The Ben Shapiro Show - Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

00:00:00.000 I think meeting the kids really hit me in a different way.

00:00:03.000 One time I broke down and cried when I was with one of them.

00:00:07.000 The other times I felt like I really had to stay strong.

00:00:10.000 And then when I got back to my hotel after filming that day, I think all my emotions came out.

00:00:15.000 Because you can't understand not only the trauma that they dealt with either when they were taken hostage or...

00:00:20.000 I interviewed a kid who saw Hamas kill both of his parents right in front of him and then he had to hide under his mother's dead body for a few hours so that Hamas would think that he was dead as well.

00:00:31.000 Can you imagine laying under your mother's dead body just to survive?

00:00:36.000 Montana Tucker is a multi-talented influencer and activist whose social media following of over 14 million on platforms like TikTok and Instagram has made a tremendous impact on how young Americans absorb information about Israel and antisemitism online.

00:00:49.000 Montana's viral content ranges from dancing on Hollywood Boulevard to man-on-the-street interviews that gauge the public's perceptions about Zionism and the war in Gaza.

00:00:57.000 This December, Montana will share her latest documentary, The Children of October 7th, where she interviews the child survivors of the kibbutz attacks as they survey their damaged homes and pay homage to the family members they've lost.

00:01:07.000 In today's episode, Montana discusses her experiences touring college campuses, the most common misconceptions she hears about Israel, and her takeaways from personally meeting with the victims of the October 7th attacks.

00:01:17.000 Using the power of dance and storytelling, Montana has inspired so many to utilize their creative platforms for good.

00:01:22.000 Stay tuned for this wonderful conversation with Montana Tucker on the latest episode of the Sunday Special.

00:01:27.000 Montana Tucker, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:01:39.000 Really appreciate it.

00:01:40.000 Thanks for having me again.

00:01:41.000 Yeah, so let's talk about, for those who don't know your story, how you got into Israel activism.

00:01:46.000 This is not your bag.

00:01:47.000 This is not how you started.

00:01:47.000 So how did you get to where you are right now, doing what you're doing?

00:01:51.000 It's crazy that this is now my whole life, but I'm so thankful for it.

00:01:54.000 I couldn't think of doing anything else.

00:01:57.000 My grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and I grew up hearing their stories my entire life.

00:02:01.000 Never forget.

00:02:02.000 Never again.

00:02:03.000 And my grandparents spoke at all the schools down in South Florida and around the world, and to anyone that would hear them, they would share their stories.

00:02:10.000 I would hear about what they had to go through, what Jews had to go through, and that never again and never forget stood with me my whole life.

00:02:19.000 When my Zadie passed away four years ago at the age of 97, my grandma is still alive today at age 96, I just knew that I had to now take over their legacy and their goal and their mission.

00:02:30.000 When October 7th happened specifically, Something came over me that it was like, okay, this is now my time.

00:02:36.000 I have a platform of a combined following of 14 million followers.

00:02:39.000 If I don't use it to educate people of what is actually going on, the truth of what is going on, you know, I've been back to Israel now three times.

00:02:47.000 I'm going again in a few weeks, and I'm trying to interview as many people as I can and show the truth about what is going on.

00:02:54.000 So let's talk about how you got to 14 million followers, because this is a pre-existing following before you started doing the Israel activism.

00:03:00.000 You're by profession, a dancer.

00:03:02.000 So what was it like training for that?

00:03:04.000 How do you build up a following that big?

00:03:05.000 Yeah, so I did build my following on dancing, on singing, on acting.

00:03:09.000 I would, you know, collaborate with Paul Abdul, Terry Crews, Lance Bass from NSYNC, Ric Flair, the wrestler.

00:03:17.000 So I would really collaborate with all kinds of amazing people, and that's what people followed me for.

00:03:22.000 So when I did my Holocaust series specifically, that was a really big risk for my platforms because people were not following me to see me cry and to see me talk about something so serious, especially the Holocaust.

00:03:32.000 They were Follow me to see me dance on the streets and, you know, sing.

00:03:36.000 So it was definitely a big risk and, I think, shock to the world, but it really made a huge impact.

00:03:43.000 And, you know, especially when I first started talking about Israel, I lost hundreds of thousands of followers.

00:03:48.000 The death threats, I mean, I'm sure you can fully understand and relate.

00:03:52.000 The death threats every day, still to this day, the death threats that I get are insane.

00:03:57.000 But I also gained a whole new...

00:04:00.000 Following of people who really share my morals and values and missions.

00:04:05.000 And not only is it the echo chamber of Jews or pro-Israel activists, I really have a following of people of all races, religions, walks of life who are now actually being educated about this and now really are understanding what's going on.

00:04:20.000 So did you spend a lot of time in Israel before October 7th?

00:04:22.000 I went on birthright.

00:04:23.000 That was my first time 11 years ago on birthright.

00:04:27.000 And I fell in love.

00:04:28.000 Absolutely.

00:04:28.000 I just hadn't gone back, not for any specific reason.

00:04:32.000 I just hadn't gone back.

00:04:33.000 But I always would talk about how I needed to go back.

00:04:35.000 And now they can't keep me away.

00:04:37.000 My mom literally has to drag me out of Israel.

00:04:39.000 I'm like, I want to be there 24-7.

00:04:41.000 So where were you when October 7th happened?

00:04:43.000 I was actually in LA, and I was actually going to celebrate one of my great friends' birthdays that day.

00:04:51.000 And I don't know about you, but when I found out, I felt like I got hit by a truck, and obviously I'm just in my nice apartment in LA, and I felt like my whole world just crashed.

00:05:05.000 And I don't know if it's generational trauma or what it is exactly, but I think most Jews around the world specifically felt this feeling.

00:05:13.000 And I just, like, I couldn't do anything.

00:05:14.000 I ended up not leaving my apartment for a whole week.

00:05:17.000 I felt sick to my stomach.

00:05:18.000 I felt guilty even enjoying my beautiful view while this is going on in Israel.

00:05:23.000 And I think that is what really instilled this, like, I need to do everything that I can in me.

00:05:29.000 I went to a rally.

00:05:30.000 The first time I kind of left was a rally that they had in Los Angeles.

00:05:33.000 And I marched with Floyd Mayweather, actually.

00:05:35.000 He's been awesome.

00:05:36.000 I don't know how familiar you are, but he's...

00:05:38.000 Gone to Israel now, I think, twice or three times since October 7th, and he's donated so much, and he really cares so much, and it's amazing.

00:05:47.000 So we marched the entire time, side by side, and that was kind of my first time leaving, and then my first time at a rally, actually.

00:05:55.000 Now I've been to hundreds since, but that was my first time at a rally.

00:05:58.000 And I was like, okay, there are so many other people that are here feeling the exact same way that I'm feeling.

00:06:04.000 We're in this together.

00:06:05.000 I can do this.

00:06:06.000 And then that kind of inspired me to...

