The Daily Zeitgeist - But Do You Condemn Hamas!?! Media Bias On Israel 11.14.23
Episode Date: November 14, 2023In episode 1581, Jack and Miles are joined by award winning journalist, Aymann Ismail, to discuss…How The Media Has Been Covering The War In Gaza From The Start and more! Intensified Israeli Survei...llance Has Put the West Bank on Lockdown Posting Empathy for Gaza Ended One of Her Friendships. An Expert on This Thinks That’s Fine. Haaretz.Com The Origins of the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli Communities Nestled by It Aymann Want's You To See This: That New KFC...? LISTEN: Greg Abbott's Maxi Pad by Farmer's WifeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
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hello the internet and welcome to season 313 episode 2 of today production of iheart radio
this is a podcast where we take a deep dive into america's shared consciousness and it is tuesday november
14th 2023 yep i mean national seatbelt day buckle up buttercup or chuckle fuck or whatever the the
elon musk fucking chat thing wanted you to say also uh world diabetes day national pickle day
national spicy guacamole Day.
I don't know if there's one for regular guac and one for the real ones.
Oh, for sure. We need a little bit of hot heat.
I feel like there's like multiple National Guacamole Days.
Yeah.
Just based on, yeah.
I love guacamole.
It's a great sport.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've been lobbying to get it into the Olympics for a long time.
We've been lobbying to get it into the Olympics For a long time
Family PJ Day is
I guess for families to just
Put on your favorite pajamas
And have a little party
I guess because it's getting cold
Sure
Open auditions for the
Christian Nightmares
Twitter thread
Family PJ Day My family has matching pajamas They're pretty cute Christian Nightmares Twitter thread, I feel like. Right, right, right. Family pajamas.
Family PJ night.
Anyway, my family has matching pajamas.
They're pretty cute.
Good for you.
Good for you.
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My name is Jack O'Brien,
a.k.a. I always feel like my toilet's skee-be-dee.
But I don't know what that means.
Oh.
Or I always feel like my wife is judging me.
And I swore it wasn't pee.
Oh.
I always feel like my wife is judging me.
But I said it was slurpee.
Oh.
Oh.
That is courtesy of Connie Shwea on the Discord.
I am so sorry for not knowing how to pronounce that.
But the AKA was on point.
I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray.
Hey, it's Miles Gray.
Just keep it as simple.
The Lord of Lancashire.
And Black and East experimental artist, your boy Kusama.
Thank you so much for having me on this day of day.
It was Tuesday.
Yeah, it's Tuesday.
It's Tuesday.
Yeah.
Oh, you know, Garfield had some things to say about Mondays.
But what about Tuesdays?
Am I right with Heathcliff?
We need we need somebody to step up and talk about how Tuesday. Did Kathy have something to say about Mondays, but what about Tuesdays? Am I right? With Heathcliff, we need somebody to step up and talk about how Tuesdays... Did Kathy have something to say about Tuesdays?
Am I right? Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by an award-winning
staff writer for Slate, whose work focuses on identity and religion and who has been doing
invaluable reporting on what is happening in Israel right now. He's appeared on CNN, NPR, and most importantly, this show.
He's been featured in the New York Post ad week,
or the Huffington Post.
Please welcome back to the show, Amen Ismail.
Amen.
As-salamu alaykum, my brothers.
As-salamu alaykum.
What's happening, man?
Alaykum salam, bro.
Oh, my God.
I know, man. We were just talking i was like i was like
it's been a minute and i was like we got to have you back and i i get my shit is so fucking
horrible wherever you look and i know with the work that you do having such proximity to
what's happening in gaza and the west bank and. I know it's very difficult. So like,
honestly,
I really,
we really appreciate you coming on because it's not easy.
I'm really glad you guys aren't afraid to talk about it.
I've been listening to the show and you guys have had some of the best
critiques responses and the most fiery rhetoric.
So shout out to you guys for,
for keeping it up and for inviting me for real.
Oh no,
it's just,
I mean,
thrilled to have you.
Yeah,
man.
And,
and again, I think it's also important like we've had you know like guests on to speak about what's been
going on but i think also one thing we've talked about really consistently is how the media is
portraying things and how it meant consent is being manufactured for some really grisly awful
things we want to call it genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, whatever, pick, pick one. So I think, yeah, having your insight today is also going to be really invaluable for
not just us, but everybody listening. So again, man, I know it's, thank you, man. Yeah. I know
how difficult it is to talk about this stuff too, but honestly, we just, yeah, we were glad to have
you, man. We're glad to have you. I've got it. I've got one chat. I've got one in the chamber
already. So just let me know. Uh, first of of all let me answer your first question i condemn hamas
okay okay uh-huh oh good i'm glad you saw that in the doc uh yeah but does he condemn hamas though
condemn them okay now what do you say it's a weird because it sounds like i'm coming back
and like saying that as a response but that was the first thing written in the doc but do you sir however i'm sorry i haven't said anything yet however do you sir condemn hamas
what's new with you oh you're crazy it's been crazy watching it's been crazy watching the news
uh because you know the contrary to what most people say i think we still are in the golden
age of media there are still there are so many amazing reporters who are doing such amazing work.
It's just incredible the kind of work that's coming out right now.
However, at the same time, there's some of the worst work.
But anyways, what I'm trying to say is that people who work in journalism now know the game.
They know how to keep their skepticism they know how to draw out the story
in an interesting way what i can't understand is how when it comes to just this one thing whenever
it comes to palestine everybody forgets all their training it's like we're starting from scratch
it's now it's it just drives me nuts seeing so many people make so many mistakes
taking the israeli military's narrative as fact and casting doubt and shadow into anything on the
like on the other side regardless of who it's coming from which to me is like you you guys
see what you're doing right but you see it everywhere and it's been driving me nuts yeah
yeah is it a mistake at that point like is it or is it just kind of their marching orders and what they think
they have to do like at this point you know but yeah it's a fucking nightmare out there before we
get into all of it we do like to get to know our guests a little bit better and ask you what is
something from your search history
that's revealing about who you are? Yeah. So everything in my search history right now is
from just typing in the names of articles and Wayback Machine, because I do not have
subscriptions to things. So what I do is I use proxies to get around paywalls to read
everything from Harrods to the new york times
to everything i know journalists shouldn't say that subscribe to slate plus and all that hey
you're the reason i subscribe to slate plus so i'm on i'm on a budget i got i got subscribed
i subscribed twice to sleep how much i fuck with the vision but no i get that dude that's i'm like
whenever i see it i'm like please be an archive fucking post of this article.
And I'm like, because I'm not giving money
to the Wall Street Journal to find out
about how workers are wrong about everything.
Yeah, it's out there.
Yeah, everything in my search history right now
is either that or trying to like convert times.
Like it's so hard to keep track of like what time
everything is happening because gaza time london time every every single spot has its own right
time and i really need that to stop i need to i need like some kind of uniform time please
yeah no matter what it's like yo it's noon it's like, but it's actually 3 a.m. for us. No, man, we're doing one clock for everything.
New rule.
No time zones everywhere.
We kill people who are everywhere to just put in parentheses,
Newark time zone, please.
Oh, right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
I feel like people can get used to that.
Just be like, what time is it here?
Oh, it's always the same time.
It's always the same time.
But here it's dark out when it's 3 p.m yeah yeah i don't know time zones were
invented for trains we're over that shit we're not like well how about that over here it's a
little bit different right i feel like i don don't know. Has anybody ever pitched that?
I bet there's a think piece worth writing about
if there was a uniform time, things would
actually run more efficiently.
Who knows?
Sounds like a mess though.
