Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Bad Hasbara 16: Blood Liebel, with Zachary Foster

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Matt is back with sometimes co-host Daniel Maté and talking to Palestine historian Zachary Foster about the erasure of Palestine and the blood libel smear.Visit Daniel's website at https://www.danielmate.com/ and check out his mental chiropractic service.Buy tickets to see Matt Lieb and Francesca Fiorentini headline the Punch Line in Sacramento on Sunday, March 17th at 7pm. JOIN THE NEW PATREONSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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All of garden us White foster us Zabra Hamas Hasbaras us and welcome to Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast. What's up, everyone? It's Matt Lieb here. So glad that you guys are joining us for another kick-ass episode of this podcast,

which is taken over my entire life. Just a reminder, give us five stars in a review over on the, you know, like Apple Podcast app and go on Spotify and subscribe there and leave a, you know, the comment under the episode. You can do that now. And, you know, just if you're watching this on YouTube, hit the subscribe bell and shit. I don't know what it does, but people say to hit the bell. So we're going to do that.

Just please do that. If you want to support this podcast, Patreon.com slash bad hasbara. It's in the ticker. I put it there in the ticker. So support us. And finally, if you're in Sacramento, March 17th, that's a Sunday at 7 p.m., please come to the Sacramento Punchline and see me and my wife, Francesca Fiorentini. We're going to be co-headlining at the Sacramento Punchline.

It's going to be a lot of fun. A lot of great people are going to be there. We're going to have a great comic opening for us, and it's just going to be a good time. So please, come. If you're not around, tell your friends who live in the SAC area or in the just general SF Bay area. It's not that far, or if they just live in the West Coast and they have like a wife or a husband who's a flight attendant, they can fly for free. So fly to Sacramento and see me and Francesca do stand up at a club that's in a mini mall next to a mattress store. It's a lot of fun.

Please go do that. Okay, I am bringing in my sometimes co-host and one of the best people that I know. He is back. He did a little European vacation. I saw the pictures that look like a lot of fun. Ladies and gentlemen, Daniel Matte is back. I'm still grooving to the theme song. Yeah, hell yeah. Oh, I thought you were doing the Twilight Zone for a second. Well, it's similar. It's similar. The one note is different. That's the Twilight Zone. This is da da da da da. Yeah, that's right. Wow. You know, see, that's how I know you're an actual musician. You can hear the difference in one note. You're just like, I know that. I know the difference. How you doing, buddy? How are you, Matt? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing all right. I'm, you know, just like, just to live my life trying to do this, trying to hold down a thousand different jobs at the same time and not lose my mind and raise my baby. So things are normal and good. That's how things are here. Yeah. When I hear myself say, I'm good. Then I remember what time we're living in and I'm like, well, not that I'm lying, but that I'm, I don't know, I'm generating that answer. It's not like, you know, you have to sort of. You're not actually checking in some goodness. I'm not fully checking in all the way. I'm not checking it all the way deep down. Right. But I like that you're trying to put out positive energy into the world. I am. I guess I guess what I'm saying when I'm saying,

I'm good. I'm aligned. I'm feeling like, and given the circumstances, I'm being who I want to be, who I intend to be, and I'm doing what I can and doing what I do. And generally speaking, things are, you know, I'm not, I'm not feeling stuck in the way that I sometimes might be. So, and I, and unlike last time we recorded an episode, I'm not exhausted. I was really tired last time. Oh, were you? Um, yeah, no, the second last time, the second last time, the one with Noah Kassman, I was doing all right. Does your wife, do you guys know, you know kids in the hall obviously, right? Of course, big fans. Are you, are you aware of the character Francesca Fiore? Yes, very much so. Yeah, I bring it up a lot. Francesca Fiore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course,

that makes you Bruno Punch-June. That makes me Bruno Ponce Jones. I never read. That's right. If you're not familiar with the Canadian sketch comedy legends kids in the hall, you should really check them out. I mean, listen. They got so many great sketches who's to blame for the rain anyways uh yeah so i'm uh you know i'm glad you're doing good i'm i'm feeling okay you know what i would like you know what i would like i would like it if uh i could just do um the podcast that i want to do in my life and then uh go on the road and do comedy but i also have a day job where i produce other people's podcasts and i don't want to do that anymore guys so if you want to help me out you want to

help out the world. No, it's just me. You know, subscribe and shit. I don't fucking know, but listen. Absolutely. Make this guy's life. Make this guy's life easier. Make it easier for him to do what he loves and what we love. Isn't this guy, aren't, don't we love him, folks? Doesn't he help us out in this time? Isn't he doing an essential service? Hey, I'm doing something. I don't really know what it is that I do, but people seem to like it. So I'm, I'm just grateful for that. Listen, There's people who are in a lot worse positions in me. And that's so I am grateful. And I'm grateful to you for being here, dog.

I love having you. And I love also having our guest. We have a third chair in the Bad Hasbarapod today. The third chair, the most moral guest. And this guest is a historian of Palestine. If you haven't seen his appearances on other people's podcasts, they've been really great, really informative, really just fascinating guy, very smart. Ladies and gentlemen, everyone else, welcome Zach Foster.

Thank you so much for having me, Matt and Daniel. Hey, what's up, man? What is going on? Great to be here. Yeah. How about you? You feeling aligned? I'm feeling very aligned. Matt, did you work in tech? Did you work in business? let's get aligned dude I've never one who said it yeah no I I I worked at a tech startup for a year and the the startup was um you know when you go on like Amazon like watching Amazon Prime and while you're watching the movie it'll tell you what

actors on screen you know that you know that's I worked at currently currently speaking Tom Cruise as this as this as a this character that's right yeah i worked at a company that was like we're going to do that and i remember so my job was watch movie make sure a guy on screen is guy we say it is and i was like this is a dream job so that's that's my one experience working at a tech office so as far as i know uh tech jobs are when you see movie all day i can't remember that i think i think there was i seem to remember i don't remember exactly who the mix-up was, but I was watching one of those movies with that feature, and they just got one actor

completely wrong. It was like... It was iced tea, but they said it was ice cube. Wallace, Sean, you know, Wallace Sean was on screen, but they said it's DMX or something. Like, I can't remember, but it was something ridiculously in Congress. I would love to hear Wallace. I would love to hear Wallace, Wallace Sean saying X, come give it to you. Xcon, give it to you. That's, that's my impression of him. I mean, I mean, basically, get at me. Get at me, dog. I mean, I mean, actually, really, it's basically the, I mean, isn't that the thing? You just get me. That is. After all, how, how I think, Rough Riders role. That is. But, Zach, you are someone who, uh, I've seen a lot of your, your tweets, um, and I've seen a lot of your appearances.

And when I asked you to be on this podcast, you sent me an old poster of a stand-up comedy show that we were both on in San Francisco. So I have to ask, wait, do you still do stand-up? I'm a retired stand-up comedian at this point in my life. I will eventually come out of retirement and return to the stage. when the time, when the correct time presents itself, but that time has yet to come. Okay, all right. Yeah, you're waiting. You're waiting in the wings. You're going to figure out your time of when you're going to just start busting out those jokes. I mean, I was, like, shocked at it because, like, it was an older poster.

It had, like, kind of all the Bay Area classics, you know, like, at least if you were in the open mic scene in the Bay Area comedy scene. in like, circa 2013, I believe. Yeah, I think it was like 2017 or 18, but yeah. Oh, was it? Oh, man. Could have been the same people. It could have been the same people in the open mic scene in 2013 as 2018. That would not surprise me.