00:06:07.000 To go full force.

00:06:08.000 For me and for my family, obviously, there's sort of a double whammy.

00:06:12.000 So one was we had gotten back to America from Israel.

00:06:15.000 We'd been there for the Jewish holidays.

00:06:17.000 So we'd gotten back October 6th.

00:06:19.000 And so my in-laws were still in Jerusalem at the time.

00:06:24.000 So we had a lot of friends and family, obviously, over there.

00:06:27.000 And so for I think there are really kind of three major issues that came up for Jews in America.

00:06:34.000 One was many of us know people in Israel.

00:06:36.000 Many of us have friends and family in Israel.

00:06:38.000 And so, you know, it's such a small country and it's such a small community that you obviously know people who are directly impacted by everything that's going on.

00:06:43.000 And if you don't, you're one degree removed from somebody who's either been killed, kidnapped or or had to fight in the army over there in order to in order to stop this sort of stuff.

00:06:51.000 So that was that was number one.

00:06:52.000 Number two was the the shaking of a feeling of security that Jews around the world had had prior to October 7th.

00:06:59.000 So if you weren't living in France where you're under some sort of constant sort of assault, low level assault, if you aren't living in Denmark, whereas it turns out there's some real problems.

00:07:08.000 But you're living in America, which has been the friendliest country in the history of the world to Jews.

00:07:11.000 If if you're living in the United States, this is not an issue that you really had to deal with.

00:07:17.000 widespread anti-Semitism.

00:07:18.000 Even people like me, where I got hit with a huge wave of anti-Semitism in 2015-2016, for example, It didn't really impact my daily life in any serious way other than I needed a little bit of extra security.

00:07:28.000 But the idea that my world was shaped by anti-Semitism in some serious way, it never really occurred to me.

00:07:33.000 And I think that was true for virtually every Jew, including Jews, many Jews in Israel, who had come to sort of just...

00:07:40.000 I don't understand that they live in the world's roughest neighborhood.

00:07:43.000 And that was just kind of the norm.

00:07:44.000 But there was a powerful army.

00:07:46.000 There was a powerful state that was going to protect them from this sort of stuff.

00:07:49.000 And then it didn't.

00:07:51.000 And when that happened, I think that the feelings of vulnerability obviously skyrocketed for Jews, not just in Israel, but around the world.

00:07:58.000 And then there was the, what I say was sort of the triple whammy here, which was the anti-Semitic response to October 7th, which was the thing that truly astonished me.

00:08:05.000 I wasn't shaken by anything except the evils of October 7th about October 7th because It turns out there are people who want to murder Jews in that region of the world, and they're quite plentiful. 0.68

00:08:13.000 The part that was shocking to me was the immediate response by hundreds of thousands of people across the West, including in the United States, before Israel had even responded to October 7th, to essentially side with Hamas and take the side of the people who are doing the murdering, the raping, the pillaging, the kidnapping.

00:08:30.000 That was an amazing shock to the system.

00:08:32.000 Well, that just shows you that I think this has been built up inside of them for a long time, and I think that it's just now socially acceptable.

00:08:39.000 For a long time, I feel like it wasn't as socially acceptable to be just flat-out anti-Semitic.

00:08:43.000 But now, literally, as we see on social media, as we see on the campuses, it's literally popular and trending to be anti-Semitic, anti-Israel.

00:08:54.000 Like, I'm seeing it so much on social media.

00:08:56.000 media, it's crazy what videos like are going viral are really these hateful videos that have people who have no skin in the game or people who have no clue truly about the conflict.

00:09:07.000 But social media, it's like it's like pushing this.

00:09:10.000 And on campuses, kids who feel maybe like they haven't found themselves or they haven't found a group, they're seeing how it's it's popular to do these encampments or it's popular to do these crazy protests.

00:09:21.000 So they're following along because they want to feel like they're a part of something.

00:09:24.000 How much of that do you think is social media?

00:09:26.000 You spent an enormous amount of time and effort, obviously, on social media.

00:09:29.000 You built your career on social media.

00:09:31.000 So if we here at Daily Wire, obviously, whether you're talking Facebook or YouTube, you're talking TikTok, any of those social media sites have been a boon for independent content creators.

00:09:39.000 But there's no question that the algorithms, particularly at TikTok, have been virulent in generating extraordinary antisemitism and broadcasting that antisemitism to an ever larger crowd.

00:09:50.000 Unfortunately, I blame social media for a lot of it.

00:09:52.000 I think that this is where kids aren't watching CNN and Fox all day long.

00:09:56.000 They're just not.

00:09:57.000 They're on their phones.

00:09:58.000 That's where they're getting their information.

00:10:00.000 Kids literally search.

00:10:02.000 I go to Google still.

00:10:03.000 I don't know about you when you're looking something up, but the younger generation goes to TikTok.

00:10:08.000 They search on TikTok for any of their news, for any of their information that they want to know.

00:10:12.000 They don't go to Google.

00:10:13.000 They go literally to TikTok.

00:10:15.000 And TikTok, I think, is the most toxic place.

00:10:17.000 It's sad to me because that's my biggest platform.

00:10:19.000 I have 9.2 million followers just on TikTok alone.

00:10:22.000 And it's been an incredible part of my career and my life.

00:10:25.000 And it used to be a place that I feel like was so loving and accepting of everyone.

00:10:30.000 Like, it didn't matter what you looked like, where you were from.

00:10:32.000 Like, anyone had the opportunity to go viral.

00:10:34.000 And I feel like it would push, like, the more unique you were, like, the better on TikTok.

00:10:38.000 Like, I really loved that about the app.

00:10:40.000 And I feel like now it's turned into like such a hateful place that videos don't get removed when they should.

00:10:46.000 And videos are getting removed when they shouldn't.

00:10:49.000 Like I'll have a video that gets 5 million views on Instagram and on TikTok, it'll get taken down.

00:10:54.000 Mm-hmm.

00:10:58.000 There's no question that the CCP, which effectively runs TikTok, it's a Chinese app, that the material they have promulgated to the West on TikTok, number one, is very different from the stuff they allow in China.

00:11:09.000 In China, they legitimately shut down an enormous amount of material to prevent any sort of criticism of the regime or Westernization of the country.

00:11:17.000 But they've been openly promulgating anti-Semitic content in the hope that it will split the West.

00:11:23.000 I mean, I don't think there's any question that it's an actual strategy.

00:11:25.000 Of course.

00:11:26.000 That's why I keep trying to do as much as I can to debunk any of that.

00:11:29.000 And that's why I keep going back to Israel. 1.00

00:11:31.000 I keep interviewing.

00:11:32.000 I've met with so many of the release hostages.

00:11:35.000 I just filmed a documentary called The Children of October 7th on my last trip to Israel.

00:11:39.000 Because I don't care what people think about the conflict or what side you're on or how much you think you know.

00:11:43.000 When you hear from these kids, these kids were there.

