By Dennis Prager
On September 4, 2024, I sent this letter to Candace Owens regarding many comments she has made about Jews, Zionism and Israel. I have known Candace for about as long as she has been in public life. She began her podcasting at PragerU in 2019 and left in 2021. She left on very good terms. To this day, she often speaks of her respect and love for Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU, and me.
Within hours of receiving my letter, Candace replied:
“I deeply appreciate this e-mail and I will respond to it thoroughly. Please know that I respect you tremendously and it is difficult for me to reconcile how I feel about you and Marissa and the amazing way in which I was treated by you both, and my new feelings and understanding about Zionism. Please give me a bit of time to respond to all of your points. You can always reach out to me and no matter which side of this or any political debate we wind up on, my love and respect for you and Marissa and your treatment of me will never be swayed.”
As it happens, more than two weeks later, Candace had not responded to the letter. Given the number of subjects covered, the letter’s length, and Candace’s busy family life and career, I did not expect her to. I sent it to Candace to give her the chance to respond and because I did not want her to first see it when it went public.
Last week, after not hearing from her, I emailed Candace that I would be publishing the letter. We then spoke on the phone, she briefly explained why she hadn’t been able to respond in writing, and she in no way objected to my making the letter public.
I wish I did not have to write this letter. But Candace has said many things that need to be answered. The primary reasons I have not spoken out sooner are that I needed to become fully acquainted with all or nearly all the things she has said about Jews, Zionism, and Israel, make sure I quoted her accurately, and that I never did so out of context. That was time-consuming work.
I ask anyone who has been influenced by Candace with regard to Jews, Israel, and Zionism to make the effort to read this entire letter. If you care about truth, I believe you have a moral obligation to do so.
FULL LETTER:
September 3, 2024
Dear Candace:
Like you were with Kanye West, I have been under great pressure to condemn you for what many see as your growing antisemitism.
Because I wanted to reach out to you privately before I say anything publicly, I have devoted a lot of time to listening to your relevant podcast episodes and your comments in debates and conversations with other people. If you think, based on my responses here, I’ve missed anything relevant, please let me know. I want to take everything into account, and do so in full context.
- Israel was founded by “Frankists” (“masquerading as Jews”).
You say: “The nation of Israel was established by some Frankists. . . .”
I taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College, and never heard or read such a thing. And even if there were any truth to it, it in no way explains the founding of Israel. For two thousand years, as part of daily ritual prayers, Jews prayed three times a day to be able to return to their homeland, Israel. That, plus the world witnessing what happens when Jews have no homeland — centuries of pogroms, massacres, and expulsions (which inspired Theodor Herzl to organize the Jews’ return to Israel — “Zionism” — in the late nineteenth century) culminating in the Holocaust — is what led to the reestablishment of the Jewish state. That Herzl came from the same general region as did Jacob Frank, who predated Herzl by about 150 years — a region with millions of Jews who were not Frankists — and therefore must have been a Frankist, seems like a pretty big leap.
- Alleged “Frankists,” who were in fact ethnic Jews, were responsible for missing, and presumably murdered, Christian children around Passover time.
You say: “Catholics and Christians were going missing on Passover, then they would find bodies across Europe, and they were able to trace them back to Jews . . . . They weren’t Jews, OK? It was the Frankists, and just as Leo Frank killed Mary Phagan on Passover back in 1913 or 1914 — [it was done] on Passover for a reason. The Frankist cult, which masquerades behind Jews, still participates in this shit to this day. Why would you want, as a small nation that is the size of New Jersey, the pedophiles to flee there?”
Therefore, Israel was founded to be a haven for pedophiles — who, furthermore, engage in slaughtering Christians as part of a satanic ritual.
That is as close to the medieval libel of Jews — as butchers of Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzo — as I have heard in my lifetime. You mock the idea that this is another blood libel. But that is what it is. And given how many Jews were massacred, often tortured to death, because of it, Jews have good reason to loathe it.You cite and deem as credible the two modern instances of the blood libel against Jews:
“Most people don’t know. They think that the nation of Israel was established because of World War II. No. There was a lot going on leading up to that. Learn about the Damascus Affair of 1840. Learn about what happened to Eszter Solymosi in Austria in 1880. There were Christians who kept on going missing on holidays and the entire Christian world rose up and began publicizing, trying to point to what they believed to be a satanic cult. Of course, all of that’s been erased. Most Christians don’t know this.”
