Exposing the Central Role of Joe Biden—Lifelong, Extremist Israel Defender—in the Ongoing Conflict. PLUS: Why Are Americans So Uniquely Provoked by Israel-Palestine? | SYSTEM UPDATE #180
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube tonight.
Ever since Israel was attacked on October 7th, all the way on the other side of the world from the U.S., that country has completely dominated headlines, political debates, and almost every political pundit and politician in the United States.
All of that illustrates the extreme importance so many Americans, both elite and ordinary citizens, vest in Israel.
Anyone who has paid any attention to the debates over the last month or who understands long-standing U.S.
policy in terms of foreign financial and military aid over many decades knows that Israel is of the utmost importance to millions of American citizens, to policymakers in Washington and both political parties, and to huge chunks of America's most influential pundit class and the citizens it represents.
Why is this?
Why does this very small and distant country in a region the U.S.
has long said to be turned away from in favor of a focus on the Asian Pacific occupy such emotional and political centrality for so many Americans to the point that Israel's wars generate at least as much passion, sustained interest, and fervor as America's own?
It's been five weeks since the Hamas attack, and U.S.
media outlets, social media, and our political debates are as inflamed over this country and this issue and this war as I have ever seen it be.
Many conservatives in the United States who spent years vehemently denouncing the evils of censorship, of victimhood narratives, and what they called cancel culture, now that the issue is Israel, are now vocally supporting and cheering all of those things as never before.
It is really worth asking why this is.
Why does Israel have such intense importance for so many Americans and for the West generally, to the point that the United States seems not just willing but eager to make Israeli wars our own wars?
We'll examine that question.
But first, one point that has gone overlooked in the debates over this war and all of this, because there's so much of an attempt always to suggest there's a partisan division about things, even when there isn't, is the role of President Joe Biden for decades, indeed for most of his political life.
Biden has been one of the most stalwart, impassioned, unflinching, and extreme supporters of the State of Israel of anyone in either party in Washington.
It's not just that Biden is one of the most devoted supporters of Israel, though he is, but he's also one of the most vehement defenders of the decades-long policy of the United States to fund, arm, and support Israel without limits, more than any other country on the earth by far.
We'll examine this history and its implications for our current situation.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
One of the things that political pundits like to do is to put everything through a partisan lens.
They always try and claim that the Republican Party is really great on an issue and the Democrats are terrible, and the Democratic Party is really great on an issue while the Republicans are terrible.
And one of the difficulties of trying to view American politics that way is that so often the parties have almost entire complete agreement.
Not on ancillary issues, but on crucial and consequential ones.
That was obviously the case for the war that has preoccupied American politics and journalism and discourse over the last 18 months, which is the proxy war in Ukraine to try and undermine Russia.
There's no way to really divide that issue along partisan lines.
Joe Biden's policy was to fully support Ukraine went to war against Russia to give them all the arms and the money that they needed.
And that was the vast majority of Republican politicians who also supported that policy.
There were only a handful of Republicans, largely Trump, supporting more populist Republicans in the House and a few in the Senate who were opposed to that war.
But if you wanted to look for opposition, you really didn't find it among the establishment wings of either party, which were in full and complete agreement on that war.
The same is true for this new war, for this war in Israel, that the United States has also, through Joe Biden, said it intends to fully fund and arm one of the belligerents, Israel, with no limitations until the very end of the war for as much as Israel needs.
Exactly the same as what the Biden White House said for Israel.
And that also was the view of essentially everybody in the Republican Party in Washington, with maybe a couple of exceptions, a few exceptions.
But even more overwhelming is the bipartisan agreement on this war in Israel.
There's no way you can try in, if you're a conservative who supports the war in Israel, try and attack Joe Biden because he's 100% on your side.
And in fact, he's not just on your side now.
Joe Biden, of all the politicians that have come and gone to Washington over the last four or five decades, has long been one of the most stalwart and vocal and devoted supporters of the state of Israel.
And not just supporters of the State of Israel, but supporters of the American policy to provide more arms and more aid to Israel than any other country by far.
And it's one of the things he has believed in consistently.
He has never wavered in it, going back all the way to the 70s and the 80s through the 90s, when he was Vice President under President Obama.
Before he ran for president, when he ran for president, now that he's an American president.
If you are a supporter of Israel, Joe Biden is absolutely 100% on your side.
In fact, he's so much on your side that it's hard to find a politician in Washington more on your side than he when it comes to supporting Israel.
Obviously, you have other people like Lindsey Graham, And Nikki Haley and Chuck Schumer.
Essentially every politician in Washington is fully pro-Israel, and has been for decades.
But Biden has really taken the lead.
In fact, he has scorned people in his own party, people in any party, who even question the idea that the United States should essentially, as he calls it, have no space whatsoever between the American government and the Israeli government.
Or that the United States should give Israel everything it needs.
Let's just take a little look, a montage of Joe Biden over the years being extremely consistent, angrily supporting Israel against anyone who would question why we do.
Let's take a look.
Those of us who support as most of us do.
Time, about time, we stop those of us who support as most of us do, Israel and this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel.
There's no apology to be made.
None.
It is the best $3 billion investment we make.
Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.
The United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.
The second part is, people should understand by now, this should be crystal clear, that Israel, Israel is the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East.
I always say to my friends when I say those things to you, I say, imagine our circumstance in the world were there no Israel.
How many battleships would there be?
How many troops would be stationed?
You know, I used to say, early on, when I was a kid, I'd say, when I was a young senator, I'd say, if I were a Jew, I'd be a Zionist.
I am a Zionist.
You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.
Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there's simply no space between the United States and Israel.
There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security.
There is only one nation.
nation in the world that has unequivocally without hesitation and consistently confronted the efforts to delegitimize israel at every point in our administration at every junction we've stood up on the legitimacy on behalf of legitimacy of the state of israel the security of israel the united states is inextricably tied and
And we will never, ever, ever abandon Israel out of our own self-interest.
I also emphasize what I've said throughout this conflict.
The United States fully supports Israel's right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks from Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups that have taken the lives of innocent civilians in Israel.
So that is essentially Joe Biden in every decade.
That was Joe Biden as a senator.
Then Joe Biden when he was running for president.
Joe Biden as President Obama's vice president speaking to AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee.
Joe Biden as a presidential candidate.
Now Joe Biden as president.
Same message over and over and over.
Israel is not just our ally.
It is a country to which we owe undying, unlimited loyalty.
And he hasn't just said it, he has backed it up with all kinds of policies.
The very last thing that the Obama-Biden White House did on its way out, it did it in September of 2016, two months before President Obama left office, or three, was signed a record-breaking deal with Prime Minister Netanyahu to vastly increase the amount of aid the United States gives to Israel every year, $3.8 billion a year.
It's a 10-year commitment.
And then on top of that, the United States has constantly given Israel Much more money above and beyond that money as well, including now Biden wants to give another $14 billion to Israel for this new war.
So whatever you want to say about Joe Biden, you cannot say with any degree of honesty that he has ever wavered in his full-fledged support for Israel.
He sees Israel as a centerpiece of U.S.
policy the way most people in Washington have, which is why it has gotten more money and more aid Then any country on the planet over decades, even as a lot of military officials have tried to warn that our support for Israel, especially in the Middle East, causes there to be a huge amount of anti-American sentiment to increase the risk to American citizens as they travel.
We've showed you all the travel warnings that Americans have received from their State Department over the past month.
