Latest / Did I Write That?! / “Seeds of Subversion”: About the Book
Transcript
- Adina Samuels: You're listening to Did I Write That? Featuring conversations with authors published under Antrice Press. They share the behind the scenes of the actual writing of the book, the things they wish they'd known, and what you need to know about the book that will soon be in your hands. I'm Adina Samuels, founder of Andresha Press, and I'm thrilled to introduce you to our newest author. Let's get to it. Noah, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. So you are our newest author. I'm so excited to talk about your book. But before we get there, can you tell us a little about yourself? Sure. So I'm Noah Tal. I'm a tech lawyer living in Silicon Valley. I was born in Israel, but raised mostly in the United States. And I have three really cute kids that I'm raising. And I'm very passionate about Jewish issues, especially since October 7th. So tell tell me a little about the book in your own words. For someone who's never seen it, never heard of it, what should they know walking into this conversation? Yeah, so for for anybody that's been following, I guess, the conversation about Jews and Israel since October seventh, it's really changed. My whole life growing up in America, I I really never experienced anti-Semitism. America has always been a wonderful place to grow up for Jews, and I think it still is, largely, but We've been hearing tropes lately that we really haven't heard as a society since the Holocaust, you know, and and these tropes are being repeated and spread at record levels. Things like, you know, Jews run the world, again, Jews control politicians, Jews control the media, Jews control the banks. And all of this is flowing from A conversation about the war in Gaza, obviously. But instead of making specific, you know, recommendations about how to fight a cleaner war or talking about international law, these conversations often devolve into the worst of the worst, accusations about Jews being vengeful and bloodthirsty and enjoying killing children and even eating children and just terrible things that I just never thought I would hear about Jews. And so that really scared me, you know, it scared me for The future of my children. I I just was thinking, how is this happening? Don't people understand that this is dangerous stuff? And because all of these religious undertones have been making their way into the geopolitical conversation, because a conversation about Gaza will end up being a total demonization of Jews, and because of these safety issues that have been plaguing Jewish communities around the globe. as a result of this devolving conversation, I thought, geez, su you know, somebody has to do something about it. there have obviously been a lot of books written about anti-Semitism, but I think this one is different. Yeah. I think you said exactly what I was thinking, which is that any one of us who have seen these blatant portrayals of anti-Semitism online in person since October 7th, we've all felt that fear and that discomfort and this, well, what what in the world is going on here? But you didn't leave it there. Like you actually decided to put in the work and and write this book. So I want to know a little about the process because this isn't just, you know, a memoir of your experiences and your feelings since October 7th, but actually a very rigorous, researched, well-researched book and fact-checked book that. kind of arms us with a lot of intelligence to help all of us who are feeling this like, well, what do we even do in the face of these ridiculous accusations? Approach them with a little more information. So tell me a little bit about how you approach the writing of this book. Yeah. So I mean, first it was trying to identify like what is new today, right? What what hasn't been written and why is the conversation failing us so badly? And I identified a couple of Really new things that needed to be addressed. One is this conflation, or this, I guess, this idea that anti-Zionism is a legitimate political movement that can live outside of the old Jew hate umbrella, right? We've seen it in other countries. We haven't seen it in America, and we haven't seen it in much of the West. In other countries where, you know, anti-Zionism has been legitimized politically, like in the former Soviet Union and in Poland and in much of the Middle East. We've seen Jewish communities physically decimated, right? Because as Anat Wilf says, who is a former Israeli Knesset member and also a best-selling author, basically when you when you, you know, even if even if anti-Semitism, let's say, is illegal, but it's okay to demonize Zionism, well, all Jews are guilty of Zionism because you just had your Passover Seder and you just prayed next year in Jerusalem. And now you're guilty of Zionism, and it's exactly the same thing, right? And so this is how they've decimated Jewish communities around the world. So it's really important for Americans to realize that this is a pretty nefarious playbook, that anti-Zionism is not a legitimate political movement that, you know, doesn't endanger the lives of millions of Jews and frankly also non-Jews in Israel, Christians and Druze and Muslims. You know, Israel has a huge minority of non-Jewish people who are also Absolutely endangered by this anti-Zionist rhetoric. But the other