Chapo Trap House - 526 - Free Parking feat. TrueAnon (5/25/21)

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

We’re joined by TrueAnon for a round table on Israel through two in-depth reading series. Can Americans have opinions on Israel and Palestine, despite it being outside our lived experiences? Is middle eastern peace calling out, siren-like, to Joe Biden? Find out inside. Tickets to Chapo’s upcoming live show June 5th at the FRQNCY1 streaming festival here: https://frqncy.live/frqncy1 And hang out with Chris and Dan Boeckner watching some live music on Chapo’s twitch this saturday at twitch.tv/chapotraphouse

What up gang, it's been a minute since I've done a full plug for Frequency One Fest, so here it is. We're just about 10 days out from the fest on June 5th, Catch Chepo plus nine other great bands, podcasts, and comedy acts live at our one day streaming festival, Geerticks at Frequency.Live, that's FRQNCY.Live. The boys have been prepping their show out in LA, I've seen what they were working on, it's gonna be a great time. It is kind of a preview this Saturday, May 29th, Dan Bechner and I are going to do a

little live stream over on the Chappo Twitch, that's twitch.tv slash Chappo Trap House. We're gonna be watching videos of some old live concert sets provided to us by our partners over at the Picathon Festival, and we're gonna be joined by the FYM boys, the Chappos, some of the We Hate Movies gang, Zola Jesus and Keith from ETID might stop by, some of the other podcasts playing at the festival might send some people over, it's gonna be a good time and hopefully give you, the audience, a sense of what the actual Frequency Fest will be like. So that's going to start at 5PM Saturday, May 29th over on twitch.tv slash Chappo Trap

House. So, onto the ep, this one's a banger, have fun with it, ticks again for our June 5th streaming live show at frequency.live, that's frqncy.live. You know, it's been a really crazy week, a lot of awful images, a lot of awful reports, really scary stuff. I am, of course, exclusively and only talking about, you know, reports we're getting from Burbank, from the Upper West Side, from the Upper East Side, from Carol Gardens, from Silver Springs, Maryland, of Jews reporting that they are feeling like unsafe and harassed

and generally feeling icky. And they should feel that way because I am gangstalking them, welcome. Hello, everybody, it's our Chappo, it's back again. Our most recent episode was the first time me, Matt and Phil, looks were in the same room with each other, breathing the same air in probably a year. And today is the first episode, we have guests in our company, welcome, once again, to Brace and Liz of the Truinand podcast. Hello.

It's so nice to be here today. Today's first off topic, should there be kink at Pride? Totally blankly, go. Well, that depends on what you mean by kink because I got a few things that could, they teeter between fetish and kink. Granted, I'm technically banned from most Pride events that I go on parade routes because my parade routes pass like high schools and parks and stuff like that. I thought you were banned because you stole your first screen name from the kink community.

Yeah, I did. If I'm banned for appropriation. Wait a minute, you aren't the Pispick granddad? What the fuck? No, no, no. I've retired from that life, fully dry now. Well, I got a lot to talk about this week, but before we get into today's episode, I would just like to use this opportunity because it's my show, to take a little victory lap.

I will just read this one tweet here. This is from Roger Sullenberger, who is a reporter at the Daily Beast. Sullen's child. It's funny that this shows up in a tweet and not an article on the Daily Beast, but I won't be holding my breath for any news coverage of this topic, so I'm just going to read this latest report. A US district judge has ordered Trumpflak, Jason Miller, to pay Gizmodo nearly $42,000 to cover legal expenses from his failed $100 million defamation suit.

The judge found Gizmodo accurately reported a court filing alleging Miller slipped an abortion pill into a woman's smoothie. Oh, snap. So Catherine Krieger vindicated Will Menaker not getting any money back, but there are certain things more important than money, and that is my satisfaction. So rat face fuck, Jason Miller, rotten hell. Well, at least he still has his looks. So this is the only media coverage this will get, but there's certainly a lot of articles

written about us getting sued, but almost no coverage of the fact that we were vindicated in this lawsuit, nor do I expect there to be, but cheers to you, Jason, better luck in the future. Whether you're pro or anti-article, not sure who's what, where people fall on this spectrum. It is a spectrum about articles, but more articles to come. So if you're anti-articles, get ready to protest. If you're pro, get readin', get those RSSs, one of the greatest publications. And reach out to people for more articles on whether or not articles are good or bad.

Yeah. And you could even be, you could think you're reading all the articles, but there are entire countries where they're writing articles in different languages that don't get translated. And there's people who study articles for years and years and years, and even they are not expert on articles. That's true. And we need to listen to them. They say articles take a day to learn, but a lifetime to master.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, moving on from Catherine and I's personal vindication, and all things legal, social, and romantic, and just vindication of our love over the forces of evil. Let's go into what Felix alluded to in his opening shbeel here. So I'm hearing a lot of reports that the Jews are tired. They're tired. They're so tired, y'all.

And I just have to answer. I had to wake up at 9 today. You realize that's almost like 10 East Coast time? APAC has launched a nationwide drive collecting Victorian sleeping hats and stockings to wear because they're so sleepy. So I gotta ask, you know, Grace and Felix, how you guys holdin' up? Well, I don't know about Felix, but this morning I was outside of a little store called Dolls Kill on Sunset, and I was waitin' in line, talkin' to a lot of the other people

there. I'm pitchin' a bra there, like it's a really complicated kind of webbing thing. And a gang of teenagers kept telling me to leave. They're like, you don't belong here, it's weird you're in front of Dolls Kill. This is a store for 16-year-old ravers, please leave. And I did, I did, after recording a shaky three-second cell phone video where I'm fine to kill me. And honestly, like I've been thinking, like I have a lot of cousins technically in Israel,

and honestly I've been thinking it'd be safer for me to just take over someone's house there than to even go back to one of the many homes that I own and rent out, both here and in parts of New York. And so, yeah, it's been pretty dangerous for me, I mean, I've read all these things about, you know, these scientists, people being like, I feel unsafe walking outside, and there are- Yeah, it's called allergies. Exactly.

Yes. And honestly, like a lot of my friends here have been like, have been talkin' about how they wanna move, because mostly because of there's rumors of a second round of Me Too things coming in, but also for other reasons as well. And so, yeah, I would say I feel pretty unsafe. It's insane to me. People are just like, yeah, I don't think I can walk outside, never, I have never had anyone in my life say something to me on the street about being Jewish.

And you are, as they say, visibly Jewish. I look like a fucking dersturmer, like, and yeah, and so I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying it's funny how it just happens to the most insane science on Earth, but we have to try this in all conditions, though. Have you ever walked around in public rubbing your hands together? Maybe that would do it. Constantly, dude, are you fond of that? I have a similar, like, harrowing tale to Bray's mine, of course, didn't technically

happen outside or in a physical realm, but, you know, I was doing what I do every morning, and by that I mean, I click on my followers tab on Instagram and I just type in the names of girls, you know, like, is there a, is there like a caro following me? Is there a Kristen? Is there an Emma? And I just click on the profiles and if they're locked, I'm requesting. And I'm DMing them, I'm like, hey, are you, you know, are you Aaron or something? You know, just like confirming that that's their name.

Yeah, of course. Like, hey, what's that, like sending a picture of my face from, like, 0.5 millimeters away from my chin and being like, good morning. I'm looking at the Red Scare Girls' stories and every time they post a girl wearing their merch, I click on their profile and I do the same thing. But just the thong, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just like, it's just like my soul patch area.

Yeah, yeah. Send them a picture of that. I'm like thinking about you and I don't follow them. I don't follow the girls, I'm DMing. And my account's been limited because I'm calling, like, I'm calling out, like, how, you know, like, whatever I'm feeling, I guess, like, pogromed. And it just really scary, this stuff's going on. I've, I was also, like, shot multiple times, but there's no video of it.

Do you have to trust me? The thing is that I find just incredible is that after like a, I would say, at least a recent vintage, unprecedented outpouring of support for Palestinian people, I mean, at the bottom line, not dying, you know, but in a lot of instances, like, pretty full-throated support of Palestinian people from maybe segments of society that don't always support them or have it in the past. Now for some reason, we have to, like, I have to, it's like Corbin stuff. Yeah.

Well, yeah. I mean, it's just like, I mean, this is what I want to talk about because, Brace, as you alluded to, like, it seemed like, like, this time around when there were, like, hammering Gaza and killing scores of people, like, every night, this wasn't, like, 2014 or, like, the last time they did that, like, and the sort of the, like, I don't know, Zionist, like, PR machine in America and in the West, like, sort of was taken off, taken a little bit of back at how much things had changed, and I think things have changed because when people in America now see videos of, like, armed people in uniform, like, brutalizing, arresting,

ear-gassing crowds of unarmed people, there are certain associations that they're like, oh, wait, I can make this connection in my head about things here in this country vis-a-vis, you know, what, what, cut the conduct of Israel and on the world stage. And, like, they were taken aback by that, and as well as the sort of, like, the broader movement of, for Palestinian solidarity around the rest of the world. And, but just as, like, I think the whole apparatus has reformed itself pretty quickly. Yeah. Well, it is now, like, has a certain, like, message discipline where, like, now there

just seem to be this, like, tidal wave of, like, news stories or, like, this idea that we have to reckon with the fact that, like, Zionists feel unsafe in America because they saw a sign that said free parking and they thought it said free Palestine. Well, yeah, like, all that pinkwashing shit, like, didn't work. Like, it just, it fell completely flat, like, since it maybe worked, like, eight years ago, but now it just, I don't really think too many people are buying it. If you weren't already totally on board with Israel and Zionism, you're not getting into it through this, most likely.

