Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Bad Hasbara 57: Najla Said Knock You Out, with Najla Said

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Matt and Daniel are joined by author, actor and playwright Najla Said to discuss dueling depictions of the last moments of Yahya Sinwar, Benjamin Netanyahu’s supposed fear of sharing space with Najla's father Edward Said, and whether an inveterate torturer can know his victim as a mother knows her child (probably not).Please donate to MAP: Medical Aid for Palestinians: https://www.map.org.uk/Find Najla Said online at https://www.najlasaid.com/Subscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbaraSubscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get your podcasts.Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5RDvo87OzNLA78UH82MI55Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-hasbara-the-worlds-most-moral-podcast/id1721813926Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Quit your way Call 1-877 You Can Now Or visit Tobacco Free Florida www.com, developed by CDC. Hello and welcome to Bad Hasbara. The world's most moral pot. I'm trying to balance out. Your voice is about an octave lower,

so I'm trying to go an octave higher. Yes. The world's most moral podcast. I am your most moral. No, the world's most moral podcast is a podcast about mushroom foraging. Oh, is that right. Do I not understand? Do you know what Moral?

I've never foraged mushrooms. I grew up in Los Angeles. You never had a morale? A good, a good umami tasting mushroom. Yeah, you're throwing in words like umami. I only know them is a place that makes burgers. You've never had an umami burger? I've never had an umami burger, but, uh,

umami is that tasty, earthy flavor that the Japanese specialize in. Anyway, I'm in, I'm in San Francisco right now, so maybe, maybe the mushroom for it. Maybe, maybe the mushrooms are, in the air, the spores. It could be. You might be getting some of that spore thing from Last of us turn into a clicker. I am your world's most moral host, Matt Lieb. I'm Daniel Matte. Whatever else you want to say about me. Probably your world's other most moral co-host. Yes. And we are so excited to have you here. As you can tell, I'm a little sick. My daughter gave me some sort of illness again and I ended up like losing my voice and now it's almost back which

for me I'm like if it's almost back then it's time to podcast that's what I say you know your daughter give us give us viruses and takeeth away tech equipment yeah and taketh away my sweet sweet time because she had to not be in daycare for the last few days of last week and I got to say really, really happy that she's better. Good for her. So excited. So excited for her being all cured. I feel like shit dog. I feel like dog shit. Dog shit dog. Dog shit dog. But so excited that you guys are all joining us. I'm going to be speaking a little bit more like this for this podcast because not only does it sound more sexy, but also it doesn't strain my voice. much. Is that all right? Well, I've always, you know, well, actually, you know, Matt, it's funny.

I have always wondered what would this podcast sound like if it was an NPR show, you know? Yeah. If it was a drive time, you know, if we interspersed our, our jokes and japes expensive, Israeli propaganda with some light jazz and some, some discussion of, I don't know, crossword puzzles or gardening or, you know, other things that NPR listeners, I'm going to do one of those those like Michael Barbaro like moans he does you know

neither of us have a name complicated enough for MPR I got a goddamn accent on my name yes hello I am Mateo Spaghetti Meatball and I'm here with Daniel Matteteete

and we're here on this American Hasbara Chapter 1 Yahya or Yachno Sinwar This episode is brought to you by the Rockefeller Foundation. Rockefellers.

The other Rothschilds. Thank you. Jay Z made his whole company Rockefeller. I'm waiting for some rapper to name his rap conglomerate after the Rothschild. Yeah.

Rothavala. The rat. Yeah. The child's wrath. Yeah, there we go. That's fun. flailing a bit here, Matt. We're flailing a bit. We're not flailing. We're doing great.

Is this not flailing? No, listen, there's no such thing as flailing with podcasting. Because at the end of the day, people... Oh, we're podcasting. That's right. Yeah, all they're doing is they're like doing their taxes. They're doing their laundry. They're like, what's the one? The vacuuming their car.

You know, they're not... They're tuning us out or they're tuning something else out. Yes, they're double screening. They're playing tune blast or whatever. They're on their phones. They're looking at porn. The point is, is that we are secondary. to whatever else they're doing.

Imagine making this podcast, the soundtrack, the backdrop to your porn use. Yeah. The editor's scuple removes all flails. Thank you, Adam. And this is a shout out to Adam Levin, our wonderful producer.

Please tell him he's wonderful in the chat. Also, today's episode. I love your MBR voice. This is what I got to do, bro. It's really disturbing. It's not fun. But I will be doing Michael Barbarrow's moans just oh because he sounds like he's coming sometimes when he's listening to people um well

i want him to come yeah i want you to come i don't have that anymore i just have you're emotionally damaged jewishly thank you so much rabbi um today's episode is brought to you by map medical aid for palestinians please donate now map dot org dot uk you go there Hold on. UK. Yeah. We're collaborating with the Brits on this one. Listen, not all Brits. Hashtag not all Brits.

Once again, MAP, medical aid for Palestinians. Join that or not subscribe. Please donate to that. And also, if you have any money left over, patreon.com slash bad hasbarra, please. We have some great bonus episodes coming up. We're going to be doing a movie review of the movie Golda on the Patreon just for Patreon's

it's going to be really fun we're watching one of many Hasbara movies that we will be doing on the Patreon so please join now and you can watch all of the great movies in which Israel is hero and everyone else is villain

including the Americans when you tune into that you can expect to hear me say something along the lines of I can forgive our patrons for killing us for wanting to watch the movie Golda and listen to us joke about it

but I can never forgive them for making me watch the movie Golda yeah yes I also blame our patrons it's certainly not my fault for seeing it and being like we need to talk about this movie all right

it's just it's the Golden Mayor thing to do you know that quote from her right oh yeah yeah yeah killing our children the most passive it's like I've always called her, you know, Hitler's like passive-aggressive, wet nurse, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like, it's like, what if a Nana was just reading mind-comf out loud, but sweetly. That's right.

In a way that seemed comforting until you dissected the content. Yes, so before we get to introducing our wonderful guest, I want to show a tweet. This tweet, I mean, listen, we've played. and displayed a lot of tweets on the show that are insane. This is no different. So apparently it was Netanyahu's 75th birthday recently. Yesterday, I think. Was it yesterday?

Yeah. So obviously shout out to Netanyahu for being 75 years young. And here is a tweet by some Twitter psychopath who made an AI celebration. of him enjoying his birthday, from L.A. Afrat. Benjamin Netanyahu celebrates his 25th birthday in about an hour. Seventy-fifth. What did I say? 25th.

It seems like he's 25, though. Yeah. Look how beautiful he is. It's that vampiric glow of... Yes. It's that sheen of immortality that comes from drinking other people's blood. A, hey, no blood. Damn right, I just did a blood libel.

No blood libel here. No blood libel here. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. You can't do that, Daniel. No, I'm just saying he drinks blood. The only people who drink blood are that Peter Thiel guy. And let's be honest, Netanyahu.

Look at this guy. Look at him. And he asked, what do you wish him for his birthday? So, Daniel, I want to ask you, if you could get something for a glorious leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, what would it be? I would want some psychonaut, which is to say, you know, a psychedelic expert chemist or cook friend of mine, like a chef, some kind of psychedelic chef, to concoct him just a beautiful dosed falafel ball or something

or whatever his favorite fucking food or pickle or a bagel and smear. Yeah, whatever. whatever he likes to feast on. Other than human blood. I would want this person to dose him with just a perfect combination of, I don't know, whether it's cannabis or psilocybin or ketamine or ayahuasca, some perfect combination. I would want him to go on a terrifying, nauseating, vomit-inducing shivers, like right to the very edge of his tolerance for um for sort of carmic accountability sure getting a just getting a sense

i would want to start with the the pain and horror of his victims i'd want him to take a trip to his own ancestors to europe i'd want him to get slapped around by his european ancestors being like what the fuck are you doing grandson i'd want him to go on some kind of journey that would leave him so shaken that he'd be unable to speak for the rest of his life but all of his thoughts a vision quest a vision quest yeah but i mean i mean that actually from my heart i would want that for him and i would want him to never be able to hold power again i'd want him to be weeping probably for the rest of his life yeah uh and then maybe give him the opportunity to come out of it just in time to say something that would go down in history as the world's best

oh shit i'm sorry yeah i like i mean i like the idea of nettingyahu having a really bad trip but I mean like when you have a bad trip or I have a bad trip like what are we seeing you know a lot of the times it can be like the most horrific things you can imagine you know yeah blood guts gunfire you know children dying but for him like I assume for him he's like oh this is fun because he's a psychopath like what's a bad trip for someone who enjoys human suffering I feel like it's having to like sit and watch telitubbies and maybe like kind of just rewatch the we are the world video over and over again or like watch a watch a speech by uh edward said you know what i mean well it would have to start with like it's it's like a pleasant image or he's at a celebration filled with his favorite people trump is there jill biden is there his wife is there but when they any of them open their mouths to speak, Edward Said's voice comes out. Oh, shit. Yes. Or Sinwar's

voice comes out. Yeah. And it's, you know, like Tevia's dream and fiddler on the roof where it's just this kind of larger and life thing that shakes him awake. So yeah, it would be something where like, you would have to start with a favorite place, a happy place. Yeah. You know, just images of lovely, the lovely turning into the horrific and Zionism falling apart in front of him and under his feet. Yeah, yeah. I would like to imagine that the only thing that would make him have a bad trip is if he saw, like, like Israel, the flag comes down and in its place, the Palestinian flag goes up.

