Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - 163: Me First and the Dhimmi Dhimmis, with Jasper Nathaniel

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

With Daniel on assignment, Matt is joined by Producer Adam Levin for a chat with journalist Jasper Nathaniel covering the saga of West Bank teenager Mohammed Ibrahim, whose freedom Jasper helped secure. Plus a crash-out landing from a new online hasbarist on the scene, and lastly; we’re not saying Jasper’s mom was hectoring her elected officials, but she was the first of the gang with a gun in her hand…Please make a donation at https://gazadirect.com/Subscribe to Jasper's substack at https://infinitejaz.com/Jasper on X: https://x.com/infinite_jazSee Matt Lieb and Francesca Fiorentini December 13 at the Ice House in Pasadena, CA: https://www.showclix.com/event/new-world-disorder-12-13-25-7-30-pmNew Bad Hasbara Merch: https://estoymerchandise.com/collections/bad-hasbara-podcastSubscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbaraWhat’s The Spin playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/50JoIqCvlxL3QSNj2BsdURSkad Skasbarska playlist: http://bit.ly/skadskasbarskaSubscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get your podcasts.Spotify https://spoti.fi/3HgpxDmApple Podcasts https://apple.co/4kizajtSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Moshwam hot bitch, a ribbon polkote. We invented the terry tomato. And weighs, USB drives, and the iron d'all. Israeli salad, oozy, stents, and jopas, orange rose. Micro chips is us. iPhone cameras us. Taco salads us. Pothalamos us.

Olive garden us. White foster us. Zabrahamas. As far as us. Hello and welcome to Bad As Barra. Yeah, bitch. My name is Manly, and I'm going to be almost moral co-host for the podcast. And I'm producer Adam, unable to vocode at will. sorry you don't have the gear

welcome everyone to another wonderful episode of Bad Espara as you can tell this is a special episode because Daniel Matee my life partner best friend and I don't know camping buddy let's say he is still on vacation he is out for the Thanksgiving festivities

and so because of that we are not going to see him, but we wish him a great, a great vacation, whatever it is that he is doing. But producer Adam is here with us. You get me and like it. That's right. You're going to like it. You're going to like the way we pod. I guarantee it. There we go. Men's Warehouse, podcast edition. How are you doing, Adam? How are things? Couldn't be better. It's nice out here in the San Fernando Valley.

Yeah, finally, like, the weather is like perfect, you know, it's like, it's consistent, feels nice, it's not too hot. I'm not in the valley, but it's really, it's really great. So I'm in a much better mood. I got my Capu Barra shirt on. I went to the San Diego Zoo over the, over the little breakie. And just had a hell of a time. I love, I love all the, I love the animals. They're cute. sure my daughter is a big fan of giant rodents so i got this giant rodent shirt so she would love me more you know did it work no still yells at me that's the thing about having a three-year-old is uh you do everything you can to make them not be mean to you it is it's like having a really popular best friend when you're a loser it's like she doesn't want to be seen with me but uh Occasionally when we're alone. She tells me she loves me. Five stars in review on all your local podcast apps and or stores. Please subscribe. We're almost a 50,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is amazing because this podcast being video was just something I threw in, you know, because I was

like, hey, there's a lot of video podcasts now. Maybe I should, maybe I should try. And now, this is a thing they say we have to do now. Yeah, it is, it is forced. We are forced. We are forced to do it um as as podcasters there's no such thing as audio only anymore um so now we have to learn how to do video editing so please uh support us and thank us by being a subscriber to our youtube channel uh also go to patreon dot com slash bad as barra to get yourself an extra bad as bar episode every single week for the most part. SSA, safe for last week. We had, it was Thanksgiving and we had to celebrate.

Get the caveats going. But other than that, we, we do, okay? So I don't know who I don't know who I'm arguing with. I'm just mad. Yeah. And if you want to go to badassbar.com, you can get shirts. We got shirts if you want them. They are union made.

They are non-problematic in origin, and they look nice. So get them, please, before they run out. Today's episode is brought to you by gazaDirect.com. GazaDirect.com features a rotating list of fundraising campaigns for destitute Palestinians in Gaza, collected from across various crowdfunding websites and gathered in one place to help highlight campaigns in need of attention and help donors find efforts to support. So if you are one of those donors, if you're someone who's like,

I'd like to give my money to something other than bonus episodes of the world's stupidest podcast about a very sad thing, you can by going to gaza direct.com and finding a, yeah, finding something to support. Find a campaign. Give money.

It is a useful use of your money. So do it. Adam, there's no. spin this week. Sure. But you know what there is? Spoon. Okay.

What's the spoon? Tell me about your Thanksgiving. Uh, so I do a friends giving every year, um, and I, uh, for some reason feel the need to layer complexity and difficulty on, uh, with each passing year. Of course. Um, so this year, uh, I did, uh, a, I think a six or seven course menu. Yo, you printed out menus. You didn't just cook.

You were also like, I got to get some graphic design in this, in this fish. Well, I was a little self-conscious about reading the entire recitation of, you know, the origin of the French butter and all of that. Sure, sure, sure. Because I would have been embarrassed. Yeah. And if you do want to check it out, right here's my Instagram where you can see this and other photos of things that I cooked. And I was pretty busy, so I really only took one food photo, and that was this mac and cheese that was kind of the star of the show. And knowing that from last year, I made one in the morning and put it in the refrigerator so that I could cut it into giant paving stones of mac and cheese and send people home with leftovers.

Oh, my gosh. Um, and, uh, as, as always, uh, it was just a thing to throw myself into, uh, because everything's bad all the time. Uh, and, yeah, it sucks. And sometimes you got to just like, uh, throw yourself into something completely different, uh, to, to feel like you're doing any tiny little bit of good in the world, uh, and feeding people is a great way to do that. Yeah. Um, and And it's not just feeding them, but it's also it's healthier options too because that's also a vegan mac and cheese. I do have to stop you there. I did a vegan and vegetarian meal this year.

So it's about half vegan options and half just vegetarian. So that mac and cheese is real cheese? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. I regret not going. Fuck. I'll have to bring it. for you and Francesca.

Please do. That looks incredible. And in the spirit of cooking and being creative and getting that energy out, I, we love this this new segment. Stop interrupting. It's called Creative Overlap. Oh. I do have a brief What's the Spine and that's this book, The Choy of Cooking by Roy Choi.

I just got that from my brother for, for my birthday, which coincided with. with my friend's giving. And it was incredibly sweet of him. Also, in a bit of what's the spin, a friend of mine got me the original Operation Ivy energy cassette tape that he found for a dollar at a thrift shop and he said he could not let it sit there.

I love it. I love it. Is that, I assume, that's SCA Operation Ivy? It's SCA punk. Scott Punk. Okay, okay, sick, sick, sick. It's one of those, you know, for me, it's a memory of a patch that a cool kid was wearing on his backpack that even an uncool kid like me could like them hey i think you're cool i think you're plenty cool and of course if you want to

check out operation ivy and other bands there is the scatskaska playlist available uh everywhere you get your scott music click the link in the description uh because there's no way you're going to remember how to spell that so that is what's uh spooning and what's spining and what's spining over in the Adam household. Okay, it is time for us to introduce our wonderful guests. I'm super excited. He is a returning champion. You know him from his wonderful substack,

which if you have not yet subscribed to it, you should. Infinite Jazz reporting on the occupied West Bank that you won't find anywhere else. It really is the best. the ground reporting uh for what's going on in the west bank if you haven't subscribed you should it is incredible and he's a great guest ladies and gentlemen everyone else welcome back to the podcast jasper nathaniel what's up dog hey guys how you doing doing all right doing okay

how are things where are you right now currently i'm back at home in brooklyn back in Brooklyn. Yeah. Then back in the real Jewish state of New York. The real Jewish state. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. So thank you for coming back on a lot to talk about. Obviously, there is a distinct lack of Daniel Mate today on this podcast. So it's just us. I hope that's okay. I hope my capyubar shirt makes up for it. Should I make the same joke that I made when I... Yes, you should. You should. I want, yeah, do it. These guys didn't tell me that Daniel was not going to be here today, which is fine. But when I came in and I saw Adam and Matt, and they told me, I said, oh, man, I've been

practicing my fake laugh for Daniel's joke. So I don't know what I'm going to do with it now. Yes. That's my joke. It was great. And ladies and gentlemen, when I tell you, I laugh for about 20 minutes straight, I mean it. No exaggeration. so thank you for for coming on uh you have been uh at the forefront at least for me and my

social media experience um of talking about a um recent freeing that happened of a uh Palestinian American uh you know I guess uh prisoner um Muhammad Ibrahim and so I wanted to talk to you a bit about that and get kind of our audience to be more familiar with the story because it is I think part of the story is how little coverage this got for nine months. So let's start with introducing who this kid was. So he's a 16-year-old Palestinian American who spent nine months in an Israeli military prison. Can you tell us more? more about who he is and what happened and what led to this? Yeah, Muhammad is, now he's 16.

