Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - 117: Check Maté, with Aaron Maté

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

With Matt on assignment, Daniel is joined by Producer Adam and brother of the pod, journalist Aaron Maté to survey mysteriously shrouded Israeli weapons demonstrations, the purported expertise of the New York Times Editorial Board, and fittingly for an episode with 100% more Canadians than normal: a thorough investigation of things you can’t do on television (if hasbarists are watching).Please support Doctors Without Borders: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/To read Aaron's writing visit the Grayzone: https://thegrayzone.com/See Francesca Fiorentini and Matt Lieb August 28 in Houston, TX: https://bit.ly/mattfranhtxSubscribe 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 ha bitch, a rib and cocoa toast We invented the terry tomato And weighs USB drives and the ironedole Israeli salad, oozy stents and javas orange crows Micro chips is us iPhone cameras us Taco salads us Ptohavas us

Olive garden us White foster us Zabrahamas Asvars us Udvuzlunk Abadhas Baraban a vlog Lager

Kulseyeb podcast Yaban You got there Yeah That's my Hungarian Root showing through I've been practicing that for the last

couple of days since getting to Budapest Okay I'm Daniel Mate And I'm Hey and I'm Oh boy We're unpracticed at this

Yeah It's so there's something missing you know just the sort of something's off but we're going to get there it's just this is our this is only our second time doing a matless episode and uh you know he usually handles this part of it so let me say it again i'm daniel matte your most moral co-host and uh i'm producer adam levin your most moral producer standing in heck yeah fell in that mat lebe seat whatever that means. Welcome everyone to Bad Asbara.

We are so happy to have you for another episode. Very excited for this episode. We've got a great guest, as we always do. When do we not have a great guest? But today is an especially great guest. Shout out to Matt Lieb, who will be back next week. Adam, I think Matt did send us a quick voice memo from his travels. Yeah, we got just a little update.

I'm enjoying my vacation to Tel Aviv, paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu himself. Excellent. Oh, that's so great. It's so great. It's so nice of him to send us a real voicemail that definitely is real. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

It's that natural intelligence of his. There's nothing artificial about it. I hope he's safe and holding up with Caitlin Jenner so they can enhance each other's Tel Aviv experience. Iran War disrupts Caitlin Jenner Tel Aviv experience. That's from some kind of Israel Hayom, I think. Yeah, Caitlin Jenner Tel Aviv experience is my least favorite psychedelic band. Seriously, a real, they harsh my mellow in two seconds flat. What else does the Google Doc say?

Says you got to subscribe. Yeah, you go for it, Adam, you tell them. Subscribe on YouTube and all the podcast ads. and give us five stars. We need those stars. We're star-piggies. Join the Patreon at patreon.com slash bad hasbara.

Let's see if I can launch that at the same time. I'm not used to also being on camp. There we go. Hey. Patreon.com slash bad hasbara. You get the regular episodes early and you get a bonus episode every week. It is a wonderful way to support the show

and we appreciate your help. And then if you, If you have money to sponsor us, that's wonderful, but we also need to talk about our unofficial sponsor that you should absolutely go give some money to, Daniel. Yeah, today's episode is brought to you by Doctors Without Borders. Doctors Without Borders is providing medical and psychological assistance to Palestinians affected by conflict, displacement, and occupation. They face a challenging situation as escalating violence, movement restrictions, and

shortages of critical supplies have severely limited people's access to health care. Their teams are providing life-saving care with limited supplies in hospitals overwhelmed with casualties, often while coming under attack by Israeli forces. It's crazy that reading a blurb like that or description feels like a severe understatement, but that's how they're describing their plight, and you know it's even worse than that. So please go to Doctors Without Borders.org and make that the first place that you lay down your hard-earned dollars. If you want to become a pay pig on this podcast afterwards, we will absolutely welcome you. Last week's Patreon episode was with the one and only Anthony Fantano, the internet's busiest music nerd.

You wouldn't think there'd be a crossover between the needle drop and Bad Hasbara, but their goddamn was. And it was goddamn great, wasn't it, Adam? Oh yeah, a lot to say about Tom York, a lot to say about the artistic integrity of Matt and Daniel's pun facility. Yeah, he ranked some radiohead lyric puns, but we forgot to say, highly, highly enjoyable. We forgot to say Schwama police and that would have been, I think we could have gotten to really crack a smile on that one. You know, we still have one more little promotional thing, and that is you can get tickets to see Matt Lieb and Francesca Fiorentini, August 28th at the punchline in Houston. The link is in the episode description.

It's also on screen here. So if you are in Houston, Texas or the surrounding areas, get out there. See them. Punchline Houston, August 28th. They are a riotously funny couple. Not just funny looking, but funny talking. Daniel? Yeah, man.

I'm going to hop off, but first I feel duty-bound to ask you, what's the spin? We lost Brian Wilson last week. And, you know, really good to see him getting his flowers as the, you know, king of sort of American. If you use this as an excuse to play the bare naked ladies Brian Wilson song, I will, that would be unforgivably Canadian of you. I won't do it. Okay. I won't do it. I did see them in high school.

I think we skipped school to go see them. They had a concert during a school day, and we went and saw them at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver. But no, you're never going to hear that group on this podcast because I don't own any vinyl from them, and I don't plan to. But Pet Sounds, of course, in Brian Wilson's composing abilities and arranging abilities were really up there.

The Beatles admired him. Bob Dylan greatly admired him. If anyone hasn't seen the movie, love and mercy, I highly recommend it. It's a beautiful sort of phantasmagorical semi-biopic, but it's not the standard biopic. It's very, very trippy and evocative. And then a couple of records I picked up in my travels. First of all, I got this in Sicily, and this is really rare, and I like screamed out, fuck off, which I do when I'm excited. In the, in the record, record store when I saw it in Siragusa in Sicily, and that is the symbol album by Prince

and the new power generation. The album that starts with the song, My Name is Prince, and I am funky. When it comes to funk, I am a junkie. And sexy motherfucker and all seven and we'll watch them fall. Beautiful. It's great album. Very rare to find. Extremely rare to find on record. And then just today here in Budapest, home of my ancestors, I found. I found this one by Cousin Victor. I have no idea who he is. I'm sure he's not on Spotify, but I had to have it.

It's from the 1970s, and I'm looking forward to checking it out. I should also do a bonus, what's the spine, because I am sitting here in the offices of the Hungarian publishers of the book I co-wrote. We love this new segment. Stop interrupting. It's called Creative Overlap.

nice that you were quick on the draw i didn't even warn you we were going to do that um so here's the the uh hungarian uh version of myth of normal and the title the title in hungarian i'm going to pronounce it absolutely authentically is normal is vagi which i i think i think is kind of you're always saying that i think i no i'm not only one only in the locker room i don't think normal is vagi. I think normal is more phallic because we're living in a patriarchy. Actually, it's pronounced normalis vaj. And they also published the Hungarian memoir or book of Erno Rubik, who created the Rubik cube, who I didn't realize was Hungarian. So anyway, those are some spines to crack open if you're a Magyar speaker.

Okay, Adam, before you go, we wanted to do one quick hit here before we bring on our guest. Sure. Danny Danon, of, I assume, the heir to the Danon Yogurt dynasty, or maybe just some Israeli asshole, posted this, and I just found this hilarious, I am appalled by the outrageous and anti-Semitic incident at the International Arms Exhibition in Paris.

Adam, there was an outrageous and anti-Semitic incident at a Paris International Arms exhibition. Here's what he says, where the booths of Israeli companies were concealed behind black walls. This discriminatory act singled out Israel while representatives of other countries were freely allowed to showcase their technological innovation.

I don't know. Putting black walls up makes it seem more exclusive and mysterious to me. Like, ooh, what kind of next-gen missile do they have? behind these black walls. Israel stands at the forefront of global technology, he says, and it is clear that some nations feel threatened by our exceptional capabilities. This is especially absurd considering that Israel's actions are aimed at protecting the free world, including France and Europe, from Iranian terror.

