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Oct. 17, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:23:45
Lower Standards
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Dennis Prager here.
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The last words uttered by Sean McConnell for Have a Good Show. .
He's still alive, but they are the last words that you had said up until that moment.
It is a bit morbid, I agree with you.
Hello everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
I hope you read my column today.
It is about two phrases and what they really mean.
When people say some variation on the theme, Palestinian children are precious and Israeli children are precious.
What does that mean, since we all acknowledge that?
So what is the person actually saying?
And the other one is the famous cycle of violence.
They are both related, and it is in my column.
At townhall.com or at dennisprager.com.
So, my producer will get a big kick out of this.
The article in the New York Times and then an article in the New York Post on the exact same subject.
Here is the headline in the New York Times.
Half of New York City children passed math and reading tests.
The laughter is the laughter.
It's gallows humor.
How else could I describe it?
So let us say that that were actually accurate.
Isn't that pathetic?
But it's much worse than pathetic.
It's worse than the headline.
Here is the subhead in the New York Times.
The proficiency rates are up.
And now, the great word in the English language.
But!
But the state's annual exams were overhauled.
Get that?
Overhauled.
So the results can't really be compared with those from last year.
So it's a phony headline.
It's not the New York Times' fault.
What they did is they redid the test so that more kids would pass.
And it's still only half.
Remember, truth is not a left-wing value.
It applies to everything.
Douglas Murray, in the New York Post, his headline is a bit more to the point.
Don't believe the, quote, rise, unquote, in student test scores.
They've moved the goal posts.
I mean, think about that, right?
Imagine that if Team X has best year ever in field goal kicking, but then you will learn that they have moved The goalposts 10 yards closer to the end zone.
Or even out of the end zone.
Which would be tough, because it would interfere with the play.
I smell a rat!
That's how it begins.
And not one of the ones you see on many streets on a lovely New York evening.
I mean the announcement by officials.
That proficiency rates in math and reading in New York City schools have gone up.
City officials celebrated the news.
They did?
They celebrated the news knowing it was a phony score?
As a sign that students are getting back their educational mojo since the pandemic.
The Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education even welcomed the news as extremely encouraging.
I'm pausing because I'm thinking...
I'm thinking of how to control my language with regard to professional educators.
My theory has been since I was in graduate school that if you get a degree, a graduate degree in education, the one thing you definitely don't know how to do is educate.
There are just a few problems with this, writes Douglas Murray.
The first is that the figures are a crock from the get-go.
You can't test exam rates at this point of the year, something that the officials in question know very well.
I would guess that they also know that the data will only be able to be gone over by experts when they are released in December.
That is after the local elections, which might strike a cynic as highly convenient.
Of course, education officials are rightly embarrassed by last year's test scores.
Because of those results, because those results showed a sharp fall-off of student overall performance.
In 2022, fewer than 38% of 3rd to 8th graders were proficient in math, so a drop less than 1 out of 3. That is compared with 46% before the pandemic.
I've got to tell Douglas and all my friends.
Never right before the pandemic.
Before the lockdowns.
The pandemic is irrelevant.
The lockdowns caused these.
The shattering of school attendance and proficiency.
Those aren't the sort of figures that officials like to see.
People, especially parents, might notice.
So what did they do?
They moved the goalposts.
State education officials actually admitted after last year's results that they were planning to adopt new standards in testing across grades.
And if you think that these new standards are better standards and not simply aimed at making the tests easier and results better, then I might suggest a Nigerian gold mine for you to invest in.
And even if you believe those claims, just look at what officials are actually celebrating.
Anyway, that's what they did.
they changed the tests.
Why do New York voters keep allowing the wool to be pulled over our eyes so blatantly and so ineptly?
That's right.
That's been my question all of my life.
Why do people in Seattle, And Portland and San Francisco and Philadelphia and Chicago, why did they vote Democrat?
Well, I have a very interesting answer.
You will all find this fascinating.
Even my producer will.
So there was an article.
I have an answer that is completely from a completely unrelated subject.
The elections in Poland.
How do you like that?
But even you won't know what I'm coming up with as an answer.
So the New York Times writes, they're thrilled at the New York Times because the conservative, if you will, Trump-like I was just in Poland and saw these huge demonstrations against the government because they didn't like the fact that the government,
for example, had contempt for the European Union in Brussels telling Poland what to do.
Poland begins to look beyond the vote.
To unwinding an illiberal democracy.
That is the headline.
That the conservative government was an illiberal democracy.
So here is a paragraph from the article about the Polish election.
The big question now, however, is not only whether the opposition can form a government, that is the...
More to the left parties.
But if it does manage to take power, can it actually wield it in a system where public broadcasting, the Constitutional Court, the Judiciary in general, the Central Bank, the National Prosecutor's Office, and other branches of state have been packed with right-wing, that is Law and Justice Party, loyalists?
Who in many cases cannot be easily dislodged?
This is the most important question.
Wow.
Would they ask that question about America?
Where except for the judiciary, you'd have the exact same thing?
The media and the schools and everything else is controlled by the illiberal democracy?
Called the Democrats?
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So here is a related story to the grade inflation, the phony statistics about math and reading proficiency in New York City schools.
