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- [00:06]
A
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are committing war crime after war crime after war crime. And the question is why? And so I have an expert on to educate all of us and give us some insight. Let's welcome Dr. Mark Lamont Hill. He has a PhD from Penn Casual and is an anthropologist and scholar of the Middle east and Palestine. He's also an expert on the political relationship between ISRA in the United States. And according to his T shirt today, he's also extra black.
- [00:36]
B
That's right. Every day.
- [00:37]
A
Welcome.
- [00:38]
B
Good to see you. Thank you for having me.
- [00:40]
A
Good to see you, too. So what I am seeing are war crimes. I am seeing schools bombed. I'm seeing people breathe in toxic rain. I'm seeing hospitals bombed. And this seems to be a feature, not a bug, of IDF military operations. Please enlighten me on what we're all seeing here.
- [01:01]
B
Well, first, I'm glad you pointed out the feature piece of it, because that's exactly what's happening. It's happening in Iran right now. It happened in Gaza. It happens in the west bank, though in a slightly different way. But ultimately, there is a very particular approach that the Israeli army takes to military action, and it's one of overkill. For years in Gaza, for example, what we saw was the IDF engaging in what they called their words, not mine, mowing the lawn, which referred to periodic military operations and military strikes that would deplete the population slightly, but also instill a certain kind of fear in the population about what resistance would look like after October 7th of 2023. We saw something much bigger, something devastating. We saw an actual genocide, and we saw the destruction of hospitals, schools, cemeteries, anything that makes a society a society, any semblance of civil society destroyed. And the argument always is, look at them. They're so violent, they're so dangerous. They pose such a threat, a nonstop threat, that we have to be thorough in our destruction in order to save ourselves. It's like back in the day, although you're clearly too young to remember this, when Rodney King was getting beaten. And it's like five cops beating up Rodney King. And they're like, yeah, but I know it's five on one, but if he had gotten up, you don't know what he would have done to us. You know, because of all the PCP and all the others and all the stereotypes they have about black people. It's a very similar thing here. These crazy Palestinians, these crazy Arabs. If, if we were to not do this thoroughly, look what they would do to us. Now, when you transpose that over to what's happening in Iran right now. It's a very similar ongoing narrative. They pose an existential threat to us. They're always looking to destroy us. They're always enriching uranium. They're always trying to build a nuclear bomb to get rid of us.
- [02:59]
A
And.
- [02:59]
B
And look at what they've always done. This sort of fake appeal to history. And in doing so, they make us. Meaning. And I say us right now. I mean, the United States, they make us the good guys. They make Israel the good guys, and they make anybody over there, whether it's Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine. They make them the bad guy. But also justified.
- [03:18]
A
Okay, let's talk about the patronizing propaganda that is used by Benjamin Netanyahu. We've all seen this hyperclip for 40 years. They're going to have a nuke. Death to America. Death to Israel. They're going to have a nuke. They're going to have a nuke. Going to have a nuke. And we see that. And then we see our president have. Has a sane sentence, and he's like, oh, we demolished all of their potential nuke things. This is like a month ago or whatever. And then BB Dog walks Trump into this thing, and then they're like, oh, they were gonna have a nuke. And it's just the stupidity in which they think the audience receives their information that is not only dangerous, but also insulting. And this propaganda that they use, and I have fallen prey to it, Dr. Hill. I really. I have fallen. I've fallen prey to it before, but what I've really woken up to is that this whole notion that Israel's this great democracy and the Palestinians, you know, they will throw gay people off a roof. And then I'm like, you're killing gay Palestinians. So what. What kind of democracy do you have? Like, what kind of democracy is that? Do you follow? Zero rule of law. And then they keep electing Benjamin Netanyahu. And so is it a cultural problem over there where everybody's so propagandized for all of this violence?