I think he would, I think he would lose his mind and he would cry. He would basically, he would end up like Percy at the end of Green Mile. He would just shoot some other guy. Thank you, John Coffey. I'm sorry, but I just love the Green Mile. you ever seen that movie no but you've mentioned it on like two straight podcasts have i maybe i should see it i like it it's good they killed him what they love um yeah i i was thinking for a birthday present what uh i would like is for him to have a cake um that was made out of

uh you know poison and then he dies but i'm not very creative in the state of sickness You know, I'm just like, I don't know, something that leads to him dying, that would be great. Yeah, I mean, my backup plan would be a piano falls on his head. Yeah, right. But I do like the idea that even as he's dying slowly of the poison or of, you know, being crushed under the weight of a piano, that he does have some kind of vision where he's trying to sing the Israeli National Anthem, but he can't, all that comes out of his own mouth is the cries of a Palestinian child. You know, just something to really shock his system so that as he heads for the next life, he's got some things to think about.

Yeah. And that next life, I mean, I just, if there is a hell, that's where he's going. So, speaking of, there's no good transition out of that, but there is someone. That was a hilarious bit. I've got to say, one of the funniest things we've ever done. I'm dying out here, bro. I'm fucking sick. Our guest is a Palestinian-American actor, playwright, and author.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the podcast, Najla, Saeed. Hello. Hey, how you doing? Good. Sort of. Yeah, I'm good. Is it sort of because you're like, wow, these guys are really flailing? No, it's, yeah, maybe.

We're doing our best. doing great you guys are hilarious uh sometimes uh thank you so much for coming on uh and i we need to ask you first and foremost um what would you get netanyahu for a 75 um what would i hope you weren't offended by the idea of recruiting your father's voice for a no i think it's like a i would actually you know there's a famous story where he refused to be in the same room with my dad when they were interviewed so um i would probably get him my dad Yeah. Oh, my God. Just a room full of your dad's.

Yes. His bad trip would be having to publicly debate your father. Well, and that's what happened. Like, he was so scared. And my brother insists that that's when they invented the split screen interview because before that, everyone would show up in the studio. And then he's my brother's like, everyone was so scared of our dad that now they had, they had to start putting people in different studios. And I'm like, I don't think that's what happened, but it's a good story. They call it the side screen. Yeah, exactly.

split screen is the Saeed screen. Yeah, that is a crazy thing for those of you don't know what we're talking about. Netanyahu refused to, it wasn't that he refused to debate him. He wouldn't be in the same room.

Right, because he was convinced my dad wanted to kill him. A little bit of projection, but that's okay. Yeah, a 100% projection. It is completely insane, especially for anyone who knows the work of Edward Saeed. It's the idea that he had become, like, the foremost academic talking about Palestine and talking about Orientalism in the country, in the world, all as a long con to eventually get in the same room with fucking BB Netanyahu, who, by the way, the lesser Netanyahu at this point. I mean, his brother was the one who was the, quote, hero of Entebbe.

it's like he's a psychological like it's so obvious he's got issues oh yeah he wants to be his brother so bad and to be honest I do too because his brother died but

yeah just the idea that he was claiming oh this guy wants to kill me it's so fucking ridiculous as if Netanyahu can step into any room in which there isn't at least one person who's like

it's really what Zionists get freaked up by the funniest people. A friend of mine has been organizing some speaking events for Peter Beinart in Western Canada. And he was originally going to come speak at the local synagogue. But the synagogue absolutely rebelled.

And these are like Western Canadian Jews, you know, not conservatives overall, but when it comes to Israel. And someone like Peter Beinard, the most fucking mild-mannered, Jew-loving, like practicing Jew, like just like, Your father had a sharp tongue and a very incisive mind. Yes. And so to idiots, that's very scary. But he was not some kind of fire breathing radical. No. Not at all. But it's the calmness. It's the erudition. It's the it's the reasonableness that actually sets these people off. That must have been something that your father

remarked on in his time that just something just about him being a genuine Palestinian intellectual um yeah like my whole childhood because my brother and I went to private school so in new Manhattan so you know I went to school with uh my brother's classmate was Lachlan Murdoch and every time Rupert Murdoch would and they were friends I mean like when they were little they had play dates but whenever Rupert would see my dad he would just like turn his head and do some like very dramatic

like I don't like you thing and my dad was always like who are these people like he's such a horrible human I don't care so there was a lot of that and there was a lot of like people my friends being like

oh your dad is I respect him because he dresses nicely and sound you know basically what they were saying he dresses nicely and he sounds like not doesn't sound like an arab um but he's so controversial and i'd be like you're calling my parent controversial like it's a bit awkward but yeah there was a lot of that it is

i think for me it is one of the craziest things was um reading edward said before um seeing him speak oh really um because all i knew about him was what the Hasbarah was, that he was, you know, a scary Palestinian, you know, growing up, if you were Palestinian, you were, you know, by blood and by birth were someone who was an anti-Semite, right? So, so reading his work, I was just like, you know, I fell in love with it because he's such a brilliant writer. But I still, in my head, imagined someone completely different. Not yelling the words, but in a way, writing it less soft-spoken than he actually is.

Yes, that's good. And so I want to play a little bit of Edward Saeed speaking for people who have never seen him speak. Because for me, this is what kind of like really blew my mind. A child of a people that's been sort of kicked out of its own land, forbidden to return. I mean, that is to say, most of the authors of these books, for example, are sometimes students who are employed by these agencies to spy on me and to find out what I say and this sort of thing. And if they're Jewish, just by fact of being Jewish, born in New York, of a Jewish parent, they're entitled to go to Israel or Palestine, as I call it.

become Israeli citizens at any time that they wish. I was born there, my father was born there, my grandfather, great, etc. And I can't return. I don't have the same right. I mean, the law of return somehow covers them. And my people, my family, were kicked out of there, and they're writing books about me accusing me of terrorism.

I mean, the sort of, the enormity of the whole thing just baffles me at the same time that it strikes me very strongly. So for me, that clip kind of describes, my exact awakening around this issue. The idea that just by Jewish parentage, I have somehow more right to be an Israeli citizen than someone who was literally born there, but, you know, because they're Palestinian. And in your case, only have Jewish parents. I mean, me, me coming and kicking Najla's ancestors off their land. Well, yeah, that's okay. At least both my parents are nominally Jewish, you know, not really proud.

practicing Jews, but come on, but you? Yeah, no, but honestly, a little bit, though, that is kind of my thinking. I'm not saying, obviously, that it is okay for Daniel to do it and not for me, but what I'm saying is the utter ridiculousness of me, someone who is half Jewish, was raised completely secular, no religion, my ties to, you know, the Jewish community have been largely Zionist ties rather than religious ties. They've been communal ties. Someone who literally had to, my first time in Israel was through birthright.

Like the idea that I had somehow more of a right to that land than you or your father, that for me was the beginning of my awakening. And also just to say real quick, I can't fully describe without sounding like a monster the racist caricature that was in my head before hearing your father speak, before seeing him, it was, you know, not to overstate it, but it was definitely not that guy, you know. So it is, yeah, a lot of awakening happened. If you happen to, if you happen to speak to him anytime soon, just pass along our apologies for that. I feel kind of awkward.

Yeah, my bad. Stereotyped. Yeah, we're sorry. Just let them. I will do so. Yeah, no, it's really funny because my friends, like what you were saying is, like, growing up, everyone would be like, I'm going to Israel, we're going to Israel, I'm having a bar mitzvah, Israel, and I would be like, does it ever occur to you that that's kind of like not nice to me? It hurts my feelings. Never occurred to anyone. Yeah. So you're right in looking for Palestine about people really didn't know what to make of

you either. No. But that was on me too. Yeah. That was how so? Well, I mean, well, yeah. I mean, it's partly about the fact that, first of all, my family's Christian and unlike a lot of Arab Christians were not Greek Orthodox, we're Anglican. So I was a baptized Episcopalian. And then my dad's mom's family is actually Baptist because my great-grandfather came to America to like follow some you know, the American dream, but that didn't work out. So he became a Baptist minister in Waco, Texas, and then moved back to Nazareth, where, as we all know, Jesus comes from. So my family is very different in that way. And so first it was, oh, you're Christian. So that's different. And then it was, it was all class-based because I was at private school. And we were,

and it's interesting because in Arab culture, sort of being upper class is more being an intellectual. not about money. So my parents had gone to good schools and all this stuff, but I'm from a family of intellectuals, not rich people. So I didn't fit in because everyone at my school was rich. They all lived on the Upper East Side and I lived on the West Side, which to them made Jewish. Yeah, that made me like Jewish. Because like no one lived on the West Side. So it was kind of weird. And then I just was like confused. So, you know, I would just be like, I don't know where I'm from. I don't understand and I kind of, because I thought Jewish people would hate me if I told them because there was a war, my mom's Lebanese and there was a war and I just didn't understand.

So I think the default at the time was to try to assimilate and I looked more white. So I tried to be more white. I was never like considered a minority. So it was weird. And I have to assume if you grew up in a home populated by intellectuals, you know, the friends of your father, you were, you were hanging out with a lot of prominent Jews. Oh, yes, all the time. Noam Jomsky, Philip Ross, even, all these bizarre, brilliant intellectuals. Because also, the Upper West Side I grew up on was more like socialist, bundist, like, intellectually-type people.

And now it's like very different. It's very capitalistic, Zionisty. A bit more Israeli, actually. Yes, that too. it's not enough that they colonize your father's homeland now they're colonizing my homeland i know and i'm not leaving they come they they come and follow him to the place where he had to settle not when i say subtle i mean in the other sense settle as a refugee yeah subtle like that's a consolation prize yes and uh yeah they just can't get enough i know it's pretty funny and they all like really just think deep down inside somewhere I am Jewish because they can't fathom that I'm a Palestinian. I had tutored a kid once 25 years ago and his mom kept saying I was Sephardic and I was

like, no, I'm not Sephardic. She just couldn't understand how I was like tutoring her son and I was Palestinian or something. Yeah, it's funny you say that that timeline because that was I feel like the word Mizrahi had not entered the like modern American Jewish lexicon at that point at that point it was you were either Ashkenazi which just

meant white which of course isn't actually the case that's that's not what it literally means or you were Sephardic which was just like one of them brown browns yeah one of those Jews that got cut up on the wrong side of the tracks

right exactly So, yeah, that's just always been fascinating to me. I've always wanted to do a deep dive into when exactly Mizrahi entered the lexicon for... Yeah, that's a really good question. I, like, totally missed that, too. But then I was being corrected all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. It's just at some point they wanted to make a distinction.

