Responding to Netanyahu Interview Critics

17:55Francis Foster:If you find yourself in a position where you are in front of people and they're staring at you silently, that would not have been a good circumstance 99 % of the time. So that is a barrier that many, many people have to overcome. And people think, oh, it's because you got sent up to the blackboard at school. No, no, no. It's hardwired into you. So that fear of ostracism is part of it. But I think with the war in Gaza, we're also facing it something else entirely, which is the visual medium, the visual channel in human brains is so powerful. It's so much more powerful than anything else. It is overwhelmingly powerful.

18:34Francis Foster:And when you see images of true horror, which you will see in every conflict zone, it completely overwhelms your logical reasoning and faculties by necessity. It's just how it is. And I think with one of the reasons that you see this with Gaza is people are just seeing horrific shit day in, day out. And it shuts down their ability to think critically. I'll give you one example, which I just think sums it up. There's a meme that I keep seeing popping up, And this is in my feed, so you know it's doing well elsewhere, right? Which is X number of children have been killed in Ukraine and, you know, a hundred times more, however many more children killed in Gaza.

19:15Francis Foster:That's the difference between war and genocide, right? Okay. Now, if you know anything about these two conflicts, you go, that is the most stupid thing that anyone's ever said. Because what they're trying to say is, look, Israel is committing genocide. Russia, even though it's bad and wrong to invade, is not, right? Why is it? But the question no one ever asked is, why is it that so many civilians are being killed in Gaza and not that many civilians are being killed in Ukraine? Why is it? Well, I know because I have family in Ukraine. And you know what they do when the air raid sirens go off? They go down into the tube in Kiev.

19:55Francis Foster:They go down into the tunnels, which the government has made available for them and encourage them to use. In other words, Ukraine has done everything possible to make use of all the facilities it has to allow the civilians to be safe from Russian attacks. But in Gaza, they have a tunnel network that is bigger than the London tube, and not one civilian has been allowed in. The point being, the reason that civilians are dying in Gaza is that their government, Hamas, wants them to be killed and is doing everything possible to prevent them from surviving. It's not using the facilities it has to save them.

20:37Francis Foster:It's deliberately putting them in harm's way. That's why it's happening. But if all you see are these horrific images of war and you don't think beyond that, a meme that is as stupid as that sounds convincing. The world is changing fast and it's not enough to just know what the news is. You have to know how it's being reported because the truth often depends on where you're standing. That's why I use Ground News. It's the only website and app that gathers and compares news from over 50 ,000 sources around the world. It doesn't just show you the headlines, it also breaks down the political bias and who owns the media outlet you're reading or watching.

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21:48Francis Foster:And on the other side, this story about how more than 60 % of CEOs expect a recession in the next six months currently has no coverage in right-leaning media at all. That's a pretty big blind spot when you're trying to understand where the economy might be headed. If you're someone who values nuance over noise, ground news is essential. It's no wonder they have over 10 ,000 five-star reviews. Right now, Trigonometry viewers can subscribe and get 40 % off their vantage plan. That's the same one I use. Click the link in the description and visit ground.news slash trigonometry. Start thinking for yourself and subscribe at ground.news slash trigonometry.

22:25Konstantin Kisin:One thing nobody tells you about long-form conversations is how much disappears the moment they end. You spend an hour with someone sharp, come out with half a dozen things you need to act on, and by the time you're back at your desk, you're already reconstructing from memory. That's the problem Plaud solves. It's a compact device that captures conversations and turns them into searchable notes, summaries, and insights you can actually use later. You can ask it a specific question like, what were the actual points from that call? And it pulls the moment and the summary instantly. It also recognizes individual voices.

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23:34Konstantin Kisin:Get up to 10 % off at plaud.ai using the code TRIGGER at checkout or click the link in the description. Thank you to Plaud for sponsoring today's episode. Look, I completely agree. And I also think as well, in a world which is as sanitized as ours, which is as safe as ours, where we talk about things like safe spaces, microaggressions, ad nauseum, I think people are desperate to feel something. And one of the easiest ways to feel something is to go online and to see something horrific. And there's a part of, just as you can get addicted to things like hardcore pornography or any other type of images, so you can get addicted to a kind of outrage loop where you see a horrendous image or video from war, which are not difficult to find.

24:25Konstantin Kisin:And so you get that mainlined into your brain and then you feel outrage. Of course you feel outrage. It's natural. If you see the corpse of a child being uncovered from rubble, what human being wouldn't be outraged about that? What human being wouldn't feel angry? What human being wouldn't feel despair? But you're not really going to get those emotions, those visceral feelings from your everyday life? So I think people as well, they get hooked on that and then they feel that they are on this part of this moral crusade so then that they can talk about what's happening and then they can vent and then they can get angry.

25:06Francis Foster:And it gives, I suppose it gives them a sense of meaning and purpose. You know, if you just go to your nine to five and life is kind of boring and blah, blah, blah, you don't feel alive. Yeah. What if you're on a mission together with other people on some kind of moral crusade? And, you know, one of the things that, you know, it's interesting. After our interview came out, we actually went away for a few days for holiday. And we had a chance to meet a few people there. One of them is a former lecturer at one of America's most prestigious universities. And one of the things he said that shocked me, but also didn't shock me, He talked about the fact that in his department, which was in the humanities, and this was a relevant test for them to give their students.

25:51Francis Foster:When they got a new intake of students, they would give them a test, just an induction test, just to find out where they were at. And what they would do is they would ask them to place countries in Europe on a map. They would give them labels and they would give them a blank map and labels to put on. And he said that a third of students, people are going to think a third of students couldn't put the right country, didn't know where Belgium was. No, a third of students put the labels on the Mediterranean Sea. They could not tell the difference between the sea and the land. Right. That's a third of students at one of America's most prestigious universities.

