The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - 50-Year Anniversary of Escaping from Lebanon - The West Beware! (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_908)

00:00:00.000 Hi everybody, this is Gad Saad. Today is October 31st, 2025. It's the eve of Shabbat

00:00:09.180 and it's a very important day in terms of my personal history because it is, I believe it's

00:00:18.480 today, 50 years ago that we arrived to Montreal from Lebanon, having just escaped the first year

00:00:29.240 of the astounding brutality of the Lebanese Civil War. And so to honor that 50-year celebration,

00:00:37.140 I thought that I would take a few minutes to read for you pages 2 through 7 from The Parasitic Mind,

00:00:50.820 which I hope that if you haven't gotten a copy yet that you do so. And you'll see in a second

00:00:58.540 why it's relevant to this 50-year anniversary. I should mention that I cannot express how

00:01:05.280 thankful I am that we were able to miraculously escape such a difficult situation. And so I'm

00:01:15.640 forever grateful to, of course, Canada for having granted us a better life in the West and more

00:01:24.960 generally thankful to cosmic justice for having allowed us to escape. In any case, here we go.

00:01:33.100 The section is titled Growing Up in Lebanon. I was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1964 and spent the first

00:01:40.320 11 years of my life in the, quote, Paris of the Middle East. My family was part of the dwindling

00:01:46.340 Jewish community that had steadfastly remained in Lebanon despite the growing signs that Lebanese

00:01:52.380 Jews had a bleak future. My father had nine sisters and a brother, while my mother had six sisters, 1.00

00:01:59.020 all of whom, with the exception of one paternal aunt, had emigrated from Lebanon long prior to the

00:02:04.760 outbreak of the Civil War in 1975. My maternal grandparents died prior to my birth. My paternal

00:02:12.280 grandparents left for Israel around 1970. A similar immigration pattern occurred within my immediate

00:02:20.120 family. I have two brothers and one sister, all much older than I. The closest to me in age is 10 years

00:02:26.720 older. My eldest brother married a Christian woman of Palestinian origin and they immigrated to Montreal,

00:02:33.340 Canada in 1974. My sister also moved to Montreal prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, both to pursue

00:02:40.640 her studies and to escape the looming dangers. Finally, my other brother, who had been crowned Lebanese

00:02:47.140 champion of Judo on multiple occasions, was forced to flee our homeland due to ominous threats that he

00:02:54.660 should retire, for it was not good optics for a Jew to repeatedly win a combat sport. He heeded that 1.00

00:03:01.600 advice and moved to Paris, France around 1973 to continue his studies and Judo career. The breathtaking

00:03:09.740 irony is that he eventually represented Lebanon at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Hence, the Jewish 1.00

00:03:17.960 Judo, who was no longer welcomed in Lebanon only a few years earlier, was quote embraced when it suited 1.00

00:03:25.900 the relevant authorities. Growing up as a Jewish boy in Lebanon had its existential challenges. I vividly

00:03:33.100 recall when the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970, a few weeks shy of my sixth birthday.

00:03:42.140 Nasser's pan-Arabism, unification of the Arab world, had made him a hero in the region and as often happens

00:03:48.560 in the Middle East, thousands of people took to the streets to publicly lament his passing. Why would

00:03:55.320 this event constitute an episodic memory for a five-year-old? As the angry procession made its way

00:04:01.860 down our street, aptly named Rue de l'Armée, or the military street, the terrifying chant,

00:04:09.140 death to Jews, left an indelible mark on me as I cowered in hiding next to our balcony. You see, 0.99

00:04:17.200 even in quote progressive, modern, and pluralistic Lebanon, endemic Jew hatred was always ready to rear 0.96

00:04:24.840 its ugly head. All calamities in the Middle East are ultimately due to the diabolical Jew. It rained today, 1.00

00:04:31.780 blame the Jews. The economy is weak, blame the Jews. Tourism is down, blame the Jews. You contracted 0.99

00:04:37.840 a stomach bug, blame the Jews. The Christians and Muslims in Lebanon are not getting along, 1.00

00:04:43.160 you guessed it, blame the Jews. And contrary to current attempts at revisionist history,

00:04:49.080 this existential disdain for the Jew precedes the founding of modern Israel by 1400 years. 0.73

00:04:55.000 I can still remember sitting around the table on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, in 1973,

00:05:02.680 watching the worried look on my parents' face as word broke out that a combined Arab army had

00:05:09.860 attacked Israel on that holy day. Existential genocidal hatred is not something that one magically and 0.57

00:05:16.720 suddenly contracts as an adult. Rather, it is instilled insidiously and repeatedly in the minds of

00:05:24.100 otherwise pure and innocent children. I was the only one of my four siblings not to attend the Jewish 0.73

00:05:32.560 elementary school. I must have been nine or ten in class at the Lycee de Genfilles when the teacher

