Israel Massacres Rafah Refugees as Speech Crackdowns Escalate in the US; GOP Obsession with Israel; Alan Dershowitz Debate on Iran Recap
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Massacre in Rafah (9:41)
Speech Crackdown in U.S. to Protect Israel (50:00)
Iran Debate Recap (1:06:05)
Outro (1:30:24)
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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.
As many of you probably noticed, we were not here for any night last week, and the reason is that we were traveling in the United States for a variety of events.
Some of which have already been released, others of which have not.
One of which was the debate we did in New York City with Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz on the question of whether the U.S.
should bomb Iran.
I think it goes without saying that he was in favor of that proposal, while I was quite opposed.
And it turned into a broader debate on neoconservative ideology.
We're going to talk about some of what Happened.
It was a great debate in the sense that it was, according to the Soho Forum, the largest crowd for any debate they ever hosted.
And it was quite intense and spirited and contentious, both during and after.
And we'll tell you about all that.
I did other events as well that haven't been released, including being a guest on a very large podcast, which I can't yet say.
It was not Joe Rogan.
But it was another one with a large reach, two and a half hours of conversation in person about some very, I think, deep and profound issues.
That kind of format lets you really delve deeply into a way that almost no other does.
So look for that over the next few days as well.
We're going to start trying when we're traveling to be able to do the show remotely or have a suitable guest host to make sure that we're not off for the entire week like we were, although it just didn't work out last week.
But we are actively planning on all of that.
We are happy to be back and thank you for your indulgence.
Now for tonight, in March, President Joe Biden was asked about his opposition to a proposed Israeli invasion of the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, where all Palestinians had been ordered by Israel to go and seek refuge.
There was at least 1 million people, 1 million displaced Palestinians, probably more, in that refugee camp that Israel was then saying it intended to bomb and invade.
Now, at the time when asked in March, Biden said that the U.S.
Which is funding, arming, and diplomatically protecting Israel's war, was not only opposed to an Israeli attack on Rafah, at least without a concrete plan for evacuating civilians, which the Israelis hadn't provide, but also he said it was what he called a quote, red line.
Which is president speak for what the White House regards as not just objectionable, but so intolerable that it would require punishment and retaliation to any country that does it.
That's a very important phrase for projecting to the world, for communicating to the world what the White House will not tolerate without punishment.
Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately mocked and dismissed Biden's warning, vowing that Israel would bomb and invade Rafah whenever they felt like it, regardless of what Israel's benefactors in Washington think.
We may be financing Israel's war, we may be arming it, we may be diplomatically supporting it, but that said Netanyahu doesn't mean we have any say in how this war is conducted.
And true to his word, Netanyahu ordered Israeli military forces to begin shelling and entering Ratha two weeks ago.
Even as Gazans died by the dozens, as a result, the Biden White House continued to defend Israel, claiming that Israel had not crossed Biden's proclaimed, quote, red line, because this was only a minimal, limited invasion, not a full-scale invasion, and it was very targeted and selective, even though that was not in Biden's original warning.
Well, that excuse is no longer available, even given the willingness of Biden officials to lie to protect Israel and protect themselves.
Because last night, Israel did exactly what everyone knew would happen if they invaded Rafah.
Namely, they shelled and bombed parts of the refugee camp, the very parts where they told Gazans to seek safe harbor, and that would be a safe zone.
That bombing caused a mass fire that extinguished the lives of dozens of Palestinian women and children who were burned to death while incinerating hundreds more with severe injuries.
That there is virtually no working health care system in Gaza since Israel bombed all of their hospitals and killed so many of their physicians and health care workers.
And that so many Palestinians face mass famine and malnutrition, this atrocity was just that much more horrific.
They are bombing and incinerating and killing an already decimated population.
Now, as Israel always does in such situations, it first denied that this happened, claiming it only killed Hamas terrorists.
Then, when the proof immediately emerged of how many civilians had been massacred, something we found out about only because we have a free internet, Israel admitted all of this but then justified it finally in the wake of growing international outrage and disgust Netanyahu apologized earlier today calling the massacre a quote tragic mistake
The exact cycle that occurred when Israel slaughtered seven aid workers, including an American, from the World Central Kitchen, shooting at their Walmart cars, which had coordinated their route with the Israeli military, and in so many other instances of atrocities over the past seven months.
Now, the undeniable reality is that this war and these crimes are as much of an American policy as it is an Israeli one.
The money, the bombs, the diplomatic protection that Israel is using to kill so many innocent human beings comes overwhelmingly from the U.S.
government with both political parties overwhelmingly in support.
And that is why it is insufficient and unconvincing, and I think ethically intolerable, to simply proclaim indifference with this conflict.
To say, oh, it's not about us, it's on the other side of the world.
I know that's tempting, But it is the American government, as much as the Israeli government, that's responsible for all of this, and the world knows that, and it thus requires our close attention and scrutiny, which is what we intend to give tonight.
Now, exactly at the same time that the horrors of the enduring US-sponsored Israeli war are escalating again, crackdowns on American speech rights, Advocated by pro-Israel supporters also continue to escalate.
Each week brings new and worse examples of this as we continue to report on, and we will report tonight, on the latest targeting of the free speech rights of American citizens and protection of this foreign country.
And then finally, as we noted, one of the things we did while traveling in the US last week was a debate with Alan Dershowitz that was nominally about whether the US should bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, a limited resolution Dershowitz insisted on, But very quickly in the debate, he admitted that what he really wants, his real goal, is for the U.S.
to force regime change in Iran, which just coincidentally happens to be the country Israel considers to be its gravest enemy.
And then once there's regime change, he wants the U.S.
to impose a new government there, one that is pro-Israel and secondarily pro-US.
Now, the debate took place before a sold-out theater, and it was definitely an intense energy, which I think really helped to explore these issues.
More than the specific question of bombing Iran, the debate really offered the opportunity to analyze and deconstruct the classic neoconservative mindset of war and militarism that Dershowitz defense on behalf of Israel, but more importantly, which continues to dominate American wars and foreign policy in Washington.
So we'll take a look at some of the most illuminating parts of that debate.
Before we get to all that.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting now.
Defenders of the Israeli war in Gaza, and they are legion in both parties in the United States, love to say things whenever some atrocity occurs that makes love to say things whenever some atrocity occurs that makes them sound like some war-weary general or some combat soldier who is seeing war in its utmost form.
They say things like, yeah, war is hell, civilians die, things happen.
Now, you'll notice they didn't say that on October 7th.
When Hamas reacted to decades of what it perceives as repression and violence aimed at its country and its people, people morally objected, including us, by saying that there are actual limits and rules and morality and ethics and legal limitations of the conduct of war, and if those are violated, as happened on October 7th, then it requires condemnation.
But the people who said that, who support Israel, oh, Hamas did all these terrible impermissible things, these atrocities, Now turn around when Israel incinerates dozens of children, and they say, yeah, there's no limits in war.
There are no rules in war.
War is hell.
And everyone knows that now.
What has distinguished the war, the Israeli war in Gaza, from most of the wars that we've seen, if not all in the 21st century, and even going back decades in the 20th century to World War II, Is a whole variety of unique circumstances, beginning with the fact that Gaza does not have open battlefields where two armies can fight.
Gaza is one of the most densely packed and populated places on Earth.
It has an overwhelmingly civilian population of 2.3 million people, half of whom are women and children.
And obviously not all men are militants.
Many of them are old or too young to be.
Many of them in fighting age are not militants of Hamas.
And so you're talking about a huge portion of the population that has nothing to do with terrorism or war or warfare or military fighting of any kind.
And yet Israel, by all accounts, has killed tens of thousands of them, including women and children of all kinds.
And it has destroyed 70% of residential buildings, obliterated homes, destroyed apartment buildings.
It has destroyed the civilian infrastructure and civilian life in Gaza so that even once this war ends, it will be almost impossible for decades to return to any semblance of a normal life.
They have destroyed the water system, the sewer system.
