's a condemnation of the black perpetrators.

01:03:16.540 And we're trying to figure out why are you blaming it on white supremacy?

01:03:19.540 Right.

01:03:20.540 Like, let's let's get real.

01:03:21.540 And it is happening.

01:03:22.540 There's just a couple examples.

01:03:23.540 March 2021 Vox comes out and says, ultimately, there's a failure to remember what got America

01:03:28.540 to this place of racial hierarchies and lingering black Asian tensions, white supremacy.

01:03:33.540 And for black and Asian American communities to move forward, it's important to remember

01:03:36.540 the root cause and then to fight it together.

01:03:39.540 Black Lives Matter came out and said, you know, when we call for the eradication of white supremacy,

01:03:44.540 we're saying Asian Americans and every other marginalized racial group deserves to be freed

01:03:48.540 from this violence.

01:03:49.540 Washington Post anti Asian racism is white supremacy hands down and on and on it goes.

01:03:56.540 Right.

01:03:57.540 So it's like and then I mean, I want to get it get into the moron academics who I've already

01:04:01.540 recited on this show who are out there saying it even more explicitly.

01:04:04.540 But that's the narrative.

01:04:05.540 Everything is white supremacy.

01:04:07.540 Why can't why can't we talk about the fact that actually here what we're seeing is a

01:04:11.540 rise in black on Asian violence?

01:04:13.540 Because I think the word black is in there.

01:04:16.540 And I think the moment that we're currently in is all about white supremacy.

01:04:23.540 It's all about systemic racism.

01:04:25.540 It is all about racial justice and it's all about racial equity.

01:04:28.540 And when you put all of those things together, in some ways, the narrative kind of says black

01:04:35.540 people can do no wrong.

01:04:36.540 And the only wrong they can do is possibly not condemn white supremacy enough.

01:04:41.540 And in that narrative, which is all over our politics, all over our media, it is very

01:04:46.540 politically inconvenient to actually say that actually you have some, you know, you have

01:04:53.540 some widespread black on Asian violence in urban communities and it has maybe not been

01:04:59.540 as serious in the past, but it has been going on for quite some time.

01:05:02.540 And now we see all these politicians using the pain of Asian Americans to further their

01:05:11.540 distorted narrative.

01:05:12.540 And I think the problem is that we have to talk about crime.

01:05:17.540 We have to talk about violence, but we also have to talk about race.

01:05:20.540 And it is very uncomfortable and there's no getting around that problem.

01:05:25.540 You know, I think one of the reasons why this has been a dirty little secret and why it has

01:05:31.540 kind of exploded in our faces this year is because in the past when these crimes happened, they

01:05:37.540 don't just happen in a vacuum.

01:05:40.540 There's a lot of racial animosity at times in inner city areas, you know, different ethnic

01:05:46.540 and racial communities are bumping up into each other.

01:05:49.540 Under normal circumstances, if a white person were to discriminate against a black person

01:05:54.540 or if a hate crime were committed, you would get wall to wall coverage of how bad that racism

01:05:59.540 is.

01:06:00.540 Unfortunately, in these urban areas where crime is often perpetrated on the most vulnerable

01:06:05.540 black, brown and yellow people, the victims can't really speak for themselves.

01:06:10.540 Many of them don't speak English and the bystanders and our political leaders are far too cowardly

01:06:16.540 and they kind of look away.

01:06:17.540 And so if a black person were to say something that's racist against an Asian person.

01:06:23.540 And let me tell you, a lot of Americans don't know this.

01:06:25.540 This kind of racism actually happens a lot in inner city areas.

01:06:30.540 How do bystanders respond?

01:06:33.540 They don't.

01:06:34.540 They look away uncomfortably.

01:06:35.540 And that's how our society in general has responded to the problem of black on Asian

01:06:40.540 violence over the decades.

01:06:42.540 And that is why we currently can't really have an honest conversation.

01:06:47.540 And I think that it's because white people, many white people, particularly many white reporters,

01:06:54.540 feel a certain amount of white guilt.

01:06:56.540 They feel that they have no moral authority to condemn any behavior by black people.

01:07:01.540 So they sort of stand back and they kind of just repeat whatever groups like BLM tell them they

01:07:09.540 ought to say.

01:07:10.540 And ultimately, the victims are the victims you see in all of these horrific videos that

01:07:15.540 have been on display in the past few months.

01:07:18.540 That's fascinating.

01:07:19.540 So you under this theory, then, if a white person person witnessed another white person

01:07:26.540 attacking an Asian victim, they might speak up.

01:07:29.540 But it's it's it's because of the very race of the attacker of a black person being the

01:07:35.540 attacker that they don't because, as you say, they feel they lack the moral authority.

01:07:39.540 I've I've never quite understood it like that, but that makes sense.

01:07:42.540 And I think it's, you know, why you see a lot of a lot of white people talking about their

01:07:49.540 white privilege these days.

