Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - 111: Never Again For Anyone, with Holocaust Survivor Stephen Kapos

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Matt and Daniel are joined by survivor of the Nazi Holocaust Stephen Kapos, for a wide ranging discussion of Stephen’s escape from Transylvania, the parallels he sees between his own ordeal and the Palestinians’, and the current political climate in his home country of England.Please visit https://gazafunds.com/ to donate to Palestinians seeking safety and security.See The Bitchuation Room with Francesca Fiorentini and Matt Lieb May 30 in Los Angeles: https://bit.ly/bitchuation-laSubscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbaraSubscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get  your podcasts.Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5RDvo87OzNLA78UH82MI55Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-hasbara-the-worlds-most-moral-podcast/id1721813926Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Moshwam ha bitch, a rib and poker to We invented the terry tomato And weighs USB drives and behind all Israeli salad, oozy stents, and javas orange crows Micro chips is us iPhone cameras us Taco salads us Pothomas us

All of garden us White cost for us Zabrahamas Asvaras and welcome to Bad Hasbara. A vlog leg mora lichab podcastia. That was bad Hungarian. Bad Hungarian is the new name of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening. My name is Matt Leib. I am your world's most moral co-host. And I am Mote Daniel. the other most moral, most Magyar co-host. Most Magyar co-host, Mate. So excited for all of you to join us for this very special episode of Bad Hezbara, in which we just actually completed an interview with Stephen Kaposh, who is a Holocaust survivor.

Kaposh. Kaposh. Sorry, I didn't put the right emphasis on the correct. syllable, Kapush, who is Holocaust survivor and pro-Palestine activist in London. What? You can be both? In fact, it makes more sense to be both. In fact, it actually is the correct position. I thought that at the very end of the Holocaust. As a gift, well, as penance. I thought that at the very last moment before the Red Army liberated the King. camps. That's right. Everyone gathered together and the storyteller said, and the moral of the story is

never again for us. That's right. Now let's all move to the place that none of us have ever been, have ever been or want to be. Nor has a climate that we very much enjoy. Yes, no, the moral of the story of the Holocaust and of World War II is doing this is okay if we're doing it. And, and And somehow Stephen did not learn that moral. And so he has been speaking out for the rights of Palestinians and against genocide for the last couple of years. And it was a great interview and you will see it soon. But we usually actually let our guests wait in the waiting room of stream yard while we talk and stuff. and this is one of the few times where we're like he's suffered enough he suffered enough i don't want

him to see us like that you know as far as he knows we're two very serious guys uh and then he quickly found it in the interview we are not too very serious guys turns out he he's got a great sense of humor he's he's he's great uh he's hilarious and incredibly insightful and uh yeah i think you'll enjoy the interview and definitely get a lot out of it i know i did um but just to preempt that how great this interview is, give it preemptively five stars in a review on all the podcast apps. Because you already know intuitively how good it is. You know it's good. When have we ever let you down?

You know, we're one of the best things you've ever seen. So yeah, give us five stars in a review. Give us a subscribe. Hit that bell. There's a bell, I think. YouTube.com slash at Bad Hasbara. next stop 50,000 subscribers That's right

And then after that We're done We don't want any more subscribers After 50 Also Patreon.com slash badisbarra You will get all the episodes Right as they're finished

Edited being edited You'll get it before everyone else And you get a bonus episode Every week so that's pretty sick Do you know we just hit our 2000th paying subscriber To Patreon? I know I saw And like today it was literally

at 2,000. Yeah, I'm incredibly grateful for everyone who is supporting us on on Patreon. It makes this podcast possible, frankly, because without the, you know,

being able to at least support paying rent, it's hard to, it's hard to justify to my family, me just starting more and more podcasts. So I, I appreciate it. And, yeah, but please don't, you know, give us your hard-earned money until you have checked

out, GazaFunds.com. Today's episode brought to by GazaFunds.com. GazaFunds.com is a rotating carousel of crowdfunding campaigns from individuals and families in Gaza raising money for rebuilding, resettlement, medical, and other personal expenses. If you want to donate directly to people affected by Israel's, quote, war on Gaza, this is a wonderful resource. GazaFunds.com. Please donate to them before you even think about joining the Patreon because, once again, they need it more than we do.

Daniel, what's the spin? Well, if I was a good Hungarian, I would have picked some Bartok, some Kodai off my classical music shelf. I was going to say that. didn't. These are birthdays. Last few days have seen a glut of musician birthdays, starting with Bob Dylan on the 25th, which is also my uncle Janosch's birthday, if he's listening. Happy birthday birthday, Janosh. To my uncle, Janos. But I've already, I've already featured Bob Dylan so many times on what's the spin. A lot. A lot. Yeah. And Bob Villan, that I thought I would look for, I said, Well, who else has been born in the last few days?

So, number one, we got the great Andre 3000 just turned 50. Oh my God. He's 50? He's 50 years old. A couple of months older than me from the Mighty Outcast. So that was the album, A.T. Aliens. Lauren Hill had a birthday. Oh, beautiful.

How old is she now? I think she's a bit older than him, maybe, like 54, possibly. man that's crazy I might be wrong anyway this is Fuji's the score an album that hasn't aged as well as I would have liked but anyway

oh really what's wrong with it it's got some good singles a lot of really bad skits like skits were big in 90s hip hop and some rich did them well and some didn't like there's an incredibly racist Chinese restaurant skit

that's just entirely silly anyway Heavy D would have been having a birthday the last couple of days RIP to the Hevster that's right Patty LaBelle had a birthday in the last few days

Cool So here's the classic nightbirds by her group LaBelle Hank Williams was born A couple of days ago, many years ago Wow The Great Hank Williams Greatest hits A couple of more

I'm just destroying my records As I throw them onto the bed You have too many of them anyways That's true Levin Helm of the band had a birthday Okay The only American member of this group From Arkansas

Rock of Ages this is their live album okay so it's not the musical no it's not okay um and then finally stevie nix just had a birthday oh and this is her album with lindsay buckingham before they joined fleet with mac right yeah yeah yeah yeah look at that look at that young ingenue look at those two beautiful people they're going to be together forever no drama ahead for those two no they're going to do all right i can always tell but at first glance if a couple's going to make it. And this fucking ham and Nick's characters, I feel like they're

in love. They can't go their own way. No. Always going back to you. Love it. So that's what is spinning. Those are all great records. Add them to the playlist now

whoever you are out there. That's managing the Spotify playlist. I can't wait to see. Yes. Also, there has been word from some of the people who subscribe to the playlist or whatever it is,

the ones who use the playlist on Spotify, who agree with you, Daniel, please remove the comedy albums from the playlist. There has been multiple comments like, no,

seriously, it's ruining the playlist. I agree. I feel like, yeah, it's probably the right thing to do. There's probably also a version of the playlist

that exists where You pick one or two really great songs from each album. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's also. But I mean, I'm not telling you how to do your job guy who randomly decided to do us a favor of making the playlist on Spotify. You're doing great.

