Leave it there i appreciate your good questions and we will go sign copies now. Thank you. [applause] stick we would get this lightning going in just a minute. James pretty brady critically wounded in the assassination attempt of reagan has died the the impartially paralyzed in the accident. He would want to campaign for stricter gun laws the brady bill signed into law in 1983 required a mandatory five day waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks for potential gunfire. James brady was 73. [applause] in recent days israel has been attacked in compelled to take action to defend itself from attacks from gaza this is the third time in six years once again voices have been raised you criticize the military operations to demonize israel . Of selfdefense that would be a nobrainer for any other country in the world this is a sad and tragic time the special for the more than 1. 7 million palestinians who have been taken hostage by her boss with the efforts to abeyance the radical agenda of. We are fortunate to have with us today Joshua Muravchik whose book making david into goliath how the world turned against israel seems relevant to current events. He has written hundreds of articles in intellectual journals with Foreign Policy and political and ideological topics the author of nine previous books including heaven on earth the rise and fall of socialism and trailblazers the voices of democracy of the middle east caribbean fellow at the Foreign Policy institute at Johns Hopkins school and of indians to studies infirmity years at the American Enterprise institute from 2011 to 2013 also a fellow at the george did you bush instituted and a fellow in residence in before that in the seven days a congressional aide to representative james ohara and patrick moynihan. Joshua . [applause] thank you for coming here for what i have to say. I am grateful for that. It is a striking coincidence of process to repeated self and times over the past decade and a half is now taking place once again that it strikes back in selfdefense and then receives widespread criticism around the world in this was the subject than i tackled in this book why does it work this way . The idea came to me about four or five years ago one morning when i read in the paper on the internet about a story in sweden that ran in the widest circulation daily in sweden and they reported israelis were now slaughtering palestinians randomly in order to harvest their body organs for sale. This story had no basis whatsoever in was built around the case of a deceased palestinian who had a scar on his body because he had an autopsy. But when the reporters for other publications followed up and went to the family they denied it ever making an accusation. So essentially theyve made it up. The swedish ambassador to israel apologized for the story at which point she was reprimanded enforced by the Swedish Foreign ministry to withdraw her apology on the grounds it was the infringement of press freedom. When i read about this i thought how can this be . It is so crazy. How to become to this . I can understand people fill critical at one moment in disagree with the israeli policies. I do sometimes. But to have an image to imagine and put into print in the major western daily newspaper that israelis were randomly slaughtering palestinians . Had become to a point where people have an image of israel to allow them to publish such things . Was also startling to me is i am old enough to remember sympathy for israel and around the world was very substantial Public Opinion polls showed in the United States how people did not have an opinion or did not care but put those who did the support was quite overwhelming. Maybe eight one but similar were taken in france and the ratio of support for israel was even more onesided than for the United States there is still a great deal of support for israel but around the world as sematech. So it could be a part of the omnibus arabs state that nasser espoused would get the Palestinian National charter that was adopted in 1964 makes no mention to have the palestinian state or sovereignty and it is all about palestinians as part of the arab nation. The defeat of the arabs of 1967 was so devastating in humiliating destroyed nasser prestige and with that also destroy it the idea of the arab best that cleared the emergence of the Palestinian Nationals that was advocated by a few among the and yasir arafat in friends mostly those working in kuwait. And over the years theyve moved into the plo to take it over to see the emergence of Palestinian Nationalism as an issue in the conflict for the first time. So as having an image with massive arabs against israel to become little but strong because israel now was an occupation of territories of several million. Instead of people who were trying to deny the jews a state of their own but to deny and other people was state of their own. Said without whole conflict was given a different look but this was not a sufficient explanation of the hostility against israel today. Because maybe the world came to care about with the aspirations because no one cares about other occupations. But to exercise the occupation of tibet . A far more outstanding and preoccupations and the palestinians and in terms of the National Aspirations what about the kurds whose aspirations in it justifiable in every dimension. For thorough culture or knowledge headnote country of their own. Sadly no one cares before they denied those aspirations. And really it cannot begin with the attitudes we see today. Has manifested and inconsistency was right in the demonization of israel that we see so much. For example, the teacher unions have voted for academic boycotts of israeli universities. The same teachers unions have never voted for or propose store discussed or debated of universities and countries with no Academic Freedom or no unions of teachers or anywhere else that passes unnoticed. We have seen recently the Presbyterian Church has voted to divest from companies with israel but to persecute questions . And then what goes hand in hand there is no serious interest in the fact that this case has been decided