 Welcome back to Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel, it's the four o'clock clock on a given Tuesday, we're talking community matters here, and we're talking about bigotry in our backyard. My co host Peter Hoffenberg, and our special guest. Seth, I can't read it or Seth brisk. Okay, says he him at the end. I know that's not your name. Okay. Welcome. Welcome Seth welcome Peter. You have the duty of explaining the scope of our show today and introducing Seth. Okay, very, very briefly the scope of the show is to try to come to terms with what seems to be and the cystic show it is in fact rising intolerance, but not just rising intolerance rising number of physical attacks, rising examples of graffiti. And quite often the numbers are attacks on Asian Americans and African Americans and Latin Americans and I think that is the most significant number. But Jane I want to explore some of the examples of anti Semitism by no means to diminish other attacks but to see that anti Semitism is also part of this tsunami of intolerance. And sometimes people who attack Asian Americans and African Americans also attack choose for the same kind of racist view. Historically, the group that has been out front, even out front of the federal government in chronically and collecting statistics about is the Anti-Defamation League. It has a very important place in American history. And we've asked a Seth, who's one of the regional, I'm not sure the exact title coordinator director. Anyhow we say mocher is one of the regional mochers who reaches out to us as part of his regional portfolio. So, Seth if you could talk to us a little bit initially about your sense of why people feel this rising bigotry and rising intolerance. I think it's a general sense around the country J is that fair enough. Yes, yes, maybe an understatement somehow. And he knows there's a question in chat, basically about that right how to explain the rise of intolerance in the US in recent times. Is this new greater than before, etc. So let me turn it over to Seth, and I don't know whether you're officially representing the ADL or not. Okay, great. We have to have that legal outlet if you want a legal freeway exit. Okay, so let me turn it over to Seth and to Jay. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Jay. Appreciate being here today to talk to you. As Peter indicated, I am the regional director for the ADL that includes all the islands of Hawaii. And, you know, just by way of introduction ADL is the world's leading anti hate organization. And our organization has always been to fight against hatred directed at the Jewish people but also all forms of hate with the same kind of vigor and passion. And, you know, we are respected leaders in exposing extremism, but also delivering anti bias education, fighting hate online, and, you know, responding to incidents as they occur. The goal is to see a world in which no group or individual suffers from bias discrimination or hate. But unfortunately we've been seeing too much of that lately. And there are a number of different statistics you can look at to to demonstrate that this problem is a persistent and in recent years it's been rising. But ADL conducts our own audit of anti Semitic incidents. These are both lawful expressions of anti Semitism, but also illegal expressions also known as hate crimes that occur. And for the last four years we've seen historically high numbers of anti Semitic incidents occurring. And what you see before you actually are the hate crimes that have reported by the FBI, but this correlates the information that we've been finding so this graph shows you that in the last four years on record. We don't have the record yet for 2021 but for the last four years on record, the FBI has tabulated over 7000 hate crimes in each of those years, and you can see them rising. You can see that even the separation the social distancing of the pandemic didn't do anything to abate the the trends of hatred that we see and in fact, as you might have suspected, hatred is on sharply increasing. When you look at it targeting against specific communities, for instance the Asian Pacific Islander community. Additionally, and consistently over decades, the FBI shows us that not only are Jews more the most targeted among any recorded religious group. Jews are actually targeted more than all of the religious groups combined. And that's a consistency year upon year regardless of whether or not the hate crimes districts go up or down. These are crimes that are committed, but where the primary motivation behind them is hatred towards the person or the perceived identity of the person or institution that you are targeting. So it could be for instance, you know, a swastika spray painted on the door of a house. They may not be targeting a Jewish community member but they may think they are. And therefore, this is considered an anti Semitic incident on the part of the FBI. You know, in such an example. And again ADL does our own tracking of incidents we also track harassment that is legal so we live in a country where we value and cherish the First Amendment people are free to express themselves. We have hateful and offensive expressions. But we want to be able to track those numbers and see what's been going on. And in those numbers also show that the last four years are among the highest on record that we've ever tracked. And that's dating back to the 1970s when we first began tracking these incidents. And these include harassment, vandalism and assaults. And that include generalized expressions of hatred and bigotry that we experience online. So when you see someone posting something on