Yakov Hirsch, a writer for Mondoweiss.net, discusses how “hasbara culture” has infected the minds of Israelis with a “macho victimhood” ideology and tilted media coverage (led by Jeffrey Goldberg, the “most toxic person in American culture”) so Americans are misled into thinking Palestinians are the aggressive occupiers of Israeli land, instead of the other way around.
Check out my Patreon page
https://www.patreon.com/scotthortonshow
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
You hate government?
One of them libertarian types?
Or maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers, or warmongers.
Me too.
That's why I invented libertystickers.com.
Well, Rick owns it now, and I didn't make up all of them, but still.
If you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are, there's only one place to go.
Libertystickers.com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian, empire, police, state, founders, quote, central banking.
Yes, bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And, well, everything that matters.
Libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
All right, y'all.
Scott Horton Show.
Check out the full archives at scotthorton.org.
More than 4,000 interviews going back to 2003 for you there.
And all the latest stuff gets posted first at libertarianinstitute.org slash scotthortonshow.
You can follow me on Twitter at scotthortonshow.
All right, introducing Yakov Hersh.
He is a writer for Mondo Weiss.
He's a, I think, retired professional poker player.
And now he's a dog trainer.
And he's a severe critic, not just of Israeli policy, but really, he's a media critic, more than anything, in a way, I guess, it's fair to say, on the question of Israel and how it's debated in the United States, especially.
Very interesting stuff here.
Very provocative.
Welcome back to the show, Yakov.
How are you doing?
Good.
How are you, Scott?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us on the show here.
So I think to try to get us started off here, let me just lay down a couple of premises of this thing for people who do know and don't know.
With Israel, and with the occupations of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights by Israel, what you really have is virtually a 50-50 split now between Jews and Christians and Muslims.
Now, about 20% of the population of Israel are what's called Palestinian citizens of Israel.
So they are treated like second-class citizens, basically.
I'm not exactly sure the Golan Heights, maybe they're third-class citizens.
But in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, they're just prisoners.
They're just simply victims, basically, is all you can call them.
They have no rights, really, at all, as Todd Pierce, the former Guantanamo Bay lawyer, explained on this show.
They're not under martial law.
They are under foreign military occupation law, which is a whole other level of brutality beyond martial law, if you take, you know, for what that's worth.
And the situation is such now that former Prime Minister and former Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the current president of Israel, Rivlin, various military and intelligence officers have come forward and they have said, the Israelis, we are now up against a wall here, where either we're going to be a Jewish democracy, a Jewish democratic state, and let the Palestinians go and have independence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem.
I don't know if anybody ever addresses Golan or not.
But anyway, we're either going to let them go, or we're going to be, in other words, they are now an apartheid state where half the people virtually are disenfranchised.
And that that is an untenable situation for the long term.
And then the other side of the argument is to go ahead and annex all of this occupied territory, erase ever the possibility of independence for these territories.
And for that matter, also continue to deny equal rights for the Palestinian people as well.
And just take it and continue on in this apartheid fashion.
And this is what Ehud Barak and these other Israeli leaders are saying is a completely untenable situation.
Something's got to give here.
And your big argument is that for some reason, this discussion is not really taking place in America, even though it is taking place in Israel every day.
We're not really allowed to talk about this.
And then the question is why?
And your short answer is Hasbara culture.
But what does that mean?
OK, everyone is familiar with the discussion about the Israeli lobby, and it's a very hot topic.
It's controversial.
People are familiar with the book, the Israel lobby by Walter Nersheimer.
It is.
And most people assume that it's money.
You know, that is what drives America's policy towards Israel is the lobby, which represents finances and represents money to politicians.
And it's just such a big hassle to go against Israel because your opponent gets funding that people are just like, oh, whatever, I'm just going to, you know, say the AIPAC line.
They write me whatever I need to say, and I'll just say it.
But I don't think that that's truly what the lobby is.
I believe the reason why America's policy towards Israel is what it is, is because of what I call Hasbara culture.
So the lobby, in my opinion, is a sacred perspective, and this sacred perspective is most represented by Jeffrey Goldberg and Benjamin Netanyahu, which means when we discuss Israel and Palestine, let me back up a bit.
Yeah, define Jeffrey Goldberg as well.
We know who Netanyahu is, the prime minister, but who's Jeffrey Goldberg, for those who don't know?
Before we get to Jeffrey Goldberg, let's talk about the politicians who support Israel.
I believe that people who take positions on a question like Israel-Palestine, it is not enough for to get money and take the position that you take.
You need to feel good about it.
You need to feel that you're a moral person.
You need to feel you're doing the right thing by and large, or it's certainly easier to do what you do if you think you're doing the right thing.
So my hypothesis is this sacred perspective is proselytized to such a degree that to take a position against the sacred perspective, that is much more difficult for a politician than it is to forego a certain amount of money that they would get if they took a position So let me just give an example of the Iran deal.
I'll take Booker, a senator from New Jersey, a Democrat who clearly needs to support, I mean politically, needs to support his president, his African-American president, who was in favor of the lobby.
Now, what was the pressure that Booker felt to vote against the Iran deal?
It wasn't that you're going to lose the deal, it wasn't that you're going to lose the It wasn't that you're going to lose the next election, you're going to lose money, the pressure was how could you do this to the Jews?
It was America's rabbi, Rabbi Shmueli Boteach, I don't know how to pronounce his name, but he, what did he tell Booker?
He said, I took you to Yad Vashem in Israel, the Holocaust Museum, when you were 25.
How could you vote for the Iran deal?
So imagine the pressure that someone feels, and this is not really a debate you could have with Rabbi Shmueli about whether, you know, it means the destruction of Israel, whether Iran wants to destroy Israel, whether they want to annihilate Israel.
The reality is that they call for a referendum.
The Ayatollah, when he talks about annihilating Israel, he has a nine-point plan how to, quote, annihilate Israel.
It's pure fantasy.
It's a referendum, the Jews, you know, people under occupation and even the Jews will vote and they'll come to some conclusion.
And so Jeffrey, so let's get to Jeffrey Goldberg now.
So that is the reality of the world.
The reality of the world is Iran and Israel, you know, are enemies, right?
But Israel has a weapon in this fight with Iran, and that is this Hasbara culture.
That is a perspective that if Iran says, you know, Iran represents Nazi Germany in some fashion or another, and Jeffrey Goldberg has cultivated himself the discourse in such a way that he is in charge of saying what's taboo, who's taboo, who's not taboo, what's sacred, what's the correct, what's the correct perspective, what's the moral, what does moral clarity suggest we do in every situation?
That is basically what neoconservative, the power of neoconservatism.
And the reason why Jeffrey Goldberg will not go away is because they wrap themselves up in this moral clarity.
And if you question them, then you are a moral relativist.
So this is a very, very, very powerful thing to have on your side in any political discussion.
And especially when this gives you a weapon to demonize.
If you look at Jeffrey Goldberg's career, anyone that has stood up, and I mean literally every single person that has argued with him on any of these, quote, sacred issues that he considers sacred, important, you know, right and wrong, anyone that has stood up to him and said, hey, no, we think you're wrong, I think you're wrong, what has happened to this person?
There is no debate.
It is, oh, why are you on the other side?
Why are you with the taboo people?
And Jeffrey Goldberg, as a theoretician, he will explain why all the people are against them.
He has these tropes, the sulfating Jew trope.