They changed the exam.
So here is a piece.
When did it come out?
Let's see.
October 4th, so exactly the same time.
In the New York Times, teachers can't hold students accountable.
It's making the job miserable.
My dear listener, did I not read to you yesterday that Governor Newsom, one of the most destructive governors in the history of America, Has signed a bill whereby you basically cannot throw out of class or punish otherwise a disruptive student.
They gave examples in the article.
Where was that article from?
Was that the LA Times?
Was that the New York Times?
Anyway, they gave an example of a student, in one case a girl, Hummed during class.
So during class, you would basically have something like...
I doubt she was humming that, because that's Mozart.
Nevertheless, she would hum.
Now, let us say, even on an airplane, Certainly before it took off, if the person next to you were humming, it would drive you crazy.
So now that girl had been told to leave class.
She wouldn't stop.
And her reasoning was she had ADHD. And humming calmed her.
And so, of course, the ACLU, which is as related to civil liberties as I am to marathon running, decided to take up her case.
Then there was another example given in the article of a boy who sat in class who would drum.
Yes, and I gave an example yesterday.
And most of us would say that that kid should be kicked out of the class and probably suspended.
Not anymore.
Not in California.
Because why?
You probably guessed it, or you heard me talk about it.
And Hispanics and disabled were thrown out of class for doing that.
And I wondered about the disabled.
It didn't make any sense.
I picture a kid in a wheelchair and why would he be considered Disruptive to the extent that they would disproportionately be thrown out of class.
But then I realized from the ADHD girl who hummed that that's a disability ADHD. So now I understand that.
So since left for the left, truth is not a value.
And that's a fact, not an opinion.
This is a good example.
What they say is the reason there are more blacks, Hispanics, and disabled thrown out of class is because of prejudice, bias.
You know, teachers want to throw out or are more inclined to throw out for the exact same amount of drumming Because if a white kid is drumming and a black kid is drumming, according to the left, the teacher is way more likely to kick the kid who is black out for drumming.
Because teachers do not find white kids drumming problematic.
Isn't that amazing?
You've got to admit, that is really racism.
Ah, you're drumming there, Timothy?
I know there are no Timothys anymore, but I just decided to take a classic white name.
Yeah, well, if Timothy is drumming, then we keep him in class.
But if La Timothy or De Timothy is drumming, we kick him out.
That is what the left says.
And the only question is, do they believe their lies?
What they're saying, by the way, is so remarkable, and teachers accept this, that vast numbers of teachers are racist.
I don't claim that.
I think vast numbers of teachers are in fact leftists.
That's why they are a member of the most leftist group in the United States of any number of teachers' unions.
Tell me something that is as powerful, has as many members, and is as far left as teachers' unions.
Maybe there is, I just can't think of one offhand.
So, teachers can't hold students accountable.
It's making the job miserable.
This is the New York Times.
No comment on what's happening in California.
You can't throw out of class disruptive students.
She begins, the writer, Jessica Gross.
She's an opinion writer.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how America's teacher pipeline is drying up.
According to education researchers, the proportion of college graduates who go into teaching is at a 50-year low.
Yet there are still college graduates and young professionals willing to commit to a challenging career that frequently comes with low pay.
But that pool shrinks when you factor in mountainous student debt.
Gee.
Who created that problem?
Left-wing universities and the government.
Hmm.
Declining respect for teachers.
Oh, really?
What did I say for all of my career?
When students were no longer permitted to pray for teachers, within a generation they started cursing them.
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The left has ruined education.
I gave you the latest example.
In California, you cannot...
You cannot suspend, throw out of class.
You can't get rid of disruptive students.
So then at the same week, the New York Times has a piece about why it's a 50-year low of young people entering the teaching profession.
And because of the shattering of standards, behavioral and academic.
The left ruins the schools and then writes about the ruined schools but never mentions who did it.
The left is like the child who spills grape juice on an expensive tablecloth or rug and then says, It spilled.
The schools got ruined.
Don't look at us.
We're the...
Even though they're 100% responsible.
So, this woman, opinion writer for the New York Times, is writing about people not going into the teaching profession.
And she writes about the reasons.
Schools are ground, so she...
Well, that was the third reason.
Okay.
The pool shrinks when you factor in mountainous student debt, declining respect for teachers.
Why is there declining respect for teachers?
For the same reason there's declining respect for policemen.
Because the left has ruined it.
The only respect left in our time is for academics and for government, when the government is run by the left.
That's who you respect.
If you don't hear it from the government, it is not true, said the former Prime Minister of New Zealand.
You can trust us as a source of that information.
You can also trust the Director General of Health and the Ministry of Health, covid19.govt.nz.
That's it.
That's the great line.
A single source of truth.
And when you see those messages, remember that unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.
That's right.
That's the authority they respect.
Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.
That is why we speak of the left as neo-communist.
That's exactly what the communist regime said.
Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.
I continue with this article.
I included a questionnaire at the end of that newsletter asking teachers and parents what they think has changed about teaching and the perception of the job in their communities.
I mostly heard back from teachers, and one of their consistent themes was that they felt they could no longer hold students accountable academically or behaviorally.
