 Welcome back to the ThinkTech. This is Global Connections. We're going to talk to Seymour Kazimursky on trying to understand the terror attack on Israel. It's a few days now, and the world has changed. There are changes in the United States. There are changes in Ukraine and Russia. There are changes everywhere. And we change. We change our perception over time. Our first perception is outrage. Our second perception is what happened here. Our third perception is how have people been affected? Our fourth perception is what do we do now to avoid something worse? And the bottom line is people died. They were murdered. It's like the Holocaust. And we have to figure out what it means, what it means to us and them, but, you know, those who didn't survive cannot speak to it. So Seymour Kazimursky has been teaching the Holocaust in Hawaii. He's sort of the voice of what happened in the Holocaust, trying to educate school kids and everyone else about what happened in the Holocaust and what it means. And in that process, for 40 years, he's been trying to understand it so he can speak to it. And now, you know, we said never again. It's kind of like again. So Seymour, I really did want to talk to you to find out how you're feeling, how you're reacting. What is going through your mind on this? Well, Jay, thank you for inviting me to come on the show. But it's so emotional. It's so terrible to believe that we're experiencing basically another Holocaust in another form. And everything that I teach is all based on understanding hatred and intolerance. And the hatred that Hamas has for Israel, the hatred that Hezbollah has, that Iran has, where their sole goal is to annihilate the people of Israel, to put them into the ocean, to make sure there's no Israel. So it bothers me to such an extent that we are trying to make peace with groups that don't understand the word peace. And it bothers me that we've tried so hard for 50 years now to try to make peace with these people. And it's not the people. You have to understand it's groups of people. It's the people at the head of Hamas and Hezbollah. I'm not blaming all the Palestinians. I'm not blaming the West Bank people or even the Iranian people themselves. The leaders are so corrupt and so vile that they sanction what we just saw in the last few days. Jay, it's terrifying. It bothers me. Terribly. Yeah, but you know, this is, it's a hybrid war. It's a war, of course, land sea and air, but it's also a war in social media. It's a war in the press. And I'm afraid that there are a lot of people in the conventional media that do not understand. I saw an interview with Cory Booker today who just got back from Israel. He understands. He completely understands. If he were here with us today, he would be agreeing with what you just said. And I admire him greatly. It's a long shot, but I would like to see him as Speaker of the House for that reason. But let me, let me say, though, that, you know, I thought at the outset that let's not let the press get hold of this. Let's just go into Gaza and do what we have to do. And they can think about it later. Instead, Israel has held up, probably because a lot of people have said don't, don't go into Gaza. You know, you can bomb it. You already started bombing it. But don't, don't do a ground invasion of Gaza because it'll be very messy and lost the life on both sides and loss of, you know, public opinion and all that. But I really wondered at the time, this is within a day or two after, whether the right move conventionally, classically would have been for them to, you know, get their act together and go in and find the terrorists and kill them. Too late for that now. But I wonder what you saw, sir. Well, frankly, I think there's, you're correct. But there is another aspect to us. We learned in the last four or five days that Hamas and Iran have technological warfare. They understand exactly what they're doing. And I disagree with you with one point. If we went into Gaza today, we don't know how many bunker bombs there are. We don't know how many missiles that they could throw at our, at the Israeli soldiers coming in. We don't know about all of the, the, the technology warfare that they have currently used that they can use. Israel must do the bombing that they are doing now and go in when it's a little bit safer. I believe that if we want to try to get our hostages back, Israel is doing the right thing. You want power? You want food? You want electricity? Give us back our hostages. If you want to suffer, you're going to suffer. And I feel for the Palestinian people, Jay, you know, and there are many, many times. And every single time I go, I feel that the people, the Palestinian people have, have been under the thumb of Hamas. 