Phyllis Chesler-Could the War in Israel Lead to WWIII?

Show Transcript

Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Can the War in Israel Lead to WWIII?

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: Why is it that so many Americans continue to justify, even celebrate Hamas slaughter of Israelis, attending rallies in support of Palestinians and calling Hamas terrorists freedom Fighters. Today, Thriller author Mark M. Bello and I are pleased to present legendary feminist and best selling author Phyllis Chesler to discuss all of this on the Justice Counts and Lean to the Lab podcasts.

[00:00:28] Chesler's a psychotherapist and professor emerita of psychology at City University of New York. She's authored 20 books, including A Politically Incorrect Feminist, The New Anti Semitism, An American bride in Kabul and the groundbreaking Women in Madness. She's lectured and organized political, legal, religious, and human rights campaigns in the U. S., Canada, Europe, Israel, Central Asia, and the Far East. Since 9 11, Dr. Chesler has focused on the rights of women, dissidents, and gays in Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim communities, the rights of women in prison, the rise of anti Semitism, anti Zionism, the demonization of Israel, the nature of terrorism, forced veiling, forced marriage, polygamy, and tribal psychology.

[00:01:30] Dr. Chesler has conducted four studies about honor killing that have appeared in Middle East Quarterly. She submitted affidavits for Muslim and ex Muslim women who are seeking asylum or citizenship based on their credible belief that their families will honor kill them. In 2021 2022, she co led a team which rescued 400 women from Afghanistan.

[00:01:58] That work continues. Dr. Chesler, thanks so much for joining us today for our podcast. 

[00:02:04] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: It's my great pleasure to be with you both. 

[00:02:07] Bob Gatty: Yes, thanks for being able to bridge the great divide between the Muslim community and the Jewish community. Why is it that the peaceful Muslim community is incapable of speaking out against Islamic terror?

[00:02:20] Why, for instance, won't the Palestinian people welcome Israel as liberators from a terrorist regime? 

[00:02:28] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Because of the indoctrination which is deep, far, wide, and high, not just in the Islamic world based on religion on Islam and on interpretations of Islam, but in the West, among Muslims who are here, and more important in the West, among left, liberal, academics, intellectuals, public intellectuals, Nobel Prize winners the U. N. human rights organizations, the whole kit and caboodle, have all been deeply brainwashed into viewing, into scapegoating Israel as the symbol of all the crimes committed by Islamic leaders and countries, including terrorists. For example, Islam is the largest practitioner of gender and religious apartheid.

[00:03:24] Anywhere. And yet Israel falsely gets accused of being an apartheid, Nazi, colonial, settler, nation state. It is a reversal, a diabolical reversal of reality. , 

[00:03:39] All polls show us that with very honorable exceptions among Muslims, Muslim dissidents ex Muslims, this is the prevailing view that Israel is the little Satan, America is the big Satan. This was bin Laden's view. And this is now Hamas, Iran's view. Iran is funding all the terrorism in the world, and they're hoping to destroy Israel, and then guess who's next?

[00:04:15] It's us. It's the West and our ideals and our way of life. And it is absolutely ironic, pathetic, tragic, mind boggling that you have gays in the streets of Palestine. Were they in Palestine, a country which has never existed, by the way? Were they in Gaza or on the West Bank? They would be jailed if lucky, tortured if less lucky, and no doubt murdered.

[00:04:44] And everyone who lives there says as much. You have women who are demonstrated, who are demonstrating in the streets of the West, coast to coast in America for Hamas and Were they to be in Gaza, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, etc. They would be forcibly veiled. They would be forced, possibly by their families, to marry into polygamous families, even as children.

[00:05:14] They may not be allowed to have an education, and they could be honor killed for minor infractions from a Western point of view. And yet, They are half in love with easeful death. They have joined a fascist death cult with joy. This is what we're looking at. 

[00:05:35] Mark M. Bello: That's mostly an Arabic community point of view, not a Western civilization in general point of 

[00:05:45] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: view, correct?

[00:05:47] Ideally, it's not a Western point of view at all. But. Look at the demonstrations, even in my city, New York. The, uh, trying to, closing down. Grand Central Station, closing down any number of public venues, stopping traffic, calling for freedom for Palestine, when indeed they should be calling for freedom for Palestinians from Hamas.

[00:06:19] And from islamic jihad because that is who precisely Is using innocent palestinians who also hate jews as human shields, A war crime which the un has not denounced. The un has not denounced October 7th the genocidal atrocities 

[00:06:41] Mark M. Bello: you lead me right to my next question 

[00:06:44] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: human rights no 

[00:06:47] Mark M. Bello: Left to my next question.

[00:06:48] A foreign invader comes into your country, kills 1, 400 innocent men, women, children, infants, beheads them kills them and destroys their bodies in despicable ways. Obviously, you decide to fight back, and you declare war, and you get condemned for it. I, it's mind blowing to me. Would this happen to any other democracy other than Israel, number one, and number two, is the world's response just to the Just another example of modern anti Semitism.

