Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Bad Hasbara 99: Nepo Daddy, with Dr. Gabor Maté

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Matt and Daniel are joined by Daniel's father, author and activist Dr. Gabor Maté to reach a deeper pun-derstanding of Daniel's sense of humor, to ponder the pleas for empathy from Gaza's aggressors in Israel, and to ask whether Miss Rachel should be jailed at Guantánamo Bay, or possibly offered the leniency of our famously chill domestic SuperMax prison system.Please donate to Children in Conflict: https://www.childreninconflict.org/See Matt and Francesca Fiorentini at Cobb’s in San Francisco on May 7: http://bit.ly/mattfrancobbsSee Dr. Gabor Maté at one of his upcoming events: https://drgabormate.com/events/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

Hello Hot bitch We invented the terry tomato And ways USG drives And the ironed roll Israeli salad oozy stents and jopas orange crows Micro chips is us iPhone cameras us

Taco salads us Pothalas All of garden us White foster us Zabra Hamas Asvaras Us Hello, everybody, and welcome to Bad Hasbara.

The world's most moral podcast. That's right. My name is Matt Lebe. I will be your most moral co-host for this podcast. And I'm Daniel Mate, the other one. Yes, the other moral man. So excited for all of you to join us on this very special episode of Bad Hasbara. It's special for many reasons.

One of the reasons being that I am once again recovering from illness because of my child. I blame my child for all illness in the world, not just for me. But that's fine. I love my child despite the fact that she's like a petri dish. If anyone can recommend a good multivitamin, I'm taking recommendations because I can't keep getting sick. Flintstones. Flintstones is a great brand for that. Flintstones vitamins? Do they still make those?

Oh, they must. But do kids watch the Flintstones? It's just like some random cartoon to them. I never took Flintstone's vitamins because of the intellectual property involved. I took them for the tart, delicious, fruity flavor and the way they fortified my growing body with all the essential vitamins and minerals. I very much enjoyed the way it made my bones stronger. This is not a sponsor, by the way.

We just are super into Flintstone's vitamins and strong bones. shout out to producer Adam Levin on the ones and twos and please subscribe on YouTube on all of the podcast apps give us five stars in a review and also why don't you go ahead and join the Patreon Patreon.com slash bad Hasbara

you can also see me and my wife live Cobbs Comedy Club in San Francisco May 7th it's a Wednesday be there or be not there Today's episode is brought to you by Children in Conflict. Children in Conflict has been working in occupied Palestinian territory since 2006 and is currently supporting children in Israeli detention, providing case management, child protection, mental health, and psychosocial support.

You can donate to that right now at www. children in conflict.org. That's children, I-N-C-O-N-F-L-I-C-T dot org. I don't know why I didn't spell out children. I think it was just too long. And Daniel, what's this been? Well, for some reason today, my mind's been going back to records and or music

that brings me back to my early childhood. My dad had an impressive record collection when I was a kid. and he had mixed tapes. Yeah, yeah, he's famously. Yeah, it's a world-renowned record collection that's taught many people about the dangers of compulsive shopping.

That's right. But also taught me a lot about music. And he also had mixtapes featuring more contemporary music. So I just pick some records off the shelf. And some of these actually used to belong to my family. So here we have Daniel Baramboyne, the Argentinian-Israeli. Um, but non-Zionist or at least strongly pro-Palestine, uh, conductor and piano player

playing, uh, the Beethoven sonatas, the Waldstein as well as a sexy guy. It looks like Billy Joel. Seriously, right? Yeah. It's wild, like a Jewish Billy Joel. Billy Joel's older brother who took music just a little bit more serious. A little bit more seriously. Yeah. The real piano man. Um, then, uh, little known fact about my dad, uh, is he's a huge Elvis fan. Oh, all right. Elvis is, this is my only Elvis record. But, uh, only one you need, baby. My dad, my dad uses Elvis songs in workshops about childhood trauma, if you can believe it.

Huh. I'm trying to think which ones. Uh, well, you'd have to take one of his courses to find out. All right. That's fair. Um, one of my dad's favorite groups from the 60s, the sardonic, the fugs. Uh, I don't know if they were yippies or proto hippies, but they were very, uh, the fugs. The fugs, yeah.

They're very, very funny. sort of political absurdist satire. Yeah. The Rolling Stones, undercover of the night, which is not one of their best albums, is from the 80s, but the title song was on one of his mixtapes,

and I remember listening to it a lot as a kid, kind of a disco new wave. Yeah, I remember the 80s Rolling Stone stuff. And they do start me up in the 80s? They did actually do start me up in the 80s. It was like, hey, they had another hit. This is a French-Canadian group called Bard, and I loved this record as a kid. I used to dance around the house to it, and it's very hard to find.

I actually stole this from my parents. And finally, now they know. Finally, I'm about to expose my father as my earliest Zionist indoctrinator. Jerusalem of Gold by the Finjohn Group, which is a collection of, you know, this is from like the 50s or 60s. I guess it must have been, no, in the 70s, because Jerusalem of gold was a 67. Was that the, is that the OG, like, uh, recording? that became a mega hit in Israel and I'm not sure if it is but there is a cup there are a

couple of songs in Arabic on here they had one either Egyptian member or something like that but anyway the title song is a nationalistic sentimental piece of garbage but it's it played in my house regardless because there was a love of folk music of all kinds and yeah that's like one of those you know things where I'm like Well, I mean, that song can mean anything to anyone. So I can, I can listen to Jerusalem of gold and not feel bad, right? Right. Absolutely.

Right. It's art, you know. It is art. Art is what we make of it. That's right. You know, it has nothing to do with intention. Well, that's what's spinning in the Mate household. And now we're going to find out what's spinning in all Maté households.

I am so excited to do this, especially for our 99th episode. We stayed in the double digits before, you know, this happened. I was very much hoping it would before we got to 100 and we've done it. Ladies and gentlemen, everyone else, we have a great guest today. You may know him as a physician, as a best-selling author, but I know him as my co-host's dad. Ladies and gentlemen, everyone else, please welcome to the podcast, Dr. Gabor Matte. Hey, how are you doing?

And this is pure nepotism, you know? Yep. I finally get to make the big time because of my son. That's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. Well, but I don't want you to feel bad about it. Like you, in some ways you earned it.

And even if there's an element of, you know, you got a leg up. Yeah. We did choose 98 people before you, so it's not like we. Yeah. Yeah. But I hope this will give my career a boost. Oh, definitely. Yeah.

I was looking at, you know, speaking of your career, I was, I was looking on YouTube. I was, you know, in preparation for us talking at some of the different interviews you've done. And I just want to let you know, this will be the lowest performing Gabor Mate video. So feel free to say whatever you want. Nobody watches the show the way they watch. watch all of the other shows you've been on. Yeah, well, at least I set a record. That's good. That's right. Yeah, most likely. Most likely. At the very least, a personal record.

So I'm, thank you for inviting me to this least popular program. Thank you very much. Absolutely. The world most moral and least popular program. That's right. We are the world's most moral and least popular podcast. Yeah.

And we thank you for coming on. There's going to be a lot to talk about today. I'm going to let Daniel, obviously, a lot of the conversation, because as I don't know if you're aware, but you guys have some relation together. You are both related. And because of that, actually, it would be hard for just one of us to be related.

That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You both have to be related to each other in order for relations to work. Yeah. I also like to college. Both is interesting to me because you often read that both people agreed.

I said, well, it's redundant because if only one of them agreed, it's not an agreement. That's a good point. Yeah. This, I'm against redundancy. I am as well. Well, I guess one person could agree to a proposed agreement. Hmm. They could agree, but they wouldn't agree with each other.

Exactly, yeah. You could agree to conditions. Well, let's agree to disagree. I wanted to ask. So I recently became aware, Daniel, let me know, that you have listened to this podcast before? A whole number of times.

So that's, that was... Usually before there are two comments on the YouTube video, I'm getting excited, usually very positive feedback from my dad, either about a particular joke that you made or I made, or the excellence of the guest we had, or, you know, very detailed. Yeah.

Sometimes with a timestamp, you know? Well, listen, you guys, here's the deal. Two nights ago, this is, we recorded. on a Tuesday, on Sunday evening, I went to a performance here in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was a Palestinian poet, spoken word artist, Rafiz Zaida. Do you know her? No. Well, it was a fundraiser for Gaza and enthusiastic, full audience, 400 people or more. She's Canadian, British, Palestinian.

I should reverse the order, Palestinian, Canadian, British. British, lives in London. You should have her on some time, but the point I'm making is she was talking about these tragic events, but she was also so full of humor and verand and and zest, you know, and I had to marvel at her. And a few days ago, I was exchanging emails with Mikhailed, who I'm sure is known to you. Oh, yes. Israeli now living in states and will advocate for freedom for Palestine. And the son of a decorated Israeli general.

That's right. I remember you bringing Mati Pelad to Vancouver with your organization Jews for a Just Peace in my early teens. That's right. I was back in the 90s and Mati Pelad was a general in the Israeli general staff during the 67 war. and then he became an advocate for a two-state solution before that was even legal to talk about it in Israel and he used to wear these crossed flags of Israel on Palestine on his chat. And back then, in the Vancouver or Canadian

or North American Jewish community, two states was akin to going to a pro-Palestinian encampment today. I mean, it was radical and unfairly. Yeah, well, the deal was he presented him in Vancouver and he wasn't allowed to speak at the Jewish Kennedy Center So the Canadian Jewish Community Center directors knew better what was better, knew what was for Israel's security. They knew better than this Israeli general. The point is, I was exchanging emails with his son, Miko, a few days ago, and I was saying that there's no words left.

