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Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Barak Swarttz - YouTuber & Activist | The Truth About Israel They Don't Want You to Know
02:54:31
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- [00:00]
Barack Swartz
I have tried to think about reverse engineering that idea of bringing people to Israel and bringing Israel to people. If you want to talk about the complexities of the Middle east, you have to create a safe space in order to do so. And when you just say come to Israel, you're inviting somebody that already doesn't believe you, they don't feel safe with you, and you haven't even created a safe space to have these tough conversations.
- [00:21]
Scott Clary
He used to dream of pro basketball. Then he broke his back and his acl. Most people would stop. He didn't. Barack Swartz traded the court for the camera. From training NBA athletes in Israel to building a YouTube YouTube channel that bridges sport and storytelling, he turned adversity into action.
- [00:36]
Barack Swartz
I try to stay away from the word influencer because there's been an abuse taken towards the word just because people label influencers fake. So I try to think of myself as key person of influence, trying to use storytelling to positively impact conversations around the world that I true and dear to me. At first, I found being a basketball player as a liability coming into the space of the Middle East. Throughout my process of trying to my message and who I am, I found it to be probably the best asset because basketball and culture and sports and who I am helps humanize the conversation a little bit.
- [01:08]
Scott Clary
His message resilience isn't optional. It's the platform you build when the world says no. This is Barack Swartz, the news and.
- [01:16]
Barack Swartz
Mainstream media and television, all of them. The way that they make most of their money is by delivering content that will inevitably make you have to see more. Israel is literally the epicenter of religious energy of the world. If you understand how to increase your frequency as a human being, it shifts the vibrations that we have.
- [01:47]
Scott Clary
Brock I'm excited that we're finally doing this. It's been a long time coming, which I didn't realize in almost like five, six months since we first spoke. So just explain. What do you do for a living? What do you. What do you consider the work that you do?
- [01:59]
Barack Swartz
I would say I fall under the category of influencers. I try to stay away from the word influencer because I think that there's some. There's been an abuse taken towards the word and also some hijacking of the word just because people label influencers fake or they're doing it for the wrong reasons or like they're. They're not. They're not being who they are. So I try to think of myself as a key person of influence, trying to use storytelling, trying to use basketball and trying to use my voice to positively impact conversations around the world that I, that are true and dear to me. So I make content on the Internet. I come from the basketball world. I was a player in high school and college. So I've sort of found the intersection of basketball and advocacy throughout the Internet.
- [02:55]
Scott Clary
Be more specific because I think that that can be very confusing what the, the intersection of basketball and advocacy actually means. But maybe frame it through your story. So obviously you're playing ball. You see things happening in the world that you're not exactly happy about. At what point do you think, okay, you know, I have the potential to go do this, to actually play professionally. Like, I, I'm on that path. This is not the path that I'm gonna go on. Even though it's like highly lucrative and I can make a lot of money and that'd be a great life. There's other things that I feel like, you know, I'm like called to accomplish. Where, where are you in life when that happens?
- [03:33]
Barack Swartz
I'm, I'm from the States. I was born in Boston. When I was six, my family went to Israel, to Jerusalem for two years. I was there during the, the second intifada. Very early on, that's when I started playing basketball. Picked up a basketball since that moment, since that day. Fell in love with the game. We'll get into those details later. Came back to the States, started really pursuing. We have this thing called balls life where everything that you do in basketball is just. It's a culture, it's a fashion, it's a language, it's your, it's your thing. I, I was, I think, gifted with some self awareness very early on in my life. Self aware, meaning. I realized I was a white Ashkenazi Jew from Boston. I was not going to the NBA. And so regardless of, of my. You're allowed to last.
- [04:14]
Scott Clary
You could have gone, you could have done semi pro.
- [04:17]
Barack Swartz
I did, yeah, Yeah. I. And so this, this idea of like, hold on, let me be a little more, a little bit more realistic of where I fit in. I actually was gifted with that pretty early on. But that didn't stop me from wanting to still put a ball in my hands and play. I played at two high schools and two colleges, was injured most of my career. And so the injuries, we'll get into these details. But the injuries and the experience and journey of being this like, basketball player, I would say injured basketball player, gave me a lot of opportunity to start working on who I am as a person, as a man. As an adult, young adult, and understanding more about the world. Bigger than basketball. And how can these experiences on and off the court help me with my relationships, help me with my professional career, help me grow as a person? With all of that being said, when I knew the NBA and Division 1 basketball was not my future, you have to be a little bit more practical about thinking, what are you good at? What are the things that you're good at, and what are the things that you like? And how can you find a way to merge those things? And I've always been somebody who. Who likes to speak and likes to tell stories and likes to help other individuals. Like, they're just things I like to do. If it's picking up the wallet on the ground that somebody dropped and running after them, or if it's having deep conversations, bigger than, you know, just that. And personally, as. As a. An American Israeli who has lived in Israel since those two years in Jerusalem, back and forth between the States, it was very clear to me that after I was training basketball players, and as a player, it was very clear to me, it was my time to open up dialogue about what my life is like in Israel, with it being a very big conversation right now in the world. And it's so interesting because at first, I found being a basketball player as a liability coming into the space of the Middle East, Israel, Palestine, such a polarizing conversation. And yet throughout my process of trying to massage my message and who I am, I found it to be probably the best asset because basketball and culture and sports and who I am helps humanize the conversation a little bit.
- [06:27]
Scott Clary
When you say you thought it was a liability, the framing is like, who am I to have an opinion on this?
- [06:34]
Barack Swartz
We all have this idea of, first of all, am I allowed to be in this arena? Do I have a right to be in this arena? Arena, as in like, talking about something. Conflict, Humanitarian crisis. Conflict. We'll talk about this eventually. But I didn't serve in the army when I moved to Israel. I didn't get the call to serve. So you have a little bit of, like, an identity crisis. Is this my place? But the basketball court has always been in between those four lines. My sanctuary for being able to connect with people from all over the world, mostly non Jews. My three closest friends, Nigerian, Haitian, and Jamaican. My best friend in high school is Muslim. Like, we'll talk about this. So that that court has allowed me to actually realize, wait a minute. That is how I build bridges. Like, the sport of basketball has allowed me to build bridges. And I Also find that since most of us are not the geopolitical expert, we do tend to find our way of relating to somebody who might have something in common with me. Sports, music, fashion, art, whatever. The thing is that's a, that's a door. It's an opening a door to a conversation that's deeper when you already have common ground.
- [07:45]
Scott Clary
I agree. One thing that is sort of, I guess a little jarring to me is I think a lot of the animosity and the hate is, is purely from social media and echo chambers online. Because growing up we did not draw the lines between people that we see on, on Twitter or X or any other social. Like there was no lines, there was no you're this, I'm this at all. And maybe I'm blessed because my parents were great people and they just encouraged you to just be friends with anybody and everybody. I'm sure that not every family is like that. Although I think in, you know, more like newer families or, or certain parts of the world maybe a little bit more forward thinking or accepting. But my family is like I say, they were accepting, but it wasn't like I knew they were accepting. It just felt like everybody being a human to another human is just the norm. That's just how you live. And I started really understanding that not everybody thought that way. When you start to see these global conflicts and you start to see like an us versus them.
- [08:56]
Barack Swartz
Yes.
- [08:57]
Scott Clary
And to me that was so strange. Yes. I just doesn't exist in my world when I was growing up and I've just started to notice it more. I don't know if it's more recent, if it's because social media sort of encourages these echo chambers of thought. But yes, same like yourself. It wasn't, it wasn't basketball. I played a whole bunch of different sports, but it was just shared activities, shared life, shared childhood experiences. There was no us versus them when you were a kid. And I don't really know, I don't really know at what point people thought that there isn't us versus them if it's not a learned experience from parents.
- [09:32]
Barack Swartz
Both of my parents are rabbis, so my dad is a reconstructionist rabbi, my mom is a reform rabbi. She actually wanted to go through with the conservative movement. At that time, women in the United States were not allowed to go through the conservative movement. She was I think like the 55th women rabbi in America. By the way. To those watching, like they might not understand the concept of a woman being a rabbi. It's just that in specifically mostly in North America, we have grown to different denominations in Judaism.
- [10:00]
Scott Clary
Same with any religion.
- [10:01]
Barack Swartz
Same with a lot of. Well, in Israel, like most synagogues, most places of worship are going to be like through the Orthodox movement. You're not going to see like Reform synagogues down the street everywhere. And my mom, through the rabbin at the Rabbanuten in Israel could not get ordained because she wouldn't be going through the Orthodox movement, for example, just to. So I'm mentioning that because one of the big pillars in the Reform movement is social justice and speaking up for social justice. When I was six, we went to Israel. My dad was on a program to study with other rabbis from across the world. And my mom was in the country to do volunteer work to understand more about Arab Jewish relations, Israeli Palestinian conflict, how to, how to sort of bridge the, bridge the gap. She spent a lot of time both in the west bank, down on the border in Gaza and my dad was studying. We, we as a family went down When I was six years old in 2001, we went down to Beersheba, which is the Negev. It's the desert southern part of Israel. My parents took and I have an older brother, he's four years older than me. So I was six, he was 10. By the way, this is, remember I'm six, I don't know any Hebrew, I don't know anything about Israel. I don't want to be here. It's like, why are you taking me, like the kid who was throwing the baseball in the street with his brother, away from his like fun, comfortable place in, in Boston to this new place called Israel in the middle of the second intifada. And we went down there to this Bedouin village. Bedouins are nomadic group, typically Arab speaking people who don't have the same access to all other people in Israel. A lot of the Arab. Sorry, a lot of the Bedouin communities, it has improved way more since 2001, 2000, 2003. But at that time some of the resources had been neglected to them. So they're always on the go. Backpack, tent, like rod clothes, they just always on the go. We went down there to help volunteer and build for them a medical facility because the water that they were drinking was very dirty and so kids and children and mothers and fathers were getting ill and they didn't have a medical facility to treat them just because of the water that they were drinking. We built it out of clay and haystacks and I was with groups of Bedouin Arab children who didn't speak English. And didn't speak Hebrew and I didn't speak Arabic. So we communicated kind of just like with sounds and body language. But here's this six year old from Boston who is just thrown into this place called Israel, then very early on starting to do these initiatives and projects to understand how to interact with people from different parts of the world who don't speak the same language as you, don't believe in the same God, don't have the same menu in their kitchen, not the same ethnicity, culture and all that stuff. And my parents really emphasized this important lesson which you just touched on, which is it should never be about us versus them. Like, I will always love you if you love me too. Period, end of story. That's like how I see the world. I've always seen the world that way. And I was, you know, I emphasize this point because that experience happened to be between it's six, seven and eight years old, which every human being, if you look into the development of who we are, our neurology and even astrology, we all go through experiences between those two to three years that help form a lot of who we are later in life. And you can look at this through your astrological and natal chart. You can look at this through going back to childhood experiences. That period of time is shape shifting for people. So I got thrown into the middle of it at 6, 7 and 8 in Israel and with this experience with Arab kids. And since then I've always looked at life that way. I've always looked at it. Why is it me versus you? And then in a situation where there's a conflict, it should be about us versus the problem. It's just trying to identify what that problem is and trying to figure out if we can find common ground, which is because of social media. The, the impossible task right now with something like Israel, Palestine or kind of any conflict.
- [14:08]
Scott Clary
Yeah, it's very sad. Yeah, it's very. No, I was gonna, I was just gonna agree with you. I just. That is, that is the way that you fix any, any conflict. It could be with your wife or your husband, it could be with any group in the world. It's like, what's the problem? Let's come together, solve it together. Because if you don't, if you don't adopt that mentality, there's always going to be a loser.
- [14:29]
Barack Swartz
Yes.
- [14:30]
Scott Clary
And to be quite honest, when there is a loser to a degree, both sides lose. There's never somebody who comes out of a conflict like unscathed. If you ever choose the us versus them, Mentality that's good. It's, it's never so. You're young, you have like a very healthy worldview. Your parents are great. And this is what I alluded to before. Like, yes, I understand that not everybody's childhood is great. I understand that some parents are absolute assholes and they teach something very early on to their children, their kids. And it's very hard to sort of reprogram and see the world in a, in a better light because you had all this influence. It happens in the US it happens in Canada, happens in Israel, it happens all over the world where you are sort of programmed a certain way because of your parents. I just wish that social media didn't triple down on that negative programming. But also social media seems to at the same time as triple down on people that were negatively programmed from their parents. It also seems to take people that were relatively reasonable, good people and make them angrier and more divided. So everything is just making people angrier across the board.
- [15:42]
Barack Swartz
Sure. And I mean you basically just, you unpacked right there. What I think is the main, first of all, you would agree with me that the news and mainstream media and television, all of them, the way that they make most of their money is by delivering content that will inevitably make you have to see more. And the thing that makes you have to see more is the emotion of being afraid. If you are afraid of something or you are more curious about something that you're fearing, you will dig deeper, you'll listen to the podcast more, you'll watch the news more, you'll research more. That is essentially, and that's attention. So fear mongering machines will grab people's attention more, which unfortunately this is, it's, it's a, it's a financial model for the new. By the way, I don't watch the news. Like a lot of it is hard to compartmentalize. And I also think a lot of it feeds into what you're talking about. There are influencers and content creators and I would say voices of reasons who do talk about how you are your algorithm in a way. And there are ways to live a life and have a life and interact with the world that will have an effect on, on your, on your feed. So, and as somebody who lives on social media on like seven or eight platforms now, building a, a brand, I also have to figure out talking about something so complicated, the Middle east and at the same time having an incredible amount of other pillars in my life that are really important to me. My family, my friends, music, dancing, Traveling, food, like, just like parts of me, basketball. And so I, I think I've, I've been very blessed to be able to understand the psychology around it and practice good relationships with it. Mo and that has to do with I think consciousness and energy. Most people don't, which is why social media in the news continuously wins. It will all it is, it is the powerhouse of now being kind of like the decision maker for people when they're choosing how they want to view a world conflict, which is a really scary reality that in 13 seconds or 24 seconds somebody's perception can be changed, especially if they follow someone. That person's voice is probably going to be the leading factor versus critical thinking. And the person who they follow is subjective. Right. They're following a subjective. And that's.
- [18:28]
Scott Clary
But they're also like people don't even think about incentives. So the person they're following is incentivized because that content, that content pays them.
- [18:36]
Barack Swartz
Correct.
- [18:37]
Scott Clary
But also. So not only the influencer they're following or the voice they're following, whether if you are angry about something, somebody's profiting off that anger. 11 out of 10 times.
- [18:46]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [18:47]
Scott Clary
So the angrier you are, the shareholders at Fox and MSNBC and BBC and Al Jazeera, they are profiting, the angrier you are. I mean, how do social platforms make money? Yeah, it's, it's. Well, you need people because with people comes advertisers.
- [19:04]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [19:05]
Scott Clary
And that's how you make. So. And the toughest thing to sort of, you know, not sound too cliche, but to escape the social media matrix is it's very difficult because you have the smartest, most well funded engineers, psychologists, marketers in the world whose only job is to keep you attentive and angry and consuming. So you're already losing the battle because most people aren't trained to have a discerning view and have the intellect and intelligence and cognitive horsepower to beat the smartest people in the world whose only job is to keep you sort of trapped in the social media ecosystem. It's very toxic.