Twitter, or on Instagram, or page on Facebook that might deny that the Holocaust occurred, or says terrible things about Jews, then we wouldn't necessarily count those as a particular anti Semitic incident. There's simply too much of it to catalog. Factor that in with all of the other rising forms of hate and we see that we are living through a period of sustained and pronounced hate directed at the Jewish community. More recently directed at the Asian community consistently and most often directed at the African American community. And as we know, through studies, hate rarely confines itself to one category, and to one community. So if we see hate being directed at one group, invariably, if it hasn't already, it will soon be directed at others. Well, wow. Here's your logo behind you ADL anti defamation league and I've been familiar with that my whole life and admire of your organization, my whole life for what it does. But you know, back in the old days when we said anti defamation league. We were talking about defamation defamation is not necessarily violent defamation is not necessarily hate. I guess when ADL was created maybe life was different. Do you think you want to change your name to adjust to the times set. Well I'd actually say that the hatred that we encounter is remarkably consistent. So ADL was founded in 1913 in a time when there were popular expressions of anti Semitism in the media. Newspaper articles cartoons songs depictions in the theater that showed Jews as grotesque caricatures and sought to marginalize them in society. Similarly, what we see today is some repeats of some of that same those same expressions of bigotry we see white supremacist groups, fliering, communicating over the Internet, and distributing fliers that try to accuse Jews of some of the same things we've heard in the early 20th century that Jews are are associated with conspiracy theories about spreading disease, or having too much power or maintaining too much control or controlling the government. I mean, these are old style expressions of anti Semitism that many people, I think may have thought were defeated or consigned to the dustbin of history at the fall of Nazi Germany. And yet, they continue to persist throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. You know, it used to be that when people really wanted to express vile bigotry and hatred, they would hide themselves behind a hood to have that sort of anonymity. And you think of images of the Ku Klux Klan marching through towns or even famous pictures of the Ku Klux Klan marching through Washington DC. They would hide themselves because it was even in that in that time, even at that, at that period. It was taboo to express such raw hatred. And, and now today, we find people instead of trying to hide behind the anonymity of a hooded mask or cloak. They're hiding behind the anonymity that's afforded through the Internet, through screen names, through social media. And I see some of the very same kinds of expressions of bigotry coming out today, but just using new technology and new forms to express it. You know what's coming out today is also an examination of the Holocaust, you know, the, the, there's what Holocaust remembrance day was only a couple of weeks ago, and there's a certain amount of media about it. And I wonder how an anti-Semitic person reconciles that. I mean, logically, maybe the wrong way to put the question, but how does an anti-Semitic person who spends his time doing anti-Semitic things and making anti-Semitic comments and tropes and what have you reconciled that with the Holocaust where six million Jews were killed? How do they see it? We're, we're seeing the confluence of a few things happening right now. You know, one is that the Holocaust is becoming more and more of a distant memory. So there are many people who don't necessarily have lived through the experience of experiencing it. The number of people who can bear direct eyewitness to what occurred during the Holocaust, that number is sadly diminishing. The survivors of the Holocaust, there are fewer and fewer of them to tell firsthand their accounts of the depravity, the bigotry, the mass murder, the genocide that took place. And so those people who seek to inherit the ideology of the Nazis, who seek to promote that kind of hatred directed at Jews and at others on the basis of religion or race or other markers, those people are, will try to sow some, some, some lack of knowledge of, or to try to promote this notion that perhaps the Holocaust didn't happen as you've been told or didn't occur at all, to minimize it, to trivialize it, or even as we've seen more recently in the pandemic to exploit it. So we've seen a number of really horrific expressions of bigotry tied to people who are frustrated with the public health response to the pandemic. We've seen it right right here in Hawaii with responses to the public health response and targeting Lieutenant Governor Josh Green. Now he became a symbol both because he's a medical professional, but also somebody at the, you know, who's who's among the leaders of the state, and he became a target for protests. Now that's fine people have a right in democracy to protest policies that they think are unfair or unwise. But then what happened was we saw it cross the line, we saw people using the Holocaust as an analogy to public health measures that are meant to save lives. So here you have an event, which was one of the most heinous acts of mass murder in human history, being compared to public health measures that are intended to save and preserve life. And you have officials who happen to be Jewish or may not be Jewish at