 Okay, we're live and we're back and I'm Jay Fiedel and this is Bigotry in America. And today we're going to talk with Paul Friedman. He is the Tri-State High School Coordinator for StandWithUs.com, which is an anti-bigotry organization around the mainland. By the way, Tri-State refers to three states, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Welcome to the show, Paul. So nice to have you here. Thank you so much, Jay, for having me on your show today. It's an honor to be here today. Great to have you. Great to be able to discuss this. You know, we don't actually, in my view, discuss it enough. So I'm happy that StandWithUs is with us also. What does StandWithUs mean, anyway? StandWithUs is an international educational nonprofit organization that goes around the world. We're headquartered in Los Angeles, California. And we go around the world educating high school students, college students, and community members about Israel and the Middle East. StandWithUs is not a political organization. We are not a religious organization. We are strictly an educational organization that looks to expose people to all the facts to create a more tolerant and open-minded society that can one day lead to conversations that will lead to peace in Israel and in the Middle East. Well, that's pretty much our exact intention here in setting up the Bigotry in America show. We want to identify bigotry of all kinds, racial, religious, what have you, and then we want to talk about it and see if we can do something about bringing the country back together. But can you tell us where you are? Paul is joining us by Skype, but I'm not sure exactly where. Where are you, Paul? Sure. I am in New York City right now. Good. So let's talk about the condition of, you know, of, say, misinformation, miseducation about Israel, about Zionism, about the Jewish people, as it exists in the high schools today in this country. Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation out there that comes, that is about Israel. Unfortunately, you know, the media, when they tend to portray Israel, they tend to portray it as a, you know, war torn country full of extremism and conflict taking place all over the, all over the country. However, when you go to Israel, one will quickly realize that the reality is much different than their perception. In Israel, there's beautiful coexistence that takes place every single day. In Jerusalem alone, you can see Jews, Muslims, and Christians interacting together peacefully in the streets, coexisting, living amongst one another, schools, kids going to school together, playing soccer on the playground. So it's a very different reality than the perception that is taking place about Israel. So in order to counter all of this misinformation that is going on about Israel and some of the blatant lies that takes place about Israel, Stan with us works with educators and with students to plan programs in high schools and college universities to educate their school about Israel. And we have a number of different programs, and depending on what topic they would like to be educated about, we will run a program or bring in a guest speaker that is an expert on that topic to educate that community about Israel in the Middle East. That's great. And you know, we had only last week, we had a very interesting show with the president of Hadassah here in Hawaii. And she spoke about the hospitals, the Hadassah hospitals, which is sort of the center point of Hadassah in Israel and how the patients are multiracial, Jews and Arabs both. All kinds of people are the patients. The hospitals serve everyone. And the staff in the hospitals, including the professional staff, the doctors and surgeons and what have you, they're also multiracial. Hadassah is a really wonderful example of what you've been saying. But going beyond that, Hadassah sends its staff to far points in the globe to help people. And it's very interesting how much Hadassah does in far points of the globe. Just yesterday, we had a show with a fellow in a small town, Varanasi in India, a student there. And he was talking about the Israelis, about how they came and helped his town, the people of his town, which is not too far from the Nepalese border and Bhutan. Now, this is the middle of nowhere, actually, on the Ganges River. And he spoke about how they feel about the Israelis. They love the Israelis. So lest we forget, you know, the world in general is served by organizations like Hadassah and the other good works that are sort of exported by the state of Israel. In any event, let's talk about how it is going and how these kids in these high schools that you serve are being affected by this misinformation. What is their state of mind, so to speak, when you arrive at their door? Sure, sure. So every community and every high school is different. And there are varying levels of anti-Semitism. In general, in North America, so in Canada and the United States, the anti-Semitism tends to be much more intense on the campus level, on the college level than it does on the high school level. However, we do have incidences that take place on the high school level. For example, at a private high school, a prestigious high school in New Jersey, the author of the school newspaper wrote an article about Gal Gadot, who is the Israeli actress who played Wonder Woman in the recent film. And in that article, she basically wrote, you know, should we be supporting the film Wonder Woman because they chose to select Gal Gadot who supports Zionism and supports the Jewish state of Israel and supported their military offensive in the Gaza Strip in 2014? And should we be supporting this movie when we have an actress who supports, you know, these military offenses against the innocent Palestinian people? And this was an article in a school newspaper in a high school in New Jersey, where there are a lot of Jews. So these types of incidences take place all over North America and, unfortunately, in many different parts of the world. And the teacher reached out to me. I have a good relationship with one of the teachers at that school. And now we're working together to bring a Israel event into that school, actually an Israeli Arab Muslim speaker. And he's going to come into the school and explain from an Israeli Arab point of view why he chooses to support Israel and dedicate his life educating the world about the Jewish state. So these are the types of situations that