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Oct. 9, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:23:04
Horror in Israel
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Dennis Prager here.
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You know, every Monday I say, welcome to the show, I hope you have a good weekend, and note that I did.
Well, I didn't, to be perfectly honest.
A level of sadistic evil, like that of these Islamic terrorists, Has not been common in history.
As I write in my column that I'm writing for tomorrow's publication, the Nazis have a successor.
Tragically, the word Nazi has become so overused, like the word racist, and so many other terms, misinformation, genocide, threat to democracy.
Existential threat.
These terms should be reserved for the actual thing.
Well, this is the actual thing.
These are Nazis.
I'll talk to you about the support that the Nazis have on the part of academics in the United States.
And in case you were in doubt as to the moral cesspool the university has become, This should be proof.
LA Times has a piece today calling, what is it, the new old nonsense of, you know, let all sides return to a peaceful world.
I mean, it's the inability to recognize evil.
Yeah, here it is.
Is there a sustainable path forward?
Yeah.
And what has happened should be clear to anyone who cares about truth.
Hamas has inherited this generation's annihilate the Jew.
I wrote a book 40 years ago, Why the Jews.
It's in its third edition.
If you want to understand what happened this weekend, read Why the Jews.
Among other things, it has a chapter on Islamic anti-Semitism, which is a euphemism for Jew hatred, for Jew annihilation.
And it has a chapter on anti-Zionism.
This was the way in which the world of those who wish to destroy the only Jewish state has hidden behind the fact that it is an annihilationist vision, exterminationist, to use a term that was coined.
With regard to the Holocaust, see, there is no hatred like Jew hatred, never has been, because it is exterminationist.
There are a lot of groups that have been hated, a lot of religious groups, ethnic groups, racial groups, but it is very rare that the hater seeks to exterminate the group.
Iran wishes to exterminate Israel.
And for those who think it's just confined to Israeli Jews, there are so many reminders that that is not the case.
Remember when the Islamic terrorists left from Pakistan and they went into India and on their way to commit atrocities there, they slaughtered a rabbi in Bombay, in Mumbai.
Why did they stop for a...
A rabbi and his wife slaughtered them both.
There's evidence that they tortured them first.
Why did they do that?
What does a rabbi in Mumbai have to do with enmity towards Hindus?
Well, it's like the Crusaders, on their way to the Holy Land, decided to massacre the Jews of Germany.
There has always been, and that is the phrase that I have cited so often from the Passover service.
In the Passover service, the Seder, as it is known to many, there is the book called the Haggadah.
I have a commentary on the Haggadah.
It's like my commentary on the Bible.
They're called the Rational Haggadah.
Explains a great deal.
There is a line in there that is probably at least 2,000 years old.
The Haggadah is 1,000 years old, and the line is probably 2,000 years old, maybe older than that.
In every generation, somebody rises to annihilate us.
And the Hebrew is to annihilate, to put an end to us.
us, not to persecute us, not even to kill us, not to enslave us, but to end us.
Anyone who is pro-Hamas is equivalent to anyone who is pro-Nazi during the Holocaust.
There is no difference.
There is no difference.
There was no attack on military.
There was only an attack on Jews.
Jewish grandmothers were murdered or captured See the picture of the 85-year-old woman being whisked away by Hamas?
For the Jew hater, the 85-year-old grandmother and the one-year-old toddler, or baby, is as much an enemy.
The Nazis exterminated families, whole families.
That's what Hamas did.
They paraded the naked body of a woman that they murdered.
I don't know what else they did.
Turns out to have actually been a German tourist who was at this music festival where they slaughtered, massacred about 235 young people, wounded God knows how many others.
Israel has 7 million Jews.
The United States has about 350 million people.
So, 7 million into 35. What is 7 into 35?
No, 50. 350. I'm wrong.
So, 7 into 350 is 50. Yeah.
So, it's approximately equivalent.
Let's say 1,000 Jews were murdered.
So that would be equivalent to 50,000 Americans.
We rightly regard 9-11 as a modern Pearl Harbor.
Can you imagine what 50,000 would be?
That was 3,000.
Entire families were wiped out.
Mother, father, and children.
You have to see the videos of the celebrations in Gaza, where they had bodies, or at least this body of this woman, which they kept beating.
The dead body they would keep beating.
The Palestinians essentially have produced nothing.
What they have produced very well is a hatred, the likes of which does not have a parallel.
Not all Palestinians, by any means, but it's like not all any group, not all Germans, supported the Nazis.
But it was fair to speak about the Germans as a statement In the 1930s and 40s, until the war was over, understanding that not every German is being included.
Part of the hatred of Israel is that it did take the same exact area and make it blossom.
One of the great stories in the Bible is a story where I believe it was Isaac who was able to dig wells and become somewhat wealthy as a result.
And these people came by and instead of learning how to dig wells, they stuffed up Isaac's well.
That's the story of those who produce and those who destroy.
The destroyers hate the producers.
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The world has a lot of bad things going on in it.
It's funny, I read this remarkably stupid piece in the Los Angeles Times, and I didn't look who wrote it.
I thought it was an editorial column.
This is a foolish man who teaches Jewish history at UCLA. Jewish history note.
Very few departments have been spared left-wing idiocy.
And he writes...
The key words are for the left.
The cycle of violence.
Right?
Cycle of violence.
That's what it is.
It's a cycle.
Nobody started it.
You see?
It's a cycle.
It's like when I was a kid and some kid would, some bully would go over to another kid and then the other kid would fight back and then a teacher or a parent would say, I don't care who started.
I remember as a kid thinking, you've got to be kidding.
You don't care who started?
Isn't that like the most important question?
The Jews accepted the partition of the area called Palestine.
There was never a country named Palestine in the history of the world.
