Why Hamas Will Never Stop | A Chilling Conversation with Brooke Goldstein
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They say globalize the Intifada, they also mean globalize the ideologies that is meant to then justify genocide. We saw in the Holocaust you have to dehumanize the other in order for a person to be able to justify the murder of babies, of burning babies alive, of raping and killing and murdering women, of taking Holocaust survivor grandmothers and infants hostage.

In order to justify this ideology and pretend as though you're sitting on the moral high ground, in order to have this sickness, it has to be indoctrinated. Hello and welcome to State of a Nation. I'm Elon Levy. For decades, the world has grappled with the complex interplay of ideology, extremism and global policy failures that perpetuate cycles of violence.

In this episode, we take a look at the root causes of one of the most persistent and misunderstood international crises, the radicalization within Palestinian society and the impact it is having on Israel and the West.

Today I'm thrilled to welcome lawyer, author and award-winning filmmaker Brooke Goldstein to the show. Brooke is the founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project and a passionate advocate for civil rights and justice. Her groundbreaking 2006 documentary, The Making of a Martyr, exposed the systematic recruitment and indoctrination of children into violent ideologies in the Palestinian territories

earning her international recognition. That same indoctrination and use of child soldiers, unfortunately, we've seen on full display in the October 7th war. Throughout her legal and advocacy work, Brooke has consistently championed the fight against the normalization of extremism and the funding of terror.

In this conversation, we'll tackle the alarming role of international institutions, yes, international institutions, in perpetuating extremist ideologies and what must change because those institutions are fueling the problem.

We talk about the psychological and cultural impact of radicalization on both victims and perpetrators, especially children, and how they're paying the price for the Palestinians' forever war against any Jewish state. And we talk about practical strategies for combating anti-Semitism and empowering Jewish empowerment around the world.

It's not just a conversation about geopolitics, it's a deep dive into the systematic changes needed to secure a more peaceful and equitable future. She has her ideas, I have mine, and we have a bit of an argument. It gets a bit feisty at Heart Under the Collar in this episode. So join me and Brooke, let's dive between the lines

and beyond the headlines. Brook Goldstein, welcome on State of a Nation.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm especially excited to have you here on the show because you were meant to be one of the very first guests on the podcast.

But then on the night of April 13th, 14th, the Iranian regime decided to fire a volley of ballistic cruise missiles and UAVs at Israel. And your flight was cancelled. And so we had to reschedule. We sent a message through back channels to the Iranian regime not to dare interrupt with our podcast recording today. Tell me, where were you on that night? What happened?

Oh, wow. So I was all packed and ready to go to the airport. And the missiles started flying. And obviously, I got a call from my mother, who I love and respect very much, and asking me to wait. I said, no way I'm going. But the flight was canceled. I believe it was rebooked about three or four hours later. But at that time, I was already sleeping in bed.

Yeah, it was a really astonishing night. It was, I think, the first time that Israel had been directly attacked by the official military of another state since the 1991 Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War. And it was at the time the biggest ballistic missile attack in history ever.

to be followed, of course, by the major attack in October. And we're hoping we're not going to have any more. But we'll get through the issues that we need to discuss today, hoping that we're not interrupted by any sirens on our end. In Miami, I think you don't have to worry about sirens. Brooke, I want to pick your brains about how we ended up with the jihadi extremism that led to the October 7th massacre.

And I'm asking because there is intense international pressure on Israel right now to end the war that Hamas started with Hamas still in power, right? That is what an unconditional ceasefire means. That's what the UN General Assembly is demanding, not only to abandon the hostages, but to leave the Hamas terror regime in power.

And that's a prospect that scares me as an Israeli, because if Hamas still governs Gaza after this war, then so will its ideology and the ideology that led people to celebrate in the streets when hostages were dragged through the streets in Gaza. But I also fear that that ideology, the opposition to Israel's existence from the river to the sea, what Einat Wilf calls "Palestinianism" as an ideology,

is so deeply ingrained within Palestinian society that even if Hamas is removed from power, that ideology will still be there and you haven't addressed the root cause of its popularity. Now, I know that you produced a documentary quite a while ago called The Making of a Martyr. A lot has changed since 2006, but you know what? Maybe things haven't changed as much as we'd like to think. So how did we end up

with the overwhelming majority of Gazans, thinking initially that the October 7th massacre was a good idea. Well, I'm really happy that we opened up with this because a lot of people, like you said, are throwing their solutions that are just band-aids around

to this issue, which is a theological issue. We're not necessarily at war. Israel is not at war with Palestinian people. Israel is not necessarily at war just with Hamas. The Western world is at war with a radical ideology and it's Islamism.

And unfortunately, since I released the documentary in 2006, actually nothing has changed. In fact, it has gotten worse. And I originally did this film, I risked my life to produce a documentary film about the illegal state-sponsored indoctrination and recruitment of innocent Muslim children towards violence. And what you see in the Palestinian context, but also frankly,

throughout the Muslim world is a steady stream of hate indoctrination that targets Muslim children from infancy.

and teaches them through their school textbooks, their television programs, their religious clerics, often their own parents, their political leaders, to ascribe to a very violent jihadi ideology that aims to destroy the West, to reestablish a caliphate that preaches death to the Jews, but also death to America and death to the rest of the Western world.

