Jason Kenney’s 2019 push for Alberta university free speech policies, inspired by the University of Chicago’s 2014 principles, clashes with the Edmonton Journal’s opposition, despite its Pulitzer-winning legacy of fighting censorship. Meanwhile, U.S. Jewish donors fear Democratic candidates’ anti-Israel rhetoric—Beto O’Rourke called Netanyahu a "racist"—and Trump’s unconditional support during Gaza rocket attacks contrasts sharply with their silence, risking strained U.S.-Israel relations as Muslim voter outreach grows. Free speech and press freedom debates also highlight concerns over perceived media bias and surveillance, underscoring broader tensions between progressive values and conservative backlash. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my rebels, I got a story for you about free speech.
I know that's no surprise.
But today the enemy of free speech is a columnist for the Edmonton Journal.
Now you might think that's no surprise.
Well the Edmonton Journal back in 1938 won a special Pulitzer Prize for standing up for free speech, actually against the government of the day which was bringing in their own fake news law.
Now the crazy thing is it's 2019 and the Edmonton Journal has switched sides.
Anyways, I go through it in some detail.
Hey before I say goodbye and let you listen to the podcast, can you go to the rebel.media slash shows and become a premium subscriber?
It's eight bucks a month.
I know that's not nothing, but I tell you, it helps us pay the bills around here.
You also get the video version of my show.
You get the video version of Sheila Gunn Reed's show, David Menzies' show, and you get the moral satisfaction of knowing you helped pay our bills.
All right, without further ado, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Jason Kenney says he wants to strengthen freedom of speech on universities, and you won't believe who comes out guns blazing against that.
It's May 6th, and this is the Esther Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I used to live in Edmonton, and from time to time, I visited the luxurious offices of the Edmonton Journal right downtown.
What a holdover from an era when newspapers actually used to make money and when they were the center of a city in so many ways.
And right there in the lobby of the Edmonton Journal, before you got on the elevator, was the honorary Pulitzer Prize won by that newspaper way back in 1938.
In fact, they have the editorial written on the walls.
It was for the Edmonton Journal's resistance to a series of laws introduced by a socialist premier named Bill Eberhardt.
He hated the media, and with good reason they hated him.
But I think he let it get to him mentally.
I mean, the Social Credit Party was started from scratch in 1934, and in its very first election in 1935, it got more than 50% of the vote and won 56 out of 63 seats a year after they started the party.
Voter turnout was a staggering 82%.
But this guy who just won everything in his field of vision couldn't stand his critics.
And for some reason, he cared about his critics.
And so he passed a series of laws, including one of them that would require, it would mandate, it would force newspapers to run editorial content written by Eberhardt's government to correct the wrong ideas in the newspapers, as in what Aberhardt considered to be fake news back in the 30s.
I mean, look, he could always write a letter to the editor or submit other points of view, but this was different.
So this would be to command newspapers to run government propaganda.
The Edmonton Journal, which back then had some self-respect, refused to do this and railed against this.
And the laws were soon struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada.
By the way, that was all done before the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which, as you know, wasn't enacted until the 1980s.
And it was done even before DiFen Baker's Bill of Rights from the 60s.
So there's a point there that our free speech heritage, free press heritage, goes back earlier and deeper than modern liberals might think or know.
Anyways, it was a great moment for press freedom 1938.
And I think, like the early days of the Nobel Peace Prize, that Pulitzer Prize actually meant something back then, more than a political approval by a group of liberal journalists in New York, which is all it means today.
As you may know, Bill Aberhard died in 1943 and Ernest Manning, Preston's dad, took over and normalized the party, kicked out the more extremist elements, and won for 25 more years as premier.
He got rid of the crazy socialism part.
I guess a point there is that even without the press act, Aberhardt won re-election with a majority government, which just goes to show you.
Now I tell you all this, and the Edmonton Journal's commendable historic record, and that little quirk about government regulation of fake news in the 30s, because it's all coming back again.
But look at this.
Look at this headline.
Look at this byline.
Look at this.
The Edmonton Journal is talking about free speech again, but this time they're on the side of censorship.
Or at least it's an attempt to strengthen, it's an against an attempt to strengthen free speech.
Take a look at this.
UCP prepares to roll out Ford-flavored post-secondary changes in Alberta by Emma Greene.
So of course, UCP is the new United Conservative Party, government in Alberta.
But right away, they're denormalizing free speech, aren't they?
They're otherizing it.
They're implying it's not natural or Albertan.
They're saying it's something that only Doug Ford is all about, which is weird because, first of all, that's to Doug Ford's credit if it's true.
