Chapo Trap House - 953 - The Hills Have Eyes feat. Jasper Nathaniel (7/21/25)

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

TWO WEEKS LEFT to pre-order YEAR ZERO: A Chapo Trap House Comic Anthology at badegg.co/products/year-zero-1 Journalist Jasper Nathaniel joins us to discuss his reporting on the West Bank and Israel��s second front in the war on Palestine. We look at the increasingly violent settler movement, Israel’s flagrant violation of international laws, the use of archaeological warfare in the region, and the constant ubiquitous violence that defines life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. And on the domestic front, we have an update on the good professor Davidai and his relationship to the august institution Columbia University. Follow Jasper’s Substack: https://substack.com/@infinitejaz Follow Jasper on Twitter: https://x.com/infinite__jaz?lang=en Follow Jasper on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/infinite_jaz/?hl=en

Hello everybody, Will here. Before we start today's show, I would like to remind you that there are now legally enjoined to preorder a copy of year zero a choppo Comics anthology at bad egg dot co on to the show everybody Hello everybody, it's Monday, July 21st and this is your choppa. I am coming to you live from the beautiful co-working space in historic Provincetown, Massachusetts. It's bear week and it's open season here. But on today's show, we're going to keep it a little less light because we are once again going to be talking about the situation in Palestine. And obviously, our attention and energies on this show has been very much focused on Gaza.

And rightly so because the ongoing Holocaust there really is somehow continues to get worse every single week. I mean we're at the point now where we've seen you know people of all ages just starved into skeletons just collapsing on the street and many of those with enough strength to go out and try to get food being basically just killed for sport at these phony aid distribution sites, which are just in themselves killing fields. But we wanted to maybe shift our focus over, just slightly over, to the West Bank and talk about how the situation there also continues to get worse and how in many respects I think

it really does help bring into a sort of a sharp focus what the project of Zionism is really all about. And joining us to discuss this is the journalist Jasper Nathaniel who covers the West Bank and has been there several times. So we were happy to have him here today. Jasper, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me guys. Jasper, I know I know he said we wanted to talk about the West Bank, but I did want to

point out something that you that you posted earlier today. This is from the New York Times news quote news analysis about the ongoing slaughter of people at these aid distribution sites. Their headline reads two deadly shootings in two days highlight dangers of aid distribution in Gaza. Now that's sort of an odd way to discuss what the danger here is. I think it would highlight the danger of, I don't know, being a Palestinian anywhere near the Israeli military. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think probably all of your listeners know about the daily massacres happening there and the framing of, you know, the challenges of a distribution, obviously it's, it's bullshit because there wasn't a distribution system in Gaza for many,

many years. It worked fine. It was called UNRA. Um, and Israel and basically the entire West sort of commuted to shut it down. I do think one part of this that, that has really flown under the radar and we probably shouldn't go too deep into this because it would totally derail us is like the CIA and sort of, you know, operatives who are running the quote foundation. I mean, it is like,

it's so farcical that it's anything other than just a sort of blackwater redux that, yeah, I don't even know what to say about the idea that the New York Times, who frankly has covered blackwater, has covered those mercenary groups that like that does not make it into their analysis. Well also keep in mind that the New York Times is also at the forefront of the propaganda campaign to delegitimize UNRWA and like tie it to homologs in some way. Yeah. propaganda campaign to delegitimize UNRWA and like tie it to Hamas in some way. Yeah. So like and now like what they've replaced that with is just a shooting gallery

run by mercenaries and who just are killing people for sport. Either either the occupation forces or these blackwater style mercenaries are just shooting starving people daily. And the challenges of aid distribution are challenging because they open up like one aid distribution site a day, whereas UNRWA used to have hundreds of them everywhere. So obviously when you funnel thousands of desperate starving people into a very small area, yeah, you create a very volatile situation, which then provides a pretext to just wantonly murder them. Another thing that the American media, the mainstream media, has really failed to do

is just literally keep up with what they're saying in the Israeli papers, because Ynet, which is a center or right-leaning paper in Israel, published this sort of remarkable expose of testimonies from IDF commanders. And within there, one of them just came out and said, we have killed hundreds of hungry Palestinians near these aid sites. And that is something that the IDF has continued to deny sort of publicly and especially when responding to inquiries from the New York Times and stuff.

So like when the Times publishes a story like this, you'd think that they would include the fact that IDF commanders are now readily just admitting that they're mowing people down at these sites. But yeah, it's just not happening. I mean, I translate those articles using Google, and I think they could probably use that same technology and see what they're saying there. Why not?

Weirdly, they were one of the first media sources on the US or Israeli side that even indicated that perhaps Israeli helicopters ended up killing civilians on October 7th. I don't know if it's a similar thing as to how the Wall Street Journal in America will sometimes do very good reporting or if it's just some, you know, interscene dispute between factions of the military or factions of Netanyahu supporters. But, um, the framing of this particular article about the, the, um, commanders was basically the commanders are mad that the war is being misrepresented to the

public. And so it was about how they're not really interviewing them on the front lines anymore, they're blurring soldiers faces and in their part about the GHF sites, it was about how now there's all these videos being shared around the world that are making us look really bad at people being mowed down at these sites. So the grievance was not about, oh man, we killed hundreds of hungry Palestinians.

It was like, well, these videos are now delegitimizing us. Right. It makes it harder for us to go on vacation now. Exactly. I mean, and this is why we want to tell you, to sort of switch focus. I mean, it's the same focus, but to just go but a few miles to the west, to the West Bank, where it's like... To the east. it to the east To shift focus just a few miles to the east to the West Bank from Gaza

I mean, it's all the same focus But like I think when Gaza is covered and people are horrified by it I think the defenders of design this project or just like the American media can like always kind of rely on this idea Well, like well Gaza is where Hamas is and Hamas attacked Israel and they killed all these people on October 7th and like they started a war Well, the West Bank is a situation where like we're you know, most of Palestine or what would be Palestine exists Hamas is not in control of the West Bank nor are there like major terrorist acts being committed from the West Bank. But we see here like a daily escalation of violence, of the annexation

of territory and just like daily petty cruel sadism. And I want to begin with something that happened just the other week, which was the killing of a Palestinian American. He was 21 years old. His name is Saifullah Musalat and he was visiting family in the West Bank and was beaten unconscious by a gang of settlers backed by the Israeli security forces who then denied like prevented an ambulance from rendering care to him for three hours as he died. Jasper like what can you tell us about the context in which that killing took place? And what can we say about what our government is doing or rather not doing about it?

Yeah, I'll take a step back and then we'll get into the recent murder. I mean, before October 7th, actually in February of 2023, there was a sort of fundamental change in the way the West Bank is governed. And what happened was, as I think most people know, Netanyahu, in his efforts to avoid being prosecuted for corruption, had to ally with these extreme far-right parties in order to build a majority governing coalition. It's not to say Netannyahu wasn't already extreme, but we're talking about like, you know, theocrats and people like Smocic and Ben Gavir basically, who,

who I think people are hearing more and more about. So what happens in February 23 is Smocic who was the finance minister, um, and the head of the religious Zionist party works works out this deal with the defense ministry, which was run by Yoav Gawande at that point, where he becomes an additional minister in the defense ministry. And the reason that he does that is because the occupation of the West Bank on the international legal level is technically, um, it has to adhere to some international laws around occupation.