thing that's new is technology. So we've never had a moment, an anti-Semitic wave with the kind of technology or really much of any technology that we have today. Anti-Semitism comes comes and goes in waves. A lot has been written about it, right? And the last big wave was really around the Holocaust. We had TV very slowly, we didn't have the internet, we certainly didn't have social media, and we didn't have this global immediate explosion. And ability to amplify untrue things at the level that we have today. And so I thought, okay, that aspect of this anti-Semitic wave has not been tackled yet, has not been discussed. But to your process of your question about kind of process, like how did I get into it and then how did I do it? So Rabbi Akiva Zwaig, who I'm going to interview separately, was my kind of main religious contributor here. And I was talking to him for like Personal grief at first. After October 7th, I just, you know, I wanted to somehow reconnect with something spiritual, something Jewish. And I didn't know what to do with my grief. I was just so distraught at what had happened to our people. I was praying nightly for Kfiri Nari El Bibas and their mother Shiri, the the kind of the the family that like I I adopted into my heart because I have, you know, little boys that were the same age at the time, and I just had so much grief and didn't know what to do with it. And The rabbi actually helped channel my grief and was like, you know what you are is like a researcher and a writer. These are your talents. If if these are the issues that are bothering you in life, that you can't, you know, you're worried for your kids, you're worried for your family, and you don't know how to continue. Well, a very Jewish approach, you know, Judaism is all about personal agency, personal responsibility, and and an individual purpose in the world, right? Because we each have this God-given soul. And so he was like You know, our our job for each of us is to apply our particular talents to the issues of our day, what is bothering us the most. And it sounds like you have a project here. And I said, I love that. I'm gonna try that approach with with future clients of mine too. I think that's great. And what a productive way to channel all of those emotions and experiences. I think in today's world, the the highest level of intelligence isn't just knowing things. Like we all have access to knowledge now, kind of at the tip of our of our fingers, but it's the ability to articulate what other people are feeling and offer information in a in a clear, articulate, digestible way that then allows us to feel. stronger, braver, more united as a nation. And I really think your book does that. So from my perspective, the way that I see this book is it's we've got we've got the political angle, the tech lens, a religious sources, science as well, your legal background. We're really trying to come to these understandings from a very holistic perspective. And you know, in our Edits at some points we did have conversations about well, do we even want to give a platform to some of these outrageous things that are being said about Jewish people? Tell me a little bit about how you went about choosing what to include and what to exclude when, especially in the world of social media, there's just an abundance of content out there that that we could talk about for forever, probably. Yeah, I mean, the tropes that are circulating are Pretty disturbing, right? And I kind of grouped them into three big categories. So the first one that we tackle is the conversation that comes out of the war in Gaza. As you know, we also talk about the war in Gaza from an international humanitarian law lens. And, you know, we define genocide and we talk about the legal requirements and how, you know, this war does not come even close to meeting them. But aside from the legal conversation, again, there's this like religious undertone constantly underpinning those conversations where very influential people in America, like Tucker Carlson, for instance, who may or may not be starting a new political party, now will say things like, you know, Judaism is an Eastern religion and calling Jews, you know, backwards for having an old testament mentality as opposed to the New Testament, which says turn the other cheek. The old testament is vengeful and has a vengeful God and says an eye for an eye. And you know, in his words and in the words of a lot of people like him online, the reason that a war like Gaza got bloody is because there's a fundamental problem with Judaism itself, that Judaism is violent, that Jews don't care about killing kids or that they believe in collective punishment. And in fact Carlson has even said that Christianity is the religion that brought the world, the concept that the son should not be punished for the sins of the father. Whereas that's straight from Deuteronomy, right? That's from our Bible, the Jewish Bible. So, you know, I just thought that that trope really does need to be rebutted on the level that it's made. And whereas the people who say that are always cloaking themselves in, I'm just criticizing a foreign government. What's wrong with criticizing a foreign government? They're not criticizing a foreign government when they call Jews barbaric Old Testament mentality people, right? They're criticizing the religion, and so they need to be