ברוק גולדשטיין: "כשאנו מתמקדים מדי בישראל או באנטישמיות אנחנו מאבדים את התפיסה של מה שאנחנו באמת מתמודדים מולו..."

From what's described as rising radicalization in New York City to foreign actors taking advantage of America's legal system, Steve Lance and Tiffany Meyer sat down with Brooke Goldstein at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest to explore these hot-button issues. Goldstein is the executive director and founder of the Lawfare Project. Here's the interview. And we're here and we're joined by Brooke Goldstein, executive director and founder of Lawfare Project. Brooke, thank you so much for sitting down with us. Thank you for having me. It's really great. Brooke, since Zoran Mamdani, mayor-elect in New York City, was elected, a lot of New Yorkers say that the city feels less safe. What do you think is driving this feeling? We have a mobster in office right now. Zoran Mamdani was one of the people who were in the pro-Hamas mobs and now he's in office. And the unfortunate truth is that all of this radicalization even happened before he was in office. It's happening on our campuses. And I do have to warn though, because we're so focused on anti-Semitism, we don't have a problem of rising anti-Semitism. We have a problem of rising radicalization in our country. And of course, the Jews are a part of that, but it's anti-American, it's anti-Judeo-Christian values, it's anti-democracy, it's anti-freedom, it's anti-free speech. And so this is something that all Americans should care about. And that's why, for example, it's so disrupted and disturbing that there's such a focus, not just on Jew hatred, but on Israel, because that's not what this is about. That is a great distraction. When we're too focused on Israel or anti-Semitism, we're losing the view of what we're really facing, which is creeping Islamism. And the more we fight amongst ourselves, and the more we talk about Israel-Palestine, the less we're focusing on radical Islam as a threat to the West, to all democracy. So Zoran Mamdani is not just a threat to the Jews, he's a threat to the rule of law in America. To your point of taking advantage of our systems, the term lawfare, how vulnerable is our legal system? From what I understand, a foreign-born national, a foreign national, can sue and take to court an American citizen, and we don't know if there are state actors behind them. Well, look, justice is a slow wheel that turns, but we are very blessed to live in a country where we have an impartial judicial system. But the whole thing about lawfare is it harasses people. And even though in the end of the day, you may win the lawsuit, you're still spending in time and money defending yourself. And especially when it comes to defamation lawsuits, if you're speaking publicly about these issues, and then you get sued, the first thing your lawyer is going to do is tell you to be quiet until you're finished the litigation. And we've seen that time and time again. We had, for example, a lawsuit a couple years back before the Boston bombing attack, where I think it was 17 media defendants were sued. I think it was also the New York Times, including my former boss, for calling attention to the fact that Saudi funds were going and funding a mosque, the ISB mosque in Boston, and allegedly radicalizing the mosque goers. Those 17 media defendants were sued by the very mosque that they were trying to raise awareness about. The FBI was not investigating out of fear of being called Islamophobic. And lo and behold, nobody was paying attention. And the Boston bombers who were allegedly radicalized in that very mosque went off and exploded themselves at the marathon. So lawfare is a very real threat. It's a very real tactic that's being used not just locally, but on the international stage with frivolous war crimes charges against Israeli officials and American officials who are trying to fight on an asymmetric battlefield against terrorists who are using their own children as human shields and then accusing us of war crimes when they benefit from the higher civilian casualties and deaths. So that is the tactic of lawfare. That's what I wrote my first book about. That's what we are set up at The Lawfare Project to fight against. And thank God, we have a group of over a thousand lawyers. We work with over 37 major international law firms, and we've been providing pro bono legal support to the victims of lawfare.