Speaker 1: Cool Z Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Do
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff, the podcast about people who have been designated
Speaker 1: as cool by a random lady with a microphone.
Speaker 2: It's me. I'm that lady, Harder Kiljoy.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Matt Leeb.
Speaker 3: Hey, I'm here and I'm Matt, and I'm excited to
Speaker 3: be here, very happy. We're going to talk about some
Speaker 3: cool people and the cool stuff that they did. It's
Speaker 3: a nice break for me from talking about bad people
Speaker 3: who did bets.
Speaker 1: That's right, because Matt is a comedian and I podcaster
Speaker 1: on pod yourself a gun and also a shoplifter.
Speaker 2: That's right. I was a I mean quite.
Speaker 3: Well, I was a prolific shoplifter when between I think
Speaker 3: fourth and fifth grade stole from the West Side Pavilion
Speaker 3: Rip a mall that.
Speaker 2: Is no longer. I know. It was so amazing, I know,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh.
Speaker 1: Is this the one that people tried to buy to
Speaker 1: turn into a community center recently?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it's now Google.
Speaker 2: Is it Google? Is that what that building is? Is
Speaker 2: that Google? No? So it was people.
Speaker 3: You would know this mall as the mall from Clueless,
Speaker 3: the mall that Ty almost died in when those hot
Speaker 3: boys tried to pretend to push her. Yeah, but but
Speaker 3: then she lived and then she got like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: just real cocky about it, like real conceited. And then
Speaker 3: she called Share a virgin who couldn't drive, and that
Speaker 3: was way harsh, but true, it was it was, it
Speaker 3: was true.
Speaker 2: She was a urge.
Speaker 1: This is this is a fictional movie. But yes, the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got arrested there once. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 2: pretty cool.
Speaker 3: If you're wondering, I'm also an anti Zionist Jew, and
Speaker 3: I talk a lot about Zionism and what it is
Speaker 3: and what it isn't on my Instagram at matt leeb jokes.
Speaker 3: If you like jokes and if you like hearing about
Speaker 3: anti Zionism, and even if you are like a soft scientist,
Speaker 3: liberal Zionist or whatnot.
Speaker 2: I think it would be helpful check out.
Speaker 3: The content because it's you know, I think it's it's
Speaker 3: my view on it, and I think we would be
Speaker 3: better to understand what Zionism is not. And one thing
Speaker 3: it is not is it is not Judaism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is a better introduction to this entire topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our producers, Sophie Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 2: Hi, I also committed crimes at that all, allegedly allegedly
Speaker 2: alleged by you.
Speaker 3: I've just stolen things too, but none of the same
Speaker 3: them all is us.
Speaker 1: I've never been to this mall. I've only been to
Speaker 1: La and short fared of moments.
Speaker 2: Moments.
Speaker 3: Well now it's Googlers, it's a Google.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Well now it's even cooler to steal from.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I'd love to go in there and get some staplers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably anyway.
Speaker 3: They probably have headphones though, All those tech companies have
Speaker 3: like just baskets of headphones. When I lived in San Francisco,
Speaker 3: I would occasionally have a friend who worked at like Facebook,
Speaker 3: and we'd go to like the campus and eat eat
Speaker 3: all the pizza, and take all the headphones.
Speaker 2: It was so sick.
Speaker 1: People ask all the time about how to start a podcast,
Speaker 1: and the answer is you go to the Google headquarters
Speaker 1: and you steal things from them. Headphones, Yes, just headphones,
Speaker 1: just audio equipment.
Speaker 2: It's all you really need.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then you have a podcast. Time in jail, put
Speaker 3: your headphones in, let the cord dangle, go to a
Speaker 3: bus stop and start screaming. Yeah, that's essentially what a
Speaker 3: podcast is.
Speaker 2: We're being on us more.
Speaker 1: Or less is but we we're different because we have
Speaker 1: an audio engineer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was like I was going to say, I I don't.
Speaker 4: Recall hi, thank you for everything that you do, Yeah,
Speaker 4: the unsung Hero, because I haven't put it to music yet,
Speaker 4: we're singing it in Thanks for the things that you.
Speaker 2: Do for the show. What was kind of beautiful. Thanks. Thanks.
Speaker 1: I have a metal band, So you have.
Speaker 3: A metal band, and you didn't steal from the Lizard Pavilion.
Speaker 2: Enough.
Speaker 1: Very punk magpie. I know, I'm just not punk. I
Speaker 1: know that song walking in La. That's everything I know
Speaker 1: about La is that no one walks there according to
Speaker 1: a punk song from the eighties that might not be
Speaker 1: punk yeah.
Speaker 3: Or Beverly Hills Century City, that circle jerk song.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, that's a good song. Go ahead.
Speaker 1: One woman wrote our theme music and this is part
Speaker 1: two of a two parter about Israeli and international solidarity
Speaker 1: with Palestinian struggle and where we last cliffhangered. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to leave it in an actual cliffhanger. I was like,
Speaker 1: will the IDF kill this American woman? And the answer
Speaker 1: was going to be yes, And so now we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about her because she was really fucking cool
Speaker 1: and really fucking brave. She was one of many, many
Speaker 1: brave people who are part of the International Solidarity movement.
Speaker 1: Rachel Corey was born in nineteen seventy nine and grew
Speaker 1: up in Olympia, Washington to a middle class, kind of
Speaker 1: centrist family. She went to Evergreen, the kind of hippie
Speaker 1: school in Washington in Olympia, and soon she was an activist,
Speaker 1: basically joining the same era of alter globalization movement stuff
Speaker 1: that I did. Her anarchist boyfriend told a reporter later
Speaker 1: that quote. Although Rachel didn't like labels, she could be
Speaker 1: fairly described as an anarchist too. An article in The
Speaker 1: Stranger was like wildly confused by this whole anarchism thing,
Speaker 1: But most of the ism volunteers at this point were
Speaker 1: anarchists coming out of that alter globalization movement, and the
Speaker 1: same sort of people who would have been, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to stop free trade agreements that were stripping resources
Speaker 1: from developing nations. Yeah, soon enough she's involved in the
Speaker 1: International Solidarity movement and she wanted to set up a
Speaker 1: formal sister city relationship between Olympia and RAFA, which is
Speaker 1: a city in the southern part of the Gaza Strip,
Speaker 1: next to the border with Egypt. So she went to
Speaker 1: Gaza and she spent and she joins the ISM, and
Speaker 1: she spent a month protecting a well, which is just
Speaker 1: inherently noble, like poisoning the wells is like literally the
Speaker 1: classic bad thing to do if you're an army.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And the Israeli military kept destroying this one well and
Speaker 1: then firing on all the municipal workers who came out
Speaker 1: to fix it. So the ISM went and human shielded
Speaker 1: the municipal workers who are trying to fix a well. Wow,
Speaker 1: because they're scary.
Speaker 3: Human shield Yeah, human shields who are human shielding on
Speaker 3: their own volition. Who would have thought, yeah, yeah, And you'll,
Speaker 3: you know, if you get deep into, you know, reading
Speaker 3: about Israeli apartheid in the way it works, a lot
Speaker 3: of it is centered around control of water, which is
Speaker 3: why you're like a well, why a well? And it's like, well,
Speaker 3: read more about how much of the water in Gaza
Speaker 3: is number one, controlled by Israel, all of it, and
Speaker 3: how much of it is potable because not a lot
Speaker 3: of it is actually safe for consumption, and it's a desert,
Speaker 3: so you can understand, you know why water would be
Speaker 3: important in the desert, but it's even more important considering
Speaker 3: what happens, Yeah, during a siege.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in two thousand and three, this thing was happening.
Speaker 1: They won't be familiar to anyone at all. Some Palestinians
Speaker 1: who were sick of decades of oppression have been fighting
Speaker 1: back in the Second Antifada, So Israel decided to do
Speaker 1: collective punishment the one and only time that they did this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they said Sari and then it's all good, Yeah,
Speaker 3: everything now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as part of this collective punishment, they were bulldozing
Speaker 1: people's houses. Ostensibly to quote the BBC quoting the Israeli authorities,
Speaker 1: they were doing this because quote, demolitions were necessary because
Speaker 1: Palestinian gunmen used the structure as cover to shoot at
Speaker 1: their troops patrolling in the area or to conceal arms
Speaker 1: smuggling tunnels under the Gaza Egypt border.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's from season two of Narcos Mexico.