And now you don't hear about the Sephardic Jews outside of like, oh, they're a very specific, you know, got exiled from Spain. And it's like, that. Well, literally the word Sephardic means from, Separat is Hebrew for Spain. Mizrahi is a specifically Israeli term. Right, right. It just was not.

It only makes sense in the Zionist context. And then, yes. When we had Hadar Cohen on, she talked about this, we've had other guests talk about this, that it's a controversial term. Some Arab Jews are reclaiming it. Some people claim it proudly. Some people claim it as within the Zionist fabric.

And some people claim it as a rebuff of it. It's very complicated. But speaking of the complicated and overlooked relationship between Palestinians and Jews in that land, I just wanted to mention before we move on to other things, Najla. A couple of weeks ago, Hadar and I came and saw you in a play that you were in that just closed? Yes. Unfortunately, it was only a very short run. It was a very short run.

How was the rest of the run? It was called the mulberry tree. It was wonderful. I think, I mean, we got better and better. I personally did. Yeah, we saw the very first night. It was beautiful. It was like, and the director gave her lovely speech about how you're the first audience to see this and you're the final ingredient.

I love that. I know. And I think we were nervous because I think people had made us feel like if we did this play at this time, it would be controversial or people would be uncomfortable. So why don't you tell us a bit about why that fear was there? what was the show about? Sure. So the play is set in history. So it starts in 1970, but then goes back in time where there's this.

So in 1970, there's a young man who shows up at this village in the Galilee. That's now a Jewish village. And there's a woman there who's actually based on a real human being because it's a real village. And she's the daughter of... In 48, Israel. In 48 in the Galilee, in the north. She runs, she like... gives tours now of this village where there's this ancient synagogue. So the play, which was written

by a man who grew up in this village, is about, it's not really about him. It's fictional, but the village was before 48, a village where, where there were many of these villages, there were Jews, Muslims, and Christians all living together, and they were all Palestinian. So there's a rabbi in village and the young boy who's you know purportedly Muslim but they don't really believe anything which is another thing that I like about the play is it's not specifically built around this Muslim family it's really just they are secular and there's a hilarious moment in the early in the play where because the the rabbi of the of the village becomes a mentor and a friend to this young boy and actually a Palestinian actor played him yes beautiful job but anyway the boy and the the boy's grand

because the boy's father has died. The boy's grandfather, who's also friends with the rabbi, comes along. And the boy says, you know, grandfather, can we go to synagogue too for Yom Kippur or whatever? He says, no, we don't go to synagogue. We're Muslim. We go to, we go to the mosque. And the kid goes, when? When do we ever go to the mosque?

Yeah. We don't believe in anything. Yeah. And the grandmother's a communist. And it's like really bizarre. But that's also more like the families I know that are Palestinian. There's a lot of sex. And my parents grew up in that Palestine where people,

Their religion wasn't a thing. It was, most people were secular. So in the play, the young boy wants to be the rabbi's Shabbat helper. So he comes over to light the candles and then the rabbi starts teaching about the Zohar. But then history catches up with them and then the King David Hotel is bombed and all these things start happening. And the rabbi ultimately has to sort of choose, you know, which is his people. Is it this family that he's lived with, you know, his whole life? Or is he going to go help the new immigrants from the camps?

So it's complicated and it's deeply moving. And you sort of have to decide at the end if he saved their lives or betrayed them or both. So what it does show is that there were Jewish people always in Palestine. And that was never a thing. What it really showed for me, I mean, the nauseating, creeping feeling of the encroachment of this Zionist project as it rolls towards its inevitable, as we now know, historically inevitable conclusion, but just the tension that it brings. And the fact that, I mean, one of the biggest points of discomfort and cringe for me is there's a kibbutz they keep talking about over across the valley. And, you know, again, I grew up going to summer camp that was modeled on kibbutz. and where Kibbutz was supposed to be this utopian ideal.

And it turns that even within the Jewish nationalist project, Kibbutz seem have been very racist against Arab Jews, against Brown Jews, are very, very much a place for European Jews. Yeah. But within the context of this show, you know, there's just, it's like what are they doing over there across the valley in that Kibbutz? They're building things. They're doing military training exercises, Grandpa. I saw them.

They have guns. They're they're practicing with machine guns. They're they're planning something. What are they planning? This this ominous sense that inside the walls of what I ended up as a North American kid hearing about as a utopian project. Exactly. Yeah. There was a there was the the complete huge crime being planned and then perpetrated,

which is the destruction of the life that this, the communal collective multi-faith indigenous life based on belonging to a place that this play beautifully depicts. It was so lovely and you were wonderful in it. Thank you. Well, hopefully we're going to do it again. So we were scared the first night. We didn't know. And then we got standing ovations every night, which was wonderful. And one of the last shows, I was walking to the theater, you know, an hour before the show. and there was this old lady from the Upper West Side who was lost and she had an eropathy in her foot

and she couldn't figure out where the theater was and am I in this play, this play about the patent? She's against the occupation, but she's open to seeing this play and then I gave her a hug and we went and then she stood up at the end and she, so it was more surprising than I thought so that it actually affected people that I didn't think it would.

So it was actually really interesting. I love the idea. I'm against the occupation, and therefore I can watch this play. Exactly. I was like, good for you, lady. Yeah, hell yeah. You checked all the boxes on the should I see this play thing. Right.

And then she was kind of like, the kids are too far left. And I was like, all right, let's use the computer. Let's move on. We already hugged. Let's go. Yeah, exactly. But you know, it's the strangest thing. Ever since I wept during the scene where all the Arabs being killed out of the

kicked out of the villages, the neuropathy in my foot, it's a lot better. Yeah, I don't know why. I think it was the Zionism a little long. You know, you brought up something very interesting about Palestinian identity, like, including being a secular person, that I think a lot of people don't, I mean, Hasbara has tried to spin Palestinian identity as being specifically and intractably Islamist. Yes. the idea that, you know, it goes hand in hand with not just like being a Muslim, but being a terrorist, a Muslim terrorist, right? And I think, you know, you see the way that that can like, you know, have this blowback effect, at least on, you know, people such as yourself or such as your father in which all the sudden the idea of a Palestinian Christian is just like, what? The most ironic thing in the world, because we're from Nazareth, but that's all.

But yeah, can you tell us more about just kind of growing up specifically as a Palestinian Christian and what that has been like for, like have you had any interactions with people who consider themselves like Christian Zionists who have tried to use Christ against you? Yeah. Well, I haven't, well, this is the first time we went and the only time. I went to Palestine. I was 18. And it was my father's first time back because he had just been diagnosed with leukemia. And so he was writing an article for the London Observer about his trip home after leaving 45 years earlier or whatever. And the day that we went to his house,

which is in a neighborhood called Telbia or Tel Piot, I think is how you say it in Hebrew. It's a very sort of upper-class Jerusalem neighborhood very close to where Netanyahu lives. Um, so that's the first thing is, like, we're from West Jerusalem. So we're from a part of Palestine that is gone. Like, we're never going to get it back. So the first thing was, like, being from West Jerusalem and not East Jerusalem, like most Arabs in that was the weird thing. But then we went to the house and my dad was, like, looking at the room he was born in

and remembering things. And then he was terrified. He didn't want to go inside. But then we walked, and my brother and I were like, oh, wait until we'll get there. Like, we were convinced that the family that lived in our house was like, you know, Rosenberg, like someone's name that we knew and that we were going to be like, oh, our friends from, like, school live in this house. Their family name is on this house. But we get there and our- They're just holding onto it for us.

Yeah, exactly. So we get there and like the house has a plaque on it that says the international Christian. embassy, which is a right-wing Zionist Christian organization run by a South African Boer. Perfect. So on top of everything. Chef's kiss. And we all just stood there with our mouths, like, just dropped because, like, we're Christian

Palestinians and you took our house and you're using it to, like, be Zionist Christian. I don't understand. So it was a little bit. Zionist Christians founded by a bore is so funny. It's like the perfect. They can't stop. themselves from being just like, triple down on apartheid here. Exactly.

That's wild. So I haven't actually had much interaction with Christian Zines, except for the fact that they took our house. There's also a sign on our house that says that Martin Buber lived there, which is also weirdly ironic because he rented a room from my family. So it's all there. But nothing about my dad. Can you explain anything about who Martin Buber is?

Oh, he was a philosopher. He was actually like, he believed very similarly as my dad in a, one state sort of equal rights kind of thing he was a cultural Zionist yes which which back then you know meant that you and it was a plausible position Einstein took this position yeah exactly that Jewish national collective rights in a place don't have to mean territorial domination military supremacy demographic majority by any means necessary much less ethnic ethnic ethnic cleansing and yeah, Martin Luther, not, excuse me, not Martin Luther, Martin Buber is the one who wrote, I and Thou.

Yeah. A real humanist, Jewish philosopher who had a love for that land and a respect for the indigenity of the people there and was trying to imagine a way of the Jews to harness that homelandness of the place without fucking, you know, turning the place into hell on earth the way they have. It just makes you wonder. Did, uh, did, uh, did he settle that house immediately after, uh, your father was ethnically cleansed? I, it's, that's the thing. He rented a room from my, so it's, it was like a

two family house, you know, so my dad's cousins and aunt and uncle lived upstairs. And when my dad's family left, they stayed a bit longer and I think they were the ones who rented the room to him. So it was probably right after. Yeah. I'm not sure. Martin Boobber was writing in the 1920s and 30s, right? Isn't that his era? Oh, yeah, you're correct. But I don't know if he was still, I mean, I don't know when it actually was. So I can't.

