Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Welcome To Bad Hasbara

Episode Date: December 17, 2023

Hey everyone, here's the first episode (or like partial episode) of Bad Hasbara, a new podcast about Israel and propaganda. I was trying to only record a small trailer but I got lazy and decided to post the whole thing as is. Most episodes won't just be me talking at you, I promise.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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White Koss for us Zabra Hamas Hasbara suss Welcome to Bad Hasbara the world's most moral podcast. This is a show where I take a look at the magical world of political propaganda that is coming from Israel, the world's only democracy in the Middle East and the world.

I'm your host, Matt Lieb. How's it going? Very excited to have you guys listening to this brand new show. This is a little side project that I'm doing, mostly because if you know me, which I assume you do, because why the hell would you live? be listening right now. You know that I mostly talk about the Sopranos and the wire and movies and whatever my podcast co-host, Vince Mancini, is talking about that week. And I decided that,

like, rather than kind of like taking up a huge portion of the frotcast, me just ranting about Israel, I felt like it would be better for me to just kind of like do a weekly update podcast weekly or by week. I don't know. It depends how many times I feel like doing this a week. I got a lot of shit. I got a fucking baby. I had a fucking, you know, wife. I got other podcasts and stuff. But semi-regularly keeping people who are interested abreast of what's going on with Israel's latest incursion into Gaza, which is something that I think we should all be keeping an eye on personally, and I think more and more people are interested in keeping an eye on it, because for the first time in my lifetime, people are like, seems weird, seems strange, and the

justifications for it seem like bullshit, which is heartwarming to me as someone who's talked about this a lot for a very long time. So, what is Hasbara? You're probably asking. Hasbara is a Hebrew word. It loosely means shit that I just made up to explain why that thing you saw isn't actually what you saw and what you actually saw was this other good thing.

Now go to sleep, little boy, you're tired. Honshoe, hanshoe. It is, in short, propaganda. It's PR. It's narrative control. It's Hasbara. But specifically, bad Hasbara. Like, right now, I got to say, I've never seen such out of touch.

Hasbara? I mean, I'm talking about shit like, you know, killing thousands of people and then a couple days later having someone in the IDF and his full on fatigues and a tank holding up a gay flag. Something like that maybe might have worked, I don't know, post-9-11, the 90s, something like that. But for the first time ever, I'm like, oh, the PR people are asleep at the wheel. clearly, maybe they've just gotten so used to decades of acting with impunity, decades of their leaders having a get out of the Hague free card, they've realized, you know, they've gotten lazy. They've stopped kind of keeping up with whether it's social media or whether it's Western

sentiment. I don't know, but they are clearly not in control of the narrative the way they used to be. And me, personally, I believe that's a good thing because a lot of lies happen. And I like to explore those lies because they're very funny. Now, they're also very sad. I understand for a lot of people listening, you know, this is also an incredibly tragic thing. And it is to me, too. But I think it's also important in this time of sadness to remember that there are people

out there in Israel who think they are doing a modern 2015 style BuzzFeed identity politics correctly and that is just very, very funny to me. I mean, it's great. Listen, a lot of really funny shit has come out of this tragedy, mostly on the propaganda angle. Like, you guys remember, I don't know, like there was the rap music video that they made where the guy, uh, The Israeli guy was like, we're going to kill Doolipa. That was fun. Or, you know, an Israeli representative trying to explain away in Abu Ghraib by being like, oh, no, no, they're just naked because it's hot in the desert.

First of all, remember, it's the Middle East and it's warmer here. And especially during the day when it's sunny, it's to be asked to take off your shirt, it might not be pleasant, but it's not the end of the world. You know, or like a day that we spent arguing about Israeli salad. Like shit like that to me, that's that good shit. That's that shit I love. And that's the shit I've been following for a long time. So if you are not familiar with me, hi, I'm Matt Lieb.

