I'm Rabbi Ammi Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, and you're listening to In These Times. Today's podcast was recorded live in our sanctuary several weeks ago. It's my pleasure to welcome Bret Stephens, the prolific New York Times columnist who writes about foreign policy, domestic politics, and cultural affairs. He's also the editor-in-chief of SAPIJournal,l. which I have had the honor of being published in twice, including in the most recent volume a few weeks ago.
If you're not reading Sapir, you should be. It's critical for anyone who really wants to understand what's going on in the Jewish community. Bret is the former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post and Pulitzer Prize winner for his work at the Wall Street Journal. In so many columns recently and in so many ways, Bret has voiced and articulated what many of us are feeling about Israel. Bret, thank you for who you are, for what you do, and for giving us an hour of your time.
So let's give it up for Bret Stephens. Let me ask you first, uh, just a general question. How are you doing now? How are you feeling? When I saw you a few minutes ago, you asked me how am I doing and it was hard for me to answer. How are you doing? Uh, you know, it's depend, uh, as my Israeli friends say. But, look, uh, I think the Jewish world is in a bad way. And because I'm now so connected to the Jewish world, I feel it acutely, and I feel it emotionally.
I'm just kind of down a lot of the time, not only because of what happened or what is happening, but because of a trend line that really disturbs me. Maybe it isn't even a trend line. It's a certain kind of mood, uh, both among israel's critics and haters, uh, and as well as among its defenders. One of the things that I've noticed about the hatred of Israel is that there was always a kind of restraint.
You knew it was there, but it was being held back a bit by a perception of what was permissible. And now I think the perception is that everything is permissible. And so the nature, for example, of the anti Israel protests has turned so, in such a nakedly anti Semitic direction. I wrote about this last week, and the writing was sparked by a scene that was filmed at the Berkeley City Council of an 89 year old Holocaust survivor standing up, simply to petition the city.
Mothers and fathers to have a Holocaust Remembrance Day. About as anodyne a request as anyone could make on behalf of the Jewish community. And she was heckled and shouted down. Another woman speaking at that same meeting complained that her seven year old son, Jewish son, was told by other children at the school that Jews are stupid. To which the people in the audience screamed, Zionists are stupider.
Um, a third guy yelling something like, You cowards, you money grubbers, or something like that. In a way I guess this shouldn't be entirely surprising because it's Berkeley. But what is surprising is that I'm the only guy who wrote about it. I mean in a major newspaper. As far as I know. Just imagine if it were some other religious or racial minority that was being treated. that way in, uh, say, a Southern city, it would be national news for ages.
Charlottesville was national news for ages because it was an openly anti Semitic protest by hideous white supremacists. But what we're seeing now just almost like passes, uh, notice. Except, you know, in the usual places like this, the Jewish community. So I think that our enemies and the most vitriolic anti Semites in America feel like the light is green and it's going to continue to be green.
And in the meantime, I look at what's happening in Israel and I see a government that is failing to meet any of its goals. And, um, an Israeli military that reminds me of General Westmoreland talking about how many Viet Cong were killed that day without any sense of what the strategic objectives are. So I guess I'm a, I'm a Jewish optimist. Uh, yes, things can get worse. Let me ask you Bret, um, and we're not going to talk specifically about any media outlet or, colleagues of yours.
But generally in the media world, and even in the high-level media world, Do you find the same thing? Do you find that there is a kind of a gloves off, there's more is permitted by commentators and even journalists who supposedly are reporting straight news than say before October 7th? Yeah. Since we're not talking about any specific news organizations, um, Um, uh, look, the media, as long as I can remember, and I've been in the thick of the story for 25 years, has been anti Israel.
I mean, on, on, on balance, it's been anti Israel, but it was anti Israel, at least certainly when I was at the Jerusalem Post, because it saw, say, they didn't like right wing Israel. Okay. They didn't like Sharon when I was living there. Or, uh, Bibi, obviously. And Bibi is easy to dislike, especially if you're a normal person. But it did like left wing Israel, right?
I mean, it held on to its Israeli heroes, Shimon Peres, a certain idea that there was a good Israel and more had to be done to let that good Israel express itself politically. Now you have a sense increasingly that there's no good Israel. That's. It's kind of the overall tenor of, I think, media commentary. Obviously, I'm generalizing here, and there are all kinds of exceptions.
But it also used to be the case that there were the good Palestinians who were struggling for peace and then the bad Palestinians who were Hamas. Now, Hamas has become Palestine, and you see it, I think, most starkly in the nonchalant way in which casualty figures in Gaza are cited as authoritative. We don't take, in the media, Russia's word for it when they tell us about their casualty figures or the casualty figures that they're inflicting on Ukrainians.
We don't even take Ukraine's word for it, by the way. We're skeptical, rightly so, because people lie about those sorts of figures to give themselves propagandistic advantages. And yet we know that Hamas lies. We know they lie about everything. We know they don't distinguish between civilian and military numbers and their casualty figures.
