This Past Weekend with Theo Von - E520 Rabbi David Wolpe

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00:01:08.320 Today's episodes are regarding the conflict in Israel and Palestine.

00:01:12.360 I've heard a lot about this issue, and I wanted to deepen my own understanding.

00:01:17.160 I recognize that this is a sensitive topic, but the only way to learn is to seek knowledge.

00:01:24.460 I decided to have guests from both sides of the aisle, if you will, to help me learn by sharing their views.

00:01:33.280 I did it in separate episodes because I'm not a debate moderator.

00:01:38.180 I chose guests who I thought would share their views sincerely, and I think they both did.

00:01:43.440 I'm very thankful to have the opportunity to learn, something that they don't even have in some countries.

00:01:49.500 Today's guest has been called one of the most influential rabbis in America.

00:01:54.060 Until recently, he led the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and has also taught at UCLA, Harvard Divinity School, and more.

00:02:01.840 He's written nine books, led numerous missions to Israel, and he's seen a lot in his time.

00:02:08.520 I'm really grateful for his time today.

00:02:12.260 Today's guest is Rabbi David Wolpe.

00:02:31.840 Yeah, thank you so much for your time.

00:02:45.620 Sure, happy to do it.

00:02:46.580 Yeah, really appreciate it.

00:02:47.600 Rabbi David Wolpe.

00:02:49.980 Yeah, there's no way you would know by looking at it.

00:02:52.300 No.

00:02:52.760 No, not at all.

00:02:53.740 I get Wolpe all the time.

00:02:54.860 Yeah, Wolpe, the Wolpe of Wall Street.

00:02:58.260 Was that ever?

00:02:59.960 It would be a different type of Wall Street.

00:03:01.800 Yeah, a different kind.

00:03:02.940 You just got back from Israel.

00:03:04.840 Yesterday.

00:03:05.640 Wow, welcome back.

00:03:06.840 Thank you.

00:03:07.620 I've never gotten to go.

00:03:08.900 A lot of my friends have gotten to go on birthright and that.

00:03:12.880 I mean, it's really an amazing thing to do.

00:03:15.420 I recommend it.

00:03:16.740 Yeah, I always hear great things.

00:03:18.100 I would like to get to go.

00:03:19.240 What was it like over there?

00:03:21.760 What's the vibe?

00:03:23.540 It's resilient but depressed.

00:03:26.680 I met with these students at the Technion, which is like the science technique.

00:03:31.520 It's like MIT of Israel.

00:03:32.660 The Technion?

00:03:34.040 And they all serve.

00:03:36.780 They miss 100 days of school because they all – literally when you're in Israel, 1.00

00:03:41.620 it's an hour's drive and you're at war.

00:03:44.120 Wow.

00:03:44.500 And then you drive home for the weekend and then you go back.

00:03:48.040 It's crazy.

00:03:49.500 It's not like here where you have like Canada, Mexico, and two oceans.

00:03:53.380 Right. 0.94

00:03:53.700 There, right next door are the people who want to kill you.

00:03:56.820 Just always in the heat.

00:03:58.340 It feels so – does it feel like even – like how close were you to Gaza?

00:04:03.360 You could see it from where you are.

00:04:05.340 Oh, wow.

00:04:05.440 I mean, it's very easy.

00:04:06.440 It's not hard.

00:04:07.260 You can see the West Bank.

00:04:08.320 It's just a bit – I mean, Israel is really tiny.

00:04:11.380 It's like smaller than New Jersey.

00:04:14.020 Oh, wow.

00:04:14.940 It's – yeah.

00:04:15.660 Is there a general like sense of like we are Israel going on? 0.80

00:04:20.080 Is there people like that are on the fence about what's going on over there?

00:04:24.380 Like what's kind of the –

00:04:25.920 The general sense is, of course, we have to defend ourselves.

00:04:31.000 The government is very unpopular there right now.

00:04:33.960 Like really unpopular.

00:04:35.200 Like the unpopularity of governments here doesn't compare to how unpopular that government is right now.

00:04:40.480 Yeah.

00:04:41.140 Netanyahu's government?

00:04:41.800 They feel like he's badly mishandled this.

00:04:46.020 So – but the sense that there has to be some – that Hamas has to be eliminated to the extent that you can eliminate it, I think almost everybody in Israel agrees with that.

00:04:55.600 Wow.

00:04:55.960 So –

00:04:56.640 How did he become so unfavorable do you feel like?

00:05:00.220 I think honestly – I mean this is too easy but he stayed too long.

00:05:04.120 It's like at a certain point you have to say I've done what I could.

00:05:09.240 I'm getting complacent and not paying attention and he's out of touch and he just – I mean Biden visited some of the families whose kids were taken hostages before Netanyahu did.

00:05:23.320 Wow.

00:05:23.480 Which is insane.

00:05:25.320 Yeah.

00:05:25.600 So not great.

00:05:27.180 He gives me the GB sometimes, you know?

00:05:29.680 I don't know why exactly.

00:05:31.480 They need someone new.

00:05:32.380 Oh, wow.

00:05:35.020 Yeah.

00:05:35.440 66% of Israelis want Netanyahu to leave politics.

00:05:39.600 Yeah.

00:05:40.240 And 85% support an investigation into what happened on October 7th and he was prime minister.

00:05:45.800 Do they believe – I mean you hear rumors.

00:05:48.120 You hear people say that they let their guard down on purpose.

00:05:51.520 Do you believe that that would ever have happened?

00:05:52.940 No.

00:05:52.960 I don't believe that.

00:05:53.920 Yeah.

00:05:54.020 I really don't because the enormity of the destruction is far too great and no government would ever –

00:06:02.360 let me put it the other way.

00:06:03.540 Any government would know that if you do that, like you will go down in history as having failed your people.

00:06:11.920 Yeah.

00:06:12.080 So I can't imagine they did.

00:06:13.700 Yeah.

00:06:13.880 I think it was a monument – one of the things that just is true in general is I try never to like attribute to maliciousness things that can be attributed to incompetence.

00:06:24.860 Incompetence because it's almost always incompetence.

00:06:27.340 People think, oh, well, that's so suspicious that like – why did they leave the shooter on the roof for Trump?

00:06:35.840 And I think because it's so easy to get stuff wrong.

00:06:38.920 Yeah.

00:06:39.080 It's so easy.

00:06:40.440 There are like a thousand ways to get stuff wrong and only one way to get it right and generally – it's not always true, but generally it's incompetence.

00:06:48.860 Yeah.

00:06:49.280 So –

00:06:49.620 That's a good point.

00:06:50.360 It's like – and we've become in such a place like with media where people I think don't trust media or are uncertain and there's so many – there's so much media now.

00:06:58.700 Right.

00:06:58.860 Like there's so many – there's AI versions of things.

00:07:01.420 There's animations.

00:07:02.420 It's like you don't even know if the voice you're listening to is really of the person that you're listening to.

00:07:08.080 No.

00:07:08.360 So it's almost impossible to – so I think that just creates even more option for fantasy.

00:07:16.680 Distrust is going to grow.

00:07:18.040 There's no way it can't grow.

00:07:19.400 I mean it's – yeah.

00:07:20.520 It's scary what AI is doing and will do to people's perceptions of the world for all of us.

00:07:27.160 Oh, yeah.

00:07:28.100 Yeah, and it's hard not to – because there's so much stuff you do that you're used to believing on your phone and on your –

00:07:35.520 Yeah, and it's hard not to believe your eyes.

00:07:37.200 Yeah, right.

00:07:37.700 It's like they're my eyes.

00:07:38.920 Of course I believe them.

00:07:39.760 Yeah, these are them.

00:07:41.180 Yeah, anyway.

00:07:42.160 Rabbi Wolpe, you were a professor at Harvard, right?

00:07:45.220 You've had a storied history and I could go into a lot of stats and I'll put those in the beginning of this episode so people know.

00:07:52.480 You were working at Harvard?

00:07:55.300 Yeah, I was a visiting scholar at the Divinity School.

00:07:58.320 Okay.

00:07:58.900 Right.

00:07:59.400 And you left after the October 7th?

00:08:01.960 I didn't leave Harvard.

00:08:03.260 I left.

00:08:03.860 What happened was – so when I got there, I was a visiting scholar at the Divinity School.

00:08:10.560 After October 7th, the president asked me would I be a member of the Anti-Semitism Commission.

00:08:15.280 She was really shaken up.

00:08:16.680 This is Claudine Gay.

00:08:18.300 Would I help her understand what happened?

00:08:20.800 Would I give her some books?

00:08:21.880 Would I be part of the Anti-Semitism Committee?

00:08:23.780 I said, of course.

00:08:25.000 So I became part of the Anti-Semitism Committee and to make a long story short, it was clear to me that they weren't doing anything.

00:08:32.560 That Harvard wasn't.

00:08:33.160 Harvard wasn't doing it and didn't really intend to do anything and I think that the committee was kind of a cover for it.

00:08:38.920 And so I resigned.

00:08:41.620 I was going to still teach my class next semester and I still did.

00:08:45.180 By the way, the kids were great.

00:08:47.060 They were great.

00:08:47.840 And most of the students at Harvard, like students everywhere, just want to get a job, want to finish their degree.

00:08:54.960 But not all.

00:08:55.460 But when I resigned, it became a giant like public thing, which I did not expect because I think people were so fed up with the idiocies and the radicalism and the just thoughtlessness of the demonstrations and also of some of the faculty.

00:09:19.440 And so we're still – as you know, we're still fighting this.

00:09:22.140 I mean, there are lawsuits now and testimony and –

00:09:25.640 I don't even know that.

00:09:26.540 Oh, yeah.

00:09:27.040 It's an ongoing thing.

00:09:29.200 So – and all of the universities are trying to recover.

00:09:32.720 I've never seen any institution ever lose as much credibility overnight as – I mean, Harvard was Harvard.

00:09:42.600 It's like I watched a season of this show, Suits.

00:09:46.340 I don't know if you've ever seen it.

00:09:47.460 Yeah, I've seen it.

00:09:48.220 My friend used to be in it.

00:09:49.380 She had a list too, actually.

00:09:50.600 Yeah, but that doesn't matter.

00:09:51.440 And it's all about – we only hire from Harvard.

00:09:54.900 Yeah.

00:09:55.220 Only hire from Harvard.

00:09:56.240 And it's so funny because I'm watching this and I'm thinking, wait, you have no idea.

00:09:59.720 You would never say that now because their stock has plummeted.

00:10:06.000 Like –

00:10:06.840 Do you mean just amongst like Jewish families who would send their children there or do you just mean overall?

00:10:11.960 Overall.

00:10:12.500 Overall.

00:10:12.880 I mean there are law firms, major law firms, some of them not Jewish law firms who said we're not hiring from Harvard because we don't want kids who – the part of the issue is that they were not solely anti-Israel, anti-Jewish.

00:10:30.620 They were anti-American, anti-democratic, anti-Western.

00:10:34.760 And so they don't want to hire from – I mean it's all part of the same complex.

00:10:40.160 Nobody's like, I really love America.

00:10:42.400 I love freedom.

00:10:43.160 I love capitalism. 0.99

00:10:43.980 I just hate the Jews. 1.00

00:10:45.080 Yeah. 0.99

00:10:45.360 That's really rare, certainly not on the left.

00:10:48.300 Maybe it happens on the right, not on the left.

00:10:50.560 That left anti-Semitism is America's bad, Israel's bad, colonialism is bad, all the culture they've created is bad. 0.99

00:10:59.900 Everything's bad.

00:11:00.520 Where are the Native Americans? 0.94

00:11:01.780 Everything's bad.

00:11:01.960 Exactly.

00:11:02.460 Burned the Israeli flag and the American flag.

00:11:05.100 They were cheering the Houthis. 0.71

00:11:06.660 The Houthis have on their flag – this is the flag of the Houthis.

00:11:10.340 I am not misquoting it.

00:11:11.420 You could see it online. 1.00

00:11:12.300 It says, death to America, death to Israel, death to the Jews, God is great. 1.00

00:11:19.200 Dear God. 0.99

00:11:20.260 So –

00:11:20.940 Wow, and they put it in Christmas colors too.

00:11:22.660 That's a reach.

00:11:23.400 Oh, there you go.

00:11:24.420 That's a reach.

00:11:24.800 There's that beautiful flag.

00:11:26.720 Oh my gosh.

00:11:27.240 And that – the Houthis are – 0.95

00:11:29.120 The Houthis are from Yemen and they were blocking all the shipping in the straits.

00:11:34.280 Yeah. 0.94

00:11:34.840 And the – and they were cheering them on Harvard's campus and you think to yourself, what are you, crazy?

00:11:41.320 So you're saying on the campus it became – it didn't become like a pro-Israel or pro-anti-Israel or pro-Palestine or anti-Israel.

00:11:50.240 It became all this other stuff?

00:11:51.400 It was much bigger.

00:11:51.840 Wow.

00:11:52.060 Much bigger than that.

00:11:53.020 Yes.

00:11:53.600 So as a result – and the fact that Harvard didn't – other places did take almost immediate action.

00:12:01.180 And guess what?

00:12:02.420 If you tell students you're not going to be able to graduate if you don't stop protesting, they stopped protesting amazingly enough.

00:12:09.100 But Harvard didn't do that and Columbia didn't do that and Penn didn't do that.

00:12:12.940 And then also there were outside agitators too.

00:12:16.880 It wasn't just students.

00:12:18.100 Yeah.

00:12:18.140 A lot of the people who came onto campus were from the community who saw an opportunity to –

00:12:24.020 Yeah.

00:12:24.240 Some people were looking for something to do even.

00:12:26.320 I remember somebody sent me – it was an Evite to protest.

00:12:30.200 I was like – this is – they're doing Evites to it.

00:12:33.540 Did you feel – sorry, go ahead.

00:12:35.160 I was just going to say, I said to somebody, the secret of all this is that they are having the time of their lives.

00:12:40.740 Yeah.

00:12:41.120 They like – they were ordering all sorts of – what's a nice way for a rabbi to say this? 0.90

00:12:46.200 Sexual paraphernalia to be brought into the camps at all the different colleges.

00:12:51.420 Sure.

00:12:52.560 The condoms, other stuff.

00:12:54.340 Because they were like – they were basically camping out for – and they're college students.

00:12:58.240 Yeah.

00:12:58.400 They think it's a rave almost to some.

00:12:59.800 Yeah.

00:12:59.880 It is kind of a rave.

00:13:00.980 I know.

00:13:01.500 So anyway.

00:13:02.220 Watch next year.

00:13:03.280 There are new – there's like protest raves.

00:13:07.060 Yeah.

00:13:07.500 It could easily happen.

00:13:09.520 Did you feel like the students had a right to get out there and voice their thoughts?

00:13:13.700 Yeah.

00:13:14.120 I didn't have it.

00:13:15.420 I don't know anyone who was reasonable, had a problem with the students protesting.

00:13:19.160 I disagreed with a lot of what they said but protesting was fine.

