The Honest Take

THT Dara Horn (v3 final cut) — corrected transcript
English (US)
Sequence time; 00:00:00 = first frame of "THT Dara Horn — MORTY first pass — MORTY GFX v3".

00:00:00.000 — 00:00:29.540 · DARA
The rabbi who was hosting me at this synagogue picks me up at the airport and says, I just need to tell you what you're walking into. There was a threat against the Jewish day school in town. The person was arrested last night. We just found out about it this morning. This was a person who was posting online about how he was going to murder the children in the playground during the recess and then he was going to murder the parents in the carpool line during the pickup. And I'm like, wow, that's really horrible. And my host is like, that's not the horrible part. Who was this person? He was the school security guard.

00:00:33.420 — 00:01:17.620 · BEN
This is The Honest Take, the show that goes past the headlines to find out what's actually true about Israel and about the people covering it. I'm Ben Chertoff, and my guest today is Dara Horn, novelist, essayist, and the author of People Love Dead Jews, and now of a new book with a title she chose very deliberately, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living. Today, we're asking why the oldest lie in the world keeps showing up in a new costume and what it would actually take for people to stop falling for it. One thing before we start, if you're not already subscribed, take that two seconds and fix that.

00:01:17.740 — 00:02:07.300 · BEN
And if you've been meaning to rate the show, today's a good day. It moves the needle more than you'd think. Alright, here's Dara. On the evening of October 8, 2023, Dara Horn was in a synagogue in her New Jersey town with 2,000 other Jews, most of them in tears. A lot of people in that room were about to learn things about their friends, their colleagues, and their kids' schools that they never imagined. Dara already knew. A couple of years earlier, she'd published People Love Dead Jews. And afterward, it felt like every Jew in America with a story had found her. The vandalism, the threats, the slur from a boss or a teacher, the incidents that never became a headline because nobody was killed.

00:02:07.580 — 00:02:49.920 · BEN
One of her sisters started calling her the antisemitism Lorax, the little figure from Dr. Seuss shouting into the woods while the trees keep coming down. So October 8th didn't shock her, but the speed of it did and how organized it was. Her new book is an attempt to explain why. And her answer is that we've been fighting the wrong thing. We treat antisemitism as a prejudice, something you cure with empathy, by getting people to know us better. She thinks it works more like a con. It's a story people tell to get power or to keep it, and it's always tailored to its audience. Whatever a society holds sacred, the Jews are the ones wrecking it.

00:02:49.920 — 00:03:37.880 · BEN
You don't beat a con by being more likable. You beat it by showing people who's running it and what they get out of it. We get into what she saw from inside Harvard's antisemitism advisory group after October 7th, the UN conference in Durban in 2001, where crowds were already chanting what you hear on campus today. The week a fact-checker asked her to prove pogroms from a century ago, while the same paper put Hamas' account of a hospital strike in a banner headline. And what happens when you answer a heckler as if they actually meant the question? And why she thinks most of the people who stay quiet don't need more facts. They need to find out how many people are already standing behind them. Dara Horn, welcome to The Honest Take.

00:03:38.060 — 00:03:39.000 · DARA
Thank you for having me.

00:03:39.740 — 00:04:12.440 · BEN
So I want to go back to October 8th and the evening of October 8th, 2023. You talk about it in your new book that you were in a synagogue in New Jersey with 2,000 people in tears. And you wrote that none of you knew how much your friends and neighbors would turn on you. And I think that's the experience that most of us had. But what did you know that night? And what was the first thing that kind of clued you into that this was going to be different?

00:04:14.320 — 00:05:20.720 · DARA
Um, yes. So that night there was a community gathering where I live. Um, it was sort of like a wide Jewish community gathering. It was about 2 000 people um right after the end of the holiday, um you know which for us is was ended that later that night on October 8th. Um and there there were some the they were able to get some state representatives to come. Um so there were you know and there were people from you know non-Jewish leaders who came to that event, but really it was the Jewish community. And, you know, in my local community, I didn't really see the chaos emerge until later, but it immediately was obvious from, uh I'm was there was a group that very quickly formed the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance that was, and and because I'm an alum and I had affiliation with the university, you know, over many years, I had heard immediately about these, you know, 30-something Harvard student groups that had, you know, put out the statement that, you know, Israel was responsible for all the violence.

00:05:20.720 — 00:06:00.240 · DARA
And it was basically a celebration of October 7th massacre. That actually went out apparently on October 7th. They were, you know, type A people over there ahead of the curve. So, you know, that was already happening. I will say, though, you know, I had a previous book that I had published in 2021 called People Love Dead Jews that, you know, really was, I hadn't seen it as a book about antisemitism. I had seen it as a book about really the role that Jewish history plays in a non-Jewish imagination. But it really had, it became this kind of touchstone in the Jewish community before October 7th.

00:06:00.300 — 00:06:47.280 · DARA
And I already was being invited to speak in different places about that book. And I already was seeing in terms of the college and things, it was already happening long before that. I mean, I remember this even from 20 years before that. But I will tell you that there's just one sort of piquant example of this. I don't know if that's the right word. I will tell you just, you know, one example that sort of encapsulates it all. I went to speak at a college that there's no need to name it because they all do this now. It was UC Santa Cruz. I spoke there in 2022 and they had tried to pass some resolution, you know, against antisemitism in their student government and the resolution had failed.

00:06:47.280 — 00:07:24.440 · DARA
And I guess that having decided that they weren't against antisemitism, they decided they were in favor of antisemitism because a few days before I came to give my talk, um they hit their the dorms were covered in swastikas and, you know, someone had vandalized these the the vandalized the college with swastikas. And I they cleaned them up before I got there. And I remember the professor who was hosting me there was telling me about this and told me, you know, and I asked this professor, you know, do you think this was done by students or was it, you know, people from the town? And she said, oh, no, we definitely think it was students.

00:07:24.440 — 00:07:37.680 · DARA
And I said, why would you think this? And I can't even say this without laughing. She says, because we found the empty spray paint cans in the recycling bins. It's like, kill the Jews, save the turtles. Right.

00:07:37.880 — 00:07:39.340 · BEN
Save the environment.

00:07:39.620 — 00:08:33.840 · DARA
Yeah. I mean, it's the ethos of Greta Thunberg, right? I mean, and that was, I mean, I remember speaking at another school where, you know, they showed videos of the student demonstrations chanting globalizing the intifada. I mean, all this stuff was already happening. I mean, you can trace this much, much further back. But I sort of already had a front row seat to that before October 8th. And I already had many people coming to me about this issue and inviting me to speak and asking me for advice about it. And what happened after October 8th for me was that it became institutionalized, most notably that it was maybe about a week or two after October 8th that I was recruited to participate in this antisemitism advisory group for the now former president of Harvard, who didn't really take a lot of our advice in the end.

00:08:34.760 — 00:09:11.520 · BEN
I want to get into that in a little bit. Your sister had described you as the antisemitism Lorax, which is a great reference that you include in the book. You know, I have to imagine you're getting inundated with all these experiences from the Jewish community, especially the diaspora community, and all this recounting of awful experiences. Yeah. How did you how did you take that home and process that? How did you not let that just drive you crazy?

00:09:12.260 — 00:09:14.680 · DARA
I mean, I would dispute that it didn't drive me crazy.

00:09:15.320 — 00:09:15.620 · BEN
OK.

00:09:16.380 — 00:09:56.760 · DARA
Yeah, I think it drove me crazy. I think my family will tell you that that was part of my emergent antisemitism Lorax, as my sister called me. Um, yeah, I I got this name because what what happened it was after it was really after the last book was published in 2021. It was I was not prepared for this at all. That suddenly, it was like every Jew in America is coming to me with their horrifying experiences, and in a lot of instances asking me for help. And I just you know felt completely powerless. I was not prepared for this at all. Um I you know wasn't prepared emotionally for this.

00:09:56.760 — 00:10:04.440 · DARA
I mean, this is a very difficult thing when suddenly everyone is telling you your horror stories. I mean, I'm not a therapist. You know I'm not like trained to like take on other people's horror stories.

00:10:04.440 — 00:10:13.680 · BEN
The first section of your book is just this like slow build of of horror stories, and it's it's it's tough to read.

00:10:13.680 — 00:10:46.560 · DARA
Exactly. I mean, and just to clarify for your audience the kind of things that I'm talking about. Um you know these were things like I remember, and again, this is before October 7th. Um I remember going to uh I was invited to speak at a synagogue in Ohio, and I remember that the rabbi who was hosting me at the synagogue picks me up the airport and says, I just need to tell you what you're walking into. There was a threat against the Jewish day school in town. Um they you know there was uh the person was arrested last night. We just found out about it this morning.

00:10:46.560 — 00:11:25.680 · DARA
This was a person who was posting online about how he was going to murder the children in the playground during the recess, and then he was going to murder the parents in the carpool line during the pickup. He had this plan. He was posting about it. And I'm like, wow, that's really horrible. And my host is like, that's not the horrible part. What's the horrible part? Who was this person? He was the school security guard. So thankfully, this person's now in prison. But, you know, I mean, that's the kind a story that doesn't make national news because no one's dead, thankfully. But, you know, I mean, there was just like hundreds of stories like that of, you know, all the things that don't get classified as a hate crime.