- [04:49]
B
It's a good question. I think there are a few things happening. One, we're all propagandized. You're not the only one who falls victim to it. I remember being a kid of the. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, watching the WWF. I mean, from the moment the Iron Sheik wins the title by stealing it from Bob Backlin, you know, which happens right at the time of the 1979, you know, the Iranian revolution, and Hulk Hogan comes and saves the day and he's a real American. And there's Sergeant Slaughter and Hulk Hogan and the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Bull. From the moment that happens, we're taught to look at different countries, different ethnicities, different identities, differently. Whether it's the Rocky movies, whether. I mean, you could look at. We're all socialized, right? When you add that to news media, which for years didn't even want to say the name or the word Palestinian, they were just Arabs. Do you see the kind of passing jokes on TV shows that I love, like the Golden Girls, you know, where they're making PLO jokes, you know, anti PLO jokes? Right. There's a way they were all kind of socialized then. When you add that to the political narratives, it gets very, very dangerous. This idea that the US Wants peace and the brown people always want war, that they're always perpetually, perennially and preternaturally violent. They can't help but be violent. All they do is fight. And that's all they've ever done. This becomes the narrative. And I think Israeli society buys into that narrative the same way American society or French society or German society buys into that narrative. However, I do think it's a little more complicated and I think there's a little less room for grace at times. When you go to places like Jerusalem, where I've spent the last decade or so doing research, I see settlers taking people's homes. I see settlers saying, look, if I don't take the home, someone else is, so why not me? That's not an abstract narrative. I understand that this home belongs to a Palestinian, and now it does not because of the choice that I'm making. So I don't want to let them off the hook. You know, people say, I hear Bernie Sanders say this all the time. You know, I don't support Netanyahu's right wing agenda. That's a way of framing the problem in Israel as a problem of Netanyahu. And that's not enough. Netanyahu is a jerk. Sure, Netanyahu, when he gets out of office, may walk into a prison cell because of crimes he's committed to. Netanyahu is a warmonger when it comes to Israel. Netanyahu and Trump make the perfect bromance because they're the same person. We get it. But Israeli society is structured in a way that produces inequality. It's not a Netanyahu state, it's an apartheid state. There are people who get different rules and rights, levels of access based on whether or not they're one identity or another. That is the problem with Israeli society. It's not a problem of leadership. If you brought in the most progressive leader ever, if the society stays the same, if we continue to have admissions councils in places like the Galilee where even black and brown Jews can't live in the same neighborhood, necessarily, if they don't fit the culture and social fabric of society. If we have places like the west bank in East Jerusalem and Gaza which are walled off from mainstream or from the actual Israeli state, again, some people have citizenship, other people do not. People talk about two state solutions, but it's a one state reality right now where Israel controls everything. They control the west bank, they control Gaza, they control East Jerusalem, and yet Palestinians don't have equal rights. That is a fundamental problem. And right before October 7, people said, oh, but the Israeli people were sticking up for themselves. They were marching in the streets to fight Netanyahu. And that's true. And the liberal Zionist wing of Israel said, absolutely, we don't like what he's trying to do with the courts. We don't like what he's doing with society. But they were fighting for more democracy among the people who they wanted to give democracy to. It's no different than fighting to keep us. It'd be no different than the north in times of slavery saying, look, we're going to. Or rather the south saying, look, we're going to continue to fight. We want to hold on to the south. We want the south to be fair. We want everybody to have a vote, not the enslaved people, but everybody else. And we're going to fight to make sure that women have a right, but not those black women. That's what's happening right now. They were fighting for a liberal Zionist vision, not a democratic vision.
- [09:18]
A
Okay, so you speak about Trump and Netanyahu being perfect bromance, not strange bedfellows. Perfect bedfellows. And you speak about if Netanyahu drops dead or goes to prison, you still have a cultural problem. And I think in the United States, if Trump drops dead or goes to prison, we still have a cultural problem. But what I see is the through line that a lot of Americans need to wake up to is you talk about apartheid and Israel. Israel. But let's talk about apartheid in the United States for sure. Let's talk about the fact that just recently, when white women and men that look like me saw Renee Good and Alex Preddy shot, they were like, oh, my God, they are out of control. They are just over policing and just shooting innocent people. But the Lesson for Americans is black people have been telling us this for decades and we are dismissive. We cede ground to right wing media in that, oh, you know, you shouldn't have resisted arrests and all of the propaganda surrounding this. My husband's a criminal defense attorney and there's no question we have a two tiered justice system. He has a client who is serving crazy amounts of time, a black man, for crack cocaine. Life sentence on top of life sentence on top of life sentence. That would never happen to a white man. So is this a through line in Israeli society and American society that we all need to wake up to in order to get beyond this when we do an autopsy? And what led us into fascism? It started long before the incubation of all of this moment started, long before that idiotic man came down the escalator. Please speak to that.