rebutted on that level. So, you know, that's why I chose that one. But I also chose the Jews are running the world again. And I also chose the Jews don't care about anybody else, which you hear a lot. Jews think they're better than others, they think they're chosen. This one is a very interesting trope because it does have a basis in scripture. There is a concept of chosenness in the Jewish Bible, but it's not at all how people talk about it. It absolutely is not an unfeeling doctrine. It absolutely does not mean that Jews don't care about non-Jews, you know. And I think there's this asymmetry between Christian and Muslim doctrine on the one hand and Jewish doctrine on the other hand, where, you know, in under Christian and Muslim doctrine, like if you don't accept the faith, then you're going to hell, which is why I think they they want to save non believers. And I understand that. If I believed that my neighbor were going to hell because they don't share my beliefs, I would certainly do what I could to save them, right? And Jews also have this feeling and caring tendency very much so. We want to save and help. It's just that in our religion there is no saving required. You know, Gentiles absolutely have their own relationship with God, same as Jews. They can go to heaven same as Jews. They don't require saving in our religion. So there's no need to control them or other Jews, right? There's just no no no need to control and coerce, which is why no Jews don't run the world and aren't seeking to. And there is no Jews feeling better than everybody else. In fact, the Bible is is constantly talking about. You know, the many, many ways in which the Jews are constantly misbehaving and disappointing God and getting punished for it. And one could argue that's still happening to this day. You know, we've been sifting through this manuscript for months now, refining the arguments, working on the various sections. Yet every time I come across some of these statements that you've identified that people are saying, or even in this conversation that you've just brought up. It's almost like I I I really find it unbelievable as a Jewish person that there is so much hatred towards people and to think that there are people out there who want bad for me, you know? And I think what you've done with this book is you've really brought to light not only the fact that this is very much a reality, but you've given us the ability to rebut and respond to a lot of these very egregious claims. Now, interestingly, when I think about the fact that you've written this book, I the word bravery comes to mind. Like this was a brave book to write. But I wonder I wonder why I think that. Because ultimately what you're doing is you're shedding truth, right? You're shedding light on truths and you're refuting untruths. Why do you think it feels like this is a hot take book that you've written that might get a lot of backlash? Especially considering what you now know about, you know, all these topics in general. Well, thanks for that. That's very kind. You know, it's it's a self-preservation book, but it's also a book about preserving the West and Western values. And I think the reason it might be a little bit brave or a little bit of a hot take is because it identifies some of why a lot of this is circulating and who it benefits. And I you know, and that is That is hard to say. So, you know, I really struggled with the question of like why the Jews again, and obviously that's an age-old question. The Jews have been scapegoats in, you know, as we said, it comes in waves. And so in almost every period in human history, there's been a new reason to scapegoat the Jews. But there's that that reason absolutely exists today. And it's being done by authoritarians that are fundamentally anti West, anti-America, anti-human freedom. And being anti-Israel. really helps their political message. It helps them in a couple of ways. So first of all, being anti-Jew in this way, it really kills, it really hits at the heart of the West because Jewish morals really undergird Western moral thinking, right? The Bible is just at the heart of Western civilization. And as I think author Douglas Murray said in his book on death cults and democracies, you know, the foundation of the West is Athens and Jerusalem. Reason plus morality, right? And when you poke, poke, poke at Jerusalem, when you poke at morality that way, you're really undercutting one of the main branches and you're killing the whole tree. So it's very effective rhetoric to employ. It's Also extremely convenient from an authoritarian standpoint, right? Because if you kill this idea of like, you know, objective truth and and individual accountability to it, then there's no problem with, you know, collective control, actually authoritarian control and central planning. But in addition to that, like shifting the conversation to Israel is a way to kind of cost transfer away from America and cede really pernicious ideas in a way that does not Does not directly and obviously affect the American homeland. So for instance, if you're trying to convince Americans that like they don't deserve their own country or that their country is fundamentally evil and you want to teach them things like, you know, you live on stolen land and you are you know, a colonizing people, it's it's gonna be pretty hard to inject that as, you