00:13:23.100 The things that I objected to were one, when they broke the rules basically by interrupting classrooms, by interrupting people at the library, by those incidents where people were pushed or shoved or whatever.

00:13:36.720 And also like I have to say like when a kid walks by and he has a head covering, a kippah and you know he's Jewish and you call him a baby killer. 0.81

00:13:46.460 That's not really like – if I were the head of the university, I would say, look, we have limits on the way we speak to other students.

00:13:54.980 And that – you can't do that.

00:13:58.080 So – but it's tricky because college is supposed to be the place where you can say whatever you want.

00:14:03.780 Yeah.

00:14:03.900 I remember we got out in protest.

00:14:05.020 They were having the girls' soccer team when I went to LSU.

00:14:07.240 They were having them take different like new – something new had just come on the weightlifting and athletic market with creatine, some advanced form of creatine.

00:14:16.660 And they were having all the girls take it and some of my friends were on there.

00:14:18.760 But we got out in protest. 0.88

00:14:19.920 It was ridiculous.

00:14:20.640 But next thing you know like the news was there and it was like we don't even know exactly what we're doing. 0.70

00:14:24.040 But yeah, college was a time where you could do that sort of thing.

00:14:26.420 Right, exactly.

00:14:26.860 A lot of backers, financial backers of the institutions also pulled their finances, right?

00:14:34.020 Yes.

00:14:34.460 Oh, a lot of them did.

00:14:35.340 Yeah.

00:14:35.980 And that was another – that was another example.

00:14:38.240 So like I would hear that people got upset.

00:14:41.400 Why are the Jews pulling their money? 0.78

00:14:43.400 And I would explain to them it's not the Jews pulling their money.

00:14:47.120 What you call someone who gives money when they like what a place is doing and takes it away when they don't is a donor.

00:14:52.840 Yeah.

00:14:53.600 Donors do that all over the world.

00:14:55.160 It's only when the donor is Jewish that people go, oh, look.

00:14:58.000 Look at the Jews doing that. 1.00

00:14:59.500 And that was part of a preset prejudice that people had before that happened.

00:15:04.520 I mean these guys who were pulling their money, they also were people who originally were giving money to higher education.

00:15:10.760 That's a good thing to do.

00:15:12.220 Good point.

00:15:12.660 I think that that's very admirable.

00:15:14.400 That's the only reason they were pulling it is because first they were giving it.

00:15:17.240 Yeah.

00:15:17.660 There are a lot of rich people who don't give anything to anyone.

00:15:20.600 So I –

00:15:22.160 That's a really good point.

00:15:22.840 I didn't think about that.

00:15:23.560 I mean I agree if you – if a school is doing something that you don't support, if you're a donor to it, you certainly have to –

00:15:30.020 If I support your podcast and you get up tomorrow and you say something that I really object when I come to you and I say, look, I'm not going to support your podcast anymore.

00:15:37.580 You might be upset but it would make perfect sense.

00:15:39.420 Yeah, I have to be an understanding about it.

00:15:41.080 Right.

00:15:41.480 Yeah, Robert Kraft, billionaire, pulls funding from Columbia University to make protests.

00:15:45.460 I remember that.

00:15:47.660 It was Robert Kraft and Mark Rowan from Penn and Bill Ackman from Harvard.

00:15:52.360 And all of them also felt like this is a way to draw attention to – and then they said we're going to give to universities that do protect students.

00:16:01.580 It's not like they weren't going to give to universities.

00:16:03.100 They were going to give to different ones.

00:16:04.340 So you don't think it was that people were protesting one way or the other about the conflict?

00:16:09.700 It was more about how they were doing it and what the school was allowing?

00:16:13.360 So it's complicated.

00:16:15.800 I would say this.

00:16:16.980 That was a big part of it, what the school was allowing and how they were doing it.

00:16:20.820 Then there were two parts to the conflict and here some of your listeners might agree with me, some of them not.

00:16:26.140 But I'll at least tell you what I think.

00:16:28.180 If you're protesting the war and you think Israel shouldn't be fighting the war or shouldn't be fighting the war that way or you think they're being indiscriminate and they're bombing or whatever, I may disagree with you but I totally get that. 1.00

00:16:38.540 That is – I mean that's as legitimate a protest as you could have.

00:16:42.060 As soon as you say therefore Israel shouldn't exist, that shades into anti-Semitism because – look, I went to the encampments and I talked to the kids, the ones that would talk to me.

00:16:53.680 A lot of them wouldn't and I said to them, Assad in Syria called a half a million people.

00:16:59.920 The Chinese are putting the Uyghurs into concentration camps. 1.00

00:17:03.180 The Myanmar is killing the Rohingya. 0.99

00:17:06.280 Millions of people were sent in refugee camps in Sudan.

00:17:09.960 There's slavery and – literal slavery in Mauritania, North Korea.

00:17:13.900 I don't see you protesting any of those things.

00:17:15.940 I see you protesting when the Jews do it but not any of those other things. 1.00

00:17:19.280 And not only that, Germany started two world wars. 0.56

00:17:22.600 I never heard a protest there shouldn't be a Germany. 0.95

00:17:24.680 The only country I have ever heard people say shouldn't exist happens to be the only country in the world where Jews have a country.

00:17:33.160 None of the 50 Muslim countries ever, ever, ever I heard shouldn't exist. 0.88

00:17:37.100 Wow.

00:17:37.360 And not only that, but if there wasn't a 3,000-year history of persecution of Jews that just happens to also coincide with the fact that that's the one country that shouldn't exist, I would also be a little less suspicious.

00:17:51.700 But put all of that together and I would say that's an anti-Semitic protest.

00:17:56.000 There's enough proof of evidence for you to say that.

00:17:58.040 Yeah.

00:17:58.260 Yeah.

00:17:58.400 Wow, I hadn't thought about a lot of that stuff.

00:18:00.880 And one of the reasons that we're here to – that we're happier here today is because we want to learn about the conflict and more about the history of it, right?

00:18:09.120 Because there's a lot of like – even – there's me, right?

00:18:11.540 I don't know.

00:18:12.380 I don't know a lot.

00:18:13.540 Like, you know, it's been kind of tough because you feel certain things but you don't know a lot of the history.

00:18:20.960 Right.

00:18:21.060 And so, yeah, that's why we're just really grateful that you're here today.

00:18:23.760 It's really hard.

00:18:24.400 But if I – I can give you a sort of capsule history in this way.

00:18:30.380 I mean, obviously there were Jews in Israel for thousands of years and thousands of years ago.

00:18:36.240 Nobody reasonable disputes that.

00:18:38.000 You can go and see –

00:18:38.840 Biblical Jews. 0.81

00:18:38.960 Biblical Jews and also in the time when Jesus – I mean, I used to say to people who say Jews have no history in Israel, you're about to sing about a Jew who was born in Bethlehem.

00:18:49.140 How can you say they have no history?

00:18:51.260 Somebody was born in Bethlehem there.

00:18:53.440 So Jews have been in Israel for a long time.

00:18:55.340 They got kicked out by the Romans basically.

00:18:57.900 In all that time, they always prayed to go back.

00:19:00.440 And in the 1800s, Jews started to buy their way. 0.92

00:19:04.260 They started to go to Israel and buy land from Arabs who willingly sold them land. 0.90

00:19:07.840 And then the United Nations said, look, the Jews deserve a state, especially after the Second World War, the Jews deserve a state. 1.00

00:19:15.980 None – there were actually – sadly, there were some Arab groups and families that said, okay. 0.97

00:19:21.920 But the overwhelming Arab powers said, no, we're going to destroy the Jews.

00:19:27.860 They don't get a state.

00:19:29.240 During the war, there is no question that the Israeli troops forced many Arabs out of their homes.

00:19:37.660 Some fled on their own.

00:19:39.820 Some fled because their leader said –

00:19:41.420 During which war?

00:19:41.620 During 1948, the founding war of Israel.

00:19:44.640 That's the Israel independence?

00:19:45.960 Was that the creation of Israel?

00:19:46.660 Israel independence war, right.

00:19:47.620 Because what was the Balfour –

00:19:48.620 The Balfour Declaration was long before that.

00:19:51.520 That was when Britain said basically that both Jews and Arabs deserve a state.

00:19:56.780 Okay.

00:19:57.000 And then the United Nations said the same thing, but the Arabs felt like, no, there is – and why they felt that way is dependent on who you ask.

00:20:09.040 There are – there is in Islamic law, if you ever held a land, you're not allowed to give it up.

00:20:14.660 And if you give it up, you have to reconquer it.

00:20:16.420 That was part of the issue with the Crusades and that's part of – there was part of – so for those who felt it religiously, it's a religious issue.

00:20:23.320 Okay.

00:20:23.560 So that's a religious element to it.

00:20:24.900 That's a religious element to it.

00:20:25.280 That if you ever give up your land, sell it or whatever, you need to conquer it back.

00:20:27.640 And there are, by the way, people on the right wing of the Israeli society who feel the same way about the land.

00:20:33.640 Like God promised it to us and we get all of it.

00:20:35.680 Okay.

00:20:36.360 So that is a religious element that weighs on some people on both sides.

00:20:41.340 That one's hard.

00:20:41.840 Okay.

00:20:42.780 But then there is also –

00:20:43.920 Gosh, that's tough, dude.

00:20:44.460 Yeah, that is tough.

00:20:45.660 When your HOA is God or whatever, you know?

00:20:48.520 That's a good way to put it.

00:20:49.760 Exactly.

00:20:50.380 Jesus.

00:20:51.380 You sign the contract.

00:20:52.540 I mean, what are you going to do?

00:20:53.320 Yeah.

00:20:54.880 But Israel has – I mean, first of all, in 1948, all the Arab armies attacked Israel.

00:21:01.980 Israel won that war.

00:21:02.980 And was Israel established at that point?

00:21:04.480 Yes.

00:21:04.640 Just so I'm super – so I'm super –

00:21:06.320 It was a tiny strip of land that the UN gave them, but immediately all the Arab armies attacked and tried to – and said, even to some of the Arabs, leave your home because we're going to wipe out all the Jews and then you can come back.

00:21:18.020 And that was in 1948?

00:21:18.960 That was 1948.

00:21:19.380 Can you bring that up?

00:21:20.140 I just want to see what it looks like.

00:21:21.740 That was Palestinian land in 1948 and that was Jewish land.

00:21:25.500 So Jewish – 1.00

00:21:26.040 That was 1946.

00:21:27.200 That was 46. 0.64

00:21:27.760 That was before the United Nations had a partition, okay?

00:21:31.500 Then in 1947, that was the partition plan that the UN proposed, okay?

00:21:36.640 Okay.

00:21:36.900 So 47 was the partition plan the UN proposed.

00:21:39.240 What you don't see, by the way, is all the bottom there that's Israel, almost all desert, almost all uncultivated land. 0.90

00:21:44.440 Got it.

00:21:44.640 All the best land is the green land.

00:21:46.280 Okay.

00:21:46.500 Then all the Arab nations said, no, we will not accept that and launched a war.

00:21:51.920 Israel fought a war and you see the results of that war from 49 to 67.

00:21:57.020 I see.

00:21:57.420 So they conquered – in the war, they won parts of that war.

00:22:01.420 And actually, again, they fought – the Arabs fought again in 56 and then again in 67.

00:22:07.220 And by the way –

00:22:08.200 And when you say the Arabs, does it just mean Palestine or does it mean –

00:22:10.000 No, no, no, no.

00:22:10.460 All the Arab nations.

00:22:11.680 Okay.

00:22:11.880 Jordan, Syria, Egypt was actually the most significant enemy of Israel, the most powerful.

00:22:18.620 And then in 1967, there was another war in which Israel conquered Jerusalem.

00:22:25.820 And then in 1973 –

00:22:27.780 We won the series at that point, kind of.

00:22:29.100 Right.

00:22:29.500 1973, there was another war called the Yom Kippur War.

00:22:32.720 And that's after that war when finally Egypt said, we're not going to win.

00:22:39.600 We're not going to win.

00:22:40.560 That's when Sadat went to Jerusalem and said, we want to make peace.

00:22:45.300 And since then, Sadat was the head of Egypt.

00:22:48.200 The head of Egypt.

00:22:48.900 And since that moment, since 1973, Israel has had peace with Egypt and then made peace with Jordan.

00:22:56.300 Okay.

00:22:57.100 Which – to which I say, there's Sadat.

00:22:59.200 Sadat was assassinated, unfortunately, by his own people after he made peace.

00:23:02.760 Dang.

00:23:03.680 But –

00:23:04.200 Somebody Sadat him, huh?

00:23:05.600 But –

00:23:06.340 Sorry, that's silly.

00:23:07.480 Oof.

00:23:08.000 And I shouldn't say, yeah.

00:23:08.720 He was actually – he was truly – he was a great man.

00:23:11.100 He really was a great man.

00:23:12.780 Was he?

00:23:13.360 Yes, he was.

00:23:13.960 And he was Egyptian.

00:23:14.920 He was Egyptian.

00:23:15.560 He was the Egyptian leader who had the courage to go to Israel and make peace.

00:23:21.060 And –

00:23:21.380 And so who's left in the other part of the country at this point?

00:23:24.340 So then it's just Palestinians? 0.99

00:23:25.780 Right.

00:23:25.940 Like, where are the Palestinians at? 1.00

00:23:27.720 They live on the West Bank and in Gaza, those two places you see.

00:23:31.320 Okay.

00:23:31.720 And there have been at least five – probably more, but at least five separate peace proposals that Israel has made to Palestinians.

00:23:40.440 And they have said no each time for a variety of reasons for each one.

00:23:46.120 But I always tell people, like, every time somebody's serious about making peace with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, now what are called the Abraham Accord countries, which is the UAE and Bahrain and so on.

00:23:57.900 And every time they have peace.

00:24:00.500 The people that don't have peace are people who don't make peace with Israel because I was just in Israel and I will tell you – I mean, first of all, what people in America don't realize is they think that Israelis are aggressors, but Israelis are sending their kids. 0.74

00:24:17.000 Like, you go to sleep at night and you don't know where your kid is because the army can't tell you and you don't know if you're going to get a knock at the door.

00:24:24.900 And I know someone – when I was just in Israel now, someone told me that their friends have signs on the door, do not knock.

00:24:33.160 If you come and visit them, you have to call them.

00:24:36.000 You have to let them know.

00:24:37.500 You have to sing outside the door.

00:24:38.860 They don't want that alarming moment.

00:24:39.460 They don't want that knock because the knock means maybe your child is dead.

00:24:44.260 So Israel doesn't want this war.

00:24:47.180 Nobody wants this war except people who do, unfortunately.

00:24:52.080 And so what I have said to many, many, many – look, I've had the very uncomfortable, I don't like doing it, position of having to debate this with other people.

00:25:06.680 I would much rather be making peace than debate – I'd rather debate religion and not debate politics.

00:25:12.000 But I've asked every single one – every time I've had a debate about Israel and Palestine, I've asked the same question and I've never gotten a good answer.

