Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 438: Christ vs. Khan (w/ special guest Jasper Nathaniel)

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Journalist Jasper Nathaniel joins us to talk about both Christian and Jewish variants of Zionism, Israel's expansion into Lebanon, the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, and finally the recent pogroms of Palestinians in the West Bank FACT CHECK: Billy Graham was not a Calvinist, and was actually a Southern Baptist Support Jasper here: www.infinitejaz.com And support us here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Welcome to the show Trillow Willie listeners. It is April 2nd. And today we are joined by Jasper Nathaniel. Jasper, how's it going? Going really well. Thanks guys. Everything is great. Everything is really good. Did you survive the onslaught of pranks yesterday, Jasper? I mean, between the onslaught of pranks and the rising anti-Semitism, it was a hard day. But I managed to get through it. But on we trudge. On we trudge. This episode will be, I've been reading the Bible a lot lately. So I've been reawakening my latent gentilism.

You know, so like we're recording this two Gentiles and a Jew. That's right. Two Gentiles, one Jew. We're like, you know, like Marjorie Taylor or like, I don't know, I feel like various commentators have been trying to take back. the word goy and i don't really like that i'm not really a big fan of the right wingers trying to like reawaken goy identity politics um but i do have to say that um reading the bible it's like i guess that was kind of the whole point it's why christian zionism is like really confusing to me it's like

the whole point of christianity was missionizing proselytizing to the gentiles so like what what really are we doing here you know i don't know it's uh It's one of those things. Does it feel like with Easter coming up and knowing what my people did to Jesus Christ, is it a little uncomfortable for you to be here with me? So close to the resurrection? It's a little uncomfortable. It is.

I'll be honest. You know, I really have never really understood the whole Jews killed Jesus trope because it's like, what, what, 14 of them were there? Like, you know what I mean? It's like it doesn't make sense. It's like you got to indict everybody because of a handful of spectical observers. You got to ask Mel Gibson. I believe he is the authority on that one. That's right.

I mean, technically it was the Romans, right? Although they did you. It was the Romans, yes. One of the, um, the Romans had like a sick, fucked up sense of humor. The fact that they put Jesus Christ, king of the Jews, like the sign on the cross, It's like they were doing a little irony, doing a little sarcasm there. Yeah, it was obviously a classic humor, classic Roman humor. Classic Roman humor.

Yeah. We'll prank on the goy. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I want to talk a little bit about that. Like, we've had two Trump appearances in the last 24 hours that have been, one of which was on the show. He's been on the show. He's been on the show. He's been on the show.

Wow. Amazing. I totally missed that. We've had them on twice to talk about the resurrection, actually. Easter Sunday. But they had an Easter lunch yesterday at the White House, like an Easter lunch event. And I just have to read some quotes from this event.

Because it was attended. So Franklin Graham was there. Billy Graham's son Not a good start This guy used to live in Boone North Carolina And we briefly had an apartment together Now Booth Carolina is the The headquarters of the Graham

Oh wait a minute I thought you were saying you and Franklin Graham had No no no no I should clarify Talking about Terrence No I wasn't involved in that weird stuff he was in Okay you got it Got it.

But Terrence thought it'd be a good jap, speaking of April Fool's to sign me up for the mailing list. Oh, that's great. That shit follows you. They will find you wherever you're at. I'm still getting it in my new address. So, wait,

hold on. Who am I thinking of? Not Franklin Graham, the other one of them who was like having a weird sort of cucked relationship with his pool boy? Fallwell. Fallwell Jr. Okay.

Is he still around? Is he still in the picture? Well, the dad died about 15 years ago, but the junior, he's still around. I don't know what he's up. But did the pool boy cuckold thing take him down, or is he still like in the scene? He had his own nestor scandal. He did. Yeah, exactly.

He had his own nestor, yeah. That's funny. That's actually a good question because I would have assumed that in the Trump here he'd be kind of eaten good. but I haven't really seen much from him. It was like during the Biden years, he was like really, I guess it was the Nestor scandal or the Nestor-like scandal. The picture of him, you know, obviously drunk with his fly and zipped with an 18-year-old girl.

The last thing I see from him is a post about keeping the legendary Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz in your prayers. Yeah. Yeah, this is interesting, though. He also posted a tribute to Jesse Jackson. Jackson Jr. when he died. A true rainbow coalition, you even bring him the gay evangelical men. But yeah, no, I do wonder what happened with him in the pool boy. Maybe they weren't. Maybe they're friends. And it's like a thruple. They're in a thruple. The Graham's were a little more ecumenical than like some of their contemporaries, I feel like, because like Billy Graham for all his warts was like,

I think he like even like voted for Obama or something like that. But you don't have to hand it to him because I think that was as a favor to former Klansman Robert Byrd. Oh, yeah, classic. He, the grams were, and still are Calvinist, right? They're Presbyterian. Are they? I'm pretty sure they're Presbyterian.

And I found that out sort of embarrassingly late. I would have assumed they were like Southern Baptist or something. So this is a real gentile hour, Jasper. Do you know? I was going to say, you just lost me when you brought in the Calvinists. Not important. Okay, so Trump's Easter lunch yesterday, Franklin Graham was there. He said his quote from this, Let us pray, Father, you tell us, or let us pray, Father, you tell us in the book of Esther

that the Persians, the Iranians, were wanting to kill every Jew and do it all in one day. wait hold on Franklin Graham said that or Trump said that Franklin Graham That's incredible Wow Today the Iranians the wicked regime of this government wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire

But you have raised up president Trump Are you serious? This is crazy This is news to me I just like I wanted to bring this up Because like I genuinely feel in the last week I've seen way more Trump is God type messages in posts than usual.

Like, we've got this from Maga cultist Christian nationalist Lance Wall now, declares that Trump is basically quote, a prophet in office. This guy is an actual Old Testament prophet king. Trump himself compared himself to Jesus writing into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday

and said, like, Jesus was a king, and I always also am a king. One of my all-time favorite Trump moments was when, I don't know when this was, who said it, but somebody asked him about his favorite Bible passage, and he was just like,

there's too many to pick. All of them. There's just too many to get, too many to pick. And then when Preston, he was like, now that's a personal question. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Very personal to him. Dude. Oh, my God. Well, like, you're cutting

a broad swath with the Old Testament prophet. Kings though mixed bag there you true that is true some good ones some not so good ones so that doesn't really mean anything in the end of it so that I

where was the this Easter ceremony because I'm completely fucking obsessed with his inability to stop talking about the new ballroom like I just cannot get enough it was it I guess it's not ready yet obviously but

but he must have had something to show off some plans or something. Yeah, the Easter lunch was at the White House. But I guess the ballroom was halted. The ballroom's in the White House. What's that? The ballroom's in the White House, isn't it? Right, but I think it was halt.

Didn't a federal judge halt it from being done? Oh, I saw that, but I think he drone strike that federal judge and they continued. Yeah. Yeah. Paula White was also there, which, you know, you have to accept that. But like, genuinely, no one freaks me out more. than Paula White dog. She's scared. She is frightening. She's terrifying. Crazy. She floated the idea that evangelicals need to tie up to Israel, which is not like too dissimilar to what I grew up with.

But there's all kinds of weird stuff there. You know, she's married to a guy that was in Journey. Are you serious? Yeah. I can't really. I got to see. Yeah, you're right. And it's her third marriage, too. Finally, she landed with a rock star. Third time's the charm. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, good for her. John is frightening. Does she speak in tongues? Oh, yeah. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. She's also the type that like, I love this shit. She goes out into the audience and will do her hands like that and like the first three rows will like fall back. Yeah. Yeah. No, very powerful.

