“Jihad Is For Losers” - Jonathan Sacerdoti’s Powerful WARNING!

26:03But just very, very quickly, what would you say to those that think that the Israeli government and the military were complicit in October the 7th so they could respond with gusto and just flatline Palestine completely? Because that's a theory that a lot of people have. Look, I don't have a lot of time for such a theory because I think it involves imagining a government and the military which is willing to sacrifice people in a way that I just don't believe that the Israeli government was its own people. I do think there were obviously failings in allowing October 7th to happen, in failings in intelligence or in listening to intelligence or in mobilising the military quickly enough.

26:38There were a number of failings, and there's been some resistance to inquiry within Israel, certainly since then, during the war, into finding out why that happened. But I don't personally subscribe to the conspiracy, And it will lead us into discussion of Jews in the UK and the West more broadly, because I think it's typical of some people to assume conspiracy and to assume the worst of Israel, the Jewish state, in trying to understand what happened. It was a terrible moment for that country. It was a terrible moment for anyone that values the rule of law or international law or civilians living peacefully because it was a brutal and savage attack on civilians.

27:18So given that it was such a horrible moment, the immediate assumption that actually the Jewish state did that deliberately to its own people in order to then carry out a slaughter, a massacre of Palestinians, it assumes the very, very worst of Jews, the very, very worst of Israel. And knowing Israel as I do, knowing Judaism as I do, these things are utterly unthinkable to me as possible explanations, but they are echoes of the kind of conspiracies that have chased Jews around forever around the world and now within Israel. It is the assumption that Jews are people who are acting in a coordinated and secretive way which is bloodthirsty, power hungry, controlling, brutal, nasty and expansionist and my experience and knowledge of these things which is not insignificant is the direct opposite.

28:11it. We are not those people. And there may be reasons that some think we are. But in every single fibre of my being, in every single moment of my work, of my existence, I will do everything I can to explain to people that that's not the case. And they may think it out of malice towards Jews, or they may think it out of ignorance about Jews. But anything I can do to answer those sorts of allegations, I always will. So absolutely, bring it on. Yeah. So do you think the British public have been brainwashed into thinking that the Jews are as good as the devil? I think the British public have been misled.

28:50You might call it brainwashing, especially in terms of Israel. So I do think that that has contributed then to having a negative opinion of many Jewish people, because lots of those Jewish people stand up for Israel and argue with those misperceptions about Israel. So, for example, the BBC and Sky News, in my opinion, have a reprehensible record in how they cover Israel and the wider Middle East. I think that their coverage is massively twisted, warped and skewed against Israel. I don't think that there is nothing for them to criticise or to report critically about Israel and its engagement, especially in wars.

29:31But I do think that they massively overdo it and they under provide context and explanation and they under provide facts that would help people to understand it better. And I think that within the UK, even if you put Israel aside, we're a minuscule portion of this population. You know, British Jews are under half a percent of the population in this country. I mean, how many of us do you think there are? It's something like 300 ,000 in the whole country. Most people in Britain don't know a Jew. And why should they? If they don't live somewhere near Jews or they don't work with Jews. And even if you do know Jews, quite a lot of the time you don't know they're Jews.

30:13We're just regular Brits like everyone else. When I go to work, and certainly in the past, I'm a little bit more high profile about these things now. But when I worked in television production, you know, 20 something years ago, it was irrelevant to the people around me that I was Jewish unless we became friends. And I mentioned what I might have done at the weekend or elements of my own personal life and religion and background and culture and faith. So I think there is a lot of ignorance. I think that's then hijacked by a lot of calumny lies, misrepresentation of Israel. And I think that what's fed into that has been the infiltration and influx of masses and masses of people in this country from cultures which traditionally have extremely anti-Jewish sentiments and thoughts, both culturally and religiously.

31:04And that's from Islamic immigration. So Islamic immigration into the UK has undoubtedly triggered and increased what might have been a small latent anti-Semitism or anti-Jewishness in Britain already. So some Brits may have had negative opinions of Jews, discrimination against Jews. It might have manifested very rarely in small ways. But I think that that has been magnified enormously by Muslim immigration into this country. I'm going to come back to all of the Jew conspiracies and theories in a minute. But as you've touched based on migration, which a lot of people blame the Jews for. So we'll come back to, we'll park that and come back to it.

31:49But there was a piece you wrote on Substack, why jihadism is for losers. Yeah. Just expand on that. Yeah. So that was a column I wrote in The Spectator, which everything I write is also on my Substack, so people can follow everything there. So it's a provocative title to say that jihad is for losers. But what I outlined in the article was through the case of a particular terrorist who was just found guilty, actually, last week. He was a guy that tried to scale the wall, the perimeter fence of the Israeli embassy in London with knives and carry out a terrorist attack inside. Now, that guy was a small boat immigrant who had come into the UK illegally and claimed asylum.

32:33And why did I call him a loser? Well, you know, I felt certain facts in the case that came out in the court case pointed towards him being a loser in the purest sense of the word. For example, once he'd gone into the country, he then tried to hitch a ride to Manchester in a lorry and accidentally deported himself back to France. I would say that is something of a moron that we're dealing with.

33:21Firestone, always dependable since 1900.

33:51The paper. New season streaming September 9th, only on Peacock. This show gives me a reason to live. Like the Frank Spencer of G-Head. Right, exactly. I mean, it was like that movie, The Four Lions, right? So he then came back into the country a second time on a small boat, which is our bad. Maybe we're the losers in that context, that this literally can happen twice with the same guy. He then got offered accommodation in a hotel in Basingstoke, a four-star hotel in Basingstoke, 20 minutes away from the Jane Austen house, which is now a beautiful museum. And then they kicked him out from that because they found out he'd already claimed asylum before.

