Chapo Trap House - 1055 - The Hills Have Eyes 2 feat. Jasper Nathaniel (7/20/26)

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

Journalist Jasper Nathaniel returns to the show for another look at the state of the West Bank. We talk about continuing settler rampages, mass shootings ignored by Israeli authorities, and Ro Khanna���s recent trip to the occupied lands. Jasper's article: https://www.infinitejaz.com/p/a-hellish-month-in-the-occupied-west

Greetings listeners, it's Monday, July 20th, and this is your chopo. On today's episode, Felix and I are once again joined by journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who is back from a recent reporting trip to the West Bank to let us know just what's been happening. Jasper, I know we had you on recently, but I know we had you on almost exactly a year ago to talk about, because I'm currently in Cape Cod, and we were recording in Cape Cod last time I was there. And I think like your piece was titled like you don't know how bad it is. Well, it's been a year. You've just returned from a recent reporting trip to the West Bank.

How bad is it now? It's real. I find it really difficult to describe what it feels like in in some villages in the West Bank. I mean, I should start by saying, you know, obviously the West Bank is a very landscape. There's some places that are still relatively insulated from the occupation. but I think the sort of main story is that in the last year, in the last, even the last six months, the settlers have both taken over more land than they had before. So they effectively finished their takeover of Area C, which, you know, according to the Oslo Accords,

is the part of the West Bank that is controlled by Israel. And, but, you know, lots of Palestinian communities are still there. So the settlers have sort of swallowed up area C and are now moving into areas A and B. which are ostensibly controlled by the Palestinian authority, and ostensibly, Israelis are not even legally allowed to go there under Israeli law. But their presence is just now ubiquitous there. And so the way it's actually materializing is that in places that have long-faced settler violence, a lot of those communities have either been officially, you know, fully ethnically cleansed. They were actually just gone.

So in the, in the, since my last trip there in October, two communities that I visited, in October are now just completely gone. I actually don't even know where some of the people are. And then the other story is that in lots of communities across the West Bank, places that have literally never seen a settler before are suddenly finding themselves surrounded by outposts and facing daily attacks by settlers. And so basically, you know, the takeover has just sort of accelerated and the violence has accelerated with it.

I was just like, you know, on a personal level, like preparing for today's episode. Like whenever I read your reporting from the West Bank, like on an emotional, visceral level, like, I am just filled with such a sense of fear, loathing, and disgust. Because like what you're describing is like so sadistic, so cruel and so beyond the pale that it really is like, it's hard for me to even fathom what the, what like the violence that these people are facing. And more than anything, and this is really something like we've said before on this show. But like a canard, a sort of stock argument I hear all the time when discussing Palestine or whenever anyone wants to weigh into this issue of how Palestinians are treated by the Israeli state,

by the project of Zionism. You almost always hear that like when talking about Gaza, there's like always this sort of, I don't know, fake parody of violence and this idea that like, oh, well, they're killing people too or they're firing rockets. And, you know, like there's armed resistance there. There's terrorism there. Or that like if only Palestinians would just take the path, of Martin Luther King or Gandhi or, you know, a passive nonviolent resistance, then Israel would have no problem living in peace of them. But like, you're reporting from the West Bank where there is no armed resistance whatsoever. It like puts the lie to that because of just like the absolute indignity of what everyday average Palestinians are facing who are just literally trying to live

their lives in peace and aren't killing Israelis is really difficult to fathom. That's exactly it. I mean, you know, in Gaza, we had these images of, you know, just pure carnage and devastation and, you know, it's a genocide over there. And it's just sort of you can't believe your eyes when you see the images. In the West Bank, you know, the story that makes it into the mainstream press, such as it ever does, is like, you know, a settler attack or, you know, like Rokana's thing, which I'm sure we'll talk about. You know, he gets held up by armed settlers or, you know, see. CNN, a CNN vehicle was attacked recently by settlers. I was actually there for that as well.

What does not make it into the paper, which I think is a lot of what you're alluding to, Will, which is what I try to report on, is just these little sort of quotidian daily indignities and cruelty that Palestinian people who, as you said, are really just trying to live normal lives are facing. And it's actually just unimaginable. Like you constantly, you're meeting people, having chance encounters with people. And they just tell you a story of something that happened the before and then they'll show you photos or videos on your phone. And you just think to yourself like these are these settlers and the soldiers who are behind them and the states that's backing them.

This is the most sadistic shit on earth because like you said, there's no pretense of armed resistance. They wiped out all the armed resistance in the West Bank, basically. There's basically they took out the Janine Brigade. They took out the lines down like they cleared out the refugee camps. They are now just tormenting and terrorizing in utterly defenseless people. And like, as a sort of Americans, like, we are programmed to think that, like, one of our core values is that, like, a man's home is his castle, that you are entitled to any defense of, like, if I'm just sitting here in a house and, like, some random goons just show up and, like, start destroying my property, attacking my family. There really is no limit to what you're justified in doing in response to that kind of aggression.

And, like, what you're seeing every day is, like, a sense that I get from your reporting in the West Bank is, like, Like, I just, I'm trying to fathom it. Like, imagine you're just living your life. You're in your home, your place of business or whatever. And some guy just approaches you and like smacks your grandmother or pushes your mother down a flight of stairs in front of you. Like, what would you do as a person? Like, what would you feel was justified doing in response to that?

And like, like, that's what like, it just, it chokes me when I read this stuff because it does seem that there is an active strategy among the settlers backed by the Israeli military of intentionally victimizing. women, children, the elderly, the disabled to provoke what is a natural human response from any man or woman or just any adult person who feels a responsibility to protect their lives and those of their communities, to provoke a reaction that would then justify an even more violent crackdown on people just defending themselves. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're constantly during these settler attacks watching Palestinians have to make the decision of are they going to fight back

in some way knowing that that could you know get them literally killed it could send them into a torture dungeon indefinitely it could get their village burned down the next day or are they going to just sort of take it and there's nobody you know protecting them from this and you know in fact the entire israeli state is you know against them and it's just these impossible decisions that are put in front of Palestinians who are facing this every day is so excruciating to watch. And I also just want to say that like some of the most inspiring things that I've seen in the West Bank of Palestinians fighting off settlers, you know, unarmed Palestinians, finding ways to fight off settlers who are coming for their homes, who are coming for their families and their communities,

fighting them off with whatever they have. If I was to share video of that or photos of that or write about it, those people would be in jail the next day if not, like I said, killed or attacked or something. And, you know, there's one of the stories in the piece, which maybe we'll get to, is about just that. It's a group of people who were attacked in their own home.

And the military came and threw them up against the wall and slammed them on the ground and was accusing them of throwing rocks at the people who had attacked them from a Palestinian home that they had stolen already. And you know, I don't want to make it seem like, oh, like, there's always this question about like, why don't they fight back? Because they are fighting back, but also I would like to say that like making the decision not to fight back also takes a huge amount of bravery as well, given the stakes of what's going on here.

But you mentioned like the stories that break through to the Western press. And I guess I want to begin there with the one story that did get the most media attention over the last couple weeks, which is what happened to Congressman Rokana when he visited the West Bank as a sort of like as a U.S. congressman. And like you you you talk about in your piece, you were getting frantic text messages from his staff as they were basically detained by heavily armed Israeli settlers. Because you just now and I think like Roe Con is experience of that as a U.S. congressman choosing to visit the West Bank, not on some sort of Israel approved junket, but just to like experience what life there is like for Palestinians, I think is commendable. However, I will say

what happened with Rokana returned vis-a-vis his conversation with Jeremy Ska-Hill that I'd like to talk about. I think just for me, it illustrates this fundamental contradiction and sort of limits of even the progressive liberal view about Palestine from American politicians. But to begin with, you just sort of narrate what, like, your experience, like interacting with Rokana's congressional delegation and like what happened to him when he chose to visit the West Bank. So I got connected with Rokana initially because a couple months ago, I called him out on Twitter when I saw that he had voted for a bill to defund UNR, the humanitarian agency that, you know, supports Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, in particular, supports the refugees. And I called him out on Twitter for it.