all, being tagged with these epitets that are used to try to drive home the person's point about mass mandates or vaccine mandates or other such public policy matters. So, Holocaust rhetoric is a convenient go to for many people because it's very extreme. It's sort of hard to to to challenge. And therefore it's often invoked in some of these more contentious debates, but we would ask people not to do that. It's a trivialization of what happened in the Holocaust. It's a complete misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what occurred. And it has no relevance to politics, public policy debates or the like, where it's often being invoked. You know, there was a question and Peter referred to it briefly and I like to read it to you it's certainly worth addressing, because it's hard to answer this question. And it's from one of our other hosts who is international, international hosts, who lives far away from Hawaii. And he asks, how do you explain the rise of intolerance in the United States in recent time. Is this new greater than before, or has it always been there but now it is more noticeable. So the answer is probably yes. And, you know, pardon my, my glib response but honestly, there has been a an error of hatred that has persisted within American society. It doesn't matter whether you're in the Aloha state in the golden state in the Empire State. We see these expressions of hatred across the country. They've been with us for some time. Now again, as I mentioned, as a certain at certain points in the 20th century, it became more taboo to express these these forms of hatred openly. And so people were less likely to publicly air their bigotry or take ownership of it. But certainly we've seen that recently, there's been more expressions of hatred, more of a reflection of that. So why is that well there are two real main factors driving this phenomenon. The first is that extremists are feeling emboldened. We saw particularly beginning with the 2016 presidential election, a coarsening of the public debate, sort of a normalizing of more extreme speech of taboo subjects of in the name of sort of pushing back against being politically correct. People were saying more and more offensive or borderline racist or bigoted things in an effort to push the envelope. Now this normalized for some extremists the ability to publicly express their behavior. And so we've seen that happen with a number of different groups and we've seen recently a proliferation of various groups under a variety of names. They sort of rebranded themselves as the alt right to give themselves an error of legitimacy. They've created new groups and names, which may share some of the same hatreds of older groups like Nazis or the KKK, but are reformed under new identities, but that still express white supremacy white nationalism and the like. So we've seen names of groups like oathkeepers proud boys. The American immigrant immigration movement, a page, Patriot Front and others that have come up as an effort to sort of rebrand white supremacy and white nationalism and extremism in all of its forms. And the second factor and the second factor is one that we've already touched on which is the weaponization of technology. The use of technology by extremists to reach to recruit, or even to radicalize people who are already involved in this extremist spot. So we see not only using the cover of anonymity that we've discussed, but we also see people using technology to try to so fear, create intimidation. And we see that in things like doxing or swatting, doxing being the publication of publicly available documents about an individual to try to intimidate them. So, where you might live where your children might go to school, where you might work, you know, other types of information that can be available through public records, they post them on the internet to try to intimidate people to dissuade them from behaving or expressing themselves or associated. And then we see swatting, which is a falsified call to law enforcement to try to elicit an armed response a SWAT team. We've actually seen this results in death. Again, an effort to intimidate people from associating or simply from being who they are. So, and we also see technology used to make robo calls, or even to live stream terror attacks. So technology plays a very important role in a particular social media in the explosion of hatred and the expressions of hatred that we've seen most recently. Before I turn it over to Peter on the local side of things. I just want to ask you one more question you said that the ADL gathers information. Except for social media which is, you know, so, so large. Is that information of the names of the people engaged in bigotry and anti Semitism. Are those names available. Can I look it up somewhere. Can I find out who's on that. The list at ADL has prepared. To provide extremism reports for the public for journalists and for law enforcement, so that they are aware of the groups that are organizing that have these bigoted views and in some cases, try to back up their bigotry with action. So you can go to our website adl.org, and you can look up the names of various groups named some of them today that are prevalent in expressing bigotry and extremism and looking to recruit people to do the same. There are extensive backgrounders on our website that again, people can use. There's also a number of different tools that we have and resources, including a hate symbols database. So you may see graffiti or tattoos of an individual you may not necessarily know the meaning our experts in our center on extremism will help to unpack that. We also have a reporting