#20: Alan Dershowitz

Embark on a fascinating exploration as Professor Alan Dershowitz, a legal giant, lends his voice to scrutinize the nuances of U.S.-Israel relations and the rough paths toward peace in the Middle East. We delve into the disappointments with the Obama administration and the challenges that Hamas presents to international diplomacy. This episode promises not only to shed light on these pressing global issues but also to navigate the intricate debate over DEI initiatives and their impact on the fabric of American institutions.

The conversation takes a turn towards the home front as we examine the intersection of DEI, meritocracy, and the very identity of our nation's future legal defenders. Can the weaponization of legal systems and the shifts in political dynamics be reconciled with the core values of our Constitution? Professor Dershowitz doesn't shy away from tackling these complex questions, offering insights that cut through the noise of today's polarized discourse.

As we wrap up our discussion, we uncover the threads of unity that bind American values, despite the sharp political divides that seem to characterize our times. The emergence of bipartisan consensus on issues like antisemitism and global terrorism sparks a glimmer of hope. This episode isn't just a conversation; it's a clarion call to uphold justice and unity amidst complexity, guided by the wisdom of Professor Dershowitz.

You can buy his book, War Against the Jews, How to End Hamas Barbarism online!

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Transcript

Kelly Tshibaka: 0:08

Hello America and hello Alaska. Welcome to stand where we help make courage contagious. I'm your host, Kelly Tshibaka, the chair of the Trump campaign and Alaska former US Senate candidate. I'm joined today by my awesome co-host, Niki Tshibaka, who used to work at the Department of Justice. We're so excited to be with you broadcasting from Alaska's last frontier. You can become one of our standouts on our show. You can go to our website, standshoworg, where you can find all of our episodes and make sure to subscribe While strap in tight for an awesome show.

Kelly Tshibaka: 0:41

Today, we're going to talk about Israel and Trump with our amazing guest, alan Dershowitz, who is one of the most celebrated and influential lawyers in the world. I would say he was the youngest full professor at Harvard Law School, where Niki and I greatly enjoyed going to some of his lectures when we were students, and he has advised presidents and prime ministers, representing many prominent cases, including representing President Trump in his Senate impeachment trial. He's a number one New York Times bestselling author, most recently the book War Against the Jews how to End Hamas Barbarism. We're going to talk about that book today. So, professor Dershowitz, welcome to stand. We are so excited to have you with us.

Alan Dershowitz: 1:21

I'm thrilled to be there because you know I've litigated cases over 30 states but I've never been in Alaska. I was supposed to come to speak to the bar a few years ago but I got had a medical problem so I canceled it. But my wife and I are thinking about maybe making a trip this late spring or early summer to Alaska, because it's, I think, the only state I've never been to and I'm anxious to go there. I hear it's absolutely beautiful and the people are fantastic, and I've had a number of former students who have been there, including members of the judiciary, and so I'm really looking forward to uniting with some of my former students and seeing the beauty of Alaska.

Kelly Tshibaka: 2:01

You're welcome to come. We'd be happy to have you as former students. We'd be so happy to have you here. We'll show you great time. You'd be definitely welcome in Alaska. Yeah, you would love it. So you're a prominent Democrat, kind of a little bit of a different flavor of Democrats. But something that I found interesting you've said is that you will never speak to President Obama again. I think that that's interesting. I'd love for you to share with us a little bit more about why.

Alan Dershowitz: 2:25

Well, I knew Obama as a student. I knew him as Barry and he used to hang out with my closest friend on the faculty, charles Ogletree, and he used to hang out in front of the office and we shared an office area. So I got to talk to Barry numerous times and I really liked him. He always came to the office wearing a leather jacket, with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and an alternating between talking Harvard style and talking Black style and it would depend who he was talking to. So I always wondered about his authenticity.

Alan Dershowitz: 3:00

But I supported him when he ran the first time and I was having some doubts about the second time and he called me and I was in Israel and he asked me what people in Israel were talking about and I said Iran, et cetera, and he said we'll come to the Oval Office when you come back to the United States. And so I did and we had a considerably long time conversation. Obviously he was asking for me to endorse him for the second term and he wanted to assure me that he had Israel's back. And he kept saying over and over again you know me, I'm a man of my word, I will never abandon.

