Dara Horn on The Big Lie of Antisemitism
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show and learned endless amounts about
[0:09]storytelling, reinvention and life itself because when you talk about books, you're really
[0:13]talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors, the best-selling and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy!
[0:27]Dara Horn is the author of the final solution to the Jewish question, a love story for
[0:32]the living.
[0:33]Dara has been on this podcast before and it was an honor to welcome her back to discuss
[0:37]her new book.
[0:38]Dara is the author of 7 books including the essay collection People Love Dead Jews and
[0:44]the novels The World to Come and Eternal Life.
[0:47]She is the recipient of 3 National Jewish Book Awards and her work has appeared in The
[0:51]New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and many other publications.
[0:55]She received her doctorate in Hebrew and Yiddish literature from Harvard University
[1:00]and has taught Jewish literature at Sarah Lawrence, the achieving university and Harvard.
[1:05]She lives with her family in New Jersey.
[1:07]Welcome, Dara.
[1:08]Thank you so much for coming back on Totally Booked.
[1:10]I'm so excited to discuss your new book which is so chock full of interesting, devastating,
[1:17]moving, horrifying and thought-provoking things, a book that everyone must read and that
[1:24]I feel many of us feel we have already lived.
[1:27]It's a beach read.
[1:28]Don't make me laugh.
[1:29]And if you like don't want anyone to sit near you at the beach.
[1:34]That's so funny.
[1:35]How do you have a private beach, right?
[1:37]Yes, exactly.
[1:38]There you go.
[1:39]Oh my gosh.
[1:40]All the all the beach chairs are yours as the fact that you in your introduction, you
[1:45]lay everything out with the fact that you were touring and doing all the education events
[1:50]that you do.
[1:51]And you were on the Harvard 70s and 10s course and just so much.
[1:55]And you were constantly being asked, how do like what now?
[1:59]And you were being, you know, you have a quote, you said, I'm a writer, not a therapist.
[2:03]I was entirely unprepared to become the emotional receptacle for hundreds of strangers
[2:09]shame, confusion and fear.
[2:10]Was it really my responsibility or the responsibility of Jews in general to cure the
[2:15]pathologies of our harassers?
[2:17]That seemed like an outrageous ask.
[2:19]And so the book.
[2:21]Yes.
[2:22]There we are.
[2:23]Here we are.
[2:24]Yeah.
[2:25]I mean, this was like, yes, as you said, I was, you know, really overwhelmed by the response
[2:27]to the previous book.
[2:28]And the, you know, I made a mistake with the last book.
[2:31]So my previous book, People Love Dead Jews was about, you know, sort of this, you know,
[2:35]use of, you know, Jewish memory and public life.
[2:37]And, you know, it really is about modern antisemitism.
[2:41]And people kept asking, you know, so what's your solution to this problem?
[2:43]And might completely taste those sort of reply was, do you really want me to give you the
[2:47]final solution to the Jewish question?
[2:49]I wasn't really prepared for that.
[2:51]But as you say, then it became institutionalized, right?
[2:53]I mean, I guess I was on this very unfortunate, ill-fated antisemitism advisory group to
[2:58]the now former president of Harvard, who you may have heard did not take a lot of our
[3:01]advice.
[3:02]It went so wonderfully that I ended up as a witness in the congressional investigation.
[3:05]It sort of, yeah, it became like this institutional thing.
[3:07]We're suddenly, you know, the people coming to me being like, so what's your solution
[3:10]to this problem was like the whole, it felt like it was like everyone, which was so crazy.
[3:13]It's like I'm a novelist.
[3:14]I'm not a therapist.
[3:15]I'm not a policy maker.
[3:16]I mean, you know, literally my last book was a graphic novel that I talk in good.
[3:19]Which I really enjoyed, by the way.
[3:22]Which was like, thank you, yes, which was on totally books also.
[3:25]So thank you for, thank you for your enthusiasm for my work.
[3:28]Yeah, that was a little bit of a different tone than this one.
[3:30]I just felt like what I started noticing when I was traveling and speaking and all these
[3:35]different audiences that was that there was a lot of opportunity that we've been leaving
[3:39]on the table.
[3:41]And what I mean by that is there's so much more ignorance than malice out there.
[3:45]You know, I would go speak in places where I was like a non-Jewish audiences.