30 years now, Hamas has been on top of Palestinian people and they have not, they, they haven't revolted. They haven't decided that they want to get rid of Hamas, that they want to make peace with Israel. So we need to understand that the Palestinian people have very little choice, but the choice now is get out of the way. We're coming in. We're going to clean out Hamas. Netanyahu said something that I think in a very few short words, really explains it. You started the war. We're going to finish it. And I think that is going to have a tremendous amount of suffering on, on the Palestinian people. If Egypt opens up the border at Rafa, and I understand that they're really talking about it now, and they will accept the refugees, just like Poland accepted the refugees from the Ukraine in the last year. If they do that, then the Palestinians can go there. The Israelis can come in, clean out Hamas, and then hopefully we can start a state solution of two people living together. But until then, Jay, remember what I said at the beginning. They hatred, that hatred and intolerance, you, after all of the years, all of the generations, all of the teachings that they teach their children to hate Jews and to hate Israelis. That's not going away. That's going to take education, and it's going to take time. So I don't think there's an easy solution here. No, I agree. They've been teaching hatred to the Palestinians and to the extreme, the Hamas. And when you teach a kid something like that, it sticks. It sticks for that kid's whole life. And so you talk about it's going to take time. Where do you do social modification? Where do you take that same kid who's now imbued with hatred? That's all he thinks about, killing Jews, killing the state of Israel, sweeping all the Jews into the sea. He's been learning that his whole life, and you're going to change his way of thinking. It's a long shot. A very, very long shot, Jay. And more important, he's got the backing of people above him that say, we can do it. We can do this to Israel. Look, the Nazis tried to do it. Hitler tried to do it, and we defeated them. My mother had a very famous saying when she was a Holocaust survivor, she's passed on, and when she was interviewed, and the interviewer said to her, Mrs. Kazimerski, how are you so positive? And she looked at him straight in the eye, and she says, don't you understand? I won the war. There's no more Nazis. I won the war. And that's what we have to look at. We have to look at the ability. We have to take the next step, get rid of Hamas, and I'm hoping that we go further, Jay. I'm hoping we get rid of Hezbollah. Now, you don't want to start me on Iran because, you know, I can go crazy when I talk about what Iran really wants to do. But if we can get rid of Hamas and we can get rid of Hezbollah, we can start to re-educate the people that Israelis are not bad people. We want to live side by side. But if you insist that you want us to be annihilated, that the hatred is so great that there's no way that we can work together, live together, there's no peace. No. I'm reminded by the fact that every war from 1948 on has been started, or incipiently started, you know, by the Arabs, by the Palestinians, by Hamas and Hezbollah every single time. And Israel has been essentially on the defensive all these years. The difference this time, however, is the level of atrocity, the level of technology, the level of cooperation and nuanced strategies with countries like Iran. And I believe that Russia, Putin is also involved in this, it serves his interest to be involved. So, you know, the Israelis have a bigger problem than they ever had before, ever. And they have taken more casualties than they have ever taken before. So I'm not as optimistic. I do not necessarily see any light at the end of this tunnel. I think a lot of people are going to die, including Israelis and Palestinians. And I don't know how to prevent that, one way or the other. I wouldn't give you a big bet on the hostages getting out either. It's a long shot. This is all a long shot. And I don't know if it's a clear strategy, or whether Israel knows of a clear strategy. We are in spasm here. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about, and we do have a few minutes to spend on this, is the reaction in the country, in the United States. The reaction in Congress, to the extent we know what Congress is doing these days. And the reaction on the college campuses, or shall I say the university campuses, some of the biggest, best universities in the country, have failed to find a moral compass on this. And I find that extraordinary and an example of an abiding anti-Semitism. No other word would apply. But I wonder what your thoughts are. Anti-Semitism is growing. You know that. I know that. Every time we say that anti-Semitism is growing, we have to understand why, Jay. What is happening on these college campuses? What is happening on social media? The ability to say whatever you want to say. Take the Harvard position. All of a sudden, all these guys who signed on to a petition and said, you know, this whole war is the fault of the Israelis, none of them want their names printed. They're all afraid that they can't get jobs now. Well, guess what, everybody? It's time to own up. If you feel that strongly about your position, then you better be able to take that position and defend it. The anti-Semitism issue is just as great here in Hawaii, believe it or not. I just got called to a school. I won't name this school, because they had swastikas on the walls of the school. You mean now? And they wanted me just three months ago. And they had swastikas on the walls of the school, and they said, can you come and