Instead of isolating Israel, the world should stand with us and learn from our knowledge and capabilities. And here's the picture he posted. And it's hard to see what's going on, but it looks like there's some. sort of temporary construction walls all black up around some kind of exhibit and there's hanging from the ceiling there's the logo of some israeli arms manufacturer i'm assuming but you found this picture which looks very similar but kind of different wanted you describe to us how this is different uh sure so we've got uh Israeli arms manufacturer i a i and their booth is surrounded

by a black partition. Their version of old McDonald goes I-A-I-A-O. The booth is surrounded by a black partition with a very tasteful gold star on it, and it says, they marked us then. They blacklist us now. So that is a dark gray wall up around an exhibit that looks like completely custom designed by the Israeli manufacturers. So I don't know what the hell Danon's talking about. It's, it is a weird choice. I mean, who knows if the expo said, if you're an Israeli company, you have to, you know,

you have to shield the world from your wares. You know, maybe they told them you have to put up a Jewish star on your, like a yellow Jewish star on your, on your display. And you have to have a self-pitying slogan on. so that everyone will know you're Israeli. They marked us then. They blacklist us now. Anyway.

Also wild to talk about being marked when you're selling a, you know, laser guided missile system in which you mark a target for destruction. Yeah, exactly, right? Yeah, they put a red dot on our foreheads then. Anyway, not much to say about it, but it was just, you know,

it just hit the right sort of absurdist notes to kick the episode off. Adam, speaking of kicking off, I'm going to kick you off for a little while. Okay. Bring on our guest, and we'll bring you back after the break. My guest today is a returning guest. Oh, there he is already.

I wasn't quite ready for him, but here he is. You know him. You love him. He's from the gray zone. He's from my parents' loins, just like I am. He is my brother, the Izzy Award winning journalist. Izzy or Izzy not? He certainly is Aaron Mate.

Welcome back to Bad Hasbara. Great to be here. Great to be here. Aaron, could you just hold on a quick second? I've got some noise coming from the next room. I think it might be the neighbors. I just need to go ask them to keep it down, okay? Yeah, go ahead.

I'll just, I guess I'll just sit here and wait as Daniel addresses his issue. Aaron, I'm just, I don't know what you're up to. I'm just recording a podcast in the next room, so can you just keep it down? I'm sorry, I'll try to be more quiet. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. That's certainly the problem between me and Daniel. I'm still only the louder one of the bunch.

Yeah, I'm always interrupting, whereas he's reserved and calm. And I just can't keep my mouth shut. Yeah, I would just say, I was just saying that's certainly the problem between the two of us. I'm the loud one, you know, always interrupts and makes a lot of noise. And there's a very big presence in a room, whereas, you know, you're more demure, you know what I mean, restraint. Yeah, absolutely. My self-expression has, if it's been curtailed by anything, it's your gregarious, nonstop, self- Yeah, as the middle child, as the loud middle child as opposed to the reserved older brother.

You came out into the world and I basically never spoke again. Yeah, right. So here we are in Budapest together on a kind of family pilgrimage of sorts. It's great to have you here. and it's a really propitious opportunity to have you on. And especially given sort of the timing of the news cycle because there are things I know about and you know about and then there's things I don't know about and you know about.

And the geopolitics of the larger region and the U.S. role in sort of the history of regime, change is something that you have a lot more expertise in and a lot more, you're much more well read in. So given everything that's happened in the past week with the, I mean, I don't even call it an escalation, but the full-blown explosion of explosions in Tehran and Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel, Israel unilaterally attacking Iran and then claiming it's doing it in self-defense, self-defense, but defense of the entire world. What can you tell us about, how would you sum up what's going on and what's important to keep in mind in terms of the context?

Well, let's go to the immediate background. What was happening right before Israel bombed Iran? There were negotiations going on between the U.S. and Iran. And so Israel bombs Iran on on a Thursday night, you know, U.S. time, early Friday morning, Iran time. And three days later, or two days later, they're supposed to be talks between the U.S. and Iran. So basically, on the eve of a new round of talks, Israel goes ahead and bombs Iran, thereby destroying the talks. And he does so with Trump's full blessing, as Trump has made increasingly clear. To the point now where Trump, in one of his latest posts, as we're recording this, says that we, we, now, now have full control of Iran's airspace, we as in the U.S. and Israel.

And he also says, we know exactly where the so-called Supreme Leader is hiding. He's an easy target, but if safe there, we're not going to take him out, kill, at least for now. So we're not going to take him out, parenthetical is so funny. We're not going to take him out, parentheses, kill, exclamation mark. Yeah. We are not going to take him out kill if, you know, as if A, he's a, you know, a six-year-old child and also B, more importantly, That he's saying that we means the U.S. and Israel. So the U.S. and Israel are acting in tandem.

And what was happening during these talks? I mean, so what is Trump's reason for helping Israel go to war against Iran? Now he says that he gave Iran a 60-day deadline to basically make concessions and back down or else face consequences. And it's true. He did issue that deadline. But first of all, if you're Iran, right, and you have scheduled talks planned to discuss a deal in which, you have been making progress, and there have sometimes been talks from Trump and Wickoff that, yeah, we're making progress, then you've ever reason to expect that those talks are

continuing and that the deadline is not going to be enforced by Trump, especially if you have a meeting scheduled, right? As producer Adam says, yes, I yes, Trump, king of meaningful deadlines. Yeah, exactly. We know from his, from his, you know, his wonderful Riviera diplomacy in Gaza that when he imposes a deadline, you know, he'll hold, he'll hold anyone to it, even if it's his best friends. Exactly. So, and what was happening in these talks? Well, initially, Trump and Wickhoff were saying that they were open to some Iranian enrichment

of uranium, which they have the right to do under the nonproliferation treaty, and which was enshrined in the original Iran nuclear deal that Trump broke, capping enrichment at a level that is for peaceful purposes, nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. And Trump and Wilcoff were saying, you know, initially that they were open to that. But then after just a little bit of pushback from Israel and their allies in the U.S., Trump started endorsing the maximalist Israeli demand of no enrichment whatsoever, not even for peaceful purposes. And then also, Ham and Wiccoff started talking about putting caps on Iran's missiles, which is not a nuclear deal. That's why the original nuclear deal didn't even address missiles.

So basically, in short, what Trump and Wikoff were demanding was, was twofold. One, they were saying that Iran can't meet its, can't have its sovereign right to enrichment, which for Iran is a red line for many reasons. First of all, they have the right to enrich under the nonproliferation treaty. So they see this as essential to their sovereignty. The fact that they developed enrichment capacity is a point of national pride. It took a lot of technical know-how and struggle, and they're not going to just give it up

because Donald Trump says they can't enrich. And also, they have domestic energy needs, right? to like, this is why they want to meet the domestic needs of their massive country. And so what Trump and Wickhoff are saying is basically you can't meet your domestic energy needs. Now, why would they care about that? If it's capped at a peaceful level, why would Trump and Wickcoff and Israel insist that Iran can't even have that?

The reason is obvious. It's because the goal in Iran when it comes to Israel and the U.S. is regime change. And if Iran can't meet its energy needs, then you're making it harder for the Iranian government to govern because the people will naturally be upset, you know, on top of all the existing hardships that they face, especially from murderous sanctions that Trump has imposed by breaking the Iran deal. So what they're saying to Iran is like, you can't meet your energy needs, you can't have sovereignty.

And when it comes to missiles, you also can't defend yourself. Because if Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, which they don't want to have, and the U.S. intelligence has repeatedly said, they don't have nuclear weapons program, they do need some missile capability to defend themselves from the constant threat of U.S. Israeli aggression, which they've been facing for a very, very long time. So in short, Trump will cover demanding no sovereignty, no energy, self-sufficiency, and no self-defense. So that's what they were insisting that, that Iran accept.

Iran wasn't accepting that. I was hoping that the talks that were scheduled would continue and maybe lead to a breakthrough. Trump instead used those talks as cover to help Israel bomb Iran. You see, Aaron, I can't interrupt you when you're spitting bars like that. I mean, that was an intense and very rich summation of the context. As far as the Iranian right to enrichment, absolutely. I mean, they've been saying for a long time, one of the biggest albums in Iranian hip hop back in the late 90s, early 2000s was by a rapper called, what was his name? here we go 50 rial uh get enriched or die trying

it's terrible it's terrible i wish matt was here i wish matt was here i would have gotten a i would have gotten a chuckle at least yeah he would have chuckled really he wouldn't he would have laughed yeah he would get enriched or die trying okay get him get enriched or die yeah look it does work it's it works the whole thing work get enriched or die time it was a little labored it was a little labored well but i i do want to correct you on one thing erin uh you said that israel bombed Iran on Thursday, right? Yeah. That's not what foreign policy expert Bernie Sanders says.