But what they have found that, like, works, and it doesn't work as far as, like, just making everyone pro-Israel, but it, like, muddies the waters enough and makes things murky and for people who are, like, you know, low information, but their heart is in the right place. They don't know any better. They see just these vague allusions to, like, anti-Semitic incidents that oftentimes are just self-reported by the ADL with no evidence, with nothing, just, and their categorization of it is so broad that it could just, it could include seeing graffiti that says free Palestine,

like, not even, like, on a temple or anything. Just like, you see it, you see it, like, you know, on the side of a Dunkin' Donuts, which hasn't been a Jewish establishment for three years. Well, also, like, their definition of anti-Semitism is so expansive. The ADL's official definition of anti-Semitism is any denial that Israel deserves to exist as an ethno-state. Yeah. Like, if you don't affirm that, that's not anti-Semitism, that's anti-Semitism.

So that all you need to hear is somebody say, hey, how about we have a one-state solution with, like, equal rights between everybody in Israel, and that's anti-Semitic because it denies the Jewish character of Israel. Right. Yeah. But it is enough, and it's murky enough, that it causes enough people to pause. Like, maybe last week, they were pretty full-throated in their support for Palestine and actively questioning America's relationship and the way that we benefit from this and the way

that we bolster Israel to now being like, oh, is this, like, the infographic bullshit I should care about? Just that constant anxiety that people who, like, don't really get a lot of good information in, but do genuinely kind of want to help, but do not know how to. I think what's been unfortunate to you is, like, at least looking at the kind of, like, posting wars on Instagram, which is always a good barometer of kind of, like, middle-class kind of liberal activist sensibilities or whatever, like, you're right to say that it, like, so quickly turned into the, like, oh, and we need to denounce this, and oh, I don't

know anything about this, I'm going to step out, you know, whatever. But also, like, so much of the focus has been on kind of, like, personal attitudes, like, what side do you support, rather than, like, really focusing on, you know, the, like, contradictions of the Democratic Party and the politicians that are fucking supporting the state and the lobbies and the, you know, Israeli weapons sales and things that actually could change some of those power dynamics here, but more so, like, just personal attitudes, which is a shame, because that's not really going to help anyone anywhere, you know? Yeah, it's a contest for sympathy, and that is why I think that, like, in this contest,

this, I mean, by the standards that they're going to set for themselves, I think this campaign is going to fail. They're not going to change a lot of minds, I think, because people are operating now from an axis of, like, who is the victim in this tableau of horror? Who is being dispossessed in this spectacle that I'm observing? That I've now become, like, a noor to seeing my politics as, like, finding out who's being oppressed? It's pretty clear.

You can't, these tweets from these people, like, I felt safe at the fucking, at the bagel place or whatever, that's not moving the needle compared to the images of, like, actual bombing and fucking, and police violence. So I think people's sympathy is going to move more towards the Palestinians, but the real problem is that that's all it's going to do, it's a sympathy economy, it's about who your heart is with, but that just ends up boiling down to a few performative posts or something, and, like, these guys are fighting this propaganda war because they have nothing else to do.

In the case of a lot of them, they're literally being paid to do it, but less because it's going to mean anything in terms of policy, but because fighting over the culture is what we do all day. And you have to have a side, you have to have a side that is offering a coherent position to be argued against. It doesn't really matter where people land on it. It matters that the engagement is happening at that level and that we're having this conversation instead of doing anything else.

And that's the utility of the sort of carbon shit they're doing. People who are, like, I feel like they've lost, like, a large segment of the American population, but on, I'd say, about, like, 30 to anywhere from 30 to, like, 60% of those people, if you do enough of those, I feel unsafe posts, they'll be like, oh, I shouldn't go overboard. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think, like, you know, the sort of the intersectionality door swings both ways here

because I think, like, if you read the writings of these people who are defending what Israel is doing right now and even defending them from, like, hey, I'm as liberal as the next guy, like, what they're saying is that, like, look, you can't apply a George Floyd American white supremacy view of things to what Israel is doing to the Palestinian population that they have complete military authority over. You can't do that because, like, these same people would never dream in a billion years to say something like, oh, well, actually Black Lives Matter is an evil organization and actually, like, the cops are right to suppress them and, you know, assassinate activists

and, or just generally, like, oppress and occupy black neighborhoods in the manner in which they do. But, like, now, when organizations like Black Lives Matter start carrying signs that say free Palestine or start saying things, like, from the river to the sea, that becomes a huge problem for these people because it puts them in a lock in this country, a dead lock that they can't argue their way out of. But, so, like, what they're doing now is that they're, they're, the door, like I said, the door swings the opposite way.

So what they're saying now is, like, actually, where are the marginalized group in America? Because we're, like, Jewish people are a minority and, increasingly, in the social spheres of, like, you know, power and influence, it's getting harder and harder for me to say things like, yeah, like, Israel should be an ethno-state or we need to preserve the Jewish character of America. So what they're doing is that they're coming up with these increasingly hysterical and exaggerated and stupid accounts. Israel is anti-colonialism against, like, the Ottomans.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Finkelstein has some pretty great stuff on, like, anti-Semitism in America, where he's a real straight shooter, Doc. But the fact is, like, a lot, I mean, they've tried a variety of sort of woke strategies around the past, like, you know, 10, 15 years, talked about the pink washing. Last year, they were trying to do, like, a vague, past few years, they've been trying to do, like, a vague, like, land back, like, we're indigenous people of the Middle East

kind of thing. Yeah, no, you're, motherfucker, your name is Blake. Yeah. You're not indigenous to the fucking Middle East. Exactly. Well, the other thing, too, is, like, I mean, now they're explicitly saying they sort of see where this is going, so there's a rash of articles, including some. I think there's one that's just titled, You Can't Put, Like, An American...

I'm going to actually read from that. Exactly. I mean, like, the thing is, where do you think that settler in that, like, Shiktarab video was from? Dude, he was from fucking Laht, like, Nile. And where is the fucking tear gas and the fucking bombs and the guns and the fucking everything? Where's that coming from?

Where is the upper leadership of Israel almost exclusively from? Why does Netanyahu say water when he speaks English? He's from fucking Philadelphia. Netanyahu went to high school with Reggie Jackson. He's the mayor of Easttown or whatever you're watching. The mayor of Easttown. Yeah. Like, Netanyahu, like, does crumping with Gritty and all that, like, Philadelphia bullshit.

He's anti-Fort and comfortable English than he does Hebrew. Well, actually, like, you bring up this article, like, this came out today in the Atlantic. The headline is, The Americanization of the Israeli-Palestinian Debate. Israel, like America, is deeply messed up. But it's messed up in completely different ways. We were shit. We were shit. I tried to be all the things to this country that I could have been to.

Everyone who tried to perceive me as, but I took all my personal shit and made a fucking mess. I was shit. This is like, I love this article because it's like, this guy wrote it like sitting backwards in a chair. Like, hey, these are two pretty messed up countries, but. Wait, who wrote this article? Okay, this is by someone named Maddie Friedman.

I believe this person also wrote the article in the Atlantic saying that there are Hamas Rockets in the AP's office. It's the same guy. Okay, this is Maddie Friedman, it says you're author of Spies of No Country, Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel. Oh, Robert Maxwell. So I'm just going to like, I'm going to skip ahead to the end of this article because literally the first 500 words is talking about the Paul Newman film, Exodus.

You cannot presume the lived experience of a of Israeli people because it's distinct from the American one. Actually, you're a colonizer for trying to apply your structures to our system. Exactly. So I'm going to read the last three paragraphs because this is where they really get down to what they're actually talking about here. So they write, Western observers are often tempted to see foreign countries as mirrors of their own because it makes the story more compelling for members of their audience who

are interested, who isn't, mainly in themselves. And it means they can analyze other societies without going to the considerable trouble of studying them, learning their language or even visiting. So Modi of India is Donald Trump and France's problem is racial inequality and Dutch conservatives are Republicans. It's seductive to think that everything you need to know, you learned back in Berkeley. But believing that foreign countries operate according to American logic is a recipe for confusion, even disaster.

Okay, I'm going to pause there and I'll just say like, believing that foreign countries operate according to American logic. Israel may not operate according to American logic, but it operates in the way it does entirely due to American money, military and diplomatic cover. Well, that's the thing. It's a fucking empire. America isn't like other countries. Like America is exceptional because it's the headquarters of a global fucking empire.

