But Do You Condemn Hamas!?! Media Bias On Israel 11.14.23

invaluable for not just us but everybody listening. So again, man, I know it's thank you. Yeah, I know how difficult it is to talk about this stuff too, but honestly, we just yeah, we're glad to have you, man, We're glad.

know the game. They know how to keep their skepticism, they know how to draw out the story in an interesting way. What I can't understand is how when it comes to just this one thing, whenever it comes to Palestine, everybody forgets all their training. It's like we're starting from

scratch just now. It just drives me nuts seeing so many people make so many mistakes taking the Israeli militaries narrative as fact and casting doubt and shadow into anything on the like on the other side, regardless of who it's coming from, which to me is like you guys, see what you're doing, right, but you see it everywhere and it's been driving me nuts.

I could? Like, I bet there's a think piece worth writing about, like if there was a uniform time, things would actually run more efficiently, right, who knows though?

Digestive system is weird, so similar similar searches, but it would just be octopus digestive system, unicorn digestive system, right, how and that's how Rainbow Sherbert is made.

why I'm a photographer in the first place. So I picked up photography after like going through all of my family's old photos and seeing all these pictures of myself being young, family in Egypt that I hadn't seen in a long time, and I remember feeling like this was the most important, the most valuable thing I have in

my whole family, Like I want these pictures. And so I picked up photography, thinking I need to document everything, like everything is valuable, and now that I have a kid, like number one on every single list is just document, document, document, I'm taking a crazy amount of photos. I'm like really going hard on that end. And so we did it for the first kid. Now we got to do it

for the second kid. Pictures Like literally the first thing I do when I go to anybody's house is I dump my baby on their lap and say, all right, smile taking a.

me feel so much more real. And so when I got to see them for the first time when I started going to Egypt with my own money, when I got a job, I was trying to go like at least every year, and meeting those people felt so much more exciting, Like I felt connected to them, and I recognized streets and like, I'm telling you, this box that my mom gave me a photos is just like a gigantic cardboard box just loose photos thrown into it, and so just that trevsure trove and going in and discovering

and trying to match up which photos are taking a which camera because of the shape of the print. Everything has been Oh wow, okay, like one of the most enjoyable things I have ever resent in my life. Yeah, I just wanted to be able to recreate that from my kids.

Thata was like, yeah, that's my grandma. Yeah, that's my great grandma or whatever that you kind of have these reminders and to your point, like asking questions because that actually helps your parents, like help my parents like jar their job there memory memory, and then actually begin sharing things that are that are a little bit further like hey, your grandmother was you know, she was a fantastic woman. We're like, oh shit, oh okay, this is this is

my uncle. He only talked in rhyme because when they were kids, somebody threw a bullet in the fireplace and it hit him in his head. And now he can only speak in rhymes. Yeah, like shit like that where my grandfather was like, let me tell you about him. Yeah. So I definitely like pictures are such a yeah, you know, they're like it's it's so wild, like because now we can take pictures like at will. It's wild that we don't cherish them the same way we did when we

were printing film. So yeah, you really got to lean into having that ship printed for sure.

trip somewhere. Like they're also going to pick us up from the airport, take care of us, pampa us, like they do that every trip. Regardless, they don't even do it for the gifts. It's just that the gifts for me is like a way to pay them back and show appreciation. So yeah, no, I really should be talking about these cousins, man. They're really like the reason.

in the mainstream media. But aiman you know, you are seeing seeing this happening, and you know, as a member of the media, like covering, I'm just curious to get your perspective on like what what what has been happening? What are you seeing behind the scenes, And then like how's that affecting how we're hearing about or not hearing about what's happening in Israel?

