Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Bad Hasbara 30 - The Peace Industrial Complex, with Noam Shuster-Eliassi

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Comedian, activist, and IDF refusenik Noam Shuster-Eliassi joins Daniel and Matt to talk about being one of the few leftists in Israel, refusing to serve in the IDF, news from the ICC, and so much more.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Moshwam ha bitch, a ribbon's open-toe. We invented the dirty tomato and weighs USG drives and the iron dome. Israeli salad, oozy, stents, and javas orange rows. Micro chips is us. iPhone cameras us. Taco salads us. Pothalas us. Olive garden us.

Life costs for us. Zabrahamas. As far as us. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Hello and welcome to Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast. My name is Matt Lieb. What up with it? World. I'm here being your most moral host slash co-host. You know how it goes. Thank you all for watching another episode of Bad Hasbara. Thank you all for listening to it. That's the most important one, as I've said, the beginning of every freaking episode. episode of this podcast. Instead of doing the general rundown of all the things I want you to do,

you know, the stuff that you probably skip, I'm just going to tell you to do one thing. And here's what it is. If you have a podcast app, whether it's Apple app or the Spotify app or any of those other ones, I want you to go to this podcast, Bad Has Barra, the World's Most Moral Podcasts. And I want you to hit the button that says like subscribe or follow you. follow or like a bell button, whatever button there is that has you automatically download the episode as soon as it comes out, I want you to press that button because that way, you know, you get alerted to every time the episode comes out because, as I've said before, the audio version of this podcast comes out before the video version. So if you're watching the video,

you're seeing it way after it's recorded. Whereas if you're listening to the audio, you know, know that's actually pretty soon after we release that you know within a few hours so uh do that that way it automatically downloads it sends you an alert you know that the episode is happening and you can choose to listen to it or not listen to it um you know but the point is is uh that counts as a download for us so that's that's great for us that feels good that way we know how many people are actually like you know doing the YouTube to podcast conversion you know and that helps us and it's very nice and anyway so do that go to your your podcast app that's on your phone click that button that says subscribe or follow or like or whatever or all of them just click

whatever buttons are on top and then you know listen to it and then do whatever you want I guess so yeah that's the one thing I will ask you thank you and now let's talk About some Hasbara. That's right. Today, we have a great guest and we have a great most moral co-host. It is, of course, Daniel Mante, but also in the same room with him is a hilarious comedian and activist who is from Israel, not an Israeli expat the way most of our Israeli guests have been. This is from Israel, who is both someone who I've known since before this all happened and after this all happened.

And so I've been very excited to get her on the show. Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, welcome both Daniel Matae and comedian Noam Schuster Eliassi. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Daniel is busy because... Oh, oh, hi there. You've caught me in the middle of writing a review for the Bad Hasbara podcast. Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah. Let me just finish, okay?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Matt Lieb is funny, but also makes me uncomfortable in my pants, but I don't dislike it exactly. That's the effect I have on people. I make them engorged. And the other guy is nifty too. you're sent there we go hi hi how you're doing no i'm so excited to be here and here yeah well you're the most moral israeli so we need to have you on yes yeah sounds has barat to me it's actually

kind of true yes i'm i'm in new york i'm in the real promised land of the jewish people that's what I've said from the beginning people said you know we're going to create a Jewish state someone sort of said oh we got New York though or at the very least we got New Jersey yeah um so New York in New York concrete jungle bagels and smear's locks oh you know what off top of the head pretty good parody song yeah and it's New York spelled NU and new oh like new metal new new yeah new metal exactly new metal someone's got to do his genre of new metal so noam thank you so much for coming on um as i said yeah um i was familiar with your work um uh you know pre october 7th uh we have some mutual friends and acquaintances and

the kind of the Jewish left spaces. And it wasn't until, you know, after the seventh that, you know, this podcast started. And I remember you were on a list in my head of like Israelis that we need on the show. Because this is the one thing I wanted to avoid with the show was like only having Israeli expats because it's, you know, like, what's going. going on on the ground, I think is an important perspective for everyone to have. And, you know, it's, yeah. So I want to ask, like, how's it, how's Israel been these days? It's amazing. The humus is so delicious. No, but I do want to say, I'm happy to be here. And I, the one person

that I told immediately that I'm going to be on the podcast. he's like a really big fan of yours and the podcast who's he's a Palestinian citizen of Israel. He's from Jaffa. He's an architect. He's an architect. An architect. And he's just like in between meetings, in between like stuff. He's like, I love this podcast and it really, really saves me these days.

So. Amazing. Yeah. Cool. So that makes me feel good. I didn't. You know, every time, you know, we get a message from someone who's. actually in Palestine or in like Israel 48, and they say they listen to it, it blows my mind

because all I can think of is, you know, the amount. Like originally I was just like, you know, this is probably going to be something that anyone who actually lives in Israel would be like, why are these dumbasses talking about this? They don't know. But for people who need this, first of all, in like, from a huge, humor standpoint, from like breaking things apart standpoint, you're just asking me, how is Israel these days? And Daniel and I just had a conversation before we started recording, there is some kind of like a ghetto mentality, some kind of mental prison, some kind of, I've been in New York

for two weeks. Yeah. And the type of creativity and meeting people and me being able to work on material Imagine New York City being a breath of fresh air, folks. That tells you everything you need to know. I'm in the Alps, you know, on vacation. You know, getting back to nature. Come to New York City. No, and not to say that I'm like not scared to speak even when I'm here because I know, I mean, I know the world I'm living in, but just like the physical, I don't know,

something suddenly in your, in my jaw, in my throat, in the body. I just like, I can exhale. I went to a few open mics, mainly in Brooklyn. And at some point I was like, you guys, I know I'm here to do stand-up, but I just want to talk shit about my country for the rest of the time I haven't stayed. And they're all like, yeah. When we first saw each other on your trip, we met at a Palestinian restaurant. Right.

And you were looking around and you just couldn't get over the being in a restaurant. restaurant without people in, you know, Kipot and M16s. Yeah. Like just this sense of like Jewish paranoia everywhere around you. Yeah. Which is an insane thing to think that anyone from any country in the world would go to America and be like, I'm so glad there's so few guns here. That's right. You're like going to America.

You should be thankful to Israel. We make you look good. Yes. I know. Honestly. It is, it's one of those things. In America, Jews only control the media and the banks. In Israel, we control everything, also the Palestinians.

And look what you've done with it. Well, that's the inversion of what that, what was, what was, what was her name? Was it Ruth Bader Ginsburg? No, no, no, no. What? Which one? This woman, there's a clip of her who's clearly an American Jew, but she's now living in Israel. And she's talking to a group of university students.

or she's on a Hasbara mission, and she's like, it's not our job to make you look good. Right. It's your job to make us look good. Ruth Miller. Ruth Miller. And she's talking about the importance of Hasbara on college campuses. Yes.

And this is about 10, 15 years ago. Right. I hope she's still around to see what's going on and how radically and spectacularly their efforts have failed in college campuses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it is quite remarkable that, all of that work and money and time and effort and, you know, the amount of Hasbara handbooks and the, you know, the thing I learned about yesterday. What was it? The language. Yeah. The protocols

of the propagandists of Zion. Yeah, right. The language dictionary. Like all of this work that went into explaining, especially, you know, among college campuses, has all gone to shit as there's nothing that uh you know college kids do more than watch tic talk yeah and it turns out watching ticot is a lot better than reading the hesbar handbook yeah who would have thought i was in a i was lucky to have dinner with professor rachid halidi calidi yeah cool it was so amazing and we talked about that we talked about the young generation he said he said he never i mean he's never seen a change like this and with the young people especially and he said that it's so incredible there isn't a single person who comes from an oppressed community or a brown person

or a person who has experienced in his heritage oppression or colonizing that is not sympathizing with Palestinians or can understand what is happening to Palestinians and at that moment I thought to myself how tragic it is that because I'm sitting and listening to him and I'm like yeah and that's my heritage too because my one set of grandparents survived the Holocaust so obviously been been through oppression sure and on the other side my Iranian Jewish family came to Israel in the 50s and were treated horribly right and were looked at in a very racist way and treated in a very racist way and the fact that I am I was supposed to distance myself from understanding sympathizing working towards being with you know Palestinians and what

they're it's insane because like the most natural thing is for Jews to understand the Palestinian experience I know to be part of ending it rather than to be part of so there is no amount of has by explaining PR that you know can go in circles and recruit millions of iranians to make it look sexy but i'm i'm you know i'm iranian and i'm in touch with iranian activists and we know we you know we know that there is no way to defend uh what is happening so yeah can ask you a question about that so one of the the things that i see happening within the iranian community discourse and about it is the fact that we're supposed to be in solidarity with the feminist uprising movement in Iran.

