CPAC 2021- In Every Generation: Ancient Lessons for the Modern Fight for Israel

In Iran or ancient Persia who is committed to the eradication of the Jewish people Right. These are ancient and modern literally to the word and so we're going to talk about antisemitism support for Israel today and And we're here with CPAC under CPAC's leadership to do this We have this important conversation with me here on the stage. I will start at the end We're honored to have with us Josh Mandel Josh Mandel is a veteran. He's sir. He was a man. He's a Marine former state treasurer of Ohio from 2011 until 2019 revolutionized Transparency of the state budget in Ohio. There is a website that he put up which is still live Ohio checkbook comm Which is really truly a leader in Ohio became a leader in transparency under his under his leadership Josh is also a grandson of Holocaust survivors Antisemitism is an important part of his public service and he's actually running now for Senate in the great state of, Ohio Next we have Talia Kaplan Talia is here in a private capacity, but she works professionally for Fox News and Fox Business She joined Fox in March 2019 and reports on the Middle East antisemitism the economy markets crime and politics But a lot of her passion lies in her work with Israel and antisemitism She's worked in media here in the United States in all kinds of different places in New York and other in other parts of the country And she has been she was raised by Israeli parents and speaks fluent Hebrew. So we'll have a lot to say on that Talia And then finally to my immediate right is dr. Richard Kravats Dr. Kravats is the is an author He is currently president emeritus of scholars for peace in the Middle East a Horowitz Freedom Center journalism fellow and academic free speech He has written prolifically Published over 450 articles op-ed pieces scholarly papers He's written books including dispatches from the campus war against Israel and Jews in the in genocidal liberalism Dr. Kravats is also a member of the board of directors of scholars for peace in the Middle East And he's a board member of the Journal for the study of antisemitism amongst many other worthy causes So on that note I'm going to ask each of our panelists to provide a brief opening statements and to talk a little bit about Their passion for this particular topic what they're working on and they're in their specific spheres of influence Josh we'll start with you over there I Wouldn't be here my And so when he got to the camps, he went one way to be warped. And his mom, his siblings, all were killed at the same time. At the same time, my grandmother, Fernanda, my aunt, Marietta, my aunt, Renata, and my uncle, Mario, who were full-blooded Italians and Jewish, they were hit. And a group of very courageous Christians in Torino said, we're not going to allow kids to die at the hands of Nazis. And they took in my grandmother and a lot of other Jewish kids in the community. And if you think about that level of courage, if the Nazis would have knocked on the door of the Christian family, they would have not only killed my grandmother, they would have killed the Christian family I came from. And that story is branded inside of me. It's stuck inside of me. And it's one of the reasons why, as the State Treasurer of Ohio, as a legislator back there, and starting in the years as a United States Senator, I will continue to be such a fervent fighter for religious liberty and be so grateful for evangelical Christians and others, Catholics and others, throughout America and throughout the world, who support the U.S.-Israel relationship. I grew up around a kitchen table that was very proudly American, very patriotic, and also very Zionistic. And when I was in college, I decided to pay back that debt for the U.S. military liberating Europe and decided to join the United States Marine Corps. Along the way, I did a couple tours in Iraq. And one of the interesting things is when I was in the Marine Corps in a town called Al-Qa'im, which is right near the Euphrates River and meets the Iraq-Syria border, my cousin Mitch, who was in the IDF, was stationed in the Golan on the Israel-Syria border. So my father, Bruce, back in Cleveland, Ohio, would write letters with his brother, my Uncle Doug, who lives in the Shomron in Israel. And they would say that Cousins Mandel have the Syrians surrounded. So that was back in 2004. I did my second tour in 2007-2008 and have been in and out of public service ever since. But I was very grateful that CPAC and ACU invited me to speak on this panel because I think it's important that we, as Americans, recognize who are our friends and who are our enemies. And when it comes to Middle Eastern policy and foreign policy in general, that has to be the foundation. I was talking with a good friend of mine yesterday, and we were just talking about good receipts. There was a friend named Mark Goldman who is from Florida and is here at CPAC. And we were talking about the fact that what separates America from so many societies over time is monotheism and belief in God. And the fact that we are a country that is based and founded and grew strong in Judeo-Christian values, not in radical Muslim values. And I think it's important that we, as citizens, we as patriots, and we as Americans, always keep in mind those Judeo-Christian values that make our country strong. Thank you. Thank you, Josh. Talia. Wow. Love it. That was not planned. We actually met before, I