You don't know what to say anymore. When you looked at these horrors that are being perpetrated, and every day we'll talk about them, you don't have to say anymore. And Miko writes, yeah, there's no more words left. And then I went to this event on Sunday evening with Rafi Zaida. We should definitely have on. And it took the words of a poet and a satirist and a humorist and a deep thinking human being. But it took poetry. It took incredible humor to give some inkling of one's emotions in the face of this.

horror and the absurdity that surrounds it so I'm just this is by way of bowing to your program because I think it's so important to to bring that humor and otherwise how do we even endure all this stuff yeah and there was so much laughter there that night a lot of Palestinians were there and a lot of laughter as well that's great yeah Palestinian culture has an underrated sense of humor, underappreciated. I mean, even in, I've got the book, Perfect Victims here by Muhammad El Curd, which I recommended to you.

Just bought it. Yeah. Just bought it. I mean, it's not a laugh-out-loud book. Yeah. But the sardonic sense of the absurd is, is palpable. Yeah. I mean, you know, I've always kind of marveled at the.

you know, speaking for myself at the American Jewish community in my life's inability to find kinship with Palestinians based on just humor alone because of the fact that it's just so clear to me that they are sort of the inheritors of this sort of gallows humor that I think, you know, was popularized, at least in the West by a lot of Jewish comedians. And, you know, you see it now with so many, you know, Arab comedians, Palestinian comedians, you know, Palestinian writers and thinkers, you know, same sort of, you know, intellectuals, you know, you see it in a way where it's almost like a, it seems like it would be such a cultural match. And yet there's this block. Well, the problem, Matt, is that it's a conflict of interest because the Zionist

sectors of the mainstream Jewish community, which is much of it, are heavily invested in Gallo's construction and Gallo's maintenance. That's right. Yeah, exactly. If you have stock in the Gallos industry, it is very hard, you know, to make jokes about it as much, you know. Well, it's interesting because colonized people have great senses of humor. Yes. Like when I work with indigenous communities here in Canada, Jim has to do a lot. Their sense of humor is outrageous. And you don't see it right away

because they tend to be a bit... Until they trust you. Right, of course. And they have a good reason not to. They tend to be a bit reserved. But once they get to know you, it's incredible. And even the grandmothers have this outrageous sexual humor, you know?

And you see this in the Jewish humor of Eastern Europe. yeah is that of oppressed people and no wonder that there's similarities with Palestinian humor yeah you're allowed to see it but listen speaking of humor I prepared something here I didn't prepare it I found this in an article by Gideon Levy and talk about absurdity I just want to tell you the most absurd thing I've ever read in relationship to Israel Palestine yes please sure please I mean a guest bringing the content this yes this is a rarity this is Gideon Levy writing our arts and you know the jews have these memorials to righteous

gentiles right right and also help jews during the holocaust is this about the israeli commentator on television who talks about how there isn't a single righteous gentile in in gaza no okay no no i no no um but someday there'll be a a plaque to righteous jews and Gideon Lebrough will certainly have pride of place. But he writes in an article recently in Haaretz about an Israeli television commentator and fashion commentator who visits a West Bank village in the company of the Israeli army battalion that is occupying the village. And to make room for her visit, they kicked the Palestinian family out of their home.

And she writes, what does she write at some point? She looks at these Palestinians and the total disdain and then she says, after 60 minutes of arriving there, she already knew that this was no innocent village. And that was enough to make me forget my guilt over the poor family whose house was confiscated by the army. But that's not the real absurdity. I'm coming to her.

he looks at these soldiers, the most moral army in the word. And you know what she said? She says this in an article published in Israel. She says, they have to break into houses in the middle of the night, deal with crying babies and grandmother screaming with fear without losing touch with everything that's human in them. And then she starts crying. Can you believe it?

I mean, who can make this stuff up? I mean, it must be, you know, incredibly difficult on one's foot and ankle to have it so firmly placed on someone's neck. Yeah, it must be, morally, and to still hold on to humanity. And still hold on to your own humanity. Imagine those guards at Auschwitz, you know, what a struggle it would have been for them to hold on to their humanity. Yeah. But hey. Yeah.

I mean, and on the flip side of that, what I was referring to is there's a clip of an Israeli, just one of these pundits who says, you know, it's very interesting. Even in Nazi Germany, there were righteous Gentiles who hid Jews and all this. And there's a very interesting project, he calls it a project going on on X right now, you know, former Twitter. Some Israeli reporter or whatever did a survey of thousands of tweets by Gazans since October 7th, 2003. And although we found, although he found some condemning Hamas because they're upset at the war and the destruction of their homes and blaming them, he couldn't find a single righteous Gentile in Sodom. He literally said that. You know, it makes a biblical reference. A single Gazan who condemns the massacre on October 7th. And then he goes on to explain that these are human

animals and Trump's relocation policy is therefore an act of kindness so they can go be human beings somewhere and not human animals yeah well let me do you one more thing here about the moral army this is um again from hearts i think and um the israeli army has destroyed the perimeter of gaza they just destroyed now there's an article in the new york times this weekend on sunday on sunday paper about how the russian war in ukraine has destroyed not just you know houses and lives but but also the ecology. Right. You know, now, that's true.

It's also true that the Americans did the same thing in Vietnam. Not that I'm making any excuses for the Russians, but the destruction of the, you know, the Agent Orange and all the people are still getting cancer decades later. We don't talk about that so much. Right. The Russians do it. Well, that's a big topic.

But. Well, plants prefer it if they're complete eradication is for democracy. Right. If it's for freedom, then the players are like, Yeah. Yeah. So in this case, Israelis have destroyed all the agricultural land in Gaza, quite deliberately. Yes.

It's not just the question of killing people. They're also killing the ecology and the plants. And so I'm quoting an Israeli office. And Israel, I'm sure at some point we'll get much more reports from Israeli soldiers who are sickened about what they did. it'll happen it's already happening to some degree you don't hear much about it yet you're beginning to hear about it no they always do after it's safe to do so yeah i mean i feel like uh you're gonna see a big resurgence of uh people at breaking the silence um there's going to be a lot of new silence breakers uh coming out soon well let let you know and i'm not no i'm not against it at all

i'm not against it i i am especially after reading mohammed el kurd's book more sympathetic to the Palestinians who are not so sympathetic to it and who aren't so impressed by it and who aren't and who are weary and wary of the industry of you know the peace industrial complex that trots these soldiers out on international speaking tours as brave truth tellers yeah sure which on a certain level in the context of their own crazed society they are but that's a pretty low bar yeah so in this case they're talking about how the Palestinians come back, even though despite the shootings, they come back to pick these plants on their lands, you know, so that the officer said that the Pashtenians appeared

to want to pick edible plants growing in the area. There was Hubeisa, which is mallow, which is a kind of a seed-bearing plant, because no one went near there. People are hungry, so they come back with bags to pick Hubeza. And some got away with their food and their life. lives the officer said. Isn't that nice? Yeah, that's very nice. Some actually got away. Yeah, some lived. Yeah, some actually lived and they actually managed to carry some food with them. Yeah, what fun. Do you suppose the officer was actually lamenting that, though? We didn't manage to intercept them all. It's true. It's hard to know the tone. So then he says, the thing is at this point, the idea of really is fulfilling the public's wishes, which states there are no

innocence in Gaza. Oh, yeah. And in interview with the Guardian, the same officer said that the Hamas attack on October the 23rd, be in many Israelis feel, and need to pick up the gun. A lot of us went there. I went there because they killed us and now we're going to kill them. It's like we haven't killed them before. Right, yeah.

It all started on October the 7th, which reminds me of the old joke in Hungary. The fight started when the other guy hit me back, you know? It all began when they hit me back. So October 7 is like a unique event. There weren't murders of thousands of Palestinians before it israeli hands. Before the bombings where hundreds of children were killed. You know, a lot of us went because they killed us. Right.

You know, it's like, did history become forbidden, foreboughton to talk about history? Yeah, I mean, it seems so. And I wanted to... I'm sorry, Matt, but before I go, let me just finish it. And then he says, they killed us and now we're going to kill them. And he says, and I found out we're not only killing them, we're killing their wives, their children, the cats, their dogs. We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves. Now, you know what?

Why isn't this front page headline in the New Times, you know, and in all the North American press? and this recent, well, because the police could not, the police could not verify that this person really said that. The IDF could not verify that this was actually spoken and not by some Hamas operative who was planted in his voice box. That's right. I mean, they do hide everywhere. Who's to say they don't hide in someone's voice box? Or someone's word processor. This could have been a Palestinian bot. I mean, we all know Hamas propaganda is everywhere. It's even in children's entertainment. That's right.

You posted something, Matt, about how Miss Rachel, who's a YouTube children's star, is now being targeted by the Stop Anti-Semitism. Dot org, or whatever, dot org for being a Hamas agent. Yeah. Well, of course, I've been accused of being bought off, you know, and I just wish they would buy me off, and I could use the money. You know, then I'd donate to Gaza, you know, but nobody buys me off. I mean, I'm totally outraged.

You know, like when I was in medical practice, we talked about how the medical establishment has been bought off. And I'm saying, why can't they buy me off? You know? I have my rights. I have the right to be bought off like everybody else. Hamas hasn't actually paid me anything, and Qatar hasn't paid me.

It's pure anti-Semitism is what it is. Maybe it's because I'm a Jew, yeah. That's what it is. That's got to be what it is. It's interesting about, you know, this sort of allegation of like, so Stopantisemitism.org put out this photo from nursery rhymes to Hamas lines, Miss Rachel. It's not even a perfect rhyme.

Yeah, it doesn't, I mean, listen, that's not stop antisemitism.org's job. That's Ms. Rachel's job to do good rhymes. And they wrote a post, Stop Anti-Semitism is calling on Attorney General Bondi to investigate of Ms. Rachel is being funded by a foreign party to push anti-Israel propaganda to skew public opinion. This is all based on a video she did in which she did a prayer for all the children of the world and included Gaza. She has raised funds for the children of Gaza. She is a children's YouTuber. She sings children's songs.

