Part Two: Israeli & International Solidarity with Palestinian Struggle

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Matt Lieb about the anti-zionist Jews and others who have thrown in their lot with the Palestinian people in their struggle against an apartheid state and genocide.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Z Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Do
Cool Stuff, the podcast about people who have been designated
as cool by a random lady with a microphone.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's me. I'm that lady, Harder Kiljoy.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
My guest today is Matt Leeb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Hey, I'm here and I'm Matt, and I'm excited to
be here, very happy. We're going to talk about some
cool people and the cool stuff that they did. It's
a nice break for me from talking about bad people
who did bets.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
That's right, because Matt is a comedian and I podcaster
on pod yourself a gun and also a shoplifter.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
That's right. I was a I mean quite.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Well, I was a prolific shoplifter when between I think
fourth and fifth grade stole from the West Side Pavilion
Rip a mall that.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Is no longer. I know. It was so amazing, I know,
and it's like, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Is this the one that people tried to buy to
turn into a community center recently?

Speaker 3 (01:07):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Unfortunately it's now Google.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Is it Google? Is that what that building is? Is
that Google? No? So it was people.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
You would know this mall as the mall from Clueless,
the mall that Ty almost died in when those hot
boys tried to pretend to push her. Yeah, but but
then she lived and then she got like, I don't know,
just real cocky about it, like real conceited. And then

(01:39):
she called Share a virgin who couldn't drive, and that
was way harsh, but true, it was it was, it
was true.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
She was a urge.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
This is this is a fictional movie. But yes, the.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, I got arrested there once. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm
pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
If you're wondering, I'm also an anti Zionist Jew, and
I talk a lot about Zionism and what it is
and what it isn't on my Instagram at matt leeb jokes.
If you like jokes and if you like hearing about
anti Zionism, and even if you are like a soft scientist,

(02:18):
liberal Zionist or whatnot.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
I think it would be helpful check out.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
The content because it's you know, I think it's it's
my view on it, and I think we would be
better to understand what Zionism is not. And one thing
it is not is it is not Judaism.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, yeah, that is a better introduction to this entire topic. Yeah,
our producers, Sophie Hi, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Hi, I also committed crimes at that all, allegedly allegedly
alleged by you.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
I've just stolen things too, but none of the same
them all is us.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I've never been to this mall. I've only been to
La and short fared of moments.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Moments.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well now it's Googlers, it's a Google.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Well now it's even cooler to steal from.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I know.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
I'd love to go in there and get some staplers. Yeah,
probably anyway.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
They probably have headphones though, All those tech companies have
like just baskets of headphones. When I lived in San Francisco,
I would occasionally have a friend who worked at like Facebook,
and we'd go to like the campus and eat eat
all the pizza, and take all the headphones.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
It was so sick.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
People ask all the time about how to start a podcast,
and the answer is you go to the Google headquarters
and you steal things from them. Headphones, Yes, just headphones,
just audio equipment.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
It's all you really need.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, then you have a podcast. Time in jail, put
your headphones in, let the cord dangle, go to a
bus stop and start screaming. Yeah, that's essentially what a
podcast is.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
We're being on us more.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Or less is but we we're different because we have
an audio engineer.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
It was like I was going to say, I I don't.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
Recall hi, thank you for everything that you do, Yeah,
the unsung Hero, because I haven't put it to music yet,
we're singing it in Thanks for the things that you.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Do for the show. What was kind of beautiful. Thanks. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
I have a metal band, So you have.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
A metal band, and you didn't steal from the Lizard Pavilion.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Enough.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Very punk magpie. I know, I'm just not punk. I
know that song walking in La. That's everything I know
about La is that no one walks there according to
a punk song from the eighties that might not be
punk yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Or Beverly Hills Century City, that circle jerk song.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Hell yeah, that's a good song. Go ahead.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
One woman wrote our theme music and this is part
two of a two parter about Israeli and international solidarity
with Palestinian struggle and where we last cliffhangered. I didn't
want to leave it in an actual cliffhanger. I was like,
will the IDF kill this American woman? And the answer
was going to be yes, And so now we're going

(05:20):
to talk about her because she was really fucking cool
and really fucking brave. She was one of many, many
brave people who are part of the International Solidarity movement.
Rachel Corey was born in nineteen seventy nine and grew
up in Olympia, Washington to a middle class, kind of
centrist family. She went to Evergreen, the kind of hippie
school in Washington in Olympia, and soon she was an activist,

(05:45):
basically joining the same era of alter globalization movement stuff
that I did. Her anarchist boyfriend told a reporter later
that quote. Although Rachel didn't like labels, she could be
fairly described as an anarchist too. An article in The
Stranger was like wildly confused by this whole anarchism thing,

(06:06):
But most of the ism volunteers at this point were
anarchists coming out of that alter globalization movement, and the
same sort of people who would have been, you know,
trying to stop free trade agreements that were stripping resources
from developing nations. Yeah, soon enough she's involved in the
International Solidarity movement and she wanted to set up a

(06:30):
formal sister city relationship between Olympia and RAFA, which is
a city in the southern part of the Gaza Strip,
next to the border with Egypt. So she went to
Gaza and she spent and she joins the ISM, and
she spent a month protecting a well, which is just
inherently noble, like poisoning the wells is like literally the

(06:51):
classic bad thing to do if you're an army.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
And the Israeli military kept destroying this one well and
then firing on all the municipal workers who came out
to fix it. So the ISM went and human shielded
the municipal workers who are trying to fix a well. Wow,
because they're scary.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Human shield Yeah, human shields who are human shielding on
their own volition. Who would have thought, yeah, yeah, And you'll,
you know, if you get deep into, you know, reading
about Israeli apartheid in the way it works, a lot
of it is centered around control of water, which is

(07:35):
why you're like a well, why a well? And it's like, well,
read more about how much of the water in Gaza
is number one, controlled by Israel, all of it, and
how much of it is potable because not a lot
of it is actually safe for consumption, and it's a desert,

(07:58):
so you can understand, you know why water would be
important in the desert, but it's even more important considering
what happens, Yeah, during a siege.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, so in two thousand and three, this thing was happening.
They won't be familiar to anyone at all. Some Palestinians
who were sick of decades of oppression have been fighting
back in the Second Antifada, So Israel decided to do
collective punishment the one and only time that they did this.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yeah, and they said Sari and then it's all good, Yeah,
everything now.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
And as part of this collective punishment, they were bulldozing
people's houses. Ostensibly to quote the BBC quoting the Israeli authorities,
they were doing this because quote, demolitions were necessary because
Palestinian gunmen used the structure as cover to shoot at
their troops patrolling in the area or to conceal arms
smuggling tunnels under the Gaza Egypt border.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yes, that's from season two of Narcos Mexico.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
L Chapo says that.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
It's very cool, but I think an important thing in
terms of something that will contextualize this conflict that will
be very helpful for people I think is you have
to remember what the overall project is at the end
of the day for zionis and that is the complete

