Rabbi David Wolpe has been called one of the most influential rabbis in America. Until recently, he led the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and has also taught at UCLA, Harvard Divinity School, and more. He s written 9 books, led numerous missions to Israel, and has seen a lot in his time.
00:04:41.800They feel like he's badly mishandled this.
00:04:46.020So – 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.
00:04:56.640How did he become so unfavorable do you feel like?
00:05:00.220I think honestly – I mean this is too easy but he stayed too long.
00:05:04.120It's like at a certain point you have to say I've done what I could.
00:05:09.240I'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.
00:06:13.880I 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.
00:06:24.860Incompetence because it's almost always incompetence.
00:06:27.340People think, oh, well, that's so suspicious that like – why did they leave the shooter on the roof for Trump?
00:06:35.840And I think because it's so easy to get stuff wrong.
00:06:40.440There 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.
00:06:50.360It'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.
00:08:55.460But 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.
00:09:19.440And so we're still – as you know, we're still fighting this.
00:09:22.140I mean, there are lawsuits now and testimony and –
00:10:12.880I 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.
00:10:30.620They were anti-American, anti-democratic, anti-Western.
00:10:34.760And so they don't want to hire from – I mean it's all part of the same complex.
00:13:15.420I don't know anyone who was reasonable, had a problem with the students protesting.
00:13:19.160I disagreed with a lot of what they said but protesting was fine.
00:13:23.100The 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.
00:13:36.720And 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.
00:13:46.460That'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.
00:14:05.020They were having the girls' soccer team when I went to LSU.
00:14:07.240They 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.
00:14:16.660And they were having all the girls take it and some of my friends were on there.
00:15:23.560I 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 –
00:15:30.020If 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.
00:15:37.580You might be upset but it would make perfect sense.
00:15:39.420Yeah, I have to be an understanding about it.
00:15:47.660It was Robert Kraft and Mark Rowan from Penn and Bill Ackman from Harvard.
00:15:52.360And 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.
00:16:01.580It's not like they weren't going to give to universities.
00:16:03.100They were going to give to different ones.
00:16:04.340So you don't think it was that people were protesting one way or the other about the conflict?
00:16:09.700It was more about how they were doing it and what the school was allowing?
00:16:16.980That was a big part of it, what the school was allowing and how they were doing it.
00:16:20.820Then there were two parts to the conflict and here some of your listeners might agree with me, some of them not.
00:16:26.140But I'll at least tell you what I think.
00:16:28.180If 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.
00:16:38.540That is – I mean that's as legitimate a protest as you could have.
00:16:42.060As 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.
00:16:53.680A lot of them wouldn't and I said to them, Assad in Syria called a half a million people.
00:16:59.920The Chinese are putting the Uyghurs into concentration camps.
00:17:37.360And 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.
00:17:51.700But put all of that together and I would say that's an anti-Semitic protest.
00:17:56.000There's enough proof of evidence for you to say that.
00:17:58.400Wow, I hadn't thought about a lot of that stuff.
00:18:00.880And 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?
00:18:09.120Because there's a lot of like – even – there's me, right?
00:18:38.960Biblical 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.
00:19:57.000And 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.
00:20:09.040There are – there is in Islamic law, if you ever held a land, you're not allowed to give it up.
00:20:14.660And if you give it up, you have to reconquer it.
00:20:16.420That 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.
00:21:06.320It 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.
00:23:31.720And there have been at least five – probably more, but at least five separate peace proposals that Israel has made to Palestinians.
00:23:40.440And they have said no each time for a variety of reasons for each one.
00:23:46.120But 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.
00:24:00.500The 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.
00:24:17.000Like, 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.
00:24:24.900And I know someone – when I was just in Israel now, someone told me that their friends have signs on the door, do not knock.
00:24:33.160If you come and visit them, you have to call them.
00:24:47.180Nobody wants this war except people who do, unfortunately.
00:24:52.080And 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.
00:25:06.680I would much rather be making peace than debate – I'd rather debate religion and not debate politics.
00:25:12.000But 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.
00:25:18.860I 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?
00:25:34.960And 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.
00:25:45.120But as a people and as leaders and people like Hamas, until they really want peace, it's impossible.
00:25:51.840I 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?
00:25:59.840I'm – you have to know the people on your border.
00:26:04.220We go nuts about Mexicans coming over the border and the vast majority come over because they want to work and America goes crazy.
00:26:12.060Can you imagine if it was a truly hostile population, how America would handle it?
00:26:41.680There 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.
00:26:53.160After the Romans took over, then there were a succession of empires.
00:26:58.740There 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.