structure online called adl.org slash report where people can report anti Semitic or other bias incidents that may occur. So that we can help to track these incidents and again keep the public informed. But of course we also encourage people to reach out to local law enforcement whenever they see these acts, even if you think it might be a legal expression. It's important to let law enforcement know let the professionals decide, even a legal expression of hatred could be connected to other criminal activity elsewhere, or also could be a harbinger of criminal activity that to come. So it's important also to report these types of things to law enforcement, and you mentioned social media, we are interested in tracking social media we simply don't cover it in the one report that I reference. But it's also important for you to report hatred directly to social media platforms. It's, it's their responsibility to remove offensive content they have user agreements. Ensure that they are living up to those user agreements and in many cases, they are depending upon you the user to report the hatred to them. So make sure that you do that through their own reporting portals. Thank you, Seth. Peter, let's turn to you let's talk about what happens at UH, the problem as it exists in UH and the memorandum that you wrote about examples of anti semitism and hate crimes here in Hawaii. It's not just you and we're talking about the community. And that's one of the issues. I think a nice bridge would be set that you could explain two terms for our audience. What is the definition of anti semitism. Well, there are there are many excellent definitions of anti semitism it's hatred that's directed at the Jewish people or their institutions. And because of their religious observance it anti semitism can take many forms, many people mistakenly associate anti semitism with only being about Nazism or mass murder, which of course was the most extreme example of anti semitism, but there are many forms of anti semitism as with other forms of bias and bigotry that are much more subtle. And that is different from other forms of bigotry and that Jews are often targeted as being perhaps too powerful or exhibiting, you know, or having a classic anti semitic tropes about Jewish money and control. So anti semitism is is a varied and diverse subject that sometimes called the oldest hatred and important to remember something else about anti semitism that Jews are a people, not just simply a religious group. And so as a people, Jews have certain rights and and that other people are as well. And that sometimes spills over into the issue of the ways in which Jewish self determination known as Zionism is denigrated, or the Jewish state Israel is sometimes denigrated. Again, not criticism, not legitimate criticism of Israel or Zionism, but rather, you know, simply saying that Jews have no right to self determination, which is a right guaranteed under international law. Thank you very much. There are lots of documents out there defining anti semitism US State Department, the IHRA, there's a new Jerusalem report. Is there a particular document that our audience could go to the ADL uses. So as I said, there are many good definitions for anti semitism for you guys for ADL. We, we have, we have a primer on anti semitism where we unpack the seven most common myths about Jews. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance IHRA document is an excellent source, but you can also go to ADL.org and search for anti semitism. I'm able to recognize that one of the difficulties of anti semitism is racism against African Americans is pretty clear. Anti semitism is not so clear. And that's one of the historical issues. So that's one of the things I'd like you to put up for audience which you did very nicely. The second question which is connected is, you keep referring to lawful hate. What is lawful hate. Again, we cherish our First Amendment rights in the United States. And so it is your lawful right to tell somebody in a public setting that you hate them because of the way they look, or the way they pray, or who they love. That can be a lawful expression. But it can cross the line if you are engaging in severe harassment. And certainly if you're committing a crime, as you're saying some of those same hateful statements about who they are, how they look, how they pray or who they love. It's the defense that what you say makes me feel uncomfortable. Is that a defense in the view of the ADL? I'm afraid that causing discomfort or causing a sense of intimidation is if so fact of hate. And is that a lawful hate? And you'll see the connections. We only have two minutes left. Yeah, sure, sure. Yes, I see where you're going. Okay, go ahead. Okay, so in two minutes. Let me address as Jay asked me to some of our more local issues. The local issues, while they're connected, they do have a couple of focal points. So at the University of Hawaii, and there's a question as to how many Jewish students there are, UH is not allowed to ask religion in the registration material. So we don't know. We're continuing at current events, which is a nice thing. So one issue is the role of BBS that is departments, not the university as a whole, either promoting, as in the case of an upcoming event sponsoring, perhaps teaching BBS which is boycott divestment in sanction, and to the current pillars are that Israel is a colonial society, and Israel is a part type. So if that is mentioned, spoken about, and a Jewish or other non-Jewish student feels uncomfortable or intimidated, without a clear and present danger, without any particular disability. So we're not talking about