Chapter 1: What war crimes are attributed to Trump and Netanyahu?
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are committing war crime after war crime after war crime. And the question is why? And so I have an expert on to educate all of us and give us some insight. Let's welcome Dr. Mark Lamont Hill. He has a PhD from Penn, casual, and is an anthropologist and scholar of the Middle East and Palestine.
He's also an expert on the political relationship between Israel and the United States. And according to his t-shirt today, he's also extra black. That's right. Every day. Welcome.
Chapter 2: Who is Dr. Marc Lamont Hill and what is his expertise?
Good to see you. Thank you for having me. Good to see you, too. So what I am seeing are war crimes. I am seeing schools bombed. I'm seeing people breathe in toxic rain. I'm seeing hospitals bombed. And this seems to be a feature, not a bug, of IDF military operations. Please enlighten me on what we're all seeing here.
Well, first, I'm glad you pointed out the feature piece of it, because that's exactly what's happening. It's happening in Iran right now. It happened in Gaza. It happens in the West Bank, though in a slightly different way. But ultimately, there is a very particular approach that the Israeli army takes to military action. And it's one of overkill. You know, for years,
In Gaza, for example, what we saw was the IDF engaging in what they called, their words, not mine, mowing the lawn, which referred to periodic military operations and military strikes that would deplete the population slightly, but also instill a certain kind of fear in the population about what resistance would look like.
After October 7th of 2023, we saw something much bigger, something devastating. We saw an actual genocide, and we saw the destruction of hospitals, schools, cemeteries, anything that makes a society a society, any semblance of civil society destroyed. And the argument always is... Look at them. They're so violent. They're so dangerous.
They pose such a threat, a nonstop threat that we have to be thorough in our destruction in order to save ourselves. It's like back in the day, although you're clearly too young to remember this, when Rodney King was getting beaten and it's like five cops beating up Rodney King. And they're like, yeah, but I know it's 501, but if he had gotten up,
You know, you don't know what he would have done to us, you know, because all the PCP and all the others and all the stereotypes they have about black people. It's a very similar thing here. These crazy Palestinians, these crazy Arabs, if we were to not do this thoroughly, look what they would do to us. Now, when you transpose that over to
to what's happening in Iran right now, it's a very similar ongoing narrative. They pose an existential threat to us.
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Chapter 3: What military operations are being discussed in relation to Israel and Gaza?
They're always looking to destroy us. They're always enriching uranium. They're always trying to build a nuclear bomb to get rid of us. And look at what they've always done, this sort of fake appeal to history. And in doing so, they make us Meaning, and I say us right now, I mean the United States. They make us the good guys.
They make Israel the good guys, and they make anybody over there, whether it's Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, they make them the bad guy, but also justified. Okay, let's talk about the patronizing propaganda that is used by Benjamin Netanyahu. We've all seen this hyper clip for 40 years. They're going to have a nuke, debt to America, debt to Israel.
They're going to have a nuke, they're going to have a nuke, they're going to have a nuke. And we see that and then we see our president has a sane sentence and he's like, oh, we demolished all of their potential nuke things. This is like a month ago or whatever. And then BB dog walks Trump into this thing. And then they're like, oh, they were gonna have a nuke.
And it's just the stupidity in which they think the audience receives their information that is not only dangerous, but also insulting. And this propaganda that they use, and I have fallen prey to it, Dr. Hill. I really, I have fallen prey to it before.
But what I've really woken up to is that this whole notion that Israel is this great democracy and the Palestinians, you know, they will throw gay people off a roof. And then I'm like, You're fucking killing gay Palestinians. So what kind of democracy do you have? Like, what kind of democracy is that? Do you follow zero rule of law? And then they keep electing Benjamin Netanyahu.
And so is it a cultural problem over there where everybody's so propagandized for all of this violence? It's a good question. I think there are a few things happening. One, we're all propagandized. You're not the only one who falls victim to it. I remember being a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s watching the WWF. I mean, from the moment
the Iron Sheik wins the title by stealing it from Bob Backlund, you know, which happens right at the time of the 1979, you know, the Iranian Revolution. And Hulk Hogan comes and saves the day and he's a real American and there's Sergeant Slaughter and Hulk Hogan and the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Vo.