He was 15 when he was abducted in February. So basically, Muhammad and his family are, they're Palestinian-American. They have dual citizenship in the West Bank. They live in a town called Al-Mazra al-Sharkia, which is one of a handful of towns in the West Bank that are actually predominantly American citizens. Um, they also, uh, spend time in Florida. Um, and Muhammad's first cousin, his mother's sister's son is, uh, Seifola Mousselet who, if that name sounds familiar, it's because he was another Palestinian American 20 years old who was beaten to death by settlers in July. Um, and so, uh, the two of them were actually supposed to work together at the family's ice cream shop in Tampa Bay this past summer. But Muhammad was in prison. and Seifamal was dead. So basically, you know, this family is like a lot of Palestinian-American families who go

back and forth. Zahir, his father, does business in the U.S. He works in electronics and he does some real estate. And so this town, Al-Mazer al-Sharkia, is largely built on the American economy, actually, because a lot of the families there have to do business. in the U.S. and then they sometimes send their kids to school in the West Bank to maintain their roots. They own land there. They own olive fields. The town has been pretty insulated from the violence of the occupation for the last couple decades because they have

wealth, they have bigger, more sort of secure homes, and they're American. And so they've been left alone a little bit. Only in the last really two to three years have towns like this one started to come under attack from both settlers and soldiers. So there's been a couple of murders in the last couple of years from before October 7th, actually, and soldiers have started coming in more regularly to do raids. So Muhammad was 15 years old in February, I think was February 16th, about 3.30 in the morning, basically a group of soldiers, the family says about 25 people. to 30 soldiers pounded on the door in the middle of the night. The father Zahir, who's from Kansas

City, let them in. He asked what they wanted. They said, where's your son? They went into the bedroom, didn't tell the family anything, didn't tell Muhammad anything. They blindfolded him, zip tied him. You know, all this, of course, with their guns pointed at him. By the way, this is a little guy. He's clearly on the smaller side of 15-year-olds. He has not gone through puberty. It appears. So he looks like a kid. He is a kid. Yeah. And they basically drag him out of the house, blindfolded, zip tied, throw him in a military jeep and disappear. The family has no idea where he's been taken. They have no idea why he's been taken. It takes several days for them to find out through a lawyer that he is at, I think he started at Ofer Prison, which is

a military detention facility. So people probably know that in the West Bank, all Palestinian are subject to military law, whereas the settlers, to the extent they're ever prosecuted for anything, it's in civilian. Civil law. Yeah, civil court. Right. And so it comes out that Muhammad and three other kids who are not American, so Muhammad and three Palestinian kids have been accused of throwing rocks at a settler's car, not of injuring anybody, not of damaging any person. property, just they say that they were throwing rocks. And there's an interrogation video. I've seen part of it. Another part has not been released yet, but you see Muhammad. He is, again, really little guy. He's got a blindfold around his neck. So they've pulled it down. And then

there's two just hulking soldiers wearing full masks with huge guns, interrogating him and asking him over and over and over, did you throw rocks? And he keeps on saying no. Apparently, Eventually, eventually he confessed to throwing a stone and not hitting anything. Muhammad later said in a sworn affidavit that he was severely beaten in the military jeep on the way to the interrogation. And then once he got there, he was beaten again. And then while he was being interrogated, they threatened to beat him again if he didn't confess to it. So he says it was a false confession made under duress, which is entirely consistent with just a huge amount of evidence. testimony. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Including the son of Hamas who wrote his own biography about his brave

turn to being a collaborator with Israel. One of the things he mentioned was the beating that he had received in the car on the way to a military prison, which I always thought was funny how much the first half of his own biography just confirms what everyone has already known about the way in which people are treated by the military apparatus and the West Bank. And the Israeli prison system is under the purview of Ben-Gavir as a national security minister. And the actual guy who runs the prison system is just like a Ben-Gabir henchman. And they have been very public and vocal about the fact that they have made conditions

in these prisons as bad as they possibly can. They've cut down food as much as they possibly can. Just a couple of months ago, the Israeli Supreme Court, who very rarely rules against the military, said that they are starving their prisoners. And so anyway. And what's the penalty for that in Israel's a weekend at a spa for the soldiers who do it? There's no penalty. It's literally just stop starving them.

And as far as I know, there's no enforcement mechanism. What the, what the fuck? And then you do nothing. Yeah. And Ben Gavier came out and said right away, basically, yeah, no thanks. And so anyway, you know, it took a long time to, just like from a journalistic perspective, to get a hold of the document. So I should say it's sort of unclear how long he was just being held in detention without charges. At some point, he's charged.

with throwing rocks which in Israel can carry over 10 years in prison um but it's it's just crazy because this detail is important it seems to make the distinction between what is known as a administrative detention and what is essentially um you know being jailed for a suspected crime so he went from you know uh being not being charged to having a confession coerced out of him through violence to being put into a military prison for a crime that he most likely did not commit. Right. And there's a after October 7th, this is one of these stories that just has not made the news in the Western press, which just drives me absolutely insane. And Israel just decided unilaterally after October 7th, I think on October 7th that security prisoners, which incorporates everybody from like Hamas fighters that were captured on October

7th to a 15 year old kid accused of throwing a stone, security prisoners are not allowed to get visits from the Red Cross, which is a violation of international law, a clear violation. And as some may recall, there's a big stink made about it when Hamas said that they would only allow the Red Cross to visit hostages if they opened up. humanitarian corridors, which Israel refused to do. And they're not allowed to get visits or speak with their family either. So Muhammad is in Israeli military detention, completely cut off from his parents. And every time he has a court date, it just gets delayed. So he's just sort of wasting away. Eventually, the embassy visits him after a lot of fuss was made by the family. And they immediately

reported that he had lost a significant amount of weight, somewhere between a third and a quarter of his body weight. He'd contracted scabies, and he reported that he was being beaten. The story didn't actually become public until July, when after Seifala was murdered, a great reporter for the guardian named Joseph Gettyon did a story on that. And it came out talking to the family that they also had another kid, again, first cousin, who was in prison. So I read this and I was just completely shocked that I hadn't heard anything about it yet. And I'd reached out to Joseph and he put me in touch with the family. And I spoke with the family and they basically said, yeah, we can't get anybody to to cover it except for Joseph. He's the

first one. And so I then just sort of decided that I was going to make it part of my beat. Yeah. And you did. I want to show people like the amount of you know, at the very least tweets that you were putting out, as, you know, as well as writing about it on your substack. But you had been doing this for months and months. This is just from, you know, August 9th in which you say, I find it genuinely shocking that not a single major American outlet has covered 16-year-old Palestinian-American Muhammad Zahir-Ibrahim held in Israeli military detention since February for throwing rocks, quote unquote. His parents are begging for help, and they have been completely ignored.