So in a very real way, our politics are linked to theirs in a way that other countries wouldn't necessarily be. Israel could not operate the way it does in the West Bank in contravenous, sorry, in violation of dozens of UN charters. You know how many times we are in our position as a veto on the security council? That's all we do. We just did. And we attempt to hold Israel accountable.

Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is like a repurposing of an old Zionist line, which is like, oh, well, why don't you talk about another country? And it's like, this, do you think Israel could get away? Do you think another, like, do you think like fucking Albania could do this right now? No, they'd be sanctioned. No, yeah.

At least if not having like a regime change. Right. Yeah. And it's like, if we're, if this is so painful for you to impose our framework on you, can we have like a hundred billion dollars backed? Well, that's, can you build a new fucking USS Liberty? It's like, I listen, I read the article and I tell this guy, Maddie, terrible name, by the way.

Maddie, you're right. America, we get ahead of ourselves. We don't realize how much we need to really stop and take an inventory of ourselves because, you know, we can't really know the rest of the world until we know ourselves. So we'll just be taking that four billion dollars a year and investing it in self care until we think about ourselves to have opinions about other countries. Would you take that deal? Yeah.

We're going to do an anti-bias training. It's like, this is the cost, motherfucker. The Americans will yap about this at the expense of getting four billion dollars a year. That's not good enough of a fucking deal for you. No, yeah. Honestly, shut the fuck up. You were getting off so light. Yeah.

This is it. This is nuclear weapons. This is you. This is you. Runs the world. Runs everything and then fucking cry about it. We let them fucking North Korea sets off like a wild E. Coyote dynamite explosion in a cavern or something.

And we've decided World War III is around the bend. They have 300 nuclear weapons that they just sit on. It's been verified that they put them on fucking, they put nukes on planes in the Yom Kippur War by themselves, just decided to do that as a strategy. They don't get the be held accountable for that shit. And then all they get that for all they have to deal with is putting up for us complaining about it a little more. This is media.

This ties into me and me and Liz have always demanded weapons inspectors for U.N. weapons inspectors backed by American force. If I could become like a God Emperor of America, like I just I fused the populist like basically if I became the Grimoire, I'm tongue of Matthew McConaughey, how I truly believe could immunitize the American political eschaton. I would come into office saying we're we are being serious about nuclear non-proliferation. And the first thing we're going to do as a show of good faith is total fucking inspections of Israel, total decommission of the Israeli illegal nuclear program.

And then we can start talking about how to do it. And I think if you did that, you might actually get somewhere. Yeah. Well, I mean, once they decommission the 300 Israeli nukes, they can turn the silos into the worst burger restaurants ever created. Well, as you mentioned, welcome to the welcome to burger condom. I mean, Liz, you mentioned like, I mean, because, you know, you can think about this and like people like they try to like, like set out like when you advance a critique like this,

like you're saying, oh, like, oh, Israel controls America, and they're pulling the strings in like an anti-Semitic way. But like, no, in fact, like, we let them have them because it very much serves our interests in the Middle East. Like was it Alexander Hague called Israel, the largest American aircraft carrier in the world? Yeah, absolutely. I think that like sometimes people forget about this.

I mean, even sometimes in the comparison with South Africa, right, because there are some differences where the apartheid state in South Africa, some, you know, part of what precipitated its fall was also that it wasn't useful to the Americans anymore with the fall of the end of the Cold War. Yeah. They were there to stop like, was it a beak or something? It's like, you care. Yeah.

And I mean, so the Israeli situation is complicated because of the location, I mean, the location, like quite literally just the location, location, location. Yeah. I mean, the purpose of this state, of this outpost in the Middle East and its strategic, and you know, the Israeli state also has its own, you know, its relationships that it's developing with Saudi Arabia and Qatar and everything is like very unique and changing as well. And all of these things are very, I guess sometimes, you know, it's just more complicated,

I think, than like, we just tend to flatten things a little bit. And I think the situation is much more fluid and, I don't know, a little more contingent than we kind of give credit to. Well, I think Israel does play like a pretty important role in like the, it's not unofficial because it basically is official at this point, but unnamed alliance between them and, you know, the gold stage. The Gulf, the GCC, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Like that's the real thing is that they've been, they have been the go-between. Which is new, by the way. And they have. It's the new development. Like, it's now the GCC essentially has nukes, you know, I mean, they always have because of us. But now there's like a degree of separation there where if something happens with them in Iran, you know, it's like, it's our hands at the end of the Trump era when like this

long standing taboo in these countries about not recognizing Israel to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. Yeah. All they needed was like, Hey, can we do this fucking oaf of favor? Yeah. Fine. We'll all make deals with Israel. Yeah.

In contravention of like what's presumably the public opinion in these countries and the Arab solidarity, they just go, whatever, Israel, you're fine. They've had to make decrees in Saudi Arabia to tell people like, we will put you in prison if you send money to Palestine because it's, it's just still like with the people there. Like this is still a broadly unpopular position, but what the fuck are you going to do, Senate change.org petition? Yeah. The interesting thing that's happened with Saudi Arabia and I'm unsure how many other

gold states this has happened with is they did, there is a weird parallel here where, you know, when people would go like, Hey, why do we, you know, why do we have all these bases here? Why do we give them carte blanche to do all this shit even before Khashoggi, even though this was a very marginal position. They, you know, they behead people for being gay, like crucify 15 year olds, they do all this shit. And the Saudi line would be like, also this is like colonial thing where it's like, this

is our way of life. Yeah. Like you can't impose. And there was this sort of like a vestige of like old values of the Arabian peninsula or like at least an aesthetic of it. But now if you look at Saudi media and stuff, it's very interesting because it looks exactly like Israeli media. And by looks like Israeli media, I mean that there is this, like they're basically making

their own. They're hot babes on TV. Yeah. And they're making like, it's like Israeli media because it's like this shitty pastiche of everything around it. It's like their TV shows are like a combination of like Turkish soap operas and like this is us and like fear factor and shit. And that happened pretty quick in Saudi Arabia.

And it just, it took a very short time for them to just give up that last like even like idea of asceticism to just go full force into like whatever this new like shitty type of monoculture is. Girls start your engine. Yeah. And that's what's so funny about Israel saying that they're the only democracy in the Middle East. You should understand them as part of this access.

Yeah. That runs through the Arabian peninsula of just pure authoritarianism. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, Israelis have democracy. Yeah. Well, so do members of the Saudi royal family, you know, control over the regime. Also fraudulent in their own right. I mean, you know what I mean?

Like the, the domestic situation in Saudi Arabia is very bizarre. And I would say precarious. Absolutely. The same thing in Israel, like the internal contradictions of the Israeli state, like, I mean, literally the amount of labor that they rely on, the Palestinians are basically the labor force of Israel. Yeah. And this is going to be a contradiction that the state has to completely reckon with and

might not be able to overcome. Yeah. So this is a similar thing with Saudi Arabia, where in both cases, they are sort of like, their victims is obviously not the right word, but in the phrase victims of their own success, they're victims of their own success of designs from previous generations, where with Israel, it's like, you know, making Palestinians be this sort of slave labor contingent. And with Saudi Arabia, it's sort of using Iqwan teachers, you know, several generations ago when they had to fill their schools and sort of using Wahhabism as this like thing

you could use to deal with like young military age men where you'd send them somewhere else. And now like, White school. Yeah. Well, yeah. Literally. Rock climbing school. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And now it's like. Yeah. Like in this current era with Saudi Arabia, where like they're not exactly like printing money and they're still very rich and they still have a lot of influence over global oil prices. But it's that's not as big of a deal as it was and say, like, you know, even like 2002.

Absolutely. No, it's totally shifting. I mean, they risk being, I mean, the oil situation is very serious, I would say for their economies and they have to figure something out. So it's interesting. Do you think that like, yeah, there's a tendency to kind of, I don't know if it's like a specifically American thing or something. I was thinking maybe it is because we were saying this position of Hedgeman.