You can sometimes feel it all the way here in Brooklyn actually. The waves. You can feel the waves every once in a while. You just feel a little jolt and you're like, she must be Paul White doing that hand thing. Yeah. Uh-huh. He was the keyboardist for Journey. Yeah.

Interesting. That makes sense. She's not marrying the guitarist or the drummer, dog. No. She's marrying the keyboard. No, she's marrying the guy with, like, the keyboard holster. You know what I mean?

Like the ones I had, yeah. I mean, the most skilled with their fingers, that's for sure. That is true. Those too much have a crazy finger, you know, finger battling. Between her casting out demons with the laying on of hands and his, you know. But don't stop believing 20 times in that. I mean, you know, I've actually, I don't think I've ever gotten, um, said anything like this on a podcast before because I'm a serious journalist, but she must have an insane sex life. Like, yeah.

I mean, she, I mean, like, let's, first of all, she married a rock star. Um, and just her personality, like, wow, it must be, she must just be saying some absolutely bad shit stuff. Well, think about if in your normal life, you're like with a stretch. right face like casting out demons and stuff. Right, exactly. When the filters down in the sack, it's untell him what's happening. Yeah, it's like exorcist level stuff. Uh-huh.

She's, um, she too called prop, uh, called Trump a prophet and a king and the new savior. Um, and it's been a weird, I mean, I'm kind of jumping ahead here for a second. I wanted to talk about Trump's speech last night. But it has been a very, in my opinion, anti-Christ past week or so because not only is Trump the king, the risen king, the new Jesus Christ, but, you know, I saw obviously,

you know, if we could just skip across the pond real quick to talk about what we wanted to have you on to talk about today, Jasper. Russia, Ukraine. Russia, Ukraine. where the entire world pivots. But, you know, hopping over to Israel, like, the Israel barred the cardinal, what's his name, Pierre Batista Pizabella, great name,

from entering the holy sepulchre. On Palm Sunday, you see these videos coming out of Lebanon of Israel bulldozing, the idea of bulldozing, like, statues of the St. George in Christian villages, all the, at the same time telling Christian and Drew's Lebanese to, you know, not shelter fellow Muslims to turn them over to the idea of basically ethnically cleansing them. But something that like I feel like did not get enough coverage in the

news was when Netanyahu said last week that Jesus Christ, had no advantage over gangus con. I actually, I kind of fully missed that. I just saw the headline, so you're going to have to fill me in on what the fuck he was talking about. Basically, he was saying that, like, might makes right and that in a battle between the two, Jesus would lose against Kingus Khan.

Pretty intuitive, in my opinion, but okay. Seems to me that that's the kind of statement you make only if you know that like the, you know, overwhelming majority of your Christian supporters are part of like an actual satanic cult. But masquerading is like, he should have just said, he should have just said Hitler. That would have sort of like made the whole thing a little clearer, I think, the point is making. Uh-huh. Yeah, the gangist con thing is like, um, I don't know, like, if you're Mike Huckabee or any of these guys,

like we've talked a lot about this on the show before like christian zionists hate the new testament and they hate jesus but um how does that play back home i don't really understand that like and also man oh go ahead no i mean mike huckabee is he's actually i i guess i don't want to give him any credit at all but like i i've ridden a lot and i'm working on a big story about the Palestinian Americans in the West Bank who have sort of found themselves in the crosshairs of settler violence and the occupation in the last couple of years

and they've had a lot of interaction with the embassy and a handful of interactions with Mike Huckabee himself. And I got to be honest, like, I think he is not as sinister as he is sort of confused. Because like, like just to give you one quick example is a little bit of a spoiler for a story I'm working on,

but like he went to the family of somebody who was killed by a settler, an American, he went with them to see the place where he was killed. And they couldn't get close enough because there were settlers there. And he was basically asking all these questions like to his security, he didn't understand why there were settlers in, this area because it's technically area A, which means it's Palestinian control territory. And he genuinely seemed to like not get it. He was like, why are they there? They're not supposed to be there. And then, and he promised the family, he's like, we're going to do everything we can to get them out.

And then they just never heard from them again. And their impression was that not that he was like putting on a performance, but that he was actually sort of sincere. And then like his memory just erased the second he left. And he went back to like remembering what his job. is, which is to be, you know, Israel's representative there. And so I think that, like, he has to reconcile a lot of contradictions in his head. You know, like it is, you know, he loves to talk about how Christians are thriving in Israel and in the West Bank, which is just simply untrue. I mean, if you go talk to anybody in Bethlehem or, um, or Taipei or these other Christian villages, like, they are suffering. They're being brutally attacked constantly. But I think that he really, like,

he is, I guess if you believe that you need all of the Jews in Israel in order for like the rapture to come and for you to get beamed up to heaven, like you have to do a lot of mental gymnastics. And I think that he is in fact a real believer. Yeah, I mean, yeah, on its face, right. But like just in terms of what he has, what is happening on the ground there, all the things that he has to reconcile to sort of maintain this belief. I think it's hard work, frankly. I think it's hard work. And I think it's hard work. And I think, he is more sort of a sort of lost puppy than he is this really nefarious actor. I don't know. I'm working this out in real time as I talk. So no, I think that I myself have really been trying to understand the Christian Zionist mindset lately because I grew up in a Southern Baptist church. I remember like walking into the, the, I don't know what you would call this. I guess foyer right

outside the I'll tell you what you didn't walk into is a sepulchre. I didn't walk into a sepulch. No, we don't have anything like that in Southern Baptist Church. But you don't find that. In the foyer outside of the church hall,

my church, the pastor had all these books. And one of them was the John Hagee book, Jerusalem Countdown. And I've always started about this. I've always thought this was hilarious. Because the whole book is about how, like, you know, we're entering the Great War prophesied in like Ezekiel 30 or 34 or something like that. But it's like we can't let Iran get their hands on nuclear secrets.

We can't let them know how to build a nuclear weapon. And in the book, John Hagey tells you how to build a nuclear weapon. Amazing. Love that. Like, why do I need to know this as a kid in New Mexico? I have my own experience with that book. That must have just been like day rigor. and I'm Pentecostal though,

but that book was given to me by a woman named Linda who was married to this Christian's eye and this like shut in guy named Gideon and their sons were like, their names were like cartoonishly Old Testament, like Naim and Habakkuk and shit like that. Were they, they were Protestant?

No disrespect to the Nahams and the Habakkukes out there. Just, you know, you don't see a lot of them running around these days. They were Gentile? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they were like kind of doomsday. She gave me, my mom. a copy of this book and said that God told her in a vision that I needed to read it. And my mom was like, I don't know, but here you go. I was like, huh.

But it was like the whole thing. It was like the whole Iran is sort of the, you know, the focal point of like things going forward. And we got to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. Yeah. It's about Iran. Exactly. Yeah.

Same. But yeah. Amazing. It's, I've just been wondering lately, though, to your point, Jasper. at what point are you at i feel like i don't quite know how to articulate this but like just seeing that video of the idea of bulldozing that that statute of st george in like lebanon it's like at some point christians are going to have to take aside you're going to have to well i think i mean i think they're kind of all over the map to be honest like mike pompeo is you know a huge christian

zionist i don't even know what he's up to these days but um But he's just a straight up neocon. Like I think that his just sort of like, you know, burning desire to annihilate Iran and, you know, every, every country, almost every country in the Middle East, except for Israel, probably trumps his, you know, Christian Zionism. In the case of Mike Huckabee, I mean, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a Huckabee scholar.

Like, I don't know enough about his, his politics from his years as, you know, whatever the hell he was doing. But again, like my impression just from, I mean, I have watched so much of him in the last couple months. And like,

to be honest, he's having the fucking time of his life. Like, oh yeah, he is in a, he's in a band. I don't know if you've seen him performing with his,

um, I can't remember if it's with a church or with a synagogue because there's definitely some Jews in the band with him. And they're doing these like, just completely, absurd, like cringe. what was it? Oh, they did Sweet Home, Alabama, but I think they did.

