March 12, 2024 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
17:43
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| On October 7, he was just walking on the street with a stupid smile and saying, this is the happiest day of my life. | ||
| Two days later, he was crying. | ||
| But he took it all to extreme. | ||
| Now, we know he's an actor. | ||
| But I saw BBC showing a video clip of him as if that is news. | ||
| And now, thanks to the Twitter audience, that they all know him, everyone was bashing BBC. | ||
| Hey, you're the only one in the world who doesn't know who is Mr. Faffle. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he helped to make a big joke of the the Pollywood industry that they have. | ||
| All right, so Ellie David, I'm very happy to be sitting with you because we've never met in real | ||
| I only know you through Twitter. | ||
| You are a masterful troll on Twitter. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Great to be here. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| No, you really are. | ||
| I think I kind of became aware of you during COVID. | ||
| You were very outspoken against lockdowns and mandates and vaxes and all of that stuff. | ||
| Which was very difficult to do here in Israel, also very difficult to do in America. | ||
| But I think in the last, you know, five or six months since October 7th, you've really kind of caught fire in the online world. | ||
| But I said to you right before we started, I don't know what you do in real life, actually. | ||
| I just see you pretty effective on Twitter, so maybe we could just do a little of that for a minute or two, and then we'll talk about the state of the world and everything else. | ||
| With pleasure. | ||
| Well, as I mentioned, trolling on Twitter is not my day job. | ||
| You don't get paid for that? | ||
| No, actually. | ||
| My main business, I'm an AI researcher, entrepreneur. | ||
| I teach at the university, founded several companies, sold several companies, all AI-based. | ||
| Artificial intelligence for cybersecurity, healthcare and other stuff. | ||
| But that's what I do. | ||
| So as somebody who's doing AI and my all life is just numbers and understanding numbers, making sense of them. | ||
| Now, when COVID started, and I guess all of us looked at the numbers and looked at the recommendations and saw there's nothing that correlates between the real life data and the recommendations. | ||
| And that's what got me really angry. | ||
| So I started trolling on Twitter. | ||
| Right. | ||
| How difficult was it to be a counter-COVID voice here? | ||
| Because the country was pretty locked down and pretty unanimous on that, right? | ||
| In Israel, it was extremely difficult, much more than you can imagine. | ||
| In almost all Western countries, you had the liberal, woke left that they were in favor of essentially doing Chinese-style lockdowns. | ||
| And you had the more libertarian right side that they were against them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Again, I'm not counting the initial one month or two. | ||
| We were all scared there was no data. | ||
| After a few months, when data emerged. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But in Israel, you had the woke left, which was pro lockdowns and all mandates. | ||
| And you had the right Which was even more pro-lockdowns than Mandit. | ||
| So, people like me, we were the extreme minority and getting attacked by almost everyone across the board. | ||
| It was much more difficult being anti-lockdown in Israel than in the US or Europe or elsewhere. | ||
| Are you getting any cred now for largely being right about all this stuff? | ||
| I know Israel has bigger problems at the moment than that stuff, so... | ||
| Yes, but always off the record. | ||
| Nobody's admitting publicly that they were wrong. | ||
| We spent here over 200 billion shekels, that's about 50 billion dollars, on the cost of lockdowns and mandates. | ||
| And at a time now that we need money for real important stuff, we have of course budget limitations. | ||
| And everyone admits privately that it was absolutely wrong to spend all that money for chasing a mild respiratory virus, but nobody's publicly admitting that. | ||
| Right, okay, so you become outspoken at that time, then October 7th happens, now you're really, I think, one of the leading voices online in advocacy for Israel, and you also do it in a kind of funny way, in a trolley way, as you said, and everything else, but just tell me what life has been here What life has been like for you here, your family, that sort of thing? | ||
| October 7, I was with my family. | ||
| It all started at 7 a.m. | ||
| with sirens here in Tel Aviv. | ||
| And I think for all Israelis, it was a crazy day, a life-changing day. | ||
| And since that day, every Israeli I know is trying to do what they can. | ||
| In different aspects, behind the scenes, publicly. | ||
| And so what I could do, and I started doing from that day, was just echoing what we feel, what we see here to the world. | ||
| I remember on October 7th, on the day of October 7th, even before Israel started doing anything in Gaza, which was a few days later, on October 7th I saw on Twitter such a huge wave of anti-Semitism That I've never seen in my life. | ||
| So, people who say that is a result, a reaction to the war and what Israel does, that's nonsense. | ||
| I saw that on October 7th. | ||
| I saw many videos of Palestinians cheering and just giving out candies, celebrating the massacre and kidnapping. | ||
| Yeah, but not just Palestinians. | ||
| I mean, there were people all over Europe. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| All over Europe, the pro-Palestinian cult. | ||
| It actually reminds me of the COVID cult. | ||
| Forget the Palestinians. | ||
| You go to Ivy League universities in the U.S. | ||