Still, what a, what a lineage that house is happening. It's insane. Yeah. And they've turned it into an ugly condo. They built some stories on top. It's, and now it's run by Christian Zionist pro-apartite. It's like everything in my life has to. to be very complicated and ironic and confusing all the time.

Crazy. Completely crazy. We had a lot of news happen in the last seven days or so, and we're going to get into some of that with you, Najla. But first, we have to take a little bit of a commercial break. So everybody, stick around because we will be right back. Back. Welcome back to Bad As Barra, the world's most memorial podcast. We are here. Sorry, I have to talk like Netanyahu in order to talk normal. So that's just how it's going to be. We are here. People of the world. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Does that mean he's the same birthday as Kamala Harris? He's one day apart. Oh, interesting. Twinsies. There's no, nothing implied there. It's just interesting. Nothing. No, no, no, no. It does mean I think they're the same. Astrological science meet, both of them. Oh. That makes them Libros, right?

I wish I knew literally anything about, um, like, sorry. No, no, it just my, my wife, my wife loves, uh, what is it called? Astrology. Yeah, she's always, you know, like, we'll say something like, uh, oh, Sagittarius, I knew it. And I'm just like, what do you the fuck? How did you know it? It's because you knew the birthday? And it's like, no, it's a personality type.

And I'm like, I don't believe in any of this hocus, pocus. um anyways we're here with nudge nudge la said uh our most moral guest and we're going to be talking as best as we can uh about the asbestos asbestos it sounds like i inhaled a bunch of asbestos uh and we're going to be talking about a fantastic subject um and by fantastic um i mean horrible we're going to be talking about the death and subsequent reaction to the death of Yahya Sinwar of Hamas, who was

murdered in a firefight last week. And this has been... Or as some people would say in more neutrally, killed. Yes, killed. Died. Somehow died. Somehow Dired. Yeah. Murdered, killed. Eliminated, neutralized, marty-assinated.

Neutralized is my favorite. It's so... Shuffled off this mortal coil. Yes. And Sinwar But certainly turned into Literally martyred as in Turned into a martyr for his people who will mourn him And the way they did it

Will ensure in fact That his legendary status He instantly became missed by Not only the way Israel killed him But the way Israel rolled out the news Of them having killed him And not to mention I have a lot of like aunties and Lebanon

My mom's age and a little bit younger, they all have a huge crush on him and have for years. So now he's a war of God. And these are Palestinian Christians? Lebanese, Palestine, yeah. My family.

But not Islamists by any means. No, they just think he's hot. So we need to talk about this dynamic. Yes. No, we do because this is the thing. No, it's true. Let's get into it, Matt. Yeah.

Well, I mean, first we need to get into the video that was released by Israel in an attempt to I think people Zionists wanted people to see how badass their military was which is a constant like calibration mistake that they make

in which they're just like oh people love it when we do you know murder with advanced technology and I here's the video that it would be like like cops using their body cams

to show how badass they are. It never works that way. Yes. Like, you look like the coward. Yes. You look like the fucking bully. Mm-hmm. And whoever's at the receiving end of your...

Okay, let's look at this. Well, yeah. A drone, yeah? Yeah, it's a surveillance drone that was sent into where Sinwar was currently, like, at this point, this is in southern Gaza, and he is in the bombed out second floor of some kind of residential yes he's in a room right now sitting on a couch and we see a drone you know zigzag its way in there and we see him sitting on a sofa and he is in his full military fatigues and he ends up waving a stick that he has found at the drone which I think

for the people who were putting this video out they I think they wanted to show him as being like see this butcher with his with his slicing implement whether it's a stick or whatever

this barbarian right because it's just a of course we don't have anything that sticks yeah and and I think you know in an attempt to make him look weak or pathetic um everyone saw something completely different from this video and what they saw was one he was not uh hiding in cutter as they were saying um he was not in iran uh he was not in tunnels

under gaza with 13 million dollars in right piles yes he wasn't he wasn't hiding behind some he wasn't hiding behind some beautiful young israeli hostage right Yeah, or hiding behind, you know, a bunch of Palestinian children as human shields. He was on the front lines fighting with his men. He was there with an injury. A tank had shot and blown off part of his hand, I believe. Yeah. If only there were like really famous, epic Hollywood characters who get their hands,

cut off and continue to fight that are like fucking Luke Skywalker yeah straight up straight up Luke Skywalker and and you know even while gravely injured he managed to you know yeah Sin Walker oh that's really good uh he he managed to still like what it with whatever implement he had around him he saw that surveillance turn it was like fuck you um and And you get the sense of him throwing it. He's just, he's, there is a kind of like, fuck you, you fucking cowards. Get this droid out of my face. Get this fucking mechanical dragonfly.

Yes. It's, it's also gives, you know what it also gives? Mike Erman Trout's last moments. Yeah. Down by the river with Walter White in Breaking Bad season five where he just says to him, you know, Walter is, like, buzzing around him, trying to explain all this. And Mike's just like, Walter, shut the fuck up and let me die in peace. Yes, yes, completely.

And, you know, it's, you know, I think one of the, I don't know, the ways in which Zionism has warped the minds of so many Israelis is they want to, they want the world to see him and all Palestinians the way that they see them, which is as this like monolithic evil existential threat. With its with its balls cut off constantly. Yes. This emasculated threat, this humiliated, cucked, feminized, you know, pulverized, neutralized threat and still pathetically trying to assert its humanity. Now, that's the mindset of a colonialist psychopath. Yeah.

Yeah. Whatever one else sees. The New York Post cover was like rat in a hole. And I was like, that's not at all how any of us see that video or see him. It's so fascinating. I'm like, what planet am I on? Yeah. Yeah.

Nor did it happen in that way. Yeah. It's like it's, he was not, he was literally not a rat in a hole. Exactly. You know? This, this whole narrative. they realized when they released a video that they had fucked up

because they had shown him not being the person that they said he was going to be. And here's Shao Banefriam, my favorite fucking liberal Zionist bugaboo, trying to meekly suggest this, which is his role, to meekly suggest

that maybe Hasbara gets things wrong and then he gets smacked down and he's like, well, I'm just, I'm just saying, so here's, here's him. The chatter on Arab social media makes it very clear that releasing the drone footage and pictures of Sinwar has backfired. It has added to the myth that which makes him a folk hero and strengthens Hamas.

Even people who disliked him are paying tribute. And then someone says, I call BS. There's nothing heroic about the videos, pictures at all. That little bitch threw a stick and was blown away. Those who celebrate that as heroism were blind to his evil in the first place and deserve their fate. And Shaal says, just telling you, what i am seeing yeah i'm just saying yeah i'm just saying i'm just saying don't be mad at me or you're supposed to be on my side um yeah no it is it is i think endlessly fascinating the

mindset of an israeli who um who sees that and goes like he's a little bitch he threw a stick and we had all of this advanced weaponry we destroyed him or an israel support or an or an Israel supporter, a Douglas Murray. Oh, yeah, no, 100%. A Brianna Wu, whoever the fuck. Well, I think what's interesting about it in, as it relates to Israeli society, is just any semblance or any pretense of the idea that if a Holocaust was happening, you know, it's, I guess what I'm saying is that you can tell that they find the Holocaust.

mostly to be a story of Jewish humiliation. They find what happened to Jews to be a story of weak, defenseless people who were throwing sticks against a mightier power. And rather than seeing that and going like, damn, that mighty power is fucking evil and they should be, you know, their ideology should be rid from the earth. And wow, the human spirit is mighty and noble and inspired. People against all odds will assert their humanity and their dignity to the very last. Yes.

As say they did in the Warsaw Ghetto. No, the crime of the Warsaw Ghetto is that we let ourselves get cucked in the first place. Yes. That we didn't have a Reich of our own. Yes. Yeah, it's interesting. My mom said that at the beginning of this whole thing about a year ago. They don't like us because we fight back or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah, and it's fighting back in a way that for them, they're like, but don't you see it's hopeless? Don't you see that you're a sucker if you fight back? Don't you see that you have no chance of winning? You're throwing away your life, you know, and it's this like- You're fighting for the losing team. Yes, you're fighting for-

We see or I see some guy throwing a stick. Like his last breath, he's still like, fuck off. get away from me. I'm going to resist until the end of, yeah. Yes. And it's, I'm a human being. Yeah, I'm a human being.

I'm brave and fuck you, you know. And I feel like losing that understanding is crazy to me. It's completely. Yeah, and by that. And of course, if you go back to October 7th, they had a moment where they loved showing videos of like Israeli women struggling against their captors. Yes.

Yes. Well, that was hopeless, too. Should we not admire that? I admired the bravery of those women in that moment. Even as I did the unthinkable and contextualized the actions of October 7th, even as I questioned the allegations of mass systemic rape, there were very clearly multiple cases of young women in the clutches of armed masked men being dragged to their certain doom or very, very, very unpleasant ordeal into Gaza.

Fucking terrifying. And to see a woman struggling against her captors, I'm not, it doesn't mean I'm rooting for her side or whatever, but the human spirit to be like, you know, like you, that's actually relatable and human. And there was a moment where they, and the, and the, the, the Zionists allowed themselves when it comes to their women, you look how badass. our women are. They fight back. They spit in the face of whatever. But that's, yeah, when it comes to a Hamas leader, a fighter, a Palestinian child, Ahmed, sorry, Ahatamimi, you know, any Palestinian who asserts

their right to defy in, even and especially when they have no hope of prevailing over the much superior force. They just find it disgusting. Yeah, it's funny. And we became like when I was, whatever, 13 or 14, when the first Intifada started, we had all this sympathy because we were throwing rocks at tanks.