00:11:46.000 They were there that day.

00:11:47.000 They're sharing their real personal stories, not anything political or opinions of anyone else.

00:11:53.000 They are sharing what actually happened to them.

00:11:55.000 And I feel like that's why I try to share those because everyone can relate in some way.

00:12:00.000 Everyone has a mom, a dad, a sister, a brother, a cousin, someone they feel like they can relate to.

00:12:06.000 When you hear these stories, I think they really open people's minds.

00:12:10.000 So obviously, spending the last year doing this, what have been the most frequently asked questions to you?

00:12:17.000 Because you've been going around to college campuses and talking with people.

00:12:19.000 What are the most common questions that you've been getting and how do you answer those?

00:12:23.000 So many.

00:12:24.000 I think a thing that people don't realize, this is not specifically about the conflict, but I'm sure you know as many times as you've been to Israel how Israel's an apartheid state.

00:12:33.000 I think that one bothers me so much because you land in Israel, and I think I've never seen a more diverse group of people in one area.

00:12:42.000 It's insane and amazing and beautiful how many different types of people coexist in Israel.

00:12:47.000 It's really beautiful, and I think that's something that people don't know.

00:12:50.000 I think it's just white Jews that live there. 0.66

00:12:52.000 And there are so many different types of Jews that live in Israel, too.

00:12:55.000 So I think that is something that I'm really trying to show as well.

00:12:58.000 And people ask a lot of the times, like, oh, is it just, like, white Jews that live there?

00:13:02.000 And they think that no Arabs live there at all.

00:13:04.000 And the statistics are incredible of, like, how many actually live there and live there peacefully.

00:13:09.000 And I've talked to them.

00:13:10.000 I'll go up to them and ask them how they feel.

00:13:12.000 I don't know if you're familiar with the Druze community.

00:13:14.000 Yes, please.

00:13:14.000 But which they're incredible.

00:13:16.000 And I've met with them and they said Israel's the most amazing place they've ever been and they love it.

00:13:21.000 Or a group of South African, like, 20-year-olds, we met them on the beach at Tel Aviv.

00:13:26.000 We asked if they were just visiting and they said, no, we live here.

00:13:28.000 We've lived here for a few years.

00:13:30.000 We're Israeli.

00:13:30.000 This is the best decision we've ever made.

00:13:33.000 So I think those are some misconceptions that people always ask.

00:13:36.000 I think also hearing from Israelis, like, everyone truly wants peace there.

00:13:40.000 Like, I think that's something that also is getting so...

00:13:45.000 Misconstrued.

00:13:45.000 They want peace.

00:13:46.000 They want this to end.

00:13:47.000 They want peace.

00:13:50.000 Obviously, everyone wants to get rid of Hamas.

00:13:52.000 That's not a question.

00:13:53.000 But they want peace.

00:13:54.000 They want peace there.

00:13:55.000 And I think that there's just such a misconception of Israel and Israelis.

00:13:58.000 I mean, the last part that you speak about there is so obviously true.

00:14:02.000 Have you ever spent any time there?

00:14:04.000 And if you meet anyone...

00:14:05.000 I mean, here's the thing.

00:14:06.000 In the West, very few people have actually served in the military.

00:14:08.000 The draft in the United States ended during the Vietnam War that's now 50 years ago.

00:14:12.000 So it's been a very long time since you've had mandatory military service in the United States.

00:14:15.000 Mandatory military service is the way that it is done in the state of Israel.

00:14:18.000 If you hit 18, you're going to the military, and now that they're starting to end exemptions, even for the Haredim, for the ultra-Orthodox, it really means pretty much everybody, except for actually Arabs who are not drafted. 0.51

00:14:29.000 Is bound to do either army service or military service.

00:14:33.000 Or national service, rather.

00:14:35.000 And if you're a parent, do you want your kids in Gaza?

00:14:38.000 If you're a parent, are you desperate to have your kids up in Lebanon? 0.96

00:14:41.000 If you're a parent, your kids hit 18. And I know all these parents.

00:14:45.000 I mean, they're my age.

00:14:46.000 And they're looking around and they're saying, my kid's hitting 18. The last thing I want is that.

00:14:52.000 but that's what it takes to survive in this rough neighborhood.

00:14:55.000 We would love a point where that doesn't have to happen in this rough neighborhood.

00:14:59.000 Nobody wants to be doing this stuff.

00:15:01.000 These people all have jobs.

00:15:02.000 The number of people who were called up to the military after October 7th, it's like hundreds of thousands of people.

00:15:08.000 I mean, it literally cleaned out nearly every business in the country.

00:15:11.000 You had people who were working in the banking sector in Tel Aviv were getting called up.

00:15:15.000 You You had small business owners who owned a pizza shop were getting called up.

00:15:18.000 People who had six, seven, eight kids were getting called up.

00:15:21.000 I mean, they mobilized pretty much everyone in the country after October 7th.

00:15:24.000 And many of the Israelis who are getting wounded and killed in combat are people with small kids, are people who have their own business.

00:15:30.000 And because, again, in the United States, there is no war front in the United States that is immediate.

00:15:36.000 The closest thing you can come to it is probably the southern border, but the southern border is still not nearly as violent, obviously, as southern Lebanon is right now, or the Gaza Strip is right now, or even places like Janina or Nablus.

00:15:48.000 The immediacy of the geography is something that I think a lot of people don't understand, because especially if you live in America, this is an enormous, amazing country.

00:15:55.000 It spans 3,000 miles in terms of its width.

00:15:59.000 And the state of Israel, at its closest point, if you're talking about ignoring the West Bank, is nine miles wide.

00:16:05.000 I mean, it's the distance from where we're sitting to the Atlantic Ocean right now.

00:16:09.000 It's tiny.

00:16:10.000 And so when people talk about, well, why does Israel need to be so militaristic?

00:16:13.000 Why do they need such a big army?

00:16:14.000 Why do they need all this kind of stuff?

00:16:16.000 It's because you're talking about a state that's half the size of New Jersey.

00:16:19.000 That's why they need that.

00:16:22.000 I don't know if we're talking too much about what happened in Amsterdam, but that also proves why Israel needs to exist. 0.97

00:16:30.000 I think that is one of the perfect examples of why Israel needs to exist and why The calling for the globalizing, the intifada, what that actually means. 0.89

00:16:40.000 And I don't know.

00:16:42.000 I think that Israel is so criticized.

00:16:45.000 It's the most criticized state in the entire universe.

00:16:48.000 But you're right.

00:16:49.000 It's something that needs to exist.

00:16:51.000 And we need to protect it at all costs.

00:16:54.000 And they're constantly, at every angle, being attacked.

00:16:58.000 And speaking of the soldiers, and I visited a lot of the hospitals.

00:17:01.000 I'm sure you did as well.

00:17:02.000 And it is amazing to meet these people who...

00:17:05.000 Got out of their normal lives.