Alan Dershowitz: 3:35

Israel. I will never accept an Iran deal that doesn't guarantee that they will never get nuclear weapons, and so I foolishly endorsed him. I wish I hadn't. If I had to take over again, I would vote for Mitt Romney, who would have been a better president and was a great governor. I thought of Massachusetts. And then when, at the last week of his term, last couple of weeks of his term, he did not veto over the objection of his own UN representative and other people in the State Department, he allowed a resolution to be passed for the Security Council that said that the Western Wall the holiest place of Judaism, equivalent to the Vatican and Catholicism, or Assault Lake City to Mormonism that the Western Wall is illegally occupied territory. He allowed the United States to vote for that and that the access roads to Hebrew University and the Hadassah Hospital are all illegally occupied territory. And that, for me, showed that he would.

Alan Dershowitz: 4:36

Either he was lying to me or he had changed his mind, because he was really out to get Netanyahu. This was his last month in office and he was going to get revenge. This was not in the interest of the United States, it was not American policy. It was just Barack Obama being nasty and hurting Israel and hurting American interests in the Middle East, and I thought it was such a show of a personal peak that it terminated my relationship with him. I had a very good relationship with him. I was invited to the White House repeatedly during his eight years. I was one of the only people outside of government invited to see him give the award Medal of Honor to Shimon Perez and he wrote me a beautiful note on my 75th birthday. But once this happened, you know I picked my friends carefully and so I am not a friend to Barack Obama and I hope his wife Michelle, who I remember also was a student. I hope she does not run for president.

Kelly Tshibaka: 5:42

I really appreciate you sharing that. That's good insight. That leads us, I think, naturally into a discussion about this latest book that you've written, the War Against the Jews. I want to jump into that. Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005. It's offered to give land of its own to Palestine many times in order to end the conflict, but every time it has Palestine and the Palestinian leaders have rejected that compromise deal. They don't want a two state solution, it seems. So what's your take on how to end this conflict and stop Hamas barbarism, as you've proposed?

Alan Dershowitz: 6:14

Well, this is story in today's Media in Israel but, not in the United States that Sinwa, the head of the Hamas, has said he doesn't want a ceasefire. He does not want a ceasefire, he wants to escalate. He wants to see more Palestinian civilians in Gaza killed. He thinks that will be good for Hamas's cause and he thinks that if we don't have a ceasefire During Ramadan, that will increase the violence and increase the death rate. And Hamas benefits every time a civilian is killed. If they kill an Israeli civilian, they benefit. If Israel kills by accident, because they don't try to do it, a Palestinian civilian, hamas benefits and everybody should read this article. I posted it online in my Twitter account. The article is amazing because it really Quote Sinwar, the head of Hamas, saying he's now changed his mind. He doesn't want a ceasefire.

Alan Dershowitz: 7:13

So all these useful idiots who are protesting? Yesterday they protested in California At the at the election results when Adam shift. That was screaming. Well, scream that to Hamas. Israel has offered a ceasefire and Hamas says no, because Sinwar and Hamas want dead Palestinians, preferably babies. The more dead babies that they can show on television, the stronger their cause. This is so cynical and CNN plays into it, msnbc plays into it, the New York Times plays into it. But the American public is too smart for that and they understand the cynicism of Hamas. That Hamas's goal is Dead babies in order to put the onus on Israel. There's nothing more cynical than that.

Alan Dershowitz: 8:11

I asked the head of the palace, one of the heads of the Palestinian group, when I debated him recently on A television show. I said will you Stand up to Hamas and say, do not use human shields this is on Pierce Morgan and this leading Palestinian said Hamas does not use human shields. Well, I have a video tape of one of the leaders of Hamas Bragging about how we use our children and our women as human shields. They are martyrs. We're proud of them. They're human shields. Human shields this is not my term, this is Hamas's term. And yet the leaders of the Palestinian Authority think they could pull the wool over the eyes of decent Americans by saying Hamas doesn't use human shields.

Alan Dershowitz: 9:02

They're also now saying many feminists are now saying well, hamas didn't rape anybody. If anybody was raped, it was probably the Israeli Defense Forces who raped them. This kind of rape denial is Kind of rich, small Holocaust denial. You know extremists say or the Holocaust didn't occur, but now you get these people. There are tapes, there are recordings, there are testimonies, there are photographs of women raped, being raped, and, and you see the results. And Me too, me too, except if you're a Jew, and so I am no longer like a supporter of the me too movement. I am not a supporter of Gays for Palestine. If you want to be a gay for Palestine, buy a one-way ticket to Gaza. Go to Gaza, and you'll never get out, you'll be killed, you be thrown off a roof if you're a gay for Gaza. But they're so hate. The hatred of Israel and Jews is so deep that they're willing to subordinate their own cause of gay rights To the anti-Israel attitudes that they have is there any hope for stopping it?

