True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 426: Palestine... Legal?
Aired: 2024-12-19
Duration: 01:45:41


=== Jackson Brown Encounter (03:17) ===

[00:00:00]  Are you gonna do it, Briece?
[00:00:02]  I was thinking the other day, you know, I was I was having my mid-afternoon snack, of course, a penis, which I devour, much like, You know, as I've said, Bugs Bunny with the carrot.
[00:00:21]  I was picking my oversized teeth with a large, particularly fibrous pubic hair.
[00:00:31]  And I was thinking, you know what?
[00:00:34]  I could have been a doctor.
[00:00:36]  I could have been an accountant.
[00:00:40]  But I would have really liked to be a lawyer.
[00:00:44]  And particularly, I would have been liked to be a lawyer that was able to argue with women.
[00:00:49]  Because when I do it now, in the confines of my own home, my bewigged wife and my several ugly daughters, they always yell at me so much and they throw, you know, various pieces of produce at me, wounding me greatly, but with no bruises, because oftentimes oranges in such a manner flung do not leave such things.
[00:01:09]  And I was wondering, if I could just only be a lawyer, I could go into court.
[00:01:13]  I could argue, who is the beautiful woman on the Supreme Court?
[00:01:17]  Liz?
[00:01:18]  Who was the beautiful woman?
[00:01:20]  I mean, which one?
[00:01:21]  Who was the beautiful young Justice Katanji?
[00:01:26]  Jackson Brown?
[00:01:28]  Am I thinking of perhaps the musical artist Jackson Brown is what I'm thinking of there, who my good friend Brace Belden did meet once.
[00:01:36]  And he sent Leonard Cohen a text message on Brace Belden's behalf.
[00:01:39]  You guys are good friends?
[00:01:41]  I'm not friends with Jackson.
[00:01:42]  Well, Brace isn't friends with Jackson Brown, but Brace met Jackson Brown one time.
[00:01:47]  And Brace's friend Vinnie Martini did have a book of poetry by Leonard Cohen, which I personally think is a little bit, you know, you're not walking around with stuff like that.
[00:01:55]  I feel like that's a bit of a peacocking thing for a certain kind of woman that existed in urban areas in perhaps 2010 when such an incident did occur.
[00:02:02]  But Jackson Brown, the musical artist, saw this book and he said, oh, a book of Leonard Cohen's poetry, which by the way, Leonard Cohen, who Brace Bell did, not me, though, Mordecai Mohill, Menachem, Jewish, Sylvestine Plattenberg.
[00:02:22]  Of course, I like Leonard Cohen because he performed for the troops at the Golan Heights or wherever he did it.
[00:02:26]  There's that one famous picture of him surrounded by those beautiful hunky boys in the IDF.
[00:02:30]  But Brace, you know, he was, Jackson Brown sent a text message to Leonard Cohen.
[00:02:35]  It says, Leonard, look, these boys have your poetry.
[00:02:39]  what were we talking about good morning good evening good afternoon Hello, everyone.
[00:03:07]  And good tidings for you and yours on this holiday season.
[00:03:11]  Hi.
[00:03:13]  Hello, I'm Liz.
[00:03:14]  I'm Brace.
[00:03:15]  And of course, we are joined by producer.
[00:03:16]  Young Chomsky.

=== Favela Israel Fun (04:57) ===

[00:03:18]  And I was thinking, of all the religions, I got to say, I've really been thinking about this a lot.
[00:03:23]  What would you, if you were like character creator, you're making a new Liz, you have to pick one.
[00:03:28]  Which religion are you picking?
[00:03:30]  First of all, this is true non-hello.
[00:03:32]  Oh, yeah, hello.
[00:03:34]  Great question.
[00:03:35]  Thank you.
[00:03:36]  And I would be Baha'i, because then I get to be all.
[00:03:38]  Interesting.
[00:03:39]  Is it all?
[00:03:40]  Isn't it all?
[00:03:41]  Every?
[00:03:42]  I think it's like just the fourth one.
[00:03:45]  I was actually looking at some like ISIS Twitter accounts talking about Baha'i the other day.
[00:03:48]  I actually don't really remember anything about Baha'i, even though I remember learning about it.
[00:03:52]  That Baha'i place on like Valencia or Guerrero had a really nice drinking fountain, which I've mentioned on the show like three or four times.
[00:03:59]  What would you be?
[00:04:00]  I think Hare Krishna seems kind of chill.
[00:04:03]  You're crazy.
[00:04:04]  That's insane.
[00:04:04]  That is the whack.
[00:04:06]  Because of George Harrison, and I like chanting.
[00:04:09]  But you can only chant one thing.
[00:04:11]  You can do that now.
[00:04:13]  And also, it's something that's not.
[00:04:13]  But also, what about your love of clothing?
[00:04:15]  You would have to give that up.
[00:04:17]  All I'm saying is I think George was onto something.
[00:04:19]  You'd have to be barobed.
[00:04:20]  Barobed.
[00:04:21]  I could see you in a robe, but he would probably be like, I'm getting the robe with this linen or whatever on it.
[00:04:27]  You could get into Russia.
[00:04:28]  I feel like yellow is my color.
[00:04:29]  I couldn't do it.
[00:04:30]  I've been thinking about this, and I mean no disrespect to anybody when I was about to say what I'm about to say.
[00:04:36]  But I was like getting worried about going to hell.
[00:04:39]  But I was like, well, I don't know if we have, Jews have hell.
[00:04:42]  I thought the whole thing was there was no hell.
[00:04:44]  It's like, it's like really, you can definitely tell that Jew, they like were just coming up with a lot of stuff.
[00:04:49]  And so they didn't flesh it out completely.
[00:04:51]  It's first draft.
[00:04:51]  It's first draft.
[00:04:53]  Is that everyone's first draft?
[00:04:55]  Yeah.
[00:04:56]  Well, and I, and I rock, and I, you know, I rock with the Muslims, but there's a lot of rules and you have to do a lot of stuff if you're like pretty religious.
[00:05:05]  I like rules.
[00:05:07]  Yeah, I don't.
[00:05:08]  I don't like, I just wouldn't remember to pray that many times.
[00:05:11]  And then I would feel guilty.
[00:05:12]  It's like, it's just maybe Catholicism is for you.
[00:05:15]  No, so I don't like Catholicism because it seems like regular Christianity, but run by a bunch of really rich, evil gay guys.
[00:05:22]  And it's like centralized.
[00:05:24]  Yeah.
[00:05:25]  But it's like, it's like a thousand or whatever, they say 2,000 years of like rich, evil gay guys making a religion.
[00:05:32]  That's scary to me.
[00:05:35]  I'm going to say the Protestant is the one that I would pick because, because, Liz, there's less rules than the other ones, but Christianity has the easiest one where I think you just have to say, sorry, I accept Jesus.
[00:05:48]  I believe you, I love you, I believe you, like right before you die, and you go to eternal paradise.
[00:05:54]  But the thing about Protestantism is, yes, there's less rules, but you're constantly in trouble because even though you don't know the rules, there are rules.
[00:06:05]  What about Pentecost?
[00:06:06]  Who are the guys who are like the people?
[00:06:07]  That's the talents.
[00:06:08]  Yeah, I think I'd be Pentecostal.
[00:06:10]  No, I don't think you should go evangelical.
[00:06:13]  Would you do some snake joking?
[00:06:14]  It seems so fun.
[00:06:15]  I heal you.
[00:06:17]  I heal you.
[00:06:17]  It's a real, this is a big problem.
[00:06:20]  I think I would do that one because it seems like, well, my criteria for religion is least amount of work to get into heaven.
[00:06:28]  It's kind of Catholicism.
[00:06:30]  No.
[00:06:30]  Oh, yeah, it kind of is.
[00:06:32]  But there's so much work on earth and then there's the.
[00:06:34]  The thing about Catholicism is that it's, she's in her decadent era.
[00:06:38]  So if you love a decadent old gal who probably doesn't have a, you know, bright future ahead of her, that's maybe a little bit decaying, maybe a little bit shabby, but still, you know, still can like pull it together for one grand old show.
[00:06:56]  We're doing that.
[00:06:57]  She might be your old dame.
[00:06:58]  If you love bright, shiny, scary, futuristic, political, but also like kind of narco vibes, I think that evangelical Christianity could be for you.
[00:07:15]  That looks really fun.
[00:07:16]  That does look really fun because you're going to like a big rock concert every weekend.
[00:07:20]  Or, you know, gangland control in the global south.
[00:07:24]  That's true.
[00:07:25]  Yeah.
[00:07:25]  Brazil, I could, yeah.
[00:07:26]  In Africa, they're everywhere.
[00:07:28]  What was the one in the favela call that we were talking about?
[00:07:31]  It's the Israel favela.
[00:07:33]  Israel favela.
[00:07:34]  Yeah.
[00:07:35]  It's Israel complex, I believe is what it's called.
[00:07:38]  Jesus Christ.
[00:07:39]  I just, I really want to go to heaven.
[00:07:41]  And I really am afraid that they're, but wouldn't they let me in?
[00:07:44]  You think if I was just good?
[00:07:46]  I mean, I haven't been that good, but like, I mean well.
[00:07:50]  And if I get to heaven, they're going to be like, oh, you weren't Christian or like you weren't Muslim or whatever.
[00:07:56]  That's the bet.
[00:07:57]  That's the wager some may say.
[00:07:59]  Yeah, but I'm like, I'm willing to go to heaven.
[00:08:04]  Why wouldn't they let me in?
[00:08:06]  But why wouldn't they let you in?
[00:08:07]  Why wouldn't they let me in?
[00:08:09]  Well, that's a question for you to think about.
[00:08:11]  Man, heaven sounds amazing.
[00:08:14]  You don't like heaven.

=== The Israel Complex Wager (03:19) ===

[00:08:15]  It's kind of boring.
[00:08:17]  You know what's not boring?
[00:08:19]  This episode that we have.
[00:08:21]  That's how many.
[00:08:21]  Let's do that again.
[00:08:22]  You know what's not boring?
[00:08:24]  This episode.
[00:08:26]  Leave the whole thing in.
[00:08:27]  Don't even cut the bad.
[00:08:28]  No, leave the whole thing.
[00:08:28]  Yeah, leave the whole thing.
[00:08:30]  You saw his hands are firmly in his lap.
[00:08:32]  Yeah, he didn't do anything.
[00:08:33]  He ain't doing that.
[00:08:34]  This episode is what he's PDSing editing.
[00:08:37]  Actually, where I will say, from where I'm sitting, it does look like he's fucking with his shit right now.
[00:08:44]  Excuse me.
[00:08:44]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:08:45]  Now it really looks like that's inappropriate, and I will file an HR complaint if you continue doing that.
[00:08:50]  PDS will be in trouble.
[00:08:52]  You both are forfeiting vacation days to be.
[00:08:54]  PDS beaten that shit.
[00:08:56]  Nope.
[00:08:56]  Nope.
[00:08:56]  We're not doing that.
[00:08:57]  We're not doing that.
[00:08:58]  And I refrained from saying that during the entire episode.
[00:09:01]  We have with us today Dylan Sabah from Palestine Leadership.
[00:09:07]  Dylan Sabah.
[00:09:08]  No, you're saying it like, what's his name?
[00:09:10]  The Morrowind guy.
[00:09:12]  Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:09:15]  Yeah, I am.
[00:09:16]  I am.
[00:09:18]  You know, I gotta stop.
[00:09:20]  That's the only thing I think of now when I see that.
[00:09:22]  Ramaswamy.
[00:09:23]  No.
[00:09:23]  That.
[00:09:24]  I hear that.
[00:09:25]  And then I think Morrowind, and I don't even know what Morrowind is.
[00:09:27]  Liz, I'm telling you, Morrowind is the last time I played a video game when I was like, I belong here.
[00:09:32]  If that, my heaven, I'm gonna tell you, right?
[00:09:34]  My heaven for me, my heaven is the streets of Vivik City.
[00:09:41]  Oh my god, in my head, all of the buildings are shaped like his head.
[00:09:45]  Not too different than that.
[00:09:46]  All the buildings are sort of shaped.
[00:09:48]  But they look like his head, kind of.
[00:09:49]  Yeah, I would love that.
[00:09:51]  I would love to get in.
[00:09:52]  I would love to live in Vivik.
[00:09:53]  I would love to enter.
[00:09:54]  Not the guy from Warmin, the real guy.
[00:09:56]  I would love to just be in him.
[00:09:58]  Ramaswamy.
[00:09:59]  Ramaswamy.
[00:10:00]  Let me in.
[00:10:00]  Let me in.
[00:10:02]  It's like a weird, it's an update to the Johnny Depp, the Ramaswamy voice.
[00:10:08]  Yeah, I hear you.
[00:10:11]  Sorry.
[00:10:12]  The thing is, I can't.
[00:10:13]  It's like a kind of like showbiz version of the Johnny Depp voice, which is somehow not show busy.
[00:10:18]  Yeah, it's not.
[00:10:18]  It's a different thing.
[00:10:19]  It's Viper Room.
[00:10:20]  He looks horrible.
[00:10:21]  Not like Broadway Bay.
[00:10:22]  I would love to be with Ramaswamy in the Viper Room doing Tuesday.
[00:10:26]  I would love to see Ramaswamy fucking drop Tucson.
[00:10:30]  I love to hear the death rattle, but not actual dying, of course.
[00:10:33]  I'm a man of peace.
[00:10:34]  But I would love to see the light fade from Ramaswamy as he like, as I don't aid him and he passes under the table that we have at the Viper Room.
[00:10:43]  And like me and the two chicks with me are just looking at him and like, it's like the end of the movie.
[00:10:47]  And we're like, man, we tricked you into partying and it turned around and bit you.
[00:10:52]  And Ramaswamy goes, no.
[00:10:56]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:10:57]  Classic morality tale.
[00:10:58]  Classic morality tale.
[00:10:59]  I'd love to be the bad guy in the Ramaswamy.
[00:11:00]  We have a real episode.
[00:11:02]  We have a real episode.
[00:11:02]  And it's a real doozy.
[00:11:04]  But it's not.
[00:11:04]  It's a doozy.
[00:11:05]  No, it's a good episode.
[00:11:07]  Yeah.
[00:11:07]  We have friend of the pod Dylan Sabah.
[00:11:10]  Yeah.
[00:11:10]  And then a late appearance from other friend of the pod, Abby Martin.
[00:11:15]  Let's start this motherfucker off.
[00:11:27]  Ladies and gentlemen, times have gotten so tough that now the Jews have to call in the Arab lawyer.

