Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitism A Conversation with Michal Cotler-Wunsh (Episode

Biden's deficits can't be ignored—he's 81 and not up to the job. 🗣️🇺🇸

Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. I'm back in town after traveling for, um, about, uh, 11 days in Europe. This is my first podcast after that disastrous presidential debate. I couldn't record a podcast because I was traveling; I was actually on an airplane the morning after the debate. But I did post a short piece to Substack, which you can read if you search my name over there.

My main point in that piece was not merely that Biden should drop out of the race—he clearly should. Those who have worked so diligently up until this point to conceal his deficits should be ashamed of themselves. I don't know how they thought he was going to bluff his way through this. More importantly, we have to acknowledge that we have paid a significant price for his deficits already. He can't speak effectively about anything, certainly not extemporaneously.

He's done no interviews with the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal, and he hasn't done them for a reason. The job of the president is not just to be cognitively intact so you can make decisions. The job of the president is also to communicate and persuade, right? There has been so much he should have communicated about—the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza. He has to make sense of these things in public; he has to make the case for why America needs to be engaged in the world. He needs to be able to do a two-hour interview or a two-hour press conference. He's 81 and is not up to the job.

There's a proper insanity surrounding the president now where people are just torturing their reputations coming forward and defending him. This includes President Obama and Governor Nome. You cannot tell America they didn't see what they saw during that debate. He didn't just have a bad night; it's not at all analogous to Obama's bad debate against Romney. No one came away from the debate that Obama clearly lost thinking Obama is unfit to be in the Oval Office because his faculty of speech and very likely cognition is so degraded. That was not the lesson drawn there; it absolutely was last week about President Biden.

The Democrats ignore that or obfuscate that at their peril—not just at their peril, at everyone's peril. If half of what Democrats believe about a second Trump term is real, well, then what are they doing rolling the dice with Biden at this point? I think there is no way that man wins in November. So obviously Biden himself should decide to drop out, but short of that, there has to be a way to do this at the convention. Let's just see what happens.

Next, let's talk about something deeply disturbing that happened in Los Angeles. You had people blocking Jewish access to a synagogue in the most Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles. If you had a bunch of masked Christian Republicans gathered in front of a mosque in Los Angeles assaulting Muslims, what would the response have been? We would now be several days into a national news cycle about Islamophobia and injustice in America. There would be joint LAPD-FBI task forces kicking down doors, press conferences, vigils, presidential speeches, and multi-part investigative reports from numerous leading publications.

The essence of anti-Semitism is the double standards one continually discovers here. It happens to the Jews, and no one seems to care. If it happened to the Muslims, if it happened to Black Americans, we'd never hear the end of it. It's the stuff that has been normalized around the Jews that seems so insidious. I happened to walk down Fifth Avenue past the big synagogue there. I noticed how normal it had seemed that out in front of the synagogue entrance, there are these giant blocks of stone. They're to prevent a car from jumping the curb and mowing down people in front of the synagogue entrance. This is normal, but it's only normal for Jews. No one else has to do this in American society.

Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism, especially after October 7th. 🛑✡️

Before October 7th, I certainly would have said that anti-Zionism is quite distinct from anti-Semitism, and at one point, I could have even claimed to have been an anti-Zionist of some sort myself. However, after October 7th, I don't think there's any meaningful difference. Anyone who's arguing that Israel shouldn't be a Jewish state at this point is clearly betraying, if not an outright hatred of Jews, such moral confusion about what happened on October 7th and about the risks to Israel—not just to the nation-state but to the actual inhabitants, the existential risk to them posed by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Anyone who argues that Israel shouldn't exist as a Jewish state at this point is out of touch with what has happened there and with what millions upon millions of people who really do hate the Jews want to have happen there between that river and the sea. All of these people who are calling into question the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its fight for survival against antagonists that genuinely mean to perpetrate a genocide there are not engaging with the actual moral terrain. Holocaust denial is synonymous with anti-Semitism—well, technically, no. If you're in the Holocaust denial business, we know what you're up to, and I think we're in the same spot post-October 7th with anti-Zionism.