And the laws basically state that the occupying force can temporarily administer the territory. Um, they can't put any permanent routes down, and everything has to be in the interest of the occupied people. And so it's, you know, I want to be really clear that like the military occupation was not benevolent, you know, it was unspeakably cruel and evil, but honestly it did in a weird way provide some insulation between the Palestinians in the West Bank and these ideological settlers who were just hell bent on annexing it because the military didn't necessarily have those same ideological commitments. They wanted to like rule it with an iron fist, you know,

kill people when they could, arrest people, but the settlers have their own agenda. And so what Smotris does is he basically plants himself inside the military in the defense ministry and then he builds an entire sort of shadow government inside the defense ministry that's staffed entirely by, um, right-wing ideological, mostly setter settlers like himself. And in doing that, he basically is then able to pull off like a reverse coup where he gradually stripped all the powers away from the military in terms of what can and can't be

done in the West bank and, um, puts all the power in his own hands. And so that starts in February, 2023. And from that point, settlement building just skyrockets. I call it the period of settler abundance, because all the checks and balances have been removed. They're capable of then just like building with no restrictions at all.

They're demolishing things. They take over the police force basically, and stop enforcing any sort of policing over violent settlers. And then October 7th happens. And I think that Smotrich immediately was like, oh hell yeah. I mean, this is exactly what we need. Because what he starts doing immediately is he says, the Palestinian authority is no different from Hamas.

The people in the West Bank are cheering October 7th, and suddenly every single thing that the Palestinian authority is doing, which is the Palestinian governing body in the West Bank, he's connecting to Hamas. And now, so in addition to all this bureaucratic power he already has, he now has the ability to just point everything as a security concern. So I know

there was a lot of background, but that's sort of what sets up this period of like just unchecked state and settler violence in the West Bank that really is sort of categorically different from what was happening before. Well, one of the points you make is that Gaza is of little religious significance to the settlers, like to the zealots who view themselves as enacting a kind of messianic colonialism. Whereas the West Bank, which they refer to as Judea and Samaria,

very much does, is like at the heart of a religious mission as they see it. Could you explain? Yeah, I mean, Gaza in the Old Testament is the land of the Philistines. And, you know, they were sort of the eternal enemy of the ancient Israelites. And the Jews would like sort of be on and off at war with them. But they never were they never like conquered what we now know is Gaza. And they never like built a civilization there. The West Bank on the other hand, as you said, it's called Judea and Samaria. This was like the real cradle of ancient Jewish civilization

according to the Old Testament. And the settlers, you know, to the extent that we take their beliefs, that we think their beliefs are sincere, really do believe that like that is the homeland and they need to take it over because that is, you know, the prophecy basically. So I think that like, when you hear Smotrich, the perfect example is like every couple of weeks, you hear Smotrich say something just so outrageous about Gaza that the whole world, you know, posts it. And it's like, look at him talking about how they're annihilating everything in Gaza.

He said the quiet part out loud. If you, if you listen to the way he talks about the West bank, it's completely different, everything is very sort of quiet and methodical and it's all about just, you know, gradually spreading facts on the ground in the West bank. So, so my basic, you know, working theory, and I should say like a lot of people believe this is that while they've been annihilating Gaza and to be clear, they definitely also, the settlers and smutrach definitely want to see everybody in Gaza out. I mean, they hate Palestinians, they want to ethnically cleanse it, but again, from

an ideological perspective, they're much more concerned with the West Bank and the actual bureaucratic steps they've taken. I mean, there's no comparison. They've basically done nothing for Gaza on that front. You know, it's well known that there's just literally not a plan. Whereas in the West Bank, I mean, there are thousands and thousands of pages of of Knesset notes about the way they're doing this. How does the sort of tacit, if not outright,

permission granted to these sort of gangs of settler, mostly youths, to essentially terrorize people on their own land, to destroy their crops, to kill their livestock, to enter their homes, and to, which did lead to the murder of an American citizen in the West Bank, just the other week. Like how does that, how does that process, like, how does, how does that operate? How does that work? Okay. So, so you can think about the effort to sort of take control of the

West Bank is like coming from two different sides. One of them is from inside the West Bank and inside the West Bank, there are these nominal territories areas A, B and C, which were divided up during the Oslo Accords to and that is supposed to divide between what the Palestinian Authority rules governs over and what Israel governs over. Basically, area A is entirely supposed to be the PA. Area B is a mix of both. And then area C is all Israel. So one of the things that they've done, the effort from inside, is they have basically created a whole set of laws to erode those

boundaries. So like a perfect example, you mentioned archeology. Well, they have long been able to sort of police archeological sites in area C, but a new cabinet decision has now given them permission to protect Jewish heritage sites. And I'm saying this in scare quotes in area B, area B is where a lot of Palestinians live. And to be clear, the entire West Bank is basically an archaeological site. So what that means is that in towns like Sebastia, which is in the north, where I spent a lot of time, which is surrounded by these beautiful

archaeological ruins, the soldiers now have their perfect legal justification to come in every single day, demolish houses that, you know, they say are too close to the archaeological site, prevent them from building anything, often shoot people. And so it's not to say they weren't like already doing these things, but now they have, it's been enshrined into policy. And so the archaeology is one example of that. There's so many on that same front. The other side of it is what's happening from outside the West Bank.

And this is basically an effort to erase the green line that separates Israel from the occupied West Bank. And so that's kind of what I was talking about before, where the goal is to make all of the everything inside the West Bank governed by Israeli law the same way everything in Israel is. And so the more they're able to take laws in Israel and basically, you know, bring them over to the West Bank, the more they are effectively annexing it and again, you know, breaking international law, which states that it needs to be run by the military. Well, when you say it would be everything in the West Bank would be governed by Israeli law. Is it just no longer a crime in Israel to

like burn someone's crops or kill them if you think that their land is yours? Yes. So getting into violence, I mean there are a couple of things that they sort of tangible policy initiatives that have enabled this just sort of free for all violence and settler violence. First is that as this was reported right after October 7th, but it's still happening. They basically just armed thousands and thousands and thousands of settlers and sort of deputize them to form these little. Yeah, I remember I remember news footage of Ben Gavir just handing out machine guns to teenagers, essentially.

Yes, and a lot of those were American guns, by the way. And they actually just, that was like, I'm forgetting what it was called, like, regional defense battalions, maybe. And they gave these settlers actual military fatigue. So like, sometimes you see videos of what look like, you know, these like, drunk, disheveled soldiers rolling into towns. And a lot of time they're settlers, basically cosplaying as soldiers. So they armed them. They stopped demolishing outposts, which is huge. So outposts, this is like really central to the settlement strategy. So basically a settlement, it's illegal under international law, but under Israeli law, it is, it's legal.

Basically, the Israeli government has like given them permission and many times actually like invested in saying, yes, build a little Jewish community here. Outposts are when settlers within that community then go peel off and like, we're going to build another settlement here, but the government hasn't yet recognized it. Sometimes they're called farms. They do them on Palestinian land. And there was a time actually when the military was like frequently demolishing those outposts because I think they were a pain in the ass. Like the military wanted to maintain order and they had these punks like constantly going around. I would imagine they're also a drain on resources because like they essentially have to be protected

by the military as well. Exactly. They wouldn't be so brazen with this violence if they didn't know that they had a modern military backing them up if they were just like lynch mobs on their own. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I should say Smocerich was literally one of those guys running around the hills building outposts being chased around by soldiers. So in the last couple of years, they've just stopped demolishing outposts.

I should say apparently they've started doing it again because the settlers have started attacking soldiers. Um, so now there's like some new talk in Israel actually about cracking down on settlers purely again, because they're going after soldiers, not because they've killed over a thousand Palestinians, but, but basically like the, the, the, you see these settlers sort of like bound into Palestinian villages and it kind of looks like a random attack.