26:26Konstantin Kisin:The world's one of the world's most prestigious.

26:29Francis Foster:Yes. And the other thing he said is they don't have the concept of when things happened in time very often. In other words, to them, ancient Greece and the American War of Independence might have happened 100 years apart. Literally, this is what he said, right? So if you have people whose thinking is disjointed in time and also in space, it means that there are certain things that they're simply not able to understand. And we will see this when we analyze the breaking points video because it just stands out that people that accomplished and with such a big audience don't understand basic things.

27:08Francis Foster:But if you are dislocated in time and space, it means that you have no ability to analyze and assess the thing you're currently seeing in its true context. Because history is context. That's the point. You can't analyze whether what human beings are doing today is right or wrong or good or bad without understanding what human beings have always done. Thomas Sowell is one of the things he always talks about. Their best way to predict human behavior in the future is to notice human behavior in the past, right? So if you're dislocated in this way, then you can't even ask the question of, yes, these things are happening.

27:46Francis Foster:Why are they happening? If civilians are dying in Gaza, why is that? But if you just see the images and you go, oh, that's terrible, then all of that context goes away entirely. Of course.

28:00Konstantin Kisin:And it's also as well, but it also comes down to something else, Constantine. And it's something that I have a constant battle with. And I think everybody has a constant battle with, which is ego, which is you've got to have the humility to realize there are things that you do not understand in this world. I do not comment on whether Israel should stop the war or have they gone too far because the answer is I don't know thank God I've never been in a battlefield thank God I've never had to join an army I am not a military person I'm not a military expert I'm not a geopolitical expert I do not know enough my job is to investigate these things like you do and to talk to people far more learned than ourselves about particular subjects.

28:48Konstantin Kisin:As a result of that, I think I've got more information than your average layman. But I don't presume to understand what we should do when it comes to this war and what the ramifications are going to be afterwards. Because UK, OK, stop the war, right? And then what? And then what? What are we going to do? What's going to happen with Hamas? What's going to happen with Fatah? What's going to happen with... I don't know. I genuinely don't know. Well, if you think about it, nobody does.

29:19Francis Foster:That's why this conflict's been going on for as long as it has. If someone had a solution to the Middle East, we would have had it by now. This is the point. It's very, very difficult. This is why I think we inevitably find ourselves at the point where we need to discuss the breaking points video. This is why, as people will see, they position our interview, which they haven't watched.

29:47Konstantin Kisin:Yeah, because that's the best way to do research, mate, I think. I always, you know what, when I'm researching for a guest, what I like to do is go, is just not do any interview, is not do any for research. It's kind of meta.

30:02Francis Foster:I am laughing, but it is sad. Anyway, they position our interview, which they haven't watched. Yes. As us trying to make Netanyahu look reasonable, when in the last question of the interview, I say to him, how are you actually going to achieve peace? Now that seems to me like a pretty fucking important question to ask a person who's involved in a conflict. What is your peace process that you have in your head given the realities on the ground? And they present that as us making him look moderate. Anyway, let's watch the video and we'll talk about it because this is incredible. Right. Yeah. Fresh off his blockbuster appearance with the NELF boys, Benjamin Netanyahu has now joined the gentleman of Trigonometry for an appearance.

30:51Admittedly, I haven't had a chance. This came out last night, so I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing. Producer Griffin.

30:56Konstantin Kisin:It doesn't turn.

31:01Konstantin Kisin:Do you know what? Maybe people have got a point about new media. I take it back.

31:05Francis Foster:They do. By the way, I should say, the moment I saw this video, Now, you know me. You will confirm this. I never, ever get annoyed about people criticizing us. Ever. Right. Because I'm like, you want to put your opinion out in public or you want to be a public figure or you want to do things in public. People are going to have an opinion. I always give this example. Do you know who Steph Curry is? Yes. So Steph Curry, for people who don't know, is an amazing basketball player in the NBA to the point where he's not just amazing. He's like one of those once in a generation people who actually changed the game.

31:38Francis Foster:Yeah. And by all accounts, he's a great guy, a great family man, a brilliant player, a brilliant teammate. And I fucking hate him. And I do because he changed the game in a way that I don't like. I grew up in the Michael Jordan era where people basically hardly ever shot three points. is Steph Curry can shoot them from a halfway line and it's changed the game entirely. And because of that, I think it's kind of boring. I don't like it as much. I hate this guy who's in it, by all accounts, a great guy. My point being, the moment you are in the public eye, people are going to have their opinions about you.

32:10Francis Foster:They're going to like to hate you. I totally understand and I have no problem with it. When I watched this video, I literally, I fucking exploded. I was like, how can you be so stupid? Their channel has the same number of subscribers as ours. Like they've got a big YouTube channel and they look at them, look at the way they presented it. They purport to be journalists. Right. And this is how they start this video. Admittedly, I haven't watched it, but my producer has picked out a clip that totally misrepresents the interview. Let's talk about it.

32:42Konstantin Kisin:I know. I know. And this is the thing that I found. It's it's almost a satirical parody of new media. Yeah. Well, there's a comedian who I actually want to have on the show called Mark Maron, who is highly critical of new media. And to be fair, I think he makes a number of good points and he's very funny about it. But this is like something like this is like a sketch Mark would write. If the SNL did a sketch, this is the opening line. Now, I haven't seen this thing. I haven't seen this interview. But listen to me make a half an hour video about it where I commented about it in depth.