Today's Indigenous Peoples Day, for those who don't want to celebrate Columbus Day, the indigenous people to that area are Jews.
Jews preceded Muslims in that area by, let's see...
About 2,500 years.
So, the word Palestine was made up by the Romans after they destroyed Israel in order to de-Judaize the area.
Palestine is a geographic area.
It was never an entity in and of itself, but that doesn't matter.
To the fools who write in the LA Times, another path forward which requires bold and courageous leadership is again breaking with the old paradigm of eternal enmity.
Yes, there's such a thing as eternal enmity.
Read the Hamas Charter, David Myers, and the rest of you at the Los Angeles Times.
Read it.
They cite the Quran as ordering a good Muslim to kill a Jew.
It would entail recognition by Israel that it cannot batter Palestinians into submission.
It doesn't want to batter Palestinians into submission.
It wants to survive.
What an idiot.
You know what we debated?
I'll never forget.
It was at UCLA. It must have been 25 years ago.
This is, again, a professor of Jewish studies at UCLA, to give you an idea of the rot, how deep it runs in the academia.
And the debate was, is there a moral difference between Israel and its enemies?
And he said there was none.
Yeah.
A remarkable fool.
Like the fool, another Jew that I debated at Oxford, who was a former Israeli.
The debate, you could watch it, you should watch it.
Who's the greater obstacle to peace in the Middle East, Hamas or Israel?
And this former Israeli said it was Israel.
Israel was the greater obstacle.
You should watch my comments.
Just do Dennis Prager at Oxford.
You'll find it on YouTube.
Bringing an end to the stranglehold of the occupation may be the best chance to break the cycle of violence.
Really?
Really?
Man was a fool 25 years ago.
He's a fool today.
Really?
So if Israel just said, okay, we know you're really good guys here in Gaza.
We're leaving.
Yes.
That would break the cycle of violence.
Academia gives the fool a chance to look like a non-fool.
That's all it does.
Fools with PhDs.
That's who teaches your children for the most part.
Yeah, that's what it is.
One must make peace with one's enemies and not one's friends.
That is really deep.
That is one deep line.
Okay.
I yearn for peace.
What Israeli doesn't yearn for peace?
Weren't those Israelis who were massacred, those young Israelis, 250 of them, massacred for being Jews?
Only for being Jews?
There was no military aim here.
The task was to murder as many Jews.
Grandmothers, babies, kids at a music concert.
I think the concert had to do with the peace.
I wonder how many of them still think that if it was indeed a peace concert.
Of course, these are well-intentioned, decent kids, obviously.
People don't like...
I understand it.
It's very hard.
It's very easy to declare anti-evil evil.
The left did not declare communism evil.
They declared anti-communists evil.
And that's what we have here in the Middle East.
No, Hamas is not evil.
Hezbollah is not evil.
No.
Those who fight them are evil.
Wow.
Bob in Munster, Indiana.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, Dennis.
I'm a long-time listener, as I told you, screener, and it's the first time I've called.
I'm kind of emotional because I just am that type of person, so I hope I can contain myself here.
My heart aches for what's going on right now in Israel.
I'm a fairly analytical person, and I always try and find reasons behind the acts that people put on one another.
Maybe I've missed something, or maybe there's really nothing to find for the reason for so many thousands of years of the hatred.
Towards the Jewish people.
What do you think?
What do you think might be a reason?
This is not a challenge.
I'm very curious where your mind has taken you.
It's taken me to...
You'll tell me.
Hold on.
I've got to take a break.
I'm very curious.
I wrote a book on this.
It's called Why the Jews.
Back in a moment.
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And I am talking, of course, about the monstrous acts of the Islamists, known as Hamas, murdering as many families as possible, as many young people.
That was the purpose, because their desire as Iran's is to exterminate Israel, including its people.
Bob in Indiana wants to know why thousands of years.
Should I offer you my theory, or did you want to offer me yours?
Well, I've given it quite a bit of thought while I was sitting here, while you were on break, and I want to thank you, sir, for taking my call.
I forgot to do that.
The answer is so obvious that I may have overlooked it and am searching for something to find of something that was done by the Jews to someone else when really it's simply pure evil.
It's the devil amongst us.
That's good.
That's good.
I'm going to let you go, but that is right.
It's pure evil.
It is the devil amongst us that's right.
Evil focuses on the Jews.
It is an amazing thing.
What groups that massacred Jews were good groups, or otherwise good groups?
That is why the non-Jew who does not learn that the haters of Jews, the annihilators of Jews, will come after them next.
I've really learned nothing from history.
Hitler was dismissed as the Jews' problem.
Tens of millions of non-Jews died as a result.
Same here.
Oh, it's the Israeli occupation.
Really?
So why did they want to exterminate the Jews before the occupation?
Were the Arab states pro-Israel?
Prior to 1967?
That people can believe that proves that people will believe anything, which we have learned certainly in the last few years.
I quote in my book, Why the Jews, the Reverend Edward Flannery, a Catholic priest and a historian.
It's a very important book on anti-Semitism.
It was Judaism that brought the concept of a God-given universal moral law into the world.
The Jew carries the burden of God in history, and for this has never been forgiven.
The Jew made something better.
Envy is a very big factor here.
You know how critical I am so often of my fellow Jews.
So this has nothing to do with chauvinism or anything like that, but generally speaking, Jews created something better than many of their neighbors, like Israel versus the surrounding states, a functioning democracy, a functioning judiciary, a functioning culture, an incredible economic miracle, and people hate them for that.
That's not the only reason.
But it is a big one.
They're hated for believing they're the chosen people.
You would think that, given how tiny the Jews are on earth, the fact that some of them believe God chose them, which never meant Jews were better.
The Bible is more critical of Jews than any Bible is of its own people in the world.