don't think. No, I just met him like five minutes ago. So now I work for Boston for 12 years. Before I came here, I was a senior student at the University of New York State. And before that, as the rabbi mentioned, I was in Florida for seven places, including Wyoming, Pasco, Wyoming, Nashville, Tennessee, which was very close to New York. And soon we came back to New York. And I was there in June, and I was there in June. And this happens to be very near and dear to my heart. Very close to my heart. But I tell you all this because when I was working for the organization, I was a student. And I was a student. And so when I was there, she said it right before, this is me that you have to do. And so I'm grateful for that opportunity because it's like a special place for me. I don't know if you've ever been to the Gulf of Mexico, but I've lived in the Gulf of Mexico for a long time, and I'm from the area that's in the Gulf of Mexico. Okay, so my first trip was to Canada. It took so long. I was committed to being in America, and I was brought around to the state. But when I was there in Somalia, I had an opportunity moment. I was just like, wow, this is something I've never seen on television before, I mean, my parents are Israelis. I had no idea that this is what it was like when I was around, and when I was there, I realized I had to recover and explore a little bit. So I took up a camera, definitely did everything, and one of the stops on the tour was in the industrial area of Comte, in the Somalian capital. And while I was there, I saw that Cartoons and Israelis literally, they live side-by-side as neighbors, and they also work side-by-side as a whole group. And this factory called Kudoka, they make all of those different types of art that we're talking about, and half of the people who work at this factory were themselves Somali women, and the Somali women that I spoke with are so happy to be working there. They were saying that they make higher wages by living at this factory, as opposed to working at a foreign factory that's all Somali. They were able to support their families. I couldn't even believe it was a person who had a camera, and I got a better camera, and I realized my story about this. At the time, I was a freelancer, so I didn't really know what I was gonna do with it, and I was working on it as a volunteer. And when I came back to America, I put everything together, and I went to every media conference I had, and everyone essentially said that it was for a student, it was for a student who was getting schooled as a student, and we were all getting paid for it, which I pretty much had to do it myself. I was able to work with an agent that I was working with at the time, and we were able to do things. And when I started working for Fox News, and long before, while I was working there, I was just a freelancer at the time, and I had 10 minutes to go, but I just had my time out, and I was able to speculate so that people could just hear about what I was trying to say. And while, at that time, I realized, you know, in news, they always say that it's all about the student, it's all about the community. So I realized there was news right there, and so I took my story to the editor of Fox News, and I was told that that was the best way to talk. And so that totally just came from a danger zone for everybody, it was a danger zone for Fox News itself. But I was so grateful that I was able to tell the story that was really right there on the ground, something we don't necessarily see in Central America. I mean, when you have all these news stations across the country, the one phrase I always heard over and over again was all these news stations say, it's we, it's we. So what does that really mean? I mean, that's pretty much what it means, the violence and all the negative news. We don't necessarily need to talk about that. And it's interesting, because in the US newsrooms, they constantly, you know, want to advocate for boycotting. Israel was really set up, and here I was in this factory, and actually there on the ground, and these guys were saying that they liked working there. So it was just really interesting to hear that. But anyway, the one thing I did was talk to Fox News, and I did a report, I did a report that came to the promotion, I got a report sent to me that showed, in fact, back in 2017, the first ever UN report on anti-Semitic profiling was adopted by anti-Semitism. In the US and around the world. And sadly, even though I was really taken aback by the report, I noticed that anti-Semitism was real and was around us. And there were several incidents in the world of anti-Semitism that occurred in our country in the last couple of years ago. The Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, six months later in Calais, California, in New York, I was in New York, I was at that funfair, stabbing and monkeying, a few weeks before that in Brigham City, New York, New York City, there was a stabbing in the consumer market. So I noticed that the report was around us, it was real. And I think that information, and just getting the word out about what's happening, the word, and seeing what's going on, I think that's the most important part of it all. Thank you. Thank you for having me. As you heard in the introduction, my focus was on the campus of the perception of anti-Semitism as an unfortunate, democratic, patriarchal class of Israel and what's going on in that Western-style democracy that I've