of their news from social media. They only know what's going on through TikTok and through Instagram, And I feel like a lot of people don't really know how to distinguish between people just posting things opinion news clips of commentators from the actual journalism, which are like first hand accounts people on the ground doing journalism. And it's like equivocating between being like an activist talking about out what's happening and being a journalist and trying to report the

facts as they are has been driving me nuts. So there's two things happening when we think about how the media has been like covering this. On the one hand, I'm seeing so much misinformation and disinformation spreading like crazy on social media. And because everybody's in their own little social media bubble, what people on either side are, you know, And in this case there's a lot more than just

two sides. But anybody who's consuming media on social media right now are getting just like this fire hose of information, and some of it's real and some of it's not, and some of it's made up, and some of it's like from ten years ago, repackaged to look like it was just show yesterday, right, And so you have people who are Zionist and sympathetic with you know, the IDF and what they're doing right now to secure Israel, who are like sharing these videos of like people in body

bags who are wrapped in the white like we've been seeing of from Gaza, who are getting up to check their phones, you know, because it's like actually a clip from a protest in Lebanon, you know, or something like that, but that clip is being repackaged and shared as you know, evidence of Hamess making up casualties and that the IDEF

is pure hearted and pure intention. But on the other end, there was a viral clip that went viral, uh maybe two days ago that supposedly showed like Apache helicopters shooting Israelis who were fleeing from their lives when they came in with those paragliders at the at the music festival,

which is also like you know, repackaged. I think it was from like the two or three days afterwards when that clip, when those clips were shot and published by the IDF showing their attack helicopters attacking militants who were trying to either flee or take more ground than in Israel. And so those are two examples.

is that witness testimony. You can read it about it on Harriet's But at the same time, the role that the journalist has to play is to find primary sources and report it out. And the way that so many people at prominent outlets that have a humongous responsibility and outsized responsibility to tell the truth in this in this particular war where information like this is kind of just going crazy. This flying over our heads has been catastrophic.

A good example is right after the beginning of the war, the is the Palestinian ambassador for the PA for London, was for England, was being interviewed by the BBC and he just talked about how he lost like seven family members in an Israeli bombardment. And this guy, you can tell, was being super stoic. He looked like he was just crying because he just found this out and he's on the news ready to talk about what's happening. And the presenter asked him to condemn ha mess like immediately after

he shared that he lost seven family members. And this callousness goes beyond what a reporter ought to do. You know, we should be asking people about what they see, what they feel, trying to get primary sources to tell us something about what's happening in front of them. Asking somebody who has a wealth of knowledge about being an ambassador for the PA, not Hames, which is PAS, they run the West Bank, Hames Ruse, the Gossam. This person is an ambassador for them, so he he's also lost family

to the bombardment. He's in a unique position to talk about what's happening from his perspective. But this person who was interviewing him, this journalist was asking about something that he's disconnected to a and was trying to make a moral argument with this person, and that to me felt like, I don't know, I was disappointed. I was like, you know how to do this, Like this is your job. You don't have any problems doing this with any other subject.

Why is it when we come to talking about Palestine and talking to Palestinians, we skip the part where we're supposed to interrogate how they're experiencing the world, and we skip to, well, how do we get that? How do we hold them accountable for what the other side is saying?

where were you on October seven? Yeah, how are you affected by this tragedy? Which are you know, I'm not. I'm not here to like browbeat these people for doing their job, because those are good questions to ask people who are going through this and that suffering is real, right, But where is that when we're talking to Palestinian sources.

Just today, the New York Times put out a piece and their incredible podcast, The Daily not as good as the dailies like guess, but you know, if you have extra time, you can probably artists and a lot of people might think they can. First Weekend First Thanks. I was going to say I was gonna make that point,

but you know they were. They did this whole episode where they talked to God, to gods and doctors, doctors who are in these hospitals who are operating, and the host asked one of them, well, the idef is saying that Hamas is doing X y Z in these hospitals, like what are you seeing? Which is like a good

question to ask. But the people who are just being constantly asked to take these political arguments that one side is making in it and trying to rationalize them and trying to breathe air and to them and give oxygen to them. The guy had a meltdown man. He freaked out. He was like, Yo, we are having to choose which

kids die and which kids live. We don't have enough resources to give kids who need amputations any kind of anesthesia, so they are awake and while we're hacking off their body parts, like you know, the the trauma in this guy's voice when he was like, why the hell are you asking me about ha Mesz right now? Was I think was incredibly emblematic of the what we've done to these people, you know, by flattening them as being like this of response to Hames. These people are people, man.

