[DESCRIPTION] Dalia Ziada speaks to the camera from an office setting. The Touro University logo is at the bottom right.

[DALIA ZIADA] Education is key. But, also, it's not only about American campuses. We have a big, big problem in high schools. Actually, recently, one of the big Islamist-led organizations in the United States has started a program called Education on Palestine. 

And it's not targeting American campuses. It's not targeting communities in America. It's targeting high schoolers, high schoolers-- Education on Palestine. And if you watch the videos, you will be shocked. It's nothing about Palestine or a Palestinian state. It's all about destroying the Israeli state. It's all about projecting hate to the Jews and justifying why we need to hate the Jews. 

And it's very dangerous, in my opinion, because, well, these even younger people who are in high schools cannot-- I mean, cannot be subjected to this type of devious attempts. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] 

[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.

[TEXT] Egyptian Refugee, Israel Advocate: A Conversation with Political Analyst, Dalia Ziada, March 18, 2025, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera from a library setting. The Touro University logo is at the bottom right.

[ALAN KADISH] Hello, and welcome to Touro Talks. I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, President of Touro University. 

[TEXT] Dr. Alan Kadish, President, Touro University

[ALAN KADISH] It's my absolute pleasure today to have on with us Dalia Ziada. 

[DESCRIPTION] Dalia Ziada joins Dr. Alan Kadish.

[ALAN KADISH] Dalia is an award-winning Egyptian writer, Middle East peace activist, and senior fellow for research and diplomacy at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. 

Previously, Dalia worked in leading positions at major regional and international think tanks and civil society organizations, where she analyzed the geopolitics of Eastern Mediterranean region, advocated for peace and democracy in the Middle East, and fought tough political and cultural battles against radical Islamist groups in Arab countries and in the United States. 

She studied international security at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is author of the bestselling book The Curious Case of the Three-Legged Wolf, Egypt's Military, Islamism, and Liberal Democracy, and other internationally acclaimed books on the political complications of the Middle East. Dalia was forced to flee Egypt in November of 2023 because of her support for Israel against Hamas in the Gaza war. So welcome, Dalia. It's a pleasure to have you with us today. 

[DALIA ZIADA] Thank you. 

[ALAN KADISH] You certainly have a very unusual background, and we're very much looking forward to hearing from you. As we begin, perhaps you could tell us about where you grew up, what it was like and how you came to be the person you are today. 

[DALIA ZIADA] Thank you, Dr. Kadish, and thank you for the entire team here for making this happen. 

[TEXT] Dalia Ziada, Egyptian Scholar, Sr. Fellow at Jerusalem Center for Security & Foreign Affairs

[DALIA ZIADA] It's a great pleasure for me to be with you. You started by a very difficult question, where I started all of this and why I started it. Actually, I had my upbringing in a society, in the Egyptian society, a very hostile society to Israel, to Jewish people in general somehow primed me to be also hostile to Israel and the Jewish people. 

Until I was 18 years old, I was educated that Israel is the enemy, the Jewish people are our religious enemies, and that Judaism is a bad thing, and Islam is like the revolutionary religions that came to correct what Judaism has done, and all of these crazy things that later on I saw that was completely wrong. But my point of change, my turning point, was when I was 18 years old. It was my first year in university in Cairo. I was a "fresh-woman," as I like to call it. 

And it's-- actually, I was joining the protests. It was around the time of the Second Intifada, and our campuses were full of protests led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, at that time, I didn't know the Muslim Brotherhood. I didn't know that the Muslim Brotherhood are the ones leading the protests in support of Hamas Second-- Hamas's Second Intifada in Gaza. So I joined the protests. It's good to feel part of something bigger than yourself at that age. 

And it appeared to me at that time like a good cause, you know, given all the education I received before. So about two months joining this movement on my campus in one of the beautiful sunny days of Cairo, like most of the days there, the people organizing the protests, who are the Muslim Brotherhood, decided just to burn some flags. So they started by burning the Israeli flag, which made sense because it is a protest against Israel. And then they burned the American flag, which did not make much sense to me. I couldn't understand why they are doing this. 

And then the third flag was the Egyptian flag. They burned the Egyptian flag. And if you know Egypt, you will know that our nationalist sentiments are very strong. So this moment created kind of a cognitive dissonance in my head. It made me feel like these people cannot be good people and at the same time burn my flag. Something's wrong. 

