8/28/26: Norm Finkelstein Returns to Discuss Gaza, Hasan Piker, New Book Gaza's Gravediggers
116m 57s
Norm Finkelstein returns for a special Friday show where we go in depth on a number of topics including Democrats condemning Hasan Piker after blatant lies about Piker's statements on Zionism, the Israeli propaganda of sexual assault on Oct 7th, and Norm's new book Gaza's Gravediggers.
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Good morning, everybody, and happy Friday.
We've got a special edition of the Friday show today
because I'm joined not only by the great Ryan Grimm,
but by the world-renowned Norm Finkelstein,
who has a new book out that everyone needs to check out
called Gaza's Gravediggers,
An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places.
And Norm, it's always a pleasure and an honor to have you.
Well, you know what?
It's always a pleasure.
It's always a pleasure to be your interlocutor.
You're smart, you're serious, and you're competent.
So I was like that.
And I always, whenever I meet a stranger
and we get into conversation,
at some point it comes around,
do you watch Crystal Bull on Breaking Points?
Yeah.
Well, that is very kind coming from you.
Thank you.
Hi, praise indeed.
I never praise.
I speak facts.
I have a lot that I want to get to with you today.
I want to dig into your book,
which I think is extremely important.
I want to get into a particular chapter in your book
about the mass rape allegations,
probably the most controversial part of the book,
although you have a way of courting controversy
by stating facts, I would say, in general.
But I wanted to start by getting your reaction
to something that's been,
I think, in the news lately,
which is that Hasan Piker has come under attack
from the right, but also from a lot of
quote-unquote liberal Democrats
for comments he made about the rise of anti-Semitism.
And so let me just read his comments for you, Norm,
and then get your reaction to the attacks on him
and also the substance of the comments.
So this is what sparked all of this outrage.
He said, quote,
Look, the anti-Zionist Jews in my community,
you have a very tough job.
The head of you, where you have to go back
to your communities,
try to get your elderly relatives to understand
that this connection between Israel and Zionism
that's expressed over and over again
through a lot of these Jewish institutions
is teaching people the idea that Jews are monolithic.
And this is a dangerous mode of propaganda.
If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there
that they are singularly invested in Israel,
eventually someone's going to come around and take action,
not against the state of Israel, mind you,
but against American Jews.
I don't know how many different ways I can explain this.
I don't know.
I don't know how people don't recognize
how dangerous this predicament is,
how dangerous this is for Jews.
Your reaction to those comments
and the outrage surrounding them.
Well, first of all, a qualification,
which is I don't really know Hassan Piker as a podcaster.
I don't watch podcasts with any kind of regularity.
So it's no offense to him.
I just don't.
That's not my mode of intellectual engagement.
Inquiry.
Having said that,
I think we should make some general remarks
and then specific ones.
As you become more,
as you become a bigger public figure,
your personal responsibility increases.
The things you might say in your room, in your house,
or you might say in a bar,
you don't say in public.
And it's the same thing here.
If you have an audience of 10,
it's very different than if you have an audience of a million.
That's because words can have an impact.
I don't mean in the sense that a word
is the equivalent of a physical blow.
I mean in the sense that words can have a political impact.
They can determine the result of an election.
And here, Abdul Saeed's election is at stake.
And wrong words can put that election at risk.
So let's make it clear.
Legally, morally,
some might use the fancy word epistemologically.
Of course, he has the right to say what he believes
or even wants to say.
And doesn't believe that right is there.
But politically, you have to weigh your words.
You have to be careful.
As I gained a bigger and bigger audience,
I won't say I didn't say what I believed.
I did say what I believed, but I was more careful.
I was more careful because I realized suddenly,
my words can have a political impact.
After October 7th, many people were very curious
how I would parse morally and factually what happened.
And that was, for me, a very fraught moment
trying to figure it out
because my words now would politically count.
So, having now said that,
the second qualification,
I would like to enter a third.
I was on Hassan Parker's program.
I have to say,
I was positively impressed.
He had done his homework.
It was clear he read the book.
It was clear he had thought through
what would be the right,
what would be the right questions to ask.
And as you must know,
most interviewers do not read anything beyond a blurb
for a book they're interviewing.
So, I thought, okay, the fellow, the young fellow,
he's trying to be serious.
And I respect that.
He was trying to do his job as you do, okay?
As to the remarks themselves,
I find it a truism.
If Israel calls itself the state of the Jewish people,
if Jews do not repudiate that title
or what's 1,000 times worse, embrace that title,
uncritically than the reasonable,
and we have to say reasonable, not irrational.
The reasonable inference is that you support the actions
of the state of Israel.
You accept that those actions represent you,
you, Israel is calling itself the state of the Jewish people.
You are embracing that title.
Well, then you are embracing the genocide
that Israel is carrying out,
allegedly in the name of the Jewish people.
And that being the case,
you can't do it.
You can't be shocked if people react very angrily
and more at what then naturally ensues.
I just think that's obvious.
Every country endures that.
You know, in the 1950s, there was a book written.
It was either the '50s or the early '60s.
It was called "The Ugly American."
And it was about how if the United States carries out
in a certain way, don't be shocked
if the citizens are being held accountable
for the actions of that state,
and Americans are regarded as ugly, the ugly Americans,
the supporters of criminal actions by the state.
We all understood that during the war in Vietnam,
that a lot of people were going to feel a high degree
of resentment against Americans
until there was a large anti-war movement,
which made clear there was a distinction
between the citizens at the state.
Didn't every German, brace yourself,
for the last 80 years,
Hasn't every German hat
Every German had to bear the burden of what happened during World War II.
They still carry that burden 80 years later.
So the idea that non-Jews will feel a high degree of animus towards Jews
if there isn't a clear rupture between American Jewish opinion and Israeli opinion
and Israeli state opinion, but also happens to be Israeli society opinion,
unless there is a clear rupture between American Jewish opinion and Israeli state and society,
then, of course, there are going to be dire repercussions when a state is carrying out a genocide.
I want to add one caveat to that, and then we're done with the question.
The caveat is, I feel that Hassan Piker, not from any malice,
absolutely not from any malice, but maybe oversight,
or maybe myopia, I believe he left out a crucial point.
The most recent polls show that between 30% and 40% of American Jews believe
Israel's carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
That rupture has occurred to a significant degree,
and it's a very public. You must remember, but some of your audiences, their memories are very short.
You must remember the biggest mobilizations at the beginning of the Gaza genocide,
the mobilization at Grand Central Station in New York,
the mobilization at the Statue of Liberty.
They were all initiated by Jews.
It was Jewish organizations.
It was Jewish Voices for Peace, the organization.
I always get its name wrong, not in my name, or if not now, I can't recall.
If not now.
Those were all Jewish organizations.
