Best of the Program | Guests: Tabia Lee & Riaz Patel | 10/24/23

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Go to theblaze.com for some exciting updates and join the fight against big tech censorship.

You're listening to

the best of the Blendbeck program.

All right, I want to show you a snapshot of where we are and where we're headed.

Let me

play for you some audio.

These are pro-Palestinian activists that are chanting Alo Akbar at Orthodox Jews.

They are praying in prayer.

Police have to separate the two.

One group praying,

one group shouting Alo Akbar.

Here it is.

Look at the size of that crowd.

And you have maybe

four guys that are praying.

And they are praying

with their backs to the crowd.

They're not trying to do anything.

This is in T-Neck, New York.

You've seen this all

over

the country.

Here they are in New York City.

They're chanting

in the anti-Semitic march, there's only one solution.

What solution is that?

It'd be the final solution, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

Well, that's what they're saying.

Yeah, because they're also chanting about the Intifada.

Long live the intifada.

Now we have majority of Muslim Americans believe Hamas was justified in its terrorist attacks on Israel.

New poll released late last week found the majority of Muslim Americans believe Hamas was justified in committing the horror show against Israel.

The poll surveyed 2,000 people from October 16th through the 18th, engaged in public's overall awareness and attitudes about what was happening in Israel.

Majority overall, 50.6, have a positive opinion of Israel, compared to only 12% who have a negative opinion, while 37% were neutral.

The two groups

that had the highest negative views of Israel were Muslim Americans at 36.5 and Democrats at 15.7.

The group that had the largest positive views of Israel, Jewish Americans at 85%

and Republicans at at 64%.

The results showed that Muslim Americans were far less educated, listen carefully, they were far less educated about numerous aspects of the atrocities committed by the Palestinian terrorist than Jewish Americans.

For example, only 10% of Jewish Americans were not aware of the fact that Hamas had decapitated babies.

compared to 34% of Muslim Americans who were not aware.

Overall, the overwhelming majority of Americans strongly, about 84% said Israel had the right to defend itself.

About 75% of Americans said that Hamas was not justified in attacking Israel.

The numbers from the Palestinian Americans are very high.

And notice what they said,

that they weren't educated on

the atrocities.

Now, you don't get that at school.

Where do you become educated on the news?

You become educated by what sources you read.

And if you have watched lately,

the news is spinning out of control.

Let me show you something that came from the White House press secretary, KJP, yesterday.

She was about

anti-Semitism and listen to what she says.

What is his level of concern right now about the potential rise of anti-Semitism in light of everything that's going to happen?

The rise of anti-Semitism.

So, a couple of things.

Look,

we have not seen any credible threats.

I know there's been always questions about.

Stop.

I just gave you two.

I just showed you a crowd of people

chanting Allah Akbar to intimidate the few Jewish people that were praying.

I just showed you another one.

We just had the chance of final solution, final solution.

How about this one?

Cut,

let me see here.

Cut.

I think it's one.

Cut one.

Play this.

He's not going nowhere now

Minneapolis man he's not going nowhere now an old man

I'm gonna get into this

they're kicking his car

they've tried to open it

now he's trying just to get out now they say that he was

they say that

He was trying to knife him.

He drove intentionally in, but we have aerial footage.

Play the aerial footage, please.

You see, this guy is trapped.

He's coming off of a highway, and

he gets off, and now he's trapped, and he's surrounded.

And somebody opens up his door.

What are you going to do?

You're an old man.

Who are these people?

Palestinian supporters.

This was a Palestinian march.

You have the same kind of people, exactly the same kind of people

that are doing these marches as you had lead the marches on Black Lives Matter.

Now, where are you going to get that news?

My Facebook page has been throttled since July by more than 90%.

So if you follow me, you click and say, hey, I'm one of the millions that I want news from Glenn Beck.

You're not getting it.

Only 10% of what I post goes out to people who want to read my stuff.

We are a monster on social media.

