A Special Yom Ha’Atzmaut Celebration In Honor of Israel’s 77th Birthday

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here.

Sarah: Good afternoon. As all of you know, this has been a very difficult period for the state of Israel. Yesterday, we commemorated Yom HaZikaron with a somber ceremony, where everyone stood at attention as the siren wailed. Since October 7th, 2023, approximately 900 soldiers have been killed. Everyone was a son, daughter, brother, sister, father, and mother. Every single one of those 1200 slaughtered and the 251 hostages taken on that fateful day were as well. Everyone has a name and everyone has a heroic story. Edan Alexander, Matan Angrest, Gali Berman, Ziv ben Berman, Rom Braslavski, Nimrod Cohen, the list goes on and on and on. Our independence has always come at a very heavy price, but despite the war that’s being fought on seven fronts and the heavy fires that I feel are somewhat under control raging out of the hills of Jerusalem, we have a reason to celebrate. We’re no longer at the mercy of foreign dictates.

Israel, throughout this war has proven to be extremely resilient, tough, and the people are full of passionate intensity. But mostly what makes the Jewish people unique is that we choose life over death. Every year at around this time, professor Gil Troy writes a wonderful column saying why Israeli should be eating ice cream for breakfast today. As many of you know, professor Troy is a distinguished professor of history from McGill University who currently lives in Jerusalem. He’s a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, the global think tank of the Jewish people. He is an award winning American presidential historian and a leading Zionist activist. I recently read his amazing book To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, which was published in 2024 by Wicked Sun Press.

President Isaac Herzog recently wrote, “With these timely must-read letters to his students and to us all, Gil Troy confirms his stature as a revered teacher, a leading public intellectual, and one of today’s influential Zionist thinkers.” Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, added that “Gil Troy’s work belongs to the core curriculum of all those willing to stand up and defend the state of Israel.” Gil also published a book last summer entitled The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath, facts, figures, history, which has been translated into French and has been widely, widely reprinted. He’s published yet another three-volume set on Theodor Herzl. His very first volume, the Zionist Ideas, Visions for the Jewish Homeland Then, Now, and Tomorrow was written about by Natan Sharansky, who wrote, “This magnificent work is the perfect follow up to Arthur Hertzberg’s Classic Zionist idea. Combining like Herzog, a scholar’s eye and an activist era Troy demonstrates that we now live in a world of Zionist ideas with many different ways to help Israel flourish as a democratic Jewish state.” It is indeed a rare honor and pleasure to have you once again join us, Gil. Tell me, why should Israelis serve ice cream for breakfast and Yom Ha’atzmaut?

Gil Troy: First of all, Chag Sameach, and I want to see you and raise you. I don’t want to just hold the caloric burden on me and my people on this side of the ocean. We’re one people, and I think we all should be eating ice cream for breakfast on this amazing day. I know we’re just finishing at noon, but you can extend it. You can have ice cream for lunch and supper too. But why breakfast? The reason why it’s for breakfast is because we want our kids, especially to know how lucky we are, how unique this moment in Jewish history is. You’re right, we are facing tremendous challenges and we had yet another searing Yom HaZikaron Memorial Day.

For us it’s very, very personal. We lost a very close friend, Ben Mizrachi, I’ll be talking about a little bit more at the Nova Festival. So yesterday at ten o’clock in the morning, we were there getting ready for the siren at 11:00. We drove back and could see the flames already because his kibbutz was Ma’agalei Yavne, which is near Hadera, and we live in Jerusalem. You could already see the orange flames, you could see the helicopters dropping water. We got back to Jerusalem in time, and so we weren’t part of the lockdown, but we feel the heaviness, but we also feel the joy. Last night, while I was getting so many loving texts from all over the world, and especially from America, are you okay? What’s happening with the fires? I could hear downstairs because I was on my second floor with my wife, the boom boom boom of my son and his buddies dancing all night until three o’clock in the morning.

These are kids, 23, 25, 27, who have served hundreds of days of Miluim, who have buried close, close friends, who cried in the morning and now instead of tears of mourning, we’re mixing it with tears of joy. That creates the fusion that creates a cement, which is why we’re so strong. I have to say in all my travels in the US recently to speak grossly, the more pro-Israel you are, the harder it is sometimes to access joy. The more you feel, oh my goodness, since October 7th, I can’t have fun. We also have a tradition of the Yom Ha’atzmaut brunch with the whole family, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law now, and all nine of us and we talked about the need to have joy. At the Yom HaZikaron ceremony, our local Yom HaZikaron ceremony, the son of Miriam Peretz, Miriam Peretz is this mother who lost two sons and long before October 7th had become the the mother of the nation.

I’ve heard her speak a number of times and now we heard her son speak about losing two brothers. The two of them said the exact same thing, which is, every time we rejoice, every time we celebrate, every time we have a holiday, every time we smile, every time we eat ice cream, we are giving us the victory because and we will not give them the victory they don’t deserve of robbing us of our joy. So, I want to say to you, and first of all, I want to take a moment to honor you, Sarah, because you’ve been ahead of the curve. You and your organization have been speaking about the truth for what, 20 years now. I think a lot of people have caught up with you. I know how many people disdained you and dismissed you before October 7th.