Netanyahu started this war by attacking Iran. He assassinated Ali Shamhani, Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, deliberately sabotaging U.S. Iran nuclear negotiations. The U.S. must not be dragged into another illegal Netanyahu war, either military or financially. So say the name of the country right. it's the sovereign state of Netanyahu and so you guys like I imagine love to make fun of Bernie for basically personalizing every act of Israeli aggression is just down to Netanyahu as if like

it's unique to him and not the whole country and you know Bernie won't say the country's name he won't he won't do it yeah it's as if he believes the country has been is in a hostile takeover by you know like that you know as if it's out of Lord of the Rings or something where King Denethor or whatever is under the grip of some nefarious influence. And if we can just, you know, say the right incantation, it'll go back to being itself and, you know, be reasonable or whatever. What's the history here of Israel's intent and fixation on Iranian regime change? I remember, what was it, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, Netanyahu was talking about the imminent

Iranian nuclear threat, I don't know how long it goes back, but can you say anything about the background, the longer background? Netanyahu's been lying about Iran for decades, I think, yeah, at least for three decades, probably more if I were to dig deeper. And the threat is simple. Israel's predicated, no matter who's in power, whether it's Netanyahu or the most like, you know, liberal Israeli of the spectrum. It's predicated on crushing Palestinian self-determination and Iran is the head of an access of resistance that supports Palestinian freedom and that deters U.S. Israeli aggression in the region. They support all the main groups, Ansarallah in Yemen, Hezbollah in Iran, and recently the now

ousted government of Syria that were part of an access that resisted Israeli aggression and wouldn't normalize with Israel until at least it recognized Palestinian rights. That was basically Iran's demand. Now, they've made it in different iterations over the years when we talk about some of the statements that Iranian leaders have made that are used to argue that Iran was committed to wiping out the Israeli government. I mean, what they're committed to wiping out, I mean, what they would like to see is a ethno-supremic state. They've been very clear about that. They don't think Israel has the right to steal Palestinian land and have an apartheid state, just as like every other fair-minded person in the world thinks. Now, do they say it differently?

Yes, they talk about death to Israel and all that stuff like that. Is there something hypocritical or suss about a, you know, an Islamic Republic, religious fundamentalist state professing to, you know, dictate to others that they shouldn't be ethno-states? Yeah. Or am I buying into Western propaganda? Yeah, but I mean, well, it's just not hypocritical? Like, yes and no, but what they're saying is that they should have equal rights. And Jews in Iran fare a lot. better, infinitely better than Palestinians do in their occupied territory. It's not even a

comparison. So, I mean, they're oppressed, they're oppressed reasonably equally with the rest of the Iranians. I mean, yeah, exactly. Let's not, let's not pretend like Iran is some haven of, no, of course not. No, of course not. No. We, we know personally family friends who's, who's a parent of theirs died languishing in an Iranian prison. So we're not, we're not here to to whitewash the internal qualities of that society. But that's always a complete non-sequitur because it's no one's business. The regime change is predicated on a false notion that sympathy or compassion for the plight of people around the world gives us in the West the right to go in and do something about

it. I mean, the longer background is that you can start with 19. 53, the U.S. backs a coup in Iran, ousting Mossadeh, who is a popular leader, but he makes the mistake of trying to nationalize Iran's oil to benefit its people, not Western energy companies, so the CIA and the British help overthrow him. They impose the Shah. The Shah's overthrown in 1979. Then in the 1980s, the U.S. supports Saddam Hussein and his war against Iran. And then, you know, after 9-11, I mean, I'm fast, I'm skipping over a lot. After 11, Iran is marked for regime change by the Bush administration. There's that infamous list of

countries by, you know, revealed by General Wesley Clark. And after Iraq, Iran and Syria and Libya were among the other targets. So, you know, Iran's been resisting U.S. Israeli aggression for a very, very long time. U.S. Israeli aggression is anything to do with freedom inside Iran. Israel and U.S. could care less about the Iranian people. They'd love to see someone like the Shah come back and repress people. As he was, he was in the U.S., he was. doing too. I mean, so they just don't care about the Iranian government's repression. Of course, we're not here to deny that that repression exists, but it's totally immaterial to whether not we have the right to try to regime change the country and impose murderous sanctions

and now bomb it and, you know, Trump threatened the people into leaving. And on the nuclear weapons issue, there's all, there's another aspect here. So not only has Iran not had a nuclear weapons program for a very long time, they've also proposed a really good solution, I think, to resolve the issue. They've called for a nuclear free Middle East, which the U.S. and Israel stand alone and refusing because they insist on Israel having nuclear weapons that can threaten everybody because Israel doesn't want to coexist with everybody. It wants to steal the territory it wants and wants to make sure that no one will impede its ethnic cleansing project in Palestine. So to me, that's what all this comes down to. It's just like, you know, Israel and the U.S.

are feeling very emboldened because they've had success. They weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon. They've destroyed Gaza, and they also succeeded in regime-changing Syria. And so Iran is, in their terminology, the head of the snake. So that's what they're going for now. You just an idea for a new parody song, which I'm going to have to do on this show, just pop into my head. My, my, my, Demona, the Demona nuclear facility. That's right.

Yes. Yeah. I'm going to have to just sort of recap four out of ten. God damn it. You know, ever since Dad came. on the show, it's become customary for Adam, Matt, and all of our listeners to rate my jokes out of 10, because that's what he used to do to me as a kid. And it's humbling. I'll tell you, it's humbling. You spoke about the Axis of Resistance. I want to play a clip from an interview

we did a few months ago. And yeah, we don't often do this, play clips from our own show, but we have such a wide array of guests. And everyone agrees on one core thing, which is that there's a genocide going on in Gaza and that Palestine should be free and equal. But on a host of other issues, there's a lot of divergence. And I know you took issue with something that Rashid Khaledi said. So let's take a look at that. It's about a minute-long clip from back in the fall or winter. The interest of the regime and the interest of Iran,

they've created deterrence to protect Iran against American hostility and hostility of regimes in the Middle East. And that had no, in my view, you know connection to a Palestinian national interest. It may have served some Palestinian factions. It may have helped in this way or that way for this or that Palestinian interest. But it wasn't designed this so-called access of resistance to liberate Palestine or to help the Lebanese liberate the bits of South Lebanon that Israel controls

along the Mount Hermann frontier with Lebanon. It was intended to protect Iran. And it disappeared and Iran is more vulnerable. That may or be a good or bad thing. It has nothing to do with the Palestinians. in my view, my personal view. I honestly don't never believe that there was such a thing as an excess of resistance. There was an access of protection for Iran.

And it served that purpose until Israel showed it was infinitely stronger than a lot of fools believed that it was. So what do you have to say about that? Well, first of all, I have to start by saying I have infinite respect for Rashid Khalid. I've learned so much from him. I consider him to be a real teacher of mine. And it's awkward for me to disagree with him. But, you know, look, you can argue that the acts of resistance hasn't ultimately served the cause of Palestinian liberation

and that it would have been better to have a different approach. But I don't know what that really is. It's really difficult when you're dealing with a pathological aggressor who is hell-bent on occupation. in that situation. Look, can I say from afar that maybe if there had just been complete nonviolence in Palisian territories, that would have had a better chance than arm resistance, you know, than things like October 7th. From afar, yes, that's my opinion.