Speaker 2: L Chapo says that.
Speaker 3: It's very cool, but I think an important thing in
Speaker 3: terms of something that will contextualize this conflict that will
Speaker 3: be very helpful for people I think is you have
Speaker 3: to remember what the overall project is at the end
Speaker 3: of the day for zionis and that is the complete
Speaker 3: control of the land, including gods on the West Bank,
Speaker 3: and the displacement or removal by any means necessary, of
Speaker 3: the native population. So every time he hears, you know,
Speaker 3: talk of bulldozing houses, you're gonna hear a thousand excuses
Speaker 3: that you may or may not, you know, give credence
Speaker 3: to where you'll be like, well, you know, I could
Speaker 3: see how Just remember the whole point of the project
Speaker 3: is to displace these people by any means necessary, and
Speaker 3: that includes destroying homes. So I think looking at it
Speaker 3: to that lens is important just to understand, just to
Speaker 3: understand what's why if you want to understand why, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And i'd only had I previously thought that the
Speaker 1: home demolitions were more specifically related to like clearing land
Speaker 1: for the border, or we put a border in the
Speaker 1: wrong place, and but this is like in the fucking
Speaker 1: Gaza strip. This is absolutely like, this is like we
Speaker 1: don't want you to have a place to live.
Speaker 3: They do not respect borders either, So it's another thing
Speaker 3: you'll hear about, like when apartheid walls are put up,
Speaker 3: especially in the West Bank. Every time in apartheid wall
Speaker 3: has been built or expanded on it has not been
Speaker 3: based on some sort of nineteen pre nineteen sixty seven border.
Speaker 3: It is always like okay, let's it's always pushing, pushing, pushing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's always say just get more land piecemeal, a
Speaker 3: little bit out of time, and sometimes if the opportunity strikes,
Speaker 3: a lot of bit at a time. So just remember
Speaker 3: that's the point, that's the project.
Speaker 1: So I sm volunteer started sleeping in various people's houses
Speaker 1: that were slated for demolition, and they would do things
Speaker 1: like paint we are here, and don't shoot on the
Speaker 1: outside walls. And these outside walls are pockmarked by bullet
Speaker 1: holes from Israeli guns. Rachel Corey stayed with one doctor
Speaker 1: Samir Masri, about six times or so. Later, he said
Speaker 1: about her quote, she was the fence to protect our building.
Speaker 1: I consider her as a hero. I consider her and
Speaker 1: everyone of the ism as a member of my family. Rachel,
Speaker 1: she's twenty three years old. She's already used to standing
Speaker 1: in front of bulldozers and Gaza Strip. She'd gone to
Speaker 1: the Gaza Strip specifically because it was even more fucked
Speaker 1: right then than the West Bank, and so fewer people
Speaker 1: were willing to go there, so she felt more needed.
Speaker 1: Long live Rachel Corey, Long live that spirit, Go where
Speaker 1: you're needed. On March sixteenth, two thousand and three, she
Speaker 1: stood in front of two armored bulldozers in a tank
Speaker 1: that were coming to destroy Samir's He According to Samir
Speaker 1: and basically every international group, and there were a lot
Speaker 1: of witnesses, but not according to Israeli courts, the driver
Speaker 1: saw her. Rachel had a microphone. The reasons one might
Speaker 1: think that they saw her is that she had a
Speaker 1: microphone with a speaker, and I was wearing a bright
Speaker 1: like day glow orange jacket as a uniform. She has
Speaker 1: said stop over and over again, and witnesses saw the
Speaker 1: eye the driver make eye contact with her. The bulldozer
Speaker 1: buried her alive, then backed up over her. The Red
Speaker 1: Crescent got her out into a hospital, where she was
Speaker 1: pronounced dead of suffocation, and the driver was never held accountable.
Speaker 1: Rachel's family spent decades trying to get some semblance of
Speaker 1: justice for what happened, and Israeli government just stuck to
Speaker 1: their own. A few weeks later, after Corey died in
Speaker 1: April two thousand and three, more ISMI activists who were
Speaker 1: still in Rafa. There's a couple different accounts of this,
Speaker 1: but the synthesis I putting together these accounts is that
Speaker 1: the activists had decided to set up a peace tent
Speaker 1: to block IDF patrols, like they're just kind of like
Speaker 1: blocking where the IDF wants to drive through to go
Speaker 1: patrol this area that they're not supposed to control. So
Speaker 1: Israeli sniper's opened fire on the ism activists. The activist
Speaker 1: took cover and then one British volunteer, his name was
Speaker 1: Tom Herndall. He was twenty two years old. He was
Speaker 1: an activist and a photographer. He saw that some kids
Speaker 1: were being fired upon, so he ran out and grabbed
Speaker 1: a girl and got her to safety, and then he
Speaker 1: ran out again and an Israeli sniper shot him in
Speaker 1: the head. He spent nine months in a coma before dying.
Speaker 1: And this sniper was convicted of manslaughter and he basically
Speaker 1: complained he was like, but my orders said it was
Speaker 1: fine to shoot unarmed civilians, and I guess he missed
Speaker 1: the note that it was don't shoot Westerners.
Speaker 3: You know right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, ah shit,
Speaker 3: I forgot, yeah forgot it can't shoot the people who
Speaker 3: don't know that we shoot people. Yeah, yeah, that's you know,
Speaker 3: then they'll start getting mad about it, maybe start to
Speaker 3: thinking we're not the most moral army in the world
Speaker 3: as we so claim. Right, literally they do claim this
Speaker 3: to be the most moral army in the world. Yes,
Speaker 3: they literally, verbatim say we are the most moral army
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Yes, look it up. It is quite hilarious.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of moral armies, like overall. Those
Speaker 1: are things that don't go like as a little bit
Speaker 1: of a contradiction in terms. But yeah, but where I
Speaker 1: would put Israel would not be the top of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean I would.
Speaker 3: If I was singing most moral army army in the world,
Speaker 3: I would say the band Tiger Army. I feel like
Speaker 3: they're pretty moral. I don't know much about Salvation Army,
Speaker 3: but they see that pretty bad. Actually, yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they hate gay people and they used to hate
Speaker 1: the IWW.
Speaker 3: But anyway, you know, but in terms of like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not just like it's all it's on a sliding scale.
Speaker 1: Army literally yeah, no, totally yeah, yeah yeah, whitepg WIPEPGA
Speaker 1: from northern Asyria and like that's they're all right.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So in the year two thousand, the wall started getting built,
Speaker 1: the apartheid one. In July two thousand and three, the
Speaker 1: first continuous segment of it was finished. And well, you
Speaker 1: you've kind of spoiled this. But yeah, when I imagine building
Speaker 1: a fence between me and my neighbor, I would think
Speaker 1: you would put it on the property line, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Israel is not very good surveying. It's just not their
Speaker 1: strong suit now as a nation. And because they put
Speaker 1: fifteen percent of it on the border the you know,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously the border sort of a all borders
Speaker 1: are made up. This is an especially made up border,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, but they managed but fifteen percent of it.
Speaker 2: On their own.
Speaker 1: We took way too much of your land already, eighty
Speaker 1: five percent of it is withinside Palestinian territory, as much
Speaker 1: as eleven miles inside Palestinian territory. Yeah, twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: Palestinians were immediately cut off from the rest of you know, Palestine. Yeah, fortunately,
Speaker 1: no go ahead and no, it's something they do.
Speaker 2: I mean it is. It is.
Speaker 3: Every time you hear about a security fence being put up,
Speaker 3: you usually hear about it as like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: they'll say, for example, you know, in this current conflict,
Speaker 3: a line of Israeli has bar that's been touted is
Speaker 3: there is a very clear and distinct border between Israel
Speaker 3: and Gaza. And it's never it's never clear, it's never distinct,
Speaker 3: it's always changing. It is always being push push, push,
Speaker 3: push push. If you read ahead to Mimi's book that
Speaker 3: she did with Dina, I think they call me Lioness.
Speaker 3: I forget, I forget the name of the book, but
Speaker 3: she talks about this extensively, about the amount of protests
Speaker 3: that they would do when they were younger, every time
Speaker 3: they would put up a security fence or anything around
Speaker 3: a settlement. You hear this all the time with the settlements,
Speaker 3: you know, constantly taking more and more and more land
Speaker 3: and building any kind of barrier that would just suck
Speaker 3: up more and more of land that is supposed to
Speaker 3: be within the boundaries of Israel.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's what they do.