And this goes on and on, like you, and you repeating over and over again that he is a 16-year-old American Palestinian detainee, and just seeing the amount of silence on this was shocking. This is you September, September 4th. Attention U.S. politicians, 16-year-old Palestinian-American Mohammed. Zahir, Ibrahim is starving in military, Israeli military detention. You know, you talk about the New York Times. It goes, it goes on and on, and it seems to have been met with almost like uniformed silence by mainstream media. The same media, by the way, that made a huge deal over and over about the American-Israelis

who were caught by Hamas, like Edan Alexander, you know, people who were being, who were in Hamas captivity were talked about, you know, constantly, but this seems to have been like a cone of silence on this story. Yeah, it wasn't covered by any major paper in the U.S. until I convinced a friend of mine who works for the Washington Post, Kate Brown, to write a story, which she wrote a couple months ago. first time it was mentioned in any of the major papers. And basically, like, I started covering the story. I interviewed the family in July or maybe early August, like right after the story broke. And then I sort of became like a de facto, I can't think of the word, like an amplifier

of their story. Because there were, you know, there were just, the thing is like, it became clear right away, basically, that he was not going to get out through just like going through the motions of the criminal justice system or the military justice system. And so we knew that it was going to have to be a diplomatic effort. And actually, Mike Huckabee met with the family the same day he met with the family of Seifala in July. And he promised them, actually, you know what? I think I misspoke. Seifala, I believe, was killed in June. I said July. So, Anyway, Huckabee met with them and Camel, who is safe while his father, said, you can't bring my son back.

He's been killed. But if you bring Muhammad back to us, you can give us a little joy. And according to them, Huckabee said he would do everything in his power to make it happen. They then never heard from Huckabee again. So basically, like, I was just, you know, relentlessly tweeting about it. I then in September went to Washington, D.C. with Muhammad's family and with Camel, Sae Palaz's father, and with the families of numerous other Americans who have been, the families of Americans who have been killed in the West Bank and Rachel Corey's family.

She was killed in Gaza, but there's a lot of them. I mean, there's Talphi, al-Dil-Jabar, who was killed by an Israeli sniper last January. There's I signior, Egi, the Turkish American, who was killed in the West Bank last year. and a number of others. So I went to DC and we had some meetings with lawmakers and basically it was like a lot of people saying, a lot of lawmakers saying, yes, this is terrible. We want to help you. There's kind of nothing we can do.

We don't have any say here. Which is, to me, is crazy. And it's actually something your mom points out when you. and her were on together talking to Ryan Grimm, which is that the fact that Americans and the American government, which spends billions of dollars, you know, on Israel, is, you know, the number one supporter of this apartheid state, if anyone should have the leverage to be able to get an American citizen released, it should be the United States. It's crazy the amount of feigned powerlessness. Yeah, it's such a shame that there's nobody who can do anything. Right. Yeah. And

you guys, you know, you talk about that with Ryan Grimm, you know, when it comes to all the other embassies in Europe that are able to get, you know, their people back seems like pretty quickly compared to the United States. Yeah, and I mean, I think people have probably heard this story for me enough times by now. But like I was attacked in the West Bank too in a town right next door to there by a mob, a lynch mob of settlers. And I couldn't get the embassy to do anything to help me. So they, it's not even just, it's not anti-Palestinian racism as much as it's just a, like,

utter refusal to show any sort of backbone in its relation to Israel. It's like, hey, guys, don't kill the American guy who's there right now. Like, that's just too much to ask. Right. It is, you know, it's, and it's stuff like this that I think leads a lot of people to start asking the question of like, why is it that we pretend as if we are so powerless when it's just so it just it's such a for lack of a better word a cucked position to be in when you are like the number one sponsor of this apartheid state you are and you want to know like what does all

of this support afford us right what is not that what is it for and it just you know it becomes clear and clear that that at least one of the reasons is the fact that when it comes to this project versus the safety of Americans this project is much more importance to our politicians. And they also don't want to get, you know, they also don't want to lose their re-election campaigns. I think it's a combination of, I mean, some politicians are just like in the bag for APAC and they're forbidden from speaking out. Others, I think it's, it's actually just like a learned helplessness. Like, they've been doing this long enough to know that, like, we have no influence whatsoever. And I don't think that excuses them from making an effort, but, I mean,

you can see it talking to the politicians who have been at this long enough that it's like you really just feel like there's like literally nothing that you can do well and it didn't seem like you know the one thing you could bring to bear upon them was shame was saying i'm going to put you on front street you know uh i think was it chris van holland who finally kind of joined the cause with you um you know i i'm going to let people know how feckless you are uh and it's It seemed like that and the employment of your mother, just the idea of being, you know, I might say hectored, but I would never say that about your mother. But imagine a mother was hectoring a politician. Imagine like sort of a Jewish hectoring, nagging mama, not yours, all moms.

But, you know, incredibly powerful. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it basically, at a certain point, you know, in in conversation with the family and with a couple organizations they were working with care and a couple others, we sort of like landed on a strategy of we're going to just wear down these lawmakers until it becomes enough of a headache and they feel enough shame and fear. of, you know, social or electoral consequences that they have to start acting in some way. And that took the form of relentless, shaming them on social media. I was like going on a lot of podcasts because I had just been attacked in the West Bank. And every single time I would mention my representatives who not only wouldn't do anything for Muhammad, but they wouldn't even respond to me or my mom after I was attacked. my mom was added into her call script that if if something happens to him i will be sure to show

the call log that shows i've called you every single day for months and you have not responded she was doing this to jillibrand and schumer yeah we actually have uh some some video of that as well this is your mother calling i think at this point is it jillibrand that she's calling yeah yeah This is Jill Brin. Yeah, hi. I'm glad to get somebody. My name is, and just for context, I'm a 76-year-old Jewish grandmother, a lifelong New Yorker, and a lifelong Democrat.

I have voted for Senator Gillibrand for every election she's been in, including when she was pregnant. So I have two questions. One, which you should have, because I've been calling every single day for a month, trying to get an answer, which I think it's kind of. Difficult for a constituent not to be able to get an answer from her own senator. So the first question is why she didn't sign on to the letter of October 21st from Congress that went out to Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee asking for the release of the American teenager, American teenager.

You know that too? Mohammed, M-O-H-M-M-M-E-D. My balls just went back into my stomach. H-I-M, who's been held in communicato without any contact with his family since last February when he was abducted by the IDF. It's just like watching the amount of work and the sort of the team effort that you guys put into, getting the story out was really, it was really amazing. I mean, it's, it's interesting because you see the results.

that it actually did yield in the fact that he was let me tell you something that happened that I haven't talked about yet actually. There were a couple of lawmakers who started publicly calling for it. Like Van Hollen was the big one, Merckley, Peter Welch, and a handful of others. Some politicians who are supported by APAC started working behind the scenes. to get them out. I think because they were tired of getting Hectored, they didn't want to be blamed, but they couldn't do it publicly. And so, like, I'm not going to name names yet. Can you just get this out of the press, please? Yeah, no, exactly. It was almost like they needed an alibi or they needed just like

something to get us off their back. And so like, in other words, they had no sort of sincere interest in doing it. They were afraid to do it publicly. Well, I don't know about their sincerity, but they were afraid to do it publicly. And there was just enough pressure on them that they just put their staffs on making some calls. And like I know of some, you know, the irony is that I've seen some of these politicians now getting attacked for not doing anything when the reality is like they did actually, but they are more afraid of announcing that they helped to save an American child. Yes. Because of the repercussions from APEC. Then they are of being. known as somebody who didn't help, which is just like so unbelievable.

It's so bizarre. And, and I think it's like this, you know, freeing of. Let me just say, Matt, actually, Schumer, Schumer and Jill Brand were not among those people. They did absolutely nothing, but sorry, go on. Yeah, no, they weren't. And you had pointed that out in the, um, the tweet, uh, when Chris Van Hollen said something, uh, which is, you wrote at Senn Schumer at San Jillibran. here's a layup for you.

And I think it's so funny the way in which this is kind of described as a layup because it is, because there is no downside. There is no downside, at least that I can perceive, for just being publicly for the release of an American citizen who's being held on trumped up charges in the West Bank. The idea that they would do nothing about this is... So what, mind-boggling. So what finally, I mean, some of this is speculation, but what we think sort of pushed it over the line was we got enough pressure on politicians, pressuring them to call the embassy to demand that they act, that they got somebody in the embassy to visit Muhammad. And his report was pretty bleak.

I mean, it was both the embassy report. And also, he got a hold of a prison medical report, which corroborated everything that had been said before about the severe weight loss, the scabies, also said that basically his mental health was deteriorating. Also, you know, lots and lot over almost 100 people have died in these prisons. Healthy people have died in these prisons since October 7th. Later found out that one of those people, 17-year-olds was Muhammad's cellmate, dropped dead in front of him from starvation and dehydration. and untreated colitis and other things. And so we finally get enough pressure to get somebody in the embassy to visit and get a medical report.

