TRIGGERnometry - October 18, 2023


EMERGENCY EPISODEļ¼š Bari Weiss On Israelā§øPalestine


Episode Stats

Length

57 minutes

Words per Minute

166.1645

Word Count

9,596

Sentence Count

579

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

66


Summary

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

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 I think there's been a shattering of a lot of myths and illusions and delusions this week.
00:00:06.900 What did Israel get in return?
00:00:08.860 It gave the land, but the peace never came.
00:00:11.420 This is what has come.
00:00:12.440 I think that this week has the potential to finally and forever separate out liberals from anti-liberals.
00:00:22.180 They were celebrating Jewish slaughter, and people should never, ever forget that.
00:00:27.260 If you don't believe in good and evil after this week, you're sleepwalking.
00:00:33.100 Hey guys, Trigonometry needs your help.
00:00:36.080 We took a big risk creating the show, and for us to keep doing the incredible work that you all love, we need your support.
00:00:44.320 That's the only way we're going to stay independent and create content that you won't be able to find anywhere else.
00:00:49.720 There is no other podcast where you'll hear interviews with Nigel Farage one week,
00:00:54.660 and the next week you've got Aaron Bastani, the founder of left-wing show Navarra Media, on the same platform.
00:01:00.220 You know the mainstream media aren't honest.
00:01:02.820 You know they've been caught lying again and again.
00:01:05.980 You know they can't be trusted.
00:01:08.340 The only way to change that is to make a stand and support independent content creators,
00:01:14.140 like Trigonometry, to produce better and more honest content.
00:01:17.920 We have big plans and we'll shortly be announcing exciting new shows and more terrific interviews with huge guests.
00:01:24.360 That isn't going to happen without your help.
00:01:26.680 When you support us, you also get incredible extra content, such as extended interviews with none of those irritating adverts,
00:01:36.440 and they'll be released 24 hours early just for you.
00:01:40.120 We'll have exclusive bonus interviews that only you get to hear.
00:01:43.460 Click the link on the podcast description or find the link on your podcast listening app to join us.
00:01:50.220 Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner.
00:01:56.380 Barry, it's been a pretty insane week.
00:01:59.860 What have we learned?
00:02:01.760 I think we've learned.
00:02:02.940 I think there's been a shattering of a lot of myths and illusions and delusions this week.
00:02:09.060 We can start maybe in the Middle East and then move on to the ideology that has captured so many of our elite institutions that has revealed itself for the moral perversion sort of lies at the heart of it.
00:02:25.080 But if we go to Israel and begin on the early hours of Saturday morning when Hamas terrorists infiltrated the border via air and land and sea coming with one intention and one intention only,
00:02:44.060 which is not the liberation of the Palestinian people, but the annihilation of the Jewish people.
00:02:50.900 And that is what they did in the ensuing hours.
00:02:55.020 By now, I hope anyone watching this knows the horror that ensued.
00:03:02.180 But just to give people a sense for those who are reading things, claiming that all of this is sort of propaganda or misinformation.
00:03:11.420 Families, whole families were burned alive.
00:03:15.560 Babies were beheaded.
00:03:17.620 Women who had gone to an EDM music festival in the desert were raped next to the corpses of their friends.
00:03:27.420 And as of this morning, and we're recording on Monday morning, more than 199 people were taken hostage into Gaza, and God knows what is happening to them.
00:03:35.940 It's the kind of massacre that if you follow Jewish history, you might expect from a pogrom in Eastern Europe in the 19th century.
00:03:47.360 But here it was taking place in the state formed after the Holocaust that was meant to be a safe haven for the Jewish people.
00:03:54.120 So what have we learned?
00:03:56.000 I think one thing we have learned is that Hamas told us who they were, and yet somehow we forgot.
00:04:06.620 And somehow Israel, in a way, forgot.
00:04:08.560 The reckoning of how this happened and how the most militarily sophisticated country in the world could have been so caught off guard and could have allowed itself to be the site of the worst massacre, single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
00:04:26.460 That is the reckoning that's going to take place over the next weeks and months and years.
00:04:30.500 But I think for sure one thing we know is that Hamas fooled Israel, and Hamas fooled the world, right?
00:04:39.200 Israel believed and was giving these permits for people in Gaza to come work over the border.
00:04:44.640 Hamas gave the perception that it was war-weary and just wanted sort of to get along.
00:04:50.720 And of course that revealed itself not to be true.
00:04:52.700 I think one of the other things that a lot of us are thinking in the wake of these past horrendous days is the idea we all or most of us grew up on, right?
00:05:03.660 Most of the Jewish world grew up on the idea of a two-state solution.
00:05:07.740 The idea that if we could trade land away, if Israel could trade land away, that we would get peace in return.
00:05:14.080 But I think one of the tragedies of the past week is all of us wondering whether or not that's actually true.
00:05:22.700 Right? Israel, to remind people, does not occupy the Gaza Strip.
00:05:27.600 It pulled out in 2005. It dismantled every single Israeli community there, gave back everything.
00:05:34.380 There has not been a single Jew in Gaza until now in the form of 200 hostages being held there.
00:05:41.920 And yet, what did Israel get in return?
00:05:44.460 It gave the land, but the peace never came.
00:05:47.120 This is what has come.
00:05:48.140 And so I think it's leaving many people who feel like the moral situation with Israel having to occupy the West Bank, otherwise known as Judea and Samaria, it's a horrible situation.
00:06:01.460 And yet, what would happen if the thing we've all prayed for for our entire lives happened, which is at least me as a liberal Jew?
00:06:08.300 Israel pulls out.
00:06:09.160 Well, then is it just going to have another Hamas terrorist statelet at its other border?
00:06:13.640 So I think that is one of the things that we're currently reassessing.
00:06:18.300 I think the other thing that has been shattered in the wake of this massacre is the folly of a foreign policy embraced by the Obama administration and then revived by the Biden administration to, I don't know what the right word is, but to do business with Iran.
00:06:38.260 Right? And you could justify that policy maybe in 2014, 2015, 2016.
00:06:45.980 I don't think that there is any way to justify that policy today.
00:06:50.600 Iran are the paymasters of Hamas.
00:06:52.860 We read in the Wall Street Journal, they literally gave the orders for this attack.
00:06:57.480 So why is the United States pursuing a policy vis-a-vis Iran by which we're giving them billions of dollars?
00:07:04.960 It doesn't make sense.
00:07:05.820 Barry, Sam Harris and Eric were here.
00:07:10.500 This interview will go out before theirs.
00:07:12.760 But one of the things people will hear Sam talk about is essentially that we have misunderstood the nature of the threat, which is Hamas is not about liberating Palestine or anything like that.
00:07:24.620 These are jihadis and they're driven by that motivation.
00:07:27.300 Is that your take on this?
00:07:28.400 Yeah, and I would say that, you know, when people mistakenly talk, people, well-intentioned progressives who don't know very much about the history, talk about Gaza being occupied.
00:07:39.080 And they're inadvertently right.
