Amy Spitalnick

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Set's podcast.
My guest today is Amy SPITTALNI, CEO of the Jewish
Council for Public Affairs. Amy, what is the Jewish Council
for Public Affairs?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Thanks so much for having me, Bob. JCPA. The Jewish
Council for Public Affairs is a nearly eighty year old
organization that is really rooted in the recognition that Jewish
safety is strongest in communities where we have deep relationships
with our neighbors, where we have inclusive democracy, and where
those lines of communication and relationship are open, all in

(00:48):
service of the sort of inclusive, pluralistic society we know
Jews have really been safest in throughout history.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Okay in English? What is the JCPA?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
So, what this means in practice is that we work
with one hundred and twenty five Jewish Community Relations councils
around the country, empowering, engaging them, and working with national
partners as well on building those sorts of cross community
relationships on issues related to democracy and fighting anti Semitism
and fighting other forms of hate. Recognizing that at this

(01:25):
moment we are seeing unprecedented threats to our community's safety
unprecedented threats to our democracy, and that to mobilize effectively
against all of them requires building coalitions across communities to
do that as strongly and effectively as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay, how is your job and your efforts changed from
before October seventh and after October seventh?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
So you know, I started this job full time on
September fifth, and we knew it was going to be
a challenging job. Regardless prior work, I had been really
focused on fighting extremism and increasingly normalized anti Semitism, in
white supremacy and other forms of hate, and certainly going
into this role, we knew that all of those factors

(02:14):
were front and center and top of mind for many
in the Jewish community, and building relationships across communitys were
particularly crucial to taking on this crisis. October seventh, of course,
only made that more urgent. It has, in so many
ways put a fine point on just how tenuous this

(02:37):
situation is for the Jewish community in America right now,
for so many other communities, and it has really created
a crisis in which we've seen extremists seek to exploit
what's happening in Israel and Gaza to further tear communities apart,
make Jews and others feel isolated in this moment, and

(02:58):
make the sort of cross community relationships that we know
that are at the core of our work at Chasepa
and core to jew or safety feel less attainable than ever.
And so we have to work infinitely harder to keep
these relationships strong, to keep them frankly open in the
first place right now, and ensure that we are not

(03:23):
losing sight of all of the threats that we are
facing as a community, even as we grapple with the
immediate crisis post October seventh, which again, in so many
ways really just exposed and exacerbated so much of what
we already knew to be true.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
So why does everybody hate the Jews?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Well, look, it's important to understand anti semitism right. Anti
Semitism is unlike so many other forms of bigotry. It
functions as a form of prejudice or bias in and
of itself, and that alone, of course, leads to attacks
against Jews simply because they're Jews. But unlike other forms

(04:01):
of religious or racial or ethnic bigotry, anti Semitism also
operates as an overarching conspiracy theory rooted in lies and
tropes about Jewish power and influence, and so because it
functions that way, it serves to not just operate as

(04:22):
you know, disdain, but actually allows it to apply to
virtually any circumstance in which something bad is happening and
someone needs to be blamed, right, whether it is whether
it is you know, the idea of the changes happening
to our country, the demographic changes that some on the

(04:42):
far right are seeking to pin on the Jewish community.
This idea of Jews will not replace us or the
American government support for Israel in this moment which many
want to pin on Jewish power and influence rather than
necessarily American interests the region, there needs to be some

(05:03):
sort of puppet master or h or uh control, someone
controlling and pulling the strengths. And so the way that
antisemitiism functions in this way, as this conspiracy theory allows
it to take root and manifest in so many different

(05:25):
circumstances that are in some cases tied to specific ideologies
and in other cases totally removed from the ideological spectrum,
and operate simply as as these sorts of conspiracy theories
targeting Jews.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
But you know, if the Jews have all the money.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
If that were true, I don't know. I would have
a bigger apartment, I think.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
But what do you know? These are tropes that you
hear in a regular basis. Your job is fighting anti semitism.
So someone says the Jews have all the money. What's
the response to that.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Well, it gets It's much more complicated than that, right, So,
we have a number of anti Semitic tropes that have,
according to research from the EDL and others, definitely become
more prevalent in recent years. We've seen these increase from
a handful small percentage of Americans buying into these anti

(06:19):
Semitic troops ten years ago to a much more significant
portion buying into five six anti semitic tropes at any
given time. And so what that tells us is that
there has been this sort of normalization of anti semitism.
In some cases, it manifests in the tropes that you
just talked about. And I will say, it's not even

(06:40):
necessarily meant maliciously in certain cases, right, some people are
simply saying. Some people sort of see these tropes as compliments,
and how we engage people in understanding that when you
talk about Jewish money, when you talk about Jewish power
and control, it can easily be perceived or shape shift

(07:01):
into more explicitly anti Semitic tropes that further these harmful
narratives and that make Jews unsafe. And so what we
have seen be most effective in actually addressing some of
these are actually one on one conversations where we're helping
people understand why something like that furthers the broader conspiracy

(07:21):
theories and narratives that we know make Jews and frankly
all of us less safe.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Okay, So let's say we're having a one on one
conversation and I say, but Jews have all the money.
What do you say?

Speaker 2 (07:36):
That is rooted in longstanding, age old anti Semitic tropes
related to Jews and power. The Historically, many have tried
to pin financial control and other forms of power on
the Jewish community as a means to scapegoat the Jewish
community for the ills of society. And when we talk

(07:58):
about Jews as having all of this control, having all
of this money, having all of this financial power, it
only seeks to reinforce these tropes and the broader conspiracy
theories that they fuel making Jews less safe and brought
more broadly, fueling distrust in our democracy and in our
society in a way that makes all of us less safe.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
But where does it come from, Why does everybody think
Jews have all this money?

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well, it comes from these age old anti Semitic tropes
and narratives that have been around for millennia at this point,
going back to you know, to Shylock, going back to
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and everything in between,
in which Jews were really painted as as people who

(08:51):
used the financial system, who used power to effectively control things,
to influence things.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
And so.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
It is deeply connected to those millennia old manifestations of
anti Semitism are deeply connected to what we see today.
There's nothing new under the sun when it comes to
anti Semitism, but rather it is just manifesting in new,
specific ways tied to the issues of the moment, whether

(09:21):
it be those who are talking about Jewish efforts again
to change the demographics of our country or to support Israel,
or to otherwise connect the dots to what they believe
to be what they believe to be the ills of
the moment.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Okay, if you go back one hundred years ago, Blacks
and Jews were aligned in America, there's suddenly, well not suddenly,
there was eventually a bifurcation about fifty sixty years ago.
What is that tension between black people and Jews about?

Speaker 2 (10:00):
I would argue that there isn't actually attention there. There
are many who want us to feel like that there's
feel like there's attention there, when in fact, we know
societies in which black people in which Jewish people are safe,
are safer societies for everyone, and that the advancement of

(10:21):
civil rights, the fight against extremism, against racism, against anti
semitism are all inextricably linked. And so that there are
many across the political spectrum who seek to tear communities apart,
who think that by pitting our communities against each other,
by painting the safety of one community as zero sum,

(10:44):
and that the rights the advancement of any one community
comes at the expense of another community, it makes it
harder for us to actually be in solidarity with one
another and advance the broader framework that we know necessary
to all of us being safe.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Okay, well, well, let's cut through the BS so subsequent
to the war, there are a number of organizations of
Black Life Matters that didn't necessarily represent every Black person
in America or even everybody in that organization who literally
came out in favor of the Palestinians and against the Jews.
It's hard to believe that the African Americans and the

(11:25):
Jews are aligned under those circumstances.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Again, I think that there are extremest voices in specific communities,
including some of those statements that you're referencing, that are
not reflective of the entire community that went to extreme positions,
positions that I find abhorrent in terms of labeling hamas
as active terror as active resistance, but again, are not

(11:49):
representative where the vast majority of the community actually is.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Okay, so let's switch. So we had these Black Lives
Matters protests across a maria across the world in the
wake of what happened in Minnesota. But other than in
France the other day, where one hundred thousand people came
to march, we don't see an equivalent march for Jews

(12:14):
against anti Semitism. Why not.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I'm headed to DC tomorrow for a massive march against
anti Semitism and support of Israel, and so I expect
there will be tens of thousands of people there with me,
and that they'll come from a variety of different communities.

(12:38):
It's there are a lot of people who have shown
up in very different ways over the last five weeks.
It's very easy to feel like we are isolated and
alone right now, and there are very good reasons too.
There are many who are trying to make the Jewish
community feel as if there is no one standing with us,
and the loudest voices who are spreading that sort of bikertry,

(13:01):
including some of the statements that you reference, are getting
outsized attention. But if you actually look at who's showing up,
from government officials, elected officials from the federal, state and
local levels, to community partners, there are many people who
have actually come and stood with the Jewish community, who
has spoken out against Tamas's terror attack, who've demanded the
release of the hostages, who have specifically called out rising

(13:25):
anti semitism and hate in this moment. And so what
we need to be doing is continuing to empower and
amplify those voices that are speaking out for us, that
are showing up in allyship in whatever form that takes,
in the form of statements, in the forms of showing
up at marches and pro Israel and protests against anti Semitism,

(13:50):
in the form of building relationships across communities, recognizing that
even in this moment, we are not going to necessarily
agree with all of our neighbors about the policy solutions
to these early Palestinian conflict, but that we can agree
that the rising anti Semitism we're seeing the ripple effects
of this conflict from anti Semitism to that the Islamophobian,
anti Arab hate targeting those communities is a crisis for

(14:13):
all of us, and we need to be working together
to mitigate it. And so there are people who are
absolutely showing up, not nearly as many as some of
us would have hoped, but it's important not to lose
sight of that because it's precisely what extremists want is
to make Jews feel isolated and alone. In this moment.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
What is BBS.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
BDS is boycott's divestments and sanctions of Israel.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
And who is behind BDS just the kids on campus,
other people in America. What is delivering its.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
Strength BDS is more of a movement, so it's hard
to say that any one individual or group is behind it.
It there are a number of organizations, students, others who
support the BDS movement. As you can imagine, I oppose
the BDS movement. It's a tool that some are using

(15:15):
to try to effectively put pressure on Israel when Israel
is directly isolated and treated uniquely, treated differently than any
other country. It of course raises specific issues and concerns,
and so there are many who, of course oppose the

(15:38):
BDS movement for that reason.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Is or is not the BDS movement supported by the
Palestinians in ways that are not obvious, both financially in
terms of direction.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
I'm not sure I understand the question.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Well, Noah Tishby basically says another commentator in this sphere
that BDS is not as benign as it looks on
the surface, that it's an active organization funded and directed
by Palestinians in the Middle East. Is that something you
agree with?