And this is what they are now exporting, this hate indoctrination, which is, as you said, the root cause of the problem here. Because no matter what peace agreements or handshakes or accords or ceasefires or treaties that we enter into now, if four, five, six-year-olds continue to be taught to hate life and to love death,

And the greatest thing that they should aspire to is violent jihad and killing of the Jews and destroying Israel and destroying America. That's what the future is going to look like. And yet what we saw, Elon, was after September the 11th, when the Western world woke up to

to what Israel is faced with, which is radical Islam, Islamist-inspired terrorism. When the Western world woke up to this in 9-11, there was then a steady campaign to silence and punish anyone who started talking about theologically motivated terrorism as a threat. And actually, I call it the Islamophobia mania campaign.

And what that did is slandered anyone in the counterterrorism world or even moderate Muslims who dared speak up about the threat of radical Islam and why that is a shared threat between Israel and the West.

There was a steady stream of legal attacks, what we call lawfare attacks, lawsuits, frivolous lawsuits that are designed to punish and to shut anyone up who's talking about, for example, the terror front organizations that are here in the United States also indoctrinating and funding terror. And obviously there was a campaign of violence. We saw even the targeting of Charlie Hebdo offices, the cartoonists, if they dare commentate.

parody radical Islam. We saw the murder of Theo van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam, who was stabbed in the back. His last words were, can we talk about this? We're doing a film about the treatment of women under Islam, which should be something that liberals and progressives are championing. It should be the rights of women under theological societies. And this is the root cause of it, whether it's in Iran, whether it's the Houthis, whether it's Hezbollah's indoctrination, whether it's Hamas's

They've succeeded, unfortunately, in radicalizing an entire society so that the society is not built on bettering itself, but its entire narrative and purpose is on destruction of the other. And this is what must be stopped. And we have to stop funding it. The fact that Canada is

is funding UNRWA. The United States right now, currently under the Biden administration, is funding UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency, that not only hires Hamas to carry out terrorist attacks, but hires teachers right off the Hamas payroll to teach and indoctrinate and abuse innocent Palestinian children in their schools, kindergarten schools, towards this jihadi ideology. This ideology must be stopped.

And that is, I think, a huge international policy challenge that no one is really seriously addressing when they try to put what you in America would say band-aid solutions. I'm British. We would say a plaster to try to get past this war as if it's possible to simply leave Hamas in power or its ideology in power and not come to terms with one solution.

The fact that so much of this conflict is religiously driven, I think it's very difficult for people in the West to get their heads around that religious thinking. And two, the ways you mentioned, Anra, that the international community has unwittingly or wittingly been subsidizing and fueling that extremism. And what particularly disturbs me with this question of extremism within Islam

Palestinian society and why I'm not very optimistic that the world is going to do much about it even though we are trying to shout from the rooftops that this is a problem is two things one

Many people in the West actually support the same end result, which is no more Israel from the river to the sea. That's what people are chanting about on the streets. They agree with the ideology that says Israel should not exist.

And violence is not only necessary, but is noble in pursuit of that goal of liberation, of shaking off oppression, which is how they describe the destruction of the state of Israel. But there's something else, and I want to get your take on this because we're also going to talk about extremism in the West. I was on a speaking tour in Canada recently, and I think it was at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. One of the non-Jewish students told me,

that actually within white woke society, they identified an attraction towards the idea of martyrdom. And Aileen Dinai said, what do you mean that white woke people are attracted to the idea of martyrdom? They said that they see that within the Palestinian struggle, that idea is

of sacrifice, of self-abnegation, of cancelling yourself out in pursuit of a loftier goal is something they admire. And you see how it fits in with the woke ideology, right? With the idea that if you're an oppressor or oppressed, if you're an oppressor, you're the problem and you need to eliminate yourself to make justice. They really admire that idea of martyrdom. And so I'm wondering, within the intellectual milieu in the West,

Do you think the West is equipped intellectually to understand the causes and the roots of Palestinian extremism and come to terms with it with the policy prescriptions that are necessary to deal with it, like choking off funding to UNRWA?

Well, I think that it's debatable whether we've reached and gone past the tipping point in the sense that it's so perverted. You know, what they're supporting is not martyrdom. What they're supporting is the intentional murder of innocent Palestinian children. Sometimes they have bombs dropped around the children and they are blown up by remote control by adult terrorist groups who are abusing these children for their war.

I mean, this example, when are we drawing this from? So in 2004, when Hussam Abduh, who's the main character of my film, basically voluntarily gave up. He was recruited by the Al-Aqsa modern brigades. He was paid the equivalent of $20. This is a physically handicapped, rumored to be mentally handicapped, Palestinian Muslim boy who was recruited, recruited,

kidnapped by adults in the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigade who would never send themselves as suicide homicide bombers. And he was sent to an Israeli checkpoint and told to blow himself up amongst both the Palestinians and Israelis waiting to get in line to Israel. But fortunately for them, he chickened out and he turned himself in. And when I interviewed him and I asked him, why didn't you carry it out? He told me, 'cause I didn't want to die.

because I was worried about my family and I was thinking what would happen after I blow myself up. Would there be retaliation against my family? So this child did not want to die. After Hussam had voluntarily turned himself in, the Palestinian Islamist terrorist group started using remote controlled detonators on children to blow them up by remote control. This is not martyrdom. This is child abuse.