seen for authoritarianism. I always start my talks with our campus of anti-Semitism, which is, of course, a new anti-Semitism, because it focuses not on the family, not the Jew, but on the Jewish nation, for instance, as a way of romanticization, so that it's archaically disguised as criticism of Israeli policy, when in fact, in many instances, the hatred and loathing of Israel, the constant under-wanting livelihood of the Jewish state, is a new form of anti-Semitism, which is focused specifically on a predation of Israel and Israel alone, where no other country has shown such harsh, and particularly unfriendly, and far worse, incoherent representation of the state. Many of you are familiar with the great British writer, Ellen Poe, and I use the title of her great book, The World Turned Upside Down, as a way of providing a chance for our discussion, because of the perception of Israel in the reversal of the narrative about what was going on in the Middle East, and what was going on in the world today, and particularly on campus, the narrative of the turned upside down, where reality is sometimes a fiction, a fiction created by those who have tried that, a great book, and turned it into a pariah to the world community, when in fact, as we all know, that the leaders at the capitals only affected the Americans because of free press. So did the Russians, and the Jesuits, and the Crusaders, and the Spaniards, and the Tartars, the free press that all of those other unified forces had acted, which had not possibly been able to do in the first place. So what has happened on American campus? Here by the Middle East Studies Department, there's a paragraph by Hugo Stallman that proves that the Pacific or Western values were anti-colonial, anti-Western, anti-American, and specifically anti-Semitic. The State Department of State overrides that. It's the second in five of its papers. I don't think that we've given the State Department enough space. Student groups on campuses like Students for Justice and Talents are relentlessly attempting to push through to other states to have boycotts against women, to have academic boycotts against women, to have petitions for gender equality and by that point, companies that do business with women, and particularly with defense companies. So what's the objective there? The objective there is to strip Israel of its ability to defend itself from the many enemies of that that wish to do it. It's such an attempt to eliminate the Jewish state altogether. And all of this is done in the name of social justice, as if the students who are campaigning against Israel actually care about whatever the green tail of Jews is. As if they are unconscious of all the benefits and attributes of Israel, their record on gay rights and human rights, and even rights for their non-Jewish citizens of Israel who enjoy more civil and human rights than any Arab or Muslim Jew in any of its founding countries, besides Israel. So, all of this combined, left-wing faculty members who support these radical student groups which demonstrate that Israel apartheid is an argumentation, they build a marked apartheid wall, they accuse Zionism and pro-Israel students of being racist, and the new Nazis, which my colleague Richard Landis calls moral slavery, the idea that Jewish exclusion was now the incarnation of the third Reich, not that, it's both pro-Israel and anarchic, but also specifically pro-Israel in terms of the fact that many people who are living in Israel are the actual survivors or descendants of the actual survivors of the real Holocaust. And now Gaza is equated to Auschwitz, and Israel is accused of creating a genocide against Palestinians. Four or 500,000 Palestinians were expelled from Israel in 1948, and now there's five or six million, and Israel is accused of perpetrating a genocide? That's not a very good genocide. 500,000 is not a good genocide. So this is part of the world turned upside down right now, and part of the world that we're living in right now. Thank you. Thank you all very much. So. So CPAC is put on by the American Conservative Union. As far as I know, this is the only panel dealing with fighting for a specific country. Why are we having this conversation about one country in the world in this forum with the eyes of the world on us? Why do you feel that this has to be addressed? And I'll start with Josh, especially because I know you're hoping to be a senator. Right? What answer do you have to that question? Why is it critical for all Americans of all creeds, of all faiths to understand this issue fully? I think a strong America is important for a strong Israel, and a strong Israel is good for a strong America. As my colleague mentioned just now talking about college campuses, the only country in the Middle East that looks like America is Israel. And try in any other country in the Middle East to get up on a soapbox and say bad things about the government, they will disappear. The only country in the Middle East where Arabs have a freedom of speech is the Jewish state of Israel. Think about that for a second. And so the history goes back not to 1948 with the founding of the modern state. The history goes back thousands of years. Because in 1776, at the founding of our nation, in 1787, when they're writing the Constitution, those brave men who fought in the Revolutionary War, those who wrote the Constitution of the United States, they had a strong belief in God. And they understood their