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By Kelly Rayburn

DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF

krayburn@media.ucla.edu

For Dennis Prager, a “moral case for Israel” is so obvious it is ridiculous that he would even have to lecture on the topic to a group of UCLA students.

When it comes to bloodshed in the Mideast, the author, theologian and radio talk show host sees one culture as morally right and the other as morally wrong. Those who believe all cultures are by nature morally equal are naive and misguided, he said Tuesday in Kerckhoff Grand Salon.

“My nine-year-old can understand that,” he said.

The question of Israel’s legitimacy as a state – an issue debated widely throughout the world in politics, the media and at universities – has an irrefutable answer in Prager’s mind: Israel is as legitimate as any country, and the tiny democracy has every right to defend itself from Palestinian terrorists and neighboring “police states.”

Prager said few people realize how small Israel is – “you can jog across Israel without having run a marathon.” Those who don’t support Jewish control of such a small piece of land are anti-Semitic, Prager said.

Many who sympathize with the plight of Palestinians argue that there is a difference between condemning the state of Israel and anti-Semitism. For many, the issue is not whether Jews deserve a homeland, but whether the displacement of Palestinians by the state of Israel is acceptable. Whether Palestinians were forced off their land by the creation of Israel – and, if so, how many were forced off – is a question still debated fervently today.

But setting demographic and geographic arguments aside, “there is no country in the world that was created without displacing some people,” Prager said.

“For some reason (Israel) is the one illegitimate country,” he said.

Those who question Israel’s legitimacy but do not also question Pakistan’s legitimacy or India’s – countries whose respective creation displaced thousands of Hindus and Muslims – are anti-Semitic, Prager concluded.

Earlier, most of the crowd nodded in agreement when Prager said American universities are hotbeds for anti-Israeli sentiment.

First-year UC Berkeley student Joseph Shapo said he didn’t care much about trying to influence people whose minds are set against Israel, but asked Prager what Israel-supporting students could do to help non-interested students understand pro-Israeli viewpoints.

“Not much,” Prager answered. “Most students are concerned with what they’ll do for a living, their social life and the next text, not the Mideast.”

Meanwhile, Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, while supporting the bulk of Prager’s argument,did challenge him on a few points he said Prager exaggerated. For example, Seidler-Feller – who is director of Hillel at UCLA, one of the organizations that sponsored the event – disagreed with a comparison Prager drew between the condition of the West Bank under Israeli occupation and that of Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory.

Seidler-Feller asked if it was necessary for Israel supporters to exaggerate to get their points across.

Prager did not answer that question, but he clarified his Puerto Rico example, saying the occupation of the West Bank more closely relates to Puerto Rico’s condition than to Nazi-occupied Poland’s condition in the late ’30s and early ’40s.