Douglas Murray: "The rise of anti-Semitism is a sign of a society in decline"

well thank you very much for that very warm introduction it's a a huge pleasure to me uh to be back here in the Netherlands country where I've I've spent a fair amount of time in the past I have a lot of friends and which I think very fondly of um I sometimes remember that some years ago a Dutch friend of mine visited me in London and uh said to me uh I won't do the accent but said uh what are people saying in London about the Netherlands these days and I was slightly caught and I said they're not all talking about you it has you said um but I think that's their problem not yours uh there's a good reason to focus on this country I think it's a fascinating and important country uh with a rich rich history and a and a rich potentially very rich future as well like all of us it depends on you getting things right um but I wanted to talk tonight about the subject of of anti-Semitism um and let me start with relatively recent events um after the nature of the October the 7th attacks became clear I said uh that there are sometimes in your life when a flare goes up and you can see everybody exactly where they are everyone is caught exactly where they're standing I thought that in part because I was in New York on the 7th and the next day the eth there was a protest immediately planned in Times Square it wasn't a protest in support of the Israelis who had already been massacred it wasn't even a protest against I know War it was a protest in favor of the ongoing massacres where people were waving banners celebrating atrocities which were still going on and I thought then well I have to go to Israel as soon as I can in order to see this for myself because it was my belief then as it is now that Not only was this a moment when you would see everyone where they were but that several things would happen one was what I described as Holocaust Denial in real time where even as the atrocities were still going on people were saying they hadn't happened or that the Israelis had carried them out there was a huge debate in the early weeks about whether or not the Israelis should release the footage that hamz filmed themselves and by the way you've got to have a particularly perverted mind to believe that the Israelis made hamz take the GoPro footage of the thing the Striking thing about all of the footage from the 7th from the Hamas terrorists is that they were wildly proud of their achievements wildly proud and also wildly gleeful which is a sort of new level of evil in a way many people have done many evil things in history but very few are actively proud of them in this way some of you may have heard the intercepted conversation of one of the terrorists calling his mother in Gaza and saying I'm calling you on a Jews phone I've killed 10 Jews with my own hands pass father on to the phone pass pass all the family on I want to tell them all your son has killed all these people with his own hands when I arrived in Israel and started to to speak not just to the survivors spend time with the families of the hostages but also go around the sites of all the massacres in the communities in the South Villages kibuts of ber and near o and the site of the festival The Dance Festival where all these hundreds of beautiful young people were just dancing in the early morning when true evil arrived in their midsts when I went around this I always had a disconnect because as I heard all these stories firsthand and was shown the footage of people's own footage of the day partygoers who had recorded a little bit of their escape or their friends deaths all the time I looked back home to New York to London to Europe and everywhere the sympathy had gone the other way and I thought that was extraordinary I sort of expected it all my life whenever Israel has done anything uh World response goes up and up and up whatever the size of the Israeli action uh I first heard the accusation the Israelis were committing genocide in Gaza in 2008 so I'm a little jaded with that accus ation it would also of course make it the only genocide in history in which the population doubled but let's put that aside for a second it struck me that all these people back home didn't for a day call for the release of the Israeli hostages not one day I'd have some sympathy and understanding and indeed respect for people who said you know I campaigned for the release of the hostages I paid my respects to the dead and the murdered of the seventh and I deeply sympathized with their families but I also sympathized with the innocent Palestinians I'd have some respect for that position but it's very hard to have any respect for somebody's allegedly anti-war position when they're mute at the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust A friend of mine came through Tel Aviv in January and he said you know Douglas this is the first place I've been since October where none of the hostage posters have been torn down I thought think about that for a moment that in London you can't put up a hostage poster even if a now 18mon year old child without it being torn down one of the relatives of the bbass child who's the youngest hostage he P passed his first birthday in captivity ity um one of his relatives told me he went to Dublin to try to appeal to the Irish t-u for his help some help and um he actually saw there the poster of his baby relative been ripped I said just think about that for a second if if here in Rotterdam somebody put up a poster to their missing dog would anyone pull it down would anyone rip it down if they did rip it down Would we not all say who is this sick person going around ripping down posters of a missing dog everyone wants the dog home and yet that is not extended to the Jewish children the women or indeed the men one of the things that's striking in Israel since the 7th is the fact that so many people have focused on the women and children and the importance of releasing them and that is important but there is also no crime in being a young man of 21 at a dance party and there's no crime in being a 70-year-old grandfather who hoped to spend simat Torah with his grandchildren but all the time the sympathy went the other way the the protests on the campuses not only fell straight into the Palestinian side but fell straight into the Mass side a Columbia University has been an encampment now for some months um in the main square and overlooking that square by the way 18 great figures of the western past including Aristotle Plato and Dante I do sometimes