(09:24):
control of the land, including gods on the West Bank,
and the displacement or removal by any means necessary, of
the native population. So every time he hears, you know,
talk of bulldozing houses, you're gonna hear a thousand excuses
that you may or may not, you know, give credence

(09:44):
to where you'll be like, well, you know, I could
see how Just remember the whole point of the project
is to displace these people by any means necessary, and
that includes destroying homes. So I think looking at it
to that lens is important just to understand, just to

(10:05):
understand what's why if you want to understand why, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, And i'd only had I previously thought that the
home demolitions were more specifically related to like clearing land
for the border, or we put a border in the
wrong place, and but this is like in the fucking
Gaza strip. This is absolutely like, this is like we
don't want you to have a place to live.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
They do not respect borders either, So it's another thing
you'll hear about, like when apartheid walls are put up,
especially in the West Bank. Every time in apartheid wall
has been built or expanded on it has not been
based on some sort of nineteen pre nineteen sixty seven border.
It is always like okay, let's it's always pushing, pushing, pushing.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yes, it's always say just get more land piecemeal, a
little bit out of time, and sometimes if the opportunity strikes,
a lot of bit at a time. So just remember
that's the point, that's the project.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
So I sm volunteer started sleeping in various people's houses
that were slated for demolition, and they would do things
like paint we are here, and don't shoot on the
outside walls. And these outside walls are pockmarked by bullet
holes from Israeli guns. Rachel Corey stayed with one doctor
Samir Masri, about six times or so. Later, he said

(11:19):
about her quote, she was the fence to protect our building.
I consider her as a hero. I consider her and
everyone of the ism as a member of my family. Rachel,
she's twenty three years old. She's already used to standing
in front of bulldozers and Gaza Strip. She'd gone to
the Gaza Strip specifically because it was even more fucked

(11:39):
right then than the West Bank, and so fewer people
were willing to go there, so she felt more needed.
Long live Rachel Corey, Long live that spirit, Go where
you're needed. On March sixteenth, two thousand and three, she
stood in front of two armored bulldozers in a tank
that were coming to destroy Samir's He According to Samir

(12:02):
and basically every international group, and there were a lot
of witnesses, but not according to Israeli courts, the driver
saw her. Rachel had a microphone. The reasons one might
think that they saw her is that she had a
microphone with a speaker, and I was wearing a bright
like day glow orange jacket as a uniform. She has

(12:22):
said stop over and over again, and witnesses saw the
eye the driver make eye contact with her. The bulldozer
buried her alive, then backed up over her. The Red
Crescent got her out into a hospital, where she was
pronounced dead of suffocation, and the driver was never held accountable.

(12:45):
Rachel's family spent decades trying to get some semblance of
justice for what happened, and Israeli government just stuck to
their own. A few weeks later, after Corey died in
April two thousand and three, more ISMI activists who were
still in Rafa. There's a couple different accounts of this,
but the synthesis I putting together these accounts is that

(13:07):
the activists had decided to set up a peace tent
to block IDF patrols, like they're just kind of like
blocking where the IDF wants to drive through to go
patrol this area that they're not supposed to control. So
Israeli sniper's opened fire on the ism activists. The activist
took cover and then one British volunteer, his name was
Tom Herndall. He was twenty two years old. He was

(13:28):
an activist and a photographer. He saw that some kids
were being fired upon, so he ran out and grabbed
a girl and got her to safety, and then he
ran out again and an Israeli sniper shot him in
the head. He spent nine months in a coma before dying.
And this sniper was convicted of manslaughter and he basically
complained he was like, but my orders said it was

(13:50):
fine to shoot unarmed civilians, and I guess he missed
the note that it was don't shoot Westerners.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
You know right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, ah shit,
I forgot, yeah forgot it can't shoot the people who
don't know that we shoot people. Yeah, yeah, that's you know,
then they'll start getting mad about it, maybe start to
thinking we're not the most moral army in the world

(14:17):
as we so claim. Right, literally they do claim this
to be the most moral army in the world. Yes,
they literally, verbatim say we are the most moral army
in the world.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
That's amazing. Yes, look it up. It is quite hilarious.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
There's not a lot of moral armies, like overall. Those
are things that don't go like as a little bit
of a contradiction in terms. But yeah, but where I
would put Israel would not be the top of that.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, no, I mean I would.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
If I was singing most moral army army in the world,
I would say the band Tiger Army. I feel like
they're pretty moral. I don't know much about Salvation Army,
but they see that pretty bad. Actually, yeah, there we go.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, they hate gay people and they used to hate
the IWW.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
But anyway, you know, but in terms of like, you know,
I'm not just like it's all it's on a sliding scale.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Army literally yeah, no, totally yeah, yeah yeah, whitepg WIPEPGA
from northern Asyria and like that's they're all right.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
You know.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
So in the year two thousand, the wall started getting built,
the apartheid one. In July two thousand and three, the
first continuous segment of it was finished. And well, you
you've kind of spoiled this. But yeah, when I imagine building
a fence between me and my neighbor, I would think
you would put it on the property line, you.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Know, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Israel is not very good surveying. It's just not their
strong suit now as a nation. And because they put
fifteen percent of it on the border the you know,
I mean obviously the border sort of a all borders
are made up. This is an especially made up border,
you know. Yeah, but they managed but fifteen percent of it.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
On their own.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
We took way too much of your land already, eighty
five percent of it is withinside Palestinian territory, as much
as eleven miles inside Palestinian territory. Yeah, twenty five thousand
Palestinians were immediately cut off from the rest of you know, Palestine. Yeah, fortunately,
no go ahead and no, it's something they do.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
I mean it is. It is.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
Every time you hear about a security fence being put up,
you usually hear about it as like, well, you know,
they'll say, for example, you know, in this current conflict,
a line of Israeli has bar that's been touted is
there is a very clear and distinct border between Israel

(16:48):
and Gaza. And it's never it's never clear, it's never distinct,
it's always changing. It is always being push push, push,
push push. If you read ahead to Mimi's book that
she did with Dina, I think they call me Lioness.
I forget, I forget the name of the book, but
she talks about this extensively, about the amount of protests

