Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Bad Hasbara 35: Manufacturing Condolences, with Omar Baddar

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Our guest is Palestinian American analyst Omar Baddar. A funny thing happened while we recorded this episode, we thought Chomsky died. So the last 25 minutes is a eulogy to an alive guy.Will you be in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention? So will I! Me and my wife Francesca Fiorentini have a couple of live shows we are doing! On Monday and Tuesday August 19 and 20, Francesca and I will be doing shows at Lincoln Lodge in Chicago. Monday will be a live Bitchuation Room Podcast with me and some other great guests, and Tuesday will be a live stand up show with us and some friends. August 19th Live Podcast TicketsAugust 20th Live Stand Up TicketsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey everyone, Matt Leav here doing another pre-roll announcement, but this time I'm not plugging anything. No, this time I'm letting you guys all know something funny happen. So we recorded this episode with Omar Bidar. Great episode. You're gonna love it. Here's the thing, about 45 minutes into it. We thought Chomsky died. So we then did another about 25 minutes of us eulogizing Noam Chomsky. Turns out, Noam Chomsky did not die. He's still alive. He's still with us. And, you know, good. Super happy that he's still alive. Kind of inconvenient that he's still alive. I feel like this is almost like a plot to get me to want chomsky to be dead and i'm not going to not falling for that trap no i'm glad he's still

alive despite the fact that it makes about 25 minutes of this podcast in which we eulogize him feel kind of weird so there's just a little warning up top uh we're going to eulogize chomsky for like 25 minutes on this podcast towards the end uh and here's the thing that's good in a way Because if you think about it, if you think about it, it's like people are always saying, you know, when someone dies, man, I wish, you know, I wish I could have told them all this stuff, you know, about why I love them and respected them while they were still alive. Well, we accidentally did that. So, you know, it's how often can you say that, you know, you did a eulogy to someone who can be alive to see it? so anyways it's a great episode despite that part where we eulogize in a live guy um and i think our our points still stand about why he's so great it just you know we just maybe went a little bit early on it also at the end of the podcast um when we were recording the outro uh that's when we realized that we may have been wrong about it so you get to see in real time us also um realizing

that we did that so enjoy this podcast and uh once we get to the eulogy part you'll see me again okay have fun Moshwam hot bitch We invented the terry tomato And weighs USB drives and the iron d'all Israeli salad oozy stents and javas orange crows Microchips is us iPhone cameras us

Taco salads us Bothana abamos us Olive garden us White foster us Zabrahamas As far as us Hello and welcome to Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast. My name is Matt Lieb. I will be your world's most moral co-host for this podcast.

What's up, everyone? It's another week in hell. Welcome. You know, things are going good here. I'm so glad you all are joining us for another episode of Bad Hasbara, where we break down Israeli propaganda. And it's, you know, it's great to be still doing this podcast for this long. Thanks to everyone who supported us on Patreon. Patreon.com slash bad hasbarra. It helps us to, you know, not just continue doing the podcast, but expand our capabilities. For example, I now have a Benjamin Netanyahu soundboard. I want you to come.

I want you to come. And he does. You know, this is, this is a. little bit of technology. Check this out. You're good. I am good. Thank you. Real quick, I want to let everyone know to, first of all, give a shout out to producer Adam Levin. Secondly, subscribe on all the podcast apps that are out there and also subscribe to the YouTube channel. And lastly, will you be in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention? Because I will. Yeah, me and my wife, Francesca Fiorentini. We have a couple of live shows that we're going to be doing

at the same time that the DNC is going on. On Monday and Tuesday, August 19th and 20th, Francesca and I will be doing shows at Lincoln Lodge in Chicago. Monday is going to be a live Bituation Room podcast featuring me and some other great guests. It is billed as Bituation Room Ex-Bad Hasbara, but it's just going to be, you know, mostly my wife's podcast. But please come to that. Also, Tuesday, the next day, same venue.

There's going to be a live stand-up show. show with me and Francesca. We're going to be doing some stand-up with some of our friends who are also in Chicago. Please come out to that. Ticket links in bio. Okay, time to bring in the world's most moral co-host. A man, a myth, a legend. Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone else, welcome. Daniel Mate. What's up? That's right. Hey, Matt, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? a little chest cold thing going on here, a little froggy in here, you know? You're sick?

A little sick, a little rundown. But otherwise I'm good. You're giving me an idea, you know, you're going to go do your wife's podcast and the fact that you're there makes it ex-bad Hasbara. I'm going to start just putting Bad Hasbara on everything I do.

Like, order a coffee, you know, a golden milk latte, and they're like, what's the name? I'm like, ex-Bad Hasbara. Honestly, you should. Dinner reservations. I need us both to be promoting at all times. Here's the thing about the grindset mindset, Daniel.

Yeah. Is that, you know, you got a rise, number one, rise and grind. Number two, never stop getting that bag. And number three, get W's and not L's. I don't know. I'm so old, dog. I don't know how kids talk about it. I've also heard that it's difficult, if not impossible, to knock the hustle.

or at least highly inadvisable to knock the hustle. It is not generally recommended to knock the hustle. That's what I say. And if you're going to hate something, make sure it's the game and not the player. Never hate the player because the player is just playing the game. The game has been set up for the, yeah. Well, anyways, we're young and hip. God, I just said that out loud.

Oh, my God. I have kids. Hello, fellow hip hoppers. Hello, I'm wearing a cool shirt. No snitching. Any time. Anyways, it is time to. I want a shirt that says snitches get canishes.

Yeah, that'd be great. Hey, listen, we have lots of great ideas for merch that someday will make if we can get off, you know, the couch after reading the news and falling into a deep depression. But we're not going to be depressed today. because we have a fantastic guess. Or at least we're not going to be depressed alone. Yeah, exactly. Misery loves company, and that's why we bring in all of our favorite people. Our most moral guest today is a Palestinian-American political analyst.