00:07:41.480 Gaza is occupied by a terrorist group called Hamas, which uses the most barbaric weapons of war.
00:07:48.620 Mass rape of women, the killing of the elderly, the disabled, and children.
00:07:54.380 But more than that, it is using a weapon of the sacrifice of its own citizens, right?
00:08:02.580 There are rules in war.
00:08:06.480 There are rules in war.
00:08:08.060 And Hamas literally sets up its operations in hospitals, in schools, so that they can actively try to create as many civilian deaths as possible.
00:08:18.440 That is their actual aim.
00:08:20.140 Israel is begging Gazans that live in half of the Strip to go to the other half in order to save civilian lives, because that is what an ethical military does.
00:08:32.140 There's always going to be horrific tragedy in war.
00:08:35.200 But instead, Hamas is countering and saying, stay in place.
00:08:38.900 And that is part of their strategy.
00:08:40.980 Why?
00:08:41.960 Because they want civilian deaths in order to create rage around the world against Israel.
00:08:50.140 And so it is unspeakable what they are doing to the people of Gaza.
00:08:57.840 And if anyone has any illusions about what Hamas is, just look at what they did.
00:09:03.540 Look at what they did and look now, as the ground operation against Gaza is beginning, at what they're doing to their own people.
00:09:12.120 Benjamin Netanyahu has, is, how can I put this?
00:09:17.320 State, there's a lot of people who are quite rightly furious with him, because they believe that he's let the Israeli people down.
00:09:25.220 The IDF were found wanting.
00:09:27.160 Can you explain a little bit of what actually happened in terms of security?
00:09:31.460 How did this awful tragedy occur?
00:09:33.320 We don't know the answer to that yet.
00:09:35.480 Here's what we do know.
00:09:36.600 Israel, Israel, for anyone who's been paying attention over the past year, has been in the most heated, almost cold civil war among its population.
00:09:46.880 About whether or not these so-called judicial reforms that some people view as overdue and that other people view as bringing Israel to the brink of a constitutional crisis,
00:09:56.200 even though it doesn't have a constitution, but the brink of sort of the end and the unraveling of democracy.
00:10:01.620 There have been massive protests in the streets.
00:10:05.180 And by the way, it's not just secular liberal versus hardcore and orthodox.
00:10:09.380 Many of my orthodox friends in Israel have been taking to the streets every single weekend with their family to protest the Netanyahu so-called judicial reform.
00:10:18.600 We don't have time to get into what that reform looks like.
00:10:21.340 But the takeaway is that Israel was internally weakened.
00:10:25.780 Israel was internally weakened.
00:10:27.100 You had people who were high-ranking officers in the Israeli defense forces saying that because of what Netanyahu was doing,
00:10:38.140 because of the judicial reform, and because of the bigots that he had brought into his coalition government,
00:10:43.920 they wouldn't be showing up if they were called to duty.
00:10:46.920 So that is the sort of state of affairs internal to Israel when Hamas terrorists start to cross over the border on Saturday.
00:10:53.780 The other thing that was happening was that it was a major festival holiday.
00:11:00.240 And my understanding is that a lot of troops that would typically have been at the border with Gaza had been moved to the West Bank.
00:11:05.960 But, you know, again, we don't know the full extent.
00:11:08.720 You have to think for a second.
00:11:10.620 This is the most militarily sophisticated country in the Middle East.
00:11:15.020 They know if a bird lands on the fence between Gaza and Israel.
00:11:20.100 So how is it that more than 1,000 terrorists could simply cross over the border?
00:11:26.080 There's been reports, still unverified, about a possible cyber attack that would have allowed for that.
00:11:31.260 It's unclear as yet.
00:11:32.860 But I think if we can take one takeaway a week in,
00:11:36.080 it's that having a weakened internal society that was divided against itself sent a very, very dangerous signal to Israel's enemies.
00:11:44.540 And obviously, the events that occurred were horrendous and awful.
00:11:50.200 How do you see the response to that?
00:11:53.040 How have you interpreted the way that people have responded all around the world?
00:11:57.080 Perhaps it shouldn't surprise those of us who have been following the illiberal ideology that has taken root among so-called progressives
00:12:12.380 and in our most elite institutions, among our institutions of higher education,
00:12:17.600 in all of our sense-making institutions in American life.
00:12:21.360 And yet still, I will never forget the shattering that I feel watching college students across America and across the world
00:12:34.860 cheering on the slaughter of Israelis.
00:12:39.860 And not just Jews.
00:12:41.500 People from Thailand, people from all over Europe, Americans, innocent people.
00:12:46.140 When people are marching on the quads of American universities singing Glory Be to the Martyrs.
00:12:53.640 When 50,000 people are marching on the streets of London with images, printed out images of a Hamas paraglider taped to their shirt.
00:13:03.720 Imagine on the days after September 11th, if 50,000 people marched through the streets of London
00:13:09.960 with an image of the Al-Qaeda hijacked planes flying into the World Trade Center.
00:13:16.540 Or an image of Auschwitz.
00:13:18.880 Or an image of Timothy McVeigh.
00:13:21.220 Like, these are symbols of mass slaughter.
00:13:25.080 And they are being, it is being celebrated.
00:13:29.300 It is being celebrated.
00:13:31.100 We are seeing people mass around the Sydney Opera House screaming,
00:13:35.560 gas the Jews.
00:13:37.240 Gas the Jews.
00:13:38.660 Gas the Jews!
00:13:39.960 Gas the Jews!
00:13:41.160 Gas the Jews!
00:13:42.320 Gas the Jews!
00:13:43.500 Gas the Jews!
00:13:44.680 Gas the Jews!
00:13:45.720 And I guess if there's any silver lining that has come out of this most horrific week,
00:13:50.980 the most horrific week, I think, of my lifetime,
00:13:55.240 and I think the lifetime of, please God, that will be the most horrific week of our lifetimes,
00:14:00.560 it is that people have showed us who they are.
00:14:04.600 People have showed us who they are.
00:14:06.060 And they were serious when they said that they were for decolonization.
00:14:11.540 They're saying this is what decolonization looks like.
00:14:14.000 Decolonization wasn't an academic idea.
00:14:16.680 Decolonization is about the massacre of Jews.
00:14:20.140 And the massacre of Israelis.
00:14:22.500 So the combination of college administrations that have had so much to say about Roe v. Wade,
00:14:32.780 about the war in Ukraine, about the murder of George Floyd,
00:14:36.920 all of a sudden have discovered the virtue of institutional neutrality when it comes to the massacre of Jewish people.
00:14:43.560 And they're pro-free speech now as well, which is really scary.
00:14:45.620 Exactly, exactly.
00:14:46.620 Glad they discovered that.
00:14:47.960 And so the combination of the silence of people that have moral outrage for all kinds of other causes,
00:14:55.300 but none when it comes to the massacre of Jews,
00:14:59.660 combined with young people who, whether because they are brainwashed,
00:15:04.860 or watch a lot of propaganda, or genuinely feel it,
00:15:08.460 are celebrating.
00:15:09.440 Like, I think it's very important for people to understand when people the day after this massacre
00:15:16.840 were out there cheering for it, saying from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,
00:15:22.820 the bodies of these burned people weren't even in the ground yet.
00:15:27.180 They could not even be identified.
00:15:29.720 So there's not even an illusion that they were protesting the Israeli,
00:15:34.180 the inevitable Israeli response to this war.
