Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Joins Steve Israel For a Fireside Chat on Antisemitism

Earlier today, Governor Hochul joined Steve Israel for a Fireside Chat on Antisemitism at Holocaust Museum & Tolerance Center (HMTC) in Glen Cove, New York with Steve Israel, Former U.S. Representative, and Dana Arschinm of HMTC to discuss topics surrounding antisemitism and the ongoing war in the Middle East.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Steve Israel: Before we begin I want to thank Assemblyman Levine for being here, and Legislator DiRiggi for being here, the Minority Leader of the Nassau County Legislature.

It's so good to see you. I'm just noticing your presence, and we appreciate it. And how about another big hand for the Governor of the State of New York for joining us.

And for the HMTC team — thank you, Dana, for everything that you have done. And Alan Mindel, the Chairman of the Board, who has the most important responsibility of all of us.

Let's get right to business. Governor, thank you so much for your leadership on antisemitism and for joining us in this place. I think the best first question coincides with October 7th. We are only weeks away from the first anniversary of that horrific day, those massacres. Shortly after the October 7th terrorist attack, you made two visits. You visited Cornell University, and you went to Israel.

And so I'd like to begin by asking you to tell us about that experience, going to Israel — did it reshape you? What kind of impact did it have? And when you came back, how did you process what you learned into policy and into moral clarity?

Governor Hochul: Thank you, Steve. Once a congressman, always a congressman — so you get to read that title for life. Thank you for hosting this, and to Dana for inviting me to this conversation.

This is a hard conversation to have. Because when you said October 7th, and you said go into Israel — I all of a sudden had this sinking feeling in my gut. It just will never leave me when I think about that experience, but it was important that I had that experience. Because I knew as the leader of the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, that I had a moral responsibility to go witness with my own eyes.

Because already people were saying — just like what happened to the Holocaust, during the Holocaust — there were deniers already about what was going on over there, and whose fault it was and what really the scale of the devastation was. I needed to see it with my own eyes. But all my senses were touched, and I'll explain that in a moment because the smells and the feelings, and everything were so powerful.

I landed right after President Biden was taking off. We had to wait for his plane to leave. So he was the highest ranking official, I arrived immediately. As a side note, what is also so memorable in a negative way about that event is — I received word as I was landing that my father, who I had just talked to on the phone the night before, had a brain hemorrhage and was in dire straits.

And I'll never forget what he said as I was leaving the airport. I wasn't going to tell him, by the way — I was only going to be gone for a couple days. And I'm still his little girl. You don't want to worry your dad, he still misses my mom. And he's 86 years old.

And I was at the JFK Airport really late at night. And I said, “Do I tell him or not?” And I called him and he said, “Dolly, I'm really proud of you. But keep your goddamn head down.” So, that was my crusty Irish Catholic dad, just so you know.

So, immediately my staff says, “You've got to head back, right? You're going to go back, your father's not going to make it.” And I said I can't go back. Because I came here, because I'm supposed to comfort people. And I didn't realize that the people I encountered on that journey all knew what happened to my father, and he passed while I was there. So, they were trying to comfort me. People came up to me on the street. And it was an incredible way of healing for me.

As I went to the wall, and was planning on just putting a message there that reflected my love and concern for the Jewish people, and the families and those who were held captive and those who lost their lives — and I put in another note for my father. My father had been there for his 80th birthday. All he wanted to do was go to Israel. Go to the wall, pray. We were raised in a strict Judeo-Christian heritage. We did a lot of events, multicultural, multi-religious growing up.

So, I just put that as the framework. While I was there, I was at peace because I knew that it's the natural course of life that you lose an 86 year old father. It is not a natural course of life that you lose children or young people dancing at a festival. Experiencing the greatest highs and joys of just being together. That is not natural.

So, I stayed. I went to hospitals, I visited the wounded, saw a young man who was badly injured - a young Israeli soldier whose wife thought he had died and she was expecting a baby and he almost didn't make it and she delivered the baby down the hall. I saw them united together and it gave me such hope and these people are so resilient. They're fighting back. They're so strong.