Yeah, this is about, this is probably, definitely is. But so I wanted to ask, you started, when did you start, when did this start becoming something that you were interested in. I'd love to hear about your history. I mean, your own personal history would be interesting too about like, you know, if you grew up with Zionism, you're Jewish. Am I correct about that? Yes, that's correct. Yeah. So I'd love to hear your personal history. Totally, yeah, I grew up Jewish. I grew up very Jewish. Went to Jewish schools, went to Jewish Zionists summer camps, Jewish Zionist youth groups,

went to Israel with my Jewish Zionist youth group. Can I ask which Jewish Zionist youth group? Because I was in one too. Oh, yeah, multiple. So I was first part of Kadima when I was in middle school. And then I was part of both BBI as well as USY. Don't ask me what those letters stand for. United Synagogue.

Yeah, bring your own. Bring your own occupation. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I think BBIO was like the reform or more secular Jewish Zionist youth group. And then USY was the conservative with a capital C, conservative Jewish youth group. The latter was the group that sent me to Israel when I was, what, 15, 16 on one of these Hasbara trips. You go to Poland for a week.

You tour the concentration camps, Auschwitz, Sobibur, et cetera. you're taught that and then you after a week of a hellish week of sorrow and and just you know you're crying for a whole trauma and just driving two hours into a forest

and just seeing a mound of ash then you're taking directly to Israel where you're taught that this is the solution to 2,000 years of Jewish persecution and suffering it's such a great it's such a great pedagogy It's like teaching history antonymically, like you get like opposites together.

It'd be like, this is the good part of history and this is the bad part of history. And the good part of history solved the bad part of history. Yeah, yeah, famously. Such nuance and depth and sophistication to that way of teaching. No, I like when things are both black and white. That's all the colors. Yeah, so that that was a fun trip. and that got me super interested in Israel. At that time, I don't think I knew what Palestine was.

I don't think I had ever met a Palestinian, despite having spent, what, five weeks in the Holy Land. Wow. And so that got me interested in Israel. And so started, started, you know, learning more, studying more, taking Israel classes in university, and then even spent a semester in Jerusalem as an undergrad where I first encountered Palestinians, right? You know, almost to my surprise, to my shock, right? I here I thought I was going to, you know, the holy city of Jerusalem to, you know, experience all that Jerusalem has to offer and was rudely awoken when actually, um, Jerusalem had too much to offer. Yeah, I was like, wait, how come the Arabs also make falafel? That's interesting. That's really curious. Wow. And, you know, the Arab's, cultural appropriators. Yeah, why did they steal it from the Jews? get your own food yeah um yeah so so that was sort of the entry point for me and that led me to do a month long trip in the balkans on a on a on a kind of a trip called abraham's vision which is now

defunct but it was a group of half jews half american jews half american Palestinians traveling around the balkans for a month trying to de exceptionalize israel palestine trying to learn how people, you know, trying to learn how, you know, ethnic groups are in conflict around the world. Yeah. So I'm curious, like, you know, with your historical lens looking back now, what did that reveal? Because I love hearing about de-exceptionalizing. I mean, that's like a out of left field, but so obvious when you think about it. It's the opposite of what I was joking about with the birthright kind of thing. Right. putting things in context and this conflict in particular is so it has such a gravitational pull

and it can seem so exceptional and that's important in some ways to understand the particularities but you also get into the places that i hate getting into where people like how can the jews go from victim to victimizer or like blah blah blah blah blah and not seeing the the bigger picture So what do you see as the universals? What do you see as the particularities? And what's the value in that perspective? Yeah. Obviously, there are important and significant differences between the conflicts in the Balkans in the 90s and Israel, Palestine. Sure. But there are also some very interesting similarities in parallels, one of which is, you know, the Serbs talk about Kosovo, the same way Israelis talk about

Judea and Samaria, as they would call it. Interesting. the occupied Palestinian West Bank, right? So, oh, the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, right? You know, it's like, really? And then you go to Kosovo and you're like, why are there these little Serbian enclaves militarized, like these little neighborhoods where they have special privileges and special rights and they're kind of scattered all around Albania, sorry, Albania and Kosovo.

Right. And it's just like, wow, that's, well, listen, I mean, that's a very politicized word, Daniel. No, they are, they are, in fact, settlers, right? So, you know, Serbia basically invaded and conquered Kosovo, you know, the same way Israel invaded and conquered the West Bank and established colonies in the West Bank, the same way Serbia established colonies in Kosovo. So it's a very similar dynamic. So, yes, they are, in fact, settlers. That's a good, that's a good word to use to describe them. Yeah.

Yeah. So just for my own clarity, so that trip, who organized that trip to de-exceptionalize the Israel-Palestine conflict? So there was an organization, which I believe is now defunct, but it was known as Abraham's Vision. And it was founded by some Bay Area Jews and Palestinians, if I'm not wrong. There's a guy by the name of Aaron Hahn Tapper. Maybe you're familiar with him. and there is ziyadh Aburich was one of the staff members on that trip he's a historian i believe somewhere in ohio he's based um but it was a kind of a joint venture of of israelis and you know

jewish americans jewish israelis palestinian so this wasn't a hesbarah trip this was this was something where you actually uh you were learning about these other conflicts as they did actually relate not as some sort of excuse as to why it to normalize this type of conflict No, that's exactly right. In fact, many of the organizers of this trip were themselves graduates of Seeds of Peace and were, you know, Seeds of Peace, this movement in the 90s, bring Israelis and Palestinians together and talk about Falafal al-Hummus

and how we all, oh, wow, Judaism and Islam have so much in common. But the problem with- Oslo's here, folks, everything is going to be great. Let's share recipes. But as you will know, the problem with that approach is that Israelis go back to their lives where they have political rights, where they vote for the government

that controls their lives. Palestinians go back to their lives where they're occupied, where they're living in a state of apartheid, where they do not vote for the government that controls their lives. And so actually what Seeds of Peace was doing is just papering over

was making Israelis feel good about occupation and apartheid. Palestinians go home feeling like total shit. And so Abraham's vision was a response to that and said, no, no, no, no. We're putting politics front and center. We're going to hash out these issues. we're going to talk about politics we're going to talk about the knuck about we're going to talk

about occupation etc yeah seeds of peace sounds to me like a legitimate use of the word normalization which is a word that gets tossed around a lot i've been accused of it and i would take it personally except i've seen some of the most radical and wonderful Palestinian voices that i know also accused of it it's kind of a knee-jerk thing for anyone who i don't know speaks the country who shall not be named name. But when you describe Seeds of Peace, that I get that normalization vibe of basically papering over the material differences, acting as if they don't matter, trying to jump to some sort of vibes-based conclusion, and in the process, erasing very real material power differentials, which would have to be rectified in any peaceful situation.

I think Seeds of Peace suffered from fundamentally the same problem that Oslo suffered from. which was that you have the Israeli government is both party to the Oslo Accords, right? So, and this is a piece would be that Jews are basically have all the power. Right. But basically Israel has all the power. They're both party to this agreement, but they're also the enforcer of the agreement. Right. And then they can also change the rules of the agreement.

So. Darth Vader style. Pray I don't change them further. So, you know, who wouldn't want to play in a soccer match where your opponents get to? Is Darth Vader? I'm keeping this going. I hope so, Abbas, for your sake. Ben Gvier is not as forgiving as I am.

Man. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you, Daniel, you brought up, you know, this idea of normalization is a pejorative, especially, you know, bringing up the name, you know, just in like some people have said it for, you know, you know, oh, saying Israel rather than the Zionist entity or something, which is like, no, it's actually the crumbling Zionist settler colonial entity, which is super catchy. Yeah, yeah, it just rolls off the tongue. And, you know, which is like, for me, I always, you know, I try to be sensitive to, I would say what I would call a general sentiment around, you know, verbiage or whatever, not like around language, because everyone does have like different

lines and whatnot. And, you know, I don't want to change the entire way I speak based on a single tone policeman because ACAB includes tone policing. I'm sorry. Yeah. But like, you know, Zach, as someone who's like an academic, as someone who is a historian, who understands the history of the region of Israel, of the Zionist entity, whatever you want to call it, I want to ask is the preferred nomenclature Israel or is it is not real?