00:17:06.000 Like you said, they were doctors, they were lawyers, they were working at banks, and they had to get up and leave.

00:17:11.000 And their resilience, though, and even though this is not something that I probably wanted to go do, they will go and fight for their country and for their people and do whatever it takes to save their people.

00:17:23.000 people.

00:17:23.000 And I think that is something that is so beautiful.

00:17:25.000 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.

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00:18:35.000 Yeah, I think one of the things that October 7th has made clear in the period since, including what happened in Amsterdam.

00:18:40.000 For those who missed it, what happened in Amsterdam is that there was a soccer match between the Dutch national team and the, and Makabe Tel Aviv, which is a team that's based obviously in Israel.

00:18:49.000 And, um, and a bunch of Israeli fans were there for the soccer match.

00:18:53.000 Uh, some of them in the, in the lead up were, were sort of getting into shouting matches with, with Palestinian protesters who'd shown up with Palestinian flags.

00:19:01.000 Uh, got a little bit rowdy before the game.

00:19:03.000 And then after the soccer match, uh, there were organized bands were chasing those Jews down and other Jews and beating them, trying to run them over with cars, forcing them to jump into the canals, trying to break into hotels where people were actually just staying.

00:19:16.000 It was essentially an excuse to break into a violent riot or a violent pogrom against Jews.

00:19:23.000 The reality of the necessity for the state of Israel is obviously clear, particularly for people in Europe.

00:19:30.000 There is this great and ridiculous irony where in the aftermath of October 7th, you'll see people who hate Israel say that the Jews should go back where they came from.

00:19:38.000 Of course. 0.84

00:19:38.000 I get those comments all the time. 0.84

00:19:40.000 Because the implication being, of course, that the Jews are European, which ignores, number one, the history, which is that the Jews are innate to the region, that they are, in fact, indigenous to the region.

00:19:49.000 Number two, that probably half of Jews, maybe more than half at this point, who live in Israel and Mizrahi, meaning that they're Sephardi, meaning they're from the actual Arab countries that surround that area.

00:19:58.000 My in-laws are Moroccan and my wife is Moroccan.

00:20:01.000 So like that, she's not European in any way, shape or form. 0.99

00:20:04.000 And so the irony of go back to Europe and then in Europe, Jews are being, are having the shit kicked out of them on the streets or they're being attacked in France for being Jewish. 0.99

00:20:13.000 There have been significant attacks on Jews in France, including murder. 0.98

00:20:18.000 And Jews are realizing this now, moving to Israel, and then being told, no, no, no, you have to go back where, quote-unquote, you came from, which would be the places where they committed a genocide like 80 years ago.

00:20:27.000 An actual genocide. 0.97

00:20:29.000 An actual, honest to God, murder every Jew genocide. 0.91

00:20:31.000 And places where pogroms are still existing today, thanks to many of the expats from Israel. 1.00

00:20:36.000 The Middle East, right?

00:20:37.000 I mean, many of the people who are committing, I would say most of the people who are committing the anti-Jewish violence in Europe right now are not natives of Europe.

00:20:45.000 They're people who are coming from the Middle East and Northern Africa. 0.94

00:20:47.000 They're Muslim and they're radical Muslim and they're hurting Jews in Europe. 1.00

00:20:53.000 It's hard to even square the argument, but it's not a good faith argument in the first place. 0.94

00:20:57.000 It's not, and I think for me, seeing this and hearing this, I heard my grandparents' stories.

00:21:01.000 They were exactly like this.

00:21:03.000 This is literally how the Holocaust started. 0.89

00:21:06.000 These types of revolutions or attacks, etc.

00:21:10.000 But the whole world, the difference is Jews around the world now can speak up. 0.67

00:21:14.000 We have a voice.

00:21:15.000 We're able to speak up.

00:21:17.000 We're able to do something.

00:21:18.000 So when we see this, and non-Jews, this is the time everyone needs to step up and say, this is not okay. 1.00

00:21:24.000 This is unacceptable.

00:21:25.000 Enough.

00:21:26.000 Enough.

00:21:26.000 And like they always say, what starts with the Jews doesn't end with the Jews, number one.

00:21:31.000 And the West could be next.

00:21:33.000 And that's why everyone needs to take this extremely seriously.

00:21:36.000 I think that this is one of the big points, is that what's happening right now is not indicative just of hatred of Jews.

00:21:43.000 It is indicative of the hatred of the West that has been imbibed throughout Western civilization, particularly in young people.

00:21:49.000 It's not everybody who's young, obviously.

00:21:51.000 It's a minority, plurality, depending on where you are, of young people who now believe this anti-Western claptrap.

00:22:00.000 Basically, the West is guilty for exploitation and evil.

00:22:03.000 And anybody who is successful is an oppressor, and anybody who is unsuccessful is the oppressed.

00:22:08.000 And when that matrix is then applied to the Middle East, where Israel is wildly successful, being a country of seven and a half million Jews, a couple million Muslim Arabs, some Christians as well.

00:22:17.000 The total population of Israel is about ten and a half million.

00:22:20.000 A country of ten and a half million is the militarily dominant force in the region, the economically dominant force in the region, without any natural resources.

00:22:27.000 Israel is not a country that has oil.

00:22:29.000 I mean, now they have oil in Leviathan oil fields offshore.

00:22:31.000 That was found like five, ten years ago.

00:22:33.000 It's not as though Israel built its capital off the back of just drilling the way that virtually every other country in the region did.

00:22:42.000 Israel has a Western-style government with Western-style property rights, Western-style GDP, Western-style living standards.

00:22:49.000 And it's specifically because of that that people hate Israel.

00:22:53.000 That's the real reason that people in the West, who are on the left particularly, hate Israel is because the idea is that Israel is too successful.

00:22:59.000 The reason they're successful is because they're exploitive colonizers.

00:23:03.000 And anti-colonization has to happen not just in Israel, but in the rest of Western civilization.

00:23:08.000 The anti-colonization mentality, the decolonialism mentality.

00:23:12.000 They're applying it to Israel, but that's just because it's easy to externalize that particular argument to the Middle East.

00:23:20.000 What they really mean, and people will say this if they're honest about it, is that they want to decolonize America.

00:23:23.000 And what they really mean by that is they just want to tear down all the systems.

00:23:26.000 Yep, yep.

00:23:27.000 I hope eventually the entire world wakes up and really realizes that.

00:23:31.000 Do you think it's changing? 0.98

00:23:32.000 Do you think people are silly? 0.99

00:23:33.000 I do. 0.99

00:23:34.000 I think the backlash is here.

00:23:34.000 Yeah.

00:23:35.000 I think the backlash is here.

00:23:36.000 I think that...

00:23:36.000 I mean, you see it in the Netherlands where Gerd Weilders has been saying, like, this needs to stop for years.

00:23:41.000 and he went from being a supposed fringe voice to being the largest party in his parliament.