Israel has used hunger and starvation and famine as a weapon of war as it vowed to do when its defense minister proclaimed in the first week that we will not allow any food or water into Gaza and they made good on that which is why that population even the ones who continue to survive are facing mass famine.
We last Friday showed you the testimonial of a British surgeon who just got back from Gaza and he described how he saw many patients on the operating table who had treatable and survivable injuries but who ended up dying because their bodies could not sustain even basic surgeries or fight off even the most common infections because their bodies were so malnourished they were essentially falling apart on the operating table.
This has been going on for seven months now, and we've had scenes before that were so horrific that even Israel, which never apologizes, was forced to do so, such as when two months ago it killed seven aid workers from the World Kitchen group that feeds war victims around the world, even though those three cars they were riding in were marked very prominently as aid workers, even though they had coordinated with the Israeli military about the route that they would take.
And because it's led by a celebrity chef, because they were all Westerners, because one of them was an American citizen, Israel was forced to apologize for that attack.
But that's no different than what's been happening in Gaza constantly, is a complete indiscriminate disregard of the value of Palestinian lives.
And I wish that Israel supporters, and I don't mean all Israel supporters, but supporters of this war, people who defend everything Israel does, There are a lot of Israel supporters for whom this is not true, but many for whom it is would just admit that they do not place any value on the lives of Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims.
It's so obviously true, I wish people would acknowledge it.
Some do.
But the vast majority of people are unwilling to acknowledge that, even though it is the necessary conclusion of what it is that they're supporting, including what happened yesterday in Gaza.
According to Reuters from a report earlier today, "Israeli attack on Rafatant camp kills 45 people prompts international outcry." "Palestinian families rushed to hospitals to prepare their dead for burial after a strike late on Sunday night set tents and rickety metal shelters ablaze." Remember, this is a refugee camp.
80% or 90% of the Gazan population are internally displaced.
They have nowhere to live.
Their cities have been destroyed.
There's nowhere to go in Gaza that's safe other than where they told them to go, which is Rafah.
And that's where Israel attacked.
Quote, Israel's military, which is trying to eliminate Hamas and Gaza, at least so says the Israeli government, said it was investigating reports that a strike it carried out against commanders of the Islamic militant group in Rafah had caused the fire.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strike had not been intended to cause civilian casualties.
Survivors said families were preparing to sleep when the strike hit the Te'al Sultan neighborhood, where thousands were sheltering after Israeli forces began a ground offensive in the east of Rafah over two weeks ago.
Quote, we are praying and we are getting our children's sleep beds ready to sleep.
There was nothing unusual.
Then we heard a very loud noise and fire erupted around us, said Umar Ahmed al-Tatar, a Palestinian mother and a red headscarf.
Quote, all the children started screaming.
The sound was terrifying.
We felt like the metal was about to collapse on us and shop shrapnel fell into the rooms.
Video footage obtained by Reuters showed a fire raging in the darkness and people screaming in panic.
Now, beyond the horror that I think any healthy person feels when hearing about this and seeing it, Remember, the entire world knows that this is a US-sponsored war.
Everything that is happening in Gaza, the video people are seeing of Palestinian children being incinerated and decapitated, You may remember that on October 7th, we heard constantly that 40 babies were murdered, that at least half of them were decapitated.
It turned out none of that was true.
That was all false, a lie.
Even the Israeli newspaper Haaretz investigated back in November and could document only one baby who had died on October 7th.
None was decapitated.
None were baked in ovens.
Last night, there were documented cases of babies actually being decapitated by The Israeli attack, things we've seen many times.
Here is a video from that camp.
We should note who deserves the credit for this video, who took it or who first published it.
We'll try and get that.
But here is part of the scene, and there's all kinds of videos circulating in every major media outlet showing similar things.
There you see civilians pulling out very injured people or dead people from a raging fire that is consuming refugee tents while people are screaming.
You see mothers carrying out children.
You see dead bodies everywhere.
You see babies that appear to be dead or people covered in blood.
And remember there's no working hospital essentially anywhere in Gaza anymore.
I want to just note here that Palestinians are very educated people.
They have some of the best surgeons and physicians anywhere in that region or even the world.
Western medical organizations that go to work with Palestinians come back raving about the high level of care that Palestinian hospitals provide, the very sophisticated and advanced care There are colleges and universities all throughout Gaza and the West Bank, almost all of which have been destroyed by Israel in the last seven months in Gaza.
And so you're looking at people who have always had a future.
There are people who have been blockaded.
They can't leave Gaza.
Israel bombed their airport, threatened that they would bomb it again if they tried to rebuild it.
They cannot leave by sea because the Israelis will kill them if they try and leave by sea, and all of their borders, most of which are with Israel and then one with Egypt, the U.S.-supported dictatorship, remain closed.
So there are essentially people who, you can follow them on social media, 16-year-old Gazans, 17-, 18-, 20-year-olds, who talk about the cities they one day hope to visit, but they're trapped inside Gaza.
They haven't been able to leave for two decades because of the blockade Israel imposes on them long before October 7th.
So this is already a besieged population, a population that has been subject to all kinds of horrors for decades before October 7th.
But since October 7th, what has been going on there is unimaginable.
Now, the Israeli newspaper Harriets, that I mentioned earlier, reported today, quote, That the Rafah strike will intensify pressure on Israel to accept the ceasefire of the International Court of Justice.
Last week, the ICJ concluded that the Israeli attack on the refugee camp violated international law and ordered Israel to cease that attack.
Obviously, Israel doesn't care about international law, doesn't care about international institutions, nor does the United States.
And just ignored it.
But the Europeans, including the ones that have been highly supportive of Israel, that have been financing Israel's war with the United States, that have been providing Israel weapons are at least claiming they're so horrified that they're going to put pressure on Israel to adhere to the ceasefire.
If these kind of scenes continue, quote, while the International Court of Justice's order to limit Israeli action in Rafah last week was, quote, vague enough for countries to be able to turn a blind eye, European diplomats warned that deadly Israeli attack on Rafah overnight into Monday may change that picture.
Western diplomats warned Monday that European countries may strictly interpret The International Court of Justice's decision on the IDF's Operation Rafa following the deadly incident in which dozens of civilians died as a result of an Israeli attack on the city overnight into Monday.
The diplomats who spoke to Haaretz, who represented countries that supported Israel at the start of the war against Hamas.
So if you want to claim that Europeans are anti-Semitic and hate Israel, these are all countries that supported Israel at the start of the war against Hamas, assessed that the Rafa incident will lead to harsh condemnations of Israel and would also affect the way their countries treat the ICJ's order, which Israel assessed that the Rafa incident will lead to harsh condemnations of Israel and would also affect the
Now, as I indicated at the top of the show, President Biden in March gave an interview to MSNBC.
Obviously it's the most gentle, deferential, polite interview you can possibly imagine, but they did ask him whether he opposes Israeli attack on the refugee camp in Rafah as the Netanyahu government had been Threatening to do.
And when asked, Biden said, yes, the U.S.
government opposes it without at least a concrete plan for evacuating all the civilians, which Israel never provided.
And then the interviewer asked, do you just oppose it or is it a red line?
And Biden said, it's a red line.
Which presidents aren't supposed to say unless they're willing to back it up if that red line is crossed.
There was immense criticism.
Toward Barack Obama when he proclaimed it a quote, red line for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons as part of that civil war where the US was trying working with ISIS and Al Qaeda to remove the Assad government.
And they claim that the Syrians had used chemical weapons, the UN concluded that, and then Obama did nothing.
And the argument was, if you proclaim a red line presidentially, And then allow that to be crossed with no consequences.
You're destroying the credibility of U.S.
power.
But here, it's not so much about U.S.
power.
It's just the fact that Biden is such a weak individual.
He has no idea what he's saying half the time.
But he nonetheless did affirm that this was a red line.
And for the last several weeks, obviously, Israel did what it promised it would do, which was ignore the red line, knowing there was nothing Biden could or would do.
