#424 – Bassem Youssef: Israel-Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, Middle East, Satire & Fame

The following is a conversation with Bassem Youssef, a legendary Egyptian-American comedian, the so-called John Stewart of the Middle East, who fearlessly satirized those in power, even when his job and life were on the line. Bassem is a beautiful human being.
It was truly a pleasure for me to get to know him and to have this fun, fascinating, and challenging conversation. And now, a quick few-second mention of each sponsor.
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And now, dear friends, here minute of the day in a married life is a negotiation. Everything can blow up into a full-scale war, starting from a simple sentence like, good morning, what should we do with the kids today? What should we do with that piece of furniture? Any sentence can lead you to heaven or to hell at the same time.
So you do negotiate with terrorists. Oh, yeah, yeah, 100%.
You must? Yeah. And for her, I am her terrorist too.
So it's equal. Terrorists on both sides.
On a more serious note, when you found out about the attacks of October 7th, what went through your mind? If I'm allowed to use a curse word, I was like... As many as possible.
I was like, oh, shit. Part of my my standup comedy is I describe a situation where I was in a restaurant with producers and there was a bombing two blocks away in Chelsea, New York in 2016.
And of course, this is the like, damn, what's going to happen to us now? And there's like two different reactions. There's like the white reaction, which is like, oh my God, I hope nobody is hurt.
This is terrible. I hope everybody is okay.
And there's the Arab reaction. What's his name? What is his name? What is the name? You know, because you know what's going to come.
It's kind of, I was scared what's going to really happen in that area. And I said like, oh my God, it's going to be horrible.
And the way that it was reported, I didn't know how to handle this. So I basically, I went into hiding for a few days, three, four days.
And I talked about Piers Morgan team talking to me two times, three times. I was like, no, I can't.
How can I, you defend that? How can you defend the rape, the decapitated babies and whatever. And then I started kind of looking in the news a little bit.
And then I started seeing people coming on the shows and saying things that I know as an Arab, as a Muslim, as someone from that region that it's not true. But I didn't know what to say, how to say it.
So I said, by the third time when they asked me, I said like, fine, put me on. And I went there, it was more of a, figuratively speaking, a suicide mission.
And because it's a lose-lose situation. I can lose stuff in Hollywood.
I can, I even, I remember my managers like, Bessim, be careful. I mean, are you sure you wanna do it? My manager was like, please don't do it, please don't do it.
And on the other side, if I don't perform well, whatever well means, I'm going to be

rejected by my own people.

So it was a lose-lose situation because whatever I say, it will never be enough.

And whatever I say will not be good enough.

And I was going into there and I felt that I was going into a trance for the 33 minutes that I was on the, on that interview for the first time. You blacked out.
I blacked out, I blacked out. And a lot of people ask me, is the earpiece, was that a bit when the earpiece kept falling? It's like, no, it was really falling off and it disconnected and I had to save it because I cannot see them all I can hear.
them. And I could expect at any time, okay, Bassem, thank you.
I was fighting for every second to say words, to put stuff in there. Yeah, for people who don't know, this is your conversation interview with Piers Morgan.
And you couldn't see. I couldn't see.
I was just like, the lens with the camera. And I was just like, it's a surreal dream or nightmare.
Yeah, hello, Basim. I was like, hello, Basim.
I was like, hi. And it could end at any moment.
Your career and everything. Everything, yeah.
Yeah. So what was the drive that got you to actually do it, to overcome that fear? Multiple things.
First of all, I don't want to say it's just my wife's family because my wife's family has always been there, but this time was different. The bombing, the attack, they're usually one of those people that they're away for everything.
Whatever happened in Gaza, they are always in safe places, but this time it seems that there was no place safe. And already we heard about like two or three of the cousins and the uncles already lost their home.
So this was too much. So I wanted to say something for those people because I know that, you know, I made one of the jokes that I made about like, oh, you know, it's Hassan, her cousin.
He's a loser. He's a doctor.
He's a doctor. And he, every time a hospital was bombed, we were worried about him.
So I wanted to say that because I felt that these are, this is a family that I have never seen in my life. I have never, she actually hardly saw an uncle or two because, you know, they cannot leave.
But I said like, I need to speak, at least I do something for those extended family that I have never known. But also because when Piers Morgan team called me a couple of times, said, okay, let's see what's going on in the show.
And I just watched the stuff and the lies and the one-sided reporting. That made my blood boil.
And then I thought, like, what am I afraid of? I'm afraid of, if I say something, I can lose my career. It's like, wait a minute.
But that was the reason why I left Egypt. I said, wait, I left Egypt.
I came to United States. I came to the land of the free where I can say anything I want.
And yet I have limitation of what to say. I mean, I thought we left that shit behind.
I mean, what's happening? And I understand, I understand the connection of like how sensitive it is when you speak about Israel and all of the ready-made accusations. But as an Arab, as a Muslim, I don't react the same when you talk about Saudi Arabia or Iran or Egypt or any of them.
It's like, hey, you want to diss some of these countries? I'll do that with you. Because I have strong opinions about what happened and I already been expressing them.
But when I talk, that's why I speak, and there's a lot of Jewish people who come to my show and they understand that, they understand the separation. But that kind of a grouping of blackmailing people and saying and not saying what they have in their mind, it is that kind of like one of the things that kind of like pushed me to go on the show.
The thing that was bothering you, was it what was being said or how it was being said? Both. Because there are lies, which is usually in the media, but there was the total disregard of humanity.
You talk a about in your show about human suffering and i felt that here the human suffering was not equal i felt that's why i came up with this like what's the exchange rate today what's the exchange rate today there's there's of course it's terrible to see anybody die but but I feel that like, isn't our life not worth anything? Yeah, you had a chart akin to crypto. You analyzed it from an investing perspective, of course, in a dark human kind.
It's the ROI on that. ROI.
And you were saying that a certain year was a good year. Yeah, 2014.
2014 was a good year for investment purposes. And also to refer to the family member that you called the loser, you were saying that you called him, had a conversation with him, and he keeps saying that he's not using anybody for human shields, and you called him a loser.
What are you, you can't even give a job. The liar, he lied to us because I have to believe.
But this is what the one thing, it's like, it's also one of the things, like how it was said. It was stuff that I've been hearing.
I don't know what turned on in my head, but it's stuff that I've been hearing all my life from the media. Israel warns civilians before bombing them.
And that's okay, but that's not okay. Israel is trying to minimize the civilians, but killing them anyway, and that's okay.

But that's not okay.

So it is kind of like the indoctrination

that we've been hearing as if it is okay.

And then suddenly it's not.

Yeah, there's a kind of several layers of bullshit,

almost sometimes hiding the obvious horror of the situation

with kind of politeness and all this kind of stuff. Just the basic value of human life.
That said, it's a difficult situation. It is.
It is. What would you do if you were Israel? B.B.
called you. Awesome.
Big fan. Big fan of your comedy.
First of all, would you hang up right away? Would you hear him out? No, I would definitely hear him out. I was like, wait a minute, that's material.
That's material, man. I was like, so Netanyahu called me.
I was sitting with my family, just like I have my phone and like, oh, Netanyahu. Yeah, it just shows up that way.
I mean, what would you do? What would you do in this situation? To answer this question, we need to understand how Israel thinks. There is an incredible speech given by Gideon Levy, the famous Israeli reporter in Haaretz.
And he describes a situation where he was in the West Bank and there was a checkpoint. And in that checkpoint, there was an ambulance with a palestinian, and it was there sitting for an hour and a half, not moving.
And then he went to talk to the soldiers, like, guys, why are you not letting them go? I was like, ah, let them go. And then he told them, imagine if he was your father.
And the soldiers stood up, I was like, what? These are pigs. These are not humans.
So when you tell me what would you do if Israel would do, it really needs to, we need to ask, how does Israel look at the Palestinians and view the Palestinians? Because they do look at them less than human. And there is an incredible talk by Mehor Meyer.
He was a Holocaust survivor. And he said, I learned in Auschwitz when I was there in the concentration camp that in order for a dominant group of people to dehumanize another group, they need first to dehumanize themselves.
And Israel looks at Palestinians as lesser people, as lesser beings, as some people who are dispensable. And the way that they treat them is that they don't really care about like that's why that the exchange rate thing so for me if i am israel i it will be like what would you do if you're the united states in the time of the native americans they were killing people with the millions when you dehumanize a group of people you really don't care So if I was Israel, I would do exactly what Israel is doing right now because there's no one is holding me accountable.
There is no one stopping me. And I can get whatever I want throughout my history through violence.
I think a lot of the things you just said are a tiny bit slightly exaggerated. So let me try.
Let's try. So not everybody in Israel.
So let's look at several groups. So people in government, IDF soldiers, and citizens that are neither of those.
And not everybody of any of those sees Palestinians as less than human, just some percentage. So what percentage is that in your sense? It's the people who have the power.
So it's mostly the focus of your commentary. When you say people in Israel, you really mean the people in power.
The people having power. But as much as like, of course I mean the people of power because when I speak about, even when I speak about America, I speak about people in power.
When I speak about Egypt, I speak the people of power because like you can't really talk about the 100 million people in Egypt or the 11 million people in Israel. Of course not.
There are people who go in and they demonstrate against Netanyahu and they want him out of the government. But we have to admit that the Israeli society at a whole have moved quite a bit to the right and has been like many extreme.
And you know what happens when you go to the right or you go to the most extreme, the other person go to the most extreme. And extremism breeds extremism.
So thank you for the clarification, but like I really meant with the people of power. When people criticize the United States for going in Iraq, of course I'm not criticizing citizens.
But you made another point, which is an interesting point, and it's very difficult to see in the heart of people. But I wonder if you look at the average Palestinian and the average Israeli, and when they look at the other, do they have some hate in their heart? Well, everybody probably has some.
What is that amount? You know, when you look at a person that looks different than than you how much hate is there it depends on what is the living situation of each person so in the berlin film festival just like a few couple of weeks ago there was an israeli and a palestinian receiving an award together and the israeli director said we're gonna go back to israel he's gonna go to the west bank he will have no rights and i will have full living rights these people managed to work together and be friends and they have empathy to each other now the average palestinian it's a very difficult question because is it the palestinian in the diaspora or the palestinian in gaza or the diaspora in the West Bank or the one in the citizen as a citizen of Israel who still have less right than a Roman citizen of Israel than a Jew and it really depends if I am there are people in Arabs in Israel who are having a great life and there are people Arabs who are having a miserable life but definitely people that living

in ghazan or in the west bank is kind of like on the lower tier of the living conditions now let's talk about the hate what does that palestinian see with whom israeli the palestinian see oppression limitation of movement limitation of freedom they have and then when there's something happens you see the full force coming in destroying their home, taking away members of his family.

There would be absolutely no reason for him to love the other. The Israeli, because he doesn't have the power, but he lives under his government, all he sees is the rockets or whatever, but he sees the reaction, and he doesn't see what happened to those.
And as humans, we are selfish. We see

what really affects us as humans. And I cannot even imagine what it would be like to live as a Palestinian.
And I'm not going to talk about Gaza because everybody talks about Gaza. But let me give you an example.
And I'm not going to talk about the 12,000 kids killed in Gaza. Let's talk about just like the four weeks in the West Bank.
March 4th, Amr Najjar, age 10, sitting next to his father, shot while he's sitting in a car next to his father by the IDF soldiers. Mohammed Ziyad, 13 years old, March 3rd, shot in front to the UN school while sitting with his friends.
Mohamed Ghanim, age 15, March 2nd, he shot while standing in front of a storefront during a night raid. February 23rd, Saeed Jardal, he was killed by a drone fire.
February 22nd, Fadi Suleiman killed while standing in front of the top of a Red Cross

building. Nihil Ziad, February 14th, Valentine's Day, killed a shot in the head while leaving school.

February 11th, Muhammad Khattur, U.S. citizens, killed while being in a parked car.
And Mo'ayyad

