True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 495: Ktz’iot
Aired: 2025-10-09
Duration: 55:27


=== Line of Violence (15:11) ===

[00:00:00]  And that is the story.
[00:00:01]  Like the story, the story is not interception, although that is like, you know, the fun, jousty part of it.
[00:00:06]  Like the story is that a group of humanitarian workers were beaten, abused, psychologically tortured, and systematically denied like their basic fundamental rights in a giant Israeli Guantanamo Bay where very famously Palestinians are brought to suffer horrendous conditions of torture on like the other side of the camp that is 400,000 square meters large.
[00:00:53]  Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:00:54]  I am Brace.
[00:00:55]  I'm Liz.
[00:00:56]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[00:00:58]  And this is Tronan.
[00:00:59]  Hello.
[00:01:00]  We will keep it short and sweet for you today.
[00:01:04]  I don't know why I just said short and sweet like that, but whatever.
[00:01:08]  It's the morning.
[00:01:10]  We have with us today returning from our guest returning from, I guess he was on the show maybe two or three episodes ago, David Adler.
[00:01:18]  When we last spoke to him, he was on the global Samud flotilla nearing Gaza.
[00:01:26]  There was something like 45, 46, 47 different boats packed with aid to try to break the Israeli illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and to try to deliver some aid to alleviate a lot of the insane, I mean, either medical shortages or just, I mean, shortages is maybe too generous a word and food shortages there.
[00:01:50]  And as those of you who have been following the news might know, they were attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters and taken essentially hostage and into the Negev Desert.
[00:02:02]  Yeah.
[00:02:02]  And so thankfully, David is out and we got him on the phone today to walk us through his experience.
[00:02:11]  I don't know.
[00:02:11]  There's nothing really I feel like I could say.
[00:02:14]  I feel like you just, we have to kind of listen to it from David.
[00:02:16]  It's pretty shocking and upsetting tale, especially, you know, him getting into his anger, his justified, I would say even like, you know, get angrier, David, but very justified anger at the, it's not even a lack of a response.
[00:02:37]  It's like a purposeful non-response from the American government in attempting to rescue, like you say, American hostages taken to a rendition site, essentially, in the in the desert.
[00:02:54]  So I think we should get into it.
[00:03:09]  Well, back in the show and out of prison is David Adler.
[00:03:12]  David, you are, what, it's a day and a half out?
[00:03:17]  About a day out of prison.
[00:03:20]  And I don't want to call it prison.
[00:03:23]  I don't want to call it prison because it was in prison out of an Israeli internment camp in the Negev Desert and relieved and grateful and extremely angry and very happy to be back on the show.
[00:03:40]  Let's start from the beginning.
[00:03:41]  So last we talked to you, you were a couple days out from getting to the red line.
[00:03:47]  As I'm sure many listeners of the show will know, the flotilla was stopped by Israeli naval vessels in international waters.
[00:03:56]  And your boat, I was checking on the tracker, although I know it became kind of unreliable at points, but you guys held on for a while and were able to evade them for a while.
[00:04:04]  But eventually, I think they got everybody.
[00:04:07]  What happened since we last spoke to you?
[00:04:09]  I'll start the night of the so-called interception.
[00:04:12]  I think the line is the violent and illegal abduction that we endured in international waters.
[00:04:19]  But yeah, we thought everyone could watch this great sea adventure that we had because the interceptions began at 9 p.m. with the so-called S-13, the like elite baby killer naval squad, the only one they have.
[00:04:34]  The Israeli Navy is not very impressive.
[00:04:38]  They raided the first three kind of big boats quite quickly early in the evening.
[00:04:43]  And we thought that was kind of game over.
[00:04:45]  But we were such a big flotilla.
[00:04:47]  We just completely overwhelmed their naval capacities.
[00:04:50]  And we eventually sailed on from 9 p.m. till like 4.30 in the morning, playing this very kind of, I don't mean to be like sanguine,
[00:05:06]  but kind of master and commander game of chicken with this giant barge that was trying to basically crush our boat in half that we would out sail and then they would try to spray us with skunk water to like break our boat or drown its people.
[00:05:24]  And then it wasn't until 4.30 in the morning when finally they, and they would come to us and say, you know, turn off your engines.
[00:05:30]  And our agreement always was, we'll not turn off our engines.
[00:05:33]  We're going to keep sailing to Gaza was 100% legal humanitarian mission.
[00:05:36]  The red line is a total fiction of Israeli imagination that they have a right to patrol these international waters.
[00:05:41]  It's totally total pirate shit.
[00:05:43]  And we just kept going.
[00:05:46]  And by the way, Brayson Liz, I will just keep telling this story if you don't stop me.
[00:05:50]  So go ahead and keep going.
[00:05:53]  And yeah, so we, so the barge was chasing us this way.
[00:05:57]  And that finally around 4.30, I saw a lot of sniper colors on my face and chest as a boat was approaching.
[00:06:09]  And that's when we knew game was over.
[00:06:11]  Like when you see the green and red dots, like, and you're like, okay, I think this, we think we've had our fill of fun here.
[00:06:20]  And I had known prior, you know, part of the, part of the, the, the, the tactic of this really beautiful collective action that was the global subflotilla was to use the time that we had at sea, which in the case of the Somut Flotilla, because of various bureaucratic failures and admitted sabotage, I'm now told, having not even come really back online, that Netanyahu has admitted now that they used a submarine to drone attack us.
[00:06:47]  We talked about this on the last time we were in the pod.
[00:06:48]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:49]  Is that true?
[00:06:49]  I don't know if he's admitted it, but that has pretty much come out, that it was a submarine where the drones were launched to attack the float.
[00:06:56]  I mean, what the fuck are you?
[00:06:58]  Sorry.
[00:06:59]  I'm still obviously processing a lot of novel information.
[00:07:04]  Anyway, whatever.
[00:07:06]  So we were like, eventually we're like, okay, game over, 4.30 in the morning.
[00:07:11]  And they raid our boats, like board our boats and like, you know, pick us, kick us around, basically just immediately smash the CCTVs, smash the Starlinks, start smashing any electronic thing that they have and can see, cutting cords, running through the boat, smashing everything basically.
[00:07:28]  And these are like, I don't know, 19, 20-year-old kids.
[00:07:32]  I mean, you know, it's like the Israeli Navy.
[00:07:34]  It's just like, okay.
[00:07:36]  And I was on the, at this point, I was on the Owila.
[00:07:38]  So we had five like vets, U.S. vets who were like quite hardcore, who were like, you know, just humiliated by this kind of like basically pirate behavior.
[00:07:50]  Anyways, they threw us into the cabin and thus began the longest day in my memory, where they like, in our case, sailed our boat directly.
[00:07:59]  These people basically were taught how to sail yesterday.
[00:08:01]  They literally revved our engine in neutral for an hour, like frying it before our skipper had to be like, hey guys, I think it's in neutral.
[00:08:09]  And they took us to Ashdod like one by one.
[00:08:14]  It took fucking forever because the point, you know, we had, this was the biggest like action ever to, you know, we just, they were totally overwhelmed, which revealed like, to me, this, the, the, you know, this, this paper tiger aspect of the Israeli military that, you know, we take them so seriously.
