Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - [TEASER] Miko Peled is hasbara's worst nightmare

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

This week on the Patreon exclusive episode we talked Miko Peled, the anti-zionist Israeli son of a storied Israeli general. Here is a little teaser! You can listen to the full episode on Patreon Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Your father's name is one of the first names I remember hearing as I started learning about the quote-unquote other side because my dad was part of a group called Jews for a Just Peace in Vancouver and they invited Mati to come and speak. And of course, the Jewish community center would not allow them to hold the event there. And it was controversial that he was bringing him. But my dad was trying to say to people, look, if you have this stalwart of the Zionist movement, this military hero telling you that the PLO should be taken seriously and negotiated with and that these territories it's not even an interest Israel's interest to keep them and try to annex them and settle them then what are you what are you doing and of course no one wanted to hear it but yeah

yeah so I tell the story and I'm glad you added that because that's kind of so I was already used to people in my family being you know consider traders and hated and not accepted by the establishment. So, you know, of course, I took it much further. He was a staunch Zionist till his dying day. I reject Zionism completely. But it's, you know, Israelis don't want to have this conversation. So even when I am, when I am there, I rarely meet Israelis. I mean, with my family and then, or I used to be with my family, and then I would be with my Palestinian, you know, friends and then comrades, you know, doing things. Right. And so that was it. I was interviewed a couple of times by Israeli news channels for all kinds of programs about

you know the hateful Israelis that reject Israel and is that the pitch to you they're like we're doing is that how they pitch it to you what like do they email like hey we're doing this segment about like it's called the hate it's called the hateful eight yeah yeah they frame it slightly not quite but yeah basically that's what it is wow um and And then after the recording, they would go, you know, we agree with you 95%, but why do you have to be so extreme? And I'm like, that 5%, God damn it, you know, what is that 5%? You know, and that's exactly the difference between seeing Palestinians as humans that deserve

rights and not. Yes. You know what I mean? So all these liberal Israelis and liberal Zionists, I mean, up to a point, it's okay. Why do you have to go? Right. You know, what's interesting about that. If you were to start with that 5%, if that was your start.

block, that 5%, you could not help go all the way to the 100. If you start from anything else, you're going to stop at the 95 mark. And I would think that that 95% estimate on their part was self-flattery. I don't quite think it's true. But still, the point is, you know, your politics are premised on an inescapable human value you have that these people in front of me are as human as me. And therefore, I have to listen to what happened. them. I have to reckon with my accountability and I have to imagine a future that redresses it in

some way. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's unacceptable. You're absolutely right. If the Zionist education system is built in a way that that 5% is always missing. That's the supremacy part. And we don't give up on the supremacy part because you know, you can't trust anybody and that sort of thing. And that's exactly the 5%. But it was me, I would have these ridiculous conversations with these guys who see themselves as lefties, you know, the producers, the camera people, that kind of stuff, who see themselves as these really good lefties, these really good peace people. And it was just, you know, it was, it was, it was, it would be comical if it wasn't so tragic. Right. Well, there was a time, I think, you know, where this sort of like

liberal Zionism, at least in my life, was something that, uh, I, I almost like had a tolerance for it because I was like, oh, you know, they'll get there, was always my feeling about it. And this moment, the last almost two years now, has really put that they'll get there to the test because I have never seen such a staunch commitment to never humanizing Palestinians, to never getting there. And, you know, it's interesting with you a lot, at least in my life, a lot of the older generation of people, of Jews specifically, with the way they talk about Israel is almost in this way of like, you know, it was, it didn't used to be this bad, you know, it was such a wonderful, you know, socialist state, anti-racist, you know, built. as like a bastion of liberalism and peace seeking peace seeking uh and you as someone who grew up there at the time in which all of my you know elders uh venerate and like you know idealize about

what was your experience do you was uh israel uh was there the good israel at that time well it's just one thing about hasabara um that i just remembered in one of the interviews that I did with Israeli in the introduction with Israeli TV, the introduction that said that I was the Hasbarah's worst nightmare. Yeah. Yes. Which is quite an honor, of course. That is, yeah, there's a wonderful one. That means you're bad Hasbarah's wet dream. Yes. Exactly. It's very comfortable. You're very much at home right now.