It got shared a lot. And he responded and said, I didn't know it was in the bill, which honestly, like, maybe that's true. I don't know. But I basically said, like, well, that's kind of unacceptable, particularly if you want to frame it. That's kind of worse. Yeah, exactly. especially if you want to frame yourself as pro-Palestine, like to not know the role that UNRWA plays and the war on UNRah

that led to the starvation crisis in Gaza. I mean, it's totally unacceptable, to say the least. But he responded, as he often does, respond to, you know, people on Twitter. And then he sent me a DM, and he agreed to do an interview. And so I interviewed him on my substack, and I pressed him on a number of issues in particular, Iron Dome, Iron Dome funding, which he was still and is still, I should say, you know, framing as purely a defensive tool to save lives, you know, just the same way

giving armor to a school shooter might save the school shooter's life, I guess. And at the end of the interview, it was, I would say it was like somewhat contentious interview. At the end, I said, would you commit to taking a Palestinian led trip to the West Bank? And I specifically said Palestinian led because, you know, J Street is famous for taking Congress people on trips to the West Bank. And, you know, in fairness, they show them the occupation. They show them, I think, you know, the wall and things like that. But it's all framed through the sort of lens of, you know, a, quote, liberal Zionism. And I think to, you know, to put it

mildly, it's whitewashing the role of Israel in the whole thing. And so I said, you know, would you take a Palestinian-led trip? And he kind of said like maybe. Fast forward a couple months. his team reached out to me when they saw that I was over there and they said, Congressman Rokana wants to come to the West Bank. Would you help facilitate a trip? And I basically said, well, I'm not going to organize a trip for him. Like, you know, you can do that yourself. But what I can do is talk to village leaders in places that, you know, might be good for him to visit and see if they want to have him.

And so I went to a number of leaders of villages, including Ume al-Hare and Termesiaia and Al-Mezer al-Sharqia and a couple others. And we had frank conversations about who this guy was. I mean, some of them already knew who Rokana was because these are, you know, the village leaders are often politically savvy. They know it's happening in American politics. We talked about the fact that it was obviously going to be, you know, used for political purposes. I mean, this is a guy who is pretty clearly gearing up for a potential presidential run. And unanimously, everybody said like, yes, invite him.

We want to have him. And so I then just connected his team with these people directly. and they plan this trip. I was in Umalheer when Rokane came. Umahir is where almost exactly a year ago, an activist who was part of no other land. The documentary, Aldahathleen, was shot dead by a settler on video.

That guy is not in jail who shot him. This is a really tortured community where the outpost is literally next door to the Palestinian community. There's no space whatsoever. So the settlers are building, they're basically expanding out from a settlement, the Carmel settlement, and surrounding this community. And every single day they are launching attacks, either, you know, directly violent attacks with physical assault or they're vandalizing property or they're stealing land. Congressman Rokana came the day after one of these assaults. We were all pretty banged up.

I was pretty banged up from it. He comes and, you know, the village leaders meet with him and have a frank conversation and take him around. and show him where the fight happened the night before, where, you know, we were attacked. We, you know, explain the situation. You know, when you get to the village, you see Israeli flags just everywhere because they come and plant them. And if you take them away, they will hurt you. And then they take off.

And they, I think we're going, they're going to another village in the Hebron Hills called Zanuta. then I stayed in the village maybe an hour after they left or sometime after they left. I can't remember exactly how long. The settlers came back into Ume al-Hair and launched another even more violent attack actually. And in this one, numerous people actually got injured. And an old woman, the mother-in-law of the man who was killed out of Athalene was thrown on the ground and sent to the hospital.

I was hit repeatedly. Lots of Palestinians were hit repeatedly. he just missed that. And so, like, part of the irony of people saying that, you know, this was a political stun is like, if he just stayed a little bit longer, he would have seen, he would have been part of a lot more action, actually. So anyway, I missed the texts from his staff because I was busy getting assault and myself.

By the time I got them, you know, the staffer basically was like, we're terrified. There are these like kids, teenagers with machine guns blocking our bus. And they won't let us go and we don't know what to do. We're afraid to get out and talk. to them. But by the time I got there, he said the army is here, but the army is helping the settlers. And I kind of just laughed a little bit because like, you know, before they came, his team was like, we really wanted to see the occupation. Like we want to make sure he sees it. And I was just like, put him on the bus and he'll see it. Like it doesn't take a lot of work

to show this kind of thing. And so what ends up happening is, you know, he gets, his bus gets hijacked by settlers. The soldiers come and have the settlers back. This is just routine. I mean, you'd be hard pressed to spend a couple hours driving through the South Ebron Hills and not have something like this happened to you. I think that it, you know, it genuinely shocked Congressman Rokane. I mean, I saw him again after, and Termosia, and he actually seemed scandalized by it. I mean, he was saying things like, I can't believe the soldiers took the settler side. And again, I had to just sort of laugh a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm just fast forwarding a bit to Kana's appearance on drop. and some of the high profile, but let's just say very well-timed and well-counted, quote-unquote, defections we have been seeing from more right-leaning Democrats who have had more extensive ties to APEC in the past, doing things like voting against, voting to stop military aid to Israel and a vote that they know won't pass. I think, unfortunately, like the least cynical reading you could give of Rokana and people in that vague left of center of the rest of the party place who are seemingly just now coming around to things is that they are hoping that at best that they can turn this into a contemporary South Africa. And I don't mean in terms of framing the debate, but I mean, they are afraid to be the first one who is in Congress and stands up and goes, well, yeah, of course there's fucking armed resistance.

Of course they would do this. Of course you would do this if, like you said, someone came to your house and did all these things. They are hoping that the environment magically becomes safer. and if there was a movie as popular as whichever lethal weapon had the South Africans in it today. If that came out next year, yeah, two. If that came out next year that there would be a broadly anti-settler sentiment in that movie, that this would be so acceptable that they could say these things and not be fucking terrified. In the meantime, they're just kind of treading water.

The most cynical reading you could give of this is that they are there. I hate to put things so grimly, but that this issue will go under a grand Darfurification. I don't mean Palestinians at large. I mean specifically settlements, which that has kind of been the province, the cutout of liberal Zionists for the past however many years, that all everything done outside of Israel's borders is it's their business, it's their national security, but I'm against the occupation. The most cynical reading is that, yeah, all these high-profile defections and people who seemingly have just started caring about this issue in the past two years, that this will just

become another, every two or three years, there will be a documentary about this, that this is an issue you bring up to show that you really care, that in any sub-prestice show, a character will mention the West Bank to indicate that they are a slightly more lefty liberal, but that nothing ever really changes and that they, sort of like how liberals did with Darfur, they don't talk about the broader issues so much, such as the UAE is enabling and material support of RSF. I mean, tell me if I tell me if you feel I'm off here based on your interactions. No, I think that's right. I mean, look, like it's also just it's not a radical position in the Democratic Party to speak out against settler violence. I mean, like that's actually a fucking layup for any politician.

