Rabbi Shapiro on how Anti-Zionism became the new Antisemitism | Redacted w Natali Morris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O7hAYZvTC0

Well is anti-zionism the new anti-semitism? Well, that's what the Israel lobby would have you believe But last week I had a chance to sit down with Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro He says that this is absolutely wrong and used to sell you war He says Zionism itself is anti-semitism and that the Israeli government is dangerous for Jews all around the world So I'm excited for you to listen to this interview and let me know what you think Rabbi, it's so nice to meet you I really enjoyed some of the other media that you have been doing and so I was anxious to talk to you because of This paradigm that's new to me You say that Zionism itself is anti-semitic and you are trying to teach people what Judaism actually is and how it is completely separate Apart from Zionism. So can you explain that for us? Because like I said, this is new to me. How is Zionism anti-semitic? Judaism is a religion. Jews have looked at themselves as a religion for thousands of years There are various different interpretations of this religion Everybody from the Jews for Jesus to the Reform Jews, to the Orthodox Jews, etc Zionism came and said something completely different. It said the Jews are not a religion. The Jews are a nationality Just like the Greeks had a religion They worshipped Zeus and the Norsemen worshipped Odin But their identity was a national identity. The Jews are a nationality and Israel is the state of that nationality They were the first people that said to say that the Jews are not a religion. They're a nationality There were perhaps some quirky exceptional Jews You can count them on one hand throughout history that believed that but the Zionists were the first one to do it In addition, the Zionists claim to be able to speak in the name of all the Jews all over the world Israel claims to be my state. The nation-state law of 2018 says that Israel is the nation-state of all Jews all over the world Meaning that America is not my country. Israel is my country according to Israeli law Netanyahu wrote in one of his books that the reason why anti-Zionism is anti-semitism. I'm sure you've heard that little piece of nonsense Yes, and it confuses me. Well, okay The reason why it's confusing is because it's based on an ideology called Zionism. Netanyahu said that To say I am against Israel, but I'm not against Jews is the same as saying I'm against the existence of America But I'm not against American identity According to Israel, according to Zionism, according to Netanyahu, the Jews are nationals I may or may not be religious and Israel is the country of that nationality Which means, like Jonathan Pollard said, he said that he would recommend Jews in America should spy on America for Israel because Jews have loyalty to Israel According to Netanyahu, according to Zionism, my country is not the United States of America My country is Israel. In 1917 when they made the Balfour Declaration in England There was one Jewish member of the cabinet named Edwin Montague He was against the Balfour Declaration and he was against Zionism He said if you're going to create a Jewish nationality in a Jewish state You're gonna make the Jews foreigners in their own countries and the Zionists want this It's anti-semitic because first of all, it denies my Jewish identity. It's a complete erasure of Jewish identity And two, it claims that I'm not a real American. I'm Jewish by religion. My family's from Poland. I have nothing to do with Israel It's not a question of I'm for or against Israel's policies I have as much to do with Israel. Jews have as much to do with Israel as I do with China, inherently Israel, again, my family's from Poland. By religion, I'm Jewish. I'm here in America What connection do I have with some random country they made in 1948? Now, Israel's status law in 1952 or 53 said that Israel considers the state of Israel The project and results of the national, of all Jews all over the world It's the national movement of all Jews all over the world, but that's nonsense It's not. A bunch of Zionists got together, decided to make a country and now speak in the name of all Jews all over the world And to say to everybody in the world, to you, that I am not a real American as much as you are I have loyalty to Israel. Netanyahu, when he came to America last time, to speak to Congress, to Barack Obama's Iran deal Before he left, right before he left, he said, I go to America to represent not only the people that voted for me But I represent all Jews all over the world He claims to be basically the prime minister of the Jews And Naftali Bennett said clearly Netanyahu is the prime minister of the Jews He is not the prime minister of the Jews. My president, whether I like him or not, is Joe Biden, okay? And I have nothing to do with that country and yet that country goes around slandering me and my people claiming that they speak In our name, number one. They're the only Jews in the world that do that Look, everybody has an opinion about what Judaism is, right? No problem Nobody says that they are the prime minister of the Jews, that they are the state of the Jews, that they speak in the name of the Jews That they are the national movement of all Jewish people. That's nonsense Orthodox Jews, I know that. I