00:11:25.680 — 00:11:38.960 · DARA
You know, I was, you know, my grandfather was in the Jewish cemetery and somebody shot at him. You know, it's like everybody's a lone wolf, right? I mean, it's sort of, you know, oh, it's a lone wolf. It's like we can't determine the source of this, you know, like who knows what the motive is.

00:11:39.580 — 00:11:40.320 · BEN
Motive's unclear.

00:11:40.660 — 00:12:27.180 · DARA
Yes, it's totally unclear. Yes, totally unclear. Um I mean, and just like hundreds and hundreds of these incidents. And you know and then, of course, you know things that didn't involve a gun or a knife, um you know but um you know just people constantly being insulted by their bosses at work, by their teachers at school, um you know being constantly invalidated, um you know vandalism, all kinds of harassment. I mean and these were you know and coming from authority figures and coming from people they respected. And, you know, it was just piling up on me. And, you know, I got this role, as my sister said, as the Lorax, where it's like, you know, I felt about as effective as the Lorax because, you know, it's like, you know, I'm shouting, I speak for the trees.

00:12:27.200 — 00:13:05.380 · DARA
And then it's like, you know, it doesn't matter. The guy's mowing the forest down. It really felt that way to me. And, you know, this was, I was living in the world, I think a lot of people woke up on, in the Jewish community, woke up on October 8th and suddenly discovered this. You know, they were then shocked when it was, you know, people were invalidating what they were experiencing. Their friends are all, you know, out on October 8th, you know, shouting globalize the intifada or whatever. Hamas is the resistance, fill in the blank, whatever crazy slogans. And these were people who they work with and people they're friends with and people they're married to.

00:13:05.580 — 00:13:22.840 · DARA
And, you know, we're all really shocked by this. I mean, I guess I had the advantage of not being shocked because I had sort of been living in that world already for a few years prior to that. But the speed and the organization of that was still very shocking.

00:13:23.920 — 00:13:32.960 · BEN
What do you think we missed the October 8th Jews, as Bret Stephens calls us? What did we miss in the lead up that you were able to see?

00:13:35.180 — 00:14:10.820 · DARA
I mean, look, this is a lead up. It wasn't just, look, I had the front row seat for it for the first few years. Obviously, you know, people who are at an outlet like yours were following these things for much, much longer. What people missed was they thought it was about Israel. I honestly think that's what it is because I even remember this, you know, because, you know, I was in a university setting. I have, you know, I remember being in college and in my doctorate in, you know, I have a doctorate from Harvard that I was earned in the early 2000s. So I was in graduate school during the Second Intifada.

00:14:11.100 — 00:14:50.860 · DARA
And, you know, seeing all of that was the beginning of, you know, all of the sort of, you know, boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. And, you know, Israel apartheid week, they started doing every week. That started with the Second Intifada. What I thought was, it was so immediately obvious, first of all, that it was triggered by the success of these overseas foreign terrorist organizations in killing Jews. Like, that was what was triggering it, was the success, right? I mean, that was what was interesting to me about October 8th, right, is that this was, it was triggered by the success of killing Jews, and that was the same thing with the Second Intifada.

00:14:50.860 — 00:15:32.140 · DARA
And I remembered this. You know I'm old enough to remember the Second Intifada, which isn't true for these college students. Um and you know I remembered that was exactly what you know what what created what galvanized this you know this hate movement um because it's a hate movement. It was galvanized by that. So, what people missed, I think was that and I remember this from you know when I was in graduate school and, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't writing about this topic at the time. Um, I had only wrote about this starting in 2021. I was writing novels about Jewish life. I, I think what people missed was that they, they were, I think people were compartmentalizing it and thinking that it was quote about Israel.

00:15:33.120 — 00:15:49.860 · DARA
They actually genuinely thought it was about Israel. And I think that they were shocked when it turned out that it wasn't. And I think that there are a lot of people who are still deluding themselves into thinking that this is about Israel. And I mean I could say more about that.

00:15:49.860 — 00:16:23.080 · BEN
Yeah, I mean, you dig under the surface a little bit and the antisemitism. You write about Durban, for instance, which the UN just celebrated a couple of days ago. Yeah, the 25th anniversary of the Durban conference. And, you know, that was days after the Sbarro pizza bombing in 2001 during the Second Intifada. And, you know, there are, what is it, Protocols of the Elders of Zion on sale and being handed out. One of the things that I found really...

00:16:23.080 — 00:16:27.560 · DARA
The posters of Hitler everywhere, which of course turned out to be funded by the Bin Laden family.

00:16:28.740 — 00:16:32.620 · BEN
Fascinating. Yeah that is that's a that's a factoid I didn't know about.

00:16:32.620 — 00:17:28.180 · DARA
Yeah, the the there were posters all over. The and so I mean I'm guessing a lot of your listeners know what we're talking about with the Durban conference. This was a the the UN world conference against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa in the end of the summer of 2001 um which this um as I I documented in the book but I'm certainly not the first person to document this. I'm trying on other sources. Um, this uh conference was captured by the Iranian regime. Um, they managed to take control of the Asia Pacific uh regional conference and hold it in Tehran, where they barred all Israeli and Jewish delegates from attending by not giving them visas and drafted their the entire you know decorate you know draft of the declaration and action plan against racism, where suddenly there's only one you know country in the entire world that is a racist, xenophobic, genocidal apartheid state.

00:17:28.180 — 00:18:09.700 · DARA
All the same slogans we're hearing now. Um you and then when people got to the and that so, that was the Asia Pacific conference, but then when people got to the main event in Durban, there it was like 3,600 NGOs. Um and it's just wall-to-wall antisemitic hate fest. I mean, literally posters of Hitler, which were produced by something that was called the Islamic Propagation Center in Durban, which was funded by $3 million from the Bin Laden family. That's just one example. You know, this was, I mean, there were, you know, Jewish delegates were forced out of the venues. There was, you know, people would rush the podiums when Jewish delegates would speak.

00:18:09.860 — 00:18:27.440 · DARA
They would chant over them. Anytime a Jewish delegate would speak, everybody would start chanting, free, free Palestine. And I remember mentioning this actually to college students. And they were like, wait a minute, they were doing that chant. In 2001? I'm like, yeah yeah, yeah. And calling Israel a genocidal state.

00:18:27.440 — 00:18:32.900 · BEN
Genocidal state goes back to, I I think yeah it's the earliest is in the 70s from the Soviets. Or

00:18:32.900 — 00:19:09.500 · DARA
Right, right. Yeah post 67 go back to the Soviets. Um you know they're then you know adopted by you know the Iranian regime. So I mean these are very this stuff is so old. And I mean you look at the Durban conference, and it's exactly all of that. I mean it's and it's you know this um you know it's all the Nazi stuff. People are drawing swastikas on the walls. They're selling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And I mean, it's just this hate fest. And it's just this capture by these tyrannical regimes. And, you know, I mean, it's amazing because this conference happened the week before September 11th.

00:19:09.700 — 00:19:50.060 · DARA
And, you know, the entire world had gathered in Durban to announce that there is one, you know, there's one genocidal, apartheid, colonialist, racist state in the world. And it's Israel. It's the only country mentioned in a 70-page document. And obviously, I mean, it's very transparent because, you know, every dictatorship on the planet is very delighted to not be in this document and to sign on the dotted line. And, of course, what they then have done is also they've left all of these NGOs bereft of any ability to, you know, they have nothing to say then, you know, four days later when, you know, these jihadi terrorists take down the World Trade Center.

00:19:50.060 — 00:20:22.860 · BEN
One of the things that you wrote about in your book that really kind of hit me was about your kids' generation and that the bomb threats and the swastikas were, quote, expected and even boring. And that your son, quote, hadn't been bothered by any of it. I mean, it sounds really bleak. And it also sounds kind of like there's some armor there, like there's a resilience. Um like what what can we learn from from that generation? Are they better equipped

00:20:22.860 — 00:21:09.900 · DARA
To deal with this? I mean Unfortunately, they're not. In fact, they fall for it more. I mean to me, that's what was really striking. I think that, yes, for my for sure for my children. So I have four children um who are basically, I'm well, I would say they're all teenagers. My oldest is now 21. So 21 and then three teenagers. I mean, you know, writing a book takes a long time and children age. But yeah, my children definitely are seeing this all the time online. You know, there's, it's just sort of become something that they, it's, you just dismiss it. And it's amazing to me because, you know, anytime any of these things had happened when I was growing up, you know, it was like a four alarm fire.

00:21:10.560 — 00:21:47.000 · DARA
In the Jewish community. People would you know there'd be you know editorials published, and there'd be community meetings, and you know there'd be somebody would get fired, and you know there would be like this whole to-do. And now, it's just sort of like cost of doing business. Um you know I think that so and certainly online, there's just this I think that for this part, you know for my children's generation, it is just accepted that you're just going to be inundated with hate if you're publicly Jewish online. Um and that is just you know that's just like you know the price of doing business. It's like people just accept that.

00:21:47.000 — 00:22:20.480 · DARA
When I say my son wasn't bothered by any of it, um yeah, not bothered by any of it, so like when you said is there armor, I think that there's armor for like it takes a lot more for something to be taken, certain you know for for people to take something seriously um you know because the Overton window window has shifted so much. Which I mean to me, this is very disturbing and terrifying, um but I don't I don't think that they have more armor. In terms I mean, maybe my personal children do, um but you know you have to sort of have raised your children in a very particular way in order for them to be prepared for this.