Women like freedom. Women like freedom, right? Correct. And oppose religious fascism and their crackdown and all of that. And that gets used to basically say if you're supporting not necessarily the Palestinians, but the cause of, say, resistance out of Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, which is supported by Iran, basically you are selling out and throwing under the bus the women who are fighting the Islamic regime. Have you seen this dynamic? And how do you negotiate that? And like, where is that

at? Yeah. So first of all, I'm really, really happy when after we finish recording, I can tag a few accounts that talk about this specifically and I'm very trustworthy you know female Iranian activists who absolutely denied this you know deny this dichotomy and speak about it in a very responsible way what is happening right and and that Iran israel Palestine thing is very very interesting and it's also very very complex because when what is happening right now manifest is like a manifestation of the trauma of everyone right so Jews get triggered because of the Holocaust.

Palestinians are triggered and are in an ongoing trauma of the Nakhba, of the catastrophe. Yeah. For Iranians, the trauma is the possibility of the repetition of what happened in the revolution, right? And so they are, so a lot of this discourse is so stuck in the trauma. So you see Western universities who are rising up and protesting and that and that immediately triggers the trauma of what happened before the revolution that you're protesting for freedom and what you're going to get automatically

is an Islamist revolution so the imagination you know we don't have enough political imagination say no the fact that there are protests for a ceasefire for Palestinian liberation for Palestinians to get the same human rights and privilege that we have doesn't translate automatically to what you experienced in Iran after the revolution. So it's our job to deconstruct it and to offer something else and to say this doesn't mean, and I think a lot of Palestinians have been doing that as well. Not to mention the religious theocracy is already here. It's called the state of Israel.

Also. It just has this kind of secular Western sheen to it where people don't have to live their lives you know, in an explicitly jewy way, but the, but they don't, you know, but it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's it's chewy, chewy, chewy, but not very crunchy. But you know what I'm saying, right? It's got, it's got, it's got, it's got the more, oh, we tolerate plurality, but fundamentally it's an ethnocracy, it's a theocracy. That's right. And so it's not like that's in some danger of happening. Yeah. And I think that it's important to draw a distinction between, um, you know, the Iranian Jewish population within Israel and also the, you know, Persian Jews in, say,

Los Angeles, which is, you know, where I grew up and I know a lot of Persian Jews. To herongous. Yeah, in Tarangeles, yes. If Brooklyn is the promised land for Ashkenazi. West Los Angeles. West Los Angeles. That's where all of the Persian Jews. went. And, you know, it's, I think it's an important distinction to make because, you know,

while you might be historically triggered by the idea of like, oh, no, you know, students are rising up on campus, this will lead to an Islamic revolution. Like, the idea that these, you know, these kids who are, you know, going to UCLA and counter protesting violently against the encampments, are having that kind of trauma response to it, I think is, I think is not exactly what's going on with them. Yeah, no, that's, yes. Oh, no, the interdisciplinary cultural studies faculty department is now under Sharia law. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes.

And it's just like, you know, so when you, you know, when I see the amount of like Iranian Jews, you know, know, in my hometown, having this, like, violent reaction. I know that it's coming more from a place of kind of... Fascism? Well, fascism and also just, you know, years and years of brainwashing regarding, you know, Israel and, you know, and Palestinians. And, like, because the idea that, like, okay, listen, kids protesting on college campus is kind of a thing in America.

We do, this is... Especially when it comes to ending wars and foreign policy, that's something that isn't something so much in the Iranian context. They're protesting for rights, for freedoms domestically. But a big part of the tradition of campus protest here is we don't want to support and be indoctrinated into and trained to participate in and be functionaries of a system that exports this. all over the world. And I think it's being traumatized also by a, you know, it's like to me, I look at it in the same way

that I look at a lot of my European liberal Zionist colleagues and people who I grew up with in which like your trauma is based on years and years of programming and propaganda and

your, you're, the stories that you've been told and you're displacing it yeah and and and I just feel like um you know uh all of that to me is important to make a distinction because you know I can't I can't of course speak to anyone who uh whose family was forced to leave Iran and go to Israel um but when it comes to Los Angeles I like have a better idea of like culturally the world that a lot of these kids grew up in because I, you know, was around. And I'm like, no, I think you're just, I think you, you're just kind of like teacher's pet a little bit. Like you just really love your parents. We all love our parents. But come on. At some point, you got to be like, mom, dad, do we have to

kill all the kids of God? I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the, you know, the concerns of the Persian Jewish community. I just think, I just think they take it too far. See? Wow. Let me, I, I, I want to be out. No, I got it, Daniel, I got it. Very good.

I'm just, it's just the slow, the slow kids in the back of the bus who are listening, you know, I just want to make sure that. You need a child. Once you go, once you go prison, there is no other version. There we go. But when I went to LA for to Tehranjolos for the first time. And I ran...

There's more. I ran so faro. I was just like, damn it! Why didn't my grandfather come here? Yeah, damn it. The rugs, you know... The rugs. The rugs.

The rugs. The hucca bars. There's rugs on the fucking walls. Because when my grandparents, you know, my grandparents, my Ashkenazi grandparents, they brought with them to Israel the trauma of the Holocaust.

My Persian grandparents brought with them to Israel Persian rugs. And so my grandfather went like with one rug we bought a fridge with one rug we bought like you know.

You brought rugs, we brought rugala. No, but it was like the rugs that they carried with them were like very, very valuable. You know I used to sell Persian carpets? in Vancouver yeah I delivered a Persian carpet to Sarah McLaughlin's house wow wow Tabriz Shira's yeah I was showing off the names of the cities no I got I was a good salesman yeah well well so maybe you're a Persian like maybe you did you take a DNA

test are 99% point I'm verse you know I'm sort of I've been told I have Arab vibes I have Persian vets. Yeah, you have. Yeah. Turkish kind of. Yeah. I mean, I love, I'm very proud of my Iranian Jewish heritage. Sure.

I want to say the Iranian women activists, poets, artists, actresses that I learn from, it's just a very, and I, you know, I don't want to like paint a picture. Iranian Jews are very conservative, very, very. can be very religious yeah there's a lot of like you know closeness but when we when we're not like when we break out of and like the creativity and the and the and the depth and that's amazing because they're so because my grandmother she was a very conservative like Persian Jewish grandmother but she but simultaneously she was the most open-minded woman I've ever met so like when I was seven years old my parents moved to the only intentionally mixed Israeli-Palestinian community between Jerusalem

and Tel Aviv. It's called, in English, The Oasis of Peace. I know sounds very dreamy. I like it. In Arabic, it's Wahat-Shalam. In Hebrew, it means Nevae Shalom. And every time I type it on my iPhone, it auto-corrected to Never Shalom. And, you know, when, like, and my mom. You really are a leftist. Yeah. Never Shalom. I came from a small village called Neve again. Neve again. Never, oh, my God.

Have a child, Daniel. Have one. Your puns are just perfect for kids. We need to come. Matt, I don't have a child. I have a podcast. I know. And that's going to be, have to be enough for now.

It's like your fur baby. I have however many listeners, you know, we have. Neve again. That's amazing. You can put that in your show. Wow. Oh, my gosh. I saw her show last night.

I did like a work in progress in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn. In a backyard of a store on Flatbush and like 30 people there, just adoring friends and fans. Oh, I love it. It was fun. What's the show called? Coexistence, My Ass. All right.

Right. Because I grew up in this community and like, you know, in the peace industry and the attempt to like live together and create an alternative and equality was being. enforced and like, you know, if you accept a Palestinian family, except in Israel, and it's all 50-50, and I learned Arabic from a young age, and I, you know, I learned that Israeli independence days, not just independence day, it's the Nakhba day for the Palestinians. And I learned from a young age, all of that. Yeah. And I love that idea of like, if you bring a Palestinian, you have to bring an Israeli. Yeah, it's like, you know, fair and balanced. Were you allowed to win like spelling bees? Like, or did you have to always share it with

Palestinian. Always share. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no one, no one, yeah, no one, yeah, no one, yeah, no one comes out on top, no, just the equivalency of like, you know, yeah, listen, if you're going to, if you're going to bring, you know, a black guy of your home, you got to bring a KKK memory, you know, you got to bring everyone together. No, it's very, very Fox News, fair and balanced type, you know, rhetoric. Yeah, but my parents had like an ideal idea about it, you know, they, you know, they They thought that we're creating like something that would look like the one-state solution because my dad is a refusenic, so he spent time in Israeli prison for refusing to serve in the Was he with the group Yashkvul?

