A musical theater playbill might seem like an unlikely place to find Ben Shapiro's name, but the sharp-tongued American political commentator is indeed one of the creators behind "We Will Rise," which premiered recently in Beersheba. If that's not surprising enough, Shapiro maintains that among his many ventures, this is one of his most emotionally significant. While he couldn't attend the premiere, he plans to be present for the gala opening in Jerusalem.
The songs and music were composed by his father, musician David Shapiro, while Ben wrote the rest of the text. The story centers on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, connecting those events to the October 7 attacks in Israel and the ongoing military campaign in Gaza. Some characters in the musical are based on actual figures from the ghetto: Adam Czerniakow, head of the Judenrat, or Mordechai Anielewicz, leader of the uprising. Others are fictional or were developed with significant artistic license.
Shapiro, a Jewish-American affiliated with the conservative right, is one of the most influential political commentators in the US. He has tens of millions of followers on social media, and episodes of his daily current affairs podcast, "The Ben Shapiro Show", receive hundreds of thousands of listens. He graduated from UCLA and Harvard Law School, was previously an editor at the American news site Breitbart, has written bestsellers, and was among the founders of The Daily Wire. Since October 7, Shapiro has participated in numerous public debates, consistently standing with Israel and defending its war efforts.
He spoke with Makor Rishon for an interview to talk about the play as well as on politics, excerpts of which are brought below.
Q: What do you think Israel should do if Kamala Harris wins?
"I think that Israel should do the same thing whether Kamala wins or whether Kamala loses. I think what Israel needs to recognize, and I've said this to every prime ministerial candidate for the last 10 years, is Israel needs to become self-sufficient. Israel always needed to be self-sufficient. They need to be more militarily self-sufficient, they need to get off of American aid, and they need to generate an economic dynamism, unleash the economy over there sufficient to pay for all of that. What we've seen in the aftermath of October 7 is that Israel cannot be reliant on the goodwill of other nations, because that is a very precarious place to be. You don't want to be Blanche DuBois in this Tennessee Williams play. You don't want to be reliant on the kindness of strangers. And Israel has sustained itself by attempting moral suasion for several decades at this point. And it turns out that moral suasion doesn't go all that far. What actually goes far is the raw ability to sustain yourself. And so that means on an economic level is radical deregulation of the economy in Israel. It means allowing businesses to thrive and succeed. It means that it shouldn't take 300 days to do a real estate deal. It means that the taxes are way too high on literally everything, which is why half of real estate deals are now black-market real estate deals. It means that you shouldn't have to have a cousin in one of the, in a "misrad" [referring to a generic ministry in Israel] somewhere in order to get something done. It means that the stranglehold that Histadrut [the main public service Israel trade union] has on labor needs to stop. The economy can't shut down every time somebody has a political gripe. All these things need to be done. And that's not a political point. That is, that is a reality. Either Israel's going to do that and have a dynamic economy because Israel has very, very high social fabric, high IQ, high confidence levels. And all of that is being held up. Like as everyone who is American who's ever visited Israel recognizes the miracle of Israel is that it works at all because the system is so gummed up and so ridiculous that it is sheerly through sort of bootstrapping and personal connections that anybody can get anything done over there. I mean, it's insane.
"You want a powerful military, you need to have a powerful economy capable of paying for all of those things. Make business easier. It'll be easier to pay for all of these things. Israel is a large enough, powerful enough country, economically speaking, that they should not have to rely on $3 billion in American military aid. The GDP in Israel is like $500 billion a year. Why is $3 billion in military aid deciding factor and how Israel makes its foreign policy? That's crazy. Israel, Israel should be an easy one. And, and by the way, Israel is going to be forced to whether they're like it or not because eight to 10 years from now, I think that there's a, the, the direction of American foreign policy is moving away from…But even though if, even if, you know, we don't need some day the aid from the Americans, we still need, out of his values we'll say, the veto in the Security Council. So we're still, you know, tied to America in that sort of way."
Q: Israeli diplomatic circles might tell you: Even if we don't need American military aid, we still need the American veto at the UN Security Council, so we can't ignore Washington's demands.
"I mean, first of all, I think that, so my view of the UN Security Council is significantly, I think the UN is a ridiculous organization on its face. I think that the idea that if Israel gets hit with a Security Council resolution, that somehow this is the end of the world, that is not true. What matters in international politics is raw, pure power. That's all that matters in international politics. And Israelis should start to understand that the, how is China or Russia able to get away with things? They're very powerful, large."