before the fax from the cold stone report about the last significant war in gaza and the foreign minister of sweden and the held the chairmanship of the chairmans seat chairmanship of the e. U. The very next morning he endorsed the goldstone report. It is 500 pages long of very small type. He had not read the goldstone report between the day before when it was issued and the morning he endorsed it in the day above all of europe. He was not going to read it he did not care what was in the report. It condemned israel so therefore automatically it had to be embraced and endorsed. Because israel is and how inherently wrong. Nevermind so hata may get to that situation . So those forces at work so those material pressures brought to bear and intellectual changes that alter the equation. So first of the use of terrorism which was carried out widely on european soil with airplane hijackings throughout the 1970s and would terrorize the europeans until they came into a mode of appeasement for the terrorists. There was an account made 204 perpetrators hijackings and bombings who were captured and detained in european prisons isnt they were instantaneously released here was not just the europeans so you can look into the memoir of arafats main deputy the french author wrote memoirs and he would post the summit meeting that declared the sole legitimate representative of the palestinian people. We should keep secure the vote because we created a climate of terror so those arab leaders were afraid to go against them. With the use of intimidation the oil embargo and implemented at the time he 1973 it brought europe and japan to their knees in the spoke openly of the need to change the orientation of the conflict because of their dependence on arab oil. The next year with a boycott over secretary of state kissinger that the western countries have to find some mechanism is from the threat of future oil embargoes. So to go on the boards for the europeans to join us to raise the cloud. And he wrote in his memoirs the terrible frustration every minister i consulted with was terrified of confrontation with the oil producers. This was a complete failure because the ministers decided to a peace rather than resist and the third part of what is brought to bear is the sheer weight of numbers reverie to there 100 missiles when israel 22 Member States of the arab league 57 Member States it is a fact of life for human nature that most people seeing a conflict between the many and the few take sides with the mini only the very brave will join with the few also a consequence which translates into a diplomatic pressure and also enables the arabs to take over the wind. So you have these Security Council if it has a veto and is not a problem but every other un body is majority rule and those are all dominated by the movement whose 120 members make up twothirds of the u. N. And about half of that is the islamic countries end of the 22 Member States is by which the arabs had their way to turn the u. N. Into a platform for the campaign against israel. It is astonishing but but it has unlimited rift any problem in the world of members choose spends an immense proportion passing a resolution after resolution to denounces real it does occasionally but of all resolutions threequarters that mention a particular country threequarters have been devoted to the denigration of israel and one quarter to m a misdeeds by the other 184 countries in the world. So with endless turning out of resolutions the wind has three special bodies to conditions in one vero with a large staff to propagating the palestinian cause to denigrate israel so it is the material pressures brought to bear to change World Opinion but then equally important part of the change was a transformation on the intellectual level. This was not engineered but those who could take advantage of its to turn around this takes the form of a paradigm of progressivism for one century the core idea of capitalist not just a matter of justice but portrayed as a redemptive it struggled to make the whole world a better and happier place. This image began to lose its force it was another reality play with the national and ethnic struggle against colonialism it died the the entire post colonialism and in this view instead of the class struggle is set of workers against capitalist also to be overlaid with the heroic civil rights struggle within the most watched country in the world so this all came to wine and ball of wax with the rest against the west called people of color against the white man. This was not just a matter of right thing the wrong pick came to be seen as a redemptive struggle to make the whole world a better place. It was not invented by advocates they could take advantage of it the leading symbol was in fact, the most prominent palestinian american from viet university whose work became immensely influential the newspaper the guardian wrote he was the most influential intellectual of our time. There was a web search done for the most syllabi these days are online see you can search party that there 900 courses in american universities that are assigned like georgetown and ucla entirely devoted to the thought of edward even in cambridge introduction to the thought of edward. It amounts to a complete intellectual thought not just something i disagree with that has no legitimate intellectual standing whatsoever. If the world were to look at it with clear eyes. Why would i Say Something that drastic . It boils down to the idea that all white people are inherently racist not exactly those words but the same thing. Every european also apply to americans what he could say about the orient was a racist and imperialists and ethnocentric. To prove the broad basis to examine the work those who studied the muslim world to what he really did to allow in the universe the european intellectuals from 19th century to look for those racist connotations then strung them together to say these people were all oriental less. But some of the people he quoted were not oriental list at all. Then he gave them a new label you could call them the oriole until last some of them had the one but the