33:17Francis Foster:Do you know, there's a very famous Soviet joke about this where there was a poet called Brodsky who was he was being prosecuted in Russia, in Soviet Russia, for basically having the wrong opinion. And at his trial, one of the people said, I haven't listened to his poetry, but I just like to say this is like, how are you? Anyway, let's let's let's see what opinion she has, having not watched the interview. Yeah. producer griffin pulled a couple clips that he thought were interesting um let's go ahead and take a listen to this first one this is constantine saying basically listen i don't think there's any peace possible with these people in gaza because they are quote-unquote jew haters let's take a listen i didn't say no peace is possible i'm saying how are you going to get to peace as i said before that's what a journalist is supposed to ask the prime minister of israel how are you planning to get peace when this is a reality on the ground by the way forgive me for calling the people who support Hamas overwhelmingly Jew haters I mean is that a contested claim I don't I don't understand what she's saying

34:27Konstantin Kisin:is she saying they're not Jew haters I think if you want the river to the sea Palestine to be free which is the obliteration of the Israeli state you are a Jew

34:38Francis Foster:Has she not seen clips of the education system in Gaza and videos on TV where they're literally teaching their children that Jews are like rats?

34:47Konstantin Kisin:Yeah. And let's take the word teaching and put indoctrinated in it.

34:52Francis Foster:Has she not seen the polling from Gaza? Does she not know what Hamas actually stands for?

34:58Konstantin Kisin:But this is the thing. This is people who comment about the Middle East, who know nothing about the Middle East. it's why you know and douglas murray got in trouble for this when he said the immortal words you've never been but as somebody who has lebanese heritage and talks to their lebanese family people don't understand that the way people think in that part of the world and the attitudes they have are very very very different from the attitudes people hold in the west but you can

35:26Francis Foster:think that what israel is doing is evil and wrong and terrible in every way and blah blah blah but You can't deny that people in Gaza overwhelmingly hate Israel and Jews. Yes. That's not a contestable claim. That's just a statement of fact.

35:44Konstantin Kisin:Absolutely. Absolutely. But again, it goes back to, and we've got this interview coming out with Tom Holland, which is absolutely brilliant, where Tom talks about the fact that even if you're an atheist, even if you think to yourself that you are not Christian in any way, you have been raised into a society with Christian morals and values and a Christian outlook. That is the waters that you swim in. And so naturally, in our culture and our society, we think that everybody else is raised with Christian values and morals. And that is quite simply not the case. Right. And people don't seem to understand that.

36:23Konstantin Kisin:They seem to think, and this is the reason why we thought we could bring democracy to the Middle East, That's why we could go out and that people would all of a sudden want democracy and Western values. But that is a form of arrogance because we believe everyone thinks like us, but they don't because they've been raised with a different value, a different culture and a different religion.

36:45Francis Foster:They hate you. They hate Israel and they hate Jews. How are you going to have a peaceful coexistence with those people, particularly? There were successful programs of de-radicalization in some of the Gulf states, which are actually proving to break this prototype of Arab societies that cannot seize the future. I'm not saying they're model democracies, mind you. They're not. But they certainly want to seize modernity and not go back to the savage and early medievalism. evilism. Please tell me how Constantine is making Netanyahu sound more moderate than him. And like, yeah, just the idea that, okay, you know, these people hate you.

37:30Yeah, gee, I wonder why. Maybe it's because they've been like occupied and being starved and bombed to pieces for, you know, and not even just post-October 7th. But also, Sagar, you can speak to this.

37:42Francis Foster:Do you think she's read the Quran? No. Do you think she understands the history of how Christians and Jews have always been treated in the Muslim world? No. Christians and Jews are, by definition, second-class citizens. It doesn't mean they were killed necessarily or whatever, but people of the book, Christians and Jews, in Muslim society throughout history were, by definition, second-class citizens, by definition looked down upon, by definition having to pay a different tax, use a different, you know, like ride a donkey instead of a horse, all of this other stuff. she thinks that many Muslims hate Jews because of Gaza.

38:28Konstantin Kisin:It's somebody, and again, we go back to this, who's got no understanding of the Middle East. My family, my grandfather's family, are from Lebanon. They are, if you look at South America, in particular Colombia and Venezuela, it has hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, Syrian, and Middle Eastern Christians. Why is that? Did they just go there because they fancied a nice little beach holiday? You know, they liked, you know, dancing along with the maracas. I know that's Mexican, but you get my point. They liked a little bit of samba and a carnival. No, they fled for their lives because they knew what would happen.

39:07Francis Foster:Was Israel attacking them?

39:09Konstantin Kisin:Might well have been, mate, yeah.

39:11Francis Foster:But that's the sort of thing that she probably thinks. Yeah. She probably thinks the entire Middle East, which was completely Christian, completely Christian and now isn't, is because of Israel. Yeah.

39:23Konstantin Kisin:And it's a complete historical illiteracy. It's a not understanding of the Middle East and its history, which is complicated and tragic and bloodsourced.

39:33Francis Foster:The people who are the precursors to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, right? They joined forces with Hitler before Israel even existed. Yeah. like what is she talking about but you see this goes back to what i was talking about which has

39:49Konstantin Kisin:been with argument a and argument b and if you want to be with argument a let's just call it that's the side that breaking points are on the anti-war the stop the war the whatever else then what you have to do is you have to be blind to the history and to the and to what has happened

40:08Francis Foster:She's making me fucking appreciate Dave Smith. At least she's read something. Yeah. Like, how is she? It's so frustrating because, look, like I said, people are allowed to criticize, allowed to have their own opinion. But if you're going to comment on something like this and you don't know anything, how are you called crystal ball and you have no knowledge or insight? How did that happen? And by the way, if it sounds like we're slagging them off, right, the moment we saw this video released, we had our team reach out to them and say, I would be very happy to come on and discuss this. They read our email and guess what?