This was the moment I literally broke out of the ideological box I was stuck into for the first 18 years of my life, and I decided to educate myself on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on Israel, on Judaism as a religion, and to be honest, as a religious woman myself, I fell in love with Judaism. It's a great religion. 

And also the geopolitics of the Middle East, which has become my passion. It's now my work, working on analyzing the geopolitics of the Middle East, trying to understand it and so. And it has also became my education later in my master's degree and my PhD degree now, just studying the geopolitics of the Middle East. 

So it was this moment of change for me. It was not easy, of course. I lost many of my loved ones in the process of this change. But I believe I was doing the right thing and still doing the right thing until today. Everything was perfect until October 7 happened, of course. I was engaged most of my adult life in Muslim-Jewish dialogue, Arab-Israeli dialogue and so, until October 7 happened. 

[ALAN KADISH] Before we get to October 7, tell us a little bit about what the university in Cairo was like. How large was it? What was the curriculum like? How does it compare to American universities? 

[DALIA ZIADA] Actually, we have very, very respectable universities in Cairo in particular. Some of them are Western-style universities. We have the American University in Cairo, for example. Recently, also, we started to have the British University, the German University, and so on. 

So, actually, I mean, the higher education system in Egypt is very, very strong and very solid. However, it's overwhelmed with-- or has always been overwhelmed, since the 1960s and 1970s, by the Communist ideology. Most of the students, actually, when they-- Communist, socialist, which we call today in the US progressive left ideology. It's what dominates the culture of activism or even education, like intellectual culture inside the universities. 

Plus, these are in the secular universities, we can call them. Plus, most of the-- by the way, most of the not-- we have these private universities, like the American University, and it's like-- they are more Western-style university. We have the governmental universities. These are considered the top universities in the country, not the private ones. The governmental ones are the most respectable ones. 

And we have the religious universities. And the most prominent one of them, it's actually one main university that's called our religious institution, scholarly institution, that is Al-Azhar University. And it's massive. It's not only teaching religious scholarship, but also other things ranging from science, medicine, engineering, up to humanities even. 

So this is how-- this is a quick map of the higher education system. Of course, in Al-Azhar, as a religious school or a religious university, the main ideology dominating the students and the professors there is mostly Islamist, unfortunately, mostly Salafist, which is a far right extremist branch of Islam. 

And in the governmental universities, it's mostly dominated by the Communist culture. But the Muslim Brotherhood also found a way to control these universities through playing on these socialist sentiments and introducing themselves as the most viable alternative to communism, especially to the generations that came later on, like my generation and the ones that started in the 2000s and after. And we have the more Western-style universities. They are more, I would say, more on the liberal side. They are not politicized much. 

[ALAN KADISH] So you mentioned that you lost a lot of friends and family or friends and close associates when you changed your political views. Were there others who underwent the same transformation, or were you unusually open minded and perceptive? 

[DALIA ZIADA] Actually, my generation, I consider it the most indoctrinated generation in the Arab world in general, in the Arab countries in general, because we've gone through much. When we were teenagers, we-- or even younger, actually. When we were like in primary school or so, we saw the Gulf War between Iraq and Kuwait. And then when we grew older and became teenagers, we saw the Second Intifada, and we have lived the experience of the Second Intifada. 

And then later on, the 9/11 attacks and how it was celebrated in our region, as a victory of Islam over the West and so. And also, after that, the Arab Spring, I mean, when we became 20 plus, we experienced the Arab Spring. I myself was one of the leaders of the Arab Spring in Egypt. So actually, we lived through a lot. So this generation has seen a lot. 

And actually, also, our maybe ideological biases hasn't changed much over time. I mean, most of my generation started very secular people in very secular families, which most of the families in Egypt, I mean, like our parents in the 1970s and '80s and so, they are just secular people, more on the secular side. Then our generation was somehow indoctrinated by all these wars happening around us. And these Islamist sentiments were very, very strong. 

I remember, when I was a teenager and a young woman, things were-- I used to see the imams preaching very radical Islamist thoughts, dressing just like us, dressing in a very Western style and just-- so, I mean, if you follow how this ideological transformation has happened, it's-- for my generation in particular, it's very interesting. 