[3:49]And the main thing people are asking is like, how can I help, but like what can I do?
[3:54]Oh my God, I had no idea.
[3:56]And you know, there's sort of this, the ignorance is an opportunity is something I would say
[4:01]about this.
[4:02]And you know, because in a sense, it's just, you know, what I talk in the book about
[4:06]the way we have, there's been this blank space where people don't know anything about
[4:10]who Jews are nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
[4:14]The only thing that's taught in schools about Jews, if there's anything taught at all is
[4:18]that Jews are people who were murdered in the Holocaust.
[4:21]And so, and I mean, unfortunately some people don't even know that.
[4:25]And then the problem is that, you know, when then, if that's the only thing you're ever
[4:28]taught and then TikTok tells you that Jews are white European colonizers who, you know,
[4:34]have no business in the Middle East and like, you know, we're stealing land from, you
[4:37]know, righteous brown people or something.
[4:39]Like why would you not believe this?
[4:41]It doesn't contradict anything you've been told before.
[4:44]And you know, then I started diving deeper into this and I'm realizing like, there's an
[4:48]entirely different story we could be telling that would actually have the power to really
[4:52]change all of this.
[4:53]And I now have a nonprofit that's working on telling the story.
[4:55]And of course, I told a lot of the story in the book as well.
[4:58]Amazing.
[4:59]And then.
[5:00]of the things you talk about is the role of Holocaust education
[5:04]and how it lets people down.
[5:07]And what not lets people down,
[5:10]but Holocaust education doesn't do the job
[5:13]that it is designed to do, right?
[5:15]Everyone wants it to increase empathy,
[5:18]but your big question is,
[5:20]does this actually stop antisemitism?
[5:23]And the answer appears to be no.
[5:25]Yeah, so I mean, look, I'm a lotta be clear,
[5:28]like I'm not against Holocaust education.
[5:30]No, I didn't mean to get to that.
[5:32]No, no, but like, you know, that's, look,
[5:34]I mean, I have a critique of this
[5:35]and so people are like,
[5:35]oh, we need more Holocaust education.
[5:37]It's like, well, I'm not saying
[5:38]that we don't need Holocaust education.
[5:39]That's not my critique.
[5:41]What I'm saying is that, yes, it was this idea
[5:44]that this was going to be this inoculate to have,
[5:47]you know, this was gonna inoculate people
[5:48]against antisemitism and unfortunately,
[5:51]the evidence does not bear that out.
[5:53]And so I dive deep into like,
[5:54]well, what are the things that are being taught
[5:56]in terms of the Holocaust?
[5:57]And what I really realized was that,
[5:59]first of all, as I said,
[6:00]juniors are completely erased from the story
[6:02]of the Holocaust.
[6:03]And that sounds crazy,
[6:04]because really I go, this is all about Jews.
[6:05]No, it's about Jews as passive victims that have no role.
[6:09]I travel around the country.
[6:10]I was looking at all different curricula
[6:11]and all different museums and different, you know,
[6:13]state laws and the way that they teach us in schools.
[6:15]And it's like the total emphasis is on what they call
[6:16]up standards, what we used to call righteous Gentiles.
[6:19]Unfortunately, these are important stories to tell,
[6:21]but unfortunately they're statistically insignificant
[6:23]in the story of the Holocaust, statistically meaningless.
[6:25]And what I found was that Jews had been so erased
[6:28]from the story that I remember,
[6:31]there's an example that I gave in the Dallas Holocaust Museum,
[6:33]one of the do's since told me
[6:35]when students come through the museum sometimes they'll ask,
[6:37]are there still Jews alive today?
[6:40]Because if you came to this museum, you wouldn't know.
[6:41]There's never Jews after 1945 except for survivors talking
[6:44]about what happened before 1945.
[6:46]And so that erasure weirdly is the same,
[6:51]that was the Nazi project was to not just kill Jews,
[6:54]but to like erase Jewish civilization.
[6:57]And in that sense, we've succeeded
[6:59]because there is no evidence of Jewish civilization
[7:02]in any public life.
[7:05]And what I realized also was that Holocaust education,
[7:08]if you're using this as some kind of tool
[7:10]to combat antisemitism, one of the many reasons
[7:14]that doesn't work is that it eliminates pattern recognition
[7:16]for antisemitism.