And whether or not we have gone past the tipping point, like all of these so-called progressive liberal human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, well, they do such a good job condemning the recruitment of, let's say, children in Africa who are drugged, who are recruited. And by the way, they drugged Hussam Abdu. They smoked him up with hash so that he was all dizzy before he went to blow himself up.

We condemn the abuse of child soldiers in Africa. Why is it that when Jews are the ones who are targeted, it's okay to kill children? That is perverted and it's disgusting. And the entire international human rights... Hang on, let me pose that question to you. Why? Why?

If these organizations are capable of putting a finger on a problem and calling it out in other contexts, why do they struggle to do it here? Is it because they agree with the end goal of the Palestinian nationalist movement of no more Israel?

They must. And their fellow travelers. They must because they're, and you articulated it, that the ends justifies the means. When your hatred of the Jews and the Jewish state is so great, the ends justifies the means. And that is the sickness of anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is not rational. It doesn't benefit the society that engages in anti-Semitism. The opposite.

But when you look at societies that are infected with such genocidal Jew hatred, they ultimately self-collapse and they harm themselves. And that's exactly what's happening in the radical Muslim societies. You know, in a sense, it's our fault in that our policy was just to continue to fund Hamas, to allow Qatar to send billions of dollars, thinking that they're going to just use the money to build an infrastructure that's

to build a democratic society, to build a subway, to build hospitals. How stupid were we? Because we could not comprehend, because we're logical thinking, rational people. We could not comprehend a society that's willing to take billions of dollars, instead of investing it in themselves, invested in a terror infrastructure that ultimately will be their own suicide, because it doesn't make sense. And this ideology, which is extraordinarily dangerous and I think poses

the greatest national security threat in the modern area has been imported into the United States, into our campuses at Columbia University, at Carnegie Mellon University, which by

By the way, happens to be the third largest recipient of funding from Qatar, which is the second largest sponsor of the Hamas terrorist group. This terrorist Islamist ideology married now with this progressive leftism, which is something that we've seen before. The Marxist Islamist ideology pairing is not new. So it's I don't know why we're all surprised by this.

has been globalized. When they say globalize the Intifada, they also mean globalize the ideologies that is meant to then justify genocide. We saw in the Holocaust, you have to dehumanize the other in order for a person to be able to justify the murder of babies, of burning babies alive, of raping and killing and murdering women, of taking Holocaust survivor grandmothers and infants hostage.

In order to justify this ideology and pretend as though you're sitting on the moral high ground, in order to have this sickness, it has to be indoctrinated. And we've seen this radical indoctrination on American college campuses for over 15 years now, Elon. So is it reversible is the big question.

Well, that's an interesting point. And I want, you know, as a hook for people to listen to the end of the podcast, I want to get back to that fascinating question about whether it is reversible. But I notice a slight tension in what you're saying. On the one hand, there is the idea that people struggle to understand how a society can change.

bring ruin upon itself through a dedication to the destruction of something else. I went into Gaza. I saw a tunnel dug by Hamas. It was as wide as a subway train and you realize that Gaza's problem was never resources. It was priorities. They had the financial planning. They had the engineering skill. God knows they had the money and the concrete to build an amazing metropolis above ground. Instead, they built a necropolis underground.

They decided that's where they wanted to put their resources. Now, you say on the one hand, we don't understand in the West how they did that. But on the other hand, if...

the ideology that you are telling divides the world into good and bad based on oppressor oppressed. And making peace with Israel means reconciling with evil, reconciling with Western imperialism is how they see it. Then it makes total sense that the most noble thing to do is to resist it to the last.

and whatever consequences are going to be the fault of the oppressor, not you. You don't have agency. You're only doing what circumstance has propelled you to do. And this drives us to the question of UNRWA. You mentioned before the Palestinian Refugee Agency that some countries are starting to defund. I saw Switzerland, the Netherlands starting to call questions on UNRWA funding, which is a good development. UNRWA, for those who haven't been watching other episodes of this show...

employs terrorists at a massive scale, including those who took part in the October 7th massacre, allows Hamas to fight out of its facilities, launders money for Hamas, turns a blind eye as it abducts its own staff, abduct hostages as they steal aid. But many Western governments insist UNRWA is part of the furniture. The Palestinians are entitled to their own refugee agency until they fulfill or relinquish their dream of the destruction of Israel from the river to the sea. I

I want to pose a question that came up in an earlier episode with Hilal Noyer, executive director of UN Watch. And I asked him, how is it possible that these countries are still funding UNRWA, despite the overwhelming evidence of its complicity with Hamas, that it's a Hamas front? Let's put it on the table. And he said there are two options. One is...

They think it's a necessary evil that you should tolerate because otherwise you're going to destabilize Jordan or Lebanon. So don't rock the boat. No one wants to lead dramatic change when they don't see an immediate payoff. And he said the other solution is many of these civil servants in the Western countries actually agree with UNRWA's goal, which is the undoing of Israel. And that's why, at least at a civil service level and, you know, even at a political level, they continue to send money to UNRWA because they agree with

with the goal of the jihadism and the extremism that ANRA is fueling, that goal of no more Israel. So I'm wondering from your own conversations about ANRA behind the scenes, trying to explain the mechanisms of extremism and radicalization in Palestinian society,

What don't Western officials get? Do we need a smoking gun? How many smoking guns do you need in order to cut off these international subsidies to Hamas's army of terror and the destructive ideology that has only brought the Palestinians into ruin time and time again?

