Barak Swarttz - YouTuber & Activist | The Truth About Israel They Don't Want You to Know

I have tried to think about reverse engineering, that idea of bringing people to Israel and bringing Israel to people. If you want to talk about the complexities of the Middle East, you have to create a safe space in order to do so. And when you just say come to Israel, you're inviting somebody that already doesn't believe you, they don't feel safe with you, and you haven't even created a safe space to have these tough conversations. He used a dream of pro basketball. Then he broke his back and his ACL. Most people would stop. He didn't. Barack Swartz created the court for the camera from training NBA athletes in Israel to building a YouTube channel that bridges sport and storytelling. He turned adversity into action. I try to stay away from the word influencer because there's been an abuse taken towards the word just because people label influencers fake. So I try to think of myself as key person of influence trying to use storytelling to positively impact conversations around the world that I true and dear to me. At first, I found being a basketball player as a liability. Coming into the space of the Middle East throughout my process of trying to my message in who I am, I found it to be probably the best asset because basketball and culture and sports in who I am helps humanize the conversation a little bit. His message, resilience is an optional. It's the platform you build when the world says no. This is Barack Swartz. The news and mainstream media and television, all of them. The way that they make most of their money is by delivering content that will inevitably make you have to see more. Israel is literally the epicenter of religious energy of the world. If you understand how to increase your frequency as a human being, it shifts the vibrations that we have. Barack, I'm excited that we're finally doing this. It's been a long time coming, which I didn't realize almost like five, six months since we first spoke. Just explain what do you do for a living? What do you consider the work that you do? I would say I fall under the category of influencers. I try to stay away from the word influencer because I think that there is some there's been an abuse taking towards the word and also some hijacking of the word just because people label influencers fake or they're doing it for the wrong reasons or like they're not being who they are. I try to think of myself as a key person of influence, trying to use storytelling, trying to use basketball and trying to use my voice to positively impact conversations around the world that are true and dear to me. I make content on the internet. I come from the basketball world. I was a player in high school in college. I've found the intersection of basketball and advocacy throughout the internet. Be more specific because I think that that can be very confusing what the intersection of basketball and advocacy actually means. But maybe frame it through your story. So obviously you're playing ball. You see things happening in the world that you're not exactly happy about. At what point do you think, okay, you know, I have the potential to go do this to actually play professionally. Like I'm on that path. This is not the path that I'm going to go on even though it's like highly lucrative and I can make a lot of money and that'd be a great life. There's other things that I feel like, you know, I'm like called to accomplish. Where are you in life when that happens? I'm from the States. I was born in Boston. When I was six, my family went to Israel to Jerusalem for two years. I was there during the the second intifada very early on. That's when I started playing basketball. I picked up a basketball since that moment since that day fell in love with the game. We'll get into those details later. Came back to the States started really pursuing have this thing called ball's life where everything that you do in basketball is just it's a culture. It's a fashion. It's a language. It's your it's your thing. I was I think gifted with some self-awareness very early on in my life. Self-aware meaning I realized I was a white Ashkenazid you from Boston. I was not going to the NBA and so regardless of of my you're allowed to laugh. You could have done semi pro. I did. Yeah. Yeah. And so this this idea of like hold on. Let me be a little more a little bit more realistic of where I fit in. I actually was gifted with that pretty early on, but that didn't stop me from wanting to still put a ball in my hands and play. I played at two high schools and two colleges was injured most of my career. And so the the injuries we'll get into these details, but the injuries and the experience and journey of being this like basketball player, I would say injury basketball player gave me a lot of opportunity to start working on who I am as a person as a man as a as a as an adult young adult and understanding more about the world bigger than basketball and how can these experiences on and off the court help me with my relationships help me with my professional career help me grow as a person with all of that being said, when I knew the NBA and division one basketball was not my future, you have to be a little bit more practical about thinking what what are you good at? What are the things that you're good at and what are the things that you like and how can you find a way to merge those things? And I've always been somebody who likes to speak and likes to tell stories and likes to help other individuals like the the just things I like to do if it's picking up the wallet on the ground that somebody