That is 100% caused by the left.
So the New York Times writes about it as if the grape juice fell.
It spilled.
We didn't do it.
As they're doing it.
So who does she blame?
Here's the end of the sentence.
Because of pressure from snowplow parents and bad district policies.
Bad district policies.
Well, doesn't that mean the educational district?
So, in fact, then, teachers are responsible for their low state, for their being held in contempt by students.
Are the teachers leaving the teachers' unions?
Are they rebelling against, like in my city, the LAUSD, the Los Angeles United Unified School Department?
School District?
The current teachers quoted in this newsletter asked not to go on the record with their full names in order to avoid potential repercussions in their workplaces.
How's that?
Is that because right-wing teachers will persecute them or left-wing teachers and principals?
Tell me, dear listener, even if you're a leftist, if they go on record, Saying why their authority has been so reduced.
Who exactly will there be repercussions from?
The left or the right?
More to come.
This damning article in the New York Times.
The left has ruined our schools.
That's what it's about, but they never once blamed the left.
Not once.
They do, though, say bad district policies.
A typical response, she sent out a questionnaire to teachers, the writer in the New York Times, came from Russell, a public high school teacher on the East Coast.
He said that when a big chunk of the graduating class, quote, has a 4.0 grade, that's meaningless.
This is what he wrote.
Failure is a bad word, and the kids know it.
It takes way more work to hold a student accountable than to simply pass him, her, him, him, slash, her.
Even if a kid does nothing all year, we are encouraged to find a way to pass him, her.
And then, of course, when a student does not perform, Parents often want to know what we are going to do about it, not what their child can do.
Who has produced these parents, the left or the right?
I'm curious, what do you think?
Think these are left-wing or right-wing parents who demand that the teacher change, not that their child change.
It's, my producer frequently will say to me, you think they put two and two together?
You think they put two and two together?
Not in Oregon.
Two and two doesn't equal four in Oregon.
They announced the Oregon Education Department that the idea that there's one right answer in math is white supremacist.
The left ruins everything it touches.
This is just an example.
That's all it is, but not once are you told that.
Part of the issue is grade inflation.
As Chalkbeat reported last year, quote, even as students have taken higher level courses, their GPAs have steadily risen.
Geniuses.
They're taking more GPA courses, and they still rise.
From an average of 2.68 in 1990, To 3.11 in 2019, and I'm sure since 2019 it's risen.
This overall state has become more alarming since 2020, given how far behind school children are now.
What, by the way, do you think that homeschool children are behind?
Of course not.
Is there, are there rational reasons to keep your child in most American schools?
What's not helping?
The policies many school districts are adopting that make it nearly impossible for low-performing students to fail.
Who run these school districts?
There's no hint in the New York Times.
Is there a school district in the United States that is run by conservatives?
If there is, it is probably a very small, probably rural school district.
They make it nearly impossible for low-performing students to fail.
They have a grading floor under them.
They know it.
And that allows them to game the system.
This is New York Times report.
Several teachers whom I spoke with, or who responded to my questionnaire, mentioned policies stating that students cannot get lower than a 50%.
I think from state of play and 50% is she might be British, this writer.
Because we don't say get a 50%, right?
Get 50. I'm just explaining, that's all.
On any assignment, you cannot get lower than a 50. You've got to hear what qualifies you for a 50. Even if the work was never done, you get a 50 when you hand it in nothing.
Well, that's how they would like all of life to work, because then nobody can fail.
This is the feminization of the culture.
Because we want to nurture kids that are failing.
We don't want to lift them.
We want to nurture them.
A teacher from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who filed the questionnaire name field with no, no, no, said the 50% floor and no attendance enforcement Lead to a scenario where, quote, we get students who skip over 100 days, have a 50%, complete a couple of assignments, to tip over into 59.5%, and then pass.
They've cut classes, we used to put it, 100 days.
And they pass.
When I followed up with Russell, the high school teacher, over the phone, He said of his students, even if they plagiarize or cheat on something, it's still a 50%.
Yeah.
If they get 2 out of 10 on a quiz, that's automatically bumped up to a 5 out of 10. Are you aware of all of this?
It's automatically bumped.
You get 2 right out of 10. He said grades are no longer tied to attendance and that grading quarters are merged.
So some students, quote, quickly found that if they could have a passing grade in the first one or two quarters, they could just stop coming to school.
And people will vote again.
The author of this piece, being a Times opinion writer, will probably vote for the left as well.
It is like going to a doctor that you know is a quack.
Voting Democrat when you know what the schools have been done with.
Not to mention the stores downtown.
We return.
I'm Dennis Prager.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Hello everybody and welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
The President has accepted an invitation to visit Israel where he will...
Meet with the Israeli Prime Minister as well as with the head of the Palestinian Authority, which has authority over the West Bank, but not over Gaza, which is run by Hamas.
Palestinians are divided between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
And I salute the President for his statements.
My belief is that the most important thing of all is telling the truth.
The truth is he gave a very fine talk on behalf of Israel.
Having said that, it is worth noting that the appeasement of Iran has not helped the situation.
The denial that Iran orchestrated this, Presumes to be true.
Is not an honest aspect of our current government.