I happen to believe, and you know I don't have a jot of Jewish chauvinist blood in my body.
It doesn't exist.
All right, I don't want to say not a jot.
I'm Jewish.
I have to say this.
The fact that 30 to 40% of American Jews
are willing to acknowledge that Israel is committing a genocide,
when you bear in mind from their early childhood,
they're being brainwashed at home often, in synagogue, on high holy days, and so forth,
that Israel. is a critical, if not the critical element of their identity.
That's what they carry around.
When you're asked the question,
what is the main thing that makes you Jewish?
Very frequently, the answer to the question used to be
support for the State of Israel.
You know?
And that they managed
to work themselves. out of that bubble.
And say, well, facts are facts.
They're committing a genocide.
That's pretty impressive.
Actually, I don't believe, I really doubt any other collective would be capable of that.
If you were to ask Americans during the Viet. Well, I don't know.
I suppose it would be what stage in the Vietnam War.
But even towards the end,
I don't think a majority of Americans would have acknowledged
that the U.S. is committing massive war crimes in Vietnam.
I don't believe a majority would acknowledge.
I could be wrong.
I'm sure there are many polls.
So,
I think it's an impressive fact.
If you looked at the encampments in spring 2024,
Jews are very prominent in those encampments.
They were.
That's just a fact.
Yes.
So, I think that element was missed
in Hassan Piker's remarks.
And I suspect because
I hope,
and it's really a hope against hope.
I hope
he won't turn into a grandstander,
which is one possible path
at the fork in the road
when you become a prominent personality.
That's one possibility,
one path,
the fork in the road.
And the other is,
and I'm speaking for myself,
I don't believe
it's self-praise.
It's simply a fact.
And I'm serious.
I'm deadly,
lethally serious.
Every time I get an email
praising me,
expressing homage
to what I have done with my life,
I honestly,
I don't smile.
I become very unhappy.
Do you know why?
I swear.
Because it means
I have to work harder.
I have to work harder.
I have to live up to the expectations.
I have to rise to the occasion.
So, it just means for me
more work.
More work.
Why am I answering emails?
I've got to read this.
I've got to read that.
So, that's the other fork in the road.
The other possibility.
The other path.
One is you become a grandstander.
The other is
you become more and more
serious
about your responsibility.
Because now,
you are,
as I began
this answer to the question,
now you're responsible
to many more people.
They have such high,
now have high expectations for you.
And taking your answer
in its entirety,
I think you've also identified
a real contradiction
that he's going to have to grapple with
in streaming 8 to 10 hours a day
while also intervening
at the highest level of politics.
Because the point that you made
that 30 to 40% of American Jews
have denounced what Israel is doing
is a point that he makes
probably on a daily basis.
But he didn't make it
within the four corners of the clip
that he made.
That his opponents used.
And more to the point,
what we read you
is what he actually said.
They mashed together
kind of separate clips
to make it even
kind of less charitable to him.
So this new world
where somebody who speaks
8, 9, 10 hours a day
and has people paid
to watch him and clip him
to undermine him
just presents a new dilemma
in politics
that hasn't quite existed before.
There are two ways.
There are two aspects to it.
One is there's a French expression.
Esprit de l'escalier.
The spirit of the staircase.
And you know what it means?
It means you say something.
Let's say, Crystal Ball,
you're interviewing somebody
and you're saying,
you say something
and then after the interview
you walk out
and you're walking down the stairs
and you think,
oh, why didn't I say that?
And why didn't I say that?
It's the spirit of the stairs.
That happens literally every interview.
I do.
Norm, every time.
You're walking down the stairs
and you're like,
oh, how did I forget to say that?
You know?
So he may have forgotten to say it.
So that's one thing.
And the other is
it is true.
I find it difficult
to take anybody seriously
who streams 10 or 12 hours a day.
Where is the reading?
Where is the preparation?
I asked him once that.
And he's actually reading right there.
It's wild.
It's a whole other world.
It's like, imagine if you just
streamed yourself reading.
I should just,
let me say two things.
It was,
first of all,
the first thing,
I want to make an acknowledgement.
I make mistakes like that
of leaving things out.
And I have a very close,
close collaborator,
friend and comrade,
Jamie Sternweiner.
And he said to me
on several occasions,
He said to me, Norman, I think you should remember that in the midst of denouncing American Jews for this and that and the other, remember the fact of the achievements, the things they did that in many ways vindicated American Jews.
That's why I was careful to say it now that I do. I'm more conscious of remembering to say that because I was told, I believe more than one occasion by Jamie not to omit that. So I made that mistake.
Norm, I wanted to ask you a related question to that because.
I've interviewed a few what you would call liberal Zionists who have come out and said Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street being one of them, who's willing to say it's a genocide, recognizes the war crimes, sees the horrors that are being committed, but is still deeply committed to an Israeli state and thinks that it is possible to have a liberal, democratic Jewish.
Ethnostate. I wonder if you could speak some to that mentality, because it's something that it's very hard for me, having not grown up in those Jewish institutions and with the teachings and the culture surrounding that, to understand how someone who can see civil rights abuses so clearly on the domestic level still holds on to this idealized notion that somehow Israel could be very different from from its current expression.
Norm, I wonder if you could speak some to that mentality, because it's something that it's very hard for me, having not grown up in those Jewish institutions and with the teachings and the culture surrounding that, to understand how someone who can see civil rights abuses so clearly on the domestic level still holds on to this idealized notion that somehow Israel could be very different from from its current expression.
The answer to that would be, and here I have to say, Professor Chomsky convinced me on the point. It all depends on how, and I'm not saying this out of deference to him, I use the verb, he convinced me, he persuaded me.
It all depends on how, in what aspects is the state Jewish.
Hypothetically, if it simply honored Jewish holidays as the national holidays, if it had Hebrew as the national language, even though at the time Hebrew and Arabic were both national languages,
Israel, I believe, I'm pretty certain on that.
So if you used to see signs, they would be in Hebrew and Arabic, but I could be, I don't want to stand on that point, but that's my recollection.
So if it's a matter of holidays, national holidays, celebratory holidays, the Hebrew language,
you can say those are, oh, and also Saturday is the day of rest rather than a Friday or a Sunday, you know, things like that.
You could say it's Jewishness is more or less, more or less innocuous, more or less innocuous.
But when there's discrimination in every department of society,
when there's discrimination in every department of society, when there's discrimination in every department of society,
whether it's in social life, whether it's in housing, residence, jobs,
if the army only has Jews serving in it and all sorts of benefits, social benefits come from service in the army,
then obviously it becomes much more problematic.
And then it reaches a very high level of problematic.
When it's objective, its goal is to make a homogeneously Jewish state, then it becomes obviously very problematic.