I certainly never did because I know what an amazing person you are and I saw your vision. I have to say that after October 7th, I sent a text to the amazing leader Ruth Weiss. I said, “don’t you hate being right? Don’t you hate after years of warning that those warnings would prove to be true?” But I have to acknowledge you for all your great work. I want to acknowledge everyone. I want to say, please take the message from me, not me, my kids, the Peretz’ family and the state of Israel. We must continue to dance. We will not stop dancing. We will not give them that pleasure. That’s why, as you said, we’re people of life. We are of course also people of Hatikvah, of hope. You can’t have tikva and what fuels democracies.

That’s one of the central visions I have in my book To Resist the Academic Intifada. I’m talking about what fuels both America and Israel as unique democracies, democracies that are also based on ideas, hope, and it terrifies me. I’m dismayed, as I said, when I hear so many pro-Israel types not allowing themselves to have joy. I’m dismayed that I travel around the United States of America and I see so many young people in despair and I hear their parents catching that same disease. We as the older generation have to look to the younger generation and say, hey, wait a minute, we’re always happy to learn from you, but we also want to lead you. We were children of hope because we knew that our lives were better than our parents’ lives and our grandparents’ lives and your lives will be better too. I know we have challenges both in the United States of America and in Israel and in the American Jewish community, but I also know that it’s hope that will make us succeed. That’s what we feel. I have to tell you, by the way, my kids and their friends and those amazing kids who had the house rocking last night, have faith in the future, have faith in Israel. It’s stunning to me to see some of their close friends, their cousins in America losing that hope.

Let’s focus on, given that it’s 77 years, the seven great achievements of Zionism. Part of the reason why I’m saying Zionism, not just Israel, is because we have to take back the night. We know how the word Zionism is being disrespected. I see it. I see how students say, oh, well, I’m pro-Israel, but they don’t want to use the Z word because when it’s bashed again and again and again, you naturally distance yourself from it. When I wrote the book, The Zionist Ideas, I actually read the African American conversation about the N word. It’s a word that in many ways within the African American community, they now use because they say we won’t let them, we won’t let the oppressor define us and so don’t let them besmirch Zionism, especially when can you find a more successful 20th century movement.

Communism failed and killed tens of millions of people along the way. Nazism failed and killed tens of millions of people along the way. I’m certainly not comparing them to us, but Zionism, this idea of the liberal democratic Jewish state has not only succeeded, but has thrived. I think there’s many lessonsg that Americans can learn from the kind of Zionism, the kind of liberal democratic Jewish nationals we’ve created, which creates people who are so rooted in identity, care so much about one another, are so happy, are so values oriented, is the RX the prescription we need in America today. So, we start with the first miracle, which is the biggest miracle we’re celebrating today, which is of course the reestablishing of Jewish sovereignty in our homeland. 

That gets of course to what is Zionism. Zionism says, one, we are people, not just a religion. When I say just, I don’t mean to dismiss religion, I say in addition to, we are a people and a religion, the Oreo cookie, I call that. The connectedness of the religion and the nation and you can’t take it away.

I once wrote this article for APAC because there were all these leading rabbis who were saying, oh, we’re diasporas. We don’t need the Jewish state. So, I said, let’s go through the Jewish calendar and take away anything that has to do with homeland. God forbid, let alone with peoplehood, God forbid. You couldn’t sing Beshana haba-ah B’Yerushalayim, you couldn’t do the priestly service Yom Kippur, because it’s about Beit Hamikdash, it’s about the holy temple. There’s a big debate about what apples and honey are about. But one of the origins has to do in one of the evocations is about the sweetness, not just of the new year, but of the land. Not just the land, but our land, the promised land.

So, one, we established Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland because Zionism says, one, we are a people as well as a religion. Two, we have ties to a particular homeland. Three, that we have the right to establish a state on that homeland. Am Israel, Eretz Yisrael], Medinat Yisrael. Dare we call it the Holy Trinity. Zionism was initially the movement to establish that state, and that’s the miracle of 77 years ago. But also, while establishing the state, it was also to rebuild a new Jew away from the broken, homeless, wandering Jew. Since 1948, Zionism is the movement of Jewish national liberation to defend the state when necessary, but to build, rebuild, be rebuilt and dream always. That’s the power of Zionism. So, one, we establish Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland.

Two, we had to offer a welcoming home. We don’t call them Jewish refugees, we call them brothers and sisters and future citizens. We don’t keep a refugee status like no other people in the world have. The Palestinians are the only ones who pass on refugee status from generation to generation to generation. Doesn’t happen with Pakistanis, doesn’t happen in India, doesn’t happen with us. We embraced refugees from the Shoah, from the Holocaust. 850,000 Jews kicked out of Muslim and Arab lands. By the way, it was a great gift. It was a horrible thing for each human being who was uprooted from their land. But think of how Israel was strengthened by those 850,000 people. It’s the greatest gift the Arab world has ever given us. Yes, did the state of Israel sometimes not manage it as well as it could have? Certainly, because we’re not perfect, but wow. Then wave after wave of Ethiopian immigration and Russian immigration and the smaller immigrations. So, two is just establishing a homeland to absorb all those refugees with free immigration while preserving civil liberties.