I left there a stronger person, seeing that at the depths of human pain that there was a spirit of life and optimism that has endured through centuries of oppression, thousands of years of oppression for the Jewish people. I admire that to my core.

I went to Kfar Aza. That's probably the toughest thing I've ever done in my life. The blood was still fresh. I went into safe rooms that were not safe rooms, where families were slaughtered, women were mutilated. You may have heard the story of the kites, that there was a tradition. I mean, these were people, as you know, I don't have to tell you this, but if you live out of kibbutz, these are more, what I would have related more to, the hippies, the peace loving, the people who are there because they want to raise their children in a different environment, outside the forces of society, in a loving, caring environment.

Every year on a certain day to celebrate the holidays that occurred on that day, they used to fly kites over into Gaza as a sign of we’re your friends, we’re reaching out to you, we're in this together. And the kites that were ready for that celebration, and they were supposed to be launched at 4 o'clock that day, were still in a pool of blood when the whole family was slaughtered there. The family that was reaching out in a sign of love.

I met with leadership there. I met with Netanyahu. I met with President Herzog. I met with the finance Foreign Minister. I met with Ambassador Herzog. I met with everybody. And I said what we need to see right now, before the tides of attitude change against the Jewish people who are the victims in this, before anything else happens, we need to see images of Israeli soldiers going into Gaza, perhaps rescuing seniors from a senior home or going into an orphanage or showing a side of the Jewish people that was important before other forces say that we are the oppressors, that these are the ones who triggered, they deserved it. And that didn't happen.

I spoke to Secretary of State Blinken about that. He said he wished that that had happened as well, that there was an opportunity for us to get the world on the side of Israel in that moment, which should have happened naturally, right? But it didn't. And even while I was there, there was the New York Times story that said 500 people killed in a hospital because of an attack by Israel. Turned out it was false. But that spread around the world like that. And we were trying to counter that at the time.

I knew when I came back after seeing families and hugging people who had lost their wives and children and just trying to give them some love, that I had to be a strong voice when I returned to New York. I had to stand up and be the person who witnessed with my own eyes and had the smells and touching the walls and feeling what had happened in those rooms. I had to be the voice when I came back and I've not stopped doing that. I gave more speeches on this topic than anything because I had to stand up and be the witness, the witness to history that I still am today.

Dana Arschin: And I have a question that continues with Israel, but you know, just to comment on something you had said, that you wish the media had shown Israel being heroic, and I feel like, and so many people in this room feel that even if that had been put out there, there's still this deep rooted antisemitic and anti-Israel hatred that it doesn't even matter if it was out there. I think that is what we try so hard to do every day at the Center, and we're trying harder and harder to start educating from a younger age. And what I wanted to ask you about is that Jews and non-Jews across the globe are so outraged and heartbroken by the recent announcement by Hamas that they murdered six hostages and one of them, an American Israeli citizen, Hersh Goldberg, also Omer Neutra is a Long Islander who's currently being held hostage.

What are you and your colleagues doing on a state level to facilitate the return of the hostages? And also, important to note that we're in New York, largest Jewish community outside of Israel.

Governor Hochul: Well, what I did when I was in Israel, I handed the Prime Minister a picture of Omer Neutra. I put photos that were given to me by family members into the hands and said, “we have to bring them home.”

I have been advocating for the return of Omer and, you know, Ruby Chen I've spoken to him, you know, he lost his son. We want to get his remains home. He's another New Yorker. We had them speak even at the Democratic Convention. I hosted a breakfast every morning of hundreds of people gathered to hear speakers and I had the family stand up and speak so they could tell their story. And it was a very warm room that they were able to speak before.

But in terms of the return and also the travesty that just happened a few days ago, I went yesterday to the Israeli Consul General's office, signed the book of remembrance, and talked about our support for bringing everyone home.

As far as what we can do, we're supporting what the President is doing, but in terms of raising this level of conversation, we're going to do that every chance we get. We continue to do that. We've talked about this non stop. And more than people expect. Because they don't look at me, and where I'm from, and my background, and assume it'd be natural for me. But it is. It is so natural. Because I will fight for people that are the underdogs, or those who've been oppressed, or those who just need help, and who are sick and tired of being victimized. I have to stand up to that.