Shams, February 9th, killed right in front of his home because a military car came reversing back to him and then somebody opened the door, shot him and leave. This is the daily life of people in the West Bank.
What is the justification that IDF provides? Terrorism. Terrorism.
Or I don't know, I mean, you cannot really say like human shields, but they will say like they were throwing rocks. There was a guy who went on Chris Rock and he said like his son, a US citizen would kill and they were throwing rocks.
So we killed them. Even when they were throwing rocks, you kill him.
But the thing is, you see, this is how easy for them to get rid of Palestinians. I mean, I love, like, I was, I had to say I prepared a little bit for the podcast because you are in tech.
So, and I am ignorant in tech. There is a movie called The Lab.
It is directed by an Israeli director called Yutam Feldman. And he talks about how the military industry in Israel is very advanced.
And what is really mind-boggling is in that movie he shows how the military tests its weapons in the field in urban areas from Palestinians it is it is heartbreaking you know as a doctor there's five stages of trials there is like there is discovery, preclinical, clinical, and then market and then post-market evaluation by the FDA, the FDA approval and then the FDA post-market. Five, just to take a pill.
And you go in and he interviews people and it's like, where did you test this? They test it in the field. So when you just like, when human life is so cheap, and it is so indispensable, it made me, it gave me a visceral reaction.
Because you know, we as human, this has been actually the state of humanity. Humanity has lived and survived and thrived by actually killing each other.
But there was kind of a, we were remotely, we were removed from it. People in Greece didn't know what Alexander the Great was doing.
He was killing and pillaging, like we called him the Great, but he was killing. He was conquering, he was invading.
Julius Caesar, all of the greats. He was doing, but killing was difficult.
Killing had to have some sort. You have to be with your enemy.
Then you go back, catapults, then cannons, then a little bit back. And then you're kind of like starting remotely.
Now you're killing people behind the screen with a button, with a push of a button. You know, a lot of people say terrorism.
They killed you with a knife killed one person with a knife shot you that's terrorism but if you fly a 64 million dollar f-16 and you drop up in an a-84 bomb that cost 16 000 that's not terrorism because it's remote you're behind the screen so what happened what israel is doing it is removing itself like america too drones and then when you someone to be in, they always brag about bombing them to the stone ages. What happens when the screens and all of the obstacles that you have been put between you and those people that you have treated them this way, when this is a breach and you come face to face, you will come face to face with what you have created.
Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things you just said. So one is the methodology of killing.
If you want to look at some horrific, large-scale killing, people often talk about the Holocaust, but that's visceral. You can look at Hollermore by Stalin, where the murder is through starvation.
By Churchill in India. Churchill in India.
And The Great Leap Forward by Mao. Yep.
So starvation is a thing we don't often think of it as murder because it's quiet, it's slow. And the interesting thing about starvation is that the people don't complain as they're dying because they're exhausted.
That's one. And the other is the value of human life.
It does seem that every culture has an unequal valuation of human life. So those two things combined create a complicated military landscape of the world.
Yes, but the thing is, is that how we would look at technology as the savior, as we talk about how AI will disrupt, will disrupt, will disrupt. And now if you talk about like going to the West Bank, the people in the West Bank walk and they don't see humans.
They see people shouting them from towers or behind the screens or doing, and they have like biometrics that is developed by Basel system like that's done by HP or Google and Amazon who are like part of Project Nimbus. And you see Indivision developing all of this, like metric and surveillance and all of that stuff.
And then you have like something like the gospel that like people have actually said that the gospel can actually create a target list using AI and give you a green, yellow or a red, go ahead. And now AI is not just disrupting the market, it's disrupting our humanity.
And it is, we became so comfortable killing people from afar, killing people with a push of the button. And now it is like dating apps, when you swipe left and right.
And it's like, oh, right. It becomes so like cheap.
It's not like meeting someone. It's like, oh, it's like a lot of fish in the sea.
Same with AI, boom, 500 people killed. Boom, they killed.
It's so easy, it's so easy, it's so easy. And then it's so far removed from you.
So when you put these people in this condition, you have literally put them in a different universe than yours. You are behind in your air condition screens, like pushing them, blowing up a university.
It's amazing. But then you meet what you have done, that you meet the Frankenstein that you have created.
And then people are like, oh, look what they did to us. You just gave me this image of a dating app from hell where leaders are just sitting there and kind of swiping left right invade yeah destroy it's a board like a puppet government yeah and then turn off the phone go to sleep uh so i got you know i traveled to the west bank and i mentioned to you offline that i really loved the people there just um yeah i've met a bunch of people like that in Eastern Europe where I grew up.
Yeah, like the flamboyant, the big personalities, all of that. I also met a person who's in charge of a refugee camp who was shoppin' IDF soldier.
And I'm not sure the words he said are important as the consequences of the thing that you mentioned, which is the deep hate in his eyes. That didn't feel repairable at all.
It was pain. It was like a foundation of pain.
And on top of that, a hatred. And I was like, wow, this is what, you kill one person, this is what you create.
Because we have kind of like a front row seat to what's happening. We think we're in it, but we can't really grasp it.
I mean, people's like, oh, we're just gonna go in, get Hamas out, and we're gonna get them back in. And also when the other people get back in how do you think they would look at you what have you created what have you done my show in Egypt was all about propaganda it's all about the use of words words are very important the decapitated babies were not chosen randomly because you see, it plants a certain image in your brain.
Imagine if you're going in, what a baby can do? It can smile, cry, and poop. That's it.
It's absolutely no threat. So when you tell people, 40 decapitated babies, they are so animalistic, they didn't see the babies.
Women raped. Of course, it's an animal to do that and they would go through that and they would what was very frustrating about the conversation is the gish galloping the gish galloping throwing you see the distractions you see what happens like it's like what's the proportionate response can israel defend itself do you condemn hamas does israel has the the right to exist? Decapitated babies, raped women.
Why don't the Arab countries take them? Why don't the Muslims kill Muslims? Look what happened in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq. See how they kind of distract you.
They throw little things at you. So you don't know what to do.
Oh, the UNN, anti-Semitic, October 7th, October 7th, October 7th. And then suddenly, you are distracted and pulled into discussing all of these little things.
And you're not discussing what's happening right now. It is basically stalling, giving them time to do what they do.
So there's some degree to the propaganda, the beheaded babies and all this kind of stuff, that is so over the top that it shuts down actual conversation about actual wrongs, war crimes on both sides. So it's overstating it to where everyone on social media and everywhere in the press and everywhere is arguing, almost become desensitized to actual horrors of death, which are more mundane.
They're not so dramatic as beheaded babies. Yeah, because people, a baby is shot, but decapitated babies.
There's like a knife blade that goes into their skin, their trachea, their flesh, their spine. Decapitated.
You can just like, he's dead. No, you go in, this is the hate, this is how much hate.
And you know, that's why- You have made me laugh at the darkest shit. You're such a beautiful person.
Your dark humor is just wonderful. But you see, this happened to Jews before.
Remember blood libel? Where did the blood libel come from? It come from these rumors that Jews suck babies' blood. This is what they did to them.
That's what's in the cup. That's a very delicious baby cup.
Delicious baby bud. But this is what you do.
You tell people something, and it happened with the Native Americans when they were here, when they went in and they wipe a whole tribe. So, and Jewish people, one of the minorities that were persecuted and had this used against them for a very long time.
And it is terrible and it's terrifying that's been used again. So I just did a very lengthy debate on Israel and Palestine.
And the really painful thing from that, there's two historians, it was deep, it was thorough, it was fascinating. But in constantly asking about sources of hope or solutions, there was none.
There was a sense of, like a really dark sense of it's hopeless. From both sides, it's hopeless.
So, you know, I look to you. For a source of hope.
Is there any hope here? Solutions, short-term, long-term? Obama have kind of summarized this beautifully in his book. He said, the reason why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so chronic is one side has so much power, and the other have absolutely no power and that's what one body said he said like you have israel that basically don't listen to us because they are supported by people who are bigger than the president bigger than administration they know that they can i mean like you oba like netanyahu was a cotton tape many times saying like he's basically like belittling americans like i we we 80% of the population, we don't care.
This has kind of like nunchal and kind of like, we have them. And there's nothing really that compels Israel to give up anything.
Because at the end of the day, what is compromise? Compromise is like, I give something, you give something. Israel's not giving anything.
And they project that on you. So for example, how many we heard like oh palestinians were giving like four five six seven fifteen chances and they said no to them and yet when you read the history that's not the case at all like for example in 2000 the whole idea about like arafat walked away from oslo that didn't happen and there is an incredible video by, you know, what's his name? Joe Skorboro with Misha.
And they were hosting her father, Brzezinski. He was the national security advisor.
And Joe Skorboro said like, well, you know, like Arafat left the Oslo court and the Palestinians left. And then Brzeizka said, this is like embarrassingly shallow.
It's like, listen, what happened was there was a lot of catches on the Oslo court. It was very unfair to the Palestinians.
So Arafat said like, I agree, but I need to take it to the Arab capitals. And they went to Sharm el-Sheikh, they came to Egypt.
And he and Ahil Barak went to there. And then Ahil Barak left because there was election and he lost it, Ariel Sharon came and it was destroyed.
This is one of the reasons why people, it's kind of like facts don't matter as much as what is the narrative that has been controlled. But what were the biggest barriers to peace there? Do you think it's fundamentally

leaders don't want a Tuesday solution

or was there nuanced small differences

that if solved could have led to a Tuesday solution?

I mean, maybe there was a certain point

when the Israeli leaders were more open to compromise.

But I can say that because each time Israel gives back land, it has to be after some use of force. The 1973 war, the Intifad, the first and second, the casualties in Gaza, they never give up land willingly and because of peace.
Because if I have that much military, I can do whatever I want, why would I give up anything?

I have that much power.

Why would America or China give everything

if they're so powerful?

And especially if they have this kind of open check

from the United States.

So it is really about what can push Israel

to give up something.

Because you are so much stronger than me. What could compel you to give up something? Because you are so much stronger than me.

What could compel you to give up something?

And this is why the whole thing about like,

trying to equalize Palestinians

and the Israeli state and government,

it doesn't make any sense.

So what is the source of hope?

You know, Jon Stewart, who will talk about it from many angles, somebody you admire, a friend, he proposed a two-state solution. Of course.
Look to the comedians for hope. Yes, well, everybody's talking about the two-state solution, but Israel has said many times on Netanyahu and Benes, like, there is going to be no state solutions.

In the past, it's like,

even Naftali Bennett,

he came in on the hard talk.

It's like, yeah, maybe in the past

we wanted two-state solutions,

but like, look,

every time we give them land,

they kill us.

So no state solutions.

And they are openly saying it.

That's perhaps rhetoric.

Rhetoric that is supported by action.

Because look at what they're doing in the West Bank that you said.

They are cutting it,

illegal settlement,

piecemealing it.

So how,

if you have an intention at all

to give them anything,

why would you keep doing this?

And you've called it

a bunch of little gazas.

Yeah.

It's a nice little picture

of what's happening.

Piecemealing it,

dum, dum, dum.

Because it is,

what happened

in the past four months

Thank you. A bunch of little Gazas.
Yeah. It's a nice little picture of what's happening.
Peace-mealing it, dum, dum, dum. Because it is, what happened in the past four months, the Palestinians have been micro-dosing on it for a very long time.
Little by little, little by little. And we would shout every time when it gets too much, and then we shut down, and then little by little little but this time it was hard it was hard to see the blatant oppression and the world said maybe the hamas ministry of the health are giving us the bad numbers maybe it's just human shields and i i laugh there's 13 000 babies killed does that mean that there's 13 000 military target hiding in their diapers because it is so it doesn't make any sense to kill that baby it's like oh oops just out of our head it's hard to know what to do with those numbers i mean i it's just one baby is enough but you know what happens when you hear so many numbers numbers become numbers and you become so desensitized and this is why there's a difference between saying 13,000 Palestinian kids did it's like Mila Kohane an Israeli baby 10 months old she was killed in her crib and this is what we hear from CNN we never hear a story about a Palestinian kid that's why thank you for giving me the space for saying the news of the Palestinian children that were killed just for four weeks.
Because humans needs context. They need depth.
They need like a 3D look at what they can look at. But if you just give them numbers, they don't mean anything.
Is there some degree to where both leaderships, Hamas, PA, Palestinian Authority, Israel, all want war, like perpetual war to remain in power? That's an interesting question. But, I mean, let's admit something.
The Arab the in the area have actually used the problem of palestine in order to stay in power in order to take getting excuses like have this enemy and israel the israeli government has used that too and maybe the palestinians but but my problem with when going into discussion this is that the the two sides are not equal they're not equal in. They're not equal in power, they're not equal in influence, and they're not equal in international support, especially with the United States.
So Palestinians can, people who have made changes in history were the people with power, the people who would have the ability to change things. And the Palestinians cannot really change it.
What can they change? Well, is that true though? Okay. With how much support the Palestinian people have.
So just like you said, there's a lot of Arab states that will voice their pro-Palestinian position in order to distract from their own corruption and abuses of power in their own countries.

But I don't think if you look globally,

there's a complete asymmetry of power

and public opinion here.

Maybe in the press in the West, but if you look globally.

But do they have the same kind of weapons

that the Israeli have?

So literally power? No, there's a major asymmetry of literal power. Some money to their leaders.
Does that make any difference? I mean, and also when you say Palestinian authority, which authority are you talking about? Hamas or the Palestinian authority who has been kind of a domesticated, kind of like a puppy for the Palestinians who basically had been an informant for their own people. And this is the thing also that kind of like really pissed me off when I was hearing the thing about these things, like Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas.
Like we have Netanyahu on tape confessing that he supported Hamas, gave him money in order to cause factions between the Palestinians. So it's just like, you just told me this.
You just told me this. You just told me they didn't have support Hamas.
It's like, but Hamas is like, what? I mean, to which degree does Netanyahu represent the Israeli people is a real question. To which point does Trump or Biden represent the American people? And to which degree does Hamas represent the Palestinian people? It does.
None of these represent it, but who have the power in order to make the decisions? It really comes down to that. Well, who does have the power? You're giving a lot of power to Israel.
Yeah. But the Arab League.
What should Hamas do? What do you think should Hamas do? Continue doing what a charter says, which is trying to destroy Israel. And the role of the Palestinian people is to overthrow Hamas and get a more moderate leadership probably.
And the role of the Israeli people is to vote out this right-wing government and elect a more moderate leader so that there's a chance at peace with two moderate leaders. So before Hamas even got to control 2006 Gaza, there was Ariel Sharon in 2000.
And we all know what happened. And Ariel Sharon kind of like had, came up with this amazing policy of like breaking people's kids' bones in the Intifada.
So, Hill Baraki was also, I mean, which one is moderate? I mean, I think Hamas is a product of what happened. I mean, we can, if there was no apartheid in South Africa, there would be no NFC.
There would be no Nelson Mandela. If there were no Nazis in Paris, there would be no French resistance.
And I'm not saying that, and again, I'm not, I don't wanna be put in a position to defend Hamas or anybody because you know what that entails, but those are, like, Hamas, again, not defending them. They went into October 7th.
What was their, why did they do that? Like release our hostages, the people in prison. Because if you're talking about people who are kidnapped, Israel kidnaps people every single day.
And when they had the first exchange in November 4th, Israelis 400 people, three quarters of them were women and children. Why are those people in prison? There's one in four kids that are in prison that stay in solitary confinement, which is by international law, a form of torture.
And you're putting kids through that. Is it possible, so first of all, ceasefire.
Yes. And longer term, is it possible for Arab states and the United States to get together and with power through diplomacy enforce a solution.
It's a very, very ideal solution. But you know, and I know that the Arab states don't really have the power.
All of the powers are in the hands of America. They have the power.
See, I think they have the power. Maybe they don't want to use it.
They don't want to. Because there's a benefit.
Maybe there's a benefit. The dark sense I have is that a lot of people win from the suffering that Palestinians are going through because they can point to that and distract from corruption in their own states.
And then obviously Iran can benefit also from the same kind of dynamic, distracting from the authoritarian nature of their regime. Definitely, but what is the core of the problem here? Is it the Arab states using the suffering or actually the suffering itself itself and the suffering comes from people being displaced their homes were taken away there are seven million palestinians in diaspora seven millions seven million went out there and now they're living in canada and america and europe they had homes there they cannot go back to 1.7 million people of the people in Gaza don't belong in Gaza they were pushed from other places the the piecemeal thing of people are being you know in in Germany I'm gonna shift gear a little bit it's gonna be a little bit of fun there is a there's a book that I bought the rights to and want to turn it into a movie.
And I bought, I optioned the right for two months, for two years in March of last year, before October 7th. After October 7th, I bought the permanent right.
That book is called The Muslim and the Jew. And it is written by an author called Ronan Steinke.
I read an article about this book in 2016 and i chased that book for rights for seven years i didn't have that much money but i wanted that book and that book was translated into english called an and dr helmi and that book tells the incredible story under nazi germany where arabs went in droves to berlin 1920s after the First World War in the Weimar Republic and they became doctors and engineers and journalists because for two reasons number one it's just they're cheap very cheap because of the inflation and two a lot of the Arab nationalists didn't want to send their kids to England or France because they were the occupiers. And Dr.
Helmi was the hero of that. He's an Egyptian doctor.
And that's why I kind of like, I personally kind of connected with him. And he went to medical school, didn't find a place to live, so he lived in the Jewish ghetto, like many Arabs.
He didn't find a school to work, a hospital to work in, so he worked in a Jewish hospital. So there was a lot of Arabs who lived with the ghetto.
And actually the first director of the Berlin mosque was a Jewish convert who converted to Islam and he was a gay activist. I'm telling you, this is like a crazy story.
Yeah. And this is not a fiction story.
This is actually like a nonfiction. It's written actually based on the statement and the documents of the Nazis in the Gestapo.
Dr. Helmi, he was in this hospital and the Nazis came in and they killed and tortured and beat up the Jewish doctor.
And they made him the head of his department. Then he was, so now he's surrounded by Nazi doctor.
They didn't touch him because he was an Arab. There was kind of like a thing between Germany and the Arabs because they wanted to appease to them in order to have kind of a grassroots base in the Arab world where he want to go next.
And this is why 1934, 1935, the racial laws of Nuremberg, they had a name change. First they were called anti-Semitic.
Then they changed into anti-Jewish because also Arabs were Semitic. So they wanted to appease the Arabs.
Now what happened. helped me when that happened to him he would go back to the ghetto and he would see the apartments next to him the Jewish apartment become more and more and more flooded with people because they were moving Jews and pushing them and putting them together pushing them to the side.
And each flat, each apartment, instead of one family, it would have three, four, six, seven families. And he was there, born at home.
And he looked, he was there. This is where the people he grew up with, he lived with.
And now he's seeing that kind of discrimination just because he's an arab and then he he started to kind of like atone for like because he felt responsible because he wasn't treated the same way and he started to go and treat jewish people in their homes because they couldn't go to hospitals and then one family gave them his daughter it's, this is Anna, save her.

