Episode 290: The Disturbing Reactions to the War: From Pulling Down Hostage Pics to Hate on College Campuses

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

So, you know, it's really interesting.

Last time I saw you for solos, never in my wildest dreams did I think what happened on October 7th would have happened, which has derailed any type of commentary on anything except what's happening in the Middle East.

I mean, it's kind of crazy.

It's hard to talk about anything else.

I mean, can I just say how, and I'm sure, I'm so distracted.

It's all I think about.

It's all I care about.

It's all I post about.

It's consumed every element of my life.

It's actually insane at this point.

It's now three weeks in, more, almost a month in, right?

No, it's a month in.

It's a month in.

And I'm still as like enraged as I was at the beginning.

How about you?

I mean, absolutely.

We still have people that are being held hostage.

It's still a huge issue.

It's nowhere near resolved.

And I mean, I can't agree more.

I literally dropped all my clients.

It's been Israel 24-7.

It's impossible.

What I don't understand actually is how are people just like so

laissez-faire?

That is what I count for.

I think it's crazy.

But there's, but can I tell you something?

The majority of people are actually laissez-faire.

They are not really, they don't feel a direct connect to it or they're just not paying attention.

And you have other people like me and like you who are like down that rabbit hole, who are so invested and so just enraged by it.

And, And, you know, I don't even know what we were supposed to talk about on this, on this solo.

It doesn't even matter.

Cause again, this is exactly my point.

I'm unable to focus and concentrate on anything that doesn't involve what's happening right now in Israel, the war, Gaza.

I am just torn apart by it.

And, you know, one thing that really does bother me, what's happening on the web, like happening in the U.S.

or around the world, is what the hell is going on with people tearing down the posters of hostages.

I don't get that.

They're calling it Zionist propaganda, which is psychotic.

How is that?

Okay, first of all, like,

what kind of sick fuck are you to be going around tearing down pictures of innocent children or whoever, kids, babies who were taken and are still

taken, who are still, who are still captive?

Like,

what kind of crazy person does that?

And then people are

acting like that's, some people are acting like that's perfectly fine behavior.

I mean, what kind of like delusional deranged human does that?

What's crazy is when you, when we find the people who do it, like there's been a few who have been social workers at schools, counselors, people who work with kids.

And it's like, how could you possibly tear down a photo of an innocent child that was literally kidnapped by a terrorist organization?

I mean, they have a nine-year-old, a nine-month-old baby in their possession right now.

And by the way, not only that, but it's taken us three weeks now to identify who's been dead and who's been kidnapped.

And we're still not done identifying all the bodies.

So we're still figuring out.

That's why the number keeps changing.

That's why now it's like 239 are hostage because we have been identifying for this entire time.

Some of the babies are literally unidentifiable.

I think it's just horrific.

And

I can go on lots of different tangents, but let's stay on the hostage one for one second because I think this is really interesting how people who are professionals, like you you're saying, teachers, social workers, educated girls and boys who are at NYU and Columbia, who are going around campuses and going around New York, going around anywhere, Los Angeles, and tearing these things down.

Like, these are not stupid people.

Now, is it just a lack of understanding?

Is it just, how did it become, I hate Jews or they had it coming or they deserve it?

These are like innocent people, innocent children.

And I don't, no, there's nothing that you're going to say to kind of justify it.

The worst is this part.

This is the worst part.

When you try to have a conversation with somebody in a real way and communicate without in a dialogue that's not going to be antagonistic, and they say something like, well, it was, this is what's happened to me.

Yeah, it sucks what happened, but

that but at the end of the sentence.

And what, in what scenario do you put a but after a terrorist attack like this?

And what, in what scenario?

You can do a yes and, which a lot of people seem to not be doing.

Two things can be very sad at the same time.

And so many people are dismissing the horrors of October 7th as if they were justified, which is crazy because it's the same group of woke people who would yell at a man if asked the question, what was she wearing?

Which is essentially what everybody is asking Israel right now.

What was she wearing?

Yeah, no, I think that's one of the most ludicrous things on the face of the planet to be able to say that the

rape by death, the death by rape of literal children, elderly, women, I mean, to say that that could ever be justified is one of the most psychotic things that anybody could say.

But they've gotten into the minds of the woke college kids.

And historically, college kids are very...

easily influenced if you look at it, right?

They get riled up and protest about a lot of things.

And when something is presented to them in such a way that makes it seem so black and white clear, and especially if they're looking at it from the prism of American politics, this is right and this is wrong, this is oppressor and this is oppressed, then it's very easy to get into their minds.

And next thing you know, they're they're chanting from the river to the sea, which is a literal call for Jewish genocide, just freely.

It's so crazy.

So, I don't know what makes them want to go down this rabbit hole to literally tear down a missing child poster, but they're easily influenced.

