Advisory Opinions - Federal Judges Examine The Israel-Hamas War

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Federal Judges Roy Altman, Lee Rudofsky, and Amul Thapar join Sarah and David to discuss their recent trip to Israel along with 11 other federal judges that focused on the question of the day: Is Israel complying with international law as it pursues its war against Hamas in Gaza? The Agenda: —The purpose of the judges’ trip —Walking through the locations of the October 7 attack —Gruesome tactics by Hamas —Military authority in Israel —Israel’s legitimacy as a nation-state —Debunking the “Israelis as colonists” narrative —David’s JAG experience —Double standards and antisemitism —The Jewish idea of gratitude This conversation includes discussion of graphic content related to the October 7 attacks in Israel. Listener discretion is advised. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isger. That's David French. And we've got a real treat for everyone today. But I do want to have a warning. I know some of you listen to this with your kids. We're going to be discussing October 7th and the war post-October 7th, some of which will be graphic, including discussion about the 47-minute video that the Israeli government has released. So bear that in mind as you continue listening to this episode. David, we've got three judges joining us who just returned from Israel. Judge Lee Rudofsky from the Eastern District of

Arkansas, Judge Roy Altman from the Southern District of Florida, and Judge Amul Thapar from the Sixth Circuit. Judges, thank you so much for being here. Maybe we're just going to turn this whole thing over to Judge Altman for like the full hour. But Judge Rudofsky, can we start with you? I know you were part of organizing this trip. And obviously, you and I go the way back. So how did this come about? Sure. First of all, Sarah and David, thank you guys for having me. Although I guess David's just a guest. So Sarah, thank you for having me. I'm barely a potted plant, Judge. Just barely a potted plant. That's what Sarah says. I understand. Judge Solomson from the Court of Federal Claims, Judge Altman and I helped to organize this trip along with the World Jewish Congress.

The idea was to give federal judges a way to learn about Israel, to learn about some comparative international law, to bear witness to the atrocities that took place during the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th, and to learn in more detail about Israel's response to October 7th and how they've been trying to comply with international law. So we all spent about four days over there, some of us maybe a little more, and we really did a huge amount, which I'm very excited to share with you, and I know the other judges on are going to be excited to share with you as well.

And Judge Tepar, you know, Judges Rudofsky and Altman are Jewish. You're not. Why did you go? Yeah, I thought it was important for judges. We often and I do often speak on college campuses, have the opportunity to interact with young people. And it was an opportunity for me to gain firsthand knowledge about what was going on. I didn't have that beforehand. As you've mentioned, Judge Altman's given speeches on this. Both Judge Rudofsky and Judge Altman have been to Israel before I had not. And so it was a real opportunity for me to educate myself, not only on what was going on, but about, as Judge Rudofsky mentioned, things like the laws that were being complied with and things like that

to hear from them and talk to them. And it was very eye opening. And I would encourage anyone that gets the opportunity to do so. And Judge Altman, you've been to Israel a lot. You were born in Caracas, Venezuela, as I understand it. And as you tell it, you can sort of measure your height against places in Israel because you were going every year. Yeah. And in fact, now I can measure myself against Judge Tappar because I actually, the part of the speech that you're talking about is that I've climbed Masada, usually very early in the morning with my cousins in Israel, which we could talk about what Masada is and why it's important. But this time I brought Judge Tepar and actually former Chief Judge Timkovich and Judge Skola up the mountain with me, along with my cousins. And I can tell you that Judge the Par acquitted himself very nicely. And, and we made it up to the top in exactly 45 minutes.

And, and it was the first time I'd gone, that wasn't at like five or six in the morning, because it's 120 degrees. If you go any later. Since we were there in March, it was actually beautiful out. Even when we went in around 11 o'clock, it was like 60 degrees. And I don't think Judge Lepore was even sweating when we got to the top. But Sarah, now that I've learned that he measured his height by trips, I wish I would have gone to Israel every year. I might be both taller and better looking if I could be more like Roy. gone to Israel every year, I might be both taller and better looking if I can be more like Roy.

Well, Judge Altman, you know, I've done pickets charge with Judge Thapar, and he can charge up that hill real fast. You should be concerned. Let me tell you, there was a time there where one of my cousins not doing so well. And so I took the backpack and ran up then a separate time, Amul took the backpack. So we each did our fair share of service on that mountain climb. Well, you've been to Israel so many times before October 7, obviously. But the, you know, speaking that you've been doing and obviously this trip, I'm wondering how your view of the country, of your time there, how did that change your perception? Well, you know, the country is almost a thing you have to see to believe. And I think that's one of the things Judge Tappar was talking about. It's not at all what is talked about and reflected on so many campuses and media

outlets today. We actually went to a restaurant at the Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, where we were taken, we actually met with the deputy chief of mission of the United States at the restaurant and a Palestinian activist for dinner. And I went down with Judge Tappar to the kitchen on the floor below. And, you know, in the United States, we're used to Jews looking a certain way and having certain names. And that's what you see on college campuses. You know, we're mostly in the United States, predominantly Ashkenazi Jews, which means Jews from Europe. That is not at all true of Europe. This mindset that all Jews in Israel are white and come from Europe is just totally belied by the facts. And so we went, for example, to the kitchen and there were all the people who were working at the restaurant at that time. And you had the owner of the restaurant is a Syrian Jew. There were Persian Jews from Iran. There were a couple who were Ethiopian black Jews.

There was a Russian Jew. And I said to them, I said, Hey, you wouldn't believe this, this is going to sound strange. But in America, on college campuses, they actually think you guys are in apartheid society. And everyone started to laugh hysterically. And I said, Hey, why is everybody I mean, I know it's ridiculous, but why are you laughing? And they said, we actually came up with an apartheid calendar of just the employees of our restaurant. And I said, oh, I need that calendar mailed to me and all my fellow judges. And so I'm apparently getting an apartheid calendar in the mail, which is a picture of each of the members of the staff of the restaurant for a different month of the year, 12 employees for 12 months, each one a different race and ethnicity, all Jews. But I don't think what

folks would expect. Another thing about the country that I just think people should know is just the amount of the degree of unity and patriotism and love for one another that is palpable when you go there. Judge Thapar would always marvel as we drove through any town, you go there. Judge Tappar would always marvel as we drove through any town, whether it was Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or down in the South, that every apartment you pass has an Israeli flag. It's remarkable. And I think it was Judge Tappar or maybe it was Judge Bumate who said to me, this must have been what America looked like back in 1776. Just how patriotic they were, how much love of country and love of each other they have, even in these difficult times. And it really manifested for me in this event that happened

