Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Noa Tishby
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
- 0:12Speaker 1: My guest today is actor, producer, activists Noah Tishbi, author
- 0:17Speaker 1: of the book Israel, A Simple Guide to the Most
- 0:20Speaker 1: Misunderstood Country on Earth. What's the number one thing people
- 0:24Speaker 1: misunderstand about Israel? Oh? God, how long do we have?
- 0:31Speaker 1: A lot? A lot? I think one of the things
- 0:34Speaker 1: that I found so disturbing, and one of the reasons
- 0:36Speaker 1: that I wanted to write this book and do the
- 0:38Speaker 1: work that I do, is because people have started to
- 0:42Speaker 1: paint Israel as the big bad wolf of the entire universe,
- 0:45Speaker 1: and I, as a liberal, as somebody that's been an
- 0:48Speaker 1: entainment industry of my mentire life is somebody that's been involved,
- 0:51Speaker 1: my family has been involved in the establishment of the
- 0:53Speaker 1: country for many generations that was highly bothered by that.
- 0:56Speaker 1: So I don't know if there's one thing, but I'll
- 1:00Speaker 1: give you, you know, ethnic cleansing, genocide, country, apartheid state,
- 1:07Speaker 1: I'll give you all of those as as one of
- 1:09Speaker 1: those things that a lot of people perceive as truths,
- 1:12Speaker 1: which are not at all. Okay, we're jumping, We're literally
- 1:16Speaker 1: jumping right in. Are we Your audience have no idea
- 1:20Speaker 1: who I am. But you know, I thought about that,
- 1:23Speaker 1: but this is the way we're doing it, So speak
- 1:27Speaker 1: to genocide, this is okay. The answer to that is
- 1:34Speaker 1: so simple that it's almost comical, because if you say
- 1:36Speaker 1: that to do ethnic cleansing, to do to create genocide,
- 1:39Speaker 1: you have to have numbers that actually are reduced, right,
- 1:42Speaker 1: And if you look at the numbers at the establishment
- 1:44Speaker 1: of the state in nineteen forty eight, or about one
- 1:46Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand Arab Israeli Palestinian citizens of the
- 1:49Speaker 1: State of Israel, now there's two point one millions. So
- 1:51Speaker 1: if you think of it as like a genocide, it's
- 1:54Speaker 1: literally the worst genocide in the history of the world.
- 1:56Speaker 1: That is. That is one of the things that infuriates
- 1:58Speaker 1: me the most, because there's there's no it's almost it's
- 2:01Speaker 1: almost upsetting to even start with this because of how
- 2:05Speaker 1: not true this is and how much I've had to
- 2:09Speaker 1: fight against this. And the thing is that this is more.
- 2:12Speaker 1: It's more. These things are more than just misunderstanding. There
- 2:16Speaker 1: are actual national security for America's best ally in the region,
- 2:22Speaker 1: for the single consistent democracy, and the entire at least
- 2:25Speaker 1: for the only country the charis of values the only country.
- 2:27Speaker 1: But it's not a perfect country. There are no such
- 2:29Speaker 1: thing as a perfect country. But what's been happening specifically,
- 2:34Speaker 1: sadly around what I call polite circles, is this demonization
- 2:40Speaker 1: of one state and that it just happens to be Jewish.
- 2:44Speaker 1: So so my home's homeland. So I took it personally.
- 2:50Speaker 1: I took it very personally. And you know, look, we're
- 2:52Speaker 1: both both based in La And there's a story that
- 2:54Speaker 1: I tell in my book that's kind of like the
- 2:57Speaker 1: funny version of it, right, the funny version of like
- 2:59Speaker 1: Israel's and the cleansing Street. Okay, the fight version is
- 3:05Speaker 1: I was, it was just when I moved to LA,
- 3:07Speaker 1: I was in my early twenties. I was, you know,
- 3:10Speaker 1: roaming around kind of like in Aprove. Okay, this is
- 3:13Speaker 1: going to come up later. I don't want to have
- 3:14Speaker 1: to get your exact age, even though someone could just
- 3:16Speaker 1: look it up at Wikipedia. But how many years ago
- 3:19Speaker 1: did you move to the US? Over twenty years ago?
- 3:22Speaker 1: Over twenty years ago? Started coming back and forth, Okay,
- 3:26Speaker 1: and I there's this girl that we were hanging out with,
- 3:29Speaker 1: and she was already famous, she was already very well known.
- 3:33Speaker 1: She turned she ended up being one of the most
- 3:34Speaker 1: famous actresses in the world. Every single one of the
- 3:36Speaker 1: audience knows who she is. If you're read between ages
- 3:39Speaker 1: of twelve and ninety, you know, you know who she is.
- 3:41Speaker 1: She was lovely and she came up to me one
- 3:43Speaker 1: day and she asked me. She's like, oh, so I
- 3:45Speaker 1: heard you from Israel. I said, yeah, I am, and
- 3:47Speaker 1: she goes, so, how does your family feel about you?
- 3:50Speaker 1: And I was like, what what do you mean? And
- 3:54Speaker 1: she goes, you know that you're modern and everything, that
- 3:56Speaker 1: you don't wear all the head gear. And that was
- 3:59Speaker 1: when asking me about misunderstanding. That was the first time
- 4:02Speaker 1: that I realized that people have no idea about what
- 4:06Speaker 1: Israel is because this here was this woman who's young,
- 4:10Speaker 1: well educated, successful, well meaning, lovely, and she thinks Israel
- 4:15Speaker 1: Afghanistan like legit. So that was probably the first time
- 4:20Speaker 1: that I encounter that, and from then on it was
- 4:23Speaker 1: just over and over. Literally every week I would hear
- 4:26Speaker 1: somebody say something that is not true. I would have
- 4:29Speaker 1: to jump in and jump in again, jump in again,
- 4:32Speaker 1: until here we are it's what I do. Oh okay,
- 4:36Speaker 1: so you've been here twenty years, so you've seen the
- 4:39Speaker 1: rise of the BDS movement. You've seen this wave certainly
- 4:44Speaker 1: on the left of support of Palestinians. What do you
- 4:48Speaker 1: think is going on here? First of all, let me
- 4:50Speaker 1: just make one thing clear, and Prosraeli and pro Palestinian.
- 4:54Speaker 1: So this trying to create this it's false equivalency or
- 4:58Speaker 1: trying to create this this it's not they're not it's
- 5:00Speaker 1: not mutually it's not mutually exclusive, right, So you don't
- 5:04Speaker 1: have to be either pro Israeli or pro Palestinian. There's
- 5:06Speaker 1: not a single person that I know in Israel that's
- 5:09Speaker 1: against Palestinians. Okay, there are people on the French right
- 5:14Speaker 1: that are against Palestinians, but that's the slight that's not
- 5:17Speaker 1: a majority by any stretch of the imagination. Right, So,
- 5:20Speaker 1: first of all, it's not either war. The way that
- 5:23Speaker 1: it's perceived in those polite circles is that you're either
- 5:26Speaker 1: pro Israel or your pro Palestine. That is not true.
- 5:31Speaker 1: The question is the question what to be done is
- 5:34Speaker 1: not a question that I can obviously answer in a podcast.
- 5:38Speaker 1: But what's been going on in the past since since
- 5:43Speaker 1: we've identified this since two thousand and one, So this
- 5:46Speaker 1: kind of originated at the Durban Conference for Against Racism,
- 5:52Speaker 1: which turned out to be so anti Semitic that the
- 5:55Speaker 1: US and Israel pulled out. That was when the language
- 5:59Speaker 1: of to brand Israel an apartheid state was originated, and
- 6:04Speaker 1: this is where BDS kind of took their language from.
- 6:07Speaker 1: So the BDS movement, which is the boycott, divestment and
- 6:11Speaker 1: sanctions movement, is trying to portray Israel as South Africa.
- 6:16Speaker 1: So if you which is it's it's it's offensive to
- 6:22Speaker 1: South African, it's offensive to actual apartheid warriors, anti apartheid warriors.
- 6:27Speaker 1: So BDS movement is trying to create academic, financial, intellectual
- 6:35Speaker 1: boycott on the state of Israel completely. They're trying to
- 6:40Speaker 1: turn it into pariah state, and they're trying to, at
- 6:43Speaker 1: the end of the day, destroy Israel. So they're trying
- 6:46Speaker 1: to dismantle the only democracy in the release. And this
- 6:48Speaker 1: is one of those things that I'm not it's not
- 6:51Speaker 1: hyperbole and I'm not making this up. This is what
- 6:54Speaker 1: their leaders are saying. They're not afraid of it and
- 6:57Speaker 1: not ashamed of it. It's all out there. It's on
- 6:59Speaker 1: videos on the Internet for everyone to see. But what
- 7:02Speaker 1: they do and what they've done throughout the years. Is
- 7:05Speaker 1: they cloaked it in a very kind of sophisticated language.
- 7:11Speaker 1: So they'll show up, for example, on college campus. Okay,
- 7:15Speaker 1: they'll set a table on college campus, and on the
- 7:19Speaker 1: table they'll talk about justice and freedom. Right. They're not
- 7:23Speaker 1: going to sit at the table and say we are
- 7:25Speaker 1: here to destroy democracy. Please sign up, all right. So
- 7:29Speaker 1: they're literally trying to hide what it is that they
- 7:32Speaker 1: are about. But this is what they are about. No,
- 7:34Speaker 1: BDS movement is against peace. Abdias movement was against the
- 7:39Speaker 1: abram Court. How there's no there is no, there's not
- 7:43Speaker 1: going to be peace lasting piece between the Israelis and
- 7:45Speaker 1: the Palestinians. If there's going to be less collaboration and cooperation,
- 7:49Speaker 1: there needs to be more than that. There needs to be.
- 7:51Speaker 1: BDS was against the abram A Court. Okay, okay, so
- 7:54Speaker 1: give us give us a little bit of the history
- 7:57Speaker 1: of BDS. So well, let me let me give you
- 8:01Speaker 1: first the history of boycotting Jewish goods. Okay, so boycotting jewishness.
- 8:06Speaker 1: This is why we say BDS is an anti Semitic movement.
- 8:09Speaker 1: It's not about um, it's not a political movement. It's
- 8:12Speaker 1: an anti Semitic movement. It's not a progressive movement. It's
- 8:15Speaker 1: a hate group basically. So the origination of boycotting Jewish
- 8:20Speaker 1: goods started in with the first This was the first
- 8:23Speaker 1: decision that the Arab League made when they were established,
- 8:27Speaker 1: before the establishment of the State of Israel, So it
- 8:29Speaker 1: was either nineteen forty five or nineteen forty six they
- 8:32Speaker 1: had their first decision was to boycott Jewish goods. Okay,
- 8:36Speaker 1: Now why I say the reason I say so this
- 8:39Speaker 1: is the origination of BDS concept. So there was an
- 8:44Speaker 1: incarnation of this throughout the year. So there was the
- 8:46Speaker 1: Arab boycott in the seventies that we didn't have Pepsi
- 8:50Speaker 1: in Israel because of the Arab boycott, and now again
- 8:54Speaker 1: BDS trying to boycott, to boycott Israel, to boycott Jewish goods. Now,
- 9:00Speaker 1: the thing about BDS, the people in the in the
- 9:03Speaker 1: West and on the left don't understand is that it's
- 9:06Speaker 1: a movement that hurts Palestinians. So the Palestine, this is
- 9:09Speaker 1: not it's not a grassroots movement of the in the
- 9:11Speaker 1: like that's like actually coming from the West Bank. The
- 9:14Speaker 1: people on the West Bank want more opportunities, they want
- 9:17Speaker 1: more jobs. They want to be able to eat ice
- 9:21Speaker 1: cream the way that you know, I'm referring to Ben
- 9:23Speaker 1: and Jerry's boycotting, boycotting Israel. So this is this is
- 9:27Speaker 1: a movement that's actually damaging Palestinians. I wrote in my book,
- 9:32Speaker 1: I quoted this letter of a guy, a Palestine guy
- 9:37Speaker 1: who's working at the soda stream factory in the West Bank,
- 9:40Speaker 1: and BDS went after the soda stream factory and the
- 9:43Speaker 1: workers there. There were about fifteen hundred workers there, but
- 9:47Speaker 1: eight hundred of them were Palestinians, and he wrote this
- 9:50Speaker 1: letter two arts and he said, don't close the factory.
- 9:52Speaker 1: I'm working here with Israelis and Palestinians and Ethiopians and Russians,
- 9:57Speaker 1: and we're all working together. I get paid three times,
- 10:00Speaker 1: I get benefits. What are you doing? Stop this? This
- 10:03Speaker 1: is what's happening. And it's BIDS on campus, and it's
- 10:06Speaker 1: these well intentioned justice warriors that don't understand what it
- 10:11Speaker 1: is that they're supporting, and they don't understand that it's
- 10:14Speaker 1: actually damaging the Palestinian people. Okay, you know you mentioned
- 10:17Speaker 1: Ben and Jerry's and we talk about the woke left
- 10:22Speaker 1: being pro Palestine. I didn't mention that word yet. Okay,
- 10:26Speaker 1: that's my word. What do you think is the generation
- 10:30Speaker 1: of this? Why is this happening because it didn't happen
- 10:33Speaker 1: prior to the last twenty or so years. This is
- 10:37Speaker 1: again my chapter in the book about BDS is the
- 10:41Speaker 1: chapter that the legal department at Simon and Schuster was
- 10:45Speaker 1: most concerned about, and they went through every single one
- 10:48Speaker 1: of these words with like, you know, fine, fine, fine fine.
- 10:52Speaker 1: I kind of like went through this very thoroughly because
- 10:56Speaker 1: I talk about the origin and the funding of BDS
- 11:00Speaker 1: and who's behind it, and I'm quoting two congressional hearings
- 11:04Speaker 1: that happen on the subject of BDS, and there needs
- 11:07Speaker 1: to be investigation about the sources of funding and who's
- 11:11Speaker 1: behind it. Let me just say that it's not happening
- 11:15Speaker 1: by accident, it's by design. There's a nefarious intent to
- 11:19Speaker 1: destroy the state of Israel. And I believe the FBI
- 11:22Speaker 1: needs to actually open an investigation against them, and also
- 11:25Speaker 1: the Department of Education should not allow them on campuses.
- 11:28Speaker 1: Probably the IRS should look into their funding as well. Okay,
- 11:32Speaker 1: let me use a specific example. I'm I'm being again
- 11:36Speaker 1: careful just because it's all in my book worded very carefully,
- 11:40Speaker 1: but it's let me put it, No nobody came after
- 11:43Speaker 1: me because there was nothing there that was not the truth. Okay,
- 11:46Speaker 1: let me use a specific example. There is highly reviewed
- 11:49Speaker 1: series on Amazon Pride called Trent's Pairing and it's got
- 11:54Speaker 1: a Jewish underpinning and a lot of people involved in
- 11:58Speaker 1: the show are Jewish. And then one of the later
- 12:01Speaker 1: seasons they go to Israel and they make a big
- 12:06Speaker 1: point of going to Palestinian areas and how the Palestinians
- 12:10Speaker 1: were just peaceful people and they were being mistreated by Israel.
- 12:17Speaker 1: What is the genesis of this sentiment by left leaning
- 12:21Speaker 1: liberal Jews? Why do you think this is suddenly you're happening.
- 12:27Speaker 1: First of all, everybody loves a perceived underdog, right when
- 12:32Speaker 1: you look through history and I'm coming I'm talking as
- 12:35Speaker 1: as a liberal Israeli right and a liberal Jew, And
- 12:40Speaker 1: in my opinions and my kind of like leaning, it's
- 12:43Speaker 1: very confronting to look at the history of the conflict
- 12:47Speaker 1: and to realize black on top of white, how many times,
- 12:53Speaker 1: like written down right, how many times there were peace
- 12:57Speaker 1: offerings to the Palestinian leadership, and how many times they
- 13:01Speaker 1: were turned down from literally nineteen twenty two onwards. So
- 13:05Speaker 1: when you look at that and you think to yourself,
- 13:08Speaker 1: what do they want? It's a very confronting feeling when
- 13:12Speaker 1: you know history well to realize that as a political movement,
- 13:19Speaker 1: the Palestinian people need to figure out what it is
- 13:23Speaker 1: that they're after, because every single action that they have
- 13:27Speaker 1: taken throughout the years was rejectionism, was a no to
- 13:31Speaker 1: whatever was offered. And when you see people like Beljadid right,
- 13:40Speaker 1: bless her heart, chanting in demonstrations from the river to
- 13:45Speaker 1: the sea Palestine will be free, that is a call
- 13:50Speaker 1: for ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people from their ancestral land.
- 13:54Speaker 1: That's what that is. Because there's a country between the river,
- 13:57Speaker 1: the Jordan River, and the sea, the Sea of the Mediterranean. See.
- 14:01Speaker 1: So it's a very confronting feeling as someone who's more
- 14:05Speaker 1: on the liberal side to look at that and go,
- 14:07Speaker 1: oh my god, what do we have to work with?
- 14:11Speaker 1: What do they want? What do they want? However, the
- 14:15Speaker 1: left eats it up in America when somebody comes over
- 14:19Speaker 1: and use fake intersectionality, perceived Jews as white people and say,
- 14:26Speaker 1: see the poor Palestinians, they're just like the blacks. They're
- 14:30Speaker 1: just like you know, it's it's white on brown oppression.
- 14:33Speaker 1: It's kind of easy to believe that in America if
- 14:38Speaker 1: you don't know the facts. And it's a very and
- 14:40Speaker 1: I'm saying this so lightly because even the notion of
- 14:45Speaker 1: intersectionality in Israel is wrong. Can you define intersectionality please, Well, yeah,
- 14:50Speaker 1: the sure so intersectionality in the context of perceiving everything
- 14:55Speaker 1: to the prism through the prism of skin, color, right,
- 15:00Speaker 1: and ethnicity. So there's an attempt to paint Israel as
- 15:05Speaker 1: this white nation that's oppressing brown people. And all you
- 15:10Speaker 1: need to do is go to Israel and see that
- 15:12Speaker 1: that's not the case. Because right now in Israel, only
- 15:14Speaker 1: thirty one percent of defining themselves of Eastern European descent.
- 15:17Speaker 1: The rest are of the region, So either Jewish of
- 15:22Speaker 1: you know, Jews of North African descent, or Palestinian, Arab,
- 15:26Speaker 1: Israeli whatever it is, that's it's not a white country.
- 15:29Speaker 1: The majority of American Jews are of European descent, but
- 15:33Speaker 1: that's not the case in Israel. So there's no this
- 15:37Speaker 1: is something that's based on that isn't based in reality,
- 15:43Speaker 1: but it because of the world that we live in
- 15:45Speaker 1: today because of this trying to you know, you said woke.
- 15:47Speaker 1: I don't want to even use that word that much,
- 15:49Speaker 1: but because of the people are trying to be holier
- 15:52Speaker 1: than the pope and they the perceived underdog is not
- 15:55Speaker 1: the underdog. It's just not the case. And again, I'm
- 15:59Speaker 1: not saying this when people to get upset. I'm not
- 16:01Speaker 1: saying that Israel is perfect by any stretch of the imagination,
- 16:04Speaker 1: but I'm trying to pull us back from the brink
- 16:06Speaker 1: of Israel shouldn't exist, because that's the thing. Is this right?
- 16:10Speaker 1: The people don't understand that Israel is the only country
- 16:13Speaker 1: in the world that her existence is being questioned. It's
- 16:16Speaker 1: the only country. It's the only country in the world
- 16:18Speaker 1: that has its own Wikipedia entry the legitimacy of the
- 16:22Speaker 1: State of Israel. No other country has that. Okay, let's
- 16:25Speaker 1: start with that concept. You and me both know that
- 16:28Speaker 1: the goal of the Palestinians and the other people in
- 16:33Speaker 1: the area is for Israel literally not to exist. Why
- 16:37Speaker 1: and howard st say that? Yeah, say that again, that's
- 16:41Speaker 1: the thing, But a lot of people don't actually get that.