I mean, who, you know, well, I think it was you that coined the term feral street urchins. Like, you know, you watched these, these hideous, heinous looking settlers attack innocent Palestinians. Like, that's easy to condemn to show that you are still, you know, pro-humanity while you support an unending, you know, supply of weapons to Israel. Look, in Rokana's defense, like, I think that he is genuinely trying to. to figure out what is the left flank position that is still politically viable. Some people might say that's not a defense of him. I'm actually saying it sort of like not as a defense, but just like I think that's the reality.

I'm fairly certain that just based on my interactions with him, he understands the people who are being relentlessly terrorized should not have to just take it, you know, and have no defense of themselves. I think he's he frankly is like I think he went on this trip and like every congressperson. I think he's got J Street in his ear. I think he's got, you know, these liberal Zionist groups in his ear. And again, these groups like they don't like the settlers either. They want to stop settler violence, but they're also, you know, they have an interest in preserving Israel and in protecting Zionism. And so that just stops you short of being able to take what is the obvious intuitive position, which is like, well, yeah, obviously the people.

who are being terrorized need, you know, defense. When you stop short of that, I just have to assume it's a, it's a, you know, political thing. And yeah, like I said, I don't think that's really a defense. I think it's a shame. But look, like, I don't know. I kind of want to get your thoughts on this, too, both of you. Because, like, you know, yeah, go ahead. I wanted to bring it up because I find Rokana and like an interesting political figure at the current moment,

because he's a guy who, like, as you've pointed out, like every liberal, progressive, Democratic politician, has a record of absolutely heinous votes on, particularly on this issue. Right. But however, I will say like since 2024, since the re-election of Donald Trump, Rokana, I think is one of the, with few exceptions, one of the few prominent Democratic politicians who can read the room. Like you said, out of, out of nothing else than just a cynical sense of self-preservation

or setting up his own future political force. in the Democratic Party, I think he like basically kind of can read the room and understand the moment. And like that, such as that like you get something like his trip to the West Bank, which for a Democratic congressman, I know it's a very low bar to clear, but I think is commendable. But like I find it, I find him fascinating because like in spite of that, he still can't make the obvious leap that he, that anyone would make if this were any other country doing it to these people. Which is to say that like, Like, Palestinians have the same right Israel does to self-defense. Right.

To protect themselves. And like, and I'm sorry, like, there is no protection in the absence of guns, bombs, and like some sort of organized armed resistance to this level of violence and dehumanization. But even so, like, look, nobody, myself included is expecting Raqana to come home and, like, put on a green headband and start, like, you know, chanting for Hamas or, or anything like that. Nobody's asking him, like, you know, express your, like, support for the martyr, Yaya, Yassin War.

Like, nobody would expect that of him. He doesn't even have to, I mean, look, he was, he was, whoever, whichever on, whoever on his team let him step into an interview with Jeremy Scahill really fucked up, obviously, because, like, you know, that's, you know, about as sharp as, as they come on this stuff. But in terms of just how he talks about it, like, you don't have to come out and say, yes, like the all locks of flood was, you know, a, you know, a revolutionary bubble. Like, you don't have to say, you can just say, listen, what I saw was defenseless people

being terrorized by people with guns and they need to be able to defend themselves. Like, it's so fucking straightforward. The fact that you come home and invoke Gandhi is just like, come on. It actually, it was, I found it maddening. The bring up Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. is offensive to me, given, like, given what these people are facing. And as you said, and they've tried nonviolent resistance

and they've been slaughtered for it. And like all of them are dead or in jail. And like you don't have to come back and say like, I praise the glorious martyr Yawa Sinwar. We'll leave that for our show. But what the point Ska-Hill was making is that if you're talking about October 7th, like if you, if you limit yourself just to the attacks on the security perimeter of the Israeli

military, which is like carrying out the occupation and siege of, Gaza. How can you possibly say that those people aren't legitimate targets in a war? Like, you may say it's bad to kill people, but you can't say that like it's beyond the pale. It's like when they say, you know, a tank, a tank gunner was kidnapped out of his tank. Yeah. And like, and I, I guess like that's why I find Roe kind of interesting because like, I like he's like he's like he's taking a step that not many other Democratic politicians do, but he is still essentially boxed in by these, I think like, I don't know, the, the,

ideology that has that has governed this this this conflict or the you know, or this for for decades and decades and decades, which is that like basically, uh, when Palestinians die, it's like a tragedy. Oh, like, you know, we feel bad about it. But like if Israel, if one Israeli is killed, then like that, then that warrants a military response and unlimited military aid to Israel. So like to protect them where it's like, the idea is that like, oh, people, Palestinians and Gaza of the West Bank, like, oh, it's sad when they die, but like it's almost like a

natural disaster. It happens and we need to help them out about it. But like, if an Israeli is killed by a Palestinian, then like that justifies our billions and billions of dollars in military aid. And it justifies everything Israel has done to Palestinians. Whereas like all the Palestinians who've been killed, like in no way can the calculus ever be that like, well, is the scale of death, violence and destruction and meet it out to them?

Like, does that ever like add up to like that they can kill someone or that like violence that they do in defense of themselves? or even just like attacking the people who are doing this to them is somehow unspeakable or like is terrorism. Yeah. I think like the whole question of Rokana, I mean, I think I have to step away from the discourse because I'm finding myself like just torn in different directions. I mean, it's sort of a proxy for like accelerationism versus incrementalism because like I've seen the argument that, you know, ultimately what Rokana did was he went over there to sort of, you know, polish his, you know, Palestine, Bonafides, and he came home and is just reciting the sort of party

line, you know, on liberal Zionism, which is not quite true, to be fair. He's gone a little further, but more or less, it makes sense. On the other hand, just to sort of like be blunt, I know, like, his team has told me they're working on some legislation right now. I have no idea, like, it's viability, but that is that if it passed would have a materially positive impact on the lives of Palestinians in communities who I know personally and who are being tormented and it would take steps to make their lives better. And so like I just think it's worth, I want to just put that out there because like the debate on this stuff, I just, I find it, um, difficult to just say it's good that he went there or it's bad that he went there. Because I

think that what happened, like, like he goes home and there's this vote on, you know, halting all aid to Israel, the Massey, Kana bill. And Nancy Pelosi votes against aid to it. And then she tells Ryan Grimm or Ryan Grimm reports, Nancy Pelosi said, Rokane's trip to the West Bank contributed to it. Sounds like a good thing. On the other hand, it could have been one of these things where it's like they knew the bill wasn't going to pass. They voted, you know, against the aid to just, again, for purely political reasons. So I don't know the answer to these things, but I do want to just say that like there, you know,

there is potentially stuff coming that would have a materially positive impact on the lives of Palestinians. Maybe it is a net negative. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, the way I think about this is like, I'm not going to totally condemn him for doing something like this. Like, I mean, even if it is cynical or even if it doesn't go far enough, I think like in a situation like this, I'll take any step in any, like in the right direction. Little, small, big. However, I think about like the thing that I think about something Dylan Saba said recently, former guest to the show. But he said like, Felix, to your point about how this kind of the people who read the winds of the Democratic Party and now are adopting a kind of like vague.

pro-Palestinianism because they know that like it's electorally savvy to do so the limits to that like he said like that is not nearly as useful as having an honest clear and crystal hatred for Israel because like that means right right because like until you can till you like can get yourself out of the way is not so much to be pro-Palestinian because what does that actually entail what does that really mean until you can get to the point where you say that like the united states government should no longer be in the business of ensuring the health, safety, or welfare of the Zionist project, then I think you're going to eventually run into a wall. Yeah.