00:15:36.280 They were celebrating Jewish slaughter, and people should never, ever forget that.
00:15:42.400 Barry, one of the reasons that I think we've all opposed this ideology
00:15:47.900 is that it reduces all human interaction to this very basic oppressor-oppressed dynamic.
00:15:56.140 And essentially seems to have no rules for what should happen to the oppressor, right?
00:16:01.860 This is what decolonization looks like.
00:16:04.060 And I think you're right.
00:16:05.080 I think what you said about London, by the way, I don't think it was 50,000 people with those badges.
00:16:09.760 No, it was 50,000 people and a few people wearing those badges.
00:16:13.960 And there were people chanting awful things there, too.
00:16:16.920 I suppose the question I want to ask you, and our good friend Douglas Murray was recently on a British show
00:16:22.440 with Julie Hartley Brewer talking about the idea of proportionality.
00:16:25.300 Because a lot of people are, in my opinion, rightly concerned about the fact that there are going to be very heavy civilian casualties in Gaza as a result of this.
00:16:36.620 And, of course, I'm sure you will say, as I will say, that the people who are responsible for that are Hamas.
00:16:41.560 But how do we manage that?
00:16:45.240 There are clearly lots of people in the West who, I think it's fair to say, are not anti-Semitic, who don't hate Jews,
00:16:50.980 who nonetheless do not want to see millions of people killed and displaced.
00:16:54.320 No one wants to see, no one wants to see any number of people in Gaza killed or displaced.
00:17:02.260 No one.
00:17:03.480 But unfortunately, Gaza is ruled by a group that actively wants them to die for the sake of a propaganda campaign against Israel.
00:17:14.220 A propaganda campaign, by the way, that has been unbelievably and enormously effective.
00:17:19.600 And if you want evidence of that, just look at what Francis had just asked me about before.
00:17:24.320 The evidence of it is everywhere.
00:17:26.740 There are basic rules of war, though.
00:17:29.600 And just imagine if we were here in the U.S. and a group of people came over the border and went house to house and slaughtered our children
00:17:39.740 and took our grandparents hostage or killed them and streamed it live on their Facebook pages for their families to see,
00:17:47.200 raped American women, what would America do in response?
00:17:51.160 It would have to eliminate the threat.
00:17:53.640 It simply cannot live with that existential threat at its border.
00:17:57.740 And I think that is how Israel is seeing the situation right now.
00:18:02.980 There's never the idea that innocent people and innocent children and women in Gaza living under Hamas rule are going to die in this war is horrible
00:18:15.740 and should make any person of conscience and should make any person of conscience heartbroken, period, full stop.
00:18:23.340 But it's really important for people to remember why they're in that situation.
00:18:28.620 And they're in that situation because they are ruled by a group that is a latter-day ISIS.
00:18:33.880 Barry, did this surprise you, the outpourings?
00:18:40.320 Because maybe it's me being negative.
00:18:43.560 Maybe it's me because I have families from the Middle East, Lebanese, Lebanese Coptic Christians,
00:18:49.060 in that I know the anger and I know the resentment.
00:18:51.600 And when we talk about hatred, it's a word that is overused.
00:18:54.740 But there is a lot of hatred in that area.
00:18:57.340 And I've seen it from family members myself to the point that I do find it shocking.
00:19:02.020 Hatred of Jews?
00:19:03.680 And Israel, to put it bluntly.
00:19:05.640 Yeah.
00:19:06.500 And the response hasn't surprised me in a way.
00:19:11.780 I kind of knew that this was going to be the backlash because that resentment and that fury has always been there.
00:19:21.960 So am I surprised by the reaction in the Middle East or the West?
00:19:26.260 Both.
00:19:27.940 I'm not surprised by the reaction in the Middle East because of everything that you just referenced.
00:19:35.000 And in a way, I've been writing about the campus issue since I was 19 years old.
00:19:42.220 At the time, I would not have had the courage to use the phrase anti-Semitic.
00:19:48.640 But there are professors at Columbia University, where I graduated from, that are absolutely anti-Semitic and that publish pieces in the days after the massacre celebrating the resistance.
00:19:58.940 And so I saw the roots of this ideology and what it would mean, not just for the Jewish people, but for civilization and the West back in 2003 when I was a college freshman.
00:20:13.840 So in a way, I'm not surprised.
00:20:17.160 But I think the thing that has shattered me is just how widespread it is, how excused it is from the people who claim to want to hold the moral high ground on every other issue.
00:20:32.020 One of the things that has happened this week, I have heard a lot of friends who are left-leaning, on the left, expressing shock at what they've seen from their own side.
00:20:47.220 What have they been saying?
00:20:48.660 I can't believe this.
00:20:50.120 This is crazy.
00:20:51.300 I can't believe the people on my side.
00:20:53.940 How are they justifying this?
00:20:55.680 I can't believe they said, like, I can't believe is a phrase I've heard a lot from people.
00:21:00.520 People who are like woke AF, you know, too.
00:21:07.040 So the question I suppose I want to ask you is, given that I feel like a lot of people's eyes have been opened this week.
00:21:15.720 Do you think this is the week that wokeness ended?
00:21:23.140 I'm an optimistic person, despite this past week.
00:21:26.780 And I remain extremely hopeful that this week can be a watershed moment in finally opening people's eyes to the absolute illiberalism of this worldview.
00:21:39.800 You have to ask yourself, what kind of worldview would let people see the massacre that we have just witnessed and justify it or explain it or remain silent in the face of it?
00:21:53.600 It's an ideology that says people that oppressors, and we can discuss whether or not Israel are the oppressors in the situation of the Middle East.
00:22:03.100 They deserve it.
00:22:04.340 They had it coming to them.
00:22:05.860 That this is what decolonization looks like.
00:22:07.780 I'm not an expert on the politics of Israel and Palestine, but it is also deeply unsurprising to me seeing what's happening in Palestine.
00:22:22.720 The instinct here, given the complexity, is to see things in terms of this is horrific, what's happened to Israel.
00:22:34.400 But when you all examined colonization and decolonizing, what did you actually think that would look like?
00:22:46.400 Like, for real, it is so interesting watching people comment on this.
00:22:57.180 When you are violently oppressed for that long, what do you think the uprising against your oppressors looks like?
00:23:09.140 And I say this, and I say this, and I say this, as a white person living in colonized Australia on stolen land.
00:23:17.940 Like, some of you all need a bit of a reality check, I think.
00:23:23.120 Because, like, what did you think was going to happen?
00:23:26.300 What did you think breaking free of colonial oppressors' chains looked like?
00:23:34.440 If you find yourself justifying or explaining or remaining silent in the face of babies burned alive with their mothers,
00:23:50.880 you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself what you've gone along with.
00:23:53.980 And I think there are a lot of good, well-intentioned progressives who have gone along with this ideology,
00:24:01.420 thinking, oh, it's just about social justice, it's just about inclusion, it's just about diversity,
00:24:06.200 it's just about making amends for past wrongs of America and the West.
00:24:09.720 I really believe that now they could be waking up to the reality of the conclusion in the real world of what that ideology believes.