And like, that's really the legacy of all of this is we will we cannot and will not stop resisting because it's it's not okay. And they don't understand why. And it's like,

all those people who are just like, peace, peace. And I'm like, you can't just say peace, you know? Yeah. You got to give us something. And I think there's a huge sense, like, same with losing Nasrullah a few weeks ago. I'm half Lebanese and I was stuck there in 2006 in the war for the second time in my life. And I may not be Shia and I may not be a member of His Bola, but he was a leader who always stuck by his word. he was an eloquent speaker.

Everyone would gather around to hear him talk because he used Arabic language so incredibly. And he was cautious and he was considered whether you liked his politics or not, he was considered someone to respect. And it's astonishing how, I mean, it's not surprising, but it's also like so mind-blowing to see the opposite, complete opposite,

coverage of these people. Because if you're Lebanese and he, presenting you preventing your country from being blown up as much as it's annoying that he's kind of in the middle of a war that you don't want to participate in you still have respect for someone who's protecting your land because the Lebanese army really doesn't have that ability so it's very complicated yeah especially a leader as effective as Nasrallah was exactly you know in you know getting the Israelis off of their land. He was pretty amazing.

Yes. And he had a sharp political analysis. Yep. And Finkelstein tells it that actually Chomsky influenced Nisrallah, that after he met with Chomsky, he never again spoke about the Jews, this and that. He spoke about the United States and military industrial complex. And he's like, Israel is not even the point.

Yeah. And, you know, Israel's just being used by the bigger powers. Now, that's dangerous, you know, that's, yes. It's that, it's that line from the wire, you know, what's the most dangerous thing in the Middle East, an Arab with a library card, you know? That's right. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you.

And we, a lot of us have them. Yeah. We're one of the most, like, we export so much. You invented libraries for fucks sake. We export so much intelligence. It's astonishing. Like, everyone has a PhD. So we are very overly educated.

And it reminds me. Gazins disproportionately most of all in the region. Yeah. It reminds me of another quote from your father because, you know, you think about like the the political sharpness of someone like Nasrallah or

Sinwar in terms of like being someone who is playing a game that is for the benefit of how they are presented on the world stage, no matter how the odds are stacked against them. Your father said something about like expecting Palestinians to just automatically put their own oppression

into the context of, well, you know, the Jews have had a tough history. Yeah. Is it's a ridiculous expectation. Expect the Palestinians to be Audrey from Little Shop of Horror is talking about the dentist, Orange Gravelli. He's not a bad man. He gets a little roughy antide.

He had a tough childhood. Why am I making her sound like Elmo? Anyway. Dentist girls sadists. That's just a fact. I have proof of it. Anyway, another story. That's true.

I believe dentists are bad. I'm an anti-dent. Steve Martin's best role by far. Yes. It just, I think it speaks to something beyond the kind of like the brutal, you know, dumb, brute characterization of these leaders that's done in western media of like oh these are just you know jew hating monsters new hitlers and you just go like no you you you just uh you're it's like you're not appreciating the work that went into someone like sinwa learning hebrew while he was in

prison for 22 years exactly it's like the stories of you know the movies of people we watch like yes the story the hurricane guy and how he went to jail and was wrongly convicted, but then became a lawyer. And, like, all these people, we, like, cheer for this. But when it's us, it's like we're sinister, evil, like, I don't know. It's exhausting to try to explain to people that Hamas and Hezbollah have nothing to do with ISIS. It's like, it's like there's just, if they were going to be ISIS, they would have to be able to leave. So it's, like, it's just exhausting.

Yeah. No, that is that when someone does. a ISIS Hamas or ISIS has blah comparison. I'm just like, okay, so we're at, we're at a stage of you just don't know what you're talking about, you're just going to say whatever. But you're going to tell me, especially when people talk to me, like, listen, the Palestinians don't understand that, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, would you say that about black people to a black person?

Right, right. It's astonishing. And it would be one thing if Israel had any leaders in this day and age that can possibly compare with these men for, yeah, yeah. Yeah. For seriousness. I mean, Abba Eban was a fucking monster of, you know, and so was Goulda Meir, but at least they had a certain gravitas to them, right? You got fucking this, you know, Itimar Ben State puff kosher marshmallow man, you know,

these fucking lunatics, these clowns in power in Israel these days. Yes. Yeah. They're all, they're not intellectual lights. No, there's the people that, like the Kahana people, they're the way. ones who blew out my dad's office when I was a kid. And then we had bodyguards and a panic button in our house. And somehow I'm a terrorist. Yeah.

Your dad was to talk by the Kahanists? Yep. Wow. I didn't even know that. That's crazy. And so we had a panic button in our house and everyone would come over and be like, what's that? And they'd be like, never mind.

Don't press it. The FBI will come. It's very strange. Wild. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like now every, you know, villain is just another version of the penguin.

you know what i mean yeah like they're all penguin coded like there's no where's our strong joker supervillain he's not there anymore it's all penguins you know so true just like if you're gonna be a of a super villain i don't know looks max a little bit you know you guys know yeah well they just press buttons and stuff right they don't even fly those planes exactly exactly um gentlemen let's expand our minds Yes. But to continue what you were saying about, like, in terms of the way that these heroes in movies are glorified for these acts of, like, bravery, like, this is from an Israeli outlet writing about Sinwar the moments before his death. Then a tank and other troops arrived at the scene. At this point, Sinwar went up to the second floor of the building where he was hiding, and a tank fired a shell at him. Sinwar was apparently wounded by tank fire and lost his hand.

After soldiers entered the building, he threw two grenades at them. And then Sinwar saw the drone and threw a piece of wood at it. As the account, I really I really hate you account, who is an undisclosed Israeli person who puts out a lot of great stuff on Twitter. That's some rambo shit. That is some rambo A great movie right there Yes Yes

And you know We're supposed to be like Oh he died in a Heidi hole Exactly And the notion that anyone would admire it Is also just anathemas Even as someone like Shail Here's another Shale

Who can look at the Arab media I'd be like guys I think this might be backfiring He can't understand why And he certainly can't fathom the notion Of a fellow Jew seeing anything to admire in Sinwar's last stance. So here's him reacting to someone we'd like to have be a friend of the show, Alon, Mizrahi. Is he a friend of the show?

He's a friend of the show. We've needed to book him. He almost did the show, and we need to rebook him. We need to rebook him. Anyway, so certainly someone we admire here. Yes. So Shail's reposting a screenshot of Alone's kind of a eulogy, really, to Sinwar in which he says he died an honorable death, a warrior's death, among his men, one with his people in

defense of his land against a genocidal intruder, occupier, and colonizer. In case the name doesn't give it away, Alon Mizrahi is an Arab-Israeli-Jew, you could say, or, you know, Israeli-Arab Jew, Israeli-Mizrahi, Jewish guy, and he talks about how his death was hemming way in. You know, he waxes very poetic here. And Shail says, I get called a lot of names by fellow Zionists on here, Kappa. traitor, et cetera. Save them for people like this who really deserve them. The fact that any Jew would make Sinwar into a hero after killing, raping, kidnapping, and torturing our people boggles the mind. And this brings to mind that tweet we read of his a few weeks ago, where he's like,

people throwing around the term anti-Semite at me, you're almost making the term, or self-aiding Jew, you're almost making the term meaningless. Yeah, yeah. What it, as if that hasn't already happened. Yeah, right. You're only supposed to do that to the people that I deem are, self-hating capos. Come on. Meanwhile, here's what Shail finds really horrifying. Sinwar had drawings made by his 10-year-old son on his person when he was killed. They showed dead IDF soldiers.

What can you say about this mentality? And then John Aziz, who I take it to be some kind of pro-Israel Arab guy. I love those. I don't know. Those are the best. We have to teach peace and compassion faster than the people who want war, teach war and hate. And Shail says, yes. Yes.

I like that faster. Like they're running around trying to teach peace and compassion. But very slowly. Yeah. Yeah, it is wild to me the amount of, because like, Shail's not wrong about one thing, which is that the reaction is, has been vastly different than expected. And so much so that you saw the immediate attempts to spin this, like to try to recover. over, you know, what they had lost in their initial failed as bar attempt.

So we have articles that came out. Here's one from the Latin Times, which I didn't know there was a Latin time. Hamas leader was carrying candy stolen from humanitarian aid package at the time of assassination. The nerve. He was eating candy. God forbid he needed a little cigarette before he dropped dead. I mean, what the hell? Total cap.

There's no humanitarian aid packages in October. Yeah, yeah, yeah, please. And candy, like, everyone knows that they don't allow sugar. It's like stealing candy before you're murdered. It's like stealing candy from the severed hand of a dead baby. That we killed. Yeah, those, Adam says, those grenades were painted to look like candy that Americans dropped, probably. And then signed by Governor Josh Shapiro in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

That's right. And then, you know, they were saying, you know, hey, he was trying to escape. That was a big thing that they were saying, you know, he's not a hero. He was trying to leave. And then also simultaneously, they were like, Sinwar's fatal mistake, Hamas,

a leader refused Arab offer to escape Gaza. So kind of a damned if you do, damn if you don't. You know, they kept saying he was in Qatar and all this stuff. And it's like, I know. It's like, no, he's not. this fucking coward took the first one-way ticket out of there this fucking idiot turned down the first one-way ticket out of there right which is it yeah and and you know so

so it's yeah it's humiliation no matter what yes like his fate is sealed in the israeli story no matter what he did he died like a dog he died like a rat anyway you you know because to live is the ultimate to live as a Palestinian yes can only end in dying in some justified way.

Yep. That's right. And, you know, then they tried the Hezbar attempt with the Birken bag where they were like, yeah, I just don't understand this argument anyway. Like, what does that have to do with anything? Well, they were showing, you know, it's a Birken bag. It could be fake. Yeah, it was, it also was not a Birken bag.

People who are like big Burkinheads were fake. Yes, they were like, this is fake. But my, I think, absolute favorite attempt. to smear Sinwar was done by an interview with a former Israeli interrogator named Michael Kobe, Kubi, and I just, I need to play this for you. I can say about Yehazinau, that he was the cruel man that I ever met, you know, in my life. So this is the former head of interrogation department, Israeli security agency. He was so mean to me.