If you go to his article, that's what most of his articles are about, explaining why the world is the way it is, the moral, you know, the moral clarity that he sees, and explaining why the other people don't see the moral clarity.
It is never would Jeffrey Goldberg agree to disagree.
It is, I am right, I am sacred, and you are an anti-Semite, you're a, you like Charles Lindbergh.
It's just tropes.
Now, the effect of this is such a demonization and a dehumanization of opponents, and since it's done in this, you know, this Manichean manner, the people who are most influenced by this, which is, which is, certainly Jews are the most influenced by this.
Jewish culture, Israeli culture is the most influenced by this.
And Netanyahu does this as well.
So the result is the discourse about this issue is not a normal secular discourse.
It is a sacred discourse.
So now, let's talk about why it's, this is not, why Israel is not discussed in the United States right now.
Because since Jeffrey Goldberg, and quote, let's call it neoconservatism, let's talk, let's mention a few names.
Brett Stevens, Jennifer Rubin, Irving, not Irving, his son, Bill Kristol, since they have cultivated this, and this is, this is why they're always going to be around, basically, because they're always cultivating this huge ideological battle going on.
That's what happened with Trump.
I believe Trump is a, just a child, an immature child.
He has whatever he believes about the world.
But basically, he's a little child, whatever that means, I don't want to get into it.
But if you look at the writings of the neoconservatism, and the reason why someone like Brett Stevens gets hired by the New York Times, because he makes the, he creates Trump as this big ideological battle between forces of light and darkness.
Of course, Brett Stevens will always be on the side of the force of light, the way he describes the world.
And he can, and such is our world, that his favorite politician is Naftali Bennett, who's basically a fascist.
I mean, I'm scared to what happens when Naftali Bennett, if he, if he takes over as prime minister, but we'll get to that in a minute.
So what happens is this ideological battle, right, which is what happened with Trump, which is not true.
It's not true about the world.
It's not true about Trump.
But this is why, this is what they thrive with, the neocons, from, is writing and describing and cultivating this battle, this, you know, this very important battle.
Now, the problem with why, with Israel right now, is when you do that to a society, when you tell a society that you're fighting with the people you're occupying, and the reason why there is resistance and violence is because some ancient antisemitism, and this is the message of, this is the message Jeffrey Goldberg, the ADL, Brett Stevens, you know, and Netanyahu, most importantly, that you drum that into, into your society.
And of course, any incident, and of course there is violence, you know, it's not out of, there are buses were blown up and there are Palestinians who are knifing Israeli citizens.
So now you, so now the problem is since what has that, what, what that has led to in Jewish culture, but for us in Israeli culture in Israel is a sense of total impunity.
A sense of impunity because they feel that they are right, morally right in the battle with the Palestinians.
Since the motivation of the Palestinians has been defined, two big articles by Brett Stevens and Jeffrey Goldberg, the roots of the knife intifada, you know, this is the article where Brett Stevens talks, talks about the blood fetish.
The problem now with the story, you know, with this analysis, if you actually look at what's going on in Israel, it's clear that Israel, the Israeli political culture has lost its mind.
And that's what the Azaria story represented.
Azaria, it's a very simple story.
This guy murdered someone on camera.
A soldier murdered a Palestinian.
A soldier murdered a Palestinian, a Palestinian who injured a fellow soldier in Hebron, the seat of apartheid.
I mean, this is the epicenter of, if you call Israel apartheid, everyone would say Hebron is apartheid.
Everyone is shocked when they go to Hebron in the occupied West Bank, which is a holy site for Jews.
And let's not get into Hebron now, but what happened was in this city, this Israeli killed a Palestinian soldier who was already shot and on the ground.
And it was clear it was just revenge.
And it wasn't so long ago that even Israeli right-wingers would just say, OK, we have rules.
We have a country.
We have an army.
Whatever the story we tell ourselves, why things are the way they are, we still are a Western country.
You can't have a video of a soldier shooting someone on the ground and it be OK and not get unanimous condemnation and this person has to be in jail.
Now, 20 years ago, the guy would have been let out of jail after a certain amount of time.
That's not our situation anymore.
This this sacred fight, you know, between Israel and the Palestinians, between good and evil, between Israel, which represents innocence and the you know, all of this Jewish history is this morality tale which comes, which is now playing out with Israel and the Palestinians in this story.
This is the tweet by Kerchik that maybe Elie Wiesel did learn the lesson of the Holocaust, the way he treated the Palestinians.
There's a lot of criticism about Elie Wiesel, who's supposed to be this very moral person.
You know, he's the lesson of the Holocaust and we see the way he's behaved to the Palestinians.
It's it's it's a problem.
But the answer to this cognitive dissonance of how these Jews who are supposed to learn lessons to have learned the lesson of the Holocaust, the problem is that that this is being lived out, you know, against the Palestinians.
And now the people, the people who cultivate the story of right versus wrong, the neoconservatives, Jeffrey Goldberg in particular, he can't talk about Israel because to shine any light on what's going on there shows that the story just does not fit.
You know, there's such horrible racism, which makes sense that this is going to happen if this is what you tell your people, you know, that everything's OK, you're allowed to do what you're doing.
So it's natural that when someone kills a Nazi on the ground, basically the whole society says, good job.
That's what happened.
The whole society said, good job.
And even liberal politicians, the labor politicians, it's almost wall to wall.
They said that now he got 18 months, which was a ridiculously short sentence.
But even after the 18 months, the most politicians said he should get a pardon.
Now, that doesn't make sense unless you understand that the story of good versus evil, and this is all Netanyahu's statements, which I've shown in my article, is we are not murderers.
We kill murder.
We fight murderers.
We are good people.
He called Azaria our children, our child.
This is what's happening.
And that's why in America, since the people who the greatest defenders of Israel base it on this great, you know, this great ideological battle and Palestinians represent anti-Semitism and everything that's bad and Muslim, you know, Muslim fanaticism, everything that's bad in the world and Israel represents Western liberalism.
You know, they all talk about not so long ago they spoke about Netanyahu, the leader of the Western civilization, defender of Western civilization.
This is a nice, very good story.
Right.
If no one looks too closely.
Yeah.
OK, so now back to the beginning, then what about Ehud Barak?
And what about all the former leaders of Mossad and all these, you know, top brass, three and four star generals and whatever they are who come out?
And I mean, you got to figure that they carry real respect and they keep saying things like, hey, this is not working out.
We're doing the wrong thing here.
In other words, they're agreeing with you that this narrative, this unreal narrative of Israeli victimhood and righteousness in this situation is suicidal.
It's self-destructive.
This impunity is leading them to destroy themselves.
It's leading the leaders of Israel to destroy Israel.
And that's what Ehud Barak and all these guys are saying, basically in a panic.
They're like, we're already painted all the way into the corner right now.
We're living in an apartheid situation right now.
And even the Americans are going to end up not being able to defend this over the long term, you know, and the whole rest of the world is already over it.
So some very, you would think, I would think influential people are trying to break through this Hasbara narrative, this sacred narrative, as you put it.
But why are they unable to?
In other words, who's afraid of Jeffrey Goldberg?
Why can't anybody just say, look, Jeffrey Goldberg, all I'm doing is quoting Ehud Barak.
OK, so shut up.
Get out of my way.
I don't care about you.
Excellent.
Right.
That is a great point.
