Tom Facchine – Discuss Palestine with Dr Shadee Elmasry
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Why don't you share with us? What has been your message to people? Who are you targeting? And what is your main message to people? Regarding this? Last two weeks, this one on 100, Simon Sula, so it depends on who we're talking to. Right? We have to differentiate between audiences. When it comes to talking to Muslims, we need the Muslims to feel empowered and like their voice matters. The other night, you know, we have a video that's currently going viral that was taken from our live streaming Fe Institute with Sammy Hamdi, where he, you know, he was responding to a question from a sister about, we feel so powerless here in the West can't do anything. And Sammy did a wonderful job over
the course of 25 minutes demonstrating that popular opinion really does matter. social media posts actually do matter. I know a lot of people, they criticize sort of keyboard activism and just you know, likes and shares and stuff like that. And there's a degree and a dimension to which that is true. But it's not this is a false dilemma, actually, in reality that these two things are all tools in the toolbox. They're all tactics that are part of a greater strategy. And what we see unfolding is that popular opinion, especially in the Muslim world, but also in the West, as well, is actually has a lot of the government's shaking in their boots, and walking back from the positions of
normalization, and just allowing this stuff to happen that had been the status quo, or the quickly forming status quo for two weeks ago. So you know, it's a psyop, if you will, it's it's it's a psychological warfare, a tactic of psychological warfare to make us give up and think that we can't do anything, we can't change anything, or that the few maybe indirect things that we can do don't have any effect. Actually, they do. They're not, they're not effective in isolation. But they're part of a larger toolbox and a larger strategy of several tactics that if we actually were to coordinate and have them all working together, that would be very, very effective. Inshallah. So if
I'm talking to Muslims, that's what I'm trying to. message number one is to don't underestimate the good that you can do. Even sharing and hitting the algorithm and trying to push the conversation has already done a surprising amount of work. We've had CNN and major news corporations apologize. For the first time ever, for their lies. Usually, they just lie and then they forget about it, they're actually apologizing for their lies, we're holding them to account in a way that we've never really seen before. The second thing I tried to tell Muslims is this is not the time for infighting, this is not the time to score points for your personal grudge, or the grudge of your your group or the
grudge of your you know, your sector, your movement, this, if we can't unite on this issue, then we will not be able to unite about anything. So if you've got you know, okay, you're from this movement, or that movement, or this side of the aisle or that side of the aisle, this is something where this has to wait, that we have to be united not just present a united front, but be united on this issue as much as we can be. Because we know that our enemies in our opposition are always going to attempt to exploit the * in our armor. And that's the biggest chicken in our armor is our lack of ability to unite. This even has to do with the people who are who are on the ground and more
physically affected sometimes people, they conflate the governments of Muslim nations with the Muslim populace. And they'll say, the Arabs have betrayed us or the Muslims have betrayed us, when you've got 10s of 1000s of people in Arab countries in Muslim countries that are hitting the streets that are, you know, showing up at the embassies that are doing what they can. And they're met with bullets, they're met with violence, they're met with the government security forces. This is another psyop. This is another attempt to get us to give up and to turn against each other. The Muslim people are united, the Muslim people are together, our governments are working off and they're
working against us. We've been able to push them on some things. We'll see how things keep unfolding, but don't give in to this idea that everybody's just betrayed. And there's no good in the moment, all the scholars are cowards. And no, no, there are scholars out there that are being brave that are speaking up. The Muslim masses are speaking up and they're coming through. We need to have a collaborative mindset and be aware that they are the opposition and the enemy is going to attempt to break our ranks and make us feel defeated and make us try to fight amongst ourselves. If I'm talking to a non Muslim, I'm trying to do two things I'm trying to and I published we published on
on the YouTube community channel. I went into the local conservative talk radio, and I had a 25 minute sort of showdown with them. There's two main things that I like to highlight. It depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to somebody who's conservative or someone on the right, I try to go right for the idea of truth and what to believe. Okay, because just two weeks ago, you were telling me that you can't believe anything that Biden says you were telling me that you can't believe anything the mainstream media says and now all of the main media organizations have lined up to bang the drums of war to try to cheerlead rah rah rah for is
Real and it's massacre of Palestinians. And now all of a sudden you believe everything they say Joe Biden gets on the camera and he says to the entire nation that he saw a picture. Yeah, he can't see anything, let alone a picture of 40 Babies supposedly being massacred. It was a lie. It was a lie. And so now now all of a sudden everybody believes him. No one's critical. CNN is literally has become a mouthpiece of the IDF. They invite they invite Israeli journal drawers to meet generals and military personnel to spew their version of the of the you know, the fake news. They're taking literally they're taking what they say as gospel and running with it. And now no one's critical
anymore. Now you have conservatives believing it right? Like they come with some now what was it today some fake fake conversation between two suppose a Palestinian militants and jobID admitting to supposedly admitting to having to having been responsible for the for the hospital attack? How can people be so dumb and naive? Americans Alhamdulillah if there's one thing that they hate, they hate to feel like they're getting the like, they're, they're they're dummies, they hate to feel like they're getting taken advantage of, or they're being lied to. And most people actually distrust the media and distrust the government, which is why you have to hammer them on this. Why are you
trusting them? Now? You know that they lie. They've lied time and time and time and time and time again? How could you possibly believe them now. And the other thing that I'm that I'm trying to hammer if you're talking to someone more on the left, is just the absolute. The absolute hypocrisy that's going on when it comes to how things are, are treated. And sometimes flipping the language makes it come home, because the Israeli propaganda machine is extremely shrewd in the language that they choose, and the tactics that they use, but you're able to flip it, we should start calling it a holocaust. This is a holocaust of Palestinians, we should start calling it as a concentration camp.