- [19:45]
Barack Swartz
It's wild. Right. Like also like someone like you and someone like me who also we make content to put out to an audience on the Internet. You want your content to do well because you want more people to see it. So you have to think about what are the strategies around how do I get that content to stick for people? And so you and I, I don't want to say play the game, but we do have to think about what is the best. What can I Control most on my input so that the output has its maximum possible, you know, reach. And however the difference is, is that, like, what is the message at the end of the day, if you boil it down, you're trying to give, is this going to make me feel good and happy and positive, or is it going to make me go into that fear state? That, that to me is the differentiating factor of if you are or are not contributing to what you're talking about. It's a really, it's a scary state. It's an unfortunate state. It's been happening for a very long time. I will tell you, as an observer and somebody on it, I think it's changing. I do think it's changing. I think it's going to take a long time for us to see what that looks like in real time. But I, if you look at the world right now, people have had enough. Like, people have had enough with government and systems and not feeling like they have access to truth and not feeling like they have access to ultimate happiness. We've, we've really gone away from what happiness is. And I, I think that we're having a conversation now in, you know, September 2025. It's, it's premature and it's early, but I do think that all of this noise and mayhem and chaos that we're seeing in the world is a growing pain that we inevitably have to go through in order to see positive change on the other side. That's how evolution works. Like, we have to go through this. Right now we're just in the, we're in the mud.
- [21:42]
Scott Clary
What makes you. Actually, no, I'm not going to ask you what makes. I'm going to eventually ask you what makes you so optimistic. But first I want to understand a little bit more about sort of your story. Because you're playing basketball. Sorry? Well, very early on, you're in Israel at 6 years old. How does your relationship with Israel evolve? Because obviously when you're, you know, playing ball, like you're back in the us I'm assuming for. Yeah, and, and like that was a period of your life. Come back to the US Were you always sort of one foot in like, Israel Middle east conflict or was that something that you sort of put away for a period of your time of your life?
- [22:19]
Barack Swartz
It's a really good question. So when we lived in Israel, it was during one of the harder times in the past few decades. I mean, I don't even know if you can measure hard times in the Middle East. It seems like everything's a hard time. So it was during the second intifada. We lived in Jerusalem, and specifically in Jerusalem, there were an incredible amount of terrorist attacks happening throughout the early 2000s. I was the like, second week we, we moved into our apartment, a group from either the government or the army, like knocked on our family's house's door and they had cardboard boxes. And inside of the cardboard boxes were gas masks. And they were teaching us when and how to use these if needed during an event where at that time Iraq had the ability to send over a particular kind of missile that did have a chemical release that could have an effect on your health and your body if you were to inhale it. And the gas masks were there to protect, obviously.
- [23:23]
Scott Clary
What year is this?
- [23:24]
Barack Swartz
2001. And I'm six. So I'm like going from the States to this place in the, like the other side of the ocean and then being handed this gas mask and I'm just like, what is this place? You know, I mean, I still. And again, like, no Hebrew. It's, it's new to me. And also there were events like bus bombings and car bombings. And I was walking to school with my brother one morning and a car bomb did go off on our street. Like for those listening and watching, the distance would be like, if you're thinking about a 100 yard NFL football field, like 60 or 70 yards away from where we were. So I got hit with this concept of apparently what this place Israel was very early on and grew very thick skin through this. At 6, 7 and 8 years old, you're not thinking about the Middle Eastern conflict. And you also don't know a lot. You don't, you don't know enough. I was a kid, right?
- [24:21]
Scott Clary
No, you're just thinking Boston was much nicer than this.
- [24:25]
Barack Swartz
All you were thinking was Boston was way nicer. It's, it's so funny you said this. That's perfect segue to. What I was going to say is we go back to the States. And you would think that at. After an experience like that, how does a kid who's, you know, traumatized during those very important years as a kid, those developmental years as a kid, how does a kid like that have an experience and then later in his life feel called to then go back more and more and more? Because that's what I've been doing. Happened in 2011, happened in 2016, 18, 19. And now I'm back and now I live there. I'm full Israeli. I wasn't thinking about Israel, the Middle east during those six. During those. Those two years when I was a kid. But what I will tell you is the energy and the connection to the land of Israel as a Jew is something that I did feel when I was that kid. It's still. Back then, it was impossible to describe, and still at 30, it is hard to describe. But I do think that first of all, and you were saying offline, you've never been to Israel. Israel is literally the epicenter of religious energy of the world. You can. You can feel it, and it's. There's no way. I can't pull up a dictionary. I can't pull up anything, any way to describe it to you. It is just something that one's core feels, Jew or non Jew, by the way, when you go to Israel, and especially Jerusalem, I. We live 10 minutes away from the. The Kotel, the Western Wall. So, like, we would spend sometimes holidays of Shabbat being there. So I was gifted with this, like, really cool opportunity that I only appreciated later in life to be in the epicenter of that religious, you know, energy of the world as a Jew there in these important years. So only later on in my life did I realize obviously, how important those two years were to. To my base and who I am. But the conflict and the. The situation in the Middle east only became something that I realized I wanted to talk about publicly and share more in the past few years. I mean, I was working for an organization that was basically taking Jews from the Diaspora to the land of Israel to explore their Jewish identity. And I was doing this back and forth, and each time I would go back to Israel, I'd realize this is more than just a vacation spot. Like, this is. This is a place that I would probably call home and has been home. So it was planted in me. My parents unintentionally planted that in me. My brother's four is older than me. If I didn't live in Israel, he'd probably never come visit.
- [27:06]
Scott Clary
Right.
- [27:07]
Barack Swartz
It's just like, it's a place for him, you know, good food, Tel Aviv beach. For me, it completely shifted my DNA.
- [27:13]
Scott Clary
What was, what was the moment when you shelved basketball permanently? Because I know you went through a lot of injuries. You broke your back at 16. And I'm assuming it's a lot like my experience with hockey. Canadian. It's, It's a. It's a cliche, but it's very true. We all play hockey. I assume that around 16, if you aren't really planning on going pro or you're not drafted there's not scouts that are looking at you.
- [27:38]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [27:39]
Scott Clary
And you're like, I should think about something else that I want to do with my life. But also, I don't know how religious you are. I have no idea. I know your parents are rabbis. I don't know what your relationship with God is, but if I had this, personally speaking, if I had this draw to a part of the world and I knew I wanted to play ball and I knew that I could even make a career going semi, like semi pro or European leagues or whatever, still make good money, and I kept getting injured. Maybe this is just me, but I would be like, you know what? That's like a sign. That is like a sign God is telling me something. I'm not meant to be doing this. I meant to do something else. Or like, he wouldn't keep putting all these blockers in my way. Do you, have you ever thought that through?
- [28:22]
Barack Swartz
Couldn't have said it better myself. And yet, because I'm insane, I like to think I'm insane.
- [28:29]
Scott Clary
Best people are, dude.
- [28:30]
Barack Swartz
Best people are insane. You definitely like, because I'm insane and deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply in love with the game of basketball. Even though I've had a really hard relationship with it, it's. It sometimes even makes me emotional. Like, I, I. When I was 16, I was diagnosed with two hairline fractures and something called spondylosthesis in my spine, which is a fancy way of saying vertebrae were separated. And I had some shatters in part of my hairline fractures in my spine. Now at 16 years old, when you go to Boston Children's Hospital and your orthopedic looks at you and was like, yeah, I've never seen a 16 year old with these before. I can't tell you how you got these. We'll do some bone marrow testing, we'll do some vitamin testing. We'll try to take a look under the hood. But this one's weird, right? Did a lot of testing, tried to figure out if it was genetic, what would happen. I was in a Boston overlap brace, a bob plastic hardshell brace for 23 hours a day, connected with a bone stimulator on my lower back.
- [29:30]
Scott Clary
So this wasn't like you fell and broke your back.
- [29:33]
Barack Swartz
I fell twice going into my senior year in the summer at a Boston University tournament when I was with my high school team, Newton South. I fell twice on my right hip bone on a Saturday morning. Doesn't do that. You know, the first one was bad. But then we had our championship game against New Mission at The Time was one of the best teams in the state, and there was only five of us because our sixth player got injured. If I chose not to play, we'd have to forfeit. So I played on it, and it happened again during the game. And then I realized, like, this is something I should check out. So when I got the images and the doc, the orthopedic told us, this isn't just like, let's. Let's sit you out for two weeks. This is a procedure. So I was in a plastic hardshell brace bone simulator. I missed out on a lot of recruiting I got from some Division 2 and Division 3 schools in Northeast America. Senior year, played in the transitional brace, more of a flexible one. Decided to do a postgraduate year, a PG year at a prep school in Connecticut. Two weeks before the season started, I fractured both of my tibias. So I had bilateral hairline fractures, and I had only one two options. One was not to play, which means the PG is gone. Two was to play. I played on them. I got some recruitment throughout that year. Had lots of other injuries. Had compartment syndrome in my leg. I had an avulsion fracture in my ankle. I ended up playing two years at Elmira College in New York. Hairline fractures were still a problem. I didn't really find myself there. It's in the middle of Elmira, New York, on the border of Pennsylvania. Socioeconomically, very depressed, very dark. Not a lot of opportunity. Wanted to come back closer to my family, maybe play basketball. Ended up transferring to Curry College in Boston, who had actually recruited me when I was a high school student. The day before I moved in, I tore my acl and so I didn't play my junior year. I can keep going, like all of these injuries over and over and over and over. And there's more, by the way, after I came back to Israel, I don't want to bore the audience with the injuries, but. Or you. But I think the insanity part comes in is, like, when do you stop? Right? Like, what are you going after? Right? Like. Like, what was I going after? Because I obviously Knew wasn't the NBA, clearly, obviously wasn't Division 1 scholarship. But I think I just love the game too much when I'm playing basketball. It's very therapeutic for me. It's kind of the only meditative state that I can. I can achieve at the moment. And I knew when you to your question. Sorry for the rant, but when did I shelve basketball? Officially my last game ever at Curry College in 2018. I actually wrote a Letter to basketball. During my last game and at the last four or five minutes of the game, the opposing team, one of their players is shooting free throws. There's a picture of me, but I was sit. I. I had a moment of like, he's shooting free throws. I'm on the other side of the court and I actually sat down on the free throw line and I kind of just looked out and blacked out for a few moments. Just like realizing, kind of like this is the last time I put on a competitive jersey. I would say that's where I shelved playing basketball. Now. When I came to Israel, there was a team created for people who are immigrating to Israel, which I actually got recruited for. And we ended up playing moved up a few divisions. The injuries still did not stop. I partially tore my bicep tendon and I have something called Morton's neuroma, which is one of. Two of my toes are essentially kind of pressed against each other, which hurt the nerve ending. So I have lost sensation and feel in one of my toes. And trying to push and plant and jump and run can be very painful. Cold weather will affect it too if it's very cold out. So I kind of realized like, this isn't it. You know, this is, this isn't it. This is how I got into training basketball players through all these injuries. So I shelved it in college. But I try to play for fun when I can. It's not my career. I wish it was not my career. Training players became my career. And now today, with how I use basketball, it's on a different pedestal. Right? Like I use it on a different platform, not playing, but I'm trying to use it to sort of open up dialogue.
- [33:39]
Scott Clary
You made aliyah, which really just means you moved to Israel at some point. The idfs you never served. Now if I. Give me, give me. Let me know if this is correct because I don't want to put words in your mouth, but. So was that something not serving? Was that difficult for you? Like when you moved to Israel, you didn't serve. You felt like you are not contributing 110% of yourself to this country that.
- [34:08]
Barack Swartz
You love at this point very much so. When I first came to Israel, I actually thought it was gonna affect my ability to fit in, make friends, get judged, maybe like date women who would look at me as like.
- [34:25]
Scott Clary
Because for people that don't know, everybody serves in the.
- [34:28]
Barack Swartz
Yeah, yeah, right. So to add some context, you're. Israelis are required to serve. 18 years old. They enlist the Time varies for depending on what you do. But very much so, I actually did. It's funny, I, I had a, a story with a girl I dated very early on who after a few like really good dates called me one day and was like, listen, I thought about it. You didn't serve in the army. Like my family, like we wouldn't accept you, you know, and it's like, it's like, it's like really okay, you know, so that, that, that like made me think like wait a minute. Some people do pay attention to. It turns out six, seven years later, she's very much like an anomaly. Like there's like she was just one of two people maybe who had like voiced their opinion of why they're against the idea that I didn't serve. Now to add some context, I didn't serve because it was my choice not to serve when I made aliyah. Typically a process goes through where you get a phone call from the IDF or from one of the organizations who are going to onboard you because you are a new immigrant. I was 25 when I made aliyah. Soldiers who are commanders can be 18 and 19 years old. And when you have an 18, 19 year old Israeli commander with a 25 year old American immigrant, things can get very bureaucratically confusing and complicated. And I was never given like a formal reason. But that is, that is essentially the guess from the organization that onboarded me to Israel as to why I never got that phone call. I was kind of preparing for it mentally because it's the conversation, it's like the, not the elephant in the room. But if you make aliyah, you understand that there is also this service that you are giving to the country. So it was something I was mentally preparing for and at the same time it didn't happen. Now when conflict knocks on your door, sirens, war fighting, and my friends that I've made throughout the past six, seven years there, 99.99999 who have served are serving or in the reserves when they get a phone call to like go into a territory or go on a mission or get called back from their family because they're in reserves. It's called miluim. And I'm, I don't have to do anything. Felt guilty. Like it felt like, like, well, that's crazy. You know, that catapulted me into wanting to start to enlist myself. I call it enlisting myself in my own army service. It's the closest thing I could ever get to, to being a soldier because I can't put on a uniform and I can't go serve and I can't go protect in the fields. So the survivor's guilt for sure, I felt especially on the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th of October when I was sitting in Tel Aviv when the country was kind of not on lockdown, but in this very like, very fierce state. And I was speaking to friends when they would get wi fi, if they would, they would leave Gaza or something. They were, they were there in territory, in uniform. So turns out that I wasn't judged. People actually look at people who make aliyah as like a very courageous thing, a very like Zionistic thing to do to like leave your life behind where you were in the world and come to this very insane place called Israel. A lot of them actually don't understand why we come there, because they're like, why would you want to come here? You know, you leave Boston, Massachusetts. Right. So that has changed a little bit for me because I feel like I am fulfilling something that I was, I was supposed to eventually do. So at first had a very difficult relationship with it and now not as much.
- [38:15]
Scott Clary
So your first. So this, the mission that you're on right now, it, it's been sort of, it's been happening your whole Life. But ultimately October 7th is when you're like, I need to actually put my voice out there. Yeah. And then you're no longer coaching basketball at this point.
- [38:33]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [38:34]
Scott Clary
And this is like, to put it simply, this is when you're like a full time content creator into, into this space.
