The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Josh Szeps on Israel, Antisemitism and the War Over Moral Clarity

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Josh Szeps joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about Israel, Gaza, antisemitism, Zionism, Jewish identity and why the debate has become so exhausting and distorted. We talk about whether Jews outside Israel are being forced to answer for the Israeli government, what anti-Zionism really means, the failure of the peace process, Netanyahu, Gaza, drones, Palestinian leadership, the pressure to “circle the wagons,” and whether it is possible to criticize Israel without giving ammunition to people who hate Jews. Josh Szeps hosts one of the biggest shows on Substack, Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps, where he has funny, bullshit-free conversations with people like Sam Harris, Jimmy Carr, Bari Weiss and Mark Normand about subjects that the mainstream media fails to discuss honestly. He has been on Joe Rogan's show seven times, he was a founding host of HuffPost Live in New York, then went on to get cancelled from his own top-rating talk radio show on Australia’s national public broadcaster. He's a columnist for Australia's most prestigious newspaper, the Australian Financial Review, and a major media figure Down Under. https://x.com/joshzepps?lang=en https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/about Chapters: 00:00 Intro and Josh Szeps joins the show 03:06 Josh’s background, Australia, and his previous Israel controversy 07:12 Jokes, parenting, kids, porn and the internet 12:59 Antisemitism, Australia, and the post-October 7th climate 15:36 Anti-Zionism, Israel’s legitimacy, and the meaning of a Jewish state 22:07 Palestinian refugees, Arab countries, and the right of return 27:26 Gaza, drones, October 7th, and whether Israel had another choice 30:29 Josh’s controversial “abandon Israel” column 38:16 Circling the wagons, Jewish identity, and criticizing Israel from the diaspora 47:58 Anti-Israel backlash, boycotts, and Jews being blamed for Israel 54:16 Kristof, the dog allegations, and the difficulty of discussing ugly claims honestly 01:08:35 The flotilla, Israeli detention, and skepticism toward activist claims 01:11:23 War crimes, double standards, history, and modern technology 01:13:05 Uyghurs, Kurds, ethno-states, and why Israel gets singled out 01:17:00 Media collapse, audience capture, and trying to have sane conversations 01:18:29 Finkelstein, complexity, and final thoughts

Hit the music. Hey, this is live from the table, the official podcast of the world famous comedy seller. Available wherever you get your... And I was doing so well. No, no, I'll just keep rolling with it. Available wherever you get your podcast. And this is Dan Natterman. I've been away.

I was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, and I'm back. We're waiting for Nome. He's late. I don't know what he's doing. Maybe he's busy with the new room around the corner. Well, whatever. he's not here. But Periel is here.

Periel Ashenbred. We also have with us in studio. A big name in Australia, I'm told. Oh, there you go. He hosts a podcast called Uncomfortable Conversations. Not a big enough name for Gnome to make it on time. No, apparently not. For nothing.

Well, you're no Russell Crow. I'm no Russell Crow. You know, dear listener, Dan didn't even know who Rose Byrne was. Did you know who Rose Byrne is, Peril? Yeah, okay. We were talking about Australians. He was like, you know, Steve Owen, the crocodile hunter? I was like, yeah, well, that's the lamest Australian.

Well, the first name. The lamest, he's pretty... The first name that I brought up was Olivia Newton-John. That's, yes, so definitely not lame. I didn't even know she was Australian. The first name I brought up, to my credit, was Courtney Act. Yes, obscure Australian drag queen. Not obscure.

I mean, not as far as drag queens go. No, I assume brought you. You know what? You sent an email. What do you want to talk with? Did I even say your name? No. Josh Zeps. Josh Zep.

Hosts one of the biggest shows on Substack, uncomfortable conversations with Josh Sepps, where he has funny, bullshit-free conversations with people like Sam Harris, Jimmy Carr, Barry Wife. I already did the introduction. But you didn't give him. Because we don't need to do the whole long thing. See, this will come out in conversation.

In the introduction. because I was interrupted when you brought that I didn't know who Rose Byrne was. I'm sorry. Also, you've been gone, so I've been tasked with doing these introductions. Well, yeah, well, now you're untasked. Teachers back and the sub is out. Noam brought you here to discuss, I assume, heavy political stuff. We don't know because Periel sent him an email saying, what do you want to talk with Josh about?

No, that's not what I said. I said, is there anything we can read to prepare for the conversation with Josh? Well, it's very reassuring that you're such fans of my work. But let me give you a little background. So he didn't tell him and I were talking about. Oh, he's calling now. He's called. Hi.

Okay, we started. We're here. Everything's okay. Okay. Yeah. So, so. So a long story short was, Noam was kind enough for it to,

let me do a live show last year here at the comedy cellar where I got together with the, you know the guys from the fifth column. Yeah, of course. Yeah, well, we know Moynihan. Yeah. Moynihan and Welch and Camille are all buddies of mine. Jesse Single from Blockton Reported, Coleman Hughes. We had a little kind of what's going on in the world panel show at the

Village Underground. And I can't remember how Gnome got onto my stuff, but then he also read a piece that I had read out on my podcast, which was quite a controversial piece about Israel and anti-Semitism and the Gaza War. This was last year. So he said, oh, I'm going to have to get Josh on the show and grill him and take him to time. I was going to rip him a new one. And so we did that last year. And then I just shot him an email last week saying, hey, I'm going to be in New York.

He was like, got to get you back. We'll get you in the actual mothership. And we'll have a chat about anti-Semitism, about the Bondi attacks in Australia. Yeah, that tracks. About all this sort of Israel Malaki, the hoo-ha. Just by way of background, Josh is Jewish on one side of his family.

That's right. The good side, the father, the paternal side. Well, that's not Jewish law. You're not Jewish law. That's right. That's why I'm in good sight. I'm not getting shoveling into any gas chambers myself. He's a very handsome guy. Thank you.

You wouldn't necessarily say he's Jewish by looking at him, you know, if you were attuned to those sorts of things. Well, not everybody is. No, okay. I don't have a giant hooked nose. He's not walking around with like a cup of pennies. Yeah, counting money and chuckling under my breath. Well, you know, there is a middle ground between the dude with horns counting money and Rutger Hauer. Right.

On the other end of the spectrum. Who's Rutger Hauer? He's an actor that looks very not Jewish. But he's Jewish? No, no. I'm saying it's the other end of the spectrum. He looks Aryan, you could say. Or Dolph Longren, you know, that's the other thing.

But so I guess Noon brought you in. But he's not here yet. But he's going to be here in two seconds. Well, he, but we have just enough time to, for my question is, have you ever held a quaker? I've never held a quaker. Do you know what a quaker is, burial? But you want to try to explain what a quaker is? Well, quaker is at least, according to some, and I think not without justification, the cutest animal on earth.

It's the cutest animal on earth. It's a little marsupial native to Western Australia, in particular an island off the coast of Perth called Rottnest Island. and the Quaker has its face contorted into a permanent grin, like a smile. So it looks adorable, but you would never know if it's actually happy or if it's angry at you because it's just permanent. It's like a dolphin, you know, is a dolphin's just always smiling. Here he is. Okay, no one is here. The big man walks in.

We're talking about adorable Australian marsupials. How big is it? The Quaker. It's very low. Oh, it's football sized. Less. It's less than... I'm sorry.

That's all right. No, it's not right. We're having a great time. Okay. Have you been running? Have you been around the corner with the new club? No. No, I have, we're going to a video project.

I have a closing tomorrow. It's okay. There's so many things going on. A closing for what? You're buying a new house? Refinancing something. But does it matter? It's okay.

You're a few minutes late. And then it's in my calendar for 4 o'clock. I don't know. It's automatic Wednesdays at 5.30. I don't know. You know what, that's why? Because I had to have something on tonight. So I moved it early.

Yeah, yeah, as soon as she told me. So it's my fault. No, it's my fault. It's definitely my fault. It's Periol's fault. It's Dan's fault. No, no, no, it has to be my fault. No, it's my fault.

I had a question now, I don't remember what it was, but me. Did I have to do with adorable Marcipio? No, it didn't. Did I have to do with Rose Byrne? Adorable Australians of all stripes. I wanted you to tell your Australia joke, please. All right, very quickly. It's a guy's doing a book signing at Barnes & Noble on the Upper East side.

and people are coming up to buy the book and some Australian woman comes up and says, Emma Chizit! And the guy writes in the book, To Emma Chizit. Because Australians speak funny. Right. Get it?