He took her, pretended that she's his niece,

put a hijab around her, taught her Arabic,

called her Nadia, my daughter's name, by the way.

And he hid her in plain sight for seven years

in front of the Nazis as his nurse.

It's an incredible story.

And then not just that he went to prison,

and then he went out and he formed with the Arab people that was in prison with him, a network that saves 300 Jews. See that kind of story? This is the Jews that were living in the Arab world.
I'm not saying that the Jews living in the Arab world was living like an incredible life. Of course, as a kind of a minority, they did not have like the full power of their full, you know, advantages of the rule that's that's normal but we

had this kind of a relationship before Israel was erected in 1948 and then of

course everybody looked at Jews at the time as fifth column and of course the

nationalistic regimes used that and this is why what Biden said was very dangerous when he said if there is no Israel no Jew in the world will feel safe you are the leader of the free world you are the president of the United States do you mean that you are telling me that the Jews in your country in the United States of America are not safe that is two levels. Number one, America historically and right now is more safe to Jews in the world than anybody.
They are safer than the Jews in Israel. They never had pogroms or the Holocaust like Europe.
They live here a good life, not perfect life, but they are better. Second of all, if you're the president and you're telling that a group of people will not feel safe unless there is a different one, you are already feeding into our fifth column.
They're like, you're Russian. You come from there.
And there is a group of laws in the Russian constitution that says that Russia will protect its citizens everywhere in the world. What happens if the president says like, oh, you're Russians.
You're protected by your own country. You don't belong here.
This is terrible. Yeah, you're right.
That's actually an indirect threat. Yes.
You know, even saying Muslims cannot feel safe in America or something like this. That means like that's a threat.
But what would a Jewish person in Beverly Hills or in Brooklyn feel if he hears that? You are already telling people you need to be loyal to Israel. I mean, Israel is a foreign country.
I am sorry, but Israel is a foreign country. Israel is a client country that we sponsor and it should actually be responsible and held accountable for what they do.
You mentioned 1948, the Nakba, but before that, 41, 39, 41 to 45, the Holocaust. What do you do? What do you do with the Holocaust? Like what, how do you incorporate into the calculus of what's- Oh, it's terrible.
Of morality that leads up to the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians from the land? How do you work that out? It is terrible, but like, I mean, what, the systemic annihilation of Jewish people under the Nazi, that is like a carefully engineered, thought for, planned, it was terrible. It was like, kind of like the human ingenuity put into like something that is very evil.
But also, it is not just that happened. We need to remember that Otto Frank, the father of Anna Frank, has his visa, refugee visa, rejected by the United States.
There's a lot of people that were rejected by the United States, rejected by other European countries. And then they were pushed into Palestine.
So you have to put yourself between, like, and the Arabs, okay, we're sitting here,'re sitting here okay come and then all right you don't have a a home or a country anymore that that that that kills you i mean you see if i'm not an arab and you give me that kind of piece of like terrible human treasure like oh my god that is terrible but then i'm an arab like yes i'm so sorry but what do i have to do with that? Why is that my fault? The persecution of the Jewish people have started since the eighth and ninth century because they were first anti-Christians, they were criminal immigrants, they were conspirators. This is the anti, like people kind of like, as if Europe kind of like throw antisemitism on us.
You understand that like Henry Ford, Henry Ford is one of the biggest anti, he was the inspiration for Adolf Hitler. This is how antisemitic Henry Ford was.
And you kind of like gloss over that and then suddenly we as arabs have to pay the price why several questions i want to ask there so but one just zooming out why do you think hatred of jews has been such a viral kind of idea throughout human history oh it, it's very easy. It all started from Christ.
They killed Christ, they killed Christ, they killed Christ. They're the killer of Christ.
That's a very sexy story. That was so, yeah, that was, and that stayed for years.
That stayed for centuries, I'm sorry, centuries. They're the killer of Christ.
And then the Catholic Church did not allow us usury but they would work in usual so they become rich now the people that we hate that we accuse them of feeling christ are becoming rich so that's envy now and that's that and and that's hatred i mean when you talk about ghettos ghettos was not just as secluded parts in cities. Sometimes those ghettos were outside the cities.
Jews were not even allowed to work a lot of professions. They were not allowed to get into the syndicates of certain professions.
So they had to go work usually and they got rich. So the people hated them more.
The first crusade didn't kill a single Muslim. All they killed were Jews.
And when they finally arrived to Jerusalem, all they killed were Jews. They almost annihilated the Jews.
So it was all this. And of course, you have the Dark Ages.
Who do you need as an enemy? The Jews, right? They're the killer of Christ. There's nothing bigger than this.
then you you fast forward i mean one of the things that i that i found out that was very very very very crazy when henry ford imported the the protocols of the elders of zion by the way in the arab world protocols of the elder of zion is so popular and uh for obvious And for the people who don't know world, Protocols of the Elder of Zion is so popular. And for obvious uses.

And for the people who don't know it,

it's kind of like a bunch of stories.

And basically it's like the Jews saying,

like we're gonna control the world,

and we're gonna do this,

and we're gonna do that, and whatever.

What people don't know,

that that is a work of plagiarism. It was plagiarized from a satirical play called Conversation in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.
And it is just, and it is kind of like based on one chapter or one scene or something. It's crazy.
But it's crazy how sticky it is. Yes.
That's weird. Yes.
Because if I hate you, that's great. But if I have a story to support that hate, that's even better.
But it's like one of the best stories, one of the stickiest stories about hate. Of course.
It's probably the most effective. Because like there, you know, a lot of peoples hate other groups of peoples, but that's just like the sexiest story of them all.
Because humans need to concentrate their hate, their insecurities, and their shortcomings into one thing that they can practice that hate on. If it's a person, great.
If it's a group, even better. How do you, into this calculus, incorporate that group is pretty small? There's 16 million Jews worldwide.
And you mentioned how is that the responsibility of the Arab peoples? You know, everybody should be to blame for not taking in Jews after the Holocaust. But, you know, the reality of the situation, if we look at the religious slice of this, there's 16, let's say, million Jews, and there's, I don't know how many Muslims, but 1.8 billion.
Do you, that difference, that 100x difference, do you incorporate that into the sense that Jews in Israel might feel for, the existential dread that we might, this small group might be destroyed? Jews in Israel have every right to feel afraid because of everything that they see and everything they've been told, everything. But I would say that the calculus or the numbers doesn't, like, of course, like being small, it is of course a factor, but it is never an excuse in order to take something that's not yours.
It's saying like, hey, you have 300 million Americans and we have 52, 52 says give one state for them, there's too many of them, too many of you, just give them something. It's like the fact that I have something and you don't and there's too many of me and there's little of you and then you come in and it's not really Israel against the Arab world or the Muslim world because we have to say we fucked up big time.
But it is the Palestinians that are in and they are being subjected to that. So it's not really like the 1.8 billion and the 16 million Jews.
And the 1.8 billion, if you look at them, some of them don't care. Some of them live into regimes that are being oppressed and those regimes are supported by the United States in order.
It's easier for me as an empire to take what I want from this country if I control the dictator. And I tell them that his power is linked to my ability, to my desire to keep him in power.
So that's why you have a total disconnect between people in power in the Arab and the Muslim countries and the people themselves. Can you speak to the 1948, you know, because you mentioned taking land that's not yours, maybe parallels with Native Americans? Mm-hmm, yeah.
There was a war. The Jewish minority fought that war against several Arab states and won that war.
How do we incorporate that into the Catholics? Yeah, well, that's also a misconception, like a misinterpretation of the event, because it seems that it was like the small, it's kind of like a David and Goliath kind of story. But, and I was always like, how did we not do that? But in reality, with numbers, I can't pull it up right now, but if you look at the numbers, the number of tanks, the planes, the trained officer, because many of those Jewish fighters came from world war ii they were seasoned fighters and they actually had more planes more tanks more artillery more pieces of weapon more of the all of the other combined because they the the people that really like fought was egypt and you have to say 1948 some many of those arab countries didn't even have their independence so they would kind of like send like a cavalry or like a people in horses but in fact the whole idea was like we won against seven nations the numbers were totally in Israel favor they were better equipped they were better trained they had like more tanks and artillery and airplanes and they planned better so yes they deserved the win because they planned and we did it.
So to you there was an asymmetry military power even then. But what do you do with the fact that the war was won? So like if you look at the history of the world, there is wars fought over land.
I agree with you. This has been the history of humanity humanity was not living peacefully it's all about like people taking people and killing people taking their land but there's two difference here mostly usually the conquering power like for example england they had england and they conquered you in India.
And after the occupation finished, they go back to England. France, Greece, Persia, Egypt, they were like, go in, expand, and shrink, expand, and shrink.
So it's all been there. What is different here is exactly what happened in Australia and the United States.
A group of people came in, not just to conquer and take the land, but to completely change, to replace them and get them out or kill them. It was very easy with the Indians because they had smallpox, there was no social media, they did it over 400 years, they had time.
The problem is, what is happening right now, I agree with you, it might not be that new, but we are there and we're watching it happen. And so now we have to confront the realities of war and empire and conquering.
Because you know what's the problem? We told ourselves we can be better. Yeah.
After 1948, there was the universal declaration of human rights. It means that we are gonna be better humans.
We're not gonna kill and take land. We're not displace people.
We're not going to take people for what they are. There's now laws.
There's international laws. There's international court of justice.
And now Israel is giving the middle finger to all of them. So isn't in some fundamental way this whole thing that we're talking about is us as a civilization on social media, in articles and books, in newspapers, we're just trying to figure out who are we as a people.
I think the shock came from the fact that we thought that we as humanity have evolved, and now we are, what have actually changed is that we became more advanced in effectively eradicating a group of people because of the technology that we have. And the fact that we can do that under the eyes and ears of all the world, and we are watching it under our phone, we have a window.
We have a window to the war. You know, 1945, people didn't know what was happening in Japan.
Well, we heard about it on the radio. Like, oh, today our forces came in and they launched.
We don't know.

We heard it.

Maybe we saw pictures after that.

And it's quite edited.

But now we see it.

We're into it.

And it is so much for our psyche.

And we can't get it.

And the Arabs are saying, like, guys, you told us we came to the West because we were told that we were equal.

You know the University Declaration of Rights? One of the co-authors his name is stefan hassel he's a jew he is a survivor of the holocaust and you know what happened to him he died by the way a couple of years ago but he before he died he was canceled by so many people and he was called anti-semitic because he joined the bds movement and he spoke about palestine that is the author of the universal declaration of human rights that we value so much and we think that that would define our humanity but then we go in and we are shocked it's like maybe we were sold something maybe that was false advertisement you shared a tweet by an account called awesome jew uh it reads islamo-nazi comedian basem yusuf comedian in quotes by the way yeah yeah, because I'm not funny. So, Islamo-Nazi comedian Bassem Yusuf is now denying the October...
I love that you retweeted this twice. Yeah.
I guess, suppose, because it's advertising some upcoming dates. He's now denying October 7th massacre.
The Muslim radical Bassem Yusuf is notorious for his radical, radical said twice, for his radical hatred of Jews in Israel. In a recent clip, he claims that the atrocities committed on October 7th are fabricated or are looking for all information regarding any of his upcoming shows, as well as the venues which host the scumbag where Jews feel safe around this Nazi.
Nazi. Yeah.
I've never, this is my first time interviewing a Nazi. It's a big honor.
It's my first time I actually get called a Nazi. First time.
First time. I have been called so many things in Egypt.
So in Egypt, I was called a CIA operative, a Mossad spy, a secret Muslim brotherhood, a secret Jew. There was also an article that was published about me in the state-run media saying in details how Basim has been recruited by CIA agents using John Stewart in order to use satire to bring down the country.
I was a Freemason, an infidel, a member of the Knights of the Temple, something like that. And there is actually people, the Muslim Brotherhood on their show, they would say like, he is actually an Israeli and they have forged an Egyptian ID for him to come.
So it's kind of like when I guess, I said, I had, I left all of that behind and I come here, it's like, boom, anti-Semitic Nazi. Damn.
I mean, I really covered everything. I don't know what else.
I mean, I think I have, it's kind of like I'm collecting PhDs. I'm just like getting like all of these credits.
How do you deal with that? How do you deal with the attacks? I mean, this goes back to the decision to do the interview with Piers Morgan. How do you psychologically do all of it?

These kind of attacks, at the beginning, it's fun.

But when they evolve into something else,

so for example, I was like laughing of all of the stuff about calling me this,

calling me that, but then when people would come

and thread the theater, because it's not the people

who are making those accusations that would come to you. It's the people that will hear and see those accusations and act on it.
And there's always the fear of like, I mean, we have in the Airboard a lot of things that somebody would hear something about someone else and go kill him and whatever, like anybody else. So there's this, but somehow I wanna make fun of it.

And it is to be called an Islamo Nazi,

it must been the funniest thing ever.