In 1840, in Damascus, Syrian Jews were charged with butchering Capuchin friar Thomas, an Italian monk living in Damascus. The Capuchins in Damascus spread the charge, which resulted in 63 Jewish children being abducted from their families to force the families to divulge the location of the friar’s blood. And a Jewish barber named Solomon Negrin was arbitrarily arrested and tortured until a “confession” was extorted from him. Under torture, Negrin said that seven Jews killed the monk in the house of David Harari. The seven men were subsequently arrested and also tortured. Two of them died under torture.
The other blood libel you cite as credible took place in Austria-Hungary in 1882. Jews were accused of murdering and beheading a 14-year-old Catholic girl named Eszter Solymosi. A girl’s body was found on the bank of the Tisza River, but though the body was dressed in Eszter’s clothes, it was not Eszter. And if it was, it proved the charges to be libelous — there was no injury to her neck.
Nevertheless, members of the local Jewish community were accused of having killed Eszter for ritual purposes, as it happened right before Passover. Jews, according to the centuries-old charge, use Christians’ blood to bake Matzo, the unleavened Passover bread.
Eventually, after 15 months of investigation, the Hungarian Highest Court (Kúria), in a unanimous verdict, acquitted all of the accused.
You repeat this libel of anti-Christian crimes committed by Jews in another podcast: “There’s a lot behind my refusal, my absolute refusal, to bend the knee to Israel, as many American politicians have done. There’s too much I’ve learned about their [Israel’s? Jews’?] history, about what was done to Christians, which they’re alleging now is blood libel — that none of that’s real, it didn’t happen. . .”
It didn’t happen, and repeating it does terrible harm. It is painful for me to know that the Candace I have known would say such things.
- Israel is not our ally
You say you are “over the idea that Israel is our ally . . . if another person says that stupid statement, I am going to personally punch you in the face.” You then add that the “punch in the face” comment was a joke. But nothing else was meant as a joke.
The “joke” conveyed your contempt for anyone who says such a thing. I am one of those. And I am hardly an outlier in this regard. American administrations, Democrat and Republican, since Harry Truman saw Israel as America’s greatest ally in the Middle East, and one of its greatest allies in the world. Only the Biden administration has begun to regard Israel differently.
In every year for which I could find data — 2005 to 2021 — Israel voted with America at the United Nations more often than any other country in the world.
And no country has supplied the U.S. with more intelligence or as much arms innovation as has Israel. I’ll cite an example from 1986: The New York Times quoted retired Air Force intelligence chief, Gen. George F. Keegan, as praising “Israeli assistance in discovering Soviet Air Force capabilities, new weapons, electronics and jamming devices. ‘I could not have procured the intelligence . . . with five CIAs. The ability of the U.S. Air Force in particular, and the Army in general, to defend whatever position it has in NATO owes more to the Israeli intelligence input than it does to any other single source of intelligence, be it satellite reconnaissance, be it technology intercept, or what have you.’”
The Iron Dome has become a critical part of the U.S. Army’s defense system. It is produced in America, but its technology was invented in Israel.
Bill Gates, whom I do not like, but who knows the tech industry, said in 2006 that the “innovation going on in Israel is critical to the future of the technology business.”
Mike Huckabee, another conservative Christian who supports Israel — in your view, if I understand you correctly, foolishly and counter to Christian values — wrote in the conservative Washington Examiner:
“Modern Israel has given us the mobile phone, the drip irrigation system, the USB thumb drive, many of the most effective cancer-killing drugs in use, voice mail, video on demand, and cherry tomatoes. America’s relationship with Israel is not merely organizational, it’s organic. Israel is a mirror image of America in its commitment to religious liberty, education, women’s rights, free speech, democratic governance, and free-market capitalism. Women have equal access to education and workplace opportunities. While a Jewish state, Israel also protects all religious shrines and provides Christians, Muslims, and Jews universal access to all religious sites. (How many churches or synagogues are equally protected by the Syrians or the Iranians?)”
04. The U.S.S. Liberty, American pedophiles in Israel, etc.
You repeatedly mention Israel’s real and alleged bad actions — specifically, Israel’s attack on the U.S.S. Liberty during the Six-Day War in 1967, the American pedophiles who have found refuge in Israel, and the recent charges of abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
Terrible mistakes happen in every war — a few months ago, Israeli troops mistakenly killed three of their own hostages in Gaza, for example — and for a long time I thought the Israeli attack on the Liberty may have been one. But I am persuaded that the strike on the Liberty was probably deliberate. For reasons I do not understand, and wish I did, both the American and Israeli governments covered it up at the time and have never since explained why it happened.
If everything said about the attack on the Liberty is true, that attack seems to me to have been criminal.