on Thursday, the last day of our trip, we were in the South. And we had visited Be'eri, which is one of the kibbutzim that was attacked close to the Gaza border, what they call the Gaza envelope. And we could talk about that visit, because it's very important. But I actually just want to fast forward to something that happened slightly after we drove on our bus to Rayim, which is about 10 minutes away. And we it's, it's where the music festival was the Nova Music Festival. And you probably know 239 kids, you know, teenagers, young adults who were at a rave, actually a music festival for peace,

were murdered there, and some other 40 or 50 were taken captive, and many of them are still being held in holes in Gaza. Anyway, when we get off the bus, we realize, and you've probably seen this on the TV or internet, whatever, they've created quite a powerful memorial there, and it've probably seen this on the TV or internet, whatever, they've created quite a powerful memorial there. And it's basically a mound of sand where each person fell. And from

the mound, there's like a wooden, I think it's a wooden stick, the other judges can correct me if I'm wrong. And on top of the stick, there's a picture of the person who died on that spot. And there's 239 of these, okay? And we get off the bus, and the first thing anyone can notice is the piercing, almost overwhelming wails of a mother who is lying on top of the mound of dirt of her son. And it probably gives the other judges goosebumps

for me to mention the story, because it was, it was overwhelming. That's the only word I can say she was it was so loud. It was so piercing. It was and she she had family members there who were trying to pull her off, and she refused. And it was literally the first thing we saw and heard as we got off the bus at this massacre site. And I turned around and I realized all the other judges are kind of standing behind me in shock, like I am kind of standing over or beside this woman. So I said, you know, we got to get, we got to move away from her, you know? And at that moment, when I had that thought, I heard music. So I started walking towards the right, and I'll stop here to say that we watched the 47-minute video of Hamas-taken videos of Hamas atrocities.

And one of the things that's on that video, and I don't want to describe it in too much detail, I'm sure we'll get into it, is a part where an Israeli soldier arrives at the music festival towards the end of the video. And he's yelling, is there anyone alive? Is there anyone alive in Hebrew? And you can see it from his like body armor camera. And he finally comes upon like the bar area. It's like a big festival and there's a bar. And he looks into the bar area and there are like a hundred bodies of young people just piled on top of each other. It's horrifying. Okay, that is where we were on that spot. And I was walking, following the music, and we come past that spot. And suddenly, I notice a group of like, I don't know, 50 to 100 women, I don't know exactly the number, arm in arm in a giant circle, singing Hatikvah, not a dry eye, the Israeli national anthem, everyone sobbing, holding each other at this horrible sight. And one of the women turns around and says, please join us in English. So I came in and put my arms with them. And everyone's singing the national anthem.

Everyone is crying. And suddenly, I notice all of our judges from the trip are interspersing themselves among the women in the circle until almost all of us were part of this giant circle, arm in arm with these women singing Hatikvah at the site of probably the worst massacre of innocent Jews since 1945. An overwhelming and extremely compelling manifestation of the strength and resilience and love of country that these people have, love of one another that these people are evincing on a daily basis, that on that horrible place, they would take the time of their own volition to stand to one side, to hug one another,

and to sing this beautiful song. I think that's just an example of how special a country and a society they are and how much they deserve, I think, our respect and admiration at this difficult time. First, judges, thank you so much for joining us. I have done a similar trip to Israel years earlier. I was part of a legal team that was representing Israel's interest in the International Criminal Court, because in a previous Gaza incursion,

they had been accused of war crimes. We were responding to those war crimes accusations. And so, you know, I've done sort of the full national security tour. I've been up Masada. It's profoundly moving, by the way, to go up Masada. And the one thing that really imprinted upon me, because when I did this, I had just come back from Iraq, where I had done rules of engagement, law of armed conflict work with the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment during the surge, and this was a couple years later.

And what was really imprinted upon me, after being a practitioner in the surge, and then seeing the Israelis in action, and hearing them describe their processes, is that Israel, the IDF, is actually more cautious than the U.S. military. And I think that that is something that is not very well known in the world, much less in the United States. And I'm not saying the United States violates the laws of armed conflict. We don't. We are actually more cautious than the laws of armed conflict require in our standard course of military operations.

And then the IDF and the standard course of their military operations are even more cautious than us, which is something that a lot of people don't know. So my question is to you all is, A, did you get into these discussions in Israel? And what was the substance of those discussions? What is Israel doing concretely that is to comply with their legal and moral obligations? And what sense did you get of whether they were still doing that this far into this really intense conflict? So we spent a great deal of time with a bunch of military lawyers, fairly high ranking military lawyers in the IDF. We watched videos where they called off attacks because there were civilians nearby that couldn't essentially be dispersed or couldn't be warned off. We watched videos where they were about to engage significant targets and chose not to.

I would say the most interesting thing we learned, or at least the most interesting thing I learned, The most interesting thing we learned, or at least the most interesting thing I learned, was that in Israel, when a military lawyer gives an operational commander advice, that is not optional advice. You know, the way I understand it here is in the United States, if a military lawyer gives an operational commander advice, the operational commander can listen to it or not listen to it. Now, there may be consequences if they don't listen to it or not listen to it. Now, there may be consequences if they don't listen to it, but they have the choice. In Israel, the military advisors or military

lawyers' opinion actually has the force of law and cannot be disregarded unless there's an appeal to a higher either military authority or ultimately the Israeli Supreme Court. So that's one interesting difference that makes it a little bit harder for the operational folks to operate if they're doing something that the lawyers tell them they can't do. In terms of what we saw Israel do to try to comply with the laws of war, the military lawyers went through with us in great detail how they figure out what is a military target and what isn't a military target. Obviously, that is incredibly difficult, given that Hamas wants to hide within the civilian population, and that there are missiles and rockets in schoolyards

and that there are command control centers in hospitals and that there are technology centers under UNRWA buildings, that makes it incredibly difficult to figure out what's a military and what's civilian targets. But we also saw how they warn even after they decide something is a military target. And even after they decide something is a target that there's not going to be a disproportionate amount of civilian casualties, they still take minimization steps. So they drop leaflets, they call people, they text people, they drop sort of non-ammunition bombs to kind of knock on the building to get people out. They do, I would say, pretty clearly more than any other army in the world does. And that's why, and I'll tell you, this is one of the things that frustrates me just in terms of facts. As I understand it now, the civilian to terrorist casualty ratio is essentially 1 to 1.5 or maybe 1 to 2,