00:24:22.320 One bright spot that has given me hope in the past few days is that the universities,
00:24:28.400 which have been essentially the hotbeds, not just the intellectual centers of this worldview,
00:24:36.200 but really the indoctrination factories of it, people, donors, are finally saying it's enough.
00:24:47.260 You have Mark Rowan, an enormous donor to the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania,
00:24:52.400 Ivy League school, really important school of business,
00:24:54.940 saying we were silent for too long in the face of an ideology that we thought was just a little crazy.
00:25:01.980 Well, it turns out it's not just a little crazy.
00:25:03.900 It actually, it is an ideology that justifies the massacre of people as it's happening.
00:25:12.740 And he's saying, I'm closing my checkbook.
00:25:14.860 And his model of courage, other people have followed suit.
00:25:19.240 You have John Huntsman, who just, the Huntsman building is built at University of Pennsylvania,
00:25:23.420 announced, not another penny.
00:25:25.280 You have people pulling their funds from places like Harvard and the like.
00:25:29.500 And I think it's, I think that that is a necessary and overdue move.
00:25:35.160 Colleges, like, are free to do whatever they want.
00:25:38.360 They're free to teach whatever they want.
00:25:40.240 Professors have academic freedom.
00:25:41.840 They can go and publish on the electronic intifada, as Joseph Mossad did,
00:25:45.600 all hail the resistance, or whatever it was that he wrote.
00:25:48.580 But that doesn't mean that good people should be funding those ideas.
00:25:51.940 And I think that this week, a lot of people are finally saying, enough.
00:25:57.600 And you mentioned the oppressor-oppressed dynamics.
00:26:01.560 I want to steelman, I know it's painful, and I know it's not pleasant to do,
00:26:05.760 but I want to try and steelman the argument that is being made by these people so we can break it down, right?
00:26:11.240 And I think it's important to do, because whether we like it or not,
00:26:14.380 there are a lot of people who believe the narrative that is being posed.
00:26:18.780 So the narrative is that Israel is an occupying force,
00:26:25.200 that Gaza is an open-air prison,
00:26:28.580 that people in Gaza live terrible lives, which they do.
00:26:31.440 They do.
00:26:31.740 That Israel and Israeli soldiers regularly commit atrocities,
00:26:38.920 that Israel has bulldozed Palestinian houses and olive groves and so on,
00:26:44.120 and that I think the quote is,
00:26:47.220 violence is the language of the oppressed.
00:26:50.280 And this is what resistance looks like,
00:26:52.840 one man's terrorist and another man's freedom fighter,
00:26:55.820 and in the same way that you and I might say,
00:26:57.940 well, civilian casualties in Gaza as a result of Israel's bombings,
00:27:02.040 a collateral damage that is inevitable,
00:27:04.780 they might say, well, how is Gaza supposed to fight back?
00:27:08.280 How are the Palestinians supposed to fight back?
00:27:11.500 And in the words of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
00:27:15.780 I'm always on the side of the oppressed, right?
00:27:19.500 What say you to this argument?
00:27:21.740 Well, let's start with the first thing you said,
00:27:23.260 which is that Israel's an occupying force.
00:27:25.040 Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2005.
00:27:28.520 Ariel Sharon gave back the Gaza Strip,
00:27:30.560 pulled out, the Israeli army pulled out every single Jew
00:27:33.000 that lived in Gaza in the hopes of so-called land for peace.
00:27:36.840 People would argue, sorry to jump in, Barry,
00:27:38.880 that the existence of the state of Israel
00:27:41.440 is default occupation of a land
00:27:43.780 that was never supposed to be taken over by the Israeli state
00:27:48.700 because it didn't exist.
00:27:49.800 That's what people would say.
00:27:50.820 Right, and what I would say to that is
00:27:52.680 those people need to read a little bit of history.
00:27:55.360 The Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel, full stop.
00:28:00.620 It doesn't mean that there aren't other groups
00:28:03.460 like Palestinians, then Arabs,
00:28:06.420 who also have a claim of indigeneity to the land of Israel.
00:28:11.080 But the Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel.
00:28:13.640 And I think one of the reasons
00:28:14.960 that people have such a hard time with this
00:28:16.960 is that it's sort of an anomaly in history
00:28:20.380 in which a group that is native to an area
00:28:23.280 can be expelled and massacred
00:28:26.600 and decimated over 2,000 years
00:28:28.560 and yet have a continuous presence in that land
00:28:31.220 and ultimately come to reestablish a sovereign state there.
00:28:34.760 It's very hard for people to wrap their minds around it.
00:28:37.900 The reason that Jews are called Jews
00:28:40.340 is because we come from the land of Judea.
00:28:44.540 Most countries don't have a birth certificate,
00:28:47.080 but Israel does in the Bible.
00:28:50.700 And whether or not you believe
00:28:51.840 in the divinity of the Bible or not,
00:28:53.680 it was written in the land of Israel.
00:28:57.340 You know, you have to go back and look at the history.
00:28:59.640 Remember the UN partition plan in 1947
00:29:02.480 that was meant to separate,
00:29:04.520 that was meant to create two states.
00:29:06.360 Yeah.
00:29:06.480 And then just go forward at every single period
00:29:09.300 over the past 75 years in history.
00:29:11.460 You have one group of people,
00:29:13.880 the Jewish people who then became the people of Israel,
00:29:17.580 the Israelis who accepted a partition plan
00:29:21.040 from the United Nations who said,
00:29:22.680 yes, we are willing to have a two-state solution
00:29:24.840 and live in peace with our neighbors.
00:29:26.740 The Arabs rejected it.
00:29:28.260 That is the story of the past 75 years.
00:29:30.820 It's the story of Israelis saying,
00:29:33.040 we are willing to give land for peace.
00:29:35.320 All we want is a safe haven for the Jewish people,
00:29:38.380 which history unfortunately has proven in our blood
00:29:41.400 that, and this week once again showed that,
00:29:44.820 you know, imagine if this week happened,
00:29:46.820 and there was no Israeli army to fight back.
00:29:49.820 That is the story of the Jewish people
00:29:51.560 since the exodus from Egypt.
00:29:56.880 Can I ask a really dumb question
00:29:58.680 as someone who really doesn't know this conflict
00:30:00.820 or understand it very well at all?
00:30:02.740 Can they just not,
00:30:03.740 can they not give Gaza independence and let them go?
00:30:07.700 What do you mean they have let them?
00:30:09.040 Gaza is ruled by Hamas.
00:30:11.960 But they need food and water and electricity from Israel, right?
00:30:15.960 To survive.
00:30:17.140 Well, but why is that?
00:30:18.640 I mean, one of the things I think people don't,
00:30:21.220 when people talk about Gaza as an open-air prison,
00:30:23.700 they forget also that Gaza has a border with Egypt.
00:30:27.100 Egypt right now is not letting these poor people-
00:30:30.700 Well, they built a wall.
00:30:31.760 Into Egypt.
00:30:32.540 Yeah.
00:30:33.380 Right?
00:30:33.820 Like, why is that?
00:30:35.980 Why is that?
00:30:36.560 And why isn't there moral outrage around the world about that?
00:30:39.320 Why is it, Barry?
00:30:40.580 Arab states have taken a lot of Palestinian refugees in the past.
00:30:45.320 They don't take any now.
00:30:47.180 One of the reasons, I think,
00:30:48.400 is that whenever they have done in the past,
00:30:50.320 it's led to very bad things happening in their own countries.
00:30:52.780 I think also part of it is that it is,
00:30:55.680 tragically for the Palestinian people,
00:30:57.980 a very, very good,
00:30:59.700 they are a very, very good political pawn and tool