believe Orthodox Judaism is correct. The others are incorrect Fine, but I recognize the fact that there are others out there Israel believes, and they tell everybody, that they are the state of all Jews Israel claims to be my state, in the words of Abigail Lieberman and Dini Ayalon, with Francis to the French And Japan's to the Japanese, Israel is to the Jews. That's Zionism. Without Zionism Japan's to the Japanese and Francis to the French, while Israel is to the Israelis Yes, right This idea that Israel... One of the things that you said in a recent interview, that I really found it kind of jaw-dropping Is that Judaism, fundamentally, is an invitation to study the word of God And it is a peaceful, absolutely full-stop, peaceful religion And I turned to my husband, and I said, maybe I'm a Jew, because I like to study And I am anti-war, and you say that it's an invitation to anyone to follow this doctrine And it absolutely doesn't... So can you speak to that? And why then, a war would be waged in the name of this doctrine? Okay, first, they're not waging war in the name... Well, they don't believe in this doctrine Netanyahu is not a religious man at all. He does not follow Judaism at all He does not eat kosher food, he does not keep the Sabbath He does not believe in the 13 fundamentals of our religion He is not a practicing Jew, or an observant Jew, or a believing Jew at all, in the slightest He is, number one, pandering to the evangelicals Number two, he wants people to believe that he's acting out of some sort of religious obligations Which he's not He wants to pander to the religious people, both religious Zionists There are such things And religious evangelicals He wants to pander to them Netanyahu doesn't believe one word he's saying They're not waging a war in the name of Judaism They're waging a war for Israel They want it to look like a religious war The reason is, if it's a religious war, it's a war against Amalek It's a war against Islamic Muslim fanatics Such wars can never be solved It's just like the Hatfields and McCoys No one compromises their religion So if it's a religious war, it just goes on forever They don't want you to think, maybe Israel can stop the war Maybe they don't have to make so many wars Maybe negotiation is better They don't want you to believe that Jews are going to their death Never mind what they're doing to Gaza Israel itself is sending Jews to their death to fight a war for politics So that Netanyahu can stay in office for some other political reasons If it's Judaism, and it's your religion, and your identity Then you become more committed to it But he's lying, he doesn't even believe that himself Now as far as you becoming Jewish If you follow the doctrine, it's not enough Part is, you have to be committed to the doctrine In other words, it's more important to be committed to it Because everybody sins, nobody's perfect If Jews don't follow the doctrine, but they try, and they're committed to it That's what makes somebody a Jew Right, I did not mean to make light I just felt like, oh, those are virtues that I subscribe to as well This doesn't seem like a club that I can't get into Because I wasn't born in it, or I have no Israeli connection This is something different, that's why I was so moved by that Right, well of course you can Donald Trump's daughter converted to Judaism, right? Ivanka Trump is Jewish, and she married a Jewish guy, and she has Jewish children You can convert to Judaism In the book of Ruth, it says that King David In the book of Ruth in the Bible, that King David himself Is a descendant of Ruth, who was a convert She was a Moabite woman who converted to Judaism Of course it has nothing to do with blood It has nothing to do with some country in the Middle East That's Zionism, and that's why it's anti-Semitic This is what you thought, you thought this Because this is what Israel and the Zionists tell everybody Which means my identity, as a regular Jew That wants nothing except to serve God Fulfill my religion, pay my taxes here in America Take a walk along the base, spend some time with my family And leave me alone, I have nothing to do with some foreign country 6,000 miles away Any more than I do with China, or Japan, or Russia Just leave me out of your politics, I have nothing to do with American politics I'm a citizen of the United States of America, and I have nothing to do with any foreign countries They're just imposing their beliefs upon me And they're going around telling everybody that I'm responsible for their actions As a commodity almost, because one of the first exposures I had to this idea, that Jews are a commodity In order to feed into the Israeli idea Was from Ilyan Pape's book, when he talks about how post-Holocaust Israel went and signed up the survivors, and talked them out of Traveling to the United States, which was where most of them wanted to go Because either they had family there, or they were traumatized by being in that region And Israel said, oh no, you're coming to Israel, you're not going to the United States And they took those people out of survivor camps, in order to boost their numbers These are stories we are not told, right, and so this idea That a Judaism identity boosts this state ideal Is relatively new, and not spoken of, I think In the conversation around Judaism Well, you're right, and that's because the people listening to the conversation