Best of 2025: Dispatch From Gaza's Nasser Hospital w/ Dr Tarek Loubani

Summary

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode: Best of 2025: Dispatch From Gaza's Nasser Hospital w/ Dr. Tarek Loubani
Date: December 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Majority Report features an in-depth and harrowing interview with Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Palestinian-Canadian emergency physician and founder of the GLIA Project, currently volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Gaza. Dr. Loubani delivers a firsthand account of the humanitarian crisis, starvation, decimated infrastructure, and the broader context of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. Following the interview, the Majority Report panel dissects media narratives and US political complicity in the crisis, including a sharp critique of politicians like Richie Torres, and features additional commentary on Zionism, anti-Semitism, and the shifting discourse on Israel within the US.

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1. Introduction & Context

[00:27–04:53]

• Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland introduce Dr. Tarek Loubani and the GLIA Project.
• Emma emphasizes the difficulty and importance of the upcoming interview, noting its harrowing content but essential perspective from within Gaza.
• Sam outlines the broader genocidal context and lack of international accountability.
• Emma highlights the heroism of doctors like Loubani, who risk their lives in extraordinary circumstances.
• The GLIA Project's mission—to provide medical supplies in Gaza—is spotlighted, with a call for audience support.

“It’s a difficult listen, but an essential interview.” — Emma Vigeland [01:42]

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2. Interview: Dr. Tarek Loubani Live from Gaza

[13:44–52:35]

A. Life in Gaza: Escalation of Crisis

[14:23–16:09]

• Dr. Loubani describes how conditions have deteriorated even further over the past year: entry for international aid and medical workers increasingly restricted; resource deprivation has worsened; mass displacement; starvation is near universal.
• Quote:

  “…The amount of food that has been coming in has progressively dwindled to the point that now when I see patients, almost everybody is starving… I can clearly make out their spine… It has been grinding, painful, and progressive. And… it's all been driven by this depraved, almost maniacal Israeli policy…” — Dr. Tarek Loubani [14:23]

B. Starvation and Its Effects

[16:09–22:27]

• Dr. Loubani explains the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s agricultural self-sufficiency and the rapid spread of famine.

• Details on physiological effects—massive malnutrition in children and adults, vivid descriptions of starvation’s effect on bodies.

• Loubani recounts tragic cases (an eight-month-old dying of starvation, failed attempts to create formula).

• Israel controls food entry, with only a fraction needed actually getting through (“60% of the population’s needs”).

• Quote:

  “The people who are severely malnourished, they will die. They will all die… That is thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. And that’s not because it’s impossible to fix… That’s because Israel will not allow us the materials and the supplies that we need…” — Dr. Tarek Loubani [21:35]

C. Israeli Claims and Organized Chaos

[22:27–29:59]

• Dr. Loubani forcefully rebuts Israeli claims that aid is intercepted by Palestinians, clarifying that lootings and chaos are enabled or orchestrated by Israeli-sponsored gangs (e.g., Abu Shabaab), often protected by Israeli drones and military technology during attacks, even on hospitals.

“The Israelis are war criminals and serial liars. They lie basically about everything…” — Dr. Tarek Loubani [23:17]

• Vivid account of a June attack on Nasser hospital by Israeli-backed gangs, supported by drones.
• Despite provocations, Gazan society remains highly ordered and self-organizing under adversity.

D. Security and Functionality of Hospitals

[29:59–35:17]

• Hospitals “function” only in the loosest term—massive shortages, overworked and malnourished medical staff, lack of supplies (gloves, gauze, medicine).
• Palestinian police and covert Arrow Unit provide minimal protection against attacks.
• Only a handful of hospitals barely operational.

“It’s an absolutely Sisyphean effort… We show up despite losing family members, despite being wounded, despite none of us having enough to eat, and… supplies… Every day it’s like a surprise what exactly we’re going to be lacking…” — Dr. Tarek Loubani [33:02]

E. The Broader Humanitarian Toll

[35:17–41:26]

• Discusses lack of menstrual products, and the risks faced by pregnant women and newborns; recounts trauma of an emergency C-section they could not perform due to a lack of supplies.
• Dr. Loubani observes a spiritual weariness in Gaza: death now met with a kind of relief because it ends suffering.

“Now, when somebody dies, you see… most people say God has now shown this person mercy. God has given them mercy to take them out of this fresh hell.” — Dr. Tarek Loubani [41:26]

F. What Can Be Done?

[45:04–48:42]

• Loubani challenges the “we need Israel to allow more aid” framing.

  “Israel is a depraved, criminal society… They will not allow aid to come in. They will be forced to allow aid in.”

• Outlines avenues for change: political protest, economic pressure (BDS), and military “attrition” on the ground. Urges persistence and continual involvement.

G. Counting the Dead: Undercounted Death Toll

[48:42–51:53]

• Dr. Loubani discusses massive undercounts in Palestinian casualty figures: only bodies brought to hospitals are counted, many left in ruins or red zones unrecorded; estimates true toll could be 5–6x “official” estimates—possibly 300,000 dead.

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3. Panel Analysis & Political Discourse on Israel/Gaza

[52:36–97:51]

A. Critique of Politicians (Richie Torres and US Political Elite)

[52:36–69:30]

• Panel discusses Adam Friedland’s emotional interview with Rep. Richie Torres, who shills for Israel while erasing or minimizing Jewish dissent.
• Critiques Torres’ defensive use of identity politics and AIPAC’s influence; exposes the use of Jewish suffering to justify Israeli aggression.

“Torres looks like a sociopath, and he looks immensely vapid and callous and corrupt. And for my money, that's a pretty good outcome because that's kind of the reality.” — Emma Vigeland [54:03]

• Adam Friedland (Jewish) describes being indoctrinated into Zionism, witnessing occupation firsthand, and the personal cost of speaking critically.

  “…this is a very important thing to us. And the fact that I still fucking care about being Jewish is embarrassing… it feels like a stain on our history… Because what being Jewish is, isn't Israel… Judaism has existed for 4,000 years. This is a country for 75…” — Adam Friedland [57:03]

• Panelists note the cyclical co-opting and discarding of Jewish identity by US politicians when convenient for financial or geopolitical gain.

B. Tracing Narratives: Justifying Occupation & Media’s Role

[69:30–73:49]

• Discussion addresses the way Zionists and US media manipulate historical events (e.g., using the Hebron Massacre or October 7th) as starting points, erasing decades of settler violence and resistance.
• Richie Torres’ evocation of two-state solution labeled as a stalling tactic—"a way to outlast genocide under rhetorical cover"—while settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing continue.

“Evoking the two state solution is just a stalling tactic… Palestinians [are the] only side… working on it. The US and Israel… have been disrupting that talk...” — Brandon [67:14]

• Lines of argument expose the way power structures enable genocide and distract with procedural rhetoric while mass death and displacement go on.

C. Rejection of Asymmetrical Violence Narrative

[81:01–83:46]

• Sharp pushback on the asymmetrical standards by which Palestinian resistance is labeled “violence,” while occupation and genocide by Israel/US are disguised as “order” or “defense.”
• Panel ties these dynamics to broader themes—colonialism, imperialism, repression against marginalized groups at home as well as abroad (“war on terror”, “war on drugs” become wars on marginalized Americans).

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4. Memorable Quotes & Key Moments

• Dr. Tarek Loubani on famine:

  "Every patient who I see, I can clearly make out their spine… their skin that's hanging off… It's all been driven by this depraved, almost maniacal Israeli policy..." [14:54]

• On undercounted deaths:

  “They release only the bodies they can identify with the ID numbers attached to them … organizations that have done these counts [elsewhere] estimate the number … to be five to six times more easily. That's 300,000 people very likely dead.” [49:17]

• On supply desperation:

  “We were smuggling in baby formula like it’s cocaine. That’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy.” [36:46]

• On protest and activism:

  "We must force Israel to stand aside while aid goes in... protests work... economic attrition... and military attrition are what's going to stop this..." [45:54]

• Adam Friedland on the cost of dissent:

  “Saying this to you right now will hurt people in my own family … what being Jewish is, isn’t Israel…” [56:53–57:03]

• Emma Vigeland on the Democratic Party’s disconnect:

  “These are questions that Slotkin and her colleagues in the Senate and in the House better start figuring out… The Democratic Party, the voters, are way ahead of them right now and it ain’t gonna change.” [92:56]

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5. Timestamps for Key Segments

• [13:44–52:35] — Dr. Tarek Loubani interview in Gaza
• [14:23–41:26] — Starvation, hospital conditions, and attacks on civilians
• [45:04–48:42] — Discussion of activism: what people can do in the West
• [52:36–69:30] — Review of Adam Friedland–Richie Torres exchange, critique of political postures on Israel
• [73:10–83:46] — Deep dive into media framing, the stalling rhetoric of “two-state solution,” and the asymmetrical standards of violence

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6. Final Thoughts & Tone

The tenor of the episode is urgent, sorrowful, and unflinching. Dr. Tarek Loubani delivers a devastating account of daily life—and death—in Gaza. The panel is analytical, irreverent, and fiercely critical as they dissect both the complicity of US politicians and media, and the rhetorical games that distract from ongoing mass atrocities. The message: the suffering in Gaza is a direct result of deliberate policy choices, and only sustained protest, economic and political pressure, and solidarity—refusing to look away—can hope to bring it to an end.

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For further action:

• Support the GLIA Project
• Continue political protest / BDS
• Share and amplify Palestinian voices

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Sam Seder]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. The destiny of America is always safer in the hands of the people than in the conference rooms of any elite.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Sam Cedar.