contrary quotes that they left out the left out entirely who were giants in the field who is writing clearly the opposite direction when he would prove with the attitudes of the westerners the steadied the orient one of the most important of the figures was a hong carry into who wrote in the late 1800s and regarded as the granddaddy of muslim and arab studies. In those left out lived for years and the arab countries and of course, like all people whose steady another region of the world, loved it. That is normally what happens if you are an academia especially chinese studies or whenever the normal mindset with a great affection and that was true also and it was exemplified to capitalize that attitude remember he was such you to discover that islam was the only religion to elevate judeas of to a rational level. As opposed to the six figures which you or your children have been assigned to read. The new people whose liberation redeemed mankind. He made the oriental into the ultimate example of people of color. The muslims into the representative orientals and the arabs into the central or core muslims and finally the palestinians into the ultimate quintessential arabs. By this chain of reasoning, abracadabra, israel was transformed in it because it was in conflict with the palestinians. It was transformed from being seen as redemptive refuge of the people from thousands of years of persecution to the very embodiment of White Supremacy and oppression and i think in matt transformation lies the explanation for the question i ask myself that morning when i read about the story of how the people possibly believe such a thing. Thank you very much for listening and ill be happy to take questions or comments. [applause] thank you joshua. I would like to ask the first question and after i do i will hand it to the audience and i ask you to ask real questions concise so everybody gets a chance and also to identify yourself. We will get to some microphones. Wait until the microphone comes to you. As for my question joshua we conservatives like to say that ideas have consequences. As Richard Richard weaver road and it strikes me that one of the ideas that has had increasing consequences throughout the middle east is this paradigm shift you mentioned between pan arab nationalism often secularsocialist nationalism and a new revolutionary islam must extremist revolutionary doctrine and represented i think by hamas which is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood which is putting into effect the ideas of a former Muslim Brotherhood theorists who borrowed many ideas of a Vanguard Party and ceaseless struggle from communist thought and applied these in islamic, islam must context. That along with the breakdown of the oslo Peace Process has made it even harder to imagine the compromise on a National Basis between israel and palestine. If the conflict is increasingly defined in rule it defined in religious terms and hamas or whatever collection of leaders on the other side see themselves as acting to advance their concept of gods interest then compromise itself becomes blasphemy and becomes increasingly hard to see any kind of negotiated settlement to this thing and that, taken with some of the war crimes that have been perpetuated as hamas has taken palestinians hostage and hides amongst civilians to launch rockets at civilians in the long term could discredit that caused in the eyes of many in nonmuslims read so do you see any impact on israels image coming out of succession of what looks to outsiders as selfdefeating armed attempts to kill civilians with very little gain to the average palestinian in the street . Do you think over time that will make westerners particularly europeans look differently at israel . Thank you. Its a deep question jim but i always hate questions where i have to speculate about the future. Id much rather speculate about the past. I think that, that islamists have gained a lot of steam since i think it was the iranian revolution that rarely even though it was shed shiite and most muslims are shiite it was the first Islamic Republic that really gave a tremendous shot in the arm to islam is a man over the decades the last 35 years we have seen that has been on the rise. But it is also evoking some backlash as you are suggesting and some horror at the things they are doing. One hopes that will spread to the west. The interesting thing is that reaction against islamism i think is to this point most evident or at this moment in this current gaza crisis, its most evident in the arab world where i think a lot of people are quite unhappy with the islamists. By far the largest majority of their victims, people who have guided their hands have not been jewish or christians but have been muslims. And think what you will about the takeover by general out of cece owl a sissy but there were millions who took the Muslim Brotherhood and i think in this current war in gaza where we arent getting used to talk this is something old in internet and social media war and we are getting all these terrible images of innocent civilians in gaza who are getting killed and bombed out of their homes and children among the victims. And yet there really hasnt been the kind of rage in the arab world against israel that we have seen at other moments where there have been these conflicts. Of course most people in the arab world will feel in identity with the arabs out of the fight but there hasnt been that fury that we have seen on other occasions. I attribute that to the fact that a lot of people in the arab world are getting sick of the islamists and i think they do understand that hamas started this round of fighting. Whether westerners will catch up with the arabs on this score i think remains an unknown. Okay let me open it up to questions at this point. This man right here and the two men behind him. Greetings. My name is james and im a u. S. Army veteran at Ground Zero NationalSecurity Consultant president and founder of and republican and unapologetic neoconservative. I want to thank the speaker for extending us the courtesy of their time to this issue. I want to visit a core tenet that seems in