It's not just an open air prison, it's a concentration camp. These are things that, you know, they're discursively, very powerful. So these are just some off the top of my head, I'm sure you would mean, we have not been sleeping all week, you know, the sense of this is are all running together. And the the ideas are getting confused. But those are some of the main points that I've been trying to hammer. What about the America First policy of the Conservatives all of a sudden? Go into to Yes, on the Exactly. And when I went to the conservative talk radio, I also brought that up, I referenced Candace Owens as tweet where she was very honest. She said, I don't understand why we
should be sending soldiers or money to patrol and other foreign nations borders. Yeah, what happened? You know that the the border is a big issue for them. Right. So it's like, who's sending soldiers and money to protect our borders? Yeah. And the answer is nobody, right? There's even people on the right who sympathize with the idea of stand your ground. It's like if you were a Palestinian, right? You know, if you're someone in Florida, and you believe in like the Stand Your Ground laws, if you're a Palestinian and someone comes into your home, I don't care if they're telling me that they're doing this as a response to this or whatever, this is my home, right. And so
that's a fundamental right to resist there that people can't deny. So that's what people I think, when you're talking to non Muslims, you're talking to Americans, you have to realize there's certain nodes of connectivity that you can hit on discursively, what he meant, but you have to know your audience, obviously, because the ones on the right are going to be different from the ones on the left, the ones on the right, they have different streams among them. Like we said, there's not everybody's in America, first Republican, right, like some people have different sort of agendas. But you have to, you have to hit on the thing that is meaningful to somebody and try to change the
discourse and try to to try to change the terms upon which this entire discussion happened. I made a mistake. And you know, in the, in that that talk radio show that I went on, the first question they hit me with was what is Hamas? And they caught me off guard, because it seemed to be an innocuous question. And I'm not satisfied with the way I answered it. I sort of played the like, I don't know, how am I supposed to know Muslims are always expected to know and how can we what I would say if I was in that studio? Again, I would say, tell me what is Israel? And I'll tell you what Hamas is? Because if because you cannot, there is no such thing as Hamas without Israel. Right. And, you know,
like we can you can disagree with some of the tactics or the things that they're accused of, you know, I don't know if it's true or not. This is fog of war. This is, you know, propaganda. If they're targeting, you know, if they're truly targeting civilians, obviously, that's something that's against us now, we don't believe in, but you can't take away the context. And the entire Israeli propaganda is dedicated to taking away the context. This is not about October 7. This is about 1947. This is about the entire history of the region. And the reason like how Israel came into existence in the first place. If you want to address the issues you want to make Hamas go away. You
want to make the resistance and the rockets and the whatever, go away, you have to end the occupation. There's no way out without ending the occupation, first period, end of sentence. Let's talk about Hamas again for a second, because it's also often used as a scapegoat as you know how necessary we got to go in all right. Well, what about the West Bank where there's no Hamas? They have
No influence in the West Bank. Why are people getting killed there? Yeah. So the language, if you flip the language if you if you take anybody sentences and replace Hamas with IDF and replace Israel with Hamas, and they would never accept it. Yeah, this is why you have to you have to force people to try to be consistent at least then they'll admit that they're just racist bigots, or whatever it is. But people they hide behind these sorts of things. They don't realize how dehumanized and desensitized they've been to the slaughter of Palestinians, they reveal it in certain moments, but to really hold them to account. Okay, so if Hamas, what if Hamas said, Well, we've been targeted by
the IDF. And so we're going to go in, and if there's civilian casualties and Soviet, nobody would accept that it would be 24 hour nightly news, right. And that's the other thing. That's the other thing that cracks me up about the way that this is covered. Because look at how bloodthirsty and even deranged some of the Israeli military commanders are when they get on screen. They have blood lust in their eyes, they talk about they talk about grinding Gaza into dust, and they talk about not letting anything survive. And they talk about all these things. If a single if they had a quote from a single Hamas militant saying anything close to that it would be nonstop coverage. It would be
nonstop covered the plastered everywhere. Yeah, it'd be plastered everywhere, but they can't do it. Here's the face of barbarity right in front of you. But because we also pair it with sob stories about their dogs and their, you know, cafes or whatever it is now all of a sudden that this is something that we accept, alongside.
