The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Israel-Hamas War And Growing Anti-Semitism On US Campuses - India Today (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 The Palestinian-Israel conflict has nothing to do with land. It's an existential battle.

00:00:09.080 Palestinians are always the noble victims, the anti-Semitism on campus. That's the anti-Semitism

00:00:14.680 that simply comes from faulty education. The anti-Semitism that comes from the Middle East

00:00:22.320 is inherent to the doctrines of that faith. The Jew is tolerated in Islamic lands as long as

00:00:31.320 he has the status of a dhimmi. Don't you dare ever criticize Islam. That's Islamophobic. Any land

00:00:39.320 that has ever been occupied by Islam can never revert to anybody else.

00:00:46.240 Anti-Israel protests have broken out across the world since Israel began pounding Gaza

00:00:53.140 after Hamas's deadly attack on October 7th. Aggressive protests have taken place on campuses

00:01:00.160 in the US and Canada and at times they have become anti-Semitic. We spoke to Professor Gad Saad

00:01:08.080 who teaches in Canada's Concordia University on the protests and the Israel-Hamas war. He is the

00:01:15.080 author of two bestsellers, The Parasitic Mind and The Sad Truth About Happiness.

00:01:21.080 Why is there this deep-seated anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments in academia and on campuses?

00:01:28.360 So it's a complex question. So it depends who is the source of the Jew hatred. There could be Islamic-based

00:01:39.080 Jew hatred, which is one topic. There could be far-right Jew hatred, which is another group.

00:01:45.720 There could be progressive leftist Jew hatred, that's a third group. So they may be coming at

00:01:52.120 their Jew hatred from different positions, but at least they're all united in their common hatred of

00:01:58.360 the Jew. And so it really depends. Now in the context of university campuses, look, much of

00:02:07.800 many of these disciplines that I discuss in The Parasitic Mind, you know, ethnic studies and peace

00:02:12.760 studies and post-modernism and women's studies and intersectional feminism and all the rest of that

00:02:18.200 stuff. They view the world through the eyes of the, of a binary world of oppressed and oppressor.

00:02:25.880 And therefore, and it's very not much, not unlike how in Marxism you have the bourgeoisie and you have

00:02:32.040 the proletariat, right? So the world is binary. There is the group on the right that's nice and the group on

00:02:37.880 the left that's mean. And they have decided that the right message to send is that the

00:02:45.400 Palestinians are always the noble victims and the Zionist Nazi regime is always the oppressor.

00:02:56.600 And therefore, every thing that is taught on university campuses in what's called Near East

00:03:03.080 studies programs or Middle Eastern programs is always viewed through the lens of, you know, until 1948,

00:03:10.440 the Jews and Muslims lived in perpetual loving peace in that area. And then these really nasty guys from

00:03:21.080 Europe that have absolutely no link to that land called Israel, absolutely none came along and then

00:03:29.080 they took over that land, stole it. And since they've been engaging in a 75 year genocide. Now, not,

00:03:37.960 not a single syllable of that is true, but yet that is the message that is promulgated on every campus.

00:03:45.800 So it wouldn't be surprising then that if I am a product of those universities, if I'm a student

00:03:51.560 that's come out of those universities, and if that's the only message that I hear from my esteemed

00:03:56.680 professors, then that's what I'm going to believe. So that would be one reason why you see

00:04:03.160 the anti-Semitism on campus. That's the anti-Semitism that simply comes from faulty education.

00:04:10.520 Okay. Now, the anti-Semitism that comes from

00:04:16.280 the Middle East, that is inherent to the doctrines of that faith. In other words, people of that faith

00:04:27.240 define their identity in part as a function of their existential hatred of the Jew. So if you have

00:04:36.440 diabetes, it's the Jew who caused it. If your wife cheated on you, it's the Jew who put those thoughts

00:04:43.240 in her head. If it's raining outside, it's the Jews that manipulate the weather. If your business has

00:04:51.000 failed, it's probably some Jew that's in the background that has caused it to fail. Now,

00:04:56.840 that's a very alluring psychological mechanism because we know that in psychology, when people

00:05:03.720 are attributing successes and failure, this is called the fundamental attribution error,

00:05:09.240 people tend to attribute successes internally. I did well on the exam because I'm smart and I studied

00:05:15.560 hard and they attribute failures externally. I did poorly on the exam because Professor Saad is a mean

00:05:23.320 guy and he's unfair. Okay. Now, what a beautiful thing it is that I can attribute all of the failures,

00:05:30.440 whether it be at the individual level or at the society level to one key culprit. It's the diabolical