Speaker 2 (16:13):
I do not know who's funding the BBS movement. This
is not my area of expertiation.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Okay, okay, then let's move on from that. So why
all of this Jew hate an anti Israel sentiment on
college campuses at this time.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Well, you know I was. I was a student leader
when I was in college over fifteen years ago.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
At this well, well, well, slow down, said on where'd
you go to college? And what exactly did being a
student leader mean?

Speaker 2 (16:48):
So I went to Tufts University in Boston, and I
was the president of Hillel on campus, the Jewish student organism.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Well, let's go back before that. So where did you
grow up? Up?

Speaker 2 (17:00):
In New York?

Speaker 1 (17:01):
But New York, New York City, the suburbs.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
I grew up on Long Island. Although I try to
mask my accent, you.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Do a good job of that. Did you grow up
in one of the so called five towns?

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Not far from there, but not in one of them?

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Okay? But the reason I bring that up is you
grew up in an environment where there was a strong
Jewish presence.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Absolutely. Look, I grew up in a heavily Jewish area.
I was the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, very Jewishly connected,
going to synagogue every Saturday, going to Hebrew School. Even
after my butmtz By going to what was called Hebrew
High School for continuing education. And so even though I
went to public school, Jewish education, Jewish engagement was front

(17:51):
and center in my life, and so it very much
I think shaped everything I did, even if I resisted
it at times. And clearly now I'm running a Jewish organization.
And perhaps if you had told me decades ago that
this is what I would be doing, I might not

(18:12):
have believed you. But the ways in which that Jewish
upbringing has shaped my path has become pretty clear in
recent years.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
How many kids in the family.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
I was one of two and the older. I'm the
older sibling and went to school at Toughts.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Well, okay, let me, what does your sibling do?

Speaker 2 (18:40):
She works in marketing, so.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
She has nothing professionally, She's not in this sphere.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Correct. She is, of course jewishly engaged in her own way.
But I am the maybe call it a massachist, the
person who decided to become a professional Jew in my day. Jab.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Okay, your parents? What did your parents do for work?

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Both my parents were New York City public school teachers,
and I think in many ways that really shaped my
outlook on the world as well. I remember them coming
home frustrated with the state of the city. They were
in New York City Public schools and queens, and you know,
frustrated with funding, frustrated with their contract disagreements that they

(19:28):
were having from the city, And it really, in so
many ways put me on a path in terms of
public service and government. And so seeing that firsthand, it
really I think influenced my outlook on the world, the
ways in which government could be a tool for good

(19:51):
or for bad, and the impact that, in particular, local
government could have in a sort of an outsized way
on people's lives. And I spent a good portion ended
up spending a good portion of my career in state
and local government, partially because of the impact I saw
it have on the day to day of my own parents'
lives teaching for decades in the New York City public schools.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Okay, you're obviously very dedicated to the cause. Are you
an outlier or you following in the jet stream of
your parents? Were they as active and involved going to
synagogue Jewish causes as you are?

Speaker 2 (20:34):
My mom, perhaps more so than my dad. You know,
my mom's parents are Holocaust survivors, and when they came
to the United States and had my mom, I think
it was important for them to be Jewishly connected because
they were persecuted, they watched their entire families be killed
simply because they were Jewish, and so to come here

(20:56):
to a place where they could practice that religion freely
and openly in whatever form that took felt important, and
so that Jewish connection ran I think throughout that side
of my family and directly in many ways, sort of

(21:16):
shaped how I grew up. And the fact that synagogue,
that Jewish engagement, that the sort of social action side
of Judaism was such a big piece of the puzzle.
I think, you know, again, it manifested in different ways
for different members of my family, but I think at

(21:38):
the end of the day, so much of it feels
rooted in our own family history and the need and
the desire to feel like we are creating and living
a better life here than what my grandparents escaped from
not that long ago.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
I see a stroller in the background, will tend to
indicate you have a baby. This is audio only your
significant other. Are they Jewish?

Speaker 2 (22:04):
They're not, But we are raising our child Jewish, and
I think is very you know, our family has very much,
I think been rooted in so many of the values
of Judaism in shaping how we live our lives, our

(22:28):
responsibility to make things better, to leave the world a
little better for the next generation, to know everything from
the Jewish traditions that are a day to day part
of our lives to I think those overarching values, and
it has been really meaningful to sort of see that

(22:49):
all come together, having our first child and passing that
on and experiencing that with them in new ways.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Who performed the wedding ceremony.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
A dear friend of mine from college who's a rabbi.
We were on the Hillel student board together. She married
us and it was incredibly meaningful. It is particularly fun
to see your friends become rabbis because it didnotes some

(23:23):
sort of level of wisdom and expertise, which they absolutely have.
But when you knew them when they were nineteen, it's
funny to juxtapose those two things.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Okay, I certainly heard from a young age that I
should marry a Jewish person. I've been married once the
person converted to their own volition. How did you feel
when you fell in love with somebody who wasn't Jewish.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
I did not expect to be talking about this. For me,
it's always about how you live your life. And I
don't think that anyone could necessarily argue that I'm not
living a Jewish life, given what I've done professionally and
given what I'm doing personally. And so for me, it
was really about, you know, there was no question there

(24:12):
if this was the person I'm supposed to be with,
if they were open to raising my child, our child Jewish,
if they were open to the Jewish values and practices
that were important to me, That's all that mattered. And
my partner is very much so open to that, engaged
in that. You know, we go to tat Shabat and

(24:34):
all of the fun things that come with being the
parent of a young, young Jewish child in New York
and and that has been incredibly meaningful to see.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
And what does your significant other do for a living?

Speaker 2 (24:50):
He worked, He's a longtime journalist who has now moved
into sort of the tech and anti disinformation space.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
Okay, the reason to bring all this up is many
people believe that it will cease being Judaism on the
planet as a result of intermarriage. I even see this
in the next generation of my sister's kids. Do you
have a take on that?

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Well, I think we need to be in. You know,
we're not going to change the fact that Jews are intermarrying.
That is a very real part of the reality of
American Jews in particular. The question is how are we
engaging those people and those couples and families so that
they stay Jewishly connected, And that could take a variety

(25:37):
of arms. It could take the form of religious tradition
and practice the holidays, engaging them through synagogue. It can
be engaging through Jewish values on social action and advocacy.
It could be making sure that we are just simply
creating spaces for intermarried couples, inter faith couples to grapple

(25:57):
with the very real questions and challenges that so can
come up in those relationships. And so we're never going
to stop the fact that We're never going to stop
the fact of intermarriage, particularly here in America. But what
we can do is make sure that we are not
losing people from being engaged Jewishly because we've made them

(26:17):
feel unwelcome in the community simply because they are intermarried.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
On the other end of the spectrum, there are very
Orthodox people. We're having a lot of children saying that
they're saving the religion. But if one pays attention to
the media. There's a lot of stories that these kids
are going to yeshiva's, are not fully educated, that in
certain communities they're taking over the school boards, they're getting

(26:45):
a disproportionate amount of welfare. What is your response to that?
How do you know that's not a good image for
Jews in general?

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Look, the Jewish community is remarkably diverse. It includes everyone
from Hasidic Ardi Jews. I live in Brooklyn, which is
perhaps one of the most diverse cross sections of the
Jewish community in the world, from Salt Mars and Assitic
Jews and Williamsburg and Borough Park to Orthodox Conservative, reform Reconstructionist,

(27:17):
unaffiliated Jews. And how we are understanding the fact that
this Jewish, that the Jewish community is inclusive of all
of these different means of practice, that there is not
one single type of Jew that is the correct Jew
or the right Chew. And in fact, we're seeing deliberate
efforts by some including I would argue politicians who traffic

(27:40):
and anti Semitic troops tropes to specifically distinguish between good
and bad Jews, to say that some Jews are loyal
and good to certain politicians, to the same of Israel
or otherwise, and some are not, And that for me
tells me we have we are. It is more urgent
than ever that we take a broad view of what

(28:04):
the Jewish tent is and do everything in our power
to keep that broad, to keep that inclusive, to make
sure that we are welcoming people in from a broad
array of Jewish backgrounds. That doesn't mean that, of course,
we don't need to be ensuring yeshivas are teaching important

(28:26):
secular skills in other curriculum. It doesn't mean that there
aren't social service needs and challenges that we need to
grapple with and support the community in addressing. But it
is important that we, truly, I think, embrace and support

