The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - November 09, 2024


The Biggest Lesson I Learned from Escaping the Lebanese War (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_747)


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

161.14558

Word Count

1,281

Sentence Count

80

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

10


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Growing up in Lebanon, I experienced Jew hatred on countless occasions. When I was a kid, a kid stood up and said, "When I grow up, I want to be a Jew killer." And then my mother put the Star of David around my neck to make me proud of who I am.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 There's an expression in Arabic,
00:00:01.380 first we come for the Saturday people,
00:00:03.380 then we come for the Sunday people.
00:00:05.160 So first we will rid the land of the Jews,
00:00:07.940 but don't worry Christians, we're coming for you next.
00:00:11.840 My name is Gad Saad, and this is my story.
00:00:17.440 I am a professor, author, and evolutionary behavioral scientist.
00:00:21.840 So I was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1964.
00:00:25.480 We were part of the last remaining dwindling community of Lebanese Jews.
00:00:30.840 But in terms of my childhood growing up in Lebanon,
00:00:33.760 it was a happy childhood,
00:00:36.380 although several elements made it less than ideal.
00:00:40.260 Certainly from a Jewish perspective,
00:00:42.560 I experienced Jew hatred on countless occasions.
00:00:46.940 For example, when I was almost six years old,
00:00:49.540 Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, had just died.
00:00:53.960 When he passed away, as often happens in the Middle East,
00:00:57.080 people take to the streets to engage in all sorts of feverish lamentations and so on.
00:01:02.000 And as people were proceeding down my street,
00:01:05.420 one of the most conspicuous chants was,
00:01:09.240 death to Jews, death to Jews.
00:01:11.300 And this is as a five-year-old boy, almost six.
00:01:13.900 That stunned me.
00:01:14.920 Mom, why are they screaming death to Jews?
00:01:16.840 What do we have to do with this?
00:01:17.940 When I was about nine or ten, we were in class,
00:01:22.400 and the teacher asked each of the kids to stand up
00:01:25.700 and tell us what they wanted to become when they grow up.
00:01:28.780 I want to be a doctor.
00:01:30.120 I want to be a soccer player.
00:01:31.220 I want to be a police officer.
00:01:32.560 A kid stands up and says,
00:01:33.660 when I grow up, I want to be a Jew killer,
00:01:35.780 to raucous laughter and applause.
00:01:39.080 When I was ten,
00:01:40.220 the Civil War broke out in Lebanon in 1975,
00:01:43.160 where it really became impossible to be Jewish,
00:01:46.860 death awaited you every second of every day
00:01:51.640 during the Lebanese Civil War.
00:01:53.280 There were snipers everywhere.
00:01:55.080 Well, when I would want to go out and play,
00:01:57.860 because I'm a kid,
00:01:58.860 my parents would say,
00:01:59.900 don't cross this particular line,
00:02:02.220 because that would open you up to the eyesight,
00:02:05.580 the scope of certain snipers.
00:02:09.100 It felt like bombs were dropping every day.
00:02:11.520 We learned how to either run and duck or not,
00:02:16.240 depending on the whistle signature
00:02:18.020 of the way the bombs were dropping.
00:02:20.360 So it just became untenable.
00:02:23.220 We found out, for example,
00:02:24.120 that there was a Jewish family,
00:02:26.000 a couple of houses down
00:02:27.020 that had been shot and executed.
00:02:29.040 So your turn was going to come.
00:02:30.840 We didn't need to experience
00:02:32.100 more than the first year of the Civil War
00:02:33.720 to say it doesn't look like our future is here anymore.
