Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Bad Hasbara 21: Sorry Lo Sorry, with Abby Martin

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Daniel and Matt are together again and joined by the amazing independent journalist Abby Martin. This week we are talking about the recent murder of 7 World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza and the Israeli government's forced apology.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Moshwamha bitch driven polka-toe We invented the dirty tomato And weighs USB drives and the iron door Israeli salacuzzi stents his office orange rose I'm from chips us iPhone salads us Tocco salads us Bothamabodas

All of garden us White foster us Zabra Hamas Hasbaras Hello and welcome to Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast. In the entire world of podcasts, we are the most moral. Thank you all for listening to another episode. My name is Matt Leeb.

I'll be one of your two hosts for today. That's right. Daniel Mate is back. Before we get started, once again, just reminders. And those reminders are, subscribe to the. YouTube do that and yeah and also Patreon patreon.com slash bad Hezbarra join it help me pay for all of this we have a producer now Adam Levin who is here and he's doing amazing work and you know just trying to try to make sure everyone gets paid so please do that that'd be nice and also you don't need to look at us listen

listen to it wherever you get your podcast our faces are not important what's important is the ads that you listen to when you listen to it on a podcast app those are those are that's what's important here because there's a lot of great ads there's like fertilizer um there's the i think one of the episodes had just israeli has barra on it which is fun i love that because you're listening to a podcast about their propaganda and then you hear an ad for their propaganda and i get paid so it's kind of beautiful so please wherever You listen to podcast, subscribe, hit the whatever notification bell exists, hit the follow button on Spotify, make comments, do the things.

And finally, join the subreddit. Shout out to all the mods at R slash Bad Hasbara, who we are now over 5,000. And at this point, I am convinced they do not know it is a subreddit for a podcast. So if you're listening to this or watching this, join it and let people know there's a podcast. that is what that's why this was made which is i mean listen it's fine if they don't know cool whatever but it'd be sick if they did okay today i want to introduce of course my main man the number one person in my life other than my wife and other than the guy i do a podcast about the wire with uh the number three man in my life ladies and gentlemen everyone else welcome

co-host Daniel Mote Ican Hasbara Hey hey look at that Remember cheeseburger Early days of the internet Those were great days Those are the best How you doing?

I'm on the jet lag side of things But I'm on the recovering side of jet lags So yeah You're on Irish You're on Irish times right now Right? I sure am You're sure I'm

you've got Ireland in your brain and you want to go to sleep yeah had some good crack they're all hooked on crack over there but it's spelled CR a no they smoke crack yeah yeah C R-A-I-C that's their word for fun oh well that makes sense because crack is fun exactly we've all done a little bit of crack not us no no we're sober at least I am I'm sober now I actually never smoked crack I want to put that out there for all the drugs I did do back when I used to use drugs. I never smoked crack. I like a little fresh cracked pepper.

Oh, love some cracked pepper. On a Caesar salad? Are you fucking kidding me, bro? Delicious. On anything. On anything? Caesar salad. Butternut squash soup.

Shrimp. Coco puff cereal. Bring it on. The waiter comes over and says, sir, would you like some fresh crack pepper on your lucky charms? I'm saying, bring it. Wow. Dude, I don't know what restaurant you're going to.

That's serving you a lucky charm. I guess in Ireland, they probably, that's probably like three meals a day, Lucky Charms, right? That's all they eat. It's incredible just how much they love Irish stereotypes. There was even a rainbow when I was there, you know? That's beautiful. Did you just keep pointing at it and go, guys, Potagorge? And did they like it? Oh, they loved it. You know, I met up with a friend of a podcast, Ty Kiki. Oh, Tidegah. I love him. Tidegah. Yeah. He's got to come back. We met up in Cork and had a lot of fun together.

Great, great, great guy. Yeah, that guy is, he's one of my favorite people. And I still get messages to this day from people who say it was very rude of me to mispronounce his name. And most of them, most of those messages are from tag himself. They're from him, yeah. And I'm just like, get over it. Tagga, I got, da, you know, it's like, what?

Get a normal name. You know what I'm saying? High five. Anyways, oh, today, Daniel, we're going to. to talk first a little bit about what's happening in the news to get everyone caught up, and then I'm going to introduce our guest. We have a great guest today. But I need to talk about the World Central Kitchen. So if you don't know, which if you're listening to this podcast, I assume you follow the news. So seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen have been

killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza. The victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian, and also a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen. So that affects everyone on this podcast. I assume you're a dual citizen, right? No, I'm a Canadian who identifies as living in America because I do. Okay. I don't have citizenship. I'm on the 01 visa, which is alien of extraordinary ability.

That's who you're fucking with right now. Damn, you're a super powerful alien. He comes in peace. He really does. So, back to sad, the WCK team was traveling in a decomplicted zone in two armored cars branded with the World Central Kitchen logo and also a soft skin vehicle. The World Central Kitchen, if you don't know, is like a U.S. base, non-profit, non-governmental organization that provides meals in the wake of natural disasters and actually is one. one of Israel's like favored NGOs. They use them a lot. And here for everyone is how the attack went down.

For those of you who don't know, this is how it happened. ... vehicles they were in when they were killed. The World Central Kitchen logo clearly visible on the roof of this car. The group were traveling in three separate vehicles. World Central Kitchen says its workers had finished on loading tons of food at warehouse in Dar al-Bala before leaving there in three vehicles along a route and at a time which had been agreed with the IDF. The burnt-out vehicles are spread out across a distance of about one and a half miles. Two of the vehicles are on the road itself. The remains of the third vehicle

is here on a patch of open ground around 100 meters off the road. According to reporting by the Heretz newspaper in Israel, survivors from the strike on the first vehicle tried to take cover and the second one, which was hit next, then the wounded from there tried to get to the third car. The vehicles were targeted three times in succession, in other words, until everyone was killed. So... You know, Big Lobowski, you know, he's a good man, and thorough.

And thorough, yeah. You know, Israel, they're a bad country, and thorough. Quite thorough, indeed. So, I mean, I don't know about you, Daniel, But clearly from that video, it's clear that what happened to them was an accident. You know, sometimes in war, you accidentally bomb a friendly target and then follow the survivors to another car and accidentally bomb that target. And then follow the remaining survivors to another car and then accidentally bomb that target. It's rule of threes.

Everyone knows this, right? Yeah, I heard it was a tragic mistake. Yes. Yeah. Well, that's what I heard too. But listen, this is something that people have been saying that this, you know, the Hamas media machine has been saying that, you know, this is some sort of pattern, that they've seen this before. They've, you know, hurt a bunch of other aid workers and whatnot. And it's like, you know, yes, the killing of civilians and aid workers and doctors and foreign

nationals and journalists and yada, yada, yada. I mean, it's nothing new. It's happened before. it's to be expected, Daniel, when Hamas uses human shields, all right? Like, what other choice does the IOWF have? It says right there in the Most Moral Army Handbook that if a Hamas guy straps a baby to their chest, you're supposed to shoot through the baby. And then you keep shooting through any surrounding babies just to make sure that the babies are dead.

It's just part of war. Yeah, it also says that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Papua New Guinea, you're supposed to bomb three successive, clearly marked aid trucks. I saw it in the New York Times, oh, the subtlety of the New York Times, like the nuance of their Hasbara, the sort of the way the Hasbara works just by the internal logic and the way sentences are juxtapose. So I saw it, I took a screenshot. of this um let me find it here right so here's like they're little listical about the event here's

what we know the killings were quote a grave mistake end quote the israeli military chief of staff said in an unusually direct acknowledgement of fault right the strike prompted aid agencies to reassess their operations in gaza now what those are not connected that's not connected Well, here's what I find hilarious. Number one, a grave mistake is for that to be an unusually direct acknowledgement of fault is not saying much. We made a mistake. Fault, you know, generally understood would be, well, never mind. You could say it's my fault and it's a mistake.

Fine. But those two sentences next to each other are so funny. The killings were a grave mistake, they say. and the second sentence, the strike prompted aid agencies to reassess their operations in Gaza. Oops. Yeah.

Oops. Accident. It's just so, Israel's so sad that this aid agency is re-evaluating aid operations that are feeding, starving Palestinians. And I've also heard speculation that, please come back.