[00:08:29]  It's like basically Krav Maga come like on the water, you know, like we just, anyways, I'm digressing.
[00:08:36]  I obviously am still a little bit fried, but we get taken to the port.
[00:08:41]  I'll try to tell the important aspects of this, where there's a long ceremony of these boats being pulled into port and we can't really tell why, but soon we discover why.
[00:08:52]  And it's because they're basically preparing this giant photo opportunity for Ben Gavir.
[00:08:56]  Now, here we come to an important political point.
[00:08:58]  And there I say, error of my judgment, which is that we had been doing so much political work on the boats to beat back the Hamas flotilla narrative, humanizing ourselves, you know, talking about the aid that we were bringing.
[00:09:12]  You know, here are nurses, here are doctors.
[00:09:14]  Here's little old David, just a Jewish boy from the Valley of Los Angeles, you know, whatever.
[00:09:20]  that and the Italians, you know, in a more serious fashion, the trade union aspect of like, okay, we will literally burn Europe was taking its toll on the on respective governments.
[00:09:30]  And so I was away, I had been aware, because I was doing a lot of medic coordination for the flotilla, like of this back channel agreement with the Israelis that they weren't going to, they were going to do their best, was the agreement, do their best not to kill us at sea.
[00:09:45]  Now, they didn't kill anyone at sea, which is a fucking miracle.
[00:09:50]  But boy, was I wrong about what that meant for us on land.
[00:09:55]  Because I was like, oh, like we won this, we won this information war.
[00:09:59]  And therefore, like what Ben Gavir has been threatening.
[00:10:02]  And I'm sure if you go back and listen to our last conversation, I sound a little bit triumphant in my tone.
[00:10:07]  I mean, certainly brave, but like, I just did not think we were going to be treated truly, like, you know, as terrorists, which we were.
[00:10:17]  So we were, you know, once we were off the boats, it was the nightmare just began.
[00:10:21]  I mean, we were thrown onto the floor, you know, onto our knees, heads down, like arms, hands behind our back, like, you know, punched into for anyone who like leaned or moved was like, you know, punched or pulled into formation and lined up like terrorists for Ben Gavir's big photo shoot.
[00:10:39]  I like asked to go pee, at which point they looked at my passport and were like, David Rashi, you Jewish.
[00:10:47]  And I was like, oh, yeah, man.
[00:10:50]  And they like pulled me by the ear and sat me next to Greta, who was also being forced to like stare at the Israeli flag for like two hours on like the tarmac of Ashdod, the port for Ben Gavir's big photo shoot, which didn't go very well because he got there and everybody just fucking started yelling at him like, fuck you, you fascist pig.
[00:11:11]  So that was briefly interrupted.
[00:11:13]  Anyway, this began to like basically, you know, not only steal our boats, but steal our belongings.
[00:11:18]  Like we got basically taken through this deportation process or deportation process, this detention process where they went through all of our stuff, strip searched us, like went through our bags, threw out all of our stuff.
[00:11:30]  And it was this refrain in like the way that they were talking about every time they would throw out like life-saving medicine that people brought with them on the boats.
[00:11:40]  Like, don't throw that out, please.
[00:11:42]  Like, that's medicine.
[00:11:43]  And they'd be like, should have thought of that before you came to Israel.
[00:11:46]  And every time we'd be like, dude, we didn't fucking come to Israel.
[00:11:50]  You fucking abducted us and brought us here.
[00:11:52]  Yeah.
[00:11:52]  Yeah.
[00:11:53]  And that was like this refrain over and over again, even with the prison guards in the internment camp.
[00:11:58]  Like every time, I'll get to it, but like every time we'd be like, every time we would complain about something, like needing to see a doctor or like one of the women like nearly dying from a UTI infection, then they wouldn't see a doctor for two days.
[00:12:10]  They kept on being like, you should have thought of that before you came to Israel, which, by the way, weird thing to think, like, oh, this is what we do in Israel.
[00:12:16]  But, you know, that's, I guess, for them to decide how they want to brand themselves.
[00:12:21]  Yeah.
[00:12:23]  So I'm so not even, I'm just going to, I'm just trying to get through the basic facts of this story, which I think need to be told.
[00:12:29]  So the like, it was a very, for your, I think your listeners may, you know, it's like it's very Hag Seth school of international law kind of interpretation of due process.
[00:12:43]  Just like, oh, you want a lawyer?
[00:12:45]  No.
[00:12:45]  Oh, you thought you were going to get this paper?
[00:12:47]  Like, no.
[00:12:48]  Like just basically, we were just chucked through this basically like kangaroo process and then, you know, stripped, zip-tied, blindfolded, thrown onto a bus, like in an extremely hot police van, overcut a police van and just shipped into the middle of the Negev desert.
[00:13:08]  And for all I can tell from being online briefly, like that's where like a lot of the stories kind of stop.
[00:13:13]  Like activists, Israel says activists detained at sea, like just, you know, New York Texas.
[00:13:20]  That's basically the long and short of it is like there was a there was a flurry of stories right when everyone got arrested.
[00:13:26]  And then there's been like occasional small news stories about people returning, but not really about what happened in the Negev.
[00:13:33]  And that is the story.
[00:13:34]  Like the story, the story is not interception, although that is like, you know, the fun, jousty part of it.
[00:13:40]  Like the story is that a group of humanitarian workers were beaten, abused, psychologically tortured, and systematically denied like their basic fundamental rights in a giant Israeli Guantanamo Bay where very famously Palestinians are brought to suffer horrendous conditions of torture on like the other side of the camp that is 400,000 square meters large.
[00:14:04]  What's it called?
[00:14:04]  Kitsiyot or something like that?
[00:14:06]  Yeah.
[00:14:07]  So, yeah.
[00:14:08]  So I think that maybe if I can be generous to our journalist class, pundit class, I could chuck it up to them, maybe assuming we're going to get thrown into like, you know, like a drunk tank and, you know, chucked out a couple of days later or whatever.
[00:14:24]  And there's some like they, because of the way that they infantilize and frivolize the flotillas in general, like they just don't take seriously that this is like a major geopolitical confrontation, not to like get high on the own supply, but like it's a, it's a problem.
[00:14:38]  This is like such a grave.
[00:14:40]  And the point is obviously that everything that happened to us is just like, you know, a microscopic illustration of what's happening to the Palestinians in all these torture camps that we don't know about to the like 11,000 plus people who've been kidnapped from Gaza alone since October 7th, with whom we shared, I think, the premises of this torture camp.
[00:15:00]  I don't really know.
[00:15:01]  But yeah, so anyway, over the coming, so for three days, we did not exist basically.
[00:15:08]  Like, you know, the most basic stuff.

=== Cells in Gaza Torture Camps (09:52) ===

[00:15:11]  We never saw a lawyer, didn't see our governments, couldn't make phone calls, no showers, no food, a cup for getting water out of the, like, the tap in the toilet.
[00:15:21]  And that was it.
[00:15:22]  Just like thrown into jail cells altogether and no medicine for people who were like really, you know, like including diabetics who needed insulin.
[00:15:32]  I mentioned this person who like literally like went blue from a kidney infection.
