Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - 131: Good Toda'a, with Mohammad Alsaafin

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Matt and Daniel are joined by AJ+ journalist Mohammad Alsaafin to break in Israel's new term for hasbara, to ponder a few of the many reasons Alan Dershowitz might be denied a Polish delicacy, and to wonder whether taking a photograph of a photographer taking a photograph makes the photograph the first photographer was photographing not a photograph at all.Please donate to Gaza Direct: https://gazadirect.comJoin the patreon at https://www.patreon.com/badhasbaraBisan From Gaza playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZd3QRtSy5LP4IgJ3sX2LhF3tuBbFFbKJ&si=Vt17CeFepyZ4_ETiHow Israeli Apartheid Destroyed My Hometown, from AJ+: https://youtu.be/aEdGcej-6D0?si=FUPo9fymKOKCVCm3See 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

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Olive Garden us White cost for us Zabrahamas Asvaras Us Hello everybody and welcome to Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast that may soon need a name change. That's right. As we'll discuss later, Hasbara might be on the way out, folks.

That's right. We might need to rebrand. My name is Matt Lieb. I will be your world's most moral co-host for this podcast. I'm Daniel Mate, and I'm the other one of those things. Matt just described. That's right. He's the other guy. He is most moral and he is also co-host. We host together. We are two people, yet we are, speak with one voice. If you hear, if you hear a voice that sounds, no, let's, if we do this, it'll, it'll, it won't be able to, to speak. Yeah, no, he speaks with the good, the smart guy voice. I speak with the, the, the dick joke. voice but the point of those are just an act and both are valid they're also they're both staged

they're both staged they're both very staged uh shout out to producer adam levin who is here on the ones and twos and writing the kairons if you are a viewer uh if you are a listener please subscribe on whatever podcast app that you use whether it's uh Spotify overcast uh Apple Apple Apple pods do that and do that now. And if you are a viewer, please subscribe. Give us a subscription and put on the bell that tells you when the videos come out. I would like that. And if you are someone who wants to give us a review in five stars, we would love that. Tell us how much you love our show. We love when you love our show. Don't we, Daniel? We sure love it. If you want to complain that five is the maximum number of stars you can give and press

Spotify to, you know, put a sixth star just for this podcast. We, you know. We would love that. If six pointed stars were available, I love it. Rate us seven Stars of David. All I know is the Star of David's been having a rough century. Yes, it sure has, man. Boy, boy, oh boy.

Before we continue, first, we got to tell everyone that our gutter shows in New York on October 10th and 11th are sold out. But the stand-up comedy show, October 13th at the Bell House, still has tickets available. So I would get on those immediately. The link is in the description. Such a great venue. I'm very excited to be part of this thing. Whatever is going to be. Yeah.

It's going to be super fun. And, you know, I'm just excited to see Daniel do his first set ever. You know, I will help him prepare. You know, if you need any jokes about, you know, doing whatever to whatever kind of animatronic fish that sings, let me know. I've got tons of jokes like that. It just has to feel real for me, you know, we need to sell it. That's true.

Yeah. You don't seem like the main thing I need help with is like stand-up comic. transitions, like what you do between jokes where you like grab the microphone and you look down while people are still laughing, but you don't wait too long and you're like, yeah, I don't know, man. I was doing this thing. Yeah, yeah, that's it. You just did it. Yeah, that's it. You just did it. Yeah. That's what it is. I mean, I'll do my entire set about like, about what I've observed from, like, how did you stand-up comics? If I had no comprehension of humor or jokes, like what a stand-up set would look like to an alien. Yeah, exactly. It's,

Like a stand-up is when you go up there and you say, but I, uh, and then you change subjects. And then at some point, you laugh at your own joke and hit your knee with the microphone. That's right. And if you're John Marco Cerezi, you contort into all kinds of various positions. Yeah, you do a lot of theatrical movements, which is fine. It's not me putting it down, but let's, you know, the guy moves a lot. I'm a standstill guy. Sometimes I talk with my hands. I just, I'll do that. But, you know, To each their own, I think Daniel's going to be great, and you don't want to miss this. Please get your tickets. Link is in the description.

Do it now. Today's episode is brought to you by gazaDirect.com. GazaDirect.com is a collection of fundraising appeals from Palestinians in Gaza. Every hour spotlights a new campaign to help you connect with and those funds in distress. Wait, and fund those in distress. And the feature campaign is always selected for most urgent need. So if you have been desperately combing the internet, looking for places to put your money to good use to help the people of Gaza,

this is a good website to go to. When people ask me like, hey, there's, you know, I have money I want to give, but I don't know who to give it to. I'm afraid of it going, you know, to the wrong organization. just go to gaza direct.com and you'll find a fundraising appeal. You'll find someone to give money to and you should do that. It is important. Important tip though. Do not go to gaza indirect.com. That's right. That's right. That's right. If you go to that, then all of a sudden you're just funding Bernie's ability to say Netanyahu instead of Israel. He's got a search and

replace function in his brain that is subscription based. So he needs the money to continue that charade. So go to that website if you want to fund that. I would suggest gazaDirect.com instead. Again, these are not, people have been asking this, which is funny for me to have to say, these are not real sponsors. Right. No one is paying us to say go to gaza direct.com. They're more like Spancees or maybe raison d'etres. I mean, why are we here? Yes, to have a good time. Yes, to entertain ourselves.

Yes, to lighten the load of the horrors. Yes, for you and me to have something to do with our meaningless lives. Yep. But also. This is a podcast built around a cause. Let's not be obtuse or indirect about it. So we're trying to get you guys to take the energy that you get from listening to the show and channel it towards something.

And if that's going out to protest, great. But donating right now in a moment like this is one of the best things you can do. Yes. And it is also, hey, you know, we don't, sponsors don't necessarily want to sponsor this show. You know, it's just one, it's one of those shows that title alone makes people nervous who sell products in capitalist society. So we decide to have a bunch of fake sponsors. that are things you should actually give your money to. But if you do have money left over

and you are like, I love this show. I wish there was two of this show every week instead of just one. Patreon.com, yeah, badassbara. Go to patreon.com slash badasbara. You will get a bonus episode every week as well as other shit. You know, sometimes there's other shit.

Sometimes we post. Last week was a good one. I talked to I know. I know. I'm a 19-year-old in Tel Aviv who went. to jail for refusing to serve in the IDF. That's right. That's

right. And it was a great episode. I wish I had been there. Instead, I was in Seattle doing some shows with my wife. I tried to stop myself from doing it. Don't do it, Matt. It's nice to hear that every time. Do you guys have anything else coming up?

Houston, yes. Very important that you all go to Houston on August 28th. Francesca and I are going to at the Houston Punch Line. Please buy your tickets right now. The shows in Seattle were so fun, you guys. They were super great.

We sold out one of them, and we got within like five of selling out the other one. It was incredible. So many Bad Has Barra fans came out. I was so stoked on it. Nothing makes me feel better than people wanting to come out to see stand-up comedy because they like the show. So I hope you're in Texas, because if you are, you need to, drive on over to Houston and drive on over to the punchline

and see us performing at the punchline, August 28th. Daniel, what's a spin? Well, I've been thinking about the 80s and what a great era the 80s were for... I love the 80s. I was born in the 80s. Yeah, and I was raised in the 80s. And which meant that I was a full, you know,

pop culture-absorbing age by the early 80s. And one of the things that I love about the 80s, and I think it's underrated, is the presence of political pop songs. Now, you think of the 60s as the political pop song era, but I'd say the 80s far actually outstrips it. The 60s is really only the very end. You had entire albums like Sign of the Times by Prince. The first lyric on the album is,

uh in france uh a man died of a big disease with a little name you know his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same this was a huge hit on pop radio talking about aids talking about the drug crisis talking about uh all kinds of things simply read uh the song money's too tight to mention calls out ronald regan by name and nancy it's all about struggling financially it's It's about Reaganomics. Yeah. Fast car by Tracy Chapman. An incredible song about struggling in under capitalism.