dropped and running after them or if it's having deep conversations bigger than you know just that. And personally as as a an American Israeli who has lived in Israel since those two years in Jerusalem back and forth between the states, it was very clear to me that after I was training basketball players and as a player it was very clear to me it was my time to open up dialogue about what my life is like in Israel with it being a very big conversation right now in the world and it's so interesting because at first I found being a basketball player as a liability coming into the space of the Middle East, Israel, Palestine such a polarizing conversation and yet throughout my process of trying to massage my message in who I am, I found it to be probably the best asset because basketball and culture and sports and who I am helps humanize the conversation a little bit. When you say you thought it was a liability, the framing is like who am I to have an opinion on this? We all have this idea of first of all am I allowed to be in this arena to have a right to be in this arena arena as in like talking about something conflict, humanitarian crisis conflict. We'll talk about this eventually but I didn't serve in the army when I moved to Israel I didn't get the call to serve so you have a little bit of like an identity crisis is this my place but the basketball court has always been in between those four lines my sanctuary for being able to connect with people from all over the world, mostly non-Jews my three closest friends Nigerian Haitian and Jamaican best friend in high schools Muslim like we'll talk about this so that that court has allowed me to actually realize wait a minute that is how I build bridges like the sport of basketball has allowed me to build bridges and I also find that since most of us are not the geopolitical expert we do tend to find our way of relating to somebody who might have something in common with me sports music fashion art whatever the thing is that's a that's a door it's an opening a door to a conversation that's deeper when you already have common ground I agree one thing that is sort of I guess a little jarring to me is I think a lot of the animosity in the hate is is purely from social media and echo chambers online because growing up we did not draw the lines between people that we see on on Twitter or X or any other social like there was no lines there was no you're this I'm this at all and maybe I'm blessed because my parents were great people and they just encouraged you to just be friends with anybody and everybody I'm sure that not every family is like that although I think in you know more like newer families or or certain parts of the world maybe a little bit more forward thinking or accepting but my family is very like I say they were accepting but it wasn't like I knew they were accepting it just felt like everybody being a human to another human is just the norm that's just how you live and I started really understanding that not everybody thought that way when you start to see these global conflicts and you start to see like an us versus them yes and to me that was so strange yes I just doesn't exist in my world when I was growing up and I've just started to notice it more I don't know if it's more recent if it's because social media sort of encourages these echo chambers of thought but yes same like yourself it wasn't it wasn't basketball I played a whole bunch of different sports but it was just shared activities shared life shared childhood experiences there was no us versus them when you were a kid and I don't really know I don't really know at what point people thought that there isn't us versus them if it's not a learned experience from parents both of my parents are rabbis so my dad is a reconstructionist rabbi my mom is a reform rabbi she actually wanted to go through with the conservative movement at that time women in the United States were not allowed to go through the conservative movement she was I think like the 55th women rabbi in America by the way to those watching like they may not understand the concept of a woman being a rabbi it's just that in specifically mostly in North America we have grown to different denominations and Judaism same with any religion same with a lot of well in Israel like most synagogues most places of worship are going to be like through the orthodox movement you're not going to see like reform synagogues down the street everywhere in my mom through the the rabbi and the rabbi and in Israel could not get ordained because she wouldn't be going through the orthodox movement for example just to so I'm mentioning that because one of the big pillars in the reform movement is social justice and speaking up for social justice when I was six we went to Israel my dad was on a program to study with other rabbis from across the world and my mom was in the country to do volunteer work to understand more about Arab Jewish relations Israeli-Palestinian conflict how to how to sort of bridge the bridge the gap she spent a lot of time both in the West Bank down on the border in Gaza and my dad was studying we as a family went down when I was six years old in 2001 we went down to Behrshava which is the negative it's the desert southern part of Israel my parents took and I have an older brother his four years older than me so I was six he was ten by the way this is remember I'm six I don't know any Hebrew I don't know anything about Israel I don't want to be here it's like why are you taking me like the kid who was throwing the baseball in the street with his brother away from his like fun comfortable place in in Boston to this