Digital Social Hour - The Fight Against Social Media Censorship | Yuval David DSH #1236

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

🎯 Join the fight against social media censorship on this episode of the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! Emmy-winning actor, filmmaker, and leading Jewish LGBTQ+ activist Yuval David shares powerful insights on activism, human rights, and battling online censorship. 🌍 From advocating for marginalized communities to tackling antisemitism and misinformation, this conversation is packed with valuable insights you won’t want to miss. 💡 Discover the challenges of navigating social platforms under shifting policies, hear Yuval’s stories of resilience, and explore how social media influences global narratives. From discussing free speech on X to the dangers of unchecked algorithms, this episode dives into the pressing issues shaping our digital world. 📢 Don’t miss out on this inspiring and eye-opening conversation! Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and join the movement for truth, justice, and open dialogue. 🚀 Let’s keep the conversation going—drop your thoughts in the comments below! 👇 CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:58 - Importance of Debate 04:17 - Repairing the World 10:25 - Palm Reading Techniques 11:36 - Social Media Algorithms Impact 13:44 - Meta Fact Checking Explained 18:50 - Unity Without Conformity Principles 26:55 - Trump's Gender Policy Analysis 30:38 - Condemning Anti-Semitism 33:00 - Understanding Antisemitism 34:20 - October 7th Attack Overview 37:07 - Where to Find Yuval APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Yuval David  https://www.instagram.com/yuval_david_ https://www.yuvaldavid.com/ https://www.youtube.com/yuvaldavid LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ #donaldtrump #bigtechregulation #nadinestrossen #socialmediacensorship #censorship

to help rescue women and LGBT people out of dangerous and life-threatening situations internationally. Most of those countries happen to be countries that practice Sharia law and I'd help get them out of those countries so they could be somewhere where they can be safe. The challenge is there are people who don't want to leave their homes. want to leave their homes. Okay guys, we got Yuval David here today. Emmy and multi award winning actor, filmmaker, journalist and leading Jewish LGBTQ plus activist and advisor. Thanks for coming on today, man. Thank you for having me on. You do such amazing work spreading messages and creating platforms for people to share what's important to them.

And I think in this era of information and sharing narratives, we have such a wide reach and that's exactly what you represent. So it's my pleasure and honor to be here. Absolutely. I think having conversations are important. I know you engage in debates as well. I do. I think those are very important because when there's no debate, there's no growth, right? Yeah. And I firmly believe that everybody has a seat at the table. As long as you're not trying to kill somebody who's at the table or practice erasure or condemn their identity or their beliefs, then we all should sit at the table. And that's where growth

happens. That's where learning happens. And debate is a wonderful thing to be challenged in life is when we grow. And that's no matter if you're in school, no matter if you're practicing a sport, like I just got off the, we're here in park city. So I just got off the mountain 20 minutes ago and was doing double black diamonds that some of the runs definitely challenged me and I became a better skier because of it. When I have the opportunity to encounter people who have a different opinion than I do, especially when it's fact based and very informed, it's amazing for me because who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind and how exciting is that? Right.

Has that happened for you where you've had a strong stance and you've seen some new information come to light and that made you change your opinion? Yeah, absolutely. There are times that, uh, my strong stances have been challenged and I get more information and that either solidified my stance or gave me a deeper understanding of the opinions and beliefs against my stance. I've been a human rights, civil rights, social justice activist for most of my life. I was raised to be to understand that the privilege of life that I have makes my life not just my own. My life is of and for my family, my friends, my community, and for anybody who I can help. It's very much connected to the

Jewish philosophy of making this world a better place. In Hebrew, a lot of people talk about the concept of Tikkun Olam, which means the repairing of the world. If you're adding captions to this, T-I-K-K-U-N-O-N. I saw that wrong. I was writing that down. No, I could tell. I saw you writing it down. Now, many people talk about this concept in Judaism of repairing the world, but it's paired with two other concepts of repairing, and that's repairing of the soul and repairing of the body. And one of the things that I love about it is it's not a simple concept. What does it mean to repair the world?