And that is my, just to pause you for a second, that is my central contention of what most people,
when they say a Jewish state of Israel, what they intend is that the majority,
the majority population from a demographic perspective in Israel would be Jewish.
And you can, you know, feel free to correct me if you think this is wrong,
but I think all of the discrimination, the apartheid, the atrocities really flows out of that view of a quote unquote Jewish state.
Because the moment that, you know, you open up all possibilities of citizenship in an equal way to the entire population from the river to the sea,
then you have a threat.
An existential threat to that conception of a Jewish nation.
Look, I never quarrel with facts.
That's my creed only.
And there's no question that there's a very high degree of plausibility in what you're saying.
Because the moment you say it's a Jewish state, it's the natural next step is that,
it's the natural next step is that you're not a Jewish state.
It's the natural next step is that you're not a Jewish state.
Jews have to be in the majority.
And the next natural step from there is then non-Jews inexorably pose a threat to your majority status.
So since non-Jews inexorably pose a threat to your majority status and your majority status,
is a keystone of a Jewish state,
then it follows that the best way to meet that threat is to get rid of everybody who is not Jewish.
It's just built in.
The Zionist view was we can tolerate a 15 to 20% non-Jewish minority.
That was, ideally, the state would be homogeneously Jewish. That was the ideal. Practically, they were willing to tolerate a 15 to 20% non-Jewish minority.
So, here's the thing. They expelled about 80% of the population in 1947 to 49. They got it down to about 15 or 20% non-Jewish.
And then, lo and behold, by the 1990s, it looked like Israel was slowly but surely. surely losing their Jewish majority.
And what saved them? You know what saved them?
It was the miracle of Russian Jewry, of Soviet Jewry.
About a million Russian, allegedly Jewish, in fact, in the last stages, 40% were not Jewish, but they called themselves Jewish.
And Israel didn't care.
Just as long as you were publicly Jewish. they took them in to rectify or to preempt that potential growing Arab minority.
And now, Israel is, if we accept that Selim's statement, that it's one state, and I think it's a correct statement, it's been one state for a long time, that's why it should never be said the occupied territories.
That's incorrect.
The essence of an occupation under international law, its essence is very simple.
An occupation is temporary.
That's what makes an occupation an occupation.
If it's permanent, it's become an annexation.
If it's illegal annexation, if that permanence was the result of illegal acts. it's an annexation.
Illegal annexation.
But it's not an occupation.
An occupation, that's the whole problem.
Language is so loaded, in particular political language.
I don't want to get off on 10,000 digressions, but the biggest myth of what happened in Gaza after 2023 was that it was a war.
There was no war in Gaza.
I just read the new crisis group report.
They were very scrupulous in describing it as a war.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
Very careful.
There was the Hamas massacre on October 7th, and then what ensued was a war.
And they say,
The moment you say that Israel's won 95% of the propaganda war, it's propaganda war.
It wins it the moment you start describing it as a war.
In the same way, this is not an occupation.
Go look up any legal definition of occupation.
Its essence is it's temporary.
It's an annexation.
And it's also. as the. The International Court of Justice said in July 2025, it's an illegal annexation.
An illegal.
They call it an illegal occupation, but it's an illegal annexation.
So, that being said, let's accept what B'Tselem has said.
One state between the Mediterranean and Jordan, and it's half and half.
It's half Palestinian Arab, half Israeli Jewish.
And if Israel says it will only tolerate a 15% to 20% minority in its Jewish state,
then expulsion is built into it.
It's built into it.
Just like Benny Morris said in one of his rare moments of lucidity,
Benny Morris, he said that transfer, which was the euphemism,
for expulsion, transfer was. And now I'm quoting him.
He doesn't like it when I quote him, but I'll keep quoting him.
He said, transfer is inbuilt and inevitable in Zionism.
That's what he said.
It's inbuilt and inevitable in Zionism.
Zionism. There are two reasons. One is the ideological reason, namely, how can you have
a Jewish state if you don't have a Jewish majority? That just doesn't gel. But there's
also a practical one. The Jews own no land, virtually no land in Palestine. By 1947, they
owned about 17% of the land, 18, 20%. How do you build a Jewish state if you have no
land on which to build it? So of course he was correct that it was inbuilt and inevitable.
But as I said to you, there's a kind of a discrete question, and the discrete question
is, can you conceive a Jewish state that's not a Jewish supremacist state? And I would
say that's a slightly more gray question, though I acknowledge what you said.
You say that it's hard to conceive the notion of a Jewish state without a Jewish
majority. And if you are, if the two are kind of inextricably intertwined, doesn't
that pose serious questions about the status of the minority? Because the status of the
minority will be to forever be perceived as what Israel calls a demographic threat.
And your population growth will always be carefully monitored to make sure you don't
cross that threshold of threatening the Jewish majority.
So I recognize that.
Yeah.
That's a problem. The other way to look at it, and I'm not saying it's a, I'm not saying
it's the answer. Take the case of the UK. It calls itself an Anglican state. That's its
official title. The Anglican church is the church of state. It's an Anglican state. But
if you ask,
"Are the most British who are not Anglican, does the fact that the UK defines itself as
an Anglican state, is that for you an oppressive burden?" I think most Brits would say no.
They don't much care about it. It's there. It exists. But to use my terminology, it's
more at the benign as it gets the malignant end of the spectrum.
And so that, if that's what Jeremy Ben-Ami had in mind, then I think it's tolerable,
but I have to have like an infinitude of asterisks when I say that, because there are so many
qualifications leaving aside that you may be right. It might be inherently intrinsically
incompatible Jewish state that is not a Jewish supremacist state.
And not to get bogged down in this, because we want to get to your book. When we're going
to be talking about the Catholic Church, we're going to be talking about the Catholic Church.
And I think that's a very important point.
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So your book tells part of the story of how this was allowed to occur.
And you focus not so much on what did occur,
which as you said, they were unable to hide.
And you focus a lot on the liberal institutions and the failures
that allowed a genocide to be carried out before all of our eyes.
Talk a little bit about your approach and also what you see
as some of those key failures as having been.
Well, let me begin with the obvious.
The main perpetrator of the genocide, obviously, was the state of Israel.
Its main enabler was the United States.
That, I don't believe, required any special expertise to demonstrate.
It was in your face.
Though now they're trying to downplay the role of the U.S.
by saying they were helpless.
You know, the David Kirkpatrick article in the New Yorker magazine.
They did everything they could behind the scenes,
which is, of course, completely ridiculous.
As the article said, 70% of the weapons were coming from the United States.
If you were so appalled by what was happening,
there was very little.
You just pulled the plug.
So that, it seems to me, didn't require any kind of argumentation on my part.
It was in your face.
Then there was the question of chronicling the horrors in Gaza.