00:25:18.860 I said if tomorrow the Palestinians had the firepower of the Israelis and the Israelis had the firepower of the Palestinians, how many Jews do you think would be left in that country in a week? 0.96

00:25:32.520 Probably not many.

00:25:33.820 I'm guessing not many.

00:25:34.960 And so until that answer is different, that is, until the Palestinians as a people, not – I mean there are many, many, many individuals who just want peace.

00:25:45.120 But as a people and as leaders and people like Hamas, until they really want peace, it's impossible. 0.68

00:25:51.840 I mean if we took right now, if we took, I don't know, Russia or Iran and we put them in Texas, how long do you think America would let them stay there? 0.99

00:25:59.840 I'm – you have to know the people on your border.

00:26:04.220 We go nuts about Mexicans coming over the border and the vast majority come over because they want to work and America goes crazy. 1.00

00:26:12.060 Can you imagine if it was a truly hostile population, how America would handle it? 0.80

00:26:16.860 It's very hard.

00:26:18.840 Israelis live in a very tough neighborhood.

00:26:21.260 America has lucky enough to have Canada and Mexico and two oceans.

00:26:24.860 Yeah, oh, we certainly got a – I mean we're sitting in the dove's nest here.

00:26:31.220 We're in a very special place.

00:26:32.620 We are very lucky and very blessed.

00:26:35.240 So – but is it understandable that Palestinians feel – because was Palestine a country?

00:26:41.000 No.

00:26:41.680 There never was a country in Israel since the – it was a succession of – so what happened was after the Romans called it – they're the ones that named it Palestine, the Romans.

00:26:53.160 After the Romans took over, then there were a succession of empires.

00:26:58.740 There was the Roman Empire and then you had, among others, the Ottomans, the British and the British were the ones who controlled it until Israel became Israel.

00:27:12.680 And the Palestinian self-identification was in opposition to Israel.

00:27:17.100 If you go back 200 years –

00:27:18.480 They didn't even exist.

00:27:18.980 You don't know the difference between a Palestinian and other Arabs who live in the area.

00:27:23.180 I mean they were people who lived in the area and had – the identifications tended to be much more local.

00:27:28.200 I am from the village of this.

00:27:29.840 I am from the village of that.

00:27:30.960 But there wasn't a Palestine as a country.

00:27:32.940 OK.

00:27:33.140 Having said that, anybody whose heart doesn't break for the plight of the Palestinians – I mean they are – first of all, for two reasons, my heart breaks for the Palestinians.

00:27:45.220 One is because nobody wants to live under someone else's rule.

00:27:49.120 It doesn't matter even how nice the rule is, you don't want to.

00:27:51.660 Although I will say what people don't realize is two million Arabs live in Israel proper with full rights.

00:27:59.220 They vote.

00:27:59.960 They're on the Supreme Court.

00:28:01.340 They're in the Knesset.

00:28:02.240 Is it comfortable over there for them, do you think?

00:28:03.940 Oh, yeah.

00:28:04.360 Very.

00:28:04.980 Not only that.

00:28:05.560 I was just in the National Library of Israel and they talked about the classes they give.

00:28:11.040 30 percent of their classes are in Arabic.

00:28:14.020 So Arabs come to the National Library of Israel. 0.89

00:28:16.740 Yeah.

00:28:17.060 They come to the National Library of Israel and take classes.

00:28:18.780 And they have representatives?

00:28:20.440 They have representatives in the parliament called the Knesset.

00:28:23.360 Palestine does? 0.96

00:28:24.080 No.

00:28:24.680 The Arab people do.

00:28:26.320 Palestine doesn't. 0.97

00:28:27.240 Palestine, those who are Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, they have their own self-governing rule, but they're definitely under Israel.

00:28:36.500 Okay.

00:28:36.760 Now, Gaza doesn't—before October 7th, Gaza had no troops.

00:28:42.380 I mean, Israel had no troops there.

00:28:43.680 They'd completely withdrawn from Gaza.

00:28:45.280 But unfortunately, instead of spending the billions of dollars in aid that Gaza got in building seaports and restaurants, and they built tunnels underneath so that they could attack Israel, which is what they did. 0.85

00:28:58.900 But some people say that it's like a group that they feel like they have no choice but to elect like a dirty government, right?

00:29:07.720 Or like—and excuse some of my question.

00:29:09.660 Like, I'm not that great, like, at—like, I'm not always the best at figuring some of this stuff out.

00:29:15.280 But some people say that it's basically like the Palestinian people have become like kind of a caged people, and so they're at the point where they feel like they'll elect the craziest element as their leader because that's the only chance they feel that they have. 0.87

00:29:31.620 All I can say is they have done that for a long time, and it hasn't worked.

00:29:34.860 Right.

00:29:35.040 And if they would elect somebody who would actually make a deal, this would have been gone 50 years ago, 60 years ago, 70 years ago.

00:29:44.320 There were so many times when all they had to do was say, yes, look, I'll give you an anecdote.

00:29:50.360 Arafat, who was the leader of the Palestinians for many years, at Camp David, where he was offered 95 percent of the West Bank plus land swaps to compensate, and this was under Clinton.

00:30:01.820 He said no.

00:30:03.580 Why?

00:30:03.960 Do you know?

00:30:04.280 And then he said to Clinton, you're a great man.

00:30:07.120 And Clinton said, no, I'm not.

00:30:08.140 I'm a failure, and you made me a failure.

00:30:11.020 I think I know why he said no.

00:30:12.940 I think he said no because he knew that if he said yes, he was in the same—he was going to happen to him.

00:30:17.780 What happened to Sadat?

00:30:19.080 In fact, Clinton even said to Arafat, you and later on, Ehud Barak, you might get assassinated for doing this.

00:30:28.300 Wow.

00:30:28.640 But think of how many of your people you will save.

00:30:31.220 And that's true of Sadat. 0.90

00:30:32.540 Sadat got assassinated, but do you know how many Egyptians are alive today because they never had to go to war again against Israel?

00:30:37.960 Yeah.

00:30:38.180 But you have to have courage.

00:30:40.160 The 2000 Cam David summit was a summit meeting at Cam David between United States Bill Clinton, President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.

00:30:49.800 The summit took place in July 2000 as an effort to end the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

00:30:55.220 Summit ended without an agreement largely due to irreconcilable differences between the two parties on the status of Jerusalem.

00:31:01.420 Its failure is considered one of the main triggers of the second intifada, which was a big— 0.81

00:31:07.680 What was the issue of Jerusalem, do you remember?

00:31:09.920 The intifada—both places wanted Jerusalem to be the capital, which eventually was able to be worked out.

00:31:17.500 What couldn't be worked out was what's called the issue of return.

00:31:20.020 So there are two kinds of refugees in the world.

00:31:27.260 There are Palestinian refugees and everybody else.

00:31:30.180 And that's why there are two agencies from the United Nations who handle refugees.

00:31:34.440 There's one that only does Palestinians and one that does everybody else. 0.99

00:31:38.340 Palestinians are the only people whose refugee status is handed down.

00:31:42.720 There are great-great-great-great-grandchildren of the original conflict—maybe not great-great—great-grandchildren of the original conflict who are still called refugees.

00:31:51.200 Wow.

00:31:51.620 That's because they constantly cultivate that consciousness.

00:31:56.940 We're going to go back.

00:31:58.040 We're going to go back.

00:31:58.620 And also because the other Arab nations never took them in.

00:32:01.340 Jordan didn't take them in, right? 0.90

00:32:03.160 Jordan, which is more than half-Palestinian, didn't say, come to Jordan.

00:32:07.680 Why?

00:32:08.180 Why wouldn't they want more Palestinians? 1.00

00:32:09.640 Because one of the things that anti-Semitism does is it creates coalitions.

00:32:15.860 And all these Arab nations, all of whom had trouble at home, they all have dicey governments. 1.00

00:32:21.940 Like if I said to you, which Arab nation would you want to live in? 1.00

00:32:24.640 The answer would be, I'll stay right where I am.

00:32:26.800 Thank you.

00:32:27.640 And this is because for whatever reason, the Islamic culture, which used to be during the Golden Age, the most advanced culture in the world. 0.94

00:32:36.080 So it's not like Islam doesn't have in it to be the most advanced culture in the world.

00:32:40.240 For whatever reason, and I'm not a historian, I have guesses, but who knows, right now they're not doing well culturally.

00:32:47.740 And as a result, they've used the Palestinians to unify their own governments because look what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

00:32:57.000 And a mutual hate is the best way to tie people together.

00:33:00.700 So you're saying it bridges them and Israel.

00:33:04.000 Of course.

00:33:04.680 What do 27, 28, 29 Arab nations have in common? 0.97

00:33:08.040 What they have in common is they can all see Israel as hostile so they don't have to say, what is it that we're not doing with our people?

00:33:15.440 I mean, because if you think about it, the biggest war by far in the Middle East in recent years was the Iran-Iraq War.

00:33:21.280 It had nothing to do with Israel.

00:33:23.280 But when people say, what would solve the Middle East?

00:33:26.140 They always say, oh, if Israel would act differently.

00:33:28.420 It's not true.

00:33:29.200 There are all sorts of local problems, but we do the same thing in this country.

00:33:34.080 You know what the problem is?

00:33:35.100 That other party and that other guy who's messing everything up.

00:33:39.560 I, on the other hand, I'm guiltless.

00:33:41.520 Like my people, we're great.

00:33:43.780 And so it's a human tendency.

00:33:46.720 Wow.

00:33:49.100 Do the Palestinians have lost more land over time?

00:33:52.240 Like even more looking at that chart.

00:33:53.480 Yeah.

00:33:53.900 Was there like a lease in the beginning?

00:33:55.620 Like what did the original document say as far as what the land would be like?

00:33:59.680 Oh, my God.

00:34:00.200 That is so complicated.

00:34:01.840 It depends who.

00:34:02.700 Because it's – well, you can see what the original UN partition was.

00:34:06.660 But then what happened was the Palestinians launched a war and lost land.

00:34:11.260 I see.

00:34:11.600 And the only way you get it back is by making peace.

00:34:13.600 So Israel lost – I mean Egypt lost the Sinai to Israel.

00:34:18.420 The Sinai is about a third as big as the entire country of Israel.

00:34:21.580 When Egypt made peace, Israel gave the Sinai back.

00:34:24.900 And that was a lot.

00:34:25.940 It has oil fields.

00:34:26.960 It has resorts.

00:34:27.980 But that's what you do for peace.

00:34:29.760 I think if the Palestinians made peace again and again and again, they've been offered.

00:34:34.920 But even if they did now, they'd get a lot of the West Bank back.

00:34:38.560 And it would be such a good thing for the world because economically, what that region – I mean you could have in the Middle East what you have like in Europe.

00:34:48.440 Or you have – you could have this huge economic engine.

00:34:51.300 Israel has technology and so on.

00:34:53.700 And a lot of the Arab neighbors want that. 0.94

00:34:57.820 Like when I went to the Technion, there were Arab students there.

00:35:00.880 They had nowhere to study really where they could study at that advanced level.

00:35:04.680 But just imagine if there was cooperation.

00:35:07.760 But you have to want it.

00:35:10.120 So you think the big – one of the biggest issues probably face in the – I mean obviously there's huge like actual physical issues and emotional issues.

00:35:19.120 But you think one of the issues facing the governments right now is that they – is that Palestine doesn't want peace.

00:35:25.420 Yes, because – and part of that, by the way, is just downright anti-Semitism.

00:35:31.640 Like when you hear – I mean this is unfortunately pretty endemic in the Islamic world. 0.99

00:35:38.260 So I don't know if you know –

00:35:39.140 What does endemic mean?

00:35:39.780 Just tell us –

00:35:40.300 Endemic means it's like they get it with their mother's milk.

00:35:43.440 Okay.

00:35:44.100 So it just –

00:35:44.300 When Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who grew up in Somalia –

00:35:47.280 Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

00:35:49.120 I spoke to her once.

00:35:51.800 She wrote a book called Infidel.

00:35:54.160 She said, when I was growing up in Somalia, I didn't know a Jew.

00:35:58.420 I didn't know anyone who knew a Jew. 0.98

00:36:01.360 But I knew Jews were evil. 1.00

00:36:03.520 Now, when you have that in kids and that's true, that's Ayaan. 0.94

00:36:09.500 When you – when kids are taught that and all through the West Bank, all through the Arab world, we know what children are taught about Jews. 0.99

00:36:19.120 They're evil. 0.98

00:36:19.840 They control the banks. 0.96

00:36:21.160 They run the world. 0.94

00:36:22.560 They're – you know, everything bad comes sooner or later back to the Jews. 1.00

00:36:26.000 Yeah, they can't drink milk. 0.97

00:36:27.180 Right.

00:36:27.560 So what do you do?

00:36:28.960 I mean how do you make peace when people believe that you're subhuman – subhuman and superhuman? 0.95

00:36:35.120 That is, you're vermin, but you control the world.

00:36:38.060 That's a really weird and strange kinds of prejudice. 0.86

00:36:42.720 And you know you grew up in Louisiana.

00:36:45.640 So you know the people still hold that kind of prejudice in the United States.

00:36:49.700 It's not like that doesn't exist in our world.

00:36:54.460 So take that and like toxify it a billion times in the Middle East and it becomes very, very difficult.

00:37:02.900 Wow.

00:37:03.540 Yeah.

00:37:04.160 So it's a tough sitting over there for Israel.

00:37:06.600 It's a very tough setting.

00:37:07.720 Has Israel ever thought of just moving to a new place?

00:37:09.820 It's funny that you should say that.

00:37:11.160 You know, originally, I'll tell you – I don't know if it's a funny story.

00:37:15.060 It's kind of a funny story.

00:37:15.780 It's okay to be – it's okay.

00:37:17.660 Everything can have some humor.

00:37:19.060 Exactly.

00:37:20.680 So the first president of Israel was named Chaim Weitzman.

00:37:24.620 And he was testifying in front of the Peel Commission, which was the British commission that was trying to decide what to do with the – and one of them said,

00:37:32.420 Mr. Weitzman, why don't we just give you Uganda?

00:37:34.480 Just take Uganda, by the way. 0.94

00:37:36.080 I'm not sure the Ugandans would have loved that either.

00:37:38.300 But that's – because there's so much strife in the Middle East.

00:37:41.860 Why don't you just take Uganda? 0.83

00:37:42.780 And Weitzman said, that's like my asking you, sir, why you didn't drive 50 kilometers – why you drove, rather, 50 kilometers to visit your mother in the next town when there are so many other old ladies on your block. 0.99

00:37:56.980 And it's the same thing.

00:37:58.780 Like Israel – I mean, three times a day in my prayers, I pray for Jerusalem. 0.93

00:38:05.120 And Jews have done that for thousands of years.

00:38:07.280 That's where David walked.

00:38:08.580 You know, that's what Moses was leading the people to.

00:38:11.400 That's – I mean, that is the Jewish land.

