Defending Israel 'just duty to me,' Dr. Phil tells JNS

(JNS) - Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, isn't Jewish. But the trained clinical psychologist and host of the popular eponymous talk show told JNS exclusively that his staunch support of Israel is "really not anything other than just duty to me."

"Everybody should be doing what I'm doing," he said.

Dr. Phil has denounced Jew-hatred on his show, in interviews and in filmed segments. He told JNS that he was "appalled at the silence from so many people," including colleagues and fellow broadcasters, "that should be speaking out about" Jew-hatred.

JNS spoke with the television personality on Nov. 7, during a Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center event in Toronto during which the nonprofit awarded Dr. Phil its 2024 Allyship Award.

"I don't think what I'm doing is extraordinary," he told JNS of the honor. "This is good versus evil."

Dr. Phil never expected to hear the antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiments on U.S. college campuses, where students and professors "are encouraging or allowing this," he told JNS. "They are absolutely supporting terrorist organizations," he added, of those he called "useful idiots."

"How do they not get that, and how are people in the United States not standing up and calling this out more than they are?" he said.

Among many of McGraw's social media posts about Israel are references to a "life-changing" visit to the Jewish state to see Hamas's destruction, "being in Israel will forever be etched in my memory and my soul" and an "absolutely overwhelming" visit to the Nova music festival site.

More than 1,500 people attended the Nov. 7 event, during which the film director Barry Avrich interviewed McGraw about the latter's recent trip to Israel. The annual event also honored eight other Jewish "allies."

Caroline D'Amore, an American actress, model and founder of Pizza Girl, was one of the awardees. D'Armore, who has visited Israel twice since Oct. 7, told JNS that her online advocacy "just feels like the right thing to do."

"When everybody told me to go educate myself, I did just that and I went to Israel and I did the research," she said. "I found out for myself and it only made me double down on all my thoughts and feelings."

Another awardee, Raheel Raza, a Muslim from Pakistan, told JNS that her activism was a "moral and ethical responsibility." 

Ally outreach is "a slow process" that is "one heart at a time and one person at a time," she added.

Dr. Phil told the crowd that he had just spoken moments before with President-elect Donald Trump on the phone.

"He understands the critical nature of standing by our allies, and I believe he understands the importance of friendship," McGraw said. 

He said that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom he has interviewed recently, are well aware of the threat from those "across the chain link fence" who seek to "eradicate you from the face of the earth."

Dr. Phil noted that there are Jews, who have been "mostly mute" about Israel.

"They've been activists in a lot of different causes, but then when one comes absolutely to their doorstep," they are quiet, he said. "I don't understand it. I find it disgusting."

"They think it's just safer to remain silent," he said.

Growing up, Dr. Phil was taught about a "very clear distinction between right and wrong," he told the audience, and that "good and evil are not relative."

"There is no moral equivalence to what the Hamas invaders did, when they're killing infants in their crib, versus a child that loses their life from a piece of shrapnel from above," he said. "One is a war crime. The other is an act of war. There is no equivalence between the two."

"You can't come across a boundary and kill non-combatants, kill children in their cribs, kill elderly people that are sleeping in their beds unarmed, then run back and hide behind children in schools and patients in hospitals," he added. "Those deaths, that blood is on the hands of the Hamas invaders. That's not on the hands of Israel."

In Israel, Dr. Phil viewed extensive Oct. 7 footage, which others haven't seen, he told the crowd. He also visited homes destroyed by Hamas terrorists and the Nova festival site.

"You stand before a crib and there's dried blood in the crib-a half-an-inch thick, and there's blood splashed up on the wall. It's not a big leap to run that movie back in your head and know what happened in that home," he said.

Although Dr. Phil has conducted thousands of interviews across his more than 20-year career as a television host, he said that his conversation with a first responder from the Nova site "changed me forever."

"He was there by himself for a long time and he collected bodies and body parts and brought them to a central location," he said. "It changed me forever to hear this man-what he went through and what toll it took on him."

Asked about the difference between Gazans and Hamas, Dr. Phil said "sometimes it may be a distinction without a difference," due to the involvement of "supposed civilians," and Israelis who hid from terrorists told him that they heard Gazans "laughing, and going through their drawers, and going through everything and carrying things out of their homes."

He called the terrorists "monsters" who have been brainwashed since the cradle. 

"They're teaching them that the Israelis are evil. They're programmed to kill them and brag about it from the time that they're old enough to be reasoned with," he said.

To Dr. Phil, it doesn't apply to call the Jewish state "apartheid."

"I don't know of a country that is more accepting of different lifestyles, beliefs, countries, ethnicities than Israel," he said.

Visiting University of California, Los Angeles in May and talking with students and law enforcement and observing an encampment made an impression on him.

The protesters "couldn't find critical thinking if they had two weeks of flashlight on a map," he told the crowd. "There is no critical thinking among these people at all. Gays for Gaza? The gays for Gaza should walk down across the Gaza border and see how far you come."

He added that UCLA was wrong to let the protests continue on private property.

 "How in the world is a student, because of their race or religion, blocked from going to their classes, blocked from getting their education? How is that allowed?" he said.