"It's A Lie!" Journalist Exposes Media Propaganda as the Left Races to Fill The Void

0:04Prem Thakker:Okay, joining me today on IHIP News is a political correspondent for Zetayo and my new very good friend. We met the other night in New York City. I follow him on all of his socials. His name is Prem. Tucker, Prem, how are you today? I'm wonderful. It's so great to be with you. I'm so happy to have you. I want to talk to you about something you posted. Van Jones is jumping in. know everybody's having like a son piker bed wedding right and he has absolutely zero power in the democratic party why they're not upset at like i don't know chuck schumer is beyond me but that's another podcast for another day so van jones has ventured into this and i'm going to play the clip because here's the part that you are criticizing even in armed struggle there are principles and the principles of no women no children no rapes no kidnapping these are moral principles that any liberation struggle has to uphold.

0:59There is a way to judge an organization and decide, is it worthy of my support? You ask the question, what are the ends of the organization? What are their goals? And what are their means? How are they getting there? In my tradition, the ends have to be more freedom.

1:19Prem Thakker:That's a pretty sleekly produced video. But what part of that What are you responding to? Well, he had said, I mean, it's a meritable, important discussion about what ideal, I suppose, armed struggle looks like. Of course, firstly, it's hard for those who are not a part of an armed struggle to describe what an ideal or perfect armed struggle looks like because it's kind of a very imperfect situation, of course. His principles that he lays out are entirely reasonable at their face. I think what really struck me is when he said, ideally, an armed struggle would not become what they are fighting.

1:56And he was saying that while he was criticizing Hamas in comparing it to other armed struggles that he defines to be more benevolent. And the implication that I took from that is Hamas should not become what they are fighting. Well, if they are fighting the Israeli government, is that Van Jones admitting that the Israeli government is actually who rapes and kidnaps Palestinians at will, who kills women and children at will? Of course, as we've seen from documented evidence, from international bodies, from let alone Palestinians themselves, as if that is never enough, the Palestinian people, that is true, that they have killed 20 ,000 conservatively children in the past two and a half years.

2:44many, many, many women and also many men. I find it sometimes troubling that we only focus on women and children when it's like all life is so beautiful and important and worth our love. That includes men too, whether they're fathers, brothers, or just men who have no relation to anyone except themselves. They have relations to us as human beings. That's one aspect that really struck me is that in his, I don't know, I don't want to disparage where he's coming from, but it just feels like, of course, if you judge his arguments at their face, sometimes they feel a bit Hasbara-esque, sort of peddling sort of propagandist talking points from the Israeli government's point of view that upon any further explication would kind of just shatter.

3:35So So sometimes he seems to be within that milieu, such that if he really was absorbed in that when he made this video, he didn't, I guess, really understand the implication of that statement right there, that he seems to be suggesting that the Israeli government is actually culpable for these crimes that he is ascribing to Hamas.

3:51Prem Thakker:And when it comes to what we learn as Americans, like just broadly, it's that Israel is this beautiful democracy and these terrorists are always trying to take them out. But when I started opening up my eyes to this, like just most recently, there's a video of IDF soldiers raping a prisoner, and then there's no charges against them. And then I read further that like they're training dogs to rape prisoners. I'm like, my God. And so then I start thinking, like, who is the terrorist in all of this? Like who is terrorizing whom here? So for the layman, because this is presented to the American public oftentimes in these sleekly produced videos that, oh, this is a complicated thing.

4:40Prem Thakker:You don't understand it. You're not smart enough to understand it. And I take real offense to that. And I think that's incredibly condescending because when you hear stories of kids that have been targeted, multiple agencies, this is widely confirmed, that are targeted here and here, shot in the head or in the heart for those of you that are listening. And there's CAT scans and medical doctors that confirmed all this and multiple, a Dutch newspaper and the BBC and the New York Times. It seems that that's intentional. And then obviously you're outraged at the injustice of that. And then if you express your outrage, then you're told by the forces that be in a very condescending way, oh, this is very complicated.