Like you said, everyone, the past two weeks has been, you know, glued to their phones, you know, catching up with what's happening. I'll tell you what I haven't caught up with the latest hospital bombing is just another hoax that we're coming upon that they did it to themselves, that they were using it for weapons depot, that they were using it for hostages, that they did it to themselves to make Israel look bad. The amount of stories that have an come out regarding the hospital hoax, that well it's not even a hoax it? Well, now they're saying it didn't even happen. It was the parking lot and 500 people didn't die. The number of stories that have come out
that are complete polar opposite to one another. constant changing is more than any other of these hoaxes and stories. I haven't been able to catch up. Can you give us what do you what is the latest you caught up with in terms of the truth about the hospital bombing? I read a really good thread on Twitter today. That was from someone with an Italian first name. That's all I can remember who was going into the ammunitions sort of possibilities and, and you know which types of missiles leave craters and which don't, and what you can expect and these sorts of things. But I'll highlight two things before even getting into that. One is that I've noticed distinctively the people pointing out
the history of sort of like the character of the witness, right? If you have a lot, right, if you have a courtroom setting, you understand that there's a character portrait or a character witness, somebody who comes in they say, Well, this is what this person is known for. So if somebody is known for telling the truth, then that person's testimony is taken in a different way than if somebody is known for lying or exaggerating. Israel, the IDF, the Israeli government has a clear, not just history and addiction to lying to murdering people and lying about it, the christian palestinian woman, the journalist who was murdered, they did the exact same thing, they murdered her in cold
blood, they denied it, they blame the Palestinians, then eventually, they kind of, you know, introduced a bunch of different narratives. And then down the line, they admitted to it back when they you know, in previous sort of escalations, they've done the same thing with schools and hospitals where they bombed them. They killed tons of civilians, they denied it, they blamed the Palestinians, they blame this faction that faction, and then eventually down the road, they deny it after sort of the moment sort of has passed. So if you look at the playbook, the playbook makes you at the very least suspect that Israel is acting fishy, in addition to all of the sort of revisionism
that's going on in the tweets of official spokespeople for the IDF like you've seen people that they were actually bragging and taking credit for it at first in the first few moments of the attack, and then those quickly got deleted, which usually when the truth comes out, yes, exactly. And there were video suppose it videos, once they they pedaled and pivoted towards actually no, this was HMAS or this was P ij. Or this was this group or that group. And they posted a suppose a video with three separate videos supposedly demonstrating that this was done by the Palestinians to themselves, either by accident or on purpose, then every one by one those videos are demonstrated to be false
that they were from 2022 or they are from previous years. And so then the idea these people actually edited their tweets to remove the videos
that they had actually posted to corroborate their details. What does that tell you? Yeah, there was there was somebody I think the Twitter account was called Farida Khan or something like this. Claiming to be an Al Jazeera English correspondent claiming that she saw with her own eyes eyewitness account a rocket that was fired from a Palestinian faction that hit the that hit the hospital. Yeah, AlJazeera comes out and says we don't know who this person is. This person is not one of us. Look at the type. Where are the lines coming from? Like, where, what in what direction who's trying to cover their tracks? Right? If you're, you know, if you're not caught red handed, but
you're caught with crumbs in your mouth, right, then I'm going to suspect you of eating the last cookie in the cookie jar. Right. And that's the situation that we have here. That's the first thing. The second thing SubhanAllah. I've been really amazed by all of the Bosnian brothers and sisters that have spoken up throughout the duration of this conflict. And how they've said that this is exactly the different tricks that the Serbians used against us in the 90s. Like when it comes to the safe zones that you weren't supposed to do and safe zones, obviously was our brand. So right, this is exactly what happened but particular to the hospital calamity. When it comes to blaming us every
single time the Serbs attacked us, the Bosnian said they would blame us they said we're attacking our own our own people, these animals, these bloodthirsty savages, they attack their own people, this group and this group, like so this is a well known propaganda trick. When it comes to the actual sort of forensic evidence, these things are unfolding. I've been in meetings all afternoon. I haven't checked by at my phone and update since probably 11 o'clock this morning. But the last that I saw, there is severe doubt that the type of explosion that occurred at the hospital could have possibly been done. If you even forget about all that we've said about the revisionism and the
editing of tweets and the LS up that when it comes to the capacities the military capacities of the of the forces that are in have as a that there is significant doubt that this could have been done by their capacity, compared with the types of weaponry that the IDF is known to have, in addition to the fact that they two days before or in the in the two days leading up to it. The IDF said that they were going to bomb the hospital, they warned the hospital to evacuate because they were going to bomb it. Yeah. So you tell me, you tell me who has the shadow of suspicion over them. I think that it's we have everything except the the last piece of golden according to the last thing that