The thing most people don't understand here is the justification for the state of Israel, certainly post-October 7th, which was a direct echo of a multi-century history of pogroms and a direct echo of the Holocaust itself. This was not normal violence, and the Jews can be forgiven, frankly, for perceiving a threat that most other identifiable groups could never imagine feeling. The Jews have, on countless occasions, discovered from one day to the next that their neighbors want to kill them. This is the part of the history of the Holocaust that most people don't understand.

Most people, when they think about the Holocaust, think well, there was Auschwitz, right? There was the killing machine of the Third Reich, the mechanization of death perpetrated by Nazi Germany on the Jews of Europe. Now, that's obviously a significant part of the story, but it's by no means the whole story, and on some level, it's not the most disconcerting part of the story. There were about 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, about 3 million, I believe, within the concentration camp system, so about 3 million died outside of it. This was through mass shootings, ghettos, forced labor, death marches, and other means. A lot of this was the result of what the Nazis did, in particular, their mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, but they had an uncountable number of collaborators in all the countries they invaded.

In many cases, they didn't have to force anyone to round up their local populations of Jews for slaughter. They simply had to give them permission, and in countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Romania, Croatia, and even Greece, there were well-known atrocities committed by locals who weren't forced to do anything. These were neighbors suddenly turning on neighbors, torturing them, beating them to death, or shooting them in ditches or helping the Nazis do that very directly. There were Jews who returned from concentration camps after they were liberated, only to be murdered by their neighbors.

Nazi Germany was certainly responsible for initiating the program to kill the European Jews, and the killings occurred within this overall framework. But at the local level, the ways in which the killings often took place were quite different from the factory-line extermination associated with the death camps, not least because many locals participated. For the Jews living in these Eastern European villages, towns, and cities who had coexisted with their Christian neighbors for centuries, the fact that their acquaintances, colleagues, classmates, and friends had turned against them, hunted them down, or delivered them to the Nazi murderers meant that they experienced the Holocaust not just as a murderous invasion by a foreign enemy but also as a series of communal massacres in a once familiar but now lethally hostile environment.

That really is different—the once familiar but now lethally hostile environment. Society can turn and become a lethally hostile environment for Jews as for no other people on earth. The Jews can be forgiven for not having the patience to split hairs about the motivations of people who are blocking synagogues in Los Angeles and beating people up who try to enter. Are these people really anti-Semitic, or are they just anti-Zionist? The stupidity on display by people who can't figure out the difference between what Hamas did on October 7th and what the IDF has done in fighting Hamas, which again is using its own population as human shields and is still holding American hostages.

Mall and I cover much of this terrain. We discussed the bias against Israel at the UN, the nature of double standards, the precedents set by Israel in its conduct in the war, the shape-shifting quality of anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism as the new strain of anti-Semitism. We talked about the "Zionism is Racism" resolution at the UN, the lie that Israel is an apartheid state, the notion that Israel is perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinians—another lie. We discussed the Marxist oppressed-oppressor narrative that is confounding people, the false moral equivalence between the atrocities committed by Hamas and the deaths of non-combatants in Gaza, and the failure of the social justice movement to respond appropriately after October 7th. We also touched on what universities should have done in those early days, reclaiming the meanings of words, extremism of many types versus civilization, and other topics.

This is another PSA, so no paywall. And again, sorry for the delay on this podcast; I just dropped the ball. I want to apologize to Mall for that and thank her for her patience. And now, I bring you Mall Cutler. I am here with Mall Cutler. Mall, thanks for joining me.

"Thank you very much for having me on. I am sure I sounded like a diaspora Jew in the pronunciation of your name, but it's great to have you here."

Like many people, I first became aware of you seeing your really brilliant and searing speech in front of the UN recently. When did you give that speech? Is that about a month ago?

