A (3:12)

I mean, again, just, it's like this thing where just, you know, it's not like we open newspapers anymore and say, oh, look at what's on page two, page three, page four. It just floods us. I, I ended up in a weird position this morning, which is, as you know, Twitter, if even if you don't, or X whatever you use, it has these two column categories, right? There's the people you follow and then there's the for you banner. And you never want to read the for you banner. But I somehow ended up on the for your banner. And because I had tweeted some stuff about Bondi beach and various other things, I start getting the algorithms serving me material relating to the events of the last 24 hours. And what did I get in this feed? I got the idea that it is an outrage to suggest that globalized the intifada has been made flesh by what happened at Bondi Beach. That's an outrage. Brett Stevens writing an editorial, an op ed saying this is what globalizing intifada looks like. Condemned by dozens of people on Twitter as a. As a libel, as a Jew Feffer corn, Jewish turncoat monsters coming at me with the idea that, you see, this is what happens when Israel acts genocidally in Gaza. I mean, you can't. You can't look away and say that the Jews are therefore responsible for this, for this. Father and son in Sydney taking machine guns and spending 11 minutes of unanswered and unresponded to assault, you know, on the most popular beach in the country. Their fault. It's our fault. We're doing it to ourselves. You know, look to the Israeli government for the reasons and causes and blame. So I say that I did this to myself because I was in the wrong corridor on Twitter. And then I look at that and I say, twitter's not real life. Twitter's not real life. Right? It's not. 73% of tweets are written by 4% of people on Twitter. It's not real life. This is not how people really think. But it's. Obviously, there are enough people who think things like this for there to be one person to pick up a gun. The Dick Kane, Dick Cheney, 1% solution problem. You only need one guy with a gun or two guys with a gun to go onto Bondi beach with machine guns. With an Australian police force that has clearly been told to stand down if there's violence, for violence to occur. And who even knew that this was going to be the worst story of the week when we were already dealing. And then Brown. We still don't understand what's going on at Brown, right? Economics final tutorial classroom. Invaded by a guy who shouted something we don't know, right? Shot 14 people, two of them dead, several in critical condition. Walks out of the building, runs down the street. They don't have him. He's still large. Abe, you were pointing out, and I think this is this feeling that things spin out of control also has to do with the fact that the authorities seem in Sydney, in Providence, all kinds of places seem uncommonly uninterested at Amsterdam, uncommonly uninterested in fixing the problem or interceding or doing things to stop them. In the middle, there's this question of whether 17 minutes passed between the starting of the firings in the classroom at Brown and the text going out from the university warning people to shelter in place. 17 minutes.

B (7:30)

No one spoke with one voice on any of these issues. The officials in Australia didn't want to speak about reports of the police supposedly sort of freezing. The president of Brown asked, hours, six hours or something after the shooting, what was happening in the classroom? Said, I don't know, didn't know. Do we know that she's even telling the truth? Who knows? But claimed not to know what was happening in that classroom. I've heard all sorts of mixed stories about the first one person that was in custody for the Brown shooting. Mixed stories, different stories until that person was released. It feels weird to bring it in, but just as a matter of confusion, the horrible Rob Reiner story was another disaster. I mean, you had the mayor saying that Rob Reiner was murdered while the police spokesperson was on TV saying, there's just a death investigation, period. Is there a suspect? No. Are you looking for a suspect? Not at this time. I mean, the weirdest, you know, personal things going on there. I know, but like, you just, you were left just with this sense of free floating, unchecked violence and chaos.

D (9:22)

So can I say something about Brown, please, quickly? I mean, there's a lot to say, I think, about all three. But at Brown, what we now know, and there's obviously a lot we don't know, is that one of the two victims is a young woman by the name of Ella Cook, who was the head of the Brown chapter of the College Republicans. And we also know that the shooter came in and yelled something. Now, this was at Brown, some kind of a prep session for an exam, an economics exam. There were obviously dozens of witnesses to this. There were dozens of students in the classroom. And the idea, it seems puzzling to me, the idea that we don't know yet what was shouted is puzzling to me. And that Paxson, Christina Paxton, the president of Brown, went out and her response was, I don't know, rather than, I can't say at this moment because authorities are investigating this and the confidentiality is key to tracking down the person who did this is also puzzling to me. The relapses in law enforcement as you mentioned, 17 minutes before students were told to shelter in place, before, you know, alarms went off, sirens on campus never sounded. And then the response of authorities was, well, this was a fast moving situation. Well, what are the sirens for if not for a fast moving situation? And then I'm seeing reports, and look, these things may be wrong, that this young woman, the head of the College Republicans, was personally targeted. And if that turns out to be true, this is going to be more tragic than it already is and petrifying. And then to move to Australia, you know, that situation is a mix of. We have the prime minister there, Anthony Albanese, who recognized a Palestinian state in September. There have been, There has been a rash of anti Semitic attacks in Australia over the past year. The country is facing a problem of immigration without assimilation, of which this attack is an expression.

A (12:06)

Australia, can I just add, Australia kicked out its ambassador from Iran because of evidence that he was materially involved in a plan to target a synagogue in Melbourne during high Holy day services. They removed the ambassador from the ambassador from Iran on the grounds that he personally was involved in a terrorist plot on Australian soil. And even today, yesterday and today, Albanese's statement does not mention Hanukkah.

D (12:51)

I was just about to say.

A (12:52)

Please, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, let me, let me. I'm sorry.

D (12:54)

And then the guy's response, Albanese's response to this, right off the bat, he eventually was shamed into it, but he, his response does not mention Jews, does not mention Hanukkah, does not mention anti Semitism. He eventually was shamed into acknowledging that this was a terrorist attack targeted against Jews. It was essentially a pogrom. No, his response was, we need more gun control. When the father and son in this attack, it was a Pakistani father and son obtained their guns legally after being investigated for associations with isis. I mean, the failures of governance and of law enforcement from the top down. And we didn't even get to, you know, the reports of female police officers here who laid on the ground while people were massacred. The failures are just legion of policy, of law enforcement, of governance. It just, you know, I'm speechless.

