A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - P!nk’s Delusional Victimhood (with Mohammed el-Kurd)

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

A cultural and political earthquake revolving around Ed Sheeran, Macklemore, and P!nk might have felt semi-plausible in 2012, but certainly not in 2026. And yet! After Macklemore called for a free Palestine at Ed’s concert, a disgruntled P!nk took to Instagram to call for apologies and refunds. In a follow-up essay, the 2000s pop icon clarified she does not need a refund, but wants to make one thing clear: as a Jew, Macklemore’s words made her feel unsafe. Today, Palestinian author and poet Mohammed el-Kurd helps dissect P!nk’s big feelings, the evolving rhetoric of Liberal Zionism, and the power of calling something what it is. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsor! Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at https://www.rocketmoney.com/fruity.  Follow Mohammed on Twitter. Read Mohammed’s book, Perfect Victims. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doesn't she have a song about super gross? Yes, she does. The call is coming from inside the house. My intro is a little long, so you're going to have to sit tight for a second. I apologize. No problem. Hello, hello, and welcome back to A BitFruity. I'm Matt Bernstein.

I'm so happy that you're here. If you've been paying any attention to the news lately, then you probably know that perhaps the biggest cultural spiral of a news cycle so far this year has centered around the concert tour of Ed Sheeran, a sentence I thought I would never say. I also never thought I'd be listening to Macklemore while doing my makeup at 8 in the morning, but here we are.

Strange times indeed. For anyone unfamiliar, here's the Spark Notes. Ed Sheeran, one of the richest and most popular musicians in the world, who started off making good music, shout out the A-Team, but then realized he could make a lot more money writing dance floor evacuating love songs that are simultaneously for everyone and no one, is nine months into his sixth concert tour, the loop tour. At a recent show in New Jersey, rapper Macklemore served as an opening act.

Macklemore has been friends with Ed Sheeran for over a decade and is an outspoken anti-Zionist, which contrasts Ed's mealy-mouthed commitment to avoiding political speech at all costs. At the show, McElmore made an impassioned speech, which concluded with a call to Free Palestine. One of the reasons why I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart, Free Palestine. My message is for peace, love for all human beings to be treated with, dignity, respect, and equality. So I say free Palestine. Followed by a performance of Hins Hall,

a song he wrote for Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was murdered alongside six of her family members when Israel shelled their family car as they attempted to flee Gaza city. The praise and backlash was swift. Zionist groups like the ADL and stop anti-Semitism, predictably labeled McElmore and anti-Semite. The chorus of controversy got louder, and six days after the show, Ed Sheeran kicked his friend of 13 years off of his tour. Ed, as it were, had faced mounting pressure from the Zionist billionaire Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and of Gillette Stadium, where Ed was set to perform. Robert Kraft rallied a number of the other stadium owners, all of whom threatened to ban Ed's show,

from happening if he brought Macrimor on stage with him. Instead of using his leverage as one of the biggest living pop stars, Ed Shearren caved, and that was that. The following day, Ed put out one of the worst PR statements I've personally ever seen, which opened with, quote, I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The suffering and pain caused on both sides is a tragedy. Thank you, Ed Sheeran.

Good to know. Within two hours, all of Ed's opening acts pulled out of the tour as well as his own band in what is perhaps the biggest showing of solidarity towards Palestine in the entertainment industry since the genocide began. But we're not really here to talk about any of that. We're here to talk about Alicia Beth Moore Hart. Or as you might know her, P. exclamation point N.K. Wait, her real name's Alicia.

Her real name's Alicia. That's crazy. After a McElmore's performance went viral, Pink shared to her 12 million Instagram followers, a post from the right-wing anti-Palestinian doxing group Stop Antisemitism. If you don't know what Stop Antisemitism is, you might be more familiar with, like, libs of TikTok, which dox is anyone who, like, works as a teacher or anyone in public service, really, who, like, shows support for queer people or is queer themselves. Stop anti-Semitism is, like, that for Palestinians. Like, they famously pressured Delta into, like, releasing a statement about a flight attendant who wore Palestinian flagpin. That's the kind of group we're talking about.

She reposted something from Stop Anti-Semitism, which accused Macklemore of turning the Ed Sheeran concert into a, quote, political nightmare for Jewish concert goers and called on Ed to apologize to and refund his fans. Pink, who has actually been posting disgusting shit for a long time, which most of the most of Most people ignored until this, more on that in a second, was flamed. And so Pink posted a fierce photo of herself, accompanied by a wall of text I might describe as a liberal Zionist manifesto. Now, I considered making an episode about Pink in her totality, as I sometimes do make these biographical episodes on this podcast, how she fits into a trend of artists who ditched the countercultural aesthetics that made them famous,

her flirtation with early 2000s misogyny, and so on. But the text she's provided us, next to this fierce photo of herself, is so rich. And by that, I mean, it reveals a lot about the psychology of people who still cling to Zionism, but think of themselves as progressive. I think pink is either delusional about the ideology she supports or lying to us, or lying to herself, or likely some combination of the above. Think of this as a sister episode to the beloved unraveling of Deborah Messing, where we began to tease out the contradictions inherent to liberal Zionism.

Today, we'll go deeper and probably still bring up Deborah Messing, because this is the A BitFruity podcast. And to do that, thank you for getting through my long intro with me, to do that today. I am so excited to be joined by a friend, someone who I really adore and whose work, You know, I've grown so much from Muhammad L. Kurd, welcome to the show. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for having me. It's really, really a pleasure. You sent me a message on Instagram like a year ago that you had listened to the Deborah Messing episode. And ever since then, I've made it my mission to drag you onto this podcast. And here we are.

I'm glad I can make it finally. And I think it's the correct episode to be on because I'm surprisingly a fan of or used to be a fan of pink. You're a pink fan? Those are your favorite pink sound? I know a couple of her songs. I like the sober song. I like all music about addiction. So she has a song called sober that I like. Oh, yeah. Radio hit.

Yeah. Muhammad, for people who are unfamiliar with you or your book, Perfect Victims, which is now translated into how many languages? Think about 16 now. Translate into 16 languages. Could you maybe fill people in on, like, who you are, your backstory? I'm a writer. I'm a poet.

I'm a journalist. I'm from, I was born and raised in. Occupy Jerusalem in Palestine, I came into the spotlight in two phases, I would say, early on when I was a child, when I was the subject of a documentary about forced expulsions in Occupy Jerusalem by settler organizations and charities and whatnot. And then again, in 2020 and 2021, when the same thing happened in our neighborhood and into our home. So our house, our house, like many, many, many others, was specifically targeted by these settler organizations that are funded by American charity groups. So settlers, like, they came into your house and they, while you were living there as a child, and they were like, we live here now. Yeah. As absurd as it sounds, as absurd as it sounds, it's fairly common in Jerusalem and fairly common in Palestine.

But literally, settlers, in my case, a guy from Long Island, New York just came into the picture. Obviously, this is under the protection and with the participation of the Israeli military and the Israeli police force. So we came home from school. There were hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and all of our furniture was across the street, and half of our house was taken by Israeli settlers, and we were then forced to share half of our home with them and lived through their brutality and torture and really like sexual, weird sexual harassment. And all of this happened against the backdrop of the Israeli police being there,

so we really couldn't do anything to protect ourselves. And I want to emphasize how fairly common that this practice is, not just to us, but to many, many Jerusalemites. I mean, part of why I really wanted to talk to you about everything we're going to talk about today is that, like, one of the sort of central tenets of Zionism, which Pink has very much expressed to the world over the last couple of weeks, is this feeling of constant victimhood while simultaneously like attending like a red carpet. U.S. Open event. I want to talk about what Pink thinks Zionism is versus what Zionism really is. And I feel like as someone who was faced with what Zionism really is as a child, I know I know you can speak to that really super well. I mean, I think the what you just pointed out, the analogy, I think it's really a perfect metaphor for Zionism, the fact that she can speak about unsafe and feeling of fear and victimized and blah, blah, blah, whilst I'm entirely

being one of the most successful musicians in the world attending a red carpet event. I think it's the perfect metaphor for Zionism as a whole, because, you know, we're talking about a people and a nation that is, you know, diplomatically, financially, economically, backed by the West, a nation that has the only country with a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, you know, a nation with so much power and privilege and access that simultaneously has inhabited this victim complex. You know, I think this kind of discrepancy is baked into the national DNA of Israelis in general. We are going to get into all of that in, I think, great depth today.

But first, because I do enjoy talking about the online antics of out-of-touch celebrities, I'm going to throw this up on the screen for anyone watching the video version of this episode. What do you make of the visual of Pink responding to criticism over? over her reposting this right-wing anti-Palestinian doxian website with like a golden hour DSLR portrait of herself was the idea I guess that she like looks fierce like she looks like she's getting like serving kind she looks stoic I think she thought she looked stoic it kills me because it's one thing for you know ed Shear and just put out this statement that's like ridiculous but it's like at least he had

At least he could do it in like a notes app apology fashion. I kind of do appreciate that she just fully blew past the the apology notes app screenshot and just posted this like fierce photo of herself. Yeah, when you put it that way, it's really funny. One of the other things I want to say about pink, not that it really matters that much, but pink has been posting some pretty heinous Zionist shit for a long time. It was just this instance that got people's attention in the wake of. October 7th, but also several weeks into the genocide. She posted a like a 10-point plan on her Instagram towards like peace in the Middle East, I guess.

Did you see this? No, I did not. That's hilarious. Show me. You want to read it? Yeah. One, the hostages need to come home. Two, Hamas is a wonderful organet.

No, I'm going to. Hamas is a theory that seeks to destroy Jews. They also murder and oppress women. the LGBTQIA plus community and political opponents. Three, Palestinians need a solution that honors their aspirations and their humanity. Four, neither Palestinians or Israelis can exist peacefully under the threat of Hamas. Five, protecting innocent civilian life must remain of utmost priority. Six, no one should.