new place called Israel in the middle of the second and we went down there to this Bedouin village Bedouins are nomadic group typically Arab speaking people who don't have the same access to all other people in Israel a lot of the Arab sorry a lot of the better communities it has improved way more since 2001 to 2003 but at that time some of the resources had been neglected to them so they're always on the go backpack tent like rod clothes they just always on the go we went down there to help volunteer and build for them a medical facility because the water that they were drinking was very dirty and so kids and children and mothers and fathers were getting ill and they didn't have a medical facility to treat them just because of the water that they were drinking we built it out of clay and haystacks and I was with groups of Bedouin Arab children who didn't speak English and didn't speak Hebrew and I didn't speak Arabic so we communicated kind of just like with sounds and body language but here's this six-year-old from Boston who is just thrown into this place called Israel then very early on starting to do these initiatives and projects to understand how to interact with people from different parts of the world who don't speak the same languages you don't believe in the same God don't have the same menu in their kitchen not the same ethnicity culture and all that stuff and my parents really emphasize this important lesson which you just touched on which is it should never be about us versus them like I will always love you if you love me too period end of story that's like how I see the world I've always seen the world that way and I was you know I emphasize this point because that experience um happened to be between it's six seven and eight years old which every human being if you look into the development of who we are our neurology and even astrology we all go through experiences between those two to three years that help form a lot of who we are later in life and you can look at this through your astrological and natal chart you can look at this through going back to childhood experiences that period of time is shapeshifting for people so I got thrown into the middle of it at six seven and eight in Israel and with this experience with Arab kids and since then um I've always looked at life that way I've always looked at it why is it me versus you and then in a situation where there's a conflict it should be about us versus the problem it's just trying to identify what that problem is and trying to figure out if we can find common ground which is because of social media the the impossible task right now with something like Israel Palestine or kind of any conflict yeah it's very sad yeah it's very no I was gonna I was gonna agree with you I just that is that is the way that you fix any any conflict it could be with your wife or your husband it could be with any group in the world it's like what's the problem let's come together solve it together because if you don't if you don't adopt that mentality there's always going to be a loser yes and to be quite honest when there is a loser to a degree both sides lose there's never somebody who comes out of a conflict like unscathed if you ever choose the us versus them mentality hmm it's good it's it's never so you're young you have like a very healthy world view your parents are great and this is what I alluded to before like yes I understand that not everybody's childhood is great I understand that some parents are absolute assholes and they teach something very early on to their children their kids and it's very hard to sort of reprogram and see the world in a better light because you had all this influence it happens in the US it happens in Canada it happens in Israel it happens all over the world where you are sort of programmed a certain way because of your parents I just wish that social media didn't triple down on that negative programming but also social media seems to at the same time it's triple down on people that were negatively programmed from their parents it also seems to take people that were relatively reasonable good people and make them angrier and more divided so everything is just making people angry across the board sure and I mean you basically just you unpacked right there what I think is the main first of all you would agree with me that the news and mainstream media and television all of them the way that they make most of their money is by delivering content that will inevitably make you have to see more and the thing that makes you have to see more is the emotion of being afraid if you are afraid of something or you're more curious about something that you're fearing you will dig deeper you'll listen to the podcast more you'll watch the news more you'll research more that is essentially and that's that's attention so fear mongering machines will grab people's attention more which unfortunately this is it's a it's a it's a financial model for the new by the way I don't watch the news like a lot of it is hard to compartmentalize and I also think a lot of it feeds into what you're talking about there are influencers and content creators and I would say voices of reasons who do talk about how you are your algorithm in a way and there are ways to live a life and have a life and interact with the world that will have an effect on on your on your feed so and as somebody who lives on social media on like seven or eight platforms now building a brand I also have to figure out talking about something so complicated the Middle East and at the same time having an incredible amount of other pillars in my life that are really