5:23Prem Thakker:You don't understand that or you're being anti-Semitic. So, and not a broad history lesson, but in practical terms for Americans that are opening their eyes to this because their taxpayer money is funding this. What is the rub between Israel and Hamas? Yes. I mean, I think your question already sets up so many of the contradictions that I think have made it so clear to so many people over the past two and a half years that maybe there's something else going on here that makes it where it isn't as complicated as I'm being told to believe. And of course, there's a broad history between Israel and Palestine and Lebanon and so forth.

6:02And I don't want to discredit that it's a long history. But just because there's a history to something doesn't mean you can't have an opinion on what is happening in front of your eyes, especially when you're funding it. And I think another important aspect of your question is this sense of respect. I feel if you can approach the question of Israel and Palestine with this question in mind of respect, both for yourself and other human beings, I think the conclusions become a lot clearer. So let me give you an example. You bring up taxpayer dollars. In the past two and a half years, the Israeli government and Israeli forces, Israeli settlers, have killed a double-digit amount of Americans.

6:43In that time, there has been no accountability for any of those settlers or soldiers who have killed Americans. And for those of you who might not know, some of these Americans are people who might be in Palestine by virtue of wanting to be there to do what we call observation, where they support Palestinians in the West Bank by being an American voice alongside them to observe and document what Israeli settlers do to them and to show that these settlers that, hey, an American is here too. So sometimes Americans are in Palestine for that reason, to offer their support to Palestinians who are being violated.

7:20Some people are Americans just because they live there. There are many Palestinian Americans and Americans that live in Palestine who just happen to live there that a lot of people in this country don't realize. In that time, there's been no accountability for any of those Americans who have been killed with U.S. tax dollars. And I know this sounds a little convoluted. I'm getting at this point of respect. Repeatedly in Capitol Hill, I've asked members of Congress, A, do you even know how many Americans have been killed by Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers who, of course, American taxpayers fund every single year?

7:51Many Republicans who have asked simply do not know the answer or in fact, tell me that I'm wrong or that I'm lying or that they've never heard of that, that they've never heard that a foreign country's military or a terrorist organization, a group of terrorists is what we should really call the behavior of Israeli settlers that are protected by a foreign government, killed Americans. And these politicians have no answer for that. And so diluting that, we then get to this broader discussion of Hamas and Israel, which is that what is terrorism and who gets to decide what is and is not terrorism.

8:27And ultimately, this collapses a lot of those designations. A lot of times when we ask officials about, you know, what about all these children in Gaza? What about all the destruction? All these schools, libraries, mosques, churches, hospitals, homes being raised in Gaza. Of course, as many people in this country have seen, the excuse is always, well, Hamas, this. Hamas is a designated terrorist organization. They're a tax.

8:50Prem Thakker:They're a gays off buildings. Right, exactly. All these flippant excuses that in general don't excuse his behavior, but it's the final crutch that if nothing else, we're fighting terrorists. But if you're committing mass terrorism in that campaign, it collapses what is and is not terrorism. And people like us, we will get attacked for making that point. Because to make that point is to eliminate the final crutch. Because the final crutch is, well, we're attacking terrorists. And you point out, well, you're committing terrorism by doing so. There's nothing else left to possibly justify this behavior.

9:26So for those lay people who are coming to this issue, I myself came to this in years past without too much connection to it. I think these contradictions are what led me to perk off this idea that it's too complicated for me to understand. I think that is the baseline that I would recommend people to go from is just that there are all these contradictions that are evident to you. Start from there. I'm not asking you to read these 10 books or to know these 10 talking words. is just to embrace the contradictions and see them for what they are and how much they disrespect you and your common sense.