We know that we were embarrassed by what happened back in, was it October or November with the rocket that fell to ground on the parking lot of the hospital in Gaza. And the purported 500 Palestinian casualties or deaths, which turned out to be nothing of the kind. And yet we cite these figures. And now even the president of the United States says 30, 32, 000 Palestinian dead. How does something like that happen?
How did we become so willfully unskeptical about the numbers and the, and the claims that Hamas, uh, provides. I have my own thoughts about why that happens, but, um, let's move on. Well, let me just ask you just either in your world or what you see on the street and what you, uh, describe, where does that come from to what do you attribute the change since October 7th? One, what is motivating this intensity of animosity towards Israel that either was suppressed before.
And was there, but didn't come out, therefore it wasn't realized or wasn't there and materialized since October 7th. Well, I think it was there. I think this was more of a question of opening the lid over a sore, taking off the bandage on a. gangrenous wound, rather than something new happening, except as I described it, the kind of glee. Um, look, there's a line I've used before, which is that of those of whom everything is expected, nothing is forgiven.
And of those of whom nothing is expected, everything is forgiven and everything is expected of the Jews. So you've seen it now in the coverage of the it's a tragic and heartbreaking strike on the convoy, on the, on the aid workers. You know, you can look back at the many, many times under presidents, Biden, Trump, Obama, just about any president. You can think of American troops have accidentally fired on civilians or accidentally fired on our own people.
Friendly fire, everyone knows what that means, but nobody says Biden is He's a war criminal because 10 Afghans were killed in a strike that was supposed to be against the people who attacked the Kabul airport. Nobody says, well, you know, where's the accountability there or Obama for a strike on a hospital. I think it was a medicine, some frontier hospital in an Afghan city in 2014, 2015. But not everything is expected of the United States when it comes to the Jews. When it comes to Israel.
It's, uh, reminds me of a kind of the old pass fail in college. Typically, if you got a book C, you passed. Israel has to get an A plus or it fails. And so that is a form of anti Semitism. You know, Eric Hoffer in 1968 wrote a famous op ed in the L. A. Times where he said, um, Israel is the only country in the world expected to behave like a Christian nation. And And that is antisemitism. So you think, you don't see any way to separate views about Israel from views about Jews.
People cannot, they can't look at Israel in the same way as they look at any other country in the world. No, look, obviously there are differences, okay? And there are a lot of people who, here in America, you know, revile Israel, hate Netanyahu, think Zionism is wrong, want to, in a million years, consider themselves anti Semitic, or behave in an anti Semitic way.
In their mind, there is That distinction, just as there is a distinction in the mind of a lot of white Americans who are perfectly friendly with their black neighbors, right, and would would reject the suggestion that they're remotely racist, but will hold this or that view, which is racist. And people don't have a kind of a full sense of what it is that they think and how opinions they have on matters they regard as political reflect some kind of prejudice. This happens all the time.
And those are prejudices that are sort of so subterranean that they're difficult for anyone who holds them to see. Now, what I think is distressing to me is that I suspect that if a white liberal had views that were in fact racist and some person, particularly a black person, were to say to them, let me explain to you what's wrong with that particular point of view, they would listen very attentively. And more likely than not, rethink the way they talk and think.
But the Jewish community has been trying to tell so many Americans, hang on a second, when you are singling out Israel, uh, for condemnation or a level of scrutiny that applies nowhere else, That is the double standard that has always been the calling card of anti Semitism. They'll say, that's just a bunch of whataboutism, and it has nothing to do with me, and how dare you. I mean, they, they, they reject it very emphatically. And that's problematic for us.
I mean, it used to be the case up until 20, 30 years ago. I don't know when, but Jews told stories and people listened. Spielberg did Schindler's List, people watched. That, that's something else that I think no longer exists. Uh, no longer happens. And by the way, much as I love her, Dara Horn, I think is wrong. People no longer love dead Jews. Look, she's such a superb essayist and great, great thinker. I think the world of Dara, but she wrote this book before October 7th.
People love dead Jews. Reflecting on how everyone wants to make a monument for Anne Frank, but nobody wants to point out that there's a world out there that would make Anne Franks of every one of us in this room. Uh, and, and right now, the dismissal of Israeli loss and pain on October 7th is, it's just very striking to me. Maybe I should write an essay. People no longer love dead Jews. Take, take us back to October 7th. Do you remember where you were when you heard the news? Oh, absolutely.
Could you tell us? Oh, I received a frantic note from my dear friend, Jessica Kazmer Jacobs. Jessica was a, um, girl from Boston who came to me after NYU, and I hired her the Wall Street Journal. She was a book editor. And then she became just very friendly with my family. She used to babysit for my kids when they were little, and we've just become very close. Jessica moved to Israel and married Uri Tibon, who is the younger brother of Amir Tibon, the higher order.
Amir was at his kibbutz, I think it's Nacharos, on October 7th. When the terrorists came and they went to their safe room and Amir called his father, Noam Tibon, former general who said, this is my profession. Nothing can stop me. I'm coming to save you. So Jessica called me immediately to let me know this was happening. This was early in the morning. And so I followed it with my throat and my heart until Noam arrived and saved his family.