I mean, I do think, you know, not, I mean, none of us are outside of that when we talk about these things, you know, so it's, it's, you know, you have to remember that all these states also have their own kind of contradictions that they're wrestling with. And none of these things are kind of like static. It's not some board game, you know, there's the sort of dynamic forces at play that are really, you know, especially in the case of the Gulf, insanely precarious. That is the annoying thing of when people go in either direction where it's like, no, we have to look at this through the entire, like the only framework you could see is Israel

just as an American proxy, or like, oh, they totally dominate American foreign policy where it's like, no, I mean, like it's, there are elements from both that are kind of true. They have their independent, they have their own motives, they have their independent motive. All of America's imperial allies and clients have their own individual situated interests. And those align for the most part with Americans at the most crucial points, but there are points of conflict. And the American foreign policy is a project of like smoothing out as great a degree as possible, those conflicts, but sometimes they really do emerge and they cannot be reckoned

with. And then, and then that's when you have the potential for something to shift. Well, I just want to get back to this Atlantic article, because like, I mean, the fact that this, this is what I'm about to read now appears in the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic. Yeah. What were they guys, what were they saying about the Iraq war? Here's the next, here's the next sentence I want to get to it says, many Americans looking at Iraq in the early years of this century, for example, saw a democracy in waiting stymied

only by a cruel dictator. America then took steps that resulted directly and indirectly in hundreds of thousands of death, including those of more than 4,500 American soldiers, I mean, that's the real tragedy and all this, but it says here, with little to show for it, the world is not a mirror. The world is a kaleidoscope that can be understood only by people who are experts in each individual shard and even then only partially. It's like, I love that like this guy is taking to the Atlantic to share with his, the readers of the Atlantic exactly what the Atlantic's position and beliefs were about Iraq in the

read up, lead up to the Iraq war. But in the context of demanding that you ignore everything that is right in front of your fucking eyes. Cause it's saying you can only know it if you're an expert, but they're experts said of Iraq. Yeah. Yeah. And also like it's like his reason for why we gave, we invaded Iraq was because like

a normal Americans were Orientalist. Like that's basically what he's saying. It's such, that is like the most insane, like millennial brain shit I've ever heard. Yeah. It wasn't like the Bush family or PNAC or this was like people wanted to do this for a really long time, it was that like just like some dumb fuck in Ohio was like, oh, what if Aladdin could vote in an election? They were saying, if not now.

So just rounding out this article that says here, the truth is that Israel is a small country in the Middle East that has nothing to do with the demons stalking America. We have our own demons conflating them, conflating them won't make either country's problems easier to understand or solve. And it's just like, okay, would you like to list some of the demons that you're referring to in Israel? Because I mean, like what are those demons look like? Well, they would probably look like Maddie Friedman who served in the IDF.

I mean, it's insane. Like we just like half of the people who write in like American media, not in America, half the people, but a lot of the people who write about this kind of stuff like Maddie Friedman, these sort of like so-called experts are, I mean, you're partisan. I understand that everybody in Israel is supposed to serve in the IDF. A lot of people do not serve in the IDF and doing so therefore is a conscious fucking choice, which this guy made. Shut up to that Taylor Swift fan account.

Yeah, like 16 year old girl, whatever respect. Jeff Goldberg, he didn't have to be in the IDF, he's going to stay at home. Exactly. He didn't even live. He just went to Israel to be a prison guard, which is the most depraved shit. It was like a bullpatter fantasy camp. Even a fucking camp where people were like raped and tortured and fucking murdered. It was like getting off on it.

Yeah. It was like it was an extended like tactical vacation for this fucking sick little piggy. He waterboarded the vending machine. The thing that's so maddening about this article is that it's like the thing with all these arguments is that like, oh, the default is the default, the path of least resistance, the default state that we should be in is giving you guys $4 billion a year and you guys train our cops and like, you know, if I want to do business in Texas, I have to sign a little piece of paper saying that it'll never be mean to you.

And it's like, okay, well, if you're saying this shit about how, you know, we all have our own demons and we have to fight, okay, can we say goodbye then? Yeah. Is that it? How about we use that money that we give you every year to fight our own demons then? Yeah. Because we know what those are, right? Because we only know our own country.

How about we more effectively use that $4 billion for our own demons? I don't want an Israeli demons. Here's what we should spend that $4 billion on, fighting anti-Semitism in America. Here's my thing, we need to, I mean, we're, we have a deficit, we, you know, we're spending way too much money overseas. We need to bring some of that money home and defend people like me and Felix from people like all of you guys and everybody else we know. Yeah.

Now I had, I have an anecdote that reminds me of this. I was, uh, this is like, this happened to me while we were here. I posted on my story on Instagram about, uh, like, you know, we did that Palestine fundraiser and I've been, it's been a pain in the ass getting Playpal to like clear all the individual motivation. My biggest fucking enemy. Yeah. No, they suck.

They fucking suck. Well, actually good development, uh, more than half of them are freed up and I'll be able to start distributing that half, but, uh, I was like just venting out, it's just like, you know, fuck PayPal, this sucks. And this like girl replied to my story. It happens a lot. I really don't notice that they're a girl, you know, but like, unless they're the ones from the stories that I reply to, but, uh, no, this is like girl replied to my story

and was like, Oh yeah, I wonder why it probably cause you're raising money for Hamas and I like, I replied to her and it was like, give me $10,000 for the taxes I paid and then like block her and then like about like six hours later, I got like a couple of messages that were like, you're disgusting. You're awful. And it was like, well, yeah, but like, you don't follow me like what's up. And it turned out she had like posted a screenshot where she like deleted her comments and it just looked like I just like founded you to pester and was like, fuck you, give me money.

I like, I was so like, it's like such a psycho thing to do. I was sort of like taking it back. I just started like arguing with one of the guys who like DM me. It wasn't a lot. It was like two people, but I was like, why would I just like do that like randomly? And he was like, that's a good point. And uh, but it was like, no, that's like, that's like, you extrapolate that to a national or international scale.

That's like the sort of Zionist media MO is to just do that just to like be awful. And then be like, look what's being done to me. I think the thing that sort of most most astounds me is if you look, there was a statistic that was being bandied about a couple of weeks ago that there was, I think a 250% increase in antisemitism in Britain. And uh, and so the most sort of like story incidents was like a car with a loud speaker saying some pretty nasty things going around London. And then a bunch of incidents where, where the state of Israel, which has concentration

camps. You could safely argue A is a genocidal agenda and acts in total opposition to all international law aggressively towards its neighbors and towards an internal religious, multiple religious minorities that comparing them to the Nazis is, is, is anti-Semitic. That's anti-Semitic. When it's like, I mean, that's an absurd line of critique to like cut off completely. And there's a reason they want to cut that off, right? Because it's true.

Like it's, and it's one of those things about Israel and Palestine that I think to like anybody, even to especially, especially, I think the sort of fresh eyes is so obviously and glaringly true, but it's one of those things like, like it's actually, that's why they want to make it verboten to say, and to say that it's true because it's just like the whole thing about like, well, maybe the side that killed a bunch of people who like are in their houses is really probably the bad side here that has to not be like, that actually has to be like a complicated thing. And that's what you always hear about Israel and Palestine.

It's so complicated. Like, oh, like, I don't think I can talk about it. There's like too much nuances. There's really not. It's, it's about as it seems on its face and looking at the broad strokes of it. That's what I mean. Like when you, when you, when you see like videos of the Alaska Moss, like worshipers being fucking fired, having live ammunition fired at them and being tear gased out of

their like, you know, homes and places of worship, it's pretty fucking clear what's going on. So like that's why we have this whole PR war now where it's like in America, young Zionists are as oppressed as Palestinians are in East Jerusalem, but by like left-wing Americans. And honestly, they should be, they aren't, but yeah, I would love to arrest a bunch of these fucking people. I would say that they're, try them in military court. So Zionists enjoy being gangstocked.

So when we, when we look at this, like, okay, so presumably this is a, a, a Sally, this is a rhetorical gambit that is meant to contest for the minds in the info war online, right? And you know, obviously the big part of it is just they don't have to convince people. They just need to keep the argument going, but they are trying to convince people. And the big thing, the big obstacle to them is that if it is a sympathy contest, they are less sympathetic than the Palestinians because they're comfortable, well, first world country that just has very little personal hardship is very similar to the United States. And the people that they're fighting are fucking held in a giant concentration camp.

So, and then you see the result of that publicly. I would say though that that also offers the one advantage they have in this mind war is that when they speak in the language of, of being, you know, feeling othered or feeling ang, made to be anxious because of, you know, microaggressions, that is less sympathetic, you know, generally, but it is something that the audience is going to be more able to relate to prime because that is how they experience oppression for the most part. And so they're going to take that, I mean, that's the idea, we'll see how it works. And they're going to be like, you know, the, the, the horror of the Palestinians is so

overwhelming and monstrous that I can't really relate to it. Not the idea of, you know, somebody saying, hey, you know, nice schnaz at the deli. That relates to my lived experience of oppression. Yeah. That's the one thing they have gone through. I think too, like, I mean, we did an episode with Noah Colwin, friend of the buds, plural back a while ago on this docu series that I highly recommend from Mount Jazeera called the lobby.

Yeah. They're like the most censored docu. Yeah. And I really recommend people watch that. I really recommend people watch. Abby Martin has an incredible documentary. Oh, shit, uh, Gaza fights for freedom. Thank you.

I totally forgot it. And she's got some really good man on this interesting man on this interview. Oh God, those are horrifying. Because those guys aren't settlers. Yeah. They're just regular fucking Israelis. They're the left wingers in some cases, they say. Yeah, but this is like what I really want to stress, I think, you know, kind of aligned

between those two documentaries, which are looking at very different angles, you know, that the lobby is really focused on the very complex network of foreign influence and lobbying that the Israeli state does throughout American universities and businesses and all these things, whereas, you know, Abby's film and a lot of the footage that she's done is really focusing on like actual Israelis, like in a lot of cases, kids and how they are filled. But what you get from both of them and what's really important to understand just like the amount of ideological work that is done to like indoctrinate and the kind of like, you know, you call it information war, you call it whatever, it's impressive and terrifying.

