Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Bad Hasbara 5: Anna Hossnieh of Ethnically Ambiguous

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

This week Matt's good friend and co-host of Ethnically Ambiguous Anna Hossnieh comes on the pod to talk electoral politics cynicism and much more. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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All the garden us White foster us Zabra Hamas Hasbaras us Ladies and gentlemen Welcome to Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast. I'm your host, Matt Lieb, and I'm here to take you on a journey. A journey through the world of the greatest PR campaign that I think we've ever seen since one of the Jenner's gave a Pepsi to the riot police.

We're going to be talking about Israeli propaganda, Hasbara, Hasbara, if you are going to choose to pronounce it correctly. I am not. I've decided that I'm going to pronounce it wrong because who care? It's a word that very few people know

and the only people correcting me on it seem to be people who I bring on the pod. And I'm like, yeah, that's fine. If you correct me on it, you probably should be on this podcast because you clearly are talking about this stuff. Just a reminder, five stars in a review on the Apple podcast app. Give us five stars on Spotify. Listen to the podcast, biggest reminder. Once again, I want to thank everyone out there in the YouTube space for going on YouTube and being like,

I'm going to watch this podcast. Obviously, I appreciate it. I love when you look at my face. But, that being said, I don't make no money because everything gets demonetized. Sometimes I get a little bit, but it's like so little that I'm like, I can't, you know, I can't feed my family on it. So, why don't you just join the Patreon instead? Patreon.com slash broadcast, F-R-O-T-C-A-S-T. you join the Patreon, you get this show, you know, you get other shows that I do talking about

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All right. Today is January 9th, 2024. We are, what, 95 days into the war in Gaza, war in the biggest air quotes ever. And our guest today is a dear, dear friend of mine. If you know me, then you know her, because you've listened to her on such podcasts as the Daily Zeitgeist or on her own podcast, ethnically ambiguous. Ladies and gentlemen, everyone else. Our guest today is Anna Hosnier. What's up? Hello, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming on. So good to see you.

How have you been? What's, what are you doing? What's up? You know, alive, well, scared. All those things? Yeah. Just unwell. Unwell?

Yeah. But why? unwell why what's wrong i don't know why'd you start this podcast you tell me that was bored um let's do a little bit of an update let's talk about what's going on in the news you know we got some fun little news uh you know let's round it out let's say what happened um israel is starving gaza this is according to betselem this is the israel Israeli human rights organization, and I will share my screen for those of you who insist on watching video, so that you can also see what I am seeing. Okay?

Here we go. So, this is from Bezellum's Twitter account. The 2.2 million people of Gaza are going hungry. This is not a byproduct of war, but a direct result of Israel's declared policy which denies them food. Gossans now depend entirely on supplies from outside, as they can no longer produce almost any food for themselves. Most cultivated fields have been destroyed, and accessing open areas during the war is dangerous in any case. Factories and warehouses have been bombed or shut down due to lack of supplies, fuel, and electricity. Stockpiles in private homes and stores have long since run out.

Instead of allowing enough food into Gaza, Israel is letting in only a fraction of the amount entering before the war with limitations on the types of goods and how they are brought in and how they are distributed within Gaza. You can read this whole thing. Links will be provided in the show notes. Bissellum's got a whole article about this in which they factually get into everything. And it is, you know, it's one of them war crimes. It's one of them war crimes that you look at

and you go like, well, South Africa's going to win, right? You know? Like, you look at it and you go like, I don't see how they can, how can they, I don't they lose this case. If Israeli human rights organizations are the ones saying it, it is crazy to me that they would even have a shot at winning at the ICJ. Well, I guess that all depends if they hire Al Dersh.

Dude, if they get the Dersh on it, I mean, he helped get OJ off. Maybe he can help get all of Israel off. I mean, he definitely can. No, so I, have you read the suit, or have you gone through the suit that South Africa filed? No, I actually haven't gone through the details of it. It's actually, it's so incredibly detailed. Like, I, South Africa, God bless you, you really did the goddamn work. They got quotes left and right from every single person who's ever said or who's ever brought forth any sort of genocidal rhetoric.

They got that. they got it quoted they got time stamps they have every single detail like they are here and they're like oh i'll go off yourself sir so i'm like yeah i mean really you know truly i have nothing else say but inshallah like as my mother would say we have something with this suit but you know of course it's israel the powers uh be you know the majority of the europe Union, America, all the stupid fucks, Canada, are pro-Israel. So it's like you're pushing against this massive, massive wall being like, hey, remember human rights?

Yeah. Just remember the law? Yeah. Remember international law? Yeah. We are a court. Remember the reason we set up the court. Yeah.

Like, why does anything exist if Israel can do whatever the. fuck they want. Yeah, it really, you know, you bring, you bring up a great question. It's like one of those things that, uh, I think everyone is coming to terms with. And it, and it's, it's something that I think brick by brick has been, um, you know, discredited this idea of like this international law and international community that exists in order to, um, kind of the UN. Yeah, like the UN or, um, You know, like the ICC or the ICJ, like all of these international courts, Interpol, any of that shit, where there was always some, like, in your head as, you know, in your child brain, you said, like, there's this, like, world court, there's this world law that we all like practice and we all, like, hold ourselves to a particular standard. And if you see something, you know, if a country doing bad things, you know, then they're going to get in trouble. And I think.