Three, Zionism returned the Jews to history. We were no longer the passive broken down victim, the rebuilding. Both Ze’ev Jabotinsky from the right and David Ben-Gurion from the left who hated each other on many, many issues, both said the same thing: Zionism is a double revolution. We have to both get rid of the regime. But the American Revolution had to get rid of the British. The French Revolution had to get rid of the king. The Russian Revolution had to get rid of the Czar. We had to get rid of first the Turks and then the Brits. But we also had to have the internal revolution. That internal revolution is not only a revolution which has created the new Jew, the proud Israelis, those kids who were bopping and hopping last night in my house and all over the country. But look at how different our young people are. Look at how strong they are. Look at how impressive they are. We’re not the broken down Jews that our parents and grandparents often were. That’s partially because of the inspiration that comes from Israel.

Fourth, we’ve built a western style capital democracy with a Jewish flavor. Now, I love how everybody loves to say, oh, it’s Jewish verse Democratic. Well, I don’t know and I know I’m a graduate of the Soloman Schechter School of Queens, and we learned, like I’m sure so many people on the call that democracy started with saline in Greece and demos is democracy, the people, democracy is rule of the people. Well, wait a minute I have an annoying habit as a historian to go even deeper. There’s this little book called the Bible and doesn’t the Bible, especially the five books of Moses, teach us about how every human being was created in God’s image?

Once we’re created in God’s image, we can therefore understand the inherent dignity of every human being, which leads to equality. You can’t get to the equal voice you’re supposed to have in the demos among the people until you start without equality. So, I like to point out that yes, there are certain tensions in managing a Jewish democratic state, but Jewish is a Jewish value and democratic is also a Jewish value. Yes, it’s not always easy, but look at what we’ve done. For thousands of years, we had all kinds of Jewish kinds of regimes, different expressions of Jewish sovereignty, but never democracy. For the last two, three centuries, we’ve had all kinds of really interesting democracies, but never Jewish democracy. We’re now in the middle of this very exciting 77-year experiment.

Fifth is the dynamic old new Jewish culture we’ve created. Think of the power of Ahad Ha’am, cultural Zionism. Yerushalayim shel, and all of you singing Zahav or your heads are filling the word, right? From Jerusalem came forth this exciting new culture, which takes old and takes new and lives the great vision of the Zionist teacher Berl Katznelson, who isn’t so well known because he died in 1944. So, before he could got a cabinet job and become famous with the class of 48, let’s call them. He said, every human being, not just Zionists, not just Jews, every human being needs the ability to remember and the ability to forget. We need to remember where we come from, our identity. We also need to forget enough so we can innovate.

Sixth, reviving Hebrew, the cultural revolution. Seventh, when we think of all these transformations, the sovereignty, the return to history, the absorbing refugees, creating this capitalist democracy, this Jewish democracy, this Hebrew state, we also see how it’s inspired and created these very exciting, very powerful diaspora communities. You wouldn’t be as politically active as you are. You wouldn’t be as comfortable exerting your Americanness if you didn’t have the example and the inspiration in the backing of Israel and the Jewish people. So, the ultimate message of Zionism is about our peoplehood, about our oneness. Now given that, let’s talk about some of the problems.

I didn’t have a lot of time today between yesterday with Yom HaZikaron and today with Yom Ha’atzmaut, it’s a busy, busy time. All good. But I started reading the Harvard University Task Force report on antisemitism. Just read the first couple of pages. It’s devastating. Most important message is you can’t, and I’m sorry to say there are major Jewish leaders who have said this, you can’t separate out the problem of campus antisemitism from the problem of the campus and if you read the first three, five pages of the Harvard report you’ll see it. Because they see the degree to which Israel was cast in the binary of oppress oppressor. Once Israel and the Jewish people and individual Jews are deemed to be privileged and oppressors, then antisemitism and anti-Zionism follows.

So, until the university really looks more closely at itself, especially in my world of humanities and social sciences, and starts purging this thought virus, and people say, oh, why do you use such harsh language? Because It’s a really big problem and it’s a really ugly problem. Until we challenge, especially humanists and social scientists to say, you know what, it’s just boring. If Harvard has 50 classes about oppressor or settler colonialism, is that the only lens through which to analyze? We see the negative implications it has on people who are then deemed to be oppressors. That’s just one little example of the need for us to be what I call F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Zionists. We have to have two conflicting thoughts in our head simultaneously. If you want to disagree with Trump, go ahead. If you want to demonize Trump, go ahead. If you want to dislike Trump, go ahead. But you also have to acknowledge the degree to which Donald Trump’s initiative against antisemitism is the most aggressive, proactive, assault on antisemitism by an American president in history. I say that as an American historian, and I have to acknowledge the good and say thank you.

I also have to say, the great tragedy is that if you read his letter to Harvard and the demands, those letters should have come internally. They should have been the conclusions of the Harvard Task Force report. They should have been generated a year ago, that if you want to wear a mask while protesting, only make sure to show some kind of medical note. If you do that, have your idea out front. Because the university is not about anonymity, the university is about community. If you want to have a campus which you’re claiming is a public good, make sure you have viewpoint diversity. Now, let me be clear. I don’t want the government dictating that. My critique is that it didn’t come from within. I’m also a little disappointed that there are 160 universities that signed these letters. I’m Indignant, how dare the government violate their autonomy? I agree with them, but why didn’t we have 160 universities signing letters indignant about the fact that students sometimes paying $70, 80, $90 thousand a year were being harassed campus?

