The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Did Israel Win the War But Lose the World╎Hen Mazzig

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Hen Mazzig, co-founder of the Tel Aviv Institute and author of The Wrong Kind of Jew, says Israel won on the battlefield and lost the world, and that explaining Israel "is not a replacement for policy." He spent five years in COGAT, the IDF unit that issues Palestinian permits and prison visits, and was attacked by settlers while in uniform. We play his Piers Morgan fight with Norman Finkelstein ("Am I a child killer?") and go through what Amit Soussana actually said. Noam asks whether Israel would hold the West Bank if it had no holy sites, why the occupation is the Palestinians' best weapon, and why "sunlight grows mushrooms." Also: Mamdani's October 7 statement, Mearsheimer on the Hannibal Directive, Eurovision, and why Noam thinks everyone should have a baby. 0:00 Hen Mazzig, three years and a day after October 7 4:19 "We won on the battlefield and lost the world" 18:36 Food, famine and the arguments that don't work 28:52 What if the West Bank had no holy sites? 37:56 Smallpox, arrogance and "have a baby" 52:13 Five years in COGAT: what the IDF's humanitarian unit does 61:40 "Am I a child killer?" Finkelstein and the rape deniers 76:00 Mearsheimer, the Hannibal Directive and "sunlight grows mushrooms"

Welcome to Vi from the table, the podcast for the world famous comedy seller. I'm here with Noam Dorman, the owner of the comedy seller. I'm Periel, the producer of the show, and we have a very, very, very special guest today. In person, in studio, Chen Mazig is an internationally recognized writer, speaker, and creator, named by the New York Times as one of the most nuanced, commentators on Israel and Jewish issues. He's the co-founder of the Tel Avid Institute and best-selling author of The Wrong Kind of Jew.

And I encourage everybody to subscribe to his brilliant substack, which you can find on the internet. Did I absolve myself of my lack of intros yesterday? Yes, that was terrible, Peryl. That was, yes, she, anyway. No, no, say it, say, say it. I'd like to hear with the listeners.

She just didn't She didn't bother to prepare introductions yesterday. We had Eli Lake, Salo Eisenberg, Coleman Hughes, you know, all people with credentials. She's like,

they don't need any introduction. Okay, can I just defend myself for a moment here? They've all been on the show before. Most of them more than once. Okay,

that doesn't mean that everybody who's watching has seen the show. Fair enough. seen those shows. I apologized. I apologize to Eli. I apologize to Coleman and Sallow and point taken. All right. So here we are. This is three years and a day since October 7th. We're trying to do a fair retrospective of what happened, what we've learned, what the future is, if it's positive or negative. And Chen Mazig, by the way, Chaviv Retagore does this also. He's supposed to be.

your name with an H for Western audiences. Yeah. I disagree with that decision. But that's... Because I didn't even know it was Chen. I thought it was hen. Yeah. Well, but they would say Chen.

In English, E.H is chah. Yeah. That was my thinking. It's either the... You were right. C.H or K.H, which is more Arabic. Arabic, yeah. Which...

Khalid. I do speak Arabic, but I'm not an Arab. Yeah. I guess... I guess, I guess you have... I guess it's six or one, half dozen the other. Yeah, exactly. But, but like, they spell Hanukkah with a CH or with an H.

You see it both ways. I prefer the CH. You probably spell it with a CH also. It depends on my audience. And Christmas. Anyway, I wonder if that's, anyway, I don't know what the original pronunciation of Christ is. Anyway. But do Americans call you hen or hen?

It's hen. No one says hen. I have to correct them or insist. And you, but you, but, you, but, your name is hen. Yeah, you correct them to say, Chen.

I do. Yeah. Well, I do, yeah. And sometimes I don't. Sometimes I just let it happen. And when I go on BBC or whatever,

and they say, Han, I'm not going to stop the interrupt the broadcast. My grandmother, they already hate Jews enough. I know, right? He's constantly correcting them.

It's true. It's true what they say. Yeah, exactly. No, my grandma used to say that I should correct them. And I'm like, no,

grandma, there's no time. And yes, and they hate us already. I'm going to be there. than knowing Jew that tells them, oh, yeah, exactly. He surrounds my name. Hate us for being pedantic.

Anyway, so, okay, so, you know, I, we did a conversation yesterday. I didn't really have my thoughts together, as I told Eli today on the phone. I hadn't done any good shower thinking. I do all my best thinking in the shower. And then sometimes when I work from notes, it actually backfires because I'm better without notes. But anyway, what's your top of the brain reaction to the last three years? It was, did Israel win?

Did they lose? Is it mixed? Did they get a F, D, C, B, A, on the way they conducted the war? What is the future hold? What things are at the top of your brain? How much time do I have? As much time as you want. Until Perry all interrupts.

Right. No, I heard the show yesterday. I think everyone made excellent points, and I agree with most of them. I think the overarching point was that Israel is won in the battlefield. We've deterred our enemies. Everyone is afraid of us in the Middle East. We've pushed back on Iran, on the terrorist organizations. They've capitated many of those terrorist organizations,

but in terms of the public image of Israel, we have lost. I think we need to say that. That shouldn't be genuine about it, because I think we have lost in terms of public opinion, in terms of younger people, in terms of diplomatic affairs, in terms of the UN, the international organizations, the media.

I think in all of those fronts, we've done terrible job, and we weren't prepared. And I don't know if we could ever be prepared to fighting against this tsunami and this such well-funded machine that is constantly propagating and pushing misinformation.

And it's so interesting because I mentioned my subsection. I wrote this piece about a friend of ours in London that on October 7th called me to say, I'm so sorry, how's your family, really took care of myself and my husband. And then I saw how he changed his opinions to the point that a few months ago, we had to cut off every communication with him

because it became so extreme. And to see how a person changed from being so compassionate to posting the most horrific anti-Semitic posts on his social media. Give me an example of what is anti-Semitic, if you remember. So, I mean, you know, resistance is justified. The Palestinians are uprising. Israel is responsible for anti-Semitism

just because of the existence of Israel people, hate Jews around the world. if Israel didn't exist, you'd be safe, basically. And he said it to me as well. I know some people might say those are not all obviously anti-Semitic things to say, right? Yeah, I mean, it's a legitimate conversation to have, maybe, but I think that there is, you know, to say that resistance is justified and characterizing the violence and the rape and the mutilation

and the kidnapping of babies, I think it's... Do you think that... that part of the reason, part of the reason, we, and I've been saying we, I know people can't wait to hear me say we because they say, you see, he is a disloyal American, he does. But the, you know, I do feel we, it's not a slip of the tongue. It's a, it's a act of care when I don't say it in these contexts

because, you know, my entire family is Israeli. and the Jewish people are won. You know, these are my people fighting for their survival. I mean, I hear sports fans all the time saying, we won, you know, because they identify with their team. So why can't I say we? I mean, to anybody wonders, I'm a very, very patriotic American, more patriotic than you probably, whoever you are out there.

But in this case, I say we, and I just can't contort myself constantly to correct it. But do you think part of the reason that we lose the information war is because for the people who read about the settlements, which I always say are a gateway drug to anti-Israelism, who bristle at the site of one people being ruled over by another, who see X number of people dead, even if they can segregate out how many are combatants. It's a lot of death.

And when they dare to question this or even say, I think resistance is, they immediately get called anti-Semites, and they're like, fuck these people, you know, and then they kind of tune out for anything else. And this is analogous to, I don't know if you know about this, In America, we had a situation 20 years ago, 15 years ago, about Confederate flags. Now, to us, to me and you, I'm sure, Periel, we see the Confederate flag as a racist symbol.

But whether you want to believe it or not, there were many Southerners who traced their heritage back to the South, and this was their flag. And though they, even Senator Webb, I believe, had made this argument. and even though they know it's associated with slavery, like, no, that's, you know, yes, we may have done all those things, but we're still Germans, you know, even though the Nazis had their own flag, but presuming the Nazis didn't have their own flag.

And, and so, and immediately everybody would call them racist, and then it just fell on deaf heroes, because, like, you know, they know they're not racist, so they go, fuck yourself, and I'm not taking it out my flag. They would actually dig in and become defiant about the flag rather than saying, listen, I know you're not a racist.