Then we start calling lawmakers and reading the medical report to them and sending it to them and saying, are you aware that there's an American kid who could die in Israeli military detention? Are you going to do anything about that? That then triggers a little more media coverage and then it gets both the lawmakers and the media to start calling Israeli authorities to get

comment on it. So now suddenly it's not just U.S. politicians, it's not just the U.S. Embassy, but now the prime minister's office, the prison system, the national security office, are also getting calls from U.S. lawmakers and from the media who at a certain point starts covering it a little bit. I think ABC, yeah, ABC finally did a story, NPR did a story. And so what happens then is that for a moment, Israel double-distance. down on keeping him. So there was just a couple weeks ago. They put out a wild statement, right? Just a couple weeks ago they, well, first the Israeli embassy in Washington circulated a memo to U.S. lawmakers that basically denied all of the medical issues and just withheld a bunch

of information. It stated as fact that he had thrown stones, it didn't say alleged. And it was just so full of, like, misinformation and omissions and just smears, frankly, that, again, when we were then following up with those lawmakers, we were pushing them to say, hey, like, are they trying to silence you? Is the Israeli embassy in Washington trying to prevent you from speaking out about this? Then Nanyahu's office puts out a statement and accuses Muhammad of a commission. a potentially deadly crime. And that, basically those two things pissed people off.

It pissed off both the people who had already been like sort of making calls on his behalf. And so we started seeing way more people get engaged in that campaign. And it seemed at least with some of the lawmakers that we spoke to to piss them off because they're basically like, don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. Right. I mean, like you're obviously lying. to us and you're trying to silent, you're manipulating us. And I guess that these politicians even have a limit. And so then basically in the last like two weeks, the pressure gets dialed up

even further. And there's something like behind the scenes stuff that I can't talk about. But we, basically the family's lawyer, starts working more closely with the U.S. Embassy at this point. And in the days before Thanksgiving, it starts to seem like maybe there's, a deal on the table. But, you know, we didn't want to hold our breath, obviously. Sure. And then the night before Thanksgiving, I was up all night because they had a hearing in the morning in Israel, which is the middle of the night in New York. And yeah, he was released. I'm going to write more about what actually happened, but technically it was a guilty plea. They had no choice. But to do it and, you know, he was credited for time served and there was a fine, you know, obviously like the whole thing is illegitimate.

But at that point, it was just desperation to get this kid out of prison. And so on Thanksgiving Day, he gets out. And it was just, you know, really euphoric moment. I mean, certainly in my house, of course, in the Ibrahim family too. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the photos and the videos like he's. extremely gaunt. So he gets out. And then, you know, the other element of this story, which has been tricky, is that, you know, there's these three other kids who were arrested the same day as Muhammad, who were, you know, they accused of being at the same rock throwing incident.

And Muhammad's family really wanted to fight for all of them together. It sort of put his family in an impossible position, though. It's like you want to do everything you possibly can to save your kid and your kid is the only one who has American support or like any sort of, you know, obligatory American support. Right. So what ended up happening was they focused on getting a deal for Muhammad. As soon as that deal happened, the lawyer then began working with the families of the other three kids and basically went to the judge and the prosecutor and used it as leverage to say he got a deal. He's accused of the exact same things. And, you know, he did some lawyerly magic, I guess. And yesterday, the other three kids were released, which was just amazing news. That

video you just shared is one of the other three kids getting out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that is really sweet. I mean, this is a baby. I did. And it's, you know, just so lucky that there was an American involved in this to, like, to provide leverage. And again, to provide the, like, the crucial shame. 350 plus other kids are still. It's crazy. And, and it's also, you know, it's, I think, lucky that, you know, it's, it's a mixture of luck, but it's also. you putting in the work, you and your mother together, putting in the work to get the word out

to make this not just another tragic story that's going on in the West Bank or that's going on in Gaza, you know, it's fighting against that sort of fatigue that people, that Israel's counting on is essentially. It felt like, I mean, the reason I latched on to the story, I mean, a number of reasons, for starters just on its own merit. Also, I was just like sincerely shocked and continue to be shocked at the lack of coverage. I mean, the New York Times has not even mentioned his name, which even like taking their bias, their political ideological bias outside of it, like how is this not newsworthy?

It's crazy. I mean, it's so crazy. Even if you're going to mention his name to smear him like you probably would if you mentioned his name. At least it would be a name drop. Instead, it was this. a concerted, I mean, I can't prove it was a concerted effort to remain quiet about it, but that's what it very much seems like. The fact that I don't know what other explanation,

like one of their, you know, a Palestinian American child finds himself in prison, no idea how it happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, it's nuts. And, you know, I think what's interesting about this beyond, you know, the, the tragedy of it is it, it's, the fact. that he was released flies in the face of this helplessness, this either learned or faked helplessness that politicians have about what they can and can't do with regards to what Israel decides to do. Like, clearly, the pressure worked. Clearly, you can pressure politicians into pressuring the Israeli government into doing the right thing. But it's like they have to be seen as being publicly up against it like the the default posture is is deference to israel but it's

like if you have the public excuse of like I'm kind of getting it from both ends here from this this mom that's that's up my ass about it yeah that's that's the only way to listen I'm happy you have your own state but this Jewish mother I don't know I don't know if I can handle this by the way there was a lot of Jewish mothers a lot of people in general calling I mean my mom was like sort of leading a network of them but There were, you know, certainly like there were people in Florida who were actually picketing every single day or every single weekend. I mean, so there were there were lots of people who eventually got involved, despite the best efforts of the mainstream media to not report on it. But, but what I was going to say is that one of the reasons I decided to sort of latch on to this story in addition to just like everything I already said is that it felt like achievable.

Like this is one of the, like there's no way to stop the genocide, right? There's nothing I can do. There's no amount of phone calls I can make that's going to, like, save, you know, a building in Gaza from being demolished or something like that or to end the occupation. But this felt like something that was achievable. And I also want to say that, like, I think that, you know, if I may, the power of independent journalism is that, like, even if imagine a world where the New York Times did do a story about this, or you don't have to imagine, the Washington Post did do a story. They do one story and then it's done, right? But like your editor is not going to let you write about it every day for six months or four months. But, you know, independent journalists can just keep hammering on it over and over and over

and just keep picking apart every line, just keep applying more and more pressure and keep activating people to be enraged about it. And I think that that, you know, ultimately played a pretty central role in it. Yeah. But it is, you know, I think that the fact that. that the other three kids were released yesterday. I mean, I'm really happy about it,

both because those kids are free now, but also because it, again, it extends us beyond just helping the American kid, and it shows that, like, actually there's more we can do. We can help more people.

But, yeah, I mean, it really was sort of revealing about, like, the U.S. just how much it takes to get U.S. lawmakers to do a little bit for something that is like so obviously. For what is like,

first of all, Like you said, there's no political downside. It's a winner. And it's still so hard to get anybody to give a shit about it. But eventually- Do you see that hold loosening a little bit? Like when you're talking to these politicians or to their staffs, you know, because we're seeing like this Herculian effort employed against Zoron in New York and that effort. that effort failing, is there more room for U.S. politicians to be honest or to try and

flex a little bit against Israeli, you know, orthodoxy? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, definitely. Like, I mean, you know, it's been like well documented just changes in public sentiment. And, like, when I was in D.C. in September, I was with Rachel Corey's parents. Rachel Corey, for those who don't know, was an American activist, 22 or 23.

She was killed by a soldier in Gaza, ran her over with a bulldozer. They've been going to Washington for 20 years. And they said there has been a huge change in just, like, politicians even willing to hear them out and willing to, like, express outrage. and to publicly express outrage, I think that where it's still falling short is, I mean, I'll give you a perfect example. Peter Welch, who's a senator from Vermont, yeah, Vermont. He gave a speech on the Senate floor in October about settler violence. And he held up a photo that I took of a settler clubbing a grandmother. And he gave the speech and it was, you know, like righteous outrage about the violent settler movement.