| You meet those liberals, they have no chance of finding Palestine or Israel on the map, or any country on the map, but they know that they are pro-Palestine, because that's the current thing. | ||
| Just like we had the Covid cult, people who know nothing about virology and immunology, but they know that you have to get your fifth booster and your third mask. | ||
| This is a Palestine cult. | ||
| You have to be pro-Palestine even though you have absolutely no idea about anything relating to Palestine. | ||
| What have your most effective attacks been online? | ||
| Maybe attacks isn't the right word. | ||
| Your most effective ways of deprogramming some of these people? | ||
| Because you're pretty sarcastic. | ||
| I think one of the effective things that you do is you'll show, you'll say, look at this devastation in Gaza. | ||
| And then the image actually is of Syria or something else to prove that people really only care when the Jews are involved. | ||
| Yeah, sorry for the typo. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| That kind of tweet. | ||
| But they show photos of some devastation or massacre and say, see what Israel has done in Gaza. | ||
| Oh, sorry for the typo. | ||
| That was Syria in Aleppo, but no protests in European capital. | ||
| Nobody cares. | ||
| No Jews, no news. | ||
| And you see that again and again. | ||
| What do you think this has all done to the Israeli psyche? | ||
| I mean, you mentioned everyone's helping. | ||
| This is literally my first day. | ||
| I've only been here for a few hours, so I'm just getting a sense of the energy here and the shift since I was last here. | ||
| It made us focus back on the existential problems we have, that it doesn't matter how many years we are post the Holocaust, there are still so many people who want to massacre us. | ||
| And there are so many people who cheer and celebrate. | ||
| As we are massacred. | ||
| So we always need to be vigilant, defend ourselves. | ||
| And 50 years after the Yom Kippur War, in which we were surprised, again, another surprise, another hefty price we paid. | ||
| We don't have the luxury of ever putting our guns down and not be vigilant. | ||
| And that was a very, very painful reminder of that. | ||
| So as an AI guy, do you think Israel was relying too much on technology and not enough with soldiers on the ground or intelligence on the ground or anything else that led to some of this? | ||
| Definitely not being with boots on the ground in Gaza was part of that. | ||
| It is not that... I don't think there was any problem with technology or AI. | ||
| Any kind of technology you use is as good as the data that you feed into that. | ||
| Now, when you don't have any presence there for almost two decades, and a very limited amount of data that you feed your systems, You can rely on them. | ||
| The systems are good. | ||
| They could be great, but if you're not fitting relevant data into them, they will not produce relevant results. | ||
| If I train an AI model that has never seen a photo of a cat, it will not be able to recognize a cat, even though that's a very easy task to do. | ||
| And the same here. | ||
| You see in Judea and Samaria, They want to kill us just as much as people in Gaza want to kill us. | ||
| And if you look at opinion polls, still more than 80% of people in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, they celebrate October 7 attack. | ||
| They glorify that. | ||
| They support Hamas. | ||
| The reason they're not succeeding in doing that is because we are there, we're present there. | ||
| We're present there doesn't only mean tanks and troops, it means also access to data that we can feed the advanced technological systems. | ||
| But when we left Gaza two decades ago and essentially said, take it, it's your autonomy, do whatever you want, we didn't have access to data there. | ||
| And they did whatever they want. | ||
| That is taking billions of dollars of European aid, Building the terror tunnels, longer than London Underground and Paris Metro combined, and building weapons. | ||
| Yeah, so what do you see as a way out of the current situation? | ||
| I mean, it seems like this Rafa thing is the last part, which hopefully we'll get this video up so it doesn't feel dated in the next day or two. | ||
| No conceivable outcome which Israel doesn't go into Rafah as well. | ||
| It's like Benny Gantz said, it's like putting off only 80% of the fire and then looking at the remaining 20%. | ||
| We know that many, most, all, I don't know, but most of our hostages are in Rafah. | ||
| We know that almost all or most of the senior Hamas leadership, they escaped to Rafah. | ||
| So, people who say Israel should not invade there, or people who say Rafa is a red line, what do you mean? | ||
| Are you going to rescue hostages? | ||
| Do you want to do that? | ||
| Go ahead! | ||
| But if not, there is no other option other than Israel actually going in and finishing the job. | ||
| The whole country seems very unified in that, right? | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| According to opinion polls, more than 90% of people in Israel are now opposed to a Palestinian state. | ||
| So when some people say, the Israeli government doesn't represent the people, Of course, there's lots of criticism from people towards the government, mine included. | ||
| But on things like a two-state solution, nobody believes in that. | ||
| We can live in a fancy world in which we live in tooth fairies and Santa Claus, that's fine. | ||
| You can believe in that. | ||
| But it doesn't turn into reality. | ||
| And right now, a two-state solution is just as much fiction as believing in tooth fairy. | ||
| Right, and it would also be three states, which people never say, right? | ||
| Because it would be West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. | ||
| Those are three things, not two states. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| The whole thing is just kind of... Three states, out of which the only common denominator of two of them is that they want to slaughter Jews. | ||