Monster.

No longer.

I have been talking to you about big tech censorship for a while.

And

it is time now because

We're entering a time when the attack and the final cutting of our throat, I believe is coming

so the Blaze is about to make a major step Blaze media is declaring our independence from big tech ahead of the 2024 election to ensure that we can keep bringing you the truth no matter what but we can't do it without you here's what happens

when we write a story it costs us money we get our money from advertisers.

They cut all of our advertising potential.

They do that by demonetizing us and depressing us.

So when I have a story I want to get out and you to see, they not only stop you from seeing it, they also demonetize us so we can't make any money on it.

Well, you can't do what we do without making money.

When publishers host ads on their website, Google and other major ad exchanges can send bots, and these bots crawl their pages for content that they deem is unsafe for advertisers.

After finding something they don't like, think the Hunter Biden laptop, something they don't like, COVID origin stories,

the Palestinian stories, the truth about what's happening in Israel, the truth about what our country is doing with our money in Ukraine.

When they find these things,

they demand the ads be removed from the quote offending article, or else the entire website will be demonetized.

When we say, no, this is the truth, they bury the

unsafe content so deep in their algorithms that it makes it impossible for anybody to find.

This is the ghettoization of media.

This is what they are doing, putting us behind a wall, just like the ghettos.

You can talk all you want, but nobody's going to hear you because you're behind a wall.

Now, we've been dealing with this every day for years.

But as soon as Biden was elected, it became much, much worse.

And we are done.

playing the game.

I've got several things to announce today.

If you go to BlazeTheblaze.com right now, you will see a complete redesign.

This is bigger than you think it is.

You will see

that it has been a redesign that has news articles, opinion, analysis.

Now it also has lifestyle, sports, tech commentary, and more is coming.

What you will will not see

are any ads at all.

There are no pop-up ads.

There are no non-pop-up ads.

There are no toenail fungus ads.

There are no ads whatsoever.

There are no ads that make it look like you're looking at a story, but you find out it's not a story.

This is why this is a big deal.

We kick the ad exchanges to the curb.

It will allow us to better serve you because you're not going to be distracted by the annoying ads.

And we won't be distracted by wondering whether big tech will allow us to monetize the traffic we generate.

We'll be relying on your direct support for all of it.

I have felt since 2010, the only people that should be between us

is

you.

There should be no one else between us.

We should have no other master than serving you.

This is not possible without you, and we're counting on you to make sure that we can continue to bring you the truth.

And our big tech overlords be damned.

The other reason why we're doing this is we need to have a direct contact with you.

We want, you want, you want the Blaze News.

you want your programs, then we have to have direct contact or it will be scuttled by algorithms.

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We are investing in more quality content, including expert analysis, insightful commentary, investigative reporting, really good stuff in the works on that.

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Millions of people read the articles we publish every day.

If you find value in this work, we're asking you to visit theblaze.com right now and subscribe to Blaze News.

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If you're already a Blaze TV subscriber, the Blaze News subscription is already included in your Blaze TV subscription.

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But all I want you to do right now is just go to theblaze.com and just look at the new ad-free experience, and you'll see for yourself how we're prioritizing you,

trying to give you what you need

and trying to take everybody else out between us.

This is critical if we are to survive.

Because as you see with the president, they're answering a question about anti-Semitism by talking about the Islamophobia.

What Islamophobia?

Show it to me.

What Islamophobia?

I can show you all the anti-Semitism.

There are lies and there are people that will tell the truth and they will be shut down.

We need you

and we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

I am always encouraged by people

that are willing when they learn something to change.

Too many are not.

And that includes people like me.

I have learned things.

And if you are honestly seeking knowledge, you're honestly seeking truth, you're bound to change from time to time.

It's essential that you do.

Otherwise, you get stuck in old thinking

and

you lose the ability to help, really, quite honestly.

Dr.

Tabia Lee, she was the head of a college DEI program.

