Ed Vitagliano: God bless you all. Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Ed Vitagliano.

Ed Vitagliano: And welcome back. I'm sitting in for Tim Wildmon today. I'm joined in studio by Fred Jackson and Tony Vitagliano, and now slipping into his usual 11:05 Central Time spot, Steve Paisley-Jordan.

Guest: Hey, everybody.

Ed Vitagliano: All decked out in paisley.

Guest: Yeah, we're in paisley.

Ed Vitagliano: Because you have the reputation, Steve Paisley-Jordan.

Guest: I do.

Ed Vitagliano: You don't always wear paisley.

Guest: No, but when I do, I'm the most interesting man in the world. I don't always wear paisley, but when I do.

Ed Vitagliano: What do I do?

Guest: All right. Can I?

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, go ahead.

Guest: I know that something was mentioned about where I was last week on the air. I went to take care of my father, who had fallen.

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, I think someone mentioned it. I wanted to just update everybody if that's been an issue here on the show, because I don't want to leave anybody wondering. My dad took a fall. He's 92. He fell in the parking lot while he was voting. He broke his nose and had some bruising and a cut over his head and everything.

Guest: He is doing well. He was in the hospital for a couple of days. He is now home. He's bruised and he doesn't look good, but he's back to himself, feeling good, and he's going to totally recover and everything. So that's where I was. I was taking care of him over the last couple of days.

Ed Vitagliano: I think Tim had asked people to be praying for your dad.

Guest: I appreciate your prayers, everybody.

Guest: Listen, I'm getting to the age where you tend to lose your balance a little more easily, and things can happen.

Ed Vitagliano: I hear it. Yeah, me too.

Ed Vitagliano: All right. I teased, or just mentioned before the break, something that happened in Philadelphia over the weekend. This was, I think, yesterday, if I'm not mistaken. There was a protest organized by the group Philly Bike On Your Left. They targeted six Jewish-owned restaurants in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square neighborhood.

Ed Vitagliano: Now, it took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. We're going to talk about what that is and why it is relevant in a second. But we want to talk about this protest because these individuals, about 300 pro-Palestinian protesters, including 200 on motorcycles, targeted six Jewish-owned businesses, labeled them Zionist establishments, and accused the owners of supporting Israel.

Ed Vitagliano: There was a counterrally in support of these restaurants. But Steve, the reason I mention this, and the reason we've been discussing these kinds of issues, even related to comments made by some in the Trump administration and by some Republicans generally, is that many of us are wondering what's going to happen to Jews in this country. This was a terrifying reminder that things can turn hostile very quickly.

Guest: It is. There's something that some people are referring to as the horseshoe right. These would be the Tucker Carlson-type people. They are conservative or right-wing, but they have taken on very strong anti-Israel positions, right alongside the left and the blatant antisemitism of the left. It's gotten a foothold, and now there's a debate on whether it's in the tent or not in the tent.

Ed Vitagliano: Talk about the Republican tent.

Guest: Nonetheless, it is a dangerous thing. It is finding a voice here. When we talk about Kristallnacht, which is a World War II event, we'll talk about why it's relevant, but we are trending in a very dangerous direction.

Guest: There were these protests, and Fox caught up with a restaurant owner, one of the businesses being protested. I want you to hear what this gentleman has to say.

Guest: I'm just a Jewish business owner. I own two small restaurants. I have nothing to do with the Israeli government. We're going to have a large showing of hundreds of people outside our restaurant, and it's going to be peaceful and nonviolent. We're going to show love and support for the restaurant community and the Jewish community and everybody who just wants to do business.

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, this is kind of scary. These protesters, this pro-Palestinian group that carried out this protest, called them Zionist establishments and called on them to leave. They said, "We want you to leave our city."

Guest: Imagine if these were Muslim-owned restaurants. Can you imagine what the mainstream media would do with that?

Ed Vitagliano: Right. You can put any group in there, and people would be outraged.