But at the same time, you know, I'm sitting from afar. I'm not under occupation. It's really easy to make the argument when you're not living under the gun that you should try nonviolence. And, I mean, I'll take one specific issue with the one point he made it, but I didn't contribute to the liberation of South Lebanon. Well, I mean, that was Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is backed by Iran. So unless I'm misinterpreting something he's saying, I don't quite get the point there. Hezbollah was formed with Iranian support. And Rashid Khalid, he knows this, obviously. He's written

extensively about it, in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, where Israel killed tens of thousands of people. Hezbollah got out of that, resisted for a long time and finally got Israel to leave. And look, certainly, U.S. and Israel see the acts of resistance as a problem. That's why they've committed so much energy to destroying it. If you go back to 2006, that was when Israel and Hezbollah had a war over the summer. And, you know, after that, that was when Syria was marked for regime change. Syria was already marked for regime change, but that's when, like, regime change efforts sort of accelerated in the U.S. when it comes to Syria, because Syria was a land bridge

during that time to give weapons to, through which Iran could pass weapons to Hezbollah. And that was defending Lebanon from an Israeli assault. And after that, Hezbollah won a lot of popular support. Is it just aimed at protecting Iran? Well, to me, that's in the realm of psychology. Like that's what's in the minds of the, of the Ayatollah and the ruling government. I don't know. The Iranians I speak to who support the government and even who don't, some who don't support

the government, they think the support for Palestine is genuine. And look, what we're seeing now, it's Iran that's now the only force that is fighting Israel, directly attacking it, inflicting hits on Israel that no one else has. And Lebanon, Hezbollah sacrificed a lot for what, for Gaza, to try to put pressure on Israel as it was bombing Gaza. Now, you can take issue with tactical decisions that everyone has made, like was October 7 tactically wise? I don't think so. I think it was a disaster. Hezbollah getting involved.

What did that accomplish? Well, someone in favor of Hezbollah's actions could say that it took pressure. It eased the pressure somewhat on Gaza. I don't think it did, but that was at least the aim. of it. It bled Israel somewhat. Yeah, I mean, they felt more pain on that battlefield than they were necessarily feeling in Gaza and it spread them thinner, but it didn't seem to have any decisive impact. But it certainly didn't serve the interest of Hezbollah or Iran because ultimately Hezbollah took a huge hit and Lebanon took a huge hit. So, I mean, to me,

the argument against the acts of resistance, the most plausible one, is it simply, basically, the U.S. and Israel are so powerful, they're so pathologically aggressive, so committed to hegemony, that taking the arm route with them is pointless, and they'll ultimately win in that game every time. And certainly there's a lot of examples of that. That, to me, is the best argument. But to say that it's all self-interest, when especially Lebanon, Hezbollah, sacrificed so much, for Palestine, I just think that's off base. And again, I don't know the mentality of the Iranian government, you know, what they really think. But to me, I just don't think all of this wasn't.

If really, if they were only interested in self-interest, then they would just leave Israel alone and they'd normalize, right? Israel wouldn't care about Iran if Iran didn't defend Palestinian rights and didn't didn't refuse to accept an ethno supremacist state inside Palestine so that's the existence of another powerful militarily strong power in the region wouldn't be enough to I mean I guess you know when you look at the Cold War it wasn't just America wasn't just threatened by Russia's size and power but it was about their influence and it was about their yeah there's some there's support for independent sovereign, you know, movements in the Americas and Southeast Asia and whatever that might oppose U.S. hegemony.

So I guess what you're saying is analogous to that in the sense of, you know, Iran supporting the forces in Palestine that Israel is trying to wipe out. would i mean maybe it all amounts to the same thing but yeah i mean if there's no armed resistance inside palestine uh the like then israel takes everything um yeah the only possible way no arm resistance succeeds is if there's some massive nonviolent movement that's incredibly disciplined and coordinated like superhuman but that's really hard to do and well with especially without international coordination i mean we saw how hard it is to get an international um crew of people to, you know, with the freedom, the flotilla and just how Israel so effectively

crushed it and, and in many ways neutralized its propaganda value. Not entirely, of course, the whole world's side, but you're right about Israel and the U.S.'s, you know, galactic empire-like power to shut down threats. I'm not sure that Rashid was poo-pooing the idea of resistance, but he was applying a kind of cynical statecraft lens to the notion that Iran is this noble ally or something like that. But anyway, I don't think you guys are disagreeing too much principle. Yeah, go ahead.

I think implicit in Russia's argument is also that Iran needs Israel as a perpetual enemy to shore up its own power. I mean, I'm not sure if that's what he said, but at the same time, and this is important context too, even Iran has effectively endorsed a two-state solution. In 2017, Iran endorsed a resolution from the organization for Islamic cooperation, calling for a two-state solution. The Palestinians get a sliver of a state just 22 percent of their historic homeland in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem.

Iran endorsed that. The leader of Hezbollah, the late leader of Hezbollah, according to Seymour Hersh, he also said that if the Palestinians accepted that solution, he wouldn't stand in the way. Hamas leaders have at times accepted that. So it's not, you can't say that Iran is just like, just use Palestine for its own ends because at times they've shown a willingness to accept the so-called two-state solution which the whole world supports. It's only Israel in the U.S., which stand in the way of that. So I just, you know, look, most of the, most of my friends who are from Iran, their

families are in Iran, are very critical of their own government. But I also think it's just a lot more. complex than we understand it in the West as outsiders. Yeah. Well, clearly and the inability to come from a place of humility and universal compassion and understanding for the perspectives of people in the regions that our countries dominate has been a future of Western foreign policy for a long time, disastrously for everyone. One of the talking points, and we're going to get into the Iranian response and

they're firing missiles at Israel and then the Hasbara reactions to that which I know is what our listeners love to tune in for because that's what we like to mock here but one of the talking points has been and this is so reminiscent of regime change operations

in Iraq, Libya wherever right? Is the people want it. The Iranian people are begging for it. There was one photo of English language note written on paper saying, Dear Israel, please bomb Iranian state media. I don't have that one available.

But, you know, and then there's this AI-generated cartoon that someone made, which is BB with a chef's apron and a chef's hat, sprinkling salt on a cauldron of mullahs and Ayatollahs and other Iranians with the Iranian flag on the cauldron, and the caption by some Twitter user named Anonymous Army, thank goodness for the chef label on his apron, says Adam Levin. It's true. Without the chef apron, we might not know what that hat is or what he's up to.

Dear Sir, Netanyahu, at Netanyahu, at IDF Farsi. So he tags the IDF Farsi account, which obviously exists. to do propaganda to the Iranian people. We are Iranian people who want to say thank you. We are glad to help you and stand with you against Ayatollah's regime. Best regards. Hashtag, thank you, Israel.

Hashtag, thank you, IDF. What are the odds a human being wrote this? And what are the odds that an actual, this reflects an actual sentiment on the part of, I mean, even Iranians who want to see their government replaced or overthrown. I can't imagine this level of quizzling obsequiousness and begging their terrorist states that are sanctioning and bombing them to please continue and finish the job. Well, look, I mean, like no country is a monolith, right?

So in every society, you can find someone or a faction of people who want regime change. And Iran's no different. And the U.S. and Israel have been supporting those elements for decades, including. the MEK, a terrorist group that sided with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and also loyalists to the Shah, some loyalists of the Shah, although not even all of them want, you know, U.S.-Israeli-backed regime change. But this is the playbook every time. Like you take every country you'll find legitimate grievances against the government, Iran's no different. And then that's exploited by people in the West who want regime change.

And, you know, like plenty of things to loathe about. the U.S. regime or any government that you live under, but does anyone in the West want violent force or the other government? I mean, the amount of people supporting that would really really drop. So this is the playbook every single time. No, I want, I want the

rising economic domination of an alternative empire like China to destroy our country. That's what I want. Sure, sure, sure. So, yeah, this is a point. As Kent Brockman on the Simpsons said about the, you know, alien aunt Orvalor, it's eye, for one, look forward to serving our

the ant regime and I will happily repeat your news. He's the anchor on TV, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, no, of course. But, you know, do people want Israel to come bomb them into freedom?

It's just such a joke. Yeah. Well, this is a sort of somewhat ironic segue to the first item I want to show you in terms of the reaction to Iran's response. And Iran hit back and they hit back hard and they hit Tel Aviv. Apparently they hit the Kiriyah, the Central Command in Tel Aviv, which is unironically nestled

in a civilian area. Of course, we're never going to hear Israel accused of human shielding. But there was an exchange or there was a protest that your old buddy, Jonathan Conrigger Mortis, John Conriquez, lodged against Fox's Trey Yinks, who somehow has been the best American corporate employed on the ground correspondent by far since October 7th. I think you'd agree with me on that. He's been reporting with uncommon candor and fairness, I think, about an honesty about what Israel's been doing in Gaza, which is not saying much.