Yeah, is not real. Which is the one I should use. Because Israel, I feel like it's like it's almost a good pun but every time I see it it just reminds you

when people would call him a Barack Obama and it'd be like, it doesn't hit. I always preferred Matt Christman's O'Bungler. Yeah. Oh, Bungler's great, because it's got that sense of using it ironically, but it's also fun earnestly.

It also makes me think of it. It also sounds like the hamburger to me somehow. Yeah. Which is a nice image. Robble, rubble. Rubble. You're stealing my thunder here. My best Israel Palestine joke in that set that I sent to you was I think it was something to the effect of, you know, Israel is not so much of a pal of Stein.

Wow. Listen, we all have our strengths. But, yeah, no, I mean, in a more serious note, talking about just the use of the nation's name, for example, is something that you've gone into in terms of the Hezbarra myths on the history of the word Palestine or Palestinians. or just like, you know, the totally ratio of the people in this kind of like broad movement of de-legitimization of, you know, the rights of these individuals. Can you speak more on that and kind of the way that that Hasbar is used today?

Yeah, so there's been a 100-year-long history. It dates all the way back to the 1920s, by the way, of this desire of, this desire among first Zionists and then Israelis to pretend as though these people who are living in Palestine before the Zionist showed up to pretend as if, A, they never called the place Palestine, and B, they never called themselves Palestinians. This is critical to the Zionist story because the Zionist story is all about creating a Jewish state in Palestine, a Jewish state in Palestine. And, you know, wouldn't it be great if these people were Arabs or maybe they were southern Syrians

or maybe they just called to play Syria? that means we don't have to share this land because these people may as well just go to all these other Arab countries. They're squatters. Right. You know, so this is the narrative. It's all fiction, right? In fact, Palestinians were calling themselves Palestinian. We have evidence at least that they were calling themselves Palestinian before Zionism was even a thing. As were the Jews of Palestine, weren't they were Palestinian Jews? Just as Syrian Jews were Syrian. So the word Palestinian in English, as also a very interesting history. In the 19th century, everything and anything in Palestine was just described as Palestinian. So Palestinian Jewry,

because you had Jews obviously living in Palestine, you know, Palestinian plants, you know, and it was also, and then after 1920, when the British established a mandate for Palestine, then the British in 1925 published this pamphlet where they talk about Palestinian citizenship and Palestinian nationality. And they're very explicit, they say,

Palestinian citizenship applies to Jews, Muslims and Christians, not just Muslims and Christians. They're like all three responding to, because the word has already come into use in Arabic and in English to refer to the primarily the Muslim and Christians of Palestine. Not so much the European Zionist immigrants. Right. Question and a comment, Zach. Yeah. Number one, you talked about the Palestinian plants. Let me put this to you, Mr. History Wise guy. Was the cherry tomato listed?

If not, it's checkmate. Sorry, Zionism wins. Was it in there? Was it in there? That's a very, that was one of Gaza's number one exports, if I'm not wrong. The cherry tomato. Was it really? I believe it was.

Are you serious? I think the residents of Naples would disagree. The Vesuvian cherry tomato, they claimed that they invented that. But it was one of Gaza's exports when? If I'm not wrong, prior to Israel's siege on Gaza, which began really in 2005-67, I mean, it sort of, it began really going all the way back to 1990. Okay, but you're not saying that, you're not saying that Palestinians invented the cherry tomato. Because if you do, if you say that, I will kill myself. That's right.

That's a very good question. I don't know who invented the cherry tomato. Oh, okay, good. Israel claims to it. It's in the theme song to this. It's in the theme song to this podcast. It's in the theme song to my life, bro. If they didn't invent the cherry tomato, then I don't know what's real. I was at your wedding.

It was in your wedding vows. That's right. I pledge to love you, honor you, keep you safe. Israel invented the cherry tomato. But here's my comment. Just to interject, because on this topic of the name Palestine, I saw the funniest talking point. Yeah. And for a while, like a number of these Hasbar, Hasbots, Hasbarats on Twitter were saying it.

They're like, and Michael Rapaport, I think we're saying it. It's like, all right, you geniuses. how do you say Palestine in Arabic you can't there's no P in Arabic they say and I and I said and I said to them great why don't you go ahead and say Jew Jerusalem or Judea in Hebrew you you incredible moron it's it's not just rabidah Yehudim jerusalem you have Israeli members of the Israeli parliament the Knesset saying the same thing right so you don't need to cite idiots like Rapabort, you can actually cite Israeli politicians voted into office who say the same thing. By the way, how is it that Egyptians say Egypt? Because there's

no P in Arabic, so apparently Egyptians aren't from Egypt. They're from Egypt. It's almost as if words, like place names are different in different languages. It's the funniest argument, but I have a video of it. the only country in the world that was already occupied before it ever existed it's also the only country in the world where its people cannot pronounce the first letter of their own country's name they simply don't have that in their alphabet just look if the french wouldn't have had the that could be sadly mistaken for a salad list or if the russians wouldn't have had the r or if the british wouldn't have had the b

try writing a better future, make Hamas surrender, bring back our hostages, and a hundred years of jihadist war against the Jews, and stop fucking lying about the alphabet. This woman exemplifies the Israeli approach to irony, which is they can't do it. They have to lapse into a kind of campy sarcasm that deflates any possibility for any making any like any headway and making a point. Any cogent point. I mean, like, like, especially when the, you, you can't name all those countries. You know, the B in Britain, the F in France, and then it would be like the, the J in, oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.

The, the, the, the, the, in, yeah, dude, no, uh, you didn't, no, uh, like, these guys, they cannot, they, they, they cannot process. And here's the thing. I don't even believe. Go ahead. You know the Israeli national anthem, right? Hatikva. Yeah. And you know, da da da da da da da da da da.

All right. Nefesh, Jehudi. That's how it goes. That's how it goes. Yeah. And my favorite song, you know, in Hebrew, Jerusalem of gold that goes, Jerusalem. Jerusalem. Yeah.

Jerusalem. Jerusalem. Jerusalem. Shels a heart. But like. you know you guys you guys know that you know in the 1980s israel actually banned use of the word Palestine in Palestine right in fact the the bank of Palestine which was a bank in Gaza was shut down when Israel occupied Gaza in 67 and when the bank was set to reopen after you know a 14 year hiatus in

1980 81 the Israeli military said okay fine we'll let you keep the name bank of Palestine because it was grandfathered in, but, but no other institutions or organizations or societies or companies could use the word Palestine in its name because, of course, that would be endangering Israelis and Jews. And, and, you know, I just thought to myself, you know, guys, like Palestine, Palestine, Palestine, Palestine, Palestine, like just take cover. Yeah. You're hurting me. It's the kid. It's the candy man of place names. Yeah, I don't know. See it three times into a mirror and then you get to own someone else's home.

You're going to get smacked in the face by my saliva. Yeah. That's when the watermelon symbol took root, right? In the 80s as a way of getting around that. Well, that's actually another great point. That was for a different reason because they not only banned the name Palestine, but they also banned paintings made from, or any artwork that used those four colors, red, green, black and white.

