Ep. 172: The October 7 wake up call for unity against antisemitism
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It is a 20-plus year exercise as we fell asleep at the wheel and allowed our universities to be funded with Arab money from Qatar and Iran. Our governments have betrayed us. They have betrayed us, they have betrayed the Jew, and they betrayed the alliance with Israel. This is happening right in your backyard. ♪♪

This episode of Think Twice is sponsored by the Jewish Future Promise, ensuring a vibrant and thriving future for Jews and Israel. Hello, and welcome to Think Twice. This week we have an interesting conversation for you with author Israel Ellis about the October 7th attack on Israel and its aftermath, both in the Jewish state and around the world.

But before we start today's program, I want to remind you, as always, to like this video and podcast, subscribe to JNS, and click on the bell for notifications. Also, you still don't have to wait a full week for more of our content. There is a Jonathan Tobin Daily podcast where I share more news and analysis with you about the most significant issues we're facing today. You can find The Daily Show under Jonathan Tobin Daily on the JNS channel, wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, JNS's inaugural International Policy Summit will be held later this month in Jerusalem. Click the link in the description below to request registration in order to attend. And now to today's program. Even 16 months later, it's difficult to process what happened on October 7th, 2023. We still struggle with questions about why the Hamas-led Palestinian assault on Israel occurred.

Why did Israel's vaunted army fail to prevent it? It's not the first military disaster in history and not even the first for Israel, but it's a disaster that historians will be unpacking for decades to come. But perhaps an even more important question is why did the world react as it did to this act of aggression launched by a genocidal Islamist terror group?

Why was this act of barbarism used as an excuse for a campaign to delegitimize the victim of the attack and even to deny the truth of the atrocities committed by the Palestinians? Why didn't Israel's friends among the democracies, including the United States, take an unambiguous stand in favor of the Jewish state's defense and, more importantly, for the complete destruction of Hamas?

Why was it the signal for the start of an unprecedented surge of anti-Semitism around the world, but also in North America, where Jew hatred became fashionable and lauded as a form of human rights activism? And what can we do to ensure not only that it doesn't happen again, but also how do we address the normalization of anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism?

And how can lovers of freedom be united behind a campaign aimed at preventing Iran, which fomented the seven-front war against Israel, from continuing to fund terrorism and threaten not just Israel, but the Middle East and the West? And how can we heal the divisions within Israel and the Jewish people that played not only a part in convincing Hamas to attack, but hindered efforts to completely defeat them?

How can, in short, the lovers of life be better prepared and unified behind the effort to defend themselves against a cult of death that has improbably garnered support from some of the most educated and supposedly enlightened people in the West? One person who has thought a great deal about these questions is author Israel Ellis, and we're pleased to have him with us today.

Israel Ellis is a Canadian-born entrepreneur who has successfully established businesses in entertainment, technology, software, logistics, manufacturing, and real estate. He's also an author. In 2019, he wrote Moving Through Walls, The Four Foundations to Living Your Best Life, a guide to self-empowerment and purpose-driven living. And he is now the author of The Wake-Up Call.

Global Jihad and the Rise of Antisemitism in a World Gone Mad. Israel Ellis, welcome to Think Twice. Thank you very much, Jonathan. Well, it's great to have you with us. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. I want to start by asking you why you thought it was important to write this book, 10-7, The Wake-Up Call.

There's been a flood of commentary and reporting about October 7th and the war that followed. What do you think has been most missing from what we've read and heard about the conflict and that your readers need to know? Sure. Well, Jonathan, first, I'd like to start off by telling you that this evening I'm in Tel Aviv.

And I have a son who is an IDF officer in the Army here. After the horrific events that took place on October 7th, we were obviously very, very concerned about our son. And we were traveling, leading after October 7th, we had made several trips to Europe and around the United States and, of course, where we live in Canada.

And we eventually made it to Israel. And everywhere where we were, people are asking the one single question of how. How did this happen?

How could one of the most sophisticated armies in the world have been surprised by this? How was Hamas able to organize such a sophisticated attack with sophisticated technology within a span of two years, some say, in terms of what they were doing? How is it possible in this day and age that this could have happened? And it really plagued me. That idea really, really haunted me.

One day I had, you know, gone and got permission to go to Gaza. And I wanted to experience the distance between Gaza and Be'eri. And so I walked the distance to see what were those terrorists seeing when they were running through from Gaza into Be'eri. That night, I sat in my

in my apartment on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv, thinking about the day's events, thinking about what I saw, thinking about the homes that I saw in a beautiful, pristine kibbutz, burned down, bullet holes, people murdered, bloodstained still on the streets, the terrible stories of the brutality, thinking about all that. And I started to ask the question, how? And I started to scream it out

How did this happen? And I took my computer and I wrote it down and I wrote how and I started to really think. And there are seven observations that came to me. And I want to say specifically, I use the word observations, not answers, because I don't think we have the answers yet.

So I use the word observation. And I made seven observations of how October 7th had taken place. And that is what the wake-up call is about. Because the book is important. It sort of weaves through the stories of various Israelis affected. And I've interviewed high-level people in the Shabakh, in the army,

I've interviewed regular people and followed their stories, and it intertwines through these seven observations that I've made of how October 7th happened. And so the purpose of the book is to provide answers, is to provide some context, is to

is to provide some comfort to the isolation of Jews around the world who are feeling the unprecedented tidal wave of anti-Semitism. And for people who are out there and who are looking at the rhetoric and the news and the protests and saying, what is going on? People who are not affiliated or not connected to the situation, I want to provide the correct information.

when it comes to what is going on in the question, in the answer to the question of how. Yeah, I think those are questions a lot of us asked. And, you know, you described your own, your visit to the site, you know, of Berry. And for those of us who have traveled there and seen the devastation, especially in the first months after that, but even later,

You know, it's been, you know, it's a traumatic experience. It's much like visiting. I think it's now become like visiting the sites of the death camps in Europe in terms of how it's affecting people and its place in history. Your book is in one sense a primer about the war, but also very personal.

Talk a bit about, you know, you've already mentioned your connection with your son who serves in the IDF, but talk a bit not only about the horror of how it affected you of October 7th, but also the aftermath in your own home in Canada that convinced you that something very different was happening.