00:05:38.340 asked pupils to state what they wanted to be when they grew up. Typical responses were uttered

00:05:45.140 uneventfully, policeman or soccer player, until one student said, quote, 0.97

00:05:50.440 quote, when I grow up, I want to be a Jew killer, close quote, after which the class erupted in 0.97

00:05:56.900 raucous laughter and gleeful claps. I still have the class photos from that era, and that boy's face 0.97

00:06:04.180 is forever etched in my memory. In sharing these stories, I don't wish to imply that our daily lives

00:06:10.560 in Lebanon prior to the Lebanese civil war were hellish. My parents were well entrenched within 0.97

00:06:16.320 Lebanese society. The fact that we were part of the last wave of Jews to leave Lebanon was a

00:06:21.960 testament to my parents' overall attachment to our homeland. Most of my childhood friends were

00:06:27.780 Christian and Muslim, one of whom recently reached out to me as his daughter was about to start college

00:06:34.140 in Montreal. Any hope of long-lasting peaceful coexistence was shattered once the civil war broke

00:06:41.980 out in 1975. This conflict remains the standard by which the butchery of all other civil wars is

00:06:49.620 gauged. Neighbors who had lived next to one another for decades became instant prospective enemies.

00:06:56.420 Death awaited us at every corner. If the endless shelling did not kill you, we learned to take cover

00:07:02.580 or not depending on the whistle signature of the bombs, the snipers might if you appeared within their

00:07:08.600 field of vision. Civilians were kidnapped and killed. They were also mowed down while waiting in long

00:07:15.200 bread queues. Two of my family members evaded such a death by going out late to buy bread during a

00:07:22.740 ceasefire. Various militia set up roadblocks at which point they check to see your internal ID which had

00:07:30.640 one's religion written on it. If you were of the quote wrong religion you could be executed. Our religious

00:07:37.420 heritage was written as Israelite rather than Jewish which meant we had few Muslim friends at roadblocks.

00:07:44.960 Of the innumerable terrifying moments that I experienced during the civil war one sticks out in my mind as

00:07:52.180 uniquely eerie and ominous. Prior to the start of the war my parents had contracted a hand dryer service

00:07:59.740 that provided a roll of washable textile which was installed on the wall of our kitchen. This was a

00:08:06.980 precursor of the subsequent models of disposable hand drying tissues found in public bathrooms.

00:08:13.080 Periodically the same individual would come to our house to remove the dirty roll and replace it with

00:08:19.040 a clean one. I believe his name was Ahmad or perhaps Muhammad. I thought that this was a rather strange

00:08:25.860 service then and even more so now as I recount the story. One evening in the middle of the otherwise

00:08:32.320 endless street to street fighting and continuous bombshelling I heard a knock at our front door.

00:08:38.540 I walked to the door and asked who was there. The reply came quote it's me Ahmad or possibly Muhammad

00:08:46.980 the guy who changes your kitchen roll. Open the door kid. I delayed and his insistence grew more sinister

00:08:54.880 and forceful. Quote, open the door now. I ran to my mother. If memory serves me right there were four

00:09:01.980 occupants at our house that evening. My mother, my sister who had returned to Beirut to visit us

00:09:07.400 and was now stuck there, a male friend of my parents who was also stuck at our house even though he lived a

00:09:13.680 short drive away, and myself. My father was not at home. I believe he was outside the country but I can't

00:09:20.360 remember why he was away. He eventually returned to Beirut and narrowly escaped death on the drive back

00:09:26.240 to our home. My mother approached the door and talked through it with Ahmad who was accompanied by one 1.00

00:09:32.780 or more men. The exchange grew tense and my mother fetched the male friend who was cowering in another

00:09:39.440 room. She hoped he might frighten them away and I recall the disgust and anger that my mother expressed

00:09:46.360 for this male friend's breathtaking cowardice in refusing to help. Within the brutality and chaos

00:09:53.220 of the civil war there remained some semblance of law and order. As a latch-ditch effort and against

00:09:59.640 all odds my mother phoned the police. The Arabic word for the outfit was 16. In Arabic by the way it's

00:10:08.520 satash. And they took the call. Remember that this is during a full-blown war. Once they arrived at our

00:10:14.780 house we opened the door and let everyone into the kitchen. The lead policeman asked the men why they

00:10:21.680 were there and who who they were. Ahmad replied, quote, oh my friends and I were in the mountains and we

00:10:29.000 brought back a basket of pomegranate with us and so we stopped by to give it to this family, close quote.

00:10:36.400 After the policeman, I recall his impressive rifle by his side, checked to confirm the contents of the

00:10:42.520 basket. He stared coldly at Ahmad and said, quote, your connection to this family is that you changed

00:10:48.740 their hand-drying role and you decided to brave the street fighting and come in the middle of the night

00:10:54.000 to offer them pomegranate? If I ever find you here again, you'll have serious problems, close quote.