Well, even worse is they don't even, if you ask, if you go up to somebody and say, Do you know what you're even chanting from the river to the sea?

They have no under, they have no idea.

Most of these people who are chanting from the river to the sea or even protesting, if you actually call them on what the hell they're doing, they have no clue.

Yeah.

Which then tells me we, as a Jewish person, the Jews have done a really bad job on our narrative because we've now become the enemy.

And that is what's happened.

And I don't know if it's because people now are gathering their information from TikTok and Instagram and social media.

So they're just seeing snippets of a horrible video coming from the Palestinian side.

I'm not sure.

Or.

No, they've hated us for thousands of years.

Okay, then, but why in these colleges?

Maybe you can answer this question, okay?

You're You're younger than I am.

What is happening?

What are they teaching children or, you know, young adults where we or Jewish people or Israel is such a horrible, like such a horrible enemy?

What are they teaching?

And why don't we have any type of dialogue or

groups that are pro-Israel?

on these campuses.

We definitely do.

We have tons.

We have so many of those groups and they've been active for literally like 30 years.

Okay, but you don't see them out there.

They are.

They are.

You're just not getting those videos, but they absolutely are.

We have Stand With Us, we have ICC.

There's so many of these massive groups.

There's Zionist groups on campus.

There's Zioness, which was started as a young movement.

You're right.

No, no, there's a ton of these.

Hold on, let me answer your question though, because I have an answer.

There's a few different things.

One is funding.

A lot of funding to these mega universities is coming from Qatar, and people don't realize that.

So like Harvard, Cornell, all these places are getting mega, mega funding from Qatar.

That's a huge factor.

The second is, the second is the fact that if you just look at the sheer population numbers, we are not that many people.

So the amount of people who have never met a Jew in their life is very high.

And a lot of Jews don't realize that because we grow up in our communities.

So to us, we're seeing it as, you know, it's common sense.

They should know this.

But you know how many times I've been the first Jew that someone met?

From the second I went to boarding school, like as a literal child to now, I've had so many people where I was their first Jew.

I've been told things like, oh, that's so crazy.

I thought you guys all had horns.

Or growing up, I was told that you guys were like the root of all of our problems.

We just like kind of blamed everything bad on Jews.

Straight up.

Like literally those phrases have been told to me so many times.

And I think that as Jews, we're in our community, we see the things from within, and we don't realize that there's actually a big need for Jewish education globally.

And there's just not that many Jews.

We're 6 million people.

We're tiny.

So, okay, that's why I was going to backtrack on that because you're right.

There are organizations that are in the colleges, but the truth of the matter is, because we're so much smaller as a unit,

we're not as vocal and we're not as visible.

That is 100% true.

So, I guess the bigger question is, but still, the vitriol that's coming from the Palestinian side in these protests, in these chants, like people are talking about, like, we should get, you know, they were like, they were jumping up and down when they, when they found out that we were completely, you know, terrorized and burned and beaten and sat and just the gruesomeness that happened.

People were literally jumping up and down in the streets in like, or in Harvard, Yale, Cornell, all these Ivy Leagues.

And to your point, I know that Qatar is a major, they fund most of the stuff, but so do I thought, I thought Jews are also major

on the same level.

But I get, this is the thing, Jewish funders.

Jewish funders also are,

I mean, they are also more, I don't want to generalize, but Jewish funders do not push an agenda unless it is like something like what's happening now, where now all the donors are like, whoa, you're going to allow this kind of anti-Semitism to run camp, you know, rampant on campus.

But they're actually there trying to fund really specific programs, science programs, things like that.

So it's a little bit different.

By the way, I stand corrected.

I said six million.

We're 16 million.

I need to make that known because that's a lot more millions of Jews.

And by the way, can I tell you

16 million is still less than what we had pre-Holocaust.

And this is the other question.

This is not an equipment.

This is the other problem I'm having with this, with these catchphrases like genocide, colonization, oppressor, oppressed.

First of all, how are we committing genocide or how is Israel committing genocide if there are 10, 20, 30 times more Palestinians than there were back when, whatever that was.

And we as the Jewish, as Jewish people,

we're not even at the number that we were prior to the Holocaust.

So we are, if anything, we are the oppressed,

right?

But

we're hardly committing genocide.

No, genocide is such a crazy term to use for this, especially if you're looking at what's happening globally.

Like there are legit genocides happening right now as we speak.

And if you look at what's happening in Jordan and in Lebanon and how the Palestinians are being treated there, I mean, they're getting their rights taken away.

They're in refugee camps for the last 75 years.

I mean, it's really an atrocity and people don't care at all.

They don't care at all.

So I think the genocide term is crazy.

And in the same breath, by the way, they're talking about how Israel is so powerful and this, that, and the other, but the death toll is 7K.