Right. Look, they know what UNRWA is. There's been so many congressional briefings and hearings and documentary films and, frankly, video evidence filmed by the UNRWA staffers themselves who are also Hamas carrying out atrocities that anyone who continues to fund UNRWA is doing so, I would argue, knowingly, intentionally, willingly.

And the greatest victims of UNRWA's crimes are the Palestinian Muslims themselves, particularly the children. And so I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I'm a lawyer. And I would argue and I have always argued that the continued, unbridled, unfettered funding of UNRWA is a violation of international law. It is state-sponsored.

sponsored mass infanticide. It is providing material support to designated terrorist groups. States know what they're doing. They're doing it intentionally. And that is the sad fact here. And I just think that the Jewish community and frankly, many in the world and in America know this. They know what is going on and we have to keep calling out. But until

these states have a willingness or a consequence frankly a consequence to funding unfortunately it will continue and this is the root

cause of the conflict in the Middle East. Nothing that Israel does, whether it's give away more land or stop Jewish building in Judea and Samaria, none of that is going to make a difference in terms of bringing peace to the Middle East. Now, the de-indoctrination and the cessation of indoctrination is possible. We know that because Saudi Arabia stopped.

One of the provisions of the Abraham Accords, which aren't talked about so much beyond the economic cooperation, is that Saudi Arabia changed its textbooks. Well, Saudi Arabia hasn't joined the Abraham Accords, at least at the time of recording. We hope it will very soon.

Saudi Arabia stopped funding hate education. They changed the education in their textbooks and they also stopped funding... I think it's part of the general trend within the Gulf that pushed the UAE towards the Abraham Accords. Let's say...

It's part of the same cultural trend that in the UAE has manifested itself in a normalization agreement with Israel and in Saudi Arabia has not yet. But I'm really fascinated by what you're saying. And I want to circle in on this, this idea of how we de-radicalize and how we de-radicalize, but how we do it by on an international level. OK, many of our listeners, many of our viewers understand the case against UNRWA.

They want to know what is the most persuasive way that they can explain to their governments why they are doing such damage to UNRWA. So how do we tackle Palestinian extremism and radicalization by tackling the UNRWA problem? So first of all, like I said, the government officials who are supporting the funding of UNRWA are doing this knowingly and willingly. The only way to stop it is to vote out the

those politicians who support this policy. But it's a bipartisan in every country. UNRWA is just taken as part of the international architecture. It's not like you usually have one government that's pro-UNRWA, another that isn't. I mean, in the US, maybe it's a little bit different, but most countries, it's not a partisan issue. I mean, it's just something people take for granted as part of the international system. It's something we have to fight against. Well, they can't. I mean, the constituents have to start holding their elected official accountable

holding their electeds accountable and vote for them or not or demand that they make statements as part of their platforms whether it's supporting or not and if they do support ANRA we have to speak out against them and not vote them into office whether it's in Canada, the United States or Europe. One of the points that I've found most convincing when I speak to foreign audiences and I've briefed members of the British Parliament, Canadian Parliament

One of the points that is most compelling is the understanding that not only did UNRWA staff take part in the October 7th massacre,

Most of the October 7th monsters were graduates of onerous schools. And when you tell them that their constituents' tax money has been going into the schools that produced the October 7th monsters, their jaws drop. You can hear the penny dropping on the floor. And they realize that money that could have gone to schools in their own constituencies or districts has been going into the schools that produced the monsters.

family burning, baby snatching rapists of October 7th. You really hear the cogs turn. Absolutely. The taxpayer argument, the fact that we are funding and in America right now too, with our taxes, basically those who carried out October the 7th is a very strong argument. But this argument has also been made for the last 10 years in the sense that if you look at reports, there have been so many suicide homicide bombers who have

We've also graduated from UNRWA schools or leaders of terrorist organizations that have graduated from UNRWA schools. So obviously, yes, they've also taken place on October 7th and the atrocities. But there's also a larger theme that I want to touch on. Change has to come from within.

There's nothing I keep saying that Israel can do. And there's nothing that we in the West can do necessarily to force these Muslim majority countries

to adhere to a different version of Islam, one that is not so radical. It has to come from within. Obviously, there can be economic incentives and diplomatic incentives, like with the Abraham Accords and the side agreements that went into Saudi Arabia, getting rid of their indoctrination programs as well. There are incentives everywhere.

But this change has to come from within. And there's so much, it's not just pressure, there's expectation that Israel should build or create a Palestinian state or Israel needs to solve the Palestinian problem. When

This is a problem that the Muslim community needs to solve for themselves. Otherwise, you know, it's like the prejudice of low expectations that the Muslim community, they can't deal with their own problems, that we have to impose our Western or Israeli solutions on them. And so...

