The left is portraying Trump as an antisemite-nothing could be further from the truth.

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Welcome back to The Dershow. So many moving parts around the world today. We have no idea where we are on a deal between the United States and Iran, what Israel will do in the event that... like the deal. Major, major uncertainty in that area. Latest reports were that Trump said there won't be any enrichment, but then a later report said, well, in the meantime, they can do a little bit of enrichment and then we'll come to a more final deal. In the meantime, they're making a bomb.

They're getting closer and closer and closer and they're enriching and they're centrifuging and they're doing all the things and they're building a delivery system and a rocket system and they're buying time. And President Trump said he would never allow them. to develop a bomb, and it's not so hard for him to prevent them from getting a bomb during his three and a half years that he has left in office.

But, you know, there's a long future beyond that. And it's very important that actions be taken now that prevent Iran from developing a bomb ever. in the future because this is their most vulnerable time and if israel is gonna attack and destroy their nuclear capacity this is the time to do it so this is a waiting game and waiting is helping iran Gaza? We don't know. You know, there are all kinds of the ambassadors and the emissaries from the United States have said

They're close to a possible deal, and then they said Hamas rejected the deal. Of course, the New York Times says it was Israel that rejected the deal, but don't ever believe anything you read in the New York Times. And then we have Ukraine. The Ukrainians have taken a bold step and destroyed. some of Russia's major offensive potentials and some of their defensive as well. They also blew up a bridge, a very important bridge. So they're fighting.

hard and strong. Can they eventually beat the Russians? It's unlikely. But it strengthens their negotiating position. But is there a negotiating position? Or has the Trump administration basically said, hands off, you know, they can't come to a deal. We're not going to get involved. This is Europe's problem.

Ukraine's problem. Of course, big difference between Israel and Ukraine. Israel can do it by itself. All it needs is from the United States not to say no. whereas Ukraine needs more support from the United States and European allies. Let's get to today's subject. There was a big story in today's New York Times, and there have been other stories in the Times and on CNN and other places trying to portray Donald Trump. as an anti-Semite. The basic thesis is, of course,

part of Trump derangement syndrome. He can't do anything that's good. Anything he does has to be suspicious. So what he's doing in terms of American universities and trying to combat anti-Semitism on campus must be motivated by others.

considerations and to top it off, he's an anti-Semite. Well, you know, I know Donald Trump. I've known him for a long time. I don't know him well, but I know him. I know his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. I know his daughter. I know... Many people closely connected to them. I know people who have served in his cabinet and his ambassadors. become a close friend of the current Trump ambassador to Israel. He's not an anti-Semite.

He's not. He has a warm spot in his heart for Israel and for the Jewish people. And what he's doing... should be taken at face value. Does he have other objections to Harvard? Yes, so do I. As an American, even if I weren't Jewish and I weren't a Zionist, I would be furious at Harvard having been on their faculty for 60 years.

furious at them. Look at what they did just last Thursday. They gave an honorary degree. They only gave six honorary degrees. They picked six people from all over the world to honor, and one of them turns out to be a bigoted anti-Semitic woman. who was called for an academic boycott of Israel, which would prevent Israeli Jews who are doing research on the cures of cancer. to work with others outside of Israel. They gave her an honorary degree. The class marshal at Divinity School was a thug.

who threatened and intimidated a Jewish student just days after, October 7th, before Israel sent a single troop or single soldier into Gaza. And then they gave a $65,000 scholarship to another one of the thugs who intimidated and surrounded the same student. And the $65,000 scholarship is for him to work with an anti-Semitic organization.

that applies a double standard to everything Jewish and Israeli. So Harvard's in a very, very, very bad situation as a good president and some good people on the faculty. But they're, you know, the people in control, the people who decide who gets the honorary degrees. The corporation does that. And who...

does these other honorific things, there's a real problem. And I believe Donald Trump when he says he wants to stop the anti-Semitism. Does he also have other motives? We all have mixed motives. everything, but he is not an anti-Semite. And people point to his speech in Charlottesville. Well, people just are lying about that. CNN is lying about that. The New York Times is lying about that.

Anybody who's heard the speech, and I've heard the whole speech, it's on tape. There's no doubt about what he said. He never, ever said there were good people on the side of the Nazis. He never said anything like that.