- [38:41]
Barack Swartz
Not that early on. No, not that early on. So just to add the. Because it's, it's, it's interesting. It definitely didn't happen like that. I want to remind the listeners that I started this for personal reasons, for feeling guilty that I wasn't able to go help after what unfolded after the 7th. And my friends were in Gaza and then actually relatively quickly then deployed up north next to Lebanon. That's a B. I found out in October that one of my friends was killed at the Nova Festival. And C, the last thing I flew back to the states after the 7th, on the 10th, I was one of the last flights out of Israel. See, the last thing that was on my mind was basketball and fitness. I had, I, I, I went through a really scary. My body wasn't sleeping in October, so I was sleeping like 90 minutes to 120 minutes a night and for about three weeks. And like whether it was related to what happened on the 7th and just everything or whatever it was, I started seeing a sleep doctor Once I started to figure that out, I realized that Israel and the story of what I went through and what's going on is too important for me not to, not to talk about. And I started making YouTube videos in my basement in, in, in the Greater Boston area. 1, 2, 3. And then the fourth one, I showed you a picture actually of what the production looked like before this podcast. The fourth one went relative to the size of my channel at the time viral. There was is. And I can't say his name for, for privacy reasons. There's a very big YouTuber who operates in a different space who actually found me one day before the war and talked to me about going on YouTube one day. And as a result of that conversation, I decided this was when I was still making basketball fitness videos. So the first like four or five videos on my YouTube channel are me trying to teach, like Steph Curry work warm ups. Like if you go back, it got 200 views. And then I had a conversation with him when I was in the States, a very heartfelt conversation with him about how do I go from that to talking about this thing that happened in Israel. And he helped me identify that this is potentially a calling for me. So fourth video goes out. He's helping me think through sort of like post production stuff just to get an idea that like, I didn't figure it out on my own. I got help along the way. I told the story, but thumbnail and title and like understanding over time. November, December, January, now I'm like, my YouTube channel is growing. And now from YouTube, other parts of my life, Instagram and TikTok, now a Discord community is being built. And then like the wheel goes so full time now sitting in front of you. Yes, in the beginning. In the beginning, no, in the beginning it was figuring out how to find my voice. What does my voice even mean? Like, who am I, this basketball fitness guy now talking about Israel, Palestine, like, how does it even work? Right? And I started observing a lot of the people who did choose to begin to chime in. And I understood a lot of it was congested, a lot of it was regurgitated, and a lot of it didn't feel like it was threading any needle.
- [42:02]
Scott Clary
Like it's one thing content around the.
- [42:05]
Barack Swartz
Conflict, okay, the content around the conflict felt that every time I did this, it was a new person saying the same thing that I just saw before I swiped. So it's 39 ways of saying the same thing. And a lot of those 39 really molded into like, kind of the same way. And that's when I realized if I use basketball and when I say that practically I'm saying go to basketball courts and film videos about the Middle East. Not sitting in front of a chair, in front of lights and talking about it. But like I would go to basketball courts, I put on a microphone, I would play basketball and I would talk about Israel, Palestine, or I would go to a basketball court and I would interview somebody who had had an experience, a traumatizing experience, just trying kind of like hot ones. So same idea. Then eventually, you know this as somebody who finds a cool niche and then they can run with it. Good things happened from there. The brand started to grow and suddenly now, like I'm getting opportunities maybe to come and speak here, speak there. And I've. I've been to six countries, I'm going to my seventh soon. So if I wish it just happened that like I turned on my camera and like suddenly I was like a full time content creator. It's taken a lot. And I started making videos on the Internet in 2018. I was just making like cool videos back in Boston about my life. I started a series called Barack Meets Barack because I wrote him a letter when he got elected and he wrote me one back and I made this like journey about how I'm going to meet him. So like I was doing things like that just for fun.
- [43:39]
Scott Clary
That video that went viral, what were you speaking about?
- [43:41]
Barack Swartz
That hit that particular video was a member of Hamas who got captured by the IDF who was actually operating inside of a hospital inside of the Gaza Strip. And they interviewed him, they questioned him about what is happening inside of the hospital with the war. And in the video he's speaking Arabic. The video is translated to Hebrew. And I realized that since I speak fluent Hebrew and a lot of the boots on the ground reality stays in Israel, in the Middle East a little bit when it comes to Arabic and Hebrew. And that doesn't get distributed to people sitting in Miami or people sitting in Canada. What a great way to sort of create that boots on the ground reality. So I would take these videos in Hebrew that show what is going on. I would translate them into English, but I would also give the angle as to like, what does this mean in terms of why things are happening? The video was that it was the interview. Cut, Translate. And then me giving people access to that in the diaspora who don't have access to that because of a language barrier.
- [44:48]
Scott Clary
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- [48:09]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [48:09]
Scott Clary
And I've seen it bleed into just pure anti Semitism. So something from a PR perspective is not working. And if you have an opinion or not, be my guess. I don't know enough about why it's not working or why there's so much hate towards Israel and Jews and, and in general. Not something we can actually bring up. Because now even stuff that's happening currently, like even this week is just arbitrarily being blamed on Jews, which is just insane. But without getting too negative, I think it's. I think the way that you look at bridging a conversation is a beautiful way to do it. But you have like actually some more data on how it's worked and how has it worked? More or less.
- [48:57]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [48:58]
Scott Clary
Like explain like the conversations you have with people, like opinions that you have changed. Like when so many people who try and advocate for Israel.
- [49:10]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [49:11]
Scott Clary
Like again, it's just, they feed into an echo chamber and their message just falls flat.
- [49:17]
Barack Swartz
There's so much for me here.
- [49:20]
Scott Clary
And you can push back. If, if you don't, I'm going to.
- [49:23]
Barack Swartz
Push back for you. You're gonna, I think you're gonna like this. It's gonna also probably shock the people listening. Before I get to that, I would say that if you look at the story of the Middle east right now, just to make things very simple, unfortunately we have pro Israel and pro Palestine. That's, that is the US versus Them we were talking about a while a while ago. From the pro Palestine perspective, they have A very beautiful story because it's two words and they all say the same two words. And there's really no other slogan. It's Free Palestine. And yes, you have globalized the Intifada. Intifada, revolution. There's only one solution. From the river to the sea. Death to. You have. You have all of this. But Free Palestine is simple and it's very effective and a lot of people have easily gotten behind that. And I'm not saying, by the way, that's the only reason they have. There's a lot of other nuances. You look at Pro Israel, by the way, again, I want to repeat. I'm just simplifying it because it's not just anti and pro. It's. This is the two camps sort of barking at each other. Pro Israel, you have Bring them home. You have Amis Alchai, we have each county in every city has like four slogans. You have the internal divide between religious and secular. You have the, the issues internally. In Israel, you have for the coalition against. The coalition against Bibi. Pro Bibi. We have sex in sect with a CT inside of their messaging that we're supposed to have. And we're all trying to tell the same story. They have done a. They see here. I'm doing it right now. The pro Palestinian camp has, has done a very good job at effectively saying two words, which is simple and easy. And we've had lots of slogans and attempts of throwing darts at the board to try and get what you're saying, the international community to, to hear our, our side, our truth.
- [51:35]
Scott Clary
Now.
- [51:39]
Barack Swartz
I want to start by saying that the increased amounts of anti Semitism is scary. The experiences that you saw unfold online for Jewish students on campus, for Israelis traveling abroad for vandalism, for synagogues, for the president of a synagogue or the rabbi. I'm just trying to remember in Detroit getting killed at her doorstep for the two members at the Israeli embassy getting killed in the name of Free Palestine. Like real, real stuff. Real, real, real stuff. This is all of these things are the scary, violent events that we all saw on the first thing we talked about in this podcast, which is the media, social media, especially right now. It is not built that platform. Those platforms are not built to show us the full picture. I'm going to tell you what I mean by that. They're there to show us concentrated events that are meant for you to see because it benefits them, but it also incentivizes certain behavior in you. Our timelines. Now, it's a timeline thing. Whatever your timeline Is your feed, whatever you want to call it, that's essentially your school of thought. You open up the timeline of somebody who's in the pro Palestinian camp. You open up the timeline on X, whatever it is on this side, you scroll through. That is their school of thought. When you download those apps and you press yes, you're actually signing off on them having access to your camera, your microphone, your cookies and your data. They're getting access to you. They know you so well. So that your feed is. It's perfect for who you are and what you believe in. That's where the divide comes in. My biggest issue with the PR efforts inside of the Jewish community inside of Israel is they're very keen on come to Israel and see it for yourself. Come here. Enough debating, enough contemplating outside in the world on social media. Let me come show you that it's not an apartheid state. Let me come show you that Arabs have the same rights. Let me come show you that they serve in court, that they're doctors. Let me come show. Let me come show you. Now, the issue with that is because this side of the room already has a pretty negative perception on what Israel is. They don't want to come here to begin with. It's like inviting somebody to dinner that doesn't even have an appetite. It's not going to work. And we're seeing, like you just said a minute ago, if someone like me needs to be doing it and I'm having more results, then we have something we need to fix here big time. Now, let me tell you, this is where I'm going to push back a little bit. I wanted to tee that up for you. I have tried to think about reverse engineering that idea of bringing people to Israel and bringing Israel to people. If you want to talk about the complexities of the Middle east, you have to create a safe space in order to do so. And when you just say, come to Israel, come, come, we show you, we come show you the truth, come have hummus and all this stuff. You're inviting somebody that already doesn't believe you, they don't feel safe with you, and you haven't even created a safe space to have these tough conversations. If we bring Israel to people, Barack, who has chosen to do advocacy, goes to the us, goes to Canada, goes to Spain, goes to a Muslim country, goes to Morocco, goes to South Africa in October, I'm going to Australia. And you speak to Jewish and non Jewish communities. You speak to people in Washington Square park in one of the hottest hot spots of like, where These dialogues, these tough dialogues on the Internet have gone on when it comes to Israel, Palestine, where you go to the U. S. Capitol, why Bibi is testifying, and there's four of you pro Israel and thousands of anti Israel people there. Where you go to the White House and you try to have this dialogue, you begin to find out. And I've. I'm saying this as somebody who just came back from Greece, all of the anti Semitism, all of the fighting, all of the violence, all of the fear, all the intimidation, it is all real. I'm not dismissing any of it. What it does represent, however, is a very, very loud minority. If you think deeply about the encampments at these Ivy League institutions, the drone footage shows you all of the people at the encampments. If you took the controller of the drone and you just flew it up another 200ft, what you would see are the tens of thousands and other people who are just walking back and forth, minding their business, or the ones who are like, what is going on here? It's showing you the loud minority. It's not showing you the silent majority. That's what social media does. That's what these events will make you think, is that it's everywhere that you go. Case in point, when I was in Spain, when I was in Morocco, when I was in South Africa and I just came back from Greece offline. And I'll say it on this podcast, and I've been saying it ever since. I actually don't think most people in the world hate Israel. I don't think most people in the world are behind the idea of torching it up and wiping it clean for the cause of the liberation movement for Palestinians. I don't think most people in the world are endorsing these protests, marches, and acts of violence and just scapegoating to Jews and Israelis. It sure feels like it. Because you just, you know, you kind of said it like, naturally, because that's what we're programmed to do.
- [57:42]
Scott Clary
Or programmed very much feels like it.
- [57:44]
Barack Swartz
Sure.
- [57:44]
Scott Clary
And there's big voices that seem emboldened to take a. And this is also frustrating, they say, like an anti Israel stance, but ultimately it bleeds into anti Semitism. Yes, Very easily and quickly.
- [57:55]
Barack Swartz
Which.
- [57:56]
Scott Clary
Which we just saw then Bilzerians and the. Candace Owens and the. And people that, like Dan Bulzerian. I mean, where did this come from? And then now an event happens, like what happened right now. I like to keep these evergreen, but we know, like, Charlie Kirk was just assassinated and murdered.
- [58:12]
Barack Swartz
Rest in peace.
- [58:12]
Scott Clary
Rest in peace. And I don't even understand the mental gymnastics that somebody has to go through right after that happens to start saying, oh, that must have been Israel, must have been the Jews, must have been the Jews. But you see that on X within the first two hours and I'm like, I don't remember people being, six years ago, people having the balls to say that. Like, that is such a wild, you know, the person's full name. These are not Anonymous accounts. It's not 4chan. These are just real people who feel like that's something appropriate to say on social media where you can find out who they are. It's almost as crazy as the people that were celebrating his death. In my opinion, like, all of it is just nuts. People seem like so emboldened and so courageous to say these ridiculous things. And the reason why I say that it feels like Israel's losing the PR battle is because you see this stuff pop up and I just, and it could just be a bias, but I just don't remember it being so out there.
- [59:20]
Barack Swartz
I agree with you that we are losing the PR battle. I don't agree with the majority sentiment within the, the pro Israel camp that most people hate Israel. I just don't. And I, I don't because I'm hoping that's true. But well, well, I'm not only hoping it's true, but when I go to these countries, I can give you, I can give you examples in every single country right now with experiences that social media and mainstream will not show you, which proves to me behind this. This is why I think my voice is very important. Because when I'm traveling now, I'm actually like, I'm documenting my experiences in these anti Semitic hotspots. Spain is anti Semitic. Morocco, Muslim country, South Africa, trying to, you know, put Bibi in jail for all the war crimes in the beginning of the war. Like you, you go to these places and I'm going to tell you a quick story in, in Morocco. This will blow your mind the first day I get there. By the way, I was in Morocco because after the 7th of October, a group of, I would say more moderate Muslims from Morocco, Pakistan and Dubai came into Israel to bear witness to what happened. To learn more, let me repeat. Not all of them were pro Israel. They were just thinking about, how can I understand a holistic perspective of this conflict. They came to Israel. I was invited to go be with them and walk with them through the territories in the South Kibbutz be, go to the site of the Nova Festival. I got very close with a few of them who live in Morocco. We made some videos in Israel together after they understood a little bit more, seeing things firsthand, meeting with families. The first thing I'll say, which I find very telling, is after these videos went out on the Internet, the amount of threats that they received from their people back home in Morocco was insane. I saw the messages, I saw the people in an assembly line waiting for them, essentially just waiting for them to land. Right. Because they came to this place called Israel. So their own Muslim brothers and sisters were then saying, don't even think about coming back here after what you just did. These are moderates. And they said, it's my home, I'm going back. So they went back to a place, their home back in Morocco, that they weren't necessarily welcomed back by some of the people there. That's the first thing that I find very interesting. Now, I went to Morocco because if you're going to come to my home and bear witness to, like, what life is like in culture, I want to go and learn more about your culture. So I was on a 10 day exploration in Morocco. I went across the entire country. My first night, I went to Medina, which is the old city in Marrakech. And you walk in and it's this massive, massive open flea market. There's food, there's concessions, there's music, there's kids on a Friday night. And for Friday night, for me back in Israel, Shabbat, for Friday night there in Morocco, it's like celebration. And they have these food stalls and these juice stands and one of them is on like a big stair step. And they have this tradition where they bring in tourists, they bring them up on the stand, they give you this nice cool cultural Moroccan hat and they sing to you in front of everyone. And he called me up, he just caught eyes with me, called me up. I come up. The first thing he asked me is, where are you from? And I said, Israel. And he says, which means, hey, brother, how are you doing? In Hebrew. I'm in Medina.
- [62:51]
Scott Clary
I know, yeah.
- [62:53]
Barack Swartz
So I'm like, okay.
- [62:55]
Scott Clary
Unexpected, but all right.