[7:18]Because what you're then teaching people is that,
[7:20]what does antisemitism look like?
[7:21]It looks like six million Jews being murdered
[7:24]in Europe between 1933 and 1945.
[7:27]And then the pattern they're trying to do is like,
[7:28]oh, look, here's other genocides or like here's Rwanda
[7:31]or here, which is important to teach.
[7:34]But you could teach about genocides against Jews
[7:37]in thousands of years.
[7:39]You also could teach like ask this question.
[7:40]It's like, well, why was this group of people targeted?
[7:44]And that's sort of like a dangerous question
[7:46]that people don't want to ask.
[7:47]And to me, this is where you can start
[7:49]looking at a pattern to understand antisemitism
[7:53]and actually inoculate people in it against it.
[7:56]And I do think that there's a way to do that,
[7:57]but it's not the way we're doing it now.
[7:59]You also point out that the narrative is devoid
[8:02]of any signs of the joy that Nazis and the perpetrators took
[8:06]and comes to the times you link it to the Hamas today.
[8:11]And one of the survivor's stories of how much joy
[8:14]he seemed to be taking in raping her,
[8:16]not to go dark very quickly here.
[8:19]But how do you know?
[8:20]I mean, that's the thing.
[8:21]Why are we sanitizing this?
[8:22]Yes.
[8:23]So why are they being portrayed as sort of soldiers
[8:26]executing joyless orders when in actuality that
[8:31]is not what happened?
[8:33]And the real story deserves to be told as well.
[8:37]Yes, that that was something that I noticed because, look,
[8:39]my background is in Yiddish and Hebrew literature.
[8:41]And when you read Yiddish literature about the Holocaust,
[8:45]which is, by the way, the stories of the over 85%
[8:48]that people murder the Holocaust where you get a speaker.
[8:50]So would you read testimony and documents
[8:53]from Yiddish sources?
[8:55]Like, it's just rife with this.
[8:56]It's about the sadism, right?
[8:57]It isn't this like Hannah Arendt,
[8:59]Hannah Arendt, you know,
[9:00]banality of evil, faceless, bureaucrats.
[9:03]You know, they're so efficient.
[9:04]Like, there's nothing efficient
[9:05]about like making people dance naked on Torah scrolls, right?
[9:09]There's nothing efficient about like forcing Jews
[9:10]to make pornographic films.
[9:11]And like, this is very similar to, as you say,
[9:13]like this very, you know, this Israeli hostages
[9:17]who are, you know, being repeatedly raped in captivity
[9:20]and the way they describe this is like,
[9:21]this person was having the time of their life, right?
[9:23]And so that's also like a dynamic of this
[9:25]that I have a cat that I was trying to get to.
[9:28]And so I just felt like there was this complete misunderstanding
[9:31]of that we were teaching about this as, you know,
[9:34]this banality of evil model.
[9:36]And then we were teaching about it as, you know,
[9:39]that's a failure of empathy, right?
[9:42]Like, oh, if only we, you know, understood
[9:43]that these people that were a prejudice against
[9:46]or that were attacking or just like you and me,
[9:48]they're just like everyone else.
[9:51]I mean, the problem with that premise
[9:52]when it comes to antisemitism is
[9:53]Jews spent 3,000 years not being like everyone else.
[9:57]Uncoolness is Judaism's brand, right?
[9:59]This is...
[10:00]I think you know and so and I see that as a joke, but then ultimately the place where I arrive,
[10:05]which I can talk about is that that ways that Jews have chosen not to be like everyone else
[10:13]is ultimately the asset test of a pluralistic society and that joy that people take,
[10:18]you know, in persecuting Jews that sort of collective effervescence, that sociologists say when
[10:23]they're all sitting, you know, chanting the same slogans together and that kind of thing,
[10:26]that is the key to understanding this. And so there's just a very different, you know,
[10:31]understanding this as like a bias, as a prejudice, as a failure of empathy does not, it's not just
[10:36]that it doesn't meet the moment. It doesn't adequately explain this pattern for like 2,200 years.
[10:42]Right. And you really clarify what you call the big lie of antisemitism, which is if I could just read
[10:48]this, you say the big lie of antisemitism is that Jews are destroying whatever you value most.