But these are highly coordinated efforts because there's basically a system now. What they do is, a perfect example is Sinjil, which is the Palestinian village right next to where Safe was, the American was murdered. So Sinjal is a Palestinian village that is surrounded by five different settlements. In addition to the settlements, a bunch of settlers peeled off and started building outposts right around it. And so they basically were just completely under attack

at all times. Then the military comes in in the last couple of months and basically carves the town in half by putting a giant just iron fence surrounding it. So now half the town is cut off from their farmland. Um, the other half of the town is completely exposed to settler violence and the people who would protect them are now behind the fence. So the military is basically like fence people in and then left some people just

open to get lynched. And then the settlers who have built an outpost right there will literally go every single day or every single night and terrorize people, assault them, steal their sheep, kill their sheep, let their sheep graze on their land. And they do this over and over until the people just get up and leave. And this is like, they have it down to a system.

I think over 60 Bedouin communities have actually left because of this exact thing. Um, so what happened in the, in the case of the American was he actually lived in, um, like a wealthy town in the West bank. I forget the exact statistic, but there's actually a lot of Palestinian Americans who live there. It's called, um, Al-Masra Al-Sharkia. I hopefully didn't butcher that too bad.

But that town is basically very close to Sinjil. And it had been sort of insulated from settler violence, again, because it's wealthier and there's a lot of Americans there. But as the settlers were closing in on Sinjil, they started then going onto the land of that town as well. And so the people from that town were starting to come out with Sinjil residents and protest.

And the protest, basically, I think they were happening for a couple of weeks. And then, you know, the settlers started coming, beating them with clubs, shooting them. And that's what led to the kid being beaten to death a couple of weeks ago, and someone else getting shot dead. And I should just say that like in Sinjil, the town that's right there, the kid being beaten to death a couple of weeks ago and someone else getting shot dead. And I should just say that like in Sinjil, the town that's right there, they used to have a sort of organized protection system.

When settlers would attack, they had their methods of protecting. Those people are now stuck behind the fence and there's only one way out and the IDF guards it. So these people were literally just left to be lynched by the settlers. Of course, the soldiers did absolutely nothing and just let it happen. For a very long time, really until about like, I would say the last like six or seven years, the posture of liberal Zionists who, if they did have Israeli citizenship, they spent more time in America, or if they spent more time in Israel, they represented a sort of like shrinking to sort of non-existent

Ashkenazi liberal political consensus that like just no longer had purchase in Israel. But the way they framed the West Bank, especially in contrast to Gaza, was I guess you could compare it to liberals under Obama characterizing Iraq as the bad, stupid mistake and Afghanistan as the good war, with Gaza being the good war and everything being done in the West Bank as stupid and delegitimizing. It really seemed like they drew this distinction because the actions of both the settlers and any partners they had in the Israeli government at the time and the military, it was so plainly illegal under anyone's laws that it made it more difficult for them to do business in Western Europe, in other places, and it could actually impact their ability to travel, their ability

to move freely between the West and Israel proper. As the settlers have just gotten a more open partnership with the government to run these lynch mobs, have you seen any indication of that sort of characterization in Israeli politics, or has it just kind of like disappeared as the country has just gone more and more insane? No, I think that, well, first just on what you said, I mean, I totally agree that like the good liberal Zionist position was to support Israel and oppose the settlement movement and the West Bank.

And I think that that was really the sort of like load-bearing wall for the idea of the two-state solution. And they needed to maintain this fiction that one day there was gonna be a two-state solution and the main part of it was gonna be the West Bank. And they ignored the fact that the West Bank already from the time of Oslo in the 90s was basically just like a sea of Israeli governed territory with the little Bantustans that are stands that are, you know, our Palestinian, but it was just really,

I think convenient for liberal politicians to be able to talk about a two state solution. And because of that, they had to oppose the settlement movement. I think that it was of course like completely cynical and dishonest in the fact that at this point to actually like clear the settlers out of the West Bank. I mean, it would take an international military coalition. Like it, you know, there are 700,000 of them at least, and they are heavily armed and they will fight to the death. So like, what point of that is just that this,

if you ever hear a liberal saying talking about a two state solution again, as if that's the sort of like thinking persons, you know, practical way out of this trap. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's, it's completely, it's a, it's a utter fantasy at this point to your question, Felix. I mean, I think I'm not, I'm not going to pretend to be like super tuned in with what the average Israeli is thinking these days. I will say that among the, the, you know, liberal Israeli, whatever that even means at this point,

there is still animus towards the settlement, the settler movement in part because they just look so fucking hideous and it's just such a bad look for them. Every time one of these videos comes out of the hilltop youth, they just are the most decrepit, freakish looking people. And I think people in Israel know like that's what people are looking at. In addition to hills have eyes. By the way, there was a story a couple of weeks ago in Haaretz about how those kids, a lot of them from the hilltop youth were foster kids in Israel proper and the outposts got themselves registered as foster homes so they could basically adopt these like you know troublemakers in Israel and then radicalize them and then basically deploy them to go terrorize Palestinians.

So like when you see them and you're like who the fuck are these kids parents? Like how are they even letting them out of the house looking like that? Let alone like putting them on the front lines? I don't know how many, but at least in some cases, they literally are like street kids who have been conscripted into this war on Palestinians. Well yeah, I mean, I guess like, I mean obviously the Israeli military has killed American citizens in the past, but like what does it say about the level of impunity that these people are operating with? Like, as you said, these kind of like, feral, deputized street urchins are now killing, feel free to kill an American citizen. I mean, I guess to them, I didn't ask for their papers. It's just a Palestinian. It's just an Arab to them. So it's open season.

There's some reporting that he had an American flag, like on his car window, and they just ignored it. I don't know if the guys who actually killed him saw that, but, um, yeah, I mean, well, it's just, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, like settlers just don't get arrested for killing Palestinians. It's just that simple. I mean, I reported on a story, um, in January of last year where right after October seven, the couple of days after in Masferiata, the documentary about called No Other Land takes place there. Basel, the main guy, his cousin, actually this

is at the very end of the film. You see him basically walking out of his house and a settler comes and just shoots him in the stomach on October 13th, 2023. He was completely unarmed, defenseless, guy just shoots him in the stomach, walks away. They know exactly who did it. It's on video. They know the guy's name. They know everything about him. I know everything about him now and just nothing's happened. And you know, there's not even like any sort of plausible deniability in this case, but you know, that's happening everywhere. In that case, it happened to be on film, but they lit, they quite literally have,

you know, Ben Gevier and Smotrich have told the police not to arrest settlers. Again, I don't know if that's changing a little bit now that there's more attention on them that they're attacking soldiers too. The other thing I just want to say, also getting back to your question, Felix, is like, even if people in Israel don't like the settlers for the reasons we talked about, they do still think of them or a lot of them do. They think of the settlements as, some people call it Israel's bulletproof vest. In other words, like the settlers are the last stand before the Palestinians, the rabid Palestinians from the West Bank can go storming into Israel and kill them.

It's the settlers who are the line of defense. You know, they are cutting off Israel from all the bad guys east of, you know, the east of the river. So I think that nothing, nothing matters in Israel more than security at this point. And as long as they can use that justification for keeping the settlements, for arming the settlements, like they'll take it. Well, I want to talk a little bit about your writing, Jasper.