And what I find interesting about this allegation is that, It presupposes that one would need to be paid to have empathy for Palestinian people. And it also seems to be a bit of a projection because, as we know on this show, at least, there are a lot of paid propagandists for the Israeli government. So, yeah, it's... Just, Matt, are you serious? I mean, do you mean that people are not just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts? You know, I, at one point, I'm shocked that you're sending to them.

It's shocking to believe, but it's true. Okay, I'll have to take your word for it. Yeah, believe me, I've been doing this for 99 episodes now. At this point, I can firmly say, the Israeli government sometimes pays people to lie, as shocking as that may be. I wanted to talk to you a bit about sort of your work as someone who, discusses trauma and specifically in this particular time of Israeli Hasbar, because as you know, trauma seems to be very much in the core of the explanation, so to speak, of Zionism and the project of Israel. So how do you walk the line, you know, between being sensitive to

someone's trauma and, you know, real or imagined, without being used for the sake of manufacturing, like, continued support for Israel. Yeah. Or continued indulgence. Yes. And of a kind of, well, it's going to take a lot of time and, you know, you have to be patient and all this kind of stuff that Palestinians certainly can't afford and should be asked to put out in that way.

Yeah. Well, look, I mean, there's no question that the Xenist movement in Eastern Europe arose out of deep trauma. People were threatened, and more than threatened, they were massacred and living under oppression. And, you know, the idea that there should be a state where we can be strong and defend ourselves and they should be in our historical homeland, so-called, it's hard not to understand that. I mean, not only they understand it, they used to share it. And for me, if I can generalize Zionism, for me, it wasn't just a political project.

It was also personal redemption. It made me, when I was a Zionist, not having been one, and growing up to a certain extent, there's an American psychologist, Ken Hardy, a black psychologist who talks about the assaulted sense of self. And in the book, Daniel and I co-wrote the myth of normal. We quote Dr. Hardy, and the auto-sensitive sense of itself, He's when the abused person, hey, there's that book.

Talk about privatism and product pushing. The French version just dropped. I saw on Instagram. I saw the first time I saw the cover, The Mite de la Normality. It was very exciting. Super cool. And the Arabic version just arrived last week.

Hell yeah. Yeah, it's been published now. Is there going to be a Hebrew version? There is. But we went with a radical press, right? Yeah, but it's going to be a Hebrew version, yeah. Yeah, cool. Good.

So where was I going with this? Ken Hardy, the assaulted sense of self. Oh, yeah, the assaulted sense of self. When the abused person or people take on to reveal themselves that the abuser had of them. So in growing up with anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, I mean, really vicious anti-Semitism. I'm not even talking about the murder of my family and my own infancy. by the way that's another one

sometimes when I'm that was a strange moment to burst into laughter yeah yeah well no not even talking about them wholesale eradication and extermination of my family actually speaking of that this reminds me of a joke no go on please

well it reminds me of this that sometimes when I'm described as a infant survivor of the Holocaust which my god I was someone is he was born in 19 44 how great of being a survivor and it was only an infant he doesn't remember anything you know i mean the idiocy is that people come up with yes of course you can i tell you about the person who asked me if my father was involved in the holocaust yeah oh yeah i was involved

deeply involved not only was i involved i almost died yeah you really put your back into it so um in fact well you know what this reminds me of I know we're going in circles here. This is what we do here. This is what we do. This is the point. This is why we have such low views. When I wrote my first book, Scattered Minds,

on attention deficit disorder, by the way, Matt, welcome to the club. I diagnosed you months ago. Oh, you were 100% correct. Yeah, of course I am. Most comedians of ADHD and ADHD and childhood trauma. Tell me what. But they all go together, you see.

It was a whole other conversation. Anyway, where was they going into this? I wrote that book. and scattered minds after I was diagnosed. And I talked about how, in my view, this condition is not an inherited genetic condition, but actually it's a response to the environment. And when parents are stressed, which my mother was, kids are stressed. And when you're stressed, when you deal with it is you tune out.

And this is when your brain is developing anyway. And I said this. I wrote this, and I described my own infancy, to make the point that a mother can have all the love they can possibly generate for a child, but still their stresses will show up in their child's psychological functioning. Sure. And I saw this to show, despite the greatest love that mothers have, when they're stressed, that gets through to the child.

Well, the Toronto Star reviewed the book and said, Matté blames his mother. So my mother was still alive at the time, and I said, Hey, Mom, the Toronto Star says you started the Second World War. My mother said, yeah, sure I did. They all say that. They finally found me. They finally found that.

Who started the second war was my mother? She was involved. Anyway, Kenneth Hardy, this assaulted sense of self. So going back to that, so I grew up with this assaulted sense of, as being a Jew as something to be ashamed of. And you're talking about life in Hungary after the war, under communist rule. I'm talking life in Hungary after the war where, where, Where in the bathroom, when two kids would piss into the urinal and their streams would cross, they say, because it's a made of a cross, they said a Jew just died.

Jesus. And I'd be standing right next to them. So this is what I grew up with. And I would have said in response, or did you say, you know, a Christian just got sprayed with their own piss? Well, so for me, Zionism was then not just sort of. of a sensible political cause where we should have a land of our own but also it was a personal redemption it made me proud to be to be Jewish so going back to your question about trauma yes Zionism to some significant degree was a trauma response um it was much more than that as well

it was also an ex sort of the last expression of the nationalist movements of europe and then becomes a colonial project which it had to be because It doesn't matter what you could say on behalf of Zionism, and there's lots of Jews that were opposed to it right from the beginning. Yes. You know that in 1895, there was a Polish spiritual Zionist, Asher Ginsburg, whose Hebrew name was a Hada-aham, which means one people. Or one of the people? Yeah, one-one. It might more accurately be translated as one-of-the-people.

Okay, one of the people, very good. And he wanted a spiritual homeland for the Jews, but not a state. And he saw, back in the late 1890s, a Jewish colonists that would buy the land from these absentee landlords and then push the Falaheen, the peasants of their land. And he said that if we, now this is when there's a few thousand Jews in Palestine. And he said that if we continue to treat the Arabs like this, all we're going to end up is one small levantine people tormenting another levanting people

and if this is the Messiah coming I don't want to see him arrive and the point I'm making is there was lots of Jews who could see what was coming way back then but necessarily the Zionist movement became a colonial movement I mean this word settler colonialism which everybody says is a slander and a blood libel the hell it was

They call them this colonists. You know, the Rothschild Colonial Project. That's what they called it, you know. And the New York Times has plenty of headlines talking about Jewish colonists and things like that. Exactly. But I want to just stress, it's not as if it started as a purely noble, romantic, abstract dream

and then later became the ugly side of colonialism. It was frankly racist from the start. These were mainly assimilated. white identifying, or at least white aspirational European Jews who were tired of being the Arabs of Europe who very much looked down on the Arabs of the Arab world. Oh, absolutely. And who disregarded their rights or their existence or their history. In British Columbia,

I'm laughing again. In British Columbia, there was a cabinet minister in our provincial government, who's Jewish, her name is Serena Robinson, who has the distinction, and she was minister of higher education. How this ignoramus becomes minister of higher education is a whole other story. But Serena Robinson expressed a humble opinion last year that prior to coming to the Jews, pastime was just a crappy little country. And lo and behold, after some days of outrage, she lost her position as Minister of Higher Education

I wish she screamed anti-semitism Is she even Jewish? She's Jewish and she's written a book now about anti-seminism in Canada and you know

Of course. Now her living You're quite the Jew, Mrs. Robinson. Where have you gone Mrs. Robinson? No. So, you know, so, you know, she says this because, yeah, so they looked upon this as a crappy little country and the indigenous population didn't matter. And of course, very quickly, they had to, their only way, I mean, Herzl went hat in hand to all the colonial pores in the world, the British, the Russians, the Turks, he would have made a deal with anybody.

Oh, and he wrote, the anti-Semitic countries will be our allies, will be our friends. because we have the same project. Get the Jews out of Europe. Yeah. So, and of course, the only way that this small minority of settlers could possibly have imagined becoming the dominant force in Palestine was by suppressing the local population, and that can only be done with colonial,

but the help of the imperial countries, which turned up to be after the first world of Britain. So to ask the question, flowing into the Zionist streams, not just trauma. You might say that's there, much reinforced after the Nazi genocide, but a strong element of colonialism. And at this point, I'm sick of hearing about the Jewish trauma. Yeah, that's good to hear. I mean, I recognize that it that is there, but it no longer explains what's going on.

Right. Because you look at colonists everywhere, guess what? The Spanish colonelists in Latin America did the same thing. Genocidal suppression and sheer robbery. And in the United States too. I mean, we also have this origin story based on this facade of, you know, oh, this was a country founded by the European, you know, British Protestants who were escaping persecution or just like, you know,

escaping persecution was what I was taught. growing up in terms of the origin of the United States. But isn't it some truth in that? I mean, of course there's some truth. And I think, you know, all of this, there's some truth. Europe was not sending its most privileged people to live in a backwater colony that was frozen half the year. A hundred percent.

I think, you know, the question is, is what does that trauma obfuscate? And I think that's something that must be a more delicate dance for someone like you who is sensitive to trauma. understands that like real or not, you know, people's, you know, ingesting all of this propaganda about, let's say, you know, 40 beheaded babies or babies in ovens or mass systemic rape. People are repeating these, you know, lies that have been debunked, not just by, you know, leftist. Not just by your son. Not just by your second son.

Yes, but also, you know, the Israeli government has, you know, said, oh, well, we were mistaken about the 40 beheaded babies or the baby in the oven or... Yeah, you were mistaken about the killing of the medical workers three days ago. Right. Sorry. Now that there's a video, that turns out we were mistaken. Before the video, they were just terrible. But there wasn't even a sorry in this case. There was a sorry in the case of the World Central Kitchen.