I have to, he actually initially, as Max Blumenthal pointed out, took part in the initial Al-Shifa deception of falsely accusing Hamas of having a command and control. He took part in laundering his lawyer propaganda. Since then, he's done a lot better. But I just have to point that out that initially he was, he took part in the Israeli deception about al-Sheifa, where they, where he enabled the aforementioned Jonathan Carmaricus's stunt there, where they planted weapons. in al-Sheifa and that was used to make you know to pave the way for destroying

al-Sheifa but yes since then since then trie yinx has done a much better job than pretty much every every other u.s. journalists on the ground and he's been completely maligned by by zionists the last time you were on the show we showed clips of you debating karmikas on the uh peers morgan show here is yinks a clip from yinks reporting uh where we're going to see him being shooed away by israeli police in telaevina he just keeps going and then we'll see karmrikas's response in nuclear facilities and top irgc leadership overnight and into today the iranians have responded with three waves of ballistic missiles this is israel's version of the pentagon the kiriak and the building on this compound was just hit

go back go back please you you can understand here it's very tense at this specific location because the iranians are now targeting the defense establishment of israel And so I'm going to have my cameraman pan up here to this building just across the street from the curiosity. What are you to move to me, lech to samma. And so, what I love about that clip is how the officers or the police or whoever get progressively more Israeli as it goes on. So they start off by saying, go over there please, go over there, please. And then they say, lech to shama, which means go over there. there. Lech Lech Lech Lechrechaema. And then when he doesn't comply, they say,

Lechlechlechrecha, go over there, what you don't understand, go. And it just, you know, they just can't, they can't contain any, they can't affect any sort of courtesy anymore. They have to be, well, they have to get real Israeli with it. But here is what Conriquez said about this, and I find this such a funny, a funny scolding of an international journalist. He says, this is disappointing reporting by a serious journalism working for a very serious network. Well, that's a funny statement in itself. Providing the Iranian regime with live BDA, which I believe means battle damage assessment, after their attack on Israel, after their attack on Israel is not an international reporter's job.

caution and professionalism are called for i mean that's i mean that i mean that i mean it speaks for itself uh but what he means by caution and professionalism means just hasbara uh israelic propaganda that's what the u.s media is expected to pair it and even just reporting from the seat of a from the scene of a of a strike by iran is uh you can't do that in the eyes of an israeli functionary because it shows some vulnerability from Israel. I mean, it's self-evident. Well, Ron, I'm here on the streets of Tel Aviv. There's nothing to see here. Reporting for Fox News, I'm Trey Yinks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the, it's like the inverse of, you know, how, you know, people on the right would make fun of liberal networks when they were covering the George Floyd protests.

And like there'd be like there's that one meme of like a scene burning in the background. And the reporter says it's a mostly piece. peaceful protest. That's kind of what they want Fox News to do when reporting on these strikes. But that's, you know, look, they expect, they've come to expect that honestly from the media because that's what the media does. And not just Fox News, CNN, everybody, as you guys have talked about a lot, has been complicit in whitewashing Israel and serving its agenda. So Jonathan Cornriquez is upset at a rare deviation. Yeah. Any deviation from complete and total obeisance is is not tolerated. Speaking of Israeli propaganda,

here's what they tweeted out. Here we go into unintentional irony territory, buckle up. Two nights in a row, Iran's regime is deliberately targeting Israeli homes, schools, and hospitals, seeking maximum civilian casualties. Israel strikes nuclear facilities, military sites, and military leaders,

not civilians. One side targets innocent, the other defends them. There's this picture of Israel targets, and there's these three ominous looking Iranian, I'm supposing military officials, nuclear scientists, people that they assassinated, and Iran targets, and then these two old people, a woman in a wheelchair, an old man with a gash on his forehead. Gaza aside, which Gaza should never be to the side, but let's even just talk about the

Israeli strikes on Tehran. Who did Israel target, Aaron? Well, as we're recording this, we can say that they've targeted hospitals, at least one hospital. They also targeted a residential building where they killed at least 30 civilians, including children. And this is their playbook. I mean, Gaza, this is all they've done is just mass murder civilians. And that's always what Israel has done. They've attacked Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, the West Bank. I mean, on and on and on. Like, this is a just foundationally aggressive, violent, aggressive state.

And so this is what they do. They kill civilians everywhere while complaining about being attacked and not welcome to the region and being the victims. But yeah, even just on this battle alone, if you were to compare the target list between Iran and Israel, I would bet everything I own that Iran's targets are primarily, if not universally, military, because it doesn't serve Iran to hit civilian areas, whereas Israel, on top of the aforementioned targets, also has gone after sewage lines, water facilities, energy facilities, because, again, their goal here has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, it has to do with regime change.

And so the regime change playbook is always make the civilian population suffer. so that there's enough pressure on the government to collapse. Here's some more outrage from the aforementioned Danny Yogurt Danon. Iran launched a brutal missile attack on Israel, deliberately targeting civilian areas. Israeli women and children were murdered. Others were severely injured. Families shattered. And yet at UN women and at UNICEF remain silent.

No condemnation, no outrage, no solidarity. Do Israeli women and children not matter to you? Would you stay silent if this happened anywhere else? Your silence is not neutrality, it is complicity. We demand a clear and unequivocal condemnation now. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how to respond to these Israeli officials because they're just, I mean, you guys find a way every week to parry to them, and I respect it,

But it's just, I'm a little speechless by them, the level of hypocrisy and just, you know, sheer evil. Well, given how you're such a nonstop talk box, you being speechless, you can just be speechless for the rest of this episode. I'm just going to play you things. And we'll just capture you just being speechless. And history will record that for once, Aaron was, his jaw was on the floor and he couldn't say shit. And you had to pick up the slack for once, reluctantly by talking, which you just hate to do. This may be therapeutic for both of us. You know, like, finally I learned to say what's on my mind.

And you learned to just shut the fuck up for one. Alon Levy says, as Iranian ballistic missiles rained down on Haifa, a reminder that, quote, international law or, quote, global institutions have done diddly squat to keep Israelis safe. Ooh, Ned Flanders, don't you speak that way. You watch your mouth, Ned. Push comes to shove, we only have ourselves. Yes, Israel's longstanding faith in the succor and support and refuge of international law and global institutions has finally been shattered now that they've been abandoned by these institutions.

Yeah, I mean, everything in this whole tweet is so funny. I mean, first of all they do is thought international law. They have been occupying the West Bank in Gaza, in 1967, in total violation of international law. And then you can add all of the many other crimes since then, particularly the genocide and Gaza to that rap sheet. And then push comes to shove, we only have, we have only ourselves, yes, except for the most powerful country in the world, which arms you to the teeth, which vetoes every UN Security Council effort to hold you minimally accountable. You also have all of the European Union, too, which has lined up one off the other to defend Israel's so-called right to defend itself in attacking Iran, which means in reality Israel's right to commit. aggression and mass murder so but you know he um song parody coming in on my own except the u.s sport support of billions of bucks by myself they veto every resolution against us yeah who's the original

on our own patty la belle and michael macdonald what a meeting of the greats yes that's what the 80s was amazing for duets between these fucking legends you know This is Neo Berg. Breaking. Arabs in Judea and Samaria, a.k.a. West Bank Palestinians are celebrating the ballistic missile attack on North Israel, chanting al-Ahu Akbar, scumbags.

Well, where do we start with this one? Maybe we start with the lawn chairs set up in Steyroth for years now whenever Israel goes on a lawn mowing campaign in Gaza. and Israelis cheering. Maybe we start with the TikTok videos. It's just unbelievable the lack of self-awareness, as if they think we haven't seen them cheering on. Besides the fact, I didn't watch the video,

but Palestinians, Arabic speakers, say al-Ahālahu Akbar in all kinds of circumstances, including when they're afraid, when they're awed, when they're mourning, when they're grieving, and the turning of this holy phrase, which just means God is great into some kind of, well, it's a blood libel, really, is the height of Islamophobia.