But should you feel like it a little more curated experience? Yeah. You know, either way. But thank you for doing what you're doing. Okay. Without further ado, it is time for us to present to you this wonderful interview that we did. with Stephen Caposch? I'd say caposh.

Capos. I feel like I'm doing it exactly the way you're doing it. You're saying caposh. Okay. And I'm saying caposh. Capos. Okay. I just,

this is like the... But it's like Maté versus Mate. Right. Or nuclear versus nuclear. You know? Nuclear is fine. The only difference being one is correct and one makes you sound like a yokel. I'm not a yokel.

I just don't understand why there can't be more use nuclear. So please everyone enjoy this great interview that we did with the wonderful Stephen Kaposh. We have a wonderful guest today, an interview that I am very excited to do because this has been someone who we've wanted to speak to for a very long time, someone who we've seen only in various viral clips on the internet and in various other interviews and being a real journalism podcast that we accidentally somehow become, we are also going to be interviewing this person. He is a Holocaust survivor, a pro-Palestine activist, and he is joining us right now. Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, welcome to the podcast, Stephen Kaposh.

Hello. Hello. Thank you for having. Hi, thank you. Thank you for coming on to the podcast. We really appreciate it. It's very cool. I thank you. Yeah. I would like to begin by asking you about the various viral videos that I've seen that have come out with you at different protests, different Palestine solidarity demonstrations. you seem to be part of a small but yet, you know, very vocal contingent of Holocaust survivors

who are speaking out against the genocide in Palestine. Yeah. Can you tell me about what it's like and what it's been like for the past 18 months being a public figure now talking about this? Yes. This is a somewhat surreal experience for me because it all happened rather quickly. I have not been used to public speaking very much. And yes, this group that you are mentioning, the full name is Holocaust survivors and descendants against the genocide in

Gaza, that's a full title. It's quite a long title, but it's, it's self-explanatory. I first, I haven't started this group. I first saw it, I don't know if you know Mark Etkin, the colleague and

organizers of this group, who started it with Hein Brasheath, you may have heard of him, and on one of these demonstrations I just seen them standing on the side two or three of them

and at that time they were just descendants they didn't have an actual survival and I thought well that's such a good idea that I would join and I did and ever since then

we were at every single large demo and it has been growing now it's nearly 20, 30 members and almost my entire family has joined as descendants. And it has various purposes, but it's a reaction in the first place to the lie that all Jews support Israel. And secondly, the lie that these pro-Palestine marches are somehow no-go-Ary.

us for Jews and we stand that and clearly declare that we are Jews and we have the warmest possible reception actually. People sort of, you know, hug us and thank us and get very emotional about it. I really appreciate it. And this is in England, right? Yeah, in London, mostly. In London. I want to ask you about that reception because, you know, some, there are Jewish groups like the visibly religious, ultra-Orthodox Natura Kharta, Satmar, Jews who will show up to pro-Palestine rallies. And I've seen, you know, obviously there, I don't know what the counter-protest scene is like at London protests here in New York. If you go to a pro-Palestine rally, you're likely to have, you know, these fervent Zionists in small numbers showing up to try and

confront people and they get in the face of these Jews and, you know, scream at them and say, how can you betray your people? Have you had encounters with counter protesters who would have the, let's say, the chutzpah or the temerity to come up to a group of Holocaust survivors and or descendants of same, and with the same kind of hostile energy? What have you received from those Well, the London Metropolitan Police has a policy to keep the groups apart. And usually it's organized well beforehand and there are allocated areas. So we haven't had, I mean, they are, as you say, extremely volatile and aggressive at various times. But on these particular large demos, the police makes it absolutely sure that

we don't mix, and I will tell you about a local event when such a mix did occur with consequences. But generally speaking, we have not had this confrontation unless there is a rather one-off provocation. There was one such thing that there is an Israel-supported Zionist organization sort of campaign against anti-Semitism, CAA. Right, yeah. And its chief executive, Gideon, Falter, or Falter, has been, on one of these past occasions, pretended to be casually, happened to be at the place as the demonstration was going on. And he wanted to assert his right, as he said it, to occupy the same space as the huge demo,

which large groups marching past. And he wanted to cross the road against the floor of the march. Yes, I've seen this video. I've seen this where he is, and then he's asserting that he is not being allowed his freedom of movements due to the fact that he's Jewish, right? Yeah, by chance, by chance. This happened to be right next to where we were standing. So I actually saw it unfold almost.

And he pretended that this was a casual thing that he just wanted to happen to be that. And later videos showed it up that he had a crew with him and they were cameras and so on videoing. And the whole thing was a provocation, and it became an own goal, actually. It's like someone complaining that your face got in the way of my fist, you know. Right. Yeah, sure. The only other sort of confrontation I had was a recent one when somebody came up to us. And it's very unusual, but he did and said, you know, shame on you, shame on you.

usual stuff and talking to me. And I said to him, are you a Zionist? And he said, yes, of course. And the next question was, do you support the genocide? And he said, what genocide? So I said, the discussion terminated. Yeah. Because as far as I'm concerned, I don't want to have any exchange with somebody who's still having seen what we are all seeing.

Right. cannot accept that that is something awful, like Geno said, is going on. So, you know, yeah. I just don't know that our group's policy is not to engage with the Zionists. It's a good policy. On the very few occasions when they try to. Yeah, that's our podcast policy too. We do not engage with Zionists.

Except when we're on Twitter when that's all we do. Right. Well, that's a, I mean, we could, we got, this podcast, this podcast could use a lot, you know, a little party discipline reminiscent of what you guys are doing. Yeah. We might want to consider engaging less. But I want to ask, uh, performance art when we do it. Yes. Yeah. I want to ask in terms of, you know, your, your experience being a Holocaust survivor and hearing, uh, someone, you know, a Zionist at a, you know, March saying what genocide? I imagine for you this, it's, you might even find it more offensive than, you know,

just your, your average person being a survivor of a genocide, a genocide in which people to this day, there are still Holocaust deniers. what are your your thoughts on the way in which people are doing denialism and do you see a do you see a connection there between what the denialism of the European population during the Holocaust and the denialism of the you know Israeli population and the Jewish institutional population in denying this genocide? Yes, well, first of all, I found it extremely offensive the way that the genocide is being used as a cover for the Holocaust, or rather the other way around, the Holocaust used as a cover for the ongoing genocide in various ways. But I think that the Holocaust experience is deliberately kept alive and exploited.