And the U.S.
tried to invent an excuse for why it was tolerable.
No, this red line wasn't crossed because it's a very limited attack on Rafa.
Now, with people being burned to death, children being incinerated, That the whole world is watching the videos of, they can no longer try and pretend that.
And so according to Axios' reporter, Barak Ravid, who's actually, as we told you, an Israeli reporter who served in the Israeli Defense Forces reserves up until 2023, up until last year, And it was spent the last seven months doing absolutely nothing but dumping White House messaging about the war onto the pages of Axios and then doing the same, dumping the Netanyahu government's messaging onto the pages of Axios.
And because subservient message carrying of government is what the corporate media most values, this reporter, Barack Ravid, was just handed the highest award at that gala that the media throws for itself at the White House.
And today he's carrying the Biden White House's message and he said, quote, the White House is assessing if Israel violated the quote red line with the Rafa strike.
President Biden threatened earlier this month to suspend the delivery of some U.S.-made offensive weapons if Israel entered population centers in Rafa, the city in southern Gaza viewed as Hamas's last stronghold.
U.S.
officials later explained that a humanitarian crisis as a result of the mass displacement of civilians from Rafa could constitute a violation of Biden's red line.
The IDF announced on Monday that it opened an operational investigation into the airstrike Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the civilian deaths, quote, a tragic mistake.
Now, as we pointed out, the first article that we read, which was from earlier today, was Netanyahu saying, we're investigating this.
We have no idea if any civilians were being killed.
I know that's being claimed.
We believe we only killed Hamas militants.
There was a letter to the editor of the Western Mail Letters written back in 2014, another year where Israel was aggressively bombing Gaza.
Nowhere near what they're doing now, but at the time it was one of their most fatal, enduring bombing campaigns of Gaza.
And the letter to the editor of the Welsh newspaper wrote the following, Sir, here is a quick guide to Israel's PR methods.
Number one, We haven't heard reports of death.
We will check into it.
Number two, people were killed, but by a faulty Palestinian rocket or bomb.
Number three, okay, we killed them, but they were terrorists.
Number four, okay, they were civilians, but they were being used as human shields.
Number five, okay, there were no fighters in the area, so it was our mistake, but we kill civilians by accident, so they do it on purpose.
Number six, okay, we've killed far more civilians than they do, but look at how terrible other countries are.
Number seven, why are you still talking about Israel?
Are you some kind of an anti-Semite?
And then the writer wrote, test this argument the next interview you hear or watch.
It was from Adam Johannes, who, among other things, is the Secretary of the Cardiff Stop the War Coalition.
That is such a perfect description of what the Israelis do every time something like this takes place and have been doing for a long time.
It's exactly what they did when they killed those aid workers.
And then finally Netanyahu had to apologize and the same thing he did here, but after a cycle of news saying, Oh, we don't believe it happened.
Oh, we believe it happened, but it was their fault.
Oh, we only killed terrorists.
Oh, okay.
We killed and on and on exactly what he described.
The White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, who everyone understands is crafting U.S.
foreign policy, was asked last week about Biden's proclamation of a red line juxtaposed with the Israelis' explicit disregarding of that red line and invasion into Gaza.
And here's what he said.
A senior administration official said yesterday that Israel has addressed many of the U.S.
concerns regarding its operations in Raqqa.
900,000-plus civilians have fled Raqqa in recent weeks.
Has Israel addressed all of the administration's concerns?
Does the U.S.
support what Israel is doing in Raqqa right now?
We've had detailed discussions on Rafa during my visit to Israel.
These have built on weeks now, as I've discussed with you from this podium, of discussions on a professional basis about Rafa and about how Israel can achieve the defeat of Hamas everywhere in Gaza, including in Rafa, while minimizing civilian harm.
I explained to the Prime Minister and other senior Israeli officials the President's clear position.
I reiterated that position.
I was briefed by Israeli officials and by Israeli professionals on refinements that Israel's made to its plans to achieve its military objectives while taking account of civilian harm.
Oh, don't worry.
Israel has implemented refinements that they shared with Jake Sullivan, assuring him, don't worry, We have very reliable and earnest plans in place as to how we're going to invade and bomb Rafa without killing a huge number of civilians.
And then Jake Sullivan crawls back to Washington and he assures the press, oh, don't worry, they're not going to deviate from our red line.
Our red line was about killing civilians, but they assured us in secret meetings.
And showed me plans for how they're going to do this without unnecessary loss of civilian life.
That's what he said five days ago.
Let's hear the rest.
What we have seen so far in terms of Israel's military operations in that area has been more targeted and limited.
It has not involved major military operations into the heart of dense urban areas.
We now have to see what unfolds from here.
We will watch that.
We will consider that.
And we will see whether what Israel has briefed us and what they have laid out continues or something else happens.
And one of you asked me the last time I was standing at this podium, how are you going to judge this?
And I said that there's no mathematical formula.
What we're going to be looking at is whether there is a lot of death and destruction from this operation, or if it is more precise and proportional.
And we will see that unfold.
And we will obviously remain closely engaged with the Israeli government as we go.
That's how we see the situation.
I just want you to note how pathetic they are, how weak and irrelevant they are, how empty they are.
They have been proclaiming for months they will not tolerate an Israeli invasion in Tarafa without guarantees that they will protect civilians.
And even though civilians have been dying over the last two weeks, they've been saying, oh, it's not very many civilians.
They're being very careful.
They're being very targeted.
We don't have an exact number of how many civilians have to die for us to proclaim that they violated our red line.
But if we start seeing major civilian deaths and massive attacks on civilians, then we'll assess the situation.
They know they can't make commitments because they know there's no way politically, in terms of their donors, in terms of their voting base, in terms of the media, That they can do anything against the Israeli government, even if they wanted.
They announced a very trivial suspension of a handful of weapons for a short period of time, which didn't impede the Israeli war effort at all.
The Israelis already had a huge stock of those exact weapons that the United States had sent them.
Just as a way of saying, you know, given that we're paying for the war, that the whole world associates us with this war, we would like you not to do horrific things to civilians that enrage the entire world, not only against you, but against us.
And the Israelis proceeded immediately to go and do exactly that with this attack on right in the heart of the refugee camp, in fact, in the sector that they identified as one of the safe places that they encourage people to go.
And everyone knows that what Jake Sullivan just said is completely meaningless.
There's going to be no consequences for the Israelis at all.
It makes the Biden administration and the United States government look like the joke that they are.
It's always been the case that the bizarre relationship is that we pay for Israel's military, we pay for their wars, we arm them, we do everything to sacrifice and jeopardize our own standing in the world to protect the Israeli government, and yet we don't direct anything in that part of the relationship.
The masters of that relationship are Israel.
And Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying for decades, including on tape, we don't care about the Americans.
We know how to speak directly to their public.
The public will always keep the public on our side, using that media, using our power and influence in that country.
And that's exactly where the dynamic is.
Now, one of the things that always happens in these wars, I don't just mean with Israel, I mean with wars in general, is that when the wars are proposed, when the wars are about to start, it's usually in a climate of emotional intensity.
So back in February of 2022, When the Russian invasion of Ukraine was depicted as a new Nazi invasion, that Putin was going to roll through all of Europe, that he was slaughtering and murdering civilians.
Even though the number of civilians killed in Ukraine is dwarfed by the number killed by Israel and Gaza.
Remember, Israel launched more bombs and ordnance in Gaza in the first two weeks than the United States had used in many entire years in occupying Afghanistan.
But emotions were so high, because the media manipulated those emotions, that everybody was afraid to stand up and say the United States should not get involved in this war.
That's when it's hardest to do.
That's when it's most difficult.
And I remember when I was doing it, at the start of the war, I said, I know that emotions are very high now, but in a few months they're going to wear off.
And none of the promises being made about this war are going to actually come to fruition.
This war is going to be a failure.
It's going to take the lives of a huge number of Ukrainians, destroy the country.