And there's also speculation, which I don't think is implausible, that at least the three Brits who have, their military veterans, military heroes actually, you know, it's absolutely plausible that they were in possession of some knowledge or having witnessed some things that, you know, what happens in Gaza stays in Gaza. Right. It is. I mean, it's thing from Israel's point of view. I think we're going to, we're going to learn more about this as, you know, the days and weeks and

months go on, you know, as the Israelis complete, they're very thorough and I'm sure trustworthy investigation. Did you see John Kirby's press conference? Yeah. I just, listen, I'm not in the business of not being cucked by Netanyahu. But, you know, what makes this reaction different by Israel is that instead of telling us that, like, you know, actually Hamas did it, or actually the world's central kitchen is Hamas, or that the food exploded because, uh, you know, the, it was too spicy.

Like the Israeli government, Hamas shook up the, the, the, the bottles of of carbonated water, you know, like Bart in the April Fool's episode of the Simpsons, you know, and it, yeah, Hamas has been known to put a Mentos in Diet Coke. It's just something they do. Um, but the Israeli government, um, magnanimity. by the way, admitted that this was, in fact, an oopsie-dupsy on their part. And I have some video. Here first is the main man himself, Bibi Netanyahu. Unfortunately, within the last day, there was a tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip.

This happens in wartime. We're thoroughly looking into it. We're in contact with their governments, and we'll do everything. everything to ensure it doesn't happen again. Yeah, and then that's not the only person who came out. Also, there was the IDF chief of staff, Herz-I-Hurzhi. No, it's Halevi, different guy, and he had this to say. Was a grave mistake.

Israel is at a war with Hamas, not with the people of Gaza. We are sorry for the unintentional harm to the members of WCCA. You know, I don't think I've ever heard the word sorry, said with an Israeli accent. I've never heard that. I've never heard sorry. Sorry. It was like, wow, why does that sound so foreign to me? Oh, so they don't say it.

So, so. It doesn't quite. Yeah. You had to practice that for two hours. Yeah, there's no, you know, English to hear. Hebrew version of Sari in Israel. And then, of course, the, you know, official Israel page on Twitter, they put out this notes app apology.

Whoopsie. Damn, our bad. That's just crazy out there. And then a lot of crying emojis, which means they're sad. That's very thoughtful. Yeah, it's very nice of them to put out the notes app apology. And now with permission to mourn the deaths of innocent people, Israel's official and unofficial spokespeople got in on the self-pity party,

and they made a bunch of statements. We have, you know, Aviva Klompas saying the killing of staff from the World Central Kitchen was an absolute tragedy. We have Richie Torres here. The death of the seven World Central Kitchen volunteers is tragic. We have Barry Weiss, a horrific tragedy. we have Michael Rappaport very sad and then of course ain't it cool news run

don't walk to the nearest IDF safe zone you know they got to get in there got to love a board as opposed to the nearest as opposed to what you're probably in which is the nearest IDF kill zone right yes that's most of the zones but there is a safe zone in there

and you just have to guess where it is and then of course the goat herself Eve Fartlow sorry I mean Eve Suckblow, I'm sorry, I mean Steve Urkel, said Eve, the bar is pretty low. Eve, a bar is

super low, said, may the memory of the seven aid workers killed in Gaza be for a blessing. Okay? And then it's the first time she's ever written a Palestinian name in memoriam. Yeah, yeah. Because it was, because he died

alongside six white people. That's right. And that kind of inspired me to, you know, like, I think like I should also apologize for all this. So I made my own apology video and I think people should watch it and just understand how sorry I am about this whole thing. Today is a really tragic day for me and for all of my liberal Zionist brothers and sisters out there. those aid workers at the World Kitchen who died tragically in an accidental targeted bombing it's just one of those things that is just unavoidable and I you know as Zionists I think we all need to pause for a moment and realize that like the collateral damage is is not good and is in fact can be bad. You know, I'm praying for them and for all their families. And, uh, got a notification.

Israel. Oh, they're Hamas. They're Hamas. Um, they deserve to die. It's good that they're dead. And, um, I'm, you know, it's tragic to say, but I hope their families die too. Oh. Oh, no, no, sorry. That, that was a different thing. That was a different thing. different thing. No, this is tragic. This is tragic. The Israeli government is saying officially that this is sad. So I think it's sad that this happened unless there's something else that comes to light later. Yeah. You know what's wild? The actual mistake they claim they made. You know what the actual mistake they claim they made was? I think they said it was night time. no but they might they might have said that their claim was we thought there was a Hamas terrorist on board the truck now never mind the fact that they knew full well that there wasn't because the person they had suspected had gotten off at a warehouse and not gotten back on but think about the logic of that we're sorry that we killed these seven people without taking a terrorist with them yes we thought we were taking a terrorist with them mm-hmm it turns out we

We only killed them, in which case it's just not justified. Right. In which case it is in fact the demonic logic of that. Yes. Yeah. No, it's, you know, it's collateral damage, you know, and it's wartime. And sometimes we make a mistake and only kill innocent people. But if we can get one Hamas guy, even a suspect, honestly, even someone who just like wrote something on social media one time, then it's completely justified.

And I'm not sorry. And it's collaborative. Then it's collaborative damage. Right. Exactly. That is exactly what it is. So the question I want to ask is the same one that I think Jews have been asking for thousands of years. Why is this night different from all other nights?

And to answer this question, I want to bring in our guest. This next guest is absolutely fantastic. One of my personal favorites has been reporting. on Israel, Palestine, Gaza for years, independent journalist, creator of the Empire Files, and director of Gaza Fights for Freedom, ladies and gentlemen, and everyone else, please welcome Abby Martin. Hey. Hey.

How are you doing, Abby? Hi, Abby. I'm doing good. How are you guys doing? Well, considering everything. Yeah, yeah. It's a loaded question, but we're all doing fine. Right.

We're doing. We're doing. we're still alive um so first abby i want to thank you for coming on this podcast uh i've been watching empire files uh for a long time and i've really admired your work um and i think you you are one of the honestly few like rarest type of journalists which is someone who's going to talk about uh israel Palestine honestly and from the ground and so I yeah well I want to ask do you condemn Hamas you must condemn I'm sorry no I and when did you first like when did you first realize you hated Jews right yeah yeah and also are you sorry answer all of those three questions

immediately. I'm sorry for October 7th. Thank you. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Yes. You personally did. But are you sorry for the destruction of the second temple? Yeah. And will you help us build the third? Do you have any red cows? Yes.

But I wanted to ask you, Abby, seriously, about this recent murder of seven aid workers. I feel like without, you know, obviously I'm not, I'm not giving the Israeli government any credit here. I'm wondering what the motivation is, what the factors are that led to an actual admission of an oopsie, which is not something that they usually do immediately. It's something they usually do after first saying no Hamas did it or first, you know,

giving any kind of excuse they can to get the news cycle to stop talking about it and then later kind of being like yeah I guess we killed that journalist you know like they did they've done I mean thousands of times so do what are your thoughts on on what happened here and why the Israelis are responding different this time I think it's honestly because it's international and the majority of them were not Palestinian because at first they were trying to say it was Hamas I mean, not the official line, but all of the sock puppets and Hasbro trolls were already like, no, if it was a strike, it wouldn't be this perfect, you know, all the bodies would be torn apart. Like all of that, all of the typical talking points were being put out there that it was a roadside bomb that no Hamas did it. And this is what you see initially to just completely deflect and obfuscate like even truth and make it really murky.

But I was frankly very surprised to see the Israeli government even care to respond an issue and apology. I mean, it must have been an outpouring from the actual governments that lost citizens that were pressuring them for the first time in months and months because we see how the playbook works. You guys have detailed it extensively. And at this point, in the genocide six months in, they simply do not care. And they have killed people seeking aid. This is like routine massacres that are happening every couple days of just desperate Palestinians amassing to seek aid. and they're just unleashing quadcopter drones on them, just tank shelling and killing people with snipers. And almost as many civilians have died trying to scavenge for food than have died

on October 7th civilians. So I was just like, why is Israel even like caring at this point? I mean, they already said even the Hague can't stop us. They just don't care. So something must have happened behind the scenes. Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that this happened almost within 24 hours of them going and bombing an embassy. And that's pretty egregious. And if you had to pick and chew, like if you're going to apologize for one to almost offer a smokescreen, like I'm almost imagining like the mayor's office on the wire,

you know, like which one are we going to apologize for to deflect intention from the other? Right. Much more serious international incident, if it's possible to imagine something more serious than killing seven or six internationals and a Palestinian in delivering aid would be bombing an embassy? You would think.