- [62:56]
Barack Swartz
This is weird.
- [62:57]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [62:58]
Barack Swartz
We leave and across the street, look, tens of thousands of people across the street. You see like 200 waving Palestinian flags. Every night they're there and I'm speaking with the people who are taking me around. And then there are police officers around the public. And the police officers hate them. They disrupt peace. They disrupt like the, the travel and they, they make people have to work on, on nights and shifts. They don't even want to work. The king in Morocco is also very protective of the Jewish communities that still exist in Morocco and he is a friend of Israel. And you would think that as an Israeli Jew going into Morocco and you should see the messages I got from people before I got there. Watch out, be careful. Tuck in your nec. Talk about my necklace in a, in a moment. This is an important necklace. Like so that's one story, by the way, that I have and I have South African stories, I have stories from Spain and now in Greece that these stories are not covered on mainstream. They're not on X, they're not on CNN and they're not on Fox because I'm showing the optimistic side of things which is really hard to do right now with the current state of the union. And boy, oh boy, Scott, let me tell you the pushback that I've received from people in Israel, people who have unfollowed me, who are pro Israel, who think that I'm completely misrepresenting the, the, like the, the boots on the ground reality for people. When I get on YouTube basically every day of my life and I talk about these things in length, sometimes up to 30 or 45 minutes of the anti Semitism of the negative state. I just think it's so important that the language that we use is accurate. And I don't think it's accurate right now for us as the collective to say the world, I hear this every day. The world, the globe, Earth, everyone hates Israel. I make the case it's not true. I make the case that there is a very loud minority who makes us feel and think that way. Which by the way, the damage that they do is insane. It's insane and it's dangerous and it's bad. The Candace Owens, the Saint Huygurs, the, the Dan Bazerians and the Muhammad Hijabs and the Mehdi Hassan's and we can keep going down because they have a lot of influence. I still on record right now will say I just don't think it's the majority. I think that a lot of people too haven't voiced their opinion A because it doesn't, it's not important enough to them. Like people down in Miami have more things to worry about than like what's happening in Israel, Palestine. And two, they are sensitive to joining a very polarizing conversation because they've actually seen some of the repercussions for what happens if you voice your opinion. Which is wild, right?
- [65:52]
Scott Clary
It is.
- [65:52]
Barack Swartz
So sorry, that was, that was a lot.
- [65:54]
Scott Clary
No, don't don't apologize. This is what we're here for. Follow up to that. I actually don't think that the whole world hates Israel. I think that actually most, a lot of neighboring Arab states are very, very much pro in air quotes Israel.
- [66:14]
Barack Swartz
Not that they have to love the country, but they don't agree with the destruction.
- [66:16]
Scott Clary
They don't agree with the destruction. I mean now we have chabad, even though God, you know, God forbid the rabbi was killed, but the chabad in Dubai, in uae, so like the Gulf, the Emirates, like.
- [66:29]
Barack Swartz
Like it.
- [66:30]
Scott Clary
So obviously as an interviewer you don't, you don't want to come across as biased, but obviously if you're listening, you kind of understand my bias. Like my dad worked for csis, so Canadian Security Intelligence Services, which is like a, a MishMash of the CIA and the FBI kind of put together. They're like a civilian investigation unit in Canada and they do all like, you know, the counterterrorism stuff. And all I remember growing up was that he worked with Shin Bet and like Israel was like the bastion of democracy in the Middle East. And I think that a lot of these neighboring Arab states, not all, but I think they realize that Israel is very good to have. Israel is very good to have because there are groups in the Middle east that if Israel was not there, the neighboring Arab states would not be having as good a time as they are right now. So I actually don't think it's the world. For some reason it seems to be the West. That was my interpretation and that to me is crazy. I don't understand. And this is a bigger conversation about a younger generation, what they believe and you can throw in words like woke and liberal and all these different things.
- [67:48]
Barack Swartz
And influence.
- [67:49]
Scott Clary
And influence. But for some reason, and again you push back. But it seems like we lost a PR battle in the West.
- [67:57]
Barack Swartz
I can't push back on that.
- [67:59]
Scott Clary
And I don't understand how that happened and I don't understand how we reconcile from that because that's a PR battle you don't want to lose.
- [68:09]
Barack Swartz
I can't push back on that because I agree. What you, what you said about Charlie, I think is, look, when like pogroms were at its all time high in the late 1800s, early 1900s, 1890 in Lithuania and Russia, all that stuff, like at the time the Russians were, had done a very good job of convincing a lot of people that the Jews were to blame for a lot of the world's problems.
- [68:44]
Scott Clary
This is not the first time, not.
- [68:46]
Barack Swartz
The first time in Fact, it happened before. Then fast forward a little bit. You get into. So pogroms continue. Jews looked at as evil, dangerous, blamed for at one time the bubonic plague, like, blamed for, like, things that are insane. And then during the Holocaust, you have Al Jamin Al Husseini, who was like the. One of the leaders at the time, who came into Berlin, Palestinian leader, if you will, came into Berlin to meet with Hitler and talk about how we bring the Final solution from Europe to the Middle East. And they actually worked on translating Mein Kampf to Arabic to be able to distribute to a lot of communities in the Middle East. Then you look at, like, today, where a lot of. How a lot of people in that region think about Jewish people or Israeli people or people on the Internet who have, like you said before, education, influence. The people that you're around, make it way easier. And it always has been very easy. It's been so easy to blame Jews for the weather, for high fructose corn syrup, for what? When nothing is going well in your life, it's becoming so easy. So easy that in 90 minutes after Charlie Kirk gets assassinated, the same people who have been, you can go and do your due diligence and see it for yourself. The same people. A lot of the same people, should I say, screaming death to Israel and death to America for almost two years, are the same ones who immediately, it was the Jews and it was Israel. I always like to say, and this is why I say I have no pushback for you. Because the way I look at the situation that Israel has been in when it comes to a PR standpoint is from the tweet or the post that they want to post, to the mission that they have to go on in the Middle east, to the article that they have to write. Every decision that Israel makes today is a lose, lose. It is just a matter of weighing how much do you want to lose today? Do you want to lose a lot? Do you want to lose a lot by going into Qatar less than a week ago, eliminating leaders of Hamas, who, from our timeline, our perspective, my understanding of living in Israel is a massive win. From the perspective of those who are screaming death to Israel is another terrorist move. So you're going to lose knowing that when you eliminate the leaders of this terrorist group, lots of people are just going to point the finger and say, you're slaughtering people here. You know, it's always a lose. It's always a lose.
- [71:41]
Scott Clary
But how do we get to the point where killing a terrorist is. Is not a good thing? Not Just current Hamas. But now you have. It was a while ago. But people were empathizing with Osama bin Laden, correct? Like, excuse me, but what the actual fuck has happened? Yeah, because when I went to school and I went to university, like yeah, maybe, maybe they weren't a hardcore right wing, but like terrorists were terrorists and like when you kill innocent people, that's always killing innocent people. I just don't understand how we shifted so much and nobody can really explain that to me. Like at what point even if you say that higher education and Ivy League is too liberal, at what point did a teacher start to sort of spew this bullshit? That was not part of my higher education.
- [72:40]
Barack Swartz
Let me give you an example. I'm not going to be able to give you the full answer for two reasons. One, I don't have it and two, like I don't think it's only related to one thing. In 2016, I have a friend in Israel who was studying at Berkeley. This is 2016. Okay. This is nine years ago. She told me when she was taking classes at Berkeley in Cali nine years ago, one of the professors was already trying to, to tell students that Israel in the Jews are the reason we have destruction in the Middle east is the reason why we have like a Palestinian cause to fight for. This is 2016. Now if you look deeply like we have already uncovered evidence of Qatar over a very long period of time. We're talking 20 plus years shuffling if not billions, hundreds of millions of dollars directly into these liberal arts universities. So I think one thing to keep in mind is just first off is education. Like when you have somebody who's on the joystick, who's controlling what book is on the shelf in the library and what curriculum is being taught to the student, especially at far left leaning or those schools, it's inevitably it's going to have a very big impact when the floodgates open. And now it's that time for that student to feel like, oh, it's my time to speak up because I've been learning about this because we've been talking about this, because we've been hanging out about it. What better time when a college student has mom and dad's credit card and they have no real responsibilities besides make sure to get in class sometime, party on the weekend, like, you know, bills are low, maybe they're working at a bar off campus for, for some income and it's like let's go to the street. I mean like we, we've seen college age kids. That's when they, they're on a high. Like, they feel like they're. And so it's actually perfect. The, the Qatar propaganda theory is perfect for that. And so I'm not saying that's the only answer. It's not the only answer. And by the way, I don't, I don't have it. You say no one's been able to explain it to you. I don't, I don't think there's, there's one way to unpack it, but I do think a lot of it has to do with. Look, October 7th was, was something that was planned from an educational standpoint. It needed to be implemented educationally for it to do what it's done the past two years. And for us to have this conversation right now, it needed to have been planned over a couple decades ago. Because to pull this off, you need to deeply seep into the minds of the next generation, which this is where, by the way, I would say is hard for me to have any pushback. A lot of the college students who are now doing what we're seeing, even the ones who are basically blaming Israel and Jews for killing Charlie Kirk, these are future leaders of politics and these are future leaders of foreign policy. And these are.
- [75:46]
Scott Clary
I know that light's scary.
- [75:47]
Barack Swartz
Scares me a lot. It's also one of the reasons why I left America. I just like don't find it here very comfortable. Not just because I'm a Jew, I didn't leave because of anti Semitism. But that, that to me is, is, it's, it's easy. It's easy also too when you're at school and the opinion of most of your classmates who are taking your class with you or professor whatever, whatever was just talking to you about why, like, oh, now I understand like that Israel really does operate an open air prison over there. I'm not going to go there. I don't need to go there. But like, that's my professor. That's their profession. Obviously the school audited this person to get to hire them. Why would I fact check this? That's my professor. I didn't fact check my professors. I don't know about you. I didn't always fact check my professors in marketing class, in math class. Like, you know, I, I didn't, we're not taught to do that. We're not taught to think beyond that. That's my theory, by the way. It's like one of my theories as to why I think it's been so easy for people to, to do that.
- [76:51]
Scott Clary
I'm Curious. What is the prevailing point that somebody leads with when they walk up to you and ask and want to speak to you about Zionism? Like what is the thing that they think Israel has done that is so horrific? Because they throw the word genocide around a lot of. And you, you also said you're the first person to call Israel out when they don't do something. Right. So I'm curious and you can be as scientific or data driven as as you'd like to be since October 7th. Let's just deal with recent history. What has Israel done? What have they not done? What is the common belief about what they have done? When you speak to these people, the.
- [77:37]
Barack Swartz
G word comes up a lot. Genocide. Genocide comes up a lot because the war that is unfolding right now is the first time 9 year olds with a wi fi connection can stream it for free. They can open their phones, they can open TikTok and they can watch live war unfold. This has never happened before. When a 9, 10, 11, 16 year old somewhere in the world gets to stream this with repulsive amounts of content, repulsive like it is everywhere, everywhere, every direction. It's going to build a theory, it's going to build a thought, it's going to, it's going to convince you that there is absolutely a genocide happening. One of the main things that comes up now, and I would say this is this has been the same early on in the war and now still today, when somebody shows you a video of a girl who is stuck under a building or a picture of a body bag of somebody that got killed, or a woman or a child, what are you going to say to that? Like you've, you've, you've immediately what you.
- [79:09]
Scott Clary
See the picture, you know, you'd say like, why is Israel killing innocent civilians?
- [79:14]
Barack Swartz
They, they say, oh, they're not committing genocide. You know, this is where a lot of the. I don't want to hear what your opinion is. I want to see if your opinion is in line with mine. That's typically how these, that conversation would go because here I am, suppose the Israeli who lives in Israel, whose friends are in the idf, who has actually spent time on the border. Here I am trying to explain that what they're seeing with their eyes isn't this thing called genocide. Now I think I'm going to give you date. We're going to get to the numbers like the data in a second to help unpack this because this is the answer to your question. I think that when we use the words genocide and apartheid Right now we are completely taking away from the some of the worst horrific things in humanity, such as the real genocides in real apartheid that have happened in the world. We're actually.
- [80:10]
Scott Clary
And are still happening.
- [80:11]
Barack Swartz
And are still happening.
- [80:11]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [80:12]
Barack Swartz
By the way, I was in South Africa. I went to the apartheid museum. I went around the country. Like, I saw the cell where like Mohammed Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were in. I saw what apartheid looked like in South Africa. And I live in Israel. I live. My taxi drivers are Muslim and Arab. My bus drivers are Muslim and Arab. Like, my friend's realtor is an Arab. Like, I, I know this because I live there. It's really hard to open up a conversation with somebody who's emotionally driven by what they're seeing before I explain to you the conversation that I have to have. What I started saying very early on in this war, when I started talking about this publicly, is we have. Some people aren't going to like this. Overly emotional and underly informed people. You are driven by emotion. The news, the feed, the blood, the war and the violence. And like I told you, it is the first time. And remind me if we've had another one where you and I in 10 seconds can get war for free and watch this all day, it's clearly going to drive an overly emotional state. Now the information around why that is happening isn't being surfaced. And also those who are overly emotional don't care about the information. And this is exactly where my job gets very difficult because it doesn't matter. And you can notice that, like, since we've been on this conversation, I haven't been debunking the genocide claim. I haven't been debunking the apartheid or the all this stuff. A lot of them don't want to listen to it. They don't care because a lot of people have already tuned out because I'm a Jew and I'm Israeli and I'm a Zionist. So that's to begin with. But a lot of them don't want to hear any rational reason for why this genocide thing maybe isn't a genocide. There are people who will be willing to listen. A, because I didn't serve in the idf, which I find fascinating, and B, because I live in Israel. Since the beginning of the war, it has been reported that roughly. And the numbers have fluctuated, but roughly 60,000 people have been killed by the IDF. There's a few things to take into account before I break this down. Number one, included in that number are members of Hamas. There is no differentiation between civilians and Hamas, when this number is being reported to the general public, which is being reported to by the Gazan Health Ministry, which. That first video that I made in November 2023 was a manager in the hospital who was an undercover hospital clerk working for Hamas inside of a hospital inside of Khan Younis. So Hamas is embedded in hospitals and they are embedded in the personnel. Giving information to the public about the war, it's like really important now. You know what? For the sake of the conversation, we'll say it's 60,000 people.
- [83:32]
Scott Clary
Making the assumption that there's no lying about that number.