00:38:14.580 In three different traditions, it's the Jewish land.

00:38:16.820 It's even the Jewish land in Islamic tradition.

00:38:19.020 It's why, you know, Muhammad started out. 1.00

00:38:22.820 He originally faced Jerusalem when he prayed.

00:38:25.140 And then when Jews eventually rejected Islam, he turned towards Mecca.

00:38:29.220 But Jerusalem is sacred to all three traditions.

00:38:33.780 And it just feels –

00:38:35.220 They want the best.

00:38:35.940 Not only that, but it feels to me like, honestly, you look, there are like 40 flags in the world that have Christian symbols on them.

00:38:44.320 And there are probably 35 that have Muslim symbols on them.

00:38:48.220 And there is one that has the Jewish star.

00:38:50.440 And that one country is the one that the world's entire hostility is turned towards.

00:38:57.100 And I just feel like – doesn't anyone see that?

00:38:59.860 Isn't that weird just by its nature?

00:39:02.840 I mean, it's certainly – I could certainly see how if I was from there, I would feel a real underdog mentality.

00:39:08.900 Yeah.

00:39:09.540 Yeah.

00:39:09.720 You know?

00:39:10.360 Yes.

00:39:10.700 Do you feel like we get fair coverage of – like a lot of media folks – there's a lot of Jewish media folks, right?

00:39:25.060 Right.

00:39:25.580 And they've made a lot of like, you know, a lot of great stuff over the years.

00:39:30.920 I like the movie Family Man.

00:39:32.140 I like a lot of different stuff.

00:39:33.200 But do you feel like we get a fair coverage of the war in Israel and Palestine or of the conflict?

00:39:41.160 So it's really hard to fairly cover a conflict, especially this one, because reporters can say whatever they want if they're in Israel.

00:39:51.240 But if you're in Hamas-controlled territory, you have to say what Hamas wants you to say.

00:39:57.920 Really?

00:39:58.380 Of course.

00:39:59.040 I mean, there's no such thing as like we're reporting against what Hamas wants because Hamas is a terrorist authoritarian group.

00:40:06.060 So that makes it hard.

00:40:07.500 So you have the Palestinian people, right?

00:40:09.580 Right.

00:40:09.920 Are most of them good people?

00:40:11.860 Yeah.

00:40:12.120 Oh, yeah.

00:40:12.380 Of course.

00:40:12.940 Most people I think everywhere in the world are good people.

00:40:15.540 Yeah.

00:40:16.240 But I will say this.

00:40:18.640 Good people can be made to do bad things by ideology.

00:40:22.620 So if you say to me, were most Germans good people? 1.00

00:40:24.740 I would say absolutely.

00:40:26.260 But they became Nazis. 0.82

00:40:27.540 Yeah.

00:40:27.740 And not because they were any different than you are or I am.

00:40:32.680 Well, it's like Raiders fans.

00:40:33.760 I'm like, what are we doing here sometimes?

00:40:35.540 Raiders fans.

00:40:36.720 And that's just a joke, guys.

00:40:37.940 Don't anybody freaking lose their mind or whatever.

00:40:39.320 Hey, listen.

00:40:39.760 I go way back with the Raiders.

00:40:41.360 I remember-

00:40:41.660 You know, I'm a Max Cosby fan.

00:40:42.780 I remember Bolitnikoff.

00:40:44.260 Oh, wow.

00:40:44.960 I thought he was a president of somewhere, was he?

00:40:47.140 No, he was a wide receiver. 1.00

00:40:48.860 Oh, damn. 1.00

00:40:49.520 I failed that. 0.99

00:40:50.300 So, but seriously, it's like, yes, people are good people, but they can be made to do

00:40:56.540 very bad things if they believe bad stuff.

00:40:59.720 And if you believe that everybody over there is evil, then you think you're being good by

00:41:06.980 blowing up buses, which happened during the Intifada, blowing up cafes.

00:41:12.320 I mean, look what Hamas did, deliberately targeting women and children and so on.

00:41:17.300 Why would you do that? 0.88

00:41:18.520 Because they're evil.

00:41:20.360 And it's easier, unfortunately, than people think to persuade human beings to not see

00:41:27.680 other people as human.

00:41:30.580 I mean, in war, that's what people do.

00:41:32.820 It's like Judaism introduced this idea to the world that Christianity then spread to 0.96

00:41:38.600 the world, that every person is in the image of God.

00:41:41.840 It's really hard to hold on to that when you think that person wants to kill my family.

00:41:46.760 But that's, to me, that's the only salvation we have, is to sort of double down on that

00:41:53.400 message.

00:41:54.020 Do you like support, or I don't know if that's the exact word, but how do you feel about the

00:41:59.840 way that Israel is dealing with Palestine now?

00:42:04.280 Because it feels like there's just so many more casualties, right?

00:42:07.080 Like if you look at charts or bar graphs or something, or even maybe some-

00:42:10.760 So I'll say two different things about it.

00:42:12.960 One is, if you ask experts in war, they'll say that the reason that people are so surprised

00:42:18.800 is because they never paid attention to a war before.

00:42:21.440 And in fact, the casualty rate is roughly 1 to 1.5.

00:42:25.940 That is one soldier to 1.5 citizens, which is actually much better than almost every war,

00:42:35.520 certainly much better than our wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

00:42:39.800 But we live in a different age where you can see the rubble and you can see the bombs and

00:42:45.160 all of that stuff.

00:42:46.360 And it is heartbreaking.

00:42:47.960 I mean, look, I see coffins of children.

00:42:50.080 And I know that Israelis were responsible for that, responsible in one sense and not in 1.00

00:42:58.720 another.

00:42:59.040 And it's terrible.

00:43:00.700 But I also know that tomorrow, literally tomorrow, if Hamas said, okay, we give up, 0.63

00:43:06.480 that would be it.

00:43:07.380 That would be it.

00:43:08.200 The only one that, I mean, it's been in their power since day one to stop this war.

00:43:13.880 All they have to do is say, okay, we give up.

00:43:16.800 On October 6th, there was a ceasefire.

00:43:19.880 Israel didn't break the ceasefire.

00:43:21.380 And then when they went in, at any moment, if Hamas had said, you know what?

00:43:25.440 Since it was clear that Israel was going to destroy Gaza, that would have been over.

00:43:31.140 And yet it's not.

00:43:32.480 And so there are a lot of ways of looking at the same conflict, even while being able to

00:43:39.960 hold the enormity of the suffering and pain that is there.

00:43:46.200 Well, this says, is it really one to one?

00:43:48.420 How this is?

00:43:49.360 Is this a, I don't know what source this is.

00:43:51.640 Not one to one death of Israelis, one to 1.5 death of Hamas fighters to citizens.

00:43:59.680 Of those, let's say it is 38, although that comes from the Hamas Health Authority.

00:44:04.560 Of those 38, how many are Hamas terrorists?

00:44:07.880 According to most estimates, somewhere between 20 and 25.

00:44:11.960 Okay.

00:44:12.280 I'm not between 15 and 20.

00:44:14.420 So if it's 20, that means more terrorists than citizens.

00:44:18.540 If it's 15, that means like one to 1.2.

00:44:20.900 There's a guy, John Spencer, who's the world's expert in this, who's gone on a bunch of podcasts

00:44:27.060 and talked about how he's never seen a conflict, even though what people see doesn't accord with

00:44:35.240 this, where in fact, the degree of civilian casualties has been as low in comparison to

00:44:41.300 the degree of fighters in civilian areas.

00:44:43.760 Remember, Hamas again and again and again has in houses, in hospitals, in schools, in tunnels,

00:44:53.760 all those places where you have to kill citizens or you can't kill Hamas. 0.87

00:44:59.820 And that's a really awful way to fight a war. 0.79

00:45:04.720 Another thing I'll point out, just if people doubt this-

00:45:08.880 If people are listening at home, just so you can't see, it says, this says Palestinians, 1.00

00:45:12.300 38,000, Israelis, 1,200, reported killed.

00:45:16.520 Now, this is from-

00:45:18.000 This is from the United Nations.

00:45:19.180 Right.

00:45:19.580 United Nations.

00:45:19.920 I wasn't saying one to 1.5 Israelis to Palestinians.

00:45:22.660 You're saying of those Palestinians-

00:45:23.720 Right.

00:45:23.900 How many are Hamas fighters?

00:45:25.280 How many are Hamas fighters?

00:45:26.360 And here's the other issue.

00:45:29.040 If you go to an Israeli home, which happens all the time and you hear like sirens above,

00:45:35.280 you go to what's called a meimad, which is a shelter, which is a bomb shelter.

00:45:39.680 Every Israeli home has a bomb shelter built into it and so do all the communities. 0.83

00:45:44.580 Hamas built more than 500 miles worth of tunnels all through Gaza and not a single bomb shelter

00:45:51.180 for its citizens, not one, which meant that if Israel bombed, they were counting. 0.64

00:45:56.980 And Sinoir, the head of Hamas, even said this explicitly.

00:45:59.680 We have him on the record saying it.

00:46:01.140 They were counting on civilians dying because every civilian who dies is a success for Hamas 1.00

00:46:05.800 because they know they're not going to win the war militarily.

00:46:11.120 They can only win it reputationally and politically.

00:46:14.640 Ah, so they're counting on this type of information?

00:46:16.960 Sure, I mean, it's a terrible thing to say, but it does them good to have citizens killed

00:46:23.240 because it turns the public opinion against Israel, which is the only way they can win 0.51

00:46:27.400 the war.

00:46:27.860 Has Israel offered a, like, okay, almost like a Red Rover type of day where it's like,

00:46:33.820 if you want to come over here, you can come over here and we'll take care of you?

00:46:37.900 They had several, first of all, they had several weeks before they started the operation,

00:46:42.380 but also they have safe zones.

00:46:44.540 Now, what has happened with the safe zones, and again, it's, like, agonizing.

00:46:49.400 They just killed Mohamed Daif, who is the number one or number two next to Sinoir.

00:46:59.960 He's the one who planned, right, there he is.

00:47:03.160 He's the one who planned the October 7th operation.

00:47:06.360 He was, like, the most desirable target.

00:47:11.140 And guess where they killed him?

00:47:13.160 In a safe zone.

00:47:14.960 Oh, so he's chilling over there.

00:47:16.560 Right.

00:47:16.860 So they create safe zones, and then Hamas fighters invade the safe zones, and people say,

00:47:21.320 ah, you see, the Israelis are bombing the safe zones. 0.74

00:47:23.680 You can't win with people who don't care about their people.

00:47:27.740 And I don't want to say Palestinians don't.

00:47:29.600 Of course they do.

00:47:30.660 Like, a mother who's bereaved in Palestine is every bit as bereft as a mother who's bereaved

00:47:36.680 in Israel.

00:47:37.120 It's not like one mother feels more than the other.

00:47:38.920 But the leaders don't care.

00:47:41.540 They care about getting what they get.

00:47:44.200 And, by the way, many of them aren't in Gaza.

00:47:46.460 Instead, they're enjoying their billions of dollars that were given to them in aid in

00:47:50.600 Switzerland, in the Canary Islands.

00:47:54.880 And were they just emailing stuff to do?

00:47:56.440 Like, that sort of thing?

00:47:56.900 Yes.

00:47:57.080 Because it's a very, very painful situation all around.

00:48:04.760 And I wish on both sides that there were visionary and courageous leaders who would figure out a

00:48:15.500 way to stop what is this awful carnage.

00:48:19.780 Although, I must say, like, every time somebody, you know, feels like, first of all, it's not true that it's going on forever.

00:48:26.640 And, first of all, and also conflicts that go on a long time, like in Northern Ireland, can be solved.

00:48:34.140 I don't believe it can.

00:48:35.080 It's not true that it can't ever be solved.

00:48:37.000 Like the IRA.

00:48:37.760 Like the IRA.

00:48:38.320 The IRA.

00:48:38.740 And even countries that were hostile to Israel, like Bahrain, like the UAE, now it looks very soon like Saudi Arabia, and Israel and Jordan, have made peace.

00:48:50.440 So, whenever someone says they'll never make peace, I think you don't know.

00:48:54.700 You haven't lived long enough to see, for example, like I did, that people said the Soviet Union and the United States will always be enemies, and then the next day there was no Soviet Union.

00:49:03.160 Things change, and I can't help it.

00:49:06.400 I have faith.

00:49:06.860 And so, do you pray also then for you?

00:49:08.920 You just pray for both sides of the conflict?

00:49:10.120 Oh, absolutely.

00:49:11.020 I pray for peace, and I pray for the best outcome.

00:49:13.220 And I mean, it's like, to see the images we've seen, how can you not?

00:49:20.820 You know, it's funny, Rabbi, because like, yeah, I hear like, you know, I've been on the side like, you know, or I don't even know if it's the side, but like you hear free Palestine, right?

00:49:31.960 Yeah.

00:49:32.120 And so, I've always thought like, if something, if you start to hear the chant of free something, then that's the place that needs the help, right?

00:49:40.200 Yes, of course.

00:49:40.980 And so, I guess a lot of my like, yeah, I think that's, and I guess you see more images of damage from there.

00:49:47.780 And so, you're just, your feelings can't help but, you know, just but hurt, you know?

00:49:55.300 I, absolutely, and I think they, there's no reason why they shouldn't hurt, I mean, like, they're suffering terribly.

00:50:01.880 And part of my head is like, and this is why I think I don't, I may have a tough time, I just evolve in some of my thoughts, that Israel's the stronger country.

00:50:11.100 Yes.

00:50:11.400 Right?

00:50:11.740 They have a, more of a culture, they have a, more like charters and organization.

00:50:17.380 And it feels like it's their responsibility, right?

00:50:21.980 To help or to figure out, that's what, that's just, this is a blanket statement, right?

00:50:26.580 Yeah.

00:50:26.820 It feels like they're the ones that should have to figure this out, right?

00:50:31.020 And now, that might be delusional, but I, it's just like, it might be emotionally motivated, a lot of that.

00:50:36.780 But I, but I, I totally get that, and what I would say to that is, first of all, it's, it does you credit, there's no reason not to feel that way.

00:50:45.880 There's only so much you can do.

00:50:48.100 It's almost like, this is not a great analogy, and I've just thought of it, and I hope, I hope it's not a terrible one, but it's like a parent who has a kid who's a drug addict.

00:50:55.660 And you say, well, look, it's the parent's responsibility.

00:50:58.240 And they, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, they enable, and enable, and enable, and then they decide, okay, I'm going to cut them off, and then they enable again.

00:51:06.760 And then they cut them off, and you say, actually, at a certain point, if the other side doesn't help, you can't do anything.

00:51:14.480 A strong people can't.

00:51:15.680 Look, Israel tried, I mean, America tried this. 0.78

00:51:18.060 America said, okay, we're going to impose democracy on Iraq. 0.79

00:51:21.060 Look how well that worked, and we're much stronger than Israel is. 1.00

00:51:24.840 Other people have to want to be helped in order for you to help, and they not only have to want to be helped, but they have to not want to destroy the people that are helping them.