As a result of the perception, not the perception only, but the reality that the bombs that Israel is dropping on Gaza come right from the United States, that we pay for those bombs, we give those bombs, those are American weapons being used.
Everybody in the region knows that.
And that's what Biden was saying.
He said, even out of self-interest, we won't abandon Israel, meaning even if it harms the United States, our support for Israel and harms American citizens, we're still going to be right Israel side.
Even if it's not good for the United States, that's how fervent of a believer he is.
That's what he said in that video.
And then, since Israel was attacked on October 7th, he has repeatedly emphasized that he believes this even more.
Here was the speech that he gave on October 10, 2023.
For 75 years, Israel is the only guarantor of security of Jewish people around the world, so that atrocities of the past could never happen again.
And let there be no doubt, the United States has Israel's back.
We will make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have.
It's as simple as that.
These atrocities have been sickening.
We're with Israel.
Let's make no mistake.
Thank you.
And then, of course, Joe Biden flew to Israel to be by Benjamin Netanyahu's side and to promise him the same thing, full, unlimited support for as long as Israel needs it in this war.
And then here is Biden as recently as November 10th, so just a few days ago, reiterating that he still believes exactly the same thing.
*Squeak* No possibility.
Any update on getting hostage is out.
We're still optimistic.
Did you ask for a three-day pause to Netanyahu?
No, I've been asked for a pause for a lot more than three decades.
Did you ask him to pause for three days to get the hospitals out for that?
Yes.
I've asked for even a longer pause for some of them.
Mr. President, are you frustrated with Prime Minister Netanyahu that he has not listened more to some of the things you have asked him to do?
It's taken a little longer than I hoped.
So they occasionally push back a little bit, especially when polls start to show that younger Democrats in particular and Muslim voters, which they need for Michigan and other states, are starting to say, I'm not voting for Joe Biden because of his support for this war.
But Benjamin Netanyahu knows, Israel knows, that Biden would never, ever accompany those requests, those pushbacks, with any hint That the United States would stop the flow of weapons or money to Israel no matter what it wanted to do.
So just like when liberals or leftists stand up and say, I'm going to vote Democrat no matter what, my whole life, because Trump is so much worse, that the Democrats have my vote forever.
And even thinking about not voting Democrat is immoral.
Obviously, those people are going to be ignored.
They have no leverage.
They've already said, no matter what you do, we're voting for Democrats no matter what.
Why would any Democrat listen to the grievances or complaints or dissatisfaction of somebody who has already pledged their full and unconditional loyalty to that party?
It's the same with Joe Biden in Israel.
Netanyahu knows that Biden will never, ever, ever even think about withholding aid or weapons and will give Netanyahu everything that he needs no matter what.
So even if Biden says, we wish you would be a little bit less aggressive for a while to get some of the hostages out and Netanyahu says no, all the money in the arms are gonna still flow.
The White House has always been very clear about that.
Here's John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman and national security aide who spoke in the White House on November 11th and that's what he was asked, is there anything Israel can do, any line they can cross that would cause the United States to withdraw support?
Here's what Kirby said.
Is that still the case that the administration has no red lines?
That is still the case.
In late October, you had referred to the fact that the administration is not drawing any red lines for Israel.
As the death toll for civilians in the Gaza Strip has gone up, I wanted to ensure, is that still the case that the administration has no red lines?
That is still the case.
It's also true that airstrikes continue, and it's also true that civilians keep dying from these airstrikes.
But the U.S.
has no red lines at all.
Even if we think that Israel is starting to do things that harm the United States directly, like Joe Biden said, we will never, ever, ever, says the Biden White House, even consider withholding our arms, our funds for Israel.
They have that unconditionally for as long as they want, for whatever they want to do.
Now, I don't know if we have the tweet, but Barry Weiss, who has become one of the leaders in saying, That the United States has the moral obligation to support Israel, that the United States is an anti-Semitic country, that American Jews are in danger.
She went, I don't think we have the tweet, and she, Barry Weistead, said, here is a video of Hillary Clinton on The View talking about the Israel-Gaza conflict.
And she said, this is the best 10 minutes of the history I've ever seen because Hillary Clinton has been as fervent of a supporter of Israel her entire adult political life as Joe Biden has.
There's no difference between them.
And Hillary Clinton went on The View.
There were a couple of people on The View saying, isn't this war kind of excessive?
Aren't they killing a lot of babies?
And Hillary Clinton took the vehement pro-Israel line, as she has done her whole entire adult life, just to give you a sense for how bipartisan this view is in Washington.
And here's some of what she said that excited Barry Weiss so much.
But remember, there was a ceasefire on October 6th that Hamas broke by their barbaric assault on peaceful civilians.
And their kidnapping, their killing, their beheading, their terrible, inhumane savagery.
There was a ceasefire.
It did not hold because Hamas chose to break it.
So you have to keep several things in your head at the same time.
And that is, number one, Hamas is a terrorist organization.
It has made very clear it is committed to the elimination of the State of Israel.
And it has consistently broken ceasefires over a number of years.
Israel has a right to defend itself as any country would.
Ukraine has a right to defend itself against an invasion, an unlawful, inhumane invasion by Russia.
And Israel... I'm really glad there that she linked the cause of supporting Ukraine to the cause of supporting Israel because I've always wondered that.
How is it possible, and we've asked this question on the show before, but since before the Hamas attack, how can anybody on the one hand argue that we shouldn't support our ally Ukraine in its war against Russia, but we should support our ally Israel in all of its wars?
What is the difference?
How do you distinguish those?
I've heard people saying, oh well Israel's a great ally and Ukraine isn't.
Why?
Israel continuously does things that the United States asks it not to do, that the United States tells it by, you're doing this, you're actually harming our interests.
I don't think Ukraine has ever done that.
They're much more subservient as an ally.
But Hillary Clinton is at least being consistent, consistently repellent, I think, but consistent in saying, just like we have to support Ukraine in its war, she wanted to support the war in Libya, the war in Syria, the war in Iraq.
Like Nikki Haley, she supports every war that the U.S.
Might think about getting involved in.
So too does she support, in a full scale way like Joe Biden, supporting Israel in all of its wars.
conduct itself by the laws of war and do everything it can to prevent and limit civilian casualties.
Those three things are all true themselves.
And so when I said a couple of weeks ago that it wasn't time for a ceasefire because it would enable Hamas to rearm and reposition because I've been to Gaza and Gaza is a highly populated urban environment and what has been going on now for a number of years under Hamas rule is the building of over 200 miles of tunnels under Gaza.
Alright well there you have it.
That's the pro-Israel case.
Hillary Clinton's making it just like Joe Biden's making it.
If you live in the United States, it's most of what you've heard.
The media is on board with this narrative.
Both parties in Washington are on board with that narrative.
And I just want to make clear how it's not that Democrats are just kind of begrudgingly on board.
Democrats are vehemently on board and always have been for decades, which is why it doesn't make the slightest difference what the outcome of elections are.
The U.S.
policy toward Israel never changes, ever.
And U.S.
policy toward Israel is we support Israel, we give everything Israel wants, everything it needs, even if its citizens, as many of them do, have a better quality of life than American citizens, in terms of access to health care and college.
Even if Israel, as has happened many times in the past, according to U.S.
generals in the Pentagon, engage in some behavior that harm U.S. national security, our policy is we still give Israel everything it wants and everything it needs.
And that's true when Democrats are in office, every bit as much as when Republicans are in office.