I had him in my torture room. For two weeks, he would not give me the information. Guys, this is literally his torturer. This is literally Sinwar's actual personal interrogator. And we'll continue. I thought we were close. I thought we were friends when I was peeling off his fingernails. He said,

He loved me. He said, fuck you to my face when I shocked his balls. I never met such a mean guy. I said, look, man, I'm the good cop here. You don't want to see the bad cop. The bad cop is just me, but with a goatee. Here we go. At least 12 people, you know, at the Gaza Strip,

Yehi Asinwar was a murderer man. He was a murderer man. He's the worst supervillain murder man. I just, when, can these people name, and can any Israeli name someone that he killed or something that he did actually? I mean, I'm not saying he didn't do anything. I think some of them can name certain terrorist incidents, suicide bombings that they attribute to him. October 7th, they accuse him of having planned. although I've heard it said that in fact it's quite likely he didn't even know about it,

that the Alcasa brigades were plotting things in a way that kept things very, very hush-hush. Well, I think we're not going to know a lot about the details of October 7th for quite a while. But, no, I mean, one thing this particular interrogator is mad about is that he is accused of killing, Palestinians who were spying for Israel. And he's like, but those were my guys. You cruelly cut down people who were trying to get you cruelly cut down. He's the rancor keeper in Return of the Jedi.

We've bemoaning the murder of his beast. Now I'm looking at this, this Chiron. Former Israeli interrogator describes cruel Sinwar, and I've got, who's the band? The Gogo's Banana. Who's saying cruel summer? Vanonrama. Bonanorama.

Osonwa. Yes. The eyes. He born to kill you. Oh, by the way, I'm sorry, but He has a murder eyes. He has a murder eyes.

That's why everyone's got a crush on him. He's got to murder eyes. I feel the death between you and I. All right. Here we go. Born to kill you. He said, He took reprisal against our spies.

He's got, Yeah, yeah, sin, my eyes. Oh, my God, you're so good at that. There it is. Oh, it's an 80s fest here. Yeah. That's my era. So cool.

Sinwa our eyes, they're watching you. By Macheta, that was his dream. He told me that the best is to kill them by Macheta. Sounds like a dance. Yeah, I'm pretty sure me and my wife took Macheta classes the last time we were in San Francisco. With Dixenwa, I asked him, you are now 28, 29, and how come he's not married?

How come he doesn't want a family? So he told me, the Hamas is my wife, the Hamas is my child, the Hamas for me is everything. I think I knew him better than me. his mother. After 180 hours that I interrogated with Jesus, Genoa, believe

me, I know him, I smell him, I eat him, everything. Oh, my God. I smell him, I eat him. That's the craziest shit. He was just like, I know him better than his own mother. Believe me, I interrogated him for a hundred years. I suckled him

at my best. It's, but it's so, it's such a a perfectly yes it's a perfect twisted added layer to the psychopathy the psychosexual the Freudian that's the most Freudian as

country in the world it's so on the nose bunch of European Jews moved to the Middle East it just went like super void mode yeah I am your mother I am your mother

why aren't you married yet to ask that of a 28-year-old Yaya Sinwar who was, by the way, he was arrested and put in prison at 25. I know, I was going to say, wasn't he in jail at the time?

Yes, right. He's like, why don't you mail? You're literally torturing him. He's like, oh, sorry, I haven't been on the fucking dating apps, bro. There's no hinge here in this fucking torture prison. And again, just like Shail Benifraim, the liberal Zionist, can't contemplate a 10-year-old drawing drawings of his father killing the soldiers of the occupying ethnic cleansing

Nazi army that has ravaged their homeland and emiserated their people can't the cruelty of a child imagining dead Israeli soldiers yeah these are the most moral this guy can't imagine someone dedicated to something more yes than the kind of creature comforts and you know status oriented just having a bigger cause. Yeah. That would have him say, you know what? The cause is my life.

And to be shocked at his purported cruelty as you are torturing. I know. That's the part. I'm like trying to wrap my brain around. I'm like, but you're torturing him. What is happening? Yes. What are you talking about?

It's, it's what you have to live in this completely inverted reality at all times. If you are a Zionist, if you are pro-Israel, you have. have to be able to, no matter what, see Israel is the good guy, even if you yourself are doing the torturing. You're just like, damn, it's kind of wild that you want to, you know, kill us with machetes. Well, that's like so, that's just, you know, what the one thing about the last year that I will say is having been Palestinian for my entire life and also just a little more public because of my dad as a kid, you know, having been targeted and all that. I'm like, I've been gas lit for 50 years and I thought I was going crazy and the past year I have people like

confirming to me that I'm not crazy I think a lot of us feel that way which is why we love you and all that but I can't take anymore this is insanity it's like every single thing is a projection it's it's not even and you know what I was saying before about people saying oh I went to Israel my and then and I'm like that's nice I can't go there like yeah where's like so the one thing that's been a little bit better is that like there are more people who understand this nightmare but it's exhausting and not to put you on the spot but you've posted about this on instagram and and we've talked about it you know one-on-one just as friends but there must be a complicated set of feelings around the fact that on the one hand

Palestinian voices are getting more airtime and more room to express themselves this year and Israeli insanity like this this guy everyone is seeing it now at the same time like what's it like that I mean Matt and I by virtue of being Jewish you know there there is a lot of what's it been like for you seeing Jewish anti-Zionists well it's interesting occupy this sort of special place for people of credibility or whatever like what does it look like from where you're sitting in terms of like the fact that we get to do this and people appreciate it extra because we're Jewish. Right. Right. Well, I think it's, first of all, anti-Zainist Jews are part of this. So it's not like, you know, we're all in this together. And it's one of the most, you know, my dad always said that

solidarity was the greatest expression of love. And I never understood that until this year, really, because you feel it's not just, and I lost like my best friend and a couple of, other really good friends. And they're not even Jewish or Zionists. They just didn't know how to deal with this situation and how intense it was and weren't very supportive. So anti-Zionist Jews have been a wonderful community that has, like, more people than ever. I mean, I grew up knowing, I've known Elon Pape most of my life and, you know, Avi Shlame

and all these people that do a gnome and all of them. I've known them forever. So anti-Zionist Jews were a part of my life and from the beginning. But and actually when I first started using social media with like Facebook and stuff like 10 or 15 years ago, I would only post from Horarets or something by Elon or because I knew no one would listen to anything else. And then it's now I, this past year, I was like, why do I have to do that? Why can't anyone just listen to us? And I think that that's been, it's difficult because I'm not trying to say we don't want anti-Zionist Jews speaking for us because, as I said, that anti-Zionist Jews are part of this and how are we going to get anywhere if we don't work together.

But it's hard because you see that the people who get the most amount of time to talk are generally, if they're Arabs, they are like an expert, like Nora, or it's their field of study or they have to have all these credentials. naturals to even be interviewed, and they're great and wonderful. But I think for a lot of us who've been living it, and I've been doing work on it, I did a solo show 14 years ago, and I wrote a book. And so in 2014, when Gaza was being bombed, I was interviewed a lot. And now I felt, it's not that I want to be interviewed. I don't really care about that. But I've noticed that people, it's like the rest of the world is opening up to the issue and being open to understanding Palestinians, but they still only feel safe doing that by platforming anti-Zionist Jews. And it gets a little tiring because it's not just my dad.

There are so many Palestinians who have written articulately about this. And I would say that my dad gave a lot of people the language. And so it gets tiring when it's only because so and so said this that it's now what we should believe. It's a bit strange. But. 100% I don't know but it's like it's hard to say that because I don't want to say no you know what I mean like we don't want you because that's not true at all no no I this is this has been with regards to this podcast in particular has always been something with me that I've felt I don't want to say like guilty about but it's like something that I've seen the amount of like handholding that Americans need specifically. It's more criticism of that than like who's actually speaking. It's just this idea that we have to have someone. You know, I have been an, I wanted to just be an actress, which is not really possible when you're Edward Syed's daughter. So I did my own play to just sort of say who I am and what I'm about.

And I've done a lot of work around this. And it's art. It's not, it's not even movies. So it doesn't get seen a lot because it's mostly theater and writing. So there's so many of us who have been doing so much for so long. It gets exhausting, you know, and then you have someone like Pierce Morgan who just wants to have fights with people and people have them screaming at each other. So it gets exhausting, but at the same time, anti-Zionist Jews also give us that sense of solidarity and that we are not in this alone. And it matters a lot because I think after.

October 7th, there was like a very, a lot of my Jewish friends that I've had for over 30 years were like, bye-bye. And I got, Daniel knows I got fired by a, I teach Pilates on the side and I got fired by a client in an email with an Israeli flag the day after October 7th. And so we go through so much and we don't even get to sort of share it a lot of the time. But yeah, yeah. Well, two things occur to me about that. Number one, like I said earlier, it's the fact of existence. while Palestinian, being a human while Palestinian, having a life story and an ancestral story while Palestinian, that never mind your expertise or your credentials or what books you've written.

Like, that's both the crime under the regime of Zionist hegemony and it's the contribution in and of itself. So, you know, something like this, like we've gone on this podcast sometimes uncomfortably long stretches without having a Palestinian guest. And now we have several in a row. It's sometimes just sometimes a happenstance of scheduling and things like that. But I'm just always reminded that like as fun as it is to sit around with fellow Jews who agree with me and like laugh about our birthright or summer camp experiences or whatever, at a certain point, we're splashing around in shallow water. And there are, there's this, this platform has to be a place where people get to hear.