So I would love to see the media make a better effort at exercising just basic journalism by asking people about what they see and where they're at, versus trying to turn everything into a back and forth.

You would never see somebody talking to somebody hiding in their escape room in the Kibbutz, you know when that was happening, and if the media were able to get them on the phone, you would never imagine them being like, well, what do you think about Natan? Yeah, who's saying the settlements are about you know that at risk?

of this is oppression. Yeah, and to just skirt by them be like, well you condemn Hamas, right, Like, let's just keep let's let's let's keep reinforcing because I see this so much in the rhetoric of people who are defending what the IDF is doing in the Israeli government, of keeping the focus on Hamas about being like free these people from Hamas and like that's what it is, and rather than really like widening out the focus here

to really understand all the dimensions of it. Because to your point, like when someone is bringing up these facts that would that is, you know, meant to tell a very human story about Palestinian people. To to then bring it to what about Hamas completely just takes the window out of that take or what the point someone's trying to make to just make it purely about right right there is that? But what about this other thing that

we can agree is bad? Let's talk about the bad thing, because I don't want to keep talking about how innocent people are being brutalized through no fault of their own, right, I think that's also been really hard to watch too totally.

I mean, we need to see proof, man, before anything else.

This idea about copaganda, right, this idea that it came about after the popular Black Lives Matter uprisings across the country, after George Floyd was killed, where it was obvious that the police when they issue statements, I think a lot of people have suddenly realize that they have they are incentivized to lie, and that you really that first like that first account that they gave was well, he was on drugs and he was attacking us, and you know,

he was fighting back and all this stuff that after you see the clips, you know it's not even close to being true, and you know, this is I feel like there's overlaps here, and I think part of the lesson that we learned there in journalism and in people who are consuming media is that, you know, the police are incentivized to protect their own skin. I wish I could see more of that when we're looking about Palestine. This idea that Israel has a long track record, not

israel government. I gotta be specific, because Israelis are as diverse as anyplace else in the world. Uh they Israeli government has a long track record of lying. We saw when they killed the journalist turnebe Uckley. We saw it when they killed those four boys, those four preteens on the beach with worship. We saw that with There's like so many examples man of like them denying that they

did something when they're doing it. So I would love to see the same amount of scrutiny being like, well, you're making these claims, we need to see proof or we need to hold out to see like what everybody else is saying. Right, Yeah, it feels like we're so eager to take this narrative and put it out.

read from the same book when that time comes. Are you like, do you see it as a dimension of just sort of like these ingrained sort of like just the lack of American curiosity or or about like honestly reporting about imperialism or is it like other you know, because we see also like these like McCarthy I type activities that are happening where people if they deign to speak out about what's happening that they are people are

coming for their careers and things like that. How do you see like what like is it bad habits, is it external factors? Is it a combination of things? Like how do you kind of see like the environment that people are operating in when they just take the word of an IDF command or be like okay, that's what they said. Okay, print that without evidence and we'll just run to that.

it is. It is, man, It's it's this basic, this basic reflex that's maybe inside me because I have Arab heritage or I don't know what it is meant, but like I cannot, for the life of me, understand why there's not this curiosity where people are just satisfied with it, being like it's a religious war and so they're responding to their religion, and so it makes sense that they want to eliminate just Jewish people, and they use that as a way to just justify making claims like what's

made what's on the on the Congress floor recently, that there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian, right right. It's like when the Israeli government says that we're going to punish the people who are giving out candy or giving candy or like the people they elected Hamas, and it's like, where's the curiosity to say, Okay, what are the poles saying?

the greater part of the last twenty years. This has been like a you know, the curiosity of academics, you know, people who are going in and finding out, oh, actually, more than seventy percent of the people in Gaza when they were asked if peace was option where they want to live in peace with Israel's their neighbors and seventy five I don't know the exact number, more than seventy percent. We're like, yeah, we want peace, but you almost don't.