There has been a tsunami of anti-Semitism globally, and it erupted at precisely the same time, literally on October 8th. It was this tidal wave of protests coming out into the streets. And it made me think quite a bit about how is it possible that these things are happening and that no one is shutting it down?

And of course, we were all bothered by it. And there's sort of a choice that you make when you see something like this. You either go ahead and attribute to a bunch of radical nutcases that are parading in the streets and then they'll go away and we'll just be quiet about it. Or you can actually say, wow, there is something really, really underlying over here. There's something happening and this thing is growing and it grew. And I think the two or three incidents that happened to me

That really affected me was one day before I had gone to Israel for the first time, I was driving my car and I was leaving my neighborhood. And about five minutes out of my neighborhood is the major highway entry point, which is right outside the Jewish neighborhood in Toronto, Canada.

And you need to get on this highway to go down the town or if you want to efficiently traverse around the city. And there was a protest. Like, this is not downtown. This is not in front of City Hall. This is right at a neighborhood, a suburban neighborhood. And there was a protest set up where there are several, there's got to be about 50 people over there, masked with calisthenics flags, with slingshots.

slogans from the river to the sea, Jews go home now. And they're just being allowed to block traffic. And the police are there. And I see one officer in, and this is, of course, just coming into the winter. And I don't know if you know, but protests take a lot of energy and they're offering them Tim Horton donuts and coffee.

And I'm looking at this and I'm shaking my head. And then a police comes over to my car and he says, you need to turn around for your own safety. I said, excuse me. He said, where? I said, where am I supposed to go? He says, you just go back to your neighborhood for your own safety. I said, are you kidding? Are you sending the Jew back to the ghetto? Is that what's happening over here? I was I was flabbergasted.

The same time, the same time there was a demonstration down at the Eaton Center, which is a major shopping mall, major tourist attraction. And there was a demonstration of police showed up.

And they showed up. There must have been about 50 officers over there. And there was probably a couple of hundred demonstrators. And here's the thing. As you know, Jonathan, they're intimidating. They wear masks. They wear the same type of Hamas type of outfits. And yet they're allowed in our public places to intimidate and with slogans that incite hatred and violence. Right.

And they went up to one of the officers, and this was right, I was watching on the news, my mouth dropped open. And the officer asked him, they blocked the entrance to the mall, they blocked the entrance to a store they were protesting against because there was some Israel connection to the store, I believe it was Zara. And he said to the officer, I'm going to take you six feet under, man.

He threatened to kill that officer. He threatened to enact a violence. And guess what? Nothing happened to him. Nothing. The officer just stood stoic and let it happen. And it is incidents like these that are happening around the globe where our governments have betrayed us. They have betrayed us. They have betrayed the Jew.

And they betrayed the alliance with Israel because they do not have the agency to do anything about it. In Canada, and I'm going to speak about Canada because I know it's just as bad in New York and in other areas of the country in America. I was talking to the chief of police in Toronto. 450 charges have been laid to demonstrators. Jonathan, zero convictions. Zero convictions. Zero convictions.

They lack the agency. The person I interviewed at the chief of police offices had tears in his eyes. They have no legislation. They have no ability, no direction from government of how to deal with these protests, how to deal with these encampments. And I've seen it in New York trying to get into Grand Central Station and the doors being locked and absolutely, again, no agency by the government to do anything about it.

This is very dangerous territory. This is reminiscent of 1933. So all of that just sort of came into me and I'm thinking about where does this go? And this is no longer a bunch of fanatics. There's something real going on here. And so I started investigating the funding of these encampments and I started to investigate, well, how did this happen? What is this? And it is the global jihad. It is a 20...

plus year exercise as we fell asleep at the wheel.

and allowed our universities to be funded with Arab money from Qatar and Iran and Iranian radicals who've infiltrated into our education system and have radicalized people. And we have done this and we have fallen asleep at the wheel and have allowed it to happen. Europe is worse and America, this is happening right in your backyard, right in the backyard of America.

And something's got to be done. So in the book, I deal with the observations and I deal with what I call the wake up call because it's time to wake up. This is not going away. And 20 years from now or so, our education system, which is fraught with anti-Semitism,

And sure, Trump administration, they're stepping up. They're stepping up to the plate. They've taken away the funding or they're dangling the funding and Columbia saying, you've got this. But what happens when Trump is on? 20 to 30 years from now, some of these kids, some of our youth who are being educated today in the art of anti-Semitism and global jihad couldn't be the next president of the United States.

could be the next prime minister. So this is a dangerous area and something has to be done. So I implore the world in my book to wake up because that's the only way. We must do something about changing the narrative, changing the syllabus of hate that is infiltrated within every part of our society that allows the insanity,

of people marching in the streets calling for the genocide of the Jewish people right in front of everyone's faces, right on Main Street America. I find that deplorable. Yes. Well, that is very well said. And, you know, obviously, this is a question that is now getting to the top of the news with, as you say, President Trump's efforts to fight anti-Semitism in some of the elite schools in the United States.

Nevertheless, obviously, there's a lot of pushback against him from the political left. And we've created a situation where that's controversial. You write about the question asking, why do they hate us? That's not a new question for Jews.

But there's obviously something very different that's brought it about. You note in your book, you write of your own experiences when you were in school during the period of the Oslo Accords, when there was a lot of optimism about the peace process, sort of the euphoria of the post-Oslo period.

To the present, where a peace process seems like science fiction. So, you know, can you kind of drill down for us, for our audience, how you think this takeover of the education system happened? You know, obviously, foreign funding is part of it, but it's not the entire story.

You know, I'm over. I'll start with this, Jonathan. Over 30 years ago, when I was doing my graduate work in political science and specifically in Middle East studies, I was a huge idealist. And as one as young at that age should be. And I was very positive about the opportunity of peace happening in the Middle East. In fact, I was so celebrate. I was so, so positive about it. So optimistic.

that I had hosted a party in my flat and invited our, we had a class, Forum Peace in the Middle East, and I invited the Palestinians and the Israelis, and I made a cake, and half of it was the Palestinian flag, half of it was the Israeli flag. I was one of these idealist young people who felt that, wow, we're going to have peace, and this is it, and it's happening. We're on the cusp of it. There is a fundamental difference between yesterday and today, and that is the value of life.