We'll have enriched our arms industry and corrupt Kiev sleazebags and operatives.
And other than that, it won't have achieved anything.
There's no way to stop Russia or beat Russia.
And it's just going to destroy Ukraine, which we will then pay for its rebuilding for JP Morgan and BlackRock to profit from.
And so many people, most people in Washington, were petrified of uttering a peep against Biden's financing of the war in Ukraine.
There were some people on the right who did, but very few in the mainstream wing or the establishment wing of the Democratic or Republican parties.
And then as that policy has failed, more and more people have stood up to try and distance themselves from it.
Try and find politicians in Washington who will admit that they supported and voted for the war in Iraq.
They have almost evaporated, including many of them who were there at the time and voted for it who never talk about it.
As these wars go on, people don't want them on their conscience, they don't want them on their legacy, they try and distance themselves.
And I knew that would happen in this war, and it's exactly happening.
There were so many Democrats, including supposed people on the left wing of the Democratic Party, who stood up after October 7th for weeks and even months, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
And cheered the Israelis, defended the Israeli bombing campaign on Gaza.
Bernie Sanders was praised by AIPAC for rejecting a ceasefire for months, saying a ceasefire only helps Hamas.
And now that it's politically easy and politically irrelevant, and they're seeing these atrocities committed, now Bernie Sanders wants to stand up and parade around as some vocal and strident opponent of Israeli aggression.
Elizabeth Warren has been one of Washington's most steadfast supporters of Israel.
And I know if you're a conservative, if you're on the right, you consume a lot of right-wing media.
You don't believe that.
You think the Democratic Party is anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas, that's what Fox News feeds people.
It's a complete lie.
Joe Biden is probably the single most steadfast supporter of Israel in Washington over many decades, but Elizabeth Warren is too, and yet here's what she postured as today while she watched videos of Gazan children being incinerated.
Quote, the Israeli bombing of a refugee camp inside a designated safe zone is horrific.
Israel has a duty to protect innocent civilians, and Palestinians seeking shelter in Rafah have nowhere safe to go.
Netanyahu's assault of Rafah must stop.
We need an immediate ceasefire.
Completely empty, meaningless statement that had only one goal in mind, and that was to make Elizabeth Warren look good.
And just to underscore the point, here from the Huffington Post in 2014, which again was the last time Israel really bombed Gaza.
I mean, they killed a lot of Gazans in 2018.
They always kill Gazans.
Every year they killed Gazans throughout 2023, when supposedly everything was so hunky-dory until Hamas attacked on October 7th.
But 2014 was one of the big bombing campaigns that went on for a long time.
And there you see the headline from Huffington Post, quote, Elizabeth Warren defends Israeli shelling of Gaza's schools and hospitals.
Quote, the Israeli military has the right to attack Palestinian hospitals and schools in self-defense if Hamas has put rocket launchers next to them.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said last week at a local town hall, according to the Cape Cod Times, Warren, in defending her vote to send funds to Israel in the middle of its war with Hamas, said she thinks that civilian casualties are, quote, the last thing Israel wants.
Oh yeah, Israel hates so much when they kill Arabs.
It kills them inside.
It's the last thing they want.
Quote, but when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they're using their civilian population to protect their military assets and I believe Israel has a right at that point to defend itself.
And she's been voting to send money and finance Israel for as long as she's been in Washington.
Now, this whole thing about using civilians as human shields.
There are no open battlefields in Gaza.
Hamas and militants who fight against Israel are the population.
They're integrated into the population.
Just like you couldn't fight the Taliban in open battlefields because the Taliban is part of those communities.
It's their country.
You could in Afghanistan have open battlefields.
You could have had those in Iraq as well.
No one's going to face the United States military, the highest funded, most powerful military to exist, or Israel, which is financed and backed by that military, on an open battlefield.
And even if they wanted to, there would be no way to do that in Gaza because of how densely packed it is.
So the Israelis just kill without any consideration for how many civilians they're killing.
And people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been supporting that and voting for it for many years.
Now, there's so much that's been happening in the Republican Party that is so hypocritical and craven that the stench of it is enough to make you sick and want to vomit.
It's nauseating.
One of the main Republican themes that they've used to attack liberal and Democratic Party politicians over many years is that you are not allowed to criticize the United States government or United States leaders on dirty foreign soil.
You're only allowed to criticize the United States government and the president when you're on sacred American soil.
But if you do that on foreign soil, that is unpatriotic or treasonous.
And we'll show you many times when the Republicans have turned that into a huge political scandal and insisted on the rule, the taboo, that you cannot go to a foreign country and criticize your own government.
In 2003, the country group Dixie Chicks were really canceled.
People were burning their records, threatening radio stations that played their records because they committed the crime of going to London at a concert and criticizing, in a very mild way, George Bush for engaging in the war in Iraq.
And they were supposedly treasonous because they criticized the U.S.
government and the American president on foreign soil.
That is a no-no.
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who has become a hero to the pro-Israel right, she led the hearings that resulted in the firing of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania for not doing enough to crack down on anti-Israel speech.
Went to a foreign country, at least a country that's nominally a foreign country for now, Israel, and she gave a speech before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in which she continuously bashed her own government and its leaders.
Listen to what she said.
As long as I serve the American people, I will defend George Washington's vision of religious pluralism and freedom.
Now, it's ironic and sickening That she invoked George Washington in her trip to Israel to pledge fealty to the Israeli government because if you read George Washington's farewell address, which I highly encourage you to do, maybe we'll go over it this week if we have time, it's as important, at least as Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address when he warned of the military-industrial complex.
What George Washington said was that the most important thing the United States has to do in foreign policy is avoid enduring alliances and enduring enmities.
We cannot have devotion to other foreign countries and make their wars our wars, nor should we declare other countries our enemy eternally and spend decades trying to undermine them or take them down.
He wanted a policy of only fighting wars When our national security was at stake.
And Elise Stefanik and her fellow pro-Israel Republicans and Democrats have exactly the opposite vision.
I doubt she even read George Washington's farewell address.
She's invoking George Washington in the Israeli Knesset to pretend that she's gone on this foreign trip in order to promote her values when she's actually advocating a foreign policy that he most vociferously warned against in that farewell address.
Let me continue here.
This means crushing anti-Semitism at home and supplying the state of Israel with what it needs, when it needs it, without conditions to achieve total victory in the face of evil.
Our obligation as Americans, she said, is to provide Israel with whatever it wants, whatever it asks for, whatever it needs, with no conditions.
If Israel wants something, it's the duty of the American government and its people to pay for it and give it to Israel.
This is a person who claims to be part of the America First rebranding of the Republican Party because she's desperate to be Donald Trump's Vice President.
And while she brands herself as America first, she travels to a foreign country and proclaims that it is the duty of the United States government, of which she's an elected representative, of its government and its people, to give Israel everything it wants, everything it asks for, everything it needs, everything it desires, everything it asks for, everything it needs, everything it desires, without condition, when they ask for it, period.
While she's standing in front of an Israeli flag.
Chants of death to America are not hollow slogans.
They are a promise that what happened here on October 7th could happen in the United States unless Hamas and its jihadist accomplices are eliminated.
The idea that Hamas is a threat to the United States is so incredibly stupid that you should be insulted that she has such a low regard for your intelligence that she thinks you're going to believe that.
Hamas is a tiny little battalion in a tiny little country with extremely primitive weapons.
And they have no interest in or desire to attack the United States.
They've never tried to.
They've never claimed they would.
Israel has killed far more Americans than Hamas ever has.
Far more.
Including this year.
So she needs to justify why she's so emotionally invested in, so devoted to the goal of supplying Israel everything she wants, and so she has to invent this obviously preposterous lie that defeating Hamas is somehow necessary for American national security.
United States high honor and high responsibility to support Israel's effort.
I have been clear at home and I will be clear here.
There is no excuse for an American president to block aid to Israel, aid that was duly passed by the Congress.
