Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is Chrystia Freeland even worse than Justin Trudeau？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Oh, I think you'll like today's show. I've got my views about Chrystia Freeland.

00:00:05.080 I'm going to show you a few things about her, including some you might not have heard before.

00:00:08.780 Then we're going to have a good conversation with Joel Pollack about what is going on in Israel.

00:00:12.840 Are they really on the brink of some sort of civil war? And is George Soros involved?

00:00:17.880 And then I'm going to read some of your letters about Shakespeare and Stratford. That's all ahead.

00:00:21.780 But I want you to get the video version of this podcast. Please go to rebelnewsplus.com.

00:00:26.300 Click subscribe. Eight bucks a month to get the video version. And we get the eight bucks.

00:00:31.380 And I know that doesn't sound like a lot to you, but it's a lot to us when it all adds up.

00:00:35.640 It's how we pay our bills. All right. Here's today's podcast.

00:00:38.720 Tonight, is Chrystia Freeland even worse than Justin Trudeau?

00:00:58.440 It's August 1st, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:00.760 You're fighting for freedom.

00:01:03.960 Shame on you, you censorious bug. 0.98

00:01:08.720 We focus on Justin Trudeau because he's the boss, because he's the incarnation of the woke globalist male feminist narcissist. 0.95

00:01:23.700 I mean, he's world famous that way, in a bad way. He's routinely mocked overseas.

00:01:28.800 The first time Trudeau showed up at international events, his gimmicks worked just because they were funny.

00:01:34.400 He showed his fancy socks. He hugged people in that really personal space-violating way.

00:01:40.320 But after that, world leaders, by which I mean the serious men and women of the world, they realized there wasn't really anything behind Trudeau's vacuous exterior.

00:01:49.360 He's not a thinker. He's not a doer. He's a mascot.

00:01:53.080 That's the best word for him, I think.

00:01:54.500 That's why there are so many videos of him walking aimlessly through these international meetings.

00:02:01.420 No one has anything important to say to Trudeau, and he has nothing important to say to them.

00:02:08.140 Even at his favorite hangout, the World Economic Forum, when he's given the floor, when the world's movers and shakers, people in his vein, the globalists, the progressives, when he has their attention, he gives some cloying, self-promotional speech about how he's teaching his boys to be feminists.

00:02:25.960 And a big part of these conversations have to be men. We have to do it.

00:02:32.000 I was pleased when, you know, President Biden was standing up for women's rights in the Canadian Parliament.

00:02:38.620 Guys, men have to have conversations with their boys.

00:02:42.000 I have a 15-year-old son who spends too much time on the Internet, and I know the kinds of things that are out there, the sneaky misogynism that sort of slips through in workout videos and bro videos.

00:02:54.100 Having those conversations are way more difficult for me than having just the basic birds and the bees conversations.

00:03:03.180 Does anyone talk about birds and bees anymore in this era of too much information on the Internet?

00:03:09.480 But having those difficult conversations now about women's rights, about equality, about these things that are core to how boys are raised,

00:03:20.740 this is something that men have to be better allies on and part of, and that is something that we will continue to be pushing in Canada and everywhere around the world.

00:03:29.580 I mean, you've got billionaire investors, you've got world leaders, you've got the masters of the universe there,

00:03:34.200 but Trudeau has nothing to talk about other than his socks and how he tells his boys to be feminists. 0.99

00:03:40.240 You know, like he is, inappropriately grabbing any woman he works with and firing women who disagree with him, like Jody Wilson-Raybould, that kind of feminist.

00:03:49.720 I've been reflecting very carefully on what I remember from that incident almost 20 years ago.

00:03:57.160 And again, I am, I feel, I am confident that I did not act inappropriately.

00:04:07.660 But part of this awakening that we're having as a society, a long-awaited realization,

00:04:14.880 is that it's not just one side of the story that matters, that the same interactions could be experienced very differently from one person to the next.

00:04:30.280 And I am not going to speak for the woman in question, I would never presume to speak for her.

00:04:36.620 But I know that there is an awful lot of reflection to be had as we move forward as a society on how people perceive different interactions.

00:04:47.560 Like I said, I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way.

00:04:53.840 But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently.

00:04:59.120 So yeah, I think the only person in the world who was surprised when Justin Trudeau didn't win a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations,

00:05:06.720 which is voted on by all the countries,

00:05:09.560 I think the only person who was surprised that he didn't get one of those temporary seats was him.

00:05:16.020 Oh, and the Canadian Media Party.

00:05:18.280 They are still that way.

00:05:20.080 Just the other day, the Globe and Mail literally tweeted that Trudeau was going to be a key player in the NATO-Ukraine negotiations.

00:05:26.880 Did they really believe that?

00:05:28.700 I think Canada's actual military contribution has been to send one leopard tank.

00:05:35.300 One.

00:05:36.180 Canada couldn't even participate in the latest NATO training exercise because none of our planes were airworthy.

00:05:43.340 And remember this?

00:05:44.260 When Trudeau was supposed to chair some panel and he slept in or was drinking the night before or was hitting the bong or something,

00:05:52.920 he literally didn't show up.

00:05:54.180 Remember this?

00:05:54.680 The extraordinary panelists that we have assembled,

00:05:57.820 if I can briefly introduce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, will be coming here momentarily.

00:06:03.740 He's going to slot.

00:06:04.420 Yes, thank you, Prime Minister.

00:06:05.440 That's the empty chair.

00:06:08.300 We have, of course, Latvian Prime Minister.

00:06:10.680 How embarrassing is that?

00:06:11.720 Did the Globe really, truly think that such a poser was going to be a key player in NATO?

00:06:17.940 Or were they just saying that as part of some grant application to get more money from him to bail out the newspaper?

00:06:23.520 So, yeah, Trudeau, an empty suit, except he doesn't even wear a suit half the time.

00:06:28.140 He's more comfortable just being himself.

00:06:31.500 By the way, I don't think he's any more pro-gay pride than he is pro-feminist.

00:06:36.400 It's just whatever he needs to say to get through the moment and to demonize his opponents.

00:06:41.160 I don't think he actually believes in anything.