Or they're going to get a strongly worded letter from the UN. Exactly. Or they're going to get, you know, the president going, hey, cut it out, guys. Come on. Hey, uh-uh, that's not cool. Don't make us invade. Like that's kind of always felt like, you know, America's role as this like world policing, which has never been true, nor has it ever been a good. thing they've only ever policed anything that was in their interests right and uh but i think even

even having that kind of mentality you know knowing that to be the case this still flies in the face of everything where you're like oh there really is like there really is zero recourse if the united states is backing something uh then the rest of the you know western countries follow and there's really nothing that can be done you know there is no there is no like uh you know it's not like the brick countries have their own court that they're going to like they don't have their own hag in which to hang war criminals of the west so uh yeah so it is kind of interesting and it kind of like uh bleeds into what's going on with our democratic politics too like I know that you and I are both cynical but was there ever a point um in which you thought like

possibly Biden would be like all right guys that's enough let's do a ceasefire now or did you always know he was going to be this bad shit about it that is a really good question

you know I can't even really I feel like there are days I choose to feel a delusional hope where I go like all right now we've been okay Now we've hit 15K.

Now we've hit 20K. All right. We have surpassed 28,000. You know, like, now we're all basically at 30. Like, every time I'm like, is this enough? They've blown up every hospital. They've blown up every universe. Like, I feel like I always in the back line, I'm like, maybe it's this time.

But, you know, I don't imagine, I think also just deep down, you know, having been doing a podcast about the Middle East for years, I don't really have a lot of hope when it comes to sort of treating people in the Swana region as humans with rights. And so, like, I'm so used to that lack of empathy and, like, that treatment and the sort of, like, unwavering support of Israel that, I guess, like, I remember. You know, I think it was October 9th. Like, I had a phone call with one of my, uh, uh, my bosses. I don't know, uh, whatever they're called.

But I remember being like, I don't want to work anymore. They're going to kill them all. They're going to kill. Like, remember like screaming at someone in my kitchen. They're going to kill them all. And I think like, I, in that moment, like this is literally maybe. October 8th or 9th, so close after October 7th, that in my heart of hearts, I knew it's over.

Like, they will allow Israel to ethnically cleanse Gaza, potentially the West Bank. They will kill all the Palestinians if they are given the ability to. And that was so early on that like, and that was truly like a moment of like absolute like weakness for me because normally I don't start screaming. they're going to kill them all but like I had just been like literally a long time yeah well you have never once screamed that in my face no but here's a thing I just gonna kill some of them you've said that but I've never heard you say them all I had also just been like slammed with like 5,000 Instagram stories of like I stand with Israel graphics and like truly had been like felt

like I was like dying internally and had been so gaslit by this concept of Israel like being who we need to support in this moment that I had fully I think snapped in that moment and I remember my superior being like yeah and that's like all he could really say because like you know there was nothing to say it's just like the facts are there like they're gonna kill them more

yeah because I mean that's it's like I just knew it you just you could foreshadow something so easily because we've seen it happen so many times in history. Yeah. You know, once I was able to snap out of that a little and be like, okay, like, you can't just be like, this can't be the rhetoric you go with. You need to like, you know, we want a free Palestine and we need to work towards a free

Palestine and I was able to come out of that. Yeah. But like, that's where I began. Like that's, that was where I was like, fuck. Yeah, no, same. And I think it puts you in a category and I think a category of people that, um, I have come to find out we're sort of a minority in like most, like in definitely most of America, but even in most liberal spaces, which is someone who's competent enough about the history of the quote Israel-Palestine conflict that you knew immediately after the Hamas attack on the seventh that this was going to be used. um as uh you know a pretext to do an ethic cleansing yeah and um and not every you know

i want to say not everyone knew that uh because it's obvious not everyone knew that but i i think it also um it comforts me in that it explains why such a large percentage of people i knew went fucking crazy when i would say anything about what was going to happen eventually Right. And you personally, I want to hear about if you have any that you'd like to share any personal experiences of people that you know who have either went crazy on you or people that you know who have gotten in trouble because of this whole snafu. Well, I mean, we've really, we have witnessed, you know, the new McCarthyism. Yeah. I do know people who've been, like, dropped by their agents or, uh, their

representatives, whatever, what is this goddamn industry, uh, because of being pro-Palestine. Uh, so yeah, I do know people who are deeply, who have been affected by speaking out. Yeah. Um, I myself have not been affected. I, I think I'm, I'm very lucky to be working with a group of people. who are open to discourse and understanding what's going on in the world. I've always actually been super, one of the reasons that I love you and that I, you know, talk to you about this stuff as well is you were, you and Shereen were the only people I had ever heard.

This is back when I first was listening to your podcast years and years ago. um who actually would openly talk about and criticize israel uh who held down who we're doing it for a podcast network that you know is a a business like an actual like company like i heart and uh it was one of those things where i um where most people we know just kind of avoid these topics uh especially if you're in the entertainment industry because you're just like why why would i um you know i'm already working so hard to have a career in something. Why would I even fucking go there? Like, why would I knowingly put anything at risk?