I don't feel like these things are in order. Six, no one should celebrate the murder of women and children. So we have to cancel the party. Ripping down images of kidnapped children is inhumane. Seven, nuance and complexity are not rewarded on social media. That's not really a step to take. A, the responsibility of traditional media to report the unbiased facts has never been more critical. Couldn't agree more.

Someone say that to the New York Times. Prejudice and active hate toward any group is unacceptable. 10, any violent or hate-filled demonstrations taking place around the world are making the problem worse. not better. And she ends it with a place for us to meet. A place for us to meet. One of my favorite things that Zionists do, and by favorite, I'm being facetious,

but they'll always list like a series of like demands or like what they consider to be objective platitudes that are all just upholding Zionism. And then they'll be like, this is the even keeled middle ground, a place for us to meet. Yeah. There was like you hate peace and we want peace.

And then they've almost sent to some of their hands. Also, and this was one of the things that really blew my mind. Months later, Pink reposted a graphic from Jonah Platt, Jonah Platt, brother of Ben Platt, son of Mark Platt, the man who perhaps has more connections to the entertainment world than any other child of entertainers alive and yet makes a podcast, which, you know, me too, buddy, me too, can't talk too much shit. but he wrote and she reposted

Today is a good day to let your Jewish friends know you see and believe them and their lived experience and love them more than you love social media propaganda and tokenize anti-Zionist voices. This pissed me off so bad. This was also in the wake of the Bandai Beach massacre in Australia.

Oh, that's fucked up. She was basically like blaming the violence against Jews in Australia on anti-Zionist Jews. It's fucked up. Which I, and that didn't get heat at the time. I was like, Pink. To be fair, who's paying attention to her, you know?

I'm paying attention to this stuff because I'm not well. And like, I look at like what all of these celebrities for my childhood post all the time. But like, you know, many people have made the point after this week that they're going to have to boycott Ed Shearin and Pink. And as it turns out, it won't take a whole lot to boycott these two artists. Pink also, you know, Pink has made these like propaganda videos with Noah Tishby. She's committed to the bit. Wow. I didn't know that.

Oh, yeah. She did these, like, propaganda videos with Noah Tishby. Noah Tishby, I have a whole bonus episode about her on the Patreon, but she is a former envoy to the Netanyahu government, like, basically a propagandist to fight the, quote, delegitimization of Israel. That's, it was in her job title. She was actually fired by Netanyahu her fractional disagreements about judicial reform. And now she just does it for the love of the game.

And also what I imagine is a lot of money. But so Pink's been on this for a while, and yet this was the one that broke through. And last thing before we get into the essay, I want to start on a light, if stupid, note. In breaking from my usual chronological method of podcasting and perhaps in an effort to build suspense for what we're about to read, I want to first examine the seven Instagram stories Pink posted the day after posting the essay we're about to dissect. Pink was getting heat for that essay, and so she responded with a series of what can only be described as divorced, sassy white mom millennial zazzle mug print graphics. You want to take turns?

Sure, I'll start. Being liked by everyone is a clown's job, even though famously many people hate clowns. The next one is it's like a cartoon of a flamingo and written around the flamingo. I'm not for everyone. And honestly, that has saved me a lot of time. The one next to this is a length screen. It says, what do you mean? End quote.

Probably what I fucking said. Burn. Oh, no, she didn't. Next one, rainbow text painted on a white canvas. Don't let idiots ruin your day. It's your day. Ruin it yourself, heart. Was she posting these on the same day?

She was not only posting these on the same day, but I was in the airport waiting to board a flight when this was happening. and I was so annoyed because of the text that we were about to read that Pink had written that I was like refreshing her Instagram page. Again, I don't see this as like a flattering portrayal of my own behavior with all of this. But I was. I was refreshing her Instagram page. And it was like every 10 minutes she posted another one of these cards that was like,

fuck the haters. I was like, Pink, you have $200 million. And like, wait. You think she was sending them? to her publicist in getting like approved or just oh no this was raw posting like from bed I think okay the next one is a cat vogging maybe like a ragdoll like posing weirdly like cuntily and it says if they want to paint you as the villain pose the next one it's like a queen almost like from like a deck of

cards kind of vibe like it's a queen drinking a mug of tea if my honesty offends you imagine how much I can't stand your bullshit whoa and then okay wait the last one is actually my favorite you want to read it yeah sure it's a it's a it's a duck inexplicably it's a it's a duck with butterfly wings, like smirking at the sky. You've never seen one of these? Wait, really? No, I've never seen them. I'm like, I don't know if there are like a lot of ducks that were butterfly wings with bows on them.

It's a pink original. I don't just say wild things on social media. In real life, I say them with eye contact. Whoa. Boom. This is sort of like final boss 2010's Pinterest girl boss posting, as many people have pointed out. But I think this is also crucially indicative of a wider phenomenon that I've grown tired of, which is like people thinking that having online haters is evidence of their correctness,

which in and of itself feels like downstream from the conservative cancel culture panic. But like I understand that there's like cultural and political cachet to like having haters. I think especially in this time where people are having like a lot more conversations about. people who were wronged in decades past for being right too early, for example. I think there's this narrative of like, you all hate me, but I'm a warrior and I'm going to persist through it. But I'm sorry, you can write on Twitter that the sky is blue and someone is going to say something mean to you. Everyone has haters. I have haters. And in fact, this is why I basically just like stopped talking about that. First of all, I think it's boring and no one cares that you have haters. It's like,

congrats, your famous person online. Like, no one cares that you have haters. But also, it's not evidence of anything except for the fact that, like, you exist in public at this point. And I don't think that's good, but everyone has haters. Make your argument. I also think it's fair. Like, I don't think everything, I think it's okay for people to disagree with you or even be a little bit vitriolic. And that doesn't really amount to violence if you are in the position of wealth and access to power that she is. And, you know, I think like get a grip. Do you want to get into the text at hand. My friends, we've waited long enough. We are now going to spend much of the episode reading Pink's liberal Zionist manifesto. Within its text, I've found meaning, and I've separated that meaning

into a series of vignettes, through which I hope we can all learn more about Zionism, about pink, and maybe more about ourselves. I'm just kidding. I don't know if we're going to learn about ourselves. But without further ado, the statement begins, I've been quiet. in my own words for a week, which you know isn't like me. So here they are. Last Sunday, I reposted somebody else's post about

McLemore's set at Ed Sheeran's show. It said things in words I didn't write, and I wouldn't have chosen all of them. Then the comments came, and I did what I do when I'm hurt, which is post snarky memes and act like I'm fine. That's on me.

A repost isn't a statement and a meme isn't a spine. Do you think that's AI? I don't know. A meme isn't a spine. It's very like chat GPT. Like a this isn't a this and a this isn't a this. Yeah.

We haven't really yet gotten to the meat of the statement, obviously, but a repost isn't a statement? Isn't that literally what it is? Quite literally a statement. Also, it's interesting in this manifesto, as you call it, she begins by distancing herself from the post she reposted. But obviously to those who've read the statement, she then, I guess, adopts it again. That's the thing. I actually think this is like a really fitting intro to the rest of what she says, because what she's saying here is like, I wouldn't have said it that

way. And the stop anti-Semitism people, you know, calling the McElmore thing, you know, saying that he turned Ed Sheeran's concert into a nightmare for Jews. That's a little harsh. That's a little crazy. Like, I wouldn't say that. This is coming from like an openly like right wing Zionist group, which is like distinct from what I'm about to tell you, which I think is important to keep in mind. She continues. Social media makes all of us cheap and fast and we all know it. But I'd rather be disagreed with for what I actually said than hated for what anybody else wrote. So let me say it. I was born a Jew. I didn't pick it and I've never hidden it. And this week, a whole lot of people decided what I believe

without asking me, without checking a single thing I've ever said or done. Wrong. I've been all over what she's said and done. I know what she thinks. Sorry, continue. Because of a repost and the word Jew where apparently enough like the zeroing in on the word Jew is killing me. Anyway, because of a

repost and the word Jew were apparently enough to fill in the rest. But let me fill it in dot, dot, dot, dot, myself. Of course I don't speak for Israel for any government. I never have. What I said in October 23 is still exactly what I believe. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Palestinians deserve

a future. The honors their humanity and their aspirations. Protecting innocent life comes first everywhere and nobody should ever celebrate the death of a child. Anybody's child. I spent a decade as a UNICEF ambassador for kids who did not choose the country or the way they were born into. There's like

an undertone here. We can talk about it. And I have grieved every one of them on both sides of that fence. I didn't do it from behind the screen. I went to those children and held them. I'm not going to litigate a complex war in an Instagram caption, and I'm not going to recite anybody's slogan to earn back a follower. Discussion one, liberal Zionism.

So this felt like Muhammad Bate to me. She writes, Protecting innocent life comes first, everywhere, and nobody should ever celebrate the death of a child, anybody's child. So just to kick us off here, liberal Zionism is the flavor of Zionism Pink deals in. Liberal Zionists believe that the existence of a Jewish ethno state in Palestine, which creates second-class citizens of Palestinians through an apartheid system, is compatible with other human rights-based causes, which Pink frequently boasts her support of. Liberal Zionists think that the

maintenance of a Jewish ethno state is in itself a civil rights cause, alongside things like LGBT rights and anti-racism. And liberal Zionists believe that the problem with Israel is not Zionism, but a perversion of Zionism by Israel's far right, represented by leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben-Govir, etc. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind how seriously Netanyahu has damaged first and foremost Israel. And second, the perception that people, not just in the United States, but around the world, have of Israel. We'll get into that in a bit. But the leaders I just listed show an open disdain for Palestinians. Two weeks ago, Israeli security minister, Itmar Ben-Govir tweeted an AI-generated video showing Palestinians being loaded by Israelis

into a slaughterhouse on a conveyor belt. Liberal Zionists like pink, in supposed contrast, professed their sadness over the deaths of innocent Palestinians. They mourn the loss of Palestinian children whose deaths, they say, could have been avoided if it weren't for the leadership of certain Palestinian adults, certain non-innocent Palestinians.