40:40Francis Foster:No response. Yeah. Right. Anyway, this is making me angry. Keep watching. It's October 7th. But also, Sagar, you can speak to this. How many times throughout history have we seen bitter enemies who hate each other? And guess what? When you're able to come up with some sort of a peace deal and have a coexistence, you know, that fades over. So we can see it with our own country. You know, we were bitter enemies, obviously, went to war with Germany and Japan. And now these are some of our closest allies. Well, we can see it inside of our own country.

41:09Francis Foster:Did you hear what she just said? Did you hear what she just said? When you have some sort of peace plan, then you can come together like we did with Germany and Japan. You drop two nuclear bombs on Japan and you flatten Germany.

41:29Konstantin Kisin:And arguably the bombing was worse.

41:33Francis Foster:It was way worse. And now you're presenting that as the way to approach Gaza, where you're criticizing Netanyahu for what he's doing. What? I don't think anyone's ever seen me. This is aspirated. I am not regularly confronted with this level of retardation. What is she talking about?

41:55Konstantin Kisin:But look, again, it goes back to a historical illiteracy. Because if you knew about the Second World War, if you knew...

42:04Francis Foster:That's what I asked Netanyahu about. That's why I was saying to him, what is your approach to peace, given that you've got a radicalised population like you had in Nazi Germany and like you had in Japan? It's almost like they didn't watch the video, mate. In Germany, after the war, if you wanted to get a food parcel as a German, you had to go and watch a movie about the Holocaust to get it. That was the level of deradicalisation that had to happen. Yeah.

42:34Francis Foster:Help me, Francis. How is this possible? How are these people talking on YouTube? And I went in the... I confess, I don't usually read the comments. I went in the comments expecting people to obviously go, this is so stupid. They'll all agree with her.

42:51Francis Foster:Help me.

42:54Konstantin Kisin:Help me.

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44:09Konstantin Kisin:When she couldn't find clean, organic, convenient organ meat supplements that met her standards, she made them herself. This is a company that cuts no corners. They're fanatical about sourcing, transparent about every ingredient, and absolutely committed to health over hype. This is what real nourishment looks like. Check them out at hershorganic.com slash trigger or find the link in the description of this episode. Look, this is, and again, to me, this is the issue with new media and this is the issue with the internet in that you can have these views and opinions, but if you don't have people to challenge, if you don't have people for the opposite side, then what happens is you get these views and opinions and they're nonsensical, but because they're not robustly challenged, people don't point out in the floors with your argument.

45:02Francis Foster:That seemed to happen to Ann Coulter in this very interview, if you remember. But Saga knows history, right? And he just sits there and nods along. Yeah. What's going on?

45:18Our own country, North and South. Took a long time to shake out. That's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, that is the Israeli line, which drives me more insane than any other, is we can't be expected to live next to these people. No, actually, you can. If India has to live next to Pakistan, you can do it too, all right? Yeah, they both have nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction. If Iran has to live next to Saudi Arabia, then so can you. I could go on forever. Northern Ireland and Ireland. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how many of these have we now lived through? They're like, they actually, Israeli exception is that they want to be the only nation in the history of the world that actually is not required to live next to the people.

45:58Konstantin Kisin:What, again, that speaks to you. So you're talking about Ireland and Northern Ireland. You know, that Ireland was a civil war, but that is very different. And by the way, Irish family, Irish heritage, all the rest of it. I know a little bit about the history of Ireland. That is very, very different. I find it actually really frustrating when people compare Northern Ireland to what is happening. Now, of course, there was hatred. Of course, people were dying. Of course, there were murders. There were bombs. There were terrorism. It was tragic, awful. The history of Ireland is particularly blood-soaked and brutal.

46:31Konstantin Kisin:But it does not compare to the Middle East. It's a completely different thing. You have one religion in Ireland split into two factions, Protestantism, Catholicism. In the Middle East, you have Islam and Judaism. You don't only have Islam, you have Islamism. You cannot compare, in my view, Christian extremism, which is what you have, and Islamism. Islamism, which is what Hamas is, is a type of religious ideology that celebrates the death of their own children in order to achieve a political outcome. You get extremists in Northern Ireland, you get people like Bobby Sands who will go on hangar strike and will die and will not eat for his political cause.

47:23Konstantin Kisin:I doubt Bobby Sands would have wanted his own children to die of starvation and to see them suffer. Hamas and Islamists see that as a noble outcome and something to be celebrated. That is highly different.

47:39Francis Foster:And also, I wasn't advocating in my question to Netanyahu that they shouldn't live next to people in Gaza, nor was that what Netanyahu was saying. He was saying we need a program of deradicalization so these people don't want to kill us all the time, then we can live in peace. That's his mission, as he believes it to be. So no one is saying, at least they're not saying, Netanyahu is not saying and we're not saying, that they can't. That wasn't what was said in that interview. No. I don't know what they're talking about. No, no.

48:12Konstantin Kisin:And again, it goes back to what are you doing is taking clips from an interview without context. You haven't done the work. You don't have the background understanding. If you take something and go, look, this is a clip from the interview just for the audience. You have to know that this was discussed. This was discussed. This was they did the same thing with me where they took. We'll get to it. And so you just go, actually, you don't know what you're talking about.

48:39Francis Foster:They don't.

48:40Konstantin Kisin:It's like...

48:42Francis Foster:And by the way, we should say, they're intelligent people. Yeah. I assume.

48:48Konstantin Kisin:Yeah, no, they are.

48:48Francis Foster:They are, right? But I guess ignorance combined with intelligence is actually the worst outcome.

48:56Konstantin Kisin:Absolutely, because if you're smart and you're ignorant, then what you can do is you can logically argue your way into any position, which is what we've seen with a lot of the kind of the progressive hyper-liberal movements and what you've seen with the woke right, where you're smart so you can go, oh, you know, diversity of our strength is bad. Therefore, hey, let's all support white people.