=== Palestinian Solidarity Under Siege (16:09) ===

[00:11:35]  Dylan Saba, staff attorney at Palestine Legal, is here.
[00:11:40]  You know what?
[00:11:40]  You don't need more intro than that.
[00:11:42]  This is your third time on the show.
[00:11:43]  If people haven't listened to the previous episodes that you're on, but are listening to this one, they're betrayers, frankly.
[00:11:51]  Yeah.
[00:11:52]  They hate us.
[00:11:54]  And why should I give them more information if they despise us?
[00:11:57]  Get on our website.
[00:11:58]  You can search for it and you find it.
[00:11:59]  Yeah, at podcast true or not.
[00:12:01]  You figure it out.
[00:12:01]  There's a website.
[00:12:02]  Well, that part you have to figure out.
[00:12:04]  You got to figure it out.
[00:12:05]  It's not our job to educate you.
[00:12:07]  But it is your job to educate us.
[00:12:09]  That's right.
[00:12:10]  So let's talk.
[00:12:12]  So we are having you on the show today.
[00:12:14]  That's like a thing you do to waste time when you're trying to think of the next thing to say.
[00:12:17]  So you're on the show today, basically, because Joe Biden, our Septuagarian, possibly dead, possibly dead, 28 years later, motherfucker president, is passing away at the beginning of next year.
[00:12:32]  And a boss baby is taking his place, Donald J. Trump.
[00:12:37]  Now, many say it stands for Donald Jewish Trump because of how much he loves my people, but you would say otherwise because you're a lawyer.
[00:12:45]  And people are wondering and a little freaked out because he has talked at length, although not in detail, about his plans for coming after the Palestinians and their friends here in the USA.
[00:13:00]  That's right.
[00:13:02]  So what's going to happen?
[00:13:04]  Well, we don't know.
[00:13:05]  That's the short answer.
[00:13:06]  Okay, good.
[00:13:07]  Thank you.
[00:13:08]  End of episode.
[00:13:08]  All right, we're good.
[00:13:09]  Roll credits.
[00:13:10]  This was easy.
[00:13:12]  No, but we don't know.
[00:13:14]  We don't know what's going to happen, but we do know what has happened, and we do know what the long-standing strategy has been of the Israel lobby to suppress the Palestine movement in the United States and break the bonds of solidarity with the Palestine movement domestically in the United States and the Palestine movement globally and the movement for Palestinian liberation on the ground in Palestine.
[00:13:36]  So I think it would be useful if we start by doing a pretty quick summary of what the relationship is between the Israel lobby in the United States and Congress and the U.S. government and then activism on the ground because it can help us, it can help guide our thinking for what's potentially going to come next.
[00:13:56]  So something that not a lot of people know is that terrorism as a legal category in the United States has been associated with Palestinian and with Palestinians and with the suppression of the Palestine solidarity movement in the U.S. from the very inception of the terrorism legal regime.
[00:14:16]  So I'm going to go through just a couple of, I'm going to move through some history very quickly, but a lot of what I'm going to say is covered in a white paper that was authored by scholar Darrell Lee and published by my organization, Palestine Legal, in coordination with Center for Constitutional Rights.
[00:14:34]  And it's called Anti-Palestinian at the Core, and it goes over a lot of this information.
[00:14:38]  We can link to that in the little description here.
[00:14:42]  Okay.
[00:14:43]  So the first mention of terrorism in a federal statute in the United States ever comes in 1969.
[00:14:53]  And it is a piece of legislation that imposes limits on UNRWA, which is an organization that we've talked about in detail the first time that I came on the show.
[00:15:05]  No, that's the group that did October 7th.
[00:15:07]  No.
[00:15:08]  That is the organization, the UN organization that's tasked with providing for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, but also throughout Palestinian refugees in other Arab states and elsewhere.
[00:15:22]  And so the first mention of terrorism in a U.S. federal statute is a law that prevents UNRWA assistance from entering into the hands of terrorists.
[00:15:34]  And there's no definition, right?
[00:15:36]  So from the very beginning, we get this language of terrorism in the U.S. federal statutes, and there's no definition other than it's potentially the people that UNRWA serves, which is who?
[00:15:45]  Palestinian refugees, right?
[00:15:48]  So that's at the late, that's in the late 60s.
[00:15:50]  And remember, this is the time after 1967 where the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO, really enters the scene as the representatives of the Palestinian national cause, which ruffles a lot of feathers in the United States, in particular with Israel lobby groups such as the ADL, who are very concerned about progress towards Palestinian liberation, statehood, what have you.
[00:16:15]  So then in the 70s, you see more introduction of terrorism by Congress, and this is in the category of state sponsors of terrorism.
[00:16:25]  And again, this is very tailored to the Palestine movement because the states that are named in the state sponsors of terrorism really are just the states that are showing solidarity with Palestine.
[00:16:37]  And these are like the first kind of like, okay, these are the terrorism enemies of the United States.
[00:16:42]  So we're talking here by Libya, Syria, Iran, well, I guess that would be later, but all of the groups essentially that had, or the countries, the states that had relationships with the Palestinian movement, which was most Middle Eastern states at this point.
[00:16:57]  Right.
[00:16:58]  And then fast forwarding to the late 80s, the first, and I believe the only time Congress, not the State Department, but Congress, has designated a non-state entity a terrorist organization is in 1987, and that's when they designate the PLO as a terrorist organization.
[00:17:18]  So this is like before the modern regime that we'll get into.
[00:17:22]  This is Congress kind of being like, those guys, they're bad.
[00:17:26]  and you cannot associate with them, but it's like very, it's very a la carte, but it's very narrowly targeted at the PLO.
[00:17:35]  And this comes right after the onset of the first intifal.
[00:17:40]  So I'm naming that because we're going to see a theme here, which is that moments of crisis on the ground lead to repressive actions taken and steps forward in the United States as the lobby, the Israel lobby, reacts to developments on the ground, which is like the moment that we're in now, but to like set the stage for it.
[00:17:59]  So that's in the late 80s.
[00:18:01]  And then in the 90s, the terrorism designation then makes its way both into immigration law and then the beginnings of the sanctions regime come into play under Clinton, and then also the criminal statutes.
[00:18:17]  So in immigration then, for the first time, we see that affiliation or association with a terrorist group become independent grounds for denying entry.
[00:18:26]  And this is about trying to prevent people associated from the PLO or to target people associated with the PLO.
[00:18:32]  And then we also see the beginnings of the sanctions regime where under the Clinton administration, they start directing the State Department to make lists of groups that then become targeted for their financial transactions to try and break the ability of groups in the United States to make financial contributions to Palestinian groups on the ground and break the bonds of solidarity that way.
[00:18:58]  And then very critically, it's after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that the first material support for terrorism statute is passed.
[00:19:08]  So a lot of people think this came with 9-11, but it did.
[00:19:11]  It was before.
[00:19:13]  And it's, I mean, it's not funny, but it's somewhat ironic that the Oklahoma City bombing is an act of domestic violence.
[00:19:21]  And yet the statute that's passed in its wake only targets foreign groups.
[00:19:26]  So it just shows how, and this is pushed by the ADL.
[00:19:29]  It shows how the lobby latches onto moments of panic and crisis in order to advance their repressive legislative agenda.
[00:19:40]  So that's when you see the material support for terrorism statute actually passed in 95.
[00:19:45]  And then, of course, we know after 9-11, it really kicks into high gear.
[00:19:50]  And that's when the pivot is kind of away from Palestine more narrowly and to kind of Islamophobic, anti-Muslims more broadly.
[00:20:02]  And that's where you see the Patriot Act and the kind of kicking into gear of the surveillance regime post-9-11.
[00:20:11]  And you also see a lot of, after this, after 9-11, you see a lot of civil statute prosecutions.
[00:20:16]  So Congress passes laws that give a private right of action for individuals to claim that they were victim to acts of international terrorism and they can sue private individuals.
[00:20:30]  And even after 9-11, still, most of these are about Palestine.
[00:20:36]  A lot of them are about 9-11, but more than any other country, this is about Palestine.
[00:20:41]  And they come out because, you know, so obviously 9-11 happens in 2001, but that's at the beginning of the Second Intifada as well.
[00:20:48]  So there's also crisis on the ground in Palestine.
[00:20:52]  And a lot of these civil suits are individuals who are claiming that they were victim to some attack in the Second Intifada and bringing civil suits on those grounds.
[00:21:05]  And then, yeah, so that, I mean, that like kind of loosely brings us up to the modern day because we're in the kind of like long tail of the post-9-11 surveillance regime.
[00:21:15]  But those same material support for terrorism laws, again, passed in the mid-90s and kicked into high gear in the post-9-11 era, have been really focused on going after Palestine solidarity.
[00:21:30]  And there's a marquee case where members of the Holy Land Foundation, which is a Muslim charitable giving organization, were targeted under these laws and sentenced to federal crimes under them for allegedly providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization on the ground in Gaza.
[00:21:48]  But really what they were doing is providing charitable aid to the people of Gaza.
[00:21:53]  Can I ask a clarifying question here, if I may approach the bench?
[00:21:57]  What does material support mean in this context?
[00:22:01]  So that's a really good question.
[00:22:03]  And the answer is that, frankly, we don't really know the full scope of it.
[00:22:10]  It's an extremely and intentionally vague definition.
[00:22:15]  So, you know, the statute lists off some things that we might ordinarily think of as being material support.
[00:22:23]  So sending money to a foreign terrorist organization, sending yourself personnel to a foreign terrorist organization.
[00:22:30]  A lot of the prosecutions that we see that have actually moved through the courts are about foreign fighters, people who are going and fighting for Daesh or other groups and are prosecuted on that basis.
[00:22:44]  But very critically, the material support statute extends much beyond that.
[00:22:51]  And in a case in the Supreme Court in 2010 called Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, some groups sought to ask the court to clarify what the extent of the law is because they wanted to do some stuff that they thought should clearly be protected under the First Amendment.
[00:23:10]  It was with the, they wanted to talk about nonviolent solutions with the PKK and with the Tamil Tigers.
[00:23:16]  And I also want to clarify here: I was not with the PKK, I was with the YPG, which is not listed as an FTO.
[00:23:23]  Only the PKK is, and there's no connection between the two organizations.
[00:23:27]  And so I'm not prosecutable under any of these statutes.
[00:23:30]  You are such a good client, Brace.
[00:23:32]  Not that you're my client, but I'm just a lot of guys' clients.
[00:23:36]  Because I'm sure we have a lot of lawyers listening, and if they're listening, that means that you are now Brace's lawyer.
[00:23:42]  Yes.
[00:23:42]  Yeah.
[00:23:43]  Well, I have a lot of lawyers, but I know I'm not prosecutable.
[00:23:46]  Also did not fight a foreign government, fought a non-state actor, which is not illegal under United States law.
[00:23:54]  There we go.
[00:23:54]  Beautiful.
[00:23:56]  But you're absolutely correct.
[00:23:57]  So these plaintiffs in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project wanted to do, they wanted to, you're right, provide trainings on nonviolent resolutions to the PKK and the Tamils.
[00:24:13]  They wanted to provide them some counseling on how best to petition international bodies to receive aid.
[00:24:21]  And they wanted to engage in political activity domestically to support the causes of the Tamils and the PKK.
[00:24:29]  And they asked the court, and they were like, we could do this, right?
[00:24:32]  We're a little scared because the statute's really vague.
[00:24:35]  And the court said, actually, you can't.
[00:24:36]  Actually, what you are proposing would violate the material support for terrorism laws, and you can't do it.
[00:24:44]  And the court put in a little carve out there that said, of course, you know, we would never violate the First Amendment.
[00:24:50]  So independent political activity that you're engaged in, even if it aligns with the objectives of the foreign terrorist organization, if you're not operating under the direction or control of those organizations, then it's all good.
[00:25:05]  You can do it.
[00:25:05]  And in fact, because the First Amendment protects the right to association, you could even be a member of a foreign terrorist organization.
[00:25:11]  So long as you don't provide any material support to that organization, then that's protected under the First Amendment.
[00:25:18]  Now, put a pin in that because.
[00:25:19]  Yeah, has that been really tested?
[00:25:21]  It's not been tested, and I don't know what that even means.
[00:25:25]  This is not.
[00:25:26]  I mean, I want to say this is not legal advice we're giving you here.
[00:25:29]  We never give legal advice.
[00:25:31]  That's right.
[00:25:31]  Sometimes you give legal advice.
[00:25:32]  No, I don't.
[00:25:33]  You give legal, financial, and medical advice in the show.
[00:25:35]  That's no.
[00:25:37]  But my question is: actually, Does legal resources, do legal resources fall under this material support?
[00:25:46]  They absolutely do.
[00:25:47]  Which poses all kinds of questions.
[00:25:49]  But doesn't that?
[00:25:50]  How is that enforceable?
[00:25:54]  Like, that's how I don't understand.
[00:25:56]  Yes.
[00:25:56]  Sorry, no, I mean, these are.
[00:25:58]  It seems crazy.
[00:25:59]  It is crazy.
[00:26:00]  And these are good questions, right?
[00:26:02]  And these are questions that are intentionally vague.
[00:26:05]  And the purpose of this regime, right, is to chill activity, sow division between organizations within the broader solidarity movement and confuse people, right?
[00:26:20]  And so it poses a real challenge on how to safely navigate this legal regime.
[00:26:29]  But so they put in these carve-outs in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, but they don't actually ever really spell out where the line is between being in coordination with a foreign terrorist organization and acting independently.
[00:26:49]  And again, the key takeaway here is that this vagueness is courts effectively authorizing the executive to use their wide discretion in achieving their political objectives as an end run around the First Amendment.
[00:27:10]  And that's like the key theme that I want to be the takeaway for this whole discussion here as we move from the legal regime to thinking about like how anti-Semitism is talked about and kind of contemporary attempts to police, prosecute, and chill the activity of the Palestine Solidarity Movement.
[00:27:28]  All of these are ways in which the Israel lobby and the U.S. government are trying to skirt around the protections of the First Amendment to achieve their political objectives, which is getting the whole Palestinian Solidarity movement to stop existing and shut up.