From the moment that happens, we're taught to look at different countries, different ethnicities, different identities differently, whether it's the Rocky movies, whether, I mean, you can look at, we're all socialized, right? When you add that, to news media, which for years didn't even want to say the name or the word Palestinian. They were just Arabs.
Do you see the kind of passing jokes on TV shows that I love, like the Golden Girls, you know, where they're making PLO jokes, you know, anti-PLO jokes, right? There's a way... They were all kind of socialized. Then when you add that to the political narratives, it gets very, very dangerous. This idea that the U.S.
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Chapter 4: How does the narrative of violence shape perceptions of Palestinians?
We don't like what he's doing with society. But they were fighting. for more democracy among the people who they want to give democracy to. It's no different than fighting to keep us, it'd be no different than the North in times of slavery saying, look, we're gonna, or rather the South saying, look, we're gonna continue to fight. We wanna hold on to the South. We want the South to be fair.
We want everybody to have a vote, not the enslaved people, but everybody else. And we're gonna fight to make sure that women have a right, but not those black women. That's what's happening right now. They were fighting for a liberal Zionist vision, not a democratic vision. Okay, so you speak about Trump and Netanyahu being perfect bromance, not strange bedfellows, perfect bedfellows.
And you speak about if Netanyahu drops dead or goes to prison, you still have a cultural problem. And I think in the United States, if Trump drops dead or goes to prison, we still have a cultural problem. But what I see is the through line that a lot of Americans need to wake up to is you talk about apartheid in Israel, but let's talk about apartheid in the United States.
Let's talk about the fact that just recently, when white women and men that look like me saw Renee Good and Alex Pretty shot, they were like, Oh, my God, they are out of control. They are just over policing and just shooting innocent people. But the lesson for Americans is black people have been telling us this for decades and we are dismissive. We cede ground.
to right wing media in that, oh, you know, you shouldn't have resisted arrest and all of the propaganda surrounding this. My husband's a criminal defense attorney, and there's no question we have a two tiered justice system. He has a client who is serving
Crazy amounts of time, a black man for crack cocaine, life sentence on top of life sentence on top of life sentence that would never happen to a white man. So is this a through line in Israeli society and American society that we all need to wake up to in order to get beyond this?
When we do an autopsy on what led us into fascism, it started long before the incubation of all of this moment started long before that idiotic man came down the escalator. Please speak to that. I'm so glad you said that. I mean, again, this stuff is in the DNA of the nation. This nation was created on inequality. This nation was created on the exploitation and extraction of Black labor.
And this idea, to your cultural point, that it's normal and that it's natural and that it makes sense. Of course, Black people should be doing this. Of course, Black people shouldn't be provided access to the same rights and privileges, et cetera, et cetera. And it lingers on until this day. And so when you talk about
what happened to Renee Goode, when you talk about the kind of moral panic and outrage that people saw when that white woman was killed, that is always what happens in this society. I think about when John F. Kennedy walks through Harlem,
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Chapter 5: What propaganda techniques are used by Netanyahu?
But let's get back to the the influence. that Israel has over both parties. This was a real eye-opening thing for me. And when I realized that AIPAC gave Donald Trump just about as much money as Elon Musk did, But they also own Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker. The betrayal that I feel about that.
And then you realize, oh, that's why we don't have an opposition party because they're paid, controlled opposition. Speak about this, your knowledge about this, and cite me and my listeners about this duplicity.
yeah it's a great question and i wrote a book called except for palestine uh the limits of progressive politics precisely for this reason along with my friend and brother mitchell plitnick uh the reason we wrote the book was precisely for this point uh there are lots of progressives out there lots of progressives out there who don't support indiscriminate bombing who will call themselves anti-imperialists who support free speech etc etc etc you can go on down the list
But there's always the progressive exception, and I'm putting that in quotes, for Palestine, because you can't really be a progressive except for Palestine. And the reason is multiple. One, again, is the misinformation that we've been fed for years.