Because today we are, and we've always been the lovers of life, but we have a profound, profound shift in the value of life on the moral consequence of what the jihad means. These are the lovers of death. And I call the book In a World Gone Mad because mad is the acronym for mutually assured destruction. And mutually assured destruction is a political theory that applies to

when the other side of the coin, the other side of the battlefield loves life just as much as the former side. But when you're dealing with a party where they're the lovers of death, you lose all leverage in negotiation for peace because there is no peace when there is no other side. And I think that what has brought us to this brink, what has brought us to the point of this infiltration and this dissonance is

is the bankruptcy of the liberal movement, the liberal ideology around 2010 or so. They started to take money in from all of these donors from Qatar, whether that money was hidden from where it was coming from or whether it was direct deposits. And around 2012, Columbia University was asked the question if it was a dangerous ethical act

space to be and to be taking money from an oil-rich Arab nation whose views are completely opposed to ours? And the answer was absolutely not, that this money will not affect our curriculum. Well, we know exactly what happened there. We allowed

funds to come in to finance and to finance the defunct or the bankrupt liberal ideology, but literally monetary gains to come in higher

with conditions attached to it of who they could hire. And all of a sudden we started to see professors and teachers come in and the syllabus changed. We allowed this funding and completely turned a blind eye from coming from countries that do not carry the same democratic or moral principles that we as America hold.

hold true and dear to the important beliefs of God, people, the country, safety, security, and freedom. And they've used that. They've used that freedom of speech, and they've leveraged it against us. And we have lost that. We have lost that. We have allowed that to walk in and happen.

And we must stop that. We must stop all funding from countries and from places that do not agree with the values of what America stands for. So I would tell you that over about 20 years, there's been all this funding that has come in that has created a foundation of educational education.

teachers within our educational system that anywhere where you go in any school, public school and universities, colleges, campuses, it's all about teaching anti-Semitism right now. Any subject that you're taking in any teacher, the direction is, and so it's not even hit it.

So unions have told teachers assistants that we will provide, and I'm going to talk specifically in Canada, that the Canadian Teachers Union has said we will provide legal assistance to any teacher assistant that runs into trouble when they teach about the Zionist agenda and the genocide or the occupation of

or the colonization by Israel. And in my book, The Wake-Up Call, I break down each one of those claims to show how dissonant and how completely false those terms are. Anyone who's out there protesting using such terms really are completely ignorant to the meaning and how those terms come about.

But I think that the problem that we face and the unbelievable challenge is the very foundation deeply rooted within our educational platform and is completely manipulated and perversely infiltrated by the global jihad.

And that's what we have to change. And that's going to be quite the challenge. And it's going to take agency. And it's going to take, as Alan Dershowitz quoted recently, a moral strength to deal with. And we must deal with that in a moral way and with strength, because that's the only way that we're going to come through this if we hope to do it without continued violence to put down this anti-Semitism. It affects us in Israel greatly.

is really the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world, as you well know, Jonathan. And this is why the world needs to wake up. We need to wake up to it. So in the wake up call, I have and I have, you know, carefully and easily. It's very extremely easily written. It's meant to be written for the layperson, not so sophisticated, extremely well cited, well versed to give.

context and to give the information needed for people who want to understand what's going on, and more importantly, for people who want to be able to counter the narrative. Yeah, I think you certainly do that. You drill down into what happened with the war, why these charges against Israel are false. One thing that struck me, you're very specific about using the word pogrom to describe October 7th. Not everyone, especially on the Jewish left, agrees with that.

They don't want to use a word that is associated with attacks on Jews in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Why are they wrong? Why should we be using that term? And specifically, why is what you, I think, rightly brand, label a lie about genocide being conducted by Israel? Why do you think that so resonates with so many people?

I think that we're just, we just got to stop being afraid to call things out for what they are. I'm actually very careful, and in the book I use the disclaimer that I don't like to compare anything to the Holocaust. And when I use the word Nazism or I use the word Holocaust, I do so with reverence to a time that has taken place that does not deserve any type of comparison to anything else. But

We need to call this out for what this is. And this is a program. And the narrative of what is going on in the world is a return to the rhetoric of blood libel, accusations against Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. And what is happening today is the precursor

to the normalization of anti-sabotage. And I assure you, it is already happening and it's happening in lone wolf attacks, but those lone wolf attacks are coming together. It is already happening and the jihadist does not discriminate between the Jew, the Christian or the Muslim.

They will, as it happened in New Orleans, some random guy in a position will get into his pickup truck and he has been radicalized and he's received the go ahead. That's all going right up to Iran. And I think we got to call it out for what it is. We're afraid to. And this is the problem. Our generation has been disillusioned.

by the idea that this can never happen. Well, my wife's father and my wife's grandfather warned me many times. He is unbelievable. His name was Elias Rubinovich, and he was from a place called Lodz in Poland, and all of his family was wiped out in the Holocaust. And he has said to me many times in conversations when he was alive, don't get so comfortable.

Never again are not just two words. It's a warning, and you must carry that warning forward. And I think that I was disillusioned by the ideal fact that

that this could never happen, not in America, not in such a beautiful life. Why would people want to jeopardize this? And I think we were focused on the Eastern Europe sort of story. And we weren't looking at the Arab, at the Islam story. And I'm going to go one step further to Jonathan. This is not an Islam versus Islam.

situation because that is exactly what the jihadists are after. They're trying to turn the entire Muslim world and to try to turn the Jewish, make it between the Jews and Muslims.

This is not the Muslim way. The Muslim in the Quran, and I bring it out in my book, is very specific about how to treat Jewish people. And there have been centuries and centuries of great relationships between the Jews and Muslims. This is a very different, this is a manipulation of the Quran. This is a bastardization of what true Islam is about.

And I say that as an Orthodox Jew and as somebody who studied the Torah and both studied the Quran. These people, these lovers of death, these jihadists coming from the sponsors, the greatest sponsor of terror in our time, which is Iran, this is all done to manipulate, to create the world caliphate, which is the global jihad. And this makes up a very small percentage of the Islamic population.

And this does not represent that jihadists puts the Muslims there. They manipulate their own people. When Iran was sending missiles over to Israel, they did not discriminate. And there were missiles that were directly headed to the al-Asqa. And it didn't really occur to anybody that they would have killed anybody in their path. This is a very... What is happening...