Yes. That's, you want to hear my kids' favorite joke? They're eight years old. This is apropos of nothing. But it's a good joke. A guy walks in a library and he goes up with a librarian and he says,

I'll have a burger with fries, please. And the librarian says, so this is a library. And he says, oh, sorry, I'll have a burger with fries. I heard that. But I heard it with it. It was a blonde.

In the version I heard. That's funny. And I think you were on her side. My wife got really, really mad at me because when my daughter was like seven years old, yeah.

I'm trying to tell jokes that kids enjoy. And I said, Mila, what did the elephant say to the naked man. She says, well, I said, how do you breathe through that thing? So my, which is a cute joke.

She had a little brother. She was aware of penises, you know. It was like a dirty joke. It is a dirty joke. She told it in front of all of the kids when they were so little. It was wildly inappropriate. I guess to certain things, I just don't understand. Without, you could tell that to your eight-year-old daughter?

Oh, certainly. Certainly. But I take my kids to see like Deadpool versus Wolverine where there is not, I'm not an appropriate parent. I'm with you on all that stuff too. But at least I can understand the inference that, well, if they see violence, if they see sex, that maybe somehow this can affect their development, I don't believe that, but I can understand why someone might think that.

But why would, how does, how do you breathe through that thing in any way, damage? Because you're supposed to be ashamed of your genitals. No. That's the sweet baby Jesus taught us anything. It's to have shame about our genitals. No, I don't think that. Perry L's son grows up at a house with naked pictures everywhere, including of his mother. Oh, really?

Including of his mother. One of their maple thorps over the dining room table. And she's like, how do you tell a joke like that? I don't think it's crazy to think that kids are influenced by the things they see. But I think we've got the target in the wrong place because I don't like my kids seeing things that are really macabre and twisted and kind of effed up. But some of those things are PG-rated, but they give them nightmares.

But when there's just violence and it's playful and comic and ridiculous, absurd. Well, no, like Deadpool versus Wolverine. Like, there's brains splattering everywhere. There's, like, but it's so heightened that it's absurdist. It's like, it's stupid. And there's lots of F-bombs, but I just say to them, I'm going to take you to see this movie.

It's for grown-ups. If I hear you use a swear. any time after we see this movie, then we're never going to movies like this ever again. And then they don't. As a point, my kids swear, but the mother swears. You said consistently, though, that you were allowed to watch anything as a kid and it didn't affect you. I was allowed to see anything.

And I was allowed to see anything. And I don't believe it affected me. I mean, I don't have. There's no control group. I don't have control. But what does somehow concern me is the ubiquitousness of porn. That should say. Is it ubiquity?

Is it ubiquity or ubiquitousness? I don't know. I'm with Dan on this one. Ubiquity? Ubiquity. It's a word. Okay. It's a word.

The ubiquity of porn. Can we get a judgment on that? You can Google that. The ubiquity of porn. Yes. This perhaps is not healthy for... Certainly. No, there's no...

You can think perhaps out of that. Yeah. I mean, aside for the inferiority complex... But, I mean, Luckily, I'm not there yet. Eight, you're not there yet. They wouldn't even, I mean, I hope. I don't know if they're playing video games.

Not unsupervised. Not on some kind of crazy, fortnighty, roblocksy, connected to the interwebs thing. Okay. Only on their little Nintendo. Okay. Oh, it's not healthy for adults either, quite honestly. At least not in excess. Define excess.

Well, excess to the point that you don't want sex, to the point that you don't want sex with a real woman, because now you're addicted to the, to porno, because a real woman isn't going to do what you see in the video. Have you heard about these, are they Groypers, or is that the term for the right-wingers? There's some... Insoles? Yeah, but there's a special subgroup of incels.

There was a fascinating long-form article about this. And they basically have, like, layers. They have, like, their own dungeons in their, often in their parents' house. and they set up these live stream things where a whole bunch of, there'll be dozens and dozens of dudes and they're all watching and sharing the same porn,

but they're straight, supposedly, and they're watching, like, straight porn, but they'll go for hours and hours and hours, and they're, like, edging, and they can, like, see each other. Sometimes genitals, sometimes not. But, like, and they'll go for, and they'll do drugs,

and it just goes on and on. And this is their main hobby. and they'll spend 12, 14 hours a day, like staying up all night just doing this. But how I heard that like boys at like boarding school, like they've circle all male boarded, circle jerking and like... Yes. I mean, I've heard about that. I don't know how widespread it.

I just assumed it was the goyam. Yeah. Dan, I think you haven't been to enough English private schools in the 19th century. Do we have a ruling on the ubiquitousness yet? You mean to spell it? I prefer the simpler ubiquitous. ubiquity, okay. Okay. One for Dan. Thank you. I'll take it. Um, so okay, what about, uh, so, so what, what's on your mind these days? Where are you on current events? I've lost track of me.

We had a big debate about Israel. Israel's only gotten worse. It's only got, well, yeah, but I've then swung back to be more like, uh, I'm just like, so sick and tired of everyone being such, posturing so much about, as if like Israel is supposed to be the determining factor as to whether or not Jews are worthwhile human beings, the world over, that it's like, it's just enormously tiresome, enormously tiresome. I'm actually just writing a piece. I have a newspaper column in Australia as well, and I just finished, just walked out of a Starbucks, everyone's favorite writing environment, putting the finishing touches to a piece about, there's a royal commission industry. Do you guys know what royal commissions are? It's like, what would you call, like, the 9-11 commission?

Like a commission. Elite government commission, yeah. We call them royal commissions because the queen or I guess is the king now is still the head of state. But a Royal Commission is like the highest level of government inquiry into something that went wrong. And so there's a Royal Commission into anti-Semitism as a result of the Bondi terrorist attack. And my piece this week is basically just saying there's just so much that you can't capture

about the state of anti-Semitism by merely listing anti-Semitic incidents. You know, like the commission is going to go around, it's inviting all Australians to submit, you know, when and where they encountered some observation of anti-Semitism. But it's like tallying snowflakes to try to understand the avalanche. It's like there's a whole narrative that has come up in the past couple of years

around Gaza and Palestinianism and Israel and Netanyahu that has so corroded the, I think the standing of Jewish Australians. I mean, and I partly blame Netanyahu for this, but I'm more than, but I mostly blame the clueless way people consume their information. from social media and arrive at conclusions and narratives as a result of just seeing whatever kind of unedifying image of a dead garson baby happens to be on their feed. Yeah, I just feel enormously sort of depressed and over the whole conversation about anti-Semitism. I don't think people who, I think there's a lot of work to be done to get people who don't

understand the way Semitism is showing up in the 2020s in the West to understand. understand what it actually is. Because they think they're being, and if they're on the left, they think they're innocently anti-Zionist. And if they're on the right, they think they're innocently asking questions about the powerful cabals that rule the world

and Copeland convince Donald Trump to go to war. I mean, there's so much about this which angers me. And the problem is that most of the really important arguments to me are very simple ones we've heard a thousand times. When you hear them a thousand times, I've talked about this before. When you hear them a thousand times, somehow they lose their potency and almost become trite.

and oh, there you go again with the, you know, there's no partner for peace. And there you go again for what would you do if you were in Israel's situation. But these things are really true. And but just the way we just gloss over the word anti-Zionist, as if we know what that even means. Yeah. Does it mean that Israel should have its card pulled? It's what I've said last week like that.

Israel has an asterisk next, an astrosk. next, an asterisk next to it in the list of nations. It's on probation and you violated your probation and now you are expelled and we are going to take away your status as a nation and you will live under the Arab majority. Is that what it means to be an anti-Zionist? Because if that's what it means, it's fucking insane and everybody should know that. I think that's what it, well, I guess it means. But they will never say that.