There is no excuse to ease sanctions on Iran, paying a $6 billion ransom to the world's leading state sponsor of terror, or to dither and hide while our friends fight for their lives.
No excuse, full stop.
That's why I'm proud to have sponsored or backed every... Okay, so she just went through a bunch of policies of Joe Biden, many which were very dishonestly described, and there are very few things that can make me defend the Biden administration.
But hearing her claim that we paid a $6 billion ransom to Iran, as though we handed them cash, when in fact what we had done was seized their money That they were due for having sold their oil on an open market.
We seized and froze that $6 billion.
And then Biden announced as part of an attempt to reopen Iran's nuclear facilities, that he would unfreeze their money.
That money is not American money.
We stole it.
We froze it.
We seized it.
And on top of that, once October 7th happened, Biden knew that he couldn't unfreeze that money.
And so they never got that money.
So claiming that Israel Or Iran was paid $6 billion by the United States.
There's a lie on every level.
But the more important thing is that she is clearly standing in front of a foreign government's parliament, in front of a foreign flag, a foreign country's flag.
There's no American flag there, of course.
Just an Israeli flag.
And she's attacking her own government, her own president on foreign soil.
Now, I personally have never cared much about this role.
But the Republican Party and the American right care about it a lot.
They have been insisting that this is one of the most sacred rules there is that if you go to foreign soil, and criticize your own government, like Elise Stefanik just did repeatedly, not just on foreign soil, but inside a Israeli government building, before an Israeli government body that you are essentially committing treason.
I could spend all night showing you examples.
So I'm just going to show you a couple to illustrate the point here in 2021 Fox News, Has this headline, Joe Biden slams Republicans while on foreign soil on a break with political norms.
Quote, Biden's presidential campaign criticized Trump in 2019 when he spoke out against Biden.
Let me just.
This is Fox News and they're saying, just go back a little bit so I can re-read that.
They're saying that Joe Biden broke with political norms when his presidential campaign criticized Donald Trump in 2019 when he spoke out against Biden from Japan Republicans and Democrats have long observed a tradition that, quote, politics stops at the water's edge.
Here from the New York Times in February of 2006.
Gore's, quote, supreme disloyalty in Saudi Arabia, quote.
Al Gore traveled to Saudi Arabia last week.
And by the way, in 2006, he was not in the American government.
He was a private citizen.
But nonetheless, he traveled to Saudi Arabia.
And in a speech there on Sunday, he criticized, quote, abuses committed by the U.S.
government against Arabs after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
A burst of flabbergasted conservative blogging followed the Associated Press dispatch about the speech.
With the most clever remark coming from Mark Stein, who called the former Vice President, quote, chic Al Gore.
The editorial page of Investor's Business Daily accused Gore of, quote, supreme disloyalty to his country.
That wasn't even an elected member of anything.
That was a private American citizen who criticized the US government.
Specifically, the Bush-Cheney administration while on foreign soil.
And he was accused of being, essentially, a traitor to his country.
Because you're not allowed to criticize your own government while on foreign soil.
Here from CNN in 2012, a CNN fact check, quote, Obama went on an apology tour, Mitt Romney and others say.
Quote, the president began what I have called an apology tour of going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America.
Romney also said, quote, the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and to Iraq.
Romney said, quote, in those nations and on Arabic TV, you said that America had been dismissive and derisive.
You said that on occasion America had dictated to other nations.
So there's been for decades this right-wing American conservative Republican principle that if you go to foreign soil and criticize your own government, that it means that you are a traitor.
But as is true for most of the claimed principles and values and beliefs and rules of the pro-Israel sector of the Republican Party, they instantly evaporate.
The minute the question is Israel, which is why Congresswoman Stefanik knows that she can go to Israel and bash her own president and the government on foreign soil without anyone calling her any of these names.
Now, speaking of Congresswoman Stefanik, she continues to berate college administrators And demand that they not allow anti-Israel speech to proliferate on their campus.
I never knew before that it was one of the duties of the Federal Congress to dictate to American universities and colleges, especially private ones, like they did with Harvard, like they did with Northwestern here, what kind of speech they can allow on their campus.
But she's been the leader in demanding limitations on speech.
She was the one who demanded that.
The Harvard and University of Pennsylvania presidents say that students are not allowed to quote, advocate genocide.
And when they tried to say, well, it depends on the context.
If you write it not bad, saying Palestinians should be free from the river to the sea, that's free speech.
But if you harass and stalk a Jewish student with anti-Semitic threats, obviously that isn't, but that was not good enough for her.
She wanted a blanket condemnation on any anti-Israel speech that was considered to, quote, incite genocide, which Republicans who are pro-Israel, like her, consider to be any kind of anti-Israel speech.
And then got them fired from the controversy she created.
Of course, she's not going to give up on that.
She's still holding hearings to berate administrators for top universities to impose more and more speech restrictions in the name of protecting this foreign country.
Here she is talking to the president of Northwestern University, and you'll see who she cites as her authority on the limits of political speech and what it should be in the United States.
President Schill, the ADL released its report card for universities' responses to anti-Semitism.
Yes, that's right.
The Republican Party, American conservatives, now run around holding reports of the Anti-Defamation League, who spent two years saying Tucker Carlson should be fired by Fox, who have been attacking conservative speech for years.
President Schill, the ADL released its report card for universities' responses to antisemitism, and you're aware that Northwestern was the only university whose grade was downgraded, correct?
can't say as unquestioned gospel.
And here's what she said when doing that to the president of Northwestern.
President Schill, the ADL released its report card for university's responses to anti-Semitism.
And you're aware that Northwestern was the only university whose grade was downgraded, correct?
Yes, I am aware of that.
And isn't it also true that the Northwestern earned an F for your failure to respond and combat anti-Semitism, and they called for your resignation.
Is that correct?
I have great respect for the ADL.
Matt, I'm not asking... Look at what you have to say when you are administrator of a college campus, the place that's supposed to be the pinnacle of free discourse and free thought and free expression.
If you get confronted by a group That fanatically defends Israel for having permitted too much, quote, anti-Semitic speech on college campuses, which we know means criticizing Israel, and it demands your termination.
Instead of attacking that group and condemning its attempt to limit free speech in the United States on behalf of a foreign country, which is what the ADL does, you have to say, I have the greatest respect for the ADL.
They are a noble and wonderful organization.
I'm deeply hurt and saddened.
That they disapprove of what I'm doing.
You have to proclaim your profound admiration for the ADL if you want to have any chance of succeeding in the United States.
Tell me which group it is in the United States again that is the weak, vulnerable, singular victim group.
It's American Jews who are uniquely discriminated against and marginalized and endangered, even though administrators of our top universities in public, the minute the ADL is mentioned, have to proclaim their fealty for it and their admiration of it, even as they call for your firing.
Listen to the rest of this.
I'm asking your respect for the ADL.
I'm asking is it a fact that you earned...
I have great respect for the ADL.
I'm not asking your respect for the ADL.
I'm asking is it a fact that you earned an F and they called for your resignation.
I have great respect...
There's Elise DeVanik holding up the ADL report with an F on it as though the ADL is authorized like teachers to give out grades to administrators based on what kind of speech they allow on campus.
And if you allow too much anti-Israel speech on college campuses, speech that Jonathan Greenblatt, the executive director of the ADL considers to be bigoted and anti-Semitic and then you have to be fired, that's now authoritative.
The ADL wants all kinds of speech limitations on college campuses in defense of black people, in defense of LGBTs, in defense of women, in defense of immigrants, in defense of Muslims.
Obviously Lisa Devaneck would heap scorn on the idea that speech on college campuses should be limited for all those groups of Americans, but this group of Americans, that's when the ADL suddenly becomes unquestioned authority on what college administrators should allow.
For the ADL, I am sad that they gave Northwestern an F. But it's true.
You got an F. Yes.
Moving on.
Let me tell you why you earned an F. I want to discuss what has been referred to as the Deering Meadows Agreement, your unilateral capitulation to the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic encampment.