Whose world? Is it my world? Is it my life or is it your life? Or is it both of them? Or is it this entire planet? What does it mean to repair the body? Is it my physical body or my helping you to be as healthy as possible mind, body and soul,

or is it the body politic? And the answer is yes to all of that, the body of our peoplehood. And the last repairing is Tikkun Hanifish repairing of the soul. And that also means the spirit. And that's the spirit of whose spirit, whose soul, the soul of our people, the soul of the world, the energy of the world. So Tikkun olam, Tikkun hanefesh, the soul, and Tikkun haguf, G-U-F, repairing of the body. That's fascinating stuff. So you live by these principles?

I do. And it's also interesting because to live by them doesn't mean to succeed all the time. It also means to fail. And the people who are the most ambitious in life without bringing in an arrogance into it understand that the failures are a place in which we learn and in which we can improve and take that as direction for the next time we attempt to do something for our own good or the greater good. I'm of the belief

failure is necessary in life. I wish more people would say that. I wish more people would say that. You know I have a buddy who I'm not going to mention who... Alright shout out to today's sponsor, Specialized Recruiting Group, offering a tailored approach to find your next role. Go to srgpros.com, srgpros.com and get on the right course. Your local Specialized Recruiting Group team knows which businesses are hiring and can offer you a path to contract and full-time roles. If you don't see the role you're looking for on the website, Specialized Recruiting Group also recruits for confidential roles so give an office near you a call to learn more.

Take the next step in your career by starting at srgpros.com, srgpros.com. Was skiing with me, intermediate skier. And he didn't react well to some of the challenges and had like this freak out moment. So I said, you know, like, Hey, man, let's just chill, look around, breathe, enjoy the environment. What was challenging about that? And we spoke about it. I was like, great, we're down here. Right. And he's like, yeah. And I said, that basically means you did it. You didn't fall. It was hard, but you didn't fall. It pissed you off because it was hard. Let's try it again. And he had this moment of realization. He's like, I didn't want to coach right now. I said, I didn't expect to coach right

now, but whatever you want to do it. And he said, yeah. And then we did it again. And he ended up loving it because he like had this little mental shift on how do you approach the things that challenge you. Challenges are important. Failure, falling, as long as you don't terribly hurt yourself, you know, is important. There's that old saying, uh, the greatest warrior has fallen off of her horse. And when she has fallen off of her horse, she understands not just how to get back up on the horse and why it's important to get back up on the horse, but it makes her more courageous,

more brave and more prepared for the next battle. I love that. Wow. You took your friend on a double dot black diamond and he's an intermediate skier. And now he's able to do black diamonds. And it wasn't intentional. I wasn't like, I'm not a tour guide of the mountain. I just go and, you know, sometimes you're surprised and well, you know what? There's a double black diamond in front of you. So what are you going to do? And he now wants to do more.

I think he wants to do more single black diamonds. He doesn't want to do more double black diamonds yet, but at least he progressed from blue groomers to black diamonds and he knows that he can do it. He did a double black diamond. He made it down. He didn't fall. He took his time. It was very hard for him.

His form was sloppy, but he made it down and now he's going to do it better. Next time. That's impressive. I've never gone. I want to go skiing one day. You can ski with me, but I'll challenge you. Not on the gold black diamond though. We'll see. Not on my first one. Not on your first one. No, no, no. You got to go step by step.

One thing in the process of learning and becoming better and exploring the world, there's no need to rush. No need to rush somebody into the challenge. It's a gradual process, but everybody has their own process, which is by the way, I like to pronounce it process more than process because it's proactive. It's, it's a positive thing to move forward. I like that. I've never heard that angle. That's cool.