=== SJP Networks and Campus Politics (05:35) ===

[00:27:44]  So that's something that really, you know, I was just going to say it shocks me to just be like a podcast guy, but it doesn't.
[00:27:51]  I've known about this for a long time, and it's also kind of par for the course.
[00:27:55]  But what should be shocking to those who don't know much about it is it seems like a large part of our bureaucratic apparatus and also members of Congress, the Senate, and executive branch coordinate oftentimes with groups representing, I mean, you're a lawyer, so I'm going to try to be really careful here, but like groups who perhaps are in coordination with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
[00:28:23]  with the Israeli government itself, to pass laws to skirt around the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
[00:28:30]  I mean, I can't really see a way around that because especially as we'll get to later in this episode, it seems like there's just example after example after example of that.
[00:28:39]  Yeah.
[00:28:40]  Yeah.
[00:28:40]  I mean, and that's why, you know, that's why Daryl Lee and We at Palestine Legal wrote this report to show what that influence really looks like, right?
[00:28:52]  Because it's, you're right, there's like a high level of coordination.
[00:28:56]  I mean, there are independent advocacy programs.
[00:29:00]  I mean, Israel has an entire ministry basically dedicated to doing propaganda for the international community and push their narrative.
[00:29:11]  But there's also direct coordination between Israel lobby groups such as APAC, ADL, more recently, groups like the Brandeis Center in trying to achieve these political objectives.
[00:29:23]  I mean, you had, even since October, you've seen groups like the ADL and the Brandeis Center pushing, the Biden administration pushing states to apply these terrorism laws to college kids.
[00:29:38]  And they sent a letter basically asking universities across the country.
[00:29:42]  This is in late October of 2023 to investigate SJPs.
[00:29:46]  And then shortly after that, you had U.S. Congress passing resolution condemning some of these campus groups.
[00:29:55]  So by SJP, you mean Students for Justice in Palestine.
[00:29:58]  That's right.
[00:29:58]  The nationwide pro-Palestine group.
[00:30:02]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:03]  So the SJPs generally operate for the most part autonomously from one another.
[00:30:09]  There is like a broad national SJP coordinating structure.
[00:30:14]  But when I say SJPs, I mean basically the campus groups.
[00:30:17]  Like some of them are called SJPs.
[00:30:18]  Some of them are called Palestine Solidarity Committees, what have you.
[00:30:22]  And they're not like contrary, and we'll get to this when we talk about Project Esther, contrary to how they are portrayed by the Israel law.
[00:30:30]  A sophisticated network.
[00:30:31]  A sophisticated network, top-down.
[00:30:33]  They're taking instructions from X, Y, and Z.
[00:30:36]  These are, for the most part, at least what's happening on campuses are these are college kids who are like trying to do political organizing.
[00:30:42]  They're not taking instruction from anyone.
[00:30:43]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:30:44]  And it was so kind of amazing to see this coordinated rollout in the past year of Title VI complaints being filed and just like Biden really and state governors really kind of going after these groups for various reasons.
[00:31:01]  Some, you know, less, I guess, deft people being like, oh, they're terrorists, they're terrorists.
[00:31:08]  Some people who are a little more smart about it being like, oh, these groups are the cause of rising anti-Semitism on campus.
[00:31:14]  But all of them essentially going after the same thing, which is to break up these quote-unquote networks of pro-Palestine student groups on campuses in the U.S.
[00:31:23]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:31:24]  And you brought in something really key here.
[00:31:25]  So I started this by talking about the history of the terrorism regime, which is, I would say, like the blunter tool for repressing the Palestine Solidarity Movement in that it relies on a pretty like crude racist caricature of the Palestinian and the terrorist and as like the foreign, the foreign threat that risks invading our country.
[00:31:48]  And this is like, you know, that certainly has not gone away, actually.
[00:31:52]  It's probably like the dominant messaging of someone like Trump, right?
[00:31:55]  Is that there's the terrorist enemies out there and then there's the enemy within, which is like how the terrorists are whatever, penetrating our society.
[00:32:02]  But the other major element, the other track here for repression, and this is largely, I've seen it largely in the past 10 years or so, is to manipulate and pervert anti-discrimination frameworks.
[00:32:18]  And that's where the anti-Semitism stuff come in.
[00:32:21]  So there's been an attempt to redefine anti-Semitism to basically include any and all expression of anti-Zionist political sentiment.
[00:32:30]  Now, the primary target of that, of course, is Palestinians, right?
[00:32:33]  Who want to be able to talk about their lives, their experiences, their families without being labeled an anti-Semite or punished for, for example, saying my grandparents were ethnically cleansed in an act of racial violence in 1948, right?
[00:32:52]  Or, wow, it really seems like what Israel is doing is it reminds me a lot of the Nazis.
[00:33:00]  Yeah.
[00:33:00]  Well, that is, so, I mean, this is, this is, I want to stop you right there because we've talked about the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism a few times on this show, but that is a relatively newish definition of anti-Semitism.
[00:33:13]  We traced the history of that.
[00:33:15]  I can't remember which episode.
[00:33:16]  In some fucking episode, you should have listened to them all.

=== Ira's Legal Controversy (09:36) ===

[00:33:19]  That has been adopted just repeated, not repeatedly, but has been adopted more widely as the years have gone on, especially since October 7th.
[00:33:30]  Especially since October 7th.
[00:33:32]  Globally.
[00:33:33]  Globally.
[00:33:34]  And on campus, globally, and then in the U.S., just like on an institution level and then on a federal legal level, I think now.
[00:33:43]  So it has not been formally adopted federally.
[00:33:49]  And there's a reason for that.
[00:33:51]  And we should talk about it.
[00:33:52]  I mean, there's my, the reason that I think it has not been formally adopted yet.
[00:33:58]  Well, because it's a violation of the First Amendment.
[00:34:00]  Okay, yeah, that's true.
[00:34:01]  So, so, and, and, and I, and I don't like that.
[00:34:05]  There's a lot of contradictions in a lot of these like political and legal claims that are being made.
[00:34:11]  This is like very much one of them.
[00:34:13]  Wait, I want to step in real quick and say this also, the IHRA definition specifically is modeled after European, or it comes from EU speech regulations on hate speech.
[00:34:25]  The EU does not have free speech.
[00:34:27]  Like a lot of or a lot of EU countries do not have free speech.
[00:34:31]  The First Amendment is, I'm not going to say unique, but a it is pretty fucking unique.
[00:34:36]  And like we don't, they don't have that in England.
[00:34:39]  Like you get, you know, arrested for a post or whatever.
[00:34:42]  We have that here.
[00:34:43]  And so there's some problems with adopting something like that.
[00:34:46]  And I certainly don't want to validize the First Amendment.
[00:34:48]  I'm a bit of a hater of it.
[00:34:50]  And especially in the recent, in like kind of recent juridical history, it's mostly been used to do bad things.
[00:34:56]  You say druidical history?
[00:34:57]  Juridical.
[00:34:58]  Oh, juridical.
[00:34:59]  Juridical, yeah.
[00:35:01]  Okay.
[00:35:01]  Your way is kind of cool to have.
[00:35:07]  Two different flavors.
[00:35:09]  That's right.
[00:35:10]  But yeah, like, so, you know, what is the what has the First Amendment been used for recently?
[00:35:15]  Permission for big shop owners in Colorado to discriminate against gay people.
[00:35:20]  Abolishing or like trying to abolish public sector unionization.
[00:35:26]  Yeah.
[00:35:27]  Getting rid of campaign finance or for, right?
[00:35:29]  Like this is like what the First Amendment is used for.
[00:35:33]  But it also has some protections, right?
[00:35:37]  And my assessment is that the hesitation around doing a hard implementation of IRA is that it would face, I mean, I can guarantee it would face legal challenge.
[00:35:48]  Yeah.
[00:35:48]  Right.
[00:35:49]  So, you know, it would be a big lawsuit.
[00:35:51]  And it's not like you can necessarily count on the courts to do the right thing, right?
[00:35:57]  Especially when it comes to Palestine.
[00:35:59]  Court, you know, that's their job, right?
[00:36:00]  Their job is to figure out how to allow the feds to do the bad stuff.
[00:36:05]  But they also, you know, in the way that the state plays the role of limiting the worst excesses of the ruling class, kind of across the board, that is also, in some instances, the role that the court plays.
[00:36:18]  And so I think that there is some hesitation around actually bringing this across the finish line because there is risk of legal challenge and people don't fully know how that would resolve.
[00:36:33]  Just really quick, sorry, just for our listeners who haven't listened to our other episodes, can you really quick explain what the IHRA is?
[00:36:41]  What the IHRA is, but what it specifically is coming up ahead against with the First Amendment would make those kind of claims, legal claims, pretty simple.
[00:36:53]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:53]  So the IHRA definition is a it's a it's a definition of anti-Semitism that on its face actually sounds pretty reasonable when you read the core text of it.
[00:37:05]  But the issue is that it comes with all of these explanatory examples.
[00:37:09]  And the majority of the examples have to do with Israel, right?
[00:37:13]  And when you read it, when you read them, it becomes very clear that this is a tool of repressing or repressing pro-Palestine speech.
[00:37:19]  It includes things like comparing Israel and Zionism to the Nazis calling the founding of the Israel a racist endeavor, things like that.
[00:37:36]  And the problem is that the First Amendment prevents the federal government or its agents from engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
[00:37:46]  So you can't actually condition receipt of federal benefits on holding a particular political view.
[00:37:54]  So you can have viewpoint neutral ways of regulating discrimination, but when you cross the line into saying these political opinions are non-expressible or you will be punished or sanctioned by a representative of the government for holding them, that's where you cross the line on the First Amendment.
[00:38:17]  So what's the strategy then, right?
[00:38:19]  So if they're like, and I may be wrong and they may just do this, right?
[00:38:25]  And set up a court case.
[00:38:26]  I kind of hope they do because I think it's ripe for a legal challenge.
[00:38:30]  But what they're trying to do right now is just really encourage the IRA definition, right?
[00:38:39]  So you'll see this was kind of a little mini controversy, right?
[00:38:43]  Because AOC actually signed on to one of these resolutions, these non-binding resolutions that's like, hey, we encourage this.
[00:38:52]  Just consider it with some other definitions.
[00:38:54]  A soft push.
[00:38:55]  A soft push, right?
[00:38:56]  We strongly, you know, take a look.
[00:38:58]  Hey, just putting the IRA definition in front of their face and say, you don't have to.
[00:39:01]  But it looks pretty good, right?
[00:39:03]  But if they look at it, it makes sense, right?
[00:39:05]  And I would disagree with this.
[00:39:06]  Respect to Corbyn because the IRA definition was such a huge part of the cudgel that they used to get his ass out of there.
[00:39:15]  Yeah.
[00:39:27]  So yeah, that's, that's basically, that's the two prong strategy, right?
[00:39:32]  Is use the terrorism laws to surveil chill expression, give rise to civil suits.
[00:39:42]  And the civil suits often too are targeted at Palestine movement organizations.
[00:39:46]  So we can talk to also movement threats to movement organizations in the context of Project Esther.
[00:39:52]  I think we should talk about the nonprofit killer bill as well.
[00:39:55]  But the civil suits often are to tie up movement organizations in litigation that even if they don't win, the Zionists don't win their suit, they have taken up all these resources.
[00:40:08]  So there's the surveillance, there's the chilled speech, there's civil suits, and there's criminal prosecutions, and there's sanctions, isolating entities from one another.
[00:40:20]  That's happening on the terrorism track.
[00:40:22]  At the same time, there's like a softer push to chill expression by and also drum up culture panic.
[00:40:30]  Yes.
[00:40:31]  The cultural panic is also key in A, pushing these, like, you know, creating the basis for these, this legislative action, but also with associating with other reactionary pushes in the United States, you know, that the kind of like anti-critical race theory panic or whatever.
[00:40:50]  They, you know, they get in bed, the Zionists and the Christian nationalists to, you know, to make their push.
[00:40:57]  And all of that's happening under the auspice of, you know, the rising tide of anti-Semitism, which also is connected to the ADL, right?
[00:41:04]  So ADL is playing both games because the ADL also takes it as their mission to be quote unquote tracking anti-Semitism.
[00:41:13]  Now, because they define anti-Semitism to include all these actions of Palestine solidarity and expression and protest whatsoever, they then put, you know, that's in their methodology.
[00:41:23]  Then they point to their own data and say, look, anti-Semitism's on the rise, right?
[00:41:28]  Because they're including all of this Palestine action and then use that as the basis to pass more repressive.
[00:41:33]  Yeah, I just want to read real quick from an article that came out in the Jewish Daily Forward, which of course Dylan is on the masthead of.
[00:41:43]  But this came out in January 10th, 2024.
[00:41:47]  The Anti-Defamation League released a report Wednesday listing more than 3,000 anti-Semitic incidents committed in the three months since October 7th, a stunning figure that tops full year tallies for every year except 2022.
[00:42:02]  Jonathan Greenblatt, the group's chief executive, said in an embargoed news release that the count, which the group calculated at 360% higher than the same period in 2022, represented a threat to Jews, quote, unprecedented in modern history.
[00:42:19]  But the ADL acknowledged in a statement to the forward that it significantly broadened its definition of anti-Semitic incidents following the October 7th Hamas attack to include rallies that feature, quote, anti-Zionist chants and slogans, events that appear to account for around 1,317 of the total count.
[00:42:40]  I mean, for anybody that has just started paying attention, who thinks of the ADL as just some like fucking, I don't know, BLM Global Foundation style group for the Yehudis, wrong.
[00:42:51]  ADL is a fucking scum group of scumbags.