wonder what they would think of the current state of American thought if they could see the students who one of whom complained recently that there weren't adequate toilet facili ities at the encampment complained that she had to do her business in a bag and then throw it in a larger bag of $65,000 a year $65,000 a year that girl's parents pay for her education but it's a Colombia University in New York where Jewish students have been pursued across campus by people shouting go back to Poland or on one occasion had a poster held up in front of them saying hamz these are your next targets it's uh in London that we've had protests every single weekend it's here in the Netherlands where you saw an eight-fold increase in anti-semitic incidents in the month after October the 7th and it does bear dwelling on for a second that I wonder I wonder if it was any other group in society who had suffered such a barbaric Outburst if the public would so strongly turn on the victims it's hard to imagine there was a maniac in America a few years ago a white supremacist who went into a church in the South a black church and gunned down these innocent Christian worshippers and you know nobody in in the United States of America or anywhere around the world said well you know it's possible he was provoked into it no everyone's sympathy is with these poor families who had to go through this horrific incident and it's the same with any other group in society except with the Jews it's even I think to the shame of this country when a holocaust museum is opened in Amsterdam and pocal Survivor is photographed rushing past an angry mob screaming at him and his grandson and one of the ways I submit that you can tell that somebody hasn't thought about anti-Semitism at all is if they say something like the following anti-Semitism must be eradicated once and for all the former labor leader Jeremy Corbin occasionally used to say say this he is an anti-semite but um he used to occasionally say that's why anti-Semitism racism and all other forms of hate must be eradicated once and for all and I used to say that shows you've never thought about the matter I'd submit that uh one of the Striking things about anti-Semitism is that it seems very sadly to be a human perennial and I say that because all the evidence points that way it's also a shape shifter it's probably the greatest shape shifter in uh in history there were people who used to hate the Jews because of their religion and then some point it became less acceptable to hate people because of their religion then the Jews were hated because of their race and then at some point in the 20th century it became not so good to hate people because of their race but there was one twist left which was that the Jews who were hated by anti-semites because they were stateless were suddenly hated because they had a state it's um one of the insights of a number of writers that the Jews get hated for absolutely every reason it's it's it's an unbelievable fact the Jews have been hated historically and by people in the world today and even on people on X to today for all of the following reasons they have been hated because they've been poor and they've been hated because they've been Rich they've been hated because they have not integrated into society and they get hated for integrating into the society they get hated for as I say being rootless cosmopolitans and then for being zionists who dare to have a state and not be ruthless vasle grman my one of my hero the great Russian uh 20th century uh writer and journalist uh took time out in the middle of his Masterpiece life and fate to write about this question and to my mind vasel grman said almost everything that can be said about anti-Semitism grman who was Jewish himself covered the the Battle of Stalingrad he was the first journalist into trinka and he knew an awful lot about human evil and in the middle of life and fate which gravitates around that midnight of the 20th century halfway through this 900 page novel halfway through the midnight of the midnight Grossman takes three pages to write about anti-Semitism and he says something which can't be said often enough and I wish more people knew he he talks about the way he says in which it's something you can meet everywhere he says you can meet it in the Academy of Sciences and in the games that children play in the schoolyard he says it takes many forms from a mocking contemptuous ill will to murderous pograms then he says this anti-Semitism is always a means run rather than an end it is a measure of the contradictions yet to be resolved it is a mirror for the failings of individuals social structures and state systems tell me what you accuse the Jews of and I'll tell you what you're guilty of I am I spoke to a psychiatrist some years ago in a professional capacity I should stress um who who claimed to me that he could tell with very considerable certainty when one of his patients was going to turn anti-semitic and I said what are the giveaways he said one of the giveaways is it arrives just after intense paranoia seemed to me to make amazing sense that CU why else do people fall into it why do they fall into it even if they meant not to there's a magnificent story that Paul Berman writes about in his book called power and the idealists which has the rather off-putting subtitle or the strange passion of yosa fiser not everyone wants to know about the passions of yosa Fischer but it's a magnificent work of intellectual history and it gravitates around the history of the green left movement in Germany after the war and as Burman said says the Germans growing up after the horrors of the Nazis had they were senseful they had one one rule above all don't be Nazis don't be like our parents and if you're going to have any guiding principle that's not a bad one but Burman shows how this generation some of whom were flatmates of the future German foreign minister in the 1950s were still holding to this light don't be Nazis don't do what our parents did by the 1960s many of them have gravitated to the cause of the PLO and the nent Palestinian Movement by the time that the Palestinians are hijacking Airline planes one of yosa Fisher's former flatmates is on the plane with the terrorists and divides up the Jews from the non-jews you've done it again I'd submit that many of the people in our own time are actually repeating that very mistake I think that the people who have been most vocal in the last s months or so fall into two categories they are what I describe as the Sinister and the