Lauren Booth – Tiktok Psychology and Zionisms Death Throes I on TRT World
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the growing support forattempts of authoritative actions by western leaders and the political struggle for justice. They also touch on the culture of the Acadian, its belief in religion and spirituality, and their desire to make it a "bringing stone." They emphasize the importance of being true believers in the Acadiana's spirituality and finding fulfillment in one's life. They also discuss the potential consequences of the current crisis on society, including domestic violence and loss of human health.
AI: Summary ©
Thank you, Lauren, for being here with me
today.
I'm hoping that we can talk about how
you see the growing support for Palestine right
now globally manifesting itself and what that might
signify morally and otherwise for the West.
So much of it's happening in the UK
where you're originally from, but we're seeing it
throughout the West.
Do you think on top of the support
itself for the Palestinian people and the larger
struggle for justice that they're fighting, this signifies
some kind of moral shift within Western culture
away from individualism or a preoccupation perhaps with
the self?
I actually think this is a Gen Z,
Gen X moment of awakening.
This is suddenly a couple of generations who
have been encouraged by commercialism, by other political
forces, to navel gaze, to become, what am
I about?
Who am I?
How do I justify my being?
How do you justify my being?
And how do you accept who I am?
To suddenly seeing a horror in their midst.
This is the most tech savvy, tech connected
generation in the history of mankind.
They haven't been able to avoid a manifest
evil.
And so suddenly, and this is just my
opinion, that energy that's been inside is now,
God willing, going to change the world potentially
because that energy is pouring out.
It's pouring out so that every genocide supporting
American senator, every pastor, every business person who's
investing in war crimes because of their selling
of arms deals, for example, or land that
doesn't belong to them, they are being pestered.
It's the pester power of a generation.
They're being pestered and hounded by an angry
young people who are saying something really interesting,
not on my watch, not never again, not
in my name, because these are really diverse
young people, but not now, not ever, and
not on my watch.
Do you think that it's on account of
some kind of moral sensitivity that perhaps earlier
generations didn't have?
Or is it more of a function of
today's technology?
Because the plight, obviously the plight of the
Palestinian people is not new, or their oppression
is not new.
You know what, it's like, you know, let's
talk about Zionism.
Let's talk about the hideous nature of it,
which has been unchanged for over a hundred
years, found its zenith 75 plus years ago
in the Nakba, the taking of Palestinian land,
and has only grown since.
It's been like it's been invisible to the
public eye, but out in the open.
And now this visceral anger from the Zionists
are being challenged.
But where were we before?
I've really been asking, like, you know, even
as someone who's been interested and active for
Palestinian justice almost 20 years, how was it
possible that they were doing this vileness and
we kind of got on with our lives?
I think that's the question for humanity now,
is this horror is obvious and visceral and
hideous, but it's not really changed in its
essence.
So where were we before?
Do you feel that it might have to
do with what young people are seeing the
Palestinians tell the world that they're learning something
from how they're responding to their plight that's
changing them?
Interesting.
We are seeing that.
We are seeing conversions to Islam.
I think one of the areas that hasn't
been talked about enough is the fact that
the Palestinian people are faith-based people, Christians
and Muslims, and nowhere is that more manifest
and clear than in Gaza.
These are religious people.
They go to their face when they are
in pain, when they're happy, when they celebrate,
when they shop, in their dealings with one
another, and we are seeing that now.
And the under-pressure personality of the person
is very interesting, right?
So you and I can be nice to
each other right now if suddenly that, you
know, all of the everything went off and
we were going to be here till midnight.
You and I might see a different side
to each other.
We'd be scratchy, you know, or whatever would
manifest.
The world is looking at Gaza now and
saying, my God, your children are having their
eyes explode in front of you.
Babies are being cut out of pregnant women
who are not having any anesthetic, and you're
praising God, and you're trying to be calm,
and you're holding your structure together.
Do you know what's interesting?
I've got a friend called Yasser from Beit
Hanoun, and it's hard to say names like
that.