Well, some people might just very few. They'll bob and weave. No, what they'll say is that they'll say things like it's an illegitimate state, or they'll say, I mean, one of the sort of tragedies of the consequence of the past 20-odd years of, you know, hard-right Israeli governance and, you know, obvious refusal to try to make any advances on the peace process, no matter how, you know, fruitless that may have been, is that it has allowed people who are frustrated with this particular Israeli government and this particular war and this particular stalling of the peace process and these particular outrages by settlers in the West Bank

to conflate that with the nature of the state itself. And it's become harder for the rest of us to say, well, hang on, we can oppose all of those things, but it's still fair for the Jewish people to have a homeland somewhere in the neck of the woods where they were all banging around since the kingdom of King David. Even the peace process thing, which of course I reverberate with that. I wish they would be doing that stuff.

And then I stopped for get a hold of myself. I say, wait a second. What if I had been all on board with my government and they had offered up things to have peace, which we never even imagined they would offer? And then the people we were supposedly negotiating with unleashed an intifada. and over 1,000 people were blown up in coffee houses and buses and on streets, would I then vote for the people to try it again without any indication that the other side has changed?

No, I mean, it's completely, the Israeli response is completely understandable. It's also suboptimal. Well, we don't know because, no, the previous one was more was actually suboptimal. This may be optimal, is what I'm saying. this may be the best they could have. The previous attempts ended up in bloodshed. This ended up in bloodshed. What was this from?

Well, this was obviously incompetence, but it was also, again, okay, we'll just pull out. We'll just unilaterally make peace. We'll just give you the land back. How did that wind up for Israel? Right? So, you know, it's just very easy to say from our safety here, I just wish the Netanyahu was saying more things that would make it easy. for me to defend Israel. I don't need to judge her from the point of view of a citizen, a voting

democratic citizen of Israel who actually has his children's lives on the line and would say, no, fuck that. I'm not voting for a PR decision. I totally get that, you know, and it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback and to, you know, lob grenades from when you're safely across an ocean. The main thing that I'm worried about in the West is that the whole, the complexity of the problem. I mean, there is a lot of blame to go around, right, for the carnage and the Middle East and the failure of the peace process. Israel shares some of the blame. The Palestinian leadership certainly shares some of the... What blame is Israel's share?

Well, let me just list it, and then we can go back and litigate that if you want. I mean, the Palestinian leadership certainly shares some of the blame for rebuffing every peace attempt. Arab states share massive amounts of blame for trying to wipe Israel off the map three times in the first quarter century of its existence and using the Palestinian issue as a way to... Curry sympathy with their own street. International aid organizations deserve a lot of blame and international activists deserve a lot of blame for perpetuating the fantasy that if Palestinians are just sufficiently intransigent,

then their resistance will someday make the Jews go away. As long as they can just keep on, keep on on, then from the river to the sea, the dream will, you know, will someday arrive. But the only people that actually get blamed in practice at the marches across the Sydney Harbor Bridge, at the protests on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, on college campuses all over the world,

are Jews, which the protesters code as Zionists. And I mean, this word Zionists, as you say, like, why is it even a word? I mean, technically it just means that you think that the Jewish people have the same right as Japanese people do or Armenians do or any other ethnic group to have a country. The complexion of that country,

the borders of that country, its relationship to the people who were there before. All of those things are still open to debate and negotiation. But the basic principle of there's nothing uniquely inadequate about the Jews that prevents them from having a right to a homeland is what Zionism should mean. But it has come to mean this massive grab bag of things that people dislike about Israeli conduct.

And that is now redounding on Jews like us all over the world because the only entity that gets blamed for all of this, even though there are multiple actors and multiple players seems to be the simplest, easiest off-the-shelf thing to blame, which is the Zionist slash Jew. I agree with you, everything you said. And, you know, another one of the arguments that's been said so many times has lost all its potency, which is, well, what about all the Jews that were thrown out of the Arab countries? I mean, this is actually true.

Right. They were all thrown out. I mean, if your cause is to, you know, champion the people who've been thrown out of their countries, that's a cause too. But of course, I mean, we're also sitting on land that Native Americans used to sit on. And my house is built on land that Native Australians used to live on. So, yeah. And of course, we feel like, well, come on now. The Jews were all chased out, but they were chased into Israel.

right so that and that's true they don't want to go back there right the Palestinians who were not all chased out some number were chased out some number left some number uh they you know it divides into like thirds um they were they were they were but they were all not allowed to come back but they were chased into their own country they said no i want to live in tel Aviv i want to i want to live in well no you can't do that i'm sorry maybe that's an injustice, but we're not chasing you into Yugoslavia or even Jordan. You're going into your own country. And as I've said many times, perhaps they should demand money, compensation for their land. These are all things, I'm sure Israel would have been very happy to provide in any people.

But that's the way things are settled. They said, no, no, my yearning is to live in that plot of land that my great, great grandparents lived on in Tel Aviv. And unless I, or in, you know, in Yafo or Tel Aviv was, there wasn't anything there. Whatever it is, yeah. Lajafah's North Tel Aviv, I mean, South Tel Aviv, but yeah, whatever, whatever it is. The point is like, the idea that this yearning is to live in Israel among the Jews is obviously a lie, right? It's obviously...

Well, they might have the yearning. I don't even believe they have the yearning. No? I mean, I've met Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who is still, like, talking about this, this place in Israel, which their grandparents were from, which, you know, someday they're going to go back to, they have the yearning. It's just whether or not yearning counts for anything. thing in the real world. I think some of them over the generations, they've sort of spun this,

this tale, I don't mean to minimize it, but that this is their homeland, like Hebron for the Jews. There are a lot of Jews that legitimately do want to live in Hebron because it has a lot of meaning. And I think that Palestine has become that for many Palestinians over the generation. It wasn't that 100 years ago, I don't think. yearning, I mean, if they had their druthers, I think that the big lie is that the Nakhba is not the chasing out. The Nakhma was the creation of the state of Israel. And if the 700,000 Palestinians had been left right there and were able to stay there, even after the bloody war of independence, they would still be referring to the Nakhba, there would still be no peace there.

And that's the way I see it. And, I mean, if my parents were chased out of, grandparents, great parents were chased out of somewhere years ago, I would have no yearning to go live there. I mean, I think the question is whether or not the yearning carry, is currency. The yearning is political. There are people that yearn to live in Israel,

even after, you know, a millennium. Because. Yeah. I mean, the Jews obviously continued to have a yearning for that plot of land, even when they were possessed thousands of years. I mean, some had a yearning for it. Others just needed to get out of Europe and America wasn't available at the time. Yes. You would think the yearning would be to end this bloodshed.

Let me get on with my life, have a decent life for my kids. Right over that wall right there, they're rich, they're affluent, they're having a great time. They have, I mean, unless they think they're not up to the job. I mean, there are other Arab countries. We could do that too. They could, well, but they, you know, they can look at Dubai. They can look at Abu Dhabi. They can look at, well, I don't.

I know, Jordan, I mean, rich enough. It'll do. I think the West Bank is actually, it's a richer than Jordan? Had a higher standard living than Jordanian. Well, yeah. Rommel is not a bad place at off. You know that when the West Bank was part of Jordan, it was like 50% of the economy of the whole country.

And it was, because it's all this agricultural land, apparently. I mean, here's an interesting analogy to what you're saying about people being dispossessed at that time. At the same, a year before the Palestinian, were off at a state and the Israelis were off at a state. The British also left South Asia, and they did the same thing. They put the Muslims in one side and the Hindus on the other side, and they partitioned it. I mean, it used to all be the British Raj, right? Pakistan and India were the same thing under the British Empire. They left and they were like, okay, this is going to be

not good if they all have to live together. We'll make two different countries for the two different people. And this was 1947. I mean, 14 million people were displaced. Yes, that's right. So, yes, exactly. So a lot of the people who now live in Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, an officially

Muslim country, were displaced from India. Are they yearning? No, exactly, that's right. So the yearnesty, so all I mean is the yearning doesn't, it's not a current, your yearning is not a currency. Like the reason why Pakistan exists and Palestine doesn't is because when the British left, the

Pakistanis accepted their half a loaf and didn't try to take the whole enchilada. Right. That's it, really. Bottom line. Okay. And so you've swung back on that. And just in general, and by the way, you know, Sam Harris gave us a huge shout out yesterday for our podcast.

Oh, great. It did? On his own podcast or is a guest on somebody? Yeah. And I should probably explain why I haven't released the Christoph Schild Ben-Frying podcast. But anyway, on the conduct of the war. I'm still at the point. It's very, very hard. We're all good people here. We all see the number of people who have been killed.