01:07:50.540 There's a lot of self-flagellation.

01:07:52.540 And and I think the moment that we're currently in, you know, which sort of stems from from

01:07:59.540 the death of George Floyd, stems from all the protests last year.

01:08:03.540 It makes it even harder.

01:08:04.540 I mean, it was hard enough even before the George Floyd protest to have an honest conversation

01:08:10.540 about black on Asian violence.

01:08:11.540 It is a lot harder today to do that.

01:08:15.540 And and I would say it's not just white people.

01:08:17.540 I mean, you know, like I think in general, it is very difficult to confront these kinds

01:08:24.540 of scenarios, even when they're not violent.

01:08:26.540 I mean, I myself have have stood silent before a lot of these scenarios involving racial epithets

01:08:33.540 against Asian people because you don't want you don't want to risk any violence being perpetrated

01:08:39.540 on you.

01:08:40.540 But two, you don't want to really engage in that kind of confrontation.

01:08:43.540 And three, it's just uncomfortable in general.

01:08:45.540 So I think what I've called for in recent days is I have called for a dialogue between the

01:08:55.540 Asian community and the black community.

01:08:57.540 But first and foremost, I think that black leaders like former President Obama, black leaders

01:09:05.540 on the local level, on the national level, role models, I think they need to step up and

01:09:11.540 condemn black on Asian violence unequivocally, unequivocally, because I do think many of them

01:09:17.540 have the moral authority.

01:09:19.540 Certainly, nobody's going to accuse them of being racist.

01:09:22.540 And and I think that they are just as appalled at these violent incidents as the rest of us

01:09:29.540 are.

01:09:30.540 And I think they are in kind of a special place to tell their own communities.

01:09:34.540 There is not a damn bit of this.

01:09:36.540 That is OK.

01:09:37.540 I recently had a conversation with a conservative black pastor who grew up in segregated Alabama

01:09:42.540 and and he's all over this issue.

01:09:45.540 And he says one of the reasons why we're seeing so much of this is because many of these communities

01:09:50.540 are broken communities.

01:09:52.540 The families are dysfunctional.

01:09:54.540 The father is not at home.

01:09:56.540 And, you know, in the old days, if a black teenager were out of line, there would be older

01:10:02.540 family members or other members of the community who would step in and tell them his behavior

01:10:07.540 is not OK.

01:10:08.540 Whereas these days, without that structure and without that that network, a lot of kids

01:10:15.540 are just acting inappropriately.

01:10:17.540 That I mean that it does bear noting the vast majority of black people find this behavior

01:10:22.540 abhorrent.

01:10:23.540 They these black people don't represent black people writ large.

01:10:27.540 They're criminals.

01:10:28.540 They're just like white criminals don't represent white people writ large.

01:10:31.540 It's just we're trying to figure out why this dynamic has been captured so many times in

01:10:35.540 the past few months and really over the past year.

01:10:37.540 On tape, as you point out, we're having more access to it.

01:10:41.540 And there were stats just released in New York City.

01:10:44.540 A black New Yorker is over six times as likely to commit a hate crime against an Asian as

01:10:50.540 a white New Yorker is in 2020.

01:10:52.540 Blacks made up 50 percent of all suspects and anti Asian attacks in New York, even though

01:10:57.540 blacks are 24 percent of the city's population.

01:10:59.540 So, you know, you can see it sort of playing out in the numbers and then you see it playing

01:11:04.540 out in these tapes.

01:11:05.540 I have to ask you about this, Yang, because the one that really stood out to me and I tweeted

01:11:09.540 about it at the time was the 65 year old Asian woman who was assaulted in March.

01:11:13.540 End of March, midday, midtown Manhattan.

01:11:17.540 And, you know, this is the perfectly nice neighborhood.

01:11:21.540 It's not like a high crime area.

01:11:23.540 She's walking to church.

01:11:25.540 She gets brutally kicked and beaten.

01:11:28.540 The guy broke her pelvis.

01:11:30.540 She got hurt in the head.

01:11:32.540 He yelled, F you.

01:11:33.540 You don't belong here.

01:11:35.540 Bystanders stood by.

01:11:38.540 They watched it.

01:11:39.540 The doorman in this luxury apartment building did nothing.

01:11:43.540 They closed the doors rather than helping.

01:11:46.540 I don't know.

01:11:47.540 I I believe maybe I'm crazy.

01:11:50.540 I believe if I had been the victim of that attack, the doorman would have come and helped.

01:11:54.540 I maybe I'm wrong.

01:11:55.540 Maybe they're just cowardly toward everybody.

01:11:57.540 But the fact that they did not help the 65 year old Asian woman is disgusting.

01:12:01.540 And she and the guy was yelling anti Asian slurs at her.

01:12:05.540 That one did make the news, by the way, the guy who got arrested for it.