heritage back. Abraham, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, they got it. And that's something that I believe today is actually missing in America. You know, there's a lot of folks on the left that'll have you believe that the United States is somehow based on a freedom from religion. But in fact, as we all know, it's based on a freedom of religion. And in my mind, that's what the Framers and the founding fathers of our country had in mind, a nation where individuals could pray and be who they are, whether it's in school, or in the workplace, or at a conference like this, and that we protected those Judeo-Christian values. And so, that's one of the reasons, to answer your question, is I think there's such a tight bond between the United States and Israel, because the founders, the Framers of the United States, they understood that the foundation of our country was belief in God. This is something, and I love the fact that you said that, because, you know, when I was going around the world, and all the people, the question I'm sure a lot of you have, you know, there are 2.8 million Palestinian Arabs living in this area, and 400,000 Jewish residents in 127 communities in the area known as the West Bank. And some of you likely have heard these communities, they're often called settlements. I know that the Jewish people who live there, you know, they don't want to use that term. They say that they live in those communities. But you might ask yourself, why? Why would these 400,000 Jewish people, why would they want to be involved with, you know, what is perceived to be violence, right? I mean, that was a question that I had in my mind when I was there. And every single person I spoke with, every single person I spoke with, I spoke with from all over the country, because this was the battle. This was it, and this is where it was founded. I mean, as I said, this is another area in the territory of the West Bank. And that's where all our ancestors are buried. And it was just a place, and it was literally, I remember there's like one street that, you know, where Jews can pray with, and then everything else is, you know, kind of blocked by Israeli army. So yeah, I mean, it goes years and years and years back, and there's a reason why Jewish people want to know about that. And obviously, it's controversial, and hence why we're talking about that, about Israel versus other countries or any other country at all. I think we're back. I think, were you gonna jump in about your academic efforts and why this is something all Americans should be concerned with? Well, I think Josh touched on one point, is that America and Israel share common values of morality, law, and justice. Unfortunately, the way that Israel is treated, it is violent. And to stand up for Israel, particularly on American campuses, requires an enormous amount of bravery from pro-Israel Jews, because they're considered to be racist. As I told you, if you are for Zionism, if you support the Jewish state, you're considered to be a racist because the Palestinian-Israeli conflict takes time as a racial conflict, when in fact, race has nothing to do with it. And that's why the enemies of Israel label the security fence, which is 80% dispensing and 20% a wall. They call it an apartheid wall. Why do they do that? Because their vision and their narrative is that white Jews who showed up in the Holy Land after the Holocaust built a wall to separate white people from brown Arabs, as if it was about race and not about theology and tribal factions of those thousands of Jews. So, the commonality between America and Israel is based on our respect for law, our respect for justice. And when you have UNESCO, for example, trying to designate the Western Wall as a Muslim holy place, and where the UN is passing more resolutions condemning Israel than all other countries combined, Yemen, China, North Korea, all of the other predatory authoritarian regimes on earth, including the United States, the most, in violation of rationality, common sense, and morality, then you see that there's a problem. But brave Americans, the Americans who came to power, those who stood up for justice, those who came in pairs and groups after the Holocaust, and we share such common values, irrespective of your love of YouTube, your interest in faith and the Bible, but just because of what's happening in the world today. Thank you. We're getting the signal that we only have less than five more minutes for this channel. Less than five. Four more. Less than five. Couple minutes. Two minutes. Excellent. Thank you. They didn't teach me to count. So in closing, I'd love to hear from each one of you what kind of represents a different sphere. We have academia, we have media, we have politics. We have people in this room and we have people watching who are activists. They want to know what can we do. We hear what you're saying. Israel's important. Combating antisemitism is important. It's something for us to do as Americans. What is it, practical advice, you can give these individual activists for what they can do? And Dr. Kovats, we'll start with you and conclude and we'll move our way over to Josh and those things out. Well, on campuses we have an enormous problem in that university administrators are very disinclined to control, modify or critique minorities, Muslims, black students, gay students, Latino students and others who are frequently enemies of Israel on this particular campus. So they have