even if you accept Hamas's numbers. That is far better than America did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's far better than what I think I understand to be almost a one to nine number that's generally thought of as acceptable in urban warfare. But they've done everything they can, at least in my view, to get the numbers down as much as they can. I'll add two things. One is that I was shocked, like Lee, and I think everyone was, how much control lawyers have. I think in America, I could not imagine a lawyer telling a general how to conduct a war. I guess I'll add three things. The second is, as Lee mentioned, we got to watch video of airplanes locking on targets and then being told by lawyers because

there was a child spotted 20 yards away to abort the mission. And then the radio back confirming they were aborting and pulling off. And the third thing is John Spencer is at West Point. He's a colonel there and a specialist on urban warfare, probably the leading specialist as far as I know, but I'm an amateur on this. But one of the leading specialists, and he said the war Israel is waging today will never be repeated for its humane level of casualties. It is impossible, I think were his words, although you can go back and listen to what he said. But he has a podcast. I'm sorry to have a podcast competing with yours. Wait a minute. But he has a podcast called Urban Warfare that I encourage people to listen to because

he's very, very knowledgeable on this and comes at it from a military perspective and an expertise that most of us lack. And so I think I had heard that before, but I didn't believe it, which is one of the reasons I went, because you had also heard the countervailing point. I think there's so many things. And I know Roy mentioned the media and others getting things wrong. Honestly, I was pretty naive before I went over there. I would have told you that Israel was all white. One thing Roy didn't repeat about the Nova Festival that I found fascinating, and I think we should mention this, is when we went and saw the cars that were burned, and there were like 370, they started with an ambulance. that were burned and there were like 370, they started with an ambulance. And one of the things they explained is it was the ambulance driver that came to the Nova Festival and was trying

to rescue people was an Israeli Muslim who came to the, and the terrorist, he had 15 bodies in the ambulance of people that weren't dead that he was trying to get to the end, the terrorists, he had 15 bodies in the ambulance of people that weren't dead that he was trying to get to the hospital. And the terrorists killed him. They then with the bodies inside, as I understand it, and Royer Lee can correct me if I'm misremembering, lit the ambulance on fire and then pushed it over onto a young girl in a wheelchair whose father had brought her there for the Nova Festival. And if you look at the picture, we all took a picture of this board, of everyone that was there, this young beaming girl in a wheelchair stands out with her father, and he took her to that because she wanted to be there. And that was 16 of the

casualties, as I understand it, plus the ambulance driver. So 17. And these are the stories that aren't told that I never knew. Roy mentioned the kitchen. I never would have assumed that. We went down to thank them because the meal was amazing. And I was, Roy turned to me and said, Amul, is this apartheid? And I said, Oh, my gosh, I never could have imagined. And then they commented about the calendar and Roy promised me one we'll see if I ever get that. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Aura. Ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family? Give the moms in your life an Aura digital picture frame preloaded with decades of family photos.

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ADVISORY at checkout to save. Terms and conditions apply. You know, there are three big differences between Israeli tactics and American tactics, in my experience. One is you've already highlighted, which is when I was advising my commander on a strike, I could only suggest. I could not control it. So I would suggest no or I would suggest yes. And in my experience, if the lawyer said no, the commander never said yes, because that's exposing him to serious risk. But there were many times where the lawyer said yes and the commander said no.

There were a couple of times I can think of where I said, yes, we can strike. And for tactical reasons, the commander said, I choose not to. So that's one is Israel has greater legal authority than our JAG officers, Israeli JAGs do. Number two is the warning. This warning concept wouldn't cross our minds in Iraq.

Well, if I could just comment on that, David, because I actually, in the meeting, and I hope it's okay to say, I said, let me ask you a question because it's so important what you just said. Because in war, as in, I was a football player, as in football, surprise is essential to offensive capability, right?

And so I said to the lawyer, the MAG, they call him MAG, not JAG, which is Military Advocate General. I know you know that. Their version of JAGs are MAGs. So I said to the MAG, I said, would any other army in the world relinquish offensive surprise in the way that you do? Because one thing Lee mentioned, which is it's important to highlight is, you know, the Israeli intelligence services have a lot of the Palestinian people's cell phone numbers. So in addition to sending flyers to their home saying, hey, leave this, in addition to publishing over 16 million Instagram and Twitter posts, which exact, which lay out exactly which streets you should not be in at what times.

They also text and call these people and say, hey, you're building, you cannot be there tomorrow at noon. Okay, what you're doing when you do that is you are telling Hamas exactly where you will go and exactly where your soldiers will be assaulting. And I said to him, does any other army in the world do that? He said, no other army in the world has ever done that. And I said, let me ask you, do we do that? Does the United States do that? He said, no. And I said, he said, but you guys have a veto in the UN Security Council, and we do not. And of course, I think that is probably the beginning and the end of that. I interrupted the third thing you were going to say, David.

Yeah, the third thing is that the Israeli urban combat units are designed to be shot at first. So in other words, the composition when they go into urban combat from the armored bulldozers to the tanks, etc., they are designing their strategy around we're going to be shot first and then respond, which is, again, a different strategy than what we tend to use. But that goal to be precise in response sometimes requires you to receive the first punch, so to speak, so that you know where it comes from. And those three things to me were messages that are not getting out to the world. They're just not getting out to the world. David, I heard one story in regards to that, which is there were there was an Israel unit in Gaza that was being approached by 19 women or so, and they had a bad feeling about a couple of them that looked and walked like men, but they could not take action

until something happened. And so they're sitting ducks basically waiting. And as soon as they saw the guns come out, they took those two out, but they had to wait and couldn't do a thing. So it seems like they continue to follow that mantra. And what the terrorists were doing were sending these women ahead and then trying to blend in with them, knowing the Israeli military would not do anything, which again,

the types of things they're going through and the detail and attention to details, what's so shocking, it's why other than the 47 minute video, which I would encourage no one to watch. 47-minute video, which I would encourage no one to watch. And if, I mean, they wanted us to see it, and I asked them specifically why they don't show it to their troops. And they said why they don't share it with the world, essentially. And they said their troops would see it, and then they would violate the laws of war. And so they won't show it because of how horrific it is. And I would tell anyone I bump into that's offered to see it, don't. It'll scar you for life watching what went on. things. The first here is one thing that I think we got from being there and from talking with the military lawyers and sort of the back and forth is they conceive of themselves. I think the whole IDF and the whole culture conceives of themselves as the good guys. They conceive of themselves as the people who want to go out of their way to avoid civilian casualties. Now, look, I think I'm a judge. I don't want to get into politics and policy.