01:12:09.540 So he was black, 38 year old.

01:12:10.540 He'd just been on parole.

01:12:11.540 He'd been paroled recently for killing his own mother back in 2002 in front of his little five year old sister at the time.

01:12:17.540 So I see this.

01:12:19.540 It's it's not a loop on video the way we saw with George Floyd or some of these other incidents.

01:12:24.540 It barely got a mention.

01:12:26.540 I just happened to see it because I'm here in New York.

01:12:28.540 It did not become a huge national story.

01:12:30.540 And I could go on.

01:12:31.540 There's so many other incidents that we've seen along these lines.

01:12:33.540 So why is that?

01:12:34.540 Right.

01:12:35.540 So you see that and it sort of tells the story.

01:12:37.540 Yeah.

01:12:38.540 And, you know, while we're at it, if if you allow me just a minute to describe what happened during the first week of May.

01:12:48.540 On Sunday, an attacker accosted two Asian women in Midtown Manhattan and repeatedly struck one of them in the head with a hammer.

01:12:55.540 On Monday, an Asian father was beaten brutally in San Francisco while walking his baby in a stroller.

01:13:01.540 On Tuesday, a man viciously beats two Asian women in the head with a cinder block at a liquor store where the victims work in Baltimore.

01:13:09.540 Also Tuesday, an Asian store owner in D.C. was punched in the face after refusing to let a customer open store items before purchase.

01:13:17.540 Same day, two Asian women were stabbed in San Francisco while waiting at a bus stop.

01:13:23.540 One of them was an elderly grandmother.

01:13:25.540 The handle of the knife broke off after the the suspect stabbed her.

01:13:32.540 And a huge knife was actually left in her body when she was rushed to the hospital.

01:13:37.540 Then Saturday that week, some teens attacked and mugged an 80 year old Asian man in San Leandro in California.

01:13:44.540 And the video shows these attackers laughing as the victims scream for help on the ground.

01:13:49.540 Every one of these attacks were perpetrated by black suspects on Asian victims.

01:13:55.540 And this was just the first week in May.

01:13:58.540 And we have not heard a word in the media about the the suspects being black.

01:14:04.540 And we've not seen wall to wall coverage.

01:14:07.540 I bet there are plenty of people across America who haven't even heard about this these incidents.

01:14:12.540 And and I think more people have heard about the incident you refer to of the Filipino woman who was sort of stomped on in the head in Midtown Manhattan.

01:14:21.540 And I think by now these horrific attacks happen so often that perhaps some people are even kind of desensitized to it.

01:14:30.540 And and that's what's so awful about all of this that, you know, people keep talking about white supremacy and they keep looking away at black on Asian violence.

01:14:40.540 The Asian community, you know, has a lot of left wing activists who are glad to sort of participate in perpetuating this false narrative.

01:14:51.540 And meanwhile, you know, we continue to see these attacks take place.

01:14:55.540 So the I think one of the things we need to ask ourselves is not just that this is this is not right.

01:15:02.540 This is not just and that we need to put a stop to it.

01:15:04.540 But if this keeps happening, what is going to happen if there's some sort of racial sort of a race war?

01:15:11.540 Or just imagine what would happen the next time a black suspect tries to attack an Asian victim and and the Asian victim pulls out a gun and shoots the person.

01:15:21.540 Are we going to have riots? We are already hearing about a dramatic increase in gun acquisition by the Asian community.

01:15:30.540 And so ultimately we we should have an honest conversation, an honest, uncomfortable national conversation, not simply because it's the right thing to do, but also because there are real consequences of what might happen if we just let this issue kind of simmer.

01:15:46.540 You know that I mean, the way it feels to me is Asians don't count as minorities, right?

01:15:53.540 Like they're they're too high achieving. They've they've they're so high achieving. They've achieved, quote, white status.

01:16:00.540 This is how these leftists talk about race that you can you convert over into, quote, white when you do well or you gain power or you, you know, you get into universities at a rate that's disproportionate to the black community, say, for example.

01:16:15.040 And so they don't seem to care. These same leftist activists like they'll give it some lip service.

01:16:20.880 They were very interested in the in the March Atlanta shooting at the at the salons, the nail salons and and the massage areas, because they thought that guy was a white supremacist.

01:16:30.840 And then when he came out, he was like, actually, it was more about I felt these women were responsible for my sex addiction.

01:16:35.720 They quickly lost interest in him. So it seems like.

01:16:39.580 I feel like I feel like there's an element of their racism, of these sort of white leftist spokespeople for all things that are racist or not racist, they're not interested because Asian Americans are so high, high achieving.

01:16:54.080 And I think they see a lot of these leftists see Asians as kind of collateral damage in their effort to atone for white privilege, for white guilt and for past white aggressions and or transgressions.

01:17:11.740 And so, you know, you see this playing out in in the in the debate about racial preferences and higher education.