So you would immediately say, Gee, Glenn, why are you having Dr.

Tabia Lee on?

Because she's somebody who went in and found that

this is really harmful.

This is not actually making sure all voices are heard.

And she left and has been in a lawsuit with her former college.

But I wanted to talk to her because, A, I respect her.

B,

she's also talking about anti-Semitism on the campus.

Dr.

Tabia Lee, welcome to the program.

Hi, Glenn.

Thank you for having me today.

You bet.

This must be weird because I bet you never thought I'd find myself hanging out one morning with Glenn Beck.

Absolutely.

Yeah, right.

So,

doctor, tell me what your experience was.

Yes.

You know, when I was hired at De Anza College as a faculty director, it was after many years of working in higher education as a part-timer, if you will.

You know, after I got my doctorate, those job offers, you know, for the tenure track just didn't come pouring in like I thought they would.

but the one silver lining of the pandemic for me was that

you know all of these positions opened up and you know colleges needed extra hands if you will

and I was one of those folks that was hired on and it was a job that you know had a job responsibility and title that you know everyone had kind of always said we you need to be like a director somewhere you know you don't need to just be in your classroom anymore you need to share your knowledge with a wider you know group of colleagues and impact an institution.

And this was a job that provided me with an opportunity to do that position as a faculty member.

And so the things that took place almost immediately as I began to do my work.

Let me know that I was in an environment that I had never been in before.

And it was like I was in a twilight zone almost.

It was immediate within two weeks after

starting my work.

So when you took the lead role on DEI what did you think it was

yeah so this was a position to lead a faculty an institution-wide transformation around three topics which was my office role

equity social justice and multicultural education

and when I interviewed for it it was a lengthy process and and you know I was very forthright with them about who I was and they kind of revealed to me some of their pain points and one of the things they said was the panel said was

you know the office you'll be working for they're a little too woke and you know that's why we're looking for someone to come in and bring a balance and I said well can you tell me what you mean by woke because people use words all the time and

they have different meanings for them and so I'm always someone who's looking to get at the heart of what is someone actually talking about and they said that well when faculty goes to your office you know if you're selected as a candidate

they feel uncomfortable they're accused of being racist they're told that they're teaching wrong and so a lot of faculty doesn't engage and I said well based on that definition that you're telling me you know I'm definitely not woke you know what I seek to do is I seek to bring people together from diverse and divergent perspectives and you know and to identify points of commonality even if we seem really different I think we can always find a way to serve our students.

And so that was, you know, my statement.

And from that, I advanced to the next stage.

And I did even a teaching demonstration for them on calling people in instead of calling out.

And so everything was focused on that point that they raised about the negativity coming from the office.

And I was selected for that position.

And I was delighted to be selected because this was, again,

things I focus on, an opportunity to bring people together in dialogue and make a positive change in the community.

How long did it take you before you were called the wrong kind of black person or

quoting a

dirty Zionist?

Oh, yes.

So that was within two weeks.

You know, as I started off, Glenn, I'm someone who I don't assume I know anything or that I have a solution going in.

I want to see what people on the ground are saying.

So I did over 60 hours of needs assessment conversations with faculty, administrators, staff.

And during this, one of my first ones was with one of my staff members.

And they told me that, you know, this job, they were a final candidate.

This job should have been theirs.

And they said, you know, they don't know who I am or what my commitment to equity is and, you know, why I'd come in and swoop this out from under them.

But they assured me that I would have a rough road ahead of me.

And from that, that was the same person who, a couple of weeks after that initial meeting with them, while I was meeting with my team, we had already had some kind of informal meetings, you know.

And it just seemed like they were a very casual group.

And remember, I needed to do some strategic planning to do an institution-wide transformation.

And so I wanted to bring some structure.

And so I said, you know, great, it's been great meeting with everybody, you know, past couple of weeks and so forth.

Just tell me a little bit about how you all take notes.