What? It is? Oh, it's not about racing. I thought it's about driving fast car. It's not, man. Well, I got to take a look at those lyrics. The lyrics are actually incredible. You got a fast car.

Vroomy, brim, vroom. It's a KSA rental. Isn't that the lyrics? Yeah, but you have to look under, you have to read between the lines. Midnight oil from Australia, you know, they had beds are burning and all that.

This is the Blue Sky Mining album, which has a song about, you know, being a minor, not that kind of minor. Yeah. Trying to strike a chord and it's probably a minor

who, you know, digs in the earth for minerals. Right. Genesis, sort of a silly album, Invisible Touch, but Land of Confusion, which had that great spitting

image video with, you know, all the world leaders and shit, just talking about the insanity of politics. And finally, Bruce Hornsby in the range, the way it is about complacency and the way people will just sort of say, well, the way it is, it's just normal. But he says, but don't you believe him? So, yeah, that's just some records from my collection that take me back to a time when we were actually hearing about class and the real struggles of real people on the radio. I don't know what they sing about these days, but Sabrina Carpenter ain't singing fast car. I'll tell you that much. No, no. She sings a song about how, what if she was coffee? It's like, it's called me espresso, which I assume is a cockney way of saying my espresso. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to drink me espresso,

but yeah, I don't know what they sing about these days. Probably, probably nothing good. Although I They sing about Riz. They sing about Riz. They sing about skibbitty toilet, whatever these kids, you know. That's that me late capitalism. Thank you, producer Adam. In the back there, I see you've got the wonderful Beck album, C-Change. That is just got it. One of my favorite albums of all time. It is a breakup album that I've listened to during multiple breakups. It is so good. I thought you were going to say it's a breakup album. You listen to it. when you're just, when you're sort of, you're just dreaming of a breakup. I'm just, yeah, I wish I could get out of this. Oh, what if I was on Bumble again? I've also got, I've also got, uh, Brian Adams, reckless, Brian Adams from Vancouver, my hometown.

Oh, so we were into him way before the world caught on, but he has been speaking out for for Palestine. Oh, good. He is, uh, he is a, hold on a second. He is an example of, dude love 69ing. Is that true? Well, some or of. Oh, okay.

I got it, got it, got it. Brian Adams, yeah, he spoke very eloquently for Gaza, which means we can play this sting. We got one! I love it because it implies we directly got Brian Adams to do it. That's amazing. We're still working on Ryan Adams. He, unfortunately, has not spoken out as far as I know, although I haven't checked. He's a different guy.

So that's what's spinning, and it is now time finally to introduce our guest who has been waiting patiently while we drone about. And he is amazing. He is a journalist at AJ Plus. He is Daniel Mate's number one fan loves him. This is just, we asked him for an intro, and he said that. We're going to assume unironically. And he is also my former co-worker at AJ Plus, and he is wonderful. Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, welcome for the first time to this podcast.

Mohamed al-Safin. Yay! Muhammad apparently got on this podcast via the Make-A-Wish Foundation. So I want to do a drum roll, but Adam said I can't tap the table. Yes, that's right. Air drum, an air drum roll. An air drum works. We can even add drum roll sound in post.

Adam, feel free. Muhammad, thank you so much for coming on Bad Hasbara. Thank you guys for having me. It was nice listening to you guys to turn off an entire generation of listeners there and making fun of what they listen to. Listen, I don't know how many young people actually do listen to this podcast.

If you are young out there and offended, I'm sorry. Please send me recommendations for music. But do not try to hold us accountable because we will not be held accountable. I'm not trying to turn them off. I'm trying to turn them on, man. I'm trying to turn you kids on to some groovy hip stuff. That's right. Some classics, you know?

Kids love classics. Daniel, how many records do you have? That's a good question. I've always wondered this. I haven't counted. I have a lot. That's crazy. I have a lot.

You don't even, I went to his apartment one time and boxes and boxes. Like he has that display in the back there that you see, but he has also stacks of boxes of records. No, the boxes have been have been sorted on shelves now. Oh, they're all sorted. Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not good necessarily. It's not bad. What's wrong with record collecting? Well, it's consumption, but it is.

But it is very much a passion and, yeah, I enjoy it. And now that I have a sampler, I'm sort of trying to, you know, feed it back into my creative life. Your response to this was very addict-coded? It completely is. It was like, listen, it was like when the doctor asked you how many drinks you have per week and everyone goes, what do I tell this guy? It's not going to be the truth. But, I mean, listen, I think it's great.

I do have a certain amount of shame about it all, which is probably why I get so intensatorily excitable on the, what's the spin. There's so many worse things to be passionate about. I know. I know. Yeah. I was passionate about heroin for a long time. Well, I was going to say, Matt, congratulations on, was it 15 years now?

16. 16 years. 16 years. Clean and so. Thank you. I feel. Very proud of you. Thank you.

It feels good to be, you know, um, raw dogging life at this very moment, it is, you know, no, it doesn't. But I guess I would rather be present than, you know, messed up and shutting down completely. But there's times, I think, especially now, where everyone kind of wants to shut off because things are so dire. Mohamed, you and I used to work together at AJ Plus. And as you know, but I'm not sure everyone. else knows. I had a show with my wife, Francesca, called Newsbroke. That's right. That we did for many, many years. And I just want to know, like, you know, when's that coming back? We've always wanted

to bring you back. Well, we're sitting here, ready and raring to go. They're waiting for the launch of their, of their new platform, AJ Minus. How dare you? It's all the B sides of AJ Plus. Very rare it is, you know. AJ Max. AJ Max. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we can't take that. HBO took that better. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, can just briefly, I'd like to hear about yourself, you know, worked with you for a while. And I don't know your story. Where are you from? and when did you get into journalism?

And what has it been like for the last two years? So the audience can surmise that Matt was the big shot in the office. Didn't talk to little people like me. I was one of the littlest, just so people. I was the tallest. You're like Jiminy Glick. You're like, so, Mohammed, I spent a lot of years with you and yet I know nothing about you.

What am I missing? Because I feel like I'm missing nothing. Now, for people don't know, Matt is extremely tall. Like, yes. Like, especially,

you wouldn't see it on the podcast. You wouldn't know. Yeah, you can't tell from just looking at. Like, when he stands up, he'll unfold. Yes.

Exactly. Yeah. I think like on stand-up stages, you don't actually get on the stage, do you? No, I just stand up on the ground and pretend,

you know, I actually, I put shoes where my knees are. You just stand there. Yeah, exactly, but I stand on the ground. Matt stood up now, you'd see his shins. True. Matt doing stand-up comedy is what you really call playing to the rafters.

Yeah, exactly. I'm mostly talking to the nosebleeds. But yes, please, inform our audience about yourself and your work and your background. Okay, so I've been with, so AJ Plus is a subsidiary, is this the right word, of Al Jazeera? Yeah, we can say that. Um, I, uh, I joined Al Jazeera. Oh, so I was living in Palestine in the mid 2000s. I went to school there, went to college over there and of studying something that would have made me a lot more money if I pursued it. But at the time it was around, I was graduating around

the time of the first Israeli war in Gaza, 2008, 2009. Uh, and something in me just, you know, I wanted to tell stories about what daily life was like. like in Palestine, because you guys talk about the occupation, the apartheid. I know, I think, have you, I think, Matt, you've been on birthright. I don't know, Daniel. Yeah, yeah. You've been there? Daniel, Daniel, was, went to straight up Zionist summer camps, like summer long.