00:23:49.000 You're seeing it across Europe, whether the European parties wish to acknowledge it or not.

00:23:53.000 Everybody is moving to the right, whether it's Maloney in Italy, whether it's Mille in Argentina.

00:23:58.000 Across the world, there's a backlash that's coming for what I've termed the scavenger mentality I've suggested that the world is now divided, unfortunately, between lions and scavengers.

00:24:07.000 Lions are people who want to create.

00:24:09.000 They're people who want to go to work, have a job, innovate, build, have communities, have families, and live within a system of property rights and free speech and duties and values.

00:24:20.000 And then you have scavengers who just want to tear all that stuff down because they think that all that stuff is a system of exploitative colonialism and that has to be torn down and that anytime somebody fails, it's not because they've made bad decisions.

00:24:31.000 It's because the system has victimized them. 0.99

00:24:32.000 And I think Western civilization is tired of this shit, honestly. 0.99

00:24:36.000 I think Western civilization is looking at this and saying no. 0.99

00:24:39.000 And it's manifesting in all sorts of ways that have nothing to do with Israel.

00:24:42.000 I think that you're seeing this with young people, frankly.

00:24:45.000 I think there's going to be a backlash among young people who are tired of being told that they are the representatives of a civilization that is evil and bad, and the only way that they can I think that there are a lot of people who are like, no, you know what?

00:25:01.000 I'm not interested in that.

00:25:02.000 I think you saw that in the election in the United States.

00:25:04.000 I think that you're going to see that in elections around Europe.

00:25:06.000 I think the rising power of right-wing parties in Europe, which you're starting to see people trying desperately to hold back, I don't think they're going to be able to contain it because it turns out that things like open borders where you ship in people who hate your values, people don't like those things.

00:25:18.000 It turns out that people don't like being told that the best they can hope for from their life is Sort of this gradual decline into irrelevance and that you should feel guilty over the success of your civilization.

00:25:32.000 It's a not hopeful message.

00:25:33.000 I think people are rejecting it.

00:25:34.000 So I think the backlash is coming and I think that, again, because everything happens in the Middle East first because that's where the borders are the closest.

00:25:40.000 I think that you're seeing that in Israel.

00:25:41.000 Israel's a great example of this. 0.99

00:25:42.000 I mean, just the Israeli body politics is an amazing example of this.

00:25:45.000 If you go back just a year and a half ago, the Israeli body politic was tearing itself apart over things like judicial reform, or as an internal issue over how much power should be delegated to the judiciary versus how much power should be delegated to the parliament in the state of Israel.

00:25:58.000 And you had massive, huge, open protests, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, open talk about civil war in Israel, which was wildly exaggerated and absurd.

00:26:07.000 And people who are spending all of their time worrying about how do we allocate resources within ourselves, Is it fair?

00:26:16.000 And then it turns out there's an existential threat at your doorstep.

00:26:19.000 And when the existential threat at your doorstep materializes, it turns out that all the people who are protesting in the streets and all the people they are protesting against are in the same unit.

00:26:26.000 In the army.

00:26:27.000 And you see a bunch of people who are khiloni, that's secular, in Israel, and a bunch of people who are dati, meaning religious in Israel, who five minutes ago were sort of over at each other's throats over things like judicial reform.

00:26:38.000 So they're like, guys, we have bigger priorities right now.

00:26:40.000 It turns out that there's something that is much, much worse.

00:26:42.000 And so you've seen a transformation of the body politic in Israel.

00:26:45.000 I mean, first of all, the far left in Israel no longer exists as a functioning political entity.

00:26:49.000 It just doesn't.

00:26:50.000 It's not like...

00:26:51.000 When I was growing up, the Labor Party in Israel was the actual governing party in Israel in half of elections.

00:26:56.000 Before Menachem Begin, the Labor Party was the only party in Israel that had ever governed.

00:27:00.000 And now, if you were to allocate sort of on the political spectrum in Israel where things stand, of the 120 seats in Knesset, a minimum of 80 of them would have to be characterized as center to right.

00:27:11.000 There is no functioning left in Israel anymore because the left that had been, you know, sort of flagellating itself over the evils of Israel being Israel. 0.83

00:27:20.000 Like, well, it turns out no matter what we do, people still want to murder us.

00:27:23.000 I mean, one of the things that happened on October 7th was that the attack happened in the Gaza envelope.

00:27:27.000 The Gaza envelope, for people who don't know Israel and don't know the geography, it's like they attacked San Francisco. 0.96

00:27:30.000 That area is the most left-wing area in the state of Israel.

00:27:33.000 It is not an area that's in territorial dispute.

00:27:35.000 It was not one in the Six-Day War.

00:27:37.000 It is not in the West Bank.

00:27:38.000 It is not a settlement.

00:27:39.000 The areas that were attacked have been an integral part of the state of Israel since 1947-1948 and long before that.

00:27:46.000 And when those areas were attacked, those areas voted like 80% for Meretz, which is the most left-wing party in Israel.

00:27:53.000 Many of the people who were murdered were peace activists who were attempting to bring people from Gaza to work in Israel.

00:27:59.000 And the people who they brought in were giving sometimes information to Hamas as to which houses were being populated by whom.

00:28:05.000 Wasn't that what happened?

00:28:05.000 That's how they got the floor pants.

00:28:07.000 A lot of them actually knew they worked there.

00:28:10.000 Yes, they had on the bodies of the Hamas terrorists who were killed coming in.

00:28:14.000 They actually had plans, house to house, with lists of members of families, in some cases, who were living in those houses.

00:28:19.000 That can only be gathered by people who obviously were on the ground right there.

00:28:22.000 And so, for Israelis, many of whom had been saying, well, you know, really, this is about...

00:28:27.000 The treatment of the Palestinians, or what can we do to facilitate better treatment for the Palestinians?

00:28:31.000 The people who were murdered were exactly the people who were asking those questions.

00:28:34.000 And so the reaction of Israelis, left, right, and center, was it turns out that maybe this is not about a territorial dispute.

00:28:41.000 Maybe this is about something much deeper and much more malevolent.

00:28:44.000 I think we've seen that now, for sure, across the board.

00:28:48.000 So you spent a lot of time with victims of October 7th.

00:28:51.000 What's that been like for you?

00:28:52.000 Oof.

00:28:55.000 You know, in the beginning, I didn't necessarily interview children.

00:28:58.000 I met one girl, Emily Hand, who was a hostage.

00:29:02.000 She was probably the first child that I met.

00:29:05.000 This was closer to the beginning, right after she got released.

00:29:09.000 And again, I think because I heard my grandparents' stories and my grandma was 13 when she was taken to Auschwitz, I think meeting the kids really hit me in a different way because a lot of them, I interviewed kids from 11 to 17. And their stories and looking them in the eye, sharing their stories with me.

00:29:30.000 You know, one time I broke down and cried when I was with one of them.