know, the as Russian propaganda, let's say, if if your c to the American people is you should be giving up your own home, right? But if you just deflect it onto Israel, if you say they are colonizers who live on stolen land, now you've managed to seed that idea cost free. You've able to s b you've been able to seed communism into the United States, hit at the heart of American property law, and yet nobody has given up their houses here because it's totally free to protest another country, right? So it's very sneaky and clever the way they're doing it. And then there's a third benefit for them, which is actually a development of a confluence of interests that Americans, some Americans who are buying these messages now have with authoritarian regimes that they wouldn't have naturally picked up had it not been the anti-message, had it been a pro-message. So like for Iran to seed explicitly, you know, pro-terrorism or Islamist messaging into the United States. Would have been hard. But to come in with an anti message being anti-Israel, anti-genocide, anti these people doing all of these evil things in the world, suddenly now the American who has bought this message has a confluence of interest with the IRGC. Wow, funny how that works. Who are you hoping reads this book, Noah? It covers such a broad range of subjects, topics, and I think a lot of people need to read it. Who is this written? For. Who do you hope picks this up? I mean, it's written for for all Westerners who, you know, want to preserve our ideals of free speech, democracy, private property, capitalism, and you know, the values on which our society is founded. but I was specifically thinking also of young Jews that have been very uniquely demonized, especially on college campuses these days, that are that are leaving their homes to just So much hate and so many accusations. I see a lot of young Jews just not proud anymore. And it's really unfortunate because their religion is beautiful, their religion is fundamentally good and wants peace in the world and wants people to be responsible humans and kind to others and absolutely cares about all of humanity, everyone in the world, right? And they are just not feeling that. They don't have that vocabulary anymore. And I think they're they're lacking the, as you were saying, like the rebuttals to a lot of the tropes that are circulating. And so I think I wrote it first and foremost for them, but then also for others that are trying to understand what is this moment? Why is this Holocaust style stuff coming up again? Who is fueling it and how are they doing that? Mm-hmm. Absolutely. The one thing I wonder about what you said there is I don't know that it's a lack of pride in our Jewish identity, but perhaps it's just a conflux of fear. Like it feels dangerous to wear your Star of David in public. And especially if you have like a larger symbol, often you'll get questions like, Do you wear that out in public? And that's never something that I've really had to think about before before the past few years. You know, similarly in your book, you talk about how your understanding of the Holocaust was something that happened so long ago, it was like untouchable almost to your reality. And now over time you've been seeing these frighteningly similar images, motifs, elements of propaganda. And that's that's exactly it is I think the fear is very real. And the one thing that I think your book gives us it's like, at least it gave me is a bit of like a breath of relief. Like it really feels like you are paving the way for us to have these conversations with conviction, with fact, with courage, knowing that everything you said is all in an effort to bring about the beautiful parts of Judaism and just refute these kind of ridiculous claims that hopefully after people reading your book, after reading your book, people will see, you know, there's just absolutely no basis to this at all. So On that note, that was a long-winded way of saying, thank you for writing this book. I think it was a huge project, Noah. So not easy. We've been through probably every sentence at least six times to make sure that we're saying exactly what we want it to. And you've really channeled your grief and the grief of the Jewish people into an asset, what will really become a productive piece of literature that college students can use. community centers can use and non-Jewish people can use as well to understand, you know, what's what's the other side of this story? What might not we be seeing here? Yeah, thank you. Thank you for saying that. And I'm hoping that, you know, as as you're saying, non-Jews, we have a lot of allies in this country and abroad, right? We have Christian Zionist brothers and sisters that have been trying really hard to defend Israel and that have been really unfairly maligned and def and and defamed. recently also. And so this I think can also help that community with their convictions, knowing that yes, they are right. No, the tropes are not correct. You can rebut these things. But can we talk a little bit also about how this is spreading? I don't know if that was something that you were going to ask about, but I think it's a really important part of the story that, you know, nobody is tackling yet. Yeah, please go ahead. Talk a little bit about I think this is where the the tech comes in so much. This is kind of the twenty