00:06:44.140 You can tell he's down in the polls, though, because he's playing that card again against conservatives.

00:06:49.480 It always works. 0.75

00:06:50.180 So, yeah, Trudeau, he's the worst.

00:06:52.760 He's the symbol, the epitome, the distillation of it all. 0.98

00:06:55.780 He's so vacuous, and he's such a sneak.

00:06:59.180 I think one of the reasons why he's so absolutely low in the polls with young men,

00:07:05.080 it's absolutely his worst demographic by far, 0.99

00:07:07.860 is because young men see he's sneaky, he's fake, he's a fake feminist, he's a trickster. 0.99

00:07:15.560 The good professor Gad Saad has a phrase for men like that. 0.99

00:07:19.220 It's a bit rude.

00:07:20.100 He swears.

00:07:21.260 It's funny, but he nails it.

00:07:23.180 Just listen to a minute of this. 1.00

00:07:24.740 Remember I talked about male social justice warriors as sneaky fuckers. 1.00

00:07:29.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:07:30.420 That's an actual term, right?

00:07:31.700 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:07:32.120 Well, sneaky fuckers is actually not a term that I came up with to be profane. 0.98

00:07:36.620 It's actually a zoological term that captures in nature the idea of kleptogamy, 0.99

00:07:43.880 where you're trying to steal mating opportunities.

00:07:46.740 So, for example, let's say you have a type of fish,

00:07:49.260 where there are two phenotypes of a male, you know, of a male.

00:07:53.020 There's the dominant physically imposing male,

00:07:56.400 and then there's a whole bunch of other males that actually pretend to be females,

00:08:01.060 so that they can sneak by the dominant males and then have a surreptitious coupling opportunity 1.00

00:08:07.820 with the females. 0.99

00:08:08.800 And that became known as the sneaky fucker mating strategy. 1.00

00:08:13.140 And so in the parasitic mind, I argue that male social justice warriors are instantiating 1.00

00:08:21.340 a form of sneaky fucker strategy, right? 0.99

00:08:23.980 Look, look, I'm, you know, I'm very sensitive. 0.99

00:08:27.180 I hug trees.

00:08:28.240 I cry when I watch Bridget Jones' diary.

00:08:31.020 See, I'm not, you don't have anything to be afraid of.

00:08:34.120 And then hopefully that can allow me to have access to some willing and available female. 1.00

00:08:39.500 That professor is making a point. 0.74

00:08:40.900 Trudeau is a sneaky trickster. 0.99

00:08:43.800 His male feminism, his progressivism, it's fake. 0.97

00:08:46.660 It's just a get-in-good with minorities or women or whomever. 0.95

00:08:50.860 In reality, Trudeau isn't just sexist. 0.93

00:08:52.980 He actually sexually assaulted Rose Knight and afterwards gaslit her, 0.85

00:08:56.940 saying she experienced it differently. 0.97

00:08:58.900 Men, other men, can detect fake feminists or sneaky effers, as Gadzad would call them. 0.99

00:09:05.360 Many women are tricked by it, though. 1.00

00:09:06.980 That's why it works.

00:09:07.860 That's why, though, the latest abacus poll shows that young men,

00:09:12.580 especially from the prairies,

00:09:13.560 are the most distrustful towards Trudeau of any demographic group in the country.

00:09:17.700 Seriously, Trudeau's at around 10% with young men.

00:09:21.860 I think indigenous people actually feel the same way about him, too. 0.87

00:09:24.700 They saw his fake suck-uppery 10 years ago, but then the mask slipped,

00:09:29.340 and he revealed himself, especially by his treatment of Jody Wilson-Mabel. 0.82

00:09:31.920 Did you see this clip of Trudeau getting booed at a large aboriginal event a few weeks ago?

00:09:40.480 Hello, my friends.

00:09:43.560 We have been waiting for this moment.

00:09:48.160 Yeah, they discovered what a sneaky effer he is.

00:09:50.860 So, yeah, Trudeau.

00:09:51.880 But would you agree with me that Trudeau doesn't actually do

00:09:54.740 a lot of the decision-making in the government?

00:09:58.000 By his own admission, he's a relationship builder.

00:10:00.980 He's a schmoozer. 1.00

00:10:01.680 He's a talker. 1.00

00:10:02.420 He's a narcissist. 0.90

00:10:03.520 He's an emoter. 0.97

00:10:04.880 Whatever.

00:10:05.360 But he's not deep into policy.

00:10:07.400 He's not a doer.

00:10:08.640 He's not a hard worker.

00:10:09.760 He's a show-up, wave for the cameras, and then go surfing kind of guy,

00:10:14.520 like he did on that, you know, National Reconciliation Day.

00:10:18.400 He just went surfing.

00:10:19.140 The person in government who is hands-on the most files, who Trudeau trusts and delegates

00:10:25.060 to, is actually Chrystia Freeland. 0.91

00:10:27.380 She's got a work ethic, by the way. 1.00

00:10:29.240 She calls the premiers.

00:10:30.980 Jason Kenney and Doug Ford used to say they spoke to her all the time.

00:10:34.940 She's the decider.

00:10:35.960 She deals with the things that Trudeau finds boring.

00:10:40.280 Now, don't get me wrong.

00:10:41.060 She's not particularly bright or thoughtful.

00:10:43.900 She actually ran a business before she came to Parliament.

00:10:47.140 She ran a business called Reuters Next.

00:10:49.220 She destroyed the entire company.

00:10:51.900 After she ran it, they literally euthanized it.

00:10:54.960 They shut the company down.

00:10:56.760 She destroyed hundreds of jobs. 0.98

00:10:59.080 But, you know, she shows up.

00:11:01.280 She fills the void that Trudeau leaves.

00:11:03.360 Remember when Trudeau met with George Soros in Davos back in January 2016?

00:11:07.760 Most of the time, you only see the picture of Trudeau and Soros.

00:11:11.580 But Chrystia Freeland was in the picture, too, the three of them.

00:11:15.360 She is Soros' woman in Canada.

00:11:17.680 She was Soros' official biographer before she got into Canada's Parliament.

00:11:21.880 She is Soros' key contact up here.