00:22:20.480 — 00:23:00.100 · DARA
And most people are are blindsided by it. So you know the part that I the the part that I see most obvious is that you know there's this thing that um Ahad Ha'am um cultural Zionist leader of the you know early you know about 100 years ago or more actually, he's you know writing the 1890s. He writes about what he calls you know general agreement, and um that there's just this accepted notion that the you know antisemitic lies are accepted as truth by everyone. And it's like you're then forced to prove that you don't eat babies, right? I mean, it's like, when did you stop beating your wife, right?

00:23:00.100 — 00:23:40.200 · DARA
I mean, it's that you're put into this position. And the way he put it was that he calls it um half solace he's like that at least the Jews know that they don't eat babies, right? It's like, at least my children know that, like, no, in fact, you know they don't eat babies. But the problem is, I think that there are many people in the Jewish community who don't recognize these lies that are coming at them, um don't have that chatzi nechama, that half solace of knowing this. And, you know, we're really not prepared for this. And I think that there's a few reasons why that is, which I can unpack here if you like.

00:23:40.320 — 00:23:48.880 · DARA
I don't know if we want to spend our time that way. But I think that, and I'm working now with my new nonprofit on completely changing that approach.

00:23:50.180 — 00:23:59.600 · BEN
That I'm fascinated by. This explosion of the very vocal anti-Zionist Jew. Like, where where did we go wrong there?

00:24:00.480 — 00:24:33.780 · DARA
So, well, I mean, there's a different question to be talked about, you know, the anti-Zionist Jews who are part of this movement. You know, I'm going to I mean, I'll just very briefly just say that. I mean, yes, there are Jews who are part of this movement because we are not a tyrannical regime. You know, I mean, yeah, it's people are, you know, people are like, oh, you know, how come the Jewish community is, you know, the other side is so great at staying on message. You know, why don't we, you know, like have more? And I'm like, well, it's really easy to stay on message if like you kill the people who are off message.

00:24:34.080 — 00:25:09.900 · DARA
Like that's what they do in Iran. Right. Like, you know, we're we didn't do that in the Jewish community. Right. Like this is like, you know, and also like, you know, the whole ethos of the Jewish community is diversity of opinion. You know, I mean, it's a argument for the sake of heaven. Like we never like, you know, it's like it's like Kafka said, you know, I barely have anything in common with myself. Right. I mean, this is the diversity of opinion is part of Jewish life. Um, so that's one piece of it. And then another piece of it is that, um, the as the journalist Benjamin Kerstein has put it, Jews who are anti-Zionist are coming from positions of almost unfathomable privilege.

00:25:09.900 — 00:25:47.300 · DARA
Yeah, almost unfathomable privilege. Because, you know, you can sit in a ritzy dinner party in New York City or at a seminar room at Harvard and talk about, like, well you know, hypothetically, why don't we just open up the borders of Israel and see what happens? You know, it's so wrong that they're, you know, policing their borders and not letting anybody in. And why don't we open the borders and see what happens? I'm like, if you're sitting in a bomb shelter, you know, in Israel, you don't have the privilege of saying, gee, let's just open the borders and see what happens. Because you already saw that on October 7th and many other occasions before that.

00:25:47.420 — 00:26:22.620 · DARA
So, yeah, so that's putting that over here. But in terms of the, you know, what we have been, the way we've been teaching this and where I think we can and where I am changing course, I think that there is a way that we have tried to approach. And this has less to do with within the Jewish community and more sort of like a larger effort in certainly in the United states. The effort toward fighting against bigotry has always been about building empathy. Um, you know, like, oh, we need to get to know people better, right? Like, oh, then you see that we're all the same.

00:26:22.620 — 00:27:03.720 · DARA
And this is, like, something that's important, you know, certainly with the history of race in America. Um, yeah, this is the way we tend to think about this. And the way and and so the thing is that if you if you're if you're fighting bigotry and bias, then it's true that your top priority is building empathy. But antisemitism, as I understand it from, you know, from the way I'm studying this and from this, like, very, very long historical record, I don't think it's most effective to understand it as a bigotry or a bias. I think it is much more effective to understand it as a lie.

00:27:04.360 — 00:27:37.720 · DARA
And it is a lie that people use to gain or maintain power. The lie is always the same. Jews are destroying what you value the most. Jews are destroying what you value the most. And the only thing that changes different historical periods, different settings, is what you value the most. Um, so, you know, if you're in a capitalist society, Jews are communists. If you're in a communist society, Jews are capitalists, right? If you're a religious Christian then Jews killed Christ you know if you're a human rights advocate you know the world's only Jewish state is the world's worst violator of human rights. I mean, this is sort of like the constant, you know, if you're in a racist society, Jews are race polluters.

00:27:37.860 — 00:28:13.780 · DARA
If you're in an anti-racist society, Jews are racist, right? I mean, this is very long history. And to me, what's important about this formulation, and we teach this in my curriculum in the Tell Institute, and I could say more about it. I want to stay on your topic here about this idea of the lie. The way we teach about this is teaching pattern recognition for this lie, because I feel that's what's been eliminated by, let's say focusing on the Holocaust, for example, eliminates pattern recognition. Here you see the pattern, and it is so simple that it can be understood by our 12 and 13-year-old students, where we actually even have like a chart.

00:28:13.880 — 00:28:50.700 · DARA
It's like a plug and play, like who is the liar? What is the value that they're targeting in this society? How are they claiming that Jews are destroying this value? And then the last piece of it is new media, because it's always accelerated through new media. And we do this through case studies. And you see this long historical pattern, the first case study is from the year 40 CE in Alexandria. The last case study is about the digital age and the Iranian regime. We talk about the Durban conference in the last case study. And you're sort of you see this pattern and you see how, like, for example, with the case of Simon of Trent, this is a blood libel case from 1475 that this was spread by the printing press.

00:28:50.700 — 00:29:24.040 · DARA
But you also see how it was what people now call data poisoning. It was controlled. It was actually just this one bishop in Trent who paid all these influencers to publish, you know, woodcuts and poems and artwork and paid people to preach about it and everything. Like, it was really like a campaign that was run by this one person. So I think not understand understanding the why is important. So this goes to what you said about, look, what HonestReporting does is is whack-a-mole. Right. I mean, that is your lane. That's exactly your lane. Right. It's like, you know, here's these, you know, here's these 10 things that were reported that were outrageous.

00:29:24.100 — 00:29:42.720 · DARA
And here's why they're outrageous. And that is a very important thing to do, and someone needs to do it. And I am very, very grateful that you and your colleagues are doing it. And for many other people who are doing it as well, you've been at this for a long time and do it very well. And I will say, I cite your work many times in the book, because someone's doing it.

00:29:42.720 — 00:29:43.940 · BEN
Thank you, it needs to be done

00:29:44.840 — 00:30:27.380 · DARA
I think that the larger project is not... The problem with the whack-a-mole is that when you're approaching this by just debunking a claim, these claims, and this is not me invalidating what you're doing, I'm saying like for the average person who's confronting this, rather than a person who has a whole research apparatus, once you are confronting the claim, you are stepping into the defendant's box in a bogus show trial from a tyrannical regime. Right? I mean, it's like being on trial in a show trial in the Soviet Union, right? Or in North Korea or something, right? I mean, this is like you know, when I say you're not going to win, it's not just because you're not going to win.

00:30:27.500 — 00:31:11.720 · DARA
It's because the person who should be in the box is this tyrannical regime that's spreading this lie. And so to me, the way to combat this is to turn everything around onto the people who are benefiting from the lie. Right? To me, that is the effective way is to sort of to ask like, you know, people say like, oh, what's the most effective way to combat this, you know, people who are, you know, claiming, you know, like whatever is the flavor of the week um you know? And then, you know, my answer to that is not to say, oh, here's 10 reasons why Israel's not committing genocide, Israel's not a colonialist state, whatever the flavor of the week is, but to say, I can't believe you fell for it.

00:31:14.100 — 00:31:45.600 · DARA
I can't believe you fell for it. Like, you know, you seem like a smart, curious person. I mean, and look, there's other ways that you approach that person, you know, obviously like, you know, this person in your life, there are the sort of the, the tried and tested way to do it is not by saying, here's 10 reasons why you're wrong, but to say, to approach them with curiosity, you you know, because people want to be heard, people want to be respected. And I'm not saying strangers on the Internet. I'm saying, like, you know, a person in your life who you want to maintain a relationship with is not here's 10 reasons why you're wrong.

00:31:45.680 — 00:32:27.440 · DARA
But to say, you know, I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. You know, you seem interested in this topic. You know, what Israeli sources are you reading to learn more? Right. Like this is sort of like, you know, like, is it like it seems like it seems like you're really passionate about this. I'm wondering if you think it's possible that there might be a reason why you keep seeing this on your phone. You know, you don't pay for TikTok. You don't pay for Instagram. That means you might be the product. Who might be making money off of you seeing this? Who might be benefiting from you seeing this material all day long?

00:32:28.880 — 00:33:20.660 · DARA
You know, and I think that there's, you know, that's like when you start realizing that the general agreement is not what you thought it was, but the problem is like for the, for our children, the reality is like, and this is where I get to the deeper content that I'm teaching in the Tell Institute and also in the book is that being Jewish has always meant being against the general agreement. It has always meant that because Jewish civilization is an anti-tyrannical movement since ancient times. We refuse to bow to tyrants. We only bow to God. That pisses off tyrants. That pisses off tyrants. So yes, we have been pissing off tyrants for a very, very long time.