I know you're not an anti-Semite, but can you see how this makes us feel? And then they say, oh, you know, I haven't thought of that. So is that part of the loss? Is our own ham-handedness part of the information world loss? You don't think so? No, I don't think so, but he doesn't care what I think. That's right.

But that's why I'm here. I'm here to care about what do you think? So what do you say about that? I'll go after you. Yeah. I think it's an important point that you're raising. I think shutting down legitimate conversation

about the settlement, it's about the war, it's a bloodied war, there's no, you know, I had a conversation today with this think tank in Israel that talking to me about

Asbarah and advocacy and what we're doing right. And I said, asbarra, like, not covering up, but rather, explaining what Israel is doing

all the time and defending Israel all the time is not a replacement for policy. We can explain and we need to explain, we need to advocate better. I fully do that

on a daily basis, but we also need to change policies in Israel. We need to change the way the things are handled. And we need to recognize that, yes, when you see a child being killed on your phone every day, it's going to be very hard to be sympathetic to the people that you accuse of doing that. And I do hold those people accountable, and I do think that our friend could have spoken to me because he knows that I'm an expert in the space and he knows that I have the background.

And that's what I do for a living? He could have asked me, Chen, what do you think about that? But he didn't. I don't know if he cared to do much. And I think that a lot of this propaganda war that we are fighting is not about, changing people's minds. It's about specific policies, rather. It's about making you think that everyone

else have already reached disagreement that we all know that Israel is bad and that's it. And there's no conversation to be held because every time you post something that says Israel genocide, you get millions of likes and millions of shares and so many bots commenting, praising you and you get, you know,

a covering variety and you get a, when Hannah Eimbiter says something horrific and stupid, she gets her and Susan Saranda and Javier Bredem, they get over and over so much support and so much amplification that people really believe that they jumped to the whole conversation that you and I can have about the complexities and about settler violence,

which are completely condemn and I condemn it over and over again. But I think we're having two different conversations, and it reminds me of the debate about transgender rights in the US and how everyone that has raised or had conversation about, and I was guilty of it too, everyone, people that were talking about real concern for their children, which I just dismissed. And I said, come on, I think you all are just, you're just really upset about transgender people. And I think today I'm more open to the conversation.

I understand the concerns. And maybe I wasn't back then. I think it's the same with the... This is a very good point. Yeah. Because I actually had more than one friend of mine whose children became transgender who were actually the most loving of parents who were concerned about these decisions

that were to be made that were irreparable who complained and they're calling me like they don't give a shit about my child I care about my child they're telling me if I don't do this cut my daughter's tits off I'm some kind of monster they couldn't care less about my daughter

they just want to show off and and they were very resentful, you know, that people just assumed if you had that position, you must hate the transgender. And it was not true, not even a little bit true, you know. Yeah. And I had real dear friends of mine, I still have them, and one that went along with a teenage trans kid that she's really happy today and that's fine. And she gave her the hormones and everything and went through the whole process, her mother. But she also went to, you know, psychiatrist and worked and did, I think she did everything she can to make sure it's the right decision for her child is today in her 20s and she's happy and all of it. And then I have other friends that had transgender teenage kid that

they didn't want it to allow it and said when you were 18, then we can discuss it. So we are the trans of the Middle East. Is that what we decided? I think that's what we are. Yes. So all right. So as we got that that's the now. We didn't hear a periel's point. Can we Quickly? I'm sorry. Yes, go ahead. I'll wait. Yes, we can. Quickly, I don't know. I'll keep it brief because my answer is very simple.

I agree with everything that you're saying about, you know, we should always be condemning violence that is not justified and all of that. But that's not really the question. The question is, is there anything that we could do that would change people's opinion about Israel. And I have been convinced. I mean, I didn't start out this way. I mean, I started out in Noam's the first one to tell you. I started out in a very, very different place. It's just from what I've seen. I mean, it was before the, and I've said this many times, it was before the IDF set one foot into Gaza that this explosion of rabid, maniac, obsessive,

anti-Semitism came, and now it's just chic, right? Like, now it's just, you know, if you say anything that's remotely nuanced, I mean, I see it with you all the time. You know, you're a baby killer, like Norman fucking Finkelstein, who's supposed to be like the most sophisticated, intellectual, academic. I told you. Go ahead. It's screaming on television that you, somebody who worked in.

In the humanitarian part. Literally saved Palestinian children's life. It's crazy. I mean, and you see it constantly. Did you know that Palestinian people come out of Gaza who are trans and queer and gay and they run to Israel because it's where they can be safe? Okay. Very old. Yes.

Focus. I am focused. It's the answer is no. Okay. That's the answer. The short version is no. No. No, but the one thing that I don't know, I want to push back on, not to push back, but let's think about it.

Yeah, push back. There is the extreme fractions of society that have been extreme since October 8th or October 7th when they protested here in support of Hamas and called it a genocide even before October 7th. I mean, there's, you know, Abdullah Saeed, there's videos of him saying that it was genocide before October 7th. It's nothing new. They called it a genocide for a long time. I want to talk about Mamdani in a second. Go ahead. Yeah, we will. but there is this extreme front and also the same people that are protesting nom dani for not being anti-semitic enough that's what i mean that's what it is because this is the i think he is the

modern minority of anti-israel like there's no one more that most more outspoken and using his platform so the question is if those are you conflating this extreme with the majority of people that are just critical of the war no i think that you can you can be critical of the war and i think you should be critical. And I think most people are critical of the war. I think we just, I see the extreme. And I'm with you. I was the one sitting in Piercemoe's studio and being called a Nazi,

but like an Iraqi, Tunisian, Jewish gay men sitting in the studio in London being called by a guy from Brooklyn and Nazi, which is insane. But I still, I want to, maybe it's a hopeful thinking that the majority of people, no, I think majority of people, if you look at the Eurovision, I think it's the best example. the majority of voters in Europe voted for Israel. They haven't caved into this insane campaign. So I'm just raising the point that maybe there's different reality. There's a lot of conspiracy theories about the Jews.

And, of course, they sicken me, and I don't give them any credence whatsoever. I feel like there's a butt coming. The fly goodbye. But you know what? When the Israeli singer gets the most phone calls in the Eurovision, something inside me just wonders if the unit 80,200, wasn't up to something.

No, I think you just rallied all the Jewish women in America. No, I didn't hear the song. No, but you even had the jury. Because this is, what's that? You even had the jury in each country voting. And they wrote a physical, too. And that's anonymous jury, so you can't. No, that's that I, that is right.

I just, I just think that most people don't know anything. Yes, that's true. That's what I think most people. people. I don't think that there's like some giant conspiracy going on. I think that most people wouldn't be able to find the West Bank on a map. Yeah. But the social norm is this bad, this good. And it's just ignorance. I don't think, yeah, I don't think there was any way to win the information war. I don't think there was any way. We said yesterday, the only thing I can think I can think of that I think would have had an impact and they just wouldn't do it,

was to approach the food going into Gaza in a different way. Yes, I agree with that. Because that is not yapping. That's action. And it can't be argued with. And it can't really be discounted. And it's really not that easy to accuse people of genocide when they're going to great length to feed people.

They didn't. They could have. They wouldn't. Now, I don't know. All the reasons that they didn't, we said yesterday, I'm sure it's partly true that Netanyahu

has this horrible coalition that just wasn't going to stand for that, I don't believe. So he was precluded from doing it, even if he would have done it. I don't know that he would have done it. I don't know. He's a smart man,

so maybe he would have known it was in his interest. I really don't know. In any case, they should not have blocked aid between March and May of 2020. No, I mean, much more than that. That was crazy because... So I'm saying that's the list that we can... That everyone should agree on. That was insane.

Yeah, like, and this is why... By the way, this is very good you brought that up because this goes to this whole thing about anti-Semitism. What is the average Joe Schmoe supposed to think when they hear Israelis pounding their chest and bragging, no more foods going in. Like, what are they supposed to think? It seems pretty prima facie case of like,

these people want to starve these people. And do you want me to answer that? No, no. Well, if you can answer it to the question, like don't you see that this is like you can't call somebody who hears that and then forms an opinion about that nation and that war an anti-Semite? That's an insane connection of dots.