That is the best way to fight Jeffrey Goldberg and to fight Hasbara culture, is to say, you know, when people get, when people are demonized, take, for instance, Barghouti, right, this whole controversy recently about the New York Times publishing this op-ed by a Palestinian, a Palestinian leader who's been in jail for a very long time, who's considered maybe the next leader of the Palestinian movement, Palestinian national movement.
He's been in jail a long time in Israel.
And he, the New York Times published an op-ed by him last week, and basically was complaining about the conditions of, in Israeli prisons and condition, and just basically what Israel does during the, you know, as an occupier.
And he was announcing a hunger strike.
Now, from a sacred, now, if you look at the reaction, and that's why if you look at the hysterical reaction by Israel, it makes, my analysis makes more sense than the money thing, because it just, and I've written a lot about it, this, the language, you know, when Netanyahu when, when they started making a big deal about this op-ed, the New York Times added that Barghouti's a murderer and et cetera, et cetera.
Now, the language of these Israelis, when they react, they look at Barghouti and the Palestinian, and the Palestinians as being, imagine that they look at them as like evil, right?
Let's say, like Nazi, like.
So from their perspective that the New York Times is giving a platform to someone like that makes the New York Times evil, right?
Once you have this sacred perspective, the other, you can't start thinking about the, and this is the problem with American politics, and this is our problem with the Middle East.
Once you define the other side as being, once you dehumanize the other side, you can't start thinking about their perspective.
When we talk about creating more terrorists by killing a lot, by killing a terrorist, then you start role-taking with terrorists, and that already is taboo.
Once it stops being a fight between normal countries or normal organizations, then that's why Goldberg is still around, because even though Iraq has been such a debacle, everyone looks at that, well, it was a good fight, it was a moral fight, there were bad decisions, but no one has attacked the basic premise of the sacredness of Jeffrey Goldberg and Netanyahu, because doing that is a very big deal.
Now, there are people who could do that, particularly Peter Baynard and Ehud Barak.
So let's talk about Ehud Barak, which is the question you answered.
Ehud Barak is responsible to some degree for what's going on, because in, you know, let's talk about Hasbara and Hasbara.
What is Hasbara?
Hasbara is the spin that Israel gives on any, you know, every war, let's say the last Gaza war, you have these spokesmen coming on TV, and they give spin, right?
They say, well, but the rocket, you know, I don't have to tell you all the Hasbara.
The problem with this, now let's go back to Ehud Barak, when in 2000, in that time period, Ehud Barak was seriously trying to reach an agreement with the Palestinians.
You're saying when he was the prime minister.
When he was the prime minister, right?
And it didn't work out for whatever reason, I don't want to get into the politics, who's fault?
But what happened afterwards is Ehud Barak said there is no partner for peace, right?
Now, that sounds like, okay, that's spin, there is no partner for peace.
But when the discourse from Israel about these things, when there is this ideological foundation, that everything is a battle between good and evil, and not just normal people, you know, having their perspective and trying to do their thing.
Then when Ehud Barak said there is no partner, that was cemented into reality for Hasbara culture.
Even Ehud Barak, who sort of wanted to make peace, said there is no partner.
Now, I believe Barak regretted that, because since that time, every Israeli politician, every, there's no partner, there's no partner, there's no one to talk to, there's no partner.
Now, and so Jeff, so now the problem is once this power to this, this story, this narrative about Jews being so innocent, that is so powerful that when Netanyahu was able to label people, his opponents, as leftists, leftists, a leftist basically means assaulting Jews in Israel.
So if Netanyahu is accusing his opponents, who say maybe Iran doesn't want to nuke us, or maybe we should talk to the Palestinians, when you call someone like that leftist or traitor, I mean, that's basically a traitor, you want to help the people who want to kill us.
That's what the kappa language is, you know, is about.
The kappa were the Jews who betrayed the other Jews for the Germans.
This is why Friedman, Ambassador Friedman, he said a few times that J Street, which is a liberal, which would like, which is critical of the Israeli government, Ambassador Friedman said J Street and Peter Boehner are like kappos.
This is a world cultivated by Jeffrey Goldberg.
Jeffrey Goldberg has used this type of language with Jews who disagree with him about the Middle East.
So when Ayatollah Baraka, so Netanyahu, it's very unclear with these people, these leaders, the people who decide what is part of the story, what's part of Hasbara culture, you know, they, what, you know, I have written, where Jeffrey Goldberg's, you know, where his ideology ends and his ambition begins, you don't know, because he became editor of the Atlantic, you know, cultivating this, this ideological, these ideological words by being what I call the mashkiah, the supervisor of what's allowed or what's not allowed.
And when something is not allowed in the discourse, you, he demonizes you.
When Juan Cole wants to take a nuanced position, you know, on anything, on Iran, on, there is no room for nuance.
Well, and you know, one example that you cited that I thought was, I just saw you retweeting this, I like how you go trolling through, I use trolling in the phishing way here, not the internet way.
You go trolling through Goldberg's old tweets and retweeting these important things.
And one of them that I noticed was, it was the young Jewish girl who worked for Bernie Sanders, who had said on Facebook one time, oh, damn Netanyahu or something over, I think it was the bombing of the Gaza Strip.
But here's someone who's basically an ant compared to the giant Jeffrey Goldberg, who just absolutely crushes her, who doesn't even give her the slightest bit of deference because she's a nice Jewish girl and she probably means well or something like that.
He basically says, look, everyone at this horrible person who we should all demonize and cast out and, and pressure the Sanders, you know, team must kick her out immediately or else, right?
This means war.
But it's, she's, it's just an innocuous comment by someone who's a nobody, by someone who ought to be on the in group.
I mean, not necessarily all the way in group, but at least, you know, it seems like he'd show her more deference than me.
Right.
But no.
Yeah.
Well, that's what it means to be, to be much.
Yeah.
He is in charge of what's allowed and what's not allowed.
So Zimmer, Simone Zimmerman, I think her name was, she said, you BB or something like that.
Right.
Now think about the, the, the, think about the, the contrast between the real world, Netanyahu.
We're going to find out who not Netanyahu is, you know, before long, as, as Clinton spokesperson said, he's not a Lockhart, Joe Lockhart.
You cannot believe one word out of the guy's mouth.
Everything is a lie now.
And, but this is all, you know, they get Hasbara culture has made him sacred.
I'm Netanyahu BB on the, as Trump calls him, he's sacred in Israel.
What's, what's great about reading Haaretz is what's striking about reading Haaretz, this Israeli newspaper is how they mock Netanyahu.
It's the lack that is the lack of deference for Netanyahu in our culture, in American culture.
It's so Orwellian that everyone really has to have deference to Netanyahu deference.
And, and I mean, and a great example is when James Fallows wrote an article critiquing Hasbara culture during the Iran debate for taking, you know, why he said, why are we taking that to now seriously with all this claims about Iran wanting to nuke Israel.
James Fallows, by the way, he's the guy who going back, you know, 30 years or whatever was one of the more prominent neoliberal, very centrist establishment writers.
This is nobody, anybody's ever called an anti-Semite before by any stretch, right?
Right.
And all he was think about the real world, what was he doing?
He was saying, Hey, maybe we should not believe Netanyahu.
Everything he's telling us all this band about is maybe he, he has other motives.
He wants it.
He's using this for the Congress, the speech in Congress, excuse me, is, is an election prop.
Now this is known in Israel.
Everyone talks about this, but here, when the, when someone like Jeffrey Goldberg is looking at the culture and deciding what's allowed and what's not.