00:31:02.400 to foment rage against Israel and Jewish people.
00:31:06.580 And how do we also, how do we separate this?
00:31:10.460 Because this is very important.
00:31:11.620 There are people who are, let's just call them pro-Palestine,
00:31:15.200 but that doesn't mean they're anti-Semitic at all.
00:31:18.220 How do we separate that?
00:31:19.480 Because there are people who obviously anti-Semitic, pro-Hammas,
00:31:22.360 want to see the extermination of a whole race of people.
00:31:26.480 Those people unfortunately exist,
00:31:27.940 and they've existed for thousands of years,
00:31:29.500 and that's just the truth of it.
00:31:30.840 But there are also people who are pro-Palestine,
00:31:33.620 who are not anti-Semitic.
00:31:35.300 Of course.
00:31:36.060 And those are the people you hear who are saying clearly right now,
00:31:39.840 and I wish there were more of them,
00:31:42.380 Hamas is evil.
00:31:43.600 And what Hamas did to massacre Israelis
00:31:47.940 is absolutely and unequivocally evil.
00:31:50.720 And the reason that I'm speaking out against Hamas
00:31:53.100 is because I believe in the dignity
00:31:55.980 and the liberation of the Palestinian people.
00:31:58.320 You cannot be for the liberation of Palestinians
00:32:03.320 and not be against Hamas.
00:32:05.800 And I think that's a very, very clear moral line.
00:32:08.640 There are many people I know who are pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.
00:32:12.720 One of the reasons that so many people who are pro-Israel
00:32:15.520 are also for a Palestinian state is,
00:32:17.700 A, because we believe in the sovereignty
00:32:21.120 and the right of people to establish their own fate in their land.
00:32:26.020 The same logic that allows someone to believe
00:32:29.260 in the establishment of the state of Israel
00:32:30.680 leads them to believe in the establishment of a Palestinian state.
00:32:34.640 And the other part of it is that if you're pro-Israel,
00:32:37.220 surely you don't want Israel occupying another people.
00:32:41.320 It will create a moral rot in your society if you have to do that.
00:32:46.520 But Israel has found itself in an impossible situation
00:32:49.320 as what's happened in Gaza has just showed us.
00:32:52.940 You pull out, you get a Hamas statelet at your border.
00:32:56.460 You don't pull out, as they have it in the West Bank,
00:32:59.200 and you occupy another people.
00:33:01.100 I think one of the things a lot of people are going to be looking for
00:33:03.480 in the wake of this week is some kind of third way,
00:33:06.360 some kind of paradigm shift
00:33:07.860 that can break us out of this impossible moral knot.
00:33:12.300 And it's also with the situation in the West Bank.
00:33:14.580 And look, Barry, I'm not as au fait with this, obviously, as you are.
00:33:18.460 Please correct me if I say things that are factually incorrect.
00:33:22.300 But for as long as I've been aware of the situation
00:33:26.000 that's been going on in the Middle East,
00:33:27.740 people have been saying what's happening in the West Bank is intolerable.
00:33:30.640 Israeli settlers encroaching more and more on Palestinian lands.
00:33:33.980 Is that still the case now?
00:33:35.500 It is definitely still the case that there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
00:33:40.760 From the sort of Jewish perspective, I'll say,
00:33:44.540 or certainly the religious Zionist perspective,
00:33:47.320 the West Bank, otherwise known as Judea and Samaria,
00:33:50.140 is where most of Jewish history, the biblical history, took place.
00:33:55.440 There's a lot of extraordinarily holy sites there,
00:33:57.860 a lot of places that are significant.
00:33:59.980 But as a liberal Zionist and not a religious Zionist,
00:34:03.700 I have always believed that I don't care what holy history has happened in a place,
00:34:10.800 if it can bring peace and save Israeli lives and save Palestinian lives
00:34:16.160 and bring peace to the region, give it back.
00:34:19.060 It doesn't matter.
00:34:21.200 And so you would give back the entire West Bank?
00:34:23.880 I've always believed in giving back the West Bank if it would bring peace.
00:34:28.780 Unfortunately, in the wake of this week,
00:34:31.420 that view of mine that I have held for my entire adult life has been shaken to its core.
00:34:38.780 How can I, like, what would that look like for the security of Israel to simply give it all back?
00:34:45.060 What happens if Hamas or another terrorist group comes to power there?
00:34:49.280 I don't think a lot of people realize, and maybe it'd be useful to show your listeners or your viewers a map,
00:34:54.700 of the entire Middle East.
00:34:57.740 Israel is the size of New Jersey.
00:35:00.500 It is a tiny little sliver.
00:35:03.600 And, you know, it would be an existential threat, you could argue,
00:35:07.260 if Israel were to give away the West Bank, a view that I have held for, again, my entire adult life,
00:35:13.220 that I now find myself reassessing.
00:35:15.720 And then what happens if peace doesn't break out, as it certainly didn't in Gaza,
00:35:21.560 and a terrorist group comes to power there?
00:35:23.680 Then what?
00:35:24.480 And, Barry, one of the questions I want to ask you is about the impact of all of this here.
00:35:29.580 And I'll just say, Constantine, like, the Jewish world,
00:35:33.860 like, you have to remember that the pullout from Gaza was instituted by one of the most hawkish prime ministers
00:35:41.800 in Israeli history, Ariel Sharon.
00:35:44.540 And yet the majority of Israelis and the majority of the Jewish world supported it,
00:35:49.420 because that is how desperate they were for peace.
00:35:54.060 And I think that one of the shatterings and the reckonings of this week is,
00:35:59.120 what do you do when your neighboring population does not actually seek peace?
00:36:06.480 Like, what happens?
00:36:07.560 It's not that the people don't, but the leadership doesn't.
00:36:10.580 What do you do?
00:36:11.080 I mean, if you go-
00:36:11.660 The leadership they elected.
00:36:12.620 Yeah.
00:36:12.900 Yes.
00:36:13.800 What does that mean?
00:36:15.080 Right.
00:36:15.760 What does it mean?
00:36:17.060 This is the question we're all wrestling with.
00:36:18.720 When we had Sam and Eric in here, I brought this point up many times.
00:36:21.880 I mean, I, I, well, I mean, obviously I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think anybody does.
00:36:29.300 That's why it's, it's going on, right?
00:36:31.320 That's why it's an unresolved issue.
00:36:33.140 It seems to me like a physical separation of some kind is the only answer here.
00:36:39.120 But there is a physical separation and Israelis called it a security barrier in Palestinians
00:36:44.580 and their supporters called it an apartheid wall.
00:36:47.460 Right.
00:36:48.080 There is a physical barrier.
00:36:49.260 But, but Gaza relies on Israeli electricity, water supplies for the people there to survive.
00:36:58.080 That's why it's not, it's not a workable solution, isn't it?
00:37:01.760 Isn't that the real reason?
00:37:03.280 Well, I think the real reason it's not a workable solution is because a group that has in its charter
00:37:08.340 the explicit annihilation of the Jewish people as its reason for being is, is, is ruling over.
00:37:16.700 They fundamentally don't accept the existence of Israel.
00:37:19.080 Let's be honest, right?
00:37:20.280 Let's be honest.
00:37:21.360 I mean, yeah, guys, let's be radical truth here.
00:37:25.280 Well, no, what I mean is all of this stuff about how, you know, you need to make peace,
00:37:31.900 you need to do this.
00:37:32.460 It's all bollocks because if these people don't accept the right of the state of Israel
00:37:36.520 to exist in any way, how can you have peace?
00:37:39.560 How can there ever be peace?
00:37:40.980 If these people want to see Israel wiped off the map, quote, unquote, how can you have peace?