Kelly Tshibaka: 10:06

Is there any solution?

Alan Dershowitz: 10:07

Yeah, the same solution that won us the Second World War total, unequivocal victory and surrender Hamas has to be destroyed. You know, the Secretary of Defense made the classic mistake. He said oh, if you attack Gaza, you'll just create more and more terrorists. No, what happened after the Second World War? We demolished Germany. We killed so many Germans. We demolished Japan. We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. What happened? Germany and Japan became our strongest allies. They understood we were strong and their leaders had produced disaster. And I think if Israel totally destroys Hamas, the people of Gaza will be thankful and say thank Israel for taking these Tyrants away from us and bringing us a prospect, possibly, of a democracy.

Kelly Tshibaka: 10:58

It's a good point. Palestinians and Hamas are two different groups of people. We're coming up on a break. We'll be right back with Professor Alan Dershowitz on all things Israel and 2024 elections with President Trump. Stay with us. You're on stand with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka and Professor Alan Dershowitz will be right back after this break. Stay tuned.

Niki Tshibaka: 11:26

Hello America, hello Alaska, welcome back to stand. We are with the great Professor Alan Dershowitz, who has now written 55 books, 55 books all. So we've got a lot of reading to do. There's a lot of wisdom and he's written on a written on a breadth of subjects, but right now we're talking about Israel and the, the war there that's affecting the entire world, and his book war against the Jews. He's holding it up how to end Hamas barbarism. Encourage everybody to pick it up. We're gonna post a link to it on our Facebook page so you can all easily get ahold of it. But wanted to follow up with you, professor Dershowitz.

Niki Tshibaka: 12:10

You were, you were talking about sort of the, the, maybe even willful ignorance of the media in terms of how they're talking about what's happening in Israel. We were seen just the. What happens when anti-Semitism runs amok? And here in our country, I think many of us have been shocked At the level of anti-Semitism that has sort of bubbled up to the surface Concurrently with this, with this conflict Conflict. How do you, how have you, processed that? I mean, it's it's, it's. It's scary to me and I'm not even Jewish, but it terrifies me to see what's been happening on our campuses. What professors have been, you know, inculcating in the minds of our young people. How are young people have been responding, even how the media has responded with some some, some anti-Semitic tropes and remarks. How do you process that and respond to that as a as a Jew in America?

Alan Dershowitz: 13:13

Well, first of all, I want to thank Alaska, which has been one of the better states on this issue, and the universities and the people there. The People of Alaska are such such decent people and it's not a place of hatred, the way some places are Are. There's one, one institution that's to blame more than any other in the world, and it's called diversity, equity and inclusion, the DEI bureaucracy that is now sprouting its ugly head all over university campuses, and the object of DEI is to avoid meritocracy, never to allow people to thrive on their own success. But everything becomes identity politics, and it's part of what's called intersectionality, which divides the world into two groups. If you're white, christian, jewish, you are an oppressor, and if you're a person of color, no matter how wealthy you are and no matter how your parents may have participated in oppressing others or you have, you're the oppressed, and so teaching. This nonsense permeates now American universities, american corporations, the American media, and it is resulted in, for example, jews now are being turned away at major American universities when they apply, even if they have higher grades, along with many Asian Americans, and there was a lawsuit in the Supreme Court that I supported against my own university, harvard, and so I think it's young people who are the villains, just the way they were in producing Nazism. Nazism is the product of young people. At the University of Munich, the University of Berlin, communism was stirred on not only in Moscow by young people, but in Cuba with Castro, mao Tse-Tung, pol Pot. All were adored by young radical zealots. And that's happening in America today, these useful idiots, including people whose children I know, and they're marching.

Alan Dershowitz: 15:19

I'm writing a new book in which I'm tentatively entitled. That Palestinian Pied Piper is a leading your children from the river to the sea and they're gonna drown. They're gonna drown in their absurdity. And so we have to fight back, and I wish I'm 85 years old and it's not easy for me to fight back physically. So I continue to write books, and my newest book, war on Woke, which isn't out yet I just got the first copy of it but also goes after the woke culture.