00:33:21.140 — 00:33:54.940 · DARA
And when you're raising Jewish children, you are raising them to understand this, that you don't bow to tyrants. And that does mean that, yeah, everybody in your social media feed is going to think you're wrong. And you just would never make this mistake. I mean, we're 0.2% of the world's population. When you're 0.2% of the world's population, you don't think about like, wow, it's like 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong. Actually, 50 million Frenchmen can be wrong. They actually can't.

00:33:55.960 — 00:34:46.820 · BEN
It I mean, it takes courage. And there's there's there's a moment in in the book where you're talking about the the people who are yelling these platitudes at you or challenging you in in when you go speak at a campus. And that when when you ask that question back or you go even like one level deeper in in the whatever they're saying. Yes. That it's it's a balloon that pops. Yes. I think there are a lot of people who are scared that that's not what's going to happen. How is that experience? What is that experience been like for you in general? I mean, like when you were faced with the person yelling free Palestine.

00:34:48.520 — 00:35:27.200 · DARA
So, you know, it's more like there's the experience I typically will have is like not just like people yelling. Right. Because people yelling, you know, this is, you know, this is like what people yelling do. Right. They're not interested in listening to you. What sometimes will happen is like I'll be speaking somewhere and then, you know, people will come with their keffiyehs and whatever. And you know, they'll, um, sometimes they'll, sometimes they'll yell, sometimes they'll hold up signs or something, but like more often they'll like go to ask a question. Like they'll ask hostile questions during the Q A and I just answer their question as if it's a good faith question.

00:35:27.920 — 00:36:04.540 · DARA
I mean, they're generally not even a question. They'll be like, you know, how can you say something, something, you know, when, you know, Zionism is a form of genocide. Right. You know, like, how can you say this, you know, when the, you know, the UN, you know, just declared that, you know, this is a genocide. And I'm like, I will just answer. I'll be like, you know, you mentioned the UN. Are we talking about the UN where there's 190 member states and the overwhelming majority of them are authoritarian states where dissidents are put in prison? Is that the UN we're talking about? I just want to make sure we're all talking about the same UN.

00:36:06.900 — 00:36:43.160 · DARA
I'm like, is that the UN where Iran was put on the committee for women's rights? Yeah. When Iran executes women for not wearing a hijab? I'm like, is that the UN we're talking about? I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. You know, or they'll be like, you know, something, something. Zionism is a form of genocide. I'm like, you mentioned Zionism. Let's talk about it. Right. And I'm like, you know, Zionism's a national movement like all the other national movements that arose at exactly the same time. I'm like, weird that there's no anti-Jordan movement. Right. No anti-Pakistan movement. I'm like, these are countries that were formed in exactly the same way.

00:36:43.640 — 00:37:24.760 · DARA
You know, I mean, the Jordan expelled all the Jews from all the areas it conquered. This is all the Jews. All the Jews. How many Jews remained in any of those countries? Zero. Zero. And I just say like, so, you know, this is an interesting conversation and, you know, I see you're really interested in Zionism, you know, let's learn more about it. And I always expect them to sort of come back at me with, you know, but what about this? And what about this? And what about this? Not once, not once. And it took me a long time to figure out why. And then I eventually realized I'm like wait a minute this is Zionism is genocide is the only thing they know that's the beginning in the end.

00:37:24.760 — 00:38:08.400 · DARA
Right, they have nothing. They have nothing. And so, you know, when you say like other people are afraid, that's not what's going to happen to them. So look, I am in an, I'm in a fortunate or privileged, so to speak position in that I don't, I mean, what I realized, I realized this in speaking to students that like, when, you know, when I am have these people yelling at me at, you know, at these events and then I respond with my response. First of all, I'm the one holding the microphone, but second of all, the real answer to the real difference between me, because often like then Jewish students will come to me afterwards and be like, oh, look, you know, you just, you know, this girl's been harassing us all semester and you just destroyed her.

00:38:08.480 — 00:38:35.980 · DARA
I'm like, I didn't destroy her. I just answered her question. You too could do this. And then they're like, oh no, we don't know as much as you. I'm like, you don't need a PhD to defeat an argument that's three words long. And what they really needed was, as you say, courage, because what I realized is the difference between me and them is that they have to live with this harasser and I don't. Right. So when I say like, I'm in a privileged position, that's what I mean. It's like, you know, I'm like parachuting into these places and then I leave, like, I don't have to live with these people.

00:38:35.980 — 00:39:11.800 · DARA
Right, so, you know, it's very, I think it isn't a very, I don't think it's fair to compare what I'm doing to what other people might be doing in their own lives and communities and workplaces and schools where they have to live with the people. But what I would encourage those people to think about is there's a lot of people who are on your side and you don't know about it because no one, everyone's sitting there waiting for somebody to say something. And you don't know how many people are on your side. Like, yes, you will lose some supposed friends and then you're going to gain a lot of new ones.

00:39:12.600 — 00:40:04.440 · DARA
That's the piece that they don't see because they're too afraid to cross that line. And it's like, but once you cross that line, you feel like there's this amazing thing that happens where suddenly you're no longer afraid of these people. And I mean, that's like the most liberating thing when, like, I mean, especially for me, like, you know, it's also, this is also an advantage I have over these students is like, I have four teenagers, like I'm not afraid of teenagers, right you know, like what's, I mean, this is, this is not Hezbollah, right? I mean, I would be, you know, there's a reason to be afraid of Hezbollah there's not a reason to be afraid of like, girl in a keffiyeh at Loyola college or whatever you know like you know I mean it's sort of there's this absurdity to it and I'm like, why would I care what these teenagers are saying to like, why would I, why would I be scared of these people?

00:40:04.440 — 00:40:27.420 · DARA
Like, it just seems so ridiculous. And so, you know, at that point, you start realizing that there's a lot of things that when you put, what I say when you pop this balloon, you discover the people who are on your side, because I will tell you something else that has happened to me is that I've had a lot of, I've had a lot of readers for example, from the Muslim community come to me.

00:40:27.420 — 00:40:28.640 · BEN
Really? Okay.

00:40:28.640 — 00:41:14.540 · DARA
Thank me for what I'm doing. Yes. Thank me for what I'm doing. I've spoken. Um I spoke to a Muslim American organization um this summer. Um I now have, you know, I've been on podcasts for the Muslim community um great because there's a lot of people like, well, so this is and because you can drive a truck through this because it is turning you can drive a truck through it because we are fortunate to not live in a country where we're going to be thrown in prison for objecting to tyranny. So I can give you one example. I remember I was going to go speak at a school and we had the little pre-call and um you know, actually this, I wrote about this in the book, and they asked me, you know, they're like, oh, you might want to be careful about using the Z word in your talk because, you know, that might offend people.

00:41:14.620 — 00:41:45.440 · DARA
And I'm like, should I also be concerned and avoid using the J word? Because, you know, I don't want to offend people who hate Jews. You know, I wouldn't want to offend people who hate Jews. So I think you're right. Maybe I shouldn't use the J word in addition to not using the Z word. And these people, they just look at me. And then something really interesting happened, which was then one of these people said, oh, no, no, no, you don't understand. You know, we have Muslim students and Muslim faculty, so this is a very sensitive issue. And then I just said, well, I don't see why.

00:41:45.560 — 00:42:34.960 · DARA
I'm not sure I understand what you mean because I'm sure that your Muslim students and faculty are not fans of federally designated terrorist organizations that kill Muslims. And I said, we're all like team anti-federally designated terrorist organization. We'd hope. Right. Right. And then they just look at you. And at that point, you're like, well, because honestly, that's what this is. Like to me, this is not about, you know, this is, first of all, it's certainly not about Israel. I mean, and that was very obvious to me. And I could give more examples of that. Like when I was on this Harvard committee, you know, my favorite example of this is just, I remember there was one point, um, this was in the fall of 2023, when the students all did this, you know, walk out of class for a ceasefire in Gaza.

00:42:34.960 — 00:43:02.860 · DARA
It was like national walkout and it wasn't just at Harvard, it was at other schools as well. And you know, they came into all the big lecture courses with megaphones, shouting long with the intifada, we're all going to walk out of class. You know, we have to fight for a ceasefire in Gaza. We're going to walk out of class for a ceasefire in Gaza. The reason during the ceasefire, it was during the ceasefire in Gaza, right? I was like Guys, I have great news for you. It's like, they're not even interested in what's happening in the middle. Like like, it's like zero interest in what's happening in the Middle East, right?

00:43:02.960 — 00:43:48.420 · DARA
And it's happened more than once. Like, there was that incident. There was also one, I think it was in early 2025, during another ceasefire. There were protests about, you know, calling for a ceasefire. I'm like, awesome news for you guys. There's a ceasefire. There's no interest in the facts. And the reality is there are a lot of people, like, most people are not fans of tyrannical regimes. They're not. Most people don't like being duped. Most people don't like being used. And most people are not interested in, you know, serving as a smokescreen for a tyrannical regime or for, you know, these, you know, movements that are trying to, you know, eliminate everyone's freedom. And so, you know, once you take it in that direction, you know, we're really talking about de-radicalization.