(17:11):
that they would do when they were younger, every time
they would put up a security fence or anything around
a settlement. You hear this all the time with the settlements,
you know, constantly taking more and more and more land
and building any kind of barrier that would just suck
up more and more of land that is supposed to
be within the boundaries of Israel.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
So yeah, it's what they do.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
It's like, it reminds me a little bit of how
when Russia invaded Ukraine, they were like, oh, well, we
need a buffer zone between US and NATO, you know,
And you're like, no, the border that you're allowed to
have is the border between your nation and the rest
of the world, right, Like, and I don't feel great
about that. I'm not a big borders person.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but like the one that overall.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
You could be like, you can have your border, you
can't be like I don't like the way that my
neighbor is, so I need more of a buffer zone.
So I'm going to put my fence through her kitchen.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah. Yeah, it is not normal or good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
But fortunately, Matt, you'll be really excited to know that
this all got solved because the International Court of Justice
was like, hey, so that's in violation of international law.
And then the UN General Assembly demanded the removal of
this fence by a vote of one hundred and forty
four to four. So Israel was like, I genuinely don't
understand why you think we would care what you have to.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Say, right, They're like seriously, still, yeah, how many times
are you guys going to write these pieces of paper
and us burn it in front of you before you
stop wasting paper.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, like they do not.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Care about the UN or you know, any internationally recognize
this group of you know, human rights organizations or anything
like if you go against Israel, then you were officially
anti Semitic.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Absolutely, So this largely non violent or like non lethal
movement cropped up to fight this wall, and it was
pushed for by all these popular assemblies. One village in
the West Bank, Masha, had one of these protest movements
when Israel tried to steal the prop they were going
to build an elementary school the people who lived in

(19:31):
this village, and then Israel is like, Eh, that's where
we're gonna We're taking that where ushere, We're gonna put
our fence. We're just going to put it three year
elementary school. So people from the village put up a
protest camp on the property and the name of the
camp translates to alternative protest camp and Palestinian, Israeli and
international activists moved into the camp and for four months

(19:53):
they held back the wall starting in late two thousand
and three, and they would stage direct action after direct
action against the apartment. Israel had a small but very
active anarchist scene which I think grew out of punk
rock in the hardcore scene. Though most of the Israeli
anarchists I met around that time were like far more

(20:13):
committed to liberation politics than they were to music. One
of them got me into power metal. So shout out
to Yoni. If you're listening, shout out, and also shout
out to can we be sponsored by power metal?

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Okay? Cool?

Speaker 1 (20:28):
So shout out to people singing like this is with
lots of guitars and it sounds like the least metal
thing you've ever heard. And yet if you dig deep
enough into the cringe, you realize that only the cringe
are free.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
I'm going to get that tattooed.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
Only the cringe are free.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Fuck yeah, hell yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Here's some ads.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
And we're back, We're back.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
So a bunch of these anarchists from Israel they go
to join the protest camp. They change, they changed their
name of their group at every different action they go
to the camp, and then they go out and do
these actions, and every single time they're like, oh, we're this, ah,
we're that. And one day on December and December two
thousand and three, they were calling themselves anarchists against the Wall,
and they went out on an action as they usually did.

(21:25):
It was a big march of everyone all together, about
one hundred Palestinians and one hundred other folks. The Israelis
and the internationals went to the wall while Palestinians hung
back because every time the Palestinians went too close, the
Israelis soldiers would shoot live ammunition. Folks approached the wall
to tear it up, and they chanted in Hebrew, refuse, refuse.

(21:46):
An Israeli soldier took careful aim, asked over coms for
permission to shoot, and then shot an Israeli activist, Gil
Na Amadi in both of his legs with live ammunition
at point blankage. And Gil, yeah, he had just left
the idef himself, like a month earlier. He had finished

(22:07):
his service and got now because for anyone who's listening
to ideas compulsory, you have to join the army if
you live in Israel, although many people found ways to not.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Do that, right.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
And so Gil had just this was his first protest.
He had hung at the back of the demonstration for
most of the time because he didn't know too many people,
and they like were like, this is the leader and
his guess is that he's tall.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Like, I mean, I get it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Sometimes people think I'm a leader because I'm tall, but
I'm like, no, I'm not a follower to bro. But
I mean I'll stand if you want to find me
in this like a costco, then I'll stand at the front.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah exactly, yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Good.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
After he was shot, protesters demanded the soldiers call an ambulance,
and the soldiers did no such thing. Instead, they responded basically,
go ask help from your beloved Arabs. As he's bleeding.
They shot him in the artery, which is a really
bad place to get shot. Whenever in like movies or
books or or like bad self defense training, they're like, oh,
I don't want to kill them, I'm just gonna shoot.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Him in the leg.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, as like one of the easiest ways to kill
someone with a gun.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah, you know, there's this thing called the femoral artery.
It's big and it is pretty brittle compared to a bullet.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
I remember I once asked one of my friends as
a doctor, I was writing this book called the Country
It Ghost, and I was like, I need my character
to get shot, but not like lethally, where's a safe
place to get shot, and my friend's like no, Like
I was like, what about the shoulder, and that it's
a terrible place to be shot. There's so many like.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
According to HBO's The Sopranos, the fatty part of like
the buttocks and thigh. Okay with a small caliber caliber weapon. Okay,
you know that's pretty good. There's a whole you know
b story episode in which Bobby Baclaw wants to make

(24:09):
a little extra money, so he he convinces a rapper
to let him shoot him so he can better album sales,
and he shoots him in the butt, which is not
necessarily going to get you the gangster title that you want.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, you know, it's a great show.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, and if people want to hear more, they can listen.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
If you want to hear more, body, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
No, no, it's all right. So so he gets shot
in both legs.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
It is not good.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
He survives. To spoil that or to get rid of
the fear, yeah, activists carry him and an American woman
who is also shot but less seriously injured, carried them
off while others stayed and tore apart the apartheid fence.
Despite the fact that they were literally being shot at
with live I.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Mean, bad fucking ass, Yeah, bad ass.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
And this particular fence separated Palestinian farmers from literally their
own lands, which is very often the case. And so
Giel was cared for at a Palestinian clinic with no
supplies because his beloved Arabs took care of him like
they did do that, you know, yeah, yeah, and they
saved his life because getting hit in the artery is

(25:21):
not a nice thing to do. The last interview that
I found with him was eight years later, so this
is twelve years ago, but he was fairly sure he
would never walk again.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
In that interview.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
He became a video game designer and slowly became more
radical because he wasn't a radical. He just didn't want
to have an apartheid state that he participated in.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, you know, that's yeah, that is really an important
distinction here. You know, what you might consider radical if
you're just a casual observer of this conflict, you know,
is the reason the only reason you think it's radical
is because you think it's more complicated than it being apartheid,
and it's not. So, you know, it should not be

(26:04):
a radical position, yeah, to be against apartheid but you know, so,
just so what it is, go ahead?