Because it doesn't Islamo Nazi, wow, how did you,

how did you, and a radical Muslim, me,

a lot of Islamists hate me. They don't call me a secular infidel.
So it's kind of like, who am I? Maybe I have an identity crisis and I need the people to tell me who I am. Well, let's go to the beginning.
Let's go to your childhood. You grew up in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt.
Well, let's figure out how you came to be who you are. How did you become an Islamo-Nazi? Yeah, exactly.
It's a long journey. I do like the swastika tattoo on your ass, which I didn't...
How did you see my ass? You know what you did. I know what you did.
It was very inappropriate. You're also obviously a sexual harasser.
Is this like a me too? Yes. Is this like 2020? Someone will come up and say, okay.
We have it. Clip it.
This is your me too moment. All right.
So Cairo, what's a defining memory, positive or negative from your childhood? My memory in general was cool.

It was cool.

I went to a Catholic school for primary school, elementary.

And by the time I'd done, there was kind of like a start

of a decline into the public education.

And my parents, they're like middle-class working officials. My dad was a judge.
my mom was a business professor. And they were like one of the people who was like, they didn't have that much luxury.
My dad like drove like a regular like car, a Fiat, which is like the equivalent for the Lada in the- Thank you. Thank you for speaking to the audience.
Yeah, yeah. The Lada.
And- Well, so would that be a good car or good car? No, no. It's kind of like the minimum.
My dad was not like a man of showing off. Whatever money they would do, they would put it for us.
Education. Give everything to their kids.
This is kind of like a very typical mentality. And I'm sure it's in many cultures, but like we grew up with this, like everything that we have is left for kids.
So they will put us into education. So middle school, that was the big, 1986, was the beginning of the explosion of like international schools, private schools.
And these schools were relatively expensive. Of course now with today's currency, it's ridiculous.
But at that time, it's very expensive. So I went to that school.
And from, there was this moment, it was like, you feel less right away. I mean, of course, there's the regular bullying and stuff, but it's not that.
It's kind of like you always feel less. You don't have that much of like purchasing power that allow you to go to the same outings or travel with them.
And even like how you dress, it will be modest compared to them. So I was always an outsider.
I was, and I compensated with that by two things, being good at school and being good at sports. So I was not like the typical nerd, it was just like, I was playing football, basketball, crattering field.
And I was like, one of the people would like to have me on their team. So I wasn't like, kind of like, ah, he's a nerd, get him away.
But I never had a girlfriend. I never had any kind of like, I was not boyfriend material.
So that's kind of like, it leaves remnants in you that you're not good enough. But psychologically, you're always, like when you're by yourself, you felt like an outsider.
Yes, all the time. And that's why it's kind of like, I'm more of a loner.
I don't have a lot of what you call friends. I have acquaintances people that I do stuff with, but I don't have like the people that I tell them everything.
When I went to medical school, now medical school is a different animal. Medical school is where all of the people from the public schools go public schools are very like they are not they they don't have like they they don't have english language as like a strong part of but they are brilliant people so because they would mostly study in arabic but they are brilliant and they are very very very smart very sharp but then i go there now I am the sissy boy from the private school that comes into medical school.
Now I'm an outsider again. And I go into residency and I pick up salsa.
So now I'm a salsa teacher while being a cardiothoracic surgery resident. And I'm an outsider for the third time because in salsa, I'm kind of like the respectful doctor.
And in resident, I'm the guy who is just dancing. So, and everything, of course, as a medical resident, you will mess up a lot.
So they would always like, oh, because you're a dancer. Oh, because you don't care about medicine.
You just like want to go there and dance with women. Which is true.
Yeah, all of my life i felt that i'm an outsider i'm not part of the team i'm not part of the core group so where and and i have a story that you would love i right before my residency i was so much into salsa so i i had all of the money, and then you saved that, and I was working summers, and I was doing extra jobs, and I took that money, and I went to Miami in order to learn Rueda de Casino, which is the Cuban kind of like circle salsa kind of thing. And I went there in the summer of 2001.

And my return ticket was 9-12, 2001.

The universe is a sense of humor, I gotta tell you that. No, no, no, 9-12.

I was supposed to be on a plane coming back to Egypt.

What happens?

Thank God I ran out of money 10 days before that.

It's like, all right, I changed my ticket and I came back. 9-11.
I'm kind of like, my mom, wake up! Wake up! What? What? It's like, and I see like the two tower phone, it was like, my mom's like, oh, you're here, you're here, you're here, thank God, you're here. That, and I was like, I was like, I should, I could have been in Guantanamo right now.
Yeah. Flying Flying at 912.
But by the way, I was in Miami. They went to the flying school in Miami.
So, I mean, I had like 9-11 written all over my face. You'd be all over the news.
And Mama's like, what? He went there to dance salsa? I didn't know that salsa is like a name for Paris. Why salsa? Why did that attract you? And what, like, can you explain what salsa is? So I mentioned to you offline that I've been doing a little bit of tango, trying to learn it.
Yeah, like, you know, samba, salsa, pachata, meringue, it's kind of like Latin dances. And it's like, you know, I don't know how you describe yourself, couple dance on Latin beat.
And I did it because I once I, and I talk about that about my, in my Arabic standup comedy, not the English. I talk about like how I was, you know, I didn't have like really like a great like social life.
And I, my one day and I go into a place, which it was called El Ghetto Negro. No, no, it was called Big Fat Black Pussycat.
And then I think they thought it will be like racist or something, so it should change it to El Ghetto Negro. Anyway, so.
Great, great. I know.
Great decision. I know.
So I went there, it's like, damn, music and women and my doctor, a doctor dancing salsa. That is a chick magnet.
Yeah, 100%. We do everything for that.
All of humans. Even power, even money.
All the wars we've been talking about.

Women.

At the end of the day.

The approval from the other sex.

We are babies.

We are terrible people.

Yeah.

So, of course, I mean, that was like great.

But then, as a nerd, I went in so hard,

and now I became a salsa teacher.

Yeah. And I earned more money from salsa, more than I did as a doctor.
I didn't know this part of you. That's hilarious.
I was making a killing amount of money. Like huge amount of money.
And I was just like, you know, I would go finish my shift and I go to the salsa class. And sometimes I would have like 70 people in my salsa class.
I had like the biggest salsa class in Egypt in the beginning of 2000. And it was fantastic.
And it was an outlet because you go there and there's the shifts and people dying. Damn.
And they go, salsa. Can't escape.
You must have been good. I was okay.
I was cool. I was fun.
There were people better than me, but I have a thing about teaching. I like teaching people.
So you mentioned heart surgery. So what motivated you to become a doctor? It was a choice of exclusion.
I mean, there's nothing else you can do with these high grades other than doctor and engineering. I hate math, so go be a doctor.
This is the Middle East. What do you expect? It's either, like in my joke, in my show, I said like there's, it can be one of three things in the Middle East.
A doctor, an engineer, or a disappointment. It is, that is the choices that you have.
So, years after. I'm a disappointment.
Here I am. You're damn good at it though.

That's a hard path though.

Yeah.

And it's a fascinating one.

Can I tell you something?

Yes.

That actually I was thinking about

why did I actually go into medicine?

And why did I always choose the hardest thing

although I didn't love it?

And I have to tell you

I had an epiphany only two weeks ago.

And I don't know if that's actually related or not.

You know, remember when I told you

I went to this school

Thank you. And I have to tell you, I had an epiphany only two weeks ago.
And I don't know if that's actually related or not.

You know, remember when I told you I went to this school and I didn't have that much money.

And I didn't have the luxury of time or money to be with those people and do what they do.

So by the time I finished school and everybody was going to university, oh, everybody in my school went to the AUC, the American University in Cairo. of course

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I'm a I'm of like, I realized that just like very, very very recently maybe I went to the hardest school ever so I don't have space to use other than studying because if I have that much space what I'm going to do with it I don't have that much freedom I don't have that much money I can't compete with those people going out so maybe I need a solid excuse that I'm in a place where I don't have that much of a spare time.

Is it also possible, I like how this is a therapy session where we're psychoanalyzing it.

Is it also possible that you always just pick the hardest thing you could possibly do?

Maybe.

Maybe that's the Piers Morgan thing too.

Maybe, but like when I left Egypt and I came here,

I still had the choice to go back to medicine.

But I hated it.

I hated it.

Medicine traumatized me.

The amount of like, you give up.

You know my brother in Egypt, he had a daughter.

She's a brilliant basketball player.

She is in the national team, amazing.

I used to play basketball also in the Egyptian League, but I never, I was kind of like, my favorite position in the court was the bench. And I was not as good as her, but she, and then, and then he, it was time for her to go into college.
And he didn't talk to me for six weeks. I said, tell me what's happening to Farida? Which? Like, I didn't want to tell you.
She went into medicine. I said, what? Medicine, what did he do? Because he knows how I hated it.
I was traumatized. And I said, like, dude, she's a basketball player.
Make her go to an easy school. So that's kind of inspiring.
You still did it. You still did it.
I still did it, but I don't know. is it because of the difficulty or because of what I told you? Maybe I needed something.
Maybe because I was not very confident in my social life. So I needed a distraction not to have that much of a social life.
Oh, wow, okay. You understand? Yeah, uh-huh.
It's kind of loud because I will always have an excuse I'm studying. I have something, I have exams.
And I don't know, I kind of like self-sabotaged my own thing because I couldn't compete with those people on the outing and the money and whatever. So I need an excuse to be like, oh, he's a doctor, he's studying.
At least in your own mind, you couldn't compete. Yeah, yeah.
I always felt as less because I mean, I didn't have any girlfriends in school. I had very late in life.
Everything to me came to life. So I always felt as less because, I mean, I didn't have any girlfriends in school.
I had very late in life, and everything to me came to life, so I always felt, even stand-up comedy, it came very late to me in life, so I always feel that I'm not good enough. I feel that I didn't spend the time to build the foundation that other comedians do, so I always feel that I am too lucky.
I always feel that this is a fleeting thing. And when I went, had the height and the fall in Egypt, when I was like the top of everything, I was like so famous.
And then everything was taken away from me. That's like, ah, you see, I told you, that happens when you don't build foundation, you fall.
So I always feel that I am not good enough. Or if I am in a position where people think I am, deep inside I am not.
You know that I have a speech impediment that I was not meant to be a TV presenter. I have an, in Arabic, it's very obvious.
I cannot roll my R's. I cannot say er, I cannot roll it.
So in Arabic, like Spanish, it's very obvious. So when I did my first video on the internet that made me famous, and then I got my television deal back there in Egypt, my partner at the time, he took the video and he went to a producer, I said like, are you giving me a guy with a lisp? He couldn't, he should, that's why when I came on television, I was the first ever guy with a lisp.
I had two things going for me, the lisp and the big nose. And I was always bullied for two, for these two all the time.
So I always felt less. See, but that's the foundation of like creating a great person.
Yeah. Because if you're pretty, you don't need to do much.
I probably wouldn't recommend it, but it is true. So if you are pretty, do some disfigurement.
Find the flaws and be extremely self-critical about them. So you saw Jon Stewart on TV for the first time in 2003, I believe.
How did that change your life? I was in a gym and I was running on the treadmill. And at that time, CNN was coming up on cable.
And I was watching and there's this studio, I don't know what it is, so I put the earphones on and I started watching and I was so taken by this that I stopped the treadmill and I just like stood for the 20 minutes like this on the treadmill and I just like standing there. I didn't know what he was saying.
I didn't understand what is Democrats, what is Republicans, what is those names that he's saying, what is Fox News. I don't understand.
But I was fascinated. There was something, you know, when you don't understand the music, but you get the rhythm, it was that.
I wonder what that is that you saw. It's like the timing of the humor.
I mean, there is, John Stewart is one of a kind. Like his biting criticism of power, I would say,

and also ability to highlight the absurdity of it all.

But you understand I didn't understand any of that.

I didn't understand any of the references.

But it is the rhythm.

The rhythm.

You know, sometimes when you even see like a comedy,

that's a language you don't understand,

but there's a rhythm.

Boom, boom.

There's something. There's something in the music.
understand, but there's a rhythm. da-da-da-da-da-da Stewart.
So that was in there.

Yeah, it was in there.

And I did it and it worked.

Can you talk about 2011?

I mean, what is it?

The Arab Spring, what is it?

People here in America, you know.

Depends on which side.

Did something happen or what?

Depends which side of the equation you are. Because for a lot of people, it's a conspiracy.
It's American made. It is the Muslim Brotherhood.
It's the Islamist. It is Israel.
It is everything else other than people. Oh, but it's a pure revolution.
It's a pure. I think we put too much weight on conspiracies.
I think it is normal human behavior that then become, get maybe used or abused or taken advantage of by other powers and then the conspiracy starts. But at the time, the Arab Spring didn't start in Egypt.
It started in Tunisia. Boaziz, a fruit vendor, burned himself up, like the American soldiers who did that a few days ago.
And that kind of sparked protests in Tunisia. And Ben Ali was a dictator in Tunisia for about like 20 years, and they removed him.
So suddenly it was kind of like a domino effect. So then Egypt started and it just took 18 days.
And you know, people, hindsight is 20, 20, since that like, you know, just Mubarak became like a burden on the military because the military are the real rulers of the country. You might have a president that kind of like have certain powers, but at the end of the day, when the military sees that a certain president is like too much of a burden, too much of like a, you know, so like they cut him off.
And Mubarak is the leader of Egypt at the time. He was there for 30 years.
30 years. By the way, speaking of which, because it was a joke in your Mark Twain speech.
I got teary-eyed just watching that. That was great.
You're like fucking great. Like what you did with Mark Twain Awards for Jon Stewart.
It's great. I mean, your comedy general and I wanted to go to your show I definitely will but that's like a little stroll on the complete tangent of just the masterful introduction and celebration of Jon Stewart anyway Mubarak 30 years and it's a joke that I say also like Mubarak was a president for 30 years like oh my god he had a president for 30 years like it's the middle east it's a very short first term it's like it's like we're still warming up baby warming up and i thought like we need to plan ahead we need to plan our our our our vacations our careers our jail time it's just like we need to so uh it's true so we had kind of like the shortest nicest revolution 18 days yeah and we thought oh 18 days we can change the country in 18 days so but of course we were naive and we had this kind of like the shortest, nicest revolution, 18 days.
And we thought, oh, 18 days, we can change the country in 18 days. But of course, we were naive and we had this kind of hope.
So Mubarak was removed. There was an interim period by the military, took it for one year.
Then they did elections, Muslim Brotherhood came to power. They stayed for one year and then the military removed them.
And in these three years, my show started. It started by kind of like a YouTube video.
It became famous overnight. Overnight.
Five to six videos, boom, went out. And at that time, I was waiting to get my clearance to go to Cleveland.
I was accepted in a fellowship as a pediatric art surgery in a hospital in Cleveland. And I said, all right, I'm just gonna do a couple of videos.
Maybe I'm gonna put it in the internet. And maybe after a year or two, after I come back from the fellowship, somebody will come, hey, why don't you write a show that looks like John Stewart? That was my mind.
Took five weeks. I had my first contract of television.
And overnight, the exposure,

and over the next two, three years,

I had 30 to 40 million people watching every episode.