You would think, I mean, the only time that I saw them do this was in the initial Ali Arab hospital bombing. And I think it was just them reacting to the media and the governments. And so they just, they think they can get away with anything at this point because they can. Because they can. And so I think that this is just them being like,

oh, shit, we actually just have to make a quick statement to pretend like this was a mistake. But yeah, you're right. I mean, the fact that they just flagrantly bombed an embassy. And no one's even talking about that because it was just over. I mean, maybe that's their playbook now. It should just commit like, like stack the war crimes and compound them all per day so then they can only just address one and then 24 hour news cycle just forget about the rest. It's happening at such a ridiculous rate that it's really, it's staggering and

it's hard to wrap your mind around. 100%. The one that makes you look the most human and ignore the other one. Right. The one that makes you look the most magnanimous. because you can't justify an embassy bombing as, I mean, that's nothing other than terrorism. That is what that is. That is the tactic. I mean, that you can't. The world's most contrite army. Yes. But yeah, no, so I do think that, you know, what I have seen coupled with this like magnanimous admission of a mistake has been, let's see Hamas try to do that. which is I think it's just so disingenuous and it's so I think at least on the part of the mouthpiece

is the Israeli has Boris and whatnot it is clearly what they want people to get out of this which is that when Israel does make a mistake they own up to it and they do an investigation now Hamas commit a massive massacre and apologize challenge go yeah listen it's actually harder for them than it usually is, you know what I mean, for anyone else. They do not like to

apologize. So do you think just based on kind of your, I mean, history of studying this subject and like looking into this, the video that I played earlier of the, what was it, it was the IDF's, like, Chief of Staff, Herzzi, Halievi, do you find the apologies itself to be, they feel coerced to me, I guess is the question. It's like being held hostage? Yeah, I mean, literally, if you watch that video again, is this not, is this not a hostage video? This is the most hostage-ass video I've ever seen. Just like, was a great mistake.

Israel is at a war with Hamas, not with the people of Gaza. We are sorry. So we. We are sorry. I like how he has to then articulate the point. Like, no, no, no, no, we're not at war with the civilians. We're just at war with Hamas. It's like, dude, what are you talking about?

You guys just killed everything but Hamas. Right, exactly. I mean, at this point, it's so disingenuous to continue this lie of like we're trying to kill. when anyone who has lived through the war on terror era of the United States and the world knows that you don't kill an ideology, you just create, you end up creating more and more people who are going to be like, who's going to be like, oh, okay, I'm going to be pro-Israel now now that you've killed my entire family. Yeah, it's like everyone in Gaza does not join the Hamas

that has suffered at the hands of Israel, but everyone in Hamas has suffered at the hands of Israel. Like, I mean, it's, it's not inevitability that you're going to join a resistance group, but, like, all the people in Hamas certainly have suffered and have lost things. And so it's not really hard to make, you know, the logical conclusion that this will further radicalize people. And what is going to, like, I just keep wondering, like, 19,000 orphans, you know, all of the amputees, like, what, what is going to happen to this general? that's growing up. I mean, not to mention just millions of people who are traumatized. Yes. Like, you kill my whole fucking family. Yeah. I'm probably going to want to kill you.

In Israel's mind, I think that generation will grow up to be, you know, Lithuania and Bulgaria and Montenegro's most traumatized minorities. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Once we get once we get the peer built. Yeah. And it just, it just seems to be. so counterintuitive to anyone with a working brain that you, you know, you wonder why they would hold on to this complete lie that like, no, no, no, we're just trying to, we're just trying to get rid of Hamas when it is just so clear. I think that they just need to placate the American public because we're the ones who sponsor and subsidize their apartheid and their entire regime with weapons. I don't know why necessarily because they,

They are such a huge arms dealer. But beside the point, like, they, they unleash all of these spokespeople who speak English. This is all designed for an American audience. So what we just saw, the spokesperson who's like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we're at war with Lamas. And then Netanyahu looking like a wax fucking figure. I don't know what the hell just. Did he have the surgery that, like, sucked the, um. Yeah, the Buckelfat surgery.

Yeah. Like, did he? I mean, what the hell is going on with that guy? Yeah. He was going for the Anna Taylor Joy look. Yeah, right, failed miserably. He wants to look like the queen's gambit. That just costs a million U.S. taxed dollars to be.

Right, exactly. But like that's for us. And so for Israeli society, I mean, I remember when they, when we were being told by Biden and all of these assholes here that, no, we can't trust the Hamas-run health ministry. We need to question all these numbers. At the same time, in Israeli society, Their local news was running the same counter that the Hamas run health ministry was running for civilian casualties and saying these are how many terrorists we've killed. Right.

Like it is unabashed and admitted. And so it's just posturing and very, very infantilizing to have Israeli officials literally coming over to the U.S. and telling us these things because that's all that the U.S. really wants from them. Just come over here, apologize, just say what we need to hear, say that there's a peace process in the work, say that you want a two-state solution. and everything else is washed away. And at least we can point to that statement and just say, no, no, no, no, no, it was an accident. And case closed. And that's what they do every single time

and it's absolutely despicable because we all know the truth we can see with our own eyes. And we know what Israeli society is saying. And it couldn't be further from what we're hearing here. Yeah, it's definitely not, I'm sorry. Right. That is not...

Add, you have a quick question for you. You're talking about, or maybe it's not a quick question, but not a quick answer. I'm just curious. You're talking about, you know, the American public, the American audience. We had Chuck Schumer's speech recently, which was in some ways the most surprising speech from a U.S. Senator that I can remember in terms of where he went with it. This is the most stalwart defender of Israel who gave a rather even-handed and sober assessment of blame on both sides. Not only that, but he was speaking about the one-state solution and kind of giving it its due in terms of young people. He sort of understands why it's appealing to young people.

He didn't dismiss it angrily as out-of-hand anti-Semitic. He just argued against it. It was quite something. And I'm wondering, I was watching Max Blumenthal along with my brother on the Gray Zone stream yesterday. And there was sort of a sense that Max was pushing that, like, we might be approaching the day when the U.S. protective umbrella gets removed, that Israel is spinning so far out of control now that even that the support might be starting to crumble and that the spin in the Hasbara might be working less and less and the spell might be rubbing off. Do you have that sense at all

that we might be entering a phase of where things start to ship? I do. And I think looking at several factors here. I mean, the first factor, first and foremost is the fact that Biden is running this policy. He is single-handedly overseeing the worst, most heinous war crimes in the modern era. And that's because this is validated by even senior officials that have resigned in protest over the genocide saying the buck stops with him. No matter how much pressure surrounding him, no matter how many advisors are dissenting with this policy, he is the one who is doing it. I mean, of course, you know, everyone's Zionist, really, but Biden is one of the worst. I mean, he was on the house floor a couple decades ago,

and even Medellin Began was just like, who is this guy? He's literally justifying using like women and children as cannon fodder. Um, it was really surreal. I mean, sir, we, sir, we do not do that, but we don't kill women and children. This is at the time when Reagan was saying, stop your Holocaust in Lebanon. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I think that says at all that Biden has always been one of the worst, most unapologetic Zionists. He was on the house floor. also saying, you know, if Israel didn't exist, we need to create her for our own interests. So he, you know, with these secret arm transfers over a hundred deals that bypass Congress over the last six months, I think it really speaks volumes about him leading the charge on this.

So if it weren't for him, who knows what we would be seen in terms of pressure actually reaching the presidential office? I think the pressure is mounting. It's working. That's why we see someone like Chuck Schumer even being able to speak these truths for the first time, addressing critically the ridiculousness of this of this unbreakable bond the fact that there was an abstention at the UN Security Council for the first time ever that there was actually applause you have not seen that in decades of just exasperation from world bodies just saying

fuck thank you finally finally I mean the US has been the one who is shrouding Israel with impunity for the last 50 years I mean honestly like every time that there's that there's an attempt for international accountability. The U.S. vetoes it. So I think that this was a hugely significant moment. Of course, they backpedaled and was like, no, it's not binding. No, it's because we didn't condemn Hamas. But I think it was internal pressure that finally wore down some of these people that said, no, we're, look, Israel is going too far. And they're dragging us along down with them. I mean, for the longest time, I kept asking, what will it take? What will it take? because the U.S. cares too much about its public image to do the things that Israel is doing.

I think every country in the world other than Israel, because it has the backing of the U.S. Empire, would care too much about its image to targeted assassination of 100 plus journalists. I mean, not all of them in targeted assassinations, but killing that many journalists, killing that many aid workers, desecrating the entire Gaza Strip, the medical infrastructure, all of these war crimes. It is too much. And it makes what the U.S. has done in places like Iraq. it really pales in comparison to the frequency of what Israel is doing and how blatant it all is.

