UNBIASED - Update on Israel/Hamas Truce, Elon Musk Visits Israel Amid Anti-Semitism Accusations, Houthi Rebels Target U.S. Warship, Merriam-Webster's 'Word of the Year', and More.

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

1. Update on Israel/Hamas Temporary Truce, What the Extension Entails, What We've Learned About the Conditions Experienced by Israelis, and More (2:12)2. Elon Musk Visits Israel Amid Anti-Semitism Accusations, Controversy Explained (14:55)3.  Merriam-Webster Announces 'Word of the Year'. Here's How They Decide It (21:08)4. Three Things You Should Know From the Weekend (23:11) (Chauvin Stabbed in Prison, Houthi Rebels Target U.S. Warship with Missiles, New York's Adult Survivors Act Expires Bringing Wave of Sexual Assault Lawsuits.)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Subscribe to Jordan's weekly free newsletter featuring hot topics in the news, trending lawsuits, and more.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario Helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You are listening to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased

news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Happy Tuesday. I am so happy to be back here with you after a little holiday hiatus. Thank you for bearing with me last week. I only did one episode, but that's just because Thanksgiving and all the holiday things that follow. I hope you had a great holiday or at least a great weekend. And now it's time to get caught up in the news. The news here in the United States has been fairly slow over the last few days. Really, a lot of the news has focused on what's going on with Israel and Hamas and Gaza. So that will take up the bulk of today's episode.

I want to update you on the truce agreement. More details around that agreement have come out. We've learned a lot since that agreement took effect. Monday also marked an extension of the agreement. So I want to talk about all of that. Then I want to talk about Elon Musk's visit to Israel. He had some anti-Semitism accusations launched against him. He decided to go ahead and visit Israel on Monday. So I want to go over some of his conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as Israel's president. And then in some lighter news, we will talk about Merriam-Webster's 2023 word of the year

and how they chose it. And we'll conclude with my new segment called three things you should know from the weekend. Before we get into the stories, let me just remind you, if you haven't already, please go ahead and leave my show a review if you like what you hear today. If you have left my show a review, thank you so much. It is so, so appreciated. And as my legal disclaimer, yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. Since last week's episode, there have been quite a few developments in this temporary truce between Israel and Hamas. Monday not only marked the fourth day of this temporary truce, but also in agreement to extend the truce by two days. We've learned some more details about the terms of the truce, the conditions that the Israelis experienced while being held by Hamas,, I want to discuss one slightly difficult component

of this story, and that is verbiage. Because the nature of my platform and my intention is to always remain as unbiased as possible. But I would be remiss not to acknowledge this sort of controversy between the words hostage and prisoner because both sides have two different ways of explaining this truce agreement and what it entails. Now, part of my job is to listen to the Israel supporters and the Palestine supporters and kind of assess how they view this situation, and I've done just that. So I do want to talk about the differences in the words as well as the verbiage I'll use to remain as neutral as possible. A hostage by definition is a person held by one party in a conflict as a pledge pending fulfillment of an agreement. It can also mean a person taken by force to secure the taker's demands, or it can be a person seized or held as security for the fulfillment of a condition.

A prisoner, on the other hand, is a person captured and kept confined by an enemy, opponent, or criminal. It can also be a person legally held in prison as a punishment for crimes they have committed or while awaiting trial, or it can be a person deprived of liberty and kept under involuntary restraint, confinement, or custody. Now, I know you know what those two words mean, but I wanted to give you the exact definition from a few sources just to give you context to what I'm about to explain. Some people, mainly those that are pro-Israel, differentiate between the terms hostage and prisoner when it comes to this exchange. A hostage being someone who's innocent, a prisoner being someone who's committed a crime. Because of that, in their eyes, this is not an even exchange.