49:20Francis Foster:Nothing wrong with supporting white people, but we don't want identity politics for any group, really. Yeah, exactly.

49:25Konstantin Kisin:Yeah, I don't mean supporting white people. I mean, let's now get revenge, which is what it is.

49:31Francis Foster:That's what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. better question is how you know palestinians after this genocide of them could be expected to live next to the israelis but but that's something we should expect of them too we're like listen no you got a shit deal but you have to live here that's exactly right i mean that's the nature of you know of humanity that's the nature of being able to have some sort of an agreement and yes over time not to say that there won't be continue to be tensions as there are you know, in Ireland and Northern Ireland, like there continue to be tensions. But the idea that, oh, no, you couldn't possibly live next to these is just preposterous and historically illiterate.

50:07There was another interesting section where the other host, Francis, is pressing Netanyahu a bit on some of the comments of, you know, the Smotrichs and the Ben Gavirs. Let's go ahead and take a listen to how that went down.

50:19Konstantin Kisin:There are critics of yours, Prime Minister, who will say, well, part of the reason that Israel is losing the propaganda war is when you have ministers like Shmortrik making incendiary or inflammatory comments, and there doesn't seem to be any particular pushback from your government to this. They go, well, what does a prime minister really believe? Well, what I believe I say in a parliamentary system, people are free to say. Sometimes they say things they don't quite mean. It happens all the time. You have a very active fringe.

50:53Francis Foster:Prime Minister, forgive me, but these aren't parliamentarians. These are people who are part of your government. And they remain part of your government after they say these things that to many people, even your friends, sound a little bit like ethnic cleansing is being discussed. Well, we're not discussing ethnic cleansing. And to the extent that we have these conversations around the cabinet, the security cabinet, that is actually not being discussed by these people. But Prime Minister, may I just interrupt?

51:17Konstantin Kisin:When you have your finance minister making a speech and talking about occupying Gaza, and there doesn't seem to be any pushback within the government, people quite rightly, in my opinion, would say, well, surely aren't you condoning that type of rhetoric? No. And that is exacerbating Israel's PR problem. I disagree completely. When somebody says that and I'm asked, is that your policy? And I said, no, it's not my policy. I don't intend to build the settlements or communities in Gaza and not Israeli ones. I want a non-Israeli civilian governance after that is committed to living in peace with us.

51:52it is so unbelievably dishonest at this point to still pretend like that's not your policy and like you condemn it and you have nothing to do with it but you also gotta give me credit because i called that this would be exactly how he was i asked crystal yesterday democracy yes i was like fringe inflammatory rhetoric blah blah blah i was like how is he gonna square that because it's true but i had not i didn't put myself in the mind of bb to be like yes we have free speech we have a vibrant society where we allow such things. But I mean, to Francis's credit, he was like, no, it would be like somebody else.

52:26Francis Foster:You want me to pause it because they gave you credit?

52:27Konstantin Kisin:Yeah, exactly. You know what, mate? I take it back. He's all right. Crystal fair enough, mate. Saga, if you're watching this, we'll go for a beer. Non-alcoholic, probably. It would be like somebody else using Ilhan Omar's statements. I mean, yeah, you could say that. Like, look, we have 435 members of Congress. One of them, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Ilhan, they say some crazy shit sometimes, whatever. But that is not the same whenever those people are actually in power, members of the government. And when the government policy reflects their desire. And then government policy reflects their desire to the point where they're handing out weapons in the West Bank and or U.S.

53:06dollars, which they then use to prop up their expansionist regime. Yeah. That's very different than, oh, we have free speech. Yeah. This is the thing about Bibi. He's the master. It's not like he has always in his perfect Philadelphia born English. You know, he understands which parts are distasteful, you know, to the U.S. public. And so in English, he does not endorse any of this stuff. But again, Google in the age of Google Translate and A.I., if I will, you can easily dub the stuff he says in Hebrew. And it's the same stuff. That's right. That's the stuff that drives me crazy, too. Yeah, and that's part of what I think the framing of the question.

53:46I have all kinds of issues with the framing of the question. First of all, the idea that Israel just has a PR problem is just disgusting, in my opinion, genocide. We're going to get to that with Meghan. She said that, too. She's like, the Palestinians are masters of propaganda. And that, you know, oh, the problem is just this incendiary rhetoric. And why don't you do more to condemn this incendiary rhetoric? Well, because he supports it. because he is the one implementing and pushing forward the policy that they want to see. I mean, we're talking right now as Gaza City is...

54:17Francis Foster:Was there more you want to... No, no, no. Is that it? You're happy to leave it there?

54:21Konstantin Kisin:Yeah, that's pretty much it. Apart from when she says that I'm one level above the Nelk boys, that we're one level above the Nelk boys.

54:30Francis Foster:Well, the Nelk boys have a bigger audience, so what are you going to do?

54:33Konstantin Kisin:But I found that very interesting because her criticisms of me and for us is the framing of the question. The framing of the question refers to a comment that Benjamin Netanyahu said and was talking about literally before that. That's why we framed the question.

54:49Francis Foster:Yeah, but she hasn't seen the interview, so how could she know that?

54:52Konstantin Kisin:So you're just going, you're making criticisms about the way that we're presenting the interview and the questions that we are putting forward for an interview that you haven't watched. So how can you possibly criticize? But again, what it goes back to is the lack of journalistic rigor, number one. But also, and this is a problem with journalism, and it reminds me of comedians when they only played to the comedians at the back of the room. And they didn't care about the audience. And you're going, you want us to behave in a way so that I look for your approval. I look for the approval of the people who despise and hate Israel or Benjamin Etta, Yahu, or condemn his actions, which fair enough, you are more than welcome to that.