But it sort of culminated in him calling on the Israeli government to rein in the settlers and on the military to reign in the settlers, which of course, like they are the government. Like the government are the ones funding and arming and supporting these settlers. And so what you're not hearing somebody like Peter Welch say, I mean, you hear like probably Rashida Talib say it and maybe a handful of others, but somebody, even I think Chris Van Hollen, I don't think you're going to hear them say, you know, this entire state is behind this project of ethnic cleansing. Well, I don't want to say what Chris Van Hollen has or hasn't said. But in general, like, you're not seeing big time politicians, senators, just like inditing

the entire Israeli government and the entire Israeli state in the, violence in the ethnic cleansing in the genocide in Gaza in I mean they still frame the violent settlers as fringe and radical right extreme and that's just like it's not going to cut it because it's a network that is deeply plugged into the state and the military and so to answer a question at I'm like yes there's definitely been change and I would call it progress but we're so a long way to go before 99.9. 0.9% of U.S. lawmakers are willing to actually like explain the problem that is leading to these symptoms, as opposed to just sort of calling out these symptoms and, you know, telling Israel they

need to fix it. Right. I mean, at this point, it's just, it's funny to watch as someone who has been paying attention for longer than October 7th. Funny to watch how we have now pushed the American political class into slightly agreeing with the position that they held in the 90s, in the early 2000s, which is that, like, we are against illegal settlements and illegal settlers. These are, you know, violations of international law. This is

the same liberal Zionist sort of fallback position that has been around for a long time. the fact that we have now pushed them back into a liberal Zionist fallback position is progress in, but also incredibly, incredibly Sisyphian to look at it from a larger, you know, vantage point. Because, you know, we've, okay, we've gotten a few senators to talk about illegal war criminals. Beyond that, it seems to be a much bigger ask, but we are seeing some movement on that at the very least, you know, in terms of condemnations of what Zionism is from, you know, just regular people, but also, you know, politicians like Rashida Talib and Ilhan Omar, you know, being outspoken about their, you know, anti-Israel stance. think it's it's not nothing but it is incredibly piddling compared to the wave of psychopaths we have in in public office um i want to say i just want to play a little bit more from your mom because i just i love when i love your mom and i love when a son me too i love my mom it's on the record mom

if you're listening i love you we all love you you are now everyone's mom and um We love you so much. And I just want to play her speaking about this with you and Ryan Graham. I just thought it was great. I love every child. They're Palestinian, they're American. I love those children. I am a Jewish mother and a Jewish grandmother.

They are my children as much as the world's children. They should be the world's children. That my congresspeople won't live. a finger when we give billions? I can't believe. I can't believe that after giving billions, if one of these people in a position of power, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee,

any one of these Congress people that's had dealings with Netanyahu, they said, we want this child released. I can't believe they wouldn't release that child. And that breaks my heart. Just wonderful and concise, you know, point that she's making there, just about, like, you know, human empathy for people. And there's one more clip I want to play in which you do something that is so something I would do that I was like, this is, this is fantastic. I have to play this for our audience. You show her

a tweet from one of these Hasbara psychopaths who are constantly in our right. replies and i ask one question to my mom actually just yeah somebody tweeted in response to the video um someone should call her back and explain her son as a self-hating coppo and instead of calling senators she should invest in therapy for the little capo spawn so i wanted to just you know give you a chance give her chance i love i just love you asking your mom can you tell you what happened right after this interview too oh please do can you respond to at zio nafoist Michael Ben's making some pretty interesting accusations here. Give her a chance to respond to that.

Well, as I said before, I am a proud Jewish mother. And as a proud Jewish mother, I have certain values. And to me, I have nothing but respect for my son, who I believe is the living embodiment of those values. And you see it when you see the videos of him in the fields with the olive farmers. And you see the affection that they have for him. This is not a self-hating capo. This is a proud Jewish man with Jewish values that hopefully were instilled from his father and me from when he was a child.

And, you know, my mom's family was exterminated in the Holocaust. Like entire branches of the family tree, you know, incinerated. And my dad's family was from the Middle East, and they also faced deadly anti-Semitism. So people are just constantly attacking me online, you know, from the right Zionist side, obviously, and saying, like, do you have any connection to being Jewish even? You're a Jew and name only, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I don't know how much more Jewish, like, we could possibly be. I mean, it's just.

I'd like somebody to explain to me how what the settlers are doing is different from the pogroms. that my father's family endured. I'd like them to explain that to me because I don't see a difference. And I learned all about the pogroms from my family. Bars. So good. Yeah, when she told you she loved you and was proud of you,

she did everything but like make you eat Kogel on camera to make sure you had enough to eat. Just squeeze your cheek and talk about your punum. It is, honestly, I've never been, I've never been more jealous. I was just like, this is, this is, I need my mom to, to tell me how much she loves me right now. The, the, um, just a couple things on that. One, like people who like my, my attackers online have started saying to me like, calling me like saying I live with my mom and I'm like a basement dweller in an in cell.

And I, it's just like, guys, I'm home for Thanksgiving and I love my mom. Okay. Like that is like, it's called being normal. Yeah, it's called being normal. It's like a loving relationship with a parent. Yeah. Just like, oh, somebody lives in the basement with their mom. But the other thing that happened is, you know, this was my mom's, my mom has been an activist her whole life, not a professional activist.

She's actually a gynecologist and obstetrician. But she was involved in the civil rights movement in the 60s and she's, you know, I was going to marches my whole life. but she's never been had a viral moment. She's never been like a public figure on the internet. And she discovered the comment sections of YouTube and Twitter. And let me tell you, it was a funny week home for Thanksgiving with my family, with my mom. We could not get her to stop reading the YouTube comments and the tweets.

And why do they keep calling you assadju? What is that's the true? She did keep asking me to explain these things here. I was like, Mom, I honestly can't explain it. You had to explain six, seven to your mother. It was really weird. Yeah, no, somebody called her a Hamas-loving hoe. That was one of her, one that she noted.

And, yeah, I mean, like, the, the Internet's reaction to my mom was, I mean, like, the vast majority of people were completely warm and, like, I think took her for what she said. And, like, I think it's clear, like, my mom. like my mom is completely a sincere person. By the way, that first video where she's making the call, that was a hidden, a secret video that my sister was recording. And somebody said to me, like somebody on the internet was like, oh, it's a setup, it's virtue signaling. And I was just thinking, like, if my mom knew that she was being filmed, the acting would have been so, like, ridiculous and over the top. Like, trust me, that is my mom not knowing she's being filmed.

Yeah. But anyway, the way that like some of these of Israel's most fervent, defenders. Like, you don't have to speak out against the Jewish grandma who's trying to save the American kid. Like, you can just be quiet. But like, the fact that you are so, like, insecure about Israel and so defensive about it that, like, you have to attack a Jewish grandmother who is trying to, who secure the release of an American child. Like, it's just so beyond the pill that I think it. I tell people all the time, it's free to shut the fuck up. Yeah. Nobody's making you do this. Why are you doing this? And even the people who are like over and over and over replying, like, did he throw a stone or not?

Did he throw a stone or not? I want to say to them like, let's say he did. Let's say he did. Then what? You think that he should be starved and beaten in prison for nine and a half months? But and it's like they, I think they do basically. Yes, yes, they're just complete sort of dead enders in that regard. Yeah.

And I think, you know, the, the obvious point to make is, of course, that you and your mother are, inconvenient to the narrative of this kind of like, yeah, this hive mind of Jewish pro-Israel sentiment where we are all one and anyone who is Jewish and steps outside of that or worse is descendant from Holocaust survivors and is, you know, complaining about what's happening in Gaza. To them, they're like, oh, no, this hurts the, the entire point we're making, which is that only we have ever, you know, experienced hatred and ethno-nationalist genocide. And yeah, I mean, they see you and it's a, it's also a reflection, I think, of their own, I don't know what you would call the usage of people's parents and or grandparents

who are pro-Israel in order to feel better about you yourself being pro-Israel but it's like they see that and they go oh no now now uh my you know my safety net um is being threatened because you have a jewish mother who uh is is saying that this is wrong and you know i thought it was just outsiders i thought it was just you know non-jewish people who are like this it it you know it's their it's their mother versus your mother and they're like well, my mom can beat up your mom and your mom must be a Hamas Ha. There's another, it's become like an inside joke in my family that, like, the response from Palestinian people has been so over the top and like warm and generous.