E (13:57)

There's another. The other aspect of this is the. And I'm really angry about this because although we've been talking about it, other people have noted it. I feel personally this was a turning point getting, seeing that news about Bondi beach, the willful ignorance of the fact that we all know what globalize the Intifada means. We have known what it means. And I think Ayan Hirsi Ali in the Free press today put it best, she said this, this has happened in Europe, this has happened here in Washington D.C. it has just happened in Australia. Again, this was tolerated into being. And by that she means this, this claim of tolerance that radical Islam does not have is not a threat not only to Jews, but the case that Eliana mentioned earlier in Germany that was going to target a Christmas market. There are Christmas markets that now in Paris, they didn't even have one because of the risk of all from Islamic extremism. And the hero of Bondi beach was actually a Muslim man, a fruit seller who saw what was happening and at risk to his life, tackled one of the gunmen, the father, and brought him down, probably saving countless lives. So I'm. This is not an anti Muslim rant, but this is an anti radical Islam rant. And this is a problem that every country in Western civilization right now must confront and must do so honestly and, and must root out these obvious terror cells. These guys had an ISIS flag in their car. They had unexploded active IEDs as well. The attack they were planning was much worse than just shooting up some people. It was meant to probably deal with maybe first responders or others who came to the scene. So there is an ideological issue here, and I know lots of concerned liberals like to skirt and tiptoe around it in the name of tolerance, but the time for tolerance of this sort of ideology has to end.

A (15:42)

You mentioned the Free Press and I just want to read a couple of paragraphs from an Australian Jew in the Free Press in an article called now do you believe us? Julie Zago. Of all the difficult emotions I've been forced to grapple with in the hours since two gunmen carried out a massacre of Jews at Bondi beach, the most complicated is a bitter, dark sense of vindication. Now do you believe us? I imagine screaming at Australia's progressive intelligentsia, political and media class. Do you believe Jew hatred is out of control? After the most lethal terror attack on the nation's soil? The setting for the largest massacre of Jews since October 7 tells a brutal story. Australia's Jewish community, numbering around 120,000, has long been acclimated to heavily fortified communal buildings with security guards in every door, and to the politicians of courting us in election season with money for yet more fortifications. In a march, about 100,000 people for Gaza across the Sydney Harbor Bridge in August featured, among other insults, a placard of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, two prominent members of the country's ruling Labor Party walked in front of the sign at the so called March for Humanity and it was a week later the government announced it would recognize the state of Palestine without meaningful preconditions. Firebombing of a Sydney kosher deli and of Melbourne's Adas Israel synagogue while congregants were inside. War in August revealed to have been directed by the regime in Tehran In January, police found a trailer in a town in the state of New South Wales filled with explosive materials, an anti Semitic document and a list of possible targets within the Jewish community. So it has been two years. Australia, like the United States, kind of a paradise for Jews, location of the largest diaspora. 2 After the Holocaust, next to the United States and next to Israel, excuse me, were survivors who went to Australia, made lives for themselves, had a community. It's an open, democratic society. And then, as Christine said, as was the case with Europe Beginning in the 1990s, a set of ideas about multiculturalism and immigration and other things caused a sea change in the temperature around Jews, Judaism, Israel and Australia's ruling class and intelligentsia that Julie Sago here is calling out.

E (18:32)

One of those survivors of the Holocaust was one of the victims at Bondi beach, protecting his wife.

A (18:38)

Right, look, I wrote a series of pieces, pieces in the magazine since October 7th called, you know, they're coming to get us, they're coming to drive us underground. It was almost entirely about the United States. Those articles were about the campus protests and the tearing down of the posters and all of that. And this feeling, the United States that none of us had felt before, that not only were we unsafe, but that we were being targeted. Clearly it's worse outside the United States. I mean, you know, one has to say that as bad as things are here, you get the sense, and particularly after, after the Hama, the ceasefire in Israel, that something new, that a shift has taken place. And Adavael says this on Dan Cena's podcast this morning. The, these reports from intelligence agencies and others inside Israel that there, there seems to be a new level of activism targeting Jews outside Israel. In other words, with the focus no longer being on the genocide in Gaza, now it just could be open season on Jews anywhere. With, with the, with, there wasn't even a pretext here at Bondi beach, right? You know, in Amsterdam, the pretext was a Hanukkah concert by an Israeli. That's a pretext. It's a disgusting pretext. But at least it has a press. It has a, you know, it has an antecedent.

C (20:10)

You know, but even even since October 7th. You know, I said yesterday on. On Twitter that I can't. I. I'm shocked at how much I've had cause to write about Australia since October 7. The first post I wrote about Australia, I mentioned that, you know, we used to sit around at, you know, family dinners, go, all right, where are we going to go if things get, you know, if things, God forbid, got bad in America? And it was like, all right, Israel, but besides Israel, the answer was always Australia. It really. It really is, you know, in people's minds, this idolic place. And so, you know, it's just been shocking. But right after October 7th, I think the controversy that really told you what was happening was there was this. There was a demonstration in front of the Sydney Opera House just a few days after the Hamas attacks. So Israel had not gone into Gaza yet, Right. Later on, it emerged that there was a police investigation because people had chanted, gas the Jews. This had been accepted at first because people could hear them, and the videos of the demonstrations were everywhere. But they actually opened an investigation into it, and they concluded that an expert review had concluded the phrase uttered was where's the Jews? Although other anti Semitic phrases had been chanted, end quote. So here was the fight. Did they say gas the Jews or where's the Jews? Because both of them are going after Jews. We were arguing over which explicit threat there was that, to me, really characterized Australia's like, descent into this kind of Jew baiting chaos. Because it was like, these people feel like it's a defense to say, where's the Jews? That instead of gas the Jews. The other thing is that, you know, when we talk about pretext, a fairly prominent Australian human rights attorney asked at this point early in the war, tweeted the question, why are Australian Jews so intractably bent on justifying what Israel is doing to Palestinians? This was. I mean, this was open season. You know, this was a call for go after the Jews of Australia on whatever pretext, and had been happening right away after October 7th. And there were they, you know, they were open about this not being Israel. And Australia was the one place where there was less trying to hide it behind the banner of anti Zionism and more, where's the Jews and why are the Jews and all this stuff. And so it's extra frustrating because we've had these arguments in the west, in Britain, in the US about, you know, well, what is really threaten a threat? What is har. Is it harassment to say, from the river to the sea, does it violate the colleges you know, we had to deal with, with, with the euphemism fight. And in Australia, it's worse. They were just going, the Jews, the Jews, the Jews. And still nothing was done.