[Sam Cedar (singing)]

They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.

[Sam Seder]

The Majority Report with Sam Ceta And I get the feeling you've been cheated. It is Tuesday, December 30, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning majority report. We are broadcasting live two tape steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is our famous series of best of shows. All this week, maybe not Friday, we're not sure yet, but all this week, the best of 2025. And here is Emma Vigley from the Majority Report.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hello.

[Sam Seder]

To tell you what we're listening to.

[Emma Vigeland]

Today, you will be listening to Dr. Tarek Loubani, Palestinian. Your level of enthusiasm is.

[Sam Seder]

I'm trying to look like it was frozen. So they look like there's a reason why I'm throwing it to you.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

I'm not actually here. Like we did this separately.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay. You might be overthinking it. Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Palestinian, Canadian emergency room physician and of the GLIA project. So it's a harrowing interview. But we were able to speak to him from within Gaza where he had been volunteering. And I'd interviewed him in 2024, which was also an incredible interview if people want to go watch that. But getting an update from him from within Gaza from just a few months ago, it was a, it's a difficult listen, but an essential interview.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, it's a, it's a tough interview to listen to and it is marked. You know, we've had two and a half years of, three years now of.

[Emma Vigeland]

A little over two years of genocide.

[Sam Seder]

And the deprivation, immiseration continues in Gaza. Israelis continue to refuse to allow the amount of aid that is needed to enter in there. They continue to occupy large swaths of Gaza. They continue to concentrate the Palestinians in Gaza in as a prelude to attempting to drive them out of their homes. They've destroyed 90% of the homes in Gaza. They've destroyed schools, they have destroyed mosques and churches and hospitals. And there's, you know, at the time being, there's no, there seems to be no accountability other than, I think people around the world, including Americans, and particularly young Americans, realizing that we should not be at the Very least supporting this government or society. And that there needs to be justice for Palestinians.

[Emma Vigeland]

Absolutely. And health care workers like Dr. Loubhani. I mean, he could be in Canada. When I spoke to him the first time he had come back from Gaza and was in Canada. But he goes in and puts. And puts his life at risk. And the amount of harrowing things that you must see there, it's just unbelievable. So these are real heroes and he's one of them.

[Sam Seder]

And what's the organization that.

[Emma Vigeland]

The GLIA project. We'll put a link down below for people if they want to support the GLIA project, which he's his organization. You can donate there and it helps provide medical care for it. Definitely in Gaza. Might be elsewhere as well. But certainly I think they're focused on Gaza right now.

[Sam Seder]

And Mat Leck will put in some of his special Mat picks.

[Emma Vigeland]

Nice.

[Sam Seder]

Some in the fun half for folks. And of course, we'll be back tomorrow with another best of. And we're still debating about whether we'll be live on Friday.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

It's going to be one of those things where you're going to get a tune in and find out.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly. Right.

[Sam Seder]

But don't get too disappointed if we're not live. We'll definitely be live on January. Let's see here. January 5th at Monday, but we may check it out on. On January 2nd. Also, I have it in my calendar. Trump is due to get juiced on January 5th, so that's a good to know. It'd be good to know. We might get some good clips from him.

[Adam Friedland]

Noticing some diminishing returns on this juice.

[Sam Seder]

It's true.

[Adam Friedland]

Three days now he's getting about six hours.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. We'll see exactly how long it lasts. I think he we may have to move to like every two weeks. First, a couple of words from our sponsors. Can you believe it's almost January? We're in fact 48 hours away from January. Just about. It's time to start planning your New Year's resolution. The new year is a great time to hit the reset button and focus on your health and get back on track with your wellness goals. Maybe you're planning to cut back on drinking.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sure.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. You do do, you do do dry January, don't you?

[Emma Vigeland]

No. No, never.

[Sam Seder]

All right. Well, there's a first for everything, folks. That didn't go so well. I also have yet to do a dry January, but I may. I've actually been thinking about it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

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[Adam Friedland]

Oh yeah, does that. I can dry out with lifted tea, right?

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

[Adam Friedland]

All right then I'm doing dry January.

[Sam Seder]

There you go. Brian's on the on on board. You can save 20% site wide when you go to sunsetlakesabade.com and use our code. Left is best. All one word. Left is best. They chose it. Fans of the show, Sunset Lake has great products. I have been using their sleep good night oil for, I don't know, since basically the day they came out with it. And it is a huge help And I enjoy some of their smokables as an after dinner. What do you call it? Digestive. Digestive, yes. Thank you. But they're a great company. Mostly employee owned, $20 minimum wage. When they have to hire people for the harvest. They have donated tens of thousands of dollars to things like Vermont food pantry and carceral reform and Planned Parenthood and union strike relief funds. And they have great farming practices. They don't use any pesticides in their seb a day. They use regenerative farming to protect the soil. Just an all around great company and a great way for you to do a dry January. Make yourself a little healthier by indulging in some Sunset Lake Sabadeh.com for you. I would say that lifted tea and maybe the teh say gummies that they have, I would try those out with just a little bit of tay say so that it's a buzz, not a Full on. You know, whoopty doo doo. I just said that folks. Pretty big whoopty doohool.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

Also sponsoring the program today. Let me tell you this. Another year has gone by. I am getting extremely old. As I get older I think to myself I should get to the doctor more. For instance, if I was Brian, I would say like hey you know what it's been since the aughts that I've been to a dentist. First term Obama, since I've been to the dentist. But folks, if you are putting off seeing a doctor, whether it's a general practitioner, whether it's a, a dentist or a specialist or whatnot, I have the way for you to finally overcome your. What do you call it? And this is why I'd probably go see a neurologist. You're. What's that thing where you put stuff off? Procrastination.

[Brandon]

Thank you.

[Sam Seder]

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[Adam Friedland]

They had to pull every tooth.

[Sam Seder]

And said to show up. I got some good news and some.

[Adam Friedland]

Bad news is I love applesauce.

[Sam Seder]

It was really easy to find the dentist who did it. I want to thank ZOC Doc for sponsoring today's episode. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments. Go to zocdoc.com majority to find it instantly. Book a top rated doctor today that z o c doc.com/majority z o c doc.com/majority all right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to be playing an interview from when was.

[Adam Friedland]

Was August 11th.

[Sam Seder]

August 11th in 2025. Dr. Tarek Lubani speaking to us from Gaza's Nasser Hospital. Quick break and then that interview.

[Emma Vigeland]

FOREIGN.

[Sam Seder]

We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigeland on the Majority report. It is a pleasure to welcome back to the program Dr. Tarek Labani, Canadian emergency room physician. He runs the GLIA project which seeks to provide medical supplies to impoverished of a locations and has been stationed in Gaza for at least a year. Now, I know that you spoke with Emma. You're now in Nasser Hospital near Khan Yunis. Why don't we start with that? What has changed over the past year?

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Yeah, a lot has changed here over the past year. I've been in Gaza this time for the past two and a half months. So not quite a year. But even getting in was incredibly challenging because the Israelis, of course, will prevent anybody from entering and have been constantly banning any international medical groups or any medical groups at all from entry. Since we spoke, GLIA has been banned by the Israelis for reasons unknown. And only through some herculean diplomatic efforts were we and the six other organizations that were banned with us allowed back in. So what's changed in the past year? All of the Palestinians who I see are more impoverished. There are, of course, many more people killed and everybody is starving. Over the past year, almost everybody that I've met has been forced out of their homes at least once, some of them two, three, four times. And the amount of food that has been coming in has progressively dwindled to the point that now when I see patients, almost everybody is starving. Really, truly, every patient who I see, I can clearly make out their spine, I can make out their scapula, their shoulder blades. I can see how much weight they've lost. The skin that's hanging off of them that shows me what they used to look like before the war. It has been grinding, it has been painful, and it has been progressive. And of course, as you know, it's all been driven by this depraved, almost maniacal Israeli policy of making sure that Palestinians can't live.

[Emma Vigeland]

When you talk about the starvation, can you explain from your perspective as a physician what starvation does to the human body, especially once you get to a certain point where it's difficult to reverse it even if nutrition was going to be provided immediately?