00:51:34.440 Because although Israel is stronger, that's true, there are 30 Muslim nations around Israel, or 25. 0.51

00:51:43.140 There's one Israel. 0.95

00:51:45.140 So there, you know how many, like before the Holocaust, there were 18 million Jews in the world.

00:51:50.780 That's like 0.1% of the world.

00:51:53.240 Now there are about 15 million Jews in the world.

00:51:56.320 There's a, we're very tiny.

00:51:58.120 There are over a billion Christians, over a billion Muslims.

00:52:00.780 There's 0.1% of Jews in the world.

00:52:04.680 So-

00:52:05.100 I probably know 200.

00:52:06.340 You probably do.

00:52:07.380 You know?

00:52:07.820 But that's, I mean, really, 15 million is nothing.

00:52:11.340 It's smaller than the population of LA, smaller than the population of New York, and that's it, over the entire world. 0.68

00:52:17.500 So Jews feel frightened, I think, for legitimate reasons. 0.84

00:52:23.340 Yeah.

00:52:24.440 Well, yeah, certainly, I would think if there's strength in numbers, you would have to be as, you would rely on so many other of your senses, you know?

00:52:35.040 And so many of my Jewish friends are so, like, they're complex. 1.00

00:52:41.400 I never, I, Jewish people are super complex, you know?

00:52:44.040 The whole system, it's really fun, like, funny joke around with a lot of my Jewish friends.

00:52:48.480 If you think up a good joke, they like it.

00:52:52.180 I have a theory about why that's true.

00:52:54.460 Okay, so here's my theory about why Jews are the way they, not all, but, I mean, there's a variety always.

00:53:00.320 But there are two things about Jewish history that actually, I think, gave Jews certain cultural tendencies.

00:53:07.640 One is that our tradition is very book-centered, right?

00:53:12.320 If you go into a church, you see an image of Jesus.

00:53:15.900 You go into a synagogue, you see a Torah, you see a book.

00:53:19.340 We don't have a perfect life in Judaism, we have a perfect book. 0.95

00:53:22.680 That makes it different, so you have to know, like, literacy.

00:53:25.680 Text-based.

00:53:26.340 Literacy was huge.

00:53:27.520 And then the other thing is, when you have to wander from place to place to place, you have to start learning all sorts of different cultural cues, or you won't make it.

00:53:37.620 And so you have to be, like, intellectually agile, because if you're not, the host country is not going to have any use for you, and they're not going to be able to use you.

00:53:46.560 Wow.

00:53:46.900 So both those things, Jews learned, and that's why you have so many Jews in comedy, and so many Jews in music, and so many Jews in literature.

00:53:52.960 And so they learned the cultural cues of wherever they had to wander, which is, you know, good and bad.

00:54:00.260 Good and bad.

00:54:01.200 Well, let's talk about anti-Semitism then, if we can. 0.55

00:54:03.720 Is that all right?

00:54:04.400 Absolutely.

00:54:04.860 I talk about it all the time.

00:54:06.140 Oh, you do?

00:54:06.580 I do.

00:54:07.100 Yeah.

00:54:08.460 Yeah, because we had it.

00:54:09.620 So we had an episode. 0.99

00:54:12.340 What a fucking weird. 0.99

00:54:13.840 Let's talk about anti-Semitism. 1.00

00:54:15.140 Is that all right?

00:54:15.760 Like, we had, well, sometimes, I'll be honest with you, you get scared to even say the word Jewish, or to say, like, Israel.

00:54:22.720 Like, you feel scared sometimes.

00:54:26.180 Like, you feel like, well, we had a podcast, like, Roseanne Barr was on, right?

00:54:29.820 And she said, she made a sarcastic comment.

00:54:33.260 She goes, yeah.

00:54:34.180 She goes, yeah, and six million Jews didn't die in the Holocaust, right?

00:54:38.000 It was obvious sarcasm, right?

00:54:39.740 It was obvious, I think, if you and me listen.

00:54:41.200 Of course.

00:54:42.540 But YouTube, they banned us for two weeks.

00:54:45.180 Wow.

00:54:45.300 And they took our episode down because they said that we promoted.

00:54:50.780 Holocaust denialism.

00:54:51.920 Something like that, right?

00:54:53.360 And so it kind of, it affected me. 1.00

00:54:55.120 I was like, well, shit, you know, like, she is Jewish. 1.00

00:54:58.320 It was like, you know, it made me kind of angry, kind of. 1.00

00:55:02.200 Not against Jewish people.

00:55:03.200 Right.

00:55:03.260 But it made me angry that there was this, like, that felt like there was another parameter where you couldn't speak about things, you know?

00:55:12.140 So, look, anti-Semitism is a very, it's called the oldest hatred.

00:55:17.080 It's extremely difficult.

00:55:21.420 And there are lots of factors why I think anti-Semitism exists.

00:55:24.800 But at least a big part of it is because Judaism and Christianity, look, Christianity came from Judaism.

00:55:32.940 And so.

00:55:33.720 So, Judaism was first. 0.99

00:55:34.880 Judaism was first by a couple thousand years. 1.00

00:55:36.980 Oh, damn. 0.99

00:55:37.660 And they probably were then. 1.00

00:55:39.140 Yeah.

00:55:39.420 And that's why Jesus was born Jewish. 0.99

00:55:42.860 Saul.

00:55:44.000 Oh, he was Jewish. 0.94

00:55:45.260 Turned to Paul.

00:55:46.780 Paul's original name was Saul.

00:55:48.480 Oh, really?

00:55:49.300 Yes.

00:55:50.020 He was Jewish.

00:55:52.300 And the, what happened was the believers in Jesus were all Jews. 0.73

00:55:59.960 The early disciples were all Jews.

00:56:01.800 And the other Jews disagreed with them.

00:56:03.880 And I don't know about you, but in my experience, family fights are sometimes the worst fights.

00:56:09.420 And this was a family fight.

00:56:11.020 It was like they all knew each other.

00:56:13.020 They all grew together.

00:56:14.320 It was a very small community.

00:56:15.620 They were all Jews together.

00:56:16.700 And now they disagreed about this huge thing.

00:56:18.720 It's like, you know, the fight over the Thanksgiving dinner table between the Democrats and the Republicans.

00:56:24.420 Unfortunately, the family fight got put into a book called The New Testament that lasts forever.

00:56:30.160 And so for thousands of years, Christians would read this not with a sense of, oh, that's my Jewish brother and I'm fighting him.

00:56:35.720 But that's the person who killed and denied the God that I believe in.

00:56:41.440 And that's a very powerful thing to, I mean, the history of Christian anti-Semitism is long and very ugly.

00:56:49.940 They've had a lot of beef.

00:56:50.620 And Christians and then Muslims have their own history of anti-Semitism, not for most of history as bad as Christian, but still.

00:56:58.700 And when you put that together and then Jews aren't allowed to own land in almost any land in medieval Europe.

00:57:06.500 So what do you do if you don't own land?

00:57:08.480 You become a money lender.

00:57:09.460 It's the only other job you can do.

00:57:10.740 You can't farm the land.

00:57:12.220 You can't grow.

00:57:13.000 So Jews were money. 0.97

00:57:14.720 Nobody likes a money lender because then you owe them money.

00:57:18.000 And Jews, every time people owed too much money, you know what they would do? 1.00

00:57:21.920 They would kick the Jews out of the country. 0.97

00:57:23.300 Then they don't owe money anymore. 0.99

00:57:24.800 And so Jews got kicked from land to land to land to land.

00:57:28.620 And because they lived in all these different lands, it became easy to develop conspiracies about them.

00:57:35.100 That land, Spain, or not Spain, actually Spain kicked its Jews out in 1492.

00:57:40.120 But let's say that land X or Y that we kicked the Jews out. 0.99

00:57:44.000 Now they're attacking us. 0.96

00:57:45.000 Ah, it must be the Jews that did it. 1.00

00:57:46.420 And it's always, always great to have someone to blame your own problems on.

00:57:51.040 Well, yeah, everybody wants an enemy.

00:57:52.280 Everybody wants somebody to point the finger at.

00:57:53.920 So you put a lot of these things together and you get this enduring hatred and this very selective – like people don't go on the internet and say, you know what?

00:58:05.920 Jonas Salk gave us the polio vaccine and Einstein gave us modern relativity and Freud gave us psychology and Proust gave us the greatest modern novel.

00:58:16.400 No.

00:58:16.720 They say Jeffrey Epstein gave us pedophilia.

00:58:20.040 And you can do that with any group.

00:58:22.000 The difference is, of course, people don't do it with any group.

00:58:24.780 They don't look and say, okay, what white Anglo-Saxon Protestants have done terrible things? 0.97

00:58:29.120 Let's make a huge chart of all of them and put it on the internet and say, you see, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are terrible. 0.99

00:58:35.400 No, but they do it with Jews. 0.99

00:58:38.320 Yeah, that's interesting, man.

00:58:40.860 That's one way of thinking about it.

00:58:42.760 I mean, it's unfortunate too.

00:58:44.720 Sorry.

00:58:45.120 Yeah.

00:58:45.420 No, no, no.

00:58:46.260 I say weird sometimes.

00:58:48.080 It's like I'd never thought about it.

00:58:49.980 No, of course.

00:58:50.600 I mean, it's not like –

00:58:52.880 And I think some of – maybe like – I don't know if – like I don't notice – I mean, I grew up in a place where it was like racial division and stuff.

00:58:59.920 We didn't have any Jewish folks.

00:59:01.140 My mom dated a Jewish guy actually for a little bit named –

00:59:03.660 And he would drive so far to get gas that was a little cheaper, but we just thought it was funny and he got us tickets to like our first football game we ever went to and, you know, nice guy.

00:59:15.140 And he was black and Jewish.

00:59:18.300 I didn't even know that he could do that. 0.83

00:59:19.660 Yes, he could.

00:59:20.160 And then –

00:59:21.400 Well, that's the other thing is that Jews are white to the left, but they're not white to the right. 0.56

00:59:27.180 It's weird.

00:59:28.180 Like the Klan doesn't think of Jews as white, right?

00:59:30.740 But all those kids on campus were saying Jews are white colonialists.

00:59:33.780 Well, if you go to Israel, more than 50% of the Jews in Israel are what are called Jews of color. 0.75

00:59:39.480 Some from Ethiopia, the others from Arab lands.

00:59:42.140 Wow.

00:59:42.860 So –

00:59:43.260 J-O-C's, baby. 1.00

00:59:44.700 Yeah.

00:59:45.200 That's cool.

00:59:46.140 Yeah, they got some beautiful Jewish ladies I've seen on the internet. 1.00

00:59:50.040 Probably men too.

00:59:50.860 I haven't looked at them, but I believe that there are some.

00:59:52.840 We got to get you to Israel.

00:59:53.860 Yeah.

00:59:54.060 Hey, look, dude.

00:59:55.100 I could end up over there.

00:59:56.360 A Jewish lady asked me to marry her one time, but she only gave me like seven hours to decide, and I was like –

01:00:01.260 That's a little bit of a deadline there.

01:00:03.880 Oh, dude, I asked for more time, and she's like, I've had enough of you. 1.00

01:00:07.100 I'm like, well, then this is too much.

01:00:09.160 I think that you probably made a wise decision.

01:00:11.260 Anybody who gives you seven hours to decide.

01:00:13.620 I was like, yeah, this marriage wouldn't last.

01:00:16.280 Why do Jewish people have so much success? 1.00

01:00:20.660 Is that a fair question to ask you?

01:00:22.040 Sure.

01:00:22.780 Sure.

01:00:23.260 Because a lot of my Jewish friends are successful.

01:00:25.060 It's like, dude, the more places I go where it's like – I see like, oh, this is a Jewish business owner or a Jewish thinker, facilitator.

01:00:33.140 You know, it's almost like – sometimes I think of them as like glue-ish, right?

01:00:36.480 It's like they're kind of the – like they're just – they find ways to like create value, you know, like –

01:00:46.480 So what I would say to you, yeah.

01:00:48.220 I think first of all, what I would go back to what I said before about there's a tradition of literacy and they had to learn the cultural codes.

01:00:55.260 But remember that this is now.

01:00:58.020 And yes, that's true that certain Jewish groups in the past have had.

01:01:01.720 But there are – I mean like if you think about the Jews of Eastern Europe, the ones who were killed by them, they were poor as dirt. 0.92

01:01:09.200 I mean they lived on farms.

01:01:10.940 They like barely eked out a living.

01:01:12.860 I can't even imagine that.

01:01:14.120 That's crazy.

01:01:14.520 But that's true.

01:01:14.880 Even now.

01:01:15.560 Even now there's like I think 10 to 12 percent of Jews live under the poverty line.

01:01:20.080 They're always – but the people that you know, of course, are the people who are successful.

01:01:23.160 And there are a disproportionate to our own proportion successful Jews.

01:01:28.320 Like I think it's like 20 to 22 percent of all the Nobel Prizes in the world have been won by Jews even though we're 0.1 percent of the world. 0.99

01:01:35.700 Damn, dude. 0.99

01:01:36.320 Which is amazing. 1.00

01:01:37.100 We got to fucking pull it. 0.99

01:01:37.900 Somebody has got to start a comeback or something. 0.99

01:01:39.520 But here's the question.

01:01:41.280 In reaction to that, if you knew that about another group, would you automatically think well of them or think badly of them?

01:01:49.180 The weird thing is that people look at that at Jews and they think badly of them.

01:01:52.540 If I told you, for example, which is true, the highest ethnic or racial or religious earning group in America is – do you know?

01:02:01.980 Hold on.

01:02:02.360 Give me 30 seconds.

01:02:03.120 Okay.

01:02:03.340 The highest racial or ethnic earning group in America is – I would probably say Persians. 0.89

01:02:13.120 Nigerians.

01:02:13.720 No way.

01:02:14.440 Because of this email stuff?

01:02:15.360 Yeah.

01:02:15.500 Isn't that wild?

01:02:16.460 No.

01:02:17.020 Not the – I'm talking about in America.

01:02:18.700 Oh, living here.

01:02:20.080 Yeah, living here.

01:02:21.320 Wow.

01:02:21.840 Nigerians, which is amazing. 1.00

01:02:24.760 And yet nobody says, those damn Nigerians. 1.00

01:02:27.540 Yeah. 1.00

01:02:27.960 They take all our jobs.

01:02:29.460 They do all these – no.

01:02:30.540 There's – it's because there are these ancient prejudices that then people turn against the Jews.

01:02:36.760 I would think if people – I mean, look, the people who took their money from Harvard and Penn and so on, their grandparents weren't wealthy.

01:02:44.080 Right. 0.98

01:02:44.900 I mean, these are people who made tremendous success and then turned around and turned philanthropic and then people say, look at those dirty Jews. 1.00

01:02:52.020 Yeah. 0.99

01:02:52.260 And I think, what do you want from us?

01:02:55.680 How do you win?

01:02:56.140 What do you want from the world?

