Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - 113: Truth Decay, with Mohammed El-Kurd

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Matt and Daniel are joined by Palestinian author, journalist, and poet Mohammed El-Kurd to talk through settler logic, the trope trap, and whether a lie is still a lie if lying is your job and you work for a ghoul and the lie is about genocide (it is!)Please donate to Middle East Children’s Alliance: https://www.mecaforpeace.org/Find Mohammed El-Kurd at https://www.instagram.com/mohammedelkurd or https://x.com/m7mdkurd Subscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbaraWhat’s The Spin playlist: https://spoti.fi/4kjO9tLSubscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get your podcasts.Spotify https://spoti.fi/3HgpxDmApple Podcasts https://apple.co/4kizajtSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Moshwam hot bitch, a ribbon polka dough We invented the terry tomato And weighs USG drives and behind a goal Israeli salad, oozy stents and jopas orange crows Micro chips is us iPo cameras us Taco salads us Pothomas us

Olive Garden us White foster us Zabrahamas Asvaras Giorno, most beene, and welcome to Bad Hasbara. The podcaste

Pui Morale del Mundo Mundo. Oh, I love it. My name is Matt Lebe. I will be your most moral co-host of this podcast.

I thought you were going to say your name is Gourlami. My name is Gourlami. Yeah, yeah, that's the Brad. Dominique Tococo. Right, right, exactly. exactly and your name i'm daniel mattoe hello yes and he's reporting live from uh from italy he went on a vacation or something and because of that his you know hopefully his internet connection holds up

doesn't matter to me though because as long even if he freezes i still get to see his beautiful face you know you know what i'm saying all my expressions are beautiful that's right yeah well thank god for their Thank God for technology. Yeah. How are you doing, man? I'm doing good. You know, I'm just living my life. Very excited for today's episode.

We have an incredible guest. You know, it's been, I think, a while since I was truly, I mean, no offense to any of the other guests who have you had, who I love all equally. But this one was very exciting to me because I read his book. and I'm very excited to talk about it. But first, obviously, give us five stars and review on all the podcast apps. You know, make sure that you like and subscribe. We need more subscribers. That would be nice.

And also, shout out to producer Adam Levin, who is out here on the ones and twos. If you are watching the show, you see him occasionally. Type in a little joke. And if you are listening, you hear us say the joke out loud. and sometimes give him attribution and sometimes don't. It all depends on your mode of choice in terms of listening. Also, patreon.com slash bad hasbara. If you would like to get a bonus episode every week,

you can join Patreon and you can listen to it. You can listen or watch or, you know, however you choose to enjoy this fucking. Our last Patreon episode was with recently banned from Meta, Jewish comedian and pod from the Palestine pod Michael Scherzer That's right A great episode A pity the fool who doesn't subscribe

And get to hear that episode I know, yes I also pity the fool Mr. T style And also how's that There's possibly a lawnmower next to Next to Daniel Yeah how is everyone enjoying the sound

Of an Italian lawnmower out there I can barely hear it So you know maybe Maybe we can barely hear it, but either way, I like it. I can hear it a lot, but yeah. It gives it a sort of very similar. I hope you can hear a lot less than I can. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I'm staying at one of these like agriturismo places. They've got an olive. He got the grass, as producer Adam Levin says. Perfect. Yeah, no, it's like a, it's like an olive farm here and citrus groves and whatever. And I guess they have, I guess, he's got lawns to mow and i cursed the so-called jewish state for ruining that phrase too yeah i know and also uh being anywhere near olive trees where i'm just like oh no now exactly

are you going to dig it up by the roots and plant your own bullshit that is not environmentally sound no this guy here fabio uh his name is fabio doesn't seem to have a sinus bone in his body i didn't do too much of a examination of the bones of his body but i don't get that vibe from him when he's mowing the lawn and tending the olive tree. All right. Well, if you need one of those, like, you know, things that measures skulls for phrenology, you let me know. We do need a Zionist phrenology meter.

Yeah. We got to do a whole episode of sinus phrenology. Today's episode is brought to you by... Jugenics. Yes. Today's episode is brought to you by Middle East Children's Alliance. The Middle East Children's Alliance has a team of... staff volunteers and partner organizations who responded to the urgent needs of children and families under attack in Gaza.

They are currently providing food and hygiene kits, hot meals, safe and clean drinking water, and psychological support. Please, if you have any money that you're willing to donate, do it for Middle East Children's Alliance. that's M-E-C-A-F-O-R-P-E-A-C-E-A-C-E dot-org Mecca for Peace. So, donate now. I was recently at a talk that my dad and Chris Hedges did in New York City at the Society for Ethical Culture. My brother introduced them. My dad shouted out our guest today from the podium in a video that's gone somewhat viral. Quoted him.

But Mecca was the organization being, you know, whatever, served by the event. That's what we were raising funds for. And the founder of Mecca, I forget his name, gave an incredible little speech at the beginning as well. Nice. Truly amazing organization. Glad to lend them our support. Yeah. And please listeners do so as well.

Yeah. So you've got the link there on screen. but also in the description. So please click it, donate now. Do that before anything. Don't, you know, obviously, if you have money after that, sure, join the Patreon. But either way. Daniel, what's the spin?

The spin from a long distance away. Obviously, I don't have my vinyl records here with me today. But I was thinking in my collection, do I have two records that would go well with the book title of our guest, Mohamed El-Kurd, you and I have both read his book, Perfect Victims, which came out not too long ago. I think we were both quite affected by it, quite changed by it. And in honor of that, here's what I come up with.

So here these are two records that I had back home. One is, here we go, the Christine Perfect album by Christine McVee. So a couple of weeks ago I had, you know, Lindsay Buck and Stevie Nick's album. I featured it before they were in Fleetwood Mac. So this is Christine McVee. Before she was Christine McVee, she was Christine Perfect.

That's her maiden name. And she put out an album of like blonde British lady blues rock and it's freaking great. It's a terrific record. Is this one of the other singers, the other iterations of Fleetwood Mac? Well, she was in Fleetwood Mac along before Stevie Nix and then Lindsay Buckingham joined and she stayed with them.

So she's the one who sings, I want to be with you everywhere. That's what I figured because I was like, who the fuck is singing that goddamn song? It's not Stevie Nix. Yeah, yeah, that's her. There we go. No, no, it's the other woman in the grave. She played keyboards.

I mean, arguably, Christine McVie wrote some of their best songs. She was sort of the unsung hero. I love it. She died a couple of years ago. Anyway. And then for the word victim, the song that came to mind was sort of a rarity off this very cool soundtrack from 1993, the Judgment Night soundtrack, which was a bunch of heavy metal groups, teamed up with a bunch of rappers.

And the very first song on there with Helmet and House of Pain is called Just Another Victim. I love it. I look at that. Do you know this album, Matt? No, I don't. But I love this era, like what I call the body count era of hip hop, where everyone, you know, iced tea was like, let's do metal, you know? That's right.

and it's before all the white douchebag bro groups decided to like you know it's the best genre of music ever new metal oh god is that what you mean difficult for me uh but here we have helmet and house of pain teenage fan club and de la soul live in color one of my favorites and run the mc sonic youth in cypress hill faith no more and buya tribe and mud honey and sir mixed a lot yo it's a great I have to listen. That sounds incredible. I don't know the movie Judgment Night, but I will listen to that album. Yeah, go check it out.

So that's the spin. Perfect, victim. Love it. Perfect victim. And now we are going to bring on our guests. We are so excited because, as I said, we have both read his book. Daniel, I assume read it with his eyes. I read it with my ears.

You know him. But we both read it with our face. We both, exactly. Our face was the main thing. And he is a writer, he's a journalist, and he has a new book that we've been shouting out a bunch, perfect victims, and the politics of appeal. Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, welcome to the podcast, Mohamed El-Kurd. What's up, buddy?

