A video allegedly showing Hamas soldiers being held captive by the Israeli Defense Forces has caused controversy online. But Glenn can't take the insanity. So, he invites on Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein to explain why media outlets have described the video as, "Palestinians stripped, forced to sit outside by IDF soldiers." Rabbi Alderstein, who is visiting from Israel, tells Glenn that these Hamas soldiers should be "happy that they're alive" after their group committed "the worst savagery that Jews have seen since World War II." And he explains the truly scary part of all this: "the extent to which people's minds are affected by visuals without any thought about principles." The two also discuss how the presidents and students of UPenn and Harvard are able to dismiss calls for genocide and whether the mob will turn on Christians next.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Good friend in from Israel. Rabbi Adlerstein is with us.
ADLERSTEIN: Great to be here with you, Glenn.
GLENN: How you are?
ADLERSTEIN: I'm doing good, as well as you can do in the middle of a war.
I got to tell you, the power that you have, I'm -- I'm just overwhelmed by it. I was eating breakfast, breakfast meeting. Called for an Uber. Get into the car. And I hear this voice, and I look at the -- and it says Mercury. And I tell my lovely driver, Deidre, I said, you listen to Mercury? Says, yeah, my daughter got into it a couple years ago. And I said, you know where we're going?
GLENN: Yeah. So great. So great. This is a blessed place. How are things in Israel?
ADLERSTEIN: You know, it's a mixture. It's a war. There's no question. I feel a little guilty. Because my family, my wife and myself and two kids. Live in the Jerusalem area.
Where we haven't had to run for a bomb shelter in a couple of weeks.
GLENN: Yeah.
ADLERSTEIN: People are amazing. The feeling of unity, in the country.
It's just something --
GLENN: It was like on 9/11 for us.
ADLERSTEIN: It was like that on 9/11.
I do think it's something a little differently here.
It's not just a question of survival.
It's people finding their commonality.
It's a commonality, that is deeper than this horrible, horrible enemy that we have to defeat.
It's the sense of mission, of purpose. Of having been in this land for 3,000 years.
Have come back to its start. This wonderful, wonderful state.
We have more than 50 percent of the country, who are volunteering to help soldiers.
Displaced people. People making meals.
GLENN: That's so great.
ADLERSTEIN: Every time, God forbid another soldier dies, there are literally thousands of people, thousands of strangers who come to a funeral. It's exhilarating. And it makes me feel a little bad. I remember -- I think I remember when I was a kid there was some lightness of feeling in America. And it's dissipating for so long.
GLENN: Yeah, I know. Hopefully it comes back. And hopefully, it doesn't take a national tragedy to do it.
There's video that is out.
Palestinian strip, forced to sit outside by IDF soldiers. Raises ire.
How do you respond to that?
ADLERSTEIN: My stomach responds first. After I can get control of that.
What are people -- what are people saying?
You're talking about an army, that invaded Israel.
That was a perpetrator, of the worst savagery that we have seen.
In -- since World War II.
Certainly, the worse that Jews have -- have -- have experienced.
I was Knesset, about a week ago.
And just after showing the members of Knesset. Some of the footage that hasn't been shown to the general public. Nobody made it through the entire showing. Everybody -- some people make it closer to the end.
One woman collapsed. There were doctors waiting outside. You're talking about things that we don't even want to talk about.
And if you see the visuals, you change for life.
When you -- when you then surround some of the soldiers.
People who are pledged. Who have said, October 7th, is just the beginning.
GLENN: I know.
ADLERSTEIN: It's the first. Like I said, there's going to be bigger and better coming.
And there's no way you will suppress this.
People are upset, when you show a visual of soldiers, that should be happy that they're alive.
And -- and are there, because security demanded that you make sure that they're not hiding any arms.
You know what, what's scariest about that, Glenn. Is the extent to which people's minds are affected by visuals. Without any thought about principles.
GLENN: Yeah.
It is -- it is truly terrifying, that here in America, to see -- I mean, I knew it was going to get bad.
I've talked about it for years.
But to see how rapidly, so many people have gone off the cliff of reality, is -- is a little -- a little terrifying.
You see what happened last week with -- you know, with the heads of Penn and Harvard and MIT. I don't even understand how people are justifying this at all.
Do you?
ADLERSTEIN: I'm afraid that I do.
Look, there are a number of components of this.
Two of them, we can get through very quickly. The other one we can find very interesting.
One is that anti-Semitism, never really ever goes away. It's there.
GLENN: Correct.
ADLERSTEIN: I've worked in the field of watching anti-Semitism for decades, and the worst kind of anti-Semitism, as far as Jewish survival is unconscious anti-Semitism.
People who would be shocked to hear, what? Am I an anti-Semite?
But yet harbor subconscious feelings about the Jewish people. It's the only way to understand why, there are so many people who are upset. And people should be upset, watching people dying.