It's not an insult.
But second of all, how many people who pick up the Edmonton Journal in that city, and granted that's not a very large number anymore, how many would see the word Ford and think, oh, they're talking about Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario?
That's so weird.
How many Edmontonians would assume free speech is something that only outsiders care about and not them?
That headline is obviously written by an activist, someone who has a version of Trump derangement syndrome.
It goes without saying if they hate Doug Ford, if they have Doug Ford derangement syndrome in Alberta.
No real Albertan would have that point of view unless they were an activist, which is pretty much what's left in the media party these days, ain't you?
Here, I'm going to read some from this story because I want you to, I want to let you know how far the Edmonton Journal, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Edmonton Journal, and indeed all Canadian media have fallen since 1938 when they actually fought back against the charge of fake news, fought back against government control.
Ready?
The UCP government will require Alberta post-secondary institutions to adopt controversial free speech policies based on U.S. principles that allow speakers, no matter how unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive, say what they like on campuses.
Is free speech a U.S. principle?
Is it controversial, really?
Is that what our Supreme Court of Canada said in the case of the Press Act and Bill Aberhard in 1938?
Is it true that free speech isn't even Canadian, and to say so is controversial?
Have you ever, you know, read the Charter of Rights?
It's right there in Section 2B.
Or the Bill of Rights from Deef the Chief.
It's right there in Section 1, 1D and F, free speech, free press.
It's in the very first section of our Bill of Rights, neither of which is necessary to know that we have freedom of the press up here, free speech, because like I say, Eberhardt's fake news censorship law was struck down 81 years ago before we had those modern iterations of the Bill of Rights or Charter Rights.
We have had free speech going back centuries in our country.
One of the greatest free speech cases and free press cases goes back to the 1830s when a journalist and activist named Joseph Howe named and shamed corrupt city aldermen in Halifax.
Do you know this story?
He was charged with seditious libel.
That's what it's called.
There was a trial.
He was embarrassing aldermen because he showed their corruption.
The judge ordered the jury to convict Joseph Howe.
But Howe gave such a passionate speech.
He was his own lawyer, which is generally a bad idea, but in this case it was a great idea.
He gave such a speech about free speech that he was acquitted, despite the judge instructing a guilty verdict.
And wouldn't you know it, Joseph Howe went on to become the first premier of that province.
And let me quote, if I may, from Howe on free speech.
He particularly talked about America versus Canada.
And remember, Canada wasn't even officially a country yet.
It was British North America, right?
And this was just not even a century after America was born.
Here, I'm quoting from the Nova Scotia government's official transcript of Joseph Howe's speech defending himself on March 2nd, 1835.
Now, this was a huge hours-long defense that really established freedom of the press in Canada, at least when it came to controversial speech.
And Joseph Howe specifically challenged the jury and the judge to prove and decide and agree with him that free speech was as much for loyal British subjects as it was for American rebels, as he called them.
Let me quote, and then I'll go back to the losers of the Edmonton Journal who should study a bit of Canadian history before deciding that freedom of speech is a foreign concept, a controversial concept.
Let me quote Joseph Howe's speech before getting back to today's news, okay?
I do not ask for the impunity which the American press enjoys, though its greater latitude is defended by the opinions of Chancellor Kent.
That's obviously a Brit.
But give me what a British subject has a right to claim, impartial justice, administered by those principles of the English law that our forefathers fixed and have bequeathed.
Let not the sons of the rebels look across the border to the sons of the loyalists and reproach them that their press is not free.
He was saying, don't let those Americans laugh at us for not being free.
Yeah, exactly.
And you know what?
He was acquitted.
Sons of loyalists are allowed to have a free press.
Pretty important case, and that's why we are free today.
So, okay, what is the Edmonton Journal in 2019, almost 200 years later on about?
Well, I'll read some more from this goofy story.
Quote, they are called the Chicago Principles, hailed by Advanced Education Minister Dimitrios Nicolaidis and others as the gold standard.
They were developed by the University of Chicago in 2014 to demonstrate a commitment to free speech on U.S. college campuses.
But some worry, whenever you see a journalist saying that, that means I worry, but I want to pretend someone else does.
But some worry, they don't allow universities to distinguish between groups or individuals who want to speak on campus, be it a flat earth society, racists, or a celebrity.
The UCP did not grant Postmedia an interview with Nicolaidis.
However, in an emailed statement, he said applying the principles would ensure Alberta post-secondary institutions are competitive with those in the United States.