Right. Yes. But in this case, it was like, well, they didn't have their lights off. Right, exactly. Oh, they did? Well, what I meant to say was that six of them are Hamas. So do you believe us now? I know we lied all the other times, but this time we're telling you. Were you in the middle of a question or can I? I was. So I just wanted to say, you know, as someone who's attuned to trauma and someone who's trying to not shut it down, when someone, whether or not those stories are real, which they aren't, someone. might in good faith believe them. And so, you know, I recently saw a video of you talking, you know, you were giving a conference and there was a Q&A and someone was asking, you know, the question that a lot of Israeli propagandists and as bars do, which is like, you know,

how should I feel empathy for these animals of October 7th and then listed all these other things? and you, I think, were, you were great at, you know, recognizing their trauma. But at some point, you have to just, like, how do you deal with the fact that this is, it's being exploited, that this type of trauma is being used to cause death and damage and more trauma on the Gossans? How do you do that without being dismissive of trauma? Yeah, well, so when I said, I'm sick of hearing about Jewish trauma. I didn't mean that in a journalist's sense. No, of course.

I meant very specifically as an excuse for what we're doing to the Palestinians. Of course. And there's many layers to that. And there's no question to me. There's no question in my mind that here in the West, there is multi-generational Jewish trauma. And specifically for the children of Holocaust survivors, it's extremely difficult not to identify with Israel as the solution to their parents' suffering.

Right. You know, and furthermore, they grow up in a context where this trauma is constantly reinforced and where we're constantly presented with everybody's always against us. Right. And so that, and so that, the huge trauma, it exists, it's real, I see it. I heard it in the voice of that woman who asked me that question at that conference. There's also no question that October 7th was a traumatic event for a lot of Jews and a lot of Israelis. I mean, we can't deny that, you know, whatever historical understanding we bring to it,

we can't deny that that was a huge traumatic event for a lot of people. It was probably meant to be. I mean, probably it was intended as such. they wanted to strike a critical blow to the Israel. I mean, I shouldn't psychoanalyze the perpetrators, but there's a sense in which striking back and letting and piercing this veil of invulnerability and shaking the Israeli psyche had to be in the mix.

Yeah. In any case, so they answer the question about trauma, You know, one has to, when one is growing, you know what the problem is? It's so difficult to stay empathetic. Yeah. In the face of these lies. Yes. And the face of these horrors.

In the face of these daily perpetrations that our media doesn't even cover. Mm-hmm. You know, and you know this. And your heart is broken every day. And you're outraged every day. and if you speak about it, you're seen as a self-hating Jew or as an anti-Semite non-Jew.

And so then how do you maintain your empathy for the genuine trauma that sometimes infuses some of that commentary? Well, I think that's the brunt of your question. Yeah. Really difficult, but the long term is that you can stay empathic about that, but not for a moment to cater to it. Yes.

And the other point is, And Naomi Klein has made this point, is that it's, people are being traumatized by the narratives being given, but they're being given. That's what it means to be a Jew. And as to what the Holocaust means. I mean, Israeli kids don't grow up traumatized by the Holocaust. They get traumatized by Holocaust education and the way it's done there. And I think that's also true for a lot of North American Jews. And Naomi, when we had her on the show, spoke about how she remembers growing up.

There was a conscious decision on the behalf of Canadian and American Jewish educators to make Holocaust education more, quote unquote, immersive, which is to say more viscerally upsetting and with decontextualized experiential assaults on a child's sense of self, you know? that that assaulted sense of self was not perpetrated by others, yeah, by others. It was perpetrated deliberately to instill a kind of almost pre-verbal, not pre-verbal, but certainly pre-critical thinking skills. Absolutely. You know, visceral attachment to cathexis with whatever you want to,

whatever psychological terms you want to use with this regime. Well, with victimhood, you know, identification. the victimhood um i want to jump to something else if i could you can i i want to i want to ask you about some feedback you gave us yeah which feels which feels organic related to what we just talked about do you want to go to what you want to talk about next first and we can come back to no yeah no let's talk about it now so okay so um we but please do remember what you wanted to talk about okay that well i'm not going to um So after our last, not our last episode, a couple episodes ago, we put out a parody

song that I'm responsible for. I wrote it based, what's that? And we've done a lot of these parody songs before. This is just for anyone listening who hasn't heard it. It was called Happy Tikva. And it was my response to a news story, which is perennial, about where Israel places. It's always in the top 10 on the world's happiest countries in India. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the three of us, me Adam and Matt, were just kibitzing about this. Uh, not kibbutzing, but kibbutzing. Uh, and, uh, and, uh, um...

Hey, Daniel, you know what? When you were a kid, used to make jokes and I used to rate them, you remember that? I do, I do. I never got a 10. And I never gave you a 10. This is how I became a compulsive. This is the trauma, but I'm not even joking. And I'm so sorry. A compulsive punter. I'm so sorry, you know, because you made such wonderful jokes, but I'll give you a 10 for this kibbutz, kibbutz one, okay? Oh, no, no, no, no, please save it for the better. You gave me a 10 for, I don't think kibbutz and kibbitts is even. All right, I'll give it a, it's a six.

It's a six and a half. Take the one you gave me. I'm just being the guilty parent here. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, be discerning. But I mean, but, but, but don't be a prick. And I apologize for, but, you know, because there are tens, there are tens that are warranted sometimes and you wrote to me excitedly when I said a few episodes ago that, you know, we, uh, we don't negotiate with terrorists. We terrorize negotiators. Now that, I gave you a 10 out of

10. That is a 10. I will take the 10. I love, I love that you rated him. That's so funny. And it explains his constant punning. Now every time he does it, I'm going to picture you and his head going six. Yeah, exactly. I was really a harsh. And, and then, And then I would say, but can I get better? And I'd say, well, you should appeal to higher authority. And then I would say, who's the higher authority? And I'd say, I am. The poor guy couldn't.

It was fucking Kafkaesque. Take my notes. You want to hear a joke I made up at age six or something that he gave me a nine for? He wouldn't eat in. It's not actually, it's not funny. But I think it's very. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great one.

It's great. I mean, it's not a ha-ha joke, but for a child to come up with it. I'm excited. As a comedian right now, I got my... Matt, what's the difference between you and a cannibal? Yeah. I don't know. The cannibal eats what you are.

No, no, no, no, dad, please. You are what you eat, but the cannibal eats what you are. Yeah, that's it. You are what you eat, but a cannibal eats what you are. For one and a half year, that was fantastic. That was not one and a half. Well, right. He sang, you were six, so it was one six less good.

Anyway, back to this song. Okay. So happy Tikva. Yes. And you finally heard it when we released it on Instagram, I think, as a reel or something like that. Yeah. And you wrote to me immediately, this is last week.

And you said, look, I'm coming on your show next week. And I have to tell you, like, you do great work on the show. And solid, solid nines out of tens. Yeah, sometimes. Hey, Matt, I also gave you, unbeknownst to you, I gave you a 10 out of 10 as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For which one? Yeah, because Daniel apparently wrote to you,

that he researched the history of Poren in which 75,000 Persians were massacred. And Daniel said... And the Jews banqueted and feasted afterwards. It's in there. Yeah. And so we kill all these Persians. And then we feast and we banqueted.

And Daniel said that this is a very genocidal holiday. And you said, yes, but do you condemn Hamman? Yeah. You know, that's a 10 out of 10. You know what? He texted me back, Gabor says 10 out of 10. And I didn't know how important that rating system was until this very moment. And now I am honored.

I am honored. Yeah. Well, there you go. Anyway, go back to where we're talking about. Right. So you gave a particular, you gave this song less than a 10 out of 10. And not only that, but you were disturbed or offended or concerned or at least made very uncomfortable.

I think uncomfortable was your word, not that you were offended. but you were concerned about it and it sat badly with you. And there was a particular line that stuck in your craw, which was near the end when Deliverit goes, Life is a non-stop desert techno festival. Maybe next year will be number three. And then we proceeded to have a bit of a back and forth about it. And I think I took it well.

But I invite, during the course of that, I invited you to come on the show. Well, we knew we were coming on. You were coming on. But we could discuss it as part of this. because it is a question for me of, is there such a thing as going too far? Or, you know, like, what is that line between something and something else?

Anyway, why don't you tell me how you felt about that and why? And if you still feel that way, and we can have a conversation about it. Well, look, Techno Festival in the desert is where a lot of people were killed. Right. And I get it after I talked to you. I actually thought that's what you're referring to, but it turns out that you weren't. You were talking more about how Israel is kind of revel in this. But I still think it was an unfortunate line and highly sensitive

because people were killed and innocents were killed. However, it's not that Hamas could have planned to do that. How the hell did they know that there's going to be a techno festival that day, but they chanced upon it. whether there was Hamas or other Palestinianians and they killed the innocent people. And so to make a joke about that, I think is in bad taste. And it does, it's not a good look. First of all, I think it's insensitive and kind of cold means.

I can't believe you just use the phrase, not a good look. That's such a contemporary internet-generated phrase-lang phraseology. I love it. Well, I may be old, but I'm not totally in, you know, dead yet you know yeah but but probably from your kids texting you about a hundred times a year being like dad that's not a good look so but but quite apart from not being a good it's not a good look but quite apart from not it's insensitive and i think mean-spirited you know i still think so and i wish you would drop it now i don't mind you by i don't mind you

satirizing hatifa i've always said for a long time now that the israelis stole the land from the the Palestinians, the national anthem from the Czechs. Yes. Because the, because the, the tomb comes from Smetana's Moldau. That's right. And then the national dance from the Romanians, which is a horror, you know. But I don't mind you guys. And the food from the Arabs. And the food from the Arabs. Absolutely. The humus from the Arab. You know, do you condemn hummus, by the way? Yes, of course we do. I think you said that before. Oh, we definitely have.

But I think that line in the context of October 7th was insensitive and I didn't like it. I don't like it now, even if it's a better explanation for it. Well, so I just need to cop to something, or at least clarify, it's not that I exclusively meant it that way. And when I wrote it, it immediately had a much bigger meaning. But it's not that I didn't mean it that way either. Oh, so you're going to cop to it. You're going to say partially that you were thinking of that? Oh, it was not lost on me at all.