The giving of Iran $6 billion for hostages.
They pick American, Iranian-Americans visiting Iran off the street, jail them, and then get $6 billion.
It is a worthy question.
Whether, A, they would have been arrested had Donald Trump been president, and B, would Donald Trump have given them $6 billion?
I don't think they would have been arrested, although I may well be wrong, maybe they were arrested while he was president.
I'd like to look that up.
I will have to do that.
So I'm going out on a limb here by saying I don't think that they would have been really kidnapped.
Arrested is a somewhat foolish term here.
Kidnapped.
And I don't believe that that amount of money would have been paid to Iran.
Donald Trump did remove the United States from the agreement that the Obama administration had signed.
With Iran and regards Iran as a threat to the world, which the regime is.
It is first and foremost a threat to its own people.
Then secondly, it is a threat to the existence, not just the security, the existence of Israel.
Which reminds me to remind you.
You can learn more about the Middle East and understand its situation better if you watch all the videos at Prager University on the Middle East than if you went to graduate school in Middle Eastern Studies.
And guess how I know that.
I went to graduate school in Middle Eastern Studies.
I was a fellow at the Columbia University School of International Affairs.
At two of its institutes, the Russian and the Middle East.
Studied Russian and studied Arabic and knew Hebrew.
Those were my fields.
And I'm telling you, really, believe it or not, I have no problem in disrespecting people who do bad things.
But this is not meant as a put-down of my professors.
It is meant as a fact that you will understand the Middle East better.
If you watch these, how many are there?
Twelve?
They're all five minutes.
I think there are twelve.
That would be an hour's worth.
Yeah, because I think it isn't.
Fifty-nine minutes, I think.
So maybe eleven.
Eleven or twelve talks given by various individuals about the Middle East.
At PragerU, and it's a package.
What do they do?
They just go to PragerU, and there is Understand the Middle East, or something to that effect?
Yeah.
I'm telling you, a very prominent doctor wrote to me that she watched these videos, she truly believes she understands what's happening in the Middle East, and you would.
As I reported yesterday, The Israeli Embassy in Seoul, Korea put out one of our videos.
The one by Richard Kemp, a Brigadier General, the head of British forces in Afghanistan.
And it's that the Israeli army is the most moral army in the world.
And he's a high-ranking officer in his own army, and he says that.
That's the army that is accused of genocide.
Do you know how often genocide is used with regard to Israel's policies on the West Bank and Gaza?
Genocide?
The reason is any term that can put Israel in disrepute is used by the left and by the Muslim supporters.
Of the Palestinians.
Which means those who support the destruction of Israel.
The annihilation of its population and the country.
That is what you need to know.
Please go to PragerU.
It's free.
Watch it with your family.
Send it to people.
Watch as many as you want.
The total is an hour.
But it's all five minute videos.
There's a video there by, what's David's last name again?
David Bragg?
Bragg, yeah.
David Bragg gives a phenomenal video on how many times the Palestinians have been offered a state and declined it.
Do you know that?
Do you think almost any graduate student of Middle Eastern studies at the most elite universities in the United States knows that?
Isn't that relevant?
Instead, this is the stuff you get at Universal.
Here is, what is it, Cornell professor?
Is that right?
This is a professor at Cornell University speaking to a mob just this week.
And if you can hear him clearly, I will see the subtitles.
If you're watching my...
My show on the Salem News Channel, then you will see it, but I will repeat some of the words as the subtitles come up.
Here is a professor.
What is he, a history, I think it is?
Take a look at what the subject is.
Talking to an Israel-hating mob of students this past week.
It was exhilarating.
It was energizing.
And if you weren't exhilarating, by this challenge of the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human.
I was exhilarating.
It takes a special piece of crap to be exhilarated by families being shot up.
Cornell University.
What was this despicable human's name?
Russell what?
Rickford.
Russell Rickford.
Yeah.
And that's the...
Is there one Cornell University professor who spoke on behalf of Israel that we know of?
Am I hearing crickets?
or we just don't know.
According to the Washington Post, Democrats' unity starts cracking on Israel-Gaza conflict.
That's it.
It's an Israel-Gaza conflict.
Five Democratic House members on Monday, that's yesterday, introduced a measure calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza when President Biden spoke at an LGBTQ plus event on Saturday.
God, that's a shock.
He spoke at an LGBTQ plus event.
You know what is a worthy question?
Forgive the detour here.
Do you think that all these flags and pride months and speeches and demonstrations and president going to LGBTQ plus events is helping the cause of LGBTQ?
We continue.
So I learned that the professor who announced to a crowd at Cornell, I was right, he was a professor of history, and he's exhilarated by what Hamas did.
He's an immigrant from Guyana, specializes in what?
What were the subjects that you told me?
Various black history issues.
I suspect, I would bet a serious amount.
The black radical tradition.
Isn't it amazing?
These people who come here and hate us.
There's no question he hates America.
I don't know if he hates America as much as he hates Israel.
But there's no doubt that he does.
Like Ilhan Omar.
You'd think she would spend her life in gratitude.
Instead, she has contempt for the country that took her in.
Or Rashid Tlaib.