Speaker 1 (26:14):
No, no, no, So I read an interview with him.
I read this long interview with him. It's like interwoven
with a history of video games, because it's really interesting. Actually,
and my second like aha moment of the research. The
first one was the Camp David thing, where I was like, oh,
they were offered a second they were offered a state,
but it wasn't a state. They were offered a really
fucking shit deal, you know, right, And this other aha moment,

(26:36):
and it's a little bit. This one's more subjective. He's
talking about how at his key Boots several years later,
a drunk neighbor was talking to him and I'm going
to quote Giel and then he the neighbor spoke about
the Arab about how they would never forgive quote us Jews.
Something deep inside of him came gushing out. He was

(26:56):
saying it was something everyone knew but nobody ever spoke
about out they will never forgive us, they will never
forgive us. And so there's this idea in there. Basically,
the implication is that some Israelis just feel like they're
in too deep that they're like, yeah, they've been too

(27:16):
fucked up, so they've got to keep going because they'll
never be forgiven for what they've done.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
One and you know, it's like, uh, I do feel for.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
You know, as fucked up as it might sound like,
you know, I do, I do feel for uh Israelis.
I mean it shouldn't sound fucked up to these are
citizens of a country. It's not fucked up to feel
for people no matter where they're from. Yeah, but it's
like I feel for them because of the impossible situation

(27:50):
that their government and their policies have put them in.
And it's not as simple as like, well, you know,
if they're a so called democracy, whytn't they just vote
for It's just it's not as simple as as we
know in America. You know, as much of as many
of us are liberal so to speak, or left or whatnot,
that does not mean we are the majority and can

(28:14):
control policy. And even when we think we can, we can't.
And so, like, you know, I it is this awful
impossible position that gets more and more impossible by the hour,
by the minute, by the second. And it is you know,
it's it's an understandable thing, but it's also at the
same time you know it's also I don't think.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
It's true, right exactly.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Yeah, I don't think it's true at all because you
look at apartheid South Africa and you look at what
that compromise and apartheid ended up being, and it wasn't
I wouldn't say I would call it the ideal compromise.
It was not entirely just it left South African you know,
Afrikaans people's economic privileges intact and whatnot. But there was

(29:01):
no mass white genocide. There was no you know, a
mass uprising that murdered and displaced all of the Afrikaners.
It is not true that people don't have it in
their hearts to forgive and don't have it in their
hearts to move on, because peace and normalcy is what

(29:23):
human beings crave above all.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah. And I think that Gil's position is so a
case is so obvious for this because here is the
group he was just part of. He was just part
of the IDF a month earlier. Ghost was first protest.
He does not know the Palestinian villagers. He goes with
them on a march. He's shot in both legs. The
group he was just with, says bleed out we don't care.

(29:48):
Go ask help from your beloved Arabs. And then the
Palestinians were like, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yeah, like yeah, I mean you talk about people not
forgiving you, It's like, yeah, there's always going to be
those Israeli idea of soldiers aren't going to forgive you.
You know, there's people who out there who will hold
on to grudges no matter what. But it is not,
it is not it should not be an impediment to

(30:14):
just because you can't imagine the future.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
That is a human limitation.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Totally.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
I think you have to remember that, you know, God,
for lack of a better word, is in the collective,
not the individual. And I think that a collective of
people just you know, have the ability to do good
as well as evil.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And so this, the shooting of
an Israeli activist, was a really big deal in israelm
Anarchists Against the Wall decided that that was the name
that they were going to stick with for their group
because it was the one that they were using that day,
and it was the one that the media was running
with because of all the press. Right, yeah, you know,
this activist with Anarchists against the Wall who had just

(31:00):
own up once, you know.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
But yeah, once you get the branding, you know, like
out there, it's kind of hard to pull back. Yeah,
that's why it's called pod Yourself a gun.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
You know.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
We tried to have a new feed with pot Yourself
the Wire, but people already know the other one, So
what can we do? Anyways, go on, I am not
this much of a shell usually. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
It's fine.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
And so they put out their own press release that
day before they knew how badly Geel had been wounded.
And it starts, no to the ghetto that's being built
by Jews, No to the walls between people, stop the
occupation Israeli's Palestinians and international activists, bring down the apartheid
wall in Masha. And there's another banger line from one

(31:44):
of their communicators a little later, And this is what
podcasting has done with me. Banger was not in my
slang vocabulary until I started hanging out with cools on
media people. Yeah yeah, next, I'll be still say based.
At some point I think.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Y yeah, it's gonna happen.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
Shelby says, no, no, base, Yeah, you don't fall for it.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
This is a banger line. Though I think we can agree, okay,
since we can remember, we have been brainwashed with hatred
and fear of our Palestinian neighbors. We have not gone
for trips in the countryside without armed escort. We were
told that our hand is extended for peace, but that
there is no one to talk to. But these lies
were exposed and are visible to everyone who participates in

(32:26):
the actions against the occupation. We have slept together beneath
the olive trees before they were uprooted. We have marched
together to the fence, and we will continue to struggle
together Israeli's Palestinians and internationals for justice and equality for all.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Oh based, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
See, okay, well you can. Sorry, No, you're probably younger.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Than me, so I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
I did put a filter on the zoom though, I
just look at No, that's fantastic, that's good shit, man,
fucking banker.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
The camp blasted for four months, and through it the
Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall was able to start
forming long term partnerships with the Popular Committees and various
West Bank villages where there were near daily nonviolent uprisings.
And there's like a dozen of these towns. The Israeli
government had two sets of rules of engagement, one for
when it was just Palestinians, which was basically, do some murder,

(33:22):
and then one for when there were internationals or Israelis,
only do a little murder. A typical Friday demonstration went
like this. People would rally in a village, gather for prayer,
and then they would march out to the apartheid fence
or to land stolen by settlers. Sometimes the soldiers would
shut it down in the village before they had a
chance to march. Other times people would reach the fence

(33:44):
and start chanting before the soldiers came in with tear
gas concussion grenades. And let's talk about rubber bullets for
a minute.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Oh, let's put some big air quotes on rubber.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
And almost everywhere in the world rubber b bullets is
actually used to mean something that might be more properly
called baton rounds, like when it's used in America by police.
You're talking about something called baton rounds, which are plastic
or rubber or sometimes wooden projectiles fired from various guns.
These suck, they hurt people, they occasionally kill people, and

(34:18):
they're bad news. Right, there's only two places in the world.
In my research I did for some weird reason in
twenty twenty, I did this whole big research project about
less lethals that police use I'm not and rubber bullets
has meant in two places in the world that I
was able to find literally metal bullets covered in rubber
to be like really vaguely less murderous. Yeah, you want

(34:42):
to guess those two places?