00:29:35.000 The other times I felt like I really had to stay strong.

00:29:38.000 And then when I got back to my hotel after filming that day, I think all my emotions came out.

00:29:43.000 Because you can't understand not only the trauma that they dealt with either when they were taken hostage or I interviewed a kid who saw Hamas kill both of his parents right in front of him, and then he had to hide under his mother's dead body for a few hours so that Hamas would think that he was dead as well.

00:30:00.000 Can you imagine laying under your mother's dead body just to survive?

00:30:06.000 And you hear that and you know the trauma that they dealt with then, but now the lifetime of trauma that these kids are going to have to deal with, they're never going to be the same, ever.

00:30:15.000 Now this kid is missing both of his parents.

00:30:17.000 Another kid was a hostage for 54 days and his father is still a hostage.

00:30:22.000 I mean, you can't even understand what these families are going through and these kids are going through.

00:30:28.000 A lot of the women that I interviewed, you know, the sexual abuse that they endured or the mental abuse that they endured.

00:30:37.000 I've become friends with a lot of them now and I feel like they're all my family, you know?

00:30:42.000 So it's...

00:30:44.000 It's hit me a lot, very, very hard.

00:30:45.000 I think the kids was the one that hit me the most.

00:30:48.000 But I think the more I meet these people, the more it makes me want to fight harder.

00:30:53.000 Because I know what they've been through, and I know what they're going to continue to go through, and I know that it's...

00:30:58.000 I feel it's my absolute responsibility to make sure their stories are told and shared with the world.

00:31:03.000 And I've posted just small clips on my social media already, and they already have, like...

00:31:08.000 Almost 20 million views across platforms of just their small clips and the full-length documentaries coming out in December.

00:31:14.000 And I think that, again, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks of the conflict necessarily or what your opinions are.

00:31:20.000 When you hear from these kids and you hear their personal stories, I think all of that goes away and you really feel for what happened to them.

00:31:28.000 We'll get to more on this in just one moment.

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00:32:35.000 So, you know, I think one of the things that's happened in the media is they've attempted a sort of moral equivalence, obviously, between October 7th and then the response by Israel to October 7th.

00:32:44.000 So, it's a specious argument. 0.92

00:32:46.000 It's ridiculous on its face. 0.90

00:32:47.000 Israel has been desperately attempting to protect civilian populations. 0.76

00:32:51.000 If they'd wanted to eviscerate the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, they certainly have the military wherewithal to do so. 0.99

00:32:56.000 They have not.

00:32:57.000 There have actually been more births in Gaza since the beginning of the war than there have been deaths in warfare in Gaza on the Palestinian side since the beginning of the war. 0.97

00:33:04.000 So that's an awfully stupid way to go about doing a genocide if that's what you're seeking to do. 0.94

00:33:07.000 And they just sent out the polio vaccines, right? 0.99

00:33:10.000 Right.

00:33:10.000 They're sending 2,500 calories per person per day into the Gaza Strip.

00:33:14.000 A lot of that's being hijacked by Hamas or stolen by the UNRWA before it was outlawed by Israel. 0.67

00:33:19.000 But the reality on the ground is ridiculous.

00:33:22.000 I mean, the situation that you mentioned where you have a child hiding under the body of a dead parent in order to survive, the reason that that would never be an issue in Gaza is because Israel is not attempting to kill children. 0.93

00:33:32.000 Israel is attempting to preserve life and kill terrorists.

00:33:35.000 It's not quite the same thing.

00:33:36.000 I heard a story last night about a group of IDF soldiers that went – they were in Gaza, and they went into an area.

00:33:44.000 I'm not sure exactly what building.

00:33:45.000 And a kid was booby trapped with a bomb, a detonator.

00:33:50.000 And they had a kid there with a detonator.

00:33:53.000 And I think it was like 10 maybe IDF soldiers that were right there.

00:33:57.000 And they all made the decision to not kill the kid, of course.

00:34:00.000 And then six of them died and four of them were saved because of this.

00:34:05.000 What happened?

00:34:06.000 Because they said, we're not going to kill a kid.

00:34:09.000 I mean, I've seen the tapes from, if you ever go to, if ever our viewers have a chance to go to visit an Air Force base in Israel, they have footage, and they will show you the footage of how they go about doing a drone strike on terrorists.

00:34:20.000 And much of that footage is them deciding not to do a drone strike.

00:34:23.000 They have to go through four layers of legal scrutiny before they greenlight a drone strike, which takes like an additional 45 seconds to a minute just to go through those clearances to actually perform the drone strike.

00:34:34.000 That's how meticulous Israel is attempting to be legally.

00:34:36.000 Now, it's a war.

00:34:37.000 It doesn't mean that all rules are always followed.

00:34:39.000 It doesn't mean that there aren't atrocities.

00:34:40.000 Wars happen and wars are awful.

00:34:42.000 Wars are terrible.

00:34:43.000 That's something I feel like people keep forgetting about this war.

00:34:45.000 If you look at the history of wars, it's not even comparable.

00:34:50.000 Israel has the single best civilian-to-terrorist kill ratio in the history of urban warfare, and it isn't particularly close.

00:34:57.000 For every civilian who's tragically killed, Israel kills about a terrorist.

00:35:04.000 It's almost a one-to-one ratio at this point by the data that's being provided by the IDF, and even by the data that Hamas is providing, it's like 1.6 to 1. Those sorts of ratios are unheard of in urban warfare.

00:35:15.000 When the United States is engaged in urban warfare in the past, you're talking about kill ratios of 4, 5 to 1 in terms of civilians and terrorists because terrorists legitimately hide among civilians in order to avoid Western powers killing them.

00:35:25.000 And so if any Western power has to do that, I mean, you can see this in Black Hawk Down.

00:35:32.000 You can see this.

00:35:32.000 Terrorists routinely hide behind civilians because they understand that the Western way of war is to try to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible since World War II. Meanwhile, they're going to exploit that as a vulnerability.

00:35:42.000 The moral equivalence is just insane.

00:35:45.000 Last time I was in Israel, which was back during the summer, I was sitting at Mincha, which is the Jewish afternoon service, and the person sitting next to me was a young soldier, a 20-year-old guy, who had been in Gaza.

00:36:01.000 They were going house to house, trying to avoid civilian casualties, and his unit had been hit by an IED that was in a building, and the entire building came down on his unit.

00:36:11.000 He was one of the few survivors.

00:36:12.000 He was in a coma for two months.

00:36:13.000 He'd lost both legs.

00:36:14.000 He'd lost one arm, and he'd lost a couple of fingers on his other hand.

00:36:18.000 And he, you know, it was a lawsuit.

00:36:20.000 The reason that they were in there on the ground in the first place is to attempt to avoid civilian casualties.