[10:54]That lie is a permission structure that turns bigotry into a righteous cause because it makes
[10:59]people think that they are fighting for their ideals. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So yes, so this
[11:05]is the way and this is how I explained the book and this is how also in my new nonprofit
[11:09]to tell institute where we teach this for, it's in we have a model for public schools and we also
[11:13]have a model for within the Jewish community. It's just a set of like eight lessons that goes through
[11:18]dynamics of antisemitism, but in grains than in the groundbreaking ideas of Jewish civilization.
[11:24]So yes, we define antisemitism. I don't think of it as a bias of bigotry. I mean, it may be
[11:30]all those things also. It's a lie that people tell to gain or maintain power and exactly as you
[11:36]read. It's Jews are destroying what you value the most. And the thing that varies in different
[11:40]social circles, different settings is what you value the most. So you're in a capitalist society,
[11:45]Jews are communist, you're in a communist society, Jews are capitalist. You know, it's your biggest
[11:49]value is we want to close the borders and be nationalist. Then Jews are cosmopolitans who are
[11:56]globalists who are bringing in all these immigrants. Are you in a setting where you are really
[12:02]that your whole motivation is human rights? Well, Jews are the world's worst violators of human
[12:08]rights. It's whatever you value the most is the thing that Jews are violating. And then that,
[12:12]as you said, as you read from the book, this is what makes this into a righteous clause.
[12:17]And that is related to the sadism, right? Because this is the piece where it gives people the sense
[12:23]of I am fighting for a clause. I am on the right side of history. This is what I am doing in
[12:30]attacking and destroying these people is fighting for what I value the most. That's what is so
[12:36]that's what's so powerful about this. And if you don't understand that dynamically, you just can't
[12:40]yeah, there's just no way to, there's no way to push back against this. And the biggest piece
[12:44]of it too to me is also that it's a lie to understand it as a lie really changes the way you think
[12:51]about this. Like this isn't about an opinion. This isn't about a bias. This is about a lie.
[12:55]And then the question is who is the liar? Who's telling these lies? Who is benefiting from
[13:00]telling these lies? And then you can go into who those people are. But I also tie it back to
[13:04]the actual content of Jewish civilization. Because I, the way I frame Jewish civilization in this
[13:10]book is that this is a 3,000 year old anti tyrannical movement. And guess what, when you have an
[13:15]anti tyrannical movement, it pisses off tyrants. Yes. Right. Yes. And when I said, you know,
[13:20]Jews spent 3,000 years not being like everyone else, this is a 3,000 year old nonconformist movement.
[13:25]When you have a nonconformist, so, you know, when you, when your premise is nonconformism,
[13:29]it's going to piss off dominance societies that need everyone to agree with them in order to feel
[13:32]validated. So yeah, I'm saying I'm probably involved. But this is like, you know,
[13:36]this is really important idea that to understand this and to be able to push back against it,
[13:41]to understand how you're being manipulated into thinking that you're fighting for your ideals.
[13:45]And I think that one question someone who is not Jewish or is not as familiar with this whole topic
[13:51]might ask at this point is, okay, fine. It's, you know, it's everything that societies
[13:57]against, but why pick the Jews? Why not another group? Why is it the Jews who have, have uplifted
[14:04]this mantle and why like what are we doing? So well, so well, look, I mean, I think that it's not
[14:09]true that like, oh, this never happens to any other group. Like this happens to a lot. Yeah,
[14:13]this happens to a lot of people. I used to think this I was, I used to think like, oh, anti-Semitism
[14:17]is different from other bigotry's because it has this conspiracy theory element. And then actually,
[14:21]it's one of my readers who corrected me. Someone I, one of my readers from the LGBTQ community was like,
[14:26]that's totally it lies with homophobia. It's, oh, it's a conspiracy, you know, these people are,
[14:31]you know, they're taking over your schools, they're grooming your kids, you know, they're right,
[14:35]they're predatory. Like that's like, you know, a lot of other groups deal with this. It's not
[14:38]true that it's why the Jews, the no one else deals with it. What's different about the Jewish example
[14:43]is simply that it's old. Yeah. So you have like a lot, like when I talked about pattern recognition,
[14:48]give a lot of different settings, a lot of different, I mean, this is like, you know, thousands of
[14:52]of years. You have a lot of opportunities to look at this. And so I think the question is why
[14:57]the Jews, it's really that.