00:11:00.980 What happened next still gives me shivers down my spine. Ahmad looked at us and said very coldly

00:11:07.860 and menacingly, quote, I'll be back for you. We did not stay much longer in Lebanon after that

00:11:16.140 incident and so Ahmad never had the chance to visit us again. This, by the way, as a side note to the

00:11:22.920 listeners, this happened nearly 50 years ago. Well, it literally is 50 years ago. That's why I'm doing

00:11:30.980 this episode and I remember it as if it were yesterday. All right, going back to reading.

00:11:37.400 It was clear that we needed to leave Lebanon as soon as possible. The day of our escape from Lebanon 0.95

00:11:42.500 was straight out of a shoot-em-up movie. On that fateful day, some armed Palestinian liberation

00:11:48.860 organization, PLO Militia, picked us up at our home. They had been contracted to give us,

00:11:54.840 to get us safely to Beirut International Airport. The risk was that they might drive us to a ditch

00:12:01.480 and execute us. The PLO controlled the area around the airport, so there was little chance of clearing

00:12:07.900 the checkpoints if the appropriate militia did not accompany you. One of the armed men asked me if I

00:12:14.240 wanted to hold his machine gun, which I did with excited trepidation. On the way to the airport,

00:12:19.680 I recall my father proclaiming that he had forgotten his money belt at our house and that we

00:12:25.320 needed to return to get it. The militiamen rejected my father's plea and we proceeded on a precarious

00:12:32.400 journey. The next memory that I have is perhaps one of the most poignant ones of my life. The flight

00:12:38.960 captain declared that we were out of Lebanese airspace, at which point my mother took out a chain

00:12:45.140 with a star of David, or it might have been a high, a Hebrew symbol for life or living,

00:12:51.100 placed it around my neck and said, quote, now you can wear this, not hide your identity and be proud

00:12:58.900 of who you are, close quote. Several years later, I asked my parents to fill in my memory lapse. Why

00:13:07.620 could I not remember any other details from our drive to the Beirut International Airport? Apparently,

00:13:13.580 as we drove through the various neighborhoods, our militiamen exchanged fire with unsympathetic

00:13:20.240 local militias. We were crouched in the car with luggage over our heads. I have no memory of that

00:13:27.220 incident. My first impression of Montreal was how cold it was. And as I said, it's literally today.

00:13:35.320 I believe it's today. It could be tomorrow, but I'm almost certain it was October 31st, 1975,

00:13:39.780 50 years to the day. And today is almost the exact same as that day. It's rainy, it's cold,

00:13:46.440 it's miserable. So let's keep going. I had never experienced such a climate. That said,

00:13:52.420 I recall thinking that it was better to face falling snow than falling bombs. I vividly remember

00:13:59.060 being driven by my parents to Iona Elementary School. It was a dark and dreary day. The teacher

00:14:06.780 graciously asked me to stand in front of the class and introduce myself. This was an English school,

00:14:12.800 and I knew very few English words other than whatever I might have learned while watching

00:14:17.740 spaghetti westerns growing up in Beirut. I began. Mon nom est Gad Saad. Je viens du Liban, which basically

00:14:25.500 means my name is Gad Saad. I come from Lebanon. I faced the dreaded collective blank stare. Using my hands,

00:14:33.200 I gestured a machine gun mowing down people while stating, Liban, Liban, meaning Lebanon, Lebanon.

00:14:40.900 I recently ran into a classmate who was present on my infamous first day at school, and he confirmed

00:14:47.020 that this episode was also etched in his mind. It is perhaps poetic that we ran into one another

00:14:53.700 at my daughter's elementary school year-end barbecue. Even though we had safely arrived at Montreal in 1975,

00:15:03.200 our Lebanese nightmare continued well beyond that point. My parents found it difficult to adapt to 1.00

00:15:09.560 their new lives in Canada, and so they did not fully sever their ties with their homelands until 1980.

00:15:16.720 This was the year that my parents made one of their more imprudent return trips to Beirut and were

00:15:22.620 kidnapped by Fatah. They were held captive for several days, during which time they faced a very

00:15:29.300 unsavory reality. During their disappearance, I was kept in the dark about their circumstances

00:15:35.660 in a bid to protect me, and only found out what really happened once my parents were freed

00:15:41.420 via high-level political figures who intervened on their behalf. One of my high school classmates,

00:15:47.660 who was also Lebanese Jewish, was fully aware of my parents' kidnapping. His parents and mine were

00:15:54.400 lifelong friends. He later recounted to me that he had found it very odd that I appeared so carefree

00:16:01.660 and joyful during my parents' disappearance. He did not know that I was unaware of their lot as the

00:16:08.300 tragic events were unfolding. As my parents were about to embark on their final flight out of Lebanon,

00:16:14.820 their friends reminded them that while they were very sad to see them go, they should never return.