[00:15:38]  Like people were passing out.
[00:15:40]  And the women and men had different experiences.
[00:15:42]  I'll let them women speak for themselves about kind of what it was like.
[00:15:45]  But the men, like we had these troglodyte, like internment camp guards who would just like patrol violently with, you know, a German shepherd and a shotgun and a bunch of right gear and like go kind of cell by cell.
[00:16:02]  And if we demanded something, or if we prayed, like a lot of people, a lot of Muslims, like praying, they would come.
[00:16:09]  If you prayed too loudly, they would just basically beat you, shackle you, you know, hands and legs, throw you into solitary, blindfolded.
[00:16:18]  So there was, there were beatings of prisoners.
[00:16:21]  Oh, yeah, for sure.
[00:16:22]  Yeah, lots of them.
[00:16:22]  And it was like tainted very racistly or like very Islamophobically for sure.
[00:16:29]  The treatment of the Jews was very funny.
[00:16:31]  Like we were very like targeted.
[00:16:34]  Like Israel is very anti-Semitic enterprise.
[00:16:39]  Like the other Jewish guy that I was with was just like, yeah, systematically denied medication.
[00:16:44]  I mean, there's no other way to describe it.
[00:16:46]  Was just like screaming out, crying out every hour of the day, like, please, I need my medication.
[00:16:51]  I'm on like violent withdrawals from my medication.
[00:16:53]  Like, please help me.
[00:16:54]  And they just would be like, you know, fuck you, Jew.
[00:16:57]  You should have thought of that before you came to Israel.
[00:16:59]  And we'd be like, we didn't come to Israel.
[00:17:01]  And it was just like this coda, nightmarish coda.
[00:17:06]  And the point is, like, being in prison, we had this like fever dream of like, Chris Van Holland must be on a plane to Tel Aviv to come check on our condition because this is, we are, we've teed up a home run for the Democratic Party.
[00:17:18]  Like little Jewish boy goes to Israeli detention camp.
[00:17:21]  Like, I, you know, the whole point was like, okay, we're willing to endure some degree of like suffering, not just in Saladi with Palestine, but to help like our domestic political class in the United States, like win points against the state of Israel that otherwise it is politically inconvenient for them to do because we get it.
[00:17:36]  It's, it's, it's hard.
[00:17:38]  I mean, I'm being really sympathetic.
[00:17:39]  I don't know why, but like we, we, we teed up.
[00:17:43]  It was so easy.
[00:17:44]  Vets, veterans, like guys.
[00:17:47]  And when I came back online and just saw that basically no one had fucking done anything.
[00:17:51]  Yeah.
[00:17:52]  No one had taken advantage of like this, the easiest fucking like at bat of all time, like U.S. citizens, like rogue ally, you already want to defund our largest scale disappearance of U.S. citizens by a military ally that I can remember.
[00:18:13]  I don't know if you guys can remember a larger one.
[00:18:15]  22 U.S. Americans disappeared into the Negev desert with no proof of life.
[00:18:19]  What?
[00:18:20]  I mean, I mean, our families were calling the embassies.
[00:18:23]  They were getting hung up on or like sent like an audio message.
[00:18:28]  My family was calling the California senators who were saying, oh, we can't help you.
[00:18:31]  Call states.
[00:18:31]  It was like call the embassy.
[00:18:32]  The embassy was hanging up on them.
[00:18:34]  Best part was when the U.S. consulate showed up like three days late after we'd just been like through hell.
[00:18:39]  I mean, already just like, oh, fuck, like, this is just, we're in Ben Gover's world now.
[00:18:45]  And they were like, all right, listen up, fuck wits.
[00:18:48]  There's nothing we can do for you.
[00:18:50]  Nothing at all.
[00:18:51]  You're in Israel's hands now and any decision they make is up to them.
[00:18:54]  And we were like, you have to be joking.
[00:18:56]  That's the American.
[00:18:57]  Yeah.
[00:18:58]  That's it.
[00:18:59]  Yeah.
[00:18:59]  Consular services.
[00:19:00]  We had like three like overweight Tel Aviv.
[00:19:05]  And this, I'm not even on the other, oh, we'll get to the Jordanian side of the story of the U.S. consular experience, but they showed up like three days late.
[00:19:13]  Every other country brought like bananas and sandwiches.
[00:19:16]  We were all on hunger strike because we were like, this is fucking crazy.
[00:19:19]  We're like, give us our lawyers, like give us the most basic, let us shower or anything.
[00:19:25]  Let us walk outside our cells, like whatever.
[00:19:29]  So obviously you can hear the tone of some like righteous anger in my voice, but I mean, there was some coverage comparing how the Europeans were, you know, you know, as far as I see that Europeans were very active in trying to totally to get out.
[00:19:46]  And we saw, we could see that.
[00:19:47]  We could, and we could, we could see those wheels turning.
[00:19:49]  So they came and visited earlier.
[00:19:51]  They were getting taken out.
[00:19:52]  People were seeing them.
[00:19:53]  They'd come back.
[00:19:54]  There was like a little economy of cigarettes from the Greeks who were like smuggling in cigarettes to those jail cells.
[00:20:00]  Yeah.
[00:20:01]  I mean, I'm not, you know, used to prison life, but we were, we were, we were, we were, it was, I mean, we were doing some, there was some singing and solidary, but again, I'm digressing.
[00:20:10]  I want to focus on the sort of U.S. side of the story because I think it's so scandalous.
[00:20:14]  Like they showed up so late and they literally, I'm not exaggerating, Liz, when I say they literally, like a JV or fucking like a PE coach was like, all right, you fat piece of shit.
[00:20:24]  Like, you know, there's nothing.
[00:20:25]  There's the consulate can only, if you sign this privacy form, confirm proof of life to your family.
[00:20:33]  And in this tiny text box, we promised to tell them what you want us to tell them, which of course they didn't proceed to do at all.
[00:20:41]  But we were like, guys, can you help get us out of here?
[00:20:44]  They're like, nope.
[00:20:45]  U.S. doesn't pay for deportation flights.
[00:20:47]  We're like, we're not asking for that.
[00:20:48]  Can you pressure the government to get us out of here?
[00:20:50]  We haven't committed a crime.
[00:20:51]  We haven't, we guys, I mean, we never saw a judge.
[00:20:54]  We never saw a prosecutor.
[00:20:55]  We never saw our lawyers.
[00:20:56]  We didn't have a case.
[00:20:57]  No forms ever mattered.
[00:21:01]  There wasn't just no due process.
[00:21:02]  There was no process.
[00:21:03]  It was like, I mean, yeah.
[00:21:05]  This is a black box.
[00:21:07]  Yeah.
[00:21:08]  And we were in the black box.
[00:21:09]  We obviously had no idea what was going on in the outside world because we weren't being told anything.
[00:21:14]  I'm lucky enough to have these two additional nationalities because of the Jewish diaspora and like was begging to see them and like sat with Australians in French.
[00:21:21]  And I was like, I do not trust my country.
[00:21:24]  Please, like, I will burn my U.S. American passport in front of you if you get me out of here as an Australian or French person.
[00:21:32]  You know, to make a point.
[00:21:33]  But and they were like, Tam Tam, do you want to cut gee?
