Arutz Sheva sat down for a talk with Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center headquartered in Los Angeles.

Rabbi Hier said that an important lesson to be learned from the Holocaust is: “Don’t be alone. Have friends.”

“In 1940 at the Evian Conference, nobody wanted to take in Jews. Not one country. So we lacked friends. We have to make sure there are no more Evion conferences, no more UN votes where everyone votes against Israel.

“Therefore it pays for us to make friends, not allow ourselves to be isolated the way we were during the time of Hitler when we had no friends.

“That’s the smartest route for Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu is doing the right thing - reach out, there’s a split in the Arab world. Not all the Arabs are on the same page. And if you can win them over and bring them away from the ‘mishugoyim’ [‘crazies’] in Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah, it’s a mitzvah to do that.

Rabbi Hier noted the rise in anti-Semitism in the US, which he attributed largely to “the success of Israel.”

“Jews are supposed to be ‘shhhh.’ [Anti-Semites] don’t want us to be up front. Hitler was wrong when he said before he committed suicide that hatred of the Jews would return in several centuries. It didn’t take that long. Why? Because a country by the name of Israel started waving a Jewish flag. So the anti-Semite said, ‘we can’t let that happen.’”

The rabbi said that blaming the Trump administration for anti-Semitism in America was unfair.

“No president gets it right all the time. There are no perfect human beings. But we have to be thankful that, after six presidents who promised that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and didn’t do anything, Trump delivered it. But that doesn’t mean Trump is perfect and everything he says is correct. We don’t even say that for the biggest ‘gadol’ in Torah.

“Obama made a tragic mistake giving legitimacy to the biggest anti-Semite in the world, the Ayatollah, who denies the Holocaust.

“So we can’t expect perfect specimens, but we can’t be ideologues. The most important thing is to judge a person based on what he does. So, as a Jew, I look at the fact that Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - nobody can take that back. That’s a great accomplishment.”