So, I will continue to use my voice. That's the best thing I have right now, is my voice. I use the platform I have to stand up to and condemn the violence and the hatred. And when people say to me, even a reporter said to me, why do you call Hamas a terrorist organization? Not making this up. This is days after the attack. I said, because they are.

I was on the Homeland Security Committee in Congress. I knew where all the pockets of Hezbollah were in the Northern hemisphere. I knew all about them. I knew all about this. We tracked this, we watched this, we knew the threats. They've been on the terrorist watch list since about 1996. So don't question whether or not they're a terrorist organization. Can we just start with this basic foundation? I mean, give me a break.

I will use my voice anytime, any way I can to put the spotlight on the remaining hostages and let's just put these families out of their pain. And it is sickening to me what happened to those six when they were expecting a unification that is long overdue. It's been 335 days. No one back on October 7th or even the weeks after that ever dreamed we'd still be waiting for those reunions.

Dana Arschin: We have photos of the hostages back there, every single one of them, if any of you want to come take a look after.

Steve Israel: Governor, let's get a little more detailed about antisemitism which is a growing phenomenon, not just in New York State, but across the country. But in New York, Comptroller DiNapoli released a report recently that quantified a surge of antisemitism. It tracks what is happening in blue states and red states across the country.

I know that you helped organize a strategy to counter antisemitism in the State of New York. It reflects at the federal level the second gentleman's strategy to combat antisemitism. Can you tell us more about your strategy?

Governor Hochul: I had a forum at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City with hundreds of people at the end of September, before October 7th, to talk about antisemitism. What I talked about then is I had signed into law legislation that says I want to track the teaching of Holocaust stories and the whole history of it. I want to track that in schools. Because it is the law that they're supposed to be teaching this, but I wasn't convinced that it was actually occurring. I always want the data, I want the proof, and so we put in motion at that time in a conversation around antisemitism, we hosted ten other Holocaust survivors there.

So, I found out the data today, which is that 100 percent of the school districts that have secondary and middle schools are teaching it, and the vast majority actually have supplemental programming around this.

Now, I'm going to now ask the next question: okay, is it taught once in four years? Is there a course? Is it part of a history class? So, you know I'm going to ask the next series of questions, now that I've got that level of inquiry down. But they know I'm watching. I don't control the State Education Department. It's just a fluke if you ask me, because people think I do. All I do is fund it. But I have no say over curriculum or anything else. That being said, I have a lot to say about it. And I do. So, I will continue raising this question.

But also, at that forum, we also talked about the fact that I'm going to put more money in our budget. I put $500,000 in our budget in support of people like Chuck, Chuck Levine here. 500,000 to make sure that they need additional assistance in developing more sophisticated curriculum, or curriculum that's more relatable, or connecting schools that want information about the, you know, the NOVA exhibit. I went to the NOVA exhibit. How do we get that digitized and in the classroom? So, and the work you're doing here, you know, why aren't we capturing this and getting that in the documentary you're working on? And congratulations on your possible Emmy.

Dana Arschin: Thank you.

Governor Hochul: There you go.

Dana Arschin: For anyone unfamiliar, we got our first nomination, an Emmy nomination for HMTC with my story on Holocaust survivor, Leo Ullman.

Governor Hochul: So, my view is, if they're saying that it's on page, you know, 200 of the 8th grade history book, and that covers it, there are thousands more ways we can use creative, digital content to make it more relevant to young people in a way that they can relate to. Let's make that our next challenge because it has to go from, hopefully, the home, where people teach love and tolerance and the fact that you have to have a tolerance center. Every school should be a tolerance center. That's just what we should be teaching our young people.

Tolerance for everyone and embracing it. This is what makes New York so fascinating and exciting. And those who don't honor that and respect that, maybe New York isn't your home. I mean, I just want to say, we are special for that reason, we are special for that reason.

