Dennis Prager’s Unique Take on the Cornell 7 Case

Marissa Streit (0:02)

Dennis, I know you have important things to share with us this week, so let's get into it.

Dennis Prager (0:08)

I'll tell you, it was a very difficult thing for me to decide what topic would be, because there's so much, unfortunately, rich material out there. Two things that preoccupied me this week have been what's happening at Cornell, and something else that is happening in Israel that very few people are aware of. It has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with war. So on the anniversary of October 7th, the Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah, which is a very happy day, it means the happiness of the Torah. And traditionally, Jews just go to synagogue or even in the streets and dance with Torah scrolls. It's a very happy holiday. It became a very unhappy day, a horrible day, the worst day since the Holocaust for Jews, October 7th, 2023 So the butchery took place at the Nova Music Festival at the Gaza border.

And some people decided that they would make Simchat Torah, this happy holiday, with dancing and singing at the Nova site, to show the world that the Jewish people are living and well and thriving. That, in effect, you can put us down. It even included some people whose children were murdered or kidnapped or even raped. However, at the same time, there were a fair number of parents whose children were murdered or kidnapped or raped who said, You can't do that. You can't go to the actual site. That's hallowed grounds. And they gave, they constantly gave the comparison. Would you start dancing and singing at Auschwitz, the great infamous death camp of the Nazis, where more than a million Jews were exterminated to use their language? And I raised this issue solely to provoke those watching us to think, because, very unlike me, I don't know what the right answer is.

This is one example. There aren't many of I equally see both sides as having legitimate arguments. I don't know what is right. I know what I would do.

Maybe that helps.

I was…I read that there was a large parking lot near the Nova site, and they could have used that for all the dancing and singing and prayers that they wanted. And I thought that that was a legitimate compromise. But the people who wanted to do it wanted it, as the Israelis would say, to be Daftka, specifically, at the Nova Festival site.

And it's maybe only time will tell what the right answer might be. But how you honor the victims of torture is a very difficult question. And that's something I just wanted to share with you. I read literally every article that the Israeli press published on the issue and could not come up with an answer.

Marissa Streit (4:58)

You know, Dennis, it's so interesting because people oftentimes ask, how is it that the Jewish people have survived so many years despite multiple attempts of extermination and annihilation?

And one has to wonder whether one of the reasons Jews have survived is because of the refusal to despair, right? You've oftentimes taught us that despair is a sin. And so the choice to celebrate and experience joy despite the grief, despite the hardship seems to be one of those key factors in Jewish survival. Another example that I think about that recently happened was, you probably followed the story of the Israelis who are flying back from Dubai and fly Dubai, and they were almost killed in that flight. And I don't know if it was an act of God or certainly heroic act of saving those people who are on the flight.

Dennis Prager (5:58)

You know, now that you raised that issue, the more you know about that issue, that event, the more incredible it becomes that they're alive. And I'll give just one example, having nothing to do in effect with the heroic pilot and the evil pilot.

But the plane nosedived 15,000 feet. Free fall. The plane is not built to go at that speed. By all predictions, it should have broken up, so that even if the pilot were able to open the cockpit door, which he did, it would have been too late. The plane would have cracked in half while falling. And that did not happen. And all the other things that worked out just right, it's another great imponderable or unsolvable. Was there the hand of God here?

And I have no idea. Again, I am a complete loss. I can totally see why somebody would say yes. And I totally understand why somebody would say, God allows good and evil to happen.

Marissa Streit (7:38)

Yeah, I would imagine that the survivors on the plane did feel like it was an act of God, which is why they were so joyous and grateful at the same time.