01:17:18.780 And so in order for white, you know, in order for white liberals to feel good about themselves, in order for them to be able to to to brag about racial diversity, the people who pay the price are, you know, who pay the highest price are Asian American applicants.

01:17:36.620 They're the ones discriminated against for their academic excellence.

01:17:40.520 And in many ways, I think we see this playing out in other areas of the racial conversation as well.

01:17:48.540 I I prefer to to to to think that everybody is an American, no matter what race you are.

01:17:56.440 And in fact, I find the way that some of these Asian American left wing groups, you know, categorize everybody and lump everybody together to be really quite ludicrous.

01:18:07.220 But ultimately, you know, ultimately, the conversation needs to be about, you know, what brings us law and order, what brings us peace and security.

01:18:16.080 Um, and and and we ought to be able to at least have an honest conversation about how is it that we can prevent our grandmas and grandpas, you know, walking to Chinatown from being attacked so viciously all the time.

01:18:29.500 And I've I've I've read you, you know, pointing out that a lot of the times Asian men or Asian women are on the smaller side and they can't they're they're no match.

01:18:41.700 Like they get targeted. It's it's so unfair on so many levels because they they're unarmed.

01:18:46.660 They can't fight back and they make too easy a victim.

01:18:50.140 It's taken advantage by criminals who do their own version of profiling.

01:18:54.620 Obviously, they're going to prefer to attack victims who are more vulnerable, victims who are likely to carry more cash and victims who perhaps don't speak the English language well enough and are less likely to report the crimes.

01:19:07.980 And so they may not always be specifically thinking I want to attack an Asian person, but oftentimes the characteristics that come to mind for them are sort of, you know, associated with Asian people.

01:19:22.680 And then meanwhile, you also have criminals who will outright make racist remarks against Asians while they're attacking Asian victims.

01:19:28.980 And so that also, you know, just makes it very clear where their mindset is.

01:19:34.080 And so I think where these attacks occur, there are so there are multiple layers of the mold of motivations.

01:19:41.200 I think a big part of it is just crime in general, that when we you know, when we advocate defunding the police, when we take away resources from the local police forces, that ends up having a real impact on everybody, including, you know, brown and black people as well.

01:19:59.240 Now, and that affects Asian people who have to face these criminals.

01:20:03.900 But at the same time, I think there are certainly criminals who have real racist views and that when they perpetrate attacks, like that man who killed his mother, certainly he wasn't racist against his mother, but one could be just a psycho and be a racist at the same time.

01:20:20.060 And, you know, and all of, you know, and right now we're not, we're just not having a conversation about any of these topics.

01:20:27.120 And I think even before we have that honest conversation, some concrete practical steps need to be taken.

01:20:34.900 For instance, you know, increasing police patrols to defend the most vulnerable and those types of measures.

01:20:43.120 You know, if you look at the most, the, the, some of the most common victims, if it's a grandmother in her eighties or a grandfather, you know, walking along using a walker, they're not going to be able to defend themselves.

01:20:55.960 They're not going to be yanking out a gun or they're not going to be throwing a punch.

01:21:00.140 And so ultimately we need to get law and order back in place.

01:21:04.200 And, and that also is a topic that is really controversial right now, because that's also wrapped up in systemic racism and white supremacy.

01:21:12.200 And, you know, and once again, um, um, vulnerable Asian Americans in heavily urban areas end up being the victims.

01:21:21.460 Well, and it's, I mean, if you talk to the black community too, it'd look all the polls show.

01:21:25.480 They want the same or more police in their neighborhoods.

01:21:28.520 They don't want less police.

01:21:29.980 Like only the people, the criminals want less police.

01:21:34.040 And I understand black men who have historically had negative encounters with police may not want more police.

01:21:41.320 I get that.

01:21:42.320 But the reality is crime is high.

01:21:45.120 It's at an all time high right now in a lot of cities in America, especially violent crime and law abiding citizens want to be protected.

01:21:50.940 Not all of us have guns or tasers or would be feel comfortable using them.

01:21:54.100 You know, that little lady who got knocked down 65 years old that we talked about, she, she didn't have time there.

01:21:59.660 Even if she had seen the guy come in, there was no time for that woman to grab a weapon, even if she'd been armed.

01:22:04.540 Um, so let's be real.

01:22:05.860 And, and the problem, just to give a perspective in 2020, 2020, there were more than 3,800 reports nationally of anti-Asian violence, a sharp uptick compared with just 2019, where there was only, there were only, I mean, in comparison, at least 2,600 incidents.

01:22:20.760 Three in four Asian Americans worry about experiencing hate crime, harassment or discrimination because of COVID-19, um, 68.1% have suffered verbal harassment, 20% shunning, right?

01:22:35.900 They get blamed 11% physical assault.

