#424 – Bassem Youssef: Israel-Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, Middle East, Satire & Fame

The following is a conversation with Bassem Yousef, a legendary Egyptian-American comedian, the so-called John Stewart of the Middle East, who fearlessly satirized those in power, even when his job and life were on the line. Bassem is a beautiful human being. It was truly a pleasure for me to get to know him and to have this fun, fascinating and challenging conversation. Now a quick few second mention of each sponsor, check them out in the description. It is the best way to support this podcast.

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You can get a simple pack for free with any purchase. Try it at drinkelement.com slash lux. This is the LuxFeedement podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and now to your friends, bossamusef. Your wife is half Palestinian and I've heard you say they've been trying to kill her, but she keeps using the kids as human shields. So have you considered negotiating a ceasefire? Well, the thing is every day, every minute of the day in a married life is a negotiation.

Everything can blow up into a full-scale war, starting from a simple sentence like, good morning, what should we do with the kids today? What should we do with that piece of furniture? Any sentence can lead you to heaven or to hell in the same time. You do negotiate with terrorists. Oh yeah, yeah, hunger. He must. And for her, I am her tears to so. Tears on both sides. I'm more serious now. When you found out about the attacks of October 7th, what do you mind?

If I'm allowed to use a curse word, I was like, as many as possible. I was like, oh shit. Part of my stand-up comedy is I describe a situation where I was in a restaurant with producers and there was a bombing two blocks away in Chelsea, New York in 2016. And of course, this is like, damn, what's going to happen to us now? And there's like two different reactions. The white reaction, which is like, oh my god, I hope nobody is hurt. It's terrible. I hope everybody is okay.

And there's the Arab reaction, what's his name? What's his name? What is the name? You know, because you know what's going to come? It's kind of, I was scared what's going to really happen in that area. And it's like, oh my god, it's going to be horrible. And the way that it was reported, I didn't know how to handle this. So I basically, I went into hiding for a few days, three or four days.

And I talked about P.S. Morgan, a team talking to me two times, three times, I was like, no, I can't, how can I, you defend that? How can you defend the rape? The decapitated babies and whatever. And then I started kind of looking in the news a little bit. And then I started seeing people coming on the shows and saying things that I know as an Arab, as an Muslim. As someone from that region that it's not true. But I didn't know how to say it.

So I said, by the third time when they asked me, I said, I'd like to find, put me on. And I went there, it was more of a figure, it was speaking, a suicide mission. Because it's a loose, loose situation. I can, I can lose stuff in Hollywood. I can, I even, I remember my magic, like, best in, be careful. I mean, are you sure you want to do it? My manager was like, please don't do it. Please don't do it.

And on the other side, if I don't perform well, whatever, well means, I'm going to be rejected by my own people. So it's a, it was a loose, loose situation. Because whatever I say, it will never be enough. And whatever I say will not be good enough. And I was going into there and I, I felt that I was going into a trance for the 33 minutes that I was on the, on that interview for the first time. You blacked out. I blacked out. I blacked out.

And a lot of people asked me is the earpiece was that a bit when the earpiece kept falling? It's like, no, it was really falling off and it disconnected. And I had to save it because I cannot see them all. I can hear, I can just hear them. And I could expect it at any time. Okay, Basim, thank you. I was like, I was fighting for every second to say words to put stuff in there. Yeah, for people who don't know, this is your conversation interview with Pierce Morgan.

And you can see, I can see I was just like the lens with the camera. And I was just like, it's a real dream or nightmare. Yeah, hello Basim. It was like, hello Basim. It was like, hi. In the end, at any moment, your career and everything. Everything, yeah. Yeah. So what was the drive that got you to actually do it to overcome that fear? Multiple things. First of all, I don't want to say it's just my wife's family because my wife's family has always been there. But this time was different.

The bombing, the attack, they usually one of those people that they are away from everything when whatever happened and whether they are always in safe places. But this time, it seems that there was no place safe. And already we heard about like two, three of the cousins and the uncles already lost their homes. So this was too much. I wanted to say something for those people because I know that I made one of the Jews that I made about like, oh, it's a hazard. Her cousin, he's a loser.

He's a doctor. He's a doctor. And every time a hospital was bombed, we worried about him. So I wanted to say that because I felt that these are, this is a family that I have never seen in my life. She actually hardy saw an uncle or two because they cannot leave. But I said like, I need to speak at least I do something for those extended family that I have never known. But also because when Pismog and Tim called me a couple of times, they're like, okay, let's see what's going on in the show.

And I just watched the stuff and the lies and the ones cited reporting that made my blood boil and then I thought like, why am I, what am I free love? I'm afraid of, if I say something, I can lose my career. It's like, wait a minute. But that was the reason why I left Egypt. I said, wait, I left Egypt. I came to the United States. I came to the land of the free where I can say anything I want. And yet I have limitation of what to say. I mean, I thought we left that shit behind.

I mean, what's happening? And I understand. I understand the connection of like how sensitive it is when you speak about Israel. And all of the ready made accusations. But as an Arab, as a Muslim, I don't react the same when you talk about Saudi Arabia or Iran or Egypt or any of them. It's like, hey, you want to diss some of these countries. I'll do that with you because I have strong opinions about what I mean. And I already been expressing them.

But when I talk about that's why I, and there's a lot of Jewish people who come to my show and they understand that. They understand that the separation, but that kind of a grouping of blackmailing people and saying and not saying what they have in their mind, it is that kind of like one of the things that kind of like push me to go on the show. The thing that was bothering you was that what was being said or how it was being said both.

Because there are lies, which is usually in the media, but there was the total disregard of humanity. You talk a lot about your show about human suffering. And I felt that here the human suffering was not equal. I felt that's why I came up with this like, what's the exchange rate today? What's the exchange rate today? There's of course, it's terrible to see anybody die. But I feel that like, is it isn't our life not worth anything?

You had a chart akin to crypto from an investment, you analyzed it from an investing perspective of course in the dark. And you were saying that a certain year was a good year. 2014 was a good year for investment purposes. And also to refer to the family member that you called the loser, you were saying that you called him had a conversation with him and he keeps saying that he's not using anybody for human shields and you call him a loser. You can't even give a job.

The liar he lied to a lot because I have to believe. But this is what the one thing is like, it's also one of the things like how it was said. It was stuff that I've been hearing. I don't know what turned on on my head, but it's stuff that I've been hearing all my life from the media. Israel warns civilians before bombing them. And that's okay. But that's not okay. Israel is trying to minimize its civilians but killing them anyway. And that's okay. But that's not okay.

So it is kind of like the indoctrination that we've been hearing as if it is okay. And then suddenly it's not. Yeah, there's a kind of several layers of bullshit. Almost sometimes hiding the obvious horror of the situation with kind of politeness and all this kind of stuff. Just the basic value of human life. That said, it's a difficult situation. It is. It is. Israel. BB called you. Awesome. Big fan. Big fan of your comedy. First of all, would you hang up right away? Would you hear me?

No, I would definitely hear you. I'm up to you. That's like, that was like, wait a minute. That's material. That's material. That's material, man. It's like, so, you can yell, cool me. Yeah. Well, I was sitting on my phone and just like, I have a microphone. It's like, oh, Nitenyahu. Yeah, it just shows up that way. I mean, what would you do? What would you do in the situation? To answer this question, we need to understand how Israel thinks.

There is an incredible speech given by Gideon Livi, the famous Israeli report in Heirts. And he describes a situation where he was in the West Bank and there was a checkpoint. And in that checkpoint, there was an ambulance with a Palestinian patient and it was there sitting for an hour and a half, not moving. Then he went to talk to the soldiers like guys. Why are you not letting them go? It's like, ah, let them go. And then he told them, imagine if he was your father and the soldiers stood up.

Like, what? These are pigs. These are not humans. So when you tell me what would you do if Israel would do, it really needs to, we need to ask, how does Israel look at the Palestinian and view the Palestinians because they do look at them less than human.

And there is an incredible talk by Mi'ah, he was a Holocaust survivor and he said, I learned in Auschwitz when I was there in the concentration camp that in order for a group of dominant group of people to dehumanize another group, they need first to dehumanize themselves. And Israel looks at Palestinians as lesser people, as lesser beings, as some people who are dispensable. And the way that they treat them is that they don't really care about like, that's why that they exchange the thing.

So for me, if I am Israel, it will be like, what would you do if you're the United States in the time of the Native Americans? They were killing people with the millions. When you dehumanize a group of people, you really don't care. So if I was Israel, I would do exactly what Israel is doing right now because there's no one is holding me accountable. There is no one stopping me and I can get whatever I want throughout my history through violence.

I think a lot of the things you just said are a tiny bit slightly exaggerated. So let me try. Let me try. Let's try. So not everybody in Israel. Of course. So let's look at several groups. So people in government, IDF soldiers and citizens that are neither of those. And not everybody of any of those sees Palestinians as less than human, just some percentage. So what percentage is that in your sense? It's the people who have the power. So it's mostly the focus of your commentary.

When you say people in Israel, you really mean the people in power. People have power. But as much as like, of course, I mean the people of power because when I speak about, even when I speak about America, I speak about people in power. When I speak about Egypt, I speak the people of power because like in country, you talk about the 100 million people in Egypt or the 11 million people in Israel.

Of course, now there are people who go in and they demonstrate against Netanyahu and they want him out of the government. But we have to admit that the Israeli society, it at a whole, have moved quite a bit to the right and has been like many extreme. And you know what happens when you go to the right or you go to the most extreme, the other person go to the most extreme and extremism breeds extremism. So thank you for the clarification.

I really meant with the people of power when people criticize the United States for going in Iraq. Of course, I'm not criticizing citizens. But you made another point, which is an interesting point and it's very difficult to see in the heart of people. But I wonder if you look at that average Palestinian and the average Israeli and when they look at the other, do they have some hate in their heart? Well, everybody probably has some. What is that amount?

You know, when you look at a person that looks different than you, how much hate is there? It depends on what is the living situation of each person. So in the Berlin Film Festival, just like a few, a couple of weeks ago, there was an Israeli and a Palestinian receiving and a work together. And the Israeli director said, we're going to go back to Israel. He's going to go to the West Bank. He will have no rights and I will have full living rights.

These people managed to work together and be friends and they have empathy to each other. Now the average Palestinian, it's a very difficult question because is it the Palestinian and the diaspora or the Palestinian and Gaza or the diaspora in the West Bank or the one in the citizen who has a citizen of Israel who still have less right than a Roman citizen of Israel that you.

And it really depends if there are people in Arabs in Israel who are having a great life and there are people Arabs who are having a miserable life. But definitely people that living in Gaza or in the West Bank is kind of like on the lower tier of the living conditions. Now let's talk about the hate. What does that Palestinian see with whom it is really? The Palestinian see oppression, limitation of movement, limitation of freedom.

And then when there is something that happens, you see the full force coming in, destroying their home, taking away members of his family. It would be absolutely no reason for him to love the other. That is really because he doesn't have the power but he lives under his government. All he sees is the rockets or whatever. But he sees the reaction and he doesn't see what happened to those whom. And as humans we are selfish. We see what really affects us as humans.

And I cannot even imagine what it would be like to live as a Palestinian. And I'm not even talking about Gaza because everybody talks about Gaza. But let me give you an example. And I'm not going to talk about the 12,000 kids killed in Gaza. Let's talk about just like the four weeks in the West Bank. My fourth, Amr Najjar, H10 sitting next to his father, shot in a while he's sitting in a car next to his father by the IDF soldiers.

Hamad Ziyad, 13 years old, March 3rd, shot in front of a UN school while sitting with his friends. Muhammad Rehanim, age 15, March 2nd, he shot while standing in front of a stool front during an eye train. February 23rd, Saeed Jardal, he was killed by a drone fire. February 22nd, Fadi Saliman killed while standing in front of a top of a red crossbuilding. He held the head. February 14th, Valentine's Day killed a shot in the head while leaving school.

February 11th, Muhammad Khattur, US citizens killed while being in a park car. And Mwaiyad Shams, February 9th killed right in front of his home because a military car came reversing back to him and then somebody opened the door, shot him and leave. This is a daily life of people in the West Bank. What is the justification that IDF provides? Terrorism. Terrorism. Or I don't know. You cannot really say human shields. But they were throwing rocks.

There was a guy who went on Chris Rock and he said like his son, a US citizen who killed and they were throwing rocks. So we killed him. Even though they were throwing rocks, you kill him. But the thing is, you see, this is how easy for them to get rid of Palestinians. And I love, like, I was, I had to say I prepared a little bit for the podcast because you are in tech. So and I am ignorant in tech. There is a movie called The Lab. It is directed by an Israeli, a guy who called you, Tam Feldman.

And he talks about how the military industry in Israel is very advanced. And what is really mind boggling is in that movie he shows how the military, tests its weapons in the field in urban areas from Palestinians. It is heartbreaking. As a doctor, there are five stages of trials. There is like, there is discovery, preclinical, clinical and then market and then post-market evaluation by the FDA. The FDA approved and then FDA post-market. Five, just to take a pill.

And you go in and he interviews people as like, where did you test this? And they tested it in the field. So when you just like when human life is so cheap and it is so indispensable, it made me, it gave me a visceral reaction because you know, we as human, this has been actually the state of humanity. Humanity have lived and survived the thrive by actually killing each other. And there was kind of a, we were remotely removed from it.

People in Greece didn't know what the Alexander that great was doing. He was killing a pillaging and we called him that great because he was killing. He was conquering. He was invading. Julius Caesar, all of the greats, he was doing, but killing was difficult. Killing had to have some sort. You have to be with you and enemy. Then you go back, catapults, then cannons, then a little bit back and then you're kind of like shining from the moody.

Now you're killing people behind the screen with a button or the push of a button. You know, a lot of people say terrorism, they killed you with a knife, killed one person with a knife, shot you. That's terrorism. But if you fly a $64 million F-16 and you drop up in an A-84 bomb that costs $16,000, that's not terrorism because it's remote. You're behind the screen. So what happened? What Israel is doing? It is removing itself. It's like America drones.