we encounter in high schools and on very different levels. And the way that stand with us chooses to deal with these situations is by educating the community. We believe that education is the road to peace and the most effective and powerful tool to combat anti-Semitism. So when a situation like this comes up, in a community or at a school or in college campus, we will make sure that we can bring in the other perspective to make sure that students are exposed to all of the facts, all of the context and the information so they can make an informed and educated decision when it comes to Israel and the Middle East. How can you keep cool about this? You're so cool about it, Paul. If it was me, I'm afraid I would feel the ire welling up in my throat to find that these kids were so misinformed and were so brought into that kind of thing about boycotting the one democracy in the Middle East. How do you control your emotional reaction to this? Yeah, I mean, well, I'm a professional and I have to be in a position where I can give students the tools and resources necessary in order to empower them to educate their community about Israel. And if I panic, that will cause students to panic. And the truth is that these types of situations are actually very common and that doesn't make it any less disturbing. It's in fact, it's very disturbing that it's becoming more and more common. However, I'm trained to be able to deal with these situations professionally and help students deal with these situations as well. Unfortunately, students are incredibly intimidated by the anti-Israel movement, by the boycott movement. The boycott movement manifests itself in different ways in different communities and on college campuses. For example, if a pro-Israel speaker is coming to visit the university or let's say an Israeli professor, God forbid, should be invited to come and speak at the university, the BDS movement will work to shut down that speaker from coming to that university. Let's say that there's a study abroad program that the university has that takes place in one of the schools in Israel. BDS will work to shut down that program to prevent students from learning and living and studying in Israel. Let's say there's a demonstration on campus. There's an Israeli apartheid week that takes place all across North America where they make this fake mock Israeli apartheid wall, which is supposed to represent the security fence between the Israeli and Palestinian borders. And they say, look, Israeli is this racist state that supports apartheid and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians and you can't support them? And there are Jewish students and not just Jewish students, but just in general pro-Israel students that support Israel that are just trying to get to class. And when they're trying to get to class, they're bombarded by all of this anti-Israel activity and demonstrations that are going on all around them. So many of them feel confused. They don't understand why this is happening. And they want to be able to respond to it, but they're not sure how to. So that's when they reach out to stand with us and then we will work with them to be able to respond and train them how to deal with this activity so that they will have the tools to be able to respond to it when they encounter it. Yeah, what's interesting about that, and we've had this experience on our show. We had a University of Hawaii English professor come on our show and talk about, and she writes about it, she talks about it in every possible venue she can find about boycotting Israel. And what's interesting is that this whole movement is dependent or at least cites the First Amendment at every possible opportunity, the First Amendment. And yet what happens, as you described, at least on the mainland, is as soon as you take a position adverse to them, as soon as you try to argue their points, their playbook, their playbook is uniform, argue against their playbook, they shout you down. Shouting people down is not an expression of the First Amendment. I'll go on record about that. Shouting them down is just the opposite of the First Amendment. Do they ever shout you down? Do you ever get attacked when you go to these schools, Paul? Yeah, I personally have never been shouted down at a high school or at an event that I was the speaker at that I was running. However, many of my colleagues have been shouted down. And when a situation like that comes up, we make sure that first off, before any event that we have, it's necessary for us to make sure that campus security is aware that the event is taking place and that we can reach out to them if we should encounter a hostile demonstrator who refuses to allow the speaker to speak. It's one thing if audience member disagrees with what the speaker is saying, states why they disagree with what the speaker is saying, and then supports why with facts to support why they disagree with that speaker. However, in many situations, that is not what happens. What happens is they demonstrate to prevent the speaker from speaking at all. They don't want the speaker to even be able to be in a position where they could impact and educate the people at their school around them. So they shout down the speaker to try and prevent them from speaking at all, blocking our free speech amendments. And when this situation like that comes up, we will ask campus security to escort that student out of the room and out of the building. And unfortunately, we've had to do this several times, but more often than not, campus security is very cooperative. And this campus has rules that you're not allowed to prevent speakers from speaking. So they have an obligation that if we notify them to take action when something like that is taking place. Yeah, so, you know, there's a playbook here. And it seems to me that in a lot of these campuses, high school and college campuses, the playbook urged by the people who would boycott Israel, it sounds pretty much the same. There's a uniformity. The arguments are all laid out and they sound uniformed from one campus, one speaker to another, one anti-Israeli speaker to another. And I wonder if you have a handle on who's writing the playbook? Where is this getting coordinated? Where is it getting organized? Where is it getting funded? How come you have what amounts to a movement across the country seeking a boycott? Who's in charge? Right. So the boycott divassment and sanction