But that was here, right? It was here, and they sent us on a 10-month-long year program on a kibbutz in the Nakhab or Negev desert. And yeah, I want to ask you guys about that a little bit, just because I think we would have been seeing the situation from completely opposite points of view, being there at the same time. One of the things that, you know, living there, I realize is people don't understand the daily humiliations of apartheid and of occupation. There are so many things that happen to you living under the control of different military or before. foreign military, that impact every element of your life. But because many of them are not spectacularly violent, the outside world never hears about them. Right. So I'll say one of the things that sticks out to me is shortly after moving to Palestine for school, a few months into

the semester, some guy shows up to class. And, you know, professors like, what are you doing your semester started three months ago? He's like, I just got out of jail, right? Wow. So these are things that, you know, he'd just been in prison for, I think, three years, no charges, no trial. In the Negev, actually, Daniel, in the Kits'eot, which is the famous desert prison where Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic volunteered in the 1980s as a prison court. Yeah. Yeah. Things like that. Things like, and again, I'm just focusing on things just around being in school, you know, leaving college campus one day. and then the Israeli military showing up in the jeep, blocking the exit. And when people from inside the campus gates through some rocks to bottles at the soldiers, they responded by walking up to all the cars lined up to leave and smashing in the windows.

Wow. So just things like that. Were you at Bersait University? I was at Biers 8, yeah. Undercover soldiers invading campus to kidnap, heads of the student union. Even things as mundane as, I mean, in college, you know, what do you do in college? You meet people, right? Right.

You meet partners. You fall in love. Things like the fact that because of the restrictions on movement that different Palestinians have based on where they're born and what kind of ID the Israeli military, where the Israeli authorities give you, it kind of impacts who you get into a relationship with. because a girl from Jerusalem is not going to get in a relationship with a guy from the West Bank because it means at the end of the day, if they decide to get married, she has to move to the West Bank and never see her family in Jerusalem again. My parents actually met in the 80s. My dad's from Gaza and my mom's from the West Bank.

That could have never happened by the time I was in Beerset. Right. Right. Post-Ozloic could never have happened. Right. And I think we can talk a little bit more about what happened to Gaza, post-Ozda, because a lot of the time when we talk about Gaza, we talk, obviously post-October 7th, but also post-Israeli withdrawal on Hamas-Aid and over. Before we do that, I just need to ask you, like, all that definitely

sounds like a lot of duress, a lot of constraint on your university experience. But did you ever experience any real hardship like Jews in America do? Like, were you ever made to feel uncomfortable by people on your campus protesting a foreign government? Yeah. No, no, I can say that. easy. I can't say that I've ever really felt any kind of stress, distress, pain, anything like that. Well, no, I mean, listen, your feelings are obviously valid, however minuscule the oppression. We just need to put them in perspective. Yes, yeah, yeah. But you have to remember that there's people out there who have to look at someone wearing a kaffia. It is one of the most violent things you can do yes yeah as soon as as soon as my jewish eyes look at one immediately uh i it's just a

fight or flight response i start you know seeing flames everywhere i start seeing you know images of uh movies uh you know of me being taken off to some sort of uh death camp and so do you worry about any of your friends are going to hide you oh i ask them all the time i keep asking my parents and they will not return my cold What about Francesca? She told me, flat out, she refuses to hide me. She keeps posting my address online, which is crazy because we both live here. It's what happens when you marry an anti-Semite.

I knew it at the time. Did your parents not tell you? That she was anti-Semitic? Oh, no, I knew. That was like part of what drew me to her. I was just like, oh, you hate me so deeply. She's going to kill us both. Yeah, I know.

You're like those Israeli Jews in the 50s and 60s that would pass around clandestine comic books of like dominatrix Nazi guards. Like there was a whole genre. What is that genre called? A friend of mine recently told me about it and I couldn't believe what I was reading. Yeah, yeah, no, it was very real.

And there would be revenge in it as well. But not before some pretty sexy. That's, yeah. That's one of those like, listen, I would never kink shame. But I think I would kink skull to skulk that one. Yeah, and I think at the very least, you have to work that fetish out of your system before you're allowed to establish your own country anywhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Like you need enough therapy to like dispel with the psychosexual scars of what you just went through before you're allowed to go somewhere else and govern yourself, even if there isn't an indigenous population. Men will literally do a knockba before. foregoing to therapy. So as a journalist, Muhammad, you know, you've covered this for a long time.

You've lived this, you know, the occupation. You've seen it firsthand. And just within the last two years, I'd love to know your own feelings about how this prolonged genocide and PR campaign, you know, has been, how is it different than the other PR campaigns that you've witnessed? How have things changed since we last worked together, you know, over at AJ Plus? You know, so I said, I can almost measure kind of milestones in my career by Israeli Wars and

Gaza because 2008-2009 is when I decided I wanted to be a journalist based on kind of the global coverage of that war, the first war, but especially of Al Jazeera's coverage because if you guys, if you remember Ayman Mahjaddin and Shirin Tadros, Iman, obviously at MSNBC now, Shirin was working at Amist International recently, but I'm incredible journalists and actually had very formative impact on me because they were the only English-speaking journalists covering Gaza during the 2008-2009 war from inside Gaza. And so for the first time, you see coverage of where the bombs were landing in the English language.

If you watch Arabic TV, that is what you always see, whether it's Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, wherever, you see the bombs landing. That is the perspective. That is dominant. That is not the perspective dominant in English language media across the world. But for the first time, Amin and Shiddin were able to do that. and pull you into the war in 2008 and 2014 is actually when we launched a j plus and that was the last major war on gaza 2014 i think some of the first pieces we did were around that actually

we were i think we were soft launching or actually planning on launching later in the year but decided to just go ahead with it because it was such an important topic to cover right and then obviously you know the last two years have just been on a different scale altogether Yeah, I'm sure you guys have seen the recent aerial footage that's come out of Gaza from the, from the aid drops that Yeah, and Spain that Spain was doing or? Yeah, the international community banded together to drop one truckload of of aid on top of starving people. Yeah, that was the best they could do. But for the first time, journalists were actually able to take to film outside and and you look at the landscape down below. And it looks like. a nuclear bomb is at it. The previous wars in Gaza were never like this. There was a lot of killing.

In 2014, 550 kids were killed in 40 days of bombardment. In those quote-unquote lawn mowing campaigns, you could look around at the buildings and be like, oh, that one got destroyed, that one's gone, or this entire block. Now you're looking at those pictures from the sky. Cities, entire cities are gone, yeah. Yeah, and a lot of the footage was over Gaza City, and you see the level of destruction. But in the north, Beit Hanun and the south, Rafah, those cities don't even exist anymore. Right.

And one thing I think people need to take into account is this was not the result of fighting. No. What the Israelis did was actually Beit Hanun and Rafah, because if you recall, Raffaq was Biden's red line can't go right right and then the israeli's will like well fuck you they went into raffa and everyone left everyone went north to khan unis to the central areas so raffaq became an empty city and what the israelis have been doing ever since is methodically demolishing it with bulldozers there's no fighting going on right it's not like it's not like it's not like the buildings are pockmarked with bullets with bullet holes or right so the buildings have been

raised to the ground by vocals. And this is something we can get to, but when you're talking about how the PR, the Haspara has changed that, in much of the English language Western media as well, in much of the English language Western media today, there's still this kind of framing of what's happening in Gaza is a war against Hamas,

is that the Israelis are going there, they're trying to fight and root out Hamas wherever they're hiding. Whereas the reality on the ground is actually there's very little fighting going on, but there is a sustained demolition campaign. And Israelis have been saying this for a year and a half. We want to make sure there's nothing left for them to go back to. It's said by politicians. It's set by military commanders.

It's set by Israeli diplomats. And it shocks me, as cynical as I am, because you have to be in this business, that one of the things I'm seeing is so many Western people, media outlets, especially mainstream Western media outlets, have decided that they want to interpret what's happening in Gaza in a way that has nothing to do with the reality, has nothing to do with what the Israelis themselves are saying that they're doing. Whether it's by ignoring, and usually it's by completely ignoring anything that the Israelis say that would contradict that frame. So when the Israelis say, when Israeli ministers say, we're going to make sure that no food gets in, right? The New York Times will tell you, well, it's because there's a lack of planning on how to do not eat it. Yes.

Galant said it on October 8th. That's why he's an indicted war criminal, specifically for that, for the crime of starvation. He said it on October 8th. And then obviously, you know, you watch your CNNs or you read your New York Times. You'd never know that Galant and Netianor wanted war criminals. Right. Right. That's never, that's never a, that's never a caveat.