(28:47):
the diversity of the Jewish community. There are so few
of us in this world that we should never be
leaving a single person on the table simply because we
disagree with how they practice their Let's.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Go back to Tufts. I went to college at Middlebury College,
small college in Vermont.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Now this is long behind part of the NEZCAC. The
New England small college.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Athletics absolutely listen to you. Although the sports were not
such a big deal when I went there, they are now.
But the reason I mention this is because forty five
percent of the students were from prep schools and growing
up in a suburb in Connecticut. Although Jews were far
from the majority, there was an overall Jewish feeling that

(29:31):
I did not feel in college. Certainly, Tufts has more Jews,
But to what degree was it a difference going from
your enclaveon on Long Island to Malden, mass and being
itself's Yeah, look for me.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
It was in so many ways both very similar and
deeply different. So in terms of its similarities, I think
both Long Island and Tufts have pretty significant Jewish populations.
I used to be a campus tour guide. I believe
the percentage I would share on my tours was Tuffs
was twenty seven percent Jewish at the time I was there,

(30:08):
So it was not a small population considered. You know,
we are two percent of the American population. Twenty seven
percent of Tufts hellel which was the Jewish student group
I led, was I believe the largest student group on
campus at one point, or one of the largest student groups.
So it was a community that, again I think was
quite diverse in terms of you know, religious practice and

(30:30):
engagement and in many ways, I think, you know, aligned
with where I grew up in terms of having a
strong and large Jewish community. Where it really differed in
where it opened my eyes, which was understanding the ways
in which everything else I was doing in college, the

(30:51):
active citizenship. I was a political science major, I spent
a year studying in Israel. It helped me really can
the dots between the different parts of my identity with
my Judaism, Understanding that Judaism wasn't simply you know, going
to synagogue or going to Shabbat services on the weekend,

(31:13):
wasn't simply celebrating the holidays, but also really doing the
hard work of advocacy and active citizenship and engagement of
understanding Israel on the conflict of being engaged in these
issues in a way that for me was so eye opening,

(31:34):
having really not spent time learning or thinking about so
many of them before then, and so to be able
to sort of connect the dots between my Jewish identity
and my career path right the values that I wanted
to that I wanted to live was particularly unique to

(31:57):
my experience at Toughs and something I'm deeply grateful for actually.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Okay, so I interrupted you with his backstory. You were
talking about being ahead of Hillel at toughs.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yes, you know, when I was a student. I graduated
over fifteen years ago, But when I was a student,
it felt like we could actually have constructive conversations about
Israel on campus. There wasn't always agreement, things didn't always
end in kumbaya, but I think we were generally able

(32:29):
to have challenging conversations in a way that felt meaningful
and constructive. In the years since, it seems like that
has gone out the window college campus, as much like
our politics and society more broadly, have become even more polarized,
and in particular, it feels like the ways in which

(32:49):
Jewish students or students who support Israel have been isolated
on college campuses is one of the greatest symptoms of that.
We are seeing just a level of sort of irrational
hatred and targeting and isolation of Jewish students related to

(33:12):
the Israel conversation that is unlike anything I ever experienced
when I was a student, and frankly anything that we've
seen in a number of the years in between the
last five to six weeks since October seventh have really
been a masks off movement where we've seen just vile,
vitriolic anti Semitism manifest in new explicit ways on college

(33:37):
campuses under the guise of protesting Israel. This doesn't mean
that there isn't very real conversations and debate to have
and how we best distinguished between people's right to free
speech to criticize the Israeli government to oppose is Israel's

(33:58):
actions with that are in turn directly targeting the Jewish
community simply for being Jewish or holding them accountable for
Israel's actions is going to be all the more important
in the weeks ahead because we're seeing those lines blurred
in so many cases and it's making students unsafe.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
So what change to cause this?

Speaker 2 (34:21):
It's you know, I've been deep and polled ATA over
the last five or so weeks since October seventh, and
every poll and every survey tells us that the biggest
issue and the places where we have the most challenge
in terms of anti Semitism, in terms of anti Zionism,

(34:41):
in terms of other issues like that is less connected
to ideology and more connected to age than anything. It's
telling us that gen Z the generation that has effectively
been raised on social media, whether it be TikTok or
Instagram or anything else, and therefore gets the vast majority

(35:03):
of their news from those sites. Either simply doesn't understand
the conflict, doesn't understand the ways in which debate around
Israel can and sometimes does morph into anti Semitism, or
in some places, actually do believe what they're saying, And

(35:25):
so starting to address this requires us to first understand
what the problem is, which is that this very age
specific ignorance and in some cases vitriol that is unique

(35:48):
to a specific generation that has again been raised almost
exclusively on social media in a way that is different
than any of the generations before, and so address seeing it,
I think first requires us to understand that as opposed
to trying the sort of one size fits all approach
to countering anti Semitism that for so long we've been using.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
And so what might we do.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Well, there's a lot that we can do, I think,
one differentiating and understanding the complexity of this. Right, So,
there are those who are actually anti Semitic, there are
those who are actually defending Hamas's terror attack, But for
the vast majority of people, it's rooted less so and

(36:42):
malicious and more so in ignorance, and so education, education
actually matters. There have been a number of surveys that
show that have shown that if you actually educate people,
if you share some basic facts about the conflict, about
the history of Israel and the Palestinians, it actually moves
the needle and helping them understand what's happening and reduce

(37:07):
some of the polarized biases that we're seeing. I think
it also requires us to step back and provide more
structural solutions media and digital literacy. So much of what
is flying around on social media is rooted in disinformation
and hate and extremism. And if we are not actually

(37:31):
teaching kids, teaching educators and schools and parents how to
engage on social media, how to teach our kids to
engage on social media in a critical way that's able
to actually understand what's real and what's not, what's intended
to be incendiary, and what is actually facts, this is

(37:52):
only going to continue. So there are some very specific
tools that are out there, tools from places like an
organization I'm on the of, the Polarization and Extremism Research
and Innovation Lab, which is a mouthful at American University
specifically intended to help people inoculate their kids and their
students to some of the hate online. Tools from places

(38:15):
like the Western State Center and the Southern Poverty Law
Center focused on this specific bills and other policy solutions
aimed at requiring schools to be teaching media and digital literacy.
And so we've been grappling with a crisis of extremism
and hate and disinformation on social media long before October seventh,

(38:36):
But I think October seventh, in so many ways, ripped
off the band aid and made crystal clear how that
is manifesting, particularly among younger Americans, and we're seeing it
play out more than anything on college campuses right now.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
So what are some of the falsehoods you encounter and
what are the truths these people should be aware of.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Well, you know, a big narrative right now is this
idea of Israel as a colonizer. Right We see this
in so many different places, and what that presupposes is
a few things. It suggests that first, Israel and the
Jewish people have no connection to the land, when we
know that the Jewish people have had deep connection to
the Land of Israel for millennia, and that is specifically

(39:23):
why Israel was formed where it was formed. It also
fundamentally miss understands who the Israeli people are. Israel is
comprised of people from of Jews from all over the world,
as well as Arabs, Bedouins, and others, including Jews who
were refugees from Arab countries, from African countries, and so

(39:50):
so much of this idea sort of of the Israeli
Palestinian conflict, this idea of trying to apply American dynamics
of and white supremacy to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, is
rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of what the conflict is
and what the history is. And again, the data tells

(40:13):
us that when we actually step back and begin to
educate people about this, to share that history, to share
you know, who the Israeli people are, it helps people
recognize that that framework might not actually apply here.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Okay, so there are mores throughout history. In my lifetime,
in my studies, I've never seen a country attacked where
so many people say, don't fight back. I don't think
that would be the case. I warrant the Jews, what
do you think, Well.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Look, this gets into much deeper and more convoluted questions
about is and its history that we probably then we
probably have time for here. But look, I think that
that two things are true. Right. There has absolutely been
the ways in which Israel has been disproportionately targeted and attacked,

(41:16):
both in terms of the actual attacks on Israel and
then in the international community's reaction to it, the disproportionate
attention directed at Israel that in certain places can actually
be rooted in anti Semitism or at least anti Zionism,
and similar or rather on the flip side, is the

(41:39):
fact that at the end of the day, the only
solution here is a political solution. Israel has an absolute
right to defend itself. I support Israel in defending itself
right now, and I also know that down the road
eventually the only solution to this conflict is one that

(42:00):
involves two states living side by side that is reached
through a political peace agreement. Because there is no military
solution to this conflict, Hamas needs to be upgraded, Hamas
needs to be held accountable for its barbaric terror attack,
and long term we will still need a political solution.

(42:20):
And so how we are holding all of that complexity,
how we are both simultaneously defending Israel's right to defend
itself following this barbaric terror attack and not losing sight
of the very real need for a long term political solution.
If the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are ever

(42:43):
going to be safe and ever going to live in peace,
is crucial here.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Okay. Even from the formation of Israel in the forties,
the Palestinians were offered their own state. There have been
efforts to create a two state solution, even in the
last couple of decades. Multiple times. In each case it
was the Palestinians who rejected that offer. And we hear

(43:12):
this statement which is now being populated throughout the world
from the river to the sea, which means the eradication
of Israel. So when the war began, my inbox said Pepe,
from people, I want peace, I want a two state solution,
and I agree with you, each people having their own

(43:34):
state would be the best of circumstances. But so far
we have one side who does not desire that.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
There's no other choice. I don't think we had. There's
no solution for the long term in which a singles
we're having a single state leads to Jewish safety or
to any of the self determination both people need. So
at the end of the day, the only option is
two states, one Israelian one Palestinian, living side by side

(44:06):
in peace and security. That doesn't mean that it's going
to be easy, that doesn't mean that there are comparable
partners for peace in any direction, but it does mean
that we have no other choice. A one state solution
would either be given the population that exists, either an

(44:26):
anti democratic state or a non Jewish state. And if
we want a Jewish and democratic homeland, the only option
is two states.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Okay, let's go underneath that. Let's go more micro. So
you have all these people, especially on college campuses. I
want peace now, some of them want is real eradicated,
and I want a two state solution. But as a
practical matter, Hamas entered Israeli land killed four digits worth

(44:59):
of people. And let me put it a little bit differently,
let's go all the way back. For those of us
who are older than you are, we lived through the
sixty seven War, six Day War. All of a sudden,
that was the beginning of the legend of invincibility of
the Israelis. Then we had seventy two in Munich at

(45:24):
the Olympics. We had the seventy three war, which lasted
much longer, but subsequent to that there was constant burnishing
of the image of Mo sad Okay. So since there
hasn't been anything of this significance or this volume in decades,
there's certainly been actions Elebanon and what's going on in

(45:45):
the West Bank. People see the Israelis is almighty aggressors.
Yet we have this terrorist group Pamas based in the
Gods Strip who say they will never stop fighting. So

(46:06):
is a practical matter what should the Israelis do now?