movement, their leader ironically is in Israel. He lives in Israel, he lives in Tel Aviv, and he studied at Tel Aviv University. So it's very ironic that he's an Israeli Arab who has Israeli citizenship, who lived in Israel, who was raised in Israel and who studied in Israel, seeks to boycott Israel. And boycott the very universities that he voluntarily chose to get an education at, now he works to boycott that university from being able to send speakers or to have students come to that school to study from America and from abroad. So unfortunately, the BDS movement tends to be is very anti-Semitic for three reasons. It's anti-Semitic, one because it demonizes Israel and it demonizes the Jewish state by comparing it falsely to the most horrific governments that have existed in human history, like the Nazi regime during the 1930s or South African apartheid during the 20th century. So they seek to demonize Israel. They delegitimize Israel's right to exist. The movement actually says that we do not support Israel's right to exist as a nation. So this is not a movement that is like working toward peace or working toward like mutual understanding or coexistence. This is a movement that is trying to eradicate Israel, the only Jewish country that exists in the entire world. And also what makes BDS very anti-Semitic is its double standards that they place on Israel. BDS singles down Israel as the only country in the world worth boycotting. No other country in the world, the most evil regimes on the planet, non-democracies that deny their people basic freedoms that people have in democratic countries such as Israel. They choose Israel as the only country in the world worth boycotting. And to me, this is completely double standards and anti-Semitic. It's very obvious that the only reason why they would choose a democracy, the only democracy in the Middle East worth boycotting is because it's the only Jewish country that exists in the entire world. And to me, this is completely hypocritical. There are double standards. They demonize and they delegitimize Israel's very right to exist. Because of all this, they align into anti-Semitism. Jay, it's one thing if you are against some of Israel's policies. Many Israelis don't agree with every single Israeli policy that their government comes up with. Same thing in America. Not every American agrees with every policy that the American government comes up with. However, it's one thing to disagree with their policies. It's another thing to say, these people do not have a right to exist. They don't have a right to govern themselves. They don't have a right to determine their own future. And then demonize this country with lies by comparing it to the worst regimes in the world. To me, this is a very anti-Semitic movement. It targets Jewish students and pro-Israel students on campuses. And this is the reason why an organization like Stand With the Tested Students is to empower students to be able to respond to a movement that is targeting them specifically for their support of Israel. Thank you, Paul. We can take a short break. We can take a one-minute break and we'll come back. And I want to ask you then about the Roger Waters story and go further about how this program of yours works in the high schools. We'll be right back. This is Stink Tech, Hawaii, raising public awareness. We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Stink Tech and our show today is Bigotry in America. Our guest is Paul Friedman. He is the tri-state high school coordinator for StandWithUs.com and covering New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. He joins us by Skype from New York. Paul, I wanted to go a little further with exactly what is happening with this boycott movement. And I wanted to hear about the Roger Waters story. Roger Waters is a member of a band. I guess at one point it was a popular band, but he's been very active in calling for the boycott of Israel. Can you tell that story? Sure. About five, six years ago, Roger Waters, who's English, took a very prominent position within the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement against Israel and began publicly speaking out and advocating to boycott Israel. Now, what Roger Waters tends to focus on is the cultural boycott of Israel, because he himself is a musician. And so what he does is he tries to pressure other musicians who have booked tours and dates in Israel to perform in Israel, like such as Radiohead. He tried to pressure Bon Jovi. He tried to pressure the Rolling Stones who had a date in Israel. All of these bands, he tries to pressure them to culturally boycott Israel, to refuse to perform in Israel based on Israel's political decisions. Now, what makes this anti-Semitic is that Roger Waters only selects Israel as the only country in the world. There are 197 countries in the world. Roger Waters has decided that Israel, the only Jewish country in the world, that is the only country worth boycotting in the world. That is the one country that he will pick up the phone and call other musicians and call them out on social media and try and get all of the boycott Israel people to pressure that musician or that artist on social media from performing in Israel. Now, most of the time he is incredibly unsuccessful. And this Radiohead, which is another English band, actually called out Roger Waters and said, this is ridiculous, that you don't think that we're capable of making this decision for ourselves on whether or not we're able to perform in Israel. And we find it outrageous that you're trying to pressure us as a band from performing there when we made the conscious decision to perform there because we enjoyed our experience of performing in Israel in the past. So, and as the lead singer in Radiohead explained, he goes, just like we don't necessarily support Israel's, necessarily all of Israel's politics when they have a right-wing ruler and power, just like we don't necessarily support all of Donald Trump's politics. So, when America has a right-wing rule of power, it doesn't mean that we're not going to perform in the United States or perform in Israel just because they have a leader in power that we don't agree with their political views. And I thought the way he explained that was very accurate. And it sort of just showed Roger Waters how musicians are able to see right through his bigotry and refuse to listen to him and perform in Israel. However, sometimes the