00:11:24.920 She's weird and quirky.

00:11:27.640 She clips her toenails in Parliament, which I think is odd and sort of gross.

00:11:32.480 You get a certain vibe off her.

00:11:34.760 I mean, I guess we all pull our pants out of our bums sometimes, but it just seems like she's doing it all the time.

00:11:41.380 Most of the time, she just talks blather in the most condescending way imaginable, and that's enough to bore journalists into moving on. 0.75

00:11:48.720 That's a great skill for a politician, by the way.

00:11:50.940 It's just to be a fog machine that blunts any questions.

00:11:54.200 George Orwell, in his book, 1984, called that duck speaking.

00:11:58.440 But I'd like to show you a few of her recent comments, because I think that if you put aside your visceral contempt for Trudeau, the sneaky effort, and if you persevere through Freeland's duck-speak fog machine, if you actually ever listen to her, I think you might agree that she's worse in some ways than Trudeau.

00:12:16.780 Here, listen to this question to her, and I know this was from a couple days ago, but I've been turning it over in my mind for a bit.

00:12:23.200 Look at this question about the carbon tax going up in Prince Edward Island and the Atlantic provinces.

00:12:27.180 I just want to play the full version of this, her whole answer, not just the goofy ending part, because I want you to hear the fog machine, the duck speaking, in her condescending tone of voice before her clangor of an ending.

00:12:39.160 Remember this?

00:12:39.720 I did want to say one more thing, though.

00:12:42.000 I don't need you to retread the ground you've gone over, because you've answered this question from the other side.

00:12:45.700 But you are facing a lot of pushback in this region, in particular, from local politicians, local provincial governments that say this.

00:12:52.920 They're not opposed to it, but it's coming too soon, too fast.

00:12:56.300 They need more time to adapt.

00:12:57.640 What do you say to that?

00:12:59.480 You know what?

00:13:00.140 I say I do really understand.

00:13:04.100 I really understand the challenges, and I do believe that the challenges are different in small towns, in places with less public transit than they are in big cities.

00:13:22.880 You know, I, right now, am an MP for downtown Toronto.

00:13:28.240 A fact that still shocks my dad is, I don't actually own a car, because I live in downtown Toronto.

00:13:35.500 I'm like, I don't know, 300 meters from the nearest subway.

00:13:41.260 I walk, I take the subway, I make my kids walk and ride their bikes and take the subway.

00:13:46.740 It's actually healthier for our family.

00:13:49.260 I can live that way.

00:13:50.380 I wanted you to hear the first part of that, too, because of the non-answers, the condescending tone, the disrespect of not answering a plain question plainly, like you're a child.

00:14:01.640 It's how Kamala Harris talks, meaningless word salad while smiling at you and nodding. 1.00

00:14:06.860 Oh, we love PEI.

00:14:08.640 We support it.

00:14:09.460 And we talked about your question.

00:14:11.520 But she did actually say something at the end.

00:14:14.800 Be like her and don't drive.

00:14:17.460 That was her message at the end.

00:14:18.500 Take a bike, take the subway.

00:14:20.240 Her dad is so surprised with her, and we should be so impressed with her, she doesn't even have a car.

00:14:26.020 Hey, did you know that?

00:14:27.020 What a role model.

00:14:27.800 She doesn't even have a car. 0.66

00:14:30.580 Except, of course, she does have a car paid for by the taxpayers.

00:14:34.560 She has a limo and a chauffeur, courtesy of you, the taxpayer. 0.99

00:14:39.320 And as Sheila Gunn-Reed has shown, and as Blackbox, excuse me, has recently republished, Chrystia Freeland's limo driver actually drives hundreds of kilometers in any given day.

00:14:51.740 Which actually makes no sense.

00:14:53.240 Parliament Hill is a very small place.

00:14:55.200 And Freeland's downtown Toronto riding is a very small place.

00:14:58.180 It's not like a giant rural riding.

00:14:59.840 So, how does Chrystia Freeland rack up hundreds of miles a day in her chauffeur-driven limo? 1.00

00:15:08.480 Well, take a guess.

00:15:09.480 I'll tell you.

00:15:10.420 She flies private between Ottawa and Toronto, and she sends her car along the way to meet up with her, to be on the other side.

00:15:19.040 Because, don't you see, she deeply cares about carbon and emissions, and you should be more like her.

00:15:24.880 She doesn't even have a car, you see. 0.71

00:15:27.880 She's a role model.

00:15:29.780 By the way, there are no subways in Prince Edward Island.

00:15:32.440 I think that there are no subways for more than 99% of the Canadian population.

00:15:37.420 A sliver of a fraction of Canadians are along a subway line in Toronto and Montreal.

00:15:43.340 And there are some bare-bones light rail transit schemes in places like Calgary and Edmonton and Vancouver.

00:15:48.100 And apparently Ottawa has been trying to build one for years, but just can't crack the high technology needed to make it work.

00:15:57.080 It's sort of weird.

00:15:58.680 Imagine the hubris of telling Prince Edward Islanders to just take the subway like her. 0.89

00:16:03.820 Or just ride your bike in the winter with young children to get groceries in rural Prince Edward Island.

00:16:13.560 I mean, you don't get more tone deaf than her, but the condescension of it all while she lectures them. 1.00

00:16:19.080 But hey, don't you realize that PEI doesn't tax itself more?

00:16:24.180 Tourists will stop coming to visit.

00:16:26.480 Don't you know she actually said that?

00:16:29.280 I have to say, failure to have a climate plan is actually the death knell for the Canadian economy.

00:16:39.680 People will not want to buy the stuff we make in Canada if we are not making it in a green way.

00:16:47.020 People will not want to visit our country if they do not see that we are energetically embracing the green transition.

00:16:55.780 They'll go to places that are embracing that.

00:16:58.320 So, I really believe very, very strongly that our green policy is an economic growth policy.

00:17:09.780 Is it true that tourists won't come to Prince Edward Island if it doesn't impose a carbon tax?

00:17:14.580 Does anyone believe that?

00:17:15.820 Has anyone actually ever said that other than her?

00:17:18.920 That's a kind of blackmail, a kind of gaslighting.