You have seen him on multiple different shows in which, you know, bad faith, Hasbaris, have, you know, tried to test his intellect and they've left. being humiliated, which is great, because I love when destiny is humiliated. So, ladies and gentlemen, everyone else, welcome the number one fan of bad ass bar. Just kidding. Omar Bidar. How you doing? Doing great, guys. How are you? Oh, doing fantastic. Welcome, O'Rah. How's life been for the last eight months or so? Yeah, what can I say? It's rough. It's rough. You know, it's one thing to have a full-time job. It's another thing to have small children.

Those alone can really wreck you. And then you got on top of that an eight-month fucking long genocide and things are really bad. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot at once. A weird way, just surviving and pushing through it all and hoping this nightmare comes to an end at some point. That really is just living moment by moment. That would be sick. I would love to, you know, not have to dedicate my mind.

my time to reading the worst that humanity has to offer and we need to we need to update you know these typical interview questions are like so omar tell us what gives you hope yeah i know like so omar tell us what keeps you from committing vehicular homicide yeah exactly yeah i know the the problem is that i've just been i've been raised with the initial question for anyone that you see is hey how's it going and um i i really got to stop doing that you know because if you answer that question honestly yeah it's it's either the bullshit doing great and moving on to the conversation or yeah yeah i find myself increasingly on the deep dive answer to that question so i gave you a short version of it this time yes well i appreciate it uh and we're going to be deep diving

into some shit that's been going on that I've been wanting to get some clarification on because I don't know if you feel the same way, but I have trouble trusting the United States government. What? How come? I know it's weird, but sometimes I feel like they're not telling me the truth about stuff. And specifically, I want to talk about this ceasefire deal that has happened. A few weeks ago, President Biden went on television and said, ladies and gentlemen, we got a ceasefire deal.

Everything's going to be fine. The Israelis made it. They proposed it. They love it. And, you know, now the ball is in Hamas' court. Now, a lot of people... Fortunately, Israel bombed Hamas' court. Unfortunately.

And there are no balls. Because playing is illegal. That's right. I mean, a basketball could be a weapon. We all know this. But yeah, since that happened a couple weeks ago, it turns out that things are a little bit more complicated. During a Wednesday press conference in Doha,

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken continued to claim that the United States proposed Gaza ceasefire deal was actually an Israeli proposed ceasefire deal and that it was already approved by Israel, despite the fact that it seems like Netanyahu is explicitly said that that's not true. And I have a little bit of video of Blinken talking about the ceasefire deal in Doha. I'm going to play it for you guys.

Israel accepted the proposal. The entire world got behind the proposal. Hamas came back and has now asked for changes. to that proposal. And I'll repeat what I said. Some of the changes I think we believe are workable, but some are not. And so we'll have to see over the coming days whether the gaps that are there as a result of Hamas not accepting with a clear and simple yes proposal, whether they can be bridged or not. So I want to ask, Omar, what is actually happening with the ceasefire deal?

Is this actually the case of Hamas is just not doing a ceasefire deal because they're bad and their souls are bad? It's funny, Matt, I think it's probably worth just for a bit of context. to understand what the Hamas position is and what the Israeli position is. Okay, but before you do that, I warn you, context is anti-Semitic. Go on. And anything other than a clear and simple yes? Yes. You have not asked me to condemn Hamas.

Is you doing the Holocaust on this, on this podcast? That's right. Clear and simple yes. Yeah. So we'll see if nuance is allowed in any way possible. I'll just try out and see how it goes. Okay. So, Israel, Hamas wants a deal in which there's a permanent ceasefire and they're willing to give up all the hostages for that permanent ceasefire.

And Israel's position is we would like a temporary ceasefire, get the hostages back, release some prisoners, and then continue the war on Gaza until Israel wins and Hamas is defeated. One of these deals is a ceasefire and the other is not. and it's not very difficult to understand which is which. Sure, sure. I guess the one in which the fire doesn't cease is technically not a ceasefire. So, yeah. It's a break. It's a water break.

Sure. Get everything that you want from one side. Get them to give up everything that they have. And then you continue on destroying them. And you're a surprise. It's a postponment of a death sentence. Yep, exactly. And the American proposal, the one Biden put forward,

is effectively a version of an Israeli proposal. It was phase one is the temporary ceasefire. Phase two is the permanent one. Now, Israel's condition to move from one to the other is the complete surrender of Hamas in between. Obviously, something that Hamas is not going to do. Right. Or agree to. And Biden cleverly left that condition out

when he was explaining what this proposal was. He just said there's going to be some tough things to negotiate between phase one and phase two. But as long as negotiating is happening, you know, that temporary ceasefire can be extended indefinitely. And what's interesting is that both Hamas and the Israeli government were very suspicious of that announcement. They were not sure who was being tricked in the process. From Hamas's perspective, they're worried that this is a ruse, get them to give up all the hostages, and then the war continues. And from Israel's perspective, Netanyahu's perspective, he's worried that they agreed to a temporary ceasefire and then real heavy American pressure will be applied to.

turn it into a permanent one. And you could see some allusions to that when Biden was talking about how Israel has already won, Hamas has already been degraded, you know, there's all these indications that they just really want to make this a permanent thing and be done with it. And so the Israeli government very quickly came out

and made it very clear, including Netanyahu himself and other ministers, saying the only deal we've put on the table is one that allows us to continue the war until Hamas is defeated. And so any person with a brain understands that this is a rejection of any possibility of a permanent, ceasefire and yet we're stuck in this bizarre world where American government officials are so

invested in doing part of the pun bad Hasbara on behalf of Israel that they literally are telling us to disregard what the Israeli government is saying and to take the Americans word for it that Israel is really agreeing to the ceasefire and the problem is Hamas and what Hamas is insisting Oh they're just modest they're they're just so modest about their about their peace sneak orientations you know they act all tough but behind closed doors my god they really want to see an end to this just cuddly teddy bear it's that's it's i swear to god like you wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry and hamas's insistence of saying that's fine we agree with the general framework but we need some guarantees that the war is actually going to end those are the

unworkable conditions that hamas is presenting right unworkable because they want a permanent ceasefire i mean again if if you're only watching mainstream american television about this you could it very easily come away with the conclusion that Israel and the United States are desperate to put an end to the slaughter, but Hamas wants to continue it just for the fun of it, instead of actually understanding that broader context. And there isn't a shortage of instances in which American officials are lying to provide cover for the Israeli government. It started with, I mean, it started long before, but even if you just want to start counting with this particular configuration of the genocide in Gaza, I just remember history started October 7th.