How do you, you know, track what you've done in the past, what you're doing in the future.

And they said, oh, we just kind of meet and we we talk once a week.

And I said, Well, I've made this Google Doc, and all of us can edit it.

And, you know, you can put in ideas for agendas.

And since I'm so new, maybe you can tell me some of your projects that you're working on, and I can see where I can fit in.

And the same person who told me my job should have been theirs, they said, stop what you're doing right now.

And I was like, kind of taken aback.

I was like, okay, I said, what?

And I said, okay, I'm listening.

And he said, what you're doing right now is you're white speaking, you're white slaining, and you're supporting white supremacy.

And we don't do that here.

And I said,

excuse me.

And you're African American, right?

I just want to make sure that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I've worked in education my whole life, Glenn.

No teacher or I've never been in a meeting where someone called another person a white speaking, white slaining, and said white, called them a white supremacist.

And I'm from the Central Valley here in California.

I grew up there, a small town called Bodi

and

there when I when we hear white supremacists it's actual like KKK members white national socialists is what that refers to and so I was deeply offended and everyone on the call you know had these smug looks on their faces and I said you know I haven't come in here saying any calling anyone names you know I said this is

I feel very uncomfortable what you said and I just explained to them what I explained to you where I'm from and how I've heard that used.

And everyone on the call had these looks of condemnation as though I was offending the person who said those offensive words to me.

And this is,

yes.

And I took it back to my dean, you know, afterwards, and I said, you know, hey, this happened, and her aspects was flat.

She had no response.

And I said, you know, I'm real uncomfortable.

Normally, I'd be the person who would do some kind of team building or, you know, a communications exercise.

But I said, but I'm the target.

I said, I need you to bring someone in to talk to this team about, you know, in-group bias and how do you let a new person in and how do you talk to each other with, you know, civil, in a civil way.

And then,

you know, and I need this to be repaired.

I said, because this, we can't communicate this way.

This is not normal to me.

It's very abnormal.

She never brought anyone in.

And I asked her if she would come.

And then she ended up being one of the main instigators as well.

So that's just, that was the environment that started off with my supervising dean and my team, you know, me being called a white supremacist.

And, you know, and I didn't know what they meant until many weeks later,

you know, I saw they, I started going to their workshops and I kept seeing this slide pop up.

And it said white supremacy.

culture characteristics.

And one time it had a citation on it.

And so I was able to find the white paper where it came from.

But it had things, Glenn, like

being on time, being objective,

setting an agenda.

Yeah.

And these are like personality characteristics.

And I said, what is that?

But at our California community colleges, that's being held up.

as a framework for people to work from.

And they call it that they're dismantling white supremacy.

And the way that they're doing it is by not elevating those characteristics.

And I guess castigating anyone who demonstrates them.

And to me, all the characteristics were things I had always taught my students to do to be successful in life.

They're not white supremacy.

Exactly.

These are just, you know, so I just, that's how it started.

That's how it started.

And from there, it

at every turn, it was becoming clear that I was working from a different understanding of social justice, you know, from them.

And I had to really figure that out while I was in it, which was an interesting thing because, again, all my institutions I had worked at before you know They they they use a classical definition what you know hindsights 2020

But you know here they were using a critical definition and it was this focus on you know claiming that America is a white supremacist a nation founded by white supremacy That's one of their core things that they put even the academic senate made a resolution stating that and I pushed back on that that made me an enemy again.

I said you know no America's found it to me and to others here, and they're too afraid to speak because the environment you all have created.

I said, it's founded on fairness and equality.

You know, whether we've lived up to it or not is something we can all debate, but I disagree.

I said, putting that in there.

And they said, no,

we're rejecting that.

It's found on light supremacy.

That's final.

And they put that in a resolution that the faculty signed.

You are an absolute unicorn.

Hang on,

I want to take a quick break and come back and just have you quickly tell the story about what you found with with the anti-Semitism on the campus as well.

Dr.