What he said is there were good people on both sides of the dispute as to what to do with the monuments to heroes from the Confederacy. I know because I'm on that side. I'm a good person. I'm a good person. And I'm on the side of not destroying monuments. I don't think monuments should get destroyed. Should they be in public places? Reasonable people could disagree. Should they have plaques that say they were on the wrong side of the Civil War?

There's a plaque at Harvard Memorial Hall in memory of Nazi soldiers, Harvard graduates, who died on behalf of Germany. History is history. And so Trump never said anything like that. In fact, he went out of his way to condemn the neo-Nazis. He specifically condemned them. And yet we see the same thing. repeated over and over and over again. What was it called in literature? Newspeak. That's really...

something that grows right out of Goebbels and the Nazis. You repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it. Let me be very categorical. It is a lie to say that Donald Trump ever said there were good people on the side of... the neo-Nazis or the people who said we will replace the Jews. He never said that, never implied it, never hinted at it. What he said, and he was right, is that there were good people on both sides of the dispute.

as to what to do with monuments of Civil War heroes. He's absolutely right about that. I'm on that side. Many people I know who are historically minded are on that side. I have visited the graves of Jewish Confederate soldiers. I think there's one in Richmond, Virginia. And there were people, by the way, who fought in the Civil War and were heroes who were opposed to slavery.

There was a woman at Harvard some years ago who put up a Confederate flag outside of her dorm room. I represented her and I got to speak to her and she came from a very religious Catholic family in Virginia. that were strong supporters of the Confederacy on political grounds and strong opponents of slavery on moral grounds. It's a complicated issue. It's a complicated issue. Consider the Holocaust. The Pope... refused to tell German Nazi soldiers that they will go to hell and burn eternally.

if they kill an innocent Jewish child, because he didn't want to create a conflict between their allegiance to Germany, that is to Hitler. and their allegiance to the church. That was just wrong. But it's complicated when you have a war like the Civil War. that includes people have different views on slavery. People don't realize there were abolitionists in the South and there were slave owners in the North, in New York. I have ads.

from new york old news old new york newspapers a young black person a very strong for sale new york so you know this was not it wasn't a mason dixon line fence that divided people along the fence by their moral views. And then there are the complicated views of people like Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves but was against slavery. And he put in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, one of his grievances.

against King George was that he allowed the importation of slaves into the United States. He was hypocritical. Jefferson, he owned slaves. It was the most important.

part of the value of his property and Monticello and his wine cellar and his books and all of that. And he didn't do the right thing. But he was a complicated guy with complicated views. He said that black people are less intelligent than white people, but they have a higher moral standing. He's wrong about both of them. There's no difference based on race.

about either intelligence or moral standing. Everybody is an individual. People have different intelligences and different moral standings without regard to their race. Some of the smartest people I knew as students at Harvard Law School were black. an Arab and Muslim and every conceivable background. There's no generalizing that you can do there. But let me make one generalization. And that is, again, I want to be very clear.

about this. Donald Trump is not an anti-Semite. Donald Trump is not anti-Israel. Donald Trump is not an anti-Zionist. Donald Trump has done some silly things. He invited some bad people to the White House. And some people who he's appointed did some silly things. And they invited bad people on their talk shows. It doesn't make them anti-Semites. Maybe it makes them insensitive. to the issue of antisemitism. But being an antisemite means that you yourself have to hold negative views.

about Jews. Today on the left, the definition of anti-Semitism is very simple, just applying a double standard, negative double standard to anything Jewish or Zionist or Israeli or anything relating to the Jewish people in the Jewish state. That to me is anti-Semitism. I haven't seen anything like that with Donald Trump. Donald Trump called me in his first term and he asked me to help draft an amendment.

to I think it was Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which would include discrimination against Jews. along with discrimination against women, gays, blacks, etc. I helped draft that. He then invited me up to the podium at the White House. I wasn't even planning to be there. Fortunately, I was wearing a suit and a tie. I was at the Hanukkah party.