somebody not writing a letter of recommendation. But what we could say is a general air and ambiance. Is that something that the ADL would consider an act of hate? Well, certainly. I mean, look, the BDS campaign represents a hostile deal legitimization of a fundamental right and rejection of Israel's right to exist, which is a right that's guaranteed under the UN Charter. As I mentioned, Jewish self-determination is a right that's guaranteed under international law. And BDS, much to the maybe to the surprise of some people who are interested in it, BDS does not promote peace. You know, it does not promote dignity or security for the Palestinian people. We only have a minute. Let's take some extra time, Peter, that's okay. Okay, so all that said and done, right? If there is an event and people are made to feel uncomfortable, that seems to be according to your understanding in the ADL's understanding, not if so fact don't activate. Not necessarily. I mean, but, you know, hate is a very subjective term. But we are dealing here, particularly with UH, with academic freedom, freedom of speech. So I want us because a lot of the audience is interested in what precipitated this is the periodic scheduling of a BDS meeting sponsored by several departments, not by the university as a whole. And the university has several hundred departments. So we're talking about five. Okay. And a lot of the folks in the community would like to know how to respond. So that I think ADL and the rest of us have to respect academic freedom. Absolutely. So that's one, one issue here about anti-semitism and bigotry is when BDS starts talking in a bigoted anti-semitic way. Okay. Another one, which is clear and Jay and I have talked about this, and you guys have it chronicled, but this is more for our audience. There are 10 to 15 examples of not see graffiti swastikas, etc. How should people respond if they're driving down the street and they see that, and they will see that here. What does the ADL recommend for folks to do? Certainly, if you see graffiti, if you encounter other forms of hate, you should do what you can to ensure your safety. If it's safe and if it's possible, document what you're seeing, report it to an agency like the ADL that tracks it, but also report it to local law enforcement, whether that's campus police, HPD or others. So that they're aware of this and they can document and take care of the issues themselves. You know, hatred, it's important that people speak out. I often ask that people be allies and upstanders to speak out against hate. And you don't have to be an expert. Again, make sure to maintain your own safety and security. But if it happened, you happen to encounter it, whether it's online or in a group setting, you can simply say something as basic as, I'm not okay with this, this is hatred, and walk away. And Matt both tells the aggressor of, and the person who's promoting the hate that you're not with them, but also tells the target, who may be on the receiving end of this hatred that they have allies, and not everybody in the group is going along with whatever hatred is being espoused. So he returned to the third and really I think more problematic and difficult situation, which is I hesitate to use the word unique, but not something in a fine in LA or Chicago or New York. And that is Hawaii is permeated with Christian culture. In other words, Jewish families see Easter symbols in their public school classrooms. There are not meetings on Christian holidays. There was a major state meeting on Yom Kippur. When your colleague was here we called that soft anti Semitism, but it is a denial of the integrity of Jewish religions I would consider anti Judaism, as much as anything else. And much of the society here. In many ways, and this includes the sovereignty movement deeply impacted by missionaries and deeply impacted by a Christian narrative, and that Christian narrative fits clearly into bbs where the Palestinians are in fact, the new Jesus, and Jews and Israelis are once again, murdering Jesus. What do we do about that, what do we do about a minister who opens a prayer meeting saying that Israeli soldiers have their rifles pointed through an open gate into Bethlehem. What do we do about state holidays, what are you about families where schools don't pay attention Jewish holidays, and sometimes schedule major events on Jewish holiday. I think we have to have a whole other show to talk about all these different expressions of anti Semitism they've underlined because they're all, you know they all have their own character and association with various people's daily lives I mean for people's daily lives, and the people are asking questions to live here. The last one is actually the most difficult. Look if you see a bbs meeting, you've talked about how we should respond and what we should look for. Okay, you see a swastika. It's upsetting, but you know there are not a lot of Nazis here right it's probably a relatively different way to respond to it, but the sea and the DNA, the very blood of our society here is heavily, heavily Christian, and that heavily Christian fits into, I think Jewish life in a more difficult way than for example, Confucian or Yeah, and, and it probably fits very difficultly into Islamic and Muslim life here as well. You know the I think most people know idea with Ramadan is, and they'd be happy to have a Christmas party. You know, on that day so we would I would like to welcome you back. I think though that, although this maybe isn't as racy and sexy among the Jews living here. This is the issue that this kind of soft anti semitism. It's soft, but if you look at these expressions. You