And in fact, Fatih Ravan, who was just recently murdered by the Israeli military in Gaza last week, okay? After living for decades and decades and decades under Israeli military occupation, finally was murdered just a week ago. But in 1982, Fatih Raban painted a painting using those four colors and sat six months in an Israeli prison for that. Wow. It's fucking crazy. And just like, you know, to me, it's just that you can draw such a clear parallel between any. kind of fascist regime that tries to erase history, including the Nazis trying to erase Jewish history, you know, during the Holocaust. I mean, you know, not to quote a movie instead

of something like historical, like a doc or something, but like it reminds me of Amen Gareth in Schindler's list talking about, you know, we're going to, we're erasing Jewish history. Today, that history ends. It never happened. Like that whole scene, it just feels, It just feels so disgustingly similar because you just see, you know, this de-legitimization become so normalized that people will use arguments like there's no P in the Arab alphabet and not even like not even think about it, not even consider how stupid of an argument that is. They just, it just becomes, it's just a part of the narrative, you know? It's not just the name Palestine.

It's not just the four colors, green, black, red, and white. It's everything about Palestinian identity and Palestinian culture and Palestinian history. In the past five months, the Israeli military has obliterated every single historical and archaeological site in Gaza. They've demolished the Gaza municipal archives. They destroyed Salim Arraiz's antique shop, which I had the fortune and privilege of being able to visit very recently. um and bought hundreds and hundreds of documents off him which as far as i know gaza weeks before october seventh right that's right and and bought about 600 documents off of him which as far as i can tell are the last rest vestiges of that archival collection which is which was probably the

the largest private collection of documents related to palestine in history and all of historic palestine was obliterated by the israeli military they're trying to erase everything they they go into the archives and they concealed documents by the way documents that were previously open they're going in purging the archives of any evidence that israeli committed war crimes in 48 or in 67 um they destroy palestinian homes uh in order to in 48 to prevent them from returning to to prevent people from even knowing that there were palestinian villages here right it's it's it reminds erasure of an entire people and it's and it's very uh it's calculated that way i mean they understand as the Nazis did that culture is a repository of memory and the you know it reminds me of that line

from the wire i like to use wire quotes on this podcast as much as possible because i'm trying to butter him that up uh you remember what you remember what brother muzon said to his to his bodyguard you know you know what the most dangerous thing is in america yeah you know and he says you know basically a negro with a with a library card you know and and the most dangerous thing to is is Palestinians memory because their memory is their connection to the land to which they belong as opposed to Israel which wants the land to belong to them. It's their connection to indigenousity and culture is it's a kind of architecture that allows memory to transmit itself from Lador Vador as we say in Hebrew, right, from generation to generation.

Right. And they think somehow that someday the day will come where they can actually obliterate that. And it's, I mean, it's galling and gutting and horrific that what they're doing, but they're not going to succeed no matter what they do. You are, there was a Nakhba law passed. I believe it was 2011 in Israel. And I believe the law stated that you could not receive any public funding. If you're, we're commemorating the Nakhba,

If your organization or society was commemorating the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, you would be denied public funding. And in 2021, 22, Israel also declared six Palestinian NGOs terrorist organizations, which turned out to be obviously false, right? This is just Israeli nonsense in the EU a few months later, basically said, actually, these are human rights organizations documenting human rights violations and terrorist actions. by the state of Israel, but it's all part of the same initiative, which is to erase Palestinian memory, to erase Palestinian civil society, to press control, alt-delete on the Palestinians.

Yeah. Now, it also works, it also works on the Israeli population, because if you convince, yes, you can convince your people that you're not destroying anything beautiful. Yes. Yeah. Right. The, the beauty of Palestinian culture, the human resourcefulness and universe, I mean, what culture is is indigenous and local but it also has universalist potential because people might relate to what you're if they understood the lyrics of your i mean Palestinian lyrics my god I've been to some concerts here in Brooklyn where they projected the lyrics on the walls just the absolute sensual love of that land and the way it's related to courtship and and and fragrances and the plant life and the animal life and all this kind of stuff

any human being with a beating heart and any art in their soul might be stirred by that. And Israelis cannot know that Palestinians are human like that. They cannot know because if they knew they wouldn't have such an easy time consenting to this. Yeah. Yeah. And it feels like that, you know, I think one of the more, you know, shocking and disgusting parts about that attempt to dehumanize Palestinians is that it is not just something that is done for the sake of the Israeli psyche, you know, and putting their minds at ease at living in this, you know, complete, living under apartheid and having to change your narrative in order to accept that. It's that you're expected to as a westerner, as a diaspora Jew,

as just someone who lives in the United States, just to, you know, anyone, you're expected to go along with it. You're expected to also see them as nothing but a, you know, collection of squatter Arabs. And just that attempt, you know, to do that, to make that, you know, it all seems to be, at this point just, it's, You're, it seems to be expected of people. It seems to be expected and to stray from that immediately gets you tired as being an anti-Semite as being someone who hates Jews. Which makes being a historian a subversive thing to be. Yes. You're going to do your job. You know, it's, it's funny because like even within, even within Israel, they don't, they don't like calling a Palestinian-Israelis, right? They're called Arabs. They're Arab Israelis. That's right.

Arab Israelis. You know, part of this strategy of erasing the idea that these people, A, have a connection to Ghazan Palestinians and West Bank Palestinians. So you want to sever, divide and rule, create divisions. That makes it much harder for Palestinians in all of historic Palestine to feel a shared identity, a shared a sense of Palestinianness. And in fact, in fact, even media outlets like Ha'arets, and maybe saying it after October 7th wouldn't surprise people

because after October 7th, Haarets is basically turned into a mouthpiece of the Israeli military. Even though I think before October 7th, there was this perception, false or not, that it was sort of represented the Israeli left. I think that perception is gone. But hasn't Haaret's kind of on the margins of their reporting done a little bit of, Well, maybe the things that we were told about October 7th weren't true. Like they've gone after the gray zone while corroborating a lot of what the gray zone, you know, went ahead and revealed. Sure.

Look, if you, if you land on, we just let's get back to Hartz in a second. But even even a media outlet like Hararets, according to Sally Abbott, who is she mentioned this in a podcast. And honestly, this was breaking news to me, but was barely was not reported about about by anybody else. She mentioned, from standing together, that's exactly right. She mentioned she submitted an article to Haaretz, and she called, you know, Palestinians inside Israel. She called them Palestinians, and the Haaritz editorial staff changed it to Arabs. Wow. And I'm like, bro, how are you?

This is like, that is honestly just total erasure. They're complicit in the erasure of the Palestinian people. If a Palestinian Israeli in her own article wants to call herself, a Palestinian, you're saying, no, you're not allowed to call yourself Palestinian. That's just fucking insane. But no, I mean, go ahead, Daniel. Yeah. Only that we, you know, the word erasure gained a lot of traction in the 2010s inside of social justice circles.

Sure. And any of these words, which come down from ivory tower circles and become popularly used, can become a kind of jargon that you can start to tune out at a certain point because they can start to sound hyperbolic or over. Of course, the people who are using them really, they mean them quite seriously, but it's a little, you know, but in this case, this is a case where you get that rhetorical erasure. Yes. Is a precursor to literal erasure. Yeah. You know, and the other thing I'll say is that it kind of ruins one of my favorite 80s, Euro trash pop songs, a little respect by the the group erasure.

Yeah. Ruins a little bit of... Ruins my favorite solo Tom York album, The Eraser. We need to remake that... Who is it? Kronenberg Lynch made Eraserhead. We have to make Erasurehead.

Erasure head, yeah. Yeah. Just getting back to what Daniel, you were mentioning about kind of Aretz's positioning within the discourse, so to speak, and, you know, either both in Israel and outside of Israel, the perception outside of Israel of Ha'Aritz is that it is the, you know, the New York Times of Israel. It's the one that is the most...