Tabia Lee is with us.

She is a senior fellow now at Do No Harm Medicine.

And she was at

some

universities or some,

what would you call it?

Just college or is it a technical college?

I'm sorry, Tabia.

So this was a community college.

Community.

According to Community College.

Okay.

And

you were experiencing, as the DEI director, you're experiencing,

wow, they don't define things the same.

Then you started noticing, because you were talking to students, what's happening, and several Jewish students came and said, I feel unsafe here.

And what happened?

Actually,

this was during my needs assessment conversation.

So this was conversations with faculty, staff, and administrators.

Multiple times it was mentioned that there was a problem with anti-Semitism on the campus.

And they gave me several examples like the academic calendar starting for decades on Jewish high holy holidays.

Stories were shared with me about things that happened before I came.

Our student government

basically subverted a effort of the Jewish Student Union to bring forth a definition of anti-Semitism, the IRA definition.

Instead, the student government ended up making a counter-proposal, and then they made no definition of anti-Semitism, but they condemned Israel.

And so that was very disappointing to the students.

I also heard about the students

being uncomfortable because of anti-Semitic firing.

This is all before I got there, you know, and people were sharing these stories with me and telling me the environment of fear and exclusion that had been created for Jewish students.

And I was on, as part of my director responsibilities, a group called the Equity Action Council.

And what I discovered there, Glenn,

they weren't focused on equity.

To me, equity means fairness, the textbook definition.

They were talking about something completely different.

And then they weren't focused on action either.

So it was a big time waster on the taxpayer dollar that this group gets funding to.

And

our local HALL director came to the Equity Action Council and they shared information about the uncomfortable environment for students and they asked, they urged us please to act.

And they offered to assist and they gave us some recommendations in written form because they said they had come and talked to several people before and nothing ever happens and they were hoping

to see some changes.

When we took these recommendations back to our team meeting,

I said, wow, you know,

I'm first, I'm offended by the way that one of the staff members, as these guests were talking, they were dropping resources into the chat box, like, here's a link to Students for Justice for Palestine.

This is a good resource to learn about anti-Semitism.

Here's a link to Jewish Voices for Peace, and so forth.

They were giving

things, resources that were antithetical to what the people were speaking about.

And I said, I found that disrespectful.

And they said, well, it wasn't disrespectful.

You and your guests, they called it, were sharing resources.

So we shared ours.

Oh, my gosh.

And I said, okay.

I tell you, I would, will you please come in?

I would love to do a podcast with you where we could spend, you know, an hour without commercial interruption.

So you and I can really talk.

Because I find you fascinating, brave.

What you're doing now is brave.

I can't imagine what you've gone through

and refreshing.

So could I invite you in?

I would love to, yes.

The best of the Glen Bank program.

Riaz.

So good to see you.

Nice to see you.

It's been a long time.

It has.

It has.

How are you?

I'm good.

Parenting.

Parenting is worrying and exhausting.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then your kids are getting older now.

They're

seven.

Six and seven.

Yeah.

And just wait until they get to high school.

I know.

I know.

It's horrible.

It's horrible.

I'm still in the cuddling phase.

Yeah.

Oh, don't, don't, don't miss a second of that.

Yeah.

Don't miss a second of that.

I took a video of my daughter.

I said, Promise me that you will always cuddle.

And she said, Yes.

So I'm like, Will this be useful when she's 13?

Like, no, you promised.

I have it on video.

Yeah, it won't be.

She'll just give you the eye roll, but it'll come back around to it.

So,

Riaz, there is

so much

misinformation, disinformation, and hatred going on right now.

Yes.

And so much fear.

I can't imagine what it would feel like to be a Jew today.

But I know you're Muslim.

How does it feel to be a Muslim today?

I imagine much the same.

I think

there are four things that both sides have in common right now.

And I think that's true of any binary split we see in the world.

One is that they are are seeing the absolute worst of the other side on their screens.