silly the Sinister are the ones who know exactly what they mean when they say from The River To The Sea they know that they mean the eradication of the only Jewish State they have a plan they seem to approve of violence they seem very often to be very sympathetic with Hamas whilst knowing full well what hamz does and then there's the silly those are the ones who are very impressionable and along for the ride I'm thinking of the sort of people who shout from the river to the Sea endlessly as if you shout something often enough we'll agree and couldn't identify which river they're talking about and have no idea what the sea is there was a woman in New York who was captured on camera shouting from the mountain to the Sea which mountain I don't know the Alps something look at the the way in which the world has reacted in recent weeks the last few days trending on X we have all eyes on Rafa all eyes on Rafa why would you have all your eyes on Rafa always of course said as if the person in question has often thought about Rafa in the past and is an expert on the whole Arrangements in the neighborhood of course many of these people are the people who are experts on everything and have been expert on absolutely everything in recent years they tended to be experts on pandemics first then they are experts on vaccine policy then they are experts on how to withdraw from Afghanistan they were experts on Ukraine and now they're experts on Rafa it's amazing how much expertise there is among idiot people um but it's very striking to me because you can actually tell an awful lot by what somebody focuses on obsessively and if you've decided that Gaza and Israel's reaction to the seventh and the attempt to get back the hostages and the attempt to punish by killing or capturing the leaders of hamaz is somehow the thing that is going to most energize you again I could have some sympathy if those people had ever expressed any concern about the much greater infinitely greater humanitarian catastrophes which are going on as I speak speak I see no people screaming outside the KET gabar because of the ongoing genocide in Sudan by the way there are almost no cameras in Sudan I know one journalist who's trying to get there there are I would have more sympathy with these protesters and others if they had spent the last decade or more marching and hollering and shouting and screaming and claiming that they're going to do a hunger strike hunger strikes which tend to last about 12 hours um and uh if they had done any of that for 600,000 people or more killed in the last decade in the Syrian Civil War but not a peep not a peep not a peep from those people for the 300,000 people killed in Yemen in recent years not a demonstration not a riot not a placard some of the protesters have learned recently about the hooes um I'm not sure if they know the difference they seem to think they're the same thing as hootus but let's put that aside for a moment um the hooes had no long no no sooner cropped up on the international stage uh firing at ships in the uh Red Sea and hitting a British vessel no sooner had the protesters discovered the hoties and they were hot for them as well we had people in London chanting the next weekend Yemen Yemen make us proud turn another ship around imagine just finding out about a terrorist movement and knowing yep those are my guys they're the guys for me and by the way none of those people seem to object to the fact that 13 young men who are accused of being gay in Yemen last month were sentenced to death including by crucifixion extraordinary thought that again an extraordinary place you can come to where you you decide I'm for anyone so long as they're against us I'm for anyone as long as they're against the values that my Society holds dear I'm for anyone so long as they're against and I would say that you can insert at that point the word the Jews extraordinary thing in Israel in recent months has been that sometimes not only a flare goes up but sometimes a a crack happens in the universe you suddenly get a very very clear glimpse into true human evil and we in the west have been very very lucky in our lifetimes to very rarely Glimpse that and when we have glimpsed it occasionally in this country in Paris Manchester and elsewhere we tend to brush it aside or push it past us and hope we don't see it again but in Israel on the 7th something shattered over the whole of the society it didn't matter whether the people in the south of Israel were Orthodox Jews or ashkanazi or safadi or secular or reform it didn't matter what color their skin was they were the targets because they were Jews and I can tell you that the clarification that this has caused in Israeli Society is very very little understood outside Israel I was in uh one of the kibuts B where uh a man who I spoke to in the hospital had uh had uh been in his safe room which some of you will know all of the communities there had safe rooms in their houses but they didn't lock they were safe rooms to expect rocket fire which happened all the time they became far too used to but they didn't lock because nobody expected gunman to come house to house all of the houses in Baye and near o and so on the ones that are not burnt down uh you go to the safe rooms and there are bullet mark s around the handle because in every one the person on the other side was trying to hold the handle down and uh some people held out for a while some didn't I spoke to one man who lost both his grandsons uh they called him and said we're in the safe room on our own what do we do and he told them to tie a hand a rope around the handle and try to hold it down but they were 13 and 14 and they didn't last very long against the the grow grownups of hamaz another man I spoke to was in his safe room with his family and he did manage to keep the door shut and um then he discovered that the terrorists had set light to the house so they were in the unenviable position a lot of families were in on the day of either burning to death in their homes or having to flee and being machine gunned and they watched neighbors having that done to them he realized that the house was burning down they he ended up opening the air vent in the uh safe room and uh he was there with his son and his daughter and his wife and the terrorists threw a grenade in and killed his wife and uh then a gun came through and shot his son in both sides of his chest and he bled out in front of his sister and father and his father who lost his legs in this I spoke to in the hospital and he said you know Douglas