The Genius of Israel

A book that just came out and obviously came out before October 7th, the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. And it is titled The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World. Dan Senor and Saul Singer have written it. Dan Senor has a piece in the New York Post which makes you cry if you're an American. I mean that sincerely. Here's an example of a line from his piece, and I have him on the line. In most meritocracies, the criterion to reach the pinnacle of merit is individual academic excellence. In Israel, the most meritorious are those who seek and are chosen for the most challenging military service. This changes everything. It means merit is determined by something that is not about you, but about how you can contribute to your society and country. It is a communal value that builds solidarity rather than an individualistic value that contributes to moving up the ladder. Can you imagine if we had that in the US? The best go into the military. That, that would change this country in a nanosecond. Dan Senor, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.

Thanks, Dennis. Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you.

You're in New York City.

I am.

I am. I know this will sound awful, but I want to say I don't envy you. Is that a fair reaction?

I will tell you, you'll appreciate this. I, I, as I'm sure you have too, I've been speaking to a lot of my Israeli friends in Israel since October 7th, and there's been like an arc to those conversations. Which began with me on October 7th, 8th, 9th, checking in with them. How you doing? Trying to be supportive, trying to comfort them as they go through this trauma. That was like the first few days. And then in recent weeks, it's migrated to something completely different. When I check in with them and say, how are you doing? They say, we'll be okay. Don't worry about us. We'll be okay. We have a war. This is awful. This is horrific. But we know how to fight wars. We'll fight this war. We'll be okay. We're worried about you. We're worried about you guys. We're worried about American Jews. We're worried about what we're seeing in New York City. We're worried about what's happening on college campuses. What on earth is going on? In your corner of the world. Don't worry about us, we can handle this. But what we're witnessing over happening in the United States, that's what's shaking their confidence. They're confident in their own society. They're confident in their own young men and women who are on the front lines. What, what's shaking their confidence is watching what's happening over here.

That is one powerful response. You wrote this for the New York Post. The New York Post today has a piece about hundreds of kids let out in Brooklyn from school to march against Israel, against Zionism, and among their chants was F the Jews. Hundreds of kids, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, one of the left-wing districts.

It's everywhere. Dennis, it's everywhere here. Um, I mean, I can give you story after story.

Yeah, yeah. So I think it's worth it.

My kids go to a Jewish day school. I mean, I never thought I'd see the day that I watch my kids go to a Jewish day school with NYPD guard— NYPD cars outside the day school. Every Jewish day school, every Jewish institute in the city is in some form or another a target or a prospective target. I'm not saying there's actual intelligence of a target, but just that sense of there's Jew hunting going on. That's what it is. There's Jew hunting going on in the West. And when I use that term, people say, oh, you're being demagogic. Oh, you're being histrionic. Oh, really? I mean, last week was the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Now, there was a campaign in certain corners to go out and start vandalizing the property of Jewish-owned businesses last week, in some cases on the exact day, that anniversary of Kristallnacht's beginning.

Let me just tell everybody, Kristallnacht's the night of the broken glass. Kristall is glass, Nacht is night. So the night of the glass, when throughout Germany they shattered the Jewish stores beat Jews up and looted their property. Go ahead.

In 1938. So this was an early sign of what was to come, right? And so the bookstore chain, the largest bookstore chain in Canada, owned, or the CEO of which is Jewish, they go and they vandalize the bookstores. They splash blood all over the place. They put photos of the—

By the way, who is the they usually?

It's a great question. There are these mobs of— it's a mix of things. It's a mix of— it's young, I don't know, call them students, I don't know, young activists who don't seem particularly involved with or identified with causes involving the Middle East. So somehow they're people who I normally don't associate with these issues who will get swept up in it, or or activists that are involved with the Students for Justice in Palestine or other organizations that are affiliated. And so they, in Toronto, they went and they splattered blood all over these stores and they put up signs of photos of the CEO. And instead of calling her CEO, they called her CGO, as in Chief Genocide Officer. And I don't quite see how she's the Chief Genocide Officer of anything. She runs a bookstore chain. They did it at stores here in New York. Obviously, I'm sure you've seen what's happened at MIT in Boston.

No, I didn't. What happened at MIT?