[15:00]You know, the more interesting question is not why
[15:02]are the Jews attacked over and over,
[15:03]the more interesting question is why are the Jews still here?
[15:06]Because the reality is like, you know,
[15:08]dominant empires, you know, conquer people all the time.
[15:10]Like all the things that have happened
[15:12]to the Jewish people, you know, genocide and slavements,
[15:15]you know, exile or forced, you know,
[15:17]a diaspora, forced assimilation.
[15:18]Like these are things that happen to like, you know,
[15:19]there's almost no group in human history
[15:21]that hasn't been through something like this.
[15:23]What's unusual about the Jews is that the Jews survived it
[15:26]and, you know, continued,
[15:28]that like there aren't a lot of groups from ancient times
[15:30]that even fit into this category, right?
[15:32]Like I talk about like who are Jews?
[15:34]We're not a religion, we're not a race, we're not a nationality.
[15:36]Like we pre-date all of those categories.
[15:39]And that's why, you know, modern Westerners
[15:40]have trouble even understanding what this is.
[15:42]Like we're a joinable tribal group
[15:43]with the shared history, homeland and culture.
[15:45]That was the sentence in English.
[15:47]In Hebrew, it's one word, it's two letters long.
[15:48]Um, Jews are obvious to all the people of Israel.
[15:51]So, but that's like a category.
[15:53]The reason that category doesn't make sense
[15:54]is because of the successive empires, right?
[15:57]Like, you know, the Roman Empire conquered all these places
[15:59]and then all those people who they conquered
[16:01]started worshipping Zeus or Jupiter, right?
[16:03]I mean, that's like, you know, then, you know,
[16:05]Christian empires conquered all these places
[16:07]and all those people started worshipping Jesus.
[16:09]And then, you know, Islam conquered everybody
[16:10]and then everybody became Muslim.
[16:11]Like those ancient groups, most of them,
[16:14]whether by persuasion or force or both,
[16:16]like, you know, assimilated into these dominant empires
[16:19]and the Jews didn't.
[16:22]And that wasn't because of some magical,
[16:24]you know, like, you could put all kinds of religious
[16:27]or spiritual explanations.
[16:28]But it's because of deliberate choices
[16:30]that the Jewish people made to continue this tradition.
[16:34]And it was like investments that Jewish people made
[16:37]in this, that the Jewish people made.
[16:39]So, and I talk about them in the book
[16:40]like one is literacy.
[16:42]You know, there's like very concrete steps
[16:43]about building literacy community,
[16:46]how to cast traditions between generations.
[16:47]Like, I sort of lay out all of these kinds of things.
[16:49]And I've been talking for a while,
[16:51]but that's exactly what you're like.
[16:53]I thought you were like, yeah, actually,
[16:56]it wasn't the printing press that changed literacy.
[16:59]Like Jews have been reading for 3,000 years.
[17:01]And that's right.
[17:02]Yes, like, poor Jewish kids were buried.
[17:05]And, you know, like, you know,
[17:06]forced century Babylonian and turns out,
[17:08]yeah, you don't need a printing press to have widespread literacy.
[17:10]You need a society that thinks reading is important.
[17:12]Yes, I love that line.
[17:13]Yes.
[17:14]I was like, underlying amazing.
[17:15]Yeah, go reading.
[17:18]So from our conversation,
[17:20]it could seem like the book is, you know,
[17:23]a very historic, you know, outline of, you know,
[17:27]this out of the other thing.
[17:28]But in truth, it is a voice driven narrative of you
[17:31]as you understand everything.
[17:33]It is, it is excerpts about your son
[17:36]and from his experience playing with,
[17:40]like some sort of slug video game
[17:42]to what happens to him in school.
[17:44]Yes, we know Zionists were forbidden
[17:46]from the discord.
[17:48]I don't even know what the heck this is.
[17:49]Yeah, I think this word server
[17:50]for people making fan art from a video game, right?
[17:53]It's like what the heck, and my son 14 years old
[17:55]was like, what does this have to do with Zionism?
[17:57]Like great question, nothing.
[17:59]Yeah.
[18:00]Oh my gosh.