The reason the New York Times had the story is because I thought it would be better to write this story. By giving the story to Patrick Kingsley, our bureau chief there for me to write it as a column. And so that's how it became a famous story. It's an amazing story, by the way. If those of you who haven't read it, you should definitely read it. It's one of the things that actually does give me hope. You know, which is that on October 7th, when the state failed, the people succeeded.
What is the 66, 67 year old man gets in his car with his wife. And a pistol drives down into a war zone, rescues wounded soldiers, takes their M16s, joins his old unit, and fights his way back into the kibbutz to save his son, daughter in law, and grandchildren. And I love when his, I don't know who, uh, brought out this quote, but his franchise. Saba. Saba higaiyah, I knew that Saba, which is grandfather, I knew that he would come and save us.
Yeah, he says the, the, the, the little girl whom I know, I mean, I'm very close to the family. She's this tall. She went, Saba higaiyah Grandpa's here. As time rolls on, we will find out there are hundreds of stories of people who were living up in the north, just knew that the state wasn't there, got in their cars. And, and they rolled. I mean, we, we remember 9 11 and that one guy on the plane who said, let's roll with the other passengers.
You know, they are central to our redemptive story of 9 11. There are thousands of such stories in Israel. Yeah. And it's really inspiring. I see some people who were with us on our recent mission last week. We met with Rami David. You don't, if you remember, you know, you know, that No, this is a guy who. He got some kind of WhatsApp. He said some kids need some help.
He was living in the area and, uh, he says to his wife, I'm going out to save somebody, uh, I'll be back, uh, make coffee for me. And he ends up spending two days, 48 hours saving what he estimates to be 750 people. It was so prominent that channel 12 news actually followed him for much of that day on the first day. And, uh, shame about the coffee. Well, he said when he got back after 48 hours, he, uh, he said, is the coffee still warm? But it just amazing stories.
And there's something uniquely Israeli about that. I think, you know, it's funny, there are governments that are better than their people and there are people who are better than their governments. And, uh, I'd rather be in the second type of society. So let me, uh, ask you about, um, where Israel stands now? It's been six months. The war aims were to dismantle Hamas, or at least deprive it of its military capacity to do harm.
Return of all the hostages, and on the day after, Hamas is not ruling Gaza. None of those objectives have been achieved. Now six months later, how do you see the situation currently? I, I reject a certain kind of fatalism that was expressed in the foreword the other day that Hamas is unbeatable. Because it rests on, I think, some kind of a cliché that Hamas is unbeatable because you can't defeat an idea. Nobody's trying to defeat the idea of Hamas, right?
They're trying to defeat a military organization that, uh, gained political control. I mean, Nazism, National Socialism, is an idea. It was undefeated after May 1945 because there were plenty of people in Germany who, in their hearts, remained Nazis. Um, they just figured out that it was probably not a good way to go, politically speaking. So the idea was discredited, not because people lost affinity for this ideology, but because it looked like a loser's game.
Um, Egypt figured out in after 1973, that an ideology that argued for the destruction of the state of Israel was a loser's game. It doesn't mean that Egyptians love Israel. At all. But the government had to make a strategic decision to change tack and go to Camp David in order to recover the Sinai. So Hamas is beatable, but the Israelis still haven't done it. And I think it's a combination of factors, but most of the blame as I see it rests with the prime minister.
You know, the American Jewish community, at least the precincts. I'm most friendly with had a fit when Chuck Schumer called for BB, effectively called for him to step, step down. I think the speech was misjudged because I think it actually did BB a political favor. You had guys like Naftali Bennett, no, no friend of his coming to the prime minister's defense. But the truth is he's absolutely right. This is a catastrophic prime minister.
It's a prime minister who fails to take even the most basic responsibility. for a series of failures and, uh, dreadful strategic mistakes that led directly to October 7th. And I don't just mean the, the year that preceded it with divisions over quote unquote judicial reform. I mean the strategic decision to keep Hamas entrenched in, in Gaza because it served as ideological purposes. That was to say, look, we can't give away the West Bank because Look at Hamas in Gaza, right?
And to that purpose, he, he, he lulled himself into the belief that Hamas was essentially contained behind a 21st century Maginot line. Turned out he was wrong. The fact that he then turned around and blamed the Shin Bet, I mean, sure, the Shin Bet and the other Israeli security forces have a lot to account for, but he's the prime minister and has effectively, with a year's hiatus, been prime minister for 15 years. So Schumer was right.
Israel will be a better place, but he's no longer the prime minister. And I think in a thousand years, the Jews will remember Netanyahu and go bad guy. Do you think looking down, uh, six months from now, when we mark the year anniversary from October 7th, do you want to speculate if not, you know, where would you think will be at least what are the various possibilities of where we may be six months from now? You know, I hate questions like that because you'll remember the answer.
Um, it'll be recorded. Well, that doesn't matter so much, but, but you'll actually remember it. Uh, um, look, a number of possibilities. My own belief is that there's a better than even chance that Israel will be in a war with Hezbollah. Um, it's intolerable that 60, Israelis from Kiryat Shmona and other places in the north, um, have no home. They're refugees. They're living in hotels.