Now, I say this is Muhammad Bait, because for people unfamiliar with U.S. work, much of it deals in this categorizing of Palestinians as innocent versus not innocent, people who deserve it versus people who don't. And when I read Pink's invocation of the word, innocent, my Muhammad al-Kurd senses began to tingle. I think you're absolutely right. There is a tendency in the, I think, in liberal Zionist spaces and in many of the Western spaces, and Arab states, to be frank, that are sympathetic to Zionist tendencies. You know, I think wholesale, all Palestinian life is condemned to death,

but there are the Palestinians that deserve to be mourned. And then there are Palestinians that we are forbidden from mourning. And it seems that she puts children in that camp. But what I found even more grating about the, or infuriating about the statement is the implication of the line. She says, I've been a UNICEF ambassador for kids who did not choose the country or the war they were born into. As if to say, you know, by saying the country,

as if to say it's not their fault that they're Palestinian, still problematizing the fact they're Palestinian. And this is like a liberal tendency we see among many self-professed Zionists or human rights believers. And you know, you mentioned Pet Salat's Mottrej and Etemar bin Ghvir. And I want to point out the fact that Etamar bin Qvir to be exacted is Israel's policies literally personified. What I find so funny and frustrating at the same time is that people like Pink may have an issue with his venom and his ritual and the way he spits things and the way he's saying things bluntly.

But what he is so often saying is just a mere reflection of Israeli policy, systematized violence that is codified into law, right? He once got on television and he said Jewish life and Jewish security is more important than Palestinian law. life and then somebody from the White House bemoaned that statement as unacceptable, even though that is literally Israeli law, whereby Jewish life is literally more valuable and more precious than Palestinian life. So it seems as though pinks and the likes have no issue with what kind of blood is at the hands, what kind of violence is at the hands of these Israelis, they just want them to wear a glove while committing it. Is there anything else I should tease? out in that statement because a repost and the word Jew were apparently enough to fill in the rest.

But let me fill it in myself. Not to be snarky, but one of the other things that really came through in this essay from Pink is not just how problematic her beliefs are, but like this is going to be snarky, but like how insufferable of a person she seems to be. It's just, it's all of this like, you put words in my mouth based on the Instagram story that I posted. And nobody knows what I. think because nobody asked. And I'm not going to tell you what I think. I'm just going to keep

alluding to the fact that I think something. I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to the sponsor of today's episode. This podcast sponsors and patrons help make the show free for all of you. So if you'd like to check out the sponsor, you can check out the sponsor. If you would like to use the next 90 seconds to zone out, look at the sky, go take a pee break, I can't tell you what to do with your time, nor would I like to. You know how commercials work anyway. Shout out to the sponsor of today's episode, Rocket Money. There is really never a bad time to get a hold of your finances.

And if you've been on the lookout for a really easy way to do that, rocket money might be the right tool for you. And I get it. Budgeting sucks. Reviewing your own bills sucks. Thinking about money in general, kind of sucks. Yet rocket money makes it as easy and painless as a tool reasonably can. It's a personal finance app that gives you a dashboard, lays out all of your expenses, what comes in, what goes out. It helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions with just a few that newspaper that you subscribe to that maybe you forgot about or the magazine. I subscribe to a lot of stuff. I like to read a lot of stuff.

And it can get hard to keep track of everything, especially with how difficult some services make it to unsubscribe. I personally think it should be illegal to have to write an email to a services subscription department to request that they unsubscribe you and cancel your incoming payments, but it's for another day. If you'd like to get a hold of your finances, you can head over to rocketmoney.com slash fruity. To try it out, that is rocketmoney.com slash fruity. And now let's get back to the episode.

She continues. Here's what I was reacting to. I was in the room at the Grammys in 2014 when McElmore wrapped same love. And 33 couples, gay and straight, got married to it. and I cheered. No questions asked. Four months later, McElmore put on a hooked nose, a black beard, and a bull cut,

performed in it, and called it a, quote, random costume. Every Jew I know knew exactly what it was. The same love, it turned out, had a guest list, and we weren't on it. This is AI. It's AI.

This is AI. I mean, I think it's AI. But he apologized. and I let it go, because that's what we do. We let it go. Then last weekend, he stood in front of a stadium full of music-loving families with violent images from a war on the screens,

dedicated a song to the movement of his choice, so dismissive, and then took the mic to tell all of the Jews in the stadium that it wasn't about them. You don't get to decide that for us. that's what prompted my repost not free Palestine and not anyone's right to say it

I have never asked for another artist to be silenced and I'm not asking now wow I don't need anyone fired and I don't need a refund I do believe that she does not need money what I need is to be able to say

as a Jewish mom that scared me and it scared people I love Without being told our fear is just propaganda, and without being told, I'm somehow cool with genocide because I noticed. Discussion two, Zionist feelings. I just first want to get out of the way the 2014 McElmore Jew-face costume. Have you seen this? No, but the photo, the way she described it, I was like, hmm, doesn't sound that crazy, but the photo is a bit hilarious.

The photo is crazy. The photo is crazy. And Macomore, like, God bless you. I think you've done all the right things lately. This is crazy. She let it go. Why is she bringing it up now? I thought she let it go.

I think we all know why she's bringing it up now. But just to clear the air on that really quickly, because I don't necessarily think that we can continue without just like explaining what happened here. So basically, in 2014, Macklemore performed a pop-up concert as part of a larger multi-artist exhibition in Seattle, where he wore this wig, stick-on beard, and a very large prosthetic nose. It looks, I mean, undeniably like a Jewish caricature, like an anti-Semitic cartoon.

Okay, first of all, he immediately apologized for this. He explained that he was trying to disguise himself, as my understanding is the concert was, like, a secret until it happened. He said, quote, as it turns out, the fake noses they sell at the costume store are usually big. My nose didn't fit most of them. So I ended up with a big witch nose. I went with a black beard because that's the furthest color from my natural hair color. There is no worse feeling than being misunderstood, especially when people are hurt or offended.

I respect all cultures and all people. I would never intentionally put down anybody for the fabric that makes them who they are. I love human beings, love originality, and happen to love. of a weird outfit from time to time. Accidental Jew face. I mean, who among us hasn't? I think this was accidental Jew face. If Malcolmor is someone who had like an even remotely robust history of like flirting with like

actual anti-Semitism, anti-Semites, I just think if he was like trying to be a discreet anti-Semite, I feel like only someone who would never ever actually apologize for being anti-Semitic, someone like a Nick Fuentes would do this and then not, you know, apologize for it immediately. Yeah, and the apology seems really sincere and mature and I'm of the mind that people should be forgiven once they apologize, not to not to make decisions for Jews, but that just made two sense. None of this is why we're even here. Yeah. Like pink, pink wrote like, I forgave him and you know who forgave him the ADL.

You know, you know what's interesting also is that if you look at what is now defunct the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, their prime strategy or tactic is you cannot debunk the message, so you must debunk the messenger. You cannot discredit the message, so you discredit the messenger. And this is exactly what she's doing. She's deflecting. Instead of responding to the content of what he said, she's deflecting by bringing up something from like over maybe 10 years ago, which is classic Zionist tactics. People are only bringing this up now because of the Israel conversation. So let's get back to that. When Pink quotes in this statement, McElmore saying that this isn't about Jews, told Jews this wasn't about them, but he doesn't get to decide that for us.

She seems to be inferring that his comment was dismissive of Jews, but it wasn't. The opposite was true. To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, Criticism of apartheid being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace, love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. Pink's categorization of him saying that is he told Jews it wasn't about us. You know, I think McElmore's statement in response to being dropped from the Etchiren concert was so, so, so, so masterful. and selfless, and I was so amazed by it, and I think reach out to him directly. But I will say that this bit of this speech that you just played right now actually kind of,

I find to be a bit unstrategic. Because to me, it's irrelevant whether or not criticism of Israel is offensive to Jews. And I don't think the holding of hands and the calling and the prioritizing, for good intention, the prioritizing of Jewish feelings is helpful to anyone, because what it does is that, again, it takes away the light and it takes away the focal point and the centrality of the genocide at hand to talk about what I consider to be a very secondary conversation, a very side conversation. This is not a critique against him or anybody who does this things in good faith. I know so many people that do this, but I famously written a book about why I think it's a bad strategy in the long term.

Because again, it reinforces the idea that Palestinian advocacy needs to be. pre-approved by Jews in order for it to be valid. And I take issue with that, to be honest. I also think it's a bad strategy in the short term for reasons that are very evident in this essay. You know, Zionists have created this like impossible discursive dilemma where they constantly tell us that it is anti-Semitic to hold Jews worldwide responsible for the actions of the Zionist regime, thereby conflating Jews with Israel, which I agree. Yeah, of course. As much as, like, I feel responsible just because it's being done in my name as a Jewish

person. But, but broadly, I agree. It's like you shouldn't go up to a Jewish person and start yelling at them about what they personally are doing to the Palestinians without knowing anything about their stances on anything. Like, I think that could be anti-Semitic for sure. But when anti-Zionists like Macklemore explicitly separate their criticism of Israel from Jews, here we have Zionists, like pink, cry anti-Semitism regardless, insisting that it is in fact

not up to McElmore to decide when Jews and Israel can be conflated. And I think this is like a perfect encapsulation of the centrality of Zionist feelings, however incoherent, in the global debate over Israel and Palestine. And emphasis on the word feelings, by the way, because I feel like that gets lost in the noise of these conversations is that we are more often than not talking about feelings and sentiments, not lives, not bodies. We're talking about feelings. And so the feelings of Zionists are given primacy over the lives and very often the mutilated bodies of Palestinians. And that is a crazy, like you said, to use your word, it's a crazy dilemma that we're in, that we're constantly having to address feelings while bombs are raining down on us.