It's never mentioned. But, you know, the Ministry of Health is Hamas run. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And, I mean, you talk about the way in which Hezbarra has changed.

And it seems like the media's response to it has largely been the same up until very recently, which is to just regurgitate it and allow it to exist as the facts on its own. on its own merits, just without challenging it. Meanwhile, challenging everything else that whatever other information they get not directly from the IDF is caveated with, well, remember, this is run by Hamas, or well, remember, this is the UN, which is somehow not a trustworthy institution in this one case. But Hasbara has changed so much. that they have decided that they can no longer call it Hezbara.

That's right. Daniel alluded to this up at the top of the show. He said, we may have to change our name and pivot. And that's because of a article that came out from the Times of Israel, which we will be talking about a lot on this episode, not just this article, but this newspaper, about what's called the eighth front in their, quote, war against Hamas. Let me see. Hold on. We've already got Syria. We got Lebanon. We got Gaza. We got, well, the West Bank.

How many is that? What are we at? Yemen. I'm at five. Yemen is five. Iran is six. Iran is six. What's seven? Seven is, I believe, Cyprus? Iraq. Oh, Iraq. Okay. Brooklyn and Brentwood. And so eight is the media war. That's right. and the media war has gotten to the point where they fear they are losing. And this article gets into the eighth front, and it said this specifically.

Everyone sent this to us, quote, long referred to as Hasbara, a term used to denote both public relations and propaganda that has been freighted with negative baggage in recent years. The ministry now brands its approach as to, to, quote, awareness or, quote, consciousness. an apparent shift towards broader, more proactive messaging. Tatar has exceeded its baggage allowance. That's right. Yeah, it's too much baggage. Tadah is consciousness rap. Yeah, exactly.

It's backpack rap. It's for college kids. It's, you know, soon rapper common will be doing Todaa. But, yeah. A T'Ail will be teaching how to expand your Toda A. I know. The power of now there's a starvation. Yes.

But it's not our fault. Yeah, the power of the war starts now. Yeah, so the fact that they've gotten to the point where Hasbara has become a poison-pilled word for them, I feel like we need to take credit for here on this podcast. Absolutely. You know, like obviously we're not the first people to be, I don't know. educating the normies about this word. We are not the reason it broke containment, but I think we're in the discussion, I think.

No one before has ever pointed at it and been like, bad. Yeah, that's right. That's bad. And I will say no one else has ever had a catchy Hasbara song. That's right. That's right. All of their actual Hasbara song suck ass, whereas, like, I've got a great ironic Hasbara song that rules.

Actually, like, no joke, I love it. It is a ball. Oh, thank you. I'll admit, I did see you bopping during the intro. I was like, oh, he likes the song. Yes. I do like the song a lot. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, this article is really wild. I mean, it's, it gets into the, this is like one of a thousand different articles that have come out in different Israeli publications about how the problem is PR. Which is messaging. It's insane to continue this over and over again, but just, you know, I'll read a little bit. Well, number one, it talks about how with its new budget, it's doing all of these new initiatives, including it is also working with influencers, believing that, quote, messages are more effective when delivered by popular individuals rather than by the ministry.

And I'm sorry, how many times do you have to do this and have it not worth? work for you to realize that, like, just because you get Deborah Messing to be like, I'm Israel high, does not mean that people are going to be like, yeah, well, if Deborah Messing thinks it, it must be true. This is like the fucking Democratic Party with getting Taylor Swift's endorsement. This will not win. And given the bonkers celebrities they get, you might be better off with Alon Levy than with Michael Rappaport. I was actually going to say they haven't tried Michael Rappaport enough. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Real Michael Rappaport has never been tried.

That's right. Yeah, we really need to, something like real communism has never been tried. Real Rappaport has never been tried. They need to take the shackles off of him, you know? Yeah, I know. I feel like he's been pulling a lot of his punches for the last two years, and they really need to just let him let loose, you know?

I think he needs to drop some end bombs. That's right. He finally needs to do the slurs that you can tell are just waiting there behind his teeth. But just some select parts of this article. At the start of the war, an ad hoc but adept lineup of spokespeople, Alon Levy, Mark Riegev, Tal Heinrich, and Avi Hyman was employed by the PMO, that's the prime minister's office, to deliver Israel's positions to foreign audiences.

That has since been unraveled, Lamenta Levy, who became something of a celebrity as government spokes, spokesperson from the war started until March of last year when he was pushed out. Levy, who now runs an independently funded, quote, citizen spokesperson's office, said the issue goes beyond airtime, quote, it's about engaging journalists and giving them credible, timely information. It seems kind of quaint to remember why he was pushed out, because he like exaggerated some things about some aid trucks.

Right. Yes. Yeah. It was, it was. I bet they're wishing they'd been more lenient. Yeah. Because they go way beyond that now in terms of the lies of a humanitarian aid. My favorite thing about that episode was after he was pushed out, he did a Citizens Press

Conference. You guys remember that? I do. In his basement. Yeah. And he had like an eight-year-old with him? No, that was maybe a few years later. This was just him in his basement with a green screen.

It was a green screen that said Citizens PR. Yes. Or something like that. I don't know what it was. Yeah, you know, it's the citizen spokesperson's office of Israel, which is completely... It's like the guy gets fired, but just shows up to work the next day anyway. He's like, I've always wanted to do PR. He's inside of a pillow fort.

Exactly. I love the idea of like, well, just because you fire me from being a spokesperson, doesn't mean I won't be spokespersoning. Come on, man. No one can stop me from spokesing. Being a private, independent spokesperson, It's like, just say propagandist. It is so weird.

Like, fuck the to da-a-a-a-fuck-hazbara. All these euphemisms that exist for just one purpose, which is we are going to, the spoke mind virus. Very good thing. But, yeah, like, just, it's all just propaganda. I guess it was sort of a bespoke operation, am I right? Very good. Very good.

Do you guys still do the right things for the puns or not? Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Well, you give that. No, that's an eight. Yeah, that was an eight. I was going to give it an eight, too. I thought it was very good.

To continue, no official may release information about specific military actions without the IDF's approval. Now, this is a section in the article about the many challenges facing the PR department and PR in general in Israel. They're saying that there's sort of a... I just love that. Sorry, I just love that these are framed as challenges to the PR department. starving children, that is a challenge to the PR department. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's very challenging.

And for them, the problem is the IDF bottleneck, which I will explain. Because the information can take hours to gather and approve, the army often becomes a choke point for the, for official Israel in a media environment where narratives are often shaped faster than facts can be verified. They're so used to choking people at checkpoints. points, they become a choke point. Yeah, you know, now they're going to, they're going to start doing Zora Mamdani style videos. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they'll do anything they can. I just, this, you know, assertion is ridiculous to me because I'm just like, guys, the idea

that you don't immediately, like, come out with a statement. They're framing this in sort of the opposite way. the media blitz has always been Israel. It has never been anything else. It's always been Israel doing a thousand different explanations. If there's, you know, sometimes it's reactive. But for the most part, it's them like constantly spreading talking points that they have pre-planned. Did you say they put up a fucking billboard in Times Square?

Yes. Saying there's no starvation in Gaza. Like things are going really well. when you need to put up when a country needs to put up fucking big ass video billboards

in Times Square being like you know that thing you heard about about us committing a genocide? Yeah. It's not true. It's all fake. Enjoy Book of Mormon. Enjoy cats. In the most Jewish city in America too. Yes. Yeah. And you know this is like their PR

campaigns And it largely had been reactive for the last, like, you know, year, year plus. When it started, and this article gets into it where they say, when it started out, the first hundred days, they did a great job because they were doing a total media blitz filled with lies where they would constantly, you know, and carefully and methodically drip out bits of atrocity porn um to justify whatever actions they were about to take yeah and they have now found themselves in this quagmire of creating atrocity after atrocity without um first having something to justify it because it's every day now it's it's a a mass starvation campaign and now they feel

that it's like it's like trying to squeeze rape from a stone you know like it was just yeah yeah exactly It's like trying to squeeze beheaded babies. Yes, from a stone. Well, can I actually comment on that? Please. So, you know, Israelis are talking about a PR crisis, but the way they approached this hasn't actually changed much since those first 100 days.