A (23:29)

Hey, John, here. Okay, no gift cards this year. I'll tell you why don't give a gift card as a present because you can give an aura frame. An aura frame. I got one sitting right in front of me. They're amazing. It's like having a high definition screen showing your life in photographs. So easily downloaded from your photo app into the Aura app showing you videos. Photos organized however you want to organize them from the moment that you have a digital photo. Go back 30, 40 years. If you have them scanned up to the present, you can figure out how much time each photo spends on the screen before it moves on to the next one. Unlimited numbers. You can actually preload the photos before it ships by downloading the app and they'll put it on there so that when you send it to your relative or to your loved one, the photos are there just when they plug it in. And you can personalize your gift by adding a message before it arrives. You can't wrap togetherness, but you can frame it. And for a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com that's a U R A frames.com to get $35 off Aura's best selling carver mat frames named number one by Wirecutter by using promo code commentary at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code commentary. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. It's very easy to do an ad for something when you're sitting as you're recording the ad wearing the product that you are supposed to endorse. And in my case, that is a quince Mongolian cashmere sweater. That's what I am wearing at this moment. And at Quint's you can pick one up for 50 bucks when you'd normally drop $200 or more on the same thing. Plus wool coats that actually hold up to daily wear and still look good. I myself have a quince puffer that I'm wearing over the sweater when I go out on these cold November days. By partnering directly with trusted factories that maintain high standards for craftsmanship and ethical practices, Quince cuts out the middleman and markups. That means premium quality at half the cost of other high end brands. So you can give luxury pieces without the luxury price tag. So get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with quints. Don't wait. Go to quints.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com Commentary Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Commentary look, it's worse than that because here in New York for two months, after three whatever after Zora Momdani secured the nomination as the Democratic nominee for the mayoralty, one of the main issues that he had to deal with was would he renounce, denounce or change his views or alter the way he talked about Israel, Gaza, as the founder of the chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at Bowdoin, Would he which was his entryway into politics, would he understand that in a city that was 9% Jewish, that is the has the largest single Jewish population outside of the state of Israel, that that new responsibilities would oblige him to alter his course on some of these matters? He refused to do so. And there were repeated times in which he was asked by reporters and that sort of thing why he did not denounce or renounce the phrase globalize the interference fada. And he said that is not language I use. So but the obvious follow on is he didn't say and nobody should use it. It shouldn't be used. It's, it's a call to violence against people who will be my constituents. And during this, three weeks before the election, there was in New York political circles and I can tell you, because I've had convict I was having conversations with people outside of our, you know, my own little bubble and reading things and that sort of thing about how like leave him alone, let it go. Like, you know, he's the mayor of New York. Okay, so he has bad opinions about Israel. You think he has bad opinions about Israel who get like he's got a, he's going to have to deal with public safety. He's going to have to deal with affordability. He's going to have to, he's making all these promises, you know, like focus on the policies that he's pursuing and not this question. Like, why are you bringing this in out of nowhere? It's ridiculous. This is an issue because as we are now seeing, if you subsidize an opinion, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali might have it right, that this opinion was tolerated into being. If you subsidize something, you get More of it. So if you have a mayor who is on record in the world, in the world of radical Islam, as not denouncing globalized the intifada in a place in the world that has more individual targets of opportunity to harm Jews physically than anywhere on earth, by the way, in some ways, unless you think every. Obviously every house in Israel would count as a target. But there are more Jewish buildings in New York, Jewish sites, Jewish restaurants, Jewish anything that aren't just synagogues or community centers than anywhere else on earth. And you have a mayor who has telegraphed a message that globalized the intifada is kind of okay with him, or what will that lead to when he takes over city hall on January 1st? In the city I live in, I have a kid who goes to a Jewish day school on the Upper west side of Manhattan. What's going to happen? Got a lot of security. Schools always had a lot of security. A lot of places are hardened. You know, it's not hardened. A deli, a, you know, kosher meat place, a kosher dairy place on 96th Street. I don't want a nameplate now. It's like I'm the street outside the school.

B (30:36)

Look there around.

C (30:37)

There was.

B (30:37)

We didn't even bring up. There was an incident in a New York restaurant this weekend. Yeah. Where some guy went crazy screaming about the Jews and the Zionists and called a woman the C word and stormed out of the restaurant. Just random. Any place. I think in some sense we're having a. Not us, but Jews are having the wrong arguments here. I'm thinking about the do you believe us now? Piece, John, that you read from in the Free Press. I don't think they never. I think they always believed us. They never cared. I don't think. I think Zoram Hamdani and Rashida Tlaib and everyone else who defends it knows perfectly well better than most people what globalizing Intifada actually means. They don't care. It's not that we need to convince them that there's a problem, that we need to convince them that globalizing Intifada is a direct path to violence on some level, some more than others, some closer to the surface than others. They wanted all this and they want all this. And it's explicit now because as I've seen also on Twitter throughout the weekend, there are all these sort of curlicue arguments. Basically saying Jews generally support Israel. That makes them. That reveals their bloodlust and makes them complicit in, quote, genocide. This is what they want.