And you guys kind of said, fuck it. I heard you guys doing jokes. I remember you guys did an episode where you were talking about the history of Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt. Yeah. And it was the first time I heard people doing like, like, comedian. talking about Nassar just like in a bit and like half of it you guys just randomly went on a tangent about how like it wasn't it crazy that Bill Clinton put a whole cigar inside of

someone's oh yeah it's just like this is I think this is my favorite podcast um but uh yeah I mean you Arshu is batch it's insane it's what it's it's one of the things I love about it because like you know obviously since the seventh you know you guys have been focused on what has been going on in Israel, but it's always kind of just been these series of like inane and hilarious and often educational conversations. And, but yeah, you guys have been talking about this

for fucking ever. So I kind of like look at you guys as inspirational in terms of like being brave enough to actually just talk about this shit. You know what I mean? Well, I will say it started out very slow, you know? It was like we would mention it. We would like really feel out the waters

Because we so clearly had a viewpoint. And the how sensitive are people to anti-Zionism? Well, yeah. And then, you know, we started getting like emails to like the head of at the time it was how stuff works before we got purchased or acquired by IHeart being like, this show is anti-Semitic. You need to take it off air. And then they would, what's crazy is they would like forward us this feedback and we'd be like, please don't send us this sort of stuff. Like this sucks. We don't want to see this.

We're clearly not anti-Semitic. we're clearly like doing like very good like research on like anti-Zionism and being actually quite careful to not repeat anti-Semitic tropes that like we know our criticisms are valid if you just like you know I don't know opened up al Jazeera dot com at any point in your life you might be able to like read up on some actual facts not you know hidden away by some like IDF monitor through CNN so like it just was like you know you had to just keep pushing through and I'm not you know I will not lie to you there were days where i'd be like i can't do this anymore this is miserable like no one wants to hear what you have to say and like it's sickening the way they treat

Palestinians in this world and like how they act like you know what israel is doing is for their own safety when it's like that's just killing people right yeah no it is just uh that is just murder and it's just apartheid and just ethnic cleansing you know just those things. Yeah, for sure. And I have a friend who joined the IDF and he used to be like, used to be pretty close. And now he just yells at me on Facebook Messenger. Well, that's fun. Yeah. And I'm like, I think there's a reason you're not in the IDF anymore, but I'm not going to call you out on that. But I'm so I'm going to be empathetic to your experience, even though I don't believe in what you went and did. But I get a vibe when I look in your eyes that you're not well from your experience. So there's a reason you're back here. And, um, you know, constantly sending me messages like, it's not what you think it is. And I'm always like, please, please stop doing this. Please stop. Yeah. He wants to come on my podcast. I'm like, I just don't think it's going to go over well. I don't know what you're going to say that's going to go over well. And I really would rather not even like put you in that position.

Yeah, yeah, especially since it's like there's, since I started talking about this stuff, I mean, I guess constantly and more publicly, I have been, um, urged to debate the most random people i have i've ever like people i've never heard of like i i talk shit about uh a streamer named destiny do you know who destiny is if it's on twitch on twitch i i think twitch or youtube uh the young kids know who he is um he wrote a uh so apparently there was there's kind of like a few people after the seventh october seventh who decided like they you know these are like political space you know streamers right and they decided they needed to pick aside and they just went with Israel and they have since just doubled and

tripled down you know having had no prior knowledge of the entire situation I think this guy Destiny learned everything from Wikipedia which is like listen you can can learn a lot of good stuff on Wikipedia. But I think if you're just going to skim it, you might get the wrong impression that everything started

on the 7th. And I did some like, you know, some post online about the fact that he's like now posting like kind of like right wing memes and stuff and I was like is this guy just like pivoted to, has he done a fash pivot?

And then he quote tweeted me and then all of his like weirdo sycophants started going after me and they're like why don't you just debate him debate him if you're so smart and i think there's nothing funnier than a bunch of than like a grown man uh twitch streamer who's like a politics guy and his like army of 12 year old sycophants you think that owning debates is the highest level of political discourse like There is no discourse without someone getting poned. Well, that's the thing. It's like, what can he say?

Like, genocide's okay. Right. There is no debate. Well, I mean, that's the thing. It's all, and this is like part of, I think, why the idea of debating as kind of like a way to find out where you stand as a viewer is like bullshit. Because we all know it's just like, it's just conflict engagement. Like, it's the only thing. that the pro-Zionist side has or the pro-Israel side has is rhetoric all they have they don't

have facts on their side they have uh you know just kind of a particular narrative that they were are going to use multiple sources in order to reinforce and just use that as a way to say like you know um if you disagree with me you're anti-semitic or you're lying or you're this or you're that And so the idea of debating that is like it's counterintuitive to like what I would think of as like a useful way of turning people to your to your side. Because especially if you're someone who is not going to admit to simple ground rules like I've found when I talk to other people about this who are Zionists and I'm trying to like understand. I say, okay, can we start here though? you recognize that there's a power imbalance between, like, Palestinians and Israelis, right? Like, you recognize that Israel holds the power in the cards.