You don't even see that number quoted anywhere because there's no curiosity. There's no thought experiment of like, well are these people like us? Where there were responding to many different things, there's this idea that is really prevalent. I think among a lot of writers and journalists that the issue is that there's an ideological conflict, right that if only each side could just get along, then this problem

would get solved. Right that there are actual partners for peace on either end of this that are being usurped by these like radical ideological groups. This is not the case here, man, This is not the case. What you said about the the imbalance of power here is everything. Because I think this really cuts through to how so many people who are sympathetic with the Palestinian cause actually

feel about this. And it drives me nuts seeing some of these protests being described that the protests that we've seen across the country, across the world. I think London just had the biggest protest ever in its history, and it was for Palestine. This being condensed as it being like a pro Hamas rally or an anti Israel rally. You know, the idea that these people could just be flattened to like this responding to this one part of

this conflict drives me nuts. Yeah, you know, where's the curiosity, you mean, said the reporter. Talk to these people, find out what they're saying. They're filming themselves. They're telling you what they're saying. The same thing with from the River to the Sea Palestine will be free. The congresswoman Rashida Tslay just got censured by her own colleagues on the Democratic side, who helped the obviously bad faith right wing

use that rallying cry to punish her. Now, none of the reporting I've seen makes context of what she was actually saying in the speech where she said that she wants peace for everybody. They just took the right wings word for it that she was calling for genocide. She was calling for genocide, man, come on, freedom.

inform people. It's there to just preserve these systems of oppression under like because these questions that are asked like similar to like in twenty twenty, you bear like every now and then you'd hear some reporter as somebody who's at a protest, why they're there, Like everything was always

like and we're here with the police. Start, we're here with you know, Sheriff Villanueva, who's telling us about what is happening in Los Angeles and getting this perspective that is meant to just like, to your point, flatten this movement into like a very easy to digest, like these people just like want chaos or something, and it's it's it's not that great of a thing. Slowly, I feel like those things changed because I think there are enough people in America to kind of begin to grapple with

that somewhat. But this also just feels so disgusting and uncomfortable to because it really pulls out just the inherent Islamophobia that exists in this country too, because I feel like it's so eat a lot of people just want to reflexively just cast people who, like in Palestine is being like, yeah, well, you know, like they voted for Hamas, so that means they're bad and it's that simple, and that really is so difficult to have to sit through

because to your point, this is all happening while innocent people are suffering under that, and there's many people want to say, well, they're voting for they voted for Hamas. Well, then what's happening in the West Bank because Hamas is not in power in the West Bank, the pa is you know, and like and so where is that argument now,

because we're only seeing increased violence there as well. But you know it the again, it's always this lack of humanity that's extended to these people in such a like casual way is really unnerving because you know, it makes me feel like I'm living in a place where more more people are like, yeah, some people are just not human to me. And that is really really frightening and horrific and such a difficult thing to grapple with.

going forward. But the I don't know, it's when the mainstream media covers it. They take the quotes from the most these inhumane leaders, and then that becomes sort of the marching orders for like the two different sides. When it does feel like there are a lot of people who are seeing the same thing that we're seeing, but they're just Yeah.

military thugs. They shoot people and they drag their corpses in the street, and so you have to imagine how fucking brave these people are for protesting in the streets and Kaza. Yeah, but that happened. Are they innocent?

Like all of that, I think there's room for all of that to also coexist with that same wanting, that same want for a ceasefire, that same want for people who are being pummeled to death being bombed eleven thousand plus not counting the thirteen hundred that are still under the rubble and unaccounted for. You know, you can't even digest those numbers. We're parents, right like we we can't even digest what it's like to be a parent in

Gaza right now. And did you guys hear about this new acronym that's now being coined in Gaza.

and to like, how do you look at that? And then you're brangles, Well, you know, they voted for homic Like it's wild that it's it's almost like they're like people are being trained or like inoculated against being able to look upon what is happening and arrive at the conclusion,

which is this has to fucking stop. And that's what is like really unnerving when I see people brush this kind of shit off to kind of keep like with their sort of like raw RhE of like the IDF and and you know, continued violence and yeah, I don't know that that's where that's where it's it's very It's just it can be so easy to become nihilistic and so deeply cynical with all of this. But yeah, I don't know, Like I mean, I feel like I for me, like I can only continue to try and bear witness

to it. Because as much as I want to ignore it. I can't for the life of me think of if I was in the situation of these people that I would I would be hoping that they that they're putting the energy, the thoughts towards kind of some kind of solution, that they will use their voices to try and speak up for me or my family and things like that.