That's right. Yes. If we start exactly. starting with that history to today, you remember the 40 beheaded babies that Biden insisted he saw the pictures of. There was the Hamas headquarters underneath the hospital. Biden confirmed that the U.S. intelligence backs this up. Like, it's one lie after the other. And there seems to be no depth to which American officials are not willing to sink in order to cover for Israeli lies and propaganda. That's exactly where we are. What's strange about it to me is the fact that, like, I don't think it's anything new for the American government to lie to its people, especially regarding like foreign policy.

What's strange is that they seem to be okay with both adopting and defending the Israeli Hasbara, which is so like clumsy and bad and like clearly fake. I mean, debunked within hours usually. Like for example, the under the Gaza hospital. in which I think it was Daniel Higari pointed to a what he called a list of hostages that turned out just to be a calendar. That's right. You know, there's so...

No, no, Matt, Matt, don't minimize that, okay? Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I mean, it was basically like the Hamas version of Friday I'm in love by the cure. It's like, you know, Monday, I could kill some Jews, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, too. You know, they were just listing all the days of the week on which they'd like to wipe the Jewish people. And you know what, Matt, there wasn't a single one of those days missing. It was all seven of them. That's right. They're doing it, you know, 24-7, 365. But, you know, just seeing

them defend and try to back up this Israeli propaganda seems strange to me because it's so clearly false. It's like, you know, Biden having to stoop as low as saying, I saw the beheaded babies. Although in his defense, he's so out, I mean, he's so out of it. Who knows what he saw? Yeah, who knows what he saw. I saw unicorns too. Yeah, exactly. I saw my father in the clouds too. We talked. Like, this guy is very, very, like, he's seeing images of the other world at this point. But, you know, the only thing he, the only thing he doesn't see is, the only thing he can't see is exits from stages. No, yeah. Or like, you know, He doesn't know where the stairs are or...

Or what camera to look at when he's currently being filmed. But, you know, you'd figure that after, like, one or two of these, like, you know, humiliations in which they are defending an outright lie, that they would just say, Israel, we got this. Let us lie for you. You clearly have grown out of touch with, like, Western sentiment and you're going on TV and being, like, you know, actually. it's woke to kill

Palestinians because they don't believe in leaning in or whatever so what is the calculus here as far as you know in terms of the United States and their commitment to

backing up these easily refutable lies look I mean it's funny I think this entire thing that we're watching right now it's a bit of politicians being stuck in an old mindset there was a time in which Israeli propaganda was good very well done yes it dominated the narrative there was no counter narrative that's the premise of this podcast it's kind of what the fuck happened yeah yeah and like we should do a parody we should do a parody episode of good

husbarah like a nostalgia in black and white yeah we should back when shit was like It's so easily explainable. Yeah. There's that newspaper clipping thing of what they do, you know, first they blame Palestinians and then they say it was a crossfire and then they say, okay, we did it, but it was an accident and human shield. Like that list, you know, at least that was something in which you can very gradually. By the time you have to reveal the truth, people have moved on to a different story.

Right, exactly. It used to be gradual because things used to not move so fast, but, you know, ever since the beginning of this, like, clearly, you know, psychopath. campaign of death. They've had to like do all of this within the span of hours. So they go from we didn't do it to we had to do it and it's actually okay to do it. And you're racist for not wanting us to. And look, I mean, that extremism is reflected in the trends within Israeli society itself.

And I really do believe that it is almost entirely driven by U.S. impunity for Israel over many, many years. Any, I mean, there's nothing unusual about the fact that power. corrupts and people with absolute power will absolutely abuse other people. And that's the situation that the U.S. placed Israel in, is that they were untouchable. You can have unlimited military funding no matter what you do. You have unlimited diplomatic protection, endless vetoes of the UN. And when you allow a society to behave however at once, it is not that surprising that you end up

getting more and more explicit expressions of racism and genocidal violence and all of that they were witnessing. And the American political establishment is so stuck in an old way of thinking that the reflex to just defend Israel right or wrong because this is good for domestic politics and whatever, all of these things are just demonstrably untrue at this point. And yet the adjustment has not been made. And I think it's going to take the electorate punishing people who insist on defending this kind of propaganda shamelessly in order for that shift to actually happen. That's always been, unfortunately, the record is that change never comes until. the elite realize that the game is up and they have to adjust in order for them to maintain

their hold on power. That's when that shift happens. And, you know, like, it's in a way promising to see the shift within the United States and the way public opinion is functioning, the fact that in spite of wall-to-wall mainstream propaganda on this issue, just access to information through social media and the sheer blatancy with which the Israeli government is behaving and talking about this genocide in Gaza, that you have a majority of Americans, an overwhelming one, wanting a ceasefire, a majority of Democratic voters,

describing this as a genocide. Like, just you can't deny reality anymore. And it is going to take that expression that we're seeing in opinion polls, translating into political power before the people in charge actually start noticing and shifting their behavior accordingly. I mean, but Blinken looks miserable up there, lying. He seriously does. But he looks like a masochist who loves being miserable.

Like, it's almost as if he's got like a blood pressure strap. What's that called when you have it around your arm? Yeah, a blood pressure cuffed around it. But it's a cuff around his balls. And every lie he tells, instead of his nose getting longer, the blood pressure cuff is like, tightens up. And he partly controls it, but someone in Tel Aviv also controls it. And there's a kind of sick game going on where he has a certain degree of enjoyment.