And it feeds the Israeli exceptionalism and the propagation of Jewish exceptionalism. And the lack of accountability that flows from it. And with that kind of bolstering them in all that action, they then turn to the Palestinians and make them pay for the Holocaust, in effect, by, you know, whatever they, their purpose, which is basically ethnic cleansing, and it has always been from the beginning, is being covered by the Holocaust experience because they cannot be accountable, the lack of accountability that flows from it in their view. it's using it to justify this genocide the experience of the Holocaust the historical experience

of you know all of historical anti-Semitism plus very specifically the Holocaust is being used to justify or or to obviate it to say well we know from genocide right that's they'll use any approach they can say it's just Or they can say you're misusing that word because we know what a genocide is because it happened to us. And a genocide is when millions of people are industrially exterminated in high technology camps with gas chambers. That's what a genocide is. Yeah, well, of course, it's absolute rubbish because that argument, because actually, as Francesca Albanese points it out in her, In order to be genocide, it doesn't need a single death.

There are various five definitions of various actions of obliteration, cultural as well as physical. And anyone of the five would justify a genocide in any case. But this is often misinterpreted, and, you know, the numbers game is used. Right. Particularly, for example, even the British Foreign Secretary until very recently, I think even now, although he's altered his rhetoric in the last few days. in great panic. Is that Lemmy?

Lemmy, yes. He was saying in parliament that it's not genocide. Genocide assumes millions and something. Right. Francesca Albanese reacted to this. Lemi, is he a lawyer? I mean, he just doesn't know his law, quite simply. And of course, in other forms, I was absolutely disgusted when I saw the Israeli representative to the UN when it was his turn to say something, very theatrically putting on a yellow star.

And I was just sickening, you know, because he's exploiting something which was a total humiliation for the Jewish people who had to wear a yellow star, I had to wear one, even at seven-year-old. And I just don't want to, that to be played in a theatrical fashion for a purpose. Well, so let's go back to what happened to you, if that's okay in this point in the interview, Matt, to transition to that, because, you know, as exploited and weaponized as the Holocaust has been cynically by Zionists and Israel supporters. This is something very real and very massive and very unthinkably cruel that happened and that you, like my father, were, in fact, you were in the same city in Budapest.

But you were a bit older than my dad was, so you have living, you have memory of it. So what can you tell us about what you remember of that time and what happened to your family? Well, I do remember it in like a set of postcards, almost, not as a video, sort of in isolated. Very dark postcards. I would want to be sent one. Yeah. But I want to say that because I was only seven years old, I didn't have fear. In retrospect, I should have had, but I didn't, you know, because I didn't fully understand the implications of things.

It was more a reflected fear, because I noticed the intense fear and distress of the adults around me, but I myself was not, in various difficult situations, still wasn't afraid. And it was a, the experience was a combination of things. Because on the one hand, it was the, I suppose, humiliation and discrimination ending up in hiding on false papers in protected, inverted commerce, protected homes, because they were protected by bluffs with the help of the Swiss Cross envoy to Budapest. who pretended certain buildings to have had international extraterritorial protection, which is total glass. That was a pretense?

Yes. So the glass factory that hid my grandmother and father was, as I understand the story, a Swiss protected zone, that itself was a front? I don't know about that specific particular place. But the one that I had experienced of, it was a project which was started by the Lutheran Christian Church in Hungary, which there were two Protestant churches, the Lutherans and the Calvinist. And they both, both churches combine on their bishops' instructions to initially to create, protected homes to protect initially the converted Christian ex-Jewish children. And that later grew into accepting almost anybody.

But it started with one or two homes and grew into an archipelago of large number of homes. and the organization was called the Good Shepard organization, supported by these two Protestant churches, plus the Swiss Red Cross, who had a very brave envoy, von, who has been later recognized as a, I don't know what the correct term is, as a just gentile or something. Righteous among the Gentiles. Righteous, righteous. Gentile with a tree in Yad Vashem. Yeah. On top of a Palestinian grave site or raised village. Yeah, the Shem literally is.

The person is righteous. No one said the tree also had to be righteous, okay? Yes. The tree itself. He didn't design the award of the plaque. They just gave it to him. But the key person was a Swiss envoy, who was a very brave man and given to this bluffing. Because he had absolutely no agreements or paperwork to prove that any particular of these homes,

and they were growing in number, in fact, had international Swiss protection. They stuck the Swiss flag on it. And when the Hungarian fascist groups questioned it, and they tried to raid such places, which happened several times, a quick phone call would call in von Braun, who would say, well, don't you dare put a foot across that threshold because that's Switzerland, and there will be an international incident. And there's a complete bluff.

He had a collaborator in the Hungarian foreign office who could be formed to confirm this to the fascist groups and said, yes, you know, if you, please don't do that, because if you go over, it would be an international incident. And generally, they just went away after a while. Really playing into the stereotype of the bumbling Nazis, you know, the, okay, if you say so. I don't want to get in trouble. So in the, you know, the Lutheran church or this, you know, part of this project was doing this conversioning, converting people into Christianity, right? I imagine that this only lasted for so long as a way of protecting the Jewish population. Absolutely, it's very short time.

There were a series of legislations passed at that time. And, you know, it was literally just a matter of weeks before this was no longer a protection. And so this is when, I mean, our family converted. for getting a degree of protection for a short time. Right. Well, you didn't know if it would be a short time or what. And I distinctly remember, it's one of the clearest memories that on the day when the conversion occurred.

Because my father and uncle came out of the ceremony and had a laughing fit. that's how you know that the conversion worked as soon as you come out you're just filled with joy laughing at but I must add that on some members of my family took it absolutely seriously because it went with a degree of study period, you know, led by Christian pastors.

And there is a branch of my family whose conversion really was genuine. A particular aunt who ended up living in Haifa and was still Calvinist Christian, but kept it quiet from the neighbors. Because it wasn't a thing for a patriotic Jew to be Israeli. But but she was an extremist Zionist at the same time. Well, those two things are not in contradiction. They seem to happen a lot. So at this point, how long did you stop?

under this protection before, you know, whatever Nuremberg laws or what not were passed, saying that anyone who had Jewish blood had to... But chronologically, first, were briefly under the protection of the Kusner project. And then that, when it was decided that it might not work and we left it. It is then that I was taken into one of these protected places, the first one actually, that was so creative. That was in October, October 44. And I have a very clear memory again of that day, because I was taken up, I was still small enough to be carried in, in arms, in arms, and I was carried up to the hills of Buddha where this home was, going past a German

checkpoint. Now Hungary was Germany's ally, formally, but by that time the Hungarian dictator, Admiral Horty, was wobbling in his alliance to Hitler, because he realized that the war was lost. by them, well and truly lost. Right. And he was making an ineffective broadcast of declaring Hungary's departure from the alliance and virtually changing sides. And whereupon the German army surrounded the castle, what was his home. And it was on that day that I was taken up into these homes.