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Ooh, I'm going to guess.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
Uh Israel.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Yeah, that's one of them.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
That's not a guess. So it was something I know.
And the other one apartheid South Africa.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
No, although it's still Britain's fault.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Oh, Britain's fault.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Oh, India, Northern Ireland, Ireland. Yes, that's that's I believe
where the rubber bullet was developed and eventually they were like,
we gotta stop shooting them. This just keeps murdering people.
It's just a bullet. It just kills people.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Yeah, that's literally just a bullet with a like a
you know, wrapped in a flower tortilla. It's not at
all going to stop. It doesn't stop doing bullet stuff. Yeah. Well, also,
it is not not a baton round.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
I read and I only read this in one source,
but I read that one of the reasons that the
British didn't stop using them as much in Northern Ireland
is that they would bounce right soldiers.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
Yeah, yeah, that's right, which, you know, that is one
of them.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
I'm at things, you.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Know, but in the you know, in the desert, there's
like fewer things to you know, to Northern Ireland or anyway.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, so let's let's bouncy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
So the protests would disperse at this point, and then
the youth would start throwing stones at the motherfuckers who
were shooting them.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Anarchists against the Wall did more than march alongside the Palestinians.
They also planted trees, They rebuilt homes and wells. They
walked alongside farmers, facing violence from settlers. All the while.
They would get attacked by settlers and soldiers for doing this.
And they're not the only group doing this. The other
groups that I mentioned earlier are also doing this, but
you know, they're the one who I read the book
about inside Israel proper. They did theatrical protests, like at

(36:37):
one point they set up a fake checkpoint and Tel
Aviv with like barbed wire and shit, like to just
control everyone as they came through.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Another time they climbed onto tanks heading into the West
Bank to be like fuck, you can't drive to the
West Bank. Yeah, and there's sort of a non group.
They're as much a slogan or an identity as they
were an organization. They had no platform, no manifesto, but
they were all Israeli anti Zionists. The introduction to one
of their zines from two thousand and seven reads Anarchists

(37:10):
Against the Wall sweats off the excess weight of thick,
heavy ideological frames by making practice its center of gravity.
This is not to imply that principal theoretical analyzes are
not needed. Of course, we certainly encourage applying them to
deconstruct the Zionist apartheid myths. However, at this time, the
individuals comprising Anarchists Against the Wall would rather apply tugging ropes,

(37:32):
bolt cutters, and ten pound hammers to deconstruct Israel's wall
and express their disagreement with IDF roadblocks. It's basically they
were like all doing no talking, you know.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
Yeah, love it, love it, like listen, feel free to
read in a cafe. We love it, we love it.
It's nice to have a framework. Dogma can be important.
Learning theory is always cool to talk about. Some times
it gets you laid. We're just gonna do stuff, yeah
and lay I'll talk yeah, yeah, and all along.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
They're very clear and everything that they did right that
they're not the leaders of the movements, nor are they
outside agitators, but they are people born into the occupying
force and solidarity with the occupied people.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
Oh beautiful, yeah, beautiful, beautiful. That's the shit. That's the
shit that makes me feel good inside.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
I know.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
There's a village called Billin. It's a tiny town under
Israeli occupation since nineteen sixty seven. It's two miles east
of the Green line, which is the demarcation of what's
ostensibly Palestinian again depending on what who's claiming what at
what point right right right. The border wall cut it
off from sixty percent of its own farmland. Weekly protests

(38:49):
were led by the Billin's Popular Committee and an Israeli
human rights lawyer working alongside of them managed to get
the border moved slightly. And they're constantly fight settlements. But
they it's like there are these little winds. You know,
there are these like, hey, this town gets to keep having,
keeps getting to feed itself. It's like little winds in

(39:11):
the larger picture, but it's a pretty major wind to
be like, hey, like I have food, right.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yes, no, it is it is, uh, I mean just
it's a good example of how dire shit is if
that is a win, and it is a fucking win,
huge one.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
And at least three Palestinian protesters died for that win
at these non violent protests. One man, Bessima Rama, was
twenty nine when he was struck in the chest with
a tear gas canister and his heart stopped. And then
later a different protest, his sister Jahawar Abu Rahma died
from tear gas inhalation. And that one is like, there's

(39:47):
like all of these like nah ah, that's not what
killed her. Things going on that Israel is saying.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
But they say that every every time, every time someone
die by something that they claim is supposed to be
non lethal, like a bulldozer, they say, no, that's not
what happened. Actually it was hamas fire to rocket into
their own right people.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
You know, totally, you know, totally, the playbook is the
same as it has always been.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
The playbook is literally the same it is. It is
lie lie Lie, Lie Lie. Wait wait wait wait wait.
Maybe tell the truth at some point at a later
date when people don't care.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
And then if so, be like yeah, well we meant
to because fuck.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
Them, yeah yeah yeah, or okay, we did it, but
it was an accident and therefore we are not found liable.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
So, in two thousand and eight, the Bilin Popular Committee
Against the Wall, the group that had organized these protests,
and Anarchists against the Wall, were jointly because they work
together to organize these things, were jointly awarded the Carl
von Aussievski Medal, given annually by the International League of
Human Rights in Berlin, and it's named after a German

(40:58):
Nobel Prize winning Passifift who died in Gestapo custody in
nineteen thirty eight by Friend of the Pod tuberculosis. You
all thought I wasn't going to work in tuberculosis this episode,
but this motherfucker died of it.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Friend of the pod.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Oh that's my favorite Friend of the pod is tuberculosis.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Well, we have another friend of the pod, and it's
uh the fact that, yeah, that we have to sell
ads so that I can feed my dog and spend
all of my time reading history books so that I
can tell you all of these things.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Hell yeah, I love I love capitalism because it keeps
me safe looking or something.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
It's currently the system that feeds me.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
If I say nice things about capitalism on a podcast,
will someone just send me money.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Because I would be sick.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yes, yeah, we'll find out. Yeah, here's our ad money.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
And we're back. Hey.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
So, when they went to Berlin to accept the award,
the anarchists gave a funny speech about like kind of
like it was kind of weird for us, as the
Israeli anarchists to accept this, but at the end of
the day, support for Palestinian struggle is more important. To
put it in their own words, our primary moral duty
is not to maintain ideological purity, but rather to stand