Jerusalem. Yeah, exactly. And it was just like, I was watching him. I was like, this is a boomer having the time of his life. He is like his, he is living out his golden year dream. And, and yeah, like, again, my, I mean, he said years ago, many years ago that he wanted to get a holiday home in a settlement. I can't remember which one. But like, and the videos when he goes to the settlements, like they, you know, they treat him like a king. And then he has to face the reality of what's happening every once in a while. And again, like, my impression is that he is shocked every time he encounters, like, the reality of it. And then he very quickly sort of pushes it aside so he can go back to having a really good time, like, in his, you know,

old man band. I think that's the tension that like every, like, evangelical, like, pro-Israel person kind of faces because I feel like they, they, see the stuff, they see the genocide and they know that's wrong. But I think what sort of overrides that in their head is like, well, but prophecy must be fulfilled. And they don't really engage with the fact that like if you worship the God, you say you worship, then, you know, you have to be concerned with that first and foremost. You know what I mean? And it's like, it just feels like, I see that with every, I see that even in my own family, like just like, well, how do you square this with this? Yeah, I guess you find this weird that people are trying to

breed a red heifer to like bring about the building of a temple you know what i mean like well i guess to your point before like if you are a true believer in the way he seems to be like you your brain has has been training for you know a hundred years in his case to like deal with all these contradictions uh just on on the on the religion itself and so he's sort of like perfectly equipped to go into a place like israel and the west bank and brush off all these contradictions and just, you know, continue being like Israel's number one supporter. So I think he is in that sense, like the perfect man for the job in terms of for what his job actually is,

which is, it seems to represent Israel's interest to the United States. Yeah. Yeah. It is strange that the, I don't know, in some ways like Christian Zionism is sort of in a weird way, the inverse of something like Marxism, because it has a very strange conception of history. It has this vision of history as something that occurs in stages. And so instead of modes of production, it's dispensations, right? It's like you've got the age of this, the age of this, and the age of this. It is very strange to me that like it seems like over time, the idea

of Israel in the Christian imagination was sort of metaphorical. Like they had to, Crusades and they wanted the Holy Land. But like really since the very beginning, since the early Christian ministry, they just wanted the kingdom of God. And it was this very abstract, like, they won heaven on earth. And over time, there have been multiple attempts to recreate Israel, like the Holy Land in various places. But I don't know if you all knew this.

Like an American Christian Zionist is who gave Theodore Herzl the idea of Israel. His name was William Blackstone. Hurtzl wanted, you know, the Jewish homeland to be like in Madagascar. Uganda, Texas, like, he didn't really care where it was. He was like, hey, you know, if there's real estate, then we'll take it. They sent people out all around the world to check locations. Scout the spots. Yeah.

You got to. But like, my question on that stuff is like, I wonder, like, if they would have, like, built Israel in the Rhine Valley after the Holocaust. or like went to Uganda wherever else that they like kind of floated if like that message would have been as potent to like American evangelicals because it's not

yeah I don't I yeah well what's funny what's funny to me is like for a European I could kind I don't agree but if you're a European crusader in like the 13th century it's like Israel's just kind of right over there we're on the same continent subcontinent

in America we've gotten farther geographically from Israel but we want it more than ever It's this quest for authenticity. Everybody won't... Well, I mean, maybe this is a good segue into settler stuff, which I assume you guys are going to want to talk about. But, like, you know, the early Zionists, for the most part, were secular. And, like, you know, which is why they didn't really give a shit if they ended up in Galveston, Texas, or Uganda, or, you know, the Holy Land.

And it was really the, you know, the religious Zionists came later. And, you know, what's, what is interesting today is, you know, both with the Christian Zionists, but also with the settlers. And the reason they have so much in common, obviously, is because the claim to Israel is grounded in the Bible and the biblical borders, which, you know, as Huckabee articulated recently is basically the Nile to the Euphrates. And so, like, they, the way the settlers talk about themselves and the way they talk about their mission, um, is, is basically like if Israel, if Israel's right to be here, the state of Israel, if it's right to be here is in fact grounded in the Old Testament, then, you know, what they called Judea and Samaria or the West Bank has a much stronger claim than fucking Tel Aviv. And on that, they're 100% right because like, you know, the actual land in the West Bank was in fact in the Old Testament much more than. Tel Aviv. And so what they're saying is like in order to justify this project of greater Israel or, you know, the land of Israel, we need to actually make it religious, which it was not in its inception so much. And, you know, that is why, obviously, the real kinship is not between the Christian Zionists and like Nenjahou. I mean, maybe from a political perspective, but it's really between the Christian Zionists and the settlers and the settler leaders. Yeah. Netanyahu.

himself is not particularly religious, right? No, he's not, he's a hundred percent an atheist. You know, he's about as religious as I am. He, you know, he wears a yarmika when it's, when it is politically expedient to do so. But no, he's secular. He grew up secular.

Most, I actually, I don't know the statistics, but like the, like this phenomenon of religious Zionists being in control of the government is, is pretty new in Israel.

Yeah, it's, um, that would explain his, uh, underestimation of Jesus. I just think in a, in a combat between Genghis Khan and Jesus, I think Jesus would be able to outsmart Genghis Khan a little bit. Maybe not be, maybe he wouldn't be as good on a horse. Because he, you know,

Jesus wrote, I don't know, he's going to come back on a wide horse. I don't know. I wouldn't, wouldn't underwrite him there. That's true. I think that, God, I can't believe if I'm going to say this. I'm like a month late in the culture, but I think Genghis Khan would mug Jesus, though. Damn.

He was famously like such a ladies man. And Jesus, as far as I know, died a virgin. So, you know, if we're talking about just like who's going to alpha who, it seems pretty clear that Genghis Khan would come out on top. The Chad, Con, versus the Virgin Christ. Exactly. I will say this, though. Jesus had bars. You can't deny that.

That was his really, like, the reason why we're even still talking about Jesus to this day is the man had bars in a way no one before him really had. Like, he was just spit. Yeah, he probably wasn't for a lack of options that he would die of virgin, you know. Right, right, right. He was locked in, though. He was locked in. Yeah, 100%.

Right, right. Yeah, he was a voluntary celibate. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe this would be a good way that's kind of like segue into talking about the settlements. I kind of wanted to square this up a little bit, though, by just kind of giving a broader context of what everything that Israel has been involved in in just the last like month.

Obviously listeners to this show are, you know, well aware of Israel's activities, especially in the last two and a half years. But like, obviously launching a war against the war against the world. Iran, you know, not even just a war by any conventional definition of the terms, but in my opinion, something closer to bordering on, I don't know, it's like somewhere between like an assassination campaign and a lobbying effort to get the United States to take the biggest hits on the war. But like, as we're recording, like just last night, Israel assassinated Kamal Khurazi. who was like the former foreign minister of Iran, who was also once again, like all these other

diplomats they've assassinated, was trying to essentially create a diplomatic off-ramp to this thing. So I was kind of shocked by, I don't know, I was kind of shocked by all the commentary from both pundits and, you know, investors, people who follow the markets. When they themselves were shocked that Trump did not offer any kind of indication. that this war would be ending anytime soon after his address last night. Like, they still cannot accept that we are in this thing. And the reason we're in it and can't get out is because Israel. I mean, I don't mean, I'm not trying to do like a reductionist thing or saying, like, you know,

like a lot of these, like, vulgar right-wingers do that Israel is the reason, and they talk to the glorious, you know, noble United States into it. But I do mean to say that the reason we can't get out of it is because Israel has created a set of circumstances that would make that virtually impossible because they need the United States to fight it because they are engaged in, as you pointed out earlier, Eretz Israel, right? Greater Israel.