Not a compliment. Yeah, not, well, the people saying it think it's a compliment. And I'm like, I sort of agree with you. actually I'd rather be called the New York Post of Israel at this point at this point yeah at least at least the fucking you know headlines will be punny yeah but um yeah so in you know uh I would love to hear what you have to say about that Zach with regards to um the work that is done at Haritz and uh you know how closely aligned it is with um the military state there and whether or not it gets too much credit for occasionally being like, sometimes we do bad or if it's, you know, if it deserves that credit. Well, first of all, let's state an important point, which is Haaret does allow a journalist like Gideon Levy, like Amir Haas, to publish what they want.

So this is not to say that every single thing published under the Ha'arets name is propaganda. No, there's serious journalism taking place there. And there are also opinion pieces that you would very clearly identify as very sympathetic to the Palestinians and essentially calling out Israel society for being a genocidal society, which is basically every piece that Gideon Levy has written in the past few months is basically saying, look, our society has turned genocidal. So they will publish that stuff. But at the same time, if you just land... Gidon Levy, who has to walk with bodyguards wherever he goes. Yeah. yeah i mean that doesn't surprise me at all but if you i didn't know that though that's very

interesting um if you if you just flip open the harriet's landing page i mean it's you know if think back to like um you know it's sort of like it's kind of like you got this big war ticker you know the number of israeli hostages like you know the number of is you know what how many israelis died on october or were killed on october 7th you know basically center obviously centering Israeli victims and completely ignoring and omitting Palestinian victims. That is the general vibe.

And there was even, I tweeted about this maybe a week or two ago, but at one point I just loaded the homepage and it was literally like 10 out of the 11 stories that the first 10 out of the 11 stories I'm scrolling through are basically like, you know, Israeli military, you know, to achieve success in its operation

Han Yunis, you know, basically regurgitating Israeli military spokesperson, you know, regurgitating Israeli military propaganda, citing the Israeli military as if it's a reliable source rather than pure fucking propaganda. I mean... Do you clock what they said about the flower massacre the other day? Oh, yes. Yes. I haven't, I didn't see. Oh, oh, what Haaret said about it or what, oh, no, I haven't seen, I have not seen what what Arrette said about it, but I have seen what the IDF has tweeted about it, which we will

get into uh very soon yeah so i think how are it's obviously is it you know it's clearly torn but also if you listen to the hards podcast i don't know if you've listened to that podcast it's they have an english language pod i need to i didn't right now i'm stuck on i'm trying to get through uh alon levy's podcast uh israel the state of a nation and the fucker the fucker has a podcast he in the game Kendall Roy Levy has the podcast. Yeah, you're in the game. Did you see his pep rally for Gen Zers? Oh my God.

Gen Zionist. Let's make Gen Z, Zen Zionist. And there's like a point in the video where he does this. Like he like puts his finger to his ear. Like I can't hear you. And it's the most Kendall Roy ass shit I've ever seen. It's like L to the OG. Like hello fellow kids.

Like Zionism's cool. You know? Like I am so in touch. Yeah, he just wants, he just wants his Twitter to be fire. That's all he wants. Well, he killed a, he killed a kid, you know, he's got, he's got something to hide. Wait, he, oh, Kendall did. I was like, what? Tell me more about Hala.

But, but no, I have not listened to the Haaret's podcast. Tell me about it. I mean, the first, I would say, it took them maybe three months after October 7th to say anything other than pure Israeli military. Israeli military propaganda. I mean, I had, that was a podcast I actually listened to almost religiously. I mean, generally speaking, I thought before October 7th, actually, it was relatively insightful. They bring on people who have varied opinions.

After October 7th, it just turned into a basically, you know, they bring on an Israeli military spokesperson, oh, the military has achieved its mission in Khan Yunus. We've killed the 5,000 Hamas terrorists. And then, and the host just nods and smiles. and there's no pushback and there's no critical approach at all. It's just it's pod save Israel. And look, they, you know, 95% of Israelis, according to a January 2024 poll, either they said either we believe the Israeli military is using the appropriate amount of force

in Gaza or not enough force, yeah. Okay, 95% of Jewish Israelis held that view. And Haaret's is very much a Jewish Israeli publication. So obviously, they're going to reflect that kind of mainstream view within Israel, which is basically pro-genocide. Yeah. Comment and a question. You know, it takes me back to the thing that radicalized me to begin with at age 15, which was Noam Chomsky documentary manufacturing consent. And the key observation of that that I've never lost is that it's actually the liberal side of the spectrum that gets to set the bounds of acceptable debate.

The New York Times is the dangerous one because it basically. lets people think that they're you know that they're they have good values and that they're thoughtful and they think about things very deeply right the unbiased arbiters of truth that's right with a moral conscience right wrestling with the legacy of vietnam or like agonizing about iraq but when it comes down to it in the crunch in the moment of truth they'll absolutely go along with it and when it's when it's way too late to make a difference then they'll start stroking their chins and be like maybe this and that as long as it's speculative and as long as it as long as their opposition to the mainstream hegemonic narrative can make no difference it's it's more insidious and this is why

I find liberals more nauseating than conservatives who at least have the courage of the of their their antisocial sociopathic convictions yeah my question is and maybe it's just sort of a small point but speaking of Israeli media is 972 mag still a factor 9772 is 972 is, in my view, the best Israeli publication, period. The reporting is excellent. There was a November piece by Yuval Abraham, who just recently won that award in Berlin for the documentary. That anti-Semite Israeli Jew.

Yeah, I'm so glad that those Germans got that freaking Jew to shut up, you know, because otherwise something anti-Semitic might have happened. the anti-Semitic Jew will be silent we will destroy the history of the Jew who anti-Zionist Jew I want to point that out Schnell, Uden Rauss, respect Jewish history Germany will be Uden Rhein but only for anti-Zainess, okay? So according to his, I forget when in November he published a piece

but you can go look it up it was an in-depth investigation around basically what is considered an appropriate target. And he interviews a dozen some sources within the Israeli military, people who are in charge of the Gaza operations and the results are conclusive.

The homes are the targets. Yeah. Okay. That was very direct in the reporting. The Israeli military... How do you say anything in Hebrew? Koldavar, that's a legitimate target. Everything.

Yeah. Yeah. Civilian infrastructure, apartment, apartment blocks. He'll come back. I assume his internet died. Hey, he's back. I still see him.

I saw him the whole time. Oh. Was it my internet that fucked up? Quit projecting, Matt. So, yeah, where were we? So, yeah, basically 972 is a very, you know, the reporting is excellent. You know, they just recently hired a Palestinian, Israeli to run as editor-in-chief. You know, it's obviously an independent publication entirely funded by its readers and its viewers.

They have a great podcast as well. So I think 972 is excellent. And they also, I think, have a partnership with what's the Cal Calist, I think. But basically, they are as good as it gets as far as, you know, journalism goes inside Israel. Of course, you have Arab Tamanu, Arbaniwarbaein, which is Meidan. They have an excellent podcast called Meidan, run by Abida. Shahadeh. And he interviews, you know, basically mostly Palestinians inside Israel, talking about, you know, issues primarily relevant to Palestinians inside Israel. And by the way, speaking

of erasure, if you want to talk about erasure, I know this may have been triggering to because this is an academic word. But, but like, I mean, what has happened to the Palestinians inside Israel has been totally remarkable. No one is talking about it. But they're being fired from their jobs in the hundreds. They're being dismissed from university in the hundreds. for liking social media posts that are sympathetic to the Palestinian victims of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. That is what gets them. Meanwhile, Anat Schwartz, who has no journalistic background and has worked for the IDF, likes a post about turning Gaza into a slaughterhouse. And what does she get to be? The lead author on a New York Times front page story about alleged mass rape by Hamas.