And like these efforts will eventually amount to nothing. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And Jasper, I agree with you in saying that I frankly think it would freak people out if a guy who was as of last week saying the same things that a lot of J.S. People do suddenly came out with a green headband. But it has a lot more utility if a guy like Rogano or any of these high profile defections,

people who let's just be honest here, voted to cease military funding to Israel once they knew the bill wouldn't pass. Yes, and they supported the genocide up until, you know, like tens of thousands of people were already dead. Precisely. Yeah. that yeah they don't need to they don't need to you know I don't make my analogy of the gassam brigades the band of brothers but it would be incredibly useful to meet the average American where they are at with their accurate perceptions of Israelis of the Israeli government and frankly, 99.9999.99.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.7% of Israeli fucking society. That would be incredibly useful. But until I see that, I just, I fear that we are going to see more of these votes that they just miss it.

They just miss it by 30. They just miss it by 20. They just missed it by 2. And the only utility of the vote. And it's always something that, right, if it passed, This cessation of military aid, that would have a great material impact on the lives of millions. It seems like the utility of it is so that the next time you get into an argument with someone about whatever shithead is the flavor of the month, someone can point to their vote and say they voted against all military aid to Israel, discounting the fact that they were towing the party line during every fucking week before 2026. Yeah, I want to just make one more point about this,

which is that, you know, I had a conversation with Congressman Rokana after the trip and, you know, he was still sort of talking about a two-state solution. And I don't know if he was like... A second state would need a military to be a state. Well, exactly. I want to say that, Will, because what I was going to say is that I said to him, you saw the situation here. Like, there are 700,000 plus settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a growing number that, you know, are armed, not every one of them, but like collectively they are armed to the teeth and they are messianic and they have the military behind them. And by the way, the opposition candidate in Israel, Eisencott, who's, you know, being heralded as like the liberal.

visited a violent outpost recently and gave his support to the settler leaders there. So anyway, so I said to him like, what are you going to do about those settlers? And he said, well, they have to be removed. And I don't think I even had to say like, what do you think it would take to remove them? It would literally be war against Israel. You are fighting the IDF at that point. And so it's like, okay, listen, if you want to still be a two-state solution liberal, let's hear your plan for going to war with Israel because there's literally no

other way you're going to get that Palestinian state made. And like, to Felix's point about like, these votes are like, you know, the correct thing to do to vote to cease all military aid to Israel or like all diplomatic support to Israel. Like that should still be the goal of politics, like a politician seeking to represent you. If they can't clear that very low bar, then they are not worth supporting it any way. But like to Felix, your point about how this will just be like an exercise for covering your ass and just saying like, hey, well, I voted to cut off it. like the point is you've got to get to the point where it's just like because at the end of the day

when you're still like well I'll you know what do you say to like are people who are worried about the safety of Israel or whatever it's just like this is a country and a culture not just a government that is a lunatic asylum of violent belligerent jackals and I'm sorry like like to be a part of this project is to believe that Jewish life is worth more than any other life on the planet Not just a belief, but in practice, that is what is actually happening every day. And any society or people like that, I'm sorry, does not deserve to live in safety. They deserve to live with the very real consequences of what carrying out that ideology actually. By the way, the handful of Israelis that I know who do good activism in the West Bank and are, you know, like, they're now full anti-Zionists.

and they are either defecting, like literally leaving Israel, or they have just devoted their lives to being activists in the West Bank. So, like, you know, there's another sort of debate that maddens me about, like, the role of Israeli activists in the West Bank. But to your point, well, like, the ones who see the cruelty for what it is, who understand that they are part of that project are either defecting or they're turning against, or they're defecting by leaving, or they're defecting by turning against the country.

They're going and, you know, defending Palestinians in the West Bank. And so it is, it's pretty clear cut at this point, you know, what needs to be done over there. And yeah, if they're not going to do it, then, you know, it's going to have to be done for them. It's like to move outside of like U.S. politics or politicians. And I think like the real kind of story is very, is very telling. But like to get into like the daily lives of people in the West Bank, of Palestinians in the West Bank, I want to talk about another story that did make some press here in America, but I think it deserves a much fuller airing here. You write about in Bethlehem, you met with a man named Fahed Abu Haikal.

Could you describe like why you were meeting with him and what this man had just gone through or what he, like the loss that he had just endured? So a couple weeks earlier, Fahed was driving with his family, his, His wife, his seven-month-old son, Sam, his young son and his mother-in-law, I believe. And they were driving near Hebron on, I think, a shopping trip or something to that effect. They came upon a group of soldiers in Hebron. A soldier points his weapon in the windshield of the car. Fahed said, I could clearly see his face like, We made eye contact.

He knew that it was a car full of like my family. You know, there was nothing suspicious about our car. He sees the gunpoint at him. He slams on the brakes. And then he watches a soldier pull the trigger. And the very first bullet goes through the windshield, through Fahed's hand, through his seven-month-old baby's face out the back of the baby's head into his wife's chest and then face. There's video of this.

There's video of him then pulling his. baby out of the car. And the way he described it to me, this is really horrible and graphic. So I'm sorry, but he just instinctively was trying to plug the hole in the back of his baby's head. And then he realized that he was gone. This was a, as he put it, a cold-blooded murder, a cold-blooded murder. The Israelis, I think, initially claimed it was a car ramming attempt.

And then when video came off, they sort of backtracked from that. And then they just said, like, it's under investigation, which obviously means it's not under investigation. His wife is still in the hospital. She survived. Thank God. The baby is, of course, you know, deceased. When I met him, his home was, there was no sign that there was a baby there. And it's because he told me he went straight home and he hid all the baby's toys and he dismantled the crib and put all the parks away because he couldn't bear to see it.

And he couldn't bear for his wife to come home and see it. What I found actually like, you know, particularly jarring about talking with him. I mean, this guy's a university professor. He's, you know, to state the obvious, like he has nothing to do with any sort of armed resistance. Just a complete civilian. He said, you know, if you see the video, it's very clear that it's a cold blood murder. So I think that they all arrest the soldier and I think he'll go to jail. And frankly, I think that this is sort of like he's in shock still.

And he's telling himself this because, of course, that never happens. But, and so, yeah, so it's been over a month now. Nobody's been arrested. It's not in the news anymore. I'm sure the IDF is just counting on people to have forgotten about it. Like, when you think about this, like, it's, like, it's, like, I said, it, like, it, like, it feels like there are hands around my throat when I, like, when I read this or I have to, like, try to imagine it. But, like, for the soldier that pulled that trigger, for, like, the ideology of, like, the Zionist project. That seven-month-old infant was a threat to the state of Israel.

Because by existing, by continuing to exist, they're like waging a demographic war against the project of Zionism. And they're quite open about this. I mean, among the settlers, among even like many of the elected leaders of the Israeli government, any Palestinian baby, any Palestinian alive in what they consider their country is an existential threat to Judaism or Jewish people writ large. It's an existential threat from a demographic perspective, which is what you're talking about. Well, it's also a pretty common thing that you hear from Israelis is, look, we don't like to see all those children dying in Gaza. But like the reality is, you know, the October 7 terrorists were babies once too. What choice do we have?

You know, we have to wipe out the terrorists while we can. So there's that. And then there's also just like, look, if the most generous possible reading, like, let's say he was not trying to kill the baby. Let's say they're they're trying to terrorize the Palestinian people. I mean, they want them to live in terror and they want them. He was just like he just shot a bullet from an assault rifle through the windshield of a car that had stopped in front of him. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, I mean, I mean, I'm like, you know, to get me something like possibly even more blood curdling than the incident that you just. I'm sorry to the list.