And then when you push someone to be, they always brag about bombing them to the stone ages. What happens when the screens and all of the obstacles that you have been put between you and those people that you have treated them this way? When this is a breach and you come face to face, you will come face to face with what you have created. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things you just said. So one is the methodology of killing.

If you want to look at some horrific, large-scale killing, people often talk about the Holocaust, but that's visceral. You can look at holler more by Stalin, where the murders through starvation. By Churchill in India. In Churchill in India. And the great leap forward by Mao. Yep. So starvation is a thing we don't often think of it as murder because it's quiet. It's slow. And the interesting thing about starvation is that the people don't complain as they're dying because they're exhausted.

That's one. And the other is the value of human life. It does seem that every culture has an unequal valuation of human life. So those two things combine, create a complicated military landscape of the world. Yes, but the thing is, is that how we would look at technology as the savior. And if we talk about how we disrupt, we disrupt, we disrupt, we disrupt. And now if you go, we talk about going to the West Bank. The people in the West Bank walk and they don't see humans.

They see people shouting them from towers or behind the screens or doing. And they have biometrics that is developed by Basel system like that's done by HP or Google and Amazon who are like part of Project Nimbus. And you see the individual developing all of this like metric and surveillance and all of that stuff.

And then you have like something like the gospel that like people have actually said that the gospel can actually create a target list using AI and give you a green yellow or a red to go ahead. And now AI is not just disrupting the market. It's disrupting our humanity. And we became so comfortable killing people from afar, killing people with a push of the button. And now it is like dating apps. You know when you swipe left and right. And it's like, oh, it becomes so cheap.

It's not like meeting someone. It's like, oh, it's a lot of fish in the sea. Same with AI. Boom. 500 people killed. Boom. They killed. It's so easy. It's so easy. And then it's so far removed from you. So when you put these people in this condition, you have literally put them in a different universe than yours. You are behind in your air conditioned screens, like pushing them, blowing up a university. It's amazing.

But then you meet what you have done that you meet the Frankenstein that you have created. And then people are like, oh, look what they did to us. You just gave me this image of a dating app from hell. Your leaders are just sitting there and kind of swiping left and right, invades, destroy. It's boring. Like love. Like love. Buffett government. Yeah. And then turn off the phone, go to sleep.

So I got, you know, I travel to the West Bank and I mentioned to you offline that I really loved the people there. Just, you know, I've met a bunch of people like that in Eastern Europe where I grew up. Yeah, like the flamboyant, the big personalities, all of that. I also met a person who's in charge of a refugee camp who was shoppin' an IDF soldier. And I'm not sure the words you said are important as the consequences of the thing that you mentioned, which is the deep hate in his eyes.

That was, didn't feel of a parable at all. It was pain. It was like a foundation of pain on top of that, a hatred. And I was like, wow, this is what you kill, you kill one person. That's the way you create. Because we have kind of like a front row seat to what's happening. We think we're in it, but we can't really grasp it. I mean, people's like, oh, we're just going to go in. Get the hummus out. And we're going to get them back in. And not what the people get back in.

How do you think they would look at you? What have you created? What have you done? My show in Egypt was all about propaganda. It was all about the use of words. Words are very important. The decapitated babies were not chosen randomly because you see, it plants a certain image in your brain. Imagine if we're going in, what a baby can do. It can smile, cry and poop. That's it. It's absolutely no threat.

So when you tell people 40 decapitated babies, they are so animalistic, they didn't see the babies. Women raped. Of course, it's an animal to do that. And they would go through that. And they would, what was very frustrating about the conversation is the gish galloping, the gish galloping. So you see the distractions. You see what happens? Like, what's the proportion response? Can Israel defend itself? Do you condemn hummus? Do Israel has the right to exist? The kapiti said babies.

Rape to women. Why don't the Arab countries take them? Why don't the muslims kill Muslims? Look what happened in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq. Like, see how they kind of distract you. They throw little things at you. So you don't know what to do or the honor of the UN and anti-Semitic, October 7th, October 7th, October 7th. And then suddenly you are distracted and pulled into discussing all of these little things. And you're not discussing what's happening right now.

It is basically stalling, giving them time to do what they do. So there's some degree to the propaganda, so they've had it babies and all this kind of stuff that is so over the top that it shuts down actual conversation about actual wrongs, war crimes on both sides. So it's overstating it to where everyone on social media and everywhere in the press and everywhere is arguing, almost become disensitized to actual horrors of death, which are more mundane.

They're not so dramatic as beheaded babies. Because people, a baby is shot, not a decapitated baby. There's like a knife blade that goes into the skin, the trickier the flesh, the spine. Decapitated. Like, you can just like, he's dead. No, you go in, this is the hate, so much hate. And you know, that's why you have made me laugh at the darkest shit. You're such a beautiful person. Your dark humor is just wonderful. But you see this happened to Jews before. Remember blood libel?

Where did the blood libel come from? It come from these rumors that Jews suck babies blood. This is what they did to them. I'm from the cop. It's a very delicious baby. I'm telling you this baby. But this is what you do. You tell people something and it happened with the Native Americans when they were here, when they went in and they wipe a whole tribe.

So and Jewish people, one of the like the minorities that were persecuted and had this used against them for a very long time, and it is terrible and it's terrifying that's been used again. So I just did a very lengthy debate on Israel and Palestine. And the really painful thing from that was to historians and it was deep. It was thorough. It was fascinating. But in constantly asking about sources of hope or solutions, there was none.

There was a sense of like a really dark sense of it's hopeless from both sides. It's hopeless. So you know, I look to you for source of hope. Do you have is there any hope here? Solutions, short term, long term. Obama have kind of summarized this beautifully in his book. He said the reason why the Israeli Palestinian conflict is so chronic is one side have so much power and the other side have absolutely no power. And that's the one what he said.

Like you have Israel that basically don't listen to us because they are supported by people who are bigger than the president, bigger than the administration. They know that they can. And like you like Netanyahu was a cotton tape many times saying like he's basically like belittling Americans like I we control 80% of the population. We don't care. They have this has kind of like none challenge kind of like how we have them.

And there's nothing really that compels Israel to give up anything because at the end of the day, what is compromise? Compromise like I give something you give something Israel is not giving anything. And they project that on you. So for example, how many times have we heard like all Palestinians were giving like four, five, six, seven, fifteen chances and they said no to them. And yet when you read the history, that's not the case at all.

Like for example, in 2000, the whole idea about like out of what worked away from Oslo. That didn't happen. Enter is an incredible video by you know what is named Joe score borrow with Misha and they were hosting her father. He was the national security advisor. And Joe's car was like well, you know like are of what left the old local and the Palestinians of and then British is like this is like embarrassingly shallow.

It's like listen, what happened was there was a lot of catches on the Oslo court. It was very unfair to the Palestinians. So are of a set like I agree, but I need to take it to the Arab capitals. And they went to insa and they want to charm a she came to Egypt and he and he went to there and then he had a bar left because there was a election and he lost the Israel show on came and it was the show.

This is one of the reason why people it is it's kind of like facts don't matter as much as what is the narrative that has been controlled. But what were the biggest barriers to peace there? Do you think it's fundamentally leaders don't want to stay solution or was there new ones small differences that if solved could have led us to this to stay solution? I mean there was maybe there was a certain point when the Israeli leaders were more open to compromise.

But I can't say that because each time Israel gives back land it has to be after some use of force. The 1973 war the interfaud of the first and second. The casualties and they never give up land willingly and because of peace. Because if I have that much military and do whatever I want why would I give up anything? I have that much power. Why would America or China give everything if they're so powerful? And especially if they are have this kind of open check from the United States.

So it is it is really about what can push Israel to give up something because you are so much stronger than me. What could compel you to give up something? And this is why the whole thing about like trying to equalize Palestinians and the Israeli state and government it doesn't make any sense. So what is the source of hope? You know John Stewart who will talk about it from many angles. Somebody admire a friend. He proposed a Tuesday solution. Look to the comedians for hope.

Yes, well everybody is talking about the two state collusion but Israel has said many times on Netanyahu and Venezuela there is going to be no state solutions. The past is like even even after Lebanon he came in on the on the hard talk. It's like yeah maybe in the past we wanted to say solutions but like look every time we give them land they kill us so no state solutions and they are openly saying it. That's perhaps rhetoric.

If rhetoric that is supported by action because look at what they are doing in the West Bank that you said. They are cutting it, illegal settlement, peace-mealing it. So if you have an intention at all to give them anything why do you keep doing this? And you've called it a bunch of little gauze. Yeah. A nice little picture of what's happening. Peace-mealing it. Because it is what happened in the past four months the Palestinians have been micro-dozing on it for a very long time.

Little by little. Little by little. And we would shout every time when it gets too much and then we shut down and then little by little but this time it was hard. It was hard to see the blatant oppression and the word said maybe the Hamas ministry of the health are giving us the bad numbers. Maybe it's Jesus human shield. And I left, there's 13,000 babies killed. Does that mean that there's 13,000 military target hiding in their diapers? Because it is so, it doesn't make any sense to kill that.

And maybe it's like, oops, this is out of our hands. It's hard to know what to do with those numbers. I mean I just want babies enough. But you know what happens? When you hear so many numbers, numbers become numbers. When you become so desensitized and this is why there's a difference between saying 13,000 Palestinian kids did this like Mela Coyne and Israeli baby, 10 month old. She was killed in her crib and this is what we hear from CNN. We never hear a story about the Palestinian kids.

That's why thank you for giving it a space for saying that in use of the Palestinian children that were killed just for four weeks. It's because humans need context. They need depth. They need like a 3D look at what they can look at. But if you just didn't numbers, they don't mean anything. Is there some degree to where both leaderships, Hamas, PA, Palestinian Authority, Israel all want war, like perpetual war to remain in power? There is, that's an interesting question.

But let's admit something. The Arab regimes in the area have actually used the problem of Palestine in order to stay in power in order to take getting excuses like have this enemy and Israel. The Israeli government has used that too and maybe the Palestinian. My problem with going into discussion is that the two sides are not equal. They're not equal in power. They're not equal in influence and they're not equal in international support, especially with the United States.

So, Palestinians can, the people who have made changes in history were the people with power. The people who would have the ability to change things. And the Palestinians cannot really change in. What can they change? Well, is that true though, with how much support the Palestinian people have? So just like you said, there's a lot of Arab states that will voice their propel Palestinian position in order to distract from their, the own corruption and abuses of power in their own countries.

But I don't think if you look globally, there's a complete asymmetry of power and public opinion here, maybe in the press, in the West. But if you look globally, but do they have the same kind of weapons that the Israeli have? Literally power? No, there's a major asymmetry of literal power. Some money to their leaders. Does that make any difference? I mean, and also when you say Palestinian authority, which authority are you talking about?

Hamas, or the Palestinian authority who has been kind of a domesticated, kind of like a puppy for the Palestinian who basically have been an informant for the under-owned people. And this is the thing also that kind of like really pissed me off when I was hearing the thing about the thing. Like Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. We have Netanyahu in tape confessing that he supports it. Hamas gave him money in order to cause factions in between the Palestinians. So it's just like, you just told me this.

You just told me this. You just told me in Netanyahu support. Hamas is like, what? I mean, to which degree does Netanyahu represent the Israeli people? Is there a real question? To which point does Trump or Biden represent the American people? To which degree does Hamas represent the Palestinian people? Does? None of these represent it, but who have the power in order to make the decisions? It really comes down to that. Well, who does have the power? Are you giving a lot of power to Israel?

Yeah. But the Arab League, what do you think would Hamas do? Continue doing what a charter says, which is trying to destroy Israel and the role of the Palestinian people is to overthrow Hamas and get a more moderate leadership, probably. And the role of the Israeli people is to vote out this right-wing government and elect a more moderate leader so that there's a chance at peace with two moderate leaders. So before Hamas even got to control 2006, there was a real Sharon in 2000.

And we all know what happened. And a real Sharon kind of like had make, they made, came up with this amazing policy of breaking people's kids' bones in the end of the fall. So he'll Baraki was also like, which one is moderate? I mean, I think Hamas is a product of what happened. I mean, if there was no apartheid in South Africa, there would be no NFC. There would be no Nassim and there would be no Nazis in Paris. There would be no French resistance.

And I'm not saying that, and again, I'm not, I wouldn't want to be in a position to defend Hamas or anybody because you know what got that entails. But those are, they, Hamas, again, not defending them. They went into a Kutobar Sepht, what was their, why did they did that? Like release our hostages, the people in prison. Because if you talk about people who are kidnapped, Israeli kidnapped people every single day.

And when they had the first exchange in November 4th, Israel released 400 people, three quarters of them were women and children. Why are those people in prison? There's one in four kids that are in prison that stay in solitary confinement, which is by international law, a form of torture. And you're putting kids through that. Is it possible? So first of all, cease fire.

Yes. And longer term is a possible for Arab states and the United States to get together and with power through diplomacy, enforce a solution. It's a very, very ideal solution. But you know, and I know that the Arab states don't really have the power. All of the powers are in the hands of America. They have the power. See, I think they have the power. I don't know. Maybe they don't know one of you. They don't know one. Maybe they don't know one. Because there's a benefit like that dark.

The dark sense I have is that a lot of people win from the suffering the Palestinians are going through because they can point to that. Then they distract from definitely corruption in their own states. And then obviously Iran can benefit also from the same kind of dynamic distracting from the authoritarian nature of their regime. Definitely. But what is the core of the problem here?

Is it the Arab states using the suffering or the actually the suffering itself and the suffering comes from people being displaced. Their homes were taken away. They are 7 million Palestinians in diaspora. Seven millions. Seven million went out there and now they're living in Canada and America and Europe. They had homes there. They cannot go back to 1.7 million people of the people in Gaza. Don't belong in Gaza. They were pushed from other places.