The global jihad and jihadists is a terrorist organization that has nothing to do with God, Allah, or any type of religious doctrine. This has to do with expansionism, and it has to do with subjugation. These people do not want to enslave us. They want to kill us. They want to exterminate us. And that is the biggest difference.

between a territorial or a power struggle or a classic war situation and what is happening today. Yeah, well, I think you're right about the role of Iran. And let's drill down. Let's talk a little more specifically about how anti-Semitism has become normalized in the West, especially in academia and even on the streets of North American cities.

You know, you've spoken about some of the main factors that led so many people in the U.S. and Canada to sympathize more with the Palestinians who launched the October 7th attacks rather than the victims. But why is it that and it's certainly academia is part of it, but it's also in the media, it's in the arts, etc.

It's become very fashionable to attack Israel and to really enable anti-Semitism. How is it that so many seem to side with what you rightly call a death cult and not with a vibrant and diverse democracy? It is really perplexing, isn't it, that you see these entitled, white, privileged students who don't even know which river and which sea that they're talking about.

who are camped out on campuses calling for the death of Jews. And I got to tell you, what's even more perplexing, what's more perplexing to me is when I see feminists

who are standing up for Hamas and sympathizing and calling Hamas resistance fighters, people who raked, brutally raped and dismembered women, and feminists are standing up there protecting them. Or when I see queers for Palestine,

I mean, this has got to be the most bizarre thing because Israel happens to be the most welcoming place. Tel Aviv is one of the best places for LGBTQ sensitivity. And you would walk into Gaza and maybe I would maybe put money on it that you'd last about three seconds holding your boyfriend's hands and you're done. You've got the minister of health from Canada, Yara Sachs,

holding a Jewish person herself, being used by the former prime minister, another useful idiot of Hamas, Justin Trudeau, and sends her to Ramallah to hold the hand of Mahmoud Abbas.

And you see that. And this is somebody in mental health. Okay. So why is this? I am perplexed, just as you're perplexed. So why is this happening? I have to come up with a lot of reasons. But here's what the bottom line is. I think we need to go into history. And I think we need to look at the past examples of other times where people stood silently by others.

when this momentum of normalization of Jew hatred took place. And I think one of the problems that we're having over here is that there is a gathering of momentum that happens where people, and when you couple that with a society that has

that we've got like tremendous ADD where people just can't focus enough to take a look at the information. And then you have misinformation. You have false news coming out there and you've absolutely no regulations whatsoever.

to verify and validate proper journalism. And when there's no agency to protect people from hate and where the syllabus of hate is propagated everywhere, then you're going to have this momentum of hatred come through and people join the bandwagon because that is what the mass problem does. And we've seen this happen in Germany. We've seen it happen in Spain.

We've seen it happen in many other places where there's this momentum. Now, why? Why is there the Jew hatred? Where did they get it from? So I'm going to talk about Islam for a second.

And I'm going to tell you that true Islam has, in my opinion, and I'm sorry because this is a little controversial because people would like to hear me say something other than this, but I'm going to tell you that in the Quran, in the surahs that make up the Quran, there is nothing in the Quran that commands the people of Islam to kill Jews. There's nothing. There is only one

particular hadith. And a hadith is a commentary of the Quran, which may or may not have been verbally recorded from something that Muhammad might have said, where it talks about chasing the Jew who was hiding behind the Gurkha tree.

and from this, and to kill the Jew, and from this very, very small hadith, which is highly interpretable, okay, is where all of the jihadists, all the imams will stand from their pulpits, and we'll use that as an excuse for a global jihad. And by the way, the word jihad has nothing to do with war. The word jihad is the same word that we would use for the

the challenge that we have between God and between our own human existence and all the different challenges we have between the will of the good and the will of the bad that happens on either side in our brains and our kind of our moral compass.

And interesting enough, Israel, Yisrael in Hebrew, means he who is challenged by God. He was dealing with challenges of God. And that was Jacob received that name biblically after he fought the angel of Esau and was successful and received this name called Yisrael as a change to his. It's he who is challenged.

with God. And jihad is the exact same thing. Jihad does not mean to go to war, but the jihadist has taken this, and jihadism has taken this and turned this into a very different context, and that is all about the battle cry, and that battle cry is based on the extermination of the Jewish person, but this has nothing to do with mainstream models. That's the first thing I want to say. If we look at Christianity, of course, we

We know that Christianity, going way back, is, you know, that there's been many justifications in the name of Christianity for programs and for, you know, going back to the Inquisition. And this, of course, has to do with the death of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ was originally a Jew. And, you know, years afterwards through the different, when the New Testament, after the

convocation that this was then looked at as the killers of Jesus. And that's where the whole blood libel comes in, the whole bloodletting idea of the Jews and used that as justification against the Jewish people. But again, the Christian people and many Christian people, I might not believe in any way, shape or form that any part of the Bible suggests that

the killing of the Jew is okay. We know, and every religion, every religious person will agree that the story of Cain and Abel, for example, which I talk about, is that the idea of murdering somebody is inherently wrong. It's morally wrong. We understand that morality without being taught that morality. And yet, and so we already know that. I would suggest that

That the anti-Semitism is always a precursor for something bigger than that, because the Jew is a great scapegoat and a great excuse to get to the next level.

Hitler was not interested in exterminating the Jew. Hitler was interested in creating a worldwide German power. Russia did not persecute the Jewish people. Stalin did not persecute the Jewish people because he had a problem with Jews, but he saw them as an easy excuse to divert the attention of the subjects from the famine and from the

a fraud being committed for their own benefit. And the global jihad is not because Islam is against the Jew, but they're using it as the red herring. They're using that as the scapegoat, because the true intent of global jihad, which comes from Iran,

is a total worldwide caliphate. And this is a power play by Iran. And Iran must be stopped. There's no question about it, why it's taking us so long. Very frustrating. But this is what it comes down to. So this is the gate of the entryway. The global jihad which is happening is a call to war against all of Western society.

And we've got to really wake up to this because it is the canary in the coal mine. That's what it is. And now a word about our sponsor. At the heart of the Jewish people is a promise that ensures our traditions, values and future endure for generations. The Jewish Future Promise is a movement I endorse. It is a moral commitment to securing that future.