see swastika is another anti semitic indications around. Right, but I think those are hard. Emulates what people here and see what is going on in the mainland. And so Hawaii is not completely independent of what's going on in the mainland. There's a lot of, you know, there's value on diversity. A lot of people have been shoulder to shoulder with other races other religions for 150 years. And they're not about to single anyone group out however, there are people in our midst to emulate what's going on on the mainland night. I don't want to ask Seth one question, which, which has really troubled me. It's this in our in our lifetimes at least in my lifetime. Jewish people have have not experienced anti semitism in any real significant way. And certainly they haven't experienced anti semitism in terms of violence, you know, as we saw, you know, in Pittsburgh, for example, and other places lately. And so it just seems to me that there, there must be and you would be much more familiar. There must be Jewish people in this country, who were taking off their, their yarmulkes, who are not identifying as Jewish, who are hiding from this process they do not want to be identified they don't want to be known in the community as Jewish because there's a, you know, there's a detriment to that. This is really, really tragic. This sounds like the 30s, you know, but my question is, am I right in making that assumption. Is that true and what do you feel about that. I think, you know, people have a right to be identified as Jews, people have a right to not be identified as Jews you ever you have a right to your individuality never right to your privacy. Those are rights that we cherish in American society. You know, I certainly am not. I can't necessarily draw on personal experience to know if this is that feeling is worse now today than it's ever been. I can certainly tell you that there are people who do hide markers of their Judaism today, because of increased incidents of anti-Semitism. I would suggest and I would encourage people, you know, obviously, they should do what they feel most comfortable doing, but I would encourage people to as much as possible to speak up to share facts, but to be strong, and show strength in the face of this kind of a hatred and intimidation. What we find is that most people, most people the overwhelming majority of people do not harbor these feelings of ill will. Even some people who go along with moments movements or inclinations that are bigoted against Jews or against others don't necessarily realize the full weight and impact of what it is that they're doing. So BDS is a great example, most of the people who are connected to the BDS movement, they simply want to see peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and that's a laudable goal. It's just that BDS is not the path for doing that. It's a one-sided, really biased approach to a very complex problem. So I would say to the extent possible, be proud of who you are, live your life. You know, this is sort of one of the things that we used to say when we first encountered terrorism in the United States is that we shouldn't let the terrorists win by changing our freedoms by changing our way of life. But it's also important to be prudent. We do live in an era when we've seen, you know, armed attacks against Jews, against immigrants in this country, against Muslims elsewhere in the Pacific, you know, where people have been attacked in their houses of worship. So it is prudent to take certain precautions. It is a good idea to have a relationship with local law enforcement so that your first call to them is not a 911 call. It is prudent to take other security matters and considerations into mind when you're planning your events. And that doesn't mean that you still can't have a warm and welcoming environment and one in which you can live a full Jewish life or Buddhist life or Muslim life, to express yourself as an African American or as a Latino, to express yourself as a member of the LGBTQ community, whatever it might be, I would encourage you to express that. But unfortunately, yes, it's also important to take prudent steps to protect yourself and to be aware and to reach out in allyship and in coalition to others who can support you. Yeah, we shouldn't hang separately. We should hang together. So we have a question before we go. I think we can answer the first question is, how many Jewish students or staff are at UH? I think I answered that. We can't, we don't know. But the other is important. What is the precedent for UH supporting Jewish people on campus? What about supporting anti-Israel groups on campus? So as supporting Jewish people on campus, we have, and I hope I'm not boring you, Seth. Sorry, I just want to answer this very local question. But again, a lot of these questions, you know, we live 2,500 miles from the coast. So the local really is very important for us, you know, who we rub elbows with. If your kid is going to go to UH, is your kid going to be bombarded with anti-Semitism or not? So to answer the question, the precedent for supporting Jewish people has been taken up, not by the university, but by Jewish faculty and Jewish students. So we have a hello, we have a UH fund for the promotion of Jewish life and studies. We supported the ADL rep when they were here last time. We provided the nice food and, you know, so you guys wouldn't get hungry. So the university doesn't do that. But on the other hand, the university does nothing to keep us from doing that. That's a different issue. There are no Jewish history courses. There's no endow chair. But by the same token, there's no historian of the Middle