And it's that that simple level of us prosody that like people can't even get behind is also kind of I don't know, it's like doing something to me that I really don't like, because like with every little bit of people I see not acknowledging others humanity, like, I feel like part of me becomes callous garth like gets calloused over and I'm losing a part of it too, and just trying to, i don't know, like to to find and see if the other people are seeing the

humanity and all of it, you know. So one of the.

we were making food. Like they had like a friendly relationship. But then when all of this started, he turned into almost like an Internet troll where he was just replying to all of her Instagram stories where she was sharing some of what she was happening in Gaza and rationalizing it and calling her a Hames supporter and all this stuff. Right, that kind of thing got me curious. I was like,

how is this possible? Man, Like, you know who this person is, you know that she was friends with you, You know that you were like that was never an obstacle. This like overwhelming hatred of Jewish people written large, like you know that that's not what's in her heart for a fact, because you guys were friends for years. The

piece doesn't go there. The piece talks about like how to keep I talked to this person who helped co found this sisterhood of Shalam Salam where they're like a friend circle of Jewish women and Muslim women here in America who like break bread together, hang out together. And so I was like, tell me how you like hope with these kinds of like flashpoints where this conflict and there was like a beautiful article. You can go and find it and read it. I wrote it, so obviously

I recommend that you do, but it got me. After writing it. I was thinking, I was like, how is this even possible? Like, how's this person's instinct not to go, oh, we have this relationship, how is your heart? Like how are you feeling? Like? What are you experiencing? How is it like this this bombing is happening, Like I recognize your pain as much as I want you to recognize my pain, And that to me felt like the natural way to respond to something. And I was like, how's

that possible? And then I was reading this old study like this, maybe from like ten fifteen years ago, about how it's possible that if you see the suffering of a group that you consider to be on the opposite end of you ideologically, that could actually trigger your pleasure receptors and your brain. And I need to find this out,

even sending to you guys. But I thought it was so fascinating that biologically, depending on where we land on the political spectrum, for some reason, how you experience the suffering of somebody could be either pain or pleasure. I was like, what the hell? And I think once I recognize that, right, it helped me realize what was actually important, right, not just as a journalist but as a human, which is like, everybody just wants their pain to be recognized

and to be felt. And this idea that the Palestinian pain is fake, Like you can just do with Twitter search for the phrase Pallywood, Yeah, and you'll see so many rationalizations and justifications for the killings of innocent people by denying that they're there in the first place, which

is monstrous. But it helped me to recognize that even if I empathize with one side, I'm not just talking about Pasti in Israel, but like the idea that we need to just be better at communicating that we're hurting right now, that this is fucking painful, what we're going through right now. To see these kinds of thing that you know, like this, oh my god, man, like I'm in so much fucking pain right now. Everybody's in so much fucking pain right now, Like, why are we not

just giving each other hugs? Man, Like I feel like we need to do that instead of like trying to make each other feel like you're actually manipulated and you're being lied to, so your pain is fake or oh, actually I saw a video of a helicopter hitting Israeli, so your pain is manufactured and fake. But at the same time, it's like, only one side has the power to stop this, only one side has the capacity to make peace. So really, like does any of this actually matter?