And we struggle and try to find some way to believe that this shouldn't have happened. It couldn't have happened. It could have been done differently. This is the proper reflex of a humane person, right? And yet, here we are all this time later. And what we're seeing with the drones becoming the ubiquity of the drones. Nice. And just getting a clear snapshot of what the future would have been if Israel had put this off for another few years. It would have been October 7th with a few hundred thousand drones. And it just becomes very hard to imagine that they had a choice and that any any citizen would have expected less from their government in a similar situation.

I don't know what else they could have done. I'm sure in isolated targets, or who knows. But in general, big picture, what were they supposed to do? It's worth pointing out also that the entire northern part of Israel is uninhabitable at this point. Again, I know they went back. I mean, nobody who's living in the north can basically even leave their homes, with less than like a 15-second warning. It's just not...

I said over and over, Josh. I had said many times, we wouldn't tolerate having to empty out any of our cities, even if nobody were killed. We would flatten them, right? We're not going to give up Cleveland or, you know, San Jose. I don't know what to... Yeah, yeah.

I mean, by the way, on Sam Harris, he's a good friend of my show and a great supporter of ours, and if people want to hear long conversations with Sam, then they should go back and listen to... He's been on the show a number of times. I wish he'd be more expressive, though. He's sort of monotone.

He is, but he's got that kind of intellect, that cool intellectual. He's like a brain in a floating in a vat, you know. Ponderous. Ponderous is the world. Clean, pure logic. You're speaking to a sage. We'll run that, do it up. The ponderiquity of his.

The ponderousness, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, and we spoke about this, you know, on the last time. We spoke after I wrote an op-ed in an Australian, newspaper, which I read on my body. Can we use a word infamous op-ed? An now infamous op-ed, which unfortunately was titled, but the last line of the op-ed was, it's time for Jews to abandon Israel,

which was intended to me, which was a mistake. It was intended to mean, it's time for diaspora Jews to stop carrying water for Israel. But that's a clunky line. When you're writing, you're always sort of balancing whether or not to go for the punch to the gut that makes the person fall off their chair or whether you're going to couch it in so many qualifications

that you're really saying what you mean to say. But my point was basically enough with the sort of knee-jerk, the feeling the knee-jerk need to always kind of excuse Israel's behavior. We'd gotten to a point at that stage of the war where, for me it wasn't even about really Gaza. It was about what I felt was a lack of leadership over the past couple of decades in Israel. And listen, at every single point in time,

you can always say, what would you do in this particular snapshot in time? differently and wouldn't we be just as reactionary? Of course we would. All of those variables held equal, yes. Israelis are not uniquely barbarous people or something. Your drone example just makes it more clear to me that ultimately the only solution is going to be a political one. I mean, it just sort of technologically has to be. I mean, either you're just going to flatten them constantly in perpetuity or if there's going to be a long-term settlement that ensures the survival of Israel, there's going to have to be a political accommodation.

And maybe you get there just by being as brutal as you can possibly be, and eventually they relent in some way. But that wasn't the, there wasn't the strategy of Mandela, and it wasn't the strategy of Martin Luther King, and it wasn't the strategy of Gandhi. And those were all successful people. Now, there are all kinds of differences, but... But they're on the Palestinian side, right? The Mandela is, we need a Palestinian-Mandela, Palestinian Martin Luther King. Yes, but we're not Palestinian, so we can't control that. All we can do is try to exemplify the characteristics that we aspire to.

But those are all figures of the oppressed people fighting for their freedom. Well, yeah, and they also had partners on the other side. I mean, even if the Palestinians had a Mandela right now, there is no FW. DeKlauque on the Israeli side. They would. To who? Any, probably two dozen people would probably rise up. The second that the Israeli public thought,

that this avenue now is the most likely avenue to end this nightmare. All sorts of Israeli politicians. I mean, you know, Lapid is already there, but he's maybe a little bit of a lightweight. But look, Menachem Begin became that guy, right? Of all people, Manachan Began became that guy as soon as Sadat made noises about wanting to be. This is the king sitting on his throne with all of his bombs saying the beatings will stop as soon as morale improves. You know, it's like morale's not going to improve among the possibility of a partner for peace has to in some way be coaxed or facilitated.

Like there's been no attention to kind of tending to the green shoots of democracy or civil society and Palestine by Israelis. Now maybe it's too much of an ask. Maybe it's just like, but I think for us to sit back. Maybe it has nothing to do with it. I mean, they had, this is 100 years, this recent chapter since, you know, 2000. is completely consistent with the previous 75 years of Palestinian rhetoric, Palestinian attitude. There's no reason to think that the attitude that they have now, Hamas's attitude,

which was it 88, whatever they're trying. This is not a reaction to Netanyahu. This is what brought Netanyahu. That's true. That's true. But I mean, as Yuval Noah Harari says, you have no option but to keep trying. Yes, I agree. You don't try between 1990 and 2008 and then go, well, they weren't ready for it.

So we're just going to assume that they're going to be intransigent in perpetuity. Well, there is an ugly side, which says, well, keep trying can sometimes mean being so formidable in a military conflict that you break their will, which is a tried and true method that in the United States of America. I mean, what example is there of an insurgency being crushed through will? Vietnam? Didn't happen. It didn't happen to Vietnam. No, sometimes it works on the other. But it defeated the Japanese.

The Confederacy. It defeated the Confederacy. It defeated the Nazis. And, you know, and it brought Sadat to the table. So, these things can go away. I'm not, you know, I'm kind of on your side of this. I'm just saying like. I don't know.

I mean, the reality is, and I've become much more open to that argument, I must say, in the past, you know, a couple of years, maybe even since Trump won. Like, you know, maybe my kind of fuzzy, bleeding heart, like liberal internationalist, globalist sort of faith in the inevitable decency of all nations. And like the international world order in the post-World War II era is too sunny and naive for, you know, you hear like J.D. Vance gave this speech at the Munich Security Conference, I think, where he was talking about, like, you know, the reality of the world is that it's about power. and it's raw in tooth and claw,

and like the powerful will do what they will, and the meek will submit. It was this really weird kind of 19th century sort of empire speech, you know, to sort of justify Venezuela and all this of stuff. I hate him. And, yeah, I hate him as well. And I thought that is just so incredibly cynical and depressing because I sort of believed in some,

us evolving towards a future where there would be more collaboration and less trampling of the week. I'm wondering whether you can break the Palestinians will. I've seen, you know, to what extent this represents, you know, the majority, you know, you see people on YouTube saying, well, fight to the last man. Rima Hassan and is, you ever hear her? Yeah.

He's a French woman. She's a Palestinian friend. You think because I'm foreign? I know all French women? Well, no, because you're being racist towards Australians. No, I think just because you seem like an educated guy. I've heard the name. Let's say that.

Well, she said, well, as many generations as it takes, we will keep fighting until the Hamas says. Until, you know, or we'll all die. But, you know, they may all be. No, but there's another layer to it. Then I don't want to ask your psychological question. There's another layer to it, which is because, and the polls show it, there is a significant, there is a significant number of Palestinians who would like peace with Israel.

Their will does not need to be broken. And but in these despotic authoritarian dictatorships, especially Islamic ones, these people can never achieve critical mass. You know, five, ten, fifteen percent of the population with guns can thwart the will of 85 percent of the population. So we talk about breaking the Palestinians will. I just want to say that I don't want that to sound harsher than we mean it. We don't, we're not assuming that there's no well of goodwill of Palestinian people who want

nice things and want peace with Israel. I mean, breaking the will of the people who are in charge and who will. I mean, the question is, how do you empower those, that cohort of the Palestinian population against, I don't think that we've been really serious or that Netanyahu, or certainly not his coalition partners in Smotrich and Ben-Givir have any interest actually in emboldening and empowering Palestinian people to thwart jihadism.