part defines the elements of the lecture and of course talking about the intertemporal scope of your research which seems to look at the impact of strategic information and influence operations implemented by u. S. Israeli adversaries the goal to attempt unfairly so to delegitimize israel and delink israel from its allies. I wanted. I wanted to know if in your research you came across any evidence that illustrates them. Quite the organization operational ties between assets influenced by soviet supporters during the cold war and assets of contemporary u. S. And israeli adversaries . I dont know that i have found the goods you are looking for, the kind of hard evidence of institutions or individuals who did x, y or z but the broader picture, you dont need to have special information on intelligence you know which is the soviet union is gone now but for at least its last 20 years of life, it worked very much in this field of trying to transform world sentiment against israel and that was because there is one effect of the 1967 war that i left out of my presentation in order to keep it short although it was probably too long anyway but to keep it from getting longer and one interesting effect was israels lightning victory in 1967 was a tremendous humiliation to the soviet union as well as to nassar because the soviets really push that war. They have agitated the egyptians and assyrians. The arab armies were armed with soviet weapons and it was seen to some degree a cold war proxy war where one side a light with the west and the other side of life with the soviets. Therefore it was a tremendous humiliation to the soviets. Their side was losing. Their weapons were discovered as western weapons and it had a very powerful effect inside the soviet empire. For one thing it ignited the consciences of jewish within the soviet union itself for numbered several million who had not had any kind of freedom of religious or other cultural activities. Many of them just had an awareness of the heritage that they were but hadnt lived in a kind of jewish life either religiously or culturally. But they felt this identity and they felt 100 times more strongly when israel defeated, little israel defeated these big soviet client states. So we got a movement within the ussr of soviet jewish for the right to immigrate in the first time in the history of communism. There was some kind of semimass movement for rights and against the regime. Until then there had only been an individual dissident here or there so that was momentous and it also had an effect on empire in the socalled satellite countries where people are not jews but were under the soviet boot felt hopeless about it. If israel could defeat the soviet in the middle east this model if we are up against is not invulnerable and not invincible. So it didnt have, it sent a shudder to the soviet soviet leaders in the result of that was they have mobilized and didnt stop until they were go gone. A campaign of denigration of israel and zionism, they played a big role in the u. N. Imp are pounding the zionism is racism resolution. So there was certainly a very powerful connection and there was also a connection and you may think of it as more and bolts and that is in these early years after fata moved into the plo and took over and the palestinian cause was consecrated than they quite consciously apprenticed themselves to the north north vietnamese and to get kong and two other communist revolutionary forces around the world who said we can show you how to defeat them militarily superior enemy and you dont do it on the battlefield. You do it through politics and information or disinformation. That was an enormous transformation because until that point in the arab world the arabs had been allied with the axis in world war ii. There were german nazi escaped criminals in egypt churning out propaganda. That is why so many of the killed the jews, drive the jews into the sea came from. Some i was homegrown but some of it was encouraged by the nazis and after 1967 the herbst figured out this really isnt working so the arab cause was we position from right to left all at once. Thats not exactly the detail you are looking for but thats as much as i can add to this. Excellent presentation. Given the really false and pernicious falsehoods and images that have been targeting israel that you describe in your book, what is it that israel and its supporters in the west do . Well, i wrote a book. I think israel itself has not been great at pr or information in telling their story and i dont know why. They have brand report this and i also have the sense that they dont try very hard. I think theres a certain cynicism and israel that the world is against us anyway so why bother. I know sometimes in my role as a researcher trying to get information from israeli sources that will counteract some antiisrael story thats out there that i suspect is false and i can never get it. So i think there is a problem on the israeli side and on this the side on the american and western side, people who support israel want to see it survive and flourish. I think for one thing we have to not be intimidated and increasingly there is actually physical intimidation going on on University Campuses which has been common for a few years. We have seen a little bit of it in the streets in boston and los angeles in the last weeks. Of course even more apparent in your and p. In places and its important not to be intimidated but its also not important not to be intimidated intellectually. That is, if im right in my analysis that is part of what israel is up against his its up against the dominant progressive interpretation of the current stage of World History which is the stage of the struggle of the rest against the west than it is intellectually intimidating to go against things because you dont want to be a neanderthal. You dont want to be a racist. You dont want to be someone who is unsympathetic to the claims of people who have been oppressed or discriminated against in the past. You should be sympathetic to those claims but you should be sympathetic and that they are just and they dont entail some new