And when you basically people are traumatized, it's just not worth getting into it with Jeffrey Goldberg.
And that is the way it is.
And you can't even fight the way to fight him is you have to make him taboo.
And if you make him taboo, you become an anti-Semite very quick.
If you start attacking Jeffrey Goldberg too aggressively, what did, what happened to Andrew Sullivan?
When he took Jeffrey Goldberg at his word of treating him like a serious person, Jeffrey Goldberg says he acts like a big Jewish intellectual.
So, um, so Andrew Sullivan and debate in the debate about Israel and apartheid and Netanyahu and about America's relationship to Israel at the dish, he just tweeted.
It's so beautiful.
He treated Jeffrey Goldberg like anybody else.
He talked to him, like, Hey, what are you doing?
What's this whole thing about?
Why are you involved?
Just talk to him like, like everyone else, like we could talk about any other person and in American life, like any other journalist.
But if you read Jeffrey Goldberg's response to, uh, to Sullivan, you see that he actually considers himself sacred.
You know, the way he reacted to Sullivan.
They demonize has borrowed culture, demonize Sullivan so badly, dehumanize.
They made him great.
They said he was crazy.
The way he changed his position.
He loves, he used to love Israel.
Now he hates Israel.
But if you read, if you read six, seven years ago, Andrew Sullivan on the dish, every word he says is true.
Everything he says about Netanyahu, everything he predicted is true.
That's the secret.
All these people that Jeffrey Goldberg has demonized for the past 20 years.
Every without exception, go back every single argument he's wrong.
The other side has been proven right.
But since, well, and you know, it's funny because on the point I was making that point about the young girl that worked for Sanders who said a thing on Facebook, the flip side of that, you know, in other words, kicking down so low that it's just such an unfair fight.
It's absolutely insane.
But in this case, Andrew Sullivan, I mean, this is the guy who lied us into war with Iraq as bad as Goldberg did.
And he was Commissar Sullivan back then.
They were the two of them together.
I don't know if they were like joined at the hip, but they, you know, certainly complimented each other's efforts on demonizing anyone outside of the Rumsfeld consensus back then.
It seems like if anyone would have to be treated sort of with deference and respect as a peer by somebody like Jeffrey Goldberg, it would be Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic after all.
Right.
And but you're saying, nope, not even he's safe.
As soon as Sullivan starts contradicting Goldberg.
Now, it's all of a sudden it's personal.
This guy, he he is no longer welcome around here if he's going to try to take that stance.
Think about the reality.
The reality is that Sullivan was seduced or captivated by these arguments, right?
These that's what they're good at.
The neocons are great at writing, at just cultivating these tremendous, this great ideological Iraq.
We have Saddam Hussein represents this America needs, you know, all these stories.
And and and Sullivan and look at the people who we repented.
I'm talking their language.
Look at the people who changed their mind about Iraq.
Peter Baynard, Andrew Sullivan, people who said, OK, I I was wrong.
I was wrong.
And they and they they admit and they realize they have things to answer for.
Hasbara culture doesn't say they're wrong ever.
These people, Brett Stevens has never.
Have you ever seen Brett Stevens apologize for anything?
Oh, we were wrong.
I was wrong about anything.
Has Jennifer Rubin said, oh, I was wrong about anything.
Has Jeffrey Goldberg ever said I was wrong about everything?
And you look at the way they practice their craft.
They are the forget about ideology.
If you look, they are the most unethical people on the planet.
And I'm ready to say they are the most unethical.
Hasbara culture is Jeffrey Goldberg, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Everything they say is a lie, basically.
I mean, I'm not exaggerating.
Everything is just not true.
When they quote people, it's not true.
They don't they never say the people when people have an opinion.
They never quote the people's opinion accurately.
It's because they are so into their holy war.
The ends justify the mean.
Now, hang on a second, because it seems to me, too, like just like the Israelis that they're covering for, they're painting themselves in the corner, too, where I don't know what percentage of people who know of Jeffrey Goldberg.
I mean, he's sort of a meta guy, right?
Regular Americans may not know of him, but all the journalists that they read do.
Right.
But it seems like he's getting just goofier and goofier.
His position is less and less tenable.
And it just seems like overall by just in the same way that Israel's denial has painted them into a policy position where they're in a very difficult rock and a hard place kind of a thing.
It seems like the same thing is happening with the discourse over Israel at all is, you know, the more people are told you're not allowed to talk about that, you're not allowed to think about that.
The more they think, you know what?
You has borrowed guys.
Clearly, the reason you're lying to me all day is because no truth favors your point of view and that kind of thing.
I mean, I know I'm speaking for myself and not everybody there, but it seems like it's sort of unavoidable, isn't it?
That Jeffrey Goldberg, by being in the business of denying reality, ends up isolating himself from the changes in everybody else's point of view.
In fact, the example I meant to bring up was in because of the miracle of Twitter, more than Facebook even, but I guess it was both of them.
But when Netanyahu did the massacre in Gaza in 2014, I think it's almost solely because of these social media platforms.
This was the first time the American public took the Palestinian side.
And as soon as the poll said that, they quit asking the question.
That was it.
But the American people took the Palestinian side because finally they were allowed to have 3G on their phones and they could take pictures and we could all retweet them.
And nobody had to rely on CNN anymore.
And you could go directly from the people of Gaza to the people of America and say, this is what we're going through at the hands of the Israelis.
And the spell was broken.
That was it.
The barricade was there, but people had just gone right around it.
And so it seems like possibly you're fighting the last war because maybe Jeffrey Goldberg really is a joke.
And maybe if some brave people tried it and he called them anti-Semite, it wouldn't have any effect anymore.
And halfway through, you know, almost halfway through 2017 now, maybe this, you know, that's my name.
Don't wear it out kind of thing.
Okay.
Jeffrey Goldberg is escape.
Well, right now, Jeffrey Goldberg is, you know, Jeffrey Goldberg's genius is able to keep a foot in both worlds.
He's, you know, he's a liberal.
People think he's a liberal, right?
So he has escaped.
He is he is trying to escape the scene of the crime.
Israeli political culture is his doing almost.
I mean, his and our culture, but he's the most significant person in our culture because, you know, it's very easy to look at Brett Stevens and think he's a fascist.
He's a fanatic because he does it.
He's a true believer and he doesn't hide.
I mean, he's very manipulative, but he just says he says his fascist craziness, you know, read his articles on every arm.
It's just crazy.
You know, no normal person could read this and say, I agree with Brett Stevens.
Now, Jeffrey Goldberg is a whole nother animal.
He constantly is cultivating these ideological wars, but then escapes at the end that just says, okay, I decided, you know, with the Iran deal, he ended up being in favor of the Iran deal with Chuck Hagel, the demonization, the humanization of Chuck Hagel for saying that Congress is occupied territory or something like that.
He finally ended up being in favor of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense.
So he cultivates the discourse.
And then he says, oh, I'm a good liberal.
I'm right in the middle.
Everyone should have the position that I have.
So he can't really talk about Israel right now.
That's why for the past year and I have been trolling him saying, Jeffrey Goldberg, your story is over.
That's what Azaria represents.
Jeffrey Goldberg didn't speak about Azaria because he can't explain it with the moral language he explains everything with.
That's why he will not be talking about Israel, that he's done with Israel.
I mean, and Yaakov Hirsch, if I've done anything, I have shown this spotlight on him.
I said, Jeffrey, what now?