[00:07:26] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Modern anti Semitism consists of anti Zionism. The Jewish state, which was created to make Jews safe from pogroms and from genocide, is now being used to justify the worldwide aggression, persecution encircling and murder of Jews in the West. who have a diverse point of view about both Judaism and about the state of Israel.

[00:07:56] Modern anti Semitism is now anti Zionism, and I said as much in my book, The New Anti Semitism, in 2003, and, oh, I took bloody hell for it, because, indeed, Jews, especially liberal Jews, were used to criticizing Israel more than any other country they ever criticized. And, except perhaps in the past, South Africa.

[00:08:23] And then, as I said, we have, um, the Islamic version of Jew hatred, which is long, long lasting, pogroms in the Muslim and Arab world, the persecution of and then the forced exile of about 750, 000 or 800, 000 Arab Jews absorbed by Israel. And, I have one question here. Why hasn't the Arab and Muslim world absorbed the Gazans and the West Bankers?

[00:08:59] Even temporarily as giving them refuge. Why have they refused to give them citizenship and asylum? Long ago, wars produce, they won't even let them displaced people. And. Other countries take in displaced people, but the Arab and Muslim countries have not done so. In fact, in my work for Afghan women, they're not helping the Afghans who are now nearly two million being evacuated by Pakistan back to hell.

[00:09:36] It's a question, what do you think? There's so little compassion so little responsibility taken for brethren.

[00:09:47] Bob Gatty: You've commented that Western academics, including feminists, have completely lost their reason and their morality, that they're revealing more openly who they really are and gloating about Israelis who have been raped, burned alive, shot dead, or kidnapped. Or you say they are maintaining a pained and awful silence.

[00:10:09] Why is that? Is this causing divisions among key women's organizations? 

[00:10:16] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: maInly they've remained silent, which speaks volumes and is deep and profound. I've gotten, I sent every one of my articles about the rape, murder, mutilation, kidnapping of Israelis, both men and women, to leading feminists, who are still alive, and to feminist venues.

[00:10:41] I've gotten very strange answers, I've gotten no answer. I've gotten an answer that sounds like we don't want to fight with you, but we can't talk about this. Because why? Western progressives and leftists used to be liberal classical. I was... All over on the left side. They don't want to break company.

[00:11:05] They don't want to lose their positions and their friendship networks, their funding, if they dare to stand up for the truth, if they dare to stand up for the Jewish state. But they like everyone else, have been carefully tooted, indoctrinated, brainwashed into believing that we either have a victim and then we have a victimizer.

[00:11:26] We have the colonized and the colonizer. We have the oppressed and the oppressor. And when women's studies began, this made a little bit of sense. Now it has gone full tilt boogie into a weird place. So that thinking this way has led even feminists to become more obsessed with the country that, as I said, has never existed, called Palestine.

[00:11:58] Then they have been with the occupation of women's bodies in this place called Palestine. So they have been very cautious about calling out the honor killings and the face bailings and the woman battering, et cetera, and the polygamy because that's perpetrated by men of color. The fact that it's women of color who are their victims doesn't seem to matter.

[00:12:28] And Men of color increasingly in our times, and yes, of course, we have racism and a history of slavery, but guess what? Islam has an even bigger history of both colonialism, imperialism, apartheid, and slavery, anti Black slavery, sex slavery, but the learned Westerners among us don't want to know this.

[00:12:52] Think that if you say this, You're Islamophobic. And Islamophobia, forgive me for saying, doesn't exist. yeS, people are psychologically suspicious of differences. Any group that's new or different, we freak out. And over time, clearly immigrants, which have made America, become American.

[00:13:19] The problem is too many immigrants from Arab or Muslim countries, certainly in Europe, even more so than here want to bring their way of life here, and want to dominate our way of life, which is a post Enlightenment, uh, belief in science, fact. Freedom of thought, freedom of religion. We don't, we in America don't want to be forced to convert, which is a dominant practice among Muslims, I know, because I was in Kabul, and I was a married bride there and have written about that.

[00:14:03] And I had a mother in law who every day tried to convert me to Islam. Luckily, I was able to get out and I write about it all in. An American Bride and Kabul and what I learned there, even though I was in great danger, it was a great adventure and it led me to an understanding that so many Westerners don't have and refuse to believe, absolutely refuse to believe.

[00:14:30] Everything is relative, all people are the same, all people are good, all people are like each other. Not true would be nice 

[00:14:40] Mark M. Bello: though. I'm 

[00:14:42] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: not. It would be wonderful. 

[00:14:43] Mark M. Bello: I'm not surprised to hear your comments about the Muslim community. But I am surprised to hear them about the worldwide community. Since the Holocaust, the cry, especially in the Jewish community has been never again. We're all familiar with that term. And I've traveled around the world and there are Holocaust museums and Holocaust memorials. All over the world. And it's, but it seems that the world suddenly has a very short term memory. Aren't, isn't what happened in Israel a never again crime?

[00:15:22] And what's the difference in 2023 to 1939 or 1940? Oh, 

[00:15:28] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: the clock is way past midnight in terms of the parallels to Nazi Germany. The people marching for Hamas and for terrorism and The genocide against Jews are way past the black shirts and yes, you're right, never again has happened again and the world as it once did is in full scale denial of it.