They're trying to take Lebanon right now. And I think that like they, you know, as we pointed out, they're ethnically cleansing. She had since southern Lebanon. But another insane thing that happened this past week was the passing of this bill in the Israeli parliament that essentially grants

the Israeli government full reign to just execute do the death penalty on any of its Palestinian detainees. You saw all these videos of like Ben Gavir Well, I mean technically just to be like specific about it, it makes the death penalty, the default penalty for a Palestinian convicted of killings of,

convicted of murder with nationalists or like with the intent of uh i forget exactly how they phrase it but like you know destroying the state of israel so basically like if a palestinian kills somebody out out of you know as sort of like what israel would call a terror attack against israel then the default penalty is now the death penalty is just to be precise about it basically like an ethnically specific well it's i mean that they found a loophole for that because originally it actually was ethnically specific. And I forget what I think it was a basically they responded to the international outrage. And they took the ethnic component out of it. And instead they added that caveat that it is only if the crime is committed like with the

intent of destroying the Jewish state. Uh-huh, which could be very broad. So that no, no settler. Yeah, no settler is, you know, going to be accused of that. But any Palestinian who attacks an Israeli, you know, out of, you know, again, what they would call terror, will be accused of that. So like the only, like, I guess technically if like an anti-Zionist, like if it, I guess technically if an Israeli Jewish person killed somebody and waved a flag that said, I want to destroy the state of Israel, like then, you know, they would be subject to it too. So in that sense, it's not ethnic.

But again, like it was, they clearly wrote it in this way so that it would only affect Palestinians. Right. And, you know, I, you know, the videos that came out of this are like Ben Gavir wearing like a noose pin on his lapel. You know, they have still been escalating attacks in Gaza. This is hardly received any coverage, mostly because, you know, at this point they are engaged in what you could say is at least a four front war, right? Like a three or four front war. I don't know. I mean, I don't, you know, at the same time, they're also getting hit by missiles from Iran. Was that guy, Alon Levy, who is, you know, one of the most annoying Israeli commandant. Yeah. The Twitter guy. Yeah. Iran is firing ballistic missiles either with

500 kilogram warheads or cluster submunitions at Israeli residential areas and the whole world is treating that is totally normal. Is that the guy that was at both October 7th and Bondi Beach? No, no, no. That's a different guy. That's a different guy. This is a guy who used to be an official government

propagandist and then he got fired because he was doing such a bad job and now he just does it for sport, I believe. But yeah, didn't he try to get, didn't he try to like sue the Israeli government or something for not paying him and then I think oh I'm not sure that's funny that wouldn't shock me um I I uh you know so what you know what I think has not received quite enough coverage in international media however is what's going on in the West Bank and specifically that's

why we wanted to have you on to talk about this Jasper because in the last two weeks, I think we're recording this April 2nd. So maybe this was like a little over a week ago, maybe a week and a half ago. There were, I guess, I don't even know how to characterize them. I guess you could characterize them. The Groms. Yeah, pogroms or race riots of some kind in the settlements. And this started outside the settlements. Okay. So this started with the death of an 18-year-old right named Yehuda Sherman. Could you talk a little bit about like where this started and what's transpired since then. Yeah.

Okay. So I mean, obviously this all started a long time ago. And in particular, like the, the major, the first like big turning point actually was before October 7th. It was at the beginning of 2023 when this new Israeli government came into power. And Smotrich in particular, who was the finance minister, Smotrich was one of the, fucking punk settler kids that you see running around the hills, terrorizing Palestinians. He grew up doing that.

He was accused of terrorist-related offenses. He was going to blow up a highway in response to the Gaza disengagement in 2005. And he was, like, long considered too radical, even for Israeli politics. You know, there's this lurch right word. He becomes a finance minister. And then he pulls off this remarkable maneuver where he basically does. does to just simplify it is he inserts himself into the defense ministry, which allows him to then take over the sort of machinery of the occupation. Because, you know, Israel's rule over the West Bank

from a legal perspective, from an international legal perspective, is a military occupation. And so they need to maintain this pretense that it is the military governing the West Bank and not the government of Israel. And it is not part of Israel as such. And, And so Smotridge installs himself into the defense ministry and builds basically a shadow government called the settlement administration and begins usurping power away from the military, which to be clear, like the military was never a benevolent force in the West Bank, but it didn't necessarily share the same ideological commitments as the settlers. It was more about, you know, brute force and, you know, like their own version of maintaining order, which involved. a lot of violence and whatnot. But the settlers have a specific goal, which is to, you know, expand their settlements and take over the entire West Bank. And so Smotrich basically completely, like the way he describes it himself is he changes the DNA of the system to allow this like

unrestrained settlement growth. And at the same time, Ben Gavir, who also came into power at the same time as a national security minister, he then, he literally instructs the police to stop enforcing certain laws against settlers. And then he starts handing out guns. to settlers. So again, all this is before October 7th. Then you have October 7th. And immediately what Smotritch basically does is he builds this like rhetorical bridge between the Hamas attack and the Palestinian Authority, which is ludicrous because the PA, they hate Hamas and they are essentially, you know, part of the Israeli government. But he basically says, you know, these are the same terrorists. They are going to, they want to launch a same sort of attack on Israel that Hamas did.

And so now in addition to everything he's already done, he has this security justice. for building out the settlements. Okay, so now violence is like completely fucking exploding. That's what people have seen in the last couple years. The spikes in violence, I mean, there's been a lot of them, but it always when Israel has like either like during, like when they launched the Rafa campaign in Gaza, there was a huge spike in settler violence during the first war on Iran, the 12-day war last year, there was a huge spike. And now there's been another one with the latest Iran war.

And I think it's in part because they feel that nobody's watching them. And it's also just because I think there's just a sort of like jingoistic like, you know, Israel is, you know, we're off killing people. We get to do it here now too. So anyway, to now get to your actual question. So the violence already had exploded. And then last, I think almost two weeks ago now, this guy, Yehuda Sherman, who's 18 years old, he was born into a prominent settler family.

His father is actually an activist in Smotritch's religious Zionism party. His grandfather moved to the West Bank from Cleveland in, I think, the 70s. So, you know, this is a guy with American roots, basically. He was part of an outpost in the West Bank. An outpost, just real quick, is basically when people peel off from a settlement, and they just like plant a flag and, you know, put down some tents and say, like, this is now our own settlement. And they have not got an official Israeli authorization. So all the settlements are illegal under international law, but Israel has authorized them.

And outpost is even illegal under Israeli law. But a big part of the last few years has been Smotritch and the military basically coordinating with the settlers to help them build and expand these outposts. So Yehuda Sherman is part of an outpost. where if you went to the, and his older brother was the leader of the outpost. If you go to the crowd funding page for the outpost, it says very clearly, and this is what I love about the settlers,

is that they always, you know, say the quiet part out loud, so to speak. It says the goal of this outpost is to seize, seize the land and like establish Jewish control, something to that effect. I'm forgetting the exact words, but it says that the goal was to seize the land and put it in Jewish hands. And so they're very clear about what they're doing.

What happens is that him and his brother and some other, another settler, go out on an ATV on what they call land patrol. Now, land patrol is, I mean, it's kind of what it sounds like where, and it's a lot of the videos that you see where like these like settlers just

sort of not the videos of the brutal attacks, but the videos where like a settler is like in a village, walking through somebody's house, like sitting in their chairs, taking picks, putting their phone in their face, just like being like fucking unbelievably rude and nasty. Like that's a land patrol. They just will drive into villages, drive around villages and intimidate people.