- [83:35]
Barack Swartz
Sure. Making the assumption. According To Israel's estimates, 25 to 30,000 of them have been members of Hamas. Let's meet in the middle. Let's meet in the middle. Because they're not willing to say that the 60,000 is inaccurate. And I'm. And they're not going to believe me that when I say, yeah, but Hamas members are part of that 30,000 people. The population of the Gaza Strip is over 2 million. The population of the Gaza Strip in 1948 was 80,000 people. The population of Jews living across the Middle east in 1948 was around 1 million. Between 1948 and 2025, the population of the Gaza Strip has gone from 80,000 people to 2.1 million people. The population of the Jews living in the Middle east between 1948 and 2025 has gone from 1 million to estimates between 5 and 10,000. To tell me that there's genocidal intent by the IDF to snipe day in and day out people because they can. When 30,000 people have died in a war which is horrible and tragic, and every single one of them is bad, all of them are bad. Kids are bad, women are bad. It's really hard to watch it, to be honest with you. Genocidal intent is not clear in Israel's efforts in waging this war. When they take all of the measures and I can go into them and list them off, but I notice that when people list them off, people are already tuned out. My friends who show me videos of escorting Gazans through humanitarian corridors on their iPhones, showing me videos, escorting them, moving them, getting them out of the way of when the war is happening so that they don't die. Units in the army who study Arabic to be able to make phone calls to Palestinians, to call them on the phone by areas of streets to tell them there is a military target where you are. We need you to leave the videos of the pamphlets dropping. Those are real Pamphlets. It's not stam. It's not fake. They're real pamphlets. Drones going above a building in Arabic, 60 minutes before a drone comes to take out a military target, telling the people in the building to leave. These are not the actions of a group of people whose intention it is, is to slaughter people. In the early 2000s in Sudan, in Darfur, got slaughtered by the masses by radical militia groups. Syria, Lebanon, currently happening in Syria, the Alawite Christian community, the Druze community in southern Syria and northern Israel getting slaughtered. As you and I are having this conversation right now like intent to kill. No phone calls are being made, no pamphlets are being dropped, no humanitarian corridors are being opened, no army who wants to commit this genocide seems to me like it's the right thing to do, is to tell the people that they want to go get commit genocide to that we're coming. The numbers don't reflect the genocidal intent. The proof that I've seen from the people who are apparently committing this genocide do not show genocidal intent. Am I sitting here defending every soldier in the idf, every action that has been taken? Absolutely not. No way. No way anybody who chooses has chosen to just indiscriminately kill. I condemn IDF soldiers or videos of them peeing on dead bodies or like, making fun of like, any wardrobe or, you know, Gauzen, like, whatever. I condemn Israelis getting on, you know, OMI TV and finding out that the person they're speaking to is anti Israel and then spitting on the camera and saying like, your mother and all that stuff, I condemn, I condemn it because I'm a human. I'm willing and able to condemn that as somebody who stands here firmly and defends Israel. The. So I'm, I, I mention all that to you because since the 7th of October, and sitting with you now in front of this chair, finding a way to have dialogue when somebody goes into a conversation after having seen real after real after real of all of the destruction of a war, you get to choose your location of the war. You get to choose the time of the war, you get to choose where in the war. You get to choose the content creator who's filming the war. You get to filter by category which part of the war you want to watch. That's like. So I'm not, I'm not sure Barack has the answer for that. Especially when I come on and I, I try to lead with understanding more about the person that I'm speaking with. I'll never forget. And then I want to hear you chime in. But like when I went to the capitol, there were four of us, we had no security. The group that I was with were wearing. One had a shirt that had like an Israeli flag on it. One was carrying an Israeli flag, one had a piece from his army uniform. And I didn't, I didn't serve in the army. I didn't want to carry a flag. I was wearing a cut off Nike T shirt with Converse shoes, the same ones I'm wearing here. And the reason I did that is because when I was going to go interact with people who are radically against where I am in this conflict, I wanted them to see that I was just like a normal dude. I wasn't coming in there like antagonizing with an Israeli flag. And I'll never forget, there's a picture, I'll send it to you, maybe you can throw it up. This kid came up to me, his head is wrapped in a keffiyeh. And we had an hour long conversation in the middle of the street near the capital. It was, it was mayhem. There's four of us and we had an hour long conversation back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And at the end of the conversation, he looked at me and he's like, you are the first and only Israeli that I've ever respected since I've been a human. And he shook my hand and he was, he was emotionally driven by all the different things that I just told you about. And he showed it to me, he's showing it to me and I'm sitting there like, what am I going to say to this kid? Right? Like at the same time, I'll pull up footage of body cam footage from Hamas after what they did on October 7th. My friend was one of them. But they're already like, yeah, but you know that it was, it didn't happen in a bubble, wasn't. It wasn't, it didn't happen in a vacuum. Like this has been happening for a long time. But because I didn't choose to antagonize him, because I didn't try to make it us versus them, me versus you. Because this kid radically disagrees with me on most things and I radically disagree with him. Sorry. It's like calling a spade a spade. We just don't agree on this whole thing. But when he said that to me, I realized that leading with. First of all, I asked him like, his name, where he's from, things that he does to just try and like get. You have to find a little bit of common ground if you want to talk about this stuff a little bit. We weren't there to have tea and sip tea and cookies, but we were there to just like try and see if we could have a civil conversation. I was the only one during that delegation that was able to find a space to be able to talk to people. And I'm the only one that didn't serve in the idf. I'm the only one that like, didn't. Didn't have that, that narrative from like being in the, in the. We say in the territories. So it's really interesting because in the beginning we spoke about this earlier, I thought that was going to be a massive liability. And it turns out it's a huge plus for. It's a huge plus for me to be able to find that common ground. Because IDF isn't even IDF in America. It's iof, It's Israeli Occupation forces. So is that what, that's what they call it?
- [92:03]
Scott Clary
I didn't know that.
- [92:03]
Barack Swartz
Yeah. So if you're part of the iof, you're irrelevant to humanity.
- [92:09]
Scott Clary
So you, you discount their perspective just because of what they, what they symbolize. Who, like somebody who is very pro Palestine, you discount the perspective of somebody that served in the IDF simply because of what they've done in their life?
- [92:24]
Barack Swartz
Bingo. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you want a Nobel Peace Prize.
- [92:27]
Scott Clary
I'll tell you like something that bugs me about this a lot. But regardless, this is one thing that bugs me, which is hopefully people can understand and get behind. It seems like there's like a lack of empathy and critical thinking. I don't know why, because throughout my entire life, if somebody actually brings a compelling point to me, I'll always consider it. It could even change my perspective. I'll always research it, I'll fact check it. It's just critical thinking, due diligence, like removing emotion from decision. I understand that not everybody in the world is going to be able to do that, but I see very intelligent people who I respect immensely seemingly being driven by emotion in this one part of their life when the rest of their life. I admire their work. And I guess I find that confusing. I don't know why this one particular event seems to shut people off cognitively. And that's, I think, probably the biggest thing I've been trying to wrap my mind around.
- [93:38]
Barack Swartz
Scooter Braun talked about this, about people not deploying enough empathy to general conflict with people. But also like Israel, Palestine, because there isn't enough empathy. There's actually no empathy. I first of all I want to say that like I'm more of a student at this time in my life as I become more later on, hopefully a teacher when it comes to trying to see things through a lens that I, I see possibly be a. Possibly be a tool to explore what you're saying whether it's understanding the mechanism behind anti Semitism, understanding possibly how to approach anti Semitism, possibly understanding how to approach creating empathy for dialogue. I, I asked you before we started, I asked you to print off this sheet. I'm going to explain to you what this sheet is and the. What I have in front of me is the map of consciousness which is essentially like as humans where we operate in the world from a collective standpoint which I'll show you in a minute and as Scott, as Barack, as a terrorist, as a monk, as a Buddhist for the most part right now in the world that we live in as a collective, we live in this yellow mid range and some of the different words that describe what this range is are. We're demanding, we have pride, we scorn others. A little bit of courage, a little bit of affirmation, but not so high on what it means to reach ultimate power and happiness but not at the lowest of the lows.
- [95:42]
Scott Clary
So this is how we go through life. This is how we treat people situations. Because I've been looking at the top, I'm just going to read it. So it's like God view life view level scale. I don't know what the scale means. I guess it's like a high vibration versus a low.
- [95:56]
Barack Swartz
Bingo. Yeah. Like we all have different fractals that are in front of us 247 that.
- [96:00]
Scott Clary
Are despising is very low vibration energy emotion process. And you're saying that is it like. So how you read this chart, is it more along the lines? Just so I understand, if we hover around this middle yellow tier, does that mean that it's very likely that if we are indifferent, for example we're also demanding and we also have high pride or like is. Is somebody's. When somebody sort of looks at themselves, can they be wise but also be scornful or is that unlikely?
- [96:37]
Barack Swartz
Of course you. Yeah.
- [96:38]
Scott Clary
So like you can be all over the chart depending on which category you're in.
- [96:42]
Barack Swartz
Sure. It also has to do with you personally and your experiences as a. So like for example, like a monk and a Buddhist are going to live.
- [96:50]
Scott Clary
Up here across the board basically pretty.
- [96:53]
Barack Swartz
Much because they've also done the extreme version of self work.
- [96:58]
Scott Clary
Where does this work come from?
- [96:59]
Barack Swartz
That this is from typically. Well, first of all, in Kabbalah. Well, in Kabbalah you have the study of the Zohar, like this in and everything. And so this, this comes from like understanding energy levels in consciousness. So real quick, just like in Judaism, actually, like in astrology, your astrological chart, the work that is done for each individual to understand who they are, their experiences, their traumas, and what is, what is contributing to why they are doing what they do and who they are. For example, a Buddhist and a monk who sit on a mountain or a rock in pure silence for hours and hours and hours and aren't on the Internet or anything. They're getting to the, that's like extreme. Okay. I would say anti Semitism, racism and terrorism live at this bottom end. Okay.
- [97:51]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [97:51]
Barack Swartz
Now as a collective, we aren't going to be able. As a collective, I say like collective as in people in the world. We have a. You as Scott, you have your own map of consciousness and you have your own energy levels and the frequencies that you operate on and the fractals that you're distributing to the world and the, the what you put out to the world and what it's going to give back to you. I also do. Every single person does. And there's a gajillion factors that contribute to that. All of our individual frequencies contribute to the greater frequency of the world, which is humanity and where we are. And you were saying, and we've all been saying, that we feel like the world right now is like shaken up and like everything's going wrong, everything's bad, there's war, there's conflict. Our collective consciousness as people in our vibrations are very low. It's very, very, very low. We see it on the Internet, we see it in person. And we see, we see an incredible amount of shame. We see an incredible amount of blame. We saw human beings, real human beings, blame Jews within 90 minutes of Charlie Kirk getting assassinated for what happened. Like, we, we, we are not, we don't have empathy anymore. The reason I brought this up is because we lack empathy. It's also because we don't have teachers at the rate and scale that we need to be able to teach human beings more about energy levels of consciousness and how we as individuals elevate ourselves to shift and change the collective around the world to have a higher frequency. I know that this sounds a little bit like off grid voodoo, cuckoo or whatever, but I'm going to give you two stories that I'm going to tell you right now that shook me and made Me understand the importance of learning about energy, which leads to learning about empathy, which leads to being able to have these conversations when empathy is most needed, when we're talking about world conflict, the same empathy or critical thinking that you said you were able to deploy with your counterparts when you were a college student, that we've completely abandoned.
- [100:07]
Scott Clary
That's what doesn't make sense to me, why it's gone.
- [100:09]
Barack Swartz
Yeah. I was in Los Angeles, 2024 in September. Scooter Braun saw my work, followed me. We became pen pals, kind of like how you and I became pen pals. And he invited me out to the LA Nova exhibition, where he put the exhibition on display. They brought in so that the Nova exhibition for those who are watching, listening. They took cars, tents, things that they could find from the Nova festival in Kibbutz Berry from the morning of October 7, where there was a music festival happening, where lots of people got murdered in broad daylight by Hamas terrorists. And they brought a lot of the items. They cargo shipped them to the States. And they've been around cities around the States now trying to show people what happened at this music festival. It's not affiliated by any political means. There's. You actually see no Israeli flag when you walk in there. Like, it's not about that. It's about what happened at a music festival with people.
- [101:10]
Scott Clary
Like, it reminds me of the Holocaust memorial at Auschwitz where you see all the shoes similar.
- [101:16]
Barack Swartz
They actually have a table that I filmed there, which are the items that were found that were not identified. So when people come to the exhibition, they have a table there that family members who might actually have a piece of item that was from their son or their daughter, they can claim it as long as they can prove that that was their son or their daughters. So there is actually a table there that they have that sort of reminds you of that. They brought in at the Nova exhibition a Reiki master. For those of you who don't know what. Do you know what Reiki is?
- [101:49]
Scott Clary
Not really.
- [101:50]
Barack Swartz
Okay.