However, I am not the only case. And actually, it's not only a small number of people who started-- especially after the Arab Spring in Egypt and other Arab countries-- who started to look at Israel in a different light. There are many of you-- I call them the growing minority in the Middle East. At the same time, when I was attacked by radical Islamists for my work on Muslim-Jewish dialogue and Arab-Israeli dialogue, I was also receiving messages of support from young people in the Arab world who are praising my work and saying, we wish we can do the same, but we are scared. 

So there are people who believe in peace. There are people who can see Israel in clear light and who understand that peace is the way for the region, but still they cannot find the right channels to speak their mind. 

[ALAN KADISH] Before October 7, what was your status in egypt? You were living in Egypt before October 7, if I understand correctly. So what were your official positions in terms of were you affiliated with the university, with the think tank, with an NGO? What exactly were you doing as a prelude to hearing about what happened on October 7? 

[DALIA ZIADA] Yeah. Actually, before October 7 happens, I was leading a think tank. It's called the Liberal Democracy Institute. And within this think tank, there was a research center particularly dedicated to the study of the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean geopolitics. I was also working on my PhD at Tufts University here in the United States, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and I was also affiliated with the presidential organization in Egypt that's called the National Council for Women. I was a board member on its Foreign Affairs Committee. 

Plus, of course, I was involved in many initiatives in the region that's working on Arab-Israeli dialogue, especially those initiatives that started to be more prominent and more active in the aftermath of the Abraham Accords. So-- 

[ALAN KADISH] So did you face a backlash or persecution before October 7 based on your work in Egypt, or were you pretty much accepted by the government and society? 

[DALIA ZIADA] No. Of course, at the beginning, it was not easy at all. I mean, working on democracy, human rights in Egypt is not an easy work. Also, advocating for peace with Israel is not an easy work. So, yes, I was criticized. I was always criticized. Of course, there is a huge difference between before the Arab Spring and after the Arab Spring. Before the Arab Spring, anyone who touches these topics is usually labeled as a traitor, as someone who's maybe paid by the Jews to do this work, all these theories, or an agent to the Mossad or so. 

But after the Arab Spring, things changed because we saw that Israel is not the enemy. Hamas is the one who infiltrated into Sinai, killed our soldiers, killed our people in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, while Israel was the one who helped us get rid of Hamas and get rid of the terrorism in Sinai. So this created some kind of a paradigm shift in the way Egyptians are dealing with Israel. 

And also, I mean, in the Arab world in general-- and we saw this manifested later in the Abraham Accords. So, yes, I mean, the trend before and after was different, but also the criticism always had a limit. I never-- my work has never been a threat to my life until October 7 happened. 

[ALAN KADISH] So go ahead. So tell us about what happened on October 7, what you said, what you did, and what the response was. 

[DALIA ZIADA] So on October 7, I was just like everyone else, watching the news from Arab media in Cairo. And I was-- of course, they didn't mention anything about the killing of innocent civilians, burning of children, and all the horrors that happened that day. They just said it's only a clash between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. 

And, OK, so I followed the news about two days after that, and just a few days after that, and before the war in Gaza starts, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense in Israel organized a video conference where they brought in Arab thought leaders, think tankers, researchers, writers, activists and so. And they made a video conference in Arabic to show us what happened on October 7 and explain why they need to go into Gaza to get Hamas and to punish Hamas. 

So it was so shocking to me after watching, actually, the videos and the testimonies from the aid workers that intervened on October 7 to help the civilians. I was so shocked and so angered at this. At the same time, I was-- I literally felt compelled to stand up for these victims, for these Israeli people, the Israeli women, the Israeli children, and the people who were kidnapped from their homes, in their pajamas, and killed in their pajamas. 

So it's-- so I immediately went to my social media platforms. I spoke to my followers from Arab and Muslim audience and also followers from worldwide to tell the truth about what happened. But, actually, after that, I was invited to make media interviews. Some of them are the usual media interviews I do from time to time to comment on the geopolitical current affairs in the region and so. And one of them was in Arabic. And I made this statement. 