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Now, you've spoken and written about how past governments in both the United States and Canada failed in their approach to the Middle East. We've talked a lot about the failures of the Biden administration and the Obama administration on this program. I don't have a Canadian expert on every week, so tell us a little bit about what were the dynamics?

that led to the Justin Trudeau government taking the stand that they did on Israel and being so soft on anti-Semitism as you've illustrated?

I think it's a complete betrayal by the Canadian government of the Jewish people of Canada. I think that from the U.S., we know Obama, the first thing he did when he took office was to bow to the Saudi prince, was to apologize to the Iranians. Biden continued the funding of Yunra, continued the funding of Iran. And Justin Trudeau, well, he's the biggest idiot of all of them.

And this drama teacher, he just didn't get it because I kept on defending him. I kept on saying, I don't think he really gets it. But the truth is that he's ambivalent and he's ignorant. And he's always looking for two sides. And there is no two sides when 5,000 people come into sovereign territory, murder, rape, mutilate people.

and kill and then kidnap innocent men, women, children, and use them and constantly commoditize it. Just disgusts me, these ceasefires negotiations where we're commoditizing our precious, precious lives here in Israel.

And this guy, he's looking for two sides, but there are no two sides. There is no moral equivalence that they're trying to find. Not in this situation. There never has been. When the lovers of life have to deal with the lovers of death, it bankrupts any opportunity for moral equivalency. That does not stand on anything. Justin Trudeau is simply, you know, Canadian ignorant person.

of anything to do with what's going on in Israel. And I think that he's very misguided, ill-advised, and misjudged the situation. I think it's very unfortunate that Canada has taken the stand that they did when they had plenty of opportunities to announce

that what Hamas had done without even having to take a position on the whole Arab-Israeli conflict, which, by the way, I don't think there is an Arab-Israeli conflict. I think it's a jihadist Jewish conflict. But without even taking a position on this conflict,

They could have, without taking the position, he could have declared that what Hamas did is not part of the Canadian value system. It was wrong, but he did not do that. Not until after several times it took being prompted. He very much made a bad call. Would I say it's anti-Semitism? Would I say the root of the Canadian government, the Liberal government, is anti-Semitic? I'd really rather not say that because I don't want to believe that.

I'm a proud Canadian, but I don't feel welcome in my own home. I don't feel welcome where I was born and where I've worked so hard and contributed so much. And yet they continue to fund terrorism. They continue to fund UNRWA. When Sharabi, I'm sorry, I'm getting off topic here, but when Ali Sharabi stood before the United Nations...

and was accountable as an eyewitness to what happened. He admonished the United Nations for allowing Yunra to feed terrorists while they were starving hostages. But this is what Canada has turned the blind eye. And we know from the Bible that turning the blind eye makes you just as culpable as the people who are murderers themselves. So it is a very painful experience

Very painful recognition.

then our Canadian Liberal government, our illiberal Liberals, have gone so far to the left that I need to look to my right to see them coming. And that they have betrayed us in the most terrible of ways. And I want to counter, I want to say it's ignorance because I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. But the truth is that underneath that is that dormant anti-Semitism that has been simmering in the surface.

And again, this is education. We must implore, we must implore governments to ensure that we get rid of this anti-Semitic narrative. He brought in 10 million immigrants. Country of Canada is 30 million people when liberal governments came into power. We have 40 million people. In last year alone, we brought in 1,000.

million immigrants, many of which are from Arab nationalities, 250,000 Palestinians. So you take a guess of where Canada's headed. It's an important number. It's unfortunate. Let me ask you about his liberal successor. Are you more hopeful about him or

And what are your thoughts about the Trump administration, which is, as we know, not so popular outside of the U.S. and Israel, and especially north of the 49th parallel these days? Well, you know, Mark Kearney is a governor, former governor of Bank of Canada and the former governor of the Bank of England.

And from an economic point of view, he seems to be stability and he seems to know what he's talking about. However, it was very disappointing when he first was given the mantle of the prime ministership of Canada that the first thing he did within the first day is he –

is that he land blasted Israel for cutting off the very fuel and water and electricity and humanitarian supplies because we're going out of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Mark, you don't get it, buddy. The humanitarian crisis is created. We created that. Canadians allowed that humanitarian crisis to take place by giving, by allowing Hamas to build up everything they needed to act on October 7th. We're complicit in all of that. And so

That really was upsetting that he had adopted sort of his predecessor's policy when it came to Israel. And that was I really had hoped for a lot more.

So, I mean, frankly and personally, we've got a wonderful candidate. His name is Polyab and of the Conservative Party in Canada. And of Conservative Party, yes. And I really believe that Polyab is sort of it's going to be a tight race this time. And unfortunately, it was a landslide when Justin was there. And I wish the useful idiot would have stuck around. But now I think that it's going to be a bit of a fight.

Because Canadians, frankly, and people around the world, I mean, they're just interested in what affects them within their immediate sort of what they can see. And Israel seems a little bit sort of out there around in the reach what's going on in Gaza. Well, it's just another place. Today I was watching on a YouTube video taken about protests in Amsterdam. And it was like I'm watching TV, but wow, I'm lit.

terribly terrible what's happening in Amsterdam, but they're allowing these thousands of people to march into the street with these anti-Jewish sentiments. And that's another story. You talk about Trump, and I'm going to talk about him for a minute, and I'm going to say something, again, controversial, because if I weren't controversial, I wouldn't be Israel Ellis, and I wouldn't have written the wake-up call. Go right ahead. Trump is of divine providence. I cannot think, and it's not that I'm a lover of Trump. Listen, I got to tell you, I mean, we all look at what's happened, but

I got to say that for this guy to get elected after everything that's happened into a second term after the Biden term, and for everything that really all of the, we'll call it mishigas that has happened, taken place. Okay. For this guy to get elected. Big term. To serve. To serve.

I can't come up with another term to describe it because we could say craziness, but craziness doesn't really do it. You got to use the Yiddish term Mishigas because Mishigas is somebody that has crazy, crazy antics, but the guy's effective. And that's what we'll use the term Mishigas with. He is, he is, he is by far, he must, he is God's messenger. There's no question about it. And I know that seems to be a very strong statement, but,

And that's OK. I'm at an age where I can make those statements. I've been just coming into that age. But I mean, survived assassination, survived political assassinations, right early in it. And sure, I'm a little concerned. I'm a little concerned. I think we're all a little bit concerned. But let's face it.