When I wrote the book, Gaza and Inquest into its Martyrdom,
nobody had read the human rights reports I referred to.
They just collected dust, a handful of people.
And I was writing, as it were, I was writing for history.
I was writing for the ages.
I said at the very end of that book, I don't think anyone now is going to read it.
I had, I didn't.
I had a university press put it out.
And it was supposed to be a scholarly book, which I thought maybe in a hundred years,
somebody will dust it off the cobwebs, the dust in the cobwebs.
And, um.
Read what happened in Gaza.
It was a record, a historical record, a document, less than a book.
This time you didn't need it.
First of all, everybody knows what happened.
Yeah.
You didn't need a book to recall it in detail.
The general picture is pretty straightforward and it's out there.
South Africa, it submitted a memorial to, uh.
Um, the international court of justice.
The memorial is your, basically your statement for what's called the merits
phase of the court's proceedings when they decide whether or not a genocide is occurring.
And from what I've read, the memorial consists of 750 pages plus 4,000 pages of documentation.
Wow.
Okay.
So I said to myself.
I don't think you need me to do this anymore.
It's been done.
So then leaving those two things out, there was one other possibility, which is if I had impressive narrative power, a, a great, the story of Gaza, what happened to Gaza.
There was a great British, uh, British, uh, I guess he was Irish.
Uh.
Journalist named Robert Fisk.
Uh, and he wrote this book called pity the nation about what happened during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1948, excuse me, 1982.
And it was just breathtaking pros.
It was pros that was poetry.
He had that narrative gift, the sweep, the language, the Eva K.
Evocation.
He was in Lebanon, joined the Israeli invasion in 82, really append this literary as well as historical document.
I don't possess that.
I'm not, I'm not trying to, uh, lay to false modesty.
I have very powerful, um, expository power.
I have.
Uh, yeah, we can't.
I'll be Robert Fisk.
Right.
I, I, I can put together a logical argument and you will, there will be no wiggle room left at the end.
I'm pretty good at that.
How to compose an impregnable logical argument.
So I couldn't do the narrative.
And then I decide, well, there is another area, namely it's those people who we have higher expectations of.
The UN, not the New York times, not the Washington post, God forbid Atlantic magazine or the New Yorker, but from officials in the UN from human rights organizations.
Uh, we have higher expectations of them.
And then the question becomes whether they rose to the legitimate.
The UN, not the New Yorkers, not the Washington post, God forbid Atlantic magazine or the New Yorker, but from officials in the UN from human rights organizations.
The UN, not the New Yorker, not the Washington post, God forbid Atlantic magazine or the New Yorker, but from officials in the UN from human rights organizations.
longer an isolated case here. A Julia
Sepinti, a Pramila Patton, and others.
A Joan Donahue. It was
a rotting corpse.
And had I written that a few months later,
I would say that
after the most brazen,
breach of international
law in the modern world, namely
the aggression by Israel
and the United States against Iran,
after that, with the UN
Security Council staying absolutely silent
on that aggression, it's a corpse.
It's a corpse.
You could not even condemn
an aggression which didn't even
bother to pretend it was
otherwise. You know, in September
1939, when the Nazis
invaded Poland, they fabricated a border
incident. The German troops got
dressed up in Polish uniforms
and fabricated a border incident.
Because even Hitler, even their
Fuhrer understood, you have to
pretend that you're acting in
self-defense. And self-defense
has a very specific meaning, here
I'm fast-forwarding to after World War II.
Article 51 says it has to be an armed attack
in order to justify self-defense, has to be
an armed attack. Now, there is some debate
about whether an armed attack, which has already
been launched, that it's irreversible and inevitable.
But it hasn't yet, you know, let's say the
planes haven't yet reached your, the target.
Whether you're allowed to retaliate, in that
instance, what's called a preemptive attack.
The planes have already been launched, the
missiles have already been fired. Then whether
you have the legal option to preempt that
attack by firing your own missiles, yeah,
there's a gray area.
There was no gray area when the Israel and the
United States attacked Iran. There wasn't, here's
the deal, the bottom line, there wasn't even a
pretense of an armed attack that they were
responding to. It was, and I repeat, the most
brazen, flagrant act of aggression in the modern
world. And the Security Council did nothing. So,
for me, leaving aside everything else, leaving aside
everything else, Iran has the right, at this point,
to do anything. Now, I want to underline, they have
the right to do anything, because there's no
international law anymore. There's no law regulating
state behavior anymore. You, meaning the UN, you,
meaning the states in the world, you annulled
international law. You cancelled international law.
You didn't respond to what's considered the highest
crime under international law, the crime of aggression.
You let it pass. Well, then Iran has no obligations
any longer to abide by international law. If you say,
why are they targeting the Gulf states? Well, leaving
aside the nuances of that, why shouldn't they? There's
no international law. If for the sake of their survival they're
going to target the Gulf states, what prevents them?
International law? That's not very credible anymore.
So I'm not going to go into the details of what's happened
during the Iran war. I'm just saying as a legal fact, international law
died on November 17th, 2025, when the UN gave the deed of Gaza to Donald Trump.
I'm just going to read to you for a half second from the International Crisis Group,
its most recent report. I'm quoting it now. Trump is set to hold lifetime executive power
over the Board of Peace, the body that's lifetime. A little further down, it says,
the Trump administration's proposition
is essentially an open-ended, open-ended U.S.-led protectorate in Gaza. He owns it.
And when that malignant twit, Jared Kushner, was asked about it, he said,
we are going to run Gaza like a private company. Do you get it?
Donald Trump is the chairman of the board of Trump Inc., and now Gaza is one more property
in his portfolio. That's what the U.N. Securities Commission is doing. It's not just about the U.S.
Security Council did. And then it proceeded to stay silent in the face of the most brazen,
flagrant breach of international law. So it pronounced its own death sentence. It pronounced
its own death sentence. At this point, Iran has no obligations whatsoever to abide by international law. It can target who
it wants and what it wants for the sake of its survival. You don't like that? Then look in the
mirror. You created that situation. So that's what I resolved to do in the book. I started out.
By trying to point to the pockets of corruption in the international political and human rights
organizations. But by the end, by 2025, I decided it wasn't pockets. It's a fish rots from the head
down.
When the U.N. Security Council did what it did, the whole place now reeks, it stinks the high heaven of rot.
This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait, that's the reaction. A lot of
people are having when they first try Kewpie mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before.
And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Kewpie only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers. Some fans even swear by dipping
pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never tried it? Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Kewpie, the original Japanese mayonnaise.