Maybe this is just we're going to experience this pain and just cry it out, man, because I gotta tell you, dude, as somebody who wants the fighting to stop, and as somebody who knows that all of the powers on one side who can make peace today if they wanted to, it feels really fucking bleak and hopeless.

that were made. And I think on some level too, there are probably people who don't want to acknowledge that kind of pain because on some level they don't want to admit that there might be some level of responsibility,

like on from their side too. So it gets locked into this bizarre fucking thing where people are just more invested in conspiracy theories than the very very real pain and suffering that's happening, which We've said on the show, this is only going to foment more hatred and is only going to further destabilize this part of the world, radicalize more people. It's not like so like I'm always like,

what does Israeli government think is going to happen? Like I'm always like, I can help me even understand the logic that again, people are just gonna say like, yeah, all right, that was an l for us, so you win and let's just move on with our lives. That's just not how things work. And so to see that sort of like for them to continue down this road when it's so clear to every single person like this

is not this doesn't make anybody safer. It's really also just so frustrating, and yeah, it leads you to that point like is it really are we just going to have to stand by and watch this all go down? Because everybody in powers is sort of like kind of or at least in the you know, empirical world, sort of knows that they're like, yeah, well this is this is what we're gonna do, and that's just a very difficult pill to swallow.

because their kids are being taught to hate us. It's like how removed you have to be from what's happening on the ground to accept that as rational. I mean, even like Ben Shapiro floats this kind of thing where it's like it's the textbooks. If you got rid of the textbooks, there will be lasting peace in this enclave that we've been bombing periodically, that we've been starving and calorie counting and you know, mocku line, you.

of them are just you know. He said that kids wandering and by themselves, and that it's starting to feel more like an orphanage than a hospital. The idea that these people who have never seen or met in Israeli in their lives, beyond just the bombardment, beyond the people at the guard towers, if you could even see them from as far as where the line is, where if they cross it, they'll get shot. The fact that this is their whole relationship with their neighbor for their entire lives. Man, right,

they have no fucking family left. And you're gonna say it's the textbooks Like that to me drives me insane. It drives me insane, and I feel like I'm the only person who could see through it, because it still feels like in the media sphere, we're still trying to find the ideological clash, Like where do these ideologies just not settle with each other? Why can't they make peace when all you need to do is just look up what Smatra is saying or what Ben Giverer is saying.

Who are active ministers who are talking about flattening Gaza and we are talking about wanting to use Gaza as a freaking water park?

She goes, she picks up this like half of an arm with a hand attached, and she holds and she touches the hand and she goes, this either belongs to like we'll see it or no, see like this, you know, trying to figure out like whose scalp because it's just like hair, like who's who's which baby had hair like this, so that they can identify the parts. And then at the same time, you're in your newsroom and you see somebody, right, I'm not gonna I don't think I've seen this that slaves.

I'm just gonna say hypothetically, you're in your newsroom, and then somebody writes, Hames run Ministry of Health, as if there's like dudes with ipgs and ski masks coming up with numbers and not actual trained professionals and doctors with international organizations like doctors of the out broorders in the room trying to help them account for the dead and trying to be as frugal and correct as possible so as not to double count somebody because they got the

they got the body in pieces, right, they're trying to do this work. And then President Biden says, oh, well, I have no faith in those numbers. That that grief that you're feeling from seeing all of what you're seeing with your own eyes is manufactured by Hamas and it's meant to make to trick you into seeing what Israel is doing is evil, like this is it just I

cannot fathom. I cannot fathom anyone who's not outraged by this, right, And it just feels like the baseline is if you're outraged, it's because you're being tricked into outrage.

But like apparently there's like an internal memo where a lot of like State Department employees are like Joe Biden is spreading misinformation on the Israel Hamas war right now and like saying, like we're seeing war crimes be committed, but we also have a commander in chief who is

complicit in what is happening there. But again, it's like it doesn't feel like it feels like it doesn't matter how many people are out in the streets, what the how diverse these groups of people are, how numerous it is, and you know, how so much of the world is on on one side saying we need to help the people, these Palestinian people, and have it brushed aside. Yeah, I mean it's you know, it reveals just a much darker system.

I mean, I mean that's always existed, but it like it, It really just puts it right in front of you, and it makes it feel completely insurmountable, which is so fucking hard to deal with.

still do your job. But even when we talk about power, it's like, you know, there are people who are journalists who are accusing other people of like being a mess. Run Journalists like this one guy who writes for the New York Post still has his job, right, not fires, right. They are journalists who are advocating for genocide still have their jobs. It just depends on which side you're advocating to get genocide. It just I would love to see

some consistency. But one thing that we haven't talked about that I would love to bring up is this like feud over the posters, like the kidnap posters. I know you guys have talked about it before on the show, but there's this idea that you know, if you take something down, then you have like hate in your heart or you're doing it because you don't recognize that pain.