Not Ben-Givir, but I think Netanyahu absolutely does. I think he just thinks it's a fool's errand. Anyway, I have a psychological question for you. When you found yourself at the point of writing that article, it's time for Jews to give up Israel. Because this happens to me, you know, something happens

and something else happens and then like get buffeted by a few things and I kind of panic and I buckle and I and I just collapse kind of a little bit and I find myself and then a year later I'm like, what did I get so excited about? Like, you know, I said I really overreacted in that situation. I don't remember exactly what was going on at the time you wrote that column, but it was, it was Israel was at a low ebb. There was problems with the aid and there was people being killed and I think what it,

I think it was in the wake of the accusations of intentional starvation that happened at the beginning which turned out not to be true. Yeah, well, it turned out to be less true than they thought. But they did block food from going in for about three months. They blocked food, but they could send in more previously or something. There was not any mass starvation from. No, that's right. And so we, but this all affected us, right?

It affected me too. And somebody's saying, I'm just getting sick and tired of fucking defending these people. Here's another headline today and another headline today. And then you just kind of crack a little bit, right? And do you think that's what happened? I know what you're pointing to. I think partly, well, it was not that I was in any way succumbing to pressure to make that point or feeling like the expectation on me to denounce Israel was so high that I was going to

fold. It was the opposite, actually. It was actually me just being like, I know the principled thing to do here. I know what's right here. This is not right. But it wasn't right for us to abandon Israel. I mean, to... Well, this, what it was just crystal clear to me that, that what Israel had become was so far in its current incarnation from the dream that my grandmother had for the Jewish state, that, you know, whatever little slice of behavior you want to point to and go, well, what other option did they have here or what other option did they have there or they didn't have a partner for peace? Taken in its totality, the obstinacy, the cruelty was beyond the pale and I didn't want anything to do with

it. And so what I was saying was, I was essentially trying to rebuff the argument that Jews endanger each other if we don't hold firm on Israel. There's this kind of idea that if one of us breaks and criticizes Israel, then they're betraying the team and endangering Jews, because if you give anti-Zionists an inch, they'll take a mile. So we all have to stand firm with Israel. I think that's bullshit.

I think we all know psychologically in our own souls that if we regard another group of people as being homogenous, group-thinky, reflexively encircling of their own wagons and loyal to something that we're not, we're more suspicious of them. Let me just think about our attitudes towards Muslims after a terrorist attack. Muslims don't do a very good job,

I don't think, of airing the debates that I know that they're having privately, publicly about jihadism. And as a result, I know that after the Bondi terrorist attack, I mean, I was in a park with my kids and it was majority Muslim families around with women with the head sky, and sort of swaggering, like, you know, Lebanese-looking guys.

And I did feel like, what if any of them knew that I was a Jew? Like, and I was judging them. And I can't help but think that if there was more public debate among prominent Muslims about jihadism, I would be more relaxed around them, less judgmental of them. more sympathetic to them. None of this means that Jews bring anti-Semitism on themselves or that there would be no anti-Semitism

if we were all quarreling about Israel. But those little microaggressions, the kind of background climate of suspicion towards Jews, I think the volume on that is turned down if people regard Jews as being a big, boisterous, quarreling, heterodox group of people who can't agree on anything, including their own country, than if they think that we're all reflexive defenders

of whatever it is that some foreign government does. And so what I wanted to say was quit with the circling of the wagons and feeling like you have to have loyalty to this country anymore. It's doing a whole bunch of shit that we can debate for a million years, but it's time for non-Israeli Jews. Now, I misphrased it, obviously,

because it was too easy. I stupidly thought that everyone's going to read 1,100 words of a column, right? and they're going to understand the point when I get to the final line. They don't. They see the final line, which then became the headline. And they think that I'm saying that, you know, Jews in Israel should, like, flee Israel or something like that. Not my point at all. If you're an Israeli, absolutely, going to bat for Israel. You're an Israeli.

I'm not an Israeli. I'm a Jewish-Australian person. I don't have to be held accountable for what the IDF is doing in Gaza. And I don't want to have to keep people keep assuming that I have to be held accountable for it. And I certainly don't want my kids to be at the beach getting shot. And it's not because I'm a coward who is unwilling to stand up for Zionism. It's because I'm a nuanced person who thinks that we're capable of having conversations about these things that are better than black and white.

I don't understand that. Because these are, you know, if I'm an American Jew and the Jews in Germany are being rounded up, the Jews in Germany, even without the Holocaust, just, you know, the Nuremberg laws, whatever it is, I feel this is an attack on my people. I'm deeply moved by that. What's happening in Israel is an attack on the Jewish people. Yes, I mean, I'm moved by that. I'm moved by our people.

And we have to, if you feel that way, then we take their side. You can criticize something that happens in a war, especially if you're saying. Especially if you believe it's noteworthy in the annals of warfare, meaning like other countries fight wars and they never have their war crimes and they never torture anybody like this is this is really something unique about this country and I don't want any part of it but we know that's not the case we know that this is kind of ordinary stuff I mean I'm not a big tribal guy I know I'm not a I'm not a big my country right or wrong I'm not a big my people right it's my country October 7th was terrible right it fine that's great there's also I also

feel like maybe I'm a naive international humanist but I do care about Palestinians as well like their lives count for something. Of course. So that's all I'm saying. But he's saying, I think, that some people, even if they know Israel did something wrong, we'll say, you know, I'm not going to give grist to the anti-Semitic mill. Right. You know, like you had the same issue when you, you know, talking about the dogs, okay?

And you said, should I even talk about this? Because, you know. What I'm saying is that they are, they're, the plan was to annihilate them. And actually, we know in retrospect, they were. pretty close. Like if Hezbollah had come in when and if people had got, if they got their shit together like they could have, we realized how they could have, it would have been all over or, you know, the death toll could have been a hundredfold. I don't even know. Very high. And they're in a war against a movement to annihilate them. And in that war, we say, okay,

well, you know what? You did this. Okay, you're on your own in that war of annihilation. And And there's no way to take that position without at some point equating both sides as equal. I don't have a dog in his fight anymore. A pox on both your houses. You're all the same to me. The only way you say, fuck the both you. I'm not in this anymore is when you really are indifferent. You, him, I don't care who wins.

No, that's not fair. That's not what he. Well, but then if you do care who wins, then we still support Israel. We scream and yell when they misbehave. But it's the screaming and yelling part that I think. think was the essential part of what you were saying? No, I mean, yes, it's like, you know, the United States versus Iran, right? You know, okay, I have a dog in this fight in the sense that I would rather that the United

States was victorious than the Iranians. But I'm not going to take a posture of feeling like I always have to defend the Trump administration's actions in Iran. I'm not an American. I care about Americans. You know, Americans have a lot more in common with me than Iranians do. I have an interest in the outcome. but I'm going to continue to be critical of Americans.

I don't want someone to come up to me. You're more than critical. You're saying everything that Trump administration is doing. All right. I think it's not just critical. But anyway, so... Wait. What was the...

Yeah. There is one other point here, though, which is it's separate from the IDF, because before the IDF even set foot into Israel after October 7... Gaza. Into Gaza. Sorry. Excuse me. Before the IDF even stepped foot into Gaza.

after October 7th, people were mobilized against Jews all over the world and anti-Semitism had exploded. So I think that it's a convenient sort of scapegoat, right? But like the people who hated us before. No, not all. Some. There was some, obviously some people activated on October 8th, but then over time, we lost a lot of people who, you know, have a lot of Earth's world friends. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. There was, there was death. that contingent where immediately afterwards there was it was just triggering people for whom their prior was Israel bad, Palestinians good. And I think that there's a real important distinction to be made between criticizing the Israeli government, which one certainly should, or the American

government, which one certainly should, and differentiating that from the American or Israeli people at large. And there's no other group of people that I've seen in the past two and a half years that are getting boycotted before they're trying to get on a plane than a group of Israeli citizens flying from Rome to Tel Aviv. I mean, that is uniquely Israeli and Jewish. Yes, I think that's right. And I think largely Jews the world over are the victims of this because of the assumption that Zionist equals Jew,

I mean, rather Jew equals Zionist, equals Israeli, equals Netanyahu equals Dead Gals and Baby. That's right. So there is like a very, very lazy way of thinking that worries me. But to be honest, Periel, I'm just fucking sick and tired of being caught in the middle of two bullshit arguments. I really am. I'm not anybody's porn. I'm not a stookeman at me.