Oh, and if you want,
I have a funnier one. So in my search history,
there's a whole block around like five o'clock
where it goes
rainbow whale octopus baby shark octopus shark shark shark octopus so this was um my son pointing
at the screen and wanting to summon things like it was magic and yeah oh yeah blue is another shark
show up they call it chrome my kids call it can we we do Chrome? I'm just like, all right, let's do Chrome.
And they just tell me what to search.
And it's just Google image search history.
I feel like for them, it's like Magic School Bus.
We're making things appear in their...
Magic School Bus still goes too.
We got a recent bedtime story from the old school Magic School Bus days.
And they're into it.
They're referencing various characters.
They're referencing little jokes from in it.
So shout out to the Magic School Bus still holding up.
Did you show them the 1987 hit film, Inner Space?
No, we haven't done Inner Space yet.
I need to put that on my to watch that shit.
I remember that was like when I saw the magic school books when they won the body.
I'm like, bro, this is inner space.
I saw this shit when I was a kid.
I felt that they were ripping off inner space when they would go inside the body.
But anyway.
Seen it.
Seen this.
Yeah.
That's fun.
Yeah.
Because my one son is like obsessed with the digestive system because I think he recognizes that it ends up in poo. Yeah. Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. Cause my, my one son is like obsessed with the digestive system.
Cause I think he recognizes that it ends up in poo.
Yeah.
But like from very early age,
he like first thing he wants to see what,
if he like gets around a Google image search or,
you know,
an encyclopedia,
he's looking up like some animals,
digestive system.
This is weird. So similar searches but it would just be octopus digestive system unicorn digestive system right how and that's
how rainbow sherbert is made you know digestive because you know like camels got like multiple
stomachs does he know about that shit yet i don't think so i'm gonna blow his mind man yeah i need to consult you more on the parenting stuff inner space
and camels multiple has nothing to do with parenting just like my weird stoner memory
this one dude inner space you gave me one of your favorite books that uh star wars like
tech oh the technical manual yeah technical man yeah manual? Yeah. He still fucks with that heavy.
Yeah.
What is something you think is overrated, Eamon?
I'm going to say cousins.
I'm going to say cousins are overrated.
Wow.
Yo, here's why.
Here's why.
I have cousins in Egypt, and I told them I'm coming,
and so far they've given me like,
they've asked for three iPhones.
They've asked for jeans. They've asked for boots.
I love my cousins and I'm going to try my hardest to get them everything, but like,
God damn.
Yo, but you're
over there, bro.
I know. I'm going to get an iPhone 14 and just be like,
this one just came out. Trust me.
Bro, I'll send you.
I'm about to, I think I have to switch mine out. I'm like, yo, I'll send you you can have my i got i'm about to i think i have to
switch mine out i'm like yo i'll send you mine off the strength you guys can't picture like i
was in a case should look clean you know what i mean my cousin my cousin will be ever grateful
i'll tell you that okay yeah well we'll talk after but i would give you mine because i'm
about to upgrade but mine is the one that uh gives your balls radiation when you put it in your pocket oh iphone 12 yeah iphone 12 yeah yeah
hey it's fine it's a low level of radiation radioactive yeah radioactive i remember like
in japan my cousins always ask for vitamins that's wild yeah that's also on the list that's
right yeah they're like we don't have supplements like that out here and they're like yo can you get
me and i was like, what? For real?
Go to Trader Joe's or somewhere, bring a big-ass thing of fucking vitamin C and shit.
People are like, ah!
You're like, I'll get you the newest NES game.
They're like...
Yeah, they're like, we're on PlayStation 6, fam.
It's 1989 and we're on PlayStation 6.
Y'all won't even have that shit until 28.
2028
yeah so you're headed to egypt pretty soon i'm headed to egypt in a month for my daughter's
first birthday we went to egypt for my son's first birthday and so we got to introduce him
to family and i think it's really important to like take somebody when they're really really
young yeah i think if you're a little bit you know tied to it take some pictures i met the
pyramids on the nile do all that fun stuff uh i mean this is part of the reason why
i'm a photographer in the first place so i picked up photography after like going through all of my
family's old photos and and seeing all these pictures of myself being young family in egypt
that i hadn't seen in a long time. And I remember it feeling like
this was the most important, the most valuable thing I have in my whole family. Like I want
these pictures. And so I picked up photography thinking I need to document everything. Like
everything is valuable. And now that I have a kid, like number one on every single list,
this is just document, document, document. I'm taking crazy amount of photos. I'm like
really going hard on that end.
And so we did it for the first kid.
Now we got to do it for the second kid.
Get pictures.
Like literally the first thing I do when I go to anybody's house is I dump my baby on their lap and say, all right, smile, taking a picture.
You might be famous.
I don't want to tell my kids.
They're like, they held you as a baby.
It makes a difference, man.
I remember seeing all these pictures and being excited, being like, who's that holding me?
Like, who is this?
I don't even know who this person is.
And my mom would be like, oh yeah, that's your cousin.
Yeah.
He lived in Japan for a while.
Oh, that's your aunt.
Yeah.
She taught me English when I was a little kid.
Like all that stuff made me feel so much more real.
And so when I got to see them for the first time, when I started going to Egypt with uh, with my own money, when I got a job, I was trying to go like at least
every year and meeting those people felt so much more exciting. Like I felt connected to them and I
recognize streets. And like, I'm telling you this, this box that my mom gave me a photos
is just like a gigantic cardboard box, just loose photos thrown into it. And so just that treasure
trove and going in and discovering and trying to match up which photos are taking on which camera because of the,
the shape of the print and everything has been like one of the most enjoyable things I've ever
done in my life. So I just wanted to be able to recreate that for my kids. That's all.
Like, cause we live in such an era of like digital photography and not printing shit anymore. And like, I, so, so many memories
are like just having these like same, like 40 photos in my house, like growing up there. I was
like, yeah, that's my grandma. Yeah. And that's my great grandma or whatever that you kind of have
these reminders. And to your point, like asking questions, because that actually helps your
parent, like help my parents, like jar their job, their memory, and then actually begin sharing things that are, that are a little bit further than like,
Hey, your grandmother was, you know, she was a fantastic woman. We were like, Oh shit. Oh,
okay. This is, this is my uncle. He only talked in rhyme because when they were kids, somebody
threw a bullet in the fireplace and it hit him in his head. And now he could only speak in rhymes.
Yeah. Like shit like that. Like where my my grandfather was like let me tell you about him yeah so i definitely like pictures are such a
yeah you know they're like it's it's so wild like because now we can take pictures like at will
it's wild that we don't cherish them the same way we did when we were printing film so yeah you
really got to lean into having that shit printed for sure yeah yeah and and there's a lot of spots
that still do it for super cheap.
Like, uh, I use my local CVS cause they have like a printer and so I'll just like send
them a batch of like a hundred of my favorite ones.
Yeah.
I do whatever at the, uh, at the end of every year when I have like a sale on black Friday
or, Oh, it's coming up.
But yeah, I'm doing that, uh, every single year just cause I love having the physical
copy.
Yeah.
And I like making little photo albums and keeping them out like on
the countertop to so the kids can explore it because now that they're getting older they love
to flip through it too yeah but also you know it's it's special to me to have like a little book of
being like this is your first year alive you know yeah that kind of thing god damn i should really
do that i just gift ideas christmas is coming up. Yeah. Like all the like conscientious,
like people I know,
like people who are just like very mindful,
like,
you know,
my sister or like,
you know,
we,
we have these friends,
they always have like these photograph books of like,
this was our trip to this place.
And this was,
you know,
like they just,
and it's so beautiful.
And every time I'm like,
man,
how you doing that yesterday.
Yeah.
And I never get myself to do it.
And you know, you probably got so many photos on the fucking phone and shit.
Easy.
Just got to go through it, right?