Alan Dershowitz: 15:51

Woke is inconsistent with civil liberties, human rights, basic dignity and Americanism. You can't be both woke and a decent American. This woke defies everything that America stands for. America thrives on meritocracy. We judge you, as Martin Luther King said. I was there when he made this speech in August of 1963, where he said, I have a dream that someday my children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of that character. And DEI says no, we don't want you to be judged by individual content of your character. We want you to be judged only by the color of your skin or by your ethnicity or by your sexual preference. And if you're oppressed, we're on your side, and if you're a oppressor, we're against you. That's the major problem. It's destroying America and we have to fight back. And thank you, alaska, for being on the right side generally of this issue.

Niki Tshibaka: 16:52

Yeah, that's that was so powerfully stated and it resonates so much with us because, you know, we have obviously biracial children and you know, talking to our own, our oldest two, we have five kids and our oldest two who are young adults, slash late teens. You know, asking us with all this DEI stuff, well, am I a victim or am I an oppressor? Should I love you dad and hate mom? Like how does this work? And so just the psychological damage, the emotional damage that that can do to the identity and and the the sense of self for our children that this DEI stuff is doing, it's just, it's just horrible. I'm grateful that our kids have a good sense of who they are and what they believe, but if they didn't, it would be so destructive.

Alan Dershowitz: 17:41

And too many have that sense. They depend on others outside to give them a kind of talking points and then they fall into this trap and it can destroy their lives. I've seen some young people's lives destroyed by this woke demand that everything be judged by oppressor or oppressor.

Niki Tshibaka: 18:02

Yeah, yeah, if I could just pivot for a second.

Niki Tshibaka: 18:08

We are an election season and you you have been doing some phenomenal commentary on what we've, what we've all been witnessing in terms of the weaponization of, of our government, whether it's law enforcement to judiciary, and you know it's been there on some level, you know, for a while, but it's exploded in ways that are completely unprecedented with Donald Trump's presidency and, and since then, and part of what concerns me about it, there's the macro level, obviously, of what this portends for the future of politics and public service in our country, our freedoms, but I'm also thinking about the young or new lawyers who are this next generation, this next crop of lawyers who are coming up.

Niki Tshibaka: 18:57

In the context of all of this, professor Dershowitz, you have, you have trained the minds and and the convictions and the principles of generations of attorneys, thousands of attorneys. Over the years, you've shaped their minds, you've helped develop their principles and you've always been consistent about in terms of your approach to the law and your approach to, you know, to to the principles that undergird our Constitution. What do we, what do we do with this next generation? Like, how do we make sure they don't get all caught up in all of this?

Alan Dershowitz: 19:31

No way of making sure, and I haven't always been successful. One of my students was Jamie Raskin. He took my class in criminal law and now he is trying to turn the Constitution against democracy. He made a statement after the Supreme Court wrote its decision nine to nothing, saying that Colorado couldn't ban Trump off the ballot. Raskin says, well, yes, we can, we're gonna get him off the ballot, we'll figure out a way of manipulating the Constitution and and we'll get him off the ballot in the name of democracy, and a lot of professors at Harvard support that.

Alan Dershowitz: 20:06

The one thing that being a Harvard professor doesn't give you is courage, and people are so concerned. You have tenure, you think you can speak your mind, which I've been doing for 60 years, but most of my colleagues on the Harvard faculty refuse to speak their mind that their minds are designed to achieve popularity among the students and and they just go with the flow and they insist on wokeness, and so I think we're going in the wrong direction and I think the new McCarthyism that we're experiencing could can easily become the new Americanism. We are seeing the misuse of our legal system, the weaponization of our legal system. The five cases against Donald Trump for criminal one. So are all weak and would never have been brought if you weren't running for president. The New York case, which is going to be the first one tried, is, I think, the weakest criminal case I've seen in 60 years of practice the George falling apart because the prosecutor may very well have committed perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering. You know she ought to be in the box, and I think the same thing is going to be true of some of these other cases as well.