Yeah, with Yashkvul. Very cool. And so my parents had this like, and my parents were the ones to do the hard work of the unlearning for me. So I'm actually not that great of a leftist. Like I didn't discover things like by myself. It was like that my parents were. Yeah, me too.

I mean, my dad had had shed. his Zionism years before I was born. Right. And you were... Yeah. And then he sent me to left-wing Zionist summer camp just to confuse my ass. He had to give you that trauma, dude. Well, but again, he had to give me... In a sense, I mean, first of all, I'm really grateful to him

because those were great years, but also it gave me something to push away from. And it educated me about the perks of that worldview, why it's so adhesive to people. why people have such a hard time giving it up the warm fuzzy feeling they get yeah it's kind of like you know your dad telling you to smoke the whole pack of cigarettes that's exactly right it's just it's just like this all this will i mean you'll find out why it's bad by yourself

what son what is that a fifth of vodka yeah and he pulls out a big you know one one liter jug of hootie moonshine yeah wow no so i got the perks of the peace industry my god it was worth it making like doing all the I met as a kid like I met jane fond I'm Hillary Clinton and the Dalai Lama yeah it's crazy to me that Hillary Clinton was considered a luminary of the peace industry I know in the 90s when they did the also agreements it was like yeah I do think it's important it's an important you know uh point like this idea of the peace industry I think is is fascinating because it's um something that we uh You know, in terms of its rhetorical power, the idea of peace, the idea of coexistence, you know, is something that I think any, you know, anybody coming into this, quote, conflict for the first time is going to go, yeah, you know, these are the ideals that we all strive for and not, but when you, you know, years later look and go, Hillary Clinton was part of the peace industry.

And what happens within those programs is that, okay, it's very well-intentioned. Sure. Who doesn't want to join like a youth peace program? You get sent to like a beautiful camp in Canada. And everything you do is for peace, right? Chess for peace, swimming for peace, swimming for peace, masturbating for peace. Yeah, bombing for peace.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. M16 practice for peace. And then the Palestinians are like, and Palestinians are like, okay, we just finished the whole summer meeting these Israeli kids. They were fine and we spent all our energy educating them about what we go through and the checkpoints we had to go through to like come to this camp and then they see that after a year or two the the jewish-Israeli participants enlisted to the army yeah right and so this you know the separation happens in a way we're like so what it like what are we working for what is the point

of this what is the point of this and actually from a lot of my palestinian friends they said what you're saying now that it helped them to to get educated to see and then to find out, like to get stronger about their own identity. One of the cringiest moments from those years for me was when I was living in Israel on a 10-month Kibbutz-based program called Workshop with Habonim Dror, the youth group I was a part of. And we were mostly on a kibbutz in the Negev desert, which was ridiculously close to Gaza without us even realizing what that actually meant.

You know, we had Palestinian day laborers. I've talked about that on the show. Yeah. But we spent one month on a kibbutz up in the north, Kibbutz Tuval. near matula i think and um we're picking kiwis and stuff but also having like workshops on this and that and we spent we did an exchange program and we had one or two nights in a local you know arab israeli village we never called them palestinian israelis but that's what they were yeah and then they came to our kibbutz and we did things together and the cringe moment i

remember which was just pure peace industry and this is just post oslo this is 1994 is all of us, we had a dance, you know, and it ended with all of us in a circle, arms around each other, singing, heal the world by Michael Jackson. Oh, no. That is multi-layers of cringe. That's like a cringe layer cake. Oh, gosh. That would keep me up at night.

My most cringe moment in childhood in the Peace, in the, like, Oasis of Peace thing, I remember it was after Rabin was assassinated. Hillary Clinton, when she came to the school, she came with who was for the first time the wife of the prime minister, Sarah Netanyahu. He's been the prime minister since I'm seven years old. I'm speaking to you about like, and they came to the school and we prepared this like ceremony.

And I had to sing a song in Hebrew that translates into, you and I will change the world. Anivaeta. Danny loves music so much And if I start singing the anthem of Israel He'll sing it. Yeah, we used to sing this in summer Yeah, we used to sing this in summer camp.

So I sing this song for a piece in Hebrew And the ceremony finishes And Hillary and Sarah Netanyahu come to greet the kids And I'm already, I'm like fourth grade And I'm already taller than Sarah Netanyahu. I'm like a giraffe. And she looks at me and she's like, Your Hebrew is so articulate.

I am so proud of you. She thought I was a little Arab girl studying Hebrew in this bilingual thing. I was like, so racist. So racist. I was the only like brown Jewish girl in this peace industry because everyone is like so Ashkenazi and so. I mean, it's a stereotype about like the, you know,

the privilege is kind of like Ashkenazi peace industry. But it was true. I was the only one who looked like a Palestinian. And everyone thought I was Palestinian except the Dalai Lama. He thought I was Indian. When my husband takes over, was he already Prime Minister? He was the first time, probably in it. Yeah, this is the 90s, right?

I'm going to put you on a list, make sure that you're first in line to clean our house. Yeah, that was the vibe. Can you come open this champagne for me, you little slave? So I got to ask about, like, you know, one thing that is often repeated about the Israeli left is that it doesn't exist anymore. You know, I think obviously it's got is a bit, you know, like, I imagine reductive. I mean, it's kind of a, that's an absolute doesn't exist anymore, I think is probably going far. But I would like to hear what you have to say, because especially after post-October 7th, this idea of sobering up, you know, that people have talked about a lot in Israeli media. like what have been your experiences with it and what you know what did you feel you know for the last

few months as this was going on i imagine much like in our lives where people we know who were once reasonable caring thinking people um decided you know the nationalism switch just turned on and they were like we must support war like what was going on um with you and uh yeah yeah so first of all the Israeli left right now is in Daniel Matz's apartment in Brooklyn and I'm talking. I mean, I will be that's not fair to say the five other Israeli leftists.

Yeah, yeah. Right now there's five other people are like, come on. No, no, but I will, okay. So the term Israeli left has I think left. Left. Left. Left. Left the room.

I just had the funniest image. It should be a comedy sketch, but it would have to be visual and kind of Monte-Python-esque. You have a regiment of Israeli soldiers in basic training, you know, and they're doing the marching, right? So like left, left, left, right, like, small, small, small, small, but they leave out the small part. So they just keep walking in a circle.

Small, small, small. You mean, like then they're just tilting and falling over because they can't, they won't actually say the word, They've banned the word, I know, sorry. It needs work. But there are many jokes there because small means small in, it means, in Hebrew, it means left. Anyways, there's so much to say about this.

I mean, okay, let's talk about the moment before October 7th, okay? Maybe that's the starting point that I would like to mention. Yeah. You mean back when there was peace? I'm just kidding. When everything was okay. Everything was fine until a mosque. And we didn't know anything was coming.

When we were protesting for something safe, Jewish-Israeli democracy. So the one year where there were the protests specifically in Israel against the judicial reform. Right. So I was going to this protest. And it's like a sea of Israeli flags. And I'm just like looking for the radical bloc to see where my people are, the ones who are talking about the occupation and the people who are who are who when we could wave Palestinian flags in in in this demonstration like the small block the small of the small yeah the small yeah you know what

I'm sorry maybe I'm idealizing those moments back then but I felt like there was more room for people like me to talk about civil disobedience so people were talking about refusing you know the drafts the reserve duties going to the army like actually actually taking into their hands like some taboo stuff, you know, in Israel. And I remember making a post and posting my dismissed card, you know, from the army on Instagram. Yeah. And saying like, you know, it's about time we talk about this. Like, let's break this down.

And what grounds did they dismiss you? I declared there was a conscientious objector. And they honored that? Yeah. nice then why do people sorry we're supposed to do bad hasbarat the only reason why they honored that i mean you can you can get dismissed in uh from army service in israel as a conscientious objector right if you convince them that even if you were born in switzerland and you're like a pacifist i don't carry a gun to be honest my arabic was so good in high school that like the

you know the intelligence they i have a genetic defect where i can't help treating Palestinians with dignity as humans. Yeah. But in the last years of high school, for those of us who take Arabic and are good in Arabic, the intelligence, they kind of know it and we go to these like boot camps from high school where they kind of give us like Arabic tests and you kind of have to do it in order to complete the Arabic studies. So you know, it's a very militant system and Arabic is being used like in the military,

in the intelligence. And so an officer in the intelligence takes me out of class and was like, we see that your Arabic is amazing. And do you know how far you can go in the army and like we can offer like some stuff for you? And he had a tongue piercing. And I couldn't stop looking at it. And he's like, so what do you say? And I look at him and he's and I'm like, do you do you have your tongue pierced?