Now, in fairness, it is called the Chicago Principles, but that's only because it happened to be the University of Chicago that wrote them down clearly in such a way that everyone wants to copy them.
They apply identically throughout universities all around the world, really.
I mean, what's so American only about this?
Let me quote from the Chicago Principles.
In a word, the university's fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some, or even by most members of the university community, to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.
Something about America there says universities.
I mean, America lives up to freedom better than most countries because of its love for free speech, but how's that different from what we believe at the University of Toronto and the University of Calgary, UBC, or any place up here?
I'll read more.
This talks about how to handle deeply offensive ideas.
This is from the Chicago principles.
It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.
Although the university greatly values civility, and although members of the university community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.
Can you disagree with that?
Maybe you can, but if so, you don't belong in a university.
Well, the Edmonton Journal disagrees with that, or at least one reporter calls it deeply controversial, or at least says some say it's controversial.
But let me read just one more line.
Just one more line from the Chicago Principles.
The whole thing is only a few pages long.
Google it.
It's great.
It's worth reading.
Ready?
Last quote.
Although members of the university community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus and to criticize and contest speakers who are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.
To this end, the university has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.
That's great, isn't it?
There's nothing American about that.
That's a human idea.
That's a freedom idea.
The only American thing is that with, as with so many other things, Americans are amazing and wonderful, and thank God we live in their neighborhood when they're fighting for freedom and say not in a different neighborhood like Arabia, where censorship and suppression is the norm.
That is a great set of principles.
But back to the Edmonton Journal that has, in the short space of a few sentences, started by saying these ideas are a Doug Ford thing, that was right in the headline, and now they're saying they're a Chicago thing because someone put pen to paper in Chicago.
And obviously we don't share those ideas in Canada.
Let me read some more.
The move echoes a recent edict by Doug Ford's Ontario government.
Professor Seagal Ben Porath, a University of Pennsylvania free speech scholar, helped Ontario institutions develop Ford-mandated policies.
Many ended up simply penning a policy saying they supported the Chicago principles, Ben Porath said, despite the fact the policy cannot apply in Canada as it does in the States because of our hate speech laws.
What?
So the Edmonton Journal, which just mocked free speech as something un-Albertan, it's Ontarian people, or Chicagoan, they quote some American left-wing Democratic Party activist, Googler, seriously, to tell us in Canada that we can't have free speech here because of our hate speech laws.
Kooky Professor's Free Speech Battle00:06:44
What?
Now it is true there is a specific hate speech crime in our criminal code.
It shouldn't be there.
It's odious.
But it's very specific.
There are very specific legal defenses to it.
And everyone acknowledges that it's such an obnoxious law that for it to be prosecuted, it must be personally approved by the Attorney General himself before a prosecution can be done under it.
But the Chicago principles say that criminal acts are obviously not protected by the Chicago principles.
So this doesn't even make any sense.
What this kooky professor from Pennsylvania is telling the kooky reporter from Edmonton is that in advance, we can't protect campus free speech and you shouldn't even try because some speech somewhere somehow might be criminal after a trial or something.
I don't know.
I don't even understand it.
That's the newspaper that won the free speech pulitzer in 38.
Yeah, time to ship the metal back, I think, guys.
Let me read a little more.
We are serving more and more diverse students, and we need to be thoughtful in the ways in which we organize the environment in which they are learning, she said.
This is the Pennsylvania expert on Canadian law.
Hey, can you do me a favor?
Can we all stop interviewing racists like that?
I mean, here's a professor saying, there's only one plain meaning here, that minorities and new immigrants can't handle freedom.
like regular people.
I think that's what she's saying.
Sorry, that's called the soft bigotry of low expectations.
And then the journal quotes another out-of-province expert.
Why not, eh?
Gillian Phillips, Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Association's president, so she's a union activist, watched the Ford policy roll out in her province.
She calls it an unnecessary, crass political gesture.
Yeah, hey, Google Lindsey Shepard, Google Jordan Peterson if you don't think it's necessary.
Imagine being a professor and arguing against free speech protection.
Just because you hate the politician who's for it.
This is the lifeblood of your profession.
This is the lifeblood of the concept of a university.
But you're against free speech because it was Doug Ford or Jason Kenney or Donald Trump or anyone who supports.
Sorry, that's deranged.
But that's the entire argument here.
People don't like, people we don't like are doing the right thing.
So we're going to change our own point of view on something as core as free speech because we care more about hating conservatives than standing up for the once liberal value of universities as places of debate.
Let me read some more.
Ford's government decreed that any post-secondary institution failing to implement free speech policies could be fiscally punished.