Alan Dershowitz: 21:20

But the goal of prosecutors again is to deny voters the right to select their candidates. Without regard to legal issues. Courts are playing and prosecutors are playing too great a role today in who we vote for. We, the people, decided the next president is. I plan at the moment to vote Democrat. I'm not, by the way, a loyal Democrat. I voted Republican on occasion. I will vote Republican when I think the Republican candidate is better than Democratic candidate. But at the moment I do not plan to vote for Donald Trump. But I plan to continue to defend his legal rights as constitutional rights, as civil liberties, because once you take it away from anybody, you take it away from everybody and it can be used today against Trump, tomorrow against you the next day against me and and we have to fight that.

Kelly Tshibaka: 22:12

I appreciate you saying that. I've loved how you consistently say if you take it away from civil liberties and constitutional rights, away from one person, then you take it away from everybody. It's been a great interview. Thank you so much for your time. Professor Dershowitz has been with us on stand. Kelly and Niki Tshibaka, stay with us after the break. We'll continue our discussion. Following up on what Professor Dershowitz said. Make sure to get his book War Against the Jews. You can find it on Amazon, anywhere books are sold. It's fantastic. We so much appreciate you being with us today. We'll be with you right after the break. Thanks so much. You're back on stand with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka.

Kelly Tshibaka: 22:54

We just finished an amazing interview with Alan Dershowitz, professor at Harvard Law School, an author of dozens of great books, including his most recent one, war Against the Jews. You can pick it up on Amazon. We got to talk with him about all things in Israel and about these upcoming 2024 elections. Niki, I wanted to follow up with you on something I thought was super interesting that he said so. He commented that he has this ability to defend literally defend President Trump and to recognize that all these cases that are against him right now have no basis in law, but that he'll be voting Democrat in 2024. I really admire that. Dershowitz has the ability to see when somebody's rights are being violated someone who he doesn't agree with politically but he can still defend that person and advocate for that person on national TV and yet vote for somebody different, say I don't politically align. His identity is not wrapped up in it. Why do you think that so many Americans have a hard time doing that?

Kelly Tshibaka: 23:58

There's this whole Trump derangement syndrome that we keep hearing about, where people are so angry vitriolically angry about President Trump that they destroy friendships over it and get so worked up never Trumpers and can't say anything positive or see things clearly to even acknowledge the decline of the American judicial system or the weaponization of our law enforcement systems against somebody that actually affects every American, regardless of political position. Why can't more Americans see things like Alan Dershowitz with an? A political lens when it comes to constitutional rights and civil liberties, and instead are so politically divided?

Niki Tshibaka: 24:43

Yeah, I mean that's an excellent question. I don't know that I have the answer to it. I have thoughts on it. What I mean I think part of it is that we have a younger generation coming up that hasn't been taught a lot about thinking critically for themselves. There's been a lot of indoctrination. We see it with our kids in school, the thing that they're being taught K through 12 and then our own kid in the university.

Niki Tshibaka: 25:13

When there's a lot of indoctrination and not a lot of critical thinking, when you're being told what to think, not how to think Such a good point or why you should come to, why you should believe what you do. When you're not placed in an environment where it's safe for people to have views that are perhaps controversial and be able to talk about them, then you have an issue with people later on being able to connect and dialogue on things that they're passionate about in a way that's healthy and constructive. I also think that there is, on some level we're dealing with sort of high school writ large in a way, that the social pressure that people experience in, whether it's in a professional environment, whether it's the bombardment from the media, social media everybody wants to feel like they're a good person. We all do so. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of a particular political issue. I think it just it causes us to draw the battle lines a lot more starkly and we get caught in a zero-sum debate as a result.

Niki Tshibaka: 26:33

But having these dialogues with people like Professor Dershowitz, who we have our political differences with him, but we also agree with him on the fundamentals, which is what, as Americans, should be uniting all of us right to your point on the fundamentals. Nobody should be entitled to a process, nobody should be prosecuted and gone after because of their political positions and because of what they believe, and we all know that's what's happening with President Trump. I don't know why people actually think that this that's being done to him is just going to be sort of a one-off and would never happen again. I think there's on some level. We're choosing to be a little bit naive about it and thinking well, in just this one case, the ends justify the means, and that's just it sounds a lot like 1933.

Niki Tshibaka: 27:26

It's never true in politics. It's never true. Once you open that Pandora's box, it's done, and so I still think we have hope, we can still reign this in.

Kelly Tshibaka: 27:38

I think the Supreme Court has done that with the decision that it rendered recently on yeah, nine people with very different political views and jurisprudence, very different ways of reading the Constitution. All agree this has gone too far.