And most people are like, no, I will not, I won't concede that, which is an insane thing to think about, you know, it's like one of the ways in which, like, Israelia's bar has been really effective in that people, people still to this day truly believe that Israel is just a small being is just a scared little country surrounded by big, by ISIS, yeah, by ISIS, just big bad Arab baddies, who are just like just sitting by and rubbing their hands and waiting to destroy Israel. So that it's the only way that their narrative ever works. and so when they just famously also get like you know almost four billion in aid every year you know this actually reminds me just that that this always I always thought this was so funny that when Sarah Silverman had her moment and posted that we should cut off all water and food

and electricity into Gaza that like one of the talking points was that like well it's not our fault that Hamas hordes billions of dollars and I just every part part of me thinking that you think one of the world's billionaires is Hamas? Yeah. Yeah. Like, do you know what that would make like the GDP of like like Gaza? Right. I mean, like what are you guys talking about that? Yeah. I mean, it's the conflation of like the purported personal wealth of, you know, a Hamas commander or official or someone who is living in exile. They did the same thing with the PLO all the time.

time when they were living in like Tunisia they'd be like all these like you know rich Tunisians out there uh or all these rich Palestinians out there and it's like okay you're talking about a corrupt official uh who does not live in the West bank uh you know you're you're talking about like what I would call like standard uh like political corruption and then trying to be like Therefore, you know, we have to kill them. Yeah, therefore, everyone in Palestine, they're actually, you know, if they want to blame anyone, you know, blame their, blame their leaders for the reason that we're doing apartheid. And it's just so, it's so disingenuous and it's so, like, clearly coming from a place of, like, trying to, um, trying to blame Palestinians for their own suffering. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But, you know, one of the things that I'm going to bring up today is it has been 95 days of all of this. And I think that we have, you know, the line, the Hasbara talking point for the last three plus months has been that we got to get the hostages back. And more and more, I think, we get kind of bogged down in the, like, daily, everyday details of what's going on, you know, now and fucking in the, in the north of Israel and their fight against Hezbollah and, like, just that we forget that their entire impetus for this whole thing has been, well, we got to get them hostages back, bring them home. It's been 95 days They'll get to it It's been 95 days Do you want to know

How many hostages have been released Yes Due to rescue operations from the IDF Please One One And Hey guys

And we have a few more to go We got just one down How many more months of this? How many more months of bombing? It's just like, and so recently the, you know, Israeli states head bitch in charge of Hasbara, Elon Levy. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this particular punk ass. Yeah.

But he recently went on one of them British shows. I don't know what it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, one of them British shows, to talk about getting those hostages back. And he was confronted with this very fact, and I have a clip for everyone. For going in to Gaza was to get those hostages back. As of December the 22nd, only one hostage has actually been rescued, as opposed to either being released through a prisoner exchange or any other method. Has that number increased?

We have 110 hostages who have been released, mostly as a result, of the hostage release pause that we agreed with Hamas, where in exchange for giving it a break in the fighting, it released hostages. Now, we hope that that framework would continue. But you see Israel know where these hostages are. As I say, only one hostages has actually been rescued, which is part of Israel's reason for going in. And of course, there was this incident before Christmas where IDF soldiers killed three. of Israel's own hostages who were reportedly running at them saying, help in Hebrew, half-naked, waving white flags. Yeah, really a tragic incident that shocked the whole country. And that's why our strategy now is to put unrelenting military pressure on Hamas until it begs for another breather and is willing to release the hostages.

So, um, what? Just to make that clear and cogent to people, um, The military strategy of being unrelenting towards Hamas has thus far been disproportionately murdering civilians indiscriminately, displacing 1.9 million people now. I believe there are, you know, I think a couple hundred thousand who have yet, who are still in their homes in the south of Gaza going, all right. But 90% of civilian infrastructure has been destroyed in Gaza, and obviously, you know, not to mention the starving of the people and all that. All of this is when he says we're going to put enduring military pressure on Hamas until they give us the rest of the hostages. That is just war crimes.

That is just him justifying the war crimes thus far as being the tactic for getting. getting hostages back, the 130 plus hostages who have been released thus far have all been released only due to a ceasefire. Sure. A ceasefire that was negotiated between Israel and Hamas at the, you know, with the protestations of a vast majority of the Israeli Knesset. the only reason that they were agreed with in the first place was due to pressure coming from the international community and from within the country of people going on the streets and saying give us our fucking hostages back and and like literally Israelis who are you know for the most part I think they're they're not pro ceasefire I'll say that um but who were like who do care about their own people yeah their own family and their own family. Who they know, you know, if they know they are a hostage and are still alive, they're like, can we, can we just, can we pause the ethnic cleansing for a second and get people back? And then we can return with the ethnic. Well, I mean, I think a lot of them just want to go back to the quiet apartheid versus being more like genocidal apartheid. Yes. But also I think a part of, you know, what got those hostages release is that they also released Palestinian hostages. That's right. That have been kept in Israeli prisons with no charges, no clear.

explanation of if they're actually going to go and see a court date, no, they're just being held in like the absolute most desolate conditions in this Israeli prisons. Administrative detention is. And, you know, they are subject to in the occupied territories military law, which is basically whatever the military decides. Which means if you have a rock in your hand, you're a terrorist. Even if you don't have a rock, if you are suspected of having hands that might do rock throwing, you can be taken from your home in the middle of the night and put in a detention facility, which you've been put in prison for no fucking reason for as long as they feel like it. Yes. So I think that was a huge part of getting those hostages release. And also, I mean, the fact that he can go and sit up there and be like, you know, we're just going to move in more military force to further, you know, genocide this group of people. It's it's all, here's a thing. They're so, God.

damn humiliated. Yeah. Every aspect of what they've done is just another step of humiliation for Israel, which look, you know they're all just trying to be like, no, that didn't happen, no. It's like got that they're trying to posture their way through this genocide while we can all literally see them with their ass hanging out being like, yeah, but I saw the video where that dude dabbed up Hamas member. Like, I don't know about you, but that's a bad look.