East, regardless of their political position. Okay, the second point though is important. What about supporting anti-Israel groups? That's a great interest. If we could see the flyer again, because five departments are sponsoring. So to answer your question very quickly, and we can have another discussion about this, the university as a whole does not support this event. And looking at the flyer one should not assume that the university supports the event. Individual departments and individual scholars really do make their own decision. There's no cross-campus decision about whether to sponsor or not. But when you see this, please note that it's these departments. And if you want to do something about it, I highly recommend you contact these departments. What departments, Peter? Let's forget the names of the departments. If you look at the flyer, they are the usual departments. So ethnic studies. And the former chair of ethnic studies has gone on record saying Israel has no legal right to exist. He expressed that in an interview with the student newspaper. American Studies Department, American Studies Association has supported BDS. They're one of the professional organizations that asked, but to answer Ms. Kaplan's question, the deal with the university was they were allowed to house the journal here. But the journal could not follow BDS policy. So if an Israeli or a Palestinian submits an article, it must be treated the same way as any other author. All right, so that was kind of a concession. The Center for Hawaiian Knowledge. And this has become for the Jewish community a very fraught issue. As Seth and Sean noted, indigenous rights are significant. Anti-colonialism. And nobody is saying either of those are insignificant. They're too easily mapped on now to Israel. And again, I wouldn't put past the heavy Christian influence at the at the center of knowledge in the sovereignty movement, where once again, we're attacking Jesus. Then there are various student groups. They don't have any necessarily official recognition other than I'm sure Seth is familiar every college has a students for Palestine group. And we have, we have one as well. The numbers are not great, you know, five or six departments out of, I don't know, hundreds of departments, but they are in the places where they often are found on the mainland as well. Okay, thank you. That's really helpful. I think that answers the question. Yeah. One, one quick point, you know, Professor Hopperberg mentioned anti colonialism and mentioned indigeneity. You know, if you are a supporter of indigenous people and indigenous rights, and if you are opposed to colonialism, then you should be a supporter of Israel. I'm not agreeing with every policy or every action that Israel has ever taken absolutely not Israel is a democracy like any others that that is open to legitimate critique and criticism, and you can find more criticism of Israel than anywhere else in the world in Israel itself. It's a free and open and robust civil society, but Israel is also the best example of an anti colonialist project. In other words, a group of people who had been colonized going back to their indigenous place to reclaim their indigenous rights. And there are, and I'll leave it at that for now you can go and do the study in your homework to find out why. But if you're if you are a supporter of anti colonialism, and if you're a supporter of indigenous rights, then you ought to be a supporter of Zionism not to be a supporter of Israel. And open to the criticism and critique that are legitimate for Israel for the United States for France, or Australia, or China or any other country in the world that deserves to be have criticism level that it for its policies and actions on that basis, not to not to try to delegitimize it or say that it has no right to exist. Thank you, Seth. Thank you, Peter. discussion. I just before we go before we let you go, Seth, I have one more question I want to put to you and that's one of my two points Jane and then we'll go. Yeah, you go ahead, go ahead make your points. So one is that colonial settler society is the phrases is often prefixed with white colonial settler society. To agree with Seth and bring it home, you can't go to a classroom of the University of Hypa, you can't get on a bus, you can't go to a market. I see no way in which an Iraqi Jew is white. I know I see no way we're palestinian Christians so I think one of the difficulties is, it's not just colonialism or anti colonialism, indigenous or not. It is somehow the view that Jews are white in Israel, and Israeli society is multicultural, multi ethnic, multi religious. And the final reminder is that Jews have been there in one way or another for over 3000 years. The term palestinian was a term that the Romans used for Jews there. So I think what we have is really to competing nationalisms right to competing indigenous groups to competing people's because the Palestinian Arabs were colonized by the Arabs. We have two competing narratives which really are unfortunately very close to being mirror images of each other. And as Freud argued the most hideous wars are civil wars, and to certain degree this is a civil war, particularly at this point with the Israel being around for so many years, and so many people born there so that was just like a point J because you hear the white settler colonialism, you hear arguments about taking on indigeneity, and that Zionism is not a legitimate nationalism and it's really like looking in the mirror. It's like two siblings, having a battle over the same land, and the same water resources. So the I will quote you who to bow or the way to get