I mean, even before my mom got involved, just the response I always get when I go there. But now, like so many Palestinians express love for my mom that we now are saying, you know, people say, like, if things ever get really bad for Jews here, we'll go to Israel. For us, it's like, if things ever get really bad for Jews here, we'll go to the West Bank to be protected by the Palestinians against the other Jews that want to kill us. Oh, that's what they mean when they say, you know, it's complicated, the whole situation in the Middle East. But you did say something a moment ago that I'd love to dig into, which is when people come at you saying, did he throw a stone? Yes. Um, because settlers so often use their children as a first line of offense, um, kind of like, uh, you know, there's a kid swinging his fists in front of your face. It's your fault if you walk into it. Right. Yeah. Um, you know, like you wouldn't hit a kid, would you? You have to just let this kid do violence against you. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. There's, you know, there's no recourse for the Palestinians in those cases.

They have to just be insulted and sometimes hit by these children because they know that there's no justice for them. That, you know, if they retaliated against this, they, you know, they would meet some sort of, you know, endless administrative detention with, you know, beatings or worse. It's, you know, nobody's willing to kind of like take a look in their own backyard. right which is it's just a shame um and i i guess um did any of that come up in in your discussions with uh with the people in power or working behind the scenes this this uh kind of diametric opposition of the way that children are treated um you know on this same postage stamp of land but you know just based on their religion I mean, I think that most politicians who are actually engaged are aware of the sort of nefarious nature of the settler movement.

But I don't think that it's in this sort of public consciousness in Washington that, like you say, Adam, I mean, the children, the settler children are cannon fodder, basically. I don't think that's come up. And I mean, it's really shocking when you see it up close. Like I, on numerous occasions in October of my last trip there, had like children, children in my face, like just like a bizarro scene from like a, what is it? Children of the corn. I'm thinking of stepbrothers when Will Ferrell and John. Jesse Riley, get bullied by the kids when they're walking home. It's like you actually have these kids like circling you and getting in your face.

And they're just waiting for one of you to push them or punch them or something. And then daddy will be close behind with the gang with their guns. And, you know, people will get the shit kicked out of them or they'll get murdered or they'll get arrested or all of them. And I mean, it's really obscene. Like in another thing they do is when they're building a new outpost, they always have little kids around so that if you take, if you document it, if you take pictures or video, the parents immediately start accusing you of taking pictures of their children.

Like as if you're being creepy. So, yeah, I mean, they're just constantly using their kids as human shields. Yeah, they really are. And then, you know, simultaneously, Yes, I think there's a lot more to say about this rock-throwing accusation. And we're going to get into that. But first, we have to take a quick commercial break. So, everyone, please stick around.

We'll be right back. And we're back, Zbadazbarra, World's Most Moral Podcast. And once again, we're here with Jasper Nathaniel. How are you doing, Jasper? I'm still doing pretty good. Still doing good. Well, I have some bad news for you. You don't know your history.

I am going to show some tweets that happened pretty recently about a new guy on the Hasbara scene, which is it's always wonderful to see where that $150 million is going. And listen, I can't say for certain whether or not this is someone who is being paid to do Hasbara. but I will say they are... Some people do it for the love of the game. Some people do do it for the love of the game. But I will say that this person has been

pushed on my timeline so much that I can't help but think. It's insane. I don't know where this guy just materialized from. He materialized out of nowhere. We're talking about this guy, Adam Lewis Klein. He is a PhD candidate in anthropology at McGill.

and has a B.A. in philosophy from Yale. I love having his undergraduate major on his profile. How old are you, dude? What was your high school GPA? Yeah. What did you get on the SATs? Right. I want your SAT scores on there.

I want to know how many AP classes you took. It is very strange to me. But so this guy's been popping up all over my feed. and the first time that I was exposed to him was through this piece of, he does a lot of pro-Israel graphic design. And here is one of them. Oh, this is my first time seeing him too. Amazing.

It says, the tweet text says, if apartheid means segregation, discrimination, and exclusion, then BDS is apartheid. And the graphics says BDS is apartheid, which is an amazing point. claim. The Rothko estate would like a word. Yeah, first of all, I don't know if he's using AI to make these. I would love it if he is. But this had me respond to him.

BDS comes directly from the South African anti-apartheid movement, you idiot. And I mean, it was just such an hilarious inversion of reality where a lot of times you get these like guys doing pseudo like Orwellian stuff like I hate being a guy who says Orwellian to anything but that is the most pseudo Orwellian even worse yeah but I was just like Demi Orwellian yeah this is this was literally the exact opposite thing that he is claiming guys are do we think there's any chance that this is an extended deeply committed bit because like I And I'm actually being completely sincere. Like sometimes you say that, like, is this a bit? But you know it's like in this case, it actually kind of seems like it could be. I have thought this exact thing. I've been like, this is this me?

Am I blacking out? It's just sort of like American. It's a new Nathan Robinson show. The one thing that makes me think it's not is that he wrote for the free press. Yes. So like, I don't know, that would be such a deep commitment. Yeah. So like, I mean, I guess it's not a bit.

But the shit that he, you'll get into it. But like I actually, I cannot even believe this guy. This is anti-Zionism is a hate movement. This is some more graphic design he's done. This is a great, this is neo-blocking bullets or stopping them, anti-Zionism. He sees it now. So you've got to see through the matrix of what anti-Zionism actually is. He had one that he posted.

This is great. Uh, understanding libel vomit, all right? So, and it says, libel vomit, noun, a flood of rage-driven, copy-pasted anti-Zionist slurs, libels, and accusations meant not to debate in good faith, but to abuse, dehumanize and humiliate, quote, Zionists by casting them as monstrous and unworthy of belonging in society. And it's just got, I love the things it says, uh, he's got a speech bubble of a guy yelling. Is that say I think it's more of a vomit bubble. Is it say hospital supremacy?

Yeah. Because it says, because he has Jewish supremacy and ethnicity, but then like what is that other supremacy doing there? I, maybe just regular supremacy. You can't say. He also has supremacy at the top. apartheid resistance. I mean, this has got to be AI because it's not.

Resistance, genocide, baby killer, three L's and baby killer. Oh, I didn't notice it. Yeah, more and more, I'm like, this is AI. Jewish supremacy, ethnosate, these are all the buzzwords. We all get, like, accused of doing buzzwords when we say Israel is doing apartheid, as if, like, apartheid does not have a definition and people who have lived through South African apartheid, who can attest to the apartheid nature of Israel. But, yeah, this guy, I love this.

He also wrote a list. I love a list. The following acts of anti-Zionist racism, or the following are acts of anti-Zionist racism, calling someone genocidal or a genocide supporter, using slurs such as Zio or Zio-Nazi, forcibly defining another person as a Zionist without their consent or using the term in a way that bear no,

in ways that bear no relation to their own understanding of it. May I call you a Zionist? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I love using the term Zionist in a way that bears no relationship to that person's understanding of it. He's very, he's, he's, he's confused. I love that in his mind. He's like, no, no, no, it's actually, it's actually hate speech to call me a Zionist when my definition of Zionist is very personal to me and

only is my definition and is no one else's. And if you don't understand my personal belief, it's like you can do that literally anything. But anybody, however But anti-Zionism is a hate movement. That's okay to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's totally fine. Also, I just want to point

out, calling someone genocidal or a genocide supporter anyone like is it just too or is it literally always hatred to call someone

genocidal what if they are a Nazi what if it's Paul Pot yeah I mean If you're walking down

the street you see Pol Pot you see Paul Pot you call him genocidal or you see a guy next to him

saying I support Paul Pot that's anti-Semitism dude but he has been on a tear of just incomprehensible schlock posting and you and he had this great back and forth in which he um he gets on you um well first he explains rock throwing not as an act of resistance

you know for example david v goliath let's say to use a random example off the top of my head of rock throwing being used, he instead likens it to a completely a historical thing that I don't think I've ever heard in my life. Here it is what they don't tell students or the post-colonial academics who believe they are speaking truth to power, parenthetical, or is it just their power knowledge talking, is that throwing stones at Jews was, for centuries, a time-honored method of ritually humiliating inferior deemies across the Arab world. The practice is well documented by Lynn Julius, George Ben Sosan, Batyore, David Littman, and many others.