I am a secular anti-Zionist Jew who basically grew up with no religion but believing that Israel was the, place that we would go when eventually the Nazis came back in power. And so I grew up with kind of, I would say like a vague, generalized Zionism where it was just kind of like, yeah, yeah, Israel, the place, that's the place to go. That's our land. And, you know, it really wasn't until like years later that slowly piece by piece, the narrative of, you know, Israel as this savior of Jews started kind of being pulled down. The more I learned, the more I was like, oh, this is strange. And, you know, as a result, eventually, you know, I kind of came to the conclusion like,

oh, shit, I think Israel might be bad. I feel like they might be doing apartheid. And I knew that. I was like, apartheid's for sure bad because I've seen movies about that. and movies usually that's how I know what's bad um and then you know as I kind of like grew up and like started realizing sort of like the veil started kind of lifting I um started getting more and more angry at the idea that people were being uh punished and uh you know like smeared as anti-Semites um for talking about it uh at all uh in any kind of negative light

And the more that that happened, the more I realized that it was like, I don't know, part of, you know, one of those like instances where I went like, oh, yeah, this is something that I can speak on and have at least somewhat, like, be taken somewhat in good faith because of the fact that I'm clearly, I am not advocating for the death of my own people, my own family. And whatnot, whereas, like, you know, in general, people who are, especially in this country, who are not just not Jewish, but if you're black, if you're brown, if you're an immigrant, you know, you're very quickly it is smeared as an anti-Semite if you talk about this at all. And so I realized that, you know, this is something that needs to be talked about. And if I can do it, then why not? I'm going to do it. Some people don't want to talk about it because they're afraid. But here's the thing. I already don't have an agent.

So I'll be fine. Yeah. So this podcast is going to be a series of conversations with some Jewish and Palestinian homies and activists and comedians and journalists and smart people. And, you know, we're going to follow what's going on with Gaza. We're going to follow all of the PR, all of the narrative control that's happening. And just in general, we're going to, you know, talk shit and have like a cathartic good time. And, of course, if that's something that you are like, I would like that. This is a podcast for you, dog.

Yeah, this was supposed to be just kind of like, I was going to like record a trailer. but the runtime is a bit longer than a podcast trailer. So I guess I'll give you an example of why I've been interested in Israeli propaganda for so many years. Like for me, where it all happened was when I went on Birthright. If you don't know what Birthright is, Birthright is basically a paid vacation, a free vacation for young Jews to go to Israel and see the land for themselves. they feed you and they show you, you know, like, look, people are singing camp songs and look, it's a Jewish nation. It's a propaganda trip in an apartheid state. It's a Jewish breeding

program as well. They really want you to fuck. And they make that pretty fucking explicit, which is weird, but also when you're horny, it's pretty cool. But my trip was interesting because I came in knowing that, you know, something was up, because I didn't go until I was like, like 26 years old. And so at 26, you know, I had been through college and I'd had a little bit of an awakening around Palestine, but not enough to be like, you know, boycotting going on birthright. I mean, listen, it's a free trip. What the fuck.

What if I'm going to turn out of a free trip? Fuck that. Nah, I like free. And so I'll tell you about some things that happen there. Well, the first is, and this is something that I do on stage, is a. as a stand-up comedian. I do stand-up. And I tell this joke, but I'll tell you the actual story behind it. But the first thing that happened was they told us to, that they're going to interview us at the airport. Like Israeli security is like going to give you like a brief

interview. They're going to ask you some questions. They say, don't joke around with them. Don't lie to them. They'll know just like be straight. These are like the smartest like human lie detectors. You know, these guys deal with terrorists all day, so, you know, freaking don't, you know, just be honest with them. And so they started asking me some questions when I got to the airport and I got to the like El Al terminal. And they asked me at one point, what's the last Jewish holiday you celebrated? And I said, Kwanza, because I'm hilarious, because they both got candles. Didn't get a laugh. And in fact, what ended up happening was everyone else got to board the plane, except for me,

except for me and this other kid who was held back because he looked Arab. And at the time, I was like, it feels like he's the most Arab looking of all of us, and that's why they're doing it. But I'll give him a bit of a doubt. Maybe he said some shit, too. but yeah so eventually some Israeli security guards came up to me and we found the right things against Israel write things in Arabic this is true he actually said this to me and I was like I don't know what you're talking about I don't know how to write in Arabic

and I've not written against Israel since college so on as you're talking about and he goes in my backpack and he pulls out my comedy notebook which is the scariest thing that a law enforcement officer can read. Because the shit we write in our notebooks are not meant to be seen by anyone else. It's just a bunch of out of context set list. It just says, sucking my own dick, fucking a fish, coming on the food bed.