00:17:21.040 I've heard it before.

00:17:21.660 Catherine McKenna, another Trudeau-style liar who Trudeau has disposed of, used to say that no one would buy Alberta oil and gas if Alberta doesn't bring in a carbon tax.

00:17:31.760 Really?

00:17:33.300 OPEC countries produce about 60% of the world's oil every day.

00:17:36.960 And Russia, which is not in OPEC, is another 10%.

00:17:39.800 None of those countries have carbon taxes.

00:17:42.540 People are buying oil from them.

00:17:43.760 Russia, dictatorships like Iran, Saudi Arabia.

00:17:46.480 Not a single customer in the history of the world has ever said, no, sorry, we're not going to buy your oil because you don't have a carbon tax. 0.94

00:17:54.400 They're literally buying oil from genocidal regimes, from terrorist regimes, from warmonger regimes, from regimes that hang gays and stone adulterous women. 0.73

00:18:03.940 And imagine saying people won't buy Alberta oil and gas if we don't impose a carbon tax on ourselves. 0.98

00:18:09.200 The only thing's stupider than that is to say that about PEI tourism. 1.00

00:18:13.000 Of course not a single journalist challenged such a stupid idea. 1.00

00:18:16.540 Of course not. 1.00

00:18:17.180 Now maybe they were just stunned and stoned and hypnotized by her condescending tone of voice.

00:18:22.260 But just stop for a second and imagine that being a fact that your Toronto politician had to tell you when visiting PEI, just that fact with her limo driver,

00:18:34.780 that if you don't have your carbon tax, you're not going to get tourism.

00:18:37.580 Her message is basically, stop complaining about the carbon tax.

00:18:42.460 Stop being poor, you poor.

00:18:44.720 Stop driving.

00:18:46.100 If you can't afford gas, just stop driving like she does.

00:18:48.460 Ride a bike like she does.

00:18:49.780 Or, you know, just, what was that thing she said the other day?

00:18:52.040 Just stop watching Disney+.

00:18:53.600 Stop watching Disney+, so you can afford to pay her carbon tax. 1.00

00:18:57.900 And I think Canadian families are looking really closely at all of their expenses.

00:19:02.940 I personally, as a mother and wife, look carefully at my credit card bill once a month.

00:19:09.020 And last Sunday, I said to the kids, you're older now.

00:19:12.140 You don't want to watch Disney anymore.

00:19:14.220 Let's cut that Disney Plus subscription.

00:19:17.560 So we cut it.

00:19:18.820 It's only $13.99 a month that we're saving.

00:19:21.740 But every little bit helps.

00:19:24.200 And I think every mother in Canada is doing that right now.

00:19:28.360 Yeah, that's going over really well.

00:19:30.520 I saw in that same abacus poll for the first time ever,

00:19:33.760 Trudeau was in a dead heat with the conservatives in the Atlantic.

00:19:37.540 And that was before her comments.

00:19:39.140 Hey, let me end on another note.

00:19:41.200 I saw this on Twitter.

00:19:43.280 People were asking about Chrystia Freeland's sneakers.

00:19:46.500 She's a bit quirky that way, wearing sneakers. 1.00

00:19:48.600 Not just to community events, casual events, but she wears sneakers to diplomatic events, fancy events.

00:19:54.620 Oh, well, maybe that's really cool.

00:19:56.640 But they're quite unusual, the sneakers.

00:19:59.140 They're quite distinctive.

00:20:00.080 She wears that one black and white pair a lot.

00:20:02.960 And as you can see in some of the pictures, you can see the brand name poking out.

00:20:06.920 It's called Miu Miu.

00:20:08.380 I had actually never heard of it before.

00:20:10.580 But it's a brand owned by Prada, named after Miu Chia Prada.

00:20:15.920 That's the billionaire who owns that company.

00:20:18.600 And she named the shoes after herself, which is nice.

00:20:22.560 And the shoes that Chrystia Freeland is wearing, they retail for about $800 for a pair of sneakers. 0.99

00:20:32.320 So, yeah, don't you get it?

00:20:34.680 You poors have to pay a carbon tax. 1.00

00:20:37.120 And don't complain that Chrystia Freeland, she's better than you. 1.00

00:20:41.100 She doesn't even have a car. 0.66

00:20:43.080 She bikes.

00:20:44.000 She makes her kids bike. 1.00

00:20:45.240 Even her father remarks on how wonderful it is, except she's a wicked liar. 1.00

00:20:51.720 She has a car and a driver that you pay for. 1.00

00:20:54.320 She flies on private jets. 1.00

00:20:55.780 And she'll wear $800 sneakers when telling you how righteous she is and how stupid you are for complaining about being poor. 1.00

00:21:04.980 I mean, why don't you just stop watching Disney Plus already, you poors? 1.00

00:21:09.540 That'll cover the cost of housing and your carbon tax for maybe a day.

00:21:14.940 Mark my words, the media will do whatever they can to make this woman prime minister. 0.99

00:21:20.020 Stay with us for more.

00:21:29.560 Hey, welcome back.

00:21:35.000 You know what?

00:21:35.980 A few years ago, before the pandemic stopped all of our traveling, we used to have Rebel News cruises, which were really fun.

00:21:42.880 And we actually had a Rebel News trip to Israel.

00:21:46.400 About 45 of our most enthusiastic fans came with us on a bona fide journalistic mission.

00:21:53.060 We went across the whole country.

00:21:54.900 We met Palestinian leaders, Jewish leaders, political leaders, historians.

00:21:58.700 It was great.

00:21:59.580 Well, the pandemic stopped all that, but we're doing it again.

00:22:02.960 In fact, we're going to Israel this September 5th.

00:22:05.880 There are still, I think, a couple of tickets left if you want to come.

00:22:09.460 Check out all the details at rebelvacations.com.

00:22:14.100 But this time we're adding something different.

00:22:15.260 We are adding on a second leg of the journey to go to Dubai, the Arabic city in the United Arab Emirates.

00:22:23.520 It's actually a kind of Abraham Accords fact-finding trip.

00:22:27.020 We'll spend a week in Israel and then three or four days in Dubai to see if it indeed is a warm peace.