[00:21:36]  And I was like, oh my God, guys, please.
[00:21:40]  So, so anyway, this went on for like forever.
[00:21:45]  And the Europeans all got out.
[00:21:46]  And we're all happy for them to get out.
[00:21:47]  But obviously it's like heartbreaking to be like the last puppy in the puppy sale and like just slowly the cells emptying and being and it dawning on us like our government would rather be fucking rot to shit in these dungeons.
[00:22:02]  Like, yeah, this is just of a piece of the new, of like the new post GWAT or whatever.
[00:22:08]  Like, like, this is just what we do now.
[00:22:11]  You're just not, you know, and people still have their mind that's like a zero dark 30.
[00:22:15]  Like, we will extract U.S. citizens from any side of danger.
[00:22:18]  And it's just like, they were, yeah.
[00:22:21]  Well, it's, it's, it is, it's, it's crazy to me because, you know, I'm sort of struck by two things.
[00:22:26]  One is that you, you know, you often hear the refrain of like, go to Gaza, go to Gaza, like if you like them so much.
[00:22:32]  And when you try to do that, they, uh, they blackbag you and put you in an internment camp in the middle of the desert.
[00:22:39]  The Israelis do.
[00:22:40]  Yeah.
[00:22:40]  And so, and we had this conversation.
[00:22:41]  I mean, I, so I was lucky enough to be in cell one in cell 19.
[00:22:44]  So the first cells, like, because it was wrapped around of our block.
[00:22:47]  So I was closest to the guards, which given my condition of attention deficit disorder and oppositional defiance disorder made me very conducive to being like sub-Nazi and, you know, talking to the guards abusively.
[00:23:01]  He didn't like that.
[00:23:03]  But we had this conversation many times where they were like, well, you should have thought about the freaking of Israel.
[00:23:07]  And I was like, we didn't fucking come to Israel.
[00:23:09]  And they were like, you go then, you should go to Gaza.
[00:23:11]  And we were like, let us go to Gaza.
[00:23:13]  We would much prefer to be there than you.
[00:23:15]  Did you see one thing you might have missed too is that they had some American influencers.
[00:23:20]  Lizzie Savetsky, I think the lady's name is.
[00:23:22]  I think that might be the stop anti-Semitism lady.
[00:23:25]  One of these kind of like insane sort of Zionist influencers brought her to the boats where she was like, look, there's zero aid.
[00:23:32]  Oh, you're bringing no aid confirmed.
[00:23:35]  Zero aid, zero aid.
[00:23:36]  Anyway, obviously, they're doing this very Karl Rovian thing of like just lying so brazenly that, like, you know, whatever their people understand it.
[00:23:44]  In most of the world, that doesn't work, but in the U.S., people just eat shit, I guess, for dinner.
[00:23:49]  I don't know.
[00:23:49]  So crazy.
[00:23:50]  Anyway, continuing the story.
[00:23:51]  So it's going on for a very long time.
[00:23:54]  And it's dawning on the U.S. Americans that we are likely to be like the last people there.
[00:23:59]  And this could just go on for a very long time.
[00:24:01]  And I'm concerned about my family.
[00:24:03]  And I feel bad that I, you know, I know that they're placed really stressed out.
[00:24:06]  And I feel bad about that.
[00:24:07]  I just don't know.
[00:24:08]  We don't know what's going on in the world, you know, and we don't know what kind of pressure is still left there.
[00:24:12]  In my mind, again, I'm fever dreaming.
[00:24:13]  Oh, maybe there's, oh, oh, yeah, I know there's strikes and mobilizations across the US.
[00:24:19]  You know, I'm fucking having an absolute fantasy time of thinking about how, you know, this really scandalous thing had given more wind in the sales of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement.
[00:24:33]  Maybe they did, maybe didn't.
[00:24:34]  Again, I'm not, I have not switched, I don't have a phone, so I don't know what's happened, but my understanding is that's not exactly what's happened.
[00:24:40]  And that like people didn't, that our legislators were basically like, oh, not our fucking problem.
[00:24:46]  But so anyway, finishing the story.
[00:24:50]  So we didn't get told anything ever about anything ever.
[00:24:53]  And like, obviously, the violations of basic rights were continued from day to day to day to day.
[00:25:00]  We had no idea when we were leaving.
[00:25:02]  We were told nothing ever.

=== Interrogations and Silence (06:21) ===

[00:25:04]  And we were super, we were just trying to get organized and we were super worried about the Tunisians and the Algerians, but they were actually being treated way better than we were because the Turkish were advocating for them.
[00:25:12]  Like we were treated the worst of anyone in there, like for being US Americans and also for being Jewish.
[00:25:23]  Yeah.
[00:25:24]  Great.
[00:25:25]  It's a great.
[00:25:26]  I mean, we need some new metaphor for like it's not imperial boomerang for whatever that is.
[00:25:30]  Like being the wrong kind of a US American is just like a truly dangerous thing to be these days.
[00:25:36]  But finally, yeah, at four o'clock in the morning.
[00:25:42]  And I'm so happy about this because we were.
[00:25:45]  So basically one thing I missed is that like for between six and nine hours every day, and I was in cell one and cell 19, so I was like blasted this.
[00:25:54]  They would just play on a three-hour loop this October 7th footage, like with a soundtrack, like with audio and a soundtrack.
[00:26:04]  What was the soundtrack?
[00:26:06]  Like doo-doo-doo-doo, like a piano and then strings with like a sort of dramatic TikTok, like TikTok.
[00:26:12]  No, like imagine like you AI Hans Zimmer.
[00:26:16]  Yeah.
[00:26:16]  Yeah.
[00:26:16]  You know, like a moving cinematic score.
[00:26:19]  Yeah.
[00:26:20]  But like, but just on repeat.
[00:26:22]  And of course, these are like horrific images, but the effect was like to totally desensitize us to these images because they were playing constantly all day long.
[00:26:32]  And the real people who had to watch them was like, were the guards.
[00:26:35]  So the guards would just walk up and like look at the TVs and then look at me and be like, hey, watch.
[00:26:40]  And I'm like, I'm watching.
[00:26:42]  You know, something that strikes me is, you know, because we went to the October 7th exhibit in the financial district.
[00:26:49]  That was a pop-up, right?
[00:26:50]  Not like a reality.
[00:26:52]  It's traveling.
[00:26:52]  It's traveling.
[00:26:54]  At some point.
[00:26:55]  But Israelis love watching October 7th football.
[00:26:58]  Yeah.
[00:26:59]  It was for them.
[00:27:00]  It was clearly for them.
[00:27:00]  Sorry.
[00:27:01]  But something I mentioned in that episode that we did on that is going to that exhibit, I got to tell you, it really hardened me.
[00:27:08]  Hardened my heart and made me a much less.
[00:27:10]  No, it's that really, it's really, it's really.
[00:27:12]  Yeah.
[00:27:12]  I mean, and they weren't, I mean, in the women's, one of the women's cell blocks, they put up this big, like AI-generated, like in Arabic, like the new Gaza with an Israeli flag, like sort of taunting them.
[00:27:26]  The women had a crazy, totally different time.