talk to our kids? And I said, of course I will. And I talked to the kids and I explained to them what a swastika really meant. But it's not the meaning of the swastika. It's what's behind it. It's what happened. And when I give them the story of it, and I say to them, if you saw a young girl almost raped by two boys at the side of the school, what are you going to do? Are you going to try to stop them and say you can't do that? You're going to go to your teacher? You're going to go to your parents? Or are you going to do nothing? And 300 students said, nothing, Jay. And all of a sudden, the three or four kids put their hands up, and they said, I'm going to tell them not to do it. And I said, stand up and say you can't do it so everybody can hear. And they said, you can't do it. And guess what, Jay? At the end, I had 300 kids standing up shouting you can't do it. So they understood the power that they can have by doing the right thing. Because the true answer to your question is, you are either part of the solution or you're part of the problem. And I wanted these kids to understand that they have to be part of the solution. And that's why we continue to do the education we do. Because if we don't educate the people that are kids, anti-Semitism continues. It grows. And it's not just anti-Semitism. It's all the other anti that you have as well. So we need to be cognizant of the fact that we as Jewish educators or Holocaust educators, it is important for us not just to teach about the Holocaust, but to teach about bullying, intolerance, hatred, all those pieces of the puzzle that make life worth living. And that's what we do. I wish there were more Seymour Kazimurskis around, but the fact is there aren't. And the fact is that just like those Arab kids who spend their life in school, to the extent you can say what they do is go to school, they learn hatred. That's what they learn. And if you look across these United States to schools that do not teach civics, that do not teach the rule of law or democracy, or even fairness, equity, consideration of the other guy, caring, all those basic principles. And in Christianity, if you will, you don't even have to get to Judaism. They're untrained. And then you go to the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, and you say, well, that's on the far side of the coin, because they're trained over, right? They're trained for hatred. So this is all really globally a matter of education. You can teach a given population how to love, how to care, how to be considerate, how to follow the scruples in the Bible, and in any religion, any religion really, or you can teach them to hate. And it sticks with them like glue. And I think right now, we have passed a kind of turning point, where in this country, we don't know about those things, because there's not enough Seymour Kazimurskis around. And certainly we don't know about that, those kinds of things in the Middle East, because there are not enough Seymour Kazimurskis around. Jay, let me tell you, first of all, the thank heaven is only one Seymour Kazimursk, you're one more like me. But what we are doing here in Hawaii, and what is being done around the country, my sister, for instance, she's doing a program in Canada on Genocide. I'm going to continue my program here with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and we're going to have a bus that's going to go to all the schools here in the state of Hawaii that's going to talk about intolerance, hatred, but not just about the Holocaust, but helping the kids understand one word. What does humanity really mean? What does man's inhumanity really mean? And if we can do that, if I can bring that education perspective to them, I know for a fact that we're going to change lives here, one at a time. It may take many, many, many years to do, Jay. But if we don't change right now, if we don't educate our kids, a lot better than we're doing, then we are doomed to continue to doing the same thing we have now. All these hate issues that we have, all of this anti-Semitism, it's a dire situation. I want you to know that I admire you greatly for doing this all your life, all your life. It's not just a matter of honoring your family. It's more. Thanks, Jay. So I want to talk about the state of Israel. When I was a kid, I went to Hebrew school in New York and went to all those classes about the kids in the short pants on the kibbutzim, dancing and singing, and doing creative agriculture in the desert, making the desert bloom. Yeah. I became a Zionist and I became imbued with the notion that the state of Israel was a miracle. It came out of the Holocaust. It came out of the Second World War. And everyone there had a story, and this was in the 1950s. And so now when you see this happening and you see the government is kind of in its own chaos under Netanyahu, when you see these collaborations going on between Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas and for that matter, Putin, I believe Putin's involved, then you say, this has never happened before. This level of atrocity, this level of planning, funding, weaponry, and outright outright murder has never happened before. Our civilians in their homes, in their beds, they're