And I think that even in America, we fall, you know, this is something that Brace and I have been talking about a lot, like what's been fascinating in the past, you know, couple weeks and you watch these like back and forth in the, you know, discourse wars or whatever is people almost believe the bullshit about Hamas up front. And so they start from a point of like, well, it's like they believe they've already bought into the Israeli framework of how the Palestinians operate, which is that, you know, it's still the second Intifada, it's still Hamas is still powerful, they've still got these things when it's like Gaza over the decades is so fucking beaten down, it's a fucking prison, right?

And it has the same beaten down, broken out economy and political kind of like warlord political economy as a fucking prison. You know, Hamas is not some centralized, all powerful organization, there's a reason why there's no elections in Gaza and they keep getting pushed out because the kind of the way that, you know, power works and it's, you know, it's almost like mobbed up and there they need the Israeli see it's really sneezing them, I mean, it's much more complicated. And so it becomes this really like flattened understanding of these two sides going back when it's so much more depressingly, like degenerated from that, right?

Because like the whole premise of, well, you know, the Palestinians, they are sympathetic, but it's Hamas is the real bad guy. Yeah, I'm sorry. If you as Israel does control in every respect life in Gaza, you control all the entire border, you are in charge of how much electricity they might get, how much water they get, how much sewage they get their security, what what can be imported, what can be exported, how far they can fucking go off shore to fucking fish. If you have that level of control of an area, you own it, whoever is in charge of it is

your responsibility. I mean, forget the fact that they literally fucking funded Hamas when it started to undercut Fatah, undercut the secular movement because an Islamic face to Arab nationalism is much easier to fight, forget even in that, even if they hadn't been responsible for it. They're responsible for political conditions in Gaza. They're fighting their own shadows. They do not get any lack. No responsibility is relieved from them because Hamas is so unreasonable and look what this

says in their charter. It's like, motherfucker, this is what you have authored. Well, I mean, like to that point, like as part of this like sort of shifting front in like the PR battle going on here, like it like the focus on Hamas is very important because like, you know, two weeks ago or a week ago, it's just all about like, Israel is doing this to Palestinians. This Israel is at war with Palestinians, with the people that they are like, whose lives they control and whose military they use to like occupy and oppress.

So like, but no, now it's like, no, Israel is at war with Hamas. Yeah. Hamas is a problem. We need to liberate the Palestinian people from Hamas. And there's sort of a similar dynamic here too, when you see people demand that like you should never talk about Israel as like, like it's government and state as like a monolith. You have to say BB Netanyahu. You have to say it's like, he's the problem.

He's the only bad guy who has been indicted five billion times and they've had 15 elections in the last six months and he ties for first in every single one. By the way, we should say there's a reason why this happened. Yes, it was 100% election bullshit. Absolutely. Because when there's internal strife in a country, the first thing you fucking do, this is like textbook, Erdogan did it, Iran did it, look at Israel doing it now, they need to shore up support domestically for the leader, boom, you got it.

Neftali Bennett, who was the guy who was holding the balance of power between the two sides and the seven zillion elections they've had that have all had the same result. He was demanding on a condition of entering a government that Netanyahu not be fucking prime minister anymore, which meant it was looking like they might have picked a united opposition that would have included the Arab list to be the new government of Israel. And then in that moment, when it looks like, and when Neftali Bennett is deciding essentially whether to agree to what Netanyahu was offering to get back into the Likud coalition or standing back and letting his government fall and they were about, and they just declared another

goddamn snap election, they send the fucking goose steppers into the fucking mosque. It's like, and every one of these big spikes can be traced back to that, is domestic Israeli politics just like kick the hornet's nest to get fucking, get the idiots online for your argument. And Netanyahu now, his big, his big problem is that he keeps doing this and now everyone's mad at him for being not big enough of an asshole, for not being strong enough. Well, it's not interesting how it works, right, the state emerges stronger. I mean, this is that, you know, I guess that's what I, you know, keep stressing like these,

the states have these internal contradictions that need to be wrestled with. So it's like, either it is like Israel as a state and as like a culture and like a government that's a problem or like, are they the only democracy in the Middle East or not? Because if they are a democracy, like why can't they like vote out this fucking answer? Yeah, are they colonizing or is it a civil war? Yeah. Well, here's the other thing too, it's like, wow, didn't we build a democracy in Iraq? Like what?

They have the fucking purple motherfucking fingers, doesn't that mean there's at least number two? They're also like, doesn't Lebanon have a democracy, like, there's like a several countries there. I think Libya too, didn't we do that with Libya? Yeah, like, I don't get it. So I think just to make sure, just to kind of even the playing field, again, we need to invade Israel and topple the government there and maybe put in some people that haven't

been empowered. I think we should now take a dive into America's premier foreign policy thinker and communist, premier foreign policy thinker and columnist, a guy who I think is probably to this day probably still taken more seriously in the White House and the Kurdish are power than anyone else who writes about the Middle East or foreign policy. Tariq Nashid. They should give him a call. Yes, dude.

Tariq and Schmooley need to get together. Oh my God. This is for a new crossfire show. Yeah. Tariq Nashid and Schmooley. Tariq is the only guy who could fucking do McLaughlin group. He's the only guy who could be McLaughlin now. The firing line with Tariq Nashid.

Tariq Nashid and Schmooley should do a show where they like they argue different perspectives on how to be a Mac. Yes. How to be a Jewish Mac and how to be like the more classic. Rise and grind. That's what we'll call it. Rise and grind. Rise and grind is the debate show.

Fuck, dude. Tariq. Tariq rocks. I love Tariq. He fucking unns. No, of course I'm referring to the magical brain of Thomas Friedman. So this is his column this week. It's titled, How Joe Biden Can Win a Nobel Peace Prize.

I'm kind of surprised they haven't already given it to him. I'm surprised they didn't give him the Obama considering how traumatized everyone was by Trump. Yeah. That is like some very European bullshit to do. Maybe he needs to go on a freaking apology tour. Honestly, like people say that the Kissinger Nobel is monstrous, but like at a certain level, yes, you know, he is the one who prolonged all the violence, but he did actually also

end it. So give him credit for that. You know, stop hitting yourself style. Obama was literally just where we are so happy that the evil ogre cowboy is gone. And now this fight, this metrosexual Kenyan gentleman is in charge. This guy who hangs out in limos all day. All right. This is Thomas Friedman.

Leon Trotsky once supposed to go. Let's go, baby. All right. All right. Let's fucking go. You know what? Yes. I think we've entered into a situation here.

You are about, you are about to witness a man snapping. Leon Trotsky once supposedly observed, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. A wig? Wow. You definitely need to grab Trotsky for that. Yeah. That's like, I've never.

I've never read any of that crap. I've never read any of that crap, but I don't think he said like that. I don't think he said. Yeah. Yeah. To President Biden, I'd say today, you may not be interested in Middle East peacemaking, but Middle East peacemaking is interested in you. I don't think so.

I don't think so. It does not really seem to be that interesting. I mean, it wouldn't have to be a thing to have a desire because like there is no midi space process at all, no, there's no, there's no one with any process is like now, now that the war against Palestinians is has essentially no external actors, except possibly slightly on some factions Iran. Yeah. And let me rub it on a little bit.

Exactly. It's not a Middle East peace process. It's are you going to stop domestic like assaults on people who are in prison camps? Yeah, totally. That's reframing. No, that's all those golf recognitions was also a recognition that the peace is dead because there's nobody pushing for it. Exactly.

Yeah. That was bribing them to do like the last thing they did, which is to make one statement about Palestine every year and like give money to Mahmoud Abbas. No one is on the ground like in West Bank or Gaza and is like, I need the man with the most degenerated brain in the world to like pay a guy who is of all his parents and grandparents are cousins in Riyadh to like make a statement about me. Where are you going? So, Friedman is going to explain it here.

He says, here's why all three, all three key players in the Israeli Palestinian conflict have been dealt some huge painful shocks over the past year. Yeah. They took an L. They're down bad. Palestine, Israel and me and Felix. Number one unit. They know deep down that another round of fighting like the one we saw in the past two weeks could unleash dangerous consequences for each of them.

Henry Kissinger forged the first peace breakthrough between Israelis and Arabs after they were all reeling a vulnerable and in pain as a result of the 1973 war. They each knew that something had to change. Today, if you look and listen closely, you can sense a similar moment shaping up in the wake of the latest Hamas-Israel war. See, there he goes. It's the Hamas-Israel war. It's not Israel.

It's not Israel. It's Palestinians. I wasn't aware that Hamas was in control of Sheikh Jarrah. Yeah, yeah. It didn't seem that... The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. What are the West Bank for that matter? The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, led by Abu Mazen, was dealt a significant blow

when President Donald Trump last year managed to get the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan to each normalize relations with Israel without waiting for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. The message to the West Bank, Palestinian leadership, was crystal clear. You are utterly messed up, corrupt and ineffectual, and we Arab states are no longer going to let you have... Not like these. Not like us.