You know why?
Because they're gone.
It's like saying Uskudar in Istanbul, oh, it
no longer exists.
Or, you know, Brooklyn, oh, what was Brooklyn?
So I always have to, you know, we
take a breath.
So anyway, Beit Hanoun.
And he said to me, 10 days into
this genocide, he said, you know what, Sister
Lauren, I think that they want to make
us into animals to prove why they have
to kill us, by making a struggle for
resources.
That was day 10.
We're now on day 150.
And we are seeing, you know, very dignified,
gentle people, scrabbling onto surfaces, trying to get
a sandwich thrown down by their oppressor, to
keep themselves alive.
But they're still not where I think the
enemy wants them.
They're still not full of a dirtiness and
a horror that makes us hate them.
And that's the failing of the Zionist image,
I think.
Yes.
And I'm wondering, because you've been to Palestine,
and in your own work, you've made some
very important observations about Palestinian culture, what you
think may, within the culture, accounts for this
kind of resolve, or steadfastness that we're seeing?
You know what, I can only talk about
Palestinian culture as an Orientalist, because I go
and it's all very nice.
But I do have an eye in, by
the grace of Allah, as a Muslim.
When I first went to Palestine, I went
as a Christian.
And I went as a journalist.
So I had an eye in then, as
someone who framed these people as bad guys,
potentially bad guys, some kind of amorphous threat
to my Western freedoms.
That's how I went, even though I didn't
think it was in my mind.
But if you're asking me what it is
in the Palestinians themselves, I can't speak for
them, but I do have an eye in
on SAIS.
And they absolutely believe, with every cell in
their being, in the dignity of one who
believes in one God, and that their children
are in Jannah, their dead are in a
better place.
And the only way that they can reach
that place is by being good and steadfast.
And it is this determined steadfastness that has
really stymied and shocked a clear plan for
ethnic cleansing, over and over and over again.
Now here's another proof that the Zionists do
not belong there.
If you go there and you feel this,
much less if you feel you own the
land, could you destroy 750,000 ancient olive
trees?
Could you absolutely decimate an area where ancient
stones and prophets are and where prophets have
walked?
No.
Not if you believed in any way in
a love for that land.
The Zionists are alien bodies, they are viruses
in a beautiful body.
They're a virus because a virus kills, a
virus does damage.
And people are going to freak out, oh
my God, you're calling them viruses.
But show me what good they've done for
the land of Palestine.
All right, you've made it pretty clear you
don't want the people, you don't even believe
their people are subhuman.
You say you love the land, show us
the nurturing of the land.
A swimming pool is not nurturing the land,
by the way.
Yes, no, certainly.
And perhaps what you're drawing from your own
experience as a journalist and knowing well the
power of story or framing things within a
narrative, what do you think might account for
this sense of entitlement that we're allowed to
do this?
What story are they telling themselves?
What is the story that ties the 17
-year-old TikToker, you know, eating at a
barbecue just outside in two kilometers from where
people are starving to death?
What is the story they tell themselves?
It can only be of supremacy.
It can only be we deserve this.
But also there is a get out here.
When Zionists wake up, when the Jewish fraternity
who have been brainwashed for three, four, five
generations with this real mind control, because we
have to remember that Israeli media is very
different from anywhere else in the world, you
know, then they're really not seeing what we're
seeing.
And at the same time, they have in
their hand the same as what we have.
They call it Pollywood.
They try to say this isn't real.
And then what happens is, you know, Zionist
filmmakers will deliberately make something false in like
Lebanon, right, a fake scene of a hospital
and then go, oh, see, it's all a
lie, because that's a lie.
And we can prove that's a lie.
But all of that is falling apart.
Now, what is the story they tell themselves?
I think it's a story of supremacy and
of urgency and of drama and of panic
that cannot hold them together any longer.
And it won't because post traumatic stress, it
goes both ways.
It goes both ways.
You do not get to drive a tank
over human beings and go home and have
dinner in a normal way.