- [11:06]
B
I'm so glad you said that. I mean, again, this stuff is in the DNA of the nation. This nation was created on inequality. This nation was created on the exploitation and extraction of black labor. And this idea, to your cultural point, that it's normal and that it's natural and that it makes sense, of course black people should be doing this. Of course black people shouldn't be provided access to the same rights and privileges, et cetera, et cetera. And it lingers on until this day. And so when you talk about what happened to Renee Goode, when you talk about the kind of moral panic and outrage that people saw when that white woman was killed, that is always what happens in this society. I think about when John F. Kennedy walks through Harlem in 1960 holding up a black baby, and they dismiss it as a campaign stunt. They saw it as kind of cheap liberal political theater. Like Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on Arsenio hall, or Hillary Clinton in a church in Selma trying to clap on Beat. It's like, this is what we do to make people happy. But you juxtapose that to Bobby Kennedy walking through West Virginia. He's in Appalachia, holding up white babies. His belly's bloated, he's crying, snot's coming out of his nose. That image very quickly becomes the image for the War on poverty. Because white misery is less tolerable in this country. White pain is less tolerable in this country. When my uncles and aunts and cousins were getting locked up for crack, quite literally like no one was bugging out about it. In fact, we made laws and fake science to justify the arrest. Like you talked about the crack cocaine differential, powder cocaine differential, that's one piece of it. And then again, the logic of the crackhead versus the cokehead, right? Your cokehead could be a cool frat boy. Your accountant could even be a cokehead. Your stockbroker could be your stockbroker, your doctor. Exactly. But no one says, you know, I got a great accountant. He's on crack. You can go to him. You know, we don't do it. Even though they're the same drug, we make mythologies around it to justify the differences. And so we're always trying to justify inequality through science, through media, through pop culture, through all these representations. And so when we see a white woman killed in the street in the very same way that so many black and brown people have been killed in the street, protesting in Ferguson, protesting in Minneapolis, protesting in Sanford, Florida, we're just reenacting a very old American tradition. And that's the exact same thing to your point that's happening in Israel. It's the exact same thing.
- [13:44]
A
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this as I've kind of weaned off of a corporate news diet after the last election and really trying to educate myself more and more and becoming more. I've always been an independent thinker. I was a progressive person in the Bible Belt. But I've tried to become even more and more educated off of this corporate diet. And as you open up your eyes to the Israel influence in the United States government, it's a minefield at first when I, because I started to tiptoe out into it. And then it's like, oh, she's an anti Semite. And so this idea that they weaponize something that ultimately endangers Jewish people worldwide using something so haphazardly, because in all actuality, war crimes and aggressions must be criticized. We must, as just people, stand up regardless of who is getting killed. You know, I remember I come from, you know, a line of progressives. I remember when George W. Bush attacked Iraq. My mother and I were on the phone and I had little young boys at the time. My mom saying, you know, Jennifer, she's from Texas, she go, darling, I just feel so bad for these Iraqis too. You know, they didn't want any of this. And Bush is bombing the wrong damn country. And if this woman, you know, now she lives in Oklahoma City, but if she could figure that out and she sees the humanity in other people and this quantifying of which lives matter and which lives don't is constantly a through line. But let's get back to the influence that Israel has over both parties. This was a real eye opening thing for me. And when I realized that AIPAC gave Donald Trump just about as much money as Elon Musk did, but they also own Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker. The betrayal that I feel about that. And then you realize, oh, that's why we don't have an opposition party, because they're paid controlled opposition. Speak about this, your knowledge about this inside me and my listeners about this duplicity.
- [15:56]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. And I wrote a book called except for Palestine, the Limits of Progressive Politics precisely for this reason, along with my friend and brother Mitchell Plitnick. The reason we wrote the book was precisely for this point. There are lots of progressives out there, lots of progressives out there who don't support indiscriminate bombing, who will call themselves anti imperialists, who support free speech, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you can go on down the list, but there's always the progressive exception. And I'm putting that in quotes for Palestine because you can't really be a progressive except for Palestine. And the reason is multiple. One again is the misinformation that we've been fed for years. If we've been fed that the struggle over Israel and Palestine is a struggle solely about Jewish self determination and Jewish self defense, then of course you'll support Israel's right, right? Even the framing of the conversation, do you support Israel's right to exist? It's like, what does that mean? Of course we support Jewish people's right to exist and Israelis right to exist as human beings. No one should live without safety, dignity, self determination, justice, et cetera. Everybody deserves that with no exceptions. But too often the right to exist, when you unpack, it really means the right to exist as an apartheid state. It means the right to exist on our terms. Countries don't have a right to exist, people do. But that language is only used for Israel. If you were to ask