Television personality Dr. Phil Dr. Phil delivered a forceful defense of Israel and the Jewish people in a video message, arguing that antisemitism stems from a deeper hostility toward the moral principles associated with Judaism and the Bible.
In the video, Dr. Phil questioned why Jews have been targeted throughout history despite making up such a small percentage of the world's population. He described his own upbringing in poverty in Texas and Oklahoma, saying he was homeless at 14 and had never met a Jewish person or learned about Israel.
"I probably couldn't have found it on a globe if you gave me two weeks, a magnifying glass, and a flashlight," he said, describing how little he knew about the Jewish people or the Jewish state growing up.
Dr. Phil noted that there are fewer than 16 million Jews worldwide, compared with approximately 2.3 billion Christians and 2 billion Muslims. He also pointed out that Jews constitute only about 2% of the US population, arguing that their small numbers make the scale of hostility directed against them particularly striking.
The more he learned about Israel and the Jewish people, Dr. Phil said, the more difficult he found it to understand the extent of antisemitism around the world.
He rejected attempts to justify antisemitism by citing the war in Gaza or the October 7 massacre, arguing that hostility toward Jews long predates the current conflict. "Before you make this about Gaza and October 7th, let me just stop you because I'm sorry, you cannot justify it, explain it away, or even contextualize it with Gaza, Palestine, or even spinning October 7th," he said.
Dr. Phil cited Israel's acceptance of the 1947 UN partition plan, subsequent peace proposals and its 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as examples of its efforts to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians, as opposed to the October 7th massacre.
A significant portion of the video focused on what Dr. Phil described as international institutions and political figures displaying hostility toward Israel. He criticized the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to South African jurist Navi Pillay, who chaired a UN commission that accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Dr. Phil highlighted remarks by the Nobel Committee chairman indicating that Pillay's work on Israel and Gaza was among the reasons she received the award.
He also noted that Hamas congratulated Pillay on receiving the prize, questioning the judgment behind honoring someone whose work was celebrated by the terrorist organization.
Dr. Phil turned his attention to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, criticizing his description of Israel's military campaign in Gaza as an ongoing genocide during remarks marking the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre, and cited criticism from Israeli Ambassador to the United States Danny Danon, who accused Mamdani of hijacking a day intended to commemorate the victims of the attack.
The United Nations also came under heavy criticism. Dr. Phil cited figures showing that between 2015 and 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted 173 resolutions against Israel, compared with 80 resolutions against all other countries combined. He also criticized UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for saying, 17 days after the October 7 massacre, that the attack "did not happen in a vacuum," while referring to the Palestinian experience under Israeli rule.
Dr. Phil recalled being invited to address the United Nations on the third anniversary of October 7, where he spoke in support of Israel. He described the UN as one of the most hostile environments for Jews and said the organization had failed to live up to its founding commitment to ensure that the Holocaust's promise of "never again" would carry meaning.
"I stand with and for Israel with pride," he said.
Dr. Phil then offered a brief historical overview of antisemitism, citing the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, massacres during the Crusades, the expulsions of Jews from England and Spain, pogroms in Russia, the circulation of the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered.
He argued that the contradictory accusations historically directed against Jews reveal that antisemitism is rooted not in Jewish conduct but in prejudice itself. Jews, he said, have been simultaneously accused of being too rich and too poor, capitalist and communist, and condemned both for lacking a state and for establishing one.
"When the accusations contradict each other, that tells you the hatred came first. The excuse gets filled in later," he said. "The word Jew has simply been swapped out for Zionist. Same hatred, new vocabulary."
In the video's central argument, Dr. Phil offered a religious explanation for the persistence of antisemitism, speaking from his perspective as a Christian. He argued that the Jewish people have historically been targeted because they are the bearers of the Torah and the moral teachings on which both Christianity and Islam are rooted. He referred to the biblical account of the revelation at Mount Sinai, when the Torah was given to the Jewish people, and argued that its teachings establish moral standards that challenge people who wish to live without accountability.
"If you don't like being morally accountable, you blame the Jews," he said. "Because the Jews were God's messengers and you don't like God's message, you go after the messenger."
Dr. Phil cited biblical prohibitions against sexual immorality, theft, lying, gossip and the mistreatment of animals, arguing that people who reject the moral demands of Scripture may direct their resentment toward the Jewish people who preserve and represent those teachings. He suggested that the success and survival of the Jewish people and the State of Israel present a choice to the rest of the world: acknowledge the moral tradition they represent or reject it and imagine that eliminating the Jews would remove the obligation to live by those standards.
Dr. Phil concluded by expressing confidence that the Jewish people would survive, as they had endured persecution throughout history, from the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Crusades to the Holocaust and the October 7 massacre.
"The question isn't whether the Jewish people will survive this. They will. The question is which side of history the rest of us want to be standing on when it's over," he said.