And we need to stop doing that. I don't think that that person is an anti-Semite. But I'm talking about the obsession, this maniacal obsession. There are actual famines and actual genocides going around in many countries that that same person who is so horrified. I want to tell every Jew. Stop with that argument. No, I'm not going to.

No, I'm going to tell you why. It's meaningless. Let me tell you why it doesn't, yes, the Chinese, you can tell people about what about a million Muslims in concentration camps in China, right? Yeah, what about them? Number one, they don't care. Maybe because they're all Chinese,

maybe if they were a different race of people in the concentration camp, people would slightly be more ginned up to care about it. But for whatever reason, They don't care. And you can bring, and you can waste your precious bandwidth in trying to fight for our cause with this trite already argument. And at some point, you have to realize, why do I keep bringing this argument up?

It does not work. Nobody cares. That is reality. Move on to something that might persuade somebody. They don't care. they see the underdog, the Irish see the Irish, the blacks see the blacks, they project their own history, the Muslims see the Muslim. The queer communities. Exactly.

In terms of the powerful, the Jews, the powerful, the powerful, the most powerful of the powerful, abusing and ruling over people of color. And this is what they see. and they're not going to process that differently because you tell them, but you know in China, no, that's not, you have to explain to them. And by the way, I don't know if you can't explain to them, which is why I'm so pessimistic. That's what I'm saying. But so part of that explanation I used to fantasize was,

okay, you need, at least you need to understand why it is this place is occupied because they don't understand it. Do you understand that they attacked us? Do you understand that we offered to give it back to them? Sometimes I stump people to say, well, can you tell me what resolution to Palestinians would accept? And that's an interesting thing

because people, oh, and at some point if they find out, well, actually, there's nothing they would accept, that in some way reaches people, say, oh, I didn't realize that. I kind of thought Israel was refusing to let these people have a state. But there's no good answers here,

which is why I'm so pessimistic. I got into a lot of trouble, not a lot of trouble. I've gotten some pushback on Twitter already because I sounded like I was whining as a diaspora Jew about, look what Israel is doing and the problems it's causing me. That's not my feeling at all. My feeling is what I said before, is that we are one people and that, yes,

part of the cost that I worry about as a diaspora will break off. from Israel, because at some point, they will, I mean, Herzl wrote about this. They will just, you know, try to assimilate because it's easier than to defend these evil Israel. And I think that in few generations, we're not going to see a strong Jewish community in America. Now, as an Israeli, do you care about that? Of course they do.

I mean, that's why I spent. But talk about, like, like, because I said that I thought that Israel would care about that a lot. I thought, and so people say, oh, Israel, maybe the religious people care less, but what's your feeling about it? I think that Israeli Jews should care more about the Aspera Jews. I think the Aspera Jews need to care less about what the world think about them. And I understand that it affects us. I understand. It affects me and my husband.

It affects me when I walk down the streets in London, and people call me names and I get death threats and I report to the police, all of them. Is there a way to combine the anti-gay and the anti-Jewish slur into one? Yeah, I know, just make it quick. Come on. Sometimes the Iraqi and that, you know, I'm looking Middle Eastern, so I get some of the P-Word. I'll think of something, but I won't say it on the air. Yeah. Yeah, just saving time.

So I get a lot of it. But I also think that the scariest thought that started floating in my mind, which I never had, was, what if Israel did not exist? What if Israel would not exist? And it's all of a sudden, of course, I know Israel is strong and I'm going to fight every day for Israel. But if that would happen, that would be such a tragedy and beyond tragedy. I don't think that the Jewish people would survive at this stage without a Jewish state personally. I mean, and I know that it's true for my family because my family can go back to Iraq and Tunisia.

And majority of Israeli Jews today are descendants of Jews that came from the Middle East and North Africa. If Israel was to be destroyed or to be changed or whatever fantasy they have, have, which is all of a sudden becoming something that I even think about, which I never even entertain. And that's grim. I think that diaspora Jews just, is someone that lives in the diaspora and has been in the diaspora for over a decade now. I get the fear and I get how painful it is. And maybe, you know what, I don't want to make a point about the diaspora community. I want to make a point about both communities that they need to try and understand each other's pain. And I think Israelis, while they see their anti-Semitism on the right of

rise and in the last three years they become more aware of how bad it is, they still see what they're going through, which I think is legitimate because they're facing a war of six, seven fronts and their life is at risk and they have families that, family members that they've lost in this wars. So I think it's, you can compare that to anti-Semitism in the state, which again is also lethal and we also need to recognize that. But I think, yeah, I think just a matter of trying to understand each other's pain and understand that, yes, even if you're not getting rockets every day, just being shot outside of a museum is real enough.

This is the way I see it. And you correct me at each time that I'm wrong. So I looked at it this morning, Herzl's, what's it called, the Jewish state? And he talked specifically about that a Jewish homeland would also have an effect on eliminating, I think he said eliminating, but at least ameliorating anti-Semitism throughout the world, which is to say that the whole notion of an Israel,

maybe there are other nations like this, but I can't think of one, it's created with a mission, and the mission is to help the Jewish people of the world, not just the Jewish people who live there, the Jewish people of the world. And of course, it's important for Israel to have Jews in America because they're in,

influential in helping Israel. And they have money that comes from America. There's all sorts of reasons that Israel wouldn't say, we want every single Jew to come from America to live here. So that's number one in my mind. That is perfectly appropriate to consider Israel's behavior in terms of its consequences to jury in the world. However, there's a triage, which is, of course,

You have to, the patient has to live first before you can attend to its other problems. So Israel has to survive before any of these other things. Now the question is, is the way and the things that it says it needs to do to survive, are they really the things it needs to do to survive? So for instance, I had a thought experiment today. What if the West Bank had no holy sites, had no historic or religious association with the Jewish people, no sentimental attachment to it, nothing. It was just a plot of land. Would Israel have the same policy about occupation than that it does now?

Do you follow? Meaning, Israel says, we can't pull out, we can't do that, maybe, but how much of that is. a rationalization because the land is so both important to many people emotionally and also those emotional people are voters. So then many politicians will just parrot whatever line it is. Because I'm more and more interested in really testing all the arguments as to why the occupation has to continue, if it has to continue, how much less approach. How much less oppressive, might it be and still have serves Israel's purposes for security? Things like that. And I'll just, since I talk, so I'll finish up. Because I do believe that if Israel were not occupying the West Bank or were seen to be occupying it in a much less, uh, brutal way,

much of the Western world would take the temperature down on the way they see as you'll because of this oppressor dynamic. Number one, and even the Palestinians themselves, even though they talk a good game, I think the occupation is their weapon. I think they're the last ones who want the occupation to end because that is how they fight Israel by being occupied. if not for being occupied, what would their strategy be right now? How would they win the world over right now if they were not occupied? What would they say? 1948? That's not a rallying cry.

Yeah, you raise a few good points there. I think I won't go back to history. But you know what, yes, we do need to look at history. And the times that Israel pulled out of Gaza and what happened there wasn't done perfectly, but it was done and Israel has pulled out its settlements and the result was the Palestinians camp. I mean, right, and Israel still occupied the West Bank. But before that, when the West Bank was under Jordanian control,

it wasn't safe for Israel. It's not like the war on terrorist attacks continuously. And then... Can I just pause you there because this is part of my spiel on this? Yes. But at that time, Israel was very correctly... worried about huge Arab armies. Oh, okay. From every front, nation states, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, overwhelming the country. Israel is no longer worried about Arab armies. The Jordanian army is not

coming through the West Bank. The Egyptian armies, so long as that government hold, is not coming through the Sinai. So it's a much smaller, maybe more dangerous now because of modern technologies and things like that, but it's a much smaller problem with a different, perhaps, worst-case scenario, although they really did dodge a bullet on October 7th. That worst-case scenario was much worse than people realized. But go ahead. Yeah, I agree with that. I served for five years in the West Bank. I served in Hebron-Ramala and Jerusalem. I've seen that in Jerusalem periphery. And I've seen the settlers, and I've been called horrific names by settlers, and I was attacked by settlers as a soldier with uniform.