I love going back through the pictures, but there's also something unnerving when I'm like, I don't remember them looking like this.
Like I'm taking the picture.
I'm talking to them.
I don't remember this interaction.
I don't remember them
ever sounding like that
because you just,
it's so,
it's just, you know,
you see them every single day,
like constantly.
And they're all you think about.
And so, yeah, it's weird.
You're on your dad's mode.
Half that is on the pilot.
That's right.
That's right.
What is something you think
is underrated? I'm going on a pilot. That's right. That's right. What is something you think is underrated?
I'm going to say cousins.
Go on.
Go on.
You know, after, after saying that, I felt, I felt really bad because I do love my cousins.
Of course.
Of course.
And I get you.
Like they, they're, you know, they can't like afford, cause like the Egyptian economy is
in the fucking shithole right now.
So, uh, what they're going gonna do to pay me back is like
set up trips for me and my family so one of them is gonna set up like a nile cruise for us the
other one's gonna set up like maybe a backpacking trip somewhere like they're also gonna pick us up
from the airport take care of us pamper us like they do that every trip regardless of gifts they
don't even do it for the gifts it's just that the gifts for me is like a way to pay them back and
show appreciation so yeah no i really shouldn't be talking shit about these cousins, man.
They're really like the reason why I go.
And I know they listen.
Yeah, yeah.
Shout out to your cousins.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They don't really speak English, but they're listening.
Yeah, yeah.
Day one listeners.
Oh, man.
Amazing.
All right.
Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll get into it.
We'll be right back.
Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll get into it.
We'll be right back.
I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and
LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades.
Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers,
church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine.
Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, Thank you. abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk
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in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?
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This summer, the nation watched
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was the target of two assassination attempts
separated by two months.
These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago
when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life
in less than three weeks.
President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close
to being the victim of an assassin today.
And these are the only two times we know of
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One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.
I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover
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The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And we're back.
We are. And since October 7th, we've been talking about the perplexing way the media has been covering this, the discounting to the lives of Palestinian people, innocent Palestinian people and children. kind of in the in the mainstream media but amen you know you you are seeing seeing this happening
and you know as a member of the media like covering i'm just curious to get your perspective
on like what what what has been happening what are you seeing behind the scenes and then like
how is that affecting how we're hearing about or not hearing
about what was happening in israel yeah man no this is a media literacy is everything these days
because it's equally important to like create good journalism as it is for the audience to
know how to read and interpret like good journalism So what I mean is this, right?
I'm really, really upset by the way that I have younger siblings.
My wife's siblings are much younger than she is.
So I have one that just graduated high school,
another one who's in college.
And they get all of their news from social media.
They only know what's going on through TikTok
and through Instagram.
And I feel like a lot of people
don't really know how to distinguish
between people just posting things,
opinion, news clips of commentators
from the actual journalism,
which are like firsthand accounts,
people on the ground doing journalism. And this like equivocating between being like an activist
talking about what's happening and being a journalist and trying to report the facts as
they are has been driving me nuts. So there's two things happening when we think about like how the media has been like covering
this on the one hand i'm seeing uh so much misinformation and disinformation spreading
like crazy on social media and because everybody's in their own little social media bubble what
people on either side are you know and in this case there's a lot more than just two sides
but anybody who's consuming media on social media right now are getting just like this fire hose of information. And some of it's
real and some of it's not, and some of it's made up and some of it's like from 10 years ago,
repackaged to look like it was just shot yesterday. Right. And so you have people who are
Zionist and sympathetic with, uh, you know, the IDF and what they're doing right now to,
like, secure Israel, who are, like, sharing these videos of, like, people in body bags
who are wrapped in the white, like we've been seeing a lot from Gaza, who are getting up to
check their phones, you know, because it's, like, actually a clip from a protest in Lebanon,
you know, or something like that. But, like like that clip is being repackaged and shared as, you know,
evidence of Hamas making up casualties and that the IDF is pure hearted and
pure intention. But on the other end,
there was a viral clip that went viral maybe two days ago that supposedly
showed like Apache helicopters shooting Israelis who were fleeing from their
lives when the Hamas came in with those paragliders at the at the music festival yeah uh which is also like
you know repackaged i think it was from like the two or three days afterwards uh when that clip
when those clips were shot and published by the idf showing their attack helicopters um attacking
militants who were trying to either flee or take more ground in Israel.
And so those are two examples.
But they were being passage to say that this is Israel shooting their own people. They were saying, yeah, the reason why the casualties numbers were so high is because
the Israelis were also shooting everybody.
But there's also, you know, I should also caveat that there is like a few kind of,
there's a few eyewitness testimonies of survivors in the kibbutz who talked about how when they were being taken hostage, that Israeli soldiers showed up and just started spraying bullets and hitting their own people.
This is eyewitness testimony.
You can read about it on Haritz.
But at the same time, the role that the journalist has to play is to find primary sources and report it out. And the way that so
many people at prominent outlets that have a humongous responsibility and outsized responsibility
to tell the truth in this particular war, where information like this is kind of just going crazy,
flying over our heads, has been catastrophic. A good example is right after the beginning of the war,
the Palestinian ambassador for the PA for London, for England, was being interviewed by the BBC.
And he just talked about how he lost like seven family members in an Israeli bombardment.
And this guy you can tell was being super stoic. He looked like he was just crying
because he just found this out and he's on the news ready to talk about what's happening.
And the presenter asked him to condemn James immediately after he shared that he lost seven
family members. And this callousness goes beyond what a reporter ought to do. We should be asking
people about what they see, what they feel,
trying to get primary sources to tell us something
about what's happening in front of them.
Asking somebody who has a wealth of knowledge
about being an ambassador for the PA,
not Hamas, which is,
PA is their,
they run the West Bank, Hamas,
this person is an ambassador for them.
So he's also lost family to the
bombardment he's in a unique position to talk about what's happening from his perspective but
this person who was who was interviewing him this journalist was asking about something that he's
disconnected to a and was trying to make a moral argument with this person and that to me felt
like like i don't know i was disappointed
i was like you know how to do this like this is your job you don't have any problems doing this
with any other subject why is it when we come to talking about palestine and talking to palestinians
we skip the part where we're supposed to interrogate how they're experiencing the world
and we skip to well how do we get the, how do we hold them accountable
for what the other side is saying?
You don't see that when it comes
to those same people interviewing
Israeli ambassadors or Israeli prime ministers.
When they talk to their own people,
they say, we are going to flatten Palestine.
We are going to eradicate Hamas
and all of its supporters.
And they use a lot of this genocidal rhetoric.
And they talk about having a second Nekba. Ministers in the current Israeli government talk this way.
But when they come on to do these interviews, they ask them, well, where were you on October 7th?
Yeah.
How are you affected by this tragedy? Which are, you know, I'm not here to like browbeat these
people for doing their job because those are good questions to ask people who are going through this
and that suffering is real. But where is that when we're talking to
palestinian sources yeah uh just today the the new york times put out a piece in their incredible
podcast of the daily uh not as good as the daily zeitgeist but you know if you have extra time
you can rip off artists and a lot of people might think they came first we came first thanks
yeah i was gonna say i was gonna make that point but um you know they were they did this whole episode where they talked to god
to gods and doctors got doctors who are in these hospitals who are operating and the host asked one
of them well the idf is saying that hamas is doing xyz in these hospitals like what are you seeing
which is like a good question to ask. But the people who
are just being constantly asked to take these political arguments that one side is making in
and trying to rationalize them and trying to breathe air into them and give oxygen to them.
The guy had a meltdown, man. He freaked out. He was like, yo, we are having to choose which kids
die and which kids live. We don't have enough resources to give kids who need amputations any kind of anesthesia.
So they are awake.