I said-- they asked me, like, what do you think about the war in Gaza and what Hamas did on October 7? So I said, Hamas is a terrorist organization, and what they did is an act of terrorism, and they should be punished. And Israel has the right to defend itself. And if Arab countries are thinking straight, if Arab leaders are thinking straight, they should be backing Israel in this war against Hamas. 

So imagine saying this to an Arab audience who are very much sympathetic with Hamas, who are seeing Hamas as heroes because they killed the Jews on that day. So, of course, I received-- it immediately started receiving a horrible backlash, first on social media, the usual insults and death threats. All of a sudden, this moved to my phone, like, text messages, phone calls, emails, horrific things in these emails and messages, like, serious threats, like putting my address on the phone and saying, we're coming to kill you now, you know? 

And then the national TV in Egypt, the national media, started to portray me as a traitor, as a Zionist agent, whom they exposed. And they even bought my photo on the screen with the Star of David on my face. It's terrible. And then I thought, OK, maybe it's a wave and will go away. But, actually, just a few hours after that, a group of Salafists, radical Islamists, who are very close to the jihadists who live in my family neighborhood-- and they knew where my address is. They went to my family house looking for me. They wanted to punish me for not being a good Muslim. 

And thank God I was not there. My mother met them. And then she called me, and I was in my apartment in another neighborhood. So once I received the news-- it's the first time to happen to me. It was very, very scary. So I contacted the security authorities in Egypt thinking that they will jump immediately to protect me. I mean, they should. 

And I spoke to a very senior officer who could really have intervened to protect me, but, unfortunately, his response was so shocking. He said to me, we have nothing to do with you anymore. You go do what you do and face your fate. 

And when I asked him why you're letting me down now, he said, because you said you support Israel. So for him, this was like my punishment for saying that I support Israel's right to defend itself against a terrorist organization like Hamas. Then I had to act very quickly. I had to run out of the country very quickly. And thank God I was so blessed with having great friends here in the US and also in Israel who were able to act very quickly to evacuate me before it's too late. 

[ALAN KADISH] So you came directly from Egypt to the United States, is that correct? 

[DALIA ZIADA] Yeah, I came directly from Egypt to the United States. Especially, also, at these few hours when I was traveling from Egypt to the United States, I discovered that the public prosecutors, the general attorney in Egypt, has been investigating into or started investigations into four legal claims that were immediately filed against me by lawyers close to the regime-- one of them is a member of parliament, actually-- accusing me of spying for the Israeli Mossad, inciting war crimes in Gaza, threatening Egypt's national security, committing high treason. 

Like, look at me. Imagine, I did all of that. I did all of that. It's crazy. But thank God I came here before an arrest warrant was issued for me or anything. However, unfortunately, until this moment-- we're speaking 15 months later. All of this happened in late October, early November 2023. Now it's 15 months ago, and still the claims are open. 

Some of them are forwarded to the court. And it doesn't seem-- and the death threats are still coming, and it doesn't seem that it will stop anytime soon. So perhaps I have to continue the fight from here. 

[ALAN KADISH] So what are you doing in the US now? 

[DALIA ZIADA] It's a very interesting question because I came here thinking that, oh, thank God I left the bad guys behind. I'm coming here to the safe land where the Islamists cannot reach or corrupt. But, unfortunately, I found out that the bad guys exist here too, and they are on a mission to sabotage America from within. 

And actually, America, for me-- it's true it's not my homeland. It's not the country I was born in. But it is the country that gave me my education, that gave me my name, that gave me protection when I needed it, that gave me shelter when I needed it. 

So I hate to see that this corrupt Islamists and radicals are trying to sabotage it from within and destroy it. So I put on myself the mission to fight against that. Right now, I am working as a senior fellow with the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs to continue doing my favorite thing of analyzing the geopolitics of the region, providing a different perspective about what's happening there. 

At the same time, I'm working on a big project, actually, to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and expose the threat of radical Islamists in the United States with the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, ISGAP. And also, I'm doing campus visits, lecturing at American campuses with Hillel, Hillel International. And so far, I visited over 35 campuses all over the United States. 

It's interesting. I mean, the students who come to my lectures are not only-- of course, my lectures are also about geopolitics of the Middle East, Muslim and Arab perspectives of Israel, the conflict that is going on. And it's interesting that the students who come to my lectures are not the typical students of Hillel. They are not only Jewish students or pro-Israel students, but also I found a growing trend of Arab and Muslim students whom I consider from the naive category, who were like me when I was in their age, they just don't understand and who also feel like there is something wrong is going on with this movement. 