I've followed the settlements and the settler's leaders. And I don't want to, again, brush them with a white brush, but I think that it is, you know, we can't separate the fact that there's leaders of communities there that are taking the lot to their own hands that are saying that it's all justified that are attacking the IDF, calling the chief of staff of the IDF horrific names. And those are Israelis, that if they lived on the other side of the green line, they would be treated differently and they would be arrested. They operate with impunity and they're not attacking Hamas in the West Bank. They're attacking Palestinian elderly Palestinians that are working in their fields. And that's something that we need to say. Like, this is insane. Horrible.

And Netanyahu is not doing anything about it if it's because of, of course, it's because of his coalition because of his voters. But he can end it. The government could end it. And if there was a different government, they would end the violence. I think the violence would be a, and the radical settlers, the extremist needs to be, handled with and I think that would that change the way that if there was no occupation tomorrow would that change the way the world is seeing Israel I think I think it would but I don't think I also don't think that after the last three years even if there was a new government

which I hope for and I'm flying to vote like I really want the new government and even if the occupation ended and the war has ended and we would have the West Bank is an autonomous country with Gaza's an autonomous country. I think what we've seen in the last three years have really tainted minds of so many people that I don't know if it might calm down a bit, but I don't think that there is any way to turn back. I just really, I'm a bit more pessimistic about public opinion worldwide. Well, I think there's a way to turn back.

I think that people can recognize, and I'll use this an opportunity to bring in Mamdani, people can recognize a real effort when it's real. And people have a kind of truth detector and they know the difference. So Mamdani made his statement, whatever it was, is we're New Yorkers, we're sorry for the tragedy, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? What he could have said was, I know many Jewish New Yorkers have been skeptical of me. I want you to know on this day, my heart is with the Jewish people of New York. Whatever you think, we may disagree about politics, but you never have to worry about my heart,

whatever you have to say. That he could have easily said, people say, oh, you know. And stop there. Yeah, like, and stop there. Like, it wasn't so hard to formulate a statement. The only reason it was hard is because you didn't want to say that. You were worried about, I mean, I get his position, worried about the other side.

But also, because that's not what he thinks. Right. That's my point. So people can recognize. So if Israel, and this happened, you know, you may be too young, but when Rabin met with Arifat, people who hated Israel gave them a second chance. Did they?

Yeah, I remember this very important, he was actually a Jewish journalist, Robert Novak. He was a hated Israel. He was always talking about the U.S. liberty. He was Jewish himself, but converted to Christianity, blah, blah, blah. and then he says, you know, I think Rabin is a great man. I remember saying, well, you know, he has a heart after all. Because he recognized, he was right, actually.

He recognized that Rabin was the real deal. He wasn't just saying it. He meant it, and he meant to see it through. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the UK, the recent resolution that they passed on the settlements and sanctions Israel because of the settlements, They didn't speak about Gaza. It was all about the settlements in the West Bank and the violence there. And that was the reason that they've cut off or put sanctions.

Yeah. And so. And then Israel responded by sending 20 diplomats, British diplomats, back home and closing the consulate. And then the UK, I mean, ridiculous. And the UK threatened to close down the embassy, the Israeli embassy in the UK, which would be catastrophic. Because then I couldn't get a passport if I, you know, if I got stuck there or anything. any Israeli. And then someone in the government decided to reconsider it and then approved changing the name of the consulate in Jerusalem into a mission instead of a consulate and

only sending seven diplomats. The whole thing was just ridiculous. But it was all because of election time. And the Israeli government needed to show they're strong in front of their... But that's not diplomacy. Diplomacy, the meaning of diplomacy is to try and avoid this and try and build bridges. And this government is just unable to do that. There's a big picture here, which is that in so many ways, the world changes, and the old rules don't quite apply, and you become the last to know. And we talked about yesterday how between technology where we really have free speech, where nobody's kind of setting the guardrails onto what can and can't be said, what kind of conspiracies get tremendous attention and what kind don't. the changing demographics throughout the Western world towards people who are just as a profile,

much less likely to support Israel, the distance from the Holocaust, as I said yesterday, becoming a grainier and grainer, black and white movie, such that the world that Israel used to operate in, has disappeared overnight. And I likened it to smallpox. The Europeans always had smallpox and some number of people died

and it was an endemic disease that was somehow manageable. And then they took smallpox to the new world and it killed 90% of the Native Americans, right? So, because they had no immunity no, no, and Israel is kind of used to living in a world where there's a kind of natural immunity and sympathy and they could get away with a lot and people would forget and let it go. Whatever reason they could, and Israel's worse now than they used to be too, but, and all of a

sudden, they're in the new world and it's kind of the opposite because it's the, you know, they're not the ones dying, but you still get the analogy. Like, it's just, it's just sweeping through a new population. And it's just, creating anti-Israel, anti-Semitism everywhere. And they don't realize that they're spreading this. And they need to change their behavior. They need to have some hygiene, for lack of a better word. And they are oblivious.

And we, you know, we Israelis, we talk about Israelis, you know, not in front of non-Israelis. But we know arrogance. We know our people. Our people are tremendously impressive. But where does it come from, this arrogance? It comes from being shun and being abused and being ridiculed and having our, you know, no one is more, they're not even letting us mourn our dead.

They're not even letting us. It's not, imagine if the entire world stood with Israel on October 8th and since then, you know, do you think Israel would have gone into such length? If everyone said, and there would be protests in every major city around the world, and everyone would say, we stand with Israel because Israel is in pain. and this is horrific, but it didn't happen. And I think Israelis are arrogant, being arrogant, I think comes from insecurity, deep insecurity. And I think we are insecure because the entire world is against us.

And the only way for us to exist and to survive is by pretending like we don't care, you know, and just take care of ourselves because no one is coming to help us. Or actually not caring because you can't function otherwise. Like you can't even get the mayor of the city that has, the largest Jewish population outside of Israel to shut the fuck up for 24 hours to mourn the dead of like the day that more Jews were killed than any day of the Holocaust. Like how do you expect Israelis to react? No, I think they care.

I don't think that I don't care. I think Israelis are really. I think at a certain point you become, there's a word in Hebrew. It's called Adish. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, it's like, I don't know, maybe like.

indifferent something? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's what it is. Like at a certain point, like you can't function. Yeah. But and that, that happened. Remember, it was it Ben-Gurion or the Umschmum to just say like,

who cares about the UN, who cares about the people? Omschimum is amazing. Yeah. But that was the approach. That was the, you know, the MO of Israel the whole time. It was like where the world is not going to, Golda me are saying that the world is not, you know, what was the quote that she said?

I would rather have a state that that is disliked than a museum, something about the Holocaust, than bodies that people love. I'm probably butchering this quote completely. Chen, I'm sorry, my wife, who knows I'm doing podcasts is calling. Sweetheart, I'm doing a podcast. Bye. She's not Jewish, by the way.

My husband isn't Jewish either. My husband's Israeli. You win. Because we are the reason of there's not going to be a Jewish future. That's what they say, that assimilation is going to be the reason that that as part of Jewish community would disappear. Well, you know, it's funny because, okay, I'm not religious at all. I'm defiantly don't believe in God. And yet, when I had my children, I dutifully took them to the conservative rabbi because the Orthodox won't do it.

and they dunk them in the water and they say the magic words and they give them a certificate. And I had them bar mitzvahed, you know. And I can't help it. It's in me to do so. But I wonder, I just had this thought. You know, this matrilineal and patrilineal thing is not in the Torah.

This is, Moses had a child with a, what was it named? Sephora? Who is not Jewish. What's your name? Tipora. I may as I remember the name. Who is not Jewish. And God was going to kill Moses

because he didn't have the child circumcised. Not a Jewish mother. And then at some point it became passed through the mother for logical reasons, just like we presume many of the dietary reasons are, because you don't know who the father is.

There's a practical reason, just like the practical reason not to eat certain foods which might carry diseases. So you don't know who the father is. But in the modern age, you absolutely do know who the father is, right? You hope, yeah.

You hope. With genetic testing. And there's so much intermarriage now. I could imagine some pressure on the rabbis maybe to change, to find some way to change this rule someday. Now, who would object I know who would object

Who The Jewish girls Because that's their only dowry Like Like Like This is what This is

This is how you It's all I've got I mean I'm good for I have a Puerto Rico wife We're all going to have Puerto Rican wives If we can get the If our children can be Jewish

Yeah Maybe that's right It's not It's fron upon to be gay as well Maybe that it's all about the Jewish woman to make sure that they're married. Yeah. So if two gay men want to get a surrogate, you get a Jewish surrogate, correct? No, no, no.