[00:15:52] My hometown paper, the New York Times, which I've documented in many articles, keeps publishing lies with photos of, perhaps doctored photos of dead Gazans. and with the most horrific crimes attributed to Israel, which they did not do. They also engage, as everyone else does, in moral equivalency. So now, we are looking at a potential hostage exchange.

[00:16:23] The people who Hamas are demanding are terrorists who are in Israeli jails and who have been tried by law versus the civilians who are completely innocent, who have not been tried by law, who have been kidnapped by Hamas. It's not the same, but the entire world is counting the numbers. The same numbers should be exchanged.

[00:16:49] So that means exchange evildoers with the innocents. Because of the numbers and the pressure on the Israeli government is probably beyond belief to cease fire and the Israeli military can't. It has got to once and for all wipe out all the tunnels that Hamas has built on the backs of the Gazan people, taking all the funding from Iran, from Qatar, from the United States.

[00:17:24] We, our president, just gave 10 billion dollars to Iran through Qatar. Iran is funding Hezbollah and the Houthis. And Hamas and Islamic Palestinian Jihad, what is wrong with us that we in America, our leaders are reluctant or refuse to see what's happening? Why are we also scapegoating the only, as you said, the only democracy in the Middle East which has the most ethical army in the world?

[00:17:59] Accusing it of every crime that it does not commit day after day around the clock, 

[00:18:06] Bob Gatty: yOu mentioned a minute ago, you mentioned hostages and we know that a number of hostages have been taken innocent civilians. You say we are all hostages. Can you explain 

[00:18:20] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: that? Outside of Israel, we in the West are inundated, held hostage to the propaganda that is Jew hating and America hating and Western hating, um, and it's around the clock for us and it's on our streets everywhere.

[00:18:41] Somebody just sent me a letter There's a train called the Q train, which runs the length of Manhattan into Brooklyn, and somebody began scrawling on the seats, gas the Jews, kill the Jews. This is everywhere. It is happening everywhere. A person in an elevator, a friend, a colleague, was just standing, minding her business in an elevator and a man began yelling, Kill the Jews!

[00:19:07] Kill the Jews! Cursing. It is just like the genie is out of the box. And a military guy named Hillel Fuld, whom I don't know, there's a video which I recommend, he makes a very interesting comparison. He says, just as in the Vietnam War, which at the time I opposed the Viet Cong in no way had the military might of America.

[00:19:32] So in the Tet Offensive, we won, but we lost because our electorate was moving against this war. And similarly now, we see worldwide demands for kill the Jews, cease fire. Save Hamas, and from the river to the sea, with no understanding that this slogan means kill the Jews, exterminate the Jews, get rid of Israel.

[00:20:05] So this is, we are all held hostage to this virulent, vicious propaganda, and increasingly on the streets, certainly of London, Paris, Amsterdam Austria. Definitely Israel, of course, and America and Canada, you have demonstrations and petitions and reversals of reality by very smart, presumably smart people that are being circulated on the internet around the clock.

[00:20:37] People are fighting over this. Family members have been fighting over it. So that's what I meant when I wrote, we're all hostages. Okay. 

[00:20:48] Mark M. Bello: You've written in I don't remember the specific article, but you wrote, if we don't act, they'll all come for us sooner or later. When I, articles about these kinds of prejudice and anti religious behavior, I often quote the Martin Niemöller poem.

[00:21:08] Oh. First They Came. And I think that's what you mean. Would you explain that to the people, please?

[00:21:15] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Yes, it's an excellent quote, remembered, thank you. Since Israel represents the West in the sea of an Arab and Muslim culture, which is anti Christian, anti Western, anti infidel, the Baha'i of Iran were given asylum in Israel, they could not stay there.

[00:21:37] The program, Iran's program, is to get rid of the Western way of life. Put Women in body bags. Execute homosexual men. Have one religion under God. Their God. That's it. If we don't stand up to the world bully, and I see World War III fast approaching, becoming more dreadfully visible. Axis of evil is China, Russia, Iran, selected Arab countries, Turkey. If we don't stop them in the Middle East, and they have also been attacking American military targets, and Americans, and Hamas has kidnapped any number of Americans into the tunnels in Gaza.

[00:22:36] We've been attacked here. That was 9 11. Before that, it was the World Trade Center, the attempted bombing, which didn't totally succeed. 1993, I think. They have their eye, the Islamic or Islamist terrorists, have their eye on the West and the Western way of life. This is so clear. What's also clear is the desire to appease in order to be bombed less, so that if we give Iran and Hamas, Israel, give it up, sacrifice the Jews, people love dead Jews, that's when we get pity, when we're dead, not when we're living and fighting back.

[00:23:25] Then maybe Iran will come for us later, maybe the battle on our shores will happen later. Students of World War II have taught us that the more you appease the bully, the higher the price is, the longer the war is.

