Firing Line

- A global reckoning over Israel and antisemitism, this week on "Firing Line."

81 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, hatred and violence against Jews is on the rise.

- Australian authorities are calling this a terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community.

- That's the uptick in antisemitism that we're seeing right now, 'cause people taking it upon themselves to get rid of and attack Jews because of the perceived actions that Israel's took in Gaza.

- [Margaret] Noa Tishby was a television star in Israel before she came to the United States and produced the award-winning HBO series "In Treatment."

She says, "Many Americans, including many American Jews, don't understand the threat posed by Islamic Jihadism."

- As an Israeli, a liberal progressive Israeli, I moved here and I'm like, "Oh, my God!

You have no idea what you're dealing with."

- [Margaret] In her new role, as author and activist, her mission is to defeat what she sees as the newest form of antisemitism.

- Criticize the government of Israel all you like, but if you're denying Israel's right to exist, that's where it moved to the other side.

- From the river to the sea!

- [Margaret] So is anti-Zionism the new antisemitism?

What does Noa Tishby say now?

- [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness.

And by the following: - Noa Tishby, welcome to "Firing Line."

- Thank you so much for having me.

- This week, Israel welcomed home the remains of Ron Veley.

- Mm!

- The final hostage from October 7th, on the same week that the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

For Israelis, what is the significance of this news?

- Huge, huge significance because of the connection for Israelis between October 7th and the Holocaust.

- Yeah.

- So first of all, I wanna mention that his mom, Ron Veley's mom, said that he was the first one in.

He volunteered, he jumped in.

He was not supposed to.

He was at home and wounded.

He was not supposed to go get drafted.

He was not supposed to go save people, and he did.

He jumped on his uniform and went straight in and his mom said, "He is the first one in and he's gonna be the last one out."

And it ended up being the case.

He was the first one in and the last one out.

It was horrible.

I'll tell you a personal story that was such a powerful and depressing incident that connected the two events.

So throughout the process, after October 7th, I went to Israel pretty much right away after a month or so and started interviewing survivors and hostage families.

I met, at a rehabilitation center, a girl named Noam Navid.

Noam Navid was a 26-year-old girl when she went to the Nova party with her boyfriend David and they escaped at 6:30 AM when the attack happened and they were hiding in a trash bin.

At some point, Hamas terrorists basically walked into the trash bin and sprayed everybody that was in sight, killing her boyfriend and 13 other people in that trash bin.

And Noam spent hours lying underneath dead bodies waiting to be rescued.

She was hit in the hip, bleeding, using people's bodies to cover herself up so she can hide from the terrorists.

And she's sitting there and she's telling me that story, and that is the exact story that my grandmother's sister had in the Holocaust.

That is the same story that I heard growing up of Gita, who was in a village in Poland and was taken away outside with the entire village, and they were shot and she had to hide underneath the bodies of her dead children and husband until she can escape when night fell and find her way to Israel.

And that connection between these two events.

- The symmetry of the memory.

- The symmetry of the history of the Jewish people repeating itself again, was shocking and it culminated when this week, when Ron was returned on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

- President Trump credited Hamas actually for working, quote, "Very hard to get the body back of Ron Veley," and you've praised President Trump.

- [Noa] Yeah!

- From time to time, particularly his plan last fall.

- Mm-hmm!

- Are you still confident that his peace plan can lead to a new Middle East?

- I would love that.

I'll tell you the problem that has been from the beginning.

The problem is that this peace plan was absolutely brilliant.

The problem is that Hamas never agreed to it.

I'm just waiting for Hamas to actually agree to do something and be pushed properly by the Arab countries in the region to be removed from power and to basically not be who they are.

Which is that's the tricky part.

Hamas is a resistance movement.

Hamas is a jihadi terrorist organization that is priding itself and resisting to the state of Israel, resisting to Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East, resisting to Western values, resisting to the United States.

That's who they are.

So they need to be dismantled completely.

- To lay down their arms.

- Entirely remove their arms and be removed from power completely.

So am I optimistic?

Absolutely.

But I don't trust Hamas at all.

Not even a little bit.

(crowd screaming) - [Margaret] In recent weeks, you have posted several videos voicing support for the protestors in Iran.