55:47Konstantin Kisin:But here's the thing. I am not and we are not going to conduct an interview seeking your approval. I don't care about your approval. It doesn't interest me actually one way or another. What we care about here is going after the truth and exposing the person sitting in front of us. And again, not exposing him to be a far right big or whatever else, to expose the way he thinks, how he thinks and why he thinks the way that he does. And treating the audience like adults for them to make their own mind up.

56:20Francis Foster:You know, and it speaks to a comment that a very good friend of mine who will remain nameless because I think he'd probably prefer to still have a career. He messaged me. He called me afterwards when the interview came out and he said, you know something, I've understood something that I hadn't quite thought of before, which is the entire Western world, particularly people like this, we're kind of like doing queers for Palestine at scale. In other words, we are people who are sitting in comfort and safety and having all of these very clever, sophisticated opinions about a country that actually is fighting for its survival.

57:05Francis Foster:That's what's happening. And if something like October 7th had happened on Crystal's doorstep, I don't imagine she'd be taking the position that she's taking. no and this is when we talk to Netanyahu this is one of the things that I go and people can like or dislike it but it's a fact I think he sees himself as the leader of his people at a time when he has a choice between allowing their destruction or ensuring their survival that's what's happened and you can agree with that you can disagree with that but that is where he's coming at it from and you've got to understand his history I mean he's I think he was in the special forces.

57:47His brother died in an anti-terrorist hostage rescue mission.

57:53Francis Foster:He himself served. So this isn't a guy who did PPE at Oxford and then went into politics. This is a guy who's been fighting for Israel his entire life. And I tried to get out of him in our interview, but you can see it wasn't going anywhere, which is like, how did you feel when October... There There was no feeling there at all. It was like, you got the decision, you know, which is what happened. You know, it's so interesting. I spoke to a number of people who are not remotely political who watched that interview, and they all said the same thing. Do you know what they said? It's weird. It's weird, and this will be unpleasant to a lot of people to hear who don't agree with what Israel is doing.

58:36Francis Foster:They all said the same thing. This is what a prime minister looks like. All right, people, it's trivia time. Financial trivia, to be exact. Do you know what retirement asset grew the most in the first six months of President Trump's second term? Many of you probably guessed the stock market was the best since what's backing the most retirement accounts in America today is that. But from January the 21st through July 21st, the Dow Jones grew less than 1%. What about Bitcoin? President Trump loves Bitcoin, so it must have performed well, right? Well, it did. It grew nearly 15%, an impressive six-month investment.

59:12Francis Foster:but it's not the number one. The heavyweight champion was, wait for it, gold and silver. Gold and silver are considered to be safe haven investments so many of you will be surprised to learn they both grew by a whopping 25 % in President Trump's first six months. 25 % in six months. Not bad for safe haven investments. Our partners, Augusta Precious Metals, specializes in helping Americans move wealth and retirement into self-directed IRAs backed by physical precious metals like gold and silver. They are consistently scored as the most trusted gold IRA company by major financial publications, and they enjoy an A-plus rating with a better business bureau.

59:53Francis Foster:In a world where governments print money and rack up debt like it's going out of fashion, I like assets you can hold in your hand. That's why I've always taken steps to secure my family's future with gold. If you have over$100 ,000 in your current IRA, 401k, or other retirement account, Visit TriggerGold.com, that's TriggerGold.com, to learn how Augusta Precious Metals can become your lifelong self-directed IRA partner. And the truth is, man, and this is the truth, if our country, this country, was in danger in the way that Israel was, do you want Keir Starmer in charge? Or do you want Benjamin Netanyahu?

1:00:35Francis Foster:I know which one I'm picking. You know what I mean? And so I just think a lot of this is people, as I've said many, many times before, in air-conditioned studios having opinions about things that they demonstrably don't understand from this excessive empathy and an inability to contextualize things in history. And also to actually, you know, empathy is partly about putting yourselves in the shoes of other people. Put yourselves in the shoes of people who have to live next door to the people who committed October the 7th. How might you be thinking? What might you be demanding on their, where it's on your big YouTube channel?

1:01:11Francis Foster:What might you be asking for? We saw it with 9-11. I don't remember a measured response.

1:01:16Konstantin Kisin:No.

1:01:17Francis Foster:I don't remember people being all that concerned about innocent Iraqis, and especially in America. In Britain, we really pushed back against them as much as we could. And Tony Blair was bullied into it, I believe, and went along with it. In America, there was no such reticence. They attacked us. We're going to go and destroy the people who did. Now, I don't think they handled it very well, but I also am not a hypocrite enough to sit here and be like, well, Israel can't go and destroy the government and organization that did this. And if those people are putting their own civilians in harm's way to win the PR war, that's not Israel's fault.

1:01:56Konstantin Kisin:What this is to me, and this is Rob Hedneson's idea, and we've had him on the show many times, and it's a luxury belief. it's a luxury belief if you had if america had hezbollah firing rockets from mexico that would

1:02:12Francis Foster:be no mexico yeah that would be it would just be a glass sheet yeah that would be no mexico yeah

1:02:19Konstantin Kisin:and what's very interesting and people may not know this is so hezbollah they're a terrorist but they're also a drug running organization they're in venezuela venezuela has very close links with Iran. It has very close links with Russia, with China, but particularly with Iran. There is a little island off the coast of Venezuela, which is part of Venezuelan territory called the Island of Margarita. At the moment, there is a Hezbollah training camp in Margarita. That is just open knowledge. Everybody knows that in Venezuela. Trump is going to come down very hard on Venezuela in the next few months and years.