=== ADL's Expanding Definition Controversy (10:54) ===

[00:42:56]  I'm saying this, not my lawyer.
[00:42:57]  Of scum groups, they're scumbags.
[00:43:00]  I fucking hate Greenblatt.
[00:43:01]  I fucking hate all these pieces of shit.
[00:43:04]  And their entire project is to stamp down on any criticism of Israel.
[00:43:09]  These people don't care about like Jews.
[00:43:11]  They care about Israel.
[00:43:12]  I want to say too, really quick, that like the discrimination front, you know, if we're talking about these like two prongs of attack or two roads of attack, legal modes, like that, the way that that gets enforced mostly is through the Department of Education and through, at least when we're talking about the state coming in, right?
[00:43:33]  You see like pressure placed on, you know, Meta and Twitter or X or whatever.
[00:43:40]  Not that anyone has to put pressure on Elon for anything.
[00:43:42]  But on, you know, clamping down on speech on social media.
[00:43:46]  Okay.
[00:43:47]  But the federal government is, you know, it's really going after universities for Title VI violations under the Civil Rights Act.
[00:43:56]  And so that's where it really like, I just want to kind of talk about that enforcement mechanism because as we're looking at this transition period from one sleepy to another, you know, I mean, I think that there's like a lot of questions, or at least I have questions of like, okay, since October 7th and before, which is important, but especially since October 7th, it's not like the Biden admin has been trying to protect groups, right?
[00:44:24]  They have been utilizing a lot of the legal regime that you have so expertly laid out that has been built for decades and has been this kind of slow build, enabled, you know, as a way to kind of go after organizations, activists, you know, whatever, speech, general speech.
[00:44:45]  But like we started the episode off saying, like, it seems like the Trump admin is primed to kind of use these weapons either more forcefully or in more kind of insane gesticulating ways and violent ways.
[00:45:03]  And I think like, I don't know, I always think about like Bill Ackman, right?
[00:45:07]  Someone who got like insanely radicalized, it seems like, on, you know, after October 7th, really going after all these people and how much Trump's reelection was really like bolstered by this unique moment of really pandering to like right-wing Zionist organizations and like newly activated anti-woke and also like extremely pro-Israel big money makers like Ackman, right?
[00:45:36]  And they're going to want something from the admin.
[00:45:39]  And so I'm just kind of wondering what we can kind of look at.
[00:45:42]  Yeah.
[00:45:43]  So, I mean, it's really, it's really interesting because the push to leverage anti-discrimination law through the Department of Education's authority over Title VI of the Federal Civil Rights Act, which is what we're talking about.
[00:45:59]  We're talking about, you know, the Civil Rights Act that was passed, you know, in the civil rights movement, creates a prohibition on national origin discrimination for federal institutions, anyone that's receiving federal funding.
[00:46:10]  Yeah.
[00:46:10]  So you can get your federal funding cut off if you're engaging in national origin discrimination, which has been, you know, the definition for the purpose of Title VI includes shared ancestry.
[00:46:24]  And so really, in the past decade or so, and more recently in like the past five years, Zionist organizations have leveraged this strategy of bringing Title VI complaints.
[00:46:41]  And this actually started, or this really kicked into high gear under Trump 1, the Trump 1 administration.
[00:46:47]  There's this guy, Kenneth Marcus, who is an appointee for the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, which oversees Title VI, right?
[00:46:56]  So there was a concerted effort to first define the statute to include anti-Jewish discrimination because it doesn't on its text proclude religious discrimination.
[00:47:08]  But so that's like the push to include shared ancestry, which is not in and of itself a bad thing because a lot can come in that we would probably want in under shared ancestry.
[00:47:18]  But there is this attempt, again, to leverage this regime in order to go at the Palestine movement under the broad umbrella of anti-Semitism.
[00:47:29]  And it hasn't actually been all that successful on the level of the federal government itself.
[00:47:38]  And what I mean by that is there actually haven't, the Department of Education has never found that an institution is engaging in anti-Semitism by allowing a hostile environment by having anti-Zionism on campus.
[00:47:54]  They've tried many times, right?
[00:47:56]  They've brought many of these complaints, but none of them have been successful.
[00:48:00]  And I think in part, because it comes right up against the First Amendment, right?
[00:48:04]  And there's the real hesitation of crossing that line for what it means.
[00:48:08]  A lot of the people who work in the Department of Education, the Office for Civil Rights, these are career bureaucrats, right?
[00:48:14]  They're libs for the most part.
[00:48:16]  They have like an honest intention of getting it right.
[00:48:21]  And so there hasn't been all that much success on that front.
[00:48:26]  Now, Trump administration passed an executive order that, again, encourages the Department of Education to consider the IHRA definition, but they haven't actually won any of their cases.
[00:48:41]  Now, that's not to say that the strategy has been a flop, right?
[00:48:44]  Because what they've been able to do is scare the shit out of universities.
[00:48:49]  So they bring these cases, and then sometimes they're resolved through resolutions where Before a finding of violation, the university is like, okay, well, we'll change our policies.
[00:49:03]  We'll do X, Y, and Z.
[00:49:06]  And also, because you can bring Title VI claims as a lawsuit, too, not just like filing a complaint to the Department of Education, you can actually sue someone in court, sue a university in court.
[00:49:15]  And so Zionist groups have brought these kinds of lawsuits also in court.
[00:49:20]  Now, the flip side of this, though, is that on our side, we've also been bringing similar claims, right?
[00:49:28]  So we have been filing a ton of complaints, and this started a couple of years ago in Florida, but we've brought over a dozen, and other institutions, other organizations have brought these as well, saying that these institutions are engaging in anti-Palestinian racism by allowing hostile environments on their campus for Palestinians where people are harassed, smeared, physical attacks, spat on, hijab, what have you, right?
[00:49:55]  Like all of this has been going on before October 7th, but certainly since.
[00:49:59]  So we've got these cross waves of complaints going into the Department of Education.
[00:50:07]  And the Department of Education is like trying to figure out, right?
[00:50:11]  Because if you can't, they're in a position where if they grant both of them or if they like acknowledge the theories of both of them, then they may be in a situation where the university, they're giving conflicting guidance to the universities.
[00:50:26]  Rights coming up against each other.
[00:50:28]  Exactly.
[00:50:28]  So the feds have been hesitant and the Zionists themselves are, I think, at this point, even maybe reconsidering about the utility of this strategy.
[00:50:42]  Now, again, I can't predict where things will go.
[00:50:45]  It's totally possible that Marcus is back or someone else is back.
[00:50:50]  I mean, it's fucking Linda McMahon is now the secretary.
[00:50:53]  Oh my God, I totally forgot.
[00:50:54]  I forgot about that of education.
[00:50:56]  Well, maybe she might be there to just destroy the whole department, which we could talk about.
[00:51:02]  And well, that's a good point, right?
[00:51:03]  Because the other tension here, not just the tension of these cross-claims, is the tension between the Zionist attempt to leverage the civil rights framework and the broader Trumpian and right-wing push-off dismantling the ability for them to do so.
[00:51:23]  We actually just want to abolish higher education.
[00:51:26]  Fuck the university's full stop.
[00:51:28]  Yeah, and a huge push from a lot of Trump's backers to abolish the Civil Rights Act.
[00:51:34]  Right.
[00:51:35]  A lot of them trace essentially all of our current ills back to that law.
[00:51:40]  Totally.
[00:51:41]  And they're not, I mean, they're not going to do.
[00:51:43]  I mean, they're not going to abolish the Department of Education.
[00:51:45]  I don't think.
[00:51:46]  It would be pretty crazy.
[00:51:48]  Never make predictions on this show.
[00:51:50]  There's one thing I've learned.
[00:51:51]  It's never make predictions.
[00:51:52]  No idea what they're going to do, but I'd know that, I mean, you mentioned the kind of the role of career civil servants and their like classic image of them of just like, I just am trying to do what I'm told and I know what the rules are and I'm doing a good job and I'm here to serve, right?
[00:52:07]  That's the deep state.
[00:52:08]  Yeah, well, I mean, no, but it should be said that like, you know, the Trump admin wanting to pass Schedule F executive order, allowing them to actually fire career civil servants, you know, is that would be a way for them to kind of get rid of some of the roadblocks there.
[00:52:23]  You know, the more extreme, I don't, I agree with you that I think it would be really very legally complicated for them to abolish the Department of Education because I don't think that you can do it through executive order.
[00:52:36]  I think it has to go through Congress, which is like, and you probably, I think you need a majority, which would be very complicated.
[00:52:41]  However, it can be in name, you know, all but in name.
[00:52:46]  Starve it, yeah.
[00:52:46]  You can do a lot of things.
[00:52:47]  And you can move, for example, you can very easily move the responsibilities of doling out financial aid and all of that to the treasury and then move all civil rights jurisdiction to Department of Justice.
[00:53:02]  So that is actually precisely what they've been talking about is moving the civil rights stuff to DOJ, which I think could never get political.
[00:53:11]  Never gets political.
[00:53:14]  And I think that could end us up.
[00:53:17]  We could end up in a different place than we are right now with that.
[00:53:22]  I want to switch gears a little bit right now to talk about just briefly some of the proposed plans, either from Trump world or surrounding Trump world, that have to do with beating down on Palestine activism after he takes office.