00:43:48.420 — 00:44:33.580 · BEN
Mm hmm. You, um you have some periods in the book when you talk about going back to Harvard, having to be escorted by security in Harvard Yard where he would spend 10, 10 years. Um, and, uh you know, there, there is a grief that comes through those sections. You say that you're angry. Um are is it that the university has kind of forgotten its ideals or that knowledge in general is, you know, I worry that we're kind of slipping into a dark age.

00:44:33.580 — 00:45:20.540 · DARA
Okay. Well, so look, I talk about this in the book because, you know, when I was first on this committee at Harvard, it was just this fire hose of incidents. And that was like, it was like the whack-a-mole experience, right? Of we were meeting with the administration twice a week for hours. And it was like every meeting was about, you know, whatever new outrageous thing just happened in the last 48 hours. And to be clear, and I've said this in other contexts, but, you know, and I don't have to tell you or your listeners, but, you know, the idea that this was the way this was presented in the media, that this was, you know, a whole battle about free speech and, you know, protests and where do you draw the line?

00:45:20.700 — 00:45:55.660 · DARA
Like a single student came to our committee complaining about, oh, I don't like the slogan. What they came to us complaining about was I don't like having my dorm room vandalized. I don't like being followed through the law school with someone with a megaphone who's following me personally screaming at me. Right. I don't like having someone spit in my face. I don't like having my professor throw me out of class for being Israeli. I don't like my professor canceling class so everyone can go to the anti-Israel rally, writing a really long email on the class listserv about how it's incredibly important for all of us to attend this anti-Israel rally.

00:45:55.660 — 00:46:33.520 · DARA
By the way, I grade you. You know, I don't, I mean, this was the kind of things that people were complaining about. It was not like, you know, I object to this, you know, characterization of the Israeli government. So, you know, the whole mythology that this was about free speech rather than harassment of Jewish students was just outrageous. But what happened was, you know, after this committee experience was over, I dug deeper into this, and it wasn't my, I mean, I should say, like, you know, there are many people working on this. This was the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance put out an audit of everything Harvard was teaching about Jews in Israel.

00:46:34.600 — 00:47:10.300 · DARA
And then this was later corroborated by the university's own antisemitism task force. And oh, my God, it's so damning. Because to me, that is the real problem. It's not about, oh, what do you do about these students who are expressing themselves? They're teaching this stuff. I mean, it was like, you know, they would have whole classes about, you know, Israel as a settler colonialist state. Like, that's the premise of the class, not, you know, let's discuss this. They're teaching an antisemitic lie, which comes from the KGB, as the basis of a course at Harvard. I'm like, what the heck are you doing? I mean, there was, it just got more and more outrageous.

00:47:10.500 — 00:47:47.880 · DARA
I mean, there's, you know, in the book, I walk through this. I mean, and actually, Harvard was not as bad as some other places. I mean, obviously, there's schools like Cornell and Georgetown that have campuses in Qatar. I mean, it was laughable that these schools were going on about academic freedom when literally they have campuses in Doha where, you know, the Qatari royal family gets to censor the syllabi. So, I mean, you know, this idea that we care about academic freedom is just, you know, it was such a smokescreen. So when you say about this, but yes, I saw what I came to see ultimately was that this was sort of, often people will say, oh, antisemitism is a canary in the coal mine.

00:47:48.020 — 00:48:30.180 · DARA
It's a warning that, you know, worse things are happening in your society. I actually think that institutionally it's the opposite. I think that it's institutionally antisemitism is the tail end of like the collapse of your institution. So I think it's like once this stuff starts happening so obviously, this is a sign. It's not a sign worse is to come. It's a sign of all the decay that has already happened. So, and I mean, this is true in, it was true in universities, especially the way I explored in the book is about the humanities and social sciences. And I attribute this to this massive investment in STEM, you know, science, technology, engineering, and math.

00:48:30.340 — 00:49:01.960 · DARA
In the past 30 years, this was all like, you know, learn to code, all this kind of stuff that was pushed in K to 12 schools, you know, which now all of a sudden it's obsolete. Now, now no one, you know, all the people who spent all their time learning how to code now, you know, or out of a job. But meanwhile, you know, there was this massive, that was the prestige, that was the priority. And there's this absolute neglect of the humanities and social science. I mean, history, I know in my children's public elementary school, they didn't even teach social studies every day. It was like on a rotation, like gym and art.

00:49:02.560 — 00:49:34.820 · DARA
Like they were doing it like a couple times a week. So, I mean, it wasn't considered a core subject, right? I mean, there's no state testing um and a lot of states don't even have testing. And so they might have and they have testing and so they don't have testing in social studies or history. They have testing in math and English. And the thing about English is that it basically was just being taught to extract information from a text, right? That's what like sort of state standards testing. It's not about rhetoric, right? It's not about like, what is the use of irony, right? What is the use of repetition?

00:49:34.820 — 00:50:06.380 · DARA
Um, not about logical reasoning. Um, you know, I remember my children, when they were younger, we had a book in the house. It was like a picture book that was called the book of bad arguments. Um, and it was like, it was logical fallacies, right? But what taught in a way that kids could understand, you know, things like, uh yeah you know, appeal to authority, false binary, um no true Scotsman. You know, when you move the goalposts, you know, you say like, no Scotsman would ever do that. And that a Scotsman is doing that. And so you say, well, no, true Scotsman would ever do that, right?

00:50:06.460 — 00:50:45.960 · DARA
I mean, it's like every one of those false arguments, the bad arguments, if you look at something like the lie that, you know, that the Gaza war is a genocide, it's every single one of those bad arguments. Appeal to authority. Look, this International Association of genocide Scholars says it's a genocide. I'm like, and the way you become a member is by spending $30 and 20% of the members. Register your dog. Right. And it's like, yeah. And, you know, and it's like, you know, appeal to authority, right? You know, no true Scotsman. It's like, well, let's make a more expansive version of genocide so that it includes, you know, whatever I want it to include.

00:50:46.300 — 00:51:20.200 · DARA
I mean, it's like every bad argument in that book, no one's teaching those arguments, right? Like, no one's teaching, like, what makes something, like, how do you weigh evidence, right? Like, what is a bad argument versus a good argument? Right. Like what is, you know, like what is a straw man? Also, like, you know, basic elements of rhetoric. Right. Like this is rhetoric, like which is for, you know, for good or bad. I mean, for anyone persuading somebody of a point of view, like, you know, how do you people use how do you use repetition? Right. You know, how do you use, you know, bringing somebody into your point of view?

00:51:20.480 — 00:51:56.340 · DARA
How do you build that kind of how do you capture a reader's attention? Right. I mean, I learned about this as a writer because I, you know, that's my job as a writer is to capture people's attention. That's a skill that you can learn. And also once you learn it, you become kind of immune to it. I mean, it's actually, it's kind of bad. And that like, my family hates watching movies with me because I'm like, here we go. It's the save the cat moment, right? Like, look, we just showed the hero being nice to an animal and then it's in, right? Like, you know, it's like, when you see this structure and you're a writer, it's like, it's a little annoying, but like, um, but you are immune to these things.

00:51:56.700 — 00:52:46.640 · DARA
We're not teaching those things. Harvard was not teaching those things. Harvard was not teaching those things. Like there was this debasement of the humanities and the social sciences to the degree where, you know, people in the humanities, you know, you could argue different reasons, but, you know, the pivot to social advocacy was partly it was a desperate grasp, you know, a grasp at relevance. So, you know, there's been this absolute defunding of the humanities and, you know, guess who is funding it? The Qatari royal family, right? I mean, they're paying for all these area studies and they're paying for think tanks. And, you know, I mean, because they understood that, you know, humanity, the study of the humanities is where a society articulates its values. And so, you know, they replaced it with their values instead of ours.

00:52:48.040 — 00:53:17.480 · BEN
I talking about that, that how to argue. She reminds me of my freshman year of college. My first class, my was taught by my then advisor who gave us this mimeographed paper, like how to argue. And it was a joke. And it, you know, it had like use Latin words because that proves that you speak Latin and your opponent doesn't. And the very last thing was, if all else fails, can compare your opponent to Hitler.

00:53:17.680 — 00:53:20.260 · DARA
Oh, so it's like a prominent Godwin's law.

00:53:20.500 — 00:53:41.500 · BEN
Right. Yeah. But that's everything now is comparing like the the argument of genocide is essentially comparing Jews to Hitler. And that's become it. And it's astounding that that. So that's why I'm, you know, especially reading your book. And it's scary. Like, where where are we going in terms of any sort of understanding of knowledge and argument?

00:53:41.740 — 00:54:17.040 · DARA
Um, so I mean, look, this is a larger issue, um, beyond the Jewish community. What's to me is, you know, when you say we're entering the dark age, I mean, this is the, this is the beauty of Jewish civilization. Yeah. We've been here before. We've been in much worse. Yeah, we've been in much worse. Um, you know, we were the, you know, one of the only people who were teaching our kids how to read when most people weren't. We're going to probably be the only people teaching our kids how to read when most people aren't in the future.

00:54:17.660 — 00:54:21.160 · BEN
I was having this conversation with my wife last night that we'll get through it.