And now, in a typical Orwellian inversion, what was once a tool of subjugation and degradation has been rebranded as a noble symbol of, quote, resistance to oppression. So just to be clear, it is a trope, an anti-Semitic trope to throw rocks, period, because it harkens back to a time in which he's claiming that people were doing a humiliation ritual on Jews by throwing rocks. completely wild shit but you wrote since you keep inexplicably appearing on my timeline dropping in once more

to point out that this tweet is a textbook case of the academia brain rot you believe you're critiquing and this back and forth is just great he goes you love academia

when you think they're justifying your hate movement and you wrote I report from the ground dumbass and then he wrote you love no idea i do not know what this next response is supposed to me you love you and racism like what what is he talking about it just gets better yeah keep going incoherent again but but just want you to know that your tweets are downright hilarious to read after returning from the west bank to claim palestinian kids rose stones as a part

of some ancient ritual of jewish humiliation when they're being brutalizing by settlers and soldiers every day you are not a serious person. To which you responded, why not read the books I listed and educate yourself instead of exploiting Palestinian suffering for a hate

movement? A troll who gives homework. I love it. I also love a troll that hates the exploitation of Palestinian suffering. Yeah. I just hate the way it's exploited by people who want that suffering to stop. And you wrote, yes, after three days

of seeing your completely inane tweets all I can think is I want some of his reading recommendations feel free to check out my work on West Bank violence and offer a meaningful response but defaulting to hate movement every time is not

exactly a sign of intellectual strength he wrote I don't consume libel based reporting sorry anti-Zionism is a hate movement and then you posted this right here. My libel-based

reporting led to a terror indictment today. Thumbs up emoji. And this is from the Times of Israel. And this is the story of the man who beat this Palestinian woman with a club over the head for the

crime of being near him when it was clubbing time. And so he was actually faced a extraordinary. rare terror indictment, which it's another whole story. But it's, again, it's due to a pressure campaign. But, but, and like, you know, I want to be clear that I don't believe that, like,

it's the Israeli authorities that are going to, you know, fix this. But of course, that are going to, but my point here is like, do you think that the Israeli government would use my libelous anti-Zionist movement to make a terror indictment against a settler? and then like yeah keep reading but yeah so from this point he having no place else to go with his zionism is a hate movement he just uh anti zionism is a hate movement he just starts claiming well then if it's real then it's not a part of the hate movement to which why would you even respond if you are not part of the hate movement so he's he's kind of accidentally calling you a zionist which unfortunately is in one of his rules.

So that is unfortunate for him. He writes, fine, Ivanov, but that's not the same as anti-Zionist hate movement. I think it's a Chekhov reference, but like I don't know how it would relate. Honestly, this is when I started to think, oh, this guy's having an episode. And I still think that, to be clear, like I think there's something happening in his brain. A hundred percent. There's a sputtering quality to any time you start to pull at any thread of what the online Zionists start to say to you because any even slight examination of their thought

process unravels the whole thing because there are so many contradicting elements. And so I've seen exchanges like this a lot online where somebody just sort of starts sputtering fine Ivanov you know it just like yeah it goes off the rails yeah person to person it's like oh I can I can feel at least where this is coming from tonally but in this case I'm just like listen dude I don't get the reference and I'm not interested in reading the books that you've read in order to find it I'm not going to go I'm not going to even allow him to explain that one to me like I did not want to and then I had this and then I had this vision that I could like short circuit his brain by making him go back to the beginning of the thread.

I love that. Now knowing that I was an actual reporter who had done this kind of reporting and read it again and have it, you know, like halt his reasoning about the dimmy thing, but I don't know what happened. It's ultimate fantasy that we all have where we're going to be able to logic them

into some sort of consistent worldview. Yeah. It never happens. Yeah, you just wrote. cool now with that in mind read the thread from the beginning he he continues to go after you i didn't even see this until somebody sent it to me yeah um so yeah you had written so kids throwing stones in response to jewish terrorism that's is anti-zionist humiliation and he wrote jasper nathaniel is a reporter can i just say one thing matt please like this is this is obvious

but if we start the earth from scratch and there's no history, let's say we're starting at a time when there's no history. I love this. Thought experiment in time, baby. And aliens come down with like advanced weaponry to try to kill you. Yeah. What is like just the most natural intuitive thing that people would start doing to defend themselves? I'll ask if they aliens have a right to exist.

They would pick up rocks and start throwing them. Like, that is literally, like, maybe the anti-Semites would. I mean, it's literally just like, that's what you have access to. If you have no weapons, if you're up against a much stronger opponent, all you can do is pick up rocks and throw them. I mean, it's literally, it's literally in the Bible. I mean, at this point, it's like, what are we doing here? Are we pretending that rock throwing hasn't been the most on the nose symbol of resistance to a more powerful force? It's just so hilarious to think that, like, one of these little kids sees like a fucking Murkava tank coming at him.

It's like, I'm going to humiliate these second-class citizen Jews inside the tank by throwing a stone at them. Yeah, these inferior deemies have come to our town again to kill my family. I'm going to humiliate them with this pebble. It's just, by the way, the settlers fucking, I got hit by a stone by a settler. Oh, shit. throwing stones all the time that is that's they're doing anti-semitism and i threw stones when i was a kid not often yeah i was i threw a stone from time to time yeah sometimes you know it was to it was to humiliate the deemies in my school well of course listen but i mean listen that's a different time it is just

it's wild that he just continues on this completely a historical path of so jasmine nathaniel is a reporter on Israel but knows nothing about Middle Eastern history. He didn't know that the stone throwing has been a practice of humiliating Demi's minorities with second-class status according to Islamic law for centuries. Then he acts deeply surprised. He's a reporter on Israel who knows nothing about Middle Eastern history. But of course, which he already said. He already stated that. But of course, this isn't exactly unusual. I mean, yeah, at this point... If only there was a minority in this situation with second-class status that's constantly

being humiliated by, like, some sort of power structure and colonial forces. Unfortunately, there's not, Adam. We can't... This is the historical context forever. And you point out, well, you say, this person is clearly having some sort of manic public unraveling. And while I am somewhat concerned for his well-being, I think that for the greater good, it is absolutely critical that we help him watch a podcast with Sarah Hurwitz, ASAP. Couldn't agree more.

I really need the liberal Zionist like Bad Hasbara Hour. This guy is doing so much harm to this movement that he, I mean, I don't know about so much. Like we're talking about, you know, Twitter, but, yeah, like, that's why I kind of think it's a bit. I mean, this guy is just writing these, he can't decide if he's like a scholar or a troll. Yes, he like replies. If you, if you click on his profile and just look at his replies, it's just all fucking day. He's replying to people who are like, like yesterday, yesterday, I shared a headline from an article in the Jewish news syndicate, which is like a new syndicator, obviously, but like extremely Zionist. And the headline was about parents at a settlement who.

are not sending their kids to school because they're afraid that the Palestinian workers who are employed by the school are coming too close to the playground, unsupervised. And then I had a quote in the article in the tweet. I literally did not editorialize it whatsoever. And he just responds anti-Zionist libel. It's like what what are you even talking about? Anti-Zionism is a hate movement. This is he keeps posting this over and over to anyone who is, yeah, he, he, He doesn't know what he's talking about. He is not sure where he stands as either a troll or as like a serious, you know, Sarah Hurwitz. I think, I think there's something.

And by the way, like a couple other people, I think I shared some screenshots. Like, oh, yeah. People who are very much on his side. Yes. Like other Zionists. Yeah, start comment. This guy writes for the Jerusalem Post. And like, people are just responding like, yeah, I don't know about this one, buddy.