=== Proposed Nonprofit Killers Bill (15:46) ===

[00:53:50]  So first thing I want I want to mention here is what's called the it's like the nonprofit killer bill.
[00:53:56]  That's right.
[00:53:56]  Which actually at first I was like interesting.
[00:53:59]  I like that.
[00:54:00]  Because I famously, in fact, and this should be shared by many people, most nonprofits are horrible.
[00:54:08]  It's not an industry that I co-sign, but that is not exactly the intent of this bill to just kill nonprofits.
[00:54:16]  If that was the case, we were killing every single nonprofit in the country.
[00:54:19]  Yeah, you might have an argument there.
[00:54:21]  That is not the case.
[00:54:22]  So it's currently in Congress right now, I believe.
[00:54:26]  It's HR 9495, the Stop Terror Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.
[00:54:35]  So if you have paid attention to those little magic school bus, whatever the motherfucking thing is, the bills on, I'm just a bill motherfucker.
[00:54:41]  And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.
[00:54:44]  On the steps or whatever.
[00:54:46]  No, the little guy.
[00:54:47]  You'll notice that they oftentimes like put two things, they'll put more than one thing in each bill, right?
[00:54:52]  And so stop tax penalties on American hostages.
[00:54:56]  That's something I can get behind.
[00:54:57]  I don't want anybody to pay taxes.
[00:54:59]  And you might just be saying that because, oh, he's a podcaster, but no, I don't want to pay for bombs or roads or anything.
[00:55:06]  I hate this country.
[00:55:07]  I'm just playing.
[00:55:08]  But part of the bill is to, it stops late tax fees for people who are held hostage.
[00:55:15]  and their spouses.
[00:55:16]  So like if you're held hostage, you're not going to be able to do that.
[00:55:18]  That thing that so many people find themselves.
[00:55:21]  That classic thing.
[00:55:22]  But maybe these days, you know?
[00:55:24]  You know, there's some of these guys in Gaza right now.
[00:55:27]  If you find yourself in Ga, if you find yourself at a music festival and then perhaps in Gaza, you will not get a late tax bill.
[00:55:33]  Okay, you know what?
[00:55:34]  Fine with me.
[00:55:34]  But then the second half of the legislation is a little interesting.
[00:55:38]  It says, terminates tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.
[00:55:42]  Now, I want to make it clear, the woman who introduced this bill, her name is Claudia Tenney.
[00:55:47]  She's a congresswoman from upstate New York, and she also introduced bills to cut off unraw funding.
[00:55:51]  Her top contributor by far was APAC.
[00:55:55]  And I also read a three-page letter that this woman wrote, I guess, refuting point by point a CBC, which is Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, YouTube video on the Israel-Palestine conflict that she says, I guess, was showed in like a school somewhere in New York.
[00:56:12]  Which is, she's not just saying you shouldn't write this.
[00:56:15]  She's arguing with the video in a letter to the New York Department of Education.
[00:56:20]  Everyone's going after Canada right now.
[00:56:22]  Yeah, which is funny because the CBC is not exactly the most pro-Palestine organization to ever exist.
[00:56:26]  We're Canada.
[00:56:27]  I know.
[00:56:27]  Poor Canada.
[00:56:28]  We should invade them, though.
[00:56:28]  I actually really do believe that.
[00:56:30]  I don't think that Trump should invade them, but I think that if we do get to, I mean, I've said this in the show before, like, I think it's ridiculous to think that after socialism, we'll have a Canada.
[00:56:38]  But that's just.
[00:56:39]  I do think that if we are going to invade, then Trudeau has to stay.
[00:56:43]  Yeah, he has to stay.
[00:56:44]  Because it's funding.
[00:56:45]  Trump said he could be governor.
[00:56:46]  He did.
[00:56:46]  He did say that.
[00:56:47]  He's like, I'll let you be governor.
[00:56:48]  It'd be, by the way, the worst state in America if that happens.
[00:56:50]  Is Trudeau leaving?
[00:56:51]  What's happening?
[00:56:51]  There's rumor because Christia Friedland just stepped down.
[00:56:56]  But so there's rumors.
[00:56:57]  There's a bunch of rumors that Trudeau isn't going to last.
[00:57:00]  I don't know.
[00:57:01]  Yeah, I think his time is.
[00:57:02]  One by one across the West.
[00:57:05]  Incumbents are down.
[00:57:06]  So kind of going back to what we were saying earlier.
[00:57:09]  Terminates the tax-exempt status of terrorist-supporting organizations.
[00:57:13]  What the fuck does that mean?
[00:57:15]  It means whatever the executive wants it to mean.
[00:57:17]  Okay, good.
[00:57:18]  That's good.
[00:57:19]  So what this bill does, right, it gives the executive wide authority to, without any kind of due process, just name organizations, call them terrorist supporting, and then direct the treasury to revoke their tax-exempt status.
[00:57:36]  And, you know, obviously this is hugely concerning, right?
[00:57:41]  Yeah.
[00:57:41]  It's hugely concerning because of executive overreach, because of the opportunity for them to use this to target politically dissident groups.
[00:57:52]  When we think about the consequences of losing tax-exempt status, it's not the end of the world.
[00:57:59]  There are other ways to incorporate as an organization, obviously.
[00:58:02]  It's getting your bread up.
[00:58:03]  Yeah, I mean, it's certainly very annoying and it would make things complicated.
[00:58:10]  But the IRS is also just another weapon that the government can use to go after and bury people in paperwork and cost and so many things.
[00:58:20]  So there's two things.
[00:58:22]  I guess there's three.
[00:58:24]  There's that, which is that, again, yeah, you just create problems for organizations that they then need to spend their limited resources dealing with.
[00:58:35]  There's also the possibility that that then becomes evidence for some other entity to sanction an organization.
[00:58:47]  So say, for instance, like I'm in, I'm going to make up a group like Friends of Palestine or whatever, and we lose our 501c3 or 3C, whatever it is.
[00:58:58]  We lose our nonprofit tax exempt status via this act.
[00:59:04]  That could be that I could be sanctioned by another federal government agency for, because that's evidence that I support terrorism.
[00:59:12]  I would certainly not, I would oppose that logic entirely, but I'm naming it as a risk.
[00:59:17]  Yeah.
[00:59:18]  So I don't think that there's any justification for doing that.
[00:59:22]  But one risk that I'm identifying is that if under this bill, an organization without any process is named, then that could hypothetically be treated as evidence for imposing sanctions on that organization, right?
[00:59:37]  Gotcha.
[00:59:37]  So there's the bureaucracy or like the kind of dominating resources risk that we just talked about.
[00:59:44]  There's the risk that this then snowballs into more targeted repression.
[00:59:49]  And then the third risk is something that I want to talk about, and I think we should talk about in the context of Project Esther.
[00:59:54]  So maybe we can kind of like move there.
[00:59:57]  But the risk that I see as potentially one of the most immediate threats is that this allows the government to be in a position of pitting movement organizations against one another.
[01:00:13]  How so?
[01:00:14]  Because a lot of this stuff operates, at least for them, on the level of association, right?
[01:00:21]  And movements exist in an ecosystem with one another, right?
[01:00:25]  Movement organizations exist in an ecosystem of the broader movement, right?
[01:00:30]  So groups work with each other all the time, shared membership, work on projects together, co-sponsored things, what have you.
[01:00:36]  If you have one group in the movement that is picked off and targeted, that makes it much riskier for other groups in the movement to associate with that group.
[01:00:48]  Isolate everyone.
[01:00:50]  That's right.
[01:00:51]  And if you look at some of the legislative history of some of these efforts, and again, bringing back the ADL, right?
[01:00:58]  Bringing back in the Israel lobby, it is part and parcel of their strategy here to make groups, especially when it comes to sanctions, right?
[01:01:06]  They want to make groups toxic.
[01:01:09]  That's their strategy, right?
[01:01:11]  Pick a group, make them toxic, follow the associations.
[01:01:15]  And the real threat that, I mean, so there's the hard threat that that poses in terms of consequences, and then the softer threat of this poses real challenges to a movement that wants to maintain cohesion, kind of collective movement defense in an environment where the federal government is intentionally trying to pit organizations against one another.
[01:01:34]  So we should mention here that there is actually a pretty recent example of this happening with the labeling of the group Sammy Dune as a appendage of the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is listed by the U.S. government as a foreign terror organization.
[01:01:52]  Sammy Dune is a prisoner support network for Palestinian prisoners.
[01:01:57]  It is all over Europe.
[01:01:59]  It is in the U.S., it's in Canada.
[01:02:02]  Actually, when I was in Europe, I was talking to, there was a guy there who was like, yeah, I'm in Sammy Dune, but I'm not allowed to be open about it or really tell anybody about it because it's actually illegal in the country that we were in.
[01:02:17]  And after October 7th, one of the major things that the government did was they moved, the Biden regime did is they moved to, and the Trudeau regime moved to label Sammy Dune as in a sort of vague way as being connected to an FTO, a foreign terror organization.
[01:02:35]  Yeah, so the recent designation came under the Treasury kind of sanctions program, which is an organization called OFAC.
[01:02:44]  And they designated Sami Dune as organizationally as specially designated global terrorists, which is a sanction designation that basically operates in parallel to the material support for terrorism regime.
[01:02:57]  So it's like being an FTO in terms Of what kind of associations organizations can legally or permissibly enter into with that group.
[01:03:08]  But yeah, that's a perfect example of how these things come into practice.
[01:03:15]  So, one thing that I see, especially in terms of people trying to anticipate the consequences of something like the nonprofit killer bill, is like there's this fear that, you know, all of a sudden all the nonprofits are going to be anyone left of center is going to be a target, that they're going to go after everyone from the ACLU down to your like little literary magazine.
[01:03:40]  And that's, that's, I don't think that's going to happen, right?
[01:03:44]  And I don't think that that's really the major risk here.
[01:03:48]  I think that the risk here is about particular groups being targeted and in particular, Palestine groups that are targeted, right?
[01:03:56]  In an attempt to sow division, not only within the Palestine movement in terms of association, but also to split off Palestine from the left, right?
[01:04:04]  I think that's really where things are going to go in terms of the concerted strategy of the Zionist movement and potentially the Trump administration when it comes to this stuff, which means that that's what we need to be anticipating, right?
[01:04:17]  That's what we as a movement need to be planning for is how to hold those bonds of solidarity together against these threats, develop systems for mutual defense, mutual support, and not allow that strategy of division to be effective.
[01:04:33]  And it's a big challenge.
[01:04:34]  Well, that's, I mean, to get to Project Esther, which is a Heritage Foundation sort of white paper, I guess, a plan for the Trump administration.
[01:04:44]  Somewhat, it came out after Project 2025, but I think it's sort of projects.
[01:04:50]  It's in the universe, the multiverse.
[01:04:52]  On Joe Recentment happened, and they were like, oh, wait, we need to do some Palestine repression in here, too.
[01:04:57]  Like, that's got to be in there.
[01:04:58]  After some, they're like, addendum time.
[01:05:00]  We need to make sure that this includes including the project.
[01:05:02]  So in Project.
[01:05:03]  It's great goofy.
[01:05:03]  It's straight up goofy.
[01:05:05]  It is such like, I've never, I don't, like, this is not my world.
[01:05:08]  You know what I mean?
[01:05:09]  I'm not reading a lot of like, like, foundation white papers for the government.
[01:05:13]  Sometimes I do, but like, this is such, like, half of this could just be cut and the exact same message would get across.
[01:05:21]  They're pumping up the word count on this motherfucker.
[01:05:25]  It is essentially a plan for the Heritage Foundation that very explicitly makes the case for the government going after pro-Palestine organizations that they name, the groups that disperse funds to those organizations.
[01:05:38]  And there is definitely allusions here to using that model to go after other left-wing cause celeb or however you say it, celebrate, you know what I'm saying?
[01:05:48]  How you say it?
[01:05:49]  Cause celeb, I think it's cause celebs.
[01:05:51]  Thank you.
[01:05:53]  And it's so funny because they identify the Hamas Support Network, HSN, which they put in little parentheses at the time, and then Hamas Support Organization, HSOs, which they make absolutely no distinction between the Space Shops.
[01:06:07]  Can't call something HSN.
[01:06:08]  That's the home shopping network.
[01:06:12]  And there's a funny paragraph in here.
[01:06:13]  There is risk both in doing nothing and in doing something.
[01:06:16]  If left alone, the HSN and its affiliate Hamas support organizations could become irrelevant or discredit themselves.
[01:06:23]  Although current trends and geopolitical conditions do not support this conclusion.
[01:06:26]  That's good at least.
[01:06:27]  At the same time, if Project Esther succeeds, it could reinforce a, quote, blood libel narrative in lending credence to an HSN, quote, blame the Jews mantra and expand anti-Semitism.
[01:06:37]  It is therefore upon us to integrate measures to mitigate the negative consequences that could result from success.
[01:06:42]  Although the HSN and the individual HSOs that comprise it, such as National Students for Justice in Palestine, alternatively known as a Palestine Solidarity Committee, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace, and Sammy Dune, along with such financial supporters as the Westchester's People's Action Coalition Foundation, Alliance for Global Justice, the Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, to name a few, have risen to the fore of American public's view since Hamas initiated its war against Israels and the Jews.
[01:07:09]  The network has been active for years, infiltrating and entrenching itself in key institutions across the United States.
[01:07:14]  So what they're very clear here is an attack on sort of the nonprofits that the constellation of nonprofits of the left.
[01:07:23]  And I think that they would be using this as a test case to destroy these networks and then go after, because like the Tides Foundation is like one of those groups that like controls money that gets sent out, right?
[01:07:36]  Yeah, and they incubate various organizations, including my employer, Palestine Legal.
[01:07:41]  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:07:42]  So you would get fucked with this.
[01:07:45]  You would lose your shit, maybe?
[01:07:47]  Well, I mean, it depends on what we're talking about, right?
[01:07:49]  Because this is not a legislative proposal, right?
[01:07:53]  This is a broader framework.
[01:07:54]  So potentially could be impacted under, for example, the nonprofit killer bill.
[01:07:59]  But the point I want to make here is that this is, in a way, it is a like forward-looking plan for what to do.
[01:08:07]  But in many respects, it is a pretty neat, although wordy, as you're right, summary of the strategy that we've discussed, right?
[01:08:17]  And a strategy that's an old one.
[01:08:20]  And the strategy, right, is to bring in what are really grassroots efforts in the United States and elsewhere in the world to support Palestinian liberation and reconstitute them as some top-down conspiracy such that they can neatly fit within the legal frameworks of terrorism, right?
[01:08:45]  So when we hear terms like quote unquote Hamas support organization, Hamas Support Network, this is a narrative intervention.
[01:08:54]  They are trying to paint a picture of something that is top-down and directed by a terrorist organization in order to create a legal fiction that there is a conspiracy here and then use the national security laws to, again, skirt the First Amendment.
[01:09:14]  So that's a good point because later in the Project Esther paper, they say we have several laws at our disposal that may help to exploit HSN and HSL vulnerabilities, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Reggie Torres, the Racketeer Influence and Corruptions Act, the RICO Act, and counterterrorism, hate speech, and immigration laws.