There may well be many people out there who want to say that they're deceiving themselves, and that's not what Israel is. But I don't think you can say that that's not what they're trying to do, and that's not who they're trying to be. Whether they're living up to that, which I happen to think they are, is a different question. But it was very interesting culturally. I think you got a lot of questions from the judges, along with what Judge Altman said. hey, why are you giving up the tactical sort of advantage of surprise? Or isn't that hamstringing you? And it was almost like a disconnect because their answer sort of, they gave us kind of blank stares. And then they said, yeah, but that doesn't matter. We have to do this. This is the way you have to fight a war lawfully. And it just struck me that

you have to fight a war lawfully. And it just struck me that it's so imbued in that society to make sure they are fighting morally. And not to say we don't, but we don't necessarily think of that first. So that was a big difference. The second thing I'd like to add is really on something Amul said, although quite frankly, you've probably heard it a couple of times in the answers from both Amul and Roy as to different things. I think a defining feature of Israeli society right now is twofold. Number one is trauma, that people are still in trauma everywhere you go from October 7, and quite frankly, from the continuation of October 7th, which is the holding of hostages. And number two, resilience. And Roy's story about the festival, I think, captures both of that. Amul's story about the 47-minute video, and I think, I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about the video, but captures

that I was traumatized from seeing the video. I think we were all traumatized from seeing the video. If you ever want to see 14 judges with 20 minutes of nothing to say and complete silence, you should have seen us all after the 47 minute video. There was nobody who wanted to say anything, and I don't think could say anything. What we saw on that video was so horrific and so barbaric and so, I mean, almost your worst conception of the Middle Ages that I don't think even those of us who thought they knew what they were in for could have predicted one one-thousandth of the evil we saw. Can we talk bigger picture about what is Israel and some of the debates, Judge Altman, around Israel's creation, existence? You've talked very powerfully about the history of Jews in the land that is now Israel. But let's talk the law side of this.

What defines a nation state's legitimacy? And why do you feel like Israel is a legitimate state versus the Palestinians who claim that it's illegitimate. And there's like the hard version of that argument and the soft version. The hard version is Israel is a settler colonial state. They had illegal settlements. I mean, you can walk through some of that with us, perhaps, and steel man that strong version of the argument. But I think the soft version even of the argument for those who are, you know, not on the cultural extremes of this is like, look, you know, they're in a bad neighborhood. And this is sort of what is expected. And it's just going to kind of be a fight.

And, you know, whoever wins that wins that a two state solution probably isn't going to happen. And eventually one side's going to win or the other. And you know, the world's just going to kind of watch. Some people are going to root for Israel. Some aren't yada, yada, yada, we move on. And I'm curious as you would think of, again, the legitimacy of nation states and where Israel falls on that spectrum. Well, it's an important question. I mean, when we talk about settlements, it's just important to understand the distinction between what, you know, we in the West see as settlements, which is, I think, some people criticize Israel for things that Israel does in Judea and Samaria and the building of communities in that area,

which is known as the West Bank by some people. That's because it's the West Bank of the Jordan River, which is on the eastern border, confusingly, of Israel. But that's not what Palestinians see as settlements. And that's an important thing to understand. Palestinians see Tel Aviv as a settlement. They think of Haifa as a settlement. They think of Eilat and Beersheba as settlements, places that Jews have lived for thousands of years. They claim are settlements. And the attempt is to disintermediate current Israeli society from history and archaeological evidence. It's easy for us who have sat in a hotel room, for example, and looked

in the book in the drawer in the nightstand, as someone told us, to understand that Jews have been in Israel for thousands of years. But Yasser Arafat in 2000, his principal negotiating position with Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak was, there's no such thing as Jews. It's all just fiction. Jews are Polish and Ukrainian and Belarusian, and they came here in the late 19th century and colonized us. So you either believe the fiction and disbelieve all the history, or you accept that Jews are, in fact, indigenous to the land of Israel and thus cannot be colonists. You know, when we talk about colonization, land of Israel and thus cannot be colonists. You know, when we talk about colonization, we talk about colonization as a home country that goes abroad, finds an indigenous people,

subjugates them in order to do one of two things, in order to sell the home country's goods to that available market, or to take raw materials and maybe a labor force from that colonized market in order to use for the perpetuation and propagation of the home country's economy. The Jews who have lived in Israel for thousands of years are indigenous to the land. The Jews who emigrated to Israel weren't colonizing Israel for some home country. They were going there because they had been expelled by force and had nowhere else to go. So the colonization model really doesn't work. In fact, you know, the argument that Israel, that what happened in 1947-48 is illegitimate, really just ignores what, as a legal matter, we understand to be the creation of nation states in the 19th and 20th centuries, it's actually not that aberrational. You know, in the law of the creation of nation

states, there are really three ways in which a nation can become a state. You can either win it in a war, and there are two kinds of wars. There are offensive wars and there are defensive wars, wars of survival. Two, you could have a longstanding presence in the land, long established. Or three, you can have a decree, an international decree, a legal deed that says that I have a right to this land. So think about it, for example, for a country that we all agree is legitimate, the United States, right? We've got a war in 1775, 1776, that ends in 1783,

but it's not a defensive war. It wasn't a war of survival. It was a war of offense. It doesn't make it illegitimate, but we have to accept that George III didn't want that war. Many members of parliament didn't want that war. We started that war, and we fought that war and won that war. So we have a war of offense, still legitimate, but maybe less so as we come to examples of nations that fought for survival on their homeland.

Second, we have some presence on the land. The first English people came to America in 1607, but we weren't Americans back then. We were Englishmen. It wasn't really, and Akhil Amar has written a lot about this, it wasn't really until probably a trial in Boston in 1760-61 involving James Otis as a lawyer that we started to think of ourselves as different from them. We started to think, hey, we're different than they are, and they're not treating us right. And it was, in fact, John Adams, who was actually seated in the gallery during that trial, very much moved by the things

that James Otis was saying, who wrote many years later, that it was then and there that the child revolution was born. So do we are we indigenous to the land? Of course not. Do we have a longstanding presence of the land hundreds of years? Definitely not. Is it legitimate? It's still legitimate. The third prong, we have a document.

It's maybe one of the greatest documents of all time. It's the Declaration of Independence. And it was written by Thomas Jefferson. And it was edited by five members of the Committee on Style. Thomas Jefferson and Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman and Ben Franklin. And now, what were they? They were Americans. They were rebels.