And he asked me to say a few words about what we had done on Title VI. And I talked about it and said it was one of the most important developments. And he thanked me. very much for that. That's not the actions or the words of an anti-Semite. When he recognized Jerusalem as the eternal capital,

of Israel. That was not an act of anti-Semitism when he recognized the Golan Heights. And he called me about that. He spoke to me on the phone. He wasn't sure about what the right thing to do was on the Golan Heights. And he listened to me. He listened to David Friedman. He listened to, I'm sure, to Jared, to other people, and he finally decided, yes, he was going to recognize Israel's claim to sovereignty.

over the Golan Heights. You know, when he worked on the Abraham Accords, and I was privileged to play a very, very small role in that, I met with important people and hopefully persuaded them not to oppose it. Those were not the actions of an anti-Semite. Let me tell you who is an anti-Semite.

the people who are being made heroes of at these universities who are handing out pro-Hamas leaflets, the 30 civil liberties and civil rights groups that on October 7th and 8th... hours after the massacre and kidnapping before Israel sent a single troop into Gaza. The people who blamed the killings on Israel. That's anti-Semitism. The people who praised Hamas for murdering Jewish babies and children.

That's anti-Semitism. Recognizing Jerusalem is not anti-Semitism, appointing Mike Huckabee to be the ambassador to Israel, a man who loves Israel as deeply as he loves any place on earth.

That's not an act of anti-Semitism. And so these Trump derangement syndrome people have to get their facts straight. Yeah, he shouldn't have. invited to the White House or to Mar-a-Lago some of these people. He didn't.

either know or even if he knew um you know i i personally wouldn't have anything to do with an anti-semite but there are a lot of people out there who do business with anti-semites every day for example There's a man, a congressman now from Queens or a state assembly from Queens who just endorsed for mayor the most anti-Semitic. candidate ever run for mayor of New York. He's running against Cuomo.

And what he said, what this congressman said, the congressman is an Asian American, he said, I know he's an anti-Semite. I know he's anti-Israel. I know he's terrible. I know we disagree, but he's good on a lot of other issues.

So people do that. Jews supported Mussolini. Mussolini was not initially an anti-Semite, in fact, yet. a Jewish mistress and lots of close Jewish friends. Of course, he ultimately became an anti-Semite when he made his deals with Hitler, etc. but before that jews supported mussolini there were even a very very very tiny number very tiny number of right-wing jews who tried to make deals with Hitler about exiling Jews and sending them out of Germany, which is what Hitler wanted.

to Palestine, which was what, of course, the Zionists, some of them wanted. So there were a few. But, you know, life's complicated. When you invite somebody, that doesn't mean you agree with everything that they've said. rarely have met anybody other than my wife 99.9% in agreement with her. She's smiling. But most other people, including my children, I'm not in agreement with everything they do or say. I didn't bring up my kids to... of a stamp.

my views. When I was teaching criminal law for 50 years and constitutional law and all other forms of law, I would tell my students, the highest grades go to people who disagree with me and make better arguments than I'm able to make. I don't grade. you on your opinions i don't grade you on your views i grade you on your ability to think i'm trying to teach you not what to think but how to think and so

You know, let's talk honestly about Donald Trump. There are criticisms that you can make, and I've made them. And if he... comes to the wrong views on the Iran deal, boy, he's going to have a critic, not only from me, but from lots of other people who... including people who voted for him and supported him, and who did it in large part on the ground that they thought he would be much better for Israel than Kamala Harris.

By the way, I think he would be under any circumstances better than Kamala Harris. I don't know where she would be on this issue. She would probably be replicating the disastrous Obama deal. That was essentially an invitation to Iran to develop nuclear weapons. It was 10 years without it, but the 10 years are soon to be expired. And then they would have been free to do whatever the heck they wanted, essentially. And look, they've been doing it all this time.

Let's not have any doubt about what Iran is doing now. Iran is developing nuclear weapons. It is developing the capability to fire these nuclear weapons, to trigger these nuclear weapons. Anybody who believes to the contrary is a fool. or a knave, nobody reasonable can believe that Iran wants to use.

nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes. Nobody believes that. Nobody in Iran believes that. Nobody in Israel believes that. And no reasonable person in the United States believes that. Donald Trump does not believe that, thankfully.

Marco Rubio doesn't believe that. Nobody in the administration believes that for a minute. Now, this disagreement is how best to achieve that. And obviously, we would all... agree if the 100% goal of always preventing Iran from developing a bomb forever could be achieved without military action, that would be better because in military action, people die. Although you can attack nuclear sites with minimal civilian casualties, as Israel did twice.

once in Osirak, in Iraq, and the other in Syria, with almost no casualties. And so it's possible. Now, we know where the nuclear facilities are buried, some of them. Some of them may be buried underneath hospitals. a favorite tack of Israel's enemies to put their leaders underneath hospitals. When Sinoah's brother was killed, Mohamed Sinoah, he was hiding underneath the hospital.