It just, it looks like a really fucked up to-do list if you don't know what you're looking at. So it's like, holy shit, what did he read? And he points, he goes, right here you wrote Allah-u-A-Bah-A-Bar. And I actually had written the phrase, Allah-A-Bah-Bar. I was like, Holy shit.

This is a hilarious misunderstanding. I am a comedian. This is just a joke notebook. I write jokes. You know, I've been doing it for a year now. Pretty fucking good at. But I'm not actually saying it's just a joke. He's like, Allah, like, but it's not a joke.

How is that the joke? And it was at that point when I realized I'll have to do my joke for Israeli security in order to prove my innocence, which is the greatest comedy open mic I've ever been to in my fucking life. I was like, fuck yeah, let's do this.

I got a joke, you got a gun. So I do the joke for him. I'm like, okay, well, it works better in a club, but I guess we'll do it here. Al-A-Habbar in Arabic literally translates to God is great. Allah, God, Akbar, great. But not so much great as in awesome. It's more great as in big, as an expansive,

as an everywhere, almost as in fat. So when I hear someone exclaim, Alahu Akbar, as a comedian, I want to shout back. How Akbar is he? And I would love it if he responded, like his deaf comedy jam. I'm like, Allaho's so Akbar! Allah is so motherfucking Akbar! That when he sits around the mosque, can he sit around the mud?

Salam, salam, salam. Beepi, be, be. La He'llahim Allah. Beepi, Maham al-Bee, Mahamah, Rasulam al-Bee. That was a reggae horn for those of you don't. Watch deaf comedy jam. So I did the joke for him and fucking nothing.

Completely stone face. And I was like, kind of mad. I was like, well, I'm still workshopping it. It's not done yet. So don't fucking judge it. He just looks at me and goes, wow, don't quit your day job. That is the worst I've ever seen anyone bomb.

And I've literally seen people being bomb. Shalom! Shalom! Then he did the reggae horn. And then we brought him. both spun like dreidels and entered the Holy Land. All right, guys, I've been Matt. Now, how that actually ends is I did that joke for him, bombed,

and then they just let me on the plane, which was much worse. I would have rather spun like a dreidel and entered the Holy Land. That would have been cool. But I remember, you know, I've been doing, you know, talking about doing that story for a while. And, like, that was the first sign that there was something weird with the Middle East's only democracy was that the way he described the phrase, Allah-Hu-Aq-Bar, was a writing against Israel. And, you know, at the time, I kind of like glossed over it, but then I was, I was like been thinking about it for like years and years, you know, talking about doing the story. It is wild that in a nation that purports to be this like liberal democracy and liberal democracies are, of course, one of the,

many tenants is religious freedom that a Arabic phrase, religious phrase, a Muslim phrase, would be considered against Israel. And so that was a weird moment. In general, the trip was kind of eye-opening for me as a total, full, immersive Hasbara experience. Because one of the things they were playing on was basically your upbringing as a Jew culturally. So like we're talking about people singing camp songs. Like as someone who, you know, grew up secular, I was surprised how much it affected me because these were all songs that I knew because I went to Jewish camp. I was a Jewish camp counselor. And I was like, wow, this is, this is like, it was, it was, it was, affecting me but it was also set off some flags because I remember when we were in

Jerusalem seeing like groups and groups of Jews and young Jews and people who they may have been on one of the Tuglet tours the birthright tours or they I don't know what but they were singing these songs that I knew from my childhood and I was like no fucking way they made a whole country that sings the same camp songs I do in West Los Angeles. Like that I don't like it just felt very like you're trying to sell me a timeshare. And and that was kind of the trip. You know, it was playing on a lot of emotions and it was playing on a lot of like, you know, traumas, Jewish traumas, a lot of fears that we have about the rest of the world and how they

view us and how we're never safe and how we can only be safe. amongst each other, which is, you know, very effective when you grow up thinking that and you go to a place that the state's line is essentially, yes, you're right to be paranoid. But it was also, you know, beautiful because, you know, there is thousands of years of Jewish history that does exist in the land of Palestine. And so you are seeing that. it is effective for for uh you know i think any jewish person um but there were other moments that really like brought at home like one was we were on our way up to i think haifa which is in the north of israel and uh we stopped off our bus was getting gas and they explicitly said you know go you know go into the gas station like the the store you know the am p m but in in uh hebrew