first century element of the argument, the newness of it. Yeah. So I really think that I mean this this stuff is spreading through a three part kind of process. The first is the creation of misinformation by some of American enemies that some of America's enemies that that we talked about. So these would be Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. They are Creating this propaganda and the book actually talks about the origins of a lot of this rhetoric. A lot of it goes back to the Soviet Politburo and it certainly predates the Gaza War, right? The, you know, labeling of colonizers and the casting of all Palestinian action as legitimate resistance and the framing. Of Gaza as a global conflict with geopolitical significance that was really a creature of the Soviet Politburo. A lot of Jewish intellectuals like Isabella Tabarovsky and Naya Lecht talk about this very eloquently. So the book traces that history and proves that those talking points that you know students on college campuses believe originate from the Gaza War. Actually, not only they predate the Gaza War, they predate the occupation wholesale. So that's the first part is misinformation and tracing it. The second part is legitimization. So they use our legacy institutions against us. That would be education and legacy media. Legacy media has been really compromised during this conflict. The New York Times and others have had to retract many, many stories that were just simply false. And so Our our legacy institutions are basically used as a way to legitimize this propaganda that actually originates with enemies of the United States. And then the final piece is amplification. This propaganda is amplified using social media and other technology, including with foreign bots, fake accounts, and coordinated inorganic activity. We have these, you know, crowdsourced knowledge bases such as Wikipedia and Reddit. Which are totally rife with anti-Semitic editors provably coordinating behind the scenes in violation of those platforms' terms of service to manipulate content. And when it's called out, such as with Wikipedia, Wikipedia's Jewish co-founder Larry Sanger actually came out to complain about this and offer a fix. And when he comes out to offer a fix, he gets kicked off the platform. Larry Sanger has officially lost or received a formal retraction of editing privileges on Wikipedia. So it's a huge problem what's going on in our information landscape. And you know, regarding social media, there's really a lot of evidence that it's being manipulated by foreign actors. And the book goes through some of that compelling evidence. Now, that's not to say that everything that we're reading is fake or inorganic. And it's not to say that, you know, support for Israel would be sky high if it weren't for social media. I don't think that's the case. And we don't have, you know, the research doesn't doesn't support, you know, necessarily direct causality or or explain to what extent, you know, propaganda bot accounts or something are actually fueling the negative attitudes towards Israel. But I really do think we need to protect our information's ecosystem. There's a lot of manipulation. So I can go through just a couple of proof points if you want. Yeah, please go ahead, Na. So we have governments talking about it, our own government first and foremost, like the US Department of State, has issued explicit warnings to the American public as early as 2024 about, for instance, Iran. And I can just read straight from what they said to the American public. So Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts, seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, as we've seen them do in the past, including in prior election cycles. They continue to adapt their cyber and influence activities using social media platforms and issuing threats. It's likely they'll continue to rely on their intelligence services in these efforts, as well as Iran-based foreign influencers, to promote their narratives. They've sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza. And our government even says we have observed actors tied to Iran's government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests and even providing financial support to protesters. You have the Israeli government that released a report during Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025 about coordinated Iranian activity on social media through fake accounts. And in addition to government sources, there are non-governmental entities that are dedicated to protecting the information ecosystem and studying and uncovering manipulation on the internet. These include the Network Contagion Research Institute. Which uncovered how the rise of Nick Fuentes of the alt right, I guess, was largely fueled by bots. These include the Syfluence Research Institute that uncovered how protests on Colombia's college campus were largely fueled by Nigerian bots funded by Iran. There's a lot of evidence here, and again, we don't have all the pieces yet. Not all the research has been done. But there's a lot of there there. And I'm hoping that the book will kind of wake people up to the need for more research, the need for more investigations, and that we will all, you know, be be focused on the need for getting foreign influence manipulation of all kinds out of our information ecosystem so that what we imbibe