So he's going to just ignore the elephant in the room, which is Israel and the occupation and just be ahead of the Atlantic and cultivate his worldview here.
The worldview here in America is Trump.
The Trump followers are Nazis.
That during the election, the poison that he pumped into our culture, you know, hopefully there'll be at least one historian who will write about Jeffrey Goldberg, Twitter, Nazi article.
He's cultivated this madness, this ideological war.
That's what he does here.
He's trying to remake American culture in his image, in his perspective.
So, I mean, I can give a thousand examples, but if you look at the Iran debate, he wrote this article, a very, very important article called Why Iran's Antisemitism Matters.
And in this article, he has he is representing the ideas of Hasbara culture.
That means Iran's antisemitism means Hitler.
Iran, Khomeini is not a normal human being.
It's an idiot.
They have an ideological need to wipe, wipe Israel off the map means to kill every Jew.
You know, that's what it means to Jeffrey Goldberg.
So, so he had this article where he's confronting Obama and Kerry confronting.
If you read this article, he's in their faces and he's saying, why do you believe reality, which is Iran is not going to nuke Israel.
It read the whole article, Kerry and Obama saying, well, they might be antisemites, but not going to they're not going to kill themselves.
Israel has 100 nuclear weapons.
Israel's going.
So this is it's Kerry.
This whole article is Kerry and Obama defending themselves for being for saying we could have a deal with Iran and Jeffrey Goldberg saying you don't understand antisemitism.
It was Hasbara culture dogma, that whole article.
And it's not true about the world.
It's not true about antisemitism.
It's not true about Iran.
It's pure project.
It's pure.
It's just Jeffrey Goldberg's ethnocentric perspective.
And you and since people and since the issue is antisemitism and the Holocaust, you can't confront someone like that without he won't debate.
Jeffrey Goldberg doesn't debate anyone.
He doesn't debate anyone.
You can't debate.
So he labels you as a selfie if you want to criticize him or discuss these things.
You're a self-hating Jew.
Look at Peter Baynard, you know, who now works.
Look what he did to Peter Baynard's book, The Crisis of Zionism.
Look what he did to Tony Jutt.
All these people said, hey, Israel is going off the rails.
Israel is going to be an apartheid state.
What happened when Jimmy Carter put apartheid in this book?
The whole world knows Jimmy Carter doesn't hate Jews.
Jimmy Carter looked at Israel and says, bad things are going to happen.
Let me I'm going to put apartheid in that title, even though I know, you know, the roots going to come down on me.
And what happened when he put apartheid?
Jeffrey Goldberg, what did he say?
He said the reason why Jimmy Carter is interested in the Middle East, he hasn't been informed yet that the evangelical Christians are supposed to love Israel.
Jimmy Carter still thinks of Jews as the Pharisees.
Now, this is a nice story for Jeffrey Goldberg to explain why Jimmy Carter goes back to him being a joke thing again.
Now, I know they got away with really slamming Jimmy Carter, and I forget if he apologized or not or what.
But it wasn't that sort of like the last gasp.
I mean, does anybody take it seriously when Jeffrey Goldberg writes that Peter Beinart is a self-hating Jew?
Because everybody just knows that.
I mean, these guys are basically the twin leaders.
I mean, as you characterize them, they're the two in competition for who is the most prominent liberal Jewish writer in America kind of a thing, right?
So how the hell is Beinart a self-hating Jew when he's up there saying, Jewish culture, I'm talking to you, with you, for you?
That's his whole beat all day, every day.
If you look, that's why it's very, you know, very interesting relationship.
The Jeffrey Goldberg, Peter Beinart, he has not called him a self-hating Jew now.
He just like gives him he gives him.
Well, not anymore.
Now he's he's going mainstream, Jeffrey Goldberg.
Jeffrey Goldberg, you know, he can't control it.
I don't know what he's going to do, Jeffrey Goldberg.
But Israel is going is falling apart right now.
Israel, there is going to be an explosion.
It's going to I mean, it's we got very lucky that it has not been an explosion now, because all the when you're telling that all these ideas are jokes and how could they be taken seriously?
This is this is, as we say, Torah Messinai.
This is Torah.
This is the Torah from Mount Sinai, the Hasbara, this sacred perspective that the Palestinians want to kill you.
This is why all the killing is going on with the Palestinians.
Every Israeli politician has said if they come at you with a knife.
I mean, almost every kill him, kill them when they come to kill the Jews, kill them.
No one should leave his house thinking I'm quoting no one.
No Palestinian should leave his house with a knife thinking they're going to come home alive, come back home alive.
Now, this language is only possible when you have a certain and this perspective is real.
It's a sacred perspective they have about the Palestinians.
This is why Netanyahu has been able to stay prime minister forever.
He says the Palestinians are coming out in droves.
He's able to incite so much against the Palestinians.
And since they have made themselves sacred, no one could point the palace to no no mainstream person could point to the Netanyahu and say, you are the biggest racist in the world.
No one could say.
Let me stop you for one second, too, because I want to clarify for libertarians who I know are thinking right now, hey, somebody comes at you with a knife, right?
You have the right to shoot them.
You don't have to sit there and get in a fistfight with a man with a knife.
But of course, all libertarians also know the original question is who's trespassing on whose property, who's standing, who's ground.
And it's the fact that the Palestinians has not have knives only tells you what you need to know, that they have gun control in Palestine and gun control works.
In other words, the Jews are allowed to be armed and the Palestinian Christians and Muslims are not.
And that's why the Israeli Jews have power and rights and freedom and property.
And the Palestinians live like slaves.
Well, they're unwanted.
So they're not really slaves, but they're helots.
These fifth class citizens, whatever they are, prisoners in this Israeli established ghetto.
So sorry, I wanted to clarify that because no, you don't have a duty to run from a guy with a knife.
You can shoot a guy with a knife, but let's not examine this in a vacuum.
That's all I'm saying.
Very often, it's a girl with a scissor.
Actually, he said, if a girl comes here with a scissor, you know.
OK, with her, yeah, you could probably avoid shooting and killing a girl with a scissor.
The important point about this is the politicians are not giving self-defense advice.
They are saying these people deserve to die.
That's the message.
They deserve to die.
That's the problem.
Not, of course, someone comes at you.
You need to kill someone.
Don't bend over backwards to worry about them.
That's not the story.
You know, I think we discussed this before, but I forget what you said.
Have you seen the documentary Defamation?
Yes, yes.
Right.
So this is I love recommending this to people because I think it's such an eye opening thing to me.
Well, OK, so the documentary, it's made by an Israeli Jew who's basically going out in search of anti-Semitism.
He hears about anti-Semitism all the time.
Now he's determined to go and see if he can find some.
And but what he portrays in Israeli society, the way that he portrays Israeli society, the popular culture, I guess I should say, even in the political culture and the popular culture, too, is sort of reminiscent of the US in 2002, where it's, you know, war is the health of the state on DEFCON one type mode.
So the enemy is all around us.
The enemy, you know, especially in this case, basically all non-Jews on earth apparently wake up in the morning only so that they can have an opportunity to kill every Jew that they possibly could someday.
That's all anyone who's not Jewish thinks about is killing all Jews.
And so all the especially Israeli Jews need to do is think about how to defend themselves from the next Holocaust, which could be initiated any moment now at the hands of not just the Iranians, but could be anybody, since everybody hates us all so much just for being Jewish, just for being us, poor us, which is, you know, in other words, they hate us because we're free.