"Yes, that was just about three weeks ago. Well, you know, we saw one manifestation of what I was trying to say in the complete silence regarding the women so brutally raped on October 7th. But that's, as I said, just one manifestation of what that speech was about."

So, obviously, we're going to talk more about what happened on October 7th or at least more about the aftermath and what did and didn't happen in the aftermath.

UN hypocrisy perpetuates injustice and double standards. 🌐🌀😤

Thank you for continuing this discussion. There is one UN mechanism created for all refugees around the world, and that's the UNHCR. This organization ensures that refugees and their needs are taken care of.

However, the UN created another additional entity uniquely singling out one group of refugees—the Palestinians. This group gets to hand down refugee status from generation to generation, perpetuating the status rather than resolving it. It's quite perplexing.

The irony is that the very countries entrusted to uphold, promote, and protect the international rules-based order actually enable entities that systematically violate it. Take, for example, countries like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and China. These nations are notorious for flagrant human rights violations, yet according to the Human Rights Council in the UN, all of them combined have fewer human rights violations than one single country—the state of Israel.

The overwhelming majority of funding for the UN comes from these countries. It's interesting because, by funding this Orwellian inversion, they are actually enabling the perversion we see today. This is a moment of reckoning and perhaps the last opportunity for these countries to set things right.

This situation exposes a whole range of organizations, mechanisms, and the UN institution itself. For example, the UN women's groups resisted condemning and were actually silent about barbaric atrocities until a couple of days ago, when they issued a very lukewarm statement. This silence is complicity, empowering genocidal terror that used brutal rape and sexual crimes.

One of the women's groups issued some sort of lukewarm statement 50 days after the atrocities were perpetrated. It will be up to the countries, mostly those funding this infrastructure, to ensure that it upholds its original mission statement or collapses. We may be the bloody canary in the mineshaft, but the mineshaft is collapsing all around us, and October 7th exposed that very clearly for anyone paying attention.

Let's focus on the UN for a few more minutes because it's really hard for people to understand how bizarre the status quo is here. Perhaps you can dissect one of these double standards for us. Israel finds itself in a perpetually no-win situation.

They are clearly fighting a defensive war. There was a ceasefire on October 6th, which Hamas broke in a way that is so patently evil and in violation of any sane use of self-defense. They consciously targeted non-combatants, children, and took children hostage, using torture, rape, and mutilation.

The details are so obviously in violation of every norm of self-defense or just war. There's something quite wrong when Israel is being held to a standard in defending itself that no other democracy has ever seen. When the US was fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and bombing Mosul, there was no analogous scrutiny on the civilian death toll.

It is, of course, tragic that civilians die in any of these conflicts. We would all hope that Israel holds itself to the highest possible standard in waging its ground war in Gaza to protect civilian life. But they are fighting an enemy that consciously uses human shields, trying to leverage collateral damage into a propaganda victory.

That propaganda victory is only possible given this complete inversion of moral sense that we're describing at the UN.

Israel's fight for survival is scrutinized while terror is ignored. 🌍🔍😔

Hope that Israel would be holding itself to the highest possible standard of waging its ground war in Gaza so as to protect civilian life... They're fighting an enemy that is consciously using human shields and trying to leverage collateral damage into a propaganda victory with the rest of the world. The scrutiny applied to Israel when it wages a defensive war in the aftermath of thousands of rockets and medieval-level barbarism in its own territory against its civilians is something to behold.

Double standards or the selective application of any principle undermines the entire infrastructure always. Imagine if you're three years old and I say to you we're going to play a game and you're going to play according to the rules but I'm not. That three-year-old will say to me, "I'm not playing." The consistent application of double standards or the selective application of standards to one single member state is a problem for the infrastructure created to uphold, promote, and protect those foundational principles.

Targeting civilians from densely populated areas endangers civilians, a double war crime. Over 11,500 rockets have been launched at Israelis. Not one of those 11,500 double war crimes has been condemned by the institutions mandated to uphold, promote, and protect against such actions. The Nazis at least hid what they did during the Holocaust. The 3,000-plus barbaric savages that infiltrated Israel live-streamed it with pride. They knew that they would be receiving support, including right here on university campuses that would actually echo the Hamas Charter.

