Dennis Prager Show - Anti Zionism and Anti Semitism Are the Same
Aired: 2023-12-14
Duration: 06:20


=== Anti-Semitism On Campuses (04:22) ===

[00:00:00]  Here is the title of the article from October 9, 2005. We're talking over 18 years ago, when young Jews major in anti-Semitism.
[00:00:16]  That is the title of the book, of the column.
[00:00:21]  Which is two very important points here.
[00:00:25]  How old three.
[00:00:27]  How old this issue is.
[00:00:29]  The anti-Semitism of the campuses.
[00:00:32]  Two, how the Los Angeles Times has radically changed.
[00:00:36]  And three, how long ago I was right.
[00:00:40]  And you'll say I'm blowing my horn or tooting my own horn.
[00:00:43]  I don't care.
[00:00:44]  That's fine.
[00:00:46]  I have been saying things that are true and never alone.
[00:00:52]  I've never claimed to be the only one saying these, but one of the only ones.
[00:00:58]  When I said that the lockdowns were a catastrophe in April 2020, I was almost universally condemned.
[00:01:10]  I'd like to make a list.
[00:01:12]  Listen to this.
[00:01:13]  Again, 18 years ago, American Jewry is experiencing a cognitive dissonance the likes of which it has never known.
[00:01:23]  To illustrate, consider my recent lecture in Virginia Beach, Virginia, anti-Semitism at the universities.
[00:01:29]  What can we do about it?
[00:01:31]  I lectured in Virginia in 2005, anti-Semitism at the universities.
[00:01:39]  It is very significant that a mainstream, that is, largely secular and liberal, Jewish organization, the Jewish Community Center, would fly a speaker from across the country to speak on anti-Semitism at universities.
[00:01:53]  To understand how significant, one must appreciate how much Jews revere the university.
[00:02:00]  First, education has a religion-like status in both religious and secular Jewish life, and the university is romantically thought of as the temple of education.
[00:02:10]  Second, the university is regarded as the key vehicle to professional success.
[00:02:15]  Third, the university is the most secular of all major institutions, and many Jews believe in secularism as much as Orthodox Jews believe in Judaism.
[00:02:26]  Fourth, for many Jews, happiness is largely dependent on deriving pride and joy from their children, and nothing gives them more than being able to tell people that their child attends a prestigious university.
[00:02:40]  Yet universities have become society's primary breeding ground for hatred of Israel.
[00:02:47]  This is really important that I wrote it this long ago.
[00:02:51]  It would be important if anybody did.
[00:02:53]  Now I'm not the issue.
[00:02:57]  Universities have become society's primary breeding ground for hatred of Israel.
[00:03:10]  2005 This hatred is often so intense that the college campus has become a haven for people who use anti-Zionism to mask their anti-Semitism.
[00:03:26]  That's my article, by the way, my column, my Tuesday column up today is Yes, Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism.
[00:03:35]  Talk about that in the third hour of the show.
[00:03:39]  Moreover, anti-Zionism itself is a form of anti-Semitism, even if some Jews share it.
[00:03:45]  Why?
[00:03:46]  Because anti-Zionism is not simply criticism of Israel, which is as legitimate as criticism of any country.
[00:03:54]  Anti-Zionism means that Israel as a Jewish state has no right to exist.
[00:04:00]  And when a person argues that only one country in the world is unworthy of existence, and that happens to be the one Jewish country in the world, one is engaged in anti-Semitism, whether personally anti-Semitic or not.

=== Wow. What Changed You, Harvard? (02:12) ===

[00:04:19]  And I remember this now.
[00:04:22]  This anecdote I wrote about in the LA Times in 2005. Not long ago on my radio show, I invited a UCLA student who, on the occasion of Israel's birthday, had written a hate-filled article about the Jewish state in the Bruin, the UCLA school newspaper.
[00:04:44]  I asked her if she had always been anti-Israel.
[00:04:48]  She said that as a Jewish girl growing up in Britain, she was actually a Zionist, who had visited Israel a number of times on Jewish student trips there.
[00:04:58]  What changed you, I asked.
[00:05:00]  The university, she responded.
[00:05:05]  Wow.
[00:05:09]  This I didn't remember either.
[00:05:11]  Listen to this.
[00:05:12]  That sort of transformation may be what inspired Harvard University's president, Lawrence Summers, to deliver a speech in which he identified the university as replacing the far right as a center of anti-Semitism.
[00:05:28]  Wow!
[00:05:30]  Isn't that something?
[00:05:31]  He was the only non-leftist president of Harvard almost in at least the last, I don't know, 25 more years.
[00:05:42]  Where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, Summers warned, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities.
[00:06:03]  Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect.
[00:06:10]  If not their intent.
[00:06:15]  Okay, just thought I would share that with you.
[00:06:18]  I have no idea how I discovered it.