Okay, let's see here.
Sunset Beach, California.
Antoinette, hello.
Hello, Dennis.
Good morning.
Good day.
We're having trouble with your phone.
Oh, can you hear me?
Hold on.
Let me change.
Sorry.
Okay.
Yeah, that's better.
Okay, here we go.
Yeah.
Now, can you hear me?
Yes.
Okay, sorry about that.
This past Sunday, it was an amazing...
It would take your breath away, and you'd be very proud of the Americans that are in support of Israel.
Our pastor, Pastor Joe Kedek, at the Calvary Chapel of the Harbor.
And we're in Huntington Beach, Sunset Beach, right at the border, our church.
And he had the Israeli flag on the big screen there at our church, on all the screens.
And just everybody was just very quiet.
But they played your video!
Which one?
Wow!
The one about the land and how you guys offered, how the Israelis offered it to the...
People there at Gaza to, let's get this straightened out.
And this is what we offered.
But then they showed, you know, if you put down your arms, all those Arab countries all around you guys would try to assassinate and kill you.
But you guys offered to give that land and let's have peace.
And what's so heartbreaking is that, I'm sorry, the Hamas, those people.
They're not people.
They're animals.
They're evil.
And it was breathtaking.
Everybody, we are praying for Israel.
We support 100% Israel.
And now we understand.
It just made it so clear.
And I thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Well, please thank the pastor from the bottom of my heart.
There was an article in the New York Times, I believe, about how the greatest support...
It's coming from evangelical churches.
So I remind people that in the religious-secular conflict that exists in the United States, with the total understanding that there are some religious people on the left and some secular, more than some, on the right, nevertheless, as I often point out, the further away from religion you get, the more hatred of America and Israel.
And the more likely you are to say men give birth.
So even if you're an atheist, you have to ask yourself, gee, why is nearly every destructive idea held in the secular world in America, but not the religious world?
It's a very important question.
If you care about society, then you need to ask yourself, why is there a monopoly?
On destructive and stupid ideas in the secular world.
Why is there no wise secular institution?
Name one.
Yale?
Stanford?
University of Illinois?
Name one.
The great line, when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything.
We are living the truism that that is.
Let's see, Salinas, California, and Gene.
Hello, Gene.
Hi, thanks, Dennis, for taking my call.
You know, back in 1948, out of a collective guilt, society put the Jews down there in Israel, and...
Except for Vatican City, which I even question, I can't think of another place on Earth where land has been set aside for either a race or a religion.
And I think it's time to admit that it's not going to work out, and maybe they should be like the rest of us and disperse amongst the rest of the planet and integrate.
They're too into keeping to themselves the Jews are, and breeding, procreation, business, everything, and that's why...
Concentrating them is the worst thing we could do.
So, tell me how many non-Japanese live in Japan?
Well, they were born there.
And there's no other religious races over there.
That's right.
But I'm reacting to your comment that there is no other country except the Vatican that is set aside for one group.
Also, anybody can convert to being a Jew.
No one can convert to being Japanese.
There are vast numbers of countries that are ethnically or culturally unified.
Finland is 98% Finnish.
Same religion, or at least historically the same religion, same language, same race.
So why you object or you find offensive or bizarre that the only people on earth that can't have their own country are the Jews is something...
If you want to respond, I'll keep you on.
The Jews are not just a religion.
They're certainly not a race.
They were Jews of every race.
So they had a country there 3,000 years ago and 2,000 years ago.
And they went back.
I have an Israeli soldier on the line from Israel.
If it doesn't work fully well, then we will have him call in by phone, but you can watch my show and see him.
I'm not giving his last name for security reasons.
We'll just call him Ben, which is his first name.
So, Ben, thank you for taking the time.
I know this was cleared with your superiors in the Army.
To go on National American Radio.
So, you are located right near the Gaza border, is that correct?
Yes, that's correct.
In one of the kibbutzim that was brutally massacred on Saturday, October 7th.
When did you arrive there?
I arrived, I'm now in my second community, but all of last week I arrived in Kfar Aza about 48 hours after the attack, after arriving to base first and reporting to the reserves.
So to the extent that you are allowed, and I hope you are allowed fully, because people need to know what happened.
I don't believe in sparing The sensibilities of people when evil takes place.
Can you tell us what you actually saw?
Yes, of course.
When we first arrived to the kibbutz, I say fortunate.
Nothing about the situation is fortunate.
What we saw.
We didn't see any of the dead Israeli citizens lying around the kibbutz that were butchered in their homes and in the streets around.
We saw they were already in body bags and when we arrived they were being loaded onto massive cooler trucks to be taken to the coroner.
And it took about an hour and a half of loading dead bodies onto these trucks.
You can just kind of imagine an hour and a half of loading bodies onto trucks.
That's a large number of body bags.
In between each one, we said the mourner's prayer, the mourner's kaddish.
And then the next morning when we woke up, we started to walk around the kibbutz and see the scenes in daylight.
Puddles of blood in children, baby's bed, teddy bears.
Covered in blood that give you the scene of children holding their teddy bear while they were shot down.
Families who were riding in their bomb shelters with 12-inch knives next to them as their last line of defense if the Hamas terrorists were to break in.