So, it’s complicated. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, the mark of true intelligence is the ability to hold two conflicting thoughts in your head. So those of you who are anti-Trump be anti-Trump. In fact, you actually gain credibility by saying, you know what, I disagree with him on a, b, c to Arabs or deportations. But I agree with him because anti-Semitism is not just bad for us as Jews, but it’s bad for America and it’s toxic to democracies. So that is one challenge and the deeper challenge there is what’s going on in our Jewish community. I’ve crisscrossed the country and within seconds I can smell who’s pro-Trump and anti-Trump and that’s going to determine the conversation.

They don’t want to hear from people who are on the other side of the divide. My pro-Trump friends will dismiss anybody to their left as anti-Zionists. That’s not helpful. My Trump friends will dismiss. I got it. I was in Boston last Shabbat, and if I said something positive about Trump’s anti-Semitism initiative, they dismissed me in a condescending way as a dupe. I’ve told you this before on Zoom calls, my Rebbe[?] in all this is Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York, who said, if you agree with me on seven of 12 things, please vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 of 12 things, please see a psychiatrist.

The American Jewish community is paralleling, no, not just paralleling, but intensifying the great divide that’s taking place in America and the American Jewish community should be the healing. We should be able to say, we agree that October 7th was abhorrent. We agree that Israel has the right to exist. We agree that we want the United States and Israel to each be dynamic democracies even though they have a slightly different balance in the kind of democracies they are. We have to agree to focus on the 70% about which we agree and then get to the 30% about which we disagree. But we cannot constantly define one another by the 30% which we disagree on because we have so many serious enemies and we’re delighting our enemies in our divisions. We’re delighting our enemies in the disrespect we give to one another. If nothing else, agree on eating ice cream today. Agree on the sweetness.

I also want to add a little bit of historical perspective. First of all, imagine what it was like to be a Jew 85 years ago when we didn’t have a Jewish state. Imagine how terrifying it was to be David Ben-Gurion 77 years ago, when everybody was telling him, including many people in the American administration, especially George Marshall, you can’t announce a state and now a day later, he’s done it. No money, no food, no fuel. We don’t know if we had diplomatic support. What courage? Look how far we’ve come. I know everybody’s in deep despair. By the way, I’m of course heartbroken that the hostages continue to languish. I want each of us, and we have different theories out there. There are some who say, get a deal any which way. Others say, no, wait a minute, then what happens next year? Well, they take another 24 hostages or 59 hostages or 250 hostages. How do we do it? Anybody who’s so sure they have the answer terrifies me because it’s a very complicated question. Again, a little humility, a little paradox.

But let’s go back a year with all the challenges we have right now. A year ago, Yom Ha’atzmaut, I remember a year ago, Yom Ha’atzmaut, every Israeli I knew was terrified of Hezbollah. Our mistake was not being scared enough of Hamas and we underestimated them. A year ago, the conversation in Tel Aviv in Jerusalem was, how many towers are going to be knocked down? How long will electricity and water be knocked out? It wasn’t will it happen? It was when will it happen and how long will it be? Look at the speed with which we crushed Hezbollah. Look at the way in which we humiliated Iran and have eviscerated its defenses. By the way, I think we have to take this opportunity and I say we both as Americans and Israelis to push back now, this is the moment. I’m terrified by some of the things I’m hearing from the Trump administration. I have to put on the table. Hezbollah crushed Iran, humiliated, Syria because of the internal pressure collapsed [inaudible] Syria, collapsed. Finally, finally, Hamas has been degraded. So even in this past year, with all the pain, with all the sacrifice, with all the loss, we’ve had tremendous gains.

Finally, with this I’ll end, I want to go back to the essential lesson that I learned October 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th. Some of us didn’t need to learn the lesson. Again, I give you Hakarat HaTov about how evil our enemies are. You know why? Because we respected them that we didn’t disrespect them. We read the Hamas charter, we heard Abbas’s speech in the UN. We heard the degree to which they de-legitimize us and demonize us and threatened to destroy us and hate not just Israelis, and not just Zionists, but Jews and Americans and liberals. We took them seriously. So, I wasn’t surprised by what happened on October 7th on one level. Of course, I was surprised by the massive failure of the Israeli government and the massive failure of the IDF. This poor young friend of ours, Ben Mizrahi, who grew up in Vancouver, who spent a year in Israel and bonded with not just my son, but our entire family, was missing at the Nova Festival. Unfortunately, on Tuesday they found his body and on Wednesday we went to his funeral.

Now, until that moment, we were stuck. We were stuck in Shoah Holocaust, worst day in Jewish history. Notice, even though our most secular friends said Jewish history since the Holocaust, not just Israeli history. We were stuck in pogrom, powerlessness, paralysis and then in the eulogy we heard Ben’s story. Ben could have run away, but instead he ran back in with his friend Itai Bausi. He’d been a combat medic in the army, and so he broke into an ambulance, which he didn’t learn in Vancouver. The last picture we have of Ben is from a still photograph of a video with him crouching with an orange backpack. If you go to the Nova Festival, you can find Ben and Itai linked in death. Their two posters are together and it’s side by side and you see the orange backpack. Every time I go there, it’s gathered a little more dust. My first instinct the first time I went was to move the dust away. But I said, no, I want the world to see what they did to this beautiful 22-year-old young man, this beautiful 22-year-old hero. But what did he teach me? What does his funeral teach me? What did his eulogy teach me? Because he and Itai and thousands of others ran back.