10:02Prem Thakker:And especially like respecting what's happening now. Like what is happening right now is more important to me. Those little kids that were targeted with American taxpayer money and just in general, who's funding it, just targeting kids for sport is so fucked up. It's so alarming. It shocks the conscience. But as it goes to the settlers, I follow Senator Chris Van Hollen and he was speaking about, on his Instagram, about Americans getting killed in the West Bank. So it's like, what's a settler? Because that to me, it sounds like kind of this quaint word, right? Like you're settling in, we're going to settle in for dinner and watch some Netflix and chill, right?

10:45Prem Thakker:Well, as I started reading about this, it's rather disturbing and rather propagandistic in its moniker. The Israeli government, by virtue of using faith in its project to take over this land, is carrying out not just apartheid in the way that you just described of being able to allow one group of people to completely dominate another, but it's explicitly religious supremacist. and that is what is so ultimately sad about this project is that it is using and exploiting and taking Judaism as this pathway to then bring people to take other people's land in the name of Judaism which is just such a bastardization of a beautiful faith and I think there's that aspect of it and of course there's the primary in principle issue which is that Palestinian people are being displaced by people for whom, as you say, they can come from anywhere, even from America, just come to land that is currently a Palestinian's land, whether it's their farmland, their homes, and just be outright evicted.

11:56And what I think people do not fully appreciate, and this gets to your point, is that this is a broad movement within Israeli society. The settler movement is what we call it. And as you say, settling is a quaint way of describing it because its impacts are indeed terroristic. It's people coming in with weapons, with fists, with whatever, mobs of them in fact, threatening people, taking their homes, horrifying behaviors towards children, women of course, and not to just focus on women and children again, but it is the type of behavior that if you read about it in any other context, there would be no ambiguity about what is going on there.

12:41And what also people don't understand is that These people are not policed, despite the fact that they are explicitly committing crimes. The Israeli government protects these people. In fact, sometimes it funds, it even arms them to a certain extent. And there is no sense of policing there. And so I think Americans especially don't understand that this is essentially a paramilitary movement that we are funding by virtue of funding the Israeli government that also protects these people. And in fact, again, many politicians in the Israeli government are explicitly pro-settler. I mean, this gets to, I think, a prior discussion of one thing that I've been concerned about is that now we're at a time where we have the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

13:32We have escalating settler terrorist violence in the West Bank in Palestine. We have, of course, the ruins of Gaza that are still being devastated to this day with this so-called board of peace that is anything but. And of course, the Israeli government is doing what it did to Palestine, to Lebanon. All of this is happening in such a way where it's hard, understandably, for people to have the same sort of focused energy as they did in the past two and a half years on Gaza. because it was easy to focus. Now it's sort of spiraling in such a way that you don't know what to focus on. And this gets to this broader project that the Israel government and people within it are pursuing, which is greater Israel, which is taking as much of this land as they can as their own.

14:18And I think if people can look at this as kind of the prism, that can hopefully help them refocus. And the settler movement is a part of that. It's the taking of land at will. and again, if nothing else, it's funded by people in the United States.

14:34Prem Thakker:And that's the thing. I think there's going to be degrees of people. You grew up in North Dakota. I grew up in Oklahoma and there's degrees of people in middle America. American culture is very ethnocentric. Our news is very American based, rarely international. And so you have the people that I hate to say it, but you had just have to acknowledge they're like, I don't really care what's going on in the Middle East. It seems like they're fighting all the time. Yeah. And so then from there, the issue is, if you can't get people to care about human rights is the funding of killing people. And I know just about every American cares about money.

15:12Prem Thakker:We value that above and beyond everything else. I noticed something on the settler issue about a month ago online and it was Cory Booker and Dan Goldman and Richie Torres, all AIPAC funders, all Israel thumpers, I mean, just completely like blinded in the Israeli propaganda, in my opinion. And they all tweeted kind of on the same day, something about, we have to put an end to this settler violence. And it kind of like, I think it was Dan Goldmer. So I was like, no, what, what are, what's going to, what's the backstory on that? So settler violence in the West Bank and Palestine generally is the easy way out if a member of Congress wants to condemn any part of the Israeli government's behavior because it is so patently obvious in a way where it's much harder to make it sort of shrouded in this essence of that it's complicated or you don't quite understand the history there.