Similarly, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March to bar post-secondary institutions from federal funds if they restrict free speech.
Seriously.
What a lame column.
I think that's what it is because it's not really a news report.
And forgive me for finding it so remarkable.
Of course, this article in the Edmonton Journal is not actually remarkable.
Of course, that's how things are now throughout the media and the academy.
Free speech and free protests and drama are all fine when you're a leftist protesting against the right.
Like just the other day, the media loved this actual replica guillotine with replica blood on it put on the lawn of the Ontario legislature because it was Doug Ford inside who would be getting the chop.
But someone, I don't know if you remember this, someone had a poster of Rachel Notley on a golf course and that promoted violence because you could hit the golf ball and hit the poster and that's violence.
But the guillotine, that's A-OK guys, because it's Doug Ford.
Look, none of these leftists mean it.
They all say they're for free speech for themselves against their enemies.
None of them want free speech for their opponents, except for that's how it works.
Free speech is the gift you have to give your opponents if you want it for yourself.
It's a paradox, I know.
But this isn't news.
It's old.
I remember a dozen years ago how few journalists in Canada published the Danish cartoons of Mohamed.
I mean, it was pretty much just me at the Western Standard Magazine.
But the rest of the journalists were sort of jealous of me, I'll be honest.
I talked to so many.
Most said it was about a freedom.
You know, 70% of working journalists surveyed at the time by Compass, the pollster, answered that their own media outlets should have published them too.
70%.
It's been a dozen years, and I doubt 10% of working journalists would believe that today.
I doubt 10% of professors would believe in free speech today, too.
Now, I found the story in the Edmonton Journal newsworthy because I used to live in Edmonton, and I have seen with my own eyes that Pulitzer Prize plaque and the engraved editorials on the walls there.
I've seen it with my own eyes, and I know how a premier in Alberta tried to shut down the free press by calling it fake news, and I loved my Alberta history.
I loved my pride as a born in Alberta boy, knowing that someone fought back and lived up to the province's motto, Fortis et Le Ber, which is Latin for strong and free.
Now, that same newspaper is ridiculing free speech as a foreign idea, a wacky idea, even an illegal idea.
Sorry, that is an utter disgrace.
And I think you ought to know about it.
Stay with us for more.
Allah!
then That is shocking footage of hundreds, close to 700 rockets fired from Gaza deliberately into civilian neighborhoods in Israel, just in some cases hundreds of feet away, some cases a dozen miles away, killing various civilians, which is their purpose.
Many people think that Hamas is, of course, acting as a shock troop, a surrogate for Iran.
Delegation Dynamics00:14:27
Israel has deployed its Iron Dome anti-rocket system, but I think the strategic attempt here was to overwhelm that by sending hundreds and hundreds of rockets, low-tech rockets, that might actually only cost a few hundred dollars to make the Iron Dome system costing $100,000 to stop them.
But it couldn't be clearer who the bad guys are, so clear that even Canada issued an unusually one-sided tweet.
Normally they condemn the Israeli victims as much as they condemn the Palestinian terrorists, but in this case, they put out a tweet only criticizing the terrorist baby steps.
Of course, Donald Trump showed the way.
Let me show you his very dramatic tweet.
He said, once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rockets by terrorist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens.
And Trump goes on to say to the Gazan people, these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery.
End the violence and work towards peace.
It can happen.
So that is Donald Trump, who the left portrays bizarrely as anti-Semitic or even a Nazi of sorts, even though, of course, his daughter and son-in-law are not just Jewish, but they're religious Jews.
So here's my question.
What about the 20 or so Democrats seeking the nomination for that party's 2020 presidential primary?
As of when I checked about an hour ago, not one of them had even uttered a word against these rockets.
Why not?
Well, joining us now via Skype from the Los Angeles area is our friend Joel Pollock, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
Joel, did I properly sum up what's going on?
Have you seen any Democratic presidential candidates even say the obvious, terrorism is bad?
No, not one.
And it's quite striking because in the past, Democrats would have at least said something about the terrorism.
They might have also added Israel should act with restraint and so forth.
But they didn't say anything at all.
And it continues to amaze me how, given the near or total unanimity of opinion on the Democratic side, how there's not one person who would raise his or her hand and stand out from the crowd.
It seemed they would reap instant dividends from doing so.
I mean, it would be great to be the one Democrat who defended Israel, but nobody's done it.
Just like there was not one single Democrat who attended the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem or even the party that Israel threw in Washington, D.C. to celebrate that opening.
So Democrats just seem to be in lockstep.