Whether you're Jewish, whether you're Muslim, you're seeing the absolute worst of the other side.

Two is you're not seeing the absolute worst of your own side.

And so we go with these blind spots where we're not aware of our own flaws and weaknesses.

Three is that the people in charge represent fewer and fewer of the people that they're supposed to represent.

I mean, all the protests in Israel from January were saying this is too extreme for us.

And I think everyone felt this tightening, tightening, tightening, and it was going to spring load and it did.

And even America, I think the choices we have, I don't know if most people would say, yes, those are the choices I want.

And so three is that these people representing represent fewer and fewer.

And four is the consequences of those decision makers in their extreme positions are borne by the average person on both sides.

So that is true of Russia, Ukraine.

That is true of Israel, Palestine.

Those four things are in common.

It's absolutely true.

And it starts with the screens, is that the darkest part about the screens to me is not that it curates what you like to like, it curates what you like to hate.

And that's where we're all walking around with the sense of dread and fear and anger is because we're cultivating a muscle that has never been cultivated to this extent.

Every day, post after post.

What do you hate?

I like to hate that.

I like to hate that.

And so that's why we're all walking around primed and angry and rage increases is because these damn screens are designed to make you feel that because if the world is burning you're not going to turn away from your screen if it's all fine you can put it down and enjoy life

and they said in facebook pushed an angry emoji five times harder than a thumbs up five times harder not twice so everything you're getting is the dire worst stories of hope of connection don't make it through Conflict is it's funny.

I'm still pitching times in Hollywood and people will say, what's the conflict?

And I'm like, the world is actually burning.

Can you smell it?

It's actually, I can smell the burning of the world.

And you want more conflict, and there has to be a space for connection because that's where hope comes from.

And if there's no hope, then there's it's all over.

So that's what you have decided to do with the rest of your life, or at least this portion of your life, is to connect people.

But let's

let me drill in a little bit here on just what you just said.

You said it probably feels a lot like being a Muslim today, except

you have people in America shouting there's only one solution, chanting only one solution, death to the Jews.

And so you have this history of 18 Holocausts in the world where the world just turned against and just wanted to kill all of them.

So I think that is, that's kind of a special place.

You know, there's one thing about anger and rage, and it makes you do stupid things, but Hamas, Hamas,

is serious about wiping every Jew off the planet.

And that seems to be what a lot of people who are marching are kind of for.

Well, so the unusual thing about my history is I'm a Muslim, but I was always sent to Jewish schools.

And so, and you never knew that.

I would wake up in a Muslim house in a Christian world where I went to Jewish schools where everyone thought I was Hindu because my last name is Patel.

And there really is such commonality between Jews and Muslims.

And I will say to you, I just turned 50, I have never met a Muslim ever.

And I've been to Saudi, I've been, that has ever

not seen why Israel needs to exist and is not, in some ways, admiring of the Jewish community because of how they've, what they came back from.

And I do not see, so yes, it's funny, it depends on what echo chamber you're living in.

Because I would say I have college professors who absolutely say to me, we can't say anything pro-Israel right now because we're going to get shouted down.

But I also know in Hollywood that there's one position and one position only.

And agent, a recent agent made a statement on the Muslim side and she was asked to retract it, walk it back.

And so again, because of our screens, we're all living in these echo chambers where one side is completely for Jews and one side is completely against.

And yet the solution is going to be somewhere in between where there's compatibility and camaraderie.

So, let me ask you:

a majority, new poll, majority of Muslim Americans believe Hamas was justified in committing the terrorist attacks against Israel.

How would you answer that question?

Absolutely not.

I would say I

do not support Hamas.

I think it's a horrible organization, but I understand why it emerged.

Like, Hamas is a reaction of desperation.

An analogy.

If you look at January 6th and you see people sort of just going into the capital, if you look at that isolated incident, you're like, oh, they're absolutely crazy.

They're horrible people.

But there's obviously something that happened before that that led them to a point where they were that desperate.