A (32:14)

Logic of that is the logic of globalize the intifada is that the intifada took Israeli civilians. The idea of the intifada was that any. Anyone in Israel, it's true of terrorism in general, but anyone in Israel is a legitimate target because the nation itself is, is, is, is the stain. And every citizen of that nation is, therefore carries the stain. Well, if you make that global, then as I keep trying to explain to the Peter Beinarts of the world, they're not going to care whether you said that they were in the right and Israel was in the wrong. You're standing in the wrong place. You're dead. You're a Jew in 1938 who converted to Catholicism in Vienna or in Berlin. You're going into a concentration camp. They don't. Distinctions, ideological distinctions, are not going to save you from an attitude and atmosphere in which the idea is that every Jew carries within him the stain of the evil that needs to be extirpated.

E (33:29)

Well, and that comes with. And the irony there is that that's the argument they're making. And yet the minute you point to radical Islam ideology, the minute you ask, where are the imams stepping up daily, weekly, after, and they'll give. One will give a press statement after an attack like this, and then they disappear forever. Where are these men getting radicalized? What are their own communities doing to prevent that radicalization? But the minute you say that you cannot tar all Muslims with this. This is not a Muslim thing. How dare you. And yet, if you happen to be Jewish, you are responsible for everything that the government of Israel has done from the moment the state of Israel was founded. I again, like, I'm really wound up. I should probably tone it down or have had less coffee, but it infuriates me that we are allowing once again, it happened after the shooting here in Washington of the two young people at the Israeli embassy. It is not enough to just say, oh, we need more gun control. Oh, we're worried about the radicalization. Oh, it's not a Muslim thing. This is an ideology that. It's starting with the Jews. Yes, but it is extending already. They are murdering Christians in Africa. They are shutting down Christmas festivals all over Europe. They are not interested at all in negotiating the terms of the kind of civilization they are using violence to attain. And our tolerance is a weakness in this setting. And I think that's where this is what the Jewish community has been reminding political leadership for, for decades now. But we, I think as Americans, we have a lot more facility, a lot more Freedom, but also a lot more ability to kind of organize. And I mean, we've talked on the show many times about Jewish communities security, but also personally arming themselves, training, self defense. These things, unfortunately, are the new reality. And I think not our. The fact that our elected officials aren't able to identify where this ideology's endpoint is. It is not just the destruction of the Jews. It is the destruction of everything that Western civilization stands for. They go after the Jews first because the Jews are the best example of a people who thrive under the conditions of that civilization and who uphold its values.

B (35:38)

Yeah, I think the important, I think the point about what we're witnessing really is the destruction of the west is very important. Hanukkah got off without a hitch, as far as I could tell, in Israel. Meanwhile, all around the west.

A (35:58)

Who, even.

B (35:59)

If you're not Jewish and even if you hate the Jews and you hated the war and you want to live in societies like these, because Islamists can get away with this. They can get away with more and more in free countries where individuals are granted all sorts of exotic rights. It's the end. I mean, you know, you look at England, you look at Amsterdam, look at, look at Australia. This is, this is. It happens very quickly. And if you just look at the state of affairs two years ago to today, all around the west and what kinds of countries they are now.

A (36:44)

Eliana, you put out a newsletter this morning at the Free Beacon. I was thinking about Julie Zago, the author of the piece on the Free Press, and Abe saying, they don't care. When she said, now do you believe us? She wasn't talking about sort of like Australia's versions of Ilhan Omar. She was talking about the mushy middle right. She was talking about conventional opinion, liberal opinion makers and holders in Australia who, you're right, probably in the end didn't care. But their version of not caring was saying, no, no, no, you're. You're overreacting. Really, it's not that bad. Right. So, Eliana, you quote this tweet from a Democratic candidate for office somewhere in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania. So can you tell. Can you explain what happened with the two tweets of this guy who is running for office?

D (37:49)

Sure. So this candidate, and I forget his name. You have the newsletter in front of you.

A (37:54)

I'll find it while you.

D (37:56)

Okay, so he's challenging a Republican in the midterms. A Republican congressional candidate by the name of Ryan MacKenzie.

A (38:04)

Yeah, his name is Bob Brooks.

E (38:06)

Bob.

D (38:07)

Bob. Good. But I know that's wrong. So Bob Brooks is a Democrat, a left wing Democrat challenging a Republican, Ryan Mackenzie in a swing district in Pennsylvania. Ryan Mackenzie was just elected in 2024. And so Bob Brooks puts out a tweet and issues condolences for both the Brown University and the Bondi beach massacres. And then moments later takes down that tweet and puts out a new tweet removing his condolences for the Bondi beach massacres. You know, he could be forgiven, given Anthony Albanese's statement for not realizing that Jews were the subject of the, were the victims in the Bondi beach attack. And then when he realized it, belatedly, he pulled down the tweet because he didn't want to give condolences to the Jews. And he put out a new tweet that just said he was so sorry about what happened at Brown. And this is symptomatic of where the far left is in this country. So he's a, you know, Bernie Sanders endorsed candidate in this swing district in Pennsylvania. Did you want to talk about that, John, or.

A (39:28)

Yeah, no, I just think basically the idea that he. Yeah, the idea that he edited the tweet. Somebody said, well, you take out the, take out the Australia thing, like, because he's trying to consolidate. Yeah. On the left in the Democratic primary process in a district that Democrats like Trump won 50. I just looked it up. Pennsylvania sevens. Trump won 5148, Obama won it twice. So it is a genuine American swing district. And so if you're trying to get secure the nomination in the Democratic Party, it's sensible to go from the left center word. Right. So all we know about this guy, I've ever, never heard of him. This is not a district I know much about, although my daughter's college is smack in the middle of it.