No, they were all on Atavan. That's right. They were all drugged up. They were all drugged up. And I famously, I love to be like, what's up, bro? It was good to see you all. I have a good one whenever I'm like on drugs. I'll tell you, as someone who is a recovering opiate addict, 14 years sober now, one of the things that I love to do was take a little bit of heroin and forgive my enemies.

It was just one of those things. And also just walk yourself to different vehicles. and like fully cognizant. Fully cognizant, just going around hugging. Using crutches for the heck of it. Why not that? Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, the, the competing narratives here of like, you know, Hamas is good, actually, and took care of those people and they all love them.

And Hamas raped every single person, man, woman, and child who they have in captivity, obviously is a false choice, right? Like we can simultaneously say kidnapping people, you know, is not a humane or a nice thing to do while also trying to be like, and everything Israel says that happened, just take it with the largest grain of salt. Take it with a mountain of salt. Pretend Mount Everest is just a giant thing of salt. take it with that and know that whatever they say is going to just be used in order to keep decent people quiet from you know sure and I think one of the biggest things is we're getting like even like every correspondent we hear from or even just like you know it's minister of whatever It's always like, it's always like, Minister of Agriculture wants genocide.

It's just like the randomest people you're hearing genocidal rhetoric from. But like none of it has any backing. Like they're all fed their, you know, they're all fed their lines. They know what they're supposed to say. And everyone has the same rhetoric of like, you know, we have to protect ourselves. It's all self-defense from Hamas. We don't know what's happening. You don't know if Hamas is eating that aid that's coming in through.

like what if Hamas gets like an apple like what happens then you know it's like all the same rhetoric that's truly like delusional and like really just like I don't even know like it is truly is shocking to me like how people absorb this information and how like in order to be taken seriously you have to condemn Hamas while you're watching like I don't know like we're watching delusion on our our screens and we're watching people all say the exact same thing and the mainstream media picks it all up and I don't know like I don't I guess I just don't I don't know what happens next outside of just a furthering a genocide like I don't understand like what happened like the human condition is not well if we accept right what they're putting out right Right. Right. Yeah. Like where do we go from here? Right. Right. 100%. This is, I think everyone has been kind of wrestling with that, at least I have as well, wrestling with that exact thing where it's just like you, because part of you wants to be like, you know, come on, come on, Matt. You can't. There are things out of your control in life. You know what I mean? There's just some things that are just bigger than you, you know? And, um, You can't focus your energy on them. You have to, you know, focus your energy on putting positive things out in the world,

not like tearing things down, but building things up and blah, blah, blah. And also just like the general public feeling like this total, you know, sense of helplessness. And I think what makes it worse is for those of us who don't want to be helpless, for those of us who want to take action and want to go protest and want to do civil disobedience and whatnot, um finding that all of those actions have not moved our own government an inch yeah not an inch it turns into a point where you go like you know i've always like cynically said like you know

you're voting for the lesser two evils here you know do you want the the blue corporate shill or the fucking red corporate chill but now it's just like you know you know I've always only 75% believe that. But now I'm like, I think I 100% believe that this is not a representative democracy. And it just kind of like, there's this great moment this week with Medi Hassan, who, if you don't know Medi, I mean, if you're listening to this, you probably know Medi Hassan. He's MSNBC Peacock TV journalist, you know, formerly Al Jazeera English. He was, his show was recently canceled on MSNBC. And so he decided that he was going to just leave.

He did his last ever MSNBC show, and he announced in that very show. that he was no longer going to be working there and that he was basically going to carve out his own path and see see what happens next. Anyways, he on his show, he had the great Gosen photographer and photojournalists whose name I can't pronounce, Motaz, I know. Motaz, yeah. uh, uh, uh, as, as ziz, yeah. Is Zezia? Is that it? I mean, I don't know.

Shere, would be a better person. She's better with the, I, I say Arabic words and names with a Persian pronunciation, because that's what I'm used to. But Sheree knows the, is better, obviously, because she can speak Arabic. So she's the one to ask how to pronounce it. Um, but, uh, Motaz, yeah, you, you've, you've seen his work for sure. Um, he is, uh, he's out there in Gaza documenting everything. And he had this to say on, um, on, I believe it was Medi's last show. And I just thought it was like so poignant and so perfect. Um, and this is

with regards to the idea of like, you know, people in the West. Um, and, you know, whether they're pro-Palestine or anti-Palestine, you know, whatever. Um, and talking about, um, and talking about, freedom and freeing Palestine and all that and just he kind of flipped it on its head in a way I thought was really brilliant and I have a clip the first message is don't call yourself a free people a free person if you can make changes if you can't stop a genocide that is is going still ongoing since the first day we are so close to be a hundred day of of murdering and genocide. So don't you call yourself a free person if you can't stop someone to kill someone else? Because what I witness here, that all the world is ruled by a be able that no one in the whole world can say to them, or they can stop them. So nobody shall call himself a free person if he's watching another people, another human being, getting murdered in front of him, a live show by a young photographer who was just coming to show the

word that, and he can stop this. People call Motets like a hero, a sober hero, Montez didn't choose this, but I don't want you to justify what is having, or to forget about what is happening by calling someone a sober hero and forget the people who are under like tons of trouble, And they died there by a missile. Maybe you shared with your taxes to give it to the occupation. That I thought was kind of a brilliant statement. The idea of like, you're not free either. You know, like we talk about like wanting a free Palestine.