I was a leftist all my life now this isn't to make a political point but it's to say many of these people in the communities that were most affected were people who did everything they could in their lives to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors they had people who drove Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals to get treatment there was one woman of 74 who did that every single week and she was killed and burnt in her home by heraz there there were people who employed Palestinian workers from Gaza because they desperately dreamed of the day when they could live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors only to find that when the terrorists came to their communities these people they thought were their friends in many cases had given to Hamas the complete maps of where to go and when in the communities about 20 km from the Gaza border there's a town called ofakim it became quite famous because of a woman called H who was rather remarkable woman in her 70s and the hamz came to her house and sought sanctuary and she she fed them and talked to them in Arabic and sort of treated them like a Jewish mother and sort of very strange and sometime at the very end of the day she managed to get out of her house and the uh there was a massive firefight and she walked out into the street and met a policeman who said we know there are 14 terrorists who come into our community but we've only found 13 she said oh there's one in my cupboard um but in offer Kim one of the survivors showed me who was a member of the knesset A Member of Parliament showed me the map of one of the terrorists got from the body and it showed his house on the map the people his community had been employing in order to live in peace had given the intelligence to Hamas and on the map because they knew it was a holy day they had the first Target was his house house and then the next targets were the kindergartens and the synagogues it really does take something to regard the people who dreamed these dreams of Peace as the victimizers and Hamas as somehow the victims but yet that seems to be where much of the world has landed it's decided among other things because the only acceptable form of anti-Semitism today is anti-zionism some people occasionally forget to say anti-zionism and say Jews but many people have kept disciplined on this one many people seem to claim that Israel in response to a massacre like the seventh should either do nothing or should act on the advice of a few online Twitter Warriors it's a very curious thing this if you I've been to Gaza quite a lot in recent months and uh if you see the IDF in action it's a form of discipline in Army I've never seen in any other War they know every single young man and woman in Gaza knows their terms of operation and much of this is house toh house fighting of an unbelievably difficult kind one in every two houses in Gaza as a whole has arms dumps of some kind uh some months ago I spoke to a commander in the Gaza whose job it was to try to locate tunnel entrances as well as arms dumps and he said we now no longer if we enter a house we now no longer look for the tunnels or the Munitions in any other room other than the children's room so we go straight to the children's room and you turn over the cot and you'll find a rocket propelled grenade or a tunnel entrance and many of these tunnel entrances are booby trapped and Israel has lost a lot of young soldiers in precisely those circumstances it's lost soldiers because very often as any Soldier will tell you a group of civilians come out with their hands raised and then from the middle of the civilians come a few Hamas gunmen a few days ago the whole world was obsessed with what they reported on the news as being being a an Israeli bombing of a refugee camp most of the news that reported that did not report that instead of the Israelis being wildly keen on just bombing refugee camps and like why would they want to do that the attack in question came because hamz in their infinite care for civilian Palestinian human life launched a set of rockets at Tel Aviv from between the tents that Palestinians were in when the Israelis struck the launch site and it turned out that hamaz was using it also as a Munitions dump so there's a secondary explosion but if you look at much of the world press and from what I can see even the Dutch press they only report that first thing they only say Israelis have struck a refugee camp it was the same at the beginning of the war I was uh by the shifa hospital when uh that was the focus of the world's attention it took Israel months to identify just how many people were murdered on the 7th but amazingly hamz can come up with round figures very swiftly and there was an explosion near the shifa hospital which is actually not a hospital it's more of an arms control dump and also an interrogation system and um there was a bomb there and all the world's press said within minutes Israel bombs the shifa hospital and again said well what monsters would do this what monsters would would attack a hospital first of of course as I say it's not a hospital it's a command headquarters but it took it took days and weeks even the Press who had reported that first incident to say actually it was a rocket fired by Islamic Jihad in the Gaza which like quite a lot of their Rockets fell short and landed in the car park but hamz immediately said at the time 500 people have been killed and the world reported this number Not only was the story false the numbers false the whole thing was a Croc but as Mark Twain famously said sometimes a lie can get all the way around the world before the truth can even get its boots on one of the reasons I think by the way we should mind about this is because if Israel is not allowed to fight a war of self-defense in order to recapture its stolen civilians then down the road neither will a country like this one or a country like mine if it's deemed unacceptable to want to reclaim your citizens and want to punish people who wish to destroy you then we are all going to be in a great deal of trouble next um if you do the math the equivalent of the seventh would be somewhere in the region of 3,000 Dutch civilians being killed in one day and some 700 stolen into captivity I think very highly of this country but I would like to think that if that happened here your country and your government would not sit back with equinity and simply allow that not to be responded to and if there were an organization or an entity anywhere in the world so mad