01:22:39.680 And by the way, women are targeted the most 68% versus 29% male victims to your point earlier of, you know, they go for the most vulnerable, right?

01:22:47.620 And we're the least threatening women, um, are, especially if you add, you know, elderly to the list, forget it.

01:22:54.320 So what do we do about that?

01:22:56.440 You say conversation.

01:22:57.220 I, I notice, um, Jada Pinkett Smith, she had a discussion on red table.

01:23:01.960 They took some flack for stuff her mom was saying, but overall, you know, they had, they had some black panelists.

01:23:07.880 They had some Asian panelists.

01:23:08.960 Lisa Ling was on there, I think.

01:23:10.700 And, um, I think it's interesting because her mom, Jada's mom, who goes on there with her daughter, Jada's mom said as follows.

01:23:17.540 I need to understand she's talking about, uh, Asian people.

01:23:21.000 Where does their animosity for us come from?

01:23:23.700 Because that's what it feels like.

01:23:24.880 It feels like they have come into our communities, taken over our stores, taken over the hair and nail industry, and really blocked us from being able to thrive in this industry.

01:23:34.860 We're coming into these stores and what are they giving back to the community?

01:23:37.960 She says, we're not even treated with respect and kindness.

01:23:40.880 It's very difficult for there to be any concern for them.

01:23:43.160 She says, I don't even feel like they want our help.

01:23:45.780 There's something different from the scholars, but for the average person, do they care?

01:23:49.220 Do they, are they interested in a relationship with me?

01:23:51.020 And she goes on to say, I've never had an Asian person that I don't know come up to me, speak to me, give me eye contact.

01:23:58.020 We're owed some of that when you come into our country and you start businesses.

01:24:03.440 Oh, boy.

01:24:04.880 Adrian.

01:24:05.880 Hello, Adrian.

01:24:07.120 I mean, I credit them for trying to have the conversation.

01:24:09.920 I felt uncomfortable hearing it.

01:24:12.180 But what do you make of her comments?

01:24:14.260 I thought it was highly offensive.

01:24:16.220 I mean, it was incredibly offensive.

01:24:17.760 It was racist in many ways.

01:24:19.400 And I think, and I actually, I'm grateful she said it because I think she said what is on the mind of a lot of other people who might not, you know, have her megaphone and, you know, who might not be comfortable kind of saying it out loud in public.

01:24:34.800 And, and I think a lot of times when you see the interactions between different racial groups in urban areas, there is an undertone of a lot of that.

01:24:45.940 Which is why I say that it is incumbent on black leaders like former President Obama, as well as, you know, Vice President Kamala Harris, to make it very clear that black on Asian violence is absolutely not okay.

01:25:01.900 I don't give a damn how you feel about nail salons and their owners and, you know, and that's a conversation I'm happy to have.

01:25:09.340 But I don't give a damn how you feel about, you know, the poor service you're getting from the Korean, you know, nail salon worker.

01:25:16.400 There is not a damn thing that justifies any of these violent incidents, many of which are, in fact, hate motivated.

01:25:23.200 You know, a number of these crimes have been charged as hate crimes.

01:25:26.020 And so I think that is number one.

01:25:27.960 Before we can, you know, before we have a conversation about, you know, blacks and Asians that have a give and take, I think the leaders in the black community, as well as just our leaders in general, you know, President Biden, for instance, need to go out there and make it very clear that it is not okay

01:25:46.660 for any of this black on Asian violence to be taking place.

01:25:51.140 Obviously, racist attacks on anybody, by any perpetrator, on any victim, that's not okay.

01:25:56.760 But because we're seeing so many of these incidents taking place that I think our leaders need to step up to the plate and make that clear.

01:26:05.180 Now, as far as what Jada Pinkett Smith's mom was saying, first of all, just imagine if a white person said that about a Hispanic, you know, that they've come into this country

01:26:15.540 and taken over our communities and taken, you know, and taken our jobs, taken our businesses.

01:26:22.000 And what are they giving back?

01:26:23.300 And then we're not treated with respect by them and they need to make eye contact and that show would be canceled.

01:26:30.180 Yes, that's absolutely.

01:26:32.400 Meanwhile, you hear, you know, like the other panelists on that show, we're kind of nodding along in silence.

01:26:38.200 I give Jada some credit for, you know, for actually making it very clear that the violence is not okay.

01:26:44.240 So, so I give her credit that, but that whole show was actually, that whole panel was actually deeply offensive for another reason.

01:26:50.560 It's because everybody around that table agrees that white supremacy is ultimately the problem.

01:26:57.700 And that, you know, and that racial minorities don't have to take responsibilities for their own actions.

01:27:04.200 It's because somehow if violence takes place between two minority groups, that ultimately it is the structure of white supremacy and systemic racism that is at fault.

01:27:15.020 I mean, it is utterly absurd.