But that's the belief, and it bothered...
The anti-Semite, because deep down they believe it.
The Jew carries the burden of God and history.
Ernest van den Haag, a great thinker, wrote, Fundamental to anti-Semitism a non-Jew, though seldom explicit and conscious, Is hostility to the Jewish belief in one God a belief to which anti-Semites very reluctantly converted and which they never ceased to resist?
Anti-Semitism is one form this resistance takes.
Those who originated this burdensome religion and yet rejected the version to which the Gentiles were converted easily became the target of resentment.
One cannot dare to be hostile to one's all-powerful God, but one can be to those who generated him and to whom he revealed himself.
We'll be back.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Sarasota, Florida.
James, hello.
Hey, Dennis.
I was curious if your trip, I'm sure, is canceled in a couple of weeks.
I was going to join you and so extremely torn up about what's happening to them, but highly disappointed that I won't be able to join you or we all can't go.
Well, wait.
Unless you heard things that I didn't, it is not cancelled.
I am planning to go.
It's a day-to-day decision, presumably, but I intend to go.
If the trip is cancelled, obviously, I won't go.
But I intend to go.
Are you registered to go?
Oh, yeah, I'm ready to go.
I'm just assuming that they can't wrap up a war in two weeks.
Right, but the war will most likely not be affecting, as it usually has not been, Israel proper.
So, anyway, look, if they don't cancel, I hope you consider going.
My view is that, first of all, Israel needs tourism badly at this point.
And the least I can do is be a tourist and take 500 of you.
Inspiration Tours, which is running it, will not take a tour if they believe that there is a threat to the safety of people.
They're not fools.
So, I would hope that those of you who have registered just wait for the decision to go or not to go.
It is still two weeks.
And a lot happens in that time.
The wars in the Middle East don't tend to be long.
It would be a real shame.
People have counted on it.
Israel has counted on it.
I have counted on it.
The real sickening aspect of their evil is actually visible.
There is a video, I will have a link to it in my column tomorrow, of the monsters, the Nazis, the Islamic Nazis, known as Hamas, known as Hezbollah, Known as Islamic State.
There are a lot of these people.
And they are parading, they're driving through throngs of thrilled, jubilant, ecstatic Gazans.
Because there's a dead Israeli in the back of a pickup truck.
And it's almost a fully naked body of a female.
And she is periodically beaten by a large wooden stick, not even a stick, a 2x4.
And while dead, the mother, there was a German tourist visiting.
The mother in Germany saw this and say my heart goes out to her.
Do you realize whole families were exterminated?
More Jews were killed on Saturday in one day than at any time since the Holocaust.
It was the most, not talking about wartime and soldiers, but Jews were slaughtered for being Jews in greater number than at any time.
Since the last group of Nazis slaughtered Jews.
They weigh up a thousand.
A thousand a day is Nazi-like figures.
And the support that Hamas has on campuses, which I'll talk about later, that really is indicative of...
Of the moral cesspool that the left has created in the United States.
I mean, this is really an example.
If you can't tell the difference between good and evil in the Middle East, like the fool who wrote the column, a professor of Jewish studies, no less, in the Los Angeles Times, cycle of violence.
It's like the cycle of violence between The Nazis and the Allies.
Let's break that cycle of violence, folks.
Same thing.
You know why Israel occupies any Palestinian lands?
Because if they didn't, they'd be slaughtered.
You get it?
Is this not obvious?
I think my video on explaining the Middle East, which is up again, it's at PragerU, one of the first videos ever made.
I think it's the most widely watched video explaining the Middle East.
And I explained it.
One side wants the other side dead.
That's it.
And this weekend proved it.
If this doesn't open your eyes to how evil Israel's enemies are, literally nothing will.
Nothing.
That this country has been able to produce so many intellectuals who cannot see the difference between good and evil is a reason for you not to give a nickel to a college, unless it's Hillsdale or something like it, and to very strongly reconsider whether you send your child there.
Unless they're studying science, technology, engineering, or math.
There may be absolutely no good reason to do so.
These are moral wastelands.
Woe unto those who call good evil an evil good.
It ain't new, is it?
I believe it's from Hosea.
We'll be back in a moment.
You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show on a very bad day.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
If you want to understand the horrors of this past weekend, one way to do so is to watch my five-minute video put up years ago at PragerU.
I think it's the most widely watched video on the Middle East, on the internet, in the world, for good reason.
I don't say this because I made it.
I'm not that big a simpleton.
It's powerful, and you should send it to all those who are ambivalent about calling evil, evil.
If you cannot call Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian regime evil, you truly have a broken moral compass.
In fact, It's scary that such people exist.
The difference is so great.
The amount of lies you have to assert and believe to think that there are some moral equivalents.
Like the fool who wrote this piece in the LA Times that I cited to you earlier.
Cycle of violence, morons.
Yeah, a cycle of violence in World War II. Pearl Harbor, then we retaliated, then they retaliated.
Oh, a cycle of violence.
You can't see the difference between good and evil in the Middle East.
You are a very scary human being.
You probably went to college.
More likely, you probably teach at college.
It is unbelievable.
The whole point was to slaughter as many Jews as possible.
There was no military aspect.
Let us murder Jews.
Babies, grandmothers.
See the picture of the 85-year-old woman who was kidnapped by Hamas?
85-year-old woman.
Just like the Nazis.
Just like the Nazis.
Every Jew is deserving of death.
If you're one year old or you're 85 years old, it makes no difference.
The Nazis murdered you, and Hamas wants to murder you.
And so does Hezbollah, and so does the Iranian regime, and tens of millions of other Muslims.
Not all Muslims, but tens of millions.
You saw a preview.
What would happen, as I ask in my video?
If Israel laid down its arms, or if the Palestinians laid down their arms.