Maybe the piecemeal thing of people are being in Germany. I'm going to shift gear a little bit. It's going to be a little bit of fun. There is a book that I bought the rights to and I want to turn it into a movie. And I bought, I optioned the right for two months, for two years in March of last year. Before October 7th. After October 7th, I bought the permanent right. That book is called The Muslim Ended You. And it is written by another called Ronin Steinke.

I read an article about this book in 2016 and I chased that book for rights for seven years. I didn't have that much money but I wanted that book. And that book was translated into English called Anandoktralmi. And that book tells the incredible story under Nazi Germany where Arabs went to the end of the war. It was in Berlin in 1920s after the First World War in the Weimar Republic. And they became doctors and engineers and journalists. For two reasons.

Number one, it was their cheap, very cheap because of the inflation. And two, a lot of the Arab nationalists didn't want to send their kids to England or France because they were the occupiers. And Dr. Hanmi was the hero of that. He's an Egyptian doctor. And that's why I kind of like personally connected with him. And he went to medical school. He didn't find a place to live. So he lived in the Jewish ghetto. Like many Arabs.

He didn't find a school to work at a hospital to work and so he worked in a Jewish hospital. So these were the people who lived with the ghetto. And actually the first director of the Berlin Mosque with a Jewish convert to Islam and he was a gay activist. I'm telling you. It's a crazy story. And this is not a fiction story. This is actually an unfit story. It's written based on the statements and documents of the Nazis under the table.

Dr. Hanmi, he was in the hospital and the Nazis came in and they killed and tortured and beat up the Jewish doctor. And they made him the head of his department. And he was certainly surrounded by Nazi doctors. They didn't touch him because he was an Arab. It was kind of like a thing between Germany and the Arabs because they wanted to appease to them in order to have kind of a grassroots base in the Arab world where he wanted to go next.

And this is why in 1934, 1935, the racial laws of Norramburg, they had a name change. First they were called anti-Semitic. Then they changed into anti-Jewish because also Arabs were Semitic. So they wanted to appease the Arabs. Now what happened to Dr. Hanmi when that happened to him? He would go back to the ghetto and he would see the apartments next to him.

The Jewish apartment become more and more and more flooded with people because they were moving Jews and pushing them and putting them together, pushing them to the side. And each flat, each flat, each apartment instead of one family, it would have three, four, six, seven families. And he was there when he'd looked. He was there. This is where the people he grew up with, he lived with and now he's seen that kind of discrimination just because he was an Arab.

And then he started to kind of like atone for like because he felt responsible because he wasn't treated the same way and he started to go and treat Jewish people in their homes because they couldn't go to hospitals. And then one family gave them his daughter. It's like this is Anna, save her. He pretended that she's his niece, put a hijab around her, taught her Arabic, called her Nadia. My daughter's name, by the way.

And he hid her in plain sight for seven years in front of the Nazis as his nurse. It's an incredible story. And then not just that he went to prison and then he went out and he formed with the Arab people that was in prison with him a network that saves 300 Jews. See that kind of story? This is the Jews that were living in the Arab world. I'm not saying that the Jews living in the Arab world was living like an incredible article.

As a kind of a minority, they did not have like the full power of their full, you know, advantages of the role that's that's normal. But we had this kind of a relationship before Israel was erected in 1948. And then of course everybody looked at Jews at the time, not as fifth column. Of course, the nationalistic regimes used that. And this is why what Biden said was very dangerous when he said, if there is no Israel, no Jew in the world will feel safe.

You are the leader of the few words you are the president of the Nazis. Do you mean that you are telling me that that choose in your country in the United States for America are not safe? That is wrong on two levels. Number one, America historically and right now is more safe to Jews in America in the world than more than anybody. They are safer than to use in Israel. They never had programs or the Holocaust like Europe. They live here a good life, not perfect life, but they are better.

Second of all, if you are the president and you're telling that a group of people will not feel safe unless there is a different one, you are already feeding into their fifth column. They're like, you're Russian. You come from there. And there is a group of laws in the Russian constitution that says that Russia will protect its citizens everywhere in the world. What happens if the president says like, oh, you're Russians, you're protected by a country, don't belong here. This is terrible.

Yeah, you're right. That's actually an indirect threat. It's like, yes. You know, even saying Muslims cannot feel safe in America or something like this. That means like that's a threat. But what would a Jewish person in Beverly Hills or in Brooklyn feel if he hears that? You are already telling people you need to have a loyal to Israel. I mean, Israel is a foreign country. I am sorry, but Israel is a foreign country.

Israel is a client country that we sponsor and it should actually be responsible and held accountable for what they do. You mentioned 1948, Anapa, but before that, 41, 39, 41 to 45, the Holocaust. What do you do? What do you do with the Holocaust? How do you incorporate into the calculus of what's? It's terrible. Of morality that leads up to the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians from the land. How do you work that out?

It is terrible, but the systemic annihilation of Jewish people under Nannatsi. That is like a carefully engineered thought for plan. It was terrible. It was like the human ingenuity put into something that is very evil. But also, it is not just that happened. We need to remember that Otto Frank, the father of Anna Frank, has his visa, refugee visa rejected by the United States. There's a lot of people that were rejected by the United States, rejected by other European countries.

And then they were pushed into Palestine. So you have to put yourself between it and the Arabs, okay, we're sitting here, okay, come and then all right, you don't have a home or a country anymore. That gives you... I mean, you see, if I'm not an Arab and you give me that kind of piece of terrible human tragedy, like, oh my God, that is terrible. But then I'm an Arab, like, yes, I'm so sorry, but what do I have to do with that? But why is that my fault?

The persecution of the Jewish people have started since then, the eighth and ninth century because they were like... They were first anti-christians. They were like with criminal immigrants. They were like conspirators. This is the anti- people kind of like... As if Europe kind of like throw anti-Semitism on us. You understand that like Henry Ford, Henry Ford is one of the biggest anti-... He was the inspiration for Adolf Hitler. This is how anti-Semitic Henry Ford was.

And you kind of like gloss over that. And then suddenly we as Arabs have to pay the price. Why? Several questions I want to ask there. So but one, just zooming out. Anything hatred of Jews has been such a viral kind of idea throughout human history. It's very easy. It all started from Christ. They killed Christ. They killed Christ. They killed Christ. They're the killer of Christ. That was the very success. And that was... Yeah, and that stayed for years. That stayed for centuries.

I'm sorry, centuries. They're the killer of Christ. And then the Catholic Church did not allow usury, but they would work in usury. So they become rich. Now the people that we hate, that we accuse them of killing Christ are becoming rich. So that's envy now. And that's hatred. And I mean, when you talk about ghettos, ghettos were not just as occluded parts in cities. Sometimes those ghettos were outside the cities. ghettos were not even allowed to work a lot of professions.

They were not allowed to get into the syndicates of certain professions. So they had to work with usury and they got rich. So the people hated them more. The first crusade didn't kill a single Muslim. All they killed were Jews. And when they finally arrived to Jerusalem, all they killed were Jews. They almost annihilated the Jews. So it was all this. And of course you have the dark ages. Who do you need there as an enemy? I choose. All right? They're the killer of Christ.

There's nothing bigger than this. And then you fast forward. I mean, one of the things that I found out that was very, very, very, very crazy when Henry Ford imported the protocols of the elders of Zion. By the way, in the Arab world, protocols of the elders of Zion is so popular. And for all of you's users. And the people who don't know it, it's kind of like a bunch of like stories. And basically it's like the Jews saying, like, we're going to control the world. And I know this.

I'm going to do that and whatever. What people don't know that that is a work of plagiarism. It was plagiarized from a satirical play called conversation hell between Mekiavelli and Montesicu. And it is just, it is, and it is kind of like based on one chapter or one scene or so. It was, it was crazy. But it's crazy how sticky it is. Like, yes, yes. Because if I, if I hate you, that's great. But if I have a story to support that hate, that's even better.

But it's like one of them, one of the best stories, one of the stickiest stories about hate. Of course. It's probably the most effective. It's like, there are, you know, a lot of people hate other groups of people's. But that's just like the sexiest story of the world. Because humans need to concentrate their hate, their insecurities, and their shortcomings into one thing that they can practice that hate on. If it's a, it's a person, great. If it's a group, even better.

How do you, into this calculus, incorporate that, that group is pretty small. There's 16 million Jews worldwide. And you mentioned, how is that the responsibility of the Arab peoples? You know, everybody should be to blame for not taking in Jews after the Holocaust. But you know, the reality of the situation, if we look at the religious slice of this, there's 16, let's say, million Jews. And there's, I don't know how many Muslims, but 1.8 billion?

Yeah. Do you, that difference, that 100x difference, do you incorporate that into the sense that Jews in Israel might feel for, you know, the existential dread that we might, this, this small group might be destroyed? Jews in Israel have every right to feel afraid because of everything that they see and everything they've been told, everything.

But I would say that the calculus or the numbers doesn't, like, of course, like being small, it is, of course, a factor, but it is never an excuse in order to take something that's not yours. It's saying, like, hey, you have 300 million Americans and we have 52 or 50 Suces, give one state for another. There's too many of them, too many of you, just give them something, you know? It's like the fact that I have something and you don't and I have, there's too many of me and there is little of you.

And then you come in and it's not really Israel against the Arab world or the Muslim world because we have to say we fucked up big time. But it is the Palestinians that are in and they are being subjected to that. So it's not really like the 1.8 billion and the 16 million Jews. And the 1.8 billion, if you look at them, some of them, like, don't care, some of them live in two regimes that being oppressed and those regimes are supported by the United States in order.

It's easier for me as an empire to take what I want from this country if I control the dictatorship. And I tell them that his power is linked to my ability to my desire to keep him in power. So that's why you have a total disconnect between people in power in the Arab and the Muslim countries and the people themselves. Can you speak to the 1948, you know, because you mentioned taking land that's not yours. Yeah, maybe parallels with Native Americans. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There was a war.

The Jewish minority fought that war against several Arab states and won that war. How do we incorporate that into the Catholic? Yeah. Well, that's also misconception, like a misinterpretation of the event because it seems that it was like the small, the, it's kind of like a David and Goliath kind of story. But and I was always like, how did we, how did we not do that?

But in reality, with numbers, I can't pull it up right now, but if you look at the numbers, the number of tanks, the planes, the trained officer, because those, many of those Jewish fighters came from over to, they were seasoned fighters. And they actually had more planes, more tanks, more artillery, more pieces of weapon, more of the all of other combined because they, the, the people that really like fought was Egypt.

And you have to say 1948, some, many of those Arab countries didn't even have their independence. So they would kind of like send like a cavalry or like a people in horses. But in fact, the whole idea was like, we won against seven nations. The numbers were totally in Israel favor. They were better equipped. They were better trained. They were, they had like more tanks and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and aeroplanes. And they planned, planned better.

So they, yes, they deserve the win because they planned and we did it. So to you, there was an asymmetry military power, even then. But what do you do with the fact that the war was won? So like, if you look at the history of the world, there is war's fought over land. I agree with you. This has been the history of humanity. Humanity was not living peacefully. It's all about like people taking people and ekeling people taking their, but there's two different here.

Mostly, usually, the conquering power, like, for example, England, they had England and they conquered Union India and after the occupation finished, they go back to England. Britain's Greece, Persia, Egypt, they will go and expand, and extend, expand, and shrink. It's all been there. What is different here is exactly what happened in Australia and the United States.

A group of people came in, not just to conquer and take the land, but to completely change to replace them and get them out or kill them. It was very easy with the Indians because they had smallpox. There was no social media. They did it over 400 years. They had time. The problem is, what is happening right now? I agree with you. It might not be that new, but we are there and we're watching it happen. So now we have to confront the realities of war and empire and conquering.

Because you know what's the problem? We told ourselves we can be better. After 1948, there was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It means that we are going to be better humans. We're not going to kill and take land. We're not going to place people. There's now laws. There's international law. The international court of justice. And now Israel is giving the middle finger to all of them.

So isn't some fundamental way this whole thing that we're talking about is us as a civilization, a social media in articles and books and newspapers. We're just trying to figure out who are we as a people. I think the shock came from the fact that we thought that we as humanity have evolved. And now we are what have actually changed is that we became more advanced in effectively eradicating a group of people because of the technology that we have.

And the fact that we can do that under the eyes and ears of all the war that we are watching it under our phone. We have a window. We have a window to the war. You know, 1945, people didn't know what was happening in Japan. We heard about it in the radio. Like, well, today our forces came in and they launched that. We don't know. We heard it. We maybe we saw fixtures after that. And it's quite added. But now we see it. We're into it. And it is it is so much for our psyche. And we can get it.

And the Arabs say, like, guys, you told us we came to the West because we were told that we were equal. You know, the University of Declaration of Rights. One of the co-authors, his name is Defan Hezel. He's a Jew. He is a survivor of the Holocaust. And you know what happened to him? He died by the way a couple of years ago. But he, before he died, he was canceled by so many people and he was called anti-semitic because he joined the BDS movement and he spoke about the Palestine.

That is the author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we value so much. And we think that that would define our humanity. But then we go in and we are shocked. It's like maybe we were sold something, maybe that was full self-vertisement. You shared a tweet by an account called Awesome Jew. It reads, Islamonazi, comedian, basamuse of comedian clothes by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, because I'm not funny.

So Islamonazi, comedian, basamuse of is now denying the October, I love the year we tweet like this, like twice. I guess suppose because it's advertising some upcoming dates. He's now denying October 7th massacre. The Muslim radical basamuse of his notorious first radical radicals at twice for his radical hatred of Jews in Israel.

In a recent clip, he claims that the atrocities committed on October 7th are fabricated or are looking for all information regarding any of his upcoming shows as well as the venues which host the scumbag would Jews feel safe around this Nazi. Nazi. Yeah, I've never, this is my first time interviewing a Nazi. He knows. But first time I actually get called a Nazi. First time. I have been called so many things in Egypt.