00:22:34.760 I'll be there.

00:22:35.220 Sheila Gunn-Reed, David Menzies, Avi Yamini, Drea Humphreys.

00:22:39.020 It's going to be a great team of rebels, and hopefully you, for more details, go to rebelvacations.com.

00:22:44.980 We are interested in Israel, whether or not the tour was happening, because such incredible things are going on in that country, and we'll see them firsthand.

00:22:54.560 It looks to me like a political division in the country that is more shocking than anything I've seen, even in the United States.

00:23:03.300 The United States, where Democrats and Republicans despise each other, where there's talk about a national divorce or even a civil war.

00:23:11.160 I think it's just talk in America, but it feels like it actually is on the precipice of a genuine civil war in Israel.

00:23:19.320 I know that sounds crazy, but to help us figure out what's really going on, we go to our friend Joel Pollack,

00:23:25.220 the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com, who's been covering this story for them.

00:23:30.560 Joel, great to see you again.

00:23:31.840 What I see in Israel right now suggests a kind of division that makes the Trump-Hillary division look like a friendship.

00:23:39.980 Well, I don't know how real that is, and it's exciting to hear that you're going to Israel in a few weeks,

00:23:45.060 because you will have a sense on the ground of how things feel.

00:23:49.620 I've had the experience before, especially during the height or the depths of the second Palestinian Intifada,

00:23:56.660 of feeling as though Israel was under siege and perhaps even about to give up.

00:24:02.120 And when I arrived there, I found a healthy, thriving, robust society that was dealing with a problem of terrorism at the periphery,

00:24:10.720 but was overall intact and simply too big and too strong for anybody to bring down.

00:24:18.900 And I think you'll find that as well.

00:24:20.820 I have a friend named Asher Fredman, who is a veteran of the Israeli army.

00:24:24.840 He's an Israeli.

00:24:25.940 He studied in the States and went back there.

00:24:28.460 And he tweeted late last week that despite all of the media talk about Israelis being at each other's throats,

00:24:35.820 that life actually felt as if it had continued normally.

00:24:40.080 There were large-scale demonstrations.

00:24:42.080 There was some disruption to traffic and things like that.

00:24:44.680 There certainly is a lot of passion on either side of the issue of judicial reform.

00:24:49.820 But for the most part, Israeli society remains intact.

00:24:52.820 And the term civil war is mostly being used by people on the left who seem desperate that the majority of the Knesset,

00:25:02.140 Israel's parliament, is determined to fulfill its promises to its voters and to pass these judicial reforms,

00:25:08.820 which are actually rather modest.

00:25:09.980 There is a panic on the left that is partly about the loss of political power,

00:25:15.120 partly about intolerance toward any election or any governing majority that isn't them or that they didn't win.

00:25:23.400 And I think it's also fueled by social media.

00:25:26.520 I think there's a level of unreality to it.

00:25:28.580 I'm not trying to dismiss the idea that there really are divisions that are important.

00:25:33.420 But when I talk to people on the left in Israel, including some of my own relatives,

00:25:37.640 or I listen to what people on the left are saying, serious people, intellectual people,

00:25:42.600 they almost never address the issue of judicial reform.

00:25:46.480 They are not really upset about the particular reforms being pushed.

00:25:51.840 They are really expressing a kind of anxiety about their own place in Israel's future at a time when demographically the balance is shifting in favor of more religious Jews

00:26:02.820 and in favor of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, what are called in Israel Mizrahi Jews,

00:26:08.760 who tend to be browner, who tend to be a little bit less educated sometimes.

00:26:13.100 They come from more impoverished backgrounds, but they're still very much part of the fabric of Israeli life.

00:26:17.280 The old secular Ashkenazi Eastern European elite, which was predominantly socialist and which was responsible in large part for the founding of the State of Israel,

00:26:27.620 is feeling its power slip away because it is largely confined to the urban coastal environment.

00:26:34.060 It is very heavily represented in the media and in the tech sector and at the universities, but it doesn't represent the population as a whole.

00:26:40.960 And ever since the end of the peace process in the early 2000s, it has lost its, if you will, grip on Israeli political discourse.

00:26:52.160 It had already lost the majority in the late 70s to the Likud party led by Menachem Begin,

00:26:56.800 who was the first to bring the opposition to power in Israel.

00:26:59.800 But the left stopped being able to set the agenda, except through the courts,

00:27:03.840 where the powerful Israeli judiciary took more and more powers for itself over time,

00:27:10.820 declaring a constitutional revolution and the right to review legislation,

00:27:15.400 which is part of many other democracies, but was never explicitly guaranteed by any constitution in Israel and not by any legislation.

00:27:24.620 So the left hung out through the judiciary and eventually conservative voters got tired of it.

00:27:29.440 And they're trying to pare back the judiciary, not to make it dependent or to take away its judicial independence,

00:27:37.120 but to keep the branches in balance so that when people vote for a government and it carries out a policy,

00:27:43.300 it actually can do that without being overturned almost automatically by the courts.

00:27:47.740 You know, I'm so glad you said everything you said there, because I have not been in Israel in a while.

00:27:53.100 And I do listen to social media from Anglo-oriented Ashkenazi Jews as opposed to the Sephardi Jews or Russian Jews or working class Jews. 0.88

00:28:03.960 And I'm sure what you said is right.

00:28:06.320 It feels a little bit like a color revolution, almost like what would America be like if Trump won in 2024?

00:28:14.020 You would have people looking for any excuse to jam a clog in the works.

00:28:19.580 In this case, they actually are focused on their remaining source of power, which is the Supreme Court.

00:28:25.560 Joel, can you tell our viewers, I think I know of some of them, but I know you follow this closely.

00:28:29.740 What are some of the quirks about the Israeli Supreme Court that the left and that the court itself is fighting over

00:28:35.700 and that Netanyahu ran to campaign on?

00:28:38.260 Because some of them are so astonishing that I think Canadians or Americans who are used to sort of a check and balance,

00:28:45.500 the courts, the legislature, the executive, all in sort of tension with each other.

00:28:49.400 I think they would be blown away by how powerful and self-delegated that power is by the Israeli Supreme Court.