Hello, hello. Hi, we're so stoked to have you. my first question to you is this uh why did you come on this podcast uh my publicist told me wow i i enjoyed the concept of the podcast and i don't really often do things that are entertaining so i just thought it would be a good idea i love it it always excites me when somebody who we really like and respect actually wants to go on the

podcast. That's that's pretty that's pretty sick. So I appreciate that. I mean I think reading the book I had a I had a strong positive hunch that you might enjoy the vibe here because you're very funny like and you talk about um you talk about sardonic humor as not just a coping mechanism, but almost just a complete necessity and a birthright and a kind of, like you really, you consciously, self-consciously understand that in times like this, it's necessary and it's healthy and it's good. Can you speak a little bit to your approach to humor in a moment like this? And obviously, I mean, let's just name off the top, we're coming at this satire as like,

you know, anti-Zionist Jews, ha-ha, making fun of our own. Like Matt went on birthright. I went to a left-wing Zionist summer camp. For you, I imagine, the position from which you have to make light or find the absurd or the humor, you're coming from a different position. But anyway. Well, it's interesting because you're, you know, you're like in an atmosphere where you're constantly, like when you're advocating for Palestine or if you're Palestinian, you're constantly

reprimanded. And there's this kind of like reverence that is expected of you when you're talking about, your enemies, I'm talking about, like, you know, be it Israeli settlers or American Jews or so on and so forth. And, you know, we hear so much about their woes and about their troubles and their challenges. And you're expected to kind of like respond with the solemnness and a sobriety in your voice and to like take it seriously. And what you do when you do that is that you kind of put second or you render irrelevant your own suffering and, the real material like suffering of your people and you elevate this kind of like, you know,

obnoxious, I don't know, like paranoia of Zionists above your own real lived experience. And I think humor here is not just a coping mechanism. It's not just a way to deal with the absurdity of an upside down world, but it's kind of also a mechanism that breaks taboos. Right. Because, you know, the average person would watch me or watch you on CNN and watch like Jake Tapper or Anders Zucker reprimand you about so, quote unquote, anti-Semitism. And if you're able to flip the script and if you're able to like kind of radical the question itself, then the listener, the receiver is able to kind of repeal the moral authority from that question and, you know, reveal it for what it truly is, something duplicitous and something fake. and something that is meant to be as a distraction. That's ultimately what I believe the power of humor to be. And also it's really dignifying.

You know, like for Palestinians, we make jokes about everything. I remember in 2021 when we got our court orders to be expelled from our house by settler organizations. This is, you know, tele organizations that are registered in the U.S. I live in Eastern part of Akhibati, Jerusalem. I remember me and my friends were joking about, what we were going to wear on eviction day, right? And it's, it's, there's something there about, you know, you have, you have been occupied, you have been beaten, you have been brutalized.

They have control over every aspect of our, of our lives, of our bodies. And it's humor allows you this sovereignty over your mind and over your psyche, I think. Yeah. It's so funny the way, you know, you put that in the sort of your thoughts behind it mirror so much what, uh, I think, uh, Jewish. diaspora comedy, as, you know, talked about, you know, in terms of gallows humor and laughing through pain and just how absolutely humorless Israeli society and Zionism in, you know, both Israel and America, has made our people the sort of the gallows humor is reversed in this

way in which now, I've said this before, but now, you know, Israelis think gallows humor is when the hangman makes a joke, you know? It's like now cruelty seems to be the only sense of humor that, you know, Israel and Zionism allows for. And everything you described, you know, is, I don't know, the sort of the historical explanation for Jews being funny. And to be honest, I think it's a big reason as to why there's something so, there's a reason why there's hatred there beyond, you know, obviously the need to ethnically cleanse is also the fact that the story of the Palestinian has, you know, at this point, it's overtaken the story of what it meant to be a persecuted Jew. Now it's like, hey, you can't talk.

about persecution. That's our brand. You can't laugh through the pain. That's what we do. You're not allowed to do that. You know, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I wish I do wish Jewish people are able to reinvent that humor again or, you know, Israelis are able to reinvent the humor because I think jokes aside, I think the repercussions of this humorlessness is disastrous because there is a society and a population here that is growing up with these kind of bedtime stories and folklore stories and stories that are so flat and one-dimensional about persecution and about, you know, we, they learn about the Holocaust in this way of absolute subjugation and they don't learn about Jewish resistance. They don't learn about, you know, resilience. They don't learn about the kind of uprising that took place, the kind of political violence, Jewish, like brave Jewish people took part of. And so they, as a result of this kind of flat, one-dimensional education, humorous education, should we say,

there is this perpetual warrior stance that they have to assume they're constantly in this, constantly in this state that, you know, anything could happen at any time. Their lives are in peril, despite their nuclear state, despite, you know, the diplomatic cover. Despite that, for many of them, they've been able to achieve. well for themselves in society despite the many many factors there's still this kind of like ingrained fear and

you know growing up in Jerusalem I would always see and you know when you would get arrested or when your family member would get arrested you're always expected to flash the to flash the victory sign and smile while you're being arrested and I always thought it was like a stupid you know a delusional

thing to do why would you do that while you're being arrested but I think after coming to the United States and after you know, seeing Zionist students who have cheese addictions, you know, in the whole department, you know, self-victimized about

protest chants. I think actually this victory sign and the smiling through the pain and like laughing in the face of the police as they arrest you, actually, I think it does something to dignify the individual. Yeah. No, yeah, absolutely. I want to

you know, bring up something that you're saying in terms of like this humorlessness and also the constant stance of either you're in perpetual trauma, perpetual fight or you know you are the toughest Jew, you know, we are no longer the Jews that go like lambs to the slaughter. Just I saw a tweet recently that really encapsulated this completely contradictory view. This is a guy named Sal Sadka who he He posts a bunch of stuff that is, you know, a lot of trash. He's like the, he's a Bible scholarship real estate Torah. He's a character.

Yeah. And he recently wrote this where he is showing a picture of a Wikipedia page that the file is called Flag of Nazi Israel. And it's a Israeli flag with a swastika in the middle. And he goes, you don't hate Wikimedes. Wikipedia enough. What I love about this is you searched for that flag.

In order to look at that image, you had to Google an image you found offensive. And then as soon as you saw it, you were like, I'm offended. I feel like everybody needs to see this. To me, it just like, it reeks of this

like, you know, we are not Jews with trembling knees, but also sometimes we do search for the most offensive image that we can get offended by that image. No, our knees don't tremble anymore, Matt. Our right index finger trembles as we hover over the track pad. Right, exactly.

Yeah, it's... And that's brave. That's warrior. That's bear jew shit. I mean, how do you search for this and then post it and be like, isn't this offensive? What do you, what is, I'm just not sure what is expected in that moment, you know? He's writing this because he wants everyone to be mad at Wikipedia for something that he himself searched. You know, I just love it. It's kind of like when they found the Minecraft in the Minecraft book in Gaza, as if they don't have it in all of their libraries. Yes, yes.

As if it's also, you know, something that, you know, it's like, we found this mind comp book, you know, in a child's bedroom. As if, right. And as if like, you know, no one is sitting there asking, well, what are you doing in a child's bedroom? And some children read at a much higher level, you know. I know. That's cause for celebration. I thought we, I think they're more offended by the fact that Palestinians read than they are about their choice of book. You know? Yeah. I think I think it's good that, that kids, you know, in advance of being the age where you could go to art school. and have a crushingly disappointing educational experience. Just read about that in advance, you know.

Get a sense of the real world out there and the hard times for a sensitive artist type. That's right. Yeah. I mean, you don't want to get rejected from art school. That's how all the worst happens. So speaking of humor, I do want to talk about this opening, you know, to one of the chapters in your book

in which you talk about, you say, chimpanzee societies wage war against each of them. other. Crows make and use tools. Dolphins talk to each other and talk about us. They have different dialects and various synonyms for a human. Some of them are slurs. So I want to ask, if dolphins use slurs, is there a chance a dolphin has done anti-Semitism to me? I'm certain. Everybody hates Jews. If you can do the radio, so. especially dolphins too I'm sure there's something about it

I love a special dolphin word for Jew it's so funny to me I I use I write for the nation sometimes and like when I first started writing like maybe in 2021 I came up with this great metaphor for the occupation And I wrote about, I was like, the occupation is like an octopus.

It has its tentacles everywhere. And my editor was like, that's not as innovative as you think it is. It's pretty anti-Semitic. And I was like, it's really not my fault. You were likened to everything ever. Yes. Kind of. It's what else is their left for us?