Some of the people being released by Israel have murdered members of the IDF, whereas those being released by Hamas are innocent Israelis who were taken for the purpose of being used as leverage. Something I do want to point out too is that you're more often than not, whether it's in the media or on social media, going to see the worst of the worst or the best of the best when it comes to headlines, posts, etc. So a lot of the pro-Israel posts that I've seen focus on those being released by Israel that have committed terrible crimes like murder. But I also do want to be clear that while that is true, Israel has also released some of its detainees that have committed pretty heinous crimes like that of murder, but also smaller crimes like incitement or protesting, or maybe they haven't been charged with a crime at all. What do I mean

by that? There's a method of detention that Israel uses called administrative detention, which is incarceration without trial or charge. Sometimes someone can be held on the grounds that they plan to break the law in the future when no law has been broken yet. So because this is typically a preventative measure, there's no real time limit as to how much time these detainees spend detained. Initially, the person can be held for up to six months, but if the military commander of the West Bank finds that reasonable grounds exist to believe the threat still exists, the detention can be extended for another six-month period and so on and so forth. There's no limit as to how many six-month periods a detainee has to spend detained. Now, a person held under administrative detention must be brought before a military judge within eight days of the original detention order or its extension. And it's up to the judge to either uphold the order, reject it, or shorten the period

of detention. This decision can then be appealed by either the detainee or the military commander to the Military Court of Appeals in Israel, and from there to the High Court of Justice. So there is a legal procedure for these detainees, but all that to say, these detainees can be held without a charge. To give you some numbers, before the truce, Hamas had roughly 239 Israelis in its custody. Israel had approximately 8,200 Palestinians in its custody. Of those 8,200 Palestinians, roughly 5,200 were being held prior to October 7th. Roughly 3,000 were arrested after October 7th. And of those 8,200, depending on the report that you read, somewhere between 1,200 and 2,200 are being held under that administrative detention we just talked about. Now, there's a lot more we can dive into, but all of this to say, this is why those that

are pro-Palestine call this a hostage exchange. To them, these detainees in Israel are hostages. They are not prisoners because they haven't really committed any crimes. So to them, this is not hostages for prisoners like Israelis see it or those that support Israel. This is hostages for hostages. I have seen media outlets, including more pro-Palestine outlets like Al Jazeera, refer to Israelis in Hamas custody as hostages and captives and those Palestinians in Israeli prisons as prisoners. So you can note that, but I do just want to be clear that pro-Palestine supporters see this as hostages and hostages, And they do get very particular about the terms that are used. However, because I am not here to influence your judgment at all, because I want to remain as

neutral as possible, throughout the story, I'm going to use the word people rather than hostage or prisoner. Because at the end of the day, that's what they are. They're people. Whether you regard them as hostages or prisoners, they're still people. No one can argue that. So with all of that said, let's talk about the terms of the truce. How many people have been released by both sides? What have the Israelis said about their conditions while being held at the mosque? And what does the extension of this truce mean? When the truce was announced last week, all we knew immediately came from the Qatari Foreign Ministry, who helped negotiate this deal. And what the Foreign Ministry said is this, quote, the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons. The number

of those released will be increased in the later stages of implementing the agreement. The humanitarian pause will also allow the entry of a large number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs, end quote. Since then, we've learned a little bit more, right? Because that statement didn't really say anything about how many Palestinians would be released from Israeli custody. Now we know that it's three Palestinians for every one Israeli. We also know that there's a pause in fighting. We know that the United States and Israel have to pause their drone surveillance flights for six hours each day. We know that this truce lasted

four days instead of the originally thought three days, so more has come to light. Basically, every day, Hamas gives Israel a list of about 12 names of people that will be released that day. Israel gives Hamas their own list of people, and those people are then released to the Red Cross, who facilitates the transfer through Egypt at a scheduled release time. Though I will say on Sunday, the transfer of Israelis did not take place in Egypt. Instead, it took place in Gaza City, which was the first transfer to take place within Gaza itself. Over the course of the initial four days of the truce, Hamas released 58 people, 40 of

which are Israelis because it was 10 per day for four days. The remaining 18 were other foreign nationals, mostly from Thailand. But Israel did say, if you listen to my last episode, I made mention that Israel was saying they're only negotiating for Israelis. It is up to the other countries to negotiate for their people. So over the first four days, 40 Israelis were released. Israel released 117 Palestinians. Most of the 117 Palestinians were under what we talked about before, that administrative detention, and were mostly women