So in Egypt, I was called CIA operative, I must say, by secret Muslim brother, the secret Jew. Secret Jew. There was also an article that was published about me in the state of the media saying in details how basam has been recruited by CIA agents using John Stewart in order to use that to bring down the country. I was a free Mason and infidel, a member of the Knights of the Temple, something like that.

And there is actually people, the Muslim brother on their show, they would say like, he is action Israeli and they have forged an Egyptian ID for him to come. So it's kind of like when I guess I said, I had, I left all of that behind and I come here like boom, anti-Semitic Nazi. Yeah. I mean, I really covered everything. I don't know what else. I mean, I think I have, it's kind of like I'm collecting PhDs. I'm just like getting like all of these credits. I mean, how do you deal with that?

How do you deal with the attacks? I mean, this goes back to the decision to do the interview with Pierce Morgan. How do you like psychologically throw all of it? These kind of attacks at the beginning, it's fun. But when they evolve into something else. So for example, I was like laughing of all of the stuff about calling me, this calling me that.

But then when people would come and thread the feature because it's not the people who are making those accusations that would come to you, it's the people that will hear and see those as it gives accusations and act on it. And there's always the fear of like, I mean, we have, we have in the airport a lot of things like somebody would hear something about someone else and go kill him and whatever, like anybody else. So there's this.

But somehow I want to make fun of it and it is to be called a net and Islam, monazzi. It must be in the funniest thing ever because it doesn't Islam, monazzi. Wow. How did you, how did you, an radical Muslim me, a lot of Islamist hate me. They call me a secular infidel. So it's kind of like, who am I? I have an identity crisis and I need the people to tell me who I am. Hmm. Let's go to the beginning. Let's go to your childhood. You grew up in Egypt, Karawa, Egypt. What childhood?

Well, let's figure out how you came to be who you are. I'll do you come at Islam, monazzi. Yeah, exactly. It's a long journey. I do like the swastika tattoo on your ass, which I didn't, how did you see my, you know what you did? I know I did it. It was very inappropriate. You're also obviously a sexual harasser. This is like a me too. Yes. This is like 2020. There's someone who come up and it's like, okay, we have it. This is your me too moment. All right. So the Cairo.

What's a, what's a, what's a memory, defining memory, positive or negative from your childhood? My memory in general was, was cool. It was cool. It went to a Catholic school until the, for, for primary school, elementary. And by the time I'd done, there was kind of like a start of a decline into the public education. And my parents there like middle class working officials here by that was a judge, my mom was a business professor.

And she's, and they were like, one of the people was like, they didn't have that much luxury. My dad like drove like a regular like car, a fiat, which is like the equivalent for the ladder in the, thank you for speaking to the audience. And so would that be a good car? No, it's kind of like, kind of like the minimum. My dad was not a command of, of showing off you, whatever money they would do, they would put it for us education, give everything to their kids.

This is kind of like a very, very typical mentality. And I'm sure it's many cultures, but like we grow up with this like everything that we have is like for kids. So they were put us into education. So middle school, that was the big 1986 was the beginning of the explosion of like international schools, private schools. And these schools were relatively expensive. Of course now with today's currency is ridiculous, but at that time it's very expensive. So I went to that school.

From there was this moment was like you feel less right away. I mean, the big, of course there's the regular bullying and stuff, but it's not that. It's kind of like you always feel less. You don't have that much of like purchasing power that you can allow you to go to the same outings or travel with them. And even like how you dress, it will be modest compared to them. So I was always an outsider. And I compensated with that by two things, being good at school and being good at sports.

I was not like the typical nerd who was just like I was like I was playing football, basketball, Cracking field and I was like one of the people who would like to have me on their team. So I wasn't like kind of like, he's an aired getting away, but I never had a girlfriend. I never had any kind of like I was not like I was not boyfriend material. So that's kind of like it leaves remnants in you that you're not good enough.

But psychologically you're always like when you're by yourself you felt like an outsider. Yes, all the time. And that's why it kind of like a more of a loner. I don't have a lot of what you call friends. I have acquitted this people that I do stuff with, but I don't have like the people that I tell them everything. When I went to medical school, now medical school is a different animal, medical school is where all of the people from the public schools go.

Public schools are very like they are not they don't have like they don't have English language as like a strong part of but they are brilliant people. So because they would mostly the study in Arabic, but they are brilliant and they are very, very smart, very sharp. But then I go there. Now I am the CISI boy from the private school that comes into medical school. Now I'm an outsider again. And I go into residency and I pick up salsa.

So now I'm a salsa teacher while being a cardiothoracic surgery resident. And I'm an outsider for the third time because in salsa, I'm kind of like the respectful doctor. I'm the guy who is just dancing. So and everything of course as a medical resident you will mess up a lot. So they would always like, oh, because you're a dancer, oh, because you don't care about medicine, you just like want to go there and dance with women. Which is true.

Yeah. But. And so all of my life, I felt that I'm an outsider. I'm not part of the team. I'm not part of the core group. So and I have a story that you would love. I right before my residency, I was so much in two salsa. So I had all of the money and then you saved that and I was working in summers and I was doing extra jobs and I took that money and I went to Miami in order to learn a way that the casino, which is the Cuban kind of like circle salsa kind of thing.

And I went there in the summer of 2001. And my return ticket was 912, 2001. The universe is a salsa humor. I got to tell you that. 912. I was supposed to be on a plane coming back to you. What happens? Thank God I ran out of money 10 days before that. Just like, all right, I changed my ticket and I came back. 911. I'm kind of like, well, my mom. I was like, I was like, I could have been in Guantanamo right now. Fly at 912. By the way, I was in Miami. When they went to the flying school in Miami.

So I mean, I had like 911 written all over my face. You'd be all over the news. And my mom was like, what? He went there to dance salsa. I didn't know that salsa is like a name for. Why salsa? Why did I attract you? And what like can you explain what salsa is? So I mentioned to you offline that I've been doing a little bit of tango or trying to learn that. Yeah. So you know, some of us also put you out there. Marine gets kind of like Latin dances.

And it's like, you know, I don't know who you just grabbed salsa. A couple of dance on Latin beat. And I did it because I once I, and I talk about that about my Arabic standup comedy, not the English. I talked about like how I was, you know, I didn't have like really like a great like social life. And my friends went there one day and I go into a place which it was called El Getune Grou. No, no, it was called Big Fat Black Pussycat.

And then I think they thought it would be like creases or something to switch it to El Getune Grou. Anyway. Great, great. I know. Great decision. I know. So I went there and there's the damn music and women and my doctor, a doctor dancing salsa. That is a chick magnet. Yeah. We know we do everything for that. All of you know that. Even power. Even money. Of course we've been talking about women at the end of the day approval from the other sex. We are, we are babies. We were terrible people.

Yeah. So of course like I mean that was like that was like great. But then I as an nerd, I went in so hard and now I became a salsa teacher. Yeah. And I earned more money from salsa more than I did as a doctor. I didn't know this party. That's hilarious. I was making, I was making killing come out of money. Like huge amount of money. And I was just like you know I would go finish my shift and I go to the salsa class and sometimes I would have like 70 people in my salsa class. Oh wow.

I had like the biggest salsa class in Egypt in the beginning of 2000 and it was fantastic and it was an outlet because you go there and there's the shifts and people dying. Damn and he goes salsa. That's great. You must be good. I was okay. I was cool. I was fun. There were people better than me but I have a thing about teaching. I like teaching people. So you mentioned heart surgery. So what motivated you to become a doctor? It was a choice of exclusion.

I mean there's nothing else you can do with these high grades other than doctor and engineering. I hit math so go be as well. This the Middle East. What do you expect? Either like in my joke and my show I said like there's can be one of three things in the cities, a doctor and engineer or the appointment. It is the choice that you have. So years after. I'm at the point. Yeah. You damn good at it though. That's a hard path though. And it's a fascinating one. Can I tell you something?

Yes. There's actually I was thinking about why did I actually go into medicine and why did I always choose the hardest thing although I didn't love it. And I have to tell you that I had an epiphany only two weeks ago. I don't know if that's actually related or not. You know remember when I told you I went to this school and I didn't have that much money. And I didn't have the luxury of time or money to be with those people and do what they do.

So by the time I finished school and everybody was going to university, everybody in my school went to the AUC, the American University in Karr. Of course. I mean, American education, party time, I mean of course there are brilliance in everything but they have. Yeah, they have a different social life.

And part of me now I kind of like, I realized that just like very, very recently, maybe I went to the hardest school ever so I don't have space to use other than studying because if I have that much space, what I'm going to do with it. I don't have that much freedom, I don't have that much money, I'm not going to keep it with those people going out. So maybe I need a solid excuse that I'm in a place where I don't have that much of a spare time.

Is it also possible, I like how this is a therapy session where we're psychoanalysing it. Is it also possible that you always just pick the hardest thing you could possibly do? Maybe. But maybe that's the worst Morgan thing too. But maybe but like when I left Egypt and I came here, I still had the choice to go back to medicine. Sure. But I hated it. I hated medicine traumatized me.

The amount of like you give up, you know my brother in Egypt, he had a daughter, she's a brilliant basketball player. She is in the national team, amazing. I used to play basketball also in the Egyptian league but I never, I was kind of like my favorite position in the court was the bench. I was not as good as her but she and then and then he, it was time for her to go into into college and he didn't talk to me for six weeks. I said, well, what's happening to Farido? Where is college?

Like I didn't want to tell you. She went to two medicine. I said, what medicine? Why did he do? Because he knows how I hated it. I was traumatized. And I said like, dude, she's a basketball player. Why can't I go like to an easy school? So that's kind of, it's fine. He still did it. I still did it but I don't know is it because of the difficulty or because of what I told you, maybe I needed something, maybe because I was not very confident in my social life.

So I needed a distraction not to be to have that much of a social life. Oh, okay. You understand? Yeah. It's kind of a lot because I will always have an excuse. I'm sorry. I have something. I have exams. I have to self-sabotage my own thing because I couldn't compete with those people on the outing and the money and whatever. So I need an excuse to be like, oh, he's a doctor. He's studying. At least in your mind, you couldn't compete.

Yeah. Yeah. I always felt as less because I mean, I didn't have any girlfriends in school. I had a very little life. Everything couldn't do me came to life. So I always felt even stand up for me. It came very late to me in life. So I always feel that I'm not good enough. I feel that I didn't spend the time to fill the foundation that other comedians do. So I always feel that I am too lucky. I always feel that this is a fleeting thing.

And when I went the height and the fall, fall in Egypt when I was like the top of everything I was like, so famous. So then everything was taken away from me. That's like, I see. I told you, that's happens when you don't build foundation. When you fall, so I always feel that I am not good enough. Or if I am in a position where people think I am deep inside, I'm not. You know that I have a speech impediment that I was not meant to be a TV presenter. I have an air in Arabic. It's very obvious.

I cannot troll my hours. I cannot say, er, I cannot roll it. So in Arabic, like Spanish, it's very obvious. So when I did my first video on the internet that made me famous and then I got my television deed back there in Egypt, my partner at the time, he took the video and you went to a producer and said, like, are you giving me a guy with a list? He could, he should, that's why when I came on television, I was the first ever guy with a list.

I had two things going from me, the list and the big nose. And I was always bullied for two, for these two all the time. So I always felt less. See, but that's a foundation of like creating a great person. Because if you're pretty, you don't need to do much. I probably wouldn't recommend it, but it is true that if you are pretty, do some disfigure me. Find the flaws and be extremely self-critical about them. So you saw John Stewart on TV for the first time in, in 2003. I believe.

How did that change your life? I was in a gym and I was running on the treadmill. And at that time, CNN was coming up on cable. And I was watching and there is this studio, I don't know what it is. So I put the earphones on and I started watching and I was so taken by this, that I stopped the treadmill and I just like stood for 20 minutes like this on the treadmill. And then I just like standing there. I didn't know what we always use saying.

I didn't understand what is Democrats, what is Republicans, what is what those names that he's saying, what is Fox News, I don't understand. But I was fascinated. There was something, you know, when you don't understand them music, but you get the rhythm, it was that. I wonder what that is that you saw. It's like the timing of the humor. I mean, there is, John Stewart is one of a kind. He's biting criticism of power, I would say, and also ability to highlight the absurdity of it all.

But you understand, I didn't understand any of that. But I didn't understand any of the references, but it is the rhythm. The rhythm, you know, sometimes when you even see like a comedy that is that language you don't understand, but there's a rhythm. There's something, there's something in the music. So there's something with the videos and the pictures and he and the face and people reacting. What is this? What is this? What is this? Yeah. And we had the global edition.

So I went to the YouTube and I just started to kind of like watch every single episode that I can. I said, like, do you think we can have this in Egypt? I thought, never. And then 2011, like I had a friend of mine who was also a YouTube partner. It was something new at the time. He said, like, let's do something on the internet. Let's do something. I said, like, I want to do a chance to do it. Do Ray William Johnson. John Stewart will not work. I was like, I want to do a chance.

So that was in there. Yeah. It was in there. And I did it. And it tore. Can you talk about 2011? I mean, what is the Arab Spring? What is it? People here in America, you know? Depends on which side it happened or what? Depends, depends which side of the equation you are. Because for a lot of people it's a conspiracy. It's American made. It is the Muslim brotherhood. It's the Islamist. It is Israel. It is everything else other than people. But it's a pure revolution.

It's a pure... I think we put too much weight on the conspiracies. I think it is normal human behavior that then become, maybe used or abused or taken advantage of by other powers and then the conspiracy starts. But at the time, the Arab Spring didn't start in Egypt. It started in Tunisia. Boaziza, a fruit vendor, like burned himself up, like the American soldier, so did that a few days ago. And that kind of sparked protest in Tunisia.

And Ben Ali was a dictator in Tunisia for about like 20 years. And they removed him. So suddenly it was kind of like a domino effect. So then Egypt started and it just took 18 days. And people, hindsight, this 2020, since then, like you know, just Boobar became like a burden on the military because the military are the real rulers of the country.