No, yeah. The reason it was successful those first 100 days is because initially everyone was paying attention to your official media organs and to government officials across the world who were parroting what the Israelis were saying. Yes. You know, the beheaded babies lie gained velocity

because the president of the United States was the one who repeated it. Yes, yes, exactly. Anything the Israelis, and this hasn't changed, by the way, anything the Israelis say is taken with very minimal cynicism or skepticism by mainstream media to this day and repeat it off, right?

Even despite, you know, one of the things that drives me crazy is if you as a journalist has to have a source who repeatedly lies to you, gets caught lying, you stop believing that source. Yes. Unless it's the IDF. Right. And which kids, you always believe what the IDF says.

Right. No matter how times they've lied to you. And if you're in a Hollywood movie, you meet that source in an underground parking lot, and you back them up against the wall and be like, you fucked me. I believed you. And then they're like, but I got one more scoop for you.

And we're like, damn it. But what's changed since the first 100 days, is the vast majority of people are not getting or not really, they're seeing something else with their own eyes and here's what's happening, right? Through social media, you mean? Through social media, right?

And that's why, despite the fact that the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, Sky News, etc., etc., the entirety of German media, the fuck is going on in that country, by the way. Who would have thought Germans would be so weird? Build Magazine, which I think is like a New York Post kind of thing.

Just ran an investigation. This is not a magazine that does investigations. Proving that, like, most or many of the photos out of Gaza are staged. Yes. So that's- This Gaza photographer stages Hamas propaganda. Yeah. Right.

So it's just a picture of, I don't understand what's staged about that. Well, it's a guy taking a photograph of something that's happening. Right. And so there's a, it's a photograph of a guy taking a photograph, which is supposed to prove that at stage. Right, okay. That's great. Yeah. No, it's insane.

But, I mean, there's been this, the reason Haspar is failing is because it's gotten so bad. It's because it was always designed to work in a world where the media gatekeepers were the ones who were trusted to take. Exactly. Yeah, that's true. A hundred percent. Reliable, reliable deliverers. Right. Well, it was the only place you can.

could get it. And it's funny in this article after, you know, lamenting like, hey, it was good the first 100 days, but then something happened. And they say, the press is no longer very much interested in what Israel has to say. They're taking cues from the field, from Gaza, from health services, from the Gaza Health Ministry, and very little from the IDF. First of all, not true at all, because the media is still 100% parroting IDF talking points. What they actually are lamenting is the fact that people, individuals, at least according to polls, are looking with their eyes and going, seems like the IDF is lying. They're mad that they can't pacify people.

You know, it's crazy about that, though. It's not just, so Israel is obviously the loser in that, right, in that equation. But what's crazy is these media outlets are refusing to change their methods when it comes to repeating what the Israelis are saying. are also bleeding trust and bleeding viewership and viewership. But they have been for years. True.

But not, I feel like this does feel like even more so. I think it feeds into this overall sense that people have, that they just cannot trust these official institutions anymore. Yes. I have noticed that while the New York Times has continued to be a shameless, incredibly dishonest launderer of Israeli crimes with all of its sophisticated, you know, homegrown New York, Hasbara tricks. The Washington Post seems to be doing marginally better reporting. And I think one of the things that, for

hasbarists, like to not have a complete and total hegemony on the mainstream media, is its own kind of crisis. Because if the dam starts to break, the whole damn thing could blow, right? The containment unit could just blow and all the ghosts could could flood the city. I also think that in the first hundred days, I wonder what you think of Muhammad, the echoes of October 7th, whatever happened on that day, there were some horrors on that day. It was an upsetting event. It was a shocking event. We can argue about the cause. We don't have to argue the three of us, but one could have a conversation about the causes or whatever. But there was a, just like with 9-11, initially, there's a natural human

response of oh sympathy for the people to whom this happened even if you don't know anything about their status vis-a-vis the people who did it but at a certain point that's one day that's one day you know 700 days ago yes and and and not quite maybe 600 days now right and at a certain point if that's the source of your horror porn like I said that wells run it's well it's not just run dry it's also been replaced by daily images for the last 600 whatever days right much fresher horror much fresher uh in many cases much more graphic i mean much more verified much more verified um i mean take take away kind of like and we don't have to get into the the crazy stories that will repeat it um the things that we know did not happen right right um it's upsetting

to say. I mean, how many children have you watched take their last breath over the last two years? Yeah. Insane. Insane amount. That's not something any of us ever expected to see. I had never seen a dying or I don't know how many dead children I'd seen. I'd never seen footage of a child dying from acute trauma or malnutrition or starvation or shock. And certainly I'd never seen footage of children, you know, dismembered and beheaded and trapped under building. I've seen things in the last two years that they change you. Yeah. I'd actually bring this down as a note, which was this stuff specifically to children, right?

Not to discount the fact that the same horrors have been done to adults as well. adults yeah but what does that do to people who are as a society as a world when we're seeing this over and over and over again this is supposed to be kind of the this is supposed to be even in warfare the one thing where you don't go right right and and and even to try to um the acts of justifying it uh you know the the amount of tolerance that people had for attempts to justify it was pretty wild, I would say, for a long time, a long time where people could still see these images and figure out a way to spin it in their head where they said, well, war is terrible. These things happen in war. If I'm seeing it,

that means that someone is benefiting off of me of my own misery and watching it. I don't want to fall into some sort of, like people were doing that for a long, long time. And it is only until recently that even these, you know, now completely untrustworthy media institutions are like, well, we're looking at things that we would never think anyone would have to see. And it's starving children. Yeah, there's something about starvation too.

And I mean, I was talking about political songs from the 80s, right? Well, we are the world. do they know it's Christmas the whole like there's something about like people starving that arouses a kind of communal sympathy and alarm that you would think people being napalmed and bombed by us you know in Vietnam or fast forward to today like everything that's been going on prior to the starved the acute starvation crisis would be enough to morally rouse people, but somehow there's a kind of stubborn unwillingness to look

at the carnage that our weapons reek, but because we can't relate to that somehow, even though 9-11 did happen here, but starvation seems to get people in a place where the, because you can't it gets, there's like a moral rash. I think it's, because you can

always justify a bomb. Yes. Yes. You can always say, you can always say there was a Hamas. Right. There was a Hamas. There was a Hamas in that tent. There was a Hamas in that school. There was a Hamas in that hospital.

Yeah, human shields, all that stuff. There was a Hamas in that cafe, literally, right? You guys remember about a month and a half ago, they bombed like the one standing cafe in Gaza City, where German was go to. And the Israeli justification was there was a single Hamas member there. Right. But you cannot justify starving children, even though, again, going back to Yov-Galant and Smotrich and Benefir and Mavir and many, many, many others, they've been very open that that is their plan.

I mean, the end of 2024 was the so-called General's plan, which was where the goal was to isolate Northern Gaza and starve everyone out of Northern Gaza. And that ended with the ceasefire in January, 2025. But they speak about this openly. Yeah. You speak about this opening. But, you know, the visual, like you said, Daniel, the visual of a starving child. is difficult to justify.

You can't justify it because it is something that is happening. It is something in which everyone knows it is the responsibility of them to, of the Israelis to fix. That this is something that they are allowing to happen. And people already understand that Israel has been trying to do everything in their power to get rid of the institutions that have been feeding Gaza during, you know, the last, you know, two years.