as to want the destruction and murder of the entire population of this country I would expect you to have not just the world's sympathy but the world's support if you decided that that was something you could not live with that's why I think that the ability of Israel to fight Wars is also the ability of our own to fight Wars but that's not the only reason of course to be concerned about this subject which we're gathered here today to discuss and I'm looking forward to questions in a second perhaps Above All Else the reason why anti-Semitism is an issue that needs to be discussed and thought about is because of course as all historians know it is the most reliable precursor the most reliable guide if anti-Semitism flares up in a society and is tolerated and Jews can't go safely down the streets of cities like this one it is the sign that the society is in Decay and that everybody else will be next the curse of the Jewish people is to be the canary in this C all mine but the world's desire to shoot the canary seems to me to be perverse at any rate there's a lot to unpack and I'm looking forward to your questions the rest of this evening so thank you [Applause] thank you Douglas we will now open up the room for some questions our uh lovely inam Marie will go around the crowd um yeah um I think we'll do five questions and please like in Dutch Parliament a question is one maybe two sentences long and always ends with a question mark Baker you don't want to know the Dutch day they can talk like I can but I'm but I'm here um H yeah yeah H hello um as a student I've been like fighting anti-Semitism anti-israel feelings on campuses a lot in the past 3 years um and I feel like the ball isn't rolling yet what do you think will get the ball rolling I think that once once it does roll it'll keep rolling but um we're not there so do you think there is a way to push the ball uh thank you very much my question is is it possible to defeat Hamas Douglas do you want to maybe do three questions or five three okay um there yeah um I have a question for you Mr Mari uh but first I want to say something um okay this better um I think um it's uh it's very special to have someone here like you who as a journalist doesn't just write his articles uh on the basis of the information that he gets from his desk but actually searches the truth directly in the country in the war zones going there and be an eyewitness and on the basis of that write your articles so for that I think you have to be very courageous and I think you're a great man now now my question and my question is the following uh I've heard you talk a lot about the phenomenon uh of anti-Semitism in the world I didn't hear anything about what causes anti-Semitism and I think you need to know the cause in order to be able to fight it could you say something on that those are very good questions let me take them in no particular order um first of all is it possible to defeat himz yes it's eminently possible and the IDF is a long way into doing that um it is only one arm of the Iranian revolutionary government in tyan who also have Hezbollah on the northern border which is another subject which the world ignores you've got 100,000 Israeli families who can't go to their homes because of the Hezbollah rocket fire but the world seems to be totally uninterested in these Jewish refugees um it is possible to defeat Hamas it's extremely difficult but the last stage is underway the last stage is what's happening in Rafa some people say it's not possible because Hamas is an idea there is something in that but as a structure as an organization as a group that is financed which is armed trained it's eminently possible um there are leaders of Hamad around the world including in London I wouldn't mind there being some foggy incidents around them but um but the leadership inside Gaza is is eminently possible to destroy and when people say it's not possible I always think without going to the obvious comparison on our continent think of the situation in 1945 with the Japanese the Japanese had a truly zealous ideology and a form of idolatry in their Emperor King most military and political analysts in 1945 believe that the Japanese would not give up ever because of the issue of Pride of the sheer it's impossible to consider when the emperor signs the document of defeat that ideology disappeared and today Japan is a thriving successful magnificent rich country so it's eminently possible but I believe by the way that peace will only come through defeating Hamas the worst conditions are Israel being allowed to destroy him as a bid that is as I've said quite a lot in recent months it's like saying I will put out 80% of the fire in my house you've got to put out the whole fire or there's no point and uh so yes it's possible and achievable um getting the ball rolling on antisemitism I think was question you mean you mean getting the ball rolling of opposition to the zealots as it were yes well first of all I salute you um and keep up the good work um it might sometimes feel lonely out there but um my own experience of uh anytime you're doing something right but lonely is that you discover two great things on your side the first is you make the best enemies and the second thing is you make the best friends so don't give up um in terms of getting the ball rolling I would definitely divide your time adequately you know don't deal with the people who are you know fullon hamaz you know they're kind of unlikely to be persuaded at this time at this time um but there are obviously a very very large number of your contemporaries who are just very very misguided now they've been taught into that position but that means they can be taught out of it I have us sometimes for giving spirit [Music] which which suggests that certainly if you're about the age of 20 you should be allowed to be stupid for a while you know if you're 30 and you're still stupid we've got a problem Houston but but you know speak speak to the people who you think can be and also of course a great a great thing is they operate by shame and um shame can be applied back to them um as for the uh gentleman there thank you for your kind words I I do take the rather unfashionable position of a journalist and actually going to the places I'm writing about um uh but you asked the source I mean when I described antisemitism as a shape shif I tried to explain the fact that in a way the source is so amorphous it's very hard to to to pin down if I had if I had one one thing that I would tie it down to very very often it's Envy