You might have a president that kind of like half-sertened powers, but at the end of the day when the military sees that a certain president is like too much of a burden, too much of like a... So they cut him off. And Boobar is a leader of Egypt at the time, he was there for 30 years, 30 years. By the way, speaking of which, because there was a joke in your Mark Twain speech, I got a teary eye just watching that. That was great. You're like fucking great.

Like what you did when Mark Twain awards for John Stuart. It's great. I mean, your comedy is great in general. And I wanted to go to your show. I definitely will. But that's like a little stroll and a complete tangent of just the masterful introduction and celebration of John Stuart. Anyway, Mubarak. So I had a...

And it's the joke that I say also, like Mubarak had like was a president for 30 years, like, oh my god, you had a president for 30 years, like it's the Middle East, it's a very short first term. It's like we still warming up. We still warming up. And I thought we need to plan ahead. We need to plan our vacations, our careers, our jail time. It's just like we need to... That's great. So we had kind of like the shortest, nice distribution, 18 days.

And we thought, oh, 18 days, we can change the country in 18 days. So... But of course we were naive. And we had this kind of hope. So Mubarak was removed. There was an interim period by the military, it took for one year. Then they did elections. Musumbra, that came to power. They stayed for one year. And then the military removed them. And in these three years, my show started. It started by kind of like a YouTube video. It became famous overnight. Five to six videos boom went out.

And at that time I was waiting to get my clearance to go to Cleveland. I was accepted in a fellowship as a pediatric art surgery in a hospital in Cleveland. And I said like, all right, I'm just going to do a couple of videos. Maybe I'm going to put it in the internet. And maybe after a year or two, after I come back from the fellowship, somebody will come, hey, why don't you write a show that looks like John's theorem? That was my main. It took five weeks.

I had my first contract of TV and overnight, the exposure and over the next two, three years, I had 30 to four million people watching 30 to 40 million people watching every episode. A lot of this like, wow, that's too much that is terrifying. Because it means that there are 30 million people who have an opinion about you. You said there's a lot of aspects of that sudden fame that were just horny. It's toxic. It's unnaturally. It's unnaturally.

When people started to recognize me in the street and take pictures, I was awkward. It's like, why do you want to have a picture with me? Why? Why? Because I didn't feel that I'm worthy enough to be like a reward for some of the picture. And I didn't understand it. I was actually, I was kind of an ass sometimes because people thought it was arrogance. No, it was confusion. And I remember like my director and my producers and people are, they always saw me in a very bad mood.

It's like, why are you not enjoying this? Because this is not natural. This is not natural. This adoration, this love and this have to end somehow and it did. And because at a certain point, you are a human. And people kind of the adoration and the fun and the love comes because they see you saying stuff because you do your job basically. Political satire is basically us making fun of politicians in the media. But a lot of people have a really strong opinions about politicians in the media.

So we came that we articulate that and we give it and we make them laugh. So for them, we made a great job. So why don't you do more? But you are limited. And at a certain time, you can't. And at a certain time, you're afraid because we're humans. Because you're afraid about like if you continue speaking up, not like something will happen to me, I'm kind of like maybe have some protection because I'm a folk, I'm people's see me. But what are the people around you? And we, I've seen that.

So that's why at a certain point, look, that's it. I can. I mean, there's a lot of things to say there, but one of the difficult things of fame in your situation is you're not just having fun, you're criticizing power. Yeah. And it is loved by the people, but it comes with the price because at a certain price, if the power is too strong and you're not into a situation or a system that allows that, it gives you that kind of safety. So what happened? What happened? I was.

So when, so the height of all of my fame, the Muslim brothers were, brotherhood was in power. And at that time, they had their media and I had one show. I had like one hour per week and they had five channels, 24, 7. And they were like, you know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, John Stuart said it beautifully one. They said shit and you say shit and we just say shit better than you. This is exactly what John Stuart said. We're just better. We're not better at saying shit back.

Yeah. So, so basically I had one hour and they have like the five thing that they were like, you know, they're calling me all kind of names, not just me like all their enemies, you know. And then I just had one hour and I would kind of like annihilate them in one hour or a week. So at a certain point, they would, they would even like kind of be the side with the army against the, the kind of the liberal secures, whatever you call it.

And at a certain point, the army kind of like flipped everybody. Like kind of like they made the, the, the, the, the, the, the, yeah, they removed the most brotherhood. They came to power and we, I have to say, I admit it. I supported that in the beginning because I had daily threats. I had, I was actually interrogated and I rest in the Muslim brotherhood. I was in an interrogation for six hours and they were asking about my jokes.

And I used that in my standard of comedy describing exactly what happened in the six hours. And it is so funny. Okay. Well, it's, it's a whole lot of. But what you just let out, you weren't interrogated by the, the general prosecutor, the general prosecutor and it was based because of the complaints by the, the officials in the government because in order to do it, it has to have a high up mandate to bring that person to questioning. So they went to kind of official channels. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah, it was official. It was legal. Yeah, legal, legal. So I went there and, and I, and I asked, and, and it's kind of like a bunch of like insulting a slum, something president, spreading false rumors and I went there and I, and it was funny because I, I go into the building where there's police officers and their judges and all of them are big fans of the show.

And some of them were taking pictures of me and then I'm sitting there and it was the most ridiculous interview ever because he was asking me about my jokes. Like, what did you mean by this joke? It was like nothing. It was there for six hours. He was just reading, he was reading my joke and he's reading the jokes and the junior judges sitting there like cracking up. I was like, I remember that. That's dark.

That is, it's kind of like, and I'm laughing, but in the meantime, it's like the whole situation is ridiculous. But then at the end, I was released on bail. I went back to my show and I make fun of that. And you have to be honest, the Muslim Brotherhood were in power, but Egypt were like right out of the revolution for there was kind of like an equal spread of power between the people.

There was not like someone who can't manage just like the Muslim Brotherhood who didn't have that power yet, but they were kind of people saw that they were moving towards that. And then the tension rose and then there was like a kind of a confrontation between them and the army and then a lot of people were killed in the street. It was terrible massacre. And then suddenly I am blamed for all of that. It's like you made fun of us. So now it made it easier for people to kill us like, do it.

Come on. You're doing that to me too. I just did it better than you. And the fact that you cited with the same people that flipped against you, that's not my fault. Did you criticize the army at all? Yes. So after that show, I did like one episode against the army and I was canceled the next day. And then I went to another channel, did 16 episodes in a different season and it was like I was walking on eggshells. And then it was canceled again.

And then my production company that was doing my show that we severed ties because we didn't have the show. They had their offices ready that have people like having death threats. So I woke up on the 11th of November 2014 and my lawyer said like leave the country right now. There is this legal case that they kind of like they're coming for you. And they said like you cannot, it was an arbitration case and I lost against my channel that basically canceled me.

And it's like I don't know but there's no jail time in arbitration. It's like yeah, tell that to the judges leave. So I jumped on a plane at the verdict was 12 noon 11 November 5 after I was on a plane left Egypt and I never came back since then. Was there a worry of non-legal things like assassination? I can't tell you something. I was so stressed because of the show because of everything.

I sometimes I would wake up in the morning and I hope that like bullet will come and finish everything because I was so stressed. It's like I would love because I'm too much of a chicken to kill myself. So I would like rather have someone else do it for me. So I was so under so much pressure and I remember the day that like my show was canceled indefinitely. The second time under the army. I was like I don't have to worry about what kind of script I have to write next week.

Because this is you know remember when you asked me about like that tweet but like all of the same use accusation doesn't bother me. Infidels by secretive Zionist, the Slamonazzi. That's bullshit. What is really what really leaves a mark is the criticism to your craft and your work. So you're not funny. Goes deeper. Yeah certain things get to you better than others. Especially if you have like a secret suspicion that you are like maybe not funny.

Maybe I'm not because I was put into that is like because that told you you're insecure. It's like I know but you shouldn't say that. Yeah. You shouldn't say the truth out loud. You shouldn't say that. I'm like give it to you. What about the way the responsibility of speaking truth to power. So like walking on eggshells like what did that feel like? Well after the Muslim Brotherhood were removed. You have to understand like when the military coup happened it was a very popular coup.

Like people love the army. In Egypt the army is more secret than the religion. People love the army. But the army can go on and on. So the me going against the army was I mean the Muslim Brotherhood was not very popular. They were popular before their own basis. But people accepted the fact that like we make fun of them. But Ciccia at that time he was a God. And I used to go to this high class club called Gizirah Club.

And this is basically kind of like the kind of upper middle class, upper class kind of people. And during the that year of the Muslim Brotherhood I was the most popular ever. And I was like, come yeah. When the military came in people were walking to me like pointing their fingers like don't speak about Ciccia. Don't speak about the army. We love you now. But don't you they would like that. So I called John Styrs just like I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

And at that time all of the channels were like closed down. All of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I was the only one left because it was difficult for them to get rid of me very quickly because I was too popular. It was kind of like peace. Peace milling kind of like go. And I remember some like I don't know what to do. He said like you don't have to do anything just your safety comes first. And said but I can't.

I mean, I've been doing that for two years and I kind of just like say, bye bye guys. I have a responsibility. I have a team. I have people working for me. And I also I cannot just like, disappear. And he said the most interesting thing ever. And say, if you're afraid of something, make fun about the fact that you're afraid of it. Instead of talking about that, something. So there was like a whole episode that we did not even mention, C.C.

We did not even mention it, but the videos did all the thing. And the whole episode was me trying to avoid talking to about him. And that, that, that, that how the comedy was created. The fact that I don't want to be here. And then I know, so he said, like, if you will be surprised how people can relate to that because there was a lot of kind of like, oh, we love him, but we feel we cannot speak. So just by doing the simple thing about mirroring the society, that goes a long way.

And I kind of tried to do what I can under the military. I mean, they came up with a machine that treats AIDS and hepatitis C virus. And basically every single and I went to town with that because people think that he doesn't really have to go in to go to the bigger post like you're an asshole. No, you talk about their propaganda. You talk about what they want people to perceive them at and that it's a failure.

And for that, that kind of hit them even more because what do authoritarian figures do? They work on two things. Fear and propaganda. And from that, it gets the respect. So when you go into their propaganda and expose them, they have nothing else. That's brilliant. So like you are walking an actual, but you're doing it masterfully. That you're reviewing sort of the flaws in the propaganda, the absurdity of the propaganda and so doing or criticizing them.

And this is why comedy is very specific because people say you were not as hard on him as you were in the Muslim Brotherhood. Yes, because on the Muslim Brotherhood, we were just like saying shit to each other. But now the ceiling was like here. So it's kind of like how can you do something for him? Yeah, exactly. That's the art form.

Yeah, in a Soviet Union under Stalin, a lot of the criticism came from children's stories and children's cartoons, double meaning, double in windows, death, that means other stuff. That is the brilliance. That's the brilliance. But everyone knows. Everyone knows. Because you are putting a mirror, you're mirroring the society. It's fascinating. And that's why I was cancerous twice. And that is a scary one, the army. You see that in Ukraine, everybody supports the army.

That's why Zolansky getting rid of the head of the army was a big, big deal. It's a really dangerous thing because everyone is afraid to say the negative about the army, especially during war. In that case, in this case, maybe there's civil war, that kind of thing. But think about it. Actually, an army during peace is much more dangerous. Because think about it. I don't really have an enemy to fight. I have all this power, all this strength. Why is this actor have more money than me?

Yeah. I'm protecting him. Why does this businessman think that he can get onto his private plane and go to Paris? And why I'm here sitting, like not having all of this thing? And there's a lot of time on your hand because your job is to go fight. When you don't go fight. And when you have the lack of, that's why that's one of the things I love the United States about is the fact that the army can't really get power.

But the power is actually in the military in the complex, which is a different issue. Yeah. It's kind of like a different kind of issue. But if you have all of that power, like, why am I sitting around just like playing guard for you guys? That's why Iran is terrifying because you have this military that it just becomes a police force that turns against its own people. Yeah. So you're a famous guy talking shit in the middle of all that.

Yeah. And when I left, I went through a very dark side, dark, dark, dark because all of the insecurities, all of the stuff that had been working on my head now came to life. And now I'm in America and I'm a nobody. I'm a nobody. And now I have to do something, have to earn some money. So I started to stand up comedy five years ago. And I sucked because it was my second language and it was new. And now I would go to these comedy clubs, it was like kids on 21, 22 people.

And then I'm there with a family to support it. I'm going there to do it for $15, $20. And I was bad. You're bad. You're your bombing. Bombing big time. Eating shit. Waiting. Right. Big time. Dying up there big time. And I would go back home and I would cry. And then what made it worse is sometimes like a fan. Yeah. Not a fan. A bunch of fans from Egypt. Oh, that's a music field that they come. Yeah. That's the point. That kind of like face of adoration. Yeah. That goes.

And I could see it in their face. I think he's going to drive an Uber in a couple of weeks. That's that kind of pressure. And I would go when I would cry and I and and then the central. Oh, you left. You you you you gave up. You were a sellout. You're a coward. Well, don't you speak from abroad. You're safe now. Like I don't I already spoke. I don't want to be because I don't want to be an activist. I was doing that for comedy when it was good for everybody.

But now they want me to go into YouTube and just like throw a lot from outside. And I said, you know, I understand. I have family there. And and and it was this kind of like thing like that. I am being like attacked for not doing what I should do in their face and attack for not being funny and not doing good being. And now I'm a feel like maybe it was wrong. And I was I didn't know I really it was so traumatic that I don't know actually how I went through these years.

And I blocked so many details from my brain because I have been using this technique for a while now that I have been erasing a lot of my there is a lot of memory. Every gaps in my brain and I'm trying to suppress it because it was very very very traumatic. And a lot of people told me you have to go to therapy but I don't I can I don't know I I'm worried to open the floodgates. And I'm thinking as if I'm functional and I'm not killing anybody. I'm okay.