From the River to the Sea—that's a call to annihilate the state of Israel. That's just hatred of Jews and the complete unacceptance of Israel's existence in any borders. We have to look very clearly and understand that when they did that, they did not even hide. They knew that they would be receiving support, including right here on university campuses that would actually echo the Hamas Charter that calls for the murder of Jews and the annihilation of Israel from the River to the Sea.

That's not a two-state solution, and anybody who cares about Palestinian well-being should recognize that. If we don't call out those double standards, including in the implementation of international humanitarian law, we fail to uphold any principles. Israel not only holds itself up to a very high level of ethics in fighting wars generally because those are our principles, but international law is also created by precedent. The precedent that Israel has created in its war on genocidal terrorists is now going to be a very high standard for all democracies that want to uphold those laws of war.

Israel has created humanitarian corridors that it has actually announced before any attack, asking the civilians in those areas to evacuate. Hamas, however, has prevented their evacuation in many cases or intercepted the humanitarian aid that Israel has enabled to flow through. Hamas has also stopped civilians from moving from areas of Gaza where Israel had to fight Hamas terrorists because they use them as human shields. The understanding that the world has enabled I'll call it a false moral equivalence between that genocidal terror organization and a democratic state defending itself from it is troubling.

That's going to be a problem for all these democratic countries that have enabled that equivalence. The only entity that has to be held to account for the tragic loss of life, both what it perpetrated on October 7th and in the aftermath in the Palestinian loss of life, is Hamas—a genocidal terror organization. All that does is empower those regimes, and that is a problem for all democracies and for all of us who cherish life and liberty. Just days before October 7th, the supreme leader of Iran tweeted precisely what it was that we saw happen on October 7th, only that he, instead of using the word Jew or Israel, exchanges it with Zionist or Zionist cancer in this case that would be destroyed by Palestinians.

The conflation of Palestinians with Hamas undermines the Palestinian cause, and we should be very clear on that. There should be a Palestinian leadership, but sadly there hasn't been one that's vocal enough to unequivocally condemn and say that was not in my name. I truly long for a two-state solution and for peace and coexistence recognizing Israel's right to exist. If we do not have an equal and consistent application of any principle, it undermines it completely and it no longer exists for any situation, any context. So double standards in any context actually undermine the principle in every context.

Modern anti-Semitism targets Israel's existence, not just its people. 🌍🛡️🔄

Recognizing Israel's right to exist alongside whatever will be the long-term resolution of the conflict is crucial. It can't be that we expect some resolution with an entity like Hamas, which perpetrated the atrocities on October 7th. The oldest hatred in the world, often referred to as Jew hatred, has survived by mutating. Anti-Semitism never died; it just adapted according to the guiding social constructs of the time.

You mentioned some of these constructs: religion, science, and in our day, the secular religion of human rights. This has been co-opted and weaponized into something very lethal. The strain of anti-Semitism we see now was made very clear on October 7th. This event exposed the modern, mutated, mainstream strain of an ever-changing virus. Anti-Zionism, or the negation of Israel's very right to exist, intersects with all these constructs.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism is the single, benchmark definition. This definition enables us to identify this strain. We must understand that inoculating our societies, communities, and families against just one strain of a virus does not make us immune to other strains when they mutate. We have to inoculate our societies against this new strain of anti-Zionism.

This was exposed very clearly not only in the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th but also in the responses around the world. In democratic countries, within hours, there were denials, justifications, and support for these actions, culminating in attacks on Jews in the aftermath. Anti-Zionism, or the negation of Israel's very right to exist, is the modern, mutated, mainstream strain of anti-Semitism. We must be able to identify and combat this strain.