34:31And so according to the weird rules where you get a free hotel, you don't get one for your second try. I mean, I don't even understand what that is, but at least we're trying to teach them a sense of fair play, a British sense of fair play. So upset was he by his lot that he was such a failure that he then wrote a note to his mum, photographed it next to his knives. It was in Arabic. And it was full of references to the Koran and other Islamic ideas about redemption and becoming a martyr and carrying out terror attack to redeem himself from this position of complete failure and loserdom. And so he set out with a red cloth wrapped around his head, like Abu Abidah, the Hamas spokesman, and walked from Kilburn to Kensington armed, reciting prayers as he went on his mission to go and carry out a terror attack in the Israeli embassy, gets there.

35:25Incidentally, not a single person on the way seems to have thought it was at all strange to see such a thing walking through London. That should tell you something about the state of London these days. Tries to scale the fence after saluting the armed police officers outside it. And of course, they pulled him down, threw him to the ground, arrested him, and he asked them why they were stopping him carrying out his crime. This is the guy who epitomized, in my opinion, this notion of jihad, which appeals to losers in this context. And a friend of mine who I interviewed in my podcast, Dr. Anat Berko, is an Israeli criminologist who has actually written fascinating books on the psychology of suicide bombers and those surrounding them.

36:10She has carried out unique research going into jails in Israel where she spent hours individually interviewing failed suicide bombers, dispatchers and others involved in the terror attacks about their lives. And one of the uniting factors for all of them, one of the common features of all of them is some form of failure or loserdom. So you'll find that often these ideas of jihad, of martyrdom, of carrying out terror attacks and atrocities on others for a higher religious belief can often be motivated by someone who's failed in other ways in their lives. So with women who were involved in these terror attacks, they might have been raped, which in their culture brings shame upon them for having been raped.

36:51They may have engaged in premarital or extramarital sex, which again will, in their culture, bring dishonor upon them and their family. With the guys, they might be gay and that in itself would bring dishonor and shame on them and their families. or there may be other things that they've done which somehow cast them in their own sort of value system as failures and losers. And so what this does, it takes them from zero to hero. If you can carry out a martyrdom operation and kill infidels, then you are immediately elevated to this heroic position, which will bring glory on your family, on yourself.

37:28And then in heaven, you are rewarded with all the things we're familiar with from the Islamic faith. And so I do feel that in these cases, often the notion of violent jihad, of terrorism, of martyrdom, deliberately looks for those who are failures, those who have a sense of dissatisfaction with their own lives and offers them this magnificent admiration if they should carry out this brutal act. So the theory that Jews or, let's say, the Jewish elite, because obviously your regular Jew isn't going to know the first thing about how to orchestrate mass migration. But the Jewish elite, there's a theory that they're responsible for mass migration to import people that hate them, that want to kill them.

38:14And also it's important to add now that jihadists will quite clearly say Saturday first, then Sunday. So people that are celebrating the death of Jews, don't think you're exempt from that because you're next. I'm well aware what that means. That means Jews first, Christians next. So I think we should think on a broader scale of who we're up against here and don't celebrate the death of a small race or religion that you don't like because you've read terrible things on the internet. I'm kind of veering off. But the theory of the Jewish elites being responsible for... Let me just jump in on that really quickly because I want to say, The Saturday first, Sunday next, right?

38:55The Saturday people first, the Sunday people is important. But I always say this to people, especially here in Britain. You know, those two Jews got killed in Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. But actually, despite people like me saying for years, guys, take this seriously, take this seriously, they're trying to kill us. Actually, the number of Jews killed for being Jews in this country is really low. There were attacks foiled. There have been plenty of attacks and threats to us. But the number of Brits killed by the same jihadist ideology, much higher. Manchester Arena, that wasn't an attack on Jews.

39:25That was an attack on little girls, basically, enjoying music, an Ariana Grande concert. Now, I stood outside there and reported on it for days in the aftermath. And what were we told? Our love is stronger than their hate and we must all unite. And, you know, somebody will play that moronic John Lennon, imagine. And this is our reaction as a population. It's not that Saturday people come first. We're all in there. In the ideology that says that infidels, non-Muslims, must be converted or forced to convert or be killed, if that's what you believe and you're willing to take up arms and fight against it or plant a bomb or carry a bomb or shoot or stab or ram in the service of that belief, it's not that non-Jewish Brits are next.

40:09They're actually being killed and attacked already. And that's why I don't want this to be about Jews. People always say, why do you always go on about Jews or you Jews just constantly want us to hear about what's happening to you? What about the rest of us? I agree. What about the rest of us? If you think there is a threat from Islamic terrorism towards Jews, you have to acknowledge that that threat already exists towards all of us in this country who don't satisfy the terrorists ideology. So I would say Saturday people, Sunday people is a really useful phrase to try and say that we're the canary in the coal mine.

40:43But it's already happening all over this country. And the rape gangs is another example. That wasn't to do with Jews. That was to do with white, non-Muslim girls predominantly, but not just white. Also, I think Sikhs were involved as well. Anyone who was seen by those carrying out those acts to be fair game, to be abusable because they weren't of the same culture, religion, background, those people were attacked. And that wasn't about Jews. We share in this a common enemy. And that's why Jewish people have contributed to this country in so many ways and to the West and to Christian culture and to European culture.

41:24and we can all join forces on this as well. That's why I think that this shouldn't be about Jews begging other Brits for sympathy or empathy or help. It should be about all of us saying we have a problem together and we need to work together to beat it. So I'm sorry to jump in on that one. Well, I'm glad that you did because it is important and it's something that I'm acutely aware of and maybe you amplify and that will help the audience digest the magnitude of the situation that we're all in. So let's go back to the Jewish elite being responsible for that mass migration, which then puts us all in danger.