And we had to go past a German unit, which had its field gun, trained on the castle. And the person who was taking me had some magic piece of paper. And I fantasized that it was something that he acquired an earlier visit to Germany and had carried hitler's signature on it or something. because when he showed it to the checkpoint, all the German soldiers stood to attention, saluted and waved us through. Wow. Was he a Jedi?

Yeah. Might as well have been one. Actually, he was the gardener of this place. Wow. A humble person. He must have done a really good job. everyone saluted him. So you, I mean, from what I've read, the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the death camps

and labor camps and all that was one of, if not the most effective and efficient sort of deportation operations in the entire, and the entire Reich, you know. So you were one, I mean, you know, you're the recipient. of significant good fortune to have ended up where you ended up. Yeah, but it's partly a group good fortune because the deputations were intensive, as you say, and very efficient. In fact, a new platform was built in Auschwitz to receive them. And there was about 400,000 Jews, mostly from the countryside. That's right.

Because the Germans were coming in from the outside. Right. For later, and it was more problematic because it was more visible to the world. And there were various interventions by then, including even Pope, I think, Pope Leo de Twelfth, no, Pius de Tvost, who didn't have a good record, actually, for... But even he intervened at one point with the Horty, the Admiral Horty was still in power then. And it sort of delayed and delayed until the actual takeover of power, which followed the day that I described when Horty made this pronouncement. immediately

the fascist party the alternate fascist party I should say took over the arrow cross and the arrow cross was a political party as well as you know

like the brown shirts a series of gangs of hooligans and armed gangs which were hunting Jews from that day on.

Yeah. And some terrible things were going on if you were found. But until then, as a group, the Budapest Jews were sort of in a waiting position. They had this preliminary stage, if you like, of having had to live in large yellow star-marked buildings. obviously in order to make eventual deportation efficient and quick but it never got to that point so I imagine when you're

I mean I'm sure there's much more we can ask you about your own personal story but the reason you're here the occasion here is that we're drawing parallels we're drawing the parallels that I always grew up saying you should never draw In fact, never compare the Holocaust to anything. It's this sacrosanct category of one incident, this anomaly in history that

yet somehow we're supposed to draw every lesson from and the lessons are all about us. And at the same time this morning, I saw a picture, a photograph from Gaza of maybe 1,000, 2,000 Gossens crowded into a barbed wire fence area. This is taken from above and the caption is this is an aid area. This is where they're lining up to get, you know, a tiny amount of rations from private security contractors. Yeah. Well, you know, that-

Yeah, that attack on Andro is just a completely false base story and it's quite simply They are against Andro, partly to deny the refugee status of many Palestinians, but also, in order to prevent effective food distribution, quite simply. It's a tool of not quite clear ethnic cleansing and genocide. And possibly to use food distribution and humanitarian aid distribution. itself as a concentration tool to lure and, you know. So I'm wondering, you know, with all of these both general and specific reminisce, what's the word, resemblances, what do you think of this argument that we shouldn't compare? We shouldn't draw these problems that it's dangerous.

I think it's Israel's self-serving taboo. we should break as often as we can because it's a it's a false completely false claim that why can't you compare it when it is extremely comparable

so nothing nothing in your world is lost like the horror is that you and the Jews of Europe suffered in the 30s and 40 are not diminished by one iota by drawing whatever comparisons present themselves to what's going on now. You're not dishonored by that, or it's not, it doesn't whitewash anything to say, hey, look, we're living in a world where these crimes are still possible, and where in fact a so-called Jewish state can commit them. Yes, and also just simply to be truthful.

I mean, it is extremely lighted. So why, why can't you say it? And there are many aspects that I found that were the current genocide in Gaza particularly rhymes with our experience. For example, the frequent dislocations on very short notice, just simply having to rely on information from your enemy, which we had to do as well, which connects to the Kastner project. You know, I wondered sometimes, how could my father go into a deal and trust a deal with the Nazis? Right. And the answer is that partly because of that there was no firm information.

And the alternative was even worse. Do you think the Nazis patted themselves on the back as much as Israel does for dropping leaflets? Right, exactly. I made a joke on Twitter the other day when the Houthis warned Israel to vacate Bangorian airport I said well hey they dropped a huge leaflet right no Zionist gets to complain

right yeah I'll give you another parallel which actually links to my family directly that when there are these sudden orders to

leave for another safe area, which turn on never to be safe. How, what is it like for a family to suddenly get out and go? And what do you do if you have a disabled member, the pain of that decision, and it's got to be done in an instant of whether to leave somebody behind, because it's incapable of the journey, because there was no bus service for moving. Or the whole family to stay in solidarity and help and expose themselves to the killings. Now, my family in Transylvania, because through my mother, I have a, I have a, I have, Transylvanian family

connection who were farming in the middle of Transylvania And Is that where modern-day Slovakia would be? No, Slovakia is a northern

Carpathian. Transylvania is an area, a historic area of Hungary which has been locked over to Romania after the first world war

part of it, about half of it, returned by Hitler as a kind of pay-off, a gift in order for Hungary to participate in the Barbarossa attack on the Soviets. Sort of like Israel giving back the Sinai. Yeah, sure. And, you know, Admiral Horty as well as a war criminal, really, in allowing what was going around the Jews. It was also a rather ineffective politician. He could have realized that this was not in a long term, a very brilliant deal.

And so after a Second World War, naturally, Transylvania went back to Romania. So you had family there. Yeah. But when it was lobbed over to Hungary by Hitler, as a gift of Hitler, immediately the Jews had a much worse prospect than when they were under a relatively more humane Romanian rule. And my family was approached by who were farmers on quite a large scale. Some of the Romanian workers, because the village was half-Romanian, half-Hungarian at that time, approached them and said, look, we are not very far from the Romanian border now, and we have secret tracks, and we can take the family by horse and cart illegally dropping you on a Romanian border.