[18:00]Now, next thing you know,
[18:02]he's educating these kids on the cliff.
[18:04]Oh my, it's just crazy.
[18:05]Yes.
[18:06]So you include a lot of that.
[18:07]You include your own wrestling with how to help yourself
[18:12]the most and like what else you can do.
[18:14]You include anecdotes from all of the places that you visit
[18:18]and the things that surprised you and didn't.
[18:20]And then on top of that,
[18:21]you have the whole Harvard piece
[18:22]which you scatter throughout,
[18:25]not just that you were on this committee
[18:28]to quote-unquote help
[18:30]and that everything you said as a suggestion
[18:33]was met with like some random reason why
[18:36]it actually couldn't be implemented.
[18:38]But then you even just go to the fact
[18:40]that there are people on campus celebrating
[18:44]on October 7th, like the celebrating, the massacre.
[18:47]Oh, yes.
[18:48]And that is not about what is being taught in the classroom.
[18:51]It is about how this happens on a campus
[18:54]and what were the Harvard students
[18:57]not prepared for when they arrived
[19:00]because that is another claim that was made.
[19:02]Yes.
[19:03]So see, I actually think that it is about
[19:05]what's taught the classroom to
[19:06]because that was the thing that was sort of,
[19:08]you know, after this committee fell apart,
[19:09]what I later there were these several groups
[19:12]that did these audits of like everything
[19:14]that Harvard has been teaching about Jews in Israel.
[19:18]And when you look at that, you're like,
[19:20]there's no way they can fix this problem
[19:22]in terms of the students
[19:23]because literally they are teaching this.
[19:24]They are teaching this.
[19:25]And when I say they're teaching this,
[19:27]they're teaching antisemitic lives in class
[19:29]as though they are facts, right?
[19:31]I mean, it's like, you know, there's like a whole class
[19:32]at the pump, you know, where they teach about Harvard,
[19:35]you know, about, you know,
[19:36]Israel is a settler colonial estate.
[19:38]It's not like a discussion.
[19:40]That's the premise of the class.
[19:42]You know, let's talk about the settler colonialist
[19:44]implications for public health, right?
[19:46]I mean, it's like, this is a,
[19:48]these are lies that were created by the KGB.
[19:52]I mean, like, seriously, like it's like, wow,
[19:55]they're like, we're leaning into like, you know,
[19:56]like Zionism is genocide is like a KGB slogan.
[20:00]Zionism is apartheid as a KGB slogan. Zionism is racism and colonialism. These are KGB slogans.
[20:04]It's like, wow. But then as we say, like what I found is like, yes, one of the Harvard
[20:09]administrators at one point told me that, you know, and it was not just him. It was several
[20:13]administrators have made and some of them have made this comment in public that the students
[20:16]are coming to school to Harvard unprepared to wrestle with ideas. And it's like, well, why are they
[20:25]if they're not prepared to wrestle with ideas? I'm like, you literally like, every single
[20:29]kid here, you had 10,000 other kids, you could have picked. Why did you pick these people up? Like,
[20:33]this sounds like, this sounds like a you problem. Who are you choosing? And it was sort of this
[20:39]like understanding that like, there was, and this is sort of like a deeper problem in humanities
[20:45]and social sciences that I discovered was that like, there had been this pivot to social advocacy
[20:50]instead of scholarship. I mean, this is like a larger problem. It's like way beyond just anti-Semitism.
[20:55]And there was this understanding that like social advocacy was the purpose of the humanities,
[21:01]right? Like that was, you know, it's like, and that goes back even to K to 12 schools. It's like,
[21:05]oh, we're going to read a book about fill in the blank marginalized communities so that we can build
[21:09]empathy. And it was like, okay, well, there is this thing called it's in literature called
[21:14]social protest literature, but like, that's not what literature is. That's what social protest
[21:20]literature is, right? And there was just like this unwillingness to engage with ideas. That was
[21:25]something with the students. Now, this is part of this, the hate movement. And I keep calling it
[21:29]hate movement because it's an organized hate movement is backed by totalitarian regimes, which is this,
[21:34]you know, anti-Zionism. And I, in the book, I trace the history of anti-Zionism. It's, it's,
[21:37]we get this state of it. It's E word. Yes, the Z word, right? So anti-Zionism, it's its own movement
[21:43]that has absolutely nothing to do with Zionism or Israel. And backed by totalitarian regimes, extremely
[21:50]well-funded for over a century. And one of the tenets of this movement now is quote anti-normalization,
[21:56]which means we don't quote normalize quote Zionist translation. We don't talk to Jews.