and children. More than 150 aid trucks have entered Gaza City and the northern region since the truce began, and more aid is expected to enter over the next two days during the extension, which exists under the same conditions. So this extension has not changed the terms at all. It remains the same. Fighting is paused. 20 Israelis are being handed over by Hamas in exchange for 60 Palestinians from Israel. We have also learned that there are more than 40 people that were taken on October 7th that are not being held by Hamas. What do I mean by that? Instead, they're being held by other groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Because this truce is specifically between Israel and Hamas, those 40 people can't be included in the exchange unless and until they're in the custody

of Hamas. Or maybe Israel reaches some sort of agreement with those outside parties, in which case they can be exchanged. Now, since the release of the Israelis, we've also learned a little bit about what they experienced while they were being held by Hamas through their family members. If you remember, there were two elderly women that were released a few weeks ago before this truce. One of those women told the media that she was kept in spider web-like tunnels underground. She was told by Hamas that they wouldn't hurt her. She said she was treated well. She was told by Hamas that they wouldn't hurt her. She said she was treated well. She received medical care. She received one meal a day, which consisted of cheese,

cucumbers, and pita, and that the guards ate the same thing. More recently, though, within the last couple days, some other family members spoke to the media after their relatives were released in accordance with the truce. And some said that they were held in large reception hall type rooms underground. So not necessarily the tunnels, but instead these big open rooms. And they think about five floors down. They had access to basic food like rice, beans, hummus, and bread. One family member in particular said that her three relatives lost about 15 pounds in the 50 days that they were gone, that they slept on a row of chairs that were pushed together in that hole, and sometimes they had to wait hours before going

to the bathroom and did not have access to showers. So they did not shower once in the seven weeks that they were gone. They had access to light for two hours each day. Some of them had access to TV and radio and said that they were aware that the Israelis were rallying for them to be brought back and that they were putting pressure to ensure that this truce deal went through. They said that those that had medical conditions were given medication, but that they did have trouble sleeping. They said that those that had medical conditions were given medication, but that they did have trouble sleeping. Some said that they had requested pen and paper, but didn't have access to it. Now, it's not clear if that meant that they weren't given it or that Hamas didn't have it to give them or that they had it, but they didn't give it to them.

That's not clear, but they did say that they requested it and didn't have access to it. Now, because the truce was extended by two days, that puts the new expiration day at Wednesday. So I should have another update for you on Friday's episode, whether that truce agreement gets extended again. The original thought from the Israeli side was that this truce agreement would not go to the full 10 days as it could have gone. But who knows? Maybe as the days go on, if everyone's cooperative, maybe it does get there. So stay tuned for an update on Friday. But in some other yet related news, Elon Musk took a trip to Israel on Monday amid these accusations of anti-Semitism. So roughly two weeks ago, one user on X posted, quote, Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I'm deeply disinterested in giving the

tiniest shit now about Western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is." Musk then commented on that post and wrote, you have said the actual truth. Following this, Musk was accused of encouraging and engaging in anti-Semitism. And in a matter of hours, big, big companies like Apple, IBM, Disney, and Universal all pulled their ads from the platform. Now, one thing I do want to note is that these companies didn't necessarily pull their ads from the platform. Now, one thing I do want to note is that these companies didn't necessarily pull their ads because of Musk's post or comment, but instead because there's

this company called Media Matters who published this data showing anti-Semitic content being shown next to ads from some of these companies, which is why these companies ultimately decided to pull their ads. X says, though, that the data published by Media Matters is completely fabricated. There is not a single authentic user on X that saw the alleged ads next to the anti-Semitic content in the Media Matters article. So after that, X filed a lawsuit against Media Matters. The Attorney General of Texas opened an investigation into Media Matters for potential fraud. But that's a whole other story. I just wanted to give you context as to why these companies pulled their ads because it was more than just Musk's comment on this post. The day after Musk made the controversial comment,