But just the lack of self-awareness of how Israel has come off for at least the last 20 months and much longer is incredible. Well, two things here. As you say, countless videos of Israelis celebrating the destruction of Gaza and also videos of Israelis dressing up as Palestinians and mocking them.

mocking people starving and needing water and, you know, all these vile videos put out on Israeli social media. That's the first point. Second point is, as Norman Finkelstein says, when it comes to Israel, you know, Israel is guilty until proven innocent. That's what you have to assume at this point. So in this case, you know, if they put out a video saying something, I just, I'm not even going to believe that unless it's met with an overwhelming amount of evidence.

And third, let's say Palestinians in the West Banking Gaza we're chanting now. Well, they have every right to. I mean, if you saw a country that's founded on stealing your land, ethnically cleansing you, stealing your homes, putting you under a sadistic military occupation for decades and decades, you would cheer too if it got bombed. So anybody cheering-

After decades and decades of impunity, it's nice to see a little punity. Yeah, I mean, a Palestinian saying that would have every right to share. share if that's what happened. But again, I just can't take anything that Israeli propagandist puts out on faith. All right. We're going to cap this segment there. That was plenty. And I think it's time for a break. Thanks for all that insight, Aaron, and all that analysis. And for sitting through all that bullshit. And now we're going to go to some other bullshit, which is an ad from our sponsors. And I don't know who they are. Maybe there's Israeli weapons manufacturers. But listen, folks, you can love it. You can hate it, but don't build a black wall with a yellow star on it around your heart. Open your mind.

Take in what they have to say. And please stick around because we will be right back. And we're back. This is Bad Hasbar, the world's most moral podcast. Hope you're all doing well, as well as you were 30 seconds ago. Or better. I'm Daniel Mate. I'm here with my brother, journalist Aaron Matte. How you doing, Aaron? I'm doing Well, you know What can I say? I'm happy to be here with you in Budapest The birthplace of our father

Yeah, it's your first time here What are you first time here? Well, it's been very moving just being here with him And seeing where he's from going to his child at home And you know, this place has really shaped So much of who we are in so many different ways The trauma of the Holocaust and it's shaped the fact that we are I mean we saw the

The balcony outside of the his childhood home on which they had the family meeting where the parents asked the two kids, our dad and his brother, whether they wanted to move to Canada or to travel in 56, and they enthusiastically said yes, and that kind of tipped the scales because they were unsure whether they were going to leave. And if that had gone differently, you and I would not be sitting here. We wouldn't be sitting anywhere. All true. And it's happening at a time when There's another Holocaust going on in Gaza, and I can't help but think of that every time I sort of learned something new about this place. And it's also at a time when the world's in great peril with what's happening with Israel and Iran, which is very, very scary.

So, you know, those are two things on my mind right now. It's moving to be here, but I'm incredibly just as always increasingly worried about where we're going. Yeah, it's heavy times. And we're here in a country that, you know, Viktor Orban, the leader, fancies himself, Israel's best friend, which is kind of bringing Theodore Herzl's prophecy to life that the anti-Semites will be our best friends. We actually saw the place where Herzl's home was right next to the synagogue where our great-uncle or great-great-uncle, I forget, was the cantor. And that was interesting. But yeah, Herzl was, Herzl lived here and developed a lot of his ideas about what the Jews of Europe needed to do here.

Anyway, we're going to move on and we're going to read something and to do that reading and to join us in laughing at it, I think. We're going to bring back to the stage. Please welcome, producer, Adam Levin. Hey, I'm here. I didn't think of a funny bit to be doing and get surprised when you brought me back in. I should have been eating a big sandwich or something. You should have been Tubin. Jesus.

You're going to get me thrown out of the podcasting union. You ever play that video game in the 80s, Tubin, the inner tube video game? I did not. I thought maybe you were thinking of a different video game. No, no, no, no, no. It was actually a fun video game. Anyway, you found this article here in the New York War Crimes, Adam,

which is alerting us to a scourge, a very real threat happening in our society, an under-discussed threat, I would say. And that is anti-Semitism. And maybe just because we always take the New York Times on faith, why don't we play our actual anti-Semitism alert bumper? There's no anti-Semitism in the United States. Thank you, Ma.

So this article is a long one. We may skip through some of it. It's an op-ed. And the title is, anti-Semitism is an urgent problem. Too many people are making excuses. And what I love here is the byline is by the editorial board. And then it explains who the editorial board is.

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate, and certain longstanding values. No need to say what those are. Yeah, certain longstanding values. Aaron, what are the longstanding values of the New York Times editorial board? Serving power, especially Israeli power, those are the most concrete longstanding values of the New York Times. I predict that in like 20 years that this byline will be exactly the same, but it'll say the editorial board is a group of opinion droids whose views are informed by and it sounds

like something out of science fiction, you know, like just some little cabal of automaton's whose job is to come up with opinions that you are now supposed to think. Yeah, I mean, and the fact that they have debate in there as well, but sort of at odds, debate and certain longstanding values, either you value debate, which means, you know, you're open to anyone's point of view or you're imposing rigid principles, certain rigid, longstanding principles. I think they use the wrong conjunction. It's debate within certain longstanding.

Exactly. Right. Well, and that's the Chomsky point, that debate in the corporate media system can happen, but within constraints, right? And that's how you help manufacture consent by isolating debate to a very, very small spectrum of opinion. As Metallica said, freedom of choice is made for you, my friend. freedom of speech is words that they will bend.

You can do it your own way if it's done just how I say. 1988. Of course, three years later, they wrote a song called Don't Tread on Me, supporting the fucking Iraq war. So never meet your heroes, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. All right, here we go. Here's the article, Adam.

Please read for us with your, your, mellifluous, dulcet tones. You got it. The list of horrific anti-Semitic attacks in the United States keeps growing. Two weeks ago in Boulder, Colorado, a man set fire to peaceful marchers who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages. Less than two weeks earlier, a young couple was shot to death leaving an event at the Jewish Museum in Washington. This is the couple that were Israeli embassy employees. The previous month, an intruder scaled offense outside the official residence of Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania

and threw Molotov cocktails while Mr. Shapiro, his wife, and children were asleep inside. In October, a 39-year-old Chicago resident was shot from behind while walking to synagogue. Okay. So there's four incidents listed there. The D.C. shooting, the shooter put out an extensive manifesto. He shouted Free, Free Palestine. So we know that his motives were related to that. And I don't know, but in my experience, politically motivated assassins are not reticent about being very transparent about what their motives and all their motives are. The Buffalo shooter in that grocery store in Buffalo made absolutely clear he went out of his way to target people of color, black people. That's what he wanted to do because they were black and he is a racist. racist. This DC shooter wrote a pretty extensive manifesto and all he spoke about was the

freedom of Palestine. So it's a leap. I'm not saying it couldn't have been anti-Semitically motivated, but there's a lot as we're going to see of conflation going on, which is what this anti-Semitism panic rests on. There's zero evidence that the embassy shoot, that the shooting of the embassy staffers was motivated by anti-Semitism and all the available evidence shows it was motivated by the genocide in Gaza. And that's not an endorsement of the shooting. I personally oppose all political violence. But you can't say it was motivated by anti-Semitism when there's no hint of anti-Semitism and anything he said. What do we know about the Boulder incident? The Boulder incident from what I saw, that also was motivated, I think, primarily by,

Palestine and look it's it's also look let's say for a second that everything here was motivated by anti-Semitism or or the the perpetrators were anti-Semitic these are acts of violence that should be condemned but if we believe that all human beings are equal how are we not even more outraged by the tens of thousands of more killings by Israel a Palestinians in Gaza, which is at the basis of all of this. Or if we keep it within the bounds of the United States, because remember, one of their long-standing values at the New York Times is to only keep debate within certain parameters. What about the Palestinians targeted?

Yeah, of course. A Texas boy, what, stabbed to death, or maybe that was in the Midwest. That was in Chicago. Yeah, that was in Chicago. An attempted drowning in Texas, I think. Yeah. Point blank shooting of three Palestinian young people in New England. I don't know that the New York Times editorial board has gone to such loquacious lengths to decry that trend.