[22:03]And I'm like, this is literally the definition of prejudice. Like, did you sleep through middle
[22:07]school if so? How did you get to Harvard? And like, literally, this is what prejudice is.
[22:13]This is you prejudge people before talking to them. But also, notice what this does. This makes it
[22:18]actually impossible to, even if you did actually care about the Middle East, which most of these
[22:22]people don't. This makes it impossible to create any, to do any kind of problem solving in the
[22:26]Middle East, because problem solving, you know, if you, you know, problem solving would require
[22:32]talking to people who don't think that half the world should die. So it's, it's designed to not
[22:38]solve the problem. It's not just to not solve problems, to not engage with anyone. And obviously,
[22:42]this is like downstream from this environment where like, you know, you never talked to anybody who
[22:47]doesn't agree with you. Like, oh, you voted for Trump. Therefore, I, you know, I cut you out of
[22:51]my life or whatever. I mean, this is like a larger social problem. But it's putt. I mean, this is,
[22:57]there's a reason like, I find it annoying when people say like, oh, it's like the young people these
[23:01]days, you know, they have all these different ideas. I'm like, you know, why they have all these
[23:04]different ideas? Where are they getting them from? Their phone guess who's controlling their phone?
[23:09]Like, you don't pay for TikTok. You don't pay for Instagram. If you don't pay for it, that means
[23:14]you're the product. Who is benefiting from you seeing all this like, you know, zombie,
[23:19]Soviet propaganda and Islamist propaganda all day long? And the answer is these totalitarian regimes
[23:26]who have invested enormous amounts of money in this. I have a chat from the book also about
[23:29]how this how this hate movement has taken it over AI. Yes. Yeah, I have the receipts,
[23:35]which is like extremely impressive. So terrifying. However, you do have an optimistic through
[23:41]line to the book as well. When you say that the opposite of hatred isn't love, it's curiosity.
[23:47]Yes. I love that because it's actionable and enforceable and promoteable for anyone. Like,
[23:56]you just have to be curious. You have to wonder. You have to dig. Tell me more about that.
[24:01]Yes. Well, so actually, it's funny. I was just at a conference where I yesterday where I met a
[24:05]student who was someone who had been involved in one of, you know, in this, you know, as
[24:10]all movement in her campus. And then like, she's like, and has left this movement. And one
[24:14]of the things she says is like, the red flag for me was when we weren't allowed to ask questions.
[24:19]Like, you know, and I'm like, I'm curious, like what happened on October 7th and then they're
[24:23]like, we're not talking about that. You know, or it didn't happen, right? Like, there's no,
[24:28]like there's no conversation about anything, right? There's no nuance in anything. And like,
[24:31]as you know, in the Jewish community, there's ridiculous. I mean, it's like debilitating amounts of
[24:36]nuance and discussion and disagreement and debate and dissent about absolutely everything. And
[24:41]this is a totalitarian point of view. So in terms of the remedy curiosity, you know, when I built
[24:45]this Tel Institute program, and as I said, it's like it's a crash course. It's like eight lessons. And
[24:50]the premise is about these groundbreaking ideas of Jewish civilization, where it's about, you know,
[24:56]monotheism ultimately. And, you know, monotheism in the Torah, we're ultimately
[25:00]this anti tyrannical device, basically, because when they say that you say they don't
[25:05]bow to other gods, like in other societies, like one of the gods is the dictator, like the Roman
[25:09]emperor, right? Or the Pharaoh. It's like, well, then the Jews are saying they don't bow to
[25:13]tyrants. And so, you know, then, and also you have in Jewish civilization, this whole
[25:19]robust tradition of debate and just civil discourse and debate and dissent, what we call
[25:22]makho, get la chamshamai and argument for the sake of heaven, where arguing with someone who doesn't
[25:27]agree with you is how you achieve understanding and reach truth and solve problems, right?