The history of anti-Semitism, or Jew hatred as it was called before it became known as anti-Semitism, shows a long process of demonization and dehumanization. Double standards have traditionally barred individual Jews from an equal place in society. In the modern strain of anti-Semitism, it is the state of Israel—the proverbial Jew among nations—that is demonized, delegitimized, and subjected to double standards. This process enables the very same mutation of anti-Semitism.

The UN's "Zionism is Racism" resolution of 1975, passed after a series of conventional wars failed to destroy the state of Israel, shows how this ideology has persisted. Ironically, this Soviet Union propaganda is alive and well on 2023 university campuses in the name of progress. Zionism is integral to the identity of the majority of Jews, who for thousands of years have spoken the same language, Hebrew, read the same book, the Bible, traversed the same land, Israel, and practiced the same rituals and customs. To demonize and delegitimize this identity is to perpetuate the same anti-Semitic processes of the past.

Zionism is core to Jewish identity, not racism. ✡️✨

Recognizing the importance of addressing issues on campuses, it's clear that the same harmful ideologies have persisted for decades. In the name of progress, we see these ideologies manifesting in modern contexts. Zionism is integral to the identity of the majority of Jews, who for thousands of years have spoken the same language, Hebrew, read the same book, the Bible, and traversed the same land, Israel, while practicing the same rituals and customs. This long-standing cultural and spiritual connection defines what it means to be indigenous.

Understanding this, it's evident that Jews have longed, prayed, and yearned to return to Zion. Zionism, thus, is not merely a political statement but a core part of Jewish identity. It is more than a 140-year-old national progressive liberation movement that enabled the return of an indigenous people to their ancestral homeland. This successful movement is now misrepresented on university campuses as "racism," echoing the UN's infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution of 1975.

We must contend with this on campuses, identifying and combating the mainstream anti-Semitism present today. The next step in this process is addressing the apartheid lie. In 2001, the Durban Conference Against Racism turned into an anti-Semitic hate fest, giving rise to Israel Apartheid Weeks across North American campuses. Despite Israel's challenges, it is not an apartheid state.

Misappropriating the term "apartheid" to describe Israel minimizes the suffering of those who truly lived under apartheid. It also obscures real issues that Israel, like any other democratic country, should address. Israel's diverse society includes Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouins, who are fully integrated into everyday life in Israel, appearing in the Supreme Court, hospitals, the military, and more. This integration contradicts the apartheid narrative.

Israel's efforts to resolve conflicts with Palestinians have been repeatedly rejected by Palestinian leadership, much like the 1947 partition plan. Since disengaging from Gaza in 2005, Israel has not controlled the area, which has been under Hamas since 2007. The false apartheid narrative erases the complexity of Israel's situation and the agency of its minorities.

Hospitals in Israel are filled with patients, doctors, and nurses of every religion and faith, showcasing the country's diversity. Experiencing life in Israel firsthand reveals these often misunderstood aspects. The Orwellian inversion of accusing Israel of perpetrating a genocide, especially after the horrors of October 7th, is grotesque. The atrocities committed by over 3,000 Hamas terrorists that day were designed to invoke memories of the Holocaust.

Few people know that survivors of the Nova Peace Festival, where these atrocities occurred, are now in psychiatric wards. This understanding makes the weaponization of Holocaust allegations against Israel even more perverse. There can be no worse accusation against any country than falsely accusing it of genocide.

Israel's fight is for survival and democracy, not oppression. 🛡️🌍

When hospitals, schools, and mosques are used as shields, it debilitates Israel in many ways. We must fight to protect our citizens. Israel is fighting for its life at 75 years young, not only as a Jewish nation-state but also for Jews around the world being attacked. It’s not just the Army; it’s the entire Israeli society deployed. Rockets continue flying overhead, red alert sirens blare, and there is an ongoing war in Israel.

This war is raging here too—an unconventional war for public opinion in the streets of the United States, Canada, and all democracies. It’s a war on our shared humanity, a war on civilization as we know it. Authoritarian regimes have a way of saying what they mean and meaning what they say, aiming to build a caliphate on the rubble of our civilization. While Israel is considered the "small devil," the United States is viewed as the "big devil."