Yeah. Not like us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone seeks to emulate the good governance of the UAE and Sudan. The message to Palestinian leadership was crystal clear. You came here nine years ago to do stupid jokes, but now you find that yourself are corrupt, ineffectual and shay.

You are shit. You tried to be all the things that you wanted to be to everyone while oversharing the fuck out of your personal shit. If you were ever to come back, you would come here with a healthy mental attitude, and you wouldn't. The message would... And I'm sorry, back to Raymond. And we Arab states are no longer going to let you have a video over our relations with

Israel. Have a nice life. And by the way, despite Israel's relentless pounding of Hamas and Gaza, none of those four states renounced their normalization with Israel, but Israel also got a shock. It was surprised that Hamas chose to fire rockets at Jerusalem, in effect, inviting this war. Okay. There you go.

Yeah. Yeah. They just... They weren't expecting them to fire the rockets, but look, they just did, and there's war all of a sudden. The entire thing was premised on that happening, because you know it's autonomic. If you push hard enough, they have to respond, and then you have your war. The entire...

Yeah. All of it was initiated by Israel. That's the thing. It happened in East Jerusalem where Hamas has no fucking run. It was entirely instigated by Israel. It was surprised by some of the long-range rockets that Hamas was able to build in its underground factories and deploy and keep deploying, despite heavy blows by the Israeli Air Force.

Yeah. These underground factories with their long-range rockets really took them off guard. They've been terrified by the power of their fucking weaponry. Well, it's just, you know, that's why they have to blow up the sewers and the water mains and all the houses. The only neurosurgeon in the AP offices and every fucking school. Because that's where the underground rockets are. They're under the streets, so you need to destroy the infrastructure so there's nothing

that the factories can be underground, because if they have to move them above ground, of course, you minimize civilian casualties. It means that every Palestinian civilian who lives above ground is essentially a human shield, because they're shielding the ground. Well, here's the thing about the human shield thing that I've understood. If you had your gun to somebody's head in front of me, say we're taking it at its face, right? I wouldn't shoot that you through that guy.

Like if you were taking a hostage and it's like, you know, like die-hard situation. Wait, you've never seen the movie Speed Brace? I've seen like four movies, but I have been the hostage in many hostage situations. And like that's Israel's whole thing that I don't understand, like, well, they use human shields, yeah, but you shoot the human shields. All they want to do, though, is say, well, it's their fault that we shot the human shields, because they know we're going to shoot them anyway, which means they're not trying, which means that they don't care if they die, and in fact, they want them to

die because then they can use them to make us look bad. Yeah. Like that's the argument is that like, not that they're, because obviously the human shield things break down immediately. If the Israelis have proven, as they have over and over again, that they will not be deterred by the presence of a human shield, then it's not a shield. It's not a shield. But those deaths then make Israel look bad.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I'm sorry. Like these people, they don't want to fucking die and they are not being forced to be where they are. They're just trying to fucking live. And clearly that no matter how bad Israel looks, until now it hasn't moved the needle at all.

It's just an annoying thing that they have to deal with. Like, oh, we got to deal with all the people crying over all these civilians we killed. Oh boy. Have you seen that guy, um, Arson Strauskin? One of the honestly greatest living human beings. I love him. He's like, so Arson Strauskin is the perfect Israeli because he has a, his first name is like- Oh, is that that guy who's posting his disgusting face?

Yeah. Yeah. So he's the perfect Israeli because his first name is a combination of the four sounds that they let you combine any two of to make an Israeli male first name. Like Gulat or Arson or- Etan. Etan. And his last name sounds like Indian sweets.

Yeah. Yeah. And his last name is Rajshin, of course. And he has, he's a sexy guy, you know, look him up, looks good. And every time like, for the past two weeks, every time like a celebrity has been like, I can't believe what I'm seeing. Like even just the most like blanket, just like, you know, stop war, bullshit statement. He's like, oh, well then do you like this?

And it's a picture of his disgusting face, hold it like making like kissy lips, holding his child in like a furnished basement. And he's like, I've got to be here because of Hamas Rockets. And then you look at his next post like two minutes later and he's like, try a Stravski wine. I've been making it. He did a wine ad. He did a wine ad in between, which I got to say, genetically I respect, but it's just

really, because he was, and I was also responding. Read the room. Yeah. He was also responding with that same picture of him in the bomb shelter, like eight days early, there's like a million shots, wine, but that that is like that. That's like the consequence of like Hamas's reign of terror over Israel. Guys got to take a sad selfie. Yeah.

He has to like hang out with his kids. Yeah. He has to like, he has to watch like Owls of Gahool. There was the one where it was a guy, he was taking a video of himself like huddling with his sister in a gutter and he's moving the, and there's a bird just flying by and there's people walking in the distance, just walk down the street. Yeah. He just, he heard a car backfire and decided to do that.

Do you know how bad you have to fuck up to have like a country where like only Jewish people are considered human and, and like they're that bad at like film production. Insane. Like advertising, like they're that shitty at it. I was also reading that a big reason that Hamas fired the Rockets too is they were incited because they saw like an NA guy walking by with a kill your local pedophile T-shirt on. Yeah.

Yeah. Hamas has been planning at local NA meetings and yeah. I'm back to Friedman here. He says, but most of all, Israel was stunned by this fact. Hamas by its actions was able to embroil Israel in it into a simultaneous. Oh, you embroiled me. Damn it. Five front conflict with different Arab populations.

That was scary. On several days last week, Israel found its military and police confronting violent Palestinian protesters in the West Bank, enraged East Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, Palestinians on the Temple Mount, rockets fired, most likely from Palestinian militants from Southern Lebanon, rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza and most dangerously mob violence in mixed Israeli towns between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. Israel managed to keep a lid on all of it. Yeah.

How did they manage? But it is not hard to imagine, had it continued, or if it flares up again, that this would severely stress Israel's army and police and economy. I mean, God willing, Israel has not faced that kind of multi-front threat since the Jewish state was founded in 1948. This time around, Israel still found a lot of world public opinion and sympathy on its side. But for how long?

Did it find like world public opinion on its side? No, it did. Let's talk about America, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain. No, no, no. The five guys. Yeah. Five guys. That's when they're not spying, it's just five guys.

It says here, in the age of social networks, no, it says, a retweet can be more deadly than a bullet. Israel's use of sophisticated air power, there's a great sense. Israel's use of sophisticated air power, no matter how justified and precise, trigger to see a set of images and video in the age of social networks that inflamed and energized Israel's critics around the world. It didn't kill anybody. It generated fucking video.

The content creation by the Israeli army was such a huge setback. You joke, but their content creation game is pretty impressive. No, dude, they were making, I think they fucked up because they made that like, I mean, they were doing shit like making memes of like, like before and after of like a residential apartment building. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, I will say like, I hit up some of those TikTok IDF girls and like, I found them to be insanely unaccommodating when in a private space, which is crazy because I was like, I could go over there and I could probably rescue you and be like, you know, I could like, they have those little short like M16s or whatever, like I could easily probably bench press that several times in front of you to make love to you also under and they just

would block me. There's this area that inflamed and energized Israel's critics around the world and exposed just how much the rising progressive left and even some young Jews have grown alienated from BB Netanyahu's right wing government and it's willing this to abandon democratic norms to ensure perpetual Israeli control over the West Bank. Like this is what I was talking about earlier. It's not that they've grown alienated from Netanyahu's government because the Israeli government by definition must abandon democratic norms to maintain control over the West Bank.

And there's no, I know a lot of young Jews being in the media industry and also in my just general life. I don't know anybody who's like, yeah, I just like Israel, but like this Netanyahu government, I've only like, like known governments like that in Israel. There's no like good government. Yeah. There's been government. Benny Gantz is not going to give Palestinians any civil rights.

Exactly. He brags about like leading the cast lead the fucking invasion. Yeah. Who's your fucking other guy? Zionism. Zionism has been dead for like over two generations at this point. Yeah. Ehud Barak like bragged about putting on a dress to just like burk a room full of Palestinians.

Do you remember that? Ehud Barak claims that he visited Epstein's apartment sometime between 10 times and a hundred times. Yeah. And like there's photographs of him leaving and like 19 year old women also leaving. It's very fitting because he is the Israeli Bill Clinton. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. But what these people think that like young Jews like us think Israel is, it's like, it's not, it's obviously not Netanyahu's government. It's every government in fucking Israel. The first. It's the government of Israel and this country of Israel. The first thing I was like told about Israel and Israelis as a kid, like before I knew any like, any political, before I thought of them as like a political entity because

I was too young, I just was told by family members like, you know you're talking to an Israeli because they're the rudest, most annoying person you've ever met. I have heard that. It's like, what do you think, like what do you think we think of that place? They make Australians on vacation, which are distinct from Australians in Australia. They make Australia like the permanent like floating, like the diaspora, the diaspora of Australians. You just go from, for some reason, hostile to hostile and then they just, I'm going to

be a skiing structure and bomb for five years. Americans are like this silver surfer of colonialism. They're just going everywhere and being awful. Yeah. Well, it's because the country itself, it's like it's just an insatiable desert with a little, it's like a fucking like a margarita glass with the salt room of civilization around it. But also, wait, this is in the New York Times, right?