Israel, in my view, has also been wrong in not extraditing any of the accused American Jewish pedophiles living in Israel. I should explain, however, why that is. It has nothing to do with pedophilia; Israel would not extradite any Jew to any country for any crime. The reason is history: Corrupt authorities often demanded that Jewish communities hand over innocent Jews on trumped-up charges. And if they did, those Jews would often be tortured into confessing some crime and then be executed. This history in no way justifies Israel not extraditing Jews to law-based countries like the United States. But history has effects. And, as I said, it is not specific to pedophiles.
Regarding the alleged abuse of some Palestinian prisoners: If true, it is criminal. It is important to note, however, that, like with the abuses committed by our soldiers at Abu Ghraib, it was Israeli whistleblowers who informed the world of the abuse. In the words of a CNN headline: “Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center.”
Contrast the Israeli whistleblowers with the sharing of photos and videos of October 7 by Hamas terrorists with fellow Palestinians. Are there any Palestinian voices who have objected to what was done that day, or what has been done during 75 years of Palestinian terror? Is there one Palestinian official who has said about Palestinian terror what Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, just said about the alleged abuses of Palestinian prisoners — that the investigation into the soldiers’ conduct must be allowed to continue because “even in times of anger, the law applies to everyone”?
Publicly, how you, Candace, judge Israel is exactly how the anti-American left judges America: Focus on every bad thing America has done without putting any of it into moral perspective.
America has been an extraordinarily decent nation that has done many indecent things. So, too, Israel has been an extraordinarily decent nation that has done some indecent things. If we knew every detail of the history of every country we consider decent, I suspect we’d find the same is true for all of them.
- You regularly refer to the “Zionist media.”
What does that term mean? Does it mean media that believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish country? That is, after all, what “Zionist” means — nothing more and nothing less. Until the day after the October 7 massacres, only two groups regularly used the term “Zionist media”: antisemites who used “Zionist” as a synonym for “Jewish,” and Arab and Muslim countries and groups that seek Israel’s destruction.
- “Israel has a stranglehold on dialogue in America.”
That is so obviously untrue as to qualify, I regret to say, as a lie. I’m not accusing you of lying, because I think you believe it. So let me ask you: Does Israel have a stranglehold on dialogue in academia? If there is a stranglehold on dialogue in America’s universities — and increasingly in high schools — it comes from anti-Israel sources. It is much more dangerous for one’s career and reputation for a professor to speak out on behalf of Israel than to attack it.
Does Israel have a stranglehold on dialogue in American media? Other than the Wall Street Journal editorial page, virtually all mainstream media in America loathe Israel’s prime minister as much as they hate Donald Trump, and they vigorously oppose Israel’s war against Hamas.
Given that the media and academia are the primary shapers of American opinion, where exactly does Israel have a stranglehold on dialogue in America?
- Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan
You frequently state, as if it is incontrovertible fact, that Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan, the 13-year-old girl whom you almost always note was Catholic. But why are you so sure that Frank was the murderer, given that almost no one who has investigated the case thinks so?
The book you cite (Ep. 35) as providing definitive proof of Frank’s guilt, The Leo Frank Case by Leonard Dinnerstein, does not provide any such proof. The book meticulously details the evidence on both sides — for and against Frank’s guilt — as well as the climate of the time and place in terms of race and ethnicity, and the way everyone involved wrestled with the conflicting evidence.
But neither Dinnerstein nor any other author I could find who has studied the case argues for Frank’s guilt. In fact, they believe he was probably innocent. Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, surveyed five books and one scholarly article on the Frank case, and concluded: “The modern historical consensus, as exemplified in the Dinnerstein book, is that, in addition to being apparently the only Jewish person ever lynched in American history, Leo Frank was an innocent man convicted at an unfair trial.”
Note: “as exemplified by the Dinnerstein book.” I don’t understand why you cite Dinnerstein as proof that Leo Frank was guilty.
Example #1: Just two months after the trial, the judge himself, Judge Leonard Roan, said, “I have thought about this case more than any other I have ever tried. With all the thought I have put on this case, I am not thoroughly convinced that Frank is guilty or innocent.” Shortly before he died the next year, Judge Roan wrote to the Georgia governor asking for clemency for Leo Frank.
Were you aware that the judge said that, and later sought clemency for him? And that Georgia Governor John M. Slaton, despite the risk it presented to himself (he had received over 1,000 death threats, some of which included his wife, according to Leonard Dinnerstein), after studying the voluminous evidence, granted that request and commuted the death sentence?
Are you aware that Slaton wrote a 10,000-word explanation of his reasons? (Dinnerstein, p. 126, in a section of the book titled “Commutation”).
And Dinnerstein quotes Gov. Slaton as saying something that should touch you as a Christian:
“Two thousand years ago another Governor washed his hands of a case and turned over a Jew to a mob. For two thousand years that Governor’s name has been accursed. If today another Jew were lying in his grave because I had failed to do my duty I would all through life find his blood on my hands and would consider myself an assassin through cowardice.”