| Right, and they're on opposite sides. | ||
| And they're capable of doing that. | ||
| They prove that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How have you sort of kept the smile on your face and being sort of sarcastic and everything else throughout this? | ||
| At some point, you either have to smile or cry as a way of dealing with a tragic situation. | ||
| Now, I try to see the sarcastic part of everything, to be also cynical, because also that's the messages that do work. | ||
| You can convey the message more effectively. | ||
| This war is our lives, but Most of the people in Europe, in North America, when they look at this, they have no obligation to start reading lengthy essays about the subject. | ||
| So, it is our duty, even when we convey the information, convey it in a way that they actually read it. | ||
| Showing also some cynical part of it. | ||
| Look at what happened, sorry for the typo, that was... It kind of allows them to read it without getting bored and ah, yeah, another, same thing. | ||
| Speaking of the cynical part of it, can you talk about Pollywood for a second? | ||
| Because you've also done some nice work exposing some of that nonsense, the Fafo guy and all that craziness. | ||
| But can you explain what really that is? | ||
| Because I don't think people realize the level of fabrication of some of these videos coming out of Gaza. | ||
| There is a... That's not something new. | ||
| For decades you see camera crew sending someone in and some painted ketchup on them as if it's blood and then immediately the aids come and he's almost dying. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Everyone knows that. | ||
| But we owe a lot... Dead bodies that magically get up? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Off the gurney, with the cameras not rolling. | ||
| And that day, two weeks ago, Hamas said that Israel killed something like 100 people. | ||
| But thanks to their efforts, they resurrected 40 of them, and in two hours it became 60 people. | ||
| Now, I owe a lot and we owe a lot to the great guy that we call Mr. Fafo. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He took it to an extreme. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, it's okay if you die and then two weeks later you're alive and that's kind of acceptable Pollywood standing for Palestinian Hollywood. | ||
| But that guy was almost dead today in ICU and tomorrow no bruises, no stitches. | ||
| He's a radiologist. | ||
| The other day he's a cameraman. | ||
| So, literally, he's basically an actor who pretends to be in all of these situations. | ||
| I think on October 7th he was celebrating, then two days later he was crying, then he's a doctor, then he's... I mean, it's incredible. | ||
| Is he alive still? | ||
| Do we know if he's alive? | ||
| I think so, I hope so. | ||
| He's doing us great service. | ||
| It would be tragic if we lose him. | ||
| On October 7th, he was just walking on the street with a stupid smile and saying, this is the happiest day of my life. | ||
| Two days later, he was crying. | ||
| But he took it all to the extreme. | ||
| Now, we know he's an actor. | ||
| But I saw BBC showing a video clip of him as if that is news. | ||
| And now, thanks to the Twitter audience, that they all know him, everyone was bashing BBC. | ||
| Hey, you're the only one in the world who doesn't know who is Mr. Faffle. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, he helped to make a big joke of the Pollywood industry that they have. | ||
| Since I found you on Twitter and we're talking about Twitter so much, how appreciative are you of what Elon Musk has done with Twitter to allow some of the debunking of this nonsense and overall defend free speech? | ||
| I think Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter may be a greater service to humanity than Tesla and SpaceX and other great things he's doing and will be doing combined. | ||
| Free speech is the cornerstone of Western democracy, and we took it for granted. | ||
| But we saw, especially during COVID, that we cannot take it for granted. | ||
| Even today, accounts get banned for posting pro-Israel videos on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok. | ||
| Of course, that's completely terrible on a different level of its own, on all other social media. | ||
| The only place that you can actually speak freely is an X. | ||
| Of course, there are downsides to that too. | ||
| We see some of these anti-Semites that are turning to big accounts. | ||
| That's a price I'm willing to pay for having free speech. | ||
| And we should all be thankful to Elon Musk for the amazing job he's doing | ||
| for preserving the Western values and Western democracies. | ||
| Tell me one thing we should know about Israel and the Israelis that the average person doesn't know. | ||
| You know, Israel is known in the tech community as a startup nation. | ||
| The start-up nation and the technologies coming out of Israel, that is not just one angle of Israel. | ||
| That is Israel. | ||
| The whole country is a start-up nation, which is all about encountering a difficult or impossible solution, but trying to find a way around it, to survive, to succeed, to thrive. | ||
| That's all about building tech companies, but that's all about this country as a whole. | ||
| When we founded the company in 1948, against all odds, all Arab countries attacking us, and to this day you see everyone wants to kill us, but in these moments we see the whole country united for every problem we're finding solutions, and I'm confident that we will come much stronger out of this As a country, as a civilization, and especially our economy will come stronger out of this because this is what we are, the Startup Nation. |
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