00:54:21.500 — 00:55:06.760 · DARA
Well, it's not just we'll get through it, but we have this, we have the tools. And what to me, and this is part of what I'm doing in the Tell Institute, is giving people these tools. Giving people these tools. We have this toolkit in Jewish civilization to deal with this. So, for example, you know, Jewish education, traditional Jewish education is exactly preparing you in how to argue, right? Like Jewish education isn't, you know, even, you know, traditional Jewish education isn't a teacher talking at you. It's chavruta, right? It's you with your learning partner studying together. And it's only a good chavruta if your learning partner doesn't agree with you, right?

00:55:06.760 — 00:55:41.400 · DARA
There's a famous story from the Talmud about, you know, Rabbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish, who were these two study, you know, these two sages who were, they're a pair of sages, they're constantly arguing. And then when Resh Lakish dies, Rabbi Yochanan is, you know, someone gives him a new study partner and he's like, this guy's terrible. He does disagree with me. He's like, how am I supposed to learn anything? How am I supposed to learn anything? You know, this was something that happens in a lot of Yiddish literature. There's this sort of story that comes up over and over again when people leave the traditional world and they go into, you know, the wider European society.

00:55:42.460 — 00:56:26.540 · DARA
And often one of their experiences they talk about is going into a library, like a library in a, you know, a Western European city, and they see something they have never seen before, which is people reading silently. Because in traditional Jewish communities, reading was a communal experience where you never would sit and read to yourself. You would always be reading out loud and debating with somebody. And these people, like they all write about, they're like, what are these people doing? Sitting quietly, looking at books, like they're baffled by this. So it's like, you know, like we have the tools tools to, you know, and, and even this sort of whole idea of, you know, the law that doesn't come from a king, right?

00:56:26.540 — 00:57:01.460 · DARA
Which is what the Torah is right the law that doesn't come from a king and this is how we teach it you know in the Tell Institute, we designed this to be taught to public school students. I mean, if I was teaching in a religious context, you can talk about the way we obviously regard this as a covenant with God. But even outside of a religious context, this is a radical idea that there are laws that are, it's not Hammurabi's code, right? Like that the leaders have to follow the laws too, right? I mean, and these are laws, these are ideas that influence the American founders.

00:57:01.460 — 00:57:04.680 · BEN
I was going to say, it is such a democratic ideal.

00:57:04.840 — 00:57:40.760 · DARA
Yes, exactly. I mean, or, you know, the story, like what we call in our curriculum, the story of freedom, right? I mean, the Pesach story, the Passover story from, you know, the story. This is a very unusual story in the ancient world because, you know, most stories are like, I know, you know, a lot of people this summer, past summer watched the movie the Odyssey, you know, based on, you know, if you think about Homer's epic the Odyssey, it's about, you know, the king coming home and taking his rightful place. Place in the palace, restoring his power. Like, the Passover story is about burning down the palace, right?

00:57:40.880 — 00:58:26.680 · DARA
It's basically about overturning this earthly king, refusing to bow to the king, refusing to bow to tyrants. And this is the ethos we need to teach people. And part of that is the ethos. We're very fortunate in the United states that that's part of this country's ethos as well. So, you know, is this, is this fixable, so to speak? The answer is yes. Yeah, this is fixable. I mean, I think that there's, look, I write in the book also about AI. Um I write about this data poisoning plot um to poison Wikipedia and Reddit with antisemitic um antisemitic lies. Um, you know, so there is a will to stop this, right?

00:58:26.800 — 00:58:45.620 · DARA
I mean, most Americans don't want their information ecosystem taken over by tyrannical regimes overseas and our foreign adversaries. Like, most Americans don't want that. And if they understood the depth to which that was happening, I think they'd be appalled. We need to tell them.

00:58:47.280 — 00:59:01.400 · BEN
When you do that, what has the reception been like? I mean, you've testified in front of Congress, but what is the reception to your experience?

00:59:02.120 — 00:59:42.200 · DARA
I mean, people are starting to wake up to this. I do think people are starting to wake up to this because, you know, when you start having overwhelming evidence of an organized eliminationist hate campaign. And you sort of, you know, it is possible to connect the dots here and see where the, where some of the sources of this are coming from. And so, look, I'm not, I'm not claiming that like everything, you know, everything is due to like, you know, foreign influence. Obviously that's not true. Obviously you have a lot of people in this country who are, uh for their own reasons, are propagating all kinds of hate movements.

00:59:42.200 — 01:00:26.080 · DARA
Um, but there is absolutely a synergy between this and opportunistic foreign actors. And I think that people don't like to be fooled. So in terms of like how people receive this, when I, when I put out this, this idea, there's sort of a few different levels of people, right? There's people who understand, who recognize that, that this is this overwhelmingly organized hate movement or basically, you know, this is like people in your organization who are basically sort of trying to sound the alarm about this and expose the lies, right? Because that's the problem. It's like, you know, as I said, fighting hatred requires empathy and I'm not discount I mean, obviously we all need empathy, right?

01:00:26.080 — 01:00:54.380 · DARA
I mean, this is, I'm not saying like, you know, stop being um you know, we all need empathy, but fighting lies requires a different strategy, which is exposure. So exposure is the first step. Um, you do have to do it over and over again, as your organization knows well. Um, you do have to sort of continuously do this. It's possible to de-radicalize people, you know, what's a lot easier is pre-bunking.

01:00:54.380 — 01:00:56.760 · BEN
Yeah. Yeah. You talk about that.

01:00:56.760 — 01:01:34.700 · DARA
Yes. So this is something, this is one of the reasons why we're building this at the Tell, like this, our program for the Jewish community is at the Bar and Bat Mitzvah level, because, you know, before students are completely saturated with this, because it is this, there's a lot of research that's been shown that it's like pre-bunking a lie is much easier than debunking a lie, meaning that you sort of alert people that they're going to be encountering this attempt to manipulate them, and then they are prepared, right? It's like a flu vaccine where you get a little bit of the flu and then you are prepared, right?

01:01:34.700 — 01:02:18.760 · DARA
Like when people understand they are prey for people who are going to be manipulating them. It is very empowering. It is very empowering to be able to identify, you know, these lies. And so, you know, what is the result of this? Like in terms of like the response I get, I will tell you that like school programs that we've already done, so we have already done pilots in public schools. The main response we have gotten has been just like, wow, who knew? This is amazing. Like people are fascinated by this. And while I'll tell you what they're fascinated by is not just like, you know, this sort of pattern of antisemitism, what they're fascinated by is the longevity of the Jewish people and how that was accomplished.

01:02:19.620 — 01:03:01.260 · DARA
That is what the students and the teachers are fascinated by. Like that's the first thing people respond. I'm like, wow, this has been around for 3,000 years? And it's not just this magical thing that Jewish civilization has been around for 3,000 years. It's choices. It's choices that the Jewish community made at different points, which are very high-cost choices. And when I say high-cost, I don't just mean it's expensive to send your kid to Jewish school. It is. But also, these are high-cost choices because it requires not getting the social validation of everyone agreeing with you. You know, you are essentially training people in curiosity and courage.

01:03:01.260 — 01:03:29.400 · BEN
Yeah. You, uh, you write that you know, this fear, even though I'm, uh, even though I'm the antisemitism Lorax, every time I write about this, I'm still absolutely terrified. Even now, what does that, what does that look like for you? And, and you know, what does it feel like the night before you have to go out to do some speaking engagement,

01:03:29.400 — 01:04:23.160 · DARA
Like dread, a lot of dread, a lot of, I would rather do something else. Um, you know, why, why am I doing this with my life there's so many other things I could be doing. Um, but also just, you know, constantly self-doubting self-checking like, did I express this well enough? You know was this you know could this be misinterpreted double checking myself 20,000 times? And then I'm like, you know what? These haters aren't doing that. They're not sitting there being like, oh, you know could that tweet be taken the wrong way? Spending 10 seconds thinking about that. Right. They're like, they're not like, oh, if I wear this keffiyeh will people associate me with people who have been shooting Palestinians in the street, the way Hamas has been executing people.

01:04:23.160 — 01:05:00.360 · DARA
Like maybe this, you know, I don't want, you know, I support, you know, Palestinian rights and dignity, but I don't want people to associate me with a regime that's shooting Palestinians in the street. No one's thinking that don't think that for a second. End I'm still doing that. I'm still sitting here being like, well, you know, what what would my friend in this organization think? What would somebody else think? We would this is idiocy. I'm still, even I, if even I am feeling this way still, I mean, you see how difficult this is to overcome. You see how incredibly difficult it is. It is absolutely.

01:05:00.360 — 01:05:37.720 · DARA
But like, yes, dread a sense of dread and a feeling like, yeah, I would rather do something else. Like we read on Yom Kippur, the book of Jonah, about the prophet Jonah, and he's told to go prophesy to Nineveh and tell the people of Nineveh that they have to repent or they're said he's going to be destroyed. And his response is to skip town. Yeah, he hops on a boat to go to somewhere in the opposite direction. I'm like, I wouldn't mind hopping on a boat and going to Tarshish. You know, like I kind of I get it. But then you end up in the then you end up getting eaten by a whale.

01:05:37.920 — 01:05:52.740 · DARA
So, I mean, like the realization is that, like, you know, you don't. Yes, you have a choice. Like, I could just never do this. But the person you have to live with for your whole life is yourself.

01:05:53.940 — 01:06:09.040 · BEN
And you write about the thousands of grateful people who are waiting for you to say these things discovered. So like this is what people who haven't done this yet don't know is how many people they're going to find out were on their side and just didn't want to say anything.