=== Narrative Interventions (06:04) ===

[01:09:36]  So like that is, and then they say finally, given the nature of our charge, we may seek moral guidance from relevant religious texts.
[01:09:43]  But that is like, that's a pretty clear indication that they're looking at already existing legal frameworks to employ in adopting this like overall guide, essentially.
[01:09:57]  And that's what they've been doing.
[01:09:58]  Like, that's what I'm saying.
[01:09:59]  Like, this is, they named all this.
[01:10:00]  I mean, RICO has not been used against the Palestine Solidarity Movement yet.
[01:10:03]  It's being tried against the Stop Cop City movement.
[01:10:06]  Yeah.
[01:10:06]  And I was thinking, yeah, I was thinking the other night when we were talking about this that like, I'm surprised they haven't gone after PAL action with it yet.
[01:10:16]  And I hope they don't.
[01:10:18]  But like I am just like waiting for the shoe to drop on them using it on a Palestine group.
[01:10:23]  I also want to say that like aside from the use and abuse of these laws towards Palestinian Solidarity groups, that like the there's been an explicit DOJ directive to use FARA, to use RICO statutes to go after organizations and people since at least Trump won, but even before that.
[01:10:46]  And that also continued under Biden.
[01:10:48]  And so this follows a like bigger, I want to say like move from within the state, looking within the sort of legal frameworks that are there and for legal weapons at its disposal that it can use towards like a variety of different means.
[01:11:06]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:11:07]  And you make a really good point, which I think is worth emphasizing, which is that we're not looking at a host of new threats under Trump.
[01:11:15]  We are looking at the continuation of a bipartisan strategy of using federal law, federal agencies, and the government to suppress political dissent in the United States.
[01:11:27]  And it is accelerated in different ways under different administrations, right?
[01:11:32]  Like one of the key acceleration points, right, that we talked about at the beginning of the show is in the 90s under Bill Clinton.
[01:11:39]  And a lot of this stuff is happening under the Biden administration, especially since October, directing different federal authorities to engage in surveillance and what have you.
[01:11:48]  And so in assessing what risks come under Trump, it's not what new shit are they going to trot out, right?
[01:11:56]  It's what, in the various contradictions that we've identified, how will they resolve with the forces and the personalities and the individuals that are directing this whole operation that is ongoing.
[01:12:10]  Yeah, I mean, there was talk about deporting that student from Cornell, I think it was.
[01:12:17]  And then I think they backed down from that.
[01:12:19]  But Trump has promised, I mean, no, I'm going to take that back.
[01:12:25]  Sources close to Trump have told the Times of Israel and like organizations like that that a day one executive order from Trump would be to deport students who are people here on student visas who've been to Palestine protest.
[01:12:38]  I have no idea how that would happen day one.
[01:12:41]  I mean, it just seems like, that kind of just seems like some shit you say, but I don't, I'm not, I'm not saying that that's not going to happen day five or day six or that even he won't sign an executive order to that effect day one.
[01:12:53]  I just don't really see how it can be carried out day one.
[01:12:55]  I think one of the interesting things is going to be like, and this is not to get all like legal wonky or whatever, but we're really going to see, I think, in this iteration of Trump, like the, how far his people are willing to stretch the permissibility of executive actions.
[01:13:13]  And we like saw it under the first one, but he received a lot of popular backlash.
[01:13:18]  I mean, remember the Muslim ban and the, you know, all of the popular protests and in the papers, they were really stinking up the whole joint and made it very, very difficult for him.
[01:13:28]  And he was facing a lot of internal pressure and donor pressure.
[01:13:31]  And all of that is like out the window this time.
[01:13:35]  And so it'll be really interesting, not interesting, but like it will be interesting to see like how far they go when you have, when you look at like the Trump legal team, and by legal team, I mean not his lawyers, but like his legal architects, like the guys coming in to draft all of this stuff, a lot of them believe in a really, really, really expansive executive, which again has been, this is not new to Trump, right?
[01:14:02]  I mean, this has been, we've been talking about, or I mean, everyone has been talking about the expansion of the executive since Reagan, right?
[01:14:09]  But I mean, really, like you say, lifting off during Clinton, then of course, Bush, then obviously Obama, the GOAT of EOs.
[01:14:18]  Yeah.
[01:14:19]  And so like, again, seeing where he's got all of these, these tools at his disposal, but then how far does he really want to push it?
[01:14:26]  Yeah.
[01:14:26]  Yeah.
[01:14:27]  And that's where we really don't know.
[01:14:28]  Right.
[01:14:28]  We really don't know what is how things are going to be prioritized in terms of the political capital.
[01:14:36]  I share your sense that things are going to be more effective this go-around and with less panic and less pushback.
[01:14:44]  And to your point, Brace, like, yeah, I don't know what he's going to be able to do on day one, but I fully expect that there will be EOs that include the terminology, right, from these Project Esther, and that it's, and that this is what we are looking at is they are making a case.
[01:15:02]  You know, it is as much them making law or directing new strategies as laying down a narrative, laying down a case through EOs, through these, you know, Project Esther,
[01:15:18]  through messaging, through, you know, targeted actions against individual groups to paint a false picture of how these organizations relate to each other and relate to organizations in Palestine in order to, again, and I'm in a broken record on this, get around the First Amendment.
[01:15:38]  Yeah.
[01:15:38]  Because that's the big roadblock, right?