sitting at the kitchen table. It's not the same thing as fighting Israeli groups on a battlefield. It's murder, it's mass murder. So you say, can Israel defend itself? I mean, some people, some people in the kibbutzim there in the south, they never did get help. They waited hiding for hours and hours and days before anybody came to help them. And the Israelis were really off guard here in so many ways. And I'm not here to criticize their intelligence or anything like that. It raises the question of whether Israel can survive, whether the state of Israel that we learned about in Hebrew school in the 50s, and those kids in the short pants growing creative agriculture in the kibbutzim being attacked every now and then across the border and surviving. The state of Israel has survived all these years. And that's also a miracle. But miracles have a way of not sustaining themselves. My question to you is, are you concerned about the future of the state of Israel as I am? I am not, Che. I disagree with you. I think the state of Israel will survive. I think the knee jerk reaction that you and I have right now, the anger that we have that we want to punch back and what happened with the intelligence failure and how did they get through. And I think a lot of it is because Israel has always been known as the strongest power in the Middle East. And they maybe took too much for granted. They didn't realize that Hamas could do their own disinformation campaign and make themselves look like they're going to sit back and not do anything when in reality they were planning this in for at least a year or two. There's no way they could have gone through with this without major planning and without assistance. Now, I know Iran has said that they have nothing to do with it. Syria, Lebanon has said, I honestly believe that Hamas could not have done this without their assistance. There's no way. Their money, their technology, our money maybe was involved in this. But that's for another conversation. Your question was, can Israel survive? This year, Sue and I spent two weeks there in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in the Kazimersky Kibbutz called Ainsham Air. Every year, we go back. And I can tell you, there's no doubt in my mind that when it comes to survival, there is no fitter nation in the world to survive than Israel. This has brought Israelis together. I mean, you know what happened with that. I mean, I was swearing at nothing Yahoo three months ago because my airplane couldn't get off the ground. You know, I was stuck in Tel Aviv because there were strikes of hundreds of thousands of kids were striking. But those hundreds of thousands today are dressed in their uniform. They're at the border. They're ready to invade. And I think that's the one thing about Israelis. When it comes to the defense of Israel, we are all there. By the way, I just wanted to tell you three Kazimerskis, my brother, my nephew and my niece, where all doctors are going to Israel, they're going to help out. Good. You know, there's more than just those young men and women amassing at the border, ready to do a land invasion if they are told to do that. But I suggest to you, in being there and being willing to follow those orders, they also understand that it's life and death for them. That a certain number of them will die in battle. And yet, they are still there. You're right, Jay. That is really a strength that you're talking about. Their inner sanctity of Israel above all, that Israel has to survive, allows them to do what they have to do. I can only tell you going there and being with the people of Israel and being with the Mossad and studying in Israel. I've done business in Israel, as you already know. And it's an amazing country, Jay. And I think their ability to do what they do in business, their ability to do what they do in technology, this war will end. It's not, it's going to be bloody. It's going to be horrible. It's going to be terrible. But the answer to your question is Israel will survive. In my opinion, there is no doubt whatsoever. I'm dependent to Israel on the US, on the US government, on the administration, Congress for funding. And when I say dependent, I'm asking whether they need cooperation, funding, resources, what have you, support from the United States in order to survive. And do you think there's questions about whether they'll get that? I don't. I think that both the Democrats and the Republicans, except for those idiots in the squad, those four dumb assets, if you'll excuse my expression, who think that the Palestinians are all perfect and the Israelis are all bad. The Democrats and the Republicans are 100% behind Israel, and they will support them. Don't forget, we have another issue. We have Ukraine that is looking for major support as well. So funding-wise, armament-wise, militarily, intelligence-wise, I think the US is behind 100%. I don't think we'll have a problem. I think the most important thing right now is to limit the damage, to see if we can get a humanitarian corridor so that we can get the hostage, trade the hostages. You've heard the latest is trade the hostages for power, food, electricity, that kind of stuff. But I'd like to see a humanitarian