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hey it's ryan reynolds here from mint mobile now i was looking for fun ways to tell you that
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bites me slow when network is busy see terms your analysis of the un's role in in its interactions
with the kind of israeli campaign that you describe in in chapter one to produce what
your chapter title calls rape rape fantasies had another chapter so to speak right after
your book went to the the printer when a a new report came out they called it the civil commission
um
uh i guess in some type of effort to give it a a government governmental gloss and there's a
real trap and i'm curious for how you went about strategically handling this there's a trap in this
entire uh reporting project when it comes to examining the allegations that israel is making
about october 7th and hamas's use of alleged use of systematic sexual violence that you have to
in order to rebut it you have to
repeat a lot of the allegations uh you have to get into a lot of a lot of things that nobody wants to
talk about nobody wants to think about and you have to identify connections uh between all of the
different players that make you feel crazy uh and so i'm curious how because so so you have an essay
in your subsect so what you did is after this commission report came out um you read through it
and you analyzed it and so i can i consider it sort of an addendum or appendix or epilogue to
to your book itself and hopefully in a paperback this maybe can be included um so talk to us a
little bit about this this project the civil commission project that was described as like
the denouement of the of the entire project um that this for once and for all this they're
settling the question and and how did you how do you personally politically strategically
as a writer you know confront this without kind of losing your mind well there are a series of
questions there and they're all important questions number one i knew that immediately
as the book came out regardless of gravediggers people were going to say but he didn't address
the new report and therefore it would undermine undercut all of my findings because the
findings would seem obviously inadequate in the face of this nearly 300 page report
so even though i knew it was going to be an arduous and agonizing task i felt it had to be done
or else chapter one of the book would be rendered obsolete number two
it was 300 pages or nearly and the immediate assumption is if it's of that physical sheer
physical weight there's got to be something there there's got to be something there
i remember when i was a young man and i read the book from time immemorial
which claimed that palestine hadn't been the palestine was empty on the eve of jewish
colonization and then all these arabs and neighboring countries
sneaked into palestine and claimed to be indigenous to the land
and the book was a national bestseller and
everybody said it's got to be true because joan peter is the alleged author
she points out that the book had been written by a man named john peters
and the book has 1857 endnotes
so as they say in law prima facie there seemed to be a case that it couldn't all be made up
in the case of from time immemorial i was a young man i was still in graduate school
i discovered it was all made up and in the case of this report
while you're talking i'll let people kind of see the actual physical product because it
it almost makes the case for itself as as you're talking you'll see it's just a bunch of quotes for
the first like 30 pages from hillary rodham clinton further you'll see that half the pages
are footnotes half the pages are footnotes and so you have to scroll down considerably more because
several
you're not yet in the body
you're not yet in the body
like notice that there's still nothing
yeah that's correct
yeah yeah that's correct
still nothing still nothing
we're not yet at the book
yeah we're not
still nothing
not yet at the book
yeah
now we're at the forward we're 30 pages in we're at the forward
yeah
uh more bios like
totally correct
so more quotes more
right
uh i i have to say all this all you're saying be totally correct here now go back just go here
these are the footnotes yeah go to the next page just scroll down to that next right there you'll
see next one you see the the length of the footnote so everybody by the way listen closely
including me
sometimes known as the world's leading forensic expert
which is a nice title but sort of like on the lines of the tallest building in wichita kansas
how many forensic experts are there you know even i was daunted i have to say i'm going to speak with
complete candor i wondered whether i was wrong i did i'm not going to deny that and the book had
already been published
and that would have been as you can imagine
a supreme humiliation and would have totally discredited me
for the remainder of my life
if i were wrong
and i did harbor that fear
because as i said of the sheer
weight or bulk
of the report
and of what's called
it's scholarly apparatus
all those footnotes
we're at seventy pages and now we're doing background and context
so
then
i have to read it
on my first reading
i
was not as despondent
but i still
was concerned
it took me a second and then a third reading
to discover
that in the immortal words of brianna joy gray
it was a nothing burger
it only had
if you
if you have my
um
text do you have my text yes i have your um
and your
sub stack essay
yeah
so if you go to it
scroll down a little not you just keep scrolling i'll tell you when to stop it's it's like five or pages in
here just here
it's called
i i i i um
catalog
how many times each of their witnesses
is mentioned
so the divas family
thirteen times the same testimony
tally biner
ten times
goldstein almock
twenty six times
they were just
recycling
over and over
and oh she
uh
dr
um
kochav
elkayam
um
levy
if you scroll down a little further
i
well you see the end notes
just
the end notes to my chart
mm-hmm
this is
for each person
how many times they're mentioned
oh my goodness
now we know where all those long footnotes come from
because they're mentioned even more times in the
exactly it was the classic hitler technique you keep repeating repeating repeating that's what
hitler said if you scroll all the way up to the top his two classic techniques of propaganda he
talks about it in mind conf just scroll down a little uh just here so i quote hitler the most
brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is born
in mind constantly and with unflagging attention it meaning propaganda must confine itself to a few
points and repeat them over and over and that's exactly what she did just repeating it over
and over so that having been said and there are many other things to be said
about the modus operandi of this report and time won't allow me to go into
important details but nonetheless details yeah uh the question is the big picture where do we end up
so what we end up with is as most of many of your viewers will know there was no forensic evidence
of sexual violence or rape by hamas on october 7th none exists there israel seemed to have what i
would call a plausible but maybe not a dispositive a definitive alibi its alibi was israel wasn't
prepared for a massacre of this magnitude but it was not prepared for a massacre of this magnitude
it had a finite number number of forensic pathologists in the state as a whole and it had
to process the bodies rapidly for burial jewish ritual burial i personally found that i'm not
saying it's true but i found it plausible but now we had so we don't have forensic evidence
then we have two other possible kinds of evidence
one is testimonial evidence and the other is digital or photographic evidence let me take them
in reverse order okay let's start with the digital photographic evidence the report states
that it has 10 000 10 000 photographic and digital segment
pieces of evidence from october 7th 10 000 what it says 10 000 photographs and digital segments
from october 7th okay that's our first piece of evidence our first fact fact number two
they said it would take 1800 hours
to look to examine all of its digital and photographic evidence for those of your
listeners who aren't able to rapidly uh calculate it that would mean if you ryan
or you crystal if either of you were to sit down in the room eight hours a day seven days a week
looking at all the digital and forensic evidence excuse me digital and photographic evidence
it would take you more than seven months more than seven months we're talking about digital and
photographic evidence from a very finite parcel of land called the gaza envelope
we're talking about cctv evidence traffic camera evidence body cam evidence dash cam evidence