And then beyond that, it's actually kind of painful. And it's their little kind of kink. play he's got uh yeah resting squeeze ball face for sure i mean the guy definitely he he constantly looks pained uh you know to to defend this stuff but at the same time uh it's just it comes so easily to him that i don't believe that he is um like i have trouble believing that he's going oh man you know i know it's bad but i have to do it like i think he's a true believer uh you know in the same way he came to Israel he came to Israel quote as a Jew he's the original as a right when he after October 6th isn't that what he declared he's like I'm here as a

Jewish American and yeah and so you know I guess for me um I think not just for me but for a lot of people the big awakening here is the fact that it really will take um the electorate punishing politicians for them to be like, okay, fine, genocide's bad, which is like, it feels insane to me because you'd figure just like, you know, on a moral level, you would be like, you know, genocide is bad. Yeah, Washington does not function on a moral level at all. No, it certainly doesn't.

I would never expect it to because, you know. You guys think even if the Democrats lose, they'll learn their lesson? That actually is a big question. Yeah, we've been having debates about that. I've thought about... The fact is the Democrats are a much, they're much more themselves when they're in opposition. You know what I'm saying? Because then they can raise money, scaremongering about the big bad Republicans and all that.

Exactly. They love to lose. I think there's some of them who are looking forward to losing. I feel like this is... 100%. Yes. But I guess the general idea that, you know, if they lose, then they will learn a less. I think is, you know, I thought that after 2016, I was like, if they lose to Trump,

certainly they will learn that, you know, they'll learn something. So here's the contrast, and I'm curious in what you guys think as well. Yeah. In 2016, right, there was the burning or bust movement who said, as punishment for the Democrats, screwing burning over, we're not going to vote. And the idea was that this was going to teach the Democrats a lesson when Hillary loses. But the reasons why Hillary lost are in huge dispute. Some people will say it's sexism, some people will say she did not campaign in the Midwest.

And so when you have many, many possible explanations, it's harder for the establishment to learn the lesson. The argument I'd been making is that in this case, there will not be a dispute about what issue lost the Democrats, the election. Sure, that is true. It's very clear what has impacted opinion polls, how young people feel about this. It just seems like it's more stark. But I've had the pushback that given how old and forgetful and, I mean, it's just a demonstrable. I mean, again, I'm not a doctor, so I won't speak in categorical terms on this. Yeah, you don't need to be a doctor to see a sundowning old man and being like, oh, he should be

resting. And the question becomes, if he loses, are people going to say he was just too old or are they actually going to focus on the Gaza question? Like, I guess in theory, there could be that same effect of them not learning a lesson because it's not a single effect as clearly as I had thought it would be. I think it's possible that it's possible that the general public will take a wider look and be like, wow, he really, you know, screwed himself up with this, you know, Israel thing, especially once Netanyahu does a victory lap celebrating the fact that Trump is in office, you know, any, you know, Blue Maga, you know, Israel supporter who has just been doing it because they love Biden. is going to, I think, immediately revert to, like, you know, being against Netanyahu and whatnot. I think the problem is expecting the blame game to go up, where is where it should be,

and instead it'll just go down. It'll be, this is what the left did. This is what happened after 2016. Everyone blamed the left. Everyone blamed Bernie or bust, even though it was like, there were, such a small margin by which Hillary lost certain states that you really could blame any single of the one of these things. But the main issue being like, the voters are not to blame here. It is your job as a politician trying to win. In the case of 2016, they also found an entire

foreign country to blame and then they obsessed about it for six years, you know. Yes. And in this case, I don't know who they would blame Russia. I mean, or, Iran, I mean, we've heard Pelosi desperately and reflexively, it's just an automatic reflex for her when there's people protesting outside of her house. She's like, China. Sure, there are, Russia, you know, this is right out of the Kremlin's playbook to oppose Israeli genocide. Right. So, you know, they could blame his age. They could. And, you know, there's going to be stuff at the DNC, so they'll have stuff to pin on protesters too. Sure. They'll always find a way.

They refuse to learn, I mean, unless, unless APEC just gives up on them and then shacks up with the Republicans, and then Democrats are a little freer. But I just don't see it. And, you know, those who aren't completely ideologically committed to the Zionist nightmare are totally cowardly and craven. You've got people like AOC doing these anti-Semitism panels with, I mean, I mean, I don't. I don't mind you want to talk seriously about the problem of anti-Semitism. That's fine with me. I'm not going to oppose that. Right, but at least use some of the resources around you to check whether or not

the people are going to be, that you're talking to or dealing with this in bad faith. And I feel like it's, yeah, it's just been, it's the amount of politicians who have actually been good on the subject are so few and far between that. I just don't. It's hard to have hope on that level. Yeah. And their own party and their own party is trying to sink them right now. Jamal Bowman. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Clinton is is is pushing her pushing his opponent right now. Yeah. That's right. And lots of funding by the way from Republican sources weighing into Democratic primary to try to defeat people who are critical of Israel. I mean, they're completely shameless about it. But just a small pushback on the AOCs and many

others in Congress and the Jamal Bowman's for that matter on balance right like in a world in which there is no political calculus obviously those are people who would be worthy of criticism but looking at where Congress has been historically for many many years and to end up in a situation where today you have members of Congress who are willing to say that Israel is practicing apartheid yes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza that to me is huge progress I completely agree even though they don't always say the right thing and I certainly have no shortage of criticism of many of these progressive members. On balance, I see them as moving things big picture in the right direction and certainly something to build on as a sign of where our politics

is shifting as well. Yeah, I certainly don't focus. Or at least they're pushable in the right direction. They've been pushed in the right direction and they've moved and you got to respect that. Yes, and I, and I personally, I don't focus on the criticism of, you know, the quote, progressive, you know, members of Congress and whatnot in the way I think that you see often, especially online, like people on the online left are like, you know, you see, see this is her the whole time, you know, when it comes to AOC. Personally, I'm just like, AOC is someone who I think is movable and not in the way that a liberal Zionists, you know, that a lot of people are like, oh, we can, we can bring the liberal