00:28:57.300 It would shock people in Canada and the United States.

00:28:59.960 Can you list a couple of ways that the Israeli Supreme Court is different, ways that Netanyahu wants to change?

00:29:07.140 Sure.

00:29:07.480 I mean, one of the ones that comes to mind immediately, and this makes a lot of Americans take a second look at what's going on in Israel,

00:29:15.320 because the Israeli Supreme Court is composed of 15 members.

00:29:19.520 We have nine justices here in the United States, and every time there's a case at the Supreme Court,

00:29:25.640 it has to be heard by all nine of the justices.

00:29:29.460 But in Israel, not all 15 justices hear every case.

00:29:33.860 And in fact, the chief justice in Israel can delegate certain cases to certain justices.

00:29:40.200 So the chief justice can decide that a particular case is going to be heard by a conservative justice or a liberal justice,

00:29:46.320 and thereby determine the outcome of the case.

00:29:49.940 It's not as if the balance on the court is allowed to work its own way through the facts and the laws,

00:29:56.500 but rather the chief justice can essentially decide whether liberals or conservatives prevail on a particular issue,

00:30:02.400 simply by deciding which judges or justices are going to hear the case.

00:30:05.800 It's as if the only judge allowed to hear the affirmative action case would be Clarence Thomas,

00:30:11.280 who's opposed to affirmative action.

00:30:12.580 The left would never accept that.

00:30:14.120 Or the chief justice, John Roberts, deciding that the only justice who can hear the Roe versus Wade line of abortion cases

00:30:21.180 is Samuel Alito or Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom voted to overturn Roe versus Wade.

00:30:26.040 So that's one aspect of it.

00:30:28.660 Another is the power that was recently removed in last week's legislation by the Netanyahu government,

00:30:36.100 which was the power to overrule government actions that the courts found unreasonable.

00:30:40.920 Not unlawful, not unconstitutional, but simply unreasonable.

00:30:45.340 Now, there's a doctrine of reasonableness in common law that we have in the United States and that you have in Canada as well.

00:30:52.020 This is something different.

00:30:53.000 This is not establishing reasonableness as a standard of behavior.

00:30:58.140 So when you have a tort case, for example, you often measure someone's culpability by what a reasonable person would have done.

00:31:05.180 Or we talk about whether there's a reasonable doubt in a criminal case.

00:31:09.080 This is simply saying we don't think this policy is reasonable.

00:31:12.740 Not that it didn't go through the right administrative hoops or that the government didn't apply its mind to it or whatever,

00:31:17.460 but just that the court decides that such and such is unreasonable and therefore we're going to reject it.

00:31:22.420 No left-wing activist or Democratic Party voter or liberal voter would ever accept that a conservative court could tell a Democratic Party or Liberal Party government

00:31:33.760 that its policies are simply unreasonable to those conservative justices.

00:31:37.800 But that's how the Israeli system works.

00:31:39.980 And the reason it worked that way, as I alluded to earlier, was that in the 1990s, the chief justice at the time, Aharon Barak,

00:31:47.640 began taking more and more power for the courts and declaring that the courts had power to review certain legislation

00:31:54.880 and that the courts had the power to intervene in government decisions.

00:31:58.720 And this power went largely unchallenged, but it began to interfere, not just in things conservative governments wanted to do.

00:32:06.740 It began to interfere even in agreements that the left and the right had come to.

00:32:11.480 For example, about six years ago, there was an agreement between the left and the right on how to resolve the thorny question of religious students participating in the military.

00:32:20.920 And they actually came to an agreement.

00:32:22.260 But the court, which is dominated by the left, said, no, this agreement is invalid.

00:32:25.560 It's unreasonable and we're going to reject it.

00:32:27.320 And so it's actually been a force for the left, but not a force for compromise in the Israeli political system.

00:32:33.700 It has tended to be a backstop, sort of last-ditch maneuver or weapon, really, for the left to defeat not just conservative policies, but compromises,

00:32:44.500 so that conservatives know when they negotiate with the left, they're not really negotiating with elected leaders.

00:32:49.420 They're also negotiating with the courts.

00:32:51.920 I heard there was also, there was one ruling, you tell me if this is right,

00:32:55.480 that the current members of the Supreme Court wanted the right to veto any new appointments to the court.

00:33:01.920 Is that right? Did I hear that right?

00:33:04.440 Well, they have a veto because Israel selects its judges through a judicial commission.

00:33:10.660 And although there are a few elected members of the Knesset on this commission, the majority of the seats are composed of judges and lawyers or members of the bar.

00:33:22.640 So the judges can say, no, no, we don't like who you pick.

00:33:25.420 Pick again.

00:33:25.940 It's got to be one of our friends.

00:33:28.140 Right.

00:33:28.600 And the lawyers don't contradict the judges.

00:33:30.620 So effectively, the judiciary has a veto over judicial selection.

00:33:35.020 There are occasionally conservative judges who are simply so brilliant that it's hard to turn them down with a straight face.

00:33:41.040 But most of the people who are selected are on the left and learn through their careers and on their way to that point to appease the worldview of the largely secular, largely Eastern European judges who are running the system.

00:33:54.660 So, yes, Netanyahu wants to broaden that.

00:33:57.260 And when Americans say, like the Biden administration has said, I mean, most Americans actually aren't too familiar with the ins and outs of this.

00:34:03.780 But when the Biden administration says that these reforms are radical and they're a threat to Israeli democracy, you look at how we select judges in the United States.

00:34:11.400 It's entirely political.

00:34:12.680 The president, which is, of course, elected, then can approve or disapprove of this election.

00:34:22.460 At no point are there any experts at all who weigh in on the judicial selection process.

00:34:27.180 So we have an entirely political process in most of the states in terms of ordinary criminal law and civil law.

00:34:33.300 We elect our judges directly.

00:34:35.380 So I want to talk about the power of the legislature relative to the judiciary or the power of the electorate.

00:34:42.400 And we have an independent judiciary in the United States, but it's not as independent as the Israeli judiciary.

00:34:47.120 And it will still be more independent than the Israeli judiciary if most of these reforms are passed.