There is no daylight between the Democratic and Republican Party, just like there's no daylight between the U.S. government and the Israeli government.
I'm not for the moment commenting on what this is good or bad.
I just think it's important to emphasize how vehement the Democrats are How vocal Joe Biden has been and continues to be in his passionate support for Israel.
It isn't just that Joe Biden has been sending a huge amount of arms and weapons to Israel in the month since the Hamas attack or the five weeks since the Hamas attack.
There have been so many weapons sent that the Biden administration refuses to disclose what weapons they're sending, even though they have continuously done so with regard to Ukraine.
With Ukraine, they keep releasing lists saying, look at all these weapons we're giving to Ukraine.
But with Israel, they refused any transparency, even irritating their allies in Congress.
We think, well, we have to approve this, we in Congress.
And of course we will, but we kind of think we should at least know, we the Congress and the public should know what weapons you're providing to the Israelis.
But the Biden administration just refuses from the intercept on November 7th, one month since Hamas's surprise attack.
Little is known about the weapons the U.S.
has provided to Israel.
Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence.
One month since Hamas's surprise attack, little is known about the weapons the US has provided to Israel.
Whereas the Biden administration, all right, we just went through that.
National Security Spokesman John Kirby acknowledged the secrecy in an October 23rd press briefing, saying that while U.S.
security assistance flows to Israel, quote, on a near-daily basis, he continued, we're being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they're getting for their own operational security purposes, of course.
Now, just to give you a sense for how fervent and how deep and how abundant Has USAID been to Israel over many decades?
Here from Axios, which prepared a chart and a short article on it from November 4th.
There you see the headline on the screen.
President Biden requested at least $14.3 billion in additional assistance to Israel, which would include money for air and missile defense systems.
Can we put that on the screen, please?
Including the Iron Dome.
Though the timing of a new security package remains unclear, the US is by far the biggest supplier of military aid to Israel, contributing around $130 billion since its founding.
So I think this is very important to note, just to give you a sense for how long this has been going on.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of military aid to Israel, contributing around $130 billion since its founding.
With the U.S.' 's help, Israel has formed one of the most formidable and technologically advanced militaries in the Middle East.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations and bipartisan leaders in Congress have approved aid to Israel over several decades.
As part of an agreement reached under the Obama administration, Israel receives $3.8 billion annually for its military and missile defense system.
Israel is the largest recipient of U.S.
foreign military financing, which has represented around 15% of the country's defense budget in recent years.
So I don't know if we have this chart.
There we have the chart on the screen that shows you from 1951 until 2023 just how much U.S.
money has poured into Israel through Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
And now here you see this massive increase in 2023 as a result of Biden requesting another $14.3 billion for now on top of The $4 billion a year that the U.S.
gives to Israel every year, along with a bunch of extras whenever Israel needs them for things like replenishing its Iron Dome and its missiles when it bombs Gaza.
So this is U.S.
policy, tied at the hip to Israel.
The whole region knows that.
And Joe Biden is one of the most adamant supporters of it.
Now, there are people in the U.S.
government who have constantly warned that this policy harms U.S.
national security.
David Petraeus did it.
Other generals have done it, including Jim Mattis, who worked for President Trump.
Often they've had to apologize or walk that back.
But there's a formal dissent process within the State Department that the State Department created in 1971 under the Nixon administration, the Secretary of State, William Rogers, to give diplomats, career diplomats, the opportunity to dissent From executive branch policy, when the president sets a policy, there are career diplomats in the State Department who have been around for decades, and they want to hear dissent from these people.
Because they're not political appointees, they're there to safeguard the diplomatic interests of the United States for their career.
And for the second time since this war began, the diplomats in the State Department have issued a dissent memo blasting Joe Biden.
For his policy on Israel and Hamas, saying that he is devastating U.S.
interests through his actions.
Quote, here from Axios today, there you see, Scoop internal State Department memo blasts Biden, U.S.
policy on Israel-Hamas war.
Quote, an internal State Department dissent memo accuses President Biden of, quote, spreading misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war and alleges that Israel is committing, quote, war crimes in Gaza, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Axios.
The memo, signed by 100 State Department and USAID employees, urges senior U.S.
officials to reassess their policy toward Israel and to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza's Hamas-controlled health ministry.
And I should say there that it's not just that source for that number.
The Economist, which is a steadfastly pro-Israel journal, over many, many years advocating for support for Israel, has said that the Gazan Health Ministry's numbers over many years has been proven accurate when they've done investigations afterward, independent ones.
That if anything the number is too low because they can't and don't count the number of dead people trapped under the rubble under buildings that have been bombed by the Israelis.
U.S.
intelligence has also said that they believe that that number if anything is too low but they definitely believe it's accurate after surveilling and eavesdropping on Israeli and Gazan officials.
So it's not just a number coming from Moss and obviously if you're dropping In every week, more bombs than the United States in average years dropped on all of Afghanistan.
In average years, more bombs in a week on a tiny strip of densely populated land.
You're going to kill a huge number of civilians.
You can bicker about the number if you want, but there's, I mean, there's Gazan doctors and nurses and healthcare workers and people from Reporters Without Borders and the UN.
All of whom are attesting to the gigantic number of civilian deaths inside Gaza.
The memo goes on, quote, yet we have failed to reassess our posture to Israel, the memo states.
We double down on our unwavering military assistance to the Israeli government without clear or actionable red lines.
Now, the question becomes, what's the alternative?
Is anybody advocating an alternative?
I thought the Republican Party had rebranded itself as an America First policy.
As a policy that says we don't want neocon ideology anymore.
That's what this is.
We're going to involve ourselves in the countries of other wars even though we're not directly attacked.
Hamas didn't attack the United States.
Hamas can't attack the United States.
Hamas doesn't want to attack the United States.
Hamas is a force that is in Gaza to try and get what it regards as its land back from Israel and to free itself from the blockade that Israel has imposed since 2006 on all of Gaza.
It's not a group that's trying to attack the United States.
And I thought the Republican Party, the American right, had said, we don't want these wars anymore.
We don't want to give our money to other countries to fight their wars.
We only want to fight wars when absolutely necessary to protect our national security.
And there is a candidate, well, Cornel West is saying, we're helping Israel commit war crimes, but he probably won't be on the ballot now that he's not a Green Party candidate.
But Vivek Ramaswamy, who's running for the Republican nomination, Today said the following, quote, Neocon ideology cost the U.S.
trillions of dollars and killed millions in pointless wars that didn't advance our interests.
Time to move to a realist future.
Appointees of my administration will agree that, quote, one, avoiding World War III is a vital national objective.
Two, war is never a preference, only a necessity.
And three, the sole duty of U.S.
policymakers is to U.S.
citizens.
Join me to stop these no-win wars at http://notoneocons.com.
I thought that was the alternative that the Republican Party and the American right had reconstituted itself as supporting.
And while you have seen some opposition on the American right to this idea that we should fund and arm Israel, even if it harms U.S.
interests, Overwhelmingly, the Republican Party, and not just the establishment wing, but also the wing that opposed the US war in Ukraine, has been vehemently supportive of Joe Biden in his view that we should support Israel until the end.
Lindsey Graham came out from the beginning and said Israel needs to finish the job.
Nikki Haley said the same thing.
And that is the standard view of most people in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party.
And Vivek, I think, is reminding people and President Trump, former President Trump gave an interview yesterday trying to do the same thing saying there's hatred on both sides that's unlike anything he's ever seen.