Zionists in on this. It's like, good luck. They've built a narrative around this to, in order to like, you know, silo themselves from having to have any other opinion. But, you know, AOC has been, I would say good when it comes to this issue compared to members of Congress, which of course is not saying much. Not the best pool. Not the best pool. But yeah, just in terms of like the electoral stuff when it comes to would, would democratic, you know, politicians learn the lesson here. I would, I would hope. But it's just, it's not something I, it's just not, it's just, I have a hard time being optimistic about it. Yeah. And honestly, also, there's, there's another scary bit beyond the lessons learned and the blame game and all of that. Suppose Biden loses

the election over this and Trump comes in. And even though Trump, unlike Biden, does not give a shit about Israel on a personal level, all of his political incentives are to basically give Israel an even bigger car launch. That's party base. He's surrounded by Jared Kushner and David Friedman and the most fanatical pro-Israel people imaginable. And right now he is hitting Biden, claiming that Biden is too pro-Palestinian. I mean, just all kinds of absurd nonsense. Same with Schumer. So if Trump comes along and says

to Israel, you have U.S. blessing to finish the genocide in Gaza. Just push them all out. And we'll back you no matter what. How do you look back and say like just there will be a lot of gloating of people who said, you didn't vote for Biden because

of what he did to Gaza, but look what you got. You got somebody who did much, much worse to Gaza. The whole thing is a mind feel it just seems like no matter what direction the election goes in right now it is just depressing on all fronts yeah i guess for me it's hard to uh like look at that like trump winning that election and go like well this is because uh these kids out here um are not politically pragmatic to expect from voters uh this sort of like allegiance to a degree in which they will even vote for you when you commit a genocide is I think it's it's a ridiculous expectation and to say like well

you know Trump would you know do a do it worse it's like you know I fully believe that he is and capable of that but I think it's a ridiculous expectation to have people like do that kind of political calculus when at the end of the day, what you're really trying to do every election cycle is get them to vote, period. And so if you're not doing the job of getting people out to the polls to vote for you, you know, I think it's, I just don't think it is fair to blame these kids out here who, you know, didn't like when the Palestinians died. It's like, you know, They're going to, if they are going to vote at all and they vote their conscience, I mean, I really can't blame them. And even if that includes not voting because they're voting for their conscience, it does mean I think it's the smart thing to do. But it's, I just, I personally can't blame them. I just, I can't do it. Before we get any further, we're going to do a quick commercial break. And then we'll be right back with the rest of the podcast, which once again, is going to be about how Chomsky died,

even though Chomsky didn't died. So stick around. Be right back. I think it's something at 30% now. Guys, like much more than it was. I know this show. I know this show is not live,

but I'm just looking at incredibly depressing news that seems to be breaking that noam chomsky has passed away oh wow um i tried to confirm it i don't want it to just be from twitter are you guys seeing anything on your own it's it's been i mean he had a stroke last june and we knew that he was entering his final days oh no oh well that is a big bummer it really is it's not it's not a live show but i uh i think i'm not going to cut this out because that is I you know we can probably use that as a segue

to move on and talk about Noam Chomsky for a little bit I think it's worthwhile honestly it's it's genuinely I think that it's not an exaggeration to say that he was the most important

intellectual of my lifetime yeah just he's has no equal and just on a personal level he's been such a guy like he was in my introduction to political thinking, to kind of thinking about the world and the ways in which it's messed up in ways that are invisible to most people.

Just, yeah, it's, yeah, this is depressing. Obviously, he has not weighed in recently, so I knew there was something health-wise that must have not been great with him and he was 95 years old, I think. Yeah. Yeah, that is. I was 15 or 16 years old when I first saw the documentary

manufacturing consent. That's when it came out when I was in high school. Canadian made documentary about him and his propaganda model. My first documentary of his two, actually. Yeah, same. Yeah. And it just floored me and changed the way I saw the entire world. You know, just watching him go up against William F. Buckley

and watching him deal with that pompous Dutch politician and watching him defend a Holocaust denier. his right to free speech. Yeah. And just his, the acuity of his mind and his principle and the fascinating link between him being the guy who reinvented linguistics. Yeah.

And then becoming this political dissident, the fact that he almost put his career, he put his career on the line around the, the, the days of Vietnam. Vietnam almost went to jail. I mean, and he was a big influence on me. It was an even bigger influence on my brother, I would say, in terms of just the stick to the facts, dispassionate, just absolute rigor and no need to get emotional. You just, you know, and he had this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, he could hang on. He could, he could quote anybody at any moment. Uh, he, he, he was a genius and, and, and, and, uh, and a mench and a saint.

Yeah. I didn't always agree with his takes, especially later in his life, but he made the mold. Yeah, he was such a debt of gratitude. A moral compass in a way, for sure, right? Even, again, like, there are a few minor issues in which I've disagreed with him. Funny story, I quote unquote, debated Noam Chomsky when I was in my 20s over the question of the Israel lobby. It's a video that I cringe. It's hard for me to watch it just because I was so tongue-tied sitting next to a giant.

Sure. that I just like said um and basically like every three seconds as I was trying to utter my sentences together um but there's no question that he is such a moral guy that it was whether i agreed with him or not i wanted to know what his take was on something as a way to measure what my take is on it and to kind of like inform where i am sitting on any particular topic and that question of that the fact that he was a genius on linguistics and philosophy and politics and you could ask about just about any region of the world and it can give you some genuinely incisive takes on what's happening in U.S. involvement and on top of it to have the moral courage to put your career

on the line for it and to not just simply sit back and be the analyst who's describing to you how the world is but willing to put his own career on the line. Yeah, that is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime kind of intellectual. For me, the first time, before I saw manufacturing consent, the first time I had heard of him was based on a recommendation of his book, Hegemony or Survival, which was recommended to me by a close friend Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez went on, I think, TV, and like, he even lifted up the book and said, everyone should read it. And I was like, all right, I'll check it out. And yeah, and then since then, you know, I started just, you know, inhaling everything that he's ever written and ever said, any recordings I could get of him. And, you know, I always found him to be just comforting in this way and in the way he is, his moral clarity has always been just something that has made me feel good and made me feel not crazy.

which is, you know, something that people say when they, you know, comment about this podcast. They're like, thank you for making me feel not crazy. And it's just I don't, I make fun of that, but I also don't want to downplay the importance of that feeling because it is, it's weird to be like, you know, this political philosopher, linguistics professor made me feel not alone. but that is that has definitely you know been the case when it comes to him and um

he was also so non-elitist yeah you know all these interviews with community radio stations in that documentary he would answer everyone's emails yeah like he talked to anyone

who ever wrote to him he always wrote back the guy had an insane speaking schedule an insane interview schedule and and the main I think by If I just sort of tap into, like, what was the main principle I learned from him is always criticize your side first. Yeah.