00:34:51.360 There is one reform that I've objected to, which would allow the Knesset to overrule court decisions, Supreme Court decisions by a majority vote.

00:35:00.040 Now, I don't think that is consistent necessarily with judicial independence.

00:35:04.760 That's too low a bar.

00:35:06.280 It's too low a threshold.

00:35:07.660 We in the United States also allow Congress to overrule the Supreme Court, but they have to pass a constitutional amendment, which is much more difficult, much higher bar.

00:35:15.600 And, of course, three-fourths of the states have to approve of the amendment for it to go through.

00:35:19.980 So it's much more difficult.

00:35:21.140 It still exists, that kind of mechanism, but it's just much more difficult.

00:35:24.120 So I think that having a simple majority of the Knesset is too low a bar.

00:35:28.200 I've brought this up with proponents of the reforms in Israel, and one of them told me, well, you can't get a majority of the Knesset to do anything.

00:35:34.760 But I think they've started to realize that that one reform they've proposed is problematic, and they've signaled the willingness to drop it or to compromise on it.

00:35:43.160 The point is there can be a dialogue about this, and most Israelis, including some on the left, agree that the powers of the court are simply too great.

00:35:50.800 What they object to is that Netanyahu is in power, that he is directing this process of reform, and that he has, in a sense, the ultimate say on which reforms come to the floor for a vote.

00:36:01.520 The opposition has walked out of negotiations.

00:36:04.360 They have rejected talks with Netanyahu.

00:36:07.460 They've put up impossible conditions.

00:36:08.800 They have, in a sense, created their own internal opposition because the hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets are now living in tent cities in places like Gan Sacher, the Sacher Garden in Jerusalem.

00:36:20.280 Interestingly, these tents are top of the line.

00:36:22.700 They're all the same.

00:36:24.140 There's a lot of funding coming into this opposition movement.

00:36:26.220 But when you've got those kinds of numbers on the ground, it's very hard for the elected opposition leaders to come back to their supporters in the streets and say, you know what, we decided to compromise after all.

00:36:35.660 So they've talked themselves into a corner by using phrases like civil war or regime or coup and using it not rhetorically but in a real sense.

00:36:46.040 Netanyahu is—

00:36:46.960 Go ahead.

00:36:47.480 Yes, go ahead.

00:36:48.180 You mentioned the funding.

00:36:49.360 All the tents are the same at first rate.

00:36:52.140 We know that the United States medals in other countries.

00:36:55.540 I was in Hungary recently, and I learned of $25 million being poured into that country to set up opposition media, which would be like three-quarters of a billion dollars that Hungary puts into America for anti-regime media.

00:37:10.220 And George Soros himself and other Democrat activists have been against Netanyahu viscerally.

00:37:18.520 I think that—I use the phrase color revolution.

00:37:21.840 I think that this is exactly what America would look like if Trump were, quote, restored.

00:37:28.100 Because remember, Netanyahu was voted out.

00:37:29.940 They were coming for him legally.

00:37:31.400 He was disgraced in scandals.

00:37:33.080 But he got back in.

00:37:34.580 A vindication of himself, he would say, and his policies.

00:37:37.580 And now he's going to do what he always wanted to do and take out his deep state critics.

00:37:41.500 That's the analogy I see.

00:37:43.420 And so all the forces, many of them in America, many of them in Europe, who want to topple Netanyahu because they have a personal hatred for him and because they don't want him to make these democratic reforms to alter the balance of power in that country.

00:37:57.020 I actually think this is—there's a lot of foreign meddling.

00:38:00.500 And it's—the Supreme Court is something they care about, but they just really are going to try and stop Netanyahu at all costs.

00:38:08.600 And they wouldn't mind a civil war.

00:38:10.860 I mean, I've heard that, for example, some people are not showing up for conscription to the military.

00:38:16.060 I've heard stories of doctors saying, what's your political stripe before I give you medical care?

00:38:20.620 I don't know if those are true stories.

00:38:22.420 But I think that there are some people who are so insane that they actually would go to civil war.

00:38:26.420 Well, I think the conscripts are still showing up.

00:38:29.700 It's some of the volunteer reservists who aren't showing up.

00:38:32.680 Okay.

00:38:33.240 Now, it's still problematic.

00:38:35.100 It's still a major problem because it is anti-democratic.

00:38:38.940 It's an attempt to use military pressure to change a policy, right?

00:38:42.460 If you're going to say we are going to prevent the military from functioning to get our way because we didn't win at the ballot box last November, that is the opposite of standing up for democracy.

00:38:54.080 The military, it's a coup of its own in a way.

00:38:57.900 But I think that there won't be a civil war in Israel because Israelis don't want to kill each other.

00:39:04.460 There's a lot of animosity between some groups of Jewish Israelis.

00:39:09.480 There are also fault lines between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

00:39:12.480 We saw that explode two years ago, shortly after Joe Biden was elected, when Hamas went to war against Israel.

00:39:19.900 And there were riots in which Arab Israelis attacked Jews.

00:39:24.780 And there were some revenge attacks, reprisal attacks as well.

00:39:27.800 So there are some tensions, but nothing to approach the scale of a civil war.

00:39:32.780 There have been military divisions among the Jewish residents of Israel before.

00:39:39.040 Prior to the State of Israel being formed in the last few years, there was a military confrontation, really, between the forces that lined up behind David Ben-Burion, who became the first prime minister, and the forces in the paramilitary organization that was led by Menachem Begin, who later became the prime minister in 1977, as I mentioned.

00:39:59.680 These were forces that were opposed to one another, and Begin's forces decided to attack British police installations and to attack infrastructure in what was a campaign of sabotage, and we could even call it a campaign of terror, against the British occupying forces.

00:40:14.520 They bombed the King David Hotel and so forth.

00:40:16.960 Ben-Gurion's forces in the Haganah, which later became the Israel Defense Forces, they worked with the British to suppress Begin's forces.

00:40:24.920 And that left a lot of bad blood that Begin, to his credit, set aside when the State of Israel was founded.

00:40:33.140 But there has been that sort of low-level conflict in history, not recent history, but we're talking 80 years ago, when there were real divisions among the different Jewish military organizations about what tactics to use to win independence from the British.