To us. Yeah. But like, could you describe the, uh, this I'm probably going to butcher the name of this, but could you describe the school that you visited in? Oh. Al-Mugiar. Because, like, this story barely made it into the news. But, like, this school was attacked. And I guess, like, as Americans, what could only be described as a school shooting. But that really doesn't even do it justice enough because, like, when we think of school shootings in America, we think of some, like, you know, crazy, disaffected kid who goes to that school, showing up and killing a bunch of people. Could you describe what the school shooting that happened?

Like, at this. Yeah. What was it? Like, an elementary school, high school? like what age kids were? It was basically K through 12, the equivalent of K through 12. The town is called Al-Mu-Kahir. It's a village east of Ramallah, working class village.

This is actually the village where you may recall last year I documented this woman being brutally clubbed. It's where she's from. And a couple months ago, there was a report that a settler had shot two people dead at the school. the story came and went. I did more digging on it and then I visited and I met with the principal and we walked around. So basically what happened is settlers just showed up in the village one day, which to be clear,

like there's literally no reason they should be in this village. There's no settlement anywhere near. This is all Palestinian land. Settlers just showed up on what they call a patrol. A patrol is where they are just going around basically doing provocations. trying to provoke some sort of an attack on them or whatever that gives them license to then start killing Palestinians. In this case, it's not even clear like what the ostensible provocation would have been.

So what happened was the principal was notified that settlers were spotted sort of peering down at them from a hill maybe 50 meters away. Not that far. We went up to the hill. It's like you can very clearly see from the hill you're looking down at a school. once they saw the settlers up there and they were like looking around they got near the principal decided to evacuate the students and so there's 450 students in this school so he starts evacuating them through an emergency exit on the other side of the school except a handful of students

basically got spooked or something and they tried to run out the main exit as they were running out the main exit and there's video of this one of the settlers crouched down in a sniper position and started shooting them, shooting the children trying to escape the school. He shoots a 14-year-old boy in the head and kills him. He's a 32-year-old who heard about this and was running to the school to help. His brother was a teacher there actually was shot in the chest and killed. The army shows up at some point. Somebody runs to the army to beg for help.

The army shoots that guy. They then tear-gas the school, tear-gas the people there. And then the army and the settlers leave together. So there's two people dead, I think five injured, including severely injured. The Israeli police or the border police or the army, the people who would be in charge of this investigation, never talk to the principal of the school. There's no investigation. Nobody knows who the settler was. He just disappeared without a trace.

I mean, you know, as you said, well, it's like, this is, you know, we have a name for this. This is a school shooting. A guy, you know, deliberately taking aim. at students in a school. That's a school shooting except... But this is an adult doing it to children. It's an adult doing it to children. And, you know, I was actually, I did some research on this. As far as I know, as far as I could tell, there's never been a school shooter in America who got away. There have, you know, they either die by suicide, they're killed by police or they're arrested

and they spend the rest of their life in jail or they, you know, get the death penalty. And ironically, the one time that it appeared someone got away, it was the Brown shoot, the Brown University shooting last year, these internet idiots, started blaming it on a Palestinian kid when it was actually just like some disaffected, like academic asshole. So anyway, like you expect after a school shooting, someone is going to be held accountable. Not only is nobody held accountable, this village remains under daily assault. Literally, I think, five or six days ago, settlers invaded the village.

They shot the 17-year-old cousin of the kid who died, the kid who is. In the video of the 14 year old being killed outside the school, there's a guy who runs over to him. That 17 year old was shot and killed earlier this week. So that's another student from the school, the cousin of the kid who died. Of course, nobody's been arrested in that. I mean, this is a village that is, think about Sandy Hook after their school shooting, right? Like that is a village that will never fully recover from it. You know, it stays with people forever.

Going back to that school, I don't even think they allowed kids to go back to Sandy Hook. at this school, they had to go back because there's no other school for them. The occupation won't let them build another school. And they're still under attack every single day. So this is like not a member of the Israeli military, an Israeli citizen, an adult who staked out a school from like a, you know, a higher advantage point and just shot kids

running out of it like a fire drill or something. Now, like obviously like the Israeli government, like, you know, when confronted, when asked about this, like you said no arrest has been made. Like that should tell you everything. And I remember, I think like just last week was a recent interview. I forget who did it with, who was the interviewer.

But Benjamin Deniahu when asked about the like the settler violence, like incidents like this, that yeah, Dana Bass. He claimed it was the work of, in his words, between 50 and 100 juvenile delinquents and that they were like, it's not,

it's exaggerated. And then we're sort of, we'll deal with them eventually. And it's like, well, if that were the case, it would be pretty. easy to arrest and convict these 50 to 100 juvenile delinquents. And the point you make in the article you sent is it like they have a template for how to deal

with this kind of thing. And it would just be imagine the person who pulled the trigger was a Palestinian. If the person who pulled the trigger was a Palestinian, they'd be dead, you know, within hours. And their house would have been demolished. And everyone in their family would have been arrested. And the town would have, you know, new gates installed around it. And like, the point you make is like these individuals who are doing this, they have names and they are well known, not just to the international press, not just to you of being attacked by them, but they are very well known to the Israeli government, police, and military. And it is one of the most surveilled countries on the face of the fucking planet.

They endlessly brag about their targeting capabilities, about their tracking capabilities. They have more tools and more leeway to deploy them than possibly any nation on Earth, any nation that still has voting or something that you could call voting for that matter. You just frankly cannot look at the kind of technology they have for a security force that is dedicated entirely to internal repression, tracking, targeting, and not conclude that they purposely let this fucking mass murderer get away. And I just going back to what we were talking about at the beginning, I don't, there is, there is no path for any of these people to stick. Once you were at this point of not just shooting up at school, but just as some nameless, faceless bureaucrat who is counting the years until your pension, that one of the boring, dull things that you do on a Tuesday at your job is help a mass shooter.

an adult who went into a school and massacred these children evade even the pretense of capture. Nothing is ever going to stop these people except fear. There is nothing but fear will stop them. I don't know how much it will take to inflict that. I don't know how many lives it will cost. But I just cannot imagine that anything will motivate these people to budge one, degree, but fear for their own lives. And like, just to follow up when you said, Felix, like, this is something that can only

happen with these people feel not even a shred of fear, that there will ever be any consequences for murdering an infant or a school child, a school, you know, a school kid. Yes. I'm like, they live with a sense of absolute impunity and not just that, but a sense of absolute moral outrage that anyone would, would be offended or shocked or disgusted by what they're doing. And it's not just fear of the. people who are living in Israel right now, there would have to be fear-inflicted that lasts for generations, I think, for there to be a lasting impact.

Let's just say, let's take the example of the hypothetical two-state solution. If that state had a military, if it is not just a Bantu stand, the only way it does not get strangled in its crib is, A, if it has nuclear weapons, and B, if, again, I don't want to sound glib on this, but I don't know how many lives it would take, how many Israeli lives, what would have to be done, but the kind of fear that would last for over a century to be inflicted on this populace.

I mean, look, like, there's precedent for, like, what you do with a, you know, a fascist regime that has to be taken out of power. And like, you know, de-radicalization, truth and reconciliation, things like that. I mean, it's not as if the, you know, quote-unquote, free world has never had to deal with this problem before. I want to just make one other quick point, well, about something you were saying about. They know who these people are.

So one thing that Israel does is when an attack, when a settler attack gets enough attention and it becomes a PR crisis for Israel. for example the the woman who I documented getting clubbed last year they will go out and they will make an arrest the person they are arresting is a grunt this is a nobody it is a foot soldier what what they just a crash out like just when you send out there and do the dirty work they did the same thing when the CNN van was attacked a couple days ago they went out and arrested a couple of kids what they will not do is arrest the people that they know are literally sending those people out to launch the attacks, the people who are building the outposts and expanding the outposts and are working directly with the Israeli government, taking their money and taking their weapons and taking their infrastructural support to build out these outposts. And so it is actually like you do occasionally hear, oh, an arrest was made. And most of the time they don't actually do any jail time, of course.