Yeah, it's New York. So question for the editor of the New York Times, who knows who the hell that is. Present. What is it called when a right wing government abandons democratic norms in order to maintain control over an internal minority population that is rising against it so it can continue to what? Control the Gulf States, whatever it said. Like there is actually a word for that.

Liz, I'm anti whatever that word is. That's the most maddening thing is like everyone who spent like the past like five or six years like comparing Trump to Hitler and making all these Nazi Germany comparisons, which like one way or the other, not a huge, I don't care that much. Like I don't entirely agree with it, but I don't think it's a big deal. But it's like, okay, well, what's this? No, I mean, what the fuck is this place where they do crystal knock every fucking night? That's what I'm saying.

I think it's very bold of the New York Times to come out and call Israel a fascist state. But I welcome this change with the Overton window and I think that we should, you know, applaud them for their, you know, boldness and courage. Well, how come the New York Times Union or whatever doesn't get their asses onto this? Yeah, right. Tom Cotton scared the shit out of all of them. Exactly. What's this fucking?

Yeah, why does this make you feel unsafe? But that's what I'm saying. I'm like, wait a second, like none of this shit, like. It matters. No, I'm just like, none of this is being hurled towards fucking Joe Biden, who is in charge towards the Democratic Party, who is in charge, who just sold them a billion dollars worth of weapons. Who is bought and paid for by APAC, a guy who in the 80s, as we were talking about earlier,

just came out and said on the floor of Congress, Israel's the best bargain in foreign policy. If Israel didn't exist, the United States would have to make it to protect its interest. Really? Giving up the game. You don't have to say anything. You said it already. Exactly. And that's the thing.

That's the thing I don't understand. It's like all these people, it's like, I've seen a lot of very confused Democrats and Democratic socialists talking about this thing. It's like, well, dude, this, yeah, this is the Biden thing. It's like, yeah, this is like, if you, that's the thing that makes all this shit really easy is if you just replace Israel with like apartheid air in South Africa. Obviously, they're not all, it's not one for one, but it makes it really pretty simplistic and in a good way, I think.

Yeah, because people get the right administration shit for supporting apartheids in South Africa. In the practical way that we should look at it as Americans, that's how we should look at it. But yeah, no, this is like Joe Biden. This is exactly who he's always been. But yeah, as Liz said, it's like people will shit on like Andrew Yang and I think like rightfully so. But it's like, what about fucking the president?

What about Tony Blinken? Friedman continues. As the Guardian columnist Jonathan Friedland put it last week, a new connected generation of progressive left-wing activists in America and in Europe is reframing the Israeli, Palestinian struggle, not as a conflict between two national movements, but as a straightforward matter of racial justice. They don't let once it's allowed to have a nation, you fucking God suckers. Yeah.

It's a conflict between a nation and the subjugated population that exists within the border of that nation. Yes. It's like, calling it a struggle is sort of a euphemism as well too. Maybe it's in Latinist terms of like, yeah, they are a nation. They're like, we need to free the Palestine belt. Have they tried, have they tried doing chas? Israel, Israel, I will say Israel is a chas, but with extrapolated about the exact same

civilization to people there. Just different populations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to try to start occupied Democrats Israel. I think I could really get a lot done because as, but as a note the placards at last week's demonstration in London. What did you call me? It's ablest to use that word.

Note the placards at last week's demonstration in London. Palestine can't breathe and Palestinian lives matter. Many Americans Jewish college students are either unwilling, unable, or too afraid to stand up in their class or dorm and defend Israel. They're probably very afraid. I can see that. Lawmakers tell me that they're being savaged on Twitter and Facebook for even remotely suggesting Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas rockets.

A dam is burst. They don't have the right to defend themselves. No, no, yeah. That's not a fucking thing. That's a fake thing. Yeah. It's not a fake. That's a fake thing.

Have you ever noticed that it is never employed in any other context? That probably means it's made up. Yeah. There's a similar thing where it's like, oh, well, you, you don't think Israel has a right to exist. And it's like, when have you used that framework with any other country has that here's another country? I don't think has a right to exist.

Austria. I was talking about. Yeah. There is no need for an Austrian Belgium either. Get over here. Exactly. What's divided between the Netherlands and France? You've solved the problem.

Austria is just part of, first of all, that is what Israel should be Austria, because these fucking fucking Germans do the Holocaust. Yes. And then they're like, it's your problem. Yes. Because I'm like, dude, I want, give us the fucking, I want fucking Bavaria, if you gave us Bavaria, like instead they're like, here, you know, this is your problem. And don't worry.

If anyone complains, we've invented an even more annoying form of anarchism. It's so, it's so fresh, honey, because when you consider them, the scale of the population transfers from East Prussia after World War II, millions of Germans being ethnically cleansed. And the thing is, yes, it was ethnic cleansing, it was a lot of people, but at the same time, they fucking did the Holocaust. They kind of had it coming. Yeah. And pretty soon they realized, yeah, you're right, we did have that coming, which means

that if they take it, some of that land that got cleansed at that period and given it to the Jews, it's not like there'd be a bunch of dispossessed Germans mad about it. Now they'd be like, fair enough. We would have, because they did that shit. We would have made the Rhineland bloom. Yeah. No, if we had, do you know, like, you know how good our life, like, dude, our life, I would literally move there because what there's like, oh, cool, like, instead of like having

to join the IDF and like kill a kid, like, oh, I can like be in like a, uh, Polly relationship with four 19 year old art students with a armpit. I would be, I'm 19 for this. There would be no, not only would there be no compulsory conscription, there would be no military. Instead, you would have two years where you were drafted to be a DJ. The biggest problem would be that me and Brace would be like, yeah, Jews actually invented pretzels.

Yeah. We're indigenous here. We invented pretzels. Sorry. Yes. And we'd still be into techno. Yeah. No.

We'd be doing techno. We would be Euro rail super users. We would. The restaurants would have the same nightclub feel and the same names like Dr. Pizza. Yeah. There would be no weird cognitive dissonance when Israel wins the Eurovision Song Contest. Exactly. They're just part of Europe.

Good for them. Yeah. Because European country, country Israel, just what Eurovision. And maybe they could have like a Eurovision for podcast too, maybe Americans could join. They could. Yeah. Is there that version of Israel, like the version of Israel now, you know, it's a fucked up country because it's all, again, the only people to write their Jews name one show from

there. Yes. Is that it? Yeah. We're the homeland. No. No. What's it fucking called?

What's the weird show about teenagers like being bisexual? Euphoria. Euphoria. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Cool. Glad we invented that one. Yeah.

We're the show making race. But if we were in Germany, like we would take part in the grand tradition of German comedy. Yeah. Yes. Just like sausage incidents. Yeah. Yeah.

I would be like one of those just Russian guys who lied about being like cuts a fucking Yamaha out of like a newspaper, puts it on his head. I would do that. I would do that. Yes. Buddy, you think you want, you want some proof? All right. Let me tell you about how I'm tell me about my back.

Let me tell you about how I'm feeling right now about my body. Let me, let me just walk you through some of my neuroses. Exactly. Yeah. Well, here's the thing about like people talk about always, you know, like you can't say it's like white surprise. I'm like, yeah. I mean, they did import like a bunch of literal white neo-nazis from Russia because they're

white. And they sterilized actual Jews and they like, but like they'll like, let you come if you're an actual Nazi, like there were Nazi skinheads in Tel Aviv. But if you're Palestinian and you try to convert to Judaism, not happening. Not going to happen. Sterilize. Ethiopian Jews. Actual Jews.

They have a, who have a greater claim on like a contiguous, like multi-millennial connection to Judaism than like most of the Russian losers who ended up like mutilating. Or the Americans. Yeah. But like, yeah, no, there is very clearly what, what's, I do love the Russian guys who just like in like 1989, we're like, yeah, I'm Jewish. Well, yeah, you are the first Jewish guy to kill your wife on an ADV. You're the first Jewish guy who is both friends and enemies with two different boomers.

You're the first Jew to ever filter alcohol through transistor radio to drink it. I can continue with Freeman. He says, which is why I was not the least bit surprised to read the Netanyahu's longtime ambassador to DC, Ron Dürmer, now retired, bluntly told the conference a few weeks ago, Israel should spend more of its energy reaching out to passionate American evangelicals than Jews who are disproportionately among our critics. Let me know how that works out for you. If Israel loses the next generation of liberal Americans, including liberal Jews, it is in

for a world of political hurt that no amount of evangelical support will be able to blunt. That's not true. It's not true at all. They would be totally fine and secure as long as like American political patronage. Well, here's the problem. They're white. They would love that. Here's the problem though.