Ed Vitagliano: Now, I want to be fair here. Mayor Cherelle Parker of Philadelphia, a Democrat, and Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, both condemned the protest as antisemitic. So, tip of the hat to those two political leaders. The Anti-Defamation League and JewBelong, which is a group that defends the rights of Jewish people, both urged residents to support the Jewish-owned businesses.

Ed Vitagliano: But Fred, this is getting increasingly frightening for the Jewish people in this country. I don't know how far we may take this in our discussion today. There's some question about whether the Republican Party will remain, in the years to come, a firm ally of Israel.

Guest: It was alarming to me that within hours after the Hamas terrorist attack, the massacre of 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children in October of 2023, there were pro-Palestinian, or pro-Hamas, protesters on the campuses of our major universities. We're talking about Harvard, Columbia, and other universities, particularly in the Northeast.

Guest: That told me this hatred against Israel has been going on for a long time. They just used the excuse of Israel's response to that Hamas terrorist attack to say, "Now's the time. Now's the time to go after the Jewish community."

Guest: We told the story over the last couple of years of what's happened to Jewish students on these campuses. Now we have this demonstration last night. You mentioned Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania.

Ed Vitagliano: Who's Jewish?

Guest: Who's Jewish. Remember, his house was attacked?

Ed Vitagliano: Yes.

Guest: There was a fire at his house. Totally antisemitic.

Guest: He was a potential candidate to be vice president on Kamala Harris's ticket in 2024. After Trump's victory in 2024, word kind of filtered out that the Harris campaign said no because he's Jewish and the pro-Palestinian wing of the party wouldn't support it.

Ed Vitagliano: That's stunning.

Guest: And look what has happened recently. You have Abdul El-Sayed, who made no secret of his animosity toward Israel, and that's being kind. He campaigned with Hassan Piker, the guy who said that the United States deserved 9/11.

Ed Vitagliano: Hassan Piker.

Guest: Hassan Piker. El-Sayed says, "I'm just a friend. He's just an influencer." I think he tried to dismiss it all. But this is in the open, and the Democratic Party didn't have a problem with what was going on.

Guest: Then, on Election Day, we had President Trump announcing that the United States was ending its $4 billion-a-year aid to Israel. We now know that this was supposed to happen gradually. He had talked with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and they wanted to phase this out over 10 years. But President Trump said, "No, we're going to end it within two months."

Guest: So we're left wondering what is going on here. It's interesting that our conversation today, November 9, is being held on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, which in 1938 was when the Nazis went after the Jews, arresting them and, in some cases, killing them.

Ed Vitagliano: We have a video on our site, AFR.net, about the anniversary of Kristallnacht. I want you to listen to this. You're going to hear a woman who is obviously pro-Jewish, but you're also going to hear from a witness, a man who is now very old, who was there with his mother when the Nazis attacked.

Guest: The night of broken glass, Kristallnacht, was a precursor to what lay ahead. Synagogues were burned. Synagogue windows were broken. Jewish businesses all over the country were vandalized. Jewish men were murdered, Jewish women were held hostage, and Jewish homes were devastated.

Guest: I only remember that my mother said in the morning, "You're not going to school today. You're going to visit another country and another girl. You're going to go by train and by ship and everything."

Guest: So I made a pile of toys like this, which I took. I didn't take anything. The next morning, my mother, at six o'clock, took me to the train station. I got on the train with 300 kids, and I saw her through the window running, looking to see where I was. She never saw me again, but I saw her. That was the last time I saw my mom.

Guest: But with the Jewish people, we are strong, we are stubborn, and we are resilient. Rather than fall through the events of Kristallnacht, we rose up and said, "No more." This is remembering an event from November 9, 1938.

Ed Vitagliano: Do you hear what that lady said? The Nazis started burning synagogues. Folks, what has happened in this country in the last year? Synagogues attacked.

Guest: Remember what happened in Michigan, in El-Sayed's backyard. A guy drove his truck into a synagogue. He planned to kill everybody in that school, in that Jewish school.