Like if Israel wanted to wipe them out, it would take, what, a snap of a second, according to what everybody sees our army as.

So why are we taking so long?

Like, what is that?

It just seems like we're the worst, least successful genocide in all of history.

It's like so ludicrous to even say that.

And I think that there are actually legit grievances that Palestinian people on the ground in Israel have, and their voices are not being heard because they're being drowned out by all these white woke liberals in America who are screaming about a bunch of things that are actually not their legit grievances.

That's not what they're talking about.

Those are not the problems that they want solved.

They have so many other things that they've been...

By the way, the Gazans in Gaza years ago, there was protests against Hamas.

Nobody covered that.

No one cared.

Literally, no one cared.

And so many people got killed during those protests.

Wow.

And there's not been an election in any Palestinian territory in so long.

Fatah, that has been running the West Bank, has not held an election because they know that if they run, Hamas will win.

And in Gaza, they have not held an election because they, I mean, they don't give a shit.

They have these fake elections.

It's like people are so delusional.

They're not actually fighting for the rights of anyone.

They're just being brainwashed and manipulated into feeling like they're these saviors, like they're doing good, like they're standing up for the right cause.

My next question is: for social,

let's talk about social injustice.

Okay.

Let's talk about that for a second.

And the woke community.

Let's just talk about that.

So there are all of these other rah-rah organizations that they stand up for.

But yet when it comes to anti-Semitism, it's silent.

They look away or they actually attack.

Why is that?

Do you have any anti-I mean, I am confused by what the hell?

If you're such a, if isn't the woke generation supposed to be like for everyone?

Like, how are we, is it because we're we're considered to be the oppressor and now there's like that narrative that Israel is creating all of these genocides these humanitarian acts and so therefore it's for the Palestinians I'm really confused so the thing with anti-Semitism that people don't understand is that it's very different to other hates right other types of racism or bigotry or discrimination they the people who are discriminating typically know that they are discriminating it's like an outwardly hate right they're just like racist and they right?

Anti-Semitism is rooted in this evil ideology that everything they believe is actually factual.

So if you go on, you know, these threads or the comment sections or whatever, and you're looking at like posts that Kanye has and people are commenting, the comments are not like, oh, he's just a racist.

It's like, that's the truth.

Finally, he's speaking the truth.

You know what I mean?

People actually believe those things.

It's so crazy how it is common knowledge now

amongst all of the haters because for centuries that's been the case and people have always hated Jews.

It's a very deep-rooted,

it's the oldest form of hatred, it's the oldest form of bigotry.

And so, when we're trying to combat this, we are combating it as if we are any other minority group who's dealing with hate.

And when we point out the crazy acts of anti-Semitism, we just assume people will be like, Oh, yeah, that's crazy.

But the truth is, people deep down are like, Well, yeah, it's the Jews, they, you know, they fucking suck.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I mean, this is what I've noticed, which has been really kind of disheartening, is that the amount of hatred that from people that I never really thought actually had that in them.

The vitriol that's been like thrown at me.

Like, I mean, I understand like if it's, if it's, if it's something that you don't understand or you haven't been, you haven't been brought up this way, you don't have the education piece to it.

But what I find just interesting is that it's that has it been repressed in so many people.

And then when they have a moment to kind of lash out, they take that moment because I'm actually, I'm really surprised at what has been going on.

Like there's been like these horrible marches in LA that I've seen, like in my neighborhood, you know, and people on Instagram on DM me who I know, who I'm like very friendly with.

And they are like just

so

mean and like, how dare you?

You know, what are you thinking?

And

like basically like very, very aggressive in the fact that I'm supporting Israel.

And then instead of having a proper dialogue, which by the way, they won't have a proper dialogue.

They'll just throw lots of facts and data that they believe is true.

And then

when I try to comment, they won't even listen to my stuff.

And it's basically severed a bunch of relationships that I never thought would be severed.

Like it's kind of crazy, the polarization of what's happening because of what's happening.

And either you're on this side or you're on that side.

And if you're on the wrong side of what I think, then it's like venom and hate.

There's no dialogue.

There's zero communication.

And it's just like, it's just, it's just getting worse and worse and worse.

That is what I've noticed.

So, yes, but those are on the extremes of the spectrum, which, by the way, is a lot of people, I will say.

But there are billions of people out there that are both indifferent and

ignorant to this whole thing.

I'm talking about the people who are like, who are

they are not passive and who are keeping up and really kind of affected by this, like me and you.

There are like, I know, we said at the beginning of this podcast, there are a lot of people who, you know, quite frankly are just like, they just are not paying attention and they're going about their life.

But there's,

there's a different scale of those kind of people.

There's the Jews who are apathetic, who I literally hate right now, and I think that it's insane.

But then there are just the average citizens who don't realize they're not Jewish, they're not connected.