Palestinian hatred for Israelis, Israeli hatred for Palestinians.
In 2015, Trump having the instinct of this sort of America first non interventionist Worldview originally provoked the hatred and scorn of neocons when he said, I think the United States need to be much more even-handed in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians because we've lost the credibility to forge a peace deal.
And not having a peace deal undermines American interests.
Now, he never followed through on that.
He quickly got into line, became a very hardcore supporter of Israel.
He was a very pro-Israel president.
He moved the embassy from Tel Aviv, where it was, to Jerusalem, a disputed city, but ultimately it wasn't controversial because Chuck Schumer, the senior Democrat in Washington, also a vehement supporter of Israel, came out and applauded that and said he agrees with President Trump on that, so it just never became a controversy.
But there is that alternative that says, why are we, the United States, making Israeli wars our wars?
Why are we sending all of our citizens money to fuel Israel's wars every year to send massive amounts of money, a lot of which does end up back in the United States because they buy military equipment from the United States.
It ends up in the pockets of arms dealers like Boeing and General Dynamics if that makes you feel better.
But not all of it.
Some of it Israel just keeps.
But that is the alternative view that Vivek is laying out, but that is a minority view in Washington.
If you are a vehement supporter of Israel, and we want to talk about in just a second why so many people are, because I think it's a question worth asking, you need not worry.
Bipartisan Washington is on your side.
The United States is fully committed to providing all the weapons, all the bombs, all the aircraft, all the money Israel wants and needs for the end of time.
Regardless of what Israel does in this conflict, you can rest easy.
But if you're somebody who is starting to become uncomfortable with the amount of death and destruction in Gaza, with what that outcome is going to be, with what the blowback is, these are not Republicans doing this.
This is Joe Biden, who is a leader in the pro-Israel movement and has been for many, many decades.
Now, as we said at the start of the show, I think it's very obvious that this war in Israel has produced as much intense passion as any debate seen in many years in the United States.
I can't think of a debate or an event that has caused more intense passion, more vitriol, more interest, that has dominated our political discourse like this war in Israel.
I can't tell you how many people have said, we've gotten emails like this and tweets and all sorts of comments.
You know, I really have supported your work over the past four to five years when it comes to American civil liberties, free speech, critiques of the CIA and the FBI, the American media.
But because you don't support the Israeli war, I just can't follow you any longer.
I can't subscribe to your work any longer.
I can't support.
It's an amazing thing to say.
Think about that.
I agree with all of the views that you've been expressing, all the work you've been doing when it comes to the United States and to American political debates, but because you don't support this foreign country in which I have a huge amount of passion, it doesn't mean I disagree with you.
It means I just can't listen to you anymore.
I can't follow you.
I can't support your work.
I mean, that takes immense passion for a foreign country to wipe out everything else and say, this is the litmus test for me.
If someone doesn't support Israel, I cannot even listen to that person.
That is evidence of real commitment to this country.
And I think it's worth asking why.
Why do so many Americans, why is it for so many Americans when this issue arises, all bets are off?
And the passions get enlivened over Israel, a foreign country like no other.
And it's a very uncomfortable question for a lot of people to ask and to try and answer because it requires you to say things that have been placed off limits and made taboo.
But it's an important question and it's a question that I think requires discussion because it's obviously true.
There are people who have not talked about anything else since October 7th.
And I'm one of them because so many people are focused only on it.
It's very difficult not to.
And this is an American war by virtue of everything we just talked about.
So let me just go over a few reasons.
There isn't just one or two.
There are several.
Why Israel has become so significant, so at the forefront of the interest of so many American people who live thousands of miles away from Israel, who live on the other side of the world in this foreign country.
And yet, obviously regarded with the greatest intensity, the most amount of passion you could see for any other political debate.
So first of all is the big elephant in the room, which is that the United States has a lot of American Jews in it.
It's the country that has the most amount of American Jews outside of Israel of anywhere in the world, millions.
And as an American Jew myself, and somebody who had a very kind of Standard upbringing.
Jewish upbringing in the United States.
Everyone in my family is Jewish.
My parents are Jewish.
The three grandparents that I knew were Jewish.
My fourth grandparent was too.
He just died before I was born.
So all four of my grandparents were Jewish.
My grandmother was actually a Refugee from Germany.
She was a German Jew.
She and her younger sister fled anti-Semitism under Hitler in Germany in the late 1930s and came to the United States as refugees.
And the rest of her family who remained were all killed in the Holocaust.
My grandmother had a thick German accent until the day she died.
I was very close to her.
And so I was inculcated with all the same things that American Jews, most almost all American Jews that I know, and I think American Jews in general, are inculcated with from birth.
Which is the idea that Israel is so important, that it's your duty to love Israel.
It's your duty to be devoted to Israel.
It's your duty to be committed to Israel.
And then as you get older, everything you do, going to synagogue, getting bar mitzvahed, Israel pays for American Jews to go to Israel for free.
And when you get there, they give you this big propaganda campaign, very well planned, about why Israel is so important to you.
They drum it into your head.
And everyone you're surrounded by, who you love, constantly tells you that Israel is so important.
Every one of my friends who's Jewish, which is most of them my lifelong friends, starting on October 7th, even ones who have been politically indifferent when it comes to Israel, or even kind of critical of Israel, got very radicalized very quickly, overnight, and said, no, we need to support Israel as a result of this Hamas attack.
And obviously there are a lot of American Jews and American Jews are one of the highest earning groups in the United States.
There are a lot of powerful American Jews.
You've seen a lot of billionaires who are big supporters and donors to American colleges withdraw their funding and say we're not donating any more to you because you're insufficiently supportive of Israel because you allow too much pro-Palestinian activity on your campus.
Obviously there are a lot of American Jews in high positions of politics.
American Jews are a very secure and powerful group in the United States.
And that's part of it.
American Jews are conditioned since childhood to love Israel.
I asked Batya Ungar-Sargon when she was on my show, because I know how she grew up.
I grew up like her.
Everyone I know who's Jewish grew up this way.
I said, I know you were taught since birth.
to feel so passionate for israel do you ever wonder is the reason i think this about israel that i'm so supportive of israel as an adult is that because you've been told to indoctrinated and inculcated with these ideas since childhood and she said it's an interesting question but she's very supportive of jews of israel
and i think that's one reason another reason is that there is a huge evangelical population in the united states who this is a very recent phenomenon have come to believe that it's vital to their religious beliefs for israel to be united and strong not just in what's considered israel proper under international law which are the post-1967 borders but all of israel they're
They consider the West Bank, Gaza, even Jordan and other countries to be part of Israel.
And a lot of religious Israelis believe that as well now, too.
So, in addition to American Jews, you have a lot of Evangelicals whose pastors teach them that their duty is to support Israel, that Israel is a blessed nation biblically.
And they don't really love Jews, but they do believe that Israel needs to be fully supported.
We've shown you some interviews that Lee Fong and others have conducted with Evangelical members of Congress who explicitly say, I believe Israel and the United States are the two blessed countries and that's why we need to stand with Israel for religious reasons.
And they're a big population, obviously a bigger population than American Jews.
That's why so many red states and Texas and Louisiana and Alabama, all throughout the South, have enacted laws saying if you want to work for the state, you have to sign a pledge vowing that you won't boycott Israel.
You're free to boycott any other country in the world.
You're free to boycott other American states.
You just can't boycott Israel.
This is not American Jews doing that.