[00:23:44] So that's what I meant. And I wish it hadn't come to this. A number of excellent cognitive warriors for the truth, and for the Jews, and for Israel, and I've been among them. I'm privileged to be among them. And I work with Muslims and Sikhs who are for Israel and for democracy, etc. But there's so few in number. It's like the good Germans. Who tried to save Jews, or who tried to mount resistance. It's not enough. Look at the people of Iran, who've tried so hard, and have died for trying, to take on the molocracy. And they couldn't do it. Look at the people in China. Who also tried.

[00:24:33] There is a totalitarianism there and in Russia, post Soviet Russia, that seems totally resistant to popular, democratic, if you will, not violent revolt. The longer we put off facing this, the longer will the battle be when we do face it. Okay. I don't mean to sound so frightening and so if I had a joke I would tell you a joke right now. 

[00:25:08] Bob Gatty: I don't know. It's not really very funny. President Biden's approval ratings have gone into the toilet since the war began. I'm not quite sure I understand why. The way things are going, though, the only alternative will be Donald Trump. So my question is, which of the two is the better person to manage this crisis and why?

[00:25:34] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley is the better person, even in the so called five inch heels, because she's, she was moderate on the key issue in the election for feminists or for progressives. She was moderate about abortion. Let's work it out. It's not going to go away. Let's, Let's not have, she didn't say it, I'm saying it, let's not have slave states and free states, let's be realistic about this.

[00:26:05] She was excellent at the UN in terms of the Israel issue, excellent, and she's smart. Now, I once voted for Susan B. Anthony, I was so desperate, given the paucity of the presidential candidates being offered to me. And right now, Biden's, who seems to be, this is a case of elder abuse, he seems to have cognitively lost it and yet he's still forced to be out there, he's not at his best, but his team remains Obama's team, and Obama wanted to empower Iran And did so to somehow shake up the Middle East, and Obama has a long track record of Jew hatred, which has not abated.

[00:26:59] Even though he was smooth, cool, sophisticated, pretty, nevertheless, his politics were, as I'm saying, and I've always had a problem, in his first book, Dreams from My Father, he didn't focus at all on his white mother and his white grandparents, who sheltered him, who brought him up. He focused more on the black Kenyan father who abandoned him.

[00:27:32] And as I read that, I thought, what kind of man is this? Just asking. So Biden, who some people insist, tell me, lean on me. He's not doing that bad a job. And I see the guy stumble. I see the guy fall. I see the guy face in one video. Face a curtain, turn his back to the camera. And I think this is not fair to him.

[00:28:03] And I think the Democrats are absolutely desperate. They don't have a good enough leader to offer and they ought to find one really quickly. And if they don't, I hope that the Republican candidate is Nikki Haley. Okay. 

[00:28:18] Mark M. Bello: More and more, it looks like it's going to be Donald Trump. Oh if it's Donald Trump versus who.

[00:28:25] Where are you at? Where are you on that reality? 

[00:28:28] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Oh, God. Let me tell you that I was sitting in my living room watching the election results when he was elected. And I think it was Pennsylvania. When he lost Florida to Pennsylvania, when he won that state, I thought I would lose my mind. Why? And he's done some good things.

[00:28:47] He did some good things. But he's a Goomba. He's unbalanced. Kind of guy. So with nowhere near the experience that Hillary Clinton had, so she was a most experienced woman against a guy who had no experience, which said, oh, how far have feminists really come in America? Not that far. Now I understand. She wasn't charismatic the way her husband Bill is, and she was a bit stiff, and maybe she didn't run the very best grassroots campaign, these are all allegations, but still, she knew all the players in the world, she had all the experience, he had none, so from that point of view, speaking as a feminist, I think Oh boy, what a backlash.

[00:29:39] What a backlash in terms of women's freedom. On the other hand, speaking as a Jew at the time, the fact that he relocated the embassy, the American embassy to Jerusalem, I said, yay. And his intentions to stop this Unlicensed, unmitigated immigration over our southern border, I agreed with. I don't think we can, morally, yes, we have a history of accepting the tired and the poor.

[00:30:17] But, this is different now because the cities, the sanctuary cities, of which mine is one, can't afford it. We're not even taking care of the citizens who are, have been here for a long time. We're not treating the homeless and we're not doing anything for the mentally ill, hallucinating homeless. Some of whom are violent, not all of whom.

[00:30:42] How dare we then accept an unlimited number of immigrants, which under Biden's administration, we have been forced to do. What do you think of that? 

[00:30:55] Mark M. Bello: My problem with what you're saying. You didn't answer my question, but who 

[00:31:01] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: would I vote for 

[00:31:03] Mark M. Bello: Who's the better candidate for president to handle this crisis going forward Trump or Biden.

[00:31:10] But beyond that, you mentioned people who mistreat women, you mentioned bullies. Biden doesn't mistreat women. Biden's not a bully. 

[00:31:22] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Biden sniffs them. 

[00:31:25] Mark M. Bello: That's an all right. That's an unintentional habit, if you will, he doesn't rape people he doesn't he doesn't say I can grab them by the p word.