And while we're hacking off their body parts, like, you know, the trauma and this guy's
voice when he was like, why the hell are you asking me about Hamas right now?
Right.
Was, I think was incredibly emblematic of the what we've done
to these people you know by flattening them as being like this a response to hamas these people
are people man so i would love to see the the media make a better effort at exercising just
basic journalism right asking people about what they see and where they're at versus trying to turn everything into a back and forth.
Or they're propagandizing them in real time.
You know what I mean?
You want to talk about like HMS, there's HMS spokespeople who are giving interviews.
Right.
Like you can do that piece if you want to talk to them and be like, well, we heard about, you know, the fuel being withheld from XYZ.
What do you have to say to that?
But there's people who are on the ground, these doctors who have to sleep in operating rooms,
who can't leave because the flood of people who need help is just constant. The people who have
brought their own families to hide in these hospitals too. I mean, there are thousands
of people in these hospitals and you can just imagine the chaos by opening this window and talking to these people and just asking them about like hamas just it
just drove me nuts like you would never see that you would never see somebody talking to somebody
hiding in their escape room in the kibbutz you know when that was happening and if the media
were able to get them on the phone you would never imagine them being like well what do you think
about netanyahu saying the settlements are about you know like is he putting y'all at risk he's putting y'all at risk right because i feel like
and a lot of them would say yeah hell yes he is like you know a lot of people feel like netanyahu's
policies are not popular like he's fucking incredibly far-right and fascist and like if
they were willing to ask those fucking questions, I feel like that would also be.
Well, it just kind of leaves it leaves out this like not even elephant in the room.
The biggest dimension of this is oppression.
Yeah.
And to just skirt by them, be like, well, you condemn Hamas, right?
Let's keep reinforcing because I see this so much in the rhetoric of people who are defending what the IDF is doing in the Israeli government of of keeping the focus on Hamas about being like free these people from Hamas. And like that's what it is. And rather than really like widening out the focus here to really understand all the dimensions of it, because to your point, like when someone is bringing up these facts that would,
that is, you know, meant to tell a very human story about Palestinian people to, to then bring it to what about Hamas completely just takes the wind out of that take or what, or what the point
someone's trying to make to just make it purely about, right, right. There is that, but what about
this other thing that we can agree is bad. Let's talk about the bad thing, because I don't want to
keep talking about
how innocent people are being brutalized
through no fault of their own.
And I think that's also been really hard to watch too.
Totally.
And what drives me nuts is that
these are like allegations, right?
There's been no proof put forth by the Israeli government,
but there's just not enough scrutiny
to sort of just say,
okay, well, the Israeli government is saying this.
Is that true? Like we almost, I've seen too many media outlets to sort of just say, okay, well, the Israeli government is saying this.
Is that true?
Like we almost, I've seen too many media outlets and journalists skipping that step and going straight to, okay, well, we need to now ask the other side
with this allegations being made of to defend themselves for it.
I mean, we need to see proof, man, before anything else.
This idea about copaganda, right?
This idea that it came about
after the popular Black Lives Matter uprisings across the country, after George Floyd was killed,
where it was obvious that the police, when they issue statements, I think a lot of people
suddenly realized that they are incentivized to lie. And that you really, that first account that
they gave was, well, he was on drugs and he was attacking us and, you know, he was fighting back and all this stuff that after you see the clips, you know, it's not even close to being true.
And, you know, this is, I feel like there's overlaps here.
And I think part of the lesson that we learned there in journalism and in people who are consuming media is that, you know, the police are incentivized to protect their own skin.
I'm,
I'm wish I could see more of that when we're looking about Palestine,
this idea that Israel has a long track record,
not the Israeli government.
I gotta be specific because Israelis are as diverse as any place else in the
world.
Uh,
the Israeli government has a long track record of lying we saw when they killed the journalist
shirin ebu akli we saw it when they killed those four boys uh those four pre-teens on the beach
with worship we saw that with uh there's like so many examples man of like them denying that they
did something when they're doing it so i would love to see the same amount of scrutiny being like,
well, you're making these claims. We need to see proof or we need to hold out to see
like what everybody else is saying. It feels like we're so eager to take this narrative
and put it out. Is there like a dimension? Cause like we talk about this all the time,
especially in American media, people can like grapple with white supremacy or systemic
oppression and journalists can't.
And a lot of people have talked about how like what it what it takes to actually get
to a certain newsroom and the and like what the culture is of a specific outlet that sort
of self filters in a way that you're only going to get people who are kind of know how
to like read from the same book when that time comes. Are you like, do you see it as a dimension of just sort of like these
ingrained sort of like just the lack of American curiosity or about or about like honestly
reporting about imperialism? Or is it like other you know, because we see also like these like
McCarthy type activities that are happening where people if they deign to speak out about what's happening, that they are people are coming for their careers and things like that.
How do you see like what like is it bad habits?
Is it external factors?
Is it a combination of things?
Like how do you kind of see like the environment that people are operating in when they just take the word of an IDF commander and be like, OK, that's what they said.
OK, print that without evidence. and we'll just run with that.
Yeah, I mean, it breaks my fucking heart, man.
I've been trying to not cry all day, and I'm fighting it back now.
Because what you said about the lack of curiosity really hit something right on my heart, dude.
Because that's what it is.
It is, man. really like hit something right on my heart dude because that's what it is it is man it's it's this
basic like in this base basic reflex that's maybe inside me because i had arab heritage
or i don't know what it is man but like i cannot for the life of me understand why there's not this
curiosity where people are just satisfied with it being like,
it's a religious war.
And so they're responding to their religion.
And so it makes sense that they want to eliminate just Jewish people.
And they use that as a way to just justify making claims like what's made,
what's on the, on the congress floor recently that
there is no such thing as a palestinian civilian right right it's it's like when the israeli
government says that we're going to punish the people who are giving out candy or giving candy
or like the people they elected hamas and it's it's like where's the curiosity to say okay what are the polls saying right because
if you look for the polls like you would for any other community when you're trying to understand
like what this community is experiencing or how they feel there are polls man people go and they
do studies about this stuff Gaza has been under siege for like the greater part of the last 20
years this has been like a you know the curiosity part of the last 20 years. This has been like a, you know, the curiosity of academics, you know, people who are going in and finding out, oh, actually more than 70% of the people in Gaza, when they were asked if peace was option, would they want to live in peace with, with Israel as their neighbors?
And 75% I don't know the exact number, but more than 70 percent were like yeah we want peace yeah but you you almost don't you don't even see that number
quoted anywhere because there's no curiosity there's no uh thought experiment of like well
are these people like us where they're responding to many different things there's this idea that
is really prevalent i think among a lot of writers journalists, that the issue is that there's an ideological conflict.
Right.
That if only each side could just get along, then this problem would get solved.
Right.
That there are actual partners for peace on either end of this that are being usurped by these like radical ideological groups this is not the case here man
this is not the case what you what you said about the the imbalance of power here is everything
because i think this really cuts through to how so many people who are sympathetic with the
palestinian cause actually feel about this and it drives me nuts
seeing some of these protests being described the protests that we've seen across the country
across the world i think london just had the biggest protest ever in its history and it was
for palestine this being condensed as it being like a pro-hameas rally or an anti-israel rally
you know the the idea that these people could just be flattened like this
responding to this one part of this conflict drives me nuts yeah you know where's the curiosity i mean
send a reporter talk to these people yeah find out what they're saying they're there's they're
filming themselves they're telling you what they're saying the same thing with uh from the
river to the sea right palestine will be The congresswoman Rashida Tlaib just got
censured by her own colleagues on the Democratic side
who helped the
obviously bad faith right wing
use that rallying cry
to punish her.
Now, none of the reporting I've seen
makes context of what she was actually saying in the speech
where she said that she wants peace for everybody.