You would be much safer. But don't trust the Hungarians, don't stay. It's too dangerous for you. And they turned down this offer because there was one elderly family member who they judged couldn't take that address, bumpy journey. So they stayed. They never believed the full dangers that was in front of them. all of them were transported to Auschwitz and just one teenager

girl survived 15 died So you see a parallel between that just the way in which people you know the Israelis use this well there's a safe zone here and if you don't leave then it's actually your fault

you know if you get killed you see the parallel between those two things and you know and also go ahead also not a parallel of the agony of dealing with a disabled person if you happen to have one yes yes and i've seen a video recently of that in Palestine a very heart-wrenching video of you know people moving their disabled or elderly family members you know down and you know an endless road filled with refugees

you know, after their fifth or sixth displacement in the last 18 months. And it's, it's just, it's awful to see this happening and simultaneously hear people excuse the deaths of anyone who has made the decision to stay because they just don't want to leave a family member behind or they physically aren't unable to carry them on their backs. Yeah. And that really brings home what you're saying. well it brings home what you're saying about the deaths not being the ultimate or the certainly the sole measure of a genocide because while whatever percentage has been killed

and a larger percentage has been injured and another percentage is missing the percentage of Palestinians in Gaza who are stressed beyond all human capacity 24 hours a day for 19 months and pressed into impossible inhuman choices that would destroy the souls of most human beings to be in that position is close to, it is 100%. And that's happening. And that's what I take was happening to, you know, not all Jews in Europe died. Not all Jews, I mean, a large percentage did. Not all Jews were in concentration camps, but all Jews were in a state of such extreme

precarity and fear and terror so as to be marked by it for the rest of their lives if they did survive. Yeah. In fact, I think that there is a whole range of pains which are called the sort of the invisible pain of the genocide that's going on. I'll give you an example of how it rhymes with my experience. right after liberation we were on the buddha side of the town as you know then you divide the town into buddha and pash and our original home was on the pash side and after liberation we had to wait a bit because all the bridges were blown up and and we had to wait for the soviets to

build a pontoon bridge so that we could walk over there was no transport transportation hasn't started up yet and to look at what happened to our home and we had no knowledge and so we arrive at the place where our building was and at a glance we take in the fact that we are homeless because the external walls were all down and you could look into our building like it was a doll's house you know some of our furniture still there and so on and at an at an instant you realize you are homeless right now the gauzeons after a bombing coming up from the shelter suddenly find no no building above them and at a glance you are suddenly made completely homeless.

And imagine the difficulty in Gaza of creating a home with all the restrictions of materials and permissions and God knows what else. And it may take a couple of decades to build up a home. And then it goes in an instant. On top of which, most of these people are already refugees. Right. I mean, why are they there in the first place? So what sort of experience is that to realize it all of a sudden?

Yeah. Right. I mean, we were by comparison, actually, in every comparison I can make, the Gazon situation is worse than what my direct and our family's direct experience was. Right. For example, it so happens that where our homes protected, Swiss protected homes were, was close to the royal castle where the climax of the fighting between the Germans and the Soviets played out. And, well, the destruction when we came up and looked around after the fighting was over was total in that small area. Not all Budapest was like that at all, but in that particular small area, because it was the final fight, it was total, you know, just piles of rubbish and bricks and broken glass, you know, mounds of it. That horses, that soldiers discarded, discarded ammunition, burnt on tanks, etc.

That was the scene. But all of that was a byproduct of two armies fighting. Right. In Gaza, the same environment created deliberately, deliberate destruction. Right. So which is worse. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a great point.

It's, you know, you look at these scenes in Gaza of entire neighborhoods flattened. And, you know, when you compare it to, you know, pictures of destruction from other wars, you know, some you could, people will make the argument. This is war. This is what it looks like. That's what it looks like when two armies are fighting each other. And even then it's not like that. Yeah, and even then it's not an entire flattened. I mean, the entire city, you'll see a city completely in rubble.

And yeah, people act like it's just a natural byproduct of war, not realizing that they're talking about one army doing all of the destruction. Yeah, I think, in fact, to apply the word war to to what goes on in Gaza is incorrect. Yes. It's agreed. It's not a proper war at all. The Holocaust was a genocide couched

in a much larger war. What's going on in Gaza is some skirmishes couched inside a genocide. Right. It's like calling the Holocaust a war between the Germans and the Jews is if there's two equally armed sides

fighting each other. It's completely ridiculous. hold on there stephen don't mean to cut in what you were saying was super interesting but we have other interesting things to talk about like our sponsor whoever the hell is going to be our sponsor so please everyone stick around whoever whoever paid money to interrupt a holocaust survivor that's right yes uh you know it must be important if they interrupted so please stick around listen to these ads we will be right back And we're back. This is Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast. And now back to our interview with Stephen Kaposh.

You got it this time. Yes. I want to ask you about where you're living now, which is, you know, England. You've been there for many years. Something I've noticed about British Jews is a particular. strain of paranoia, a particular strain of a feeling of insecurity and a feeling of, and British Zionists have this flavor to them. I guess it's similar to what I see in Canada to a sense that despite what seems to be a very stable English existence, there's this conviction bred in

the bone that what you went through, Stephen, is in the offing for them, you know, in the next inning of the cricket match. Yeah. What do you think accounts for that? Well, I think that's deliberately created, artificially created. It's taken sometimes to absurd ends. For example, when the Jeremy Corbyn project was alive and I was a keen supporter, he has a record of being against any kind of discrimination and had excellent relationship as a

local MP with the Jewish community in his area and supporting them, et cetera. So nothing could be more unlike than Jeremy Corbyn as a danger to the Jewish community. And yet, and yet artificially and as a kind of uniform chorus, the mass media and those behind them created somehow stemmed him with this kind of image of a greatest exited, it called it. The chief rabbi said, existential danger to British Jews. It's a cynical, deliberate, complete lie,

and campaign, more than a single lie. It was a campaign to destroy him. Yeah, our former guest, Asa, when Stanley has written the book about that. And in the process, British Jews allow themselves to be weaponized in a war against wealth redistribution, against a, you know, against a social welfare state, against any kind of future for social democracy in England. Like they've become a tool of the ruling class. It's incredible to me. Well, I think it's a, particularly a separate story of what happened to the mass media, which were able to create these campaigns against Jeremy Corbyn or in favor of Israel,

and that there were no dissenting voices virtually, you know, because of career consequences and so on. People were worried about being smeared. Yeah, total intimidation and so. Suddenly, when the United Nations, a couple of days ago, declared that 14,000 babies may be killed by starvation within the next couple of days, there was a panic. Suddenly, they woke up. That past attitude may be coming home to roost and they may be held responsible. which they should be. Yes, absolutely. And of course, that's when a rhetoric changed, not action, just a rhetoric. Right, right, which is, yeah, just a rhetoric seems to be as much as anyone can expect right now, unfortunately. It's interesting to me, you know, to talk about the question of anti-Semitism with you specifically because you are a Holocaust survivor and you've seen first,

hand what anti-Semitism is and what it can do. Not that others haven't or haven't experienced some types of anti-Semitism, but obviously this is, you know, the most ultimate extreme example of a mass mega pogrom happening. And, you know, as someone who is a Holocaust survivor, when you see, like, do you feel worried as a Jewish person in London you know you talked earlier about people claiming you know

oh this march is a no go zone the phrase no go zone is something I've only heard with regard to the UK this is not something we have in the United States where people go oh don't go there that's a no go zone you know we don't even really

we don't talk about anything that way but this seems to be something almost like a meme or whatnot within like UK Jewry, the idea of a neighborhood in which Jews are not allowed because there are various Muslims or Arabs or whatnot. What is your feeling about safety as a Jewish person in England? It's not an issue, quite simply.