[00:31:35] All right, that's true He doesn't use his entitlement to behave the way trump does. Oh, excuse me

[00:31:40] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: China to i'm 

[00:31:42] Mark M. Bello: just i'm interested in why your feminism doesn't eliminate him as a viable candidate for president I don't want to because you're Judeans, Judaism suggests that maybe, I've heard a lot of Jewish people say, and I'm a Jewish person.

[00:31:59] I've heard a lot of Jewish people say Trump better for Israel. That's bullshit. He's not better for Israel. He's just not what's going on here and I don't want to jump on a soapbox, but what's going on here is that Biden seems to have this even handed. oH, there are victims on both sides.

[00:32:23] I don't agree with that. I'm on, uh, your team on Israel's right to defend itself, but I understand it. Obama, for instance, gave money to Iran not to foster terrorism, but he thought maybe sugar will work better than shit. He was wrong, but he was well intentioned. Trump has no good intentions at all, other than what's in Trump's best interest.

[00:32:55] That's all he cares about. And how anybody, no matter what their issue is, can say Trump is better for this or Trump is better for that, Trump is a terrible human being, and he should never come anywhere near the presidency. 

[00:33:10] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: I don't disagree. However, did you see Biden when he was the head of the Judiciary Committee handle the Anita Hill hearings?

[00:33:18] Yes. That was not his finest moment. And let's not forget the corruption and his cover up of all the money that he siphoned off from China and elsewhere for his son, the drug addict. Disaster, right? So no, none of these politicians are anywhere near perfect. They're, in fact, 

[00:33:41] Mark M. Bello: to be proven, but I hear you.

[00:33:44] I'm not saying he's perfect. 

[00:33:45] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: No not, if we are reduced to merely these two candidates, our country is in deep trouble. Because neither of them have the gravitas, the dignity, the knowledge base that we need, especially at this time. So I would hope and pray. That both parties and I don't much love the fact we have only two parties and don't get a chance to vote on issues, but only on a party versus a party.

[00:34:18] I would hope that both parties come up with a credible candidate. Both.

[00:34:25] Bob Gatty: I think I just totally disagree with what you said about Biden not being capable enough to be president of the United States. Totally disagree with that. The man's got a long history of, I think doing a really good job in the Senate, and I think he's done an excellent job as president under the circumstances.

[00:34:47] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Which circumstances, you mean his cognitive decline circumstance? No, I 

[00:34:53] Bob Gatty: don't mean that. And you know what, these are Republican talking 

[00:34:59] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: points. Oh, but I'm not. I can't, but you are, 

[00:35:03] Bob Gatty: that's what you're doing. You're repeating the Republican talking points about 

[00:35:07] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Biden. No, I'm a psychologist and I'm noting his public persona. Maybe privately he's very different and much better. I'm only paying attention to the falls and the trips and the loss of words and the use of wrong words. So only as a psychologist, I'm not a neurologist, I'm not a psychiatrist and he's not my patient. I think the guy's in a bit of trouble.

[00:35:41] Guy's in a bit of trouble. And, but more important than that, I'm looking at his, the recent statement he issued that the Washington Post jumped on right away, early, was too even handed to suit me. Victims everywhere, victims on both sides, and indeed, yes, the Gazans, are victims. And as I said, mainly of Hamas, if only the world could understand that and not refuse to get it.

[00:36:15] Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005. There's no occupation going on. I'm not even handed at the moment. My people, the feminists have maintained an ugly and profound silence about, and I don't agree that only women victims should be cared about. I think that Arabs and Muslims rape men and they rape boys.

[00:36:43] It's what they do. I don't think women were the only ones who were raped. I don't think that rape, as lifelong and horrendous as it may be, although many victims are resilient, is as bad as murder. And we're looking at a pogrom on steroids. And for the good people of the world to again, as you pointed out, Mark, again, miss it.

[00:37:09] And not condemn it is very telling, very significant, and is why I say the IDF cannot stop. They have to keep going until they've eliminated Hamas in that region. Imagine if we had people lobbing rockets at us from Mexico or from Canada. How long would we wait to get rid of the rocket infrastructure? How long?

[00:37:36] Bob Gatty: You know what? You on November 14th, you published a piece in The Hill stating that Israel will likely be victorious in its war of self defense against the Hamas terrorists, but the expected victory will not truly resolve the situation. What would resolve the situation? 

[00:37:56] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: I'm so glad you brought that up.

[00:37:59] I thought and came up with the only solution that would make sense for Jews to have another 50 years of safety in the world, or 60 years. And that would be to have an Eichmann like trial in Jerusalem, which could only take place after Israel is militarily victorious. We can't go to the International Criminal Court.

[00:38:22] We can't go to the United Nations. That would be like going to Iran for justice. So if all of the footage, all of the live streaming of the atrocities, all of the footage Of the discoveries of the terrorist tunnels under all the hospitals in Gaza, which are coming more and more clear to the front, such a trial, Eichmann like trial, Nuremberg like trial, would put terrorism on trial, and perhaps the Hamas leaders, the victims who survived, the witnesses To what happened on October 7th and what's happening in Gaza, maybe, maybe that would be the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, and the most educational thing to do.

[00:39:17] What do you think? 