42:01To some it's a theory, to others it's a fact, because Jew hatred is at an all-time high in the UK. So what would you say to those people? So the idea that Jews are responsible for waves of immigration, which are diluting indigenous or white populations in Britain or around Europe or elsewhere in the West, is a pervasive one. And it's one that I think we're seeing increasingly wielded by portions of the right, if we need to use broad terms to try and describe, you know, ideologies and peoples acting a certain way. It is false and it is wrong. And that doesn't mean that there is no seed of fact from which this idea has come.

42:41So why would Jews, this is what I want to start with, is the saying it's wrong. Why would Jews want to encourage mass immigration from a population that brings with it a huge portion of people that want to kill them? There would be no common sense in that. And this is the bit that I cannot understand. I'm open to any suggestion and I don't write anything off. I think anything's possible. But that there, just from a common sense point of view, it doesn't make logical sense to put yourself in that much danger unnecessarily. What would be the gain for elite Jews by doing that? Right. And yet there is the fact that traditionally and historically, Jewish groups or Jewish populations or Jewish communities or Jewish thought has encouraged sympathy and empathy and kindness towards immigrants.

43:34Why? Because very recently in our recent history, we ourselves were refugees fleeing, say, Nazi Germany, though there have been many other examples as well in Jewish history. And so we have seen what happens when people didn't allow us to enter into safer places, whether it was America or the UK. And in some instances, you know, Jews were allowed into the UK and were saved as a result of that. The Kindertransport very famously were children who were brought over to escape the horrors of the Nazi era in Europe and were rehomed and given new lives here. But even that in and of itself, if you think about what it was, it was children who were separated from their parents.

44:16Only the children were brought in on trains and many of them never saw their families again. In itself, quite a horrific idea. So yes, of course, there's gratitude that those people were saved. So Jews have collectively a sense of how important it is when people are in genuine danger and fleeing it to try to help them. And it's also more, you know, traditionally in Jewish thought, even biblical Jewish thought, that we ourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt. And so we should be kind to the stranger. But that doesn't mean that we're suicidal enough to want to invite in people who want to kill us or kill those around us.

44:53And I will say this, the Jewish people who have been involved, like George Soros, for example, in funding big movements which push for more open borders and easier immigration of some of the populations that have been very problematic for Western societies, those people have not done it because they're Jewish. They have not done it because they are part of a bigger Jewish conspiracy. And this is the problem that will unite any of the Jewish conspiracies you and I discussed today. It is that the idea that lies behind all of these conspiracies about Jews, even if there is a seed in there of fact which allows people to build the conspiracy on it, the uniting feature is that Jews are somewhat evil, plotting, scheming, and united across the world, even as such a tiny population as we are, to come up with these methods of controlling the rest of the world and the rest of society for our own weird and dark purposes.

45:51And I can tell you, it's just not true. And the idea that this tiny percentage of human population could also unite and manipulate the entire world to do what it wants. There are, for example, probably more dissenting voices who are Jewish, more big donors of anti-immigration movements and political parties and figures who are Jewish than there are Jews who have funded migration. There is disagreement amongst Jews. You know, we always say two Jews, three opinions. It's you go to a desert island and find this Jewish guy who's been there on his own. The old joke says and they say, show us around.

46:33He says, there are three synagogues. Here's the one I go to. Here's the one I left. And that's the one I wouldn't be seen dead in. So the point is, we don't all agree on everything. And certainly we have no inbuilt religious or cultural tendency to necessarily support mass migration and replacement. Though we do have an appreciation that when somebody is fleeing something horrific and their life depends on it, it's a good idea to be nice to them. And I think that despite everything that's happening in this country, that is quite a British idea as well. We are a people that generally are sympathetic and kind.

47:07We do want to help people, but not at the expense of our nation, not at the expense of our system, not at the expense of our children, not at the expense even of our Jews, I would hope. And that's exactly the point. So I would say that, you know, there are some elements of the movement to accept migrants who are fleeing from certain parts of the world. And there are some Jewish people who've been involved in them. But George Soros, for example, as far as I know, is an atheist who has spoken against certain elements of Jewish thought and Israeli policy. So the idea that he's acting as a Jew and part of a combined and large Jewish conspiracy in what he's doing, to me, isn't quite right.

47:44And on migration, a lot of people will turn around to me and say, well, isn't that what you're saying the Muslims are doing? Isn't that what you're saying Islamic immigration is doing? How come you're saying, well, it's not Jewish of the Jews to do this, but it is Islamic of the Muslims to do it? And I think that, again, it's a very awkward conversation because we're not people, Jews and non-Jews, Brits, who like to make generalizations about other people's faiths and beliefs. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at them. And the Islamic attitude towards migration is very different from the Jewish one.

48:17The Islamic concept of hijra, which was the migration that Muhammad made from Mecca to Medina, fleeing himself, but then it became symbolic of an act of spreading Islam. It became symbolic of opening Islam to the rest of the world. And the notion of hijra has been used since in quite a lot of mainstream Islam, as I understand it from people I've spoken to on this topic. It's been used to suggest that Islamic immigration, mass immigration around the world can be used to spread Islam into other countries. And through the concept of dawah, which is trying to offer and familiarize a society with Islam and effectively sell it to them for conversion.

49:08And if failing that through jihad and fighting, the aim is ultimately for many parts of traditional Muslim thought to convert the whole world into an Islamic ummah, a whole, where everyone shares in what they, of course, would consider to be a good thing because it's their belief. But that is totally different to the Jewish concept of migration. Jews fled places of danger. And throughout our history, throughout our religion, we yearned for the return to Zion. It's in many of our prayers. That's where the name Zionism comes from. And Zion, Jerusalem, has been the focus of our prayers since Jews were expelled from Jerusalem.