It's easy to go on and on about official enemies. Yeah. But the responsibility of a citizen in an allegedly democratic society is to focus on what am I responsible for? And if I'm responsible for anything, it's the actions of my own government. And to point out that bias so clearly in the way that our media and discourse engages where the crimes of others are so obvious when they're adversaries and the way we cover up and justify our own and to just ask you to step outside of that

and to see what a mirror image it is of what other countries do as well. And most critically, I think really just in terms of beyond the concept of manufacturing consent, it is a more specific detail about the way that you control the debate by constraining the limits of it but then encouraging very lively and even adversarial debate within that spectrum to give people

the illusion that there is free thinking going on when in reality all you're doing is reinforcing that limit and saying that any thoughts beyond that are basically that's what defines who is kooky and who's not if you whether you get out of a certain spectrum and you see that playing out right now so so more so than ever it's it's it's never been more apparent than anyone who wants to talk about, you know, Israel, Palestine in the last eight months. Yeah. And you can see it, by the way, right, Matt? Like, if you're looking at what conservative right-wing media does, it's like Israel, the good guys, Palestinians, the bad guys, the end. And then you see what the supposed liberal end of the spectrum is. And it's Israel, the good guys,

Hamas, the bad guys, Palestinians, poor, innocent victims caught in the middle. Yeah. That's the supposedly liberal lefty position. Right. And then any step beyond that, to actually explain that the Israeli government is not a good actor here, that they're an apartheid regime that is effectively the most responsible party for putting us where we are today, that is not a piece of analysis that is allowed within the spectrum of acceptable opinion in our mainstream political and media discourse. And yeah, just it's, it's, I think all the way down the line, you know, you take the thing about, you know, does Israel have the right, you know, what's Israel supposed to do after October 7th? Like that's such a cardinal example of the kind of thing Trumps he's talking about. Yes.

Because on one end of the spectrum, it's Israel has the right to go crush Gaza and decimate, do whatever it wants to do for as long as it wants to do it. The other end of the spectrum, Israel has the right to defend itself. It just needs to be proportional. Right. And it needs, you know. But what's never said is Israel doesn't have the right to self-defense. It had the right to self-defense.

had the right to self-defense on October 7th while there were people inside of its territory. It had the right to protect its citizens. It had the right to shoot any attacker dead while they were attacking, you know, but as the occupying power, it does not have the right to self-defense, and it doesn't have the right to fire a single bullet inside of Gaza. That's right. And it's funny. And Chomsky would just, sorry, Matt, just to.

Yeah, yeah, please. His, his, the excellence of that point is that citizens. in a society like ours who get where it seems like there's a free debate we're more heavily propagandized and indoctrinated than North Koreans are or where or or Soviets were you know where it's so clear that it's brutality

that's keeping the the discourse limited as opposed to this illusion this this chimera of free speech, free thought and all that and it's it's so effective and so violent yeah

You know, you talk about setting the parameters of the debate in a way in which anything outside of those parameters is kooky and the way in which people kind of like don't, people forget that they need to immediately reject whatever premise is being put forth by these as bars because the premise itself is bent towards something that is usually not in touch with reality. For example, one of the, like, you know, various Twitter has bars said, like, Elon Musk has propped up in the last few months, said something along the lines of like, okay, so you guys say October 7th doesn't justify, you know, what's going on, you know, in Gaza right now. Well, tell me, what does it justify? That was the question. And, you know, with the obvious, you know, objective of getting people to try. try to figure out a plan that they believe is good for what they personally would accept in terms of the amount of death of Palestinian civilians without, you know, once seeing people who would just reject the premise outright and being like the idea that you are justified

in doing literally anything other than if someone is shooting at you, you should. shoot back at them. You know, it's like, uh, it's, it's clear that people, you know, are being told that they're, you know, the, this is whatever, that there is justification in some way. We just disagree on the amount of death of Palestinians. Like, we agree that no matter what it is inevitable that Palestinian civilians will be killed and frankly should be killed. Um, Oh, you're saying we can't have 20 gallons of blood? Okay, fine. How much blood can we have?

How many pounds of flesh? How many pounds of flesh? Sorry to get into thematic about it. Yeah. Yes. And look, right, there is the quote unquote realistic way to think about this, which is, of course, Israel is going to retaliate. The question is just a question of scale.

Or you can ask the more obvious moral question here. Right. If the goal is to end this, how do you end it? Right. And a useful question to answer that is to say, how did we get here in the first place? Yes. And nobody's willing to go back to that extra inch of just asking what is fundamentally wrong and broken here. So frankly, when people do this gotcha of like, if you were Israel on October 7th, how would you respond?

What would you do? I honestly don't mind answering that question extremely straightforwardly. Yes, providing all the context of what life was like for Palestinians before October 7th is important. And talking about how Israel has killed far more people in Gaza, you know, like back in 2014 and 2008 and 2009, there have been far bigger massacres that Israel is committed in Gaza, killing infinitely more children than had happened on October 7th even. All of that is important context to understand how we got here. But if somebody were to say October 7th, what would you have done?

You could very easily say the Israeli government should have offered to end the occupation and the siege that is imposed on Palestinians everywhere and apartheid rule and demand in return that every single person involved in the killing of civilians on October 7th be turned over for trial. That's right. That is a moral position that you can take in which you're undoing. You're saying nobody gets to get away with something horrible that they have done, but you're also addressing the underlying injustice that keeps us stuck in a situation

in which violence is inevitable. It's going to keep happening over and over again. And this delusion that Israel has, that if they just suffocate the Palestinians a little more and brutalize them a little bit more, they're going to bring an end to this. That suffocation and brutalization is the reason why we ended up. up here in the first place. I mean, this absurdity of putting somebody in a cage and constantly brutalizing them in that cage and saying that's because they're dangerous. And then one day, this person escapes that cage and attacks you. You're like, see, that's why I had them in a cage.