Speaker 1: It's like, it reminds me a little bit of how
Speaker 1: when Russia invaded Ukraine, they were like, oh, well, we
Speaker 1: need a buffer zone between US and NATO, you know,
Speaker 1: And you're like, no, the border that you're allowed to
Speaker 1: have is the border between your nation and the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, right, Like, and I don't feel great
Speaker 1: about that. I'm not a big borders person.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but like the one that overall.
Speaker 1: You could be like, you can have your border, you
Speaker 1: can't be like I don't like the way that my
Speaker 1: neighbor is, so I need more of a buffer zone.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to put my fence through her kitchen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it is not normal or good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But fortunately, Matt, you'll be really excited to know that
Speaker 1: this all got solved because the International Court of Justice
Speaker 1: was like, hey, so that's in violation of international law.
Speaker 1: And then the UN General Assembly demanded the removal of
Speaker 1: this fence by a vote of one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: four to four. So Israel was like, I genuinely don't
Speaker 1: understand why you think we would care what you have to.
Speaker 3: Say, right, They're like seriously, still, yeah, how many times
Speaker 3: are you guys going to write these pieces of paper
Speaker 3: and us burn it in front of you before you
Speaker 3: stop wasting paper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they do not.
Speaker 3: Care about the UN or you know, any internationally recognize
Speaker 3: this group of you know, human rights organizations or anything
Speaker 3: like if you go against Israel, then you were officially
Speaker 3: anti Semitic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So this largely non violent or like non lethal
Speaker 1: movement cropped up to fight this wall, and it was
Speaker 1: pushed for by all these popular assemblies. One village in
Speaker 1: the West Bank, Masha, had one of these protest movements
Speaker 1: when Israel tried to steal the prop they were going
Speaker 1: to build an elementary school the people who lived in
Speaker 1: this village, and then Israel is like, Eh, that's where
Speaker 1: we're gonna We're taking that where ushere, We're gonna put
Speaker 1: our fence. We're just going to put it three year
Speaker 1: elementary school. So people from the village put up a
Speaker 1: protest camp on the property and the name of the
Speaker 1: camp translates to alternative protest camp and Palestinian, Israeli and
Speaker 1: international activists moved into the camp and for four months
Speaker 1: they held back the wall starting in late two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, and they would stage direct action after direct
Speaker 1: action against the apartment. Israel had a small but very
Speaker 1: active anarchist scene which I think grew out of punk
Speaker 1: rock in the hardcore scene. Though most of the Israeli
Speaker 1: anarchists I met around that time were like far more
Speaker 1: committed to liberation politics than they were to music. One
Speaker 1: of them got me into power metal. So shout out
Speaker 1: to Yoni. If you're listening, shout out, and also shout
Speaker 1: out to can we be sponsored by power metal?
Speaker 2: Okay? Cool?
Speaker 1: So shout out to people singing like this is with
Speaker 1: lots of guitars and it sounds like the least metal
Speaker 1: thing you've ever heard. And yet if you dig deep
Speaker 1: enough into the cringe, you realize that only the cringe
Speaker 1: are free.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get that tattooed.
Speaker 3: Only the cringe are free.
Speaker 2: Fuck yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 1: Here's some ads.
Speaker 2: And we're back, We're back.
Speaker 1: So a bunch of these anarchists from Israel they go
Speaker 1: to join the protest camp. They change, they changed their
Speaker 1: name of their group at every different action they go
Speaker 1: to the camp, and then they go out and do
Speaker 1: these actions, and every single time they're like, oh, we're this, ah,
Speaker 1: we're that. And one day on December and December two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, they were calling themselves anarchists against the Wall,
Speaker 1: and they went out on an action as they usually did.
Speaker 1: It was a big march of everyone all together, about
Speaker 1: one hundred Palestinians and one hundred other folks. The Israelis
Speaker 1: and the internationals went to the wall while Palestinians hung
Speaker 1: back because every time the Palestinians went too close, the
Speaker 1: Israelis soldiers would shoot live ammunition. Folks approached the wall
Speaker 1: to tear it up, and they chanted in Hebrew, refuse, refuse.
Speaker 1: An Israeli soldier took careful aim, asked over coms for
Speaker 1: permission to shoot, and then shot an Israeli activist, Gil
Speaker 1: Na Amadi in both of his legs with live ammunition
Speaker 1: at point blankage. And Gil, yeah, he had just left
Speaker 1: the idef himself, like a month earlier. He had finished
Speaker 1: his service and got now because for anyone who's listening
Speaker 1: to ideas compulsory, you have to join the army if
Speaker 1: you live in Israel, although many people found ways to not.
Speaker 2: Do that, right.
Speaker 1: And so Gil had just this was his first protest.
Speaker 1: He had hung at the back of the demonstration for
Speaker 1: most of the time because he didn't know too many people,
Speaker 1: and they like were like, this is the leader and
Speaker 1: his guess is that he's tall.
Speaker 2: Like, I mean, I get it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sometimes people think I'm a leader because I'm tall, but
Speaker 3: I'm like, no, I'm not a follower to bro. But
Speaker 3: I mean I'll stand if you want to find me
Speaker 3: in this like a costco, then I'll stand at the front.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: After he was shot, protesters demanded the soldiers call an ambulance,
Speaker 1: and the soldiers did no such thing. Instead, they responded basically,
Speaker 1: go ask help from your beloved Arabs. As he's bleeding.
Speaker 1: They shot him in the artery, which is a really
Speaker 1: bad place to get shot. Whenever in like movies or
Speaker 1: books or or like bad self defense training, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to kill them, I'm just gonna shoot.
Speaker 2: Him in the leg.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as like one of the easiest ways to kill
Speaker 1: someone with a gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there's this thing called the femoral artery.
Speaker 3: It's big and it is pretty brittle compared to a bullet.
Speaker 1: I remember I once asked one of my friends as
Speaker 1: a doctor, I was writing this book called the Country
Speaker 1: It Ghost, and I was like, I need my character
Speaker 1: to get shot, but not like lethally, where's a safe
Speaker 1: place to get shot, and my friend's like no, Like
Speaker 1: I was like, what about the shoulder, and that it's
Speaker 1: a terrible place to be shot. There's so many like.
Speaker 3: According to HBO's The Sopranos, the fatty part of like
Speaker 3: the buttocks and thigh. Okay with a small caliber caliber weapon. Okay,
Speaker 3: you know that's pretty good. There's a whole you know
Speaker 3: b story episode in which Bobby Baclaw wants to make
Speaker 3: a little extra money, so he he convinces a rapper
Speaker 3: to let him shoot him so he can better album sales,
Speaker 3: and he shoots him in the butt, which is not
Speaker 3: necessarily going to get you the gangster title that you want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's a great show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if people want to hear more, they can listen.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear more, body, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's all right. So so he gets shot
Speaker 1: in both legs.
Speaker 2: It is not good.
Speaker 1: He survives. To spoil that or to get rid of
Speaker 1: the fear, yeah, activists carry him and an American woman
Speaker 1: who is also shot but less seriously injured, carried them
Speaker 1: off while others stayed and tore apart the apartheid fence.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that they were literally being shot at
Speaker 1: with live I.
Speaker 2: Mean, bad fucking ass, Yeah, bad ass.
Speaker 1: And this particular fence separated Palestinian farmers from literally their
Speaker 1: own lands, which is very often the case. And so
Speaker 1: Giel was cared for at a Palestinian clinic with no
Speaker 1: supplies because his beloved Arabs took care of him like
Speaker 1: they did do that, you know, yeah, yeah, and they
Speaker 1: saved his life because getting hit in the artery is
Speaker 1: not a nice thing to do. The last interview that
Speaker 1: I found with him was eight years later, so this
Speaker 1: is twelve years ago, but he was fairly sure he
Speaker 1: would never walk again.
Speaker 2: In that interview.
Speaker 1: He became a video game designer and slowly became more
Speaker 1: radical because he wasn't a radical. He just didn't want
Speaker 1: to have an apartheid state that he participated in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that's yeah, that is really an important
Speaker 3: distinction here. You know, what you might consider radical if
Speaker 3: you're just a casual observer of this conflict, you know,
Speaker 3: is the reason the only reason you think it's radical
Speaker 3: is because you think it's more complicated than it being apartheid,
Speaker 3: and it's not. So, you know, it should not be
Speaker 3: a radical position, yeah, to be against apartheid but you know, so,
Speaker 3: just so what it is, go ahead?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, So I read an interview with him.
Speaker 1: I read this long interview with him. It's like interwoven
Speaker 1: with a history of video games, because it's really interesting. Actually,
Speaker 1: and my second like aha moment of the research. The
Speaker 1: first one was the Camp David thing, where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: they were offered a second they were offered a state,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a state. They were offered a really
Speaker 1: fucking shit deal, you know, right, And this other aha moment,
Speaker 1: and it's a little bit. This one's more subjective. He's
Speaker 1: talking about how at his key Boots several years later,
Speaker 1: a drunk neighbor was talking to him and I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote Giel and then he the neighbor spoke about
Speaker 1: the Arab about how they would never forgive quote us Jews.
Speaker 1: Something deep inside of him came gushing out. He was
Speaker 1: saying it was something everyone knew but nobody ever spoke
Speaker 1: about out they will never forgive us, they will never
Speaker 1: forgive us. And so there's this idea in there. Basically,
Speaker 1: the implication is that some Israelis just feel like they're
Speaker 1: in too deep that they're like, yeah, they've been too
Speaker 1: fucked up, so they've got to keep going because they'll
Speaker 1: never be forgiven for what they've done.
Speaker 2: One and you know, it's like, uh, I do feel for.
Speaker 3: You know, as fucked up as it might sound like,
Speaker 3: you know, I do, I do feel for uh Israelis.
Speaker 3: I mean it shouldn't sound fucked up to these are
Speaker 3: citizens of a country. It's not fucked up to feel
Speaker 3: for people no matter where they're from. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: like I feel for them because of the impossible situation
Speaker 3: that their government and their policies have put them in.
Speaker 3: And it's not as simple as like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: if they're a so called democracy, whytn't they just vote
Speaker 3: for It's just it's not as simple as as we
Speaker 3: know in America. You know, as much of as many
Speaker 3: of us are liberal so to speak, or left or whatnot,
Speaker 3: that does not mean we are the majority and can
Speaker 3: control policy. And even when we think we can, we can't.
Speaker 3: And so, like, you know, I it is this awful
Speaker 3: impossible position that gets more and more impossible by the hour,
Speaker 3: by the minute, by the second. And it is you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's an understandable thing, but it's also at the
Speaker 3: same time you know it's also I don't think.
Speaker 1: It's true, right exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's true at all because you
Speaker 3: look at apartheid South Africa and you look at what
Speaker 3: that compromise and apartheid ended up being, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say I would call it the ideal compromise.
Speaker 3: It was not entirely just it left South African you know,
Speaker 3: Afrikaans people's economic privileges intact and whatnot. But there was
Speaker 3: no mass white genocide. There was no you know, a
Speaker 3: mass uprising that murdered and displaced all of the Afrikaners.
Speaker 3: It is not true that people don't have it in
Speaker 3: their hearts to forgive and don't have it in their
Speaker 3: hearts to move on, because peace and normalcy is what
Speaker 3: human beings crave above all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think that Gil's position is so a
Speaker 1: case is so obvious for this because here is the
Speaker 1: group he was just part of. He was just part
Speaker 1: of the IDF a month earlier. Ghost was first protest.
Speaker 1: He does not know the Palestinian villagers. He goes with
Speaker 1: them on a march. He's shot in both legs. The
Speaker 1: group he was just with, says bleed out we don't care.
Speaker 1: Go ask help from your beloved Arabs. And then the
Speaker 1: Palestinians were like, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like yeah, I mean you talk about people not
Speaker 3: forgiving you, It's like, yeah, there's always going to be
Speaker 3: those Israeli idea of soldiers aren't going to forgive you.
Speaker 3: You know, there's people who out there who will hold
Speaker 3: on to grudges no matter what. But it is not,
Speaker 3: it is not it should not be an impediment to
Speaker 3: just because you can't imagine the future.
Speaker 2: That is a human limitation.
Speaker 1: Totally.
Speaker 3: I think you have to remember that, you know, God,
Speaker 3: for lack of a better word, is in the collective,
Speaker 3: not the individual. And I think that a collective of
Speaker 3: people just you know, have the ability to do good
Speaker 3: as well as evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And so this, the shooting of
Speaker 1: an Israeli activist, was a really big deal in israelm
Speaker 1: Anarchists Against the Wall decided that that was the name
Speaker 1: that they were going to stick with for their group
Speaker 1: because it was the one that they were using that day,
Speaker 1: and it was the one that the media was running
Speaker 1: with because of all the press. Right, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: this activist with Anarchists against the Wall who had just
Speaker 1: own up once, you know.
Speaker 3: But yeah, once you get the branding, you know, like
Speaker 3: out there, it's kind of hard to pull back. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's why it's called pod Yourself a gun.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We tried to have a new feed with pot Yourself
Speaker 3: the Wire, but people already know the other one, So
Speaker 3: what can we do? Anyways, go on, I am not
Speaker 3: this much of a shell usually. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 1: And so they put out their own press release that
Speaker 1: day before they knew how badly Geel had been wounded.
Speaker 1: And it starts, no to the ghetto that's being built
Speaker 1: by Jews, No to the walls between people, stop the
Speaker 1: occupation Israeli's Palestinians and international activists, bring down the apartheid
Speaker 1: wall in Masha. And there's another banger line from one
Speaker 1: of their communicators a little later, And this is what
Speaker 1: podcasting has done with me. Banger was not in my
Speaker 1: slang vocabulary until I started hanging out with cools on
Speaker 1: media people. Yeah yeah, next, I'll be still say based.
Speaker 1: At some point I think.
Speaker 2: Y yeah, it's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: Shelby says, no, no, base, Yeah, you don't fall for it.
Speaker 1: This is a banger line. Though I think we can agree, okay,
Speaker 1: since we can remember, we have been brainwashed with hatred
Speaker 1: and fear of our Palestinian neighbors. We have not gone
Speaker 1: for trips in the countryside without armed escort. We were
Speaker 1: told that our hand is extended for peace, but that
Speaker 1: there is no one to talk to. But these lies
Speaker 1: were exposed and are visible to everyone who participates in
Speaker 1: the actions against the occupation. We have slept together beneath
Speaker 1: the olive trees before they were uprooted. We have marched
Speaker 1: together to the fence, and we will continue to struggle
Speaker 1: together Israeli's Palestinians and internationals for justice and equality for all.
Speaker 2: Oh based, Yeah.
Speaker 1: See, okay, well you can. Sorry, No, you're probably younger.
Speaker 2: Than me, so I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I did put a filter on the zoom though, I
Speaker 3: just look at No, that's fantastic, that's good shit, man,
Speaker 3: fucking banker.
Speaker 1: The camp blasted for four months, and through it the
Speaker 1: Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall was able to start
Speaker 1: forming long term partnerships with the Popular Committees and various
Speaker 1: West Bank villages where there were near daily nonviolent uprisings.
Speaker 1: And there's like a dozen of these towns. The Israeli
Speaker 1: government had two sets of rules of engagement, one for
Speaker 1: when it was just Palestinians, which was basically, do some murder,
Speaker 1: and then one for when there were internationals or Israelis,
Speaker 1: only do a little murder. A typical Friday demonstration went
Speaker 1: like this. People would rally in a village, gather for prayer,
Speaker 1: and then they would march out to the apartheid fence
Speaker 1: or to land stolen by settlers. Sometimes the soldiers would
Speaker 1: shut it down in the village before they had a
Speaker 1: chance to march. Other times people would reach the fence
Speaker 1: and start chanting before the soldiers came in with tear
Speaker 1: gas concussion grenades. And let's talk about rubber bullets for
Speaker 1: a minute.
Speaker 3: Oh, let's put some big air quotes on rubber.
Speaker 1: And almost everywhere in the world rubber b bullets is
Speaker 1: actually used to mean something that might be more properly
Speaker 1: called baton rounds, like when it's used in America by police.
Speaker 1: You're talking about something called baton rounds, which are plastic
Speaker 1: or rubber or sometimes wooden projectiles fired from various guns.
Speaker 1: These suck, they hurt people, they occasionally kill people, and
Speaker 1: they're bad news. Right, there's only two places in the world.
Speaker 1: In my research I did for some weird reason in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, I did this whole big research project about
Speaker 1: less lethals that police use I'm not and rubber bullets
Speaker 1: has meant in two places in the world that I
Speaker 1: was able to find literally metal bullets covered in rubber
Speaker 1: to be like really vaguely less murderous. Yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to guess those two places?
Speaker 2: Ooh, I'm going to guess.
Speaker 3: Uh Israel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of them.
Speaker 3: That's not a guess. So it was something I know.
Speaker 3: And the other one apartheid South Africa.
Speaker 1: No, although it's still Britain's fault.
Speaker 2: Oh, Britain's fault.
Speaker 1: Oh, India, Northern Ireland, Ireland. Yes, that's that's I believe
Speaker 1: where the rubber bullet was developed and eventually they were like,
Speaker 1: we gotta stop shooting them. This just keeps murdering people.
Speaker 1: It's just a bullet. It just kills people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's literally just a bullet with a like a
Speaker 3: you know, wrapped in a flower tortilla. It's not at
Speaker 3: all going to stop. It doesn't stop doing bullet stuff. Yeah. Well, also,
Speaker 3: it is not not a baton round.
Speaker 1: I read and I only read this in one source,
Speaker 1: but I read that one of the reasons that the
Speaker 1: British didn't stop using them as much in Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: is that they would bounce right soldiers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right, which, you know, that is one
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: I'm at things, you.
Speaker 1: Know, but in the you know, in the desert, there's
Speaker 1: like fewer things to you know, to Northern Ireland or anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's let's bouncy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the protests would disperse at this point, and then
Speaker 1: the youth would start throwing stones at the motherfuckers who
Speaker 1: were shooting them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anarchists against the Wall did more than march alongside the Palestinians.
Speaker 1: They also planted trees, They rebuilt homes and wells. They
Speaker 1: walked alongside farmers, facing violence from settlers. All the while.
Speaker 1: They would get attacked by settlers and soldiers for doing this.
Speaker 1: And they're not the only group doing this. The other
Speaker 1: groups that I mentioned earlier are also doing this, but
Speaker 1: you know, they're the one who I read the book
Speaker 1: about inside Israel proper. They did theatrical protests, like at
Speaker 1: one point they set up a fake checkpoint and Tel
Speaker 1: Aviv with like barbed wire and shit, like to just
Speaker 1: control everyone as they came through.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another time they climbed onto tanks heading into the West
Speaker 1: Bank to be like fuck, you can't drive to the
Speaker 1: West Bank. Yeah, and there's sort of a non group.
Speaker 1: They're as much a slogan or an identity as they
Speaker 1: were an organization. They had no platform, no manifesto, but
Speaker 1: they were all Israeli anti Zionists. The introduction to one
Speaker 1: of their zines from two thousand and seven reads Anarchists
Speaker 1: Against the Wall sweats off the excess weight of thick,
Speaker 1: heavy ideological frames by making practice its center of gravity.
Speaker 1: This is not to imply that principal theoretical analyzes are
Speaker 1: not needed. Of course, we certainly encourage applying them to
Speaker 1: deconstruct the Zionist apartheid myths. However, at this time, the
Speaker 1: individuals comprising Anarchists Against the Wall would rather apply tugging ropes,
Speaker 1: bolt cutters, and ten pound hammers to deconstruct Israel's wall
Speaker 1: and express their disagreement with IDF roadblocks. It's basically they
Speaker 1: were like all doing no talking, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, love it, love it, like listen, feel free to
Speaker 3: read in a cafe. We love it, we love it.
Speaker 3: It's nice to have a framework. Dogma can be important.
Speaker 3: Learning theory is always cool to talk about. Some times
Speaker 3: it gets you laid. We're just gonna do stuff, yeah
Speaker 3: and lay I'll talk yeah, yeah, and all along.
Speaker 1: They're very clear and everything that they did right that
Speaker 1: they're not the leaders of the movements, nor are they
Speaker 1: outside agitators, but they are people born into the occupying
Speaker 1: force and solidarity with the occupied people.
Speaker 3: Oh beautiful, yeah, beautiful, beautiful. That's the shit. That's the
Speaker 3: shit that makes me feel good inside.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: There's a village called Billin. It's a tiny town under
Speaker 1: Israeli occupation since nineteen sixty seven. It's two miles east
Speaker 1: of the Green line, which is the demarcation of what's
Speaker 1: ostensibly Palestinian again depending on what who's claiming what at
Speaker 1: what point right right right. The border wall cut it
Speaker 1: off from sixty percent of its own farmland. Weekly protests
Speaker 1: were led by the Billin's Popular Committee and an Israeli
Speaker 1: human rights lawyer working alongside of them managed to get
Speaker 1: the border moved slightly. And they're constantly fight settlements. But
Speaker 1: they it's like there are these little winds. You know,
Speaker 1: there are these like, hey, this town gets to keep having,
Speaker 1: keeps getting to feed itself. It's like little winds in
Speaker 1: the larger picture, but it's a pretty major wind to
Speaker 1: be like, hey, like I have food, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, no, it is it is, uh, I mean just
Speaker 3: it's a good example of how dire shit is if
Speaker 3: that is a win, and it is a fucking win,
Speaker 3: huge one.
Speaker 1: And at least three Palestinian protesters died for that win
Speaker 1: at these non violent protests. One man, Bessima Rama, was
Speaker 1: twenty nine when he was struck in the chest with
Speaker 1: a tear gas canister and his heart stopped. And then
Speaker 1: later a different protest, his sister Jahawar Abu Rahma died
Speaker 1: from tear gas inhalation. And that one is like, there's
Speaker 1: like all of these like nah ah, that's not what
Speaker 1: killed her. Things going on that Israel is saying.
Speaker 3: But they say that every every time, every time someone
Speaker 3: die by something that they claim is supposed to be
Speaker 3: non lethal, like a bulldozer, they say, no, that's not
Speaker 3: what happened. Actually it was hamas fire to rocket into
Speaker 3: their own right people.
Speaker 1: You know, totally, you know, totally, the playbook is the
Speaker 1: same as it has always been.
Speaker 3: The playbook is literally the same it is. It is
Speaker 3: lie lie Lie, Lie Lie. Wait wait wait wait wait.
Speaker 3: Maybe tell the truth at some point at a later
Speaker 3: date when people don't care.
Speaker 1: And then if so, be like yeah, well we meant
Speaker 1: to because fuck.
Speaker 3: Them, yeah yeah yeah, or okay, we did it, but
Speaker 3: it was an accident and therefore we are not found liable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, in two thousand and eight, the Bilin Popular Committee
Speaker 1: Against the Wall, the group that had organized these protests,
Speaker 1: and Anarchists against the Wall, were jointly because they work
Speaker 1: together to organize these things, were jointly awarded the Carl
Speaker 1: von Aussievski Medal, given annually by the International League of
Speaker 1: Human Rights in Berlin, and it's named after a German
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize winning Passifift who died in Gestapo custody in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight by Friend of the Pod tuberculosis. You
Speaker 1: all thought I wasn't going to work in tuberculosis this episode,
Speaker 1: but this motherfucker died of it.
Speaker 2: Friend of the pod.
Speaker 3: Oh that's my favorite Friend of the pod is tuberculosis.
Speaker 1: Well, we have another friend of the pod, and it's
Speaker 1: uh the fact that, yeah, that we have to sell
Speaker 1: ads so that I can feed my dog and spend
Speaker 1: all of my time reading history books so that I
Speaker 1: can tell you all of these things.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, I love I love capitalism because it keeps
Speaker 3: me safe looking or something.
Speaker 1: It's currently the system that feeds me.
Speaker 3: If I say nice things about capitalism on a podcast,
Speaker 3: will someone just send me money.
Speaker 2: Because I would be sick.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, we'll find out. Yeah, here's our ad money.
Speaker 2: And we're back. Hey.
Speaker 1: So, when they went to Berlin to accept the award,
Speaker 1: the anarchists gave a funny speech about like kind of
Speaker 1: like it was kind of weird for us, as the
Speaker 1: Israeli anarchists to accept this, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, support for Palestinian struggle is more important. To
Speaker 1: put it in their own words, our primary moral duty
Speaker 1: is not to maintain ideological purity, but rather to stand
Speaker 1: with Palestinians and their resistance to oppression. And they also said,
Speaker 1: this is where I got the thing earlier that I
Speaker 1: said from this quote. We would like to stress that
Speaker 1: we are not equal partners, but rather occupiers who joined
Speaker 1: the occupied.
Speaker 2: In their.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, thank you. Yeah, these you know what this
Speaker 3: is an aptly named podcast.
Speaker 2: Those are cool people. Yeah, and they're doing cool things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I yeah, I'm excited that I figured out.
Speaker 1: I've known about them for a while because I am
Speaker 1: when I lived in Amsterdam years ago, like kind of
Speaker 1: during a lot of the height of this, and I
Speaker 1: had a lot of Israeli friends who live there, partly
Speaker 1: because a lot of Israeli's left the country because the
Speaker 1: other option was go serve or go.
Speaker 2: To that's right, yeahm hmm, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In January two thousand and eight, folks in Tel Aviv
Speaker 1: and Israeli City held a critical mass protest against the occupation.
Speaker 1: You ever heard a critical mass. It's this old style
Speaker 1: of protest.
Speaker 3: No, I know of this thing where people go on bike.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's the thing. It's like it's like it's
Speaker 1: it's just a.
Speaker 2: That was just a bike ride. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like it started off as this movement. We'll
Speaker 1: probably do an episode about some time. Probably start off
Speaker 1: as this movement to like reclaim cities from cars, you know,
Speaker 1: and like a bike rights thing. But then more and
Speaker 1: more during the ultra globalization movement, they started getting used
Speaker 1: to like be a way to hold a demonstration was
Speaker 1: to go be on bicycles cool and so Anarchist Against
Speaker 1: the Wall held a critical mass protest against the occupation
Speaker 1: January two thousand and eight, and this one as small
Speaker 1: as hell. It was like thirty people. There's not really
Speaker 1: anything illegal about it. You're just literally vehicles that are
Speaker 1: allowed in the street and you're riding in the street.
Speaker 1: One protester, Jonathan Pollock, was arrested. This was politically motivated.
Speaker 1: He was a founding member of Anarchists Against the Wall
Speaker 1: and he's an interesting guy. He was in the hardcore
Speaker 1: scene in the nineties and he founded a vegan anti
Speaker 1: Zionist group called One Struggle, this very nineties hardcore thing
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, his case of riding a bicycle in
Speaker 1: the street went a trial in twenty ten, and he
Speaker 1: gave this awesome speech where he got three months for
Speaker 1: organizing the protest, which he claims he didn't do. And
Speaker 1: his speech is basically like, well, I should have I
Speaker 1: should have organized a protest, but I just happened to not.
Speaker 1: I'm not sorry, Like, yeah, no, the protest is sick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of sucks getting in trouble for it because
Speaker 3: I'm not I didn't do it, but fuck I wish
Speaker 3: I did it, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Yeah, which is what I've always held. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if I ever, like, I have a friend who once
Speaker 1: got arrested for got convicted for doing like all of
Speaker 1: the damage at a protest, like all of the windows
Speaker 1: that got broken. They were like, you did all of it.
Speaker 1: She is not physically possible, but he did that.
Speaker 3: I mean, unless you're the Hulk or like the kool
Speaker 3: Aid Man, that guy can do whatever you want.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: That's a good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so unless my friend has this secret capacity that
Speaker 1: I'm not personally aware of. And I was always trying
Speaker 1: to tell him. I was like, you should say you
Speaker 1: did it.
Speaker 3: You did the time, like, yeah, you might as well
Speaker 3: at this point, Yeah, you might as well just do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or just start saying you did it. No one's
Speaker 2: gonna question you.
Speaker 1: Is it really stolen valor if you've gone to prison.
Speaker 3: For it, that's one hundred percent true? Is that is
Speaker 3: a one thousand percent er? Just say you did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's a thing called having too much honor, all right,
Speaker 3: or being too honest.
Speaker 2: Right, totally come on.
Speaker 1: And so as soon as he got out, Jonathan returned
Speaker 1: to protest work he sent several more months in prison
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty on charges of throwing stones at soldiers
Speaker 1: in the West Bank, which he actually almost certainly did
Speaker 1: not do. Most sources seem to admit that this was
Speaker 1: a political arrest. He had been at demonstrations every week
Speaker 1: for years and no one had ever seen him throwing stones,
Speaker 1: even though in April two thousand and five, the IDF
Speaker 1: shot him in the head with a tear gas canister,
Speaker 1: requiring stitches and hear me out, this is my favorite
Speaker 1: Israeli claim IDF claim so far. The IDF was like, no,
Speaker 1: we didn't.
Speaker 2: Shoot you on the head. We don't.
Speaker 1: We don't shoot people with tar guess cannisters. What happened
Speaker 1: was we shot it into the air when it rick
Speaker 1: a shade off of a stone thrown by these evil terrorists.
Speaker 2: M that's right.
Speaker 3: Once again, it's the magic stone theory of you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's exactly you know, there was a guy on
Speaker 3: the grassy knoll who threw a stone a child. Actuallyinians
Speaker 3: killed JFK. Is that what you're saying. I'm saying the
Speaker 3: Palestinians killed JFK. Which is I think a Palestinian man
Speaker 3: is supposed to have killed RFK, but I don't know
Speaker 3: if I don't not in connection to the conflict to
Speaker 3: just he yea related people are people? Oh yeah, yeah
Speaker 3: yeah yeah yeah, different thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In twenty nineteen, this guy, Jonathan, he survived an
Speaker 1: assassination attempt by knife wielding far right guys, and he
Speaker 1: he regularly gets arrested for all this organizing, and he
Speaker 1: always refuses to cooperate with his court cases because he've
Speaker 1: viewsed them as illegitimate, and so this is part of
Speaker 1: why he ends up getting prison time here and there
Speaker 1: for doing He's like, because he's not actually doing wildly
Speaker 1: illegal stuff. He's an organizer and he's showing up in
Speaker 1: solidarity with people.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Anyway, he's cool. Yeah, Well, I don't know him personally.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's a terrible person. The stuff that I know
Speaker 1: about him doing is yeah, so far, so good. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: At the very end of two thousand and eight, Israel
Speaker 1: launched a three week quote war war gets quotes in Gaza.
Speaker 1: It gets called the Gaza War, although that name was
Speaker 1: probably gonna anyway. It gets called Operation cast Lead, and
Speaker 1: it gets called the Gaza Massacre.
Speaker 2: More lots of different names.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more than a thousand Palestinians were killed, as well
Speaker 1: as thirteen Israelis, four of whom were killed by friendly fire.
Speaker 1: It was this horrible massacre that laid the groundwork for
Speaker 1: the current batch of resistance in Gaza, because the people
Speaker 1: who are twenty now were five when they survived this
Speaker 1: horrible shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: More than a thousand Israelis marched against the war in
Speaker 1: Tel Aviv. And I want to quote from anarchist against
Speaker 1: the Wall speech to just show how much things have
Speaker 1: changed in their intervening time.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: Today we are told that a ruthless attack on Gaza's
Speaker 1: populace is in fact a war on Hamas. Dropping bombs
Speaker 1: in residential areas in the world's most densely populated region
Speaker 1: is not a war crime, but instead an assault on
Speaker 1: the infrastructure of terrorism. Shelling the University of Gaza's female
Speaker 1: dorms is eliminating explosive labs and murdering hundreds of women
Speaker 1: and children constitute just and moral combat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, evergreen, Yeah, evergreen. I mean it's just, you know,
Speaker 3: it is the same thing over and over again regarding
Speaker 3: Gaza and the Israeli treatment of Gaza. And if you're
Speaker 3: interested in learning what they call this type of security
Speaker 3: without peace is one of the things they call it.
Speaker 3: They also call these, you know, every two year operations
Speaker 3: in Gaza, they call it mowing the grass. The idea,
Speaker 3: the idea being, you know, you mow the grass that's
Speaker 3: killing a bunch of people, you know, supposedly terrorist quote unquote,
Speaker 3: and then you wait a few years and then you know,
Speaker 3: you got to mow the grass again. So if you
Speaker 3: want to know the value of human life in Gaza,
Speaker 3: just look no further than the phrase mowing the grass
Speaker 3: or mowing the lawn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fucking it's fucking dark.
Speaker 3: And it's not like, oh well that's something said by
Speaker 3: like some far right No, that's what that is generally
Speaker 3: what it's called. That is what they say in their
Speaker 3: own media. It is I've heard it's a phrase I've
Speaker 3: heard bandied about in our own media recently.
Speaker 1: And you that's a bad thing to import.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't help but feel like, you know, I
Speaker 3: maybe call me naive, but I don't think the Overton
Speaker 3: window has shifted enough to describe a massacre of civilians.
Speaker 3: Is mowing the lawn and not have people be like
Speaker 3: that sounds genocidal?
Speaker 2: Is shit, right, But you know, who knows. Maybe I'm naive,
Speaker 2: maybe people don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, the main this is the first time
Speaker 1: I've been paying some attention to this stuff since, you know,
Speaker 1: since I was about nineteen or twenty or so, and
Speaker 1: so however, many decades, two decades whatever. I think people
Speaker 1: know who I am, and now everyone knows everything about me.
Speaker 1: Born in Maryland, Yeah, roughly forty or forty one years old, right, raby,
Speaker 1: I'm forty seven, who knows?
Speaker 3: Okay, anyway, so social Security number eight exactly.
Speaker 1: But this is the first time that the the media
Speaker 1: narrative didn't work. Yes, yes, and that is hopeful.
Speaker 3: It is, and I think it's because this is my
Speaker 3: general theory about it, is that the thing about manufacturing
Speaker 3: consent is that it takes time and it takes effort.
Speaker 3: And the thing about propaganda is that propaganda works better
Speaker 3: in sort of a controlled media space. It also works
Speaker 3: better once again spaced out. It used to be in
Speaker 3: the past that a massacre would happen, or a Palasidian
Speaker 3: civilian or a journalist would be murdered by Israeli forces,
Speaker 3: and they would say, no, they're lying, because they always lie,
Speaker 3: you know, they would say, the Palestinians are lying, we
Speaker 3: didn't do that, they did that to themselves or whatever,
Speaker 3: and then weeks would go by, months would go by,
Speaker 3: and eventually there might be some admission of guilt, like
Speaker 3: you know, like has done so many times, We've heard
Speaker 3: this a thousand times.
Speaker 2: By the time they admit.
Speaker 3: To anything or they circle back around to it, no
Speaker 3: one cares in this instance. So much propaganda is happening,
Speaker 3: happening so fast, at such a high rate, at least
Speaker 3: in the last you know, couple of months since the
Speaker 3: seventh that there's no time for spin. There's it just
Speaker 3: the spin looks manic and ridiculous. Like a hospital is
Speaker 3: bombed in Gaza and they say, we didn't bomb the hospital.
Speaker 3: We don't bomb hospitals. You know, they probably bomb their
Speaker 3: own hospital. And then two days later they bomb a
Speaker 3: hospital and they're like, okay, we do bomb hospitals, but
Speaker 3: we have to bomb hospitals because they're not actually hospitals.
Speaker 2: And it's like.
Speaker 3: Any casual viewer of the news is not getting the
Speaker 3: sufficient time to be convinced of their line. Instead, they
Speaker 3: just two days later do the thing they said they
Speaker 3: never do, and so you go Oh they're liars, and
Speaker 3: I think that is, you know, I mean in a
Speaker 3: horrifying way.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: It's a hopeful development that they are. They seem to
Speaker 3: have just in general gotten worse at Husbar Husbar being
Speaker 3: an Israeli propaganda and that they are not that they
Speaker 3: were ever good at it, if you cared about the
Speaker 3: subject at all. But it's particularly bad now because they
Speaker 3: just start living in such a bubble where they don't
Speaker 3: all of their talking points, all of their kind of
Speaker 3: like liberal pink washing is dated for this younger generation.
Speaker 3: It feels phony, like we know what pink washing looks like,
Speaker 3: not you know, through Israel so much as we know
Speaker 3: it through corporations who City Bank having a Pride float,
Speaker 3: you know, and we know like, oh people just say
Speaker 3: this in order to sell us stuff. So now people
Speaker 3: are seeing Israel doing that and they're going like, oh,
Speaker 3: I know this, Yeah, this is fucking the MetLife you know,
Speaker 3: fucking float over at the Pride parade. This is this
Speaker 3: is you're trying to sell me life insurance? Is bullshit?
Speaker 3: Yeah no, that makes sense to me. I'm just glad
Speaker 3: people aren't buying it as much as they used to,
Speaker 3: and that it's it's like nice and not be alone and.
Speaker 2: You know, God like it is.
Speaker 3: If there's one thing that has made me a little
Speaker 3: bit less insane, it's been seeing other people, you know,
Speaker 3: being able to be like you see this.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this this feels like super fake, like more
Speaker 3: fake than usual.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If I ever had time in my life, I would
Speaker 3: start a podcast purely about Hasbara. It would just be
Speaker 3: the you know, the weekly because it's all so it's
Speaker 3: all so egregious and insane that you know that I
Speaker 3: think from an American perspective or you know, we would
Speaker 3: be able to look at it and just just to
Speaker 3: dig into it for you know, I don't know, to
Speaker 3: see what is actually happening. Yeah, but you know I
Speaker 3: got I got TV shows to it. One Now I
Speaker 3: understand this well, I mean I don't know. There's always
Speaker 3: more projects to do.
Speaker 2: There's always more projects.
Speaker 1: So speaking of more projects, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other projects in Israel that are part of resisting occupation
Speaker 1: and they ranged the Gamut. One of them, Yeshkovl, was
Speaker 1: found in nineteen eighty one and it is a movement
Speaker 1: of IDF soldiers who refused to serve in the occupied territories.
Speaker 1: And I know I was talking earlier about how like
Speaker 1: Israeli friends who were all, you know, getting away from
Speaker 1: the draft or whatever. And of like four Israelis I
Speaker 1: know who avoided serving in the IDF, two of them
Speaker 1: just left the country, or one person just never went
Speaker 1: to Israel basically had joint citizenship. Another marched in and
Speaker 1: said fuck you, I won't do it, you know, and
Speaker 1: so they sent him jail for a while and then
Speaker 1: he came out and was like, yeah, well fuck you.
Speaker 1: And then another one of my friends I probably said
Speaker 1: this before on the podcast, another one of my friends
Speaker 1: who went in and was like, give me a gun.
Speaker 1: I don't know who I'm gonna shoot. I'm gonna shoot.
Speaker 2: Someone, damn.
Speaker 1: And they were like, nope, you don't get a gun.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I wonder if that would work.
Speaker 1: Now, I have no idea. I know, right, they'd be
Speaker 1: like you're a guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: At this point, I think there's just so many reservists
Speaker 3: came up after the seventh to be like give me
Speaker 3: a gun.
Speaker 2: So who knows.
Speaker 1: But I know, I mean he was like I think
Speaker 1: he took it real far. He was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know who am I to shoot.
Speaker 2: Might be me, might be you. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: oh I love that, and.
Speaker 1: So okay, so you and so you have all this.
Speaker 1: You have this movement of people going back decades. The
Speaker 1: first people who refuse to serve go back at least
Speaker 1: as far as the fifties, and it it ebbs and flows,
Speaker 1: but it is uh flowing again. And then of course
Speaker 1: you have people like Giel who went and served and
Speaker 1: didn't like what they saw and didn't like what they
Speaker 1: were involved with, and then joined the other side immediately
Speaker 1: after leaving. And when I say the other side, of
Speaker 1: course whatever that told the whole story. I don't need
Speaker 1: to disclaim this. And then more recently I swear it
Speaker 1: on to current events. In September twenty twenty three, two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty conscientious objectors signed a letter called Youth
Speaker 1: Against Dictatorship, and they said, quote, we decided that we
Speaker 1: cannot in good faith serve a bunch of fascist settlers
Speaker 1: that are in control of the government right now. Reservists
Speaker 1: have signed onto this as well, because as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of reservists are signing up and
Speaker 1: going off and persecuting this war. But a lot of
Speaker 1: reservists have signed onto this as well and refused to serve.
Speaker 1: And this is tied into the right wing is really
Speaker 1: extra coming to power in Israel this year and the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three Israeli judicial reform has centralized more power
Speaker 1: into the hands of legislature and away from the courts. Basically,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court used to be able to declare laws
Speaker 1: on constitutional.
Speaker 3: Right the way a checks and balance the system usually yeah,
Speaker 3: and they were like, what have instead of having checks
Speaker 3: and balances, we just the right wing people in charge.
Speaker 1: Israel's also increasing slowly the authority of the Rabbinical Court,
Speaker 1: saying that religious law can be used in civil matters.
Speaker 1: And this isn't to say that the left is like
Speaker 1: powerful in Israel. It really really isn't. But there is hope,
Speaker 1: and there is hope in a way that is interesting
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: And to.
Speaker 1: Close it to compare to when the left hope was
Speaker 1: not as hopeful. Twenty eleven, Yeah, Israel got a version
Speaker 1: of the Plaza occupation protests that swept around the globe.
Speaker 1: Occupy and you know, all those kinds of things. Theirs
Speaker 1: was particularly lackluster and reformist, not just because Israel hadn't
Speaker 1: been a hit as hard during the financial crisis. But
Speaker 1: to quote author Uri Gordon quote, the fact that a
Speaker 1: movement mobilizing around social justice effectively ignored the social conditions
Speaker 1: of millions of Palestinians living under their own government's military occupation.
Speaker 1: This was an occupy movement that ignored the other real
Speaker 1: occupation taking place in its own backyard. And so anarchists
Speaker 1: against the Wall, they like, showed up. They're like, all right,
Speaker 1: well fucking we'll do this shit too, you know, and
Speaker 1: they set up their own tents and they were run
Speaker 1: out for bringing anti occupation politics into the occupy movement.
Speaker 1: So they moved over to the tense city of actual
Speaker 1: homeless people in African refugees, like right across on the
Speaker 1: other side of the street, basically because they've been in
Speaker 1: solidarity with those people for years and they were accepted
Speaker 1: and they're still around. So were the International Solidarity Movement,
Speaker 1: and more importantly so are Palestinian organizations of all types
Speaker 1: and all levels. And thinking about any of these groups
Speaker 1: of people as like Palestinis Hamas, israel Is the IDF
Speaker 1: whatever or Israeli's is you know, is reduction.
Speaker 3: That will just fuck everything up, Yes, completely reductionists. Then
Speaker 3: also you know again gives too much of the gives
Speaker 3: too much fuel for the right wing in Israel to
Speaker 3: use in order to I think rile up bring people
Speaker 3: to their cause of like you see this, you know,
Speaker 3: they hate us, they hate all of us, they want
Speaker 3: to kill us if they ever had their way, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we'd be driven into this.
Speaker 1: The one state solution that they were fighting for was
Speaker 1: a non right was actually a decent like non apartheid state.
Speaker 3: But yeah, right, right, and so yes, so it is
Speaker 3: it is important to remember as much as the Israeli
Speaker 3: left has been diminished, and it has been, there's no
Speaker 3: getting around that. And as much as they, you know,
Speaker 3: as much as the Seventh has I think further ghettoized
Speaker 3: the left, it does exist. There is a history there,
Speaker 3: and I do not think that it is I think
Speaker 3: the pendulum is a pendulum for a reason, and it's
Speaker 3: the idea that it's going to stay swinging right forever
Speaker 3: is an illusion, and it is it is something that
Speaker 3: I personally am seeing more and more people, especially now
Speaker 3: waking up and listening to, you know, Israeli leftist voices
Speaker 3: who are still out there. And I also want to say,
Speaker 3: it's also important to not dismiss and this is you know,
Speaker 3: for I suppose the more online left people, it is
Speaker 3: important to not dismiss any Israeli leftist voices because they
Speaker 3: might sound, you know, because they say something like Hamas
Speaker 3: is bad, like the idea that you would like. You
Speaker 3: can't you can't hold people to an an unrealistic standard. Now, personally,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's at all unrealistic to be like
Speaker 3: a right wing Islamist group is bad. Yes, the kidnapping
Speaker 3: people is bad, Murdering civilians is bad. It's just like period.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And uh, but like I do see people kind of
Speaker 3: go like, oh you know this, you know this, the
Speaker 3: Israeli left is dead. Look at this person you know
Speaker 3: talking about how bad Hamas is.
Speaker 2: And it's like, bro, slow your role here, slow your
Speaker 2: fucking role here.
Speaker 1: The you know, everyone talks to the audiences they know,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, everyone talks to the audience that they know
Speaker 3: and what they you know in Israel, Uh you know
Speaker 3: it is Hamas is uh uh you know, I mean
Speaker 3: not even just outside of Israel. It is a terrorism bad.
Speaker 3: There are reasons for it. No one is disputing that.
Speaker 1: No one gets to kill civilians is a perfectly reasonable
Speaker 1: line to hold people too, and then you have to
Speaker 1: hold all sides to it while still recognizing that one
Speaker 1: side is more power than the.
Speaker 3: Other right one hundred percent, and the power dynamics are
Speaker 3: what's important here, And that is a different argument than
Speaker 3: saying something like hummus is good. So but again, this
Speaker 3: is not you know, I'm talking to fucking anonymous internet
Speaker 3: accounts now, which is never a good thing to do.
Speaker 3: But yes, the Israeli left, I think, you know, I
Speaker 3: maybe this is naive. Maybe I just have hope, but
Speaker 3: they will have their day, and I think more and
Speaker 3: more there where they have always been the most useful
Speaker 3: is in showing the world that this is not about
Speaker 3: ethnic hatred or religious hatred, that Israelis and Palestinians are
Speaker 3: neither are monoliths, and neither are they. They have been
Speaker 3: in this fight together and will continue to be in
Speaker 3: this fight together, despite their small numbers, despite everything you see.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I don't know, I just have some hope. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have some hope.
Speaker 1: And I think that whatever hope we have is in
Speaker 1: solidarity with each other, with people who are fradualized in
Speaker 1: various ways. Working together across all kinds of cultural boundaries,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it gives me hope.
Speaker 3: And remember, the left fails more than it succeeds, so
Speaker 3: being like, oh, the Israeli left failed is like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: the left. That's kind of what the left does is
Speaker 3: fail and fail and fail and fail and fail. But
Speaker 3: when it succeeds, we also remember that. And it's a
Speaker 3: it's a lot easier to build something new than it
Speaker 3: is to tear some down. So let's h extend a
Speaker 3: little bit of hope, a little bit of positivity, a
Speaker 3: little bit of grace.
Speaker 1: Well that's our non current events podcast about history, about
Speaker 1: the past, and uh yeah you got you got any
Speaker 1: plugs for us here at the end.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, uh, join me to talk about the
Speaker 3: Wire and the Sopranos, Pot yourself a gun, a TV
Speaker 3: rewatch podcast.
Speaker 2: We do it. It's great every week.
Speaker 3: And then also in between seasons, we have our our
Speaker 3: og show that me and my cost Vince Mancini, have
Speaker 3: been doing together for over a decade, is called the
Speaker 3: Frontcast and that's at patreon dot com slash Frodcast. For
Speaker 3: those of you who are like Matt, I love you dog,
Speaker 3: but I will not watch a whole last TV show
Speaker 3: to listen to you talk about it. Well, then listen
Speaker 3: to the frodcast patri dot com slash broadcast. You know
Speaker 3: you can. You can join if you want, but also
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't want to take your Your money
Speaker 3: is more probably more important to be spent at Cool
Speaker 3: Zone because they do that actually matter.
Speaker 2: I have an impact and are helping to educate people.
Speaker 3: Me and Vince mostly just talk about movies and like funny,
Speaker 3: funny shit we see on the Internet, and it all
Speaker 3: matters sometimes and yeah, yeah, yeah, some of it more
Speaker 3: than others, so I gotta tell you yes. And then
Speaker 3: I'm on Instagram at matt leeb jokes follow.
Speaker 1: Me, hell yeam if you want to follow me, I'm
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy. I'm technically on Twitter. I'm
Speaker 1: technically on lots of services that I don't actually check.
Speaker 1: I deleted Twitter off my phone is the best decision
Speaker 1: I've made for my mental health. But then it just
Speaker 1: means how you open it on my laptop and that doesn't.
Speaker 2: Fix anything yet.
Speaker 1: And also, if you want to hear me read you
Speaker 1: fiction every Sunday on this feed and on it could
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Speaker 1: people use this to go to sleep too, which means
Speaker 1: that one of my friends now whenever I talk to him,
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Speaker 2: That rule.
Speaker 1: So yep, that's it from us, and we'll see you
Speaker 1: next week with more Cool People Did Cool Stuff.
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