So I think that I was asking that same question, what will it take for the U.S. to stop protecting Israel to this extent because of how much it's hurting U.S. hegemony. It seems so counterintuitive to global capitalism, and it seems counterintuitive to Biden's reelection chances. But I think that we're finally seeing the answer to that, that the pressure is mounting. It's not working anymore. And I think the U.S., you know, when you're an empire, every problem is a nail. So whether it's sanctions in Latin America and you losing your grip on hegemony in that region or just this unshakable bond with Israel, this allegiance that will drag you down and lose your standing in the rest of the world. But I think maybe some clear heads are coming out top in our administration, and they're finally saying, look, this is hurting us too much.

finally becoming too untenable for us. And I hope that that's the case. And maybe it's because they just don't like being chased down and hounded by people everywhere they go. Maybe they're just like, shit, I can't even leave my house. Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah.

It is wonderful to watch. And, you know, I, I, it just what shocks me about it is, um, it even ended Lizzo's career. I know. Lizzo, Lizzo quit. We lost her. Yeah. Lizzo was like performed at the, what was it, Radio City Music Hall at a special, a special Biden-O-Bama, like, you know, genocide's okay if you're sad about it, event.

And yeah, yeah, she performed and people dragged. People put the zone of interest music over. What was with the whole cast of like Arrested Development there? I was like, what am I? What's going on? I miss that. You know what? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.

I love that show so much. It's horrible. Everyone is so horrible. Everyone's disappointing me at all, at all times. Stephen fucking Colbert. Oh, my God. Well, remember when he shaved his head and was doing the whole campaign slot for Obama and shaved his head basically saying, like, I'm going to become a Marine and did that whole

USO tour adjut propaganda. God. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's not even like, don't ever meet your hair. heroes. It's don't, don't follow your heroes and hope that they, they die at some point, so you don't have to see them turn into what they become. But, you know, what's shocking to me about this too is like for anyone who's been paying attention, if we're just talking like

electoral politics reasons for why this is bad, like anyone who knew anything about this knew this was going to be bad electorally. Like, it surprises me that they're even a little bit having some sort of like come to Jesus moment

because of the fact that like there was, you know, everyone knows that no matter what Biden does for Israel, he's still going to be, you know, he's still going to be

going up against Trump who is beloved by. by Netanyahu and, you know, he will still get dragged by the right-wing Republican, Israel-affiliated, you know, mouthpieces and lobbyists and whatnot. And not to mention the fact that people do actually give a shit that he is committing a genocide. Like, it just shocks me that people are like, wow, man, I don't think people like this. And Trump is saying, wrap it up, guys.

Yeah, right. at this point you got to wrap it up now he's not saying wrap it up because Palestinian lives matter but that's not how Trump rules no of course not this looks bad this is you know you got a you're being inefficient wrap it up but he's making more sense than Biden is when Trump cares more about optics than anyone than like then Biden you know that shit is going insane in the Democrat White House you know what I mean like he has never given a shit about optics he will literally just do whatever the fuck he wants even if you're like that looks exactly like a crime and he's like shut up you're a crime and and at this point it's just clear

to me that uh Biden is not only doesn't care about optics but he might even think the optics are good for him in some way I'm not really sure what he's thinking yeah he must be an off-the-cuff theory yeah yeah he must be let me float this theory what tell me what you guys thing. Yeah. The Democrats are so used to taking black voters for granted. Yes. And they've had ample reinforcement for that position, you know, because you've got Clyburns in the mix. Right. Who will always go out and rally the base and the black community in America has their own reasons for just gravitating back to the Democrats no matter what. Right. That they may not have taken seriously that Arab Americans

to say nothing of young people in general when it comes to, you know, how strongly people feel about Palestine and the absolute red line that this is and the fact that there are certain groups that you can't take it that you can't take for granted. Right. Oh, get over it. It's like what Hillary Clinton said. Just get over it.

There's two choices. choices my way or the highway or whatever the fuck she said and jimmy fallon's like yeah yeah i like yeah he's like uh huh he's slapping his knee and tortling yeah good one god damn what a hog i mean you're right i think like look the democratic party is essentially just one thing and one thing only it's a massive voter turnout machine that's all they care about that's all they ramp up for every two years their entire rhetoric is just progressive it's just the veneer of progressive But it's really right-wing policies. And then they wonder, why don't people vote for us?

And then they blame the left. They blame the non-voters. They blame everyone except themselves. And there's no accountability. But I think that this time around, there is a fear now that they're seeing the uncommitted voters tally very, very high in swing states. And already Biden was dragging his feet. He was already losing almost every swing state before facilitating and overseeing genocide.

So if that's not waking people up in the Democratic Party apparatus, I don't know what will, but you're right. I think Arab voters, Palestinian voters, and just people of fucking conscience. Young people, because young people, even though the Democrats lost the midterms, apparently they painted that as a victory because they didn't lose as much as they thought they were. And it was really the young people coming out in droves rejecting the right-wing judges who overturned Roby Wade. But I think that those people are not going to show up this time. And even when they were polled and asked when they were in the polling line, and stuff. They were just like, I blame the Democrats and I'm just so mad. I hate Biden and I hate

them for doing this and not stopping this, but like I'm still more mad at the right wing. And so they were still very crystal clear about like why they were voting against like the lesser of two evil at that point. But I don't think it's going to work this time because there is no lesser of two evils in this situation. Yeah. Come to think of it. Yeah. Go ahead, man. No, I mean, you make, I think a perfect point here, which is like in order to be like, you got to vote for the lesser of two evils you have to be less evil you can't like that is like the whole thing you can't it's not the nicer of two evils right yeah you can't actually be in fact more evil that's right that's like the number one rule of being lesser of two evils and yeah and even though

trump would probably be doing the same thing and i'm sure oh sure you know if he's not doing it right right exactly and it just kind of leads you to the point Like, if they are still viewing themselves with the strategy of, well, we are the lesser of two evils, it just reinforces the fact that they look at what's going on in Gaza and say, well, genocide is less evil than Trump, you know, doing the capital riots on January 6th. Yeah, because Trump is Hitler. Right, exactly. And, dude, Biden is so, oh, my God, he's such a nightmare. I remember during the, I don't even know if it was 2016 or 2020, but when, when Biden was harangued by his, by his base or by young people, whatever, like about immigration and all these policies that were very right wing, he was just like, just vote for Trump. If you don't like me, vote for Trump.

And that's his attitude now. I remember a Muslim came up to him or an imam or someone was asking him about the genocide. And he was just like, Trump will deport you. Yeah. So vote for Trump. If that's what you want, it's just like, what? You don't vote for me. You ain't Arab.

Right. And here's some hot sauce to prove it. Here's some Zotar, a packet of Zatar in my bag. Oh, man. Yeah, it is, you know, the Democrats' approach to losing the midterms is very reminiscent of Israel's approach to the ICJ ruling. We won, guys. Yeah, right, yeah.

Actually, we won very much so. We're not in, we're not in jail. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, here's Unra that we need to defund and let's change the subject. Yeah, it is, you know, the electoral politics thing for me

has been the most, I think, just annoying facet of the conversation and the discourse, because you just come to a point where you just go, if I can't trust you to act within the realms of not just like humanity, but like even like coal, calculated logic, you know, even just regular ass, like conniving Machiavellian, I want to win

an election, you know, fucking Tommy Carcetti from the wire type thing. There's two of the wire references now. Like, if I can't trust you to at least be that self-interested, then I really don't know on what human level to engage with you. So I don't, like, my whole thing with the electoral politics thing has been like, I don't, I don't, I don't fucking know. No one's acting normal. But just on like the genocide level, I think that is something that I want to talk with you more about Abby, the human costs and kind of like the way in which the conversation around what's been happening in Gaza has been co-opted, I think, by, you know, Hasbaris who want to argue the intricacies of well.

what is a genocide? And you see this all the time with, you know, these, like, Israeli spokespeople and they're like, you know, Western counterparts in the UK. Matt, we could commit genocide if we wanted to. Right. It's my favorite thing ever that someone says. Benny Morris said that. Yes, they all say it.

To Finkelstein's face, he said, hey, if they wanted to commit, we could kill 500,000 if we wanted to. Yeah. It's a very strange argument. I mean, the argument itself is basically, you know, it's like the attempt there is to say, listen, if we wanted to do genocide, like, we'd be really good at it. But all it comes off sounding like is like, listen, if you guys wouldn't be such assholes about it, we would do an actual genocide, but we're trying to do this in a way that's nice. We're trying to do it slowly.

Well, it's like, yeah, it's like an abuser who has a gun to your head. And he's like, you want to stop the kids from dying? Yes, exactly. Then just release the hostages. We can commit genocide if we wanted to. Right now. You hear that? It's just like, um, what?