A lot of this like, wow, that's too much.

That is terrifying.

Because it means that there are 30 million people who have an opinion about you.

You said there's a lot of aspects of that sudden fame that were just horrible. It's toxic.
It's toxic. It's unnatural.
It's unnatural. When people started to recognize me in the street and take pictures, I was awkward.
It's like, why do you wanna have a picture with me? Why? Why is it? Because I didn't feel that I'm worthy enough to be like a reward for someone to have a picture. And I didn't understand it.
I was actually, I was kind of an ass sometimes because people thought it was arrogance. No, it was confusion.
And I remember like my director and my producers and people around, they always saw me in a very bad mood. It's like, why are you not enjoying this? It's like, because this is not natural.
This is not natural. This adoration, this love, and this have to end somehow, and it did.
And because at a certain point, you are human. And people, kind of the adoration and the fun and the love comes because they see you saying stuff because you do your job, basically.
Political satire is basically us making fun of politicians in the media. And a lot of people have a lot of really strong opinions about politicians in the media.
So we came that, we articulate that and we give it to them and we make them laugh. So for them, we made a great job.
So why don't you do more? But you are limited. And at a certain time, you can't.
And at a certain time, you're afraid because we're humans. Because you're afraid about like, if I continue speaking up, not like something will happen to me.
I'm kind of like maybe have some protection because people see me. But what are the people around you? And I've seen that.
So that's why at a certain point, that's it. I can't.
I mean, there's a lot of things to say there, but one of the difficult things of fame in your situation is you're not just having fun, you're criticizing power. Yeah.
And it is loved by the people, but it comes with a price because at a certain price, if the power is too strong and you're not into a situation or a system that allows that, that gives you that kind of safety. So what happened? What happened, I was, so when, so the height of my fame, when the Muslim Brotherhood was in power.
And at that time they had their media and I had one show. I had like one hour per week and they had five channels 24-7.
And they were like, you know, John Stewart said it beautifully. It's like, we say shit and you say shit and we just say shit better than you.
This is exactly what John Stewart was like. We're just better.
We're just better at saying shit back. So basically, I had one hour and they had like the five things that they were like, you know, they're calling me all kinds of names.
Not just me, like all their enemies, you know. and then basically i had one hour and they have like the five things that they were like you know they're calling me all kind of names not just me like all their enemies you know and then i just had one hour and i would kind of like annihilate them in one hour a week so at a certain point they would they would even like kind of be the side with the army against the the the kind of the the liberal sectors whatever you call it and at a certain, the army kind of like flipped everybody.
What do you mean? Like kind of like they, yeah, they removed the Muslim Brotherhood, they came to power. And we, I have to say, I admit it, I supported that in the beginning because I had daily threats.
I had, I was actually interrogated and arrested under the Muslim Brotherhood. I was in an interrogation for six hours and they were asking me all day my jokes and I used that in my standup comedy describing exactly what happened in the six hours and it is so funny.
Okay, well, it's hilarious. Slow down.
You were interrogated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The general prosecutor, the general prosecutor and And it was based because of complaints by the officials and the government because in order the general prosecutor to do it, it has to have a high up mandate to bring that person to questioning.
So they went through kind of official channels. Oh yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. So it's all...
Yeah, it was official. It was legal.
Very legal. So I went there and I asked.

And it's kind of like a bunch of insulting Islam, insulting president, spreading false rumors.

And I went there.

And it was funny because I go into the building where there's police officers and there are judges.

And all of them are big fans of the show.

And some of them were taking pictures of me.

And then I'm sitting there.

And it was the most ridiculous interview ever because he was asking me about my jokes. It's like, what did you mean by this joke? And I was like, nothing.
And it was there for six hours. He's just reading your jokes back to you.
He was reading my jokes and he's reading the jokes and the junior judge is sitting there like cracking up. It's like, oh, I remember that.
It's like, guys. Guys.
That's dark. It is, it's kind of like, and I'm laughing, but in the same time, it's like the whole situation is ridiculous.
But then at the end, I was released on bail. So I went back to my show and I make fun of that.
And you have to be honest, the Muslim Brotherhood were in power, but Egypt was like right out of the revolution. There was kind of like an equal spread of power between the people there was not like someone who come in and just like the muslim brother we didn't have that power yet but they were kind of people saw that they were moving towards that and then the tension rose and then there was like a kind of a confrontation between them and the army and then a lot of people were killed in the street it terrible massacre.
And then suddenly I am blamed for all of that. It's like, you made fun of us, so now it made it easier for people to kill us.
Like, dude, come on, you're doing that to me too. I just did it better than you.
And the fact that you sided with the same people that flipped against you, that's not my fault. Did you criticize the army at all? Yeah, so after that show, I did like one episode against the army and I was canceled the next day.
And then I went to another channel, did 16 episodes in a different season and it was, I was walking on eggshells. And then that was canceled again.
And then my, the production company that was doing my show that we severed ties because we didn't have the show, they had their offices raided, they have people like having death threats. So I woke up one day, 11th of November, 2014, and my lawyer said like, leave the country right now.
There is this legal case that we, that they kind of like, they're coming for you. But I said like, you cannot, it was an arbitration case and I lost against the channel that basically canceled me.
And I said, I don't know, but there's no jail time in arbitration. It's like, yeah, tell that to the judges, leave.
So I jumped on a plane. The verdict was 12 noon, 11 November, five afternoon I was on a plane left Egypt and I never came back since then.
Was there a worry of non-legal things like assassination? I can tell you something. I was so stressed because of the show, because of everything.
I sometimes I would wake up in the morning and I hope that the bullet will come and finish everything because I was so stressed. It's like I would love because I'm too much of a chicken to kill myself.
i would like rather have someone else do it for me so i i i i was i was so under so much pressure and i remember the day that like my show was canceled indefinitely the second time under the army and i was like i don't have to worry about what kind of script i have to write next week because this this is, you know, remember when you asked me about like that tweet, but like all of those, this accusation doesn't bother me. Infidel spy, secret Jew, Zionist, Islamo Nazi, that's bullshit.
What is really, what really leaves a mark is the criticism to your craft and your work. So if you're not funny, it goes deeper.
Yeah, certain things get to you better than others. Especially if you have like a secret suspicion that you are like maybe not funny.
Maybe I'm not because I was put into that it's like because that talks to your Like, I know, but you shouldn't say it out loud.

You shouldn't say the truth out loud.

You shouldn't say it out loud.

Like, give it yourself.

But what about the weight

of the responsibility

of speaking truth to power?

So like walking on eggshells,

like what did that feel like?

Well,

after the Muslim Brotherhood were removed, you have to understand like when the military coup happened, it was a very popular coup. Like people loved the army.
In Egypt, the army is more sacred than the religion. People loved the army.
The army can go wrong. So me going against the army was, I mean, the Muslim Brotherhood was not very popular.
They were popular for their own bases. But people accepted the fact that we make fun of them.
But Sisi at that time, he was a god. And I used to go to this high class club called Gizirah Club.
And this is basically kind of like the kind of upper middle class, upper class kind of people. And during that year of the Muslim Brotherhood, I was the most popular ever.
People come, yay! When the military came in, people were walking to me like, pointing their fingers, like, don't speak about CCU. Don't speak about the army.
We love you now, but don't, they were like that. So I called John Stewart.
I was like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.
And at that time, all of the channels were closed down, all of the independent, I was the only one left because it was difficult for them to get rid of me very quickly because I was too popular. It was kind of like peace, peacemailing kind of like.
And I remember I was like, I don't know what to do. He said, like, you don't have to do anything, just your safety comes first.
And I said, but I can't. I mean, I've been doing that for two years and I cannot just like say, bye-bye guys.
I have a responsibility. I have a team.
I have people working for me. And I also, I cannot just like disappear.
And he said the most interesting thing ever. And say, if you're afraid of something, make fun about the fact that you're afraid of it, instead of talking about that something.
Brilliant, yeah. So there was like a whole episode that we did not even mention, Cici.
We did not even mention it, but the videos did all the thing. And the whole episode was me trying to avoid talking about him.

And that how the comedy was created.

The fact that I don't wanna be here,

and I don't know, so he said like,

if you will be surprised how people can relate to that,

because there was a lot of kind of like,

oh, we love him, but we feel we cannot speak.

So just by doing the simple thing

about mirroring the society,

that goes a long way.

And I kind of tried to do what I can under the military. I mean, they came up with a machine that treats AIDS and hepatitis C virus and basically every single, and I went to town with that because people think, it doesn't really have to go to the bigger powers like you're an asshole.
No, you talk about their propaganda. You talk about what they want people to perceive them at and it's a failure.
And for that, that kind of hit them even more. Because what do authoritarian figures do? They work on two things, fear and propaganda.
And from that, it gets the respect. So when you go into their propaganda and expose them, they have nothing else.
That's brilliant. So like you are walking on eggshells, but you're doing it masterfully.
That you're revealing sort of the flaws in the propaganda, the absurdity of the propaganda, and so doing or criticizing them. And this is why comedy is very specific because people say, you were not as hard on him as you were in a Muslim, but yes, because under Muslim Brotherhood, we were just like saying shit for each other.
But now the ceiling was like here. So it's kind of like, how can you do something from here? Yeah, exactly.
That's the art form. Yeah, in the Soviet Union under Stalin, a lot of the criticism came from children's stories and children's cartoons.
Double meaning, double in the window, that means other stuff. That is the brilliance.
But everyone knows. Everyone knows.
Because you are like putting a mirror, you're marrying a society, it's fascinating actually. And that's why I was canceled twice.
And that is a scary one, the army. You see that in Ukraine.
Everybody supports the army. That's why Zelensky getting rid of the head of the army was a big, big deal.

It's a really dangerous thing,

because everyone's afraid to say anything negative

about the army, especially during war in that case.

And in this case, maybe there's civil war,

that kind of thing.

But think about it.

Actually, an army during peace is much more dangerous.

Because think about it.

I don't really have an enemy to fight,

but I have all of this power, all of this tank.

Thank you. But think about it.
Actually, an army during peace is much more dangerous. Because think about it.

I don't really have an enemy to fight,

but I have all of this power, all of this tank.

Why does this actor have more money than me?

Yeah.

I'm protecting him.

Why does this businessman think that he can get onto his private plane and go to Paris?

And why I'm here sitting, like, not having all of these things?

So, and there's a lot of time on your hand because your job is to go fight. When you don't go fight and when you have the lack of, that's why, that's one of the things I love the United States about is the fact that the army cannot really get power but the kind of like, the army is, the power is actually in the military industrial complex which is a different issue.
It's kind of like a different kind of issue. But if you have all of that power, why am I sitting around just playing guard for you guys? That's why Iran is terrifying, because you have this military that just becomes a police force that turns against its own people.
Yeah. So you're a famous guy talking shit in the middle of all that.
Yeah, and when I left, I went through a very dark side. Dark, dark, dark, because all of the insecurities, all of the stuff that had been working on my head now came to life.
And now I'm in America and I'm a nobody. I'm a nobody.
And now it's like I have to do something, I have to earn some some money. So I started to do stand up comedy five years ago.
And I sucked because it was my second language and I was new. And now I would go to these comedy clubs with like kids, 21, 22 people.
And then I'm there with a family to support that. I'm going there to do it for $15, $20.
And I was bad. I was bad.
You're bombing. Bombing big time.
Eating shit. Eating big time.
Dying up there big time. And I would go back home and I would cry.
And then what made it worse is sometimes like a fan, like not a fan, a bunch of fans from Egypt. Like, oh, that's a music.
They come. I know there's a disappointment.
That kind of like face of adoration that goes and I could see it in their face I think he's gonna drive an Uber in a couple of weeks that kind of pressure and I would go and I would cry and I and then the of, oh, you left. You gave up.
You were a sellout. You're a coward.
Why don't you speak from abroad? You're safe now. I already spoke.
I don't want to be, because I don't want to be an activist. I was doing that for comedy when it was good for everybody.
But now they want me to go into YouTube and just like throw rocks from outside. And I was like, you know what, I understand, I have family there.
And it was this kind of like thing like that I am being like attacked for not doing what I should do in their face and attacked for not being funny and not doing good being, and now I feel like maybe it was wrong. And I was, I didn't know, I really, it was so traumatic that I don't know actually how I went through these years and I blocked so many details from my brain because I have been using this technique for a while now that I have been erasing a lot of my, there is a lot of memory gaps in my brain.
And I'm trying to suppress it because it was very, very, very traumatic. And a lot of people told me you have to go to therapy, but I don't, I don't know.
I'm worried to open the floodgates. And I'm thinking as if I'm functional and I'm not killing anybody, I'm okay.
I was like,an tweeted, never went to therapy. It's going to be on my headstone.
Yeah. To your best buds.
Okay. I mean, that is like terrifyingly difficult.
Like after being a surgeon, after being a surgeon,

after being a superstar, super famous,

going to eat shit at local tiny clubs

in the United States.

I mean, eating shit period.

Yeah.

Like bombing is really, really, really difficult.

Really difficult for 20 year olds.

Imagine when you're 45, 46,

and then people's like, is this his midlife crisis? What is this? I went through a lot of pain and a lot of like the doubts and it was terrible. I mean, how did you survive? I mean, I know you blocked off most of it, but what gave you like strength through all that? Because I't have any other choice.
Because I started that, and the only reason that I could is to continue. I don't know what else to do.
I don't want to go back to medicine. I don't want to do that.
And I don't know. I was, and bit by bit, bit by bit, I started to kind of like be better, be better, be better.
And I was at a certain time, a year ago, a year ago, this is where I started to kind of like hone the craft and kind of sell more tickets and sometimes even sell out some shows and sometimes sell a theater. So like it was going and the money was flowing and it was good.
And then I was like, why didn't I want it faster? I want more. I want it now.
I want Netflix deal or whatever. And then the Piers Morgan thing happened and then I blew up.
And then suddenly I'm selling out everywhere. And it's like, ah, if those people came, if the war happened two years ago, I will not be ready.
So now they come to the show. And by the way, my show had nothing to do with the October 7th.

My show is my thing that I've been crafting and working on.

You know how difficult it is to do the first hour,

the hour that I've been working on for five years.