And it's intolerable that Israel can't sufficiently secure its peripheries to make it possible for Israelis to live up to the last millimeter of sovereign Israeli territory. And so something has to give. Hezbollah is now a stage three cancer. It's only going to get worse. And the Israelis have to act, which is why I think they were wise and correct to strike the target in Damascus. Because those, those IRGC commanders were not only supplying Hezbollah with, with missiles, rockets, and so on.
My understanding is they're effectively building a third army of conscripts and people from Shiites from Afghanistan and elsewhere to create yet another front. On the Golan against Israel. So I think there'll be a wider war. I think it will be war on a scale that dwarfs what we've seen so far. I think the heart of Israel will be a target. Ranaana, Tel Aviv, Haifa. It'll be a war that Israel hasn't seen the likes of since 1948. By the way, it's a war Israel will win.
So, so let me ask you, do you think Israel's Western allies, and in particular, the United States will be supportive of Israel in that war. Yes. For a couple of reasons. First of all, as much as I don't like the moon music lately from the white house, generally speaking, I think the president has been outstanding in his support. And, you know, you have to look at Biden's support in the context of past American presidents. You know, George W. Bush was supposed to be a great friend of Israel.
But after 34 days of war with Hezbollah, he pulled the plug on it effectively, just as Obama did in 2014, Reagan during the Lebanon crisis, the Ford administration with its so called reappraisal of relations with Israel, uh, Eisenhower, in fact, the only president really stood by Israel as well as Biden has was Richard Nixon, takes all kinds. Um, so I think that that deserves to be.
Recognize it especially deserves to be recognized by people like me, you know, aren't seen as greatly sympathetic to the administration. I think I should be the first to say this. Secondly, if you look at the menu of options available to the United States, the only thing that's going to mollify the Israel haters is like a complete American boycott. Do you really see the administration doing that either strategically or even politically? The United States were to absolutely boycott Israel.
Cut off all arms supplies, like say Canada has. There are now zero Canadian canoes, uh, on their way to, uh That was, I think I read there was 112, 000 of military deals between Israel and Canada. We could make up the difference right here. Yeah, we could do a, we could do a, like a collection here. That's like 60 canoes. Uh, so, it would be political folly because it would be a gift to the Republican Party.
There are a lot of Jews, by the way, who would actually pull the lever for the Republican Party if Biden took a hardline anti Israel turn, which he's not going to do, but it would, it would be a strategic error. Look, Biden came into office and he had this big show of making reappraisal provisions with Saudi Arabia. How did that work out?
He ended up being humiliating for the president because then when oil prices shot up, uh, and we added huge inflationary issue in part energy related, he had to essentially go begging the Saudis. You know, Israel is a small country, but it's not an infant. It, it provides a whole set of goods for the United States. It is a genuine partnership between countries and, um, Israel has options in the world just as the Saudis have options in the world.
What if, what if the Israelis were to say, Oh, I guess when you cut off arms with us and you ended the bilateral arms treaty, you know what we're going to do? We're going to start selling cyber technology to China. Let's do that. And this immediately because Israeli cyber tools would be grave threats to American national security, which is why the administration is so upset about the so called Pegasus program. Now, I hope Israel doesn't do that.
God forbid it should be driven to do anything like that. The relationship between Israel and the United States is not because we feel sorry for the Jews. It's because it's good for the United States. Are you worried about some of the voices now in the Democratic Party that, at the very least, want to condition, uh, weapons supplies on certain policies. In particular, I thought it was noteworthy that I, uh, I saw that, um, Nancy Pelosi joined that group. What do you think that means?
How do you interpret that? A large part of the Democratic Party has turned against Israel, and I think in doing so, it's turned against the best traditions of the Democratic Party, which are represented by President Biden.
Um, and that's why I think every Jew who is a Democrat has to work within the Democratic Party to make sure that the candidates who are running for congressional seats are like the Toms Hozis of the world, but you know, they, they get it, you know, you can hate Israel for a million reasons, right? And or deplore, not hate it, but deplore many Israeli policies. But the only country that is remotely standing up for liberal and progressive values in the region is Israel.
The only one, and it's, it's such a simple thing to say, but you don't want to be an LGBTQI plus person in Gaza at any time or remote because the treatment of, of gays and lesbians in the Palestinian Authority is horrendous. You don't want to be a woman there. You don't want to be a political dissident. You don't want to be an artist expressing yourself freely.
All of the freedoms that progressives claim to champion here in the United States These are precisely the ones that the Palestinians, both in Fatah and Hamas, violently suppress, including freedom of the press. I do not understand how the left has become not just a critic of Israel, but in so many instances anti Zionist against the state itself. I say this, by the way, as a center right guy, we need a revived left wing Zionism. We need it. Israel has not prospered by the collapse.
of the Labour Party and what it, what it has traditionally stood for. But it has to be in the Zionist family. The moment it becomes anti Zionist, it's, it's, it's out of the conversation. It's useless and it's completely hypocritical. Help us understand what's happening in the intellectual world, in particular in universities. Of course, it goes without saying, we have many, many families who have kids in universities who are thinking about sending their kids to various universities.