(42:23):
with Palestinians and their resistance to oppression. And they also said,
this is where I got the thing earlier that I
said from this quote. We would like to stress that
we are not equal partners, but rather occupiers who joined
the occupied.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
In their.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, yes, thank you. Yeah, these you know what this
is an aptly named podcast.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Those are cool people. Yeah, and they're doing cool things.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Yeah, no, I yeah, I'm excited that I figured out.
I've known about them for a while because I am
when I lived in Amsterdam years ago, like kind of
during a lot of the height of this, and I
had a lot of Israeli friends who live there, partly
because a lot of Israeli's left the country because the
other option was go serve or go.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
To that's right, yeahm hmm, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
In January two thousand and eight, folks in Tel Aviv
and Israeli City held a critical mass protest against the occupation.
You ever heard a critical mass. It's this old style
of protest.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
No, I know of this thing where people go on bike.
That's yeah, oh okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah, well that's the thing. It's like it's like it's
it's just a.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
That was just a bike ride. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Well, it's like it started off as this movement. We'll
probably do an episode about some time. Probably start off
as this movement to like reclaim cities from cars, you know,
and like a bike rights thing. But then more and
more during the ultra globalization movement, they started getting used
to like be a way to hold a demonstration was
to go be on bicycles cool and so Anarchist Against

(43:59):
the Wall held a critical mass protest against the occupation
January two thousand and eight, and this one as small
as hell. It was like thirty people. There's not really
anything illegal about it. You're just literally vehicles that are
allowed in the street and you're riding in the street.
One protester, Jonathan Pollock, was arrested. This was politically motivated.

(44:22):
He was a founding member of Anarchists Against the Wall
and he's an interesting guy. He was in the hardcore
scene in the nineties and he founded a vegan anti
Zionist group called One Struggle, this very nineties hardcore thing
to do. Yeah, his case of riding a bicycle in
the street went a trial in twenty ten, and he

(44:43):
gave this awesome speech where he got three months for
organizing the protest, which he claims he didn't do. And
his speech is basically like, well, I should have I
should have organized a protest, but I just happened to not.
I'm not sorry, Like, yeah, no, the protest is sick.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Yeah, kind of sucks getting in trouble for it because
I'm not I didn't do it, but fuck I wish
I did it, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Exactly, Yeah, which is what I've always held. Yeah, you know,
if I ever, like, I have a friend who once
got arrested for got convicted for doing like all of
the damage at a protest, like all of the windows
that got broken. They were like, you did all of it.
She is not physically possible, but he did that.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
I mean, unless you're the Hulk or like the kool
Aid Man, that guy can do whatever you want.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
That's a good point.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
And so unless my friend has this secret capacity that
I'm not personally aware of. And I was always trying
to tell him. I was like, you should say you
did it.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
You did the time, like, yeah, you might as well
at this point, Yeah, you might as well just do it.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah, or just start saying you did it. No one's
gonna question you.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Is it really stolen valor if you've gone to prison.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
For it, that's one hundred percent true? Is that is
a one thousand percent er? Just say you did it.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
There's a thing called having too much honor, all right,
or being too honest.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Right, totally come on.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
And so as soon as he got out, Jonathan returned
to protest work he sent several more months in prison
in twenty twenty on charges of throwing stones at soldiers
in the West Bank, which he actually almost certainly did
not do. Most sources seem to admit that this was
a political arrest. He had been at demonstrations every week
for years and no one had ever seen him throwing stones,
even though in April two thousand and five, the IDF

(46:31):
shot him in the head with a tear gas canister,
requiring stitches and hear me out, this is my favorite
Israeli claim IDF claim so far. The IDF was like, no,
we didn't.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Shoot you on the head. We don't.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
We don't shoot people with tar guess cannisters. What happened
was we shot it into the air when it rick
a shade off of a stone thrown by these evil terrorists.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
M that's right.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Once again, it's the magic stone theory of you know,
it's it's exactly you know, there was a guy on
the grassy knoll who threw a stone a child. Actuallyinians
killed JFK. Is that what you're saying. I'm saying the
Palestinians killed JFK. Which is I think a Palestinian man

(47:16):
is supposed to have killed RFK, but I don't know
if I don't not in connection to the conflict to
just he yea related people are people? Oh yeah, yeah
yeah yeah yeah, different thing.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Yeah. In twenty nineteen, this guy, Jonathan, he survived an
assassination attempt by knife wielding far right guys, and he
he regularly gets arrested for all this organizing, and he
always refuses to cooperate with his court cases because he've
viewsed them as illegitimate, and so this is part of
why he ends up getting prison time here and there
for doing He's like, because he's not actually doing wildly

(47:55):
illegal stuff. He's an organizer and he's showing up in
solidarity with people.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
You know.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Anyway, he's cool. Yeah, Well, I don't know him personally.
Maybe he's a terrible person. The stuff that I know
about him doing is yeah, so far, so good. Anyhow,
At the very end of two thousand and eight, Israel
launched a three week quote war war gets quotes in Gaza.
It gets called the Gaza War, although that name was

(48:21):
probably gonna anyway. It gets called Operation cast Lead, and
it gets called the Gaza Massacre.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
More lots of different names.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, more than a thousand Palestinians were killed, as well
as thirteen Israelis, four of whom were killed by friendly fire.
It was this horrible massacre that laid the groundwork for
the current batch of resistance in Gaza, because the people
who are twenty now were five when they survived this
horrible shit.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
More than a thousand Israelis marched against the war in
Tel Aviv. And I want to quote from anarchist against
the Wall speech to just show how much things have
changed in their intervening time.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Today we are told that a ruthless attack on Gaza's
populace is in fact a war on Hamas. Dropping bombs
in residential areas in the world's most densely populated region
is not a war crime, but instead an assault on
the infrastructure of terrorism. Shelling the University of Gaza's female
dorms is eliminating explosive labs and murdering hundreds of women
and children constitute just and moral combat.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Yeah, evergreen, Yeah, evergreen. I mean it's just, you know,
it is the same thing over and over again regarding
Gaza and the Israeli treatment of Gaza. And if you're
interested in learning what they call this type of security
without peace is one of the things they call it.

(49:49):
They also call these, you know, every two year operations
in Gaza, they call it mowing the grass. The idea,
the idea being, you know, you mow the grass that's
killing a bunch of people, you know, supposedly terrorist quote unquote,

(50:10):
and then you wait a few years and then you know,
you got to mow the grass again. So if you
want to know the value of human life in Gaza,
just look no further than the phrase mowing the grass
or mowing the lawn.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah, that's fucking it's fucking dark.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
And it's not like, oh well that's something said by
like some far right No, that's what that is generally
what it's called. That is what they say in their
own media. It is I've heard it's a phrase I've
heard bandied about in our own media recently.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
And you that's a bad thing to import.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
Yeah, you can't help but feel like, you know, I
maybe call me naive, but I don't think the Overton
window has shifted enough to describe a massacre of civilians.
Is mowing the lawn and not have people be like
that sounds genocidal?

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Is shit, right, But you know, who knows. Maybe I'm naive,
maybe people don't.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
I mean, honestly, the main this is the first time
I've been paying some attention to this stuff since, you know,
since I was about nineteen or twenty or so, and
so however, many decades, two decades whatever. I think people
know who I am, and now everyone knows everything about me.
Born in Maryland, Yeah, roughly forty or forty one years old, right, raby,

(51:36):
I'm forty seven, who knows?

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Okay, anyway, so social Security number eight exactly.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
But this is the first time that the the media
narrative didn't work. Yes, yes, and that is hopeful.

Speaker 3 (51:55):
It is, and I think it's because this is my
general theory about it, is that the thing about manufacturing
consent is that it takes time and it takes effort.
And the thing about propaganda is that propaganda works better
in sort of a controlled media space. It also works
better once again spaced out. It used to be in

(52:18):
the past that a massacre would happen, or a Palasidian
civilian or a journalist would be murdered by Israeli forces,
and they would say, no, they're lying, because they always lie,
you know, they would say, the Palestinians are lying, we
didn't do that, they did that to themselves or whatever,
and then weeks would go by, months would go by,

(52:40):
and eventually there might be some admission of guilt, like
you know, like has done so many times, We've heard
this a thousand times.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
By the time they admit.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
To anything or they circle back around to it, no
one cares in this instance. So much propaganda is happening,
happening so fast, at such a high rate, at least
in the last you know, couple of months since the
seventh that there's no time for spin. There's it just
the spin looks manic and ridiculous. Like a hospital is

(53:12):
bombed in Gaza and they say, we didn't bomb the hospital.
We don't bomb hospitals. You know, they probably bomb their
own hospital. And then two days later they bomb a
hospital and they're like, okay, we do bomb hospitals, but
we have to bomb hospitals because they're not actually hospitals.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
And it's like.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
Any casual viewer of the news is not getting the
sufficient time to be convinced of their line. Instead, they
just two days later do the thing they said they
never do, and so you go Oh they're liars, and
I think that is, you know, I mean in a
horrifying way.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
It is.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
It's a hopeful development that they are. They seem to
have just in general gotten worse at Husbar Husbar being
an Israeli propaganda and that they are not that they
were ever good at it, if you cared about the
subject at all. But it's particularly bad now because they

(54:09):
just start living in such a bubble where they don't
all of their talking points, all of their kind of
like liberal pink washing is dated for this younger generation.
It feels phony, like we know what pink washing looks like,
not you know, through Israel so much as we know
it through corporations who City Bank having a Pride float,

(54:32):
you know, and we know like, oh people just say
this in order to sell us stuff. So now people
are seeing Israel doing that and they're going like, oh,
I know this, Yeah, this is fucking the MetLife you know,
fucking float over at the Pride parade. This is this
is you're trying to sell me life insurance? Is bullshit?

(54:53):
Yeah no, that makes sense to me. I'm just glad
people aren't buying it as much as they used to,
and that it's it's like nice and not be alone and.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
You know, God like it is.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
If there's one thing that has made me a little
bit less insane, it's been seeing other people, you know,
being able to be like you see this.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Right, Yeah?

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Yeah, yeah, this this feels like super fake, like more
fake than usual.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
If I ever had time in my life, I would
start a podcast purely about Hasbara. It would just be
the you know, the weekly because it's all so it's
all so egregious and insane that you know that I
think from an American perspective or you know, we would

(55:51):
be able to look at it and just just to
dig into it for you know, I don't know, to
see what is actually happening. Yeah, but you know I
got I got TV shows to it. One Now I
understand this well, I mean I don't know. There's always
more projects to do.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
There's always more projects.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
So speaking of more projects, there's a whole bunch of
other projects in Israel that are part of resisting occupation
and they ranged the Gamut. One of them, Yeshkovl, was
found in nineteen eighty one and it is a movement
of IDF soldiers who refused to serve in the occupied territories.
And I know I was talking earlier about how like

(56:27):
Israeli friends who were all, you know, getting away from
the draft or whatever. And of like four Israelis I
know who avoided serving in the IDF, two of them
just left the country, or one person just never went
to Israel basically had joint citizenship. Another marched in and
said fuck you, I won't do it, you know, and

(56:48):
so they sent him jail for a while and then
he came out and was like, yeah, well fuck you.
And then another one of my friends I probably said
this before on the podcast, another one of my friends
who went in and was like, give me a gun.
I don't know who I'm gonna shoot. I'm gonna shoot.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Someone, damn.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
And they were like, nope, you don't get a gun.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
I wonder if that would work.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Now, I have no idea. I know, right, they'd be
like you're a guy.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
At this point, I think there's just so many reservists
came up after the seventh to be like give me
a gun.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
So who knows.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
But I know, I mean he was like I think
he took it real far. He was like, I don't
know who am I to shoot.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Might be me, might be you. I don't know, you know,
oh I love that, and.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
So okay, so you and so you have all this.
You have this movement of people going back decades. The
first people who refuse to serve go back at least
as far as the fifties, and it it ebbs and flows,
but it is uh flowing again. And then of course
you have people like Giel who went and served and
didn't like what they saw and didn't like what they
were involved with, and then joined the other side immediately

(58:01):
after leaving. And when I say the other side, of
course whatever that told the whole story. I don't need
to disclaim this. And then more recently I swear it
on to current events. In September twenty twenty three, two
hundred and thirty conscientious objectors signed a letter called Youth
Against Dictatorship, and they said, quote, we decided that we

(58:21):
cannot in good faith serve a bunch of fascist settlers
that are in control of the government right now. Reservists
have signed onto this as well, because as you mentioned,
I mean a lot of reservists are signing up and
going off and persecuting this war. But a lot of
reservists have signed onto this as well and refused to serve.
And this is tied into the right wing is really