Messengers of God are not normal people, right? We think they're crazy because when someone says they're a messenger of God, we usually say the guy's in that case, okay? But I think that Trump is a messenger of God and he's doing something that no other leader is doing out there. And his suggestions might seem off the wall, but you see, Trump has a strategy. I don't think he's crazy at all, right? This guy is brilliant. And what he does is he says the most obscene things

And he provides the craziest of ideas. But what he does, he brings people to the table. Let's talk about how crazy it is. And he brings them to the edge. He brings people to the edge because when you bring people to the edge, you get new ideas. And what's been happening over the last 80 years, and I'm going to take this right back to the beginning of the foundation of Israel and through all this, it's the same old, same old, it's the insanity of the repetition.

We have provided Hamas with 14 opportunities for peace that have all been squandered. It's the same old thing. And what does Canada say? What do the Democrats say? What?

oh, well, let's do a conference. Let's do a conference. Let's bring both sides to the table. Both sides. We'll bring the people who are terrorists who want to plant bombs and send young people suicide vests off the kilp. And we're going to bring them. We're going to give them a seat at the table. And we're going to bring them with one of the most moral countries of the world. And we're going to vilify that moral country. That Frank DeVos is the only democratic area of the Middle East. And we're going to put them through this. And we're going to

And we're going to humiliate them again and again to go over. So it's insanity, Jonathan. It's classic insanity. And at least what Trump does is he puts out really good ideas. Hey, I think it's a great idea to pay off every Palestinian, give them $250,000, give them a half a million dollars.

get out of Dodge, buddy. Go somewhere else. Go start a new life somewhere else. We're going to go ahead. We're going to come into Gaza. We're going to take it over. We're going to build one of the most beautiful rivieras of the Middle East. And we put up golf courses and hotels. And I know that sounds crazy, but at least it gets the conversation going because no one is suggesting anything else but the same old, same old. And

And I know that people are concerned. I'm very concerned about the tariffs and everything else that Trump is sort of proposing. But I believe...

that he has a strategy and his strategy is chaos. He creates chaos. He brings people to the edge and then new ideas emerge. And I believe that's his MO. That is what he's doing. But hopefully I'm right about him being a divine province because I just cannot see it any other way of how this guy has been able to get into power and to be where he is today. Uh,

Let's hope that the next four years really produce some powerful alternatives to the old ways of the way the world's been run because it does not work today. And let's hope we can create enough legacy in that four years to create a future, future leaders that we can be proud of. Let's turn for a moment to Israel.

Obviously, Israel is divided, as it always is politically, about something. Prime Minister Netanyahu, about whom you have very strong opinions too, is a focus of controversy. But I think the issue that is dividing Israelis right now most severely is whether the government's priority ought to be ransoming the hostages, the remaining hostages, at virtually any price,

Or the defeat of Hamas to ensure that it can never happen again and also allow the many Israelis who were forced to flee their homes, about whom you also write, to go back to their communities. What do you think is the right answer? Or is it really something of an impossible dilemma? Well, Israel is in an impossible situation. But this is the land of miracles where miracles do happen.

I believe the first thing that we have to look at, I talk about it in my book, my seventh observation that I make in my book is Jewish disunity. And Jewish disunity is when Moses brought the Israelites to the land of Israel, he was very, very clear on a warning of...

of what the future holds. Moses said to the people of Israel that if you follow the way of the land, what we call in Hebrew, it means the way of the land. If you follow the way of land, and what is the way of the land? It is mutual respect for your fellow man or woman, person,

And that mutual respect is the way of the land. Because when you have a love for each other and mutual respect for each other, you will always come out on top with respect to our moral compass. But when you fall away the land, your enemies will not touch you. You will have blessings in the land.

But when you go against the way of the land, you will have curses. And the Jews are divided. The Israel society that is divided and the Jewish, sorry, the division of the Jewish people is not unnoticed by their enemies. They noticed it and they used it as the backdrop

to build up what would become the terrible events of October 7th. I think that the fundamental problem in Israel, and by the way, I have nothing but respect for Prime Minister Netanyahu. He is perhaps one of Israel's greatest leaders. He is a

a brilliant, brilliant person. I'm just in total admiration of him. But every leader gets drunk of power and every leader who gets drunk with power loses sight of the common man. And as soon as you get drunk with power and lose sight of the power,

the common man. You need to leave that office because this is not a kingdom. This is a democracy and that's what democracy is about. I think fundamentally at the foundation of the problem that we have over here, the challenge is that the

The electoral system of Israel no longer serves its masters. When Israel was first developed as much of a homogeneous society, the idea of their political system actually did not create a lot of division between people. It was a proportional representation system, no constitution. We created basic laws as we went ahead.

And it was okay at the beginning because much of Israel was homogeneous. And so it sort of like there wasn't a lot separating between policies of parties. But today, Israel is very much a heterogeneous society and completely diversified with very diverse interests. And the problem, the fundamental challenge that we have within the current electoral process is it puts the minority interests in charge of the popular vote.

And we must, we have a crisis over here, a crisis of democracy in Israel that must be changed.

And how it must be changed is that the system must be changed. Number one, Israel needs a constitution. Number two, Israel needs two houses, just like in Canada, just like U.S. property, most democracy have. Number three, Israel must move away from proportional representation and into constituency representation. Because in proportional representation, no one is representing specific regions. It is a slate of candidates, those who get the most votes,

at the pop of the slate, regardless of their popularity, they get to go ahead and become lawmakers in the Knesset. That is not how a heterogeneous society is going to be successful. We need to divide Israel into electoral districts and we need to create a constituency system where we have representatives representing different parties. You cannot have 26 parties

in a national election and end up having, piecing together a coalition from a little here, from a little there, because ultimately what's going to happen, this is exactly what's happened, is you get the religious far-right fundamental parties that are in control of what is the agenda of the government. And that is absolutely not going to be a healthy situation for the popular vote. We must give back the power to the people. And in order to do that,

And in order to get there, we need to change the electoral process. Now, the current division is over judicial reform. And this is the product of Band-Aids that has happened over the many years that Israel has been a democracy country.