- [101:51]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [101:51]
Barack Swartz
Reiki is a form of energy healing. Energy transfer from one human to another, or human to pet, to heal, heal pain, heal physical pain, heal emotional pain. And my parents actually have both been trained in Reiki since I was a kid. So whenever I'd come home from high school and have a headache, you. Essentially, the way it works is a couple ways, but you can either lay down and the person who's giving you Reiki can put their hands in the spot that you have pain above a chakra or even like on your head. They can be little to no contact or some soft contact, and very quickly you'll feel their hands heat up and that body part where they're giving you Reiki gets. Gets warm too. And that's actually the physical transfer of energy. And when I would have headaches in high school, I'd come home, I'd lay down, put my head in my mom's lap, and within 10 minutes, the headache was gone. Every single time, Every single time. We had a dog who was also sick, and she would give him Reiki, too. They brought in a Reiki master to treat the survivors of the Nova Festival, because one thing Reiki actually can do is you can extract trauma and stress from another human being through energy transfer and energy extraction and help somebody through a healing process after what many of the survivors went through after the 7th of October, my last day at the festival, at the. At the Nova Exhibition, the. Her name is Heather. She gave me a Reiki treatment upstairs in her clinic that she built. And in one hour, she managed to. My entire lower limbs went numb. I couldn't feel my lower limbs, and I started crying during the treatment. And in the middle, she started choking. She was. She was literally choking in the middle of the treatment. She left the room. I came out of my meditative state and I didn't understand what was happening. I was about to get off the bed, and there's music. She has a candle. It's very like. It really gets you into a deep state. And I escaped this. And right as I was about to get off the table, she came back in, didn't say anything. She finished the treatment after we spoke. The details of my treatment are not so important. I'm going to get to this in a second. But after we spoke, she told me, when she's giving Reiki to somebody who has so much tension and stress built up into their own body, that stress is transferred from the person she's giving Reiki to into her body, and the stress gets caught in her thyroid and she physically starts choking because she's taking stress and trauma out of somebody who she's. She's healing and it goes into her. So just to give you a practical example of. That's what energy transfer can look and feel like when you're doing it to somebody who has a lot of stress. Now, she was doing this to people who survived the festival. Israel had survivors sent to America to speak with people who would go through the exhibition and they would have questions or they'd be in the healing center and they'd want to speak to people who literally were at the festival on October 7th and survived. She. This is where this comes in. I'm not going to name her name, but Heather was giving. I can say Heather's name. She was giving Reiki to a girl who survived that morning. The girl goes on the table, the same room I was in. She closes her eyes, Heather starts. Heather puts her hands on the girl, and within 15, 20 minutes, Heather closes her eyes and she starts to have a vision in her head. Keep in mind, Heather is also an astrologist. She studied Kabbalah and she converted to Judaism. So she's very much tuned into consciousness and energy. She closes her eyes and she's giving Reiki to this girl and she starts to have a vision. She sees a religious figure, religious looking man with kind of what looks like a cloak, this big beard. And he is kind of protecting, in a way, the girl that she's giving Reiki to. That's the vision that she had in her head when she was giving Reiki to this girl. She had no context about this girl aside from the fact that she survived the festival when the Hamas terrorists came. When she finished the treatment, Heather told the girl about this vision that she had when she was giving her Reiki. The girl looked at Heather and said, when we were at the Nova Festival and the Hamas terrorists breached into the site of the party, me and like 40 other people were running and we found a bomb shelter. There's actually a very infamous video of a bunch of attendees of the party in this bomb shelter. And you see Hamas terrorists taking grenades and they throw them in and then they leave or they take their gun and they spray it up and they leave. And you can hear just from the sounds of the video what's going on inside the shelter. Bodies on top of bodies, people screaming, whatever. She. This girl was in the shelter with her five or six friends and the other like 30 or 40 people just piled in there while the Hamas terrorists barricaded them in. And when she was inside of the bomb shelter, she started saying her great grandfather's name out loud over and over and over and over to protect her and protect her friends. And that's all she had control over at that point in time. She then took like the body of another person who's at the festival. She put the body on top of her. She had no other choice. That girl's great grandfather is a rabbi, was a rabbi from Spain with a long beard who had a tallit. And when she was saying her great grandfather's name out Loud in the bomb shelter. He was protecting her. The only six or seven people that survived the bomb shelter that morning were her and her friends. She reached a very high level of consciousness in that moment. That girl, like, reached. She surrendered and she reached a really high level. She gave up. She chose faith and she chose love, and she chose protection against the lowest possible level of consciousness. Which are terrorists, which are Hamas terrorists. In this case, these are the two going at each other. That's what the 7th of October was, especially at the Nova Festival. So the energy that she carried and was able to transfer for her friends. And by the way, like, when she told that to Heather, you know, she didn't have that context, but that's the vision that she saw. I'll give you one other quick story, if you don't mind. This is one of Heather's jobs, was to understand the stories behind how these people survived, because it is related to this one girl who was also at the festival. I can't. I'm not going to say her name. There's a famous video, unfortunately, I say famous, but it's like. Like you can't unsee it. It's all the. A lot of the people at the festival sprinting across this open field where you just see people getting hosed down and sprayed, and you hear gunshots. They're sprinting. They went left, they went right, they went everywhere. This one girl found in the middle of, like, not a forest, but she was way far away from the field. She found a tree. She hid behind the tree for, like six hours by herself. At this point, probably like going insane, talking to herself, but at the same time trying to stay as calm as possible. Seven hours after standing there, she spotted a Hamas terrorist with a machine, Kalashnikov, a gun in her hand, who was scanning and then locked eyes with her. And she's next to the tree. She's beautiful. Very beautiful. Israeli girl in the middle of a field on October 7, the Hamas terrorists had injected themselves with. They were on another level. The things that they were trying to accomplish, to do to people, to women, to anybody. You can imagine what would happen in that case, where here's this girl in the middle of an open field, surrounded by no one besides Hamas terrorist. She locks eyes with him. He sprints to her. She takes two steps away from the tree, and she just takes a big inhale. At this point, he's about 10 to 12ft away from her. He's full on beeline. Sprint to her, and she takes a massive inhale. She exhales and she smiles right at him, like a real smile, like, released when she smiled. And he gets to 10ft away, he stutter steps and he stopped, and he's confused. He has no idea what to do. And he slowly, slowly backpedals. He sprints and he beelines and he leaves. And she just stood there. She also survived the 7th of October to, like, sit here and tell me that this Hamas terrorist got a phone call, heard his name, had some other incentive to not do what many of the people know, what he was proceeding, what he was going to proceed to do to her. When the lowest level of consciousness possible meets the highest level of consciousness possible. Love in bliss, empathy, all of the things that they achieved, a lot of these survivors achieved will always. This is why people say love always wins, why Scooter Braun always says empathy always wins. And one of the things that Heather's job is to do is to work with some of the people who did survive and understand how they achieved these levels of consciousness in a moment where it's probably nearly impossible to do. So. Those two stories are like several of 50 or 60 that she uncovered from that very dark morning. And Heather is actually my therapist now. She's my healer, she's my astrologist, she's my guider. And this whole space of energy and consciousness is really fascinating to me when I look at it practically, when I say practically, I'm talking about people who survived maybe the 7th of October. So that was like, you know, I just, like, unloaded a lot. But it all has to do with what you said about empathy and energy and consciousness. And I, as I said before, I'm more in, like, the student phase right now, where I'm just trying to offer something that I think I see potentially having a big impact that I'm exploring. But I do think that if we are able to find a way for people to learn how to do the work it needs on their own, to discover what empathy really looks like in their own life, to be able to then deploy it to other people, the collective consciousness and how we are as human beings on Earth, where it's not just conflict in war and debate, in us versus them and antagonizing. And that's basically like the state of the Union where we are, where I think that is one way we can. We can rise as people. It doesn't mean that we're on a planet on Utopia where, like, there's nothing bad, there's. There's bad, probably will always be bad, but we're not in a good place. Right now. And I think that what we're seeing is the unfolding of all of this. By the way, I just want to say this eclipse season, lunar eclipse, eclipse season is notorious for pretty bad things to happen. Charlie just got killed and assassinated during an eclipse we saw, not during the eclipse, but it's eclipse season right now. You can go and you can look at actual like, like tragic things that have happened in the world. Look at the astrology, look at what was happening in the world at that time. It's pretty, it's really eye opening.
- [114:59]
Scott Clary
Indeed is a success story, partner. Now if you're hiring Indeed is all you need. Let me give you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to Indeed and be super specific. Not just can you edit audio. I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at least three years, gets our style and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes from people who've edited one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing. People who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it. That's what makes a difference. You get people who actually are what you're looking for. According to Indeed Data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored jobs. And people are finding quality hires right now. In the minute that I've been speaking to you, companies like yours have made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed Data Worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes. Less stress, less time, and more results. Now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs and listeners of this show will get a 75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com Clary just go to Indeed.com Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Clary terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the right way with Indeed. HubSpot is a success story, partner. Now look, if you're in marketing right now, or if you're an entrepreneur who's hired marketers, or if you're a founder who leads a whole marketing team, you know the drill. You are creating content for 12 different channels. You're launching campaigns, you're scoring leads, you're analyzing all the data and somewhere in there you're actually supposed to do great marketing. And it's exhausting and you're spread too thin. But this is what actually works for marketers to give you your life and your time back. HubSpot's marketing hub HubSpot's content hub combined with their new AI called Breeze. Now what this actually does is basically everything that you shouldn't have to do yourself. It remixes your content instantly so you're not starting from scratch every single time. It handles lead scoring so you know exactly who to focus on, which customers will probably convert. And it pulls all your analytics and your data and KPIs into one place instead of having them scattered across 15 different tabs and tools. Plus, the AI agents that HubSpot builds for you can automate the repetitive stuff that's eating away your day. Bottom line, you get better results faster without burning out. See, with HubSpot, everything's connected in one platform instead of duct taped together. So if you're tired of being spread too thin, check out HubSpot.com marketers to see how this actually works. I think that one thing I take away from this is if. If people who achieve like the highest level of consciousness and just sort of belief, like those two stories you just told me in the face of like absolute danger and absolute death, really is if just coming to peace with who you are as a person and what you believe in and knowing that your time on this earth, even if it ends, was well spent and you're happy with the life that you've lived and all these different things that just sort of put you at true peace, if that can counteract almost guaranteed death, then even a fraction of gratitude and forgiveness can counteract, like a negative sentiment. And I feel like the issue is that people are trying to change another person's perspective, whether or not they feel like they're right or wrong, it's coming from a place of low consciousness. So even if I am pro Israel, I'm like, how can those like, like, how can those not understand? Like, it's just like a low vibration, right? It's like an anger. I'm trying to convince them through anger versus I empathize with who you are and what you've accomplished. And you as a person and your beliefs on one thing are not your beliefs on everything. And there's way more, there's way more that we agree on than disagree on. But I think that coming full circle, I think that even if you are on one side or the other side, you're trying to change someone's mind from like a. An aggressive.
- [119:26]
Barack Swartz
Yes.
- [119:27]
Scott Clary
Place.
- [119:28]
Barack Swartz
Yes.
- [119:29]
Scott Clary
And it's not working.
- [119:30]
Barack Swartz
Not only is it not working, Scott, when has that worked?
- [119:35]
Scott Clary
Like never, never.
- [119:40]
Barack Swartz
So she has introduced me to this. This is, by the way, also something that she thinks about when it comes to anti Semitism.
- [119:49]
Scott Clary
I was going to just mention one more thing. I was going to say, I would be curious if you doing self work has actually led to more productive conversations with people.
- [120:01]
Barack Swartz
You realize I have chills right now. You realize what you just said is an embodiment of who I've been the past four months of my life. What you just said is the formula. You can't achieve higher levels of consciousness and you can't achieve, achieve, excuse me, higher levels of vibration if you don't do the work on your own. To understand what it is that I have to work through, understand who you are, understand past traumas, understand past experiences, letting go of ego. And there are practical ways of how you do this by understanding first what energy is doing the inner work to reverse engineer, by the way, the beginning of this podcast, when I told you about 6, 7 and 8 years old living in Israel, the beginning of inner work begins with the beginning of understanding. First, the snapshot of time of who you are when you were born. What's your natal chart, what, what is, what does the world look like when you were born. If you look at astrology, by the way, and you, you're gonna have people who are gonna comment and say like, astrology is not rational, it's not practical. And that's fine. And I'm not here like preaching astrology. It's not. That's not why I'm in this room with you. What I am going to say is if you understand how to increase your frequency of a human as a human being, which has a direct effect on the person you speak with at the market, the person you debate with on X, and the vote that you cast for why or why not. You agree with something that could be very polarizing. It shifts the vibrations that we have. No one teaches this. No one is teaching energy. No one is teaching inner work. I'm gonna reference Scooter again just because he has actually talked about a lot lately his evolution of doing this, like doing inner work, like doing the really hard digging into one's own life. Scooter also has an extremely public platform, so a lot of people have access to his life, but doing a lot of the digging that is required to raise what you just said. And so the reason I got chills is because I'm actually doing that right now. Most People don't do that. This is why you have. It's called like the midlife crisis. Something crazy happens and you have like a moment of life of like, wait a minute, what do I do? And this could be a divorce, it could be a breakup. This could be something tragic. Whatever it is, you lost your job. That's actually when a lot of people maybe begin to think about doing therapy or work on themselves. Just imagine what would happen in a world where this is taught as a team. Empathy, empathy. This. The last 20, 30 minutes. Go back to what you said before, which I think is, I would argue, one of the more important things that, like, we could ever talk about, which is this idea of empathy, lack thereof, that exists today. So how do you. By the way, the formula for injecting empathy into social media is one that I'm probably not on earth to be able to crack because that seems nearly impossible. How do you inject empathy into the town hall of X? You know, like, no, I don't know.
- [123:31]
Scott Clary
I don't know.
- [123:32]
Barack Swartz
Given everything that we discussed, from me personally growing up with basketball, splitting my life and my time between Israel and the States, trying to find myself a little bit where I am now today on this, like, grassroots mission, there is one other thing that I want to talk about and actually involves something I brought here if we have a moment. I. I live in Israel and like, it would be hard for me to talk about places in the world or a place in the world to the depth that I do if I didn't live there or have never been there. For example, I just came back from a trip from Spain, Morocco and South Africa. I spent a lot of time in South Africa. I went across the entire country from Johannesburg to Kruger. I went through the Karoo desert region, all the way down to south, the southern part of South Africa, through the garden route, up to Cape Town by myself with a car. In about a month. I met with people in urban places, suburban places. Today, I'm not an expert on South Africa. I don't know everything about the country. I feel comfortable talking about some of the landscape there because I took my two fucking feet and I went there and I went to go interact. This is where I see the line that needs to be drawn when I speak to people who really talk firmly about their conviction of Israel, their. That their stance is rooted in such truth without actually having not having been there. There's a very. There's a clip between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith speaking to each other on Joe Rogan about a month or two ago, Joe Rogan brought. Brought both of them in to talk about Israel. Dave Smith is, for the most part, not supportive of Israel's actions. The IDF in the current state of the union. Douglas Murray, non Jew from the uk, very much a leader in the space, author, leader, advocate for Israel, who has been to Gaza, Khan Younis, Israel several times since the beginning of the war. He also quickly after things began with Russia and Ukraine. He's a journalist, he's a writer. He went into Ukraine, into Kyiv, like he went to go see it for himself. So that when he speaks and when he writes about it, he's coming from a place of. And there's a very replayed clip between Dave and Joe, sorry, Dave and Douglas on Joe Rogan, where Douglas asked him, when was the last time, like, you were in the region, in Middle East? And Dave said, I've never been. And Douglas was like, you've never been? And it was like five or six seconds of a silent pause. And then Dave was like, oh, what, because I've never been there, you're going to say I don't have the authority to talk about it? What, you've never been to Nazi Germany, yet you talk about it? And Douglas was like, no, you. You can't time travel, but you can travel. And I think that there's a lot of merit to that. He got, obviously, because of the core of Joe's audience and the fact that Dave has. Douglas has an unpopular opinion for Joe's audience, that he's there to defend Israel. I think I feel the same way. I feel the Same way when 99.9% of the people that I'm interacting with are deeply rooted into a narrative that is not based on personal experience being able to justify the things that they're claiming. It's not just the war is bad. You can claim the war is bad. But when you say that my friends, who are currently now there at 1:30am as you are sitting here in Miami, in Gaza, to say that my friends are committing a genocide, like that's where I'm going to draw the line, right? And that's what Douglas's point was, was like Dave repeatedly, publicly always talks about this genocide Israel's committing, and he hasn't even been there. So when we talk about being boots on the ground, I. I have with me a piece of rocket shrapnel that I found with my own two hands here in Israel. I'm going to give this to you in a second, Scott, but the reason that I brought this and that I bring this around when I was in northern Israel about six months ago, I went to a city called Metula, which if you look on the map of Israel, it's the furthest northern city in Israel. It's on the border of Lebanon, on the border of Syria. You can see it from like, like it's very high up in the mountains. You can see Lebanon, you can see Syria, you can see the border fence. You could throw a baseball as hard as you can to Syrians. That would be on the other side if they were allowed down there. Now, obviously because of the war, they can't. That's how close this city is to the north. After the 7th of October, Hezbollah, which is a completely different proxy within the Middle east who has repeatedly been trying to destroy Israel, they started firing rockets. Their missile capabilities and technology that they have are far deeper than what Hamas has. Hezbollah has had rockets that could precision missiles that could reach a specific building like mine in Tel Aviv. So they started firing and Mutula got just absolutely eradicated. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens had to evacuate and leave their homes in the north. They got relocated across the country because of how close they were in perimeter to the north when they started firing in Israel. We have a system that when there's a rocket that has been fired from an enemy, whether it's Yemen, whether it's Hamas in the Gaza Strip, whether it's Hezbollah in Lebanon, whether it's Iran, we have a system, a technology, technological system that actually alerts citizens of the rocket. So we have, when you are on an Israeli SIM card, or I think at this point, any SIM card, because the cellular towers have your location, if the rocket is projected to come to where you are geographically in the country, you get an alert. Depending on where your city is in the country, that's the specific amount of time that you have allotted to get to a safe space before the rocket could penetrate where you are. I live in Tel Aviv. So if a rocket is fired from the Gaza Strip towards my area, when I receive the alert, when my phone, it's called the red alert app or home front command when you receive it. I am allotted 90 seconds to get to a shelter because I'm about 69, 70 kilometers away from the Gaza Strip. Just to put into perspective, 90 seconds is a lot of time. 90 seconds is enough time to be in the shower. Get the alert. This is, I'm speaking to you off personal experience. Get the alert, turn off the water, grab your towel, go downstairs to the bomb shelter and be downstairs with your residents and Your neighbors. It's a lot of time. And speaking in Israel time, communities in southern Israel like Sderot and Beri and Netiva Sara and Nachal Oz, these villages, when a rocket is fired from Gaza, they have about 15 to 17 seconds. So if you're in the shower or if you are a mother or father of three kids, at 3:00am when the. You have to. In 15 seconds, not 90, get your three children, make sure that they're awake, get them out, be in the safe room, because the border can't. Well, you can't. You can't. That's the point. The point is, is that what is 15 seconds when you're, when you have three kids? Metula is so close to Lebanon that they don't have a system that gives you. There's no such thing as time to go to the shelter. So when you're in Metula, and maybe you can clip like pictures, but I actually have some from when I was there. You can see if you have a set of binoculars or if you really look specifically, you can actually see some of the compounds where Hezbollah sits. That's how close they are. So when the siren goes off and it's a sound that every Israeli knows in Metula, you can't really do much. You just pray because you can go to a shelter, but by the time you take the steps to get there, the rocket fell somewhere. So that was the. That. That it's being reconstructed. But that's what Matula was when I went there six months ago. Now, on our way out, we stopped at this basketball court that's out. It's an outdoor basketball court. It's caged on the top of Metula. You look behind the court, you see Lebanon, you see Syria and this outdoor court. And when I went there, it was. We had to get some permission to go and see the destruction and meet with some of the families. Some of them actually refused to leave. They're like, no, this is my home. I'm not going anywhere. If a rocket hits, a rocket hits. And when I went to the basketball court, it was covered with rocket shrapnel because the, the IDF and the government, they hadn't had then gone there yet. They had gone there to clean up. They hadn't gone there because there's so many houses that need to be rebuilt. There's so many things have to be done. So you just see shrapnel laying around. This was the biggest piece of shrapnel that I found. I'm going to give it to you in a Second, the reason this piece is really important for me is because for the people that maybe made it this far in the podcast, that's amazing. And for the people that tuned out in the first three minutes when they saw that here's some guy talking about the I word, Israel, the piece that they don't understand is the threat, the constant threat, 1am or 1pm Summer or winter, fall, it doesn't matter. The constant threat that Israel is under from basically every front besides its western front, because that's just the Mediterranean Sea, is this. This in my hand is supposed to free Palestine. And this in my hand is supposed to rid the region of dirty Zionists who are the same 5, 6 and 7, 8 year old children in Metula who after school want to get some shots up or play four square or shoot the same way I was when I was a middle school student at recess getting shots up at the Watertown Middle School, I, I would play at. These kids don't have 40 seconds, 20 seconds to run into a shelter when they look across the hill and see Hezbollah firing this at them. This is the size of my palm. I'm going to give it to you. Once you take that, you can see how dense and how heavy it is from the size of just the palm. And now to give you some perspective, the pipes and the size of these. Okay. Is from the length of the room that we're sitting in. One rocket is about twice the size of the length from this wall to this wall. Yes. So that is the size of my palm, which. It's heavy. It's very, very dense.