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Well, I think you're getting there's a lot there. So
there's a long history and then there's the specific dynamics
of this moment. And I think there was a specific
New York Times story last week where Hamas did an
interview saying specifically that their goal is constant war, and
so for many that just underscores the need to actually

(46:32):
uproot and destroy Hamas. That doesn't change the fact that Israel,
for example, has an obligation to protect Palestinian civilian lives.
That when Hamas of course does things to put Palestinian
civilian lives in harms way. That makes that even harder.
But it's important that we not lose sight of this complexity. Right,

(46:56):
that this is intentionally what Hamas wants here. They want
a constant state of war, and therefore Israel has a
right and frankly responsibility to do something about that. And
at the same time, it doesn't change its own obligations
to protect Palestinian civilian lives however possible.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
And so.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
What's what we need to be conveying is all of
that complexity. I think the President President Biden has done
a phenomenal job conveying that complexity, making clear what he expects,
making clear his deep support for Israel and its right
to defend itself even while cautioning about its responsibilities to
protect civilian lives. And so too, must we hold that

(47:45):
complexity and talking to people about this this conflict and
make clear that we are separating Hamas from the Palestinian people,
that they are not one and the same, that Hamas
is not the future of the Palestinian people, and that
they in so many ways have put Palestinian lives directly
in harm's way as a result of their brutal terror attack.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
What do you say to the people calling for a ceasefire.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Look, I don't understand how we could have a ceasefire
with an organization that has made crystal clear as recently
as just a few days ago that their goal is
constant war with Israel. First, there are still nearly two
hundred and forty hostages babies, children, grandparents who are being
held in Gaza and have been held there for over
five weeks. These include not just Israelis, but Americans as

(48:35):
well as suple variety of countries, and so first and foremost,
we need the hostages released. Second of all, Hamas has
made very clear what their intent is, which is a
state of constant war, and so there needs to be
both a path forward that addresses the humanitarian concerns in Gaza,

(48:58):
but that doesn't simply lead of Israel susceptible and open
to repeated attacks from Hamas, which is precisely what they
have made clear is their goal. And so again we
so often see this conflict in black and white terms
ceasefire or no ceasefire, when in actuality, there are ways

(49:19):
to both address the humanitarian conditions protect Palestinian lives. However,
possible while still ensuring that a terrorist organization that murdered
and abducted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people is
being held accountable and those people are and the hostages

(49:40):
are hopefully being freed.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Okay, let's shift back to our nation. So what we've
noticed since October seventh is a schism in the Democratic
Party from what is labeled the far left to the mainstream.
We even had a member of Congress who was censured
over her pro Palestinian comments. How does one bring the

(50:05):
Democratic Party together on this issue?

Speaker 2 (50:10):
I would argue that the Democratic Party is actually pretty
united on this issue, and there's a couple voices who
have been the outliers, But first and foremost the leader
of the party, President Biden. His moral clarity has been
unbelievable in the last five weeks. I was part of
the initial meeting at the White House with the President
and others in the days after October seventh. He spoke

(50:32):
not just with deep moral clarity, but from a deeply
personal place, making clear that this matters to him personally,
speaking about how he brings his kids and his grandkids
to Dajao to see the horrors of the holocaust, firsthand
and make them understand never again, our obligation to fight
anti Semitism in all of its forms. And so the

(50:52):
leader of the Democratic Party has been unbelievably clear in
his allyship and solidarity with the Jewish people, in his
support for Israel at this dire moment, and I think again,
in exhibiting the sort of moral clarity that we so
desperately need. And we've seen that from a huge amount
of elected officials across the spectrum. And so while there

(51:15):
are some specific voices that are certainly not aligned with
that vision, it is not where the vast majority of
Democrats are or the vast majority of Americans, and so
it's easy to feel like there are many against us
in this moment. The loudest voices tend to get outsized impact,

(51:37):
outsized detention on social media, and outsized criticism. Rightfully so,
but it's crucial that we not lose sight that the
vast majority of our country's leaders have been strongly and
clearly standing with the Jewish community in this deeply painful
and dramatic moment.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Okay, within the year, we're going to have a residential election,
although only six states are really going to count there
are polls that indicate Trump is doing well in those
six states, and people on the left will say, well,
if Trump gets elected, democracy is in question. So it

(52:19):
is a one percent or a very small percentage of
people who will ultimately decide this election. So people have
to want to vote be who will they vote for.
So I agree with you, the generally elected people in
Washington are behind the Israelis on this, but there is

(52:41):
a significant sentiment amongst the population who are not.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
And I think it's important to actually distinguish what we're
talking about here because the vast majority of Americans actually
really complex views on this. I think we don't give
people enough crist it. But if you look at the
poll data, the vast majority of Americans actually support Israel.
They believe that Israel has a right to defend itself,

(53:08):
and they are also concerned that, for example, Israel is
not doing enough to protect Palestinian civilians. And so they're
able to hold all of those complex thoughts at the
same time. And it speaks to the importance of having
that nuance, having that complexity in how we're addressing this conflict,

(53:28):
because that's actually where the vast majority of people are
and so again, it's really easy to feel like those
loudest voices are dominating the conversation. But every single poll,
every single survey I've seen, and I've been deep in
these over the last few weeks, tells us that we
are not alone in this moment, and we have to

(53:50):
do a lot of work to ensure that remains the case.
But that people are showing up, and they're showing up
not simply in support of Israel, but perhaps even more importantly,
showing up for the Jewish community at a time when
the ripple effects of this conflict are translating to very
real anti semitism here at home.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Okay, you mentioned earlier the reasons why we can't have
a cease fire. New York Times came out for a ceasefire.
They continue, that's the position of the paper on the
editorial page. They continue to print pro cease fire opinion pieces,
and almost none that's saying we shouldn't have a ceasefire.

(54:32):
I hear from Jews saying we should have a cease fire.
So yes, we might have universal universals too struggle. We
might have a majority agreement that Israel should be able
to exist and defend itself. But I'm also seeing people
who are afraid to say that there shouldn't be a ceasefire.

(54:57):
I see my inbox people say, don't use my name.
They don't want to go on record if I say
there shouldn't be a ceasefire. The blowbacks unbelievable. I lose
subscribers to my newsletter, so I am not so sure
that really everybody's on the same page. Let me reiterate.
I think a lot of people on the left are

(55:18):
blinking fearful of being criticized themselves for saying there should
be no cease fire. So this I believe is problematic
right now, Yes, our government and the Israeli government are
not stopping, but the sentiment of the public seems to
be the opposite.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Look I think, I think we need to distinguish between
what is a difference of policy and actual maliciousness. Right so,
I think good people can disagree at a certain point
over whether there should be a ceasefire or a humanitarian pause,

(56:04):
or all of the different policy solutions that are out there.
I know where I stand, and I'm deeply concerned about
what a ceasefire in the full sense would mean for
Hamas and its ability to continue to attack innocent civilians.
And I also know that there are some people who
support a ceasefire who I don't agree with, but who

(56:25):
also are able to simultaneously condemn Hamas and specifically, most
importantly call out the anti Semitic ripple effects that we're
seeing here at all. And so it's figuring out where
those lines are so that we are separating maliciousness from policy, disagreements,

(56:45):
from ignorance, and from all of those different pieces. It's
very easy to conflate everyone who is against us in
different forms into sort of one big bucket. But at
the end of the day, if we distinguish between those who,
for example, support a cease fire but are speaking out

(57:06):
forcefully against anti semitism, speaking out about the importance of
Israel and its right to exist, from those who might
just simply be ignorant and are latching on to the
easy hashtags and slogans, to those who are indeed malicious
and are for example, celebrating Hamas's attack as an active

(57:27):
resistance or celebrating the targeting of Jews to hold them
accountable for Israel's actions, or anything in between. And so
how we again really understand that there's complexity there, and
it's our job to figure out who we are simply
disagreeing with, who we can educate, who we can bring

(57:48):
along in a way that expands the base of support,
not just for Israel in this moment, but specifically.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Okay, I understand all that, but let's dig a little deeper.
I constantly hear we hear this from Roger Waters of
Pink Floyd. I'm not against the Jews, I'm not anti Semitic.
It's Israel. Whereas those of us who are Jews listen
to a lot of the comments, say this is inherently
anti Semitic. It's like people who say, hey, I'm not

(58:21):
racist and then evidence racist behavior. So yes, you and
me both agree. You can criticize Israel and its policies
and not be anti Semitic. But money people are criticizing
Israel's policies were saying they're not anti semitic, actually are antisemitic.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Well, this is the entire conversation right now, right, this
is exactly what we need to be engaging people on.
Because look, I like a few weeks before October seventh,
I was proud to speak outside the UN with other
major Jewish leaders protesting the rollback Act of Democracy in Israel.