They basically made it impossible for Jewish students to go to class and study, to the point that the administration had to all but tell Jewish students, you know, maybe today's not a good day to go to class. And so my only point is, it used to be that there was ugly criticism of Israel and the critics, those critics of Israel who I would, in my, by my standards, they will have crossed the line, would say, no, no, it's not antisemitism. It's just criticism of Israel. And they were very sensitive about being stigmatized with a blurring between anti-Zionism and antisemitism or criticism of Israel and antisemitism. Now they're not worried about the stigma. To the contrary, they embrace it. That the stigma is the point. That Kristallnacht is the point. That the association and the anniversary of Kristallnacht is the point. And so I just, that's what, when my Israeli friends look at what's going on here, that's what they're struck by. From the river to the sea. They know what that means. And it's, so that's what's so unnerving, I think, for us. And it's so unnerving for our Israeli friends and family who are watching this from Israel, because they think that America, this kind of stuff doesn't happen in the United States of America, in the enlightened, modern, affluent, highly educated democracy of the United States of America. So I, You know, look, after October 7th, Dennis, I was floored that the outrage against Israel began before even— before Israel even responded to October 7th. The outrage began before that. Yeah. And then once Israel made it clear it was going to do something to respond, as any country on the planet would do if there was a genocidal attack from an enemy on your border. Israel hadn't even really responded. They just made it clear they were going to respond. Then the outrage cranked up even higher with these protests and everything. And it was like as though people were outraged that the Jews objected to being slaughtered. That you object to being slaughtered. How dare you? And then Israel said, well, as a matter of self-defense, we have to take out Hamas. And then some leaders said, okay, that's fine. You can take out Hamas, but don't hit any hospitals or civilian areas. Israel said, okay, but you do know that the hospitals and the civilian areas are deliberately co-located with the enemy we have to take out, deliberately co-located by the enemy, by Hamas, if not just co-located, like literally in the same, like underneath these facilities. Well, you can't, you can't. So what you're basically saying is we can't hit Hamas.

So now you've got to keep that thought. I got to break. The book is The Genius of Israel, and it explains America in many ways. Like to remind you about Relief Factor, one of the greatest products I have ever advertised. Should you have muscle or joint pain, you can do two things— three things: nothing, which is what people tend to do, call Sean to give you a massage, or take Relief Factor. To me, there's, there's, there's no question. Now the product is phenomenal. Everyone I know, literally everyone I know well, let's put it that way, uses it. You should try it for 3 weeks. If it doesn't work in 3 weeks, cancel your order. How do you like that? So you get 3 weeks for $19.95. If $19.95 is not easy these days, and I get that, don't have lunch. It's more important to conquer your pain and find out if it works. Again, relieffactor.com. For the 3-week Quick Start 1995, 800-583-84. Dan Senor and Saul Singer have written another bestseller, The Genius of Israel, came out right before 10/7, and it is so relevant to us. I read, Dan, from your piece, terrific piece in the New York Post, which is a terrific newspaper. I just want to read it one more time, then I'll read some other parts. In most meritocracies, the criterion to reach the pinnacle of merit is individual academic excellence. In Israel, the most meritorious are those who seek and are chosen for the most challenging military service. This changes everything. A society that selects for service changes everything. Then he tells an interesting story. When we spoke to Nadav Zafir, a successful Israeli entrepreneur and the commander of an elite tech unit in the IDF, he was in the process of moving his family back to Israel after spending a few years in the United States building his business. A major reason for returning to Israel— listen to this, folks— was so that his children could go into the Israeli Army rather than to an American university. I looked at my kids and I said, this is what I want for them, not because I'm a Spartan, but because I honestly think it's a better education. Imagine if the best and brightest in America went into the military. That's what I had said before you came on. I go back to Dan Senor's book, The Genius of Israel, is up at DennisPrager.com. You're, uh, I, I, as you noted, or you may have noticed, I didn't interrupt you once because it was so fascinating. Your Israeli friends, that is in Israel at wartime are more worried about you, an American Jew. And for the first time in my life, I understand that the combination of the left and Islamism is bad for the West and bad for the Jews. So when I said to you, who are they? That's who they are. The woke and the fundamentalist Muslim, especially from the Middle East. 700 kids going out, whatever the number hundred was, in Brooklyn to demonstrate against Israel and scream 'F the Zionists' and 'F the Jews.' Your children having a police escort to a Jewish day school in Manhattan. It's a different world. So what's the thesis of your book about the genius of Israel? It's a society that believes in itself?

Yeah, it's a few things. It's a, we try to understand why, and this is before October 7th, we feel even more strongly about it after October 7th. It's why on just about every metric, Israel is moving in one direction and Western affluent democracies are moving in the other direction. So most of the West right now is in the process of, or about to have, a demographic catastrophe— shrinking populations, shrinking and aging populations. People are having fewer and fewer children. In many parts of the world, they're well below the replacement rate necessary for a population to grow. So populations will shrink. We're already seeing it in certain parts of the world. We have for years, like Japan, which is population is shrinking. They're closing schools in Japan because there aren't enough children. In Japan, we cite in our book, the market for adult diapers is larger than the market for baby diapers, just to give you a sense.