16:18And so because of that, it's a little easier for members of Congress, namely Democrats, to come out with a letter saying we need to stop settler violence. Of course, to what we were just saying, you can't stop one without the other. You cannot stop settler violence without fundamentally challenging the U.S.-Israel relationship and the way that the U.S. always defers to Israel when it comes to any instance of violence, whether it's by an Israeli bomb or whether it's by an Israeli settler's gun or their fist, because they're intertwined. And so it's completely rhetorical. It's a way to throw a bone to people to see, look, I care about this too.

17:00If you cared, you would go much further. It's as simple as that.

17:04Prem Thakker:Totally. I'm curious, what was it like when you first met the issue of Israel and Palestine? Do you remember the first time it really came on your radar?

17:18Prem Thakker:Probably, it was probably during the campaign. And I told your boss this, Mehdi, when I was on his podcast. My husband has always been, he's more to the left than I am. And he's really critical of Democrats. He's incredibly critical of the opposition party because he thinks that they're, sorry for the cussing, but his words don't mind, they're fucking pussies. And he's just like, of course they lost. And he was going, what's the deal? He's from small rural Oklahoma. He's a criminal defense attorney. He's like, what's the deal with Israel? And I was like, well, they're our ally and they're a democracy.

17:50Prem Thakker:I had the MSNBC talking points. Sure. He goes, I don't know, man. Ted Cruz and like Lindsey Graham, like everybody I hate supports Israel. And it just seems like they're always stirring it up and bringing us into things. But then, you know, you go back to your lives. And embarrassingly, I will tell you during the Kamala race, because I was all chips in for Kamala, because I have a lot of red state trauma. And there's a total abortion ban in Oklahoma. So a woman that is raped does not have freedom. A person that might have a complicated pregnancy does not have freedom. And I see these things as immediate needs that a Democratic president can solve for these red state draconian laws, of MAGA super majorities.

18:41Prem Thakker:So as I was going into the DNC every day, and there were all these very peaceful, very organized pro Palestine protesters, I'd be like, God damn it, they are going to fuck us. They are going to fuck us. They're going to fuck us. Why weren't they at the RNC? Pisses me off. Everything always falls on the Democrats. Always have to do everything perfect. Why weren't they harassing Trump? But even I knew at that point enough about it, a peripheral knowledge that Donald Trump would be far easier to manipulate and far more homicidal than Kamala Harris. Now, there's going to be a lot of people in my comments, she's genocide, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

19:20Prem Thakker:Yes, she and Biden did that. No question about it. And I think that's why they won't release the autopsy report. But anyway, I was irritated by it a little bit. And I'm just being honest with you because I think this is a democratic journey. And I think we all need to talk about where we were as a corporate dim or whatever. And so I'm showing my weakness here. And then after she lost, honestly, my audience, a lot, we have a lot of really young progressive people that were like, you need to be better. You need to talk about Palestine. You need to. And I, I really started listening to people like you, people like Mehdi, other than just Western corporate media.

20:02Prem Thakker:I think, And God, once you, once you open up the floodgates, it's just unrelenting. And then once you start engaging in stuff on your algorithm, then you get served up more and more. And then you just see the imagery of that. It's a feature, not a bug. It's a feature to bomb infrastructure. It's a feature to kill the breeding population. And then you start looking into like just the, the culture. I started reading like some polling about Israelis and just it's so foobar. It's so fucked up. It's so it shocks the conscience. It really does. And then, you know, I always go back to when my youngest son, Roman, he just graduated from high school.

