Nadene Goldfoot
What happens when the world’s watching and judging… your every move? So far, 25 countries are judging Israel with their thumbs down.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, sits down with Dr. Phil to break down Israel’s war objectives, the moral tightrope of civilian protection, and the global firestorm of criticism. From accusations of genocide to the rise of antisemitism on college campuses, Danon doesn’t hold back. He shares what it takes to lead under pressure, why media narratives matter, and how international aid can fuel the very terror it’s meant to stop.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, speaks with Dr. Phil about the war within the war–the battle against misinformation about Israel that is spreading throughout the world.
Dr. Phil as a psychologist:
Rescue teams led by Zaka — the Israeli non-profit dedicated to responding to mass casualty incidents — have uncovered evidence of brutal attacks on civilians.
The unconscionable attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas gunmen on October 7 was marked by murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. Women, the elderly, and even little babies were targeted. On the bloodiest day in the country’s 75-year history, an estimated 1300 were killed, over 3300 wounded and approximately 150 Israelis were taken hostage. Karys Rhea, a fellow with the Jewish Leadership Project stated, “. . . This is the greatest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust.”
The Hamas invaders were not soldiers; they were assassins. This was not an act of war. It was a well-thought-out, well-financed massacre of Jewish civilians. The Hamas charter calls for the ultimate annihilation of all Israeli Jews, followed by the annihilation of Jews around the world. Sound familiar?
Sadly, some people, including some right here in America, actually celebrated the slaughter and blamed those being murdered, raped and kidnapped. The reason WHY would be very difficult to explain, certainly to the mother of a reportedly beheaded innocent baby. It would be especially difficult to explain why many of America’s most respected, elite universities are not only indulging, but actually endorsing sanctioned student organizations holding celebrations for the murder of her baby, friends and neighbors and those who massacred them.
Yet that is sadly what many of our top colleges and universities are doing concerning the attack on Israel. Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, UCLA and Stanford are high-profile examples who have reacted to the October 7 attack in a manner that should raise concern, if not outrage. For years, too many of these schools have allowed pure hate-based groups to exist on campus, creating real fear among fellow students, especially Jewish students due to anti-Semitic intimidation.
These student organizations’ reaction to the Hamas attack on Israeli Jews was so appalling that it put the institution’s policies and standards on full transparent display and revealed a disturbing degree of ivy-covered “intellectual rot.” Americans nationwide have been appalled and shocked.
The leadership of these supposedly highly sophisticated schools are so busy “virtue signaling” and coddling students who think that words are violence, but violence—horrific, inhuman violence—is social justice, that they have forgotten it is their job to teach their students to think and to test reality. Instead of training tomorrow’s leaders, these “great” learning centers are instead profoundly demagnetizing our culture’s moral compass among the college population.
A population for whom there is largely no longer a “true north,” no clarity of right and wrong.
Senator Cory Booker commented on Tuesday that there was a time we took pride in calling out bad behavior and bad actors, calling evil – evil and hatred-hatred. Martin Luther King, Jr. said we suffer not just from the vitriol and violence of our enemies but from “the appalling silence and inaction of the good people!” This is a critical moment in time, a critical opportunity to stand up, step up and speak up against evil and not be appallingly silent.
I am no expert in geopolitics. But I don’t need to be to immediately denounce the actions of Hamas as utterly sick, twisted, disgusting and inexcusable.
Staying fully in my lane of analyzing human behavior, I will amplify some things I know for sure:
I know for sure the atrocities and ensuing celebrations committed by Hamas are inexcusable and unjustifiable. Murdering, raping and torturing civilians, is just plain sick. I don’t care how much someone feels victimized, no matter how right or “anointed” they feel; the kind of brutality we witnessed is wrong on every level. These are not the acts of honorable soldiers, freedom fighters, or militants; these are the acts of out of control, misguided monsters.
From a psychological standpoint, I can’t help but wonder what these assassins say to themselves, alone, in the middle of the night after burning or beheading a terrified and defenseless little baby boy or girl, whichever evil act they may have perpetrated.
Have they bothered to think about how many of their own children they have destined to be sacrificed in the retaliation that is certain to follow. Retaliation they have brought down on the Gazans/Palestinians (62% of Gazans supported maintaining a cease-fire? 50% believe Hamas should stop calling for the destruction of Israel and accept a permanent two-state proposal.)
I know for sure that allowing the university-sanctioned student organizations to celebrate the sadistic acts of terror without consequence confirms these “enlightened/woke” universities are failing miserably in shaping, educating, maturing the minds of those students. Even if you hold the student solely accountable for choosing their positions, evidence suggests university faculty are not challenging the students’ thinking, instead hiding behind first Amendment arguments. Ironic since the Ivy league schools have abysmal records on free speech!
We can’t control a terror group like Hamas doing such a thing as this, but we can control how we respond. It is here in the United States that the universities are failing miserably. Instead of hiding behind a weak free speech argument, it is the educator’s job to teach critical thinking that will lead to a rational response. Critical thinking is an essential mindset for combating violence, intolerance and wrong-headed conclusions, a skill set in short supply in today’s world.
Resource:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hJ1pSR4Zx0
On radio: https://www.radio.net/podcast/phil-in-the-blanks