That is mind-blowing.

Yeah.

Without getting too raunchy, or I would say not even raunchy, sick.

The—

is the adult diaper just for adults who are incontinent, or is it a sexual matter?

No, I think it's— I think it's the former.

Okay. So that really— that is one of the most depressing statistics I have encountered.

Yeah.

There are more adult diapers than— the reason I asked, by the way, I want to explain to people who might have thought that's weird. The question I asked was not weird. Someone, a family member who was single, a middle-aged woman, went on a dating site and one of the guys she encountered sent her a picture of himself in a diaper. That has stayed with me, I have to say. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I just wanted to explain where that question came from. So yes, so we— there's demographic suicide.

So, so, right. So, so basically people's— the populations are shrinking. People aren't having enough children. I was in Japan last spring and I— every person I met with, including government officials, said it's the biggest threat to, to Japan, that people are just not having children. Families are smaller, if not nonexistent. Population ages. No one's there to support them. Younger generations. And there's no innovation in the society or the economy because It's a graying population. You see the same in some parts of Europe. And other, if you just look at the forecast, the US is not far behind. So that's demography. Then you look at life expectancy. Life expectancy in most parts of the world is plateauing. Israel's life expectancy is higher than Europe. It's higher than the United States. It's higher than its wealthy peers in the Sunni Gulf states in the region that have gobs of money and access to the best healthcare money can buy. So Israelis are living longer and I should add to the earlier point, they're having more babies. Israel's right now way above the replacement rate. Israel's the only wealthy democracy that is both getting wealthier and having more and more children. So it's an iron law of demography that the more economically productive a population becomes, the less reproductive it becomes. That's pretty consistent everywhere except for one place, which is Israel. In Israel, they're building a stronger and stronger economy, they're getting wealthier and wealthier as a country, and they're having more and more children. And it's not just the ultra-Orthodox. When I say this, people say, ah, it's just the Haredi Jews, it's just the ultra-Orthodox Jews that are having a lot of kids. It's true, they are. They also represent a small part of the population, where the real growth is coming from, are from secular Israelis who are also having 3, 4, 5 children in some cases. So the demography contrast, deaths of despair over the last couple of decades, there's been this crisis in the United States of people dying from alcoholism.

These are powerful. They're all in the genius of Israel. You want to understand Israel? This is a terrific way to do it. If you'd like to consider lowering your blood pressure naturally, as it were, without the medications, or to reduce use of medications, I introduce you to 120 Life, an all-natural hypertension treatment formulated by a man in Chicago who suffers from high blood pressure. He created 120 Life, a juice drink and powdered mix that helps lower your blood pressure naturally. I've been drinking it. It works. Numbers are dropping. It's made of pomegranates, tart cherries, cranberries, hibiscus, beetroot, and magnesium. It helps lower blood pressure without the side effects of pills and medication. I should invite you to try it for 2 weeks. See for yourself. If you don't see lower blood pressure numbers, There's a money-back guarantee. Can't get easier than that. There's a way to measure it. It's not how do you feel, it's what are the numbers. Visit 120life.com, that's 120life.com. Use the coupon code Dennis to save 15%. Dan Senior and Alex and Saul Singer— that's funny, Alex's late brother, my new I knew well.

Who fell in the IDF.

That's right. I know, in Lebanon. I know the family well. They were students of mine. They were some of the most spectacular I've ever known. The genius of Israel, dance scene or in soul singer, and it is so applicable to what we don't have in America. You have a great quote. Your article is— is this article up on Dennis Prager? We should put it up. Your article in the New York Post is as important about America, to be honest, as it is about Israel. And let me see here if I can find it because I just had it. But you cite, which is of course so true, purpose, that people need a purpose. And there's a purpose-driven population in Israel. And with the death of Judeo-Christian values— that's not the way you put it, I'm putting it, I don't want to put any words in your mouth— and an American patriotism, we have substituted climate change I'm amplifying on what you wrote, but I've had it. Thank you.

Preaching, preaching to the choir.

I would suspect so. So, by the way, in light of all of this, how are your children reacting when they see cop cars guarding them? How do they assimilate this?