You've called on the US to intervene and you said, quote, "If you care about human rights, talk about Iran."

- Yeah!

- How does Iran fit into the broader fight against antisemitism?

- It's a great question.

It's not just the broader fight against antisemitism, it's the broader fight for a safer world.

So when you think of every conflict that's happening in the world right now, almost all of them, when you track back to where they start and where they come and where they're funded from and who's behind them, you'll find the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Whether it's Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis that are bugging and attacking, not just Israel and the United States, but also the Saudis and the Emiratis, right?

They're a destabilizing force in the Middle East and therefore a destabilizing force in the West.

And here's what people need to understand.

So in 1979, when the revolution happened, it was the first time that the Muslim world saw a country that was run by Muslim law, Sharia law, taking the ideas of Islam, which were, I guess, fantastic in the times when Mohammad was around for some people, but really don't qualify for anything that we can stand up for right now.

You know, if a woman gets raped, she needs to produce three witnesses in order to corroborate her rape.

And if not, she's considered the adulterer and she can be punished by death and stoning, but she can actually redeem herself if she marries her rapist.

That's a culture that we cannot stand behind, that we have to stand against no matter what.

We need to be very clear that Islamic fundamentalism should not be accepted in normal society.

So to me, the people of Iran have been trying to tell us for years that they don't want this.

They're occupied under their own regime.

Literally, there's a full-on gender apartheid happening in Iran right now.

Gender apartheid!

And why aren't liberals talking about that?

Beyond!

Just, it defies logic to be honest.

- President Trump called for Iran to either negotiate with the United States or face a potential to attack.

- Mm-hmm!

- What should the US do?

- I believe that it's time for the Islamic Republic of Iran to fold and go away.

The Islamic Republic of Iran should not be controlling the Iranian people.

- Is it the American's job to make that happen?

- I don't know who else's job it is.

Because if you think of 80 plus million people, they're not armed.

I don't know that they can do it on their own.

So I really hope that the us that Israel, that the MI6, whoever is there building an opposition that can actually take over the regime, that's what needs to happen.

Along with an attack, strategic attack, on revolutionary guard targets and so on and so forth.

Obviously, nobody wants to attack the Iranian people.

They're actually extraordinary.

- Horrific acts of antisemitism have been committed in the last year.

15 Jews were slaughtered while celebrating Hanukkah in Australia.

In Manchester, an attacker drove a car into pedestrians before stabbing worshipers at a synagogue on Yom Kippur.

Two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC were shot outside the Jewish Museum last May.

Why do you think vile acts of antisemitism and violent acts of antisemitism are happening now?

- Tale as old as time.

So let's go back for a second and explain what antisemitism is and what it isn't.

So antisemitism is not racism and antisemitism is not equated to a so-called Islamophobia.

Antisemitism is not looking down at somebody because you feel like you're more than them and they're less than you.

It's not as simple as that.

Antisemitism is a shape-shifting conspiracy theory, meaning you attribute to the Jews mythological powers, essence of control, conspiratorial attitudes, desire of dual loyalty, suspicious kind of attributes, and so on and so forth.

And it's shape-shifting every few generations.

So the first accounts of antisemitism were about 300 BC in Alexandria.

They were talking about these weird people that have these, like, weird kind of habits and rituals and whatever.

That was the first time.

Then it changed into something different with the death of Christ.

It turned into religious-based antisemitism.

"The Jews killed Christ."

Obviously, they didn't, the Romans did.

Then it became not cool to be antisemitic, to hate people based on their religion, so antisemitism shape-shifted again and shape-shifted into political and racial antisemitism, which is what the Nazis used, right?

Then after World War II, that became not cool again, right?

You can't discriminate against somebody based on their religion or their ethnicity or any of that.

So it shifted into something new.

And that is Israel, that is anti-Zionism.

That's what it changed into.

And I'm gonna offer something here, right?

So I'm sure, right, that you have viewers right now on PBS that are convinced that Israel committed and commits a genocide.

Convinced!

They're looking at me going, "But Israel's committing a genocide on the Palestinian people," not understanding that this is today's blood libel.