And casualties. Even though, we don't know how many there are.
What happened in Syria?
When answered killed 500 to 600,000 people.
By the way, almost every single one of those deaths been avoided. Had America stood its ground.
Rather than keeping -- painting lines in the sand that they don't even follow.
13 million people displaced.
If you ask people in America, what is the bloodiest conflict in recent decades?
Where more people dying than any place on earth.
And I'm telling you, 11 out of ten.
STU: Say Israel.
GLENN: Will tell you, will not get this right.
The math was not my strong point.
11 out of the ten will tell you, I don't know.
But they won't get the real one.
Which is the Congo.
The war that's been going on for decades.
With hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Orders of magnitude. More than Israel Palestine.
Where is the outrage?
That's part of it. Another part of it is, is the introduction of -- of a Middle Eastern anti-Semitism, that's -- that's a product of immigration.
That's going to change the demography of America.
It's already changed the voting habits of the Democratic Party. But then there's the part that you should really get scared about, Glenn.
And that is that Liz McGill. You know, the -- the -- the one who was -- the testimony who was the most damning in Congress.
You know, with the pens on context.
What was she doing? That was your question. What she was really doing is pandering to the expectations of faculty and students on campus.
And that has been heading in one direction for decades.
GLENN: It is -- you know, if you don't understand it.
It is why Bob Iger, being replaced at Disney, will make no difference.
Because the culture is so deep. It's all the way down the food chain.
It's in all of the employees.
So replacing the top, won't change a darn thing.
ADLERSTEIN: Right. And I know I'm not going to get paid more for this interview by buttering you up. No one is going to pay anything.
But that's one of the reasons why you're sitting in such an important position. Why the only way that this can be arrested, or at least contained in part, is if people recognize the depth of the problem. And say, we will take the appropriate measures.
I don't mean anything, God forbid, militarily.
I mean in education. In particular.
There's just too many parents out there. Who will say, this is horrible.
You know, the intersectionality stuff. And the wokism.
But as far as their own kids. And the schooling they're giving their own kids.
Okay. Really? We will send our kids to a Christian school.
But we just moved. And the public school is a mile away.
And we're going to do it. Thinking that somehow you're not going to have to bear those consequences.
If you're serious about the centrality of the family. If you're serious about Christian values.
Then you have to realize, that the most sacred mission that God gives you, is to make sure that you're -- that your children are servants of God, who -- interested in the truth.
And people are just not able to emerge that way when they're glued to their devices 26 hours a day, and then indoctrinated in public schools, and certainly in universities.
GLENN: Right. Let me -- let me ask you. Because you said, a year ago.
And you said to me, several years ago. They're coming for Christians first this time.
I think we're not in lockstep.
But they are -- it's getting worse for the Jews, faster than it is for the Christians.
But you were right all those years ago.
Christians are unaware of what is happening, to them.
And -- and what is right around the corner.
I mean if you're surprised at how many people are saying, you know, I'm -- you know, I'm -- anti-Semitic things.
I'm against the Jews. Or whatever.
That's -- that's -- it's not a huge leap in this society now, to say, yeah. Well, I'm also against those Christians too.
Because the Christians cause all the problems.
ADLERSTEIN: Especially since one of the dominant themes in the culture of America today is the takeover by thoughts of intersectionality, and wokism, and the idea that you can divide the world into two halves: The oppressed and the oppressors.
And the good guys are the oppressed. And the bad guys are the oppressors.
There was a display in a hall, at Indiana University, Perdue. For almost an entire year. Not in the classroom. In a hallway.
That sought to tell -- to alert students about how Christianity, was part of white privilege.
And therefore, made Christians as Christians, part of the oppressor class.
How Christianity was used, as a vehicle of oppression.
You may be right, that I was wrong about coming for Christians first.
GLENN: Oh, no.
ADLERSTEIN: They did in places like Nigeria.
But, you know --
GLENN: In the West.
ADLERSTEIN: They unleashed something that was powerful.
GLENN: Right.
ADLERSTEIN: Not a step behind. Maybe a quarter of a step behind.
Michigan State university had a -- a code of speech for students. It has been revoked since then.
But it was in force, for I believe an entire academic year.
Where students were told to avoid, any language that made oblique reference to the majority religion in America.
So you were not supposed to use words like merry. Or --
GLENN: Wow.
ADLERSTEIN: Or Jingle Bells. Or eggs.
GLENN: Wow.
ADLERSTEIN: And -- it's stressed the majority of religion. You were allowed to talk about minority religions. I guess as long as it's not Jewish.
But you can't talk about -- about Christianity.
GLENN: The key here to understand all of this is, oppressor versus oppressed.
If everything else goes all logic.
Everything goes out the window.
All facts go out the window. If you just look at oppressor versus oppressed.