These are mostly evangelical conservatives doing that.
And then on top of that, you have the fact that Israel is a close partner for the U.S.
security state, and long has been.
They fight wars together, they share intelligence.
The U.S.
has tried to dominate the Middle East because of oil for a long time, and Israel has been a partner in that.
So the CIA, the Pentagon, all of these people embedded in the U.S.
security state see Israel as a vital ally.
They see Ukraine that way too, but they definitely see Israel that way also.
And then, finally, you have this kind of conservative idea that emerged after 9-11 that the West is currently involved in a war of civilizations.
So you have the civilized, white Christian, Judeo-Christian West on the one hand, and then you have the Muslim hordes on the other.
And Judeo-Christian Westerners are advanced, they have a high culture, Now there are people who don't count Jews among this, but there's been a narrative evolution that says, no, the West isn't Christian, the West is Judeo-Christian.
Jews are part of this elevated culture, and they're fighting this primitive force of Muslims.
Who don't believe in pluralism and religious liberty.
This is a big book by Samuel Harrington called The War of Civilizations that a lot of American conservatives embraced in the wake of 9-11, which is why they fought so many wars and wanted to fight so many wars.
Because they see it as a civilization war.
And you have a lot of conservatives now supporting censorship in France and Germany and the UK.
Not really even because they support censorship, but because they see it as a way of controlling the Muslim hordes who have invaded Europe.
That is absolutely part of why the American right has become so intensely supportive of Israel.
Even though at the same time they're saying, "We believe in America first," and "Non-interventionism," and "Not fighting wars." Since October 7th, all bets are off.
They're very excited and animated by what they see as this civilization war.
So you have four different groups.
American Jews, evangelicals, national security hawks, and warriors on civilization.
And obviously there's a lot of overlap in those groups, but I think that's a major reason why Israel just occupies such an intense interest on the part of so many Americans, even though it's a tiny foreign country on the other side of the world.
And as a result of how much investment there is on the part of the United States in Israel, you also have a lot of people who intensely focus on this conflict in terms of supporting Palestinians.
And one of the things that has been done over many decades to keep this consensus in place, this bipartisan consensus of supporting Israel with money and military weapons and bombs and everything else diplomatic cover, is to accuse anybody questioning this consensus of being racist, of being anti-semitic.
As though you can't look at what's going on in Gaza.
The blockading of food and water.
The stories of children getting infections and having limbs amputated because of infections from dirty water having to be performed without anesthesia because hospitals can't get it.
Of surgeons trying to have surgery on children who are clinging to life while bombs are going off around them while the electricity is failing because the Israelis blockaded food, water, medication in.
fuel from the beginning, that there's no way you can look at these things, this meant suffering among innocent Palestinians, among babies, among children, and oppose it unless you hate Jews, unless you're anti-Semitic, unless you're racist.
And the irony of that tactic is that this is what conservatives say the left does.
This is what conservatives complain about leftists, about liberal leftists.
Oh, the minute you disagree with them, they call you racist.
They call you bigoted.
They call you transphobic.
They just call you names.
They say you're a racist to try and destroy your reputation and stifle debate.
What is this tactic?
Saying that anyone who questions US support for Israel, anyone who questions this horrific bloodshed in Gaza, Must hate Jews.
It's such a grotesque, dishonest tactic, just like when the American left runs around accusing everybody who sees things differently with them as them of being a racist or a white nationalist, something we've objected to many times here.
It's just that they become mirror images of each other.
From support for censorship, to support for cancel culture, to support for victimhood narratives that we've covered many times over the last several weeks, but also this tactic of branding all of their opponents racist and anti-Semites.
And in fact, it's so extreme that here's an Intercept article from November 11, 2023, just a few days ago.
What usually happens is the two organizations in the United States that lead the way in accusing everybody who questions U.S.
policy toward Israel of being an anti-Semite are AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League.
And the ADL was such an enemy of the American right that just a few weeks ago they were tweeting a hashtag ban the ADL and they got accused of being anti-Semitic for doing so and now they love the ADL.
Because the ADL is going around accusing everybody of being anti-Semitic who doesn't support Israel.
And who feels moral qualms about the word that the United States is helping the Israelis prosecute against a helpless trap population in Gaza.
In fact, it's such an extreme tactic that the ADL is now even calling American Jews and Western Jews who defend Palestinians, and there are many of them who are doing so, a being an anti-Semitic hate group.
Jews who are gathering to say we don't support this war in Gaza that Israel is prosecuting are being accused by the ADL of being anti-Semitic hate groups.
That's how automatic and reflexive this smear is.
That comes not from the American left, who does like to accuse their opponents often of being racist, but from Israel supporters on both the right and the establishment wing of the Democratic Party.
Here from the Intercept, Anti-Defamation League maps Jewish peace rallies with anti-Semitic attacks.
Quote, American Jews have mobilized several thousand Jews across the U.S.
to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The ADL calls these Jewish organizations, quote, hate groups.
The Anti-Defamation League has classified the event and dozens of other protests led by Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, and if not now, as quote, anti-Israel, according to analysis by The Intercept, and added them to their database, documenting rising anti-Semitism across the US.
Quote, we're seeing a genuine rise in anti-Semitic attacks and white nationalists, white supremacists, anti-Semitic hate and violence.
Eva Borgwart, the national spokeswoman, a person for If Not Now, told me, quote, when white nationalism is on the rise, to cheapen the accusation of anti-Semitism by applying it to Palestinian rights advocates, including Jews, is incredibly irresponsible and dangerous.
You see, she is a leftist, and she's saying, no, the real anti-Semitism is on the American right.
Stop calling us anti-Semites.
But the pro-Israel advocates will call everyone who questions the war in Israel anti-Semites.
So the United States discourse is basically just a bunch of people running around trying to scream racist at one another.
Quote, since Hamas' brutal October 7th attack on southern Israel where Palestinian militants killed over 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, and took over 200 hostages, the EDL, a Jewish advocacy group that tracks anti-Semitism and extremism, has been keeping track of the alarming rise of anti-Semitic incidents.
In 2020, over 100 progressive organizations, including the Movement for Black Lives, Democratic Socialists of America, and Center for Constitutional Rights, signed an open letter asking the progressive community to not partner with the ADL because the group, quote, has a history and ongoing pattern of attacking social justice movements led by communities of color, queer people, immigrants, Muslims, Arab, and other marginalized groups, while aligning itself with police, right-wing leaders, and perpetrators of state violence.
Now the ADL is targeting a new group of people, progressive Jews.
So you see that left-wing rhetoric.
Oh, the ADL hates people of color, they hate this, they hate that.
But people on the right are now doing the same thing.
If you don't agree with us and Joe Biden and the Republican Party on our support for Israel in this war, you're an anti-Semite, you're a racist.
And it's not a cynical, satirical invocation of that tactic, it's an earnest one.
Everybody who does not agree with US support for Israel and this war will automatically be stand accused of being an anti-Semite of hating Jews.
At the very same time that people like Barry Weiss and Jewish groups are trying to promote the idea Just like right after George Floyd we heard that America is a systematically racist country, that black people are in danger, we're now hearing the exact opposite from the exact same thing but from the other side.
No, America is a systematically anti-semitic country.
American Jews are not safe because of how much anti-semitism has been proliferating and we need protection for American Jews.
And one of the things that I was so happy to hear Batya say when I had her on my show was this is a repulsive narrative to slander America by saying Jews are not safe in America, but that is the prevailing narrative.