And, you know, talk to people, ask them, you know, what's it like in Israel and stuff? And I was like, okay. So we get there and buying some, you know, Israeli candy or whatever. And I'm at the counter. And I was, you know, the guy at the checkout, you know, was standing there. And I was like, so, you know, he was a young guy, you know, he was probably like in his 30s. He looked approachable. A brown guy, I assumed like Arab.

maybe Mizrahi Jewish. I don't know. And I go, so you live in Israel. So what is it like here? And, you know, he spoke perfect English. And he goes, well, I'm a gay Palestinian. And you can't be gay in Gaza. You can't be gay in the West Bank. Like in any Arab state, I would be dead. So for me, Israel has been a safe haven, not just, you know, for as someone, you know, living in a democracy, but as someone who's gay, you know, it's a safe haven to anyone in the Middle East who is being oppressed. And, um, and I was like, uh, no fucking way. No, no, uh, no normal person enters into any conversation with so I'm a gay Palestinian it was just it was so a salesmanie I was like this is no no no no any other place you would go if I were to talk to a

young guy and he happened to even speak English you know in a foreign country in the Middle East and I was like so what is it like living here their answer would be are you buying or are you not buying like what I don't need what What is this? This is not a fucking meat and greet. I'm not here to make friends. I'm here because I don't leave until four. Why would you?

There was just, it was just so clearly, I don't want to say a plant, but it was so clearly, it just felt very North Korean. You know what I mean? Like at least, or at least what the media says

North Korean propaganda is, you know, go there and, you know, everyone's just like, we love it here. Of course, at this point, I'm like, what if everything they're saying about North Korea is a lie? I don't know.

Doesn't matter. I'm not going that far because there's only so much I can get into breaking down Western media narratives before you end up just a fucking crazy person at a bus stop, just being like, the moon landing's fake. But for me, that was like such a clear moment of like, oh man, this is a really well-futable. thought-out trip, you know? And of course, subsequently, obviously, you know, as I'd gotten more and more into the kind of the activist space around Palestinian freedom, I've met a bunch of gay Palestinians, and none of them are like, you know, the one good thing about Israel is that they wouldn't kill me for being gay.

Yeah, they would just kill them for being gay. fucking Arab Muslims, you know? It's just like this is, you know, the identity politics there are a little heavy-handed, a little on the nose and a little bit tone deaf, which is a lot of what this show is going to be about. Last thought about my trip to my birthright trip that I got to go because I was born with a sufficient amount of Jewish blood in order to kick a Palestinian family off their land. So the trip ended with this giant, like, arena party. It was like at an arena, like maybe 20,000 seats, I don't know, maybe 10.

I don't know. I can't. I didn't count. And there's all sorts of, like, you know, acts, just different. There's speakers. There's rappers. my favorite was this like duo of Israeli rappers who were you know like singing a song in which they were talking about all the shit that Israelis have invented they were like you know we invented the cherry tomato and you know we made ways we we did the first heart stent and like shit like that or you're just like cool okay like good i don't know what to tell you um it was just an interesting song for like a hip hop song you know like uh just bragging i mean i guess that's you know a lot of hip hop

is bragging about what kind of car you got you know what kind of ladies you have in israel it's like here's a list of our startups cool um and so you know we're watching this and it's like getting more and more ridiculous it's very much feels like a uh a corporate um mega event where you get all the branches from you know this giant corporation together and then uh you know after you know some overpaid rappers and some like you know shitty catering and like uh just um you know you see the vice the executive vice presidents giving like a speech talking about all the you know great achievements of the company and how you know this year we made the most money that we've ever had in Q3, you know, um, it ended with, uh, the speaker, the last speaker was the CEO of