You're not a pawn or pawn? Well, I'm not somebody's porn. Prawn? Prawn like a shrimp? You know, I'm just sick of this, of being expected to live in this binary world where you're either with us or against us. and to feel like I... But that's what it is, though, right? I mean, that's...

We didn't do that. Like, I didn't do that. Like, I have a very nuanced view. I have incredible sympathy for the Palestinian people. I have always been, like, a peace-looking person. My mother's from Israel. She was actually born in Palestine. That's what it says on her birth certificate.

I'm not making those distinctions. No, I know. But to them, you're still a Zionist. And I am a Zionist. but I'm saying that like, so I'm being forced to pick. That's what I'm saying. Join me in the resistance. Refuse to be pigeonholed that way.

I mean, the Netanyar, you know, Smokritch and Ben-Givir want every Jew in the world to essentially be forced into being the most expansionist form of Zionist, otherwise to feel like they're betraying the team and they're not a real Jew. They will throw accusations of anti-Semitism at anybody who criticizes pretty much any Israeli policy. That's bullshit. Yeah, that's bullshit. It's also bullshit on the other side for people to use their supposed opposition to Israel as a coded way of denigrating the Jews of the world.

These are both strong. I'm sorry, Josh. I don't understand any even hand. Smolchish and Ben-Gavira are tiny parties, and there's coalition. They're in government. One of them rules the West Bank. It doesn't rule the West Bank. They have a coalition government.

Is in charge of the occupied territories? Is it charged of the whole occupied territory? I don't even know. I don't say what I don't know. Yes, I think he's the minister for the occupied territory. By the way, are we going to talk about the flow tizzo? Yeah, but, um, I also want to hear about the dogs. That's, that's since 2022, and this problem is long before that.

Yes, Netanyahu made a deal with the devil, but they're not making Netanyahu's policies. And to the extent, they kept pressure on Netanyahu to fight the war. I'm not sure they were on the wrong, even on the wrong side of that argument. Like, you know, Ben-Givir is in charge of the prisons, and that's awful. But I just don't see cherry-picking Smotrish and Ben-Govir. Okay, I mean, replace them with Netanyahu, and my argument still stands. Or Netanyahu, and using that to obscure the total clash of civilizations here in terms of what, simply one wants for their own people, including their own Arabs, as opposed to what the other

side wants for their Arabs. No, I get that. I mean, call me a civilizational like chauvinist, but I actually think we're better. I mean, I think we are, I think we can aspire to be better. You can aspire. But then we have to compare ourselves to the craziest jihadist and say, look how bad they are. I mean, we're not as bad as them. I'm saying, if Israel had its way, it would be a nice outcome for its Arabs and its Jews. And if any of the Arab entities have their way, you're talking about dystopian is an understatement. You're talking about horrors for their own people.

And this rhetoric, which sounds kind of like even-handed and straddling it, I don't agree with you. I mean, I respect it. I don't agree with you. I mean, I understand. But I mean, you and I disagree about the hawk. the proper level of hawkishness that Israeli policy should probably have. My argument that I don't think is touched by what you just said is simply that Jews have been

around for thousands of years. Israel has existed for 2% of the entire story of Jewry, right? Less than that problem. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's about... Is it 2%? Yeah, apparently.

You know, the... Sounds about it, right. The... The amount of oxygen that this particular conflict in the minutiaeer of it and Ben Gavir and Smokery and Smotri... and Gaza and this and that and blah blah, blah, occupies. I want the Jews of the world to lift our eyes

to find a bigger definition for ourselves of what Jewishness means in the West, in the 21st century, than to allow ourselves to constantly be dragged down and defined by the actions of what I fundamentally regard as being a foreign government. Yes, it's the homeland of my people. Great. But I have no control over it.

I don't vote for it. It's acting completely independently of me and my. interests. What about your other people over in Scotland? Let's let's let's cut this down. I don't know how much time you have, but let's go out of 40. I think we're over, we're trying our, everybody's patience on this Israel stuff. But just before that, you were just mentioned, you know, I talked about the dust. I missed that or did it not really be released yet the episode? Me, good grammar. This episode is turning into a nightmare because, um, I don't even know what I want to say about it. I felt... Well, don't say anything about it until it comes out.

You know, I'm almost don't even want to release it. Who did you get on the show? We have a... We had Shail Ben Affraim. We have two dog experts. And then I had a Zoom call with Shail afterwards because... There was like a pantomime gusp. You don't know what went on in here. Really? Because we got into a screaming match. You have to release it. I'm dying to hear it now. I'll let you get it. I heard it because it was up for like, a hot minute before you pulled. It was up on YouTube.

I saw it. I saw it. I don't know how I saw it, but I saw it. The glare that Noam is giving. I don't mean to fucking be a tab. I didn't know it was an issue. Spilling the beans there, Dan. Well, I didn't know it was an issue.

You saw Shaila? I saw the episode, yeah. Screaming and yelling back and forth? I saw that we called you a Nazi. How is that possible? It was unwisted the entire time. Well, maybe because I clicked on live from the table, but that shouldn't be, I don't know.

Anyway, you got to some private thing that nobody else saw. But I don't think many people saw it, if any, because I was right, like, I really wanted to see it, so I was kind of like Johnny on the spot, like kept looking for it. So as soon as it was put up, and I saw Shail tweeted, we just, I did the most unpleasant interview of all time.

Sounds like an uncomfortable conversation. And I said, I said, well, that's got to be, no. So, you know, most uncomfortable, I said, that's got to be our man. So I said, maybe it's up. So I clicked and it was up, you know, for a hot minute. I mean, just enough time for me to watch it.

In any case, I listened to the interview. It's a screening match. But then I realized that he was actually saying something that I didn't pick up on. And then I began to feel uncomfortable about putting it up. Because in some way, it wasn't quite fair to him. so I had a Zoom call with him

where I went over this thing where I mean he's really speaking in a mushy way so it's not I understand why like you heard it I can understand why that you didn't even pick up on the fact that I wasn't being fair to him

so that that's one part of the issue that I have and I want to edit it in a way that I didn't say I didn't pick up but I just I don't want to reveal too much of the episode yeah so I wanted to edit it which takes a lot of work in a way which kind of just gets rid of that whole kind of sort of misunderstanding and replaces it with the Zoom call

where I zeroed in on him. But then there's this other thing I'm just uncomfortable with, which is that you know, when all the Israelis started saying, this is impossible as could never have it, blah, blah, blah, blah. And my opinion was, no, I don't know that it's impossible. This is, you're talking about dog rape. The dog rape, yes.

But they were saying it's impossible. So one person said, tweeted Hen Mazek, I think his name, it's a fairly prominent guy. You look at me like he's a little prominent guy. You look at me like he's Australian. Oh, yeah. You know all the Jews. But or somebody of that, I don't know if it's him, but he said, Jews don't rape Palestinian.

It's like they made a blanket statement. Jews don't rape Palestinians. This is the kind of, with the Jews or Jewish dogs. And but by simply, you know, expressing my skepticism that it's impossible, I just know that people are taking from that, that I think it happened. and I don't think it happened. Well, how would we not? I mean, I agree with you. Like, you can train a dog to do anything.

I mean, I've seen, I mean, but now I'm getting myself into the same problem. You've seen the porn. I don't, I've seen dog porn, mate. I've seen a lot of dog porn in my time. I'll tell you. We get the dingoes out. I've seen it, but only from behind, I see the, so I didn't see the penetration. So there's, but I was doing research.

That's why I watched. There's just, like Pete Townsend. There's a specific detail of the penetration. and then there's also the kind of people being in denial about the fact that there would be horrible treatment of prisoners in an Israeli prison, including sexual assault, right? And like I just feel like people are upset with me for saying these things, and even people I know are hearing these things and thinking that I am more on Christoph's side than I am and I kind of just feel like, why the fuck

did I even talk about this at all? No, I do not think there's any risk of you coming across as like a Jew-hating anti-Israeli. You'll be surprised. I mean, you say one little thing. I know, but critical and you get, as the host of a show called Uncomfortable Conversations, I am constantly putting my foot in it,

and you just have to have faith, indeed, in that article as elsewhere, you just have to have faith that over the course, every little episode, I remember Conan O'Brien. People have called no Macapo, but I remember. I remember Conan O'Brien saying, every episode is a tile in a mosaic, and you can't worry about the tile. You just have to have faith that by the end of your career, the mosaic is going to be something worth looking at.