1:02:59Konstantin Kisin:And they're talking about it openly and honestly. Now, why is that? Is it because they hate Venezuelans or the Venezuelan people? Or is it because they know that there is a direct security risk having a Hezbollah training camp about three and a half hour flight away from Florida and Miami? It's very simple. And this idea that this is why and I understand with America, because if you live in a nation as powerful and as geographically isolated as the United States, it gives you a certain, well, why should I care? Why should we get involved? You know, this is awful. And I get that. And I understand that.

1:03:33Francis Foster:It's one of the things that makes America so great is they don't have to worry about being invaded. They don't have to worry about their land being taken over by enemies and their people being destroyed. They don't have to worry about that. Most other countries in the world have to worry about it.

1:03:46Konstantin Kisin:Absolutely. But if you live in a country where you have another nation as powerful as Iran, using openly genocidal language, wiping off the face of the earth, etc., etc., etc., funding terrorist organizations that fire rockets into your country that also fund Hamas and who then commit the atrocities that was October the 7th. Iran directly funds Hamas. you can make a very good strong argument that essentially Iran indirectly or directly actually directly funded October 7th.

1:04:30Francis Foster:By all accounts, by the way, just while we're on that, just to be clear, by all accounts, what we know, I think so far, is they did not know that it was specifically going to happen, but they were aware of a general plan.

1:04:43Konstantin Kisin:Absolutely. And if you give money to an organization that openly advocates for wiping Israel off the map, I doubt you'd wake up the next day See October the 7th And like oh that was a bit of an overreaction

1:04:56Francis Foster:And It's just so obvious Like the suffering in Gaza So people what people tend to do Is they go look at the suffering in Gaza Therefore and then they make a bunch of Completely unconnected statements The suffering in Gaza is awful It's awful It's terrible I never used to understand why people would say this Before I became a parent when you become a parent, you experience a kind of very, I was going to say very powerful, it's not very powerful, overwhelming, debilitating vulnerability. And this is why when you see politicians go to the scene of a mass shooting, as we've tragically just had in America, as we're recording this or whatever, and they always say, I'm a parent to the parents.

1:05:42Francis Foster:And what they're trying to communicate is, I understand your pain, because I can imagine, because it's every parent's worst nightmare. Of course.

1:05:53Francis Foster:I can't understand, but I can just about imagine what it's like to have your family killed. And I know people in Ukraine who've had that happen. It's awful. But the question you have to ask is, why is this continuing? Why is it still going on? This could have ended. This could have ended on October the 8th, for God's sake. All Hamas had to do was return the hostages that they stole the people they stole from Israel, many of whom have died, and the remaining ones of whom are being held in horrific conditions and being forced to dig their own graves, for God's sake, and surrender the terrorists who took them.

1:06:30That's all they had to do, and they haven't,

1:06:32Francis Foster:and they still don't. They could end this war tomorrow, and they don't. Why is that? That's the question you have to ask. Why do the people who have the ability to end this war today refuse to do so even though it means tens of thousands of their fellow citizens being killed is it possible that they care more about their political goals than they do care about those

1:06:55Konstantin Kisin:civilians absolutely and this is what the people this is what people refuse to talk about when they talk about this it's why i find myself getting so frustrated when and when and they also compare because there are extremists on the israeli side let's just be honest about of course there's extremists on the Israeli side. You know, I've been reading about the settlers. That is something I am not very comfortable with. Me neither. At all. And I don't think you are. And there's a lot of people who are pro-Israel who think that actually the behavior by the settlers is not good. It's not good. You look at some of the language used by Smotrich and Ben-Gavir.

1:07:32Konstantin Kisin:I condemn that language. I condemn that language. Absolutely. No uncertain terms. Which is why we made the decision to challenge. challenged Benjamin Netanyahu about it, and we felt that was important. But you can't tell me the extremism is the same on both sides. You cannot tell me that the extremism of the settlers is equal to the extremism of October 7th. It's not.

1:07:59Francis Foster:You can't tell me that. It's not. It's not. I mean, these people fundamentally don't understand Islamism. They just don't, and they don't care to. They much prefer to live in a world where all cultures... It's the same moral relativism that we saw from the progressives this entire time. All cultures are the same. All cultures are equal. No, they're fucking not. No. They're just not. And if you want to understand how they're not, look at Europe. What happens as the demographics of Europe change the world? Guess what? Sexual assault goes up. I wonder why that is. Is it possible that importing lots of people from cultures that think women are basically cattle, is it possible that that might increase bad treatment of women in our country

1:08:44Konstantin Kisin:and people are very uncomfortable about this i remember i was on i can see you've got some kind of joke no no because it's a true story it's funny because i was saying you know we were talking i went on a date with this girl and she was like you know the you know i think it's disgusting how people say old cultures are you know some cultures are better than others i'm like well where would you rather live here when we're going for a nice Japanese meal in shortage or under Taliban rule in Afghanistan and Afghanistan and that was the end of the day he never recovered but but that's how people think they they refuse to see this that's why

1:09:22Francis Foster:we've had mass waves of illegal immigration from cultures that we don't want here because that's how people think they think that see this is the problem right um this is the central myth that i think liberalism has created and i'm a big fan of liberalism but i think this is one of its big flaws that whole thing about all men are created equal in the u.s constitution what i think it was meant to mean was that all people should be given equal opportunity absolutely Right. But people aren't equal. And your culture, I mean, it's one of the reasons you want your child to get a good education and you want them to be raised and you want to raise them well, etc.