Yes. I completely agree. I think it is like one of the things, and you bring this up in your, chapter about tropes and drones, where, you know, you talk about the way in which the anti-Semitic trope has somehow, you know, surpassed the drone and the violence of war in terms of offenses that can happen to human beings. And yeah, you know, in talking about like the octopus trope. It is so funny. The last like 19 months watching, uh, new tropes be invented. Like there, there's, there's a point at which like people are inventing ways in which you can

be anti-Semitic by doing any kind of analogy, any kind of, uh, you know, uh, imagery that is not directly associated with what you were talking about. It's like, no, no, no, no. You cannot compare Israel or, you know, Jewish society, mainstream Jewish institutions to anything. Because if you go through the history of all of world Jewry, you're going to find someone saying, oh, Jews are a lot like bears. This is a Monty Python sketch begging to be made, you know, like Eric Eidel shows up to some bureaucratic office, waits in line. and the secretary lets him in, sits down opposite John Cleese. It's like, hi, I'd like to publish an article talking about human rights abuses. Well, thank you for coming to the office of anti-Semitic trope clearance, you know,

and you have to go there, they have a big file. What analogies or metaphors were you planning on using in this article? The pig? No, nope, nope, no. Sorry, that won't work. The octopus? Horse, no, octopus, definitely not. yeah yeah the problem is in the exceptionalization you know what i mean like yes everybody has

been likened to everything ever not just jews i remember i was also at the nation i shared my friend as a caricature artist and i shared something where he i can't remember he painted uh and is like he drew an israeli soldier either as a lizard or as like a like a purple demon and the editor the editor of the nation called me and they were like this is anti-Semitic and I was like oh let's look at how he paints about senior authority officers and he paints him exactly the same way as rats and as lizards and whatever it's there's something about it's a bit it's a bit narcissistic to be honest and also we're the fucking we're the people who one of our own made a book called mouse which was then subsequently given to every

bar mitzvah child for for the next 20 years you know and what is it it's a comic book about the Holocaust, with the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Poles as pigs, the French as frogs. I mean, you know, we are capable of understanding anthropomorphic analogy in a literary way, and in fact, thinking of it is quite high art. Yeah, and there is something about like, you know, the sort of the guardrails. around language that you talk about in this book in a way that I think perfectly encapsulates this moment for a lot of people, including us. The idea of the guardrails existing and who they apply to is obviously completely based on whether or not they support Israel or whether or not

they are Jewish in one sense or another, either, you know, genetically or religiously, you know, who can say what analogy and who can use what trope is entirely dependent on, you know, the people doing the bad faith attack. And I also just hate the fact that now everyone knows what, or uses the word trope. Like a word like trope belongs nowhere outside of cultural studies class. I don't like that's just a word that doesn't like you give you put that word out in the sun and it shrivels up and ceases to be of any value I don't want the average person on the street thinking about tropes I'm sorry yes it's just too high concepts too it's too it's just fuck off yeah well speaking of tropes I think the I want to well I want to talk about the origin story of you know when I first learned about you and your sister and what was going on in Sheikh Jarrah. And a lot of people may not know this, but, you know, obviously in the last 19 months,

people have become more and more aware of what's going, what has been going on in Palestine, you know, for the last 70 plus years. And so you've seen a lot of memes. And one of the memes that people have seen is a, settler or a very rotund Jewish fellow named Jacob who with the text under it is something like if I don't steal it someone else is going to steal it and I don't know how many people know this because when you know people see things like that I feel like there's always going to be people go like what is this this sounds like someone is paraphrasing but no this is an actual thing that somebody has said

that this person has said, and this was actually your house. So for people who don't know the origin story of this, first let me play you the video, and then I'd love to hear about this time in your life. Jacob, you know this is not your house. Yes, but if I go, you don't go back. So what's the problem? What are you yelling at me?

I didn't do this. I didn't do this. It's easy to yell at me, but I didn't do this. You are stealing my house. And if I don't steal it, someone else is going to steal it. No, no one is allowed to steal it, you ammy. So, it's not mine to give back. I don't have the power.

Yes. I'm just some guy. I'm just, I'm just a patsy. So that is, you have a twin sister. Is that right? I also have a twin sister. We're twin twins. I love it.

And that was... She also cooler. What's that? Is she also cooler? Yes, way cooler. Way cooler, way more together. She doesn't have a podcast. True, yeah.

Yeah, it sucks. I try not to... And she also had something terrible. And she also had something terrible happened to her house. That's right. Well, yeah. And they're very hostinian. Yeah, the fires burned down her house and, you know, I can, I'm happy to say that those were Zionist fires that burnt down the house.

Just kidding. This is a comedy podcast. But, yeah, so, first of all, the, okay, so, and in the nicest way possible, that man, it is not your fault that that man looks like a gerbil. cartoon. I'm just saying there's something about this like scenario that when I see the image of him, when I see the image of Yakub, I go

like, if you didn't know this video existed, you would think this is like a Nazi meme that's spreading around because of the fact that he's just who would say out loud if I don't steal it

someone else is going to steal it. It's not my fault. You know, what am I to do he's like openly admitting to stealing something it's it's like it just feels like his existence is anti-semitic um but i want to i just want to ask you about this time in your life um he uh so what was happening how old were you and uh tell me about what it was like having to share your house in the most absurd situation imaginable yeah i'll try to give you first of all yakov is kind of like the personification of Israel is just, just glutinous, you know? Yes.

But I'll try to give you like this, the briefest explanation. Essentially, like our houses, like many, many, many other houses, thousands of other houses in occupied Jerusalem that are being seized or at the risk of being Caesar demolished by several organizations that are in cahoots with the Israeli governments and the military and the military. And, you know, settlers are in, you know, are in high positions in the government and in the military and the courthouses and the courthouses are built by settlers. and the laws are kind of made to fully disentangle us from our lands and from our ownership and from our deeds.

But this is kind of the reality I grew up with as absurd as it is. It's the only thing I've ever known, and I only knew it was weird when I would venture out of my neighborhood, and I would look at other people's lives that didn't have settlers in half of their home. In the year 2000, you know, our family expanded. We were, me and my sister were born, unfortunately, into the world. and my dad had to expand the house. Obviously, 93% of building permits submitted by Palestinians in Jerusalem are rejected by the Israeli municipality, 99 in the West Bank.

My dad built an extension anyway. As soon as he finished building it, the Israelis came and closed it down. It was closed. We paid many, many, many, many, many dollars in fines. And then nine years later, the Israelis come and take it over. and we've had multiple Jacob figures come in and out of the house. And, you know, they're paid by these cell organizations, and their whole aim is to kind of make our lives unbearable.

I was going to apologize to you in advance for, like, playing this video one more time, you know, at the risk of re-traumatizing you. But it sounds like one of the reasons it might retramatize you is it reminds you of the time that your sister was right and you were wrong. Yes, the only time. difficult to relive. Yes. Yeah, it's unfortunate.

Why was she right? Why was she right? Well, because it's kind of like, you know, he said something that you couldn't make up. It's just like what he said was so cartoonish that it made the rounds globally. However, what I was kind of dismayed about when this happened is that, you know, when this happened, people started digging up his past and, you know, his records. And he's a fraudster. He has, like, I think, like, some kind of embezzlement charge.

Allegedly, I'm not sure I don't want to get sued by the guy sealing my house. And again, somebody found his Facebook page and he had a bunch of Nazi memorabilia, and he was a Trump supporter. And people were saying he's bad because he's a Nazi or like he's bad because he's a Trump supporter, blah, blah. And people kind of missed the focal point, which is the crime being. committed is that he's a settler stealing someone's house. That is a crime. Even if he was mother Teresa, who was maybe not a great figure anymore. But even if he was not, even if he did not have Nazi memorabilia, he would still be an atrocious human being. And I think still we have

this kind of like ailment where we have to qualify our disdain for settlers with other qualifying factors. When just theft of other people's homes is when it's when it's, itself, you know, a condemnable crime. Right. And, you know, also internationally recognized war crime, you know? Oh, that too. Yeah. If you'd figure that would be enough. Just in terms of defining terms, because the words can be used in multiple ways, I'm not saying

that a word only needs one definition. But he's a settler in the sense of occupied land, you know, East Jerusalem being part of internationally recognized occupied Palestinian territory coming in, taking someone's family's home who are living there. The term settlers is sometimes used to refer to

you know, non-indigenous non-indigenous North Americans living on North America or in the case of Israel, any person of non-Midlyastern descent, let's say, or non-Leventine descent,

who now lives there in the country known as Israel. Do you split these kinds of errors about the use of terms? Well, you know, what's super interesting, and I don't know if this is true for the entirety of the Arab world, but it's certainly true for Palestinian is that we are not introduced to the positive connotations of such words until very late in life. I'm not even just talking about settler, but even the word soldier, which I assume you are 16 by the time you learn

about atrocities that the U.S. Army has committed, you know, if you're an average American person, I am 16 when I learned that there could be, in fact, a good soldier in the world. You know what I mean? We grew up with the idea that soldiers, judges, police officers are horrendous because they absolutely are, because they weaponize their authority and power to expel us, to kill us, to brutalize us. So I think that's kind of the distinction.

And so there when every single member of when every member of a category that you've ever met has been doing doing you wrong, doing you dirty, doing evil to you, then that category becomes, and that probably for many Palestinians includes the category called Jews, right? Yeah, yes. This is, I mean, this is, I'm not, this is like my hill. I love, this is the hell. I love to die on so much. You know, it's like, every, like, 48 hours, there's another controversy about somebody calling Jews, Jews. And it's crazy. It's crazy. You know, we live under a Jewish state that professes itself to be a Jewish state that marches under its Jewish flag that uses every podium and platform in the world to emphasize that it's a Jewish state, tiny country in a bad, bad neighborhood, hostile neighborhood, despite having agreements, peace agreements with all of its, quote-unquote bad neighbors.