You don't.
And that's a very important point and well
taken because the thought has crossed my mind
many times as to how not just the
leaders, but Israeli society is able to go
on just taking warm showers and eating well
when this is happening just some kilometers away.
But are they there?
Are they?
The rates of domestic violence have spiked.
The rates of young depression have spiked.
And the airports are full of people wanting
to leave.
So this is not a healthy society.
You cannot export this level of bloodshed and
be a normative society.
So I've always said this.
I think the breaking down is going to
come from within.
Even, you know, America refusing to take action
or dropping a few peanut butter sandwiches along
with bombs.
It was really interesting and sad this week
and disturbing to see, you know, our brothers
and sisters in Gaza saying, I'm not going
to eat this.
I'm throwing it away because it matches.
It's got the same stamp, the same logo
as a bullet torn out of a child's
body.
So you want us to die with this
and eat this?
No.
You know, I think it's a very important
point and maybe that's not been really explored
enough within mainstream media with the consequences this
will have for the society that stands to
quote unquote gain from all this.
It's like you cannot do this to a
mass of defenseless people and expect to get
away with it.
What is going on?
I mean, what is the right level of
outrage right now?
You know, every day we see worse and
worse.
And I was thinking about it in the
way of a period of a lifespan.
We have in Gaza now mothers who are
having cesarean sections on the ground with blunt
utensils, with no anesthesia, and the baby is
torn from them and the mother dies and
and that baby is already alone, traumatized and
damaged by the non-state of Israel and
by every one of those people who are
culpable right the way through all of life,
all of the children that we're seeing, you
know, six, what is it?
How many a day?
You can't take in the figures.
Is it six or 60 losing limbs every
day?
It's too much to take in for the
human heart.
Right to, and this is very disturbing and
I think we need to talk about this
more in the media.
Why are soldiers sent in to destroy graveyards?
16 graveyards in Gaza, which is a small
place but a lot of people, have been
totally or partially destroyed.
And not just bulldozed, not just skeletons being
scattered of the dead, bodies being dug up
and taken away.
What is that?
And then bodies of people who have been
murdered, dragged away deliberately by IOF soldiers and
having their retinas taken, being returned without livers,
without kidneys, you know, in plastic bags, in
bin liners.
What is really going on?
It's like, you know, honestly, it's like *
has just regurgitated a load of demons now.
How do we stay sane?
And how do we do anything within this?
Well, I have my face, thanks Peter God.
We'll lie.
You know, what's interesting is Biden, because he
has some late stage dementia very clearly, sometimes
lets things slip out in the way that
Trump does, but Trump does it deliberately and
manipulative, like, hey, I've seen the CIA today.
Biden's just like, you know, we have to
stop this before Ramadan, because it's going to
look bad.
Oh my God.
Yes, it's going to look bad.
Guess what?
It looks bad now.
It's a genocide, you maniac.
It's not a PR opportunity.
These people are broken and fractured and psychopaths.
We have psychopathic leaders.
And what are we going to do about
it?
Well, it's a great point, because sometimes this
has made me question the causes that they
do, on the surface, at least say that
they support.
For example, I mean, because Women's Day is
tomorrow, the West very often, Western leaders will
very often say that we stand for women's
rights.
But now, because they're complicit, not even more
than complicit, but they're willing participants within this
genocide.
It's really made me question their sincerity, if
it's there at all, even for the causes
that they say that...
Hang on a second, because Women's Rights and
Women's Day, National Day, Women's Annual Day, it's
all led by white women who want to
rescue Arab women from Arab men, and black
women from black men.
Let's make this very, very clear.
This is a colored, this is a supremacist
version of the sisterhood, because I was in
the sisterhood.
I put this on, we want everyone to
be free.
Oh, not while you're wearing that.
And these leftist women will turn on you
and tear you, shred your reputation, if you
choose to be dignified in this way and
not in their way.