00:40:50.000 But I don't think anything like that is possible now, and I think, you know, you'll tell us when you return how it feels.

00:40:57.500 I think when I talk to my relatives, I have Israeli relatives on the left, some of whom have been at these demonstrations.

00:41:03.820 They're very passionate, and they fear that their lives are going to be taken over by religious authorities who are represented in the Netanyahu government.

00:41:12.140 I don't think that's a rational fear, but I think they fear it.

00:41:14.880 I think the role, by the way, of social media in spreading some of these fears has to be looked at.

00:41:18.880 When I talk to my few conservative relatives in Israel, they may or may not agree with judicial reforms, but they take the attitude of live and let live, that we can get past this, and people have to let go a little bit, and nobody should be seeking the blood of anybody else.

00:41:37.980 It's just not necessary, and it's not what we're about, and I tend to think that that's a widespread sentiment in the general Israeli population.

00:41:46.580 What you see in Tel Aviv is just like what you see in major cities in the United States.

00:41:50.340 You have liberal organizations, liberal activists who are living in close quarters.

00:41:54.320 It's easy for them to get into the street.

00:41:55.780 It's easy for them to get media attention.

00:41:57.200 They're very active on social media.

00:41:58.780 So they drive a lot of the narrative, and the Biden administration is playing into this.

00:42:02.240 It has supported the opposition protests.

00:42:04.380 It has given the opposition leaders a false sense, I think, that Netanyahu is going to be on his way out soon, that he can be defeated.

00:42:11.500 I think one of the reasons the opposition doesn't negotiate with Netanyahu is that they believe they have the backing of the Biden administration, and that's all that matters.

00:42:17.980 I think it's a miscalculation.

00:42:19.960 But I don't think there's going to be civil war, and I don't think that people are going to allow this to get out of hand.

00:42:24.900 We'll see what happens, of course, but I look forward to your reporting when you're there on the ground.

00:42:29.480 I'm looking forward, too, and thanks very much for your wisdom today.

00:42:32.280 And for those who haven't signed up yet, I mean, we do leave in five weeks, but I think there are a couple tickets left.

00:42:39.080 There is more room on the bus.

00:42:40.480 We will be doing journalism as we go around the country, and that's the fun stuff.

00:42:44.200 We'll be doing journalism.

00:42:45.220 We'll be meeting with experts on all sides of these various divides, and you will be there right with us as we learn what's going on in the country.

00:42:53.800 Joel, great to catch up with you.

00:42:55.140 Thanks for this briefing before we head on over.

00:42:58.320 The website is rebelvacations.com, but it's definitely a working vacation for the rebels.

00:43:03.660 Our guests will have a lot of fun, though.

00:43:06.100 Joel, take care.

00:43:06.640 Thanks again.

00:43:08.100 Thanks for going to Israel, and thanks for taking an interest in this issue.

00:43:12.080 Right on.

00:43:12.520 We sure do.

00:43:13.500 Joel's the senior editor-at-large at breitbart.com.

00:43:15.660 Stay with us.

00:43:16.240 More ahead.

00:43:16.620 Hey, welcome back.

00:43:29.500 Your letters to me, Diana Bachner, if I'm saying that right, says,

00:43:33.480 I love history and classical plays, literature, movies, statues, art, and more.

00:43:37.760 I totally agree with you, Ezra.

00:43:38.920 If anyone wants to write or create something authentic according to their own views and capabilities, then fine.

00:43:43.740 But they have no right to change the authentic creations of artists from history.

00:43:48.220 You're so right.

00:43:49.120 I mean, there's tribute bands, right?

00:43:51.940 There's cover versions of famous songs.

00:43:55.780 But we acknowledge that.

00:43:57.140 We say, hey, how do you like my interpretation?

00:43:59.340 Or I'm going to do a jazzy version.

00:44:01.780 Or I'm going to do a parody.

00:44:03.340 You know, if you've heard of Weird Al Yankovic, he takes famous songs and makes jokey rhymes to them.

00:44:09.060 That's all a form of art, too.

00:44:11.100 But this is a counterfeit Shakespeare.

00:44:14.780 And I don't know.

00:44:16.000 It feels like the Taliban destroying statues because it offends them.

00:44:20.920 It really feels that way.

00:44:22.280 Elky says, I was going to buy tickets for Stratford, but everything looks like a woke adaptation.

00:44:26.960 I'm not wasting my money.

00:44:28.260 Even worse, my kids didn't even read Shakespeare in school.

00:44:31.660 Well, that's why I was so excited to go.

00:44:34.040 I truly, truly love that play, Much Ado About Nothing.

00:44:37.780 I've read it.

00:44:38.720 I've watched the wonderful movie with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.

00:44:42.600 And I thought, this is going to be great.

00:44:44.480 And I show up in the theater.

00:44:46.000 And I felt great because the set was normal.

00:44:48.960 It wasn't alternative.

00:44:50.940 And the actors were good.

00:44:52.560 And I was in a great spirit.

00:44:55.460 And then I thought, what?

00:44:56.840 That's not in the play.

00:44:58.420 What's that?

00:44:59.480 That's not how it ends.

00:45:00.800 And it was only when I did the digging that I thought, this is rewritten.

00:45:04.880 I felt tricked.

00:45:06.320 You shouldn't be tricked.

00:45:07.700 It would be like, and who on earth has the gall, the hubris to say, I can do a better sculpture than Michelangelo.

00:45:17.660 I can do a better painting than da Vinci or Raphael.

00:45:21.520 Who on earth would have that hubris?

00:45:24.040 Well, naturally, a woke Marxist professor.

00:45:27.040 That's who I was so crestfallen because I love the idea of a Shakespeare festival.

00:45:32.160 Call me old-fashioned and quirky that way.

00:45:34.420 But this is not a Shakespeare festival.

00:45:36.480 It's a massacre of Shakespeare.

00:45:38.780 It really is Shakespeare in drag.

00:45:41.840 Well, that's the show for today.

00:45:43.020 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.

00:45:48.100 And keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - August 01, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is Chrystia Freeland even worse than Justin Trudeau？

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