They do everything in the name of the Jewish faith. They literally carve stars of David's on people's skulls and people's faces and spray them on people's houses and carve them in the ground. And yet, if you make the mortal sin of calling Jews, Jews, you are somehow a criminal. This isn't to say that there is not a distinction between Zionism and Jewish. Judaism. There absolutely is, and this isn't, this isn't to say that the Israeli state is not on purpose conflating these things and like working overtime to synonymize them. But the fact that the labor and the task and the expectation to disentangle this conflation falls on the

Palestinian is absurd. And there's also like, it's absurd because there's bad faith actors who try to like kind of like look for landmines in every one of you. your sentences to kind of indict you, but also there's good faith actors who record Palestinians in the streets of Jerusalem and Ramallah, and they hear them say, the Jews have come to take over our house or like the Jews have raided the village and they mistranslated into something else and then they get accused of mistranslation, blah, blah, blah, when in fact, we in the homeland, you know, in the heartland, we refer to each other as Jews and Arabs. You know what I mean?

They don't refer to us as Palestinians whatsoever. Actually, in fact, the use for us is Mechablim, which is like terrorists. Yeah. And they were supposed to themselves as Jews and we're, it's not sacral. It's not, it's not a controversy. And we need to stop, you know, pro-clotching about this because ultimately what it does, it kind of also, it elevates, you know, it's, we're talking, we're constantly talking about genocide and occupation and apartheid.

And somehow when the, when the charge of anti-Semitism enters a conversation, it's elevated over all of these things. This isn't to say that it's not a serious charge, but I think bigotry and sentimental bigotry or verbal abuse and stuff like that, I think it's a bit lower in rank than incinerating people alone. Yeah, you'd think so. But it seems to be the norm now.

You know, I mean, it's always been the norm when discussing this issue where people, Their own personal guardrails around what is a dog whistle, what is a trope and whatnot should apply to everyone. And if you in some way transgress, then people are allowed to then put you in a category of, well, this is a biased person. This is a person who is an anti-Semite, you know, and completely disregard your own lived experiences, which is, you know which you touch on a lot in perfect

victims the way that those guardrails seem to be made specifically to keep people from you know ever engaging but beyond that you also talk about how

easily people fall into this narrative you know how people will seed this ground to bad faith actors all the time by, you know, a anti-Zionist Jewish organization

condemning anti-Semitism after an act that is not anti-Semitic or seeding the, you know, the ground to people who will never be like, oh, okay, your organization is good. There seems to be, and you talk about this hill that you're going to die on,

that you like to die on, I think it is, to me, the one of, at least in the West, one of the most important hills. Go ahead, Daniel, you have a, you have a fun. I'm just imagining someone quoting this out of context. You know, Muhammad al-Kurd says, I will die with the word Jew on my lips. Yeah, all right. Yeah. Like, sounds like something I would have said.

But, you know, it's, I think it's. But I also, you also speak, you also speak fluent Hebrew. which I find very interesting about you. Obviously, having, not fluently. I've seen you tweeting quite capably in Hebrew and clapping back. To that. Yeah. Bavakashah?

I mean, I'm not close to fluent. But I just imagine that also gives you a certain degree of rhetorical power to be able to use. I mean, there is a, I mean, look, you live in that land. there's an intimate, I mean, everyone's butted up against each other, everyone's screaming at each other in all kinds of languages. But I was happy to see you speaking the oppressor's language back to them. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of interesting. It's because Palestine is truly so, so, so fragmented, extremely fragmented. So it's so different from one place to the next. And this might sound absurd, but there's kind of like a collect, like I only,

the first time, you know, I used to fly out of Palestine through Jordan. And the first time I flew through Tel Aviv, I kind of had like an existential crisis because I was maybe 20 at the time. And it just registered to me, registered to me that this was a real state. Like I was like, oh, my God, these, they're serious, they have, they have signs. Right. This isn't a bit. This isn't a long, prolonged bit that's, they're doing.

And part of it is because we in Jerusalem, There's this kind of collective approach where we treat the occupation as a nuisance. Not all of us speak English, Hebrew I mean. And I don't know, there is this kind of thing where we treat them as this nuisance, even though they're in our faces all the time. But I've always grown up with the idea that it's a temporary regime. And it's an important idea for your own survival, because you can't possibly live under the auspice

that this is something that is something so monstrous is going to be so permanent. But yeah, it's an interesting thing to navigate versus like people who have to encounter them in their, like in like 48 territories. They're like Haifa, Yafa, Tel Aviv, like Palestinians who have to encounter Israelis all the time versus people in Gaza who have never ever like.

That's right. who have never ever even the only times they've ever come across a jewish person was someone carrying a gun or or at the checkpoint or you know from a remote controlled airplane so it's it creates for all of these different um nuances of of experience i think and it creates for like a million states within the one state that we live in because we're all just so we're all experiencing such different iterations of Zionism. Yeah, yeah. Which is one of Zionism's most darkest successes, you could say, is that fragmentation

and that, you know, how are you supposed to have a two-state solution when one of those putative states is already in pieces and in different fragments? And each fragment has its own set of material concerns, its own set of law, you know, its own Social relationships, social relationships, citizenship, or lack thereof, yeah. Yeah. In terms of something that you wrote in the chapter about, you know, tropes and drones, and I believe you also may have printed this, this may have been printed separately as an article, but it's not my fault that my oppressors are Jewish is, I think, one.

of the best pieces that I've read in years and years of reading about this. Because it really does get at the heart of the rhetorical weapons that are used in order to silence Palestinians and to silence any critic of Israel in general is, you know, this idea that you need to not mention the fact that, your oppressors are Jewish, not mention that there are Jewish institutions in Israel and in the West that are doing and supporting the oppression, not mention the fact that the soldiers you interact with are Jewish. Like, everything is kind of like needs to, the work of untangling Zionism and Judaism is your work to do. It is your responsibility as the oppressed. And I, I, I would like, I'd love for you to speak on that more.

I mean, yeah, go ahead. Wait, say, tell me, give me more. Well, I mean, at least the way I look at it is, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the way in which you see discourse happening. The amount of times that your personal feelings you've had to set aside in order to craft a perfectly worded, you know, a perfectly worded toothless condemnation of something that's happening directly to you. You know, what is the effect of having to cater your, speaking about your own oppression to an audience that just automatically doesn't trust you, you know,

know and is looking for any excuse to uh you know throw to discard your opinion and what is it like coming on fucking podcasts where or like talking to people who they only want to talk to you about your oppressor and they you know including this podcast you know it's like hey let's you know it's it's something that when i put myself in the shoes of a Palestinian person i can't imagine how infuriating it is to constantly have to be be like, yes, let's talk about anti-Semitism, you know? Well, I don't, I don't think any of my other interests are suitable for a podcast, so it's okay.

Okay, fair. Yeah. It's an interesting question, you know, and I've said before, like, it's not our responsibility to kind of make the conflation apparent or, like, reveal the conflation. But I think the main objective of this conflation is distraction. is that kind of re-centering or like reordering of priorities. In our case, we are talking about ethnic cleansing, and through these disclaimers about anti-Semitism

or through these prefaces about anti-Semitism, you are yet, again, subconsciously reaffirming and reaffiring the idea that no matter what the Jewish state does, it's okay as long as it's in the face of anti-Semitism. And so you disavowed anti-Semitism to say that this ethnic cleansing is not okay. My argument and my approach that I have been taking is even if all Palestinians were anti-Semitic, even if every single Palestinian hated Jews, that still, like, if that sentiment still does not justify genocide, feelings, thoughts are not crimes. You know what I mean?

and there is the approach to show and we have a lot to show for it we have decades and decades of scholarship dedicated to distinguishing between Judaism and Zionism. We have not one book that doesn't make this clear. We are a highly literate people.

You know what I mean? I mean we're really not. Some of us are obnoxious but we're really nice. We're hospitable. But even if we weren't, that still doesn't justify occupation. We need not to like put the burden on the occupied when the occupier should be

in the hot seater on trial and that's my whole kind of thesis and it's nothing revolutionary or new like I'm not saying anything it may be it may be new that somebody with a larger platform set it in English but this is

nothing I said is kind of my own invention this is all we talk about in Arabic, in English behind closed doors, we are sick and tired of this like kind of contradiction, this upside world, upside down world where we're forced to live in, where the feelings and the safety and the paranoias of our oppressors is somehow more important than the lives of our children. Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think we can understand the efforts to conflate Zionism and Judaism

as this like state-backed, calculated campaign that is done in battle. faith. But we can also believe that there are some people, whether they are addicted to cheese or not, who are actually legitimately, maybe not legitimately, but actually tangibly afraid and feel unsafe. Sure. Because their feelings are real doesn't mean the threat is real. And what we do with our, what we do with our constant preemptive disavowal of anti-Semitism is that we're kind of giving candy to children with cavities. We recognize these people

are not necessarily sane in their assessments of reality. And instead of saying no, we are... Bad child, no. Yeah, we are coddling them further by saying, let me assuage you. Let me, let me, let me, let me,

let me tend to your fears before I talk about, like, let me put out this hypothetical fire. You're contributing to truth decay. You're contributing to truth decay. Very good, Daniel. Like tooth decay. That's a 9 out of 10. Thank you.