Because right now, they have a bipartisan pitch to actual voters. Obviously, they have a bipartisan influence machine that generates consent at the top. But even at the base, they have a bipartisan pitch. If they go all in on evangelicals, then they are becoming partisan in a way that could fuck them over. Because then when you could get a situation where a Democrat could get in there, and not only is there no worry that they have to kiss Israel's ass politically, there's also an actual organized constituency to pressure them to not kiss Israel's ass.

It's like that is dangerous for them. To say bet on evangelicals is to say bet on the Republican Party. That's not a terrible bet. They have control. They have built a good, they have an Alamo there in all of the constitutional structures like the Senate and gerrymandering and all that. But they are a shrinking demographic. If you make that commitment, you are saying that at some point, the dam might break and

then we're fucked. The only other thing they could do then is to like, they're about like 10 million guys on Twitter. They're all from India and to make them the happiest people that have ever lived. To just be like, yeah, you're Jewish now. They're never going to do that, but it's like, that's like the only other play. I mean, I'll be real with you and like Felix and I have discussed this privately. If they do Venmo me $500, I like will become an influencer for them.

No, I mean, that is really what this issue comes down to. Like we haven't been pandered to never given me money and that's a problem. And it's like, you know, I'm not just a single guy now. I have a niece. Yeah. Like in like 22 years when she graduates from college, I want to buy her an anti-material rifle. Exactly.

And like, here's the thing, like, yeah, like they offer me like, oh, you can live on the dirtbag kaboots and like, I don't want to. I want to live in a nice apartment with someone who wears a wig. Yeah. I'm like, I'm living in Manhattan now, making people want to save every day and it feels great. If you can listen, Israel, I'm talking directly to you now because you do make up 75% of us subscribers to Beast of Numbers.

If you get me this dollar scale bra deal, I will do anything except publicly support you or privately anything that requires more than like half a mile of walking that you want. I'm going to finish this one out here. I mean, there's a lot more to go, but I'm going to really like a couple more paragraphs. He says, and then there is Hamas, as usual, indeed, right on cue the morning after the Gaza ceasefire took effect, Hamas's leaders declared another glorious victory. I guarantee you, though, the morning after, the morning after, another set of conversations

started in Gaza. It was the Gaza shopkeeper, widow, doctor, and mourner surveying the damage to their homes and offices and families, quietly saying to Hamas, what the hell were you thinking? Who starts a war with the Jews and their air force in the middle of a pandemic? Who is going to be? In the middle of a pandemic, who is going to rebuild my home and business? We can't take this any longer. Thomas, Mr. Friedman, I can guarantee you that like that conversation was not taking

place anywhere. Because, by the way, the question, who's going to rebuild my home and business? The answer is no one, because Israel doesn't let construction equipment or supplies also this idea that Hamas is going to be delegitimized by their their insistence on resisting Israel. Who are they going to give power? Who is going? Who is going to give power to the people who like getting bombed and don't have a problem with it?

Like there is no other force of people who are like, we're going to make a deal with the Israelis. That is very systematically killed, like every leader of the Palestinian resistance, except for ones that, well, yeah, we're useful. Yeah. And so they have the situation that they wanted. And that's the thing. Every time they point to Hamas and say they're the the obstacle, it's the end result of their

intentional policy. It has helped them to have a mosque in there. That's actually that's what they're going to do with the Indian guys on Twitter. They're going to be like, you're Palestinians now, but you like us from what I've seen. And they're not like just air drop you into the Gaza Strip to vote for our guy. Yeah. And then like from what I've seen of those guys on Twitter, like they would do that. Yeah.

Like whenever there's like the guys who like whenever there's a girl on Twitter who's like being like is their thing is that they're like a Zionist ambassador and their their like profile picture is always like the one angle of their face where it's not huge. And they written the guy is replying to him is like, I want to I want to husband into your life. It's like that dude would do all that he would be a palace in fake Palestinian. So funny how like actual Israelis just tell them to fuck off. Yeah.

Yeah. We hate you. I feel bad for the Indian guys because it's like they're that's clearly just like they just want to do this because they hate Muslims. Yeah. And it's like very like sad because they are like so hard up for Israel. They're so like, I will join for free, you know, and every but every Israeli like they can't just accept that they like them.

They're just such racist like nasty people that they're like, fuck you, you shit drinking cocksucker. Yeah. Oh my God, dude. Just awful, awful place. Well, I'm not going to be I mean, Friedman goes on for for more and more, but he just says he just says to Joe Biden. He's like, he's like, he's like, Hey, you know, if you don't want to go all in on the

Middle East peace deal, I won't blame you, but you know, it's not going to get any better on its own. Well, the whole entire premise of the thing is that America could be in any way a broker of peace. How can it be that when it is the sponsor of the one side with actual power? Yes. Who is it negotiating with? It won't allow any independent thing to stand up to exist to negotiate with.

It's all consumed by the same structure. So where the hell are we? It's all internal negotiation. If it were to exist at all, it cannot be a real peace process. And part of the fantasy that these guys are peddling is that it's still viable. I don't know. Is Joe Biden considered bringing in Jared Kushner? He's coming off the bench.

I'm saying maybe we didn't give that guy enough time. No, I'm partisan. He's coming off the bench and he has a new face. This guy's a long drink of water. The deal that he tried to pitch, it really is like the only thing that would be in like an SNL sketch about it that didn't exist is like there was no offer of like a fucking casino in Ramal because it was literally, hey, we'll buy some land from Jordan and you can go there.

And that was supposed to work. It's just like, look, folks, this is a business. This is a real estate. Well, wasn't there like there's going to have like highways or like underground things connecting all? Because if you look at a map of like where the Palestinians live in the West Bank, oh, it's been totally honey-cubbed. Exactly.

It looks like fucking, it looks like it's triggering my tryptophobe. HPV war. It's on fucking year. Yeah. Just buy a chunk of Jordan and then just move everybody over there. That'll be fine. Yeah. The thing about like looking at it as a real estate deal and so you send Jared to dude

is like, he's like not even good at real estate. He sucks that. How much money do you lose on that fucking building? Yeah. Biden can bond over having new faces because Biden is like on his third or fourth face since being inaugurated. Oh man. They are cranking it so hard.

Like they're turning that flesh, let flesh lump. Yeah. At the base of his neck. They're just twisting that motherfucker. He is getting cranked. It looks like the fucking Disney guy from Venture Brothers, the guy in the wheelchair. Editor's note. Matt is referring to Mr. Brizby from Venture Brothers season one, episode four, the incredible

Mr. Brizby. He's going to eventually die of it and it's going to make fucking a hunter into like a Kanye type figure. He just drives him insane. Yeah. Every time he like speaks in front of the cabinet or anything, it just, it's like fucking grandpa Sawyer at the Texas chance of a massacre dinner where they're putting, they're putting the hammer in his hand to get him to try to kill her.

They're like, Joe is getting the syringe from minority report like three times, he is fucked up. He is so turned. They, the drugs that they must have him on. Amazing. But it was, it was all worth it for the St. Patrick's Day celebration. Like that was the best day of his life. No, that was the best day of his life.

That was his handsome hamburger party. Yeah. His handsome quarterback hamburger party. That was like, we're like, that is the perfect American event. Just like a guy who's German being like, I've been Irish my whole life. Listen, Jack, being white in America, it's kind of uncomfortable. So you got to find a way to be not white. And so we're Irish.

Yeah. That was like, if he just did that, I would vote for him again. But I'm not, you know, this time, it's not this time because I'm pushing him left. Everyone really should remind Joe about all of the bonds of solidarity and cooperation that exists between the Irish Republican movement and the fucking Palestinians. True. True. True.

They taught them how to make most of the bonds. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, fellas, this is all just part of being the junior partner in the coalition. Well, in no sense is true and on anyway, a junior partner to Chapo.

We are in fact, fully, fully board members. Yeah. They teach us, you know, they give us $4 billion each year. They create the Iron Dome around Liz. And I control most of their political content. Yeah, it's pretty great. Well, I think we should leave it there for today. I would like to thank Brace and Liz for coming by and hanging out with us.

Thank you for having us. Our first in-person guest. I know. Fuck you, COVID. Corona, pandemic over. Yeah. Pandemic goodbye. Yeah.

Now I can put needles of regular things in me again. Was it made in a lab? Yes. Did it escape? Absolutely. Was it on purpose? Maybe. All I know is I'm ripping out my rear view mirror, baby.

Looking forward only. Google for Dietrich. We were saying, we were saying that like Trump, if he wanted to win and he also wanted like his supporters to get a vaccine, he should have like gotten the vaccine and then like eaten bat soup to show that it's safe now, like that's how good the vaccine just thumbs up in front of just this bat head and the plate. That would be fun. That's the only non-hamburger thing he likes.

That would be so funny. He eats KSC McDonald's and bat soup. Those are his three meals in a rotation. There's a media blackout on bat soup. You know, every day, this is a little not a fact. Every day at Nixon's, during Nixon's presidency, he had a pile of cottage cheese with a pineapple ring and some ketchup and then some bat soup every single day keeps. Yeah, it keeps the body working.

Raising Liz. Truing on. Always a pleasure. Thank you very much guys. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye.