Lex Fridman Podcast
#424 – Bassem Youssef: Israel-Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, Middle East, Satire & Fame
Fri, 05 Apr 2024
Bassem Youssef is an Egyptian-American comedian & satirist, referred to as the Jon Stewart of the Arab World. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - AG1: https://drinkag1.com/lex to get 1 month supply of fish oil - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get $1 per month trial - Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings - LMNT: https://drinkLMNT.com/lex to get free sample pack Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/bassem-youssef-transcript EPISODE LINKS: Bassem's X: https://x.com/Byoussef Bassem's Instagram: https://instagram.com/bassem Bassem's Facebook: https://facebook.com/bassemyousseftv Bassem's Website: https://bassemyoussef.xyz PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:30) - Oct 7 (36:59) - Two-state solution (52:37) - Holocaust (1:00:24) - 1948 (1:09:17) - Egypt (1:23:39) - Jon Stewart (1:25:51) - Going viral during the Arab Spring (1:49:55) - Arabic vs English (2:02:18) - Sam Harris and Jihad (2:07:25) - Religion (2:26:37) - TikTok (2:31:10) - Joe Rogan (2:33:07) - Joe Biden (2:37:33) - Putin (2:39:21) - War (2:44:17) - Hope
The following is a conversation with Bassem Youssef, a legendary Egyptian-American comedian, the so-called Jon Stewart of the Middle East, who fearlessly satirized those in power, even when his job and life were on the line. Bassem is a beautiful human being. It was truly a pleasure for me to get to know him and to have this fun, fascinating, and challenging conversation.
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And now, dear friends, here's Basim Youssef. Your wife is half Palestinian, and I've heard you say that you've been trying to kill her, but she keeps using the kids as human shields. So have you considered negotiating a ceasefire?
Well, the thing is, every day, every minute of the day in a married life is a negotiation. Everything can blow up into a full-scale war, starting from a simple sentence like, good morning, what should we do with the kids today? What should we do with that piece of furniture? Any sentence can lead you to heaven or to hell at the same time. So you do negotiate with terrorists. Oh yeah, yeah, 100%.
You must. Yeah, and for her, I am her terrorist too, so it's equal. Terrorists on both sides. On a more serious note, when you found out about the attacks of October 7th, what went through your mind?
If I'm allowed to use a curse word, I was like... As many as possible. I was like, oh shit. Part of my stand-up comedy is I describe a situation where I was in a restaurant with producers and there was a bombing two blocks away in Chelsea, New York in 2016. And of course, this is the like, damn, what's gonna happen to us now? And there's like two different reactions.
There's the white reaction, which is like, oh my God, I hope nobody is hurt. This is terrible. I hope everybody's okay. And there's the Arab reaction. What's his name? What is his name? What is the name? Because you know what's gonna come. I was scared what's gonna really happen in that area. And it's like, oh my God, it's gonna be horrible. And the way that it was reported,
I didn't know how to handle this. So I basically, I went into hiding for a few days, three, four days. And I talked about Piers Morgan team talking to me two times, three times. I was like, no, I can't, how can I, you defend that? How can you defend the rape, the decapitated babies and whatever? And then I started kind of looking in the news a little bit.
And then I started seeing people coming on the shows and saying things that I know as an Arab, as a Muslim, as someone from that region, that it's not true. But I didn't know what to say, how to say it. So I said, by the third time when they asked me, I said, like, fine, put me on. And I went there. It was more of a, figuratively speaking, a suicide mission. Because it's a lose-lose situation.
I can lose stuff in Hollywood. I can, I even, I remember my managers like, Bessim, be careful. I mean, are you sure you want to do it? My managers was like, please don't do it. Please don't do it. And on the other side, if I don't perform well, whatever well means, I'm gonna be rejected by my own people.
So it was a lose-lose situation, because whatever I say, it will never be enough, and whatever I say will not be good enough. And I was going into there, and I felt that I was going into a trance for the 33 minutes that I was on that interview for the first time. You blacked out. I blacked out. I blacked out. And a lot of people ask me, is the earpiece, was that a bit...
when the earpiece kept falling it's like no it was really falling off and it disconnected and i had to save it because i cannot see them all i can hear i can just hear them and i could expect it at any time okay by some thank you i was like i i was fighting for every second to say words to put stuff in there yeah for people who don't know this is your conversation interview with pierce morgan
And you couldn't see. I couldn't see. I was just like the lens of the camera. Just like a surreal dream or nightmare. Yeah. Hello, Wassim. I was like, hello, Wassim. I was like, hi. And it could end at any moment. Your career and everything. Everything. Yeah. Yeah. So what was the drive that got you to actually do it, to overcome that fear? Multiple things.
First of all, I don't want to say it's just my wife's family because my wife's family has always been there. But this time was different. The bombing, the attack, they're usually one of those people that they're away of everything. Whatever happened in Gaza, they are always in safe places. But this time, it seems that there was no place safe. And already we heard about like two or three of the...
Of the cousins and the uncles already lost their homes. So this was too much. So I wanted to say something for those people. Because I know that, you know, I made one of the jokes that I made about like, oh, you know, it's Hassan, her cousin. He's a loser. He's a doctor. He's a doctor. And every time a hospital was bombed, we were worried about him.
So I wanted to say that because I felt that this is a family that I have never seen in my life. She actually hardly saw an uncle or two because, you know, they cannot live. But I said, like, I need to speak. At least I do something for those extended family that I have never known. But also because...
When Piers Morgan team called me a couple of times, said, okay, let's see what's going on in the show. And I just watched the stuff and the lies and the one-sided reporting that made my blood boil. And then I thought like, what am I afraid of? I'm afraid of, if I say something, I can lose my career. It's like, wait a minute. But that was the reason why I left Egypt. I said, wait, I left Egypt.
I came to United States.
I came to the land of the free where I can say anything I want. And yet I have limitation of what to say. I mean, I thought we left that shit behind. I mean, what's happening?
And I understand. I understand the connection of like how sensitive it is when you speak about Israel and all of the ready-made accusations. But as an Arab, as a Muslim, I don't react the same when you talk about Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Egypt, or any of them. It's like, hey, you wanna diss some of these countries?
I'll do that with you, because I have strong opinions about what happened, and I already been expressing them. But when I talk, and that's why I speak, and there's a lot of Jewish people who come to my show, and they understand that. They understand that the separation,
But that kind of a grouping of blackmailing people and saying and not saying what they have in their mind, it is that kind of like one of the things that kind of like push me to go on the show.
The thing that was bothering you, was it what was being said or how it was being said?
Both. Because there are lies, which is usually in the media, but there was the total disregard of humanity. You talk a lot in your show about human suffering. And I felt that here the human suffering was not equal. I felt that's why I came up with this, like, what's the exchange rate today?
What's the exchange rate today?
Of course, it's terrible to see anybody die, but I feel that like, isn't our life not worth anything?
Yeah, you had a chart akin to crypto. Yeah. You analyzed it from an investing perspective, of course, in the dark. It's the ROI on that. ROI. And you were saying that a certain year was a good year. Yeah, 2014. 2014 was a good year for investment purposes. And also to refer to the family member that you called the loser, you were saying that –
You called him, had a conversation with him, and he keeps saying that he's not using anybody for human shields, and then you called him a loser. You can't even give a job.
The liar.
He lied to us because I have to believe. This is the one thing. It's also one of the things like how it was said. It was stuff that I've been hearing. I don't know what turned on in my head, but it's stuff that I've been hearing all my life from the media. Israel warns civilians before bombing them, and that's okay, but that's not okay.
Israel is trying to minimize the civilians, but killing them anyway, and that's okay, but that's not okay. So it is kind of like the indoctrination that we've been hearing as if it is okay, and then suddenly it's not.
Yeah, there's a kind of several layers of bullshit, almost sometimes hiding the obvious horror of the situation with kind of politeness and all this kind of stuff, just the basic value of human life. That said, it's a difficult situation.
It is.
It is. What would you do if you were Israel? Bibi called you. Awesome. Big fan. Big fan of your comedy. First of all, would you hang up right away? Would you hear him out?
Oh, I would definitely hear him out. That was like, wait a minute. That's material. That's material. That's material, man. I was like, so Netanyahu called me. I was sitting with my family. I have my phone ready. Like, oh, Netanyahu.
Yeah, it just shows up that way. I mean, what would you do? What would you do in this situation?
To answer this question, we need to understand how Israel thinks. There is an incredible speech given by Gideon Levy, the famous Israeli reporter in Haertz. And he describes a situation where he was in the West Bank and there was a checkpoint. And in that checkpoint, there was an ambulance with a Palestinian patient. And it was there sitting for an hour and a half, not moving.
And then he went to talk to the soldiers, like, guys, why are you not letting them go? It's like, ah, let them go. And then he told them, imagine if he was your father. And the soldiers stood up. It's like, what? These are pigs. These are not humans.
So when you tell me what would you do if Israel would do, it really needs to, we need to ask how does Israel look at the Palestinian and view the Palestinians because they do look at them less than human. And there is an incredible talk by Mehor Meyer.
He was a Holocaust survivor and he said, I learned in Auschwitz when I was there in the concentration camp that in order for a group, a dominant group of people to dehumanize another group, they need first to dehumanize themselves. And Israel looks at Palestinians as lesser people, as lesser beings, as some people who are dispensable.
And the way that they treat them is that they don't really care about like, that's why the exchange rate thing. So for me, if I am Israel, it will be like, what would you do if you're the United States in the time of the Native Americans? They were killing people with the millions. When you dehumanize a group of people, you really don't care.
So if I was Israel, I would do exactly what Israel is doing right now because there's no one is holding me accountable. There's no one stopping me. And I can get whatever I want throughout my history through violence.
i think a lot of the things you just said are a tiny bit slightly exaggerated so let me let me try let's please let's try so not everybody in israel so let's let's look at um several groups so people in government idf soldiers and citizens that are neither of those And not everybody of any of those sees Palestinians as less than human, just some percentage.
So what percentage is that in your sense? It's the people who have the power. So it's mostly the focus of your commentary. When you say people in Israel, you really mean the people in power.
The people having power. But as much as like, of course, I mean the people in power, because when I speak about, even when I speak about America, I speak about people in power. When I speak about Egypt, I speak the people in power, because like, you can't really talk about the 100 million people in Egypt. Or the 11 million people in Israel.
Of course, there are people who go in and they demonstrate against Netanyahu and they want him out of the government. But we have to admit that the Israeli society as a whole have moved quite a bit to the right and has been many extremes. And you know what happens when you go to the right Or you go to the most extreme, the other person go to the most extreme. And extremism breeds extremism.
So thank you for the clarification, but I really meant with the people of power. When people criticize the United States for going in Iraq, of course I'm not criticizing citizens.
But you made another point, which is an interesting point, and it's very difficult to see in the heart of people. But I wonder if you look at the average Palestinian and the average Israeli, and when they look at the other, do they have some hate in their heart? Well, everybody probably has some. What is that amount?
You know, when you look at a person that looks different than you, how much hate is there?
It depends on what is the living situation of each person. So in the Berlin Film Festival, A couple of weeks ago, there was an Israeli and a Palestinian receiving an award together. And the Israeli director said, we're going to go back to Israel. He's going to go to the West Bank. He will have no rights, and I will have full living rights.
These people managed to work together and be friends, and they have empathy to each other. Now, the average... Palestinian? It's a very difficult question, because is it the Palestinian in the diaspora, or the Palestinian in Gaza, or the diaspora in the West Bank, or the one in the citizen, as a citizen of Israel, who still have less right than a Roman citizen of Israel, a Jew.
And it really depends if I am, there are people in Arabs in Israel who are having a great life. And there are people, Arabs, who are having a miserable life. But definitely people that are living in Gaza or in the West Bank, it's kind of like on the lower tier of their living conditions. Now let's talk about the hate. What does that Palestinian see from the Israeli?
The Palestinians see oppression, limitation of movement, limitation of freedom. And then when something happens, you see the full force coming in, destroying their home, taking away members of his family. There will be absolutely no reason for him to love the other.
The Israeli, because he doesn't have the power, but he lives under his government, all he sees is the rockets or whatever, but he sees the reaction, and he doesn't see what happened to those. And as humans, we are selfish. We see what really affects us as humans.
And I cannot even imagine what it would be like to live as a Palestinian, and I'm not even talking about Gaza, because everybody talks about Gaza. But let me give you an example. And I'm not going to talk about the 12,000 kids killed in Gaza. Let's talk about just like the four weeks in the West Bank. March 4th.
Amr Najjar, age 10, sitting next to his father, shot while he's sitting in a car next to his father by the IDF soldiers. Mohammed Ziad, 13 years old, March 3rd, shot in front of a UN school while sitting with his friends. Mohammed Ghanim, age 15, March 2nd, he shot while standing in front of a storefront during a night raid. February 23rd, Saeed Jardal, he was killed by a drone fire.
February 22nd, Fadi Suleiman, killed while standing in front of the top of a Red Cross building. Nihal Ziyad, February 14th, Valentine's Day, killed a shot in the head while leaving school. February 11th, Mohamed Khattour, U.S. citizens, killed while being in a parked car. And Muaz Shams, February 9th,
Killed right in front of his home because a military car came reversing back to him and then somebody opened the door, shot him and leave.
This is the daily life of people in the West Bank.
What is the justification that IDF provides? Terrorism.
Or, I don't know, I mean, you cannot really say, like, human shields. But they would say, like, they were throwing rocks. There was a guy who went on Chris Rock, and he said, like, his son, a U.S. citizen, was killed, and they were throwing rocks. So we killed him. Even when they were throwing rocks, you kill him? But the thing is, you see, this is how easy for them to get rid of Palestinians.
I mean, I love, like, I was, I had to say I prepared a little bit for the podcast because you are in tech. So, and I am ignorant in tech. There is a movie called The Lab. It is directed by an Israeli director called Yotam Feldman. And he talks about how The military industry in Israel is very advanced.
And what is really mind boggling is in that movie, he shows how the military tests its weapons in the field in urban areas from Palestinians. It is heartbreaking. As a doctor, there's five stages of trials. There is discovery, preclinical, clinical, and then market and then post-market evaluation by the FDA. The FDA approval and then the FDA post-market.
Five, just to take a pill.
And you go in and he interviews people and says, where did you test this? They test it in the field. So when you just like, when human life is so cheap and it is so indispensable, it made me, it gave me a visceral reaction. Because you know, we as human, this has been actually the state of humanity. Humanity have lived and survived and thrived by actually killing each other.
But there was kind of a, we were removed from it. People in Greece didn't know what Alexander the Great was doing. He was killing and pillaging, we called him the Great, but he was killing. He was conquering, he was invading. Julius Caesar, all of the greats, he was doing, but killing was difficult. Killing had to have some sort. You have to be with your enemy.
Then you go back, catapults, then cannons, then a little bit back. And then you're kind of like standing remotely. Now you're killing people behind the screen with a button, with a push of a button. A lot of people say terrorism, they killed you with a knife. Killed one person with a knife, shot you, that's terrorism.
But if you fly a $64 million F-16 and you drop up an A-84 bomb that costs $16,000, that's not terrorism because it's remote. You're behind the screen. So what happened? What Israel is doing? It is removing itself. Like America too, drones. And then when you push someone to be in, they always brag about bombing them to the Stone Ages.
What happens when the screens and all of the obstacles that you have been put between you and those people that you have treated them this way, when this is a breach and you come face to face, you will come face to face with what you have created.
Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things you just said. So one is the methodology of killing. If you want to look at some horrific, large-scale killing, people often talk about the Holocaust. But that's visceral. You can look at Hall and Moore by Stalin, where the murder is through starvation. By Churchill in India. Churchill in India. And the great leap forward by Mao. Yep.
So starvation is a thing we don't often think of it as murder because it's quiet, it's slow, and the interesting thing about starvation is that the people don't complain as they're dying because they're exhausted. That's one, and the other is the value of human life it does seem that every culture has a unequal valuation of human life.
So those two things combined create a complicated military landscape of the world.
Yes, but the thing is, is that how we would look at technology as the savior, as we talk about how AI will disrupt, will disrupt, will disrupt, will disrupt,
And now if you go, you talk about like going to the West Bank, the people in the West Bank walk and they don't see humans. They see people shouting them from towers or behind the screens or doing, and they have like biometrics that is developed by Basel system, like that's done by HP or Google and Amazon who are like part of Project Nimbus. And you see Indivision,
developing all of this like metric and surveillance and all of that stuff. And then you have like something like the gospel that like people have actually said that the gospel can actually create a target list using AI and give you a green, yellow or a red to go ahead. And now AI is not just disrupting the market, it's disrupting our humanity.
And it is, we became so comfortable killing people from afar, killing people with a push of the button. And now it is, it is like, it's like dating apps, you know, when you, when you swipe left and right, and it's like, oh, right, it becomes so like cheap. It's not like meeting someone. It's like a lot of fish in the sea. Same with AI. Boom. 500 people killed. Boom. They killed. It's so easy.
It's so easy. It's so easy. And then it's so far removed from you. So when you put these people in this condition, you have literally put them in a different universe than yours. You are behind in your air-conditioned screens, like pushing them, blowing up a university. It's amazing. But then you meet what you have done, that you meet the Frankenstein that you have created.
And then people are like, oh, look what they did to us.
You just gave me this image of a dating app from hell, where leaders are just sitting there and kind of swiping left and right. Invade, destroy.
It's boring. Like a puppet government. Yeah.
And then turn off the phone, go to sleep. So I got, you know, I traveled to the West Bank and I mentioned to you offline that I really loved the people there. Just, you know, I've met a bunch of people like that in Eastern Europe where I grew up. Yeah, like the flamboyant, the big personalities, all of that. I also met a person who's in charge of a refugee camp who was shopping IDF soldier.
And I'm not sure the words he said are important as the consequences of the thing that you mentioned, which is the deep hate in his eyes. That didn't feel repairable at all. It was pain. It was like a foundation of pain, and on top of that, a hatred. And I was like, wow, this is what... You kill one person, that's the way you create.
Because we have kind of like a front row seat to what's happening. We think we're in it, but we can't really grasp it. I mean, people's like, oh, we're just gonna go in, get Hamas out, and we're gonna get them back in. And also when the people get back in, how do you think they would look at you? What have you created? What have you done? My show in Egypt was all about propaganda.
It's all about the use of words. Words are very important. The decapitated babies were not chosen randomly. Because you see, it plants a certain image in your brain. Imagine if you're going in, what a baby can do? It can smile, cry, and poop. That's it. It's absolutely no threat.
So when you tell people, 40 decapitated babies. They are so animalistic. They didn't see the babies. Women raped. Of course, he's an Amal to do that. And they would go through that. And they would, what was very frustrating about the conversation is the kish galloping, the kish galloping, throwing, you see the distractions?
You see what happens? It's like, what's the proportionate response? Can Israel defend itself? Do you condemn Hamas? Does Israel has the right to exist? Decapitated babies, raped women. Why don't the Arab countries take them? Why don't the Muslims kill Muslims? Look what happened in Yemen, in Syria,
in Iraq, see how they kind of distract you, they throw little things at you, so you don't know what to do, or the UNRWA, the UNN, anti-Semitic, October 7th, October 7th, October 7th, and then suddenly you are distracted and pulled into discussing all of these little things, and you're not discussing what's happening right now, it is basically stalling, giving them time to do what they do.
So there's some degree to the propaganda, so the beheaded babies and all this kind of stuff, is so over the top that it shuts down actual conversation about actual wrongs, war crimes on both sides. So it's overstating it to where everyone on social media and everywhere in the press and everywhere is arguing, almost become desensitized to actual horrors of death, which are more mundane.
They're not so dramatic as beheaded babies. Yeah, because people, a baby is shot, but decapitated babies.
There's like a knife blade that goes into the skin, the trachea, the flesh, the spine. decapitated. You can just like, he's dead. No, you go in, this is the hate, so much hate.
And you know, that's why- You have made me laugh at the darkest shit. You're such a beautiful person.
Your dark humor is just wonderful. But you see, this happened to Jews before. Remember blood libel? Where did the blood libel come from? It comes from these rumors that Jews suck baby's blood. This is what they did to them. That's what's in the cup. Exactly. That's a very delicious baby. But this is what you do.
You tell people something and it happened with the Native Americans when they were here, when they went in and they wipe a whole tribe. And Jewish people, one of the minorities that were persecuted and had this used against them for a very long time. And it is terrible and it's terrifying that's been used again.
So I just did a very lengthy debate on Israel and Palestine. And the really painful thing from that, those two historians, it was deep, it was thorough, it was fascinating, but in constantly asking about sources of hope or solutions, there was none. There was a sense of, like a really dark sense of it's hopeless. From both sides, it's hopeless. So, you know, I look to you. For a source of...
Or a source of hope. Is there any hope here? Solutions, short-term, long-term?
Obama have kind of summarized this beautifully in his book. He said, the reason why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so chronic is one side has so much power and the other side have absolutely no power. And that's what Obama said. He said, you have Israel that basically don't listen to us. because they are supported by people who are bigger than the president, bigger than the administration.
They know that they can. I mean, like Netanyahu was caught on tape many times saying like, he's basically like belittling Americans. Like, we control 80% of the population. We don't care. This has kind of like nonchalant, kind of like we have them. And there's nothing really that compels Israel to give up anything. Because at the end of the day, what is compromise?
Compromise is like I give something, you give something. Israel is not giving anything. And they project that on you. So for example, how many times have we heard like, oh, Palestinians were giving like four, five, six, seven, 15 chances and they said no to them. And yet when you read the history, that's not the case at all. Like for example,
The whole idea about Arafat walked away from Oslo, that didn't happen. And there is an incredible video by, you know, what's his name, Joe Scarborough with Misha. And they were hosting her father, Brzezinski, he was the national security advisor. And Jos Karabou said like, well, you know, like Arafat left the Oslo court and the Palestinians left.
And then Brzezinski said like, this is like embarrassingly shallow. It's like, listen, what happened was there was a lot of catches on the Oslo court. It was very unfair to the Palestinians. So Arafat said like, I agree, but I need to take it to the Arab capitals.
and they went to Sharm el-Sheikh, they came to Egypt, and he and Uhud Barak went to there, and then Uhud Barak left because there was election, and he lost, and Iriel Sharon came, and it was destroyed. This is one of the reason why people, it's kind of like, Facts don't matter as much as what is the narrative that is being controlled.
But what were the biggest barriers to peace there? Do you think it's fundamentally leaders don't want a two-state solution? Or was there nuanced small differences that if solved could have led to a two-state solution?
I mean, maybe there was a certain point when the Israeli leaders were more open to compromise. But I can say that because each time Israel gives back land, it has to be after some use of force. The 1973 war, the Intifada, the first and second, the casualties in Gaza, they never give up land willingly and because of peace. Because if I have that much military, I can do whatever I want.
Why would I give up anything? I have that much power. Why would America or China give everything if they're so powerful? And especially if they have this kind of open check from the United States. So it is really about what can push Israel to give up something? Because you are so much stronger than me. What could compel you to give up something?
And this is why the whole thing about like trying to equalize Palestinians and the Israeli state and government, it doesn't make any sense.
So what is the source of hope? You know, Jon Stewart, who will talk about it from many angles, somebody you admire, a friend, he proposed a two-state solution. Look to the comedians for hope.
Yes, well, everybody's talking about the two-state solution, but Israel has said many times on Netanyahu and Bennett, there is going to be no state solution. In the past, even Naftali Bennett, he came in on hard talk. It's like, yeah, maybe in the past we wanted two-state solutions, but look, every time we give them land, they kill us, so no state solutions. And they are openly saying it.
That's perhaps rhetoric. Rhetoric that is supported by action. Because look at what they're doing in the West Bank that you said. They are cutting it, illegal settlement, piecemealing it. So if you have an intention at all to give them anything, why would you keep doing this? And you've called it a bunch of little Gazas.
Yeah.
It's a nice little picture of what's happening. Piecemealing it, dum, dum, dum. Because what happened in the past four months, the Palestinians have been microdosing on it for a very long time. little by little, little by little. And we would shout every time when it gets too much, and then we shut down and then little by little. But this time it was hard.
It was hard to see the blatant oppression. And the word said, maybe the Hamas Ministry of Health are giving us the bad numbers. Maybe it's just human shields. And I laugh, there's 13,000 babies killed. Does that mean that there are 13,000 military targets hiding in their diapers?
Because it is so, it doesn't make any sense to kill that many babies. It's like, oh, oops, it is out of our hands.
It's hard to know what to do with those numbers. I mean, one baby is enough.
But you know what happens? When you hear so many numbers, numbers become numbers. And you become so desensitized. And this is why there's a difference between saying, 13,000 Palestinian kids dead. It's like Mila Cohen, an Israeli baby, 10 months old. She was killed in her crib. And this is what we hear from CNN. We never hear a story about a Palestinian kid.
That's why, thank you for giving me the space for saying the names of the Palestinian children that were killed just for four weeks. Because humans needs context, they need depth. They need like a 3D look at what they can look at. But if you just give them numbers, they don't mean anything.
Is there some degree to where both leaderships, Hamas, PA, Palestinian Authority, Israel, all want war, like perpetual war to remain in power?
That's an interesting question. But, I mean, let's admit something. The Arab regimes in the area have actually used the problem of Palestine in order to stay in power, in order to get excuses, like have this enemy. And Israel, the Israeli government has used that too, and maybe the Palestinians. But... But my problem with when going into discussion, this is that the two sides are not equal.
They're not equal in power, they're not equal in influence, and they're not equal in international support, especially with the United States. So Palestinians can, the people who have made changes in history were the people with power. that people would have the ability to change things. And the Palestinians cannot really change it. What can they change?
Well, is that true though with how much support the Palestinian people have? So just like you said, there's a lot of Arab states that will voice their pro-Palestinian position. in order to distract from the own corruption and abuses of power in their own countries. But I don't think, if you look globally, there's a complete asymmetry of power and public opinion here.
Maybe in the West, but if you look globally. But do they have the same kind of weapons that the Israeli have? The literally power? No, there's a major asymmetry of literal power.
Some money to their leaders? Does that make any difference? I mean, and also when you say Palestinian Authority, which authority are you talking about, Hamas? Or the Palestinian Authority who has been kind of a domesticated kind of like, a puppy for the Palestinian who basically had been an informant on their own people.
And this is the thing also that kind of like really pissed me off when I was hearing the thing about these things. Like Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. Like we have Netanyahu on tape confessing that he supported Hamas, gave him money in order to cause factions between the Palestinians.
So it's just like, it doesn't make, you just told me this. You just told me this. You just told me Netanyahu support Hamas. But Hamas is like, what?
I mean, to which degree does Netanyahu represent the Israeli people is a real question. To which point does Trump or Biden represent the American people?
And to which degree does Hamas represent the Palestinian people? None of these represent it, but who have the power in order to make the decisions? It really comes down to that. Well, who does have the power?
You're giving a lot of power to Israel.
Yeah.
But the Arab League- What should Hamas do? What do you think we should Hamas do? Continue doing what a charter says, which is trying to destroy Israel. And the role of the Palestinian people is to overthrow Hamas and get a more moderate leadership probably. And the role of the Israeli people
is to vote out this right-wing government and elect a more moderate leader so that there's a chance at peace with two moderate leaders.
So before Hamas even got to control 2006 Gaza, there was Ariel Sharon in 2000. And we all know what happened. And Ariel Sharon kind of like had, they came up with this amazing policy of like breaking people's, kids' bones in the Intifada. So, Baraki was also like, I mean, which one is moderate? I mean, I think Hamas is a product of what happened. I mean, we can,
If there was no apartheid in South Africa, there would be no NFC. There would be no Nelson Mandela. If there were no Nazis in Paris, there would be no French resistance. And I'm not saying, and again, I'm not, I don't want to be put in a position to defend Hamas or anybody because you know what that entails, but Hamas, again, not defending them, they went into Qutub al-Safiq.
Why did they did that? Like release our hostages, the people in prison. Because if you're talking about people who were kidnapped, Israel kidnaps people every single day. And when they had the first exchange in November 4th, Israel released 400 people, three quarters of them were women and children. Why are those people in prison?
There's one in four kids that are imprisoned that stay in solitary confinement, which is by international law, a form of torture. And you're putting kids through that.
Is it possible? So first of all, ceasefire. Yes. And longer term, is it possible for Arab states and the United States to get together and with power,
through diplomacy, enforce a solution? It's a very, very ideal solution, but you know, and I know, that the Arab States don't really have the power. All of the powers are in the hands of America. They have the power.
See, I think they have the power. I don't know. Maybe they don't want to use it. They don't. Because there's a benefit. Maybe there's a benefit. That dark... The dark sense I have is that a lot of people win from the suffering that Palestinians are going through because they can point to that and distract from corruption in their own states.
And then obviously Iran can benefit also from the same kind of dynamic, distracting from the authoritarian nature of their regime.
Definitely, but what is the core of the problem here? Is it the Arab states using the suffering or actually the suffering itself? And the suffering comes from people being displaced. Their homes were taken away. There are 7 million Palestinians in diaspora. 7 million. 7 million went out there and now they're living in Canada and America and Europe. They had homes there.
They cannot go back to them. 1.7 million people of the people in Gaza don't belong in Gaza. They were pushed from other places. The piecemeal thing of people are being, you know, in Germany, I'm going to shift gear a little bit. It's going to be a little bit of fun. There is a book that I bought the rights to, and I want to turn it into a movie.
And I bought, I optioned the right for two years in March of last year, before October 7th. After October 7th, I bought the permanent right. That book is called The Muslim and the Jew. And it is written by an author called Ronen Steinke. I read an article about this book in 2016, and I chased that book for rights for seven years. I didn't have that much money, but I wanted that book.
And that book was translated into English called Anna and Dr. Helmi. And that book tells the incredible story under Nazi Germany where Arabs went in droves to Berlin in 1920s after the First World War in the Weimar Republic, and they became doctors and engineers and journalists for two reasons. Number one, they're cheap, very cheap because of the inflation.
And two, a lot of the Arab nationalists didn't want to send their kids to England or France because they were the occupiers. And Dr. Helmy was the hero of that. He's an Egyptian doctor. And that's why I kind of like, I personally kind of connected with him. And he went to medical school, didn't find a place to live. So he lived in the Jewish ghetto, like many Arabs.
He didn't find a school to work at, a hospital to work in. So he worked in a Jewish hospital. So these are, there was a who lived with the, and actually the first director of the Berlin Mosque with a Jewish convert who converted to Islam and he was a gay activist. I'm telling you, this is like a crazy story. And this is all, this is not a fiction story.
This is not, this is actually like a non-fiction. It's written actually based on the statement, the documents of the Nazis and Gestapo. Dr. Helmy, He was in this hospital and the Nazis came in and they killed and tortured and beat up the Jewish doctor. And they made him the head of his department. Then he was, so now he's surrounded by Nazi doctor. They didn't touch him because he was an Arab.
There was kind of like a thing between Germany and the Arabs because they wanted to appease to them in order to have kind of a grassroot base, in the Arab world where he want to go next. And this is why 1934, 1935, the racial laws of Nuremberg, they had a name change. First, they were called anti-Semitic. Then they changed into anti-Jewish because also Arabs were Semitic.
So they wanted to appease the Arabs. Now, what happened to Dr. Helmy when that happened to him? He would go back to the ghetto And he would see the apartments next to him, the Jewish apartment become more and more and more flooded with people because they were moving Jews and pushing them and putting them together, pushing them to the side.
And each flat, each apartment, instead of one family, it would have three, four, six, seven families. And he was there going at home and he looked he was there, this is where the people he grew up with, he lived with, and now he's seeing that kind of discrimination just because he's an Arab.
And then he started to kind of like atone for, like because he felt responsible because he wasn't treated the same way, and he started to go and treat Jewish people in their homes because they couldn't go to hospitals. And then one family gave them his daughter. It's like, this is Anna, save her.
He took her, pretended that she's his niece, put a hijab around her, taught her Arabic, called her Nadia, my daughter's name, by the way. And he hid her in plain sight for seven years in front of the Nazis as his nurse. It's an incredible story.
And then not just that he went to prison, and then he went out and he formed with the Arab people that was in prison with him, a network that saves 300 Jews. See that kind of story? This is the Jews that were living in the Arab world. I'm not saying that the Jews living in the Arab world was living like an incredible life.
Of course, as a kind of a minority, they did not have like the full power of their full advantages of the rule. That's normal. But we had this kind of a relationship. before Israel was erected in 1948. And then of course, everybody looked at Jews at that time as fifth column, and of course, the nationalistic regimes used that. And this is why what Biden said,
was very dangerous when he said, if there is no Israel, no Jew in the world will feel safe. You are the leader of the free world. You are the president of the United States. Do you mean that you are telling me that the Jews in your country, in the United States of America are not safe? That is wrong on two levels.
Number one, America historically and right now is more safe to Jews in the world than anybody. They are safer than the Jews in Israel. They never had pogroms or the Holocaust like you wrote. They live here a good life, not perfect life, but they are better.
Second of all, if you're the president and you're telling that a group of people will not feel safe unless there's a different one, you are already feeding into their fifth column. They're like, you're Russian. You come from there. And there is a group of laws in the Russian constitution that says that Russia will protect its citizens everywhere in the world.
What happens if the president says like, oh, you're Russians. You're protected by your own country. You don't belong here. This is terrible.
Yeah, you're right. That's actually an indirect threat. Yes. You know, even saying Muslims cannot feel safe in America or something like this. That means, like, that's a threat.
But what would a Jewish person in Beverly Hills or in Brooklyn feel if he hears that? You are already telling people you need to be loyal to Israel. I mean, Israel is a foreign country. I am sorry, but Israel is a foreign country. Israel is a client country that we sponsor and it should actually be responsible and held accountable for what they do.
You mentioned 1948, the Nakba, but before that, 41, 39, 41 to 45, the Holocaust. What do you do? What do you do with the Holocaust? How do you incorporate into the calculus of morality that leads up to the displacement of 700,000 people? Palestinians from the land, how do you work that out?
It is terrible, but like, I mean, the systemic annihilation of Jewish people under the Nazi, that is like a carefully engineered, thoughtful plan, it was terrible. It was kind of like the human ingenuity put into something that is very evil. But also, it is not just that happened.
We need to remember that Otto Frank, the father of Anna Frank, has his visa, refugee visa, rejected by the United States. There's a lot of people that were rejected by the United States, rejected by other European countries, and then they were pushed into Palestine.
So you have to put yourself between, like, and the Arabs, okay, we're sitting here, okay, come, and then, all right, you don't have a home or a country anymore. That kills you. I mean, you see, if I'm not an Arab, and you give me that kind of piece of terrible human trash, it's like, oh my God, that is terrible.
But then, I'm an Arab, it's like, yes, I'm so sorry, but what do I have to do with that? Why is that my fault? The persecution of the Jewish people have started since the eighth and ninth century because they were first anti-Christians, They were like criminal immigrants. They were like conspirators.
This is the antis, like people kind of like, it's as if Europe kind of like throw antisemitism on us. You understand that like Henry Ford, Henry Ford is one of the biggest anti, he was the inspiration for Adolf Hitler. This is how antisemitic Henry Ford was. And you kind of like, gloss over that. And then suddenly we as Arabs have to pay the price. Why?
Several questions I want to ask there. So, but one, just zooming out, why do you think hatred of Jews has been such a viral kind of idea throughout human history? Oh, it's very easy. It all started from Christ.
They killed Christ. They killed Christ. They killed Christ. They're the killer of Christ.
That's a very sexy story.
That was so, yeah, that was, and that stayed for years. That stayed for centuries, I'm sorry, centuries. They're the killer of Christ. And then the Catholic Church did not allow usury But they would work unusually, so they become rich. Now the people that we hate, that we accuse them of feeling Christ are becoming rich. So that's envy now. And that's hatred.
I mean, when you talk about ghettos, ghettos was not just as secluded parts in cities. Sometimes those ghettos were outside the cities. Jews were not even allowed to work a lot of professions. They were not allowed to get into the syndicates of certain professions. So they had to go work usually and they got rich. So the people hated them more. The first crusade didn't kill a single Muslim.
All they killed were Jews. And when they finally arrived to Jerusalem, all they killed were Jews. They almost annihilated the Jews. So it was all this. And of course you have the dark ages. Who do you need as an enemy? The Jews, right? They're the killer of Christ. There's nothing bigger than this. And then you fast forward.
I mean, one of the things that I found out that was very, very, very, very crazy when Henry Ford imported the protocols of the elders of Zion. By the way, in the Arab world, protocols of the elders of Zion is so popular. And... for obvious reasons. And for the people who don't know it, it's kind of like a bunch of like stories.
And basically it's like the Jews saying like, we're gonna control the war, then we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do that and whatever. What people don't know that that is a work of plagiarism. It was plagiarized from a satirical play called Conversation in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesequieu. And it is kind of like based on one chapter or one scene or something. It's crazy.
But it's crazy how sticky it is.
Yes.
That's weird. Because if I hate you, that's great.
But if I have a story to support that hate, that's even better. But it's like one of the best stories, one of the stickiest stories about hate. Of course. It's probably the most effective. Because a lot of people hate other people. groups of peoples, but that's just like the sexiest story of them all.
Because humans need to concentrate their hate, their insecurities, and their shortcomings into one thing that they can practice that hate on. If it's a person, great. If it's a group, even better.
How do you, into this calculus, incorporate that that group is pretty small? There's 16 million Jews worldwide. And you mentioned how is that the responsibility of the Arab peoples? You know, everybody should be to blame for not taking in Jews after the Holocaust. Yeah.
But, you know, the reality of the situation, if we look at the religious slice of this, there's 16, let's say, million Jews, and there's, I don't know how many Muslims, but 1.8 billion? Yeah, yeah. Do you... that 100x difference, do you incorporate that into the sense that Jews in Israel might feel for the existential dread that we might, this small group might be destroyed?
Jews in Israel have every right to feel afraid because of everything that they see and everything they've been told, everything. But I would say that the calculus or the numbers doesn't, like, of course, like being small, it is, of course, a factor, but it is never an excuse in order to take something that's not yours.
It's saying like, hey, you have 300 million Americans and we have 52, 52 says give one state, there's too many of them. Too many of you, just give them something. It's like the fact that I have something and you don't, and there's too many of me and there is little of you.
And then you come in and it's not really Israel against the Arab world or the Muslim world because we have to say we fucked up big time. But it is the Palestinians that are in and they are being subjected to that. So it's not really like the 1.8 billion and the 16 million Jews.
And the 1.8 billion, if you look at them, some of them don't care, some of them live into regimes that are being oppressed, and those regimes are supported by the United States in order. It's easier for me as an empire to take what I want from this country if I control the dictator. And I tell them that his power is linked to my ability, to my desire to keep him in power.
So that's why you have a total disconnect between people in power in the Arab and the Muslim countries and the people themselves.
Can you speak to 1948? You know, because you mentioned taking land that's not yours. Maybe parallels with Native Americans. Yeah. There was a war. The Jewish minority fought that war against several Arab states and won that war. How do we incorporate that into the Catholic?
Yeah, well, that's also a misconception, like a misinterpretation of the event because it seems that it was like the small, it's kind of like a David and Goliath kind of story. But, and I was always like, how did we, how did we not do that?
But in reality, with numbers, I can't pull it up right now, but if you look at the numbers, the number of tanks, the planes, the trained officer, because many of those Jewish fighters came from World War II. They were seasoned fighters.
And they actually had more planes, more tanks, more artillery, more pieces of weapon, more of the all of other combined because the people that really like fought was Egypt. And you have 1948, many of those Arab countries didn't even have their independence. So they would kind of like send like a cavalry or like a people in horses.
But in fact, the whole idea was like, we won against seven nations. The numbers were totally in Israel's favor. They were better equipped. They were better trained. They had more tanks and artillery and airplanes. And they planned better. So yes, they deserved the win because they planned and we did it.
So to you, there was an asymmetry of military power even then. But what do you do with the fact that the war was won? So if you look at the history of the world,
There is wars fought over land. I agree with you. This has been the history of humanity. Humanity was not living peacefully. It's all about like people taking people and killing people, taking their land. But there's two difference here. Mostly, usually, the conquering power, like for example, England. They had England and they conquer you in India.
And after the occupation finished, they go back to England. France, Greece, Persia, Egypt, they will go and expand and shrink, expand and shrink. It's all been there. What is different here is exactly what happened in Australia and the United States. A group of people came in, not just to conquer and take the land, but to completely change, to replace them and get them out or kill them.
It was very easy with the Indians because they had smallpox, there was no social media, they did it over 400 years, they had time. The problem is what is happening right now, I agree with you, it might not be that new, but we are there and we're watching it happen.
And so now we have to confront the realities of war and empire and conquering.
Because you know what's the problem? We told ourself we can be better. After 1948, there was the universal declaration of human rights. It means that we are gonna be better humans. We're not gonna kill and take land. We're not gonna displace people. We're not gonna take people for what they are. There's now laws. There's international laws. There's international court of justice.
And now Israel is giving the middle finger to all of them.
So isn't in some fundamental way, this whole thing that we're talking about, is us as a civilization on social media, in articles and books, in newspapers, we're just trying to figure out who are we as a people.
I think the shock came from the fact that we thought that we as humanity have evolved, and now we are What have actually changed is that we became more advanced in effectively eradicating a group of people because of the technology that we have. And the fact that we can do that under the eyes and ears of all the world, and we are watching it under our phone. We have a window.
We have a window to the war. You know, 1945, people didn't know what was happening. In Japan, what? Well, we heard about it in the radio. Like, oh, today our forces came in and they launched. We don't know.
We heard it. Maybe we saw pictures after that. And it's quite edited.
But now we see it. We're into it.
And it is so much for our psyche. And we can't get it. And the Arabs are saying, like, guys, you told us. We came to the West because we were told that we were equal. You know the Universal Declaration of Rights? One of the co-authors, his name is Stefan Hessel. He's a Jew. He is a survivor of the Holocaust. And you know what happened to him?
He died, by the way, a couple of years ago, but before he died, he was canceled by so many people and he was called anti-Semitic because he joined the BDS movement and he spoke of Palestine. That is the author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we value so much and we think that that would define our humanity. But then we go in and we are
shocked it's like maybe we were sold something maybe that was false advertisement you shared a tweet by an account called awesome jew
It reads, Islamo-Nazi comedian Bassem Youssef. Comedian in quotes, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, because I'm not funny. So Islamo-Nazi comedian Bassem Youssef is now denying, I love that you retweeted this like twice. Yeah. I guess suppose because it's advertising some upcoming dates. He's now denying October 7th massacre.
The Muslim radical, Bassem Yusuf, is notorious for his radical, radical said twice, for his radical hatred of Jews and Israel. In a recent clip, he claims that the atrocities committed on October 7th are fabricated or are looking for all information regarding Israel. any of his upcoming shows, as well as the venues which host The Scumbag, where Jews feel safe around this Nazi. Nazi.
I've never, this is my first time interviewing a Nazi. It's the first time I actually get called a Nazi.
First time. First time. I have been called so many things in Egypt. So in Egypt, I was called a CIA operative, a Mossad spy, a secret Muslim brotherhood, a secret Jew. There was also an article that was published about me in the state-run media saying in details how Bassem has been... recruited by CIA agents using Jon Stewart in order to use satire to bring down the country.
I was a Freemason, an infidel, a member of the Knights of the Temple, something like that. And there's actually people, the Muslim Brotherhood on their show, they would say like,
He is actually an Israeli and they have forged an Egyptian ID for him to come.
So it's kind of like when I guess, I said, I had, I left all of that behind and I come here, it's like, boom, anti-Semitic Nazi. Damn. I mean, I really covered everything. I don't know what else. I mean, I think I have, it's kind of like I'm collecting PhDs. I'm just like getting like all of these credits.
How do you deal with that? How do you deal with the attacks? I mean, this goes back to the decision to do the interview with Piers Morgan. How do you psychologically do all of it?
These kind of attacks, at the beginning, it's fun.
But when they evolve into something else, so for example, I was like laughing of all of the stuff about calling me this, calling me that, but then when people would come and thread the theater, because it's not the people who are making those accusations that would come to you, it's the people that will hear and see those accusations and act on it. And there's always the fear of like,
I mean, we have in the airport a lot of things that somebody would hear something about someone else and go kill him and whatever, like anybody else. So there's this, but somehow I want to make fun of it. And it is to be called an Islamo-Nazi, it must been the funniest thing ever.
Because it doesn't, Islamo-Nazi, wow.
How did you, and a radical Muslim, me, a lot of Islamists hate me. They will call me a secular infidel. So it's kind of like, who am I? Maybe I have an identity crisis and I need the people to tell me who I am.
Let's go to the beginning. Let's go to your childhood. You grew up in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt. My childhood. Well, let's figure out how you came to be who you are.
How did you become an Islamo-Nazi?
Yeah, exactly. It's a long journey. I do like the swastika tattoo on your ass, which I didn't... How did you see my ass? You know what you did.
I know what you did. It was very inappropriate. You're also obviously a sexual harasser of me. Okay. Is this like a me too?
Yes.
This is like 2020. Someone will come up. It's like, okay, we have flip it.
This is your me too moment. All right. So Cairo, what's a, what's a, what's a memory defining memory, positive or negative from your childhood?
my memory in general was was cool it was cool i went to a catholic uh uh school until the for for primary school the elementary and by the time i'm done uh there was kind of like a start of a decline into the public education and my parents they're like middle class working officials you my dad was a judge my mom was a business professor and she's and they were like one of the people's like
They didn't have that much luxury. My dad, like, drove, like, a regular, like, car, a Fiat, which is, like, the equivalent for the Lada in Russia.
Thank you for speaking to the audience. The Lada. And... Well, so, would that be a good car? No, no.
It's kind of like... kind of like the minimum. And my dad was not a command of showing off. Whatever money they would do, they would put it for us, education, give everything to their kids. This is kind of like a very, very typical mentality. And I'm sure it's in many cultures, but like we grew up with this, like everything that we have is left for kids. So they would put us into education.
So middle school, 1986 was the beginning of the explosion of international schools, private schools. And these schools were relatively expensive. Of course, now with today's currency, it's ridiculous. But at that time, it's very expensive. So I went to that school. And from, there was this moment was like, you feel less right away.
I mean, of course there's the regular bullying and stuff, but it's not that. It's kind of like you always feel less. You don't have that much of like purchasing power that can allow you to go to the same outings or travel with them. And even like how you dress, it will be modest compared to them. So I was always an outsider.
I was, and I compensated with that by two things, being good at school and being good at sports. So I was not like the typical nerd who was just like that. I was like, I was playing football, basketball, field. And I was like, one of the people would like to have me on their team. So I wasn't like, kind of like, ah, he's a nerd, get him away. But I never had a girlfriend.
I never had any kind of like, it was not like, I was not boyfriend material. So that's kind of like, it leaves remnants in you that you're not good enough.
But psychologically, you were always like, when you were by yourself, you felt like an outsider.