Dinnerstein also writes: “Privately, Slaton confided to friends that he believed Frank innocent and would have granted a full pardon if he were not convinced that in a short while the truth would come out and then ‘the very men who were clamoring for Frank’s life would be demanding a pardon for him.’ The Governor knew certain ‘facts’ about the case, which he did not reveal at the time, corroborating the defense’s theory of the way Conley had murdered Mary Phagan.”
If you were aware of all of this, then you libeled Frank. If you weren’t, now that you are, will you report it?
Example #2: After the case was appealed at the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the most revered justices in American history, Oliver Wendell Holmes, said, “I very seriously doubt if the petitioner [Frank] . . . has had due process of law . . . because of the trial taking place in the presence of a hostile demonstration and seemingly dangerous crowd, thought by the presiding Judge to be ready for violence unless a verdict of guilty was rendered.”
Example #3: One of the twentieth century’s leading historians of the American South, C. Vann Woodward, a professor of history at Yale (when that actually meant something), believed that Jim Conley, the man who testified against Frank, was the actual murderer; that Conley was “implicated by evidence overwhelmingly more incriminating than any produced against Frank.” (C. Vann Woodward: Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938; 2nd ed. 1973). Chapter 22, “The Lecherous Jew.”)
The verdict of virtually every historian who has written about the Frank trial is that Frank was probably innocent.
Example #4: In 1983, The Tennessean conducted a prolonged investigation of the Frank case and concluded that Frank was overwhelmingly likely innocent. And the newspaper revealed a major new development:
“Alonzo Mann . . . now 83 and ailing with a heart condition, was Frank’s office boy in 1913 at the National Pencil Co. factory in Atlanta. It was there on Confederate Memorial Day in April that little Mary Phagan was slain when she went to collect the $1.20 she was owed for 10 hours of work the previous Monday.
“‘Leo Frank did not kill Mary Phagan,’ Mann said. ‘She was murdered instead by Jim Conley.’
“Mann’s memory is not perfect when he is recalling people, places and events of nearly 70 years ago. But he remembers vividly the confrontation with Jim Conley, who had the limp form of Mary Phagan in his arms. . . . Mann has told The Tennessean that he saw Conley on the day of the murder with the limp body of Mary Phagan in his arms.
“He believed he saw this only moments after Mary had been knocked unconscious, but apparently before she was murdered. And he believes that if he had yelled out, he might have saved Mary’s life. But Mann says he did not yell out, and that Conley told him: ‘If you ever mention this, I’ll kill you.’
“He was frightened and ran out, Mann says. After riding a trolley home, he told his mother what had happened. She directed him to remain silent and told him not to get involved. He obeyed her.
“There is no way that what Mann says today can be reconciled with the version of events which Conley related in court in 1913. Either Conley lied then, or Mann is lying now. Because of the historical significance of what Mann is saying, The Tennessean asked him to submit to both a lie detector test and a psychological stress evaluation examination — procedures designed to determine if someone is lying. The tests were given by the Ball Investigative Agency here, and investigator Jeffery S. Ball provided the newspaper with a formal statement saying Mann responded truthfully to every question he was asked. . . .”
“Many who have examined the case have suspected that it was Jim Conley who murdered Mary Phagan. At least three persons later were quoted as saying he confessed to them he was the killer.”
So, then, why was Frank convicted? After all, most Georgians in 1913 were anti-black racists.
The Tennessean cites this reason: “Frank, 29, was from New York and was Jewish — a Yankee Jew. Georgians, in the main, disliked Northerners and distrusted Jews. During the trial hundreds of people gathered in the street outside the courthouse, and there were frequent catcalls of ‘Kill the Jew!’”
“Scholars who have studied the events of 1913 in Atlanta have tried to figure out why this happened. Some have thought they found the answer in the words of the late Lutheran Otterbein Bricker, pastor of First Christian Church in Bellwood, Ga., who was Mary Phagan’s minister. (Incidentally, you repeatedly say that Mary Phagan was Catholic, but I don’t believe that is a Catholic Church. Why do you believe she was Catholic?) Some ten years after her death, in a letter to a friend, he wrote: ‘When the police arrested a Jew, and a Yankee Jew at that, all of the inborn prejudice against the Jews rose up in a feeling of satisfaction, that here would be a victim worthy to pay for the crime.’”