Dealing internally with the hate education, if that isn't solved, I frankly don't see the prospect for a lasting peace in the Middle East. And, you know, Bret Stephens has written about this as well. Perhaps the status quo has to remain for some time. And what we need to do is change the way we think about how we react internally

to terrorism. You know, Israel, the IDF goes above and beyond what is required by the laws of armed conflict in terms of dropping leaflets to warn Hamas terrorists where they are, where

In so many other ways, and Alan Dershowitz has spoken about this a lot as well. And the more that we appease, the more that we talk about ceasefires as some sort of, you know, legitimate solution, the more we prostrate ourselves before international courts, I think the less likely we're going to be able to eliminate this.

a threat. And the only way that the threat can be eliminated is the complete destruction of not just the terrorist group itself, but a recognition that this ideology is not one that can be appeased and it's not one that we should continue funding. How is it that we all recognize, for example, UNRWA now as unequivocally bad, but we're still funding Palestinian Authority TV?

which broadcast the same cartoons, the same programs. We are also allowing the funding of Palestinian schools that teach from textbooks that the Israeli Ministry of Education has approved that also contains the same type of incitement and indoctrination. So we have to have a policy that is consistent throughout our dealing with this threat of radicalization. You're absolutely right that...

We're not going to solve the conflict unless there is a reckoning with the root cause, which is the Palestinian ideology that rejects Israel from the river to the sea. Maybe you'll have Palestinians who say two-state solution. It's very rare. In fact, it's impossible, almost impossible. Happy to be proven wrong. Anyone who says two states for two peoples that recognizes that

the Palestinian state that they want would be living side by side with Israel. Just a minor fact checkpoint, the United States has temporarily suspended funding for UNRWA under legislation from the US Congress. That cannot be resumed until at least March 2025. And it's very difficult to see that happening under the Trump administration. The change has to be internal. I agree with you on that.

But what interests me is the structure of incentives that the world is giving the Palestinians about whether they should change that ideology, right? Whether they should jettison the ideology. And the question is, what signals are they telling them about whether that ideology is working for them or not working for them? Now, the polling data shows that most Palestinians think that the extremism is working for them. What do I mean?

Immediately after the October 7th massacre, polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians believed that the October 7th massacre was a good idea. And in time, despite everything that has happened since, high numbers remain convinced it was a good idea. And why do they think it was a good idea? Because they felt it had put their cause back on the world stage.

It means that when Ireland recognizes a non-existent Palestinian state, it thinks it's sending a message, we support a two-state solution. But the message that Palestinians receive...

It's abduct more Jewish babies. It worked. When Norway recognizes a non-existent Palestinian state, the message that the Palestinians receive is burn more Jewish families. When Spain does the same, they get the message, rape more Jewish women, because the message they receive is that terrorism works. It takes your national cause forward rather than setting it back. And this is the cause that I've been trying to make.

as an unofficial advocate for Israel, making the case that international behavior, international diplomacy really makes a difference. And you need to understand the signals that you are sending. And those signals become clear through the polling data. So how do we engineer a shift within Western societies

to shake them up and help them understand the immense damage that they are doing, that they are condemning us to further bloodshed. They are condemning us to further conflict because they're not empowering the moderates who say it's time to accept that Israel is there for good and we need to change our ideology. They're empowering the extremists. It's horrifying for them to hear that they're empowering the extremists.

But that's what they're doing. So what do we do about it? Well, they know they are. You're absolutely correct that the reaction to recognize and push to recognize a Palestinian state after October the 7th is a reward for terrorism. That's exactly the message that these Western countries and diplomats are sending. And I do believe they're doing it intentionally. You know, but

We're always about what can we do to change everybody else's behavior. When I think...

we need to look within as a Jewish community and we have to start empowering ourselves and behaving in a way that respects our own sovereign legal rights. And it starts really with language. So if we're talking about a state, we often repeat the phrase two state solution. I think after October the 7th, less people, especially in Israel, believe that this should be a reality. But

Well, certainly after Hamas murdered many of the supporters of a two-state solution on October 7th. All those peace activists. Yes, who were living in the south.

who were driving Gazans daily to hospitals, who were hiring them. And that's really the tragedy of this all. But when we use this type of language, like two-state solution, when creating another Islamist state in a sea of failed Islamic dictatorships, it's not a solution to anything.

when we continue to use language... Right, because that's statement to state solution, and we can have an argument about whether that is where we want to go, but the language presupposes...

That it is a solution. And so people ask, how do you not support that solution? And many people, I think, would rightly say, and we can talk about a pathway to get there and argue about whether we want that end result or not. But many people would rightly say, because in the current reality in which the Palestinians are saying that they want from the river to the sea, giving them from the river to nine miles away from the sea to sprint the remaining distance is not a solution. It's only going to make things worse. But I understand, Brooke, I understand this point about needing to change our language. But I also want to understand...

How do we... Because, okay, if we stop saying two-state solution, or if we stop saying West Bank and start saying Judea and Samaria, that's not going to do anything about the Palestinian extremism problem. So how do we empower moderates? How do we encourage foreign governments...

to genuinely empower moderates and disempower extremists when at the moment, this is the really critical point, the behavior of the international community is empowering the extremists and disempowering the moderates. Well, I disagree that the way that we behave actually is central to everything.