he reminded users on X that euphemisms like decolonization and from the river to the sea imply genocide and therefore violate X's terms of service and would result in the suspension of any account that posted such words. A few days later, he wrote on X that, quote, this past week, there were hundreds of bogus media stories claiming that I am anti-Semitic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wish only the best for humanity and a prosperous and exciting future for all, end quote. And more recently, on the 21st of this month, about a week ago, he announced that all revenue from ads and subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza would be donated to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross in Gaza. So he's made a few comments since then just to kind of negate this idea that he's anti-Semitic.

Then on Monday, he went to Israel. And before his day started there, he wrote on X, quote, actions speak louder than words, end quote. While he was in Israel, he met with Israel's president Herzog, the relatives of some of the Israelis in Hamas custody, Israel's prime minister Netanyahu, a visit to one of the villages that was destroyed by Hamas on October 7th, and he watched some of the footage of Hamas invading Israel on October 7th. So Musk sat down with Netanyahu for a 20-minute conversation to discuss not only the October 7th attack, but also what Musk thought of the footage that he was shown during his visit, Israel's right to defend itself, the differences between Israel's

fighting strategy and Hamas's fighting strategy, and perhaps most notably, the conversation included condemning Hamas and also differentiating between Israel's killing of civilians and Hamas's killing of civilians. Musk said that the important difference is that Israel tries to avoid killing Gazan civilians, whereas Hamas is intentionally killing civilians. And of course, your pro-Palestine, your Palestinian supporters would disagree with that statement because the thought is that Israel is trying to kill Gazan civilians from their perspective. Netanyahu said Hamas is committing double war crimes, the first being that Hamas is deliberately killing, raping, and murdering innocent civilians, the second being the deliberate hiding behind Gazan civilians within the schools and the hospitals in Gaza. is to be achieved. Hamas needs to be destroyed. And Musk seemingly agreed with this statement,

saying that there is no choice. And the conversation revolved a lot around these other countries that have dealt with similar situations, like Germany with the Nazis, and how it required this fighting to turn these countries around and get them to a better place. And so Netanyahu's message was that this is what we need to do with Hamas in order to get Gaza to a different place, because right now it's being controlled by evil. Musk also met with President Herzog behind closed doors. There was a readout, though, from the meeting. There were also a couple of videos that surfaced from the meeting. And Musk also met with some of the relatives of the Israelis captured by Hamas.

So Herzog acknowledged that Musk has a lot of control over online activity. He needs to do something about managing the anti-Semitism. He said, quote, I think we need to fight this together, referencing anti-Semitism, because the platforms you lead, unfortunately, have a large reservoir of hatred, hatred of Jews, anti-Semitism, end quote. And again, during that meeting, he did meet with some relatives. One of the fathers gave him a dog tag that said, our hearts are hostage in Gaza. And Elon said he will be wearing it every day until the loved ones are released. Following his day in Israel, he wrote on X, quote, trite as it may sound, I wish for world peace, end quote. And in some less heavy news, Merriam-Webster announced on Monday that his word of the year for 2023 is authentic.

Authentic, as defined by Merriam-Webster, means not false or imitation or true to one's own personality, spirit, or character. Merriam-Webster said in its announcement that Authentic saw a substantial increase in lookups in 2023, which it attributes to stories and conversations about artificial intelligence, celebrity culture, identity, and social media. Now, I don't know about you, but for me, when I read this, I was wondering how in the world does Merriam-Webster determine the word of the year? And I kind of got down to the bottom of it through Peter Sokolowski, the editor-at-large at Merriam-Webster. He said that the data analysts will look at the data on lookup spikes, so what words are being searched a lot, and world events that correlate.