49:48Given that that's the case and that Judaism wishes for people not to become Jewish, we don't want converts. Unlike Islam, we don't want to sell our religion to you. It's an exclusive religion. If you want to become Jewish, it's traditional for you to be rejected three times. And only when you come back after that will they consider you're taking it seriously enough. So we will admit converts. We will welcome converts, people who are interested in studying and taking on the faith. But it's not our mission. It's not our aim. Our aim is to carry out our own lives and ultimately religiously and culturally Judaism yearned not to spread around the world.

50:26and take over, but to return to its homeland. The very thing that today we're accused of being evil for trying to do with the refoundation of Israel, the rebirth of Israel in 1948, and suddenly that return, which is the opposite of Jewish migration, is seen as an evil. Yes, see, I've always thought a Jew's considered a religious group or a race, and I've always thought, well, same as with any group of people, there's good people, bad people, woke people, evil people, silly people, smart people. So that's how I judge human beings. Islam has to be different for me because that prescription to that ideology, period, I feel is very dangerous.

51:10So a lot of people are, you know, they compare Jews and Muslims, Islam and Judaism. And I don't think people are comparing apples of apples at all. That's my personal opinion. Let's go one step further with the conspiracies and theories that the Jews are responsible for organ harvesting and child sacrifice and child trafficking. Where does that come from? Because again, there's some people that are absolutely adamant that at the top of that spear, child trafficking, that Jews are responsible. Well, there is zero credible evidence for that. But it harks back to a very traditional and medieval era of Jew hatred.

51:55Even in Norwich in this country, in 1140, I think it was, there was a case of this. The idea was traditionally back then that Jews kidnapped or sacrificed children, and particularly what they said was that they would use the blood of children, Christian children, for baking Mutzot. Mutzot are the little crackers that we eat at Passover when we don't eat bread. It's a festival when we remember the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, from slavery into freedom, and they left in a hurry. That's when most people who are familiar with this will know the 10 plagues that God sent on the Egyptians. And those plagues were because the Pharaoh of Egypt wouldn't allow the Jews to leave, so says the biblical story.

52:38And so God sent plague after plague after the plague until the Egyptians were terrified and said, you can leave. And they escaped quickly with really what they had with them. They didn't have time to bake bread. They baked flat bread. It didn't rise. And that is where we get our matzahs from. The blood libel, which is the origin of this phrase, is that we use blood to bake those matzahs and that that blood came from sacrificing Christian children. It is nonsense. It is unfounded. It is something that was created to unite people against Jews. It is echoed in conspiracies about organ harvesting and child sacrifice.

53:18None of it is true. None of it is true. It's so important to say that there is no credible evidence of such a thing. It is actually against Jewish thought and against Jewish intention. Again, if there are individual stories that people have found, which they can somehow corroborate, I'm not sure what they are, which have led them to then be able to extrapolate this whole conspiracy, that is the sign, the hallmark of a good conspiracy theory. A good conspiracy theory is believable because you can find something that's a bit convincing. It's like the Twin Towers when people, you know, zoom in and say that that bit fell before the other bit, lower down the building or this tower crumbled first or they look for elements in something we know happened to try to sow seeds of doubt but it isn't true and and what's most telling about many of the people who bring up things like organ harvesting for me is that there are cases actually of wholesale industrial illicit organ harvesting in the world and I don't see any of those same people call them out.

54:27For example, do you know that the Chinese Communist Party routinely harvests organs from political prisoners or prisoners of conscience? And China has a demonstrably higher rate of organ donations within the country than is possibly satisfied by voluntary donations. The prisoners in question, prisoners of conscience, often have compulsory blood testing in jail that other prisoners don't have and compulsory organ matching tests done. And there are surgeons who have testified about this and others who have been close to it, or family members or survivors who have testified to this. And indeed, it has been fairly well shown that the Chinese Communist Party has engaged in organ harvesting from people given the death penalty.

55:22And then they have killed more prisoners, even who weren't worthy of the death penalty in their own legal code, in order to take their organs and give them to others. But I don't hear the same people coming up with any of the same concern or urgency about Chinese organ harvesting from the Falangong or from actually Uyghur Muslims who are imprisoned in China. So Muslim organ harvesting carried out by the Chinese Communist Party. Not worth protesting about or writing about online. Probably you'd never heard of it. Jews stealing organs. Let's go to town on that one, even though there is no such evidence to show that that's happening.

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56:49Or is this just an act? Oh no, this is mad. Oysters, everybody! There's a certain satisfaction when you work with someone. Maybe we could be a family. You sadistic pig! The Paper. New season streaming September 9th, only on Peacock. This show gives me a reason to live. What's the truth? What are Jews set out to achieve? What's their ultimate goal? That's a really good question. I mean, I can tell you what my goal as a Jew is, and I think it's probably fairly typical. I think Jews want to live according to our own code, religiously, religious Jews as a religion. We want to live according to our values and our codes and our laws, some of which are actually very compatible with the laws of the West.

57:32I mean, remember that Christianity was born of Judaism and many of the things that are Christian values or even secular Western values actually originate in Jewish teachings and Jewish culture and the Jewish religion. The Ten Commandments are from the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament, the Torah. That put into ten very specific commandments, it codified basically the bedrock of Western civilization and ethics, the idea of one God that we should all be united under, of not murdering, of not committing adultery, of not stealing, of not being jealous of our neighbours, those sorts of things which seem to us automatic now, even non-religious people, non-Christians, non-Jews, non-Muslims, they say, well, these things are obvious, but they weren't always obvious.