Try it process. I will process. Right. How does it sound? It sounds clean Yeah, sounds smooth. So I met you at an event last night you did and I'm on I like to say I like to observe people So the first thing I saw you doing was reading palms. Yes. I was like, who is this guy? So then we get to talking and I'm just really fascinated That you were doing that but you're also on the news stations like

That's considered a pretty spiritual thing, the palm reading, right? Yeah. I was, since I was a kid, I learned the artistry of reading palms. And then I started to study the international phonetic alphabet and then Laban movement analysis, L-A-B-E-A-N. Laban was this man who looked at the way people moved and created an actual written vocabulary to describe movement. And all of those are paired together. So when I actually do read somebody's palms, which I find so intriguing because it's our hands that allow us to do so much for those of us who have hands. And our hands are very revealing to what our subtext is. When you try to really read somebody, look at what their hands are doing. And we understand how to wear a mask and how to present well or present how we wish to present,

but when you look at their hands, it will tell you something extra about them. So when I read somebody's palms, I don't only read their palms. I don't always tell them I was reading Charlie's palms, but I'm reading all of their movements. I'm reading their facial expressions and then giving them reflecting back information that I see within them. Interesting. Yeah, I was always very skeptical of palm readers growing up, to be honest, but the way you're describing it's interesting to me. Well, it's a major part of our body, right? Every part of our body can tell us something or can tell somebody else something about who we are and how we are. And I think in humanity and

our socialization, we've distanced ourselves from being able to read each other, especially in the technology era that has distanced us further from our animal nature. But I'm a dog person. Dogs can read each other and understand what the other dog is saying purely based on the movement without hearing a sound. We're the same. We respond to people's bodies and movements, whether we're aware of it or not. Interesting. Yeah. We're communicating without verbally communicating, right? 100%. That's the importance of body language. So I add that into the palm reading. How much do I believe that the palms reveal everything about our lives? I think that's neither here nor there.

I will tell people what I see based on what I learned from this ancient art of palm reading, and then I add to it what I'm sensing in the moment. What have you been thinking about all the changes on X with Elon taking over? There's now allegedly free speech, but at the same time there isn't. What do you think about all that mayhem going on on X?

I mean, we're, social media has changed our world. Social media, at first people were talking about the strange way that people communicate on social media and that people say things that they would never dare say in real life. But now we're seeing people communicate exactly how they communicate on social media, face to face. And it's a very strange thing to see, but it's happening. What I think is important is not only the discussion of the algorithms, not only the discussion of the algorithms on social media, but to understand how important we are as influencers, right? As influential people, anybody who uses social media, whether you have 1 million followers or 100 followers, you are influential for the people who follow you. So

what is it that you like? What is it that you share? What is it that you comment on? You're affecting the people who are connected to you. And I think that we all need to recognize that power and that clout that we have to affect the algorithms and to affect the information that's out there because we are in this information era. There's a lot of information out there. It doesn't mean that all the information is true.

Doesn't mean that all the information is factual because we're also seeing tremendous and horrendous propaganda and misinformation being spread on social media. Right. And it spreads fast. Very fast. So that's why it's important for us to understand who are the sources, reliable sources, who do we trust, who do we resonate with, and who do we not resonate with? So you can still comment and connect and engage with the posts on social media that you find offensive or that you're against, but at least write, comment, create content about how that is wrong information

or information that you don't appreciate or whatever your position is. Yeah, you never know what you'll see on X these days. What did you think of Metta removing fact checking? I think that that was a very problematic fact checking process that Metta had. And they hired externally people who would censor information.

One thing that we saw were there were people who were actually sharing factual information, who were getting censored. And then there were people who were connected or supporting terrorist groups who were sharing information and weren't censored. So that's a really big problem. How does social media have to engage in censorship and in fact checking when there's false information being shared? So when people really looked closely at what Zuckerberg announced, I actually think that it was a positive thing.

Hmm. I agree. Especially with certain things that they were not putting to light like the vaccine stuff and certain other topics. Totally. And also I'm a Jewish activist. I'm an Israeli activist. I'm a Zionist activist. Not only the stuff that I would comment and create social media content about Jewish and Israeli topics, but even about other world affairs. I had so many of my posts taken down when I looked at other similar posts by other people that were still up. So I was like, well, how, how is this happening? And there has been an erasure and a silencing of Jewish activist voices on social media, especially over the last four years. So I'm really hoping that that's going to change because I'm, I'm wanting my people to be

able to express themselves without people trying to practice erasure or take away their right of self and community expression. Right. I've seen the anti-Semitism stuff almost every day at this point. It's horrible. I mean, my accounts, I've had my accounts flagged, I've had my accounts taken down, and then I found out from the FBI that there are targeted and strategic groups

that are trying to take down Jewish people who are in the public eye and take down their accounts on social media. And apparently my account was listed in this list of 130 Jewish activists on social media. And I felt that and I saw that. And I remember when my TikTok was taken down and completely shut down, there are people who reached out and they're like, oh my God, Yuval, how are you doing?