(59:03):
Many people have illustrated how easy it is to criticize
Israel and Israeli policy without being anti Semitic. It's not
very hard. The same way we all criticize the American
government in American policy without fundamentally suggesting that America shouldn't
exist or engaging in bigoted tropes. What we are seeing

(59:27):
now is the ways in which Israel and the Jewish
people are conflated. Jewish people, organizations, and institutions are targeted
for the actions of the Israeli government. Terms like Zionists
are used to speak to not simply those who believe
in a Jewish homeland, but sort of used in nefarious

(59:47):
ways to perpetuate tropes about Jewish control and power. And so,
how we help people in this moment understand where that
line is between criticism of Israel which is and appropriate
and protect it under the First Amendment. To actual anti
semitism that directly isolates Jews, leads to violence against Jews,

(01:00:14):
and otherwise seeks to marginalize and isolate our community at
this tenuous moment is really important and that involves a
lot of hard conversations. It involves helping people understand why
anti semitism doesn't just harm Jews, but actually harms all

(01:00:36):
of us by sowing distrust in our democracy, by sowing
hatred that can end up targeting so many communities and
normalizing extremism at such a tenuous time. And so there's
a lot of work that we have to do in
that regard. It is specifically the work that we are
engaged in at JCPA in terms of building those relationships

(01:01:00):
between communities to better understand how deeply connected our safety is,
to better understand, for example, where the line is between
criticism of Israel and anti semitism, and to understand how
these conspiracy theories about Jews and Jewish power so often
times are utilized by extremists of different stripes to sow

(01:01:20):
that distrust in our democracy and our society.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
So, to what degree have you personally experienced anti semitism
in your life and since you've been in these public
roles in Jewish organizations, has personal anti Semitic attacks upon
you increased or decreased?

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Well, that is a challenging question. And you know, frankly,
some of the personal details about my life we're talking
about are not things they oftentimes share publicly because of
the very real anti Semitic and extremist threats and security
concerns I've had because of the nature of my work.
So before I came on as the CEO of JCPA,

(01:02:07):
I led an organization called Integrity First for America who
brought a lawsuit against the neo Nazis who attacked Charlottesville.
And as you could imagine, those Neo Nazis were not
so thrilled that we were holding them accountable in court,
and it led to some very direct threats against me
and my family. Letters sent to my home, email, social

(01:02:28):
media posts, and others directly targeting me, singing me out,
posting my photo and other identifying details. In fact, in
one case, I believe I was actually on my honeymoon.
I got a call from the FBI saying that they
had arrested someone who had been threatening me a number
of years ago. And so this was all fairly new

(01:02:50):
and jarring for me when it started. I grew up
at a time when Jews felt very safe in America.
My grandparents who had come here after surviving the Holocaust,
I think, in many ways their hope for their family.
It felt like it was coming to fruition that Jews
could live safely and freely in America without real concern

(01:03:13):
for our safety in the way that they lived growing up,
and I remember thinking how lucky I was to live
at this specific period of time in this country where
I was safe, and in the last ten years that
has changed dramatically. You can trace it back to a
number of incidents. For me, one of the sharpest moments

(01:03:37):
was Charlottesville. Was seeing neo Nazis with torches, embold and
empowered to chant things like Jews will not replace us
and blood and soil, which is an avowed Nazi slogan,
and descend on a community, surround a synagogues, around college students,
and attack people because of who they are and what
they believe. Much like the last few weeks have really

(01:04:02):
exposed a lot of the fissures and challenges that exist
in a variety of ways. I think Unite the Right
really was a mask off moment in that violent anti
Semitism became normalized. It became acceptable in our society in

(01:04:22):
a way that was frightening, and that directly helped fuel
and spur a broader cycle of extremism that targeted not
just the Jewish community in attacks like the Pittsburgh Synagogu
shooting and the Poe Jabad shooting, but also the Hispanic
community in Alpasso, the Black community in Buffalo, and a

(01:04:44):
variety of others. And so we've seen this cycle of
anti Semitism over the last decade or so, particularly the
last five to six years, in which it's become increasingly normalized,
increasingly permissible on social media, with very real world consequences.
And we know that it makes not just Jews unsafe,

(01:05:06):
but everyone unsafe because of the ways these conspiracy theories
operate and directly lead to targeting again not just of
Jewish people and organizations and institutions, but Black and Hispanic
and Muslim and other people who are seen as pawns
or tools of the Jewish community, and so many of
these conspiracies.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
Now, let's use an analogy of the Me Too movement
five years ago. As a result of that, men were
told what they could not say. Most men got the memo.
But being a man, there are things that are said
amongst men that are not written down or not publicized.
So therefore, when you've expressed an anti black sentiment, whether

(01:05:49):
you were a sportscaster or other person in the public eye.
You literally lost your job. So we know that anti
Semitism has been around for millennia, and we can't sit
here and eradicate anti semitism with a snap of our fingers. However,
and let's be point blank here to what degree did

(01:06:11):
Trump legitimize the anti Semitism which then added fuel to
the fire.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
In so many ways. The normalization of anti Semitism that
we've seen in recent years, and I'll say not just
anti Semitism, but broader hate fueled violence and extremism, came
directly from the top. It's not exclusive to Trump. There
were these challenges and symptoms that existed before him, But
what he did was effectively give license to it. He

(01:06:45):
to tell these extremists, whether they're Neo Nazis in Charlottesville
or white supremacists targeting Jews synagogue, or white supremacist targeting
black people or Hispanic people at their supermarkets, that their
views are permissible, that these conspiracy theories about efforts to
replace the white race, to change the demographics of our country,

(01:07:08):
to otherwise, you know, otherwise engage in these sorts of
conspiracy theories that we know are fundamentally rooted in anti semitism.
Trump and a number of other elected officials have effectively
normalized them in a way that has made it harder,
sort of put the genie back in the bottle. And

(01:07:31):
so we are now going into an election year where
we know that these conspiracy theories, these lies, this disinformation,
these efforts to pick communities against what another un weaponize
anti semitism, are only going to get worse. And it's
incumbent on everyone, including the media and others, not to

(01:07:54):
buy into that framework, not to help further normalize this
anti semitism in other forms of extremism, because that's precisely
what the goal is here. And make no mistake that
it's manifesting in different forms. We see among right wing
politicians like Trump or voices like Tucker Carlson, this normalization

(01:08:16):
of the great replacement theory of other anti Semitic conspiracy theories,
the ways in which political violence have been directly connected
to belief in these sorts of conspiracy theories, and in turn,
that cycle of extremism that's followed from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh
to Poway and al Paso on Buffalo and January sixth, Then,

(01:08:38):
beyond how this intersects with what we're now seeing on
college campuses and elsewhere, is not that these forms of
hate are exactly one and the same, but rather the
marginalization and isolation of Jewish students on college campuses or
in progressive spaces is because of Israel, because of support

(01:09:03):
for Israel or connection to Israel, serves the purpose of
effectively making it harder for us to build the coalitions
we need to then take on the increasingly normalized anti
Semitism and white supremacy we're seeing any other direction, and
so both of them are deeply dangerous. Both intend to

(01:09:25):
isolate and marginalize the Jewish community in different ways, and
they function differently and require us to confront them differently
because they are not the same thing, but they are
in so many ways inextricably linked because of how they
function and how in particular, what we're now seeing in

(01:09:49):
the aftermath of October seventh makes the coalition building and
the cross community relationships we desperately need in this moment
to combat increasively normalized extremism that much. Ha.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Okay, they say there's thirty five percent of the Republican
Party who are die hard Trumpers. I hear from people
on the right wing all day, every day, and it's
very much in us versus them dialogue. The democratic position
has traditionally been get out and vote. Okay, that's a

(01:10:24):
political but anti semitism knows no bounds. How do we
penetrate those people who are anti Semitic by principle? We
had an ex president who said, how can I be
anti Semitic? I have a daughter with Jewish children who
converted herself, even though there are comments he made that

(01:10:47):
would belie that. So what's our hope here?

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Look, I think there's a few things we need to
do first and foremost. I think it's to step back
and understand stand how our democratic norms and institutions and
values have been freed in recent years. And what we're
seeing is because of social media, because of the normalization
of extremism. That we were talking about the ways in
which these things have been giving given license at a platform,

(01:11:16):
we needed to actually step back and invest in our
democratic institutions and our norms. And there's very specific things
we can do. At JCPA. We are specifically building out
a democracy coalition that brings together these various pieces whether
it be the media and digital literacy that we talked
about earlier, empowering schools and educators and parents to make

(01:11:36):
sure people actually know what's real and what's not on
social media, how they are, how they are digesting what
they get from social media with a critical eye, critical
lens because of how much of these this bigotry and
disinformation spreads that way. It's investing in voting and civil

(01:11:57):
rights work to make sure that the fundamental rights we
prompt us our citizens in this country are protected. It's
combating book and curriculum bands that are aimed at undercutting
what students learn and that we know are not just targeting,
for example, the history of slavery and white supremacy in
this country, but have also now spilled over into the

(01:12:17):
curriculum and bands and Holocaust related books and education. It's
protecting our elections through the fundamental tenets of civic engagement,
through poll work and all of that. And so we
as a society have disinvested from the democratic norms and

(01:12:38):
institutions that we know are inherent to keeping communities safe
into combating the sort of polarization and extremism that you're describing.
And so if we actually begin to invest in that
infrastructure if we begin to understand how deeply connected are
these forms of conspiracy theories and hate are attempts to