- 16:44Speaker 1: Well of a lot of countries in the region, and
- 16:48Speaker 1: a lot of I'm not saying everybody and not saying
- 16:50Speaker 1: all the Palestinian people. I'm just saying the goal is
- 16:52Speaker 1: to throw the Jews into the sea and Israel seased
- 16:56Speaker 1: to exist. That's what we're dealing with here. Okay, you
- 16:59Speaker 1: and mean, how come that concept gets no traction? It's
- 17:05Speaker 1: a great question. I wish I had the answer to it,
- 17:09Speaker 1: the only thing that I can think of, right when again,
- 17:12Speaker 1: I've done a deep dive on this for like decades. Okay,
- 17:17Speaker 1: we all carry around subconscious biases when it comes to
- 17:21Speaker 1: different ethnicities and different races and different the other. Right,
- 17:26Speaker 1: and people carry around subconscious biases around Jewish people. They
- 17:30Speaker 1: just do, right. I always joke, I'm like, you know,
- 17:34Speaker 1: Jews have all them, and the Jews have all them.
- 17:37Speaker 1: You know when I say cabal, you say, people just
- 17:41Speaker 1: carry around these subconscious biases around the Jewish people, and
- 17:45Speaker 1: they do necessarily know that they carry them. But when
- 17:48Speaker 1: they hear something about Israel, it falls smack into that
- 17:52Speaker 1: subconscious bias. And if they don't stop and be like, wait,
- 17:56Speaker 1: is that true or is that automatic? Then they believe it.
- 18:00Speaker 1: And a lot of people's opinion about Israel is based
- 18:03Speaker 1: on feelings not in fact, and it's very frustrating. And again,
- 18:08Speaker 1: by the way, just so you know, I was born
- 18:10Speaker 1: and raised in Israel, so I was not raised with
- 18:12Speaker 1: anti Semitism at all. Like I was raised with zero
- 18:15Speaker 1: anti Semitism. I didn't even know that that's still a thing, right,
- 18:19Speaker 1: but I came here and I'm like, whoa, that's very
- 18:23Speaker 1: much a thing. Okay. One thing you do very well
- 18:27Speaker 1: in your book is you talk about the history of
- 18:29Speaker 1: the land. Who was there, who owned the land? Why
- 18:35Speaker 1: do you give us a short version of that? Well,
- 18:38Speaker 1: the short version of this And I'm going to say
- 18:42Speaker 1: something that's again going to be very confronting. When I
- 18:44Speaker 1: say this to people, you just look at their eyes
- 18:46Speaker 1: and they go there's just like a disconnect. Okay. There
- 18:51Speaker 1: has never in the history of humanity as we know
- 18:54Speaker 1: it has been a Palestine. There's never been a Palestine.
- 18:59Speaker 1: I know, I know there's never been a not that
- 19:02Speaker 1: there shouldn't be, but there just never has been. So
- 19:06Speaker 1: I go quickly through the history of the land from
- 19:09Speaker 1: the time we know it right from like to you know,
- 19:11Speaker 1: whatever the biblical time is more or less where we
- 19:14Speaker 1: you know, can have writing, and that piece of land
- 19:19Speaker 1: went through it was. It was quote unquote owned because
- 19:23Speaker 1: the land can't be owned, but it was. It was
- 19:24Speaker 1: a sovereign Jewish state in the Biblical era and from
- 19:28Speaker 1: then on two thousand over two thousand years ago, it
- 19:31Speaker 1: just swapped hands from one hand to the next to
- 19:33Speaker 1: the next, from the mamlukes to the usual rights of
- 19:35Speaker 1: the disco where the caliphet was there for the Crusaders
- 19:38Speaker 1: came and took it, and then four hundred years of
- 19:41Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire and a few years of the British Empire,
- 19:45Speaker 1: so it was never anything other than a Jewish state, okay.
- 19:51Speaker 1: And in seventy four a d after the Great Roman
- 19:55Speaker 1: Jewish War, the Romans took over and gave the land
- 20:02Speaker 1: the name Palestinia in order to disconnect the Jews from
- 20:07Speaker 1: their homeland from Judaea essentially, and that's where Palestine comes
- 20:13Speaker 1: from from the Romans. I know, this is something that
- 20:17Speaker 1: is it's something that is very difficult to talk about
- 20:19Speaker 1: because a lot of people are get this is upsetting
- 20:22Speaker 1: and confronting and triggering to them. But this is where
- 20:26Speaker 1: the concept Palestine was in reference of a geographical location,
- 20:31Speaker 1: not a country, not a state, not a nation, not
- 20:32Speaker 1: a people now it's different, but it never was. So
- 20:36Speaker 1: they were the Jews of Palestine and the Arabs of
- 20:38Speaker 1: Palestine and the Christians of Palestine. Right, So it's never
- 20:41Speaker 1: a peoplehood up until nineteen sixty four, where the PLO
- 20:45Speaker 1: kind of created it to be so and great. Every
- 20:47Speaker 1: people deserve self governance and self determination, but historically that
- 20:52Speaker 1: land was only ever Jewish. And when we hear calls
- 21:00Speaker 1: today in America and around the world for the Jews
- 21:04Speaker 1: to go back to where you came from, and you
- 21:06Speaker 1: ask people where where's that and they go go but
- 21:08Speaker 1: to Europe, it's very upsetting because we know how that ended.
- 21:14Speaker 1: And the Jewish people are its own ethnic group. It's
- 21:21Speaker 1: not a religion, it's an ethno religion that is originated
- 21:24Speaker 1: in Judea. So it's a it's an indigenous group of
- 21:28Speaker 1: people that has a religion and traditions that are connected
- 21:32Speaker 1: to a land. I mean, think about it, every single
- 21:35Speaker 1: Jewish person that's listening to this right now. Passover is
- 21:38Speaker 1: about moving to a land. Chavot is about the land,
- 21:41Speaker 1: you know, taking the bequelium from the ground, whatever was grown.
- 21:45Speaker 1: Suquot is about going to the land. It's all about
- 21:49Speaker 1: it's indigenous, it's indigenous tradition. And for people to now
- 21:54Speaker 1: say you're colonialists on your land, it's very confronting because
- 22:02Speaker 1: as a people, every generation we hear something like this.
- 22:07Speaker 1: This is why anti Semitism is such a tricky thing. Right,
- 22:11Speaker 1: It changes in morphs, it adapts it just like it
- 22:14Speaker 1: sounds differently different in every generation. And now this is
- 22:18Speaker 1: what it is. So you swamp the word Jew with
- 22:22Speaker 1: the words Zionist, and it's a blood libel. And you
- 22:26Speaker 1: tell me, you look me straight in the eye, and
- 22:28Speaker 1: you tell me that the Israelis, the Zionists are killing
- 22:31Speaker 1: Palestinian people, posting in children, and I'm like, this is
- 22:34Speaker 1: the blood liabel from the you know, the Crusaders. It's
- 22:37Speaker 1: the same. So this is what we're dealing with. And
- 22:43Speaker 1: I'm on the front line of this. This is what
- 22:44Speaker 1: I deal with every single day. It's hard when you're
- 22:50Speaker 1: talking to people when when people don't understand that that
- 22:53Speaker 1: it's this is it's hate. It's just hate speech, that's
- 22:57Speaker 1: all it is. This is not political, This is not
- 23:01Speaker 1: it's not about any political personality that you like and
- 23:04Speaker 1: you don't like, Like, this is where you're dealing with.
- 23:06Speaker 1: You dealing with subconscious bias about the Jewish people. That
- 23:09Speaker 1: is then affecting your opinion, and it's very dangerous. It's
- 23:12Speaker 1: very dangerous for the State of Israel. Okay, you go
- 23:23Speaker 1: through what happens in nineteen forty eight where the United
- 23:27Speaker 1: Nations gives the Jews their land Israel. But you will
- 23:31Speaker 1: also talk about their offer to the Palestinians, which is
- 23:35Speaker 1: never accepted. Yes, So in nineteen forty seven, there was
- 23:39Speaker 1: a UN Resolution one eighty one, which was the resolution
- 23:43Speaker 1: to divide the land between the Jews and the Arabs
- 23:46Speaker 1: they will call the Arabs at the time, because again
- 23:48Speaker 1: there was no Palestine and identity as we know it today.
- 23:54Speaker 1: The Jews said yes, the Arabs said no. And the
- 23:57Speaker 1: day after the night of the declaration of the State
- 23:59Speaker 1: of is they started a war. And it wasn't a
- 24:01Speaker 1: surprise because they said they're going to start a war,
- 24:03Speaker 1: and they said that they're going to wipe the Jews
- 24:05Speaker 1: off the map and killed all the Jews. Now remind you,
- 24:09Speaker 1: this was three years after the Holocaust, so the Jewish
- 24:13Speaker 1: people were in no mood to be slaughtered again. So
- 24:16Speaker 1: this was literally either we establish a land or we
- 24:21Speaker 1: all die again. Whatever whoever has left is going to die.
- 24:27Speaker 1: This was a war in nineteen forty eight that Israel
- 24:29Speaker 1: did not want. It was a war that Israel did
- 24:32Speaker 1: not start, and it was a war that Israel won.
- 24:37Speaker 1: Yet here we are in twenty twenty three and we're
- 24:40Speaker 1: still litigating that war. So despite the fact that there
- 24:47Speaker 1: were a lot of refugee Palacini refugees, there were between
- 24:50Speaker 1: seven hundred and seven hundred and fifty thousand refugees at
- 24:53Speaker 1: the time, they were not resettled in other countries. They
- 24:57Speaker 1: were kept in refugee camps and they were told weight up,
- 25:02Speaker 1: you can return, You'll be able to return soon. Now
- 25:05Speaker 1: I talk in my in my book about the house
- 25:09Speaker 1: that my family had a templets in Jenoslovakia at the time.
- 25:14Speaker 1: This is it's not just a ridiculous concept because now
- 25:18Speaker 1: we're three or four generations later. So now there's millions
- 25:21Speaker 1: of people that are considered Palestinian refugees that are stuck
- 25:25Speaker 1: in limbo, and this is something that's horrible for the
- 25:28Speaker 1: Palestinian people. That's something that should not have happened to them, right,
- 25:33Speaker 1: But nobody, nobody would tell our family that was kicked
- 25:39Speaker 1: out of here and there and everywhere. Oh wait, you'll
- 25:41Speaker 1: just be you'll be able to return. But there were
- 25:44Speaker 1: nations that actually told this to the Palestinian people and
- 25:47Speaker 1: perpetuated this state of victimhood, which is now a real problem.
- 25:55Speaker 1: But it's a problem that's laid at the doorstep of Israel. Basically, Okay,
- 25:59Speaker 1: are of the well respected journalists who had a downfall
- 26:03Speaker 1: a couple of years ago because of sexual peccadillo. He
- 26:08Speaker 1: wrote a book called My Promised Land, The Triumph and
- 26:11Speaker 1: Tragedy of Israel. And if you read the book, there
- 26:15Speaker 1: were Palestinians that had land that now no longer have
- 26:21Speaker 1: that land. What would your response be to that? I
- 26:27Speaker 1: it's obviously horrible, there's no question. Look at the fog
- 26:30Speaker 1: of war. Things happen that are terrible. They do. And
- 26:34Speaker 1: I don't doubt that there were Palestinians that were kicked out,
- 26:37Speaker 1: and I don't doubt that there were Palestinians that lost property.
- 26:42Speaker 1: I don't doubt that this happened on the Jewish side
- 26:44Speaker 1: as well. So around the same time, from every single
- 26:47Speaker 1: Arab country there was an equivalent nakama right of all
- 26:54Speaker 1: the neighboring Arab countries kicking out the Jewish residence to
- 26:59Speaker 1: the tune of eight to eight hundred fifty thousand people,
- 27:02Speaker 1: and they lost everything that they had. I have friends
- 27:05Speaker 1: from my friend, my friend zo Are from Fez Morocco,
- 27:08Speaker 1: kicked out out, left everything there, houses, property, everything, and
- 27:13Speaker 1: kicked out. I'm not saying there's no excusing any of this,
- 27:19Speaker 1: but that's what happens. And right now what people are
- 27:22Speaker 1: doing is we're going to take this against Israel and
- 27:24Speaker 1: we're going to legitimize its existence. And that is something
- 27:27Speaker 1: that I'm just not willing to accept. Okay, So you
- 27:36Speaker 1: go a little bit deeper to the point you just
- 27:38Speaker 1: made about the Palestinians and the refugee problem, which is
- 27:43Speaker 1: exploded exponentially over generations. So after the War of Independence,
- 27:53Speaker 1: after nineteen forty eight, there was an agency established in
- 27:57Speaker 1: the United Nations called UNRA, which is a agency for
- 28:02Speaker 1: Palestinian refugees. Okay, until this day, it's the single There's
- 28:09Speaker 1: there's one agency in the UN for Palestinian refugees, in
- 28:13Speaker 1: another agency in the UN for every single other refugee
- 28:17Speaker 1: from every other country in the world. So all the
- 28:19Speaker 1: other refugees are under one agency, and the Palestinian people
- 28:23Speaker 1: have their own agency. Throughout the years, they tried to
- 28:28Speaker 1: dismantle that agency because they found out that it's corrupt.
- 28:34Speaker 1: It teaches in the schools, in the schools, in school books,
- 28:39Speaker 1: it teaches about terrorism and about becoming Shahid's and all that.
- 28:45Speaker 1: They were unable to dismantle that particular agency. I forgot
- 28:48Speaker 1: the exact number today, but it's over five million people.
- 28:51Speaker 1: So in UNRA, it's the only agency in which you
- 28:55Speaker 1: are automatically second generation, third generation, you're registered as a
- 29:00Speaker 1: as a refugee unless you asked to be removed from
- 29:03Speaker 1: that agency. Okay, So it's the only agency like that.
- 29:08Speaker 1: Usually in the other unchar As, the other agency, you
- 29:11Speaker 1: have to you're being removed, you're not if your second
- 29:14Speaker 1: generation in another country, you're not considered a refugee anymore.
- 29:17Speaker 1: Not like that with UNRA. So essentially, from seven hundred
- 29:21Speaker 1: and fifty let's say thousand refugees Palestinian refugees of nineteen
- 29:25Speaker 1: forty eight, they're now I think the number is five
- 29:27Speaker 1: point nine million, but I'm not entirely sure. Five point
- 29:30Speaker 1: nine let's say million refugees that are quote unquote to
- 29:35Speaker 1: Palestinian refugee problem. And when you read material by BDS.
- 29:40Speaker 1: When you read about those organizations, they use that number
- 29:43Speaker 1: as if that number is the truth. There were five
- 29:47Speaker 1: point nine million people kicked out of you know, Palestinian
- 29:51Speaker 1: territories when Israel was established, so they use this number,
- 29:54Speaker 1: and i'm that number is wrong to begin with, because
- 29:57Speaker 1: how would you inherit a refugee status? What if you
- 30:00Speaker 1: are already settled in another country? What if your children
- 30:03Speaker 1: are already settled in another country. Okay, So it's a
- 30:06Speaker 1: highly corrupt body. There's been you know, it's a political
- 30:11Speaker 1: football in America. But I definitely agree that the funding
- 30:15Speaker 1: for UNRA needs to be booked at very carefully because
- 30:20Speaker 1: it does some good things, but it does some horrible things.
- 30:22Speaker 1: And again it's perpetuating this problem that is not helping
- 30:26Speaker 1: the Palestinian people. So of this approximately five point nine
- 30:32Speaker 1: million Palestinians, where exactly are they now? It's a good question.
- 30:38Speaker 1: There a lot of them are. They're either in Jordan, Lebanon,
- 30:41Speaker 1: some of them are around the world. You know. The
- 30:42Speaker 1: other problem is, for example, in Lebanon, they're not allowed
- 30:45Speaker 1: to integrate into society, so they're still in refugee camps.
- 30:49Speaker 1: So the notion in the UN and the United Nations
- 30:52Speaker 1: at the time, including this guy Ralph Bunch, who's an
- 30:54Speaker 1: amazing person who I've kind of went down a rabbit
- 30:57Speaker 1: hole on him, who was a black diplomat who helped
- 31:01Speaker 1: the creation of the State of Israel on behalf of
- 31:04Speaker 1: the UNIT, on behalf of the United States at the time.
- 31:07Speaker 1: The notion was that they're going to be fine because
- 31:10Speaker 1: that's the same people, and it's the same culture, and
- 31:12Speaker 1: they're going to be integrated into the society. And again,
- 31:14Speaker 1: there was no Palestinian identity as we know it today, right,
- 31:18Speaker 1: But they were wrong because the Jordanians put them in
- 31:21Speaker 1: and refugee camps, and the Lebanese put them in refugee camps,
- 31:23Speaker 1: and they bade them from actually participating in the country
- 31:26Speaker 1: and integrating into the country. So this is if you're
- 31:31Speaker 1: a second or third generation in a refugee camp, you
- 31:34Speaker 1: are pissed, and rightfully so rightfully so, so how come
- 31:41Speaker 1: the people who were generations removed their lives are not
- 31:47Speaker 1: being re established in they're living like refugees because those
- 31:53Speaker 1: countries don't allow it. Those countries don't allow it. And
- 31:57Speaker 1: here's the other thing again, the question is to why
- 31:59Speaker 1: is there no Palestinian state should be asked of the
- 32:02Speaker 1: Palestinians as well, Why is the no Palestinian state? Yet
- 32:06Speaker 1: it's been offered many times, why is the no Palestine? Okay,
- 32:12Speaker 1: let's move to a slightly different topic. Please define Zionism. Oh,
- 32:18Speaker 1: what a great question. So when people hear the word Zionism,
- 32:23Speaker 1: they often get annoyed because the word Zionism was turned
- 32:29Speaker 1: into a bit of a curse word. So Zionism, in
- 32:31Speaker 1: its simplest form, is the Jewish people's right to have
- 32:34Speaker 1: a state. That's really what it is. So in a
- 32:37Speaker 1: little bit more of a sophisticated way, it's a Jewish
- 32:41Speaker 1: people's right for self determination and self governance in some
- 32:44Speaker 1: parts of their ancestral land in a Jewish not an
- 32:47Speaker 1: exclusively Jewish state. So Zionism was never about having an
- 32:52Speaker 1: exclusively Jewish state ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ever. It's
- 32:56Speaker 1: just about the Jewish people's right to have a state.
- 32:58Speaker 1: And I I'm a proud Zionist. I think listen, Joe
- 33:02Speaker 1: Biden is a prize proud Zionist as well. And I
- 33:06Speaker 1: think that if you are a person who believes in
- 33:08Speaker 1: human rights, then you shouldn't be a Zionist. And again,
- 33:11Speaker 1: Zionism is not against Palestinian self determination. Zionism is not
- 33:16Speaker 1: an exclusivity of Jews in the land. Zionism is about
- 33:19Speaker 1: the Jews being allowed to own the state. Okay, how
- 33:23Speaker 1: about people Roger Waters being the prime example who say
- 33:28Speaker 1: I am not anti Semitic, I'm just against Israel's policy.
- 33:34Speaker 1: First of all, I kind of don't even want to
- 33:37Speaker 1: give Roger Water. I know that you're you know, it's
- 33:39Speaker 1: it's it's the music, the music spot here. But he's
- 33:43Speaker 1: Germany just canceled his performance because he's so anti Semitic,
- 33:47Speaker 1: like he's he's his band came out against him because
- 33:50Speaker 1: he's so anti Semitic. He's also always on the wrong
- 33:53Speaker 1: side of history, like he's supporting Putin, Like you know,
- 33:56Speaker 1: he really knows how to pick him. Because it's kind
- 33:59Speaker 1: of like, if Aga Waters is against something, we should
- 34:01Speaker 1: all support that because that's the right, the right thing
- 34:04Speaker 1: to do. Look, anti semitism and anti Zionism are the same,
- 34:10Speaker 1: and what do I mean by that? You can be
- 34:14Speaker 1: against the Israeli government's policies, against the Israeli government, against
- 34:19Speaker 1: Israeli Prime Minister. You can be against Israel's policies in
- 34:23Speaker 1: the West Bank or in Tel Avion. Right, But if
- 34:27Speaker 1: you're against Israel's right to exist, that goes into a
- 34:32Speaker 1: different direction. Because if you are against a lot of
- 34:37Speaker 1: other countries right to exist, if you don't like borders,
- 34:40Speaker 1: that's fine, you're not anti Semitic. But if you're against
- 34:42Speaker 1: one country's right to exist, then that country happens to
- 34:44Speaker 1: be Jewish. There's a name for that right. So that,
- 34:49Speaker 1: to me is the difference. The difference is not about
- 34:51Speaker 1: being upset about Israeli government. God knows, I'm upset about
- 34:54Speaker 1: Israeli government policies for years, as I am in America. Right,
- 34:58Speaker 1: I'm nobody. I always give this example. Right, nobody likes
- 35:02Speaker 1: whether you left, right, as center, whatever. Nobody likes the
- 35:04Speaker 1: American policy of kids in cages, right, nobody, nobody, nobody.