Yeah. As yet. But I think, generally, internationally, the conflation of being a Jew and supporting Israel as kind of naturally one and the same thing, which is what the Israeli state and Zionists generally propagate, will have inevitably a consequence of some kind of repercussion eventually. internationally and then they can say

we told you so. That's why you need us. Right, yeah. Yeah, I told you what happened. All we needed to do was convince everyone Jews support genocide for two years. Come to Israel, the safest place for Jews. I know. This is the funny thing.

I don't know if you get this from Israelis or if Israelis just are smart enough to steer clear of you. but one of the funniest pushbacks I get and Matt gets too is Israelis being like, oh, you privileged, cushy, safe, they call me a safe Jew. Right. That's one of their pejoratives. Safe Jews sitting there sipping your Starbucks in Brooklyn, which is very insulting because

I'd never go near a Starbucks. I drink much more expensive coffee than that. Yeah. But, you know, with your safety and, you know, and I say to them, aren't you supposed to be the safe Jews? Isn't that the whole mission statement? Isn't that right on the company masthead? Like, isn't that the whole point of you?

If you're not the safe Jews, why do you even exist? Forget your right to exist. What's your reason to exist if you're not safe? Yes. My late cousin who put this very simply said, well, if you have a people who are generally discriminated against and persecuted in all over the world, etc. The last thing you want to do is to collect them up and put them in one place

as a target. To concentrate them as it is right yeah yeah but don't worry these at this camp all of the soldiers are on our side which is you know that's how they keep you safe like what if you were friends with the German soldiers in terms of your own oh go ahead so talking over it's being friends with a German soldier I must tell you this particular clear memory of the Second World War that when the fighting reached us, so to speak, the frontline, and just before the actual fighting, it was Christmas 1944, the German army invited us to share their Christmas due, all these Jews on false papers and we went, of course you couldn't decline it right and um so i remember that very clearly that um you know the

beautiful long white table set um with little fur twigs and the christmas tree at the end and a huge swastick of leg i'm sorry i hate to keep bringing up star wars but this is the empire strikes back when right now when they show up on on on cloud city City, right. Darth Vader is hosting a big banquet. Right. Yeah. One Jew, one German soldier.

Yeah. Wow. One Jew, one soldier, German soldier, one Jewish boy, one German soldier all along. Jesus. And then what was the, what was the vibe? What was the spirit of Christmas? This is what I cannot quite understand. It's how is it that I don't remember what they served for food.

but I do remember what the atmosphere was like which was incredibly depressed because they all knew that they are not going to see their own family that's why they invited us

because they were already totally surrounded by vastly at that time vastly superior Soviet forces by that time the Red Army

was superior hugely numbers, but also technologically. They had these multiple rocket firing Katusha's, which the Germans didn't have. Actually, I remember them firing off at night. It was quite spectacular. Wow. And they were not going to prevail.

They knew that. So either they fall in the fight, or if they don't, it's a gulags. and that the survival rate was 10% for the cure. So they think at their moment of defeat, well, gather around little Jews to keep us company at least. Right. Let's have a nice day together. Boy, we had some times together, huh?

Yeah. If they knew that we were Jews. Right. Okay, they didn't. Right. That's why the invitation. Now, again, this was a pretty scary situation. The biggest scare was one boy asking for the loo and it's taken by a German soldier and then discover this must be a Jewish boy.

Oh, no, yeah. Yeah. That is, yeah. The adults in charge of us were aware of that. And they were really scared. But nothing happened. I'd be scared if there were like Christmas songs where it's just like, oh, shit. I did not learn

any of these. Haleigh enough, yes. Yeah, exactly. I want to ask about your experience, you know, speaking out as a Holocaust survivor, you know, in solidarity with the Palestinians, speaking out against the genocide, speaking out against

Israel. How long have you been doing it? How long have you been you know, voicing your opinion about this. And when did you start? Well, really, the start has to be back even before the Palestine question started up.

When it was, when anti-Semitism was used as a weapon inside the Labour Party. Right. And I was, at that time, we are talking about the time when it all started up

and Jeremy Corbyn was leader but our local MP was Kirstama and he was a shadow cabinet minister under Jeremy Corbyn. This

what we were convinced false anti-Semitism campaign started up. And I was a member of Momentum, which was organized for the support of Jeremy Corbyn. And we had a meeting prior to a big meeting of the Labour Party. We had a Momentum meeting the night before, where we were going to put a motion to the larger meeting. larger meeting, more general meeting, to say that we oppose this new move, that there is actually no serious anti-Semitism to speak about in our constituency, Holbenance and Pancras. Right.

And some of us, colleagues, comrades, worded a good motion, and they looked around and said, well, who should present it? You are a Holocaust survivor. It best comes from you. I said, this is the first time I spoke publicly, actually. Wow. Because I accepted, well, how could I not? And the following day was the meeting, big meeting.

And what I didn't realize, I had to follow the so-called leader of the council, who was a Zionist speaking the opposite way. And then Kirst Tarma speaking, he said, I just come from a shadow cabinet meeting and after much debate, we have achieved unity that we must root out this ratford anti-Semitism from a party and we achieved this great unity. They badgered for Jeremy Corbyn to kind of not to stop his dissent, I suppose. Kirstarmer had just had his meeting in the woods with the three witches who told him he would one day be Prime Minister if all I needed to do was to kneecap Jeremy Corbyn. So I had to follow with a speech saying, well, I am pretty sensitized towards anti-Semitism as a Holocaust survivor. and I haven't experienced any in our party nor have I seen anybody else experience any

so I conclude there isn't any you know wow that's pretty that's pretty simplistic there Stephen if you haven't experienced any and no one else has experienced any that you've spoken to and you haven't observed any

that therefore you conclude there isn't any I mean I mean shouldn't shouldn't you go looking Yeah. Have you searched on Twitter? Because I bet if you searched for words on Twitter, you could find some. And then you could experience it. And then you would know what it's like to be persecuted for being Jewish. Of course, we always accept that there is no 100% on anything. Of course. And the Labour Party would reflect the national average, but somewhat less than the national average of anti-Semites. But as I said, you know, it didn't surface in our constituency in any visible way. So you were... And then we won the vote. And we won the vote.

Oh, and you won the vote. Wow. We won the vote. This was the last time the left won a vote in our constituency. Wow. I went up to... I knew Kinshtama by then, and I went up to him afterwards and said, look, I'm sorry, Keel, you know, I had to be honest to my experience.