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Yeah, you know, I've had a good look on starvation for quite a while. I myself have been on several hunger strikes, especially when I had been previously jailed. I've followed people on hunger strikes. I've seen people in famines. And this true. And of course, in Palestine. Palestine has been the subject of restriction of food for many years. Dove wise glass in, I think it was 2007, was an advisor to then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, started what he called the Gaza Diet, which was a caloric restriction program that made sure that Palestinians didn't have enough literal calories. They literally counted how many calories were allowed into Gaza and made sure that there weren't enough for every Palestinian. But all of these programs, they allowed still for the fact that Palestinians could do their own thing. And so actually, one of the biggest reasons why there's a famine right now isn't the cutting off of aid, but rather the complete raising of almost all agricultural lands, something to the effect of 98% of all agricultural lands have either been heavily damaged or completely razed. So when Palestinians were able to obtain a measure of self sustainability, that self sustainability was taken. When their lands were literally bulldozed and when anybody who went to try to replant the land was killed and shot as though they were some kind of freedom fighter, like they were just trying to raise some animals, some simple animals, or to plant some simple crops. Even now, in the midst of the starvation, almost the only food that is here is food that has been grown by Palestinians for everybody. In terms of what it does to the body. I mean, I can describe to you some of the scenes I went. I'm myself, I'm not a pediatrician, but because I'm not a pediatrician, because this is not the thing that I see the most, I decided to go to one of the malnutrition wards. And of course the malnutrition ward is based in the pediatric hospital, because the people who are the most impacted by malnutrition are the Kids, malnutrition and these famines, they impact the weakest people in society. And so when I first got to Gaza two and a half months ago, what I was seeing were the old people were the people who had preexisting medical problems. The young kids, they were the ones who were dying of malnutrition and who looked like they were clearly suffering. And they looked just like you imagine out of the textbooks, Emma, like they. They really did look like skin and bones barely surviving. And I remember the first little girl who I saw less than a year old. I believe she was about eight months old. And her father had brought her in because he thought that we could do something to help her, and she was dead. He put her on the table in front of us, and I looked at her and realized, like, oh, my God, this little girl has died because they couldn't feed her. And I asked him some questions, half because it was my job medically, half just out of curiosity about how exactly this happened. And of course, for her, since the beginning of the war, she had had very little access. There was no formula available. The formula that was available was incredibly expensive and so out of reach for the family. And when they came to the hospital, the little formula that they were given as part of the hospital treatment was simply not enough. They took lentils, which at the time was the only thing available, was some lentils, and they mixed it with water and tried to give that to her as a kind of formula that doesn't work. It didn't work. She died. And I realized looking at her, she was eight months old. She looked like she was three or four months old, and she had a weight that was about as much as what a little newborn baby would have in that specific case, before we could even say too much to the family, a mass casualty started, and they were off to the morgue, you know, while we dealt with all these other Palestinians. But every single Palestinian who I see at this point, their body looks emaciated, like I described to you. You can see clearly the bones going through the skin. You can see clearly the impacts at this point. The people who are severely malnourished, they will die. They will all die. That is thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. And that's not because it's impossible to fix their problem. That's because Israel will not allow us the materials and the supplies that we need to fix their problem. And so even when Israel did start allowing supplies in, like they have over the past week, for example, yesterday I ate a little piece of Meat for the first time in three months, a little piece of meat. You know, now that those supplies have started coming in, there's still not enough, it's still too little. We are receiving bicaloric count, 60% of the population's needs. And so even though we are now eating, we're eating most of us, one meal a day. And the people who are starving, they need massive numbers of calories, but not only that, they need nutritious calories. I can't just give them rice, which is what's available. I can't just give them lentils, which is what's available, or yesterday what arrived, some kidney beans. I need to give them highly nutritious foods that include vegetables, that include greens, that include vitamins, you know, things like that. And that's why the people who are so deeply malnourished are going to die.

[Sam Seder]

And my understanding is it's sort of just the severity is creeping up the sort of the spectrum or across the spectrum of healthy people. Right? I mean, like almost any other dynamic I would imagine, the more vulnerable you are, health wise in the best of times, the more susceptible you are to succumbing to this. What. Do you have any sense that there, I mean, the Israelis are claiming that food supplies are being intercepted. Do you have any sense of that? Is there any talk of food supplies being intercepted or rather just simply it's just not coming?

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

I think it's very clear. Firstly, we have to start anytime we say about anything but an Israeli statement that has to be pre faced with. The Israelis are war criminals and serial liars. They lie basically about everything, including, you know, yesterday, their pronouncements about these journalists who were killed. The Israelis are war criminals and liars. In this specific case, let's expand upon how they're lying. They're lying in two ways. The first way is that there isn't enough food coming in. The whole premise of food being looted and diverted is the fact that there simply isn't enough food for people. And so it creates a dynamic where people can sometimes compete for the food. If there was an orderly way in which food could be given to people, then that simply wouldn't exist. So yes, there is some food being looted, but the primary reason for that is because the, the food is not sufficient. However, here's another question. Where is the food being looted? Where are these things happening? They're almost universally happening in what are called red zones, areas that the Israelis themselves protect and enforce. And the people who are doing the looting are people who are Israeli sponsored They are gangs like the gang of Abu Shabaab. They are groups of people who are literally under the protection of the Israelis. And anytime Palestinians, whether it be Palestinian families, Palestinian police, which do exist, or the Palestinian citizenry, any time that they fight these gangs, what they find, and I've literally seen this when one of these gangs attacked the hospital about a month and a half ago, is that the Israelis quadcopter show up, the Israelis drones show up and start fighting in terms of protecting their, their goons and killing anybody who's trying to bring order back to the situation.

[Sam Seder]

So you've seen that, you've been, I mean, you've experienced being under attack at Nasser hospital and Israeli military support, basically these drones coming in and fighting alongside one of these gangs. And just I don't know that people have a full awareness of Hamas exists in the context of Gaza. But there are competing gangs that particularly now, and we see this whenever you destroy the infrastructure of a country, competing gangs start to rise. And some are being supported actively by Israel as a way ostensibly of, I guess, fighting against Hamas, but also as surrogates for Israeli forces.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Yeah. Let me paint you a picture of the attack on Nasser that happened in June. So the first thing to say is that that attack, the last attack, the one that I'm going to describe, was the sixth attack on Nasser that primarily were Israeli led. These ones included Palestinian gangs, but they were primarily Israeli led within a three month span. We're not talking about something that rarely happens. The Israelis attacked Nasser and other hospitals regularly. Yesterday they destroyed a good portion of the emergency department while they were assassinating journalists. So the Israelis attack Palestinian hospitals regularly. The way in which this happened was that I was in. We are in these accommodations for international doctors and health care workers that are relatively high up in the hospital. And all of a sudden it was like all hell broke loose. Shooting everywhere by all manner of heavy weaponry and light weaponry. And so of course we all bunkered down, went to the ground. And being an emergency doctor, and this having been the third attack on the hospital, I knew that I needed to get to the emergency. So I ran down to the emergency department where these gangs were trying to break into the hospital, shooting at anybody who they could. They killed, I think four or five people in the hospital within the two days before that was a third attack in three days. And we of course took our patients to the ground. And I remember this one little girl who was there with a chest tube and her family around her because there had been a bombing. She caught some Shrapnel, some obviously Israeli bombing shrapnel that had gone into her chest. So we put a chest tube to drain some of the blood that had accumulated around her lung. And so we put her to the ground. She was six or seven, of course, terrified. And her family around her were terrified too. And we just sat there while the, the, these gangs sort of attacked. And one of the things that was unique and different was that we heard the quadcopters that were protecting them and pinging off anybody who was around, who was firing back, who was trying to protect the hospital. And then finally there was a drone strike just before the Palestinian police were able to repel the gang. Of course, the responsibility was taken by Yasser Abu Shabaab in a Facebook post. Like we're not speculating about who did this. And Yasser Abu Shabab said, yes, we were supported by the Israelis because we are doing the right thing. You know, that's what he said in his Facebook post. He took down the Facebook posts, I think when his handlers realized how damning that post was, but they took full responsibility for it. I want to just sort of pull back to what this is from. The Israelis are interested in deep chaos in Palestine. Palestine is not a chaotic society. Palestine is a very highly ordered society and people know how to self organize. I was amazed the first time that I went to one of these refugee camps with tents. And the tents were almost like put by a laser line. You know, they were all lined up. There were no tents out of line. There were little streets. People were organizing the tents, providing supplies, making sure that the very little that was available was available to everyone. There is no disorder by nature in Palestinians or Palestinian society, or I would argue among anybody anywhere. In disasters, we usually see people self organized in our very good to each other. So Israel keeps trying to stoke these flames of civil unrest among the Palestinians and the different factions who, what entities.

[Sam Seder]

End up protecting the hospital from these assaults.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

At this point, it's the Palestinian police. So the Palestinian police still exist. They have to basically be relatively undercover, but they're around and obviously like any other police, some of them have light weapons, like guns or some light light assault rifles. And they are the ones who everybody, regardless of faction, is hoping are going to be able to protect us when these guys show up. When the, the gang showed up that first day, the first of the three days, and started killing people, executing people in the emergency, all of us, regardless of faction, regardless of creed or belief, were all hoping that, that the police would be there that the security of the hospital would be there to protect us. So, yeah, it's the Palestinian police. There are also. There's also one other main faction that your audience might have heard of, which is called the Arrow Unit. The Arrow Unit is a kind of internal protection unit that tries to put down these types of disorders that has targeted Abu Shabaab, that has killed members of Abu Shabab. Yesterday, for example, by Nasser Hospital, some members of the Aero Unit had brought a stolen truck that was loaded with flour that had been stolen by one of the gangs and just left it at the gates of the hospital so that people could take anything that they wanted of the flower. And, you know, nobody sees them. I don't know what they look like. Nobody knows what they look like. They show up, they disappear. And when people ask, you know, how did this truck get here? It was obvious that it was the Aero Unit. But other than the Arrow Unit, which is, you know, technically a subdivision of the resistance, the Palestinian resistance, which at this point is a combined operation between all of the armed factions, it's just the simple Palestinian police, a civilian force that is answerable to whatever democratic forces still exist within the society.

[Sam Seder]

What do you know about how many hospitals are actually functioning at this point through the Strip?