00:05:37.240 scheming Jew. Now, you don't have to believe me. You can just go and do a content analysis of the

00:05:44.600 doctrines within the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah, which is the biography of Muhammad. And then you can

00:05:50.760 judge for yourself whether the message there is love the Jew, or whether it is rid the world of the

00:05:59.400 Jew. Now, of course, that doesn't mean that every Muslim is a Jew hater. Of course, most people of

00:06:07.080 any faith are nice. There are nice Jews and mean Jews. There are nice Hindus and mean Hindus. There

00:06:12.360 are nice Muslims and mean Muslims. But certainly, what does the religion preach? It's certainly not

00:06:20.360 peaceful tolerance and coexistence with the Jew. The Jew is tolerated in Islamic lands,

00:06:26.600 as long as he has the status of a dimmi. Dimmi in Arabic is not even second-class citizen. It's

00:06:34.040 third-class citizen. We tolerate you, and you have to pay a jizya. Jizya is a tax of protection.

00:06:42.360 And we tolerate you until the day we decide to no longer tolerate you. So, for example,

00:06:47.800 I am Lebanese. My mother tongue is Arabic. So, people can certainly not argue that I don't know

00:06:56.440 how to speak Arabic, and I misunderstood the quote, and I don't get it, and so on. I grew up in the

00:07:02.040 Middle East. We are Lebanese Jews. We were part of the last remaining groups of Jews in Lebanon.

00:07:07.720 And then when the Civil War broke out in the 70s, it was no longer possible to be Jewish in Lebanon,

00:07:12.840 and we had to leave under imminent threat of execution. My parents were kidnapped by Fatah,

00:07:18.360 one of the PLO militia groups, and some really bad things were done to them. I'll give you a few

00:07:24.200 other quick stories, and then I'll cede back the floor to you. When I was five years old,

00:07:29.480 and I talk about this in chapter one of The Parasitic Mind, when I talk about my personal

00:07:33.800 history in Lebanon. When I was five years old, living in Lebanon, Gamal Abdel Nasser passed away. He was

00:07:41.640 the Egyptian president who was a pan-Arabist. He was trying to unify the entire Arab world. He passed

00:07:48.120 away. Now, I lived in Lebanon. It's an Egyptian president that died. Now, imagine my surprise as

00:07:54.040 a five-year-old boy when I'm sitting on the balcony of my house in Lebanon, in Beirut,

00:08:00.040 and there is a huge demonstration of people, because in the Middle East, there's always protests,

00:08:06.120 right? That people are always protesting. And as the people were protesting, I was hearing

00:08:12.520 death to Jews, death to Jews. And my mother said, hide, don't show your face on the balcony.

00:08:19.960 Well, why are they chanting death to Jews when it is the Egyptian president who just died? What do the

00:08:27.400 Jews have to do with that? Two quick other stories. Story number two, I'm about eight years old, and the

00:08:34.840 teacher at my school says to the kids, okay, kids, I want you to stand up, and I want you to each say

00:08:42.200 what you want to be when you grow up. So one person gets up, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a

00:08:47.160 policeman, I want to be a soccer player. And one of the kids, who was a friend of mine, supposedly, with

00:08:53.960 whom I played, gets up and says, when I grow up, I want to be a Jew killer. And everybody starts

00:09:00.680 laughing and clapping. This is before the start of the Civil War. This has nothing to do with the

00:09:06.920 Zionist occupation. I have nothing to do with Israel. I'm Lebanese. I'm Arabic speaking. He didn't say,

00:09:13.080 I want to kill Israelis. He said, I want to be a Jew killer, right? Story number three, when my family

00:09:21.240 left Beirut International Airport, left Lebanon to escape Lebanon, the airplane pilot announced that

00:09:31.800 we had just cleared the airspace of Lebanon, at which point, my mother takes out a pendant

00:09:40.920 with the Star of David or like a high like a Israel, like a Jewish symbol, puts it around my

00:09:47.240 neck and says, Now you can wear this proudly and no longer have to hide your identity. Now I'm going

00:09:55.240 to fast forward to about 10 days ago, when my wife, along with one of our children picked me up at a cafe

00:10:04.760 where I was working on my laptop. She had just picked them up from a soccer match in the east end of the

00:10:10.440 city. And as I walked into the car, my son says to me, Daddy, if you had come to where I just played

00:10:19.240 soccer, and if you were wearing a Star of David, you'd be dead. This is an 11 year old. So 45 years ago,