(58:44):
extra coming to power in Israel this year and the
twenty twenty three Israeli judicial reform has centralized more power
into the hands of legislature and away from the courts. Basically,
the Supreme Court used to be able to declare laws
on constitutional.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
Right the way a checks and balance the system usually yeah,
and they were like, what have instead of having checks
and balances, we just the right wing people in charge.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Israel's also increasing slowly the authority of the Rabbinical Court,
saying that religious law can be used in civil matters.
And this isn't to say that the left is like
powerful in Israel. It really really isn't. But there is hope,
and there is hope in a way that is interesting
to me.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
And to.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Close it to compare to when the left hope was
not as hopeful. Twenty eleven, Yeah, Israel got a version
of the Plaza occupation protests that swept around the globe.
Occupy and you know, all those kinds of things. Theirs
was particularly lackluster and reformist, not just because Israel hadn't
been a hit as hard during the financial crisis. But

(59:48):
to quote author Uri Gordon quote, the fact that a
movement mobilizing around social justice effectively ignored the social conditions
of millions of Palestinians living under their own government's military occupation.
This was an occupy movement that ignored the other real
occupation taking place in its own backyard. And so anarchists

(01:00:08):
against the Wall, they like, showed up. They're like, all right,
well fucking we'll do this shit too, you know, and
they set up their own tents and they were run
out for bringing anti occupation politics into the occupy movement.
So they moved over to the tense city of actual
homeless people in African refugees, like right across on the
other side of the street, basically because they've been in

(01:00:31):
solidarity with those people for years and they were accepted
and they're still around. So were the International Solidarity Movement,
and more importantly so are Palestinian organizations of all types
and all levels. And thinking about any of these groups
of people as like Palestinis Hamas, israel Is the IDF

(01:00:54):
whatever or Israeli's is you know, is reduction.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
That will just fuck everything up, Yes, completely reductionists. Then
also you know again gives too much of the gives
too much fuel for the right wing in Israel to
use in order to I think rile up bring people

(01:01:22):
to their cause of like you see this, you know,
they hate us, they hate all of us, they want
to kill us if they ever had their way, Yeah,
we'd be driven into this.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
The one state solution that they were fighting for was
a non right was actually a decent like non apartheid state.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
But yeah, right, right, and so yes, so it is
it is important to remember as much as the Israeli
left has been diminished, and it has been, there's no
getting around that. And as much as they, you know,
as much as the Seventh has I think further ghettoized

(01:02:02):
the left, it does exist. There is a history there,
and I do not think that it is I think
the pendulum is a pendulum for a reason, and it's
the idea that it's going to stay swinging right forever
is an illusion, and it is it is something that

(01:02:25):
I personally am seeing more and more people, especially now
waking up and listening to, you know, Israeli leftist voices
who are still out there. And I also want to say,
it's also important to not dismiss and this is you know,

(01:02:46):
for I suppose the more online left people, it is
important to not dismiss any Israeli leftist voices because they
might sound, you know, because they say something like Hamas
is bad, like the idea that you would like. You

(01:03:07):
can't you can't hold people to an an unrealistic standard. Now, personally,
I don't think it's at all unrealistic to be like
a right wing Islamist group is bad. Yes, the kidnapping
people is bad, Murdering civilians is bad. It's just like period.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
And uh, but like I do see people kind of
go like, oh you know this, you know this, the
Israeli left is dead. Look at this person you know
talking about how bad Hamas is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
And it's like, bro, slow your role here, slow your
fucking role here.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
The you know, everyone talks to the audiences they know,
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Yes, exactly, everyone talks to the audience that they know
and what they you know in Israel, Uh you know
it is Hamas is uh uh you know, I mean
not even just outside of Israel. It is a terrorism bad.
There are reasons for it. No one is disputing that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
No one gets to kill civilians is a perfectly reasonable
line to hold people too, and then you have to
hold all sides to it while still recognizing that one
side is more power than the.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
Other right one hundred percent, and the power dynamics are
what's important here, And that is a different argument than
saying something like hummus is good. So but again, this
is not you know, I'm talking to fucking anonymous internet
accounts now, which is never a good thing to do.

(01:04:38):
But yes, the Israeli left, I think, you know, I
maybe this is naive. Maybe I just have hope, but
they will have their day, and I think more and
more there where they have always been the most useful
is in showing the world that this is not about

(01:05:00):
ethnic hatred or religious hatred, that Israelis and Palestinians are
neither are monoliths, and neither are they. They have been
in this fight together and will continue to be in
this fight together, despite their small numbers, despite everything you see.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
And yeah, I don't know, I just have some hope. Yeah,
I have some hope.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
And I think that whatever hope we have is in
solidarity with each other, with people who are fradualized in
various ways. Working together across all kinds of cultural boundaries,
and yeah, it gives me hope.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
And remember, the left fails more than it succeeds, so
being like, oh, the Israeli left failed is like, well, yeah,
the left. That's kind of what the left does is
fail and fail and fail and fail and fail. But
when it succeeds, we also remember that. And it's a
it's a lot easier to build something new than it
is to tear some down. So let's h extend a

(01:06:03):
little bit of hope, a little bit of positivity, a
little bit of grace.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Well that's our non current events podcast about history, about
the past, and uh yeah you got you got any
plugs for us here at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
Oh you know, uh, join me to talk about the
Wire and the Sopranos, Pot yourself a gun, a TV
rewatch podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
We do it. It's great every week.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
And then also in between seasons, we have our our
og show that me and my cost Vince Mancini, have
been doing together for over a decade, is called the
Frontcast and that's at patreon dot com slash Frodcast. For
those of you who are like Matt, I love you dog,
but I will not watch a whole last TV show

(01:06:54):
to listen to you talk about it. Well, then listen
to the frodcast patri dot com slash broadcast. You know
you can. You can join if you want, but also
I don't. I don't want to take your Your money
is more probably more important to be spent at Cool
Zone because they do that actually matter.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
I have an impact and are helping to educate people.

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
Me and Vince mostly just talk about movies and like funny,
funny shit we see on the Internet, and it all
matters sometimes and yeah, yeah, yeah, some of it more
than others, so I gotta tell you yes. And then
I'm on Instagram at matt leeb jokes follow.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Me, hell yeam if you want to follow me, I'm
on Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy. I'm technically on Twitter. I'm
technically on lots of services that I don't actually check.
I deleted Twitter off my phone is the best decision
I've made for my mental health. But then it just
means how you open it on my laptop and that doesn't.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Fix anything yet.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
And also, if you want to hear me read you
fiction every Sunday on this feed and on it could
happen here feed you can hear the cool Zone Media
book Club where I read you short stories. And some
people use this to go to sleep too, which means
that one of my friends now whenever I talk to him,

(01:08:24):
he starts feeling sleepy.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
That rule.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
So yep, that's it from us, and we'll see you
next week with more Cool People Did Cool Stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.