And it's all my personal story,

all about what happened to me,

either to me as an immigrant coming here to the United States,

finding Trump as a president,

finding myself in the middle of a guns rally,

finding myself in the middle of a bombing, kind of like talking about how I got my citizenship. It's all like funny stories about like my origin story.
So they come in and they expect October 7th and all those years are my personal story, but it's good and it kills and they love it. It's like if that kind of like blew up and America happened to me two, three years ago, I would not have people who come and be disappointed.
I gotta say the timing of October 7th is very suspicious. Oh my God, please don't say that.
I don't know. I'm just asking questions.
I don't know. I'm telling you, one of the funniest things, a guy, I was in Dubai, and like a TV anchor came to me, Passim Yusuf, he flourishes during revolutions and wars.
Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Dude, you're making me sound like a bad omen, a very bad omen. Yeah, you, Hamas, and Bibi together orchestrated all of this.
Oh, my God. That's the trilogy.
You guys should go on the road together. I'm telling you that phone call is coming.
Yeah, but Hamas has to open. And they would really bomb, right? They would really bomb.
I love dark humor. You do a show, like you were saying, in English and in Arabic.
So, and the story is very different. Totally different.
Two different stories. I would love just the language difference.
Because the music of the language is also different. So like what's, how can you convert it into words? But what's the difference in the music of the languages? I'll tell you.
Because I thought about that a lot. All right, all right.
Okay. So when I was doing the English first, I actually had good jokes,

but I was missing the delivery

because the cadence and the music

and the rhythm is different.

The way that an English-speaking American

member of audience will receive it,

it will be different than how I receive it,

the energy, everything's different.

So when I kind of like got it,

I didn't know how to switch back to Arabic. Oh, wow.
Yeah, fascinating. Because here's the thing, with English standup comedy, English standup, you have a huge library.
You have like a legacy. You have like years and years and years and years of people doing comedy.
But in Arabic, it's very new to us. And most of the Arabic standup comedy, especially in Egypt, is very tamed.
This is kind of like, imagine the stand-up comedy scene in America 1960s before Lenny Bruce. So no swearing conservative, careful.
No swearing, nothing conservative, everything. No swearing, no.
Yeah, it's kind of like very, so I didn't know what to do with Arabic. So I broke the barriers.
I became Danny Bruce, I became a Jewish guy. So I went in and I went and I changed the whole thing.
Seven words you're not allowed to say. For me, 15 words.
Well, Arabic is a very rich language. Yeah.
So when I did, here's the difference between the Arabic and the English show. The English show, surprise, surprise, is a unifying language, even for a group of Arabs.
So if I give the same exact show to the same 1,000 audience members in the same theater, and they're the same people, same makeup of like Lebanese, Egyptiangyptian syrian saudis english will be a unifying language arabic is a dividing language because you have 22 dialects and the dialects are vastly different and like maybe egyptians understand a little bit of lebanese but not that much but the references algerian moroccan tunisian totally different animal that's like a totally different language saudi, Kuwaiti, totally different. People understand the Egyptian dialect because it's the dialect of most of the artwork and the movies, but the reference and the everyday street talk might not be understood by them.
So now I have to go in and talk to all of these dialects together. So I formed my, big part of my show is like, what are you guys expecting of this? This is what, this is, we gonna, when I go do profanity and you're gonna like it, this is the problem with the show as a dialect, and I construct all of these sentences formed of so different, different words.
For example, an iron, in any, in any, in any, in the Arab dialect is an iron. In Saudi Arabia, it means ass.
That's one example. That's one example, you know? So imagine if you can actually construct sentences having all of these things in one sentence.
So I would, I would construct like a whole section of my show about that. So it's really very much about like self-reflective on language and the limits of language that's allowed.
And the limits of language, and I tell them, part of the show is like, I know what's the problem with me doing Arabic. It's like, if this was an English show and I was telling you, fuck and shit and bitch, you'll be ha ha ha ha, but if I do one swear word, all of you will cringe.
Yeah. It's like, why? Is it because we are ashamed? Yeah.
So it's kind of like, it's not just like about swearing. It's about like, there's a lot of philosophical pathways in this.
There's profanity and people have fun, whatever, but like it is about like, what does, how do we treat our language? And I tell them we speak Arabic as Arabs, but it's not the same Arabic. It's crazy, right? And you're doing the show in America also, which is another level of upside.
Oh yeah, actually the Arab diaspora in America is some of the best audiences I have. They are like wonderful and they come from, and I did it also in the Middle East, and maybe I'll do like an Arab tour in the Middle East in the fall.
Which countries would you go to and not? I worried Jordan, Lebanon, I'm doing UAE, I'm doing Kuwait, Egypt, Bahrain, Egypt, I don't think so. I don't think so.
Is it personal? Is it worry about your safety? Well, I have the American citizenship right now, so I am relatively safe. There's a block, Sure.
Honestly, there's a block. There's a person, there's so much that happened.
And I never bad mouth Egypt, it is my country. It has all of my marriage, 40 years of my life I lived there.
But when you get hurt so much, instead of trying to kind of, I don't wanna take revenge, I don't wanna like that, I just want to avoid. Because Egypt gave me so much fame and so much love and so much hate and so much rejection.
It was a very tumulus relationship. Very, very difficult.
And a lot of people tell me, well, don't you miss Egypt? and i tell them every time the egypt that i miss is not there anymore it's not bad or good it's not worse or better it's just i'm different and the places are different and the people are different and their circumstances are different whatever image that you have of what you love is not there anymore that's why a lot of immigrants especially arab immigrants they they live here but there. And then when they go back for a vacation, they get disappointed because they didn't find what they want.
And then they come back here and they're disappointed because this is what they want to come back, but it's not there anymore. Yeah.
Their view of that place is from a different time. I have that, you know, my parents, but everybody that left the Soviet Union, I mean, it's such a complicated relationship with that.
It's sometimes borders on hate, disappointment. In the case of the Soviet Union, perhaps similar to Egypt is the promises sold when you were younger and the promises broken by the possibility of what it was supposed to be.
With the Soviet Union, I'm sure with Egypt is the same. Iran is the same.
So they have a very complicated relationship with that. Yeah, that's why like for example, people from Iran, I remember quite well the World Cup that was made in the United States.
And the Iranian team will play in America. And there were people in the audience all wearing Iranian shirts.
They hate the regime, but they have this kind of connection with the country. And this is the whole thing.
You can actually love the country and you don't have to agree with the regime. Would you ever perform in the West Bank? No.
because if i go there i have to go to the israeli checkpoints and i don't want to go through this i don't want to have an israeli soldier telling me what to do yeah there's a demeaning aspect to that whole very even even in subtle ways yeah yeah yeah i mean i have so many palestinian friends with an american passport u US passport, living here. They are born here.

And they talk about the humiliation and the intimidation

and the harassment that they go in.

It's like, do you want me to try?

Yeah, that little bit of a humiliation.

A little bit.

Well, sometimes it's major, but I noticed that little bit is uh has a after a lifetime of that it can turn to uh it can turn to hate towards the other yeah and resentment resentment and then how do you do anything with that resentment i have a friend of mine he is from palestine from lowest back he's american here he's born here we talk about, you know, we have of course all of this discussion of what happened. And he tells me, you know, in October 11th in the West Bank, and there was a village called Khosra.
And on that village, like the settlers went in around the village and they sent a message on Facebook that's like, you rats get out of your sewers and we're gonna be waiting for you. Intimidation through technology.
And then they went, it is, Khusra have like another settlement next to it called Ishkodesh. Ishkodesh, they have people there who were training something called Mishmriti Yisha, which is basically the guardians of Yisha.
And it's like a paramilitary group that trains other settlers on military combat, give them weapons and do like military drills. And they went there like militarized and went there.
And it was actually co-founded by a Jew from Brooklyn, not even an Israeli. And he is like one of the disciples of Meir Kahana.
I'm sure that you know who Meir Kahana is. It was the Jewish defense lead, the people who assassinated Alex Oda here in the United States.
And they were there with their weapons outside, intimidating people. Now, this story carries everything that is wrong with the situation.

You have people from Brooklyn, from outside,

just because they're Jewish,

they can't come and they can claim the land

from the people there.

Anybody from Poland, just because they're Jewish,

you can come and take the land from other people.

They're using technology to intimidate Palestinians.

They have unchecked military power.

These are not IDF soldiers.

These are settlers, and they have free reign

in order to intimidate and to kill the people. you understand this is the daily life of palestinians not in gaza in the west bank what do you do from your what do we do what do people do to nudge this towards uh peace towards flourishing here's the thing, I wanna talk to the people of Israel.
What is Israel doing right now is not just unfair to the Palestinians, it's unfair to the Jewish people in Israel. No, it is unfair to the Jewish people around the world.
Because the way that Israel links itself to Judaism, at a certain point, you know, remember like ISIS and Kaidan when everybody hated Muslims, you know? Sometimes humans are simple. They cannot have the nuances to separate.
So anybody who with a Muslim name, with a Muslim face, with a beard, who looks Muslim, he would do it because of that actions of those atrocities. You have the power as a person to separate yourself from an abusive power, a horrible power and be yourself.
I am really worried because the rise of anti-Semitism and the rise of hate against Jews is not because of the Jews. It's because of the actions of a government.
Jews do not have to be on the side of apartheid. Ronnie Kestrels, he is a Jewish South African, and he fought shoulder to shoulder next to Nelson Badela.
He was part of the African National Conference ANC. And he had an article say, like, I know what apartheid is, and I saw Israel, and this is what they have.
And the thing is, the Israeli government should listen to other people.

You cannot call anybody who criticize you

either an anti-Semite or if they're already Jewish,

you call them like a self-hating Jew.

You cannot do that.

You cannot continue doing that because we did that.

When I would go in and criticize the Islamist,

it's like, oh, you're a self-hating Muslim.

You're not really Muslim.

You're an infidel, you're a secret,

you're a secular, whatever.

We have the power in order to

Thank you. like, oh, you're a self-hating Muslim.
You're not really Muslim. You're an infidel, you're a secret, you're a secular, whatever.
We have the power in order to reform the course

by holding people in power accountable.

And the thing is, it is very stupid

to actually call this anti-Semitism.

My idol is John Stewart.

I voted for Bernie Sanders.

Sarah Taxler, the one who did this amazing documentary about me, Tickling Giants, she's a Jew. She is married to an Israeli Jew.
We have a good ratio because we know what the right is. They don't have to associate themselves with the action of the Israeli government.
One of your favorite words, jihad. That's my favorite hobbies.
It's his favorite hobby. It's my show.
It's like, what's's my show I talk about like how When a white shooter Does something he talks about all of his family And I was like what if we did this For Arab terrorists What are his hobbies? Jihad You see You could be a comedian, you're making me feel good. Okay.
Sam Harris has done several episodes on jihad, and people should go listen to it, even if you disagree with it. But the basic idea that he's proposing is that this idea of jihad, in the negative connotation of it,

of martyrdom is a thing that gets,

is counterproductive,

is destructive to the possible future flourishing

of Palestinian people.

What do you think of that?

There's just the idea of martyrdom.

Yeah, I totally agree,

but like people don't wake up in the morning

and say like, I want to declare jihad.

Think about it.

Why would anybody choose to end his life

Thank you. the idea of moderate.
I totally agree, but like people don't wake up in the morning and say like I want any clergy hat. Think about it.

Why would anybody choose to end his life

by taking other people with him and end that life?

His life must be miserable.

He must be pushed into that.

Nobody chooses death over life willingly.

One of the first suicide bombers

in the Palestinian resistance were Christians. we don't talk about that i think he would say that the presence of a story that you can tell yourself when you're in a really shitty place that you can go to a much better place yeah by sacrificing your own life just the fact that that the presence of that story is there is is harmful of course but these but here's my problem with sam harris and usually people who they have free range talking about the islamic faith and nitpicking the stuff that makes it put in a in a in a bad light i can go and nitpick every single religion there are jews there like bin ghafir who openly say spitting on christians is not a hate speech all right they are i mean i i you can bring me like all kind of videos of islamic jihadists saying horrible things on on youtube and i can bring you jews who live there they are so like we're gonna have the whole world enslaved for us and everybody would love to be slaves for the Jews.
I can use the Talmudic argument that if you tie a man to a tree and he dies of thirst and hunger, you didn't kill that man. And this is kind of the same arguments like, ah, we're not killing Palestinians, it's just like killing, they're dying by themselves.
So it is the nitpicking of a certain narrative,

religious narrative that is separate

from the political context and what's happening right now.

It's very, very unfair because I can read,

if you want to have a deep dive into religious texts,

nobody will be happy.

And I can bring stuff from the Talmud and the Torah

and stuff that is horrible.

But like, you know, this is a way, again, of like distraction.

I dare you to talk shit about Buddhism and Jainism though.

Try.

Well, you know, the people who killed the Muslims in Myanmar,

weren't they Buddhist?

Yeah.

Well, let's go Jain.

Okay, I'll find religion.

I've got to get back to you.

I'll have to find it.

Yeah, the flying monster, the church of the flying monster spaghetti. Flying monster.
As a person who tries not to eat carbs, I'm deeply offended by that. I mean, they're Scientologists.
All they do is actually buy real estate. I think there's a few books written about the fact that they do other stuff as well.

So even there, Mormons sometimes, they're some of the nicest people I've ever met.

But I'm sure there's also darkness there too.

Oh boy, religion.

There's soaking in Mormon.

There's what?

Soaking.

What's soaking?

Okay, so I don't know how much. soaking basically like you if if you get into the woman and you don't move that's not adultery that's not like oh interesting so you go you go in and you just say there's a loophole there's a loophole that's the thing religion has a loophole yes and we muslims we do that the whole time we we pick and choose our sins, the stuff that we enjoy.
It's just, we're human. There's 72 virgins waiting for all of us.
Maybe if I converted you as a Jew, I'll get you 80. I don't know, you know, like we can negotiate.
All right. But I also have questions about whether...
That would be a very good deal. I'll give you, and maybe I'll throw there a Camry.
I have to be honest, Camry camera it's pretty good what year i don't know 1998

best year ever well they last a long time yeah so i'm not sure i want 70 i don't need to i'll

throw five in the mix and see how it feels yeah can we if you want to upgrade yeah can we can we

do a trial period but in general if you just zoom out, do you think religion is, in what way is it good for the world? In what way is it harmful? If there was no religion, humans would have invented religion. Because think about, think of like the early humanity.
Like you're like a caveman or whatever. And then like you see your family members killed and then you say say, what, I'm going to be the sheath or the gazelle

that just ends and perish?

I am more important.

I think with the development of consciousness,

humans thought that they are much more precious and important

than the other animals because they have now intelligence.