So I'm not that interested in these global
women's days, because there is a section of
that female community, I'm sorry to say, who
will be looking and going, well, at least
the next generation will have freedom.
They won't have to marry like the women
did before and inventing this whole image about
society they know nothing about.
Do you feel that Islamophobia or the selflessness
of Palestinian culture, the resistance to it on
the part of the West, has anything to
do with it threatening the way that Westerners
are expected to be in the world by
power?
Because if you become other oriented, and you
become involved in community, it sort of undermines
what you're supposed to do as a consumer.
And, you know, eventually, that kind of erodes.
That is part of it.
And I'm going to say that.
And I'm going to add something to it.
Don't let me forget.
Tariq Ramadan, the scholar, he said, over a
decade ago, he said, I don't believe it
is Islamophobia that's driving Western policy in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
He said, they don't care what God you
follow, but they do care that you buy
their stuff.
And if you are a believer, you might
need one, two pairs of shoes, and you
give the rest of your money away.
Right, you may have a food, but you'll
share it with your neighbor, you are not
going to maintain the way that they want
to live.
Now, I want to just roll back on
something, because I think we're at risk here
of making the Palestinians into some hippie like,
oh, wow, you know, freedom and love.
Let's just be good people, man.
No, there are resistance there.
And I have had the honor of meeting
with them as a journalist.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, I've interviewed various Hamas
officials.
I have even been into the homes of
Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
And I have never, ever felt at risk
before Islam, as a journalist, related to a
British, you know, a politician, I was never,
ever at risk.
They told me, we will protect you as
long.
Anybody who comes to our land, they said,
who stands with our people is under our
protection.
They're not hippies.
This is a strong people with a right
to their land, a right to dignity, a
right, a right to their own way of
life, and their own freedoms.
And they have a right to fight for
that.
Let's be very clear.
No, I think it's an apt comparison for
the point that you're making that they're not,
quote unquote, hippies, because there's definitely nothing self
-indulgent.
I mean, sometimes people use the hippie metaphor
to kind of say that this person, this
group of people as being self-indulgent.
But there's...
New ageism is self-indulgent.
And that's kind of our linchpin for anything
spiritual at the moment.
And that's where we're kind of going wrong
because spirituality is a, this makes me feel
better about myself.
This is actually not spirituality.
It's very politically conscious.
There's a resistance here.
There's a putting your life on the line,
which is not self-indulgent at all.
I mean, you know, it's called Al-Aqsa
flood.
And we are now coming up to, I
probably shouldn't timeframe it, but we are about
to enter the holy month of Ramadan and
the world is watching as people will be
fasting in starvation, period, and that they will
be either attacked or denied in their holy
space.
Where is your morality?
America, Britain and France, please don't talk to
us.
Don't export any more of your democracy.
Thank you very much.
And the United Nations.
Wow.
And the security council, just not interested.
Yes.
Yes.
I think it's going to, just because everything's
so out in the open right now, I
think it's going to somehow undermine people's confidence
in the so-called moral foundations of the
West and what they mean when they talk
about democracy.
And I'm wondering whether you see, because there
is now a lot more familiarization way on,
especially among young people with Islam, as they
become involved in their support for Palestine, whether
that represents a possible turning point in Western
society, morally or otherwise, like, will there be
some kind of transformation that we've not seen
before that might make people better people?
Only Allah knows that.
That's a really big question.
Maybe in 200, 500 years, this bit of
it will become clear.
But I think what there is a hunger
and a thirst for is an explanation beyond
our own mortality for how to be a
good person.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says,
I want to be a sadist today.
It doesn't happen.
They justify it, right?
That story that the Zionists tell themselves.
But we as Westerners, me before Islam, I
was telling myself, I've got to get from
life whatever I can get.
And I'm a good person, but I hadn't
visited anybody who was sick.
I hadn't really given my time to the
poor very much.
I hadn't looked after my own mother.
What quantifies us?
What quantifies goodness?
And once we start down that, looking at
an ethical framework, by the grace of Allah,
you will come to Islam.