I've read. We have everything except to the like confession and everything. Except, you know, the final interest in incontrovertible piece of evidence. But all signs seem to point to the suspects or the aggressors in this situation. So they said they're going to bomb it. They told everyone to evacuate. Yeah, and they took credit for the bombing immediately, then pull down that tweet. Or if you could, if you could look that up. It's probably somewhere in our WhatsApp that they literally said it. It's translated from Arabic, they have one that's in English, where they said that they did it, then took it down, then created all sorts of stories. And today's story is a complete
gaslighting of the whole world by saying 500 People didn't die. And it was just a parking lot explosion. Right? So you're literally gaslighting the whole world
in with this, this catastrophe, which is worse than all the other ones because the father to the other two hoaxes were accusations of themselves getting killed. Yes. And now the script is turned, the numbers are far greater. The target is far more vulnerable. The whole world doesn't expect accept this. And we have tons of evidence that it happened and that you did it. So this one is the worst of all. And it's in a democratic world that we live in with information to information war is a critical part of the battle. And regular citizens have a role to play in this. It's not like you can't do anything. Jake shields which is a fighter has been one of the best online at exposing these
hoaxes. And the guy is just a fighter. Right? Yeah, he has no dog in the fight. Neither is he Jewish nor Palestinian. Right. He's literally like an MMA guy and retired MMA guy. There are a lot of people out there who have been
just came out of the woodworks exposing the lies of the enemy. in democratic societies, such as the United States. Yeah, people that's our greatest hope. That's I think that's our greatest hope is that there's still enough people who care about the truth. And that information has been democratized to an unprecedented level. That doesn't mean that it's completely obviously if you're on a meta platform, it's much more heavily censored than a non meta platform. Even YouTube, I was watching. I was watching Al Jazeera News Live in Arabic and they have a thing that you have to read said
As it's cited from Wikipedia, you know, the the grand source of all that is objective and holy Wikipedia. And it said that Al Jazeera is completely or partly funded by the Qatari, sovereign wealth fund. It's like, oh, okay, very good. So everybody has their disclaimers, everybody has their context and their spin, you know, but everybody also has much more of a voice and much more of a platform. And so even if your platform is just the 10 people around you, or the 20 people around you or your group of friends or group of colleagues, your group of college, you know, classmates, your group of, you know, people that you see at work. That's your audience, right? So everybody has the
ability to change hearts and minds. Most people want to do what's right, I hope most people care about truth and justice. And if we continue to prove that the that truth and justice is on the side of the Palestinians, and I think inshallah we have more hope than we've ever had, with the particular Zionist aggression and Palestine, of getting something really special, done. And may Allah subhanaw, taala, give us Sophia. I mean, when you have a platform, you have a lot of ability to do a lot of amazing things or big things. Simultaneously, you're oftentimes not a fair arbiter, because you have too many ties to the world. You have too much you have sources of income, you have
donors or investors. Daily wire is one of these examples. It's a massive operation. It's now being revealed that
it's funding is coming from very high ups in Israel is literally a mouthpiece for Israel now. And I think now people are starting to realize that this guy cannot talk about Israel at all. He's financially tied to them. He's already we know he's personally tied to them
himself as a Jew. So at that point, people like, you know, people saying here, Sam Henkel, Jake shields,
who, Jackson Henkel,
Ryan Dawson, Keith was one of the reasons for this is that when someone outside the realm of influence, or connection, says the truth, just as you said earlier, there is a kind of analysis of, of character witness. When the truth comes from an outsider, it actually is more valuable. Right? Prophet sallallahu sallam said, I love to hear the truth from other than myself, when a Christian came and reported that he saw the digit, the same exact, he didn't say the word that Jed, but he described what the prophet had described to the sahaba. And that was to me modality. And he was a Christian at the time when he saw what he saw. And it was exactly what the Prophet told his Saba
belt. And the prophets comment on that is I love to hear the truth from other than myself, because it adds to it in the minds of people. So people who have an establishment who haven't a platform have a lot of power, but their take as their accounts as witnesses is not as strong as strangers out there. People who are completely disconnected, who are now bringing the truth because they have no ties to it. And what I'm seeing here, and what we have to see here is that
you're on the losing side of history, if you're pro Israel in this, in this world, as I said yesterday, is live stream. The Jewish story to me is in three parts. The first part what's happened on you guys is my content is Mica. The first part is in Europe, and they were truly the victims.