00:37:50.640 How is, how is there going to be peace?
00:37:52.500 I don't get it.
00:37:54.120 I don't know.
00:37:54.980 I got to be honest with you.
00:37:56.280 Like as of this morning, peace is the last thing on my mind.
00:37:59.340 The first thing on my mind is how can Hamas and the threat that it poses be destroyed?
00:38:03.880 I agree.
00:38:04.720 No, and it's the right reaction.
00:38:06.660 It's understand Hamas, Israel has to destroy Hamas.
00:38:08.840 There's no question about that.
00:38:10.340 But ultimately, if we're talking about civilian lives and people living and surviving in Israel
00:38:16.860 and in Palestine, at some point, peace is going to have to be made.
00:38:19.820 And I just don't see what that looks like.
00:38:22.220 I don't get it.
00:38:22.840 I don't, I don't see what the solution is.
00:38:25.060 I have to be honest today.
00:38:26.540 I don't see what the solution is either.
00:38:28.220 Yeah, that's fair.
00:38:28.820 And a lot of, a lot of the slogans that I've written and, and chanted for my life, my entire
00:38:35.600 life about a two state solution, about the ability for there to be peace, about, I feel
00:38:42.140 mugged by reality in this week.
00:38:46.080 To me, it comes back to that word again, hatred, in that I don't think that people in the West
00:38:51.540 understand the depths of hatred in its truest form that exist in that region.
00:38:55.920 I always remember talking to these relatives of mine, being shocked and horrified with
00:39:00.080 people who are very, very intelligent, very well-educated, successful careers, and they
00:39:06.640 would come out with things that would make my skin turn even whiter than it already is.
00:39:11.640 Which is very white.
00:39:13.160 Which is very white.
00:39:14.000 Let's be honest.
00:39:15.820 And when you have, because the problem with hatred is not only that it's a very powerful
00:39:20.920 emotion, a very toxic emotion, it, it, it means that you're irrational and that you will
00:39:26.660 do irrational things because it's such a cancerous emotion that takes over and destroys everything.
00:39:32.400 So until you deal with that hatred, I don't think you're ever going to solve the problem
00:39:36.320 if I'm being honest.
00:39:37.820 Well, it's, I saw some videos this week.
00:39:42.220 Maybe there was so many videos that came out of the horror, but I watched a video of just
00:39:47.740 a young Palestinian girl, beautiful, in Gaza, probably five or six years old, talking about
00:39:54.560 how wonderful it is when Jews are slaughtered.
00:39:58.460 What do you do when a population is indoctrinated in that way?
00:40:02.060 Yeah.
00:40:02.620 What do you do?
00:40:03.420 I don't know.
00:40:03.880 And that's why Hamas is who they are and why they're allowed to, why they're allowed
00:40:10.020 to flourish, because they feed on hatred.
00:40:12.500 That's what they do.
00:40:13.620 That's what these people do.
00:40:14.580 That's what all extremists do.
00:40:16.260 They, they, they allow the narrative to be propagated.
00:40:19.660 They push the narrative and then they feed off the narrative.
00:40:22.200 Yeah.
00:40:23.060 And that's the real worry.
00:40:24.580 And then you look around at the surrounding countries, whether it's Lebanon, where my family
00:40:28.120 originate from, or Iran, and they're led by a lot of them.
00:40:33.260 Islamic fundamentalists, who also, unironically, are rabid anti-Semites as well, because the
00:40:38.780 two go together.
00:40:39.820 I think it's just really, really hard for people like us that live in, I know this word
00:40:46.460 has been overused, but like true privilege in the West.
00:40:49.440 Western privilege.
00:40:50.080 Western privilege.
00:40:51.140 to understand hate.
00:40:54.920 Yeah.
00:40:55.460 And to understand that the, what's driving this is not poverty or, or, or anything else
00:41:05.080 other than an ideology that is based on the embrace of evil.
00:41:10.780 Like we live in a culture in which, like, in which the, I, even the idea of good and evil
00:41:16.820 seems like so old fashioned.
00:41:19.580 Like how could anyone believe in good and, if you don't believe in good and evil after
00:41:22.660 this week, you're sleepwalking.
00:41:25.720 Barry, when we had Sam here, uh, one of our audience members, we do a special section on
00:41:30.400 locals where people get to ask our guests questions.
00:41:33.300 He was asked a question by an audience member, Trump, uh, Sam famously, not a fan of Trump.
00:41:38.720 We could, we could put it lightly, put it lightly.
00:41:41.160 We all recall the, the viral moment from the last time he was on.
00:41:44.300 Somebody said, would this have happened if Donald Trump was in power?
00:41:48.760 It's impossible to know.
00:41:50.600 Um, but I can say this, I think whether because he was perceived as strong or simply perceived
00:41:57.660 as crazy, um, the Middle East was a changed place under his presidency.
00:42:04.500 I don't know if I hate Trump quite as much as Sam, definitely not a fan of Trump, but
00:42:08.980 if you just look putting aside his boorishness and his, his character, just the policies that
00:42:16.280 happened under the Trump administration, like the Abraham Accords, like the scuttling
00:42:20.600 of the Iran deal, these were really, really positive things for the region.
00:42:24.080 And I don't think that, you know, people can love Joe Biden, people can hate Joe Biden.
00:42:28.880 I don't think there's any question that Joe Biden is not perceived as a man at the height
00:42:33.380 of his powers and at the height of his strength.
00:42:35.800 And certainly this administration's re-embracing of their Iran deal framework first put forward
00:42:41.560 by the Obama administration has made the Middle East a much, much more dangerous place.
00:42:46.760 Can I say something else, Barry, about this as someone who's kind of a Westerner, but also
00:42:50.340 not?
00:42:50.920 Yes.
00:42:51.260 And it comes back to your point about people not understanding that good and evil do exist.
00:42:56.460 There's something else that people in the West fundamentally don't understand, which
00:42:59.580 is power.
00:43:00.640 And that's what you're talking about.
00:43:02.840 Donald Trump was boorish, obnoxious, unpredictable.
00:43:09.480 But he was seen in places where power is the one thing, the only thing that matters as
00:43:15.940 powerful and as someone who might react very harshly to being crossed.
00:43:23.060 And that is a superpower in the world.
00:43:26.020 And one of the things, the reasons I've been so concerned about the direction of travel with
00:43:30.720 all the stuff that you and I, all of us have been talking about for a long time, is we have
00:43:35.540 become deeply uncomfortable with the exercise of power in the West.
00:43:39.220 And that's why I asked you the question about Trump, because there's no question in my mind
00:43:44.380 that neither Ukraine or this would have happened if Trump was still in power.
00:43:49.940 For all the concerns that you might have about him, and the concerns might be the flip side
00:43:53.960 of the fact that he was willing to use power to do things.
00:43:56.460 Exactly.
00:43:56.820 But we have fundamentally lost the willingness to be powerful, and it bothers me tremendously.
00:44:03.300 I saw a tweet this week that I kind of laughed at and bookmarked to go back to, which just
00:44:08.320 said, American empire didn't go far enough.
00:44:11.180 And it was sort of glib, but I really, I've been thinking about what was the groundwork that
00:44:17.920 was laid that allowed for this week?
00:44:19.400 And I think a big piece of it is American weakness and America's sort of recession from
00:44:24.800 the world stage and in the wakes of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, like this war weariness
00:44:30.660 here at home, this sense that, you know, we tried, it failed, let's go home.