Even McElmore, like, so explicitly being like, I'm not blaming Jewish people. And then Pink just insisting that he's blaming Jewish people. And it's like, well, you can't win. The goal post keeps changing. And this is like the lesson we need to learn is that there is no appeasing them. It's not that they have an issue with how we advocate. It's that they have an issue with the fact that we advocate at all. This was evident in her, you know, October 7th solution to the peace in the Middle East where she's like, any protests are bad and a pogrom.

Do you want to talk more about the politics of like appeal? Yeah, I mean, that's great that you bring it up. I think, you know, we have been particularly after the first Intifada and the second Intifada in the 70s and 80s and in the early 2000s after like a period of plain hijackings and suicide bombings and various ways of violent resistance. And also this is post 9-11. and we have portrayed largely as violent terrorists. And many of our Palestinian, not ancestors, but like the generations before us, and also many of our allies and well-meaning journalists and diplomats and activists, have sought a toolbox that seeks to resituate the Palestinian from the category of the demonized,

the category of the terrorists into a category of the victim. And the hope was by resituating the Palestinian in that category, the Palestinian would then be seen as a human being and then would be seen as deserving of human rights dignity, freedom, equality, and whatnot. Unfortunately, of course, that toolbox was born out of necessity, but it has been, it has proved to be myopic, because just as portraying the Palestinians as a terrorist is dehumanizing and, you know, a one-dimensional portrayal,

so is portraying the Palestinian as a victim, because it says that we can only enjoy a very limited affect in order to be seen as human beings. And if we are to be angry or if we are to be, hateful or hate or oppressors or whatever, we would then be condemned to that, essentially. And some of what I call the politics of appeal are like an overreliance on Jewish voices. Instead of saying, this human rights organization says this, you must say, this Israeli or even Israeli human rights scholars say this, because their Israelis or their Jewishness gives

their testimony a lot more validity. Now, in the short term, that may convince a racist, who doesn't believe Palestinian testimony of the fact that Israel's crimes are true. But in the long term, what it does is that it reinforces the hierarchy of testimony that we're dealing with in the first place. And it does not challenge the problem at hand, which is the racism, or at least the racial bias that exists in the listener, the viewer, the reader, that prevents them from taking Palestinian testimony and interrogating it. Another attempt to appeal would be like, you know, the highlighting of women's children's deaths over Palestinian men's deaths. And that what it does, in short and brief, what it does is that, one, it takes away the agency of women and children.

And it robs them and erases their contributions to our cause and to our history, to our very, very, very diverse history. But at the same time, it condemns Palestinian men to die. It says that Palestinian men are presumably fighters and fighters are presumably always supposed to die. And those tactics, again, most of the time they come from a good place and attempt to outsmart or outwit the system. very Zionist, the very racist system. But they fall short. I think it's time that all of us are a lot more dignified in our approaches. And we don't, I think we can learn this like from the black movement. We can learn it from feminist movements. We can be a lot more dignified in the sense that we can root our politics in self-respect and we can approach the world with a politics that does not

shrink us and does not belittle us in order to cuddle our oppressors. You know, it's so interesting to the constant need to cite Jewish voices. And like on one hand, I get it because what Zionists do essentially is identity politics, where it's, you know, they'll say things like, you know, if you're not Jewish, you can't speak on this. Yeah. And so this has, of course, created a very loud, vocal contingent of Jews who do speak on this because, like, I am personally of the belief that, like, it's a moral duty. And also, if these people, if their priority is stopping anti-Semitism, as they so often claim and is sometimes actually the name of their group. I think the best way that we can curb anti-Semitism,

which, you know, anti-Semitism is bad. I think a genocide is worse. But if we're talking about anti-Semitism, I think it's probably actually really wise to loudly distinguish Jews from the actions of the state committing the genocide. But regardless of all of that, like, one of the reasons I'm really moved by you and our dynamic is we're like the same age. And just having known you for some time, I think that, like, a lot of things about us are similar.

I think we're both very dry. You, I think, are drier than me. But still, political and... Makeup gurus. We're both... Yeah, exactly. But we were born in different places, and that has shaped our biggest differences. So much of why I get credibility as a voice in online politics at all is because I'm a

Jew talking about this. And I'm grateful for that, but also to your point, like, it's, it's unfair. It's unearned valor. Yeah, I think, I think we exist in a world in which your Jewishness is a currency. And I don't think, I think it would be foolish. If you're someone interested in the Palestinian cause, I think it would be foolish of you to just abandon that currency or not exploit that currency. I think it's actually quite wise to use the access you have into certain rooms and certain dinner tables that I may never access. I think that's quite wise and that's the strategic thing to do. But you must also name the elephant in the room. And that's, I think, what you've been doing. And I think that's what many people have been doing and must continue to

do is that the elephant in the room being that the reason why your testimony holds a lot more weight is because of anti-Palestinian racism, is because of somophobia and anti-Arab racism. And just naming it is enough to get the listener to question their bias. I am not of the mind that only Palestinian should speak on Palestine. I do not believe at all in any identitarian framework or identity reductionist beliefs. But I think, you know,

the issue, again, becomes if you're only citing people because of their Jewishness. Because sometimes the things that are cited are so comical. Like sometimes people will cite Ishaq Rabin to make a pro-Palestinian point. Ishaq Rabin,

the West views him as the soldier of peace, but he himself was the architect of an Israeli policy called Break the Bones Policy in which he instructed the Israeli soldiers to break the bones, to literally break the arms and legs of Palestinian detainees upon arrest. People cite the other Israeli Prime Minister, now his name is escaping me,

but he was the architect of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and they cite him to make pro-Palcian point, and that is so humiliating to see, you know? It's like the bar is in hell. The bar is in hell. But let's go back to talking about what really meant. matters, which is pink's fear. And fierceness.

Rhonda Abd al-Fata, a Palestinian writer, wrote in Mondawais, quote, since when do the victims of genocide have the responsibility to defer to and protect the feelings of those who enact, support, and enable their genocide? Do Palestinian feelings, let alone lives, count? Zionist claims that Jewish communities feel unsafe by the word intifada and chance of free Palestine are thus read as code for anti-Semitism and accepted as truth in mainstream discourse. Rather than interrogating the warped translations of Arabic words and contextualizing Palestinian expressions of freedom, Zionist feelings are privileged over clear-headed normative

interrogations of a racist political ideology. And this all reminds me a lot of one of my favorite Eve Barlow tweets. Do you know who Eve Barlow is? She's the Jews are tired lady, like the one who saw the free parking sign and was terrified of it. Yes, exactly. For people unfamiliar, she is perhaps most famous for one of her viral tweets from yesteryear where she wrote, I think I actually know the tweet verbatim off the top of my brain. Just embarrassing. You are sick. It was like, just saw a free parking sign and thought it said free Palestine. The Jews are tired. This has been labeled by many one of the worst tweets of all time,

but in fact, about a year ago, she tweeted something else to lesser fanfare, but I just loved it. You want to take this? Yesterday, a crowd of perhaps 15 to 20 people in kaffia's and watermelon t-shirts were on my street and I walked past them. They saw my star. Like star of David. They saw my star and looked at me with intimidation.

I felt outnumbered and sincerely once. what would happen if it had escalated. Where's the hate crime? They looked at her. Oh, my God. She walked past people visibly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and this in and of itself was worth running to the internet and, you know, talking about how she felt scared. And I think this is like a particularly egregious example of this, but sentiments like this,

the like, I heard a chant and I felt scared. or, you know, I saw a kaffia on a cashier and I felt scared. Stop anti-Semitism. Get them fired. Get them banned. It's like these sentiments, specifically in the United States, have like both prevented conversation about ending a genocide and have simultaneously like upheld this standard where we continue to fund genocide.

I think, you know, people like this Barlow woman and Pink and whatever because of the presumable influence they have. People like Jonathan Greenblatt, of course, I think they use these tactics and this fear as a way to delegitimize Palestinians and to pile on to Palestinians and whatnot. But I do want to stop and say that I do think these feelings are real, not to say that they're legitimate, not to say that they are valid, but they are real. I think largely many, many Jewish people feel these feelings. And it is because, in my opinion, they have been, many.

Jewish people, this is not since the beginning of time, I think this is largely after the Holocaust and after the World War II. Many Jewish people have been brought up with, let's say, bedtime stories that are so one-dimensional. People do not hear about Jewish resistance to the Holocaust. They don't hear about, you know, a happy ending to the Jewish story. You don't hear about the fact that they have, you know, been able to establish a state, been able to climb up the ranks of the social order. They don't hear about these things. They hear a very one-dimensional story about the Holocaust, and they also hear constantly that it can happen again at any time, despite them living in high rises, despite them never setting foot in Palestine,

despite all of the privilege and wealth and protection and access and whatnot, the Holocaust could happen at any time. And that is, of course, this perpetual victimhood is, of course, the pretext that allows Israel to legitimize their perpetual warrior sins, that allows them to be in constant war with everybody. But it's a complete, it's completely irresponsible and it's such a betrayal to the Jewish people to have this kind of genesis story or like self-conceptionization that is entrapped into victimhood. And I think we're all susceptible to this kind of thing and all marginalized people could fall into that trap. But it's really important to point this out. I mean, a few years ago, actually, I was listening to a

lecture by this Zionist woman and she had cited a survey for different reasons that she had said there's a survey that after the 1967 Naksa, the 1967 war, the six-day war, after Israel was able to occupy many Arab lands in Egypt, Syria and in Palestine, and was able to defeat many Arab armies, there was a survey

of American Jewish public opinion, and over 90% of the people who took the survey said that they believed that a second Holocaust was afoot. That is insane. That's an insane thing to think that, like, you just

so gloriously won this massive war, so succinctly won it, and you think that your death is at the door. And because these feelings are real, it doesn't mean that we have to coddle them at all. I think the appropriate thing, if people are imagining things, the appropriate thing is to not coddle them, is to actually reject them, to actually say this is not the truth, this is not reality. And you are, in a lot of ways, delirious. I mean, in psychology, people call this apophonia. which is seeing patterns where they don't exist, like literally the free parking sign.