The second part was a gray area was in the British Mandate, when they're coming as settler settlers who hope to colonize fighting a colonizer who doesn't hope to settle. Like neither of you are, you're the same. There's no victim here. That what the Jews did to the British Zionist to the British, and the British to them, it's sort of a gray area, there's not one particular person who's innocent or guilty. Now, the Zionists has taken over Palestine. Now they went from victim to villain and everything they do to the people, to the Palestinian people. Go watch the videos of people like Benny Morris, early time before he retracted everything, and Alon Pepe, they're going to talk a lot
about the oral history. And we showed videos of the genocidal mindset of of these people. Now, do you think that the, from what you've been hearing that American troops are ever going to touch grounds? And Reza
is at that point, right? You're now you're cheerleading them on you're paying for it? That's one thing, right? actually physically going is a whole nother story. Okay, well, I'll answer this and then unfortunately, I have to sign off because I have to go teach a class but over
Um, but um, this isn't my area of expertise. I'm a political theorist. I'm not a political analyst, such as someone like Sammy Hamby or someone like that. So take it with a grain of salt. But I would be I would be shocked. I think that it would, it would be immensely unpopular. And I think that right now, and this is largely taking from other political analysts sort of analysis of everything unfolding.
There, definitely, there's an interest to have the escalation, right, because remember that before all this was going on, the hope was for normalization, the further that things escalate, the more that normalization is going to be very, very difficult after the fact. Right, you saw how Saudi Arabia turned off have turned away or turned back from the precipice of normalization. And now, it's public opinion is so on the favor of Gaza and Palestine that, you know, they have an emergency meeting right now in Jeddah. Right? Who knows, maybe it won't amount to anything, but we can hope, maybe the public opinion will continue to be very loud, and continue to advocate to the point where
it forces their hand where they're going to do something economically, they're going to do anything who knows. Right? So I think that the the long game for both Israel and for the United States, they want normalization of ties, normalization of commerce, normalization of, of sort of military cooperation. And the further and further it escalates, I think that the more and more that that's off the table, so I'd be surprised if you saw boots on the ground, I think it'd be very, very unpopular. I think it would help put fuel on the flames of the narratives that we've been talking about, about how this doesn't make sense from an America First mindset. This doesn't make sense from
a humanitarian mindset. This doesn't make sense from from a lot of different sort of avenues. You can't necessarily tell how much saber rattling is completely accurate. Obviously, Iran has been doing a lot of saber rattling recently.
Turkey also today are Dhawan said, If you don't stop it, we will. Again, that could just be empty words, but who knows? So I don't think I would be surprised. I'd be surprised if we saw that type of escalation from the United States. And we, we hope it doesn't get to that. But we pray to Allah spawns Otto, that he that he demonstrates in a clear way, his power and his might, and that he makes the truth apparent from the falsehood and that he helps people Philistine and makes them victorious. I mean, just closing remarks, I'd be surprised if they continue this because they're looking terrible. And this normalization is going further away from them. And I don't even see that it's a
war anymore. Because what was the last time you heard of anything coming against Israel, everything is one directional. Now, if they want to turn this thing off, I think they could turn this thing off on the spot.
So they're probably weighing whether we want to swallow up as much as it was, and eliminate a million people out of the country. Right, that's one thing that they can have. The second thing is turn this thing off quickly, and go back to normalization.
It's all about what they prioritize right? Because they could turn this thing off and end it immediately. There's there's not a war happening anymore. It's a one sided operation. Yeah, it's a matter of thank you for coming on a law or a political theory correspondent that we'd love to have you on again for more insight anytime you want, but 10 510 minutes even to share your insights with our audience. They love hearing from you. Just like a lot more books on well, you can watch all of your map Tom stuff on the Utica Masjid YouTube channel on his own social media pages and now on European very nicely done videos on various subjects on 18 Institute's website and YouTube channel.
Thanks a lot. I'm Tom Jackalope. They will see you soon.
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