And he said, yes, but you divided the party. That's coming from him. Yeah, right. You'd, yeah, you divided the party. So it's interesting because, you know, it sounds like sort of the origin story, at least you speaking out publicly, is, you know, seeing the way in which

weaponized accusations of anti-Semitism are used for nefarious, you know, means, right? Yeah. And, you know, with regard to Israel, I mean, you know, it's kind of like, it's the Jeremy Corbyn smear campaign on steroids. This is, you know, they have entire organizations dedicated to doing, you know, what they did to Jeremy Corbyn, but for anyone from a political leader to a college student. It was probably incubated in the Labour Party and then made more general.

Well, certainly, certainly. I mean, but it's what's interesting, you know, to me is the fact that the, you know, Israel for especially people of, you know, your generation, my parents' generation, has always the Hasbara around it or the, you know, sort of propaganda about it has always been sort of like this needs to exist for our safety. Was there ever a time where you felt that way and then at some point, you know, that changed and what changed? Not me. Coming out of the Holocaust, did you look at the creation of a Jewish state

as some kind of salvation or vindication? No, no, no, no. Well, as you probably know from your father as well, Central Europe's attitude to Zionism a bit different from some other countries. Because in my experience,

in Hungary the Zionists were regarded as an extremist freakish little sect as they should and and the password was assimilation and this was

in the central European country in the Austria-Hungary empire a deliberate policy of the Habsburg to to utilize

the Jewish community and its energy and culture, et cetera, towards the capitalist transformation from feudalism. And they saw them as an extremely useful vehicle. And they encouraged name changes so that they can more easily melt into the local population. It came from a bomb. And it was embraced very much.

And that's my family changed name. And lots of other people. as I know. And ours did too, actually. Yeah. And yes, I would recognize Matia's not a particularly Jewish name. Yeah, there actually was Melzer. Right. Ours was Cohen from. Apparently, my father and uncle when they were young men after the First World War and, you know, under the influence of this kind of direction, they pulled out a map of Hungary and looked for a useful name. And they saw this little river Koposh.

He said, that will do. Yeah. Well, it's one way to pick a name. Yeah. Sorry, but speaking of your name, just to cut in here, and then I want to come back to the question of your relationship to Zionism over the years or, you know, where the speaking out for Palestine came from. But it is an unfortunate pun that your name, at least on paper, looks like one of the go-to slurs

that Zionists love to throw around at people like the three of us. The implication being that we are like the Capos of the concentration camps, which is the Jews who got favors from the guards for ratting out their favor, their fellow Jews or administering or whatever, they were given a privileged position. Now I've always I want to just, obviously that's not your name, but just

given that you're a survivor of this time, I take such offense at that because what, to me it evinces such a contempt for the victims. Why were those Jews in that position in the first place? Right.

It would be like calling someone some kind of slur for a prisoner who is put in a terrible position and has to make an impossible choice. What do you hear, what do you think when you hear that word being thrown around

as a synonym for sympathizing with Palestinian? Yeah, well, I start answering that with what I heard from my father who, as part of the Kastan project, was briefly incarcerated in Belgium, in a camp within a camp, because as part of the arrangements, although he didn't end up in Switzerland like previous Kassna transport did, the Germans,

when they pulled a plug on the project, at least respected that it's somewhat different they had a contract with these people so they kept them in a inverted commerce privileged enclosure within the camp and he saw across the barbed wire what went on in the real camp and he said he actually seen completely dehumanized people almost reduced to animal status weakened and fighting over inedible soup to be beaten to death by capos, actually saw it. So this created a very strong image in my mind about capos and what that meant. And recently, I have been in fact insulted by Zionists who, in one of our local demos mixed in with us, and when I was speaking

I was asked to speak at one point this particular Zionist read in an Israeli flag poised above me from a lamppost kept shouting capo capo at me while I was speaking now I didn't hear it because I was speaking but others did

and reported him to the police who were present this is this a rare occasion when because of their special effort to provoke and intermingle, they came particularly early to occupy the area where we were licensed to be for the demonstration. So on this occasion, the police couldn't carry out their usual practice of separation. And some colleagues made an immediate complaint to the police and the chap was arrested

and it is an ongoing case a couple of weeks ago we had two days in court where the prosecution was by the crime the defendant was this guy

and I was one of I was the victim, or one of the victims, because it wasn't only me, he was saying this too. And our status was just as witnesses to this case, but it was between the crown and this guy. And the judge, after the second day's beginnings of the second day's hearing, dismissed the case. and on two grounds, it's a bit complicated to go into it, but on both grounds, when he pronounced it, the barrister representing the Crown said the Crown disagrees.

And it turns out that this particular judge, a junior judge, was completely wrong on law, and appeal is going on as we speak. It's in progress. grass. So he got off because he was claiming he was just saying your name, not that he was doing a slur? No, that was never. That was laughed out. That he did say that, but that was not the ground. He tried that defense. He did, he did. But it had the weakness that even if you're allowed that my name was the same, which it isn't, right, if you pronounce it. How can he use? How can he use it on others who had nothing like that name because it was you had that on that occasion it was used wholesale not only right right so that completely undermined his case and nobody

took it seriously but there were other technical grounds and and the interpretation of the actual meaning of of the word capo um the judge said that it wasn't raised as a term. It was an extremely serious insult which is protected under freedom of speech to pronounce. But at this point, as Crown said, the Crown disagrees. Because it turns out that if you read the law accurately and completely, then it is what is called racially aggravated accusation or or insult and that's sufficient it doesn't have to be racist outright sure or or or anti-semitic outright although many expert claim it is anti-semitic I think it is too a hundred percent it's anti-semitic I mean it's it's something that

is been lobbed by you know Zionists and you know Israel supporters in general whose cover for being allowed to do it is well I'm Jewish so I'm allowed to do anti-Semitism and that seems to be the entire argument for doing it and for why it's not anti-Semitic but you know just to finish out our conversation you know talking about this

with you being a Holocaust survivor who is speaking out against Israel speaking out in you know against the genocide going on um i just you know i i want to hear about your experience with um whether or not you had known uh as as much vitriol existed in the jewish state before october 7th and and how surprised have you been at just how, you know, for lack of a better term, damage to the society is in Israel. And do you see that society as, in any way, rhyming with the society that you were, you know, living in during the Holocaust? And if not, is it redeemable?

But as a state, it isn't. I mean, I think it has to go. And it's become toxic, completely. Israel has become toxic and Zionism become toxic, and it's not survivable, what they have perpetrated so far, even so far, and it's not finished. If I compare the Holocaust experience, the big crime there, I think, of the population was indifference. the looking the other way, the giving into intimidation, not speaking up, which is a kind of guilt, a serious guilt. After liberation, although there was a very brief period of democracy, which was an illusion of democracy, because underneath it, the Soviet occupying forces were there, waiting to make and help a changeover into a dictatorial Stalinism, which occurred after the

three years. But there was a three-year period of democracy. There was immediate physical and violent retribution against the fascists. There were lots of trials and hangings for a period. there nothing. There was no education, no real confrontation. And during the communist regime, it was swept under the carpet completely. You probably know, Daniel, that even to pronounce the word Jewish in Stalinist Hungary was a crime. Because that was racist. That was racist. That was really, it could be arrested for them.