- 35:09Speaker 1: But nobody's also talking about dismantling America. And that's where
- 35:13Speaker 1: the line crosses, in my opinion, between being against Israeli
- 35:18Speaker 1: policies and being against Israel's right to exist. And that's
- 35:22Speaker 1: where Roger Waters is. He's against Israel's right to exist,
- 35:25Speaker 1: he's anti Semitic, he is full of blood. Liabel he's
- 35:28Speaker 1: full of sh We love to curse on your podcast,
- 35:33Speaker 1: of course, guys, full of shit. He really is, like
- 35:36Speaker 1: in a massive kind of way. He's a grumpy old
- 35:38Speaker 1: man who's on the wrong side of history, and I'm
- 35:41Speaker 1: glad that a lot of people are not just not
- 35:43Speaker 1: giving him the time of day anymore. He's just the
- 35:45Speaker 1: energiz of bunny of anti Semites. Okay, but there's also
- 35:50Speaker 1: the issue of Roger Waters and people who agree with him,
- 35:54Speaker 1: who will say people should not play concerts in Israel. Okay,
- 36:01Speaker 1: we see branded Roger Waters is an internationally famous person.
- 36:06Speaker 1: But how come we see one side so large and
- 36:10Speaker 1: we see the other side defending Israel where the right
- 36:14Speaker 1: Israel's right to exist so small because it's not a
- 36:18Speaker 1: cool cause anymore. It's not a cool cause. Israel is
- 36:22Speaker 1: not perceived as the underdog. Israel's a superpower, technological superpower,
- 36:26Speaker 1: it's a strong military. It's you know, if there's one
- 36:29Speaker 1: one of the best brands in the world would be Massad. Right,
- 36:32Speaker 1: you just say Massad to somebody and like, oh my god. Right,
- 36:35Speaker 1: So Israel is not perceived as the underdog, and people
- 36:37Speaker 1: forget that it's literally under threat every single day, there
- 36:40Speaker 1: were fourteen people that were murdered in Israel since the
- 36:43Speaker 1: beginning of the year. We're three months in, point blank,
- 36:47Speaker 1: just just murdered. So people in Iran is running to
- 36:51Speaker 1: create a nuclear bomb in order to dismant destroy Israel.
- 36:54Speaker 1: So people forget that Israel, as powerful as it is,
- 36:57Speaker 1: is still constantly under threat and it's just not a
- 37:00Speaker 1: cool cause. You know, if in working in Hollywood for
- 37:04Speaker 1: so many years, and every time I would try to
- 37:06Speaker 1: get some celebrity to speak publicly for the state of Israel,
- 37:10Speaker 1: I get a no, no, no, Like we love Israel,
- 37:13Speaker 1: we get it. I'll get phone cause we're like, oh
- 37:15Speaker 1: my god, we support Israel. Is such a great state.
- 37:17Speaker 1: I've been there. It's amazing. It's so liberal, it's so great.
- 37:20Speaker 1: Would you say something publicly? No, So you know this
- 37:24Speaker 1: is it's just not a popular cause anymore. It used
- 37:26Speaker 1: to be because people was they were It was after
- 37:28Speaker 1: the Holocaust and after the Wars and after what it
- 37:32Speaker 1: was just people try to overtly destroy it. So many
- 37:35Speaker 1: times there was this like Jewish heroism that came out
- 37:39Speaker 1: of the destruction of the Holocaust. But it's not the
- 37:44Speaker 1: case anymore. It's not the case anymore. And I'm just
- 37:47Speaker 1: concerned because we don't want it to get too far.
- 37:52Speaker 1: It can be very it can be very dangerous. These
- 37:54Speaker 1: things are slippery slopes. As a Jewish person, right, we
- 38:00Speaker 1: get extraordinarily triggered because we carry around an epigenetic fear
- 38:06Speaker 1: of being rounded up. And I know you know what
- 38:08Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Yeah, I know you know what I'm
- 38:12Speaker 1: talking about. And I know every single Jewish person knows
- 38:15Speaker 1: exactly what I'm talking about. And every person who's not
- 38:17Speaker 1: Jewish that's listening right now, please consider this to be
- 38:19Speaker 1: the truth. Everyone of you Jewish friends have an epigenetic
- 38:23Speaker 1: fear of being slaughtered. So we have general not everybody
- 38:29Speaker 1: understands that term eigenetic. Let me explain it, Okay, let
- 38:32Speaker 1: me explain it. So we have people do understand generational trauma.
- 38:37Speaker 1: So we have generational trauma in our DNA. That's every
- 38:41Speaker 1: single generation there's been some sort of a disaster that
- 38:43Speaker 1: has befallen the Jewish people for thousands of years. Right.
- 38:47Speaker 1: Epigenetics EPI is above genetics is genetics, and epigenetic is
- 38:51Speaker 1: the memory basically that goes down in our genetic memory
- 38:54Speaker 1: that is above the like it's memories and generational memories.
- 38:59Speaker 1: And I'm not going to get into it that much
- 39:00Speaker 1: because it's go go, go dig about it. It's fascinating.
- 39:04Speaker 1: But when I when I went down the rabbit hole
- 39:06Speaker 1: of the epigeneticism, I was floored because nobody talked about
- 39:10Speaker 1: the Jewish aspect of it, and I was so obvious
- 39:13Speaker 1: to me that we carry this around there. I'm sitting
- 39:17Speaker 1: around la with my friends right now that are well
- 39:22Speaker 1: to do and successful and have families, and we're sitting
- 39:25Speaker 1: down and having conversations about taking down the mazuzas and
- 39:29Speaker 1: your doorstep at your door front, like at the front,
- 39:31Speaker 1: at the front of the house, the side of the
- 39:33Speaker 1: of your doors, and where are we going to go?
- 39:36Speaker 1: And I'm stopping them. We're literally sitting at a bar
- 39:38Speaker 1: on Bohemia and I'm stopping everybody. I'm like, do you
- 39:40Speaker 1: see what we're doing? And they're like what. I'm like,
- 39:43Speaker 1: we're talking about escaping again. And this is happening for
- 39:46Speaker 1: the Jewish people. If there's no we have this thing
- 39:51Speaker 1: of we have to run, we need to run because
- 39:53Speaker 1: every few years we get slaughtered. So this is bringing
- 39:58Speaker 1: it all up right now, What's happening right now between
- 40:00Speaker 1: Kanye West and Kyrie Irving and the hate that it's
- 40:04Speaker 1: against Israel. This is bringing up generational stress for all
- 40:09Speaker 1: of us. And again, because the Jews are not perceived
- 40:11Speaker 1: as the underdog in the world, because Jews are not underrepresented,
- 40:15Speaker 1: actually overrepresented in a lot of areas, people don't think
- 40:19Speaker 1: that the Jewish people are under distress. And they're like, well,
- 40:22Speaker 1: you're white passing, you should be fine. And I'm like, yeah,
- 40:24Speaker 1: you're white passing, but I'm walking around with a Star
- 40:28Speaker 1: of David and that's considered to be risky. So being
- 40:31Speaker 1: Jewish right now in America, it's kind of like being
- 40:34Speaker 1: gay in the sixties. It's ask, don't tell. If you
- 40:38Speaker 1: can pass is not Jewish, then you're fine. But if
- 40:41Speaker 1: you're visically Jewish in New York City, you get beaten
- 40:44Speaker 1: up on the streets. That's the world we live in
- 40:47Speaker 1: right now. So this is this. Yeah, let's go back
- 40:51Speaker 1: to Israel for a second. So again, if anybody's hearing
- 40:54Speaker 1: this right now and they're not Jewish, like all the
- 40:55Speaker 1: non Jewish, trust us right that this is what's happening.
- 40:59Speaker 1: Kanye Jewish friend, ask them how they're doing let's talk
- 41:03Speaker 1: about the settlements, because there are a lot of liberal
- 41:06Speaker 1: Jews Wus support Israel and they feel the settlements are
- 41:10Speaker 1: just one step too much. They will say, as we're
- 41:13Speaker 1: speaking right now, there's big issues with the government and
- 41:16Speaker 1: the settlements. Describe the history and your take on what's
- 41:20Speaker 1: going on. So my take is pretty clear from my book. Again,
- 41:23Speaker 1: I don't want to get into two into the weeds
- 41:25Speaker 1: about this, but the settlements are basically the new kind
- 41:29Speaker 1: of like settlements. So we're established in the West Bank
- 41:31Speaker 1: and Gaza when Israel won the War of sixty seven.
- 41:35Speaker 1: Again the word that she didn't start nor wanted, but one.
- 41:39Speaker 1: They were created initially in order to create some kind
- 41:41Speaker 1: of physical buffer zone and protection, and they turned into
- 41:45Speaker 1: something that's more of a religious kind of fervor because
- 41:48Speaker 1: they sit on a land that's historically indigenously Jewish. There's Hebron,
- 41:54Speaker 1: which is the barrier of the fathers and mothers, so's
- 41:57Speaker 1: it's a land that's indigenously Jewish land. It's pretty clear
- 42:04Speaker 1: what I think about the settlements from my book. I
- 42:07Speaker 1: don't think they're helping. But I also want to caution
- 42:13Speaker 1: people about them as well, because I think that to
- 42:15Speaker 1: some extent, there are a red herring within the debate
- 42:20Speaker 1: about the piece let's say, two state solution, right, which
- 42:24Speaker 1: arguably I'm not even sure if it's viable anymore, but
- 42:27Speaker 1: that is arguably the best solution that we can imagine
- 42:30Speaker 1: right now. Hopefully we can imagine something else, but this
- 42:32Speaker 1: is what we can imagine right now. There's always a
- 42:35Speaker 1: debate about the settlements, right, So it's like two point
- 42:38Speaker 1: nine million Palestinians, about four and fifty thousand Jewish people
- 42:42Speaker 1: in the West Bank. So what I like to propose
- 42:46Speaker 1: and bring up all the time is why do we
- 42:48Speaker 1: even talk about the settlements as something that has to
- 42:50Speaker 1: be dismantled? Right? I mean, there are twenty one percent
- 42:54Speaker 1: Arab Israeli's in living in Israel having the same rights.
- 42:58Speaker 1: Why would't they be some Jewish people in a Palestinian state? Right?
- 43:03Speaker 1: Why do they have to be dismantled? And this is
- 43:06Speaker 1: obviously a rhetorical question because the answer to anybody who
- 43:09Speaker 1: lives in the region or been to the region, that
- 43:11Speaker 1: knows anything about the region, the answer is very clear,
- 43:14Speaker 1: and the answer is because they'll be slaughtered within two
- 43:17Speaker 1: and a half seconds. But that is something that I
- 43:21Speaker 1: I always like to bring up That's why I don't
- 43:25Speaker 1: support that operation, the Dish vote. I don't think it's helpful.
- 43:30Speaker 1: But I also think that to some extent sometimes it's
- 43:32Speaker 1: a red herring. If there was willingness to create a
- 43:35Speaker 1: Palestinian state on behalf of the Palestinian leadership, the settlements
- 43:39Speaker 1: would have been, they would have figured out what to do. Okay,
- 43:49Speaker 1: let's talk about you specifically. So you have a long
- 43:53Speaker 1: history as an actress and as a producer. So what
- 43:56Speaker 1: we're talking about is a singer as well as an artist. Okay.
- 44:00Speaker 1: I was like, a we going to talk about that?
- 44:01Speaker 1: Because yes we are, but we're going. I got it,
- 44:05Speaker 1: I got it in my mind. Don't worry about it, right,
- 44:07Speaker 1: We're getting there. So how much of your time is
- 44:11Speaker 1: spent on activism at this point in time, whether it
- 44:15Speaker 1: be speaking, writing, posting on social media? Give me an
- 44:20Speaker 1: understanding of that, all of it, all of it. Well,
- 44:25Speaker 1: that was the question of how do you have time
- 44:28Speaker 1: to be an actress, a singer of producers. I don't
- 44:31Speaker 1: know all of it is on all of it, That's
- 44:33Speaker 1: that's the thing. I So I started acting when I
- 44:38Speaker 1: was around eight years old. UM got my first scholarship
- 44:41Speaker 1: when I was fourteen years old and been I had
- 44:44Speaker 1: I remember the first moment that I was on stage
- 44:46Speaker 1: that I'm like, I had this magic of you know,
- 44:48Speaker 1: the zone that they talk about and everything goes quiet,
- 44:50Speaker 1: and I just knew that it's my spot right um.
- 44:56Speaker 1: And I've been extraordinarily passionate about this and I did
- 44:58Speaker 1: well in some areas and great in other areas, specifically producing,
- 45:02Speaker 1: which which worked out really well. But I've always wanted
- 45:08Speaker 1: to communicate. That was my biggest thing. I just needed
- 45:11Speaker 1: to communicate in various ways, and it just kept changing
- 45:14Speaker 1: throughout my life. And when I sat down to read
- 45:18Speaker 1: to write my book in twenty nineteen, it became very
- 45:24Speaker 1: clear to me that this is what I'm going to
- 45:25Speaker 1: be doing from now own. And not just that, it
- 45:27Speaker 1: became very clear that this was I was just like
- 45:29Speaker 1: I said down I started writing, I'm like, oh my god,
- 45:32Speaker 1: that's why I went through everything, Like everything that I
- 45:35Speaker 1: went through had led me to this, like this is
- 45:38Speaker 1: not you know, And it was incredible how everything everything
- 45:44Speaker 1: changed for me from that minute onwards. And I I
- 45:48Speaker 1: have I signed with a new agency last year and
- 45:50Speaker 1: I told them very specifically that I'm not interested in
- 45:52Speaker 1: going to auditions and I'm not. I don't. I don't
- 45:54Speaker 1: want to do anything that doesn't have meaning anymore. So
- 45:59Speaker 1: I feel I I feel like everything that I did
- 46:02Speaker 1: led me to led me to this, led me to
- 46:04Speaker 1: be able to be a spokesperson on behalf of you know,
- 46:07Speaker 1: making the world a better place in my own kind
- 46:09Speaker 1: of in my own kind of way. And I just
- 46:11Speaker 1: am so disinterested in acting. I'm never saying never, right,
- 46:15Speaker 1: but it's just not something that I'm interested in. I
- 46:18Speaker 1: advocacy and diplomacy and writing us so much more interesting
- 46:23Speaker 1: to me. It just okay, But we we all need
- 46:27Speaker 1: money to live. So how are you supporting yourself now?
- 46:30Speaker 1: I do speaking engagements, I do. I'm I'm I'm good.
- 46:34Speaker 1: I'm able to support myself through this work. And it's extraordinary.
- 46:38Speaker 1: The book is doing great. I mean, the who knew
- 46:42Speaker 1: a book about Israel would do, would do so well
- 46:44Speaker 1: and get such great reviews from such amazing people, and
- 46:48Speaker 1: it's still people are still responding to it. I knew
- 46:52Speaker 1: that there's a constituency out there. I knew that there
- 46:54Speaker 1: isn't a book about Israel that tells that story in
- 46:56Speaker 1: a way that's fun, funny, easy to understand, relatable. I
- 46:59Speaker 1: just knew that it exist. Also, it's the first book
- 47:01Speaker 1: about Israel written by a woman, by the way, Okay,
- 47:04Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. You were born in Israel,
- 47:07Speaker 1: growing up in Israel. One very interesting thing is you
- 47:11Speaker 1: talk about your service being in the army and that
- 47:17Speaker 1: you did that service by being a performer. Can you
- 47:20Speaker 1: tell us more about the obligation to serve in what
- 47:25Speaker 1: varying people do. Yeah, So, first of all, it's so
- 47:29Speaker 1: it's mandatory to serve in the military in Israel. Obviously,
- 47:32Speaker 1: if you really don't want to serve, they have a
- 47:34Speaker 1: lot of people that you can get out of it
- 47:36Speaker 1: if you really really don't want to serve. But it's
- 47:38Speaker 1: mandatory to serve. I actually think it's a great thing
- 47:40Speaker 1: for a person to do at the age of eighteen,
- 47:44Speaker 1: because you're in a system that's bigger than you and
- 47:46Speaker 1: you've got to do things that you don't necessarily like.
- 47:48Speaker 1: And I don't think when I moved to America and
- 47:52Speaker 1: I realize that people go to college and just get drunk,
- 47:54Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, yeah, that the difference between like an
- 47:57Speaker 1: Israeli nineteen year old and American nineteen year old is
- 47:59Speaker 1: quite striking. So I wanted to sing in the military,
- 48:06Speaker 1: sing and act. There is something in Israel called La Katswit,
- 48:09Speaker 1: which is a military performing troops, which is essentially a
- 48:12Speaker 1: USO tour, that's what it is. And you have to
- 48:15Speaker 1: audition to get in, and it's like months of auditions basically,
- 48:20Speaker 1: and you audition would like been sketch comedy and acting
- 48:23Speaker 1: and singing and whatever all of it. And I got in.
- 48:27Speaker 1: I was very excited. It was my dream for years
- 48:29Speaker 1: and years and years to do and I did that
- 48:31Speaker 1: for two and a half years. So it's basically you
- 48:33Speaker 1: do a USO tour, meaning you're on a bus, you
- 48:36Speaker 1: come to base every morning, you get a note of
- 48:38Speaker 1: where you're going that day. Remember Israel's size country the
- 48:41Speaker 1: size of New Jersey, so it's a very tiny, tiny country,
- 48:45Speaker 1: so you can travel throughout the country basically one day.
- 48:48Speaker 1: And I got a chance to perform for soldiers every
- 48:51Speaker 1: single day. And it's a very it's a It gave
- 48:55Speaker 1: me a couple of things. First of all, it gives
- 48:58Speaker 1: me great experience in terms of standing in front of
- 49:00Speaker 1: an audience because it's like the toughest situations that you
- 49:03Speaker 1: can imagine. So one day you're performing in front of
- 49:06Speaker 1: like the Prime Minister and it's like a puge of
- 49:09Speaker 1: thousands of people in a stadium or whatever. And the
- 49:11Speaker 1: next day you're literally in a military kitchen in Hebron
- 49:16Speaker 1: on a box of tomatoes and you get three soldiers
- 49:19Speaker 1: in front of you and you have to entertain them.
- 49:20Speaker 1: You're like, hey, okay, let's do this right, so you
- 49:23Speaker 1: get as a performer, it's one of the best training
- 49:27Speaker 1: grounds that you can imagine. So once you get out
- 49:30Speaker 1: of that, and I've done this between and a half years,
- 49:32Speaker 1: I'm like, I can stand on any stage. You don't
- 49:34Speaker 1: scare me. Like nothing is worse than seeing, like, you know,
- 49:38Speaker 1: being a girl showing up in a guy's base that
- 49:41Speaker 1: I haven't seen a girl in like three weeks, and
- 49:43Speaker 1: they can get rowdy and you need to calm them
- 49:45Speaker 1: down and in all of that. So that's the first
- 49:48Speaker 1: thing you gave me. The second thing is I was
- 49:53Speaker 1: I saw the country and I saw the military first firsthand.
- 49:57Speaker 1: So I saw every single military base that you can imagine,
- 50:01Speaker 1: and I saw how soldiers live, and I saw the commitment,
- 50:04Speaker 1: and I saw the difference between like Air Force and
- 50:07Speaker 1: like you know, yoking like the Greenforces, and it was.
- 50:14Speaker 1: It was extraordinary. It's obviously gotten old. So I was
- 50:18Speaker 1: very excited to do it. I thought it's going to
- 50:19Speaker 1: be very glamorous and fun, and instead you realize that, oh,
- 50:22Speaker 1: I'm on the bus where five of us and you're
- 50:24Speaker 1: also the performer and the roadie, like I know, to
- 50:27Speaker 1: build a stage and like you know, like with the
- 50:30Speaker 1: might of the things, set up this down system and
- 50:31Speaker 1: everything and carrying everything ourselves and all of that. Um.