They just took the right wing's word for it that
she was calling for genocide. She was calling
for genocide, man. Come on.
One thing, freedom.
And also the speech, where did she
give it? Where's the curiosity?
Where did she give the speech? She gave
it at a Jewish Voices for Peace rally.
Right.
Come on!
This is basic journalism 101
that you'll see in every context except for this
and it makes me want to tear my eye out man yeah it drives me nuts i mean this is what's so difficult
to watch too after going through the summer of 2020 and understanding how oppression affects
people and like they were they were doing this like this. This is why, like, I'm so cynical about how our media operates, because it's operating not even to inform people. It's there to just preserve these systems of oppression under like because these questions that are asked, like similar to like in 2020, you bear like every now and then you'd hear some reporter ask somebody who's at a protest why why they're there.
Like everything was always like and we're here with the police.
Sorry, we're here with, you know, Sheriff Villanueva, who's telling us about what is happening in Los Angeles and getting this perspective that is meant to just.
Like, to your point, flatten this movement into like a very easy to digest, like these people just like want chaos or something, and it's it's it's not that great of a thing.
Slowly, I feel like those things change because I think there are enough people in America to
kind of begin to grapple with that somewhat, but this also just feels so disgusting and
uncomfortable to watch because it really pulls out just the inherent Islamophobia that exists
in this country too, because I feel like it's so easy. A lot of people just want to reflexively
just cast people who like in Palestine is being like, yeah, well, you know, like they voted for Hamas.
So that means they're bad.
And it's that simple.
And that really is so difficult to have to sit through, because to your point, this is all happening while innocent people are suffering under them.
And as many people want to say, well, they're voting for they voted for Hamas.
Well, then what's happening in well, they voted for Hamas.
Well, then what's happening in the West Bank?
Because Hamas is not in power in the West Bank.
The PA is.
And so where is that argument now?
Because we're only seeing increased violence there as well.
But again, it's always this lack of humanity that's extended to these people
in such a casual way is really unnerving because, you know, it makes me feel like I'm living in a place where more and more people are like, yeah, some people are just not human to me.
And that is really, really frightening and horrific and such a difficult thing to grapple with.
Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
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there seems like there's a real tension between people versus the leaders because
amen as you mentioned the polling suggests that hamas is very unpopular and you know the
the netanyahu government in the lead-up was viewed as extreme and you know was being protested throughout israel and we're seeing these massive
protests for peace and for like more humane policies and more humane actions going forward
but the i don't know it's when the mainstream media covers it, they take the quotes from these inhumane leaders, and then that becomes sort of the marching orders for the two different sides, when it does feel like there are a lot of people who are seeing the same thing that we're seeing.
but they're just yeah it uh it drives me nuts because it feels like people forgot that right before all this happened there were thousands of israelis protesting against their far-right
government yeah and there were also palestinians in gaza protesting thousands of people in gaza
protesting against hamas which in that case could be dangerous right because we know that hamas is
they they basically rule like military thugs they they shoot people and they drag their corpses in the street
and so you have to imagine how fucking brave these people are for protesting in the streets in gaza
yeah but that happened are they innocent yes do they want non never-ending bloodshed
no they were chanting we want to live.
Like that was one of the chants.
So, you know, I think all of this context is important.
I realize and I recognize that in the wake of something like on October 7th,
there needs to be room to grieve.
Yeah.
And I recognize that that pain is real.
And I wish the hostages would be set free.
Like all of that, I think there's room for all of that to also coexist with that same want for a ceasefire.
That same want for people who are being pummeled to death, being bombed.
11,000 plus, not counting the 1,300 that are still under the rubble and unaccounted for.
You can't even digest those numbers. We're parents, right? We can't even digest what it's like
to be a parent in Gaza right now. Did you guys hear about this new acronym
that's now being coined in Gaza?
Oh, was it about the children with no parents or something like that?
The new acronym is WCNSF.
Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.
Yeah, that's what that's what I'm like.
Again, I feel like I'm in the fucking Twilight Zone, man, because I don't know how.
in twilight zone man because i don't know how parent or not you can look at people who are fucking did nothing who are trying to survive
and they're living under an occupation where that's made virtually impossible and then you
see the the violence that they're experiencing and to like how do you look at that and then your brain goes
well you know they voted for her like it's wild that it's it's almost like they're like people
are being trained or like inoculated against being able to look upon what is happening and
arrive at the conclusion which is this has to fucking stop. And that's what is like really unnerving when I see people brush this kind of shit off to kind of keep like what they're sort of like rah-rah-ing of like the IDF and, you know, continued violence.
And yeah, I don't know that that's where that's where it's it's very it's just it can be so easy to become nihilistic and so deeply cynical with all of this.
But yeah, I don't know.
Like, I mean, I feel like for me, like I can only continue to try and bear witness to it because as much as I want to ignore it,
I can't for the life of me think of if I was in the situation of these people that I would,
I would be hoping that they, that they're putting
the energy, the thoughts towards kind of some kind of solution that they will use their voices
to try and speak up for me or my family and things like that. And it's that, that simple
level of reciprocity that like people can't even get behind is also kind of, I don't know,
it's like doing something to me that I really don't like because like with every little bit of people i see not acknowledging others humanity like i feel like
part of me becomes callous there are like it's calloused over and i'm losing a part of it too
and just trying to i don't know like to to find you see if the other people are seeing the humanity
and all of it you know so one of the pieces that I did recently,
I really like.
It's a series of interviews with people
who are losing their friendship circles, right?
So I interviewed this one girl who was friends
with this Zionist, who was this Israeli guy.
She's a Muslim girl.
She's Arab.
And they used to, about how this Israeli guy
grew up with Arabic culture a little bit in Israel
and would send her Arabic songs that she liked.
And she'd be like, oh, my mom used to make this
while we were making food.
They had a friendly relationship.
But then when all of this started,
he turned into almost like an internet troll
where he was just replying to all of her Instagram stories where she was sharing some of what was happening in Gaza and rationalizing it and calling her a Hamas supporter and all this stuff.
That kind of thing got me curious.
I was like, how is this possible?
You know who this person is.
You know that she was friends with you. You know that you were,
that was never an obstacle,
this overwhelming hatred of Jewish people writ large.
You know that that's not what's in her heart.
For a fact, because you guys were friends for years.
The piece doesn't go there.
The piece talks about how to keep, I talked to this person who helped co-found
this sisterhood of Shalom Salaam,
where they're like a friend circle of Jewish women and Muslim women here in America
who like break bread together, hang out together.
And so I was like, tell me how you like cope with these kinds of like flashpoints
where there's like conflict.
And it was like a beautiful article.
You can go and find it and read it.
I wrote it.
So obviously I recommend that you do.
But it got me after writing it. I was thinking, I was like, how is this even
possible? Like how's this person's instinct not to go, Oh, we have this relationship.
How is your heart? Like, how are you feeling? Like, what are you experiencing? How is it like
this bombing is happening? Like I recognize your pain as much as I want you to recognize my pain.
And that to me felt like the, the, the natural way to respond to something. I was like, how's that
possible? And then I was reading this old study, maybe from 10, 15 years ago, about how it's
possible that if you see the suffering of a group that you consider to be on the opposite end of you
ideologically, that could actually trigger your pleasure receptors in your brain.
And I need to find this out of your sentence, you guys.
But I thought it was so fascinating that biologically,
depending on where we land on the political spectrum for some reason,
how you experience the suffering of somebody could be either pain or pleasure.
I was like, what the hell?
And I think once I recognized that,
it helped me realize what was actually important.
Not just as a journalist, but as a human,
which is like everybody just wants their pain
to be recognized and to be felt.