01:02:56.800 What do you do?

01:02:57.080 Right, exactly.

01:02:58.080 I mean, nobody looks at Bill Gates, again, and says dirty wasps.

01:03:01.680 Yeah. 0.99

01:03:01.940 They look at Mark Zuckerberg and say dirty Jew. 0.97

01:03:04.320 What does wasps mean? 0.99

01:03:05.760 White American –

01:03:05.940 White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

01:03:07.420 Oh, they do?

01:03:08.100 Yep.

01:03:08.840 Wasps.

01:03:09.240 Yeah.

01:03:10.740 Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

01:03:12.000 It's interesting to think about – I appreciate you talking about it with me, too.

01:03:14.460 Yeah, of course.

01:03:14.480 Because it's like, I always just get afraid – like, sometimes I think in Hollywood, like, you know, like, there's just a lot of Jewish folks. 1.00

01:03:20.500 It's been a – you know.

01:03:21.520 Yep.

01:03:21.720 And it's – I don't have any thoughts about it, except that sometimes you, like – so at that point, you build stereotype.

01:03:28.860 You build, like – you know, you wonder, like, oh, well, do they have something against me if I'm not having successes?

01:03:34.380 So I can see how some people's schools of thoughts are, like, in Hollywood.

01:03:39.580 Well, also, we really – we have a tendency to group groups together.

01:03:44.840 So people will say this about the blacks and this about the Mexicans and this about the Jews and this about – on and on.

01:03:50.000 About the hicks, about the – you know, it doesn't matter. 0.98

01:03:53.000 Yeah, hicks, gays, people with freckles, Irish, Jesus Christ. 1.00

01:03:56.660 I know. 0.97

01:03:57.280 What are they doing?

01:03:57.920 And so – and so that's also something that everybody fights against.

01:04:01.780 Some of it is normal.

01:04:02.400 Some of it is normal, but it's also – we know, like, we know that it's not really – that it doesn't really work.

01:04:09.380 Like, do some groups loosely have characteristics?

01:04:12.460 Yes, but not enough that, like –

01:04:14.920 Yeah.

01:04:15.220 You know, this group is good and this group is bad, and also those characteristics change.

01:04:19.640 I know that this shocks people, but when Jews first came in the early 1900s, they didn't want to let them in for immigration because they had low IQs.

01:04:27.280 No way.

01:04:27.780 That was what they said.

01:04:29.900 Because we don't realize how quickly cultural stereotypes change from one thing to another.

01:04:36.240 It's interesting.

01:04:37.100 Yeah.

01:04:37.420 Yeah, and it's tough, too, because I don't know a ton of, like, Palestinian – you know, it's like I have more of a –

01:04:42.960 Palestinians are amazing people.

01:04:44.640 Yeah.

01:04:44.780 I have to say the Palestinians I know –

01:04:46.840 Tell me about that.

01:04:47.740 Are –

01:04:48.300 Because, yeah, I don't even know – it's like I have a couple of friends that are part Palestinian maybe.

01:04:53.200 There are now, like, a bunch of Palestinian poets and writers that are getting translated into English that are just, like, incredibly gifted, thoughtful, insightful people, and it makes me that much sadder that, you know, they don't have a leadership.

01:05:07.420 That they deserve.

01:05:09.560 And, like, that's what I wish for very much.

01:05:13.680 How do we get there?

01:05:14.840 I don't know.

01:05:16.040 To be – you know, and it can be vague.

01:05:17.780 You know, we don't know.

01:05:18.800 I think that you probably – you know, there is this – there's – there have to be sort of entrepreneurs of courage.

01:05:29.660 Like, how did Egypt make peace with Israel?

01:05:31.680 Because one guy said, you know what?

01:05:33.840 I'm not going to – I'm not going to – I'm going to Israel.

01:05:36.740 And Sadat went to Israel and he changed.

01:05:39.140 And people saw that, oh, my God, you can do this.

01:05:41.600 So you need these people who are willing to stand up and say, we've been doing this wrong.

01:05:48.540 I mean, where has it gotten us for the past 70 years to tell our kids we're going to one day destroy Israel, which is what the Palestinians have been telling their kids for 70 years. 0.98

01:05:58.720 We're going to destroy Israel just one day. 0.99

01:06:00.200 When you grow up, you're going to fight. 1.00

01:06:02.000 You're going to destroy Israel. 0.96

01:06:02.880 And where has it gotten you?

01:06:04.080 I mean, you saw that chart.

01:06:05.300 It's gotten you less and less and less land and less and less and less happiness and most tragically fewer children.

01:06:12.680 So – and when I say fewer children, by the way, when people say that there's a genocide, you know, the two of the five –

01:06:19.140 I thought that.

01:06:19.780 The two of the five fastest-growing populations in the world are the West Bank and Gaza.

01:06:25.260 So if Israel is actually prosecuting a genocide, they're doing a very bad job of it.

01:06:29.180 Oh, that West Bank and Gaza are Palestinian. 1.00

01:06:31.080 Are Palestinian.

01:06:31.760 Wow.

01:06:31.900 They're doing a very bad job of it.

01:06:33.380 They're making love over there.

01:06:34.720 Yes, because they – and there are millions of people and like you just want – I mean, you want them to have –

01:06:40.980 I'd be able to – it's a good pick-up line too.

01:06:42.060 It's like we got about 40 minutes, babe, you know.

01:06:44.080 Let's figure this out.

01:06:45.060 What is – what can Israel do, you think, differently?

01:06:49.660 Are you allowed to comment on that kind of stuff?

01:06:51.280 Oh, sure.

01:06:51.780 Absolutely.

01:06:52.740 I think Israel – I think Israel is – so there are two things I'll say.

01:06:58.980 One is hard to change and one is easier to change.

01:07:02.640 You know, when you go out – when you get out of high school in America, you go to college. 1.00

01:07:08.280 And we all know college kids, even though they can be very talented and very smart and very – they're also stupid. 1.00

01:07:13.720 And they're not only stupid because they're 17, 18. 1.00

01:07:17.520 Naive. 1.00

01:07:18.040 Especially guys.

01:07:19.060 But both.

01:07:19.900 Yeah.

01:07:21.260 But when you get out of high school in Israel, you go into the army.

01:07:24.180 And you give a 17 or 18-year-old an Uzi, a machine gun, and you put them at a border guard.

01:07:32.220 He's still a 17-year-old.

01:07:33.980 And then a 50-year-old Palestinian comes and a 17-year-old should not be able to control the life of a 50-year-old man or woman. 1.00

01:07:42.080 But that's the situation.

01:07:43.700 So first of all, the situation is messed up.

01:07:46.620 And that's – and that is like intrinsic to it and that's tragic.

01:07:51.080 Messed up in the sense of the organization of the – how they're running the idea.

01:07:54.480 In the sense of that armies are young and armies control people who are not young.

01:07:59.540 And that built into that is this humiliation and humiliation is the worst.

01:08:04.340 Yeah.

01:08:04.700 Humiliation is the worst.

01:08:05.980 Well, every 17-year-old wants to be Rambo.

01:08:07.460 Yeah, exactly.

01:08:09.120 And what Israel could do better, I believe, is there are lots and lots and lots of small ways in which they could constantly make it clear that they esteem the people and that they respect them and that they want to help them.

01:08:25.300 Now, it is true that the people who did that most in Israel were actually the people whose kibbutzim were attacked on October 7th.

01:08:32.520 Those were all peaceniks on the border. 0.79

01:08:34.340 They were some of the people who were kidnapped and some of the people who were killed were people who ferried medicine to Gaza.

01:08:41.100 But still, even so, I still think it is true that it's incredibly important when you're in the driver's seat to constantly turn around and say, I really want this to be different.

01:08:53.800 I hope for the day that it will be different.

01:08:55.300 And I think that Israel has not done that as much as it could or as much as it should.

01:09:00.100 The people or the leadership?

01:09:01.180 Both, both, because there's this great line from the poet Yates, who, after all, was in Ireland and saw trouble, what they call the troubles for years.

01:09:09.600 He said, too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart.

01:09:14.200 And like at a certain point, you just go, I don't care.

01:09:16.880 I don't care.

01:09:17.460 Those people, I don't care.

01:09:18.860 And that's, you have to fight against that.

01:09:20.880 You have to.

01:09:22.160 Yeah, things edify kind of in you.

01:09:24.040 Edify, is that the right word you think?

01:09:25.500 Solidify.

01:09:25.860 Solidify in you, like if, they calcify kind of, you know?

01:09:30.240 Right, and like you can't stand your neighbor.

01:09:32.620 You know, when you first met them, you brought them a cup of sugar.

01:09:35.060 But now, you just can't stand, or you're a landlord or whatever.

01:09:38.680 And it's very human.

01:09:41.640 But if we don't overcome that, it's, we go the way of the grave.

01:09:46.100 America and Britain, after World War II, or is it World War I, when they freed?

01:09:52.800 World War I.

01:09:53.460 Okay, after World War I, they helped create the space for Israel in the current space of Israel.

01:10:01.040 Especially Britain, yeah.

01:10:03.680 Does, do you feel like they should help now?

01:10:06.240 Is that part of it?

01:10:07.060 After World War II, well, after World War II was the actual creation of the state.

01:10:10.880 After World War I was when Britain first did all the initiatives to do it.

01:10:14.660 But they try, they do try.

01:10:16.900 America has tried again and again and again.

01:10:20.140 They have.

01:10:20.480 To do this, they have.

01:10:22.660 But also part of this is, part of this is that for a long time, the Soviet Union was the ally of the Arab nations.

01:10:32.400 And the Soviet Union also was deeply anti-Jewish and deeply anti-capitalist and anti-Western.

01:10:39.280 There's a lot of Jewish people in the Soviet Union.

01:10:41.540 There were.

01:10:42.180 Oh, there were.

01:10:42.640 But they all left, yeah.

01:10:43.580 So now they, so now they, I think that there really has to be like an ideological change, which is the kind of thing that you see happening in Saudi Arabia.

01:10:53.540 With MBS, he's really trying to change his country.

01:10:56.140 And now all of a sudden-

01:10:56.920 What's the name?

01:10:56.940 I'm sorry to repeat.

01:10:57.680 His name is Mohammed bin Salim.

01:10:59.900 Mohammed bin Salim. 0.94

01:11:01.240 In Saudi Arabia.

01:11:02.120 Right.

01:11:02.440 There he is.

01:11:02.920 Mohammed bin Salim in Al Saud.

01:11:04.560 He's like, for example, women can now drive in Saudi Arabia.

01:11:07.040 I know that that seems like, but that's a huge thing, which is the other part of it is that the culture-

01:11:12.220 Yeah, I would not want to be there the first week.

01:11:13.460 I'll tell you that.

01:11:13.940 The culture, no, the culture- 0.90

01:11:14.620 No offense, ladies. 0.99

01:11:15.680 The culture in the West Bank and Gaza, to women, to women is, I mean, women are very second-class citizens there, and LGBTQs have no rights, quite the opposite. 0.97

01:11:29.500 So I think that there needs to be like a general sort of reckoning with the culture and an openness that would allow people to live in peace.

01:11:42.800 And you think, so the responsibility really falls kind of 50-50, do you believe?

01:11:46.240 No.

01:11:46.920 I'm going to, I know people will disagree with me.

01:11:49.480 I'm going to say 80-20.

01:11:50.520 I really think if tomorrow the Palestinians said, we want peace, we don't want to destroy you, we want to live in peace, and we want to thrive, there would be peace, and they would thrive.

01:12:01.260 Is there a way for them to even like verbalize that to the-

01:12:04.980 Only if they have the leaders who promise it, because nobody's going to believe it if just-

01:12:09.720 I mean, there are many people who say it, but unless the leaders promise it, it's not going to happen.

01:12:14.540 Right.

01:12:15.120 And the leaders are Hamas.

01:12:17.160 Hamas- 0.96

01:12:17.940 Is there a president outside of Hamas?

01:12:19.380 There is.

01:12:19.920 There is Abu Mazen in the Palestinian Authority, but he's in his 80s.

01:12:25.200 He's thought of as corrupt and not good. 1.00

01:12:26.600 What the fuck's he doing? 1.00

01:12:28.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:12:28.320 I can't imagine that somebody would have a leader in their 80s.

01:12:30.560 How could that happen?

01:12:31.400 Right.

01:12:32.100 Yeah.

01:12:32.660 So- 0.99

01:12:33.160 What is he just milling around a fucking bocce ball court? 0.99

01:12:35.660 So it's- 1.00

01:12:36.500 Get a fucking microphone, homie. 1.00

01:12:38.320 This is crazy. 1.00

01:12:39.320 Mahmoud Abbas.

01:12:42.040 So-

01:12:43.380 And what does he say about it?

01:12:44.680 Well, this is a guy who did his PhD in, I don't want to get you canceled, but in Holocaust denial. 0.69

01:12:52.360 So I don't think that he's as sympathetic to Jews as he might be.

01:12:56.760 I see.

01:12:57.640 But he has been-

01:12:59.580 I can't-

01:12:59.860 I didn't know they had a PhD for that.

01:13:00.680 I think he has been okay in the sense that he has done some cooperation with Israel, but is he a peacemaker?

01:13:08.940 Has he really reached out?

01:13:10.360 Is he a courageous, visionary leader?

01:13:12.340 No, which is why he's not. 0.92

01:13:14.180 I mean, and the Palestinian Authority is notoriously corrupt.

01:13:17.760 So he is not somebody who is going to be able to make peace. 0.95

01:13:23.500 But by the way, the corrupt-

01:13:25.900 I just want to say, just, you know, one of the presidents of Israel was put away for-

01:13:31.520 was put in jail for corruption.

01:13:33.300 And it was an Arab female Supreme Court justice that put him away. 0.94

01:13:38.380 So it's a very complex cultural picture over there.

01:13:43.180 It's not so easy.

01:13:44.720 So they rarely even have that.

01:13:46.280 Is that what you're saying?

01:13:46.740 An Arab female Supreme Court justice? 0.99

01:13:48.140 I'm saying that could happen in Israel, but it could never happen, you know.

01:13:51.340 When people say Israel is an apartheid state, it's kind of weird that you have Supreme Court

01:13:55.320 justices who are Arab, and Arab parties in the Knesset, in the parliament, and on and

01:14:00.780 on and on.

01:14:01.500 The Knesset is the Israeli parliament?

01:14:02.960 Yes.

01:14:03.380 Okay, cool.

01:14:04.520 Yeah, sometimes it's cool to learn a new term or something.

01:14:08.700 Say if you are a Palestine supporter, right? 0.60

01:14:11.880 How do you just still be supportive of your Jewish friends?

01:14:16.300 You know, like, is there ways that people can, like, manage that with their friends?

01:14:20.240 Or should they, like, it's very painful.

01:14:23.100 What's the difference between Israel, Jewish, Zion? 0.72

01:14:25.540 What is the difference between some of that?

01:14:26.900 Okay, I'll answer both of those.