And yeah, go ahead. On ATVs provided by the Israeli government, right? Yeah, I actually have not been able to figure out if this particular one was provided by the government. In many cases, they are provided. And when I say ATV, we're talking about like $30,000 vehicles here, really nice ATVs. And I, like when you're in the West Bank, when I'm over there, like, you see this every single

day. If you're spending time in Palestinian villages, they drive through. And they are, I mean, the way I've been describing it, what they're doing is like, the thing that kids do when they get in their brother's face and they say, I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. And, you know, they're an inch away. And they're trying to provoke their brother into pushing them or hitting them.

So then they can, you know, go cry to mom. that the brother hit them. Like, that is literally what they're doing. And they will come out and say it. So one of the leaders of this hilltop settler movement actually says the point of these patrols is to generate friction. And so point being, while on a land patrol, these guys get into a collision right outside of a Palestinian village called Bait Imrin.

The Palestinians in the village say that it was an accident on a dangerous road. The driver said publicly it was an accident on a dangerous road. But what happens is the ATV is hit by a pickup truck, driven by a Palestinian. It basically careens into a ditch and Yehuda Sherman is killed. And his older brother and the other guy are injured. Yehuda Sherman's brother, Daniel, immediately comes out and says it was a terrorist attack. It was a car ramming attack. Again, the Palestinian driver who went to the hospital and then,

and it went straight to the Israeli police to turn himself in and give a statement, maintained that it was an accident. Just to fast forward real quick, a week later or so, the shin bet, which is one of the intelligence agencies, says that the driver admitted

that it was a car ramming attack. Obviously, there's no reason to trust what they say, but I want to just like make a point here, which is that I don't, it is, it's possible that it was, in fact, a car ramming attack.

It's not unheard of. for Palestinians to attack settlers. It used to be fairly common, you know, certainly during the second indifada. But it's also entirely possible as an accident. But in either case, if you take the settler story at their word, if you assume that it was in fact an attack, then they got exactly what they were looking for.

Because then what happens is at his funeral the next day, the settler's father gives a speech where he calls his son a sacrifice. He says my son was a sacrifice by the Jewish people for the settlement movement. And now we need you to go out and create three new outposts in his name. And then Smotrich gets up and he gives a speech and he says... Whose son was also just killed in Lebanon. Injured, injured.

I'm sorry. I thought he was killed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smotritch then gets up and says, we're going to erase the letters and the lines and take over the whole land of Israel. What he's referring to is area A, B, and C, which was the division of administration of the West Bank during the Oslo Accords in the mid-90s. And then, and mind you, as this is happening, a video is released, which, which a video emerges, which shows that after the crash, local Palestinians and the Red Crescent were rescuing the settlers, which contradicts the story of Daniel Sherman, where he said not only was it a deliberate attack, which that part is not on video. but he said that after it, Palestinians were throwing stones at them and they had to be rescued by the Israeli army.

The video just directly contradicts that. But obviously, you know, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. And so then, you know, from the actually started before the funeral, it started the first night. But then like these settler telegram groups, they literally start sharing like the equivalent of like, you know, partyful invitations, like Evites, telling people where to meet. and they launched these just absolutely ferocious pogroms across the entire West Bank. In the next couple of days, five new outposts are established, including three in Area A, which a couple years ago was completely fucking unheard of. But again, they are taking Smotrish's instructions.

And I think by the second or third night, the first person had been killed outside one of these, near one of these outposts. And so, like, the entire settlement movement, it's obviously grounded in, their biblical claims to the land. But it is, when you actually like listen to what they're saying, it is so grievance driven. So grievance driven.

The Palestinians are constantly trying to kill them, but also the IDF doesn't protect us. And the government wants to, you know, do blah, blah, blah. And so when they have a moment like this and they get to say, you see, you know, Palestinian killed one of us, it is like grist for the mill. As his father said, a sacrifice.

And they go out and commit the, this horrific violence. Well, I think something that was very fascinating about the piece you wrote about this. There's a few moving parts here, but the outpouring of condemnations from various international and specifically American leaders, you know, specifically thinking here of, I think it was your congressional representative who didn't help you out when you were being attacked in the West Bank. God damn.

Thanks, but. Yeah. Ignored my mom for like a month. My mom was calling him every day and he just would not speak to her. Jesus. And then also APEC even made a statement about it. I mean, what is the, you know, I think that like I find this, honestly, I find this fascinating.

Like, everything that's happened in the last two and a half. half three years like and Israel's like in my opinion what I would call almost an accelerationism they're stripping away of any pretense and not even you know making making any kind of gesture towards liberal Zionism anymore I was kind of genuinely a little surprised that like there were these this outpouring of condemnations like what do you what do you make of that what do you think that they felt the need to do that okay so there's a couple different levels of it. Starting with like the condemnation is happening within Israel, Nen Yahoo comes out and condemns it. The president, Isaac Herzog, comes out and condemns it.

The chief of the military, Zemir condemns it. Even the head of the Central Command and the West Bank, Abbey Bluth condemns it. This is, I think the best way to think of it is like, this is the pressure release valve for the settlement project. Because the project, the settlement project, is a project of settling. It's not a project of living in our settlements. It is settling. They have to continue to expand. That is the name of the game. They have to keep growing. And they literally have goals of bringing in a million people there. And so in order to do that, you need to use violence, a combination of state violence and what is essentially like these militias that have been deployed by the state, which are these settlers.

the you know there was a time not even that long ago maybe I mean it has sort of evolved over the years but even a couple years ago like the you did not see this level of coordination between the Israeli military the Israeli government and the settlers that you see today like there was a time when the settlers were being chased around by the military and sometimes the military would even take down their outposts and there was like all there was like these sort of inter uh There were these clashes between them as institutions. Today, you literally have, you know, their allies in the government, which is, you know, namely Smotrich. And then there's tons of others. And they are working with the leaders in the military. The leaders in that, so Avi Bluth, who is basically in charge of security in the West Bank, in charge of the IDF there, he has a henchmen. This has been, like, thoroughly reported in the Israeli media. He has a henchman that meets directly with these settler leaders, and they pull up maps, and they map out where they're going to build their outposts.

And based on that, they figure out what roads do we need to put there? How big of a military guard do we need to provide you? What sort of equipment do you need? And then they go there, and then they have a military guard. And so when you hear about, you know, settlers attacking Palestinians with a military guard, that's not just because they showed up. That those, that battalion is assigned to protect these particular. settlers who are out, you know, terrorizing Palestinians. And then what happens is if they are successful, which they have been dozens and dozens of times in the last couple years, they chase a

Palestinian community off their land. And then the outpost is retroactively authorized and becomes a settlement or becomes part of one of the settlements. So a really great example is that video that went viral the other day, the CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond, who he was in a town called Tysir reporting on this brutal attack where an old man was clubbed in his sleep, broke his skull, and an outpost had just formed there. And these soldiers sort of like accost him and his cameraman. They assault his cameraman. And then they say to him straight up, like, we're seeking revenge for Yehuda Sherman. And also like, we believe that all of the West Bank is for the Jews.

And we are going to help them turn this illegal outpost into illegal settlement. It just spells all of it out. So that video, you know, creates international outrage. The IDF immediately comes out and condemns it. And then they say that whole battalion has been suspended. The guy you said those things has been fired, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The very next day, the settlers are back burning that village to the ground, terrorizing it again.

And there's just no mention of it whatsoever by the military. And so, like, the point is they issue these condemnations. Like, when I documented this particularly brutal attack where, you know, this grandmother was clubbed, they all came out and condemned it. And then what they do is in some cases, like in that case, they actually even made an arrest. They arrested a guy. And then they let the, they continue to facilitate the expansion of the outpost on the ground. So, like, it just, these condemnations basically, like, placate the international

outrage, which then allows them to quietly continue supporting it. Okay, so that's the first level of it. For somebody like a Dan Goldman, you know, Dan Goldman is, you know, I think I would call him like a classic liberal Zionist in that like he is he. I'm sure he. I actually, I don't know for sure, but he's been a pretty. Sounds familiar. I'm trying to.