And they are coming to my lectures to find an excuse to conversate with the Jewish students, which is amazing, I think. And I believe, if I do nothing else other than that, just creating this channel of bringing them together, conversating together, I'll be very happy. 

[ALAN KADISH] Yeah, it's tremendous work you're doing. So you spent much of your career studying the geopolitics of the Middle East and particularly trying to understand the structure of Egypt. Did what happened to you in Cairo after October 7-- did it surprise you? Was it something that you think could have been predicted? How did that-- how did they respond so aggressively to the fact that you were expressing your opinion in what sounds like a very reasonable way? 

[DALIA ZIADA] To be honest, yes, it was very shocking to me, because, actually-- OK, criticism is fine. I've been criticized for my work my whole life. It's fine. It's fine. I mean, it's one thing when you say, I disagree with what you're doing, and it is a different thing if you want to put me in jail or kill me just because you disagree with my point of view, especially that I'm not doing something radical. I am only advocating for what should be, I mean, a normal relationship between the country, the Indigenous people of the Middle East, including Arab people, including Kurds, including Israelis, including Sunni and Shia, including Muslims and Jews, including everyone. I mean, we are the Indigenous people of the Middle East. So how come we will remain continue in this conflict? 

So this is what I'm advocating for, and I don't think it's a reason for all the hatred I received. But the most shocking part for me was the reaction of the Egyptian government against me-- the Egyptian leadership. Because Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel. We have perfect relationships with Israel over the past 12 years since President el-Sisi came into power and he started to improve-- open up to Israel, have economic relations, security relations, and so on. 

So, I mean, the shift that happened in the Egyptian regime, the sudden shift from being partners with Israel to all of a sudden abandoning Israel for the sake of Hamas and targeting people like me who are calling for better relationships with Israel, this is the part that was so shocking to me. And until this moment, I cannot understand why they did it. Maybe, OK, they wanted to play for the angry domestic audience. Fine. But they went too far. They went too far. And I think there is some kind of, perhaps, Turkish Qatari influence on Egypt in this regard from behind the scenes that is directing Egypt absolutely in the wrong direction. 

[ALAN KADISH] So you talked a little bit about trying to understand the dynamics of the Middle East. It's almost difficult to have a careful analysis done today where things are changing every single day. Do you have a prediction about how things will end up in Gaza? Do you have any idea about what we might expect based on your experience with Arab society? 

[DALIA ZIADA] Actually, it's a very good question. But I will not only limit myself to looking at what's happening in Gaza. But let me tell you about an article I wrote recently, and it's kind of a long essay in which I predicted where our region is going. And unlike you might expect, I'm optimistic about where the region is going because Israel did something amazing, actually, in its reaction to October 7. It didn't just limit its focus to Gaza, but it looked at the bigger picture of the Middle East and said, OK, now it's a golden opportunity to change the Middle East. 

And this created kind of maybe we can call a domino effect of targeting terrorist organizations that is now creating what I call the four trends shaping the future of the Middle East. The first trend is Israel's ascendance as a regional agenda setter, independent from the reckonings of its Western allies. Israel, for all its history since its establishment in the 1970s as the state of Israel, its primary goal was always to defend itself against terrorist organizations, other countries in the region that wanted to harm this newly born state. 

But for the first time after October 7, we are dealing with a whole new Israel. It's much stronger. It has the strongest military in the region, strongest not only in the sense of equipment-- I mean, Arab Gulf countries, for example, they have good equipment. They have the money to buy good equipment. But they were not engaged in direct wars on the ground like either traditional wars or non-traditional wars with terrorist organizations. 

Israel is the only country in the region that has been able to do that, plus Turkey, of course, if we look at the Eastern Mediterranean region as well. But Israel is rising as an agenda setter, as a regional player, not only as a tiny state that is trying to defend itself, and that's it. 

The second trend is that, of course, has to do with Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean is the emergence of a Turkish-sponsored ring of fire around Israel, which, in my opinion, could be more stronger than the collapsing Iran's militia network or ring of fire, the Iranian-sponsored ring of fire around Israel. 