01:06:11.200 — 01:06:33.640 · DARA
Yeah. I mean, this is like this emperor has no clothes situation and we're all just like, you know, waiting for somebody to say something, you know, it's like, yeah, like you can look around and realize like, yeah, that person has to be you. I want to say something about um someone who I've, I've been, I feel blessed to have gotten to know and maybe you've even, I don't know if you know a woman named Anila Ali.

01:06:33.640 — 01:06:35.900 · BEN
I'm not, no, I don't.

01:06:35.900 — 01:07:31.440 · DARA
Okay. So she is, um she's the leader of a group called AMWEC it's a, it's an American Muslim organization. Um, and I was fortunate to meet her. I, I spoke at a conference that her group was leading. And this group leads trips to Israel for Muslim American leaders before and after October 7th. It's not in partnership with some Jewish group. It's just them. It's just them. And I met these people at this conference. And I will tell you that they were people talking about their experiences on this trip and coming back to their communities. And and the reason I'm mentioning this in this context is that they had put out a little book of testimonials from people who had been on this trip of their experiences, you know, these Muslim leaders and what they had experienced on this trip, on their trips to Israel.

01:07:31.440 — 01:08:18.780 · DARA
This book was dedicated to the memory of Imtiaz Mir, who was a Pakistani journalist who had been on one of these trips and then was assassinated and killed in Pakistan for having gone on this trip. When you hear something like that, and then you hear from somebody who's like, oh, I don't want to post, you know, I don't want to like, you know, say something to my teacher's union because, you know, people are going to hate me. We have Muslim allies who literally are risking their lives. They're literally risking their lives.

01:08:18.780 — 01:08:53.120 · BEN
Uh I mean, you have a moment in your book where shortly after October 8th or October 7th, rather you're, you're writing a piece about pogroms and rapes that happened during the pogroms. And, and yeah and as, as you say, you know, understandably, a fact checker is checking this, which we should all hope for that, that these mag, I started as a fact checker in magazines. So like, I, I deeply respect that. Whereas at the same time, the al-Ahli hospital, uh, incident happens.

01:08:53.120 — 01:09:27.160 · DARA
Yeah. Same week I was writing this piece. It was a, I was writing an op-ed for the New York times and it was, you know, right after October 7th. And it was putting, you know, it was sort of giving this history of this, these attacks in the, you know, in from Jewish history. And yeah, as I say, there was a, you know, a friendly fact checker who needed to see my evidence that there had been gang rapes during the, you know, Russian Civil War pogroms in 1921. And I'm, you know, diligently providing her all the testimony from the court records from those from that time.

01:09:27.780 — 01:09:38.660 · DARA
And literally the same week, they run a banner headline about how, you know, the Israelis, you know, bombed a hospital and killed 500 people, which did not happen.

01:09:38.880 — 01:09:41.820 · BEN
Right. And took days and days to correct.

01:09:42.280 — 01:09:57.040 · DARA
Yes. Exactly. I mean, it's like, but you know, meanwhile, it's like, I have to prove that literally a pogrom over a hundred years ago happened, but the spokespeople for Hamas are taken at their word. They are taken at their word.

01:09:57.040 — 01:09:59.180 · BEN
It's more than bias.

01:09:59.180 — 01:10:50.680 · DARA
Yeah. We have bought into a lie. We have bought into a lie and that was exactly, I mean, and this is sort of, in a sense, you keep participating in this lie, you're forced to, right? And this is what, you know, as you say, every time you have to, like, go after the people who are telling these lies, you know, that then takes up all of your time and energy. Whereas what really has to happen is to go after the liars and ask this question, who is benefiting from this lie? Who is benefiting? From blasting these lies at our society. And it's a really interesting question that not a lot of people are asking.

01:10:51.560 — 01:11:05.340 · BEN
Right. I mean, you talk about that, too, that antisemitism is something that you use to propel your political career, whatever you want to kind of do to get ahead.

01:11:05.500 — 01:11:06.820 · DARA
There's a benefit, exactly.

01:11:07.000 — 01:11:34.160 · BEN
Yeah. The benefit. The Mamdani administration, not to be too subtle with that transition, has on the 29th release this whole plan about antisemitism. It says nothing about anti-Zionism, nothing about the IHRA definition of antisemitism. I mean, but it's something. Should we be satisfied with these breadcrumbs? Is it something?

01:11:34.400 — 01:12:17.560 · DARA
Wait, how is it something? I mean, they gave you money. I mean, I'm reminded of when, you know, NYU was going to respond to all this by opening a center for the study of antisemitism. And I remember wondering, like, is it just going to be a big mirror that we put in Washington Square Park? Right. Like there's not a lot of introspection going on here. Not a lot of introspection. You know, this is an old Soviet method. Right. You know, we are against antisemitism and in favor of anti-Zionism. This slogan, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, is a KGB slogan. It is a KGB slogan. It's like, why are people falling for this?

01:12:17.720 — 01:12:58.600 · DARA
Why are people falling for this? And, you know, one answer is, we've never taught anyone about this, is one answer. This is a longer term answer, to it's not really an answer to your immediate question, what do you do with this? But, you know, I it's the the sociologist Shaul Kelner at Vanderbilt has made this point where he says that, you know, the you know community has invested a lot, resources, money, time, effort in educating people about the Holocaust. So, you know, you're now at the point, you know, and and look, I'm not making an argument against Holocaust education, especially in this era of Holocaust denial.

01:12:59.420 — 01:13:45.280 · DARA
I want to be really clear about that for your listeners. He makes the point that, you know, people recognize those things from the Holocaust because they've learned about them. Like, most people, when they see a swastika, know that it means killing Jews, right? And they know that that's bad. He says, imagine if we had spent five minutes of all of the hours we spent teaching people about the Holocaust, teaching people about Soviet anti-Zionism and anti-Zionism in the Arab world. And how this emptied the entire Arab world of its Jews, how it was used to persecute Soviet Jews mercilessly for decades, how it destroyed Jewish communities in the Eastern Bloc countries.

01:13:45.560 — 01:14:45.970 · DARA
You know, it's like the persecution of the anti-Zionist campaign against Polish Jews in 1916, which like forced Polish Jews out of their jobs. How there has never been a society that has taken on, never been a government that has taken on anti-Zionism as its policy that hasn't emptied itself of its Jews and persecuted its Jews. It's never happened. And he's like, and all of the slogans, you know, so people recognize these like, you know, racist slogans of the Nazi regime. They recognize the symbolism of the Nazi regime. If we had spent five minutes teaching people about Zionism is racism, Zionism is genocide, Zionism is colonialism, Zionism is apartheid, Zionism is Nazism, Zionism is terrorism, all of these slogans that were used by these regimes to persecute their Jewish populations, people would have recognized it in the same way that, you know, people recognize, like, swastika is bad.

01:14:46.430 — 01:15:41.190 · DARA
You know, Nazi slogans are bad. Like, yes, this is an anti-Jewish ideology that's being used to destroy Jewish communities. Why the hell are we allowing it in New York? Why the hell are we allowing it in New York? On what planet are you protecting Jews from antisemitism? Where you're saying that it's actually, you're not antisemitic because you only want, you're only okay, you don't mind if half the world's Jews die. That's, I mean also there are a lot of Jews in New York who are Israeli Americans. That's a big proportion of the Jews in New York. You know, discriminating against people for their national origin is against civil rights so, I mean, it's like, yeah, what do you do with this?

01:15:41.350 — 01:16:37.290 · DARA
You reject it. You call it. You know, what do you think? Oh, it's something. No, it's not. In what way is it something? We're giving funding for what? For protection of Jewish institutions? Isn't that the job of the cops? Right. Is that not the job of the cops? I'm confused. Like, were the cops not already doing that? I don't really get it. I don't really get it. Yeah, you reject it. Because what in the world are you doing? Like, this is, like, I wouldn't dignify this with acceptance. You're adopting an ideology that has persecuted Jews for a hundred years. And then you're going to slap a statement online? What the heck are you doing?

01:16:40.390 — 01:17:00.150 · BEN
So how do we teach that? How do we get that across? I know you have been critical of Holocaust education, but also, you know, as you just said, it is absolutely necessary in this world of conspiracy theories. What are you doing and how do we get this stuff across?

01:17:00.150 — 01:17:56.890 · DARA
Yes. So look, at the Tell Institute, we have our program. It's not like a year-long thing. It's eight lessons that a 13-year-old can understand. It's eight lessons. It's a crash course. It is currently designed for, we have a version that's for public high schools. We have a version for, as I said, for within the Jewish community. Basically, it's the same content, but honestly, it's just framed a little bit differently. Um we are we've had a lot of requests and demand for other versions of this to deliver it, and so and we're working on that, but this is what we have at the moment. Um, the way we've structured this is around it is grounded in the ideas of Jewish civilization, because we do not believe that you can understand antisemitism without understanding the content of Jewish civilization, because antisemitism is actually a reaction to the content of Jewish civilization.

01:17:56.890 — 01:18:29.730 · DARA
So we ground it first in the idea of who are Jews, because that is something that none of these you know no one is ever teaching. Like you know you can go learn about the Holocaust at school. You will never learn who are Jews. Um you know for example, people think Jews are a religion. Jews aren't a religion. Jews have a religion. But Jews are actually a category a social category that doesn't you know that's very uncommon in the modern world. It's very common in the ancient world. Jews are a joinable tribal group with a shared history, homeland, and culture. And that was a sentence in English, in Hebrew, it's one word, it's two letters long, am.