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Yeah, we have to take a very, very liberal view of what the word functioning means. So imagine, you know, what. What it looks like to have a hospital that works. You know, you've probably been to hospital at some point for yourself or for a loved one, and there are certain expectations. Like, for example, you expect that your doctor is being paid well. Salaries are very rare here, very difficult to come by. You expect that your doctor probably was able to sleep the night. Well, most, almost all, if not all of the medical staff that I worked with yesterday, I worked in a shift Yesterday that was 24 hours. Almost all of them are sleeping in tents, if not all of them. You expect that they're fed. Well, doctors are literally passing out on the floor sometimes because they're so underfed. We're eating what the population is eating. And so for literally over a month, the most that I used to get was a handful, a literal handful of rice or of lentils. And I want to. I want to know. I am an international. I literally have access to the most of everything. And still, that's the food that we were receiving. We were receiving the same food as everybody else, which was provided out of whatever aid. So when we say that the hospital is functioning, we're talking about an absolutely Sisyphean effort. The Palestinians put in in which they show up despite losing their family members, despite themselves sometimes being wounded, despite not having anything or definitely not enough to eat, and despite none of us having equipment to eat. And I have so many stories of times that I saw patients and wished that there was something that I could do for them, that there was something more that could happen for them. Patients who were so eminently treatable and I couldn't treat them because of a lack of supplies. Every day it's like. It's like a surprise what exactly we're going to be lacking on that particular day. Yesterday was glove day. There were just no gloves. And so that meant that again, I would wear one glove. You know, obviously they sometimes come in packs of two when they're not in boxes. And so I would wear one glove, try to deal with the patient as much as I could. That was the glove that I dealt with the patient with as much as possible, and then just wash the other one when it got full of blood. Another day, it was gauze day. Simply no gauze. Medications are almost 80% at severe shortage and 50% stock out, zero supply. Do you. Have you ever had a pain medication? Because in Gaza you can't, you know, have you ever needed some kind of intravenous antibiotic? Because almost all of them are out in Gaza. It is, yes, they are functioning, but they're functioning despite these severe lacks. And really, by the most liberal definition, there's Masar, the hospital I'm at, it is the best functioning. And then the other main hospital is Dir Al Bala, Al Aqsa Hospital. And then the last one is Shifa Hospital. That's it.

[Emma Vigeland]

There's these smaller, you know, just indignities that I also think don't get spoken about fully. Like there was a piece, I'm forgetting which paper it was in, but about there's no menstrual products for women and girls. And people who are pregnant are also incredibly vulnerable. Can you speak a little bit about how pregnancies and what life is like for the creation of life in the Gaza Strip amongst these horrific conditions?

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

There is quite literally nothing more hopeful to me than to see a little baby in these environments. And any baby who is born is born despite this tremendous hardship that happens. Of course, there's no contraceptive products here, so it's not like, really there are many options. And like you said, there's no menstrual products. The only, you know, we brought glia just about a month ago, brought in a bunch of reusable menstrual products, and that's the best that we can do. But most women who I see, when they're on their period, when I see them in the hospital, have usually torn up T shirts that they're using as makeshift menstrual products. So there is a severe shortage of basically anything like that. And, you know, speaking of people who need things, of course there's a trans population in Gaza who are on all kinds of hormonal products that are also not available. So the shortages are severe and are drastic. When a baby is born, the first thing that we try to do is to feed the mother as much as possible. Families, you see entire extended families pouring their resources and sacrificing their food for the mother so that the mother can produce breast milk. If the mother doesn't produce breast milk, there is a good chance that child is going to die because Israel does not allow baby formula into Gaza. And as I say the words out loud, I mean, it really hits me hard because we're talking about baby formula. You know, we. We as an organization brought in some baby formula in one of the bags and were able to get it in. And when we presented it to the Ministry of Health, it was like Christmas for them because there just isn't enough. There was another doctor who tried to enter a couple of weeks ago, about four or five weeks ago, and all of his baby formula was identified and taken. They saw it on the X ray and so they took it. And I won't discuss how we got our formula in, but suffice it to say, you know, we learned some of the lessons from how they identified his formula and made some adjustments. So just think about this for a second. We're smuggling in baby formula like it's cocaine. That's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And so if a child has to be on baby formula, they will be malnourished because mothers have to water down the baby formula. They have to not give enough. They're trying their best to keep these children alive until either they can start taking in any kind of solid nutrition or until the situation changes. Now, in terms of what it looks like in terms of dealing with babies, we see pregnant women who are the victims of bombings all the time. And I remember this one woman, where she'd come in, the woman was dead, very, very dead. And the first thing we do when we see a woman that late term is we asked, when did she die? They said, well, it's only been about five minutes. So we put the ultrasound and saw this baby scrambling in there. But with a good heart rate. And it was obvious that this baby was going to die unless we did something. And so then the question began, you know, do we have a little ventilator for the baby? And we didn't. Do we have the equipment to take this baby out? It's called a perimortem cesarean section. And we didn't. And so me, the other doctor, senior doctor at the moment, and the junior doctors, we stood around this woman, and I had this knife in my hand. I was ready to go on this cut. And all we could really think is to what? I think if we were even in a Gaza of six months ago, six months ago, that baby would have been treatable. But on this particular day, we knew that if we tried to cut this baby out, we had no medicine to give it, no nutrition to give it, no, you know, there's a special medication for the lungs that helps them operate in those first days when they're not yet ready to be born. We had none of that to give it. We had nothing. We had nothing. And so we watched with our ultrasound on this dead mother's belly, you know, as that child's heart wound its way down and its fight gave way to just death.

[Emma Vigeland]

And you had said, how much has changed? We were speaking briefly before since, you know, we last spoke, because in many ways, of course, the genocide is ongoing. But I even see it, Dr. Lubani, in you, that it's. You've lost some weight, right? I mean, it's different than when we last spoke. The level of suffering over the past year. If you could just put that into context, because you also previously had been doing work in the Gaza Strip, and before the active genocide began, you were shot in the peaceful, great March of return in 2018. So you have a good sense of how the suffering has escalated. Just a big picture view from your perspective.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

I think probably the best way to describe the big picture is my trips to the morgue. We end up with so many bodies in the resuscitation part of the emergency department that often I can't do medicine. I have to turn into somebody who literally carries bodies because some of these people, their entire families, that there's nobody to take them. Usually the people who take people to the morgue are their families. And sometimes the entire family is executed in one of these assassination operations or in one of these tent massacres. And so I start taking people over. And occasionally, as I'm taking people over, somebody will look over at the body, ask me about it, or, you know, say, Something. And a year ago, when somebody died, there was this. There's always a deep mourning. Palestinian society is a society of life that also sort of venerates both its living and its dead. And people would have this sadness that somebody had died. Now, when somebody dies, you see that there's a kind of relief that most people say God has now shown this person mercy. God has given them mercy to take them out of this fresh hell. And that's truly how it is. You know, you noted that I've lost weight. Yeah, I've lost weight. Yeah. I haven't felt what it's like to have a full tummy in three months. That's. It's a. It's a personally devastating experience. But it's a reflection of the fact that for four months, five months now, nothing has come into Gaza, you know, and Gaza was cut off just as Ramadan began, which is a special kind of torture. That's a time of real celebration for Palestinians and for Muslims. And so they have suffered so tremendously over the past year that for all of us, when somebody dies, of course, there is a mourning, but then there is also, like, that little bit of God has now ended this person's suffering once and for all, you know, now may they see paradise. You know, I. I was never really a deeply religious person, but I can't but wish and hope for a paradise because the hell in which these people live before they show up to me in my emergency department, it's unbearable. It's unbearable. I see them, you know, especially the kids. The little kids are, of course, the hardest thing for all of us, as you mentioned, I've seen a lot of wars, and I see a lot of men, a lot of women who've been shot, who've been bombed, who've been killed. But. And I've seen a lot of children, too. But it's never felt like the war was against children and almost as though everybody else who gets killed is on the side, you know, collateral damage, as though the whole thing's for kids. For example, today, seven children were killed in Gaza in what it really has to have been described as a targeting of just this house of kids. Schools have been targeted, shelters have been targeted. So the biggest change that I've seen in the past year is that people in, despite staying strong, are, in a spiritual sense, you know, being broken piece by piece by the hunger, by the depravity, and by the feeling that, you know, I can't help but share that nobody out there cares enough to stop them.

[Sam Seder]

Dr. Lubani, is there any obviously political pressure on the government, our government that's supporting this? Beyond that, in terms of aid, are there vehicles that you would recommend if folks want to try and help? Are there, Is it, is it a day by day thing in terms of where to help? Obviously none of this is even remotely close to sufficient. And we need Israel to allow for more aid to come in. But from your perspective, is there anything that we can do or is it just simply people should share these stories?

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Sam, you know, one of the statements that you said, I kind of want to pick on for a moment, you said we need Israel to allow the aid to come in. Israel is a depraved, criminal society running a war crime writ large, mass large, and a genocide. They will not allow aid to come in. They will be forced to allow aid in. That I think can happen. And so we must force Israel to stand aside while aid goes in. We must force Israel to stand aside while Palestinians rebuild their agriculture. And we must force Israel into a ceasefire. Now, in terms of what you and your audience can do, probably by this point, everybody watching this show has been to a protest. We know the protests work. The protests work in a way that's probably, excuse me, the protests work in a way that. That's probably a little bit different in the sense that, excuse me, in the sense that we are not strong enough to beat back our governments in a single go. But the fact that we have been persistent over now two years, just shy of two years, it means that the governments have been forced to listen and forced to take heed and forced to change their actions. And so governments have changed the way that they're approaching things. Governments have done things differently. That's because of the persistence of your viewers and people like them who keep protesting. That's political attrition. There's also a kind of economic attrition that at our level has been driven by the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. And at other levels have been driven by people like the Yemenis with direct boycotts and direct interception of the Israeli economy. And so that economic attrition is also really important. And of course, the last thing to stop this, perhaps the most important, is military attrition. Military attrition is what's happening on the battlefield. It's changing the way in which Israel is running this genocide and it's stopping them from rolling into Gaza City or into other cities. For example, when they took Rafah, they were able to do it because the resistance wasn't able to stop them. But the Resistance was able to stop them. In Khan Yunus, they surrounded Nasser Hospital. Over the past two months, all of Nasser has been surrounded in a red zone with it being the single exception. And it was the resistance that stopped the Israelis from progressing to where they wanted to. So those three political, economic and military attrition are what's going to stop this. And people have to think about how they can plug into one of those three and do the maximum that they can. Are we succeeding? Yeah, to some extent. Do we need to do more? Absolutely.