corridor open up, let the Egyptians be part of the process, make sure that Hamas doesn't get through to the Egyptian side. We go in and clean up Gaza, let the Palestinian people who want to come back, who want to live peacefully come back. I want one more chance at it, Jake. I know this has happened in the seven-day war, it happened 10 years ago. We keep going back and forth on this, but I'd like to do it. I think we need to clean out Hamas. Get rid of them. Netanyahu said something about Hamas is like ISIS. He just said that the other day. And you remember how the US took out ISIS? We didn't stop it killing. We went all the way through to make sure we got rid of ISIS. And I think at this stage, I feel we have to get rid of Hamas. The straw has broken the camel's back. That's it. It's over now. Hamas has to be destroyed completely. I agree. It's a combination of hostages for food, water, electric, and fuel. The thing is that if Egypt has said up to this point, no, you can't come back into the Sinai. We're not going to let you back in. And I think the reason is they're afraid that among those Palestinians who come back into the Sinai and into Egypt, there's going to be Hamas there. There are going to be militants who make lots of trouble for Egypt. Egypt cannot afford to have militants either. They have plenty of experience with that. That's exactly what I'm hoping for, Jay. Exactly. Exactly. My talk when I heard about the humanitarian corridor, I said to myself, Egypt won't want Hamas guys in there. They'll make sure that whoever gets in, they will somehow figure out who was a real Ghazian citizen, rather than a Hamas leader. And don't forget, if you cut off the head of the snake, there's no more snake. It's the heads that you have to get off. The soldiers will disappear, in my opinion. Well, the Israelis have intelligence on who the leadership is of Hamas, and they should be sharing that with the Egyptians, so the Egyptians can make a working border to filter out Hamas leadership anyway. They will, Jay. My feeling has always been doing business in Israel. They are excellent in communication, excellent. And I've always felt that when I do business in Israel, I can do it quicker there than I can do anywhere in the world, because they tell you exactly what's happening. There's no beating around the bush. And that's why Israel is so powerful when it comes to telecommunications. It is one of the strongest countries in the world when it comes to medical devices. It has more patents than all of the other countries in the Middle East and Europe put together. Israel is a very, very special country, not because I'm Jewish, but because as a business consultant, I can tell you doing business in Israel is one of the pleasures that I have in my life. And the life in Israel is what I'm hoping will continue. And the people are sweet. We know them more now, don't we? The world knows them as victims over the past few days. And I want to say also, you talk about technology, well, I would say Hamas has to deal on cell phones. That's the way it works. And what does that remind you of? Does it remind you of Pegasus? Does it remind you of Israel? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, thank heaven as this catastrophe continues, we're going to remind ourselves all the time that it's going to get better, that we have to suffer through what's going on now. But you know, I'm sure you, well, maybe you don't, but I've had cancers removed in my face, melanomas. And you know what they do? They never take out just the amount that they see. They go all around to take it out because they want to make sure that they've got it all. That's what Israel is doing now. They want to be sure they get all of the Hamas leaders, not just the three or four, 10 or 20, they need to get them all. And they will get them all. I don't think they're going to stop until all of them are gone. And that's different too, isn't it? They're going to be more aggressive about it. One other thing that came up in the interview on MSNBC with Corey Booker was this. Booker believes that all these players, the ones, the Hamas and the supporters of Hamas, would like to disrupt Israel's efforts to establish diplomatic relations with some of the Arab countries, like for example, Saudi Arabia. And indeed, over the past few days, it's clear they disrupted everything in the Middle East, including our discussions with Saudi Arabia. But query, do you think we'll be able to revisit those discussions? That's why Anthony Blinken is there in order to assure the continuation of peace talks, of diplomatic relations between Israel and countries that might otherwise be enemies of Israel. Do you think it will work? I think Corey is right that there was a piece of the puzzle to make sure that Israel becomes a bad guy again in the world of the Arab nations. But I think it'll take a little bit of time, Jay. Sue and I were in Abu Dhabi. We were in Dubai. We saw Israeli companies. We saw, as a matter of fact, I met with a coalition of Israeli companies in Dubai doing business. And I see the United Arab Emirates. And I see Oman. And even though they are not friends of Israel, they want to do business with Israel. And guess what? Money talks. And