Oh, I see. So the double meaning wasn't just unintentional, but the intention was broader. And at the time, I said to myself, you know what, this broader, because you asked earlier, Dad, what are we supposed to do with, you know, these horrors and how can, there's another face to it, too, the ugliness. I have never seen a society so ugly and reprehensible. and just downright toxic, in my lifetime at least, an entire society, it's a tiny country that's completely rotted its culture. Genocide is a mainstream as, as, I'm not justifying

anything. I'm just explaining my emotional, you know, starting block. Norman Finkelstein talks about how it's not a state, the genocide is not a state project anymore. It's a national project. And that's true. And then, hold on, this is my turn. So the, and then you have the, I don't do that with other guests, Matt, if you've noticed. No, you just steamroll them and then they stop talking. Yeah, that's right. Just kidding. What are you, a YouTube commenter?

But. By the way, people, this is what a conversation between three people with ADD looks like. Yes, yes. Luckily, our entire audience also has ADD, so they're having a touch. So it's a completely toxic culture. I mean, you want to talk about a toxic. It's a toxic national culture. It's a failed state.

It's a lunatic state. Plus, it sells itself, and part of its ugliness is the aggressiveness and zeal and vim and vigor and total conviction and lack of self-awareness and just aesthetic tackiness with which it and massive amount of resources with which it sells its crimes to the world or obfuscates them or whatever. And part of that image is young, nubile people dancing to techno music. There are millions, not millions, there are hundreds of TikToks posted by Israeli soldiers of themselves dancing.

What are they always dancing to? Techno in the desert, jumping up and down, an Israeli DJ, the clubs. It's a huge part of the self-image. And to me, that's part of the broader context. Now, it just so happens in a horrible piece of historical irony that right on the border of the concentration camp that Israel has created and maintains with murderous intensity and vigilance in Gaza, which happened to be breached that one day in what I will always say, the breach itself was heroic, never mind what happened afterwards. There's something absolutely and undeniably heroic about it. There happened to be an actual literal desert techno festival happening that sold itself as about love and peace and connection and ayahuasca

and whatever else the fuck was going on there. Okay? And yeah. Innocence. Do I perceive you have some strong emotions about this? Yeah. And did I predict that you were going to say something about my emotional stage just now? Yes.

Thank you. That's one of your little therapeutic tricks. No, no, I do. I'm just glad to be here. I do. And I'm guessing that a lot of people listening do too. I don't think I'm just speaking for me. And I'm fully willing to own it. And there was rage in that joke. There was rage in that lyric. And there was contempt and there was disgust. But there was also heartbreak, you know, because the fact is Israel puts its own hostages, which is its entire citizenry right in that position and in that indefensible position. And so it even throws the question of quote unquote innocence into question. I'm not saying, what it sounds like I'm saying, I'm not saying every Israeli deserves to be massacred. Sure.

But in a citizen army country, anyway, you get what I'm saying. So the joke was coming from all of those places at once, and it deliberately included, it was like a, it was an apple that contained a razor blade in it, and maybe you bite on it,

and maybe you don't. And I also figured, well, maybe no one's really listening to this podcast, and, and, but I did, one night I have to tell you,

I might have been in an altered state, I had a paranoid before you wrote to me, Dad, before you wrote to me. And Matt can attest to this because I texted him and Adam. I think we should take it down. I think this might be the thing that gets me assassinated. Like I think not to give any listeners any ideas, but I was really, you know, and then I think the next day or two days later you wrote to me and I joked them, ah, you see where the paranoid voice in my head comes from?

Yes. Anyway, that's my, you know, from the point of view of the author, I'm curious to hear from the point of view of Matt, who is a professional comedian and who started this podcast, what's your take on, can comedy go too far? Yeah, comedy can, of course, go too far. I think it's, you know, there's been a lot of discourse about, you know, being allowed to joke about stuff. And I'm not one of those comedians who lives in that grievance space where it's like,

oh, we can't even joke anymore about this or that. my thought has always been you can joke about whatever you want but the way jokes work is that if it does not elicit the response that you wanted you kind of judge it based on what the ratio is if the majority of people you know uh enjoy it uh then usually you can feel good about it but if it comes at the expense of a minority of people then obviously it can still be considered wrong you can't like punching up versus punching down? Not even. I don't really even consider it that. I consider it like if someone says something isn't funny, sometimes there is a valid reason for that. And so it can go too far for individuals.

Now, when I first heard you talking about this when you were in your paranoia, I just assumed, and I think you were assuming this as well, was that like, Hatikva, you know, being the Israeli national anthem, it might offend a lot of Israelis. That was part of it too. It wasn't just that line. The whole thing seemed to me maybe, you know, it's a song that comes out of trauma and Israelis are going to be, they're just going to see red and. Right. But in, in, so I, when you said that, I was like, okay, I, I had researched Hatikva before this. And I was like, well, they, Israelis didn't write Hatikva or they wrote, they didn't write the melody that it's based on. It's itself a parody song. Just like most national.

anthems are essentially a parody song. Just change the lyrics around and make it about America. Do you know what the Hungarian National Anthem says? Oh, is it? Oh, it's the most amazing. Yeah. Like when a you know, when a Frenchman or a French woman, French person wins the gold medal, the Olympics, it's

you know, children of glory, you know? Sure. The Marseillaise, right? Yeah. And the Russians have this beautiful National Anthem. Yeah. And the Americans, you know, non-no, you know, Hungarian wins the gold medal. He stands on the podium, and the national anthem ends with, for this people, has already suffered enough for the sins of the past and the future.

I love that. I love that. Self-pity. And you know what? When you read the Marseillaise, it's a filthily bloodthirsty anthem, if you ever read the words to it. And if you read the second and third verses of the Star-Spangled Banner, too, there's some really... Yeah, it gets a little wild in there. I love... I love that the Hungarian National Anthem is like, do not judge us by our past, nor our future.

Yeah, well, yeah, we've already spoken enough, you know. And so national anthems were there to be satirized. Yeah. You know, having said that, Daniel, I totally heard the emotion that you're still now. And not only do I hear it, I share it. Yeah. Okay. So it's not the rage, you know, and talk about ugly. Gideon Levy wrote an article once about how he spent his whole career

trying to show the Israelis how ugly they are, trying to hold a mirror up to their ugliness. This is from an Israeli. So you're not saying anything to me in any way shocking. question is what do we do with that and and I still think that it's in bad taste and the impulse to stick it the impulse to stick it to them where that hurts yeah is wrongheaded and you know the the moment that I started to come around to not to necessarily to exactly the way you see it because I still think you heard it a particular way but you heard that element but at least to softening my view and to the

thought that maybe that wasn't the best possible line. Like from a craft point of view, that matters more to me, oh, am I going to offend some people? It's like, did, or was it lazy? Was that the first thought that can, because being a musical theater writer, it's not, musicals are never written, they're rewritten. And I've had to rewrite many lyrics that I would have sworn at the time can't be better. And it always can be better.

So I was out on Sunday night with my friend, Noam Schuster Eliassi, who's been on our show, who's Israeli, grew up in Nevis Shalom. She's the subject of this film Coexists My Ass, which I know you've heard of, Dad. Yeah, and I wish I could go to there. I was asked to go to the screening in Vancouver in May, but you're going to be here in New York. But I'll be out of town, yeah.

By the way, folks, Matt, if you can advertise your events, we'll put a link to your events. Yeah, but no, anyway, I'll come back to that later. Go on there. And I was talking to her about it, because I already checked with Hadar, and she said, I'm not offended by it. So I checked with Noam.

And she said, you can say anything. You know, like really, no one's going to notice, or if they do, fuck them. And Israel's disgusting right now. But the question is, is it funny? Is it as funny as it could be? So I said, well, let's, you know, I had helped her with some of her jokes before, like kind of workshopping some ideas. I said, what do you think?

Let's toss some ideas back and forth. And she said something about a pride parade. And I was like, oh, life is a nonstop. Military pride parade. Yeah. That works at least as well. Right. Yeah.

And she said, wouldn't you, she said, wouldn't you rather stick it to the, like, you know, genocidal gays in Tel Aviv than the, then the, then a bunch of drugged out kids in the, you know, and to the state of Israel for pinkwashing its crimes? I was like, yeah, maybe. So I just want to finish my point real quick, which is that, like, when it came to what you were. Hold, hold on. What are the actual real estate?

hopes of any of us finishing any point. I mean, we're at a 0% chance that anyone's going to finish any point. But I mean, also, that's what a podcast is for. You never finish your point. You just make another episode. This is edging.

This is comedy edging. Yes. So, I understood your paranoia to be about whether or not doing a parody song of a national anthem was okay. And I was like, that's totally fine. And, you know, I, I'm pretty sensitive and attuned to a lot of things

that could be misconstrued as, you know, offensive. And in this case, you know, I personally did not read that line as being about Nova. And I'll say this about it. The reason why I enjoyed that line very much is because of the way in which Israel markets itself. And, and And, you know, Daniel touched on those points previously. But like this, it's the idea of the entire country as being a nonstop desert techno festival. Yes. Like, and that image itself, I feel like is kind of, I don't know, it permeates through this podcast. Whenever we are doing, you know, showing videos and people doing content, people doing Hasbara, people's personal trips.

it's it's this constant like yeah it's this they're constantly selling this idea of israel as a place where you know we're just free and we dance and everyone hates us but we dance even though they hate us and this kind of like completely non-introspective supremely confident you know sort of proudly oblivious proudly oblivious kind of thing you know and so for me it's like breaking through to that, you know, and commenting on that is what I got from it. And that's not to invalidate you and your feelings about it. As it turns out, you know, Daniel did have a little bit of that in his head as well. A little bit. So you weren't wrong. You guys are just simpatico. You guys. As to catatizing Israelis, and I know you guys have hit Israelis on

who are very critical and opposed to and appalled by what their country is doing. But let me read you one here. This is actually, you mentioned Daniel Berenboeim and your spin, what's a spin, Daniel, this morning? So last year I spoke in Berlin at the Berenboin Saeed Academy. And this academy was started by Daniel Baranboy, a musician, and his Palestinian friend, the great Edward Saeed. And... Who's daughter, Najla, we've had on the show.