[00:27:28]  I mean, the women were like taking care of each other in the cell blocks, like painting the walls with period blood and writing poems and singing songs and giving each other massages and like talking about Marxism.
[00:27:39]  And the men were like grunting and complaining about tobacco withdrawals and like trying to sleep.
[00:27:45]  But there were good moments of like, you know, singing along and stuff like that.
[00:27:50]  But it was obviously shit.
[00:27:51]  Anyway, I'll try to finish the story because I'm dragging on, but just trying to get through as many of like the details of these like systematic violations.
[00:28:02]  So basically anyone who made too much noise, like I said, would just get taken away for however much time.
[00:28:08]  And then also there were these additional interrogations, like Mossad interrogations.
[00:28:12]  The thing that's like most important, I think, so everything about this experience made me more confident about the structural integrity, absence of structural integrity of the state of Israel.
[00:28:22]  Like I just, this thing is, you know, from the experience of the Nazi to my experience with Israeli intelligence, like they would, they brought me into multiple interrogations because they were like, oh, why, why is this type of person here?
[00:28:34]  Why would this profile be here?
[00:28:36]  Like something must be up.
[00:28:38]  So they kept speaking to me and like bringing me in to these interrogations.
[00:28:42]  And they had one question.
[00:28:43]  They were like, what is the flotilla?
[00:28:45]  Like, who is behind it?
[00:28:48]  They can't wrap their minds around Palestine, like solidarity with Palestine.
[00:28:53]  They cannot understand why people, they're so high on their own supply.
[00:28:58]  And the Mossad guy, like, you know, whatever, I was so happy to be out of my fucking cell that I was just like, you know, chatting about this.
[00:29:04]  And I was like, look, I'm not going to fucking tell you about my colleagues or comrades or whatever, but like, I can tell you this is like a movement.
[00:29:10]  Like, I didn't get bought or brought here.
[00:29:12]  Like, I came because I believe in the liberation of Palestine.
[00:29:15]  What the fuck are you talking about?
[00:29:16]  And he was like, me, and he literally hit me with like a Michael Parenti-ass definition of fascism.
[00:29:22]  He was like, you see, you Americans, you care about your career and your class and all these things and, you know, making money.
[00:29:29]  We here, we just believe in Israel.
[00:29:31]  I call it Israelism.
[00:29:33]  We just, we believe in this project, and that's what, that's what you miss.
[00:29:36]  That's what you understand.
[00:29:37]  We will never be defeated because we're strong because we believe in the project.
[00:29:41]  And I was like, dude, this is such a literally like, you know, I've been working on this for 20 years and he literally just totally just said it.
[00:29:51]  He just said it.
[00:29:52]  But also, the guy, he's fake type.
[00:29:54]  He thinks I'm fucking stupid.
[00:29:55]  He's like fake typing on a computer that he's seeing for the first time because he clearly was like brought in from Tel Aviv.
[00:30:01]  Yeah.
[00:30:01]  And he's telling me he's Mossad.
[00:30:03]  He's like, I've lived in Austria and Germany and France and Miami protecting the Jewish community.
[00:30:09]  And I'm like, protecting the Jewish community.
[00:30:12]  He was like, I collect intelligence.
[00:30:14]  And I was like, you're not very good at this thing.
[00:30:16]  He could just be on the circuit parties.
[00:30:18]  Yeah.
[00:30:19]  I mean, who knows?
[00:30:20]  Maybe he's just like a private security guard for like Bar Men's Post.
[00:30:23]  Anyway.
[00:30:25]  So God, it's very funny to be laughing at this story, but I'll finish the chronological first story just to give you everything.
[00:30:34]  So at four o'clock in the morning, they like bang on ourselves.
[00:30:38]  We did this all.
[00:30:38]  We were like horribly sleep deprived because they would just like scream through the speaker system and wake us up at all hours and then play the October 7th footage and just like try to just and like deny us food.
[00:30:48]  Jesus Christ.
[00:30:50]  We just woke up at two in the morning.
[00:30:51]  Like you need to watch October 7th right now.
[00:30:54]  It is kind of like that.
[00:30:55]  You know what?
[00:30:55]  Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but it does somewhat remind me of like, this feels like the distillation of the Israeli dream is having a bunch of like what they view as, you know, these sort of like Western lefties locked in a cage in the desert and they can wake them up at any time and show them October 7th footage, beat them or sick German shepherds on them.
[00:31:16]  Yeah, exactly right.
[00:31:17]  Yeah.
[00:31:17]  And so at night, we would just hear the sound of like wailing German shepherds and then F-12s and F-35s going to bomb Gaza because we were so close to Gaza.

=== Israelis in the Desert Cage (10:43) ===

[00:31:25]  So it was just like a horrible, sad, like terrifying experience.
[00:31:31]  And obviously the most terrifying thing was just like not knowing anything, like not being able to speak to anyone or like not our lawyers, not our families that we had no idea when we would leave.
[00:31:40]  Anyway, we got woken up one morning and you know, we had maybe suspected that we may be leaving, but it was weird because we expected October 7th yesterday to be like a bad day.
[00:31:52]  We just thought we were like, oh, we're going to get fucking beat up again.
[00:31:55]  But no, that didn't happen.
[00:31:58]  For whatever reason, we were lumped in with the remainder of the, I understand, again, I'm not online.
[00:32:04]  So the remainder of the, of the, of the inmates, intern internment camp people and thrown onto these like shackles, thrown to the buses, like prison, like small prison buses.
[00:32:19]  And we weren't told where we were going, just like we were leaving.
[00:32:22]  So I like, you know, this is like, these are well worn by like Palestinian political prisoners.
[00:32:26]  So like mine had like sort of the, some of the, what's it called?
[00:32:30]  The tint scratched out so I could see out a little bit out of the window.
[00:32:35]  Like I could like move my stand up in this tiny little like mini cell inside of the police van.
[00:32:42]  And I could like see we were driving north.
[00:32:45]  And I was like, oh man, maybe we're going to Jordan.
[00:32:47]  That'd be such a great thing if Jordan will accept us because I so didn't want to be part of like some second edition of like Ben Gavira's Frog March October 7th parade.
[00:32:58]  Right.
[00:33:00]  Like, mind you, like, we haven't slept in days and most of us hadn't eaten anything in days.
[00:33:05]  So we were just like so tired and so weak, basically.
[00:33:10]  And so we get to, it's becoming clear and clearer we're going to Jordan.
[00:33:15]  And our like the spirit, our spirits, like mine and Tiago was sat next to me, like our spirits begin to lift by this possibility.
[00:33:23]  Um, because we didn't think that Jordan would take where's like, we're so many fucking people.
[00:33:27]  You have to understand, like, we're, we were 500 people who got brought in.
[00:33:32]  Like, that is so many people.
[00:33:34]  That's like a small, that's like an audience and a coatless, like the small Coachella fucking stage of people.
[00:33:41]  Yeah.
[00:33:42]  And like that many people had to be moved this way.
[00:33:46]  I mean, it was a logistical nightmare for them and diplomatic nightmare for them, which was obviously part of the point.
[00:33:52]  In any case, not for the US who were like, do whatever you want.