Because this new ring of fire that Turkey is trying to create, it depends on states around Israel. Every place where Iran is contracting right now, the Iranian influence is being shrinking or taking away thanks to Israel's success in targeting the different arms of Iran. Turkey intervenes and jumps in and tries to fill in this space. 

We saw this very, very clearly in the example of Syria after the fall of the Hezbollah factions that were protecting Assad regime. This led to the fall of the Assad regime, and then Turkey intervened immediately to control the new group, Islamist group, jihadist group, actually, or terrorist organization, the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham that took over there. So it's interesting because these two trends tells us, the main interplay in the region in the coming few years will be mainly between not Arabs and Israel, not Iran and Israel, but between Turkey and Israel. 

So this is the second trend. The third trend, which in my opinion is the scariest one and the most concerning of all, is watching the Salafi jihadists applying the most devious trick in the playbook of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is converting from non-state actors, illegitimate non-state actors, violent, attacking Arab nation states and vowing this to the West, especially to America. They are converting into state actors, very much similar to the style the Muslim Brotherhood adopted to gain legitimacy as state actors in some countries and similar to how the Islamic Revolution in Iran adopted as well. 

And right now we are seeing Salafi jihadist groups like Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, for example, willing to work within the configuration of the nation state. They are creating a constitution, adopting even democratic practices like elections and the statehood and so on. This is very, very dangerous because, well, it's giving them legitimacy that shouldn't be given to them. 

The fourth trend and the final one is maybe the increasing state of cohesion and disarray among Arab policymakers. They don't know what to do. And this started not only by the recent domino effect, by the recent, I mean, Turkey intervention, Israel ascendance as a regional power, and so on, but, actually, it started from the moment they were not able to handle the October 7 attack, the reaction to the October 7 attack. It was like a huge state of confusion all over the region. They didn't know how to react. Some of them wanted to condemn. Some of them were like United Arab Emirates, for example. 

But they were concerned about how the domestic audience will react. Some countries, like Egypt, were more concerned about its relations with Turkey and Qatar and also the local audience, like the domestic audience and how to deal with that, and also with its regional role as a champion of the so-called Palestinian cause. So Arabs are lost. Arabs are in a state of loss right now-- Arab leaders. So these four trends, I think they will be shaping the future of our region. And I mean, let's watch how they are going to unfold, especially the Turkey-Israel interplay. 

[ALAN KADISH] So that's an incredibly incisive analysis. But I have to ask you, you started out your analysis by saying you're optimistic. None of those four trends sounded very optimistic. 

[DALIA ZIADA] Oh, right. 

[ALAN KADISH] So where is the optimism? 

[DALIA ZIADA] Yeah, you're right. That's true. Actually-- but the optimism here is that the usual balances of power that have been very destructive to the Middle East region for so long are now collapsing. They are now breaking. And the new dynamics, new coalitions of odds, we can call them-- like, this is the title of my upcoming book-- the coalition of odds are being formed between partners or allies who may not naturally ally together, who have very strong ideological differences. 

So this is one thing that's making me optimistic. The other thing, actually, that's making me optimistic is the rise of Israel as a regional power. The fact that Israel was able to defend itself-- you can't imagine how big a favor Israel is doing to Arab countries and the United States right now, I mean, by its war on the Houthis, by fighting against these terrorist organizations. 

If you look where all the Iranian-sponsored terrorist organizations were operating, they were not operating on Iranian soil. They were operating on Arab land. They were using Arab countries as launch pads to practice their terrorism. And in the process, they are destroying Arab countries. So it's a huge relief to all Arab countries. And actually, this made push, more and more, Arab countries do have normalization with Israel. Not speaking about Saudi Arabia right now, which I believe is on the way to doing that, but I'm speaking about a very important country, although it's small, as well, which is Lebanon. 

Lebanon is a very important player in the Middle East, in the Levant region, and in the Eastern Mediterranean. And imagine if it becomes like the link that links Israel to its Levant neighbors and also to its Eastern Mediterranean neighbors. It's huge. 

[ALAN KADISH] So that is hopefully some cause for optimism. As of today, some fighting is resumed. We still hope that there can be a peaceful solution in Gaza that benefits the people in Gaza. And I think the work that you're doing to try to create a more intelligent perspective on events in the Middle East is extraordinarily useful. 