And that's how I think about my output. It, you know, it's going to be what it's going to be. If people think that you're, you know, on Nick Christoff's side, they can go and listen to any one of a thousand other episodes of this show in which you're clearly not. I know. But anyway, that's how I feel. And then I also, and then I started like waxing like, you know, introspectively about, you know, how I was feeling about everything. And that's a bit much. And then, but, but I don't know, you heard it.

I just don't know if it was interesting, not interesting if it seems indulge. Like, who am I to be even talking about this stuff? Who cares what my... Me? What I'm thinking about. Dan, obviously. Yeah, I enjoy the episode. The stuff at the top where I was talking about, like...

I enjoyed that probably the most. You did. Yeah, I thought that was good, really good. Tell you that all the time. All right. So then, but then when Sam Harris said these nice things about my opinions on the Christoff article, he didn't see the, but maybe he did see the fucking podcast. What do you mean?

No, I'm Danza. I mean, he's a fan. But in any case, but I, you know, I emailed him and then I said some other stuff another week. I said, okay, well, if Sam Harris thought enough of it to actually comment on it, then, you know, I can't, I'm within striking distance. of not being an idiot, right? Like, so maybe it's not, I mean, in my experience, you can never predict

what things are going to be, people are going to appreciate and whatnot. Sometimes you just meet people accidentally in a place where they needed to hear the thing and you didn't even think it was worthwhile. I'm just not like really sure

how anybody could have gone into that conversation more even handedly than you did. Yeah, but you know, sometimes even hands it could be a bit much, you know, It's a bit annoying.

Look at him. No, no, it's true. There's a time and place for even hand. No, but then, I mean, I think that, you know, that conversation with Shil was just explosive. Yeah, I'm not going to, I'm not going to air the part where he calls me a Nazi. Oh, please.

What do you mean? I'll send you a link. This is the great thing about having it. Why wouldn't you? Because, um, that's okay listen listen i i i'm telling you the if you part of what i did wrong in that episode like there were there was so many people so many people talking and i prepared very very quickly and there were so many people writing about his tweets and stuff like that that some of this

seeped into my interpretation of everything and i was on dorman like in not actually taking the time to read everything carefully watch the videos and folders like that and i realized afterwards that he, although he was speaking, as I said, in a mushy kind of non-committal way, he did say on Piers Morgan that there was no, he said there's no penetration. Then he also said, I don't know if there was penetration. Okay. And that's why it's hazy and confusing. But I was speaking to him as if he had never, as if he had never said certain small things,

which he had said. Okay, fine. Like, I will grant him all of that. Yeah. Do you, are you really going to sit here and say, that even if that's the case, that the things that he said to you were fair or reasonable

or in any way... Nothing he said was fair or reasonable. Okay. But... Well, then it doesn't matter. There's this nightmare scenario that I have that I try to avoid where somebody watches the interview and say,

no, I'm... Look at the spot at nine minutes here. Look at what you said to him. Now, you know, but he said this and you said that, and what you said really is not quite fair to what he's saying. I mean, who is this? Al-Mudic examiner of your podcast.

You don't understand how I sweat this stuff. But nobody else cares. Every other part, you think Joe Rogan's busy. Oh, you know, I let down. At nine minutes and 34 seconds. I do my shows live now. I mean, as many, as often as I can on Substack, we just start the tape rolling and I'll have Candice Owens or whoever.

Well, I wouldn't interview Candice now, but before she went totally anti-Semitic. And Candice Owens on the show. That'd be a fun interviewer. It was interesting because I tried to make it clear to her that she doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about, about anything. And that is a high wire act. And the fact that it's live and the fact that it's going out is what gives it such a...

If it was live, I say it was live, what do I want to be? No, I think it's fine for you. Okay, maybe you misspoke or you made a mistake and you can admit that. Like, I think that that's all fine. I still don't think that calling you a Nazi... That's the best part of the show. Well, that's the part you're saying you're going to cut out. I mean, I'm saying, I, I, you know how many hours I spent tracking down those fucking dog experts?

No, we're going to put dog experts. I'll tell you why. Because if I cut out the parts of the show. I saw the, I saw the episode. I think, did you pull it too? The one with the English dog expert? Everything, yeah, but there was a link to that that was sent. No, no, no, no.

You said to send it because you wanted somebody to watch her. I said send it privately. I said send it privately, not unlisted, privately. He couldn't see it privately. Remember, he wrote me back like three times? He said me, has to log into his Gmail account. I told him. Anyway, I enjoyed that episode as well.

So the problem with the Nazi thing is that if I remove the parts where I think I wasn't unfair to him, that I wasn't fair to him or a bit like, or just like muddies the waters in a way, which is not really helpful to people listening even because it's not quite. And then if you leave the Nazi thing, it seems like he's overreacting because you have. He was overreacting enough as it was. It sounds to me like there's a little overthinking going on here. Noam, just release the damn episode on edited. But why can't you just say, like, put in a thing in the front saying, like, I said X, Y, or Z. This was inaccurate. I had a Zoom call.

I mean, do your thing. Give it. At the same time, I was just too busy to do that. That's fine. Just so busy, he was even late to this. And when do you expect him to find the time? And, you know, I got, I was so panicked. I got, and this bothers me.

I lost my bearings coming out of the building and I went this way and I went to the garage and I went the wrong fucking way and then I turned around and said, where am I? Did I come out on the east side or the west side? I know you wouldn't even know which is east side and the west side, but I... I love people in New York who get lost.

It's like, it's the easiest city in the world, you know, numbers on the streets, little east and little west. It's like it's the easiest place to navigate in the world. The world, I mean, once, the West Village is not very big. Once you learn your Perrys and your Hudson's, you know where to go. Now, I have a thing I've had it my whole life.

It's kind of like dyslexia of direction. It's not a bad, it's different than a bad source of direction. Well, I will go into a building one way and I will forget, or a bathroom, and I'll forget, I'll forget which way, like if I made a left to go into the bathroom, then I'll make a left coming out again. Like, I will forget. You try to exit the bathroom. Well, I don't know that that's. Through the toilet.

Unusual necessarily. Well, some people never, some people will never do that. I will, I will almost regularly reverse. I've served reversals in a lot of aspects. Like I was, I look at an analog clock, and if I'm tired, I'll say, is it 10 after 3 or is a 10 to 9? Like, I'll let things like that. Like, I've had this my whole life.

I don't have any trouble reading. Maybe it's some kind of a condition that you should get looked at. At this point, I had my whole, yeah, maybe it is. I'm like a homing pigeon. You let me loose on the streets. I'll find my way. easy. It's great.

Yeah, you probably have my... I have no sense of... One of my best friends is born with this sense of direction. You can bring him to a country he's never been to. Throw him out of bed and middle of the night here.

Which way is north? Like, literally, like, it's second nature to him. He always knows his direction. I mean, there's also the sun. Is that a bit too nerdy for you? I have no.

I mean... Well, you got to really... I have no sense of direction. You got to really know your... We don't need to know much. She knows which way is. up. He doesn't need the sun.

If you're in the northern hemisphere, you know that the sun is going to be vaguely to the south, and you know that it rises in the east, and it says it's in the west. Were you a Boy Scout? I was. Okay. Yeah, maybe that's why.

Dib, dip, dip, dub, do, do, sure. Or maybe it's because I'm from Australia, so we're upside down, and so I'm more conscious of, you know. No, no, no, it's because you were a Boy Scout. My husband was a scout, too, I think that they teach you that shit. Yeah. I grew up in Queens.

Nobody was ever like, look at the sun so you can find your way home. Okay. I would like to talk a bit about the flotilla if we have time. I haven't followed the flotilla. Go ahead. Talk to Josh. Well, I just wanted to know your impression with all these allegations of sexual abuse from the people that were in the flotilla.