something done is for everybody else to take their fingers out of that pie. Including, including BDS, which has a lot of support here by people who may have known nothing about the Middle East, but power has always said everybody else should just leave. And the Palestinians and Israelis and Arabs and Druze, like people in Hawaii, we have nowhere to go right. We have to get along. On campus, the most important thing in dealing with organizations like BDS is to use critical thinking, and it's a challenge, because they got a playbook, and you have to really use your kepi in order to deal with some of their arguments, but this is good we have to have this good discussion. Seth, I want to, I want to ask you one more question before we close and that's this. You are to us, and to the, the region, which you, you know, supervise the expression of ADL, and you, you spend your time dealing with hate and hate crimes, and people who hate, and expressions of hate in all forms, and anti-Semitism, it's very painful for me to talk about it. I'm sure Peter finds the same problem. It's not pleasant. I enjoy it. Yeah. No, you don't. It's horrible. It's twisted. It's, it's, it's the lowest kind of denominator of all. It's about how your life is as a professional, dealing with this, thinking about it, seeing expressions of it, seeing a record of it every day. I mean, how does that affect you? Can you get away from that or is it begin to get you down after a while? You know, I think that we are living again through a period where hatred is, it's there. It's out there. It's there whether you see it etched on the, on the wall, whether you see it in your social media feed. I see hatred and it's being expressed. I derive a lot of satisfaction and inspiration from all the people which are my work. For the people who file reports with us who are seeking our help and assistance that we can help give them some sense of hope, or in some cases some resolution to the hatred that they are confronting. So I think that we have tools to respond themselves. Bring a community around to embrace them. Introduce them to coalitions of other people from other communities, other faith groups, other ethnicities to be able to say we come together and we'll reject the hate together. So, I really, my work is a work about that's all about hope. I'm thinking that we can make this world a better place. And I know that we can and I've seen that happen by working together and by speaking up. So, you're doing that right here through this show. And I look forward to being able to do that with with folks throughout Hawaii in the coming months and years. Thank you very much, Seth for appearing on Tech Tech Peter, would you give would you give Seth even a greater thank you than I did. Thank you so much. You're welcome. No, thank you very much. Not just for sitting through Jay and me, and we don't actually shop at the same story, even though it looks that way, but not really for all your work to repair the world. ADL is an ADL has taken grief for it so ADL has been attacked politically, etc. I think people should know that ADL tracked white hate crimes when the federal government did not and would not do so. And so the ADL was way way ahead of the curve, knowing about white supremacists and white hatred. I think people also should know the event that precipitated the founding of the ADL. So that event was. Sure, so this is the at the time that the ADL was founded as I mentioned there was this air of anti Semitism prevalent in the United States and in fact, right around the time of the founding of the ADL there was a man who was falsely accused of heinous crime in Georgia. He was accused of sexually assaulting and murdering a young girl. And so he was convicted. And the trial during the trial it was even reported in the press that the public gallery was rife with people shouting out anti Semitic things hang the Jew and the like was being shouted out over the course of the trial. And even at that time even at the turn of the century. The trial was viewed to be such a miscarriage of justice that the governor of Georgia at the time commuted the sentence, the young man who had been convicted. Now, the group that was behind this was so incensed that the governor would commute the sentence to life in prison that they, and this included members of law enforcement at the time. Former elected officials at the time, they actually broken to Leo Frank is the young man's name Leo Franks jail cell, kidnapped him took him out drove him across the state and lynched him. And as you would do it any other lynching held a picnic posed for pictures with his body in the background, as was done with lynchings at that time in the deep south in the United States. This is the only documented occurrence of a lynching of a Jew in American history. This was a traumatic event for an entire community, about a third of the population of the Jewish population of Atlanta fled in the aftermath of Leo Franks trial murder. At the time of course there's been evidence to document that he was wrongly accused that that these these people were involved in this lynching and so we've seen where that kind of hatred can lead. And we can even infect those people who are charged with, you know, leading our society and being responsible for law enforcement. We understand very well what where hatred can lead. And that's why ADL was founded to fight him for good. And as our founding Charter States to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment for all. Thank you, sir. I wanted to know the origins of Peter Hoffenberg. Thank you for coming on the show. I hope we can do this again. Thank you so much.