58:23The reason they were codified and manifested in the Ten Commandments was because this was a revolutionary idea that under worship of one God and justice for all men equally, these were ten rules to live by. and they have probably influenced billions of people historically around the world, Jews and non-Jews. So we want to carry out our lives according to our rules. Some of our rules are different. So we have different dietary laws, for example. We eat kosher food, some of us, some don't. We have certain traditions. We have generally as a religious group and a religion and as a culture an attachment to the land of Israel.

59:04As I said, it's been a fundamental part of Jewish prayer and thought forever. so I'd say all those sorts of things but as a British Jew I can tell you what my mission has always been is to be a good citizen of this country I think that's pretty typical among British Jews I know and grew up around to be like everyone else around me to be a law-abiding citizen to contribute to the country I live in which I try to do all the time whether it's in my street with my neighbours or whether it's in my work more broadly doing things like this it's to contribute And the Jewish contribution to humanity, you know, we can talk about undue Jewish representation in certain areas of life, which is another question people always ask.

59:48How come you're so overrepresented in politics or banking or the media? How come Jews are so numerous in those fields when you're so small a portion of the world population? It must be a conspiracy. You must be controlling these things. That must be what you're doing. But the answer is actually that Jews just want to get on and do well on the whole, like everyone else. They want to join in with their societies. They want to contribute and have a good life for themselves. So I would say that is my mission. I don't know if it's a particularly Jewish one or British one or as a human one, but that for me is what I want.

1:00:32And I do take a lot of that from my Jewish upbringing. You know, I come from a fairly traditional Jewish family. We're not extremely religious, but we're not non-observant. My grandfather was a rabbi, but my parents didn't bring me up as orthodox as that. But I did go to synagogue very often as a child. I still go to synagogue. I live a pretty normal British life, I think, in many ways, but it's a Jewish British life. And I think the two are really compatible. I think for many, many generations, since we were readmitted to this country by Oliver Cromwell, Jews have played a big part in British life.

1:01:10And I think the Jews have been good to Britain and Britain has been good to the Jews. And that's why this moment is such a difficult one for us, because it doesn't feel like that anymore. Well, here's my concern. So I'm Britain first. And there's not a close second. It's as simple as that. I'm born in England. I'm British. That's where my love and law is and always will be. I love other places and countries and people, don't get me wrong. But number one, without a doubt, is Britain. And anyone that comes to Britain and lives in Britain and wants to assimilate, be it Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, whoever, for me to want to welcome them people into Britain, I have to be convinced that they're Britain first also.

1:01:56So they've come here for a better life and they want to put the country first. And I expect that with the Jewish community. But I don't feel like the British government are giving the Jewish community a great deal of support at the moment. And it seems to me like you're almost, you're having your hand forced not to be Britain first. So then that's a problem. Well, it's interesting about the way you've put that. I completely hear what you say and agree with it. and that hand forced is the bit that I want to pick up on because I think you've hit the nail on the head. Well, I think there are some people in this country who very much want to say, Jews decide, Britain or Jewish, which one?

1:02:42And I don't think that's the point. I think that being Britain first, wanting to stand up for British values and Britishness isn't a question of not having other people or outsiders within Britain. It is actually, in my opinion, for me as a Brit, you know, I was born here. I do come from immigrant backgrounds on both sides at varying levels. You know, my father was Italian as a Holocaust survivor. He lived in Italy as a child. He moved here as an adult when he married my mother. My mother was born here. Her mother was born here. Her father emigrated here. So I do come from immigrants, but I grew up very British.

1:03:23I sound quite British, I think. I think I look quite British. I think I have a pretty British life. My values are British. My tastes in many ways are British, but I'm also a bit Italian and I'm also a bit Jewish. I'm all of these things at once. And I think that is the Britain that I think immigrants must be keen to respect and preserve. Part of that Britishness is a sense of welcome to others, but not others who will destroy the country or take it over or warp it or go against its values. But I don't think that Jews really on the whole have done that. I don't think we've tried to do that historically.

1:04:00I don't think we're trying to do it now. So I think to try and force people to make a list, a hierarchy, when there isn't one there, you know, I am British and I'm Jewish. There is no contradiction in those things. They are layers. They are threads in a tapestry of who I am. I'm 100 % British and I'm 100 % Jewish. And that is not a contradiction. In fact, they're notes in a symphony and a harmony. They are flavours which are complementary. And I think it's extremely unfair that some people wish to try to separate them and to force it to be in conflict. And I will say this as well, that I think it's happened to some people, not out of an instinctive animosity to Jews, but because they look at often the Muslim communities in Britain or certain Muslim immigrants in Britain, and they don't feel that they integrated sufficiently.

1:05:02and they then think, well, I can't criticise them if I don't criticise all the other immigrant groups that came here too. So if I criticise Muslims, I must also criticise Jews. But I say hold us to the right standards. If we are working against this country, if we are clashing with its culture, then we can have a conversation on those things. But don't do it out of some sort of weird sense of level-handedness and fair play, which means that you have to blame us for the people that are also killing us, not having integrated. It just doesn't make any sense at all. So that's, I haven't necessarily expressed it the best way I could have done.

1:05:41But I think it's, for me, it just makes me so sad and so upset because I am so British. In myself, in my heart, I feel proud of this country. I feel proud of the values. You know, my dad was an immigrant, but he came here because he was an Anglophile. He loved Britain. He loved British literature. I studied English literature at university. You know, I studied Anglo-Saxon poetry, the history of our language, the history of our culture. I studied the kings and queens of Britain at school. I led a British life all my life, but it was a British Jewish life. And I refuse to let anyone tell me those things are in conflict.