And I think like one of the things that people in this fight have, some have known for a long time or some have like thought like myself kind of had in the back of my head but not maybe fully taking it in. But that, you know, we just want the Palestinians to have what we have, you know, like a live in a non-apartheid democracy where they count, where they matter, you know, where they aren't just like herded like cattle. into these open-air prisons. You know, we want them to have liberty and freedom and all this stuff. And just the idea of like him, I don't know, just in the way he put it, like, remember, you're not free. You're not free either. If the fact is, you can sit back and you can watch this and you can, and what, 90% or what is it, 90% of the Democratic Party of Democratic Party voters, want a ceasefire and we can't get that you know we we actually were not able to that hasn't

that pressure has not gotten through to our elected representatives it's like this this whole situation to me I'm like realizing like oh fuck like we aren't we are also we are also not free in a way no when our government is run by a massive lobbying group from another or for another country. Mm-hmm. Or for... There is no democracy. Right.

It's run by lobbies and run by money and run by people who don't have the interests of their, you know, constituents at heart more so than they had the interest of keeping their own personal power. And that power is, you know, dependent on people who are, uh, like going to give them money or not to continue running you know like these these the fact is is that we are we've always you know criticized the united states for being a country in which uh money runs our elections and stuff and it's always been kind of just like hey you know we're also kind of corrupt too but you look at this now and you go like oh fuck we're straight like every

third world trope about you know corrupt uh corrupt corrupt officials in a government and fucking wherever else in the third world like all those apply to us we can't we literally cannot stop the the Israel lobby from

like setting the narrative both in Washington and on like a majority of our like 24 our news outlets and and in our in our journalistic institutions like that is fucking wild i mean i know it's like for most people that are like yeah duh have you known that and it's like yeah i've known that but it's just like it's never been in such stark contrast where you're yelling please stop

killing the babies and people are going no yeah and they're being like um are you out of your mind yeah like wow i've never heard something so anti-semitic before has stopped killing the babies yeah it is um it's dark but i think like uh i think he's he's got a point that um i think a lot of people are feeling like where you're just like and and i think you touched on it before of like you know what what happens to us like psychically if we just continue to let this happen you know, without, without there being any kind of consequences. And I, and I think I, on a purely stupid electoral point, I, I, I fear that for the, you know, for the 2024 election, the idea of people either skipping or voting Trump or whatever, like, you know, this is not something that I endorse. I'm not saying go vote Trump, but I, like, now more so than ever do I understand.

the idea of a protest vote that would, you know, knowingly make things worse, but you're doing it just as like, it's your only, it's your only like recourse, it's your only lever power is to just be like, fuck you, I'm voting for this guy, or fuck you, I'm going to make sure you lose by not voting. You know, it's like there's, and again, you know, I'm not someone who's very precious with my vote. You know, I live in California, so I can vote however the fuck I want to vote. But yeah, man, it's like dark.

It's like, I'm like, fuck. I get it like in 2016, like people hating Hillary that much. I always just like, listen, I don't like Hillary, but this Trump guy is a fucking asshole. You know, but like this is like the one time where I'm starting like I'm starting to understand the protest vote idea. and the idea of just, like, making Dems lose because fuck them. And, uh, and, you know, I've said it for the last few months that I'm not, um, I'm not going to browbeat anyone into voting. Like this time, like, I mean, I never really browbeated anyone, but like, uh, the idea

of like people just being like, come on, you got to, you got to vote for the, you know, lesser of two evils and whatnot. I'm just like, ah, I just can't, I can't. I can't bring myself to, say, even sort of back that thinking. Well, you know, I'm too far gone. I'm so deeply cynical. Of course, I would never vote for Trump. I think my path would just be to not vote at all.

Right. I think, you know, I've been literally telling people, like, prepare for another Trump presidency. Mm-hmm. Because this government has failed us on all. levels from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to Israel and Palestine to this genocide to student loans. We have seen them fail us over and over and over again. And yeah, maybe the genocide was the last straw. But for me, it is the absolute disregard of Middle Eastern Muslim Palestinian people.

That is, you know, obviously, I'm a Muslim, Iranian-American woman living in this country, so that hit the hardest, even though I am a woman. And abortion, that was pretty fucking devastating. Oh, sure.

But this is something that's gone so deep, knowing that people who look like me, people who are like, basically my family members, we can turn a blind eye to their death has made me really just

really, really horrified to be in this country and to support anything this country does, I am really, really honestly frustrated that I have to pay my taxes this year. Like, I've never I usually, I get my taxes done, I move the fuck along, I compartmentalize.

This year, a part of me was like, why am I even paying taxes to kill these people? Like, what are we, I don't want to contribute to this anymore. I know. It's the sort of horrible capitalistic system we're stuck in. But I don't also even hear people when they say like, well, what about your vote? You're going to just go is you're going to get another Trump presidency.

I'm like, well, that's not my problem. I'm already being treated like a second class citizen. Yeah. This doesn't change anything for me. I don't have to step up and protect the like liberal whites who don't want Trump as a president. That's not my problem anymore. When you posted, I stand with Israel, you told me I don't and our people and Muslims and Palestinians do not matter right and so you did you did your work and now I'm not going to stand up

and do the work for you to get your little genocide Joe back in office that's not my problem anymore yeah and so that's where I'm at is like there's nothing you can see me like I can't even hear when people are like well the thing you understand is that Trump's going to become president I'm like yeah bitch and Trump pulled a Muslim ban and guess what my ass is still here so at this point there's nothing else you can do that's going to like further like you know i'm already i'm gone baby mentally i am gone this shit doesn't even this shit rolls off my back now the things i've seen happen to this country you know yeah and yeah that is the most cynical place you can be but i mean but i don't know i don't know what to tell you i think cynical implies like almost

um uh negativity for negativity's sake but at this point it's like the cynicism is just based on facts. So I think it's just almost, it's just being, it's being a, a realist and not a, and not someone who self-flagellates. That's what it is.