And I don't agree with people taking it down. I think if he bothers you walk, it's like, especially in New York City, do just keep walking, It doesn't matter. But like reducing those people to caricatures of like anti semites, really, I think you have to avoid the thinking about the para name at play the role of postering and how this idea of like people who don't have a voice can use the walls as canvas to like get their message out.

sidel sidelined flattening them into being like pro kidnapping. It just everything about how we're having this could discourse online feels both evil, not evil, It feels disingenuous, but it also feels sort of besides the point, because as long as the bombardment continues in Gaza, as long as our government keeps arming them, giving them the bombs to drop, it all just sort of feels like besides the point, like who cares? Who cares about these posters? Who cares

about ripping them down? It's like people are being blown to smithereens, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just drives me nuts.

or oppressed. And it's wild too to just sort of see people be like, well, I can't identify with the oppressed, so I think I'm more like the people who are having like a nice beach time while you know, indiscriminate bombing is happening.

extremely like it's both scary, like how do we get to this position where this is who's in power? But it's also it feels like a small number of extreme militants on both sides are like holding all the power, and some how the communication needs to change so that it's that that becomes clear, like A yeah, in the way that mainstream media covers it.

are the vast majority as far as I'm concerned. The people who are wanting all or nothing are the marginalized ones, right, but they get all the attention, so it's hard to see that sometimes. Yeah, you know, the one piece that I've did recently for Slate, I think kind of gets at what you're saying a little bit. He's a guy who was born in this small village in Area CE.

we both know. Yeah, okay, because I know that it's broken up basically into three parts where the Palestinian authority has like sort of civil control. I mean, why don't you break that down? Because I know the levels of control for Palestinian people. It varies depending on what zone you're in, right.

There's all like maybe maybe amount the same sized islands that are that are like right in the middle between those are be and everything around it, like all the big open rural areas are Area.

possibly defend against Jordan or Syria. So like much of the eastern side is area see controlled by Israel, there are still like Palestinian run farms in Palestinian villages out there. And so I interviewed a guy to see like what life was like for him out there, you know, in

area see where he was living. And what he described to me was basically night raids being done by not soldiers but civilian settlers who are dressed in like camouflage soldier fatigues who are armed with American guns, like sixteens, who show up at night and they basically zip tie all the guys and they put guns to their heads and they say you have twenty four hours to leave

or we're gonna come back and massacre you guys. And then they'll also destroy their olive trees, they'll shoot at their water sources, they'll pour cement into their water sources so that they can't continue to feed their trees or feed their animals. And a lot of these people are farmers, and you know, they work the land and they graze their their goats or their whatever animals they have, and so they sort of require like large amounts of lands

to run their lives. And these people were coming in emboldened by what was happening, saying, Okay, so there's a war going on, So now we are the law, and they'll call the cops, and the cops because in this area, the Israel's and control sob quality Israeli cops and they'll they'll so when they do come, they'll back the settlers up. And there's already been people who have been shot being killed.

He talked about how he can't even vocalize that they are like angry at these people for coming in and destroying their livelihoods and seizing them like blocking roads, and people who need medicine can't get medicine, and people who can't get you know, it's like their kids can't go to school. These kids haven't gone to school for a month and they're nowhere near Gaza. So I talked to this guy and you could read about it in Slate where I published it. But I asked him, I was like,

what's the solution here, like do you have hope? And he said that my only hope, because he doesn't have hope in the governments, is that his only hope that earned the free pens of the world. And what he meant was, so we did the whole thing in in Arabic and it sounded way more elegant Arabic, but he was saying that his only hope is in people who are in media to tell the truth about what's happening

there and to get the word out. And in that contest, I was wondering, like free pen, what does that mean?