Chuck Schumer, do you support communist China's right to exist? He would fumble around and ignore you and walk away. If you said, do we support Iran's right to exist? What would he say? So what does it mean to support a nation state's right to exist? And so for me, it's not a very helpful question. But it's part of how we've been tricked. Many black Americans have been told that we have a kind of duty to support Israel because of Jewish Americans support of us during the civil rights struggle. And while our Jewish brothers and sisters were quite supportive of us during the struggle for civil rights here in the United States. The way we repay them properly is to fight for justice everywhere, including to protect the rights of Jewish people. The rights of Jewish people are not protected by building an apartheid state in the Middle East. The rights of Jewish people are protected by ensuring that there's safety, dignity and self determination for Jewish people everywhere. That does not come at the expense of anyone else's. That has to be key. The other piece of this, because I don't want to make everybody this innocent patsy who just got misrepresented, is the cynical part, right? There are people who are very intentional in framing any critique of Israel as an act of anti Semitism, any challenge of Zionism as an act of anti Semitism. And in fact, part of what's happened over the last century is that Zionism has been conflated with Judaism and so that to be Jewish is now understood to be a Zionist in the minds of some people. And so any attack on Israel or any criticism of Israel as a nation state, the same way we criticize the policies of any nation, is seen as anti Jewish. I mean, can you imagine if I were to criticize Saudi Arabia, which I do all the time, if I were to criticize Saudi Arabia and I was called an Islamophobe as such, just because I'm criticizing the Kingdom of Saudi, or if I were criticizing the Iranian regime, does that make me anti Shiite? Like, it's not a fair or principled position to take as a dishonest one, but it's been codified in law. The International Holocaust remembrance alliance has a definition of antisemitism which is intentionally broad. It was never intended to be law, but it's very broad, very vague and very dangerous. What Congress has done, among other institutions, including the federal government, is adopt the IHRA definition of anti Semitism, which says that if I were to criticize Israel, that would make me anti Semitic. If I were to compare Israel and the regime of violence and ethnic cleansing, et cetera, if I were to compare it to, say, Nazi Germany, as some people do, that's not my comparison. It's honestly not. I'm not afraid to make comparisons. That's just not mine. But for people who make that comparison, they're saying that is definitionally anti Semitic. I say, have y' all have that debate about whether it is or it's not like Nazi Germany, but it doesn't make you anti Semitic to have the conversation if you're basing it on the Evidence, but there's no room to bring out the evidence. And then there's the last part. And this is, I definitely saved the biggest for last. And that's the money, the lobby money. Let me be very clear, the lobbying money. I'm not suggesting that there's some anti, that there's some cabal of power. I'm not suggesting that Jewish money is doing anything. Those are anti Semitic tropes and slurs and very dangerous. We have to reject those. We have to analyze Israel on the same terms that we analyze every other country. We shouldn't hold Israel to a lower standard and we shouldn't hold Israel to a higher standard. And I'm saying that in the same way that there's a gun lobby, in the same way that there's a pro life lobby, there is very clearly an Israel lobby. And that Israel lobby makes sure that candidates on both sides of the aisle have a certain position. The same way we can't get gun reform, you know, because both sides have, are NRA up the wazoo. We often can't get any meaningful progressive policy on Israel, Palestine because both sides, Democrat and Republican, are apacked up the wazoo. And when you look at the Clinton, when you, I mean, you watch Hillary Clinton stand on stage against Donald Trump, she's clearly the superior opponent. The candidate, she's clearly the superior candidate. She's smarter than him. She's dancing circles around him on every topic. She, she has a different analysis and a different solution until you get to Israel and then suddenly they're literally reading the same talking points. I couldn't tell on a transcript who was who. The same thing happens when Joe Biden takes the stage. The same thing happens when Hakeem Jeffries speaks. The same thing happens when Chuck Schumer speaks. It's not a coincidence that these Cory Booker, I mean, what are we talking about? I mean, it's absurd and it's frustrating to see. And finally, I would just say, and just to circle back to the anti Semitism thing, we do need to fight anti Semitism. We need to dismantle antisemitism everywhere it emerges around the globe. That is a non starter to say. It is a non starter to say we'll wait on the Jewish question or we'll wait on the anti Semitism question. No, it's urgent and it's primary. Jewish rights should never take a back seat. We must always, always fight for Jewish rights and fight against anti Semitism everywhere around the globe. But there is nothing more anti Semitic, nothing more anti semitic. Than to attach the violence and the rogue nature of statecraft that we see coming from Netanyahu. To look at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, to look at decades of displacement, decades of violation of international law, decades of illegal military occupation. There is nothing more anti Semitic than to look at all of that stuff and attach that to the beautiful, wonderful sacred tradition of Judaism. Judaism ain't got nothing to do with this. This is a nation that's doing bad stuff. Just like the US does bad stuff in New Zealand and does bad stuff and Australia does bad stuff and Canada does bad stuff. We have to be able to hold Israel accountable, to have an honest conversation that will ultimately make Jews safer and make all of us a little more free.