1:10:07Francis Foster:Because you recognize that a failure to educate them properly and a failure to bring them up properly will make them into a worse person. Right. Now, what if you have a whole culture that's teaching children to be a worse person or a better person? That's what we mean when we say not all cultures are equal And that's just an observable fact It's just a reality that you can see before you

1:10:33Konstantin Kisin:And this is what people don't want to engage with And the reason they don't want to engage with it Is because it's desperately uncomfortable

1:10:40Francis Foster:It's the central myth, like I said

1:10:42Konstantin Kisin:Yeah, it's desperately uncomfortable It's not particularly pleasant Where you have to go These values are incompatible with our civilization And they are They just are. If you import a culture, people from a culture who believe that homosexuality is a sin and these people should be executed, I don't know how you can have that and a gay pride parade. I don't know how you have those two things together.

1:11:11Francis Foster:You don't.

1:11:12Konstantin Kisin:And you can't.

1:11:14Francis Foster:And people don't want to admit that. I mean, the gay pride parades are not a massive concern for me. But there's some... Okay, but you know what I mean. I know exactly what you mean, which is, like, this is the irony, right? It's like the people that we're talking about would want Crystal Ball never to show her face in public and never to speak. That's what they want. And yet she's acting like we're the same. We're just not. We just don't view the world in the same way.

1:11:46Konstantin Kisin:We don't. And this comes back to, again, my grandfather was originally a Lebanese heritage. I don't think people in the West understand how deep anti-Semitism runs through the Middle East. And by the way, my grandfather was a Lebanese Christian, a Lebanese Christian, but he was anti-Semitic and hated Israel. Now, if you think that comes from a Lebanese Christian, can you imagine what it comes from? the depths of hatred in other countries with people who are Islamists, they will stop at nothing in order to see Israel wiped off the map.

1:12:25Francis Foster:And you know what's funny about this? I mean, this is the great irony of this whole thing. Muslims understand this. Muslims know all this. That's why the UAE and Saudi Arabia and many, many former Soviet Muslim countries are doing everything within their power to crack down on Islamism. I mean, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are working incredibly hard because they don't have this political correctness bullshit. So they're like, of course, these are the extremists. These are crazy people, right? They're crazy religious ideologues who want to take a literal interpretation of the Quran and destroy our entire society and turn this into a caliphate because that's what they see as the Quran saying, right?

1:13:08Francis Foster:And they know this, so they fight it. they resist it. But Western people are the ones that are pretending it's not. It's amazing. I follow all these Muslim influencers on Twitter that I speak to who are working extremely hard to get their societies to actually, I was going to use the word progressive, tainted by recent political movements, but that are actually moving towards a much more sensible direction direction in places like the UAE, in places like Saudi Arabia, in places like Uzbekistan and others, right? And they're not doing so because they believe in democracy. They don't believe in democracy.

1:13:46Francis Foster:These are authoritarian countries, but they're doing it because they know. They know that Islamism is not compatible with Muslim countries ruled in a kind of normal way, because it just doesn't work, because these people want a theocratic, fascist state covering the entire Middle East and as much of the rest of the world as they possibly can. And they will stop at nothing to achieve it. That's not compatible with anything. It's not even compatible with a Muslim country. That's why they're fighting it. And yet you have these people pretending that that's not the case.

1:14:19Konstantin Kisin:And that's why, another reason why they fight it is because more Muslims die at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists than anybody else.

1:14:27Francis Foster:Right, of course. Because there is a civil war happening within the Muslim world between the extremists and the rest. the people who believe in nation states, you know, authoritarianly ruled by monarchies mostly, but nonetheless, right? And the extremists. You've got these two sides. And no one in the Muslim world is pretending that this isn't happening. Yeah. Because you have to have no brain to pretend it. But if you have no knowledge of this entire situation, you just go, well, it's the same.

1:14:55Konstantin Kisin:I'd push back on that. I don't think it's because they have no brain. I think it's because they have imbibed an ideology and a worldview, which means that they simply cannot understand and see. They are blind to the nuances. What's the difference between that and what I said? Because I think it's worse. I genuinely do. I think it's worse because if somebody doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand something, I think that's forgivable. Yeah, that's true. Whereas I think if someone is willingly blind and doesn't want to or ignores it, I think that's willful and that's far worse.

1:15:35Francis Foster:Yeah, I think the truth is that that myth is breaking down very quickly. And I think we're not going to be able to pretend that everyone was the same for much longer just because it doesn't work. No. It doesn't work in practice. And I think that's what we're seeing in Britain. I think that's what we're seeing across Europe. We're seeing it everywhere now. People are, you know, I think it was, again, a brilliant Thomas Sowell line, which is you can ignore reality. You can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. And that's where we are.

1:16:03Konstantin Kisin:That's exactly where we are. And I actually think with some of the, you know, like I've had a couple of gigs canceled and I've had people really push back. I've had people send me actually quite unpleasant messages saying horrible things to me. But I think now what this conversation has actually showed me is that I think the reason the pushback is so vehement is because deep down that they know it. You wouldn't get this angry if you didn't realize that something was amiss with your line of argument. You wouldn't get this furious. You wouldn't get this censorious if you didn't at some deep emotional level understand that your argument was deeply flawed and it was being exposed day in and day out.

1:16:50Konstantin Kisin:You can't keep going down this path and you can't keep advocating these positions without being aware that actually what is really going on is you effectively signing your own civilisation's death warrant, which is what I think we're going to be saying. That was a nice positive point to end on, mate. It is what it is. I was arrested for holding one of the most basic fundamental truths that we've known forever. Children are not born in the wrong body. Their immediate instinct was to call us fascists. And Chris asked, well, what about our free speech? We have a right to freedom of speech here, don't we?

1:17:26And the police said, it doesn't work like that here. And we were arrested, strip searched, put in cells for a few hours.

1:17:34Francis Foster:Why were you strip searched? If I get criminal charges, it will change my life quite substantially. It's quite a high cost for free speech. It's not good. It's not. It's not good at all.