to tread a fine line. And Jews on campuses are not perceived to be a member of a minority. Jews are considered to be white and progressive on campus. They're not a minority. They're not seen to be marginalized or uncivilized. So they're treated differently. We have taken steps, for example, at the Brandeis Center for Human Rights and Law on North Florida campus, we have taken legal steps to make universities a human rights center. Because many times they're in violation of federal principles of the Civil Rights Act by letting a hostile project where Jewish students exist on their campus. And if they don't correct them, they could be subject to legal cover-up and be punished for doing so by outside influences. So parents can help by not sending their kids to school, not giving money to universities that allow them to have a place on campus. So that's a practical step. I'm sorry, I'm gonna put something on the line again. I'm sorry. Just an extension of what you were saying. I will say that last year, I was at another conference at the IAC and covering all the social issues of Florida. And I kid you not, every single student I spoke with, not one of them told me they were not subject to anti-Semitism, what they deemed to be anti-Semitism on college campuses. Which is really disheartening. They told me they're scared to speak out or say anything because sometimes it gets violent. And sometimes the administration don't necessarily listen to their concerns. I did do a story recently about the Department of Education curbing alleged anti-Semitism in NYU. After a student there, who was the president of a Jewish group, was subjected to anti-Semitism, she said members of another group, a North Californian group, a Yom Kippur flag, a Yom Ha'Alut festival that they were hosting, all sorts of other incidents. And sadly, it is a lie. Anti-Semitism is a lie on college campuses. And really, the one thing I will say is that I've noticed that there is in fact a lot more anti-Semitism that is happening on college campuses overall. I also would like to say that politics is getting involved. Trump administration, I interviewed at the IC actually, the special envoy to fight and combat anti-Semitism, Eric Carr. And he made it his mission to combat anti-Semitism specifically on college campuses. And Trump did in fact, if you all remember, he issued a representative order concerning sexual misregard. And hopefully the Biden administration takes action as well. I know that President Biden, while he was campaigning, said that it was a mission for him and it was a fairly successful anti-Semitism. And recently, there was a bipartisan letter that was sent to him by 53 members of Congress who were advocating for swift action so that he too would delegate a special envoy, I think they call it now an ambassador, to fight anti-Semitism. So hopefully that will happen as well. I'd say one of the most important things to support the U.S.-Israel relationship is making sure that Christians and Jews continue to work in tandem and in partnership. The, I'll finish with a quick story. So it was about two years ago. My cousin, Jill, who used to live in Cleveland, she's moved to Israel and she has a lot of kids. And her oldest son, Tom, was having performance. So I went over there. And she lives in a part of, as the media calls it, the West Bank. We call it Shomron. When she first moved to this mountain called Harbethach, there was, I think, around 200 Jews living on top of this mountain. And now there's over 1,500 Jews living on top of this mountain. There's a Hesder Yeshiva, and it overlooks Shechem, overlooks Nablus. So it's not the safest neighborhood in the world. They have IDF soldiers guarding it. And I'd never been there before. And when I went there, during the afternoon, one of their friends who was from Allentown, PA, who also lives there, he gave us a tour around the mountain. And he said, let me take out my tour book, and he took out the Bible. And he was pointing to different mountains. And as he pointed to different mountains, he talked about what stories from the Bible, what events occurred on which one of those mountains. And one of the other ladies who was on the tour, she asked this guy, she said, I don't understand, how can you put your family in such danger to live on top of this mountain that Nablus is at the bottom of the mountain, and you're surrounded by Palestinians everywhere? How can you do that? And his response was, how could I not? He said, if we're not living on this mountain, which is Biblical Jewish land, then we have a responsibility. And then he pointed to a vineyard on the side of the mountain, and he said, you see those people working out there, do you know who they are? I said, no. He said, those are Christians from the United States of America. Think about the beauty of this. These Jews living on top of this mountain with Biblical historical significance. And Christians, devout Christians, men and women of faith from the United States all year round come to Har Barcha to volunteer for weeks on end to work in the field. And in my mind, that's the type of cooperation, arms locked. We need to continue as Christians and Jews, and really as Americans first, to advance a strong, even stronger U.S. revolution. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much for participating. Thank you to our panelists. Appreciated all of your insights. And everyone should have a wonderful remainder of your afternoon. Thank you.