And this idea that the Palestinian pain is fake, like you can just do a Twitter
search for the phrase, Pallywood. And you'll see so many rationalizations and justifications for
the killings of innocent people by denying that they're there in the first place, which is
monstrous. But it helped me to recognize that even if I empathize with one side, I'm not just
talking about Palestine and Israel, but the idea that we need to empathize with one side, I'm not just talking about Palestine and Israel,
but like the,
the idea that we need to just be better at communicating that we're hurting
right now,
that this is fucking painful.
What we're going through right now to see these kinds of things that,
that,
you know,
like this,
Oh my God,
man.
Like I'm in so much fucking pain right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everybody's in so much fucking pain right now yeah yeah everybody's in so much fucking pain
right now like why are we not just giving each other hugs man like i feel like we need to do
that instead of like trying to like make each other feel like you're actually manipulated and
you're being lied to so your pain is fake right or oh actually i saw a video of a helicopter hitting israelis so your pain is
manufactured and fake but but at the same time it's like only one side has the power
to stop this only one side it has the capacity to make peace so really like does any of this
actually matter maybe this is just we're going to experience this pain and and just
cry it out man because i gotta tell you dude as somebody who wants the fighting to stop
and as somebody who knows that all of the powers on one side who can make peace today if they
wanted to it it feels really fucking bleak and hopeless yeah yeah especially when you know you
hear things like from our own government too or
they're like oh yeah ceasefire i don't know if that's possible if that's on the table and that's
the kind of it's kind of rhetoric that we're hearing from like people who even have any kind
of leverage in this situation what can he do though he's just he's rationalizing it he's just
the president what like guys how many times does he have to tell you this he's he's just the president. He's just the president. Guys, how many times does he have to tell you this?
He's just the fucking president here.
He can't do anything.
What do you want him to do?
I practically don't matter, but vote for me.
But vote for me.
I practically don't matter, but please,
vote for me.
I think there's also this element, too,
of sometimes,
and I don't mean to simplify what's happened, like interpersonally. Right. Like in sometimes when we acknowledge the pain we've inflicted on someone else, there's a some you can feel like an acknowledgement of the transgressions that were made.
They don't want to acknowledge that kind of pain because on some level they don't want to foment more hatred and is only going to further destabilize this part of the world
radicalize more people it's not like so like i'm always like what does the israeli government think
is going to happen like i'm always like help me does the Israeli government think is going to happen? Like, I'm always like, help me even understand the logic.
That, again, people are just going to say like, yeah, all right, that was an L for us.
So you win and let's just move on with our lives.
That's just not how things work.
And so to see that sort of like for them to continue down this road when it's so clear to every single person, like this is not this doesn't make anybody safer.
It's really also just so frustrating. And yeah, it leads you to that point of like this is not this doesn't make anybody safer is really also just so frustrating and yeah it leads you to that point of like is it really are we just gonna have to
stand by and watch this all go down because everybody in powers is sort of like kind of
or at least in the you know empirical world sort of knows that they're like yeah well this is this
is what we're gonna do and that's just a very difficult pill to swallow.
Yeah.
No, one of the most racist things I've ever seen.
No, that's not true.
I've seen a lot of racist shit.
But one conspiracy that drives me nuts is this rationalizing of this ideology of hate and death
that Hamas is instilling in their kids and that's the reason why this
conflict is going on right you ever see like israeli leaders talking about hamas textbooks
and this idea that they hate us because their kids are being taught to hate us
it's like how removed you have to be from what's happening on the ground
to accept that as rational i mean even like ben shapiro
floats this kind of thing where it's like it's the textbooks if you got rid of the textbooks
there will be lasting peace in this enclave that we've been bombing periodically that we've been
starving and calorie counting and yeah you know mock the lawn you know what i mean yeah it's under
like under siege occupation
it's this idea that like these kids that are going through this cannot phasmably respond to
the israeli air bombings you know of seeing like that acronym bro the acronym like what's going to
happen to that kid uh right the one of the doctors was asked that question it's like well
because he thought he mentioned that the hospital that he's in that's meant to
service like 600 people is now being occupied by close to 2 000 people and many of them are just
you know he said that kids wander in by themselves and that it's starting to feel more like a like
an orphanage than a hospital the idea that these people who have never seen or met
an israeli in their lives beyond just the bombardment beyond the people at the guard towers
if you could even see them from as far as where the line is where if they cross it they'll get
shot the fact that this is their whole relationship with their neighbor for their entire lives man
right they have no fucking family left.
And you're going to say it's the textbooks.
Like that to me drives me insane.
It drives me insane.
And I feel like I'm the only person who can see through it
because it still feels like in the media sphere,
we're still trying to find the ideological clash.
Like where do these ideologies just not
settle with each other? Why can't they make peace when all you need to do is just look up what
Smatrage is saying or what Ben-Gavir is saying, who are active ministers who are talking about
flattening Gaza and who are talking about wanting to use Gaza as the freaking water park.
Right.
Who deny the fact that Palestinians exist at all.
Right.
Yeah.
It's like, what is going on?
Like, how am I the only person that just sees this shit, man?
And it's like, I really, so I feel like all of this has been like ebbing and flowing inside
of me and i'm trying to focus i'm trying to get this work done trying to write these pieces
and then you just like get on twitter because you get a notification and then you see this video
right of like but you can't see this aunt digging through like this bag of like charred body parts
of like two and three yearyear-olds like trying to recognize
the palm of this she goes she picks up the this like half of an arm with a hand attached and she
holds and she touches the hand and she goes this either belongs to like wasi or nasir like this
you know trying to figure out like whose scalp because it's just like hair like who's who's scalp? Because it's just like hair. Like, who's, which baby had hair like this
so that they can identify the parts?
And then at the same time,
you're in your newsroom
and you see somebody write,
I'm not going to,
I don't think I've seen this at Slate,
so I'm just going to say hypothetically.
You're in your newsroom
and then somebody writes,
Hamas run Ministry of Health,
as if there's like dudes with RPGs
and ski masks coming up with numbers and not
actual trained professionals and doctors with international organizations like Doctors of
the Abroaders in the room trying to help them account for the dead and trying to be as frugal
and correct as possible so as not to double count somebody because they got the body in pieces.
They're trying to do this work and then President Biden says, oh, I have no faith in those numbers.
That grief that you're feeling from seeing all of what you're seeing with your own eyes is manufactured by Hamas.
And it's meant to trick you into seeing what Israel is doing is evil.
I cannot fathom anyone who's not outraged by this
right and it just feels like the the baseline is if you're outraged it's because you're being
tricked into outreach right yeah or you yourself have so much hatred in your heart that you're
just using this as a vehicle to open up some other murky door yeah i mean like the only thing
yeah i think the closest thing i saw to something
resembling you know humanely functioning state department let's not get started about the
state department but like apparently there's like an internal memo where a lot of like state
department employees are like joe biden is spreading misinformation on the israel hamas
war right now and like saying like we're seeing war crimes be committed,
but we also have a commander in chief
who is complicit in what is happening there.
But again, it's like, it doesn't feel like,
it feels like it doesn't matter how many people
are out in the streets,
what the, how diverse these groups of people are,
how numerous it is.
And, you know, how so much of the world is on on one side
saying we need to help the people these palestinian people and have it brushed aside yeah i mean it's
you know it reveals just a much darker system i mean i mean that's always existed but it like it
it really just puts it right in front of you and it makes it feel completely
insurmountable which is so fucking hard to deal with yeah yeah and it's so dangerous right now
to be a journalist man because in this on this side of the world a lot of people are getting
fired or being told to not report on this stuff because they're they're being they're like being
active on social media and part of me gets it being like,
yeah, you really shouldn't be like advocating
for any size you want to maintain
any kind of public credibility,
public facing credibility,
even though, even if in your heart,
you feel like you can still do your job.