- [135:32]
Scott Clary
Yeah. But this alone, this tiny fragment could kill someone.
- [135:36]
Barack Swartz
That tiny fragment has killed somebody. Like, that's, that's what we live under. That is every single time I get a comment that says free Palestine, every single time I get demonized as an Israeli and people give permission to other people to say, oh, Barak, that Zionist, he's also worthy of being cleansed. From the river to the sea. What you're holding is from the river to the sea, what you're holding is globalized, the Intifada. And what you're holding is death to Israel and death to America and death to Jews and death to Christians and death to ethnic minorities. That's. That's what you're holding. The six, seven and eight year old children who play basketball at that court, that's what's coming for them. And, and this is, this is. I didn't buy this off of Etsy or ebay. Fucking pick that up with my own two hands. And I bring this around to show people. I went to Canada, I think you'll appreciate this. I went to Canada last year and I spoke at a Hebrew Academy, 50 day school, Orthodox Jewish students. And I told the academy, please bring in a non Jewish group of basketball players so that I can merge the two into a gym together and talk to them about Israel. This is actually how I do advocacy because I have a strength and conditioning background in Israel, training, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Nessiona, a lot of high caliber players. I look at basketball as a tool to open up a safe space to then talk about Israel. So what I'll do is I'll do like 45 minute strength and conditioning sessions with people I won't even really mention Israel. And once I create that rapport between like player and coach, they see me as this mentor. Then I sit with them on the floor at half court in a big circle, I talk to them about Israel and I bring this with me and I pass it around. And when I did a clinic at the Hebrew academy, they brought in a basketball team called Liberty for youth. It's about 10 kids in their teens who have all been arrested before police brutality, gun violence. All non Jews. Not really. None of them had really ever met a Jew before and they've never met an Israeli. So here was their first time coming into a Jewish academy. I told the academy, bring them. I made those players on that team be the captain of all the teams that I made with the academy so that I could integrate them and make them feel safe. And then we sat in a big semi circle in a big circle and I talked about Israel and I passed that around. You should have seen the faces of the players when that piece of shrapnel reached them. The players were speechless when they realized that the kids that they were looking at in that gym, who were just a few years older than the same ones who play at that basketball court, that this is what they're running away from and this is in their backyard. And after the clinic, the coach came up to me and was like, as a result of your visit today and you speaking and bringing pieces from this conflict to us, you've completely shifted our perspective on the conflict. That's, I think the power in what Douglas was saying to Dave Smith, which is like, do you know what a six year old's life is like in Israel? Do you know what a concentration camp was in Auschwitz and what the Gaza Strip is? Because these are the things that people say, Gaza Strip is a concentration camp. Israel's genociding people. We can go out all these claims, and there's never opportunity for people to hold, feel, touch, tangible proof of. This isn't just October 7th. This is the constant threat of the state of Israel that they're under, which is never in conversations for people to contextualize. Actually, what is the date of the day? I could pull out my phone right now and show the camera, the app that I get, that we get. You know, if I was sitting with you on this pod, it's happened before. I've been on podcasts. And my watch will go off. No, and my watch will go off because I'm sitting here right now in America and back in Israel. I just. I have it on because I need to know. And I've been in coffee shops before where, like, I'm traveling and you. You see another Israeli in the room, because you can tell that when you both get the alert, you both look at the phone at the same time. Like, you know, and so I. I just. I wanted to bring it to you. I know you've never actually even been to Israel, but it's just.
- [140:15]
Scott Clary
I don't know, to think of this, like, hurdling at someone's head.
- [140:20]
Barack Swartz
Jugular.
- [140:21]
Scott Clary
Jugular. There's so much evil that goes into making this.
- [140:27]
Barack Swartz
It's just like, it has one purpose, right?
- [140:29]
Scott Clary
No, I know. It just feels evil. I don't know how to describe it. It's like heavy and metallic and cold and dark and dark. And you just think about, like, when it's being made. Because when you think about the person who made this and the use as to why it was being made, I guess you could say the same thing for a lot of stuff that's military stuff. But, like, when you're a terrorist organization, you're not making it to defend a.
- [140:58]
Barack Swartz
Country, and you're also not making it to preserve the innocent life of the country that you're attacking.
- [141:04]
Scott Clary
No, you're just like, okay, so somebody is knowingly and willingly crafting this, knowing it's a good chance that it could kill somebody who is, like, you know, like, hasn't even, like, gone through adulthood, let alone done something to deserve it. Like, that's what I don't get. You can make a lot of arguments for the US Is too militaristic or, you know, Israel has killed people that. But, like, when you put. When. I don't know, I'm probably gonna get on for this. But when the U.S. creates, you know, arms and weapons, like, there is a cohort of. Of innocent people, they're protecting. Who is Hezbollah protecting? The people that are killing innocent people.
- [142:02]
Barack Swartz
Why weren't the 6 year olds at that basketball court? Why were they not receiving a phone call or text message from Hezbollah saying.
- [142:09]
Scott Clary
That this is coming?
- [142:11]
Barack Swartz
Why is Hamas not dropping pamphlets on Kibbutz Berry and Nachaloz in Hebrew telling them that they're going to come in tomorrow morning at 6:29 because they don't.
- [142:20]
Scott Clary
Want people to live. Just like very obvious.
- [142:22]
Barack Swartz
I think it's like, it's, it's. And this is, I mean people are going to say that it's not. I'm going to say it right now. It's pretty simple.
- [142:31]
Scott Clary
It is very simple.
- [142:33]
Barack Swartz
This is, this is where I.
- [142:34]
Scott Clary
Is heavy.
- [142:35]
Barack Swartz
It's, it's insane, man.
- [142:37]
Scott Clary
Like, why is it so heavy? It's like not even that big.
- [142:40]
Barack Swartz
It's not that big. It's like.
- [142:43]
Scott Clary
Okay, so for context, if I threw this at somebody's head, it would most likely kill them, I think.
- [142:49]
Barack Swartz
So.
- [142:50]
Scott Clary
Like, like that's how. And that's a person throwing it.
- [142:55]
Barack Swartz
That's a person, not a rocket being launched out of like a.
- [142:58]
Scott Clary
No, this is just like a. I.
- [143:02]
Barack Swartz
Mean even you saw when I handed it to you, like I'm d. I'm careful about how I hand it to somebody. Right. Because it's insult. So I haven't done. It's been sitting in this bag and that's because I kind of just want it as it is and how I found it.
- [143:15]
Scott Clary
Yeah, it's like very jagged. It's all rusty.
- [143:18]
Barack Swartz
The other thing that I have here, which is just for me, is this is a piece of the basketball court and that white line is part of the free throw line where I found this piece of rocket. Because like the basketball court for me has been a sanctuary and temple to foster the best relationships that I've had, the best friendships that I've had, the hardest dialogue I've had to create, and the biggest bridges I've ever been able to build. And any basketball court that I go to, when I step onto that court, I find deep connection and meaning to something in the world. It sounds, it's very like highly spiritual concept for me. But the intersection which I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation of basketball and Israel advocacy is led through empathy. It's led through empathy. I talk about the severity of the war. I talk about the tragedy of the war. I talk about the fact that my best friend from high school was Muslim who invited me to his cousin's wedding at his mosque, who I've broken Ramadan with at his house, who has been at my house for Passover, who has been at my house for Shabbat, who comes from a very religious family, originally from Pakistan. To those two years living in Israel, building a medical facility for Arab children. To my three non Jewish best friends from all over the world, African Americans, who have invited me to understand their cultures. Like, if there's anybody that is built to be able to have the resume to open dialogue, I feel like I'm one of those people. I'm not radical on any spectrum. You can see I haven't really brought up politics since we've had this conversation, because I think politics simply chooses to divide people, not bridge them. Politics has its place in the world. I have political beliefs and ideologies. But this conflict actually has very much just become like, who did you vote for in the States? Oh, okay, so you're either pro or anti Israel. Who are you going to vote for? Who are you endorsing? Right. You're for Kamala, you're anti Israel, you're for Trump, you're pro Israel. Like, that's what it's somehow been boiled down to, what it was boiled down to at one point. And that's not how I look at the world. That's how I look at things. And I think what I want to leave off with here is like, there's an incredible amount of antagonization happening in this conflict to both sides. You mentioned empathy before. I'm so happy you mentioned empathy. It just. It also shows me a lot about who you are and your emotional intelligence and understanding, like, what can really drive these conversations. A lot of people watching, observing, contributing, don't have that. That understanding. And my model of using basketball as just a gateway in a vehicle just to try and open meaningful dialogue. I am hoping, and this is sort of one of my aims as I'm doing this, is to create a model for other people to reflect on in their own lives. What is it that basketball is to them. Like, maybe it's cooking, maybe it's art, maybe it's fashion, maybe it's music, maybe it's dancing, maybe it's travel. The culture itself is where we find commonality with people. You have basketball players in China who will save their allowance every week for seven years just to buy a plane ticket and a NBA ticket to go watch James Harden when they're in their mid-20s, it took them 11 years to save. And you have James Harden impacting some kid in China through culture, through basketball. The same kids who are waiting Outside of a Foot Locker from Friday night to Sunday morning to camp out to buy a pair of Jordans. Culture. Like people who save up for a year to buy Taylor Swift tickets. Culture. I think that that's how we need to be leaning a little bit more into empathy and advocacy.
- [147:33]
Scott Clary
Finding the things that sort of are commonalities versus the one small part of somebody's life that's that you believe so radically different than yours.
- [147:47]
Barack Swartz
Yeah. Yeah.
- [147:49]
Scott Clary
Because if you think about. If you think about the totality of someone's life, right. All the things they enjoy, the hobbies they have, the work they do, politics and war. It's a very small piece of it, but it has. Takes up the most mental space.
- [148:07]
Barack Swartz
That's so true.
- [148:09]
Scott Clary
Like how often, how often do you vote? How often do you go to a movie, how often do you play a sport, how often do you travel? More than you vote.
- [148:19]
Barack Swartz
That's facts.
- [148:21]
Scott Clary
Yet people's whole identity is wrapped up in politics and conflict.
- [148:28]
Barack Swartz
That's wild.
- [148:29]
Scott Clary
Why is that? I don't know why. When you have an opinion about Palestine or Israel or any other conflict for that matter, why is that? What I diminish you to movie? Like the same food, same movies, same ways to spend weekends with our kids? I don't know.
- [148:51]
Barack Swartz
It's a really good question like that and that fascinates me. Imagine if we had a better understanding of that. Because that's a cheat code to understand. Like what is it? That's because what you're saying right now after like hearing you say it like that, it's really true. The non negotiable for people has become conflict.
- [149:13]
Scott Clary
Especially people that aren't like. So you can make an argument that politics and war are a greater part of. Of somebody who's living in Gaza right now, it's more than say 2% of their life. But in the US where people are so opinionated, it's not more than that.
- [149:36]
Barack Swartz
That is so true.
- [149:38]
Scott Clary
I think this. There's edge cases where you have parents that live there, you have a cousin that lives there. The mo. The. The majority have zero ties to that particular region of the.
- [149:49]
Barack Swartz
That is so true, man.
- [149:51]
Scott Clary
Which is. It doesn't make any sense to me. But that's why you're doing the work that you do. Yeah. To make people wake up and remember that the person that they're fighting with on X is much more than just one particular political point.
- [150:08]
Barack Swartz
And you don't, you don't, you don't get access to that on the Internet.
- [150:11]
Scott Clary
No.
- [150:12]
Barack Swartz
You just don't period.
- [150:13]
Scott Clary
Well, somebody says one thing, and that's who they are.
- [150:16]
Barack Swartz
That's it.
- [150:16]
Scott Clary
That's their entirety. Totality.