I think that we are going to see a better... We're set back. There's no doubt about it. But we will see some type of affiliation between the other countries in the Middle East and Israel. This Palestinian issue has been there for a long time, Jay. And we've got a few countries, Egypt, Jordan, et cetera, who recognize Israel. Recognize Israel and you watch. Business will go back and forth between those countries. Knockwood. The other... The last point I want to ask you about are these kids under BDS, BDS on the college campuses in this country. Actually, it's not only in this country. It's in Canada and various countries. And I think it's probably in Europe, just completely anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. And they're busy, busy lately. And I believe they're part of this whole letter signing campaign, where students sign letters supporting Hamas and massacres and the like. So what do you say to these kids now? I know it would take a lifetime to retrain them, to reorganize their brain cells. But what do you say to them now? You have Harvard, you have Yale, you have Columbia, you have Penn. And I probably could go on with half a dozen more of the big five-star schools in the country. You have Stanford. Yes, absolutely. Stanford, thank you. So what do you say to them? Because it demonstrates a huge weakness in our educational system. What are they studying that they would be so dead wrong? I know. So I'm asking you, what do you say to them? And you could begin with, hey, Schmuck, what's wrong with you? But you don't have to say that. Jay, you're feeling of, we've got to change that system. Jay, we cannot. We live in a democracy. People have a right to think what they want to think. But we've had the Ku Klux Klan here for how many years? It's a system in the United States and the Western world that allows people to say what they want to say. A lot of them are only doing it because they want attention. They don't even know what they're talking about. They want attention, but they don't want to admit they signed the letter. I love that part. But you see, that could be one of the aspects of social media that might help us in the end, because we can find out who those guys are. And when you print those names, you know what they say? Oh, that's not what I really meant. I didn't know. That's what these Harvard kids said. I mean, these are Harvard educated students and they say they don't know what they signed, and all of a sudden they're backtracking. And I think as we do that, as we try to open up this conversation with these people who are anti-Semitic, especially the BDS, they will start to realize that they're going to be on the hot seat, not just because they're anti-Israel, but they're going to be on the hot seat because they are thinking a totally undemocratic way. And you can't do that in the United States and Canada and the Western world. I mean, I don't know if you realize, but in Germany, you say something anti-Semitic. You're going to jail. That's how strong it is in Germany. Now, we can't do that here in the US, but I'll tell you, I think that more and more as people say things, they're going to have to put their name to it, or people will find out what their name to it. I was hosting an ADL meeting here about a month and a half ago, and they came and I hosted, I think it was the Western leadership of the ADL. And we had, I think it was 20 people at the meeting. And Senator Hemings, you remember Fred Hemings, he was there, and he is more Zionistic than you and me. He believes so much that Israel is the foundation of what the Western world should be all about. He is truly a great Zionist. And Fred taught us something at that meeting. He made us understand, you don't have to be Jewish to believe that you're a Zionist. And he made us understand that in his thinking, the Jewish world came from centuries. It's the oldest tradition. It's the oldest biblical tradition in the world. The Arabs didn't come forth until 318. So obviously, we're a lot older than they are. We've suffered more than any other religion in the world. But yet, we survived, Jane. And your question about, will Israel survive? I say yes. Will democracy survive? Will we be able to work something out so we can get working with the other Arab countries? I say yes. I am so very positive. I hate what's going on. I'm trying not to get emotional about it. But believe me, we are going to work through this and we're going to be stronger in the end. Mark Wood, Seymour. Well, I think it's wonderful what you have done. And I think your thinking is advanced and refined and nuanced. And I sure appreciate your coming on our show to talk about it. There will be other developments that my guess is they will be disturbing also. And hopefully, you're right. Hopefully, the Israelis have a kind of special bond. Maybe this helps them bond up after the trouble with Netanyahu. And maybe that abiding, what do you want to call it, creativity and ability to solve problems will pervade. I'm worried. I'm afraid. But at the end of my tunnel, there is a little light along those lines, as you have articulated. Thank you so much, Seymour. From your mouth to God's ears, Jake. Yes, Seymour. Thank you so much.