00:02:36.180 We had to hire militia to get us to the airport.
00:02:41.860 As we were going through different neighborhoods
00:02:44.520 in Beirut,
00:02:46.020 you're now going across militia areas.
00:02:49.940 There is fire that's coming on the car.
00:02:52.320 There's artillery everywhere.
00:02:54.280 There's snipers everywhere.
00:02:55.360 So it's really a Rambo movie.
00:02:57.060 And so we were being squashed down
00:02:59.740 at the bottom of the car
00:03:00.900 with our luggage
00:03:01.820 to try to protect us.
00:03:03.320 We got on the plane
00:03:04.900 and then the pilot
00:03:06.240 says that we've now cleared
00:03:08.240 the Lebanese airspace.
00:03:10.000 And so my mother takes out
00:03:11.280 the Star of David.
00:03:12.280 She puts the Star of David
00:03:13.680 around my neck
00:03:14.680 and she says,
00:03:15.520 now you can wear this,
00:03:16.980 not hide your identity
00:03:18.000 and be proud of who you are.
00:03:20.240 I remember that
00:03:21.520 probably within two months
00:03:23.680 of having arrived in Montreal,
00:03:25.260 it's very, very gloomy
00:03:27.000 and there's this white stuff
00:03:29.340 falling from the sky.
00:03:31.220 And I'm like,
00:03:32.580 this place sucks.
00:03:33.960 It's so dark and cold.
00:03:35.640 And then I remember thinking,
00:03:37.320 well, it's a lot better
00:03:38.140 to have snowflakes falling on me
00:03:40.360 than bombs and snipers.
00:03:44.560 So Lebanon was
00:03:46.260 a Christian majority country.
00:03:48.000 Today, Lebanon
00:03:48.720 is a majority Muslim country.
00:03:51.560 There's an expression in Arabic,
00:03:53.160 first we come for the Saturday people,
00:03:55.020 then we come for the Sunday people.
00:03:56.860 The Saturday people are the Jews.
00:03:58.760 So first we will rid
00:04:00.200 the land of the Jews.
00:04:01.500 But don't worry, Christians,
00:04:02.500 we're coming for you next, right?
00:04:04.240 And so once Islam comes in,
00:04:06.880 it's very, very hard to stop it.
00:04:08.420 Of course,
00:04:09.280 there are millions of Muslims
00:04:11.560 who are peace loving.
00:04:12.440 There's good and bad
00:04:13.100 in every religion.
00:04:14.280 But we're talking about an ideology.
00:04:16.040 So now all of the super smart politicians
00:04:18.740 that are scratching their heads
00:04:19.920 and are saying,
00:04:20.880 where's the Jew hatred coming from?
00:04:23.040 If you allow entry
00:04:24.780 into your country
00:04:25.760 of hundreds of thousands,
00:04:27.960 if not millions of people
00:04:29.440 that say have endemic Jew hatred
00:04:32.720 as a definitional trait
00:04:34.420 of their societies.
00:04:35.680 Now, how do I know
00:04:36.500 that it's endemic?
00:04:37.220 Well, I lived it.
00:04:38.420 But other than that,
00:04:39.220 we have this thing called data
00:04:40.920 that allows us to know
00:04:42.620 if what I'm saying is true.
00:04:43.820 So take, for example,
00:04:45.100 Pew Surveys.
00:04:46.180 They've done surveys
00:04:47.780 of responses to Jews
00:04:50.180 in Islamic countries.
00:04:51.900 Of the polled people,
00:04:53.620 95 to 99%
00:04:56.180 are exhibiting Jew hatred.
00:04:58.760 So now,
00:04:59.180 does it take
00:04:59.720 a super fancy professor
00:05:01.160 to guess
00:05:01.880 that if you allow
00:05:03.220 hundreds of thousands
00:05:04.320 of such folks to come in,
00:05:05.660 what will happen
00:05:06.460 to Jew hatred
00:05:07.200 in that host society?
00:05:08.720 Will it go up?
00:05:09.540 Will it stay the same?
00:05:10.520 Or will it go down?
00:05:11.620 Who knows?
00:05:12.560 It's impossible.
00:05:13.280 It's a mystery.
00:05:13.840 Well, is it really?
00:05:17.400 I'm a professor
00:05:18.440 at the John Molson School of Business,
00:05:19.940 which is part