Could you tell us about your initial trip to the West Bank and what led you to write your fairly harrowing article titled, You Don't Understand How Bad It Is Here? Yeah. So basically, I had been before October 7th, I was sort of, you know, I've been just engaged in this issue for a long time, but I had never even been to Israel or the West bank before October 7th after OXO, but I had been following this story about Smocerich and I just kind of like saw what was going on after October 7th. And you know,

they immediately started just carpet bombing Gaza. I remember seeing that video of the guy getting shot in the stomach. And then there was like another video that ran out, went around, I've been all the farmer who was just shot dead by settlers in the, in the days or weeks right after that. And I, and then I remember just thinking like, like I said before about Smotra it's like they see their opportunity here. I mean, and nobody's going to cover this because everybody's going to be, first of all, we're going to be talking about October 7th for the next thousand years.

And they're going to be talking about what's happening in Gaza. And so I just remember thinking like, nobody is going to cover the West Bank. I'm Jewish, so it was very easy to get over there. I mean, I took an LL flight to Tel Aviv and then just walked through the wall, the checkpoint at Bethlehem. Like it was nothing. I basically, the, the, the idea of that piece that I wrote, I mean, I was planning on going and doing some like hard reporting on what was going on and within two days, specifically in a Hebron, I was so overwhelmed by the sheer pervasiveness of the brutality and the cruelty that I was

witnessing from soldiers and from settlers that I just lost the plot. And I was like, I don't even know what the story is here except to say that this is insane. And you know, it's, it's kind of a trope at this point, like westerner goes to the West bank and like, Oh my God, finally, you know, he's shocked and people want to listen now. And like, I recognize I stepped right into that trope. But I just the soldiers who walk around like in Hebron, where the Palestinian village is

literally just like, or the Palestinian city is like surrounded by settlements. The soldiers walk around like fucking stormtroopers. I mean, like Jasper, in your in your writing, I mean, what struck me so much is like, you know, like this is like a lower intensity than than Gaza, but what really struck me about it was like, the intimate daily and now going on, this has been going on for decades, the intimate daily like intimate acts of sadism and cruelty that like, could just be like as simple as like threatening a man on crutches to go back inside.

Yeah, that was so shocking for some. I mean, I was in a in a bakery and the bakery owner had broken his legs somehow. And so he was on crutches and he just had these like trays full of baklava and these like delicious treats. But the economy had basically shut down and nobody was really buying them. And he just was like, have whatever you want. And he wouldn't take my money. So I just sat there, it was like drinking coffee, eating baklava with a fixer. And soldiers just walk in. It's like just a quiet, I don't remember what day of the week it was, but there's absolutely nothing going on. Two soldiers just walk in and, or no, sorry, they walk to the door.

The owner had been standing by the door, the guy in the crutches, and they just shout something at him in Arabic. And he like immediately sort of runs inside and the soldiers then leave. And I asked my fixer, like, what did they say? And he's like, Oh, they told him, get inside or I'll break your other leg. It's like, what? And I was like, I think I said, why, why did, why would they say that to him? And he laughed. He's like, what do you mean?

Why? This is how they treat us. Everywhere you look, they are just bullying people. You know, I saw soldiers pushing elderly people to the ground. I mean, I, I had guns pointed at me just cause I was with Palestinians. I mean, they're so just like charged up and just drunk with power. And I think, you know, in the months after October 7th, like really feeling like they were the saviors that it's just cruelty everywhere you look basically.

You've seen it in a lot of accounts of the West Bank, both sort of before this closer partnership between the military and the settlers. But it, you know, accounts of settlers spitting on elderly people, they particularly target like it elderly and disabled people like so often. It's just, yeah, these groups of like youth just gang up on one, you know, 72 year old like that. It's, it's the kind of thing where if you saw that happen, like, Oh my God, I just watched two cops pushing an elderly person to the ground. Yeah. It would change. It would shock you to your core.

And it just happens everywhere you look over there. Yeah. And before, like before sort of this iteration of it, it was already like the Jim Crow South. It was already like every day in Mississippi during Jim Crow. But now, what you've described now is like, it's like if the plot of Mississippi burning was that they sent troops and federal agents

down there to help the people that were doing the linkage. That's basically it. To personally back up Michael Rooker's character. That's basically it. I mean, that's kind of spot on because as you said, I mean, what they did is like the settlement movement was already there and active and the military was already there. They just like literally threw a sort of bureaucratic switch. It was like, okay, suddenly the military is now directly, uh, you know, part of the same settlement movement. And so, yeah, I mean, it, it really, what basically everything that was already happening,

the dolls were just turned way up. Like for, for your sources, the people, your, the, your, your fixers, the people that like, are your contacts there? Like what, what can you tell us about just what daily life is like in the Occupied West Bank for Palestinians living under this occupation? Yeah I mean it it's different all over the West Bank of course like there are some like Bethlehem which is sort of a little bit wealthier mostly Christian like they're still getting harassed but it's not nearly as bad as it is in some other

places but like I'll tell you about a couple, um, a couple of examples. So I think that, uh, Sebastian is, is a really good sort of proxy for understanding everything in the West bank. So this is the town in the Northern West bank. It's home to, I think three or 4,000 people, um, for getting the exact number. And, uh, because the town itself is built around what the settlers consider the ancient city of Samaria, which was the capital of the Northern kingdom of

ancient Israel back in the day, basically like the settlers want this place more than they want a lot of other places. Like they want everything, but this place is really special. And so what is happening is happening is basically number one, because of the laws that I mentioned that have allowed Israel to basically take over everything happening in area B, the municipality can't do anything anymore.

They can't run the most basic civic functions. I mean, they get their water from a mountain stream, they have a whole elaborate system, they can't access that anymore. They had a whole elaborate system. They can't access that anymore. They had a whole irrigation system that they built with money that they had raised from international funds. The military came in and literally just poured cement in it. They don't let the garbage trucks out.

So there's just piles of garbage everywhere. When I was interviewing the mayor of the town, literally the day before, there was a huge storm predicted. And so he sent out a bulldozer driver to basically clear the water channels of debris so they wouldn't overflow. While he was doing it, soldiers came into town, arrested the bulldozer driver, took the bulldozer away, and so the town flooded because this guy just was not able to do his basic

job. The things that happen in every town and city, uh, are just not able to happen anymore. So, so on that level, there's this municipal sabotage, um, which is happening all over the West bank to be clear, but it's, it's really like shutting life down. They also can't leave anymore. I mean, Sebastian was actually one of the top tourist towns within the West bank. I mean, people would come from all over to see these beautiful ruins and they had a really thriving tourism industry. They had these beautiful gift shops.

And now just nobody can, can go anywhere. I mean, I think everybody knows about the checkpoints, but like, I remember when I was leaving, I was going from Sebastian to a settlement actually, which was about 600 meters away. And to be able to get there by car, I remember watching the little dot on Google maps, just going in the opposite direction for about two hours. And I was just like,

and the driver was like, I'm sorry, there's no other way. I mean, it took about three, four hours just to get 600 meters. So, so they can't get anywhere. Another like little example of how this affects people, my, my fixer and now my friend Zaid, his dad has diabetes. And because of his diabetes, he has this condition where, I forget what it's called, but basically like there's pressure on his eyes. And he was seeing an eye specialist in Ramallah who'd been treating him for years.