Don't you know anything about how biology works? The egg needs to be Jewish, not the surrogate. It doesn't matter who's carrying the baby. We're going to adopt, so it doesn't matter. I meant the woman who gets impregnated. That's not a surrogate, whatever, the mother. Yeah, whatever. She's so fucking into terminology.

Listen to me. I have two best friends, two gay guys. They have three kids. They have a surrogate and they have an egg donor. One has nothing to do with the other. Okay, the egg donor. Yes. It's a big difference.

The woman is just carrying the baby. Yes. The surrogate is just carrying the baby. My point is when two gay men look for an egg, an egg. You look for a Jewish egg? We're going to adopt, so we haven't thought about that. Can I ask a personal question? Why are you going to adopt rather than...

Because it's hard for him to get pregnant. Yeah. No, rather than... We keep trying. I mean, I know these stories that they mix the sperm, and so nobody knows whose child is it. Then it comes out looking exactly like one of them. I think this world is a broken world.

I don't think I need to bring more. Oh, that's terrible. It's very sad, yeah. But you're incorrect. You're bringing one in anyway. It doesn't matter if you're doing. I'm saving, we're going to save a soul or a few souls. My husband won six.

I went two. So made in the middle. That's beautiful. No, but honestly, I just, I think this world is so broken that I think I, I, if naturally we're not getting pregnant, I don't think there's a reason for us to go to this length. Also, to me, it was always weird to use a woman, woman's body to carry a baby this way and then taking the baby.

I don't know. I want to tell you to think, our friends, the only people she will give eggs to are gay men. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, first of all, this is a terrible thing you're saying. And it's almost empirically, provably untrue. Which part? Tell me when the world was better.

It's never been better than it is now. Yeah, I don't know. I just did this. I thought you were saying he could have. actually get pregnant. No, I'm saying that the world is not broken at all. I don't think it's going into anywhere positive. I do think it's broken. I disagree with you. I think the world is broken. I think it's much more convenient for us, for sure, and there's much less likely it would have us dying of a rare disease, and we might live longer. In war, in disease, in hunger, in hatred. I mean,

let's go to my father's life. Born 1930 during the Depression, 1940 during the Holocaust, 1950 during the Cold War and Jim Crow. 1960, the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1970s. You couldn't walk down the streets in New York without the... That's true. You can go on, there's never been a time like now. Oh, I love you this positive.

That's true, yeah. Point-taking, yeah. You're gay. You're gay. I don't have to take you through gay history. Right, right. Can you imagine... You are living in the all... Not the best time.

only good time in the history of the world for gay men or gay gay people. I need to check my privilege. The sink that literally has never been a time. In my lifetime, not that long ago, gay men will work because we always had a lot of gay waiters. We're getting beaten up on the street in New York City. Forget about Mississippi. And AIDS. Don't forget about that.

AIDS. How many people do I know who died of AIDS in the 80s and 90s? So this is not a bad time. And listen, I love Adopt. option, but you don't know what you're going to get. Yeah. You know the stories. Listen, I have, you asked yesterday. If you adopt six, I guarantee you.

Even if we bring to the world six, I guarantee. Yeah, there's no that. There's no matter. Yesterday you asked everybody to come with. Can I say one of the thing? First of all, I'm such a, like, I'm, joy of my life is being a father. Having a child. is something that you should not lightly not foreclose as something you do in your life.

You don't know it unless you've done it. My aphorism is every dog knows how to dog paddle. They just don't know it until they hit the water. This is what it is to be a person. You don't know the second that child comes out, a significant portion of your brain activates that you didn't know existed. Totally.

Totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah. So, Rethink, have a baby. Okay, now, continue. It's true. He has always said that.

Maybe in a few years I'll come back with my babies and I'll say you're right. If you still, name him, no. I'm good. It's a beautiful name. Or boy or girl. Yeah, could work both ways. I think, I just want to take a minute. As long as it's straight.

Go ahead. I don't want to. We'll make sure. We're raised them right. I won't repeat my parents' mistakes. No, I've heard you say that for years, that everybody should have a child and that you don't know it.

And it kills me. It's mostly left-wing people. You're not going to who have this, in your bubble somehow you've been baked in. They all think, yeah, we shouldn't have children. This is a terrible time to have children. It's never a bad. I had children in the concentration camps.

It's never a bad time to have children. No, I'm not against having a family. And if the world blows up, they'll all blow up. Whatever. I'm not going to push back on this because there is a little like strand of anti-feminist thing that goes on here when we have this conversation. But it's a beautiful. Feminist. Well, yeah, because you say that women, you also say that like women are really missing out on something if they don't become mothers.

But he's a father. I feel the same thing about fathers. women are, but fathers too. Okay, I don't want to get into it. It's a beautiful sentiment. But what you said yesterday to come prepared with one like sort of question or idea. And I didn't do it yesterday, but I do have one today. And what I really would like for you to spend a few moments talking about, because this is one of the things that I think gets just completely erased. You spent five years in the IDF in the humanitarian unit. And can you please talk a little bit about what you did there, what that means, what that actually looks like.

Yeah, so I served in Kogat. It's the coordinator of government activities in the territories. It's an acronym for the unit that is responsible for all the civilian affairs. It started after the Oslo Accords in 1993. It used to be the called branded as the rulers of those different areas that Israel occupied after that Israel was controlling. And then in 1993, when the area, it's too complicated, but okay, quickly, the areas in the West Bank were divided into area A, B, and C, other than in Hebron, where it's age one and age two. Each area has, the responsibility was split to two. One is the civilian responsibility and one is the security. Area A is completely under Palestinian security control. They have Palestinian security

forces and it's in full coordination with Israel. Area B, sorry, Area A has both security and civil. Area B has only civil and not security, and Area C is completely under Israel's control. Then Israel was left with this question. What are we going to do with the civilian aspect? Who is going to take care of plumbing and who's going to take care of electricity? And then they started a COGAT unit. So the unit has, it's called DCL, District Coordination Liaison offices. They have one in every big Palestinian city.

It's sitting right on the edge of Area A. So in area C, in the West Bank, between the Palestinian area and the Israeli control area. And then we have this window where people would come to the window and speak to a soldier and say, you know, I have a problem in my home with, I don't know, sewer is leaking or whatever it is that they need help. And they would come to us or they can call us as well. Or they need a permit to go to Israel because they need treatment in Israeli hospital. because Palestinian hospitals don't have the same standards of health care that Israel has. Or part of the work would also be to work with the international organization.

So working with the UN, with the Red Cross, coordinating Palestinian family visits to Palestinian to Israeli prisons. So Palestinian terrorists that have been convicted in terrorism would be arrested, and a lot of them would be held in Israeli prisons. and according to the Geneva Convention, the second Geneva Convention says that if you hold prisoners from an occupied territory and you bring them into your territory,

you're obligated to allow family visits. So we would issue thousands of permits, take them to the Palestinians, make sure that every family is able to see their loved ones at least once a month. We would bring the buses, together with the Red Cross, we would arrange the family visit.