01:14:28.840 I'll answer both of those, Greg.

01:14:29.580 Okay, thank you.

01:14:31.520 Zionism is the traditional Jewish desire to return to the land of Israel.

01:14:36.120 It has different forms.

01:14:37.400 It has a political form.

01:14:38.360 It has a religious form, but it's the same basic thing.

01:14:40.580 So, in theory, some Jews say they're not Zionists, but the truth is that Zionism is 0.99

01:14:46.000 sort of a part and parcel of being Jewish.

01:14:49.460 It's the bread and the butter.

01:14:50.700 Right.

01:14:51.020 Okay.

01:14:51.320 What I would say to people who have Palestinian friends, have Israeli friends, and disagree,

01:14:58.280 is this—I was, until last year, the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.

01:15:06.180 I had a lot of people who, in that congregation, I had a large Persian community and others as

01:15:13.140 well as the Persian community who love Trump and other people in the congregation who hate

01:15:19.640 Trump, okay?

01:15:20.880 And I had to think to myself, like, this is one congregation.

01:15:25.340 I'm not going to take a political position, but I want to try to keep these people together.

01:15:29.640 And the way to do it is we always start with politics.

01:15:35.920 But if you start with, what do you like to eat?

01:15:39.320 How do you raise your kids?

01:15:41.220 What do you care about in your life?

01:15:43.020 In other words, the things that are closest to you, then you know someone before—I buried

01:15:48.680 their parents, and I married their children, and I went to visit them in the hospital.

01:15:53.100 And by then, when I found out their political opinions, I really didn't care because most

01:15:58.200 of the things in our life that affect our life are not what we see on the screen.

01:16:02.700 People scream about Trump all the time, but the truth is whether their kid is healthy or

01:16:08.220 sick means much more to their life than how they feel about him.

01:16:12.220 So I try to get people to live locally.

01:16:14.800 You can care about issues.

01:16:16.620 You should care about issues.

01:16:17.680 I do.

01:16:18.100 Obviously, we've spent the whole hour and a half talking about issues.

01:16:21.600 But I also know that I'm not going to judge you as a human being based on your disagreement

01:16:27.000 with me unless you hate.

01:16:30.200 Unless you hate.

01:16:31.020 Then I'll judge you.

01:16:31.820 Then I'll judge you.

01:16:32.540 Yeah.

01:16:32.660 But if it's a disagreement of goodness and of love, then we can argue all day long.

01:16:40.800 I got no problem with that.

01:16:42.300 Yeah.

01:16:43.200 Yeah.

01:16:43.640 I wish you could find ways to do that more.

01:16:45.660 I know.

01:16:45.980 Me too.

01:16:46.840 It makes me sad.

01:16:48.020 Yeah.

01:16:48.500 It is sad.

01:16:49.280 It's painful.

01:16:49.960 In this country too.

01:16:51.360 It's so painful because it's like it doesn't take—I mean, it's not the first time we've

01:16:58.360 seen someone try to assassinate a political figure, but it always reminds you that the

01:17:07.780 difference between chaos and civilization, it's really thin.

01:17:11.760 It's like a bullet away.

01:17:12.860 Yeah.

01:17:13.280 And that's scary.

01:17:14.180 Well, I've said that too.

01:17:14.480 It's like all that needs to happen is a couple of police stations need to get kind of commandeered.

01:17:19.160 Right.

01:17:19.640 And then it's—the game could change.

01:17:21.700 I know.

01:17:22.060 And you know one thing I noticed the other day, Rabbi Wolpe, was when that happened with

01:17:28.160 Trump, a lot of people were like—it didn't even make them feel like—it made them feel

01:17:33.300 like something.

01:17:34.220 But if that would have happened 20 years ago when I—you know, it would have—but it's

01:17:39.320 like we're almost—we've become so desensitized to, I don't know, pain.

01:17:44.700 I don't know what it is.

01:17:45.280 That's true.

01:17:45.560 And not only that, but don't forget, like in recent history, we've had other political

01:17:49.880 figures, Gabby Gifford, I don't remember—I can't remember the name of the Republican

01:17:54.420 senator who was shot at a baseball game.

01:17:56.680 It's not like—

01:17:57.220 Oh, was that um—

01:17:57.900 Who was that?

01:17:58.620 I went Don—no, not Don Mattingly or something.

01:18:01.260 Who was it?

01:18:02.160 Oh, Steve Scalise.

01:18:03.400 Right.

01:18:03.700 Steve Scalise, right.

01:18:04.620 Somebody popped off on that bad boy, dude.

01:18:06.880 What was he in, Shortstop?

01:18:10.320 Shortstop, this Sig Sauer, baby.

01:18:12.800 They really—that's insane.

01:18:13.980 Yeah.

01:18:14.200 So I'm saying it's like, this is happening, and we have to be aware of it, and it's pretty

01:18:19.040 awful.

01:18:19.680 Yeah.

01:18:20.060 You know.

01:18:21.120 Why are—why do—a lot of aid goes to Israel from America.

01:18:25.200 Yeah.

01:18:25.320 People talk about that a lot.

01:18:26.560 You know, it's like a point of like, why are we giving money to Israel?

01:18:29.340 You know, why are we giving money to other countries?

01:18:31.700 Why—is there a bigger connection that we have with Israel?

01:18:34.800 Like, are they the footprint in the Middle East?

01:18:37.480 Or are they like the team made in the Middle East?

01:18:39.980 Or why is that? 1.00

01:18:40.760 Because a lot of people are like, well, shit, we have people that are bleeding to death 0.99

01:18:44.460 on our streets, but we're sending billions of dollars to Israel. 0.99

01:18:47.720 So there are two things to know, first of all, about foreign aid.

01:18:50.760 Foreign aid is like 1%, less than 1%.

01:18:54.660 I'd love for you to look this up, of our budget.

01:18:57.240 We think we're spending so much money on—it's nothing.

01:18:59.780 It's negligible.

01:19:00.500 That's a great question.

01:19:01.360 Look that up, Nick.

01:19:02.160 And we get what percentage of the budget?

01:19:04.680 Less than 2%.

01:19:05.840 U.S. government's foreign aid budget is typically less than 2% of total federal spending.

01:19:10.120 In 2022, the U.S. obligated $70.4 billion in foreign aid, which is about 1% of total spending.

01:19:17.120 So that's first of all.

01:19:18.200 When people say it's all this money, if only we brought it home, that's not true.

01:19:21.180 It's less than 1% of the budget.

01:19:23.160 That's not going to change everything.

01:19:24.260 But you buy a lot of influence around the world, and most of the money that goes to Israel, we get in arms purchases back and also in innovation back.

01:19:35.600 I mean, Google has offices there.

01:19:37.460 Microsoft has offices there.

01:19:39.380 Like, Israel is called Startup Nation because, like, your nav system was built in Israel, and, you know, a lot of other technological innovations were created in Israel.

01:19:53.160 So there's that.

01:19:57.080 But also, I think the reason America is tied to Israel is not because there are Jews who lobby Congress, because there are lots of lobbies in the world.

01:20:06.120 You know, there's a huge cigarette lobby, and yet at a certain point, people said, you know, let's put warnings on cigarettes and cut down cigarette.

01:20:12.560 And they had a lot more money to lobby.

01:20:15.040 It has to be a community of interest or people won't care.

01:20:18.480 Yeah, because there's, like, AIPAC people talk about a lot recently.

01:20:20.900 Right. But the only reason people listen to AIPAC is because AIPAC makes the case that here is a country in the Middle East that shares your Western values, that supports America, that listens in.

01:20:31.640 You need a local listener in in the Middle East that can actually, you know, infiltrate these various countries.

01:20:38.820 Look, if Iran gets a nuclear bomb, yes, it's terrible for Israel.

01:20:42.100 It's not good for America either.

01:20:44.160 Right. 0.99

01:20:44.340 Iran says we're the big Satan and Israel's the little Satan. 0.64

01:20:48.140 So our money to Israel is truly, I think, an investment.

01:20:52.980 It's not just a gift.

01:20:55.040 It's an investment.

01:20:55.760 Yep.

01:20:56.480 Understood.

01:20:57.260 Do we give money to Palestine as well?

01:20:59.560 Billions.

01:21:00.240 Billions of money.

01:21:01.040 Really?

01:21:01.300 How many dollars do we give to Palestine, as you will see?

01:21:05.660 And yet, despite this, and this is just the United States, that's additional.

01:21:12.520 We give billions of dollars to Palestine.

01:21:14.500 The United States.

01:21:15.520 I want to read it.

01:21:16.020 I'm sorry, Mr. Wolpe, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

01:21:17.180 No, no, no.

01:21:17.640 But I was just going to say this is just the past eight months.

01:21:19.780 But I'm talking about every year how much money.

01:21:23.880 Since October 7th, a little over a billion.

01:21:26.840 Since October 7th, a little over a billion.

01:21:28.680 And for Israel, it's $13.5 billion.

01:21:31.740 And then also the UN and other agencies give money.

01:21:35.000 No one else gives money to Israel, obviously.

01:21:36.760 But other countries give money to Palestine as well.

01:21:39.260 So we're the only country that gives money to Israel?

01:21:41.580 Yes.

01:21:41.980 We're not the only country that trades with Israel, but gives money to Israel.

01:21:44.920 Oh, interesting.

01:21:45.920 So there's a real allyship there then.

01:21:48.320 Oh, it's very deep.

01:21:49.280 In fact, Walter Russell Mead, who is the foreign affairs columnist of the Wall Street Journal,

01:21:56.140 just wrote a long book that I actually blurbed.

01:22:00.660 And I can't remember now the name of it.

01:22:02.360 I think it has the word Ark in the title.

01:22:04.580 But it's all about the Ark of a Covenant.

01:22:08.400 There it is.

01:22:08.800 The Ark of a Covenant.

01:22:09.540 And it's all about the long history of Israel-United States relationship.

01:22:16.200 And what he says is basically what Kissinger used to say.

01:22:20.300 Countries don't have friends.

01:22:21.280 They have interests.

01:22:22.580 And if Israel wasn't in the interest of the United States, the United States wouldn't be 0.92

01:22:26.300 supporting Israel.

01:22:27.020 Sometimes it feels like, because there's so many successful Jewish people in the U.S., 1.00

01:22:35.140 it feels like that America kind of has become just like a LLC or something.

01:22:42.840 Do you feel like that Israel owns America now? 0.99

01:22:47.340 Is that a crazy question?

01:22:48.480 Yeah, it is actually.

01:22:49.980 Okay.

01:22:51.220 I mean, there's never been a Jewish president.

01:22:54.740 There's never been a Jewish vice president.

01:22:57.020 Have we ever tried?

01:22:57.920 Have we ever, has any, have a Jewish president ever run?

01:23:00.140 Did Bloomberg almost won?

01:23:01.260 Was he Jewish or not?

01:23:02.140 Yeah, Bloomberg.

01:23:03.020 Yes, Bloomberg is Jewish.

01:23:04.100 He didn't really run that hard.

01:23:04.760 He ran.

01:23:05.360 Well, he ran as hard as he could.

01:23:06.560 But the point is, he didn't win.

01:23:09.360 The majority of people who own wealth in America are not Jewish.

01:23:13.260 If you look at the top 20 families, there are a number of Jews on them.

01:23:15.800 But the majority aren't.

01:23:17.680 So the idea, again.

01:23:19.840 Maybe that's a stereotype?

01:23:20.960 It's not a stereotype.

01:23:21.980 It's conspiracy thinking.

01:23:23.300 Okay.

01:23:23.580 Which is actually more dangerous in some ways than a stereotype.

01:23:25.940 No group runs America.

01:23:28.800 You hear all the time that like this group does or that group does or those kinds of

01:23:33.600 conspiracies.

01:23:33.660 I hope you don't ask that I asked.

01:23:34.660 No, no, no, no.

01:23:35.420 I actually am really glad you asked.

01:23:36.800 I think it's really important.

01:23:37.600 Yeah, I'm just trying to be able to like.

01:23:38.380 I think it's really important.

01:23:40.060 Conspiracy theories are almost always based on some previous prejudice that people have.

01:23:47.580 Or would you even say in the beginning, what was the first thing we said?

01:23:49.560 We've almost gone full circle here.

01:23:50.720 Or conspiracy theories are based sometimes on?

01:23:54.380 Well, conspiracy theories are a desire to do two things.

01:23:57.980 One is to explain a world that's inexplicable.

01:24:00.100 Why do these things happen?

01:24:01.580 I know there are complex causes, but I'd like a simple one.

01:24:04.460 Right.

01:24:04.740 And the other thing is it relieves you of any responsibility.

01:24:09.000 Everything that's bad that happens, it's those other people that are doing it.

01:24:12.300 Yeah.

01:24:12.500 But I got to tell you, I've been a rabbi now for decades.

01:24:17.000 I know many of the most successful and powerful Jews in the world.

01:24:21.340 Some of them I know very well.

01:24:23.300 They haven't let me in on the conspiracy.

01:24:25.780 And I mean, I would love to know.

01:24:28.300 Okay.

01:24:28.680 No, that's cool to know. 0.99

01:24:29.760 Because sometimes you're like, yeah, you just, I think, I think sometimes that's, some of that's Hollywood shit. 0.98

01:24:35.700 It's like, you just feel like that since so many people are Jewish, sometimes you feel like, oh, they all kind of work together. 0.98

01:24:41.880 And that you, if you're not Jewish, sometimes you feel like they don't care or that you're an outsider.

01:24:47.240 And some of that could be your own thinking.

01:24:49.220 It could be.

01:24:49.840 And there certainly is a function that every group works that way.

01:24:54.240 But if you go to most of America.

01:24:55.520 If you go to a farm and it's a lot of farmers and it's a lot of like Baptist farmers, they're going to, the same type of behavior is going to happen. 1.00

01:25:01.380 I say that a lot.

01:25:02.440 You see Jews if you go to LA, New York, Chicago, Miami. 1.00

01:25:06.800 Yeah.

01:25:07.000 But you know, like growing up in Louisiana.

01:25:12.100 Yeah.

01:25:12.560 We had two, maybe two Jewish people maybe.

01:25:15.120 And one guy, I don't even think he was.

01:25:16.540 Somebody just wrote Jewish person on his back or whatever.

01:25:19.660 So it's, but no, I think it's great.

01:25:24.220 Actually, it's much better to ask even the really difficult questions.

01:25:28.220 The questions that might be offensive and let somebody answer them than to leave them unasked.

01:25:33.280 Because then, you know, you think, ah, he had no answer for that one.

01:25:37.920 That's why he didn't say that.

01:25:39.140 Yeah.

01:25:39.880 I think it's great.

01:25:40.180 Yeah, no, I don't ever think like that.

01:25:41.320 I think like, okay, what am I?

01:25:43.680 Maybe a little bit scared to ask right now.

01:25:45.780 Or what it was like.

01:25:46.980 Well, that's the other thing I was going to say is when you talked about how it's hard sometimes to talk about Jews.