They don't realize that this is actually a war against the entire West and that they're going to be significantly impacted, you know, depending on which way things turn in Israel.

And those people, if they listen to things like this, if they listen to your podcast and to other content and to the people they're following, they're the ones who are not unfollowing us right now and who are just curious.

Those people, all this content is actually really beneficial for them.

So I know we all think we live in like some echo chamber and this, that, and the other, but there are billions of people out there that are there, open to learning, open to understanding, and just don't really understand how big of a deal this is and will be for them.

And if they did, they would be quite passionate and quite passionately on our side as well.

Well, just on the side of truth, really.

I mean, I think that the thing is, our enemy is so aligned, and people are so delusional not to see that.

Terrorism should be freaking everyone's enemy.

That should not be a selective enemy.

That should not be just the enemy for the Jewish people.

See, I just have so many questions, and I don't even, I again, like, how is it even a possibility that Hamas is not a terrorist organization?

I'm hearing things like, no, no, no, it's freedom fighters, or no, no, no, it's

resistance.

It's a resistant movement.

How is this even like, it's unfathomable.

And by the way, they're coming after you next.

I mean, just because they're after Israel right now, I've heard the leaders and everyone has seen this.

And yet, of course, if you ask someone who is Palestinian, they'll say it's fake news.

But they have very legitimately said on multiple different news news stations, different interviews that like they want to take over the West too.

You know, Israel is like only one, is like, is like one piece of this whole pie.

It's geographically the last frontier to the West.

Yeah.

If you guys look at the Middle East.

And listen, that is, again, like why everybody should be interested.

Everyone should be concerned.

Everyone should basically wake up and see what this really is.

And I guess I just implore everybody, if you don't have the facts, you know, as opposed to just looking on Instagram and social media for those facts, like this is the issue.

We shouldn't be looking at Bella Hadid or her cuckoo father or anybody, or even

actually, I believe, like not me not you like

actually read books and read about history like actually google things with really good sources so you understand what's going on and not just take things at face value from your favorite influencer because I think that is a big part of why we're in this problem in the first place why that why there's so much dialogue that is misconstrued and especially when people don't have the background like we have I really believe that yeah but you I don't think you can say that because that disregards literally the thousands of centuries of pogroms, of anti-Semitism, of wars, of literal massacres of Jews.

Aisene, I think that's what we tell ourselves now in this current environment.

But we've been working on this problem and on the misinformation and on people understanding this long before social even existed.

I was part of the problem.

I agree with you.

But what I'm telling people for people who, that's not where there's so, this is a very complex,

a very, very complex topic.

We're not going to cover it in the 20 minutes that we're covering because we're jumping around a lot because we're emotional.

We have a lot of things to say in lots of different areas.

What my point for this particular thing is that

a good idea, if you are somebody who is concerned about terrorism like you should, and living in the U.S., Canada, Europe, or wherever you're living, you should be concerned because Hamas is not only after Israel, they are after the West.

And what my point to that is: if you want to have background and education and data points that you can educate yourself, besides listening to me or you, Shawnee, or whoever, it's a good idea to really take a deeper dive and maybe Google other sources and read a book.

Because, you know, I think my point was people are getting their information now from strictly TikTok videos and Instagram videos, which isn't enough a lot of the time.

And, you know, there is a, there is a bias.

So educate yourself on what's going on because I do believe it is impactful to everybody, not just to Jewish people, not just to the Palestinian people, but to everybody who's living in this world.

And that's what I mean to say.

And we can see that.

Can I give some recommendations?

What was that?

Can I give some recommendations?

Absolutely.

So some really phenomenal books to read.

Letters to my Palestinian neighbor, that's by Yesi Klein Halevi.

Incredible.

Catch 67, that's by Mika Goodman.

It's an incredible book.

It talks about ways that we can improve the day-to-day lives of Palestinians and Israelis within the current situation.

It's not a black or white peace or no peace situation, and that's a really good book.

The next one is Noah Tishby's book, which is the guide on Israel, and that goes through a lot of the history.

And then there's quite a few other really good resources on anti-Semitism.

One is Barry Weiss's book, She's Phenomenal.

And I will always recommend Khan Mazig and the Tel Aviv Institute for a lot of very, very verifiable research information.

Khan does not publish anything that he's not confirmed himself.

And I think he's a really good resource.

So I would say all of those, but there's some great books out there.

That's great.

That's actually great advice.

Thank you for giving those sources.

Yeah.

And then, you know.

And be careful with Google because, you know, you have to also find where sources are funded.

So Al Jazeera, for example, fully funded by Qatar.

So if you're looking at Al Jazeera or AJ Plus for your information, just know that that is literally funded by the same people that are funding Hamas.

Thank you.

All right, guys, we're going to wrap this.

And

thanks, Shawnee.

Thank you.