(01:13:00):
undermine democracy, how they are intentionally utilized to so distrust
in our democracy, and therefore one of the ways we
combat them is to build trust in our democracy, to
build up the infrastructure of our democracy. And so that
is one thing that all of us can do, no
matter who we are and where we live, is really volunteer,

(01:13:21):
invest in engage in the infrastructure of democracy in our communities.
It's also important to help people understand how deeply interconnected
these forms of hate are right now that none of
them exist in a silo. We see how anti Semitism,
through these great replacement theories, fuel anti black racism, anti

(01:13:43):
immigrant hate, anti Muslim hate, anti LGBTQ hate, and we
see the cycle of violence fueled by these conspiracy theories
that have targeted so many different communities around this country,
no matter who they are, Black, Hispanic, Jews, and so on.
We also know that in this moment, we are seeing,

(01:14:04):
for example, neo Nazis recruit off of the anti LGBTQ,
anti trans events that we're seeing we're seeing them try
to utilize the abortion debate to recruit and so all
of this tells us that our safety is deeply interconnected.
Even at a moment when we see extremists trying to

(01:14:24):
tell us that this is zero sum, that's somehow fighting
anti Semitism is going to come at the expense of
the safety of other communities. The fighting Islamophobia is going
to come out at the expense of Jewish safety or
other communities safety. And we first need to get out
of the zero sum framework and understand the tackling hate
and all forms keeps all of us safe and makes

(01:14:45):
all of us safer, and recognize that it's not that
all of our safety is actually deeply interconnected. At the
end of the day, and if we are to take
on any form of hate, it requires taking o all
of these forms of hate because of the ways in
which they intersect. At this particularly tenuous moment where conspiracy

(01:15:07):
theories rooted in so many different forms of bigotry are
increasingly normalized.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
So tell me about your volvement and what you did
in Charlottesville.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
So you know I at the time when Unite the
Right happened, when the violence in Charlottesville happened. I was
working in the New York Attorney General's Office, leading communications
and policy, and it was grateful to be in that office.
We were on the front lines of a lot of
the efforts to protect Americans from the policy of this
of the Trump administration, the Muslim band, peal of doc
and so many others that were deeply at odds with

(01:15:47):
our fundamental civil rights and the values on which this
country was built. And when Unite the Right happened, it
really felt like again a mask off moment, when so
much that had been simmering under the surface, that had
been emboldened, particularly by the President and others, was all

(01:16:08):
of a sudden given license to parade violently down our streets,
to attack students, to espouse the most viol anti Semitic
and racist ideas, and then of course to culminate in
the deadly attack on a community that led to heather
Hire's death and the injury of so many others. And
so when some lawyers I knew from my prior work

(01:16:29):
reached out and said, hey, we'd we'd like to sue
the neo Nazis. Are you interested in working We're a.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
Little bit slower at this time, you're no longer working
in the AG's office.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
I was working in the AG's office and I got
a call from some of the lawyers who ultimately brought
the case, Robbie Kaplan and Karen Don, who said, we
want to sue the Nazis. Are you interested in working
with us? And I don't know what else I could
have done in that moment, but say yes, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
Just to understand, there's an organization Integrity for America. Where
does that fit into this?

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
So Integrity First for America, the organization I ran, was
created to really support this lawsuit, okay, to serve as
the vehicle for which we were able to move this
lawsuit forward. As you can imagine, even with tons of
pro bono legal work donated legal work, there are many
expenses related to coordinating a lawsuit of the size. We

(01:17:26):
had five law firms across the board.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
That okay, wait, let me let's go. Let's go back
a little bit slower. You get these calls, you say,
I'm in what's the next step?

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
So I came on as the executive director of Integrity First.
The lawsuit had been filed on behalf of nine community
members who were injured in the violence.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
Just a little bit slower. Did you give up your
job at the AG's office?

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
I did so. I did so. I left the AG's office,
which you know was was was sad because I'm a
deep believer in the power of state ags and local government.
But I think to be on the front lines of
this fight at a moment of rising extremism and anti
semitism was more meaningful than I probably anticipated it would be.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
Okay, you get the call from the lawyers. Did they
already have the nine plaintiffs or did you go to
find the ninth plaintiffs?

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Correct? So, the legal team had been on the ground
in the immediate aftermath of Unite the Right and had
connected to a number of folks, ultimately nine Charlottesville community
members who were injured in the violence. The bravest people
I know, people who, for example, two friends of Heather
Hier who had been with her that day marching peacefully

(01:18:45):
down the street against white supremacy in their community. Heather,
of course, was murdered by the car in the car attack.
Marissa and Marcus were severely injured but survived. People like
Natalie Romero and Devin Willis, who were UVA students at
the time University of Virginia students who were first surrounded

(01:19:08):
and attacked during the Torch march on Friday night on
their college campus by a bunch of Nazis, and then
somehow Natalie also ended up hit directly by the car
the next day and suffered, among other things, a fractured skull.
And so nine people all together who had shown up
to peacefully protest white supremacists descending on their campus, on

(01:19:30):
their town and were grievously injured as a result. And
what became clear very quickly was that what happened was
no accident. The social media chats that came out in
the weeks and days after Unite the Rate, including specifically
chats from the social media site Discord, showed that the

(01:19:50):
violence was actually planned long in advance, that there were
discussions about hitting protesters with cars and then claiming self defense.
And again what happened was no accident, but rather intended
to violently attack people based on who they are, their race,
their religion, and their willingness to stand up for the
rights with their neighbors. And so that is not speech,

(01:20:13):
that is not a clash between different sides. That's a racist,
anti Semitic violent conspiracy, and we have laws meant to
protect against that, and specifically, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit
with our team brought a case under a number of
federal and state statutes aimed at protecting protecting people's civil

(01:20:36):
rights and fundamental rights in the face of violent hate.
One of these statutes, the Ku Klux Klan Act of
eighteen seventy one, is precisely what it sounds like, an
over one hundred and fifty year old statue created to
protect recently freed slaves from clan violence in the South,
that has been used a number of times throughout history

(01:20:57):
to hold people accountable for their violent extreme and that
in the year twenty twenty three is somehow having a
bit of a resurgence because of the uptick in violent
hate that we've seen. And so this lawsuit, in so
many ways, really became a preview, not much like the

(01:21:17):
Charlottesville violence was, of how you hold accountable violent extremism
at a time when it was hitting record levels. There's
so much to say about the case.

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
I want to hear. So, Okay, you found the plaintiffs,
how did you find exactly who to sue?

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Great question? So there was a very lucky break. Early
on a site called Unicorn Riot, which is a non
profit journalism site, published these Discord chats, these social media
chats in which so much of the planning of the
violence happened. And in these chats they had all these
different channels illustrating every r engaging people are on everything

(01:21:59):
from transper rotation to know what to eat for lunch,
to weapons to different plans, and from those chats it
became very clear sort of who was in charge versus
who was simply their showing up, and ultimately the legal
team was able to identify twenty four defendants, some of
them individuals, some of them hate groups names like Richard Spencer,

(01:22:20):
who you might know as the guy who coined the
term alt right and circa twenty seventeen was sort of
the leading neo Nazi in America, groups like LEGA the South,
certain KKK groups, National Socialist Movement, Identity Europa and others,
and specifically using those chats, which again was a lucky break.

(01:22:42):
You don't quite you don't really get discovery that early
in most lawsuits, and of course our team subsequently subpoena
Discord and other social media sites for the full chats.
But through those initial leaks we were able to identify
who these defendants were, who these key organizers were, and

(01:23:03):
named them in the lawsuit in a way that unlike
most litigation, you don't have that level of detail beforehand.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
Okay, you serve these people in organizations. I'm following it
very externally in the news. What's going on in Virginia
in the bubble. What was the reaction to the lawsuit.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
Among the neo Nazis are among everybody?

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
What did you feel once it was filed? What did
you see in the landscape?

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
Well, I think it became very clear, very quickly that
Charlottesville wasn't an isolated incident, and so the importance of
this lawsuit became even more impactful. Right, So, within a
year of Charlottesville, we had, for example, the Pittsburgh attack,
in which eleven Jews were murdered in synagogue by a
white supremacist who a spouse many of the same ideas

(01:24:01):
as the neo Nazis in charlottes Fell. A few months later,
the christ Church attack in New Zealand. A month or
so after that, the poet attack in California. A few
months after that, the Al Paso attack and so on,
and the wiz in which we saw what felt fringe
in Charlottesville, theas this idea of Jews will not replace us,

(01:24:24):
the conspiracy theories, the avowed anti semitism in white supremacy,
all of a sudden become increasingly normalized and in bolden
on a national level, and those attacks were happening in
parallel to elected officials and pundits like Tucker Carlson and
others giving license to those ideas in mainstream forum. It

(01:24:46):
made that lawsuit all of them were important, and so
at first, you know, there was there was certainly some
attention when it was filed, But as I started my
work at Integrity, first it was a little challenging to
get people to understand why this was something that they
needed to care about, to support, to engage in. And
it very quickly became clear that Charlottesviell really was a

(01:25:11):
harbinger of all of the extremism that has followed, of
this increasingly normalized hate and disinformation and bigotry that has
taken over so much of our political rhetoric and our
society more broadly, and so having this case not simply
as a means to hold accountable those responsible for the violence,
but to put a clear marker down that there will

(01:25:33):
be consequences for this sort of bigotry, to create a
model for what that accountability looks like, which it has
since become with a number of January sixth then other
cases modeled on it, and to just really expose and
lay bare the violence and the hate at the core
of this movement was deeply important, and it was heartening
to see people recognize that as the case went on,