That's why during the war, when I got so much, I mean, when people were calling the Palestinian prisoners, hostages or comparing them to the hostages, I was sitting there being discussed it. I was working every day to make sure the Palestinian families would go and see their kids. I would coordinate with the International Red Cross to make sure that every violation of international law or every time Palestinian prisoner did not feel so well about treatment, we would address it. And we went to such length to take care of that. I was also responsible for

every infrastructure issues in that territory that I was responsible for. So, you know, if it's a road that was needed to be rehabilitated so there won't be many accidents. And I would bring the USAID back then and, you know, implement a project for millions of dollars that I would be the one asking from the USAID to invest in rehabilitating the road because there would be less car crash. Or if it's a Palestinian father in the middle of the night calling me because his child needs dialysis or whatever it is, and I would coordinate passing them into Israel for

health care. So look, this is why I see it. And maybe we should play that Mir Sharmer thing before we go. I'd love to watch other. In my extensive conversations with Israelis, the Lions share, just like my extensive conversations with police, the Lions share are good, well-intentioned, humane people. and yet every policeman I speak to

will tell you about some cop he knows he's exactly what they complain about it and every Israeli knows unless you want to disagree that there are X number of people that we're ashamed of in the way they speak to Palestinians, the way they treat them, the way they sadistically make them

and not just hurt them, just wait longer than they have to. Always want to make sure they know who's boss, right? This is part of human nature. And it's similar to the police. So there's some people who just will always defend the police because they think police is always right. And there's some people like me who are extremely pro-police,

but I don't doubt that the police, there's a reason that huge, communities resent the police. Of course. Right? And they're both true. And the police, and by the way, those communities have a lot of crime. And there's a reason that the police, many of the incidents are police properly erring on the

side of their own safety, which can be very offensive to the person who's reacted to in that way, who actually meant no harm to anybody. I agree. I mean, I know exactly what I was saying. I used to run training for the combat soldiers in each unit. We would bring hundreds of soldiers and I would have, and I did an entire day. And I remember the Red Cross wrote a whole letter praising that initiative, but we ran a day of humanitarian, human rights. And we would bring that we have an international law expert in each battalion that is advising. And this lawyer would come and explain international law. I would bring the right cross. to speak, I would give a talk as well. We went to such length. And there were soldiers there that would just, you know, tell me to shut up or just ridicule me or I would say how stupid it is that we care about them. That it exists. Yeah. But I had the full cooperation of the battalion commanders. They would take it seriously. And the commanders are the ones that are, yeah, to tell you that 100% of the IDF is the most moral.

army in the world. First of all, I don't think armies are moral. There's no, I mean, an army by default is different than a police because an army kills. An army is supposed to, um, to defend, you know, with guns and that, that is just not, um, it's never going to be squeaky clean. So, and this war is not clean. And there was war crimes. I agree with all of that. There always is. And by the way, if you read the break the silence testimony. Yeah. Um, a lot of these things get taken out of, not out of context, but just sometimes out of context and sometimes just they take the best quotes. But I once, when I was debating with your friend Finkelstein, I went and I spent some time reading those testimonies. And actually, the impression that you come away with is not

as horrible as I think people assume it would be. Yes, I agree. Many often, many times they They will say, my commander told us not to do this. This guy did this. You know, it's not like this. It's not an insight into some sadistic group of Israelis. Fully agree. And I think it's the same with the movie NASA, which everyone is really, I mean, I also posted a bit of an outrage about it, but not,

but I think we need to take it into perspectives, especially with the Jewish community. I think it does, of course, it does terrible disservice. And I know that it's being funded and being promoted in a way, in a specific way to brand Israel in a certain way. But I'm not as worried about this movie. After I watch parts of it and after I read the transcript of the movie, at the end of the day, it shows some soldiers that are not even in the decision-making.

They pretend as if they are, but they're not. They don't really have any power. And it sounds, the fact that there's a conversation about civilians and about how many civilians would be harmed and calculating collateral damage to me is something, horrible that it needs to happen, but it's, at least Israel is considering it. And I think that in general, our approach as a Jewish community to constantly, that's, I also, I know that it's my fault too, to constantly call out and constantly be outrage about everything is, I don't know if

it's conducive. I think that instead of calling to cancel and calling to ban and silence, we need more, we need to make more movies. We need another movie about how, you know, how far Israeli soldiers and IDF went to protect civilian lives and speak about this stuff. I think we need more speech rather than silencing. So it's a note for myself as well because I do a lot of times get too upset. You and Finkelstein got into this big argument. Do you want to play the thing? You have to go?

No, no, if I have to listen to it again, I'll listen to it again. No, no, I'm kidding. You want to play it? You have that thing. And then we'll play it. The thing that I emailed. you. I mean, I can already feel my blood pressure right there. Yeah, listen, I don't like Perra and I got a little argument about this because I don't like

the show. It's too Jerry Springer for me. The, the argument that you and he had was really just personal and, you know, as a guy who wants to learn about the conflict and, you know, I don't really feel like I'm getting arguments, But at some point here, you veer into the debate about the rapes. And this is an interesting subject to me. And after we listen to it, maybe you'll tell me what you, you've looked into all the evidence and what you know about it and what you don't. Because I think I know some of the evidence.

Okay, go ahead. This is... Welcome back to Unsleyn. Just before we get your response to the Sheeruner, a furoral. You know, you're an Israeli sitting on this panel. You've just had normal Finkelstein say Israel is a nation of child killers and explaining why he believes that. Can you pause it there for a second? Now, what went on right before?

He, what did Finkelstein say? So he said that Israel is a nation of child killers, basically that every Israeli is complicit. And that's why he's not going to speak to Israelis because we're all murdering children. And this is, this is basically based on the art. that the Jews used to make, that all the Germans were essentially complicit. Right. And he made this argument. He said that his parents hated the Germans after World War II.

And, you know, it's basically saying it's the same. If you accept the premise that this is a genocide, like the Holocaust, then it's not crazy within that mindset to say, and you're all complicit because you vote for these people, you house them, you drive them around, your tax money goes to them, and you send your sons off to be part of them. And that's exactly why they're fighting for the war, a genocide.

As soon as they get everyone to agree that it's a genocide, I saw even Miss Rachel having an interview the other day about how she's like, just say the word. What is your problem? Just say it's a genocide. We just need to say it. They don't understand the implication. And the implication is exactly what Norman,

I don't know if he intentionally or not, has been very frank about it. He says, once we agree it's a genocide, then Israelis are Nazis, and then we can all agree that they should be treated as Nazis, which means to be bombed and attacked. And yet he's anti-BDS, and he doesn't want to say river to the sea, and he insists on a two-state solution, and he's pro the partition. Is it an interesting? I think he changed his mind since then. I'm not sure that he still. And I remember that famous video of him saying that BDS was racist because it's targeting Israelis, but he jumped pretty far to call us all.

But he is a two-state person. He does believe in the partition. And he did chide those kids at Columbia or wherever it was about saying river to the sea. I remember that. I think that he's changed a lot. Maybe. So go ahead. Play it.

Just asking Norman, am I a child killer? That's what you just said. Am I a child killer? I would say the probability is the higher probability. He's just smiling. He's so excited. That's correct. You understand how on hinge you sound?

You had such a great career. Professor, it's such a shame that you're throwing it all away with a He loves it. He capitalized into the freaking mob. For what, Norman? For what? It's you're such an embarrassment to your family, to your people. Honestly, like you're calling me a child murder without even knowing me.

And then you're saying that I am. Did you serve in the IDF? I served as a humanitarian soldier. I worked to save Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. Were you a propaganda? Are you a propagandist? Are you a propagandist during the genocide? That doesn't make you much different in gerbils.

Do you want me to answer you or you just, or you just call me a Nazi? I think you're the one that is dominating. Are you calling me a Nazi and you're calling me a child murder? You are a rape denier. You spent years writing a book that saying that Amit Sousna, a victim that said, I was raped by Hamas. You're saying that she, well, maybe you shouldn't call it rape.

Like, look at you. You have to have some distance. man, come on. Like you're, and then you're asking you, what if I done? You have to learn to read. Yes. The beginning is learning to read. Yeah, I read very well.

I'm not sure. If you go through the book I just wrote. Allow me just finish. He made an accusation. Oh, you made accusation. You don't be a Nazi and you'll be a child killer. Fine. Fine.

And now he said, I am a dishonest scholar. Yeah, that's not me. It's your colleagues. It's Benny Morris. It's every professor that has predicted you. Allow me to. finish. Sorry. If you look at a Nazis on this testimony, by the Civil Commission, by the Civil Commission, she never said she was raped. That's the problem. What did she say, Norman?

She said, I suffered extreme sexual assault. She said that the commander is held a gun to her head. She didn't say she was raped. She suffered severe sexual assault. I invite everyone to Google it and to hear it. My question, no, my question would be, me to finish you the question. I want to keep it. Is any more? No, I think. Now, so now what is,

uh, why does she say extreme sexual assault? And I presume she could have clarified this. What is the distinction? Is it a distinction without the difference? No, I think she said, she said that she was held that, that her capture, put her in, in the shower, told her to undress. with a gun to her, towards her, watch her shower,

then took her to the bedroom, and then with a gun to her head, forced her to conduct sexual acts on him. Like oral sex. That's what she said. She didn't say oral sex. She said conduct sexual acts on him, and she said that she was with a gun to her head doing this.