Yes, this is a fascinating point, you know,
because I think that is one of the,
I think you kind of allude to it
here, the problems with the West is that
things have to somehow benefit me.
This hard work, even if I engage in
very hard work, strenuous work, it has to
pay off for me.
The idea that we have, it's like almost
a dirty word, that we have obligations or
duties to others.
It's almost become like taboo now.
But hasn't that been done deliberately?
I don't know why.
I'm not gonna cast any theories here, but
you're right.
There is this feeling on all of our
social channels, you know, don't ask me to
change.
Don't ask me to do anything.
Who are you to put me under pressure?
I should be free to be me.
What is that?
If everybody's free to be themselves, we're just
bumping about in the same space of goo.
And it's a strange pointlessness.
It's a very strange pointlessness because being a
part of society takes work.
Certainly, you know, and I think that's the
irony too, because presumably the goal of like
doing your thing, whatever you want to call
it, just being you, is to find fulfillment.
But so much of this kind of way
of being in the world leaves people, I
think, feeling unsatisfied.
And this is something that if you and
I were to get into Gaza and go
to Rafah next week, inshallah, we would be
given food by people with no food.
And they're not getting anything from us.
And we would be very aware of that
we are known to state as human beings
and that they are winning.
As I mentioned to Dr. Gilbert, I feel
just seeing this from a distance as a
Westerner, I'm forced to interrogate everything.
There's many things I can do it, of
course.
And the Palestinian people have absolutely no obligation
to do this.
It's not like their duty.
But I feel like it's causing me to
interrogate myself.
Things that I felt were important or that
I need to do.
How much is that really wrapped up or
tied into self-interest?
It's really caused me to think this, because
that's how you're sort of raised in the
West.
Who do I care about?
Not only who matters to me, who do
I matter to?
And one of the things that I noted
in myself before I went to Palestine and
met these incredible people of faith, and determination,
and strong culture was nobody asked me, nobody
would call me and say, can you do
this for me?
I was not anybody's go-to person.
I was the fun person, the drinky person,
the flashy person.
All right, but no one's going to get
on the call and call Lauren and say,
can you pick me up from the airport?
In that way, we're all pointless.
If we're not connected to other human beings
as a point person to help them, what
really is the point in us?
And there's a young girl now, she's 18,
she got a scholarship to Istanbul, a university
here 10 days before the genocide started.
And she came up to me when I
gave a talk and she said, I'm from
Gaza.
And she started to cry.
And I sat down with her, she's at
least you're not there.
You must be happy about that.
And she looked at them like, you don't
understand this at all.
And she whispered in my ear, no, I'm
asking God why I'm not deserving of being
there under the bombs.
And I almost feel that what Israel is
doing is like Westernism writ large, you know,
like we will destroy everything and let others
bear the costs.
You know, we see this, you know, even
at the more local level in cities where
there's gentrification, people are displaced.
And you're always fleeing from something in capitalism.
And in their version of modernity, you're always
running to the next best thing.
And you can leave a trail of devastation
behind you.
But you've got to get to that.
It's to do with not having satisfaction.
And that is something else.
The most said word in Gaza is Alhamdulillah.
It freaked me out on my previous visits
when I was there before I before I
became Muslim.
What's this praise and love God and you've
got nothing but but but you know, a
shed in Rafa to live in?
How are you praising and why?
Alhamdulillah because we're eating today.
Alhamdulillah.
I have one child who might be dead,
but Alhamdulillah.
And then I realized, wow, I lived in
a state of permanent ingratitude.
And this is something else that the modern
psychology has got very wrong, Paul, is this
idea of do a gratitude journal.
Okay, be grateful.
Gratitude has two parts, the one expressing the
gratitude and the one to whom you're grateful.
So if you move this table, because it's
in my way, I don't say oh, thank
you table or I'm grateful to the universe.
I thank you for moving it out my
way.
It's a two way process.
Who are you grateful to?
If you don't know that you can't even
start on the process of gratitude.