Well, I mean, the even if refrain, which you actually put as a kind of bold-faced epigraph at the beginning of the book, even if, even if, to me was the most powerful. through line throughout the book. And because that's the kind of subversive, anti-insidious corrective for these insidious assumptions that none of us question, you know. Norman Finkelstein did something similar around the term self-hating Jew, which people used for years and still do,

to discredit people like. him, people like us, whatever. And he said, so what if I am? Let's say that my scholarship on Palestine or on the Holocaust industry or anything else that I talk about is motivated deep down and someone could prove it by a kind of deep loathing of myself as a Jew or a hatred of my own people or some kind of twisted psychological dynamic. What singular bit of difference would that make to the truth or falsity of anything I'm claiming, any source I'm citing, any quote, you know, like, why is no one debating me on the merits of, on the facts that I'm presenting? Because they can't. And when you talk about giving candy to these babies,

in some ways, it occurs to me as, and I think I had this thought when I was reading your book, too, a few months ago, that one aspect of what supremacy is or domination or occupation is whose emotions get to matter. Yes. and whose don't, whose little, you know, fear of monsters under the bed gets to be the big headline and whose actual warplanes flying over their house and destroying their roof and incinerating their entire family gets to be invisible and not matter and how, you know, like that.

And there's this absolutely, we don't usually think about this, but this absolute inequality in terms of emotional sovereignty and yeah, just whose feelings have purchased and get to matter. Also with the even if refrain is that it works for, I think it works for everything. You know, even I want people to kind of recognize when they are being baited into debate and being baited into discourse. We hear the stuff about the human shields. And the answer to that should be that even if Hamas uses human shields,

you're still the ones killing the humans. Yes. You know, even if there are tunnels underneath the hospitals, you're still bombing hospitals and the patients inside them. Even if Hamas is stealing aid, you're still starving people. You know what I mean? Yes. And it's astonishing to me.

It's beyond astonishing to me that somebody, like an Israeli diplomat could go on to you. and say, like, Hamas uses human shields. And I'm yet to hear one journalist say, so what if they use, like, how does that, how does that justify you killing those civilians? How does that justify you targeting these children? No. And this is kind of the, you know, this is kind of the genius of Hasparais is these kinds of like these manufactured nuances that puts you in a corner and force you to debate and

discourse on and on and on, and kind of dilute the focus of your initial and more important argument. Yeah, completely. Yeah, and in the process, by putting the focus on the premise of the question, you're refusing to play into it by trying to, like, say, debunk it. So with the Human Shield thing, you could if news programs weren't, you know, book-ended by commercial breaks and if there was time to get into it. And if they weren't fake, and if they weren't fake, if there was any interest whatsoever. That's right.

Yes. If the host had any interest in actually getting to the truth and not just these homilies that get spun over and over again, you know, you could point out that actually there's way more evidence of the Israeli army actually as a policy using human shields, both Palestinian human shields and in many ways, Israeli civilians as their own human shields, whatever. But there's something, one thing that both Matt and I really appreciate, I think about the way you approach this, you recognize that to play that game already, the debunking game, is to lose. Can you speak more about that? Yeah, I mean, maybe it's like this old, like, you know,

businessman mantra of like, if you're explaining, then you're losing. I don't think it strays far away from it. But yeah, essentially you're, you need to come into the debate or into the into the conversation with an understanding that you are not a defendant and the person across the table from you has no authority to indict you

and thus they cannot set the terms of engagement and you need to have self you need to respect yourself enough not to allow them to set the terms of engagement that this is ultimately like my compass in all of this

in all of this thing because be it about the mind camp in the children's playroom or the human shields or the tunnels underneath the hospitals or the anti-Semitism or if there's like a secret message

like secret braille message and like from the river to the sea calling for a second holocaust or all of it we could spend hours you know like you said like they talk about how Hamas fires rockets from inside civilian neighborhoods I mean the headquarters for the IDF is in the heart of television We could play this game for hours and hours and hours.

But what we're doing here is that we're kind of accepting the terms they have the conditions that they have laid out for us. Yes. Yeah, 100%. And all it does is that it takes us away from the actual matter that matters, that they're killing people. There's a genocide. There's a siege, blah, blah, blah. There is nothing that justifies these things. And this happens also, you know, like with many, like with many, like with many,

the word hospital means in Hebrew to explain. And it stems from the belief that nothing they can do is beyond justification or beyond explanation. And this is a very genius thing because if you understand propaganda and the way propaganda works, it's this very simplistic, very repeatable thing that sticks into your mind. you're a receiver and you're able to repeat it incessantly like Hamas reigns rockets or human shields or blah blah and oftentimes we we look at these juvenile refrains and we try to debunk them with very sophisticated almost scholarly responses right but we're we're losing at that point yes because we're engaging them on their battleground and their battleground is meant to uh completely divert the

conversation. And speaking of the reverting the conversation. Oh, sorry, before we break, I just want to quickly say. Yeah. Everyone understands implicitly in personal life, right? You have a marriage or something. And one person is constantly saying, I can explain. Right.

Oh, but I can explain. Right. Exactly. It's just anyone who's that read, who's that explanation ready and has so many explanations and needs to explain so much at some point. It's cheating on their wife. Anyone who's just like, yeah, you see, see them with the phone. Or it was doing some nefarious shit in the basement or in the garage and that probably should be investigated.

She's at your computer looking through all of your folders and you're like, um, I can explain those videos. Okay. I'm into, you know, stop looking at my search history, first of all. Um, but, uh, yeah, uh, I did have the perfect segue, uh, you know, about diverting. That's what it was. And then I diverted you. You diverted me from my diversion. We do have to take a quick commercial break. So everyone, stick around, listen to these ads.

I'm sure they'll be for something that's good or not. We'll be right back. And we're back. This is Bad As Barra, World's Most Moral Podcast. We're here with Muhammad El-Kurd. How you doing? Good, good to be with you. That was really a quick commercial.

Yeah, no, it's... For you. For us... Everyone listening had to sit through at least... Right. Two minutes of... Two minutes of commercials for the Jewish Federation of America and how you can support whatever...

Some people have said that on their YouTube or Spotify for whatever, they get targeted ads, even on this podcast that are from, like, from, like, crazily Zionist organizations. Yeah. Yes, yeah, on YouTube especially, I believe there was an ad in the middle of our episode a couple weeks ago for voting for Eurovision for Israel's person. So that's nice to know that the YouTube algorithm assumes that's the kind of thing. Well, if you think about it, it's better your listeners get these ads than other people who are uninformed. I completely agree. I completely agree.

Yeah, we are inoculating them against the very things that allow us to continue the inoculations. How has the reception been to your book and how have you felt putting it out in the world? And, yeah, what's it been like, you know, hearing back from people who are taking it in? Yeah, I mean, this is interesting. It's been overwhelmingly positive. I've gotten so many reviews and letters and photos that are not really appropriate from people. Nice. Yeah.

And yeah, people have been just like people come up to me sometimes and cry and I don't know them. But it's really nice. It's amazing. I didn't think it was going to be this resonant because I thought. I still don't think it's like an original argument. Maybe it's refreshing, but it's not particularly original, be it in the Palestinian context or anything. But I didn't, I've never actually spoken about this before,

but despite it being, you know, like a bestseller on the New York Times list, and despite it being super well received, I cannot think of one mainstream news people that covered it. Right. You're not going to get an interview. like uh oh wow really yeah not no nobody and it's it makes sense because like i've kind of like uh i've burnt all the cards that i had at some point like you know my schick was like you i go to in the pre-interview and i like say the nice things in the pre-interview and then on on live

tv i kind of say the the wild things i think you know that kind of went khalas i like i've played you know i've laid it out but yeah it's been it's just been kind of interesting and disappointing, obviously, disappointing because, I don't know, because also there is a, maybe this is not the right time to talk about this, but there's also now an attempt at damage control. And so all of these organizations that have kind of manufacturing consent for genocide and have kind of dehumanized Palestinians and erase them are funneling in Palestinian voices or Palestinian stories, I should say, into their platforms. But they're oftentimes, like, very humanitarian, apoliticized, and defanged in a sense.

And, yeah, I mean, it's both, you know, a badge of honor to not be liked by the New York Times. And it's because it's, again, not my thesis and not my theory. It's the work of many, many, many, many, many people before me, be they scholars or otherwise. And many people who have worked on it, who are in the acknowledgment, and many others who I forgot because I can't remember the last names so I didn't put them in the comments. Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, you know, the talking about the damage control that some of the major news networks are doing or the previous administrations are doing is interesting because you see all these like 19 months of genocide and the unwillingness to give an inch of truth when it comes to any of this

has served a very useful purpose which is so that eventually when they need to do damage control they can tokenize people who they feel are safe and they can start regurgitating liberal Zionist talking points so they you know so they never really have to fully acknowledge any of their own complicity in anything

They never have to fully acknowledge the right of Palestinians to exist, the right of them to resist. You know, they can just go, you know, from far-right Zionist Nazism to, okay, sorry, you know what, upon further review, we've decided to be liberal Zionists instead. Speaking of the revisionism that we've been seeing in the damage control, I got to talk about Matthew Millie. who was the former spokesperson for the State Department under Joe Biden. He recently went on a podcast and gave his more candid thoughts about the genocide going on in Gaza. Here's some of that. Do you think what's going on in Gaza now is a genocide? I don't think it's a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt.

true that Israel has committed war crimes. You wouldn't have said that at the podium. Yeah, look, because when you're at the podium, you're not expressing your personal opinion. You're expressing the conclusions of the United States government. Do you consider letting me out to be a war criminal? So that certainly is not an assessment that we have made. We do have processes ongoing to look at whether there have been violations of international humanitarian law.

Is it a trustee determination one of them? I'm not going to speak to that in specific, but that's why the president says the answer to that question is uncertain because we don't know the answer. So looking at that interview and I'm not going to speak to that. I'm not going to speak to that. I'm like, you might as well just I'm not going to speak to you. I'm not going to speak to anyone.

I'm not going to pretend I didn't hear what you just said and move on. That's right. That's right. You're not real to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to respond to that with a, huh? And pretend I didn't hear you. It's so, like, fascinating to watch a spokesperson.

you know, go on a podcast after, you know, greenlighting and explaining and doing propaganda for the State Department for the sake of, you know, the state of Israel. And just watch him go like, well, yeah, I mean, it's not my job to tell anyone the truth. It's my job to lie for the sake of my bosses and he's not you know he's not he's not wrong about that that is the job of a spokesperson um but it's funny how easily the job of a human being uh of conscious conscience is immediately like well the i don't have to worry about that because you know i can sleep at night just fine i'm a sociopath um yeah and the and the assumption that that like okay fine you're right that was your job it's no longer your job because you got fired

by the country or your boss got fired by the country and now he's getting fired by prostate cancer but you know but okay fine so you did that job you did your job admirably you know you did it really well not speaking the truth but instead speaking the views of the u.s. government which is we don't take a position on whether or not we're funding a genocide right but who says you then get to walk around in public afterward. Like, you chose to do that job. Cool. Why am I saying, like, why does what you say now on a podcast

about how you think, well, no, probably they did commit war crimes? What world are we living in where someone like that gets to just look back, look back, you know, sort of reflectively on the job he did when that job was not being a human being. and laundering the wholesale murder and slaughter of so many for so long. And with such, I mean, this is the smirking guy. I mean, this is Count Smircula. He always had this fucking grin on his face. Well, I think the heartbreaking part about it is that it is a job.

There is like such a remoteness to the slaughter that they are doing. it's so it's like almost a gauze is a faraway planet that they get to walk around i i cannot it's like my brain breaks when i think about the fact that these people go to dinner and walk around and have dogs and like you know right like go to pf changs you know like these are guys who fucking have been to a cheesecake factory and ordered a meal like they're not covered in the blood of millions, you know? Yeah, it's... These are guys who sit at dinner trying to figure out how they're going to

proposition their wives for sex that night. Yeah. But I'm of the opinion that it was probably a slip-up. I think, on the interview, I don't think he's, I don't know, I don't want to talk to his intentions, but I think there is something about the dynamic when you're, like, in an interview. And it's kind of like the good cop, bad cop situation where like you almost feel an affinity towards your interviewer and you kind of just speak and you forget that you're being recorded.

And I think he probably regrets it very much. And I think his lawyers are probably furious at him for saying it because I think he is liable to a certain degree in a just world where the international order and international law wasn't completely a circus. He would be like it. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it is going to be interesting to see if there's any kind of backtracking going on. But, you know, in general, you have seen this sort of, you know, revisionist, you know, revisionism that I've seen, at least, of people doing things like saying, well, you know, of course I'm for a ceasefire. Everyone's for a ceasefire as if that wasn't something that was essentially criminalized. And people were, you know, punished. People were fired for advocating for a ceasefire, at least in this country.

And, you know, we talk about the revisionism. What's interesting, and it's something you bring up in your book, too, is sort of the way in which we treat those who were once war criminals, who were, you know, Israeli soldiers who committed crimes and then, you know, start speaking about what they did with, you know, breaking the silence and whatnot. And the sort of the willingness not only to treat that person, you know, as a human being, which is fine, but the willingness to treat their opinion as perpetrator as being more valid than those who have been, you know, the ones who have been victimized.

It's like, speak more on that as someone who has been victimized and has continued to be silenced by, you know, are at least Western mainstream media. It's racist. It's all it is. It's racist. I've tried to articulate it in a million different, but it's just racist. It's you, you see, you just do not, not you guys, obviously, you guys are, but you see. We're the good ones. That's, that's what the other title for this was, the good ones.

ones. The good Jews. Yeah, tokens was also we were going to call them those. But wait, what was it? What was it? You were saying it's just racist. Yeah, I mean, like it's, what is it that compels you? Either you're racist or you recognize that your audience is racist. Right. If you need to say, leading human rights scholars, including Israeli ones, have said that this is a genocide. side. Why is there an emphasis on including Israeli ones? Is there a higher moral ground? Do they have a moral authority on the subject? Are they less likely to be biased? They have a stake in the game. They have a horse in the race. They're Israeli. They're a party in this conflict. And yet they are put in this kind of unbiased neutral category, be it ex-I.F soldiers or human rights organizations or genocide scholars somehow because they are Israeli or because they are Jewish. they're elevated atop the average expert with this kind of air of, you know, like credibility and credence that is not afforded to us. And it's racist.

One could say that it's a strategy. One could say my audience is racist and they would never listen to a Palestinian. So let me bring in this like Jew, like this Israeli Attorney General who says this is a Holocaust or like a genocide or this Israeli prime minister who. who says this is an apartheid, because my audience is not going to listen to a Palestinian. Well, two things. First of all, for every attorney general that says this is apartheid, there's 10 attorney generals who say, this is a democracy.

Yes. And two, what you're doing is that you're constantly reifying and perpetuating this cycle of racism where Jewish voices and Israeli voices and Zionist voices matter more instead of challenging it. Maybe it's a good short-term tactic, but in the long term, you're shooting yourself and the foot. Yes. And I think this is one thing that, as for me, has been something that I try to,

you know, I try to get across at least when it comes to what we do here is people don't often like to interrogate the feeling that they have of why they need someone who's Jewish to say this, why they need someone who is a former Israeli soldier to say this. And it's, and it's, and it's, It is because of racism, pure and simple. And, you know, no one is going to admit that they're, you know, no one's going to say, like, I'm doing this for my racist audience. But we have this clear Western bias when it comes to this issue. And this is not just, you know, just for Palestinians.

This is also has to do with, you know, when there are crimes, you know, against, you know, against when there's anti-blackness. We also, we don't consider black people in this country to be a reliable narrator unless they, you know, meet all these certain criteria of like, you know, diplomas and credentials and whatnot. And it's the same with Palestinians, but more so with the, you know, policing of language around, well, what have you ever said? Have you ever said, you know, jurisdiction with a hard J?

you know, where it sounded like you said, jurisdiction. Let's not have this guy on the pod. But like, you know, and I've tried to get people to understand that, like, interrogate that feeling of why you need it to be Jewish anti-Zionists who are saying this. And it's not to say you're wrong about it.

It's not to say like, oh, you know, you are, it's not to say you shouldn't listen to this podcast because, I mean, go on. But it is to say, that there is a lot of, I think, just internalized, maybe subconscious racism when it comes to this, where you just don't feel like you, Muhammad L. Kurd, are someone who could reliably talk about this with the nuance that your oppressor requires, you know? Yeah. And this isn't to say that, like, no, Andy Zainer's juice shouldn't speak out.