That is the uptick that we're seeing right now with antisemitism.

- Okay!

Let's define terms.

- [Noa] Yeah!

- I have always operated under the definition that Zionism is the right of Jews to have a country for themselves somewhere.

- Yes!

- In their ancestral homeland.

- Exactly!

That's it!

And parts of their ancestral homeland.

- You published an op-ed in the "New York Post" with Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden Administration's Antisemitism Envoy, who was also a guest on this program, in the "New York Post" this week.

And it said, quote, "If you claim to oppose antisemitism, but fail to recognize that so much of it is now carried out under the guise of anti-Israel activism, then you are not protecting Jews and fighting bigotry, you are endangering Jews and protecting bigots."

- Yeah, that's exactly it.

When you're an anti-Zionist, you're not, it doesn't mean that you can't criticize the state of Israel, the government of Israel, policies of Israel, politicians in Israel.

In fact, I was fired by the Israeli government.

- You were fired by Bibi Netanyahu's government as the Special Envoy for Antisemitism.

- Exactly!

- Because you were critical of the Netanyahu government's judicial reform policies.

- Exactly!

And I would speak it up and I was like, "This policy is not good and shouldn't pass and will not pass."

- I think what people are interested in is the extent to which one can criticize the government of Israel.

- Yeah!

- [Margaret] And not be seen as anti-Zionist.

- That's exactly what you said!

It's literally that!

Criticize the government of Israel all you like.

But if you're denying Israel's right to exist, that's where it moved to the other side.

If you say that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state, why only Israel?

- Yeah!

- Which other countries are up for debate?

Which other countries, their existence is questioned?

- Yeah!

- It's the only country in the world that people are like, "Hmm!

Should it exist though?"

There are a lot of people, and specifically in the far left on this conversation, right, that are like looking at Israel as the last colonial, kind of last bastion of colonialism, that needs to be removed from the world just for everything to be okay, for the world to be safe again.

Which is, again, an antisemitic trope.

Because in the olden days around Nazi Germany, people's concept was, "Let's just remove the Jews and the world would be a better place."

Now people are actually saying, "Let's just dismantle Israel and the world would be a better place."

It's the same.

That's the uptick in antisemitism that we're seeing right now, because people taking it upon themselves to get rid of the world Jewry, right, and attack Jews because of the perceived actions that Israel's took in Gaza.

- Okay!

So is it possible that there are those who are critical of the IDF and this Israeli government's actions in Gaza?

- Yes!

Yes!

- Is it possible that those criticisms are genuinely related to this government's prosecution of the war in Gaza, rather than those criticisms being caused or fueled by Jew hatred?

- Yes!

Absolutely!

In fact, the war in Gaza was horrific, absolutely horrific, heartbreaking.

And the sad part about it is that as a liberal Israeli who also understands radical Islam, I knew within five minutes of the October 7th attack, while it was still happening, that Gaza is gonna turn into rubble.

It was devastating because we knew that what Yahya Sinwar did was he basically put Gaza on the, as a- - Yahya Sinwar, who was the mastermind behind the 10/7 attack.

- All in!

He all in.

He sacrificed Gaza and he sacrificed his people.

We knew that!

They knew exactly what they were doing.

- So you don't hold back your criticisms of this Israeli government's prosecution of the war in Gaza?

- No!

I think the war was horrible.

But what else could we have done?

- Yeah.

- That's the terrible part about it.

And again, it's very hard for Americans to understand the mentality of jihadism.

It's very hard for Americans to understand that some people don't wanna just have a great life, that some people prefer to sacrifice their children.

- Because you said even the most progressive Israelis... - Yeah.

Yes!

- Understand jihadism in a way that even the most right-wing Americans don't.

- Exactly!

- Tell me more.

- Well, when you're four-generation Middle Eastern, right, you know that we're dealing with a culture that is not the same as us.

It just isn't.

And I'm not talking about the entirety of Islam, and I'm not talking about all.

I'm talking about the culture of jihadism is a culture that does not look at life in the same way that we do.

Life here does not matter.

It's the afterlife.

And if I kill you or I kill myself in the name of God, right, it's a better choice, it's a better life.

So it's very hard for us to understand that!