10 or so other people. And six people may have died. Innocent people may have died. But that's a perfect example of proportionality. The law says, you know, if in order to kill 10 leading terrorists, heads of Hamas... You have to kill a proportional number of civilians, even if you try everything in your power to avoid killing them, but you know they're probably going to die. That's legal under international law. That's what proportionality means.

and Israel has engaged in proportionality and that's why it has the best ratio of combatants to civilians killed during the war in Gaza than any country in history. faced with comparable threats of an enemy who hides its military in civilian enclaves, including underneath hospitals. and underneath schools in order willfully and deliberately to cause Israel to have the horrible Hobson's choice of do you let the terrorists get away?

Or do you kill them knowing that there'll be some civilians killed in the process? Every country has done that. When we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we knew that the vast majority of people would be killed. The ratio there was probably... 1,000 to 1 non-combatants to combatants. In Dresden, probably the ratio was 100 to 1. In NATO's wars, the ratio has been 7, 8, 9, 10 to 1. In Gaza, it's either been 1 to 1 if you take Israel's figures or 2 to 1 if you take...

figure is given by other media. Or if you take Hamas's figures, it's three to one. So even the worst case scenario Hamas's figures... It's better than any other ratio ever achieved by any democracy fighting wars of this kind. And yet Israel has been attacked not only by... international fora like the UN and the International Criminal Court, but by its own former leaders, some of whom are afflicted by Trump derangement syndrome and would rather see Israel suffer.

than Netanyahu praised. So anybody who says that Israel has committed war crimes or acted disproportionately or committed genocide is just not telling the truth. Israel have done a better job? Who knows? Everybody has a right to complain about the job their country or a country that they support is doing. But Israel had an existential threat.

that it was facing from many places at the beginning of the war. Remember, there were 50,000 rockets aimed at it from Lebanon, and then many, many thousands of rockets. from Gaza. And then in the middle of the war, or shortly after the war began, rockets aimed at it from Yemen. And of course, then there were rockets sent. from Iran. It's a tiny country. It's the size of New Jersey. It has 10 million people, 8 million Jews, 2 million Arabs, Christians, Muslims.

A third of the country are people of color. It's one of the most racially diverse countries in the world. And yet it's attacked as a colonialist, imperialist, warmongering, etc. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't broken its ceasefire on October 7th and killed 2,500 people. I don't remember, 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 people. Sorry, 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 people. Most of the people who were killed, by the way, were young people who were peaceniks.

who were active in the peace movement, and they were there at a peace concert. But Hamas doesn't distinguish between good Jews and bad Jews. If you're a Jew, you're bad, and you're subject to being killed. You know, we live in a world of horrible anti-Semitism, but let's not miss focus. The serious allegation of anti-Semitism. Hamas is anti-Semitic. The people who hand out Hamas leaflets are anti-Semitic. The people who call for...

globalize the Intifada and free Palestine from the river to the sea, are anti-Semitic. Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic. Donald Trump is philo-Semitic. He's also philo-Trump. You know, he likes Trump. He does things that are supportive of his. values. You can criticize him for that. You can criticize him for a lot of things. But do not call him an anti-Semite. A lot of things happen when you do that. First of all, it trivializes the term anti-Semite. If an anti-Semite is one who...

recognized the Golan Heights, recognized Jerusalem, and did all the good things that Trump did for Israel and for Jews in America. If that's an anti-Semite, then anti-Semitism isn't so bad. You know, it's like the Holocaust comparisons. People say, oh, my God, Trump is like Hitler. If Trump were like Hitler, there wouldn't have been a Holocaust.

