Just last week, a Palestinian American teenager was shot dead by an Israeli settler outside of Ramallah. And here to talk to me about this today is Cam Katsky. Cam, this is really crazy news. And the fact that it's not a leading story and that we don't hear politicians speaking about this is really alarming. I mean, really only in a situation like the West Bank occupation can an American citizen be killed overseas and the United States government not respond with some sort of overwhelming diplomatic force. But I recently just came back from the West Bank. And one of the things I've learned is that international law just does not apply to the state of Israel. The standards to which we hold other countries. I feel like we just sort of baby Israel. We just give them all the gifts that they want, never really punish them and rarely even address the human rights violations that are happening. Yeah, I find it really troubling that when you know somebody is a war criminal, like we know Vladimir Putin's a war criminal and you have politicians will say, we cannot negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Of course, Trump does because he's a one trick pony and all of that. But when When it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu, he's just provided all of this permission structure. And he is a war criminal, an absolute war criminal that started this war to avoid going to prison. And it's just amazing how little coverage it gets in Western media. So you were Jewish, correct? Yes. Okay. So you went over there. have you always had this feeling about israel or has this been an evolution for you i was raised to see israel as this sort of fairy tale disneyland where they can never really do anything wrong and it was so interesting because once uh the genocide in guza started i realized that i was raised to believe that every country has its flaws you know you can criticize the united states government without thinking that everybody in the u.s should be murdered but somehow Israel can just do nothing wrong. And I suppose it took me a very long time to realize that that was the case. But as it pertains to Netanyahu, one of the really important things to recognize while looking at the Israeli government is there's no sort of Navalny-esque peacetime Netanyahu waiting in the wings to take over. A lot of people, when they talk about what's happening in Israel, people who are ultimately supportive of the Israeli project, but do have their criticisms of Netanyahu, they like to act like BB is the problem here. But if you listen to the Israeli parliamentarians, if you look at the right-wing parties that run the state of Israel, Netanyahu is actually one of the better people at PR in the Israeli government. You see people like Itamar Ben-Gavir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich is in charge of the West Bank right now. And he was wanted for basically terror in the state of Israel only a couple of decades ago. And now, of course, he's running the West Bank annexation. And having been there, having seen it, I can tell you, even if you took Gaza out of the equation, which, of course, we cannot under any circumstances that aren't rhetorical, the West Bank annexation is still one of the biggest human rights abuses in the world right now. And a lot of people don't even really know the difference between Gaza and the West Bank. I literally got back from the West Bank and people were asking me how my Gaza trip was. So it's important that we raise awareness for these things and recognize that the next in Yahoo is likely going to be a lot worse. That's what I think about Trump, too. I think we're incubating something really bad here. And I think Israel is incubating something really bad as well. And I think we have to have these honest conversations about it. But let's educate my viewer and listener and myself about this. So when you hear Israeli settler, that doesn't sound that provocative. A settler, that sounds like a word that somebody's settling in somewhere. But actually, these settlers are very aggressive and provocative, and they are actually kicking people out of their homes. Is that correct? Yes, and also committing these rampant acts of terror. I mean, when I have heard the thought, when I would engage with the concept of somebody settling before, I've just thought of everybody who has decided to date me. And it took me a long time to recognize that there was this form of settler colonialism that directly breeds violence in the occupied West Bank. But basically, Palestine is these two different areas right next to what we know as Israel. It is Gaza and it is the West Bank. Gaza is governed by Hamas, a very extremist party that had billions of dollars funneled into it by Benjamin Netanyahu from Qatar because Netanyahu was so opposed to Palestinian statehood that he knew if he can divide leadership between Gaza and the West Bank, it would be significantly harder and basically impossible for Palestine to get a state. So he said, OK, Hamas is this extremist party. It this movement built on fighting back and shooting back at Israel that been shooting at these people for so long The West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority which is basically just a diet IDF They will stand by and watch while the IDF commits these human rights abuses And Hamas was able to gain so much popularity in Gaza because they said, hey guys, you know these people who have been attacking you for generations? We're going to attack back. So the West Bank right now is a very different political situation. But ultimately, the state of Israel's plans for Gaza are the same as the plans for the West Bank. It's just a very different means by which they're going to achieve it, because Gaza bears virtually zero religious significance to the Zionist movement. It's basically just beachfront property where Donald Trump wants to build casinos and a Disneyland with Jared Kushner. The West Bank is the ancient kingdom of Judea and Samaria. That has all the religious significance to the Zionist movement. So while they are effectively snapping Gaza's neck, they are slowly choking the West Bank out. And unfortunately, from what I saw there and from what we're seeing in the news, this is catching rapid speed and the situation is just completely deteriorating. But again, people just don't understand Palestine. People do not understand how it works. I went there, there were gay bars, there were people walking around in leather pants and makeup vaping. It's a circumstance where we've just been fed so much propaganda that we assume it's this violent terror state, when ultimately it's a lot of people whose families have been there