When a rape victim that returned from years and months in captivity, over a year in captivity, is speaking about her assault this way, really you're sitting on Pierce Morgan and you're debating with me the semantics, if it's actual rape or not? This woman was sexually abused. It doesn't matter.

And that's the thing. Even in his book, he's spending so much time on her testimony and said she didn't say she was raped. We can't call it rape. But she's not the only one. There are so many evidence and so many testimonies from survivors. I've seen at least 15 that considered rape.

So, yeah, I tell you, I've always had a certain sympathy for the people who, even though in a certain way, you would think he would say, this, I want to be clear, she claims she was forced to give oral sex, not raped, which has a particular definition.

However, I don't know that that's still a crime against humanity to force a woman to do that. What's interesting about, Inkelstein to me is not that he wants to be precise with language because quite often we're on, we find ourselves on the other side of that. And you want to say, well, no, that's not quite right. He just called every Israelis including me a child killer and a Nazi. It doesn't care about language. Yeah. Well, for the reason that we already discussed. But what's interesting is that he is defending it,

defending them in some way. He's not just clarifying. He's also their defense, as if the sentencing would be markedly different. Oh, you just held a gun through her head and made you go, oh, in that case, you know, we'll give you a bench warrant

or whatever, you know, probation as opposed to life. It's a very, very serious crime either way. And it doesn't really exonerate the policy is in any way. Now, no, but it makes us talk about it. It makes me trying, like having to go on Pierce Morgan with millions of viewers and try to discuss whether or not Israeli women were raped or not. And that is the win. They all want us. And that's why I see every time I go on, on Springer, I see that they keep pushing that, like, say it's not a genocide. Like, let's

discuss why you don't think it's genocide because they want me to go into this conversation. and I always avoid, other than Norman Fickinson, which I lost it, but I avoid giving them that the conversation if it's a genocide or not, because as soon as I start defending that it's not a genocide, I lose. You know, they say never wrestle with a pig because you get dirty and the pig likes it. And I think that's true for every time. That's so good. Well, that's right.

Yeah. While we're talking, I asked chat GPT on the highest level if Amis Sousna was raped, and it corrected me to say that she said her captor sexually assaulted her at gunpoint, but I would distinguish that from a verified quotation where she specifically says, I was raped. So this is what a non-biased, you know, autistic emulating AI does. That draws its information from available sources, including Romans. It's according to times of Israel there.

Oh, okay. So, so. Listen, this, you know, the evidence makes me insane. And I believe that they are correct when they say that there's no digital footage of anybody being raped. Of the actual acts of rape, yes, it is true that there's no footage, and it doesn't matter to me. But what the UN found was multiple instances of women with their arms bound behind their backs, naked from the waist down, some of them bleeding. With objects inserted in them also. Yeah.

Not, I don't know if that's, I don't know if you're mixing things or not. I'll talk about women who, who, this is what it looks like after you're raped. What, what would be the scenario where you're bound pants down on your stomach, right? So it's pretty good. So the UN concluded that there's a strong circumstantial evidence of rapes. I mean, this guy is not a good. faith actor in all of this. He has an agenda. Like, he doesn't actually believe that no one was raped because he's not stupid and you have to be a fucking moron to not believe. He believed that Mao was a great

leader for a while. I mean, that's true. He also doesn't have a cell phone. But it's picking up on Amituzna, but there since then, since her testimony, there have been so many others. Romigonan said that she was raped several times in captivity. As opposed to October 7. Right. Yeah. Most of the victims that were raped on October 7 were not able to speak to us now. But we have the footage of what happened to their bodies.

And forensic evidence. Yeah. And forensic evidence of how they also mutilated some of the bodies. And we don't know if before or after they killed them, including their intimate organs, I guess. Yeah. we saw the GoPro footage

you know that the Israeli government they should have showed it to everybody I don't know why even now you can't find it online yeah and I'm in two minds about it I agree with you they should have showed it to everyone

but then again that's it's not what we do it's just not we want to respect them and the bodies and I don't think it would make a difference this is like your pig analogy what was that thing that it said, like, you know, the Jews are, that, like, stereotype, there's, like,

awful drawings from, like, Salo's books of, like, the Jews with the big... The Sturmur? With the big noses. And it says, if they keep accusing the Jews of stealing, it's not because they actually think that you stole. It's just because they want to see you pull out your pockets. Yeah. Right?

Like, they just want to humiliate you. That you have to turn on, turn over your part. Well, yeah. Yeah. This is my point about the conspiracy. theories yesterday, it's a good cousin to that, which is it really doesn't matter if the conspiracy theories can be debunked. They just accumulate psychologically in the mind,

and what they communicate is that this is what they are capable of. Maybe they didn't do it this time. But what you left with, and after a while, you just integrate that view of the Jews, even if you don't want to. That's just what happens. Fully agree. That's why everything is a false flag.

And at this point, it's like everything. You can't trust anything that Israel says, right? Even when I post stuff about, you know, confirmed something that I know that the IDF has announced, I would not mention the IDF because I know that it would immediately be dismissed. It's an army of a democratic country. I know the IDF spokeperson. They're not propagandists. And I know that, yes, they've been mistakes in the past, but I count on the information

that they provide because I know. that it's accurate and I know that even they are not denying their casualties and they're saying that people were killed and they admit it. So, but, and yet we are at this point that no one is going to believe anything that Israel or the IDF or the government is saying. And it's because of that, because of years of very well-funded and very consistent, you know, propaganda that has been. Can we end with this, my favorite, because this guy, Mirschimer, I don't know, I just enjoy watching this clip, but it's a perfect illustration of, he's like, perfect confluence is that the word of, like, everything we're talking about,

conspiracy theories, elite professors, bad faith. They're all, you know, if you really think about it, the only good spokesman, spokesmen that the Palestinians have are the Jews. Right? Finkelstein, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal, these are smart, these are smart, able, advocates. and often they are correct about things.

You know, they will uncover something. The, like, the Medi Hassans and the, you know, and even the Mir Sharmat, like, they're so second rate, right? Like, it's, it's, do we take pride in that as Jews? Like, it's interesting. Like, without us, the world might hate them. Yeah, that's true. So is my keypad here working, Steve?

Yeah. Okay, so play this. No, not this. The Mirosheimer, yeah. Let me just test it. Okay, okay, let me say it. So this is John Mearsheimer. I have you seen this before.

Yeah. This is a guy who wrote this book, The Israel Lobby, with Walt, Steve Walt, I don't forget his first name. And this was a scholarly look at the influence that Israel had in bringing America into the Iraq War, and it had footnotes, and Dershowitz wrote a whole long,

minor book disputing it all. And at the time, because I'm sometimes overminded to a fault, I read it with an open mind, and I imagined, you know,

maybe overzealous Jewish people in the government were also polling for Israel, blah, blah, blah, blah. You had no way of knowing. So now in the modern world where you have access to everybody without gatekeepers,

you finally get to see who these people are and often they give themselves away. And by the way, this has made me sympathetic to other people who from time to time conclude things about people based on their vibe about people. Black people will often get a vibe that that person is a racist. Even though they haven't actually said anything racist, they're picking up on something. Or if racist isn't the right term, they're picking up on some other motivation, some other fuel, which is powering the car. And so the question always was, what was powering Mearsheimer?

Maybe he didn't hate Jews. Maybe he was just actually doing, he's after all, he's a professor of political science, whatever it is, and he's doing research, and he's got footnotes. And, you know, anyway, boy, is this guy a fucking Jew hater? Right? So this is December 2023. Okay. And by the way, if you know anything about this, I'm going to ask you to inform us. Make clear that on October 7th, a good number. We don't know what the number is, but a good number of the Israelis who were killed were not killed by Hamas.