- 50:37Speaker 1: So it gets old. It's not it's not as fun
- 50:39Speaker 1: at the beginning. Beginning gets fun, but afterwards it gets
- 50:41Speaker 1: it gets a little. But it was an amazing, amazing
- 50:44Speaker 1: experience and it taught me a lot. The other thing
- 50:46Speaker 1: it was that coming to America, people here that I
- 50:49Speaker 1: was in Israeli military and they think I was so
- 50:51Speaker 1: cool and I was. I was a massad agent, and
- 50:53Speaker 1: it's quite disappointing for them when they were realized I
- 50:55Speaker 1: was just a singer. My son even laughs at me
- 50:57Speaker 1: as he was like, but you are, but you are
- 50:59Speaker 1: a singer and militarium shut up, Okay, you were a
- 51:02Speaker 1: singer in the military. Was there anything in the back
- 51:05Speaker 1: of your mind saying I want to go down this
- 51:08Speaker 1: path of the in my year of quote to USO
- 51:11Speaker 1: although this is audio, because I don't want to be
- 51:14Speaker 1: in combat and I don't want to die. Oh not
- 51:17Speaker 1: even a little bit. I was like, I want to
- 51:19Speaker 1: do this because this is what I want to do
- 51:21Speaker 1: for a living. It wasn't for a second I don't
- 51:24Speaker 1: want to be in combat. I didn't even think about that.
- 51:27Speaker 1: It was very much. There is a movie in Israel
- 51:31Speaker 1: called The Lack the Troop, right, It's a movie from
- 51:33Speaker 1: the seventies, and it follows one of these troops, right
- 51:37Speaker 1: the USO tour, and we were all it's like black
- 51:40Speaker 1: and white, it's super old, but we all grew up
- 51:42Speaker 1: on it. It's super famous, and I grew up on it,
- 51:45Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh my god, that would be so cool,
- 51:47Speaker 1: Like that's what I want to do. So it was
- 51:48Speaker 1: never because I wanted to avoid dying. It was just
- 51:52Speaker 1: because that's what I wanted to do. Okay, But speaking
- 51:55Speaker 1: of dying, you talk about your mother's first husband. Now,
- 51:59Speaker 1: I want to Columbia. This one's almost ten years ago,
- 52:02Speaker 1: and literally everybody interacted with had had a family member assassinated.
- 52:07Speaker 1: So to what degree do you feel that, do you
- 52:10Speaker 1: feel the military presence, do you feel the have an
- 52:14Speaker 1: essence of life or is it like living in New
- 52:16Speaker 1: Jersey in America. Absolutely not, not even a little bit,
- 52:21Speaker 1: not even close you. There isn't there's there's not a
- 52:28Speaker 1: single family in Israel that hasn't suffered a loss, a death,
- 52:33Speaker 1: a wounded, an attack. There's not a single family. So
- 52:38Speaker 1: one of the biggest differences that I saw that shocked
- 52:41Speaker 1: me when I moved to the States was a Memorial
- 52:44Speaker 1: Day because in Israel, and I talk about that in
- 52:48Speaker 1: the book as well, Memorial Day is a devastating day.
- 52:53Speaker 1: It's twenty four hours. It starts in the morning and
- 52:55Speaker 1: it ends in the ends in the next day. It
- 52:58Speaker 1: starts in the evening and it ends the next evening basically,
- 53:00Speaker 1: and then we moved straight to Independence Day and it's
- 53:03Speaker 1: a day of mourning the people who fell, the soldiers
- 53:08Speaker 1: who fell, and the terrorists victims who died. And I
- 53:13Speaker 1: can't describe the feeling because it's it's the entire country
- 53:17Speaker 1: is in mourning. There's there's sad music on the radio,
- 53:19Speaker 1: and TV only plays documentaries about the fallen, and every
- 53:26Speaker 1: single person mourns in their own way, and you go
- 53:28Speaker 1: to ceremonies and it's just you cannot escape it. You
- 53:31Speaker 1: cannot escape it because because everybody serves in the military,
- 53:36Speaker 1: and everybody has a friend or a family member of this,
- 53:39Speaker 1: like everybody knows somebody. So this is something that really
- 53:42Speaker 1: unites the country for a day and then it goes
- 53:47Speaker 1: straight into Independence Day to remind us that there was
- 53:50Speaker 1: a reason for all of that. And when I moved
- 53:54Speaker 1: to the States and the first Memorial Day came, I
- 53:56Speaker 1: asked my friends, like, what are we doing? And they're
- 53:59Speaker 1: like what, I mean, what are we doing. I'm like,
- 54:00Speaker 1: what are we doing? They're like, We're doing a barbecue.
- 54:03Speaker 1: And I was blown away. I was blown away, and
- 54:06Speaker 1: I I'm I have maybe two friends who are veterans,
- 54:10Speaker 1: and I'm the only one. You know, I'm the only one.
- 54:11Speaker 1: I'm a veteran, and I don't have a lot of
- 54:14Speaker 1: friends who are veterans. And it's it's unfortunate. There's a
- 54:17Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a disconnect, I think within
- 54:20Speaker 1: the American people in the military because it's a because
- 54:22Speaker 1: it's a it's a paid military. It's not I wish
- 54:27Speaker 1: we had more of an ownership around it and more
- 54:29Speaker 1: kind of like pride. And I actually say thank you
- 54:31Speaker 1: for service when I see military service, and I, you know,
- 54:36Speaker 1: I find I find it adorable because I know it's
- 54:39Speaker 1: necessary sadly. So what kind of kid were you growing up?
- 54:44Speaker 1: And what was your growing up experience? I um, I was.
- 54:53Speaker 1: I was very determined. I was extraordinarily determined. I was
- 54:57Speaker 1: very driven and very determined and wait, wait, wait, determined
- 55:02Speaker 1: to do what as soon as I got the stage bug,
- 55:08Speaker 1: that was all I wanted to do. That was all
- 55:11Speaker 1: I wanted to do. So I was. I was a
- 55:13Speaker 1: good kid. I was like, I was the youngest from
- 55:15Speaker 1: my mom I had. My parents got divorced when I
- 55:17Speaker 1: was about eight years old. I had three older sisters
- 55:20Speaker 1: that were kind of more rebels than me. They grew
- 55:26Speaker 1: up in like the eight seventies eighties, and they were
- 55:30Speaker 1: smoky pot and hitchhiking to sign I and causing a
- 55:34Speaker 1: little bit more trouble. So when I came around, I
- 55:37Speaker 1: was like, I'm just gonna be a good girl. I
- 55:38Speaker 1: don't want to rebel. I don't need to rebel. I
- 55:39Speaker 1: was going to do my thing. So I was very
- 55:41Speaker 1: I was good like that. But I always ended up
- 55:44Speaker 1: doing what I wanted to do very quietly. So as
- 55:47Speaker 1: soon as I as soon as I went on stage
- 55:50Speaker 1: for the first time, which was when I was around
- 55:52Speaker 1: fourteen years old and drama school, I'm like, oh my god,
- 55:55Speaker 1: this is all I want to do. And I became
- 55:57Speaker 1: so focused, like so and being a mom today my
- 56:00Speaker 1: son is seven years old, I'm seeing I'm kind of going.
- 56:02Speaker 1: This was actually quite extraordinary because I knew what I
- 56:05Speaker 1: wanted to do. I would go to sleep early, I
- 56:08Speaker 1: would go to rehearsals. I didn't smoke, I didn't drink.
- 56:11Speaker 1: I didn't I was very very focused on being successful
- 56:16Speaker 1: and being good at what I do. I worked on
- 56:18Speaker 1: my singing, I worked on my dancing. I worked on
- 56:21Speaker 1: you know, I took acting classes. I got my first
- 56:23Speaker 1: scholarship at with a Television Museum of Arts. And I
- 56:26Speaker 1: was very very focused and very determined. And it's you know,
- 56:30Speaker 1: I created my first format, television format when I was
- 56:32Speaker 1: twenty years old. So I was that was that was
- 56:35Speaker 1: kind of the kid that I was. I was a
- 56:37Speaker 1: good girl that ended up doing what you wanted to do. Okay,
- 56:42Speaker 1: So when you were growing up in today, what is
- 56:47Speaker 1: everyday life in Israel, like compared to everyday life in
- 56:53Speaker 1: the US. It's a great question. Um. So on the surface,
- 56:59Speaker 1: it's the same, right, it's the same. It's the same
- 57:02Speaker 1: TV show, it's the same music, it's the same food,
- 57:04Speaker 1: better food in Israel. Actually, by the way, I always
- 57:08Speaker 1: say to people that go to Israel, I challenge you
- 57:10Speaker 1: to find a bad meal, because the food is so
- 57:13Speaker 1: good over there. So on the surface it's the same.
- 57:16Speaker 1: It's it's like, it's exactly the same. You think of
- 57:18Speaker 1: yourself as like a citizen the world, exactly the same
- 57:22Speaker 1: as the US, kind of like a little sister of
- 57:24Speaker 1: the US. But it isn't. Because every house has a
- 57:29Speaker 1: bomb shelter, Like every apartment building has shelters, and every floor,
- 57:36Speaker 1: every office building has to have a shelter. When you
- 57:38Speaker 1: walk around in a neighborhood, you see shelters, shelter shelters
- 57:41Speaker 1: every few blocks. You see a bomb shelter every couple
- 57:46Speaker 1: of years. You sit around at a restaurant somewhere and
- 57:48Speaker 1: suddenly the sirens go off because Hamas decided to throw
- 57:51Speaker 1: a couple of rockets because they're not happy about something.
- 57:54Speaker 1: So this is something that's ongoing in the Israeli experience
- 57:59Speaker 1: that I don't think anybody understands this. So when people
- 58:03Speaker 1: complain about Israeli actions, the Israeli attitude can and should
- 58:09Speaker 1: be to some extent. You go live thirty miles from
- 58:13Speaker 1: Hamas and then we'll talk, right. So there's an undercurrent
- 58:17Speaker 1: as an Israeli of danger, of danger. So I remember
- 58:22Speaker 1: this as a child. There was a terrorist attack one
- 58:24Speaker 1: time and they were very close to my house and
- 58:26Speaker 1: Tel Aviv, and we all had to go into the
- 58:28Speaker 1: houses and close the doors. They got on a bus
- 58:32Speaker 1: on a road near the beach and they were roaming
- 58:36Speaker 1: Tel Aviv. Basically nobody could find them. I remember as
- 58:40Speaker 1: a as a in high school when or as a team,
- 58:43Speaker 1: like an element of whatever. It's like a I can't
- 58:45Speaker 1: remember the age, but I was maybe middle school. The
- 58:49Speaker 1: golf war happened and suddenly were their sirens and like
- 58:53Speaker 1: Saddam says, throwing rockets on us, and we have to
- 58:56Speaker 1: go to school with gas masks. So I'm walking around
- 58:59Speaker 1: with a gas mask and I had to box. It's
- 59:02Speaker 1: kind of like a cardboard box that had a strap
- 59:04Speaker 1: on it. And I was very creative child, and I
- 59:08Speaker 1: basically decorated it with like lace and red and like
- 59:12Speaker 1: glitter and whatever, and it's a it's a gas mask
- 59:15Speaker 1: that I'm I'm a thirteen year old taking to school.
- 59:18Speaker 1: That's not right. So but underneath and above all of that,
- 59:24Speaker 1: there's a very strong like knageoideviv In Israel, people are
- 59:30Speaker 1: people have a very strong not just will to live obviously,
- 59:34Speaker 1: but also just like will to enjoy life. To you
- 59:37Speaker 1: know that people go out and they celebrate, and they
- 59:40Speaker 1: take their babies to restaurants, and you know, it's it's
- 59:43Speaker 1: a very lively society because there's a constant threat. So
- 59:48Speaker 1: when you live with this, this concept of tomorrow might
- 59:52Speaker 1: nut come. Do you want to enjoy life? You really
- 59:55Speaker 1: do and appreciate your life? Okay, So would you ever
- 59:59Speaker 1: as a an individual, someone say well let's go to
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: this area and you say, well, that's sort of a
- 1:00:05Speaker 1: dangerous area or something happened there. Would you ever check
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: yourself or would you say, I'm alive. I'm just gonna
- 1:00:10Speaker 1: live my life to the fullest. The risk is inherent
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: and I don't care. We're going to live our life
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: to the fullest. So what you do, basically, we're so
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: used to it, so something happens. There's again Hamas throwing
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: a rocket into television. Right. So you hear the siren,
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: you're like, oh, snap, okay, you go into the safe
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: room or the shelter or whatever it is that you
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: have in your house. You wait for it to pass.
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: You hear the bombs, you hear it falling around, you
- 1:00:38Speaker 1: listen to the news. They say it's okay. Military goes
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: in taking care of the launchers, and you're like, all right, great,
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: let's go back to coffee. That's just the way you do.
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: People just go immediately snap back to yeah, all right,
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: we have to keep on living by the way. That's
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: true for a lot of places in the country, not
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: so much to the region in the south, because the
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: southern towns of Israel and the children are traumatized because
- 1:01:03Speaker 1: they are constantly under attack. So it reaches Tel Aviv
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: and like the rest of the country every now and then.
- 1:01:09Speaker 1: But in the south, in like Otefaza, the circular kind
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: of like cities and towns around Gaza, this happens so
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: often that they have children there that can't sleep, you know,
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: that are legitimately traumatized. And then standard of living, living
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: in a homogeneous society we have great income inequality in America.
- 1:01:31Speaker 1: What's it like in Israel? And to what degree? What
- 1:01:34Speaker 1: is the standard of living? So it's not homogeneous, Like
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: it's not Israel is not a monolith, right, There's like
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: the Jews of every descent. There's like Christians and Arabs
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: and Drews, and there's it's a very very very eclectic country,
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: like super eclectic. And you see this on the street
- 1:01:49Speaker 1: when you walk around and you see there with the
- 1:01:51Speaker 1: food and you hear it with the music. It's like
- 1:01:52Speaker 1: it's a very very eclectic. M It's a good question.
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: I wish I had like a GDP kind of numbers
- 1:01:57Speaker 1: for you on this, but I don't expense and inflation
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: and rise of living expensive living is a problem in
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: a lot of countries. So there's a lot of money
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: in Israel and the tech companies and the tech industry
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: and other industries, but there's also there's also income inequality
- 1:02:19Speaker 1: that needs to be addressed. Not dissimilar to what's happening here. Okay,
- 1:02:24Speaker 1: you came here because someone said if you want to
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: be in the A level actress world, you have to
- 1:02:30Speaker 1: go to Hollywood. But there are a lot of emigras
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: from Israel. Why would people leave Israel? I mean, why
- 1:02:39Speaker 1: would people come here from any other country? This is America.
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of America. I don't think particularly
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: there are more Israelis here than there are like French
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: people here or Swedish people here. I don't think so.
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: I think that. I just think that lack America is
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: the shiny house on the hill and doesn't matter how
- 1:02:58Speaker 1: screwed up our ticks are, it still is. So people
- 1:03:03Speaker 1: want to come here. I don't think it's I don't
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: think it's necessarily just specifically because Israeli's leave more. I don't. Well,
- 1:03:10Speaker 1: I wasn't if that was implied, that was not my belief.
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: But okay, with all the craziness. The other thing, by
- 1:03:18Speaker 1: the way, the thing is this, right, it's a very
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: small country over there. So the reason you you you
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: don't you might not even know how many Israelis and
- 1:03:28Speaker 1: like how many Israelis you work with or you meet,
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: or you know or you use their products or you know.
- 1:03:34Speaker 1: There're Israeli professors in a ton of universities and their authors,
- 1:03:37Speaker 1: and there's their chefs. There's like Israeli cuisine in America
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: that's exploding right now. All over the country. There there's
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: a lot of the Israeli. Israeli designers are dominating in
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: like the bridal dress, like bridal dresses right now. Well,
- 1:03:51Speaker 1: the biggest designers are Israeli designers. So it's a very
- 1:03:55Speaker 1: small country. So I have a feeling that a lot
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: of people feel like they need to branch out of
- 1:03:58Speaker 1: the country in order to expand their business, but they
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: don't necessarily leave. They sometimes will expand their business internationally.
- 1:04:05Speaker 1: It's a very small country, obviously. That's what happened with
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: the entertainment industry. That's what happened with like the format. Okay,
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: so tell us about you're moving from Israel to Los Angeles.
- 1:04:23Speaker 1: I I always wanted to live in America. I'm not
- 1:04:30Speaker 1: entirely sure why I have. I described that in the
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: book as well, in this. In this, I had a
- 1:04:36Speaker 1: dream to move here. I had I wanted to live
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: in America. I wanted to live in America when I
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: was in high school, Like I had this. I saw
- 1:04:44Speaker 1: myself as a high school kid with like a ponytail
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: and speaking in English and all that. I'm not entirely
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: sure why, but it was always appealing to me and
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: I had no reason to do it. None of my
- 1:04:56Speaker 1: family was ever born and raised or lived in America.
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: My entire family uses really my mom grew up in Africa.
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: And but but I just had this I just had
- 1:05:08Speaker 1: this drive. So when that producer told me that line,
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: just basically, if you he said, if you make watches,
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: you need to live in Switzerland, if you make wine,
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: you need to live in France, and if you're in
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: the aintainment industry, you need to live in Los Angeles,
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: I just went, Okay, great, and I just moved just
- 1:05:22Speaker 1: like that with two suitcases and didn't know anybody. I
- 1:05:25Speaker 1: knew one person. So I'm not entirely sure why I
- 1:05:29Speaker 1: had that drivers. Obviously, I came for the entertainment industry.
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: I came to further my career, but it shaped up
- 1:05:34Speaker 1: to be so much more important and so very different
- 1:05:38Speaker 1: to what I thought. It's yeah, I don't know. It's
- 1:05:43Speaker 1: kind of like there's a there's a concept called the
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: share it. Do you know the concept which is a
- 1:05:48Speaker 1: Yiddish You know, it's a Yidish. It's it's usually referred
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: to a romantic love, like you're meant to be. But
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: it's kind of like the concept of meant to be.
- 1:05:56Speaker 1: And when I see what I do now and how
- 1:05:59Speaker 1: am I my life turned out, I know that I'm
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: so much more valuable to the world from here that
- 1:06:08Speaker 1: I really was meant to be, even though it didn't
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: it did not work out the way I thought it
- 1:06:11Speaker 1: was going to work out. Okay, at a record deal,
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: I thought I'm going to be Britney Spears, but that
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: didn't work out. But other things worked out in much
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: better ways and much more exciting and important, most of all,
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: being able to talk about being able to talk about
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: anti Semitism all day long and talk about the state
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: of Israel and make people see things differently and see
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: where it is that they have blind spots and what
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: it is that we can make to create unity in
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: the world. This is extraordinary. I'm very likely to be
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: able to do that. So how'd you get rid of
- 1:06:42Speaker 1: your accent? I never had it. That's again for a second,
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: I've never had it. I never had it. And that's
- 1:06:54Speaker 1: the crazy thing, because if you ever met an Israelie,
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: this is you know, you can be outside of the
- 1:06:58Speaker 1: wisland for it is and you still talk him, you know, Okay,
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: as well, just what my father took like all I
- 1:07:05Speaker 1: need to do is a lot of a right And
- 1:07:08Speaker 1: there was a lot of hand talking to to the
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: people who are listening. Um, I don't know. It's a
- 1:07:14Speaker 1: part of it's a part of that mystery that had
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: me want to be here that I was in elementary
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: school and we started started learning English and I kind
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: of started speaking English with an American accident and not,
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: and my kids in class were like laughing at me.
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: I'd stand up in class and answer, give an answer,
- 1:07:29Speaker 1: and they'd be like rah rah rah, like why do
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: you have an accident? Like why don't you So it's
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: also it's a it's a part of it's a part
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: of this weird thing that I had, I guess pat
- 1:07:41Speaker 1: to be here. But also because I'm a singer, I
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: can pretty much imitate every accent as well. So wherever
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: I'm at whatever however somebody's speaking to me, I imitated accidentally.
