Prager on Jerusalem, fake news and Trump
NO stranger to controversy, bluntly spoken Dennis Prager will be in Australia next month as a guest of the United Israel Appeal (UIA) campaign.
NO stranger to controversy, bluntly spoken Dennis Prager will be in Australia next month as a guest of the United Israel Appeal (UIA) campaign.
Speaking to The AJN from Los Angeles, the veteran US media commentator is upbeat about President Donald Trump’s plans to move the US embassy to Jerusalem in recognition of Israel’s capital.
But when asked about the possible impact on the peace process, he declared: “There is no peace process … I wish there was … I ache for peace but I believe naivety in adults is a sin.”
Prager said there is an outside chance the US move, along with stated plans by the US to reduce its contribution to the UN Relief and Works Agency, could actually encourage the Palestinians to return to negotiations, but he remained sceptical.
“I don’t know if anything will push them. Clearly [Israel] giving up land doesn’t push them … I think the Palestinians want Israel destroyed,” he said.
Prager is confident the present US administration is heading in the right direction on Iran. He is open to either the nuclear deal with Iran being fixed or scrapped.
“The first step in fixing anything is clarity, and most particularly moral clarity.
“Whatever reservations people might have about the [US] President’s personal life, he has much greater moral clarity about the world than the left does … He was right to raise the moral, political, and some would say military problems with the deal.”
Asked how he felt as a Jew about Trump’s equivocation over Charlottesville, appearing to blame both sides after last year’s deadly clashes between left and right-wing groups in the US city, Prager said Charlottesville has been misunderstood by Americans because of “lying in the media”.
Prager said America has always been a divided nation, particularly in his 1960s student days, and it is wrong to claim anti-Semitism had grown under Trump, when the only threats to synagogues had come from “an American Jewish kid in Israel” and from a left-wing US activist.
An emphatic opponent of Jews criticising Israel from abroad, he said: “If I want to criticise Israel and its policies, I just have to fly from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv and the next day I can do that. But as someone who chooses to live outside of Israel, my primary role has to be to defend it.”
Dennis Prager will address the UIA gala dinner on Wednesday, March 21. For details, visit www.uiaaustralia.org or call 1300 477 235.
PETER KOHN
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