So it's a real pleasure to have had a chance to speak to you. I'm now going to turn it over to my colleague, Samuel Levine, who's a professor at the Fuchsberg law school at Touro, as well as director of an institute there. And he has some additional questions that have come up. So, Sam, I'm going to turn it over to you at this point. 

[DESCRIPTION] Samuel Levine joins Dalia Ziada and Dr. Alan Kadish. Samuel Levine speaks to the camera from an office setting.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Thank you, Dr. Kadish. Thank you for your probing questions. And thank you, Dalia, for your thoughtful responses. It was such a terrific conversation and such an opportunity for us, as Touro Talks, as our audience to be able to hear your very important impressions and responses to the issues of our times. 

A couple of points that are of particular interest to our audience. You mentioned your visits to college campuses. And of course, anti-Semitism on college campuses has been in the news for quite some time now, since October 7. 

[TEXT] Professor Samuel J. Levine, Director of the Law Institute and Professor of Law, Touro Law Center

[SAMUEL LEVINE] We at Touro Talks organized a number of programs featuring students and faculty at campuses talking about what they've seen. 

We're really interested in hearing more about your impressions. What have you learned from your visits to American college campuses? What's your impression of the atmosphere that you've seen? And what's the reception been to your visits? 

[DALIA ZIADA] Thank you, Dr. Levine, for the opportunity and for your great question. And thank you, Dr. Kadish, for the conversation. I really enjoyed it very much. It's a very important question about American campuses and what's happening there right now and the rise of anti-Semitism. But, actually, I'll go one step backwards before doing that to understand that-- or to explain that the practice of anti-Semitism is only a tool in the hands of the radicals from both the Islamist and the progressive left, radical progressive left and the radical Islamists, who agree on one main thing, which is destroying America. 

For the radical left, they think it's like an imperialist state that should be destroyed, and then a socialist system should replace it. For the Islamists, they are thinking about destroying this Western civilization and replace it with an Islamic caliphate system. 

So, unfortunately, these two sides, which we call the red-green alliance, the socialists and the Islamists, have agreed on one thing, and they came together on American campuses, which, unfortunately, is a very fertile environment or a very safe environment, let's say, for this post-colonialist ideology, this ideology that demonizes the United States as-- for any reason, either as a Western imperialist entity or as a Western culture that is not-- that's spreading vice, not virtue and so from the Islamic perspective. 

So they came together, and they have a very strong moment right now to build on, which is the October 7 attack and the war in Gaza. And anti-Semitism have been somehow central to the ideology of these two players, the communists and the Islamists, all over their history, by the way. So it seems that now they found the perfect tool to create this state of destruction right now, through using this tool of anti-Semitism and projecting hate at the Jews. 

But, actually, if you look at the slogans they use, the rhetoric they are adopting, the narratives they are adopting, it's not only about Israel, actually. It's not only about destroying Israel. It's about destroying the United States. It's about destroying this Western culture. 

Another interesting observation that I saw is that the problem is not the students. The students, in their majority, including those who are sympathizing with the humanitarian situation in Gaza or with Hamas, thinking that Hamas are freedom fighters and so, most of them are literally naive students. They are just not educated enough on the region. 

However, the real problem is with the ideologically-biased professors from both camps, like the Communist and the Islamist camps, who are indoctrinating these students, who are putting the students on the front lines of this fight, convincing them that violence is a good thing and revolution-- it's a political-- violent political resistance is something glorious, something romantic. You have to do it so you feel like a hero or so. And they are the real problem. They are the real people that we need to fight against more than we focus on the students, actually. 

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Your response is fascinating in that it echoes so many of the responses that we heard from students and faculty on campus, and they likewise talked about the lack of knowledge, the lack of information that's available and accessible to many of the other students on the campuses. What are your thoughts in how we can go about educating students about the reality, about the past and present events? 

[DALIA ZIADA] First of all, to get the students to want to be educated about the reality of the Middle East, you have to get them out of this hostile environment, out of this very biased environment they are experiencing on their campuses. At several campuses I spoke at, I found some Arab and Muslim students, including Egyptians, by the way, approached me after the election and say, it's the first time we hear what you said. We wish we were educated about this before. 