01:27:17.380 And somehow, you know, what they're saying, even the ones who sound a little bit more sane, are saying that white people, you know, that Asian people and black people need to work together in order to fight against this white supremacist superstructure.

01:27:32.380 That's what Michael Eric Dyson, who is there, said, he said, we're, we're at each other's necks, but we should be looking at the common enemy of white supremacy.

01:27:39.380 It's all back to white supremacy in the end.

01:27:41.600 Right. And I think one of the reasons why the Asian community is sort of looked at with suspicion by a lot of these left wing activists is that there are many individuals and organizations within the Asian American community who don't buy that narrative.

01:28:01.260 If they don't buy the narrative of grievance, they don't buy identity politics in general, you know, and even though the community is not monolithic, the Asian community does have a lot of people who are small business owners.

01:28:15.660 It's a very entrepreneurial group of people, you know, Korean store owners or there are quite a few of them, even though they're probably fewer among store store owners.

01:28:27.080 But nevertheless, I think a lot of what the left is telling this country is simply not something that's appealing to, you know, sort of a traditional Asian American family.

01:28:40.540 Right. And and I think that's why they're frustrated. And so do I think that every Asian person ought to care about justice for black people and equal rights?

01:28:52.520 Absolutely. But does that mean that I'm supposed to go and participate in a BLM protest that turns into a riot?

01:28:58.560 And am I supposed to go and participate in burning down a Wendy's? Absolutely not.

01:29:03.120 And am I supposed to then also, you know, run around saying that America is a systemically racist country?

01:29:11.160 No. And I think that's where a lot of the frustration comes from.

01:29:14.640 And I think that's where you see you'll see a lot of left wing activists accusing Asian Americans of acting white or not caring about other minority groups.

01:29:24.420 Whereas whereas whereas what a lot of people are doing is that they're opting for common sense.

01:29:29.220 They're opting to remain remain hopeful about equal rights in this country, you know, equality, not equity.

01:29:37.360 And I think a lot of people are choosing to keep faith in the American promise.

01:29:41.980 And that promise to them is not what's you know, what's on display when BLM riots break out.

01:29:48.720 Well, and so now this is where the rubber meets the road, right, because Asian Americans, many of whom have are at the lower end of socioeconomic classes, right?

01:29:58.260 They living above the dry cleaner, what have you.

01:30:00.500 That's not like this group uniformly has privilege and wealth in this country, but they tend to be extremely hardworking and they tend to be tough on their kids and make sure their kids get good grades.

01:30:09.520 I mean, this is let's go back to Tiger Mom, one of my favorite books and one of my favorite people of all time.

01:30:14.200 Amy Chua, you know, she's very open about the method of Chinese parenting and you may not like it may not be your method, but it works.

01:30:21.920 And your kid's going to do well academically because as a as a rule, and there's always exceptions to it, that academic achievement and hard work is prized in the Asian community.

01:30:30.760 And that's something to be lauded. I mean, I think that's something we should all aspire to.

01:30:33.980 I would like to I told her when she was on, I'm like, I would like to have more of the Chinese mom in me.

01:30:38.180 I wish somebody had done it to me. Who knows what could have happened?

01:30:40.840 But anyway, my mom just kept making me take typing over and over because she didn't see me achieving anything much.

01:30:47.920 Imagine if she had been the mom who got practice tests to help me.

01:30:51.460 I think we see a lot more of the emphasis on academic achievement on hard work in the East Asian communities, Koreans, you know, Chinese, Japanese.

01:31:03.440 I think Southeast Asian communities are different.

01:31:09.100 South Asian communities are even more different.

01:31:11.600 And I think, you know, what's interesting about Asian Americans is that you do have some who are very financially well off.

01:31:18.640 They've achieved a great deal of success.

01:31:20.720 But at the same time, you've got a lot of people in this community who are still very poor, you know, who are working six days a week, you know, operating their dry cleaner or their restaurant.

01:31:32.280 And and some, you know, and some of them have a whole family devoted to the project.

01:31:36.940 And so I think it's a it's a racial group that's got a lot of different aspects to it.

01:31:45.680 I actually personally don't care for the label very much because many of us don't look like each other.

01:31:51.360 Many of us don't think like each other.

01:31:53.580 And the label of Asians or the label of what?

01:31:56.580 The label of Asian Americans.

01:31:58.140 And then there's the label of there's nowadays this new label, you know, a label that's becoming even more popular, which is AAPI, Asian American Pacific Islanders.

01:32:07.580 I think a lot of this it's it's these are made up categories.

01:32:11.420 And and ultimately, we are all Americans and it's not OK for any of the crimes happening to Asian Americans to be happening.

01:32:19.100 But the point I was trying to get to is that it's sort of picking up on what you were saying, which is it does belie.

01:32:23.580 And I and this is not to discount the history of racism in America.

01:32:26.380 And I understand that American born black people have a history in this country that even that black immigrants may not have, that Asians may not have.