00:10:28.680 I leave Lebanon, and my mother puts a pendant around my neck as an 11 year old boy saying now you can wear

00:10:36.360 this proudly. 45 years later, my 11 year old son exactly the same age as that I was tells me if

00:10:45.160 you were wearing a Star of David in Montreal, Canada, you'd be dead. How has a political correctness

00:10:53.320 on the part of leaders help this anti Semitic sentiments grow? Yes, it's a big question. So

00:10:59.640 political correctness basically does the following. And so forgive me, I'm going to get a bit

00:11:05.560 professorial here. There are two ethical status systems, there's what's called deontological

00:11:13.640 ethics. Deontological ethics is when you make an absolute statement. So for example, if I say it is

00:11:20.040 never okay to lie, that would be a deontological statement. On the other hand, consequentialist ethics

00:11:27.640 is when you say, it's okay to lie, if I'm trying to spare someone's feelings. Okay, so for example,

00:11:34.520 I always joke that if your spouse asks you, do I look fat in those jeans, then you better quickly

00:11:41.480 put on your consequentialist hat and say, of course not, you look, you've never looked more beautiful,

00:11:46.120 if you want to have a happy long marriage. So for many, many things, it makes perfect sense for us to be

00:11:52.760 consequentialist. And we are consequentialist, and that's fine. But there are some foundational,

00:11:59.960 universal principles that are deontological, by definition, freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry,

00:12:10.280 presumption of innocence in the justice system, those should never have, I believe in freedom of speech,

00:12:16.680 but the second that you say, but then you're turning from a deontological position to a

00:12:23.000 consequentialist position. Okay, now, so now I'm going to link what I just said to your question

00:12:27.880 about political correctness. So what often happens with Western leaders is that they apply a

00:12:34.520 consequentialist ethos to something that should be deontological. So when you are a leader, you should

00:12:42.920 speak the truth, even if it might hurt someone's feelings. So for example, many Western leaders say,

00:12:52.360 don't criticize ever a particular religion, because then that marginalizes people of that religion.

00:13:00.120 But that only applies to that one religion. So you can go completely ape on criticizing Christianity,

00:13:09.160 that makes you super progressive. And that makes you that gives you a professorship at Columbia,

00:13:15.400 and at my alma mater at Cornell. So go ahead and make fun of Mormons, make fun of Christians,

00:13:21.320 make fun of Catholics, that makes you an intellectual, but don't you dare ever criticize Islam.

00:13:28.040 That's Islamophobic. And we don't want to be marginalizing. Look, go ahead and criticize Judaism all

00:13:34.200 you want. I don't care. Because I am strong enough in my identity to recognize that in a free society,

00:13:40.760 people have a right to criticize any idea, any belief, any religion, you can't say,

00:13:46.760 I believe in freedom of speech, except x, y, z. And so I think what happens with Western leaders is

00:13:54.920 in their desire to always appear infinitely compassionate and empath, you know, and empathetic and

00:14:02.520 nurturing, they end up succumbing to political correctness. But political correctness is akin to

00:14:09.480 so now I'm going to give an example from my book in the parasitic mind. So there is a wasp called the

00:14:16.520 spider wasp, that spider wasp, it takes a spider that's much, much bigger than it. And it stings it,

00:14:26.120 rendering the spider completely zombified. It's still alive, but it can no longer move. And it

00:14:35.800 carries it to its burrow. It lays its eggs on it. And then when the offsprings hatch, the offspring will

00:14:44.440 eat the spider in vivo while it's still alive. So I argue that political correctness is akin to the spider's

00:14:54.280 wasp sting. Political correctness, correctness stings me. And I'm slowly led to the abyss of

00:15:05.560 infinite lunacy. Quietly, shh, don't open your mouth. And we can't have that in a free society.

00:15:12.440 In a free society, yes, of course, we should always try to be nice to each other. Yes, of course,

00:15:18.440 the default value is for every individual to be kind to other individuals. But that doesn't mean

00:15:25.880 that we murder and rape truth in the service of protecting the feelings of someone. You always

00:15:32.760 speak the truth. So that's why, for example, I say, yes, I believe that transgender people

00:15:39.000 should live dignified lives free of bigotry. That doesn't mean that in the service of that goal,

00:15:45.480 I need to agree with you that men too can menstruate and that men too can bear children.

00:15:51.960 I'm not going to murder truth in the service of a noble justice goal. I can chew gum and walk at the

00:16:00.760 same time. I could be supportive of social goals while always being truthful, while never violating a

00:16:09.160 millimeter of the truth. And I think unfortunately, Western leaders have succumbed to full consequentialism,

00:16:16.760 whereby they're willing to tell any lie, as long as the consequences are that some group is never

00:16:23.640 having hurt feelings. What you tweeted recently connects absolutely to what we were discussing.