for generations who are being violently pushed out of their land. It's really true. The indoctrination and the propaganda that we've all faced regarding this issue has really defined a default setting, like for me, where I'm like, oh, okay, Israel's a democracy, whatever, and then I have to focus on what's happening domestically. But I think that the genocide has caused a moral reckoning on both sides of the political spectrum. You see support for Israel obviously plummeting, as it should, when you see a genocide. And you see Benjamin Netanyahu wanting to take over TikTok, not change their policy, but change the reality that people are seeing what's happening there. But you actually went there, you walked the walk, you talked the talk, and you have been working with Ro Khanna, and he is now introducing legislation that he's worked on with you to stop the settlement expansion that is being subsidized by the US. So I want you to tell me about that, the first part of your answer. And the second part of your answer, do you think that the Democratic Party, in order to be a party with moral clarity needs to atone for the colluding with AIPAC, who clearly wanted Trump to win. And then you see Schumer and Jeffries taking and funneling AIPAC money to Democrats. How can we be an opposition party? So, tell us about the legislation and then the conflict of interest with corporate Dems. So Representative Kanna and I have worked for a while now on legislation to stop the annexation in the West Bank. And it is a situation that's gone completely out of control. I mean, right when I landed from my trip to the West Bank, 19 new settlements got approved. So Palestinians who have been living on this land, many of whom since they were violently expelled in this rampant, violent crusade called the Nakhba in 1948, they are having these Israeli settlements built right next to their villages where illegal militias will walk around with impunity and just kill people in broad daylight. And the Israeli justice system does not hold them to account at all. And the United States doesn't hold them to account. So the congressman and I have worked on making it as difficult to expand these settlements as possible. That means sanctioning the companies that are building in these settlements. That means introducing legislation to move the Palestinians back onto the land from which they've been kicked out. But I mean, I was in a village called Umarhir, which is a shepherd's village of a couple hundred people who really just want to herd sheep and mind their own business. And these Israeli settlements are popping up all around them, choking them out. And when I say these are shepherds, I mean they're shepherds. I was sitting in the security room and there were two screens. There was one with security cameras that were watching for settlers to show up. And my job was to accompany the Palestinian villagers to these confrontations or conversations and be ready to film if something went violent. And mind you, this is just to show the world. This is just to educate people as to what's happening. It's not like if I filmed some sort of terrible crime, the Israeli government would have done anything about it. I mean, like there are so many instances since October 7th of settlers outright killing people and not facing any consequences. But on the other screen in the security room was just a TV where the people who are on the nighttime security patrol will watch YouTube videos or whatever and these guys were watching hours long videos of people herding sheep Like these are the most locked in guys I've met in my entire life. They aren't just herding sheep because it's the only way of life they've known. They're also doing it because they love it. And you got to hand it to them. Sheep are adorable. They don't get enough love from us. But these settlements are putting up Israeli flags, literally directly outside the gates. They're building 10-foot tall metal menorahs, really just to troll these people. Israeli settlers are violent, they commit acts of terror, but they also like this Trumpian form of twisting the knife and trolling. And again, they are popping up everywhere and they're making it hard for Palestinians to build new homes. So Palestinians cannot expand outward and build new housing. They have to expand upward and they end up in situations very similar to the projects. So Roe and I have worked on a lot of comprehensive ways to tackle this issue, and it's not enough, but it's a very good start. And I think it's going to be able to get a lot of bipartisan support. And this kind of brings me into the second part of our answer. The next wave of politicians who are able to be popular in the Democratic and Republican Party are going to be politicians who reject the state of Israel's influence over the United States and reject the money that they funnel into our politics. The question is, will it be anti-Israel candidates who only have love for the Jewish people? Or is it going to be anti-Israel candidates like these emergent people we're seeing on the right who have no love at all for the Jewish people and spread anti-Semitism? Because what the ADL, AIPAC, and the rest of the very expansive pro-Israel organizing community have done is just completely stripped the word anti-Semitism of its meaning and turned it into something that can just be thrown around as a defamatory allegation. And for all of these years now, they have been targeting pro-Palestine protesters and politicians who advocate for restrictions on the aid that we give Israel. And then suddenly there is this giant emergence of neo-Nazism on the right. And the leading voices on the right are people like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes. And the pro-Israel community is like, oh my God, How did this happen? It happened because you were not addressing the rampant anti-Semitism on the right. You were only focused on the most inflammatory thing that you saw a college protestor say. Yeah, I, you know, I agree with this. I, the demonization of college protesters was so bizarre to me because the majority, the overwhelming majority of these college protesters, I'd say 99%. I heard an instance of somebody having a swastika. That is unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable, not helpful to the Palestinian cause. That is not a good anti-war message. I think we can all agree with that. But college kids caring about their country, giving money, a blank check to a war criminal like Benjamin Netanyahu that is bombing schools and apartment buildings and hospitals. That's outrageous. That shocks your conscience. And that's something that needs to be protested. That is some, that's