He can no longer get to that doctor. The soldiers have not let him. There's no specialist that he can get to. So he's going to go blind basically. This is like a 50 something year old man who's just, you know, there's absolutely no reason for he's going to, he's a doctor too, by the way, he's just going to go blind now. So, so that's, I think one side of it. Um, I should also mention that right now Smocerich is refusing to give the PA

almost a billion dollars in tax revenue that they're owed. And this is money that, you know, like Palestinian workers in Israel, you know, paid towards all different types of taxes that the Palestinian people paid into. And he's just like, no, we're actually just not going to give it to you. So they're not able to pay a lot of the municipal workers. Unemployment is just skyrocketing. And then I would say the last thing is there is just like constant threat of violence in a lot of places. So in Sebastian, I was there, my last trip there, I was there for like five days every single day.

The soldiers would come into town. They would just menace people. They would get out of their cars and, and point their guns. On one of the days they shot somebody in the leg, crippled him for life. Um, and then they leave. And then about, actually right before I published, right after I published that story in the drift, the cousin of a guy who I had met there who had been shot in the leg. So I met like a 17 year old who had been shot in the leg in January and he

couldn't sit. And right before my story came out, his cousin was shot dead. So it's like people are just being shot dead constantly by soldiers. This kid was 14 years old. A sniper shot him from like 300 meters away. And by the way, the IDF, their comment was he was throwing stones. So this kid was, you know, apparently had like fucking John L.Away times a hundred arm strength to be able to do that. So basically, yeah,

it's like the shutdown of municipal life, not able to travel. A lot of people used to go into Israel to work. They can't go in anymore. They're not getting paid. And now there's just this constant threat of violence. And in some places like Masfer Yatta and like Sinjil, they're getting chased off their land. Well, I mean, like this goes back to what I said, like, I mean, whether it's Gaza or the West Bank, the focus is the same, because what you're describing here is maybe not like the wholesale slaughter

that we're seeing in Gaza, where they're totally unrestrained and have just destroyed every building, kill anyone that they see, bomb schools, hospitals, refugee tent camps. They can just do a wholesale extermination there. But what you're describing in the West Bank is like the same and lower intensity version of the same ultimate strategy, which is to make life impossible, like

in the most literal sense. 100 percent. I mean, it's a slow motion ethnic cleansing. And I should say though that there are places in the West Bank like Janine and Tulkarm, which I mean, they're not like carpet bombing it the way that they did in, you know, Rafa or parts of Gaza, but they've

basically destroyed everything. They've displaced, I think, like 40,000 people. But that's true. You say, well, I mean, first of all, they can't carpet bomb the West Bank because there's a lot of Jews there and they, you know, ideally don't want to kill all of them. And there are laws that, you know, they nominally nominally have to adhere to these international laws around the occupation. And so they, what you're, what they're doing, like you say is they're strangling it.

They're strangling the West bank and they're hoping people won't leave. And in fact, the Smochridge has this plan where he, he says we have the money and we will pay you to leave. They want to pay Palestinians to leave and go into Jordan. And if they won't do that, and if they won't accept that they are colonial subjects, then they'll have to fight to the death and kill them. So, one way or another, the settlement movement, which is completely in control of Israel, plans on taking over the West Bank, getting everybody out or you know treating them as colonial subjects. I mean it does give me an idea for what our government

should do about the West Bank and the settlement which is I think we should start paying them to leave as well and go back to this country. I mean as much as I don't want them here, that would be preferable to me. Yeah at this point we've I mean we kind of owe that as the, to the world, to kind of absorb these people. I was thinking that like they sort of have, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy that they have nowhere else to go because they're like, they're so just wretched and awful that it's like, yeah, we absolutely don't want them.

But yeah, I mean, like, as you say, well, I mean, a lot of these settlers are American or Russian or the, the one of my, when I went, when I spent a day in the settlements, my tour guide was like a hipster from the Netherlands and she had a nose piercing and she was like a hippie and she did yoga and she was cool. And then she would casually just like she actually just said while we were driving, there was like a Palestinian person on the side of the road and she was like, I have to

sometimes stop myself from just swerving and running them over. And I use this Christ. Just like when you said like, you know, when you when you went from the West Bank into one of these settlements, and it took like four hours and you talk to these, these settlers, like, do they just with the things they say to you, do they just assume that you agree with them? Or like, I mean, just who are these people? Like, what are they like? And how do they justify what they're doing?

Yeah, I mean, they're, they're mostly, they say these things because they're proud of them. And that's why I think that it is sort of like the settlement movement represents the heart of Zionism because pretty much all of what they're saying, they're like, you know, just borrowing from the early Zionists who, you know, just staked a claim to the land because of the Old Testament, the settlers are right actually,

like Jerusalem and parts of the West bank based of the Old Testament. The settlers are right, actually, like Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank based on the Old Testament is more the sort of cradle of the Jewish civilization than Tel Aviv or, you know, Haifa. But like that doesn't mean they get to keep it. But because Israel was founded on this idea that we have this historical connection, the settlers are just like, look, you guys did it over there. We have a much stronger claim to it over here. So they're very open about it.

And I mean, I don't want to like generalize the settlers because you got the hippie types like I described. You have like the just absolute filthy, you know, like children and you know, they're the people who live in the hills, the hills have eyes. The feral urchins. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have like the people like Daniela Weiss who are really, um,

like sort of adamant and ideological in the way they talk. But I will say this, every single one of them that I talked to, I probably met 15 settlers across three different settlements ranging from like the elderly to kids, every single one of them agreed, like we have to get the Palestinians out at all costs. I mean, there was no question. And they're like, the idea of coexistence was a non-starter. And, you know, of course they frame everything as like they're terrorists who want to kill us.

So like when I had that encounter in Sebastian that I mentioned where these soldiers came out and pointed guns at me, that was a day before I went to the settlement. And I talked to some settlers and I said, let me tell you this thing that happened. I was in this town, it was completely quiet. I was talking to two sweaty teenagers

who had just gone on a run. There was nothing going on whatsoever. I'd been there for a week. I know there was nothing nefarious happening. And I explained to them, you know, these soldiers just came in like completely belligerent, you know, out of control, pointed their guns, then shot somebody actually the next day. And w they like without missing a beat, they were like, you are so

naive to not realize they were planning an attack. It's just like, okay. All right. I guess. Yeah. That's what you think. I mean, like, uh, I, I assume that, that, that is bullshit, but like, I mean, somebody has to plan to fight back.

And when I see these when I see this footage of like these absolute wretches, just like burning people's fields or just taking their homes or just pushing them around on their own streets or in their own homes, I just think of like, where is the Second Amendment solution for the West Bank? Like, I know, I know, like, I know, I know we're arming all the settlers in the West Bank, but like, could know, I know, I know, I know we're arming all the settlers in the West Bank. But like, could anyone get these people guns or something? Yeah, I'm thinking like they need to stand their ground. You know, like that would be the first thought in my head. But I realize, you know, I'm not getting pushed around the same way.

And I don't want to die. Right. I mean, I'm not saying this to, you know, demand people risk their lives from the comfort of America. Like neither of us are saying that, but it is just like, unless you are like the most devout Quaker, when you see this stuff, you want to just deliver truckloads of guns to these people. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're describing like the, one of the sort of central, just impossibilities of being a Palestinian in the West bank, which is that if they fight back, they will be killed full stop.