But even so, like, it just needs to be said that part of the Israeli state project of ethnic cleansing is that the violent settlers are the vanguard. I mean, these are the people who are pushing the frontier by terrorizing Palestinians and chasing them off their land. And it's like supposedly illegal, but once they're there, they declare it a protected military zone. And I saw people arguing this Rokana saying like, well, what did he expect to happen? He was in a military no-go zone. But like, I think, I think in your piece, like, you described like, these military no-go zones are so Capricious that like a woman's bathroom was declared a military no-go zone while she was fucking in it. Yes. No, exactly. So that's exactly it. So settlers will like attack a village. If it's bad enough,

maybe the, uh, the Israeli police will arrest a settler. But if you pay attention in a couple months from now, oh, that outpost where the attack came from, what that was, you know, created through violence against Palestinians was just formally recognized as a settlement. And, you know, maybe it was cleared out by them declaring in a closed military zone. So, so like the process of them, the process of Nanyahu going on TV and, you know, saying, oh, yes, it's a problem with juvenile delinquents and the occasional arrest. That is literally just like letting the steam out of the machine so it doesn't like explode under the attention that settler violence sometimes gets. But it is very, much a part of the process of ethnic cleansing, which is the violent settlers,

occasionally one of them has to be sacrificed by being arrested, but they are the ones who are clearing out the land that Israel then quietly, you know, recognizes as a legitimate gain. Another incident that I'd like to talk about, and like, thankfully this one is, I mean, look, it's still, it's still shocking and repellent, but at least this one veers into the realm of the absurd. But as long as we're talking about juvenile, delinquents and these sort of like hills have eyes hills have eyes style teenage murderers could you discuss the the settler youth joyriding incident yeah because at least like that one like I said like it crosses in the term of just like of the absurd total no I mean okay so it's a town called muhmas

moukmas actually has a pretty heavily American population Palestinian Americans this is where an American teenager Nasrallah Abu Siam was was murdered by a settlement earlier this year. Was that the incident where they, like, cracked his skull and then prevented an ambulance from reaching him for like two hours? No, that was, that was Seifola-Muselet, who on the one-year anniversary of that, when we tried to reach that land, we were attacked by settlers too. So that's a different American who was murdered.

Yeah, no, it's hard to keep track of them. This one was an American teenager who was just killed by settlers invading the village. Shout out to, you know, John Federman and what's the governor of Pennsylvania's name? Josh Shapiro. Josh Shapiro. Shout out to these guys who did absolutely nothing to support the family after their son was murdered. A constituent. Josh Shapiro's constituent was murdered in the West Bank by settlers and he did nothing for them. Anyway, that's just like the backstory of this village. They're facing regular settler attacks now. I spent a couple days with them. We were, we had to say, I mean, the guys that I was with, these like incredibly brave young men, stay up all night guarding against settlers who are coming at them from all sides with weapons on ATVs in trucks.

and they've just been forced into this position, these young men, of being the protectors of the village. So one night, a car full of Haridi children, the way it was put to me was a clown car, like 10 or 12 of them stuffed into one car, came flying into the village, which again, it's a place where they're not supposed to be. And behind them was an Israeli police car who was chasing them. So we don't know for sure, but it probably, the Israeli police car saw a clown car and was like, well, that's against the law. of stuff, you know, 18 children in one car. So like they went after them. But as soon as they got into the village where the Israeli police don't technically have jurisdiction, the Israeli police car just turn around and left and left the car full of settler kids to joyride around the village. This is at 4 a.m. by the way. So the kids are joyriding around the village.

They then drive straight into a fucking wall, crash the car. They've woken up the entire village by now, by the way, from the joy ride and then from this huge crash. Nobody in the village ever saw the kids, except when they got out of the car screaming and running for the hills. They all just disappeared immediately. The people in the village, the Palestinians there, realized, like, this is a dangerous situation for us because a group of settlers who we never asked for them to come here, obviously. We didn't ask for any of this, but they just drove into our village, crashed their car, and now there's a destroyed Israeli car in our village. So what happens at... 18 missing kids.

And 18 missing kids. Okay. Israeli media reports at like six in the morning that, you know, a car full of heredity kids disappeared in Mughmas, right? Now dozens, if not hundreds of IDF soldiers come into Mughmas in dozens of jeeps, in helicopters, with drones, and they start kicking down doors, dragging people out of their homes, beating these shit out of people. A good friend of mine there got his was dragged out

of his bed and the soldier just immediately started punching him in the face and kicking him when he was down, broke his jaw in four places, broke his ribs, broke his shoulder. They just burst in. This is the part that is really insane. At 8 a.m., so two hours after the raid started, at 8 a.m., Israeli media reports that the children

have been rescued from Mughmas. First of all, it needs to be said. They were not rescued from Mughmas. Nobody even saw them in Mugh Mugh Moumast. Nobody even saw them in Mookmas, except when they crashed the car and ran for their lives. So they obviously just found their way to safety somehow. So by 8 a.m., they know that the kids are safe. The raid goes on until 3 p.m. It goes on for another seven hours.

They end up destroying dozens of homes, arresting 15 people, beating, you know, torturing, beating them, starving them. Today, it's been probably about two weeks. Two of them are still in prison. And nobody knows, you know, they haven't been charged with anything. Nobody knows why they're being held. The one thing that they know about how the people were picked to be arrested was they stole somebody's phone and they opened up their group text. And anybody who had said something like, be careful or like there's a set, there are settlers

here. Like that was incriminating. So the people in that group text, which were mostly the young men who protect the village, are the ones who were hauled off to, you know, a torture prison. And, and yeah, now you've got two people. people in jail. You've got another village, you know, traumatized. You've got homes destroyed. And, you know, hopefully those kids are safe and sound at home now, I guess. Just for like, the last thing I want to talk about with you is like in the beginning of this

episode, I talked about like sort of these stock arguments that you encounter. Another stock argument that you're reporting just brings to my mind is like I see this all the time and I see it often people saying to you directly. And usually it's from like American Zionists who don't live in Israel, but feel like. like a very, let's just say close, emotional and identitarian bond with that country. And they'll always say, like, referring to like, I don't know, pro-Palestinian activists in this country, especially if they themselves are Jewish Americans. The line will be like, try going to Janine and doing that.

They'll kill you immediately. Now, I think, you know, everything that we've discussed on this show, if you're like a Jewish person wandering around the West Bank, I would think it would be entirely justified for any Palestinian person there to view you as a direct threat to their life. lives. And like when I say this, I don't want to be like condescending because Palestinian people are people just like anyone else, you know, good, bad and everything in between. But like, I think I'm struck by in your reporting is like just how nice and accepted, like, just how the warmth of which you are treated by Palestinians in the West Bank as an American Jewish person yourself.