such an injustice. It's so vile that it needs to be protested. And I feel like the ADL, they have played patty cake with the short term Trump win. And they have focused on the left, where on the left, we have to be very clear eyed, Cam. We have to say, we believe in universal human rights. We believe in protecting Jewish people, Palestinian people, trans people, Black people, women, you name it. It's all universally connected. And you see these far right Israeli groups that tend to provide more cover for Elon Musk doing two sick hiles. And for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and the Heritage Foundation that refused to condemn nick fuentes who was straight up says like if i'm like hey nick fuentes are you a neo-nazi he's like yeah totally i mean we'd have no problem saying it these far-right groups there's a group called bataar that has a branch in the united states in new york they have uh bataar worldwide they actively insinuated that i should be murdered when i got back from the west bank and obviously faced no consequences for it and it's truly insane because these groups were they targeting anybody except mostly Muslims and pro-Palestine voices, they would be facing an unbelievably larger amount of consequences than the ultimately negligible consequences that they faced. But the far-right pro-Israel movement very often operates using the same rhetorical playbook as neo-Nazis. There is genetic supremacy. There is this insinuation that the Jews and Israel are the same thing. I mean, think about it. But there two people there two groups of people who use the message the Jews equals Israel There Zionists and there neo And when I hear Israel equals the Jews I always say to the pro people saying it you understand that the only other people who operate that way are the people who mean to see us exterminated But Batara this right radical pro group that operates with this theocratic violent religious message they are just targeting Muslims they are spreading this rampant, literally violent rhetoric, and they just get to operate willy-nilly. Whereas if some fringe member of an organization that's advocating for Palestinian rights says something that is anti-Semitic or acts as though some sort of call to violence. It's as if the entire pro-Palestine movement was operating that way. That's how a lot of these groups like to function. Yeah. I mean, you really see it. It's one of these conversations that you have such a divide in the Jewish community. I've found that younger Jewish people that I know are more clear right about this, like that you are that prioritize universal human rights. I'm very scared of the emergence of the anti-Israel messaging on the right, because I've lived in Oklahoma for 51 years and the simple message that Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson use, you can't be America first when you're Israel first. That really is going to hit really hard with a lot of voters. The problem is when Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene don't value immigrant children in the United States, how can we expect them to value Palestinian children truly? Well, a lot of people on the right are co-opting the genocide in Gaza as a way to spread what is ultimately Jew hatred in the form of meaningful criticism of the state of Israel. And it is a very, very dangerous problem. But again, the conflation of Israel and the Jewish people is part of the thing that causes this anti-Semitism spread. Meanwhile, when I was in Palestine, I expected two responses to people finding out I was Jewish. I expected either wary mistrust because the star of David, the symbol of our people, is being used on tanks that are blowing up their homes, and it's being used on the uniforms of people who are shooting them. So I expected some people to hear I was Jewish and say, does he really have our best interest in mind? And I was expecting like celebratory solidarity, like, oh, yay, it's a Jewish person who stands with us. This is so great. I didn't expect the third option, which was pretty much universally the response, which was nobody cared. Like nobody in Palestine cared that I was Jewish. It was boring to them. They were just like, oh yeah, look at that. Anyway, because a lot of these people have grown up around Jews and Israelis who are activists supporting their human rights and supporting international law. So they have a more nuanced understanding. There are people I know in Palestine who have not had access to very substantial educational resources, and yet they have an understanding of the difference between Zionism and Judaism that is far more advanced than that of people in the United States who have like three PhDs. They see Jews as their cousins who they've had this relationship with for centuries that have been in many ways co-opted by this colonial movement called Zionism. But again, Palestinians heard I was Jewish and they were like, oh yeah, look at that. If you zoom out and look at history, Judaism and Islam have until the 20th century gotten along fine. Like Jews were objectively safer under Islam centuries ago than we were under Christian Europe. There were conflicts between Islam and Christian Europe. There were conflicts between Jews in Christian Europe. But generally speaking, until the Zionist movement, until the rise of Arab nationalism in the early 20th century, Jews and Muslims were like, hey, man, aren't those Christians in Europe acting kind of weird with us? It's this very new thing, this conflict between Jews and Muslims. And I was raised in post 9-11 America in a very Zionist community to believe that there was this eternal war between Jews and Muslims that could never be resolved. And therefore, we need infinite nukes for Israel. But objectively speaking, from a historical perspective, Jews and Muslims have kind of gotten along great. You know, this is really, really helpful, pragmatic, normal conversations that the far right tries to prevent us from having. And a lot of people in media, particularly corporate media, but even in independent media are really scared to talk about this and have such a candid conversation about this. So number one, thank you for your bravery. Thank you for your advocacy. And please text me again when we have a new update on the work that you and Ro Khanna are doing. And I just respect and value your bravery in speaking about this because there are a lot of forces that are trying to prevent conversations like this from happening. And I think that anytime somebody tells us we can't talk about something, it probably means we do need to talk about it. So, Kam Katsky, thank you so much for joining me. Kam Katsky, Thanks for having me.