00:36:26.000 If this had been World War II, then total air power would have been the obvious response to 10-7. 0.90

00:36:33.000 And so the fact that, again, Israel's been performing, and the proof is in the pudding, meaning that When Israel performs some of the most targeted operations in human history against terrorists, the level of criticism is precisely the same.

00:36:47.000 So forget about what's going on in Gaza.

00:36:48.000 When Israel does this unbelievable beeper operation in Lebanon, where they literally use the supply chain... 0.72

00:36:52.000 They've done so many amazing...

00:36:53.000 I mean, the people that they've taken out this year has not only helped Israel, it's helped their US-wanted terrorists. 0.82

00:37:00.000 And the Lebanese people.

00:37:01.000 I mean, the Lebanese people have been living in a hellscape since the PLO came into the country in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and proceeded to help destroy the country. 0.99

00:37:08.000 And then Hezbollah with Iran came in as well.

00:37:11.000 And that country's been a sectarian hellhole for the last couple of decades, minimum. 1.00

00:37:15.000 More like since the late 1970s, early 1980s.

00:37:18.000 And because of what Israel is doing right now, it's possible that there may be an actual... 0.54

00:37:24.000 Possibility of a real government being established in Lebanon, you would hope, for the first time in decades.

00:37:30.000 But when Israel did the beeper operation, again, the single greatest anti-terror operation in the history of humanity, where they used the actual supply chain of Hezbollah in order to target Hezbollah terrorists, they literally used only devices that Hezbollah was handing out to its fellow terrorists to get explosives in the beepers, and then they blew up the beepers, and they hit...

00:37:50.000 One civilian, I believe there was one child who was killed because it was a kid of a terrorist who was carrying the beeper when it went off.

00:37:57.000 And the level of response by the people who hate Israel was exactly the same as if Israel had deliberately bombed civilians.

00:38:04.000 Because it's not about the killing of civilians or the harming of civilians for people who hate Israel.

00:38:08.000 Anytime Israel flexes muscle, anytime Israel continues to not die, that would be the problem they seem to have. 0.87

00:38:13.000 Right.

00:38:13.000 Of course.

00:38:14.000 They use any excuse to criticize Israel.

00:38:16.000 Any excuse whatsoever.

00:38:18.000 That's why I know I have to do everything I can to keep standing for Israel in every way, shape, and form.

00:38:23.000 And that's why I continue to go back and continue to share the real stories and share what's actually happening on the grounds.

00:38:29.000 And I also try to humanize the IDF. I think that's another thing that The world has dehumanized the IDF completely.

00:38:38.000 And I think sharing personal stories like you just shared and like I just shared are so important for people to hear like actually the morality of the IDF as well.

00:38:47.000 So given the fact that you are a dancer, which means that you know that actually takes practice and you have to keep doing it and all that.

00:38:52.000 Have you been able to keep up your lifestyle during this year?

00:38:55.000 It's been the craziest year of my life, I have to say.

00:38:58.000 I think I've barely been home.

00:39:00.000 Florida is my home and I have a place in LA and I feel like I'm like just barely in either place.

00:39:06.000 But this is the most important thing that I could ever do in my life.

00:39:10.000 And I think any Jew specifically that is not standing up right now in their own ways, you don't have to be on social media like me and be as outspoken as I am on social media.

00:39:20.000 But this is the craziest time for Jews since the Holocaust, right? 0.86

00:39:26.000 Back then, and I keep reiterating this, it didn't matter how famous you were, how successful you were during the Holocaust. 0.52

00:39:32.000 If you were Jewish, that was it for you. 1.00

00:39:35.000 It didn't matter.

00:39:36.000 Nowadays that's different.

00:39:38.000 And we need to make sure that we all speak up and do something in our own ways because this is what our ancestors couldn't have done or weren't able to do back then.

00:39:46.000 So for me, if I have the opportunity to use my platforms to combat anti-Semitism, to combat all forms of hate, to debunk the crazy propaganda that's going out there, if I have the opportunity to speak around the world And make a difference.

00:40:00.000 I have to do it.

00:40:01.000 So it's been, I've always tired, for sure, just constantly tired.

00:40:07.000 But I think when I meet these, all my trips to Israel, every single time, it inspires me more and more to keep going and to keep speaking up.

00:40:15.000 And the more people that I meet, also online, it could be a scary, terrible place.

00:40:19.000 I know you understand that.

00:40:21.000 And the crazy messages I receive are crazy.

00:40:24.000 But the messages that I also receive from people around the world saying like, I was ready to give up and then I saw your post and you inspired me.

00:40:33.000 Or I was ashamed to be Jewish.

00:40:34.000 I didn't want to wear my Megan David.

00:40:36.000 And then I see all of your necklaces all the time and how prideful you are.

00:40:40.000 And you've inspired me not to put my necklace back on.

00:40:42.000 So it comes with also a lot of love and support.

00:40:46.000 I'll be on the street and somebody will come up to me and just say, thank you for what you're doing.

00:40:49.000 So all of that keeps me going and makes me want to go even harder and speak up even more.

00:40:54.000 I think one of the big differences, obviously, also between now and the pre-Holocaust era is that there are so many people in the West who really, really side with Israel and who really, really understand the nature of the conflict.

00:41:06.000 That's particularly true in the United States.

00:41:08.000 There are certainly a lot of people in Europe.

00:41:10.000 Obviously, we're friends with many of them, people like Douglas Murray, who totally understand it.

00:41:14.000 But in the United States, the United States is a wildly philo-Semitic country.

00:41:18.000 This country is just fantastic.

00:41:20.000 It is a fantastic country.

00:41:21.000 I mean, there are pockets of terrible people on college campuses, particularly, which incentivize this behavior.

00:41:26.000 But the number of people in this country who truly love Jews, who truly also love Israel, and who see the civilizational conflict that's at play here...

00:41:34.000 It's an amazing, amazing thing.

00:41:36.000 I was, you know, during this last election cycle, I went around with a bunch of different Senate candidates and I campaigned with them.

00:41:40.000 One of the people who I went with was Bernie Moreno, who is the new senator, thank God, from Ohio.

00:41:44.000 He's going to be an excellent senator.

00:41:45.000 So Senator Moreno and I were up in northern Ohio in a town of maybe 2,000 people, very small town, very Republican town, very red town.

00:41:54.000 And this town had no Jews, none, because you're in northern Ohio.

00:41:57.000 I mean, for those who don't know much about Judaism, if you have any sort of practice of Judaism, you'll find...

00:42:02.000 You know, Jews individually in every walk of life, just like you would any other ethnicity.

00:42:09.000 But if you're talking about people who are observant Jews, observant Jews to a certain level require an infrastructure. 0.88

00:42:13.000 You have to have Jewish schools and Jewish restaurants and kosher restaurants and a shul and a synagogue and all this kind of stuff.

00:42:18.000 So up in northern Ohio, nothing like that.

00:42:21.000 So it's this little town, 2,000 people, and we do a big dinner event.

00:42:25.000 Maybe 1,000 of the 2,000 people show up.