They hate us because we're white and Christian and because we're minding our own business and we let our girls vote in Democratic elections and this kind of thing.
They hate us only because of how good and innocent we are, only because of who we are, not anything anybody ever did.
And but the point I'm not driving home that I'm trying to get to best here is the state of emergency that it's really that 2002 Orange Alert kind of thing every day.
And he shows how the Holocaust is invoked in virtually everything, right?
If it's a debate over the local electricity, municipal utility district or whatever it is, the Holocaust is invoked.
Everything is a Holocaust.
The furniture sale is a Holocaust furniture sale.
Every the news is the Holocaust news.
And it's never allowed to recede into even the recent past is constantly, you know, beaten into the head of all these people all day long through their media and through their politics.
And to me, it reminded me of how I used to think I hope people around the world watch Fox News so they can kind of forgive the American people so they can see that, oh, well, if this is what the American people are being fed, well, no wonder they're so horrible on everything.
You know what I mean?
I kind of feel bad for the Israelis.
They they seem like a bunch of idiot brainwashed Americans to me.
The poor dupes.
Well, look at what Netanyahu did like a few days ago.
I don't watch it, but he you know, he did this Fox show, this Hannity show.
And what did he do this show?
He just told the American people the story, right?
This Mannequin story about Israel versus their enemies.
And he knows what he's doing about the right word, you know, the right how to get through to people.
He was a furniture, very good furniture salesman.
He was back in the day.
That's a now before you got into politics.
He knows the right language to speak to Americans and tell them that Israel's on the good side.
We're with you and the Palestinians are ISIS.
That's what I don't want.
I can't watch it where I would just like throw something at the wall watching.
So that's what he's doing all the time.
You know, this is what this is what Hasbara culture does to American culture.
Now, when you say, oh, everybody knows better this, you know, people are learning.
No, these are true.
Believe, you know, people who hear the story and say, yeah, not that Netanyahu.
He's on the right side.
We have to fight Islamic terrorism.
That is a tremendous achievement on his part.
And if you want to question that, how do you attack Netanyahu when he puts himself?
It's a big ordeal to go attack, you know, the premise, the argument that Israel-Palestine is totally different than the battle against, you know, jihadis.
Sam Harris has been talked about Sam Harris.
He's supposed to be a serious person.
He drank the Kool-Aid about he drank Hasbara culture Kool-Aid totally.
He doesn't.
He says, this is why I don't criticize Israel.
They just want to live happily ever, not bother anyone.
The Palestinians just want to kill all the Jews.
It's just it's such nonsense.
But that shows the power of Hasbara culture that Sam Harris, who is not an ideologue about Israel, like these other Jewish people, you know, he is just he really is not a Zionist in any way.
He just he he has been convinced morally to take the side of Israel, which shows you the power of Hasbara culture.
I believe if Sam Harris knew that if Sam Harris went to the went to the West Bank and have run for these places, I believe he would have to change his position.
Jeffrey Goldberg, David Fromm, Brett Stevens, these people.
No, no, no.
There's nothing they can see.
This is because this represents themselves.
And so you're talking about these these important writers.
But again, it is kind of a meta thing where the Brett Stevens and Commissar Goldberg, what they say goes and that goes for kind of every other writer.
And that goes for the sort of basic default position of every local TV news reader in any context and and what have you.
It's just it's the dominant theme that is, you know, basically becomes unbroken.
I know I'm repeating myself with this, but the reason I do I want to emphasize that this isn't a conspiracy.
Think about I don't I don't mean to say it is.
I just mean to say like the the the extent of it really is not what Jeffrey Goldberg says, right?
The extent of it is the effect that Jeffrey Goldberg has.
And ultimately, that's kind of what I'm and Jeffrey Goldberg and his ilk, too.
And what I want to say here is just I'll try to be brief.
I'm repeating myself, but people contact me about this and they go, oh, now I get it kind of a thing, because basically all I'm doing is illustrating my own previous confusion before I ever decided to learn about this subject.
It always was I had this mixed message.
Then on one hand, they're saying land for peace.
These terrorists are trying to extort land out of us from apparently next door, the country next door.
They're saying we're going to keep sending terrorists against you until you give up some of your land to us.
And they're extorting the Israelis out of their land.
And the Israelis are saying, does that seem right to you that we should have to give up our land to terrorist extortionists who are trying to take our land away?
And then it seems when you frame it that way, it seems kind of crazy to think that, geez, Bill Clinton would want them to give in to that.
I don't know.
Right.
But then on the other hand, you hear, well, all this is in the context of negotiation toward an eventual Palestinian state.
So now, unless I'm looking at a map, I'm confused where Palestine is.
Is Palestine part of Israel or is Palestine the country next door or what?
Because they never say, look, this is the West Bank where the Palestinians live and it's occupied by the Israelis.
They never say that.
So what happens is, I think my kind of, you know, teenage, confused, un-understanding, misunderstanding self, not really miss, un-understanding self, short of understanding self.
I think that's where all Americans are, basically.
I think that's more or less my confusion is pretty much what everybody thinks.
They don't know that Palestine is occupied.
Or sometimes they do.
But other times they think it's the country next door that's trying to steal land from Israel.
Because nobody ever just breaks down the truth in the simplest way.
And I guess that's because everyone, that no one, that's everyone, they're scared of Goldberg will come after.
You know, I don't know if you saw this thing a few months ago.
Oh, it was during the Obama abstention on the UN Security Council in December.
It was the first time.
It must have been the first time ever that a couple of black guys on MSNBC were allowed to put up a map and for almost 10 minutes or something, explain here's the West Bank.
Here's occupied Hebron.
Here is apartheid in practice.
This is what it means that these people were conquered 50 years ago.
See, they don't have any independence here.
This is Israel.
This is Palestine, blah, blah, blah.
But it was like the Guinness Book of World Records for the most attention anyone had given to trying to just explain the basic facts on American TV news.
That's the thing.
That's, to me, the ultimate accomplishment of Hasbara culture is, well, wait, is the West Bank Israel or not?
It's that big question mark of confusion and a lack of clarity by Americans as to just who's occupying who and who's taking what from whom, you know?
But I think it's important to understand that the reason why that there aren't any pro-Palestinian voices or hardly any or there aren't any really Jewish—think about Gideon Levy or Mikko Pellet.
These people would make fantastic guests on TV.
The reason why they're not on American TV is because they have been made taboo.
It's like, oh, no, we can't have this guy on.
He's—the culture, you know, it's been brainwashed that these people are evil people.
They're sulfating Jews.
They're Muslims.
It's absurd.
But that is the power of Hasbara culture.
It's not, oh, it's a Jewish person who owns a TV station and we're not going to—we're going to be pro-Jewish.
It's like, no, we can't have that.
Everyone knows you can't have Gideon Levy on.
It's the culture.
The culture is those people are taboo, and that's the world that Jeffrey Goldberg has made.
Why is—why are these people writing for our—it's taboo.
You know, why can't they speak on American TV?
They're normal, proud, Zionist, Israeli citizens, and they're worried about that country.
But they have been so dehumanized, there is no sign of them.
And in American culture, you know, no one—you know, when someone criticizes Jeffrey Goldberg, there is no debate.
He gets labeled or she gets labeled as, you know, something, as—in a way that they do not have to be engaged with.
So that's—that is the big problem.