Yeah, when was the bombing of the World Central Kitchen truck? Was it last February? Yeah, maybe last February. Early 2024. I remember that occurred like a, holy shit, that's a discontinuous, random, horrible event that people couldn't quite assimilate. But now, I don't think that would surprise anyone

because that is Israel's approach and attitude toward anything they can't control in the humanitarian sphere. Yeah, and they really can't control this one, I mean, you know, at least the PR status of it, no matter how hard they try, the New York Times ran the story a few days ago in which they showed a starving child named Mohamed L. Motawak, who is 18 months old,

and it's in the image it is, he is being held by his mother and he is skeletal he is clearly a you know a starving child and it it was shocking to me the outpouring that you saw of people who have been doing

active hesbara for this entire time who were trying to like who were trying to cover their asses I mean my favorite was Richie Torres tweeted this out in which he said the free world has a moral responsibility to Palestinians in distress, flood Gaza with food, which, like, for Richie Torres to say that, first of all, like, wild for him to say that now. Second of all, even in him

trying to be empathetic, he sounds like he wants to hurt Gossans. Doesn't it say he's a little bit like, flood them with food. It's like that, it's like that method man torture skit from the Wutang album, you know? We're going to, we're going to close the game. of Gaza and keep feeding you and feeding you right feeding you yeah it's like it's like it's like the movie it's like the uh the gluttony sin in the movie seven you know like it just sounds like he wants to drown Gaza in wheat you know it was actually causing like we've been saying you know people to for the first time not be able to find the words to justify it and feel like it might be actively evil to even try.

Right. But still not finding the words also to assign cause where it belongs. No, of course. And it is, you know, before that even, it was, you saw the Hasbara spin attempts on it that are still going and how effectively they were able to get the New York Times to back down. So like immediately after they started saying, Muhammad wasn't starving, he had a pre-existing medical condition. Honestly, the whole pre-existing thing, it's like, I'm sorry. What are you fucking blue shield? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this blue shield for human compassion.

Right. I'm sorry, your compassion insurance policy clearly dictates that pre-existing conditions nullify our agreement. You're not covered. He's 18 months old, which means he was born six months. Sorry, four months into this. Yes. Yeah. What possible reason could a child born in this war have for perhaps being sick and ill?

Right. His only actual preexisting condition was genocide. It was being Palestinian. Yes. I mean, like being born during this genocide, that was his preexisting condition. And the idea that you would be able to try and spin this as like, oh, he's not, you know, like there's David Collier who we've talked about before. He's the guy who goes on... He rants about Wikipedia being anti-Israel. He's just a total kook. And he wrote a quote, expose about this in which he was... He said, you know, the truth about Muhammad.

Actually, he's British, so you have to do your... Oh, yeah. The truth about Muhammad. A medical report issued May 2025 by the Basma Association. really i can't do it i love that bbc upper crust british accent that buckingham palace accent that you do yeah i mean it's just like you can tell it's the very the doughton abbey accent you know it's like i speak exactly as king speak uh he's been diagnosed with cerebral palsy the truth about alice you said wembley um a a group of

neurological disorders uh affecting uh movement muscle tone posture yada yada yada uh and There is no argument here. I have seen a copy of this report and then in the parenthetical, but obviously won't produce in full here, a child's medical diagnosis. Because of HIPAA. Yeah, because a HIPAA. You know, he cares a lot about HIPAA. Oh, I thought you meant the Hippocratic oath.

No, it's, you can't. First of all, first of all, do no harm to Israel's propaganda campaign. Yeah, exactly. But it says, but it was signed by Dr. Saeed. Muhammad al-Nasan on May 20th, 2025. So the only thing he's willing to show in terms of proof of this report is a signature from a doctor. So this actually caused people to pressure the New York Times so much that they issued a

correction in which they said, it says, children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented. We recently ran a story about Gaza's most vulnerable. civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Matawak, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition. We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of a situation. A report is of photographers, continue to report from Gaza, bravely, sensitively, and a

personal risks so that readers can see firsthand consequences of the war. I'm sorry, your reporters are in Gaza? How are your reporters in Gaza? I mean, these are all great questions. I don't know, but they're talking about their stringers. Yeah, they must be. And just the idea of actually issuing this correction, and no matter how much they throw into that, you know, they are throwing the reporting under the bus through caving on this type of thing. Well, what's interesting is if you read it, it was obviously written very, very carefully to avoid denying the central thesis of the report, which was that this child is starving. Right.

What it does is it very sneakly cast down on the reason for why he's starving. Right. I say he has a medical condition. And medical condition should not cause you to starve. Yes. Exactly. except anorexia right well right i mean exactly unless this is an infant with anorexia it is like completely ridiculous causes full of bulimic children right toddlers with body dysmorphia

yeah toddlers in tiaras gaza goes crazy but like the idea that like even if this person this infant has a pre-existing condition this makes it worse for you israel yes yes Yeah, you are starving, not just children, but sick children. Yes, now you are starving sick children. The idea that this would explain anything, all it does is cast doubt on any of the reporting that they're doing about the starvation, which was the entire point. Which was the entire point. Last week, we reported that Israel bombed a kindergarten and killed, you know, 17 young Palestinian children. since then we have learned that they all had down syndrome.

And we have updated our reporting to reflect this, meaning they were too slow or something to run out the door. Normal kids would have been able to escape. Yes, they couldn't read the leaflets that came down. And then you go on social media, and you see the hospital army just screenshoting that and saying, too late, the lie is already out there. Right, yes, yes.

And it's just, you know, they gain nothing from adding this bit of context, especially because it is so pointedly used for this idea of casting doubt. Meanwhile, it's not, can I just say it's not the, so the Washington Posted something similar about two months ago when they were reporting on one of the daily massacres at the GHF sites. So this was when people were still shocked by the fact that starving people were getting gun down at Ghazi and Tarran Foundation sites. And they reported, you know, dozens of people killed.

they had doctors at Nassar Hospital where many of the bodies were bought confirming how many people were killed gunshots to the head, gunshots to the chest, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 24 hours later, they upended the correction saying, it doesn't deny any of what had happened. Right.

Simply says we should not have reported it because we didn't wait for a full statement from GHF. Right. Right? Yeah. So all these corrections, all they do is they give ammunition to the people want to, cast out on the reporting to say

you can't trust any of it. Right. Even though the corrections are in a very careful way to say actually nothing what we said was wrong. We're just buckling to a pressure campaign. Right. And it's to keep people who their primary targets are

people who are seeing this shit with their own eyes and going what is going on. It's to keep them still with that grain of Just enough so that they go, maybe I should wait before feeling anything for these children. Meanwhile, the Times of Israel reported today, this did an article in which they quote doctors who are saying essentially, this is not the result of a pre-existing medical condition.

To claim that is ridiculous. I'll just read a few quotes from this article. Now, however, two senior Israeli doctors, including the head of pediatric gastroenterology. Gastroenterology. Yeah, all right. I've got a good stomach, so I never have to see a gastroenterologist, all right? Unit at one of Israel's premier medical institutions have insisted that Al-Metawak's severely emaciated state is not the result of his pre-existing medical conditions alone. Okay, Mr. Fancy degree. yeah okay mr you know gastropub or whatever speaking to the times of israel they insisted that no child suffering from such diseases in israel or most other western countries would be so skeletal or display such severe malnutrition and that he was likely in such a condition due to an inability to access proper nutritional supplements well that's because they teach their children to waste away that's right yeah that's how that's the education system to make to make israel look bad

Yes. You categorically do not find kids looking like that in Israel or Western countries. That's Professor Dan Turner. And then another quote, even patients with background diseases should not be malnourished like that. A patient like that would be admitted to a hospital. And then finally, Dr. Michael Felden, a senior pediatric doctor and department head at another prestigious Israeli hospital made similar comments. I've been a pediatrician for 20 years, and we never see, and we never see kids looking like this, even very chronically ill children. What we do, when we, when we do, we would suspect abuse and would contact police. So the, the, someone should contact the police. Yeah, exactly. The fucking world police. Yeah, exactly. Someone should contact, I don't know.

Team America. But, yeah, it is, it's just. A completely bogus story, not meant to do anything other than to stop that part of your brain that says, should I feel any kind of compassion for these people? It's the severance, Chip. Yes. Can I say one thing about these fake corrections? Yes.