If you say Trump's like Hitler, you're denying the Holocaust. If you're saying that Republicans are like Nazis, you're denying the Holocaust. And so we have to be careful with our language because these are serious matters. We live in a very... crucial time. So let's be clear. Let me end where I began. Donald Trump is not an anti-Semite. The New York Times lies when it says he is. CNN lies when they say he is. Democrats who call him an anti-Semite are lying. They know he's not an anti-Semite.

anti-Semitism is and how evil it is. And they know that the world's a complicated place where you don't see things in simple black and white terms. So let's stop. demonizing Donald Trump by calling him an anti-Semite. Call him other things, you know, be critical of him. That's what America is all about. We have free speech rights to be critical of our president, thankfully, but don't abuse that right.

by calling him an anti-Sylite. He just isn't. So let's turn to some letters. Dear Professor Dershowitz, why are you in front of a blank wall? I much prefer looking at all the photos on your walls.

and all around you as you speak. It's just so much more interesting. Keep up the good work. I'm in a hotel room. My wife and I are at a... a music festival and was staying in a hotel but i wouldn't miss my podcast so i'm doing the podcast from the hotel i don't carry my art with me if i did i'd have a beautiful piece of art in the background but You got a hotel room. Otherwise, you know, if I moved the camera, you'd have my wife, who's a lot more beautiful than the wall, but she'd rather not.

not be on camera right now. We're preparing to go out and see some more music tonight. I think it's jazz. Today we heard Vivaldi and Mozart. So we're doing a lot of interesting things. Dershowitz, you need to quit the Democrats. I did. I quit the Democratic Party the day after the Democratic National Convention, after I saw what they were saying and doing. I am no longer a member of the Democratic Party. I'm not a Republican. I'm an independent.

But I'm not a Democrat, so I have quit the Democratic Party. Governor Polis made Colorado a sanctuary state and should be held accountable for this person's being in the state. Apparently, that man lived in Colorado Springs with his wife and five children, drove almost two hours to Boulder to do this heinous crime. Was his entire family here illegally? This is disgusting. Well, his family has now been...

subject to some scrutiny and legal proceedings. Don't know exactly what, but he claims to have been planning this thing for a year. He tried to get a gun. They wouldn't sell it to him, thankfully. And we don't know what his family knew, but if he was planning this for a year, it's at least plausible to inquire as to whether some members of his family or people close to him may have known about his plans. Okay.

Just a couple of observations. The wonderful mainstream media and dedicated former FBI officials are condemning current FBI officials for jumping too prematurely to label the Boulder, Colorado attack as terrorism or hate crime. Of course, it's absurd. The video I saw made this man's motives pretty clear, in my opinion. It's clear. It's not a matter of opinion. It's clear. Of course, it was a hate crime. Of course, it was an act of terrorism.

Elon Musk was absolutely shredded for weeks for using a Nazi salute. Senator Booker used the same salute over the weekend. The media shredded MAGA. uh media for pointing it out i have such a headache i have a headache too when i think about the way in which the media distorts everything. You just can't find out what's really going on. I end up flipping channels, but even flipping channels doesn't do it. I try to read as many media as I possibly can from around the world.

trying to get a perspective, but I can't find out exactly what the truth is. um alan why do you say the president of harvard is a good man because he is a good man he was a professor of medicine a very distinguished professor he's tried his best he has an impossible job when larry somers became president

He called me in and I said to him, Larry, you know, you have an impossible job. Of course, he got fired because nobody could do that job. There were too many people who were out to get him because he was pro-edgeral and because he. was willing to tell the truth about possible genetic differences.

um and and so at least uh you know you explore those but uh uh the president of harvard is a good man in an impossible job and he's a good man who's done some bad things i mean i don't know what his role was in picking this woman to get an honorary doctorate i would doubt he knew uh that she was in support of an academic boycott, which is the most unacademic thing you can possibly do, calling on people to boycott each other for their political views when they're doing scientific research.

um so um good men and good women um again it's a matter of opinion i know alan garber i like him i think he's a good man i also know the slightly the president of Columbia. I think she's a good woman. But the institutions that they represent... have a mixed record and it's important that the federal government be involved in a proportional way. Again, to state my view, targeted, targeted defunding, targeted.

visa denials. Don't take funding away from cancer research. Don't deny visas to people who would contribute greatly to the work of the university. Targeting is hard, but it's absolutely essential. In a democracy, it's so important to make sure you don't overreact and throw out the baby with the bathwater. And I'm afraid there's some of that going on. But for so many years...

Nothing happened. And so as between overreaction and no reaction, reasonably we disagree. As between underreaction and overreaction, I'm all in favor of targeted reaction. So let's hope. We get that. See you tomorrow. Did you know that if you're taking a probiotic, chances are you're being lied to? A shocking study revealed that 15 out of 16 leading brands don't contain the strains they promise on the label.

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