1:06:19They're just not, certainly not in this body, in this mind, in this soul, in this heart. They are absolutely, absolutely collaborative. And if this country changes into something where that isn't the case, I'm distraught not just as a Jew but also as a Brit. Your father survived the Holocaust. There's people that also deny the Holocaust, which is quite mind-blowing. But they're adamant. They won't shift their thinking. Your father who survived the Holocaust, You must have had conversations about it, I'm sure. How did your dad actually describe the Holocaust? My father, who isn't with us anymore, he died seven years ago, was a five-year-old child in Italy, in Florence, where, as I mentioned, his father was a rabbi.

1:07:10And he lived under the racial laws, which said that Jews were to be limited in the things they could do. And eventually, his father thought it was important for him and his younger brother, who was three, to be put into hiding because we all know what was happening to Jews. They were being rounded up and deported to concentration camps for extermination. So my father did bring me up knowing his story. And though he was five, he remembered an extraordinary amount of it, perhaps because he had a great memory generally, unlike me, and perhaps because it was a traumatic experience that really burnt itself into his mind.

1:07:44And I know that what he remembered was from personal firsthand experience, because when I later went back with him many, many years later, obviously, to Italy to meet some of the people who we could trace and find and film interviews with them. We met two nuns who remembered him from the time he was in hiding in a Catholic orphanage, which is how he survived. And they remembered and told stories that only my father had told me before about things that happened in that orphanage. Extraordinary for me, that his younger brother, who was three, saw the priest come in one day in his gown, his clothes, and he shouted out Papa, which means dad, because he thought it looked like his father, who was a rabbi, who wore similar clothes.

1:08:30He was three, he didn't understand. And they got afraid because he's meant to be an orphan. He's meant to be a Catholic orphan in this orphanage. Those stories, hearing a nun, an ancient nun, tell me that exact story my father had told me from his memory really struck home. So my father described his experience to me from the point of view of a five-year-old, that he'd experienced what he did and didn't understand. When his parents originally put him in a convent in Florence, they arranged for him with the local Catholic clergy who were helping to protect him and his brother. He was told goodbye by his parents.

1:09:06They didn't know if they would see him again. And then two weeks after they were put in that convent, the fascists started to raid the convents and so he arranged for them to be moved to this orphanage in the countryside nearby where they were for nine months and they were all reunited after the war thank god my my family his parents and him and his brother he told me of the hunger they experienced he told me of the experiences they had even in that convent when the nazis tried to raid the convent, the Mother Superior, who was a little lady, she's the only one who knew that they were hiding Jews there.

1:09:41And she went to the door with her crucifix and held it up to the SS who wanted to come in and said, here there are only children of God, and you too are children of God. And that's a story that I heard from the nuns who I met as well about what happened. These were extraordinary people. And so what my father's story taught me, as well as the Holocaust stories that we all absorbed as Jews from the parts of our families who didn't survive, it's really important for me actually, is my father nominated many of his saviours to be registered as righteous among the nations in Israel. That's because in Israel they have this place called Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust archive and memorial centre.

1:10:19You might have been there when you were there. And they enshrined in law in Israel early on in the country's existence this honour of being a righteous among the nations or sometimes referred to as righteous Gentile. It's non-Jews who, at risk of their own life and not for financial profit, chose to protect and save Jews during the Holocaust. And my father had several of his saviours recognised in that way. And I know from the stories of his saviours and others that those were extraordinary human beings who chose to do something inspirational and amazing, for which I am eternally grateful because I would not exist if they hadn't done it.

1:11:02They didn't just save my father or his parents. They saved me because I wouldn't be here. And they saved all the future generations. And those people, this is what I always try to remember, they were ordinary people like you or me. Some of the righteous that you'll see listed in Yad Vashem were diplomats and politicians and business people, and some were nuns and farmers and workers and illiterate people. It didn't matter. That wasn't what was special about them. What was special about them was their humanity and their sense of right and wrong. And I think about that all the time when I think about what's going on in the world around us.

1:11:44I think all the time about what's the right thing to do. When can we stand up for each other? And I think a lot of Jewish people at the moment feel not enough people are standing up for them. And sometimes because it will be compromising to do so or because people might pick on you for standing up for Jewish people. And that's why my father's story for me is very important, actually. So that was among the many lessons I learned from that period of my father telling me that story. And I've held it close to me because it's an important lesson I think that we should all learn from the people who did do those special things.

1:12:24Real value shows up in reliability you don't have to second guess like a set of Firestone all-season tires. They're designed to deliver confidence-inspiring wet weather traction and a quieter ride no matter the road, season after season. Firestone all-season tires. For durability, you can count on just like people count on you. Firestone, always dependable since 1900. And we're back. Streaming on Peacock. May I present to you the award-winning staff of the Toledo Truth Teller. Slap me. Let's jar something loose. Ay, yes! I like that. The certified fresh series returns. You're boss. You always like this?

1:13:06Or is this just an act? Oh, no. This is mad. Oysters, everybody! There's a certain satisfaction when you work with someone. Maybe we could be a family. You sadistic pig! The Paper. New season streaming September 9th, only on Peacock. This show gives me a reason to laugh. Before I ask the final question, which is probably the most important question of the day, and it certainly will be for you, I'm sure. But going back to how the media, the mainstream, how they covered the war in Gaza. I mean, I know that the BBC, for example, would be getting their intel from Hamas direct pretty much. So they're just going to regurgitate what they've heard from Hamas and Hamas are going to give them their version of events.