The concept of human shield, the concept of martyrdom, the concept of a mother who is happy that her child went and became a suicide bomber, like, it's hard for Americans to fathom this.

And as an Israeli, a liberal progressive Israeli, I moved here, and I'm like, "Oh, my God!

You have no idea what you're dealing with."

So people don't understand what they're dealing with.

They don't know the culture.

They don't know the history.

Yet they feel the need to criticize Israel and to voice their opinion.

And it's just, you know, if it wouldn't have been so dangerous and sad, it would've been a little funny.

- After William F. Buckley published his book on antisemitism in 1992, he hosted an episode on the original program with a Jewish conservative writer by the name of Norman Podhoretz.

- Yeah!

- Here is Podhoretz talking about the evolution of antisemitism.

Take a look at this.

- It seems that antisemitic passions, for reasons that nobody quite understands, are inextinguishable.

And if they don't have one outlet, they will find another.

And most of the antisemitic ideas and attitudes that were directed against individual Jews or Jewish communities in the diaspora in the past have now been translated into the terms of... Into the language of international affairs and been attached to Israel, to the Jewish state, as the state, Jewish state among the nations, just as the Jews among the people.

- Sure!

- As the Jewish state among the nations, just as the Jews among the people.

- Yes!

And I say often that Israel turned into the Jew of the World.

- What do you mean by that?

- So here's the thing.

Throughout history, the Jew, "the Jew," was always used in order to describe whatever is like the most loathesome in a society at any given time.

Whatever it is that's fashionable to hate, you plug on the Jew, right?

So today, what are the worst things to be in a polite society?

Racist!

Colonialist!

And white supremacist.

Those are the things that society today that, like, that kind of like polite society frowns upon.

And lo and behold, what do they pin it on?

It's on the Jewish state.

So they literally take the Jewish state now and pin everything that they thought- - Israel is guilty of colonialism.

- Israel is a white supremacist, colonialist, racist country.

Which none of it is true, but for people, this is what sticks.

- I wanna ask you about antisemitism where it has reared its ugly head here in the United States recently.

- Yeah!

- It is not isolated to either the left or the right.

- No!

- But we are seeing it on the left and the right first.

Is it worse on the left or the right, from your perspective?

- No!

I don't think one of them is worse than the other.

I think they're both terrible and both dangerous.

- In November, Tucker Carlson hosted the antisemite Nick Fuentes.

- [Noa] Nick Fuentes!

Yep!

- On his podcast, during which he criticized, quote, "Organized Jewry in America."

- Yep!

- He described himself as a fan of Joseph Stalin.

- Mm-hmm!

Of Hitler as well.

- And over the last few months, there have been, there's been a major fallout around this inflection point on the right.

Even J.D.

Vance, the vice president, refused to denounce Tucker Carlson.

There's also several media reports recently, the Trump Administration social media messaging has echoed white nationalist propaganda.

The Department of Labor post used the phrase, "One homeland, one people, one heritage."

- Saw that!

Nazi!

Nazi flavor!

– Which is similar to World War II slogan: (Margaret speaking German) Does this concern you?

- Yes, of course it does!

Because I don't believe that the right reaction to wokeism should be, "Oh, if they don't let us say anything, then we can say everything."

That should not be their reaction.

- Why?

- Because there should be some limit on hate speech.

There really should and I know it's not a popular opinion, but there should be something, and I don't even know that it should be legality, per se.

- Or is it just that there's not appropriate outrage?

- Should be common sense!

- [Margaret] Yeah!

- Common sense is what we have, as a society, drifted away from.

And through social media, our addiction to the drug, the hormones that are getting released by fear and outrage, are dominating our political discourse completely and entirely.

So the reason I would assume that J.D.

Vance doesn't wanna denounce Tucker Carlson is because he doesn't wanna get the media, the social media heat, and literally doesn't wanna get people on Twitter being, like, angry at him.

- An avowed anti-Zionist, Zohran Mamdani, is now the mayor of New York City.

- [Noa] Mm!

- [Margaret] Since taking office, he's repealed executive orders.

- [Noa] Yeah!

- That adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

And another one that prohibited city employees from participating in BDS, the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement.