But let's talk about what has occurred on this encampment.
Isn't it true that a Jewish Northwestern student was assaulted?
So I want to question the premise of your question.
No, no, no, no.
I'm asking the questions, you're answering.
My answer is not a capitulation.
I'm asking the question, you're required to answer.
Isn't it true that a Jewish Northwestern student was assaulted?
There are allegations that a Jewish student was assaulted.
We are investigating those allegations.
Now, imagine If a Democrat held a hearing and berated a university president for allowing too much speech that was critical of the trans movement, and then brought up a single incident where a trans student was assaulted, and cited a pro-LGBT group like Human Rights Campaign or any of those, giving you an F because you're allowing too much anti-trans speech on campuses,
Conservatives would be indignant, unanimously.
Everything gets changed, reversed, shifted, abandoned, the minute it comes to this one foreign country and to this one group of people.
Now, that was May 23rd.
May 24th, the U.S.
Department of State introduced what it calls, quote, the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.
And that special envoy, that office of the special envoy, part of the US government, hosted a symposium on effective action to confront online anti-Semitism.
If there is one issue that conservatives in the United States have been complaining about more than any other over the last, say, four years, It has been governmental attempts to influence tech platforms, big tech in particular, to limit certain ideas on the grounds that those ideas are anathema to the US government's beliefs and policies.
It's tyrannical, it's authoritarianism.
I've been someone who's been outspoken on that as well.
Here's the US government, the State Department, now doing exactly that.
though this time in defense of the one minority group that conservatives accept as a victim group, which is American Jews, and in defense of a foreign country, which is Israel, pressuring big tech companies to limit speech in the name of that agenda.
The statement reads, quote, on May 23rd, U.S.
Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, hosted a symposium to combat online anti-Semitism.
The symposium convened tech executives, NGOs, and government representatives to foster collaborative thinking about effective action against surging online anti-Semitism.
The forum was an enriching and productive exchange of ideas across the three sectors.
Participating technology companies included Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and X.
Special Envoys for Combating Anti-Semitism from Canada and Israel took part in the symposium, along with the Deputy Chief of Mission for Germany.
Six NGOs from around the world, including the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, World Jewish Congress, Center for Countering Digital Hate, CyberWell, and Decoding Anti-Semitism also participated.
Participating technology companies volunteered!
Oh, they volunteered!
When the U.S.
government calls you to a conference and complains about speech that you're using, when the companies, quote, volunteer to consider taking independent action to address anti-Semitism on their respective platforms, including establishing dedicated expert positions on policy teams, implementing anti-Semitism training for key personnel,
And increasing transparency by publicly reporting on trends in anti-Semitic content.
That's exactly the kind of government coercion the American right has been vocally and vehemently complaining of for years.
The government summons Big tech companies and Jewish advocacy groups and invites them to develop new policies to effectively combat views that the United States government considers to be anti-Semitism online?
Is that something American conservatives now support?
This is already happening.
TikTok, which is continuing to battle for its right to stay in the United States without having to sell off its primary asset to an American company, announced the following, quote, for you feed eligibility standards.
And this is what it said, quote, before you feed is a unique TikTok feature that uses a personalized recommendation system to allow you to discover a breadth of content, creators, and topics.
Certain types of content may be fine if seen occasionally, but problematic if viewed in clusters.
Throughout our guidelines, you will see eligibility standards for the FYF.
Here is a consolidated quick guide of content that is ineligible for the feed.
Quote, misinformation.
Conspiracy theories that are unfounded and claim that certain events or situations are carried out by covert or powerful groups such as the government or a secret society.
No claiming the government engages in conspiracy theories that has never happened before in American history and to claim it is to mean that it means that you are spreading disinformation and will not be allowed to spread.
On this list of misinformation are these conspiracy theories that are unfounded.
That's the misinformation.
So TikTok on its own already knows that they're saying in the United States they need to start limiting the kinds of speech.
That the US government considers to be offensive, and now they're doing that.
They participated in the meeting at the State Department with every other major platform, and it's part of this GOP-led, at least Stefanik-led, but plenty of support from the Democratic Party, to pressure all of our institutions of free speech, including academia and the Internet, to restrict Speech in the name of supporting Israel.
Remember all the reporting that we did about the TikTok ban, how it lingered in Washington for four years, couldn't get passed, was considered way too extreme.
Suddenly within two months of October 7th, Democrats gave the Republicans the majority needed to enact the TikTok ban.
Why?
Why did that suddenly happen?
It's not me saying, it's the leaders, the sponsors of the TikTok ban, And members of both political parties who say the reason they decided they needed to ban TikTok was because there was too much criticism of Israel circulating on that platform, too much video showing what was happening in Gaza.
And that was what was causing young Americans to oppose Biden's policy of feeding and arming Israel.
They banned TikTok, or required it to be sold, principally because there was too much free speech on that platform, particularly critical of Israel.
That's what they say.
That's what they admit.
And those other events, the Elise Stefanik hearing, the State Department summit, We're all from the last week.
Every week brings new crackdowns on campus, online, in all of our societal sectors, on speech that's critical of Israel at exactly the same time that Israeli massacres escalate.
And it's one thing to support the Israeli war.
It's another thing to support the U.S.
financing of it.
But if you're at the point where you're willing to sacrifice the free speech rights of American citizens on American soil to protect this one foreign government, I would suggest that your priorities are, to put it very generously, misguided and confused.
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So as I mentioned, part of what I did in New York, I did a lot of things in New York and also in other parts of the country when I was traveling in the US last week.
I think that will be a very productive week even though unfortunately we weren't able to do a show nor tape one in advance, something we don't like to do.
But one of the things that I did was a debate, I believe it was on Monday night in New York City on the Upper West Side with Harvard professor and fanatical lifelong supporter of Israel, Alan Dershowitz.
And the resolution, it was intended to be a formal debate, so he needed a resolution that he would be on one side of as the advocate and I would be on the other side of as the opponent, originally was going to be that the U.S.
should go to war with Iran.
He insisted on a much more limited proposal Namely, he wanted it to read, the U.S.
should bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.
I agreed to that.
And we had a debate.
I think it was about an hour and a half.
It included opening statements from each of us.
And then we got to ask each other questions and have back and forth.
And then there were questions from the audience that were quite contentious and interesting.
And then when I was leaving the auditorium, One of the things that happened in the debate was that it was a kind of formal debate.
I had actually debated Alan Dershowitz 10 years ago, almost to the day that we debated in New York.
I debated him in Toronto in 2014 as part of the monk debates.
And that was a debate about whether the US surveillance system had become abusive and excessive.
It was in the height of the Snowden reporting.
And he was partnered in defending US surveillance with General Michael Hayden, who was the chief of the NSA and the CIA under George Bush and Dick Cheney.
And my partner was Alexis Ohanan, who at the time was the founder of Reddit, now better known as Serena Williams' husband.
Not really sure why he was there, but he was a nice guy.
But the way the debate works is that they asked the audience before the debate, what is your view on the resolution?
They vote and the winner is whoever converts enough more people from either the other side or from don't know to your side.
And we won the debate.
That debate is online.
That was an excellent debate.
Same thing happened here.
And despite the fact that it was on the Upper West Side, which is known for being a heavily Jewish population, very, very pro-Israel, the kind of pro-Israel Democrats, very liberal and democratic, but on the question of Israel, vehemently pro-Israel, I was expecting there to be a huge number of Alan Dershowitz supporters.
I would say it was about 25% of the audience that was vehemently in favor of him.
But the reception I got at the beginning was obviously more vocal and larger so I essentially had a challenged a disadvantage in that the audience began on my side, so it was hard to convert more people to my side.
And yet by the end of the debate, when people voted again, I was able to convert 10% of the audience from either his side or indifferent to mine, and he wasn't able to convert as many to his side.
And so I was declared the winner of the debate, but that's really irrelevant.
The debate itself, you can watch the entire debate on YouTube.
The link is in the description.