Is that, is that like, is that allowed in the army? And then he looked at the officer that was next to him and was like, like, no, no, she wouldn't do good in the intelligence. And he just kicked me out. But after that, I had like a trial. It was like a trial. Wait, he got mad about the tongue piercing? Yeah, he was like, the fact that I have the chutzpah to question a superior officer. Yeah. They were like, no, you won't do good. But then I had, I had sort of like a committee, a trial where I told them that there is no way that after 18 years of being raised and living with Palestinians, I will carry a gun and put on uniform. And I was yelled at and humiliated. And I was able to convince them that there is

no way that I'm going to the army. And there is a rabbi in this committee because it is a committee for conscientious objectors and for religious Jewish girls. And the rabbi just stopped them from humiliating me and yelling at me and said, please stop this young woman, grew up. up in a different household with different habits and different beliefs and you have to respect that just like we respect religious girls. And it's thanks to that rabbi that I was dismissed. And I'll never, I'll never forget that actually. Like he really defended me. I mean, for chauvinistic reasons, he doesn't want women in the army. Sure, sure. Yeah. It's two birds, one stone. But the point is one of those birds was good and the other bird was probably misogynistic. But to bring it back to

sort of like the discussion about the left, sorry, it's, um, I'm going to set you off on attention, no, no, no, it's, it's like, you posted your, you're dismissed card. So I posted this and I had some actually like very mainstream, more mainstream artists than me and people were having a discussion and people were saying like, yeah, it's the only way to shake the system. We have to like hit the taboo and we have to. And I felt like there was more, there were more ears listening. Like we could, through this most fascist right wing government to, you know, Netanyahu has to be saved from prison with these Ben Gvirs and these smoteches and the far, you know, fascist right wing, maybe through this, we can get to the people who think that they're leftist, who think that they're in the democratic camp and crack it and talk to them about the elephant in the room and do something. Heightening the contradictions. Yeah. And the way that this was all shattered on October 7th, on October 8th, I'm already like, you know, I mean, we're in trauma, we're in chaos. I don't need to tell you, like so many people I know from the left, like anti-occupation activists, amazing people who didn't deserve to be like butchered on October 7th and we're still trying to locate them. Like, but to sit at home and see everyone.

taking like scooters and just going like blindly just going going enlisting getting drafts like volunteering just going the way and and and and I was like there is no way to stop it there is no way to stop it there is not no one to speak to and I I mean I it's hard to describe yeah the loneliness the fear the understanding that that's it I'm alone like everyone is just Everyone is just elsewhere. And with the sobering up, I'm still in conflict with that because on one hand, people have been through some real trauma. Sure.

And on the other hand, I kind of feel if, I mean, I have leftist friends in Israel who I'm sure they're exposed to the images and the visuals and the information coming out of Gaza. And if that doesn't make you go like, wait, yes, what happened on October 7th is, I mean, horrible, but like this government, first of all, is allowing this to continue, is not saving the hostages, it's like starving millions of people, it's like it's all being done in my name, and you probably have relatives who are soldiers in Gaza for nothing and you're going to lose more people in your life and all that. And I'm like, if all of that doesn't make you sober back again, like actually sober, then where were you? Like, where were you? Because it's, it's, and that's very, very difficult.

It's very difficult. I want to continue this conversation, but I know we have to go to a break real quick. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a quick break. buy whatever products are coming. They'll be great. Don't even think about it. Just click on whatever the advertisers tell you to click on. Enter the promo code.

Yeah, yeah. We should get promo code. Bad has. The promo code is 1948. Yeah, 1948. Enter promo code. The NACPA was WACPA. And stick around.

Knockbush, maqba. Yeah. And stick around. We'll be right back. If you know If you know someone who lives in the form illegal in States Pronto will be

because he'll come Kristy Knom I'm the Secretary of Security National of the United can't avoid problems descargandosel the apps and BP Home and deporting to form a secure. Receivir a help

Economica, a flight and the possibility to deliver to form legal. If not it does, we'll encounter

and we cheremos and we cheremoshing to the President Trump, our laws are complete and our frontera is

secure. Okay, we're back. Just, wow, that was quick. Did I just go through a wormhole? I know, wow. Time is fake.

I just want to continue asking about you know, your experiences with that, you know, the kind of seeing those people you're speaking about, the ones who were, you know, on the left and sobered up, quote unquote, and you're wondering, like, what the hell, like, at this point, aren't you, you know, questioning what's going on in Gaza? Did you, do you, in terms of conversations, did you try, this is, this is, Speaking of personal experience, I tried talking to a bunch of people.

And of course, this is, I think, a much different level of infuriating when you are an American Jew and you're talking to other American Jews who are like, you know, who are worried about Hamas and you're just like, do you know where Hamas is? like why why are you scared of Hamas and you know trying to like trying to reason with them based on like their purported beliefs about justice and you know peace and all this horse shit and um uh i found myself um constantly talking to a lot of brick walls of people who were willing to um you know uh let their intellect take a backseat and let Israel do what it had to do. What were, did you have any of those

conversations? Did you attempt any of those? And if so, what were the results? I mean, so many of those, it's like every day, like that's the, it is really the everyday being at home, but I, in order to keep my sanity, sometimes I'm just like, you know, because you want to continue going to protests and it's really scary it's scary also to speak up like you know i mean i don't know if it's i don't know if it's obvious enough to people in the u.s speaking up like whenever i speak up for a ceasefire i have attacks at me but but what about the host you know and it's like we are being questioned like like My humanity is being questioned to the level where if I advocate for the end of this, you know, revenge, it's hard to call it a war.

It's not, it's not, you know. Yeah, it's a mission of revenge and ethnic cleansing and genocide. And, and when you're, and when the first thought of people who are reading you, they think that, but what about the hostages as if, as if, as if this is helping the hostages. yeah and as if not everything is connected right i mean the israeli army on october 7th was completely unable to save people in many cases it did quite the opposite exactly and in and in the and and that resulted like israeli forces themselves like killing each other and killing Israelis yeah and the same thing when you're bombing when you're bombing gaza senselessly and

everywhere you're killing Israeli hostages as well and so and starving them yeah and and so the wow it is so hard to be to be here and even talk about it because I think that for the past few months I've just been trying to protect the the intellect and the mentality and the truth that I know exist and to like hug my dad and hug my mom and hug my Palestinian friends and have very very difficult conversations, you know, with people and to just know that there is this kind of truth that we are kind of prevented from seeing right now. Yeah. And you have to like go in stores and like see Israeli news and Israeli news are full participants of, you know, this except some, you know, few exceptions. Right. You know, where we have very responsible

journalists who actually went and investigated the mistakes that, you know, I mean, in Kibbutze, Bery, for example. Yes. My friend Omri lost his nephew and his niece in the incident of the hostages there were. It was an Israeli army tank that just killed, I think, around 15 Israeli hostages. And I'm having, I'm having a conversation with him. How do you cope with the idea that the army you served and the country you thought was defending you killed the children in your family like these are you know these are the these are the type of conversations a lot of israeli leftist or from the liberals or from the democratic camp liberals like whatever we want to call they go to protests and stand behind the hostage families and they see ben givir's police like shoot water cannons at

them and arrest them and beat them up that like Israel is not even allowing people who are protesting for the hostages to even think about going a step further to protest on the overall picture right to stop you know to stop the aggression on Gaza because you try to make one step that you think will be accepted like calling for the release of the hostages and you get like all this police brutality. And one of my best friends, about a week ago, her name is Sapir, and I think you saw her video, she went to one of the... Oh, wow, that was her, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The food aid trucks that the settlers attack and stop and, like, burn the food. Yeah, I saw this video, too. She documented them. She stopped them from destroying the food truck. She got bruises and she got beaten up by, by, by some of them, but thanks to her documenting this and this spreading all over the world and the whole world seeing that these monsters are preventing the food aid truck from getting into Gaza, suddenly the day after the army and the police were able to stop these, these settler youth from from destroying the food trucks. Talk about putting your body where the action is and getting getting in the way of the, the cogs of the Syria. I have the video, I can play it here.

Yeah. Is this it? Yes. This is, everyone should know, Sapir. Forkim, after she did have already, what's we all of the siddano? So, Sipir is documenting watching Israelis literally destroy an aid truck. For the second time, right? She says that.