And you also see the cars who tried to escape that have damage from RPG hits to the back of their cars as they had no chance to escape whatsoever.
And you also see, you know, some of the heroism that you saw from the day of people who put their families into bomb shelters and then they left their family in the bomb shelter to go out and try and fight and defend their community.
And they were gunned down in the streets as well.
So these are just some of the sites that we saw.
Houses burned down.
Families burned alive in their homes.
This is just some of the things.
At the risk of really entering the darkest of realms, I read that people were burned alive.
How is it that we know that they were alive when they were burned rather than they had already been killed?
So the Hamas terrorists actually filmed everything that they were doing.
Whether they had a GoPro on their head and then it was recovered after once the terrorist was eliminated and we could recover the GoPro footage.
Also, they had SLR cameras, Sony and Canon big cameras with them that many of them came in alongside armed militants and armed terrorists and it was their job specifically to film exactly what they were doing.
So that's how we know that they were burned alive.
So they were proud of that?
Extremely.
They were extremely proud of it.
It was written in their orders as well.
You know, among the 14, 15-page documents that we recovered off of the Hamas bodies, as well as in their trucks, because their trucks, they drove, just broke through the border and drove in with their cars.
So the documents that we found off of the cars detailed explicitly.
Their goals of reaching civilian areas specifically, of avoiding IDF bases and getting to the civilian communities, as well as on every single Hamas terrorist is a small piece of paper that is written with their main goal of hunt and kill everything that lives, including pets, babies, toddlers, children, women, elderly, and the men as well.
Please stay on with me.
I'm very fortunate that we got to talk to you.
Please stay on with me.
Hello everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
I'm speaking to a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, the Israeli Army, the IDF, named Ben.
I'm not giving his last name.
And he went to the border with Gaza.
Just within two days of the massacres.
And you described the body bags and the soldiers saying Kaddish, the mourner's prayer for each body.
You saw the bodies of people burned alive.
They have videoed it.
I think, you don't even have to comment, you're certainly free to, but...
I think Israel should release everything.
If people don't want to watch, they don't have to watch.
I don't believe in hiding the atrocities from the public.
People have to know whom they're dealing with.
So I want to ask you a few questions on the human level.
With your fellow soldiers, what is the...
What is the talk about?
Is it about good and evil?
Is it about how could this happen?
What makes such people?
Or do you prefer to talk about other things?
What do you soldiers talk about amongst yourselves?
Well, it's very difficult to process everything that we've seen.
It's going to take years for everyone here, the scenes that we've seen, to actually really internalize everything and start to deal with it ourselves.
But we do talk about trying to keep a positive morale.
It is a very positive morale around the guys, knowing what our goal is moving forward and keeping that focus, not letting our guard down.
However, in terms of the Good versus evil.
We know that this is who we've been dealing with for years.
Hamas has been around since 2006 in terms of the leadership of the Gaza Strip.
And since then, we have a couple of years engaged fascism with them.
It's unfortunate that taking this long for the world to wake up to what we have next time.
What we've been dealing with, you know, for all of these years.
For all of us, it's not even a talk of revenge and to get revenge against them.
It's just a talk of we're done with this.
We're sick and tired.
This events that took place are so awful and so brutal and just the savagery that took place on Saturday, October 7th.
We have a determination to never let this happen again.
If we don't deal with this now and uproot Kamas and completely eliminate them, then it's going to be our kids who are going to be fighting the next fight.
And nobody wants that.
We've all lost way too many people in, I mean, the last 15 years to 20 years of fighting.
But especially this time, everybody knows somebody.
I mean, I lost my commander from when I was in training five years ago, fell on Saturday.
family members who have been kidnapped and executed.
It's on to far end to be no matter what it is.
This is the pure face of evil and it must be destroyed.
This is tough.
It's not emotionally tough.
It's intellectually tough for me to ask this question.
And that is, is there any...
Talk about the even larger question, why do people hate us so much?
Is there a realization that the hatred of Jews slash Israelis is a unique hatred, or is there no reflection on that fact?
We lost him.
Okay, maybe you can call back in.
I do wonder if the average Israeli thinks about that.
Okay, we got him back.
So, Ben, did you hear my question?
I'm sorry, is he back?
Yeah, but I'm not hearing anything.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can now.
You didn't happen to hear my question, is that correct?
If you could repeat it, that would be great.
Yeah.
So I was just wondering, is there any reflection on the uniqueness of Jew hatred and Israel hatred amongst those of you in the Army, or is it not an addressed question?
It comes up every so often.
It does.
The anti-Semitism, the rise of anti-Semitism, it's something that even beyond just in the army, that in Israeli civilization, Israeli day-to-day life, it is spoken about.
It's something that we acknowledge.
You know, we acknowledge that it is out there.
It's rising every day around the world.
And when things like this happen and we see what's going on in the world now, that there is a not only Defending of Hamas going around, but support of Hamas.
And that's honestly one of the saddest parts about this whole situation, that even when, you know, after seeing what we see here at the Kibbutzim, seeing the barbarism that took place and is taking place, you know, for years, but kind of concluded with Saturday, it's...