we're talking about hamas body cam evidence hamas dash cam evidence because when the militants were
killed their cameras were seen they were seen they were seen they were seen they were seen they were
seen they were seen they were seen they were seen they were seen they were seen they were seen they were seen
hamas go pro evidence okay a vast accumulation of technological evidence also not trivially
iphone evidence people taking pictures as the massacre is unfolding okay now what's the bottom line
listen there isn't one photographic one photograph one digital segment
of hamas committing rape or sexual violence not one not just of rape there is not one
photograph or digital segment
of hamas committing
rape or what's the technical terminology or other forms of sexual violence now that's very strange
it becomes stranger still when you factor this into it the main conceit of this report
the main conceit
the main thesis if you're in graduate school of this report is that hamas
systematically and methodically committed rape and other sexual forms of sexual violence
in order to terrorize to shatter the esprit of israeli society it was a psychological act of terrorism
it was a psychological act of terrorism that's the core the core thesis of the report now here's the thing
hamas never posted any images of sexual violence in rape
according to the report they used the sexual violence in rape
sexual violence in rape
sexual violence in rape as an act of psychological
as an act of psychological
as an act of psychological terror
terror
terror if that's what you're saying
if that's what you're saying
if that's what you're saying and they didn't post any of the images
and they didn't post any of the images
and they didn't post any of the images which you say
which you say
which you say they purposely carried out rape and
they purposely carried out rape and
they purposely carried out rape and sexual violence in order this is what
sexual violence in order this is what
sexual violence in order this is what they're saying in order to terrorize
they're saying in order to terrorize
they're saying in order to terrorize israeli society well if that was their
israeli society well if that was their
israeli society well if that was their objective if that was their goal
objective if that was their goal
objective if that was their goal then
then
then they would have posted the images right
they would have posted the images right
they would have posted the images right you said that was their goal
you said that was their goal
you said that was their goal ms
ms
ms kolchev
kolchev
kolchev elkaim
elkaim
elkaim levy
levy
levy cheryl sandberg
cheryl sandberg
cheryl sandberg the main endorser of the report
the main endorser of the report
the main endorser of the report cheryl sandberg the former
cheryl sandberg the former
cheryl sandberg the former coo of
coo of
coo of meta
cheryl
cheryl
cheryl if you will excuse my familiarity
if you will excuse my familiarity
if you will excuse my familiarity cheryl
if that's
the thesis of the report
the hamas purposely
the hamas purposely
the hamas purposely committed
committed
committed sexual violence
sexual violence
sexual violence and rape
and rape
and rape in order
in order
in order to post
to post
to post it on the social media
it on the social media
to post it on the social media so as to terror psychologically terrorize
so as to terror psychologically terrorize
so as to terror psychologically terrorize israeli society
israeli society
israeli society cheryl
cheryl
cheryl miss
miss
miss kochev elkaim levy
kochev elkaim levy
kochev elkaim levy why didn't they post any of the images
why didn't they post any of the images
why didn't they post any of the images there's only one possibility judging
there's only one possibility judging
there's only one possibility judging from your logic
crystal ryan if they didn't post any of
crystal ryan if they didn't post any of
crystal ryan if they didn't post any of the images
the images
the images and their goal was to psychologically
and their goal was to psychologically
and their goal was to psychologically terrorize israeli society with those
terrorize israeli society with those
terrorize israeli society with those images
images
images and what's the only possible conclusion
because they didn't post any images
because they didn't post any images
because they didn't post any images because there weren't any images
because there weren't any images
because there weren't any images and if there weren't any images it's
and if there weren't any images it's
and if there weren't any images it's because it didn't happen
because it didn't happen
because it didn't happen so as i point out in what i wrote
so as i point out in what i wrote
so as i point out in what i wrote the most compelling proof to date
the most compelling proof to date
the most compelling proof to date listen closely
listen closely
listen closely miss kochev alkayam levy
miss kochev alkayam levy
miss kochev alkayam levy cheryl sandberg another main endorser
cheryl sandberg another main endorser
cheryl sandberg another main endorser rom
Manuel, listen closely.
By your own logic, your report is the most compelling evidence to date that Hamas did not commit sexual violence and rape as a weapon of war.
In other words, if you read the report correctly, the report is the most compelling proof that it didn't happen, which is, as you can imagine, an irony.
I remember my good friend Jamie Sternweiner. He said to me, I mentioned him before, he said, why do you think they did that? It was so stupid.
First of all, most of the reports to date said there were about 5,000 images, images meaning photographs and digital evidence. They doubled it to 10,000.
So now you have a very high burden to demonstrate why you don't have any images of rape and sexual violence.
And then he said…
He said to me, Jamie, or he asked me, he said, why do you think they made that thesis about Hamas did this in order to…
They were purposely posting these images in order to psychologically terrorize. Why do you think they did that? It was so dumb.
And the answer, in my mind, with all due regard to Jamie, the brilliant fellow, the answer is obvious.
Number one, nobody reads the report.
This report was just mind-numbingly dull.
I mean that.
Do you know, there were moments at night when I would say to myself, you know, Norm, you have a finite number of years left.
Is this the best, most productive use of your time?
Or even the most joyful use of your time in the days that remain to read this prep?
So most people don't read it.
And number two…
Most people say 300 pages, there's got to be something there.
There's got to be something there, you know.
Rahm Emanuel says in the report, at the very beginning, he says, he has a blurb.
And he says, for those of you who don't believe that Hamas did this, that, and the other, he says, here's your summer reading.
And I'm thinking to myself…
Rahm, this is your summer reading.
Because you didn't read it.
I was going to say, I wonder what percentage of all of those many pages of blurbs of people actually even bothered to read it.
Zero.
Ryan Grim said zero.
Yeah, zero.
So they just figured they would get away with it.
Yeah.
That's what happened.
And that leaves us…
So we have already, let's call it two zeros.
No forensic evidence, no digital or photographic evidence.
And then we come to the third possibility, eyewitness testimony, or as they call it nowadays, eyewitness and earwitness testimony.
Earwitness is considered some credible form of evidence for some things, I suppose.
Here we have a problem.
Let me start with the preliminary, if you'll allow me.
The preliminary is…
Israel is a very tightly knit society.
There are multiple overlapping, to use that idiotic woke word, intersectional loyalties in Israeli society.
There is the loyalty, you belong to the same nation state.
Everybody has what's called patriotism.
You have the loyalty, in the case of Israel, you're all part of the same family.
The Jewish family, the same Jewish blood runs through all your, everybody you know, because Arabs don't count, they don't exist.
So it's what you call, to put it in the most basic terms, the familial or blood loyalty.
So we have the state or patriotic loyalty.
We have the familial and blood loyalty.
And then you have a third kind of loyalty.
And it's in Israel.
In Israel, it's the most pronounced loyalty.
It's the loyalty of having everybody served in the IDF.
It's a citizen army.
It means everybody feels this intense loyalty to the IDF.
Why do I mention this?
Because those compounding, you can call it, those compounding loyalties, it's the midst of a genocide in which the population overwhelmingly supports it.