Yeah. Your, your camera froze for just a second when you did the wide eyes and I was like, this is amazing. It's a fantastic screenshot. No, no, no, it's perfect. It was so good. Um, but yeah, uh, you know, this, this argument. has been put forth.

I mean, you talk about the Finkelstein Benny Morris debate, you know, Destiny, who is... Density. Yeah, density. Destiny. Some, he's like a, what has been called a debate pervert.

His main argument has been trying to parse the legal definition of what is and isn't a genocide. You know, he's just like, no, this is a very specific term. And I read about it on Wikipedia, and it's very important. to me. And, uh, and so his whole thing is to deny, uh, the idea of a genocide based on the fact

that, uh, it has some sort of, you know, uh, it has a legalistic type of definition that doesn't quite match. It's only, only three of the five boxes of genocide. But you don't need five of the five. And also, it's so funny. It's like, not only is it just totally explicitly clear when you look at the actual UN charter for the prevention, of genocide, it couldn't be more clear, like to match exactly what Israel's doing. But even, even, okay, let's put that aside for one second. Just the fact that we're even having the debate, I think it's just so funny. It exposes that what Israel is doing is pretty goddamn egregious that we're even having the debate. Does this classify as genocide or not? And that should

warrant a ceasefire immediately and to stop Israel from the mass killing. It's like, Because we should stop it before it becomes full-blown genocide. Shouldn't we? Exactly. Let's say it's not a genocide, okay? Let's say it's not a genocide. It's not at the genocide rung of the latter. Well, what are the two or three wrongs close to the genocide wrong?

It's one of those things. There's only two. There's genocide and it's okay to kill all those guys. Right. That's the binary. And it's like such a ridiculous argument even just on its face. And I mean, this is what Hasbrists do. This is what they're experts in.

It's like they lost the moral argument. They lost the high ground so long ago. And they've had us on the defense for decades. Like, it's anti-Semitic. Everything is anti-Semitic. And so for naturally for anti-bigots and anti-racists who care about the plight of Jewish people and who care about the rise of anti-Semitism, we were always like, no, no, no, no, it's not anti-Semitic because, but now it's like these assholes are now on the defense.

Now they have to defend genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder. Right. So that's great. But they've somehow managed to divert into now mudding the waters about genocide. I mean, that's why it's so amazing, finally, that players on the world stage have brought it. You know, Ireland is now intervening that the ICJ ruling is happening because it's like, finally, we don't have to be making this case anymore. Right. The International Court of Justice is.

That was entirely, I think that was the thing that a lot of people, you know, who have been, who care about this issue and have cared about it for a long time, we're celebrating. when South Africa had the balls to do this to actually, you know, put a case of genocide against Israel because it was like something in the institutional, you know, world, something that is, you know, that has a logo and has people in suits that go to a building. With wigs. With wigs and shit. Like something official said what we have all been seeing with our own. eyes for months. And by the way, I think the scale is there's two, it's a binary. There's genocide and there's let it slide. And if it's anything below genocide is let it slide, that's how it goes. But yeah, you know, you brought up the hasbarists. And you,

recently, Abby, were on the Pierce Morgan's show, whatever it's called. Pierce Tonight, piercing your heart, whatever it's called. And he had on... Pierce Morgan disinterested. Yeah, is that what it's called?

I don't know. Something like that. Okay. Yeah, Pierce Morgan. I don't know. What about this pedantic point? Yeah. Let's see.

So he had on one of my favorite Twitter hasbarists, a woman by the name of Emily Schrader, who his, if you don't know Emily Schrader, Emily Schrader, is a, is a Hezbarist, works for Israeli Hasbara orgs like Stand With Us was one of the orgs she worked for, and is the director of social media. or was the director of social media for Stan with us. So this is something she's done for a while. An international Israel education organization in Jerusalem is how they call it. That's not what it is. And it's from Los Angeles, made Alia in 2015. And I listened to a podcast with her recently in which she explained her how she went from being just a L.A. girl to a, you know, genocidal lady. Or woman.

Excuse me. And it was literally Yes, LA Woman Part 2 Isle in which Jim Morrison just talks about Hasbara She was a student at USC And she was around during Apartite week And she said she was so annoyed

By the protests That they annoyed Apartide Where's that going on? I thought they were Sign me up I thought that, I thought they phased that out. I can get some of that week.

Oh, I love apartheid week. It's my favorite week. It's like a career. It's like career fair, you know? It's like career week. It's like you find a career. A partite week. You find an apartheid state you want to live in.

And yeah, so basically she became a Hasparas out of spite. And you were on peers with her. And I just wanted to play some moments that I thought were great. you were asked by Pierce about, you know, your thoughts on whether or not it was a genocide. And I thought you had a great answer. So I'm going to play some of that for you. Awesome. Believe that what's happened in Gaza constitutes genocide.

I do. And I think that the fact that this debate is raging on shows that what Israel is doing is egregious enough. The fact that people are actually having a debate on whether. or not it is genocide. Like you said, the International Court of Justice has agreed that there's a plausible case for genocide. I think that you just clearly articulated several factors that Israel is in fact carrying out.

The mental bodily harm and caring about conditions to destroy a group of people. Clearly the complete siege on Gaza, the elimination or the prevention, rather, of water, food, electricity, the prevention of aid, widespread preventable illnesses, killing people now. now we see two million people on the brink of starvation. Clearly, these are all intended to destroy a group of people.

When you compound that with the indiscriminate bombing in the most densely populated places on earth, I would absolutely constitute that as genocidal killing. And then peers compound that with the fact that there's genocidal intent. I'm sorry, your answer is so good, Abby, but she has this unfair advantage that her facial expressions. You can't help but look at her. They're fascinating to watch. It's a kind of kabuki, like, like, like, Japanese past. Kabuki smirking, you know?

Well, Pierce even has to ask her at a certain point, like, why are you laughing when we're talking about dead kids? Like, quite literally, he's just like, is this a joke? Is this a joke to you? Yeah, which is, I mean, listen, this is the thing with Zionism and Zionists in general. You know, I've said before, they absolutely have an inverted view of reality. Like, we laugh at this in order not to cry because it is so horrific. But Zionists believe they are the victims.

And so they don't know what they look like when they are laughing at the fact that their own country or the country they support is murdering children. Again, Gallo's humor is not the same thing. Not my type of humor. Well, Israelis think gallows humor is when the hangman makes a joke. That is the way that. they interpret it. They don't fully understand them as the oppressor. Anyway, folks, we want to bring up our next,

our next victim. Our next Israeli standing for me. I just flew in the Gaza, and boy, are all those kids I killed, tired. Oh, God. Why aren't you laughing? I'm the good guy. So, uh, sorry. Uh, so then, um, uh, Emily, uh,

responds to that and with just it's it's amazing to me because her response to is israel committing a genocide is so her denial is so genocidal in nature that I can't compute why she doesn't see herself you know like like how does she view herself but I'll play it for you guys so you can understand how insane it truly is. Of course not all Palestinians are human animals and Palestinian civilians, there are many innocent people. However, as President Herzog said, it is also true that there is a certain degree

of complicity with many of the people of Gaza. Now, does that mean that they deserve to die, as she stated? No, of course not. But it's not the same thing as being innocent either. Whoa! and then and then the face the face she returns to after making her mic drop face i know literally i'm sorry i don't like to be the guy i know i'm going to get comments about this about body shaming but she looks

like a shaved grinch like she's got she's got you know like the whole thing is very dr susy i'm the mouth shape is she got a triangular sort of mouth situation and those susy's eyes, yeah. I mean, just the well. It doesn't mean they're entirely innocent either. Yeah. And what I love is Pierce Morgan like listens to the sentence she just said and

computes it and processes it immediately and goes, wait, what? And this is the rest of that. There are no innocent people in the Palestinian side. I don't think that it's true that there's no innocent people. Isn't that what you just affect to be saying? I think that there is a certain

degree of complicity with many of the population. As we see in the polls, according to their polls, a Palestinian conducting poll, over 70% of the people in Gaza support the actions of October 7th. I wish it wasn't the case. But Emily, you're just using that, you're just using that poll, you're using that pole to paint all civilians as guilty. Do you realize that? I am absolutely not.

I literally stated the opposite. Yes, you are. You're saying that because, I'm sorry, I literally stated the opposite. Merely 70% need to die. Well, because again, there's only, it's a binary. It's either all or not all. Genocide or let it slide. It's either all or fall.

Here we go. I said 70%. Of course there are innocent Palestinians. So what does that mean? But you're rationalizing collective punishment and starvation of two million people. One million kids. That's what you're rationalizing by saying that 70% agree with the actions of October 7th. 70% of people in Palestine are of this view.