And so what has happened is that we created a judiciary. That judiciary has the opportunity to veto government legislation. Right. And that whole reason about judiciary to be created was because we didn't trust we didn't trust our electoral process because we know that it's very fundamentally flawed. So we create a judiciary and judiciary by point, not like public vote.

goes ahead and has the opportunity to veto legislation so they can veto laws that are coming out of the elected, sort of elected, however flawed, officials. And what Netanyahu is saying is he's invoked something called the unreasonable law. So the idea here is that a law comes forward, the judiciary through its conventional, and of course the judiciary is somewhat left, of course, and it's perpetuating within its liberal left sort of party context.

And and they come out and they outlaw or they they put down, they say, oh, no, that's not going to happen. And then, you know, that I was saying is, OK, now we can implement unreasonable law saying that the judiciary is unreasonable in in their actions against an elected government who has.

come up with this set of laws. Okay, so the fundamental problem that's happening over here is that essentially Israelis see Netanyahu as undermining the whole reason of why the judiciary was created. And Netanyahu sees the judiciary as a tool of the left that is undermining his political policies. All of this is no-go.

For all sides, it's creating Jewish disunity. But what it's also doing is it's also threatening and undermining our military. And it's undermining the defense of our country. Because now what's happening for the first time ever is that you've got military people who have no business in politics who are now taking sides within the political framework

of the Israeli system. So we've got a system that is incredibly flawed. And if you ask me, and in the book, what I point out is I point out very strongly that this, amongst other things, that the seventh most profound answer to the question of how did October 7th happen, it is directly attributed to the Jewish disunity

in a political process that does not work, that no longer serves the people of this country and no longer serves its masters. And yes, we are at risk today. We're at risk because militarily we've become involved in politics. And I'm going to quote a brigadier general of this country who I'm very close with, but I'm not going to put names out there.

And I talked to him about the political, and I wanted to get his opinion. He said, there is no one in my unit, in my company, in my army,

that is part of this army who should have a political opinion. But the situation that we're in right now, unfortunately, is that we have polarized the issues that become so polarized that it forced everyone within society to take a position. And this is the really the terrible, this is what Moses, upon coming into Israel, this is what he warned. He warned that Israel

If you do not follow the way of the land, your enemies will notice you and you will be cursed. And that is because we don't respect each other the way we're supposed to respect each other. And so things must change and they must change politically. We absolutely have to find somebody. We need someone. We need God's messenger. We need someone through divine providence who can design a brand new electoral system. The only way that's going to happen, Jonathan, is if there's a complete majority.

So we need to find a leader to come in and to give us that complete majority. I think we had one, but he made some mistakes. But I think that he's out there and we need to, he or she is out there and we need to bring them. We need to entice them to come in, that person, that individual. We need to bring them in to save us because we got to save ourselves from ourselves at this point.

All right. Well, you know, I think I'm not sure who could fill that bill, but I'll move on. You didn't actually answer my question, but you talk about some other very important things. You do talk a great deal, write a great deal on your book, that's okay, about your criticisms of Israel's political system and its failures, which you've just elucidated. It's also true that the diaspora is split as well, with vocal left-wingers seeking to undermine Israel,

What's the way to heal that divide? Or is the division about Zionism the product of forces within the diaspora that really transcend debates about October 7th or Gaza or about the demography of Jews living outside of Israel?

I think that the Jews in the diaspora are also divided by political lines. And in America, I think most Jews in America would consider themselves American Jews, where in Canada, we might consider ourselves Jewish Canadians. And I think that that's a little bit of a difference as well.

Ultimately, you know, the diaspora is looking to Israel for guidance. We're looking for leadership. I want to believe that, you know, most people I speak to

in the diaspora are we support Israel, that we believe that Israel is of divine providence and that whatever is happening in Israel, we must support Israel, regardless of whether we agree with what is going on or not going on. There is definitely some, I think one of our strongest, maybe the worst adversaries for Israel right now are Jews themselves who are

you know, who are actually against Israel. We call them self-hating Jews. I think they're self-hating Jews because I always say when people say that it's that they don't hate themselves. They hate the rest of us. But could you go on? Yeah, I don't. I don't know if that's the case, Jonathan. I think that

I think there are people that are so morally concerned by what is happening and the impossible situation that Israel is put into is that they cannot stomach being a Jewish person and yet watching this happen. So I don't want to accuse these people, God forbid, being anti-Semitic or being Jew haters themselves. And although that is the term that is self-hating Jew is the term that we easily use, I think it's much deeper than that.

I think these I think there are some people that are there. I don't know if you can say Bernie Sanders is a deeply morally convicted person that at the heart of him, he can't stand the fact that Jews are forced into a situation where we need to do things that are morally that that someone question the more the more.

The moral consequences of doing these things. Golda Meir said that she blames the Arabs. Of course, we know the famous statement not for killing the news, but rather for turning her sons or soldiers into killers.

And I think that that is a huge moral responsibility that is very difficult for people to deal with. And Israel is in an impossible situation where it must do things that others out there on the outside might feel it's morally apprehensible, but they cannot and they never do offer solutions. And I think they're very misguided and I think they're manipulated by the liberal movement and these movements that have come up that have convinced, such as DEI and...

All the other types of acronyms out there to describe what ultimately is anti-Semitic opportunities for people to join the bandwagon. So I think there's a lot of ignorance that plays into it. I think that, I mean, it's diverse and it's very complicated and it's very difficult for me to say

I'm not going to be another person to divide my community is what I'm trying to tell you. But it is very disturbing when I see a Jewish person

acting against another Jewish person. And it's very disturbing when I see a country that is polarized within itself. And I think it's very scary for people in the diaspora, for Jews in the diaspora. We know that if Israel does not exist, then never again is going to be

two words that are going to be said over and over again, because they're going to come, because that's the only thing that protects us, is the fact that Israel exists. And when we see Israel at the brink of civil war, what we might think is the brink of civil war, this disunity, it is terribly disheartening. It really provides me with tremendous pain. And the only thing I can do is to pray for the peace

is to peace of the family. We have a saying in Judaism called Sholombayit is the most important thing, and that's the peace of the home within the home. I just don't know enough of why there are people out there who are Jewish people who just

are contributing to the narrative and to the dissonance of what is happening in Israel. And I just don't understand why they don't stand up for Jewish people and why they, you know, people like George Soros, for example, and Holocaust survivor himself came from Hungary and, you know, studied with, you know, has a lot of humanitarian sort of influence in his life, became extremely wealthy off the Western world.