- [150:18]
Barack Swartz
Saw this three days, two days ago. Not only one thing in particular that Charlie said, but obviously. Yeah, yeah. You know, before I flew yesterday. What, Two days ago. Because the time difference is a little bit.
- [150:35]
Scott Clary
It flew in, like, Wednesday night. No. Or Thursday.
- [150:37]
Barack Swartz
So I technically flew in yesterday, but I was basically getting ready Wednesday night, Israel, time to go to the airport. I was going to close my eyes for, like, two hours before my flight. And my friend Tal, who's also a very big YouTuber, the traveling class, shout out to tall. He really also helped me get into this space. He texted me, and all he said was, bro, they shot Charlie Kirk. And I did not know I was going to close my eyes. I had on sleep, focus on my phone, so I wasn't getting notifications. He proceeded to tell. He, He. I'm trying to frame this in a way so that I'm not Charlie Kirk. I'm not as big as Charlie Kirk. And none of them. I'm here. But he was the first person throughout that night that was like, you just want to think about potentially going to the States right now, you know, like, and my whole spiel online is not doing that. Not tucking in your necklace, not hiding your Jewish identity. I'm the opposite. Like, if you go to my content right now on Instagram, it's really pushing this narrative of the higher level of frequency, which is working for me. And then the same person I told you about earlier in this conversation, who called me one day about YouTube, called me and was like, Rethink that US visit if I were you. Not because of Barack, but because of, like, apparently.
- [152:22]
Scott Clary
Well, you, by the way, also kind of do the same type of content I do as what he does.
- [152:26]
Barack Swartz
This is true. Yeah. Just on a much smaller scale. Right. So just. I'm just mentioning that to you because if I choose not to say anything, if I choose not to, not to share how I feel, not to speak the truth, my truth, I'm succumbing to what essentially all of the others who I'm trying to reach want me to do, which is never speak a word from my story, this is exactly. They want someone like me. People want me to tuck in my necklace, to not talk about Israel, to delete my account, to hide. That's what they want us to do. And throughout Jewish history, especially when those are the things that we choose to do, things get worse. Things get way worse. And I'm trying To be a beacon of light in a time that is like, fucking. Believe me, bro. Seems like one of the more contradictory things to. To do, to do, like. Because everything does feel just kind of like how you describe this piece right now. Cold, dark, heavy. And it's a little bit insane to think that, like, I'm going to come out here publicly and always talk about, yes, addressing the dark, but trying to still find that. That optimistic lens, which I think also comes from A, this concept of tikkun olam we have in Judaism of repairing the world, tikkun, to repair olam in the world. And B, inheriting that from my parents. And it started at that Bedouin village when I was six. Like, they gifted me. They gave me this invisible platter of, like, take this here, understand what it means, and then give as much of it back to the world in as many ways as possible while you're alive and able. And that's like, really what this feels like to me. Because as I said in the beginning of this, I did not start talking about Israel because I saw an opportunity to monetize social media platforms. I did not talk about Israel because it was trending on the news. I talked about Israel in the Middle east. And like, my narrative, because it is too important for me to not say anything and for reasons that were very personal, of losing a friend and not being in the army and contributing. And I think that, like, those reasons have a lot to do with what's anchored me in being able to still, almost two years into this whole thing, have. Still have these conversations. A lot of people aren't having these conversations as much anymore. And that's how I know I'm in it for the right reasons.
- [155:22]
Scott Clary
How are you still optimistic after everything we've spoken about today? Because everything we've spoken about. I know you are optimistic, but everything that we've spoken about, whether or not it's. Mostly to do with the west, the fact that people like Charlie Kirk were killed. Charlie Kirk was killed. Excuse me. Like, people who have loud voices are either yelling into an echo chamber or canceled. And we already established that there's two outcomes. There's either war and destruction or ultimately a. A happier, more cohesive, more human centric society. It's really only two outcomes with all the conflict in the world. And it doesn't seem like there's less conflict than ever before. I think people are just. I think the only reason why. I think the only reason why there is less, quote, unquote, war. Even though you can make the argument that There isn't. But people are not explicitly bombing each other the way they used to in like, you know, end of World War II is because I think people are all afraid that like that would be the end of humanity. Like if Russia really wanted to destroy Ukraine, if Israel really wanted to destroy Gaza, like it would be over in a second. But I don't think that anybody wants to make that move. But we're all kind of like flirting with destruction. So what makes you optimistic?
- [156:59]
Barack Swartz
Two part answer. The first part is if you look at the world right now. We are in. You just said it yourself a minute ago, it feels like we've had more conflict lately than we have had in a very long time. And I actually am going to agree with you because that's exactly what it feels like. That's what's happening. It's what's happened. Not just Israel, Palestine, not just Russia, Ukraine, Covid, in terms of just like mayhem and chaos, riots in la. I mean we can, we can go down the list here, right? The reason I'm, the first reason I'm optimistic is because the current state of the world right now is a reflection of people in the world who have raised their hand and said I've fucking had enough of the systems and governments and processes that are put in place in societies. It's not working for people. The, the way governments and the way people are. Societies are built now you can see bottom up. People are like, this is not working for us. We've reached such a low of humiliation and fear and anxiety. What did Covid do? It thrusted us into that bottom part of that chart, into questioning, into not trusting sources, into not trusting the news, into not trusting the media, which today is. It's the whole landscape. The whole landscape is not trusting. So much so that people are not getting assassinated for saying something that they don't agree with. They don't trust the. I'm smiling because I know people are gonna, it's. They have a hard time with it especially. I'm trying to do my best to sort of Trojan horse this idea of energy and astrology because I think it needs to be delicate. The astrology does show and say that 2025, in the, into 2026, we are going to have a pretty significant amount of increased conflict, bloodshed and war. And I think we're going to still see a lot of it over the next year or so when this starts to decline. We are going over the next 20 to 30, 40 years. Like do you remember when. Not you like, remember like when The Internet was created. Wouldn't you agree with me that that was classified as like a new Earth, like shifted Earth in almost every capacity that we could. You could break down Earth in general.
- [159:52]
Scott Clary
In a very positive way.
- [159:54]
Barack Swartz
In a very positive way. When the Internet came out, there was in the beginning, initial phases, a lot of the anxiety, fear and increased tension that you're seeing now with AI coming into the world. It's not coming actually. It's already. It's already been here. And the. This, this part of it being very scary, with bots and automated machines, doing things like sending death threats, doing things like DMing me, which I get every day, all these things. I look at AI as it's going to absolutely positively impact Earth right now. It definitely doesn't feel that way right now. There's a lot of cases to be made, why it's dangerous, why it's bad, it's going to take jobs, all this stuff. I'm going somewhere with this. The Internet then evolved into what you just said? Absolutely. It was Earth version beta, whatever it is. Verse 2.0, 3.4.0. What we're going through right now, not just with AI, but what we're going through right now with the destruction of systems, is the morphing of the new version that we're going to see. I think governments are going to look different, politics are going to look different. I think people are going to slowly wake up and understand how we are going to learn what empathy is, how we are going to learn to achieve a higher frequency as individuals and then collectively contribute to Jewish, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, black and white, the whole thing. I'm not trying to paint a picture where we're going to live in Utopia. That's not, I said in the beginning, it's, I think, nearly impossible. But I'm optimistic because I think we're living through the evolution of a new Earth. I genuinely think that you and I, and definitely my kids, whatever, if you're planning on having kids, I'm also planning on having them, will be experiencing the beginning stages, after the beginning stages of what this new Earth looks like. I really do mean that.
- [162:13]
Scott Clary
I don't disagree with you, by the way. I was just hoping that. I think that, like, if you think about things that change the Earth, right, Like the printing press and then, well, you could literally go through the industrial. The various industrial revolutions. Yeah. I just hope that the evolution of Earth, the next level, the scary thing about change is that the most successful changes in history have come on the other side of a very Brutally bloody conflict. So how bad does that conflict have to get?
- [162:46]
Barack Swartz
I don't have the answer to that, but you're asking the right question.
- [162:49]
Scott Clary
No revolution which has ultimately led to hopefully a more positive environment. I think that if we look at our current. And people take people, I guess it's very, very in vogue to hate capitalism for some segments of the population. But if we look at capitalism and. And democracy in the U.S. and I mean, like, it's never. It's never. No one ever says it's the perfect system, but it's way better than we've had in the past. So what's the next version? I don't know what the next version is, but I do know that even with democracy, it only came to be after a lot of people died. So hopefully.
- [163:31]
Barack Swartz
Which is awful.
- [163:33]
Scott Clary
It is. But that's every revolution.
- [163:35]
Barack Swartz
I saw a video today right before I came here, a real. This. This kid, real. His name's Kevin, I think, Olivero. He just popped up on my feed. I have no idea who this person is. He talked for 30 seconds. He said, I didn't know Charlie Kirk personally. I've never met him, but I weirdly feel that I just lost somebody very close to me. He said, my friends, too. Like, we all feel like we just lost a really close person in our. In our life. And he's a Christian. And he was saying, I've seen Charlie on TikTok. I've seen him debate. I was very impressed with his knowledge of the Bible, the Gospels. But he then said, there is a reason that Charlie got killed. And this is hopefully going to bring a lot of people in the world closer to not just God, love and faith and empathy. I know this sounds crazy when I'm saying this right now because of somebody who just got assassinated, but I also think there is absolutely going to be a massive learning positive, learning opportunity. And it's sickening that I have to say that, like, it's coming from the assassination of someone like Charlie Kirk. For people, it's tragic and it's bad and it's awful, and I don't have the answer. Neither do you. But for that reel to come onto my feed today and listen to him, it's like, I also. I think we all kind of felt it, and there's a lot of. I think there's a lot of meaning behind that. If you've seen, you know, you've seen the comments, and I've seen the comments of people who were quick to celebrate and quick to be like, it was the Jews of Israel, but, like, boy, oh, boy, there's a flood, a massive, like, downpour of people across the world who a lot of them didn't even agree with a lot of the politics of him. Candace Owens, Dave Smith, Yesterday, his. His bite on his podcast was profound. Who are torn at what happened. And I think, unfortunately, this is. This is a time right now where I just talked about the astrology about it, but you're right, like, how much death and how much violence, how much bloodshed is it going to take for us to be like, yo, yeah, enough. You know.
- [166:31]
Scott Clary
I just hope we get to that point sooner than later.
- [166:33]
Barack Swartz
I do, too. I just. It's not that. I just hope it. I'm more than hoping. I'm. I know it will. And I just think that I'm a voice who is convinced it will. And that's why I'm so bullish on this. You know, Like, Scott, there's a lot of people who have been talking about Israel, Palestine on the Internet the past two years, and it's, like, super obvious when you, like, turn it on. Like, they're there to talk to the host and the host's audience, to try and get them on board with their perspective. Like, that's the agenda going into the room, which is a very delusional agenda. If, like, you're having somebody, if your perspective is. If it's not for the audience that already exists, it's a very delusional agenda. Right. If it's for the audience that exists, great. You're going to make them feel even better than they did before. They.
- [167:30]
Scott Clary
That's echo chamber. That's all it is.
- [167:32]
Barack Swartz
Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen people come on to podcasts where, like, their audience isn't necessarily in the same camp of thinking. And I don't think that's the right approach. And that's not my approach. That's definitely like, what you were saying before is, like, there might be people who turn this on within reading the description. They didn't even get to press play because they saw who I am. That's fine. But that's not the group I'm really going for right now. Eventually I'll get to them. When emotions go down and ability to be a little bit more logical goes up. Like, again, the overly emotional underlying form state is so high right now. It's kind of like the stock market. When things are very volatile and people make emotional decisions based on their financial portfolios, they think rationally. Less high conflict, high war, high tension, high divide. People think rationally. Less we need to see the next X amount of years, 2, 5, 10, where emotions are driven down a little bit because listen, it's going to happen. You can't just keep the town hall of X the way it is right now. You can't just keep the state of politics the way it is. I mean, otherwise we're gone. Let's be real. And I, as much as it's really hard to say this because of the, the how people feel, I do have enough faith in human beings to pull it together.
- [168:55]
Scott Clary
The only, you can't not have it.
- [168:57]
Barack Swartz
I don't know what the alternative is and I'm not going to sit here and say like the world's ending, like that's not, not who I am.
- [169:02]
Scott Clary
So no, I think that's the only way. You have to have faith.
- [169:07]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [169:08]
Scott Clary
Where can people connect with you if they want to consume more of your content, learn a little bit more about like what you teach and what you speak about? Where's the best place for them to go?
- [169:20]
Barack Swartz
I am Other Barack. O T H E R B A R A K on every platform otherbrock.com YouTube, Instagram, tick tock x Discord. Other Barack is the name that I came up with after exchanging letters with Barack Obama. So the other Barack, I'm just the other one. Yeah.
- [169:38]
Scott Clary
What are you working on? Like, so if people like consume, I mean, like I know you from YouTube and Instagram.
- [169:42]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [169:43]
Scott Clary
But you're also building out a couple other things.
- [169:45]
Barack Swartz
Yeah.
- [169:46]
Scott Clary
So what can people sort of explore in your universe if they want to?
- [169:49]
Barack Swartz
I'm now actually trying to scale and build what I'm doing to create a model, a model for advocacy to even go to the length of like, to the state of Israel of like, here's a kid from Boston who now lives in Israel. If you want to tell your story to the people outside of Israel, maybe leverage the people who aren't from Israel to tell that story to the ones that they grew up with. And I'm trying to really hone in on that publicly.
- [170:23]
Scott Clary
Out of all the things that you've learned, experienced and even taught across your entire career in life, you have to pick one lesson or one idea that you, in this thought experiment, this is the only lesson that you can teach over to your kids. So the most important idea or lesson and you think that this will help their life their most, what would that idea be and why?
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Barack Swartz
The lesson that my Iman, my Abba, my mom and my dad taught to me that I a didn't realize it was a lesson at the time and B, don't think that they realized it was necessary. The lesson that I would, I would take at six years old, pulling haystacks through carts for Arab children in the middle of the Israeli desert. The lesson to completely look at the person you're looking at in the eye regardless of this, the color of their skin and the language that they speak at their house and the God that they believe in and pray to that if you look at them as the human that they are in the human that you are and don't judge, remove judgment, remove preconceived notion and take them for the same organs that they share with you, which the heart and the brain and the human soul, that if you treat others that way throughout your life and that's what you want reciprocated, that is who you will evolve to be. There's nothing in the world that's more important than being a good person. Doing the right thing is always the right thing to do. I got that from Gary Vee and my kids are going to be raised in a way, whether it's six years old, whether it's four years old. That because that's how I see the world, because that's how I want other people to be. It is a responsibility and duty of mine so that my kids have the same perspective that my parents gave me without even realizing it in the middle of a war zone. And I think that that lesson has a massive correlation to why I'm sitting in front of you. Because I attribute a lot of the lens and perspective we were talking about this offline of how I see the world to the way that my parents and my brother raised me to literally love other people around you, love other people around you, deploy love. This is why the Judaism and being Jewish is a very big part of my life. Because there's a lot of the love that I extract from being a good person, repairing the world, doing goods, respecting others. I would want them, I'd want to give them a variation of the same lesson I got when I was that six year old.