um Sherk wrote a great book about this in the 20th century but Envy is an extraordinarily deep human emotion and again ineradicable think of all of the anti-semites across Europe in the past so often it was Envy envy that the Jews had the money for instance Envy of the idea that Jews had some access in society look at the imagine what it's like for anyone in a country neighboring Israel there are dozens and dozens of countries in the region which have Muslim Islamic governments of some kind most of them are run by sort of crime syndicate family and they take all the money and the people don't get any money you know like if you go to a country in North Africa as many of you would have done you see these societies that have so much potential and the potential is squashed out of people you see young men hanging around the souk with nothing to do no job prospects and then this country emerges it's reestablished in 1948 and within one generation ation is this miracle and a country with no oil I mean and Moses also found a country with no water which somebody should have pointed out it's very annoying it makes life a lot easier if you have water um this country with no oil and no water goes on to be This Magnificent success story in the Middle East and and then it has high-tech and it has a standard of living many times higher than that of its neighbors and if you're a young man living in Jordan or Egypt Lebanon very easily let alone West Bank or Gaz why are they doing so well and there's an additional one in Muslim anti-Semitism which Bernard Lewis among others pointed out which is imagine what it's like if you've been told you've got the final Revelation from God and the Jews are doing better than you that's uncomfortable so there's a lot of things it boils down here but I would say Envy is one of the deep deep things in it and and as I said earlier from vas grman look at all the people who are what are they doing these these I call them the Ronin in medieval Japan there was a class of person known as the Ronin who they were people who had sworn fty to a Le Lord samurai warrior king and their leader had died di the Ronin were men qualified Warriors who would walk around the land searching for new Lord to swear their oath to that came to mind the other day when I looked at Greta thunberg she um a few years ago she came to some prominence because she something that made me understand Medieval Europe a bit better is when somebody from a country in the north with blazing eyes a child tells you you're all going to burn think wow that makes me understand the Middle Ages a little bit better um but first of all she was first of all she was for the green thing and now she's still with the color green so you've got to give her some consistency but uh uh but now it's hamz where did where did it end up up that Greta thunberg trying to save us from fossil fuels would end up in a square in Sweden screaming at a beautiful young Jewish singer only a lost soul desperately staggering around the land looking for purpose maybe her purpose should be found elsewhere or be better directed question thank you Douglas we'll do one more set three questions yeah right there and then you sir okay and Marcus there and please keep him short guys keep him short thank you very much my name is Marcus um I have a question um you see certain countries in Europe uh which are um very much against fanatical against Israel lately uh and they uh it comes partly from the old Catholic anti-Semitism I'm talking about Spain Ireland and to a lesser extent Norway and my question is uh you have now a division in Europe between these countries fiercely supporting yeah basically Hamas and other countries which are opposing the is so we have uh uh two camps in Europe my question is how do you think is that is going to evolve in the coming time there hey uh thank you so much for being here I really admire you and um uh thank you uh my question is this I want to address the big elephant in the room the Islamic regime in Iran I am originally self from Iran um question is this uh the Islamic regime right now is the biggest sponsor of anti-Semitism and Chaos across the world while its people contrary to most people in the region consider themselves the friends of the Jews the friends of the Israelis and we have even seen protest against this regime but the The Stance from the West in regards to the regime has been weak to say the least and the one thing that people asked during the protest were like if if you don't help us that's fine we'll take them down ourselves but don't help them but we see the opposite we see like them standing up for the Butcher of tan we see them helping finding him so my question is what is to be done on the side of the West and what is to be done on our side on the Iranian side to get rid of this the largest source in my opinion of anti-Semitism thank you okay one more for this set thank you very much uh would you agree Mr Murray that the uh current wave of anti-Semitism is based on the fallacy that the state of Israel was founded on a nation called Palestine which never existed as such and would you then if you agree um um join in no longer using the fallacious words Palestinians Palestine Pro Palestinian protest which all seem to perpetuate the myth that Jews are villains who steal other people's countries yes that's a very brilliant point and and you're right and it's very important the world didn't ever talk about pal alans as such until around 1964 as you know it sort of and then it really came in after 67 and 73 um they were called the Arabs and uh I mean the Palestinian peoples are a set of tribes and families and um I have a friend who was born in Gaza in the time when Egypt ran it and she was an Egyptian she wasn't a Palestinian she isn't a Palestinian um and yes the the development of the idea of the Palestinian people which is a misnomer in my view was because it made the Jews the usurpers and it made the Jews the overlords and it's very very interesting because this it was a brilliant brilliant tactic to do that um now you also get the one where um people claim that the Jews sort of just arrived from Europe and had no historic connection with this land and you know you get the churches are responsible for much of this in the west they they do all these things like Jesus was a Palestinian it's not a very accurate reading of the text um but but yes it it it is enormously dangerous because it also plays into the thing which is the ideology of our time that spilt out from the idiots in American campuses