Yeah. Was she alone? Did she go with a group? She's with another activist who's filming as well. There's two of them. She's saying this is not Judaism. They're pulling out knives and threatening her. These are people who are above the law and... Yeah.

I mean, that is... just, it's so terrifying. It's terrifying. It's so terrifying. Like, she did an interview, right? Then she did an interview in Al Jazeera, and she stopped the interview in the middle, and she said that we have a command in Judaism to something about the neighbor. I don't remember which one is.

Something about, if you don't stop your village from, no. Anyways, there was a quote from Judaism about, like, love your neighbor or whatever, like, something positive about your neighbor. your neighbor and then she said, but my family, my grandparents are from Iraq and I don't see when I see old people in Gaza starving and unable to defend themselves, I don't see my neighbors. I see them as my own people. And she started crying and it was very emotional. I think this is the way, this is the way to think about it. If Palestinians are not free, we are not free. If Palestinians are not getting food, we're not getting food. If Palestinians are being bombed,

we are being bombed. There is actually, there is absolutely no way. way no way to think about it differently and if you think about it less than what i said right now you have to you have to think about your own i don't know leftism or or or you know your uh your thoughts about about about humanity and i think the is really and your your thoughts about yourself too i mean you know at that point you have to recalibrate um what you're um what kind of person you are You know what I mean? It's just like, you can no longer, I mean, I don't know how you live with that contradiction. There's obviously, as an American, tons of contradictions that liberals and let this live with out here as well.

But one of those contradictions in Israel being, I'm going to allow this to continue, you know, I just don't know. I don't know how you don't go with the only way I can morally allow this is if I decide that there are some people whose lives are worth less than others. Well, we were talking on our last episode with Mohammed Qasem about the concept of Afrada separation, which is so funny to go, we were just kind of parsing out the etymology. People who, Zionists who want to insist there's no apartheid. The word apartheid in Dutch literally means apartness, right separateness that's what hafrida means yeah and Israelis including liberal

Israelis you know since bengurian have have in fact that was the labor Zionist policy wasn't ethnic cleansing or killing them but it was total separation right right but now you have a kind of separation from your own morality yeah and from your own conscious and your own self-conception awareness of uh of the reality you have to keep it separate. You have to keep it separated. Yeah. To quote the great Palestinian liberation group, the offspring, exactly. I think it's really hard. Like I think one of my struggles is to even express and explain how it's been like being in Israel for the past few months.

Yeah. My best friends who are Palestinian citizens of Israel from Lid, from Jaffa, from all of them have relatives in Gaza. Yeah. Like my, my best friend in 1948, her grandfather went on the boat. The boat started furthering away from the Yaffa shore. He realized what was happening as a kid. He jumped back into Yaffa.

That boat either went to Beirut or to Gaza. My, so my best friend, like her kids are like my kids. Like, she's, she and I are by chance, just by chance, by her grandfather just jumping off the boat in 1948 last minute and making it back to Yaffa, she could have been one of those people that we are watching every day just get destroyed under the rubble. And we have a friend. And so me and my Palestinian friend, we were a trio. And the third friend was an amazing woman.

She refused army service like me. The three of us were really, really, really close. And October 7th happened. We're having some difficult conversation, obviously. But then we're like, hey, no, but we're in this together. You know, on the first days of October 7th, seventh, I was not, I'm, I don't even remember the, the state of mind that I was in. I'm sure I made some mistakes. I've isolated some people. I wasn't perfect. I,

there were some people who were mad at me because I was showing maybe they felt like I was showing too much for that side. Like, you know, there were difficult, different emotions and I've had conversations with friends. But after about two weeks, you start kind of like getting back into yourself right and that third friend said that she's in favor of the plan to destroy Hamas and she thinks that in order to save her children the israeli army actually has to kill their children do a ground invasion and and me and my and you know and me and my friend are like but but but hey hey you know we've been in this together for years with that we did active We did students in justice for Palestine when we were in the college in the U.S.

We like we're in this together for years. You can't think that the same people who brought us to this situation can bring us out of this situation. And she's just like, I'm sorry. I want to protect my children. It occurs to me that in Israel, Phil Oakes' description of the American liberal, the math is a little bit different. He said, this is back in the 60s.

The American liberal is a curious creature. 10 degrees to the left of center at the best of times, 10 degrees to the right of center when it affects them personally and in Israel the liberal is 10 degrees to the left of center most of the time and about 40 to 40 degrees to the left of center when it affects them personally like the the swing because there is no center left anymore you know so if you if you go along with it's like you just have to default all the way to yeah what else are we going to do but commit massive historic war crimes to save our children but you know you You're talking about affected personally.

Nobody, I mean, I'm affected personally. Vivian Silver was my mom's friend and colleague. My comedy writer, we recognized the body of her fucking nephew in the Nova Festival from like his tattoo on the ground like he was shot. One of my one of my good friends, her nephew also in the Nova, like I have friends. I have family members. I found out I have a family, a distant family member who is one of the. kidnapped were all affected. But she didn't have someone immediate in her family. And on the contrary, I see Maos, Enon, who lost two of his parents, the son of Vivian Silver. They had

their own family murdered. And they're saying, stop the war, no revenge. I don't want to see any kids pay the price for this. And you are sitting somewhere and saying, oh, no, we have to destroy Hamas. Never mind Jews over here. North America or in England, the way it affected them personally is it shook up their identity and it made them feel some kind of way. And that for them is unforgivable. You do not shake our foundational belief that Israel is safe for Jews. We have to do whatever we need to do to get that illusion back up because for some reason we don't feel good about ourselves unless that illusion is operational. Exactly. My God. Yeah.

well um what else is what else is going i well i hope the i hope the police catch whoever they're trying to catch back there yeah absolutely you know we're here this is a pro police podcast uh uh we wanted to call it the thin blue hesbara but we just i'm just kidding um yeah what did nwsa love the police i love the police um coming straight from the underground yeah um but yeah so i mean thank you so much for for for for that I mean it is uh I think it's very cool of you to come on and talk to us about it to come on especially this dumb ass podcast and talk about it are we are we ending no no no we're still we haven't even we need we haven't seen any hasbar we yeah well we got to see some uh hazbarah um we got to see some chamas henchman

chamas barra and in order to get to the chamas henchman we first have to do a little bit of news and we're going to talk about a little bit the ICC ladies and gentlemen you down with ICC yeah you know me

for those of you don't know the international criminal court the prosecutor Karim Khan announced he is seeking arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Galant

Like, we've got a little video of something that they released. I love the low lighting, and I wanted to play it for people to see the moment in which she announces this. I can also confirm today that I have reasonable grounds to believe on the basis of evidence collected and examined by my office that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense, you are the hype people. Their criminal responsibility.

Hell yeah. R-I-P bozos. Those two hype men and women on the side, I wanted them to be like, yeah. Hell yeah, we're going to rest your ass. Yes, Karim Khan, which is shocking to a shocking tool. lot of people who have been following this. I remember earlier when the ICJ was having, you know, the case put towards them by the case brought by South Africa against Israel. There was talk of first

people needed some clarification. What's the difference between the ICJ and the ICC? I see England. I see friends. Where the hell is Benny Gantz? Oh, wow. Actually, Benny Gantz, I have a clip of he was very angry at this and I have did he feel left out? Yeah, here. We have this saying in protest like me and the five leftist like me and the five left is Bibi B'i B'i B'i, al Tifad, oh, we have this saying.

Bibi, Bibi, don't be afraid. We will meet you in the Hague. Oh, I like it. I like it. But hey, I loved the, I loved how people were like, where is Amal Clooney? Where is Amal Clooney? I know. Oh, there she is.

I know. Sorry, what's her deal? Is she involved with the ICSY? So people were talking about how she's been like totally silent, didn't post anything. We're like, what the fuck, where is she? And now we realized that she was. we realized that she did that because she's on the team. She's been working with the ICC on this case that they're trying to, you know,

in trying to get arrest warrants for. I love how people went back like, unblock, unblock. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I saw a few people who were, you know, when people decide to, you know, cancel someone on the internet for whatever perceived slight and then it turns out they're wrong, There's always a group of people are just like, no, I'm still right. And I'm just like, take the L, man. Amal Clooney doing this is huge, especially regarding, you know, the ICC.