The kids themselves are looking at this, we're hearing reports that they actually are looking more carefully at the atmosphere on campus in connection with Jews or Israel in terms of selecting where they. What is your advice to, um, parents, to young Jews, to the Jewish community and the university scene? Uh, yesterday I was speaking to a group of Yale students and somehow Melville's story, uh, Bartleby the Scrivener, I raised the story. All of you read Bartleby the Scrivener?
Okay, so I spoke to about 35 Yale students, not one of them had heard of it. I mean, come on, you know, Yale. Pathetic. Pathetic, pathetic, that the cream of the crop, not one person even had an intuition about the great American writer's greatest short story. Um, and I just draw my own conclusions about the state of American higher education from, from there. These schools, I know this because I now have two, two of my three kids are now in college.
So I, I glanced at what the questions were about, uh, when they had to apply. The questions are all about, tell us about your victimhood and tell us about your identity. So the school self select for people who are either are or pretending to be victims and for whom identity rather than character or achievement are the driving criteria of, of self worth. And I think it's just downhill from there, by the way, how surprising that pro Palestinian movement has gained so much popularity.
such traction on campuses where victimhood in identity are the calling cards of virtue. I wanted to ask is what is the connection is there a connection? Yeah, because, because Palestinians are seen globally as the most victimized identity in the world. Right. And that's valorized on college campuses. So first of all, I think Jews have to stop becoming slaves to prestige. The prestige that we once knew about, you know, Where does your son go? He was at Harvard. I'm like, come on.
They don't say that. They say, I went to school in Boston. No, they say, I went to school near Boston. Uh, Uh, We have to move away from that. Um, did you hear about the violent anti Israel protest at the University of Nebraska? Did you hear about it? No. Yeah, because it didn't happen. There are lots of places where you can get a terrific education. You can get a terrific education at Purdue, another school where you don't hear anything like that, uh, uh, happen.
We can try to go to schools that are making a conscious effort to reach out to Jewish students. Washington University, Tulane are two that come to mind. And by the way, there's going to be a huge opportunity. Almost, I'm almost reluctant to say this, almost like a kind of a private equity opportunity. I don't know how that plays on 68th Street on the west side.
If I were over on the 68th on the east side, we'd be talking here, but, uh, First of all, we have all types here, and secondly, they're tolerant. They're very tolerant. This is what I mean. There are a lot of college campuses on America, I think between three and four thousand. The U. S. is facing a demographic cliff because starting in 2008, the financial crisis, people stopped having babies.
So demography is like, moving like this, and you know, the Harvards and Yales of the world with large endowments are going to be fine, but there's a whole universe of schools with beautiful campuses and nice histories. I'm not going to mention some of the campuses I have in mind because I might insult someone, but there are at least 50 schools in New England that fit this bill.
Um, what if we made an effort to approach these schools, say we want a critical number of seats on your board, you want to appoint a president who believes in the value, I don't mean of Jewish education, I mean of a true liberal arts education, right?
That believes in free speech, that, um, Uh, uh, exercises real vigilance about the difference between speech and conduct and becomes a place where Jewish students are going to flourish and are not going to feel afraid to wear a kippah or a star of David around their necks. And let's start with a minion. Let's start with 10 colleges and go from there. The history of Jews in America is that when the cool kids didn't want us at their table, we went to another table and then we were the cool kids.
Mainstream banking didn't want us. So we came up with investment banking, you know, we weren't always wanted in the arts. So we went to, you know, Southern California and started this thing called Hollywood. One thing or another in one industry or another where we were not liked, where there were quotas against us, where we were told to sort of stay in our lane, we went elsewhere and we applied this kind of spirit of independent thinking and entrepreneurialism.
And many Jews took incredible risks. In their private lives with their finances to start thriving businesses. We should be doing that philanthropically, not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of the collective Jewish community and our children. And, uh, I assume that that applies to philanthropic. Okay. Support of some of these institutions of higher learning then are not sympathetic to the Jewish community.
Look, I mean, I have great admiration for guys like Mark Rowan who are trying to change the culture at the University of Pennsylvania, which historically was a school. Every other Jewish parent I knew had a kid at Penn. Maybe every parent here has a kid at Penn. That's a knowing laugh out there. Uh, right. And, and my experience of university administrators is that their central, uh, central characteristic of their being is. Um, and then the third one is cowardice.
They are cowardly towards whoever they think scares them the most. And for a long time it was the DEI bureaucracies in a lot of these schools. And now they're terrified of wealthy donors who aren't going to provide, you know, the next 50 million, uh, you whatever, whatever state of the art, building or endowed share and so on.
And so by all means, particularly wealthy Jews with influence in these institutions who care about Jewish issues, they should be exercising that influence to change the tenor of those colleges. But I think that unless you change, um, Um, frankly, unless you get rid of tenure, you have such an entrenched, I'm not going to name names here, but I am on a, um, somehow bizarrely on an email collective of about 20 names, most of whom are professors at a school near Boston.