50% of that population are under 18. They're children. So are you including large numbers of children in your assessment that Palestinians all believe this way? I don't believe that the statistics of that poll, how they conducted it, included children. However, I don't know. So I would have to investigate that further.

If it didn't include children, then that doesn't include half the people in Gaza. Yeah. I mean, just she goes on at one point to talk about how the children in Gaza are being abused by Hamas. Right. And I'm just going to play a little bit of that because this to me is just just just we'll play it. 70% of the people in Gaza have a view would have to include a lot of children, right? And if you don't include the children, you don't include half the population,

well, then you're talking about a narrow number of people, comparative. Sure, but you also have to consider the fact that Hamas is actively recruiting and indoctrinating youth with this very extremist jihadist ideology. And it's child abuse. It's an unfortunate reality that Palestinian children are dealing with. So that leads me into my next question for you, Abby. Isn't it justified? Isn't it right to, that in order to stop child abuse, you have to kill children?

You'll be greatly reducing the number of abused children in the world. That's what we want to do. Right, of course. Right. Yeah, exactly. You have to kill children in mass. I mean, I think that's a perfectly cromulent question. And I don't see why anyone would have a.

problem with it um no just like that point of calling children um like like framing them as as child abuse victims uh from from at the hands of hamas as a justification for the indiscriminate murder of children by the hands of israel is like it's so detached from reality that like you know there are times when I, you know, I try not to look at my own personal history, you know, like growing up in West Los Angeles and, you know, growing up with a lot of Zionists, with a lot of Israelis too, you know, and meeting all different kinds and knowing that like it's just, it's a, it's a spectrum of beliefs that everyone has, especially in the United States. You're not really getting the raw shit. But I look at that and I just go like, what is the thinking? an Israeli society that allows this kind of messaging to go completely just unchecked or like well yeah it's it's it's less explained by just a total fucking settler like her i mean someone who's just lives in los angeles and moves to israel i understand the cradle to grave indoctrination i truly do yeah the force separation the apartheid that's actually used against Israelis as well that they

can't go into the west bank they can't go to gaza they never interact with palestinian kids. But for someone like Emily who just leaves L.A. in her mid-20s and just makes Alia and is just living in a fanatical fascist state and becomes a propagandist for them, it takes a level of depravity and sociopathie that I can't wrap my mind around at all. I mean, I saw her conduct an interview with one of these Israeli spokespeople for, of course, Western audiences to consume. And the whole thing was just saying how the death toll is fake, how we can't trust the numbers and how the vast majority are not children. They're actually Hamas militants. And it was just the most disgusting genocide denial I've ever seen to do that for your job. It's truly sick.

Yeah. I mean, and it and it like blows my mind because, you know, I, you know, Emily is such a interesting, or not interesting, but I'm fascinated by her as a has barista. Because she's so recognizable as people that I grew up with. Like I'm literally also, I'm an L.A. boy born and raised. Like I had to like try to, I was like trying to look up like what high school did she go to. And I wanted to know. And, you know, when I saw she went to USC, I was like, okay, so she went to a private school probably. But, you know, I just like, you know, I look at that kind of soul-destroying job.

And part of me goes like, I think your soul needs to be destroyed before you enter this kind of work. Like it just, it just, yeah, it blows my mind. You're a true believer. I mean, you're a true believer. None of these people, I mean, there's certainly there's people who are paid to lie and they know that it's not anti-Semitic. I think that's the main thing that they know that they're lying about. But other than that, I truly think people like Emily believe, they believe in the rhetoric. It's just like, you know, like Marco Rubio being asked by the Parkland kid, like, why do you get money from the NRA?

They pay you to do this. And he's like, no, they buy into my agenda. This is what I believe. Like, I get money for them because I believe this. And so I think that, you know, when you're looking at corporate media stooges or agents for empire, they're true believers in the system and they are all Zionists. And they believe in U.S. egemony and U.S. imperialism. So it's hard to like unpack that. And yeah, they're soulless and they just want to ascend in their careers and they want the access.

but someone like Emily, you can tell she literally thinks what she's saying. Yeah. For the most part. And that's what's scary. Yeah, that is what's fair. Not to armchair is psychoanalyzed, but there's something deeply damaged there. Please do. This is my favorite thing you do.

I mean, we're all here for it. I mean, you have to be deeply damaged in the part of you that feels things. Yes. You have to, something happened in L.A., whether it was earlier in her life or more recently, that a place where she can go and be on top and join the powerful and not give a shit and be a part of a winner. There's something there that's filling a deep emotional need for these people.

Same thing like Richie Torres, these true believers. Israel is a project, it's an external projection of some internal drive that, that, which makes it impossible for these people to wake up out of it because they need it too much to keep their sense of identity together. I want to ask you something, though, if I could just slightly change topics about the paid ones who don't necessarily believe it. Because I'm not sure which ones discussed me more.

As Tom Petty said, I can't decide which is worse, right? The Richard Torres is the Emily Schrader's, or this triumvirate of White House and State Department spokespeople right now. I'm wondering if you've ever seen anything quite like Matthew Miller, John Kirby, and Corrine Jean-Pierre. I mean, and I'm I'm remembering Jen Saki. I'm remembering Kelly and Conway. I'm remembering whoever the fuck used to go out during the Bush administration, Sean Spicer. I have never in my life seen, and I can't quite put my finger on what it is about these people. But, you know, Kirby's exchange the other day with the journalist asking him

about the world kitchens, the world kitchen bombing and saying, you know, and furthermore, sir, I'll have you know that the Israelis have not found any evidence whatsoever in the state department. Am I right that there's just something, these are new new depths we've never seen before? Yeah, no, it's, I mean, Ari Fleischer, right, he was the press secretary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was pretty fucking bad. But yeah, all the, all the ink that was spilled for Sean Spicer and, or Spicer during the Trump administration and Sarah Huckabee Sanders and how aghast everyone was that she can go and run Trump's cover for all the lies. And what about this? I mean, what's especially disgusting about someone like John Kirby is that he actually cried. Yeah. Talking about Ukraine.

Yeah. Cried. Yes. So for that, I mean, for me, I, I, I wear. my heart on my sleeve, I'm very expressive about my emotions. It seems so particularly deranged and pathological to actually cry crocodile tears for like some foreign policy objective

and then just to be completely stoic and unaffected when you see six months of children blown to bits. I know that they're seeing them. Yes, they have to. They're seeing the pictures. So what what kind of like levels of human psychology does

that speak to where you're you're that deep-seated and your commitment that you can actually put on a show like that. And Aaron pointed out that Corrine Jean-Pierre can't even look up when she's speaking. Like she's now at the point where, but she just does it. There's just a kind of like, fuck it. Tough it out. You're going to get a book deal. You're going to get your book deal.

You're going to be on MSNBC. You're going to be a commentator. Just write it out. Write it out. People are going to forget. People are going to forget. And you can feel the, it's the same kind of like optics calculus that a Sean Spicer, you know, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was doing, like, once I'm, once I eventually get fired or I'm out of this job, I'm going to write a book and then I'm going to correct, you know, the history. The difference is, is they're doing that for a genocide. They're doing it for something that is not, it's not about like some fucking, you know, like meeting.

that Trump had with a Russian guy. It's like this is about literally a genocide. Or at least one below, a let it slide. You know, but like that's insane to me. If you're right or die for your boss,

you know, and it's Trump, you can see how Trump could charm some of these people, right? 100%. You get up there. You get up there. It's a fun game

because you have total contempt for the media as they actually deserve. So it's a game, asshole to asshole, which asshole is going to, whatever. in this case, these people are full-throatedly, at least in the case of Kirby, totally coldly. I mean, Max points out that Matthew Miller looks like Gargamel, a younger Gargamel, which he does.

And then, and then Korean Jean-Pierre, like, morosely, defending fucking genocide. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point, too, because usually there's no pointed questions from the press pool, especially during like the lead up to Iraq and, you know, all these heinous foreign policy endeavors at the U.S. unleashed after 9-11, but now you are seeing pointed questions about all of the war crimes almost daily in these conferences. So, so for the first time, these people are just having to just lie and apologize for what are clear blatant war crimes over and over and over again and just keep saying Israel, nope, there's no evidence for that. Oh, no, Israel's

investigating themselves. Or yeah, we've seen the footage and it's not. up to us, Israel's, you know, Israel said that it was an accident. Oops. It's unbelievable to me. I mean, I don't know how these people sleep at night. They're genocidal maniacs. And I think that I think that we forget sometimes how genocidal and murderous and just flippant, like our elected representatives truly are about brown people. Yes. I mean, you see in the halls of Congress people like Medea Benjamin and just other constituents like asking, I think it was like the Senate. from Tennessee or something, he was just like, kill them all, kill them all. And they were talking about kids.