And like, I like, like, the people you talk to, like just like, how open and friendly they are with you, given the context, I think is like kind of staggering. Yeah, I mean, like, I always feel strange about it because, you know, the Jewish institutions around the world and certainly in America are like entirely complicit in all of these crimes. And so, you know, I think that they are more, the Palestinians and the West Bank are far more generous than they need to be. But and like something that you see also pop up on Twitter every now and then is like a very. video of a Palestinian like talking about settlers or talking about soldiers and they're just saying Yehoud or Yehudi, which means Jews. And they'll be like, see, their problem is with the Jews. And it's, I think Muhammad is Muhammad al-Kurd. It was like, they call them Jews because they are

Jews. Like, yes, the people who are attacking them every day, the settlers and the soldiers are Jews. And they make that very known. They literally have Jewish stars, you know, on their uniforms or they plant them in their yards. It's actually, it's on the flag. And so, So like, so there is every reason for these people to be, you know, as you said, I think, you know, skeptical at the very least, if any Jewish person, but, but it is actually like, it's so straightforward. Immediately, if you are, you know, with somebody that they know and trust or if, you know, they have seen your work or something and they understand that you are against them being, you know, terrorized, killed, dispossessed, what have you, then they take you in as one of their own.

or beyond that. The hospitality they show you is unlike anything I've ever experienced before. And like the, you know, Janine is a great example of this because Janine is sort of has a reputation as like gritty, tough city. It's in the Northern West Bank. It has this giant refugee camp, the Janine refugee camp where there were at one time a lot of fighters there. And people always are like, go into Janine as a Jew and see how they treat you.

I went into Janine. I've actually been to Janine three times now. And I don't go around, you know, I don't wear a yellow star pinned on my shirt. I don't like volunteer, but often the Palestinians I'm traveling with will just like mention it because they're, they think it's like notable or like, look, we have a Jew with us. The Jews are on our side or some of the Jews are on our side. So it often comes out that I'm Jewish. And, and these guys are just like so warm and friendly. And I'm talking about like tough looking guys who lived in the refugee camp.

And actually, I was planning on trying to go into the refugee camp to report on what was happening inside there. And these guys literally would not let me because they thought it was too dangerous because there's just really snipers in there. And so they were very much trying to protect my life from the Jews who would maybe try to kill me, knowing that I'm a Jewish person too. And then instead of me going in, we had cookies and coffee and there was some arm wrestling. actually, which I've been forbidden from sharing the results of it. But like it was just this totally warm encounter. And I've stayed in touch with a lot of those guys. And, you know, when I posted about this on Twitter, actually,

people start to say like, well, yeah, it's because you're not a Zionist Jew. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no shit. Yeah, that's the point. That's the point. They're only nice because you don't want to kill them. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. No, it's, oh, you're not one of the Jews that wants to kill them. That's why they're being nice to you. Like, yes, actually. Yeah. I'm also not like a Christian who wants to kill them. Like, you know, have an evangelical Zionists go into there and start like, you know, waiting in Israeli flag. Like they'll have just as much trouble as a Jewish person who did that. So like it is just, again, like I feel I want to be careful the way I talk about this because I do think that like a lot of the, you know, the so called rise in anti-Semitism or a lot of these things are coming from.

the fact that the Jewish institutions are complicit in this, even like materially, you know, the Jewish National Fund is pouring money into settler groups and whatnot. But still, I mean, the Palestinian people that I've encountered, and there have been lots of them, I have never once in my life encountered any hostility whatsoever. The most dangerous thing is that, like, they will not stop. giving you food and coffee. And if you try to say no, then they take it as a personal insult. So you end up not sleeping because you have too much caffeine.

But like they're so warm and kind and generous. And it just like the people who say will go into Janine or go into Area A or whatever. Like I actually like I don't know if they believe themselves, but they could not possibly be more wrong. This is something I thought about a lot when in after the Russian special military operation commenced. and the Western response was any Russian musician or athlete or whatever. Can't even read Dostairski on the train anymore. Right. Yeah.

Even guys who died like 300 years before any of this shit happened. It didn't matter if they had come out against the special military operation. That didn't matter. The fact that they were Russian was such a grave insult that they should be denied entry, that their books should be ripped off the shelves, that they should not be allowed to compete or perform their art or whatever. And I always thought it was so fucking monstrous

and insane and hypocritical from Americans because I really like, have you ever in your life met in Iraqi, whether you're in Dearborn, whether you are overseas wherever? I've never met a fucking Iraqi who wants to spit in my face because of what my country

did to theirs, even though they'd have every right in some ways. And I have met people, not just Palestinians, people from Yemen, people from South Lebanon, people from all these countries that they would have, if they just fucking hated me surely for where I am from, for demographic reasons, because the fact that people who looked exactly like me, did something unspeakable to them or someone they know, it would sadly be something that would be understandable. But I've never, some of the kindest things I've ever heard have been from these people. And it just, again, I did.

Just like you said, oh, they only trade you that way because you're not a Zionist. I don't know. I've never fucking met anyone in my life who is that nice to me because I do not openly want to kill them. That is just sort of like the bare minimum in my day-to-day life that people assume that about me. And sometimes they're wrong. But no, no, I mean, it's just, you're right.

Like you don't want to totally dehumanize people in the other direction and act like people aren't capable of ire or grudges or any of these other things. all humans are capable of. But it is something that I have found completely remarkable in just my many years of knowing people from all these places that America and Israel have done the unspeakable and unthinkable. They're pretty savvy about it. I mean, in terms of like, not like your point, Felix, about not wanting to dehumanize them in the other direction.

I think about this a lot. Like, you know, I don't want to portray Palestinians as these just like, you know, for, ever forgiving, you know, welcoming you in, but like, it's like nothing ever happened to them because they are, you know, like a complex people like all of us. Yeah. They, you know, what I always find when I have conversations with them about this is they are thinking about it in like a complex way. Like they understand, yes, the Jewish institutions have supported the Zionist project.

But there are a lot. There are, you know, they see what's happening with, you know, young anti-Zionist Jews or anti-Zionist Jews. They, like, every last one of them is. anytime I say him from New York, everybody's like, Zoran or Mamdani. And they all know that like, you know, Jews in New York were a part of, you know, getting him elected.

And so it's just to say that like they are thinking about it in a, I think a pretty rational, reasonable way. Contrast that with the organs of, the institutions and organs of like Jewish cultural and political life in America. Contrast that with them because like, you know, having, being from New York. having, you know, not being Jewish myself, but having been, you know, grew up in a very Jewish community, I never once in my life associated being Jewish with the actions of an Israeli government,

nor would I ever hold any Jewish person, you know, responsible because to me, that's racism. However, over the last, you know, a couple years or whatever, it seems like the Zionist lobby or like Zionist advocates or people who, like I said, feel an emotional identification with that cause or ideology, have been very insistent over the last couple of years. years that like there is no separation whatsoever between Judaism and the state of Israel and the actions of the state of Israel and support for its government and its military. And like I guess like just the the final leap here or like a door that should be easy to walk through for anyone, be they Jewish or Gentile, is that if you accept the terms of that argument on the debate like as it's

being had by these people, then like, okay, I accept that. Then fuck being Jewish. If that's what it is, then like it's unsupportable and no one with any morality should have anything to do with it. It's just like the people who, yeah, after years and years of the worst images that millions of Americans have ever

seen in their entire lives, I think one of the things that is largely responsible for the shift in public opinion, after people have seen these images, they go, if you were disgusted by this, you are anti-Semitic, they are making,

making the bet that millions of people, millions of good people won't go, okay, well, if that's what it is, then okay. I am that. Totally. I mean, how many, how many young, uh, just like idealistic people who saw what Israel was doing to Palestine and came out to march against it were convinced by, you know, the likes of Jonathan Greenblatt that actually it's the Jews I'm against. It's not a state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Jasper, I did want to ask you something kind of more in the weeds, I guess. Yeah, because I guess this were going out. I know that you have traveled extensively throughout the West Bank and it's, you do you want to avoid a Tom Friedman moment where you go, oh, I talked to this cab driver and got this sense.

But do you just the dozens of people. you talk to all the homes that you've been welcomed into. Do you get a sense of the political reality for people in the West Bank, for Palestinians in the West Bank, after Abbas.