Right. Like Tanahasi Cote says, you know, the voices that don't get heard all the time. And if we have something special to bring, I'm getting to the point where if I never hear another Jew get up on a microphone and talk about Tikuno Alam again, it'll be too soon. Like that, like that contribution to remind the world that actually Judaism is a religion of peace and social justice. And like, that's too toothless at this point for me. Like, yeah, I get it. It's also a religion of genocidal incitement, if you read our text. It's a religion of many things. We don't get to be like, no, we're actually, so I feel like.

I know God gets nicer in the second half of the Bible. I don't know why you guys didn't keep reading. He's kind of bad. He kills his son and all that, but he's nicer about it. He's like so scary. Are you trying to convert us to Christianity? Yeah, right now. Come on.

For us, that's not canon. That's not even the second part of the Bible. That's just some like fanfic that has written. after the fact. But if we're going to be having these platforms and being anti-Zionist Jews, then we better use it to go all the way and say the shit, like show the ugly shit about the Jewish psyche on Zionism like we do on this show, like that fucking torture or like there are things Matt and I can make that need to be made.

Right, that I can't make ever. That's harder for other people to make both through because you don't know. intimately and because of how it might sound to others. And so hopefully we can be paying our dues that way. Yeah, but also just this podcast in general. Like I, we grew up doing this at home, you know, except we call it Hasbara, because my mother says it with a Lebanese accent. So Hasbara, which also sounds like the word for coriander in Arabic.

So I get confused sometimes. But we would sit and like my dad would be interviewed in the, who was once on with like Ehud Barak or someone. and he kept saying it is not honorable and my dad would in the middle of the thing was like what is honorable that's not a word like on television and stuff and so we grew up doing this so it's so fun to do it with you like to watch you guys do it too but at the same time i don't know if i could have a podcast like making fun of yeah um well what i was going to say is number one in solidarity for trying not to be another Jewish voice who's speaking over the voices of Palestinians my baby has decided to give me fucking laryngitis

so I want to say shout out to comrade baby also we do Jew on Jew interruptions and speaking over on this on this podcast we also speak yeah that's true as much as we also speak over our Palestinian guests and all guests Yeah, you just do speaking over. That's okay.

It's called something creating, yeah, cooperative overlap. That's it. But either way, we call it frontal load disorder that I have, but it's okay. Yes, yes, we have that as well. Or as the rabbi likes to say. You're emotionally damaged, Jewishly.

Either way, we will get an email telling us that we spoke over you too much. That's going to happen no matter what. But I just wanted to. continue um just talking about this idea of uh jews like speaking um it's just it's always for me been a fascinating and an annoying thing uh and i can't imagine what it's like to be a Palestinian when like um you have to constantly even in solidarity with Jews you're deferring to them to be like, this is okay, right?

Like the idea that people are like in any way giving me, like you said, an Arab or Palestinian has to have degrees to talk about this and get invited onto news programs. I don't know shit about shit. I'm not even fucking fully Jewish. And it's, and it's immediately just like, oh, I feel comfortable with this. And, yeah, anyways, this is just me getting it.

But it's not worse than my friends. Like, I had a friend in high school. He was one of the people who stopped speaking to me on October 7th, who was like from the Upper East side and of like German background. And his parents weren't particularly either religiously or culturally Jewish. And more like they wanted to assimilate into being white people. And then all of a sudden he gets. taken with Israel and he spends a lot of time there and works for friends of the IDF.

And then all of a sudden, when October 7th happens, I can't possibly understand his pain. And it's all about him. And I'm like, you're not even from there. I am. It's the most mind-boggling thing. Completely insane. And I'll just say this as well, which is that if you are going to be an anti-Zionist Jew taking up any space in this conversation, This is why you better just be a fucking anti-Zionist Jew.

None of this, like, beating around the bush shit. None of this word policing, thought policing bullshit. None of this, like, constantly being on guard for anti-Semitism on the left. That's the problem. Even if there are people who will make, in good faith, rhetorical mistakes, you know, or will go too far down a rabbit hole. And all of a sudden they're like questioning, you know, that was did Leo Frank do it, you know, because they're like, you know, the ADL is now just a front for, you know, the Zionist, like, propaganda lobby, right? At this point, all they do is launder propaganda for Israel.

I can understand someone being like, maybe from the very beginning they are a completely, you know, fake, right? So anyways, the point is, like, if you're going to do this, do this. without being, thinking you are the moral leader or thinking that you can police anyone else. Yeah, it's been weird. I've had, sorry, I've just had, like, young people explain to me. You know, this is about colonialism. It's not a, and I'm always like, do you, this is the only time of my life that I want to say, do you know who I am? But I'm getting my dad's arguments. You should be like, let me orient you to who I am. Like, exactly. I'm getting Palestine explained by younger Palestinian, like, a lot of, students and stuff. And it's colonialism. You don't understand. Like, you can't sit. And I'm

like, please stop. And that's been weird because I think people do know who he is and all of that. But, you know, with the social media and the TikTok and all the ideas keep going, but there's no citing where they came from. And of course, he didn't invent all of these ideas. But he did articulate them very well for a lot of people. So it gets a little weird. But as long as it's all for the same basic cause, it's, it's all good. We just have to stop getting a little. But there is that, like, you know, the idea that if we all listen to someone like Ilan, who is wonderful and I love him very much, but then it's okay and not.

Right. Yeah. And I appreciate you saying that you guys used to do this around the dinner table because, you know, that's something, because I need to remember that, like, we're catching up to you. you know like we can take our place in it we can bring our talents our and and whatever gifts our weird little identity gives us and our and the fact that we were on the inside to some extent you know but don't but like you've you know it it's the it's the survival job of any oppressed people to study the oppressor yeah understand them better than they understand themselves

so and it's funny because in all these years the the like strategy doesn't change it's like they come back with the same talking points. They avoid questions the same way. I mean, even in the play, the character who, the young rabbi's daughter who becomes more of a Zionist, in the dialogue, she kept like avoiding the question and going around the question. And it's so exhausting because it's always the same thing. And growing up, my brother, my dad, and my three male cousins who are more like brothers, they actually have a podcast called Muck to Sea Street, which is wonderful.

We would all just make fun of the news. constantly and we can all do a great Israeli accent and we know that in's and outs of the argument so it gets more and more absurd the more you listen yeah which is yeah why this podcast is fun to do it's so funny it's fun to watch too and it's it's it's also funny because the way you do the way you pronounce the title of the podcast kind of tells us what what what demographic you're in if you say bad Hasbara right you're either you're either you're either Palestinian or you're sort of on the outside of this. If you say bad Hasbara, you're probably a, you know, a North American Jew like us. That's true. You say Bad Hasbara. There is no such

thing as Bad Hasbara. Yeah, that's when you know you're going to get the one-star review on Spotify. Exactly. So this, so this conversation actually, I think, smoothly transitions into just sort of wrapping up this Sinoir piece which was I wanted to talk about the way in which the media, even

in the most like has barriest corners of the BBC they in trying to smear him, they couldn't not eulogize him with some indisputable

facts about him which was number one he was born a refugee. He spent 22 years in prison. He learned Hebrew, studied Israeli society, and when he got out, he became the head of Hamas and literally changed

the charter to recognize Israel, which is something that has just been completely erased from the narrative. And to specify that the struggle is not with the Jewish people per se, but with the Zionist entity. And even with that, I always am like, the

whole thing about having it said Jews is it's like they made a country and said it's only four Jews I know and then we're like okay well we're not Jews so we don't we're gonna fight the country of the Jews and then we get called it's like all a trick and then the I'm imagining a comic strip where it's like like like you know mama the Jews are coming exactly the Jews are coming like and the mother's like don't be anti-Semitic exactly and then they would say like and then the flag has the star of dating it's the You like just took the religious thing and put it on the flag. So if I criticize the country, this is all a trick.

And Arabs get really annoyed by it. Of course it's a trick. It's literally the Jews down the road. It's those Jews. Yes. Yes. It's not all the Jews in the world. It's the state that says, I am the Jews. And like we were saying earlier, you know, it says a lot about political instincts in general.

That they are like, we understand the parameters in which we are working with in terms of convincing the world that, yes, indeed, the imprisoned population of 2.3 million Arabs in Gaza is the victim. And as, you know, ridiculous as it sounds to even just say that out loud that you need to convince people of that. I mean, that is something, you know, it's the same instinct that people. have where they go like, I'm going to need to listen to a Jew talk about how Israel is bad rather than a Palestinian. Exactly. It's it's it's playing towards, uh, people's instinct to be careful about what they say with regards to the Jews. And I think that one thing that I've seen a lot of people do since the, you know, since Sinwar was killed by, uh, Israel, um, has been to be like on the lookout for anyone who's going to do like uh sinwar eulogizing posting you know

someone who's going to say something positive and a lot of like these like like this one here like the like the like the alon misraqi post yes yes and and also so what you'll end up seeing is a lot of people who are like i don't know more media figures i would say um the ones who are like safe to put on the bbc or safe to put on msnbc or whatnot doing the thing where they're both it. They go, he was terrible. He's evil. He's bad, obviously. But now are you going to condemn? He was mean to his interrogator.

He was notoriously... He was still mean to the guy who kept him in and risen and tortured him. His mother, his own mother. Yes, his exactly. His own his own old Ashkenazi male mother. Yes. And so, like,

you know, I've even... I got some DMs from people who, I don't fucking know, who saw some, like, tweets that I had retweeted about Sinwar's death that were in some way too kind for them. They didn't like that it was too kind.

And so, you know, people have been like, so wait, what do you think about Sinwar? And I was thinking about this question. And I was like, I just realized my thoughts on Sinwar are this. If his last name were Saperstein and he was born a refugee into a open-air prison of 2.3 million Jews who were kept in an apartheid state by whomever. And he was the leader of a violent resistance against the oppressor.