00:27:12.680And the Palestinian self-identification was in opposition to Israel.
00:27:33.140Having 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.
00:27:45.220One is because nobody wants to live under someone else's rule.
00:27:49.120It doesn't matter even how nice the rule is, you don't want to.
00:27:51.660Although I will say what people don't realize is two million Arabs live in Israel proper with full rights.
00:28:27.240Palestine, those who are Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, they have their own self-governing rule, but they're definitely under Israel.
00:28:43.680They'd completely withdrawn from Gaza.
00:28:45.280But 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.
00:28:58.900But 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?
00:29:07.720Or like—and excuse some of my question.
00:29:09.660Like, I'm not that great, like, at—like, I'm not always the best at figuring some of this stuff out.
00:29:15.280But 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.
00:29:31.620All I can say is they have done that for a long time, and it hasn't worked.
00:29:35.040And 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.
00:29:44.320There were so many times when all they had to do was say, yes, look, I'll give you an anecdote.
00:29:50.360Arafat, 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.
00:30:40.160The 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.
00:30:49.800The summit took place in July 2000 as an effort to end the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
00:30:55.220Summit ended without an agreement largely due to irreconcilable differences between the two parties on the status of Jerusalem.
00:31:01.420Its failure is considered one of the main triggers of the second intifada, which was a big—
00:31:07.680What was the issue of Jerusalem, do you remember?
00:31:09.920The intifada—both places wanted Jerusalem to be the capital, which eventually was able to be worked out.
00:31:17.500What couldn't be worked out was what's called the issue of return.
00:31:20.020So there are two kinds of refugees in the world.
00:31:27.260There are Palestinian refugees and everybody else.
00:31:30.180And that's why there are two agencies from the United Nations who handle refugees.
00:31:34.440There's one that only does Palestinians and one that does everybody else.
00:31:38.340Palestinians are the only people whose refugee status is handed down.
00:31:42.720There 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.
00:32:27.640And this is because for whatever reason, the Islamic culture, which used to be during the Golden Age, the most advanced culture in the world.
00:32:36.080So it's not like Islam doesn't have in it to be the most advanced culture in the world.
00:32:40.240For whatever reason, and I'm not a historian, I have guesses, but who knows, right now they're not doing well culturally.
00:32:47.740And as a result, they've used the Palestinians to unify their own governments because look what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
00:32:57.000And a mutual hate is the best way to tie people together.
00:33:00.700So you're saying it bridges them and Israel.
00:34:29.760I think if the Palestinians made peace again and again and again, they've been offered.
00:34:34.920But even if they did now, they'd get a lot of the West Bank back.
00:34:38.560And 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.
00:34:48.440Or you have – you could have this huge economic engine.
00:35:10.120So 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.
00:35:19.120But you think one of the issues facing the governments right now is that they – is that Palestine doesn't want peace.
00:35:25.420Yes, because – and part of that, by the way, is just downright anti-Semitism.
00:35:31.640Like when you hear – I mean this is unfortunately pretty endemic in the Islamic world.
00:36:03.520Now, when you have that in kids and that's true, that's Ayaan.
00:36:09.500When 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.
00:37:20.680So the first president of Israel was named Chaim Weitzman.
00:37:24.620And 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,
00:37:32.420Mr. Weitzman, why don't we just give you Uganda?
00:37:42.780And 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.
00:48:38.740And 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.
00:48:50.440So, whenever someone says they'll never make peace, I think you don't know.
00:48:54.700You 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.
00:49:11.020I pray for peace, and I pray for the best outcome.
00:49:13.220And I mean, it's like, to see the images we've seen, how can you not?
00:49:20.820You 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?
00:49:32.120And 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?
00:49:40.980And so, I guess a lot of my like, yeah, I think that's, and I guess you see more images of damage from there.
00:49:47.780And so, you're just, your feelings can't help but, you know, just but hurt, you know?
00:49:55.300I, absolutely, and I think they, there's no reason why they shouldn't hurt, I mean, like, they're suffering terribly.
00:50:01.880And 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.
00:50:26.820It feels like they're the ones that should have to figure this out, right?
00:50:31.020And now, that might be delusional, but I, it's just like, it might be emotionally motivated, a lot of that.
00:50:36.780But 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.
00:50:48.100It'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.
00:50:55.660And you say, well, look, it's the parent's responsibility.
00:50:58.240And 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.
00:51:06.760And 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.
00:51:15.680Look, Israel tried, I mean, America tried this.
00:51:18.060America said, okay, we're going to impose democracy on Iraq.
00:51:21.060Look how well that worked, and we're much stronger than Israel is.
00:51:24.840Other 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.