Niki Tshibaka: 27:55

Right, and I think those kinds of things will help to sort of cabin us in a little bit as a country and remind us hey, no, this is who we are, not, not this other stuff. We are people who agree on these fundamental values and we are not going to sacrifice those values for what we perceive as a short term gain. Whether we're Republicans or Democrats, independents, socialists, whatever political strike we may be, whatever religious affiliation we may have, whatever economic status we may be in, that's not what we do.

Kelly Tshibaka: 28:33

I really like your analogy of the lunch room or the high school analogy, because it reminds me of a high school lunch room where everyone kind of based their identity on where you sit at lunch. Right and so well.

Kelly Tshibaka: 28:45

You sit with this table, that table, and you kind of get into this tribalism concept instead of thinking about why you ever sat at the table to begin with, and we also maybe remember, if you can brush off your high school memory, there were times you switched tables because of either a change in the friend group or a change in your circumstance, and that that's still an option, that you can be open enough, like Dershowitz would pick up his tray and go sit at Trump's table to figure out how to defend him. That doesn't mean that that's who he's voting for for student body president, but he can. He's savvy enough to be able to sit at a lot of different tables in the lunch room. That it doesn't have to be your social identity. Your lunchroom table doesn't have to become your school identity, and I think that that's part of what we've fallen into is just a lot of hyper tribalism instead of identifying ourselves by values. Reminds me of a conversation I've been having a lot with the kids who are saying you know, okay, mom, so because, especially with primary season and everything that came up, are we Republican? And I was like whoa, hold up on that. I say you know, those are really loose terms because if we look back through history of America, the values of the Republicans and the values of the Democrats have really changed on us and we just need to be very careful. I don't want to ingrain in our kids that we are sit at this lunchroom table, because if the values of the Republicans change significantly over the course of those kids' lifetime, I don't want them saying well, mom said to sit at this table, and then it turns out that the party is actually standing for and advocating for things that we never actually believe.

Kelly Tshibaka: 30:28

It really comes down to like you're saying how do you think what? What are those paradigms and those values by which you believe? And it turns out we actually have a lot more in common with people who might call themselves by a different party or even call themselves by a non-party, and that's what can unify the country. If you can actually move past. You're probably not going to agree with everybody on much. You and I don't agree on everything politically. That's okay.

Kelly Tshibaka: 30:58

I'm not looking for assimilation and I'm not looking for people to say, oh, you have to completely agree. You know they indoctrination. We're looking for unity and affinity and that's what you know, kind of these. That's why you have a party platform, these platform points. Can we agree on these principles, how we think about things? Because when it comes to forming policy and making decisions. You have to run a proposed legislation or am I going to support a candidate through a set of values?

Kelly Tshibaka: 31:28

And I think we've gotten away from what are those values that we really advocate. You know, as a country, what unifies us. There's people out there, even people in elected positions right now at the national level who are espousing non-American values. They just absolutely go against our constitution and, as Dershowitz said, leaders in our country who are now really advocating and promoting fundamentally un-American values, using our American systems to push un-American values. And we've got to be united around some basic principles here. Do we or do we not support free speech? Do we or do we not let's just back it up Support freedom? Do we or do we not support truth, just like basic?

Niki Tshibaka: 32:09

truth. And if we do support those things, then it has to be for everybody, everybody, not just everybody, except this one person here who we think is who we disagree with who we don't like.

Kelly Tshibaka: 32:22

That's how democracies get upended. That's how freedom gets Well. Speaking of democracy, do we or do we not support a government led by the people, instead of the government led by unelected bureaucrats who unilaterally decide this person's not going to be on the ballot, or a government led by a judicial system with no accountability, or a government led by a weaponized law enforcement system? This is becoming very scary un-American stuff that we really need to guard against, and we were faced with this last year An interesting decision that kind of came to our doorstep.

Kelly Tshibaka: 33:03

Whose job is it to guard against those things? There's no nonprofit organization swooping in to save you. There's no police force that's going to swoop in when they come for your constitutional rights. No police force is coming in to swoop in to save you. The media is not going to go. Hey, wait, your constitutional rights are being violated. It fundamentally comes to each individual American to take a stand. That's a tongue twister. Take a stand and to say I'm going to defend my constitutional rights against what is erosion by the government right now. That's what's so important in this time.