important to me my family my friends music dancing traveling food like just like parts of me basketball and so I think I've been very blessed to be able to understand the psychology around and practice good relationships with it moat in that has to do with I think consciousness and energy most people don't which is why social media in the news continuously wins it will all it is it is the powerhouse of now being kind of like the decision maker for people when they're choosing how they want to view a world conflict which is a really scary reality um that in 13 seconds or 24 seconds somebody's perception can be changed especially if they follow someone that person's voice is probably going to be the leading factor versus critical thinking and the person who they follow is subjective right they're following a subjective in that but they're also like people don't even think about incentives so the person they're following is incentivized because that conflict that content pays them but also so not only the influence of their following or the voice are following whether if you are angry about something somebody's profiting off that anger 11 out of 10 times so the angrier you are the shareholders at Fox and MSNBC and BBC and Al Jazeera they are profiting it the angrier you are I mean how do social platforms make money it's it's well you need people because with people comes advertisers and that's how you make money so and the toughest thing sort of you know not sound too cliche but to escape the social media matrix it's very difficult because you have the smartest most well-funded engineers, psychologists, marketers in the world whose only job is to keep you attentive and angry and consuming so you're already losing the battle because most people aren't trained to have a discerning view and have the intellect and intelligence and cognitive horsepower to beat the smartest people in the world whose only job is to keep you sort of trapped in the social media ecosystem it's very toxic it's wild right like also like someone like you or someone like me who also we make content to put out to an audience on the internet you want your content to do well because you want more people to see it so you have to think about where the strategies around how do I get that content to stick for people and so you and I I don't want to say play the game but we do have to think about what is the best what can I control most on my input so that the output has its maximum possible you know reach and however the difference is is that like what is the message at the end of the day if you boil it down you're trying to give is this gonna make me feel good and happy and positive or is it gonna make me go into that through a state that that to me is the differentiating factor of if you are or are not contributing to what you're talking about it's a it's it's a really it's a scary state it's an it's an unfortunate state it's been happening for a very long time I will tell you as an observer and somebody on it I think it's changing I do think it's changing I think it's gonna take a long time for us to see what that looks like in real time but I if you look at the world right now people have had enough like people have had enough with government and systems and not feeling like they have access to truth and not feeling like they have access to ultimate happiness we've we've really gone away from what happiness is and I think that we're having a conversation now in you know September 2025 it's it's premature and it's early but I do think that all of this noise and mayhem and chaos that we're seeing in the world is a growing pain that we inevitably have to go through in order to see positive change on the other side that's how evolution works like we have to go through this right now we're just in the we're in the mud what makes actually now I'm not gonna ask you what makes I'm gonna eventually ask you what makes you so optimistic but first I want to understand a little bit more about uh sort of your story because you're playing basketball sorry well very early on you're in Israel uh six years old uh how does your relationship with Israel evolved because that obviously when you're you know uh playing ball like you're back in the US I'm assuming for yeah and and like that was a period of your life come back to the US where you always sort of one foot in like Israel Middle East conflict or was that something that you sort of put away for a period of your time of your life it's a really good question so when we lived in Israel it was during one of the harder times in the past few decades I mean I don't even know if you can measure hard times in the Middle East it seems like everything's a hard time so it was during the second intifada um we lived in Jerusalem and specifically in Jerusalem there were an incredible amount of terrorist attacks happening throughout the early 2000s um I was the like second week we moved into our apartment a group from either the government or the army like knocked on our families houses door and they had cardboard boxes and inside of the cardboard boxes were gas masks and they were teaching us when and how to use these if needed during um in event where at that time Iraq had the ability to send over a particular kind of missile that did have a chemical release that could have an effect on your health and your body if you were to inhale it and the gas masks were there to protect obviously what year is this 2001 and I'm six so I'm like going from the states to this place in the like the other side of the ocean and then being handed this gas mask and I'm just like what is this place you know I mean I