In the latter case, there would be peace within a week.
In the first case, there would be genocide.
You saw what would happen if the Palestinians were allowed free run or free reign in Israel.
Not all Palestinians, all doesn't matter, my friends.
You don't have to be slaughtered by everyone.
Not all Germans were Nazis.
Here is the video.
It's five minutes.
It explains the Middle East.
It's at PragerU.com, called The Middle East Problem.
When I did my graduate studies at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University's School of International Affairs, I took many courses on the question of the Middle East conflict.
Semester after semester we studied the Middle East conflict as if it was the most complex conflict in the world, when in fact it is probably the easiest conflict in the world to explain.
It may be the hardest to solve, but it is the easiest to explain.
In a nutshell, it's this.
One side wants the other side dead.
Israel wants to exist as a Jewish state.
And to live in peace.
Israel also recognizes the right of Palestinians to have their own state and to live in peace.
The problem, however, is that most Palestinians and many other Muslims and Arabs do not recognize the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist.
This has been true since 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the land called Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
But no Arab or any other Muslim country accepted it.
When British rule ended on May 15, 1948, the armies of all the neighboring Arab states, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt, attacked the one-day-old state of Israel in order to destroy it.
But to the world's surprise, the little Jewish state survived.
Then it happened again.
In 1967, the dictator of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, announced his plan, in his words, to destroy Israel.
He placed Egyptian troops on Israel's border, and armies of surrounding Arab countries were also mobilized to attack.
However, Israel preemptively attacked Egypt and Syria.
Israel did not attack Jordan and begged Jordan's king not to join the war.
But he did.
And only because of that did Israel take control of Jordanian land, specifically the west bank of the Jordan River.
Shortly after the war, the Arab states went to Khartoum, Sudan, and announced their famous three no's.
No recognition, no peace, and no negotiations.
What was Israel supposed to do?
Well, one thing Israel did, a little more than a decade later in 1978, All the Palestinians have ever
had to do is recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Meanwhile, Palestinian
radio, television and school curricula Remain filled with glorification of terrorists, demonization of Jews, and the daily repeated message that Israel should cease to exist.
So it's not hard to explain the Middle East dispute.
One side wants the other dead.
The motto of Hamas, the Palestinian rulers of Gaza, is, we love death as much as the Jews love life.
There are 22 Arab states in the world.
Stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.
There is one Jewish state in the world, and it is about the size of New Jersey.
In fact, tiny El Salvador is larger than Israel.
Finally, think about these two questions.
If tomorrow Israel laid down its arms and announced, we will fight no more, what would happen?
And if the Arab countries around Israel laid down their arms and announced, We will fight no more.
What would happen?
In the first case, there would be an immediate destruction of the state of Israel and mass murder of its Jewish population.
In the second case, there would be peace the next day.
As I said at the outset, it is a simple problem to describe.
One side wants the other dead.
And if it didn't, there would be peace.
Please remember this.
There has never been a state in the geographic area known as Palestine that was not Jewish.
Israel is the third Jewish state to exist in that area.
There was never an Arab state, never a Palestinian state, never a Muslim or any other state.
That's the issue.
Why can't the one Jewish state the size of El Salvador be allowed to exist?
That is the Middle East problem.
I'm Dennis Prager.
I'll show that to anybody you know who is not clear.
Oh, well, Hamas is just responding to occupation.
Israel has a desire to occupy Palestinian land like you have a desire to.
I don't know, occupy...
I can't even think of an analogy.
I was going to say a bunch of wasp nests.
Yeah, that might be similar.
You know why Israelis got complacent?
Because they're far more interested in living life than in preparing for war.
That's what happens.
The bad guys are preoccupied with war.
Very rarely are good guys.
Back in a moment.
Probably the, I think the most objective source of news that I know of from the Middle East is the media line, TheMediaLine.org, the Middle East news service based in Jerusalem.
Michael and Felice Friesen are the editors.
And if I had one of the worst weekends of my life, Michael and Felice, I can't even imagine what you have felt.
I mean, when Americans may not realize that essentially the equivalent...
Of about 30,000 Americans were slaughtered.
Again, virtually all civilians, to put it in American terms.
And we correctly react to 9-11 when 3,000 were slaughtered.
I'm reading in the Israeli press that people are correctly noting that more Jews were killed on Saturday than on any day since the Holocaust.
So, I don't even know where to begin.
I know what I want to ask you, but why don't you just emote?
And I'll ask you questions after that.
Well, Dennis, it's not the way we'd like to come and visit you.
Correct.
Nobody's ever been to this place before.
This is all new.
This is uncharted territory.
Not only did an unbelievable number of terrorists get into the country, but we don't know how many of them are still there.
We don't know where they are.
They're not all identified.
They're not all located.
The bloodshed was beyond belief because each story, each killing, has a macabre story that goes with it.
It just multiplies the unholiness of everything that's happened.
Felice just came, and this confounds things too.
We're now on the third day of the war, and the first comprehensive briefing by the military and the government just concluded.
Felice was part of that.
So some of those details I don't even have yet that you'll hear from her.
But I have to tell you, sitting here a number of blocks from the old city with talk of the Hamasniks.
Trying to do through the old city what they did through Gaza is very unsettling, to say the least.
And I don't think there's ever been an incident where people are so completely on edge, just believing that anybody they see is in Paris, any place they go is dangerous.
We listened to the planes all day long.
We didn't sleep last night because the jets kept us up.
Just a little bit of what we're facing, Dennis.
Wow.
Dennis, I can add, the state of country is in a state of mourning.
It's in a state of war.
The brutality of the Hamas fighters that came into Israel, you can't even begin to imagine.
The Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen, just got off with a briefing, and he visited this morning the southern towns.
And one of the things he spoke about are two 10-month-old babies they found whose parents were killed in front of them.