This is a moment of reckoning in international institutions, university spaces, traditional media, and social media. It’s a moment of reckoning for ourselves as people who cherish the foundational principles of life and liberty. We must apply DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) principles equally and consistently. Jews don’t fit into the narrative of being oppressors; we are an indigenous people returning to our ancestral homeland after millennia of persecution.

I am not an oppressor; I didn’t come from Europe. Stop sending me back there—that’s not my story. Are we satisfied with this Marxist division of the world? What does that do to our democratic societies? Applying irrelevant social constructs prevents us from ensuring equality of opportunities and diversity that allows all of us to thrive. This is a moment of reckoning; we must look at the results of our intentions.

Democratic societies were intended to offer opportunities, like the American dream that enabled Holocaust survivors to build new lives. Is this really a country that oppresses? Irrelevant social constructs prevent us from ensuring equality and diversity. We must examine the results of our intentions because they have led us to this polarized reality. Social media exacerbates this polarization, which is destructive to the foundations of all democracies.

There are two important points to flag. First, the tragedy of good intentions where idealistic college kids are fed distorted concepts. When they chant "from the river to the sea," they may not realize they are advocating genocide. Second, the double standards in public opinion. Understanding that ISIS and the Nazis had to be fought to the end, despite civilian casualties, is crucial. We could not afford to lose those wars as it would mean more innocent lives lost.

This unconventional war for public opinion creates false moral equivalence. There is a difference between a democratic country defending its civilians and a genocidal terrorist organization.

Israel's fight is for survival and democracy, not oppression. 🛡️🌍

Innocent lives, that's a very complex sort of understanding... except that it isn't right except when it isn't. We're very clear on why the Nazis had to be destroyed in World War II. What you're touching upon is actually a part of this unconventional war for public opinion that enables the false moral equivalence between a democratic country that not only can but must defend its civilians and, in this case, a genocidal terror organization. If we level the playing field, then we say, okay, then it's fair game and everybody is equal except that there are things that are out of bounds. Not all things are created equal, and the imperative need to differentiate between good and bad is part of the conversation that we need to be having.

This is a real moment of reckoning for university bases. If you can’t unequivocally condemn what happened on October 7, there's something seriously wrong. Professors who are exhilarated by what happened on October 7 or students that support what happened and threaten fellow students to commit the atrocities that were perpetrated on October 7—there's something seriously wrong with the university setting. The pursuit of truth, or at the very least the pursuit of knowledge in a post-truth era, is essential.

Universities have become spaces where, instead of teaching people how to think, we are teaching people what to think. That's a problem for mandated institutions meant to teach people how to think critically and to pursue knowledge. University presidents have come to this moment of reckoning, especially regarding foreign funding that has entered universities without transparency. October 7 is a moment of reckoning.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism is crucial. The safety and security of all students should be ensured by all universities. We must be able to use the IHRA definition to identify the strain that threatens their safety and security.

This strain we're referring to is one that has cynically leveraged the rubric of social justice. It's almost like an export of American Civil Rights history, modeled on the African-American experience, and the current variant views white people and white-adjacent people as oppressors and all people of color as oppressed. When you're on the left side of the political spectrum in America, Jews are viewed as essentially extra white. On the far right, they're viewed as not white. So, they're getting it from both sides, but on the left, that's what anti-Semitism always is—for what we are and what we aren't.

This strain is a kind of social justice quasi-Marxist DEI leveraged animus against Israel and Zionism. It's what I call anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. It has intersected with other social justice movements, tragically, because it undermines those movements by being co-opted and weaponized for this.

When Israel began divulging the atrocities, the immediate denial that followed was heartbreaking. It was an Emmett Till moment, where Emmett Till's mother decided to leave the casket open for everybody to see the grotesque nature of what happened to him. The decision to look into what Israel has exposed—leaving the casket open—is going to have to be civilization's decision. All of those social justice movements we mentioned, if they choose to look away, not believe, or remain silent, as we saw at the UN with women's groups and children's groups on International Children's Day, will be making a grave error. No mention of the drugging and burning of children, not just burnt alive on that day but also children kept in captivity and marked with the exhaust of a motorcycle so they wouldn't run away.