How are you holding up? And I was like, well, I'm not defined by my social media. I use my social media to amplify what I do and to amplify the messages and the educational content that I find important, but it doesn't define me. But then my accounts resurfaced because they were double checked by whoever shut it down because there were, if enough people within a community will flag an account, it will just get taken down, but then you can appeal the process. If you're doing things that are okay, then it'll

come back up. Was this on TikTok? Or this was on TikTok and it happened on my Instagram as well. Wow. Not Twitter? My Twitter was never taken down, but my Tik Tok and my Instagram were taken down at least a couple of times each. That's wild.

I wonder what you're saying specifically that's making them want to take you down. I post a lot about the war in Gaza, about human rights concerns, about democracy, about the need for Israel to exist. And I also condemn terrorism and terrorist supporters very, very boldly and openly. And I think that has upset people, but I know a lot of Jewish activists and allies of the Jewish people and allies of Israel

or people who believe in American and Israeli democracy and democracies around the world, whose accounts were also taken down, even if they're not Jewish, because they're posting that type of content. So we know that there are Islamist and Islamist supporting movements that are trying to take these accounts down.

And again, it goes back to the start of our conversation. I don't believe in silencing people. I believe that everybody should sit at the table. As long as you're not trying to kill somebody at the table or erase their identity or say that they don't have a right to share their opinion. I believe in, I have a pretty low bar.

The low bar is, do you believe in women's rights, LGBT rights, freedom of religion, education, equal access to education, healthcare for all, and the ability for people to run for office and protest against people who are in office and against their government? I believe in democracy and in our constitutional republic. I think it's a very important process and I'm glad that I'm a citizen of two countries, Israel and the United States, both of which have this system of checks and balances that our government, there are people in our government who are completely opposing each other, but they both still have the same amount of power to try to contest each other and each other's policies.

That is so important. Otherwise, the counter is a totalitarian or fascist regime. And I come from the liberal left progressive, LGBT, Democrat spaces, and I've seen my own communities and movements shift the goalposts. My values haven't changed, but the goalposts. My values haven't changed, but the goalposts have been shifted by these movements, which is very upsetting.

And there's this belief in not just and no longer in unity without conformity, there's this belief that we must have unity with conformity, that we all need to have the same opinion. And it's disappointing for me, especially within the LGBTQIA plus movement. We're not a community. I don't think that we're a community. We haven't acted like a community for a very long time. And there are many people within the LGBT

community who said we've never been a community. It's a movement and we have succeeded immensely as a movement. In fact, I think the LGBT movement is one of the most successful social movements And we have succeeded immensely as a movement. In fact, I think the LGBT movement is one of the most successful social movements that we have seen and we have a lot to learn from that. But then I've seen my own movement go too far, especially within the Q side of things, within the queer side of things, where there's been a silencing and an erasure and a closeting, let me use that term, of conservative voices and religious voices within the LGBTQIA plus community. And that's wrong because we're

supposed to be the most diverse and inclusive community and movement in the world because LGBTQ people are part of every other community in the world. And that's something that I spoke very openly about and condemned within my own movement. And that probably got you a ton of hate, right? From your own community. Yes. It got me a lot of hate, especially when I would support Republican leaders and conservative leaders

and LGBT conservative people and LGBT religious people, LGBT people of different countries who don't necessarily follow the far left liberal and progressive ideals. And I'd say, I don't have to agree with them, but I support their right to do what they do. And then I was condemned for supporting people's right. And that made me even more bullheaded, more digging my heels in and saying, no, no, no, I don't believe in erasure. I don't believe in canceling people unless they're trying to kill somebody or eradicate somebody.

And it all goes back to the same principle. Yeah. It's used to your ground. Yeah. But like queers for Palestine and queers for Hamas, such a ridiculous organization. It's ridiculous. I didn't even know that existed. Oh my God. It's an insane organization.