They were families that were wiped out with grenades full, with grenades thrown into shelters, and then they were swarmed by bullets.
The stories that are coming out, and many on our site, TheMediaLine.org, are just absolutely defies any human sense of decency.
Really, the foreign minister himself equated this as the only time we saw this.
Was during ISIS and with the Nazis.
So this is really what the Israeli citizens are living through with the death toll over 700, with over 2,000 casualties at the moment.
And actually what they're really working towards right now is securing borders, making sure that terrorists, Hamas terrorists, are not in the country anymore, and they still are.
making sure that they understand and know who is exactly missing and who was taken into the Gaza Strip as hostages.
And this is one of the most serious elements of what just went down as well.
Okay, I'm going to continue with you in a moment.
Go, folks, to themedialine.org for the most, I think, accurate information from the Middle East in general.
themedialine.org.
I'm Dennis Prager, speaking to two people that I have admired deeply for years, decades.
They run themedialine.org.
You want the most up-to-date information on the Middle East at any time, and certainly now, that is where you should go.
So, So, I have so many questions for you.
You're speaking to, I don't think I made this clear, you're speaking to us from Jerusalem.
So, in light of the barbarity, The literal Nazi-like barbarity.
The Jewish baby and the Jewish grandmother is worthy of extermination, exactly like the Nazis.
People overuse the term Nazi, which is its own problem.
But in light of what happened, do you think that those in Israel who have thought, oh, it's the occupation, otherwise they're really terrific people, We'll rethink the issue?
I don't think anything is status quo, Anthony.
Nothing.
Wow.
We don't know yet what's going to be, but these scenes, the descriptions, the testimonies, the stories told about how people died, the people who were miraculously saved while somebody standing next to them was murdered and humiliated, dragged through the streets or whatever.
The particular sicko at that moment chose to do to the victim.
Nothing has changed.
Nothing will be the same, including the belief on the part of border communities that they can live in security because if something goes awry, they can pick up the phone and call the Army, and the Army will be there to help them.
They made those phone calls, and nobody came.
That's not going to go away easily.
The fact that there were gaps in the fence in such a live, dangerous area as the Gaza border, and there were gaps that allowed the terrorists to come through easily, that's going to be investigated.
The fact that there's a report through AP that the Egyptians warned, 10 days ago, warned Israel that this was coming or something of some large nature from Hamas was in the works.
But they say the Israelis were so tied up with what was going on in the West Bank that they ignored it, and this is what happened.
What does it mean they were tied up in the West Bank?
Well, the West Bank has been a hot zone for quite a while, and there was a lot of interest that was shown on the West Bank issues, largely because of political considerations, both domestic and international.
The reason whatever went down, it seems that they're accusing the government of Israel of ignoring a hot warning.
Additionally, the technology that was relied on obviously was not the way to go in this scenario.
Israel relied heavily on technology, and Hamas broke through everything.
They really had planned this very, very well on multiple levels.
Everything was taken out, and there was no infrastructure in place.
There were people that couldn't get any assistance for hours at a time.
Even the 3,000 young people at the music festival, when they were trying to escape, there was a woman who told us in Hadassah Hospital, and that piece is going up in a few hours, very, very important, where they hid under a car for 10 hours and couldn't get help.
So many things here that happen require questions to be answered.
But the worst thing of all is that when you look at this war, It's a war against civilians.
It's a war very much to take out Israelis and send a message to the world.
I would say you can equate it as anything better than what we saw in 1948. And 1973 was a war against army.
It was not a war against civilians.
Right.
Yes, that's right.
People should not make that comparison.
By the way, I think I have a speaker on in the background, so make it lower if you would, because I want to hear you as clearly as possible.
No?
Sorry, I don't.
I think the echo.
Yeah, some echo for whatever reason.
All right, it's not terrible, but if we could get rid of it, that would be great.
What Michael said is my hunch.
Nothing will be the same as before Saturday.
So, I think it will take a very obtuse Israeli.
To any longer think this is a battle over land.
This is an existential battle over good and evil.
Over the right of Jews to live there, period.
You know, the video that I played from many years ago that I gave, One Side Wants the Other Side Dead?
I have to believe most Israelis now think that way.
Am I right?
Am I wrong?
Is there no way to know?
Most Israelis are not coming out of their homes yet.
Most Israelis are not having these conversations yet.
Most Israelis haven't absorbed the horrendous photos that they've been seeing.
Israelis who have been watching videos on TV have been doing so to try to identify members of their family that are missing.
The way that they're making these connections is that some of the footage actually comes from Hamas.
A lot of it comes from Hamas.
And people look at them over and over again to see if they see their relative being dragged through or pushed through or however they're doing it.
They have to rely on that because it's the only source they have.
That's what's going on here now.
People are waiting to see if during the night tonight we're hearing the engines of the aircraft.
And we know that the military planes, because nobody else is flying right now.
But we don't know when those planes stop, what's going to be the end result.
And we don't know how many of the targets of those planes are otherwise targets to come into Israel proper and continue.
For instance, in Jerusalem, as somebody who's going to be sleeping in Jerusalem tonight, I don't know if I'll be sleeping.
Thousands of rockets have come into Israel.
We had to be into the safe room ourselves, and many people have been killed that way as well.
There's an extreme sense of fear right now.
By the way, Dennis, a couple hours ago, we were having a meeting by phone with some people from our office, and the sirens went off, and we went into the shelter.
We came out when it was all clear.
Immediately reestablish contact with someone who works with us to find that in his community, a rocket fell and the residue was 10 feet from his front door.
And at the same time, elsewhere in the Jerusalem area, Abu Ghosh, they actually fired rockets that landed in Abu Ghosh.