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: So when I'm in London or in Australia or England
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: or Australia, have to be very careful because I turned
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: into very douche con person because I start imitating the
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: accent that I hear. So you there were no special classes,
- 1:08:07Speaker 1: no courses you didn't have to. I have never taken
- 1:08:11Speaker 1: a single class like dialect class. Not a single one.
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: Not a single one. Okay, So you you come to
- 1:08:20Speaker 1: America to act. Your book says you had a certain
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: level of success, but not at the level of your dream.
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: Can you tell us about that. Well, I came to
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: America already very successful. So I started acting at a
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: very young age, and I got I became successful around
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: sixteen or seventeen, and super successful around the age of nineteen.
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: And the television show that I did that became basically
- 1:08:50Speaker 1: a national hit within one episode, to a point where
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: we couldn't walk down the street. It was the equivalent
- 1:08:56Speaker 1: of like a melrose Place. It was like a nighttime
- 1:08:59Speaker 1: so opera, ridiculous but so fun. And it was the
- 1:09:03Speaker 1: first soap opera in Israel. And we all became overnight sensations.
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: So I by the age of twenty one, I was
- 1:09:13Speaker 1: offered like the equivalent of the Tonight Show, like a
- 1:09:15Speaker 1: nightly evening show. I was very, very successful. I say
- 1:09:21Speaker 1: this like that because I've noticed that a lot of girls,
- 1:09:23Speaker 1: especially young girls. I do a lot of college and
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: high school talks. They try to they talk themselves down.
- 1:09:28Speaker 1: They don't own their success. So I always say that
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: a girl's like, own your success. You did amazing, So
- 1:09:33Speaker 1: I try to do that myself. So I came here.
- 1:09:36Speaker 1: I came here already famous, and I was certain that
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: it's going to be the same. I'm gonna be like, oh,
- 1:09:43Speaker 1: you just are going to realize that I'm a very
- 1:09:45Speaker 1: famous person from Israel and you're going to just hand
- 1:09:47Speaker 1: me everything. And I'm like, oh, here's the most famous
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: person from France, here's the most famous person from Holland.
- 1:09:55Speaker 1: So I was a rude awakening and in that sense,
- 1:09:57Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, I have to audition my
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: living crap out of everything. I had a record deal
- 1:10:03Speaker 1: as soon as I moved here with MCAM. I was
- 1:10:06Speaker 1: traveling all over the world, recording with the best people,
- 1:10:09Speaker 1: the best musician, best songwriters, like I went to Stockholm,
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: I've worked with share on people, I work like everything.
- 1:10:16Speaker 1: And then the label folded, basically disappeared where you know
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: when it merged into Universal, and I was left with nothing.
- 1:10:24Speaker 1: So it was a very challenging few years of getting
- 1:10:29Speaker 1: very close to something but not getting it, and the
- 1:10:31Speaker 1: label do like I'm getting this huge record deal that
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: is a huge, huge thing, and then the label fold.
- 1:10:39Speaker 1: So I had a few years of humbling that I
- 1:10:46Speaker 1: appreciate now, I really do. I don't think I would
- 1:10:49Speaker 1: have been able to handle everything that I'm handling now
- 1:10:52Speaker 1: if I was successful at that level at that age.
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: I was too young for it. That's one thing to
- 1:10:58Speaker 1: be successful in Israel, but it's a whole story in America.
- 1:11:02Speaker 1: But you do have acting credits, and you do have
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: an acting career. I do, I do, and I did,
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: and you know, all the trucks in the house say yay,
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: said star trek. I didn't even realize it's a big deal.
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: And I did it. Yes, I did. I did. I
- 1:11:16Speaker 1: was working. I was a working actress. A lot of
- 1:11:21Speaker 1: fans in the industry. The industry was lovely to me.
- 1:11:24Speaker 1: It was never the breakthrough that I wanted. The biggest
- 1:11:27Speaker 1: breakthrough actually came with producing. When I a part of
- 1:11:31Speaker 1: you were asking what kind of a child I was,
- 1:11:32Speaker 1: or what kind of a kid I was, and the
- 1:11:34Speaker 1: driven and committed and all of that. That didn't stop
- 1:11:37Speaker 1: when I moved to America. So I had ants in
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: my pants even here. As a young adult. I was
- 1:11:47Speaker 1: auditioning and getting roles and whatever. But I kept looking
- 1:11:51Speaker 1: for projects to produce because I was like, I'm not
- 1:11:53Speaker 1: going to just sit down and be quiet a bored.
- 1:11:56Speaker 1: I'm annoyed, I'm not ful failed. I need to do more.
- 1:12:00Speaker 1: So I was looking for projects to produce. I was
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: working on a documentary format. I was creating a bunch
- 1:12:07Speaker 1: of formats. And then I heard about an Israeli show
- 1:12:11Speaker 1: that's called Mittipura, which was basically two people sitting around
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: and having a conversation. So I was a therapist sitting
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: with a patient in a room talking and I heard
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: that concept and I'm like, oh my god, this is brilliant, right,
- 1:12:26Speaker 1: And I, at the time was on a show called Coupling,
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: which was a British format that NBC adopted. So I'm
- 1:12:35Speaker 1: kind of going. I went to Israel for two days
- 1:12:37Speaker 1: or a couple of days for my nieces. But Mitzvo
- 1:12:40Speaker 1: and everybody, we're talking about that show and how brilliant
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: it is. You have to watch it. You have to
- 1:12:44Speaker 1: watch it. If you watch it. And I'm sitting in
- 1:12:46Speaker 1: a car driving with my manager and she turns to
- 1:12:49Speaker 1: me and she goes, oh my god, have you seen Battipoolia.
- 1:12:51Speaker 1: You have to watch this show, and I had one
- 1:12:54Speaker 1: of these aha moments again. I had like till like
- 1:12:58Speaker 1: a light bulb went above my head. And I turned
- 1:13:01Speaker 1: to her and I'm kind of going, oh my god,
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: this is it's a format. It has to be a format.
- 1:13:05Speaker 1: And I turned to her and I said, do you
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: know the creator? And she said yes, and I'm like,
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: do you have his number? She said yes, so call him,
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: call him right now. And mind you haven't watched the
- 1:13:15Speaker 1: frame of the show, right So she calls him up
- 1:13:19Speaker 1: and I pick up the phone and I go, Hi,
- 1:13:20Speaker 1: this is no tice me. I'm leaving town tomorrow to
- 1:13:24Speaker 1: go back to LA. We need to meet tomorrow morning.
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: And it's not about what you think it is, because
- 1:13:28Speaker 1: I didn't want him to think that I want like
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: a roll and a show right right. So then I
- 1:13:33Speaker 1: hang up the phone. I turned to her and I'm like,
- 1:13:34Speaker 1: cand you get me a DVDs of the show because
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: I haven't watched it. But it was so clear to
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: me that this was my format, because the idea was
- 1:13:43Speaker 1: so simple and so brilliant, and the execution was clearly
- 1:13:46Speaker 1: brilliant because everybody was talking about it. So she, of
- 1:13:49Speaker 1: course I get the DVD that afternoon, I watched it.
- 1:13:51Speaker 1: I'm floored. I'm like, this is this is it, this
- 1:13:54Speaker 1: is what I'm gonna do. I'm going to bring the
- 1:13:56Speaker 1: first Israeli television show from Israel to America and I'm
- 1:14:01Speaker 1: going to sell it as a show. So I go
- 1:14:04Speaker 1: and meet the guy and I said, what's going on
- 1:14:07Speaker 1: with the show And he's like, oh, I started working
- 1:14:08Speaker 1: on second season. I'm like, I stopped it. I go,
- 1:14:10Speaker 1: I'm going to sell your show to HBO and he
- 1:14:13Speaker 1: looks at me as if I'm insane because at the time,
- 1:14:17Speaker 1: this never happened before, obviously, and it's so never happened
- 1:14:20Speaker 1: before that there wasn't even a remake claw in the
- 1:14:25Speaker 1: contract of the creators and the network. That wasn't even
- 1:14:29Speaker 1: addressed like a remake or international format right sale. It
- 1:14:32Speaker 1: just was not. It didn't exist at all in the
- 1:14:35Speaker 1: reality of anybody. So he's like okay, and he I'm like,
- 1:14:39Speaker 1: do you have a translated copy. It's like yes, I
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: actually do, because I'm sending it to some Jewish festival
- 1:14:43Speaker 1: somewhere and I'm like, great, can I get it. He's
- 1:14:45Speaker 1: like sure, So he gives me a translated copy of
- 1:14:47Speaker 1: the first five episodes, and again I'm a plane back
- 1:14:50Speaker 1: to LA and I'm thinking, how the fuck do I
- 1:14:53Speaker 1: sell a show to HBO? I don't know how to
- 1:14:56Speaker 1: do no idea how to do that. I literally had
- 1:14:59Speaker 1: no idea how to that. I knew that I have
- 1:15:01Speaker 1: a brilliant concept, a brilliant show that needs to be
- 1:15:05Speaker 1: an American show. So I come back to LA and
- 1:15:09Speaker 1: I start making calls. My first calls to my lawyer
- 1:15:12Speaker 1: and I'm like, I have a show from Israel, and
- 1:15:15Speaker 1: he goes, good for you. I'm like, no, it's a format.
- 1:15:20Speaker 1: It's like, what do you mean? And I'm like, the
- 1:15:21Speaker 1: same way that we adopt shows from the UK, We're
- 1:15:24Speaker 1: going to adopt this from Israel. Like it's a brilliant
- 1:15:26Speaker 1: show we should do. Like I'm pitching people on adopting
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: a show from Israel. Long story short, I brought the
- 1:15:35Speaker 1: show to Stephen Levinson at leverage in Mark Wahlberg, and
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: we sold at HBO and it did four seasons and
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: over one hundred and forty episodes, fourteen Emmas, and Golden
- 1:15:43Speaker 1: Globe domination, a Peabody Award, Like it did so well,
- 1:15:47Speaker 1: And what happened as a result of that show was
- 1:15:51Speaker 1: that it created a market where market didn't exist before.
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: And that market is an Israeli television show in the
- 1:15:57Speaker 1: US and television format sales in the US, and so
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: many people don't A lot of people know like Fauda
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: and shows like that, which are brilliant, but a lot
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: of people don't know. So many of the shows that
- 1:16:09Speaker 1: we love are actually based on Israeli format. It's like
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: Euphoria is an Israeli show. So I have a tendency
- 1:16:18Speaker 1: to do things first when you kind of look back
- 1:16:21Speaker 1: in my history, and this was one of those things
- 1:16:25Speaker 1: that I'm the most proud of because it just it
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: changed the Israeli market forever, changed a lot in the
- 1:16:33Speaker 1: American market, and it's it changed the perception of Israel
- 1:16:38Speaker 1: within within Hollywood. It really changed that. And of course
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: the show on HBO was called in treatment Um. One
- 1:16:48Speaker 1: other element in your book, you talk about the Israeli
- 1:16:50Speaker 1: personality that a woman wouldn't expect a man to open
- 1:16:55Speaker 1: the card door restaurant and told offended. I was offended.
- 1:17:01Speaker 1: I was offended. That's a true story. I the Israeli
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: personality is it's what's called a saber, right. So a
- 1:17:08Speaker 1: lot of people are like, oh, you're a sober if
- 1:17:10Speaker 1: you were born at Israel. But the reason it's a
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: sober is because it's spikey from the inside and sweet
- 1:17:14Speaker 1: from the spikey from the outside and sweet from the inside. Right,
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: there is an urgency to being in Israeli that can
- 1:17:22Speaker 1: be translated into rudeness very easily. So if you met
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: in Israeli in your life, you know that there's kind
- 1:17:29Speaker 1: of like an abruptness and kind of like an aggressiveness
- 1:17:31Speaker 1: and kind of and this comes from the pressure cooker
- 1:17:35Speaker 1: that we live under. So there's no time for pleasant
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: reason and politeness. The downside of it is that there's
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: no time for pleasant reas and politeness, so it's a
- 1:17:44Speaker 1: look rude. The good side about it is that you
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: always know where you stand. You always know where you
- 1:17:49Speaker 1: stand with in Israeliti. And it is something that, as
- 1:17:51Speaker 1: in Israeli, was very difficult for me to decipher because
- 1:17:54Speaker 1: I didn't understand when people were saying great, but they
- 1:17:57Speaker 1: didn't mean great, they meant no thank you. Right, So
- 1:18:00Speaker 1: I am the kind of friend and the kind of
- 1:18:02Speaker 1: person that I'm straight up, I just find it to
- 1:18:05Speaker 1: be easier. I had to tone myself down in a
- 1:18:08Speaker 1: in a lot of ways and also allow men to
- 1:18:11Speaker 1: open the door for me. I'm a big fan of
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: that now. But the story that you're referring to is
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: my first boyfriend in la who is an Australian actor,
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: and he is very kind of like gentleman in a
- 1:18:25Speaker 1: in an old school way, and he came to pick
- 1:18:27Speaker 1: me up and when we walked to his car, he
- 1:18:29Speaker 1: opened the door and I looked at him and I'm like,
- 1:18:31Speaker 1: what are you doing. He's like, I'm opening the door
- 1:18:33Speaker 1: for you. I'm like, why, I can get the door.
- 1:18:35Speaker 1: It's fine. I was offended. I was annoyed. It annoyed me.
- 1:18:39Speaker 1: So I'm not like that anymore. Very much want people
- 1:18:42Speaker 1: to open the door for me. I'm okay with that.
- 1:18:44Speaker 1: Doesn't take away from my strength or right or my
- 1:18:47Speaker 1: or anything else. But but yeah, this is the Israeli way.
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: Is a lot more. It's a lot more in your face,
- 1:18:55Speaker 1: but it's real. It's real. It's real. You'll know and
- 1:19:00Speaker 1: if somebody is if somebody doesn't like you, you'll know it.
- 1:19:03Speaker 1: But if somebody is your friend, you can count on
- 1:19:05Speaker 1: that forever. Okay. You have a long history of knowing
- 1:19:09Speaker 1: what you want seeing it and getting it being very agile,
- 1:19:14Speaker 1: sometimes not getting it, by the way. But that's let
- 1:19:17Speaker 1: me continue here. How does that affect your love life
- 1:19:20Speaker 1: and your interaction with women someone who's so strong and successful. Okay,
- 1:19:25Speaker 1: these are such great questions, but they're two very separate questions.
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: I'm all about women. My girlfriends are the most important
- 1:19:36Speaker 1: thing for me up and then my son. Obviously, I
- 1:19:37Speaker 1: have four sisters, so I am a huge My interaction
- 1:19:42Speaker 1: with women is amazing, and women actually they sense that.
- 1:19:46Speaker 1: So the majority of my followers are women. I get
- 1:19:50Speaker 1: I meet like kids when I speak in colleges and
- 1:19:52Speaker 1: I can't in high schools, and I can't tell you
- 1:19:53Speaker 1: how many times they come to me and like, oh
- 1:19:54Speaker 1: my god, my mom loves you. Like women get me
- 1:20:00Speaker 1: down level. They know that I'm a girl's girl, through
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: and through. There's no question about that. Every girl right
- 1:20:06Speaker 1: now is listening to it if she don't know me,
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: and she looks through my stuff, and I'm a girls girl.
- 1:20:11Speaker 1: I have four sisters. Women camaraderie is one of the
- 1:20:14Speaker 1: most important things in the world. When I had, like
- 1:20:16Speaker 1: when I have meldowns in my life, I got like
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: my girlfriend's showing up in my LA kitchen, sitting around
- 1:20:21Speaker 1: and I mean, it's so important to me. It's I
- 1:20:26Speaker 1: think it's one of the most important things in human
- 1:20:28Speaker 1: interaction is the relationship between women. I think that if
- 1:20:31Speaker 1: a woman does not have that, it's such a loss,
- 1:20:34Speaker 1: and I feel for her. I think she should every
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: woman that doesn't have that need to go out and
- 1:20:40Speaker 1: seek it. I have extraordinary group of girls around me
- 1:20:46Speaker 1: in La, in Tel Aviv, in New York, in Sydney,
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: and I have my girls crew everywhere. And I also,
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: I mean, I have a WhatsApp group with my two
- 1:20:55Speaker 1: best girlfriends from elementary school, from fourth grade, but we
- 1:20:59Speaker 1: still have what's up group like a carrying relationships for decades.
- 1:21:05Speaker 1: And my girls are my tribe, like my tribe um.
- 1:21:11Speaker 1: In terms of relationships, I I'm looking forward to my
- 1:21:16Speaker 1: third relationship. I am. I was married, so I had
- 1:21:22Speaker 1: I had two long term relationships and two you know,
- 1:21:24Speaker 1: seven and a half eight year relationship. They were great relationships,
- 1:21:28Speaker 1: but they didn't end up continuing. Well. Just to be clear,
- 1:21:34Speaker 1: Just to be clear here for a second, people say
- 1:21:37Speaker 1: that they broke up it's mutual. It's never mutual. I
- 1:21:41Speaker 1: would think knowing you your personality that in both of
- 1:21:45Speaker 1: these cases you were the one who blew the whistle, Bob,
- 1:21:50Speaker 1: you would be so surprised. And right now, if my
- 1:21:53Speaker 1: girls are listening all the way through, they're laughing their
- 1:21:56Speaker 1: asses off right now, they really are. Look, I have
- 1:22:01Speaker 1: a son, so I won't publicly talk about specifically, not
- 1:22:07Speaker 1: the relationship with his dad where great co parents were
- 1:22:10Speaker 1: working on raising raising our son together. And I'm just
- 1:22:20Speaker 1: I think that I don't know, It's it's an interesting question.
- 1:22:22Speaker 1: I didn't realize we're going to go there. Right. I'm
- 1:22:24Speaker 1: a very couply person, so it's very bizarre that I
- 1:22:27Speaker 1: didn't that they both didn't last. You know, I'm a
- 1:22:30Speaker 1: very couply person, so it'll be interesting. They say third
- 1:22:34Speaker 1: times a charm, right, Well, well, why why did the
- 1:22:38Speaker 1: why did the two relationships not work out? What are
- 1:22:42Speaker 1: we having this? What kind of a conversation is that? Um? Well,
- 1:22:48Speaker 1: I can talk about the first one because he went
- 1:22:49Speaker 1: public with it. So the first one did not work
- 1:22:51Speaker 1: out because he's a lovely guy. He was an addict,
- 1:22:58Speaker 1: um And I didn't know he was an addict when
- 1:23:01Speaker 1: we got together and we got married, and we we
- 1:23:06Speaker 1: stuck through it as much as we could, but it
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: destroyed the relationship. And again, the only reason I'm talking
- 1:23:15Speaker 1: about is because he he's a he's a He wrote
- 1:23:17Speaker 1: a book about it, and he went public. He went
- 1:23:20Speaker 1: public with it, So I didn't. I didn't know to
- 1:23:25Speaker 1: recognize the signs. I mean, in retrospect now I should
- 1:23:28Speaker 1: have known, but I could I couldn't have known, right,
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: But that's why that didn't work out. And the second one,
- 1:23:38Speaker 1: I can't. I can't discuss this. I have a son.
- 1:23:41Speaker 1: I can't. It was it was challenging, but it's not
- 1:23:47Speaker 1: what you are alluding to her thinking. I will tell
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: you once the mica is off. How about that, Okay, Okay,
- 1:23:55Speaker 1: I don't need to press you. Okay, So I will
- 1:23:57Speaker 1: just like I have a son. It's I have to
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: be careful and everything that's out there for him to
- 1:24:02Speaker 1: be Like what, Okay, So you're talking about this hypothetical
- 1:24:06Speaker 1: third relationship. Yes, are you actively seeking it? I think
- 1:24:12Speaker 1: that so. I we broke up about two and a
- 1:24:15Speaker 1: half years ago, almost two and a half years ago,
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: and I think I'm only I was not interested in
- 1:24:20Speaker 1: one up until now. I needed to sort things out first.
- 1:24:24Speaker 1: I was a bit dramatic and there are a lot
- 1:24:26Speaker 1: of things that were happening. So I was not open
- 1:24:28Speaker 1: to it. I think I am. I am open to
- 1:24:33Speaker 1: it now, so yeah, well let's see what happens. Well,
- 1:24:36Speaker 1: I mean, are you know, would you be set up
- 1:24:39Speaker 1: with friends, or you meet people through life, or would
- 1:24:41Speaker 1: you go on a dating site or any of that.