It's sad to see the world reaction and how and I know that there are minorities.
It's a minority of people who are supporting and defending Hamas, but they are the loudest ones right now.
And that's the saddest part.
And so I think we all have a responsibility and we talk about this too.
I talked about it amongst my friends that we all have a responsibility to share our stories and those who are not here, but understand and acknowledge and, you know, believe.
The things that are being said and shown.
There's a responsibility to condemn Hamas, condemn terrorism, condemn the evil in any face it is shown.
And the majority needs to be loud.
The majority needs to be louder than the minority that is currently taking control of all of the media and the college campuses.
It's awful to see, but we do talk about it.
Well, I hope to stay in touch with you, and may God watch over you in these coming days and weeks.
Ben, your credit to Israel and to the Jewish people.
Thank you for coming on.
Thank you so much for having me, Dennis.
So there you are.
There's your Israeli imperialist.
Is that not obvious?
Right?
Did that come through?
His imperialistic and colonialistic and genocidal character?
I laugh because the only choice is to cry.
The world of the lie.
The apartheid state.
Genocide.
Occupation like Israel has a choice.
How many people know that Israel stopped occupying Gaza and then got killed?
Hi everybody, it's the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show, the third hour every Tuesday.
Given the Middle East in the news, I decided to address a subject today that isn't exactly Middle East related, but it is Middle East related, I'm sure.
I mean, it's not the sense, well, it might be actually.
But that's what is provoking me to choose the subject.
The subject is the Jews as the chosen people.
An idea that has been part of Judaism since Abraham, an idea that has been the an idea that has been the essence God chose Abraham and his seed and those who would convert to it.
There is a prayer that is known to any Jew who prays.
You have chosen us from among all the people, etc.
The most interesting, well, or one of the most interesting aspects of Jewish chosenness is how seriously non-Jews have taken it.
Jews are one of the smallest people on earth and have always been that way.
So you would think that if people in one of the tiniest groups in the world If somebody said that God had chosen them, they would either be ignored or even ridiculed.
I mean, if somebody walked over to you on the street and said, no, I just want you to know God chose me, you would walk away, you would think you met a nut.
Or if you're really kind, you might give the person the name of a therapist to see.
But the Jews were not told to see therapists.
They were not walked away from.
The fact is that vast numbers of non-Jews believed in chosenness, Jewish chosenness.
The founders of the United States believed in it, and Lincoln said, we are the second chosen people.
You know that quote from Lincoln?
It's really remarkable.
The founders and Lincoln, they all believed that the Jews were chosen, including those who were not doctrinally Christian, like Franklin and Jefferson.
But there was a belief that the Jews were chosen.
John Adams wrote, who, by the way, studied Hebrew.
In fact, you couldn't get a degree from Harvard till 1800 if you did not study Hebrew.
God has Harvard sunk.
It was a better Harvard in 1800. It's sad.
It's tragic, actually.
And it's also another subject.
So what does chosen mean?
Is it racist?
Is it chauvinist?
Well, let's deal with the racist part.
It can't be racist for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which anybody on earth of any race can become a Jew and thereby become chosen.
So it's literally not possible to be racist.
It's darker-complexioned, and half of Israel is lighter-complexioned.
Some of Israel is completely dark, Ethiopian Jews.
You can't have Ethiopian Jews and Canadian Jews and be a race.
That should be obvious.
It is a nation.
Jews are a nation.
They're referred to as a nation frequently in the Bible.
Am Yisrael, the nation of Israel.
But not a race.
And it certainly isn't chauvinistic.
There is no group more criticized in its own Bible than the Jews.
There is no holy book on earth of which I am aware, and I studied religion and continue to do so.
I am not aware of any religious book that is so critical of its own group.
As the Bible, the Hebrew Bible is, of the Hebrews.
Okay.
What does it mean then?
It means that God chose a group to live a certain way and to promulgate certain values to the world.
If you will, a messenger.
I did not come up with this phrase.
I don't remember who did, but it is a great one.
The Jews are a messenger who forgot his message.
And I believe the message is to bring the world to ethical monotheism, the God of Sinai who demands that we be good to our fellow human being.
Or, if you will, to bring the world to the Ten Commandments and to the giver of the Ten Commandments.
The God of Mount Sinai.
That is the meaning of chosenness.
God tried to have people be good people with the conscience, building a conscience into the human being.
That didn't work.
The world became so bad that God destroyed it and started over again with Noah.
Then he gave Noah seven laws, basic laws, moral laws.
That didn't work.
And then, if you will, God's third try to make the world better was to have a certain group chosen to live by his rules and thereby convince the world to live by his rules.
And that...
Group could have been any group.
It happens to have been the seed and others, the seed of Abraham and others.
Could have been any group.
God could have chosen the Japanese, the Thais, a tribe in Africa.
The Jews were so unimpressive that they are a living example of the power of the Torah.
And the rest of the Bible to elevate a people because they were not a very impressive group when they got out of Egypt.
They also got out of Egypt with a mixture of other peoples.
So there was never a purity, if you will, a racial purity among Jews.
However, it's very important to get back to my original point.
Non-Jews have taken this very seriously.