Niki Tshibaka: 33:38

That's what Alan Dershowitz has done throughout his career. He's been one of those paragons of what that looks like, one of those examples of what it looks like to be consistent. Whether you agree with the legal positions he's taken or not, that's a totally different issue, but he's been consistent in what he believes. The Constitution says how he believes it should be applied. That's what he's taught his students. That's what he's advocated for. I think that's what's also enabled him to. You opened up the segment with that question how he's been able to say I'm not going to vote for Trump, but I am going to defend him and his constitutional rights. Because if I don't to the extent I mean he didn't say this, but this is the underlying principle To the extent I say I'm going to let this person get attacked on this issue and say it's okay, then I'm sort of undermining my rights as well, because I'm basically giving other people the justification to do this thing to me.

Kelly Tshibaka: 34:48

Yeah, but Kelly and Niki Tshibaka on stand, we'll be right back after this break. Welcome back to Stand with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka. So glad to have you with us. We hope you hit subscribe while you were on break. Caught all of our episodes at standshoworg.

Kelly Tshibaka: 35:12

Well, we've been talking about our interview with Alan Dershowitz. Something I think is interesting is in his book War Against the Jews, which we were talking about, he makes the point that this particular conflict that's happened has created by bringing to light some of the hidden feelings that people have in America so surprising anti-Semitism and surprising support that it has blended lines or blurred lines of advocacy and enemies that weren't there before. So people who previously would have found themselves political opponents are now political allies and vice versa. He makes that point and that it has caused some interesting disruptions for the 2024 election, when we've already seen that, like in the primaries, especially in March primaries, we saw a lot of, on the Democrat side, undecided or uncommitted votes of people who actually were really disappointed. Democrats who were really disappointed that the Biden administration hasn't been more supportive of Hamas and Palestinians and so they're against Biden. They're just not going to vote for Biden and then, similarly, people who identify themselves as Democrats being really upset that some of the left has taken such a strong pro-Palestinian, pro-hamas position that they find themselves distancing from the Democrat Party and Democrat leadership and are reluctant to vote for the Democrat administration and are either going to vote Republican or unsure, or just not going to vote, which could really affect voter turnout.

Kelly Tshibaka: 37:08

I think that this so I want to chat with you about it and get your take, but I think that this presents a unique opportunity. So this isn't something that is kind of contrived by the media or enforced by nonprofit groups in America. It sort of popped up, you know, from a provoked conflict from Hamas last October and America's responding. So a little bit like Arab Spring that happened, you know, many years ago that our intelligence community didn't anticipate. I think this is something America didn't anticipate. The American indoctrination machine, if you will, didn't anticipate that suddenly has made strange bedfellows political bedfellows across the country and left us in a place that provides opportunity for unity, just like we were talking about in our last episode, where there's been dialogue and discussion and people looking at each other differently going.

Kelly Tshibaka: 38:03

I didn't expect to find myself on in the same camp as you, but this is actually a really big issue, this issue of what happens between Israel and Palestine, actually Israel and Iran, israel and the entire Middle East. It affects an entire global stability. It affects our relationship with the Middle East, but it affects entire global stability and what you think about this conflict and about these people groups has tremendous consequences. You know, when you see these pro-Palestinian supporters in New York and such holding up Nazi flags, it affects like we're talking about how you think about things, not just what you think. I think most people we have to say most, because it isn't all most people want peace in the Middle East and want this conflict to stop. We want innocent people to stop dying. We want there to be peace. However, we can't support people holding up and espousing Nazi ideology right, so I like that. This is an opportunity for there to be unity between people, groups that didn't used to find unity and commonality.

Niki Tshibaka: 39:13

What's your take? Yeah, I mean it's interesting that you say that it's made strange bet the levels because it really shouldn't have. I mean we had had. We have for so many decades had a consistent pro-Israel.

Kelly Tshibaka: 39:31

Wait, please define we, because the people listening might not know when I say we, I say we as a country have had a pro, generally pro-Israel stance.

Niki Tshibaka: 39:40

Now, we Democrats and Republicans have had differences of opinion on and in terms of their administrations, presidential administrations, on how to achieve a two-state solution and those kinds of things. But America has been, as a matter of policy, at the highest level of the government, a staunchly pro-Israel, and so to see this, that kind of become upended, even though the president, our current president Biden, has spoken from the bully pulpit and said you know, we support Israel. There's also been a lot of underhanded things, you know, on the other hand, that go where he hasn't. So it's a very strange irony to me that in 2001, we had 9-11, and it was a bunch of terrorists who flew a plane into a building killed yeah, a couple buildings.