So, at that forum we talked about more money, we got the money. We are continuing to focus on security grants as well — it's a different topic, but — we've quadrupled the amount of money that's going for security for cultural centers, for synagogues, for yeshivas, other religious institutions that are feeling threatened. And the rise of antisemitism, again, was not triggered by October 7th. It's been there. It's been there for thousands of years, but it just rears its ugly head every so often in a way that we cannot ignore. And people start thinking that this is becoming normalized — that's not acceptable in the State of New York. We're going to keep pushing it back every way we can through education and protection of our institutions.

I have increased the size of our social media monitoring unit to make sure we're watching for tracking hate crimes, by our State Police. And also, hate crimes were not even bail eligible. Did you know this? They were removed from the law, the kinds of crimes that were bail eligible. We put it back, and I, I'm proud. Just this year.

So, someone commits a crime, there's an element of hate to it, that's an accelerated offense you can add to it. And I want our district attorneys and our law enforcement to know that. Hate crimes are now bail eligible.

Dana Arschin: I was going to ask exactly what you talked about in 2022, the instruction, the survey regarding education. So, I know you talked about security and money, and that you have no say over curriculum. But what more can be done? Is there any way the State could mandate that educators have to come every year to visit their local tolerance center to learn? Like, money never seems to be enough. So how do we make it a reality?

Governor Hochul: That's what I'm talking about, is finding other ways to get students exposed to this. I do see hopeful signs. I was at the Rockland Community College and they have a Holocaust Museum there, but they also have — right embedded within it — is a cultural center for African studies because there was a great history of oppression from there. There were slaves in that area. And so, the woman who runs that program also learned everything about the Holocaust tours. They brought students to both to understand and create that synergy that should exist among, for example, the people who would be interested in both programs. Let them know that there are people whose stories need to be told.

So, I saw that there was not just tolerance for the African American history or Jewish history — blend them together in a case like that. And they have thousands of people coming through. They have 40,000 students come through that who all of a sudden, after seeing holograms and information and talking to Holocaust survivors, every one of them would walk out of there transformed with the experience they had in speaking to a real-life person who told the stories. Firsthand, this is not in a textbook. This makes it real. I think what you're getting at is a way to make it real for people, and that this is not past history. There is a history that precedes the present, but we have to address the present and hopefully the future.
Steve Israel: On that, I think we have a Cornell student here. I don’t know if she's in the room. Is Molly Goldstein here? Alright, Molly, stand up for a second.

Governor Hochul: Hi Molly.

Steve Israel: You know Molly Goldstein.

Governor Hochul: I know Molly.

Steve Israel: You did an event with her. Molly Goldstein is a student at Cornell University and is working with us to do a better job of raising the issue of antisemitism to the student body in Cornell, and that's a wonderful thing. And you know, I'm going to say, Molly — one lesson I've learned is that, you know, a former congressman isn't going to persuade university students to think a certain way. I'm not even sure a governor can.

But students are the best deliverers of message to other students. So, Molly, thank you very much for your work. She's a great intern for the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs. You met at an event you did, yes?

Governor Hochul: Yes, you know, Molly, it's so good to see you. I met Molly — this is again more family history than you need to know — but I had gone to Florida to bury my father and we came back at night, and I received word about the threats online against Cornell students. And I said to my team, “I'll be there for breakfast in the morning. Just get me there.” So, I went right to where the students were gathered. Molly — there were a number of you. I saw a lot of pain and fear in the students’ faces, especially those who were the freshman, sophomores.

The parents’ anxiety levels were off the charts. I mean, I sent my kids to school under different circumstances, and you worry about them every minute. And for the parents, and people told me they had nieces and nephews there, there was so much worry. And I said, “I'm going there to sit down and bring the State Police.” And our State Police regional captain from that area was Jewish, and he sat there and said, “I'm going to take care of these kids like they're my own.” He told me that on the way out the door. I said, “You better, because they're like my own too.”

And one of the questions these students had was if we can get more security cameras, right? And I said, “Well, there's a process. We have to go RFP to do this.” And all of a sudden, I said, “You know what? I'm just going to run down to Home Depot and get you security cameras right now.” It's like, I'm not putting up with all this bureaucracy. So, we got it done, right? Within a week we had security cameras there as well.