Because one of the things I learned in following the coverage of the ICJ was people saying they didn't expect anything from the ICC, mostly because, you know, Karim Khan, they, the thought about him. was that he was sort of, he was someone who the Israeli government liked, someone who they were like, no, that's our boy. And so much so that there was multiple articles, and I'll quote one from the New Arab, regarding their kind of people in, you know, the Palestinian legal community and the, and a victims advocates for Palestinians were saying that prosecutor con was not someone who was you could trust to put any like effective investigation into this um and so i'll quote um uh triestino marinellio i don't know marinello a long name illegal representative of that's a nice that's a nice multi-putrean of uh very

you know, I like to get a trust, you know, what's the name? Maranel, Maranilo. Goes really well, goes her really well with Oslo Bucco. Yeah, oh, Oslo Bucco. Yeah, oh, Oslo Bucco, okay. Illegal representative of Palestinian victims before the ICC said, so far, Prosecutor Khan always failed to meet with victim representatives or victims themselves. Since he took office, his mandate has been characterized by double standards.

in relation to the situation in Palestine. And so it was kind of like, people just kind of wrote off the ICC as not being, you know, they weren't going to do shit. They were the Harlem, they were the Washington Wizards of. No, Washington Generals. Washington General, sorry. The Wizards are a real team. Yeah, yeah.

No, but they, you know, or whatever, they're like the, they fake you out. Yes. Yes. And they really, you know, so shocked a lot of people. Benjamin Netanyahu among them, super pissed off. I have a little bit of a video from his response to this. Show us. I missed him. I haven't seen him for two weeks. Decision by the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, to seek arrest warrants against the democratically elected leaders of Israel is a moral outrage of historic proportions. It will cast an everlasting mark of shame on the international. court, Israel is waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization. He's looking more and more like a legitimate goblin. I know. His face is shrinking and his ears are getting more and more pointy.

Yeah. You know, like he's becoming more and more of an anti-Semitic stereotype in a fantasy movie. Like a dog whistled, you know, alien race. Palpies, Palpatine, pre-Mace Windu-Burns. or whatever. You're the reason why there is anti-Semitism. That's a catalog. Unlimited power.

No, no, you will die. The worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Now, in the face of these horrors, Mr. Khan creates a twisted and false moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and the henchmen of Hamas. Henschman of Hamas. He consisted, man. Between President Bush and Osama bin Laden. I'm sorry. I got to play that again. Excuse me? After September 11th, this is like creating a moral

equivalence after September 11th between President Bush and Osama bin Laden. Yeah, America killed. That would be so unfair to Osama bin Laden. That would be very unfair to Osama bin Laden. How many Iraqis did America kill after a million? And how many and how many Afghanis had America killed and and and and how many Iraqi children had, the U.S. starved and justified on the ground. And also who did 9-11? Just kidding.

Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. I think the saddest thing really, like, watching this is like, we think that some kind of a savior will come from the international court. Like, we should be putting this person in prison. Right. We should, like, you know what?

I used to be the biggest critic. I mean, I am. Like the biggest critic, you know, on the peace industry, the Oslo, the Rabin, the this, that they fucking murdered Rabin for 10% of what Netanyahu has done to Israel and Netanyahu has paid zero consequences and you know we have this like one of the lunatic ministers in Israel she went on TV one her name is Mirregev

you know yes yes and she went she called the Palestinians cockroaches she is the worst she's a fucking psycho She's the one who said, go to Gaza, you traitor. She yelled it on the podium of the Knesset to a Palestinian member of the Knesset. Anyways, so she goes on TV and she talks about how the leftist, the Ashkenazi leftist in Israel, get all the privileges, and nobody does any harm to them in the media. And she said, and she said, Rabin, Rabin was so loved. They didn't kill him in the media like they do to BB.

So the interviewer is like, yeah, they didn't kill him in the media. They killed him in real life. They actually murdered him. And I was like, I'm looking at this and I'm like, we like, this is not a, this is a circus. Yeah. It's not serious. This is a circus. Yeah.

And you know what? Okay. I mean, we can sit here and make jokes and I can tell you all the like, all the bad has bra. But at the end of the day, you know, you want to think of like, I mean, you want to feel like, okay, maybe there is like a grown-up adult, like a responsible moral, like adult somewhere, somewhere, like a Leibovic, like a prophet, like a savior, a Moses. I don't know, bring anyone. Anyone to just like bring a flashlight and be like, hey, you've all lost this. like you're rewriting your history

like chapter by chapter can you like follow me for a second so we don't go to the same place as we did as Jewish people anyone anyone and it's not happening can I ask you a question so being an anti-Zionist

you're dreaming of and agitating for and mobilizing for and towards a day when the Zionist regime is no more and it's replaced by a completely different kind of society that's equal and, you know, which is antithetical designism. I mean, there are American activists here who pray for the downfall of the United States, dream of it.

But I just, I have to wonder, what is it like to dream of the day when the country you were born essentially is no more and is replaced by something else? to feel like that is, like nothing short of that will suffice. Like you're past the point of seeing this society as being reformable within its current form. I just wonder emotionally, what is that like? Well, I, wow. This, I mean, this question always comes up in the end as if it is really in my hands to like, you know, structure and do the whole thing. But I'll tell you, I mean, let's take a step back.

I mean, I know that there is a very live and vibrant discussion about like Zionism and anti-Zionism and are you a Zionist? Are you a Jew but are you Zionist and and all of this? I am trying to really, I've been having like spiritual thoughts with my head. What? Because my grandparents, none of them were there in 1948 in Palestine, okay? Right, right. One grandparents were busy surviving them. Holocaust, the others were in Iran, living, and I don't mean this stereotypically, living in

their home. Like, Iran is truly a home that my grandparents missed till the last day. Yeah. So what is Zion? What is Zionism? What is the yearning for Zion, the praying for Zion that they had? Some Jews had the choice. Are you a Zionist? Are you not a Zionist? Are you part of this? Are you this? Are you that? And having two grandparents who, I mean, I don't mean to disqualify. describe them as passive, but I am trying to face the fact that they were, they were not part of the, you know, they were not part of this movement. And at some point, there was no choice but to follow the, the big brothers, the rest of the family, you know, there was. They were caught up in a, in a wave that was much bigger than then. They were uprooted from where they're from. There was no choice for my family to stay in Iran anymore. There was no choice for my family because of Christian white anti-Semitism. There was. no choice for my family to stay in Eastern Europe and so taking these circumstances and realizing that this is my identity right the myth of whatever

Zionism became the myth of whatever we became just like he was brought on the Palestinians it was brought on to me as well without my request my parents were wise enough and smart enough to unlearn it to see what was done in their name, the fact that, you know, and the, and the list they could do is raise me with Palestinians, have, have me and my brother, you know, not take active participating in the, in the militarism, in the militant sense of it. And my, and my dream is not, is not complicated. It's not radical. It's like, one day, my country will not be this and it will be that. I just want the Palestinian people to have.

everything that I have. I just want us to be radically equal. I love that. Say like, do you really want them to have gefilte fish? I mean, I don't want them to have gefilte fish. That's the only rule. They're not, they're not allowed. Yeah, yeah. There's only one apartheid, and it's defilter fish apart. But when I had COVID and I lost my sense of taste and smell, gefilte was. Hey, comes in in the clutch when you don't have to taste it or even sense it in any way. Exactly. The COVID you filtered it out. Jee-chewy. And so, you know, we have all these, like,

we have all these big, we have all these big thoughts, and we have all this, like, Zionism, and the day after Israel, and Israel, and what is Israel? Well, it's, as an activist, I think there's something really smart about that. Because if you want to reach a broad public, isms are not going to do it. We're going to tear down Zionism. We're going to deconstruct colonialism.

That doesn't hit people where most, you know, unless you're university educated or you've done a lot of reading. Yeah. But when you speak about, I want Palestinians to have every single fucking thing I have, I want a world in which my kids don't have to serve in an army that occupies another. Now you're talking about material reality. Now you're talking about things that people can relate to. But more than this, a world where a Jew from Brooklyn can get up tomorrow and go to Israel and do whatever they want, when says, 76 years ago, Palestinians here are in the United States and our refugees have, you know, don't have access to go and visit their homeland, visit where their grandparents lived, have access to their homeland. These are very, very basic things. These are not radical things. These are not like, as it, why do we, you know, why do Jews who get, you know, free access?

you know and a right of of return and the privilege so called return so called return and after thousands of years cannot comprehend that Palestinians deserve and for

and we try to dismiss that identity and you try to say no it doesn't happen no it didn't happen no they don't have this connection we're fighting for it for 2,000 years and you're telling people we're fighting for it for 76 years that they should give up as a Jew I don't think it's going to happen

name me a single a single customer service department that offers a 2,000 year return policy. There's not one. Is that a joke you said already? Is that a new joke? Every joke on this show is new. That's pretty good.