That's right. Yeah. That's right. And I met some Israelis where I was in Berlin. And I'm going to quote you one of them just to show. And I think it's important to keep this in mind, because it's so hard. in the midst of all this, not to take on a kind of view of everybody as being by the same, tarred by the same brush.

And this person writes, the oscillation and the grief, the outrage, despair has been my lot for months, and I have felt illness come of it too. For me, there's also been deep shame and guilt for having been part of the system. I could say I didn't know better, when I was a young person, and this would be true.

But I keep imagining a less forgiving tribunal, and the new levels of depravity and cruelty keep shocking me back to a state of stunned guilt every time, and I just want to scream in horror. How can humans do this? How can it be so blind and so evil? So here's an Israeli who grew up in that system, who served in the army, who was propagandized the same way.

And they still found and are finding their humanity. And all those emotions that you expressed, Daniel, they share as well. And we know that there's such people. And I know that you know there are such people. I live with one. But I think we have to keep reminding ourselves. Yeah. And that touches on something that I'm glad we can end this segment on.

There's a line from a very fine movie called The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Yes, I've seen it, yeah. And near the end of the movie, one of the characters says, you don't get to hate something unless you love it. Now, I don't love the state of Israel. But I was educated to love it at my Zionist summer camp that for some reason you sent me to, but that's a whole other conversation. And I lived there.

And I grew up, in that environment at least, soaked like you know baklava cake in honey in a love of that land of milk and honey and we would sing Hatikva every Friday on Shabbat once a week we would raise the Canadian and we would raise the Israeli flag

every day but sing like labor socialist songs but on Friday we'd sing the two national anthems and the emotion the collective emotion that I was a part of even if I was uncomfortable especially as I got older and learned more with the nationalism and the lyrics of Hatikva Nefesh Yehudi, Homia, the Jewish soul yearns

you know, looks to the east to be, you know, Liotam Khovshi Berzhenu to be a free people in our own land and we would learn and Israelis would teach this to us and the sentiment or the emotion of it went into my body and it's still there

even if I have a very different relationship with it. And part of my rage is a rebellion against that and a kind of part, there's a part of me that has not forgiven the, not just that I was taught a pack of lies, but that I don't get to feel that way anymore. No, I think I totally get it.

And I think what you're talking about is grieving here. Yes. Because after I stopped being a Zionist, which is decades ago, but I missed the same. I miss some of the very beautiful Hebrew songs. And you know what? I'll confess.

On my cell phone, I have some Israeli music from the 60s that I still love, you know? And I wish I could still share in that dream. You know, because as dreams can be ugly or beautiful. This is a beautiful one, but dreams also. At least the dream when experienced from one and only one point of view. I was going to say dreams exclude reality. Yeah. you know and um so i i i totally get it and and and i you know the the the feeling of it

and and one one misses that and and and um i still wish i wasn't like that you know yeah yeah but it is like that and we have to deal with how it actually is as marlowe said on the wire you want it one way but it's the other way that's the other way that's right exactly Can I jump to something else? Oh, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll jump to something else. Oh, so we still have time. Okay, good.

Yeah, yeah, we still have time. But we do need to take a quick break. That was, I think, a great button on a conversation. You know, sometimes even though Hatikva is a parody song, you know, I understand Daniel's attachment to it. Sometimes I cry when I hear Amish Paradise by Weird Al Yankovic. so I've been there but we need to take a quick commercial break do you sometimes look at your wife and realize she's very plain that's right never not never never so please everyone

stick around because we will be right back and we're back bad as barra world's most moral podcast. I'm here with Daniel's dad. How are you doing, Dr. Gabor Matte? I'm doing very, very well. Are you glad you decided to do this podcast? Yes, I am. And actually, you know what? In Arabic, often they talk about somebody as somebody's father, like Abu. I'd be called Abu Daniel. Oh, well, I'm happy to start calling you Abu Daniel. That's a beautiful, that's a beautiful name. And then Daniel... Come to think of it, it's the opposite in Hebrew, right? Daniel Ben, Chimdavid, which is your Hebrew name.

They do that too, son of. They do that too, yeah. I love it. I like that it's more reciprocal. Yeah. So we wanted to ask you, you... Well, you've been at this a long time. And in some of my earliest political awakening memories, at least, were watching you take

shit from the Vancouver and more broadly Canadian. Jewish community, which revealed itself to be a, you know, a festering hotbed of idiocy and dishonesty. I'm sorry, let me, let me, I just, I'm remembering that it was just so disgusting. My, you know, my first, my first exposure to the ugliness of Zionism was in the shit you took and the deplatforming and blacklisting and censorship. Those times have changed, but I'm sure you're still getting a lot of pushback. I know you are, including within the realm of you doing trauma work and education about a whole bunch of topics. What's that been like for you? And can you share with us some of them more maybe infuriating or whatever you want to say

about the pushback you get? What are the kinds of pushback you get that? Sure, but before I do, and I say this with some hesitation, but can I give you guys a joke I came over it last night? Hell yeah. Only if we can rate it. Only if I can rate it. I was going to say you can rate it, you know? It's good.

Because you just mentioned all the crap that I've taken over the years. So I was saying that the ADL speaks so much, the anti-deformation league speaks so much crap that somebody should find an anti-defication league. Hey. What are you going to give me for that one? That's at least an 8.5. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I was hesitating, but there it is. Solid, solid B plus. For a first draft, amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Amazing.

Because I'm hoping to start a new career. It's a stand-up comics. So what fine varietals of shit have you been sampling lately? Yeah, what kind of defecation? What are the flavor notes? So someone is just like direct. Like, I was talking about trauma and lifelong trauma and, you know, nothing to do with Palestine.

And somebody writes, this man is a total terrorist jihadist. Never listened to anything this horrible man has to say. Are you reading the comments again, Dad? Well, I did this time. This time. This has been going on for years. I've been telling you about the comments.

I admit it. I read some of the comments. Okay, but in terms of the pushback, so here's some favorite ones. So some people will say, he should stay in his lane. He knows about addictions or trauma, but what does he know about Palestine?

okay well i think that's a great that's not his expertise you don't have a degree in middle eastern studies okay i think that's a great line and i think that should be applied across the board and if it was no rabbi and no uh professor's psychology and no politician and no anybody should have the right to say anything about anything right they don't have a degree in and this will be so much better and so if if everybody who doesn't have a degree degree in this stuff. The difference is I've actually studied this stuff. I read, I'm steeped in Zionist, steeped in Zionist literature, steeped in the non-Zionist Israel literature, actually have some basis. But if we apply the rule that unless you have, this is your lane, you shouldn't

talk about it, then who exactly would be authorized to talk about this issue? So I love that one. Yeah. Well, that's the point of that kind of gatekeeping, it seems, like the point of saying, I mean, it's funny to say it to you. It makes more sense to say it to like Daniel or I, but, you know, with you, credentials-wise, it's kind of hard to argue that you have no basis with which to speak on the issue of Israel-Palestine. But, yeah, it seems to be just a way of gatekeeping. I mean, it's like, no, the only people who are allowed to talk about it are Israelis and

those who agree with Zionism. Certainly not Palestinians. They don't know anything. Right, exactly. Well, they're terrorists, so yeah, they immediately, you know, disregard anything a Palestinian has to say, anything an Arab has to say. One of the funniest things I've noticed just regarding that is when Israelis are arguing that they are not a racist state. And then someone says, well, I mean, you know, the U.N. just said this, that or the other about a genocide or about ethnic cleansing about that. And they'll just go, well, yeah, of course they would say that.

They're filled with Arabs. And it's like, well, that's, you understand, you have to understand that's racist. You just did a racism right there, this automatic assumption that because they are simply because they're Arab that they're going to be against Israel is. And not only that, you know, the whole historical argument, the UN created the state. And, you know, right. Well, either we take the UN seriously or we don't. Right.

If we take it seriously, then why don't we follow all the UN resolution? or in Palestine, in which case none of this horror would be happening. All right. Why don't we follow a single one? Yeah. If you don't take it seriously, then don't trot out this nonsense about what happened in 1947, you know? Anyway, the next point I was going to make with this argument about, you don't have to live

with the consequences of your point of view. You can criticize this. But, you know, I said, I love that one. I think everybody who doesn't have to live with the consequences, should not. shut up about it. That means all the politicians in North America, all the journalists, all the opinion makers, the columnists, the rabbis, the professors, all of them. None of us who live in Palestine, which also means, by the way, nobody has the right to say anything about Ukraine or Russia. Nobody has the right to say anything about Sudan. Nobody has the right to say anything

about Vietnam or anything unless you live there and you have to live with the consequences of it. Because actually, when you think about it, all the cheerleading that is a Gets from North American Jewish organizations, they don't have to live with the consequences of it. No. If anybody pays the price on the Jewish side is the Israelis. That's right. You know, let alone the Palestinian.

So I love these arguments that are, you know, which also means that comedians like Mayan Bialik and whose great, great grandfather wrote this amazing poem called City of Slaughter, about but the Kishinaf programs. Hayun Nakhman Bialik was a great Yiddish poet. And you wrote this poem about, by the way. And before the internet goes on a hunt, yes, you've been on my MBLX podcast, yeah, years ago. I was on her podcast, and I really liked her. Yeah, to promote Myth of Normal.

Yeah, and it's still on YouTube, the great conversation. And when it comes to this issue, we couldn't be further apart. You and I were both separately on the podcast. of Dahlia Kurtz, who recently went on a jihad against, and I'm sorry to use that word, but a fatwa, I guess, against Eve Engler, the Montreal activist, and got him arrested and hooked up over the weekend. That's right.