[00:33:56]  And I will illustrate that point by explaining what happened to us on the other side of the Jordanian border, which is that we got there and like crossed the Jordanian border and every country's government was there.
[00:34:07]  The Jordanians were there with like video cameras to like be like, all right, might as well have a press day with us.
[00:34:11]  Every other country was there to like hug, embrace, feed, give a phone.
[00:34:17]  Every country, I'm talking Japan, Australia, fucking the Arab countries, of course, Brazilians, everyone was there.
[00:34:28]  And our government, our beloved Sharon, with her bright blue eyeliner, Sharon, our general consul, said, Hey, guys, okay, can we get around?
[00:34:39]  So listen, I only found out about this just yesterday afternoon.
[00:34:43]  Okay.
[00:34:43]  So I was actually on a sick day.
[00:34:45]  So I don't know very much about the situation, but we can't offer you any clothes, food, water, shelter, accommodation, transportation, flights, or a cell phone.
[00:35:00]  So you're totally fucking on your own.
[00:35:03]  Are you serious?
[00:35:04]  And we were like, what are you talking about?
[00:35:07]  And she was like, don't worry.
[00:35:09]  We have comped you, a transit visa.
[00:35:11]  So the Jordanians will drive you straight to the airport, at which point they will drop you again with no cell phone, no money.
[00:35:18]  Most people had their stuff just straight up stolen by the Israelis.
[00:35:21]  Bags were just completely missing.
[00:35:22]  Passports were stolen.
[00:35:23]  Credit cards were stolen.
[00:35:24]  Cash was stolen.
[00:35:25]  Jewelry was stolen.
[00:35:26]  Like they just stripped everyone of their belongings.
[00:35:27]  They stole your wallet, right?
[00:35:29]  They.
[00:35:29]  I got my bag back with like, my sweater in it, but so wall gone yeah, wall gone, everything gone, like they just went.
[00:35:37]  Yeah, i'm also like, oh my, what are I?
[00:35:41]  Notebook gone, not to be sentimental, but um um yeah, the Us was just like you are completely on your own and everyone in the hall, like the other, was like giving cigarettes to their prisoners.
[00:35:56]  You know, like we were like, are you, are you, are you serious?
[00:36:00]  Wait, how are you supposed to leave if they, just if they don't?
[00:36:02]  You don't have a phone, you don't have a.
[00:36:03]  Uh, if you don't have a wallet, how do you need to buy a plane?
[00:36:08]  Precisely what we asked in a very, very high volume to uh, ms Sharon.
[00:36:13]  Uh, and she began to like whimper, as if we were like bullying her, and we were like, you are, are the general consul, and she was like I again, I just found out about this.
[00:36:23]  I just found out about this.
[00:36:24]  This is the largest scale abduction of U.s citizens, including many veterans who had like fought and given their lives to this country.
[00:36:33]  Whatever you know you want to say about like going to Afghanistan, but like they did, do that decorated veterans.
[00:36:38]  Um um, like you know, these people were being disrespected in a way I just I just couldn't.
[00:36:43]  I was.
[00:36:43]  We were furious.
[00:36:46]  I'm looking at it right now.
[00:36:47]  Sharon Weber, no wife, you don't read the news.
[00:36:50]  It was in the news dude, the news were the news store.
[00:36:54]  Yeah, her neighbor like this.
[00:36:57]  Also, this is being negotiated.
[00:36:59]  You don't mean the U.s government doesn't know that a negotiation is underway to send 22 U.s American citizens out of the Negative Desert to Jordan.
[00:37:07]  Are you like?
[00:37:08]  Oh, it was your sick day.
[00:37:09]  You didn't get a call, it was cell phone anyway.
[00:37:12]  There was no empathy.
[00:37:13]  They kept.
[00:37:14]  It was a refrain.
[00:37:15]  She kept sharing, kept repeating, we are not your babysitters.
[00:37:19]  I just want you to know.
[00:37:20]  I just want to be clear.
[00:37:20]  We're not your babysitters.
[00:37:21]  We're like we get that.
[00:37:23]  Thank you, Sharon.
[00:37:24]  We understand that.
[00:37:24]  We're not asking to babysit us.
[00:37:26]  On her linkedin, she's been.
[00:37:28]  She's been.
[00:37:28]  By the way, her linkedin says consul general 35 years.
[00:37:32]  Oh no, she's been.
[00:37:33]  She's been a consul general in Jordan for for four months.
[00:37:36]  But uh, she's been in the in The State Department for 35 years.
[00:37:40]  Languages, Arabic, limited working proficiency, and then English, native proficiency.
[00:37:45]  Dude, they literally printed out like travel advisory um printouts for us.
[00:37:50]  That was the only thing they gave us.
[00:37:51]  That was like if you're in Jordan, you may enjoy local cuisine.
[00:37:55]  UBER also provides a convenient way to transport.
[00:37:59]  I was like oh oh, we are so.
[00:38:01]  Oh, my god, it is.
[00:38:02]  So yeah, and that's when I was like uh.
[00:38:08]  So I pulled aside one of the aides and I was like, does this?
[00:38:11]  Does so the government's like?
[00:38:13]  I mean, I asked, I mean I tried to pull, she did number two there.
[00:38:16]  I tried to pull her aside to for like to ask an arms question, to be like I mean, if we're going to go to the airport and try to go back to the United States, like we need to know, are we like, are we looking at terror charges on the way back?
[00:38:25]  Like, we didn't have, we had no idea.
[00:38:27]  Maybe they were like coordinating with the Israelis to be like, oh, you called them terrorists here.
[00:38:30]  Okay, we'll call them terrorists here too.
[00:38:32]  Like, in that case, we won't fly back to the United States.
[00:38:34]  You know what I mean?
[00:38:36]  So she was like, and then the other person who I won't name was like, oh, yeah, no, they hate you, but on a humane level.
[00:38:43]  And I was like, what is that?
[00:38:45]  What is that?
[00:38:46]  What does that mean?
[00:38:47]  They hate you, but on a humane level.
[00:38:50]  It's like, I don't even mean you level you agree with me?
[00:38:53]  Anyway, I thus ends the epic tale, I suppose, but not my rageful fucking like war path to try to get like our pundit class to take seriously this like grave crime.
[00:39:11]  And I want to say it's not about centering our experience.
[00:39:15]  It really isn't.
[00:39:15]  It's just to show it's the whole point was to show how rogue Israel has become and to show the extent and to try to beat back some of the like soft peddled Zionism that Ben Gavir is a marginal figure and just be like, they literally handed us over to this fucking fascist big U.S. citizens and said, do whatever you want to them.
[00:39:32]  And so they did.
[00:39:35]  Yeah.
[00:39:35]  I mean, I think that two things there.
[00:39:37]  One is that totally correct in that Ben Gavir functions in this way that Netanyahu also functions as somehow.
[00:39:44]  It's like, well, Israelis aren't their government.
[00:39:46]  Well, okay, they elected this government many, many, many times, but Israelis aren't this one part of their government.
[00:39:51]  That's a marginal figure.
[00:39:53]  But it seems like all the policy directed by this government is directly something that almost all of it is something that Ben Gavir himself desires.