Like they will die. And some of them reached a point where they are willing to die for the cause. And I think that, you know, militancy is growing. It's, you know, it's mostly in the cities and the refugee camps, but like, I hear that you're seeing it sort of seated outside of there, which makes perfect sense. But like, just to give you an example, uh, this, there's a town called, uh, Buren, which is, um, right by Yitzar, which is like one of known as one of the most extreme settlements is where all

the whole type you'd come from. He literally, this guy, uh, literally lives like on the bottom of the hill, but the settlers live on top of, he has had to build a fortress around his house, like a literal fortress because every single day they come in and they throw rocks and they, um, basically, you know, they fire, they fire shots at the house and they try to kill them. And I asked him like, have you thought about fighting back? Um, and he, he basically said, I'm not a fighter. I don't know how to fight. Like I'm a fucking farmer. And so like a lot of these people are just, they're, they're, they're not fighters.

They have literally no experience with firearms. And so like, I, I do think absolutely, um, actually Ben Ehrenreich had a great piece about this in Harper's a couple of months ago about how like more and more people are saying, I guess we have no choice but to fight. But for the most part, I mean, we're talking about people who have never fought, they're just like, that's not who they are. They're, they're farmers and they're, they're peaceful people. And so the idea of like picking up weapons is not, you know, in the cars for them.

But what they do say is they'll never leave. They will never ever leave. And they will, they will ever leave and they will get killed and they will get run over by bulldozers and tractors before they leave their land. I will just say this, that outside of a few instances, just no one's like a born fighter. You know, Hezbollah obviously,

it rose out of, um, communities in south Lebanon that will not totally comparable, uh, in composition and, you know, class makeup. If you went back to like the 1960s, people wouldn't necessarily think that those were born fighters. And I always think of that video of the Kassam fighters, where they talk about what they wanted to do when they were younger.

I always think about that guy talking about how he really wanted to be a gym teacher because he loved exercise and he wanted to teach young people how to exercise, but he just felt like he needed to do this. And we're against any type of prognostication. I think it's particularly grim to make prognostications here, like you're betting on a sports game.

But eventually if you just kill people and brutalize them and humiliate them, no matter what, and just say after the fact, oh, they were planning attack. They, they, they were going to kill us. Eventually it will become like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think that's true. I mean, I, I, I, my guess is as good as yours. I think we are going to see more probably armed resistance coming from Palestinian villages where there has not been. I will just say that my sort of visceral experience and going to a lot of these places was like,

there's absolutely no chance these people are going to pick up arms because they are, it's like, they just don't seem that way. But I could be totally wrong and Felix you're right. Like they are being pushed to a point where they it's either like, actually there's a great quote in that Harper's article. I mentioned where somebody is like, I'm going to die either way. I might as well go out fighting. And so I do think that people are, are definitely coming to that conclusion.

Yeah. I mean, this is one of those quotes where you look at it and you're like, damn, why I wish Pat Buchanan hadn't said this. Cause it's pretty good. But he, he said in like 2009 regarding, uh, the grapes of of Wrath, that those little boys who saw their sisters and moms being murdered 10 years ago, they had to grow up sometime. What do you think happens when they grow up? And obviously, both in the case of the Kassam fighters and, um, you

know, has will offer that matter. Uh, it, you know, it obviously isn't that like every man in these, in these places is an armed fighter, but this delves into like, uh, almost militia guy thing of like, you only need 3% of the fucking population to do this. But the only thing I'll just add Felix is like, you really can't overstate how just utterly incompetent the Palestinian authority is. Like they, they are, you know, they're basically a subcontractor to Israel. They certainly are not like recruiting fighters the way Hamas is able to in

the West bank, all the militant groups are like underground. So I think that is another thing that'll be a struggle is there's just no central. I like the people who are running the Palestinians in power in the West Bank are more interested in just like, you know, getting to live fancy lives because they're doing good by Israel. But, um, yeah, I mean, I think you're right. And I remember my friend's, I had said to me after I had met three straight kids who had all been shot,

he was like, one day, if one of these kids fights back, your media will call them terrorists. And I was looking at like, you know, 12 year old kid and I was just like, yeah, no, absolutely they will. I have a friend on Twitter who lives in Jenin and he has a very gallows humor type running gag about pretending that the Palestinian, like being like a bathist for the Palestinian authority.

But yeah, no, I mean, I think it goes both ways with the PO in that, yeah, they're absolutely a collaborationist regime, but they are, like you said, incredibly incompetent. And I don't know if there was more militancy. I don't see them being especially effective in helping rooting them out. Abbas actually, I think he either just did or he's about to. He took a trip into Jordan to try to demilitarize some of the Palestinian groups there. I mean, they really are trying to demilitarize the Palestinians, but yes, they are totally

incompetent. So I don't think they'd be able to. All right, Jasper, if I could, I want to return to this issue of archaeology in the West Bank, which was fascinating to me because like you mentioned, most of the West Bank is an archaeological site. Could you talk about how archaeology is used as a means to both adjudicate claims to territory, but also to like expand the footprint of settlements? Because, you know, like when we talk about Judea and Samaria, you're right. Like, yeah, like that is the historical homeland of Jewish people in the Old Testament. But it's also been home to like many other layers of human history and culture.

And like literally in archaeology, there is the clearing away of like the strata of each individual era. Could you talk about like how archaeology is used by Israeli authorities to not just, like I said, adjudicate claims of territorial disputes, but like also to like literally erase the history of other peoples in this land. Yeah. It's, it's really fascinating. And like, when you think about it for two seconds, you realize why archaeology has been totally central to Zionism from the, the earliest days from well before 1948. So, so basically like there,

there's this great scholar at Columbia, um, So basically, there's this great scholar at Columbia, Professor Nadia Abuel Haj, who, God, I don't know if she's gonna leave Columbia, but she wrote this great book called Facts on the Ground, which basically, the thesis is that Israel, the state, Israel, the idea, and Israel, the culture, all sort of were developing in a mutually constitutive fashion. And it was archeology that was like allowing it to happen.

So basically you had from well before the Jews were there, actually, the British were during the mandatory period, were sending archeologists in to go find evidence of the Old Testament. And it's very easy to pick up a pottery shard and go, Oh my gosh, this is from ancient Israel. You know, and so they were going around actually renaming Ottoman or Arab villages based on things in the Old Testament. And they were just sort of like creating a new epistem, epistemology of the place. That was like a biblical place instead of just a, um, a land.

And so then when the, when the Zionists actually come in in their early 20th century, they have this groundwork already. And, uh, they, they send archeologists out and they literally just start like digging up sites. And I should say a lot of it is legitimate. Like they're absolutely finding things that are, you know, from the Old Testament. The problem, like you said, Will, is, you know, there's lots of civilizations that have been there. And if you just go by an arbitrarily picked like sliver of history, the whole world order falls apart pretty quickly. But you know, in this case, they could trump all of it

because it was from the Bible. And so basically what they do is they have these archaeologists going around turning the Bible into like the history textbook of Israel and in and so then once Israel is actually formed in 1948, like archaeology becomes a I think, I Hajj calls it, like the national hobby. It's taught in schools, it's just everywhere you look. It's not like a little side practice like it is here, it's really central to the Israeli identity. So what happens in 1967 basically is, you know, Israel occupies Gaza and the West Bank and these archaeologists in Israel,

I think not even necessarily from an ideological perspective, just because it's what they do. They just hopped right over the border and continued doing what they were doing, which is finding remains and calling it evidence of ancient Israel. And so, you know, the point is like, they let the genie out of the bottle, right?