Well, I think it has a lot to do with the kind of systematic othering of the entire Middle East save for Israel. You know, like any time you see it in media, it's usually, if you see it in sort of fictionalized media, it's like eululating and, you know, Ood melodies being played over a sepia-toned background. It's Claire Dane's as Little Red Riding Hood. Yes, exactly. But anyway, let's move on. The United States is experiencing its worst surge of anti-Jewish hate in many decades. Anti-Semitic hate crimes have more than doubled between 2021 and 2023, according to the FBI.

I think they misspelled ADL. And appear to have risen further in 2026. On a per capita basis, Jews face far greater risks of being victims of hate crimes than members of any other demographic groups. Citation needed on that. Well, here's the chart. And we know that when it comes to the leading chronicler tabskeeper on anti-Semitic hate crimes, the ADL, what is it? Like 90%? Some enormous percentage of the incidents they're talking about are.

incidents of anti-Israel speech, pro-Palestine protest, and Jews feeling uncomfortable because of those two things. Or tickey-tack things like the flyers that we put up in order for them to be taken down and create a media event for them being taken down, that counts as a hate crime in this sort of tally. That's where you need the citation. Yeah. And the group that everybody relies on, the so-called Anti-Defamation League, I mean, they've said

openly that they define criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. That's like in their methodology. So these figures are just a complete joke. A complete joke for so many reasons. We're talking about a really privileged sector of society, which is Jewish people. We're talking about people who are opposed to a genocide and then be accused of anti-Semitic for it. And it's just so, I mean, Daniel, I mean, we're part of this ethnic group, and I just feel humiliation whenever this topic comes up now because of just how ridiculous it is. It's also at a time when, you know, when people who look to be of Latin American descent, citizens or not are being pulled off the street by, you know, our own government. Oh, they're way down this list. 13 incidents per 1 million Hispanic people

versus 291 hate crimes Yeah, every piece of video from the last couple of weeks would beg to differ with that. Yeah. Well, I think some of these other groups should sort of see our conflation and raise us.

You know, I think like LGBTQ people could redefine the definition of homophobia, transphobia, queer phobia as, I don't know, thinking the pet shop... Playing nickelback music. Yeah, or thinking the pet shot boys are overrated or, you know, hating on the village people, you know, black people

could say that if you thought sinners was, you know, derivative or overrated, that you're now creating, that's a, everyone who saw a 35 millimeter print instead of IMAX 15 perforation or something. Guilty. Our father, Gab Warren, I don't want to mess up what he said, but he said something along the lines of, I'm tired of hearing about the Holocaust. right now. I'm tired of hearing about Jewish suffering. And what he meant was simply, you know, he's a Holocaust survivor himself. But at this point, at a time of genocide especially, for Jewish people in whose name this genocide is being waged to still talk about being persecuted, it's not only callous and really insensitive and really cynical, it's also

a total insult to the memory of Holocaust victims. You know, on this trip here in Hungary, I mean, we've gotten a little bit of insight into what, you know, our father and his family went through and the Jews of Hungary went through and they were put into ghettos. They were shot in the streets. They were, they were starved. They were forced into safe houses where conditions were horrible. I mean, that's the legacy of actual suffering that the establishment of Jewish community today is exploiting to justify committing a present-day Holocaust. And it's worse than justify it. They're providing material support to it. They're cheering it on.

I mean, and I'm now having to deal with comments in my, on my posts that do veer into anti-Semitism. I had someone say, you know, I've always loved Jewish people and, which is, you know, never is going to go well. Some of my best friends are dot, dot, dot, dot. Right. But, you know, it just feels like most or many of, much of the evil in the world is being committed by and then like a Jewish star emoji.

And I'm just like, you know, it's like first of all, fuck off with that shit. Second of all, it's getting harder and harder to say fuck off with that shit because of the loud and proud way that the mainstream representatives of our, you know, people, I put that in quotes just because, I don't know, the Jewish people is a suspicious framing

for me to begin with. But, you know, so many mainstream Jewish leading representatives, politicians and people, yes, who claim to be doing things in our name, are just carrying on like absolute ghouls and monsters. So I'm running out of energy to say, hold on. Stop there, buddy. Don't jump to anti-Semitic conclusions. But yeah, don't jump to anti-Semitic conclusions. But also don't stop short of fucking calling out the rot at the mainstream center of much of Jewish life in the world these days. Well, yeah, and as Max Pemothal points out, I mean, this is the essence of Zionism.

Zionism promotes anti-Semitism. It needs anti-Semitism to justify itself as an ethno-supremicist state, right? Well, and it promotes the conflation of the religion and the statecraft project. You need Jews to feel unsafe and persecuted around the world to justify your existence on stolen Palestinian land. And so, you know, nobody promotes anti-Semitism more than Israel and its apologists. Agreed. American Jews who make up 2% of the country's population are well aware of the threat, mostly from their boomer parents. And they also represent a disproportionate number of New York Times op-ed readers.

So, of course, they're well aware of the threat. You guys are always flogging it. Some feel compelled to hide signs of their faith. Synagogues have hired more armed guards who greet worshippers, and Jewish schools have hired guards to protect children and teachers. A small industry of digital specialists comb social media looking for signs of potential attacks. And these specialists have helped law enforcement prevent several... Attacks. It's a bad sentence.

The response from much of the rest of American society has been insufficient. The upswing in anti-Semitism deserves outright condemnation. It has already killed people and maimed others, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who was burned in Boulder, and history offers a grim lesson. An increase in anti-Semitism often accompanies a rise in other hateful violence and human rights violations. Societies that make excuses for attacks against one minority group rarely stop there. Well, it turns out that this increase in anti-Semitism does. a company arise in other hateful violence and human rights organizations, just not in the direction that the New York Times wants you to think. Yeah, it's also an issue of sort of, if you resemble

that remark, like if you are a national aggressor and you put the symbol of a religion on your bombs and your tanks and the flag, you can't avoid some amount of people confront. the two, especially when you do so much work to conflate the two, and, you know, and say that this is Jews against Muslims, Jews against Arabs. You can't totally divorce yourself then when someone says, I am striking out against the Jews. I obviously don't think people should be striking out against Jews, but you can't fault people for conflating the two when the state does. it so often. And when our synagogues have the goddamn Israeli flag in them, so many synagogues still do.

And whenever I go into one and I see it, my skin crawls and several times I've had to walk out. It's just the Jewish community has wedded itself, well did it, not wedded, welded itself to this apartheid regime a long time ago. Let's read this slide and then probably skip ahead a bit. And I'll just make one point that, you know, when I went to Gaza, um, you know, when I went to Gaza for the only time. This was in 2002. I was, you know, I was talking to a group of kids and I was hearing them speak and one of the first things they talked about were the Yehud,

like the soldiers that would come and attack them. And then when I first heard them say, you know, Jews in that way, I was like, just reflexively, I was like, oh, like they said Jews. I was like taking it back a little bit. But then I thought about for, I mean, less than half a And of course, of course they're going to call, they're referred to the soldiers as the Jews because that's how the soldiers describe themselves as the Jewish state. So it's just obvious when you appoint yourself the state of the Jewish people, you commit all these crimes in the name of Jews. You're going to get people seeing Jews as that way. I mean, that's what is there. If this is the Jewish state, the Israel wants to project, people are going to see it exactly for what it is. And that's going to spill over to all of its supporters all around the world as well. And so the, you know, I Like any discussion of anti-Semitism at this point, I don't want to hear it in terms of like a any talk like there's no burden on any pro-Palestine at this point. It's only on supporters of Israel to renounce their support of Israel. Like I just can't think of it any other way. I completely agree.

And this next paragraph, you know, throws us back, you know, this whole thing about painting Palestinian, and pro-Palestinian opposition to Jewish ethno-supremacy as tied to the world's oldest ideological profession, so to speak, is such a misleading diversion because this conflict is not thousands of years old. This conflict is just over 100 years old and has very real and recent material grounding. But here we go.