And the irony of that is there are a lot of Jewish groups protesting the Israeli war.
There are a lot of Israeli Jews protesting the Israeli war.
Are all of them anti-Semites?
Are all of them pro-Hamas?
Do all of them hate Jews?
Are all of them racist?
Here from the group If Not Now on November 13th, breaking.
Dozens of Jews for ceasefire were just arrested for blocking the Israeli consulate in Chicago.
The crowd is singing in Hebrew from the book of Isaiah, a prayer to end wars from thousands of years ago.
We are crying out from the depths of our soul for a ceasefire.
Now, I just want to show you a physician In London, who works with Doctors Without Borders, who's reading a message from her fellow medical professionals in Gaza.
And I just want to ask you, is it possible to object to this war, and to feel uncomfortable with what's happening in Gaza, to feel this is excessive force, to feel that these are war crimes, without being anti-Semitic?
Is it possible that something else, other than a hatred for Jews, might be causing people to listen to this?
And think that the war in Israel is unwise or immoral and the United States shouldn't be involved?
I'll listen to what she has to say.
We, as medical staff, want to leave, but we cannot.
We might not survive until the morning.
Shifa Arabic for healing.
We might finish.
We might not survive until the morning.
We don't want to be killed here.
Just only because we remain committed to our patients and our medical profession.
I am calling for help urgently.
Please do whatever you can through your government or the international These aren't political activists.
These are people.
These are nurses.
a safe corridor for the medical staff.
Please treat this as top urgent.
This is the director of the major trauma hospital in Gaza.
Cease fire now!
These aren't political activists.
These are people, these are nurses, these are doctors.
These are people who devoted their lives to going to dangerous places around the world to care for sick and injured people.
And they are hearing from doctors and nurses in Gaza.
And there are some of the best medical professionals in Gaza.
Gaza has a very high literacy rate.
It is an outstanding educational system, particularly a very good healthcare system.
And they're hearing from their colleagues about how many of them are being killed.
While trying to treat patients, how their hospitals are being bombed, how they have no medication and anesthesia, how they're performing surgery with no painkillers and no energy on children.
Do you think it takes anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews to want that to stop?
Are there anti-Semites who hate Israel because of their hatred for Jews?
Yes, of course there are.
There are many of those.
Just like there are many people who oppose immigration because they're white nationalists.
But that doesn't mean that everybody who opposes immigration or most people who oppose immigration are doing so because they're white nationalists.
Just like it doesn't mean that everybody who or most people who oppose this U.S.
and Israeli bombardment and destruction of Gaza that's causing intense, unprecedented amounts of human suffering Are motivated by a hatred for Jews.
It is a disgusting slander to say that.
Disgusting.
Just like it's disgusting for leftists to say everybody who opposes police reform or who cares about crime or who opposes more uncontrolled illegal immigration are all white nationalists.
These are mirror images.
These are the same tactics being used against people who disagree with both of these groups for the same motives.
To try and destroy reputations, to suggest there's no valid reason other than racism, to disagree with them, and to stifle debate.
Here is a CNN report that Christiane Amanpour promoted from a CNN journalist who is bravely in Gaza.
That is about the complete collapse of most hospitals in Gaza as a result of the Israeli shelling and bombing.
Listen to this and you tell me whether or not it requires anti-Semitism or a hatred of Jews to be sickened by this war effort.
These are the sounds of the final gasps from Gaza's collapsing healthcare system.
Medical staff in Gaza City working under near relentless Israeli bombardment for over a month.
But now, this chorus of frantic voices, seen here working under torchlight, tells its own gut-wrenching story.
The Al-Quds Hospital, the second largest in Gaza, has now collapsed.
It is one of many hospitals in Gaza that are completely out of service, according to officials.
Those remaining now on a cliff edge.
There was a direct injury in the head, internal bleeding, and we can't do surgeries.
No surgeries, no oxygen, no electricity.
We work manually.
We are using a manual resuscitator.
It is a clear injury.
It needs an urgent surgery.
A life-saving one.
He is less than a year old.
Remarkably, this baby survived.
But his father, who was in the very same building when an Israeli airstrike hit, did not.
At Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa, officials say three babies in the neonatal unit died after a generator powering incubators was damaged in an Israeli strike.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.
The IDF regularly says it is targeting Hamas.
But doctors here say the hospital is now completely surrounded.
The situation overall is difficult.
According to our colleague there, there is no water, no electricity.
They cannot communicate between each other.
There is a lot of targeting around the hospital.
The Israeli military said Sunday it has sent 300 liters of fuel to the entrance of the El Shifa hospital, said to only be enough to power the hospital's generators for 30 minutes.
But the IDF says Hamas blocked the hospital from receiving it.
Hospital officials, however, say staff were too afraid by surrounding Israeli tanks to collect the fuel.
Inside the hospital... Alright, so you can watch that all day if you want.
It is stomach-churning.
And no, I do not think this is going to make Israel safer.
Nor do I think it's going to make the United States safer.
To continue to just bomb relentlessly and kill huge numbers of Muslims and Arabs in front of the entire world.
I mean, you can try and destroy Hamas, whatever that means, kill all the people who are associated with Hamas.
But the lesson of 9-11 was that we were attacked because we had been bombing and interfering in their region of the world for so many years, not because they hated our freedom.
And the more we bombed, the more people tried to come to the United States and detonate terrorist attacks.
And when they got caught, they said, we're doing this in retaliation for all the violence you brought to our world, to the number of bomb weddings you bombed, to the number of our children that you've killed.
What do you think is going to happen to a population in Gaza That has been blockaded by a foreign military or the people in the West Bank and the Palestinians in the West Bank, whose lives are controlled by a foreign military through occupation.
And that government is now saying, we don't even think that territory belongs to the Palestinians anymore.
We believe it belongs to us.
We're going to expand and control it and take it from them.
What kind of people with any self-dignity would just sit by and accept that?
Or what do you think is going to happen when people in the Muslim world sit here and watch day after day these stomach turning images?
And whatever you want to call it, Hamas hiding and using human shields, I know all the cliches.
There's just no question that enormous number of civilians, a tiny, a huge population of people who are trapped, who have been trapped in Gaza for decades.
Israel bombed the only airport in Gaza City.
You cannot leave Gaza.
There are people who are 20 years old and 30 years old who have never left and can't leave.
Israel bombed the airport.
The ceilings are controlled by Israel.
Every part of the border is controlled by Israel except for one part that's closed by Egypt, specifically the dictator in Egypt that the United States helped impose.
When Egypt finally had a democratic election after the Arab Spring and the demonstrations in Tahrir Square and they elected the wrong candidate and the United States helped overthrow that candidate to impose a general, General Sissi, who is much more supportive of Israel and the United States than he is of the views of his own people.
So he, yes, he keeps the border closed as well in Gaza.
It is an open-air prison.
Literally, there's no other way to describe it that is an accurate way to describe it.
Now, at the very same time that you have huge numbers of people so obsessed with Israel and insisting that this is what they want, it's part of the war on civilization, we're so happy to see these people being bombed and killed, we want more of that, is that mindset.
We've seen people in pro-Israel protests say, I want this flattened, I want Gaza flattened.
There are people inside the Israeli government saying, I want that flattened.
Just like there are people in Hamas who say, I want to kill all Jews and destroy Israel.
There's the same mentality on the pro-Israel side.
It just happens to be that Israel is the one with all the weapons because the United States has given it all to them.