Except for the Farsi. I came up with that one in the pre-show. The Farsi was good. The Farsi was very good. No, no, no. No, I agree. This show is an incubator. Pretty sure. Target, you can return things

after 2000 years. Yeah. I mean, Target is just great like that. This show is sponsored by Target. Just kidding. Yeah. I feel like I buy stuff in the US. I like wear them. I rip them. I tear them. I put chocolate on them. And then I'm like, can I return? It's like, oh my God. Yes. Is there anything else I can do for you today? Yeah. Yeah. You want some money? We push each other and it's like you stand in line for two hours and you give up. You just go. You know, since the destruction of the second temple, the Jewish people have longed and yearned toward the east, you know, pining for the day when we can return to the Holy Land. the promised land, Irha Shalom, Yushalayim, and beat the shit out of each other and be really rude and fucking assholes in peace and quiet without the world hating us and judging us.

Right, exactly. Can we just be normal? Can't we just not get along? Yeah, yeah. Can we just not get along to peace? Who said, who said Jews are like smartphones? they're like, they can be the best thing that ever happened to or the worst thing that ever happened to you? I don't know. I think it was either me or Hitler. Just kidding. Have I told you my favorite anti-Semitic joke

or a joke about anti-Semites? It's my favorite Jewish joke. Okay, do it. What's the problem with anti-Semites? They hate Jews a little too much. I like it. I like it. It's very good.

It's very good. they should, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a little over the top with it. Well, before, before we get out of here, just, just closing out a little bit of what's going on with the ICC, you know, just the conversation went south. Yeah, that's what happens on this. We have a plan. We never stick to it. Sound familiar? I don't know what that was in reference to. Um, maybe the Israeli army, I don't know. Yeah, not planned Dalit, certainly. They've stuck to that one. They're keeping it going. But so Netanyahu mentioned this idea of the false moral equivalency. Biden mentioned the exact same thing. And then another important American also mentioned it.

And that important American is called APEC. And AI. AIPAC. AIPAC, they also mentioned it through all these tweets that I will show. Literally, just all these lawmakers, there is no equivalence, Grace Mang, there is no equivalence, Bob Casey, Ballard. Yeah, like, basically, oh, Fetterman, of course, we got, you know, Mr. Bumbleclat himself. They're really apacking it in. Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff, Debbie Wazerman, shit.

No More Equivalency Mullins. Just, I mean, just look at this shit. It looks like someone who's been like giving them, I don't know, talking points, instructions. And big stacks of cash. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Oh, that's anti-Semitic. Yeah, it's anti-Semitic.

You can mention lobbying, but don't mention that lobbies use money. I'm sorry. In Washington, reality is anti-Semitic. I'm just going to. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And it's just like, it's so, it's so crazy because you're seeing, you know, this idea of like, you know, how dare you make a moral equivalency between Hamas and the Israeli government? I absolutely agree. They're right, but for the wrong reasons. It's like you're kind of, you're not far off. You know, you are correct. There is absolutely no equivalency. But I think you've switched who you think is the bad one here. Like, who's worse to you is not the case, but you are right. We don't have to call Hamas good in order to say that.

No, certainly not. Morally equivalent to the Israeli government. You don't even have to think who's the worst. You just think, like, who's been, like, helping to fund and sending suitcases filled with money to make them stronger so that the pay will not be. I mean, it's not even about equivalence of, like, evil. It's just a policy. of one that was to strengthen the other.

And now when there is this equivalent, suddenly, oh, you can't make that. But we worked for so many years. Yes. Well, I was thinking about this yesterday. Maybe we'll cover this on the show sometime, Matt. But you know that new bombshell video that came out of the five Israeli hostages that were purported to be just ordinary Kibbutznik teenagers?

And in fact, they were all soldiers at the Nakhaz. And I fell for it. I made a video not. like being like oh my god terrible Hamas but more like making the following point which is that the reason for them there's no moral equivalence is this the worst thing they can imagine because they have colonized your mind the worst thing they can imagine is the natives getting restless fighting back and disturbing their their bloodily secured so-called peace right that and that's what Hamas does. It fucks with their program of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, we're okay, and we can

maintain this, okay? Right. The worst thing we can imagine, because we don't identify, at least in this, I mean, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're benefiting from a colonized of society, obviously, but, but fundamentally in terms of our values or, you know, anyone who's who's, who's advocating for Palestine right now looks at the situation. And who do do we identify with in terms of moral outrage? It's civilians, being carpet bombed, industrially exterminated, whatever. And so to us, that's the worst thing imaginable. And it's just that for them, that doesn't mean anything

because they're on the teat of state power and they don't understand that state terrorism is terrorism. So they can't actually see the similarities, never mind the lopsided advantage. Power dynamic? Power dynamic and massive racking up of the score of body count that the powerful state has. I think it's important, though, to mention something about this video. I mean, this video is horrifying.

Oh, yeah. These women shouldn't have been there to begin with. Correct. These women shouldn't have been neglected, defenseless, put in this position to begin with. And to see, like, women bleeding, like young women exposed. Like, it's horrifying. And I think that this, I mean, this video, just like all the videos that we've seen out of Gaza, the videos of hostages, they're very difficult videos to cope with. And what I'm thinking, as an Israeli, and knowing that my society is watching these videos, knowing that the government is seeing this, the ministers are seeing this.

And if what Daniel is saying is true, and this is the manifestation of the worst thing that can happen us, How does that not make you want to do everything to bring them back and stop the war and to do a hostage exchange and do a hostage? Do you see what I'm saying? Of course. Like if the if if if I mean I think it becomes absolutely clear when you see any of these things being utilized, especially being utilized by the official Twitter account of Israel. And especially with the fact that. The Arabic itself was... The subtitles were fucked, yeah.

Yeah, the subtitles were fucked intentionally. I felt for that too. I felt for that too. I can't believe it. I went on Instagram and I made a post about it. Again, making the point about colonial and mindset and all this kind of... But I accepted the premises that there was in fact sexually suggestive language, that there was in fact that these were just, you know, 14 or 15 year olds who were not in the army.

The fact that this video is being used to inflict more... revenge and more violence and more aggression on the citizens of Gaza, I mean, I think it's clear to all of us. And it doesn't matter. And the fact that they use the wrong translation and the fact that it's edited in a certain way, of course it serves that, you know, but, but I think what we can, really, what we can do is look one step further. And if we, and if we look at this and we say, this is what it looks like when we allow things to remain the same. because to be in the position that we are in where we're saying, I mean, we saw October 7th coming. We've been trying.

It's a horrible position to be in, to be like, hey, things are not going to just be okay if we stay like this. This is going to happen. And if you allow such things to happen to Palestinians, one day it's going to turn at you and it's going to. And whatever you allow, you know, whatever you allow to happen to Palestinians will come right back at you. And it's not fun to be in this position. To watch that happen, to watch that unfold for me, it's not fun. Well, here's a dark thought, though. And God willing, inshallah, you can reach a lot of good-hearted, mind-twisted Israelis

and untwist their minds back to the reality of we don't want this to happen our future. But I think when you're talking about whether it's Netanyahu or Smotrich or Ben-Givir or these diaspora cheerleaders for it all, there's a part of them that wouldn't know what to do if this stopped happening. There's some part of them, I think, psychologically, that gets off on they're attacking our girls. They need to, like you said, Israel's become a ghetto of its own. And there's an addiction to that. This video will be used.

This video will be used by the government to spread whatever they want to spread. And there's something pornographic about it. And they will not go the same effort and to bring those girls back. Absolutely not. What use are they, if they come back, they might report that it wasn't so bad. And by the way, it's the hostage families. It's those girls' families that wanted this video to be out there because they thought that this is going to shock everyone.

But the opposite is happening. It's inflicting more feelings of revenge and hate. And by the way, it's like you're saying, it's like the pornographic side of it. It's like, it's like, oh, look what is being done to us and look how horrible it is. So we have to keep on fighting and we have to keep on doing this and it's horrible. And at this point, it's like, you know, it's just so clear to anyone who's been watching what the purpose of these drops are. You know, it's like every, you know, it's the fuel to the fire, you know, if you find yourself waning and this idea of possibly not doing a revenge murder, of over two million people, you know, then, you know, oh, just remember, this happened and that

happened. I'd be willing to bet that if you go back and track the calendar of the schedule of these drops, you will be able to find something like the ICC warrants a day or two before. A hundred percent. Or the world kitchen massacre or, yeah. We have inadvertently clocked that a few times. times where, you know, we will, you know, start talking about the ICJ and the decision will come out. And then all of a sudden we're talking about UNRWA for, you know, two weeks. And then, you know, while that happens, UNRWA investigates these false claims made by the Israeli government. And then later, quietly, people start refunding UNRWA.