00:16:30.600 You said you're a very optimistic person. I'm a fighter for Western values and liberties.

00:16:34.440 I am a dogged defender of science, reason and common sense. I must say, though, that I'm unsure that the

00:16:40.840 West can recover from its multi-front civilizational suicide. And you have said that our kids will have

00:16:49.000 to pay for the progressive arrogance. Exactly. So, and that took, I mean, millions of people by surprise.

00:17:01.240 You know, my tweet, I don't know how many has been viewed now millions and millions of times all over

00:17:05.240 the world is because I think people are usually used to me being what many people call me the happy

00:17:13.000 warrior and hence why I wrote the happiness book, which is even when I'm dealing with very complex,

00:17:18.840 difficult subjects, I always seem to be, you know, playful and I can joke around and I can

00:17:25.800 be fun and irreverent. Whereas here I was obviously very dire in my prognosis. And the reason for that

00:17:34.120 is because I, as I say in the full tweet, and I highly recommend that people go and read it,

00:17:41.640 it'll take them one minute to read it. It's my pin tweet. It's because, you know, if I draw an analogy,

00:17:47.640 if you go see your physician and he says, Hey, Mr. Dusk, God forbid you'll have stage four cancer.

00:17:55.480 And here's what we need to do. Imagine if your answer is, well, there is no such thing as cancer.

00:18:01.400 And if there is cancer, it's probably the fault of the Jews. And if they probably have the cure for

00:18:08.280 it, but they're holding it because the Jews are diabolical. And here's what I'm going to do

00:18:12.600 to fight the cancer, which I don't really have. I'm going to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day.

00:18:19.000 I'm going to inhale a bag of asbestos, and I'm going to suntan and an artificial suntan for the

00:18:26.360 next eight hours a day. So, as you know, the adage, the first step to solving a problem is to recognize

00:18:35.240 that you have a problem, right? That's what you have for alcoholics. Well, the West is not doing that,

00:18:40.200 right? The West is saying, I don't want to, excuse me. It is in a denial mode.

00:18:46.440 Exactly. It's in a complete denial mode. And in the, in the pursuit of that denial,

00:18:51.880 then you end up doubling down on all of the things that gave you stage four cancer, right? So,

00:18:59.480 right. So I don't believe that smoking causes cancer, even though you told me I have lung cancer.

00:19:05.160 As a matter of fact, I'm going to smoke six packs a day to show you that, that it's,

00:19:10.600 there is no such thing as cancer and I don't have cancer. And so that's why I was very, uh,

00:19:17.240 solemn and pessimistic in that tweet, because I saw look on October 7th, 1400 plus Israeli children,

00:19:27.960 young people, Holocaust survivors were butchered in the most horrific ways. Now, three things can

00:19:35.960 happen as a result of such a reality. If you pursue the ontological principles of shared humanity,

00:19:44.440 you would be, so there are three things that could happen globally, right? And before I explain that,

00:19:50.040 let me draw an analogy. If you are on a diet every single day, as a result of the set of decisions

00:19:57.160 you make that day, three things can happen to your weight. There is no fourth thing. It's only three

00:20:01.400 things. Either your weight at the end of that day goes up, either your weight stays exactly the same,

00:20:07.720 or your weight goes down. There is no other possibility, correct? Now let's apply that to October 7th,

00:20:15.240 1400 Jews were slaughtered in this most incredibly vicious barbaric way. So three things can happen

00:20:23.320 from the global community. There could be increased Jew hatred. There could be no change in Jew hatred,

00:20:31.320 or there could be decreased Jew hatred. Well, you would think if 1400 Jews who were at a music festival

00:20:38.520 were dancing around were slaughtered, then in a sane world, if only for the next few days,

00:20:46.520 there would be decreased Jew hatred. But what has happened in the past three weeks? There has been

00:20:52.840 massive demonstrations around the world of increased Jew hatred as a result of 1400 Jews being slaughtered.

00:21:02.440 The greatest number of Jews killed in one day, if I understood correctly the stats,

00:21:07.880 since the Holocaust. So that's why I wrote that tweet, because it's the perfect cocktail of

00:21:16.120 unbelievably dangerous, parasitic ideas, and our unwillingness to even start step one of addressing

00:21:25.320 those parasitic ideas. As a matter of fact, we're doubling down on each of those dreadful ideas.