All the polls show that.
There's only about 5% of Israeli Jews.
Who thought Israel was using too much force in Gaza, and that was for all three years, only about 5%, 40% thought Israel was not using enough force, you know, and then, you know, all the polls about if the IDF enters the city, should it kill everybody in the city?
There was the poll, are there any innocents in Gaza and all the polls did not cast Israel in the best light.
Having said that, I believe, you shouldn't trust a word in Israel, he says.
I'm sorry.
I recognize that's a high bar.
I will then say two things and then get more into the testimonial issue.
Number one, the standard used by human rights organizations is witness testimony, and there also has to be some digital evidence.
That's what makes the standard in human rights organizations is reasonable grounds to believe, and in order for the report to conclude reasonable grounds, it has to have both witness testimony and some digital evidence.
Given that we already know there is no digital evidence, as a matter of fact, Amnesty International stated,
we haven't even heard.
We haven't even heard anybody claim there was digital evidence.
That's what they said.
Given that fact, then the conclusion of every human rights organization per force is, or had to be, there's no reasonable grounds to believe rape and other forms of sexual violence occurred.
That's by their own legal standard.
That's their legal standard.
There has to be.
Now, the digital evidence doesn't have to be of an event in particular.
It could be, let's take an example.
The digital evidence could be Israel photographs all of these Palestinian Gazans who are undressed.
You know, you remember the mass scenes of them down to their boxer drawers and things like that?
So if then a witness claims.
That he or she had been forced to undress the fact that there was already some evidence that Israel imposed that humiliation,
that digital evidence can be used as confirmation of an individual testimony,
which may not have been in that particular picture.
Is that clear?
Have I made myself clear?
You just need to demonstrate.
That the testimony falls into a pattern, P-A-T-T-E-R-N, a pattern that has been digitalized or photographed.
But the individual testimony doesn't have to be that picture and that photograph.
Well, they don't have that for sexual violence and rape.
So that's the conclusion they per force should have reached.
That's not.
A conclusion they did reach, and we can get to that.
Let's get back to this report.
So I said, I wouldn't believe a word.
And as really said.
As a default setting for the reasons I set out.
Now.
In the case of this particular report.
It uses what's what it calls survivor based.
Inquiry.
If you read the report, you know, it's survivor based inquiry means you don't need to have a survivor based inquiry.
You don't ask the alleged victims any questions.
Now, this is literal.
Any questions that might hurt their feelings.
And they also said quite explicitly, as you discuss in your paper, that they wanted to lead with a therapeutic approach, which is understandable if that's the approach they want to take.
But they also separately say they took a legal and academic approach, which is in complete contradiction because it doesn't allow you to say, well, you said that you heard this, but we looked at your cell phone data and it looks like you weren't there at that time.
Can you maybe walk us through?
Because maybe you had a genuine misremembrance and it doesn't go to the core of your testimony, but it's good to probe it because maybe it does.
Meanwhile, there's some people in the report that you also flag who have been exposed even by Israeli government officials as having been total fabulist and fraudsters, and they still wind up being central players in the report.
And they say that even if this approach compromises, namely the therapeutic approach, compromises our factual findings, we put their feelings first.
It says it, literally.
I don't know if you find it.
I italicized it when I was going through that, what they said.
Maybe you can find it while I'm speaking.
So effectively, what the commission, the civil commission did was it acted as stenographers.
It just wrote down whatever anyone said.
The physical and emotional well-being of the testifier is our highest priority, even if it compromises.
Our documentation efforts, unquote.
You have to laugh at that.
Amazing.
I wonder if you can read it one more time, because I'd like the viewers to hear what she said.
Yeah.
The physical and emotional well-being of the testifier is our highest priority, even if it compromises our documentation efforts.
You know, you have to ask yourself, is this gathering evidence or is this group therapy?
What's going on here?
So now you have. Yeah, they also said the delicate triangle between therapy, documentation, and justice requires constant balance.
Except that they. But I say, if you're not going to critically evaluate the testimony, then you have yourself upset the balance.
You put the balance on therapy and not on documentation.
So now we have two. Two problems.
Number one, in my opinion, and I know it's not going to be a popular opinion.
On the other hand, I'm not here to be popular.
It's just how I evaluate.
I don't think. I think the default setting is not to trust the word they say.
Number two, there was no interrogation.
There was no fact-finding.
There was simply stenography.
It was a group therapy session.
It wasn't. Trying to ferret out the truth.
Even. Okay, I'll grant.
I'll grant.
Maybe you should be delicate.
Maybe you should walk on eggshells.
Okay, I'll grant it if people are traumatized.
But they didn't do anything.
They just sat down, put a microphone, and speak.
That was their documentation.
She keeps saying,
I. Archived this testimony.
I archived that testimony.
You know, trying to put it like Ryan said,
they call it a civil commission.
A highfalutin body.
Now they archived.
I said, this is not archiving.
This is the equivalent of a hoarder collecting junk.
I have to keep saying to myself,
I live. during the war in Vietnam, the ground troops entered in March 1965. About three years later,
there were large, I'm not saying a majority, but they were certainly significant. There were
significant organizations of Vietnam vets who opposed the war and publicly exposed
the crimes committed. There was a famous organization, actually one of the heads,
I didn't particularly like him, was John Kerry. It was called VVAW, Vietnam Veterans Against the
War. And then they gave what was called testimony, I think it was called the Winter Soldier
Testimony, in which they described the horrors that the U.S. was committing in Vietnam.
Is there anything remotely equivalent to that three years after the Gaza genocide?
Maybe two or three people who are crawling in harrits?
So why should I trust?
Testimony. But let's now get to the testimony, okay? I'll now give you, in my opinion,
the context, the proper context. Let's now get to the actual testimony.
So, on the question of rape, one person, a male, is said to have alleged that he was raped.
That one person, he goes by the name D, period, in the report.
That person, number one, he's completely discounted in Israel.
If you take the most comprehensive report that came out by Israel,
it's called the DINA report, D-I-N-A-H, the DINA report.
On October 7th, sexual violence on October 7th, they didn't even mention him.
Hear me?
Yeah.
They didn't even mention him.
So, we have not one, there, listen, not one survivor testimony of rape on October 7th.
Not one.
Now, number two, their key witness, my memory is, her name is Darren Komarev.
I believe that's the name.
Darren Komarev.
M-A-R-O-V.
Darren Komarev.
She's listed number one in the report.
Okay?
She's their star witness, as it were.
She's not an eyewitness.
She's an earwitness.
Okay?
Now, let's, more of the details in this earwitness.
She was in a caravan, which had no windows or apertures.
So, the outside world.
She's sitting in this caravan, and she says, in her uninterrogated testimony, she said,
I heard three discreet rapes.