But even when we talk about power,
it's like, you know,
there are people who are journalists
who are accusing other people
of like being Hamas-run journalists.
This one guy who writes for the New York Post still has his job.
Right.
Not fires.
Right.
There are journalists who are advocating for genocide still have their jobs.
It just depends on which side you're advocating to get genocide.
I would love to see some consistency.
But one thing that we haven't talked about that I would love to bring up is this like feud over the posters like the kidnap posters i know you guys have talked about it
before on the show yeah but there's this idea that you know if you take something down then
you have like hate in your heart or you're doing it because you don't recognize that pain
and i don't agree with people taking it down i think if it bothers you walk it's like especially in new york city dude just keep walking it doesn't matter but like reducing those people
to caricatures of like anti-semites really i think you have to avoid the thinking about the power
the power dynamic at play the role of postering and how this idea of like people who don't have
a voice can use the walls as canvas to like get their message out.
You know, so even if you want, even if you want people to care about those people who are being kidnapped,
I just don't understand flattening the people who are removing them because they're in pain because they feel like they're being sidelined,
flattening them into being like pro-kidnapping.
It just, everything about how we're having this discourse online
feels both evil, not evil, it feels disingenuous,
but it also feels sort of besides the point,
because as long as the bombardment continues in Gaza,
as long as our government keeps arming them,
giving them the bombs to drop. It all just sort of feels
like besides the point. Who cares?
Who cares about these posters? Who cares about
ripping them down? It's like people are being
blown to smithereens.
Right.
Yeah.
It just drives me nuts, man.
People, I think, in America understand what happens
when you get shot.
We're like the mass shooting capital of the world.
We don't understand what it's like to have a bomb dropped.
We don't. Yeah.
We don't know what it's like.
Unless you're like maybe like black activists in Philly or something like that.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, we have, yeah, we have very lopsided experiences here too.
And I think that's why this shit resonates with so
many people like i said this before man it it's so easy to see through the bullshit if you have
any kind of experience or proximity to being marginalized or oppressed and it's wild too to
just sort of see people be like well i can't identify with the oppressed so i think i'm more
like the people who are having like a nice beach time while, you know, indiscriminate bombing is happening.
What does proportionality look like?
Like, what do you want Israel to do?
It's like all that is just.
Yeah.
It's just so annoying, man.
Yeah.
Breaks my heart.
Yeah. like administration and just how extremely right wing it is and how unpopular and like clear-eyed
a lot of the criticism of of that administration is like it it does feel like that if there if
there's a way that this eventually through just sheer number of people continuing to push on the side of humanity you know like
versus these small extreme i i know it's very bleak right now but the more i read about just how
extreme like it's both scary like how did we get to this position where this is, who's in power?
But it's also, it feels like a small number of extreme militants on both sides are holding all the power.
And somehow the communication needs to change so that that becomes clear.
Clear in the way the mainstream media
covers it that's an important question i'm not palestinian so i'm like i take my cues from
people who are palestinian and israeli who are working towards peace you know there are so many
so many israelis that want. And they're the vast majority
as far as I'm concerned.
And there are so many Palestinians
that want peace.
And they are the vast majority
as far as I'm concerned.
The people who are wanting all or nothing
are the marginalized ones.
But they get all the attention.
So it's hard to see that sometimes.
Yeah.
You know, one piece that i've did recently for
slate i think kind of gets at what you're saying a little bit he's a guy who was born in this small
village in area c do you guys know what like area areas a b and c are and what's that c like a has
like is mostly pa controlled right and b is like split and then c has like is mostly PA controlled, right? And B is like split.
And then C is all Israeli controlled, right?
Correct.
Yeah.
So there are, so after they made those designations, there were still, and there still are today, areas in Area C.
Wait, actually, Eamon, let me just explain that because I think most people will absolutely have no idea. Like I just did that recap, like as we both know.
will have absolutely have no idea like i just did that recap like as we both know yeah okay because i know that it's broken up basically into three parts where the palestinian authority has like
sort of civil control i mean why don't you break that down because i know the the levels of control
for palestinian people it varies depending on what zone you're in right yeah so area A is exclusively administered by the PA.
Area B is administered jointly by the PA and Israel.
And area C is administered by Israel.
So if you ever see like that Swiss cheese map showing all of these tiny little islands that are not connected to each other at all, Those are the Palestinian parts. There's all like maybe, maybe about the same size islands
that are like right in the middle
between those are area B
and everything around it,
like all the big open rural areas
are area C.
So a lot of the,
there's still like a hefty amount.
So they made these divisions
based on population,
mostly when they did make these divisions. Israel, this was all done during the Oslo Accords. Israel made the case that they
needed those rural areas to secure peace for themselves and to also possibly defend against
Jordan or Syria. So much of the eastern side is Area C, controlled by Israel. There are still
Palestinian-run farms and Palestinian
villages out there. And so I interviewed a guy to see like what life was like for him
out there, you know, in area C where he was living. And what he described to me was basically
night raids being done by not soldiers, but civilian settlers who are dressed in camouflage soldier fatigues,
who are armed with American guns, like M16s, who show up at night and they basically zip
tie all the guys and they put guns to their heads and they say, you have 24 hours to leave
or we're going to come back and massacre you guys.
And then they'll also destroy their olive trees.
They'll shoot at their water sources. They'll pour cement into their water sources so that they can't continue to feed their trees or feed their animals. And a lot of these
people are farmers and they work the land and they graze their goats or whatever animals that
they have. And so they sort of require like large
amounts of land to like run their their lives and these people were coming in emboldened by what was
happening saying okay so there's a war going on so now we are the law and they'll call the cops
and the cops because in this area the israel is in control so they'll call the israeli cops
and they'll they'll so when they do come they'll back the settlers up. And there's already been people who have been shot, been killed. He talked about how he can't
even vocalize that they are like angry at these people for coming in and, and destroying their
livelihoods and, and seizing them like blocking roads and people who need medicine, can't get
medicine and people who can't get, you know, it's like their kids can't go to school. These kids
haven't gone to school for a month and they're nowhere near Gaza. So I talked to this guy and you
can read about it in Slate where I published it, but I asked him, I was like, what's the solution
here? Like, do you have hope? And he said that my only hope, because he doesn't have hope in the
governments, is that his only hope are in the free pens of the world. And what he meant was,
so he did the whole thing in Arabic
and it sounded way more elegant in Arabic, but he was saying that his only hope is in people who
are in media to tell the truth about what's happening there and to get the word out. And
in that context, I was wondering like free pen, what does that mean? What does that mean?
And then I was thinking about like the privilege that we have to report what we want to report uh and that we are in a way censoring when we're not
finding voices like these and i thought of the responsibility and i thought about like what we're
not doing by covering those kinds of voices and how their entire hope, their only weapon really is that
their own story, like that this kind of thing is happening to them. And there's nobody else that's
there who's going to protect them. And nobody else is going to offer them a peaceful life,
except for us, man, except for people who can put pressure on their governments,
show the world what's happening to them. And in that context, I see journalism as being so freaking potent and so valuable and so threatening. And, you know, the Israeli government has already killed 40 plus journalists and targeted attacks. They'll deny it was targeted.
The evidence showed, the forensic analysis showed that they attacked the Reuters convoy to the north.
And they even openly said that when this honest reporting thing came out,
honest reporting, this org is like pro-Israel, it's not honest.
They had their mission statements to divert people's attention away from what the IDF is doing.