The big problem is they—is that we have to change the discourse from one of sacred and taboo to politics, to people being human beings, to Palestinians being human beings, to think of their perspective.
This is—you know, I wrote a lot about BDS and the difference between Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Baynard, and this is very important.
Peter Baynard says, well, I'm a Zionist.
I don't agree with BDS, but it doesn't mean BDS wants to kill me or hates Jews or like the Nazis.
He understands.
All you have to do is look at Palestinians' perspective, and it doesn't—it's not about Jew hatred, but the ethnocentric perspective of Jeffrey Goldberg, and it's so aggressive that the way he feels—he experiences the world.
That's what it is.
What makes him feel uncomfortable, he says, well, if it makes me feel uncomfortable, I think it should make all of America feel uncomfortable.
What happened when Trump said something positive about Le Pen?
There are a lot of ways to criticize Le Pen and Trump, but the way Jeffrey Goldberg and Bret Stephens both tweeted, they said, well, or Jeffrey Goldberg's World War II veterans will be astounded that Trump is supporting Vichy—you know, what are you talking about?
What does this have to do with Vichy France, you know, the French government that was aligned with—allied with the Nazis?
Whatever you—call her a fascist, call her anything, but for normal Americans, you know, why are you bringing the Holocaust into French politics right now, right?
And that is the thing that Jeffrey Goldberg and Bret Stephens—this is what they make everything that Trump does, they need to make it a big ideological war, and that just ain't the case.
Trump is a little baby fighting the media who wants to do well, who goes to his crowd to get applause.
He's a little baby, and of course he has to be watched, but they make him into this diabolical beast who wants to take over America.
I mean, it's crazy, but that's the world they need.
If they don't have a world like that, what are they going to write about?
That is their specialty.
You know what, though?
I'm interested in how that's going to play out, because I think Donald Trump's attitude is he's never even heard of a Palestinian.
He doesn't know what a Palestinian is, and if you ever showed him one, he'd say, well, the Israelis are whiter than them, so what the hell do I care?
And I don't mean that—because I don't mean to just play into the caricature of him as some ideological white supremacist.
I think he just kind of by default doesn't care about people, the browner they are, you know, kind of thing.
And I can't see him having the moral imagination to think that any of this matters beyond getting along with his friend Netanyahu, letting Netanyahu get away with whatever he wants.
So I'll be interested to see how Goldberg continues to spin that.
When Donald Trump out Zionists Barack Obama, George Bush, and Bill Clinton and says, no, really?
You want to annex the West Bank?
What the hell do I care?
I don't know.
What's Goldberg going to say about that?
I think this is going to play out very differently.
I really, really am very confident that something else is going to happen.
I believe that Donald Trump is really going to try to make the ultimate deal.
Think about his perspective.
All the Arabs that he meets, right, what do they tell him?
They say, oh, Trump, we're with you.
We agree, make America great, whatever you want, whatever, whatever discussions he had with the Arab leaders that he sort of gets with the Sunni Arab leaders, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt.
They come and what do they tell him?
They all say the same thing.
Mr. Trump, you're great.
We love you.
But, you know, if you could only take care of this two state solution thing, everything will be wonderful.
All the advisors he spoke to, they know, everybody knows, the people that know, know that it's Israel's fault, that it's Netanyahu's fault why there isn't a two state solution.
He's not a product of his power culture, Trump.
This is why they, this is why Jeffrey Goldberg worked against Trump so much.
He's not, there's no power.
His power culture does not have power over Trump.
When you tell this, so, I mean, this is a very big subject, but this is what I believe is going to happen.
Trump is going to want to make the ultimate deal because people tell him he's going to realize it.
What does it take to make the ultimate deal?
It takes one phone call to Bibiano.
Tell Bibiano, hey, I spoke to Kerry.
I spoke to people.
I spoke to Barack.
I spoke to people in Israel.
Everyone thinks this is wonderful for Jews.
Everyone thinks this is wonderful for Israel.
We're going to have the greatest security in the world.
I'm going to put American soldiers.
It's all, all the arguments that Israel uses against the two state solution.
It's all bullshit.
And Trump's going to realize that at some point.
Hey, I told you no building.
He's going to run up because he has no interest.
Trump's interest is that Netanyahu does not call him on the phone and harass him about settlements.
He wants to be left alone.
Making America great again does not involve getting phone calls from Netanyahu or from Friedman or from Dermer.
He wants to be left alone with Israel to make America great again.
There's no place to make America great.
But for Donald Trump personally, and I would imagine if he pulls off the two states, if he pulls, pulls off this ultimate deal, he will tell everyone it'll be such vindication for Donald Trump that indeed he is the ultimate deal maker.
What's going to stop him from making the ultimate deal?
There's no Congress that's go.
If, if Netanyahu tries to do the stuff he did against, against Obama, like going to Congress behind Trump's back, talking to Republicans, that's world war three with Trump.
So I really believe all his, all his serious advisors are telling him, yeah, it's a big headache, this occupation.
So what I believe he's going to do, he's going to try to make the ultimate deal like everyone else did.
But the reason why there hasn't been an ultimate deal is because Israel has their way and waited out Obama and made him crazy and made him and dehumanized him.
So no, you know, Obama was helpless against Netanyahu.
Trump is not helpless against Netanyahu.
If he decides he wants a two state solution, we're going to have a two state solution or we're going to have the end of the American Israeli special relationship.
Here's the thing though, I mean, I got to say, I think you're right that, well, for example, I'm pretty sure it's on the record that Mattis has said that, yeah, you know, Israel causes us a security headache and that kind of thing.
But I don't think it's right that that will be the dominant argument that overrides, you know, American domestic political considerations such as the house in two years and the reelection to the presidency in three and this kind of deal, the start of the next campaign, which is any minute now.
And I think I look at it like this.
I could be wrong about this.
And, you know, Lord knows I'd prefer to be wrong about it.
But I don't think that this could happen with somebody like Trump.
I think the only way that this could happen would be an American president who really knows something about it and who really wants to do something about it and is willing to really do something about it.
And, you know, who has like a not even they'd even have to have like an ideological bent, not just a practical one, because Obama knew and started to push for an independent state in his first the first year of his first term.
But he quickly backed off.
He wasn't man enough to say, no, I mean, it really call new elections and put Barack back in there and let's get some business done.
He didn't he wasn't willing to do what had to be done.
And Trump, you're right that, you know, oh, he's Mr. Swagger, but he doesn't have the motive, you know, he doesn't have the he would have to think that, man, what's happening to the Palestinians isn't right.
And I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do something to make sure that they are treated more fairly.
Now, that would have to be at the root of his motive is to do the right thing for those people.
And Donald Trump clearly couldn't care less about the Palestinians.
I doubt he even knows who they are, where they're from or anything about it at all.
My confusion about the West Bank when I was a teenager, that's Donald Trump, the president of the United States.
Yeah, but I but I don't think he needs to know anything.
And the more you know, the worse.
I mean, Obama just was not powerful enough.
Obama could not do anything.
Trump, if he if Trump wants to do this, he can do this.
Now, I believe there are a lot of reasons why he wants to do this.
And they can't they can't treat Trump the way they you know, Trump is going to say, I'm doing I'm doing this for the Jews.
I'm doing this for Israel.
And you can't attack him as a Muslim.
You have the discourse about Trump working for a two state solution will be very different than Obama.
The language used attacking Trump is what you hate Jews.
That's why you're going for a two state solution.
You love the Muslims.