And, like, I think everybody should speak out as much as they can, everybody, no matter what I feel about them personally or like, you know what I mean? Everybody should speak out. But there needs to be a reckoning that we live in this absolutely, I mean, let's just compare the other side. There aren't nearly as famous. There aren't nearly as many famous, you know, Zionist Arabs that. are tokenized or like are used by the Zionist establishment as there are anti-Zionist Jews because they're racist because they're it's not that there there are so many Zionist Arabs but they're just racist that they don't listen to you know what I mean are that many Zionist

Palestinians I think there there there's a fair there are there are fair there's a fair share of collaborators and traders and every single colonial struggle and spies and people you know there are people who work in Israeli media who are Arab who funnel Israeli lies and stuff like that but they're less likely

to rise to prominence because and thank God because there's a racism that prevents them from doing so. Right. But you know there is of course

still a few. My favorite and we have to do a full episode on this guy, and we will, I promise, is Mosab Hassan Yusip, one of the most fascinating buffoons I have ever We talked about him on the Abbey Martin. When we had Abby Martin on, we spoke about him because he had this absurd appearance with her on the Pierce Morgan show and she put him in his place quite well. But yeah, I mean, he's a real one. I mean, whatever he is. I just finished his book son of Hamas have you read this

Mohammed have you read it is I'm not into self-flagellation oh my God it is it is maybe one of the most beautiful pieces of propaganda I've ever read and we're going to at some point do a breakdown because I just

it's it's fascinating but yeah when you talk about like the usefulness you know you're right you don't see it as much the you know, there are, there's too much racism against Arabs and Palestinians for it to be useful in like mainstream society to have the, you know, token collaborator, you know, be the main spokesperson.

Yeah, I mean, especially like we grow up, you know, it's kind of similar to how here, like in New York City, you know, James Baldwin talks about how. the black cops were the worst cops. Right. In Palestine, you know, the Arab soldiers, who would never call themselves Arab, by the way, but the Arab soldiers, Arab Israelis soldiers, were the worst, were the most atrocious. They were the most violent and the most brutal because they were overcompensating. And also, you know, we don't need to get into this, but, you know, even like Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers are also more brutal.

People say that such an assessment is like anti-black or whatever, but it's not. not true. I think it's because it's because the state does not see them as fully Jewish and thus they feel their way of integrating and their way of proving their Jewishness is the brutalization of Palestinians. I know this because, you know, this is what I've what I've grown up with. These are the kind of nuances, you know, I know that if I'm stopped by this kind of soldier, I expect this kind of thing and if I'm stopped by this kind of soldier. Right. It's, it's very, it's very, It's very prominent, but on Musaub, I was on, I had to do the Oxford Union debate and like the day of, I think, or like the day before, they told me that he was going to be there. And I was like, I'm going to, I'm not going to be in a debate with an Israeli spy.

Yeah. But, you know, I was convinced, talked into it by a bunch of others and I just decided I'll speak for five minutes and I'll leave. So I just spoke first before everyone else and I just left the hall. But then when he spoke, I heckled him from behind. And there was a funny clip that someone heckles him. No one knows it's me, but it's me. Oh, that's amazing. That is, yeah, it is very.

And, you know, I think in the debate itself, debate, in that, you know, five minutes you did, you explained just even being in the same room with this person was not dignified, which I completely agree with. Not just for the reasons of he's a spy, but also for, you've got to read this book, dude. I've never seen someone so quickly be like, oh, spy? Hell yeah. Like, it is wild. I read the book thinking it was going to be a long explanation of how it could be possible for someone to turn on their entire family and people.

But it really quickly delves into him just being like, they told me that I could be a spy. And I always kind of like James Bond movies. And I'm like, is that true? Is that real? Yes. Well, I mean, you read the book. He is weirdly, he doesn't do a lot of handwringing. And there's not a lot of explanation of why this was something that maybe you shouldn't do.

It is, it's fascinating. It's, he accidentally did a look into his own psyche and published it. And he also at some point in the book, not only does he. he, like, give his life to Israel, but he also converts to Christianity, and it's essentially a long anti-Islam screed. It's one of the most beautiful, gullible buffoons I have ever seen. Wouldn't it make more sense to convert to Judaism? You would think so, but the thing is, is I think that there's still, for him, it's more

about, like, exceptionalizing Jews as, you know, it's phylo-Semitism. It's like, well, no, of course, I need to be, I can't just become one. I've got to be born into the, you know, master race here. But, you know, with Jesus, at least I can still hate Islam. Anyways, it's fucking incredible. Besides, the Jews are just placeholders until the Christians take over that land anyway, right? That's right, that's right. Christian Zionism, you get to have both worlds.

He's one step ahead. You have to cheer for the Jews while you're playing the long game. He's one step ahead. No, that's true. You know, just coming back to this question of, you know, the possible tactical move of foregrounding Jewish or Israeli voices that corroborate the facts that Palestinians have been documenting and trying to get out there forever. I mean, I think the way you put it is very stark that, yeah,

maybe you just acknowledge that your audience is racist. And I think that for people like us, certainly for me, you know, to the extent that I'm still trying to talk to Jewish people about it, and I'm feeling more and more ambivalent about that, like in the early months after October 7th, most of my Instagram stuff was talking to other Jews, even debating Zionists. I even debated an active duty Israeli soldier at one point on an Instagram live. I don't know how the hell I agreed to do that. I think it was worth doing in the end, but it felt really shitty, and maybe it was. wasn't worth doing. But anyway, with Jews, there is this long-established thing in me of like, no, I want to show them that not all Israelis see it the way you see it. And in fact, there are some people that you might even be able to relate to that have, you know, there's these groups that refuse to serve. There's groups that call it genocide. There's young Israeli Jews who realize

they don't want to be Israeli anymore. They want to be people of that land living in harmony with everyone else they want to be just you know um but i am tiring of it i am tiring of the it gets exhausting to be like oh have you ever heard of ivy slame like or or you know ilan papay or like these same names and i'm i don't know like because you're right because the racism of it it's like who why isn't enough why isn't it enough to say mohammed al kirk a 25-year-old, you know, native of East Jerusalem had his fucking house stolen by American Jews. Here's what he says about it.

You should want to know that. Never mind what Shrovriam Shikha says about it. And I have tons of respect for breaking the silence. And I even have respect for, you know, more middle-of-the-road groups like standing together in terms of the specific work they're doing in their lane. But it is tiring, and it does feel, undignifying after a while to be holding up Israeli or Jewish sources as somehow more important.

Yeah, I think anything in life can be made better with a little humility and just the acknowledgement of the dynamics at work goes a long way. the acknowledgement of the intention of what one is doing goes a long way it's this kind of like implied or like implicit thing that gets under my skin and know these people are better orators and I don't I'm not like a far I don't think I don't think because someone has certain experience they necessarily are better are better equipped to talk about it.

I don't believe in like this kind of identitarian approach to things. Yes. And I don't come at this issue from an identity, identitarian perspective. I come at it because it's very obviously supremacist, even under the surface. It's, it's,

it is a supremacy where Jewish voices are more important, Jewish voices are more reliable. You are able to see another Jewish person and see that there are a human being. Yeah. And you're not able to see me as a human being. And I think that with some humility could go a long way.

Because this, you mean, the elephant in the room here also is that for a lot of us and people like me who are like writing about this, this is how we make our ends meet. This is how we make our living, right? And there are many, many, many, many anti-Zion Jews who have made careers off of this. And nothing wrong with writing and talking about these things. But the lack of humility is so atrocious. I can think of, you know, like a certain, maybe now anti-Zionist author who was recently liberal Zionist and before was religious Zionists

and, like, supported the Iraq war and then didn't support the Raqqqqqqq. Like so people who are like consistently wrong in their careers who don't take a minute to pause and say, wait, been wrong about so many things. Maybe I should, you know, I'm just amazed by how many people in our world of advocacy don't have the word maybe and perhaps in their lexicon. I don't know how to say, I think the case might be. There's just such an arrogance and they lecture at us all the time and they talk with so much moral authority. It's repulsive, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And there's a genocide happening in Gaza and then they go write books about being Jewish during the time of

genocide. Yes, completely. And, you know, it's, it's interesting just like watching the way in which, you know, Daniel, you're talking about, you know, whether or not it's futile to even, you know, try to engage on this level anymore. And, you know, I think everyone's got different roles. Some people's, you know, have chosen their role to be like shepherding the, you know, liberal Zionists into the maybe anti-occupation. And then maybe someday they'll make it all the way over to non-Zionist, possibly to anti-Zionist eventually. Farming is complicated, you know? Farming is complicated. You got to get one flock from one field into another. Certain fields are adjacent and there's gates here and there's fences there. I'm pretty sure that's anti-Semitic also.