They're terrified of their base on this issue.
The campus left is very anti-Israel.
That's where all the action is right now.
And Democrats just don't want to step out of line.
That's incredible to me.
Here's a tweet from Ilhan Omar.
And like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she's a freshman congresswoman.
She's from Minnesota, obviously a Muslim activist.
Here's what she wrote.
And I think you're right, even though she's just a freshman and she's not, I wouldn't say she has a lot of allies in Congress necessarily.
I think she's setting the tone.
Let me put that back up just for a sec.
I'll read it.
I'll read the tweet from Ilhan Omar.
She says, how many more protesters must be shot?
Rockets must be fired and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends.
The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable.
Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.
That stops about half a step short of saying, I'm on the side of the terrorists.
But that is, I mean, there used to be a foreign policy general agreement between Democrats and Republicans during the Cold War, at least.
Is that gone?
Is the bipartisan consensus that Islamic terrorism is bad?
Is that actually gone, Joel?
Well, the bipartisan consensus has eroded in that Democrats won't call it Islamic terrorism.
Remember, that was the big fight that we had when Barack Obama was president.
And even now, they don't really want to acknowledge Christians or victims of Islamic terrorism.
With the bombings in Sri Lanka last month on Easter, there was that curious phrase they used, Easter worshipers.
There weren't any Democrats who actually said Christians were attacked.
So the Democrats like to frame this entire thing differently.
It's not that they are in favor of terrorism, but they want to frame it differently.
With Israel and the Palestinians, things get a little different.
There, you do find some Democrats who favor Palestinian terrorism.
We have some of them in Congress right now.
Rashina Tlaib, who's a first-year representative from Michigan, said a bunch of things like what you just heard from Elon Omar, and she ended her tweet with hashtag Free Palestine, which as you and I know means getting rid of Israel.
Ilan Omar, I'll give her credit before I take it away again.
I'll give her credit for at least acknowledging the rockets are a problem.
But there isn't a cycle of violence.
There are episodes of violence that are caused by Hamas.
Israel never initiates the violence.
This was caused by the terrorist group Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip and takes orders and money from Iran, among other people.
And she also referred to Gaza as occupied.
Gaza has not been occupied by anybody except maybe the Hamas terrorist group since 2005.
Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out, every last one, in 2005, with considerable debate and protest within Israel itself over that decision.
But there's nobody left who is Israeli in Gaza.
Nobody's occupying Gaza.
So she is basically presenting a lie and using it, as you point out, to take the side of the terrorists.
She's casting it as kind of, we all want peace, but she favors boycotting Israel.
She sides with the worldview, at least, of Hamas and others.
And this tweet was, again, an attempt to justify, through immoral equivalence, the actions of the Palestinian terror groups.
And you see that openly now in Congress.
You know, the Jews, like blacks and gays and Hispanics, have traditionally voted Democrat.
And in Canada, Stephen Harper's pro-Israel activism for pro-Israel politics for 10 years finally broke that away.
And I think in the last election, the Jewish community here probably voted about 60% for conservatives.
But in the United States, I'd say the Jews for the Democrats are still probably 70, 80% in the last election.
You probably know those exit polls better than me.
I think, I mean, Jews are only a couple of percent of the U.S. population, but they're disproportionate in terms of political activism.
They're greatly disproportionate in terms of donations.
And of course, they live in major cities that are key, whether it's in the media cities of LA and New York or in political, I mean, Miami, large Jewish community there.
That's a really, that's a state that is a majority maker or a president maker.
I just don't understand how Jews can be fine with the party basically saying, yeah, we're going to stand by as Israel is rocketed.
And not just Jews.
I'm a Jew, you're a Jew.
We care about Israel perhaps for reasons of religious or ethnic connection.
But a lot of Americans love Israel, and they're not Jews.
They're Christians who have an affection for Israel, or they're just Democrats who believe in free countries and democracies.
I mean, the same way I love Taiwan.
I have no ethnic or religious connection.
I just love the little country standing up to the big bully China.
I can't believe that Jews would stick around a party that is becoming Jeremy Corbynified.
Like, I look at the Labor Party in the UK.
It's explicitly anti-Semitic right into the leader's office now.
I fear that's happening in America, and I don't see a lot of Jews pulling out.
Well, that's for two reasons.
Number one, this is the pre-existing reason, which is that Israel is very far down the list of priorities for Jewish voters on the left.
Number one or number two is abortion, health care.
I mean, they're basically Democrats, and in fact, their religious observance is often defined by their party allegiance.