01:32:34.220 I actually think that is a legitimate point in distinguishing what black Americans may be going through and the sort of challenges they may be up against.

01:32:42.060 But it it is it is true as well that many Asian immigrants to America overcome enormous odds and overcome socioeconomic, you know, lower being on the lower end of that that struggle.

01:32:55.500 And they managed to make it.

01:32:57.120 They managed to work their way out of it just and achieve the American dream.

01:33:01.040 And if your message taking if this isn't about black people, it's about sort of this little these leftists who are trying to co-opt the narrative in our academic institutions and beyond.

01:33:10.340 If your narrative is that the American dream is not possible, that it's a facade and even the notion of it is racist because it's not achievable, except for by a white person.

01:33:18.660 And you see an Asian like that doing it over and over, then that's an inconvenient truth for you to steal a phrase that you might not you might not want to talk about that so much or really shine a light on those achievements.

01:33:29.560 Right. Right. Right. And so you come up with narrative saying that white people find it, you know, more convenient to allow Asian people to succeed.

01:33:38.000 And we hear that kind of language pretty often out there.

01:33:42.980 And then, you know, we also hear people saying that Asian people just want to be white and they don't care about blacks or Hispanics and they just want to, you know, one, look white and to act white.

01:33:54.860 So we do see a lot of that. But ultimately, I do think it gets back to what you're saying, which is that if the belief amongst certain individuals in a racial minority is that they believe in the American dream.

01:34:06.520 And if it's the dream of the leftists to take down America as we know it, then the two don't really jide very well together.

01:34:14.140 I can't let you go without asking about what's happening to Asians and AAPI.

01:34:20.000 I don't know what to say now at college campuses, because to me, they're the discrimination against against Asian people.

01:34:27.840 It's just so obvious, like all these activists who are out there talking about equality.

01:34:31.840 They don't mean Asian people.

01:34:33.340 No, no, and not at all. And what is most ironic is that the left wing Asian American activists who have been out there criticizing Trump day in and day out ever since the pandemic started.

01:34:47.480 And these left wing activists who keep talking about stop Asian hate and who keep saying that this is the fault of the white supremacists, these are the very groups who defend the use of racial preferences in higher education, as well as on the high school level against Asian Americans.

01:35:07.220 These are the groups who do not have the best interests of Asian Americans at heart.

01:35:11.760 But yet, time and time again, they're the ones getting a huge amount of funding from left wing organizations and left wing individuals to provide the facade that they are actually speaking on behalf of Asian Americans and that somehow there are huge numbers of Asian Americans who buy into this left wing ideology of America is a racist country.

01:35:33.580 You, on that front, you on that front were instrumental, as I understand it, in defeating that California initiative that tried to make discrimination legal again.

01:35:43.300 They literally tried to write it back into law and allow racial preferences and to really upend a system that had been, I think, doing better in California.

01:35:53.620 Can you just explain what that fight was over and why it was so important that you and others, the Californians, defeated it?

01:36:00.880 Yeah, I mean, that was an exciting campaign.

01:36:02.660 That was just in 2020.

01:36:04.680 And I was also involved in the 1996 campaign, which was the Prop 209 campaign.

01:36:13.000 That was the campaign that banned racial preferences in higher education, in public education, public contracting and public employment in California.

01:36:21.500 And what happened last year in 2020 was that a bunch of leftist politicians and leftist groups wanted to actually reinstate racial preferences and a number of us got involved and decided to fight back.

01:36:36.520 And we won in sort of a David versus Goliath fight.

01:36:39.940 You know, they had, I think, something like $30 million.

01:36:42.960 We had $1.7 million.

01:36:45.440 They had everybody who was anybody in California on their side, including the business establishment, the media, the sports establishment.

01:36:54.080 And we just have the grassroots.

01:36:56.140 And what is so important is that, you know, this was all also part of the Black Lives Matter debate.

01:37:04.640 You know, this was part of the conversation about America's racial reckoning.

01:37:08.140 And somehow the left was saying that if you believe in racial equity, then you must bring back this unjust, you know, racial preferences system.

01:37:18.320 And we don't care if Asian Americans are hurt in the process.

01:37:21.780 And our argument to all Californians was that America is no longer a systemically racist country.

01:37:30.060 But regardless, we are not, you know, our state is not one that is going to discriminate against people based on race.

01:37:37.540 And Californians agreed with us resoundingly by a 14-point margin.

01:37:42.260 So, you know, that was exciting.

01:37:44.020 And that was truly gratifying because it gives us hope that even in a deep blue state like California, Americans continue to believe in equality.

01:37:53.580 They continue to believe that merit matters, that character matters.

01:37:58.060 And I do hope that moving forward, whether we're talking about higher education or whether we're trying to find real solutions to Black-on-Asian violence,

01:38:10.560 that, you know, that we can appeal to Americans with that kind of common sense and Americans who continue to believe in our country's founding principles.