The intensity of Jew-hatred at that time in Georgia was why, in the words of The Tennessean, “No one was ever arrested for the lynching of Leo Frank. A grand jury, called to investigate the case, failed to indict anyone. Tom Watson — the Populist Party candidate for U.S. president in 1904 and 1908 and U.S. Senator from Georgia, 1921-1922 — a formidable political figure who controlled the populist movement in the state by preaching hatred of Jews, Catholics and blacks, wrote in his paper, The Jeffersonian: ‘In putting the Sodomite murderer to death, the Vigilance Committee has done what the Sheriff would have done if [Georgia Governor] Slaton had not been of the same mold as Benedict Arnold. LET JEW LIBERTINES TAKE NOTICE! Georgia is not for sale to rich criminals.’”
Example #5: Most damning of all, Jim Conley’s own lawyer, William Smith, later wrote that he was convinced that his client, not Leo Frank, murdered Mary Phagan (New York Times, October 4, 1914, and Dinnerstein, p. 125).
Yet, despite all these people who believed Leo Frank was probably innocent, you know that Leo Frank was guilty. How?
And then you cite the Frank case and a handful of cases you believe involved Frankists to build a whole case conjoining Jews, Israel, and pedophilia. (Andrew Tate also conjoined Israel and pedophilia on your show.) That’s quite a leap.
One final note: You regularly refer to Leo Frank as a “pedophile,” sometimes as a “Jewish pedophile,” who raped Mary Phagan. Yet, Frank was never accused of raping Mary Phagan. So, on what do you base your repeated statement that she was raped? The Tennessean noted that “there was no evidence indicating she had been raped.”
Question: Given your frequently expressed desire to pursue truth and to be corrected, will you mention these five examples on your podcast?
- “The ADL was founded by protecting and defending a pedophile.”
It is true that the ADL was founded after Leo Frank, a Jew, was lynched in Georgia. I am no fan of the ADL, but just about every Jew in 1913 America, seeing the antisemitic mobs and seeing a Jew lynched, understood that a Jewish anti-defamation organization needed to be formed.
You are certain that Leo Frank murdered the girl and that he was therefore (yet another) Jewish pedophile (one in generations of Frankist pedophiles, you say, though I can find no evidence that Leo Frank was in any way involved in a cult that began in Europe more than a century before his birth in America) — and the ADL was founded essentially to defend Jewish pedophiles. That in and of itself is a remarkably dark, even hateful, view, based on nothing that I can find, and a new one in the annals of anti-Jewish charges. A clear source or set of sources for this allegation would be helpful. Without one, what are people to think about such a charge? I say that as a frequent critic of the ADL, which, especially in the last decade, has veered so far left that, as I have said on my radio show, it may have fostered more antisemitism than it has actually fought. Nevertheless, the charge that it was founded to protect Jewish pedophiles is, without any foundation that I have not seen you provide, morally indefensible.
- Israel was founded in order to be a safe haven for pedophiles
You say, “I can’t support the state of Israel. There’s a ton of reasons why, but chief among them is that there always seems to be this cover-up for pedophilia.”
You also say, “I should not be the only one calling out how many times Zionists defend pedophiles and criminals. This is not normal, OK? . . . The nation of Israel may have been established by some Frankists. It’s looking like Theodor Herzl’s family was from the exact same area in Moravia and in Bohemia where the Frankist cult was founded.”
There were millions of Jews scattered around that part of eastern Europe in Herzl’s time. How do you connect him to the Frankist cult, which at best was a tiny minority — and then assert that his advocacy of a homeland for Jews in their ancient homeland resulted in a state founded by people devoted to a satanic cult involved in incest and ritual sex with children? Such a defamatory allegation should be presented with very strong evidence. “May have been” doesn’t qualify as such.
- America is occupied by Israel
Summary: America is occupied by Israel. If you speak about Israel, you have to say you don’t want to be killed and if anything happens to me, blame the Zionists.
Your words: “Basically, any person who speaks about Israel has to basically say a statement that’s like, you know, ‘I don’t want to get killed.’ . . . That is not normal, OK? That people have to think about their security. The way you get comfortable with it is your luck, well, you know they shot JFK in an open car . . . . If they want to, they’re gonna get me. That’s not a normal process to have. We don’t have that about any other country in the world except for the one that, you know, took over ours. And that’s the truth, OK? We are an occupied nation. . . . I just want to be clear. Anything happens to me, blame the Zionists. One thousand percent, blame the Zionists.”
This was only one of the times you refer to America as being occupied by Israel. On another, you say, “Your nation is being held hostage by a foreign power [Israel].”
The notion that people who criticize Israel essentially risk their lives is simply untrue. The internet is flooded with anti-Israel rhetoric. Academia is dominated by professors who are virulently anti-Israel. Has one individual been dealt with violently, let alone killed?