[00:39:17] Mark M. Bello: They didn't do it to Al Qaeda. They didn't do it to ISIS. Ah. They're late, but I agree with you. I think they all ought to be put on in a Nuremberg style, crimes against humanity type of of tribunal. I don't think it'll ever happen, but I think it should. And every terrorist group, including white nationalists in America should be put on trial for this kind of behavior.

[00:39:46] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Absolutely, but think of the jurisdictions where would we put Al Qaeda on trial? 

[00:39:53] Mark M. Bello: What do you think the chances are of those? 

[00:39:56] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: I think that Israel could, if it had the will, if my way of thinking struck them as useful, um, and others have thought this too, I didn't know that. It could take place in Jerusalem, but that would be of Hamas Iran, all the terrorists that Iran funds.

[00:40:17] I think you're right about Al Qaeda, I think you're absolutely right. And I'm not certain we should have just executed bin Laden. Israelis didn't execute Eichmann. What a temptation that must have been. But rather put him on trial for the world to see. And the same would have been true with bin Laden.

[00:40:39] I'm with you. But I ask you again, because I'm curious, would that jurisdiction have been in the cave that Mullah Ammar gave him in Afghanistan to strategize it? Or would it have been in Pakistan and Abbottabad where he was hiding out? Or would it have been in New York City or in Washington DC? And under what, under the American government?

[00:41:03] Only because there was so many of the 3, 000 plus killed that terrible day from other countries. So I ask genuinely because I think it would be important to do. 

[00:41:13] Mark M. Bello: Even though I'm the lawyer in the room, I have no idea. I, I just think, what's that old joke? I don't know what it is, but I know it, I know what is.

[00:41:22] It should happen. It

[00:41:24] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: should definitely happen if there's morality that prevails. 

[00:41:28] Mark M. Bello: I want to talk about it. I want to talk about anti Semitism for a second. You wrote a book 20 years ago. And it's interesting because you wrote it in 2003 exactly 20 years ago, and it's called the new anti Semitism.

[00:41:44] And I'm wondering if the 2023 anti Semitism. The real new anti Semitism is different than the. The 2003, 2003 anti Semitism, and if so, what's the difference? 

[00:42:01] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Alas, I covered it all. I was prescient, and nobody listened to me, and to a handful of others who were saying and seeing the same thing, so that I said anti Zionism.

[00:42:16] In fact, my editor on that book chastised me and said, badgered me. Do you really want to say that anti Zionism is the new anti Semitism? Really? I said, really and truly, I do. And I called out the western intelligentsia and progressives and university curricula and then what I knew of the Islamic world and its lethal Jew hatred.

[00:42:45] Not all Muslims, I work with Muslims. I work for Muslims. I don't see that coming our way in return, by the way. Thinking about that. But then I was thinking, do I have to update this book? And the answer is no. All I would do, in fact I did, I published a series of articles called Living History on the Frontlines for Israel and the Jews in 2015 or 2016.

[00:43:15] All I would have to do is combine them and update it into our time, but the analysis remains solid. Perhaps one thing. That's new, is the kind of doctored footage, the Pali, I covered that before, what my colleague Richard Landis calls Paliwood, in which footage is doctored, photos are fake, the Western media run with fake information.

[00:43:46] I had that in the book in 2003, only it's become even worse, even bigger, even larger. 

[00:43:55] Mark M. Bello: 2003 on steroids? 

[00:43:57] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Yeah, yes, exactly. Yeah. Good questions. I wish I had all the answers to all these good questions. 

[00:44:08] Bob Gatty: Here’s another one. You've done heroic work in the area of women, gays, and dissidents rights in the Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh communities, where forced marriage, forced veiling, and polygamy are huge problems.

[00:44:24] Why is almost no action taken to stop these human rights violations? How does the world stop these atrocities? 

[00:44:33] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Two questions. These atrocities, if committed by men of color, are verboten. It's taboo. It's viewed as Islamophobic, racist, and not to be done, certainly not by white folk, not by western folk. I work with Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu women.

[00:44:54] They have embraced my work in these areas, but really embraced it and used it. And the white Western feminist girls don't even know about it, don't want to hear about it. Think vaguely it's maybe racist. I was once invited to a law school to speak about my four academic studies on honor killing. I was then disinvited.

[00:45:18] Because two faculty members who were strongly against Israel threatened violence were I to appear even via Zoom. And the Sikh woman who pulled me into Mandy Sanger is her name, who pulled me into the rescue of the Afghan women, then convened. a conference on honor killing, in which I was featured, I, via Zoom, into University London, because she said she will not have me dishonored by such dishonorable people.

[00:45:51] I thought, wow. And then I chose one of the Afghan women, I chose so, I was so lucky, who I've adopted in a sense, and she's in graduate school in America, she's going to be a leader of women, She's going to be a credit to Afghanistan, to womankind, to America, and she wrote me a letter, which I framed, in which she said I gave her life, I gave her freedom, she will never forget this, etc.

[00:46:23] It was very moving, and, The feminists who have not been quoting or citing or aren't even reading my work didn't do anything like this. They're stuck back into Taliban bad, feminism good. Statements, talking head statements. But the activism and the risk taking and the round the clock working, they didn't do.