And at the very same time that you have this, you have this censorship crisis taking place all throughout the West.
Here is the British Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who just got fired by the British Prime Minister because of statements like this.
She was calling for pro-Palestinian protests to be banned in the UK, like they were in Germany and France.
Pro-Israel protests are permitted in Israel and France.
Pro-Palestinian protests are banned.
If you claim to believe in free speech, is that something you're comfortable with?
And here's what Suella Braverman said yesterday.
Quote, the sick, inflammatory, and in some cases clearly criminal chants, placards, and paraphernalia openly on display at the March Mark a New Low.
I want to highlight this phrase for you because she has become very popular among the American right, Suella Braverman.
She's talking about clearly criminal chants and criminal placards.
You tell me, what are criminal chants?
What are criminal placards?
Do you want the U.S.
government under Joe Biden, the CIA, the FBI, DHS, to be able to criminalize slogans and chants and placards?
Do you want this censorship coming to the United States?
If not, why do you want this in the West?
Even if you're a fanatical supporter of Israel, and let me just say, I know a lot of supporters of Israel.
They're not people who want to see people in Palestine suffering.
They don't want to see babies in Gaza suffering.
I don't believe that's true of most supporters of Israel.
So if you're a supporter of Israel, don't you want this debate to be free?
Are you willing to sacrifice basic free speech in the West in defense of Israel?
Here is a video Of huge numbers of Palestinians leaving their homes in northern Gaza to go to southern Gaza, which for a Palestinian is something that is incredibly traumatizing given that they were living in what is now Israel in 1948 when they were forced out in what they call the Nakba.
And a high Israeli official just said, this is Nakba 2023, we're going to displace them again.
And whether that's the Israeli policy or not, Here watch these people, these Palestinians, have to leave their home, a million of them at least, half the population internally displaced, as they march on foot, with no water, no clean drinking water, with food very scarce, with their grandparents, and people in wheelchairs, and people who are wounded, and with their children,
as they march to the south of Gaza where they hope they'll be safe, even though Israel continues to bomb that too.
*Mario plays*
*Mario plays* You think these people are ever going to go back to their homes, given that how many people inside Israel, inside the Israeli government, have as their view that Gaza doesn't belong to the Palestinians and they want to annex it and occupy it and take it over?
You think these people are ever going to be allowed back in their home?
Anytime soon?
This is a huge population transfer.
Now, Again, here's the Metropolitan Police in the UK, and they said the following, we're investigating the person in this photo in relation to a hate crime that took place today, November 11th.
That was the day that there was at least 750,000, maybe a million people in Britain who went and marched against the war in London.
Anyone who can help us identify them should call 101.
Information can be also provided to Crimestoppers.
And here she is, she's a woman at the protest holding a sign that essentially blames Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, and Suvala Braverman, the now-fired Home Secretary, for the war.
And the amazing thing is that there were huge numbers of people in response to this threat by the Metropolitan Police identifying all these protesters that they're seeking for having what Suvala Braverman called criminal placards or criminal chants.
Adding names of people, saying, here's a protester who also said something criminal.
Here's a protester who also had a criminal sign.
Go after them.
Turning over fellow citizens to the police for the crime of expressing views that they think should be criminal and that should lead to their arrest in the West.
Do you think that's a healthy climate?
Are you comfortable with that in the United States?
I know if you're on the American right, you're now happy because your views, if you're pro-Israel, are in vogue with the D.C.
Bipartisan class, with the media class, with the neoliberals and the EU.
But if you're gonna cheer all this, you're just gonna strengthen the system that is going to be used against you yet again.
And yet so many are cheering it because for once it's in favor of the views that they support.
Here is An Israeli citizen, Gil Dickman, whose relatives were both murdered by Hamas on October 7th, and one of them was kidnapped.
So he's an Israeli Jew, for those of you who believe those are the people worth listening to, and he went to the Knesset today.
And he was scornful about one of the members of the Knesset in particular who had called for Gaza to be totally wiped out.
That is genocide.
People inside the Knesset, inside the Israeli government, calling for the ethnic cleansing and the complete destruction of Gaza, for everyone in Gaza to be killed.
And obviously if you're somebody who has a relative who's a hostage in Gaza, that's not what you want to hear.
And here's what he told the Knesset.
- - So for those listening by podcast, You said, looking at one of the Knesset members, that the best response to this video is to erase Gaza.
My cousin is there.
My cousin's wife is there.
There are baby Jews and Arabs, by the way.
They are there.
What is this supposed to do for our mental strength?
To hear you talk like that in such slogans, like we're not here and that's what you have to say.
To erase, to annihilate, to flatten.
Who are you flattening?
Human beings that you've abandoned is who you're flattening.
Human beings who are under a murderous regime is who you're flattening.
If there is still a trace of humanity left in you, please, please care for our resilience.
Take care of the resilience of our relatives who are there.
We don't know if they're alive or dead.
So there's an Israeli Jew expressing disgust at members of the Israeli government saying, erase Gaza, flatten it, destroy it.
We've seen people on the pro-Israeli side from the beginning saying things like that.
There's also women, the health professionals, everything they want in their life.
It's taking care of people.
So there's an Israeli Jew expressing disgust at members of the Israeli government saying, erase Gaza, flatten it, destroy it.
We've seen people on the pro-Israeli side from the beginning saying things like that.
There are people in the Netanyahu government who don't want to just destroy Hamas.
They want to annex the West Bank, take over Gaza, and they're abusing and killing huge numbers of Palestinians to do so with American money and American weapons while Joe Biden stands by and says, we will give them everything they want.
There are people on the pro-Palestinian side who have said repulsive and anti-Semitic things from the beginning.
We're constantly shown them as justification for censorship, for banning protests, for banning student groups.
There are just as many on the pro-Israel side.
They're in government.
That's the difference.
Here is the founder of a company that had to apologize, Kenneth.
And this is what he said.
Kenneth Ballinger.
And they said, any employee's personal or political opinion does not reflect the value of Oyster Ventures or myself.
Oyster Ventures does not tolerate any behavior that disrespects individuals or groups of people.
The problem was the person who said this that they had to apologize for is not just a random employee, says Matt Binder, but the founder of that company, the co-founder.
And this is what he said, Kenneth Ballinger.
After the war, Israel should handle Gaza like China handles Xinjiang.
Full surveillance state, re-education camps, sterilizations.
It's warranted and the only way to pacify the jihadi population.
And then someone said in response, Brandon Goldman, sterilizations, come on, you can do better than that.
He responded, they reproduce like rabbits.
Do you have to hate Jews and be an anti-Semite to find this repulsive?
and terrorism.
Why should we allow that?
The world would be a much better place if they didn't reproduce.
Do you have to hate Jews and be an anti-Semite to find this repulsive?
To not want these people to be the arbiters of what's moral?
Here, for those of you who like to single out individual people on one side or the other who say repulsive things, is a lawyer in New York City who told some pro-Palestinian protesters that they should be raped and killed.
Here's what he said in New York City.
Alright, go to Gaza.
We're going to kill all of you.
- We'll bump the hell out of you.
- Okay.
- Yeah, we'll kill all of you.
- Yeah?
- All of you terrorists.
- Kill the children.
- We'll kill all of you terrorists.
- I'm so happy that you're killing children.
- All of you.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Go to Gaza so they can rape you and kill you.
- Say your name, say your name. - you, that's my name.
- Fuck.
- All right, go to Gaza.