If you just hear the word free Palestine and you hear Jewish genocide, that is on you, right? I mean, I can talk to you about a different example in the UK where there's a cancer hospital that showcased artwork made by children in Gaza and the Jewish patients reported it and said that it made them feel unsafe and fear for their lives. That's insane.

to free you to see to see watercolor on ceramic and think pogrom. That's insane. Yeah, no, that's fucking crazy. Sorry that was a bit of a tangent. No, no, no, no. It's a good tangent.

And it's something that I think about a lot because I think about how like white women behaved during Jim Crow. I do think in that era, like a lot of women because of their own racism genuinely believed that if a black man made eye contact with them

that they were endangered. Look how. the hysterics of white people as the era of apartheid South Africa came to an end. Like they genuinely believed their lives were under siege because of multiculturalism. I was getting dinner with a friend recently who had just returned. She's Palestinian and she can't go to Palestine because of her work, you know, because she would probably get kidnapped by Israel trying to visit her own family. but she was recently in Jordan for the wedding of an extended family,

and she returned home and she brought me back a kaffia that she had gotten there, which was very kind. We were standing outside of the restaurant after dinner, and she put it on me. She was like showing me how to fold it correctly because I didn't fold it correctly. And we were standing there in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, and this like visibly Orthodox Jewish woman and her family walked past us, made eye contact with me, saw what we were doing,

and her eyes got so wide. and she like started yelling at me do you know what would happen to you and i could tell she was genuinely experiencing some sort of like anxiety attack over seeing my friend put a kaffia around my neck and it was the craziest thing we said nothing to her we didn't even look in her direction it is this like it's like a form of psychosis it's fully it's fully psychosis and that is not to like use it as a slur or like derogorily it is clinical, this kind of derangement. It's clinical.

It's like mass psychosis and it needs to be addressed. And the fact that organizations like the ADL and like sub-antysmism exploit this like existential fear that exists within the Jewish community, it's so irresponsible. But obviously, quite strategic because we continue to coddle it instead of calling it out for what it is. I think words have meanings and safety, you know, it's very often weaponized by right-wing forces. to take away people's liberties. 100%. 100%. And to that end, I saw yesterday Jonathan Greenblatt, who we talked a lot about him and the ADL in another

episode of this podcast, Jonathan Greenblatt's salary at the Anti-Defamation League, which did begin in earnest as a civil rights organization and has descended into a de facto PR agency for the Israeli government. He makes, in his capacity as a CEO of this nonprofit, $1.4 million a year. And the ADLs, yeah, yeah, yeah. What? One point four million dollars a year to get on Twitter and complain about Hassan Piker. Are they hiring?

But like the ADL's whole thing is that every year they release an anti-Semitism audit, where they will tell you incidents of anti-Semitism across this country have skyrocketed 4 million percent this year. Mind you, you know, if you go in and look at the various instances of anti-Semitism that they're labeling, all like, you know, kid at Columbia University wore a free Palestine shirt. Also, the category for the ADL, the category for what is included as anti-Semitism is so expansive. I remember one time when I was writing an article for the nation, I said like the occupation's tentacles, blah, blah, blah. And my editor was like, that's an anti-Semitic trope to talk about Jews and octopuses and whatever. So I then went and like tried to learn more

about the Jewish tropes. And there are so many, but also like many dictators, many whatever political leaders, many political opponents have called each other names. The octopus has been used for so many different movements, and yet somehow it makes it into the ADL guidebook as a specifically anti-Jewish trope. Yeah. And that happens with so much. It's unbelievable. And it's all like instilling fear in the broader Jewish population because these

statistics get disseminated far and wide, and then it helps the ADL fundraise. and it helps Jonathan Greenblatt make $1.4 million every year. Not to get too far down like the nonprofit industrial complex, but just my God. Pink, you have been victimized by the ADL. Join the club, sister. Doesn't she have a song about Supergirls? Yeah, she does. The call is coming from inside the house.

She continues. And please don't talk to me like I've never stood up for my beliefs when it was unpopular. In the middle of the Gulf War, in 2006. I put out a song called Dear Mr. President and sang it every night on tour while my country was in a war I didn't support and I took the hate for it

and I sang it anyway because my sharp criticism was of a government not the flawed country I love and who my dad fought for. So I said that this episode wasn't going to be like a biographical like pink episode and so far I have stayed true to that. However, I do just want to talk a little bit about this

because first of all, in the middle of the Gulf War in 2006, you know when the Gulf War was? The 90s. Yeah, the Gulf War was 1990. I thought she meant, I don't know why, I thought she meant the invasion of Iraq. That's what she does mean. But she says, huh. But she calls it, she says in the middle of the Gulf War in 2006.

Maybe she thinks Iraq is in the Gulf. I actually did not, it didn't even, like this, I did not even occur to me. I just read it as the invasion of Iraq. In the middle of COVID in 2013, So, you know, the Gulf War was in 1990. It seems like she meant the Iraq War, which is what her song, Dear Mr. President, was about three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which happened in 2003, Pink released Dear Mr. President, a protest of then-President George Bush.

Pink in the song Lambast George Bush for his opposition to gay rights, his failed education policy, no child left behind. and most notably his support for the Iraq war, which we were three years into. Now, I have a little tangent about this, if that's okay. Yeah, please. I don't doubt that Pink received some backlash for this song. I'm sure she did. But I think it's worth examining, given Pink's current assertion that this song is evidence of her progressive political bonafides,

what the reception to the song really was. I found an article written about this song from 2006 in The Guardian, written by Caroline Sullivan, who wrote, Curiously, nobody appeared to object when the tune made its initial appearance on her album, I'm Not Dead. It was only a week ago when a clip of her singing it at a concert appeared on the website YouTube. On the website YouTube. On the website YouTube. Very quaint, very quaint. Passions became inflamed.

Dear Mr. President became YouTube's second most viewed video of the week with 172,780 hits. For that to be the second most viewed video of the week on YouTube, early YouTube was charming. It was 1990 to go for. Yeah, that's right, that's right. And some hundreds of comments. Some of these praised her outspokenness, but others were very anti-pink. Another no-talent celebrity Bush hater, one wrote.

Pink is a stupid girl. Keep that shit to yourself. One said succinctly, whore. Well, that's bad. I don't think anyone should comment horror on Pink's video of her performance of Dear Mr. President.

I don't think people should say, keep that shit to yourself. I don't agree with the people who did that. But, you know, as we all know, and like I mentioned at the top of the episode, you can say just about anything on the internet and get a bunch of shit for it. And the reality was

that the vast majority of Americans did not support the Iraq war by 2006 when this song came out. A CNN poll from that year showed 34% of Americans supported the war, down from over 70% who supported invading Iraq in 2003, when the chicks, then the Dixie Chicks, famously spoke out against it and had their careers destroyed as a result. According to Gallup, George Bush's approval rating in May of 2006, two months after this song was released,

was 31% nearly his lowest ever, and several percentage points lower than Donald Trump's current approval rating, which we all know is extraordinarily low because of how much people across a political spectrum don't want the Iran War. The Guardian article that we just read from had 34 comments posted in 2006, and they were almost all positive, even if tinged with misogyny. Jackie Chung wrote, I don't like Pink's horrible, grating, Poor me music, but she deserves some credit, and at least it's not another insipid ballad about how tortured or strung out she is. So anyway, I don't think this song is bad, and I'm sure some people were really mean to her

about it, and I'm not trying to be pedantic, but I do think Pink is trying to retroactively insert herself into a sort of Dixie Chick's narrative that just does not apply. 2003 was not 2006. At the point in which she made this song, the anti-Bush sentiment that she was espousing in the song was overwhelmingly popular, and I don't think this is evidence of the bravery that she thinks it is. I think it was safe for her to make that kind of song.

And also, if the backlash comes with a lucrative record deal, I'll gladly take the backlash, which I think is the piece of information she seems to be constantly dismissing is her wealth and power. you were not a martyr in making an out like maybe perhaps a platinum album that earned you lots and lots of money and you're not a martyr for singing a political song at what I assume was a very lucrative tour you were commodifying that political sentiment into a lucrative product thank you very much for for opposing the as you called the Gulf War but it wasn't at your expense miss pink we know that the chicks aren't nearly as famous today as they could have been and as they were when they were pushed out of the mainstream pop scene because of their actual brave stance against the invasion of Iraq when it was popular. Like, yeah, pink making this statement, it's like, it doesn't make sense because it's like,

well, if it was really brave and so against the grain, then why are you still one of the, you know, top touring artists in the United States? Because of the jumps, the jumping jack she does. Oh, yeah, the flipping around. Her brain shook around a little bit. Too much. So I got you there. That's funny. Pink continues. I stood with gay kids before it was fashionable and with trans kids now.

