Q&A Dennis Prager: the left’s moral compass is broken

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is an American syndicated radio talk host heard on 140 radio stations across the United States. His daily three-hour show can be heard in Canada on the Internet and via the “Dennis Prager”  smartphone app. A New York Times bestselling author, he has written six books. His latest is The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code.

Prager is co-founder of the Internet-based Prager University (PragerU), which features prominent thinkers giving five-minute courses on subjects ranging from the Middle East conflict to economics, happiness and male-female relations. 

He’ll be speaking as part of the Shabbat Project, June 9 at the Paradise Banquet and Convention Centre in Vaughan, Ont.

The title of your Toronto talk is “Maintaining hope in a dangerous world.” What’s the secret to doing that?

One “secret” is to understand that there has nearly always been a challenge to maintain hope. The world has almost always been dangerous. Yet, ultimately, evil is vanquished. The problem, of course, is that before the “ultimately” arrives, a lot of people suffer terribly. That’s why evil must be fought.

And one source of hope is religion. I don’t know how truly secular people who empathize with human suffering keep their sanity. If I believed this life is all there is, I would either have to decrease my empathy with human suffering or check myself into a psychiatric hospital. For other responses, readers are invited to my speech.

Canadian Jews are increasingly attracted to the governing Conservative party, in large measure because of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s unquestioning support of Israel. One observer described this as something U.S. Republicans “can only dream about.” What’s your observation about U.S. Jewry’s political leanings these days? Is there disenchantment with President Barack Obama?

Most American Jews are not disenchanted with Obama because most American Jews completely share his left-wing values and positions – including his disdain for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For most American Jews, Judaism is an ethnic identity, not a religious one. Their ethnicity is Jewish but their religion is leftism – feminism, environmentalism, egalitarianism, socialism (à la western Europe). Leftism has been the most dynamic religion in the world for the last 100 years, and no group has been attracted as much as have Jews.

What is the most immediate threat to world Jewry? You believe it is Iran and you chide U.S. Jews for being more concerned with climate change.

Other than Iran and violent Islamism – which are bad enough – I believe the most immediate threat to world Jewry is internal. On the one hand, there is the drift of non-Orthodox Jewry away from Judaism (God, Torah, Israel) to leftism (ultimately leading to no God, no Torah, and no Israel). On the other hand, too much of Orthodoxy – the one Jewish movement to resist embracing leftism – is drifting into an unhealthy preoccupation with halachic ritual observance. This leads to an ever-increasing number of chumrahs (stringencies – see the long list of inedible items deemed not kosher for Passover, for example); to judging fellow Jews almost solely by their levels of ritual observance; and to a retreat from the rest of the Jewish community and from the larger non-Jewish world. Chabad is the major institutional exception to this, and there are many other individual Orthodox exceptions.

“Chide” is a gentle word. History will have moral and Jewish contempt for those many American Jews who worry about global warming more than about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. The climate has changed throughout the Earth’s history. So what? Thank God it’s not cooling. Moreover, I am not persuaded that computer models of the climate 40 years from now should trouble anyone nearly as much as a regime whose greatest goal is to annihilate Israel obtaining nuclear weapons. For the record, I suspect that Harper worries more about Iran than about global warming.

You use the term “leftist thinking” in a lot in your writings. Isn’t that a bit broad and unfair? Would you use the term “rightist thinking” the same way?

I don’t understand why it is “unfair” to characterize left-wing positions as left-wing positions. It would be unfair only if I were to characterize as a left-wing position a position that is not actually left-wing. However, I do not believe that in a lifetime of speaking, writing and broadcasting that I have ever done that. One of the governing mottos of my national radio show is, “First tell the truth, then give your opinion.”

In your lifetime, anti-Semitism and Israel hatred in the non-Muslim world has shifted from the hard right to the left, often the mainstream left. How do you explain this, and why hasn’t the U.S. Jewish vote changed accordingly to the Republicans?

Here is one explanation: the left does not divide the world into traditional categories of good and evil. Rather, it divides the world between rich and poor, black and white, and strong and weak. The Palestinians are perceived as poor, non-white and weak as compared to Israeli Jews. Therefore, the left roots for the Palestinians instead of the morally good party, Israel.

Also, unlike the Torah, which teaches justice – “Do not favour the poor man in court,” the left teaches social justice – “Do favour the poor man.” The left’s moral compass is, therefore, broken. And the further left one goes, the more one is incapable of seeing, for example, the morality of Israel in its wars with Hamas. Instead, one only sees dead Palestinian babies. It would be as if one were to have seen only dead German babies as a result of Allied air raids in World War II and concluded that Nazi Germany was the victim.

The U.S. Jewish vote hasn’t changed because most Americans are leftists. And just as leftism trumps the non-Jewish left’s commitment to Israel, it does the same to many Jews. 

We often hear that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic. Where do you stand? In an extreme example, can one argue for a single binational state and not be anti-Semitic?

I have never once heard or read a mainstream conservative Jew or non-Jew label criticism of Israel “inherently anti-Semitic.” Haters of Israel invented that charge in order to protect their Israel-hatred against legitimate charges of Jew-hatred. I debated at Oxford University last November, and one of the two anti-Israel people I debated said that “Israel does to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews.” Is that “criticism” of Israel or an anti-Semitic libel?

Can one argue for a single binational state and not be anti-Semitic? I respond with a question: can one argue for the disappearance of the Italian state and not be anti-Italian?

How do you feel about Israel being the focus of so much partisan bickering between left and right in both North America and Israel itself?

If Israel is a “partisan” issue, that means that one partisan side is pro-Israel and the other partisan side is hostile to Israel. What else can “partisan” mean here? It surely doesn't mean that both right and left vie with one another in demonstrating which side is more partisan on behalf of Israel. I wish it did.

Why was this question not asked a generation ago? Because Israel was strongly supported by both conservatives and liberals. It has become a “partisan” issue solely because the left has become so hostile to Israel.

Are the left and right equally guilty of making Israel a political football?

Neither side has made Israel a “political football.” Both sides are sincere in their beliefs. The left sincerely believes that Israel is an apartheid state, commits war crimes in Gaza, and is the to blame for the lack of peace between it and the Palestinians. And the right sincerely believes that Israel is one of the most humane countries in the world, and that the Palestinians’ celebration of terrorists and desire to eradicate the Jewish State of Israel are the reasons for the lack of peace between the two peoples.

Is this bad for Israel?

Of course it’s bad for Israel that so many left-wing parties, institutions, media, and universities have turned against Israel.

This interview has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.