And I just, of course, of course the pro-Israel side is saying these allegations are ridiculous and they have a lot of video where like one minute you see the person on a stretcher and then the next minute they're walking and and one guy said he he think that the Israelis broke his spine but he seemed to be you know moving his body in a fluid way so I just have you seen the the videos of the of the people shackled from the flotilla in the like shipping container open air shipping containers no okay but but but I just want to yeah I I I am inherently skeptical of the reports just of people who are obviously so anti-Israeli that they're willing to get on a flotilla and go and rescue the people of Gaza, so I don't immediately take everything that they say at face value. That being said, because there were Australians on that flotilla as well, and I know the foreign minister has lodged a formal complaint with the Israeli government, because they do have footage of, I mean, it's not great the way they're

being treated quite apart from whether or not there was any sexual assault. know, they heard them off this thing, and they put them in the baking sun and then kind of a barbed wire, you know, enclosure. Did you see Ben Gavir going and taunting them? Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. I saw that. That was awful. They're all on their knees and they got their hands tied behind their back and their heads are down and they're in the beating sun and there are Israeli guards with machine guns, you know, on the outside around them and they're all just still, you know, on the ground and they're being barred. Well, what did they think they were going to, like, Tel Aviv Gay Pride

parade? No, I mean, sure. Yeah, but, you know, I mean, really, if they came to a bunch of people came, I mean, I was going to say if they came illegally to Australia, we'd treat them well, but we actually ship them to concentration camps on desert islands when they arrive in Australia illegally. I think there was a sense that it could have been done with a little more grace. But lack of grace on Israelis? As you say, like, well, I mean, they're doing a stunt for, you know, in order to drum up attention. But you are skeptical of some of the more extreme. I just don't know. I mean, how, yeah, they certainly have an incentive to exaggerate their mistreatment.

Can you imagine how different history would be if modern technologies existed? I don't know, since like, you know, let's start at the Civil War. Oh, it'd be hopeless. I mean, we'd never last, I mean, imagine the Second World War, like the firebombing of Dresden with smartphones. Can you imagine the fucking milk toast columns that Northern Americans will be writing a about the civil war. I'm no more part of the union. I don't care what happens with the union anymore.

Not with these methods. I mean, it does raise, yeah. Well, the attitudes have also changed. I think there was a sense that war all's fair in war, that that's, you know, we didn't give a second thought to bombing Hiroshima Nagasaki. What do you think happened to those Japanese prisoners in American prison camps. Now, the kind of story that we hear is that American prison

camps were much more humane than Japanese. We know that the Japanese... It's a low bar. The Japanese prison camps were... I remember I read... I think it's by an Australian guy, wrote a book about his experience in Japan. Was that King Rat? Or was that... There were a bunch of Australian books about Changi, the Japanese prisoner of war camp that they set up in Singapore where they kept a lot of Australians. I don't know which book was. I only read a first few pages, but I just He says, they beat us until we bled, and then they beat us for bleeding. That's what he said. But I'm sure the American prison camps were not club med.

And, you know, I'm sure terrible things went on in those prison camps. What about the, aren't there like a million Muslims in being held in prison camps in China? No concentration. Yeah. I mean, this is another thing. Nobody talks. What happened to Tibet? Nobody cares about Saddam anymore.

I mean, this is a point that I also make frequently. You know, if you're going to hold Jewish Australians or Jewish Americans somehow morally responsible for the immiseration of Palestinians, nobody holds Chinese Americans responsible for the genocide against the Uyghurs. I've been saying this for two years. But it is fair to hold somebody responsible if they go on Twitter and say all Palestinians. Of course. No innocence in Gaza. Yes, of course.

That's horrible. Judge people by what they do, but not by who they are. That's a horrible thing to say. But I've been making this point for two years that I mean... I just had David Harris on my show. Do you know David Harris? He's an anti-Semitism expert. And Shimon Peres called him the foreign minister of the Jews.

And he's in the 70s now. Is that like a genocide expert? No, he's an anti-Semitism. No, I'm saying it's a similar thing where they just... They get to say, what's anti-Semitism? I mean... I mean, well, no. Or he studied the history of it.

He studied the history of it. He's just written a book about it called anti-Semitism, like a primer or something like that. It's a how-do book. I mean, he... Exactly. And he made the point... It's a cookbook. Exactly.

Take one part jihadism. And he made the point that, like, if you want to talk about people who deserve self-determination in the Middle East, the Kurds have their own language. You know, they contain their own religion in the Yazidis, which is a part of the Kurds. They have their own, they have all of, if anyone has a right to self-determination in the Middle East. You mean a right to an ethno state?

Yeah, yeah. Did they want one? Do they want one? Absolutely they want one. They've been agitating for one for decades. But, you know, the Turks aren't going to have that. And nobody's going around about the bloodthirsty occupying Turks. The Turks are sitting on top of half of Cyprus, by the way.

They literally occupy half of Cyprus. You don't hear the bloodthirsty, you know, colonial settler Turks. It's only the colonial settler Zionists who get our, get our ire up. I mean, talk about it. A Nazi. Eridwan is like the worst. Edewan is not great. I wouldn't say he's a Nazi.

I don't know, Josh. More you think about it, like even the malfunctioning, just the of this horrible machine that, turns out opinions on Israel. I'm just thinking about this ethno state thing. This is something that gets, even I think Glenn Lowry talked about ethno, like, this is the dumbest argument ever known, right? There are ethno states all over the world.

The Kurds want an ethno state. We all want the Kurds to have this state. I mean, the Japanese have an ethno state. Saudi Arabia is an ethno state for Arabs. Hamas fights under the banner of. of ethno state, the Jewish ethno state is obviously a defensive posture because when they didn't have their own state, everywhere they were for 98% of their history, they were slaughtered, right? They never put together, you know, two decades of happy treatment. And now this has been

recast into this ominous sounding desire for an ethno state, because you know who else wants ethno states, the clan, white supremacists, right? The fact that this isn't laughed out of court, it tells you something about, I hate to use these words, like the ecosystem that we are living in. And if you discount for all the garbage in, we only see the garbage out.

Really, we are flying blind. It is so fucking polluted. Everything is a hundred times worse than it actually is. in terms of the way it's seeping to us. And this is what you're reacting to. I steal myself not to react to it in that way. But I felt your pain.

That's why I asked you that question. Yeah. I mean, look, I think the problem that you're pointing to is much bigger than anti-Semitism or Israel or anything. I mean, the problem you're pointing to is a breakdown, I think, in the way that we're thinking about all of the biggest issues that are challenges for the 21st century because of the way the information ecosystem has collapsed.

And there are so many polarizing echo chain. so many people get so much of their information about the world from platforms that are determined by algorithms that pander to what they already believe or demonize what they don't like. And people fear their listeners and their readers. Yes, and there's exactly. And so there's this huge, you know,

the legacy media is timid and the new media is largely hysterical because of that clickbait phenomenon and audience capture. So all we can do on shows like this and shows like mine is, I think, try to carve out a sane space. in which we can air uncomfortable conversations. When's your hard out?

My hard outs now. It's past you. Anyway, I'm not a Nazi. And I'm usually punctual. Well, today you're both a Nazi and also un-punctual. The late Nazi. Did you have a good...

Which is a very rare combination. That's true. The trains are supposed to run on time. The Nazis were, if anything, they were punctual. If you had a good conversation with Shiaelle, the Zoom conversation? Yeah, it was good. It was good.

actually. He's all right, actually. You're all right? I mean, Noam gets along with the people he gets along with. Aaron Mote, Norman Finkelstein. They had a bread. You kind of had a breadbell. I don't have to leave. But I was, turned out, I was really right about it. Because I always regarded Finkelstein as like there's something good in him. I don't want to put him in the same category as the haters.

And now he is blasting the right-wing anti-Semites, like Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens. While the people he usually cavorts with, like Brianna-Joy, are, you know, all in with that stuff. He wants no part of it. And, you know, there's other, he's not, he's anti-BDS. He doesn't like River to the Sea. He's a man of principle in his own way. I know he's a little touched and a little crazy.

Yeah, listen, people are complex. This is the problem with, even Trump, like, like, people are not cartoons. This is where everybody gets everything wrong. You have to try to figure out who they are. Anyway. All right. Love you guys. I got to bounce to my fancy dinner.

Enjoy. Enjoy. You're going to a good Australian joint? No. Josh Zaps, everybody. Uncomfortable conversations. A fantastic podcast. Sam Harris approved.

Sam Harris approved. I suppose I can say that. We both have the Sam Harris Star of approval, like Michelin Stars. Thanks, guys. Thank you.