I'll give an example. We had a case against... We were filing a lawsuit against Belgium, against two regions in Belgium for banning shkhita, for banning kosher slaughter. And we also had a lawsuit on behalf of Sagot Winery against the government of France that went all the way up to the European Court of Justice, which is the Supreme Court of Europe. And in the first instance, the lawsuit against Belgium said...

that it is a violation of the religious freedom rights of the Jewish community to ban Shchita, that they allow for hunting, they allow for other types of stunning and slaughtering, and you cannot do this. This is discriminatory. And the lawsuit against the government of France, France was imposing a BDS regulation, a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions regulation,

and wanted to put labeling on Sagot wine and other wine that was being imported from Judea, Samaria, and they wanted to label it a product of an illegal Israeli colony. And we sued the government of France, alleging the same discrimination. Right. The French used the word collant.

which is the same as for settler and colonialist, it's the same word. - At the same time, we have people arguing in Israel that Judea, Samaria should be Judea and that if a Jew builds a house or a home, you know, we call them settlers. They're not settlers, it's not a settlement, it's a Jewish home.

home, a Jewish school, Jewish people that have every right to live wherever they want? How am I to argue before a foreign court that they should respect the religious freedom rights of the 3,000 Jews that live in this area of Belgium? If Israel is arresting Jews for praying on the Temple Mount,

If Israel is demolishing houses of Jews who build in Judea, Samaria, if the Jewish state is not respecting the religious freedom rights and the freedom of Jews to live wherever they want, how are we expecting foreign courts to enforce those rights? Sorry, do I understand correctly that you're saying part of the solution to Palestinian extremism is to...

is to change the status quo on the Temple Mount and allow Jews to pray there? You think that's something that would lower the plans of extremism? I said in the beginning of this conversation, the solution to Muslim extremism has to come from within the Muslim community. They have to look within and they have to solve this problem for themselves. And how do we induce that? We can do that.

There's nothing that we can do. Western powers can use carrots and sticks. We can use diplomacy. We can use economic cooperation and treaties and so forth to try to replicate the Abraham Accords. And I hope that continues. But the decision to change has to come

from within. The leaders in the Muslim countries who recognize that extremism is as much a threat to their society as it is to us are the ones who are going to inspire change. And when we look at the West, when we look at Western legal systems and Western governments, and the question is, how do we convince the West to stop supporting terrorism?

I think the first question is how we need to model the correct behavior. Because if we are still basing our policies on appeasing terrorism by demolishing Jewish houses or preventing Jews from accessing the Temple Mount, the whole... You're referring to houses that are being demolished because they were built without lawful permits. I'm referring to the general concept of not...

recognizing that the Jewish people, that Israelis, that Jews have every right to live in Judea and Samaria. Of course, they should build with... But the houses that are demolished are the ones that were built because they didn't receive housing, they didn't receive permission. That's not entirely... As you know as well as I...

that there are areas of Judea, some area that operate like the Wild West, that there's Israeli military control that applies Ottoman law. We have a case right now where we are supporting the representation of Han Angot farms, which are structures that were built peacefully, they were built lawfully. And yet, some in the Palestinian community are being paid to bring petitions before Israeli military courts

claiming that they have title to the land. And when they come to these courts, it's shown that there is no legal title. In fact, neither party has legal title. And instead of being able to issue the permits and behave like any Western democracy would and creating an administrative system to allow Jews to build there, what the courts are doing is applying Ottoman law.

And Ottoman law says that if there is a Muslim petitioner that says, I own the land, and a Jewish petitioner says, I own the land, and the two are in conflict and neither can prove deed or title, that it automatically gets reverted to the Muslim petitioner. That is what Ottoman law says because it's Sharia law. I think we're getting a little bit...

sidetracked here. This is a fascinating conversation, but I don't want to delve into this, first of all, because I'm not familiar with the specifics of the case, and two, because... No, but I want to understand how we tackle extremism, and I don't want to get into debate about Ottoman land law. I'm talking about the

the policies that we are implementing in Israel send signals to the rest of the world about whether or not we respect our sovereign rights, whether or not we respect our religious rights. And I do believe that in order to

fight anti-Semitism to tackle radicalization. The solution is Jewish unity and Jewish empowerment and understanding and respecting our history and our civil rights and our human rights, because we have spent tens of millions of dollars, especially in the West, fighting anti-Semitism, coming up with programs, putting people on stages, you know, having debates at Berkeley with two sides arguing. And frankly, it hasn't moved the needle.

because I don't think our mission should be to create a Palestinian state or to fight anti-Semitism per se. The mission of our community should be Jewish empowerment and unity and enforcement of our civil rights. And that's why I have dedicated myself as a civil rights attorney to bringing cases on behalf of Jewish communities around the world who face discrimination and also bringing cases in Israel against Islamists

anti-Semitic discrimination, because that is what I believe to be the solution. If you look at the black civil rights movement of the 50s and the 60s in the United States, it wasn't so much about taking neo-Nazis, putting them on a stage at Harvard and debating whether or not black people are inferior to whites, because that kind of logic and that kind of factual debate doesn't work. When we're printing 15-page pamphlets of

about why Israel is not an apartheid state, where we're responding to all the BDS resolutions at schools. That is not working. What worked in the 50s and 60s was a black empowerment movement, a peaceful movement that was meant to spread the narrative that was eventually accepted that black people are equal, they deserve equal protection under the law, and they deserve to have their civil rights enforced. And that's what I think this is. It's a battle for civil rights. It's, in fact...

I think the most important civil rights battle of our time, enforcing our sovereign rights in Israel to live with self-government and to live protected from terrorism and to do whatever we need to do to enforce our national security. Those are international legal rights and also domestically to enforce our civil rights. That is what I think we should do to ensure a better, safer future for us.