[00:40:02]  And I was also, there's also this fever dream where I was like, we also like, you know, they love to give a lot of oxygen to those like 200 person Tel Aviv protests to like bring them home.
[00:40:11]  And I was like, this is also the easiest fucking ad bat for these like Israeli peace next to be like 500 humanitarian.
[00:40:19]  And then as far as I can tell, there also weren't like big, not that we like thought we were going to like change the world, but we did think that we were doing, we were, we were, like I said, we were prepared, we were prepared to endure some amount of like hardship, paling in comparison to that of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, to give a really easy political opportunity for a necessary transformation of paradigm in the world's relationship to Israel.
[00:40:48]  That's what we thought.
[00:40:49]  What was could have may have happened.
[00:40:51]  And it did happen in Europe.
[00:40:53]  It just really didn't happen in the States.
[00:40:56]  And, you know, like we got to Jordan and got to a hotel.
[00:41:01]  The first thing I saw was CNN.
[00:41:03]  And I was like, oh, oh my God, I can't.
[00:41:05]  Like, I just nearly just vomited.
[00:41:07]  Just the, you know, just re-entering the sort of epistemic world of our pundit class was just so vomit inducing.
[00:41:17]  I know, you know, it's something I want to bring up because I think you're correct in that this did precipitate a frame further of Israel's relations with other countries.
[00:41:28]  I'm talking specifically about like with Spain and I mean, Turkey is a complicated situation.
[00:41:34]  But Spain and Italy, but people who sort of expected the Italian and, and I guess Spanish or Turkish ships to like, I don't know what, fight the Israeli Navy.
[00:41:48]  And I know when we last talked, you were fairly, you, you had a sort of a more pessimistic view on that.
[00:41:54]  That I think was accurate.
[00:41:57]  Yes, accurately pessimistic because that turned out to all be for show.
[00:42:01]  Yeah, they bailed.
[00:42:02]  They bailed pretty quickly.
[00:42:05]  Yeah, look, the work, there's more work to do.

=== Why It's More Than Hatred (12:24) ===

[00:42:08]  I mean, obviously, this was like a very exhausting, like hardest thing I've done in my life.
[00:42:16]  Like it was like a long mission, very difficult and overcame many challenges to even complete the mission.
[00:42:22]  I think when we were first discussing this, Brace, like the prospect of me going, you were, you're, you just text me like, yeah, you could go.
[00:42:29]  I mean, you're just sailing to jail.
[00:42:31]  And I sort of chuckled myself that the reward for like this tremendous like odyssey of the Mediterranean, you know, almost traditional Odyssey was just a detention camp.
[00:42:45]  But that's what it happens to be.
[00:42:47]  That was the cherry on the cake.
[00:42:48]  And or Sharon, I guess.
[00:42:48]  Sharon was a cherry, I should say.
[00:42:50]  Have you heard anything from the Americans since you left Jordan?
[00:42:53]  So, I mean, I don't have a phone.
[00:42:55]  I mean, no.
[00:42:56]  What are you going to say?
[00:42:57]  I mean, all I know is that Ro Khan, God bless him.
[00:43:00]  I mean, I don't know the guy, I guess, wrote, like, got a bunch of California legislators to be like, SoCal activist David Adler spoke to his sister.
[00:43:11]  I saw that he wrote a letter.
[00:43:13]  Of course, sister had to like be my advocate.
[00:43:15]  And I'm so angry.
[00:43:16]  I mean, I guess this is the point that I would want to end on.
[00:43:18]  I'm really, really angry.
[00:43:19]  I'm really, really angry for that my family was put in a position.
[00:43:22]  My family and friends were put in a position to advocate on my behalf.
[00:43:24]  It's just unbelievable that my family would, or any family, I mean, and especially those of the like Palestinian Americans.
[00:43:33]  I mean, there's still a Palestinian American in this prison.
[00:43:36]  And of course, Shireen was a Palestinian American, but that families would be responsible for advocating on behalf of These abductees who were again disappeared into the negative, like disappeared with no proof of life, nothing.
[00:43:49]  Like, so I'm really mad, and I think that the pursuit of kind of accountability for that is just starting because I'm really mad on behalf of family members and friends who I know did worked really hard to secure a release.
[00:44:02]  And I just feel I had a sort of breakdown in Jordan of guilt that I put them all through that.
[00:44:08]  But then that guilt kind of became anger that they were ever put through that.
[00:44:12]  I mean, they should have gotten a call right away from, you know, I work in DC pretty regularly.
[00:44:16]  They should have gotten a call from like my friends in DC to be like, this is horrible.
[00:44:20]  And we're going to work together to see what we can do.
[00:44:24]  But like, they didn't.
[00:44:25]  No one called them.
[00:44:26]  And I can't believe that.
[00:44:28]  I mean, my rep in like my in my parents' house is like Brad Sherman is like psycho Zionist, but but in general, like you would think that that would be a thing that happened with all these families and it just didn't happen.
[00:44:40]  So the family chat was just like in shock, which of course had some, you know, this overlining of that is that a lot of these families who are not politicized just got like completely radicalized about what the U.S. government is and how it behaves and its relationship to Israel and what that means, what that implies for everyday citizens.
[00:44:56]  But I have to say that it's going to take me some time to like both just normally get recovered into normal life and like check my email.
[00:45:05]  But like, I, yeah, I'm trying to process that sense of just disappointment and maybe, maybe kind of foolish or naive disappointment, but like pretty, like pretty anger, I would say, that like how let down we all were by even by a side that claims not just to be pro-Palestinian in some vague way, but like US citizens abducted, you know, prison.
[00:45:32]  I mean, again, it just, it just was a like a total flub, if I can be glib about it.
[00:45:41]  And I think that's embarrassing.
[00:45:43]  You know, I think, and not to be, to sound maybe flippant about it or whatever, and maybe I'm off base here, but to me, sometimes I guess it, when you encounter someone that you've maybe hated from afar or maybe at, you know, at a distance, but not a kinetic distance, let's say, and then to encounter them in this environment, right?
[00:46:08]  One where they put you through this sort of thing.
[00:46:13]  That hatred sort of being justified in that way, which we know it is, right?
[00:46:18]  Like we see, and those of us who have been very familiar with what Israel's been doing for a while, you have this sort of, you know, maybe hatred, but it's something that you, it's a hatred that you maybe feel acutely at some points.
[00:46:31]  But then in general, it's like a political thing that is sort of a little bit divorced necessarily from emotion.
[00:46:38]  But it could be edifying in this way to truly hate, to like hate these fucking people and to hate this and to hate their armed forces and to hate their government ministers having had face-to-face contact with them.
[00:46:52]  Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that I think that, you know, I did this little dance as a, as a Jewish US American.
[00:47:04]  It grades me to no end to have to like be Jewish in that way.
[00:47:09]  But I think the point, you know, has been so violently and clearly illustrated that like the state of Israel is just not, it's, you know, doesn't care about Jews.
[00:47:19]  I mean, it, it's, it's, this is, this has become a project of truly, as that Mossad agent was saying, basically reciting Gables to my face, like this is, yeah, this is a project and it's not for us and it and it doesn't have any space, I think, in it for coexistence with not just with Palestinians, but with like the world.