And when it isn't and with their family. When it, oh, sorry. When it isn't and with their families. Sorry, what? I stood with gay kids before it was fashionable. I think this was. And with trans kids now when it isn't. I stood with gay kids before it was fashionable and with trans kids now, when it isn't, and with their families.

And I handed out the books that got banned, and you know I got called every name there is, and I do all of it again tomorrow. I have stood up for other people's people my whole career, and I know exactly what it costs. And now I'm standing up for my own people, and I thought I knew going in how lonely that would be. And it's lonelier than that. But I'm doing it anyway. Can I just say something about that last line? Please. That really grinds my gears to say that, oh, standing up for LGBT or black people or whatever was lonely.

But standing up against so-called Jew hate is even lonelier. There is a Zionist tendency to exceptionalize Jewish society. suffering over any other kind of suffering that is so insane and so racist to say that anti-Semitism is somehow exceptional and is somehow more harmful or more painful than other forms of bigotry and other forms of racism. And this is not something that Pink invented, by the way, this is official Israeli narrative that is echoed largely by mainstream Jewish American organizations. I remember recently being in the archives and picking up a book written.

by an Israeli scholar in the early 1990s. And the first chapter was about how anti-Semitism is worse than anti-Black racism and detailed the ways in which anti-Semitism is worse than anti-Black racism. And it goes into like empirical detail to make this crazy racist point. So when I first read this, I was immediately transported back to October 2023 when a one other liberal Zionist, Amy Schumer posted one of the most abhorrent celebrity post celebrity takes of that time, which went very viral at the time and which has been essentially rewritten here into Pink's statement verbatim. Here is the poem that Amy Schumer shared in the shape of a Jewish star.

Oh my God. First, they came for LGBTQ and I stood up because love is love. then they came for immigrants and I stood up because families belong together. Then they came for the black community and I stood up because black lives matter. Then they came for me, but I stood alone because I am a Jew. That's insane. Like, again, just saying because I am a Jew, I am alone. That exceptionalization is so insane.

That is verbatim what Pink has written, literally. And I'm alone. And I knew it would be lonely and it's lonelier than that, but I'm doing it in. Anyway, I noted that her invoking her support for gay people in this. What happens when a pink invokes gay people in her argument in support of Israel, call that pink washing? Pink washing. A.

What happened of fun? Oh, I just got the joke sorry to me. Pink washing. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I am so... Oh my God, that is embarrassing. No, no, no, no.

It was a bad joke. It's a bad joke. No, it's great. It's wonderful joke. Pink continues. Something has changed in this country. And you can read it in my own comments. Not really anymore because she limited them.

And now the only comments come from Galgadot, but anyway, you can read it in my own comments. Quote, from the river to the sea, Zionist, spat like it's a slur. by people who couldn't tell you the details of what I believe because I hadn't told them yet. I wasn't asked. I was told. Girl, what?

I don't think most of them hate Jews. I think somebody handed them a story where the Jew who won't apologize for existing must be the villain. And they've been putting words in my mouth ever since. But I've been portrayed as the villain before. This is so like Taylor Swift reputation. But I've been portrayed.

as the villain before, I can take it. I just won't take it quietly, and I'm not going to teach my kids to. They need singers like me. This is what I mean where it's like, okay, yes, the belief system she's espousing here is one thing, but like the personality that is really seeping through these words is another. It's a bit dated. Chapter whatever we're on. Is Zionist a slur? It should be. It should be.

The argument here that she's making is that people don't know what Zionist means, right? And they're using it as a slur, but people do not know what we Zionists believe. And the rebuttal to that, the very logical rebuttal is that Zion, there's no definition. There's no, first of all, in genocide, there's no room for, like, wishful definitions of Zionists or generous definitions of Zionism. Zionism is simply what it does, you know? Because if you look at history, if you look at the word fascist today, or the way, word Nazi today. At the time of its inception, like if you look at the etymology of the words,

these words to their owners, you know, to the people who've coined them, they meant positive things. I mean, Nazi is a shortening of the national socialists, fascists is also its own system that was meant a certain positive thing to its, you know, the peoples who've coined these terms. And then throughout history, they've held these negative connotations because of the actions of their supporters and members and whatnot. And now they are derogatory and they are a slur. Rightfully so, they should be slurs. And I think Zionism, a movement that is defined by its material, tangible actions,

being occupation, apartheid, and most recently literal genocide, should be a slurs. A movement that is so expansionist, that is so racist, that is so, so supremacist that advocates for the robbery of people's lands, for the robbery of people's livelihoods, should be a slur and people should be ashamed that they're Zionists. I think in some liberal Zionist spaces, but also in some progressive spaces, Jewish and otherwise,

there is, I hear sometimes a discussion about should we ostracize liberal Zionists or should we ostracize Zionists on defense by creating a wholesale rejection of Zionism. And the theory of change there is that if you actually hold simultaneously, that Zionism as a movement is behaving badly now, but it also could mean positive things,

then maybe you can win people over. I personally think that's horrific and insulting, but also I would accept that kind of grace from people if they would extend it to Nazis, if they would extend it to fascists, right? But that kind of complexity would never be applied to Nazis and fascists, rightfully, I think, but it would never be.

It's only in the Jewish context that something so horrific and violent, materially, tangibly, not abstractly, something so violent is allowed this kind of grace and this kind of space to exist in its multi, like, diverse definitions. It's really insulting. 100%. And, you know, in my notes, what I wrote here is that, like, in its most basic, like, etymological sense, like, it's not a slur. It's a neutral descriptor of someone who,

who supports the political ideology of Zionism. I think the misalignment is like, what is Zionism? Pink has not provided us with her definition of Zionism, but her friend and collaborator, the former Israeli envoy to combat anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of Israel, that was her official title, has provided us with that definition.

The definition she often employs is a Zionist go-to. What is Zionism? Zionism is the Jewish people's right to self-determination and parts of their ancestral homeland Israel. Seems innocent enough, but the problem is anyone can define the movement that they support any way they want to. Riley Gaines doesn't identify herself as someone who hates transgender people. She says she's saving women's sports. Nazis were simply protecting their bloodline. Supporters of apartheid South Africa said black and white people could be separate, but

equal and they simply wanted to preserve cultural identity. And American anti-abortion activists are, of course, protecting the unborn. We're always protecting something. We're always on the defense. If the only people who get to define their own beliefs are supporters of those beliefs, we aren't necessarily going to get an honest answer or one that includes the negative consequences or harm. So I want to ask you, how would you define Zionism? I mean, simply put, I think Zionism is the attempt to establish a Jewish homeland on top of Palestinian land by way of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide. But again, I think even my own definitions falls into this problem that you have outlined, is the idea is who is the reliable source, right? Who can be the

reliable narrator to define something? Is it its supporters? Is it its opponents? I think neither, really. I mean, maybe I, because Zionism is practiced on my body, I have a very intimate definition of it. Maybe that's an argument that can be made. But I think a better argument, which is not something I've created, by the way, this is a popular political idea. But a system is simply what it does. A thing is simply what it does. If you want to define Zionism, you should look at how it interiorly manifests. And just by opening in Twitter, we can see that it manifests through bloodshed. Staying here for a second, liberal Zionists like Pink generally believe that Zionism is not the problem with Israel and therefore, you know, using Zionist as a pejorative is anti-Semitic. The problem, they will tell you over and over again, is Benjamin Netanyahu, a warmonger, perhaps even a war criminal, who is undermining the otherwise good-natured Zionist project with his unique,

callousness towards Palestinian life and bottomless hunger for power. Here is liberal Zionist Queen Hillary Clinton, who Pink campaigned for and appeared alongside on the Ellen show in 2015 alongside fellow liberal Zionist Amy Schumer, the 2010s, really were crazy, espousing this exact belief on television this week. Look, I have said repeatedly, I love Israel and I hate Netanyahu's government and his policies. I love America and I hate Trump's government and policies. I think it's bad in the first case for Israel what's happening. And I think it's really bad for the United States what's happening.

That's not the full clip. I just find it amazing because I'm like, I think there's also another group of people that it's bad for. So I think we've got to be very clear the message as we send, hopefully the Israeli people, especially after this bombshell that came out in the Israeli press, where Netanyahu had been literally called and warned that Hamas was planning something. This was a failure of leadership. This was a failure of, you know, protecting the people of Israel. He'd been told what was going to happen.

So if the Israelis want to vote for that again, then I think the United States has to take a very tough position. I can't believe God took Dolly Parton and not our frontier. You get me in trouble. I really can't believe you made me listen to Hillary Clinton, by the way. But anyway. I'm sorry. I'm going to Venmo you like reparations for that. Please do.

$1.4 million. Genocide is, I always say, is not a one-man show. And the attempt to pin all of this bloodshed and killing and murder on Netanyahu himself is an attempt to save this very rotten, very complete. system of Zionists. It's a very old tactic, and I think it pleases Nathanielho more than it pleases anyone, that he has also given all of this credit and all of this glory for having single-handedly genocide of the Palestinian people or single-handedly changed the fate of the Israeli state.

But it's obviously a cop-out. And I think it's really important that everybody across the political spectrum to name Zionism as the issue. Same with the Holocaust and same with World War II, you know. I think it was necessary for us to name Nazism as the root cause of the bloodshed because that is the only way we could have a process of denotification. Similarly, I should say, we should name Zionism because that then gives us a roadmap or a blueprint or a toolkit or whatever you want to say to how we can clean up this mess anyway,

which is by desionization. Zionism exists, not abstractly, it exists through a system, through a set of laws, through a set of institutional protocols that can be traced and erased and uprooted. And that is what these people are getting at by omitting the perpetrator, by pinning all the blame on this individual who will die in the next two decades. It's an attempt to save Zionism and its core as a system. I think that's what's happening here. I think some progressive politicians themselves even know this. I mean, I don't think this is only a Hillary Clinton tactic.