D (40:18)

The woman, the woman Ryan Mackenzie defeated in this district is Susan Wild, who was a Jewish Democrat. He defeated in 2024 and was the incumbent. And she, you know, so this has gone back and forth, you know, was a Jewish Democrat who was, who was in this seat, you know, but what was rattling around in my head when Abe and Christine were talking and John, you had said, are we better off in America? Are we not better off in America? Was actually the Trump administration's national security strategy and their barbed commentary about Europeans. But I think it applies to Australia, but the lack of civilizational self confidence and all benaises in Australia. But it applies to Europe too. Their refusal to stand up and say, we may take immigrants, but we are going to demand assimilation Diversity is not in and of itself a good. There's nothing inherently good about diversity. And if you want to, you know, we will accept people from around the world contingent on certain, you know, assimilation. And to Christine's point, I would expect nothing, you know, from these Muslim communities. What I. My expectations are of the leaders in the Western world, and I think that is who the Trump administration is critical of. I do think for now, the United States is better off, because every now and again, the American people will get so angry and tired of Democratic leadership that occasionally they will elect a Trump who will say no, like, we're sick and tired of immigration from the rest of the world without the requisite assimilation. And that is what we're seeing the president say, and we simply don't see that very often in the rest of the world. But we are seeing the Trump administration talk to them. And these attacks, I think, are symptomatic of the dangers of talking about diversity, you know, as an inherent good and a refusal to demand assimilation, the assimilation of immigrant populations.

A (42:49)

Look, I would even say that it is more than acceptable in the truest understanding of the world that diversity is a good. I think, in the United States, assimilation was not something that had to be forced on people. It was the nature of the existence of an immigrant population that it became assimilated over time. Something changed. Excuse me, something changed in this country in the 1970s, 1980s, in which not assimilating became a subject of a series of subsidies, educational deferments of the idea that a kid coming into school needed to be taught in English, the creation of social service agencies to funnel money. This, of course, is now seen in the most dramatic way in the Somali fraud that we've now been talking about for weeks and that Eliana and her family have been talking about for seven years, the Somali fraud, which is that you not only bring in a population, but you provide it with services and resources to prevent its assimilation. Part of the process of assimilation was the tough bargain of coming to the United States, which is, you come here, Congratulations, you're here. You're covered by the Bill of Rights. You're covered by our Constitution. You have the freedoms that we all have, but if you don't learn English, you're not going to get out of the working class. If your kids don't do well in school, they're not going to do any better than you. You're going to be living in poor, you're going to be living in poverty. Maybe it's better poverty than you had where you came from. But you're still going to be living in poverty when there are all these benefits and glories available to you. But get yourself on track. And now we pay people to stay in their ghettos. We subsidize people for not assimilating. So it's not just that we have. We are demanding assimilation. We are supporting the opposite of assimilation. And that is psychotic. That is. It's civil talk about a lack of civilizational self confidence. It's not just that you're breeding populations of people or you are allowing generations of people to be created who are. Have some sense of their distinct nature apart from the overall American experience which is not only criminal to them who deserve every right to participate in the American experience, but is disastrous for American cohesion in. Even though we don't demand cohesion in the way that other countries demand cohesion or leave people out who are not part of the in group forever. Like you. You know, you can't become French really.

E (46:02)

But doesn't it.

A (46:02)

You are French.

E (46:03)

It also encourages a culture of grievance and entitlement combined. And those are very. That's very fertile ground for radicalization. Particularly if you're a young aimless man growing up in that community and maybe you've been living off of whatever subsidies and you can't quite break into the mainstream culture even if you want to. And so that. And then you can go online and you can find lots of other aggrieved young men who have things to tell you. And it does sound. In this case, you know, the young man in this attack on Bondi beach was on the terrorism watch list because he was associating with other people who had pledged allegiance to isis. So they even knew he was a threat. But they. They declared that they didn't see him as an imminent threat. We have lots of those people in our country too right now. People on watch list. People who our authorities are kind of keeping an eye on. We need to probably keep closer track of all of those people. We did this in the wake of 911 for obvious reasons. But one of the border issues of course. And these stories trickled out during the Biden administration. But obviously the media was not that interested in covering them. Only conservative media covered them pretty religiously. And that's the number of likely terrorists who did come across our border because it was wide open and who are here and stayed and are planning things. So all of these little signs that again, it's not just the tolerance, it's also the passivity that we've had Those of us who remember 911 remember a time of much more heightened scrutiny and safety. And if you see something, say something. I've noticed that returning when I was in London this past spring, a lot more, you know, see it, say it, sort it is how they put it on their trains. But we need to unfortunately all have a heightened awareness of the reality that the freedom that our country does offer to people who don't want to assimilate and who are encouraged to be aggrieved places real risks to just regular Americans.

C (47:50)

There's also the issue of.

A (47:52)

Go ahead.

C (47:53)

There's also the issue of what that means for radicalization and anti Semitism, because I think it's worth pointing out that the, the profile of a mass shooter in America is someone battling mental illness in some way. There's some sort of, you know, Jared Loughner and, and all these guys. We've had, you know, we've had a few, you know, we had a shooter from the trans community who was, you know, some, it was several was worked up about that issue. Right? And so, you know, we've, we've had, we often come down and say like, this guy was, you know, institutionalized or whatever. And, but the profile of a, of an anti Semitic mass shooter is globally not someone who heard something and acted on it because they hear voices. Okay? And, and that's important because it's, it's. We, we, we have the discussion in America about incitement and we always say, well, you can't predict what a crazy person is going to do with something you say. And you can't be held responsible for something a crazy person is going to do, right? That you, you say this and you know, we had, that was the, that was the fight over Sarah Palin. And you know, could she know that she, she put a target in her ad and some crazy person, we use that vernacular. You can't be expected to be responsible for what some crazy person is going to do when they hear something. But here's the thing. The anti Semitic violence is planned, rational and thought out and networked and part of an infrastructure. So when people say globalize the intifada, that's not like, oh, somebody crazy might hear that Israel was starving Palestinian babies and might just lose it, take out a knife and start swinging it around. That is a directive to a fair number of people in the world. This is part of a population that believe that action can and should be taken. And they're not, they're not hearing, they're not chasing ghosts, they're not Hearing voices. They are listening to the culture and the politicians and all this stuff and that everything about these anti Semitic attacks are in a certain crazy way, entirely rational in the way that they proceed. Right. John, you said this in the wake of the hypercoche attack in Paris when Obama said, you know, some random people in a deli or something to that, you know, effect. And, you know, and you were saying it's not random. Right. It's, it's. These things are. Certain people are sought out and they're. And the people who do them are sought out to do them and all this stuff, you know.