around Judaism Aren't going to the scholarly sources, they're going to the media, to the news, and to listen to Netanyahu And they assume it's a matter of, just a given, just an axiomatic given That Israel represents the Jews, that Israel's the state of the Jews It's not, it's a lie, absolute lie, and Zionism is absolutely opposed to Judaism in that sense It's nationalism, it's the nationalization of the Jewish religion Of Jewish identity, it's the steeliest identity theft, I call it That they wanted to be the Jews, they wanted to be the Jews Because there's a whole historical history behind that But the Zionists are They make a lot of trouble for us They love anti-Semitism all over the world, because then their answer is, of course Everybody has to come to Israel You know, there's, on campus, people protest for the Palestinians, oh they're really anti-Semites And they want to kill you. Just recently, they said that some guy got up At the Republican National Convention, someone sent me a clip of some guy That said that they're going to elect Donald Trump, and he's going to make the United States safe again Once more, for Jews to walk around with their yarmulke Because currently it's not safe. Now that's insane I literally, all my life, I've walked around the United States with a yarmulke And every day, I'm in New York, and I do, we're safer here, much safer than they are in Israel But the idea that we're not safe, because why? Because, why? It's nonsense But Israel wants Jews to feel unsafe, and if you notice, whenever they talk about anti-Semitism on campuses They don't talk about how many Jews are not safe They don't speak about how many Jews were hurt, how many Jews were harmed They speak about how Jews feel unsafe, they go around to Jews and they say You should feel unsafe, they want to kill you, they want to kill you So, oh my god, I'm scared, and then they say, oh look, see, Jews feel unsafe Well, of course, and now what's the solution? Go to Israel, go to Israel Israel's the safest place, but didn't President Biden recently say That if not for Israel, Jews wouldn't be safe anywhere around the world? What kind of nonsense is that? Is that not anti-Semitic? I mean, come on, I am a minority here in this country, and would he say that about any other minority? He's supposed to keep me safe, I pay taxes to him to keep me safe And he's saying that he, as my president of the United States He's not keeping me safe, some foreign country's keeping me safe Isn't that insane? Well, yes it is, especially in light of October 7th, we've covered many times on this show How the Israeli government was responsible for creating Hamas And so that fundamentally makes people who live in Israel unsafe So can you tell me what the Orthodox Judaism response would have been to October 7th? Or is that even a question, because the Orthodoxy would not have created this conflict with Hamas? I'm not sure where to come at this You see, I'm circling it, so can you help me? That's right, that question is similar to asking What's the Orthodox response to Ukraine's bombing of Russia? The Orthodox Jews have nothing to do with what Israel did Israel's China, Zelensky's Jewish and Netanyahu's Jewish And their actions equally represent the Jews and are equally connected with Orthodox Jews That's number one, number two, Orthodox Jews were not created in the state of Israel anyway We're not allowed to have a state of Israel, we're a religion And until the Messiah comes, we're not even allowed to have any state, any sovereignty at all We would not have created this, and I want to tell you something You talk about, before what you heard from Hila and Papi A few weeks ago was the 100th anniversary of the death of a man named Yaakov Dahan I don't know if you heard of him, here's the story When the Jews were, in the early 1900s When the Zionists and the Arabs and the British were fighting over that land To determine who was going to be in control of it The Jews said that we don't want the Zionists here We'd rather live under the Ottomans, we'd rather live under the British We don't want the Zionists, it's bad for spiritual, it's bad physically, it's bad for our security We don't want it But they didn't have an in to the British, who then had the mandate But there was a man, who was a Dutch guy, Yaakov Dahan He was a lawyer and a poet and a professor, and he was very hooked He was a famous guy, he was very hooked up, a very prominent scholar And Rabbi Yosef Hein Zonenfeld, he was the chief rabbi of the Orthodox community back then He sent Yaakov Dahan, he said go to the British And tell them that the Orthodox Jews here, we don't want Israel We don't want this so-called Jewish state And right before he was ready to go to England So he was coming out of a hospital where there was a synagogue Inside the hospital, coming out of his prayers A man by the name of Avram Tahomi, a Zionist It was a funny thing, because the streets were kind of empty It was an eerie scene, a guy comes over to Avram Tahomi, his name was Sergio at the time He looked at his watch, and he took out a gun and shot him three times in the chest It was an assassination, the Zionists, the Zionist Haganah The organized Zionist militia, which later became the idea of assassinating this man It wasn't even a murder, they made sure nobody would be in the streets A hundred years ago, like this one, and they did it in order