No, the reason they attacked you is because you had them in prison and brutalized in a cage for this long. That stuff just gets completely overlooked. And it's such a, it seems to be a rather obvious point if people would just bother make it as opposed to being stuck in Israel controlling the narrative and again back to controlling the framing like even somebody like what's his name? Pierce Morgan

who's constantly having a back and forth on this internally and struggling with it seems to recognize that Israel is behaving awfully towards Palestinians right like he looks at this and says this is not justified this is the terrorism that you claim you're fighting against us on but still stuck on the idea that

surely there had to have been massive retaliation for October 7th as a starting point. Right, right. You're making it difficult for me to enjoy the bloodlust revenge for October 7th. It's just gone a little I don't know why. You could kill some people

but not kill older people. I refuse to do his accent correctly. I'm incapable of doing a British accent, so you guys. This is the only one I can do. I'll condemn her much, yeah. Well, anyways, It's a big, big, huge, incalculable loss to the world and to, you know, anyone who, you know, believes in justice and believes in fighting Western imperialism with everything that they have.

And who values clear thinking and moral reasoning and consistency. and yeah and just uh it is it's also funny he was funny in a very dry way like yeah just the there was no shade like chomsky shade yeah well and it's it's certainly informative for the way a lot of people right now on the left engage so effectively to debunking propaganda it's it's not it sounds like a poetic sentiment but the idea that chomsky lives on in so many people who have taking bits and pieces. They bring, like, no one person can embody everything that Chomsky has brought, but everything that Chomsky was is diffused in so many people who do different bits of what he did so well. Yeah. And just, and also just, you know, as he, him being an anti-Zionist

Jew, you know, him being, him being a Jewish voice that was able to just kind of sort of above this like Zionist madness. I don't know whether or not he explicitly considered himself anti-Zionist, but he certainly had no, he would never, he would never have used that, that phrase. And in fact, you know, back in the day, he spent some time on a kibbutz, he had some soft sympathies for the, sure, the anarchist, you know, the kibbutz ideal, but he quickly saw all the ways in which it was totally degraded and racist. He certainly, but he was, yeah, he wasn't anti-anarchist.

anything he was pro justice pro truth yeah but just you know i guess anti-imperialism as a model of of the you know type of person you can be uh you know if you're um whether or not you're jewish but you know for me personally i always found it to be um just incredibly inspiring incredibly cool and he will for sure be missed and also you know uh i guess i guess he's not going to come on the podcast which I think is the biggest tragedy of this whole thing. Okay, so we're going to just real quick, I want to bring in just a little bit of talk about Sinwar. And we want to ask you, so there's a guy, if you don't know him,

his name is Sinwar. Literally, he is the avatar. for everything that is evil and bad when it comes to, you know, the, not just Zionist talking points, but just regular American imperialist talking points. He looks like, you know, someone who's evil. He's like a caricature. They put him up whenever something happens, you know, the Palestinians die. They go, this is the guy who did it. And it is something where I have not actually done a deep dive on this actual person before. I just know him as the figurehead of Hamas that people point to as being, you know, particularly, you know, as being the bad guy. He's the new

Osama or whatever. Recently there were some leaked correspondences that a lot of liberal Zionists have been like trotting out as, you know, reviving one of their favorite talking points, actually Hamas is responsible for the genocide. And I just wanted to ask you about that. Like, what exactly is the feeling amongst people in, I mean, you're in the American Palestinian community as an American Palestinian, but just in general, like, how much is Sinwar actually, you know, like, involved in people's thinking? on a day-to-day basis in Palestine and like what you only because you never actually see him anywhere except for being propped up as this as this evil prop what what is the deal with sin war yeah

look honestly I don't think he factors in a lot in the thinking of people in the United States who are involved in the issue of Palestine probably does not even factor into the thinking of people on the West Bank for that matter or Palestinian citizens of Israel is a particular figure in Gaza who gained prominence, really, in the aftermath of October 7th, where, I mean, in a way, right, Hamas was fading prior to this event. It was a situation in which the main contrast between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has bent over backwards and is effectively collaborating with Israel, providing security, running administrative life in the Palestinian areas, collecting trash

running schools or whatever, but effectively ceding the idea that Palestinians are just permanent prisoners of Israel and not really doing anything to challenge Israel in any meaningful sense. They were a tool of the occupation, and they knew that this is effectively the only purpose left for them, but they would not dare challenge it because they know what the consequences of challenging it are. So they accepted that role. And in a way, Israel had hoped for Hamas to play that role as well, that after the repeated military campaigns against, against Gaza in 2008 and 9, 2012, 2014, that Hamas would know its place, agree to basically just be the prison wardens. They're the ones in charge inside this open-air prison and to

accept that role. And in a way, Hamas was fading in recent years. The last non-violent movement to end the siege happened in 2018, the March for Return, that Hamas initially was not a part of and eventually jumped on the bandwagon for it. Sure. Because they saw that it was gaining a lot of popular appeal. And that was the last time Palestinians attempted a non-violent mass movement and uprising to say, stop treating us like this. This siege has to come to an end in a siege that Israel was. Israel must have really welcomed that, huh? They'd been wondering where the Palestinian MLK was for all this time. They must have been so relieved and just welcomed it with open arms. Exactly. Open arms and open bullets, right? Yeah, right. Chests and heads and kneecaps. Yeah. And

Decaps, yeah. Yeah. And ended up killing several hundred Palestinians. Reports suggest they were targeting journalists. They were targeting medics. They were targeting young people. They were targeting disabled people. I mean, just all of it.