So my life will not end like that.

My death will be even more important. There's consequences for that.
There's consequences for what I do. And then the early man was like, they are in the desert and all of these natural phenomena.
They didn't know what to do, they were afraid. So they need to have refuge.
They need to have something to take care of. They need to have a reason for everything.
Because if there's no reason, it's chaos.

It's chaos. It's terrifying.

It's terrifying.

There's nothing.

There has to be a reason.

There has to be a reason.

There has to be a purpose.

It has to be like a cause, something.

It's just, I'm not just gonna be like die

like a cockroach being stepped on.

And that's kind of like part of this ego. The whole world rotates around you in a way.
It's the ego. So religion actually got a lot of it from humanity itself, like me, us, like us being humans.
And there's, and many religion is a collection of stories and those stories based on things that humans did themselves and they attributed it to God. And there's an aspect to religion where you humble yourself before a thing that is much greater than you.
So that has a, I would say, a very positive effect of humbling. It will be great if it stopped there.
But here's the thing. If you humble in order that your ego kicks in and feel that you are better than someone else who's not humbled in front of the same God.
Go there. That means that I will have all of that train that I can use that.
Because now, what does it mean being humble? I'm divine. Yeah.
But you're not. I'm way more humble than you.
But you're not. So you see how they kind of like the oxymoron, I'm humble and I'm surrendering, but in the same time, I am better than you and I'm more entitled.
Isn't it crazy? Yeah. It's beautiful, it's crazy.
I mean, look at the Muslim Christians and Jews and everyone, it's like, all right, Muslims, we surrendered, I'm talking about the extreme ones. I mean, like people say, I surrender to God, good.
Keep it that way. Yeah.
Like if you go there, I surrender to God, that means that I am closer to God than you, than you should die. Okay, Christians.
Christ is love and he loves me and we're going to be together, but you don't get into his kingdom and you die. You see, it's the same thing.
Yeah. It's just, if you make it.
Stop it. Stop there.
Stop where you are humble and you feel that you're a piece of shit and you are a worthless human being and you are there. Stop there.
But once you say, oh, that makes me a better person than you and it makes me more with God than you, so that would give me the entitlement to kick your ass. Yeah, we always ruin a good thing.
Don't we? That ego.

You've been outspoken with Piers Morgan,

but just on this topic,

and you talked about the Superman story,

which I would love it if you were in a Superman movie.

But have you lost job opportunities because of this? There was other, a couple of things that were going on, but they stopped again, I don't know if it's October 7th. The Superman story just so...
What role were you? What did you audition for? Yeah, it's okay. So in June, I was traveling to Dubai.
And right an hour before I get into the car and go there, my manager said, like, best, I'm going to send you a script, read it. It's for Superman.
It's like, oh, Superman. You know, I'm not really good in auditions.
I'm not an assistant actor. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to do it, send the tape.
I do the tape, I send it. I go to the airport.
And I read, and I think I can talk about it now because they said they changed the script. So basically what I found it interesting in that new script is that there is like a dictator in a country that invades another country and Superman interferes politically.
That's the first time we ever see Superman interferes politically. So basically it was like Russia and Ukraine, but because of me it was like, it couldn't be Russia and Ukraine, so it had to be something kind of like with a flavor.
So I read the role as if, as a mixture of Trump and Mubarak. I did this mix and like, you know, I had like the kind of the mid-piece, but also like kind of like the essence of Trump into it.

I went to the airport.

It's like an hour.

It's like James Gunn saw it.

He loves it.

It's like, what?

I never had an audition that fast.

I mean, I had a few roles, but not that fast.

Not like that.

And then I said, like, well, the strike starts like tomorrow and we need to be on the phone.

But after the strike, we cannot talk.

The SAG after strike, like where the writers and the actors strike.

So like, well, I'm gonna be on a plane right now.

It's like, wait, once you land,

you can have a Zoom call with James Gunn.

I have a call with James Gunn.

He's, I am a huge fan of him.

The guy took like something like Guardians of the Galaxy,

nobody knew about it, made amazing trilogy.

And he is like a really cool guy.

I like what he did.

And it was like really nice. And he started to talk to me about the movie and you know, like I talked to people before casting them so I know that everybody's on set, have a good chemistry.
It was amazing. So in your mind, if you're an actor, what does that mean? You got the part and he told me, you got the part.
Month goes by, strike goes by, October 7th happens.

I do Piers Morgan one and two.

And then I go to my Australian tour.

My manager called me, that circle's over.

It's like, you don't have the part anymore.

I was sad, very sad, but for three days.

And so like, I'm gonna need to stand up with it,

I'm actually doing very well, alhamdulillah.

And then when I went to Chris Como, after I finished the show, he told me, did you lose any opportunities? And that was off record, after the show was like, we concluded, and I said, I talked about Superman, and I found myself when I was talking, I was angry. I was bitter.
And I went to home, I was like, why was I angry? Why was I bitter? It wasn't meant to be. And I'm living a good life now.
I don't need to. So when I was asked again, the next day in two different interviews, the BBC and another one was Salon with my friend, D know, with Allah.
I said the story in a different way. I said, I don't have any anger.
As a matter of fact, maybe if I was Wonder Brothers, I didn't talk about James Gunn, I thought it was the studio. If I was Wonder Brothers and I'm a Muslim, I wouldn't have like a Zionist or pro-Israeli in my movie.
But I want to tell them that like when I criticize Israel, I am not a threat to you as a Jew. And we can actually have more in common.
I was more of a kind of empathic. So when I said that, the internet went crazy.
And you know, James Gunn have haters because you know the Snyder verse and all of this. It's a word that I don't understand.
And James Gunn like had all of these attacks on these attacks on him. And I was pissed of how it was handled.
I wasn't angry at James Gunn, but I thought it was handled. So my publicist, I'm just like, best him, stay calm, don't speak, it's better to not talk about it.
I said, okay. So there's nothing wrong about me, but I see the heat is rising against James Gunn.
And that is a guy that I had a personal connection with even through Zoom. And I didn't like what was happening.
And then he called me and he explained to me, I said, Basim, you know, I actually use, like have camera tests before people before finally I didn't know that. And then we changed the script and it was the strike.
So I didn't call. And also I thought to myself, I'm small'm small I'm a small actor I'm not that important for him to call me to say we're gonna change the script so I still think that like the timing sucks and everything but then I went and I did a video explaining exactly what I'm telling you because I didn't want to be famous for the wrong reasons because that would be unfair because that that was there people were, and I was having like interviews.
Can you come about this tomorrow? I was like, guys, that's it. I'm not going to talk about it.
Because this is a non-issue. And I didn't, and when I talked to James on the phone, I felt how sincere he was.
So I didn't want someone to, because of me, will have that kind of attack. Because I know what it means to be on the other side of that kind of attack.
It's terrible. And it ruins your life and it ruins your day.
And nobody deserves to be doing that. And I don't want to be the reason for someone else to go through that pain.
And you also said that you don't want to be a victim. I don't want to be.
I'm doing great. I'm selling out everywhere.
I'm having a wonderful, loyal audience that's coming to me. Why would I be angry angry about the role of it's superman yes it's great to be in a superhero movies but so what

you know but you know there's a there's a wisdom in that even if you weren't doing great that's a

choice a lot of people can come to which is like do i play victim here or not it's greed it's greed

it they want more attention they want to be more into the thing they want more and more and there's

Thank you. to which is like do i play victim here or not it's greed it's greed it they want more attention they want to be more into the thing they want more and more and there's so much to go around to be enough for all of us but it is great it is ego ego ego ego i need to be in the center i need to be victimized i don't do i need to be people feel sorry for me and love me it And it is not the right way.
It is not because it is fake. It is fake, it's made up.
And I did not victimize myself when I left for Egypt. I mean, in the time that I was, now I speak about it now.
But in that dark times, I was detained in airports. I didn't have my American passport yet.
I was still traveling with my Egyptian passport. And I was detained in an Arab airport.
I was going to be delivered to the Egyptians. I had shows when I was still starting, I had hecklers being sent to me by the Egyptian embassy and Egyptian council in New York and in London to curse me and to take videos of that and then send it to state-run media in Egypt.
And I didn't speak about that because I felt that like if I speak about that, I feel about like what was going on to me, I would be victimizing myself. It's like, if I'm gonna be good, I'm gonna be good because of what I do, not because of what people's perception of what I'm going through.
Yeah, and that becomes a slippery slope and somehow victimizing yourself. Goes to more victimizing.
Yeah. And then you cannot leave that habit.
You can only exist and thrive if people feel sorry for you. Yeah.
I mean, Israel and Palestine currently both have that temptation. I would always push back when you do the comparison because one of them is not really in the same kind of power.
I mean, yeah. For sure.
To you, that's a big problem. It's very easy to say why Palestinians will victimize themselves, but Israel with all of that military might, man, it's too much.
What Israel is doing is that they're victimizing the Jewish experience. And I don't think a lot of, and I don't think it is fair for a lot of Jews.
I don't think that they should use the Holocaust and the persecution that happened to Jewish people all through history in order to push an equally oppressive agenda. That is not fair and it's not good for the Jewish people living and it is basically a disrespect to the memory of the Holocaust.
I told you I want to make a movie about the Holocaust. I do.
Because what happened was that kind of engineered torture should never happen again and it should not be happening now so to you what israel is doing is leading to more anti-semitism in the world 100 and i think and you know can i be a conspiracy theorist for a second please the earth is flat we all know a part of me thinking maybe they are doing that intentionally because if there's a rise of anti-semitism Jews, there will always like points like see, they hate us so we can do whatever we want. Because you see, if we let go of our might and our strength, we're gonna go back to the concentration camps because you see how the world hates you.
And again, when you say they are people in power. Yeah, oh power yeah oh yeah absolutely listen it's always the people in power i believe that humans are easily corruptible and easily repairable but the corrupt corrupting part is much easier but you you people could change but power people in power are very dangerous very dangerous.
Especially if you have religion, which is power by itself, military might, political support, and money. Dude, that's a very, very, very dangerous recipe.
All that said, I do believe in the power of the little guy, the individual to overthrow the government. I don't know if you heard but the arab spring will uh you know happens but but but okay here we are we are here just among friends we are americans right we're americans yeah allegedly we're americans and how funny is that like just giving our two backgrounds we're Americans.
We're Americans. It's like...
We're Americans. There's one thing about, like, the power of the little guy that I am very sad about.
Because, you see, I love America, by the way. I consider it my new home.
And I want my kids to grow up here. I'm very grateful for the opportunity that I have in the United States.
And I criticize the United States politics and I criticize it out of love the same way that I was criticizing what's happening with Egypt out of love. What is worrying for me is how the power of the little man is diminishing.
It doesn't matter now who do you vote into power. They will not listen to you.
They would listen to the people who paid them to be there. And it is very concerning because I can see the American democracies turning not even slowly, very rapidly into an oligarchy.
If I'm sure that all of the millions of people who are voting, they don't vote for the NRA. They don't vote for APAC.
They don't vote for the pharmaceutical companies. They don't vote for the military industry complex.
And yet, the people in power, they come in, they take your vote and my vote, and they are loyal to those people, not to us. And it is very, very, very concerning.

Very concerning. And this is the danger on American politics and American democracies.
It is dangerous because basically, the vote becomes just like a ceremony that someone with the more funding uh like funding will get to power and then he's not loyal to you so the fire i mean we are in texas um everybody everybody's armed to the teeth here yeah but like what are these arms going to do in front of tanks well you said the the american military is unique in this way.

I know, but for now, the tanks are...

First of all, I believe Russia has more tanks than the United States.

Tanks, I don't know.

I'm not an expert in military strategic deployment of arms,

but the United States uses different kinds of weapons.

They have drones and they have the lasers and they're sitting comfortably behind the screens. It's kind of like it turns into like a big Xbox game.
Yeah. And they sell a lot of those things to everybody.
It's crazy because the defense budget is 68% of American military. It's like almost $850 billion each year.
Mm-hmm. And most of that weapons, we don't even need it.
We just do it because of the contracts. There was like an incredible 60 minutes, I'm sure that you saw it, the one about like the gouging of the prices of the Department of Justice.
It was one of the most fascinating things that I've ever seen. They say like a valve, a safety oil valve that used to be sold for $32 dollars now it is sold for 9 000 why because there's only five uh weapon companies and they can control the prices and in 2006 the whole apache fleet of the american army in iraq was grounded because there is one valve that they were like gouging the price and didn't want to give them.
The Stinger missile, that's just like the missile, the one that you carry and it's like the anti-aircraft. It used to be sold for $25,000.
Now it's sold for $400,000. And nobody is doing that.
You know why? Because the DOD has fired 130,000 people, including engineers and negotiators. So now, in order to cut expenses, now we're paying more money.
And the thing is, we do not have a say in this. We do not have a say in how my tax money and your tax money is being spent.
Because I'm sure you don't want your money to be sent to Israel like that. I'm sure.
Even if you're Jews, I'm sure. I'm sure that I don't want my money to be given to some Muslim countries who kill other Muslims.
I'm sure. But it is not, here's the thing.
What kind of power do we have other than speaking? So what is left for us is free speech. And now when you speak, they call you anti-Semitic.
You see why I'm angry? But still, I mean, America's holding pretty strong despite the criticisms on the free speech front. But if you look at the freedom of the press, freedom of the speech index, America is not at the top.
It is not. And this is why, for example, it is very disheartening for me to see that the Western media, Western press, that used to be the beacon of freedom, are now using as mouthpieces.
And it is funny how the New York Times, Nixon got angry in the New York Times in 1971 when they found leaks about him lying about the Vietnam War since the beginning. And now he hired the plumbers, the special unit in order to go in and find the leaks.
This was Watergate basically, because he was angry to see who leaked that instead of fixing the problem. Now the New York Times have published this story about the rape that was a hoax that was written by Anna Schwartz who's someone who has no experience.
And now when it was leaked, instead of them correcting themselves, they went in and they had their own investigation to see who leaked. The New York Times in 2003 became the mouthpiece of George W.
Bush of the WMD. And now, as an American, I see that the New York Times is becoming a mouthpiece of a foreign country.
Why do you do that? One of the things that's really difficult to know is where to find the truth. It does seem that both sides use propaganda

and both sides lie a lot.

Both sides as in?

Both Israel and Palestine, pro-Palestine, pro-Israel.

There's a lot of lies.

I know, but it's a lot of inequality, man.