[Emma Vigeland]

Last question. And this is probably beyond the scale of, you know, something that you can fully speak to, but I would still love to ask you, because we get these death toll numbers in the United States that feel like these wild, wild undercounts. And the level of carnage that you're talking about here does not match the numbers that are printed in the Western press. Could you just shed some light on that dynamic and why there is such a lag and what your assessment is of the true reality based on what you know?

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

I loved your description. The numbers are a wild undercount. That's perfect. I can tell you, for example, about malnutrition. So I work within the Ministry of Health System, right? We as. As what are called emergency medical teams, international doctors and nurses and allied health professionals, we go in in solidarity with medical teams. And so we. We sort of follow their lead in terms of how they do things. And so we. When I document what the cause of death is for somebody, everybody receives a piece of paper that says how they died. What our directive is is that if there's anything other than then simple malnutrition that's causing this death, don't write it down as a malnutrition case. You can write it as secondary or tertiary, but don't write that this person died from malnutrition. Similarly, Palestinians do not count the dead unless they have been to a hospital. So, for example, there have been many AID massacres, which, by the way, is another kind of depravity we haven't even touched upon. And so when the AID massacres have been happening, there are many bodies that people tell me, lots of my patients will tell me there are bodies stranded there that we couldn't get to. We don't count those dead. We don't count them even really as more than missing because we don't know for 100% sure that that person is dead. Like, look at the lists the Palestinians release. They release only the bodies they can identify with the ID numbers attached to them. Of Course, it's a wild undercount. Think of how many people are under the rubble, how many people are still in red zones, how many people are thrown around laying dead in the sun in various parts, including at GHF sites, this Gaza humanitarian, so called Gaza Humanitarian foundation sites. Of course, it's a wild undercount, really. Credible organizations that have done these counts for other places like Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo estimate the number at this point to be five to six times more easily. That's 300,000 people were very likely dead. And of course, there's another concept in medicine called excess deaths. So for example, I've seen numerous number of people, for example, dialysis patients. I saw a dialysis patient who we worked on yesterday for a number of hours who ended up dying. In our count, that person died of a kidney related cause. But obviously that person was malnourished. They couldn't receive dialysis care the way they were supposed to. They were killed by Israel, they were killed by the occupation, but we don't count those as direct conflict related deaths.

[Sam Seder]

Dr. Tarek Lubani, thank you so much for your time today and thank you for the work you're doing there. Don't, obviously, you know, I don't know what to say. It's sort of, sort of speechless what people are going through there and what you're having to deal with, which. So thank you for your time, really appreciate it.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Thank you. And I mean, the last thing to say is Palestinians are staying strong. Your audience should stay strong and we should just keep working at this till it stops. Thank you.

[Emma Vigeland]

Absolutely. And the GLIA project, we'll put a link to that down below, wherever people are listening to or watching this.

[Sam Seder]

Thank you.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thank you. Adam Friedland had Richie Torres on his show. He's just had a bunch of different interviews that seem to come out of nowhere, including one that was pretty hilarious with Anthony Weiner.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Chris Cuomo.

[Emma Vigeland]

Chris Cuomo. But the latest one here is Richie Torres, obviously a member of Congress who has become notorious for taking a lot of AIPAC money and being a vociferous defender of Israel's genocide in Gaza and speaking with a lot of authority about what Jewish people care about and what is anti Semitic and what is hateful towards Jews and what is not. Adam Friedland is a Jewish man and here sits across from Richie Torres. And like, I know that it seems like what Adam was saying when he posted about this was that he had mixed feelings about this interview because he was very vulnerable. I think it's really awesome that he was and showed, you know, courage to put yourself out there in this way, to speak about his experience of being indoctrinated into Zionism and having gone to Israel and what the process was like to extricate himself from that. I always think that's valuable when people talk about it. And what I think the best part of what came out of this interview was was that Torres looks like a sociopath, and he looks immensely vapid and callous and corrupt. And for my money, that's a pretty good outcome because that's kind of the reality. So here is an excerpt from that interview. Talking about Israel.

[Adam Friedland]

You're being. That's mean.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'll go back a little bit if that's okay. Maybe like 30 seconds. This is perfect.

[Adam Friedland]

The world saw the Holocaust and they established standards for what a genocide is. It was the same year, and the world said that this shouldn't be a thing that happens, you know?

[Emma Vigeland]

Pause briefly. We don't need to take it off the screen, but he's referring to 1948, basically saying that the standards for what constitutes a genocide, and the same year that the state of Israel was founded, it happened at the same year.

[Adam Friedland]

It doesn't make sense to me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Like.

[Adam Friedland]

Like what? Like, I don't know. It. It doesn't track to me why there's this fixation with kids at a school that. And two examples of people at a restaurant that. That there was banging.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Two examples.

I mean, there are.

There are surveys on it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Give me the.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Read the EDL surveys on it.

[Adam Friedland]

It's hard. It's hard for me to talk about this in public.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, you're.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's.

[Adam Friedland]

You're being dick. That's mean.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

No, don't.

[Emma Vigeland]

Not being mean.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

I'm just clear.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

It's an emotional topic.

[Adam Friedland]

All right, I'll share with you what happened.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

I'm not with you.

[Adam Friedland]

I lived there, sir. I lived there when I was 18, and I grew up a Zionist. And we were told, and our whole community in this country is told, that we have to defend Israel and love Israel, because it'll stop at the Holocaust. It will stop another Holocaust for happening. And my parents. My dad was born in 1951. That was six years after these atrocities. His friend's parents, he knew these people that had been through this hell, these skeletons. And it terrified us. And the understanding in our community is that we have to defend Israel. But I lived there, and I went to a settlement at the end of my year. There was. And I looked down the hill at a Palestinian village And I saw how they lived. And I turned back and I looked at the settlement and saw how they lived. And people live in a world where they're demeaned and dehumanized and surveilled constantly by people in. And this isn't in Gaza. By people in SWAT team outfits with semi automatic weapons. And that's what the world is seeing. And you keep telling me that the problem is someone's getting yelled at at a restaurant.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

I'm sorry, you're conflating two different issues.

[Adam Friedland]

Please, just. Please. Me saying this to you right now will hurt people in my own family.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay?

[Adam Friedland]

Because. Because this is a very important thing to us. And the fact that I still fucking care about being Jewish is embarrassing. I should just be a guy.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

But.

[Adam Friedland]

But it, but this is. Feels like a stain on our history. And it feels like it's changed what being Jewish is. Because what being Jewish is, isn't Israel. Judaism has existed for 4,000 years. This is a country for 75 years. You know, like it is the oldest, one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Anti Semitism is one of the oldest forms of hatred. People in my life are going to be male of me about this, but I'm saying this because I am Jewish, you know, and I don't understand why you would be.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Look how you define. I feel like I'm here to be lectured, not shut up.

[Adam Friedland]

That's not nice. You can't talk that way. Why are one set of Jews but more poor than brothers?

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

No one's saying any.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

You're.

[Adam Friedland]

What happened. You had. You went to the beach at the. In Israel. What, you went to a restaurant or something? Yeah, a nice restaurant. Like, Listen.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, all right, let's pause it now because this is. That's one excerpt, but Brian has a theory about this. I don't want to put you on the spot about this, but there's some.

[Adam Friedland]

Back context when this was cometown before it was the Adam Friedland show. Adam always talked about getting sucked off on his trip to Israel. They made fun of him for that all the time. But that's like a move. And I think it's a part of.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

The recruitment, grooming process.

[Adam Friedland]

I think Richie Torres maybe got some. Yeah, well, overlooking the Mediterranean in a.

[Emma Vigeland]

Condo must be beautiful. Later in the interview, he brings up gratuitously, Tel Aviv pride out of nowhere, which is just like another way that westerners get sold on the idea that like Israel is this egalitarian place because they, they have pride parades there. Although you can't legally get married in Israel if you're a gay person. Let's leave that alone for a second. So it was, it was informative to see how Torres bought into that and how it seems like he was on an Israel trip when he was really young. Richie grew up 4 years old, 24. Richie, you grew up like in a lot of poverty. Yeah. And you go like, we get flooded with this amount of money or AIPAC is like, we will basically secure your place in power. Or for X period of time, limited funds, you can get to the dance. If you're a guy like Torres who doesn't seem to have a lot of scruples, you sign up, he's plucked out.

[Adam Friedland]

Of poverty and joined a mafia.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I mean that's, that's our political system.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

But I mean, I mean, Adam Friedland is a really. Actually a pretty earnest guy. I've like, I've been a fan of his for. Since the comptown was using the home improvement theme song as an intro. He. We had him on the Michael Brooks show six years ago talking about. And I believe I 24 interview that. And he was similar to this, sort of embarrassed about it. He didn't really want to talk about it. And when posting this, he, you know, said they weren't sure if they're gonna release it.

