I spoke today at the Jewish Unity Rally at Cornell University. The thunder and hail storm that rolled through just as it was scheduled to start did not dampen spirits. We had about 500 people in attendance, which all things considered was a good turnout.
Prior to our event, sociopathic anti-Israel students hung an anti-Israel banner on a building behind the stage, trying to steal some attention. The crowd cheered when it was torn down! Such a pathetic ploy by losers only strengthened the crowd’s resolve.
There was a lot of singing and dancing, and about 10 speakers.
Here is my speech:
Transcript [auto-generated, may contain transcription errors]
Thank you for being here, and thank you to Yossi and Zoe and Samantha for organizing this.
I’m so proud of the job they did because it’s not easy on a college campus, particularly this college campus, to step forward and be a proud Jew, be proud of Israel, and be proud of the United States.
This is a unity rally, but it’s not just a unity rally for Jews, and it’s not just a unity rally for Israel. There’s a reason we have Israeli and American flags on this stage, it’s because we stand for civilization against true barbarians who are looking to tear us down.
I remember after October 7th, receiving a lot of communications from people who read my website and people I’ve met over the years. And the communications I remember the most were from Christian friends asking if I was okay, asking how the Jewish people were doing, asking if we need them to organize groups on campuses to escort Jewish students who are under attack.
So this is not just a Jewish unity rally, it’s an American unity rally and we can never forget that.
You’ve heard a lot, and you’ll hear more today about October 7th, but I want to talk to you about October 8th and October 9th and October 10th. How is it that on this campus and other college campuses across the United States, the immediate reaction from many students and many faculty was to celebrate what Hamas had done. How is it that at Harvard, within a day, 50 student groups signed a statement entirely blaming Israel, the victim, for what happened on October 7th?
How is it that a professor at this university felt exhilarated upon hearing of the attack? And what’s most disturbing is watch that video, he got met with cheers by many students.
And then they broke out into the genocidal chant of ‘from the river to the Sea. Palestine will be free. ‘ We know what they were talking about when they say that, those aren’t just words. The history of the phrase is a genocidal call against the Jews. It’s the same phrase that that student who just pleaded guilty to terror threats online, that was one of the phrases the government charged him with making that when it was directed at Jewish people, it was deemed a threat.
So when they march with their stupid bullhorns through this campus, When they do their childish die-ins. When they hang the signs behind us, which have now been torn down. We know exactly who we are up against.
When they call for the destruction of Israel, they are calling for an October 7th a thousand times over. They know that will be the result, they can no longer claim as they do, they just want a society where everybody will get in a big circle and hold hands and get along.
They know that the destruction of Israel means October 7th a thousand times over. That is what they want for Israel. That is what they want for the United States.
Listen to their own words. They hate capitalism. They hate our system.
It’s privileged children and privileged faculty, who have willingly accepted the benefits of our society, the benefits of this campus, the benefits of the donors to this campus, and then use it to try to destroy us all.
What you are doing here is standing up against that.
You probably don’t realize it, and this is directed to the students in the crowd. I guarantee you, because I went through the same thing in the early 1980s in law school. 20 years from now, you’ll look back upon today, and this is the one thing you will remember more than anything about your time at Cornell because this is the day you stood up for the Jewish people, you stood up for the best traditions of Cornell and you stood up for our country.
To steal a phrase from,Winston Churchill, you will look back upon today as your finest hour at Cornell.
So I encourage you to keep standing up because when each of you stands up, you stiffen the spines of dozens or hundreds of other students.
I understand as well as anybody the social pressures. I understand how brutal social media can be, and I understand how brutal it can be to be targeted on the internet. But when you stand up, you embolden others to do the same. So don’t stop standing up.
You have coming up on this campus a BDS resolution. They can call it whatever they want, but that’s what it is.
Turn out the students who care about this country, who care about this university, who care about our freedoms, who care about our civilization, to vote against it. Because let me tell you something, I have studied BDS from its inception, and it is not as it is portrayed. Look up my video on YouTube, The Real History of the BDS movement.
This is a direct outgrowth of the anti-Jewish boycotts that started in the British Mandate for Palestine in the 1920s and continued for decades. It’s the anti-Jewish boycott repackaged in the language of social justice to fool innocent westerners who are used to that language and to get them to create the historical perversion that the people who actually are for justice, the Israeli people, are the ones against it, and the brutal repressive regimes like in Iran and in other places in the Arab world, they are portrayed as the liberators.
Let me tell you, the creation of Israel is the single greatest indigenous liberation movement in the history of the world.
And there is only one reason that the people who organize against the Jewish people and organize against Israel do not recognize it as an indigenous liberation movement, do not include it in mutual liberation movements. And it’s because it was a liberation movement by Jews.
The opposition to Israel is Jew hatred flat out. We need to acknowledge that.
I will leave you, because I know there’s a lot of other speakers, with just one anecdote. You probably know Natan Sharansky, Prisoner of Zion for over a decade in the Soviet Union, a refusenik, someone who was imprisoned for teaching Hebrew and for wanting to leave for Israel.
You need to read about his story, how he defied the Soviet authorities in prison. He spent over two years in isolation and punishment cells. He would not accede to any of their demands. The one thing they did let him have in prison was a book of Psalms. And when he was released in a prisoner exchange after over a decade in prison, in Berlin, as he was going to walk across, they confiscated his book of Psalms.
And he sat down in the snow and refused to walk towards the checkpoint unless they gave him that book of Psalms.
This one man, who’s like five foot five, this one man stood up to the Soviet government and risked his freedom and would not budge unless they gave him back his book of Psalms. And they did.
And then they told him, walk straight to the checkpoint. Do not deviate from the path. So he zigged and he zagged his way out.
And when he was on the flight, when he passed into West German custody and was put on a flight to Israel where tens of thousands of people met him at the airport, on the flight, he read out loud the Psalm that he had read when he was in those isolation cells and those punishment cells.
Psalm 30: I will extol the oh Lord for thou has lifted me up and has not made my foes to rejoice over me.
He never gave up.
We’ll not allowing our foes to rejoice over us. We’ll continue to support our country. We will continue to support our university. We will continue to support Israel as it continues to thrive.
Thank you very much.
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