[00:46:51] So who are they? Who are they? I ask, and I'm one of them, and I'm a pioneer leader of them, and I don't recant my radical feminism, nor do I recant my support for Israel and for Judaism, so you can wear many hats and be the same person. 

[00:47:13] Mark M. Bello: That's true. Where's this going? Do you see any progress in the, in these communities on feminist issues?

[00:47:23] And what 

[00:47:24] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: can There are a lot of feminists in Pakistan who are using my work. They're not in America. Ditto in India. Where is it going? I think that feminism is lost, and I published a book which is out of print in 2005, which I called The Death of Feminism, because... I saw how it was going, and in fact, let me say something possibly incendiary.

[00:47:55] Those people, that way of thinking, that has become obsessed with a country that really has never existed. Villages, tribes, existed. in the region, and many Arabs thought they were Syrians or Jordanians at a certain point, or Egyptians. There was no Palestine until Yasser Arafat, declaimed a country that never existed before.

[00:48:22] So the kind of people, feminists and otherwise, who believe that Palestine exists now, have deserted sex based rights. They believe that a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man and identity politics is everything. I think this is a mistake and I think, I got disinvited by a synagogue because to where I was invited to talk about antisemitism because they thought I was transphobic for saying what J. K. Rowling has said for Saying that children shouldn't be subjected to mutilating surgery? Yes. Again, as a psychologist, I know some people suffer and they need therapy and when they become 21, if they wanna go forward with becoming another sex, I don't wanna pay for their hospital care as the American military is currently doing.

[00:49:24] It's on them. But we shouldn't allow children to do this when they're really psychologically in trouble and looking for a quick fix and are going to be heroized if they take this road. So feminism has mainly become a post modern, post colonial, they write incomprehensibly, and they honor only women of color and condemn The very white women pioneers who created the second wave, who created the first wave of feminism.

[00:50:02] It's not just white guys that are in trouble. And by the way, I want to go back to something that you said about trying Jew haters on the right. or holding them accountable for it. I agree 100%, 100%. And my question back to you is what jurisdiction, how do we do it? And because in our times, hate speech, microaggressions, you can lose your job and your reputation and get doxxed and so on.

[00:50:38] But if you say that Jews should be gassed that's academic freedom, that's free speech, we can't mess with that. So only for the Jews can you let loose lies, lethal lies, but for everyone else, even in the tiniest of ways, Um, you're going to be held accountable on campus. 

[00:50:59] Mark M. Bello: Certainly. I didn't mean it literally in terms of the white nationalist community.

[00:51:03] They would have to commit a crime against humanity, which I believe Hamas has done. I'm not necessarily comparing the 2. I'm simply talking about the ideology. Yes, it was me being me. I want to, I have a Jew to Jew question for you. On a very small scale, some of what we're talking about.

[00:51:26] It happens in the Orthodox Jewish community. You've got women wearing wigs, you've got women reduced to subsidiary roles and homemakers and child makers, and that's their job. I'm wondering how you feel about that traditional Orthodox Jewish woman role that, uh, a very male dominated culture fosters.

[00:51:55] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Jew to Jew, I will answer. I was privileged to be with the women, December 1st, 1988, who prayed for the first time ever at the Kotel, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. And we have been in the Israeli Supreme Court ever since. It's a long and wonderful and terrible story. At that point, I realized it was easy for me to help set up a, not-for-profit organization, a grassroots legal movement.

[00:52:23] I wanted to study Torah since I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. That was something girls didn't do, and I began doing just that with a very learned orthodox woman. A feminist rifka, how, who's died. And I became exposed to the absolute treasury of diverse Jewish thought, which is magnificent. Did I take a veil?

[00:52:54] No, I didn't. Was she dressed in an ugly fashion, covering her head? No, she wasn't. Because many of the Old Testament behaviors have long been... We don't stone people anymore. The Jews don't do that. The Jews don't do polygamy anymore. It was outlawed by Rabbi Gershom in the early Middle Ages. So what you're talking about concerns a smaller group, but very visible group, in which women still do learning, but they do have the children and they do raise the children, and many of them, amazingly, with six children, I couldn't do it are also judges and lawyers and bankers, we're a genius people, so it has been said.

[00:53:46] Many are indeed, as you pointed out, subjected to a separate existence. And if you interview them though and say, are you miserable? Are you happy? They'll tell you, no, the community means everything to them. It provides them with solace and sustenance and uplift. And they always can get help. And they have a point about community.

[00:54:12] We who choose freedom, also then choose high risk. They don't want that high risk. They want a community that they're part of, that backs them, that they agree with, it's there for them, good times, bad times. And As a feminist, I think, that was like my interviewing women about being economically discriminated against in the early 1970s.

[00:54:36] Nobody thought she was. So that means they didn't know, they didn't have choices. no, Jews. are not fundamentalists the way Muslims are still today. The Quran needs to be updated and reformed, which many Muslims with whom I work agree with and are trying in their many different ways to do. Do I want a theocracy in Israel?