No, it is going to speak about the Hannibal. Yeah, we can get that. So now what is true, there was an article in Ha'Aritz, which doesn't mean it was wrong, where there was some friendly fire. Yeah. And I think we know that... There was one house. One person, at least one person,

was killed. How many people do we know were killed? Well, a few, more than one. I think there was even a family at some point that... Not a family, but there was a family home that was collapsed, and there's still an investigation about the death of a young girl there. Yeah. So now I want to say that in the criminal law,

if you are a criminal law... criminal and you get into a firefight with the police and then the innocent person gets killed by the police. The criminal is charged with that death. So despite the grain of truth in what he's going to say here, that still doesn't morally put that on Israel. Israel sucked into a fight with terrorists, thousands of them on October 7th. There's God. gunfire. Somebody got killed in friendly fire. He immediately said, well, that wasn't Hamas. Yes, it was Hamas. It wasn't for Hamas. Nobody was shot that woman. Right. And also the directive that they're bringing up, the Hannibal directive, it was canceled in 2017. The army hasn't used

it and they haven't implemented it. And then they're connecting actions that happened on that day, this horrible day that no one wanted. And there was one time that one commander said, don't let any car go back into Gaza because they knew that they were taking hostages and he said something like by any means like stop them and then they say okay so that they connected to something that was stopped in 2017 where the directive by the way Hannibal directive came out because they didn't want its soldiers to be kidnapped and it wasn't about civilian so it has nothing to do with what happened on that day but it's all the conspiracy you know that look at the wall everything is connected they were killed by the IDF and I find that heart

surprising given the nature of the fight. Given how much I hate to. It's hard to discriminate in those situations. Now, the Hannibal Doctrine is a very different matter. The argument there or the claim there is that what the Israelis do is that if it looks like an Israeli soldier, even an Israeli citizen, is going to be captured by Hamas or some other terrorist group. Now, he's already upset with himself that he used the word terrorist.

watch. You use the Israelis language to describe those groups, then the IDF will kill those Israelis. Now, that's just a lie. Yeah. There's nothing about killing the Israelis. They might, it's a certain kind of standard of care. Yeah. You're authorized to try to take out the terrorists, even if he might put the innocent person's

life in jeopardy. You don't aim for the innocent person. Of course not. Which is what that makes it sound like. Yes. Yeah. And this is spread. Robert Pape said the same thing.

cock sucker anyway let me continue no no offense taken i'm just going to say that i was just going to say no offense that i don't know them well enough to make that joke so that they don't become hostages and and the logic here is that it's better to surreptitiously kill them better for the IDF to surreptitiously kill them rather than have them become hostages that's murder I guess you could call it that. No, he's making this up. I've searched into this so many times thinking I must be missing something. It's not surreptitiously killing them.

And, of course, it needs to be said that I've described it as a trolley problem, like in a philosophy, because it's absolutely true that in the trade for Shalit, Sinwar was released. And Sinwar being released led to 70,000 dead Palestinians, by the way, and thousands of dead Israelis. So, you know, it's a moral conundrum. There is no right answer, but there would be no moral conundrum if not for Hamas.

Hamas forces is, Hamas is the train that has to, in the trolley problem, is this runaway train. And Israel has to figure out somebody's going to get killed, which way do we steer the train at the last minute? Yeah, but that's why it's so smart to, first of all, put Israel in this corner of you have to make this decision and then weaponize it against us. And that's what they're doing with everything. It's always like, why is Israel doing it? It's always, you know, it starts on 1948. It starts on, you know, it's just Israel's retaliation is the part that everyone is remembering.

And it's just another example of the same pattern. Look at how he's like giddy. He's like so happy. They enjoy it so much. It's like Finkelstein. Yeah. And there's a picture of them together. Oh, of course. Naked? I've heard that about this. Then there's the whole issue of the Hannibal Doctrine, because as we know, the Palestinians were bent on taking many of... No, he doesn't want to say hostages.

Right, right. Many prisoners, prisoners babies. He doesn't want to say terrorists. He doesn't want to say hostages. They're captured Israelis back to Gaza, and the Hannibal Doctrine calls for killing those people before they get there. Now, those people, why does it? And you listen, I am as pro-Israel as this Katie Halper, another Jew,

as Katie Halper is anti-Israel. I would absolutely correct, you know me, Periel. I would absolutely correct a guest saying something like that. I'd be willing to bet in the final analysis, however, that Hamas did not murder many of those Israeli civilians. So what are your thoughts on the role of Epstein and the Epstein files in Epstein's history? This is the best one of all because in, potentially in the U.S.'s treatment of Israel. When you look at Trump and his behavior towards Israel,

and you look at his behavior before he became president, there's good reason to think that the Israelis have the goods on him and that they've made it clear to him that if he gets tough on Israel, they'll reveal certain things. Now, let me just say, the people saying this, were the same people who pissed correctly, pissed all over Russiagate as just a bunch of innuendo,

this whole notion that the Russians had all this stuff over on Trump. And they ridiculed, Aaron Mote especially, they ridiculed Russiagate. Almost as if Russia paid them to do that. Almost as if Russia paid them, which I don't think they did. They're authentic leftists.

But now they embrace all that same archetype, that same schematic way of approaching things in the service of their case against Israel, except with far less evidence than there ever was against Trump. There's no evidence. And even if Israel had what documents about Trump having whatever, what can be so bad that would change people's minds about this guy? They already, I mean, it's... What you're trying to say is, what about could be so... embarrassing that Trump would be embarrassed. Yeah, exactly. What can embarrass Trump? Nothing. All right. Can hypothesize that given his very close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

and the fact that Jeffrey Epstein recorded so much of his interactions with other people. There's not evidence of that either, by the way. And those other people's interactions with young girls. Not evidence of that. And with young women, there's something there. The problem is that we don't have the evidence. So you can't say for sure that Trump is being blackmailed. But we can speculate and make sure. There is enough circumstantial evidence that one has the sense, and I'm choosing my words carefully.

Yeah, really carefully. This is him choosing his words carefully. One has the sense. But has the sense that that may be the case. That Trump is being blackmailed. Now, this is why Israel is in such trouble, because as we said yesterday, there was a world where this kind of stuff

could not reach a large audience. And there was a theory that sunlight was the best disinfectant when it came to speech, meaning that, well, if you just get it out all out into the open, then people will prove that it's not true. And that will be the most effective way of eliminating this bad,

polluting stream of ideas. and what we've learned is it's exactly the opposite. Sunlight is not a disinfectant. Sunlight grows mushrooms, right? That's somehow. And I don't know how we're ever going to get past this new reality where every new conspiracy theory is just more titillating to people than the boring, like they say if it bleeds, it leads.

This is essentially that. Like, if it's titillating and it's conspiratorial, people are going to read that first. And Coleman said yesterday and I had the same thought, well, maybe AI can somehow be brought into service. And I thought you said, what if, because AI is very good. Sometimes I write things and it will,

I don't ask it to correct me. I don't want to be corrected. It's like my wife. But it always, it always corrects me. And it's always like doing research in the background. Anything I write, it starts Googling, stuff like that.

Why he would say it's like her husband? But, and so you could imagine that every time you tweet something, that Grock would automatically present a counter argument. Yeah. Or present counter evidence. It does that already, though. You see that on Instagram, too, that it says, you know, this is. Community knows.

No, those are community knows. But then that's by committee and that's already been kind of paralyzed because there's people on both sides of these things from time to time. I just mean automatically. That could be a good counterbalance. As long as the information that it feeds off of is accurate. Because if AI is going to start analyzing information based on volume, then we're doomed. My experience, I don't know how much time you spend with it.

The AI is pretty good. Yeah. It really is pretty good. No, I spend some time with it, but I still sometimes it would come up with stuff that I know that I've verified that is not true. and it's still... And I would ask the source and it will give me source that is completely discredited.

You have to use the highest engines. There's a huge difference even between what are they called here on Chatchebt is pro and they're right below pro is extra high. You'd think extra high would already be...

No, you have to use the pro. It takes longer. So AI is going to save us all. Something, yeah. I think with AI, you can, have a child. And by the way, just to end on this,

I have two close friends who have adopted children and have wonderful outcomes, wonderful families. I said a thing, but you never know what you're going to get. I don't mean to... No, of course. Cast aspersions on adoption.

But you do never know. All right. Anyway, this was fun. No, I appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation. I'll let you up next time in town. Yeah, please do. And if you want to come to the comedy seller,

I see a show or something like that, I can't promise there'll be no gay jokes, but you can handle it. Too sensitive to that stuff. Yeah, there'd definitely be Jewish jokes. That's fine, that I can join me. Okay, Chen Mazig. Bye, everybody.

Bye. Very good, Steve. He played some music for you. Oh, okay, amazing. He was YMCA.