And yet has funded essentially organizations that are funding these Palestinian protests and encampments. And I think it's I want to reach out to him. I want to see George.

I want to say, why? Why are you doing this? I want to understand it. I want to understand that that's really what the wake-up call is about because we want to create that dialogue and understand it. That's all I can tell you. I wish I had the answer, Jonathan. I just think that it's a very unfortunate situation. It pains me greatly when I see the division amongst our people.

Yeah, I think you're not the only one who feels that way, although we could go a lot about talk a lot about George Soros. But you also write and this is in our last moments here. You know, if we can speak briefly here, you write about the depression that many Israelis feel about the war and how it's affected them.

Healing those wounds is a difficult task. But, you know, if it's just sort of on one foot, what's the best path forward for healing of our country that is otherwise considered to have among the most happy, you know, the happiest populations in the world to move forward from this terrible trauma? You know, Jonathan, I love Tel Aviv. I love the rest of Israel.

I love coming here and I come here many times a year and I just feel enveloped in love when I'm here and enveloped in the security of what it means to be Jewish. I could wear my kippah, I could wear my Star of David and I could really be proud as a Jew and not worry about anything. And it is light over here. It is vibrant in every cafe and everywhere.

There is tremendous trauma here. We have young people. There is a crisis happening in the land. I had a young man come up to me at a bar the other day. I was at a bar celebrating my son's engagement. And I had a young man come up to me. Thank you. Who's the brother and agent who I talk about in my talk. And I had a young man come up to me and he said,

Is there somewhere I could speak to? I'm in real trouble. And his brother was there and his brother himself has just been diagnosed with PTSD. And

And his brother turned to me and his brother is one of the most elite units here and comes from, you know, came from America right afterwards. And I looked at him and I said, what's going on with your younger brother? He says, well, after October 7th, he had to handle all these bodies and get to clean up, you know, the Nahalas and he just can't get it out of his mind. Many of the soldiers that I've talked to have explained what the trauma is that they are experiencing and they are seeking help and they're

wonderful organizations that have come up and there's wonderful people that have volunteered. There isn't enough that we can do to hug our soldiers and to help them through this time. But the

healing process. I talk about it at the end of the book. The last chapter of the book is about healing because I am a self-empowerment individual. My other book, Moving Through Walls, deals with self-empowerment. And I believe that the way forward is through healing because when we carry grievances with us, no matter how true the injustice is,

You just can't move forward as those grievances strangulate your emotions. And it's just impossible to move forward. So we must heal. And the way we must heal is, first of all, we have to create dialogue. We have to allow people to speak. And we have to create an environment where it's safe to express feelings. And we have to provide that support. I think that's very important. But what we have to do is we have to create a dialogue

where people come back into control. One of the reasons why the trauma exists and why Israelis are having so difficulties is because they are out of control right now. They're feeling out of control. I talk in my book about this woman, Noreen, that I met. She was in Koh Phangan. I happened to have met her in Thailand. And when I was there following a number of different families that had one of the places they are in is there in Thailand.

And I talked to her and she cried. She sat there crying that she had to leave her home, her kibbutz in the south where she loved, where she wanted. She just doesn't feel safe. She doesn't believe the government. And I said to her, I said, Noreen,

If you could make a list of demands, would that make you feel better? If you could make a list of demands? And she thought about it and she stopped crying. We started talking. We started making a list of demands. What would she demand of the Israeli government, of the world, so she can come home? I'm not saying that in any way that...

Those demands will make it up to the top of where decisive acts are getting taken place. But many of the Israelis have those same demands. And so I say that we need to find ways to empower people to take back the control. And the control is control of safety, security, confidence in government, faith in God, protection, and pride.

And I believe that if we can do this through various means, that that will go a long way towards healing. I think that there is no question that what is going on in Hamas is a justified war. And we must just eviscerate this evil force. And there's no question about what has to happen over there. But what happens after we do that?

Does war continue? Can we actually achieve healing and peace through war and through violence? No. We have to find ways to communicate and to coordinate with all peoples in this land.

And it's done through education. And where we must invest our efforts is in demanding that there's an education of love and peace, not hate and warfare. And I think that's where the healing is coming from. So I would say, Jonathan, to close this off, is that if we are to heal, and we have to heal because we cannot move forward until we heal, is that healing comes when we feel protected,

when we feel loved and we can love, and when we feel that we are back in control of the situation. And in order to feel in control, we have to allow the space for all of our soldiers

for all of our civilians to have a say in the political process that is actually governing and controlling their lives. And in order for that to happen, we're going to have to make changes to that political, very political process itself. I know, again, I'm going to say it sounds like an impossible pipe dream, but we do live in the land of miracles and miracles do happen here every single day. So I have to believe that there is a miracle that's going to happen. I think the most important thing, Jonathan, I'm going to end with this,

is we have something, a concept here that we call imuna. We call it faith. And there is belief and there is faith. And sometimes things become so out of hand and so out of control that

that the control that we wish to exercise to correct the ship is simply really a disillusionment in terms of what we'd like to believe that we're in control, but we're not in control. And we need to put ourselves a faith in the universe, call it the universe, call it some

unbelievable supreme power, call it Hashem, call it God, whatever you want to call that force that has brought us here. But ultimately, I think we need to have faith in each other. We need to have more faith in God. We need to have more faith that we can come through this wall. We can overcome this, and we will look back, and we need...

it to mean something. We need to learn something. And most importantly, we need to respect each other. We need to show respect and love for each other. And I think that whatever is meant to be, we have to believe that everything that has happened has happened for a reason for our future. And maybe one day we'll have that clarity. I don't know, but I certainly hope so. All right. Well, that's certainly an important prayer.

Israel Ellis, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing your insights and discussing your new book, 10-7, The Wake-Up Call. We also want to thank our audience. Please remember to tune in every day for Jonathan Thoma's Daily Edition. Whether you're listening to us on one of the various podcast platforms, watching us live on Facebook or X, or on the JNS YouTube channel, please like and or subscribe to JNS.

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