It was hosted by Reason, but it was at the Soho Forum.
The theater was packed.
And probably some of you have watched the whole thing.
I definitely recommend it.
I want to go over a couple of excerpts because I think the debate really ended up being about neoconservative ideology, the U.S.
Posture of endless war, especially in the Middle East.
It's devotion to Israel.
Why people like Alan Dershowitz want the U.S.
to go and attack the country that just so happens by coincidence to be the country that Israel considers its greatest enemy.
Just like in 2003 when we invaded Iraq, the Israelis hated Saddam Hussein so much That the Israelis actually helped the Iranians in their war with Iraq in the 1980s because they considered Saddam Hussein their greatest threat.
So we went and invaded Iraq, Israel's greatest threat, 20 years ago, and now Dershowitz and others want us to go to war with Iran, Israel's, by coincidence, Israel's greatest threat.
One of the things that happened was, on the way out, I was accosted by a very loud and menacing mob of Israel supporters.
It kind of surrounded me.
I lived in New York for a long time.
I know how New Yorkers are.
And so I understand that's how New Yorkers are.
They're very expressive, very emotional.
They can be very angry.
But I think if you didn't, it would be considered quite threatening.
But they were completely deranged.
And I was trying to say to them, look, if you want to have a rational conversation, I'm happy to.
But if you're going to sit here and scream at me personal insults, which is what they were doing, it was very personal, saying I was arrogant, that I treated Professor Dershowitz rudely.
How can I be a Jew and say these horrible things about Israel?
I'm a traitor to my own people.
It was that kind of invective.
So eventually they calmed themselves down, but after a good while, we were finally able to leave.
But there are a couple excerpts that I want to show you.
If you haven't watched the whole debate, I encourage you to do so, which I think were really representative of the kinds of debates we need to be having.
So let me show you this first excerpt where Professor Dershowitz was sitting down, because he's 85, and to his credit, at 85 years old, he's as acute in the depth as he was 10 years ago when I debated him.
Definitely nothing wrong with his brain the way their say is with Joe Biden's.
But he didn't want to stand up at the podium, which is totally reasonable for a person that age.
So he sat down, I spoke at the podium, but here was one of the exchanges.
Here's one of the exchanges.
What proportionality means is that when you're attacking a target that has both civilians and military, that you have to evaluate the military value of the target against the civilian casualties that were anticipated.
Iran declared war on Israel by sending all those rockets, thankfully.
Thankfully, Israel, Jordan, the United States, and other countries deflected those and prevented all these deaths from occurring.
But you cannot sit here and justify the claim that Iran did not want to kill Israelis, that it sent these hundreds of drones knowing they would all be miraculously stopped.
Can you justify that?
So this is in response to his claim.
He started off the debate spending 15 minutes claiming that we should look at how we should have attacked Nazi Germany in the 30s, that that would have been a good preventive war, that had France and the UK attacked Nazi Germany, even though they weren't being attacked yet, history wouldn't even know all the great things they accomplished.
History might even look at that as wrong.
And he was trying to say, analogize that to what we should do with Iran.
Yet again, for the 50th time, taking an American enemy and claiming that they're Hitler and the new Nazis, and we should judge those countries the way we judge the Nazis.
Obviously, that's said about Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran, Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, Gaddafi.
Every American leader, every foreign leader that we want to go to war with gets called the new Hitler.
And that's what he was doing.
And I was trying to make the argument that Unlike the United States that starts wars all over the world, Iran doesn't do that.
And when the Israelis recently just bombed an Iranian consulate in Damascus in Syria, The Iranians could have retaliated.
Many countries would have retaliated with a major military response, including using their proxies or their allies, Hezbollah, which has tens or hundreds of thousands of missiles aimed at Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities.
Instead, they use their slowest, most primitive drones and bombs, missiles.
Knowing that they would be taken out, that most wouldn't reach Israeli soil, almost none did.
And that's because they're a constraint, not a Nazi-like country that doesn't seek nuclear annihilation.
They care about their own country, not having a war.
So that was Professor Dershowitz asking that question.
Let's show the second part of that video that I started to show.
...knowing they would all be miraculously stopped.
Can you justify that?
Yeah, what I want to say is... Alright, we're gonna get this up for you in just a second.
Yeah, what I want to say is, if Iran has such a primitive army that they're not capable of landing even a single missile inside Israel because all they have is a bunch of crappy drones and slow missiles that can be removed from the sky by Jordan and by the United Arab Emirates, then they're hardly an imposing country.
The reality is that Hezbollah— All you need is one to get through.
Alan, Alan, please.
Hezbollah has hundreds, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of highly sophisticated missiles pointed directly at every single major Israeli city, including Tel Aviv.
If Iran wanted to do a kind of response against Israel that you're suggesting they wanted, they had that capability and they didn't because they're a rational, restrained country that didn't want to end up in a world war.
Now some of the audience, the minute I said that Iran was a restrained country that doesn't want to end up in a nuclear war, started guffawing like that was so ridiculous to say that Iran was a rational, restrained country.
So I wanted to address the people in the audience who reacted that way.
end up in a world war.
I know, I know the only rational restrained countries are America, Israel, and the West.
That's what your media tells you all the time, so I know that you believe that.
But there are actually other rational restrained countries in the world too.
You're always told there's a new Hitler in Iran, there's a new Hitler in Russia, there's a new Hitler named Hamas, there's a new Hitler in Syria, and you believe it all the time and you stand up and you cheer all those evil irrational countries.
As I said, if you look at who the ones are who are starting wars, it is your country, the United States, and along with Israel as It's why propaganda works.
the reality if you remove yourself from Western propaganda.
So the reason why I wanted to show you that excerpt is because I do think that we are so susceptible to propaganda.
It's why propaganda works.
It really does work.
And even those of us who try and resist propaganda, who try and understand that there's nationalistic propaganda to which we're subjective, can easily absorb it if we're not consciously aware that that's happening and we seek to combat it critically.
And, And we're all taught, I remember being taught as a young child in school, That the United States was the greatest country in the world, that we were the embodiment of freedom and democracy, that we loved freedom not only for ourselves but for the entire world, and at the time that was the Cold War, and the Soviet Union was the It's natural for human beings to do that.
And that we were engaged in a war of good.
And this is something that we're all taught because we're all tribal.
We're all part of a tribe, which is our country or our community or our state.
And we take pride in that identity.
It's natural for human beings to do that.
And so we're constantly being told that whatever country, whatever we do, whatever our allies, whoever our allies are, those are the good countries and the countries that we hate.
And then what you want to go to war with are our adversaries.
These are the evil, bad countries.
Even Hitler, like, all the time.
And it's so important to remove yourself from that propagandistic framework.
Maybe it's sometimes true that the United States does good things in the world.
Maybe it's sometimes true that our policies have benevolent outcomes.
But it is not the case that we live in this cartoon-like world of good guys and bad guys.
There's a reason that framework is put into films made for children.
It's because it's a very simple-minded way of understanding the world.
And the minute I made the point that Iran is not some Hitlerian or Nazi-like government trying to roll through and conquer all kinds of territory, that they're a suicidal apocalyptic cult, That doesn't care if they get incinerated and there was that chuckling from that Upper West Side audience that was there to support Dershowitz.
I wanted to address that directly and tell them how propagandized they were because I think it's so important to consciously be aware all the time of how much we're being indoctrinated by our media and our government.
Which has been telling us this message that's been put into our head for decades.
That we are always the good guys and whoever we hate at the moment are the bad guys.
Now here's another exchange that I want to share with you that I thought was relevant as well.
This is actually the last point that I made as part of the debate when I kind of had some closing words and I wanted to leave people with what I thought is the major point, not just about bombing Iran, but about how we see ourselves in the world.
Now a multipolar world.
If you look at why so many countries are going to China, are joining BRICS, are leaving the Western influence, it's because of the resentment that this kind of mentality is spawning.
What do you think the world is going to do as they watch the United States continuously assert its unilateral and singular right to start wars against other countries who are not attacking us?