Look, before he took office, you said that New York Jews were very, very concerned.

- [Noa] Yeah!

- About him.

How are they feeling now?

- They're very concerned.

Very concerned.

And when he came into office and immediately revoked IHRA, which is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, and all of the hirings that he has and people that he put in place, they're all anti-Zionists, even if they're Jewish.

And by that, you have to understand that he is gaslighting the Jewish community.

So for him to say, "Yes, I support Jews.

See, I'm hiring Jews?"

And all the Jews that he's hiring are tokenized because of their fringe opinions.

You can equate it to if you have a black outreach and you use the most fringe voices and say, "That's my representative of the black community," which clearly is not!

- You're saying he's tokenizing Jews in his administration?

- Yes, he is!

He's tokenizing Jews in his administration and all the Jews that he has around him and everybody he has around him, are people that do not support the existence of Israel.

So that's what he's doing.

We're not convinced at all.

- One of the reasons he was elected, and one of the reasons he has been so successful is because he has demonstrated himself to be a very good listener.

- Mm!

- He has met with the Jewish leaders, he has met with rabbis.

Many of them stood up and said that they were comfortable with his election.

If you could meet with him, would you, and what would you say to him?

- I would first say, "Reinstate IHRA."

First and foremost.

Because the reason he's upset about IHRA is because of this one line that talks about Israel.

- IHRA is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

- [Both] Definition of antisemitism!

- So the first thing to indicate to the Jewish community that you're actually standing with us is to reinstate IHRA and have a conversation with people that do think Israel has the right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish people.

So I would venture to say that a huge part of his political career and a huge part of who he is, and the reason that he got into politics is the desire to dismantle Israel as a Jewish state, and we all need to keep a very close eye on what he does in the future.

- Final question!

In your book, "Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth," you describe a two-state solution as, quote, "Arguably the only solution we can think of today that will create stability in the region."

- Yes!

Unless you can give me something else.

- You have dismissed the idea of recognizing a Palestinian state since October 7th.

- Yes!

- [Margaret] Because you have called it, "Magical thinking."

- Yes!

- Because, quote, "There is a lot of work that needs to be done to even have that conversation."

- Yes!

- What is that work that needs to be done?

- Well, first of all, I believe that October 7th took the Palestinian cause years backwards.

And it took the Palestinian cause years backwards because for Israelis, Israelis are mortified by the concept and the thought of the Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel, because we saw what happens when we left Gaza and we got October 7th.

So every Israeli is very concerned, and you would totally agree and understand why.

That's number one.

Number two, there has to be an education and a reeducation of the population there because they were left to jihadi ideology and became a radicalized group of people, and they deserve better.

They deserve a Palestinian leadership that can actually move them forward to the next century and beyond, and a Palestinian leadership that doesn't believe in jihadism and doesn't believe in mid-ages, Middle Age's sense of living under Sharia law.

That's what needs to happen.

I also think that around October 7th, what happened, which is the result that we're seeing in Gaza right now, is the world understood that they can't do it alone.

- Yeah!

- And that's a bad thing for them.

The world understood that they can't.

Left to their own devices, they come up with October 7th, which is why the US and the Board of Peace, and everybody's taken over Gaza because the world understood that if they are at it alone, Hamas is the one that takes charge.

- Radical Islamism takes charge.

- And my sense is that's not a good thing for the Palestinian people at all.

- During Hanukkah, you recorded daily videos of candlelight with celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Amy Schumer.

Does that help the PR battle?

- That's such a beautiful campaign that we do.

And it's not about PR, it's about pride and knowledge.

So the better you know yourself and your identity and where you come from and the better younger generation and people know what being Jewish is about and be proud of it, that's the only thing that's gonna actually end antisemitism at the end.

It's gonna take a long time.

It's not happening anytime soon.

But I believe this is the one thing that can actually strengthen the Jewish community, and therefore the world, is to be proud of who we are and know our history and know our heritage and be loud and proud in our Jewish identity.

- Noa Tishby!

- Thank you!

- Thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

- Thank you so much.

- [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness.

And by the following: (bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues) (airy music) (bright music) - [Announcer] You're watching PBS.