BDS campaign is strong enough to get artists from canceling their show in Israel, which is why it's so important to educate the public and also show support to artists when they choose to perform in Israel to show their support and to thank them for standing up to all of the hate and the bigotry and discrimination that exists out there against the only Jewish country in the world. Well, yeah. And I want to explore with you the arc of this. And when I grew up, there was no such talk of a boycott ever. And even, I want to know, a few years ago, there was no, and then it came to my attention that this movement, if you want to call it a movement, was on the campuses, college campuses, and now to find that it's on the high school campuses. And my question is at least my observation, Paul, this is getting worse. And it's getting worse under the Trump administration. He somehow has a way of fomenting this kind of bigotry and hatred. I am not sure how that works from a psychosociological point of view, but it seems to me that he has an effect and there's a sort of groundswell of this kind of bigotry. Am I right? So I think it's important to point out here that there are two forms of anti-Semitism. That are taking place in the United States and around the world simultaneously. We have the more ancient form of anti-Semitism that we tend to see on the far right politically, with white supremacy and your neo-Nazis and your Ku Klux Klan and drawing swastika symbols on like synagogues and Jewish cemeteries and Jewish community centers and things like this. And this is your more ancient form of anti-Semitism. And this type of anti-Semitic activity has increased under the Donald Trump administration. However, it had always been there even before Donald Trump came to power. However, it's probably come more to the surface since he's elected. However, what actually increased under the Obama administration is this BDS campaign and this boycott, divestment and sanction campaign against Israel. And so you have these far right anti-Semitic activities with these swastikas and these white supremacists attacking Jewish institutions. And then you have this boycott, divestment and sanction campaign which actually comes from many different groups of people in the United States, not just white people, but also different minority groups in the United States that are actively supporting boycotting Israel. And we see a lot of these groups are actually not supporters of Trump, but very anti-Trump supporters. And in fact, at one political rally, an anti-Trump rally in Philadelphia, we saw the burning of an Israeli flag that took place during the election. And this was at an anti-Trump rally and an Israeli flag was burning. So there are two types of anti-Semitism. I think it's important to acknowledge that both of these anti-Semitic activities are taking place. And it's very unfortunate that Jews are experiencing this right now from both the far right and the far left. And unfortunately, a lot of the boycott, divestment and sanction campaign that takes place on college campuses isn't really coming from the far right or from Trump supporters. It's actually coming from anti-Trump movements. So we're experiencing anti-Semitism from both political spectrums right now. Yeah. And it's happening in a landscape where the country is seeing more bigotry on a number of levels, racial and religious. I find that very interesting. The larger picture here, the 50,000-foot picture, is the country is engaged in more hatred than it was before. And we are more fragmented on a racial and religious basis than we were before. I mean, I know you have an abiding optimism about this, Paul, but it doesn't sound very good. And I wonder how we can put Humpty back together again. Yeah. Well, I am very optimistic because even though the BDS movement is extremely well funded and they're very loud and they're very disruptive and they target Jewish students and make them feel intimidated and scared and powerless. However, because these situations have been taking place, the pro-Israel movement has become incredibly active, proactive, not just reactive, but taking initiatives to make sure that these types of incidences do not take place in the future. And when it does take place, we are right there to help students with an event and with education to make sure that students are informed and understand the full picture. And in fact, many BDS resolutions were defeated last year on many college campuses in North America. In fact, much many more, three times more BDS resolutions were defeated than what were passed. In addition to this, on the state level, on the local state level, over half the states in the United States have made it illegal for businesses to operate who support the boycott movement against Israel. So if these businesses choose to choose to boycott Israel, the state will cut funding to those businesses for supporting racism and discrimination against the Jewish people. So half the states in the United States have adopted anti-BDS legislation to make it illegal for these activities to take place. So I'm very encouraged. I think these things are actually heading in the right direction that BDS resolutions are being defeated, that anti-BDS legislation is being passed on the state level and that will continue and that students, the pro-Israel movement in general has become much more organized in North America out of necessity and is working to educate the community about Israel. And I think the next generation is going to come up being much more educated about Israel in the Middle East and will be in a much better position to make an informed decision and won't be so susceptible to the lies and the misinformation that exists out there. You know, it's too bad we have to do this. It's too bad that this has taken place and that it's necessary to do education about something which isn't true. So I really appreciate your work. I appreciate the work of StandWithUs.com. I think it's incredibly important, not only for the cause of Israel and the Jewish people, but for the cause of harmony among the races and religions in this country as a beacon to religious freedom in the world. So thank you for what you do, Paul. I hope we can touch base with you again, but I will be with you and supporting you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jay, for this opportunity. It's wonderful having the opportunity to speak with you today. Aloha.