I heard a gang rape.
Then I heard a second rape.
And then I heard a third rape, all going on simultaneously.
I admit, I'm an older person.
But I'm thinking to myself, I'm sitting in my apartment.
When I hear a buzzer, I can never tell whether it's somebody at the door, or because I live in the parkway, whether it's a car passing outside.
But she, she, the earwitness, their star witness, she managed to discern.
Three discreet rapes going on outside this cubicle in which she has self-isolated.
And then she says, in one of the rapes, the fellow, the woman was shot in front of the fellow.
I'm thinking to myself.
How does she know that?
She was shot in front of him.
How would she know that?
Then she says, he was her boyfriend.
Yes, I saw, uh, Crystal, her eyes.
So, she was his girlfriend.
How would you know that?
From inside your self-isolation in the cubicle.
How would you know?
And she says, I heard it.
Here, here, and here.
And I'm thinking to myself.
Did she hear the Boston Pops?
The Vienna Boys Choir?
And the Beatles reunion?
It was just.
So ridiculous.
And this is your star witness?
Yes.
Right, if that was one. Oh, I should also add, in his testimony, the fellow who claimed, you know, the one fellow, you read his testimony in the report, he never said he was raped.
He himself, I quote the testimony in what I wrote, he never said he was raped.
Allow me now to turn to the question of rape of the hostages, okay?
Let's begin with the obvious.
This is a perfect opportunity to film your sexual violence, to post on the web, so as to psychologically terrorize Israel's population.
You have them captive.
And your objective is to commit sexual violence, including rape, in order to psychologically terrorize Israeli society.
Here's the opportunity.
Is there a single image?
Is there one?
Is there even, on the edges of an image, there's nothing?
What is the testimony?
Well, as you both probably know, and many of your listeners, there's a testimony of the woman, Anat Shoshana.
Okay?
I won't go into the details, I'll just state, if you read her testimony, she never said she was raped.
She did not.
She said, I suffered extreme sexual assault.
Okay.
What?
What was it?
What happened?
She never says.
Even the report is very careful not to say that she had been raped.
Now, somebody asks, well, what could it have been?
Well, rape requires, usually, as you know, there are a thousand different definitions, but in general, it requires some act of penetration.
I don't know what happened.
Maybe the guy said to touch his penis.
Maybe.
I don't know.
But the bottom line is, there's not a single witness who claimed that they suffered sexual rape.
Sexual violence is separate now.
Right.
Not a single one.
There is one witness who says that he, her, or she.
He or she heard reports of sexual rape.
Heard reports of rape.
Doesn't say it happened.
There is one witness, her name is Aviva Siegel, who claims that she saw an act of fellatio, coerced fellatio.
However, when she was interviewed by Amnesty International.
Which bent over backwards to validate the Israeli claim, she didn't say it.
Now, let's turn to the second tier.
We looked at rape.
What about other forms of sexual violence?
Now, there, we have all of this strange evidence by witnesses.
Remember, no digital evidence.
Witnesses.
So, we know that the witnesses, they did take a lot of digital, they did produce a lot of digital evidence about what happened on October 7th.
Took a lot of pictures and so forth.
I should say, these were witnesses who were first responders.
Okay.
Okay.
So, now let's.
Turn to the question of sexual violence.
One fellow says, he says, I found a woman with her legs spread.
I tried to close her legs.
I couldn't because her vagina was stuffed with aluminum cans, not single singular aluminum cans.
Another says.
If you can quote it, Brian, all of these household items were stuffed into a woman.
Hmm.
The only thing they left out was the kitchen sink, the toilet bowl, and the corner gas station.
Otherwise, everything.
Was stuffed into women's vaginas.
Why didn't you take a picture of it?
You were busy documenting.
As you know, I presume, there was one alleged picture of some physical objects thrust into a woman's pelvic area.
But the forensics pathologist who examined it said that you couldn't tell.
There's only one picture.
Human Rights Watch looked at it.
Several forensic pathologists.
They said you couldn't tell.
But here you have this massive sequence of the most graphic, grotesque.
ghastly descriptions of sexual violence,
not one did the first responder document.
Now, you may say, well, first responders were too busy.
There was so much killing, so much death.
Fair, that's a possibility.
But there's a problem.
The report says that the first responders did take a lot of pictures.
Just like the report said, quote,
we have extensive digital evidence from Hamas cameras.
Then where are the pictures of sexual violence?
When you seize those cameras, those GoPros, where are the pictures?
You said it's extensive.
And now you have extensive evidence provided by first responders.
And they're seeing all of these ghastly commissions perpetrating of sexual violence.
Not one picture.
How did that happen?
Well, and I think that is the, I mean, that really is the crux of the thing.
If the argument is not there were possibly isolated incidents of rape or sexual assault,
the thesis, to your point, is this was used as a weapon of war and of terror.
And so, you know, if you can't produce any forensic evidence,
if you can't produce any digital evidence, that really, I mean, it really did.
And it destroys the idea that this was used as a technique of terror because that's, you know,
you wouldn't then try to hide and try to make sure there was no visual evidence of those acts
if they were committed en masse as a strategy on October 7th.
And the testimonial evidence is wacky.
Yeah.
It simply is.
And we know some of those first responders like the, you know,
fabricated other later debunked hoaxes as well.
And she did not discount that evidence because she's constructing a comprehensive archive.
Right.
So she won't discount it.
Well, Norm, thank you so much for spending so much time with us today.
And everybody should go and check out the book, Gaza's Gravediggers.
Take a look at the sub stack, which goes into detail about this report.
And, you know, case by case, the testimonials and what they said and what you found.
And it's always such an honor and a pleasure to get to speak with you, Norm.
All right, guys, that's going to do it for us today.
Nice to be back from Spain.
I left my daughter there.
Felt a little weird getting back on the plane without her.
But I kept close tabs on what you guys were up to, Ryan.
I was wanting to really wanting to jump in on the whole Hassan Piker freak out.
I was very much missing the opportunity.
Opportunity to weigh in on that one.
Yeah, we're on day.
I just checked out Drudge Report.
He's the top story right now on the Drudge Report, which to this day still drives a lot of kind of cable news and chatter kind.
of inside inside washington um in fact let me see if it's still up there
yeah here let me just just just so people who don't understand like what this drudge report
is like if you're young you have no idea what this thing even is but it's extremely influential
it's still extremely influential yeah at its peak it was like insane the amount of clicks and views
you would get if you ended up with a drudge report link but it's still all it still is the
gen x and boomers get a lot of there and here's their top headline right now they make him look
so cool in that photo they do they pick the good one uh and brett bear rebutting the don
in any event wow amazing times we're living in wild it's wild all right guys well we still have
the month uh free
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