Do we have an international decree from 1776 saying, we, the combined nations of the world, agree that you are now an independent state? No, we don't. We don't have really a treaty with another nation until Ben Franklin negotiates that with France several years later. But nobody would dispute that we're a legitimate country. No one would suggest that if a Cherokee tribesman went into Buckhead tomorrow morning and slaughtered 2,000 citizens and raped hundreds of women and

took a bunch of people hostage in holes, that that was just a Cherokee tribesman retaking his ancestral homeland. No one would suggest that or that America is somehow illegitimate. No one would suggest that if a person came from Mexico tomorrow and killed 1,200 people in La Jolla and took a bunch hostage back to Tijuana, that that was okay because we were a settler state and we were just white colonialists. No one would say that. But somehow people say that with Israel. So let's compare it to the Jewish state of Israel. First prong, they've won the land in war after war after war. And not wars of offense, not wars that they wanted or started,

wars of survival, existential wars started by their Arab neighbors. In 1948, on May 15th, 1948, Israel declares its independence and it is invaded by five Arab nations. Israel wins that war a few months later, to the great surprise of the Arabs. In 1967, the Egyptians under Gamal Abdel Nasser amass almost 100,000 soldiers at the border. The Syrians do the same up in the Golan. The Levi Eshkol, the prime minister, fights a war of survival that in six days, again, he wins. 1973, Yom Kippur, invaded on the holiest day of the year while most Jews are at synagogue and all the bases, as they were on October 7th, by the way, are mostly empty and filled with reservists. Again, invaded by six Arab armies.

And again, Israel wins that war, a war not of their choosing, a war of survival, much like the war they're fighting now. There was a ceasefire on October 6th. There was a ceasefire on October 5th. There was a ceasefire on October 6th. There was a ceasefire on October 5th. There was a ceasefire on October 4th. A ceasefire is just an opportunity for Hamas to rearm and kill more Jews. So the first prong of how a nation becomes a state, Israel has won the land, has proven its legitimacy in the land by surviving in the land in war after war after war. Second prong, Jews aren't colonists in the land of Israel. Jews have been in the land of Israel for thousands of years.

The first mention of Israel as being run by Jews is in 1205 BC, not by a Jewish biblical scholar or by a Jewish archaeologist, but by an Egyptian adversary, King Merneptah, the pharaoh of all Egypt, writes a stele, which you can go see at the Cairo Museum, where he says he wins all these battles. He's talking about how great he is. And one of the battles at the very bottom of the stele is he went into Israel and fought in, guess where?

Ashkelon and Gezer, two places that are still in the land of Israel today. And he defeated the king of Israel in battle in those lands. Now, he also says he wiped the seed of Israel from the face of the earth. That's not true because Rudofsky and I are still here, but he's entitled to a little bit of poetic license. So are Jews colonists?

Jews are indigenous to the land. The second prong, again, they're totally legitimate presence in the land. The third prong, the Jews don't just have an international, excuse me, a declaration of independence saying that they're an independent state. They have that too. There is an Israeli declaration of independence from 1948, but they also have an international decree voted on twice, by the way, first in 1948, and then again ratified because the United States wanted to make sure that everybody was okay with the results of the 48 war, ratified again in 49 by the representatives of the combined nations of the world in General Assembly, 33 to 13 in 1948, and I think 37 to 12 in 1949. So Israel, almost more than any other nation in the world, has all three prongs in spades. They've won the land in war after war after war, all defensive wars of survival. They are the indigenous people of the land in war after war after war, all defensive wars of survival. They are the indigenous

people of the land going back thousands of years. And third, they have an international decree voted on twice by the representatives of the combined nations of the world, recognizing the legitimacy of the Jewish claim to the land. And by the way, what do we have to say about all these other countries that were created and drawn as lines on a map in the aftermath of World War I and World War II? Think of places like Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Libya, and of course, in the same year that Israel was created, Pakistan. These are all countries that were just created by English and French colonists by having them drawn on a map totally arbitrarily. But I don't see anyone on Columbia or Harvard or Yale campus protesting the illegitimacy

of the Pakistani claim to the land or the illegitimacy of the Syrian or Jordanian or Iraqi claim to the land. Syrian or Jordanian or Iraqi claim to the land. In fact, the first king of Iraq is Faisal, a prince, the son of the king of Saudi Arabia, a colonist in the land of Iraq, not from there, didn't know the culture there, imposed there by the British because he had won the war against the Ottomans. I mean, we're getting deep into the weeds of history that no one on Harvard's campus knows about, but it's important to understand the history, to understand the legitimacy of the ancient Jewish claim to the land.

You know, one thing that I think is also, so Judge, I think that history lesson was really powerful and important. There's another element here that a lot of younger people in the United States and the West more generally need to grasp. And that is they see Israel in the year 2024 as not, it's almost like a quasi superpower, extremely well equipped. It's a nuclear power.

It has the best weapons that money can buy. It's a military innovator. I know for a fact that Israeli innovations have helped the U.S. military, for example, particularly things like developments in reactive armor, and I could go on. But this concept of Israel as the oppressor-oppressed narrative, this concept of Israel as the oppressor-oppressed narrative, it is not like the world, as you said, it's not like the world was all in for Israel until Israel got powerful. Israel became powerful

because the world was not all in on Israel. And so in 1948, for example, a lot of people don't know this. When Israel fought these combined Arab armies, it was fighting without American equipment. It was fighting without American aid. Yes, Truman recognized Israel, but we had a Neutrality Act at the time. We couldn't get involved in active armed conflict. So literally, the Israeli Air Force is flying a Czech version of the old Messerschmitt BF-109 prop jet fighter

in the late 1940s. I mean, it was an underdog in every sense. And dropping Molotov cocktails. Right. It was an underdog in every sense. And so this sort of idea that says, not just the settler colonial argument, but also the oppressor oppressed argument doesn't really fly either here. And as far as lines on a map go, I know this isn't a question, it's more of a comment.