We've seen Bernie Sanders himself only blame the current Israeli government or only Netanyahu for genocide and for actions that Israel has been doing for seven decades. And Zionism has been doing for 100 years. Yeah. And that actually dovetails really well into what, sorry, that was so NPR of me. Nope. That was so like, welcome to New York Times. interview. That dovetails really well into that. Sorry, that was like annoying. But that does segue

really well into another thing, which I just, sometimes I get like overly like podcast voice and I just, I'm like, shut. I was going to say you have a really good like radio voice. I'm Delilah. Welcome back. I was going to say how it's turn. That's probably offensive as hell, right? I don't know. And Jew hatred, Muhammad. And Jew hatred. He's Jewish. Damn. sorry. I will refund your your Venmo $1.4 million dollar operations payment.

Perfect. Yeah, Kopa. But that does segue really well into another aspect of this that I wanted to talk about because in an effort to understand what Zionism actually is versus what someone like Pink wants it to be,

I want to address the issue of Israeli youth, the future torchbearers of Zionism. If Netanyahu is a bad seed in an otherwise good ideological apple, as Pink surely believes, then the young Zionists roaming Israel will surely recapture Zionism's goodheartedness when their time comes, or will they? It's understood that in most places, and especially in the United States, the youngest generations

are typically the most progressives. That's how, you know, the arc of history is long, but bends towards progress happens. What people might not know, though, is that statistically in Israel, the opposite is true. Israeli youth represent the most right-wing age demographic in the state, far more right-wing than the generations that preceded them. In a recent poll, I'm going to have to check my source on this, I'll throw it on the screen, said 73 or 74% of Israeli youth identify as right-wing. Yeah, I mean, this is really interesting.

I was talking about this with a friend recently because we're discussing the idea of like, how can you change people's minds when this is kind of a country that is uniquely right-wing in terms of where the youth sits on the political spectrum, as you just said. My opinion is that Israeli society is extremely diverse, you know, because they're essentially,

all of the Jews from all over the world who have come and built a homeland on top of our homes. But that diversity means that they're very different also culturally. And the one thing, the one thing that seems to be connecting them is hatred of Palestinian people. And if you look at Netanyahu's political history, he's often timing his wars on Gaza, his, you know, what they call mowing the lawn. he's often timing it around election campaigns. There's a positive correlation between him butchering Palestinians and his political popularity. You earlier mentioned Etemar bin Kvir, posting an AI-generated video of Palestinian prisoners are on a conveyor belt to be slaughtered.

That does not exist in a vacuum. We are on the brink of Israeli elections right now. So these things are electoral gimmicks that get these people popularity. What I'm going to say next is going to sound. a bit absurd and it's going to sound like I'm using it as a metaphor. But in my life, my own home, my own front yard has been literally turned into the offices of into the makeshift offices of various Israeli politicians around the time of elections. So Etemois binigvira himself had once come into our front door and set up a makeshift office

before him an Israeli politician named Nir Hassun did the same thing. because that to the Israeli public and to Israeli youth, that signals a commitment to the occupation. And now we are on the brink of elections, and yet everybody from across the political spectrum in the Israeli Knesset, in the Israeli political movements, all agree on genocide. Even the left-wing elements, all agree on genocide,

all seem to think that they're not going hard enough. Because this is the fabric of Israeli identity today. It's genocide against the Palestinian people. And, you know, I've been, like many millions of Palestinians in Palestinian and the diaspora have been like the victim of so much vitriol, but I think I don't often spend time talking about it because obviously there's a priority and premise to the genocide taking place. I think it's bombs are more important. But even in my childhood and growing up, I knew that it wasn't safe for me to walk down the street while a group

of settler youth is approaching. I knew that one day of the year they have what they call Jerusalem Day, where they march in our neighborhoods and will literally start stopping on our cars and forcibly opening our doors and going inside our living room and breaking our windows and whatnot. I knew that that would happen once a year and that they were doing it under the protection of the police and that generation after generation, the violence would only seem to increase. And today, in the occupied West Bank, we're seeing Palestinian village after the next be targeted by Israeli settler violence. And these are not just police officers. They're not just soldiers. these are young Israeli men who are going out of their way to do pogroms in Palestinian villages.

That tells you something about the quality of political life in Israeli society. One other core definition that Zionists will often give Israel, including Noah Tishby, the pink colleague that I have mentioned, they call Israel, quote, the only democracy in the Middle East. In an essay for the foreword called Noah Tishby asks how Zionism got to be a bad word, she repeats this claim, as she does many times in her book, Israel, a guide to the most misunderstood country on earth. Your thoughts on if Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East?

There are, I think, over 60 laws that discriminate against Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship. So even what they call Arab citizens of Israel cannot enjoy that democracy. I want you to highlight that for a second because we sat down like a few months ago and you were explaining to me how this works because one of the retorts that especially liberal Zionists will often say is there's Palestinian Israelis. There's Arab Israelis and they are they have full rights just like Jewish Israelis. Yeah, I mean that's obviously a trope, the idea that there are Arab Israelis or Palestinian Israelis and whatnot. Not sure you'll see like an unculton figure here and there. But all Palestinians, first of all, we can. can't really own land, 93% of the land, a Palestinian land is state owned by Israel. There are over 60 laws that explicitly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel,

so-called Palestinian citizens of Israel. And even if you look at the Israeli nation state law, which is the closest thing they have to constitution, they say that Jewish settlement is the national value to protect and promote, if I'm not mistaken, in the quotation. So they explicitly named Judaism as the thing. So obviously it's not a democracy. But I want to go further and say that even if it were a democracy, even if the Israeli government was truly a true democracy, that still would not excuse genocide.

So the retort itself is irrelevant. The idea that we're saying Israel is committing genocide and then they respond and say, well, it's the only democracy in the Middle East. That is entirely irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it's a dictatorship or a democracy. or democracy. Genocide is bad, full stop. It also strikes me as not even true, and this is like obviously secondary, but it's not even entirely true for Israelis. And we saw that this week, Israeli filmmakers, Yuval Abraham and

Rachel Zor, who you might remember from their work on 24's, Oscar winning No Other Land. They just premiered their new documentary, Nasa, which documents the IDF's callousness towards killing Palestinian civilians. Upon its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Israel's Minister of Culture, Mickey Zohar, wrote on Twitter that he will be stripping the citizenship of these two Israeli filmmakers for making the film. And I know in the context of like the ongoing genocide against Palestinians

and all this other stuff, it's like, I'm very well aware this is not the biggest thing that's happening right now, but it just strikes me as like yet another example of like, you know, this is not a democracy in any sense. And like what Zionism and the Zionist regime is willing to do to other people, like they will do to its own. Yeah, I think 100%. I mean, part of this Zahar's sentiment, I think, is incentivized by the fact that we have upcoming elections. But I think, you know, it's a kind of a popularity tactic. The Israeli public are very, very angry with the film. And so that makes sense that they would say something like this.

But even if you look at other racialized populations within Israeli society, like Ethiopian Jews, like Yemeni Jews, they are not included in this democracy and they are discriminated against. And we have seen this historically since the 40s and 50s after the Anakba and how the Israeli government was literally stealing Yemeni and Moroccan Jewish children and putting them in the hands of Ashkenazi families to raise them or like giving Eastern Jews like impossible conditions. living or there's been like two or three weeks ago there was this protest in an Israeli town saying you know people should be allowed to have black skin color but they shouldn't be allowed to have it in our schools we don't want our kids going to school with Ethiopians I mean that's a thing happening right now in that very lovely society sounds democratic yeah back to pink she writes so to the ones who are furious with me you don't have to agree with me you never did That's been our unspoken agreement for 25 years, and it still stands, and so do I.

You don't have to agree with one thing Israel's government does to not want the Jewish family two rows down from you to be scared or targeted at a concert. That's the only thing I'm asking anybody for. To the ones who are frightened this week, Jewish or Muslim or Palestinian or Israeli, or just tired of all of it, I see you. Thanks, pink. And if anybody wants to really know what I think, just ask me, I'm right here.

I've never been hard to find. And I'll keep speaking out in my own words. Well, I can't really just ask you, though, because you're pink. You know, there's this phenomenon that I've been noticing for a long time, which has become really glaring lately. and which has reared its head throughout this Ed Sheeran mess. Essentially, it's where a Zionist can describe their beliefs

in a way that sounds deferential to, quote-unquote, both sides, but which is very clearly understood by one side as support. The comment section of Pink's Instagram statement, however lukewarm and even keeled someone unfamiliar with Israel and Palestine might have perceived that statement to be, quickly became a meeting place for the most, most hardline Zionists in politics and culture to celebrate pink, to celebrate each other, and to celebrate Israel. I have one screenshot here from thousands of comments of fanatical Israel supporters.

I'm sure by their own admission. That's not me, you know, labeling them as anything. I don't think they would call themselves. The first comes from, da-da-da-da. Your favorite. My girl, Deborah Messing, who said Shenatova, Pink, which a lot of people. don't know what that means. It was Russia Shana last week. Shanatova means happy New Year. It's the Jewish New Year. Followed up by Dana Bash, CNN's Genocide Air in Chief. Shanatova, here's to a peaceful 5-7-87 for us all. Jonah Platt, Shana Tova right back.

You are so far from alone. Wait, what's 5-7-87? That's the Jewish year. That's like how it's like 20-23, but like in... It's not... In Jesus years, yeah. Why did I just say it's 2023? We're stuck there.