=== Pledges, Investments, and BDS Laws (15:03) ===

[01:15:41]  You're not supposed to be able to repress political dissent in the United States.
[01:15:44]  Now, we know the history of that, right?
[01:15:46]  And there's a reason why people keep comparing this moment to the McCarthyism era.
[01:15:53]  But that's the challenge, and this is the strategy.
[01:16:04]  What an amazing segue to get us to what we're about to talk about, which is something that I think may, to the First Amendment scholars out there, provide a little something to chew on here.
[01:16:19]  which is the fact that 38 states out of 50, by the way, and yet not our 51st state, Canada or Israel?
[01:16:29]  Oh, wait.
[01:16:30]  Well, I don't know the laws in Israel, but I was going to say Israel also has anti-BDS.
[01:16:34]  Okay.
[01:16:34]  But we're talking about anti-BDS legislation in the United States.
[01:16:39]  So you might be surprised to learn that the majority of states in our country in some ways, in different ways, but in some way penalize or make illegal in some way to boycott the state of Israel.
[01:16:58]  There is, as far as I know, no other country that has any sort of similar laws in any state in America.
[01:17:06]  There might be, but I certainly haven't been able to find any.
[01:17:10]  And I want to start off here by saying BDS is a relatively new phenomenon compared to the history of Palestine.
[01:17:17]  It's 20 years old.
[01:17:18]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:17:18]  It started in 2005 from Palestinian civil society.
[01:17:23]  And it said BDS stands for boycott, divest sanctions.
[01:17:26]  And it's funny because Israel has always sort of downplayed it as being both like racist and sort of, well, it's interesting.
[01:17:33]  They both downplayed it and played it up as being like both racist but ineffective, but also a threat to Israel.
[01:17:38]  But also it shouldn't be used in the first place because it's incomparable to the thing it was based on, which is boycott and divestment and sanctions against apartheid era South Africa.
[01:17:50]  Yeah.
[01:17:51]  Yeah.
[01:17:52]  So, I mean, yeah, that's it's crazy.
[01:17:55]  It's crazy.
[01:17:57]  I really, I want you, listen, listeners, I want you to sit with that for a second, especially if you're driving.
[01:18:01]  I want you to close your eyes and think for a second that in 38 states in this country, there are laws passed that penalize or make completely illegal to boycott the state of Israel.
[01:18:16]  In some ways, I have a question.
[01:18:17]  Is it just to directly boycott or is it to support the boycott?
[01:18:20]  That's where it gets sticky.
[01:18:21]  Well, yes, it does get sticky.
[01:18:24]  Yeah, I want to make it clear.
[01:18:25]  It's not literally illegal for you to say you're boycotting.
[01:18:28]  That's right.
[01:18:28]  It's in all in all of these, because they can't do that.
[01:18:32]  But what they can do is they've done as much as they can, which makes it illegal for the state to do business with you.
[01:18:38]  Yeah, so these laws look different in different states.
[01:18:41]  And I know how this works in New York because I'm a part attorney in New York and I've taken a closer look at that.
[01:18:49]  But you're right.
[01:18:51]  So a huge number of states have passed some law or executive order that attempt to limit your ability as an organization, individual, to engage in BDS.
[01:19:05]  And again, the real problem here is that you have a First Amendment right to engage in a boycott, right?
[01:19:11]  This is like a form of speech.
[01:19:14]  And has already been challenged at the Supreme Court.
[01:19:16]  The Supreme Court has said this a number of times that you have a right to a boycott.
[01:19:20]  So maybe they want to try it again.
[01:19:22]  Yeah.
[01:19:23]  They actually don't.
[01:19:23]  No, I think they purposely didn't.
[01:19:25]  I'm sure because they will.
[01:19:27]  Right.
[01:19:27]  And so we'll talk about what the legal strategy is here because the main objective is to stamp out Palestine solidarity activism, grassroots organizing engagement.
[01:19:41]  So they want everyone in the United States to think that they don't have a constitutional right to engage in a boycott.
[01:19:48]  They want people to think that BDS is illegal.
[01:19:51]  You have to buy Sabra.
[01:19:53]  Yeah.
[01:19:53]  In fact, part of the win for them, right, is this headline that 38 states have criminalized whatever.
[01:20:02]  It's usually not criminal, right?
[01:20:03]  But have put in some limitation on the ability to engage in boycotts.
[01:20:10]  But when we get into the, I mean, and they have real consequences, right?
[01:20:16]  So real people are prevented from getting contracts with the state.
[01:20:21]  We will be talking to one of those at the end of this episode.
[01:20:23]  So I certainly do not mean to downplay the actual legal effect of this, but there is a lot of confusion around what these actually prohibit.
[01:20:34]  And I encounter this in New York all the time, right?
[01:20:36]  Where organizations are like, well, how could we do this?
[01:20:38]  Because BDS is illegal in New York, right?
[01:20:41]  And then I explained to them that actually what the law in New York is, is an executive order from the entities controlled by the New York state executive cannot invest in financial institutions that are engaged in a boycott.
[01:21:07]  Interesting, because so I was looking at the, because that executive order requires a blacklist maintained by the New York state executive that is updated, I think, every 180 days.
[01:21:20]  And it's available online.
[01:21:21]  I looked at it.
[01:21:22]  I'm looking at it right now.
[01:21:23]  And there are 11, there are only 11 companies on this.
[01:21:27]  And almost all of these seem like they are investment companies or like investments like pension funds or investment companies in mostly the Nordic states.
[01:21:39]  There is a UK like cooperative supermarket group on here.
[01:21:45]  There is a SIM card company from the UK.
[01:21:48]  And there is a Turkish dental supply company called Goligas Diz Desposu Tikaret Ve Parzarlamma Limited.
[01:21:59]  I know.
[01:21:59]  Well, but I love the Turkish accent.
[01:22:01]  But everything else in store, which is in a supermarket in Luxembourg.
[01:22:06]  It's also the Nordic states, I guess.
[01:22:08]  I know, sure.
[01:22:09]  Well, I think it seems like the Nordic states, it's like ESG law, like not laws, but like things that they put like ethical investment things prevent them from investing in.
[01:22:17]  Most firms have ESG directives and they have found very easy excuses to not divest in any kind of investment out of Israeli weapons firms.
[01:22:27]  So like, well, actually, yeah, it's funny because some of these, it's literally because they uninvested from Elbit is like one of the reasons that I think one of this is on here.
[01:22:37]  So the deal is it's like, it's like they're much actually, they're like less harsh in some states than you'd think they were, but the headline still reads, BDS is illegal.
[01:22:47]  Right.
[01:22:48]  So all the time I encounter people in New York who think that they are at risk if they engage in a BDS action, if they have any relation to a public entity whatsoever.
[01:22:56]  And that's just not, it's just not true.
[01:22:59]  Now, I can't speak for every state, right?
[01:23:00]  So some states, they're not just this direct investment and they limit the ability to get state grants unless you pledge, right, not to engage in a boycott.
[01:23:13]  Now, the ones that go further, though, end up violating the First Amendment, right?
[01:23:18]  Because you can't really do that.
[01:23:20]  And so for the most part, when these have made it to court, the courts have knocked them down or have indicated that they are going to knock them down.
[01:23:30]  And then what happens, Brace, as we were talking about, right, is then the state legislature who ever passed a law comes in and does something to just moot the case.
[01:23:42]  And what that means is that they make an amendment that say, actually, this only applies, hypothetically, right?
[01:23:50]  This only applies for contracts over $100,000.
[01:23:53]  So that one case where someone couldn't get a $2,000 grant because they refused to sign a boycott pledge that the court was like on the precipice of ruling unconstitutional, now the case is dead because it just doesn't apply anymore.
[01:24:07]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:24:08]  It's like it's, I mean, from what I understand, it's like there will be people from like the Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs who will like meet with government officials and like kind of help them figure out a way along this around this case.
[01:24:19]  Yeah.
[01:24:19]  Or around whatever case, because there have been cases.
[01:24:22]  I mean, there's a rather, I think one of my most famous examples of this is there was a town in Texas that it was, this is from 2017.
[01:24:35]  It's a headline.
[01:24:36]  Texas City tells people no Hurricane Harvey aid unless they promise not to boycott Israel.
[01:24:41]  You would decide a pledge not to boycott Israel in order to receive aid.
[01:24:44]  And like the ACLU fought that.
[01:24:46]  But like it is, it is like the way that these laws are, I know, it's like.
[01:24:51]  I mean, a lot of, you know, but then through the universities, they find like some enforcement unless you have the means and ability to get someone to help you counter sue.
[01:25:01]  Yeah.
[01:25:01]  Well, and I want to make it clear, too, is that BDS has been around since in an official form since 2005.
[01:25:08]  But none of these anti-BDS laws came about until 2015.
[01:25:13]  Now, 2015 is also just coincidentally when Gilad Erdan, one of Israel's most loathsome creatures, was at the minister, was the Minister of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy.
[01:25:28]  Now, he himself takes credit in a video that I watched for some reason the entire way through last night in various public forums.
[01:25:35]  I think this was like a Jerusalem Post or something, like, you know, sort of deal book style sitting on the stage thing.
[01:25:42]  He actually takes credit for these laws in America, a state of which is not Israel being passed.
[01:25:50]  And so it's in a 2015 press release from the Illinois state government website, Chicago, flaked by bipartisan legislators, Jewish community leaders, and the Consul General of Israel to the Midwest, Governor Bruce Rahner, today signed historic legislation making Illinois the first state in America to divest its public pension funds from companies that participate in BDS targeting Israel.
[01:26:13]  Now, the state legislature had unanimously passed that bill, heavily promoted by the Jewish United Fund, funded, which is itself and funded in part by the Pritzkers.
[01:26:21]  One of those, of course, is now the governor of Illinois.
[01:26:24]  And that was the first of the laws passed.
[01:26:28]  It seems like, from what I can gather, the two main people behind this were these various Jewish groups in the U.S. in coordination with Giladerdan and the Minister of Strategic or the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and ALEC.
[01:26:45]  That's right.
[01:26:45]  That's right.
[01:26:46]  And I think the ALEC thing can't be discounted here.
[01:26:49]  Yeah, I've definitely, because I don't even really know the American legislative, what is it?
[01:26:55]  Executive Council.
[01:26:57]  Council, yeah.
[01:26:57]  We'll check that.
[01:26:59]  Yeah, I mean, I know that Jalala's doing exchange council.
[01:27:03]  Jalal's doing his victory lap, and I'm sure that he was leaning heavy on, or the Israel, you know, Israel is leaning heavy on a lot of these state governments, but in terms of the actual work of drafting these pieces of legislation, I don't know that he did all that much because they're basically cookie cutter from other ALEC legislative efforts to punish the, or to try and take similar action against boycott of firearm companies and fossil fuel companies.
[01:27:30]  Yeah.
[01:27:31]  So that's the cookie cutter legislation.
[01:27:33]  There's a couple of different versions of it that, you know, there's like maybe three or four model pieces of legislation that they then just plug in BDS, basically.
[01:27:43]  And yeah, it's part of this broader right-wing push against the grassroots, against left-wing social movements.
[01:27:52]  And I want to return briefly, Liz, to something that you were naming a couple minutes ago, which is the distinction between, like, I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but the distinction between the alleged distinction between speech and actual economic activity.
[01:28:10]  Because one of the arguments that's not really been that successful because when you think about it for long enough, you realize that it actually doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
[01:28:17]  But one of the arguments that they try to make to explain why this is actually constitutional is they're saying, we are not, we don't want to prohibit calling for a boycott.
[01:28:28]  Yes.
[01:28:29]  That's speech.
[01:28:30]  We want to prohibit the action of boycotting.
[01:28:34]  Which makes no fucking sense.
[01:28:35]  Yeah.
[01:28:36]  Because if you are like, if you don't say anything and you just don't buy Israeli products, like, are you boycotting?
[01:28:44]  Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the speech in.
[01:28:48]  Yes, yeah, I agree with that.
[01:28:49]  But I think like this could affect people more when, like, for instance, right?
[01:28:52]  Like you're, you're in this Texas town, you're applying for Hurricane Harvey relief.
[01:28:56]  Like, okay, you know, you sign, you won't pledge not to boycott Israel.
[01:29:00]  But then like, you know, you see that fucking video of a kid using a roller skate on his fucking arm because he lost his leg as like a five-year-old boy struggling to fucking get it.
[01:29:11]  I try not to watch these videos.
[01:29:13]  That one, really tough.
[01:29:16]  And you're like, okay, well, I'm boycotting or I'm disinvesting or whatever.
[01:29:21]  Like, I'm telling my investment advisor to take all the stocks out of SodaStream.
[01:29:26]  You could be legally liable then.
[01:29:27]  Well, so they, no, you should not be a, like, that should still be a ruler.
[01:29:32]  The law says you're legally liable.
[01:29:34]  Some courts, a minority of courts.
[01:29:38]  I don't think there's maybe one example where a court has bought that argument.
[01:29:42]  This is the argument that the Zionists are pushing to try and get away with this.
[01:29:47]  But it's no constitutional argument.
[01:29:49]  Yeah, and most courts recognize it as unconstitutional.
[01:29:52]  So usually what they do will then they try to just moot the case by coming in.
[01:29:56]  If it looks like a court is about to strike it down, they will come in and try and try and moot the case.
[01:30:01]  But the argument they're making is, yeah, is this like kind of false distinction between speech and economic activity, which I will remind the listeners was the very basis of Citizens United, right?
[01:30:16]  So it's not like in a totally different context, right?
[01:30:20]  But the Supreme Court very famously has weighed in on whether this distinction like holds.
[01:30:26]  It's crazy to me.
[01:30:28]  I mean, this whole thing, I mean, even though these laws are like basically, it's almost like kind of like a signal to Israel that you rock with them or whatever from these governors, like it's still fucking crazy to me that these even exist in the first place.