It's a fascinating question, Dennis. We have many friends who who send their kids to secular private schools, Jewish families, right, their kids to secular elite prep school, right? They're the ones having a hard time. It's almost a version, actually. Now, I haven't thought about it this way till you asked it. The way my Israeli friends say to us, how are you? We're worried about you in the United States. You can transfer that from me to my friends whose kids are in secular private schools. Because I say to them, how are you? Because they're sending their kids to schools where, at best, there's been no public acknowledgement by the school of what happened on October 7th. And at worst, there are these ham-handed statements issued by the faculty that engage in the grossest forms of moral equivalence. And whataboutism and even-handedness that could make your head explode. Now, at our children's school, big population is Israeli, big part of the faculty is Israeli. The events of October 7th are very much in the water, if you will, of our community here in New York. So our kids are enveloped in it and don't— I mean, it's upsetting. Obviously upsetting. Also, they have cousins who have been called up in the reserves in Israel. You mentioned, you know, Saul's daughter has been called up in the reserves. We have other family who've been called up, some in combat roles. So it's all around them, but I'd rather it be all around them. In other words, there's burden and sacrifice and tragedy when that they're aware of when it's all around them. And there's also pride and knowing, a kid knowing at a young age there are things that are worth fighting for. And there's a cause and there's a mission and a story that we care about, the story of our people. And this is another chapter in the story of our people. And we take great pride in that and we take great burden in that. And I think it's a healthier way to raise a kid. So I think they're in a better shape than a lot of Jews who are leading very assimilated Jewish lives, very assimilated lives as Jews in all around us.

There was, I read this to my listeners a few weeks ago. There was less suicide and depression in America during World War II than today.

Yeah.

The hardship is not the cause of depression. Meaninglessness is. I'm, by the way, paraphrasing you. I just want to make that clear. I know. Just want to give credit where it is due. But it echoes my entire life's Mission is—

can I give you a quote? Can I give you a quote? I'm just opening up the book right here because my— I have two favorite— two of my favorite quotes in this book, and I don't mean to—

all right, give the two quotes when we come back. It's a perfect way to leave it because I want to— I want to remind everybody, The Genius of Israel is up at DennisPrager.com. Dan Senor has co-authored a really important book, ironically coming out now right after 10/7. October 7th, the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. The genius of Israel. And it's— if Israel is not on your radar, although it is on most people's now, but even if it's not, if you want to understand America and our existential crisis, this is a tremendous way to do so. You were about to cite two Citations from your book.

So the first one is a quote by Sebastian Junger, who's not Jewish, who's a war correspondent living here in the US. He's written a number of very good books, including one called Tribe. He spent a lot of time with American troops in very difficult parts of the world, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And he writes in, in Tribe, and we quoted him, we quoted him elsewhere in the book based on conversations with him. This quote opens up the book. Our book. He says, humans don't mind hardship. In fact, they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary.

That's in your New York Post piece. It's phenomenal.

Yeah, yeah. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. That quote to me says so much because Because Israel is one of the happiest places in the world, literally, according to the UN.

That's right.

Ranking. The nicest thing the UN has ever said about Israel. The UN ranks countries based on happiness. And Israel in 2023, it's been top 10 for years.

But in 2020, by the way, Gaza, just for the record, is in the top 130.