1:13:48I know this to be true because I've put it under the microscope. Someone like Piers Morgan, for example. How do you think Piers Morgan covered the war in Gaza? Was it self-gain or did he have general concerns, do you think? Sorry, one more thing about the Holocaust that I didn't get to. And then I will do Piers, which hopefully you can clip up and he and I can start a fight again online like last time. Lovely. No, I don't know Piers, so it's not personal. The really important thing about the Holocaust, though, more generally, is I think there is a resurgence in Holocaust denial. And that is something which is really almost unbelievable for people like me, but for most Jews and many non-Jews.

1:14:26And it's so bizarre to hear that there are conspiracies even about that against Jews. The Holocaust was the industrial scale organized attempt to eradicate the entire Jewish population of Europe. And it's not just a theory that that's the case. The Nazis were clear about what they were doing. We have multiple sources of evidence which corroborate each other and independently of each other, give us these ideas of fact of what we know happened. Numbers like the six million Jews killed. These are not plucked out of the air. They're derived from best possible evaluations from the sources we have. We know, for example, that the Nazis themselves wrote about the final solution to the Jewish question, their words, after the Vance Conference, which was their planning for how to tackle the Jewish problem.

1:15:34That was a document from the 20th of January 1942, and it explained their intention to kill the millions of Jews of Europe. We know from the blueprints and plans of the six concentration camps where Jews were gassed and exterminated and incinerated that they had those facilities in them. We know from the traces of the gas Zyklon B in those places that it happened. We know from the SS train records and timetables and rosters, the capacities of those trains and how many Jews were deported in cattle trucks and the like to the Nazi concentration camps. We know so much as fact about the Holocaust that it is utterly unthinkable that anyone who bothered to study even the slightest amount could allow themselves to doubt these key and fundamental parts of it.

1:16:32And the fact that they do and that that has become popular and that it has become a route for fame and cliques to do so is actually deeply troubling. not for Jews. Again, it's deeply troubling for us all because it's a denial and an inversion of fact and what's right and what we know. And that will take me to Piers Morgan because Piers Morgan interviewed Nick Fuentes as one of his interviews. And Nick Fuentes is somebody that has, I would say, denied or tried to revise or dismiss the Holocaust and its importance. And when Piers Morgan started that show, Uncensored, I wrote this, I wrote a column about Piers Morgan Uncensored in The Spectator.

1:17:11I write for The Spectator several times a week. Amazing publication. I love that I have this outlet, this platform, and that they give me the freedom to say these things and to write exactly as me, a Brit and a Jew and an expert on the Middle East and on Israel. And they never tell me what to say and they never try and change it. That's uncensored. What Piers Morgan is doing, and I wrote this in my column, is trying to get clicks and noise and fame and controversy. And there is nothing wrong with disagreement. He will say my show is about getting people with different opinions to disagree and thrash it out.

1:17:49But we all know that that is not all it's about. When you line up five people in parallel Zoom windows and make them scream at each other and one of them's a Holocaust denier and one of them's a Jew and one of them's an Israeli and one of them's a Palestinian, but you chose the most extreme version of each of those people you can, And then you set them off. You're not truth seeking. You're not trying to give people with something important to say, a platform to say it. You're giving sometimes some of the worst people in the world a massive platform to share massive untruths and prejudices and attacks.

1:18:23And you're doing it because it's popular. It's entertainment. It is political porn. and that's why people watch it because it is entertaining and titillating and arousing to our political thinking brains but we all know that light porn might be fun and enjoyable but it's not doing us much good and certainly swimming around in it too often is going to warp how we think and what I said about Piers and that show was when it started on talk tv station I have great respect for I liked it I liked the show and I liked some of the people he brought on who thought the opposite of what I think, or who came from a different place from me.

1:19:02And he gave them space to talk and to explain their ideas. And he challenged them. And he had respectful conversations. And I liked some of the people he brought on who I did agree with. And he gave them space to say stuff I agreed with. And I thought it was great. And I told so many people to watch it. And then something changed. And it more or less changed when Talk TV went off air as a TV station and went online as a YouTube channel, effectively. And Piers Morgan had a head start, and he jumped first with his show first. And it really quickly turned into what we see today. And we all know what it is today.

1:19:35Piers knows what it is today. Deep down inside of me knows, I really believe he knows that I'm right. And I say this with utmost respect. He's, you know, a giant of media in this country and around the world. I'm not trying to disrespect his achievements and his career. But it's dangerous. It's dangerous to let some of those people say some of those things. And even now, sometimes there are episodes I think he does a great job on that he actually really does challenge. I thought the Russell Brand one was really interesting. I thought he really gave Russell Brand space to speak, but he really showed up some of the weirdnesses and the aggressions in how he spoke about stuff.

1:20:10So it's not that I think it's all terrible and he's a terrible, terrible man. But I think sometimes what he does is not fair when he shouts over certain guests, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, and doesn't let them speak. When he interrupts Israeli guests more than he interrupts those who are anti-Israel. When he gives a platform to people to share their views, but their views are based on lies and known untruths. All of those things, for me, are a problem. It's not that he might disagree with me about Israel. I don't care about that. I'll go on and chat with anyone who disagrees with me and have a proper, respectful conversation where we work out where our differences are.

1:20:45So I think it's a real shame that that's what's happened to Piers' show, and I hope that he can change it into something more respectful and more polite and more truth-seeking and more just calm. And even if you lose a few clicks, I think you'll be all right. I find the whole rage-baity, people ganging up on each other, interrupting, giving you seven-minute slots, but you only having access to three-minute slots on mainstream is completely unfair. You don't get a feel of someone's fibre at all, which is the main reason I reached out to you. And that's what I love about this because, you know, I do a show like this, you do a show like this.