Yeah, written by Anat Schwartz and Scott Templeton. That's a season five of the wire reference about a guy. Give it your special touch, Seanat. Yes. Yeah. I want to hear about the Dickensian aspect of the war. Well, I mean, I think what's going to happen is, as you brought, it sounds like you all have been following this reporting very closely.

But what will happen is they will, and not Schwartz will be the scapegoat, right? Yes. There will be no culpability because who hired Anna Schwartz? How did you get the job in the first place? Yeah. She's the journalist. Miller. She's Judith Miller.

Yes. And meanwhile, Jeffrey Gettleman, who is a Pulitzer Prize winner, gets to keep his Pulitzer. And you know who else is a Pulitzer Prize winner? Scott Templeton, season five of the water. Yeah, and his editors. And he literally said in an event, he's like, I get, you know, I don't like to use this word evidence, because evidence is almost like, it's like a legal term. You know, my job is to like tell a story.

and, like, highlight people's voices. My job is to, uh, I'm a fiction writer, basically. I'm a novelist. Yeah, I'm a novelist. I'm a creative artist. You know, I'm not, my, my, my responsibility is to my muse, not to the fact. You know, by the way, Zach, I just have to say this. I just have to say this, Zach, your Arabic is sexy a.F.

Like, you're actually, like, where did you learn to, like, pronounce Arabic? Like, do you speak the language? Yeah, how, yeah. Dude, my PhDs in Palestinian history. hey i mean yeah but no look i spent i appreciate that very much look the problem there are phds who can't can't can't make me to mess with their accent i will confess i have a fetish for languages and uh i i i love languages i especially love arabic and uh look if you spend as many years as i spent living in the arab middle east syria lebanon palestine egypt um you know you're gonna

hopefully pick up the language. I've also spent 15, 20 years trying to learn it. So, you know, like, yeah, it's been a long time in the making. So I'm a professional lyricist for musical theater. And I have this observation about like Hebrew for lyrics versus like modern Hebrew for lyrics versus Arabic. And you tell me if I'm right. It just sounds to me like Hebrew is just a cheat code for lyrics because everything has these suffixes, right? Every plural rhymes with every single, every masculine plural rhymes with every masculine plural rhymes with every masculine plural. plural. Every feminine plural rhymes with everything. Everything ends with, you know, a hay with like just an aspirated, like an like an a sound, an ah, or yeah. It's just so easy to rhyme everything with everything. And it just doesn't sound dope. It doesn't flow. When you hear Israeli rapping, it just sounds like, yeah, Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss, like also the rhythm, the rhythms of Arabic, the triplets, the like, it just has so much more of a. Now, I think Biblical Hebrew has a poetic sense, more of a free verse poetic sensibility and in terms of imagery and I understand it to be a very deep language, but somehow in the modern context, it's like anti-lirical to me, whereas Arabic strikes me as just a language with such flow. Am I onto anything here? I'm trying to think of Hebrew rap. The only song I can think of is the Hadag Nakhash song from like way back in the day, and Arabim and Beguim. What about that? No way. Isn't that, what is that, uh, that?

Shirat that sticker. Right. But there's a, the, the, the, the really popular one since October 7th. Oh, that one. It has like a Lebanese Arabic title to it. Yeah. Habu-chabu or something like that. Yeah, it's the one that's like calling out like Bella Hadid and Mia Khalifa. That's right. That's right. But you have Damn, which is the very popular Palestinian rap group. Now you have St. Levant and that younger Palestinian from Gaza who he's rapping with. So, I mean, they're rapping in English as well. But. Well, if. I got to, you know, defend modern Hebrew here, because here's the thing about modern Hebrew. If there's one thing we can all say about this wonderful and original language, modern Hebrew is Sababa. I think we can all agree with that. Yeah, your accent is quite refined there. Where did you bring in Hebrew?

Sababa! Sababa! Sababa. Sababa. I don't want to diss an entire language. There are lovely songs in Hebrew. Yeah. When non-fascists speak modern Hebrew, I love the sound of it.

Me too. Same Csies. Like German. German is the language of Goethe. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the language of Himmler, you know? Yeah.

Unfortunately, you know, it takes all kinds. But I just noticed this thing about just the, I don't know, the syntax of it that made Arabic sound cooler to me. But before, we have to wrap up soon. I want to get to some news before we go. So today we're going to do a this week in headlines. So first we're going to start off with what you guys probably already know if you have been following the news. So according to this is an article for May J Plus, Massacre, Dozens Killed by Israeli fire in Gaza while collecting food aid.

So more than 100 Palestinians have been killed and some 700 others wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds waiting for food, aid southwest of Gaza City. Health officials say that the besieged enclave faces an unprecedented hunger crisis. That doesn't sound right to me, Matt. The headlines I read in my Western sources called it a chaotic incident. Yeah, no. If you read anything that is written in America and be, Beyond anything in the West, they've mostly described it as a snafu and a Black Friday sale or a run, like like a run on Trader Joe's pre-hurricane or something.

Yeah, a flash mob, you know, it's akin to the knockout game, you know, your kids could be doing it. They just don't teach single file lines in Palestinian culture. They really don't. They really don't. As you guys all know, Israel and Zionist activists have been stopping or severely limiting the flow of food and medical and other aid going into Gaza since the war began. And way before that, as there is currently and before then a blockade, which has led to directly to a famine in which starving Gazans are resorting to eating animal feed. and Israel is using their desperate state of hunger

as a reason why over 112 Palestinians are now dead and 750 wounded. Now, did you guys see the IDF's statement about this? If you haven't, I have it for you right here. This morning, humanitarian aid trucks entered north of Gaza. Residents surrounded the trucks and looted the supplies being delivered as a result of the pushing, trampling, and being run over by the trucks, dozens of gazons were killed and injured.

Being run over by the trucks is a risk factor for many populations. I hate when I'm being run over by the trucks. Yeah. When you are run over by the truck, chances are there will be a wound and or injury to you or your person. So they also released this drone footage. Did you guys see the drone footage they released? Yeah, it looks like an ant colony.

That's exactly what it looks like, and it's exactly I believe what they were going for in releasing this footage, because it is also completely silent. All you see is just hungry, starving Palestinians gathered together like so many ants in an ant colony. Matt, if they had actually shot, we would see those bullets in that footage from about 600 feet up. From a thousand feet in the air, from space. Yes. And this is, this is it right here. Just, I mean, look at those spermatozoa that they're trying. Right.

It's just the complete the humanization, like the entire, like the footage is very clearly released for the reason of in the, you know, Zionist mindset of being like, look at them. Now, if you're someone who has empathy or feelings, you're looking at that and going, wow, this looks like a fucking desperate situation. And you're watching a truck run over people and you're going, what the fuck is happening here? And the reason that they didn't release it with sound is because if you had heard it with sound, you might actually hear what was going on on the ground. And I have video footage of that. So that is the IDF shooting at starving Ghazans who have been, you know, who have had all of their food aid either taken or stopped or just not given. And of course, you know, leading to a such a desperate situation,

which they might come out by the thousands in order to actually get something to eat. It also takes a huge amount of chutzpah. Yes, Israelis would say, to describe clamoring desperately for food when you're starving as looting. Yes, yes. I mean, the word looting is already racially and class-coded anytime anyone uses it, because it means the rabble is trying to take what we withhold from them and trying to get more of what they need inside of, you know, onerous conditions. But in this case, the trucks pull up.

People are literally starving. and there's a little bit of jostling and there's some energy to the attempt to get and you call that looting. I mean, that's, I mean, and it's also a condition that they were put into by the IDF, by the Israeli government, by activist citizens of Israel who are blocking aid trucks, who are having little raves outside of the only entry points into Gaza. when they're not doing that, they're just gathering in groups trying to run as far into Gaza as they can because they are settlers and they want to settle again. Including self-described liberals in those crafts. Yes, yes. Basically, I'm a liberal and I've just, I, did you see this Israeli actress who was on some talk

show and she sort of just proudly or just boldly, baldly confesses? She's like, October 7th murdered something in me. It murdered the humanitarian impulse. I'm still a leftist in a lot of other ways, but not this. I just don't care anymore. They're just not human to me. They're doing. And it was exactly, they're doing your sketch, Matt.