[Sam Seder]

The.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

The trouble is he was too earnest for what is a complete psychopath. I think that that shows to people like Richie Torres is like you, when you say the word buy in, he's bought like he would not be there. We would not know who Richie Torres is unless he was willing to justify everything that Zionists want justified and nothing that they don't. And to the extent that he will ever break with Israel, he has permission to because it's untenable.

[Brandon]

Also, I think, you know, you do Richie Torres and people like him too many favors when you even insinuate that they care about Jewish people or Jewish people being safe. And that's not what Adam Freeland was doing. And I think that was a very powerful clip because he was obviously very vulnerable. And like, it's important to hear about these experiences and how people, you know, extricate themselves from these sorts of ways of thinking. But Richie Torres, most Zionists like their care for Jewish people is more about the care for the power that invoking Jewish people's identity in like that collective. And you know, in the case of the Holocaust, that collective tragedy and trauma has allowed them to wield within our political system. And it's not just the Jewish identity. You See this across the board with the way in which a lot of our political parties engage with identity. It's not about the people, it's about the power that you can garner from co opting people's story, co opting people's tragedy. And then, you know, once it's no longer politically useful, they jettison them. Like, I have no doubt that once, you know, being really, really pro Israel, being really, really, like evocatively anti Semitic is no longer valuable to Trump or no longer valuable to the Democrats. You won't hear anything about it. You know, like, and the anti Semitism that has arose as a result of their actions will be something that they don't take responsibility for. They have no solution for. They'll maybe go on TV and ch people about it, but there'll be no structural solution or acknowledgement of how we got to this point. Or they're rolling games to the point.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, and Adam touches on this too, where his assertion is the correct one, which is that the people committing genocide are waving a Jewish star around. And that is contributing a lot more to anti Semitism than to the people protesting it. This was another part that I found. I sent the codes in our chat. This was another part that I found to be fascinating. They're going back and forth here speaking about phrases like from the river to the sea and Hamas's intentions with the state of Israel. And you see how Torres uses the Hebron massacre to basically justify the Nakba, which he doesn't acknowledge in the clip. And Friedman kind of calls him out on it. So this was another part that I thought was good.

[Adam Friedland]

There. They didn't have to fucking move because black people could vote. And talking about South Africa, tell your kids to come back because we need them to build our country. I don't know. I think that, I don't see what's wrong with people being afforded the right to vote.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Do you think that's what Hamas means when it says free Palestine from the river to the sea?

[Adam Friedland]

To me, it seems like maybe if there's a recognition that people were cleared off their land in 1948, but there.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Are those, and there are those who.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Only want a Jewish state and there are those who only want a Palestinian state that they could fuck off and we should be advocating for the coexistence of Jewish state and the Palestinian state. I continue to believe. I continue to believe the two state solution ultimately is the inevitable path forward.

[Adam Friedland]

That is why it's stupid.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

There were a thousand Jews who were murdered before the establishment of Israel. Like Half a century before the establishment of Israel. Half is a thousand Jews.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

They were killing each other Jews and Palestinians.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

It doesn't make sense to me this in 2025.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

The only point I was, was there was violence against Jews before the establishment of the state of Israel.

[Adam Friedland]

There was violence against Palestinians.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

I mean, sorry, can we just say like the establishment of the state of Israel was more than just a brief moment where England's like, hey, here's Israel. There was a Zionist set settlement process going on for the decades ahead of it. Like Rashid Khalidi's Hundred Year War of Palestine isn't called the 75 Years War War on Palestine for a fucking reason.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Also there is no.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sorry, go ahead.

[Brandon]

I can say there are no other examples where like America or American politicians would apply this logic into any other group has, that has had violence committed against them by colonial powers, by even like coexisting powers within their own region. They would never accept like inter ethnic group, like concentration camps in parts of Eastern Europe. I mean they maybe would depending on who was in charge. But you know what I mean, like the argument that they're making for this is entirely predicated, it being in service of the, you know, United States war machine and of course our west, our NATO allies in Europe. But like it doesn't, wouldn't apply to native Americans doing it, to white people in America, black people doing it. It's the kind of logic that like you can use to like kind of convince liberals that this fascism has like a, you know, liberal bend to it. But it's, it just, it falls apart when you look at any other example of like how we treat minority groups or what we think that they deserve around the world.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. And I'm reading here from the Jewish virtual library talking about the Hebron massacre and this is their read of it. Hebron had up until this time been outwardly peaceful, though the tensions hid below the surface. The Sephardi Jewish community in Hebron had lived quietly with its Arab neighbors for centuries. These are Jews as they reference, who were originally from Spain, North Africa and Arab countries.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

How is that possible if Islam is inherently violent?

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. These Sephardi Jews spoke Arabic and had a cultural connection with the Arabs in Hebron. In the mid-1800s, Ashkenazi native European Jews started moving to Hebron. And in 1925, the Slobodka Yeshiva, officially called the Yeshiva of Hebron, Knesset, Israel, Slobodka was open. Yeshiva students live separately and basically it becomes a clash between Zionist immigrants as they write, and their Arabs, Arab Neighbors, they are acknowledging that there were Jews that were living there, the Sephardi Jewish community that lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors. But once Zionism started, that's when tensions and that's when violence began to become more frequent because the settlements were acts of violence and there were obviously tensions and there was resistance.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

It's the nationalism, stupid.

[Emma Vigeland]

So this is Torres using that to justify basically the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. Go ahead, Brandon.

[Brandon]

And also he's still justifying it now. And evoking the two state solution is just a stalling tactic. It's meant to stall because the two state solution is something that nominally only one side of this conflict has been working on for the entire time it's been talked about, that's Palestinians and it's been disrupted by the U.S. and Israel are, you know, not that those are two different entities, but you know, the U.S. israel, Israeli complex has been disrupting that talk because it's not what Israel wants in the region. The settlements are an example of that. They've been very open about not wanting it because they view a two state solution as unacceptable and they view the alternative, which is the more likely scenario of what will happen now that they've been doing their genocide, a one state solution where there it's not a Jewish ethno state as the same thing as losing their country. And that is just the white supremacy or analog that they have become in their country. And Jirachi Chores understands that stalling the is a tactic that they can use to hopefully outlast this genocide. And maybe by the time people realize or start actively like agitating in a way that Democrats can't ignore or Republicans can't ignore or labor can't ignore in the UK or any other of these Western countries that are complicit in this genocide, can't ignore, it'll be over. They'll all be in South Sudan or they'll all be dead. And then everyone can then wake up to the genocide for the first time. All of the people complicit in our media can wake up to it. All of our politicians can wake up to and go like, huh, I can't believe this happened and no one did anything. And maybe we just won't do this again in the future and that's what they're hoping will happen. I don't think it's possible. But that shows you the depths of their deprivation here, that they're hoping that they can just keep talking about unicorns and two state solutions until every Palestinian is dead or displaced and then acknowledge that something bad happened. And just one more point. This is not the only topic they do this about. Climate change is another topic that they do this about. They talk about the ways in which it's complex and how they acknowledge the science and they're really just stalling with the idea that there'll never be a time where it's too late for there to be too state solution or too tight or too late to tackle the climate catastrophes that are on the way. But, you know, we're already there for both of those things and that's just something people have to become aware of. I think that, like, this is a way for them to get their way without becoming seeming actively antagonistic to things that we would consider to be liberal, like fighting climate change or not doing.

[Emma Vigeland]

A genocide or racial integration. Go ahead, Bender.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

No, I was going to say what really, you know, struck me when I was watching this along with, you know, Adam's, you know, very emotional discussion, and I thought that was great. You know, Richie comes off like he's offended, as if he has something to be offended for. Like, he's not Jewish. He's not even Israeli.

[Emma Vigeland]

He's not Palestinian.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

He's not. But he's sitting well. Well, you know, Adam's not talking.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, I get it. Yeah, right.

[Sam Seder]

But.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

But he's sitting there as if he's like. As if Adam is saying something against him. And that just. It struck me because it comes off very bizarre and inappropriate, by the way, when you're actually sitting across from someone who is actually Jewish and lived in Israel, who's sharing this feeling with you based on their own personal life experiences. For him to come off as if, like something was said that deeply affects him when, when there's. There's nothing there. Richie Torres will. Life goes on for Richie Torres, no matter what happens in Israel and Palestine. He has no family there. He has no connection there. He has no connection.

He had a great name. Tel Aviv Bender.

Yeah, but, yeah, other than that, he has no connection to the other factors, such as his Judaism, which he isn't. Yet he's sitting there, like, upset that Adam would dare to say these things to him. And I think that really comes across. And it's not just Richie Torres. There are so many US politicians, not even just politicians, also just evangelical Christians, Christians, period, non Jews altogether, that for some reason they feel like their position on what's happening with, with and in Israel and Palestine has some sort of effect on them when it doesn't at all. I mean, the Effect is in their own imaginary land where. Whatever.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, it really does.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

It does, yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes. Because that's why he's so indignant. Binder, and you hit the nail on the head is it's because the continued conversation around this is a threat to his political future and he has broader long, you know, big ambitions. He was putting his name out there about running for governor potentially, but stood down because Hochul does already have a challenger to her left in Delgado. But you see the inherent anti Semitism behind anti Zionism in the way that he treats Adam's Jewish experience as something that is an inconvenience to him or not. He's totally disrespectful about it because it is a problem for him using Jewish people to justify the blood soaked money that he takes. I just want to go a little bit more into.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

I was going to say, like, I'm not sure if we're getting, I'm not sure if we're getting to that clip or. But I think it's. If we already watched that. I can't remember. But there's a point where he says like, you know, that's just your experience or something to the effect of like, that's not everyone's experience.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. It might be in this. I forget. But.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Okay, but I just wanted to point out that, that they never look at that they never have that view when someone is sharing the opposite.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Right.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Like there's never, there's never. They never say to someone who's sharing a pro Israel feeling that, well, you know, there are people on the other side. No, that only ever happens when someone is criticizing Israel and then they, well, that you don't, you know, that's not, that's just your view. It's never the other way around.