Yeah. No, the reason I'm looking for here is... You're looking for Bealeck's poem? Yeah. Oh, it's incredible. I remember you read it at last year's Seder. Yeah. if you actually

read the... I can find it online, Adad, if you like. Yeah, the first few lines, it's about Gaza. What's his first name, Nachman? Haim Nachman, Bialik. The poem is called City of Slaughter. Rise now and go to the city of slaughter. Into its courtyard, wind thy way. There with thine own hand, touch, and with the eyes of thine hand.

Behold on tree, on stone. on fence on mirror clay the splattered blood and dried brains of the dead this is

about Kishinev the program where Jews were killed it's also about Gaza you know anyway

so so people like Bialik and Bill Maher and all the other all the other big Maher's out there thank you Two, eight, nine, nine, nine, at least nine.

Nine, nine, nine, one, thank you. We talk about it. Let's all stop talking about it. Right, yeah. Because none of us have to live with the consequences of the opinions. And their opinion, and this is what they don't realize. They really don't get, is that their opinion, they think we're the enemies of Israel and the enemies of the Jews. They don't get that history.

speaking, what they're advocating for, it's going to be a total disaster. It already is for the Palestinians, but it's going to be a terrible disaster for the Jews and for the citizens of Israel. It's going to only lead to something terrible in the future. And they're cheering it on. They're cheering it on. They're pushing it, they're advocating for it, and they think they love that country. And actually, they're behaving like the enables of an addict who's destroying themselves. Yes. That's what they don't get.

Yeah, I've used that comparison, you know, many times. This enabling nature of the sort of American Zionist, the way in which they, yeah, the constant cheerleading to the detriment of not just, you know, Israelis, like in some sort of theoretical future sense, but, you know, to the point in which you have the, uh, these groups that are representing, uh, hostages, uh, who are currently still in captivity in Gaza are saying, hey, your rhetoric is harmful to our family members who are still there. Uh, and they just... Also, your bombs are harmful. Well, right, of course. Where your rhetoric is harmful. Well, that's the whole thing is that, you know, as I think, you know, saying it without saying it, which is as far,

as I think a lot of these, you know, groups can go is they're just going, you're going to directly, you know, contribute to this continued war machine and to the death of my family. Not to mention this accusation that the hostages are sometimes hungry, you know. That's right. Sometimes. Denying the right, you know, um, oh yeah, speaking of food, okay, I want to mention one more absurdity. oh sure if then we want to play you in absurdity yeah yeah so the new york times had an article when Palestinian kids there were photographs on youtube and and TikTok of Palestinian kids the skeletal bodies starving infants the new york times had an article

in their Sunday section in their Sunday um edition of a caviar farm in Israel where they um grow fish and they harvest caviar and how despite the war the workers at this caviar farm still kept diligently going to work to make sure that the caviar exports can still continue and this was a full-page article on this freaking caviar farm in Israel while Palestinians were starving to I mean, can you think of a greater absurdity? It's like zone of interest, fish edition, you know? Exactly right. It's, well, you know, everyone's literally eating caviar while, you know, thousands of

Gazans are being murdered on a daily basis. It's just, it's insane. And, you know. Our hatchery is awful fish. They're hatcheries are for terror. That's right. They are hiding. Hamas, indistulgent.

Speaking of fish, can you tell everyone the one Hebrew phrase you know? Oh, yeah. I studied Hebrew once. I remember one sentence. What is it? It says, Ani da Godot, which means I'm a big fish. And I was told in Israel, that's the only phrase you need to know. Wherever you go, I'm a big fish.

Yeah, I'm, hey, I need dog Godot. Oh, okay. but you know you we've talked about this a lot on this podcast uh you know this and again it is not to center uh in any way uh jewish feelings or like uh our future trauma as being somehow more important or uh worthy of talking about than Palestinian trauma but this idea of like these people like Bill Maher and whatnot this constant cheerleading is also bad for the Jews. And to me, the Miss Rachel thing is a perfect example.

Because Miss Rachel is someone who's got millions upon millions of viewers. It's completely non-political. I mean, it is children's song. And rather impressionable viewers, too. Yeah, exactly. Very impressionable. Viewers who are still forming their view of the world. Right.

And so all I can think of is. is like at some point and parents and as a parent I love Ms. Rachel because she teaches my daughter things that I'm too busy podcasting to teach her myself

and I not only that she does it in a way that you probably couldn't like exactly the music 100% I mean I could do it I could do music but I don't have the time

that taught her his daughter ABC but it was like all ironic yeah yeah yeah It was a parody song. But, you know, so like millions of parents, millions of toddlers watching this person. And not only did stuff antisemitism.org tried to, like, go after her for her, you know, pro-Gaza stuff. But there are literally, it starts, we are calling on attorney general Bondi to investigate Miss Rachel. This idea.

And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, that putting Ms. Rachel in Guantanamo for anti-Semitism will not stop anti-Semitism. In fact, it might spread antisemitism. Oh, you're kidding me. You mean you think that Jews seeming to support a genocidal psycho state at this point might spread anti-Semitism?

Oh, and then operating in back rooms, in the legal system to control who can and can't speak. I mean, imagine a little toddler being, Mommy, what happened to Miss Rachel? Well, there was a group of people who didn't like her. What are they called? What were their names? Yes.

And I'm sorry, but if you ask any parent in the United States to choose between abandoning Miss Rachel and being Hamas, you're going to get everyone to choose to be Hamas. Moss. I'm sorry, Miss Rachel is too good at what she does. To frame it in that way seems to me almost

deliberately made to isolate the Jewish people, to isolate anyone who you know, it just seems like at this point, this is not, stop antisemitism. This is spreading antisemitism.

It's like, it's almost... You know what this reminds me of? There was this comedian and who once said, I have this irrational fear of clowns. I don't understand it. Could it be that when I was five years old, I went to a circus and a clown shot my father dead? Could it be because? Yeah, could it be because?

Yeah, I have this irrational fear of clans. I don't know. Sometimes I think it might stem from... People say, you know... That's a great joke. I have this suspicion and dislike of what Israel does. Could it be because they're killing tens of thousands? the civilians and stifling free speech everywhere else yeah and doing it in the name of not

Israeli safety but Jewish safety yeah hey we should be grateful right three of us this is what I hear all the time and you know thank you thank you yes yes yes yes just in case I ever need to move there because my DNA says that I'm allowed to it's because my neighbor said what's that when I was carrying my menorants. Right, exactly. It's, yeah, and so, yeah. Well, you know what? To come back to what we've said in the beginning,

and I think it was Philip Roth or somebody who wrote, that something was too ridiculous to be taken seriously, but too serious to ridicule. Yeah. And I don't know what was him or not, but I read it in Naomi Klein's book, Dopa Ganga.

And that's how it is. Like, look, all three of us and so many of the people are listening and so many others, the hearts are actually breaking. And at the same time, the heaven assaulting absurdity of it all, you know. So we have to have both the, keep in mind both the horror, the human tragedy of it on all levels, and even a tragedy of the dehumanization of the souls of those people that support this, it's a tragedy too, you know,

let alone the tragedy of the Palestinians. So we have to keep all this in mind, you know, and balance. Not in the balance. What am I saying? I'm saying that the humor is absolutely necessary to get to time. Otherwise it would be unbearable.

But it's only part of this complete breakfast. That's right. It is one of many facets of it. It also includes zinc and B12 vitamins. There's actually a really lovely video of you, Dad, going around on Instagram today. Motaz Aziza shared it of you talking about moral injury. You want to say anything about that? I can play the video first if you if you guys want. Yeah, we actually have the video. Yeah. There's something called moral injury.

And moral injury happens when you're watching something terrible happen, and you can't stop it. And you're helpless in the face of it. As I said earlier, it's impossible to have your eyes open and not to have your heart broken. So I hope your hearts are broken. And I hope they're broken every day because what's going on happens every day. So look, here's what I would say to you. It's true what I said, that all the speaking that I've done, or other people have done internationally, all the advocacy that you may have done, all the letter writing and petitions that you may have signed have not saved a single finger of a single Basin child. Some might say that we have failed.

Don't believe that for one second. you have not failed the very fact that in the face of all the propaganda and all the withholding of truth so many people's hearts are broken that's a sign that's a tribute to humanity and if your heart is broken that's a tribute to you even if you feel brokenhearted and helpless and in despair don't let that get to you because you have a larger goal here which is to contribute to the light and the truth in the world is best you see it. And that is a long-term struggle. It's a long-term calling, and all of us can contribute to it. Yeah. I mean...

That was at a fundraiser a couple of weeks ago here in British Columbia, where actually, Daniel, I took three of the Arabic language books of myth of normal because I don't need to have five copies of them so I took three of them and I'm going to sell them for 20 bucks each as a fundraiser. You know what they did? They auctioned them off and they raised $1,200. Wow. Wonderful. That's amazing. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, I really, I really think, you know, that that clip is great because I think it is hard for a lot of

of us to stay in any way in a mode of finding a silver lining to any of this stuff. You know, it just becomes more and more daunting as the days and weeks and months go on where you're just like, you know, where all you have is your heartbreak, right? And so the way you put it there, just the silver lining being that you're human enough to have your heartbreaking, I think, is... That's right. And even if we can't see the silver lining right now, that doesn't mean the sun's not there

and that we don't have some role in stoking it and still being faithful to it. I was talking to a British friend once, and not about this, but she was telling me that her best friend died of cancer. And she was devastated. And then she went for a walk in the forest, and she was filled with deep gratitude.

that she could feel the grief. Yeah. That she was alive to feel the grief. And that she had that emotion. So, yeah. Our friend Stephen Jenkinson says heartbreak is a skill. And it's a skill that must be practiced nowadays. Yeah.