Ironically, there is a group about whom expressing strong criticism means risking your life — Muslims. But you never mention that. You acknowledge that you don’t talk about Islam. Which is strange. If you care about mass killing — especially of Christians — the only group killing a large number of Christians today is Muslims.
- Zionism and anti-Zionism
Recently you devoted nearly two hours depicting Zionism, once again, as an evil movement. It is completely fair to say that you are an anti-Zionist.
What is anti-Zionism?
Forty years ago, I coauthored Why the Jews?, a book explaining antisemitism. It contains a chapter equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The gist of my argument then and ever since is simple: Zionism is the name of the movement to reestablish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Therefore, anti-Zionism means opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish nation. Of the world’s more than 200 countries, the anti-Zionist regards only one as unworthy of existence — the Jewish one.
To deny that this is anti-Jewish is like saying, “With the exception of Italy, every country in the world is legitimate. But do not accuse me of being anti-Italian — after all, I like many Italians and much Italian culture.”
Why don’t anti-Zionists devote their energy to delegitimizing Pakistan? There was an Israel from 1020 BC to 586 BC and from 516 BC to 70 AD, but there was never a Pakistan until it was created in 1947-48 (the same year Israel was reestablished). Pakistan was wrenched from India to create a Muslim state.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, the creation of Pakistan resulted in 14 million refugees — Hindus fleeing Pakistan and Muslims fleeing India. Assuming a 50-50 split, the creation of Pakistan produced about 7 million Hindu refugees — at least ten times the number of Arab refugees that resulted from the war surrounding Israel’s creation. And were it not for the Arab rejection of Israel’s creation (and its existence within any borders) and the subsequent Arab invasion, there would have been no Arab refugees at all.
As regards deaths, the highest estimate of Arab deaths during the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine is 10,000. The number of deaths that resulted from the creation of Pakistan is around one million. In addition, according to the Indian government, at least 86,000 women were raped. Most historians believe the true number to be far higher. The number of women raped when Israel was established is close to zero. The highest estimate was 12.
It is for those reasons that people accuse anti-Zionists of being antisemites — not because they criticize Israel, but because they delegitimize Israel — and only Israel.
- Stalin was a Jew
You say: “Everybody knows that Stalin was Jewish. Americans don’t know this.”
My field of study in graduate school — at the Russian Institute of Columbia University’s School of International Affairs — was the Soviet Union and communism. With all I read about Stalin, it was never hinted that Stalin, born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, a thoroughly Georgian name, was a Jew. Moreover, I can assure you that if anyone in Russia thought he was a Jew, his numerous opponents would surely have repeatedly noted that in order to smear him. There were five possible successors to head the Soviet Communist Party, and thereby head the Soviet Union, after Lenin’s death in 1924. Of the five, three were born Jews: Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Trotsky. Though they had nothing to do with Jews and never referred to themselves as Jews, everyone knew they were born Jews. But not Stalin.
In fact, Stalin had attended the Tiflis [now Tbilisi] Theological Seminary, where he studied in order to become a priest of the Orthodox Church. He, of course, left the seminary when he adopted Marxism as his religion.
Why would you say that Stalin was a Jew? That is precisely the sort of thing that makes people think you harbor anti-Jewish views. If I said Stalin, a thug and a mass-murderer, was a Christian — which at least he once was — people would assume I harbored anti-Christian views; that I mentioned his being Christian it in order to smear Christians.
- The Australia Controversy
I listened to your interview on Australian television about the attempt to deny you a visitor’s visa. I am not in agreement with blocking entry into countries on the basis of controversial opinions, but I looked up stories in the Australian media to get a sense of what people there are upset about. And one of those things is a remark you made in your episode about Hitler (Ep. 17) about Nazi medical experimentation on twins: “…they experimented on twins…I mean, some of the stories, by the way, sound completely absurd — you know, the idea that they just cut a human up and then sewed them back together. Why would you do that? Literally, even if you’re the most evil person in the world, that’s a tremendous waste of time and supplies — just slice a person in half and sew ‘em together. That just sounds like bizarre propaganda.”
Australians are upset on behalf of one of their citizens, a Jewish woman around the age of 100, who was one of those twins. And the reason is their view that you minimized what was done to people like her. The description you offered of the type of experimentation — “just slice a person in half and sew ‘em together” — doesn’t reflect any Nazi experiment I’ve ever read or heard about — it sounds like a cartoon version. But it’s not far off from reality. You can find descriptions of what was done to people like that Australian woman on the Wikipedia Nazi human experimentation page. It sounds pretty close to what you mocked:
“From about September 1942 to about December 1943, experiments were conducted at the Ravensbrück concentration camp for the benefit of the German Armed Forces, to study bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration, and bone transplantation from one person to another. In these experiments, subjects had their bones, muscles, and nerves removed without anesthesia. As a result of these operations, many victims suffered intense agony, mutilation, and permanent disability.”