Oh, was. he at APEC? No, no, who is? Like, what, what, oh, he's your representative, sorry. He's my representative. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dan Goldman, yeah. Yeah, he's, uh, he represents me where I am right now. Um, so, so, so this guy, like, you know, the whole sort of racket of liberal Zionism is they

need to maintain this illusion of a potential two-state solution. because if you think about it, without a two-state solution, you basically have three options. Option one is the, is apartheid. Like you have three million Palestinians in the West Bank who cannot be considered full citizens or else it would completely degrade the Jewish majority in Israel. and at a certain point, it would no longer be a Jewish state. So that is obviously untenable. Option two is ethnic cleansing, which is what they're actually doing.

You know, you get the Palestinians off the land so that it just becomes a Jewish state on its own. He's not going to come out and support that, even if it's what he wants to happen. Option three is you basically partition the Palestinians in the West Bank. You put them in, you know, little, you put them in their own tiny, little area. You know, let them say they have a state. And now you can continue to say we have a Jewish state that is also a democracy because everybody has voting rates because the Palestinians are not citizens of our state. And so, so in order for a Dan Goldman or any liberal Zionist, frankly, to be able to purport to support a Jewish democratic state, it requires the existence

of a Palestinian state to partition them, to partition it and to, you know, democratically, you know, create the demographic conditions for a Jewish democratic state. The settlers come out and does somebody like Dan Goldman, they're like, go fuck yourself. There will never be a Palestinian state. We control everything here. We're going to, you know, brutalize the Palestinians. We're going to chase them out of here. We're going to do this and that.

And so what they're doing is they're creating a political problem for a Dan Goldman because they're making it increasingly politically untenable for somebody like him to keep on pretending that there is this potential two-state solution. And so, like, for a long time, it's actually not really new. I mean, there's been this like burst of it recently, but it's not a new phenomenon to see a liberal Zionist in the U.S. condemn sadler violence, because that has always been the sort of like both a politically necessary thing for them to do, but also it is just like it's disruptive. And so, you know, but what makes it so, you know, but what makes it so, disingenuous is that what they all say, I mean, like Goldman and particular is focus on men.

He says two things. Number one is we need to reinstate Biden sanctions on settlers. Biden sanctioned like eight settlers. I'm not even exaggerating. Like I'm almost positive it was less than 10. Yeah. And like as if that was going to, you know, fundamentally change something. I mean, it's just, it's almost like beyond parity.

So that was his number one solution. We need to reinstate the Biden's. And then the second thing is the government needs to prosecute these settlers, which is just like it is so unbelievably disingenuous. I mean, the metaphor I can come up with for it is like, we need to ask the foxes to convene a summit on henhouse security. Like nobody who has paid any attention believes that the Israeli government, not only that they would like start like cracking down on settlers, because like, It's it's not as if sometimes people say they're not enforcing laws on settlers. They're not prosecuting them. But that is understates it so severely because they are working directly with them.

Like they are in partnership on this project. So what he would actually need to say, you know, if he was going to be sincere was like the entire Israeli government needs to be sanctioned. And you know, we need to cut off all support for them. And like that is how you would theoretically. reign in settler violence. And anything short of that, anything short of cutting off all support for Israel is supporting the Israeli government, which is fundamentally supporting the settlement project. Yeah, I've always kind of thought that the liberal position, especially, I mean, you saw this, especially in 2024 during the presidential election. Like, the liberal position is always kind of

where you see the contradiction, like, at its, you know, most heightened, uh, civil. but like so for example like you were talking about how like a lot of these settlers um are if not all of them operating on this like sort of um biblical imperative right like they think that like there is some sort of like religious or biblical mandate to the land um but it is also the case that if you want to look at from a materialist standpoint there is a racial ideology that is obviously developed over the last 70 years that for every pretty much every single Israeli has as deeply seeped into Israeli society and into United States the United States political class as well that Palestinians are not human right or that they are some sort of like subhuman inherently violent

right racial category and also Terence just like from a materialist perspective they have literally said that the Palestinians land deeds which they have from Jordanian times are no good. Only Israeli land deeds counts. So like literally it's like your private property actually is not legitimate because it's

from this bullshit, you know, Jordanian kingdom. Like only an Israeli deed is a legitimate one. Which I guess their Israeli deed is the one that goes back like 3,000 years. Is that what? King Hayred? No, no, no, no. Not even. I mean like yes, like the biblical deed, sure, but what they're actually, like, quite literally what they're saying is like only a deed

issued by Israel since 1967 counts. And like, they're not giving deeds to Palestinians. So like a lot of Palestinians have land deeds from Jordanian times and they just like don't count. Well, this is what I, something that like really was not surprising in the slightest in 2024, but I could see how many people would be shocked by this. I was reading W.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in America in 2024. And so I kind of felt like this is the thing that sort of clarified it all for me, that the Democratic, because I guess Dan Goldman is a Democrat, I assume, right? Yeah, like the Democratic. He was the guy who he made a name for himself because he was the prosecutor that led the Robert Mueller or the Russia Gate. Like he led the first impeachment

against Trump, basically. And so he became a resistance hero. Okay. Yeah, the Democratic Party, and it's especially like its leaders, had so thoroughly internalized Israeli ideologies about Palestinians that it like, it wasn't even like a question of like trying to make the moral case that then that genocide was wrong. Like they had so thoroughly internalized the notion that a Palestinian was like a lesser human being that like 10 Palestinians equaled one Israeli, you know, however math that they worked it out. that they couldn't even really see why genocide was wrong in that case. You know, it's like them walking out of the DNC with their fingers in their ears or Kamala not even letting a Palestinian speak at the DNC. But like, honestly, what was very shocking to me reading your piece was

Yari Lapid, is that how you say his name, the liberal opposition leader in Israel? He, him framing it, and I have to see this as a kind of projection. because you know Israel's conception of itself is is this like multicultural democracy that like loves gay people and loves all this other stuff, that they have to frame it in this like biblical sense as a kind of like projection or as a mystification of what is clearly a very racial ideology. He asked about, I'm just quoting from your piece, asked about Ambassador Mike Huckabee's claim that Israel has a right to the territory between the Nile and the Euphrates. Lapid concurred. is based on the Bible. Our mandate over the land of Israel is biblical. The biblical borders of the land of Israel are clear. Therefore, the borders are the borders of the Bible. I don't really, like, I guess I have a few questions about that. Like, first of all, the Bible is the Christian book, I thought, or do Jews also refer to their book as the Bible? I thought it was the Torah or the Tanakh. I think we say the Bible sometimes. It's not like, yeah, we're allowed to say it,

actually, parents. Thanks for checking, but yes. I just wanted to, yeah, I did to do my due diligence. But like, I don't know. I think that's very interesting that like, you know, even a liberal opposition in Israel has to like frame it as this like, we have a biblical. Read the read to the end of that paragraph because I think that sort of explains it.

Yeah, he, Lepeed added that security and policy considerations prevent Israel from taking it all, but those constraints are clearly not fixed. since the situation already seems to have changed in Lebanon with Israel announcing plans to occupy the country from its southern border to the Latani River. Right. So, so like the liberal conception, such as, you know, Israel can be said to have liberals in government at this point, is like, well, yes, we actually do have a right to the entire land of Israel. But let's be, let's be practical. Let's be political. Like, you know, we're not going to actually like, you know, go to war with Iraq or, um, or whatever.