Oh, yeah. Seth Franzman, who was, yes, a writer for the Jerusalem Post. I've never met a Middle East expert or anyone in the Middle East in 20 years of researching and spending time in the region who has described stone throwing this way. Stone throwing has nothing to do with that. Then another one, this is another, quote, anti-Zionist is a hate movement guy calling it a bit of a stretch. So this other account, who is on? Adam's side, right? Sounds a bit of a stretch. Not sure if this historical fact really plays any role in the meaning, forming context for Palestinian stone throwers.

This is the type of thing that, I mean, I don't know how if you guys have friends in academia or like, have you ever been around it, but like, this is the type of like thing that happens to people who are in, you know, a PhD program or something. It's like they completely intellectualize everything to the point. that they lose sight of like just very basic obvious facts that you would experience if you stepped outside. Yes. And so these people who.

And so these people who are, um, the meaning that I will form with this. Right. And so these people who are, I guess probably not academics are like trying to rein him in. They're like, hey, you sound, you sound kind of silly. Don't, you know, stop saying these things. You're not helping us. I love it too because like this person also is like, look, I'm willing to grant you. that this is some sort of historical fact, which it is not. I mean, I'm sorry, but like this idea

of, uh, I mean, the entire deemy narrative is, uh, is some Hasbara shit. We discussed this on the last episode, but like the person who essentially popularized this, um, you know, idea of deemyhood for, uh, for Jews as being some sort of like, uh, this second class citizenship status that was meant to humiliate and eventually, you know, drives the Jews out after the formation of Israel. This, the person who popularized this entire idea was essentially doing, is responsible for far right-wing anti-Muslim conspiracy theories that are still popular to this day. Like, it is completely a historic to be like, oh, yes, stone throwing, a past time of anti-Semitism for the, the Middle East. It's just part of this narrative that we all are supposed to automatically believe, which is, oh yeah, there's a sort of a blood feud between all Arabs and all Jews

since the beginning of time. Just not true. I kind of think that this guy is going to just like disappear at some point. And it's going to be like, was he even real? Like where? Where did he come from? Where did he go? Jasper, you're going to look at the mirror one day. And you're going to see this staring back at you. And you're going to be, oh, no. Can you click on the profile image? I mean, it's like, it's kind of haunting. Oh, I, I have to, I have to get a separate picture of it in order to do it.

No, no, no, no, don't worry. We might not want to do that to the, to be like, uh, yeah, watching the ring video. The ring, yeah, exactly. Um, or I mean, he, he is, I, I actually, I'm not even kidding. Like, I think that there's something, he is having some kind of a manic episode or something and I don't even want to like go hard too too hard on him I know I know reason but like I don't I actually just I I try to get inside the heads of these people and understand what they're doing and I really can't figure out what he's doing because it just looks ridiculous like he's being just

completely um like across the board people on both sides are like either making fun of him or like telling him to please be quiet right because he just keeps going it's like his entire identity so far is lobbing himself up for the most obvious Aleup dunk of all time he just keeps setting himself up and and I think even

his you know his own compatriots are just like hey everything you're doing just looks stupid and this doesn't really work anymore and I think actually I've seen that a lot with the Sarah Hurwitz too despite like a couple of defenders out there I would say there was pretty much radio silence

on the clips that were shared from, you know, her various different media hits in which she, you know. It's nay on the Mountain of Skolesmaid. Yeah. Like, there was, there's kind of this aversion I see, at least, you know, even in Zionist, mainstream Zionist institutions to be on the defense of liberal Zionists, be. or at least liberal Zionists who sound insane because they know there's no defending being like damn the problem is holocaust education taught people that holocausts are bad we need to stop that

they they understand that that looks really stupid in whatever context it's in but i do love that you are supportive of this guy um you just wrote you're doing great man everyone is everyone applauding you keep it up and it's it's that kind of positive energy that makes me love having you here on the badass bar we're all in the same tribe you know like that's right we we we're all at the end of the day we've all had stones thrown at us in a constant in a trope that we all know about yeah we're all out here fighting anti-semitism yeah in various different ways um different ways so yeah uh shout out to Adam Louis Klein or Lewis Klein.

By the way, he is a paid subscriber to my substack. See, this is important to know. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I actually thought about tweeting that, but I thought that he might sue me or something. I very much wanted to

doctor a photo of, like a screenshot of my Twitter in which you can see like the different alts. And I wanted to put his face. And then be like, oh, no, I've been discovered. Because at this point, honestly, I think if he were like a Jasper Nathaniel, you should try to get him on the show, honestly. He might come on.

I would love to hear him speak in tongues. It would be so nice. Such a break from, you know, all the like coherent conversation that we tend to have here. But yes, Adam, open invitation. please come on and tell us about Deemey Hood. I would love to hear more. But Jasper, thank you so much for coming on the Bad Has Barber podcast and talking with us for a bit.

I really appreciate it. Always a good time. Total pleasure. It's always great to talk to you, and it's always great to read your work. I want to just, like, stress for the audience to please not only subscribe to Infinite Jazz on a substack, but become a paid subscriber because something you pointed out earlier, I think bears repeating, which is that independent journalism, there's a reason that people are turning more and more to it. And one of the reasons is because of the fact that without having an

editor on your back, who is either, you know, in some cases an ex-Israeli intelligence, or is just someone who's like just trying to sell papers. Without having that, you actually can't get the type of work that you are doing. You know, you can't be leading a, for lack of a better word, crusade to try and get this kid released from Israeli prison. And so, you know, I think the people who I want being journalists are the ones who are doing real journalism, independent journalism like yourself. And that's can only be possible by subscribing as a paid subscriber to Infinite Jazz. So please do that. Make this Jasper's full-time job. I mean, it essentially is, but make it one in which he can afford to move. One that doesn't drain my bank account. Yeah. We want him to be able to move out of his mom's basement, guys. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. This guy. Again, I do love my mom, but I'm ready to get my own place. I just turned 38.

He just turned 38. He is begging you to help him leave his mother's place. And there's a 20% off right now for the now through the holidays. That's wonderful. Yeah. So 20% off. Please everyone subscribe as a paid subscriber to Infinite Jazz. Follow him wherever you follow people on social media.

Anything else to plug for you, Jasper? Um, nope. Thank you. Those are the things. So yeah, do that. If you're someone who, uh, needs it easy for you, go to the show description. You just click the link and you can subscribe right away. So please do that. Jasper, always a pleasure to talk to you.

Always a pleasure to look at you. I forgot to open with, uh, the beginning. Uh, I was going to let you know that it is kind of unfair that you are. um both an incredible reporter and a righteous person and just drop that gorgeous i mean you're just the you're way too handsome and i just found out that you're fucking six four that's yeah you understand how unfair that is the chin the jaw line is very unfair the jaw line i was talking about this with my wife she so what she said is that francesca she said she said that you Stop looking at it.

Like, you looked at the camera in this way. Don't do that. Stop making the telephone sign with your hand. Yeah. Stop. Oh, no. He printed out his number and he's holding on an index card. No, she said, yeah, he looks like a face-tuned version of you, Matt, where he went on and you.

Matt, imagine if you were handsome. Yeah, essentially, she said that. I was like, hey, first of all, I'm very handsome. And the only comeback I had was, I was like, yeah, but I bet. he's like, you know, probably like five, seven. Oh, I thought you were going to make a speculate on the size of my junk. No, no. I did that for myself, though.

I did. I was like, listen, I might be a little more round-faced, a little bit more pale and more sizable breast cup than, you know, Jasper. But it's long and it's the anyways. And I just want to thank, I just want to thank Francesca for following me. on Instagram recently. One of my newest followers. Anyways, listen, if you post thirst traps, she will show me them. So just let me know.

But yes, you're very handsome and you're very great to talk to. Thank you for being the perfect package. And your mom loves you. Everyone, subscribe. Become a paid subscriber. Do it. I appreciate it. Of course.

Of course. All right. Thank you out there, everyone. patreon.com slash bad as barra. That is barra at gmail.com. For all your questions, comments and concerns. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, Adam, are you ready? I'm ready. From the river to the sea. Sometimes only a Jewish mother can get you free. Oh, I like that. Jumping jacks was us. Push-ups was us. Gopma-ga us. All karate us. Taking Molly us. Michael Jackson us.

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, breeding air, us, drinking water us. We invented all that shit. Thank you.