You're still there. I say 23 and I mean last year, you know, I'm still there. We have Deborah Messing, Dana Bash, Jonah Platt, Eve Barlow, Gal Gadot left a comment on this about how supportive she is. And last but not least, just in this short list, Israel War Room, which is a obviously openly pro-Israel-Israel sort of war-oriented news Instagram account, which thanks Pink for speaking out.

blue heart. They're kind of ADL-esque. Like, anytime I've had a speech at universities, they always reach out to the university with like a petition to cancel the thing or, you know, stuff like that. Oh, Israel War Room does? Yeah, yeah. Well, and so my question here is it's like, Pink has written this statement where she's explicitly stated in what we just read, you know, to the ones who are frightened this week, Jewish or Muslim or Palestinian or Israeli, I see you. And so to someone who doesn't know all that much about this, they might be like, like, well, she's playing to all sides. This is a neutral call for peace and maybe just her existence as a Jewish person and her right to not be scared at the Ed Sheeran concert. And yet, everyone

commenting is like the most hardline pro-Israel activist on Instagram. You use the word rhetorical sneakiness, which I think is very, very good word to describe this. Are you familiar with the Israeli project Global Dictionary of 2009. So the now defunct Australia Strategic Affairs Ministry, which is now kind of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, collaborated with a different NGO to create this thing called Global Dictionary

or Global Dictionary Project in which they have literal language that has been engineered by marketers, one really famous marketer, but other marketers and marketing agencies, NPR agencies, but also psychologists and whatnot. to make Zionism appeal to different kind of audiences everywhere. So all of these things that we see, like the rhetorical sneakiness in her post,

the attempting to seem balanced or attempting to cater to both sides, all of these things are engineered. Much like, you know, the question about, do you believe Israel has a right to exist, that was explicitly engineered as a distraction to derail discussion in the 60s by that same ministry. And now we have this kind of rhetorical, tricks that all or most Israeli supporters retort to that are meant to distract from the debate

or diffuse the debate or make them seem neutral. And it's, I have to say they're, they're quite masterful. I mean, even like when she's saying if you're a Palestinian or Israeli, but also if you're tired of it all, to allude that this is like a fatiguing problem, like a fatiguing issue that people are debating about even though it's like thousands of miles away and what do I have to do with it. This is, I think, a masterful way of, one, depolitizing the issue, but two, distancing it from the context of the U.S., even though it is entirely enmeshed within U.S. politics. And so we see these kinds of rhetorical tactics, you know, when an Israeli politician goes

on CNN, they'll say, they'll begin their statement by saying, I mourn every civilian life lost, but war is brutal and shit happens. And so that makes them seem a little bit more reasonable. So they're quite masterful at propaganda, which makes me think that not only did Chad TripT help her in writing this statement, but I think there was a PR firm or at least people heavily involved in Israeli propaganda that are helping her because they have determined very wisely that this is a propaganda asset. This singer with the edgy haircut, she is a propaganda asset. Oh, I bet, and I'm not even being like cheeky, I bet Noah Tishby was involved in the construction of this statement. Yeah. Because we know that she is a professional Israeli propagandist.

We know that they are friends. And she even says, you know, in this statement, all I want is the right to say I'm scared and to not have my fear labeled propaganda. Well, like I'm sorry, but it is. Yeah. I mean, nothush me is very, I think like her elk and like all of these people that come from this tradition of Israeli propaganda, they're a bit better than us at this. You know, like our books are like Israel's genocide and God.

which is true, we're very, very transparent. For them, it's like understanding Israel, 10 questions about Israel and Palestine. What do you not know about Israel? And it's very unassuming. It's very neutral sounding. And so it seduces people into picking it up. And I think it's the work of not political scientists,

but the work of marketers who know how to appeal to population. Because in Israeli set of priorities, I believe they're not interested in appealing to the student population, to populations that are politically engaged because they understand that the electoral population, the people who vote in general are not necessarily that informed about the Middle East or that interested in the Middle East.

So they want to capture the imagination and the attention of someone who's a little bit curious, but not that involved. Because anybody that is truly involved in Middle East politics, this would be a no-brainer to. Not because of just our scholarship or our ability to communicate ourselves, but because in the presence of so many burning children, it is very hard to make an argument on behalf of Israel.

That should be your next book, Palestine, A Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. Yeah, it's already an orcs. That's how you get them. Yeah, and the same sort of rhetorical sneakiness was running through the text of Ed Sheeran's statement, which we don't have time to get into today. But, you know, he literally says, I don't want to take sides. And it literally, his statement opened with,

I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The suffering and pain caused on both sides is a human tragedy. This was widely criticized by most of the world, but who liked it pink? Because Zionists are smart enough to understand that this supposed new, neutrality means siding with Israel. And so I guess the question that I pose to people is just like, are you?

It's also just to say, I think he retorted to this like both sides, conflict is bad, blah, blah, blah, out of the rhetorical sneakiness and out of this like Zionist impulse to appeal to a large population. But also, and I want to emphasize this is because he cannot afford to, at this point in time, three years into a genocide, he cannot afford to make a statement that is explicitly pro-Israel. and neither can pink. Pink's statement in

2003, the October statement was so explicitly Zionists in pro-Israel and today the tide has shifted so much in the world not necessarily institutionally not necessarily policy-wise but the tide in terms of public opinion

has shifted so much in the world that she knows she cannot afford to be as openly pro-Israel as she was just three years ago and I think that is something to look at. A note of positivity even? Yeah, yeah. Pink concludes it's Friday.

It's not Friday. Well, actually, the day that I'm releasing is will be Friday. So it'll be Friday once again. It's Friday. It is Friday. For working people who have more to worry about than pop stars and pylons, very chat TVT. I'm telling you. It's the end of a hard week.

It's also the 25th anniversary of September 11th. And my prayers are with the innocent souls we lost that morning. And at sundown for Jews, it's Rosh Hashanah. our new year. Now I'm going to go make dinner for my kids, light the candles, dip some apples and honey, pour a glass of wine, and be full of gratitude. That's my tradition. It also happens to be a Jewish one. No, it's explicitly a Jewish tradition. Like, that's not, it's the tradition of Jews. It's not your tradition. That grinds my gears. That's so annoying. It's like me saying Ramadan is my thing. It's no, it's supposed to be what's my thing that I observe.

of as a Muslim life what? Yeah. This ending, that's the end of the statement, by the way. Congratulations. We all got through it together. But I know, I'm like, let me take five paragraphs and spend two hours talking about it.

This just killed me. She's like, for working class people who don't want to hear about all this because you guys have jobs. And also, it's 9-11. And Russia Shana, goodbye. It's like, just throwing spaghetti.

at the wall here, you know. But this, I mean, this line, we've been hearing for so long from Zionist institutions, from even like members of the Israeli government where they treat anyone who cares about this as like frivolous. We saw this a lot with the sort of war on college encampment protesters in 2024, where it was like these elite privileged college students with nothing better to do than to tent out. And Greta Thunberg is actually a rich girl from a rich family. And so she's clearly just like wasting her time protesting.

And it's very interesting to me that she wraps up this statement with like a plea to the working class. Yeah, it's also to what you were talking about earlier, like a clever trick. Like it's a psychological trick by way of linguistics to signal to the reader that this is trivial or this is of no moral urgency or no political urgency. It's a faraway issue that we shouldn't care about and is only cared about by these elites. So it's a way to kind of, again, distance the U.S. from its colonial outpost, frankly, in the Middle East. I want to conclude with just noting what I actually noted up top, which is that the day after releasing this statement, which caused a lot of controversy online, but sure did get the support of Galga Dote. Good for Pink. Pink took her nine-year-old child to the U.S. Open, where they were featured heavily as celebrity guests typically are at the U.S. Open. They had professional photos taken of them. Pink wore. What I actually think is a very cool jacket, like a sort of like green wool jacket with embroidered tennis players on it that cost $860. Yes, I did find the jacket. Thank you, reverse image search.

And it just like, it just like struck me because this whole statement is about like giving deference to Pink's fear. And like Pink's fear matters. And the next day, you know, courtside at one of like the most prestigious and expensive sporting events to attend in the United States right now with her child who is alive. And one step further. And you might think I'm, you know, really cynical in saying this. And that's fine. It is cynical, but maybe worth mentioning that it did almost feel to me like her trotting out her child in the professional photo shoot that they had. It did feel like a bit of a wielding of a human shield. 100%. 100%. And I think, again, like we said earlier, it's the perfect metaphor for Zionism. Expensive quota, the expensive US open while crying online about how unsafe and vulnerable you feel. It's the perfect encapsulation. of Zionism as perpetually having victim complex and a warrior stance.

It would be comical if it wasn't so offensive and if there weren't so many lives on the line. But I think I want to tell your listeners to just take this as an opportunity to always root their analysis and their perception and their interpretation into a material analysis of the world. Things like these may seem vague, they may seem blurry or hard to crack. But if you just look at the world materially and you look at the world materially and you look, look at this as just a wealthy, wealthy white woman in the U.S. having a delirium or a delirious episode about real materially manifesting genocide, then you would see how trivial her whole drama is. And it would remind you to focus on what's actually morally urgent, which is the genocide

taking place right now. You know, a delirious episode is what I do here every other week on the BitFruity podcast, Muhammad al-Kurd. Thank you so much for joining this delirious episode. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure and I'm a big fan. So thank you for having me. Where can people find more of you and I think they absolutely should and they probably want to?

You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram, just my full name. And I invite everybody to read my very great, amazing book very well. And your upcoming one, Palestine. A simple guide to me. most misunderstood country on earth. That's my no it to shoot. It's like weird Israeli accent. I love you all so much. Thank you for tuning into this excruciatingly long analysis of Pink's Zionism. But that's what we do here. If you liked the episode, I hope you'll stick around for another one. I don't know. Like, comment, subscribe. Love you so much. I will see you next time.

And until then, stay fruity.