As far as lines on a map go, my gosh, Europe, for crying out loud. Think of Europe pre-World War I, post-World War I. Tons of lines drawn, lots of countries made. And so this is, the sheer double standards at work here are further evidence of anti-Semitism. And I'll end the comment by saying, turning it into question, right? 100%. You know, there's, I want to say two things about that one is that um there's you know early zionism in the late 19th century early 20th century

um and i know you you guys definitely want to hear more from the other judges so i'll shut up after these two points but early zionism you know it had several strands um i don't like talking about early zionism as as a big disagreement, because I think overarching everything was the idea that Jews needed a homeland in their ancient land in order to protect themselves against the violence that they were subjugated to, that was being imposed on them all over the world. But there were some scholars, minority scholars, like Ahad Ha'am is probably the most prominent of which, who disagreed with Herzl and said, look, if we become a nation state, what's going to happen is that that nation state is going to

become the Jew of the nations. And that Jew of the nations, whatever we call it one day, is going to be treated differently and worse than all other nations, just like we Jews are treated differently and worse than all other peoples. And of course, you know, Herzl and Jabotinsky and others rightly understood, hey, look what's happening in Kishinev. And then, of course, look later what happened in the Holocaust. We desperately need this just as a mode of survival. But, you know, one of the things that, and so history doesn't look kindly on Ahad Ha'am, but you look back at some of the things that he was writing and saying, and it's kind of coming true. I mean, what the implication of your comment and I guess question, David, is, isn't Israel being turned into the pariah state, the Jew among the nations that you heard Lee say earlier,

it's fighting probably, according to most urban warfare scholars, the most humane and efficient war in modern history. No other army in the world will be able to replicate the way that Jews have preserved innocent Palestinian lives in the war in Gaza and in the face of tremendous odds, by the way, where Hamas' entire strategy is to make Jews kill innocent Palestinians. Remember, Hamas' spokespeople, Ghazi Hamad, was asked on Lebanese TV,

hey, why didn't you build, take those billions of dollars and build bomb shelters for your civilians? And he said, no, no, no. The bomb shelters are for the fighters so that we don't get bombed by the planes. We need the civilians to die so that we can get Western people to turn on Israel. So Hamas's entire strategy is to get people, the Jews to kill innocent, excuse me, the Israelis to kill innocent Palestinians. And yet a kill ratio of one to one and a half, one militant to one and a half civilians would be the most humane war ever fought in modern times. And it's still not enough. It's still the Jewish pariah among the nations that is being

hauled before the ICJ on preposterous, and we can talk about that, genocide charges. It's still the Jew among the nations that's being treated differently and worse than every other country and being held, as you say, to a complete double standard. And so, you know, the last thing I wanted to say about that point is, you know, you talk about like what's going on with the history of this place, you know, and you're right that we're drawing lines in a map, but rarely are taking care to make sure that the lines are actually reflecting indigeneity. So much of the culture today is centered around indigeneity. If you care about the rights of indigenous peoples, Jews went to Israel because they

had nowhere else to go. Remember that Barbara Tuchman wrote that there's only one people on the face of the earth, that if you went back 3,000 years and moved forward to today, are still speaking the same language, practicing the same religion, and living on the same land that they did 3,000 years ago. No more indigenous people can be found in the world. And that people is the Jews who are living in Israel. And so when we talk about oppressed and oppressor, we have to recognize that, yes, Israel has tremendous technologies, a startup economy, a huge GDP, but there's only 9 million of them. And they're surrounded by, I think, 23

Muslim countries with a total population of, I think, 1.6 billion people, most of whom are taught from a very young age that Israel needs to be destroyed. And so when you look at it from that perspective, Israel is not just the pariah among the nations, the Jew among the nations. Israel is, to use Sarah's language from the beginning, in the most difficult, most precarious neighborhood of all, being continuously oppressed, attacked, and vilified

by a much larger conglomeration of people that surround it from all sides. Judge Thapar, I'm curious, at the end of your trip, how you saw this resolving. You know, if you had asked most Americans who were paying attention 20, 30 years ago, I think they would have said it'll take a while, but we're headed towards a two-state solution eventually. Some sort of two-state-ish solution. I'm curious, as you left the trip, you know,

there's calls for a ceasefire. But as Judge Altman has pointed out, we've tried that. There's, you know, well, we just need to have a two-state solution. You know, Israel had pulled out of Gaza. It had a border with Egypt. None of that, you know, two-state-ish solution seemed to be working out. Were you left with hope that this has an end? I mean, I don't have answers to all those questions. I'm not an expert, but I was left with hope for two reasons. One is the resolve of the Israeli people. And I'll just give a quick story. I met someone, Roy and Lee met him too, but it was through happenstance. His name's Tom and he was in Chicago and on October 7th, without even knowing what's going on, he's from Israel, had been here for 10 years or so. he had served because everyone serves, which is a remarkable thing. And not only does everyone serve, there was a highlight of the trip, which is the special needs service people, which I think we should just mention, but they have this incredible regiment of special needs

service members because every kid grows up looking to the opportunity to serve. And these special needs kids used to be excluded. And in Israel, this remarkable general who we got to meet came up with a way for them to serve. And not only are they serving, but they are significantly contributing to the betterment of the Israeli military. But Tom, on October 7th, without even knowing what was going on, heard what was happening, did not turn on the news or anything. He bought a plane ticket to Israel and got on a plane to go fight. So I think it's a lot different than what we envision. The second thing is, and like I said, I'm not an expert. Interestingly, my cousin has been to Israel multiple times since October 7th. She's a philanthropist and raising money for the victims

of October 7th. And she, and so, I mean, think about it. We, you know, I'm a Christian. We're of a different religion. I had never been to Israel. She had been once before, but now has gone multiple times, including just spending a month there. And she has high hopes, which she says, which I trust is the way things are going to change. And Roy brought this up is the education, the education. If you look at the Muslims in Israel, they, from everything I understood, and we met some, and we got, you know, they're a very integrated society in that regard. I think Roy or Lee can correct me. 23% of the population in Israel is not Israeli Jews, but is Arab Muslims.

And they are educated in Israel and get along peacefully and volunteer to serve in the military and do all sorts of things and contribute significantly to Israeli society. No one talks about them. And I think the difference between them and just from what I know is maybe the education system. It's the same thing we complain about in America, right? If everyone will do better if properly educated. And I think that is a component that has to happen. The third thing I'll mention, and then I'll be quiet, is we did get to meet with a Palestinian activist who there are people like him. And if people like him were in charge, he is obviously, he's a leader of a opposing party. He's anti-Hamas, but he believes in the Palestinian people and believes that they could govern in a similar way to Israel and America. And he also pointed to the education

system as being a significant problem. He was from the West Bank and not Gaza, but he pointed to the education system as posing a significant hurdle where kids are taught to hate at a very young age and not only hate Jews, but hate people that are different. Right. So Christians are included. The LGBTQ community is included. We met with the speaker of the Knesset who is gay and he's openly gay in Israel. And I think, you know, it was interesting to meet with him. We met with him about something different than the war, more about why the independence of the Supreme Court, because we care about independence of courts. It won't surprise you.

And it was interesting to hear from him. But my point is, is he would not be welcome in the West Bank. And the person we met with that was Palestinian wants to change all that. He is a leader. He has significant funding, but he's having struggle getting traction because of the education system there.