Ed Vitagliano: This is happening. What's happened in 1938 is happening in this country, right?

Guest: And it's happening in Europe.

Ed Vitagliano: Tony, this is what was frightening about this. By the way, I did mention that these protests in front of these six Jewish restaurants in Philadelphia were in honor of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.

Ed Vitagliano: What's interesting is that this happened in 1938, on November 9 and 10. This was before World War II began and before the gas chambers. This seems to be what this man was sharing. His parents understood that it wasn't going to get better. It was going to get worse, and they had to get their kids out of there.

Ed Vitagliano: Can you imagine seeing your mom for the last time? She never saw her son again, obviously, because at some point she died. I don't know how she died. Maybe it was from bombing or maybe in a concentration camp.

Ed Vitagliano: But there are precursors to the worst possible things.

Guest: Right.

Ed Vitagliano: Intelligent, wise people who understand human nature pay attention to those precursors. That's why we're warning about what's happening in this country, as we have been for several years.

Guest: The Democratic Party is kind of stuck. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place because, in order to continue to coax the Islamic and Muslim vote, whose population continues to grow in this nation, they have to flirt with openly antisemitic candidates sometimes.

Guest: I think they're walking a dangerous road where eventually there will be a switch that flips, and they won't be able to put the cat back in the bag. You look at what happened in Europe. Once Islam starts to take root in your government, you don't uproot it. You continue to allow that ideology further and further control and more of a say in your government. Some argue that it would now be too late for Europe.

Guest: If the Democratic Party doesn't do something to address this now, I don't see them being able to fix it. It's going to continue to be a problem for them.

Guest: The scarier thing that we're all talking about is how that ideology manifests itself physically. We're starting to see some of the rumblings of that. It starts out as protests in front of businesses, and there have been some actual open destruction of property and acts of violence. How long until that boils over into something on a larger scale?

Ed Vitagliano: What's interesting to me, Fred, is that we don't want to overblow this. The Muslim population in this country has doubled since 2007. However, that means it has gone from 0.8 percent to 1.6 percent this year, so that's still a very small percentage.

Ed Vitagliano: However, it is expected soon to grow so that, in a fairly short amount of time, Islam will be the second-largest religion. It will surpass the percentage of Jews in this country.

Ed Vitagliano: The reason I say this is interesting is that 1.6 percent is still a low percentage of the population that is Muslim in this country. Not all of those people are going to be violent. We understand that.

Ed Vitagliano: However, if you really want to make war against Jews in this country, that's too small a percentage. You've got to draft foot soldiers to help you. That's where the college campuses have come in. That's where these strong concentrations of Muslims are voting Muslims into office, and voting people sympathetic to the so-called Palestinian cause into office.

Ed Vitagliano: In New York City, for example, they voted in a Muslim mayor. We have the first Muslim senator in Michigan. This is why we make note of the fact that Muslims are allying themselves with the socialists when they shouldn't be allies.

Guest: That's right, but it's because they want to bloat their numbers somewhat to still be able to accomplish what they want to accomplish. I would say that they will only be allies until the Muslims have control. Then the socialists will be at the end of a gun or a rope, or out. They will turn on the socialists and anybody who opposes them in a heartbeat.

Guest: You don't have to have a large percentage. If you've got universities on your side and money talks, because we know many universities in this country have been getting money from the Middle East.

Ed Vitagliano: Right. Qatar, in particular.

Guest: They're in the Persian Gulf, dumping millions into universities. The transformation that has taken place since 9/11, Brother Don warned about this. He said the best thing to happen to Muslims in this country was 9/11.

Ed Vitagliano: Right, I remember him saying that. That was controversial at the time. We were scratching our heads, asking, "What do you mean by that?"

Guest: But it didn't take long, because all the sympathy went to the Muslim groups. Muslim student groups started on campuses, and you couldn't touch them.

Ed Vitagliano: Right, right.

Guest: You couldn't criticize them because you were Islamophobic.

Ed Vitagliano: Islamophobic.