My friend Stephen Jenkins says, wish you would step off from that ledge, my friend. What's that? That's Third Eye Blind. He's the lead singer of Third Eye Blind. His name is Stephen Jenkins. Stephen Jenkins. And it was a great joke for me, Daniel, that's what it feels like.

I thought you had a friend named Stephen who is encouraging you to jump off a building. No, no, no. He wrote a song called Jumper. Okay, got it. Shout out in the comments. Daniel, who's the singer that's saying, get off that cross, my friend. Get off that cross, my friend. We need the wood.

It's Tom Waits. Tom Waits. All your crying ain't doing no, don't do you no good. Come on up to the house. Come down off the cross. Oh, I love that song. I love that song. A lot of people need to get off the cross.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Before we get out of here, there is one piece of content we would like to show you. And it actually is very much relevant to that lyric. It's a huge self-nailing to a six-pointed cross. Yes. This is a commercial for... Don't tell him what it's for, actually.

all right let's let's allow the reveal now we're going to need to read along because there's it's it's a song so adam wrote adam wrote omish paradise video that would have been very funny no go ahead daniel what were you saying um so let's play it on low volume and we might need to pause it but i'll try to read the the the english translation yes in time but it's so it's uh this is an ad okay all right here we all right a couple of israelis or we don't know there israeli yet, but they are waiting for a cab in some foreign country. Yes.

Where are you from? What do I answer him? I don't know. It's the same story. Every taxi ride. Italy. Sweden. Am Israel, but in the meantime, we blend in with the local culture.

I am a visitor wherever I go. You want? Yes. Adding some international flavor with tricks we make it comfortable I just want to stop right there and say with tricks what are we doing don't call yourselves tricky doesn't silly rabbi tricks are for yids yeah that's an old punchline six point five no no no but that that that's a pre-existing punchline

oh I know I know yeah yeah you keeps on I'm sorry until the Hebrew slips out the locals clock that they're Israeli. And hold on a second, hold on a second. So someone hears the Hebrew and actually starts carousing with them in Hebrew and saying Yala Balagan, Yala being an Arabic word. And now they're singing, Ah, Yarab, the Arab, which is also more, you know, Israeli pilfered Arabic. As most Israeli slang is. You're right.

feeling at home and now they're getting on to an El Al flight like in Israel, feeling at home like in Israel. Here you finally can. Can I have a black coffee please? That's the most. That's so Israeli. That's so Israeli asking for a black coffee on an airplane off. Finally I can get a black coffee.

Yeah. To me I was like, is that an Israeli thing? I have no idea. Yeah. Oh, thank God. Just being ourselves. without apologizing without

and then he sings without apologizing up the octave We will always be there for you El Al, it's more than an airline, it's Israel. Is this for real? It's absolutely for real. I made the joke on Twitter that we had Bad Hasbara commissioned

a parody El Al ad and we couldn't be happier with the results, but it's 100% real. You know, in Amsterdam, during that soccer to do last summer. Which you can hear about on our episode, Amsterdam, with Yahav Ares. Yes. Well, did you mention that one of the chants that these Israeli fans were blithely voicing the night before there was some pushback? There are no schools in Gaza because all the children are dead.

yeah and they thought this was funny yes and that's this was funny so you you can't make this stuff up yeah you mentioned the the desert festivals and these is usually women soldiers in their cute uniforms wiggling their pelvises in triumph over the murder of Palestinians yeah you can't make this stuff up on the israeli male soldiers in lingerie belonging to their victims yeah and And of course, that stuff is not presented in the way. Like, imagine if the Russians were doing that in Ukraine. You know, no, you know, there was a children's hospital that the Russians bombed last year.

Right. Some kids got killed. And there was appropriate outrage around it. Yeah. But my God, that's just something that happens every five minutes in Gaza. Right. Yeah. And what you don't see is, you know, it's one thing for the government of a country, any country, to commit war crimes.

I think it's another thing when those war crimes are celebrated by the citizenry and mocked, like the victims of it to be mocked. And I think that is, you know, so when you look at this kind of commercial, it's like without apologizing, as if an apology. would be totally out of left field, completely without basis, to need to apologize for your own. As that's an American, I'm just like, it is natural to apologize for your country.

The idea that you would be like Oh, no, oh no, it isn't. Like when the Americans shot down an Iranian civilian plane, was George Bush, the vice president, said the senior, I never apologized for America. Oh, yeah, no, I mean,

Ronald Reagan, I think, but we're talking about the citizenry when they traveled at. Americans of any awareness when they get, when they encounter international people. Any American who's interested in visiting Europe for non-white nationalist reasons. And this is the thing about this commercial. This is strictly for an Israeli audience. And what it's saying to the world is, Hasbara has failed. We are hated. Who knows why?

Because we're us, because they're jealous of us, because who knows why. Maybe wink, wink, maybe we did something naughty. But it's so nice to get on that El Al flight and not have to deal with the consequences of how the rest, where there is no rest of the world where we can get back to our desert techno festival, sorry, not sorry, we can get back to our sheltered air raid bunker where we are most at home.

I thought you were showing me a parody. No. No. That singer, in fact, has had a hit on his, Israeli radio about, I don't know, destroying some kind of pop song that's about genociding Palestinians. Yeah. Well, like I said to Mikhailad, there are no words left.

Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the words could be, hey, are you interested in going on my son's podcast? Because we would love to have Miko Pelot on. I reached out to him through his website. and I was like I'll never hear back this way so we'll get him yeah sure um but yeah just I mean look who we got today that's true busy guy that's true um yeah just to round this whole thing out uh that advertisement for LL um yeah the just in terms of what we've been talking about this entire

podcast, this, you know, the way in which Israel and Zionists and supporters of Israel, whatever you want to call them, engage with the rest of the world, seems to be almost like, I'm not sure if it's unique. And I want to ask you, you know, as someone who knows about this kind of stuff, you know, a doctor, you know, someone who's written about, psychology and the psychology of people is like do you think that is there something different going on outside of sort of the nationalist norms of any other country is this is this unique uh or is this something clinical and i hate to always use clinical language because i don't mean to like you know i don't mean to generalize about people with anything's like

psychosius or you know delusions obviously you know we delve into metaphor and we can use language that could be construed as ableist because of it and I don't want to do that but I do want to know like as someone who is who knows about this stuff it feels clinical to me is it is it clinical you know I don't want to diagnose it but I'll as you were asking a question I was thinking what was actually underneath it yeah first of all it's almost impressive I can't think of any other examples of any other people on such a broad scale celebrating their own evil impulses and actions. I haven't seen it. I wonder if it has to do with the enabling that you mentioned. No country has ever been

enabled like this. Well, that's true. And I think there's two aspects to it. One is that October the 7th really was a shock to Israelis and to their self-image. as invincible. They've created this invincible self-image. And this really shocked them. And now there, there's no end of revenge. When I revenge, when I say, I don't think God's has a war of revenge. It's got nothing to do with it.

It's got to do with the designers project. It's culmination. It's culmination, yeah. But on the emotional level, there's a huge drive for vengeance. for the shock yeah I mean you can certainly understand how people felt about October the 7th the shock the grief to rage and all that but this glorying in the evilness of it that's I think that's a response to the shock on one level on the other level I think something deep down knows how horrible this is something they can't not on some deep level and i think this is a reaction a denial so i think it's like the the depth of evil is mirrored by the depth of elation about their right to commit the evil and hey dad what's the drug that's most likely to be taken at a desert

techno festival what's it called ecstasy yeah and that is the face the emotional face and the and the pharmacological face of Israel partying its way into the nuclear sunset, you know, and we talk about, they talk about we don't have to live with the consequences. Like hell we don't. Ever heard of the Sampson option? There is a very strong strain, if not in the Israeli populace, then in the policymakers in Israel of we will bring the world down with us. So we have to, yeah. By the way, you know what ecstasy actually means? No. X-M-E-M-E-M-E-E-M-E as being out of place.

Mm-hmm. Oh, shit. Like, they're not, we're not in ourselves. Wow. I guess in the positive sense, that's freed from static, freed from static perception. From the shackles of my mind. As someone who can no longer take drugs because I am sober. Nor based turkeys.

nor based turkey speaking of which last thing you say you've listened to this podcast yes if I were to say the words turkey baster to you would you know what that refers to with regards to me I'm sorry I feel that one he's not a super fan god all right

good good good good good good good good I think that's a show I think we can wrap there I think we'll stop there don't look it up don't listen to the episode with Tyke Hickey just will move on pretend I never said anything. Dr. Gabor-Mate, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us. I really appreciate it. Let's do plugs. Where can people find you? You're doing an event soon in New York. Well, actually, my Instagram, what's my Instagram? Is it Gabon-M-D-M-D?

It's Gabrametea-M-D, yeah. Yeah. Or my website, www. Gavrammate-Mate. But I will be speaking in New York City on May 3rd, 4th at the United Palace Theater. And also while there, I think I'll be doing a fundraiser with the great Chris Hedges. Oh, wow. For the Near East Children's Educational Foundation, NICEF, which is an American-based organization to support children in Palestine. And it's been going for decades, and we'll be doing a fundraiser for them on the 5th of May

so look for that I think when it comes to you and Chris Hedges you'll probably be the funny man of the two Chris is a very serious man and he's so articulate and so deep you know he's an ordained minister I know yeah I learned that on this podcast

I had no idea and once again thank you so much for coming on Patreon.com slash badhasbara bad as barra at gmail.com. All right, everyone. Thanks again so much for listening. And until next time, from the river to the sea. Israel's ecstasy is our agony.

Wow. Nothing funny about that one. That was really good. Straight truth, dog. Yeah. Jumping jacks was us. Push-ups was us. Godmaga, us.

All karate us. Taking Molly us. Michael Jackson us. Yamaha keyboards. Us. Charger minks on us. Indoor was us. Keith Ledger Joker us.

Endless bread success. Happy meals was us. McDonald's was us. Being happy us. Bequam yoga us. Eating food, us. Reading air, us. Drinking water us.

We invented all that shit. Thank you.