all over the place as my friend Andrew Sullivan said we all live on campus now regrettably um and that is the idea that the whole world and just came from America this idea the whole world can be divided into victim and victimizer oppressor and oppressed colonizer and colonized and so on and so on and so on and of course it's a totally inadequate way to understand America but to try to impose that on the Middle East and on the Israeli Palestinian crisis the Israeli Arab question is is quite wrong um the Iranian regime I'm so glad you asked that this is a very big big one isn't it I mean um I agree with you everything one hears from from the people of Iran is to wish to live in peace and of course the regime wants exactly the opposite uh the problem of the regime in tan is such a serious one I mean by the end of Trump's presidency whatever one thinks of him and you may have noticed there are some criticisms that can be leveled um whatever you think of him he did actually bring the mullers to their knees financially and that that had some good consequences um and I think would encourage the people to take back their country from this vile regime again I mean it's astonishing um just yesterday or the day before uh uh the supreme leader sent out this message of thanks to American students for turning out on campus on the side of the Palestinians if I was one of those protesters I'm not sure if I'd retweet that it it should be regarded as embarrassing um but there's such confusion on this in the west um when RI had his helicopter crash the other week I said to some friends I said let's just wait and see how he's described by the mainstream media and um in the end we came we got mixed Legacy RI that was kind of cute for a guy who hangs people from cranes mixed Legacy it's true he hanged some people shot others um so swings and roundabouts um I I I'm Amazed by those ones I I keep a record of the the way in which you can you can Flex somebody's reputation by just that one term my friend Jordan Peterson is always described as controversial Professor Jordan Peterson I knew that it wouldn't be controversial leader RI no no no mixed Legacy Jordan would never get mixed Legacy just controversal but racy mixed Legacy just like what was it alag Daddy was described in the Washington Post after his uh early demise as a an austere religious scholar well that's a bit of the truth but uh not the whole of it I I just would hope with everyone that my Iranian friends and Persian friends someday can live in peace in their country they deserve it one of the great civilizations of the world as for Spain and Ireland and so on um I refer you back to what I said earlier about the the people staggering around the land looking for purpose um Ireland is a particularly fascinating one I was saying this to somebody at dinner Ireland in my own lifetime went from being a highly religious Society to the most secular society in Europe had the terrible terrible Catholic Church abuse scandals and in the 2000s people just fell away from the church in Ireland at such a speed and they sort of picked up this sort of weird woke thing from a America and that became the new faith and um and and they've be they they they struggle for this meaning for attachment to a cause and and some of that goes back some way many of the terrorists of the IRA trained with uh with with various Palestinian factions and so on um Spain is a very interesting one I'm not sure if that is a Rel religious explanation anymore I mean Spain is obviously still a very religious country in Parts but I think the leftwing Deputy Prime Minister who last week said from The River To The Sea I don't know if that's religious I think that's the new Cult of woke I think that's taken over her I think it's that sort of weird religion of oppressor oppress that I was describing earlier um but what a thing to say what a thing to say I mean I would have thought that if an Israeli uh politician said you know we need to make sure that the Arabs reconquer Al andalusi that the Spanish government would feel kind of sore about that um so I think it's an appalling intervention uh by the Spanish I it it'll be very interesting to see how this pans out in Europe there's one other thing of course which is pandering pandering will be the one of the things to look out for um certain leaders have decided to Pander to small or large percentages of their population who they believe rightly are very head up over this issue and I would just say to the people who want to go that route you know the the people in our own countries who support Hamas do not only support Hamas and the ones in our own countries who deeply desire the destruction of the Jewish state do not only desire the destruction of the Jewish State there is one thing you can tell with 100% certainty about every anti-israel protest in any Western Country they never have the flag of the country therein anywhere in evidence they never sing the national anthem of the country they're in they always in fact hate the country they're in the protesters in America who hate Israel hate the American flag I was speaking at a Commencement Address the other day an alternative commencement addressed for some of the poor students of University in America that weren't allowed their commencement because of protests and uh he had fought for the American Army he'd fought in the American army in Afghanistan and Iraq and in November he went onto campus with the American flag and he was chased off campus and he said to me you know Douglas I I risked my life for that flag and I lost friends for that flag and to meet people at home who believe that place that flag had no place here hurt more than anything I I would urge you as a point of a scientific experiment next time you see a pro hamaz protest here urge them to sing your national anthem see what they say okay thank you we'll have the last three questions the last three questions please without you [Music] do thank you Douglas for your courage and for your truth speaking um I have one question about the silent majority of Europe and of the West and of the students at the universities most of them don't go protest with all these slogans and don't agree with it but many people lack the courage you seem to have so what can we do in order that the silent majority gets up Rises up and thank you very much it seems to me that after your visit in Israel you are a little bit more positive about defending Western values and how do you think about uh Europe defending Western values because it seems to me we are