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: I don't go on dating sites. I've never been on
- 1:24:46Speaker 1: a dating site. I'd like to keep it that way.
- 1:24:48Speaker 1: I get introduced to people, people are interested in setting
- 1:24:51Speaker 1: me up. I'm not. I'm in a great place in
- 1:24:55Speaker 1: life for a woman, not for a woman, just generally
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: for a human being. I think that we need to
- 1:25:00Speaker 1: be in a place in which we're happy with ourselves
- 1:25:02Speaker 1: and happy like I have a great son, I have
- 1:25:04Speaker 1: a great life of incredible friends. I'm a very couply person,
- 1:25:08Speaker 1: and I want somebody that would compliment me and I
- 1:25:11Speaker 1: would compliment him, like I want to be able to
- 1:25:14Speaker 1: find my share it, to find my lobster, my ride
- 1:25:18Speaker 1: or die the friend. The person's going to enjoy all
- 1:25:20Speaker 1: of it with me, you know, and we'll see if
- 1:25:22Speaker 1: they're out there. It's so bizarre. I have never Bob,
- 1:25:26Speaker 1: can I tell you something? It's only in Israel that
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: I get asked these questions. In America, I never get
- 1:25:31Speaker 1: asked these questions. And Israel they know me for so
- 1:25:33Speaker 1: many years and they've been through like the media has
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: been with me since I was a teen, so they
- 1:25:38Speaker 1: always ask these questions and they're like about children in
- 1:25:41Speaker 1: marriage and divorce and all that. This is the first
- 1:25:42Speaker 1: time I'm ever talking about this in America. I'm so confronted,
- 1:25:46Speaker 1: Like well, as I say, I'm already asking as a person,
- 1:25:49Speaker 1: this has got more to do with my identity asking
- 1:25:51Speaker 1: these questions than your fame. But just I love talking
- 1:25:54Speaker 1: about It's not about fame, It's just about I'm in America.
- 1:25:58Speaker 1: My work is so overshadowing my personality and my personal life.
- 1:26:02Speaker 1: I didn't even talk about I only recorded like a
- 1:26:06Speaker 1: video that talks about me being a single mom or recently,
- 1:26:08Speaker 1: and I haven't posted it yet, so I don't even
- 1:26:10Speaker 1: talk about it publicly. It's pretty clear from my social
- 1:26:14Speaker 1: media that I there's a son, but there's no husband.
- 1:26:17Speaker 1: So but it's yeah, it's interesting. I think people think
- 1:26:21Speaker 1: that I'm like a lot more of a ballbuster. I
- 1:26:23Speaker 1: always say about myself that I'm a Labrador and a
- 1:26:25Speaker 1: leopard skin. That's the truth. Wait to say that one
- 1:26:28Speaker 1: more time. I'm a labrador in a leopard skin. I
- 1:26:32Speaker 1: look like I'm this ball but whatever, But I'm just
- 1:26:35Speaker 1: I'm not so you know, somebody can see through that. Then,
- 1:26:39Speaker 1: going back to the initial question, are men intimidated by
- 1:26:43Speaker 1: your success? Personality, beauty, etc. Um. I'd like to say no,
- 1:26:52Speaker 1: but it's I don't know. Are you intimidated by it?
- 1:26:54Speaker 1: Do you think it would be intimidating for a guy? Well,
- 1:26:57Speaker 1: I mean, I'm dead straight. I mean this is not
- 1:26:59Speaker 1: only you specifically. You know, this isn't all the immediate
- 1:27:03Speaker 1: at this point that you have these successful women and
- 1:27:06Speaker 1: there's a limited pool of successful men and should they
- 1:27:09Speaker 1: date down? And then you have all these successful men
- 1:27:12Speaker 1: who want to date down and you're successful in a
- 1:27:17Speaker 1: way beyond just career, And I was wondering how that
- 1:27:21Speaker 1: would affect dating prospects with a certain people would say, hey,
- 1:27:24Speaker 1: I want to date someone that successful, or would you
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: comminently say I don't want to date someone that unsuccessful.
- 1:27:33Speaker 1: I don't say anything to me. It's about the people
- 1:27:36Speaker 1: I've never dated in my life. I've never I've never
- 1:27:39Speaker 1: I've had opportunity to date very big people, famous and
- 1:27:46Speaker 1: successful and rich and whatever. I never cared about that.
- 1:27:49Speaker 1: The joke among my friends that I didn't and they're like,
- 1:27:52Speaker 1: you know, they're like, just could you date a billionaire now?
- 1:27:54Speaker 1: And I'm like no, because it's never been a parameter,
- 1:27:57Speaker 1: so it's not going to be now. I don't know
- 1:28:01Speaker 1: what to tell you in terms of if men are
- 1:28:03Speaker 1: intimidated or not. Maybe maybe not. I'm not entirely sure.
- 1:28:07Speaker 1: I don't see myself like that, but that's why I
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: asked you, would you be intimidate? Are you into is
- 1:28:13Speaker 1: it intimidating? I'm not the regular guy, you know, the
- 1:28:18Speaker 1: regular guy who has big on image and has his
- 1:28:21Speaker 1: check book whatever, and that's you know, I would think
- 1:28:28Speaker 1: generally speaking, men would be. Then there's an elite level
- 1:28:32Speaker 1: of people who are billionaires and very successful like that,
- 1:28:36Speaker 1: and that's they have different criteria. But the average person
- 1:28:40Speaker 1: is earning a living and doing well, driving a German
- 1:28:43Speaker 1: car or a tesla. I think that they might be intimidated.
- 1:28:46Speaker 1: But moving on from this, the conventional wisdom is that
- 1:28:50Speaker 1: the Israelis and the Danes make the best television forgetting
- 1:28:55Speaker 1: the Danes. Why is this? Rayleigh television so good. It's
- 1:29:00Speaker 1: such a great question invention, like necessity is the mother
- 1:29:05Speaker 1: of all invention. That's legitimately why the reason Israeli television
- 1:29:10Speaker 1: is so good, and it really is so good, is
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: because number one, there's no money. There's no money in
- 1:29:16Speaker 1: the industry. There's only nine million people to sell the
- 1:29:20Speaker 1: product too, so to begin with, there's no budget, right,
- 1:29:24Speaker 1: and those people are extraordinarily sophisticated. So it's a sophisticated
- 1:29:29Speaker 1: audience that doesn't take bullshit and would not stick around
- 1:29:32Speaker 1: if the show is not good. And when you create
- 1:29:35Speaker 1: a show, you cannot rely on explosions, helicopters, special effects, monsters.
- 1:29:42Speaker 1: You can't. You have to make sure that the show
- 1:29:44Speaker 1: is great. It's written really well, like a song that's
- 1:29:46Speaker 1: written on a guitar and you can play it and
- 1:29:49Speaker 1: it's brilliant without all the productions in the rigor moole.
- 1:29:52Speaker 1: That's what Israeli television is. That's why in treatment is
- 1:29:55Speaker 1: so great. That's why Homeland with such a huge success,
- 1:29:58Speaker 1: That's why You four is so great, because it's characters
- 1:30:00Speaker 1: and its stories and its people, and that's what Israeli
- 1:30:04Speaker 1: people like. And because Israelitis, there's so much like Americans culturally,
- 1:30:08Speaker 1: whatever works there can work here. So it's it's just
- 1:30:13Speaker 1: there's no it's almost like there's no miracle to it.
- 1:30:15Speaker 1: When you know the Israeli culture and you know American culture,
- 1:30:17Speaker 1: you know why the television there, why it works. Okay,
- 1:30:21Speaker 1: other than in treatment, name your three favorite Israeli television shows,
- 1:30:26Speaker 1: Oh my god, Okay, Well, honestly, it's a show that
- 1:30:29Speaker 1: you're never going to hear about because it's called is
- 1:30:32Speaker 1: a sketch comedy show that's never going to be able
- 1:30:35Speaker 1: to be adapted because it's so specific. But it's absolutely brilliant.
- 1:30:40Speaker 1: It's the most biting political commentary that you have ever seen,
- 1:30:47Speaker 1: way harsher than America. So what they'll do there, Like
- 1:30:50Speaker 1: you think SNL is biting, it's nothing compared to what
- 1:30:53Speaker 1: they do there. They turn politics into a circus in
- 1:30:57Speaker 1: the cleverest of way. So I would say this is
- 1:30:59Speaker 1: probably my most favorite show. It's been going on for
- 1:31:02Speaker 1: twenty years or something. It's it's absolutely brilliant. That's number one.
- 1:31:07Speaker 1: Number two. I think the show is now. This show
- 1:31:10Speaker 1: is now in Hulu, but I'm not one hundred percent sure.
- 1:31:12Speaker 1: It's called Rehearsals. And it was a show that was
- 1:31:15Speaker 1: created by the public broadcaster con eleven. And it's again
- 1:31:22Speaker 1: very small show about a couple that used to be
- 1:31:25Speaker 1: a couple and they wrote a play about themselves and
- 1:31:28Speaker 1: then the play becomes they buy the theater, buys a play,
- 1:31:32Speaker 1: but their relationship breaks apart. So very small, relationship driven,
- 1:31:37Speaker 1: brilliant show. It's called rehearsals. Look it up. It's amazing.
- 1:31:41Speaker 1: That's two. That's two a third do we need a third?
- 1:31:48Speaker 1: Can I get back to you on them? I'm sure
- 1:31:50Speaker 1: they're amazing ones. Don't let me think I mean, i'd
- 1:31:53Speaker 1: say foud up. Let's say found up because it's amazing.
- 1:31:56Speaker 1: Everybody can watch Fouder on Netflix. It's brilliant. If you
- 1:31:58Speaker 1: haven't gotten addicted yet for it, I would go with
- 1:32:01Speaker 1: Prisoners of War and True Gear. Oh my god, stop, sorry, sorry,
- 1:32:09Speaker 1: I'm changing my mind, and I'm putting Prisoners of War
- 1:32:11Speaker 1: there number one. First of all because it's the best
- 1:32:15Speaker 1: Israeli television show of all time, and second because the
- 1:32:18Speaker 1: creator is my best friend and he's going to kill
- 1:32:19Speaker 1: me rightfully, so I can't believe it didn't think Prisoners
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: of War. I'm so sorry. Prisoners of war number one. Okay,
- 1:32:30Speaker 1: so all these people I've I've seen a lot of
- 1:32:32Speaker 1: Israeli television and you tend to see the same actors
- 1:32:35Speaker 1: and actresses. You know, So what kind of economic life
- 1:32:40Speaker 1: would those people have? Not easy? It's not. A television
- 1:32:45Speaker 1: show in Israel does not. If you're an actor, you
- 1:32:50Speaker 1: need to do everything. So in Israel, you if you're
- 1:32:52Speaker 1: an actor only doing a TV show. I'm like in America,
- 1:32:56Speaker 1: if you do one TV show here that's successful, you're
- 1:32:58Speaker 1: set over there. You need to do TV. You need
- 1:33:01Speaker 1: to do theater. You need to do voiceovers and campaigns
- 1:33:04Speaker 1: and live shows and stand ups and commercials and a
- 1:33:08Speaker 1: lot of different things. So it's again there's no budget,
- 1:33:11Speaker 1: So it's a it's a tough life in that sense.
- 1:33:14Speaker 1: You have to do a lot of things in order
- 1:33:15Speaker 1: to actually make a living as an actor in Israel. Okay,
- 1:33:25Speaker 1: let's go back to you. So what does an average
- 1:33:28Speaker 1: week or an average month look like? Now? They vary. So,
- 1:33:32Speaker 1: first of all, I travel all the time, So there's
- 1:33:35Speaker 1: I do. I started a college campus tour now, so
- 1:33:38Speaker 1: I travel, I go to speak on college as I
- 1:33:40Speaker 1: started with Berkeley, or as we wait a little bit,
- 1:33:45Speaker 1: a little bit slower. How did this get set up?
- 1:33:48Speaker 1: And do you get compensated? I do get compensated. I
- 1:33:52Speaker 1: mean there's a there's a it's a discounter price for colleges.
- 1:33:55Speaker 1: So I and I do a lot of high schools
- 1:33:57Speaker 1: as well for you know, nothing basically, but but it's UM,
- 1:34:02Speaker 1: I travel a lot. I travel a lot. How do
- 1:34:06Speaker 1: you get those gigs? I have a speaking agent and
- 1:34:09Speaker 1: they contact him and he reaches out and now they
- 1:34:12Speaker 1: know to talk to him if they if they want
- 1:34:14Speaker 1: to book me to go and to go and speak.
- 1:34:16Speaker 1: But the college campus store for me is one of
- 1:34:18Speaker 1: the most exciting ones because because of what's happening with
- 1:34:22Speaker 1: BDS on college campuses, because anti Zionism and anti Semitism
- 1:34:25Speaker 1: on campuses is so extreme. I love going to college campuses.
- 1:34:31Speaker 1: I started with Berkeley or as let's let's slow down there.
- 1:34:36Speaker 1: Berkeley is uh is a hotbed of political activity. He
- 1:34:41Speaker 1: who hosted your speech? In two? How many people came?
- 1:34:46Speaker 1: Great question? So, first of all, I wasn't actually a speech.
- 1:34:49Speaker 1: So I went to Berkeley because, um, there was an
- 1:34:53Speaker 1: article that came out a few a couple of months
- 1:34:56Speaker 1: ago about the fact that at Berkeley Law School, some
- 1:35:00Speaker 1: student groups have outlawed in their by laws, basically in
- 1:35:05Speaker 1: their constitution. They outlawed any speaker to come and speak
- 1:35:09Speaker 1: to them if they support Israel or Zionism, effectively creating
- 1:35:13Speaker 1: a what the article was referring to as a Jewish
- 1:35:15Speaker 1: free zone. So the campus university try to say it's
- 1:35:21Speaker 1: only nine groups in the campus, but the problem is
- 1:35:24Speaker 1: that these groups were the women's groups, the LGBTQ group,
- 1:35:28Speaker 1: the Asian Pacific us of big, big groups called student groups.
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: So the kids on Berkeley have been feeling alienated, discriminated against,
- 1:35:43Speaker 1: marginalized for a very long time. And this was kind
- 1:35:46Speaker 1: of like the straw. The broke their backs and they
- 1:35:50Speaker 1: reach out to me and they asked They asked me
- 1:35:53Speaker 1: basically if I want to go, and I said absolutely,
- 1:35:55Speaker 1: I'll go. And I just asked them, what do they need?
- 1:35:58Speaker 1: What do they want me to do? So they asked me,
- 1:36:00Speaker 1: that's the Jewish groups, the Jewish groups on Berkeley, jew
- 1:36:04Speaker 1: students groups on Berkeley. They said they wanted me to
- 1:36:07Speaker 1: first of all, come and hang out with them and
- 1:36:08Speaker 1: have dinner. So I came over and I hung out
- 1:36:10Speaker 1: at the hilll and sat with the students and chatted
- 1:36:13Speaker 1: to them and to see how they're doing. They're not
- 1:36:15Speaker 1: doing well. They're very concerned and feel alienated. And I
- 1:36:21Speaker 1: heard some horrific stories about that. And then the next
- 1:36:24Speaker 1: day they wanted me to do what's called the tabling event.
- 1:36:27Speaker 1: So and that's what they wanted me to do. So
- 1:36:29Speaker 1: they didn't want me to come and speak at the
- 1:36:30Speaker 1: hill El. They want me to be out there on
- 1:36:32Speaker 1: the main plaza and put a table and have conversations
- 1:36:36Speaker 1: with people. And I said, okay, great, I'll do that.
- 1:36:40Speaker 1: And they said, you put it basically, put a sign
- 1:36:41Speaker 1: above the table and you just kind of reach out
- 1:36:44Speaker 1: to students and have conversations. So I said, sure, I'll
- 1:36:47Speaker 1: do that. And I said, I'm going to have the table.
- 1:36:50Speaker 1: Sign above the table say anti Zionism is anti Semitism.
- 1:36:55Speaker 1: Let's have a chat. And I did that and it
- 1:36:58Speaker 1: was horrible. It was absent, horrible. I was there for
- 1:37:02Speaker 1: four hours. The video is on my Instagram and or
- 1:37:05Speaker 1: my social media and on YouTube. Is well, I think,
- 1:37:08Speaker 1: but it's I was attacked. I was yelled at, I
- 1:37:12Speaker 1: was harassed, I was ignored, I was ganged up on.
- 1:37:17Speaker 1: I didn't want to bring security because I don't want
- 1:37:20Speaker 1: to change my life because of the work that I do.
- 1:37:23Speaker 1: But the people that I was going with basically ruled
- 1:37:26Speaker 1: out and said at some point, like a day before
- 1:37:27Speaker 1: that I can know overay, just gonna have security there
- 1:37:29Speaker 1: for you. So there was playing clothes carrying security guy,
- 1:37:35Speaker 1: and I was very happy that he was there because
- 1:37:37Speaker 1: I was scared, like legitimately scared. I was. I was
- 1:37:40Speaker 1: attacked so badly. Well a little bit more, a little
- 1:37:45Speaker 1: bit more specifically, what happened enough with the yelling, the
- 1:37:49Speaker 1: blood on your hands and you're enough with the killing,
- 1:37:52Speaker 1: and you know, I had people ganging up on me
- 1:37:54Speaker 1: and I'm trying to have conversations and they don't want
- 1:37:57Speaker 1: to have conversation. There was demonstrations, there was yelling those
- 1:38:01Speaker 1: you know you should just you can check out the video.
- 1:38:04Speaker 1: It's it's extreme. It's extreme. And I walked out of
- 1:38:07Speaker 1: there after four hours, and I'm thinking, oh my god,
- 1:38:09Speaker 1: I'm exhausted. This is terrible. And this's just me for
- 1:38:11Speaker 1: four hours. What are the Jewish kids on campus are
- 1:38:14Speaker 1: going through? How did they feel? And the answer is
- 1:38:16Speaker 1: they feel terrible. College campuses right now, in terms of
- 1:38:20Speaker 1: anti Semitism and anti Israel sentiment is a hotbed. It's horrible.
- 1:38:25Speaker 1: We hear reports that student Jewish students on campus only
- 1:38:29Speaker 1: feel safe in Jewish spaces. It's to what to the
- 1:38:32Speaker 1: point that I was saying before, it's like, you're Jewish,
- 1:38:34Speaker 1: don't ask, don't tell. As long as you're not telling anybody,
- 1:38:37Speaker 1: as long as you're not out there visibly Jewish, proud Jewish,
- 1:38:40Speaker 1: then you're fine. It's horrible on college campuses. So I
- 1:38:45Speaker 1: do a lot of that. It was a Duke class week,
- 1:38:47Speaker 1: which was incredible. I went to the University of Miami.
- 1:38:50Speaker 1: I've got I'm doing UCL. Okay, you have those bad,
- 1:38:54Speaker 1: bad experience at Berkeley, So what happened like a Duke
- 1:38:56Speaker 1: in the University of Miami. Duke was university I was great.
- 1:39:00Speaker 1: It was Florida Atlantic University actually, and the University of
- 1:39:04Speaker 1: Miama did both of them. Those two experiences were great,
- 1:39:07Speaker 1: and Duke was also great. Duke was intense because there's
- 1:39:12Speaker 1: a lot of anti Semitism and antisignism the Duke and
- 1:39:15Speaker 1: they had a huge turnout in terms of the students
- 1:39:20Speaker 1: and local people from the community, apparently the biggest that
- 1:39:25Speaker 1: they had for a very long time. Because a lot
- 1:39:27Speaker 1: of students at Duke d students at Duke are very
- 1:39:29Speaker 1: concerned about what's happening. And it was interesting because the
- 1:39:32Speaker 1: professor that was interviewing me was not it was throwing curveballs, like.
- 1:39:36Speaker 1: He was asking me very harsh questions that I disagreed
- 1:39:41Speaker 1: with and I had to set my foot down. And
- 1:39:47Speaker 1: basically he was you know, nobody puts baby in the
- 1:39:49Speaker 1: corner rights And he was saying all these things or
- 1:39:51Speaker 1: like the cleansing and the genocide, and I'm like, I disagree.