Israel, uh, Benjamin Netanyahu literally Bibi himself came out to thunderous applause, because you know, big surprise for all the 20-something American kiddos to see the prime minister of Israel come out and, uh, and give a speech. And it was like the speech was just like, welcome home. Are you going to come here? You're going to, you know, meet a nice boy. Are you going to make some baby? We need your babies. And so like leaving aside how fucking weird it was for the prime minister of Israel to, uh, talk about us fucking. Um, which is, just so incredibly weird um what really like blew my mind was i was like the fucking prime minister of israel the main guy is going to be the headliner speaker for a group of american children

because we were children i mean i was like the oldest one on my trip at 26 which is i think the cutoff age but there were like fucking 18 year or olds, 19 year olds, 20 year olds, like, we're talking young youngsters and American youngsters. And just it made me realize in that moment how fucking important Jewish American youth is to the Israeli project. Like, we are so important that they are going to win us and dynas for like 11 days, 14 days. I forget how long. It was a long time. They're going to win us and dynas. They're going to, like, encourage us to like fuck they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna give us some of the best israeli food that i've ever had like just amazing i i was like wow this food is incredible

we're smoking hookah we're going to fucking tel aviv you know people are wearing capri pants and talking about taking tcb um and like fucking it was it was insane to cap it off with literally Benjamin Netanyahu like being like did you like it? Well there's more where that came from all you have to do is uproot

and move to your ancient homeland and it was eye-opening because I just realized it was just like this is I mean I knew it was a propaganda trip but I didn't know how important it was for the Zionist project of, you know, expanding the population of Israel because it's just the whole project around Zionism is about holding a demographic majority. And that demographic majority is hard to keep going, given like, I guess the birth rates. of Jews. We don't have a lot of babies. I don't know. Mostly it's like they just talk about how like

the Arabs have too many babies. It's like real weird racist shit mirrors a lot of some of the racist shit we say here in the United States vis-a-vis like Latin American immigrants. They have too many babies. This place is going to be Mexico. Are you going to be Mexico? It's the same thing, except for a lot more genocidal. But just like realizing that like the support of American Jewry to Israel was just so key to the continuing project that they would have literally Benjamin Netanyahu come out and tell us to fuck. I was like, this is, this is bad and this is weird and this feels like a cult. And it was for the first time that I started viewing the entire project of Zionism as like oh this is culty this is like this is something this is it's not like

religion you know religion of course you can be similar to cult in many ways depending on how fundamentalist and how extreme it is um but this is a different thing because this is not just about you know praising god or like believing it's about it's about being together to hold up this false narrative and all supporting each other on this false narrative of, you know, whether it's like victimhood, of Israeli victimhood or even like just general Jewish fear and trauma and playing on that and separating you from your family and separating you from the place you grew up and just saying like, no, no, no, no, no, all those people, they never liked you anyways here we love you come here look at all these soldiers look at how hot they are someone put

take their tities out here we wear bathing suits fucking bikinis you know talking about hot babes you know and like hot is really men you know with the with the strong muscles they're only like five two but they're hot. And yeah, so it's just like, it's a cult feeling, you know, it felt like half sex cult, half time share, you know, half, uh, there can't be three halves, but you know what I'm saying. It's like a, it's a timeshare mixed with a sex cult, uh, mixed with like trying to sell us NFTs and, uh, you know, just realizing that this whole thing is built on making you believe this narrative about your connection to this land.

being so important that, you know, you got to allow Israel to do what it's got to do. You know, you got to allow it to do ethnic cleansing. You got to allow it to finish the project of ethnic cleansing that was left unfinished in 1948 and unfinished even after 67 when they started the occupation of the West Bank and of the Gaza Strip, you know. Like, this is all for that. The whole thing, you know, the feeding me, the, you know, making me milk a cow at the kibbutz, the, you know, having every soldier who is with us on the trip be like, super hot, but they're just so beautiful. Like all of it is just meant to allow you to either, like, either to have you move there or to have you come back and go like, I've seen this place for myself. You know, no, I haven't seen Havran.