highly divided countries thank you yeah commission thank you very much Douglas for sharing your insights and experiences from Israel uh my question was isn't there an even more underlying cause for anti-Semitism and all of this such as um China and Russia trying to destroy our Western values and the existence of um Palestine and this movement being originating from leftist movement from the Soviet Union uh isn't that what we should focus on uh like the root root cause and uh because it's not against only Jews it's against Western values at all yes I mean there is quite a lot of evidence from online in particular of the way in which various of our competitors and opponents like to help us in our own derangement um it's it's it's very convenient for the Chinese Communist party that you know everyone in the west is trying to work out what a woman is um at the same time as they're taking over Africa it's like it's it's a it's very useful for them um and if I were them I'd push that as well but what do you do about gender neutral toilets ah meanwhile they take over Congo you know it's just like it's a neat move that and there's certainly evidence that that that some of these protest movements get encouragement certainly and and some false information definitely gets buun around Tik tok's a very interesting one in this war that there was there was clearly a switch flipped early on the war that meant that like 95% of the accounts suddenly were anti-israel and uh that's the Chinese Communist Party playing their their tricks they know it's you know they know that it's deranging to westerners and um that's good for them they love that um but but yes it's it's a very important Point um the silent majority is a very very difficult one that i' I've been told all my life about the silent majority and I believe in them but I wish they wouldn't be so damn silent um but I do believe in a decency and a common sense that is reclaimable but it requires people to stand up and you have had people who have done that in this country to at Great expense and risk their own lives you've had that this country actually has has produced for some years some pretty remarkable people from a wide array of backgrounds and I think that this country should should honor the courageous I have one thing in particular which I would say that I mean by the way when you mention that most students don't agree with this it's absolutely true there was a poll out the other day that showed the amount you pay for your education versus the amount of protests on your campus and the most elite expensive institution had the best the mo sorry the largest number of protests and the ones that were s technical colleges where people are actually learning something no protests well you know I'm um I'm delighted to encourage that Trend and uh to say you know if it might actually in future be for parents quite a useful guide it would be for me if I was a parent sending a child to college I think one of the things I would look at is uh our students encouraged to waste their time shouting on campus to somebody who can't hear and that would be one stop the war well Benjamin Netanyahu isn't listening to students in Rotterdam who do you think you are narcissist the bore and nus what are you and why have you been created um I amum not to be too harsh but the the let me just finish on this one of positivity let me finish on this one of positivity you're quite right sir um I do actually I I wrote a book some years ago the strangest death of Europe which was about our continent and um in the years since at various times people have readers have said to me you know that was a very depressing book to read I said yeah you should have tried writing it um uh but there is a lot there is a there is a lot that is very very troubling about Europe today in my own country included a lot of deep deep problems ahead you know when I see 100,000 200,000 angry people mainly Muslim chant you know chanting through the Streets of London I don't think this is a problem for the Israelis I think it's a problem for us and um I wish more people saw that but just to end on this thought you're right actually I have had a sort of certain injection of positivity and I'll tell you why it's because of the young Israelis um older Israelis quite often used to say that the Young Generation had become weak you know that theyd sort of wanted to spend all their time on Tik Tok and Instagram they all wanted to party in Tel Aviv H they'd become you know weak and it just isn't the case they've been magnificent and I see them in the field the beautiful young women 19 I saw recently or some months ago at the place where all of the cars from the Nova Festival which had been burned out and shot at they'd all been brought to this one place so that the last of the body parts could be taken out and these uh this was being done by all these this very special people who deal with the dead and these young women of 19 were all there helping out I could have cried when I said to you know how old are you 19 wow your contemporaries in America and Britain and Holland they haven't seen a fraction of what you've seen but that's your advantage you know there was a young woman at a dinner in uh Tel Aviv some time ago who was sitting opposite me at dinner on a Friday night and I said what do you do was she I said how old are you said I'm 23 I said what do you do she said I'm an intelligence expert on Yemen she's going to be someone you know she's going to know more at 24 than someone in Britain will by the time they die but it's a demonstration of the fact that sometimes when things become serious if you've prepared yourselves and you've prepared your kids and your generation then they might step up too and you know the there's always that question I always had it all my life I'm sure all you did as well you always have this question after the war which was sort of who would I have been what would I have done could I have risen to to be heroic in the way that so many people were and it's always a question the Young Generation in Israel had that question but they've answered it and I would just say that you know it's a sign to us in my view that if the time of trial ever came to us we should be so lucky as to have a Young Generation like they do there and we should hope they would do the same thing anyhow thank you thank you glas thank you very much thank you

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Id: W7X1gEHioQ4

Length: 70min 44sec (4244 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2024