- 1:39:54Speaker 1: Let me tell you why. And what I heard from
- 1:39:57Speaker 1: the students afterwards, which is totally legitimate, by the way,
- 1:39:59Speaker 1: we can definitely have a conversation about that. I got
- 1:40:01Speaker 1: nothing against that, But what I was able to show
- 1:40:04Speaker 1: the students is also how do you stand in front
- 1:40:06Speaker 1: and stand in the face of these uncomfortable conversations, because
- 1:40:11Speaker 1: a lot of people just recoil. They just kind of like,
- 1:40:12Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about it. It's too complicated.
- 1:40:14Speaker 1: And I'm trying to show people that it's okay to
- 1:40:17Speaker 1: have these uncomfortable conversations. We have to have these uncomfortable
- 1:40:20Speaker 1: conversations because otherwise what are we doing. So it was
- 1:40:24Speaker 1: that's what I heard from the kids there that they
- 1:40:26Speaker 1: it was very helpful for them to see me kind
- 1:40:28Speaker 1: of like butt heads with a professor a little bit,
- 1:40:30Speaker 1: because it showed them how to handle it when it comes.
- 1:40:34Speaker 1: Because it comes, it comes a lot. It comes up
- 1:40:36Speaker 1: a lot. So I do a lot of that. I
- 1:40:38Speaker 1: travel to various places around again, around the country and
- 1:40:42Speaker 1: around the world. And when I'm in La it's a
- 1:40:44Speaker 1: lot of like reading, writing, working in the next book,
- 1:40:48Speaker 1: posting on social media, doing videos, taking readings. It's very
- 1:40:53Speaker 1: it's a busy time to be fighting anti semitism. Sadly okay,
- 1:40:58Speaker 1: by times. Well, let's let's go back. When you do
- 1:41:02Speaker 1: these speaking engagements, generally speaking, are you preaching to the
- 1:41:07Speaker 1: converted or do the people who disagree with you show up?
- 1:41:11Speaker 1: I wow? Okay, Oddly enough, other than Berkeley, I did
- 1:41:16Speaker 1: not have people show up to protest, which is kind
- 1:41:19Speaker 1: of surprising, honestly, because I don't we don't hide that
- 1:41:22Speaker 1: I'm going to speak, So we're wondering why they didn't
- 1:41:26Speaker 1: show up. I'm all about I've you know, I've been
- 1:41:30Speaker 1: through these conversations many times. I can handle it. I'm
- 1:41:34Speaker 1: please accost me, I'll be fine. Hackle the shit out
- 1:41:37Speaker 1: of me. It's okay, you're allowed, but it hasn't happened yet.
- 1:41:40Speaker 1: I'm not only preaching to the choir. I'm obviously talking
- 1:41:42Speaker 1: to a lot of people in the Jewish community, but
- 1:41:45Speaker 1: I have a lot of people that invite me to
- 1:41:47Speaker 1: speak to their non Jewish friends in their workspaces. This
- 1:41:51Speaker 1: is something that I really want to do more of.
- 1:41:53Speaker 1: Like I think Google should invite me to speak about
- 1:41:55Speaker 1: anti Semitism, and Apple and Coca Cola, and like these
- 1:41:59Speaker 1: companies need Oh okay, but let's let's go back to
- 1:42:02Speaker 1: the basic question, not just me just generally speaking out.
- 1:42:08Speaker 1: Operations need to deal with anti semitism head on, right,
- 1:42:12Speaker 1: But do the people who need their beliefs challenged? Did
- 1:42:16Speaker 1: they show up? Yes? Yes, so one of the people
- 1:42:21Speaker 1: that I like. So, for example, at Duke, I know
- 1:42:24Speaker 1: of a few kids that were there that were brought
- 1:42:27Speaker 1: in by their Jewish friends because they had an issue
- 1:42:31Speaker 1: with Israel and an issue with anti Semitism. I know
- 1:42:34Speaker 1: that people use these talks in order to bring out
- 1:42:37Speaker 1: their community and bring out their friends when they need
- 1:42:39Speaker 1: to be challenge or addressed. I also know that people
- 1:42:42Speaker 1: use my videos for that, So they save my videos
- 1:42:44Speaker 1: online and then they send them to people when something arises.
- 1:42:48Speaker 1: So yes, definitely, definitely. And do I want to be
- 1:42:51Speaker 1: more in more spaces where I'm not more spaces that
- 1:42:55Speaker 1: are less preaching to the choir, of course, but again
- 1:42:57Speaker 1: it's not easy because it's Hewish advocacy and it's people
- 1:43:02Speaker 1: don't it's not as comfortable as other advocacies for people
- 1:43:06Speaker 1: to kind of wrap their heads around. Is this a
- 1:43:09Speaker 1: Sisaphian endeavor or do you think you're making a difference both?
- 1:43:15Speaker 1: So I don't. We didn't touch upon that. But I'm
- 1:43:18Speaker 1: also sometimes Israel's first special Envoy for combating anti Semitism
- 1:43:22Speaker 1: and delegitimizations. I was appointed by then Foreign Ministry and
- 1:43:26Speaker 1: a Pede to represent Israel when I'm asked on international
- 1:43:32Speaker 1: stage as the anti Semitism envoy, And when we had
- 1:43:38Speaker 1: this conversation, he offered me the position. He said, you
- 1:43:41Speaker 1: know how the United States has a special envoy for
- 1:43:44Speaker 1: anti Semitism in Canada and EU and a lot of
- 1:43:46Speaker 1: other countries in the world, and Israel doesn't have one.
- 1:43:49Speaker 1: I said, right, I didn't think about that, And he's like,
- 1:43:51Speaker 1: would you like to be that person? And I said
- 1:43:53Speaker 1: absolutely yes, And then I started laughing and he asked me,
- 1:43:57Speaker 1: why why are you laughing? And I said, because you're
- 1:43:59Speaker 1: setting me up to fail, like I'm literally never going
- 1:44:02Speaker 1: to be successful in this. And he started laughing and
- 1:44:04Speaker 1: he said, you know, he said, I expect you to
- 1:44:06Speaker 1: end anti Semitism and then three months give me a report. Please.
- 1:44:11Speaker 1: Anti Semitism is the oldest form of hate and discrimination
- 1:44:14Speaker 1: that's still being practiced today. There's no reason for me
- 1:44:17Speaker 1: to think that I'm going to be able to end it.
- 1:44:19Speaker 1: It's crazy. It's never going to end fully. Am I
- 1:44:24Speaker 1: making a difference? Yes, I know that for a fact.
- 1:44:27Speaker 1: Okay that I'm making a difference. Sor right? Are there
- 1:44:30Speaker 1: any other noah tissues out there? But we just don't
- 1:44:33Speaker 1: know who they are. There are other advocates out there, Yeah,
- 1:44:37Speaker 1: there are other people that are doing this. It's it's
- 1:44:39Speaker 1: I mean, everybody, everybody is different. But I can definitely
- 1:44:42Speaker 1: recommend people to follow an account named a white of
- 1:44:46Speaker 1: Frame and a guy named Blake Flayton and Eve Barlow
- 1:44:51Speaker 1: and Lizzie Savitsky is like a great advocate. There are
- 1:44:54Speaker 1: people out there, but you know, the Jewish people are
- 1:44:58Speaker 1: zero point zero two percent the world population or zero
- 1:45:01Speaker 1: point two percent of the American population, we're less than
- 1:45:04Speaker 1: fifteen million people. Around the world, it's a very small
- 1:45:06Speaker 1: number of people. So when it comes to online, when
- 1:45:09Speaker 1: it comes to we're kind of drowning. You know, our
- 1:45:12Speaker 1: voices are drowned a little bit. What is your personal
- 1:45:16Speaker 1: belief of the cause of the great resurgence? Anti Semitism
- 1:45:22Speaker 1: never went away, but even statistically it's burgeoned in the
- 1:45:26Speaker 1: last seven years or so. Why do you think that is.
- 1:45:31Speaker 1: You know, here's the thing. Throughout history, every time a
- 1:45:38Speaker 1: society was having challenges, the Jews were to blame. So
- 1:45:43Speaker 1: when we look at in perspective of history, this is
- 1:45:45Speaker 1: not surprising at all. When we look at what's happening
- 1:45:48Speaker 1: now with like the modernization of anti Semitism again, whether
- 1:45:51Speaker 1: it's Kinye West or anti Zionism, you kind of look around,
- 1:45:55Speaker 1: you go, okay, we've been through a pandemic. So then
- 1:45:57Speaker 1: of course they're going to be voices that say that
- 1:45:59Speaker 1: the Jews created the pandemic, and we're sitting looking at
- 1:46:01Speaker 1: it going really cute. So every time there's like economic challenges,
- 1:46:07Speaker 1: they'll find the Jews. There's a plague, they'll the Jews fault.
- 1:46:10Speaker 1: This has happened throughout history, and this is something that
- 1:46:12Speaker 1: to some extent the Jews are to be blamed because
- 1:46:16Speaker 1: anti Semitism is not simple racism, right, it's a it's
- 1:46:20Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory. So it says that the Jewish people
- 1:46:23Speaker 1: are they're also like they're they're like the Nazis would say, right,
- 1:46:29Speaker 1: the vermins of the earth, and they're lower race and
- 1:46:32Speaker 1: they're like the scum of the earth. Right, But they're
- 1:46:34Speaker 1: also controlling everything, and they control the banks, and they
- 1:46:37Speaker 1: control Hollywood, and they control this and they control them.
- 1:46:39Speaker 1: So there's this like duality of anti Semitism that isn't
- 1:46:42Speaker 1: simple racism. That's why it's harder to decipher. And every
- 1:46:46Speaker 1: time throughout history it just repops. So it's repopping. Society
- 1:46:51Speaker 1: has been through a lot of stress in the past
- 1:46:52Speaker 1: few years. And sure, lo and behold, blame the Jews. Yes,
- 1:46:57Speaker 1: but everything you're saying is certainly true. But observers would say,
- 1:47:03Speaker 1: there you can say things and there will be no
- 1:47:06Speaker 1: repercussions in a way that never happened, certainly in my lifetime.
- 1:47:11Speaker 1: You know, it's been legitimized, and and why do you
- 1:47:16Speaker 1: think it's been legitimized Jews don't count. There's this book
- 1:47:21Speaker 1: it's it's actually David Baddell wrote a book called Jews
- 1:47:24Speaker 1: Don't Count and showing throughout like recent history how in
- 1:47:27Speaker 1: every Jews don't count in like d im offices, Jews
- 1:47:31Speaker 1: don't count as a minority. Literally, people don't look at
- 1:47:34Speaker 1: the Jewish people and think of minority. Right, So there's
- 1:47:37Speaker 1: this kind of like double standard when it comes about
- 1:47:39Speaker 1: the Jewish people again, because the Jewish people are not considered,
- 1:47:41Speaker 1: they're not underrepresented. The Jewish people have used the American
- 1:47:44Speaker 1: system in a way like this is a blessing. Right,
- 1:47:47Speaker 1: We're like, oh my god, we can actually achieve things great,
- 1:47:50Speaker 1: and now it's held against us. Right, So it's it's
- 1:47:54Speaker 1: a very it's they don't want to cry wolf, and
- 1:47:56Speaker 1: I don't want to be like competing in the oppressed Olympic. Right,
- 1:48:00Speaker 1: you can be both an oppressed minority and also do well.
- 1:48:04Speaker 1: It's just that people need to notice that there are
- 1:48:06Speaker 1: subconscious biases towards the Jewish people are affecting them, whether
- 1:48:11Speaker 1: they know it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not.
- 1:48:15Speaker 1: What would you tell you know, you speak at college campuses,
- 1:48:18Speaker 1: those are developing people let's just talk adults. What would
- 1:48:22Speaker 1: you tell adults to do in the face of this
- 1:48:25Speaker 1: anti semitism. First of all, say something when you see something.
- 1:48:29Speaker 1: In second, reach out to your Jewish community. This is
- 1:48:31Speaker 1: something that's not a joke. If you see if you
- 1:48:35Speaker 1: see like a rise in anti semitism online in your neighborhood,
- 1:48:40Speaker 1: reach out to your Jewish friends, reach out to your synagogue,
- 1:48:42Speaker 1: the neighborhood synagogue, see if they need help. Actually reach out,
- 1:48:47Speaker 1: Actually reach out again. This is something we are walking
- 1:48:50Speaker 1: around feeling like we're I'm creating a lot of ally ship,
- 1:48:55Speaker 1: like reaching outside of our community and finding more allies
- 1:48:58Speaker 1: because the Jewish community does have allyship in the way
- 1:49:03Speaker 1: that we would like to have. So that's something that
- 1:49:06Speaker 1: I would say to again to people who are who
- 1:49:08Speaker 1: are not Jewish, who are listening to this reach out
- 1:49:10Speaker 1: or reach out. We're under stressed right now. Every Jewish
- 1:49:12Speaker 1: person that you know is like breaking out a little bit,
- 1:49:16Speaker 1: pulling the lens back a little bit. What do you
- 1:49:19Speaker 1: think about intermarriage, because certainly in the United States, there
- 1:49:23Speaker 1: is a rising number, rising percentage of people who are
- 1:49:28Speaker 1: marrying people outside the faith, and there's a limited number
- 1:49:31Speaker 1: of Jews to begin with, do you have an opinion
- 1:49:35Speaker 1: on that? I mean, the father of my child is
- 1:49:37Speaker 1: not Jewish, so and my child has raised Jewish and
- 1:49:41Speaker 1: his identity is very strong, and he is first language
- 1:49:43Speaker 1: is Hebrew, but it didn't it's important to me to
- 1:49:47Speaker 1: raise my child Jewish. But I wasn't that particular about
- 1:49:51Speaker 1: the father in terms of religion or tradition. Also knowing
- 1:49:55Speaker 1: that I'm the woman, so it goes by the mother.
- 1:49:57Speaker 1: I look, I technically, I just I think we need
- 1:50:01Speaker 1: more Jews, so I would loosen the acceptance bar. But
- 1:50:06Speaker 1: that's just me. But the good thing to remember is
- 1:50:09Speaker 1: that everybody is welcome to be Jewish, Like everybody is welcome.
- 1:50:13Speaker 1: It's going to take some work, but everybody's welcome. So
- 1:50:16Speaker 1: I would love to see as many more Jews as possible.
- 1:50:20Speaker 1: I also think that with Jewish culture and Jewish people,
- 1:50:27Speaker 1: the proof is in the pudding. So there's something about
- 1:50:30Speaker 1: Jewish way of life the works, right, And as Jews,
- 1:50:33Speaker 1: we instead of celebrating that, we sometimes kind of try
- 1:50:35Speaker 1: to hide it. So we try to hide the bizarre fact,
- 1:50:41Speaker 1: right that the Jewish people are zero point zero two
- 1:50:44Speaker 1: percent of the world population, but we're twenty two percent
- 1:50:46Speaker 1: of Nobel Prize winners twenty nine and like economics twice
- 1:50:50Speaker 1: that can't remember the exact breakdown, but like twenty two,
- 1:50:54Speaker 1: that's a crazy number. And that's not because of some
- 1:50:57Speaker 1: cabal or some genetic like it's not right. There's something
- 1:51:02Speaker 1: about the Jewish way of life that's really good that
- 1:51:05Speaker 1: everybody should adopt as well. And that's something that I'm
- 1:51:08Speaker 1: very as a secular Jew, I celebrate because I think
- 1:51:12Speaker 1: culturally we get so much to contribute. Because just think
- 1:51:15Speaker 1: of how great, how where would it be if the
- 1:51:16Speaker 1: entire world would celebrate a bat on a Friday, just
- 1:51:19Speaker 1: get together with friends and family and like stop everything
- 1:51:22Speaker 1: and just relaxed and not talk about mundane stuff and
- 1:51:24Speaker 1: focus about you know, focus on like what's what matters.
- 1:51:27Speaker 1: Like there's a lot there are a lot of things
- 1:51:29Speaker 1: about the Jewish tradition that are magic that needs to
- 1:51:32Speaker 1: be adopted by the entire world. How great would that be?
- 1:51:36Speaker 1: So that's my attitude. My attitude is that we need
- 1:51:38Speaker 1: to be more open in terms of acceptance and spread
- 1:51:42Speaker 1: out that kind of like way of life more. That's
- 1:51:45Speaker 1: not a bit of a secret, by the way, It's
- 1:51:47Speaker 1: all out there. Just we can all live like that. Okay,
- 1:51:51Speaker 1: although some of this stuff actually engenders anti Semitism. But
- 1:51:55Speaker 1: moving the focus once again, what do you mean, Okay,
- 1:51:58Speaker 1: this is the same thing. I don't want to get
- 1:52:00Speaker 1: deep into a discussion is because there's a lot of nuance,
- 1:52:04Speaker 1: But this is the same thing Asians are combating at
- 1:52:09Speaker 1: this particular point in time. There's a very people would say,
- 1:52:13Speaker 1: I don't want to start getting em get in trouble,
- 1:52:15Speaker 1: but there's a very strong family importance placed on education.
- 1:52:22Speaker 1: So therefore there are people feel that the Asians are
- 1:52:25Speaker 1: taking their spots in education, and conversely, their Asians believe
- 1:52:29Speaker 1: they're being discriminated against. So there's a long history with
- 1:52:35Speaker 1: Jews that people feel, well, you took my spot, you know,
- 1:52:42Speaker 1: and you know this is all a thing together you
- 1:52:45Speaker 1: speak a little Yiddish whatever, and I'm not including Okay,
- 1:52:50Speaker 1: that wasn't at all what I was saying. And as
- 1:52:52Speaker 1: long as America as a meritocracy, and that's great, we
- 1:52:54Speaker 1: can this is all about achievements. I hear what you're saying.
- 1:52:57Speaker 1: I don't think this was not what I was you know, well, well,
- 1:53:00Speaker 1: let me let me let me change a little bit.
- 1:53:03Speaker 1: The world is not about facts. The world is about perception. Sure, Okay,
- 1:53:08Speaker 1: and then you say, you know, as you said earlier,
- 1:53:12Speaker 1: when times are tough, people are looking for a scapegoat. Yeah,
- 1:53:15Speaker 1: and you and both you and me both know how
- 1:53:20Speaker 1: hard it is to make it in Hollywood. People have
- 1:53:23Speaker 1: no idea. You have to sacrifice everything and you still
- 1:53:28Speaker 1: may not make it. But there are a lot of
- 1:53:30Speaker 1: people who don't make it or don't even try, who
- 1:53:33Speaker 1: blame the Jews. Okay, So there are these examples and
- 1:53:38Speaker 1: they cause the anti Semitism. But I want to move
- 1:53:41Speaker 1: to a different topic. Let's talk about let me just second,
- 1:53:46Speaker 1: Just at that point, i refuse to recoil to that,
- 1:53:50Speaker 1: and I'm going to stay proud, loud, and proud you
- 1:53:54Speaker 1: And because I know that historically if I go quiet,
- 1:53:57Speaker 1: it's not going to stop anti Semitism, So I'm actually
- 1:54:00Speaker 1: flipping it on its head. I'm going to be as
- 1:54:02Speaker 1: loud and as proud and as open. I'm going to
- 1:54:04Speaker 1: invite people for Shabbat. I'm going to be as open
- 1:54:07Speaker 1: as I possibly can because either way, antisemitism is not
- 1:54:10Speaker 1: going to go away. Does that make sense, absolutely, very
- 1:54:15Speaker 1: very clearly delineated. But let's go to Israel today. You
- 1:54:19Speaker 1: had a video you posted about, well, Israel's a democracy,
- 1:54:23Speaker 1: and just like in the US, there are people, you
- 1:54:27Speaker 1: know who have different opinions. There's protests in that shows
- 1:54:30Speaker 1: a healthy democracy. Today, which is March first, Thomas Friedman
- 1:54:35Speaker 1: has an opinion piece in the New York Times talking
- 1:54:38Speaker 1: about Israel being on the precipice. This is one person's opinion.