It's like you're a realist. You know what the consequences are. And you don't really see them as being like, you know, like, like, Trump is more incompetent. Like, you know, there's, I kind of understand people, even like being like, I'm willing to take a chance to see if he, you know, tries again with a Muslim ban or tries because the way liberals are talking about it, like, oh yeah, vote for Trump and then there won't be any Muslims left. Are you happy now, you fucking Muslims? Like, just like the liberal racism of like electoral politics that it brings out in these guys is like insane. And, and yeah, and you're looking at it, you know, from a realistic point of view. It's not even cynicism because you're, you're right.

And so, yeah, it is, it's all a big bummer. It's why I can't really even think about electoral politics because it just makes me more mad because all, you know, having backbone at the State Department in the White House, like in our government and having at the very least an understanding of optics. I mean, that's the crazy thing is they don't even fucking care about the optics. Usually that's all they care about. But they know they're like the fucking Twitch streamers. They're dug in. And they're like, well, these guys aren't going to vote for us anyways. And if we backtrack now and don't let them do the full ethnic cleansing and genocide,

then we're going to lose those voters too. So we just have to keep going with it. It's like they're just dug in. And that, I think, is so much more cynical than being like, fuck you i'm withholding my vote and so that's how i feel about it um before we get out of here i want to ask you why you're not more like this guy there's a there's a man who i found on on instagram who uh you know he used to be someone who hated israel and um i just i look at this guy and then i look at this guy and then i look at you, Anna, and I go, why can't it be more like this guy?

Let me play him for you. Man loves Israel. It's true. I really do love Israel. You see, Pakistan is a nation that is extremely hostile towards Israel. I was taught by my culture to hate Israel and to hate Jews. Even in Pakistan, their passport allows them to travel to any country, except Israel. Qasim was raised by Muslim Pakistani parents in England with the father who even used to praise

Adolf Hitler. And by his early 20s, he had been. been so radicalized that he made plans to return to Pakistan and joined an Islamic terror group. But that all changed. One day he came across a book called The Case for Israel and decided to read it believing he could debunk the arguments to defend the Israel. However, he couldn't. He couldn't talk him! In 2007, Kazim came to Israel using his British passport and what he saw changed his perspective.

He witnessed Jews, Christians and Muslims living together, not under apartheid, but together in coexistence. He'd go to birthright? So rather they mean a radical, Qasim was radically changed. He eventually left Islam, became a Christian, and is now a deputy director at one of the biggest pro-Israel Christian organizations in the world, Christians United for Israel. Although he experienced rejection from his family, he was brave enough to speak up. If you grew up anything like me, let me tell you this. Go explore, get outside your bubble, and if you can't, come here and see it for yourself,

because what you're taught is not always the truth. Qasim is the perfect example of how love always triumphs hates and sometimes it just hates So wow there's a lot to unpack there we don't have time we could do a full episode just on that video it's true i did hate jews that's my favorite part where it's just like it's true i was a piece of shit well it's also like used to be a piece of shit you were raised by like a radicalized islamic like father who worshipped adolf hitler like what What the fuck? Oh my God.

That's not okay. You should have just been like, this isn't okay. Yeah. You don't have to go full Israeli. There's a bit of an overcorrection. If that's true, you're just like, you don't think you overcorrected a little bit. Oh, overcorrection understatement. He was going to go to Pakistan and join an Islamic terror group.

Yes, but then I read one book. By Alan Dershowitz. A famous rapist. Who's named over 300 times in the Epstein docks that got dropped recently. Just recently. Just like being someone who was radicalized by the Dersh is, I mean, it's beautiful and it's wonderful. It is a big red flag. I love it.

I mean, like, here's the thing. I get it. He was a religious person who went to a very, like, holy land. but was not able to sort of separate what he was experiencing from the Israeli propaganda all around him. Yeah, I mean, listen, I look at that whole video and I go like, this feels mostly fake. I mean, there's no part of me that it's like even wants to take apart the experience because I'm just like, wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. so he grew up in Britain to a Pakistani family so he's not from Pakistan he grew up in England yeah to a Pakistani family's father loved Hitler okay and instead of college he was like

join Islamic terror group yeah I'm gonna join al-Qaeda yeah and then but on his way to booking his ticket he read a single book and then he said well I've got to go to Israel so he just just flew himself to Israel. He took that plane ticket. He said, Spirit Airlines, I want to make a change. We're not going to Pakistan. We're going to Israel. He went there.

He saw Muslims and Christians and Jews living together in harmony, dancing. And then he immediately converted to Christianity. And then, not Judaism, by the way. Yeah, I don't know what happened. He's like, I don't love Jews that much. And they're also like, no. we're not going to let you in. But he converted Christianity and now he works in a pro-Israel Christian group.