Let's get into some mystification and obfuscation here, Adam. Anti-Semitism is sometimes described as the oldest hate. It dates to at least ancient Greece and Egypt, where Jews were mocked for their differences and scapegoated for societal problems. A common trope is that Jews secretly control society and are to blame for its ills. Really some trenchant digging there. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. That is a faulty trope.

Jews don't secretly control society anymore. or Zionists are openly exerting control on society. But that's not Jews. That's Zionists and many of whom are not Jewish. I mean, I feel like we're repeating ourselves. We say this shit all the time. But it's a good opportunity. This article is a great opportunity to sort of expose every faulty premise.

There's a clip recently from Senator Norm Coleman, a former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman, who recently appeared at a pro-Israel summit. And he literally said a pro-Israel media system. Summit. He literally said the masters of the universe are Jews. He called on the tech industry to censor pro-Palestinian voices. One of the funniest things come out of that conference was at the same conference. Somebody from one of the big tech companies, I think it was Meta, said that we have a policy of censoring content that's anti-Semitic, including people who say the Jews have, you know,

have control over society. So basically, according to Meta's policy, they would have censored what their other speaker Norm Coleman said and bragged about at the conference. Yeah, we played that clip. It was quite something. And we made all the He-Man references that needed to be made back then, Adam. So let's not flog a dead, uh, tiger named, uh, battle cap. Cringer. Cringer. Cringer. Cringer. Okay. So I don't think, I actually don't think we need to, uh, to, you know, it, these next paragraphs are, and, and you notice what's not being said in any of these. We're on the eighth slide. It's going to take us until the 13th slide for them to mention Israel or Gaza. But here they go, continuing to mystify the long

history of anti-Semitism. It's a light sleeper, so on and so forth. The, you know, blaming Trump, the anger pulsing through society has manifested itself through animosity towards Jews, you know, the MAGA movement, all this shit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. One explanation is that anti-Semitism has become conflated with the divisive politics of the current Israel-Hamas war. true that criticism of the Israeli government is not the same thing as anti-Semitism. This editorial board has long defended Israel's right to exist while also criticizing the government for its treatment of Palestinians. Since the current war began, we have abhorred, and they have a hyperlink on the word abhorred, just to prove that they have abhorred, the mass

killing of civilians and the destruction of Gaza. Israel's reflexive defenders are wrong, and they hurt their own cause when they equate all such arguments with anti-Semitism. But some Americans have gone too far in the other direction. They have engaged in what aboutism regarding anti-Jewish hate? They have failed to denounce anti-Semitism in the unequivocal ways that they properly denounce other bigotry. Now we have Natanz Sharanski

who has suggested a 3D test for when criticism of Israel crosses into anti-Semitism with the D's being de-legitimization, demonization, and double standards. That's a, I mean, we could go through each of those, but Aaron, you know, de-legitimization.

Like 3D, I want a 4DX test. Yeah, exactly. I'm coming out for an IMAX test. I want to play 5D chess when it comes to anti-Semitism. But de-legitimization, yeah, we should be able to say that Israel is not legitimate, that apartheid is not legitimate, that house demolitions are not legitimate, that an ethno state is not legitimate. Demonization, they're acting like demons.

As for double standards, it's really rich of the New York Times to be complaining about double standards going against Israel. And this has been one of the biggest Hasbroa talking points for decades. I don't know if you want to add to that, Aaron. Well, everything is projection on steroids because this is everything that Israel supporters, whatever we want to call them, Zionists do, although to an infinite degree. And, you know, I only wonder hearing all this, you know, if this is truly going to be the face of sort of modern Jewish identity now in the aftermath of October 7th, then these people are

duly dooming the Jewish culture. Yeah. Because who can accept this level of cynicism? that basically paints itself as the victim as it carries out mass murder and demonizes people who try to stand up to it. So if this is the way, like to the extent that this reflects, you know, contemporary North American Jewish culture, they're basically, you know, deciding to destroy an entire identity because I don't want anything, like these aren't my people.

I don't want anything to do with this. And many other people of conscience won't want it either. And so if this is where, you know, organized Jewish life is going, they're going to make it impossible for, I think, it to be tenable, or at least to not be seen as an extremist cult. And I hope more people wake up. But it's certainly the people with the pen, the people with the microphone, the establishment, the overwhelming narrative, is this that, like, were the victims as we carry out genocide. Yeah. And as anti-simm, excuse me, whoa, that was a slip of the tongue, as anti-Zionist Jews. As anti-Zionist Jews, we are put in the position of always having to say, well, we're not

like those other Jews. And I'm frankly getting tired of it. And I understand people's fatigue of constantly having to, what increasingly feels like splitting hairs. Again, when you have a mainstream Jewish community in all of its powerful institutions that are welded and wedded to this hateful and destructive ideology, it becomes less and less tenable for us to be like, oh, no, but, you know, it's not the same. Well, it isn't the same, but powerful forces are trying to make it the same. I'll just read the last two paragraphs

of this and then we'll wrap. Americans should be able to recognize the nuanced nature of many political debates while also recognizing that anti-Semitism has become an urgent problem. It is a different problem and in many ways a narrower one than racism. Antisemitism has not produced shocking gaps in income, wealth, and life expectancy in today's America. I think that's a pretty important point. Yet, you know, as Finkelstein points out, to be Jewish in America is to be denied no opportunities, no entry to anything, no membership, no admission to any school, no hit on your career prospects, you know, it's just not, it's just not in the same category as other kinds of bigotry because it's not systemic. Earlier in the article, we had to

skip over it, but they talk about how, oh, the differences, intellectuals are afraid to condemn it outright without equivocation, which is utter horseshit. Yet the new anti-Semitism has left Jewish Americans at a greater risk of being victimized by a hate crime than any other group. That's bullshit. You rather live as a Jewish person than a trans person in this country. You rather live as a Jewish person than a black teenager, you know, dealing with the cops. You call that not a hate crime. Many Jews live with fears that they never expected to experience in this country. Well, maybe that's true. No political arguments or ideological context can justify that bigotry. The choice is between denouncing it fully and encouraging an even broader

explosion of hate. I think there are other choices, like bringing in the larger context of what Jews are associated with by virtue of the state that calls itself the state of the Jews. But of course, that's outside the bounds of New York Times opinion board debate. Yeah, well, listen, to the extent that these people can influence the issue, their choice is between denouncing Israel and ethnic supremacy fully or continuing to do their part in encouraging anti-Semitism. That's what they're doing. That's the relationship to it. So that's the choice they have. But look, there are many obstacles to having a conscience in this culture. as we've seen i mean look at all just look at look at look at what's been normalized and what's

getting worse as as we speak with this war extent with this um yeah with this conflict extending to iran remember what butchie said on the wire you'll have to refresh my memory conscience do cost it's right that's exactly right yeah yeah well Aaron that's a great place to leave it so great to have you back on the podcast for the second time i hope it won't be the last Anything you want to plug? Where can people find you? Thegrayzone.com, and I co-host a podcast with Katie Helper called Useful Idiots. It's at Useful Idiots Podcast.com.

And I also write a weekly or almost weekly column at my substack, Aaron Matey.com. Excellent. Aaron, thanks again for joining us. Thanks for having me. And thank you all for listening. Producer Adam, thank you again for filling the Matt Leab seat and for all you do behind the scenes. and in front of them. Thank you all for listening.

Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for supporting our sponsor, Doctors Without Borders. Thank you for joining our Patreon. If you haven't already, you ought to. You should. It's great. We have a really great Patreon episode coming up this week. I don't want to spoil it, but it's going to be a banger and a real left turn.

It's going to be, I think, quite the unique one, and I'm excited for it. So I hope you'll go to patreon.com slash bathasbara. Okay, folks, Adam, you know, it's on you to bring this one home. Show us what you got. Thanks for listening. And until next time, from the river to the sea. Aaron has insights greater than we. Ooh, does he ever?

Very flattering. Thank you. Does he ever? Jumping jacks was us. Push-ups was us. Godmaga us. All karate us. Taking Molly us.

Michael Jackson. Yamaha keyboards, us, Georgia makes on us, Andor was us, Keith Ledger Joker us, endless friends success, happy meals was us, McDonald's was us, being happy us, Bikram yoga us, eating food, us, breeding air, us, drinking water us. We invented all that shit. Thank you.