00:51:34.440Because although Israel is stronger, that's true, there are 30 Muslim nations around Israel, or 25.
00:52:24.440Well, 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?
00:52:35.040And so many of my Jewish friends are so, like, they're complex.
00:52:41.400I never, I, Jewish people are super complex, you know?
00:52:44.040The whole system, it's really fun, like, funny joke around with a lot of my Jewish friends.
00:52:48.480If you think up a good joke, they like it.
00:52:52.180I have a theory about why that's true.
00:52:54.460Okay, so here's my theory about why Jews are the way they, not all, but, I mean, there's a variety always.
00:53:00.320But there are two things about Jewish history that actually, I think, gave Jews certain cultural tendencies.
00:53:07.640One is that our tradition is very book-centered, right?
00:53:12.320If you go into a church, you see an image of Jesus.
00:53:15.900You go into a synagogue, you see a Torah, you see a book.
00:53:19.340We don't have a perfect life in Judaism, we have a perfect book.
00:53:22.680That makes it different, so you have to know, like, literacy.
00:53:27.520And 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.
00:53:37.620And 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.
00:53:46.900So 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.
00:53:52.960And so they learned the cultural cues of wherever they had to wander, which is, you know, good and bad.
00:55:03.260But 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?
00:55:12.140So, look, anti-Semitism is a very, it's called the oldest hatred.
00:57:52.280Everybody wants somebody to point the finger at.
00:57:53.920So 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?
00:58:05.920Jonas 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.
00:58:52.880And 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.
00:59:01.140My mom dated a Jewish guy actually for a little bit named –
00:59:03.660And 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.
01:00:48.220I 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.
01:01:15.560Even now there's like I think 10 to 12 percent of Jews live under the poverty line.
01:01:20.080They're always – but the people that you know, of course, are the people who are successful.
01:01:23.160And there are a disproportionate to our own proportion successful Jews.
01:01:28.320Like 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.
01:02:30.540There's – it's because there are these ancient prejudices that then people turn against the Jews.
01:02:36.760I 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.
01:02:44.900I mean, these are people who made tremendous success and then turned around and turned philanthropic and then people say, look at those dirty Jews.
01:03:14.480Because 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.
01:04:15.220You know, this group is good and this group is bad, and also those characteristics change.
01:04:19.640I 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.
01:04:48.300Because, yeah, I don't even know – it's like I have a couple of friends that are part Palestinian maybe.
01:04:53.200There 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.
01:05:33.840I'm not going to – I'm not going to – I'm going to Israel.
01:05:36.740And Sadat went to Israel and he changed.
01:05:39.140And people saw that, oh, my God, you can do this.
01:05:41.600So you need these people who are willing to stand up and say, we've been doing this wrong.
01:05:48.540I 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.
01:05:58.720We're going to destroy Israel just one day.
01:06:00.200When you grow up, you're going to fight.
01:08:09.120And 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.
01:08:25.300Now, it is true that the people who did that most in Israel were actually the people whose kibbutzim were attacked on October 7th.
01:08:32.520Those were all peaceniks on the border.
01:08:34.340They were some of the people who were kidnapped and some of the people who were killed were people who ferried medicine to Gaza.
01:08:41.100But 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.
01:08:53.800I hope for the day that it will be different.
01:08:55.300And I think that Israel has not done that as much as it could or as much as it should.
01:09:01.180Both, 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.
01:09:09.600He said, too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart.
01:09:14.200And like at a certain point, you just go, I don't care.
01:10:43.580So 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.
01:10:53.540With MBS, he's really trying to change his country.
01:11:15.680The 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.
01:11:29.500So 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.
01:11:42.800And you think, so the responsibility really falls kind of 50-50, do you believe?
01:11:50.520I 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.
01:12:01.260Is there a way for them to even like verbalize that to the-
01:12:04.980Only if they have the leaders who promise it, because nobody's going to believe it if just-
01:12:09.720I mean, there are many people who say it, but unless the leaders promise it, it's not going to happen.
01:19:23.160That's not going to change everything.
01:19:24.260But 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.
01:19:39.380Like, 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.
01:19:57.080But 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.
01:20:06.120You 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.
01:20:12.560And they had a lot more money to lobby.
01:20:15.040It has to be a community of interest or people won't care.
01:20:18.480Yeah, because there's, like, AIPAC people talk about a lot recently.
01:20:20.900Right. 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.
01:20:31.640You need a local listener in in the Middle East that can actually, you know, infiltrate these various countries.
01:20:38.820Look, if Iran gets a nuclear bomb, yes, it's terrible for Israel.
01:24:55.520If 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.