Guest: Right. We're hearing that again. El-Sayed has become a star. He was on Saturday Night Live, and they think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Guest: But he is a radical.

Ed Vitagliano: He is a radical.

Guest: And his family is radical.

Ed Vitagliano: They are.

Guest: There is a connection to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ed Vitagliano: Despite what he says.

Ed Vitagliano: I will say this, and then maybe we can move on unless you've got something else on this issue, Steve. There's a lot of Old Testament prophecy about the nations of the world, especially those nations around Israel, turning against them, with nobody to help.

Ed Vitagliano: For decades, I remember in the seventh grade arguing that the United States must support Israel. For all this time, I thought, "I can't imagine nations attacking Israel without the United States being right by their side."

Ed Vitagliano: For the first time in my entire life, I am wondering if this is what all the prophecy Bible teachers would say: The United States is not there on Israel's side in these prophetic Scriptures. It must mean the United States no longer exists. They said maybe that means the United States will be destroyed in a nuclear war or something.

Ed Vitagliano: Now I'm starting to think, what happens if the United States does exist, but we just aren't going to help Israel because our ideology and our views have changed? So much stuff has happened in the last 25 years that has changed my preconceptions. For the first time in my life, I'm wondering if maybe the United States one day says, "We're not supporting Israel." It could happen.

Ed Vitagliano: Do you want to add to that, Steve?

Guest: You said something at the end of last hour, Ed, when you were talking about staying engaged and the role of Christians. What happens if the parties find that we are outside of influence?

Guest: We will stay true to the Gospel. Right now, do we want to have a voice? Let me draw a connection for you. As long as we are a voting bloc, as long as we have numbers that can influence, then a party will come and say, "We want your vote. Therefore, we will align ourselves with you on the social issues."

Guest: In order for Christians to maintain the numbers we need, we need to stay engaged and we need to be true to the social issues. Look what happened when the church decided to abandon some of these core issues. All of the mainstream denominations fell away and are nowhere to be found.

Guest: Their numbers are diminishing. They're losing buildings and churches. They're becoming irrelevant. The way the church must stay relevant is to stay true to the Scriptures. A strong church will generate the numbers that the parties will pay attention to.

Guest: If we fall away and do the James Talarico Christianity thing, we will become irrelevant.

Guest: The church needs to remain engaged, remain orthodox, and remain strong on these issues that we are about, because that's the only way we're going to maintain numbers that the political parties will pay attention to. Otherwise, we can go by the wayside. We also need to be courageous.

Guest: My understanding is that the church in Germany, when things began to unfold, had a famous story involving a Lutheran church. I think it was a Lutheran church, or it might have been some sort of evangelical church near the train tracks. The trains would come by, and people on the trains would be screaming for help, and the church would simply sing louder.

Guest: That is not the kind of courage that the church needs. Then there was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who decided he was going to be true. He was a martyr for it. There are examples of both sides.

Ed Vitagliano: Anybody have any final words you'd like to share?

Guest: I just go back to something you said. In Scripture, it's amazing Bible prophecy. Many have been skeptical about what the Bible says as we get closer to the end times and the Lord's return, and what is going to happen.

Guest: I always go back to Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar's dream.

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.

Guest: It goes through the various empires, and we are down at the feet right now.

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, that's right.

Guest: It is this loose affiliation of iron and clay. That's how the nations are described. But look up, because it says that at that time, the stone will come, representing Jesus Christ.

Ed Vitagliano: To topple the statue.

Guest: To topple the statue.

Ed Vitagliano: So, folks, we're not giving up hope.

Guest: Right.

Ed Vitagliano: We're directing our hope to Jesus Christ and staying faithful to Him.

Ed Vitagliano: All right, folks, I'm glad we had that conversation.

Guest: Absolutely.

Ed Vitagliano: That is very important. As I talked about at the beginning of the show, we try to put context around what is happening to give us a Christian understanding of it. That's what we do here at American Family Association, generally. Lord willing, we'll see you tomorrow.