Similarly, and again, this is an analogy.

This is much more bloody, much more horrible.

There is a desperation that has led to this.

This is not something, again, when I said the three things in common, I do not think most Palestinians would like Hamas to be in charge.

It's the necessary evil that they have because there is no other option for them that can get them resources.

We talk about our kids being worried about our kids.

Can you imagine being a parent and your child does not have access to food and water and health care on a daily basis?

I know many people from Palestine who are repeatedly strip searched.

They try to bring in resources to the family.

It's taken.

It is a reaction to something that history started before October 7th.

Is it justified?

No.

I don't like Hamas, but I understand why it ended up that we got this Hamas.

I do not think any Muslim would want this.

So I believe that to be true,

just like I believe the majority of those who went in on January 6th were led

by some really bad people

who

were just saying things that maybe people wanted to hear.

This is my analogy.

Yes.

So there are

every time I've gone to Israel, I have met with Palestinians and I met with Jews off the record, once the cameras are away.

And I have always found Palestinian parents, people who are working.

Now, they're usually people who are crossing into Israel.

That's where the opportunities are.

Correct.

And they'll always say the same thing.

I have no problem.

I have no problem.

I just,

this is out of control.

And so it is kind of like how we feel

here in America, I think.

A lot of people feel like, I don't want any of this war.

I don't want any of this division.

But that's where it's going because of our leadership.

Absolutely.

I think everyone feels we're on the edge of this civil war.

Who do you know who's like, yes, I'm open to this.

I'm open to opportunities being gone for the next years in a civil war.

It doesn't make sense.

But I think the way it all works is more and more of these extreme positions are taken and the ordinary person is not being represented.

And that's true worldwide.

Okay, so how do we deal with, would you compare Hamas, what they did to Nazis?

I would say yes.

I think, I think, I mean,

yes, in a way.

I think that they are horrible people who are now working from an extreme position.

I think there's no part of me that supports what they're doing.

And I don't know any Palestinians who would say this is the way we would choose.

It's sort of like no, I'm just talking about Hamas.

Yeah, yeah.

Why do you hesitate on saying that that's a Nazi tactic?

Kill all the Jews.

I think I was just thinking from a political standpoint of where

Nazism started.

I was being very specific about the analysis.

I know I watched your eyes.

You were thinking it wasn't avoiding.

No, it was like sort of what are the levels.

I think in the extreme of we don't want Jews to exist, yes.

Okay.

Yes.

So

when we went in, and this is something I've been struggling with.

When we went into World War II, we didn't hate the Germans.

We didn't hate the Germans.

We hated the Nazis.

How do we separate

the Nazis, if you will, from the regular Palestinians?

This is tricky when you're talking about a place that is so densely packed.

I mean, the population of Gaza is so tightly packed that how do you, and I constantly hear this human shields.

I'm like, well, there's nowhere else to go.

Why won't any of the Arab neighbors

take them into their own country?

Here's a perfect example.

Another analogy.

At the

southern border, there are tons of Mexicans, Central Americans.

They're all Christians.

How come we are not just opening up our borders to them?

You're not in that situation.

If they were all being slaughtered like Christians.

To a large extent, they are.

People who are coming to the southern border are running away from absolute drug warfare.

My point is that there are other factors.

There's economic factors, political factors.

These are not countries with massive opportunity.

When you're saying why can't they just accept them because they're all Muslims, there are other factors.

There's struggles that they have in their own countries in a similar way that we don't open up our borders in the South, even though technically...

Well, that's a separate story.

But the idea is that even though you all worship the same prophet and you're all Christians in some way, there are political factors, there's social factors why you can't just open up your borders.

I think sometimes when we look at the Arab world, we're like, you're all Muslims.

Why can't you just take them in?

But there are other factors.

There's tons of problems in these other countries that they don't have opportunities, similar to America, that we don't have enough resources for our own citizens.