So that's why I'm saying that. But they had succeeded in painting people who were photojournalists who were documenting what
was happening on October 7th as being complicit and complying and cooperating with Hamas and their
executions of innocent people on that day. And so the defense minister, Ma'ben Gevir,
and the Israeli government verbalized and openly said that those people who were
photojournalists are complicit and that we will be adding them to the list of people who are going to
be killing in response to what happened. And it just, that was another moment when I saw that I
cried because that's like, this guy is basically signing a death warrant for these photojournalists because this American-based pro-Israel org
wanted to contribute to the fog of war
and make things more murky so that we aren't...
So we doubt what we see is true.
And I just really...
If anybody who's listening gets anything from this,
I just want you to know that it's dangerous to look away
and finding
primary good sources is everything right now. And these people, they have no other avenue for peace.
That's the only way that there's going to be peace is that enough people wake up to what's
happening, realize that it's not the textbooks that's driving these people apart. It's that
there is this one government in Israel, the Israeli government that has control
over everything, everything. They are in charge. And if they wanted to right now, they could find
the partners for peace and they could make peace. And without that, there's no hope. There's just
not on the ground, not here. We're sitting nowhere. That's the only hope yeah geez i sound like fucking cornell west man
no you haven't called me brother enough times yeah come on brother
i started by saying islam alaikum brothers do you have i mean just just generally
like resources that you think i so i'm just getting all my information from X. Is that cool?
Is that a good place to get...
No. Obviously, social media has
become... All you have to do is follow Elon
Musk. That's where all the true information is coming from.
He speaks the truth.
But yeah, I don't know.
It's getting
true information because there is
the mainstream
bias that we're seeing and
it is tough but do you have any like kind of broad advice on on where how people should approach the
task of like primary yeah yeah i would say the the people who are covering this best uh hands
down in my opinion this is my opinion uh, is Haritz. They're an Israeli
based newspaper. They have both right-leaning and left-leaning writers. They have reporters
and photojournalists who are on the ground. They have fixtures in Gaza. They are right now putting
out the best information. I read Haritz in English. Sometimes there are articles that are only in
Hebrew that you can, if you have a computer, you can translate. It's very easy. And also, you know, they, I think, enjoy more freedom
to criticize the Israeli government than we do here in America. I think we are very quick on this
side of the water to like try and condense whoever we don't like into being some like enemy of thought into being this
person who like is being driven by hate but these people are in israel and many of them are jewish
some of them are muslim some of them are whatever you know and they i think have probably the the
closest to the conflict they have primary sources and that's what I've been using to stay
up to date. And one thing that I think really conveys what I'm trying to argue here, which is
at the very beginning, a bunch of different organizations at Harvard issued the statement.
Some people thought it was bad taste to, right after this terrorist attack,
try to create context for what happened by saying that there was no
peace for Palestinians on October 6th. And that, you know, some people have like said that, you
know, it's not right to victim blame and, and tell people who were killed in a terrorist attack
that they had it coming. Right. But since day one, Harriot has been doing that kind of work,
writing about how the conception of these kibbutzes being on the
border was meant to withstand a first wave of explosion after the establishment of Gaza as this
cut off, insular, people call it, open air prison. And that these kibbutzes were put here
strategically. And these are Israeli writers who are digging into the history, who understand this open open air prison and that these kibbutzes were put here strategically and you know these
are israeli writers who are digging into the history who understand this stuff better than
we do so i think in this country if you want to consume media and be closer to this i would say
harrits is braver and they're doing some of the best work right now amazing well amen ismail we
really appreciate you coming on did we do it I didn't even cry once man
made it through dry eyes
we truly appreciate it
where can people find you
follow you read you all that good stuff
they can find me at slate.com
I'm not using x
because I do not want to get cancelled so I'm
not on social medias right now
but you can you know get to become a slate
plus member.
Uh, we're doing a lot of really, really great work.
Amazing.
And is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?
Uh, I've been, I don't know if this counts, but just looking through old family photos, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I've been feeling like really unstable.
I need to take more mental health days.
Yeah. I've been take more mental health days.
I've been going up and like looking at my kids when they were younger and it just cheers me up and it cracks me up and I have so many videos of them being
silly.
My kid is riding a scooter now.
He's like two years old.
So he's like,
does this thing where he arch,
he like pulls us to the side and he pulls one leg and he puts,
tries to point it up.
And I think it's like,
I imagine in his,
in his head,
he's probably like that leg is touching the clouds,
man.
He's like,
it's like,
but in reality,
it's just sort of like,
you know,
just a little bit.
You can see it all on their face.
That's what they're so unguarded,
you know?
And it cracks me up,
man.
That's so funny.
You know?
Yeah.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Well, thank you. I know that's not like a, like, you know, it's, Hey, that's, that's so funny you know yeah amazing yeah well thank you i know that's not like a like you know it's hey that's that's what's helping go back and look at just yeah there's there's this
app on your phone called photos go back and look through some old ones folks yeah that's good
advice miles where can people find you as their work in media you've been enjoying uh yeah find
me uh at miles of gray wherever they
take the at symbols uh find jack and i on our basketball podcast miles and jack where you know
take a break from the reality of our world event hellscape and just zoom in on the nba and that
hellscape uh and then also you can find me on 420 day fiance we're talking about 90 day
fiance another way i distract myself uh some media works in media i like okay i got a couple
first a literal work of media uh producer justin was like yo have you seen blue eye samurai yet
on netflix and i was like you know what i i know of it but i have not seen it i watched it it's
pretty dope it's about a biracial child in like, you know, 1600s Japan.
Because if you were biracial, then you were considered a fucking monster.
So just kind of like looking at that.
But it's like a dope, like animated samurai kind of tale.
And also another tweet was actually from a past guest, Dr.
John Paul at Dr.
John Paul, where just posted a picture of barney
well like like one is like a barney promo image while another one was just someone like at a
birthday party i said lord barney is on that stuff and then someone someone quote tweeted that uh
at sleep to dream and said ozempic is hitting every corner of the entertainment industry.
Damn, he's got that big head.
Yeah, man, Ozempic face.
You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien.
A tweet I've been enjoying.
Flea at Flea333.
I don't know if that's the flea or not.
Tweeted, the great thing about the thong song is you can really feel his earnest
yearning to see that thong
I know
what'd he say? I'm just double checking
this person's not like
389,000 followers I think
and also talking shit about the clippers
that feels like flea
and if not hey that's what
the account was
you can find us on twitter at daily zeitgeist we're at the daily zeitgeist on instagram we
have a facebook fan page on our website dailyzeitgeist.com where we post our episodes
and our footnotes where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's
episode as well as a song that we think you might enjoy miles what song do you think people might
enjoy uh let's go out in some like just nice aggressive kind of just 90s garage band rock
kind of vibes this is a track i discovered on instagram where this dude just like walks up to
people in like washington square park and he's like hey do you make music until someone says yes
and then just like promotes whatever they're making and he found a person who
was friends with the lead singer of this band called farmer's wife uh and this track is called
greg abbott's maxi pad but let me tell you this shit is oh dude there's a fucking there's a riff
in it that i love so much uh it just it it's like it's just good just something like rock
that got you get you going uh Like some Pixies demo type shit.
But anyway, this is Farmer's Wife.
If it was the early 90s, Diddy would have stolen it and put Biggie over it.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And would have slowed it down for sure.
But yeah, this is Greg Abbott's Maxi Pad by Farmer's Wife.
All right.
We'll link off to that in the footnotes as well as Harrods and other stuff we were talking about that's gonna do this
and this twitter post that i just sent you to in the chat yeah just throw that in there at the
bottom be like yo amen wants you to see this all right uncle man man that's gonna do it for us
this morning we're back this afternoon to tell you what is trending and we will talk to you all I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series,
Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed.
Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films
and Shekinah Church.
Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.
Every great player needs a foil.
I know I'll go down in history.
People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.
Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports.
Listen to the making of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts.
Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. podcast presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when
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Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app,
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