Specifically, with regard to twins, “the experiments included amputating healthy limbs, deliberately infecting them with diseases such as typhus, blood transfusions from one twin to the other, and sewing twins together to create conjoined twins.”
Is that “bizarre propaganda”?
You continue: “But let’s just go with it, let’s say that that’s actually true — that experimentation is the thing that sets the Nazis apart. Then why did we bring them all over here? I wonder why we did that? Maybe for a little more experimentation. Have you heard of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb? Have you ever heard of the CIA? If you think experimentation is unique to the Nazis, you need to wake up.”
A couple of things:
First, If you read the Operation Paperclip Wikipedia page, you’ll find that the scientists we brought over after the war were nearly all in various aspects of rocketry, aviation, geophysics, and chemical and biological warfare. Truman’s primary motive in approving the operation was to keep these scientists out of the hands of Stalin and the Soviet Union, which is where they likely would have ended up if we had left them in Europe.
Second, no one was brought over who was, to our knowledge, involved in Nazi experimentation on human beings — none of Mengele’s doctors who conducted horrific medical experimentation on prisoners in the camps. Only one Paperclip scientist was ever charged with committing a war crime, and he was returned to Germany for trial, where he was acquitted.
Has America done similar bad things? As your reading from the book, Chaos, indicates, the answer is yes. Would you say that puts morally America on par with Nazi Germany? We should know about and reckon with what we’ve done. It doesn’t begin to compare in volume or systemization to what the Nazis did.
While I’m on World War II, I just want to note my bafflement at another charge you made in that same episode, No. 17, citing the BBC documentary The Savage Peace, which taught you, you say, that “we”, meaning the World War II Allies, committed terrible atrocities and ethnic cleansing of German-speaking people after the war, resulting in the ethnic cleansing from the region of approximately 12 million Germans and the killing of half a million of them. Are you not aware that those acts were committed by the Soviets in the Eastern European zone they occupied? That the Americans, British, and other Allies had no presence or power to determine what happened in the areas under Soviet occupation? It’s this kind of conflation, using facts but making unwarranted leaps, that has upset so many people, myself included.
Final Thoughts
You may not consciously intend to engender hatred of Jews and Israel. But that doesn’t really matter. The fact is that you are doing so. Whatever your motives, I cannot think of anyone in public life engendering as much suspicion of Jews, Zionism, and Israel as you are.
All of my life, I have tried to teach people that motives rarely matter. Actions matter.
Communists killed one hundred million people and enslaved and ruined the lives of more than a billion. Yet, many communists and their supporters had good motives. It turns out that the amount of evil done by people with good motives is far greater than the amount of evil committed by people with evil motives. I suspect that few people wake up in the morning planning to do what they consider evil.
So, I don’t impugn your motives. I don’t even judge them. But, to my shock — and that of every Jew and Christian in my life — our once-adored Candace has done great harm to Jews, whether intentionally or not.
Let me offer my own life and work as an example of the opposite.
I have worked all of my life to bring Jews and Christians together. In particular, as a prominent Jew, trusted by many Jews, I have constantly defended Christians. For example, I have explained to Jews that America’s Christians should never be lumped in with Europe’s Christians; the terrible treatment of Jews in Europe has nothing to do with America’s Christians.
In addition, I have not talked about the Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandals. Nor have I blamed Pope Pious XII for not publicly speaking out against the Nazi genocide against the Jews of Europe. I wanted my millions of non-Catholic listeners to concentrate on all the good Catholics they know in their lives. I devoted hours to attacking the Los Angeles Dodgers for honoring — not merely allowing them to perform, but honoring — nuns in drag known as the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” in Dodger Stadium before a game.
I have had Bill Donohue, the longtime president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the premier American defender of Catholics and Catholicism, on my radio show many times. We became so close, he asked me to write a blurb for one of his books. On the Catholic League’s website, he wrote (and it is still there):
“I have known Dennis Prager for decades. He is not only a friend, he is one of the most brilliant, logical thinkers of our time. Proud of his heritage, he is not at all ethnocentric. In fact, he wants to reach a wide audience, sharing with Catholics, for example, many of the same values (it would be more accurate to say values that practicing Catholics share with observant Jews).”
I have probably talked about the massacres of black Christians in West Africa more than any non-Christian talk show host in America — and probably more than many Christian talk show hosts.