I think you're on tweeted never want to therapy is going to be on my headstone. Yeah. Yeah. Terrier buzz buzz. Okay. I mean that is like terrifyingly difficult to like after being a surgeon after being a superstar super famous going to eat shit at local tiny clubs in the United States. I mean eating shed period. Yeah. Eating is really really really difficult really difficult for 20 year olds. When you 45 46 and then people said is this is midlife crisis what is that.

I I I I went through a lot of pain and a lot of like the doubts and it was terrible. What I mean how did you survive I know you brought up most of it but what what gave you like strength or all that because I didn't have any other choice because I started that and the only reason that I could is continue I I don't know what else to do. I don't want to go back to medicine. I don't want to do go I don't want to do that.

And I don't I don't know I was and bit by bit bit by bit I started to kind of like be better be better be better. And I was at a certain time a year ago a year ago this is where I started to kind of like hone the craft and kind of sell more tickets and sometimes even sell out some shows and sometimes sell a theater. So like it was going and the money was flowing and it was good.

And then I was like why didn't I I wanted faster I want more I want it now I want to I want Netflix deal and whatever and then the piece more thing happened and I blew up and then suddenly I'm selling out everywhere. And I was like ah if those people came if that the the the what happened two years ago I will not be ready. So now they come to the show and by the way my show had nothing to do with the October 7th.

My show is my thing that I've been crafting and working on you know how difficult it is to do the first hour that the hour that I've been working on for five years. And it's all my personal story all of what like what happened to me the year to me as an immigrant coming here to the United States finding Trump as a president finding myself in the middle of a gun rally. Well, I was in the middle of a bombing kind of like talking about how I got my citizenship.

It's like funny stories about like my origin story. So they come in and they expect to over seven and all those years of my prison story but it's good and it kills and they love it. It's like if that if that kind of like blew up in America happened to me two three years ago. I would not have people who come a bit. It was a point of the timing of October 7th is very suspicious. Oh my god, please don't say that. I just asking questions.

I'm telling you one of the funniest thing a guy you I was in Dubai and like a TV anchor came to me passing you see if he flourishes during revolutions and war as like what what what dude? You're you're making me sound like a bad woman a very bad woman. Yeah, you Hamas and baby together orchestrated all of this. Oh my god, that's that that's the trilogy. You guys should go on the road together telling you that phone call is coming. Yeah, but Hamas has to open. And they would really bomb right.

They would really bomb. Oh, I love dark humor. You do a show like you were saying in English and in Arabic. So in the stories very different, totally different two different stories. I would love to just the language difference because it's the music of the language is also different. So like what what's how can you convert it into words but what's what's the difference in the in the music of the languages. I'll tell you. Because I thought about that. All right, all right.

So when I was doing the English first, I was I actually had good jokes, but I was missing the delivery because the cadence and the music and the rhythm is different. The way that an English speaking Americans, a member of audience will receive it. It will be different and how I receive it. The energy everything's different. So when I kind of like got it, I didn't know how to switch back to Arabic. Oh, wow. Yeah, fascinating.

Because here's the thing with English standard comedy, English, you have a huge library. You have like a legacy. You have like years and years and years of people doing comedy. But in Arabic, it's a very new to us. And most of the Arabic standard comedy, especially in Egypt, is very tame. This is kind of like imagine the standard comedy scene in the 1960s before Lenny Bruce. So no swearing, conservative, caring nothing conservative, everything.

No, no, no. Yeah, it's kind of like very, so I didn't know what to do there. So I broke the barriers. I became the new Bruce. I became a truth con. So I went in and I went and I changed. Seven words in a lot. It's a lot. Ah, for me, there are 15 words. There's a lot of Arabic is a very rich language. So when I did, here's the difference between the Arabic and the English show. The English show, surprise surprise, is a unifying language, even for a group of Arabs.

So if I give the same exact show to the same 1000 audience members in the same feature and they're the same people, same makeup of like Lebanese Egyptian Syrian Saudis, English will be a unifying language. Arabic is a dividing language because you have 22 dialects and the dialects are vastly different and like maybe Egyptians understand a little bit of Lebanese but not that much but their references, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, totally different animal.

That's like a totally different language. Saudi, Emirati, Kuwaiti, totally different. People understand the Egyptian dialect because it's the dialect of most of the artwork and the movies but the reference in the everyday street talk might not be understood by them. So now I have to go in and talk to all of these dialects together. So I formed my big part of my show is like, what are you guys expecting over this?

This is what, this is, we're gonna, when I go and do profanity and you're gonna like it. This is the problem with that in the show as a dialect and I construct all of these sentences formed of so different, different words for example an iron. Any any any any the Arabic dialect is an iron in Saudi Arabia it means ass. That's one example. That's one example you know.

So imagine if you can actually construct sentences having all of these things and once so I would I would construct like a whole section of my show about that.

So it's really very much about like self-reflective on language and the limits of language is allowed and the limits of language and I tell them part of the shows like I know what's a problem with me doing Arabic is like if this was an English show and I was telling you fuck and shit and bitch you'll be ha ha ha but if I do one swear words all of you will scream.

Yeah. It's like why is it because we are ashamed for only so it's kind of like it is it's not just like about swearing it's about like there's a lot of philosophical pathways in this. Yeah there's profanity and we we we we people have fun whatever but like it is about like what does how do we treat our language and I tell them we speak Arabic as Arabs but it's not the same Arabic. It's crazy right and you're doing a show in America also which is another level of it.

Oh yeah actually the Arab diaspora in America is some of the best audiences I have. They are like wonderful and they come from the just an idea and I do and I did it also in the Middle East and maybe I'll do like an Arab tour in the Middle East in the fall which countries would you go to and not. I worried Jordan living on I'm doing UAE I'm doing Kuwait Egypt Bahrain Egypt I don't think so I don't think so. Is a personal is it worry about your safety.

Well I have the American citizenship right now so I am relatively safe. There's a block. Sure. Honestly there's a block.

There's a person there is there is a there's so much that happens and I don't and I never I know never bad mouth each this is my country it is some like it has all of my marriage 40 years of my life I live there but when you get hurt so much instead of trying to kind of I don't want to take revenge I don't want to like that I just want to avoid because Egypt gave me so much fame and so much love and so much hate and so much rejection.

It is a very it was a very tumeless relationship very very difficult and it's and a lot of people tell me well don't you miss Egypt and I tell them every time the Egypt that I miss is not there anymore it's not bad or good it's not worse or better it's just I'm different

and the places are different and the people are different and their circumstances are different whatever image you had you have of what you love is not there anymore that's why a lot of immigrants especially Arab immigrants they they live here but they're there. And then when they go back for a vacation they get disappointed because they didn't find what they want and then they come back here and they're disappointed because they want to come back but it's not there anymore.

Yeah their view of that place is from a different time I have that you know my parents but everybody that left the Soviet Union I mean it's such a complicated relationship with that it's sometimes borders on hate disappointment in the in the case of the Soviet Union perhaps

similarly Egypt is the promises sold when you're younger and the promises broken by the possibility of what it was supposed to be with the Soviet Union I'm sure with Egypt is the same Iran is the same so they have a very complicated relationship with that.

Yeah that's why like for them people from Iran you know I remember I remember quite well the word cup that was made in the United States and the Iranian team were playing American and there were people people in the audience or wearing a wrench they hate the regime but they have this kind of connection with the country and this is this is the whole thing you can actually love the country and you not have to agree with the regime. Would would would you ever perform in the West Bank?

No Gaza because if I go there I have to go to the Israeli checkpoints and I don't want to go through this I don't want to have an Israeli soldier telling you what to do. Yeah there's a demeaning aspect to that whole. Very even in subtle ways. Yeah I mean I have so many Palestinian friends with an American passport, US passport living here they're born here and they talk about their humiliation and their intimidation and their harassment they go in. I was like ah you want me to try.

Yeah that little bit of a humiliation. A little bit. Sometimes it's major but I noticed that you know even a little bit is after a lifetime of that it can turn to hate towards the other. Yeah and resentment. Resamment and then how do you do anything with that resentment?

I have a friend of mine he is from Palestine from the West Bank, his American here is born here and we talk about you know we have of course all of this discussion of what would happen and he tells me you know in October 11th in the West Bank and there was a village

called Kostra and on that village like the settlers went in around the region they sent a message on Facebook it's like you rats going they out of the earth and we're going to be waiting for you intimidation through technology and then they went it is Kostra have like another settlement next to it called the Eshkodesh.

Eshkodesh they have people there who were training something called Mishmerati Isha which is basically the guardians of Isha and it's like a paramilitary group that trains other settlers on military combat give them weapons and do like military drills and they went there like militarized and went there and it was actually co-founded by a Jew from Brooklyn.

Not even and and and and and and and and and and Israeli and he is like one of the disciples of Mayor Kahana I'm sure that you know what Mayor Kahana is who was the Jewish defense lead the people who assassinated Alex Auda here in the United States and they were they were

there with their weapons outside intimidating people now this story carries everything that is wrong with the situation you have people from Brooklyn from outside just because they're Jewish they can't come and they can't claim the land from the people there anybody

from Poland just because it's Jewish you can come and take the land from other people they're using technology to intimidate Palestinians they have unchecked military power these are not IDF soldiers these are settlers and they have free reign in order to intimidate and to kill the people and you understand this is the daily life of Palestinians not in Gaza in the West Bank.

What do you do from your what do we do what do people do to nudge this towards peace towards flourishing here's the thing I want to talk to the people of Israel what is Israel doing right now is not just unfair to the Palestinians is unfair to the Jewish people in Israel no

it is unfair to the Jewish people around the world because the way that Israel links itself to the Jewish Judaism at a certain point you know remember like I see some kind and when everybody hit Muslims you know sometimes human humans are simply they cannot have the nuances

to separate so anybody who with a Muslim name with a Muslim face with a beard who looks Muslim he would do it because of that actions of those atrocities you have the power as a person to separate yourself from an abusive power a horrible power and be yourself I

am really worried because the rise of anti-Semitism and the rise of hate against Jews is not because of the Jews it's because of the actions of a government Jews do not have to be on the side of apartheid Ronnie Kestrelz he is a Jewish South African and he fought shoulder to

shoulder next to Nelson Badella he was part of the African National Conference A&C and he had an article said like I know what apartheid is and I saw Israel and this is what they have and the thing is Israel that Israeli government should listen to other people you cannot

call anybody who criticize you either an anti-Semite or if they're already Jewish you call them like self-fating Jew you cannot do that you cannot continue doing that because we did that when I would go in and criticize the Islam is just like all your self-fating Muslim

you're not really Muslim you're an inferior secret you're a secular whatever we have the power in order to reform the course by holding people in power accountable and I think is it is very stupid to actually call this anti-Semitism I like my my idol is John Stuart I voted for Bernie

Sanders they saw a tax learned the one who did this amazing documentary about me tickling joints she's a Jew she is married to an Israeli Jew we have a good ratio because we know what the right is we they don't have to associate themselves with the action of the Israeli government

one of your favorite words jihad that's my favorite hobbies it's my it's my shoes like what's your favorite is that I talk about like how when a white shooter does something he talks about all of his family and I was like what if we do did this with like for Arab for Arab terrorists what are

his hobbies you had yeah wow you make him you feel good okay Sam Harris has done several episodes on jihad and people should go listen to it even if you disagree with it but the basic idea that he's proposing is that this idea of jihad in the negative connotation of it of martyrdom is the

thing that gets it's counterproductive is destructive to the possible future flourishing of Palestinian people what what do you think of that there's just the idea of martyrdom I totally agree but like people don't wake up in the morning of seleka on the clear jihad think about it why would anybody

choose to end his life by taking other people with him and in that life his life must be miserable he must be pushed into that nobody chooses death over life willingly one of the first suicide bombers in the Palestinian resistance were Christians we don't talk about that I think he would

say that the presence of a story that you can tell yourself when you're in a really shitty place that you can go to a much better place yeah by sacrificing your own life just the fact that that the presence of that story is there is is this harmful of course but these but here he's my problem

with Sam Harris and usually people would they have free range talking about the Islamic faith and nitpicking the stuff that makes it put in a in a in a in a bad light I can go and nitpick every single religion they are Jews they're like bin Rafir who openly say spitting on Christians is not

a hate speech all right they are I mean I I you can bring me like all kind of videos of Islamic jihad is saying horrible things on on YouTube and I can bring you Jews who live there they're like we're gonna have the whole world enslaved for us and everybody would love to be enslaved for

the Jews you know I can use the Talmudic argument that if you tie a man to a tree and he dies of thirst and hunger you didn't kill that man and this kind of the same argument is like we're not kidding Palestinians it's just like killing man they're dying by themselves you know so it is

the nitpicking of of of a certain narrative religious narrative that is separate from the political context and what's happening right now it's very unfair because I can read if you want to have a deep dive into religious text nobody will be happy and I can bring stuff from

that Talmud and the and the Torah and stuff that is horrible but like you know this is a way again of like distraction I dare you to talk shit about Buddhism and jainism though try well you know the people who killed the Muslims in Myanmar were they were in their Buddhist

yeah well let's go jain okay I'll find the truth I'll get back to you I'll have to find the the the flying monster the the the the the the church of the flying monster spaghetti as a person who tries not to eat carbs I'm deeply offended by the I mean there's Scientologists all they do

is actually buy real estate I think there's a few books written about the fact that they do other stuff as well so even there Mormon sometimes there's some of the nicest people I've ever met yeah but I'm sure there's also darkness there too oh boy religion there's soaking in in Mormon

there's what soaking what's soaking okay so I don't know how my so soaking basically like you if if you get into the woman and you don't move that's not adultery that's not like oh interesting so you go in and use this thing there's a loophole there's the thing over the

religion has a loophole yes and what Muslims we do that the whole time we we can choose our our sins the stuff that we enjoy it's just we're you 72 versions waiting for all of us maybe if I converted you as a Jew I'll get you 80 I don't know you know like in negotiate all right but I also have

questions about what a very good deal I'll give it and maybe I'll throw there a camera I have the camera it's pretty good wait a year I don't know 1990 all right best year ever well they last the long time yeah so I'm not sure I want 70 I don't need to I love through five in the mix and

so yeah can we if you want to upgrade can we can we do a trial period but in janaf is just zoom out do you think religion is in what way is a good for the world and what way is it harmful if there was no religion humans would have invented religion because think about think about think I think