But to be honest, that's how we should approach it too, because fuck them. Anybody who supports Israel or thinks that actually is just trying to minimize civilian casualties. Fuck them. Who gives a fuck? I don't care what they think. First of all, they're a small part of the party that he's a member of. Like vanishingly small. But even outside in the real world, like, they're fucking wrong. Who gives a shit?

Before the establishment of the state of.

[Adam Friedland]

Israel, there's violence against Palestinians and there was an ethnic cleansing in 1948.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

I mean, the Hebron massacre.

[Adam Friedland]

What are you talking about? Right now you're in the government. Listen, I just want to argue.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

I'm sorry, you're not familiar with the Hebron massacre in 1920.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, you got Him.

[Adam Friedland]

Well, you're saying that that justifies an entire ethnicity? In 1948, Israel was a. Well, this is such a.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

This is.

[Adam Friedland]

Is even a good argument.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hold up.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Israel.

[Adam Friedland]

What are you talking.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

I didn't realize we were debating.

[Adam Friedland]

I don't want to do it. But you're facing.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

The Jewish state was established by international law.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Right.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

The UN passed a resolution. It's. That recognized the establishment of a Jewish.

What else does international law say?

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

And there were a number of Arab countries, including Egypt, that declared war in Israel. The War of Independence.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

The Palestinians.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

And Israel won the war.

[Adam Friedland]

The Palestinians didn't declare war then. There were just people that were living there and they were kicked off their.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Land, by the way.

[Adam Friedland]

They were.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

There were 800,000 Jews that were ethnically cleansed.

[Sam Seder]

Do you know.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Well, they were Jew.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

You know.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

You know how many Jews there are?

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Not Palestinians.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

I'm not talking about the palace. I'm talking about the broader Arab world.

[Emma Vigeland]

So why do.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Well, that's an interesting.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. That's what I like.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Classic.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Arab world. The conflation of Arab and Palestinian here, too. Another racist trope that aipac, you know, tries to trot out there, that there's really no difference.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Keep going.

[Adam Friedland]

Algeria is kicking the Jews out.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

You can relive.

[Adam Friedland]

Why do the Palestinians bear the responsibility of Egypt invading?

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Israel's been a state for 77 years, bro.

[Adam Friedland]

It's so depressing.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

You're proposing to undo an established state.

[Adam Friedland]

No, I know people that live there. I have family that live there. I don't think that they should propose. I'm proposing a democracy. I'm proposing an extensive demographic study of what was taken and what was lost, extensive reparations for what was taken, and a truth and reconciliation process where we could end this shit. What we're seeing right now is that members of the Israeli government are talking about clearing that shit out. And Trump, our president, is talking about putting a fucking job Jetsky museum there. And you're. That's the reality right now.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

That's the far right.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Yes.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

That's what I reject.

[Sam Seder]

So what?

[Adam Friedland]

The far right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Can you pause? This is interesting to me, and maybe not to anybody else, but I do like tracking political rhetoric and how they shift in moments where they're feeling some sort of tension or like it's not justifiable anymore for them to use previous talking points. Even Torres. Now, first of all, Adam Schiff came out and said, I'm in favor of blocking some arms to Israel. And now you have Richie Torres coming out and throwing Netanyahu under the bus. They're pretending that Netanyahu is the sole problem. We just played or yesterday read from an interview where Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker spoke with Jack Lew, Biden's Israeli ambassador, where he accidentally admitted in the middle of the interview that the Netanyahu government was being propped up by Biden because they prefer to work with him over having the government collapse. So forgive me if I don't believe this. Now, turned to Netanyahu is the big bad guy, but keep going a little bit longer.

[Adam Friedland]

And the generals that are. That are in charge of Israel, the.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Benavirs, the Smoltridges of the world, that's a.

[Adam Friedland]

They're the cabinet.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Yes. And I reject them.

[Adam Friedland]

That's what Hamas is saying they want to do.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

What the fuck does that mean?

I'm sorry? I mean, murder. I mean, Hamas murdered thousands of people.

So there's thousands. Can we just stop at thousands? What does that mean? That's not true.

[Sam Seder]

Right?

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

The civilians that died, what about. What about 800, if we're assuming all of those were killed by Hamas, which is, you know, something that is worth checking and going back on. IDF members killed on October 7th is not the same thing.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

And I mean, this is just thousands implies multiple thousands, not just 1200. Let's say, even if you're including the IDF people who, any type of, whether it's Hamas, any, Any Palestinian resistance has printed national law, a right to attack because they occupy, they're occupying. Like, this is just.

[Sam Seder]

I mean.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

And also. You go ahead, Brandon.

[Brandon]

No, no, I was just going to say, I mean, you're absolutely right, but this is just a way. And we can tell Democrats are. Are disingenuous and they're pushing back against the worst elements of the genocide now, Right. This idea that now that Trump is in charge and he's going to do a lot of the same things that Biden was going to do, but a lot more aggressively, antagonistically, vocally about them. They can pretend that they're against the genocide and against the ethnic cleansing, and then they can, you know, point to. And then they can just, like, still, you know, legitimize. They can still, like, say thousands of people were, like, killed by Hamas for no reason and, you know, all of these innocent civilians were killed. And a part of this is just about. Not even a part of this. All this about America and how Americans perceive their place in the world. And without Israel, Democrats would have a lot harder time getting money from the military industrial complex. But also advocating for the United States imperial objectives in the Middle east because, like, Israel represents a very convenient way for Democrats to pretend like they are pro liberal values while still just funneling tons of money to the security state, to the, you know, to the intelligence agencies, to military industrial complex, to the war machine that destabilizes the Middle east and makes Western countries a lot more endangered by result of the blowback that they will inevitably experience in the form of retribution from these countries and then also just in the form of the violence that inevitably springs up in these countries by nature of the fact that they valorize this kind of violence. They valorize and they legitimize genocide at the geopolitical level, at the international level, at the domestic level, we have an occupational force that's targeted towards brown people. And one form or another, and, you know, the violence that we experience will, you know, just be interpreted as being out of nowhere, which will then just further fuel the war machine. It'll further fuel people, you know, believing that there's barbarism over there as opposed to, like, what is really happening, which is, you know, barbarism is seated in the seat across from Adam Friedland. Right. You know, it's stuffed into a suit.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Mentioning Hebron the same way Zionists mentioned October 7, as if, oh, this is the time the, where history starts. And there was nothing, say, before it that could have provoked such a thing that happened other than the evil in the hearts of the Arabs, as they call it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

And I mean, that. It seems ludicrous, but that is how our entire media understands this, this supposed conflict where it's, I mean, it's even.

It'S even, it's even like his, his line of thinking is even like less complicated than that. And that's not even complicated. Like he's saying that Hamas, you know, so, so Adam said brings up how those far right elements are in Netanyahu's government. And so Richie Torres is able to just bat that down by saying he doesn't support those guys.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Even though they and their government are responsible for tens of thousands, if not got hundreds of thousands of deaths.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, it's hundreds. We got to use that only going forward. Yep.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Right.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

And. But then his response to Adam is, oh, but what about Hamas and the thousands that they killed? As if that's like, like he doesn't even see how that's the equivalent. Like it's not equivalent, but how that's the equivalent on each side. I should say, like, if he thinks it's worse.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Worse.

[Brandon]

He thinks that he thinks it's worse for sure.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Right.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

But if you can just bat away the bad elements of the Israeli government that you view as the only bad elements, the Israeli government, and wash your hands of those hundreds of thousands of deaths, but then you're going to turn around and say, oh, but you know, by speaking out against Israel, I guess you just align with Hamas and you're responsible for the thousands that they kill. It's just ludicrous line of thinking.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I mean, but that, I think, is not just unique to Israel. We have to accept that that is the unique reality of the asymmetrical expectations that underpin, like, Western society and our colonial projects around the world, our imperial projects around the world. It's only violence. It only starts being violence when they hit back because we've legitimized the occupation. We've legitimized the necessity of the occupation of certain groups around the world, at home and abroad, for the social order. And so when they fight back, when they hit, that's unreasonable, it's immoral, it's impossible, because they're barbarians. But if they do do it, they deserve the worst to happen to them. And when we do that, it's no moral stain on our people. No moral stain even on our country, people who do it, except for in incredibly specific circumstances where we feel comfortable exceptionalizing like a Netanyahu, a Ben gvir, a Donald Trump, and then everyone else remains like, just confused and morally unstained by it. But America's war machine will continue to produce these results anomalously apparent. I do think we have to understand that this is not unique to Israel. This is just the way, like colonial powers have always expected colonial subjects to behave. And it's the way Americans are going to be expected to behave as resources get scarcer here, as less people have jobs, as more people are displaced by climate catastrophes, as more people are thrown illegally into the concentration camps that are being built around the country. Like, fighting back will be the only violence that is acknowledged. And so as people legitimize the talking points that Richie Torres says, if you can't, you find yourself caring about the plight of other people just because there are other people who deserve to live. Understand that this is the test run for what's going to happen to you, happen to your neighbors, happen to your kids. In fact, it's already happening to them. It's happening to them right now.