That was that was what happened to Obama.
That's not going to happen to Trump.
Who's going to go against them?
This the crazy right wing Jews like the the the Klein guy, the the.
Well, and Jeffrey Goldberg, right?
I mean, I know fit right in with Goldberg's narrative, too, right?
No, I Jeffrey Goldberg is wants to escape from Israel.
He wants his career now and wants he cannot get involved in his his, you know, the evidence of his of his behavior of how Israel is what it is.
It's all over the place.
If one of any imagine if Andrew Sullivan wrote a column, hey, remember six years ago when I warned about Israel?
And remember what you did to me, Goldberg?
What now?
If any one person, Yaakov Hirsch has done this for a long time, not one person has written about us for our culture.
It's such a taboo, Jeffrey Goldberg, that there's not one person in all the enemies that Jeffrey Goldberg has made.
There's not one person say, hey, Jeffrey, look what you have done to Israel with all your craziness for years with you making anyone to criticize Israel taboo.
Look, isn't this the result?
Doesn't this make sense?
No one has said that to him.
If someone says that this is big problems.
If someone serious says that Rashid Khalidi, anyone writes an article now, if someone that he could just dismiss to make taboo.
OK, Glenn Greenwald, oh, you just hate Israel.
You're a self-hating Jew.
He's done that to Glenn Greenwald.
But let's say someone like that, he can't do that to.
Jeffrey Goldberg has some answering to do.
So he does.
That's why he's not spoken about Israel for a year now.
He doesn't want to get involved in Israel.
He wants to cause trouble here in America for his own ethnocentric, you know, he wants to basically mold America to the way he thinks it should be.
But he's so manipulative.
I mean, this man is so manipulative.
Every tweet he's up to no good.
Jeffrey Goldberg is on the make.
He's on the make for himself.
He's on the make for Israel.
He's on the make for his story.
He's on the make for Jews.
He's I mean, not for Jews, but his understanding.
He is he is he is I think he's the most toxic person.
Oh, he was.
I don't know where he's going to behave now, but he's the most toxic person in American culture by far.
More toxic than all the big anti-Semites.
He is the most toxic person of the last 20 years in American culture.
And if anyone were willing to debate me about that, I'd be happy to debate that question.
Well, and anybody wants to learn more type in Jeffrey Goldberg and shame and learn about his career as a prison guard in the occupied territories where he admitted brutalizing prisoners and God knows what a very bad person.
And of course, you can go back and check the New Yorker where he lied us into war with Iraq with tall tales about Saddam's relationship with Osama bin Laden.
The greatest contribution here or the only contribution he has really made is to in the public imagination to believe that when Arabs or anybody criticize Israel, it's about the fact that they're Jews.
That is what he's in every article.
He's written about the Middle East when he's interviewing Hezbollah, the Jews, the Jews, the Jews.
And listen, I everything he says is I assume everything Jeffrey Goldberg says is not true unless I have evidence otherwise, because everything I see, he's just a liar.
He's he's just he has no ethics, Jeffrey Goldberg.
He will say whatever he wants.
And no one has confronted him on this.
That's how that's how that's how sick our culture is.
No one has said, Jeffrey Goldberg, you can't do these things.
You cannot do these things.
And look at Kurchik.
I mean, Kurchik is the progeny in the sense of Hasbara culture.
These people are Kurchik is is the end.
I mean, Kurchik is the end of Jewish culture.
You read his articles.
It's just plain ideology.
Like I've said, you wake him up.
I mean, you wake him up in the middle of the night.
He'll spout ideology.
Every there's no human beings in Kurchik's world.
A person, a human being for Kurchik belongs into some sort of ideological movement.
That's what Hasbara culture has done.
And it's easy to just place people in these movements and their enemies.
And then, well, Iraq, we need to fight.
We need to invade.
We need to kill.
This is what happens.
And Peter Baynard has the power.
If he just has, you know, Peter Baynard has been told he's a bad Jew by he has Stockholm Stockholm syndrome as a Jew.
But over the years, all these crystal and Stevens and all these Jews telling him you don't love Israel, you don't love Jews.
And he's busy defending himself.
He has to understand he's the good Jew.
Jeffrey Kober is not the good Jew.
But what?
Look at Israel.
This is Jeffrey Goldberg.
And this is this is they're doing for their love of Israel.
This is all about how much they love Israel.
And as you said, and it is true, Beinart lied us into war with Iraq, too.
But then he wrote two books about how sorry he was.
So that's kind of something, you know, two full 300 page books about man, was I wrong about that?
Because Peter Baynard did it because he believed it was it wasn't part of some idiot.
He was convinced of like, oh, that's a good idea.
I guess so.
You know, there are the people who are creating the culture and there are the people like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.
OK.
And they just don't even know better.
And then when they know better, they're honest people.
I believe Andrew Sullivan's an honest person.
Peter Baynard's an honest person.
Jeffrey Goldberg is the most the most dishonest person on earth.
Find me someone more dishonest.
I mean, I'm willing to debate outside of government.
You mean?
OK.
Yeah.
But just every cent I could go through every paragraph and say and show you what Jeffrey Goldberg is up to.
That's the extent he's always up to something.
And this is the result.
I mean, this is Kurt.
I mean, this is the and look at that culture.
Sam Harris, that's Kurchick on this show.
Sam Harris, who believes he's an ethical person.
Whatever you want to say about him, he believes that you need to quote someone accurately.
You need to.
This is the people he's associating with.
This has power.
Culture people are the most unethical people on earth.
That's how powerful these these ideological arguments.
Brett Stevens makes about, you know, these fights going on in the world with which Sam Harris reads.
Oh, yes, that makes sense to him.
It's the Muslims.
It's political correctness.
Why we're not going against why we're not fighting jihadis.
Why it's the whole fake world that he's you know, this is not the world.
It is not the world.
Maybe some other time we can talk about Sam Harris and the and how far our cultures affect on Sam Harris.
Yeah, well, I know less about him, but yeah, this is probably a good place to wrap up here because I don't want to go on too long.
We're at an hour ten.
I want people to want to hear the whole thing.
So good talk.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thank you.
All right.
So that is Yakov Hirsch.
He writes at Mondewise dot net.
You can follow him on Twitter at Yakov Hirsch.
That's H.I.R.S.C.H.
Yakov Hirsch.
And yeah, again, Mondewise dot net for his great writing as well.
That's the Scott Horton Show.
Check out the full archives at Scott Horton dot org slash interviews.
All the latest stuff goes up first at Libertarian Institute dot org slash Scott Horton Show.
And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
And guys, I'm doing the questions and answers show.
So that's all at Scott Horton dot org slash show instead of interviews.
And that's all me doing answers to your questions.
So just tweet me.
Hashtag S.H.S.Q.A.
Or just email me.
Scott at Scott Horton dot org.
And I'll try to get to a few of those for you this afternoon.
In fact, thanks very much.
Hey, I'll check out the audio book of Lou Rockwell's Fascism versus Capitalism, narrated by me, Scott Horton at Audible dot com.
It's a great collection of his essays and speeches on the important tradition of liberty from medieval history to the Ron Paul Revolution.
Rockwell blasts our status enemies, profiles our greatest libertarian heroes and prescribes the path forward in the battle against Leviathan.
Fascism versus Capitalism by Lou Rockwell for audio book.
Find it at Audible, Amazon, iTunes or just click in the right margin of my website at Scott Horton dot org.