A (50:57)

Yeah. Attacks on Jews are never random.

E (51:01)

Right.

A (51:02)

An attack on a high school is random in a fundamental sense because 50,000 kids went to that high school over the last, you know, over to a high school over the last 25, 30 years, and one of them, something happened and then they go in and then they shoot everybody. That's the definition of random. Anti Semitic actions have been a fact pattern in the history of humanity for 3,000 years. So if it happens on Bondi beach this weekend, or it happened in, you know, Sabbathian in, you know, in Poland during the time of Sabbatai Zvi, or it happened in Odessa in 1903, or it happened in Spain and Portugal in the 15th century, it's all the same attack.

B (51:55)

I would say today, to both your and Seth's point, it's even more. It's even less random in the sense that an anti Semitic attack today is the end product of a very vast, well funded international machine that is designed to create that end product. Everything from the radical political organizations that organize the campus protests, that get the banners made, that say globalizing Intifada to the bot farms overseas and here and wherever else that hyperinflate these messages online. This is all a huge convergence of money and organization. And we've watched it like going through every conveyor belt in a factory. We've watched it happening since 2003. And now here, here are all. Here are the cars being pushed out at the end. That's what's happening.

C (53:11)

I'm Oliver Darcy. And I'm John Passantino. We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood and power. Now through our nightly newsletter status. And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Powerlines. Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud. No spin, no fluff, just Sharp analysis.

A (53:39)

That isn't afraid to call it like it is. We also pull back the curtain via.

C (53:43)

Our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes. My understanding having reported this is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.

A (54:03)

Oh my God, that's Power lines presented by Status.

C (54:07)

Follow power lines and listen on Apple.

A (54:09)

Spotify, Amazon Music or your fitness favorite podcast app. A conversation with a friend at a Hanukkah party yesterday. She has a very, very left wing sister who lives in Haifa in Israel. Lows the government did not like the war in Gaza. You know, very upset. She has a little kid. She's worried what's going to happen to them when they get older. She is not like as left wing as you get in an Israeli context. And my friend said that suddenly last week she had a conversation with her sister who started going out of nowhere into a kind of panegyric to Theodore Herzl and said, you know, Herzl really he got something right. Like it really he was very canny because he was right. Like there's no place, there's no play. This is before Bondi Beach. This is before. There's no place on earth for us really. This is somebody who was raised in the United States, by the way, like as a. This is an American who now lives in Israel, has an Israeli husband. But there's no place on earth for us. And so there has to be a place. And this would have been the only place because obviously we would have been foreign to, you know, because Herzl goes into in the Jewish state, goes through a list of a couple of other places on earth you could buy, you could literally go and buy land. You could bought Patagonia and then that's in the Jewish state. By Patagonia, Jews will go move to Patagonia. It's of course also the plot of the Yiddish Policeman's Union. Put Jews in Alaska, in Sitka before, before Alaska becomes a state, becomes a kind of Jewish city state. But it would have made no sense, would have made no logistical sense. And the idea that a foreign population was present. Whereas as opposed to in Israel where Jews have lived continuously and by the way and continuously despite the diasporization of Judaism from almost near prehistory and have lived there, that it's very canny because there's nowhere else on earth for us. Well, there are a couple places on Earth that felt like they were for us. For the Australian Jewish community before October 7, Australia felt that way. America's felt that way. To me, you know, I don't think. I don't think Europe ever really felt that way to Europe, including British Jews. I don't think felt like I am fully British, whatever. But there are a couple of places. Canada, you know, sort of like, do these places feel like they're there for us? I mean, I'm not willing to say that America is not. Not. Not for us anymore. I'm really not. I don't. I do feel like this is a. What's happened here. The anti. Semitization of things in the United States is. Has been grafted onto us in. In a way and is unnatural to the American experience and American history. But, you know, this point about the rational fact that Jews are being targeted around the world. If you have a rational objection to Jews having a homeland in Israel or Jews existing at all, given what they represent to you, either religiously or culturally or socially or whatever, of course it's totally rational. There's nothing irrational about it. Want to put it. Get us on the run. You want us to go hide? You want us to. The whole logic of October 7 was sinwar misunderstood his alliances. Sinwar thought, okay, we're gonna run. We're gonna cut through these fences. We're gonna run into southern Israel, into the Gaza envelope. We are going to rampage and slaughter and kill, and that is going to ignite a bloodlust that will go from Lebanon to Iran to the Gulf states. And there will be this reckoning that people were going to join in to our apocalyptic effort to end the end Israel by being. We'll be the ones on the ground. And then they can come in through the air and then they can come in also. And what he misunderstood was they weren't there. They weren't ready, they weren't going to act. Iran wasn't going to. Wasn't going to risk it, wasn't going to risk the Dimona Israel bomb, whatever. But it wasn't an irrational plan. He had to discover that the backing troops weren't there, but they were on.

E (59:00)

American college campuses, as it turned out.

A (59:02)

Right, Right. Well, so that's where we are, your.

C (59:08)

Friend who's speaking about the canniness of virtual and whatever. To answer something Abe said earlier about where you can have, you know, a Hanukkah celebration in the open, you know, except for Israel. And, you know, I spent the first night of Hanukkah last night walking along the shore.

A (59:29)

You're in Israel. You should say you're in Israel right now.

C (59:32)

I'm in Israel right now, and I spent last night in Jaffa. And Jaffa has, you know, very long.

A (59:40)

Jaffa is part of Jaffa. Just explained. Jaffa is. Is a kind of neighborhood of Tel Aviv. It's south Tel Aviv. It's the settlement, the sort of town that preceded the creation of Tel Aviv, a Christian town in southern Palestine, whatever you want to call the Mandate or Palestine or whatever. And so you're in Yafo Jaffa, as it's.