I'm bad now. They were doing the I'm bad now sketch. They're doing. And it's like, you know, irony is dead at this point. I can't even be sarcastic anymore because it's too many real ghouls exist. But yeah, if you're like anybody who saw this and, you know, is not just blindly taking the word of the IDF, you know that what happened here is entirely the fault of the IDF shooting at people and then also running them over with the trucks.

You know, the stampede itself is a result of being shot at. Now, when this was pointed out, when British journalists slash guy who enjoys my fake British accent, Owen Jones, tweeted about the IDF massacre. of Palestinians, British-Israeli propagandist Alon Levy, of course, he's back again. He tweeted out, Blood libel, these poor people kill with it, we crushed your stampede,

some cases run over by gauze and truck drivers trying to get out, Davey Beckham, Fish and Chips. See, Owen would have loved it. you want i can't i can't even listen to owen jones i can't listen to owen jones on 1.5 or 1.75x because the guy's accent is fucking brutal it's like i have to like slow that shit down just to understand what he's saying listen watch out you're you're you're you're you're talking about a former badhusbar i guess you're talking about a beautiful man here with a beautiful voice uh but listen he's been he's been magnet he's really been oh he's fantastic but i mean

And I think we'd all agree, British accent is probably, you know, a stain upon the earth. No, it sounds great. I love British people. I love the fact that in such a tiny territory, there's like 40 accents. Yeah, yeah. There's 40 accents. And they're all just saying, oh, I'm tiny cramp it. I'm sorry.

I don't mean it. British listeners, you know I love you. But yes. So Elon Levy has gone on to talk about blood libel a bunch. I think blood libel has been one of those things thrown out the most in the last five months by, you know, bad faith actors, Israeli propagandists, has bars, all of them. I mean, you see it everywhere, including my absolute favorite is when Elon Levy once again is back and he is accusing all of South Africa of blood libel because they brought this case of genocide against Israel at the ICJ. You keep hearing it over and over again. And if you're not, if you're new to Israeli propaganda, if you're new to the subject in general, you're probably confused about his characterization of things as blood libel.

And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, we have a new segment in town. This is a segment where I'm going to cover anti-Semitic tropes and how Israel uses them to excuse war crimes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is blood libel. Blood Lebel I thought I thought I was clever for Leibon's frown But this is this is great Listen my name

You got a lot of You got a lot of ways to do puns This is Blood Lebel Today we're talking about blood libel What is it? What isn't it? Do you guys know what blood libel actually is? Are you familiar with it?

Yeah, it's the idea that Jews make matzah from Christian baby's plasma. That's exactly right. So blood libel is basically... So rarely do that. Only on special occasions. Like, yeah, they're like once a year maybe. There's so many different ways to make, you know, a rest. It's like one variation on the recipe and we get tarred with it for the rest of our last.

Just a few times eating a little blood and all of a sudden people are crazy. Blame Autolengue. I'm just reading it out of the fucking book. It was in the Moosewood cookbook. But, yeah, so blood libel is this old anti-Semitic canard, which falsely accuses Jews of murdering Christians in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals or in making their matzah. Very specifically, it refers to Christian children who are being, you know, taken and having their blood harvested and then being used to, you know, put in the Jews matzah, which is obvious, I mean, like, if you've ever tried matzah, you know this isn't true, because matzah is very bland.

It certainly doesn't have that blood texture and or flavor. So, yeah, it originally emerged in late antiquity, and it was again revived, a millennia. millennium later as a Christian slander against Jews in the medieval period, and then it was revived again in modern European anti-Semitism. This has been around for thousands of years and has remained largely unchanged. The charge has remained consistent as it's about doing ritual killings to harvest blood from children and either drink it or eat it. That's the claim. That is what blood libel is. What blood libel is not, it is not when you accuse Israel of doing bad.

Doing things they did. Yes. Just saying Israel is doing something like killing someone is not blood libel. Especially. Much closer to blood libel is obsessively, almost fetishistically, repeating horror stories about horrific and increasingly horrific with every passing day. and the telling of it, and kind of a game of broken genocidal telephone, things being done to babies just for the fuck of it, like just for kicks, you know?

Yes. 40 beheaded babies. You debunk it, it comes back. You know, I don't know. I mean, any, I mean, like ripping the baby out of a womb and then beheading that baby and beheading the mother. I mean, this, this idea of like this ritualistic killing, you know, know, especially in this kind of like almost satanic sense, that is more akin to blood libel.

And I think an even more, you know, appropriate example, if you want to talk about what blood libel looks like, a very good example is from Yoav Galant, who is a former, is a Knesset member and a former IDF general who tweeted this right here in January, those who seek justice will not find it in the operational plans found in the pockets of Nakhba terrorists who were instructed to, quote, drink the blood of the Jews. So that's pretty close to blood liable, I would say. I think every Israeli accusation is a confession. I think, I think, every Israeli accusation is a confession. I think this is a perfect example of that. Yes.

Whereby these genocide apologists are accusing the world of attacking Israel and thus of carrying a blood libel when in fact, as you correctly pointed out, Matt, the litany of lies and propaganda that Israel and its supporters have been spreading since October 7th around around what happened on that day. Not just the 40 beheaded babies. Not just a pregnant woman who had the baby ripped out and then beheaded. Not just the babies in the ovens. Not just the mass rape atrocities.

But you have dozens and dozens of accusations hiding behind civilians, right? Well, in fact, actually in multiple instances since October 7th, we've actually have examples of Israelis using Palestinians as human shields. Yes. It's this litany of lies that Israel used genocide that really resembles the blood libel that they're accusing their detractors of... They're also obsessed with finding things in Palestinians' pockets

and bedrooms and lingerie and whatever. And here's another wire reference for you, Matt. We could do this all day. Yes, we could. Who was it? You know, when Kima is now new on the homicide unit and Bonds like, isn't that something in the Vick's hand? and she finds this rolled-up thing.

Tater shot me. Tater shot me. It's just this initiation prank, you know, just these planted things. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think what's striking about this, you know, these kinds of accusations, you know, and this is what's striking about blood libel in general. First of all, you can't remove the blood from blood liable. The blood is the thing. And the blood, what that represents, the idea of eating the blood. blood, drinking the blood, all that stuff. It's just a satanic, monstrous behavior. And the reason

that you accuse people of this is so that you can punish them for something they did not do. You can punish an entire group of people as they did with Jews. Whenever a child went missing in a fucking town or whatever, they would say the Jews nearby, they stole the baby and they're fucking using the blood for matzah. Like, it was a way in order to oppress and, you know, act unjustly towards Jews in the exact same way that, for example, ahead to Mimi had, was arrested recently, this was in November and it was alleged that she had tweeted or that she had written on Instagram, we'll drink your blood and eat your skulls. So in reality, what actually happened was her Instagram account was hacked as it has been for many, many

years and this was put into her Instagram and was used as a pretext to arrest her and you know you can see why you would want to arrest her if you're the IDF because she is one of the you know at least she's known in America as someone who is you know is a child who was fighting the occupation and if you've ever read like read anything written by a head to Mimi you know she didn't write this fucking bullshit you know um she she did a great book um with my friend uh dina from

a j plus um called they called me a lioness and you just like see from like reading that book and the writing style and everything like she is far more thoughtful than we will eat your skull it was just to me it's very obvious oh no but it's kind of i i can understand it though because she looks so much like maryland manson that people might get their poetry mixed up you know yeah that's right yeah they were just like, yeah, you know, they're confusing her with Marilyn Manson, sure. You know, what's interesting, Matt, about this, this blood libel accusation is that, you know, obviously there were, there was a massacre committed on October 7th and innocent and civilians were killed. But that was not, but, but that was known to everybody. Yes. Or, you know, already by

October 8th, everybody knew that. But by November, by December, after 10,000, after 20,000, Palestinians had been slaughtered. It no longer was enough for the world. That, okay, they killed 764 as race to wins. That wasn't enough. That heroin was stepped on at that point. Right. Exactly.