It is very rare that non-Jews, even those who hate Jews, have ever said the Jews were deluded into thinking that they were chosen.
What has been done is Jews have been hated precisely because, or one of the reasons, because people resented the fact that the Jews were chosen.
1-8 Prager 776. How do you react to the idea that there is a chosen people?
Do you resent it?
Do you believe it?
How do you react to it?
1-8 Prager 776. I would tell you, this I know because I'm a Jew and because I've been so involved in Jewish intellectual life and Jewish life generally.
A lot of Jews have been ambivalent or even hostile to the idea.
One of the leading Jewish thinkers of the 20th century was a rabbi named Mordechai Kaplan, and he founded what is called Reconstructionist Judaism.
And one of his major, major themes was that Jews should stop thinking of themselves as chosen, because all it does is breed resentment.
So how do you react to it?
Do you believe it?
Do you not believe it?
Do you resent it?
Do you believe other groups have now taken over the term chosen and replaced the Jews?
There is a replacement theology in parts of Christianity.
1-8 Prager 776-877-243-7776 Dennis Prager here, Ultimate Issues Hour, Jewish Chosenness.
It's a big part of the hatred of Jews.
I have a chapter on that in my book explaining Jew hatred, why the Jews, and that's been part of it.
So often I have noted that many, many nations believe that they're special.
Some even believe they're better.
The Jews was not a better issue.
The Bible goes out of its way to say that the Jews are not better, but that they are chosen.
But, for example, the Chinese believe that they are, or traditionally, they're the center of the world.
China in Chinese is middle kingdom, middle of the world kingdom.
The Japanese have a sun on their flag because they're the land of the rising sun.
And nobody hates them for it.
But a lot of people have hated Jews for the belief in chosenness because people believe it.
That's the point.
A lot of people believe that the Jews are indeed chosen.
So your reactions to it would interest me.
And let's see here.
Tampa, Florida.
Sam, hello.
Hey, Doc Brigger.
It's nice to talk to you.
Thank you.
I was hollering over the back fence to my neighbor, who is a Jew, and it was brief because other people were around, and I hollered.
I asked him, I said, do the Jews still believe?
Or not believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
And he said, yes, some of us do.
And that's why I just recently changed my belief to include that.
And you started talking about why they were chosen people, and you hit exactly what my first question was going to be.
And the second part of it was Jesus being crucified.
And they refused to accept him as the Son of God, the Jews did, as I understand it.
And they really, really took a beating for quite a while for that.
And I think about the same thing you were thinking about when you were talking to the soldier, the Jewish soldier in Israel, was that very question.
And it could be.
I mean, it's easy to judge, and I know we shouldn't do that, but it could be a part of backsliding over there, too, you know, kind of like, I mean, not that bad, but like Sodom and Gomorrah-type behavior that would cause the wrath to come down on them.
Well, okay, so these are questions that transcend the chosen one, but I will nevertheless address it.
When people commit horrific acts against other people, especially, essentially decent people, There's no part of my theology that says God sent them.
If a family is killed by a drunk driver, I don't believe God sent the drunk driver.
Some people do, by the way.
I rarely debate theology, but it is not my theology.
I do believe that we have, in the Middle East, as close to a good-evil divide as we did since the Cold War.
The Soviet Union was evil, the United States was good.
Does that mean every American was good?
Does that mean that there was no sin in America?
The idea is preposterous.
It doesn't mean that every Soviet citizen was bad.
That idea, too, is preposterous.
But the Soviet Union was a tyranny, a mass murder machine that killed about 40 million people, not including war, and the United States was largely free society, with all its flaws.
Israel, compared to Hamas, is angelic.
The bad always hate the good.
It's just the way, it's a law of life.
The bad hate the good.
So that's what I think is a factor there.
Okay, let's see.
Dallas, Texas, and Don, hello.
Hey, Dennis, how you doing?
Great, thank you.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
So my take on this is that God chose Abraham and the Jewish people to basically show the world what his original intent for mankind was.
You know, it goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
This is, you know, this is how I created man to be.
And so now, you know, if you read through the entirety of the Tanakh, you know, it's one long story of just saying, this is the way it's supposed to be.
I mean, even...
You know, all the stuff with the temple and the tabernacle and stuff.
I mean, it's very reminiscent of the Garden of Eden.
And then I look at all the writings of Paul, who was probably one of the greatest educated Jews of his time.
And, you know, he talked about Messiah was just a continuation of that to allow all of the world to partake in Jewish.
He said that we are now grafted into the, you know, to the olive tree, right, which is Israel.
And so that's how I feel about it.
Very good.
I thank you.
The irony that I have experienced in my life is that outside of Orthodox Jews, most Jews are uncomfortable or dismiss the idea of chosenness.
And vast numbers of Christians do believe that the Jews were chosen.
As I said, the founders thought America was the second chosen people.
And I have generally believed that.
And America can abandon, obviously, can abandon those values, and it is.
And only God knows what the repercussions...
Well, it's not true, only God knows.
You and I know too.
One of the repercussions is a staggeringly unhappy generation of young people.
And a profoundly confused generation taught to say men give birth or they're deemed haters.
We return.
Dennis Prager here.
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