Like when you start letting archaeologists call things Israel, because you're finding a little Jewish, I keep saying pottery shards, but they're finding all sorts of things. Then like, why wouldn't they keep doing it in the West Bank? By the way, they're doing it now in Lebanon and in Syria. There's this crazy story about like amateur archaeologists who who recruited a couple IDF soldiers to go with him on a mission into, I forget exactly where, in Lebanon. And they all got killed by Hezbollah fighters. And just because this guy, again, an amateur archeologist was convinced he was going to

go find something. Just for like, in your piece about this, the thing I found fascinating was like, much of this archeology could be legitimate in that they are discovering like evidence of you know, the early Jewish culture or existence in the land of Israel or like the Levant. But the thing is like that was thousands and thousands of years ago and like many many other peoples and civilizations have also called this piece of this area of the world home. And you describe how, like in legitimate archaeology, like you clear from the topsoil down. And what you find is like each layer of history.

And you have to be very careful about like not confusing one for the other to like accurately date something. But you describe how like these sort of the amateur hobbyist archaeologists use bulldozers at these excavation sites, so they literally just scrape away everything above what they what they think or want to claim as being ancient Israel. who are not the amateur. I mean, I've talked to a lot of Israeli archaeologists and there's actually like there is a group inside of Israel called Emek Shaveh, which is Israeli archaeologists who fight against the weapon weaponization of archaeology. So like there is there are some people who are sort of against it, but like by and large, the, um, the, uh, Academy, the archeology Academy in Israel, it's made up of people who just turn a blind eye to what's happening in the West bank. And those are actually digging in the West bank. And to your point, like they have just absolutely no regard for the actual

remains, they're just digging for, you know, the Jewish stuff. And like in Sebastian, I forget how many, I want to say like there's evidence, there's evidence of 15 different civilizations. And I think the Israelites are like third or fourth on the list. So like pretty good. Well, like the Samaritans were there before them, like there were other groups there before them and the, uh, the Israeli archeologists there, when they come into the town and by the way, they're currently trying to turn it into a sort of Disney, biblical Disneyland.

When they come in, like you hear one story, like you just hear a linear narrative of it being Jewish. And what's interesting actually is that the Palestinians in in Sebastian really own the fact that it's uh you know there have been all these different civilizations that have come through including a Jewish one and what they will say is the the ancient Jews that were in Sebastian some of them left and some of them were descendants of them and they converted at some point so like they are they're really owning the the all the different civilizations that have been there, but the actual archaeological practices themselves that they're using are, you know, just having no respect whatsoever for the practice and just, yeah, digging for the Jewish stuff.

And then, and that's the story right there. Just binning everything else. Yeah. If it's like Persian or a different civilization or culture. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if it's like Persian or a different civilization or culture. Yeah. Yeah I just wanted to tie this real quickly into a classic Chapo episode because we saw this very directly when we went to CPAC and

Saw the Israeli ambassador presenting as Felix called them the Jewish infinity stones The most boring speeches I have ever seen in my fucking life But it was do it like it is this project of presenting these like handful of ancient coins of being like, and see, this is physical evidence that we have been here forever and we have the eternal right to this land, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. This was the guy that he came on before. It was him, then Diamond and Silk and then Trump.

And that way, RIP. One of them died. Yeah,. It's been one of them. You know, yeah, no. Yeah. One of them died. But for me, that was like, you know, the talented one, which it was like when the red hot chili peppers or some like shitty van like that goes on tour and brings on like, you know, like a white rapper that the crowd just booze off the stage.

I mean, he didn't get booed off the stage, but he was just to like the most bored audience of like hogs was like, you see this coin over here. It's 7,000 years old. It's very funny that you see that there's a video on the internet of not the red hot chili peppers, but Aerosmith visiting Israel and they're getting a tour from Netanyahu, and he's showing them ancient stones. And you look at Stephen Tyler, and he's bored out of his fucking mind.

He's got a signature of one of the Jewish kings. Came after, yeah, he came after King David, this Jewish king, his name is Hezekiah, he's in the Bible. And this is one of his officials, that's the name in ancient Hebrew of this official his name is Netanyahu Den Yoash which means son of Yoash so you know we've been around here a long time terrific can you sing us something cover cover news I don't want to miss a thing Cover it. Cover it.

Cover it. I don't want to miss a thing. Cover it. Cover it. Netanyahu at one point pulls out like some tablet that says Netanyahu on it and he's like, you see, we've been here for many thousands of years, but he fucking changed his name to Netanyahu. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's all of farce. He famously has like a coin that is supposedly says Netanyahu to prove like some connection to the land. I do like the idea that Aerosmith and Steven Tyler were there because like Steven Tyler was bored because he was like, can we just get to the part where I'm able to flee here if certain charges are filed?

Yeah. Like, can you just cut to the fucking chase? I guess like the heart of this first, which is like, yes, like the historical truth that there was an ancient Jewish civilization in the land known as Israel. Like, you know, it was in the Bible times. But the thing is, like, if it's a tragedy that they lost that and like the existence of that and those pottery shards and coins entitles them to the current the current place as it currently exists and gives them dominion over everyone else who lives over there. If that's a tragedy, what is it when like people who were alive when they were kicked off their land? Like 80 or 70 years ago? Like, what is that? Is that not a tragedy? Or is it like, did something get more tragic because it happened 3000 years ago versus in 1948?

I mean, like for that matter, I mean, I think like blood quantum is, you know, the least compelling argument. But like if anyone is actually like descended from the people that stayed there, it's the people they're evicting. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what they say.

Uh, at least in Sebastian, the locals are like, we are the direct lineage of the first people who were here and it's a dangerous game when you start going into like actual genealogies. Yeah. Um, but I think that like, that there's just, I mean, to put it simply, like there's absolutely no reason why the to put it simply, like, there's absolutely no reason why the Jewish sliver of civilization should be privileged above all the others. And Will, I want to just get back to your question about the way archaeology is being

used to like expand settlements. So basically like the, I think hopefully it's clear by now that how like ideologically it's been a really useful tool. Now it's become a really effective bureaucratic weapon in the hands of people like Smotrich. So, um, I think I already mentioned the cabinet decision that just, just by saying, Oh, actually now we have a control over heritage sites and area B. I mean, that alone gives them the ability to just go in and start evicting people

and knocking down homes. Like it, and it's, you know, perfectly disguised as like narrow antiquities hall. Like you would never read about this in the New York Times, like, oh, there's a new antiquities law in Israel, but it has these enormous ramifications. Um, the, in the, in the case of Sebastian, they have, I think put tens of millions of dollars into a fund to actually turn into a theme park. I'm not kidding. When I say a Disney, biblical think, put tens of millions of dollars into a fund to actually turn into a theme park. I'm not kidding when I say a biblical Disneyland. Like they are trying to... Something the righteous gemstones would create.

No, literally like it is. And then the other thing that they're doing is, I mean, this is getting a little bit technical, but like the governing body of the West Bank, which is called the Israeli Civil Administration, which is technically under the military. From the outside, they are trying to take archaeological power out of their hands and give it to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, who manages archaeological sites in Israel. So if they successfully do that, then in addition to now being able to go into Area B plus Area C, now they'll be able to actually have all the laws that apply to archaeological sites

in Israel apply to the sites in the West Bank as well. Well, Jasper, before we wrap up here today, I mean, obviously, when you look at what's happening in Palestine, you could say tragedy, atrocity. But to return here to America, where everything is forest, you did recently write about, I don't know, perhaps the most prominent advocate of Zionism and its besieged state in American academia, Professor Shai at Columbia. We've mentioned Columbia before, but he recently just departed that August institution

under, for conflicting reasons, or just like there hasn't been really a standard official response for like, was he fired, was he let go, did he leave of his own accord? You just recently dug into this. What can you tell us about Professor Shy and his departure from Colombia? OK, first of all, like this guy's a nut job. Just like in I mean, he started DMing me and saying things.