sit again like no Hebrew it's new to me and also there were events like bus bombings and car bombings and I was walking to school with my brother when warming in a car bomb did go off on our street like for those listening and watching the distance would be like if you're thinking about a 100 yard NFL football field like 60 or 70 yards away from where we were so I got hit with this concept of apparently what this place Israel was very early on and grew very thick skin through this um at 67 and eight years old you're not thinking about the Middle Eastern conflict and you also don't know a lot you don't you don't know enough as a kid right no you're just thinking Boston was much nicer than that all you were thinking it was Boston was way nicer um it's it's so funny you said that that's perfect segue to what I was going to say is we go back to the states and you would think that at after an experience like that how does a kid who's you know traumatized during those very important years as a kid those developmental years as a kid how does a kid like that have an experience and then later in his life feel called to then go back more and more and more because that's what I've been doing happened in 2011 happened in 2016 1819 and now I'm back and now I live there I'm full Israeli um I wasn't thinking about Israel the Middle East during those 60 during those those two years and I was a kid but what I will tell you is um the energy and the connection to the land of Israel as a Jew is something that I did feel when I was that kid it's still back then it was impossible to describe and still at 30 it is hard to describe but I do think that first of all and you were saying offline you'd never been to Israel it Israel is literally the epicenter of religious energy of the world you can you can feel it and it's there's no way I can't pull up a dictionary I can't pull up anything anyway to describe it to you it is just something that one's core feels Jew or non Jew by the way when you go to Israel and especially Jerusalem um I we lived 10 minutes away from the the coat of the western wall so like we would spend sometimes holidays or shabbat being there so I was gifted with this like really cool opportunity that I only appreciated later in life to be in the epicenter of that religious you know energy of the world as a Jew there in these important years so only later on in my life did I realize obviously how important those two years were to to my base and who I am uh but the conflict and the the situation in the Middle East only became something that I realized I wanted to talk about publicly and share more in the past few years I mean I was working for an organization that was basically taking Jews from the diaspora to the land of Israel to explore the Jewish identity and I was doing this back and forth and each time I would go back to Israel I'd realize this is more than just a vacation spot like this is this is a place that I would probably call home it has been home um so it was planted in me my my my parents unintentionally planted that in me my brothers four years older than me if I didn't live in Israel he'd probably never come visit right it's just like it's a place for him you know good food Tel Aviv beach for me it completely shifted my DNA what was what was the moment when you shelved basketball permanently so I know you went through a lot of injuries you broke your back at 16 and I'm assuming it's a lot like my experiences with hockey Canadian it's it's a it's a it's a cliche but it's very truly we all play hockey um I assume that around 16 if you aren't really planning on going pro or you're not drafted there's not scouts that are looking at you and you're like I should think about something else that I want to do with my life but also I don't know how religious you are I have no idea I know your parents are rabbis I don't know what your relationship with God is but if I had this personally speaking if I had this draw to a part of the world and I knew I wanted to play ball and I knew that I could even make a career going semi like semi-prower European leagues or whatever so make good money and I kept getting injured maybe this is just me but I would be like you know what that's like a sign that is like a sign God is telling me something I'm not meant to be doing this I'm going to do something else or like he wouldn't keep putting all these blockers in my way do you have you ever thought that through couldn't have said about myself and yet because I'm insane I like to think I'm insane best people are to best people are insane you definitely like because I'm insane and deeply deeply deeply deeply in love with the game of basketball even though I've had a really hard relationship with it it's it sometimes even makes me emotional like when I was 16 I was diagnosed with two hairline fractures and something called spondyliosthesis in my spine which is a fancy way of saying vertebrae were separated and I had some shatters in part of my hairline fractures in my spine now at 16 years old when you go to Boston Children's Hospital and your orthopedic looks at you and was like you have never seen a 16 year old with these before I can't tell you how you got these we'll do some bone marrow testing we'll do some vitamin testing we'll try to take a look under the hood but this one's weird right did a lot of testing tried to figure out if it was genetic what would happen um I was in a Boston overlap brace a Bob plastic hard shell brace for 23 hours a day connected with a bone stimulator on my lower back so this wasn't like you fell and broke your back I fell twice going into my senior year in the summer at