C (60:10)

I was in Jaffa. And, you know, it's a. There, you know, you pass the. The Great Mosque. You pass the, you know, one's called the Big Mosque, one's called the Mosque of the Sea or the Sea Mosque or whatever. You pass churches, you pass synagogues literally all across the street from each other. But it's the first night of Hanukkah, and one thing we happened upon on the shore was a group of Israelis from the town were building this incredible model of a. It was a giant electric menorah that was also done in the style of, like, old Jaffa, right, And Jaffa of antiquity, the old Jaffa of, like, the houses and stuff. And on top were just, you know, these. These candles, these flames. And then you walked further, and we passed, you know, an Israeli worker who was climbing a giant menorah. And we didn't even realize there was somebody there until he called down to us like, hello, Chag Sameach. He's climbing a giant menorah to fit it with certain, you know, tubes and stuff for the lighting as they're about to do it all throughout, you see, then you pass, you know, the giant Christmas tree. All this stuff is going on completely out in the open. There's nobody. Nobody thinks for a second that he needs protection to be, you know, fitting pipe on a giant electronic manure. Nor is there security outside the mosque or, you know, the church doors, anybody messing with the Christmas tree at Old Jaffa Port. I mean, but the point is that nobody thinks that that's a normal thing here, that it's a normal, you know, that. That you should have to live that way, that you should be looking over your shoulder if you're near a manor or something like that, in a public, public place. And, you know, I think Deborah Lipstadt said the same thing on Twitter after the attack, you know, where. And a couple other people did as well. Where are their public celebrations?

A (62:12)

Right?

E (62:13)

Why?

C (62:13)

Somebody else said, why doesn't this happen in Europe, because Jews in Europe stopped having unprotected public Jewish gatherings. Right. For holidays and stuff like that. So, yeah, I mean, there is this sense that despite the fact that Israelis are obviously the target and all of the stuff that you mentioned about October 7, you know, and it's not as if there's not terrorism, but there is a different way of thinking. This is the one place where that is a normal thing to do, to have that very public display.

B (62:45)

I would say this to Europe and the west and its leaders right now. October 7th, in the end, left Israel much stronger, left all of you much, much weaker. The damage done to your countries, and it's still ongoing, has been much more dramatic in the end than what was done to Israel, to your countries, and of course to Israel's direct enemies. And I think that's something for them to think about. They're losing in this.

A (63:26)

Well, so also in the sense that there is an effort being made to declare war on Jews outside of Israel and use Israel as the pretext for the war on Jews outside Israel. Which is to say, as I said reading this stuff on Twitter, as I said at the beginning of the podcast, where people are like, you see, this is what happens. Israel commits genocide and then people start shooting up people on a beach in Sydney. And that's because Israel started it and the Jews are going to finish it. Well, question is, what is the. So that, as I said, is an effort to kind of create a response where Jews go inside, right? They don't have public ceremonies, right? We do. We have hardened security all over Jewish institutions across America and are continuing to do so. Like, we need cops around if we're going to have a celebration. And even when cops are around, as was the case at the Parkee Synagogue a couple weeks ago, there can still be scenes that are tantamount to riots and all of that. But what happens to the Jewish communities where this stuff gets very extreme? And I think particularly about Paris and London and, and. And Australia. So Paris, London, Australia, these Jewish communities, the London Jewish community, the British Jewish community, was a left wing secularist community for decades. Reliable labor voters, 75 to 80% labor voters did not like the Tories. Okay? Jeremy Corbyn becomes the, you know, wins a populist victory to become the. To become essentially the head of the Labor Party. Explicitly anti Zionist, explicitly, you know, pro Hamas, pro terrorist. Over the course of the last six or seven years, the British Jewish community has flipped. It is now 70 to 80% Tory, possibly some of them moving into the Reform Farage Movement, which is kind of staggering. In France, mass exodus, hundreds of thousands of people looking to emigrate to Israel, buying land, buying property. And from what I understand, the 120,000 Australians in the wake of the protests after October 7 have made serious efforts, overtures, inquiries about making aliyah to Israel. Is this weakening Jewish resolve and the Jewish connection to Judaism, these attacks on Jews, or where it's actually really dangerous? Has it been hardening that resolve? Has it been strengthening the connection to the Zionist experiment? Has it made it clear to these people that they cannot pretend they don't know who their enemies are and whom they have to fight? And we in the United States, and particularly left wing Jews in the United States, are not quite there yet because the situation in America is not dire yet.

E (66:37)

Oh, see this. Okay, I'm glad you said that because this, this is actually something that I think is important in terms of a continued weakness on the part of our political leaders, left and right, for different reasons. The left because it tolerates anti Semitism and the right because it has its own anti Semitism problem right now as well. And that's that, you know, most people, if, if you're Jewish and you go to, you've known that this is a problem for a very long time because you're synagogues in your schools and anytime you want to do anything publicly has a lot of security. But. And if you're on Twitter and you follow these issues on social media, you're aware of them, but most people aren't in that category in this country. They don't follow this closely. They don't actually ever go to any sort of Jewish institution and see the level of security. And when they do, they're shocked. They're shocked by what is required just for daily life as a Jew, even in a free country. So I think one thing I would like to see from the leadership in this country, and I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, I just someone more people standing up and saying attacks on Jews are attacks on everything this country stands for. And it's true. Because a free society requires tolerance of faith. And we've talked about what the turn that tolerance has taken in Europe and obviously now also in Australia, is actually not tolerance for everyone, it's tolerance of violent ideology because it only affects a group that the people in that country, in those nations have decided don't need to be protected. Protected or should protect themselves. But we don't do that here. We should not do that here. And I would like to see more of our elected political officials saying an attack. This happens if among sort of progressive Democrats, anytime, say somebody attacks a trans person, it's an attack on this trans person is an attack on all of us. You know, they're instantaneously willing to say that about any special interest group on their side. I don't hear that from them with attacks on Jews. I hear the worries about Islamophobia, the let's all understand that we have to do. It's all, pardon my French, it's bullshit. It's just not what the moment requires any longer. There must be stronger statements of what these attacks mean, particularly in a free society that as you say, John, hasn't, thank God, experienced quite the level of regular violence that we've seen in Europe and now in Australia.