But when you frame it that way, you tend to leave yourself the opportunity to say, oh, look at that. circumstances have changed. Like now we get to go occupy Lebanon. And by the way, you know, we have the right to it as well. And so like the, the somebody like Gailer Lepid, who is, um, I mean, he is definitely a centrist just in terms of like the spectrum of Israeli politics. But like he's probably not going to come out and say, like, we are going to.

Well, actually, I don't know what he would say at this point. But like, you know, in theory, I don't think somebody like him would say, we're going to get all the Palestinians out of the West Bank and we're going to occupy it. But the moment there is like a change in circumstances where that becomes either the politically expedient thing to do or there's some like bullshit security justification where like they will switch on a dime and say, well, now we get to go occupy that or now we get to occupy Lebanon. on basically. And I think that that is like basically the same justification that you see for like the fact that they have now like fucking occupied like a third of Gaza or something. And, you know,

they built this ridiculous buffer zone, which is basically just expanding Israel's borders. Like, again, I think that most liberal Zionists would say Israel should not like take over Gaza. but they're going to fully support occupying it if they have like just the slightest sort of pretense or justification for it. And so that is, I think, how the liberal Zionist thinks. And like on the settlement project in particular, like a good example is like before October 7th and even more so before the second intifada, there was like a political block in Israel that was anti-occupation. It was never particularly like effective political block or like a productive one. But like there were lots of politicians or there were politicians and there were prominent people who were against the occupation and who were against a settlement project. After October 7th, everybody starts talking about it as well, you know, we might not like them.

But they are what they call it as like our bulletproof vest. You know, the settlements are protecting us from the barbarians east of the green line, whether they be Palestinians and the West Bank. or, you know, coming from Jordan or, like, wherever they might come from, like, we need the settlements there to protect us. And so the liberal is really, the liberal Zionist position is always going to say, we actually get to preempt any idea of, like, actual liberalism or, like, actual, you know, democratic or even like human rights principles if, like, it's in Israel's interest to do so. And then you have them now also pointing to the Bible as well.

yeah i think that to bring this full circle back to the beginning of the conversation we're talking about like christians and how they square that circle it's really not that big of a mystery once you add the kind of racial ideological component to it like the way they square it is that well those people aren't uh they're not human i guess in the way that like white people are right like if you've created this like white category in racial ideology so it's like it's permissible to destroy their relics of Christianity and shrines and statues and churches and all this. And I think it also functions the same way for liberals. I think that, like, I've talked about this for a while, but it is just genuinely remarkable.

Like, the liberal conception of 1960s America was like Martin Luther King, I have a dream. Like, we're all hand in hand. But like when it comes to Israel, it's like, well, no, we got to keep them separated. Like segregation is fine. And this isn't in the case of Israel. And yeah, I don't know. I just I wonder I want the reason I'm teeing it up this way. The reason I'm even bringing this up is because we are about to enter the midterms.

We're and then which means by that point we'll have entered the 2028 election season. And I have been genuinely curious to see how the Democratic Party navigates what was clearly the issue that sunk them in 2024. for you've got Andy Bashir coming out this week being like we need to talk to people like normal people and then saying like well Israel's not doing genocide like that's a normal thing to say um and but then on the other end of the spectrum uh you've got aOC who is potentially running in 2028 i mean i say that i'd have no proof of that but it seemed like she's kind of gearing herself up towards that um and she had a statement yesterday about iron dome funding for israel's iron dome like how do you see aOC's position on this?

Do you think that there is a position in the Democratic Party that would be able to sort of, I don't know, buck against what is clearly, in my opinion, a very cynical and racist policy towards the Palestinians or is the Democratic Party doomed? I mean, I have my own thoughts in the matter, but I'm just kind of. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if the party is doomed. I mean, I think that, like, I actually have been thinking about, like, what could possibly happen in the next 10 years to, like, reverse momentum back in the direction of pro-Israel?

Like, there's so much momentum moving away from Israel that it just seems like a political, like, inevitability that within 10 years, like, Democrats are going to have to be, like, pretty much, you know, pro-pal. sign anti-Israel. So in that sense, like I'd like to think that, you know, there's, there's some hope. But in terms of like what's happening today, I mean, it's actually kind of interesting, like, exactly how it played out. Because what happened was, you know, AOC obviously has gotten a lot of shit over the years, both for like what that ridiculous thing she said at the DNC about, you know, the Biden administration is working tirelessly for a ceasefire, which was just like, you know, utterly, you know, untrue. And then because I believe, well, I can't remember exactly what her votes were, but she has basically signaled in the past that she separates funding for the Iron Dome

from funding for, you know, Israel's offensive weapons. Right. Now, obviously, like, you guys understand your audience does, I'm sure, but like the Iron Dome, you know, it is a, it basically, it shoots out projectiles to intercept rockets that are incoming from wherever, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon. And so it technically speaking, it is defensive. But, you know, it's like it is what allows Israel to be relentlessly belligerent and aggressive to every country in the region and know that it's not going to suffer major consequences. And so without an Iron Dome, like the Israeli populace just, would not tolerate this violentist aggression because they'd be getting killed. And so like, so makes them habitual line stepers, basically.

Yeah, exactly. And so, and so like in that sense, I mean, like, every time I talk about this, they were like, you want to see dead Israelis. And it's like, it actually has nothing to do with that. I mean, like on a, on a big picture level. Like, it's about actually seeing less dead people in general. It is about seeing Israel realize that we can't go out in fucking mass murder people wherever we want and not expect to get punched in the nose. So anyway, that is like, that's the correct position from, you know, my position of authority.

That is the correct position that the Iron Dome is no different from offensive weapons in that it enables them to commit genocide. AOC had in the past, she had created a distinction that a lot of people did not like. So two days ago at, I don't know what it was, I'm sort of a DSA meeting. I'm not really like super plugged into the politics within the DSA. But somebody asked her, you know, will you support so-called defensive fund? Will you support funding so-called defensive weapons? And she said no, which was news because she. she was basically announcing, I will not support funding the Iron Dome.

So that then becomes a story. But then the next day, she puts out this big statement, which actually changes. It basically what it does, she caveats it by saying the Iron Dome is a defensive system. It is saving Israeli lives. But we shouldn't have to subsidize it anymore. They can pay for themselves. And so like what she basically was rhetorically walking back the way she had answered the question the day before, which in my opinion, it's kind of like what we were saying before about Yair Lepid on, you know, the borders. She's saying, well, right now circumstances based on circumstances like we shouldn't be funding it.

But it allows her to say in a year from now if circumstances change, well, it is defensive. And so like we should support it in some way, shape or form. So I and that and then like Rokana basically who I interviewed a month ago who it seemed to me that he had never even really thought about these things we're saying about the Iron Dome as it being a sort of offensive tool like it was kind of like it seemed like the first time he was being confronted with this argument and he told me like I do not support conditioning aid to the Iron Dome. He then changes his answer yesterday and the statement that he puts out is almost like identical to AOCs which was basically we don't need to be subsidizing this. but it is a defensive tool or it is a defensive weapon. And so they have basically walked back the position, which will, you know, insulate them from these accusations that they want to see dead Israelis, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So it seems like, and also like fucking Rahm Emanuel said the same thing the other day. This sort of like flew under the radar, but an interview with semaphore. What's that? I didn't see that. Yeah, right. In interview with semaphore, he said,

you know, we're going to treat Israel like every other country. They're welcome to buy our weapons. They're welcome to buy, the Iron Dome, but we're not going to be paying for it with tax dollars, which is basically the same thing that AOC and Rokana had said. The one difference being that I believe both AOC and Rokane had said that like we should not be, we shouldn't even be selling them offensive weapons. Whereas Rom said like they could buy it if they want. But in terms of the Iron Dome, it seems like the position is the same, which is we're not going to fund it anymore.