[25:33]That is, that is the means to that, that's the purpose of argument, that purpose of argument
[25:38]isn't even to win, right? It's to achieve this higher level of understanding. So,
[25:43]you know, these are principles that we've lost in, you know, in a lot of American discourse,
[25:48]and people are hungry for this. And then the other piece is knowing when you're being manipulated,
[25:54]and to me, this is the most important piece about understanding teaching that anti-Semitism is a
[25:57]lie. Instead of teaching it as a bigotry bias, because when you teach it as a lie, then you start
[26:03]realizing like, wow, where is all this stuff on my phone coming from, right? These things I
[26:08]could solve with my own eyes. Did you see these with your own eyes? No, you saw that TikTok, right?
[26:13]It's like, you know, it's like when you realize that and then you're sort of like, wait a minute,
[26:16]where is every, you know, and there's one of the things we teach about is this idea called the,
[26:21]idea psychology called the illusory truth effect. This is when a lie is repeated enough times,
[26:26]you know, like something cognitively happens in your brain where you start accepting it and you're
[26:30]like, well, there must be something to it, right? Why do I keep hearing it? And it's like,
[26:34]Zionism is genocide. Zionism is genocide. Zionism is genocide. Like, the means to convince you of this
[26:39]isn't, you know, evidence. It's repetition, right? And so once you realize that you're being,
[26:46]you know, and repetition and credentialing, right, appeal to authority, this is another sort of like,
[26:50]you know, these like false arguments. If you study like rhetoric and logic, it's like, appeal to
[26:54]authority. Look, this person who has a stamp from a conference at Harvard said that it's this.
[26:58]Yeah. So therefore it's true, right? I mean, it's like this, like false reasoning, right? And
[27:03]once you realize you're being, you know, that when you're able to understand that this is a lie,
[27:09]then you can be inoculated against it because then you have that curiosity and skepticism where
[27:14]you don't just believe the first thing you hear, you know, because to me, like when these
[27:18]deans said, you know, students were coming to Harvard unprepared, he was like, you know, they have
[27:21]this idea that someone's lived experience is the end of an argument instead of the beginning.
[27:27]And it's like, you know, again, when you have from reading a book, wouldn't you notice that
[27:33]there are many ways that one can experience, you know, have a lived experience also understand
[27:38]the same, even two people having, you know, can under one person can understand their quote,
[27:43]lived experience in different ways, right? I mean, it's just like this absurdity. I'm just trying,
[27:47]I mean, all I'm trying to do is I'm not trying to sort of, you know, replace a lie with some
[27:52]other, like this is true instead. I'm trying to open up the space for people to be curious
[27:58]and want to ask questions. And of course, this is something that's very ingrained into a civilization
[28:03]that, you know, maybe our neighbors need a little bit more of. Amazing. Well, just to close,
[28:08]I want to read just one more quote. When you said, even though I am the anti-Semitism,
[28:12]or acts, every time I write about this, I am still absolutely terrified even now. But I've
[28:17]also discovered a secret, which is the empowerment that comes from saying what everyone else is
[28:21]afraid to say. In that moment, when you finally choose truth and freedom and courage,
[28:26]you don't only discover your own strength, you also discover the thousands of grateful people
[28:30]who were all waiting for you to say it. So bravo to you for saying it, Dara. And thank you so
[28:36]much for coming on. Thank you. And thank you, Zibi, for everything you're doing to promote
[28:41]these kinds of conversations. You're also the person who's brave enough to say these things
[28:44]and to open the space for people to ask these questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
[28:49]Thanks for such and thought for working. Awesome read. Amazing. Well, I'm also, yeah, well,
[28:54]I mean, you're amazing that like you can like fit all this into like 25 minutes.
[28:59]No, but seriously, also, like, you know, thank you so much for everything you're doing because like,
[29:03]this is like extremely well-funded heat movement. Yeah, I know, sorry. But all this stuff,
[29:09]you and me. Well, I mean, and many others, you know, like, at some point, these publishers
[29:17]might notice like, hey, maybe we want to sell books. Anyway, maybe it's a dying history. And like,
[29:23]when someone actually has a book that people want to buy, maybe we should pump, like, maybe we
[29:26]should publish it. Maybe so. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for everything you're doing. Sorry, it's okay.
[29:35]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi.
[29:38]Formerly, mom's don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[29:42]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[29:49]Oh, and buy the books.