01:18:30.690 — 01:19:10.070 · DARA
That's who Jews are, they're Am Yisrael. So until you understand that category, nothing else makes sense, because you're trying to fit everything into paradigms that were made by empires. So, and ultimately what Jewish civilization is, is this tiny countercultural minority that refuses to succumb to empires and refuses to bow to tyrants. And that pisses off empires, and it pisses off tyrants. And so ultimately, and we present these groundbreaking ideas of Jewish civilization and how they've shaped world history. So this is an impact way beyond the Jewish community. Obviously, you don't have Christianity and Islam without Judaism. You know, there's obviously, it inspires the American founders.

01:19:10.270 — 01:19:44.190 · DARA
And we talk about like sort of these core ideas of Jewish civilization. Um you know and you know things like you know monotheism, which we think of as a spiritual idea, but it's actually, in the ancient world, almost more like a political idea. Because if you think about a society like Ancient Egypt, they've got lots of gods. One of them's the dictator. So if the Jews aren't bowing to other gods, they're not bowing to the Pharaoh. Right, they're not worshiping the Roman emperor. So you know that is a statement of not bowing to tyrants. Um you know we talk about the idea of the laws that don't come from the king.

01:19:44.390 — 01:20:27.290 · DARA
We talk about the interpretive tradition, the rabbinic tradition, where it's all about debating the meaning of the law. There's a culture of civil discourse, debate, and dissent. We talk about the story of freedom. So we grounded in that. Then we introduced this idea of the big lie, how societies responded to these ideas. They were perceived as a threat by societies that need everyone to agree, by societies that can't tolerate dissent. The whole purpose here is pattern recognition for students. So we then take them through these case studies, which I've already discussed, and then we bring them back to the survival and resilience of Jewish civilization.

01:20:28.090 — 01:21:09.590 · DARA
How was it, not just, not why, but how was it possible for Jews to survive for thousands of years? What were the choices that Jewish communities made, the commitments that Jewish communities made. And these are things like literacy, right? Things like community, not just community, like you need 10 people to pray, not just like your local synagogue community, but also connections between Jewish communities across long distances, right? I mean, that there were, you know, when there was a community in the land of Israel and a community in Babylonia, that they had messengers who were going back and forth, right, when Maimonides is sitting in Egypt, he is answering letters from scholars in who are leaders of the communities in France and in Yemen.

01:21:09.590 — 01:21:46.890 · DARA
Right I mean this is like even in pre-modern period, when you would think it was impossible. You know this constant contact with people in the land of Israel, the fact that the land of Israel is the only place on earth where where Jews have can have lived continuously. It is the only place on earth where Jews have always lived, is the land of Israel. Just these basic facts are choices. They're choices. And so we teach about that kind of choices and resilience. And ultimately, this becomes a story which students and teachers find inspiring. And it's sort of, it becomes, and it wasn't really intended that way.

01:21:46.970 — 01:22:22.010 · DARA
It really just is intended as we're learning about this civilization. But what has surprised me is that people have found it to be something that's inspiring and empowering, not even just Jewish students and teachers, but non-Jewish students and teachers have found it inspiring and empowering because it shows that, yeah, you don't have to bow to tyrants. That is something that's really important for everyone to know. So in terms of like not just teaching about the Holocaust, to me, the amazing story is not about this litany of horror. It's not about, you know, what's amazing about Jewish history is not the litany of horror, because unfortunately, that's the least interesting thing about Jewish history.

01:22:22.110 — 01:22:44.030 · DARA
There's no group in human history that hasn't, you know, gone through persecutions and displacements and things like that. What's astounding about Jewish history is this, how Jewish communities made these choices to maintain this counterculture, this distinctive civilization against these empires that sought to wipe them out.

01:22:44.470 — 01:23:22.210 · BEN
Yeah. Ben M. Freeman, who writes for us and has been on the pod before, has said that, you know, his big line was that, you know, the greatest achievement of the Jewish people isn't Israel the greatest achievement of the Jewish people is the Jewish people. And at the end of your book, in the closing pages, and I don't want to give away the ending necessarily, but you talk about, you know, talking to your children, and it really, I mean, I got that you were talking about the Shema, and, you know, passing these words down, teaching our children that that is kind of the final solution.

01:23:22.210 — 01:23:34.790 · BEN
And, yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is a question so much as just an observation, but that really, you know, it was it was you landed the plane, if you will.

01:23:35.970 — 01:23:43.310 · DARA
I mean, with one wing broken and with the people who tried to stab you lying on the floor. But, yes.

01:23:44.230 — 01:23:51.610 · BEN
Yeah, I mean, but that that is the we endure, I guess, is the takeaway.

01:23:51.610 — 01:24:50.570 · DARA
But it's not just endurance, right? It's that every single person today who's part of this community is a Jew by choice. In that every person has made this decision, this countercultural decision not to bow to tyrants, not to assimilate into empires, and to maintain this really amazing civilization. I mean, you know, to me, it's like, there's also like, you know, the value proposition of being Jewish is astounding, right? I mean, this, the name Jews, it comes from the word for gratitude. We are the people who are grateful to God. And the name Israel comes from, we are the people who wrestle with God. I mean, is there any better description of what it means to be a human being for anyone on earth?

01:24:52.510 — 01:25:43.750 · DARA
This wrestling and gratitude. And, you know, I think that in the modern context, in our modern world, we're often dissociated from the past and the future. And there is this incredible power, and this is what I'm, I'm depicting this in the book, of being part of what I call this love story, right? Where you are connected to the past and also to the future. You know, and you're connected through people, you know, um through our, you know, or through our parents and teachers, through our students and children. But that you are part of this story that you get to keep reading and writing this story.

01:25:43.750 — 01:26:19.510 · DARA
And I saw, like, I saw how that was absent from people. Honestly, like I saw this in, I write about this in the book. Like, there was a point where, you know, where I stopped being afraid of these teenagers who were heckling me at these colleges. And I started, as I put it in the book, I started feeling almost motherly toward them, you know, because as a mother of four teenagers, I understand, you know, I come to them as a mother and I started feeling, instead of being afraid of them, I felt sorry for them. Because I would see like, you know, the sort of proverbial white girl in a keffiyeh, you know, and they're like chanting free, free Palestine.

01:26:19.510 — 01:27:07.530 · DARA
And I just remember thinking like, it's sad that you don't have something from your own culture to wear you don't have like a place where you can go daily or weekly to chant meaningful words that make you feel like you're participating in something bigger than yourself. My kids do that every week at Shabbos, right? Like, you know, like, like if you, you know, if they want to chant meaningful words that make them feel connected to a bigger story, you know, they're doing that all the time. Right? Like, you know, we have things from our own culture to wear. Yeah. And it's like, you don't. And it's like, there's this, this gaping absence that people want, people want to be part of a larger community.

01:27:07.530 — 01:27:57.170 · DARA
They want to, you know, they want to be in service of others. And they don't have the way to do that, or they have not found a community that is telling them a story that they can be a part of. This is what Jews have been doing for thousands of years. This is what Jews have been doing for thousands of years, is finding, is, you know, this is a technology for finding the holiness in daily life. You know, that's what, you know, you said like the greatest achievement of the Jewish people is the Jewish people. I mean, what has held together the Jewish people? I mean, this is the Torah, right?

01:27:57.170 — 01:28:29.750 · DARA
This is, you know, and whether you're a quote religious person or not, right? You are part of this story. I mean, I call this, you know, a love story between the Jewish people and their God. And every person who's Jewish who's alive today is descended from someone who made this incredibly countercultural choice, right? They decided to be part of this, even when the millions of people around them told them they were wrong. They still said, this is who I am.

01:28:32.970 — 01:28:35.330 · BEN
Dara Horn, thank you so much for joining us today.

01:28:35.610 — 01:28:36.570 · DARA
Thank you for having me.

01:28:42.530 — 01:29:25.230 · BEN
Near the end, I tried to sum all of this up as we endure, and Dara wouldn't let me have it. Enduring is something that happens to you. What she was describing is something you do, over and over, at a cost, usually while everyone around you is telling you you're wrong. Every Jew alive today is here because somebody, somewhere, along the line, was offered an easier way out and turned it down. The literacy, the arguing, the letters carried between communities hundreds of miles apart. The holidays. None of it just happened. Somebody chose it. And then their kids did. And there was a turn in this conversation I didn't see coming.

01:29:26.080 — 01:30:06.490 · BEN
The students in keffiyehs chanting at her talks, she stopped being afraid of them. And she feels sorry for them. What they're reaching for is somewhere to belong. Words that mean something, a story bigger than they are. And that's the thing Jews have been handing down the whole time. We don't have to argue our way out of being hated. We have the thing people actually want. If this one gave you something to argue about at your own table, do me a favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's genuinely the thing that helps people find the show. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify so you don't miss the next show.

01:30:06.650 — 01:30:30.670 · BEN
And follow @HonestReporting on X, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for all the work behind these conversations. Dara's new book is The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living, and it's out now everywhere you get books. And if you haven't read People Love Dead Jews, start there. I'm Ben Chertoff. This is The Honest Take. And we'll see you next time.