One on October 7th, Israelis saved Israel. Two, Zionism was vindicated because Zionism didn’t promise us a rose garden. Zionism didn’t promise us a state al magash shel kesef. That’s the poem that’s been read so many times in the last 48 hours. It’s not offered on a silver platter, Chaim Weizmann said and Nathan Alterman turned it into a classic poem. Zionism gave us the methodology, the ideology, the motivation, the framework, the skills to fight back. As I said at the beginning, not just to fight back, but to celebrate and dream, build and rebuild. So that’s the power of this moment. This is a moment for rebuilding. This is a moment for reinterpretation. This is a moment for vindication of Zionism. This is a moment for us to take the power of Zionism and the truth, the EMET that you stood for, and say, we have to fight against our enemies, and we do have enemies. We have to fight against the internal rot of dismissing one another. I sometimes hear the hatred, the way people talk about one another fellow Jews, fellow Americans. I wish they took some of that hatred and applied it to our true enemies, Hamas. Instead, we’re so busy doing it against our fellow citizens. I’m a man of love and that’s what Israel is, and that’s what Judaism is, and that’s what Zionism is. A people of love, a cult of life. [Foreign words]

Sarah: [Foreign words] That was unbelievably amazing, Gil. So, seeing that Zionism is a rejuvenation, we were at the first rebellion against settler colonialism. When you think about all the people that have occupied the Jewish state, the Romans, the Babylonians, the Ottomans, the British and here we took it back. How would you respond if you were a student at Columbia University and you had, for example, been in the IDF and one of your professors, which has happened before, looks at you and said, oh, you’ve been in the IDF. How many Palestinian children have you killed? What kind of ammunition can you give to our students out there that have to listen to these horrific nards?

Gil: So, first of all, it’s a very personal question because I have kids who’ve proudly served in the IDF and a website in Toronto about three months ago, circulated a list of 86, I think it was evil Canadians who have served in Israel in these genocidal forces of Israel. I’m very proud to say that four of my kids were of the 86. So instead of babooning, and instead of being anxious, I wrote a column about it. I called it part of this Bizarro Universe where heroes are turned into villains. Now, the most important thing for that student is to decide when and where he or she wants to answer. We’re sometimes too reactive. So sometimes, you know what, that’s not the moment and you dismiss it or you laugh it off, or you don’t answer, and that’s legitimate.

I don’t need a Columbia student or a McGill student or a Harvard student or my kids to defend the Jewish people every moment. That’s number one. Number two, internally, the most important thing is that you have to know who you are. You have to be so comfortable in your identity. Natan Sharansky teaches us that in the worst day of his life, when he was arrested and he didn’t know how long he’d been in the Gulag, he ended up being the Gulag for nine years, the Soviet prison system, without knowing that it would end. They strip him and they try to humiliate him and he realizes, says, they can’t humiliate me, only I can humiliate me. When I read many of what our holy hostages have reported, they did the same thing. So, a lot is in your head. I call this Pilates[?], have pride.

Now, to get to the core of your question, first of all, there are two parts. because you started with settler colonialism. Let’s throw that lie where it belongs into the trash. We are the original Aboriginal people in the Middle East. I’m an American historian, I count in decades. I go to England, I count in centuries. I come to Israel and, and I count in millennia and in eternity. I call this historicide. If homicide is killing human beings, suicide is killing yourself, historicide is trying to kill our history. So, they not only want to rob us of our joy, but they’ll rob us of the truth. By the way, I speak to my Christian friends and I say they’re trying to eliminate Jesus’s story because Jesus’s story is based in the land of Israel. There’s a Quranic verse which talks about the land of Israel.

So, a, we were there first. I won’t negate the Palestinian national identity, but why negate mine? That’s number one. Number two, if we talk about October 7th read Michael Walzer Unjust Wars, read history, how did Americans fight the Civil War? World War I, World War II. This is, by the way, what I told my kids on October 7th when they went off to war, as an American historian, I know the rules of war and I know what just war is. When you are given what Michael Walzer calls a supreme emergency, such as Pearl Harbor, such as October 7th, then you have to do everything you can to defend yourself. When I said to my kids, and when I say to the students is the moral onus is on them, not on us, they started. Everything that happens is on them, not on us. So, the question would be, how many Palestinian children did Hamas kill?

By the way, we see when Hamas, for example, is caught when they made this big lie that the Jews. They don’t say the Israelis. They don’t say the Zionists. They say the Jews blew up this hospital and they said 500. Now, how they were able to count 500 people in rubble within seconds is quite remarkable. Because If it truly had collapsed, but then what it turned out from Israeli films that it was a rocket fired from the side of Gaza. What did they do? They started counting down the numbers. Fewer people all suddenly died. So, I want you to take responsibility. You take responsibility for the children killed. Fundamentally, as an American, I heard the silence. That’s why I paused. I heard the silence around America’s role in Iraq and America’s role in Afghanistan. How many children were killed there? So, the hypocrisy also is quite annoying. So fundamentally, I would never respond to that kind of question because it’s an insulting question. But fundamentally, I don’t feel that our kids have purposely killed Palestinian children. I feel that Hamas has purposely hidden behind Palestinian civilians, including Palestinian children. So, the moral onus is even doubly on them.