And the result of that was complete suppression. They simply did not accept racial, race, discrimination, identification whatsoever. It didn't go into your religion or race didn't go into any document in Stalinist Hungary. To the point of short-term historical amnesia. Yeah, exactly. It led to a lack of confrontation with the general public guilt that had to be because of the indifference to what went home. An example, indifference and opportunism as well. One example of it was when my father was telling me that when they, were transported in cattle wagons towards, towards Belsen, and they stopped at the Hungarian village.

And they were desperate for water, you could get a glass of water for a wedding ring. Wow. And that was not untypical of the kind of opportunism. So indifference, opportunism. But what I'm not hearing you describe is bloodthirst, zealous, vengeful, glee at the suffering, at the well-documented and live-streamed suffering of the Jewish people. Because it wasn't live-streamed. It was done in the shadows.

Right. And it was, you know, but what we're seeing from Israeli society that Matt was pointing to, I think, are we right in thinking for seeing something new? 80% support. Yeah. Yeah. The blood lost.

There was some in the but it was restricted to the sort of hooligan gangs of the arrow cross who were hunting Jews, quite simply. And, and, you know,

that there's horrific shooting into the danger if you found one and so. Well, actually, in Israel, it's also restricted to the hooligan gangs. It just happens to be that they are 80% of the population. Right. Yeah, well, that's a big difference. Yeah. The lunatic fringe is the majority of the country. When you were young and you saw the way, the hatred of, you know, against Jews and whatnot,

how were, what did you process as their job? justification for it, like the why do they hate us? Do you remember thinking here is their argument for why this needs to happen? Going back to the fact that not as it was going on, because I was just simply too young to analyze this kind of thing. But in retrospect, in retrospect, if you like, experienced the othering, the humiliation, in retrospect, in realizing what went on to us or about us. Right. It's very complicated in Hungary

because, again, Daniel, you probably know that the Stalinist regime, the Politburo, was almost uniformly Jewish. That wasn't helpful. And that

fed a latent anti-Semitism. Right. Yeah. And that burst, it's boundaries in the 56 uprising. Yes, that's right. My father, which is when my family left.

That's right. Yeah. My father was director of Hygiene Public Health Institute. And during the interval between the two Soviet attacks, when all kinds of, political new parties cropped up and suddenly new newspapers appeared and that was kind of a sense of great liberation. But also local workers councils appeared everywhere, at places of work.

They weren't necessarily workers, though, who ran these places. In my father's institute, it was the old right-wing parties who were, monopolized these new councils, as they called them. They had a meeting in absence of my father, where they decided that it was time to have a Hungarian director. Yeah. So there you are. Yeah.

Well, one of the reasons I ask about what these fanatics in Hungary who were, you know, and Hungary who were, you know, like you said, the ones who did have the blood, blood lust, these gangs, what their, you know, stated justification is, is, you know, one of the things that I see is a population in Israel in which they feel, you see the, you know, bloodlust and celebration of the destruction of Palestinian people and the Palestinian, you know, property and state, as completely justified whether due to like religious reasons or for the most part due to this narrative that they in fact are the victims of the Palestinians. I think they believe that I think they generally believe probably that they would be

you know it's just a matter of time there would be an attack by all Arab countries or Palestinians to obliterate them or something and this is deliberately. created that feeling yeah and it's also it's heightened by the fact that the longer you keep your boot on someone's neck the more you fear what they're going to do when you loosen

the pressure that's right exactly yes but my first shock about this kind of thing this Zionist extremism was when I first visited

Israel, which was before it's in the 67 fighting. And I found that that branch of my family who either acted heroically during the Holocaust in Budapest or came back from Auschwitz in the case of one particular cousin, they were all uniformly Zionists and racists. And it was a complete shock to me and couldn't understand it how some people who experienced what they did could do it. Could end up like that. That is wild.

I mean, especially, yeah. So you visited them, this is pre-67, and they, what was, you know. The racism was all in the air. It was in the air. It was just an anti-Arab sentiment. The militaryism, also the militarism, and already. Right. And this, yeah.

Well, I think one of the reasons we and so many people appreciate you and the work you're doing and those like you is that you're keeping that natural and healthy shock alive, that it shouldn't be the case that we go from, And, you know, I get tired of people saying, how could the Jews not learn the lessons of the Holocaust? And I thought they were supposed to be the chosen people. Forget it.

We're just like anybody else. We're capable of horrors. We're capable of great things. But, you know, your advocacy and the way you do what you do keeps alive a vision for us as Jewish people of it is simply not natural to go. from victim to victimizer. It is not a vindication. It is not a happy ending.

It is not the route to safety. It is not the route to security. And it cannot be the basis for nationhood or tribe or anything. And any Jewishness worth preserving has to be embodied by people like you who are standing up for universal values and principles and morality. So we thank you for your work. And we really appreciate you coming on the show today. I thank you.

But actually, I feel it primarily as a duty, actually, because there are fewer and fewer survivors around who can still speak as well. And that's why I never turned down any invitation to speak anywhere. And which comes back to my experience with the Labour Party, where I accepted an invitation on Holocaust Memorial Day by Tony Greenstein's socialist, small socialist group to speak, and they trailed it that I will be on my panel.

Right. And immediately I had a letter from the Labour Party bureaucrats that a couple of days before my event that should I go ahead, I would be subject to a disciplinary. investigation, which translated means thrown out of the Labour

party, so I didn't wait for that. Well, we're glad you no longer have a party to be thrown out of for appearing on the Bad Hasbara podcast. That's right. Because we'd like to think there would be repercussions. There should be repercussions for coming on this podcast. And we only feel a little less special

to find out that you say yes to everybody. I knew you said yes to everyone as soon as you were on this podcast. I was like, I know. But truly, thank you for coming on. And we feel very lucky to get to speak with you about this. Thank you for having me. Yeah. It's been an honor. It's been an honor. Well, that was our interview with Stephen Kaposh. We really appreciate him talking to us and appreciate all of you out there for listening to this very special episode of Bad Hasbara. please email us bad hasbara at gmail.com for all your questions comments concerns join the patreon patreon.com

slash bad hasbara all right everyone thanks again so much for listening and until next time from the river to the sea keeping it well hung all the way to hungary yep appropriate appropriate you're welcome ancestors Us push-ups was us. Gopma-ga us. All karate us. Taking Molly us. Michael Jackson us. Yamaha keyboards.

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