There is actually a kid from Janine that we know on Twitter who, he has a really funny, ironic bit of calling Mahmoud Abbas the lion, completely ironically. It always just makes me laugh. Very old sleepy lion. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But do you, I mean, just, I'm sure that most people are aware, but for people who aren't aware, Abbas's government is a complete cop-door government that serves a dual function of repressing a lot, any type of like organized resistance, be it armed or not armed in the West Bank, and also serving as like a all the stuff they used to say about Arafat they've just transferred onto a boss which is even in some ways less absurd because he is

very openly corrupt but more absurd because he lacks the ambition for a lot of this but do you I mean he is what like nearly 90 years old now he's about 150 I think yeah yeah yeah He, oh my, yeah, he's, he is one of those guys.

If you showed me a derogotype, and you were like, here he is. He's in that famous camp photo with Abraham Lincoln. You have to pose for three hours. Yeah. Do you do get it? But just not asking you to read the tea leaves or put up the Steve Kornacki map, but do you get a general sense of where you think things politically? might go for Pelotians to the West Bank after he is gone.

After Abbas is gone? Yes. I think that they have sort of his error already picked, who has been rubber-stamped by the occupation and presumably by the U.S. I'm forgetting his name, but he's basically just an Abbas accolate, which is to say that he is there to do the occupations bidding, despite being strangled economically, you know, literally strangled by the occupation. Like the people that I talk to, unfortunately, I have to say they just have no hope in a political process under occupation.

Because there's not an opportunity to have a real party develop or, you know, I think a lot of people know Marwan Bargudi, who a lot of people think could be a, political leader. This guy's been in prison getting tortured for decades now. How many, you know, Nelson Mandela, Palestinian Nelson Mandela's have been killed or thrown in jail. And also like the PA, listen, like the Palestinian Authority, which is what a boss runs, is certainly deeply corrupt and, you know, certainly collaborationist. But they also, I don't know that they would have any chance of actually being a sort of like autonomous ruling party because, is, Israel, I mean, right now they're literally withholding tax funds that are owed to them or tax revenues that are owed to them from like taxes that Palestinians have paid. Those revenues are being held by Israel.

And so they don't, they really don't have a chance to do anything right now. And I don't see anything changing with the next leader. So, you know, I have actually, I don't, I don't know that I've met a Palestinian who feels like, oh, yeah, the, you know, the next, like, we have a chance through our democratic process to like elect. a good a good person next time because i i i didn't mean that so much i didn't mean i didn't mean like oh oh is there you know is there a howard dean uh coming up in the pa i i guess i meant more like movements outside of that obviously was sensitivity paid towards not wanting to give the exact coordinates and names of everyone yeah no i mean there are some people who there's some people support Hamas. There are some people who support Fatah. There are some people who are communists

and want to bring back like real communism in Palestine. I think I have not seen like, like, there's a great like trade union, unionists who I think, you know, could play a political role. But I, my experience, I'm not an expert on this, is that I have not seen like real groups being able to organize in such a way that they could contend with, you know, this sort of just institutional leverage that, or momentum that the PA has. So I'm afraid to say that, listen, to be clear, like the political views are, you know, completely pluralistic. They span the map. I actually met recently, for the first time ever, like a diehard Abbas supporter, which I thought was I could not believe my, I thought he was kidding at first.

And then he started telling me about the books that he has written and that he's read and like how thoughtful he is and all these things. And I was just like, well, you just completed my bingo card. I've now met everybody in Palestine. Oh my God. It takes all kinds out there. Yeah. And then there are people who like, you know, in Gaza, I think it's, it's, there's people who

support Hamas. There's people who don't support Hamas. There's people like, who have all different political views. And those people exist all across Palestine, but they don't have a political chance right now because they're being strangled by the occupation. And so the sense I get is that people have, you know, dreams and wishes for all these different things. Like I know some like hardcore communists who really want to see a sort of like return to that sort of politics there. But there's just like no ability to organize because of the way they're strangled. There are fewer places in the world.

I think it could be more difficult to create any type of organized mess movement. And that's the same thing. Just like, this is getting a little off topic, but like I think people don't quite realize how like when your basic life functions are strangled, like how difficult it makes it to like achieve sort of higher level like moral or to have like, you know, ethical. principles or something like that. So what I'm talking about specifically is like, like, like LGBT stuff in, in Palestine, for example. Like I know lots of, I know lots of gay Palestinians. I know lots of gay activists who have no issues at all going through the West Bank.

It is certainly true that like, I think, you know, the, some like, like, like institutionally maybe, you know, it would be difficult to be an openly gay person in parts of Palestine. But it's like, I can't remember who said this, but there was some comedian who was like, we'll get to gay. Like, stop killing. Yeah. We'll get to gay. Like, we'll get to this stuff later.

But like, we need to focus on surviving. And so like, I think that some of the like sort of rougher edges, so to speak that you see, it's like, I think that if you were forced to live this way, your best attributes might not always be shining all the time. Right. I always, I use this analogy more so with Iran, with Ansarala, with Hamas and in Gaza. But I always say, you know, all of us, all the men and the handful of women who have watched Band of Brothers, you know, most of us know, most of us know that when these guys were tearing across Europe, when Spears was done, doing all this incredibly cool shit. America was a segregated country.

All sorts of horrific crimes that you should go to prison for for life and do now, hopefully. We're completely legal. There was no concept of spousal rape. Most things we consider child abuse were not really enshrined in laws in the same way. American society was very backwards compared to even what we would have today. Yeah, but I think everyone understands it's feeding Hitler. Exactly. We still recognize that it's better that Spears was an American as he killed the

Vermecht by the dozens. A similar thing here. I will say that they are a smaller movement than Hamas. in Gaza, though they have collaborated extensively with them throughout these last few years. I have found P.I.J's charter incredibly interesting. They're a more Iran-aligned group than Hamas. But they do kind of, if you read their charter, it is pretty interesting.

They do kind of thread this needle between obviously not secular Marxist-Leninism, but sort of a mix between that and Islamic and foreign policies that is, I don't know. Again, you would know far better than I. If I were being extremely optimistic and taking a very long view, I would hope that I could see it find purchase in West Bank, though, of course, there are, as you said,

quite a few many Palestinians who were also secular and would probably prefer a PFLP or something PFLP analogous to them. But I have been, that has been on my mind ever since. Yeah, I've met PIJ supporters too. And yeah, again, like, I think, look, like, I would love to see the Palestinians be able to have, like, actual vote. where they could vote on, like, the principles they believe in and not just, you know, a desperation to survive, which is, I mean, like, to the extent that people support, supported, like, Hamas when they came into power, like, it was in part because Hamas was, like, the one

group who was like, we're going to fight the occupiers. And so it's like, I think that a lot of people, even who support Hamas, like, are not, you know, like, fundamental Islamists, but they want somebody. who's going to fight for them. And so I think that like until the occupation ends, people want to survive. And that's what's going to drive their politics. Hopefully at some point they can think about, you know, higher, higher order, like principles that they want to govern their society.

But people that I talk to for the most part are just like fucking desperate. People like go back to their farmland without being like, you know, pistol whipped. And, you know, that's where we're at right now. Yeah, yeah. Jasper, I think I'd say a good place to leave things on this, you know, a very cheery episode. But seriously, Jasper, I really want to thank you for your time and thank you for your reporting. We will embed links in the episode description. But that does it for today's episode.

Once again, Jasper Nathaniel, thank you for joining us. And thank you for your reporting that you're doing. Yeah, thanks a lot, Will, Felix. Good to see you guys. You too. Thank you. All right. That does it for us today. Till next time, everybody, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.