Okay. And the subject has lately turned to Israel. And I am alarmed by what passes as intelligent commentary about Israel and really saddened by it. By the very brilliant, lovely people whose views on the subject are, you know, make Bernie seem like a Likudnik. Um, uh, so, so you have a problem that goes much deeper than, you know, getting a president who is going to, you know, show up at the Hillel house. You know, say the right things. These institutions in my mind are so rotten.
Look at Harvard, Harvard has now cashiered or, or, or had two resignations of the head of their anti Semitic task force. How hard can it be to get an anti Semitic task force that submits a report that says, you know, making Jews feel unwanted is bad. Okay. And we will endeavor to do better, but they can't do it. So, that tells you something about the culture that they're dealing with. It's not simply a matter of, of putting in a handful of new people at the top. That can do a lot.
And I look at university leaders like Daniel Diermeier, a friend at Vanderbilt. You know, who sets the right tone, but I suspect that at every university, they're dealing with rock that goes to the foundations of the very house. You aren't saying, or are you, that Jews should kind of walk away from these elite Ivy League soldiers? Yeah, of course I'm saying that. Yeah. Rather than fight from the inside and try and change it. You know, I don't know about you. I mean, my education was great.
I went to the university of Chicago, one of the schools, I think that has not lost its mind and always had a consistent set of, of, uh, principles. And, and, and to this day, I feel the echo of my education at Chicago ring through almost every column I write because it really taught me how to think, but for the most part, 10 years after you're out of whatever Harvard yield, nobody cares. Nobody cares.
And the addiction, I'm going to say this as a kind of a broad statement, but I think that the Jewish addiction to these tokens of prestige is harming our community. It's harming our community. You know what? The greatest Jews all went to City College. That's true. And they were proud of it. They were proud of it. Okay. I mean, you know, because they were the unclubbable ones. I want to move on to, uh, other two other issues before we run out of time.
First of all, Ukraine, it's almost like a forgotten war. Uh, I think I read, I think you mentioned you're banned from Russia. Yeah, I was, I was banned for life from Russia in 2022. One, why were you banned and two, how does that make you feel? So, uh, when, when the order came down, I told my wife, she was so proud of it that she. Frame the notice and took down my Pulitzer and put it in place. I felt so good about it. Absolutely. I love the one. And why were you banned?
Did they give you a reason? I mean, look, the first anti Putin editorial I ever wrote was actually in 1999. My, my, my friend, Garry Kasparov. He said, you know, first time I wrote an anti Putin 3rd, 2022. And I said, mine was December 31st, 1999. 1999. How about that? So he's now jealous. The only reason he has, uh, to be jealous of me. Uh, I don't know exactly. I mean, they didn't rush. Government doesn't call you up and say, Hey, listen, you know, we're so sorry. We considered your account.
I mean, they just, you're just put on the list and you're, you're barred. I, I've been writing anti the Putin editorials for a very long time. In fact, I wrote an article in 2006 in the wall street journal. It was called Russia colon, the enemy. For which I received no end of grief from, uh, Columbia professors, as a matter of fact. We're all sort of Putin apologists. There was a lot of, let's face it, there was a lot of, a lot of Putin apologies on the left.
Uh, some of you are probably subscribers to The Nation, that wonderful magazine of ideas. Quote unquote, in the tank for Putin for ages. Katrina Vanden Heuvel's late husband, Stephen Cohen, I think even won a prize for Putin. I just point that out. So those of you who think it's a terrific publication. Um, uh, so look, I was banned because I've been consistently anti Putin all this time. I think one of the greatest disgraces, and it's not a disgrace for our time.
It's a disgrace for all time, is the Republican Party's dereliction of duty when it comes to The need to support our great friends. What do you think is at stake for the United States in the West? What is at stake for the, what are the consequences of this derogation? I think the free world is at stake. Could you elaborate? I think the collapse of Ukraine is going to be a geo strategic debacle. First order. It's going to encourage the Chinese to move on Taiwan.
It's going to lead to either a direct confrontation between. NATO and Russia, if not now or soon, in a few years time. And the abandonment by the United States of our commitments in Europe, um, we are moving back to the America first mentality of Father Coughlin. And we have our own Father Coughlin and the person of Tucker Carlson, who is, you know, the, the chief whisperer to the, the demagogue who was and likely is gonna be the next president.
I was gonna ask you a follow up, but that was too, uh, enticing to me. Do you think Donald Trump is going to be elected president in November? I certainly hope not, and I will bend every effort I can to make that, you know. But do you think, do I understand from your last answer that you think that's more likely than not? Look, again, I, you know, what was Neal's Polaris line, uh, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. Yeah. Um, uh, so I'd be. Thrilled to be proved wrong.
Okay. Um, but yeah, I think he's gonna win. Why do you say that? What, what are the, what are the key driving issues that are gonna determine the election? I, I, I think there are three major factors. Number one, Americans think, was I better off in just before the pandemic? I mean, people understand the pandemic was a kind of a unique circumstance, but was I better off in 2019 than I am today? And the answer is. I'm worse off today.