What does that mean? And then I was thinking about, like the privilege that we have to report what we want to report, and that we are in a way censoring when we're not finding voices like these, And I thought of the responsibility, and I thought about, like what we're not doing by covering those kinds of voices, and how their entire hope, their only weapon really is that their own story, like that this kind of thing is happening to them, and there's nobody else that's there who's

going to protect them, and nobody else is going to offer them a peaceful life except for US Man, except for people who can put pressure on their governments show the world what's happening to them. And in that context, I think I see journalism as being so freaking potent and so valuable and so threatening. And you know these rarely government has already killed forty plus journalists argued attacks.

They'll deny it was targeted. The evidence showed, the forensic analysis show that they attacked the Reuter's convoy to the North, and they are They even openly said that when this honest reporting thing came out, honest reporting is this organ is like pro is real, It's not honest. Nor they had their mission statements to divert people's attention away from what the IDEF is doing. So that's why I'm saying that.

But they had succeeded in painting people who were photojournalists who were documenting what was happening on October seventh, as being complicit and complying and cooperating with MS. And there are executions of innocent people on that day. And so the Defense Minister at my Ben Gavir and the Israeli government verbalized and openly said that those people who were photojournalists are complicit and that we will be adding them to the list of people who are going to be

killing in response to what happened. Yeah, and it just another moment. When I saw that, I cried because that's like, this guy is basically signing a death warrant for these photojournalists because this American based Pro Israel Org wanted to, you know, contribute to the fog of war and make things more murky so that we aren't so we doubt

what we see is true. And I just really if anybody who's listening gets anything from this, I just want you to know that it's dangerous to look away and finding primary good sources is everything right now, and these people are they have no other avenue for peace. That's the only way that there's going to be piece is that enough people wake up to what's happening, realize that

it's not the textbooks that's driving these people apart. It's that there is this one government in Israel, the Israeli government, that has control over everything everything. They are in charge and if they wanted to right now, they could find the partners for peace and they could make peace. Without that, there's no hope. There's just not on the ground, not here. We're sitting nowhere. That's the only hope. Yeah, geez, I sound like fucking Carnell west Man.

you can translate. It's very easy. And also, you know, they I think, enjoy more freedom to criticize the Israeli government than we do here in America.

to stay up to date, you know. And one thing that I that I think is really that I think really conveys what I'm trying to argue here, which is at the very beginning, a bunch of different organizations at

Harvard issued the statement. You know, some people thought it was bad taste to write after this terrorist attack, try to create context for what happened by saying that there was no peace for Palestinians on October sixth, and that you know, some people have like said that it's not right to victim blame and tell people who were killed

in a terrorist attack that they had it coming. But since day one, Harriet's has been doing that kind of work, writing about how the conception of these kabbutzas being on the border was meant to withstand a first wave of explosion after you know, the establishment of Gaza as this

like cut off like entire like insular. People call it an open, open air prison, and that these good books will put here strategically, and you know, these are Israeli writers who are digging into the history, who understand this stuff better than we do. So I think in this country, if you want to consume media and be closer to this, I would say Harriet's is braver and they're doing some of the best work right now.

that leg is touching the clouds. Man, He's like, but in reality it's just sort of like, you know, it's just a little bit.

a couple first, a literal work of media. Producer Justin was like, yo, have you seen Blue Eye Samurai yet? On Netflix? And I was like, you know what, I know of it, but I have not seen it. I watched it. It's pretty dope. It's about a biracial child in like, you know, sixteen hundreds Japan, because if you were biracial then you were considered a fucking monster. So just kind of like looking at that, but it's like

a dope like animated Samurai k tale uh. And also another tweet was actually from a past guest, doctor John Paul at Doctor John Paul, where just posted a picture of Barney well like like one is like a Barney promo image, while another one was just someone like at a birthday party, I said, Lord Barney is on that stuff. And then someone someone quoted that at Sleep to Dream and said Ozembic is hitting every corner of the entertainment industry.

And this track is called Greg Abbott's Maxi Pat. But let me tell you, this shit is a there's a fucking there's a riff in it that I love so much.