00:44:35.440 The idea that America's done more bad than good on the world stage.
00:44:39.340 Well, what happens when we pull back from the world?
00:44:42.040 We're seeing it.
00:44:43.360 And the war in Iraq was a crime.
00:44:45.740 It was a mistake and it was a crime, in my opinion.
00:44:48.380 That does not mean that America has no role in the world.
00:44:51.280 And, you know, Putin, the leaders of China, of Iran, they're all banging on endlessly
00:44:57.940 about this beautiful new multipolar world.
00:45:00.320 And there are idiots in the West who are like, oh yeah, a multipolar world.
00:45:02.920 No, the multipolar world is just a new axis of evil.
00:45:05.940 Yes.
00:45:06.260 That's what it is.
00:45:07.100 Right.
00:45:07.580 And the process of breaking down the world we currently have looks like this.
00:45:12.260 It looks like Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine, and God knows
00:45:17.320 what else.
00:45:18.180 God knows what else.
00:45:19.000 And God forbid China and Taiwan.
00:45:20.460 Yeah.
00:45:21.100 Yeah.
00:45:21.620 And this is the multipolar world all these people wanted.
00:45:26.080 And...
00:45:26.600 The Pax Americana, I have to say, was a very good situation.
00:45:31.040 And the use of the past tense is a very troubling thing to me.
00:45:34.280 But look at the world.
00:45:35.680 Oh, 100%.
00:45:36.460 But this idea that America is evil and is the evil empire, that starts at the universities.
00:45:42.320 Yes, it does.
00:45:43.440 I mean, I can't count the number of seminars.
00:45:46.140 This is going back years now.
00:45:47.440 The number of classes I took at Columbia where the idea of decolonization was put forward.
00:45:53.100 I mean, I was marinating in all of these ideas.
00:45:55.940 Now, I had enough of a sense of right and wrong and a sense of who I was in the world that when I...
00:46:03.480 I'll give you one example.
00:46:04.740 I remember very clearly getting into a conversation with a friend who also identified as a feminist.
00:46:10.720 And she was justifying female genital mutilation to me because she believed that we in the West didn't have the right to judge other people and cultures.
00:46:20.520 That it was chauvinistic for us to do so.
00:46:22.800 That it was sort of the mark of colonization for us to do so.
00:46:26.400 And I remember so clearly, I was like a sophomore in college stepping back from that conversation and saying, whatever this is, I'm not that.
00:46:34.520 Whatever ideology this is that could justify the mutilation of women under the guise of I don't know what, righteousness is wrong.
00:46:45.100 And that, I remember so clearly that day, it sort of sent me tumbling down this path to really examine this ideology that I was encountering in so many different facets and so many different courses.
00:47:01.060 And basically what was coming back to me again and again was just this idea that anything the West was was wrong, to put it crudely.
00:47:09.720 Any values that claimed to be Western were in and of themselves chauvinistic and and oppressive toward other people.
00:47:18.460 And I had to step back and say, but hold on.
00:47:21.260 These values have literally allowed for my life to be possible.
00:47:26.500 These values have literally allowed for the greatest flourishing of equality, of human dignity, of rights for minorities that we have ever seen in the history of the world.
00:47:38.500 So those people who are claiming that we should just go and dismantle them, we should look at those people with an enormous amount of skepticism.
00:47:47.580 And right now we're seeing the fruits of their ideology and they are very, very terrible ones.
00:47:53.460 As a Venezuelan, I really do appreciate it when a Columbia graduate explains to me that socialism is a beautiful thing.
00:48:01.240 It's wonderful.
00:48:02.240 But, you know, I'm being, you know, glib about it.
00:48:04.780 But there's a very serious point to be made there in that.
00:48:09.080 And I say to these people when BLM rose to power and, you know, people were championing it, particularly in our industry and comedy.
00:48:14.680 And I said the words to them, you do not know the forces that you were messing with.
00:48:18.780 You have no idea.
00:48:20.440 You have never seen El Socialismo.
00:48:22.480 I have.
00:48:23.580 Believe me, it's not pretty.
00:48:25.380 But you can't explain that to people who've never seen it.
00:48:28.060 Well, there was an incredible, I'm sure you guys saw that BLM Chicago put out an image.
00:48:33.220 Yeah.
00:48:33.420 I think the words where we stand, Palestine, of the image of death, the image of a Hamas paraglider.
00:48:39.400 And I think a lot of sort of good progressives imagined that it was somehow a mistake.
00:48:44.920 And then days later, BLM Chicago put out a tweet that was so true.
00:48:50.120 They said, if you're shocked by that image, you haven't been paying attention to what we believe.
00:48:56.460 And they're right.
00:48:57.880 They're right.
00:48:59.020 People didn't want to pay attention because they didn't want to see.
00:49:02.040 Because they wanted to be with the cool kids.
00:49:05.720 They wanted to be on the side of the good.
00:49:07.840 They wanted to go along with something that pretended to be anti-racism,
00:49:11.880 but was actually about something far more insidious.
00:49:15.480 And you see it with the college kids with the pictures of Cher.
00:49:20.500 Exactly.
00:49:21.320 And I remember when I was at university and I said to him, do you know who Cher Gerardo is?
00:49:24.640 Do you have any knowledge of him?
00:49:26.460 Do you know, for instance, that he was a rank homophobe who despised gay people and had them executed?
00:49:31.500 Do you know that?
00:49:32.220 But this is like when I'm seeing people with signs that are like, queers for Palestine.
00:49:37.300 You know, I'm like, I saw this unbelievable instance of this trans person at a rally, you know, cheering on what had happened.
00:49:45.480 I wanted to say, do you know what they would do to you?
00:49:49.900 Do you know what they would do to you there?
00:49:52.300 It's I mean, the oxymoron of queers for Palestine.
00:49:57.420 It's just it's unbelievable.
00:49:59.540 Yeah.
00:49:59.700 Stay away from tall buildings.
00:50:01.640 Oh, my God.
00:50:02.880 Actually, they're quite pro-trans in Iran.
00:50:04.880 In Iran, they are.
00:50:05.680 Yeah.
00:50:07.020 Well, for the reasons of they don't want there to be gay people.
00:50:09.660 Yes.
00:50:09.980 It's a very interesting moment right now.
00:50:16.540 In terms of what's happening in the West.
00:50:19.480 And I wonder if this is, you know, look, I think one thing we should also acknowledge is I see people posting this thing as like, you know, when they came for these people, I stood up.
00:50:28.640 When they came for these people, I stood up.
00:50:30.000 And then when they came for the Jews, no one stood up.
00:50:31.920 And I don't think that's true.
00:50:33.020 I think we've seen a tremendous outpouring of support.
00:50:35.480 I mean, that speech by Eric Adams, the mayor of New York.
00:50:37.760 Unbelievable.
00:50:38.560 Unbelievable.
00:50:39.200 Unbelievable.
00:50:39.820 And I'm also heartened.
00:50:40.960 Douglas Murray's speech.
00:50:42.280 Yeah.
00:50:42.880 Did you see that?
00:50:43.620 In the synagogue, yes.
00:50:44.580 Oh, my God.
00:50:45.380 Yeah.
00:50:46.380 It's amazing.
00:50:47.080 We also ought to acknowledge that the world was shocked by what happened.
00:50:53.920 And many, many people stood up and said something.
00:50:57.320 And I hope that this is a wake-up call for people in the West.
00:51:01.400 I'll be honest with you.
00:51:02.820 We've been in the U.S.
00:51:03.900 Do you think it will be?
00:51:04.800 Well, this is what I was going to say.
00:51:06.440 I'll be honest with you.
00:51:07.740 What I saw, I wasn't in London.
00:51:10.040 I have many people, friends in London, Jewish friends and non-Jewish friends who I've been speaking to about what I saw there.