And Abu Ghosh is not a Hasidic, Haredi, an ultra-Jewish Orthodox neighborhood.
It's an Arab neighborhood.
Yeah, well, they couldn't care less about that either.
We'll be back in a moment.
MediaLine.org, a great source of information from the Middle East.
Final segment, I'll be talking with them regularly I'll be talking with them regularly over the course of God knows how long.
Michael and Felice Friedson are the editors of perhaps the greatest source of objective information and commentary on the Middle East, themedialine.org.
You should definitely visit so you'll know what's going on.
They are in Jerusalem.
So let me understand now, among the horrific, Consequences.
So, are stores closed in Jerusalem?
Are people just not shopping, for example?
Are they not going to work?
You have many people working from home.
You have schools closed.
There are people going out for basic necessities.
I talked about the word fear.
There's a lot of fear.
People are securing their homes, their buildings.
They don't really know what to do, is the sense that I get.
It's sort of unprecedented.
No one knows if this is going to become a multiple front war.
So there are so many considerations to take into, you know, it's complex.
And right now it's going to be a long war.
Everyone is saying this is going to be a long war.
It's going to take many weeks.
You're dealing with many hostages.
You're dealing with unsecure areas, communities people can't go back to.
8,000 people were brought out of the South into a lot, into hotels and communities, so that they could live there in the meantime.
Many of the homes were torched.
Not just blood all over, homes torched.
People killed.
Multiple funerals.
Think about the number of funerals that are going to take place.
I explained to my listeners that in population terms, we're talking about 7 million Jews, 350 million Americans, so it's...
What is it, 50 times?
Is that 50 times 7 is 350?
Yeah.
So 1,000 Israelis would be equivalent to about 50,000 Americans killed, and we had 3,000 on 9-11.
So people can begin to appreciate what you're living through.
To say my heart goes out to you is so trite.
I don't know what to say, and I obviously...
I'm a man of words.
I don't know what to say.
I called an Israeli friend.
He couldn't even take the call.
He just texted me.
Dennis, you pegged it.
Wow, you pegged it.
Because everyone that I'm speaking to feels this sense of coldness, this sense of immobility.
And it's a shock.
The entire country is in a state of shock.
And yet, the entire country has come together.
Oh, yes.
A few weeks ago, we were talking about what was happening.
That's right, that's right.
Well, God bless you.
Themedialine.org.
Forgive me.
I want people to go to your site.
One of the leading living historians of the Middle East is on the line with me.
He is also a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.
I am honored that he took time out to be able to talk with me.
Michael Oren, who has been on this program on many occasions.
Are you in Israel right now, Michael?
I am in Israel, Dennis.
I'm in South Tel Aviv and sitting in my, you know, protected room.
There was a building right in the street next to us that...
Took a direct hit yesterday and was completely destroyed, so we're in our rooms.
Wow.
My family's in their rooms, my kids, my grandkids, we're all waiting for the next barrage, which shall be coming.
That I can guarantee you.
No profit, but those barrages will be coming.
Well, there's no way to avoid the dark, so...
Is there a sense of dread with regard to Hezbollah as well?
Yes.
He's already reported fighting up north.
And I personally would think it's very hard for Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, to sit passively.
Even now, when Israel is bombing Gaza, wait until Israel enters Gaza in a ground incursion.
And that is a new ballgame because Hezbollah...
It's by magnitude of at least 10 more powerful than Hamas.
It has 150,000 rockets in its arsenal.
Then there's also Hamas in Judea and Samaria.
There's Hamas cells within Israel itself.
There's radical elements within the Israeli-Arab population, and Israel will be facing for the first time since 1973, but I've taken many more comparisons with 1948, facing a multi-front war.
I'm trying to digest this.
You know, I'll be very open with you and my listeners.
I never feel this, but I actually sort of feel guilty being far from Israel and protected.
You don't even have to react.
I'm just emoting.
No, I feel guilty not being in uniform, so take a number.
I'm beyond that age.
I am doing what I can by interviewing greatly.
I interviewed all through the night last night and again tonight, trying to, you know, present Israel's position around the world.
You know, on some of these very liberal stations, the narrative is already, you know, Israel had it coming.
You know, the Hamas, these barbaric, vicious Hamas terrorists are referred to as, you know, militants in my last interview, which wasn't a particularly liberal program.
They were referred to as fighters.
Fighters.
Fighters who take 260 kids at a music conference and take them out and shoot them.
Fighters that go into houses and shoot entire families, drag them out of their cars and shoot them.
Fighters that put children, Jewish children, in chicken coops and cages and drag naked women through the streets of Gaza so they can be spat upon and beaten.
Those are fighters.
Aren't they now?
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're our generation's Nazis, as I'm writing in my column today.
And I've never used the term about anybody.
But I don't see the difference.
You know that I was just reading before you came on.
The Australian Jewish community was warned not to go to the Opera House in Sydney because there was a Muslim demonstration there and they couldn't guarantee their security.
Well, I proudly serve on the board of an organization known as Secure Community Network, which is an organization of about 90 former FBI and law enforcement officials.
By the way, the vast majority of them are not Jewish, who are committed to guarding, monitoring threats, intercepting threats to about 12,400 Jewish institutions across North America.
And I spoke with SCN today, and they're on high alert.
They understand.
Especially as this conflict continues to escalate, that the threats to American Jewish institutions will become Jews.
Well, a generation ago it came from Germans, and this generation it comes from Muslims.
Obviously not all Muslims, but it was true about Germans.
Not all Germans voted for Hitler.
There's no such thing as all.
No, there isn't.
But the threats they had today, and I asked them about the current threats, actually came from neo-Nazis.
Really?
So the Nazi, well, there was a picture of a guy at a demonstration in New York at a pro-Palestinian rally holding up a Nazi insignia, a swastika.
Yeah.