The analysts then filter out common words like love and effect with an A versus effect with an E, which are always high in lookups, so they'll filter out the more common words. And then this year specifically, the analysts also filtered out many five-letter words because of games like Wordle and Quirtle, which are word puzzles that use five-letter words, and oftentimes players of those games will go and search what a word means. So they filtered out those as well, and through their data, they came up with authentic. Some of the runners up this year were Riz, Kibbutz, Implode, Dead Name, Doppelganger, Coronation, Deep Fake, Dystopian, Covenant, and Indite. But contrary to those words, Sokolowski said Authentic was searched consistently

throughout the year and wasn't related to any one point in time. And now for the three things to know from the weekend. Number one, Derek Chauvin, the former officer convicted in the death of George Floyd, was stabbed in an Arizona prison on Friday. The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an unidentified male inmate was assaulted at 12.30 p.m. at the Medium Security Federal Correctional Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and that employees initiated life-saving measures. Now, the Federal Bureau of Prisons did not name Chauvin as the stabbed inmate, but Minnesota's Attorney General did tell multiple outlets in a statement that Chauvin was in fact the stabbed inmate and that he was in stable condition. Number two is that a United States warship was the target

of some ballistic missiles over the weekend that were launched from some Houthi rebels. So here's what happened. On Sunday, the United States Central Command Center said that the USS Mason, along with an ally ship and an aircraft, responded to a distress call from the MV Central Park, which is this commercial vessel that is managed by Zodiac Marine, which is a London-based international ship management company. However, here's the catch, Zodiac Marine is owned by an Israeli billionaire's company. So that is the tie to Israel. So this ship that is tied to Israel made this distress call, and the USS Mason, along with an ally ship and an aircraft, respond.

Central Park was reporting in its distress call that it was under attack by an unknown entity. Upon arrival, the Mason demanded release of the ship. The five armed individuals that had gotten on board eventually left the ship and attempted to flee on their own small boat. The Mason chased after the attackers, and the five individuals eventually surrendered. They were detained by the Navy and determined to be Somali pirates. Later, when the Mason was, quote, concluding its response, end quote, to the Central Park distress call, two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen towards the general location of the Mason and Central Park.

The missiles did not hit the ships. They landed 10 nautical miles away, but the incident is being classified as a Houthi-linked incident. So as you may remember from last week's episode, the Houthi rebels have said that they will continue to target any ships linked to Israel or any ships aiding Israel in its current war with Hamas. So this isn't too surprising, but something you should know nonetheless. And the third thing you should know from the weekend, which is really late last week, but that's okay because there was no episode on Friday,

is that the New York Adult Survivors Act expired on Thursday, which led to this uptick in sexual assault cases against public figures last week. So the New York Adult Survivors Act, I've talked about it before. It was enacted by the state of New York in 2022, and it essentially allowed sexual assault victims to sue their abusers civilly, even if the statute of limitations had expired. And you might be wondering how that's possible, and it's just because this law suspended the statute of limitations. So suits were allowed to be brought for a one-year period between November 23rd, 2022 and November 23rd, 2023. It's the same law that allowed E. Jean

Carroll to sue Donald Trump for sexual assault back in the 1990s. Otherwise, she would not have been able to sue. And there were a lot of lawsuits like that. In total, this law triggered roughly 2,500 lawsuits. It included a lot of high profile people, but also not. Some lawsuits were even filed against the state of New York and the city of New York, alleging abuse at state prisons and local jails. But in the week leading up to the expiration, there was this uptick in lawsuits filed because it was really the last chance, so to speak. So sexual assault lawsuits were filed against P. Diddy, Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Eric Adams of New York, and Jamie Foxx, just to name a few. There were others as well.

P. Diddy actually saw three lawsuits filed against him under this law. The most recent one, though, was last week from Cassie, who settled the suit within one day of filing. But the accusations in the suit were pretty extensive. Andrew Cuomo's accusations came from his former executive assistant who claims he sexually harassed her in 2017. Eric Adams' accusations stem from 1993 and were brought by a former co-worker when he worked for the city. And the accusations against Jamie Foxx were brought by a woman he met at a restaurant called Ketch in New York in 2015. Cuomo, Adams, and Foxx all denied the accusations against them.

That concludes this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for being here. As always, have a great week, and I will talk to you on Friday.