=== Consulate's Crazy Law Push (12:17) ===

[01:30:44]  You know, Dylan, I know you got to get back to work right now.
[01:30:48]  What advice would you have for our listeners, maybe, who might be kind of worried about this sort of stuff?
[01:30:54]  My advice would be to not let the headlines and the scare tactics that we're seeing from Zionist organizations and even from people speaking on behalf of the Trump administration to prevent you from engaging in actions of solidarity.
[01:31:09]  One, because no matter what is going on here in terms of repression, it is nothing compared to what people on the ground in Palestine are experiencing in terms of the actual hard violence of the Israeli state funded by the United States and militarily supplied by the United States.
[01:31:22]  But also because the purpose of these is to chill your expression.
[01:31:27]  And do not forget that as fucked up as this nation is, you do have protections under the First Amendment.
[01:31:33]  So I encourage people, if you are, I'm not saying just, you know, go out and do anything and don't worry about these laws, right?
[01:31:40]  Of course you have to worry about them.
[01:31:42]  But I encourage folks to get in touch with organizations like Palestine Legal, right?
[01:31:46]  Who has a broad mandate on providing legal advice and guidance or providing referrals to people who are in the movement and they want to know how to be safe in this kind of environment.
[01:31:59]  But that's my top line advice, right?
[01:32:01]  Don't stop organizing, But do so safely and utilize the resources available to you in order to get a risk assessment, figure out how you and your organization can do a risk assessment to know how to safely navigate in a legal regime that is intentionally obfuscating and confusing and designed to get you to just decide to stay home.
[01:32:31]  Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we're joined by Abby Martin from Empire Files calling us from a rainy car somewhere in the misty depths of, I assume, Southern California.
[01:32:43]  Abby, hello, welcome to the show.
[01:32:45]  Thank you so much.
[01:32:46]  I'm actually in Portland, Oregon.
[01:32:47]  Oh, God.
[01:32:49]  We love a call-in.
[01:32:50]  We love a call-in.
[01:32:51]  You're like, oh, God.
[01:32:52]  Well, that explains the rain.
[01:32:55]  Well, Abby, you know, we've just been talking about these anti-BDS laws that are on the books.
[01:33:01]  And we're talking about how, you know, they're not exactly completely legal, a lot of the ways they use them, and then they'll change the law.
[01:33:07]  And, you know, I was thinking, hey, I know somebody that this exact thing happened to in a fairly prominent court case around it.
[01:33:15]  And that would be you in 2020.
[01:33:19]  What the fuck happened?
[01:33:22]  So yeah, no, it's pretty insane because I've been hearing about these laws forever.
[01:33:26]  I mean, I'd been covering, obviously, the anti-BDS laws my entire career.
[01:33:30]  I remember hearing about during Hurricane Harvey, like state contractors weren't able to do hurricane relief because they had to sign these anti-BDS laws.
[01:33:37]  So it was really surreal to be given one of these contracts when I was scheduled to speak at Georgia Southern University, which is a state university in Georgia.
[01:33:47]  And I was supposed to speak, give a keynote speech at a media literacy conference.
[01:33:53]  Had nothing to do with Palestine, which is just a side note of just how absurd all of this is.
[01:33:58]  So I was given this contract and I was like, oh my God, what the hell is going on?
[01:34:02]  Obviously, I'm not going to sign this.
[01:34:04]  I've been hearing about these forever.
[01:34:06]  Why is this a thing?
[01:34:07]  So no, I refuse to sign this contract because in the contract, as we know, it says like you cannot ever boycott Israel.
[01:34:15]  And I was just like, this is my entire body of work.
[01:34:17]  Like, what am I supposed to do?
[01:34:18]  Fucking take down all of my work on Palestine.
[01:34:21]  So anyway, the conference totally fell apart.
[01:34:22]  The organizers ghosted me after I refused to sign.
[01:34:26]  And so I just, I posted what happened and CARE reached out to me and represented me pro bono.
[01:34:31]  And they were like, we should fight this because this is crazy.
[01:34:34]  This is your free speech being violated.
[01:34:36]  And I didn't even realize that I had like legal recourse.
[01:34:38]  I just thought it would just go, you know, just one of these stories that never I could get any accountability for.
[01:34:44]  And so I was really happy to be a plaintiff in, I think it was March 2020 to sue the state of Georgia over the anti-BDS law.
[01:34:52]  So what happened is really fascinating and I think reveals a lot about the strategy of Israel to so, okay, so here's what happened.
[01:35:01]  I sued the state.
[01:35:03]  It was during COVID and so like it took a really long time.
[01:35:07]  Sheikh Jara popped off and all of a sudden federal judge Mark Cohen declared that I was that I won.
[01:35:14]  So it was like a really hot moment when all of this shit was popping off and I don't know if that actually helped him.
[01:35:19]  I mean anyone who's looking at the law would realize that these anti-BDS laws are totally unconstitutional and flagrantly so on their face.
[01:35:27]  So I think anyone who like studies the Constitution, if you're a constitutional lawyer, obviously you should know.
[01:35:32]  So he ruled in my favor.
[01:35:35]  A couple months later, after I declared victory and it was this great achievement, right?
[01:35:42]  And adding to all the victories across the states that have ruled these unconstitutional.
[01:35:47]  And also, by the way, Netanyahu took to Twitter to like threaten American citizens after my verdict was announced.
[01:35:55]  Wait, what do you mean?
[01:35:56]  Like, what did he say?
[01:35:59]  He took to Twitter and I think he said, I have it right here.
[01:36:01]  I think he said, anyone who boycotts us, he said, whoever boycotts us will be boycotted.
[01:36:06]  I don't know what the fuck that means.
[01:36:08]  He says, in recent years, we've had promoted laws in the U.S., in U.S. states, which will determine that strong action is to be taken against whoever tries to boycott Israel.
[01:36:17]  So he wrote this right after I won the case.
[01:36:21]  And so I took that as a direct threat that Netanyahu himself is like, we will fucking boycott you.
[01:36:26]  It's like, I don't know what you mean by that, but okay.
[01:36:30]  So then, so then here's where it gets real fucking crazy, dude.
[01:36:34]  So I was just all stoked.
[01:36:35]  I was like, great, knocked another one down.
[01:36:37]  We just need more plaintiffs to take to challenge these laws across the country.
[01:36:40]  So here's where it gets real fucking crazy.
[01:36:42]  So let me get the actual.
[01:36:44]  So in November, this is how long this took.
[01:36:47]  In November, and this was like not reported anywhere, a Georgia state legislature, legislature, excuse me, basically advocated during one of these procedures to change the law that I had already rendered like unconstitutional, that this whole court case was settled, the chapter was closed.
[01:37:09]  This person, Deborah Wilcox, state representative from Georgia, lobbied to change the law and actually said on the record, while this Israeli consulate official was next to her, and I'm going to say who the Israeli consulate official's name is, if I can get it.
[01:37:25]  I actually don't know if her name is in here.
[01:37:27]  So anyway, she said that the Israeli consulate official who's sitting next to her in the video, you can see it.
[01:37:32]  She said she asked me to change the law to up the cap, which means all of these laws across the state, if you're making $1,000, you have to sign these laws.
[01:37:43]  So it's like really applies to like working class people who are just contracted by the state.
[01:37:47]  So she said, we need to change the law to make the cap $100,000, which would mean you're way less likely to challenge it, only if you're like making that much money, right?
[01:37:58]  I mean, I don't know who the fuck makes $100,000 state contracts, but I'm assuming not, you know, not many working class folks.
[01:38:04]  So she said, this Israeli consulate official asked me to do this, and so we have to do this.
[01:38:09]  And they did.
[01:38:10]  They changed the law to up the cap.
[01:38:14]  And now the law technically still exists on the books in Georgia, even though the principle still applies, meaning you can't put a price tag on free speech.
[01:38:24]  Like the verdict still applies no matter how much you're making.
[01:38:27]  If you're making a million dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, a thousand dollars, or a fucking penny, the principle still applies that you cannot undermine someone's free speech in this way.
[01:38:38]  So it's a very cynical ploy on behalf of Israel to undermine the victories of these laws by changing them to still keep them on the books, even though, and render my case moot.
[01:38:49]  Even though if someone comes along and challenges the $100,000 revised law, they will still win in the same way that I did because the principle is still like upheld.
[01:39:00]  But it's just a very cynical way to basically have Israel say, nope, the law still exists in Georgia.
[01:39:07]  Yeah, the law still exists.
[01:39:08]  And if you want to challenge it, you're going to need resources.
[01:39:12]  And if you don't want to challenge it, or you just want to like, you know, you want to like not, you know, not be in a position where you would be violating the law, you just won't speak.
[01:39:22]  Exactly.
[01:39:23]  Even though it will inevitably, when it is challenged, be, you know, rendered moot, like you say.
[01:39:28]  Yeah, this is, we were talking about this, this with Dylan earlier.
[01:39:31]  It's like a lot of these laws, the purpose seems to be to actually just scare people into not doing anything to break the, what they either think is the law or what the law might be in the first place, even if they actually wouldn't violate the law or the law itself, like they could easily over, not easily, but like they could overturn in court because it's a, it's a clear violation of the First Amendment.
[01:39:50]  Yeah, and I want to shout out this guy, the Israeli consulate official.
[01:39:52]  His name is Harold Hirschberg.
[01:39:54]  He's the director of the government and political affairs for the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, and he was there with her.
[01:39:59]  But you're totally right.
[01:40:00]  I mean, the fact that we, that the United States has emboldened and subsidized Israel to such a ridiculous degree that now you have this lobbying arm going around and undermining and usurping like the First Amendment constitutional liberties of American citizens, I find very particularly fascinating.
[01:40:20]  And I think it's very confusing to Americans.
[01:40:22]  But yeah, I mean, and state legislators are just so terrified of the charge of anti-Semitism that they're just signing away the civil liberties of American citizens.
[01:40:31]  I mean, the right to boycott goes back to the Montgomery bus boycotts.
[01:40:35]  Like this is enshrined in the First Amendment.
[01:40:38]  And it's so alarming that you have all these politicians who should know better just signing away our rights and upholding these absurdly draconian laws.
[01:40:48]  And you're right.
[01:40:48]  It is a chilling effect because they knew, why did they do this?
[01:40:52]  Why did they start doing this shit five years ago?
[01:40:54]  Because they knew what happened in South Africa.
[01:40:57]  They know what BDS does.
[01:40:59]  They know the inevitability of justice.
[01:41:02]  They know the tide of justice is coming for them.
[01:41:03]  So they had to preemptively pass these draconian laws to make it that much more difficult.
[01:41:09]  And that should just show us all the more that BDS is the answer here and the vehicle to bring down apartheid.
[01:41:16]  Well, Abby, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:41:19]  Is there anything else?
[01:41:19]  Is there anything else you want to let you get back to your family because you so graciously fled to your car in the rain to talk to us at the end of the day?
[01:41:26]  We got to have you back on proper.
[01:41:28]  Yeah, yeah, we should have you back on.
[01:41:29]  I mean, spend some time.
[01:41:31]  No, I would love to.
[01:41:32]  I love what you guys have been doing.
[01:41:33]  I want to listen to your serious stuff too.
[01:41:34]  But no, I mean, I would just say we need more plaintiffs to take on these laws because I think a lot of people are signing away without even reading the fine print.
[01:41:41]  And it really just takes one person.
[01:41:43]  I mean, you can get represented pro bono.
[01:41:46]  And if you're a union, if you're unionized, like we don't, we don't know who this is affecting and how widespread it is.
[01:41:52]  But I encourage everyone, if you want to do something, we have to use the courts as a vehicle because they fucking have.
[01:42:00]  So we need to challenge these laws everywhere they are.
[01:42:03]  And they are almost in every state at this point.
[01:42:05]  So I think it's really up to us to just take these on.
[01:42:09]  And I think anyone can.
[01:42:10]  And you can be represented pro bono.
[01:42:12]  And it's an amazing thing.
[01:42:14]  And we just need to keep doing it.
[01:42:15]  And what's crazier is that there were so many mixed verdicts that obviously like this was going to go to the Supreme Court and it was going to be this huge thing.
[01:42:24]  And then Trump, Trump stacked Supreme Court was just like, you know what?
[01:42:27]  They're like, we're actually not going to take this on.
[01:42:30]  So they actually declined to even hear it.
[01:42:34]  That's the Alabama case, right?
[01:42:36]  With the newspaper?
[01:42:37]  Yeah.
[01:42:39]  Next, we don't want to strike them all down.
[01:42:42]  I know.
[01:42:42]  Is that fucking crazy?
[01:42:43]  It's like I was kind of optimistic thinking, well, surely if this went to the Supreme Court, it would be like a blanket.
[01:42:48]  But yeah, I don't know.
[01:42:49]  I mean, knowing where things are going, who knows?
[01:42:51]  They might have just upheld them and it might have been just enshrined now for, you know, forever.
[01:42:56]  So I don't know.
[01:42:57]  It's scary though, but I think we need to really, we need to fucking take them on, man.

=== Upholding Fear (02:39) ===

[01:43:01]  Thank you for having me on.
[01:43:02]  I hope to come on again soon.
[01:43:03]  Thank you.
[01:43:03]  And by the way, I have to say, I have to say, loved you arguing with that fucking freak, Musab Hassan.
[01:43:09]  My God, what a nut that guy is.
[01:43:13]  I love how everyone's like, he fucking dreaded you, dude.
[01:43:17]  And I was like, really?
[01:43:18]  Like, I was just like laughing at this motherfucker.
[01:43:21]  He's absolutely insane.
[01:43:22]  He's like literally mentally ill, it seems like.
[01:43:25]  Right.
[01:43:25]  It's like, it's like this, it just shows you how deranged Zionists are that they think this guy is like the best guy that they have.
[01:43:32]  It's like, you just love this guy because he'll throw Muslims under the bus because you guys can't.
[01:43:37]  So like, I mean, you do, but like the fact that you have this Muslim token era being like, Muslims are trash.
[01:43:42]  It's the lives of all Muslims is not worth more than one single cow.
[01:43:46]  And they're like, even like, listen to this guy.
[01:43:48]  It's like, yeah, I don't think that this guy's credible.
[01:43:50]  He's on Coke and he's a spy.
[01:43:53]  So like, what the fuck?
[01:43:55]  All right.
[01:43:56]  Merry Christmas.
[01:43:57]  Happy Annika.
[01:43:59]  If I had unlimited money, I would sue basically everybody.
[01:44:12]  Would I, though?
[01:44:13]  I don't want to ever go to court.
[01:44:15]  So then why would you do that?
[01:44:16]  So I guess I wouldn't do that.
[01:44:18]  You would be the guy who loves going after just like needless tort lawsuits.
[01:44:25]  Slap.
[01:44:25]  I think I would do slap now.
[01:44:26]  Just constantly looking, going around, finding small businesses to hit with, you know, oh, you don't have the handicap.
[01:44:34]  Oh, the NDA dudes.
[01:44:36]  I respect that hustle.
[01:44:38]  I respect the ADA hustlers.
[01:44:40]  Because there was a kind of a, like a, like a fear thing about that like a while ago.
[01:44:44]  Yeah.
[01:44:45]  That was articles.
[01:44:46]  I'm like, I should have fucking done that shit.
[01:44:48]  Been like, oh, you don't have the handle by the toilet.
[01:44:50]  Cause I use that shit even though my shit's working.
[01:44:52]  I'm like, because sometimes I look down when I'm peen and I get scared.
[01:44:58]  Okay, everyone.
[01:45:00]  You're vertigo.
[01:45:01]  Get vertigo.
[01:45:02]  I'm Liz.
[01:45:03]  I'm cutting them off before they keep going.
[01:45:05]  I'm Liz.
[01:45:06]  My name is Bray.
[01:45:06]  What's the fear of like, what's the trypnophobia?
[01:45:09]  Your fear of the small holes.
[01:45:10]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:45:11]  You have that one.
[01:45:12]  I get that one.
[01:45:13]  My name is Brace, and we are joined by Producer Young Johnson.
[01:45:16]  And the podcast is called.
[01:45:17]  True and On, and we will see you next time.
[01:45:20]  Bye-bye.
[01:45:39]  Come out.
[01:45:40]  Come out.