I like the early humanity like you're like a caveman or whatever and then like you see your family members killed and then you say like what I'm gonna be like the the the shita or the gazelle that just like ends and perish I need to have I am more important I think I think with the development

of consciousness humans like thought that they are much more precious and important than the other animals because they have now intelligence so my life will not end like that they will my death would be even more important there's consequences for that there's consequences for what I do and then

the the the the early man was like they're in the desert and all of these like natural phenomena they know what to do they were afraid so they need to have refuge they need to have something to take care with they need to have a reason for everything because if there's no reason it's chaos it's chaos terrifying it's terrifying there's nothing it's there there has to be a reason there has to be a reason there has to be a purpose has to be like a cause at something it's just I'm not just going

to be like die like like a cockroach being stepped on and that's kind of like part of this ego the whole world rotates around you in a way it's the day so religion actually got a lot of it from humanity itself like me as like us being humans and there's and and and many religion is a

collection of stories and those stories based on things that humans did themselves and they attribute it to gods and there's an aspect of religion where you humble yourself before a thing that is much greater than you so that has a how's a very positive effect of humbling it will be

great if you stop there but here's the thing if you humble in order that your ego kicks in and feel that you are better than someone else who's not humbled in front of the same god that means that I will have all that trade that I can use that because now what does mean me humble I'm divine

yeah but I'm not I'm way more humble than you but you're not so you see how they kind of like the oxymoron I'm humble and I'm surrendering but in the same time I am better than you know more entitled is it crazy yeah it's beautiful it's crazy I mean look at look at like like the Muslim

Christians and Jews and every like it's like all right Muslims we surrendered I'm talking about the extreme ones I mean like people like people like I surrender to God good keep it that way yeah like if you go there I surrender to God that means that I am closer to God than you then you

should die okay Christians Christ is love and he loves me and we're gonna be together but he don't get into his kingdom and you see it's the same thing yeah yeah it's just if you stop it stop stop there stop stop where you are humble and you feel that you're a piece of shit yeah and

you are worthless human being and you are there yeah stop there yeah but once you says like oh that makes me a better person than you and it makes me more with God than you so that would give me the entitlement to kick your ass yeah we always ruin a good thing don't we there you go

you've been outspoken you know with Pierce Morgan but just on this topic and you talked about the Superman story which I would love it if you were in a Superman movie but have you lost your opportunities because of this because I there was other a couple of

things that were going on but they stopped again I don't know if it's say October 7th or the Superman story just so yeah yeah so what role were you okay why did you audition for yeah it's okay so in June I was traveling to Dubai and right an hour before I I get into the car and go there

my marriage is like best I'm gonna send you a script read it it's for Superman it's like oh Superman you know I I'm not really good in auditions I'm not an assistant actress so I said okay I'm just gonna do it send it I do that they've ascended I go to the airport and I read

and I can I think I can talk about it now because they said they changed a script so basically what I found it interesting in that new script is that there's like a dictator in a country that invades another country and Superman interferes politically that's the first time we ever see Superman

interferes politically so basically it was like Russian Ukraine but because of me it was like it had it it couldn't be Russia and Ukraine so it had to be something kind of like with the flavor so I read the role as if as a mixture of Trump and Mubarak I did this mix like you know like kind of the

myth but also like kind of like the essence of Trump into it I went to the airport it's like an hour like James gun so it he loves it look what I never had a audition that fast I mean I I had a few roles but not that fast not like that and then I said like well the the strike starts

like tomorrow and we need to be on the phone but after the strike we cannot talk the seg after strike like we're the writers and the actress strike so like well I'm gonna be on a plane right now it's like once you land you can have a zoom call with James God I have a call with

James God he's I am a huge fan of him the guy took like something like Guardian of the galaxy nobody knew about it made amazing trilogy and he is like a really cool guy I like what he did and it was like really nice and and he started to talk to me about the movie and you know like I

talked to people before casting them so I know that everybody's a non-set have a good chemistry it was amazing so in your mind if you're an actor what does that mean you got the part and he told me you got the part month goes by strike goes by October 7th happens I do Pierce Morgan one and two

and then I go to my Australian tour my manager called me that suck was over it's like you don't get the part anymore I was sad very sad but for three days and said like I'm need to stand up for this class I'm actually doing very well I'm doing learn and then when I went to Chris

Como I after I finished the show he told me did you lose any opportunities and that was off record after the show was like we concluded and I said I talked about Superman and I found myself when I was talking I was angry I was bitter and I went home it's like why was I angry why was I bitter

it wasn't meant to me and I'm I'm living a good life now I I don't need to do so when I was asked again the next day two different interviews the BBC and another and another one was alone with my friend you know with a lot I said the story in a different way I said I don't have any

anger as a matter of fact maybe if I was wonder brothers I didn't talk about James and I thought it was the studio if I was wonder brothers and I'm a Muslim I wouldn't have a like a Zionist or pro-Israeli in my movie but I want to tell them that like when I criticize Israel I am not

a threat to you as a Jew and we can actually have more in comments I was more of a kind of empathic so when I said that the internet went crazy and you know James gun have haters because you know the the Snyder verse and all of the that it's just it's a word that I don't understand and James

gun like I had all of these attacks on him and I was pissed of how it was handled I wasn't angry I had to James gun but I thought it was so my publicism measures like best him stay calm don't speak it's better like to to like not talk about it I said okay so as a there's nothing wrong

about me but I see the heat is rising against James gun and that is a guy that I had a person connection even through zoom and I didn't like what was happened and then he called me and he explained to me as I best him you know I actually use like half camera tests before people before finally I

didn't know that and I and then we changed the script and it was the strikes who I didn't call and I also I thought to myself I'm small I'm a small actor I'm not that important for him to call me to say we're gonna change the script so I think still think that like the timing sucks and everything

but then I went and I did a video explaining exactly what I'm telling you because I didn't want to be famous for the wrong reasons yeah because that would be unfair because that that was I there already people work and I was having like interviews can you come about to someone's like

guys that's it I'm not gonna talk about because this is an issue and I did I didn't like and I when I talked to James on the phone I felt how sincere he was so I didn't want someone to because of me will have that kind of attack because I know what it means to be on the other side of that

kind of attack it's terrible and it ruins your life and it ruins your day and nobody deserves to be doing it and I don't want to be the reason for somebody else to go through that pain and you also said that you don't want to be a victim I don't want to be I'm doing a great I'm doing great

I'm selling out everywhere I'm having a wonderful loyal audience is coming to me why I would be angry about the role of it Superman yes it's great to be in a superhero movies but so what you know but you know there's a there's a wisdom in that even if you weren't doing great that's a choice a

lot of people can come to which is like do I play victim here or not it's great it's great they want more attention they want to be more into the thing they want more and more and there's so much to go around to be enough for all of us but it is great it is ego ego ego ego I need to

win the center and you be victimized I need to be people feel sorry for me and love me it and it is not the right way it is not because it is fake it is fake it's made up and I did not victimize myself when I left for Egypt I mean in the time that I was and now I speak about it now

but in that dark times I was detained in airports I didn't have the my American passport yet I was still traveling from my Egyptian passport and I was detained in an Arab airport and I was going to be delivered to the Egyptians I had shows when I was still starting I had hecklers being sent to

me by the Egyptian Embassy and Egyptian Council in in New York and in London to curse me and to take videos of that and then send it to the state-run media in Egypt and I didn't speak about that because I felt that like if I speak about that I feel about like what was going on to me I would

be victimizing myself it's like if I'm going to be good I'm going to be good because what I do not because what people's perception of what I'm going through yeah that becomes a slippery slope and somehow victimizing yourself goes to more victimizing yeah and then you cannot leave that

habit you can only exist and thrive if people feel sorry for you yeah I mean Israel and Palestine currently both have that temptation I would always push back when you do the comparison because one of them is not really in the same kind of power I mean yeah for sure for you but that's a very

easy to say why Palestinian will victimize themselves but Israel with all of that military might man it's too much what Israel is doing is the dewec termizing the Jewish experience and I don't think a lot of other and I don't think it is fair for a lot of Jews I don't think

that they should use the Holocaust and the persecution that happened to Jewish people all through history in order to push an equally oppressive agenda that is not fair and it's not good for the Jewish people living and it is basically a disrespect to the memory of the Holocaust I told you I

want to make a movie about the Holocaust I do because what happened was that kind of engineer torture should never happen again and it should not be happening now so to you what Israel is doing is leading to more anti-Semitism in the world 100% and I think and I know can I be a conspiracy

theorist for a second please there is a flat we all know a part of me thinking maybe they are doing that intentionally because if there's a rise of anti-Sythans and Jews there will always like points like see their hate us so we can do whatever we want because if because you see if we

let go of our might and our strength we're going to go back to a concentration camps because you see how the world hates you and again when you say they are people in power yeah oh yeah absolutely listen it's always the people in power I believe that humans are easily corruptible and easily

repairable but the corrupt corrupt party is much easier but you people could change but power people in power are very dangerous very very dangerous especially if you have religion which is power by itself military might political support and money dude that's that's a very very

very dangerous recipe that you know all that said I do believe in the power of the little guide individual to overthrow the government you know I don't know if you heard but the Arab Spring will you know happens but but but but okay here we are we are here and among friends we are Americans

right we're Americans allegedly we're Americans and how funny is that like just giving our two background we're Americans we're Americans we're Americans there's one thing about like the power of the little guy that I am very sad about because you see I'm I love America by the way I consider

it my new home and I want my kids to grow up here I have I'm very grateful for the opportunity that I have in the United States and I criticized the United States politics and I criticized it out of love the same way that I was criticizing what's happening of Egypt out of love what is worrying for

me is how the power of the little man is diminishing it doesn't matter now who do you vote into power they will not listen to you they would listen to the people who paid them to be there and it is very concerning because I can see the American democracy is turning not even slowly very

rapidly into an oligarchy if I'm I'm sure that all of the millions of people who are voting they don't vote for the NRA they don't for vote for APEC they don't vote for the pharmaceutical companies they don't vote for the military industry complex and yet the people in power they come

in they take your vote and my vote and they are loyal to those people not to us and it is very very very concerning very concerning and it is this is the danger of American all on American policies American politics and American democracies it is dangerous because

basically the vote becomes just like a ceremony that that that that the someone with the more like funding will get to power and then he's not loyal to you still the fire I mean we are in Texas everybody everybody's armed to the teeth here yeah but like what are these armed going to

do in front of tanks well you said the the American military is unique in this way I know but for now for now the tanks are for first of all I believe Russia has more tanks than the United States tanks I don't know you know I'm not an expert in military strategic deployment of arms but

the United States uses different kinds of weapons it's they have drones and they have the lasers and they have the sitting comfortably behind the screens it's kind of like it turns like a big Xbox game yeah and they they they saw a lot of those things to everybody it's crazy because the

defense budget is 68% of American military it's like almost 850 billion dollars each year and most of that weapons we don't even need it yeah we just do it because of the contract there was like an incredible 60 minutes I'm sure that you saw it the one about like the

gouging of the prices of the divided the part of this it was one of the most fascinating things that I've ever seen they say like a valve a safety of a safety oil valve that used to be sold for 329 dollars now it is sold for 9000 dollars why because there's only five

uh weapon companies and they can control the prices and in 2006 the whole Apache fleet over the American army in Iraq was grounded because there's one valve that they were like gouging the price and didn't want to give them the stinger missile that that that that's just like the missile that

the the the the one that you carry and and it's like the anti aircraft that used to be sold for 25,000 dollars now it's sold for 400,000 dollars and nobody is doing doing that you know why is because the DOD has fired 30 130,000 people including engineers and negotiators so now

in order to cut expenses now we're paying more money and the thing is we do not have a saying we do not have a say in how my tax money and your tax money is being spent because I'm sure you don't want your money to be sent to Israel like that I'm sure even if you

choose I'm sure I'm sure that's like I don't want my money to be given to some Muslim countries who kill other Muslims I'm sure but it is it is not it he's the thing what kind of power do we have other than speaking so what is left for us is free speech and now when you speak they call you

anti-semitic you see why I'm angry but still I mean America's holding pretty strong despite the criticisms on the free speech front but if you look at the free freedom of the press freedom of the speech index America is not at the top it is not and this is why for example it is very

disheartening for me to see that the western media western press that used to be the beacon of freedom as I'm using as mouthpieces and it is funny how the New York Times Nixon got angry in the New York Times in 1971 when they found leaks about him lying about the Vietnam war since the beginning

and now he hired the plumbers you know the special unit in order to go in and find the leaks this was watergate basically because he was angry to see who leaked that instead of fixing the problem now the New York Times have published the story about the get the rape that was a hoax that

was written by Anna Schwartz who someone who have no experience and now when it was leaked instead of them correcting themselves they went in and they had their own investigation to see who leaked the New York Times in 2003 became the mouthpiece with George W. Bush of the WMD and now as an American I see that the New York Times becoming a mouthpiece of a foreign country why do you do that?