And I said, “I want you to feel safe because you deserve this. This should be a carefree time in your lives.” And that perpetrator — who I believe was a lone wolf — we found him, we tracked him down. I said, “Do not stop until you find this guy.” Federal charges, and he's not going to see the light of day anytime soon. And then we invited Molly up for a Hanukkah celebration at the mansion, too. We invited all the Cornell students who had to deal with that up to the mansion in Albany. So, thank you for that.

Steve Israel: How were the latkes in the Governor's Mansion, Molly? Were they okay?

Molly Goldstein: Excellent.

Governor Hochul: I did a good job, didn't I?

Steve Israel: You cooked them! Alright, just continuing on the issue of universities, and we're going to wrap up soon. Columbia began its semester, Cornell began its semester. So, how do you as Governor — how does the State — kind of monitor situations on campus and then step in if necessary to protect students?

Governor Hochul: We have a lot of experience in this as well. We've dealt with a lot of crises since I've been Governor. We've had every kind of climate disaster. We’ve had hurricanes, we’ve had tornadoes, we had thousand-year flooding events. I was on Long Island just a short time ago to see the flooding. So, I have a crisis management team which is second to none, and I activate them whenever I need the best and the brightest to solve problems.

I activated them when it came down to how we were dealing with the protests in the spring on college campuses. In fact, go back to last December, I sent a letter to every single college president in the State of New York and said, “You're on notice because, if you allow for the call of the genocide of a people, or allow for discrimination or harassment against any student, you are in violation of state and federal human rights laws. And I will enforce them.” So, we let them know that we know the law, we know their responsibility to have a safe campus environment. So, when the encampment started in the spring and a lot of violence at Columbia, I went to Columbia. I went to Hillel. I sat with students there and talked about how we are working closely with the campus police.

NYPD was primary and we are — I would say we're the backup. It depends on where it is. If it's a SUNY campus outside of New York City, campus police first to respond, community police, State Police are there to help out. But we also have a lot of monitoring systems. We watch for threats against anyone, but particularly our college campuses we are watching.

And this time, I convened — about a week and a half ago — 200 college presidents across the State of New York on a Zoom call. Again, saying, “We asked you weeks ago for your student safety plan. We're looking at them, and the time, place, and manner restrictions we expect you to have. Are you limiting people who are not able to show identification and they actually do belong on the campus? What's your policy?”

So, we really are demanding that there be plans in place, because now — it's not a surprise this year. Maybe people were surprised last spring, we're on notice now. It's all about preparing for the big storm. This is, again, my storm analogy. It's all the preparation in advance. So, we're in constant communication to make sure that, you know, things are — people have their right to speech, but you do not have the right to threaten, harass, or intimidate another fellow student. Full stop.

Dana Arschin: And have you gotten any response from the schools yet on what their plan is, and when they have to let you know by?

Governor Hochul: Yes, we have their plans. Yeah, we asked for all their plans in advance of the college semester starting. And so, again, we watch this closely. We are the enforcers of any human rights violations. But again, they did a lot of training. My team was involved. Everybody from state police, homeland security, emergency services.

We did training and operations with state police, with college campus police all over. Constant communication. Sharing information. You know, what threats you're hearing, how we're going to handle that. We want the campuses to be safe. Students shouldn't have to worry about this. This is the last thing that should be on their minds. The last thing.

And we have to get to an environment that we all had, at least I had growing up. Where I did my protest, but we did not take over places and threaten other students and make them feel unwelcome. There's a way to do it right, they did it the wrong way.

Dana Arschin: And any reaction to CUNY? So we talked about Columbia and Cornell and CUNY, the rise of antisemitism is rampant. Anything that you can do there in terms of any state power to help make it a safer environment?

Governor Hochul: I launched a study by Jonathan Lippman, a very distinguished former Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, eminently respected. I asked him to take on the responsibility of surveying and understanding what the culture is at [CUNY] that has led to a rise in antisemitism.

And are there best practices we can employ, not just there, but to extrapolate for other campuses as well. So, he has been working, he had 40 attorneys from his law firm working on this nonstop. They've interviewed hundreds of people. So it is a massive report that he has put together, and I think it's going to be released imminently.