They've been coming for me for years. They've had protests outside my speeches. They'd call me a pink washer, which is this term that's used about LGBT people who support Israel or support Zionism or who are proudly Jewish and you know, whatever the whatever their arguments are. Pink washer. Pink washer.

It basically, pink being a color that oftentimes is associated with the LGBT movement, also with the women's movement. And they say that it's like, I'm washing over whatever things that they're upset about with this pink color. So yeah, like there's this, I'm not even going to mention their name, but they're a very hateful group online that regularly accused me of being a pink washer. And I support, I'm a proud American and I support America and Israel because of the rights that I'm able to have in both countries as an LGBT individual. And I've also worked and collaborated with organizations

like Rainbow Railroad, Dignity LGBTQI, Freedom House, the White House and the State Department to help rescue women and LGBT people out of dangerous and life-threatening situations internationally. Most of those countries happen to be countries that practice Sha'ariyah law and I'd help get them out of those countries. So they could be somewhere where they can be safe. The challenge is there are people who don't want to leave their homes and they want to be able to live as they are. Of course, they will do whatever they want to do. And then the challenge is, well, how do we support them to still have safety and protection within their country? And it leans back on the LGBT movement. The LGBT movement in the West has become far too

selfish and narcissistic. Wow. We need to recognize that there are so many people around the world that need our help and we can't only focus on this little insular world. Yeah, cause there's still countries that will kill you for being gay, right? In Gaza and in the West Bank areas that I deal with

from my Israeli and Middle Eastern affairs activism, well, the homosexual people are killed. The punishment is death. Women oftentimes will actually be forced into sex slavery if they're not killed or they get forced to marry the undesirable men. Men actually many times as a first punishment will get raped for being gay or even accused of being gay. Talk about mind twisting. They'll have gay sex with them as a punishment because apparently only the bottom, only the receptive male in a sexual situation is

considered homosexual. And then they'll throw them off of a building. Wow. But there's a man who I was involved in helping him escape his community in the West bank because he was gay and people found out that he was gay. But there's a man who I was involved in helping him escape his community in the West Bank because he was gay and people found out and we got him asylum. We, other people got him asylum in Israel. I was involved in a minor way and he ended up living in Israel from Hebron and he had an Israeli boyfriend, a Jewish boyfriend, even though he's an Arab Muslim

and had like this amazing life. But then there were people from his community, the elders of his community who found out where he was, went into Israel, kidnapped him, took him back to Hebron, stripped him naked in the town square and beheaded him as a punishment for being gay. That God, I remember the messages that were going around all of our groups. Like we felt like we saved this person who was able to have a life. And in Israel, there are so many Arab Muslim

Israelis. So he was around people who he totally identified with the same people and he was able to be gay and he was able to be Muslim and he was able to be gay and he was able to be Muslim and he was able to walk in the street, you know, with pride colors and have a boyfriend and go to a gay club. And he only had that for such a short amount of

time and that, that was. Yeah, I mourned that for a long time. And it was, um, cause I met him and, yeah, I mourned that for a long time. And it was, cause I met him and in person and what a, just the sweetest, most beautiful guy. That's super sad, man. Yeah. Religions are tough on that topic. I know some of them are.

Yeah. Christianity, Muslim. Yeah. I mean, I was raised, I mean, I'm Jewish and I was raised always in the Jewish faith, but when I was a kid, I had a lesbian rabbi. I had a trans, a trans female cantor. It wasn't an issue within the communities that I was part of, although they always would joke, they said the biggest stress that they had and the biggest criticism that they had from the community is the community said like, when are you going to have children? Like have kids. Like when are you going to have more kids? And like everything else was fine. Now, of course, if you look at ultra ultra orthodox Judaism,

yeah, of course, you're going to find issues there with homosexuality. But at least in my faith and in many of the communities from reform, reconstructionist, conservative and modern Orthodox Judaism, you can be LGBT. Yeah. So. Trump's been making a lot of moves since he became president. What did you think of him announcing there's only two genders? So I think that I understand the pressures that drove him to say that, to focus on the science, uh, even though I am an LGBT activist and advocate, I