01:25:50.700 It's like every group is so sensitive now.

01:25:55.380 So sensitive.

01:25:56.380 Yeah.

01:25:57.580 Yeah, you used to be able to make fun of like things.

01:25:59.560 I know.

01:26:00.040 I think it's coming back a little bit.

01:26:01.400 Listen, Don Rickles.

01:26:02.800 I don't know if you remember.

01:26:03.560 He was a member of my congregation.

01:26:06.200 No way.

01:26:07.160 You saw him there?

01:26:07.960 Oh, yeah.

01:26:08.580 He was merciless.

01:26:10.040 First time he met me.

01:26:11.000 Okay?

01:26:11.320 I'm the rabbi.

01:26:12.380 First time he met me.

01:26:13.360 I was young, obviously, the first time he met me.

01:26:15.960 I have never, and I'm introduced to Don Rickles.

01:26:18.360 I'm like very intimidated.

01:26:19.460 He looks at me for a second.

01:26:20.880 He goes, don't worry.

01:26:21.900 Your skin will clear up. 0.93

01:26:23.000 That was the first thing.

01:26:24.540 The first thing.

01:26:26.100 Just an error.

01:26:27.020 Yeah, right.

01:26:27.900 And I just, and of course, I cracked up.

01:26:29.680 Yeah.

01:26:30.200 But it's like, it's a shame that people can't.

01:26:34.380 I think we're getting back to it. 0.97

01:26:36.200 I think a lot of it has just been just fucking some of society. 0.98

01:26:40.660 Sorry. 0.98

01:26:41.260 Some of society, sir, just like of, yeah, like every, like, I don't know.

01:26:47.200 We got into this crazy stuff in the media.

01:26:49.740 Things used to be able to be funnier.

01:26:51.500 Now, live comedy, I think, is still very good.

01:26:53.460 It is very, yes.

01:26:53.720 I think it's the stuff that you, you know.

01:26:55.780 That one person can object to and put on social media or two people.

01:27:00.700 I mean, obviously, there are things you can say that are truly objectionable.

01:27:03.620 It's not, I'm like, I'm a rabbi.

01:27:05.780 I take things seriously.

01:27:08.060 But you have to be able to laugh at yourself.

01:27:10.420 You really do.

01:27:11.380 If you can't, then you'll just find that other people do it for you.

01:27:15.740 And when it comes to like different, it's like, in the end, your thought always has to

01:27:20.260 be when it comes to different groups, whether it's Jewish people, black people, illiterate 0.96

01:27:25.640 people, Chinese or whatever, women, men, we all have to live together in the world, right? 0.95

01:27:32.980 And so it's like, I think when I was younger, I was probably maybe like a little more dumb 0.84

01:27:38.940 about stuff or whatever. 0.94

01:27:40.300 We all were.

01:27:40.900 But yeah.

01:27:41.360 We all were.

01:27:41.900 Right.

01:27:42.280 But then as you get older, you're like, well, the only way this all, it either goes left

01:27:47.600 or it goes like straight.

01:27:49.380 It kind of conjoins more, you know?

01:27:50.820 Yeah.

01:27:50.900 The world is a boat.

01:27:52.020 Yeah.

01:27:52.220 And you know, you can't drill a hole only under your seat.

01:27:55.580 If it goes down, it goes down for everybody.

01:27:57.580 Hmm.

01:27:58.380 Yeah.

01:27:59.640 That's interesting.

01:28:00.300 And that kind of keeps us all having, it should keep us all making sure that our neighbor

01:28:07.160 has a life vest in a way.

01:28:08.380 Yeah, exactly.

01:28:09.200 Nice.

01:28:09.840 You know, because that's really important.

01:28:11.720 If it goes down for one of us, it can go down for all of us.

01:28:15.820 You wrote a book called Why Faith Matters.

01:28:18.540 Yeah.

01:28:19.000 And after having some health issues.

01:28:20.880 Yeah.

01:28:22.740 Can you tell me just a little bit about that?

01:28:25.000 I had a brain tumor and then I had lymphoma.

01:28:27.320 Um, so I had cancer, I had a couple of cancers.

01:28:31.180 Um, and, and afterwards there were all these, I mean, it's not as popular now, but there

01:28:36.000 were all these people who were like professional atheists, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris,

01:28:41.200 Richard Dawkins, a couple others.

01:28:42.940 And, and what they were describing about religion wasn't at all the religion that I experienced

01:28:48.060 when I was sick.

01:28:48.820 Cause the religion I experienced when I was sick was like people gather around you, they

01:28:52.920 help you, they care about you.

01:28:54.840 Like people in my congregation, I know they've been giving people meals for years and years

01:28:59.780 and years who are in trouble.

01:29:01.180 It was a human thing.

01:29:01.940 And there's a human thing in it, but it's done also out of faith that this is what God

01:29:05.780 wants you to do.

01:29:06.600 And like that other people are in the image of God.

01:29:09.080 And so I wrote this book, like, I, I mean, I talk about science and faith and other questions

01:29:14.340 that people have and why God allows bad things to happen and so on.

01:29:17.060 But essentially I want people to understand, like, it's very hard to create that kind of

01:29:21.940 lasting community outside of a, of a house of worship, outside of a synagogue, a church,

01:29:27.120 a mosque.

01:29:27.560 Um, and, and that these are really the people who will, you know, one day you're like your

01:29:34.560 gym is going to close, but there'll always be a house of worship.

01:29:38.520 And if you come in, you, you get accepted and you belong.

01:29:42.340 And so the book is about the different ways in our lives, um, that faith matters.

01:29:47.800 And, and, and one story that I tell in there, which actually is very apropos of everything

01:29:53.300 we've been talking about is this guy, an old story, uh, about a guy who looks up at

01:29:58.880 the heavens and he says, God, there's so much trouble and there's so much pain and

01:30:01.400 there's so much war in your world.

01:30:03.300 Why don't you send help?

01:30:04.420 And God says, I did, I sent you.

01:30:07.340 And I feel like that sense of personal agency, that's really important.

01:30:12.200 Wow.

01:30:13.300 Yeah.

01:30:13.700 And it also even makes you feel not some responsibility a little bit, but the other part

01:30:20.700 of that is it makes you feel, um, purposeful, you know, or like you were chosen.

01:30:25.920 Yep.

01:30:26.700 Yeah.

01:30:27.240 Wow.

01:30:27.600 That's pretty cool.

01:30:28.420 I did.

01:30:28.720 I sent you, um, how do you put together a sermon?

01:30:32.960 We're going to wrap up in a minute.

01:30:34.120 I just, uh, um, and if it's too big of a question, you just saw it.

01:30:38.280 That's how, um, I think of a theme and a story and then I, um, I speak more or less

01:30:44.520 spontaneously.

01:30:45.260 I speak from, you'll start something maybe with a note or two.

01:30:48.000 Okay.

01:30:48.260 And I'll get up with a note or two and I'll just go.

01:30:50.960 I don't know why, but from the time I was young, a lot, there are a lot of things that

01:30:56.420 I don't do well, but words don't fail me for whatever reason.

01:30:59.980 And I know if I have an idea, I can get up and I can give you my 15 minutes on the idea

01:31:05.040 and somehow it will tie together.

01:31:06.820 Um, and that's just, I've just been very lucky to be able to do that.

01:31:10.580 And I love to do it also.

01:31:12.040 I really do.

01:31:12.980 So.

01:31:13.340 So that's cool, man.

01:31:16.540 Um, yeah, it's interesting.

01:31:18.320 Cause I think I saw, I think a lot of my thoughts have just been like about like Israel, Palestine

01:31:23.860 is just like, yeah, feeling so much for the Palestinian people, you know?

01:31:27.660 And.

01:31:28.020 And I think that does you credit and I would never say, yeah, I would never say to somebody

01:31:32.640 they shouldn't feel, I mean, how could you not?

01:31:34.520 Right.

01:31:34.860 When people suffer, you know, the, the first reaction should be, that's terrible that people

01:31:40.440 are suffering.

01:31:41.260 Then you get to the causes, but the first reaction should just be, you know, that's awful.

01:31:45.640 Well, it's nice to have just some more, uh, it's nice to have, um, more information.

01:31:51.260 Yeah.

01:31:51.420 It's nice to have information from a Jewish person.

01:31:53.960 You're, you're fully Jewish. 0.99

01:31:55.340 I am fully Jewish.

01:31:56.360 It's nice to have information from a Jewish person.

01:31:58.560 And, um, yeah, it's just nice to learn.

01:32:01.080 Do you think Israel has a preference in, uh, the presidential election?

01:32:06.700 Hmm.

01:32:07.360 I think it depends which Israelis you ask.

01:32:10.180 Um, Trump has been pretty popular in Israel though.

01:32:13.540 He's gotten pretty high marks in part because a lot of, a lot of, uh, presidents promised

01:32:20.800 to move the embassy to Jerusalem and didn't.

01:32:23.020 And he did.

01:32:24.120 Um, and also because I think he eggs on, um, some belligerence in Israel and that makes

01:32:33.540 Israelis feel like, you know, we'll be okay with him.

01:32:36.560 So I think that that's probably true.

01:32:37.980 But ultimately what I always tell people, which I really deeply believe is true is that

01:32:43.540 the best president for Israel will be the best president for America because Israel needs 0.92

01:32:49.460 a strong America more than it needs any particular policy.

01:32:53.000 So I'm not here to tell you who the best president for America is, but whoever it is, that's who

01:32:58.180 I want for Israel because Israel needs America to be strong and prosperous and healthy in the

01:33:04.260 world.

01:33:04.580 Um, because it's by far Israel's major ally.

01:33:09.840 And so I want America to do well, not only because I'm an American, um, but also because

01:33:15.960 I think, and not only for Israel, but also I really, I like, I have a deep belief in America

01:33:22.360 as, you know, um, it's been called the last best hope of mankind.

01:33:27.900 I hope it's not the last hope, but I think it's the best.

01:33:31.460 And so when America is at its best, it's really a beacon for the world.

01:33:36.160 And for that, I want the best leadership we can have.

01:33:41.300 Um, what is a rabbi?

01:33:42.980 What do you, I know it's like a, it's like a priest, right?

01:33:45.240 It's like a priest.

01:33:46.520 Rabbi means teacher.

01:33:48.020 Okay.

01:33:48.740 So you do many of the things like you visit hospitals, you do weddings, you do funerals,

01:33:54.180 you do bar and bat mitzvahs, you do, you know, all those things you preach, um, and your

01:34:00.200 central role is to teach, to teach the Jewish tradition and to teach values and so on.

01:34:05.200 Um, and, uh, and I was lucky enough that I, my father was a rabbi.

01:34:11.540 His father, by the way, was a song and dance man.

01:34:13.700 He was a vaudevillian.

01:34:14.620 So maybe that's all the same thing.

01:34:16.120 I don't know.

01:34:16.880 Oh, it's interesting.

01:34:17.440 I always wondered.

01:34:18.360 Cause sometimes people tell me like, man, one day you should preach or pastor, you know,

01:34:21.280 or get into that world.

01:34:22.300 And I don't know really what God has in store for me, you know, like, but I do really,

01:34:26.480 there are moments where I'll be on stage doing comedy and I'll feel, um, like I wish what

01:34:32.520 I was saying was the most important thing it could be, not from me, but just whatever

01:34:38.280 needs to be said.

01:34:39.540 Yeah.

01:34:39.900 I wish that whatever I was saying, you know, like that God would use me to just, just make

01:34:45.540 it as important as possible.

01:34:46.680 What I will tell you is you never, you never know in this life who you've influenced and

01:34:51.440 how, like, you know, all of a sudden someone comes up to you, I'm sure.

01:34:54.720 And says, you know, remember that thing you said at a comedy show 12 years ago and you

01:34:58.780 don't remember at all, but they remember.

01:35:00.940 And they say that, that changed, that changed my life.

01:35:03.440 Cause you're like, you're in different places, different times.

01:35:05.640 I know we're ending, but I'll end with the story.

01:35:08.040 So there was a, there was a, a famous, he grew up to be a famous rabbi, but when he was

01:35:13.140 a kid, um, his name, he was called the seer of Lublin and he used to go into the forest.

01:35:18.460 And one day his father pulls him aside and he says, why do you keep going into the forest?

01:35:21.720 And he says, well, I go there to find God.

01:35:24.160 And his father said, that's beautiful.

01:35:25.700 But don't you know that God is the same everywhere?

01:35:27.560 And he says, well, God is, but I'm not.

01:35:30.380 And so you have to find the places in the world where you are at the place where you

01:35:36.240 can teach whatever it is you have to teach.

01:35:38.400 And maybe the comedy stage is the place where that you have found that you have to teach,

01:35:43.880 not for, it doesn't have to be a pulpit for everybody.

01:35:46.240 Everybody has their own place.

01:35:48.640 Yeah.

01:35:48.820 Sometimes we all feel, yeah.

01:35:50.300 Yeah.

01:35:50.480 Everybody has their own place.

01:35:51.900 Um, and so does Israel and so does Palestine and hopefully they'll figure it out. 0.91

01:35:55.980 Amen.

01:35:56.780 Amen.

01:35:57.940 Thank you, Rabbi David Wolpe.

01:35:59.340 We appreciate you.

01:36:00.180 Thank you.

01:36:00.900 Now I'm just falling on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

01:36:06.880 I must be cornerstone.

01:36:10.080 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.

01:36:17.600 I can feel it in my bones.

01:36:21.860 But it's gonna take...

01:36:24.080 You're welcome.

01:36:24.920 Amen.

01:36:25.460 Amen.

01:36:25.560 Amen.

01:36:26.340 Amen.

01:36:26.980 Amen.

01:36:27.000 Amen.

01:36:27.540 Amen.

01:36:27.880 Amen.

01:36:27.900 Amen.

01:36:29.720 prosperity is a원�78Y.

01:36:30.340 Amen.

01:36:31.840 Amen.

01:36:31.900 Amen.

01:36:32.220 Amen.

01:36:32.840 Amen.

01:36:33.740 Amen.

01:36:34.460 Amen.

01:36:34.860 Amen.

01:36:35.240 Amen.

01:36:35.740 Amen.

01:36:37.620 Amen.

01:36:38.280 Amen.

01:36:39.820 Amen.

01:36:40.800 Amen.

01:36:41.580 Amen.

01:36:42.260 Amen.

01:36:42.980 Amen.

01:36:43.160 Amen.

01:36:43.200 Amen.

01:36:43.340 Amen.

01:36:43.900 Amen.

01:36:44.400 Amen.

01:36:45.380 Amen.

01:36:45.940 Amen.

01:36:46.440 Amen.

01:36:47.340 Amen.

01:36:47.500 Amen.

01:36:48.120 Amen.

01:36:49.720 Amen.

01:36:50.140 Amen.

01:36:50.680 Amen.

01:36:51.200 Amen.

01:36:51.760 Amen.

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - July 30, 2024

E520 Rabbi David Wolpe

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Transcript