The Israeli response was horrific. And Hamas had faded after that into obscurity, in a sense, until October 7. They've been plotting that what they want to do in light of every method having failed and seeing that the reason why they draw a contrast, the reason why they won, by the way, in 2006, the 2005-2006 elections is because they presented themselves as a contrast to a pliant and corrupt leadership

in the West Bank that we're not corrupt, we're seriously about the people and we're going to fight back that's what their selling point and it is only through this horrific attack that took place in October 7th that a lot of the Hamas

leadership regained prominence in a way and people started paying attention to them. Ultimately, I think this rhetoric that Sinwar has engaged in, there is almost a deliberate misunderstanding of what he's saying. Again, I'm not a defender of Hamas, just to be clear, I've opposed them from day one. I don't, I have no trouble pointing out that in addition to the fact that they have effectively endorsed and enabled crimes against civilians in the past, there's also the way they rule Palestinians themselves, which is that they are also authoritarian and don't tolerate dissent and have a lot of their own problems as well. So saying this is not to defend them in any way, but it's also a fact that when Hamas leadership say this war,

is a public relations disaster for Israel. This does not mean that the Hamas leadership wants Palestinian civilians to die. It is a lie to misframe it that way. They're simply pointing out a factual matter that Israel's policy of deliberately devastating Palestinian civilians, it is their stated policy, it is demonstrably their policy in practice,

does have consequences for world pressure on Israel. To observe that reality is not the same thing as wanting innocent people to die. Hamas has been clear, just back to our original point. They want a ceasefire. In the long term, Hamas knows it can't win a direct confrontation with the Israeli military. What they're counting on is that the world at some point would intervene, knowing that the only way Israel is going to win on the ground is through genocide,

that this is something that the world is not going to allow. That's what they're banking on. That, in a way, remains to be seen. But that is what it means to say that Israel is paying the cost in terms of public relations of the crimes they are committing in Gaza. We have to be very clear that when Israel devastates the infrastructure in Gaza, they do it because they believe, as they say, that devastating civilians is a positive means for them to put pressure on political leadership. They've done it not just in Gaza, where Hamas does hide in civilian areas, because out of necessity, it's a small strip of land, flat, it's very urban wall-to-wall practically. and Hamas as a guerrilla force has to hide.

They can't confront the Israeli military out on the battlefield. So to hide is to embed in the civilian population to some extent. In the case of Hezbollah in Lebanon, that is not the case. In Lebanon, it's a mountainous region. There is a ton of tree cover, banana trees and tobacco trees, and human rights organizations have observed that when Hezbollah operates in South Lebanon in their last conflict with Israel in 2006, overwhelmingly they were hiding outside of civilian areas during that war.

But that did not stop Israel from devastating the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon. Because that is their deliberate strategy regardless. And so you see a lot of attempts at confusing people that, oh, look, Hamas says dead Palestinians is a great thing. That is absolutely not what they're saying. They're saying a silver lining of allowing Israel to demonstrate what it is has negative consequences for Israel. And that's just observing reality.

I'm not entirely sure I guess it remains to be seen whether the world is going to intervene in a meaningful sense to put an end to this absolutely disgusting and insane massacre that has been unfolding month after month at some point reality has to set in

at some point somebody is going to say if the only way Israel can achieve military victory is through complete on total genocide that is a price too high that is not unacceptable and for meaningful pressure to be placed on Israel to end the slaughter to accept

I mean horrifyingly that the killing of 40,000 Palestinians and the destruction of 80% of Gaza is more than enough and it's time to come to your senses and put an end to the slaughter and figuring out a political way out of this conflict because there is no military means out of this.

Military, Israel's insistence on a one-dimensional military strategy is the reason we ended up here and you need saner minds to prevail in this moment. To put an end to the slaughter immediately as an emergency, we need an end to this genocidal violence in Gaza. But beyond that, finally, to force Israel, even if Israel does not see Palestinians as equal human beings, to force them to treat them like equal human beings, and to insist that they deserve every bit of dignity and human rights and self-respect and freedom that Israelis currently enjoy, that is going to be our only path out of this.

And that equality, just to bring it back to Chomsky, whether he identified as an anti-Zionist or not, is completely – I see – I think people sometimes overfixate on the word Zionism. and anti-Zionist and what it means and all that. That to me is besides the point. Chomsky understood how monstrous the Israeli government is. He understood that Palestinians deserved equality in every sense that the life of a Palestinian is no less valuable than a life of an Israeli. And he understood that justice by which Palestinians achieve their rightful aspirations for freedom and human rights and equality is actually the path to a better future for both

Palestinians and Israelis. And I think that's absolutely where we would have to end up to end this conflict once for all and i think that's a good place to end this interview with you omar really i just before you go though i just i just i just can't get over the fact that isabella uses banana shields and tobacco field and endangering the lives of trees so callously yeah i mean listen these trees deserve the same rights as Palestinians being that they are both inanimate objects to

Israeli eyes Omar truly a pleasure talking to you thank you so much for coming on and you know where can people find you where can people find your work? I am loose on social media these days

you can find me on Twitter or X whatever you want to call it at Omar Bedar is just my full name on Instagram I'm at Oh, Badar, so it's just my first initial last name. And if you put my name in YouTube, you'd probably find my channel somewhere. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on, and everyone follow him everywhere on the social

medias. Badar Hasbara. Oh, damn, that's the title. Yep. The competition is coming. That's my next podcast. Yes, perfect. All right, thank you once again to Omar for coming on the show.

and talking to us about some Hezbara and then also talking to us about the life of Noam Chomsky, which we are now getting conflicting reports as to whether or not he actually did die. So, you know, manufacturing condolences. Yeah, right, we might have been manufacturing condolences. It happens to the best of us, but, you know, we will see what happens with that.

um hopefully he's still alive but if not then all the condolences stand um yeah but anyways thank you so much for listening everyone we love you a bunch uh we sure do patreon dot com slash bad has barra email us bad has barra at gmail dot com and all right until next time from the river to the sea thank you for everything noam chomsky he's still alive. Jumping Jacks was us, push-ups was us, Godmaga us, all karate us, taking Molly us, Michael Jackson us, Yamaha keyboards, us, charge of a minks on us, Andor was us, Keith Ledger Joker us, endless press success, happy meals was us.

McDonald's was us, being happy us, we're from yoga us, eating food, us, breathing air, us, drinking water us. We invented all that shit. Thank you.