Brooke, it sounds like quite an action plan. It doesn't fill me with a huge amount of optimism because you know the old Canard, two Jews, three opinions. The idea that fighting anti-Semitism requires all Jews, when you say unity, right, to be on the same page in agreeing something that is currently quite a little bit outside the Overton window and is going to require actually most Jews to change their minds on one of the most important issues.

toxic political hot potatoes of the day doesn't sound like an actionable plan. No, because we all know how difficult it is from a basic synagogue board to an NGO to get people on the same page. But I'm really intrigued. But I'm really intrigued by this. Many historical examples, okay? I'm talking about grassroots mobilization and the launching of a civil rights movement. Taking Israel-Palestine, taking the politics, taking the hot buttons, taking the partisanship

out of our struggle for civil rights. Well, how are you going to do that? Well, we're doing it. We're doing it with the End Jew Hatred Movement. We're doing it very successfully because there has been a conscious strategy to divide the Jewish community along political partisan lines. Jews who...

support sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Jews who don't. Jews who are against settlers, Jews who are pro-settlers, Jews who are anti-Trump, Jews who are pro-Trump, Jews who are pro-reform, Jews who are anti-reform. All of this is a huge distraction. And when you take the politics out of what is essentially a civil rights issue, it's not a political issue. It's not an issue of foreign policy. It's a basic

civil rights issue, achieving parity for the Jewish community, a minority community, the oldest, most persecuted minority community in human history, achieving equal protection under the law and having our civil rights enforced both in Israel and the diaspora is not a divisive issue. It's actually the one thing that has unified the Jewish community abroad, at least abroad in the diaspora,

to fight against Jew hatred, to end Jew hatred. When we did our first protest... Sorry, maybe there are dots I'm not connecting. What's the connection between the fight for Jewish civil rights in the United States and the application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria? I'm just not seeing how the two issues are connected. So I'll explain it again. Would you support an area of Belgium that says no Jews are allowed to live here?

Would you support a certain arrondissement in Paris that says no Jews are allowed to live here? That would be a violation of the basic civil rights of the Jewish community in that area.

The same holds true... But if you're telling me that in order to... But if there's a problem that Jews aren't allowed to live in Belgium and the solution to that is that the Israeli military should control Belgium, then I would say, you know, for the sake of argument... I don't understand what you're saying. I think you're oversimplifying things for the sake of argument as opposed to going down a path of understanding with me. Okay? You're saying... Your question was how is...

Sovereignty in Judea, I can't even remember, related to... To civil rights in America. To me, these sound like two different issues. Same, same.

And the fact that we haven't recognized it as the same thing has been the impediment to enforcing our civil rights. So the simple example I'm giving you is that a Jew has a basic civil right to live wherever he or she wants to live. That is a basic civil right. Now that right has become politicized

in Israel because it's used as a straw man argument to justify terror. That a Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria is a provocation to terrorism, is a twisted argument taking what is a basic civil rights issue that everyone should agree on.

Parts of Belgium should not be Jude and Rhine. Parts of France should not be Jude and Rhine. So how is it acceptable that we're arguing that Judea, Jews are from Judea, we're indigenous to this region. If there's anywhere that we should have a civil right to live, it should be there. How is it acceptable to argue that? If Jews can pray anywhere in France, if Jews can pray anywhere in...

America, how are we arguing that Jews do not have the basic religious freedom, the freedom to assemble peacefully and lawfully on the Temple Mount and be protected when they do so? It is the same issue. And yet our civil rights have been politicized, have been wrapped up in a tantrum.

terrible debate about how to appease terrorism by denying our basic rights. And we started this conversation in the beginning on the same page, that the more that we make ourselves smaller, the more that we appease terror, the more that we think we can give up land, okay, we're not going to be on the Temple Mount, okay, we'll take all the Jews out, the more that we violate our own civil rights, the more that we encourage

the more that we reward it. So the simple notion that I'm proffering here is that we've spent the last decade

how many decades funding and fighting anti-Semitism that perhaps we should spend a little time looking within and seeing how empowering ourselves and standing up for our basic civil rights might send different messages, whether it's to Western governments or other diplomats or even to ourselves. I have seen miracles happen when Jews are empowered. I have seen students change the entire...

culture of a school simply by standing up and signing on to be a plaintiff to a lawsuit. I saw Sagot Winery CEO Jakob Berg change American foreign policy vis-a-vis the West Bank or Judea Samaria simply by signing on as a plaintiff in an anti-discrimination lawsuit, which then led to then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo come for the first ever visit to a Jewish business in Judea Samaria and declare that

Two things that Trump issued an executive order that says any imports from Israel, whether it's under Israeli government or military control, should be labeled made in Israel. And that, quote, Jews are not illegal in Judea. If that one CEO had not stood up for his basic civil rights against economic discrimination in a French administrative court, he would have not been able to change American foreign policy, which for the first time recognized that Jews have every right to live in Judea.

So that is the connection. I'm happy to tell you many, many stories of how standing up for your civil rights can change the narrative. There's just one small, small example also about changing the narrative and going on the offense. There's a wonderful group called Students Supporting Israel. And it used to be here in campuses. It used to be that the entire modus operandi of these pro-Israel campus organizations were responding responsibly.

Right? Israel Apartheid Week is coming up. We have to respond to that. BDS is coming up. Let's send out emails and fundraise to how to defeat that BDS vote. Well, Elon, who heads up or used to head up SSI, said, forget that.