think that there's a lot that we have to learn about, especially the trans movement and what it means to be trans. Because so far, what we know from biology and science, it taught us about what we're capable of. We can change that. We can explore things in different ways. But I think the LGBTQIA plus movement has also pushed things too far with forcing people to use specific pronouns and to talk about it all the time. Like be who you want

to be as long as you're not trying to again kill somebody or force them to believe something. And this is the ramifications of that. The progressive and LGBTQ movement started to be too forceful and condemning people who weren't quite ready to accept that, condemning them as idiots, condemning them as hateful bigots. And when somebody is called a hateful bigot and they don't feel that they're being a hateful bigot, then they might become more conservative or see the accuser as being crazy. And that's exactly what we saw. It's also why I think we saw this red wave across the country. The liberal progressive movements pushed too hard. And this country has never been a fully liberal country.

It's been mostly a conservative country and the conservatives spoke up. You saw it with this election, right? Absolutely. That was crazy. Well, the, we saw that at largest percentages of black Americans, Latino Americans, and Jewish Americans actually switching parties from the Democrat party to the Republican party, not

just voting Republican, but actually switching parties. So both parties have major lessons to learn here. Republican party from successes that they had and significant failures that they had. And the Democrat party, especially the failures that they had, they lost vast amounts of voters that they had. And the Democrat Party, especially the failures that they had, they lost vast amounts of voters that they thought would always be with them. So it's time

for a rebrand. And I think it's an exciting time in our political situation here. We have a lot to learn and we have a lot to improve. Yeah. Have you changed your sense personally in politics? Yeah. I'm no longer a Democrat. Oh wow. Yeah. Which was big because I've been a Democrat

my entire life. I'm now a moderate centrist independent. And I actually have found myself feeling safer and more accepted in Republican spaces, which is so wild for me. If you would have told me that in 2016, I wouldn't have believed you. Right. And again, it leans back to the goalposts shifted. My values haven't changed, but other people shifted the goalposts. And I'm able to have those safe conversations with Republicans. I'm on Capitol Hill regularly meeting and advocating with different Congress people. And I'm able to have conversations with Republican leaders who agree on some of the things and disagree on other things, but I'm able to speak to them and we speak and many times our meetings are much longer than expected and we just have these amazing conversations. I love it. But that's what all Americans should do. Our

politicians are just as important as we are. We represent them just as much as they represent us. Everybody can go to Capitol Hill. Everybody can much as they represent us. Everybody can go to Capitol Hill. Everybody can meet with their elected officials. Everybody can run for office. Like that's the beauty of our country. Right. Is there anything you're trying to get through Congress over the next few years? Anything trying to get pushed? One of the big things is condemning the anti-Jewish racism or the anti-Semitism that we're seeing. Did Trump just do something with that? He did, which is great. He announced the order to revoke student visas of students who have infringed on people's civil rights and safety on campus. I think the encampments that we saw

when people were condemning Jews and Israelis and Jewish studies and Zionists on campus is insane. Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people. If we believe in national movements for other people, for indigenous people, for LGBT people, for women, for Muslim people, for, you know, it's why we have so many people who say like they're Italian American, they're Israeli American, they're Jordanian American, they're Irish American, whatever it is, be proud of that, that colors who we are as America. And on campuses, we're seeing people trying to silence Jewish voices. That's a very dangerous thing. And it also became more than just trying to silence them. There was violence, there were rioting, there was

destruction of property, there was disturbing of classes, of professors trying to teach. That's wrong. It's wrong to infringe on somebody else's freedom of speech. And that goes back to the narcissism that we're seeing within many of these movements. Yeah. And you said four years ago is when this really started happening, this silence against Jewish people? No, this has been going on for a very long time. The anti-Semitism, we've seen anti-Semitism rising in this country for many years. We've also seen the Islamization of the world increasing around the world, including in the United States, where instead of it just being spreading of a religion, which is fine and great spread religion, you know, wherever you want.

But when there was a radical belief to change the system or to burn the system down or to silence other people, that's when it gets dangerous. Radical behavior is very dangerous. I mean, we saw it with the Crusades of the Christians across, across Europe and across many other parts of the world. Yeah. When they would burn and kill rape and loot non-Christian communities or force them to convert.