Sarah: Wonderful. The whole issue of indigenous people’s rights comes up again and again and again. A Palestinian could say, my grandfather was here. Your grandfather took back this land. One way that I have been able to relinquish these notions is to say, are you better off with Hamas and power and Gaza or the Palestinian authority empower in the West Bank or Israel in power? Just to turn the tables, because you can go back on ad infinitum talking about who has the indigenous claim to the right of the land of Israel and you’ll get nowhere. But to try to look at the pluses and minuses of vibrant democracy such as Israel or these theocratic Iranian regimes that are taking root in Judea and Samaria, in the West Bank and in Gaza, there’s absolutely no comparison for the average Arab, let alone the average Jew. That is just my way of flipping that on its head.

Gil: Well done. The proof text, of course, is Israeli Arabs. Israeli Arabs, most of whom call themselves Israeli Arabs, outsiders call them Palestinian Arabs, but most Israeli Arabs call themselves Israeli Arabs. They’re about 20% of the population. They’re about 20% of our doctors, about 40% of our pharmacists and our nurses and they’re in many ways a part of the society. Now, is there more work to be done? Absolutely. It’s not always easy being a minority, and it’s complicated. But on the whole, Israeli Arabs know that they are way better off than their cousins under Hamas rule, under PA rule in Iran. I understand why it’s hard for them to speak up. So that’s one.

Second to also reinforce your point in this Harvard study again, page three or four, they talk about how many Gulf Arabs who were studying at Harvard were shocked at the degree to which the Palestinians were so hostile to the Jews and so hostile to Israel. They were more pro-Israel than sometimes, I’m sorry to say, some of the Jewish students at Harvard, which shows that it’s not about whether you’re Jewish or Arab, it’s not a racial thing, certainly because these aren’t races, these are national groups. It’s ideology. what kind of ideology do you have and what kind of identity do you have? When you talk about anti-Zionist Jews, we’re talking about an identity problem and sometimes, I’m sorry to say a psychological problem too, but we’ll talk about that in group therapy later.

Sarah: That is a big psychological problem. But we do have wonderful Muslim and Arab friends who have spoken out, people like Mosab Hassan Yousef and Yoseph Haddad, Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, just the list goes on and on and on. [Crosstalk]

Gil: Look, the Abraham of Accords have not been broken, right?

Sarah That’s right.

Gil: Despite all the cries of genocide and all that and harsh accusations. Look at the Gulf Arab state, so I agree with you. It’s not only those extraordinarily brave because by the way, they are threatened much more than I’m threatened. They often have to go with private security. They’re harassed. They’re seen as traitors to their own people, and we should embrace them even more and thank them even more for their courage. But even more interesting to me is the regular everyday business people and students from the Gulf and obviously their leaders who are keeping the Abraham Accords going. Because they know where the future is and they know, as you point out, where you’re better off and who you’re better off doing business with.

Sarah: The Abraham Accords have kept going. Do you want to comment at all about what’s been going on in Egypt and what’s been going on in Jordan? Those are our longest standing partners. We have seen certainly true buildups along the Sinai. I’m very, very worried about all of the money that we have been appropriating to Egypt and to Jordan. I know in Jordan, it’s waved the dog. A lot of Iranian missiles are going in there. So, do you feel [crosstalk] like you’re in a position to comment?

Gil: Sure. So again, first [foreign words] acknowledgement of the good. Let’s talk about the degree to which on the whole, those two peace treaties, which we never imagined. I’m old enough to know that but when I was a kid, we never imagined there’d be peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, so that’s a big plus. Second, let’s go back to just a little bit over a year ago on April 13th, when 320 Iranian missiles came trying to destroy Israel, the Jewish people, Israeli Arabs, they didn’t care who, and the degree to which the Abraham Accords and frankly all the defense negotiations and coordination and practice between the United States of America and Israel and the EU and the Arab countries, including Jordan, including Egypt, paid off magnificently. So those are two pluses.

Big minus in terms of Egypt. There’s this border. Everybody always talks about how Israel is so evil and is not allowing humanitarian aid. Well, I don’t know. I have this silly thing. I look at maps and isn’t there a part of the map that shows that Gaza and Egypt are bordered? Why can’t humanitarian aid go through there? More than that, why can’t refugees, if we really care about human life, go into that vast desert called the Sinai, why can’t we have hospitals set up there instead of those floating things that the United States of America made, which we sunk very quickly. Why hasn’t Egypt been a helpful partner? Moreover, even worse, when we look at the extraordinary buildup that led to Hamas’ horrific crimes and evils October 7th, where did most of it come from? It came from all those tunnels smuggled in.

Now, obviously, we have a problem with the tunnels with Hamas in Gaza, and I don’t think the world will be over until we’ve destroyed every one of those tunnels. That’s a very important thing. We have to think about real war aims. That’s a real war aim. I can’t eliminate an idea. I can eliminate a tunnel. The tunnels have to be destroyed. But it takes two to smuggle. The smuggling that went on mostly from Egypt, I’m sorry to say, really raised serious questions about the stability, the honorability, the integrity of the Egyptian regime. I very much worry about the instability of the Jordanian regime, but I think that’s why it’s really important, let’s pull out even further to focus on American foreign policy. American foreign policy has to have zero tolerance for Iranian manipulation. It cannot make the mistakes that the Obama administration made in pumping billions of dollars, which then the Biden administration intensified billions of dollars back into the mullahs[?].