One thing I've noticed is we were talking earlier about the first 100 days and the success of Asparin, those first 100 days. A lot of the things, obviously, that were reported turned out to not be true. none of those outlets ever issued corrections about those things. None. Yeah. Nope. No. They just exist in the ether and... Just go on with it. You just move on. You just move on. And the only people who ever, you know, dispute it are, it's other publications who are making corrections of other journalists. And so, yeah, you never see a correction issued. I mean, you're a journalist who puts your byline on.

on a claim and then that claim turns out to be completely false have the self-respect to say I was wrong yeah you'd figure you'd figure right I remember I've mentioned this on

on Twitter a lot because it pissed me off so much the night that the Israelis invaded Shippa hospital the first night I think everyone was kind of watching your online or on TV just watching the Israelis get closer and closer are terrified about what was happening.

Because people, I mean, this has been going on so long. Shiffa Hospital was where tens of thousands of people were sheltered for the first couple months of the war. It wasn't just the biggest hospital in Gaza, but it was also a huge, it was a place where tens of thousands of people had sheltered because it was considered that the Israelis would never attack a hospital. Right. And then there was that line that Hamas HQ was under Shifa Hospital.

under Shephard, which, by the way, is a line that had been going back for it since the 2000s, yeah. And I remember Jake Tapper's CNN, this was like 11 at night, dropping an article on CNN's website, saying, an intelligence source has told me, confirmed that Hamas is, you know, running military operations from the basement of the hospital, blah, blah, blah. And I remember CNN actually put at the time, they've removed it since because I went back in check recently, but they put a, they put a, uh, a disclaimer that this thing was obviously written so fast to be published just before the Israelis got there, that they couldn't verify the claims. Right.

Jake tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Of their star, that their star anchor was making, right? Yes. Obviously, it was all a lie, right? The Israelis went in demolished ship hospital, then went back a few months later and massacred 300 people, the mass grave was found there. and no and do you call that

was one of the first times they actually brought embedded Western journalists into Gaza to go into the hospital and there's a tunnel chat there's a hole in the ground they discovered some pretty damning shift schedules too on the wall

you know yeah all the days of the week grand rounds of yeah I remember do you guys know she used to be an Israeli speechwriter

at the UN I guess Akiva clumpass. Oh, I love, I love the clumps. Aviva clompas. Sorry, sorry for getting your first name, Mark. By the way, she's insane in her unhinged posts. I've seen multiple New York Times reporters and staffers reposts her shit.

But she was on a row, every single man on this calendar is a dead man walking. Yeah, yeah. And just nothing, nothing, you know, beyond that beyond other people's pointing out guys this is a calendar

oh look at that Daniel's ready with the dead man walking original soundtrack I love how you had that right there it just arrived today oh okay

we actually planned this before all right I was like either that or you have an amazing filing system we have to take a quick break but everyone please stick around and listen to these ads

and we will be right back and we're back this badass barra world's most moral podcast here with uh mohammed al-safin how you doing dude good man good i want to ask uh real quick um when i in the office i remember everyone uh we just called you sophine yeah does that be i i i never knew why that was So my first name is actually the most common name in the world. Muhammad's the most common? Well, I'm learning something new every day. No, I knew that.

I'm just kidding. So yeah, like growing up, there was always multiple Mohamas around, so everyone just used my last name. Well, that makes sense. Also, it's, you know, there's a lot of mats around, and I'm now realizing that is why so many people I know just called me Lieb. They just wanted to make sure everyone knew you were Jewish. Yeah.

Yeah, they would put three parentheses around it every time they would say my name. Hey, Lieb. That's all part of the blood label. That's part of the blood libel. That's seven out of time. That's an old one. That's a old one. Speaking of blood lebel, we're going to be talking about some actual anti-Semitism that affected the likes of someone who has been a stalwart, pro-Israel.

propagandist. He dealt with a situation that I hope that no, Jew or Gentile, anywhere around the world has to deal with. That's right. Alan Dershowitz was recently put in a terrible position in which he was denied parogis at Martha's Vineyard. And I first want to... Did you have a pre-existing condition? He'd had a pre-existing condition of being a pedophile. And Alleged, joking, fun, don't sue because he does sue, which I will explain in a second. But here is just a tweet that he wrote about this. Let's see, he goes,

don't buy parogis tainted with the poison of anti-Semitism. He can't even spell pierogi. Yeah, I know. That's not how you spell it, is it? Yeah. As I correctly suspected, the bigot who refused to sell me, Parogi. Krem Miskovic.

Miskevich. Is a notorious anti-Semite. I'm sorry, sorry. Kremmiskevich is the most Israeli name. I know. But apparently he's just some anti-Semitic Polish, dude. When it comes to anti-Semitism, he's the Krem de la Crem. Yes.

Is a notorious anti-Semite who is part of an anti-Semitic organization that protests Jewish, not only Israeli, cultural events, and doesn't believe in Israel's right to exist or to respond to what these haters regard as, quote, justified massacres of October 7th. If I knew that at, if I knew that the local rabbi correctly characterized their anti-Jewish protests as the anti-Semitic, I would never have tried to buy their tainted pierogi. Neither should you. Don't patronize anti-Semites who refuse to sell to Jewish Zionists. fight back against bigotry. I never would have ordered the taint-flavored pierogi.

But you know what Krem Miscovich said to him when he said, why won't you sell me your Polish delicacy? What are you saying? It's my prerogative. Oh, I love it. My prerogative joke. It's good. My prerogative.

No, no, I get it. I think that was pretty good. I thought it was fine. That was good. But we have to play a little bit of what happened. fuck you Adam 6 out of 10 that's an episode title if I ever heard one well you can't win them all Daniel that's true I get I get away with a lot of before we see the video he said as I suspected if he suspected that the guy was an

anti-semile why was he trying to go get a parogi from well he didn't suspect until the guy denied him parogi service so here's the video officer officer why i've been buying i've been buying for this guy for a long time okay but when i asked him to sell me for him to him he said he refused to because he doesn't why is he filming why doesn't doesn't the farmer's market cop have his body cam on yeah i guess not uh so that that was him in case the market cup beats him up that's fine yeah yeah exactly uh but that was him uh complaining to i love that he called the police about the parochies he just yelling oh sir i am i am hungry for a yummy savory treat uh and they won't give it to me

because i support israel and because i allegedly got massages on a certain island you may have heard of in the news this does sort of remind me i've told this story in the podcast at the time i was denied service at a vener schnitzel place in vienna yeah and you immediately clearly had tables and they looked at me with very stern austrian faces and tried to tell me that there was no room for me so i had to go to the fourth best wiener schnitzel place in vienna but it was a bad taste in my mouth it was tasty but left a bad taste was it an actual wiener schnitzel like the chain or was it a wiener schnitzel place i just want to know if it was it It was fast food.

No, no, no, no. I didn't know there was a chain called Boehner Schnitzel. You guys don't have Viener Schnitzel in New York? Never heard of it. Oh, yeah, it's like a fast food wiener chain. I think it's for hot dogs. Right. You're talking about that.

Viener Schnitzel is like the like, you know, it's the Viennese like, no, I know what Viener Schnitzel is. I don't just eat fast food. I'm very cultured man, actually. But I, and I've never eaten that of Viener Schnitzel, but I do know it is a, a very popular fashion. Anyway, what I'm saying is I feel Dersh's pain, maybe for the first time. Yeah. I mean, listen,

we've all been in situations in which for one reason or another someone didn't like us and we called out anti-Semitism. We called the cops. I've never done that. Oh, well, you've got to try it, man. It's really fun. That's actually the Jewish conversion process. That's right. Once you make that phone call to the cops, you're a Jew. Well, it's It's the Mikva and then the phone call to the cops. Is that my way finally being allowed to go back to Palestine?