Leadership is about moral clarity—condemn atrocities unequivocally. ✊🕊️

Right when you think of that casket being open but civilization choosing to look away, then I think that's the moment of reckoning for what you call the social justice movement and principles that have been appropriated and weaponized in the enablement of this mutation of anti-Semitism, or in its current strain of anti-Zionism. What should colleges have done and what should they do now? What would you have university presidents do or have done on October 8th, 9th, and 10th when they saw their student body erupt in, in some cases, well-intentioned but in many cases, grotesqueries of moral confusion?

Actually, the first thing that some universities did very successfully is so simple that I can't believe I have to say it, but it's the unequivocal condemnation of the atrocities we saw on October 7th. That's it; that's it right there. The understanding that if you call out Hamas—a genocidal terror organization that in its charter is committed to the annihilation of the state of Israel and the murder of Jews—and actually showed us what they mean by that in the Hamas Charter, showed the entire world. That kind of leadership, moral clarity, and courage is what I would hope for. I think it would have actually headed off a lot of the counter-demonstrations that we saw hours and days after when there was a lack of moral clarity and courage.

The few that issued a clear, unequivocal condemnation that said, "Because we support humanity and peace, we have to unequivocally condemn what it was that we witnessed as a world—atrocities the likes of which the Jewish people have not experienced since the Holocaust happened on October 7th." Which universities were actually good here? There was a statement issued, I believe, by Yeshiva University. A couple of university presidents joined. It's devastating to me that I even have to mention it, right, because all it is is an immediate, unequivocal condemnation of the atrocities we saw on October 7th—immediate. That headed off a lot of the responses that were enabled by the sort of silence. So, if universities issued statements in the past about what happened in Ukraine or what happens anywhere else in the world, and failed to do so on this day when the world hasn't experienced something so grave.

The likes of which the Jewish people have not experienced since the Holocaust. There were a couple of universities. There was a statement issued, I believe, by Yeshiva University. A couple of university presidents joined. It's devastating to me that I even have to mention it, right, because all it is is an immediate, unequivocal condemnation of the atrocities we saw on October 7th. The first thing would have been just to issue a clear, unequivocal condemnation. That should not be difficult when we saw the magnitude of these barbaric atrocities. From "The River to the Sea," we have to react to as we said, is a call to annihilation, a call to genocide.

Universities are going to have to address this, but in a proactive kind of way. I mentioned it so many times, but I have to mention it again. It's actually to adopt and implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition. The result of a 15-year democratic process that's been adopted by more than 40 countries and more than a thousand entities. It's not enough to just adopt it; obviously, it has to be implemented. In order to be able to identify and combat anything, you first need to define it comprehensively—all versions of it.

I don't want social media spaces censoring or removing; I actually want them to refer out to the IHRA, to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. What is Zionism? It's integral to the identity of the majority of Jews; it's how the majority of Jews self-define. It is integral to the identity, meaning I can't just shed that Zionist pound of flesh to be a good Jew. To reclaim what words, what concepts, what historical facts that have been appropriated, weaponized, distorted, and actually in that way, not only to reclaim them but enable what I would call claiming intersectionality.

October 7th enables a very important moment, I think, and it is to transcend real and perceived differences of politics, of religion, of denomination, of geography. What we're battling together is extremism. It's not the real or perceived differences of yesterday—Jew and non-Jew, right and left. It's not that; it's extremism that's threatening the foundations of democracies, and October 7th and the responses to it made it abundantly clear. I look forward to a time when you'll be out of a job, but somehow I think that's not coming soon. What's most important is that we make this accessible to broad publics that recognize the responsibility of our times and that "never again" is right now.

Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=l4gX7XR0GW0