that nobody should be able to know That the Jews are not Zionists They want everybody to think that they represent the Jews And this prominent man was going to tell the British, we want nothing to do with it So they assassinated him So yeah, the Zionists are not the friends of the Jews Which is why, by the way, the Haredim refused to join their army Right, and so now the Israeli army is saying that they will conscript Orthodox Jews Even though that is against their religion And so something you've been a part of is that pushback Showing that there are protests in the street, that Orthodox Jews will not fight And they do not want to fight, and in fact it is against the Jewish doctrine So you can follow Rabbi Shapiro at rabbishapiro.net For more about this, and I hope what I said about being interested in Judaism Didn't come off as disrespectful, I was very motivated By the doctrines that you were- You're admiring Judaism Yes, absolutely, and I feel like there's a lot to learn here that has been kept from me I have to seek it out myself clearly, because the media is not going to help And they're just going to yell at me Israel has the right to defend itself, if you are against that, you're anti-Semitic And so this is something that I feel like requires massive study On all of our parts, and I'm inspired by the fact that there is such a doctrine That values deep study, deep meditation, self-responsibility And anti-war, because I value those things too, so I hope that resonates I just want to mention two things about Israel I'm reading over here from a book Called Civil Religion in Israel, by two secular Jewish academics And it describes how Zionism masquerades as a religion Even though it's completely godless And it gives an example of Israel's army As a tool for indoctrination, for socialization When Ben-Gurion made the army, this is why Israel forfeits their right to draft anybody into their army Normal armies are militaries to defend the country But Israel's army was created by Ben-Gurion to be a melting pot He said clearly, it's going to be an instrument of socialization, it's going to be an educational institution It's an indoctrination camp for the Zionist religion Which means as follows, I'm reading over here Special efforts are invested in the education of future officers during the early 70s The officers training course included lectures on the following topic Now this is an army, for officers training, listen to this 1. What is Judaism? 2. The uniqueness of the Jewish people 3. The people and the land in a Jewish perspective 4. War and army in a Jewish perspective 5. The meaning of Jewish holidays in contemporary times 6. What is Kirish Hashem? Kirish Hashem is sanctifying God's name by being moderate 7. Is Judaism a religion, a way of life, or a constitution? 8. The identity of the Jewish people Now imagine if the American army would get up there and teach their recruits What you were taught about Christianity is wrong Christianity is not a religion, Christianity is a nationality And nobody would tolerate that in an army Yet Israel's army is not merely an army, it's a parochial school And they force people to listen to this, and they force people to respond to it And it's a forced indoctrination camp for the Zionist religion No country has a right to force people for religious indoctrination The fact that their indoctrination camp is also a military is no excuse Israel forfeits their right to drift anybody into that army Because it's not just a military It's an indoctrination camp for a religion Which is against, and they teach openly What is Judaism? Is that an insane thing for an army to teach? Because Israel's army is a religious indoctrination camp And therefore there's nobody that can expect Orthodox Jews or any religion To subject ourselves to this type of brainwashing against our religion And against our God, because every country has a right to expect people to serve their country But no country has a right to expect people to serve their gods And Zionism, number 2 Because it's the army of the Jews, because Israel's the country of the Jews And their army is the army of the Jews, not the army of Israel You know that Arabs, aside from Jews, are not subject to the draft They'll accept them voluntarily, but not everybody gets drafted Jews get drafted, Arabs besides Jews don't Christians besides Circassians are not drafted The reason is, and I heard this from one of the members of the Knesset I was on a radio show about 10 years ago Because the IDF is the army of the Jewish people Because Israel's the country of the Jewish people But all of this is, let them teach people how to secure a country Let them teach people how to be soldiers They're busy in the army teaching people about the Jewish religion How my version of the religion is wrong, and it's just a nationality Let them separate church and state, at least in the army Until then, they have no right to draft anybody Israel's army is an indoctrination camp for our religion And no country has a right to ask anybody, no moral right to ask anybody to go through that type of brainwashing Right, well thank you so much for sharing this with me I hope you come back on Redacted another time Again, you can find Rabbi Shapiro at rabbishapiro.net And his book called The Empty Wagon about Zionism So it really was a pleasure to speak with you, sir Thank you so much, a pleasure to be here!