They needed to get that pure, that raw. That's right. That was just some dry, shaggity, shwaggity, cyanide weed. That's what it was. Zionide. We got that Zionite here. Zionite here. Pandemic.

You know, you know, you know, it's interesting as well, if you look at lynchings in the American context from the end of slavery to World War II, it was not killing that white people accused black people of. It was rape. It was rape. That's right. They need to find something that is so egregious that, you know, and rape was the most common accusation leveled against a black person for these lynchings. And I think that's not, and I don't do. not think it's a coincidence that the Israeli propaganda machine curated the witnesses. The Zacat people made up so many lies.

They made up testimonies. The eyewitnesses changed their stories multiple times. Raz Cohen changed his story. They fool the witnesses into telling them they're doing a servant act when they do it about why. So they had to contrive and concoct this story. They don't have to be that extreme. They could just do like the southern whites did.

I mean, Israelis would have the same genocidal reaction if they just said that the Palestinian, you know, militia men burst into Kibbutzim and whistled at the women. Right. Exactly. Just do the, just do the Emmett Till thing. Just a little lighter touch. I actually, I was at Newark Airport coming back from Europe last week. And like, I was in the customs line with a very unhappy looking older dude in a Zaka uniform. And his very unhappy looking wife. And I just was like so. creeped out you know yeah very and i was i was wearing my stuff the genocide uh baseball cap yeah oh wow it was all it's like dude like to be a part of that organ he just looked like a yeah just an agent of evil to me yeah well i i think that to me is is just to end this portion and the podcast um is a great point to make because like you have to remember that like hasbar is are claiming these things is blood libel. What they are claiming

is that to believe that to insinuate that a Jewish person or Israel or the Israeli government would ever do something that is cruel is anti-Semitic. And you know, if an Israeli soldier kills

it kills because it must kill. If it starves you, it's because you must starve in order to save more people. Like this whole idea to me of saying Jews are not capable of this and to claim that they are is anti-Semitic. I actually believe that othering of Jews in and of itself is anti-Semitic.

Like, humans, Jews are humans. We are capable of empathy. We are capable of cruelty. We are not special or different. The same standards apply to us as that they would apply to anybody else. And to otherize us is, in my mind, opinion to be it doesn't matter if you're making us subhuman or superhuman or you are

othering us and that is anti or phylo-semitism amounts to the same thing but not only that like if you wanted to generate generalized hatred towards a group you would want them to act as obnoxiously as possible now what is more obnoxious than browbeating and lecturing the world about their alleged hatred of you while you commit the most heinous crimes most people have ever seen in their lifetimes. It's the most dis... And then we wonder why did they hate us? Of course, if they hate us, I completely understand. Now, I don't advocate it. It would be based on a misunderstanding. Right. It would be based on the same kind of like broad racism that the Israelis like to do right but they count on it

Israel is both an anti-semitism it runs on anti-semitism and it produces anti-semitism yeah it's like the input and the output is anti-semitism it needs it it it manufactures it if it if it can't manufacture it it it fabricates it but that's its entire raison d'etra and its entire lifeblood but i have a new business idea guys I'm going to open a weed shop. Ooh. I'm going to call it Bud libel. Oh, my God.

You're making me question my sobriety. Just please promise me you're going to carry Jack Herrera. That's all I ask. Okay, that got real serious for a hot minute. Okay. Carry what? Sorry? Also, Jack Herrera and Afghan Kush, that's all I ask.

No, but. Nice. You know, I think like, even even the claims of anti-semitism are oftentimes themselves manufactured you recall that back in the may 2021 war um when israel killed something like 254 Palestinians um you know there's always these reports oh there's all the rise in anti-semitism but in fact what you have instead is the the adel the apartheid defense league um they basically what they do is they define anti-semitism as criticism Israel and then they're like look look at all these protests

against Israeli war crimes in Gaza, hence the rise of anti-Semitism. I couldn't believe it when I saw this new Times cover article called the New Antisemitism. Literally 15 years ago, Norman Finkelstein was giving lectures and maybe even put out a pamphlet or a book about how every time Israel wants to commit a massacre, you can time you can time it. Yes. The rise of, quote, unquote, the new anti-Semitism. At this point, it's the oldest canard in most. modern like anti-Semitism discourse they've been saying it's new for at least 50 years yeah and the and the

author of that article proudly tweeted it was like I made my best attempt to give a sophisticated nuanced rendering of the new anti-Semitism you know and people were like you failed yeah noelman the same guy who was brought in to help reconstruct iraq after her the u.s invasion of iraq in 2003 by the way um so you know that i actually did not realize he was such a a genocide apologist but here we are yeah well i agree with something you said uh daniel about Israel running on anti-semitism and you know creating it as well Israel is anti-semitism is to Israel as duncan donuts is to America. As Tim Hortons is to Canada. That's exactly right. Israel runs on anti-Semitism and America runs on Duncan. Go to Duncan Donuts. promo code Israel is genociding. I'm just kidding. We don't have that

sponsor. Promocode blood libel. Blood libel, yes. Guys, that's been the episode. I got to go pick up my baby. Thank you guys so much, of course, for coming on. Co-host, sometimes co-host Daniel Mathe, where can people find you? Danga, dingin, dinga, dinga, dinga, danga, bitch. Is that the opening line? Mahlomah bitch? Yeah, it's Mahashlam ha bitch, a Reverend Bokertove. We invented the cherry tomato.

What I like about that line, Mashlam ha, bitch. Yeah. Is that by saying Mashlam ha, you're identifying. You're talking to a guy. Yeah. It undercuts any accusations of misogyny right out of the bat. That's right. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Where can people find you? And then you could also do Mashlomech, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can find me Daniel B. Matte on Twitter and Instagram, and I have two websites for various things I do. Danielmate.com for musical theater, walkwithdaniel.com for my mental chiropractic service. What is that? Go find out. Yeah. Check that out. You'll see the links in the bio.

Zach Foster, where can people find your work? You can find me on X, formerly known as Twitter at underscore Zach Foster. and you can find me on my newsletter, my wonderful newsletter on Palestine, you can subscribe to. That's palestinexas.com. And you can find me on Instagram at Zachary underscore underscore, Fosser underscore underscore underscore underscore. Yeah, check all that out. Sorry. Just to underscore the point.

My wife's looking for her phone. But all right, Zach, it was wonderful having you on. You're a fantastic guest, and please come back anytime. Daniel, I love you so much. and bad has barbara gmail.com for all your questions, comments, and concerns. And I'm going to be playing a voicemails soon. I've got some really good ones that I think people are going to love. Patreon.com slash badazbarra.

All right. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. And until next time, from the river to the sea, Alon Levy, suck my D. Jumping Jackson's us. was us. Godmaga us. All karate us. Taking Molly us. Michael Jackson us. Yamaha keyboards. Us. Georgia makes not us. Andor was us. Heath Ledger Joker us. Endless spread success. Happy meals was us. McDonald's was us. Being happy us. Bequim yoga us. Eating food us. Breathing to us, breathing air, us, drinking water us.

We invented all that shit.