If you go into many of the more liberal synagogues or temples, much of what they do and say in their services is defined by its proximity to the Democratic Party platform.
So there is almost a canonization of left-wing policies that's gone on in Jewish communities.
Now, more observant Jews tend not to be affected by that, and they are moving in a more conservative direction in terms of voting behavior.
But there's a definite emphasis on the priorities of the Democratic Party over and above issues like Israel or even anti-Semitism.
It's not unique to American Jews.
I spoke when I was in Poland to a young woman from the Labor Party in the UK who refused to leave, even though she didn't criticize those who did leave.
She refused to leave over Corbyn's anti-Semitism because she said the things she still cares about most are the things labor represents.
And so she wants to vote with labor and hope that they will change their leadership.
I think that's how many Jewish Democrats feel about it, that the things that are most important to them are still the things on the Democratic Party agenda, at least for them.
And they will wait until the party turns itself around on Israel, which is not that urgent to them.
The other thing that's happened is the media have toxified Donald Trump for many Jewish voters.
That has unraveled a bit with some of the debunking that has gone on, and especially with the outstanding performance of Rabbi Goldstein from the Poe Synagogue, the victim of the shooting last Saturday.
I mean, he's been absolutely superb in terms of his poise, his principled stands about a moment of silence in public schools and so forth.
But he also turned to Donald Trump at the White House late last week and called him a healer and thanked him for his personal intervention in helping the community.
And I think that actually went a long way to see this rabbi with a traditional black hat, black coat, long white beard, turning to Donald Trump and essentially blessing him not just as a great president, but as a person with empathy for the community, I think that went a long way.
So you're seeing that unravel a little bit, but there are Democratic activists in the Jewish community who are absolutely determined to make sure that Jewish voters go into the voting booth believing that Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, and they will sell them whatever fiction they have to sell them, including Charlottesville or whatever, to make sure that they think that.
Again, another way it's unraveling, I mean, I just wrote a story about this.
Donald Trump has a delegation in Israel right now.
They're a delegation of ambassadors, a very large delegation.
They are in Israel.
They happen to be there during the rocket attacks.
The reason they're there is they participated in this Holocaust commemoration that I was covering last week in Poland, where they marched from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
It's called the March of the Living.
Trump sent the first ever official U.S. delegation to this event.
There's never been another U.S. delegation from the government anyway.
And it's amazing.
I mean, Trump is the first American president to send a delegation to participate in this annual commemoration.
So that's a big deal.
And little things like that, over time, chip away at the false impression that he's an anti-Semite.
But you have the media and activists within the Jewish community on the Democratic side who are definitely pushing that idea, will not relent, will not stop, no matter what the facts actually say.
So that is probably going to keep Jewish voter support for the Republican candidate, in this case Donald Trump, at historic levels.
It'll be about 30% for Trump and 70% for whoever he's running against.
You know, it goes up and down.
It could reach 60, 40, maybe as bad as 80, 20, depending on what's in the news.
So I don't see Donald Trump winning the Jewish vote.
However, if I am a Jewish donor on the Democratic side right now, they've got to be supporting Joe Biden because when you see what comes down the pipeline in terms of Bernie Sanders and some of the other candidates and what they believe and say about Israel, Beto O'Rourke has said some crazy things.
The Democratic Party that's coming into its own right now, the younger Democrats, are so viciously anti-Israel to the point of borderline anti-Semitism that those Jews who still are very active in the Democratic Party are probably very concerned about it.
And if I were one of them, I'd be telling Joe Biden he has to win the nomination because he is all that stands between the Democratic Party and a complete capitulation to the far left on Israel.
And he's not that great on Israel, by the way.
He has a very long record of mistakes and problems, but he at least is less crazy than the others.
And I think that's what he's going to try to convince people, and that's what they want to convince him to emphasize.
You know, I mean, I agree with you that the same way that for many liberals, Israel is not their number one issue.
And I certainly wouldn't call myself a single-issue voter.
I care about so many things.
But if, and you don't even, that's why I said you don't even have to be Jewish.
You don't even have to be Christian.
You just, I mean, how can you stay silent with terrorist attacks like that?
I suppose it's the same way so many of those Democrats stayed silent about the Sri Lanka massacre of Christians on Easter Sunday.
But that's got to be a shock to the party, the historical home of Jews.
And perhaps there is a validity to a hardcore left-winger saying that's not my only issue.
But when the party has gone so insane like that, it boggles my mind that there's no reaction.
Let me ask you about Tulsi Gabbard, because she's a former Air Force vet who has some interesting foreign policy views.
War Candidate vs. Pro-Israel00:04:06
She's fought against terrorism.