00:16:20.360 Their sage advice was heated. The gravity of the situation hit me hard upon being reunited with

00:16:28.180 them in Montreal. I will never forget the trauma in their eyes, as well as my father's temporary

00:16:34.040 asymmetric facial paralysis. I also recall being haunted by the possibility that my mother might have been

00:16:42.400 gang-raped by her captors. That I miraculously escaped from Lebanon offered me some temporary respite, 0.62

00:16:50.200 for the next 15 years or so. The ugliness of ideological tribalism, however, returned to haunt me on

00:16:58.740 university campuses. Before I get to that, I want to discuss the two life ideals that best explain why

00:17:05.360 I fight against the enemies of reason. Okay, that puts an end to what I wanted to read. I know that many

00:17:12.120 of you have either read my book or listened to my book, so you're probably familiar with the pages that

00:17:18.060 I just read for you. But I read them here today again, because it is 50 years since I left Lebanon.

00:17:28.640 50 years, I can't believe it. On the one hand, it's as if it's 30 lifetimes ago. And on the other hand,

00:17:37.020 it's as if it's 30 seconds ago. And the reason why I take this time today on the eve of Shabbat to

00:17:43.660 mark the moment, other than, of course, it has great, you know, personal significance for me,

00:17:51.500 is that, regrettably, I'm seeing the exact same writing on the wall in the West. Now, again,

00:18:00.380 this doesn't mean that tomorrow morning there'll be civil war. It doesn't mean that Beirut will be

00:18:05.140 replicated on every street corner next week, or next month, or next year. But once you let in

00:18:13.340 an ideology that is built around its supremacy over all other ideologies, only one outcome can

00:18:23.900 can be expected. It's one that has occurred for 1400 years. It's one that I lived, my wife's family

00:18:33.140 lived, she's also Lebanese, my grandparents lived in Syria, my brother-in-law's family lived in Egypt,

00:18:41.460 my wife's family or ancestors lived in Turkey, during the Armenian genocide. So our personal history,

00:18:51.620 both that of my wife, and of my own, and of my brother-in-law, is littered with a consistent pattern.

00:19:00.180 We're constantly fleeing the people of perpetual peace. And the West has decided,

00:19:08.340 through the mechanisms of parasitized minds, and through the mechanism of my forthcoming book,

00:19:14.360 Suicidal Empathy, to give up everything. Give up our heritage, our culture, our religion,

00:19:23.780 our women, our children, our civilization, under the guise of orgiastic, misguided, suicidal empathy,

00:19:36.300 and tolerance, and kindness, and compassion, which will be used against us.

00:19:44.520 Heed my warnings. I've been doing these warnings for several decades. As I said earlier today,

00:19:51.840 on social media, I wrote a post. After we left Lebanon in 1975, I had a respite from all this

00:20:01.200 craziness for the next, say, 20 years. And then by the late 90s, I started seeing the signs. And I

00:20:09.720 started standing up on top of the mountain and screaming and warning and imploring people to pay

00:20:15.800 attention. Please pay attention. If you don't care for yourself, if you think that it doesn't apply

00:20:23.920 to you, it will apply for your children. If you think it won't apply for your children, it'll apply

00:20:29.680 to their children. But you can't avoid the outcome that is as clear as the existence of gravity.

00:20:38.940 In any case, I have nothing but love in my heart for anyone who believes in personal liberty and

00:20:50.880 personal freedoms and seeking truth. That's why the two ideals that shape my life are truth and

00:20:57.560 freedom. No, I don't support Israel because I hate Muslims. It's just not part of my makeup. 1.00

00:21:07.220 I do have deep concerns about an ideology and a religion that is perfectly antithetical to the

00:21:16.000 most fundamental foundational values that define the Western tradition. That doesn't make me someone

00:21:23.100 that's hateful. It makes me someone full of love, full of love for our personal liberties, for our

00:21:30.260 freedom of conscience, for our freedom of speech, for our freedom of association, for just our

00:21:37.100 freedom period. Any ideology that imposes itself on others, whether it be communism or Islam or any

00:21:46.440 other of the endless ideologies throughout history that said, I decide what your future trajectory is,

00:21:55.100 is one that we have to reject. This is what made the West great. This is what allowed us to come 50 years

00:22:01.180 ago to the day to Canada and flourish. And I hope to continue my work to at least keep warning people

00:22:07.100 that if you wish to retain the freedoms that you've taken for granted, you have to stand up and speak.

00:22:14.820 Wish you well. Shabbat Shalom. And I'll talk to you soon.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - October 31, 2025

50-Year Anniversary of Escaping from Lebanon - The West Beware! (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_908)

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