A (68:47)

And however Christine's.

B (68:49)

Well, you were going to say something hopeful. No, no, no, I was going to say something worse. To Christine's point, where once you would have seen it readily on the right now there is among some high profile right wing politicians a reluctance to say that kind of thing because the very message that is being advanced by the anti Semites on the right is our interests are not aligned with Israel. We are not Israel. We are America.

E (69:18)

We.

B (69:18)

Well, what, why would we say an attack on a Jew is an attack on this country? It's simply not true. You know, and there is a fear of turning off those people.

A (69:29)

Now look, you're both absolutely right. And I mean I think Christine's hortatory demand is sorry, I took a lot.

E (69:42)

Of coffee this morning.

A (69:44)

Righteous. But the tweets that we talked about, Eliana's tweets, the Democrat Running in Pennsylvania 7th shows that not only is that not going to happen, but that the incentives in one of the two major political parties in the United States are acting against people doing that. Saying an attack on one Jew is an attack on all. They don't want to say it. They're afraid of saying it. They think it's going to harm their fundraising.

E (70:14)

American people don't agree with that. That's what I'm saying.

A (70:16)

I agree with you.

E (70:17)

Vast majority don't agree with that. Sort of with the direction that that party is headed.

A (70:22)

I, I, I, and, and, and as that one of the tragedies of this groiper antisemitism, Tucker Carlson, Kevin Roberts, bathing in filth is that there is a huge political opportunity that is being squandered by the right to seize the moral high ground in a civilizational struggle against America's enemies that everybody was in on 25 years ago when they attacked. So as I say, the thing about the United States and even the Jewish community of the United States is everything that's happened that's bad is with the exception of a couple, particularly the, obviously the murders at the Israeli embassy, the guy getting killed by having the megaphone thrown at his head. In Los Angeles, you know, certain violent events since October 7th are really terrible. But we haven't had a Bondi beach. We haven't had a pogrom like in Amsterdam, you know, after the soccer match. We haven't seen the police in our cities siding with the Muslims against the Jews as we have in London and Paris. Like, we haven't seen that here, seen bad behavior by a lot of individuals and organizations that seem to be tolerated by things. But we're on a knife's edge. And as I said, the city, the city with the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel and probably the largest urban population, Jewish urban population, period. Twice. Twice as many Jews in New York as in Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv. We just got a mayor who is a fellow traveler of the globalize the intifada crowd, and 2026 now looms as a very frightening portent. We'll have to see what happens. But, you know, but, but I think that the people who think that. I think this is Abe's point about what's happening to countries getting weaker, people under. I mean, people have underestimated the Jews forever. And we're underestimating ourselves now in some fundamental sense. Like, do you really think, you know, we're going down without a fight? Wasn't that what October 7th showed? Israel said enough and it said enough to Hamas and it said enough to Hezbollah and it said enough to Syria and it said enough to Iran, and it's saying enough to the Houthis. And we. That is now the example that Jews are going to follow. Not the. As a Jews who are in my horrible for you Twitter feed, but as I say, Britain and Australia and France demonstrate that the Jewish communities there are fully aware of who their enemies are and are gonna. Are willing to act on it. They're just, they're so small and they're so relatively powerless. And the Jewish community of the United States is small, but it ain't powerless. 20% of the giving in politics and close to 20% of all charitable giving in the United States comes from this 2% of the population of the United States. We are in a position to make sure that what is happening there, that there are consequences to people if it happens. Here.

D (74:12)

You know what's interesting, John, is that Israel has demonstrated that the national self respect, the civilizational self respect that many on the right now that the Trump administration is demanding from European countries, but that many on the right now are taking aim at, who claim to be maga, are taking aim at, angry about deriding, but that they really should be pointing to as a model for what the rest of the world, Europe, Australia, should be doing.

A (74:47)

And by the way, just not to broaden this out and to get it, you know, like go into controversial territory. But there's one other nation in Europe that is expressing civilizational self confidence and an unwillingness to kowtow and bend and be sucked into the yaw of what MAGA seems to want, and that is Ukraine, which has said we are not, we are not surrendering to Russia. This country doesn't get to swallow us up. That's not the way this works. And it is a deep problem. Again, talk about a loss of civilizational self confidence. That we have this force on the right that has decided somehow that Ukraine is our enemy instead of our bulwark or a sort of a leading light in the effort to establish the glory of Western civilization against its enemies is a great tragedy for the right. And you know, it's still, it's close to, it remains much more inexplicable to me than the anti Semitism explosion on the right here. Because anti Semitism exploding is the dog bites man story of the world. Like that there is antisemitism and it has expression and it has expression all over the place. That's just what it means to breathe and be alive as a Jew throughout history. But this is yet something else. Didn't even mean to go there, but you just, you brought it up in my, in my head. So. Well, we've gone a long time. I don't have a recommendation. I don't think we have a recommendation today.

D (76:22)

Except your tweet on Brad Lander is a good recommendation.

A (76:26)

Okay, well, thank you.

C (76:28)

I was going to recommend Christine drinking the same amount of coffee.

A (76:32)

Yeah, Christine, that's good coffee. What's your, what coffee do you drink?

E (76:36)

I drink a really dark roast and I grind it up myself in a nerd, nerdy way because I like extremely strong black coffee. So I really did have a little.

A (76:44)

Okay, so extremely strong black coffee is today's Commentary recommends because it gives you, it gives you the juice that lets you go for an hour and 15 minutes on a podcast. So we'll be back tomorrow for Abe, Christine, Eliana, and Sarah Seth. I'm John Potworowitz. Keep the candle burning. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US Based restoration specialists will find fix it guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.