But if you want to buy those projectors from us, which costs like a hundred grand a pop, like you're welcome to. So it kind of seems like that is the position that at least like as of today, that is the left flank for anybody who's like considering running for for president, which to me is like just inadequate. But I mean, look, like, you know, I get fucking dog piled every time I say something like this. But like it is progress, like just objectively speaking. it would be unheard of for, you know, a couple years ago for a serious presidential contender to say we're no longer funding the Iron Dome. Like that would have been a career ender. And so like it is progress even if it is like totally inadequate in my opinion.

Yeah, that's true. It is. That I don't have some holes in it too, though. I don't know if you have it. It does have some holes in it. But like, I mean, there's been like maybe a couple dozen deaths. in Israel since the Iran war started without an Iron Dome, I mean, you'd be looking at like hundreds or thousands of casualties, which means it would be like a real fucking war where like,

you know, they didn't get to, you know, just have like bulletproof armor to protect them. And like what's so insane about it is like if the point is that, you know, it's defensive, why are we not giving defensive stuff to other countries? like do we care about the people in Gaza or like even fucking Ukraine like we're not giving any of them projectors Even our Gulf allies We basically

Yeah exactly Yeah I don't know it's It is kind of when you look at it that way On one hand it's it's a little bit of progress And the other hand it's like they're threading a needle That is like really I'm not even sure that the average American is really

going to know the difference are really going to care? No, this is very much like a leftist inter-leftist squabre, I think. I think, which is kind of astonishing to me, like, I genuinely think the general population falls into one of two camps. One of which is anti-Semitism is bad. Israel's committing genocide.

They should stop. Very simple formulation. And that's all three of us, just to be clear, right? Yeah, we're all normal. Okay, good, good. Yeah. Or there is the other like Normie position, which is I love Israel. Israel has, you know, the right to exist or whatever the fuck they say. And then, and it should be able to expand. I mean, I think that those people are outnumbered heavily by the first position. They're just overrepresented in the halls of power. Exactly. They're just overrepresented in the halls of power. But that to me is like why it feels so fucking goofy to just see them wrestling with these like. That's why I said, that's why I said, I think that it's just like, like everything,

like the momentum is going in one direction and I don't know what could possibly change it. Like really, what could happen that would suddenly like make young people be like, actually we want to start supporting Israel. I mean, I like, I don't know what it could possibly be. And so, and like the boomers are they're going to have to get better at basketball. A strong Eurovision finish. I don't know. A strong Eurovision finish.

I mean, listen, like, I mean, I, another thing I get fucking killed for saying, but like, I know some Israelis from the West Bank who have men the West Bank activists who I think probably like on October 8th would have still considered themselves Zionists, but they were against the occupation and they were trying to protect Palestinians. Today, they're like, this country's irredeemable. Yeah. Israel is completely irredeemable. And they would now consider themselves anti-Zionists, actually. Yeah. And I think that like that is a position that even like, listen, like the fucking insane Zionists, obviously you're never going to move. But I do think actually that like I was just talking about this for somebody yesterday who was telling me that like they got into a fight with their mom at Passover.

And I was saying that like, listen, if your mom is still, you know, supporting Israel today, like, you're never going to convince somebody that the whole project was like, bad from the start you're not going to like change their understanding of what happened in nineteen forty eight but i do think it there are more people than i'm seeing who are coming to the conclusion that whatever dream whatever israel they believed existed they're accepting that it no longer exists and they and they are no longer like proudly calling themselves zionists and i think that that that and frankly like listen if you're a fucking politician who like you know supported uh a genocide against Palestinians, like, you'll never wash off that stain from yourself and, like, you should be hounded for it the rest of your life.

But I happen to think that the people who are coming around, I mean, look, it's way too, it took way too fucking long, but purely from a sort of political perspective, if there are people who are not willing to say, Zionist project was evil from the start, 1948, knock, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but they are willing to say the project is irredemo. we cannot support it in any way, shape, or form. I think that's going to be an important part of any sort of a coalition to cut off support for Israel. Yeah, I agree. And I think that the, I think, you know, I don't really know the means by which this message would get out there,

or if you even make much of a difference. But I am just kind of routinely astonished the extent to which the Christian Zionist position is almost sort of, if not mystified, at least sort of neglected or pushed aside. Like there was a big discourse a few weeks ago when that guy drove into a synagogue or whatever, and I can't remember where that was. And people were saying like, well, synagogue sent a lot of money to Israel. True. But a ton of fucking Christian churches send tons of money to Israel as well.

I mean, just the churches that Tom and I grew up in both send fucking money to Israel. Like the entire religious community. the white religious community in this country. If you're not like Unitarian or Episcopalian or whatever, you're probably sending, or Catholic, you're probably sending money to Israel. And so,

I mean, I don't know. I guess we'll, you know. No, I mean, it's the same, I feel like it's the same thing as a sort of afflicted workers and leftist

movements forever, which is like, well, not forever. I guess there was a time when this wasn't the case, but like they have the institutions and we don't. like there are there are just no like jewish institutions that are anti-zionist there's lots of anti-zionist jewish people but like the institutions are almost like across the board

zionist right and and so actually like just some of you guys should should look into it i can connect you if you want but there's just great new book coming out by molly crabapple um i'm totally blanking it's called something like here is where we live but it's about the jewish Boond Movement, which was actually a labor workers party movement that came about the exact same time as Zionism. Yeah. And it was basically like, first of all, it was a, it was a workers party movement. But basically what they said is like, we don't need a state, we need to, but we should be able

to be Jewish wherever we are in the world. And anyway, I was just talking with her recently about how like, I don't know if that is the one, but it is a positive vision for an anti-Zionist Jewish. future that is not just like purely um like defined by what it's against as in like it has a vision of you know a workers movement and you know of all these other things so we need institutions like she was like we were talking about how and i don't know about the christian zionist man you guys are going to have to figure that shit out um i think that might be the last the last domino to fall to to tell you the truth um i think they'll hold out longer than the jews

A million percent, yes. Yeah, well, you know, the rapture kind of depends on it, right? Well, yeah, they view y'all as cannon fodder anyway. Exactly. Yeah. So ultimately, you all are immaterial in that case. Yes, yes. But also, though, like I was saying earlier,

the dream of a promised land has been, I mean, I don't agree that the early Christian movement was obsessed with this stuff. I mean, if you go and look at like the writings of Paul and stuff. Like he was visiting Jewish communities in like, you know, Asia Minor and Greece and everything like this. But like over time, obviously Christians have become obsessed with this idea of it. So I think it's like, you know, pretty baked in at this point.

But we got to take off. Jasper, thanks so much for joining us this week and for telling us about your reporting. If people want to learn more about your reporting. in your writing, where do they need to go? My handle pretty much everywhere is Infinite Jazz, just Jazz with 1Z. On Twitter, Infinite underscore Jazz, Instagram, Infinite Underscore Jazz. And my substack, most importantly, is just look up Infinite Jazz. And that's where I post on the ground reporting from the West Bank, but also, you know,

really trying to sort of connect all these dots for people and contextualize it. And I also happen to believe that, like, we talked about this. Like the West Bank is the purest expression of Zionism. And it is actually like to understanding what's happening there on the, the level of the actual like just day-to-day violence, but also on the political level is the best way to understand the whole sort of project. So yes, please subscribe over there. Well, please go check that out.

And please subscribe. You can also subscribe to our Patreon. The link is in the show notes there. We will see you over at our Patreon on Monday. Jasper, thanks so much again. Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, this is great. Thanks, guys.

See all. Well, history proves that, unfortunately, and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over genius harm. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation. So you have no choice. If you look at the world as it is today, you have to be blind not to see that the democracies

led by the United States have to reassert their will to defend themselves and to oppose their enemies in time while there's still time before the jarring gong of danger wakes them up and wakes them up too late. This is where we are now.