They were talking about children. Kids. This is, this is how these people think, talking about we should, we should drop a nuclear bomb on them like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was some other asshole. Yes. Some congressmen. I mean, I think we, this is who these people are, honestly.

And, yeah, that might be the Republicans saying the most crazy stuff, but like we see how Democrats devalue and de-legitimizeize the lives of, um, you know, and, um, you know, brown people. And we're seeing it clear as day. 100. Yes. Clear as day. It's almost it's like there's an added layer of offensiveness when it's Democrats because they are hiding their genocidal nature behind kind of like either whether it's you know the idea of like mental health or or social justice like they they couch it whereas like a Republican will literally just say kill them all kill all the children yeah they preempt their their apologies for israel by being like

oh we we yes you know we abhor the loss of civilian life on right sides yes exactly you know they're gonna pull the you know they're gonna pull the lester of two evil shit by telling you that the next election is existential by pretending they're different right i think that you know fuck john paul sartra the real existentialists or the democrat because everything is fucking existential well i had a gun to my head for 20 years as a young woman saying, you know, if you don't vote for the Democrat, your right to abortion is going to be taken away. And that gun, that metaphorical gun was seriously drove me at the beginning of my political awakening to, like, feel that.

Like, it was existential for me. I had to go and don't make fun of me. It was very embarrassing. I went on a swing state trip for John Kerry. I mean, that's how, like, driven I was. I was like, I need to protect this. And then you just realize it's completely, they don't protect it themselves. Yes.

Why are we fighting for these people? if they're not going to codify Roe when they had the chance. Right. Yeah. And they're going to yell at us for them being bad at winning elections when they, you know, by just American sentiment based on polls, they should be winning elections. Yeah. Why doesn't status quoism? Why doesn't that excite the youth who are bankrupt and don't have enough money for anything at all and who are gripped with debt?

It's like, hmm, I don't know. It's not very exciting, is it? That is quoting the precipice of climate catastrophe. Yes. If they think that, you know, it's like the people they appeal to are only people who would give their left nut to be a fucking staffer in their, you know, campaigns. There's no one showing up at rallies for Biden. Like Trump has a cult following. Yes.

Like Trump has a base that's very excited and will be driven to the polls to vote for him. Biden does not have that. Yes. And he's refusing to build it. He's refusing to even try. And it's all, all I can think of is just based on his own personal beliefs or, you know, about like, you know, they'll fucking, people don't care about the Browns. Or it's based on this like democratic, you know, class, this like D, triple C class of people who are just like, only thing that matters is money. We got to make these calls. We got to make sure that we're, we got to make sure that. We don't piss off A-PAC, and nothing else matters, which is just, like, disgusting on a whole other level. They keep trying to cater to this, like, fantasy right-wing voters who's a moderate who's just ready to become a Democrat, and they do this every election, right? Yes. And it never works because Republicans are Republicans. Yeah.

For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania or Michigan? That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Schumer. the Democrats are the ones who are most likely to use language like we see you we hear you but in fact no one feels literally no one feels seen or heard by the Democrats at this point the only people who see who feel seen and heard as an actual experience are Trump voters

and that's why they love him exactly and and he's only he is only just placating them He's only throwing fish to the goddamn seals and watching them flap their fins. Like they are not actually getting anything. They're getting rhetorical fish. The pronouns, right? You know, gays. And they're like, yeah, he's not doing anything

to improve their lives, but he understands that he's playing a media game. And he understands what it is to do demagoguery. And he's like, I'm just going to do that. No, he actually is doing something. I think we need to, yeah, yeah, yeah, even on the grounds of you want to oppose him effectively. Yes. And at this point, again, I'm a culture war draft dodger, so let me out of the, you know, but even from the point of view, if you want to defeat him, you have to understand what he is doing for them.

And it's not small, and it's not insignificant, and I'm not going to deride them for it. He's naming things that they can completely see. He's making them feel less crazy because they know. that the coastal elite look down on them. They know that the expert class hates them and reviles them. They know that this country is not set up for them, if it ever was, you know? And so someone saying it gives them, it's oxygenating, you know? And the fact is, no Democrat can do that because no Democrat tells the truth about anything.

Trump's a fucking liar, but he's an honest liar. He's a hypocrite, but he's an honest hypocrite. Yes. So I think that's 100% spot on. I think that's exactly right. I do think that there's there's something to be said for just the acknowledgement of your worldview. And experience. And experience. And I don't even think it's like, I'm not even talking about it from a place of like, oh, well, these people, their worldview is necessarily racist or sexist or anti-gay. It's just, you know, whatever their worldview is, he is good at, he's good at giving them a nice reflection of what their lived experience is and then kind of giving them a reason why they are in the position that they're in and then blaming, you know, pronouns or whatever the fuck. But, you know, that is something that Democrats can't even do even in the midst of a genocide, which is just fucking insane. Like, I'm supposed to be talking about the Sopranos, about the wire. I am not supposed to be doing an entire podcast about this. But it's like literally the number one thing that Daniel and I get in terms of messages is like,

thank you for saying that my eyes are not lying to me. And it's, uh, see, we're doing what Trump is doing. Yes, we are, 100% except for, you know, we're, uh, Well, then someone should be, except, except, you know, without pointing in the direction of just kind of a generalized bigotry in order to, like, you know, it's more Machiavellian, obviously, with him, because he's doing it to get power, whereas I'm trying to human, we're trying to, we're trying to, we're trying to, we're trying to avoid

impulses. Yeah. Um, but we, all right, we, we got to, we got to wrap this up. So I think I want to play just one piece of, uh, as barra. that um a friend of the show uh justin uh part of the og bad has barra facebook group back in the day sent to me this is just uh there's a lady named schula um and you may have seen her before i don't know what the deal is with this but this is like whenever any anyone like emily schrader or anyone talks who you know goes on these like big news shows and you know they've got their

makeup on or whatnot. This is like the soul that I see deep within them. So I'm going to play this for a man. Oh my gosh. I'm a supporter of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Israel and the IDF must go into Rafa now. And this is also the only way to release our hostages.

There is no other way. Hamas is not interested in peace. They're working with Biden to buy time. Because they know that at the end of the war, they will lose because Biden in his election year will stop Israel from fighting from giving us weapons. He only focuses on his policy how to deal with the Muslims. Who are Hamas in Michigan, in Nevada, and other states, Arizona, how to deal with the radical leftists, who are also against Israel? Only Netanyahu will bring back the hostages.

No one will bring them back. Bye, Shula. And then my name is Shula. I thought that was Laura Lumer. Who is that? That is what Laura Lumer was desperately trying to avoid becoming when she went into her cosmetic surgeon and said, I'm thinking the penguin from Batman returns. An anorexic penguin.

That's creepy as hell, man. Yeah, just like one of the most creepy ladies I've found since, you know, Twitter decided to make their algorithm only Zionists. That lady Shula gets put on my feet all the time and I'm just like. Anyways, Biden, you know, I want to say congrats to you for such, forward thinking, knowing that no matter what you do, Netanyahu will never love you and his supporters will always think you are Hamas, no matter how much genocide you allow. Even Emily Schrader. Even Emily Schrader was like saying Biden is just horrible on Israel.

It's like, what else do you, what else could you possibly want? What else can you do? It's like, it just shows that they can't, there is no winning. So like, from a position of just pure fucking strategy what are you thinking thinking that they will help um yeah it is insane we do have time for one more question daniel so abby i think the first time i ever became aware of your work was your woman on the street interviews with israelis yes in jerusalem uh or Tel Aviv or wherever it was and this was what 2016 yeah so you had your finger on the pulse that's that it's pulsing now for the entire world to see, which is the deterioration of whatever used to be humanistic and liberal in that society. So you're going to be less surprised than your average

person about what's happening now. But have you been surprised at all? And what did you see back then that were, that can you just trace for us the sort of what you were observing? then and what we're seeing now and that the development of that because something has exploded here but it's been brewing for a long time yeah because there was always like a socialist argument and you know especially with Bernie Sanders saying he stayed on this kibbutz and that there was a socialist project and so it was always kind of hard to wrap your mind around how fascist Israeli society has become because it really is worse than it's ever been and I think a lot of people who are true leftists flee because they can.

A lot of them have dual citizenship and or passports that they can just leave Israel because why would you want to live in a society like that when it's actually dangerous to be a leftist? It actually is. There's lynch mobs and people who will actually hunt you down and beat you up. There's a saying in Israeli society now that says Arabs are the common cold and leftists are AIDS. You can't get rid of the common cold unless you get rid. of AIDS first. You know, Dan...