We're gonna kill all of you.
Go to Gaza so we can rape you.
I don't think he's representative of Israel supporters.
He's not representative of the Israel supporters I know.
Nor do I think that when you pull out a random pro-Palestinian, pro-Sachar saying something anti-Semitic or repellent, they're representative of the people who are protesting this war.
But it's so easy to pull people out like that and try and say that they are.
Every anti-war protest, going back to the 2003 anti-war protest against the war in Iraq, That's what the media would do.
They would pull out one person with a communist sign and say, oh, this is a communist march.
You had a million people in major Western cities all over the world protesting the Iraq War, and those were the tactics that were used.
Here's Herrick, say, in an Israeli newspaper.
The title is, Israel's Government's Tender Souls Who Call for an Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza.
These aren't random Pro-Israel protesters off the street, these are members of the Netanyahu government.
Quote, we are told that tranquilizers were handed out before the screening.
The people who underwent the atrocities were forced to do so without the benefit of conipine.
Galit Distel Atbarian, tender soul that she is, took a pill and it didn't help.
She couldn't take the terrible sight, she said, and ran out shrieking and sobbing, shaking all over, in one of the worst anxiety attacks she has ever known.
She tweeted, quote, This is a member of the Israeli Parliament.
Erase Gaza from the face of the earth.
Let the Gazan monsters rush to the southern border and flee into Egypt or die, and then let them die badly.
Gaza should be wiped off the map and fire and brimstone on the heads of the Nazis in Judea and Samaria.
Which is what Israeli extremists call the West Bank.
Jewish wrath to shake the earth around the world.
We need a cruel, vengeful IDF here.
Anything less is immoral.
Alongside cabinet members who vied with her to head the most useless ministries, she caused terrible damage.
Her tweet garnered 3 million views, retweets, and appalled comments by leading journalists from around the world.
Her post, the Minister of Heritage of Absolutely Nothing, began with the pastoral line, quote, the Northern Strip more beautiful than ever, bombing and flattening everything.
In The New Yorker, Isaac Chatier just interviewed one of the main leaders of the Israeli settlement movement that has the full support of the Israeli government.
For years, the United States has been telling Israel, stop allowing settlement expansion in the West Bank because doing so will make peace that we want between Israel and Palestine impossible and that harms our interests.
The Israelis ignored it.
And Benjamin Netanyahu's official position is the West Bank belongs to the to greater Israel and we're gonna aggressively expand as much as possible and put as many Jews there as we can.
And he interviewed this West Bank settler leader and it says a leader of the settlement movement on expanding into Gaza and her vision for the Jewish state.
For decades, Danielle Weiss has been one of the leaders of Israel's settlement movement.
Weiss became involved in settlement politics in the wake of the 1967 war.
In the early 70s, her family moved to the settlements in the West Bank, and she later served for a decade as mayor of Qadumim, a community in the north.
She has been arrested numerous times, including for assaulting a police officer and interfering with an investigation into the destruction of Palestinian property.
More recently, she has been affiliated with the Nakala Settlement Organization, which helps younger settlers establish legal outposts in the West Bank.
An initiative that's controversial even among the settler community.
And this is what he asked her, quote, what are the borders of the Jewish nation?
And she said the borders of the homeland of the Jews are the Euphrates in the east and the Nile in the southwest.
A New Yorker noted, quote, this would include the territory of multiple Middle Eastern countries as well as the territory that Israel controls today.
Question, I was trying to understand where Palestinians who live in the West Bank go.
Answer, why should they go?
Why should they go?
Question, they should stay where they are, you're saying?
Answer, they should accept the fact that in the land of Israel there is only one sovereign.
This is the issue, so let's not confuse things.
We the Jews are the sovereigns in the state of Israel and in the land of Israel.
They have to accept it.
Again, this is about the West Bank.
Which the entire world regards as illegally occupied by Israel.
Quote, question, if they accept it, namely the Palestinians, should they receive full voting rights and things like that?
Answer, in the state of Israel, they have the right to vote for the Knesset because Ben-Gurion gave them this right.
He trusted them.
And even if he didn't trust them, he didn't have much of a choice.
Three years after the Holocaust, he wanted to have a state for the Jews, and he knew the world would be making problems with the issue of voting.
But in the 75 years since independence, the Arabs in the state of Israel And the Arab members of the Knesset showed in every possible way that their idea is to establish a Palestinian state.
They are not working for the interests of the State of Israel.
So I think the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, that's the West Bank, have no right to ask for rights, voting rights, or take part in elections for the Knesset.
They lost the right to vote for the Knesset.
They will never get this right.
In Israel, there's a lot of support for settlements, and this is why there have been right-wing governments for so many years.
The world, especially the United States, think there's an option for a Palestinian state.
And if we continue to build communities, then we will block the option for a Palestinian state.
We want to close the option for a Palestinian state.
And the world wants to leave the option open.
It's a very simple thing to understand.
These are not random, unrepresentative members of the Israeli government.
Here's Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
In December of 2022, he tweeted the following.
These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me.
The Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right to all areas of the Land of Israel, by which he does not mean what the world recognizes as Israel.
He means, quote, the government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel, in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea, and Samaria.
So those settlers have the full support of the Israeli government.
They are trying to cleanse the West Bank and Gaza of all Palestinians.
That is a major goal of this war.
It's certainly an effect of this war.
And I refuse to accept the idea that to oppose this war, to find this war reprehensible, to believe that it will not cause any good, that it will kill huge numbers of innocent lives, requires you to hate Jews or be anti-Semitic and racist.
That is a repulsive tactic.
But it has become the predominant tactic, along with censorship and cancel culture and victimhood narratives.
That so many conservatives that claimed for years to despise that are now vocally adopting because Israel is the litmus test.
It's the overarching issue for so many people.
And they're willing to sacrifice every one of their claim principles.
They're willing to declare as their enemy any person who doesn't share their views on this foreign country.
Because it's the overarching issue for them.
They're willing to sacrifice free speech in the West, in the United States.
So many people claim to have learned a lesson that they were wrong to sacrifice our civil liberties in the name of 9-11, which was actually an attack on the United States.
And so many of these people, 20 years later, want to sacrifice civil liberties and free speech in America, not in the name of an attack on the United States, but in an attack on this foreign country.
Which so clearly so many of them regard as at least as important as if not more important than their own country.
And some of them will say that if you ask them.
And I went through the reasons why this is true.
And you just don't have to look very hard to see.
The passions this foreign country generates in the United States is the reason there's such a stranglehold on U.S.
policy.
That Joe Biden even said we will not ever stop supporting Israel, even if our own self-interest requires it.
We'll sacrifice our own self-interest in order to continue to support Israel.
When would one country ever say that about a foreign country?
Ever.
Never.
And nor should they.
And yet, when it comes to Israel, the bipartisan class in Washington does.
And if you can look at what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank and say that the only way anybody could object to that is if they're filled with racism and hatred for Jews and bigotry and anti-Semitism, then I would submit that your worldview is completely distorted by your attachment to this foreign country.
You don't have to agree with people who object to that, but the idea that they should be censored, that they should lose their jobs, that they should be branded as racist, is the behavior of unhinged extremists.
And there's something about this foreign country that for a lot of people in the United States causes that to happen.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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We've been purposely trying to find and address the best critiques of our coverage of the war in Israel and Gaza.
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It's really crucial to our show.
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We hope to see you back tomorrow night and every night at 7 p.m.