Talking about Palestinians, one thing it's very difficult to know what Palestinian public opinion actually is, because there are such there's such control by Hamas, especially in Gaza, There's such control by Hamas, especially in Gaza, and that it's very difficult to get a read on the population. When we got to Iraq in 2007, we were in a situation where we were put into a place in Diyala province where al-Qaeda and Iraq controlled the whole place. And the commander made this really good point. We don't know how many allies we have yet. And the question, the answer, the analogy used is, what do you call one man with a gun in a room full of 100 people? I don't know, sir, what do you call it? He goes, a majority. In other words, he's running the place.

He's running the place. To understand the place, truly, you have to get rid of the guy with the gun. And once the guy with the gun is gone, you can then begin to understand the place. Truly, you have to get rid of the guy with the gun. And once the guy with the gun is gone, you can then begin to understand the place. So that leads me to, did you get any sense when you were there about what comes next? Because right now in Gaza, because right now the IDF is doing its best

to get rid of the men with the guns, to get rid of Hamas, to diminish its power and authority to where it cannot run Gaza anymore. What is it that comes next? Did you get a sense of that? Or is that something that they talked much to you about? You know, I'll start and then I'll leave it to the others. But we met with the deputy ambassador from the United States. She was in charge on October 7th. And I think it'd be interesting that she was remarkable. I found her to be very smart, very thoughtful, very engaged. And I think I'm just not I didn't get that sense. But it doesn't mean it's not there. It just means I'm not equipped to answer

that question. But someone like her, I mean, I think she is thinking about it. Obviously, the United States is thinking about it. It's just judges aren't particularly thinking about it. We did ask the questions about what comes next. And I think the Israelis have hope that they can live side by side, but not with Hamas is the sense I got. And for obvious reasons. And but they I mean, they're not giving up hope. It didn't seem to me. It's just a much different perspective than they had before October 7th. And interestingly, while they might have been divided before October 7th, I found it from however you want to politically or look at the Israelis, them to be 100 percent uniform. Judge Rudofsky. Unlike Amul, I don't have a whole lot of hope or maybe we're saying the same thing

in a different way. I don't have a whole lot of hope in the short term. I do have a whole lot of hope in the long term. And let me just take a minute and explain why. The reason I don't have a whole lot of hope in the short term is because of this 47-minute video. On the video, and look, one of the reasons we went is to bear witness. And so I think it's important that we report facts to people. On the video, you saw a terrorist chasing a dad and the Israeli kids into the kids of the dad into a shelter and then gleefully throwing hand grenades in there. When the kids when the dad died, when the kids came out, one of whom did not have a right eye,

you see the terrorists walking into the kitchen and you think maybe they might go over and help the kid. But instead, they go over and take out some milk from the refrigerator and drink it. You see clear evidence of rape. You see multiple beheadings. And the reason we have this footage, while some of it's security footage, is because what Hamas did is they took pictures and video of them social feeds and sent it to the victims' families. We see mass graves in the videos. We see at the festival site a Hamas terrorist gleefully shooting one at a time into the 12 porta potties lined up, knowing that there were people hiding in them. We see Hamas terrorists gleefully throwing hand grenades and going on a shooting spree inside the shelters. When we went to Kibbutz Berri, we saw people in the shelters, or we didn't see people, but we saw evidence of the shelters being burned and having grenades thrown in them because those shelters were built to withstand missiles from Saddam Hussein back in the Gulf War.

They were not built to withstand terrorists roving around a kibbutz for hours on end trying to find anything they could kill. When we went to the car site, as Amul said, we saw about 2,000 burned cars in a very, very clear message of wescale effort to murder, rape, cause mayhem, cause shock, and terrorize the civilian population. And when they brought back people both dead and alive to Gaza, what you saw is Palestinians, and not Hamas here. What you saw is Palestinians and not Hamas here. What you saw is Palestinians jumping over each other, pushing each other out of the way, hitting each other out of the way, all so they could get to either these dead or alive bodies and spit on them, hit them, curse them, degrade them, rip their clothes off. There is no way to have peace with a society like that. There is no way to have peace with that as a substantial part of your neighboring culture. Now, there's no question there are good people in the Palestinian society. There are no question

that there are people who want peace. But when that is the major component of what you are dealing with on your borders, I don't have a very good feeling about the short term. The reason I have a good feeling about the long term is we have a joke sort of in Judaism at our holidays, which is they tried to kill us. We won. Now let's eat. And the reason that's a joke, first of all, we have some gallows humor. But second of all, is throughout history, the Jewish people have faced extermination time and time again, and have overcome it, but not just overcome it in the sense of war, but overcome it in the sense of peace. And these things ebbs and flows and there's wartime

and there's peacetime. And I think ultimately that will happen the same way it's happened in the past. Will it be an everlasting peace? Most likely not. But I think and I'm hopeful that we can figure out a way forward if Israel finishes this war in a way that they can not worry about Hamas ever again. on a bit of Jewish history, Hebrew, that I find to be one of the most beautiful parts of Jewish holiday celebration, which is Dayenu. And I was wondering if you could tell us about that as our ending. Well, Dayenu is a song that is a song rooted in one concept that I try to teach my children above all else, which is gratitude

and appreciation for the things that you have and that you've been blessed with. Dayenu literally translates to, you know, it would be enough. And it's a song relaying all the many things that have been given to us, including and especially our national homeland, our ancestral homeland, and along all the things that God has given us, that the people have been blessed with, we would say, if only you had done that for us, that would have been enough.

We would be satisfied and grateful. But then you took us out of Egypt, and that would be enough. If you had just taken us out of Egypt and you had given us food in the desert with the manna, then that would have been enough. And it takes us all the way back until you get back to the Jews in Israel and the building of the temple by Solomon in the year 1000 BC. And it says, if you had just given us the temple that you built in Jerusalem for us, then that would have been enough, Dayenu. And it really is a story of survival. And it's a story of gratitude for all the wonderful blessings

that we have. And if we can go all the way back to the beginning, Sarah, and maybe this is the genius of you on this podcast, then I think the story I told about the women singing at Raim at the music festival is, I think, a manifestation, probably unbeknownst to them, of the Jewish spirit of Dayenu, even in that horrible place, even in that horrible place alongside the burial sites of those beautiful young people where all of us were listening to the wailing cries of a mother who had lost her son. The Jews were still grateful for the land that they had and that they had been given and all the blessings that we shared with one another. And we still took a moment to hug one another and to sing the national anthem, which of course is called Hatikvah, which means the hope. Hatikvah, by the way, is a song that

most people don't know this long predates the Jewish state. And in fact, the most powerful line the Jewish state. And in fact, the most powerful line in Hatikvah, which we sing along with the U.S. National Anthem every Friday night in my house before Shabbat with the kids, the most powerful line is, which is to be a free people in our own national homeland. And the song talks about how for 2,000 years we were exiled from our national homeland and we never lost hope. And that's why the song is called Hatikvah.