1:21:17I mean, it's an old cliche that podcasters become podcasters interviewing podcasters. But the truth is this allows us to have it like I'm, you know, long-winded and go on a bit. But it allowed me to do that. It allowed me to share everything I had to say. And it gives me and my audience a complete idea of who you are, where you're coming from, why you think. You don't have to agree with it. Probably don't agree with some of it. That's it. And that's the beauty of these kind of chats. I don't want to sit there, keep interrupting you and spoil your flow and try and veer it in a direction. It's like, I want to hear what you've got to say and how you come to that decision.

1:21:51But the final question, how do you put a stop to anti-Semitism? Look, there are practical immediate solutions to the anti-Semitism we have now, you know, to literal physical attacks. And maybe the government will do some of those things to do with security and what have you and arrests and cracking down on people breaking the law in ways that already are illegal. then there are laws that you can make that need to be made to make more things tightened up to stop them a bit earlier. But for me, it's fundamentally more about ideas and ideology and our culture. And when we talk about cultures that clash with ours, or which are aggressive and prejudiced and dangerous for, say, Jews, but also for British values, I think we really need to know what the flip side of that is what are they contradicting what are they dangerous to it's not enough just to say we don't like that we have to say what we do like as well and I think in many respects that's something that we've forgotten how to do in Britain I think we need to more powerfully forcefully confidently stand up for the things which are British which are ours which are worth protecting whether it's from our history or our culture Some people say it's from our ethnicity.

1:23:16I disagree with that. I don't think this is about ethnic purity. I think that's the wrong lesson to learn from history. But I do think that it's about our values and what they stand for as British people, as Westerners, as modern people, as Jews in my case. And so I think the same things that will save the West, that will save Britain, will save Jews. because I think that a degree of tolerance and respect is part of that. And I think that most of Jewishness fits in really well with most of Britishness and most of Westernness. So I think that's obviously going to help. But it's ideology. It's standing up against ideologies which preach hate, which preach death, which idolise death.

1:24:03And it's the bravery to name them and call them out as well, which is definitely lacking. And I'll be frank, it's not the only one, but Islam and some of the ideals and ideas that are rooted in Islam are problematic for Jews, they're problematic for other non-Muslims, they're problematic for Britons, if they're allowed to become the catalyst for danger, for violence, for hatred, for separation, for opposition to what we are. So Islam as a faith that one can hold in oneself, that when, you know, I've met recently, actually, I've been doing some interviews for another series I'm releasing later in the year, some amazing Muslim reformers, people who really want to rebalance Islam as a more inward looking spiritual thing that they do themselves.

1:24:57people like Dalia Ziada or Zudi Jessa in the States. I fully support every person's right to worship their God internally, to have their own spiritual relationship with the world, with heaven, with God, if they want to and not to. But where it affects me or where it has a lot to say about me, someone who has nothing to do with that faith, I'm not part of their faith, whether it's because I'm a Jew or any other kind of non-Muslim in the case of Islam, I don't have time for that. It cannot tell me what I can do. It cannot tell me what will happen to me if I don't do what it says. I cannot be marked for death because I don't agree with it.

1:25:38And even in the case of people who do things which are inflammatory to Islam, if they draw a picture of Muhammad or if they write a book which is seen as heretical like Salman Rushdie, Those people must be protected because that is Britishness. Those are our values. That is the West that we need to defend. And so what can you do to help protect Jews and anti-Semitism? It's help protect yourself, help protect Britain, help protect Christianity, help protect Westernness, help protect the very things we are. And in order to do that, we have to rediscover who we are. and then we have to have pride in who we are and the ability to say, this is worth protecting.

1:26:22This is something we teach our children. This is something that we teach in our schools. This is something that we will happily say we think is better than the things trying to kill it. And only when we do that do I think that Jews will be safe. And that's why a lot of Jews don't feel safe in Britain today. And it's also why a lot of Jews support the state of Israel because the state of Israel is a country which, for good or bad, for faults or not, has a very clear sense of identity has a population which has proven over the last two and a half years, if not over the last 78, that they are willing to fight and die to protect their values and their way of life.

1:26:58And not because they're brutal Spartans who are violent and bloodthirsty, but because they recognise that the state that they've built, which is modern, but also rooted in Jewish thought and Jewish law and Jewish history and Jewish culture, is worth protecting. And that is, I think, one of the things that this country could learn from the state of Israel. So it's a long answer, but I think that that is what we need to do in order to protect Jews and protect all of us. When you say about that, something that Britain could learn from Israel, I totally agree that the sense of community and family and the government encourage you to expand your family and you get tax relief the bigger the family you build.

1:27:34I'm all for that. But sadly, we've got to call this a day. Where can my audience find and follow you? Where do you do your best work? Well, so all my work is collected on my sub stack, which is johnsac.substack.com. I also have a YouTube channel. I have an X account, which is at johnsac. I have Spotify. I'm everywhere, basically. But if you look on jonathansacrodotti.com or on my sub stack, you will find links to everything else. And please do watch my podcast, subscribe to it. It helps the algorithm. You know, let's all do this together. I'm so pleased that you invited me on. I really am because we're all on the same side.

1:28:12And I think that that's ultimately what you're doing, what I'm doing. We're just trying to stand up for something. And we have a platform now. You have this amazing channel, this amazing show. I have the privilege to do the same. Viewers have the ability to see through all the rubbish that they used to be fed and go and find it all on their own. So I do hope that we can, yeah, I hope to do it again sometime. Hopefully it'll come on mine. 100%. And if you are also fed up with the rubbish that you're being fed from the mainstream, like and subscribe to this channel it will take you two seconds and cost you nothing I'm going to put all of Jonathan's links in the description so follow him and all his platforms but do like and subscribe because a lot of you watch this week after week after week and you forget to press the button you play your part and I'll play mine and Jonathan I know that times are very tense for you guys at the moment so from me to you I hope you stay safe thank you thank you sir

1:29:11you