injustice. People just have to have the intellectual courage to stand up and argue for what they feel is right even if it goes against the zeitgeist and even if it goes against what seems to be the proper way of thinking about upright and moral people. This woman in the back here. Hi i am deborah rice from frontpage magazine. I appreciate you coming today and enjoyed your presentation but i couldnt help notice that you omitted any mention of the antisemitism is that has plagued the jews throughout the centuries and they have been scapegoated throughout all of history. Certainly hamass charter which says expressly that it wants to eliminate the jews now by diplomatic means but by violence and the unholy alliance between leftists and islamists. Also might as well add also the inherent antisemitism as well as antichristian phobia and all of that in some interpretations of islam and certainly in hamas. I didnt talk about antisemitism and i dont need to talk about it except perhaps in the book because while i am sure its a factor in hostility to israel the question that i was trying to answer is what has changed so dramatically over 40 years . It cant be that there was no antisemitism or very little antisemitism in the world 40 years ago. Antisemitism is there today but it was there then and its been there for centuries and a millennia. So its kind of a given but however much antisemitism bears in the world we had an era from the late 40s to the late 60s and the sixday war is the epitome of that but you would think when there wasnt a war but just a Popular Culture the novel exodus which was published in the 1950s was the bestselling novel and in the United States since gone with the wind. Then it went on to be translated into scores of other languages and became a bestseller and many other countries rated so it just didnt seem to me that antisemitism was aired very good explanatory variable for how we got in those days to today. One other problem with antisemitism that i thought about and one other problem with many problems in what we are talking about in his overall argument which is i thought about this one walked in mearsheimer published first their paper and then their book. I thought it was all quite nasty and when i read it i thought this just really reeks of antisemitism. In the paper that preceded the book right at the beginning they said we may be called antisemites but far from it. Not only are we not antisemites, we are philosemites. Then people read what they wrote and any number of critics said you were antisemites and they said now we are not in the critics said yes you are, no were not and at that point it seemed to me that the argument goes nowhere. I feel that its very hard for me to prove that soandso is an antisemite but its not at all hard for me to prove that someone is saying about israel is false, unfair, unbalanced unjust and i would rather keep the argument on that plane than to get myself embroiled in trying to prove whats in someones heart or mind. We have time for one more question and will you be signing books afterward so people can talk to you afterwards . There are books i will find them. That sounds good. This lady up here. Hi my name is barbara and my question is when you look at the conflict and you assign blame or look at the blame because you have to identify the problems in order to work towards solutions would you say the islamic side as 100 of the blame and israel has a rope or would you make it 90 10 or how would you do that . In other words things israel can do to work also towards a solution . Let me say two things in response. One is, in terms of i think its less important to assign blame than to think about how the conflict could be ended and to have the only formula that is convincing to me for any conflicts are formulas that involve very substantial concessions on both sides. And i think there is no and i dont have much sympathy for some in israel who seemed to take the position well we will just have everything we want and somehow this problem will go away. I dont think thats at all reasonable. In assigning blame it becomes trickier. Im not an israeli and i dont share the risks that israelis are experiencing at this moment and that they live with every day. I try to impose on myself a rule of great modesty and taking positions on what israel ought to do that if i were an israeli i would be on the more soft line rather than the hardline side of the spectrum. That is among those who do accept is there should be a twostate solution and i think a lot of the settlement building is foolish and is a nuisance and bad in that and, if there is ever and there seems to be none at all but if there is a will have to involve dismantling of some settlements, consolidation and so in that sense i am not imply good accord with everything thats done by israelis for that son by israel. It also doesnt seem to me a very meaningful exercise to say this one did that thing wrong and that one did that thing wrong. Theres a basic cause of this conflict and that is not in 100 details. Its in one big idea and a basic cause of the conflict is that the arabs initially would not accept the existence of any sovereign jewish state of any size and with any borders. Over the decades even generations some of them now due including some of the palestinians. But i think whereas there is a very clear that geordie and israel for a settlement for a twostate solution for the creation of a palestinian state as part of a Peace Agreement among the palestinians there is not and never has been a consensus that says okay, we will go for two states as a private solution. We will accept that israel is there forever and we are there forever and we will live sidebyside in a productive relationship. There certainly are substantial numbers of palestinians who do want that and who do believe that there is another substantial number who dont. This most recent poll was taken in may sponsored by the washington policy and conducted by respective palestinian poll organizations and it found that twice as many palestinians agreed with the proposition that we want the conflict to go on until we have all of palestine