Right, exactly. So Israel's number 4. And, and so It's interesting, like, why is Israel so happy when you look at events right now and you look at versions of events right now that Israel has had to experience in some form or another throughout its history? It's because happiness is not about the easy life. Happiness is not derived based on lots of creature comforts and being taken care of. Happiness comes from feeling like you have a purpose, like you have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, like you, you, you, that you're necessary. And in Israel, if we weren't, didn't call Israel startup nation, we'd call it necessary nation. Everybody in Israel feels that they have a role, they have a part to play. And that's, that's what's significant in that New York Post piece, which is an excerpt from the book, which is one of the important things about national service in Israel is Israelis feel like, I have something to contribute, I have a role to play, it's larger than me, it's not all about me. And so that's a very important part, that's an important theme that explains the health of Israeli society, the happiness of Israeli society, and the resilience of Israeli society. The second is we quote extensively a public intellectual in Israel who you may know named Mika Goodman, who says, who told us, and we quote the interview in the book, he says, you know, Israel is a small country with a big story. That is to say, there are other small countries in the world, okay? Nothing against them. You know, there's small countries in Europe. Canada's a little more than a small country, still smallish country. But these countries don't have big stories. Like what happens in those countries beyond the country's goal of maintaining a decent standard of living for its people or whatever, in the scheme of things, there's not a sense that the country really matters. And in Israel, it's a small country with a big story. It's small, but what happens there really matters. What happens there, it's like it's a story, it's a country and a story with biblical proportions, not only going back 2,000 years, but God willing, forward 2,000 years. And so every Israeli says this place is big in the scheme of things. What we debate and deal with here is not just about the quality of life, it's about the essence of life. And yet the country's small enough that everybody has a role. Everyone has a role in shaping that story, or as Mika says, in touching history. Everyone here can touch history. So I think, Dennis, when you have, when everybody feels necessary, everybody feels that the story and the purpose of the country matters, and everybody feels that they can do something to touch it, shape it, move it forward. I think it's incredibly empowering. So it requires hard work. Okay. Those people storming, those Israelis storming Gaza right now, that's really hard work. Okay. Those Israeli civilian volunteers that left their comfortable homes in North Tel Aviv over the last few weeks to go down to the southern agricultural communities that were wiped out on October 2nd and now have been evacuated. October 7th and been wiped out. And those farms there are going to go dormant unless people start taking care of them. These volunteers from the tech community and other very comfortable communities in Tel Aviv have been schlepping down to South Israel. To farm, to make sure these farms don't go dormant. These people who have set up an Airbnb system, a bespoke Airbnb system in Israel, so that every Israeli that has a spare bedroom in their home that can take an evacuee from the north or the south. And so, hey, my son is going into— called up to the reserves. We got a spare bedroom. Oh, we can take someone. That you can find a room if you've got nowhere to live and go into that person's home, total stranger. Okay, I have example after example after example of what I'm talking about, Dennis, of the country rallying, the country coming together. Every one of those people in every one of those projects I just described, and I could times them by 1,000, feels necessary. They feel that they're part of a story that they're shaping and advancing and defending, and therefore I think They are leading happier lives.

It is brilliant. We have, we have lost that to a large extent in America because Americans don't feel the American story. Israelis feel the Israeli story, as you put it. So they've substituted with this story of climate change and LGBTQ. And hormone blockers and American racism and defunding police, because there's no more American story. It's so applicable to here. People don't know how many Israelis doing so well in America and in Europe got on the first flights they could to go to Israel to fight, to maybe die. Leaving a comfy life in France.

Yeah.

The book.

I know. I know people who have done.

Yes.

There's a—

let me, let me just let me announce your book because I'm trying to push your book.

Sorry. Sorry. For me to get.

That's right. Exactly. The Genius of Israel. It is up at DennisPrager.com. Final segment with Dan Senor, S-E-N-O-R. The book The Genius of Israel. And as I keep saying, it's as much, even though it's about Israel, it's as much about us as it is about Israel. Your point about needing to feel necessary, I guess, and that hardship is not an issue. I was reading, Dan, in the first hour of my show, Protests in, in a small city in Wisconsin because there were red and green were up at the city hall of this city, and they taking it down because it's going to make people who are not Christian feel uncomfortable seeing red and green in city hall. These are the causes in a society that no longer believes in anything. This is what they're fighting for. Let's get rid of red and green. Right? And we're two Jews who are somehow comfortable, I suspect. I don't think it troubles you if you see red and green at City Hall. No.

No. I, you know, I gotta tell you something else that I think helps explain Because you're right about the contrast with the US, and that's partly why we wrote the book. I ask Americans all the time, what's a ritual today that you do on a regular basis that when you're doing it, A, you're doing it regularly with the people you love, your family, your friends, and while you're doing it, you know that most of the country is doing it too. So it's a personal familial experience, but it's also a collective national collective experience. And they say, most of the country? I says, yeah. They said Thanksgiving. Fair. They usually say Thanksgiving. I say, name one more. And they usually say the Super Bowl. Okay. I like football. Great. The Super Bowl. People, Super Bowl parties, you know, most of the country is paying attention to some degree. I said, what if I told you in Israel there's a Thanksgiving every single week? The country has a Thanksgiving every week, that every single week they have Shabbat and the country basically shuts down. Now, some are more observant than others, but by and large, 70 to 80% of the country is together with family and friends every Friday night, and they know they're doing it and they know the whole country is doing it. I said, what about Memorial Day? Israel's Memorial Day? For 2 minutes on Memorial Day, the whole country stops.

I spoke about that last week on my show.

And it's the— we opened the book. The opening of our book—

oh, I have the chills—

is this scene, is the scene of Memorial Day through the eyes of—

I was in, I was in a car when it happened once.

And you get out, stop on a highway, and it's—

I wish, I wish we did that in America.

I know. And I say, and I say, all right, read the book, everybody.

Then I, uh, I really, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you. The genius of Israel from the genius of Dan Senor and Saul Singer. Thanks, my friend.