I think quite frankly, liberals, there's a lot of liberal happy talk about the state of the economy based on one factor, which is the availability of jobs, which is great. I don't want to, I don't want to downplay it. Um, but when people say, well, inflation is cooling off, it doesn't erase the fact that rent, the average, the median rent in the United States, uh, I just, uh, To look this up 'cause I was just chatting with Ga Collins.
Um, yesterday, uh, the median rent to the United States is up by 20% since the day Joe Biden took office. The 30 year mortgage rate, which was at 2.7% when he came to office, is now north of, uh, 6%. So financing costs have, have gone way up and a basket of groceries is about 25% higher. Yeah. You can say, well, wages are now beginning to rise, but that's, that's they've lagged and they're still lagging.
And so you've got a situation which Americans feel economically like they're running to stand still, you know, to quote the old U2 song, which is about a heroin addiction. That's another story. Um, the second factor is, I think, frankly, Democrats have been, uh, derelict in, they're thinking about the border. You know, you walk around here, I grew up in Mexico City. The fact of my biography that people don't often know. My family is from Mexico. Left handed, right of center, Mexican Jew.
Um, uh, Well, you know, it's two things that I think rankle, a, it's now a crisis in every city in America. You know, go out to Bennett Field or all over here, you see, you see this kind of Latin American style poverty. Uh, second, we're not enforcing the law. I feel keenly for these immigrants. My heart goes out to them.
My mother was a refugee to this country, although my mother was a refugee who waited for five years to get a visa under Harry Truman's Displaced Persons Act in order to come here. Um, and there's a feeling like there's contempt for the law and indifference by the part of elite Democrats. And I, I was very amused when DeSantis, who, you know, strikes me as a jerk of the first order, flew a few migrants up to Martha's Vineyard and, you know, the vineyard had a conniption thing. Um, really?
Go to El Paso or any of these towns along the border when sometimes 10, 000 people a day are coming in. Those people need to be housed, taken care of, you know, uh, fed, their kids have to be at school at some point. And I think Democrats have neglected the issue, you know, very badly. And the third thing is, I don't feel as safe in cities in America as I used to. Now you can say, well, it was worse in the 1990s, but most Americans don't remember the early 1990s.
You have to be at least 40 years old to have any memory. And I'm, I'm a six foot one, reasonably big guy, right? I'm on the subway and I'm like this looking around, uh, and we keep being told this story that Oh, streets have never been safer. So something is amiss. Something is wrong. When the governor, a democratic governor deploys national guards to the subway. And then tells us everything is fine and safe.
I don't quite know what that is, and I would love for criminologists to look carefully at the data, but I think there is an interesting disparity between crime that police reports and crime that the victimization surveyed by the FBI reports. People self report much higher numbers of criminal acts, but they're not taking it to the cops. That, that's a, that's a hypothesis by the way, I could be, could be wrong, but something is, is not right there.
And so all of this tells me that it's not going to go well for the incumbent. Also, Trump has so many negatives, right? The fact that his support for him is solid, that he's ahead essentially, or even in all these polls, tells me that people have sort of priced it all in. The noise, the craziness, the this and the that. And they're still saying, better. Oh, last thing. It's heartbreaking to say this, but the president is feeble.
And anyone who's had relatives who've had dementia knows it's a one way, uh, you know, it's not like he's gonna get better soon. So they're worried about that. You've taken a look at the voting patterns of American Jewry since the end of World War II, FDR. In very high numbers, in substantial majorities, American Jews have voted for Democrats across the board, from the, from the president, down on the, on congressional election.
And, uh, in 2020, 78 percent of American Jews, if I remember the numbers correctly, voted for Biden.. Do you think that's likely to change this year and in future years? Look, I'm going to vote for Biden. What's the choice? You know, if Nikki Haley were in Canada, I'd vote for Nikki. But of course I'm going to vote for Biden.
It's against, you know, it's like you can have the kind of two day old, moldy mayo sandwich, or you can eat, you know, You know, the dog shit with glass in it, and I'll go for the sandwich, you know. Um, I, I borrowed that line from David Sedaris, by the way, I need to, but, but yeah, of course I'm going to vote for Biden. I think most Jews will because they understand a couple of things.
They know a demagogue when they see one, and they know that even if this demagogue was sympathetic to Israel in the first term, that he's a man with no loyalties. And an isolationist president is eventually going to turn on Israel as well. At least Biden believes in democracy in the free world and abides by the results of elections. So I'll take it. You know, my bigger fear is, is, is this, Ammi, which is that Republicans and Democrats used to provide a pretty good home for Jews.
There were plenty of Republican Jews who thought, you know, this is a better party in terms of its lower taxes, less regulation, strong foreign policy, generally good on Israel. I was one of those. And then plenty of Democrats who said, yeah, but no good on choice and other social issues. And Democrats are pro Israel too. But as the parties have moved to the extreme, Jews who I think are genuinely closer to the center have become homeless.
It's very hard for Jewish pro Israel Jews to feel at home in a party where at least the most visible voices, not necessarily the majority voices, but the visible voices are people like AOC, right? Or Jamal Bowman up in my, in my district. And on the other side, on the Republican party, notice that all the never Trumpers were Jews. These were people who, you know, had positions in office, were big donors to the party, and they feel homeless as well.