Steve Israel: Governor, you speak with other governors routinely on both sides of the aisle. They have similar challenges in their states. The rise of antisemitism and hate crimes. What's that dialogue like? This is a national phenomenon, isn't it?

Governor Hochul: It's national, but I think they recognize we are really the epicenter. It is, you know, basically we have the largest Jewish population. You know, a larger population that needs to be protected from these threats. And so, I would say this is not on the – it's on everybody's radar, but it's not to the scale it is here. Other colleges – other states have had the experience with the college campus protests and the unrest and the encampments, so those are the conversations we have more likely around, you know, what we're doing to use our resources to protect.

But they're looking at us. You know, they want to see what we're doing here because they don't deal with anything of this scale at all.

Dana Arschin: I have to say, you've proven to be a strong ally. I was having an argument with my nanny who watches my two year old yesterday. She's sure you're Jewish. And I said, she's not Jewish. I said, her name's Kathy, Katherine. She said, “I'm telling you, she's Jewish. I see her in Israel. I see her doing this, doing that latkes in the governor's mansion.” I thought you would appreciate that.

Steve Israel: Can I let, let's say we're gonna wrap up soon, but I look - this is such a challenge, such a deep challenge for the people of New York, but it's not the only challenge that you have to deal with as governor.

And I wonder if you would just take a few minutes to tell us, what else are you focused on as governor. What are you focused on on Long Island? What do you think the major challenges are that confront us that we need to really focus on together?

Governor Hochul: Two have been – two issues have been my primary focus since I became governor. Crime, and this constituted crime. These are hate crimes. But crime – working with our legislature to make sure our laws give our law enforcement and prosecutors the power they need to protect our citizens. I can give you statistics all day long on how we've driven down the crime rate. It is extraordinary.

The shootings, the murders, the violent crimes are down to 1960s levels in many respects. But as long as people still feel anxious, we've not succeeded. So we have work to do to get people back to a place where they know that we're fighting crime. We're not done. We have a lot to do. But I think that's always on people's minds, Steve. Very much so.

And affordability. I mean, Long Island is a wonderful place to live. It's not that cheap, though. It costs a lot of money to live here. And one of the reasons the highest expense people have is their housing. And we have failed in the ambition to build enough housing so your children and grandchildren can be raised near you in the great communities where they started out.

The employers here are having to bring in workers from, you know, New Jersey and Connecticut and other places where they built more housing, so I would just say affordability, but under that umbrella is how to get more housing built in a responsible way. I've met a lot of these supervisors out here, Republican and Democrats, it's not a partisan issue, and how we can deal with affordability overall.

We're doing all we can to help families. I started off the summer saying, “I want this to be the summer of affordability.” We announced $350 million statewide for families that are earning less than $108,000 that they could get money for back to school, $350 per child back to school.

You know what that means? For a family of three, that's $1,000. I went shopping with a single mom with 12 year old twins. One of the children had disabilities. And we walked through the Target with that shopping cart. And she was so grateful, she kept saying, “I would not be able to get two backpacks this year, they'd have to share. I would not be able to get this.”

We went and got the water bottles, we got the folders, we bought the pencils. And at the end of it, I was so glad because when that tally came, when the cost of that came, I knew that everything we had just given her with the check, that we had covered it. And she says, “I work hard, I can't tell you I struggle, but this means everything to me.”

When we do something like that, it's a good day for me to know that we're making a difference. Child care, I had to leave my – I had to leave a job I loved as counsel to Senator Moynihan many, many years ago. Loved working on Capitol Hill, it was one of the highest honors of my life. But I had a baby and another baby, and there was no child care options back then, that were, you know, affordable or accessible, so I know the challenges.

And so we have made it so, if a family earns less than $100,000, the most they're going to pay for childcare is $15. We're subsidizing that from the state. Think about that. It's normally $350 a week, $15 if you're a family that's struggling. So, we are constantly thinking of ways to put more money back in the pockets of New Yorkers.