I don't want to be on the defense. I want to be on the offense. He started submitting resolutions to student council bodies demanding recognition of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, demanding the school recognize Judea as part of Israel, demanding Jewish students are a minority community and deserve equal protection of the law. Now, what happened? The following year that all of these pro-Jewish resolutions were happening, that's

were meant to enforce the civil rights of Jewish students on campus, whether they won, whether they passed or they didn't pass, 50% of the so-called anti-Israel, anti-Semitic activity on campuses was reduced.

And the other side's energies were now being spent on responding to the Jewish students standing up for themselves and demanding equal protection and civil rights. And I definitely agree with that need to shift gears and go on the offensive. And I think you've helped me understand how you connect the dots between the question of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and civil rights for the American Jewish community.

I'm not sure I completely agree with maybe a discussion, an argument to have for another day, but it's certainly interesting. Help me just connect the dots on another issue. You're now working on a book that is not about fighting Jew hatred, but ending Jew hatred. Now, that sounds very presumptuous when you're talking about ending something that has been a part of the human experience, certainly of Western civilization for thousands of years, and you think you can end it.

So help me connect the dots and understand why this presumptuous title and mission statement. Sure. So it really depends on what your definition of ending is. Look, hatred is an emotion. Answered like a true lawyer. Hatred is an emotion. Everybody is born with the capacity to hate. You can never get rid of the emotion of hatred. But as we discussed in the beginning of this podcast, Jew hatred is taught. Right.

No child is born hating Jews. So in fact, the first part of the book, we talk about the indoctrination and my experience

in Tulcam and Nablus and Jenin and Ramallah, going into these schools that are run by terrorist groups, Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad. I went into schools, we went into UNRWA schools and documenting hate indoctrination and making the exact argument that you're not going to see an end to anti-Semitism unless the theology behind it in the Muslim world

is change, that's number one. But when you go to the outside the Middle East, to the diaspora, to the Western world,

And you look at, and the book was born, and the NGO hatred movement was born actually from a study. A study that we did of civil rights movements and minority rights movements in the 21st century. And what are the strategies and tactics and the messaging and how they're organized that leads to a successful civil rights movement.

And I'll use the Black Civil Rights Movement again as an example. Which hasn't ended racism. They have not ended anti-Black racism. And the Me Too movement certainly has not solved the problem of male misogyny. But what they have done, and this is the key, is impose consequences for bad behavior. Impose real consequences.

consequences for behavior they don't want to see, to push it back down to be at the fringe of society and the behavior that is marginalized and that is criticized. So you don't want to say the N word because you will be criticized and marginalized for doing so. It's politically incorrect. And so when we say ending Jew hatred, what we mean is

how do we operate as a grassroots civil rights movement using the tools of other minority rights and civil rights movements that they have used successfully, which is impact litigation, civil rights litigation, and grassroots mobilization to ensure there are consequences for Jew hatred. So that Jew hatred as a systemic, as a government policy, as something in the media, as something that is socially acceptable

is ended. And I do believe, in fact, I know that that is possible because we have seen examples of it both on a macro and a micro level occur. So we have seen, for example, I mentioned students mobilize on campus and create effect. We have seen civil rights lawsuits change policy

policies of some of the worst schools. We filed a lawsuit against San Francisco State University several years back, which ended up in a settlement agreement. Communities, not settlements, Brooke. A community agreement. I'm keeping you on a message. Like...

which ended up an agreement that rewrote not just SFSU, but the California State University system policy, which now reads, quote, that they recognize that Zionism is an integral part of the identity of some Jewish students, which moves.

That anti-Zionist behavior on campus, it's not a political issue. It's a civil rights issue. You are treating somebody differently because of their belief in something, because of their identity, their cultural, their ethnic, their religious identity.

So I went on a little bit of a tangent there, but ending Jew hatred means doing the exact same thing that the women's movement has done. The black civil rights movement has done the LGBTQ plus movement has done, which is establishing a body of case law as well as legislation and changing public perception of how anti-Jewish behavior is, is either accepted and tolerated or punished and, um,

And that brings us full circle to the question I teased earlier, whether the problem in the West can be reversed. You're saying that indeed it can, and it comes through imposing consequences for bad behavior. And if we look at it from a foreign policy perspective, it means that...

We discussed earlier the need for Palestinians to do an internal reckoning away from extremism, but whether they do that internal reckoning is based on the system of incentives for good or bad behavior that other countries place. A lot of food for thought. Brooke Goldstein, how can people follow your work on social media and wherever else you operate?

Thank you for asking. You can follow the End Jew Hatred movement on Instagram. It's just End Jew Hatred. You can follow the Lawfare Project as well on Instagram. And I'm realbrookgoldstein, also on Instagram.

Okay, Brooke Goldstein, thank you for coming on State of a Nation. Thank you for having me. And that brings us to the end of today's episode of State of a Nation with Brooke Goldstein. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please follow, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a like, give us a nice review, only if you enjoyed it. But if you've reached the end of the show, I'm guessing you did.

And please tell us in the comments, what kinds of guests do you want to hear on the show? What kind of episodes do you like? At the end of the day, we produce this podcast, not for us, but for you. So we want to know what you want to hear and what you think will educate, enlighten and elucidate you. I'm Elon Levy, and thanks for joining us.