And he ended up dying, not in a hidey hole, but on the front lines, throwing a grenade one-handed, throwing two grenades one-handed at his oppressors and throwing a stick at their, you know, advanced technology. If that were the case, there'd be a fucking statue of him in Washington, D.C. It's incredible. If that were the case, we would all agree that that guy was a righteous martyr. That's the truth of it. And you can say, oh, well, there would be, you know, some people who were like,

I'm against his tactics, but at the end of the day, you know, Pure heroism. It really, I mean, that's heroism, whether you're on that side or not. If it were like a, Nat Turner. You know, an epic, like, whatever novel or poetry, it would be like, this is the greatest thing you could ever write about somebody. And Nat Turner, who oversaw. Exactly. Yeah.

Massacres of far more specific horror and documented barbarity and brutality than seem why every did. Yeah. They had to invent a bunch of shit to make October 7th come close to what the Nat Turner Slavervoldz were. He is now rightly seen as maybe a complicated heroic figure. Right. I just texted you a screenshot of a tweet that my brother put up, which I thought was alongside what you just said, a sober and sort of the only decent way of reacting to this. Whether Sinwar advanced or hurt the cause of Palestinian liberation is for Palestinians to decide. Westerners are responsible for our own actions. You hear the Chomsky in them,

right? No, yeah. Yes. In this case, the decades-long Israeli military occupation of Palestinians, which Hamas was founded to resist and which has now turned into outright mass murder. And I've had friends contact me and being like, can you believe all these leftists, you know, like celebrating Sinwar? Do you know how controversial he is among Palestinians? Do you know how hated Hamas is? And I'm just like, I don't care. Like, I don't get to have a vote or an opinion on which prison gang rises up at Sing Sing or Attica or Auschwitz. Just to kind of go back to what we were saying earlier about the anti-Zionist Jews, like, I think that your brother does this really well. And you guys do as well, which is just you don't say what Palestinians should do or what they're, you know, and that is the key to it is not, is being, you know, having solidarity, but not that condescending.

And I think you guys do this pretty consistently, and so does Aaron just say, it's not up to me. It's not up to me. It's up to them. And I even say that because I don't, I am a Palestinian, and that's another thing that has sort of been lost since Oslo when they kind of divided us up so well. When I was growing up, all Palestinians, whether in diaspora or in 48 or the West Bank or Gaza, were Palestinian. We were all one cause, one thing. And now it's really diaspora of Palestinians are different. So I even defer to Palestinians that live there.

Like, it's not up to me. If they, I don't personally think a two-stay solution will work or, but if that's what they decided, it's not up to me to say, right. I mean, I can certainly criticize it, but if somehow that's what works, you know, it's not up to me to say that. And that, I think, is a key thing to what we were talking about before. And you could make a, you could make a very compelling Palestinian case for, wow, Hamas really fucking

October 7th They really fucked their people You really could And that would be an interesting And worthwhile conversation Worth having In a certain context With certain people and whatever

But what I'm not going to do Is presume Like I was at a Jewish currents event Which was full of great people Nura Aricot Ledda or was on a panel there With a bunch of Palestinians

There was a panel of several Jewish scholars and thinkers, and all of them are opposed to the Israeli occupation, apartheid, opposed to the genocide. But one of them saw fit. And this is, I was surprised at this person. I won't name names, but this is someone that I wondered maybe we should have them on the podcast or something. But I was very surprised. This person said, I want to take this opportunity, now that I'm in front of a Jewish currents crowd, to say something that I've really been wanting to say, which is that if we don't condemn October 7th, if we don't strengthen, denuously condemned the mass murder that happened, then we lose all moral credibility.

And I actually went up to this person afterwards, and I said, the problem, you may feel like sympathy for Israelis is missing in leftist discourse. You may feel that in the zeal to support the oppressed, people are dehuman, are becoming desensitized to the pain of, people that you would consider innocent on October 7 that's fine you can say that you can lament it you can grieve it you can mourn it the minute you use the word condemn you put yourself in a particular position from which to condemn it you are saying I have a place to stand I have a place to stand and that place allows me to say that had I been in your position I would have done something different and I have the right to say what I would have done in your position and here are the options you had and here's what you should have

done. Now, if you're not willing to stand on that and like actually elucidate what you mean and tell Palestinians what they should have done and if you're willing to arrogate to yourself the right to tell Palestinians what they should have done, then I'm sorry, you don't have the right or the mandate to stand here and condemn. What there is to condemn is the actions of those with power. It's like when they bring up the talking point of like, well, you guys, didn't accept partition and I'm like hey what are we how does that help people dying right now but also like the condescension about people who lived a long time ago choosing to give up most of their homeland it's like you wouldn't have done that either I don't understand that

like and it's always so condescending yes it always comes from a place of absolute privilege And I feel like when you are, when you were just a regular-ass privileged westerner, you're already coming from a place of privilege where you get to, you think your liberal values should decide the fate of any other political conflict that is probably caused by the government that bore you. But it's even worse, I think, when you are a purported Jewish anti-Zionist or Jewish non-Zionist intellectual. who wants to tell people what is right and what is wrong, tell Palestinians how to resist. And it is, to me, it's, it just is just another, it's just another layer of privilege where it's like your voice is being raised up because of the fact that you are a Jew who is against this.

don't use that as a cudgel. And that's not to say that don't share your wisdom, I absolutely believe that older Jewish anti-Zionists who have been around the block, like Finkelstein, for example, has a thing or two of value to say about his experience and that should he disagree with some tactical decision, I think you should go ahead and say it. He's also been the personal guest of Hamas leaders in Gaza.

Yeah. He's actually broken, bred with these people. I'm willing to listen to him saying, yeah, I think they maybe screwed the pooch. Right. Tactically. It's exactly. But you'll never hear him standing on moral morals. Moral. Yes. Exactly. And condemning. Because that was his first thing right out of the

gate last fall. In every interview, he would bring up the Naturnal Slaver revolt. Oh, he did. Yeah. We the abolitionists, we the abolitionists are fundamental obligation. is to refrain from confusing our own emotions and our own personal reactions with a moral platform to condemn anything. If we're in solidarity with these people,

then they are right to resist is sacrosanct, even if the choice is made along the way and how they do that might be horrific, idiotic, stupid, in our opinion. We might have views about it. Of course. but yeah my first memory of norm finklestein makes me feel guilty i took a phone message from him when i was like eight yeah and i wrote his name on number on a post it and then i forgot to give it to my dad and i found it in my book bag at school and i still feel bad about that because norman is so sensitive

did he ever get in touch with your dad yes i said i just remember pulling out the post it at school and being like, oops. And then being like, I'm writing his name. I have had it with the crocodile voice mails, the answering machines. I do not believe. I don't respect that. I don't respect when you say you'll take a message.

Give it to your father. I was like eight. I'm sorry. This is torture. I can't do his voice because I've lost my fucking laryngitis. My late's never. I can't do it. I can't do it.

A bad has Barra fan who's a leather worker. I didn't. didn't bring it with me. I should have. In Texas, sent me a beautiful Palestine key ring colored leather, but also made me this leather pouch. I don't know what it's used for, but wrote on it, my innards are writhing. Oh, beautiful. Which is a famous quote. Famous Norman. He knew the way to my heart. I think we've said what needs to be said. And I don't know how you're feeling um but uh i'm feeling like that was a a bad has bar a podcast that was pretty good i think we i think we've saeed what needs to be sai i'm just going to keep riding this but

there's so many there's so many uh clever saeed said jokes i know they never are you kidding me i'm i'm i'm good day mate i'm oh right i mean i'm the best mate you're the best mate you're the You're bum on today. Oh, my God. There's so many ways. With me, it's just... Look at all these four-letter last names. Oh, yeah.

Well, my mom gets to be Mama said, knock you an out. Oh, I love that. She's the love. Najla Said knock you out. Yeah. Oh, man. I wish I had...

Sometimes people call me Leib Tard. I love that. I call you Liebenshram. But doesn't leave mean like love or something? something. Yeah, but I think they want to call me Lib-Tard, but instead they call me Leib.

Shet-Lebe. Yeah, Shet-Lebe. You could, some people used to call me Leib the Hebe, but it was okay because they were Jewish, too, so I was like, I'll accept it. In high school, they used to call me Menage Latois, and it was really not fun.

Yeah, I'm sorry. That's not fun. Well, you're no longer in high school. You're here safe. At the... Holy. Bad Has Barra podcast. Najelah, you've been a joy to talk to. Thank you so much for you.

You guys are awesome, and I do love your show. I can't believe you actually listen. That makes me so happy. I don't really leave my house or the YouTube. I just look for people who don't hate Palestinians on the YouTube, and then I watch them. Oh, I love that. That's amazing. No, it really makes me, I mean, I grew up feeling really isolated and, and, and,

and really self-hating. And it's been a very different thing, being a grown-up and having people stand with you. It's very different. So it means a lot. Thank you. It means a lot to me to have you on and to, yeah, for you to express that. So, yeah, please come back. I would love to come back.

Yes, please do. And make fun. Patreon.com slash bad has borrow. please donate or subscribe and bad hasbara at gmail.com please write us letters if you have to write a letter to us saying we interrupted Najla too much I will just ask Najla right now were we interrupting you too much no I'm surprised I didn't interrupt you more I have a problem with that well so do we um so stop in phandalizing our women guests all right okay they have strong voices yeah i always what did adam say oh i didn't read it yeah i'll stop writing oh my god it's

all the youtube comments oh man all the all the nasty letters are from producer adam uh and thank you all out there uh for listening to the show watching this show on youtube or listening on spotify uh sorry about my voice. Hopefully, by the next episode, it'll be all better. All right. That's the end of the podcast. Until next time, from the river to the sea. That's fucking butchel. I raised him on my knee. Jumping jacks was us. Push-ups was us. Godmaga us. All karate us. Taking Molly us. Michael Jackson us. us

Georgia makes on us Andor was us Keith led your Joker us Endless bread success Happy meals was us McDonald's was us Being happy us Bequam yoga us

Eating food us Breeding air us Drinking water us We invented all that shit Thank you.