A lot of the problem of Egypt and Jordan starts with Iran. I need the Trump administration to have not just moral clarity, put morality aside, strategic clarity about how bad an actor Iran has been. I don’t understand why is the burden always on Israel? Why is the burden on Israel to knock out Syria’s chemical plants? Why didn’t the United States of America step in? Why didn’t the United States of America, not because of Israel, but because of Taiwan, knock out Iran’s defenses last April 13th because you don’t mess with one of my allies and instead say, take the win. So, we don’t have a lot of time, but I just want us to think not only country by country and border by border, and dysfunction by dysfunction, but a, where have we had successes? Again, give American foreign policy and American defense posture positive reinforcement where it’s worked, but put up big warning signs where it hasn’t.

Sarah: So, if there was ever a time to attack Iran, I believe it is now. After Israel has really disseminated a great deal of the Hamas infrastructure, the Hezbollah infrastructure, the United States has certainly helped in the Red Sea with the Houthis. It’s very weakened after last year’s attack, September of 2024 on the Iranian defense missiles. I see that these talks are dragging on and on and on. I’m very worried also, that if Israel attacks before President Trump believes that he’s had a chance to really negotiate this, he might anger President Trump. Do you have any feelings about this?

Gil: I worry a lot about this. Again, putting the Israel dimension, aside from the American dimension, America has to have a very strong defense posture. America has to have zero tolerance for bad actors like Iran. America asked to see the degree to which Iran has been part of this axis of evil with Russia and with China. I have friends who decided to visit Southern Lebanon in late October, early November. They went into those tunnels right by the border of Metula and Kiryat Shmona and all those cities, which could have been decimated on October 7th. They saw huge crates from Iran, from Russia, from China, from North Korea, filled with weapons intended to destroy us. Frankly, also, not only going after little Satan, but big Satan, which is the United States of America.

So, I don’t understand the ongoing blind spot vis-a-vis Iran that I see in the Democratic Party. But I’m also starting to see in certain segments of the Republican party. I’m not a man of war. I have kids in and out. I have buried close friends. I know the cost of war. But I also know that sometimes the best way to avoid war is with a little bit of war. You can avoid a major conflict with minor interventions. With Iran, I think we have to think on two levels. One, what military pressure, what military intervention can work, but also, we have to work much better with Iranian dissidents. We have to work much better with the Iranian community in the United States of America who knows the regime from the inside.

Natan Sharansky and Avital Sharansky, these unbelievable heroes back when you and I were protesting for the Soviet Jews, but we didn’t really believe it would work. I certainly didn’t believe it would work, but we did it because we were good Jewish citizens. They believed it would work because they could see the regime from the inside and they knew the pressure points. We gave them supports that they can use the pressure points that they knew as insiders. We have not, and I say we again, as Americans, have not been savvy enough in undermining the Iranian regime. It’s a matter of starving them financially. It’s a matter sometimes of intervening in terms of the internet power that they have and it’s a matter of empowering with evil organizations like the “CIA” and I put that in quotation marks, under the radar, weaken that regime, put it under tremendous pressure and mobilize the Iranian dissident forces inside the country and outside the country.

Sarah: Right. Actually, several of the pieces of legislation that we’re working on right now have to do with weakening the regime and giving the people empowerment, and being able to give them materials to be able to overcome the internet blackout to be able to communicate with one another. Trying to have sanctions on their gas exports to China where they’ve made a tremendous amount of money and their drones to Russia, et cetera. So, we’re working on these things as we speak. In fact, we have two appointments this afternoon on Capitol Hill to do these kinds of things. So, and to work together with wonderful groups like NUFDI, the National Union for Democracy in Iran and other wonderful groups that are full of Iranian dissonance because the people hate the regime. What are there, 88 million people in Iran? We’ve heard that two thirds of the mosques in Iran have been closed recently, and that the Iranian younger people, most of whom were born after the 1979 revolution despise Shia Islam and are no longer practicing. So, we have a lot of people on our side, the unions and the women and so many people, but we have got to give them some support. That’s the most [crosstalk]

Gil: It’s a great thing that you’re doing on so many levels. It’d also be helpful perhaps to get some of the former Soviet Jewish dissidents like Natan Sharansky speaking to Iranians. I don’t know if they’ve really done that and share some of their advice. Because one of the things I learned from Natan, I’m no expert on Iran, but one of the things I’ve learned seeing through the eyes of Natan is to see that when a regime fears its people, then it’s weak and you smell the fear of the Iranian regime. So, this might be one other dimension. If I could also give you one other piece of homework and you can feel free to ignore it. But let’s talk about the hostages for a second because of course, it’s such a heartbreaking story.

Two out of the box thoughts. One more popular one, I think truly out of the box. I think all these protests internally to put more pressure on Israel has only raised the price of the hostages, has only created this whole bring them home as opposed to let my people go dimension. A lot of people talk about that. I don’t understand why we don’t have more protests. By the way, take all those Israeli protestors, take all the money that’s coming from High Tech Tel Avivs and from outside organizations and send them to London and send them to New York and send them to Washington and protest outside Qatari embassies, Qatari consulates and Qatari properties. Follow the evil. They say follow the money, follow the evil and put pressure there. That’s one idea.

Second is my son and his buddies one of my sons and their buddies were sitting around shortly after October 7th in their army unit and they joked, I’m more valuable. No, I’m more valuable. I’m more valuable. What do they mean as a human being? Why? Oh, my son has American, Canadian, and Israeli citizenship. My friend had a Danish citizen. Or they’re Israelis, they’re making jokes about it. But what’s the essential idea? I think, and I look this up, the United States Constitution gives the United States Congress the right to make anybody a citizen overnight. In the future, anytime an American is kidnapped with any other human beings, all of those human beings should get automatic American citizenship. There should be a Canadian law and Italian law such that we don’t get it to a situation where we say, oh, he’s the American hostage, she’s the Italian hostage, they’re the Thai hostages. But no, if those 250 people were all American hostages and Canadian hostages and Italian hostages, two things. First of all, morally the world would be saying, this is unacceptable. In a way they really haven’t said.