(01:25:57):
as we went from filing the lawsuit, through the various
stages including you know, surviving the motion to dismiss in
which the judge made clear that this was not free
speech and that free speech doesn't protect violence, and then
into you know, the pre trial discovery phase when our
attorneys were traveling the country deposing neo Nazis and otherwise

(01:26:22):
moving this case towards trial, which ultimately happened in fall
of twenty twenty one.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
Okay, so tell us about the trial.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
So the trial itself was four weeks in Charlottesville, Virginia. Certainly,
you know, if for me it was impactful and traumatic
and stressful, I can only imagine what it was like
for our plaintiffs, these nine people who survived the unthinkable
in twenty seventeen and chose to relive that in service

(01:26:53):
of holding accountable the neo Nazis and extremist responsible. No. Notably,
some of the defendants actually represented themselves, specifically Richard Spencer
and Chris Cantwell to very prominent neo Nazis, and this
meant that at this trial they were not represented by

(01:27:13):
lawyers and were the ones who were directly not just
giving their own opening and closing statements, but actually cross
examining our witnesses, which included the plaintiffs, so cross examining
the very people whom they attacked. And it became very
clearly as we expected that those defendants and frankly some
of the lawyers representing other Neo Nazis, were intent on

(01:27:37):
using the trial to try to for further normalize and
desensitize people to bigotry and hate. They would make Holocaust
jokes on the stand, they would use the N word
in court. They would sort of harass and terrorize our
plaintiffs on the stand, trying to get them to expose
or dos their friends who they were with. And then

(01:27:59):
what side I multaneously have their supporters and social media
trying to dox these people. And so it was a
very deliberate effort by these defendants, and in fact, one
of their lawyers said as much after the trial, to
really desensitize the jury and all those listening on to
this sort of hate, to make it seem like this
is just normal stuff and therefore they shouldn't be held

(01:28:21):
accountable for it. But our team put forward, i think
a very clear and comprehensive recounting of the facts, which
is that these neo Nazis planned for violence in extensive detail,
again down to discussions of whether they could hit protesters
with cars and claim self defense, which is precisely what happened.

(01:28:44):
They went to Charlottesville with the intent to engage in
that violence, they engaged in that violence, leading to Heather
Hire's death and the injury of so many others, and
then they celebrated that violence. And so what was heartening
was that at the end of the day, the jury
and by the defendant's efforts to desensitize them, and they

(01:29:04):
found every defendant liable to the tune of multimillion dollar verdicts.

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
Well, needless to say, some of these people were held
to these multimillion dollar verdicts, but their quasi judgment proof well.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
What was particularly heartening even before trial was the impact
this has had on the defendants themselves. So people like
Richard Spencer, who was at the time the most prominent
neo Nazi in the country, said before trial that this
case has effectively bankrupted him. Then we've seen how this
case has marginalized and bankrupt so many key leaders of

(01:29:39):
the white supremacist movement who were prominent six years ago
and now have been wholly sort of pushed to the
side and diminished in this. And so it shows the
importance of accountability that if you actually hold these extremist accountable,
there are very rare consequences even before trial, even before
the judgments. That being said, the judgments mean that they

(01:30:03):
will effectively be followed around for the rest of their lives,
garnishing wages, putting leans on their home, seizing assets, and
making it impossible for them to sort of rebuild any
of the infrastructure that led to this extremism in the
first place. And so that is really the point of
litigation like this, to illustrate the consequences. It's not necessarily

(01:30:27):
to collect millions and millions and millions of dollars instantaneously.
And I think our plaintiffs went into this knowing that
they wouldn't necessarily be getting those millions of dollars instantaneously,
but rather to make clear the power of accountability and
consequences at a time when there has been so few.

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
Okay, you mentioned one six and it certainly is direct,
So you established. Those of us in the legal world
know to establish a precedent to get a ruling is
very important. But six there was a lot of attention,
more than in Charlottesville. We saw it with our own eyes.
Yet we have people like Tucker Crawlson and others saying, no, really,

(01:31:11):
it was just a picnic.

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):
Yeah. Well, look, here's the difference between Charlottesville and January sixth.
There's actually been accountability for January six and so post Charlottesville,
one of the reasons we thought our lawsuit was so
important is that the DOJ, which was led by at
the point Jeff Sessions under Trump, the Trump administration, was
unlikely to hold accountable those responsible for the violence. And

(01:31:34):
that's largely born out. Post January six it's been a
different ballgame there has actually been, of course, hundreds of
prosecutions that have come out of what happened that day.
There have also been civil lawsuits, including I think three
or four that are explicitly modeled on the Charlottesville case
that have been moving forward in which the court the
judge have specifically cited the Charlottesville case that allowing them

(01:31:56):
to move forward. And so we've seen sort of much
broader accountability post January sixth in a way that we
didn't see after Charlotte's fell, which is important shows us
that progress is possible, that our systems can work in
the way that we need them to. But of course,
as we head into twenty twenty four, rightfully so we're
hearing many of us are deeply concerned about what next

(01:32:19):
year will mean for democracy, for accountability at a time
when one of the people most directly responsible for January
six is the leader of a major party and could
very well take back the White House.

Speaker 1 (01:32:35):
And so.

Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
How we not allow in the coming weeks and months
these ideas that fuel January sixth in the first place,
and the idea that it was anything other than an
act of violent extremism, How we don't allow that to
become normalized is going to be even more important than ever.
Telling the story of what happened, what came out of
the January sixth Commission is so important for that reason.

(01:33:00):
Secutions are so important for that reason, and continuing to
make crystal clear what this actually was, which was not,
you know, a tourist visit, which was not a picnic,
which was not a peaceful protest. It was an act
of violent extremism, and there must be broad accountability for
that in every sense of the word.

Speaker 1 (01:33:25):
Okay, let's go back to anti semitism directly. If one
is a Jew, there's been this great assimilation which you
referenced earlier. What can you tell a Jew when confronted
on a personal level with anti Semitism, whether it be

(01:33:46):
direct comments to them acts, when it comes up in discussion,
what should Jews do? Say?

Speaker 2 (01:33:55):
So, I think it's important to understand where that anti
semitism is coming from, right, because sometimes anti Semitism is
avowedly malicious and horrific. It's the swastika on your synagogue,
it's the it's the snide comment walking down the street
about your nose or something like that, and other times,

(01:34:15):
to sort of where we started this conversation, it's an
offhand comment about Jews and money or landlords or something
like that that might not even be meant maliciously. And
so first and foremost, like with all everything that we're
talking about here, stepping back and understanding where is this
coming from and what is the intent, so that we
can actually address it. In cases of avowed, clear malicious

(01:34:41):
anti semitism, I'm not sure it's frankly worth engaging, right,
but in many cases there is key education and engagement
that we can do to help people understand why their
comments are hurtful and further problematic tropes and conspiracy theories
that make Jews unsafe and the all of us unsafe,

(01:35:01):
and understanding how whether it be how criticism of Israel
can in certain cases morph into about anti semitism, why
those specific tropes around Jews and money and control can
further anti semitism, And having those conversations with people who
are open to learning and hearing actually matters, and everything

(01:35:21):
tells us that that sort of one on one engagement
is most effective as it relates to those issues. I think,
more broadly the goal of anti Semites is to make
us feel like we can't live proudly as Jews, and
our responsibility is to make sure that they don't succeed.
And so one of the most important things we can

(01:35:42):
do is continue to safely and smartly, but still enormously
proudly leave as Jews, go to cynicgog, go to youth group,
engage in all of the ways you want to engage
with your Jewish community, with your Jewish identity, because precisely
what these are anti semits hope to do with the
attacks on synagogues, the bomb threats, the swastikas, the broader

(01:36:08):
normalized extremism that we're seeing is to make us feel
like we can't live our lives the way that we're
supposed to. That is the goal of terrorism, and that
is the goal of hate. And so one of the
things that all of us can do is continue to
lean in proudly and clearly to our Jewish community and
our Judaism in whichever ways we choose.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
Okay, but let's be very specific. Not me, but someone
is in a group of people and someone said, uh, oh,
I jude him down on that. Now, I've been taught
from day one you immediately speak up, and I do.
But there are many people who say, Oh, I don't
want anybody to feel uncomfortable. I have something to lose.

(01:36:51):
I don't want to be labeled. This is my business.
We see this on a macro level, we see it
on universities. We're afraid to make a statement, But let's
start with the personal. What should people do in those circumstances?

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
Call it out full stop. There is no reason why
we shouldn't be calling this out, because if we don't
call it out, it becomes normalized. It's the lack of accountability,
whether it's on the personal level or the national level,
to connect the dots between everything we're talking about, that
has led to hate and bigotry being normalized in this country.
So all of us have an obligation to call it out.

(01:37:28):
We as Jews should absolutely call it out. But the
hope is also that our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends
are calling it out, and how we're empowering them to
understand why something like that is anti semitic, so that
they can actually speak up on our behalf. And it's
not just on us to protect our own community, but
on all of us to protect all of our communities.

(01:37:50):
Is going to be even more important in the weeks
and months ahead, and so I am firmly in the
camp that it should be called out. We could do
it in certain cases again and understanding where people are
coming from, calling people in and helping them understand why
what they said is problematic, as opposed to automatically assuming
it came from an entirely malicious place. There are absolutely

(01:38:12):
those who are engaging in full fledged malicious anti Semitism
in this moment, and I think that's a clear red line.
But there are also those who are inadvertently engaging in
anti Semitism without fully recognizing what they're doing, without recognizing
its impact, without recognizing the pain it causes. And we
can absolutely call it out and engage them.