Yeah, well, it's one thing to try, at least. We could all try it. But he then went on to, apparently, Alan Dershowitz has like a show, like a stream show that he does on Rumble. Called the Dershow. Yeah, it's called The Dershow. And I can't imagine watching it. watching it earnestly

not for the sake of collecting clips but what are you going to learn from it? I can't imagine I guess you would learn Well we're about to find out because producer Adam has a clip for us Yeah producer Adam has a clip of him He paid the price. He went in there

He did the time He's a trooper. Yeah this is You know Adam's a big rumble watcher as it is Yeah he never misses a rumble He loves a royal rumble And he loves watching Rumble And he sent us

He went into the pits This guy did real journalism Adam 11th Thank you for watching the show And here is Alan Dershowitz On his show Talking about the Parogi story All right

Let's turn to what happened to me today I first came to Martha's Vineyard in 1969 The senator is driven off a bridge The senator was of course Ted Kennedy A friend of mine helped to defend Ted Kennedy and it was a house without a telephone Imagine me without a telephone

At night you had to light candles So I tied an onion to my belt Which was the style at the time And that was 1970 But I've been to the vineyard regularly now For at least 40 or 50 years And every Wednesday

Okay, was he talking about early With the Kennedy thing Was he talking about Chappaquittic? Was that a random Chappaquitic reference in that? Did he help defend? I think so. Oh, wow. Cool.

For all these years, I go to the farmer's market. That's where I bought this shirt. Now it's in the Agriculture Hall, which is a quasi-public, quasi-public institution of the town of- Quasi. No, he just can't pronounce his R's. Quasi. It was crazy.

It was crazy out there. It's crazy. I was trying to order a powwogi. This guy, this crazy guy was between me, you know, like I was back in Germany. Just to go there today, because today is quick. Oh, I'm sorry, real quick, the Chiron at the bottom here, the, like, lower third, it says, bigoted vendor at Martha's Vineyard Farmer's Market refused to sell me because of my political views. I'm suing.

With the capital S. Yes, I love it. Because of the capital S. I looked at it at one glance and I thought it said, I'm sting. I'm like, that's a stretch. Yeah, I mean, I guess she could be stick. I was particularly anxious to go there today because today is corn day. It's all right.

It's okay. I got there early. I bought my 12 pieces of corn. There's a guy named Bucky. He makes a special orange juice for me. And I walk across the area and there was the parogi place. Adam is splicing videos of glaciers melting, like the slowest story about the dumbest thing.

I just want the audience doesn't know how much work went into this. It sounds incredible. Adam said very late last night working on. Yes, this is highly, highly edited. We're watching a cliff erode in real time. That's the pace of this story. I've never seen rock turn to sand before, but it's happening before our eyes. I've never watched skeletons fossilize.

Gone there a few times before, and I bought the parogies. They were okay. They were not my grandmother's progis. And I said, oh, can I have a six pierogi? And he said, no. I said, oh, you've run out of parogi? Too bad. No, no, no, we have plenty of parogi.

I just won't sell them to you. What do you mean you won't sell them to me? I won't sell them to you because I don't approve of your politics. I don't approve of who you've represented. The clear application. Hold on. Back up. Adam added who.

Epstein and. Oh, that's, yeah, that's Epstein. The clear implication was that he opposed me because I defended Donald Trump on the floor of the Senate. I was a Zionist. I noticed the week before I went there and I was wearing my other shirt. Proud American Zionist shirt, proud American Zionists. It became evident to me that he opposed my being a Zionist, my support for Israeli opposed. He thinks I'm a, you know, a down-the-line Trump supporter.

Obviously, I supported President Trump's constitutional rights. Nobody except my wife knows who I voted for. My wife. Oh, my God. Oh, God. Oh, so that is, I, honestly. I want to watch the whole episode. I want to watch the whole episode.

I do, too. I'm, like, kind of interested in watching. Is Adam auditioning for a social media manager of the Dersh show on Rumble? Is he going to leave us? Is this his real? Adam, if you are leaving us for the Dersh, I will let you know that, well, honestly, respect because I feel like

the problem Dersh has always had is PR not unlike Yeah, he needs better toda a he needs more consciousness in his videos in which he explains at the age of consent is too high That'd be the funniest resume

in the world 24 to 2025 producer of the Bad Hasbara podcast 2025 to the present Toda A manager for the Dershow on Rumble The whole job is just begging Alan Dershowitz to stop saying. At the very least to stop saying that if there's grass in the field play ball,

you know, he's got to stop saying. Like, Alan, please. He's like, I just think I love baseball. And I think it's a perfectly apt description of doing underage stuff. Guys, that is our show. That's our show. In the case of Morrow's v. her wanting it. Oh, God.

Mohamed, Al-Safin, thank you so much for coming on Bad As Baran talking with us. Hopefully not for the last time. Yeah, please. Come back anytime you can. Thank you, guys. Where can people find you and find your work? I do a lot of shit talking on Twitter, unfortunately. I have to stop, but I'm there.

it's hard not to it's hard not too um by the way i love that there's still people like two years into this who don't understand matt's ironic videos i know whenever i do a satire video i still get a large percentage of it people just yelling at me that's how we met you you you fooled me on one of them oh you thought he was serious yeah the very first time yeah but i wasn't listening i was only looking at the the subtitles the captions right when i turned on the the sound, then I heard the slight ironic lilt in his voice I clued in, but I wrote to him and I said,

man, you fucking, you're very good at this. You got me, bro. He is very good at this. Well, so there's that on Instagram, YouTube. You can find AJ Plus on our work. On YouTube especially, that's where I do most of my work.

We've produced a lot of explainers on Palestine, starting from the Naktha. Obviously, a ton of work from Gaza. including, and I really want to highlight this, you know, when Western media says we can't get our journalists into Gaza, there's, there are a lot of journalists, amazing journalists in Gaza. I would say the best of our profession. And we have been working with a young woman called Bissan Hoda. Yes.

Throughout the entirety of this genocide. Bissan's been on the ground. She was before the war, you know, she had dreams of traveling, living abroad. She would take, she would film like different parts of Gazan, like, do these amazing little video bignettes about the history of the places and the culture, et cetera. And she's become a war reporter against her will and against her wish. But she does incredible. She won an Emmy, didn't she? I was going to say.

So she's won both an Emmy and a Peabody for her reporting from Kazan. And you can see we just dropped a new video over hers a couple of days ago. Amazing. And you'll see it as a whole playlist of Besson. stuff, as well as the explainers. We won, see it there, I don't like to brag, but it's there. There's your Peabody. There's a Peabody.

Actually, we won that a couple years ago before the war for the genocide for a piece on Hebron, and it's actually, I produced, Dina, our old colleague, Matt's old colleague, Tina took Rudy, hosted that she went back to her hometown of Hebron, where her dad's from. And just, it was an incredible film about apartheid and living under apartheid there. So we're going to have all the links in the description of the show so people can

find all of that. Matt's old producer, Kate actually helped produce that as well. So, the, yeah, and Kate Elston, one of one of God's gifts to production. 100%. Truly amazing journalist, amazing producer. And Dina, of course, who I'm also trying

to get on this podcast, you know, as soon as possible. But you guys just do such great work out there on AJ Plus. And I miss all y'all. I miss you. I miss you guys. You're the reason that I'm technically an award-winning journalist because we won the Society for Professional Journalists Award for Newsbroke.

Newsbrook is one of my favorite things that we've done. Oh, well, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on. And we will have links to all of that in the description. Muhammad, once again, you're amazing. Thank you for coming. Patreon.com slash badassbara. Bad as barra at gmail.com for your questions, comments, and concerns.

All right, everyone. Thanks again so much for listening. And until next time, from the river, do the scenes. We need some peer review on that pierogi. Jumping jacks was us. Push-ups was us. Got ma-ga, us. Karate us, taking Molly us, Michael Jackson us, Yamaha keyboards, us,

Georgia makes not us, Andor was us, Keith Ledger Joker us, endless bread success, Happy Meals was us, McDonald's was us, Being Happy Us, Bequem yoga us, eating food, us, breathing air, us, drinking water us. Thank you. Thank you.