Even Antony Blinken in his final Atlantic Council speech, he said, where was the world? Now, I wish he’d said that when he was Secretary of State and people were paying attention to him. But anyway, I think we have to think about, because this is going to happen again because we’ve shown them what a successful strategy this is, how do we make sure next time that the civilized countries in the world have a stronger stand and say anyone who’s kidnapped is one of ours. We have zero tolerance for the way they’ve been manipulating and abusing and just acting in the most evil in a humane of ways.

Sarah: Beautiful, beautiful. Any closing remarks to give those of us? I do want to say one thing. I was just in Israel, just got back yesterday and I’m returning actually a week from Sunday. When the alarm was sounded, I have four grandchildren there. The 3-year-old stood at stiff attention and then he saluted and he said, my Abba is Gibhor, my father is a hero. I said, why do you think your Abba is Gibhor? He said, because he is doing his service now and he’s defending the entire Medina, he’s defending the entire state. When you have a people, who feel this way at such a young age that they understand, they grasp it, they understand it.. I don’t think anybody could take us down. Yes, we fight and we argue about the right course, whether or not we should just free the hostages which I think is really absurd and call this war off. But I think the most important thing is that we recognize the common humanity in each of us and what it is that we’re all about, that we didn’t have, as you said 80 years ago. That our parents and our grandparents would’ve given their right arms to have an independent Jewish homeland. So, any final thoughts, Gil?

Gil: So, if I may three, one, on that point, at our local Yom HaZikaron Memorial Day service and we live in the German colony. We go to just the Matnas Jewish community the community center on Emek Refaim in front of where some people might know as [foreign word]. It’s filled with people. One of the reasons why I keep on going back to there every year is because I see who shows up left right with Kippot without Kippot. El Malei Rahamim which is one of the prayers that was said in front of this mixed group was said by Chazan, the local cantor of the Hasidic sect. Just that moment when we all stand young and old, left and right, religious, non-religious in absolute and utter unity is something that unfortunately is missing in America and is one of the reasons why Israel keeps on scoring so high on the happiness index.

Because we see that exactly. You see that sense of achdut, you see that sense of unity, you see those sense of values, you see that sense of future. You see what I was saying earlier that hope. So that’s point number one. Point number two, I want to build up on something else you said, people say, how can we help each other? For example, my son said that torch bearing ceremony, the torch lighting ceremony celebrating Israel’s independence this year didn’t have a focus on reservists. I think they do such unbelievable heroic work. They need emotional support. Many of them have businesses that are failing. Many of them have families that are under tremendous pressure. I think we have to start figuring out how the state can do more, but also how individual philanthropists can step up and really sweep up and embrace these people who are indeed doing heroic work.

As I said earlier, they’re not just fighting for Israel and the Jewish people, they’re fighting for Western civilization. I’m just trying to think of dimensions of how somebody in Washington or in the United States of America can think about how can I help? I think helping [inaudible] is so important. Finally, finally, let me go back to the amazing rollercoaster year we’ve had. We buried Ben, my son Aviv lost five friends in the battle of Khoraz alone. Then he lost Ben and Itai. You see our kids also on Yom HaZikaron negotiating what grave do I go to? Which do I not go to? You know that two years ago a loss of a friend would’ve been a very different thing. Every one of my kids has buried so many holy human beings and we owe it to them.

A, as I said, to have joy , to continue dancing and c, to do what my kids did, which is during this past very difficult year, three of the four got married and they affirmed again and again, by the way, this was also, we just finished a year of mourning. My father and you and buddy were such wonderful friends to my parents. My son Aviv said, because he got married June 13th and my father passed the beginning of May. He said, I sat with my wife and said, how can we go on with a wedding? We’ve lost so many friends, we just lost Sabah Dov. Then of course they said, how can we not? How can we not? When my son Yoni got married, the first wedding, which was on November 26th, which was six weeks after the war and everybody’s in such a dark mood and everybody came to dance, I learned this amazing thing where this’ll end called heavy metal dancing.

I’ve gotten to the age where when you’re in the center of the circle, it’s pretty brutal because everybody’s pushing you and moving around and things like that. It can be pretty, pretty dangerous and you can get pretty, pretty bruised. But what happens that day was the Gaza ceasefire. 43 soldiers came from the front, and they came with their weapons, and so it’s heavy metal dancing when you have to dance with 43 soldiers who have their heavy metal weapons. We danced up a storm, we will not stop dancing. We will not stop having hope. We will not stop appreciating the tremendous friendship and vision that you have shown and that the American Jewish community has shown and that the American people on the whole have shown. So, I want to start by saying Todah Rabah, thank you. I want to continue by saying Chag Sameach because the Chag continues and the party continues outside. But most important, Am Yisrael Chai.

Gil: Thank you very much.

Sarah: Thank you so much, Gil. Please remember to read every one of Gil Troy’s amazing books. To support EMET, we need your help. Please go to emetonline.org. Thanks a million, Gil.

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