One of the things that's really difficult to know is where to find the truth it does seem that both sides use propaganda and both sides lie a lot both sides as in both Israel and past the propel time pro-Israel there's a lot a lot I know but I think it's a lot of inequality man are you like there is like a lot of people on the internet but like who have the mainstream media siding with yeah but you know thanks and I'm talking about yes thank god for social media because now it's

individuals there are people yes there are people you're comparing BBC New York Times Washington Post what what's it genre with just people with a TikTok account yeah do you think it's more power in your view now it is actually very very fascinating to see the little man having that power over the

media because this proportionally so like hey like that this is my problem but you cannot call people with TikTok propagandist while people being paid to casually give you the news and they deliberately lie to you yes I can they're both propagandists yeah well probably break it yes yes but like

the but the mechanism and the intentions are different because because here's the thing I'd rather have the TikTok guy and then yeah if like the TikTok guy is a TikTok guy right but if you have the New York Times being told that they they being exposed to be lying and then they get this like you

and report which is like a disgrace and you just put the title and you don't talk about like I'm fine with CNN and Jake Tapper and all of those people like spreading the rape allegations for years they didn't I don't even want them to refute them I want them to bring the Israeli reports saying that

they didn't have the Israeli media themselves they didn't even bother not once is that balanced that's not yeah so that's why people in TikTok and because they have to take matters on their own hand yeah but the problem with the people in TikTok is the drug the the dopamine rush of getting a lot of likes so instead of talking about the death of civilians they'll talk about beheaded babies or the equivalent of yeah they're they're going to actually make up stories because the make made up

stories are going to be more viral and so now we're just in the scene it's muck of lies and there's a lot of people who actually exposed the lies on TikTok so you have both yeah you have both and it's like kind of like the democracy of the social media as we always call it but if you have the street

front media that is the legacy media scene and BBC New York Times fuck news all of those people and they are like spreading lies and they're not even doing their journalistic job in order to at least bring the other side yeah that's problematic and that's that's worse you're supposed to be

journalists yes it's supposed to be reports report yeah but yeah I see that this is like a catalyst an inspiration for the citizen journalists to rise up this is what you're doing or this yeah this is what you're doing no this is what you're doing because you go into a deep dive

this is like like a no filter thing there's no spin the long form long form is going to save us I see why you hate the TikTok like a dopamine rush you know what I'm gonna do with TikTok I five hours later I saw the resentment in your face I can't can't look away like like those

like 30 seconds I do four hours I mean both have a place both are exciting and you know but I I can't it is very dangerous like as you can't look away and I almost never maybe I'm doing it wrong but I almost never feel better ever after having used TikTok mixed to us I can't I cannot

I cannot I have a team by the way I give my my my my my my password to like a team I don't even go there because I went I once in a dark night very late at night I went to talk and it was like two hours what yeah what I said no no no this is dangerous I'm I'm really like an Instagram and

Facebook guy I don't need that and I barely get out of Twitter I mean like X I don't I can't X is a cesspool X it's just like two could the concentrated hate and X too much too much I can't so you you don't check it at all you try not to check it at all it is very intense I don't I don't

I don't I can't I can't I just like I post something and I run post and ghost so you're you're doing comedy here in the United States right now yes Joe Rogan has the the comedy mother ship which is an incredible club have you considered doing that club

I would love to I mean I do not know of course no I don't know who does a new Joe I feel like as a small world of comedy that's why I know I think like Joe Joe's story was like what he did and stuff that he that didn't that didn't the UFC and his podcast and it just

it's it's very impressive the fact that he's there and he's bringing all of those people whether in comedy or his podcast is very impressive and this is what this is what is the media is all about what is like the internet is all about to give you the experiences of stuff that you might

never experience and that's very important I mean you do it with people will like you go into their brains he goes take people and you they take their experiences and and their life and their story it is very interesting and this is the beauty of of that art form because

you have all of these experiences at the tips of your hands and it is there for you to learn from you know and and what he's doing like and when he moved to Texas and we did the the comedy mother ship anybody who would like push comedy forward that is the most difficult art form

and the most demanding and the fact that you do that and he might not even be making money out of it but he doing that because of his passion that is enough yeah he's he's he's he's it really believes in creating this like a place where comedians can be really free and one of the cool things about

the comedy mother ship is like comedians came there yeah like there we have to like you have to bow down to the because you know the comedian who came there came after like eating shit yeah not eating out there everywhere else if you pit you have basically you're a saint

I have eaten shit for me now I'm gonna give you shit it's great you already told me what you think about the state of politics in the United States but now tell me what you really think what what do you think of the choice of Trump versus Biden how

do we end up here I don't know right I mean like the fact that like you have two people over the age of 90 yeah it is I think it's over 100 but that's all combined like 170 it is so sad it is so sad that this is what we can produce as as a society like like a demagogue and

a sleepy Joe idea I just he's two he's not there man he's he's gone he's gone I mean he could you know like when all people could be like a danger for themselves he's a danger for the whole world I mean like the whole world like if if if an old person would die who would like

you know have like a hip replacement we can need them and and like a new planet because of one decision it but it's not just that it's not it's um what are when I came here listen I am I'm I'm a democrat I always like and I told you like I vote for Bernie Sanders I I like I supported

him like 2016 but I couldn't vote then and of course a huge bad fan of Obama and one of my friends is like he's the first Muslim president but he killed Muslims like that's things Muslims do but anyways I love that line and it just I I think the the the the whole idea like my shock is

I I thought you were like what what Biden said about like Amazon is okay we are science but then like Jews are not safe anywhere other news like dude what the hell are you saying and if you don't care about me and you don't care about my misery

why would I care about you winning or losing you know and I have a joke that I told people like why would even Biden listen to us he just raised 145 million dollars in California alone from pro-Israeli groups I mean what what can we Arabs working in the vape business due to him

yeah he's like we cannot compete with that yeah and it's like practically I mean it's like life is like life is unfair the guy's a politician he needs bills to pay he needs a campaign to run he needs money he will go to the people he will give me money he Biden is the highest paid politician from Israel Làb is four point six million dollars over the years yeah but I also believe even great leaders that go against all of that. But unfortunately, Bernie Sanders was like that.

Bernie Sanders, yes, but also age, I don't wanna be ages. Of course, of course, no, no. But even with like, because I remember listening to Bernie Sanders 20 years ago on Tom Hartman show, and I don't wanna say anything against Bernie, but like he was sharper then. Of course, there's a thing with age where. Yeah, of course.

I think I'm a huge fan about like putting a limit on your working years, because you don't wanna have like a Mitch McConnell moment every now, because now the whole thing got like, what is this? Isn't this not like a house by Skarek home? It is unfair. It is unfair, and that the whole idea that you have like, you have a limit for the present, but you don't have a limit for congresspeople and senators. That's what you mean.

This is basically, you can go in and be in the governance for forever, and you know the longer that you can get, the more corrupt you will get. Yes, and that is very concerning for Americans. Everybody, everybody becomes corrupt after forever. I mean, that's why two terms is a good limit for everybody. Yeah, and you know, maybe half a term for your Egyptian leaders. Well, you know, our half term is 15 years. It's quarter term. You should come back for office there.

Oh my God, no. No, there's a curse in Egyptian presidency. No, nobody comes there like, it's like dead during jail. Yeah. It's not the most appealing job. They might make a statue of you though, make you look good after my death. I look very good, dead. And it's like, yeah, when you look at what happened when Navalny, since you kind of really thought about this in Egypt, what happened when Navalny and Russia, what do you think about that?

Yeah, but what happened in Navalny and Russia is not something new in Russia. I mean, Putin have like this whole history of poisoning and killing people. And it's kind of like pretty much, I would have to cite credit Putin, he's like bringing us the essence of the dark ages, the Middle Ages. It's like, you know, when all like basically Putin is like, is the living example of what happens if Game of Thrones was reality. It's like death by poison. Like a blow up a plane.

It's like mysteriously disappears. It is so, it is very dark, but it's like, wow. It's like a, it's a television show. Maybe that's what attracts us to that part of the world is that it's so much on display in this game of power, of geopolitics, of war. No, but the same happens in the West, but I'm behind closed doors. It's not that open. It's not that pronounced. It's like, oops, Epstein. It's like, blah, blah.

We just like, I think, I think because of the West is more advanced like in movies and cinemas, we kind of directed better. Yeah. I think I think the outcomes, like the way that you kind of like said the scene is like, scene and scene. That's why people are like landing on the moon. They're like, oh, I get it, but we haven't gone back. They're too flat. All right, if we zoom out, do you think there will always be war in the world, always be suffering?

Yes. But here's the thing, I don't think for long. I don't think that will happen for them. Wait a minute. Yeah, yeah. Because here's the thing. Humanity is destined to have war, especially, it will have war, but that's something happened in the last 50 years. We have, now we have much more lethal weapons.

The problem is the beginning is like swords against horses, horses, cavalry, like cannons, catapults, mini missiles, gik gik gik, but now you like war like a press of a button, you can annihilate the whole planet. And this is the problem. Wars will all continue. The problem is when is going to be the tipping point where we are actually going to destroy ourselves. And it is so easy now to destroy ourselves, the amount of weapons and the quality of weapons that we have.

It is designed to get more effectively, more, more, it's just, it is crazy. It's like we can create our own destruction in ourselves. And I think we're not that far away from it. Just looking at nuclear weapons, the fascinating thing about nuclear weapons that have gotten to learn recently, just how few people are involved in a full on nuclear war that basically kills everybody. Yeah. Well, three plus billion people right away. And the consequences of the nuclear winter, it's unlivable.

But all it takes is, I mean, one president can do it. So it could be even a false alarm, misunderstanding, like what happened in the Cuba Missile of the Critens. But again, and now there's more nations are prepared and ready to launch. Yeah. And you have a media and a 24 hours kind of like thing that makes you like at edge the whole time. That's crazy.

There's a dark perspective on this where there's certain members of the media that would kind of enjoy the prospect of nuclear war, like a little bit. Just let's get as close to it as possible. You have another factor that will contribute to that. Religion. And remember how like the radical Islam is talking about, like the end of time and whatever, but like most of the Islamic, I don't have that much power. Problem is with Christian Zionist now being on the top of the world with America.

They have been pushing for that kind of conflict to kind of escalate. Escalate. Listen to Sarah Palin. It's like God wants us here. Like a guardian drove all of the new gods. The dispensation is Reagan. There's an incredible book called Like Forcing the Hands of God's. Oh, beautiful book. I read it's like it's published 1998, but it still matters today. The whole idea about like, especially that the Zionist Christians who love Israel, but they hate the Jews.

They're anti-Semite, but they love Israel because of its role. This is all basically formed because of the interpretation of the Bible of Scofield and how they talk about the end of time that Amar Gideon and then the late great planet Earth and then left behind serious and all of that. It's all about like we're heading to Amar Gideon. The problem is Islam has the people that believe that they end of time. And then we have the Christians that believe in the end of time.

And then you have Israel happy that those people are using it for the end of time. And then the whole idea about them pushing as many weapons and troops and people in the Middle East to be there for the nuclear holocaust. And John Hagg, one of the pastors talk about that about the primstones and it's not gonna be a nuclear holocaust. All the people, it's crazy how people are so despised in life that they are wanting death.

So now you all would have these revelations, but these revelations mean nothing if you don't have an effective weapon in order to make it happen. And this is the crazy thing. And I'm worried that the end is going to be by someone that wants to meet God a little bit earlier. Somebody who's really in a hurry. Well, I have good news for you. Maybe we'll become a multi-planetary species. Maybe Ellen Musk will lead us on the way. To get out in space. Maybe he's one of them.

Yes, he says he currently is there. I asked you offline to not mention the lizard people. They are. There's like a whole people that believe in the lizard people. It's crazy. I actually have to be honest, I haven't fully looked into the lizard people. I probably should. You should. Yeah, well, maybe I'm afraid of the truth. I then then then then. Then then then then then. That's right. We're moving my face down. Yeah. I mean, so let's say, let's say you're wrong about the end of the world.

And we, it all turns out great. And humanity flourishes. Why would that happen? What gives you hope for that trajectory for humanity? Younger people. The people who have ticked all the time. Yeah, there is a lot of like crippled shit there. You know, after you say this, people just keep saying you take talk videos. These younger people. This woman showing her boobs. That woman. That's gonna save us. That's. All right, awesome. Thank you. No, there's like, I think.

I think there is a wealth of it. Remember like the joke that said like we thought that like when we have internet, we're gonna have like be more, you know, more informed. And now we're watching twerkin videos. And that is true. But on the other side, the fact that you have the availability of information. I'm learning a lot. And there's people who are using that platform that it's not the majority because, you know, it's not very interesting and exciting.

But I think there's, there might be a tipping point where there's enough people that would be aware. And maybe they would collectively do something in order to bring back the power to the small man. And maybe it sounds very naive. Maybe it's fine. But we don't know. We don't know because we, we have already seen the legacy media and the legacy politicians shaking in the past few months. They're getting nervous. They're getting nervous because people are calling them out.

And those people were like hiding behind the desk, behind in their office and not like not holding a couch for that. But like people now are calling them out. And it is not gonna happen like this year or next year. But I think it's something. What advice would you give to those young folks? I will never give advice to those people. Get off take talk. I will never, I will never because like their input is different on mine.

But like there's, there's one thing I learned when people saw me, did the revolution fail in Egypt? Did people, that the people are, that's like, listen, the revolution is not an event. It's not like, hey, we go in with the government. It's not an revolution. A revolution is a process. It's a very long process. And maybe that process, I mean, as much as we don't like what happened in the Arab world.

But the people there, the awareness that happened and the discussions that have been opened that where you didn't even imagine what happened in the Middle East is happening. And maybe the beginning of any hope of change is that people start talking, speaking out, talking about stuff they were not allowed to speak about. Like for example, Israel. So. The revolution continues. Ah yes. Basim, you're beautiful human being. It's truly a pleasure and honor to meet you.

I just feel the love radiating from you. I hope I get to see your perform live. I hope to get to see you many more times. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you so much. And I would love to invite you for my new special, the Islamonats, the best of you. That's what you're talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. Thank you so much. Thank you, Brother. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Basim Yusuf.

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you some words from Jalanced Doork. The press can hold this magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues, here to fore unseen, or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire. And then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden unexpected dangers, flaming ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. Thank you for listening.

And hope to see you next time. that you understand this story. We have really talked about this part of our personalի