There's a lot of people on the internet,

but who have the mainstream media siding with? Yeah, but you know, thanks to social media. Yes, thank God for social media because now it's individuals, they are people.
Yes. They're people.
You're comparing BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal with just people with a TikTok account. Yeah, who has more power in your view? Now, it is actually very, very fascinating to see the little man having that power over the media.
And because it's proportionally so, like, hey, this is my problem. But you cannot call people with TikTok propagandists while people being paid to give you the news and they deliberately lie to you? Yes, I can, they're both propagandists.
Yeah, well, probably, okay, yes, yes. But like, but the mechanism and the intentions are different because here's the thing.
I'd rather have the TikTok guy than the- Like the TikTok guy is a TikTok guy, all right? But if you have the New York Times being told that they're being exposed to be lying, and then they get this like UN report, which is like a disgrace. And you just put the title and you don't talk about it.
Like I'm fine with CNN and Jake Tapper and all of those people like spreading the rape allegations for years. They didn't, I don't even want them to refute them.
I want them to bring the Israeli reports saying that it didn't happen. The Israeli media themselves, they didn't even bother, not once.
Is that balanced? That's not. So that's why people in TikTok, because they have to take matters in their own hand.
Yeah, but the problem with the people in TikTok is the drug, the dopamine rush of getting a lot of likes. So instead of talking about the death of civilians, they'll talk about beheaded babies or the equivalent of, they're going to actually make up stories because the made up stories are going to be more viral.
And so now we're just in this scene, this muck of lies. And there's a lot of people who actually exposed those lies on TikTok.
So you have both. You have both.
And it's kind of like the democracy of the social media, as we always call it. But if you have the street-run media

that is the legacy media scene

and BBC, New York Times, Fox News,

all of those people,

and they are like spreading lies

and they're not even doing their journalistic job

in order to at least bring the other side.

Yeah.

That's problematic.

And that's worse.

You're supposed to be journalists.

Yes.

It's supposed to be a report.

Report.

Don't you know?

Report.

Yeah, but I see that this is like a catalyst

I'm going to go ahead and get the rest. to be journalists.
Yes. It's supposed to be a report.
Report. Don't you know?

Report.

Yeah, but I see that

this is like a catalyst,

an inspiration for the citizen journalist

to rise up.

This is what you're doing.

Oh, this?

Yeah.

This is what you're doing.

No, this is what you're doing

because you go into the deep dive.

This is like a no filter thing.

There's no spin.

The long form.

The long form is going to save us. I see why you hate the TikToks, like a dopamine rush.
Stupid TikTok. Five hours later.
I saw the resentment in your face. I can't look away.
For like those 30 seconds, I do four hours. I mean, both have a place.
Both are exciting. But I i can't it is very dangerous like you can't look away and i almost never maybe i'm doing it wrong but i almost never feel better ever after having used tiktok makes two of us i can't i cannot i cannot i have a team by the way i give my my my my password to a team.
I don't even go there because I went, I once in a dark night, very late at night, I went to TikTok and it was like two hours. What? Yeah.
What? I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is dangerous.
I'm already like an Instagram and Facebook guy. I don't need that.
Leave it in there, man. And I barely get out of Twitter.
I mean, like X, I don't, I can't. X is a cesspool.
X, it's just like the concentrated hate in X. It's too much.
It's too much. I can't.
So you don't check it at all? You try not to check it at all? It is very intense. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't.
I can't, I can't. can't i just like i post something and i run post and ghost uh so you're you're doing comedy here in the united states right now yes joe rogan has the the comedy mothership which is an incredible club have you considered doing that club i would love to i mean i do you know joe of course no i'm who doesn't know joe i feel like it's a small world of comedy.
That's why I... No, I think like Joe's story was like, what he did and stuff that he did in the UFC and his podcast and it just, it's very impressive.
The fact that he's there and he's bringing all of those people, whether in comedy or his podcast is very impressive. And this is what the media is all about.
What is like the internet is all about. To give you the experiences of stuff that you might never experience.
And that is very important. I mean, you do it with people where like you go into their brains.
He goes take people and they take their experiences and their lives and their story. It is very interesting.
And this is the beauty of that art form because you have all of these experiences at the tips of your hands and it is there for you to learn from. You know, and what he's doing, like when he moved to Texas and we did the comedy mothership, anybody who would like push comedy forward, that is the most difficult art form and the most demanding.
And the fact that you do that, and he might not even be making money out of it, but he doing that because of his passion, that is enough. Yeah, he really believes in creating this like place where comedians can be really free.
And one of the cool things about the comedy mothership is like, comedian is king there. Yeah.
Like, you have to bow down to the... Because, you know, the comedian who came there came after like eating shit.
Yeah, eating shit. Dying out there everywhere else.
If you have basically, you're a saint. I have eaten shit for many years.
I have eaten your beer. Now I'm going to give you shit.

It's great.

You already told me what you think about the state of politics in the United States.

But now tell me what you really think.

What do you think of the choice of Trump versus Biden?

How do we end up here?

I don't know.

I mean, like the fact that like you have two people over the age of 90.

Yeah.

It is.

I think it's over 100, but that's all right. It's all combined like 170.
It is so sad. It is so sad that this is what we can produce as a society.
Like a demagogue and a sleepy Joe. He's too, he's not there, man.
He's gone. He's gone.
I mean, he could, you know, like when old people could be like a danger for themselves? He's a danger for the whole world. I mean, like the whole world.
Like if an old person would die, he would like, you know, have like a hip replacement. We can need a new planet because of one decision.
But it's not just that, it's not that. It's, what are, when I came here, listen, I'm a Democrat, I always like, and I told you, like I vote for Bernie Sanders, I supported him, like 2016, but I couldn't vote then.
And of course, a huge fan of Obama. And one of my jokes is like, he's the first Muslim president.
But he killed Muslims. Like, ah, that's things Muslims do.
But anyways. I love that line.
It just, I think the whole idea, like my shock is, I told you about like what Biden said about like, I'm a Zionist, okay, we are a Zionist. But then like Jews are not safe in anywhere other than, it's like, dude, what the hell are you saying? And if you don't care about me and you don't care about my misery, why would I care about you winning or losing? You know? And I have a joke that I told people,

like, why would even Biden listen to us?

He just raised $145 million in California alone

from pro-Israeli groups.

I mean, what can we Arabs working in the vape business

do to him?

It's like, we cannot compete with that. I mean, like practically, I mean, it's like life is unfair.
The guy's a politician, he needs bills to pay. He needs a campaign to run.
He needs money. He will go to the people who will give him money.
Joe Biden is the highest paid politician from Israeli lobbyists, $4.6 million over the years.

Yeah, but I also believe in great leaders that go against all of that. But unfortunately, you know.
Bernie Sanders was like that. Bernie Sanders, yes, but also age.
I don't want to be ageist. Of course, of course.
No, no. But even with like, because I remember listening to Bernie Sanders 20 years ago on Tom Hartman's show and And I don't want to say anything against Bernie, but he was sharper then.
Of course. There's a thing with age.
Yeah, of course. No, I think I'm a huge fan about putting a limit on your working years.
Because you don't want to have a Mitch McConnell moment every now and then. Because now the whole thing, what is this?'t this not like a hospice care home? It is unfair, it is unfair.
And that the whole idea that you have unlimited, like you have a limit for the president, but you don't have a limit for Congress people and senators. That's, what do you mean? This is basically, you can go in and be in governance forever.
And you know, the longer that you can get, the more corrupt you will get. Yes, that's the thing.
And that is very concerning for Americans. Everybody, everybody becomes corrupt after.
Yeah. I mean, that's why two terms is a good limit.
For everybody. Yeah, and you know, maybe half a term for Egyptian leaders.
Well, you know, our half term is 15 years. Quarter term.
You should come back and run for office there. Oh my God, no.
No, there's a curse in Egyptian presidency. Nobody comes there like, is it dead or in jail? Yeah.
It's not the most appealing job. They might make a statue of you though make you look good after my death i look i look very good dad in a statue uh yeah when you look at uh what happened with navalny since you kind of really thought about this in egypt what happened with Navalny in Russia? What do you think about that? Yeah, but what happened in Navalny in Russia is not something new in Russia.
I mean, Putin have like this whole history of poisoning and killing people. And it's kind of like pretty much, I would have to side credit Putin, his like bringing us the essence of the dark ages, the middle ages.
It's like, you know, like basically Putin is like

the living example of what happens if

Game of Thrones was reality.

It's like death by poison.

Like a blow up a

plane. It's like mysteriously

disappears. It is

so...

It is very dark, but it's like

wow. It's like a, it's a television show.
Maybe that's what attracts us to that part of the world is that it's so much on display, this game of power, of geopolitics, of war. No, but the same happens in the West, but I'm behind closed doors.
It's not that open. It's not that pronounced, you know? It's like, oops, Epstein.
Yeah. It's like, oh.
We just like, I think because of the West is more advanced, like in movies and cinemas, we kind of directed better. Yeah.
I think the outcome is like the way that you kind of like said the scenes like scene and scene that's why people about like landing on the moon they're like i get it but you know we haven't gone back all right if we zoom out do you think there will always be war in the world? Always be suffering? Yes. Yeah.
But here's the thing, I don't think for long. I don't think that will happen for long.
Wait a minute. Yeah.
Yeah. Because here's the thing.
Humanity is destined to have war, especially it will have war,. But something happened in the last 50 years.

We have had, now we have much more lethal weapons.

The problem is, the beginning,

it's like swords against swords, horses, cavalry,

like cannons, catapults, mini missiles,

cheeky cheeky cheeky,

but now we're like a press of a button,

you can annihilate the whole planet.

And this is the problem. Wars will all continue.
The problem is when is gonna be the tipping point where we are actually going to destroy ourselves. And it is so easy now to destroy ourselves, the amount of weapons and the quality of weapons that we have.
It is designed to kill more effectively, more, it's just, it is crazy. It's like we can create our own destruction on ourselfself and I think we're not that far away from it.
Just looking at nuclear weapons, the fascinating thing about nuclear weapons is I've gotten to learn recently just how few people are involved in a full-on nuclear war that basically kills everybody.. While three plus billion people right away.
And the consequences of the nuclear winter, it's unlivable. But all it takes is, I mean, one president can do it.
So it could be even a false alarm, misunderstanding, like what happened in the Cuba missile crisis. But again, and now there's more nations are prepared and ready to launch.
Yeah. I don't know.
And you have a media and a 24 hours kind of like thing that makes you like at edge the whole time. That's crazy.
There's a dark perspective on this where there's certain members of the media that would kind of enjoy the prospect of nuclear war, like a little bit. Just let's get as close to it as possible.
You have another factor that will contribute to that. Religion.
And remember how like the radical Islamists talk about about like the end of time and whatever but like most of the islamic don't have that much power problem is with christian zionists now being on the top of the world with america they have been pushing for that kind of conflict to kind of escalate escalate listen to sarah palin it's like god wants us here like carl drove allove, all of the new gods, the dispensationalist Reagan. There's an incredible book called like Forcing the Hands of God.
Oh, beautiful book. I read it, it's like, it's published 1998, but it still matters today.
The whole idea about like, especially the Zionist Christians who love Israel, but they hate the Jews. They're anti-Semite, but they love israel because of its role this is all basically formed because of the interpretation of the bible of schofield and how they talk about the end of time than armageddon and then the late great planet earth and then left behind sirius and all of that it's all about like we're heading to armageddon the problem is islam has their people that believe that the end of time and then we have the christians that believe in the end of time.
And then you have Israel happy that those people are using it for the end of time. And then the whole idea about them pushing as many weapons and troops and people in the Middle East to be there for the nuclear holocaust.
And John Hagee, one of the pastors, talk about that, about the brimstones and it's not going to be a nuclear hol holocaust all the people it's crazy how people are so despising life that they are wanting death so now you have you always have these revelations but these revelations mean nothing if you don't have an effective weapon in order to make it happen and this is the crazy thing and i'm worried that that the end is going to be by someone that wants to meet God a little bit earlier. Somebody who's really in a hurry.
Well, I have good news for you. Maybe we'll become a multi-planetary species.
Maybe Elon Musk will lead us to get out in space. Maybe he's one of them.
He said secret lizard. I asked you offline to not mention the lizard people.
There's like a whole people that believe in the lizard people. It's crazy.
I actually have to be honest. I haven't fully looked into the lizard people.
I probably should. You should.
Yeah, well, maybe I'm afraid of the truth.

Then, then, then, then, then.

Removing my face.

I mean, so let's say you're wrong

about the end of the world.

I hope so.

And it all turns out great and humanity flourishes. Why would that happen? What gives you hope for that trajectory for humanity? Younger people.
The people of TikTok that you don't like. Yeah, there is a lot of bullshit there.
You know, after you saying saying this people just keep sending you TikTok videos these younger people this woman showing her boobs that woman that's gonna save us alright awesome thank you no there's like I think there is a wealth of it you remember like the joke that said, like we thought that like when we have internet, we're gonna have like be more, you know, more informed. And now we're watching twerking videos and that is true.
But on the other side, the fact that you have the availability of information. I'm learning a lot.
And there's people who are using that platform. It's not the majority because, you know, it's not very interesting and exciting.
But I think there might be a tipping point where there's enough people that would be aware and maybe they would collectively do something in order to bring back the power to the small man. And maybe it sounds very naive, maybe fine, but we don't know.
We don't know because we, you have already seen the legacy media and the legacy politicians shaking in the past few months. They're getting nervous.
They're getting nervous because people are calling them out. And those people were like hiding behind their desk, behind in their offices and not like, not holding a house for that, but like people now are calling them out.
And it is not gonna happen like this year or next year, but I think it's something. What advice would you give to those young folks? I will never give advice to those people.
Get off TikTok. I will never, because like their input is different than mine.
Yeah. But like there's one thing I learned when people told me, did the revolution fail in Egypt? Did people, that the people, it's like, listen, the revolution is not an event.
It's not like, hey, we go in, we topple the government. It's not a revolution.
A revolution is a process, it's a very long process. And maybe that process, I mean, as much as we don't like what happened in the Arab world, but the people there, the awareness that happened and the discussions that have been opened that you didn't even imagine what happened in the Middle East is happening.
And maybe the beginning of any hope of change is that people start talking, speaking out, talking about stuff they were not allowed to speak about. Like for example, Israel.
The revolution continues. Ah, yes.
Basim, you're a beautiful human being. It's truly a pleasure and honor to meet you.
I just feel the love radiating from you. I hope I get to see you perform live.
I hope I get to see you many more times. Thank you for being who you are.
Thank you so much. And I would love to invite you for my new special, the Islamunazi Basim.
That should be the title of your autobiography. Islamunazi.
Thank you so much. Thank you, brother.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Basim Youssef. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, let me leave you some words from John Stewart. The press can hold this magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen, or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.