They're aligned.
We are the only people.
Yeah, we're the only people who unite Nazis and Islamists.
Yes.
It's the right and the left.
We bring people together, don't we?
I sound cynical, but I haven't been asleep in about 48 hours.
Forgive me.
Dennis, we all know people who have been killed, who have been capped, who have been kidnapped, who are missing.
We all know them.
And it's like one phone call after another.
Ponder this for a second.
Okay, we've now tonight capped top 900 dead in just over two days.
That is roughly 11 to 14 times what America lost on September 11, 2001.
I explained that earlier.
That's right.
The 100,000 Americans wounded, about 8,000 Americans taken prisoner.
This is the magnitude here.
And we all have feelings.
We're all reeling with this, including entire families wiped out, including Entire families.
Yeah, in the most vicious possible way.
And we're leaving from it, but what choice do we have?
We're going to rebound.
We're going to fight back.
And if we have to fight a multi-front war, we'll fight a multi-front war.
And we will hope and pray that the United States will be with us on this.
So far, all the indications are very positive.
I was gladdened to hear that the Sixth Fleet has not only moved off the shore of Lebanon, but the Fifth Fleet has moved into the Straits of Hormuz, which is, I think, even more important.
Because the great Satan, quote-unquote, behind all this is Iran.
And Iran, Iran, Iran.
And Iran had a number of reasons for starting this.
It perceived weakness in Israel.
We'll talk about that.
I've got to take a break.
I want to talk about that.
What Iran perceived.
Yes.
Michael Oren.
I'm white.
You're what?
I will wait.
Oh, okay.
Fair enough.
Thank you.
Michael Oren at his home in Jerusalem.
At his bunkered home.
Speaking to the former ambassador of Israel to the United States, Michael Oren, also one of the leading historians of the Middle East.
I read his books.
I have followed him for decades.
We've never talked under such dark circumstances.
He himself, as he explained, is, as it were, sheltered in his home.
You say a rocket hit a nearby apartment building near where you live.
Is that correct?
Yes.
On the next street, yeah.
Were people hurt?
On the next street.
No, they were not.
Why, they were not home?
How did they avoid...
I guess, I don't know.
I haven't wandered out there.
I see.
It's quite eerie, Dennis.
You know, we suffer from terminal traffic jams in this country.
And the streets are completely empty.
Bellevue looks like a ghost town.
Very eerie.
I remember visiting Jerusalem during the Intifada.
I don't remember, first or second.
And there were no tourists, and it was like that then.
And every store I walked into, they just kept thanking me and my companion, Alan Estrin, for visiting.
You suffer this periodically.
So let's talk about...
I'm hesitant talking about this because all I want to do is morally clarify what has happened.
So without even necessarily dwelling, do you have a theory as to Israel's unpreparedness for this?
I do.
And there are myriad comparisons between this current war and the war that occurred almost 50 years ago to the date, the Yom Kippur War.
And Israel was unprepared for that attack and surprised with catastrophic consequences.
And the reason we were unprepared in October 6, 1973 was because the army fell victim to what we call an sort of anglicized Hebrew concepcia.
The conception was that the Arab army, so roundly humiliated six years before in the Six-Day War, would never dare launch another attack.
And so deep was that conception that the intelligence officials simply threw out.
Anything that contradicted it.
And here, too, I was in government, and for a while I was actually in charge of Gaza for the government, and I saw the conception.
And the conception was this, that Hamas had two hats.
One was a jihadist terrorist group, and the other was a sovereign.
It was actually the government of a sovereign Palestinian state in Gaza, and it had to worry about sewage, and it had to worry about quality of life and education and all those boring things that sovereigns have to worry about.
And that if you incentivize Hamas sufficiently, Flooded them with Qatari cash.
And you let workers into Israel so that, you know, the government would have something to lose if a war broke out.
But Hamas would focus on governance and not on terror.
And we were wrong.
We were wrong.
Hamas, I think, was aware of our conception and built it up and sought to, like, reinforce it all the time.
So really caught unaware.
So I'd like to offer an additional.
I completely accept that.
I'd like to offer an additional theory.
It is almost inevitable for peace-loving countries to become complacent because they're not preoccupied with destroying people.
They're preoccupied with making a living, sending their kids to school, building hospitals, taking trips abroad.
Whereas Hamas is preoccupied with one thing, murdering Israelis.
There is no other consideration for them or the Islamic regime in Tehran.
So there's a built-in advantage.
If I'm obsessed with A and you're not obsessed with A, my obsession will prevail.
Simply, you're saying you didn't fall victim to the conception.
You recognized Hamas for what it was, which is a medieval...
Vicious, brutal, barbaric terrorist organization.
We fell victim to the belief that maybe Hamas preferred the cap of sovereignty.
And therein lies the disaster.
Did you?
For a while, yes.
Fascinating.
For a while, yes.
It's painful for me to even...
No, you're so honest.
Look, if you did, then anybody could.
And so the thinking was, look, there were 17,000 Gazans working in Israel.
Why would Hamas want to jeopardize that?
Yeah, precisely.
And I was involved in that decision.
It's now up to 20,000.
Well, it was.
And, you know, they were bringing back, you know, fat Israeli salaries and social benefits to Gaza.
It's unheard of there.
Wow.
Michael Oren, O-R-E-N. Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. He hasn't had sleep, and I'm very grateful to him.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States and major historian, is on the line.
And he is with his family in his apartment in Jerusalem.
And not venturing out, there is palpable fear, as I spoke to other Israelis prior to him.
So, I want to read to you a headline from Daily Mail that I just saw, literally during the break.
Hamas announces it will begin to execute hostages.
And post video evidence online for every Israeli airstrike.
That's exactly what I presumed.
So, I assume this doesn't surprise you.