How to reduce their costs. Property taxes are high. I don't need to tell any of you that, but we don't do that one. I did that when I was in local government, but we're very sensitive to affordability and crime on Long Island in particular. That's statewide, but really, really in earnest here, so I feel good about where we're going.

We've turned the corner in many respects, I have great partners in the legislature like Chuck Levine, and we're going to keep doing it, we're going to keep working for people and, and listening and this is the highest honor of my life. I started in local government 30 years ago. If I had stayed a town board member, I would have been happy.

I was making a difference, taking care of my neighbors. I didn't ever look for that next rung on the ladder. But life has been good to me. I've had many blessings. And I'm grateful for every office I've been able to hold, including Congress, although I'm kind of glad to be out now.

Steve Israel: Me too. Final question, and then two final questions.

Dana Arschin: One last question from me. So I'd love your take on this. I know lifelong Democrats, who are Jews or who are Israel supporters who feel right now that they cannot vote Democrat. They feel for a number of reasons, but because of the growing antisemitic sentiment that seems to be spreading among a small but loud group of elected officials. What would you say to try to convince them otherwise? What is your party doing for Israel and overall relations between state and, you know, overall national policy right now on Israel?

Governor Hochul: I can happily answer that question.

Steve Israel: Except that we can't be too partisan because we're not, right?

Governor Hochul: That's too bad.

Dana Arschin: Yes, we are, we are a non-profit.

Steve Israel: I'm trying to protect your, your status, Dana.

Dana Arschin: This is fair, so we are a non-profit.

Governor Hochul: How far can I go? How far can I go? Well, you asked me to explain the perception that my party has. Is that fair?

Dana Arschin: Thank you, yes. Okay, okay. And why don't we focus on in relation with Israel.

Governor Hochul: Okay, okay. The voices of a loud minority do not represent the vast majority.

I want to be very clear about that. People are entitled to their opinion, but anyone who defends terrorist organizations, to me, is not espousing the views of the mainstream Democratic Party at all. At all. And I want to be clear on this. When I heard a candidate for president at a convention, when Kamala Harris spoke about this, when she introduced herself to the nation in her first major address, she was clear as a bell.

She said, “I stand with Israel. I stand with Israel's right to defend itself. I want the hostages home and we want peace.” So I think we'd all agree with that. I was – we would all agree with that. And she is the standard bearer of the Democratic Party. So that's pretty compelling if you ask me.

And there are others, you know, I'll say this, you can stop me if you want, I mean, I saw that J.D. Vance refused to condemn comments you know, he's gonna go on Tucker Carlson, fine, but they're believing in this person who is one of the premier Holocaust deniers, who exists and appears on this show and is able to spew their venom. I've got a problem with that. I'll call that out any day of the week.

And if that was a Democrat, I'd call it out, but it's not a Democrat. So I just want people to say, don't be misled by people who want you to believe that we don't care. And I'm not an outlier. I am not an outlier. This is the mainstream view of the Democratic Party in the United States of America, starting with the President and the Vice President on down.

So, I'm happy to have a deeper political conversation. I've probably gone right up to the line. And maybe over it.

Steve Israel: Let's end, on a slightly different plane, you were kind enough to meet outside with some of the Holocaust survivors who are here today. And I would love to end with you speaking with them. What is your message to those who are with us today who survived the Holocaust? I'm going to end where I began, October 7th. October 7th was the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust. It was another Holocaust. And so what's the governor – what's your message to the survivors who've joined us today?

Governor Hochul: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you were robbed of your childhood and you had to see atrocities that occurred to you, your family members, loved ones that you maybe never got to know. And after going through the journey of life and finding yourselves in a country that welcomed you and embraces you and loves you, that at this point in your lives. That you see the rise in that hatred that defined your childhood and robbed your childhood.

I'm sorry that is the experience you're dealing with today, but know that you are cherished. We honor what you have been through. We will never forget what happened and we'll make sure that generations from now understand, will pass on your stories.

So please take some comfort, that we will not let that happen again, ever. Ever in your lifetime.

Steve Israel: Governor Kathy Hochul. Thank you Governor. Thank you so much.