Wait, wait, wait, what? So, what's the medical reasoning behind that? Don't ask me, ask them, no. So, I mean, David Sheen, who's also, you know, a colleague, a mutual colleague of ours. I mean, he's filmed some of these fascist throngholds of rallies of tens of thousands of people in Tel Aviv chanting death to the leftists and death to the videographers because they hate Bet Salem for filming the atrocities that they commit because then it creates widespread attention for the Palestinian plight.

When I was there in 2016, I was very taken aback by how fascist and openly genocidal Israelis were. I spent a month in the West Bank. I talked to hundreds of Palestinians. Not one person ever said anything remotely anti-Semitic, remotely genocidal. And I even spoke to someone whose house was being attacked constantly. When his settlement was encroaching right on his house, they were throwing rocks at his windows. They set fire to his car. And he just said, why can't they just live there?

Why do they have to move right on top of my home in this village? He was like, I don't care if they live here. Just live an empty land right there. And we can be neighbors. And so you compare that to going into Jerusalem in a place called Tolerance Square, where you're just in a suburban, like, open-air mall where there's like Sephora behind these idiots talking to me. And, I mean, honestly, people have tried to paint this just sampling of Israeli society as like, I concocted this.

I'm the one who put this together to make Israelis look as bad as possible. No, amazingly, this is who they are. This was a random sampling of everyone that I talked to put together. And it was just within two hours. And everyone espoused genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians or just said they should be ethnically cleansed. Maybe not killed, but just expelled. Yeah, that's my favorite one. Maybe not kill them.

Don't kill them. Don't kill them. Just make them go away. Yeah, just and so this is why you never see Israelis on camera from Western media. I mean, like I was saying before, they have a very curated reality that they put over with their spokespeople to talk to our news media and our politicians. You never just see news people from corporate media or Western media going and putting a camera in the face of Israelis. And that's exactly why. And so, yeah, I was not surprised because I, you know, especially during the Great March of Return, seeing some of these polls.

showing that 95% of Israelis agreed with the 2014 bombing campaign in Gaza, 98% of them agreed with the shoot to kill policy and unarmed protesters in the Great March of Return. So it's just a natural conclusion that this is what would happen, especially in the aftermath of something like October 7th, you would see such a fervor take hold in Israeli society that would just become nearly unanimous. And it wasn't until several months into this genocide that you saw just a handful of protesters finally saying, this is too much. I mean, I even went to an anti-refugee rally in Tel Aviv,

and I spoke to someone who said, I'm a member of the Labor Party. I'm a leftist. And we need to expel all immigrants. These people bring their multitude of problems over here. We need to kick them out. And even in the random sampling of Israelis, if you watch that whole video where they were all genocidal

talking about Palestinians, one of them said, I'm a leftist. And I just think the occupation should be more humane. That's what it means to be a leftist. So even at that point, I knew there was something very, very deeply fascistic and sick about the society. And that's why I was advocating BDS for the longest time because I just said, look, there's simply no hope from within Israeli society. It's not that there's not leftists there. It's just that they're so drowned out.

And it's just frankly too late because the Lakutniks, I mean, look at Netanyahu back in 1978. He's on the floor. I don't know where he is somewhere in Israel just saying there's never going to be a Palestinian state. And it's just like the fact that this farce has been perpetrated and told to us for generations is so insulting. And it's still told to us. Yeah. And that's my, I know in Israel are encouraging BDS or something similar, you know.

Yeah. And I encourage BDS here too. It's like I, you know, and we're not nearly as fascist in terms of our actual people that live here as Israelis are. But like this, I encourage people to boycott this country too. I mean. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think.

I think my big fear, and I hate to end on a fear, but my big fear about, you know, this is about, you know, kind of this more recent, like, change in what seems like a change in public opinion in the United States, at least in our weirdo fucking Democrat political class, is that this will, that will repeat the mistakes of what happened with Israel's. 1982 invasion of Lebanon and how deeply unpopular it was and led to, you know, the first intifada and then this kind of, this peace effort that happened. My fear is the placation of the American public via fake peace efforts because I think we're now at the point like where, you know, in the past, we had this long drawn out fake peace process. And so because, because of that we were able to pacify people in

Western countries to be like well someone's working on that peace process you know still working on that yeah still working on it but don't worry

we're almost there I just got a cross a few T's dot a few eyes keep shuffling the papers yeah I got something there's an extra paper in there's a page I got to there's footnotes but yeah and you know

I think it's been pretty clear for you know, at least the last eight, you know, last decade that the peace process is a total farce. And I think, you know, the Israelis haven't even really tried to pretend it's anything other than a farce. I think that it's going to be, yeah, go ahead. Well, just I can allay your fear, but it's going to, I'm going to, the answer is going to be more horrible than what your fear is. Oh, great. There isn't going to be a peace process this time, because this time they've destroyed one entire section of

palace like of occupied palace like they've gone full hem on Gaza there's going to be no one left there's no there's no it's not like it was a you know an uprising here and there right yellow could be then pacified and co-opted and then make the mistake of supporting Iraq and the first Gulf War and all of the shit that gave Israel some leverage and led to Oslo and you had Rabin and Clinton, there's, there's no negotiated permanent solution to this. Yeah. Uh, which is, yeah, I just don't see what kind of peace process could emerge from it. Yeah, because like you just said, Gaza's been completely decimated. This is worse than the knockbook when you're looking at just

the sheer numbers of people who are going to be forcibly expelled. and the West Bank so atomized, there's no possible state there. So I think that Israel has completely lost the moral high ground. There's no one that's going to possibly believe that they're acting in good faith from this point forward. And so I think people are looking at this with wide and clear eyes, looking that Israel has gone further than they ever have. There's no turning back from them. And once you, once international human rights organizations and even Israeli human rights organizations

are calling it an apartheid state, the answer then becomes, What can we do about eliminating apartheid? You can't backpedal from that and walk that back. So now, like I said before, we were on the defense for so long. Now, Zionists are on the defense, and that's going to be their future now. And so I think that the time is coming for true democracy and liberation for the Palestinian people. It's very, very unfortunate that had to come on the heels of a massacre of this magnitude. But I truly think there's a new internationalist movement growing.

and pro-Palestinian, you know, Palestinian liberation is at the forefront of that. And finally taking into account how all of these struggles linked together and how they're all kind of appendages of US Empire. And I'm here for it. I think it's beautiful and very motivating. And I think that we're gonna win.

That is a positive message to end the show on. I think we're going to win. That would be so sick. I had to say it. I love it. I love it. And, uh, and, uh,

And I love you, Abby, you're fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast and talking about Israel and stuff with us. Thank you both so much. Huge fan of you both. It was wonderful to talk to you and hopefully we'll do it again. Yeah. Thanks for all your work over the years, Abby. You're really a stalwart, just a hero of this full independent journalism space, not just on this issue, but on so many things.

Yes. Yeah, just big appreciation. Yeah. Thanks so much, you guys. Thank you. And thank you, Daniel Mate, for coming on and, you know, being my sometimes co-host when he can be on here. Daniel, do you have anything to plug?

Well, I'm sure you're very welcome. Do I have anything to plug? I have the country of Ireland to plug. I just spent 10 days there, and I have never, ever seen one country be so in solidarity with another. I'm talking about, I was in, like, three different Irish pubs full of Irish people singing from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, singing songs about Palestine in Gaelic. There were times when I couldn't tell if the songs were in Gaelic or in Arabic, like that there's a kind of spiritual pen pal thing going on here that's really incredible.

So just a shout out to the people of Ireland. Shout out to Ireland. Plug to Ireland. Follow Ireland on Twitter at. Go visit Ireland. Ireland. Ireland's got some great content, you know. Yeah, they got great content. They got our boy, Tyg and so much other things. Our boy, W.V.8s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's cool.

But yes, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you to everyone out there for listening. I love you all. And patreon.com slash badhasbara, badhasbara, gmail.com. questions, comments, concerns, send it all to us. And all right, everyone, until next time, from the river to the sea, this is the first time I heard an Israeli say, sorry. Sorry.

Sorry. Jumping jacks was us. Push-ups was us. Grab-maga, us. All karate us. Taking Molly us. Michael Jackson us. Yamaha keyboards.

Us. Georgia binks on us. Andor was us. Leger Joker us endless red success Happy Meals was us McDonald's was us Being happy us Equelin yoga us

Eating food us Breathing air us Drinky water us We invented all that shit