[00:47:45]  Like they want to destroy the world and the basic norms, rules, institutions that if we don't even cherish, then take for granted or hope to restore or reinforce.
[00:47:56]  And yeah.
[00:47:58]  So anyway, I have a lot of thinking to do and close to buy.
[00:48:04]  But I want to thank you guys again for having me back.
[00:48:08]  And yeah, I hope to see you guys in New York soon.
[00:48:12]  Yeah, Dave, thank you for coming on.
[00:48:13]  Appreciate it.
[00:48:14]  Take care, Liz.
[00:48:25]  All right, well.
[00:48:26]  Well, that was Mr. Adler, who is, I don't know exactly what his role is, but he's one of the big wigs in Progressive International.
[00:48:34]  And I'm glad he was able to join us for this episode.
[00:48:38]  You know, it's, it's, I mean, that's a pro, you know, getting out of getting out of jail and getting right on the horn like that.
[00:48:44]  You got to hand it to him.
[00:48:46]  But we can all learn a thing or two.
[00:48:49]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:48:50]  I mean, I do think that there is really something to like hatred.
[00:48:57]  I don't know.
[00:48:58]  That's maybe a topic for another time, but like to really feeling hate, which is different than like maybe a moral outrage.
[00:49:09]  But yeah, I fucking, I mean, what?
[00:49:11]  It's, this is, this is our third October 7th since October 7th, our second October 7th since the original October 7th.
[00:49:17]  So that's the third, right?
[00:49:18]  It's the, I mean, but the first one was.
[00:49:20]  The first one.
[00:49:21]  So if the first one is like the top of the.
[00:49:23]  No, no, we're not doing this because it doesn't work like with dates like that.
[00:49:27]  But, you know, I think it, I've been thinking about a lot.
[00:49:34]  I think just because it was interesting sort of muted, I guess, coverage of October 7th.
[00:49:42]  I don't know what I really expected, but I feel like last time there was such a media spectacle around it.
[00:49:47]  And I feel like at this point, it has just become, you know, even in places where you'd maybe expect to see some screams without words or something like that, you know, very little of that.
[00:49:59]  And I think it's because it's pointless.
[00:50:02]  I think even the pro-Israel people know that it's mostly pointless to defend it.
[00:50:06]  All you want to do is just attack the people who are trying to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians.
[00:50:13]  But I do think it's worth keeping in mind.
[00:50:15]  And I don't know, again, maybe this means nothing and it might mean nothing.
[00:50:21]  But at least within our lifetimes, this is the most isolated Israel has been.
[00:50:29]  And there has been a massive change in public opinion around it.
[00:50:34]  However, it's also worth keeping in mind is that public opinion doesn't really matter in most cases in terms of the politics of the situation.
[00:50:41]  I was thinking about that when David was speaking, just the sort of like, I don't know, the difference between, you know, you constantly hear like, you know, things are changing.
[00:50:51]  People are really like opening their eyes to all of the various Israeli crimes continued and historical and still at the same time seeing such a like non-action from basically anyone who has any kind of skin in the game from the American side without them really even in this situation.
[00:51:15]  You know, the way that David puts it where he's saying like, we teed this up for them, you know, like they don't even really need to make the Israelis angry about this because it's so clear that it's like they could just say, we're stepping in on behalf.
[00:51:30]  You know, these are humanitarian workers.
[00:51:32]  They're American citizens.
[00:51:33]  Not even, they're just American citizens.
[00:51:35]  We need to get our American citizens back, right?
[00:51:37]  It's so cut and dry.
[00:51:39]  And yet that was like not enough because it's more important to punish the people who are trying to do something.
[00:51:46]  Yeah.
[00:51:46]  I mean, you know, one recalls from fairly early on, right after, pretty much soon after October 7th, when like international organizations were brought into Gaza and like there was that world food kitchen, like that strike where they just like killed a few aid workers.
[00:52:02]  And there was just when that happened and like the pictures came out of like these were very direct targeted strikes on cars with this logo on them.
[00:52:10]  I was like, oh, okay, well, this is this, this isn't really going to be any different.
[00:52:13]  Like they, there's no there.
[00:52:16]  And it was, that was under Biden, of course, too.
[00:52:18]  And there was just no, there was nothing done about that.
[00:52:20]  Right.
[00:52:21]  And like, I, I think like many people, I just, I'm sick of witnessing all the fucking crimes.
[00:52:29]  You know what I mean?
[00:52:30]  Like I hate, what does that, what does that do?
[00:52:32]  Doesn't do anything.
[00:52:34]  You know, it's, it's, it's in any other situation, if you see a crime happening, you try to stop the crime.
[00:52:40]  You kill the criminal or you arrest them and then put them on trial.
[00:52:44]  And it's, it's, uh, it, it, it is, I think that there is a growing sense of frustration, which again, what does that mean?
[00:52:51]  Probably nothing.
[00:52:53]  Um, but uh, you know, it, it is, it is, it, I, think it's just outrageous that, that there's this combination of the impunity, increasingly like naked impunity that Israel is prosecuting this war with, um, and then the criminalization of the opposition to it by the U.S.
[00:53:19]  And it is just I mean, and various other countries as well.
[00:53:24]  Uh, it is just, I mean, look at fucking Britain.
[00:53:26]  It, it's just, it, it boggles the mind.
[00:53:29]  Um, and you know, it, it is, it is, you know, it makes it makes it makes one somewhat nostalgic for the 1970s or 1960s in a specific way.
[00:53:40]  Um, and uh, I don't know, it is just it, it is, it's sickening because it's like, what does that teach you?
[00:53:47]  You know, if you watch someone who just kills kids all the time, um, feed by our government and actually given your tax dollars to do precisely that, all your politicians, with very few exceptions, not only accepting that or pushing for that, but criminalizing you if you if you dare to disagree with that.
[00:54:09]  Um, I mean, what does that teach me?
[00:54:11]  And all you can do is just, oh, you bear witness, you watch, you put a little fucking flag in your bio.
[00:54:15]  I mean, it just, it just, I think it, it, it's, it, I don't know, you know, it's just like, when is, when is, when is something going to change?
[00:54:23]  This is why I think Petro's speech that we saw, you know, as maybe far out as some of that sounded, you know, it really, it did.
[00:54:31]  I mean, at least that's a solution that I can understand, right?

=== Can't Stand It (00:53) ===

[00:54:33]  Right.
[00:54:34]  You know, it's like trying to mobilize.
[00:54:36]  And it's like, well, then just go to the source.
[00:54:38]  Yeah.
[00:54:40]  But yeah, I mean, and people say this is kind of a joke, but I mean, I really do believe like there should be a, there should be a military invasion of Israel.
[00:54:47]  I mean, I think that, uh, I think that it just, uh, I don't know.
[00:54:52]  It's, I, I just, I can't stand it.
[00:54:56]  I just can't stand it.
[00:54:58]  Anyways, uh, we got to go.
[00:54:59]  My name is, my name is Brace.
[00:55:01]  I'm Liz.
[00:55:02]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[00:55:03]  And this has been Truanant.
[00:55:05]  We'll see you next time.
[00:55:06]  Bye-bye.
[00:55:27]  Come out.