Actually, what we're-- and I can see it in their eyes that they want to break away from the radical groups they are involved in in the name of supporting Gaza or under the banner of supporting Gaza. But they are falling-- or they are struggling with the peer pressure, with how they will be seen among their colleagues if they do so, if they go against them, if they break away from them. 

So I think the education has to happen outside the campuses. We have to encourage these students to do something outside their campuses to educate themselves about the reality of what's going on. Of course, it needs a lot of funding, a lot of campaigning, also, to select the most influential students and give them this education. But it all starts first by encouraging them to seek education somewhere else, education about this particular issue somewhere else, and from genuine Middle Eastern sources, not from the biased sources they are now depending on. 

So education is key. But, also, it's not only about American campuses. We have a big, big problem in high schools. Actually, recently-- and one of the big Islamist-led organizations in the United States has started a program called Education on Palestine. And it's not targeting American campuses. It's not targeting communities in America. It's targeting high schoolers, high schoolers-- Education on Palestine. 

And if you watch the videos, you will be shocked. It's nothing about Palestine or a Palestinian state. It's all about destroying the Israeli state. It's all about projecting hate to the Jews and justifying why we need to hate the Jews. And it's very dangerous, in my opinion, because, well, these young-- even younger people who are in high schools cannot be subjected to this type of devious attempts. 

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Maybe go back to where we started, maybe, to close the program with some of the important information you provided and going back to your own story in Egypt and what you learned there and what you saw there and how you've taken those lessons to your work here in the United States. Our audience finds it very confusing to understand the setting in Egypt. On the one hand, the United States sees Egypt as an ally. Israel has had a peace treaty with Egypt for nearly half a century. And yet you had those experiences, those harrowing experiences, in Egypt. So how do you understand and help us understand some of those seeming contradictions? 

[DALIA ZIADA] I think it all has to do with how the peace treaty with Israel or between Egypt and Israel was made. It was-- I think, at that time, it was meant for show more than for creating actual peace that can last. Actual peace, I mean like grassroots peace, people to people peace. 

So what happened is that, yes, the two leaders at that time signed-- the Egyptian leader and the Israeli leaders and the American leader in the middle facilitating the negotiations and the agreement and so. They signed the agreement, but actually they did not-- they, I would say, rushed into signing the agreement also because of the many geopolitical events that were happening in the region at that time, like, for example, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the fall of the Shah and its effect on Islamist groups in other Arab countries and so. 

So at that time, yes, they rushed into creating this peace treaty, but it has never been seen as a peace treaty in Egypt. And there were nothing in the peace treaty that said that Egypt is obligated, for example, to remove anti-Semitic content from its media, its education system, or anything. In Egypt, this peace treaty has always been referred to as a strategic agreement with Israel. It's just something to keep our security, to keep us safe from the potential of an upcoming war. But it's not about cooperation. It's not about working together. 

Even when we started to see more cooperation between Egypt and Israel, especially in economy and security, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Egypt, still it was also limited on the level of the government and certain offices even in the government. Until today, it's an essential part of the military ideology, of the fighting ideology of the Egyptian military is looking at Israel as our historical enemy. 

Every year in Egypt, we celebrate the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War as a big victory, as the national day for the Egyptian armed forces. And not even single ones in my entire life-- and I was born after the peace treaty was written. In my entire life, I did not see Egypt, government, or people celebrating the anniversary of the peace treaty. 

So this is the environment, unfortunately, now in Egypt. And this is why I don't think we can have genuine and real peace with Israel until perhaps, perhaps-- maybe the events that are happening now is telling us that it is the time for Egypt and Israel to sit together, revise the provisions of this peace treaty, and create a new one that is based on mutual desire to really have peace, to really have cooperation as two normal, interdependent neighbors. 

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Thank you, Dalia, for that response. And I just want to take this opportunity to thank you once again for joining us today, for sharing with us your compelling personal story, your very insightful thoughts about the current situation, and for the very important work that you do. I'd like to thank our Touro Talks audience, once again, for joining us, and I would like to thank our sponsors, Robert and Arlene Rosenberg. Thank you. 

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[DALIA ZIADA] Thank you so much. 

[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks

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