But the damage is already done. You know, we've already moved on from what should be this incredible event in, international world history of wow the ICJ is saying that you know they're the at a risk of genocide and they're they're looking into it this is this is this is where I struggle to inform you and to be like to transfer the message to you that like I a lot of like I agree with a lot of it and from the outside it does look like this from the inside the way that it's communicated to us like the timing of this video, it's not anyone official from the government who wanted this video out now.

What we are being told by the media is that it's the hostage families because nobody is listening to them from the government and nobody is like in horrors enough about their daughters still being there that they decided to circulate this video. No, I mean, I think there are differences. Because it turns into government propaganda. And then the hostage families are like. And to be fair. When has there been a single two-day span when there hasn't been something like the ICS?

I mean, Israel is taking hits every day. And the reality is that these, the families of these girls who decided to release this footage, you would think that they maybe have someone to talk to. You would think that they're getting some kind of like therapy or help. Nothing. No. Nothing. And so the government is urgent.

from you know like a from a three-way kind of point of view they that they don't need to provide the hostage families with anything let alone not to you know not to save their family members these videos serve the propaganda they want and it redirects the attention and and so it's truly incredible that this criminal that Netanyahu somehow in all this mess somehow manages to like, I don't know, just like drive things in the direction that doesn't destroy him. You know, he's a survivor. He's someone who, uh, he knows how to keep his ass out of jail. And I think, uh, as he digs himself deeper and deeper into it, there is, um, you know, a faint hope that

I have of justice. But, uh, you know, at the end of the day, uh, a Netanyahu, When Yoav Galant in prison does not solve anything for the Palestinians, maybe just mitigates the pain a little bit. Besides, Netanyahu is a vampire. He'll just turn into a bat and fly through the bars. It was like Nosferatu. Yeah. And then, you know, who knows who will be the next, you know,

commander in chief, the next prime minister of Israel. there's I think it's possible that it is this particular leader I don't know who this guy is but he's having a great He's like a character out of the running man He has any teeth left

Oh bless that man Before we get out of here I nominate Michael Rappaport to be the next Prime Minister of his Oh he works great or Eve Barlow Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's Batman. Before we get out of here,

Oh, wait, I forgot to tell you something. What, what happened? I got married in City Hall in New York City last week. Wow. Mazel tov. That's amazing. It's amazing. Beautiful.

He's tall. He's a leftist. He's not vegetarian. Oh, hell yes. You got the last one. I got the last one. But anyways, so we have this really, really nice ceremony in City Hall. And then we walk outside and I'm holding flowers and I have like my friends with me.

And it was really nice. A relative of mine who flew especially to be with me in City Hall, she spots from afar. Someone, I'm not going to say his name because I don't like to get into like specific internet fights. Sure, sure. She spots like this Hasbara guy who does like crazy Hasbara. for and she's like oh my god that's what's his name let's go take a selfie with him like my we all have we all have our relatives that we disagree yeah yeah what can you do oh he's horrible he's like no i love him so we go and she takes a selfie with him she's like oh my god i love you

thank you for all you're doing for israel and i look at him and i'm like why are you spreading lies and propaganda and I'm wearing my wedding dress and I'm holding flowers. And he's looking at me like, wait, what is happening here? What's happening here? Like what's happening? She's taking a selfie with me. You're attacking me. A bride is mad at me.

A lady is taking a selfie. Only in New York. I had the weirdest day. A woman in a bridal gown called me a mamseille. And he's like, well, you think that all these university students and Susan Surrendon, they want your country gone they think that the rapes didn't happen they want your country gone so you should be thanking me for doing work for your country and your people and you should be thanking Israel for letting people like you live there oh my god we started this fight and then my cousin goes

listen it's my cousin I love her she just got married but she's very radical we disagree can I take another selfie with you and he's like what is going on that you're spreading lies and propaganda. That is the leftist, Israeli, anti-Zionist version of consummating your marriage. That's right. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's how you make it official. That's how you make it official. You do praxis. And then you have to come show a rabbi the, you know, the blood on your upper lip that you Right. The receipts. And my new fresh husband is looking and he's like, you see, this is why I'm in love with her. even on her wedding day she's fighting for justice that's beautiful well i i really appreciate you uh coming on this podcast so so soon after your wedding day thank you for having me it's my

and uh where can people where can people find you where can people uh you know follow your work um as long as um the israeli police is not listening to the podcast you cannot find me anywhere Just kidding. Yeah, Instagram, Noam underscore June. I'm on Twitter sometimes. J-O-O-N. J-O-N. We'll have links in the bios.

Yeah. Yeah, just, yeah, I take break sometimes from social media and then I go back to posting a lot and then this and then that. But it's fun. We're all connected. If you go to my YouTube channel. Oh, yeah. Daniel Matte music or something like that.

There was an Instagram live that the two of us did, which is the first time we ever spoke. Yeah. And a lot of people have watched it and found it interesting. So I was back in, I don't know, November, December, January or something like that. Yeah, it was in December. And actually we had, I think, a guy from Gaza in the middle of the live also. Yeah, he came on.

He came on. And yeah, look at us now. We're friends. You were at my wedding in New York. Your wedding party. Yeah, wedding party. Yeah. Wow.

I quoted Fither on the roof at your wedding party. Oh, my gosh. That was amazing. Was it, on the other hand, No, there is no other hand. No, it was God should want us to be joyful even when our hearts lie panting on the floor. How much more can we be joyful when there's really something to be joyful for?

Wow. It was so beautiful. I was sharing with the guests the dilemma I'm feeling, with feeling something so joyful for my personal life in the midst of this, you know, horrors. And yeah, and that quote was beautiful. Thank you. Harnock, RIP. They're lyricists, too.

Well. But thank you for having me, really. And Matt, I really look forward coming to Terangeles and seeing you in person. Yes, please come. We'll go beat up some. Yeah, we'll go and beat up some counter protesters. It'll be great.

We'll throw Persian rice at them. Yeah, we'll be racist. Or Persian mice. You can do it. I'll just watch. Yeah. But thank you for coming on. And thank everyone for listening.

I feel like I need to play one last video for everyone. And what I've decided it's going to be is not, it's not Hezbar. It's actually something that Daniel, you talked about, maybe a couple episodes ago, about you mentioned Phil Oaks. Is it Oaks or Oaks? Oaks. Yeah, Phil Oaks. You know, doing an updated version of Love Me, I'm a liberal, but for liberal Zionists.

And we actually have, there's this guy that I've been following on, on, you know, social medias. And his name is, well, I know him as song a day man. He's been doing one song a day for, you know, I don't know how many years. That's so impressive. As a lap songwriter, I'm just, my hat is like. off to him. Yeah. He's pretty great. His name is Jonathan Mann. He's got a YouTube channel. And a couple years ago, he actually did a version, a sort of liberal Zionist version of Phil Ox's Love Me. I'm a liberal. So I want to go out on, I want to go out on that just because I feel like

it's something that is good, you know. So I am going to play that at the end of the episode. But thank you, everyone, so much for listening. Bad Hasbara.com, Patreon.com slash badhasbara. Please support. And until next time, from the river to the sea. Alex Menoam Schuster, Eliassi. I cried when watching the footage of George Floyd dying face down.

I fly my black lives matter flag is the biggest one in town. But Palestinians have it coming when their buildings are bombed to the ground. Oh, love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal. I marched with my pink pussy hat, I stood against Trump like a boss, was proud to be in the resistance, tweeting out against his mischagas, but you know I don't blame Netanyahu, when clearly the problem's hummars, oh, love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal. I was angered by children in cages, felt helpless and full of despair. Their parents came seeking asylum from what must be a hellish nightmare. For when a child is killed in Palestine, it's because Palestinians don't care. Oh, love me, love me, love me.

Oh, another mass shooting When will the shootings end We need stricter gun laws To curb this violence But when it comes to Israelis Well, they've got a right to defend Love me, love me, love me, love me I'm a liberal

The Green New Deal's outrageous The price tag is out of control And don't even get me started On Medicare for all But you know I've got no problems With the bombs we send is real Oh, love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal. Yeah, love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.