20:49Prem Thakker:That's why I moved out here and he played AAU basketball. So we'd have to go to all of these rural towns for basketball tournaments. Yeah. And you see these rural towns where wages have never gone up. They don't have healthcare, but they have Trump flags and crosses in their yard. You know, and those are their two things. I'm MAGA and I'm Christian. Yeah. And then you think about the lies that these people are told, the lies they're told by the Republican Party. And you can't have healthcare. And if you get cancer, tough titties. Yeah. But we never say no. Yeah. to Israel and bombing people. And then, and then from there, it just compounds and compounds and compounds.

21:33Prem Thakker:My next question for you is, so in Oklahoma City, there is a Lebanese community. And I know a lot of these people, our kids went to school together. And my Lebanese American friends would always say like, yeah, you know, my grandmother or my parents lived in Lebanon and the Israelis bombed us, bombed us, bombed us. And so that's why we came here, et cetera. In my mind at the time, absorbed propaganda was just like, oh yeah, they're always fighting in the Middle East. Stupid me, silly me, whatever. Right. Just dismissive. The American mindset. And then a few days ago, I went to dinner with a woman that is Israeli.

22:14Prem Thakker:And she said, you know, Hezbollah is just bombing Israel all the time, all the time. So what are we supposed to do not fight back. So my question for you is a lot of Americans like me, the journey I just told you about, this isn't happening in a vacuum. A lot of people are opening up their eyes to this. The dam is broken. So there's a thirst for people to be educated. What is the truth about Lebanon and Israel? What is the truth about that? Because what I see is displacing of 2 million people, bombing maternity wards, schools, kids, journalists. What's going on there? Well, first, I appreciate you telling me your journey.

22:54I think it's very important. I think the more we do that, the better, because ultimately politics is about changing our mind. It's about evolving and growing and also embracing it with other people. And it's a numbers game also. So all those things mean this is a good thing.

23:09Prem Thakker:I agree. Thank you. With regards to your question, I think, again, I think it's always okay to lead with empathy and understanding someone for whom all they know is where they're socialized. And that includes, for instance, people in Israel who see Hezbollah as this all-threatening force. But that's okay to start with. But then we can take a step to that and understand what's exactly going on here, which is that Hamas and Hezbollah, like any sort of armed struggle, whether someone— When you say armed struggle, what do you mean? I mean, so let me get into this. I was going to say, Annie Armstrong, whether you view it completely perfectly or not, these happen all over the world, all throughout global history, where upon a group of people being continually pummeled and dehumanized and made to be less than, at some point they have to do something.

24:03And so Hamas and Hezbollah are the expression of an entire land of people, countries, who have been made to turn to something other than what they've tried over and over again, which is continually trying to negotiate just for their equality, for their right to exist as people. And so when you have that framework, then a lot of these questions are like, oh, well, Hezbollah is always bombing Israel or so forth. those also sort of collapse because like, okay, well, there's a reason that Hezbollah and Hamas exist in the first place. And oftentimes throughout history, and I mean, I think a good example of this is in the past two and a half years, after October 7th, the ways in which these forces exhibited some level of restraint when you think of the proportions of which the Israeli military was devastating Lebanon, Palestine, and of course now the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

25:01When you think about first, why these groups exist, and then secondly, the proportions of violence on each side, things become a bit more clear. And so, again, I treat the conversation of Hamas and Hezbollah with a sense of delicateness because you never want to undermine or invalidate a people's right to fight back. And of course, that does not mean then, you know, people say, oh, so do you support X, Y, and Z things from what Hamas says? No, that doesn't mean, A does not equal B from that. But I think this dovetails well into a very important conversation, which is how people treat the idea of a Palestinian state.

25:52So, for example, right now, there's a lot of conversation sort of going towards this, like in American politics, of what it means to create a Palestinian state, for there to be two states. For those who might be new to this discussion, the idea of, you know, Palestine is stateless. It's under Israeli occupation. And so one conversation is about giving Palestinian people a state, which already is a crazy premise. But there's always been this discussion of can it be two states side by side? Can it be one multi-ethnic democratic state where people coexist altogether in a state of equal rights for all?