00:42:27.000 And so I give a speech.

00:42:29.000 I'm about to leave.

00:42:30.000 I have to make a plane.

00:42:31.000 And one of the people from the town gets up and says, we have a present for you.

00:42:35.000 So this person takes out a giant Israeli flag and says, after October 7th, one of the members of our town was so upset and disturbed and thought it was so necessary that he went out and he bought this giant Israeli flag.

00:42:49.000 He stuck it on the back of his Ford F-150 and he was just driving around this all-non-Jewish town with this giant Israeli flag with the Ford F-150. 1.00

00:42:56.000 Wow.

00:42:56.000 And everybody in the town was so moved by that and in such solidarity with Israel and the Jews that we all wanted to sign this.

00:43:01.000 So we spent the last year signing this flag.

00:43:03.000 Here is a flag signed by hundreds of Christians in northern Ohio who love Jews, love Israel, and understand the civilizational battle that we're in right now.

00:43:11.000 That's this country.

00:43:12.000 This country is unbelievable.

00:43:13.000 That's beautiful.

00:43:14.000 I also did a rally called Christians for Israel in San Diego.

00:43:18.000 And it was so beautiful.

00:43:19.000 There were pastors...

00:43:22.000 Giving sermons.

00:43:23.000 I mean, the way they were speaking about Israel and their love for Israel and how they're standing by Jews no matter what.

00:43:29.000 And the crowd was just so diverse and so beautiful.

00:43:32.000 And there was actually a counter-protest, of course, right across from us.

00:43:35.000 And everyone that got on stage to speak, they would say thank you to the protest.

00:43:40.000 Thank you guys for being here.

00:43:42.000 Thank you for so much.

00:43:43.000 We just kept spreading love and kept going on.

00:43:47.000 But to see the allies come together, I think, has been so beautiful.

00:43:50.000 And I also, like, I don't know if you know Loai al-Sharif.

00:43:53.000 He's a Muslim peace activist.

00:43:54.000 He's incredible.

00:43:56.000 The way he speaks about Israel.

00:43:58.000 There's another one, Loai, who's from Yemen. 0.83

00:44:00.000 And he literally grew up to hate Jews, of course.

00:44:04.000 And he went to Israel for his first time.

00:44:06.000 And then his whole perspective changed.

00:44:08.000 And he now stands for Israel and stands up for Jews.

00:44:11.000 And there's a lot of amazing people who have also come out and I've showed their pride for Israel and standing for Israel, not just the Jews, which is amazing.

00:44:20.000 So you have your new project that is coming out in which you interview all of these kids from October 7th.

00:44:26.000 That's coming out in December.

00:44:28.000 And then obviously you also have a docu-series on the Holocaust that you've talked about, How to Never Forget, and We Can Dance Again, which of course was this very widely seen dance film with Nova Festival survivors.

00:44:39.000 So what's next in terms of what you're producing next?

00:44:43.000 What kind of content are you hoping to put out there?

00:44:45.000 You know, for me, I think I've tried to share the same message in different ways.

00:44:48.000 I feel like that's been my goal since the seventh is to continue to share the same message just in different ways.

00:44:54.000 And as we know, social media, everyone's algorithm is different.

00:44:57.000 A video can land on this page and not land on this person's page.

00:45:00.000 And so for me, it's been important to do these unique ways of sharing the message.

00:45:04.000 That's why the NOVA dance video specifically was kind of a crazy idea.

00:45:07.000 Everyone thought you're going to do a dance video at the NOVA site with NOVA survivors, a dance video.

00:45:12.000 Like how could you think to do that?

00:45:13.000 And I knew that people went to the NOVA festival to dance.

00:45:16.000 And I got together a bunch of the survivors and I asked them if they'd be comfortable with this.

00:45:21.000 The dance group that is in my video, they lost three of their members at NOVA. And they dedicated a whole dance piece to NOVA. So everything came together.

00:45:30.000 The person that designed my outfit is really everyone that had also friends that were lost in NOVA. So every single person involved in that video had a real attachment to what happened there.

00:45:41.000 And to see the survivors with me at the end of the video, holding my hand, walking powerfully.

00:45:46.000 Moran Steli and I was actually a hostage for 54 days.

00:45:49.000 She was taken from Nova.

00:45:50.000 She's in my video with me, and I love her so much.

00:45:53.000 But to see her, she told me that she showed right behind us of where we did the video was where she had to run to escape, where she tried to escape.

00:46:00.000 So to have her be there...

00:46:02.000 After she dealt with everything that she dealt with, to see her standing strong and dancing again.

00:46:10.000 In that video, when you first watch a video, you think it's like a music video.

00:46:13.000 So it attracted a different audience from people who may not care about the conflict or want to see me speak about this again.

00:46:19.000 They thought they were watching a dance video.

00:46:21.000 And then all of a sudden, halfway through, you're hit with the reality of what happened at NOVA.

00:46:24.000 And again, the children of October 7th, why I think this is so important is I think really hearing from these kids is going to impact people in a really different way.

00:46:34.000 I'm going to Israel, like I said, November 30th, and we're going to do like a small premiere there with all the families, with President Herzog and make it really special because this is really about the kids and their families.

00:46:48.000 And like I said, I think it's going to really impact people in a big way.

00:46:51.000 I'm going back to Israel in January to film a movie.

00:46:54.000 So I just have a lot of amazing things going on.

00:46:58.000 So the movie that I'm filming in January, I can't say too much about yet.

00:47:01.000 But I also just filmed one that's coming out in April called Mob Cops.

00:47:05.000 Where I play a detective's wife.

00:47:08.000 So that one has nothing to do with Israel, but that one's really cool.

00:47:10.000 I can't wait for that one to come out.

00:47:12.000 And I'm also doing another one called The Mensch with Jonah Platt.

00:47:16.000 So a lot of really exciting things going on, but my number one priority is combating anti-Semitism, standing for Israel, and trying to make a real difference in this crazy world.

00:47:25.000 So that's my dream.

00:47:27.000 Well, Montana, thanks for what you've been doing over the course of the past year.

00:47:30.000 Thanks for stopping by.

00:47:30.000 It's wonderful to see you.

00:47:32.000 Thank you so much.

00:47:32.000 You're the best.

00:47:33.000 Thank you so much.

00:47:38.000 The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special is produced by Savannah Morris and Matt Kemp.

00:47:42.000 Associate Producers are Jake Pollock and John Crick.

00:47:45.000 Editing is by Olivia Stewart.

00:47:47.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:47:49.000 Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta.

00:47:51.000 Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola Christina.

00:47:54.000 Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.

00:47:56.000 Executive Assistant Kelly Carvalho.

00:47:58.000 Executive in charge of production is David Wormus.

00:48:01.000 Executive producer, Justin Siegel.

00:48:02.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:48:05.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 24, 2024

Debunking Social Media Lies | Montana Tucker

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