No, I haven't seen Gaza City. I don't need to see those places. But I've seen Jerusalem. I've seen the Masada. I've seen Tel Aviv. You know, I've seen a gay man taking 2CB and having his dick sucked right there at Ben-Gurion airport. I didn't see that, but you know what I'm saying. and i know it's it's okay it's good you know what they say are lies everything everyone else

says is lies everything that they say is the truth that shit to me is too much that shit to me is like something that i i am uh i'm against i'm vehemently against uh for a multitude of reasons which we'll get into once this podcast starts uh you know this is just this is not even episode one This is like episode, you know, point one, you know, this is just me kind of wanting to put something out and just say, hey, I'm going to do this thing. If you want to listen to it, you can. If you don't, I don't give a shit. Like probably very few people are going to listen to this anyways. It doesn't really matter to me. To me, the point is that I like to have these conversations with the homies. And I like that it's cathartic for us. And sometimes, maybe not this time specifically, but sometimes we say something funny. And I think it's going to be important to, important for my mental health to try to, not compartmentalize, but to try to like get a lot of this stuff out.

And to, I think, enlighten some of the audience to like, listen, I've been talking about this shit for a long time and I've been reading about this shit for a long time. and I know that a lot of people feel uneducated around this stuff, and I don't want you to constantly feel that way. So a lot of this podcast is also going to be telling you, giving you a little bit of education, giving you a little bit of context outside of the kind of like regular ass 24-hour news network media narratives, not just about what's going on now, but also about the past and kind of like the various lies they tell about, you know, where they just kind of repeat the Israeli talking point, you know, from, you know, the Oslo Accords and how, you know, we gave Palestinians a state and they rejected it to, you know, we don't even occupy Gaza because we left in

2005, you know, and it was so sad. And we watched as they kicked the settlers out of Gaza and what do they do with it? What do they do? You know, like all this bullshit. And right now you're like, I would like to get into why those are bullshit. But just because this is 0.5.1, this is the first half episode. I can't get into all of it right now. But yeah, you know, like just I want people to learn a little bit more about it because I feel like a lot of people if they learned more and they felt a little more confident in like what they do know about it, they would feel a little bit more. confident about looking with their eyes at what they're seeing and going like yeah that is wrong i was right i knew it was right i knew that killing kids was a bad thing i knew but i wasn't sure

i wasn't sure because when ever they would kill a bunch of kids and i would see it on the internet there would always be someone who would say like you know uh no but you're humas if you think that's sad and i started going oh shit maybe maybe i'm not educated enough to know why it's okay to kill all those children there's probably a good reason i just don't know because i'm stupid um you're not stupid uh you're probably i mean if you're a listener to any of my other dumb-ass podcast you're only a little stupid but you're actually a lot smarter than most podcasts listeners because you're beautiful and I love you. So yeah, I want, you know, I'm going to be talking about, you know, different segments

that will include kind of like other than updates of what's going on in Gaza. We're going to talk about the different Hasbaris that we have, you know, that are really having a moment right now. You know, we've got rabbi Shmuli Botech. I got to figure out actually how to pronounce his last name. I can't imagine it's actually pronounced Botech. But that's how it's spelled, John and Pod Horitz, Dennis Prager, I mean, Hen Mazig, like these guys, you will hear all about these wonderful, wonderful Hasbaras who were just filled with such beautiful, beautiful talking points. Richie Torres, of course.

And then, you know, we'll also get into some, you know, some Israeli history, some kind of like maybe re-contextualization of exactly, you know, what happened in the, you know, some Israeli history, some kind of like maybe recontextualization of exactly, you know, what happened in the, these various talking points that people bring up and yeah and then just kind of see how the Western media continues to spin it and see the moments in which they don't because a lot more of that has been happening recently. It's been pretty great to watch. So follow this show, listen to it, you know, subscribe now. We're going to be putting out episodes of of course on the regular like on the frotcast feed for everyone who wants everything all in one place go to patreon.com slash frotcast and you know sign up and pay and you get everything five dollars or more you get all the episodes of every show that we do um or you can sign up for free and you still get this show or you can just subscribe on whatever podcast app you have bad has barra the world's most moral podcast please listen and enjoy Push-ups was us. Grabmaga us.

All karate us. Taking Molly us. Michael Jackson us. Yamaha keyboards. Us. Georgia Binks not us. Andor was us. Heath Ledger Joker us.

Sandwest friends success us. Happy meals was us. McDonald's was us. Being happy us. Bequim yoga us. Eating food us. Eating air us. Drinking water us.

We invented all that shit.