00:21:31.320 And so I frankly don't have a good feeling for your grandchildren and mine, unfortunately.

00:21:36.600 Coming back to one of the core questions, why does free Palestinians, you know, see such overall

00:21:44.440 support? But there's almost, you know, nil when it comes to Jews' right to coexist peacefully.

00:21:53.080 Because from the perspective of most Jew haters, a good Jew is one of two Jews. Either he sits,

00:22:03.800 there's an expression in French, which I'll say it in French, and then I'll translate,

00:22:10.200 which means be pretty, but stay quiet, right? So earlier, I mentioned what the Demi status is

00:22:18.520 in Islamic lands. Anybody who is not Muslim, who is a Kuffar, the people of the book,

00:22:24.520 ahl al-katab, meaning Christians, meaning Jews, could be tolerated under, now, typically they're

00:22:33.800 killed or they're forced to convert. But there is a third option, we could tolerate you as long as you

00:22:40.040 live as a Demi, second, third class citizen, right? Well, for most Jew haters around the world,

00:22:47.080 and as I explained earlier, they come of many forms. There are Jew haters on the progressive left,

00:22:52.200 there is Jew haters on the ultra-right, they come in many forms, but they're all united in their Jew

00:22:57.160 hatred. Well, for those folks, Jews should always be quiet. We don't want Jews to be strong, right? So,

00:23:07.560 when you now have a confident Israeli nation that has personal agency that could defend itself,

00:23:17.080 we can't tolerate that. That's not a good thing. Of course, we had Jews living in Arab lands,

00:23:23.080 but they were in the minority. They kept quiet. We could at any moment decide that we were not going

00:23:29.720 to tolerate them. By the way, Mr. Das, what's happened to Libyan Jews? Where are the Libyan Jews

00:23:35.640 Jews today? Where are the Algerian Jews? Where are the Yemeni Jews? Where are the Iraqi Jews? Where are

00:23:42.840 the Egyptian Jews? Where are the Lebanese Jews? They all have seemed to have magically disappeared.

00:23:49.320 The idea being that, of course, there are periods where Jews are tolerated,

00:23:54.360 but they're tolerated until they're not tolerated, right? So, it's kind of the analogy is you're walking

00:24:00.360 around thinking you're perfectly healthy until you drop dead of a heart attack. Until the moment you

00:24:06.040 drop dead of a heart attack, you were walking thinking that life is good, and then boom, you're

00:24:10.120 gone. So, it's the same thing with the Dimmis in Islamic lands. You're tolerated until, inshallah,

00:24:18.440 time comes and we no longer tolerate you. What's happened to all the Christian minorities in the Middle East?

00:24:24.680 By the way, my homeland of Lebanon used to be the only Christian majority country in Lebanon. Oops!

00:24:32.440 What happened now? And so, the idea is that, sure, we can tolerate Jews, but not when they are in a

00:24:42.040 position of power. And so, the existence of Israel is an existential threat to that theological position,

00:24:52.120 right? There's another position that your viewers should know. In Islam, the world is divided into

00:25:01.720 two worlds, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harab, the house of Islam and the house of war. Any land that has ever

00:25:12.840 been occupied by Islam can never revert to anybody else. That's why, for example, Andalusia,

00:25:21.560 which is in current Spain, at one point was conquered by Islam. Well, you often hear Islamists say,

00:25:31.160 inshallah, we will get back on Dar al-Islam because this is our land. Once it becomes in Dar al-Islam,

00:25:38.680 it can't go back to. And everything else is Dar al-Harab, the house of war. We need to conquer it.

00:25:45.160 So, but of course, most of the people who walk around at Columbia and Cornell and go free,

00:25:50.680 free Palestine don't know all these things. They simply view the world as Palestinians are the

00:25:56.920 victims, are the oppressed, the Jews are the mean oppressors, and it ends there as a member of the

00:26:02.840 LGBT community. Okay, great. More power to you. Now, if that's your foundational identity,

00:26:10.360 which society should you be supporting more? Tel Aviv, which is one of the most queer friendly

00:26:18.040 societies, or Gaza, where you will be thrown off a building within three seconds of you entering

00:26:24.280 Gaza? But no, queers for Palestine. So this is what I also, by the way, there was a woman recently,

00:26:29.720 you may have seen her, her name is Anna Epstein, Jewish Anna Epstein. She was going around Boston

00:26:36.920 University, pulling down the posters of kidnapped Jewish babies. She's Jewish. How long would she

00:26:46.440 survive? What would have happened to her if she was in southern Israel at that music festival?