01:38:19.020 Can you tell us, I mean, I remember reading about this and what happened in California when they said no more racial preferences.

01:38:28.060 What happened in terms of Black students and numbers at the universities in California?

01:38:35.620 So at the University of California, there was an...

01:38:40.880 So the measure, the original measure that banned racial preferences when it passed in 1996,

01:38:47.600 and then it went into effect a couple of years later.

01:38:50.920 And what happened was, I think, in the very early days, the first year or so, there was a drop in minority enrollment.

01:39:01.900 And I'm referring to Black students, Hispanic students.

01:39:06.400 And however, the university finally decided to take diversity seriously,

01:39:13.540 rather than papering over, you know, just a bunch of sort of racial preferences numbers.

01:39:20.700 And so the university just actually began to implement real affirmative action,

01:39:26.360 affirmative action based on socioeconomic status, for instance,

01:39:31.080 affirmative action based on whether a kid's parents went to college or not,

01:39:37.120 doing outreach in minority communities that, you know, see a lot of crime

01:39:43.700 and don't necessarily understand what the requirements of getting into the UC system may be.

01:39:49.260 And as that kind of sort of non-race-based affirmative action took place,

01:39:57.280 we've seen over the past two and a half decades or so that racial minorities,

01:40:04.460 including underrepresented racial minorities,

01:40:08.180 have actually been admitted in bigger and bigger numbers at the University of California.

01:40:15.080 And so in many ways, racial neutrality has been a success.

01:40:19.180 And in fact, just a couple of, you know, I think it was just the last year or the year before,

01:40:24.280 you know, you saw newspaper reports saying that the University of California has just admitted

01:40:30.560 the most diverse class ever, you know.

01:40:33.300 And so you're seeing headlines like that now, even without racial preferences.

01:40:38.140 Isn't that amazing?

01:40:39.100 I mean, that's the success story is that initially the numbers went down,

01:40:43.060 but over the past quarter century, they've gone up and the numbers look really good.

01:40:47.620 And the achievement looks good.

01:40:49.240 And that the challenging disciplines that Black students have gotten degrees in and so on,

01:40:53.120 those numbers have gone up, you know, science, technology, engineering, math, and so on.

01:40:57.520 It's, it was a success story.

01:40:59.980 Graduation rates for Blacks and Latinos have also gone up.

01:41:03.340 Right.

01:41:03.760 So thank goodness that people like you decided to fight back when this knee jerk,

01:41:08.840 we need racial preferences everywhere.

01:41:10.900 And in particular in these California universities, even if the system's working,

01:41:14.680 does it work perfectly?

01:41:15.600 No, nowhere ever, but it's working pretty well.

01:41:18.420 And it's definitely working better than it worked when they had the preferences there on the books.

01:41:22.380 So that was, that was an important thing.

01:41:23.880 It sort of set a model, as you point out, for other blue states who get that idea in their head.

01:41:29.340 Listen, I, I love talking to you.

01:41:31.220 I'm so grateful for your open and honest conversations, what we do here.

01:41:35.160 But some people are bolder than others.

01:41:37.460 Thank you so much.

01:41:38.760 Oh my gosh.

01:41:39.240 Thank you so much.

01:41:40.220 It's, uh, it's an honor to be on your show.

01:41:42.640 Um, you know, it's, it's great talking to you as well.

01:41:45.080 And, and thank you for, for providing an opportunity to have this, you know, very, um,

01:41:50.440 sort of open conversation.

01:41:57.160 Monday is Memorial Day, as you know, hope you have a good plan going.

01:42:00.580 Uh, one thing you got to do on Memorial Day, it's not all about the barbecue and, you know,

01:42:04.360 hopefully the opening of the pool and seeing your friends.

01:42:06.280 It's, it's also about remembering those who serve this country and paying them respect

01:42:10.980 because it's Memorial Day.

01:42:12.720 We'll do an hour long interview with Robert O'Neill.

01:42:15.240 You know him.

01:42:16.260 He's also known as the man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden.

01:42:19.900 Big respect to him.

01:42:20.940 And he used to come on my show on the Kelly File and really was just a thoughtful guy,

01:42:25.000 right?

01:42:25.320 And has been through a lot and has been pretty outspoken on Twitter since all of that as

01:42:30.100 well.

01:42:30.240 So he'll join us on what it means to serve and to sacrifice as very few in this country

01:42:36.840 have ever experienced.

01:42:38.120 Don't miss that.

01:42:39.160 Talk to you then.

01:42:40.640 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:42:42.800 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:42:46.980 The Megan Kelly show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

The Megyn Kelly Show - May 28, 2021

The Rise in Anti-Jewish and Anti-Asian Violence in America, with Ron Dermer and Ying Ma ｜ Ep. 108

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