I thought maybe she would come out against this.
What are your thoughts on her?
Well, she's the anti-war candidate right now.
And, you know, it helps to have a military background if you're going to be the anti-war candidate.
It gives you more credibility.
And she's basically saying that our entire foreign policy strategy is wrong, not just this administration, but the previous one as well.
So she is opposed to the moves that Trump is taking in Venezuela and the moves he's taking toward Iran and so forth.
So she's trying to move us away from any kind of assertive posture on the world stage.
There was an element of that in Obama's foreign policy, but even he got entangled in Syria and Libya and elsewhere.
So I think she is basically standing for the pacifist position, if you would.
You know, there's one other thing I wanted to point out about all of this, which is that the Democratic Party, in terms of its orientation toward Israel and the peace process, is really reaching a point of no return.
That is to say, the things they're saying and doing now are going to have a serious effect on the relations between the two countries.
We've just learned that Israel supplied the United States with key intelligence on Iran and threats by Iran to American interests or American allies.
I'm sure Israel would continue to work with the Pentagon and CIA and things like that.
But Democrats are doing and saying things right now that would rupture the relationship with Israel in a profound way.
When Beito Arouk, for example, says that Benjamin Etanyahu is a racist, I mean, Netanyahu, if he doesn't call early elections, will be prime minister unless he's indicted, you know, convicted or whatever.
But he'll be prime minister when Beito Arouk takes office, if he wins the election.
How are you going to deal with someone you call a racist?
So it's a little concerning.
Well, I find it very sad because I just think that the only reason not to condemn a terrorist attack against Israel is if you've got some deeper animus towards Israel.
And we know that one of those animosities is anti-Semitism.
I do not want to say that 20 out of 20 of the Democratic candidates are anti-Semitic.
I don't believe they are.
But I think they're all indulging it or humoring it or staying silent in the face of it because I think the Ilan Omers and the Rashida Tlaibs and a lot of the campus activists in the Democratic Party truly are anti-Semitic.
And like Jeremy Corbyn, they can do the math.
There's one other thing happening here.
Sorry, I meant to mention this earlier.
They didn't tweet about the situation in Israel and Gaza, but more than half a dozen of the candidates tweeted a happy Ramadan to Muslim Americans, which is fine.
There's nothing wrong with wishing them that.
But it does tell you what they're thinking.
I mean, the two voting blocks are roughly similar in size.
Probably the Jewish voting block is still slightly larger.
But it just tells you that Democrats are thinking about making a conscious pitch to Muslim voters and basically ignoring Jews as a voting category, assuming, in a sense, that they're going to get that support no matter what.
Yeah.
Well, in Canada, I mean, it was only 30 years ago that the total Muslim population of our country was, I think, under 100,000, and Jews were about 300,000.
Today, the Jewish population in Canada is about 350,000, and the Muslim population is 1.3 million.
So in a very short period of time, mainly through immigration, the Muslim community is now quadruple that of the Jewish community, or at least triple.
And not all of them are citizens yet, but they all will be in a few years.
Justin Trudeau did the math.
And he said, well, I can't beat Stephen Harper on being pro-Israel.
So why not do a little judo move?
Let him go pro-Israel.
I'll go pro-Muslim Brotherhood.
And there's four times as many fish in that pond to catch.
I think that's the math Jeremy Corbyn sees.
I think that's the math these 20 Democrats see.
Math Of Political Shifts00:03:19
Last word to you, Joel.
Well, I think it's going to be interesting to watch, but I do think this is the first time that there's a really clear case that Donald Trump, who supported Israel 100% in this rocket attack, Donald Trump is the pro-Israel candidate, and that Democrats have yet to produce any candidate who will say even the perfunctory things Democrats used to say for generations in support of Israel and the Jewish community.
It's amazing, but we're finally at that point.
Yeah.
Well, it's very depressing, and I say that as a Jew, but I say that as a Canadian, as a small D Democrat.
I say that as an ally of the democracies, and I see that as someone who is concerned about not just the hard jihad of terrorism, but the soft jihad of Islamification, which has now touched the Democrat Party.
Joel, it's great to have you.
Thanks for spending so much time with us.
Thank you.
Good to be with you.
All right, there's Joel Pollock, the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
What do you think of that?
I'm Jewish, so I have certain ideas that resonate with me that may not to Gentile viewers, but I have to think I would feel the same way, I think, if it were a Taiwan, if it were a South Korea, if it were some other small democracy next to bullies, and if these insane rocket attacks, how could you not stand with the democracy?