And all I could think was like, does this guy have a fucking lawyer? Like, he is so just like reckless to be just sending me these DMs. So basically like what happened was last week, I think it was last week, maybe the week before last on the same day, Davide published a letter from the office of institutional equity at Columbia, which is like the office that investigates harassment, discriminatory harassment, that basically said the investigation was over.

The investigation into his harassment case was closed with no findings of wrongdoing. The language was something just like that. At the same time, two of the students who had accused him, credibly accused him of harassment, published their letters online from the same office and their letter said specifically the investigation was closed because he left the university and there were no findings whatsoever. It was basically the essence of what it said. So, um, Davide uses his language, his letter, he publishes it on Twitter and immediately says, Columbia just admitted I did nothing wrong.

Whereas the, um, the, the students letter immediately says, Columbia just admitted I did nothing wrong. Whereas the the students letter clearly says no, it actually just sounds like they didn't finish the investigation. So there's like two letters from the same office at Columbia that seemed to directly contradict one another. So I thought they were from the same office. And then basically, I was reading the letters again, and I noticed that the letterhead in the letter that Davide

shared had a typo in the name of the office. So it said office of institutional equity. And I was like, oh my God, did this guy forge a Columbia document? Columbia University, but it's spelled like the country. I mean, it like, and not just that, the font. So I posted on Twitter and like immediately the sleuths came out and were like, it's actually not even the official font.

And he didn't use the Columbia flu and they have these strict brand guidelines. So I'm like, holy shit. I guess, you know, I've like avoided him like the plague and I've not really wanted to report on him, but I was like, okay, I guess I gotta try to to track down what's going on here to make a long story short. Um, I should say the office of institutional equity has completely stonewalled me.

They refused to answer any questions about it, which obviously speaks to an NDA. But what I was able to learn through, um, other people who have talked to them and I've, I've heard the actual conversations and I've confirmed this from multiple sources, was that the Office of Institutional Equity did not write his letter. His letter was written by, quote, outside folks, which could mean anything, but probably

means a law firm, but the quote was outside folks, and then it was just routed back to the OIE with a typo in the letterhead. And when they read it over, they couldn't even bother to notice that it was just routed back to the OIE with a typo in the letterhead. And when they read it over, they couldn't even bother to notice that it was just a completely different letterhead with the typo. They just signed it and sent it to Davide. So it just, and so I wrote this Substack piece and by the time I had finished that he had written an essay for Tablet, he had done multiple interviews, he was just running around town talking about how they had found him innocent. I wrote this piece basically he's like actually no they very specifically said oh and I should say what I was able to confirm was that he

was never told that he was found innocent he was not found innocent they did not clear him of any investigations they just terminated the investigations early because he left and you know it should be so like like like he agreed to leave voluntarily as a means to forestall and then just shut down all of the investigations ongoing because of the many students he's harassed or gotten deported. And that is the same thing as a judge legally declaring you normal. Yeah, I mean, so when I first published though, when I just posted on Twitter, showing the typo and a ton of people started responding to it.

I was like, shy is going to respond. Like he, he's very online. Yeah. He doesn't get to him. Like Dave Weigel retweeted, I was like, oh, he's going to see this. So he finally does respond. And he says, uh, yes, it's, or I had asked him like, shy, can you confirm that this letter with a typo in the office name came from Columbia?

And he said, of course it came from them. What would you expect from a place like Columbia? And I was like, I don't think very highly of Columbia, but I would not expect a typo in a letter. That's one thing that I would definitely not expect. But then he basically sent me a side. He sent me a side, but sends me a side DM and he's just basically he says, Hey man, you're going after the wrong guy. I'm the good guy here.

And he starts like doing this thing, which I have learned from talking to, um, his alleged victims that like, he tries to really like come out, like personalize his relations with you and be a good guy in private so that he can then like, you know, trash you in public. So he's trying this and I was like, and he was, he was guilting me. And I was like, look, man, take it up with Columbia. Like if, if, if this was in fact sent to you with a typo, like, I don't think you can be mad at the journalists for publishing it. And he says to me, I have a feeling it wasn't sloppy. I think they did it on purpose. So not expand on that, but it basically, what he was saying is, and this is what I said, what I mean when I say

This guy really should talk to his lawyer before saying things like that Presumably there's some sort of you know cause and their severance agreement that he's not allowed to go around spreading conspiracy theories But he actually suggested to me that like they planted a typo in his letter to see doubt in his innocence So yeah, that's the story of I mean, I get it. Like, obviously, they would need to go to great lengths to make him look insane. Yeah. Well, I did. Did the good professor give you any indication of what's next for him? What's the next chapter,

the next step on his journey? Well, he did write on in his tablet essay that came out before my piece that he is launching a podcast. So you guys, I'm in for you. He's, I think he's doing a book in a live talk series. So he's going to basically live out his dream as a public figure. I will say this guy who tweets like once an hour has not tweeted anything since I published my my

Piece so and I like very actively have been I like tweeted a tablet to confirm how you guys published An untrue statement you should retract it He was not found innocent and so I've tried to make as loud a stink as I can I mean he's gonna go around using this as part of his narrative That you know, he's the victim he was wrongly charged and then he was found innocent and I I do think he's going to go around using this as part of his narrative that, you know, he's the victim. He was wrongly charged and then he was found innocent. And I do think it's like a noble duty to make sure he's not able to do that. Yeah. As far as Columbia goes, it really it really does seem like they've done everything possible to avoid actually doing any investigation

of the accusations of harassment that his own students have made against him. Because it really, it really like I said, it really seems like they did not want to look into that because own students have made against him. Because it really, like I said, it really seems like they did not want to look into that because they know what they would find. So I think like- Yeah. You should read the piece, like the details that I learned from the students

about the type of stuff that was happening and what Columbia just refused to respond to. I mean, it actually shocked me. Like I knew he was a creep, but I did not realize the extent of it. So this stuff I've seen about him, it's like, if you worked at like a bon pen and acted like him, you would be arrested. Yeah. He is an insane person. And I, I kind of laughed what you sort of indicated your fear of him like responded to you because it is like Someone that insane they kind of like they try to drag you down with them

They like just by virtue of being in a public feud with them Like it's like a skunk spraying you with schizophrenia The thing is though like I remember the only other time he had responded to me on Twitter was the day Mahmoud Kaliol was detained by ICE a couple months ago. I looked at his Twitter and saw that like two days before he had tweeted at Marco Rubio and literally like shared a video of Kahlil and said something to the effect of, Hey, Secretary of State, this looks like a deportable offense, doesn't it? And so I retweeted it and I said something like, shy da da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, I think he'll have no problem with us. I'll have no smoke coming from us. I think he's working with Ellie Gell-E actually. Alright, Jasper Nathaniel, we've got to leave it there for today.

I want to thank you so much for your time. And if people would like to read more of your journalism, where should they go? Yeah, I have a subset called Infinite Jazz. It's just 1Z, so Infinite J a Z. I publish a weekly newsletter there about what's happening in in Palestine and I dig through Israeli and Arabic papers to find stories that are not being covered in the West and then on Twitter I think it's infinite two underscores jazz and then on Instagram infinite one underscore jazz nosies sure that was all very easy to follow up but we will have we will have

links for all of them available in the show description so once again Jasper Nathaniel thank you so much for your time and for your work on this subject yeah thanks so much you guys had a good time all right that does it for today's show everybody I will be off on Thursday, but till next Monday from Will Meraker, this is me signing off. Bye bye. The End you