00:05:20.900 of Concordia University.
00:05:22.380 In 2024 to 2025,
00:05:24.580 though,
00:05:24.740 I'll be serving
00:05:25.300 as a visiting professor
00:05:26.380 and global ambassador
00:05:27.320 at Northwood University.
00:05:28.740 And so I study
00:05:29.560 the biological
00:05:30.500 and evolutionary underpinnings
00:05:32.360 of what makes us
00:05:33.780 the consumers that we are.
00:05:35.880 The full victimhood
00:05:37.060 that you hear
00:05:38.000 happening in the West,
00:05:39.520 I can't take seriously
00:05:40.760 because people
00:05:41.680 who've really had
00:05:42.560 victimhood stories
00:05:43.480 know that this is nonsense.
00:05:44.900 Being misgendered
00:05:45.980 at Wellesley College
00:05:47.200 is probably not something
00:05:48.460 that you should be crying
00:05:49.340 for more than a second about,
00:05:51.280 given what other people
00:05:52.220 have gone through.
00:05:53.000 So, for example,
00:05:53.940 Ayaan Hirsi Ali
00:05:54.960 has the right
00:05:56.160 to tell a story
00:05:57.200 of victimhood.
00:05:58.040 The fact that you come
00:05:59.180 from a line
00:06:00.020 of indigenous people
00:06:01.020 that in 1739
00:06:02.380 had a treaty
00:06:03.900 that the French government
00:06:05.580 violated
00:06:06.140 doesn't give you
00:06:06.960 the right to whine.
00:06:07.900 I think some of
00:06:08.600 the staunchest defenders
00:06:09.940 of the Western tradition
00:06:11.480 are immigrants
00:06:12.980 because the person
00:06:14.240 who's born
00:06:14.720 in Huntington Beach
00:06:15.760 and who's only surfed
00:06:17.120 and his biggest worry
00:06:18.120 is where to get
00:06:18.740 my next burrito
00:06:19.520 doesn't understand
00:06:21.040 that that's not
00:06:22.180 the default way
00:06:23.740 in which reality exists.
00:06:25.660 Much of societies
00:06:26.800 throughout history
00:06:27.680 have been littered
00:06:28.740 with autocracy
00:06:29.680 and pain
00:06:30.860 and rivers of blood
00:06:32.280 and persecution
00:06:33.940 and subjugation.
00:06:35.220 And so,
00:06:35.640 it takes usually
00:06:36.560 the immigrant
00:06:37.140 who has sampled
00:06:38.280 from the larger buffet
00:06:39.220 of societies
00:06:39.800 to come to the United States
00:06:41.860 and say,
00:06:42.560 wow,
00:06:42.860 what a miracle
00:06:43.460 you guys have.
00:06:44.360 And boy,
00:06:45.100 be careful.
00:06:46.280 You don't want to lose it.
00:06:48.580 To all Americans
00:06:49.880 who might be watching this,
00:06:51.820 heed my warning.
00:06:53.060 Never take for granted
00:06:54.760 your liberties.
00:06:55.980 It's not built
00:06:57.060 into the mechanism
00:06:58.700 as a default value.
00:07:00.340 It's something
00:07:00.900 that you have to
00:07:01.640 always be vigilant
00:07:02.920 in defending.
00:07:03.860 Ronald Reagan said,
00:07:04.960 freedom is never
00:07:05.720 more than one generation
00:07:06.840 away from extinction.
00:07:07.760 And so,
00:07:08.480 it is important
00:07:09.220 for Americans
00:07:09.960 to think that
00:07:10.820 you can blink your eyes
00:07:12.400 and your society
00:07:13.820 can change.
00:07:14.540 So,
00:07:14.800 always be vigilant.
00:07:16.120 Don't think
00:07:16.640 it's the default value
00:07:17.720 to live in this
00:07:18.360 beautiful paradise
00:07:19.040 that you take for granted.
00:07:37.760 Try the way
00:07:38.780 to live in this
00:07:39.320 Quelling
00:07:39.720 immigrant
00:07:40.760 osphorid
00:07:41.240 much
00:07:41.900 and
00:07:42.000 back to life.
00:07:42.780 Host
00:07:47.380 that you have to
00:07:48.640 floor in this
00:07:48.820 conference
00:07:48.940 in the
00:07:51.240 cabinet
00:07:51.820 full of
00:07:52.460 thousands
00:07:53.400 of
00:07:53.520 ies
00:07:54.280 or
00:07:55.420 others
00:07:55.960 always
00:07:56.360 In the
00:07:56.940 m