00:26:52.280 She would be raped, then decapitated. But she was for Palestine. So this is what I call,

00:26:59.160 so there is one example of a parasitic situation. There is a wood cricket. The cricket,

00:27:06.680 despises water. It never wants to go on water. But when the wood cricket is parasitized by a hair

00:27:15.000 worm, then the cricket suicidally jumps in the water to its death, it drowns. But it needs to do that

00:27:24.040 from the hair worms perspective. Because in order for the hair worm, the parasite to complete its

00:27:30.680 reproductive cycle, the cricket has to jump in water. So it alters its brain circuitry so that

00:27:38.920 the cricket is willing to happily commit suicide into the water. There is your chickens for Kentucky

00:27:45.320 fried chicken. There is your Jews for Palestine. There is your queers for Palestine. They say they are

00:27:52.520 against colonialism. They're against imperialism. They're against military conquest. Okay, fair enough.

00:28:01.400 Now, we can argue and debate whether the existence of Israel for the past 75 years constitutes a military

00:28:10.360 colonization. But okay, let's suppose we can see that that's true, just for the argument's sake.

00:28:16.120 So then I wrote and I said, Hey, everybody, I'm wondering, does anybody know how the 57 countries

00:28:25.240 that constitute the organization of Islamic cooperation? How did Islam become the majority

00:28:33.800 in all of those societies? Was it by passing around candy and sweets, and by engaging in the

00:28:40.680 reason debate and the Socratic method? Because if you are against violent military conquests,

00:28:49.160 and if you are against colonialism and imperialism, okay, great. But then you have to be consistent.

00:28:57.000 And so then I said, Hey, are there any historical evidence, let's say, in India, where there is a

00:29:06.360 phenomenal amount of people that died under Islamic invasion. And most people say, Well, I never heard

00:29:13.640 of that. Don't know what you're talking about. Don't know never, never, ever heard of that. Most

00:29:18.600 people are cognitively lazy, are intellectually lazy. So whatever I learned in my Near East studies course

00:29:26.520 at Columbia is what I'm going to repeat when I go to the free free Palestine demonstration.

00:29:31.960 And what I learned in that course, is that the Jews are mean apartheid Nazi like country,

00:29:40.440 engaging in a daily genocide, by the way, maybe I need to refresh my mathematics, even though I have

00:29:47.240 many degrees in mathematics, because I didn't know that in a genocide, a population can increase fivefold,

00:29:56.280 because from about 1960 to currently, there is about a five fold increase in the Palestinian population

00:30:04.120 from roughly 1 million to 5 million. So those pesky Jews are very good in science and philosophy and

00:30:13.480 and art and music. But clearly, they really suck at committing genocide, because it's the only

00:30:21.000 instance in history where a population that's being supposedly exterminated has increased fivefold.

00:30:28.920 So maybe somebody could explain that to me, because I must have missed that class in at Columbia University.

00:30:35.560 Is there a resolution of this conflict? The Palestinian Israel conflict has nothing to do with land.

00:30:44.280 Nothing, zero, not one inch to do with land. It's an existential battle. Does one group

00:30:54.680 accept the fact that there is going to be a Jewish presence in the Middle East, where there is a Jewish

00:31:03.320 nation that exists with full autonomy, with a Jewish majority presence? Is one group going to get rid

00:31:14.680 it's theological doctrines that you're taught from day zero of your birth, that the Jew is the usurper.

00:31:23.240 The Jew is the is the diabolical. Now, of course, again, that doesn't mean that all people of that faith

00:31:29.560 believe that. And of course, most people ignore all that stuff. But I can send you all the quotes.

00:31:37.160 You can just go Google them yourself. You can do a search from a million imams and every single mosque

00:31:43.400 you could think of where part of the prayers is about the eradication of the Jew. So if that is removed,

00:31:52.680 if there is a way where there could be a reformation, I'm not very optimistic,

00:31:57.640 where all of those passages become null and void, where we no longer demonize the Jew as the source of

00:32:06.760 all of our problems, then I think down the line there could be peace. And I can tell you,

00:32:12.840 the amount of human potential in the Middle East is infinite. We have such huge cultural traditions.

00:32:20.920 I'm speaking about everybody, the Christian Arab, the Muslim Arab, the Jews from Arabic countries.