And so I think Dayenu, I think, is probably a great manifestation of the Jewish philosophy of gratitude and appreciation. the time out of your schedules and your family time to make that trip, to bear witness, as Judge Rudofsky said. And really, thank you for sharing it with our listeners. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for having us. That was a difficult conversation, more difficult than I expected it to be.

Yeah, you know, I think it was difficult, but I'm very glad we did it. And I'm very glad we did it because one of the things that is troubling me is that the discussion of the war that is currently dominating the news right now keeps forgetting the October 7th. And you cannot forget October 7th because what people have to realize is the instant that Hamas attacked Israel in that way, Israel not only had a right, a right to destroy Hamas under the law, it also had a moral obligation to its own citizens to destroy Hamas. And, you know, a lot of the people talking about, and you know, we have talked about laws of war a ton. I believe in the laws of war. I have played my part in trying to uphold

the laws of war in war. So none of this is saying that Israel doesn't have to comply with the laws of war. But what people have to understand is Israel has this obligation to defeat Hamas. And let's look back, say, at World War II. When we had incidents in World War II where civilians were killed or maybe American soldiers went too far or our bombs were not precise, which was sadly par for the course back then because of the lack of technology, you didn't say, well, now we'll give Hitler a ceasefire. That was not the argument. You don't give Hitler a ceasefire, right? Because the way in which you're fighting this war, this existential struggle,

means that Hitler gets a break, okay? No, Hamas doesn't get a ceasefire. No, they don't get that, in my view. Israel has a moral and legal obligation to uphold the laws of war. But we have to remember, it actually has a moral obligation to its own citizens to defeat Hamas. And I feel like this podcast really helped flesh that out. So I'm really happy we did that. And obviously, these were judges. So there was both, it would have been inappropriate for us to talk about the domestic

political reactions that are going on. But I mean, the whole time I'm listening to them talk about this, I'm thinking about, you know, part of the reason that we're having this conversation is because there has never been, I think, a foreign war that has affected American politics so much, certainly in my lifetime. aren't shared by people who don't think Hamas killed any women and children on October 7th, or think that all the Jews are European, or think that the Jews just arrived, or think that the Jews have been, you know, sorry, I'm blanking on the right word. More settler colonial oppressors. Yeah, have been, you know, in Gaza when they haven't been for, you know, decades. So that's part of the educational side of this. But it's also just an incredibly sad moment, I think.

I just keep reacting with sadness to a lot of this. Yeah. think I just keep reacting with sadness to a lot of this. Yeah. Because I, you know, you and I've talked about this offline where you've been shocked by the amount of anti-Semitism that is really coming to the fore of American society. And look, part of my reaction, and this is the hopeful part of it, is yes, I think there's more anti-Semitism in the country than I thought there was. But on the other hand, I also think that it's a way that people online see as a way of getting attention, of getting engagement, etc, of being outrageous. And, and so I don't think it's, I hope that it's not as prevalent and as deep as what we see online in American social media. But it's certainly a lot bigger than I thought it was.

That's where I am, Sarah. It cannot be as big offline as it is online because I do think online attracts the most intense people, attracts attention-seeking people, as you were saying. So I don't think it's as much, but it's so much more than I thought. I mean, I wrote about it. I've written about it multiple times now.

You know, the situation in the elite academy is stunning, is stunning. Then we had this whole thing during Holy Week where Candace Owens is fired by Daily Wire and had said a number of just grossly anti-Semitic things. And the next thing you know is you have a bunch of Christian voices who are flooding, you know, like Ben Shapiro, who's an Orthodox Jew, statements like Christ is King, not because they're just stating their devotion to Jesus, because they're trying to tell Ben

that he's a second-class citizen. And that's so dark and evil. And I never thought I would see that widespread even just online. What's so interesting about that is that's the anti-Semitism coming from the right. And I'm going to use these terms somewhat loosely, but then the anti-Semitism from the left is fascinating to me because to me, it's the rot inside the ideology of the progressive movement as it currently is constituted this idea that um there's racism for a positive good that we're not trying to eradicate racism we're trying to order racism and i think you see that

that also leads to anti-semitism because if you're going to order the races, someone has to be below someone else. And that's so pernicious. It's so awful. And this is like a core part of the it's the logical conclusion of their ideology right now. And it leads to anti-Semitism. And their reaction to that isn't, oh, there must be something wrong with the ideology. It's, well, that must mean the Jews are bad. What? Right. Oh, it's nuts. And it's also what is fascinating to me is this is showing the difference between the center right and the far right

and the center left and the far left. Yes, yes. What you're beginning to see is far right and far left have ideologies that are qualitatively different from the ideologies of the center right and the center left. And it's why left and right is sort of breaking down. Like we call it horseshoe theory of politics. I don't know that that's actually gonna stand up

much longer either. It's not linear. It's not a horseshoe shape. It's breaking apart entirely. Yeah. I mean, I've I've thought of people have said, do we need a third party? And I've sort of thought to actually reflect our country. We need four major parties, far right, center right, center left, far left, because that center right and center left have enough differences to where they don't fit well in one party. You know, a Biden Democrat and a, say, Romney Republican have a lot of differences. Yeah.

Right. But the far right and the far left are a MAGA Republican, a Romney Republican or a Haley Republican have a huge number of differences as well. Republican or a Haley Republican have a huge number of differences as well. And the same thing with, say, an ADL, you know, a Democrat who's a faithful donor to the Anti-Defamation League has huge differences with Students for Justice in Palestine at Harvard. You know, this has been and will continue to be a painful process for the United States. But if what comes out of it is a true realignment of the parties reflecting coalitions that make more sense than, frankly, the previous coalitions made anyway, maybe that will in the long term strengthen the United States

polity. And I can look forward to that. But David, before we go, real quick, I ended on the Dayenu thing because to me, it should be part of American culture and not just Jewish culture as well. It would be enough is both a statement of gratitude, but it's also a statement of duty and responsibility in my view.

It would be enough to be given this chance of a self-governing country and the longest existing written constitution in world history. And therefore, what does that mean for us? If that's enough, then it falls to us to finish the rest. So that's why I wanted to end on that.

I love that. I think it's a beautiful sentiment. And I think it's actually true and important in all of our lives. So I hope everyone enjoyed this special, if different, episode of Advisory Opinions. And don't worry, the next one, we will be back to the nerdiest law nerdery of the nerds. As is our custom.