- [23:41]
A
Okay, final question. Speaking of what is anti Semitic? I grew up in the Bible Belt, I don't live there any longer. I just recently moved to New York, but a lot. And I was an atheist raised by atheists. Really weird upbringing in the Bible Belt. But a lot of my friends that my peers in high school and junior high were rapture preppers and they want the like Ted Cruz lady Graham. They want the Jews to be in Israel kind of like places please. And then Jesus comes down and sends them to hell.
- [24:14]
B
Yes. And then conversions and death and then
- [24:17]
A
they're lecturing us about bigotry and it's just so rich and so inherently demeaning to Jewish people. And I also think this is the most co opted group in America. Trump was able to call Falwell Jr. Get the evangelical vote. Netanyahu is now investing in this group of white evangelical Christians to bring them over to Israel and use them. And just last question. Just speak to that dynamic of Christian Zionism playing such a huge role in this and kind of emotionally blackmailing. You know, we're accused of virtue signaling. I accuse MAGA of Christian signaling. They weaponize their faith and Christian signal all the time. And this is a central part feature of this Iranian war, end of times apocalyptic freak show they're all into.
- [25:10]
B
I mean you just used all the perfect words to describe it. I mean this is the Christian nationalism is deeply dangerous, deeply racist, deeply anti Semitic. Many of the people who are supporting Netanyahu, from the White House, from the State House and from Congress are people who hate Jews and love Israel.
- [25:32]
A
It's true.
- [25:35]
B
There are very few people more deeply anti Semitic I have found. Thanks. Than these MAGA people. But they still want to support Israel. Why? For the reason you just gave. Because it fits into their vision of the eschaton of Christian eschatology. Or what the end of days looks like, as you said, they think that. That Jesus only comes back when Israel's rebuilt. And so even though the biblical Israel, both geographically and structurally, etcetera, Is not the Israel of today, the nation state built in 1948, they want to believe that because they believe that if Israel's rebuilt, then Jesus will come back. And yes, for those of you who are receiving the support of these evangelicals, watch the end of the play. It doesn't work out well for you, for Jewish brothers and sisters, right? The idea of Jesus coming back and people are either forcefully converted or killed, that narrative itself is deeply anti Semitic.
- [26:36]
A
Yes, I think so too.
- [26:38]
B
Yes, it absolutely is, but it's not. I don't want us to infantilize or underestimate the intelligence of our Jewish brothers and sisters. They know that, but they also know the evangelicals are full of shit. They don't believe it. So they're like, whatever will take, Whatever it takes to get the support. You can believe your wacky evangelical theories all you want. Just keep the funding coming, keep the support coming, keep the diplomatic cover coming, keep those votes coming in the UN Security Council, those veto votes, do all the things that allow Israel to build itself and grow. And we don't give a damn if you continue to believe in this wacky stuff. But to wield that as some kind of moral cudgel against us, to say, well, we're taking the principle we're Christians and we believe in Jesus and we believe in Israel and we believe in the God of the Bible. All that Mike Huckabee bullshit, Right? If, to use a technical term like, if. If that's, if that's what you're using as your moral mark of moral superiority, then I say I feel very good about where I stand morally in relation to that. Because you all don't give a damn about Palestinians. You don't give a damn about the love ethic of Jesus. You don't give a damn about loving the least of these, which is that baby in Gaza right now.
- [27:49]
A
I don't give a shit about poor people in Arkansas.
- [27:51]
B
None of it. None of it. All they want you to do is, is. Is. Is support Israel and give birth to babies that we won't take care of once they're born and continue to build a capitalist empire that looks nothing like the vision of the world that their beloved Jesus talked about.
- [28:10]
A
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, Dr. Mark Lamont, I've loved this so much. I want to have you back on. Thank you for your expertise. Thank you for your insight. We'd love to have you back on IHOP News.
- [28:22]
B
I would love to be back on. I just want to tell people I have a Patreon. You can visit me on Patreon, where I have an account, a network, in fact, where we talk about all these issues in great detail. Everything from politics to pop culture. We tie all the. All the ends together and make it plain for you.
- [28:37]
A
Is it just Dr. Mark Lamont Hill?
- [28:40]
B
Yep. You go to Patreon, you'll find Mark Lamont Hill, official network. It's right there.
- [28:43]
A
Love it. All right, we'll see you soon.