00:32:30.440 We all share a deep love of hospitality, of food, of culture. We have great linguistic heritage,

00:32:38.840 historical heritage. If we could resolve this tribal mindset of us versus them, this existential mindset

00:32:47.880 of Jew hatred, we would unlock the richness of the Middle East that would make the richness of

00:32:55.240 oil be nothing compared to the cultural richness. So the problem between Israel and Palestine

00:33:00.920 ultimately is not one of land. It's one where you have to accept the fact that it is fair that there are

00:33:10.360 nearly two billion Muslims that live on earth. There's 15 million Jews that live. They're outnumbered 125 to

00:33:17.960 one. 99.6% of the land surrounding Israel is Arab Muslim land. 0.4% of the land is Israel. That seems

00:33:29.720 like a pretty fair deal. Once people accept that, then we could move on and live in universal brotherhood.

00:33:37.560 After a remark of your tweet where you said that you will be interviewed by India today. So the chain of

00:33:44.840 comments that I was seeing is someone who mentions, and here I quote that person, nobody hates Jews.

00:33:53.080 That is just a spin. People hate injustice, manipulation, and the chaos that has occurred with

00:33:59.480 Zionism. Hating Zionism isn't hating Jews. If you don't hit the real issue, you are part of the problem.

00:34:08.120 You're, I mean, I want your comments on that. Yes. Well, that's why I wrote the tweet that's pinned

00:34:15.400 on my Twitter feed, because that tweet that you just read is exactly the problem, which is there is no

00:34:25.720 intellectual decency. So let me address it very directly. There is 1400 years of documented Jew

00:34:33.800 hatred that precedes the existence of quote Zionism. How do you explain that? The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem

00:34:42.680 got together with Hitler. Hitler seemed to hate the Jews and had nothing to do with Zionism,

00:34:49.160 because by definition, if we know history, Hitler existed before Israel as a country existed, right? And

00:34:58.520 yet he wanted to get rid of the Jewish parasites that are a problem in Germany. Yes. So the idea that

00:35:06.600 nobody hates the Jews might be the greatest lie ever told, because I mean, history is laden with a

00:35:14.840 million examples of Jewish exterminations. All those are due to Zionism. So when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem

00:35:24.920 got together with Hitler before the existence of Israel, and he said, don't worry, once we're done

00:35:34.360 with the Jews in Europe, we will exterminate the Jews, inshallah, in Palestine. What did that have to

00:35:42.040 do with Zionism? Right? So it is so laughably incorrect. Now, some people may not know this,

00:35:49.720 they could be simply ignorant. But the reality is, most people who say, no, no, no, I just hate

00:35:56.360 Zionists. I love the Jews. They're typically Jew haters. Now, that doesn't mean, by the way, that

00:36:02.680 people can't appropriately criticize specific Israeli policies. If you criticize some policy of Israel,

00:36:12.280 that doesn't make you a Jew hater. That's perfectly up. As a matter of fact, as you know,

00:36:17.880 there is a huge segment of Israeli population, that they will themselves criticize the Israeli

00:36:25.240 government, that they will themselves criticize Netanyahu. Nobody's even saying, I'm the first guy

00:36:31.480 to say, criticize Judaism as much as you want. That's perfectly fine. You have been re-treating this

00:36:38.360 over and over again, I know this stand of yours, that policies are welcome, you can criticize, but

00:36:44.600 you know, the hatred part is very, very different. Exactly. Don't walk down and say gas the Jews.

00:36:51.640 What is, you're not saying, I'm against Zionism, because x, y, z, you're saying gas the Jews. How could

00:37:01.080 that not be hatred? What would be hatred then? If chanting gas the Jews is not hatred, give me an

00:37:08.680 example of what hatred is, right? So, that's nonsense. It's garbage. No one should take such

00:37:17.000 stupidity seriously. Why did I escape Lebanon? Why did I put on running shoes and run really fast

00:37:23.880 so that my head would not be detached from the rest of my body? I had nothing to do with Zionism.

00:37:29.880 I was an 11-year-old child. Imagine this, Mr. Das. Imagine my wife sitting with me at a cafe. This

00:37:35.800 happened about two weeks ago, when this, the crazy anti-Semitic stuff. Outside my university,

00:37:42.120 there were huge chants of very ugly anti-Semitic stuff. How do you think I feel trying to go through

00:37:48.120 my office when there is this kind of chanting going on? So, she said to me, God, where are we going to go

00:37:55.000 next? Where are we going to run to next? So, imagine in the 21st century that the wife of a

00:38:03.240 professor who preaches freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, love of science, love of reason,

00:38:10.280 we're having a conversation. Where are we going to run to next? Well, if nothing else,

00:38:14.920 at least we could run to Israel. Maybe there we will be safe. But as we found out on October 7th,

00:38:20.760 even there, you may not be safe if you're having fun at a music festival.