[00:55:03] Hell no. Do I want rabbinical control of marriage, divorce, and burial? Absolutely not. No. But you know what? I also appreciate deeply the faith, the existence of faith the scholarship that often is there. It's not just corruption and craziness and cruelty. And I also, as a feminist... I don't much mind the separation of men and women during prayer, and that was an interesting thing to discover.

[00:55:40] Maybe that's as far as I'll take it for now. 

[00:55:44] Bob Gatty: Okay. Hey, you know what? You mentioned a little while ago the United Nations. What do you, yeah, what do you think the UN should be doing and could be doing? 

[00:55:57] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: First, they are the United Nations of tyrannies, and the United States should pull out. The democracy should leave the United Nations.

The UN has not condemned October 7th, They've condemned Israel. The most resolutions they've ever passed are against Israel.

[00:56:31] And if they've, and they have not stopped a single genocide, what did they do for Bosnia or Rwanda? Just to name two. Or Algeria, when the paramilitary groups arose. No. They have done one thing only. They have legalized Jew hatred. I would like to see it gone.

[00:56:50] Mark M. Bello: I wanted to ask her about the New York Times.

[00:56:52] What I was shocked about it. You don't have to answer a question, but I'll tell you what I was shocked. I'm shocked that the New York Times writes the stuff it writes. As someone who considers himself, to use Bob's term. Someone who leans to the left but I was also shocked that the only place I could get the washington protest in the Detroit area. Was Fox News. Yeah, that's the only station that covered it. It. From the minute it started to the minute it stopped and by the way, I would like to tell the people that 200 and something thousand people showed up for that protest and there wasn't a single incident of violence or an anarchy or anything.

[00:57:35] It was just a very peaceful event attended by very passionate people, but I'm just curious as to what happened to the moderate left and even the radical left. And where's the love for the only democracy in the Middle East? I'm mind blown by that and I'm very conflicted because I'm a solid Democrat, if it isn't obvious, and I'm just blown away by the lack of love that I'm seeing for Israel.

[00:58:07] You don't have to answer, you don't have to answer that. I just 

[00:58:09] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: No, I've documented the New York Times. It's extraordinary. I think they could be tried for incitement to genocide at this point. And I'm so torn because I read them every day. I, my first book, Women and Madness, got a front page review in their book review.

[00:58:29] Which made a huge difference, and every book of mine was reviewed there more than once until I published the new Antisemitism, which was not reviewed. And I finally wrote a letter to all the editors, and I said, what's this? Is it because so many other books were out, or you don't think it's timely, or is it that I'm a woman?

[00:58:52] I can't believe that's the reason. And I got back a letter from the then executive editor, Bill Keller, who said, If you're accusing Chip McGrath, the book review editor, of being an anti Semite, then you're a neurotic, paranoid woman. I hadn't mentioned. anti Semitism at all. But I certainly had my answer when somebody on their staff contacted me and said, I wanted to review your book.

[00:59:20] They wouldn't let me do it. And then I said, I have something better than my book. I said, I have 30 letters from professors. Now this is 2003, beginning of 2004. Professors have been writing to me about being harassed and condemned for their pro Israel. points of view. Why don't you write about them? And I got permission for that to happen.

[00:59:47] And this editor wrote back, or this journalist wrote back and said, I was stopped at the highest level. So then I thought, I don't understand it. I really don't. They didn't cover the Holocaust. Why are they not covering Jew hatred now? And so from time to time, I count the words that they use to condemn Israel.

[01:00:12] And it's humongous, I have several articles. I saw that. I saw that. And I don't really understand why. At the end of the day, I read some of their articles, and it's extraordinary overkill. Occasionally, they'll have a one off article. That argues Israel's case or Judaism's 

[01:00:33] Mark M. Bello: case.

[01:00:35] There isn't any other case. You're either a terrorist or you're with 

[01:00:38] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Israel. They, no, they won't say terrorist. They'll say militant, gunman. I shouldn't say 

[01:00:45] Mark M. Bello: that. You're either for the terrorists or you're for Israel. Either, those are your choices. I have an idea for you. I have an idea for you to sell books.

[01:00:55] Sell books by saying, this is the book that the New York Times refused to review. You'll sell a million, Bob. 

[01:01:04] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Really? Okay. Listen, you can definitely be my agent or my publicist, whatever the job is 

[01:01:11] opened. I think 

[01:01:12] Mark M. Bello: I'm going to try to sell one of my, it would be a lie though. I couldn't say it.

[01:01:16] Bob Gatty: Okay, guys. So I think we need to wrap this up, but we're wrapped up. I really did, fellas. Thanks for coming on with a really interesting conversation. And I 

[01:01:28] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: hope I didn't disappoint you in any way. Now, 

[01:01:30] Bob Gatty: I still say that Biden's doing a good job, but anyway. 

[01:01:33] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: All right. No, look, you're entitled to your 

[01:01:35] Mark M. Bello: view.

[01:01:35] As are you. 

[01:01:36] Bob Gatty: Absolutely. I want 

[01:01:38] Dr. Phyllis Chesler: Susan B. Anthony. Let the record show.