Well, Islam has done the same thing and it's happening now and it's a very dangerous thing. Yeah. I think it's definitely been around, but I feel like there's been an explosion. Of anti-Semitism specifically. Absolutely. The FBI, the ADL police departments across the Yeah, I think it's definitely been around, but I feel like there's been an explosion. Of anti-Semitism specifically? Absolutely.

The FBI, the ADL police departments across the United States have all shown the statistics that even though Jewish people are what, like 2% of the US population and 0.2% of the world population, that Jews have faced the highest amounts of discrimination and hate crimes more than any other ethnic and religious group. And that's according to the statistics shared by the FBI this year, but last year, 2024. And you guys definitely get the most. And it's horrific, but what history has shown us is when things are turning for the worst,

communities tend to first blame the Jews. And we've seen it across the Arab world and the European world. People blame the Jews for being capitalist, but they blame the Jews for being communist. They blame the Jews for being poor, but they blamed the Jews for being rich. They blamed the Jews for being separate than the society and they blamed the Jews for immersing themselves in society. I always thought that that was just Jewish history. When all of this anti-Semitism started rising and the groundswell exploded, especially over the last few years and especially since the October 7th terror attack. Yeah. It was, I had this moment of just recognizing here we go again. I was like, oh, I get this.

So I often say that I was shocked, but not surprised by what's going on in the world. And I know it's personal for you because you had friends involved in that attack, right? October 7th. Yeah. I have many friends and people I know who were murdered on October 7th, both from the Nova Music Festival and from the communities in the South, friends and people I know who were taken hostage, some who were released from captivity, thankfully, and some who were murdered in captivity and others who are still being held. Wow. All of my activism, everything that I've done with all of my work in entertainment, media,

and advocacy, I feel like I'm doing much more Jewish activism than ever before because my people are being attacked. My friends are being attacked. My communities are and were attacked. And it's my responsibility to advocate for them and to make sure that we can have peace. And the sad part is sometimes to fight for peace.

You have war, war sucks, but if somebody's trying to kill you, you need to fight back. But yeah, I hope Trump can help reach a resolution in his term. I very much hope so. And I think the, the benefit of having Trump as as the president of the United States is that he's very tough and he gives this tough way, a tough speak. And he's a tough guy. But that's kind of who he is and how he presents himself. And that's something that the Arab world

responds to. The Arab world tends to respond to very strong, tough leaders who will intimidate the people into action. That's just how it is. I wish it was, there were democracies in the Arab world. The only one in the region is Israel. And I really dreamed that there will be more democracies there. Yeah. I mean, he's definitely, he's going to push. We're already at a trade war with Canada, so he's moving quick. He's moving very quickly. And it'll be interesting to see what he, what he succeeds in doing. And you know what?

We saw many more hostages being released by Hamas since Trump came into power. And actually since Trump won the election, then we did over the last four years during the Biden Harris administration. Absolutely. Well, Yuval, it's been a pleasure. I definitely want to have you back on if

you're ever in Vegas, but in the meantime, where can people find you man and support you? I mean, I'm all over social media. Yuval David, Y-U-V-A-L-D-A-V-I-D. That's actually my handle all over social media. Although on Instagram, I didn't get it. I'm Yuval underscore David underscore. Someone took it. Well, it's interesting. Yuval is also is a name that's also given to women in Israel. So it's a kind of unisex name. Um, but one of the major things that I try to impart to people is to be educated, to be informed, to read alternate sources, because what we're seeing in this world of social media where 97% of

people under the age of 45 receive their news and world information from TikTok and Instagram. And just because they see a video or receive some information, they assume that that's in factual information, but we need to know how to have a more critical eye and understand what is propaganda and misinformation and disinformation and what is actual fact. So I hope that your audience will definitely follow and support me all over you've all David wherever I'd love it But also the people who you believe are doing something great share their accounts share their profiles share this Specific podcast and the work that you do because there's so much that we can do to help the world learn and become that better place

Absolutely. Love it. We'll end it there guys. his stuff out we'll link it below see you next time peace