In sum, over the past 40 years, I might well have been the greatest non-Christian defender of Christians and Christianity in America. I also believe that I have probably brought more American non-Jews back to church than any living Christian.
You could have done something similar for the Jews and Israel. And for Jewish-Catholic/Christian relations.
You have chosen to do the opposite.
For example, on August 17, you tweeted:
“Today marks 109 years since a 13-year-old Catholic little girl named Mary Phagan was ruthlessly raped and murdered by a wealthy, powerful pedophile named Leo Frank — President of the local B’nai B’rith chapter. Christians, let’s make her story viral.”
Now, why exactly did you mention that Frank was president of the local B’nai B’rith chapter? And why exactly are you calling on Christians to “make her story viral?” The logical conclusion is that both were noted to foster Christian anger at Jews.
Imagine if I had tweeted on August 17:
“Today, August 17, marks 349 years since the death of Bogdan Chmielnicki, the greatest murderer of Jews prior to Hitler. Chmielnicki, a devout Christian, directed the slaughter of more than three hundred thousand mostly Ukrainian Jews, many in the most horrific ways. Jews, let’s make their story viral.”
Would anyone assume there was any purpose other than to foment Jewish animosity toward Christians with such a tweet?
I have waited a long time — probably too long — to send this letter. But I wanted to be sure that I had my facts straight and I was also hoping that I would hear you say things — indeed, anything — that would make writing this letter unnecessary.
I need you to understand why even I — a longtime friend whom you have often said you admire — have concluded that you are harming Jews and Israel.
(Let me just say that I understand your qualms about the post Oct. 7 situation in Israel and Gaza. I understand that you are deeply disturbed by the innocents, particularly children, who have been killed, wounded, and displaced since the war began. I am, too, as is everyone I know. You and I apparently differ, however, about who is morally responsible for the disaster this has become for all involved.)
For some reason, you are preoccupied with Jews, and in a very dark way. One compelling proof of that darkness is the comments on your X feed and on YouTube anytime you talk about Jews. Many hundreds, probably thousands, of comments are clearly antisemitic. In the views of these despicable people, you are a kindred spirit.
That is not insignificant. Let me share a personal anecdote. A couple of years ago, I asked Julie Hartman, a young woman with whom I do a weekly podcast, to look through as many emails sent to me through my website as possible. I often do not see them for weeks, so there were at least a thousand emails for her to peruse. After about two weeks, she made an important observation: There wasn’t one racist or otherwise bigoted email in the thousand she read. The left routinely accuses me of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, etc. Yet not one email expressed any of those. You would think that given my outspoken opposition to affirmative action, for example, I would elicit a fair number of emails from racists. Not one. You would think that given my ongoing opposition to same-sex marriage, I would receive a fair amount of gay-hating emails. Again, not one.
That there are a vast number of outright Jew-hating comments on your podcasts is not a good sign. All of us can be measured in part by the people we draw into our lives.
If you do not mean to hurt Jews, that should seriously trouble you. At the very least, I would think you would speak out against such sentiments, forthrightly declaring that you are not interested in anyone following you who is anti-Jew. Racists know they have no ally in me. Antisemites don’t know that about you.
Do I think you have become an antisemite? If the only definition of an antisemite is a person who hates all Jews, you are surely not. But that has never been the only definition of an antisemite. If it were, almost no enemy of the Jews in the Jews’ nearly 4,000 year-history, other than Hitler and his most fanatical Jew-hating followers, were antisemites. I strongly suspect that, unlike Nick Fuentes, for example, you do not consider yourself an antisemite.
But, if the term defines an individual who isolates Jews and/or the Jewish state as having a particular and malign influence in the world, the term would apply.
(Since you are an avid reader, I highly recommend Robert Spencer’s The Truth About Anti-Semitism.)
Finally, I have gathered from all your comments over many podcasts, discussions, and interviews, that you believe there is one standard for Israel, and another for everyone else. In my opinion, there are many more facts that refute that view than there are that support it. But like the left’s view of America, it’s easy to believe if you sift out the good and focus on the bad. The more one does that, the more that skewed picture comes into focus. I implore you not to do that.
In your final DW podcast, you expressed an interest in having Rabbi Barclay or any other of your critics arrange for you to go to Israel and Gaza, to speak to people there and report on what you find. If you’re still interested, I am offering to go with you to Israel to do just that. Obviously, I could not go into Gaza, even if such a thing were possible, but I can certainly talk to people who could make it happen if it is possible (though I admit to some trepidation about the risk to a young American mother of young children).
Candace, this is one of the most difficult letters I have ever written. After you read this, I am open to dialoguing with you privately or publicly.
May I ask that you confirm that you have received this letter.
Dennis
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