Niki Tshibaka: 40:40

Yeah, killed hundreds of Americans, thousands. And our response was A war on terror.

Niki Tshibaka: 40:51

A war on terror. We went into Iraq, we invaded a country, we occupied a country right, and I mean we went all out. Now we are in a position where we have people in government, our leaders, speaking in support of a terrorist organization that's correct and defending a terrorist organization, criticizing Israel for doing very much the same thing that we did when we invaded Iraq right, and so for me, it's just the cognitive dissonance between saying we are, you know, having this strong war on terror and then, on the other hand, having leaders now saying we are standing with this terrorist organization because, and against Israel in this conflict is just mind-boggling to me it's mind-blowing, Even as the heads of the terrorist organization are saying we do not want a ceasefire and that's why and to your point, that's why I think we're seeing a coalescing of people who, on lots of other issues, might be on like polar opposites when they see that kind of double-mindedness, when they see that kind of hypocrisy, when they're like you know, no, no, we're not with you on that one.

Niki Tshibaka: 42:21

We're united on this particular piece, and it's an important thing to be united on. Let's be very clear it's important to be united on our support for Israel, and supporting Israel does not mean being against Palestine, which is often also how it's framed. It's being against the organization, the government leadership that's leading them, hamas, which is a terrorist organization. But you're not against.

Niki Tshibaka: 42:47

Palestinians by supporting Israel. Israel does a lot to support and help Palestinians. There are Arabs in Israeli parliament too. I mean, it's not a it's not a situation where it's this again, another zero-sum issue where you have to like, say one thing means that you're against the other.

Kelly Tshibaka: 43:12

Yeah, and I think America has supported and has tried to broker that two-state solution multiple times. I think there's been several times it's been offered that Israel has offered it even in this century, and Palestinian leadership has rejected it. And you know even this song that they've seen, or the motto they have from their river to the sea, palestine will be free Free of what? And the answer is free of Israel. And so that's why they've been rejecting this two-state solution, because they don't want Israel between the sea and the Jordan River, which means getting rid of the state of Israel.

Niki Tshibaka: 43:53

And I think on our end, it's so critical that we, as Americans, continue to speak out in addition to what's happening there, but to speak out very strongly against what we're seeing in terms of this rise of antisemitism. Yes, Because you know, you and I know, for example, there's not a lot, at least in terms of what our children have been taught in school. We have to teach them about.

Niki Tshibaka: 44:15

World War II they never were taught Hitler, the Holocaust, all that stuff. And so you know it's important that we remind this, you know, the generations that are following us of what can happen and not to think that we're somehow morally superior and so much better than these others. Like we are all human, we are all capable of the greatest heroisms and amazing things, that we're also capable of the most horrible depravity, right. And we need to remember the lessons of history and remind ourselves of them. And when we see things like the antisemitism that we're seeing, you know, bubble up, not to be silent and to really stand strongly against it and speak loudly against it, because we don't, we don't, we don't want to go down that dark and dangerous road.

Kelly Tshibaka: 45:06

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think that that's good. So what do you think this means for the 2024 election? I think I think this could really have a big effect on Democrat turnout. I think that this might be part of why we're seeing a surge in Republican favoritism for President Trump. I think that could be contributing to it. I think it could have a surprising impact on what happens in 2024, what's your take?

Niki Tshibaka: 45:33

Yeah, I mean I think the biggest right now, the biggest issues immigration. I think that's going to have the biggest impact. But I do think this issue, with what's happening in Israel and the antisemitism we're seeing and the pressure of the Dershowitz tide, and also with DEI, like it's all of a piece of kind of racist tribalism ideology, that's sure people don't like it and they've seen the damage that it's done in just a few years. So I do think it's going to play a role in the election. I do think that foreign policy is an important issue. I just think that domestic relief right now that's probably going to be the bigger thing. I got to say, though, I really enjoyed Professor Dershowitz's passion, his staple eloquence and his wisdom.

Kelly Tshibaka: 46:28

Great interview. Great interview. Thanks so much for being with us today on Stand with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka. You can catch all of our episodes at stanshoworg. We'd love for you to subscribe and we'll see you next week.