And so this is, I mean, we're getting back to the depressing theme in this conversation. We're becoming a community that is estranged from the two major political currents in American life. And I think most Jews desperately want to be players in those, those parties. And we feel like we have a lot to say in long histories, but, but they're, they're strangers to us. Very, very difficult.
I mean, I know plenty of liberal friends who on October 7th or October 8th, when the left really started coming unfit with Hamas, kind of looked around and said, what just happened? Right. Which is just the way I felt when Donald Trump took over the Republican party in 2016. One very brief question before my last question, which is you mentioned Gail Collins, uh, that, that, uh, exchange that you have with her, is it on a weekly basis or? Yeah, pretty much every week. It's just a fabulous thing.
I think at one point, several months ago, you mentioned to me that, uh, that was a very, very, very, that's a very popular column. Yeah, it is, it, it, it, our, our numbers, you know, because the Times tracks these things very carefully. Yeah. Digitally, our, our numbers are phenomenal. And do, do you think that says something about people's desire to want to actually have a dialogue? Yeah, look, I think, you know, if you look for our conversation on social media, it's nowhere, right?
Twitter doesn't notice it because social media has algorithms that are built for outrage. And what we're in the business of doing is like just, you know, Shooting the breeze, uh, two friends over a proverbial glass of wine, although we do it on Google Doc. But we are, in real life, real friends who get together for real wine and cheese, you know, just to giggle. Um, and, uh, people are hungry for a different kind of conversation.
I think they miss period in American life when people could, uh, disagree agreeably. Have a laugh and think that there's, there are more important things in life than, you know, the earned income tax credit or whatever it is. So my last question to you is, uh, are you optimistic? What, give us an optimistic message of hope for the next phase of American Jewish history that we're entering into now. You know, this is the 370th year of Jewish life in North America, um, 1654 to 2024.
Uh, and so, uh, you know, I'm not going to do that. I'm trying to come up with something nice to say, but it's just not in my mood. I'm going to tell you something. In 1922, the most important man in Germany was Walter Rathenau. And the greatest philosopher in Germany was Husserl. The greatest scientist in Germany was Albert Einstein, and the greatest doctor of Germany was Otto von Meyerhoff. That was 1922. They were all Jews. 11 years later, the Third Reich.
So there's a pattern in Jewish history where our zenith comes right before our, our precipice. I worry not only about the kind of explosion of antisemitism. Um, at a moment that should be a Zenith moment when the Senate Majority Leader, Secretaries of State, Treasury, Homeland Security, Chief of Staff to the President, so on, all Jewish.
But I worry about not just the, the, the new anti Semitism, I worry about a culture in the United States that lends itself to thinking antisemitically you know, we're a country riddled by conspiracy theories. Very few of them are anti Jewish, but if you'll believe anything about anything. Then you'll believe anything about the Jews and anti Semitism is a conspiracy theory. I worry about the way in which we now no longer talk about success in America. We talk about privilege.
And so people who we used to admire as successful people who would pull themselves up, um, we now see as privileged people who have more than their fair share and that's dangerous for successful minorities. I worry about the assault on independent thinking and heterodox thinking. That has been the calling card of the Jewish people for so long, you know, the gadflies, the dissidents, the no sayers, the think different people.
Now we have a kind of a, this highly censorious cancel culture world, and it's taken its grip not here in this room, but among so many of our children, products of, you know, Columbia, schools near Boston and so on. Um, and I call those attitudes, not anti Semitic, but anti Semitic adjacent. They are what lead to anti Semitism. They're a step away from it. I think that's one of the reasons we have the kind of problem that we do. We don't just have to fight anti Semitism.
We have to restore America to what it once was. We have to restore America to a country where the concept of merit really meant something. We have to restore America to a country where the belief that what matters most of all is the contents of your character, not your identity. We have to restore America to a country that believes in free speech and, uh, free enterprise.
We have to renew faith in an America that understands that this country is based on a set of values which centrally flowed, not just from the Enlightenment, but from Jerusalem. And that used to be America. And so, I think the task is not simply to sort of fight our corner, Of the battle against prejudice. When it comes to prejudice against Jews, we have to fight for what we understand America to be, because that was the America in which we used to thrive.
I think that's really the task before us. I want to thank you for an exhilarating hour, uh, and, uh, for who you are, Bret, and for your fierce honesty and your fearless, uh, willingness to go out and tell the truth as you understand it. And, uh, all of us are very inspired, uh, by your example. And can I say something nice about you? We've stopped the podcast. Turn it back on. So, uh, you know, there's an old line that, um, uh, no man is a hero to his valet.
Uh, few writers are heroes to their editors, which is to say that when your job is to edit. people's prose, you get to see how they really think. And most of the time it's dreck. Um, and one of the joys now having edited Ammi twice is what a beautiful, beautiful writer you are, not only in terms of the depth of the depth of the, of the thinking, but in the clarity and energy and eloquence of expression.
I really want to hand it to you because Every time I get a piece from you, I don't have to worry about it. It's good. So I just want to thank you. Alright, well, that's a good way to end it.