You tell me, send me an email to Ezra at the Rebel.media if you disagree.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
On my monologue Friday about World Press Freedom Day, Revelation writes, Every day is Press Freedom Day.
When you have to have one day a year to point it out, it's because it isn't free anymore.
Hey, that is a very good point.
That is a very good point.
Yeah, every day is Press Freedom Day.
You know, I'm going to borrow your line.
Thank you.
Keith writes, tomorrow we may well be arrested for saying anything that Marxists do not like.
Freedom of speech will soon be a thing of the past.
We are already controlled by the double-speaking censorship in our daily lives.
You are so right.
You are so right.
And the fact that our devices, we don't just look at our devices, our devices look at us, and they never forget.
I mean, my God, you know, I bought one of those little Alexa echoes, plugged it in to test it out.
Oh, my God, I got that thing out of the house so fast.
Who would have something in your own home that listens to you all the time?
And don't tell me it doesn't listen, because it has to wake up when you say, hey, Alexa.
So it's got to be listening to hear the words, hey, Alexa.
Imagine having an audio listening device in your home all the time.
And as we showed you the other day, super crazy, Amazon has a $600 million contract with the CIA.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if the CIA said, yeah, we'll put a little listening device in your home and you will pay us for it, would you go along with it?
And I know you're thinking, Answer, you're sounding like Alex Jones win for it.
No, I'm just talking about the Panopticon of how we used to watch TV, but now TV watches us.
And it's not just all about sports and weather and cooking.
It's about politics now, too.
And it's about deplatforming people who don't share their views.
Rex Murphy Swears00:03:59
I think these are dangerous days.
Dan writes, Alan Bukhari is always interesting and sometimes bloody scary.
Yeah, I really like him and I like everything about him.
I've had the chance to meet him a couple times.
I think he's great, really smart.
And someone said to me, Ezra, he reminds me of a Bond villain.
Just that perfect accent and the look.
And I thought, oh my God, you're right.
Except for he's on our side.
Scott writes, I get a little hot under the collar about the bad stuff or excited about the good news too, but I noticed particularly this week a number of times where you swore or used improper language.
And you give examples.
When these things happen, I won't forward links to friends or colleagues.
I find I am reluctant to watch the show when there are little ears around just in case something pops out.
And to be honest, if this pattern continues, I may stop watching as much myself, even when by myself.
Scott, that's a good point.
I think I have a big enough vocabulary that I can say things without cussing.
Can I tell you a quick story?
And I don't think I'm telling Tales Out of School.
You know who has the biggest vocabulary in the world?
I haven't met everybody, but of the people I know, you're probably thinking Conrad Black.
He's pretty good.
Rex Murphy.
I used to be chumming with him.
I regret that I've fallen out of touch with him.
Once I went over to his place, and he, this was before the internet was really, really big.
He had like a CD or DVD version of the extended, full Oxford English Dictionary.
You know how big that is?
Like the full meal.
If it was in books, it would be this wide.
Because it shows you the etymology, the history of every word.
He had this at his home.
Did you know he was the editor of a dictionary himself?
The Dictionary of Newfoundland, which has amazing words and where they come from.
Rex Murphy edited a dictionary.
Tell me that guy don't love his words.
Oxford scholar, of course, Rhodes Scholar.
And you're going to think this is super nerdy.
I'm embarrassed to say it because you're going to see how nerdy I was.
Rex and I played a game where we tried to stump the other guy with an obscure word.
Do you know what it means?
I don't think I stumped him.
I think I still remember I tried to get him on Infandus.
I think he knew that.
Anyways, besides telling you a Rex Murphy story, here's my point.
Rex Murphy perhaps has the largest vocabulary of any person in the English language.
Certainly in the top 0.000001%.
But he swears.
I'm not trying to embarrass him.
I'm not trying to tell tales out of school.
Why would a man who probably has 80,000, 90,000, 100,000 words at his fingertips?
And I think the average person only has like 30,000.
Why would he swear?
It puzzled me.
Because you swear sometimes, not because you can't articulate it, but because you want an exclamation point.
You want to show how passionate you are.
And probably because you're a Newfoundlander.
And that's my story about swearing.
Sometimes you swear because you want to make a point by smashing things a bit that you couldn't, even if you had the most amazing description.
I think that's why I swore a little bit last week.
So I'm not going to guarantee it'll never happen again.
But I take your word, your caution about not doing it too commonly.
And it also gave me a chance to tell you my Rex Murphy challenged the other guy with a big word story.
And on that note, if anyone's still watching, I bid you adieu.