Just, it's a remarkable origin story that in no way sounds fake and or based on a multitude of Hezbara talking points. It is, first of all, this person is a red flag that they ever wanted to join a terror group. Right. And the fact that you go like, oh, you know, know what i'm joining the wrong terror group yeah you're like he's still a radicalized individual very radicalized and i'm just like you clearly needs help in um in 12 step programs we say uh there is no geographical solution to a spiritual problem and i think that i think that applies here in spades you know god that's so scary yeah isn't that great i wouldn't i would if i was working with a guy and he was like you know i i would if i was working with a guy and he was like you know i

I'm just going to join ISIS. I would be like, what, dude? Hold on, come again? No, no, I was going to, but then I read a single book. If he's like, have you heard of Alan Dershowitz? No, it was Dersh. Whoa. You know the guy who's, uh, keep the, the Epstein's like best friends with?

He got O.J. off. Like, even I would be like, guys, like, I don't really feel comfortable having a desk next to him. Right. I know. I don't, I'm not trying to like. stereotype a Muslim man, but he's saying a lot of really scary shit. I mean, he's very much like leaning into the stereotype where he's just like, hi, just like any other Pakistani, I was going to do murder.

You're like, whoa. What? What is this? What do you mean? It's like, my dad loved Hitler. It's like, I think this is a very you specific thing, dude. No, it's all of us. I'm Christian now, though.

It's like, now I feel safer. The dad worshipping him. Hitler thing is like, you were raised to be a problem. Yes, yes. We need to go back and make sure your dad is not up to anything. Like, what are you talking about? I think there's a lot more like fascist programming that has not been deprogrammed out of you. And I think maybe, you know, you started good with deciding not to join the Islamic State.

But maybe let's continue that journey, baby. Let's keep that going. Let's not stop while we're, you know, midstream here because you are now just doing other fascism, bro. Oh, whoa. And that video, that TikTok inspired video, were they high-fived at the end? I was like, oh, Lord, help us. I love it so much. God bless him, you know, whatever, whichever God he's now using as an excuse to do murder.

But as an excuse to excuse genocide. That's right. can I just say something real quick I want to add to my voting point earlier that I think I think I am pretty cynical of the upcoming election and who knows what I will end up doing but I just want to encourage everyone to find that place for themselves I'm not telling anyone to not vote I'm not telling anyone to vote I'm telling you to sort of take that in and what's happening in the world and and come up with with the right solution for yourself because I don't care what anyone else does at this point because nothing matters. And I believe at this point we have the right to determine our own futures because clearly this government does not care about us. So I think you have to find your own solution to dealing with this horrible, horrible state that we are in and the fact that you know, all our money is going to go support a genocide.

So, yeah. And I'm saying very biased talking points, but here's a thing. That's the facts. That's a goddamn facts. Them's is the facts. That's all true. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. I'm not telling other people what to do with their vote or how to vote.

And that is the point. You know, I'm not saying don't vote. But I'm also not going to say vote because at this point, I don't know how I can. um like there's no part of a debate with you about why you won't vote that i'm not going to agree on you know whereas before i maybe it wasn't cynical enough and could be like well you know as a pragmatic rational person it's like no at this point it's like i couldn't i couldn't in good faith engage with you in a counter argument because i wouldn't believe the counter argument you know so yeah again uh i encourage people like you to make your own decisions um and i'm not

going to brow beat you either way you know uh i would i would feel very good if uh you know people made pragmatic choices and i would also feel fine with people uh made um non pragmatic choices i personally um i'm going to use my california privilege and uh fucking and I don't know, Cornell West probably is going to get my vote. You know, that's, I mean,

I vote third party most of the time anyways. And that's probably going to continue. But anyways, that has been our pod. Anna, thank you so much for coming on and talking about Israel with me. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Where can people find you? I am at Anna Hosniye on Twitter I'm at Selling Host Nye on Instagram Hell yeah, hell yeah We have a podcast ethnically ambiguous So you can find anywhere you find podcasts

It's a great podcast I stream once a week with my streaming co-host Molly Lambert where we talk about all things We talk about all things like Bravo television And then we talk a lot about politics And we actually talk a lot about Palestine Because you know it's unavoidable We just have a lot of things we talk about things we talk about

talk about. We talk a lot about, you know, Epstein. We talk a lot about, we talk a lot about Dersh. We talk a lot about just politics and life and the world and Bravo television and reality TV. So it's like a very well-rounded streaming. It's called deckheads pod. And we stream usually either Tuesday or Wednesday nights. Depends. I don't know. You can follow us. We post it about it. So yeah, that's where you can find me. Check it all out. uh patreon.com slash frotcast once again to get all these episodes and then all also episodes of uh you know pod yourself the wire and pod yourself a gun and also the frotcast and uh you know just a bunch of fun podcast that you can listen to that are great uh bad hasbar uh at gmail dot com for all of your

questions comments concerns uh anything you want to point out to me that you think is something to talk about also check us out on reddit subreddit bad has barra all right everyone thank you so much and until next time still working out what the sign-off's going to be but from the river to the sea now no one will hire me that's fucking true go luck shout out james Jumping jacks was us. Push-ups was us. Gopma-ga us. All karate us.

Taking Molly us. Michael Jackson, us. Yamaha keyboards. Us. Georgia binks on us. Andor was us. Heath Ledger Joker us. Endless Fred success.

Happy meals was us. McDonald's was us. Being happy us. Beacon yoga us. Eating food, us. Breathing air us. Drinking water. us. We invented all that shit.