as information is as true as possible. So what is your call to action to the individual reader once we know all this information that you brought towards us? What what do I do now? Well, I think we have to fight lies. We have to advocate for better social media. We have to ask, you know, social media companies to help uncover bots, help uncover Foreign influence, and it's a hard technological problem, and they are working on it. But I think if they hear from consumers that this is important to us, and I say this obviously just as a lay consumer, I work in tech, but this has nothing to do with like my job, right? My my job is not focused on these issues. Just as a lay consumer and as somebody who cares about, you know, our future and the future of my children. I think we all have to care about the quality of the information that we get. So it also means just not believing everything you see on social media uncritically. It means advocating for truth-seeking AI and also not believing everything that AI says uncritically. It means maintaining face-to-face relationships of trust as we pass on information. And there's a lot of ancient Jewish wisdom actually that bears on that. That the book talks about. The book kind of ends with. An appeal to ancient Jewish wisdom for fixing some of the newest problems that we have in our information landscape with technology basically says that we need to maintain our human relationships of trust when it comes to educating the next generation and teaching them how to be human. And we have to ensure that our children's educational curriculum reflects our values as a society. I think that we all really need to work together to examine all of these sources of information and education to ensure that. That they're as truthful as possible. Well, Noah, you've done a really remarkable job at paving the way. Is there anything, any last thing you want to leave our listeners with? If they're on the fence about picking up this book, anything you want to tell them? So I would tell our our our our readers and listeners a couple of things. So for Jews, I just want them to have confidence in their religion again and to remember that Judaism is a beautiful religion. Israel is an amazing country. There is no legitimate reason. why they are being unfairly demonized. We have nothing to be ashamed of, even if we've been forced to defend ourselves. Defending yourself is hard. War is hard. War is terrible and tragic. And that doesn't mean that you're a bad person or that your people are bad. War is never the goal. Peace is the goal, but this relentless information war that demonizes every everything that Jews touch needs to be combated. So I just want to give a little bit of what we call fizuk strength to the Jewish community in that regard. And for non-Jews, I would love to impress upon them that this fight against lies is not just for Jews' sake, right? Because once truce gets bent, it's very hard to unbend. And those that hate Jews and Israel fundamentally hate Western values. They hate individual agency. They hate hard work and accountability to an objective standard, which is what the Bible preaches. And if they take Israel down, there's a lot more that comes tumbling down after. So this exercise in reclaiming truth is not just for the sake of the Jewish community. It's really for the sake of all of us. Beautiful. Well, Noah, thanks again for sitting down with me and giving us a little bit of a behind the scenes on this book for anyone who's bought in at this point. You'll find the links in our bio to take you directly to where you can get your hands on a copy for yourself. Noah, thanks so much. Thank you so much, Adina. It's really been an absolute pleasure working with you. Same. Thanks, Noah. That wraps up another episode of Did I Write That? Featuring the outstanding authors published under Andrasha Press. If you want to learn more, check out our website, Andrasha Press.com. Follow me on LinkedIn and Let's make sure to get the stories that the world needs to hear out into the world. Seeds of Subversion does something that I haven't seen any other books about anti-Semitism do. It really tackles these libels about Jews from two angles. It does both defense and offense. So on the defense side, it goes through each libel systematically and proves from a Jewish perspective why it's simply wrong. And on the offense side, it looks behind what's being said about the Jewish people to who is doing the saying. And for what purpose and how are they spreading their message? And I think you really have to tackle these libels from both of those perspectives. You really have to do defense and offense in order to fully debunk them. Because if you do just the offense, then people will say, Well, okay, maybe it's convenient for, you know, certain people to be making up anti-Jewish libels, but so what? They could still be true, right? And if you do Just defense, you fall into the trap of Jean-Paul Sartre, where he said the anti-Semite likes to accuse the Jew because he wants to see him turn out his pockets. And so people will say, Well, don't defend yourself, don't turn out your pockets, you've done nothing wrong. Well, you have to defend yourself if people are believing the lies, but it's not enough. You also have to expose why the lies are being said and how they're being propagated. So we try to do all of that.