So we cannot just open up the borders blindly.

But I think if you look at Gaza, that's one thing.

That's where Hamas is.

But if you look at West Bank, there's also been, without Hamas, massive problems, massive issues that I look at the West Bank as more indicative of the problems because there is no Hamas there.

And yet there's no opportunity for these people.

And there's still this constant surveillance and there's constant strip searches.

And I know from people I actually talked to.

So to me, the West Bank is very much the better case to look at because there is no Hamas there.

And yet the treatment is so horrific for so long.

And so extremism does grow when there's lack of opportunity.

First of all, I don't call it the West Bank.

I call it Judea and Samaria, the traditional names.

But

I know people that live there.

And I know people, families, who have been slaughtered

by their neighbors, just slaughtered in the middle of the night.

I mean, you know, but there's factors behind that.

For example, I was showing, someone was bringing up to me because I worked in Saudi, they showed me an article of someone and said, look, they hanged this man because he was gay.

And so I went and found the original article and was like, well, no, because it was gay, but because he actually assaulted children.

So when you say slaughtered, I don't know, I need to know the specifics of this.

I think we tend to paint brown people in big strokes.

And it's the same way that I think, analogously, white people get like all of them, half America is white supremacist.

It's not I know that but if you look at the other side they will say well most white people are white supremacist and the same way this broad stroke every time I look up news footage It's always the same shot of large crowds of Muslims veiled who are wailing and then all men prostrating in prayer which by the way there are 15 million of my kind of Muslim Ismailis.

We don't pray that way and no one knows anything about us and men and women are equal and prayers are led by a man then a woman then a man then a woman but no one's ever heard of us because there's a broad stroke being painted here and that's what the the screens do.

And so I'd have to know the specifics of this situation.

And that's why I'm like, the only solution is for people to actually talk because the edits we're getting are edits.

What are you seeing in your edit?

What are you not seeing in your edit?

So Riaz Pital is with us, a dear friend who really is trying to find solutions of connecting people.

And you've been going around the country

for years, for years now.

Yeah.

How's it going?

It is

anytime I leave a group of people, I am hopeful because they connect.

They are able to see each other.

They're able to realize that they are not the edits that they see in the screen.

And then they're able to talk.

And

it's such a productive element.

We know things are divided.

We know we feel conflict.

This experience, it's an hour, connect effect.

And we do it on college campuses.

We do it in community centers.

We do it at companies, anywhere where there's existing communities that are lacking a sense of connection.

And they go through this hour show.

I'm an entertainment person.

It is actually a show.

It's entertaining.

Because when you're entertained, your ego goes down.

Everything, the problem is that even though we're all living in an information age, connection is not remotely information-based.

I'll show you an edit, you show me an edit, I'll show you facts, you show me facts.

And then we go nowhere because it all goes to the brain and ego.

This is a different way-in that permeates.

And so we take this group of people and we hard-reset their humanity.

And whether we've done it with progressives and liberals, progressives and conservatives in Orange County, we've done it across the gun debate.

And people are able to see each other and realize, oh, I don't know you,

I know, and it's about people like you, but you I don't know.

And then they're able to talk.

My lane is personal transformation.

So for me, the real thing is the loneliness epidemic.

And part of the isolation from screens leads to this polarization.

Well, how do I get a hold of you?

How does somebody want to do this?

It's infoconnecteffect.us.

And we go constantly to places.

We arrive with our team.

There's a technology that we bring.

There's a huge part of it that's on a screen.

And it goes between the real world and the screen world.

Because that's the whole thing: we live our lives between two worlds.

One of them is real.

You and I sitting in this room, this is real.

The edits on our screen are not.

They're edits.

So important.

You're doing God's work.

We are trying to get people to realize that there is hope if you connect with people.

And it's the most important thing in the world: connection, and it's disappearing.

Info at

connecteffect.us.

Yes.

Thanks, Reyes.

Nice to see you.

Good to see you.

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