If we've been fed that the struggle over Israel and Palestine is a struggle solely about Jewish self-determination and Jewish self-defense, then of course you'll support Israel's right. Right? Even the framing of the conversation, do you support Israel's right to exist? It's like, what does that mean?
Of course we support Jewish people's right to exist and Israeli's right to exist as human beings. No one should live without safety, dignity, self-determination, justice, et cetera. Everybody deserves that with no exceptions. But too often the right to exist when you unpack it really means the right to exist as an apartheid state. It means the right to exist on our terms.
Countries don't have a right to exist, people do. But that language is only used for Israel. If you were to ask Chuck Schumer, do you support communist China's right to exist? he would fumble around and ignore you and walk away. If you said, do we support Iran's right to exist? What would he say? So what does it mean to support a nation state's right to exist?
And so for me, it's not a very helpful question, but it's part of how we've been tricked. Many black Americans have been told that we have a kind of duty
to support israel because of jewish americans uh support of us during the civil rights struggle and while our jewish brothers and sisters were quite supportive of us during the struggle for for civil rights here in the united states the way we repay them properly is to fight for justice everywhere including to protect the rights of jewish people
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Chapter 6: How does cultural propaganda influence American views on Israel?
And then suddenly they're literally reading the same talking points. I couldn't tell on a transcript who was who. The same thing happens when Joe Biden takes the stage. The same thing happens when Hakeem Jeffries speaks. The same thing happens when Chuck Schumer speaks. It's not a coincidence that these, well, Cory Booker. I mean, what are we talking about?
I mean, it's absurd and it's frustrating to see. And finally, I would just say, and just to circle back to the antisemitism thing, we do need to fight antisemitism. We need to dismantle antisemitism everywhere it emerges around the globe. That is a non-starter. to say, it is a non-starter to say, we'll wait on the Jewish question or we'll wait on the antisemitism question.
No, it's urgent and it's primary. Jewish rights should never take a back seat. We must always, always fight for Jewish rights and fight against antisemitism everywhere around the globe. But there is nothing more antisemitic, nothing more antisemitic than to attach the violence
and the rogue nature of statecraft that we see coming from Netanyahu, to look at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, to look at decades of displacement, decades of violation of international law, decades of illegal military occupation, there is nothing more antisemitic than to look at all of that stuff and attach that to the beautiful, wonderful, sacred tradition of Judaism.
Judaism ain't got nothing to do with this. This is a nation that's doing bad stuff, just like the US does bad stuff, and New Zealand does bad stuff, and Australia does bad stuff, and Canada does bad stuff. We have to be able to hold Israel accountable to have an honest conversation that will ultimately make Jews safer and make all of us a little more free. Okay, final question.
Speaking of what is anti-Semitic, I grew up in the Bible Belt. I don't live there any longer. I just recently moved to New York. But a lot, and I was an atheist, raised by atheists, really weird upbringing in the Bible Belt. But a lot of my friends that my peers in high school and junior high were rapture preppers.
And they want the, like Ted Cruz, Lady Graham, they want the Jews to be in Israel, kind of like... places, please. And then Jesus comes down and sends them to hell. And then they're lecturing us about bigotry. And it's just so rich and so inherently demeaning. to Jewish people. And I also think this is the most co-opted group in America. Trump was able to call Falwell Jr.
get the evangelical vote. Netanyahu is now investing in this group of white evangelical Christians to bring them over to Israel. and use them. And just last question, just speak to that dynamic of Christian Zionism playing such a huge role in this and kind of emotionally blackmailing. You know, we're accused of virtue signaling. I accuse MAGA of Christian signaling.
They weaponize their faith and Christian signal all the time. And this is a central part, feature of this Iranian war, end of times, apocalyptic freak show they're all into. I mean, you just used all the perfect words to describe it. I mean, this is, Christian nationalism, is deeply dangerous, deeply racist, deeply antisemitic.
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