Speaker 1 (01:38:36):
But let's go back to the universities, which you've gotten
a lot of the ink publicity, where the Pen being
a big example, Harvard being a big example. Where the
people who run these institutions will condemn everything, but what
goes on with Israel in Jews or reverse they'll condemn

(01:38:59):
is but they'll let anybody else say anything. Now we
have people like Rowan and Apollo, we're standing up with
their money. These are big donors. But how do we
turn things around. Forget the students. We have a lot
of elderly college presidents who're not standing up for Israel
and Jews.

Speaker 2 (01:39:21):
So this has been something I've been, you know, both
personally and professionally, been thinking a lot about it in
the last few weeks. And I've been fortunate to be
a part of a few meetings with the Department of
Education and the Secretary of Education as part of a
small group of Jewish leaders who met with him and
the Second Gentleman a few weeks ago. And there's two
sides to this point in terms of what we need
to be doing. There's the support that needs to be

(01:39:43):
provided to college campuses for them to understand how they
are actually creating campuses where students are free to practice religion,
where we're creating inclusive environments where Jewish students and all
students feel like they could learn in a safe, sy
court of environment. And there's a number of things that
can be done in that regard. But also the flip

(01:40:06):
side of that is the pressure point. It's the carrot
and the stick, and so under Title six, which is
a civil rights statute, Jews are entitled to be in
to be in schools, to be in an environment where
their fundamental rights are protected the same as any other community.
And if schools are not enforcing those fundamental rights and

(01:40:31):
protecting those fundamental rights, it's then on the federal government
to hold them accountable through these Title six complaints. And
so specifically, there have been a number of asks by
those of us in the Jewish community in recent weeks
to surge resources into the Office of Civil Rights at
the Department of Ed so that they can more effectively
and efficiently process these complaints, for them to provide direct

(01:40:55):
guidance to universities and colleges in addition to k through
twelve schools reminding them of their civil rights obligations and
the seriousness of enforcing Title six, and to make the
ability to submit a complaint even easier. And so we've

(01:41:16):
seen some steps taken from the Department of ED. In fact,
just before I joined you, I was on a call
with some Education Department officials where they shared some additional updates,
including how they, for example, for the first time ever,
updated the form to specifically make clear that it applies
to anti semitism to people of Israeli and Palestinian origin,

(01:41:39):
or any of the other identities that have very specifically
been targeted on campuses in the last five weeks. And
so there's two sides to this coin. There is the
support that we should be providing to make sure university presidents, administrators,
faculty are able to create free and inclusive and safe environments.

(01:42:00):
And when they can't do that, there is the pressure
and the accountability that our federal government can undertake to
ensure that they're living up to their obligations.

Speaker 1 (01:42:12):
Now, the most influential people in America or celebrities. Celebrities
seem to take a stand on everything, but this Amy
Schumer took a stand. She's excoriated every day.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24):
What do you tell celebrities, Well, I think there are
many celebrities I've seen taking an important stand on this
in the last few weeks. I think again, the loudest
voices tend to get outsized attention, and so those who
have said the wrong things, who have either not shown

(01:42:47):
up in la ship or who have engaged in hateful
disinformation fuel posts might get outsized attention. But I've seen
actually a number oflebrities, whether it be signing letters or
otherwise engaging on this, that have stood up with the
Jewish community that have stood up for Israel, that have
said we might not agree with everything Israel is doing,

(01:43:09):
we might not agree with this Israeli government, we might
not agree with every action of the IDF, but we
can agree that Israel has a right to defend itself,
that Hamas is a terrorist organization, that the hostages must
be free, and that the Jewish people in this moment
are facing very real and severe ripple effects as it
relates to anti Semitism here in the States. And so

(01:43:31):
what it means for celebrities or frankly, anyone to show
up in allieship with the Jews right now doesn't have
to necessarily look exactly the same from person to person,
but rather having those baselines recognizing that we're not expecting
them to support and agree with the Israeli government or
everything that the IDF necessarily does. I know, I personally
do not, but I can still say that I support

(01:43:54):
Israel and It's right to defend itself. I'm horrified by
Hamas and it's brutal terror attack, the hostages absolutely must
be freed, and that the anti Semitism that is coming
out of this in massive waves as a result of
this broader crisis is unacceptable and has no place here.
And how we engage and empower people to do that,

(01:44:16):
to hit those baselines, to make those points, even as
they might disagree on a variety of different policy issues,
is going to be most important. And I just hope
that people will continue to show up and call this
out because what we're seeing right now is how Jews
and Jewish institutions and others in the United States are

(01:44:36):
being targeted here simply because they're Jewish, under the guise
of protesting the actions of the Israeli government. And it
makes having people use their bully pulpits, whether it be
celebrities or government officials or others, that much more important
because again, anti Semitism operates in these very insidious ways.
There's the obvious swastikas on synagogues, but it's these conspiracy theories,

(01:45:00):
these coded language, the more insidious ways anti Semitism operates.
That makes those using their bully pulpit to call it
out that much more urgent.

Speaker 1 (01:45:09):
And what about corporations.

Speaker 2 (01:45:13):
There's so much that corporations can do, so I've been
engaging with some of them, I've done workshops for some
of them. There are many of my colleagues who have
done the same. First and foremost, understanding anti semitism in
the context of your broader DEI work is important, right
attacks on Jews, anti Semitism, bigotry, and threats against Jews

(01:45:37):
must be understood as part of your broader obligation to
keep your employees safe full stop. But there's also a
lot of education and work that needs to be done
in this moment. Your employees are probably struggling right now.
I know that for me. I even do this professionally,
but it's been a really painful five plus weeks. You

(01:45:58):
can't escape the and the horror of this moment. First
with again the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust
on October seventh, and all of these sort of intergenerational
trauma that that triggered for so many of us, and
then the ripple effects of the anti semitism around the
globe that has all of us fearful and isolated. And

(01:46:20):
so corporations, just like universities and so many other entities,
have a responsibility to make sure that their employees are
safe at work and hopefully to create environments that address
this very real pain and fear that many are feeling
to empower their colleagues to understand what they're going through.
And this cuts in multiple directions. The Jewish community is

(01:46:42):
not alone right now in this pain and fear. We've
seen very real instances of Islamophobia and anti Arab haid,
including the murder of a six year old Palestinian American
boy in Chicago a few weeks ago. And so all
of these, all of these corporations and any other entity,
can do a lot to create safer spaces within their offices,

(01:47:06):
within their organizations that recognize the challenge of this moment,
and that seek to make employees feel like they are
welcome and that their fears and their concerns will be
heard if there is an incident.

Speaker 1 (01:47:24):
I grew up my parents constantly talked about anti Semitism
and where Jews were in the world, and never forget
your Jewish identity. So, in light of what happened in October,
where's the light at the end of the tunnel? Where's
the optimism? Why should I feel upbeat like things are

(01:47:46):
going in the right direction? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:47:49):
Well, look, I find two places for optimism. One again,
it's easy for the loudest voices to get outsized attention,
and they write fully should be called out and held accountable,
as we've been talking about. But for every person who
has tweeted something heinous and awful or screamed something terrible

(01:48:10):
at a protest, there are so many others who have
either shown up an allyship with our community, who have
put out statements of support, who have rallied in different
ways for Israel or for the Jewish community, elected officials,
state legislative, black caucuses, labor union, so many others who

(01:48:31):
are actually out there saying that they stand in solidarity
with the Jewish people at this moment of deep pain.
And so we need to keep finding those bright spots
and amplifying those people who are actually showing up for us,
because again, the goal of extremist is to make us
feel like we are isolated and alone, and by you know,
it's very easy to do so when there are those loud,

(01:48:53):
horrific voices out there, and how we actually lift up
the voices of allyship is our key is key. Second,
I think, you know, this has really put a fine
point on just how urgent this crisis is. And I'm
having conversations that maybe five or six weeks ago wouldn't

(01:49:13):
have been possible with people who are understanding that they
need to do more and do better on anti semitism
in its various forms, that are looking for ways to
actually invest in and rebuild the sort of the broader
work on anti Semitism that we need, and I think
specifically sort of from my purchase JCPA, the community relations
that we know are inextricably linked with the broader fight

(01:49:36):
against anti semitism. If we are not in deep relationship
with our neighbors, educating, empowering, talking to them about anti semitism,
their obligation to fight it, and how the anti Semitism
makes all of us less safe, all of our communities,
our democracy less safe and less stable, it's harder to
expect these people to be showing up for us in

(01:49:58):
moments like this, And so I'm having conversations with people
who are seeing the importance of this work for the
first time, who are seeking to work with us to
build coalitions. As we head into twenty twenty four and
we know that so much is on the line for
so many of our communities, there's actually an opportunity to
rebuild and strengthen some of these relationships between communities that

(01:50:22):
might have been freed or strained in the last few weeks,
because we know that with so much at stake, we
have no obligation but continue to build coalitions and find
ways to work together however possible. There are certainly red
lines there. There are people who have I think, made
crystal clear that this is not about disagreement on Israel,

(01:50:43):
but rather clear and explicit anti semitism, and I don't
see it a way for us to work with those people.
But I think that for the vast majority of Americans,
for the vast majority of partners, we are able to
find a path forward that recognizes our shared future and
our safety is being inextricably linked. Because again, going into

(01:51:04):
next year, with democracy at stake, with extremism increasingly normalized,
we have no obligation but to build those coalitions and
to find those paths forward.

Speaker 1 (01:51:17):
Well, Amy, you're certainly a bright spot doing God's work. Literally,
I want to thank you so much for taking this
time with my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:51:26):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:51:28):
Until next time. This is Bob Left says

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