Yes, that's right. You cannot say cattle. Daniel, so now I need to do an apology. I'm going to do either a NOTSAP apology for you or I'm going to just, you're fired. I can explain. I can explain. But, you know, we're talking about just the fatigue of it, you know, obviously not nearly to the level of anyone who has lived under Israeli rule. But it's, you know, just as a voice in the West, seeing the way in which the fears of anti-Semitism become the focal point of the conversation for people who, you know, I would have considered to be at least somewhat intellectually honest, if not, you know, with others and with themselves. You know, all of a sudden they go from a progressive person who cares about things to a person who only will post when they perceive an anti-Semitism to have happened.

And, you know, most recent anti-Semitic attack, I put that in quotes because this is, you know, one of thousands at this point anti-Semitic incidents that I'm like, until I read more about it, I'm not comfortable calling anything anti-Semitic. But in this case, it was in Boulder, Colorado, there was an attack that injured 12 protesters, and the perpetrator had like a makeshift flamethrower, they say, and allegedly through Molotov cocktails. And we don't know, again, the details yet. We're still looking into it. But it's once again being used and utilized by people to say, see anti-Semitism. is on the rise. And to me, I ask, I'm like, okay, therefore what? Therefore, speaking out against a genocide that's happening is putting Jews in danger in the United States. Therefore,

it is actually more moral to not say anything and allow for Israel to ethnically cleanse millions of Palestinian people and murder hundreds of thousands that is moral as long as there are there's no anti-Semitism being spread that's also it's also just patently absurd what's endangering the if it's true

that Jews quad Jews are now more in danger than they were in United States because of world events what's the source of that danger. What's the source of the rising animus? If that's true, let's apply the even if principle. The source of it is outrage, resentment, grief, heartbreak, people going insane with feeling of powerlessness in the face of what they perceive, I believe entirely rightly, to be one of the

greatest acts of collective evil in recent memory. And that thing continuing unabated with The support of the government of the country where they're living and them having no power to stop it is ratcheting up that sense of despair where they're going to do things to people they perceive or connected with it. I mean, it ends up at the same place. But this notion that like, oh, if we all just stop shouting free Palestine, that would take care of the problem? No. The source of the problem is what Israel is. is doing not like that's that's why people are screaming free Palestine right yeah no absolutely yeah it is it's just uh it it's this situation in which we are prioritizing uh the fears of jews in

the west um over a literal genocide is like is a ridiculous it's even as a sentence It's absurd. Even as, like, saying the words out loud, prioritizing people's fears of a possible, you know, genocide or a possible pogroms happening and over actual genocide currently happening. That's a ridiculous thing. It's a ridiculous thing to talk about. And it's especially ridiculous in the West when, you know, you can't help but, you know, look at all this and no, it's just coming from a place of narcissism and coming from a place of truly, whether consciously or not, believing that Palestinian lives are just worth less.

And it's a bummer. You know, I don't know much about the Colorado thing. I was in Chicago, so I didn't get a chance to read about it, but I'm reminded of it. the embassy shooting, which was very clearly, like, political violence motivated by the genocide as stated in the alleged shooters manifesto, who stalked and identified his victims as embassy staffers. And we can say a lot about political violence. But what was amazing to me is that it came to light that there were instances, like a similar instance where a Jewish vigilante went into a German embassy and shot up the ambassador or someone who works for the ambassador.

And that was like nuanced and explained and justified by the Jewish Museum in DC and described in a certain way. And they said even though he killed this embassy, it did not warrant the pogromes that followed, which I absolutely agree with, by the way. And yet this logic goes out of out the window. And the issue here is that we are just like as a race or like as a, what is it, as a species. We really don't have any principles. I don't think we have any, we don't have true beliefs. It just, it seems to me that we're very tribal and we're allowed to like see things,

allow things for us that we deprive others of. And I say this to include everybody, not just like Zionists in this kind of assessment. It's really important to just, you know, I don't know, like think about what kind of principle, what kind of principle one has and I don't want to go back to the other point but it just now occurred to me about the shepherding I do think shepherding people

with more moderate or more like right wing thoughts or like more liberal Zionist thoughts and like talking to them I do think there is utility and like talking to everybody I think it's so necessary to fight on every front and to convince everybody I think that's important and I think the most important work Jewish people can do right now

is working within their own communities for sure And it's like, you know, troublesome work for sure. And we are very grateful for it. But I think a good exercise that I like to employ here is just trying to remove Zionists and to compare it to any other system of oppression and see what kind of grace and nuance we would extend to like white supremacists, for example, if you had like a white supremacist friend or if you had a Nazi friend. and we should ask ourselves why is that Zionism is so exceptionalized

that we have the grace and patience for it. And I will never fault anyone for trying to persuade someone else but I do think public opinion and cultural sentiment are largely socially contagious phenomena

and or phenomena and your affect the way you talk about something the way you respond to something if you're appalled by a certain thing teaches the other person to be appalled, teaches the other person that the norm is Zionism is appalling. This is why a group like UK lawyers for Israel

can write strongly worded emails to a hospital in London demanding that they take down artwork made by Palestinian children. And it's in that entitlement and in that authoritative voice that they are able, I think, to communicate to the receiver who probably doesn't have much context on the matter. that they are right and everybody else is wrong. And I think we focus so much on the content of

what we're saying on our arguments on the UN resolution, on the law, on 19 blah blah blah. And we forget also that a powerful stance, a confident stance is oftentimes far more compelling than just a merely truthful stance. Yes. Yeah, completely. And it

explains, I think, perfectly why rhetoric is especially strong rhetoric when it comes to denouncing genocide, denouncing Zionism, denouncing the state of Israel, anything strong and with teeth is immediately put into a, you know, a category of like, this is dangerous. And it's dangerous for all Jews when you, you know, forcefully say, Israel needs to end. When you say, you know, that Israel is doing a genocide and it is no better than Nazi Germany.

You get the pushback because they know the power of this passionate, authoritative anger and outrage because they use it. They use it and they're able to accomplish the most ridiculous of coups with it. Like taking down artwork that children put up, you know, the children made it from Gaza and they put up in a hospital. Like making sure that, you know, it's interesting. just like all of the authoritative

outrage of Zionists and Jews in the West has been led to so much extra confusion where people are just like, am I wrong about this? They seem really passionate about being allowed

to do a genocide. Maybe I'm I don't know, maybe I don't know. And it's led to I know a lot of people who just wouldn't speak up about it because of that. They're like maybe there's something I don't know about morality um yeah i mean we forget we're dealing with a state we forget we're dealing with a state that has put hundreds of millions if not billions and this is like produced engineered by PR firms and experts and media people and psychologists and like it's you know it's not overnight that they've

come up with this like really incredible strategy of kind of affect over affect over content yeah And it's effective and it works and it's it's just something that once you see it once, you're unable. Like, for example, the most ridiculous example I can think of, I think in 2014, Bernie Sanders condemned or raised concerns over Israel killing a certain number of children. And Israel was officially appalled and outraged that he used the wrong number of children, that they killed like maybe 20 children less than he had alleged. Yeah. It's just completely, completely wild and, you know, we're always at this, you know, always on the back foot when arguing in using their, you know, skeleton of what an argument should be.

Using their framework is always the wrong choice. And that's why I love perfect victims. That's why I think it's a must read for everyone. And that's why I'm so excited that we got to have you on the show. Thank you so much, Mohamed Al-Kurt, for talking with us at Bad Hasbara. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure, Anjad. Thank you.

I appreciate the invitation. Of course. And thank you for writing it. And I just wanted to compliment you on the quality of the writing itself. I just, I mean, you're a poet, so it comes naturally to you. But as a work of political argumentation, it's very rigorous. It's very compelling. But part of what makes it so.

readable and go down into such a deep place is that you switch it up between reasoned argument and then taking liberties with ideas and language and yeah poetic turns of phrase that just kind of stopped me in my tracks when I was reading it I just it's it's just a beautiful piece of writing and and a crucial statement of refusal and I love how it the book is a a refusal to play a certain game. You name the game. You describe the contours of the game. You describe the consequences of playing that game. You refuse to do it.

And in so doing, I feel like you're really forging a new way to think about this for all of us. So, yeah, kudos. Thank you. That's very kind of you. Thank you. Yeah. And where can people find you on the Internet? Follow you, read your work.

Well, there's an ADL page that has all my information. And that's the first thing you'll find you. I'm on Twitter for better or for worse. And I'm on Instagram for better. Well, we'll have your handles and links to all of your work in the show notes. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. And thank you to everyone out there who has been listening and who has been watching.

Patreon.com slash bad asbarra. bad as barry at gmail.com for all your questions, comments, and concerns. All right, everyone, thanks again so much for listening. Until next time, from the river to the sea. The politics of appeal don't appeal to me. Jumping jacks was us. Push-ups was us.

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