00:51:18.380 This may sound like hyperbole, but I don't see how this issue gets better in the U.K.
00:51:24.220 We have an open border.
00:51:25.460 However, we don't vet the people who are coming in.
00:51:31.320 This is only going to get worse in the U.K.
00:51:33.120 But in America, it feels like, to me, there's a fight to be had over the future of this country and the attitude it takes to all of these issues.
00:51:40.620 So what does that mean for the future of the U.K., if you believe that?
00:51:44.160 Nothing good.
00:51:45.620 Nothing good.
00:51:46.700 I mean, I don't see how it gets better.
00:51:49.480 Do you feel that way too, Francis?
00:51:50.580 I think there's always hope.
00:51:53.140 I think there's always hope.
00:51:54.500 You've got to have hope and you've got to believe things can change.
00:51:57.320 And that there are always bad moments and there are always dark moments.
00:52:01.760 And there will always be dark moments in history and there will always be dark moments in life.
00:52:05.160 But that doesn't mean that the darkness will continue.
00:52:07.340 And I hope that people have, that people are starting to wake up.
00:52:13.260 That people who are actually going, you know what, this ideology isn't good.
00:52:18.000 This, they may, because they're very intelligent.
00:52:20.560 They say, they say nice things and they promise simple solutions to complex problems.
00:52:25.200 But actually, this is a mask off moment.
00:52:27.520 And you're really seeing what's going on.
00:52:28.960 But this isn't what I'm talking about at all.
00:52:31.060 The fact that people are going to realize wokeness is dumb, great.
00:52:34.560 Okay, cool.
00:52:35.480 But that isn't the issue we have in the U.K.
00:52:37.500 The issue we have in the U.K. is we have a significant minority of people who openly support what Hamas did.
00:52:45.180 And we are importing more of those people every day.
00:52:48.700 The 50,000 people that I saw marching, how many of those people are immigrants and how many aren't?
00:52:54.240 I have no idea.
00:52:55.000 Nobody does.
00:52:55.780 None of us know what percentage of those people actually support Hamas.
00:52:59.680 And what percentage of those people just think Palestinians are being badly treated.
00:53:04.180 We don't know.
00:53:05.360 But what we do know is there are some among them who support what Hamas did.
00:53:10.440 And the police refuse to do anything about it.
00:53:13.580 Hamas is a prescribed terrorist organization in the U.K.
00:53:16.100 Which means that if you express public support for Hamas, you should be arrested and, in my opinion, deported.
00:53:21.680 That's not going to happen.
00:53:22.460 The last time there was a flare-up, so to speak, in the Middle East,
00:53:27.320 we had people who drove down for hours from a different city to London, to Jewish areas of London,
00:53:35.200 with Palestine flags and screamed using megaphones,
00:53:39.220 fuck Jewish women, rape Jewish women, kill Jews.
00:53:43.600 Those people were not prosecuted for what they did,
00:53:47.660 even though it is the law of the land that they should be.
00:53:49.700 Why were they not prosecuted?
00:53:50.800 Not enough evidence.
00:53:52.980 It was on tape.
00:53:53.700 It was on camera.
00:53:54.300 Yeah.
00:53:55.780 So, the mayor of New York stands up and gives a speech saying,
00:53:59.620 I am your brother, I stand with Israel.
00:54:01.220 The mayor of London stands up and says, diversity is our strength.
00:54:06.220 So...
00:54:06.820 I think another big change that's happening in the American Jewish community this week is,
00:54:11.460 I mean, I think people will know this,
00:54:13.460 but seven out of ten Jews vote Democrat.
00:54:16.200 We always have.
00:54:16.980 You know, American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal.
00:54:19.540 Why, Barry?
00:54:20.220 I don't get it.
00:54:21.120 Why?
00:54:22.140 Why?
00:54:22.580 Because historically, the Republican Party was a xenophobic party, did not welcome immigrants,
00:54:28.940 did not have a social safety net, and had deep anti-Semitism at its roots.
00:54:33.560 That's why.
00:54:34.160 History.
00:54:34.760 Okay.
00:54:34.920 Now, I'm not explaining that.
00:54:38.200 I wonder, actually, how this week may have changed things, but I definitely think that
00:54:44.200 American Jews see how vulnerable we are, see how vulnerable Jewish communities are around
00:54:51.080 the world, and are definitely, like, the number of people on my WhatsApp and Signal and
00:54:57.940 text saying, we should learn how to use a gun.
00:55:01.200 People who I never in a million years would think about owning a gun are now changing their
00:55:06.480 minds real fast.
00:55:08.240 And also, as well, you know, there are a lot of metropolitan liberal Jews in London and New
00:55:13.400 York and all of these places.
00:55:14.820 Well, I put it to you, that's about to change.
00:55:16.940 I mean, one of the things, we've only got a couple of minutes, you're very busy, is I
00:55:22.640 think we are going to see the Overton window, but also politics shift to the right now.
00:55:30.520 I think it's inevitable.
00:55:31.920 That's already been happening.
00:55:33.020 Yeah.
00:55:33.280 But yes, I agree with that.
00:55:34.420 Yeah.
00:55:35.040 I agree.
00:55:35.880 The question is, you know, will that look like, how right wing will it go?
00:55:41.280 Yeah.
00:55:41.620 Right?
00:55:41.840 And yeah, that's the worry.
00:55:44.220 That's a huge worry.
00:55:45.320 I mean, there are a lot of, don't forget, like, Bill Maher had a great top to his show
00:55:50.600 this past week where he said, you know, the far left and the far right have united on one
00:55:53.800 thing and it's hating the Jews.
00:55:55.180 And there have been a lot of statements put out by influential people on the sort of so-called
00:56:00.800 new right in this country, justifying or explaining away the slaughter to, or are basically not caring
00:56:08.960 about it too much because they view it as the new current thing. Same people that put their
00:56:12.700 pronouns in their bio and then the Ukraine flag. Well, now we got to support Israel and we don't
00:56:16.880 want America. We want to, you know, look out for America. We don't want America involved in world
00:56:21.580 affairs. And that sort of brew of sort of neo-isolationism combined with sort of latent
00:56:26.660 anti-Semitism combined with the revulsion at, you know, whatever the, you know, current thingism is,
00:56:33.280 have led them to be sort of silent in the face of a massacre. That is also very alarming.
00:56:37.800 Agreed. Barry, we've got to let you go. Before we do, we always answer the same question,
00:56:42.600 as you know, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
00:56:45.600 Oh, God.
00:56:46.300 I know there's one thing on the front, at the front of your mind, of course, but
00:56:49.800 this probably brings to light other things that you might want to bring to our audience's attention.
00:56:55.460 One thing I've been thinking about this week is the number of women I know in this country who,
00:57:02.140 after Trump got elected, put on their pussy hats and marched for women's rights, terrified that Trump
00:57:09.200 was going to sort of bring in a reality, bring the Handmaid's Tale to reality, or who were taking to
00:57:14.640 the streets and certainly the op-ed pages of our newspapers in favor of Me Too and the idea of
00:57:20.900 believe all women. Well, here we are, where rape has been used as a weapon of war against Israeli women,
00:57:28.520 some of whom have been taken hostages, and I don't think I've seen a single statement from a feminist
00:57:33.380 organization in this country about it. What does that tell you about the actual state of American feminism?
00:57:39.800 What happened to the idea of believing women? Well, I guess not in the case of them being
00:57:44.480 Jewish women.