[Emma Vigeland]

The War on terror was, was like, everyone should read the Palestine Laboratory by Anthony Lowenstein and also just look into the tactics that are being used on migrants and how they basically took torture from the Iraq war and expanded upon it to bring it domestically. Same stuff's going to happen in the way that like, you know, fascism or imperialism or whatever turns inward and it becomes fascism. And those tactics are used against the population.

[Brandon]

Absolutely.

[Emma Vigeland]

Home. So that's what we're going to do.

[Brandon]

On terror.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep, yep.

[Brandon]

The one crime, the war on drugs. Drugs, the war on poverty. They've always just been wars on the American people, wars on workers, wars on, you know, the middle class. And they've been being waged unrestricted by like our government. Lock in step with the oligarchs who, you know, are now like out of the shadows. Just like, you know, walking into the White House, big smiles.

[Sam Seder]

I would encourage you to go see the full video. It was about 12 minutes long. It's quite clear that around minute eight, Elise Slotkin's staff was going, hey, hey, hey, wait. We, she's got to go. We drove all the way here, but she's got to leave now. We just remembered she had an another appointment. Let's just start with the easy question. If Senator Lisa Slotkin, if she supports Chuck Schumer in his leadership. And I found this fun.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Support Chuck Schumer's leadership. He hasn't given an interview in about a month.

[Elise Stefanik]

I didn't know that. I mean, for me, I mean, I've now served in the Senate for six months in the House before that. Him, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have hard jobs like herding cats. It's not fun. I've said for a very long time, long before I got into the Senate and long before President Biden dropped out, that we need a new generation of leadership. Leadership you can feel it in. And I think at this point, I mean, especially New York, right? You're looking at New York. It's like I'd rather roll the dice with someone new than have like the warmed over leftovers that I've already known.

[Sam Seder]

Who.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Okay, is that Akim Jeffries? Is he warmed over leftovers too?

[Sam Seder]

I mean, I like to think both of them are. But let's not forget that Chuck Schumer tapped Slotkin as the giving the response to Donald Trump's State of the Union saying that she's the future of the party. But it's nice that she calls him warmed over in that respect. Like, literally, he's not even like sloppy seconds. He's like just been sitting there under the heat lamp.

[Adam Friedland]

711 wings.

[Sam Seder]

Look at me. Yes, I know I'm supposed to be mashed potatoes. And it's not supposed to be crusty on the top, but this is what you get. I've been just sitting here waiting. Well, that was encouraging. And the beauty of that question was that was, I think the way that Sagar and Crystal and Crystal really took the lead on this interview made her feel like, oh, they're going to front load the difficult questions. The rest is going to be a cakewalk. Let's just play this moment where she's asked if what's going on in Israel is a genocide. And remember, Slotkin was a former CIA, she served in Iraq, and she gets caught up here in a couple of ways. I will say that I think relative to most of the members of the Democratic caucus, she didn't buckle in a way that I think a lot of these people would. These like. I would have loved to seen Chuck Schumer have to answer any of these questions. Frankly, I don't think Slotkin did it particularly well, but I think she did it better than some. But the real value that's coming out of this is that these people live in a bubble. And we know that from Andrew Cuomo thinking he's going to win in New York by representing Benjamin Netanyahu to the International Criminal Court, we know that by Chuck Schumer assuming, like, oh, the way that the drum up Democratic support is three months after Trump gets elected, I'll come out with my book on antisemitism. I mean, we know this from all of their behavior that they are living in a bubble and refuse to acknowledge where the Democratic Party is in terms of Israel. So this is encouraging. Let's play this starting at 612.

[Elise Stefanik]

Do you accept that? And if you do, I mean, what responsibility does a United States senator have for. This is a nation that, you know, we send every year billions of dollars to aid. To aid that you have, you know, voted for and supported. Like, what responsibility does a United States senator have to prevent genocide and to stop genocide that we see ongoing? We have a responsibility up till today to ensure that food is getting in. Is it a genocide?

[Emma Vigeland]

Don't starve.

[Elise Stefanik]

I don't know that I'd use that term, but it is. Using it is violating the law of war. Why don't you use the term, though? Because I think, you know, it's to me, if it is, do I think it's ethnic cleansing, which is what I think of in the genocide? I don't know if it meets that definition. They're anonymous.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

Didn't you say it earlier that it was ethnic cleansing. You said that they wanted to force. I mean, this is open from the Israeli government. Like, they're saying it, they're saying national security. They come out and they're like, we don't need shells. We don't need, we need shells, not food and we need to encourage migration.

[Elise Stefanik]

Like they're saying, you're not going to get me to support what the Israeli government is saying right now. I think the point I was trying to make is it's not just about, like, we have relationships with nations over time, regardless of who their leaders are. We have really tough moments. We have easier moments, but that doesn't. So I'm not willing to say that, like, I hate everything ever. Sure, but so even, even if you accept that they're committing a genocide, you still wouldn't cut off their aid. I think that defensive aid and offensive aid are different things. And I think at this point, so if they're not doing every single day, if Nazi Germany said we want defensive aid, I mean, it's just, you have to see where they're all weapons that are being shipped, the weapons that they're using right now. I mean, to be honest, if you look at what's happening on the ground, the military part of this conflict, all.

[Sam Seder]

Right, and here, you know, where Slotkin shifts and sort of like, you know, slides to sort of some type of distraction. The bottom line is if you accept that Israel is using food and starvation and deprivation as a weapon of war, which she sounds like she does right, when she says, like they're breaking the. And she says in that interview, the occupier has a responsibility to make sure that the people aren't. And so she's citing international law there. And then she also is arguing that like Israel is a long standing ally and there are times when your ally does things you don't like them to do. And there are times that they do things that you do like them to do. And you don't just, you know, say I hate you because of one tiny thing like, I don't know, an ethnic cleansing or a genocide. But she's like, I don't know if it's an ethnic cleansing. I mean, itself evidently is. I mean, they're literally talking about building in the north of Gaza. Just days ago they were introducing. It's all well reported. I mean, all of this stuff is out there. But the point is, is that if your ally is engaged, and that's why Crystal asked the question, if they're, are you still going to give them defensive Aid, regardless, if you found that they were committing genocide, like, how, how much do you as an ally refuse to pressure these countries if they are doing the most heinous of things, like I there, there is no, there is no greater. Like crime than genocide that a country could commit.

[Emma Vigeland]

And.

[Sam Seder]

If you are saying that an ally is allowed to commit genocide insofar as we would exercise no extraordinary influence on it, I. E. We're cutting off all aid, period. I don't care what you use it for. We're cutting off all aid because you're doing the worst crime that can be done. Like how big of war crimes, like where on the scale. And she refuses to answer that question. If you conceded that what they're doing is genocide, would you then cut off all aid? She sort of like dodges around that question. I said, well, I don't know if it's genocide and blah, blah, blah. But the, but the real question from a hypothetical standpoint is would you do that? And if the answer is yes, but, but they're not committing genocide, well, where is the threshold that you would then cut off all aid to stop them from doing what they're doing or threaten it? And you have to follow through. You follow through what, what is the threshold? Is it ethnic cleansing? Is it, well, you're just starving them, you're not asking them to leave, you have no expectation to leave. You're just starving them. And how starving? Like starving to death? Or just like we're just going to create long term health effects on 50% of the population that are children by starving them? Like, what's the threshold? Until you will say to an ally, even if you have this construct of you always support allies, thick and thin. What is the threshold where you will say offensive weapons, defensive weapons, whatever it is, any type of aid, economic aid, we're going to stop. We're going to stop. I mean, this is the question that Democratic lawmakers have to start answering because if they get, if they take the House, they may not be able to stop aid, but they can certainly indicate to the Israelis that if the Democrats get control of the government, all may end. You know, so these are questions that Slotkin and her colleagues in the Senate and in the House they better start figuring out the answers to because the Democratic Party, the voters are way ahead of them. That includes arc, that includes Bernie. The Democratic Party is way ahead of them right now and it ain't gonna change. That's just the political reality. And it's good that, you know, she had a firsthand understanding of where the many are in the Democratic Party. But you also just look at the polling, and yes, this is New York. Two thirds or more of New York City Democratic primary voters agree with Zoram Hamdani's position on Israel, including arresting Netanyahu. I. I think what there's. There's similar numbers to that. What Israel is doing is genocide. Now you can argue, oh, this is New York. These Jews in New York, they're so. They're so liberal. So anti Semitic. They're so anti Semitic. Yeah.

[Unknown Guest (possibly a commentator or panelist)]

Wait till the Christians in Alabama hear about this. This anti Semitism.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, this is. What's. This is where the Democratic Party is going if they're not already there. And you can write off the. The Jews, the Jew, the biggest Jewish population in the world after Israel. But I don't know how far you're gonna get with that guy.

[Sam Cedar (singing)]

To get to where I want But I know somehow I'm gonna get there I was looking when I just got caught between the truth and the life Are finding out won't make me feel any better yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the meds are going to kick in and my pilot light shining bright I guess somewhere the choice was made for the option where you don't get paid for the road that bends before it finally breaks you.

[Dr. Tarek Lubani]

I.

[Sam Cedar (singing)]

Guess somewhere I lost my drive between the 101 and the 5 do you know how far the teacher takes Makes.

[Emma Vigeland]

You.

[Sam Cedar (singing)]

Yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the man's not gonna kick in and my pilot light shining bright. While I shifted in and out of here Waiting for my moment to happen.

[Emma Vigeland]

I don't know how much longer I.

[Sam Cedar (singing)]

Can stay in or how much more I got to pay to play in the hell I got grading.