Because we have been told over and over since birth That our country is the shining beacon on the hill, that we are the emblem of democracy, that it's only other countries, those bad countries like Iran and Russia and China where bad things happen.
We're the good countries.
Our wars are good.
I think if there's anything That the last 20 years of history should tell us is that we have to start thinking critically about all of this propaganda, thinking critically about what the role of our own country is in the world, and all of the devastation and misery and suffering and bloodshed and instability that happens
Whenever our government or our media convinces us to support yet another war, this would be the worst of all of those wars because of how big Iran is, because of how sophisticated their military is.
And if you thought Iraq was bad, think about what bombing Iran will entail and make your decision based on that.
Now, one of the main points that pervaded this whole discussion and that provoked a lot of positive response from the audience, obviously not enough for Professor Yershowitz to get a majority or anything close on his side, but one that resonated with some people is this idea that one of the reasons we should do regime change in Iran is because they're a bad, repressive, dictatorial regime.
And there were people lined up to ask questions.
And we didn't get to anywhere near all the people who were lined up to ask questions.
That was the end of the Q&A.
But this one woman began screaming and yelling, insisting that she be put to the front of the line.
And she was arguing that she was the only Iranian I don't know how she knew that, but she claimed that she was the only Iranian present and she wanted to speak for Iranians.
And she stood up and directed it toward me and talked about how repressive the Iranian government is and how I have no idea about any of that.
And of course we should want to change the government.
And I said, look, I have no doubt that the Iranian government is repressive like a lot of countries in the world, a lot of governments in the world.
If we're going to go around bombing and attacking and invading every country with oppressive government, we're going to be fighting about 70 wars at once, or one after the next.
And I also talked about how, although she's an Iranian exile, she does not speak for anyone but herself.
That was the tactic they always use.
Every country, every country has divisions in it.
And there's always part of the population that would love for the United States to come in and remove the government that's in place that they hate and install one that's on their side.
There are Iranians.
Who would love for us to reinstall the Shah of Iran's family, that dynastic, tyranny and savage dictator that ruled Iran after we imposed him on that country, after we facilitated a coup against their democratic government in 1954.
And this is a common tactic in the Iraq War.
CNN and all the neocons kept putting Iraqi exiles, like Ahmed Chalabi, as though they represented Iraqi exiles living in the West for decades, as though they were representative of the Iraqi people.
And they would go on the air and they would say, I speak for Iraqis.
I'm Iraq.
I'm Iraqi.
I tell you, the people hate Saddam Hussein so much, the minute American soldiers get into Iraq, they're going to be welcomed as liberators.
The people will be on the side of the United States.
They'll help you take down Saddam Hussein.
And then we get there and we face an entrenched, massive insurgency on the part of the Iraqi people who did not want us in their country.
And so I made that point about that Iranian exile.
She was part of the group afterwards trying to attack me.
She was sort of like the pet of the pro-Israel Upper West Side Zionists.
Look, here's our Iranian ally saying that we should remove that government.
She's of course very pro-Israel.
She wants the Shah of Iran back.
Alan Dershowitz does as well.
So I wanted to I would say the single bit of propaganda for which I have the least amount of patience and the most amount of contempt is this idea that we're constantly sold, that the reason we go to wars is because we want to protect democracy and spread freedom and democracy and combat tyranny.
How often did you hear that about Ukraine and Russia?
That the reason we're going there is because we're protecting democracy and freedom in Ukraine against the authoritarian tyrants in Moscow.
We were told we were going to free the Iraqi people from the Iraqi tyranny they were suffering from.
We were going to free the Libyans.
We were going to free the Syrians.
We were going to free the Vietnamese.
And so I really wanted to take this opportunity, knowing it was going to be watched by a lot of people, but also for purposes there, to address that specific point.
So let's pull that part up while we have it.
Go ahead and play it.
Again, we don't have any problems with dictators or with tyrannical governments.
In fact, the core of American foreign policy since the end of World War II, throughout the Cold War, and then into the War on Terror, is we want dictatorial regimes.
It's much easier to install them because they're there to keep the population, many of whom would be anti-American because of their perception Of all the wars that we start under control.
Those dictators are there in all these wonderful countries that we're told we should replicate like Saudi Arabia and Egypt and all those Gulf states.
They're there to keep the population down and we're happy with it.
We support those countries.
We don't go around the world attacking other countries or trying to remove their government because we want to give those people freedom and democracy.
We only do it when we see a government that doesn't do our bidding.
And that was fine to do at the end of World War II when we had supremacy.
Maybe it was fine when the Cold War fell and we had supremacy in the 1990s.
This is now a multipolar world.
If you look at why so many countries are going to China, are joining BRICS, are leaving the Western influence, it's because of them.
And I apologize for having two of me on the screen, of having the narcissistic image of me watching myself.
It was only because we couldn't put that one on the full screen because it was taken from Twitter.
But in any event, I really believe that's the heart of everything, that it is so easy to sell the American public On the idea that what we're really after is we're going to war to defend freedom and democracy for other people and fight tyranny, when in reality, the core of our foreign policy is to install tyrannies.
Because especially in that region, but so many others, if the population was permitted to democratically express itself, they would elect anti-American or anti-Israeli leaders precisely because of their anger that China is now so effectively exploiting That we've been throwing our weight around and going around starting wars.
That is a global perception.
There are global surveys that ask which country is the greatest threat to the world.
And I know every American would think, oh, it must be Russia, it must be China, it must be Iran.
It's the United States in global surveys.
And the dilemma has always been, how can we bring democracy to parts of the world when we know that if people get to vote and majority rules, the government will be adverse to us?
We supported a dictatorship in Egypt for 30 years, the Mubarak regime.
And when all those students in Tahrir Square so courageously gathered and protested their government and demanded democracy, and we pretended like we were on their side cheering them, even though we supported that Mubarak regime for 30 years.
And they finally got the right to have an election for the first time in Egypt's history.
And they went and they voted for the wrong candidate.
They went and voted for a Muslim candidate, Mohammed Morsi, who was very critical of Israel.
And we can't have democracy because when we do, we've made the people hate us in so many parts of the world that we will have pro-anti-American or anti-Israel leaders.
And so we immediately, in less than a year, worked with Egyptian generals like General Sisi, who now runs that country as a military dictator, to overthrow the democratically elected president and to install once again a pro-Israel, pro-American dictator in Cairo.
That's what we do.
We want dictators to suppress the wishes of the voters in the places we know that they will be anti-American.
We're only comfortable with democracy in places like Europe.
Where we think that they will elect Western liberals, but increasingly we're becoming concerned about that as well, like the election of Viktor Orban in Hungary.
And then in 2014, the Ukrainians made the mistake of electing a president who became too pro-Moscow, leaning too far away from the EU.
And Victoria Nuland and John McCain and Chris Murphy and all kinds of American officials publicly, but also covertly, supported the overthrow of that president because we didn't like the leader that the Ukrainians elected, and we installed one that was far more pro-American.
We all heard the video of Victoria Nuland.
This is the core of American foreign policy.
So the goal is not necessarily pro-dictators for its own sake.
The goal is to have a pro-American, pro-Israel government.
But oftentimes we can do that only by overthrowing democratic leaders and imposing tyranny.
Our closest allies and partners in the world are the worst tyrannies on the planet.
The Saudis, the Emiratis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians.
And that's been true for decades.
And that's why it's so baffling and frustrating.
To watch the American media sell the U.S.
government's wars based on this completely fictitious, obviously fictitious fairytale that the reason we go to wars is not to install governments that do our bidding, but because we want to spread freedom and democracy all over the world.
And the sad thing is that was something that Americans believed and were told and bought for the invasion of Iraq and saw how false it turned out to be.
But the appeal of that narrative is so, so strong for people who are tribalistic and want to believe in the goodness, the inherent goodness of their side, that it's still extremely effective propaganda despite how provably false it is.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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