- 1:54:43Speaker 1: I don't want to say that. I'm going to Thomas
- 1:54:46Speaker 1: Friedman himself gets a lot of blowback, but talking about
- 1:54:49Speaker 1: net Yahoo, talking about the Supreme Court situation, talking about
- 1:54:55Speaker 1: the settlements, what is your take on what's going on
- 1:54:59Speaker 1: in is Real today? My take on it is that
- 1:55:05Speaker 1: Israel is such a flourishing democracy. It's virtually almost ungovernable.
- 1:55:11Speaker 1: That's one of the things that people need to understand.
- 1:55:14Speaker 1: What's happening right now is very delicate because I mean, again,
- 1:55:18Speaker 1: I don't want to this is inside baseball, So maybe
- 1:55:20Speaker 1: people have no idea what we're talking about. But basically,
- 1:55:22Speaker 1: the new government is it's the most right wing government
- 1:55:24Speaker 1: that Israel has ever had, and they're trying to create
- 1:55:26Speaker 1: these judicial reform very quickly, and the majority of the
- 1:55:29Speaker 1: country is resisting them. And there are a lot of demonstration,
- 1:55:32Speaker 1: like huge percentage of the population are out in the
- 1:55:35Speaker 1: street demonstrating. So, first of all, that's beautiful, that's democracy.
- 1:55:39Speaker 1: That's number one. My opinion about what's happening is that
- 1:55:43Speaker 1: they need to slow down. That's my opinion. They have
- 1:55:46Speaker 1: to slow down. But these reforms need to be taken
- 1:55:49Speaker 1: very seriously and need to come to a wide agreement.
- 1:55:53Speaker 1: They must know now that there is no wide agreement.
- 1:55:56Speaker 1: The percentage large percentage of we could voters want to
- 1:56:00Speaker 1: slow it down. Don't think that it's the most important
- 1:56:02Speaker 1: thing right now to do. But again, it's a it's
- 1:56:06Speaker 1: a flourishing democracy. Let's see, let's see what happens. Look,
- 1:56:09Speaker 1: if every single one of these laws pass, and then
- 1:56:12Speaker 1: they pass like that, every country can unplode. Right, and
- 1:56:17Speaker 1: they took Row away from us. It's this is terrible,
- 1:56:20Speaker 1: but it's not the end of the American democracy. So
- 1:56:23Speaker 1: this is a part of the process. We're all concerned
- 1:56:26Speaker 1: and we're all watching it carefully, but it's a part
- 1:56:31Speaker 1: of the democratic process. What's happening there right now? Oh,
- 1:56:33Speaker 1: let's talk to me in three months. Maybe my opinion
- 1:56:36Speaker 1: would be different, But right now I'm kind of like,
- 1:56:37Speaker 1: all right, this is it's happening, and it's it's the process.
- 1:56:40Speaker 1: It's a moving it's a moving and every day there's
- 1:56:42Speaker 1: something else that's exactly it's a moving picture. But also
- 1:56:47Speaker 1: when you referenced this in the beginning, but let's look
- 1:56:49Speaker 1: at it enough from the outside, but the inside. To
- 1:56:52Speaker 1: what degree do the Orthodocs affect the perception of Jews
- 1:57:00Speaker 1: in general? It's like we were talking about inner marriage, etc.
- 1:57:03Speaker 1: One of the big stories in America now, and I
- 1:57:05Speaker 1: know some people who are involved in a very religious
- 1:57:11Speaker 1: traditional groups where they're having a lot of kids because
- 1:57:15Speaker 1: they say, we have to repopulate the Jews. New York
- 1:57:18Speaker 1: Times has done all these series about these communities are
- 1:57:23Speaker 1: taking money and not really educating their kids. In Israel,
- 1:57:28Speaker 1: you have the Orthodox, the ultra Orthodox, they don't have
- 1:57:32Speaker 1: to go into the army, etc. So speak to this please.
- 1:57:40Speaker 1: I always say about my book that left, right and center,
- 1:57:45Speaker 1: you can pretty much tell where I stand, but I
- 1:57:47Speaker 1: can explain everybody's perception, and I'm not going to be
- 1:57:50Speaker 1: I was. The book was endorsed by the left and
- 1:57:53Speaker 1: the right, both in Israel and in America. Right, but
- 1:57:57Speaker 1: who is not going to be happy about that? Are
- 1:57:58Speaker 1: the ultra Orthodox? Those are the only community that I
- 1:58:01Speaker 1: was like, you, guys, I can't defend that, so, honest
- 1:58:05Speaker 1: to God, and again, this is inside, this is full
- 1:58:07Speaker 1: on inside baseball, right. I cannot defend not teaching core
- 1:58:11Speaker 1: curriculum to generations of people within Israel or with our
- 1:58:16Speaker 1: outside of Israel. I just can't defend that. I think
- 1:58:18Speaker 1: that is abhorrent and it's disgraceful and it's terrible. It's
- 1:58:23Speaker 1: it's abusive for the children, there's no question about that.
- 1:58:26Speaker 1: And it's not sustainable. So the Orthodox population in israels
- 1:58:30Speaker 1: about fourteen percent. They're growing, a lot of people are
- 1:58:33Speaker 1: leaving the Orthodoxy, so it's kind of like balance it out.
- 1:58:35Speaker 1: It's not going to take over like everybody, but it's
- 1:58:38Speaker 1: like the entire country. But there's no world in which
- 1:58:41Speaker 1: you don't need to teach corpora with Lim and that
- 1:58:43Speaker 1: needs to change immediately. That's my opinion. What about Sorry,
- 1:58:49Speaker 1: aren't the ultra Orthodox also behind the settlements? Not entirely
- 1:58:55Speaker 1: the ultra It's not entirely the ultra Orthodox are A
- 1:59:01Speaker 1: lot of the ultra Orthodox are actually not don't even
- 1:59:03Speaker 1: believe in the existence of the State of Israel. So
- 1:59:06Speaker 1: they believe that it's an abomination because there hasn't been
- 1:59:08Speaker 1: the Third Temple yet, So it's not The settlers are
- 1:59:12Speaker 1: more kind of There are a lot of Americans in
- 1:59:14Speaker 1: the settlements actually, and it's more it's kind of like
- 1:59:18Speaker 1: the more muscletem traditional muscle team munim, you know, more
- 1:59:22Speaker 1: than that. It's less the ultra ulter Orthodox, the ones
- 1:59:24Speaker 1: with the black hats and the and all of them.
- 1:59:27Speaker 1: But I'm against not studying core curriculum. There's no nothing
- 1:59:29Speaker 1: controversial about that. Okay. So the average American we're talking
- 1:59:35Speaker 1: about the government and the settlements, etc. They're not thinking
- 1:59:39Speaker 1: about that. But on a regular basis in the news
- 1:59:43Speaker 1: there are actions and retaliations, and the Jews, the Israelis
- 1:59:49Speaker 1: in this case, which you're both, are constantly criticized in
- 1:59:52Speaker 1: these circumstances. Tell us what you think is really going
- 1:59:56Speaker 1: on here. I'll tell you a story. A few years ago,
- 2:00:07Speaker 1: I was in Israel with the father of my child,
- 2:00:10Speaker 1: my ex was. We were there together at the same time, obviously,
- 2:00:13Speaker 1: and we were sitting and having dinner in Hurzeleia on
- 2:00:18Speaker 1: the beach, and there was tension. So before sometimes before
- 2:00:21Speaker 1: these attacks. You kind of get intelligence and they somehow
- 2:00:25Speaker 1: kind of They're like, all right, it's tense, mus might
- 2:00:27Speaker 1: try something, so be on alert. And we're sitting and
- 2:00:30Speaker 1: having dinner and all of a sudden, sirens go off.
- 2:00:34Speaker 1: And I'm sitting with my I'm sitting south facing south.
- 2:00:38Speaker 1: The Mediterranean Sea is to my right, and I'm looking
- 2:00:40Speaker 1: at him facing south and we're on the beach outside
- 2:00:43Speaker 1: and the sirens starts going off and I start seeing
- 2:00:46Speaker 1: missiles coming from the south, and the south of Hurtzelea
- 2:00:49Speaker 1: and Tel Aviv is the Gaza Strip and we're like,
- 2:00:51Speaker 1: oh shit, we're just looking at it. And I'm like, look,
- 2:00:54Speaker 1: look behind you, here they are. Here are the missiles.
- 2:00:56Speaker 1: And we get off and we go to the shelter
- 2:00:58Speaker 1: and we wait for it to pass. An hour later,
- 2:01:01Speaker 1: we are in the hotel room and heard Celia and
- 2:01:03Speaker 1: we're watching CNN and the headline is Israel attacks in Gaza.
- 2:01:09Speaker 1: And my ex, who is an American Southern Baptist from Tallahassee,
- 2:01:13Speaker 1: looks at it and he goes, that's not what happened.
- 2:01:16Speaker 1: They just threw missiles at me. Well, that's not what happened.
- 2:01:20Speaker 1: And I'm sitting and I'm looking at him and I'm
- 2:01:22Speaker 1: rolling my eyes and I'm like, yep, welcome to Azrael.
- 2:01:26Speaker 1: This happens all the time. There's a terrorist attack, they
- 2:01:32Speaker 1: call it israelis were you know, people were murdered. They
- 2:01:36Speaker 1: don't call it a terrorist attack. Israel retaliates, they call
- 2:01:40Speaker 1: it an attack, and they don't say what preceded the retaliation.
- 2:01:44Speaker 1: This is the bias in the media is so extreme
- 2:01:48Speaker 1: that once you've seen it for the first time, you
- 2:01:51Speaker 1: can't unsee it. And we do this all the time,
- 2:01:53Speaker 1: and it comes up every time this happens. There's this
- 2:01:56Speaker 1: whole thing with the activists. They're like, no, New York Times, no,
- 2:01:59Speaker 1: the Guard and let me correct that, and we kind
- 2:02:01Speaker 1: of x whatever they say and we say what actually happened.
- 2:02:05Speaker 1: But this is what happens all the time. The bottom
- 2:02:08Speaker 1: line is Hamas for that matter, is a terrorist organization
- 2:02:12Speaker 1: that took over Gaza by force. Again, Israel does not
- 2:02:16Speaker 1: control Gaza. Israel unilaterally retreated out of Gaza and handed
- 2:02:20Speaker 1: it to the Palestinians, and then Hamas took over. So
- 2:02:23Speaker 1: Hamasa is the one who's controlling Gaza. It's a terrorist
- 2:02:25Speaker 1: organization that wants to enact shariel law, which is the
- 2:02:29Speaker 1: embodiment of rape culture. Right, Sharia law, not Arab culture,
- 2:02:33Speaker 1: not Muslims and not you know, this particular iteration and
- 2:02:38Speaker 1: wants to wipe Israel off the map. And that's what
- 2:02:41Speaker 1: we're dealing with here. And we're dealing with people that
- 2:02:47Speaker 1: celebrate death. We're dealing with people that again I'm prefacing,
- 2:02:52Speaker 1: it's the extremists of them, right, that are dragging the
- 2:02:54Speaker 1: entire region into hell. We're dealing with people that the
- 2:03:00Speaker 1: more casualties there are, the better it looks. And it's
- 2:03:05Speaker 1: just it's horrible, and it's horrible for the Palestinian people. Look,
- 2:03:08Speaker 1: I've been to demonstrations and I carried signs saying free
- 2:03:13Speaker 1: Gaza from Hamas, Free Palestine from Hamas, not from Israel.
- 2:03:19Speaker 1: If these extreme groups would have put down their weapons
- 2:03:23Speaker 1: and would have agreed to accept the existence of a
- 2:03:26Speaker 1: Jewish state, they would have been a Palestine and there
- 2:03:29Speaker 1: would have been prosperity and collaboration and communication, just like
- 2:03:33Speaker 1: look at what's happening with the Abraham Court, with the UAE,
- 2:03:35Speaker 1: with Israel. Suddenly it's it's suddenly the region is acknowledging
- 2:03:40Speaker 1: what everybody publicly basically what everybody knew privately, and that
- 2:03:45Speaker 1: is Israel's not a big bed wolf of the Middle East.
- 2:03:47Speaker 1: Iran is And if you want more tech and more
- 2:03:52Speaker 1: advancement and more freedom and more democracy, Israel's your partner.
- 2:03:58Speaker 1: So Drew, if you get out your crystal ball, what
- 2:04:02Speaker 1: do you foresee as the future of Israel and the
- 2:04:06Speaker 1: future of anti Semitism in America? Those are two different questions,
- 2:04:09Speaker 1: but both the future look Israel is strong and Israeli
- 2:04:19Speaker 1: people are resilient, smart and stubborn. So Israel is going
- 2:04:26Speaker 1: to be fine. It's it's not going to be pretty,
- 2:04:28Speaker 1: and it's not it's challenging right now, but Israel is
- 2:04:32Speaker 1: going to be fine. There's also such extraordinary people there,
- 2:04:35Speaker 1: with so much brain and so much innovation. And if
- 2:04:37Speaker 1: it's the country, if the country is not going to
- 2:04:39Speaker 1: be changed, laws are not going to be changed to
- 2:04:42Speaker 1: a point that it changes it such a we can't
- 2:04:45Speaker 1: recognize it anymore, Israel is going to be fine. Anti
- 2:04:49Speaker 1: Semitism is not going anywhere, actually, So it's kind of
- 2:04:53Speaker 1: like a Jewish mandate to make the world a better place.
- 2:04:55Speaker 1: And it's our job to continue warning the world when
- 2:04:59Speaker 1: the comes up. There was an article years ago by
- 2:05:03Speaker 1: Jonathan I've got his last name, Oh my god, it's
- 2:05:04Speaker 1: in my book. It's called basically he's the one who
- 2:05:07Speaker 1: kind of coined the Jews of the Canary in the
- 2:05:09Speaker 1: coal mine. The Jewish people. When society turned on its Jews,
- 2:05:15Speaker 1: it's a sign that society is in trouble. So every
- 2:05:19Speaker 1: country in the world that turned on the Jews, that
- 2:05:22Speaker 1: was foreshadowing for something bad that was going to happen
- 2:05:26Speaker 1: in society. So it's kind of like it's almost our
- 2:05:30Speaker 1: role to stand there and be like, no, we're not
- 2:05:33Speaker 1: gonna let you do this, because we don't want America
- 2:05:34Speaker 1: in the world to implode and just notice that you're
- 2:05:36Speaker 1: being anti Semitic. Let's just stop that. It's not going anywhere.
- 2:05:40Speaker 1: But I hope that in my lifetime at least it's
- 2:05:41Speaker 1: going to go back and become unfashionable again, because that's
- 2:05:45Speaker 1: the thing that we're frustrated a bad not that it
- 2:05:48Speaker 1: came back, because again it's it never went away, but
- 2:05:51Speaker 1: it became acceptable. That is a shocking proposition for all
- 2:05:54Speaker 1: of us. Well, it would be hard not to look
- 2:05:57Speaker 1: at the United States and not say the visibility of
- 2:06:03Speaker 1: anti Semitism and the ability to verbalize it came in
- 2:06:09Speaker 1: with the Trump administration, and you have a unique situation
- 2:06:14Speaker 1: where the right wing always pledges fealty to Israel, support
- 2:06:19Speaker 1: for Israel. There's issues as to whether that's because they
- 2:06:22Speaker 1: see it as the Christian homeland or defensive whatever, But
- 2:06:27Speaker 1: our country at large irrelevant of anti semitism. Most people
- 2:06:34Speaker 1: on both sides of the FEDS don't think it's going
- 2:06:37Speaker 1: in the right direction. Now, wouldn't that portend even more
- 2:06:42Speaker 1: anti semitism. Yes, it does. That's why it's going up
- 2:06:46Speaker 1: so much. And look, the thing to acknowledge is that
- 2:06:49Speaker 1: right now we're dealing with anti semitism on the right
- 2:06:52Speaker 1: and anti semitism on the left. This is one of
- 2:06:55Speaker 1: those things that are hard for people to acknowledge. It's
- 2:06:58Speaker 1: almost like it's easier to see the Jews will not
- 2:07:00Speaker 1: replace us and the Marjorie Taylor Green Green of the
- 2:07:03Speaker 1: you know Lewis Jewish space laser right, that's very easy
- 2:07:07Speaker 1: to call out. But what about on the extreme left
- 2:07:10Speaker 1: when they equate Israel to Commas? What about them the
- 2:07:12Speaker 1: extreme left when they call when they call Israel a
- 2:07:14Speaker 1: bloodthirsty country. This happens on both sides, and oddly enough,
- 2:07:19Speaker 1: on the fridge light fringe right, on the fringe left,
- 2:07:22Speaker 1: the one thing that they have in common is anti Semitism.
- 2:07:25Speaker 1: So this is definitely something that I think we should
- 2:07:27Speaker 1: look at as a society and be worried about. Um.
- 2:07:32Speaker 1: There's no doubt the Trump allowed anti Semitism in America
- 2:07:36Speaker 1: to raise its head on the right in a way
- 2:07:38Speaker 1: that we never saw before. Um, which was shocking for
- 2:07:42Speaker 1: all of us. But again, it's coming from both sides.
- 2:07:45Speaker 1: It's radical left, radical right, and radical Islam is where
- 2:07:48Speaker 1: anti semitism is coming from the most. And that's that's
- 2:07:53Speaker 1: that's what unites them. But but I will never just
- 2:07:57Speaker 1: call the right. I'm going to call the left because
- 2:07:59Speaker 1: I'm obliver world that lives in Hollywood, you know what
- 2:08:01Speaker 1: I mean. I'm going to call out the left and say, no,
- 2:08:03Speaker 1: we need to look at ourselves as well, not just
- 2:08:05Speaker 1: on the right where it's convenient, but also on the
- 2:08:07Speaker 1: left where it might not be might not be that
- 2:08:09Speaker 1: easy to look at. We still have to because anti
- 2:08:13Speaker 1: semitism on the right, by the way, anti semitism on
- 2:08:15Speaker 1: the on the left right now, the majority of it
- 2:08:17Speaker 1: is anti Israel. Rhetoric anti Semitism online. Sixty nine to
- 2:08:21Speaker 1: eighty four percent of online anti semitism is anti Israel rhetoric.
- 2:08:25Speaker 1: It's the demonization of Israel. It's the double standard, it's
- 2:08:28Speaker 1: the delegitimization of Israel. It's all these when you when
- 2:08:32Speaker 1: you switch, when you switch the world due to the world,
- 2:08:34Speaker 1: the word Zionist, it's anti Semitism. It's just it's just
- 2:08:39Speaker 1: kind of cloaked and masked. Definitely. Okay. In conclusion, I
- 2:08:43Speaker 1: think everyone on both sides of all these issues should
- 2:08:48Speaker 1: read your book. So why don't you sell your book
- 2:08:51Speaker 1: to my audience a little bit? Tell them, tell what
- 2:08:53Speaker 1: they're what they're eating for if they read it. Wow, um,
- 2:09:02Speaker 1: such a great pret question. So yeah, it's a It's
- 2:09:05Speaker 1: a book that tells the story of Israel and the
- 2:09:07Speaker 1: Middle East in a way that's that's easy and fun
- 2:09:09Speaker 1: and funny. It goes in depth, but not too deep.
- 2:09:12Speaker 1: It tells the story of my family that was establishing,
- 2:09:16Speaker 1: very involved in the establishment of the state of Israel.
- 2:09:18Speaker 1: And it was endorsed by both Bill Maher if you're
- 2:09:21Speaker 1: on the left, then Ben Shapiro if you're on the right,
- 2:09:24Speaker 1: and Aaron Sorkin and Eric Weinstein and raycourts While and
- 2:09:28Speaker 1: a lot of people that are thought leaders that I
- 2:09:30Speaker 1: admire that we're very gracious in reading the book and saying, yeah,
- 2:09:33Speaker 1: we like it. It's good. So maybe your audience would
- 2:09:36Speaker 1: like it too well. I think everyone should. Wed You're right,
- 2:09:39Speaker 1: it is lighted. As I tell people, it's not a
- 2:09:41Speaker 1: hard weed in any event. No, I think we've come
- 2:09:44Speaker 1: to the end of the feeling we've known. I want
- 2:09:47Speaker 1: to thank you so much for speaking with my audience.
- 2:09:50Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having us. It's a pleasure.
- 2:09:53Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob left Sex