I'm surprised they didn't announce it earlier.
Right.
That's right.
What took them so long?
Yeah, exactly.
What took them so long?
And it's a huge issue for us, of course, as we proceed to, I think, the amount of ground invasion of...
I don't see why we have much choice, but right now I can understand that being in the Prime Minister's shoes is not a place that anybody would want to be right now to make that type of decision.
But the Israeli people refuse to return to the status quo ante.
That simple.
We've done it five times already, always with the same result, doing the same thing over and over again is the definition of insanity, right?
Right.
And in contrast to the Yom Kippur War, where we did try to restore the status quo, and we wanted to push the Egyptians and the Assyrians back to 67 lines, now we want to change that status quo and drive Hamas out of Gaza.
What that means exactly is yet to be seen, but it will be a brutal battle.
And then the big question, and it's not such a question tonight because it's already shooting along the top, along the north, will Hezbollah join the fray?
Will Hamas in Judea and Samaria join the fray?
Will Israeli radical Arabs join the fray?
And will this end up being a conflict with Iran?
Because, again, as I said earlier, the great evil behind this entire nightmare is Iran.
An Iranian-American Jew, who is a brilliant man and whom I know for decades, and has a very clear read of Iran.
He said to me at synagogue on Saturday that he is convinced that within six months Israel will invade Iran.
And I would not mention this but for the fact that I agree with him.
I don't want to say evade, but there are other ways we can grapple with Iran.
I don't imagine the IDF is going to be marching through Tehran.
No, no.
Invade, attack.
I should have said attack, not invade.
Yeah, clearly, Iran stands behind this.
I talked before about the conception, falling victims of conception.
Once I got out of government, I was less susceptible to it.
And I've been saying now for many weeks that Israel was heading toward war.
And the reason Israel was heading toward war was because of Iran.
Iran saw great weakness in an internally divided Israel.
It saw hesitancy, isolationism within the United States.
It feared.
It feared the Saudi-Israeli pending peace treaty and the prospect of Saudi nuclearization.
It feared, Dennis, the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
And, you know, Donald Trump was the person who pulled out of the JCPOA, the person who assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Al-Quds Force.
They were afraid of him.
Well, just let me say to my listeners...
They could stabilize the entire Middle East by triggering a war.
I'm sorry I interrupted.
Yes, I'll finish my thought in a moment.
You got it.
I said that the Iranians believed, probably not unrightly, they could stop this peace process between Israel and Saudi Arabia and destabilize the entire Middle East just by triggering a war.
So I was only reacting, and I got so passionate I interrupted you, but the...
I've said all of my life, basically, or my adult life.
I don't want American presidents loved.
I want them feared.
I asked Neil Ferguson, the great historian, would Putin have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president?
I have no idea if the guy's even a Trump fan.
And he said no.
And you're telling me now that Iran fears more than anything that Trump has elected.
That's very, very revealing.
He has demonstrably pulled the trigger.
And the Biden administration and here, you know, I have great affection for the president and respect for his staff.
I work very closely with them.
I think they've acted very admirably and foursquare beside Israel during the current crisis.
But they have came into office, you know, vowing to renew the JCPOA to reconcile with Iran.
It's a very different message.
And just recently, they paid Iran $6 billion to release five American hostages.
Now, you know, we now have a precedent of a superpower paying off Iran to release hostages at a time when we have hostages.
And what's the message?
That is challenging.
It's going to be challenging.
Will you be able to sleep tonight?
No, I'm completely booked till the dawn.
I've been doing all the foreign media.
And some of the reporters have been, I think, more understanding than others.
Our biggest, biggest challenge is...
His rhetorical, like Chicago, I can't even say that at this point.
They refer to these people as fighters and militants.
They talk about 1,200 people killed so far in this conflict.
They're innocent victims.
That's like 9-11 was 3,019 people killed.
Alright, listen, I've got a break.
I'm going to be in touch with you.
God bless you and watch over you.
Thank you, Nancy.
Thank you to your listeners, Joe.
A liberal Democrat, not a leftist apparently, but a liberal, Richie Torres from the Bronx, called the statement Richie Torres from the Bronx, called the statement of support for Hamas by two scum in the Congress.
Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush, reprehensible.
They blame Israel for the violence.
For the violence.
Yes, the cycle of violence, like the moron Jewish studies professor at UCLA, David Myers, in his equally disgusting piece in the LA Times.
Stupidity doesn't know ethnicity.
Well, apparently not.
So we have Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib.
And David Myers, mixed bag of fools.
Cycle of violence!
Yeah, cycle of violence.
These are Nazis, ladies and gentlemen, and if you don't understand that, you don't understand what is happening.
They want to murder every Jew in Israel.
I said this in my...
Video for PragerU explaining the Middle East.
The most widely viewed video on the Middle East in the world.
You should see it.
You should send it.
It is as pertinent today, except today proves it.
I said, one side wants the other side dead.
And you saw it this weekend.
Listen, I'm sorry to Brent, Neil, Jamil, David, James, Darren, and Mike.
All of you have important things to say.
But there's so much that I wanted to learn from my guests.
The world will not be the same after this past weekend.
That is the one certitude.
And a big reason, not the only, is a perception of America as in trouble and weak.
For those of you, including many on the right, who have argued, oh, America, who made America the world's policeman?
All of my life I have argued, wait a minute, so the world doesn't need a policeman?
Saying the world doesn't need America as a policeman is just like saying defund the police in Portland.
There is no difference.
When we're not the policemen, the monsters of the world rise up.
And they slaughter grandmothers and babies and show it on social media.
These people are proud of it.
The one difference is they do it in the name of their God, who I promise you is not my God or your God.
I will be with you tomorrow.
And I... I can only imagine what I'll have to say then.
Thank you for listening.
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