00:38:25.240 So, the reason why, look, there's many forms of hatred in the world. So, I'm hardly saying

00:38:31.800 that Jew hatred and anti-Jew bigotry is the only form of hatred, but it's a unique form of hatred

00:38:38.520 because it is the longest standing hatred and it is the most stained form of hatred because it's

00:38:47.080 diabolical. So, for example, I will, if I showed you the kind of hate that I've received over the

00:38:53.880 past three weeks, and you never see me posting stuff where I say, you know, I'm attacking individual

00:39:00.280 Muslims or that. I always try to keep it professorial. I always try to criticize ideas, right? But if I

00:39:07.000 showed you the kind of thing, I am a parasite, I am a dog, I am a lying Jew, I'm a criminal, I'm a murderer,

00:39:16.440 I'm a supporter of genocide of children. They're saying this to me, the guy whose house in Beirut

00:39:23.400 was stolen by Palestinians. And yet, I don't hold any hatred towards Palestinians. The way I decided

00:39:30.360 to take revenge is to live my life with dignity and honor. I don't hate Palestinians, right? I judge

00:39:37.800 people by the totality of their merits and their flaws. I don't present myself to the world as

00:39:45.640 Gad, part of the Jewish people. I present myself as Gad Saad.

00:39:49.880 I would love to, you know, hear about your happiness book.

00:39:54.360 I wrote the happiness book because I, if you were to ask me three years ago, if I'm going to write a

00:39:58.760 happiness book, I would have never told you so. But I kept receiving a million emails from people saying,

00:40:04.120 what's your secret to always being fun and playful? And so I thought, okay, well, why don't I try to give

00:40:10.040 those secrets? And so I decided to write a book, which was made up of three parts. My personal

00:40:16.680 experiences, what makes me happy? Why, you know, what are the decisions that I've made in my life

00:40:22.520 that have led to me being happy coupled with ancient wisdoms? What have ancient philosophers

00:40:29.080 told us about how to live the good life and backed up by contemporary science, neuroscience,

00:40:35.400 positive psychology, happiness studies. And so I put those together and I offer hopefully

00:40:41.160 a prescription to how to lead the good life. Maybe I could give you a, since we only have about four

00:40:46.840 minutes, a few of the secrets I argue in the book early on in the book, that there are two decisions

00:40:52.680 that you can make that either will grant you great happiness or great misery, choosing the right

00:40:57.560 spouse and choosing the right profession, profession, choosing the right spouse. There are two opposing

00:41:04.520 maxims and evolutionary psychology, either the birds of a feather flock together or the opposites attract.

00:41:11.400 Well, the research shows that it's overwhelmingly birds of a feather flock together. If you want to

00:41:15.800 have a successful marriage, marry someone who shares your fundamental values, your fundamental belief

00:41:21.960 systems, that's going to much more increase your chances of being happy. In terms of your job that's

00:41:28.120 going to give you maximal happiness, I argue that there are two elements to that. If you have a job that

00:41:35.320 allows you to pursue your creative impulse, you could be a chef, you could be an architect, you could be

00:41:40.280 an author, you could be a stand-up comedian. All of these professions are very different,

00:41:44.680 but they allow me to create something new. And that provides me great purpose and meaning. And the

00:41:51.000 other thing I would say related to occupational happiness is any job that gives me temporal freedom,

00:41:56.760 that allows me to float around from one thing to another, where I am not bound. If I am a bus driver,

00:42:03.560 I know that my fate is sealed from nine o'clock to five o'clock. There is no ability to move around. I also

00:42:10.920 talk about live your life so that you don't have regrets later in life. Live your life as though

00:42:17.080 life is a playground. So even when I'm pursuing my science, it's a big form of play. You're trying to

00:42:23.160 find which variables correlate or cause other variables. Science is nothing but a big puzzle

00:42:28.760 making exercise, right? Puzzle solving exercise. And so I go through all of these different prescriptions of

00:42:35.320 how to live a good life. I hope that people will read it. Certainly given all of the very serious

00:42:41.000 things that we've talked about on this show, we all need some happiness in our lives. Thanks a lot for

00:42:47.000 your time. It has been an amazing interaction interacting with you. Take care and hope we get you

00:42:55.000 in our studio when you are visiting India. I hope so too. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.

00:43:01.960 Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Cheers. Take care.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - November 07, 2023

Israel-Hamas War And Growing Anti-Semitism On US Campuses - India Today (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_615)

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