a Boston University tournament when I was with my high school team Newton South I felt twice on my right hip bone on a Saturday morning to do that doesn't do that that you know the first one was bad but then we had our championship game against new mission at the time it was one of the best teams in the state and there was only five of us because our six player got injured if I chose not to play would have to forfeit so I played on it and it happened again during the game and then I realized like this is something I should check out so when I got the images in the doc the orthopedic told us this isn't just like let's let's sit you out for two weeks this is a procedure so I was in a plastic hard shell brace bone simulator I missed out on a lot of recruiting I got from some division two and division three schools in northeast america senior year played in the transitional brace more of a flexible one decided to do a postgraduate year a PG year at a prep school in Connecticut um two weeks before the season started I fractured both of my tibias so I had bilateral hairline fractures and I had only one two options one was not to play which means the PG year's gone two was to play I played on them I got some recruitment throughout that year had lots of other injuries I had compartments injured my leg I had an evulsion fracture my ankle I ended up playing two years at almyra college in new york hairline fractures were still a problem I didn't really find myself there it's in the middle of almyra new york on the border pencil vania socio economically very depressed very dark not a lot of opportunity wanted to come back closer to my family maybe play basketball ended up transferring to curry college in boston who had actually recruited me when I was a high school student the day before I moved in I tore my ACL and so I didn't play my junior year I can keep going like all of these injuries over and over and over and over and over and there's more by the way after I came back to israel I don't want to bore the audience with the injuries but or you but I think the insanity part comes in is like when do you stop right like what are you going after right like I like what was I going after because I obviously knew wasn't the mba clearly obviously wasn't division one scholarship um but I think I just love the game too much when I'm playing basketball it's very therapeutic for me it's kind of the only meditative state that I can I can achieve at the moment and I knew when you to your question sorry for the rant but when did I shelve basketball officially my last game ever at curry college in 2018 I actually wrote a letter to basketball during my last game and at the last four or five minutes of the game the opposing team one of their players of shooting free throws there's a picture of me but I was sit I had a moment of like he shooting free throws on the other side of the court and I actually sat down on the free throw line and I kind of just looked out and blacked out for a few moments just like realizing kind of like this is the last time I put on the competitive jersey I would say that's why shelved playing basketball now when I came to israel there was a team created for people who are immigrating to israel which I actually got recruited for and we ended up playing moved up a few divisions the injuries still did not stop I partially tore my bicep tendon and I have something called Morton's neuroma which is one of two of my toes are essentially kind of pressed against each other which hurt the nerve ending so I have lost sensation and feel in one of my toes and trying to push and plant and jump and run can be very painful cold weather will affect it too if it's very cold out so I kind of realized like this isn't it you know this isn't it this is how I got into training basketball players through all these injuries so I shelved it in college but I try to play for fun when I can it's not my career I wish it was not my career training players became my career and now today with how I use basketball it's on a different pedestal right like I use it on a different platform not playing but I'm trying to use it to sort of open up dialogue you made alia which is really just means you moved to israel at some point the IDFs you never served now give me give me let me know if this is correct because I don't want to put words in your mouth but so was that something not serving was that difficult for you like when you moved to israel you didn't serve you felt like you are not contributing 110% of yourself to this country that you love at this point very much so when I first came to israel I actually thought it was gonna affect my ability to fit in make friends get judged maybe like date women who would look at me as like because for people that don't know everybody serves in the yeah yeah right so to add some context your israeli is a required to serve 18 years old day in list the time varies for depending on what you do but very much so I actually did it's funny I had a a story with a girl I dated very early on who after a few like really good dates called me one day and was like listen I thought about it you didn't serve in the army like my family like we wouldn't accept you you know like and that's like it's like it's like really okay you know so that that that like made me think like wait a minute some people do pay attention to it turns out six seven years later she's very much like in anomaly like there's like she was just one of two people maybe who had like voice their opinion of why they're against the idea that I didn't serve now to add some context I didn't serve because it was my choice not to serve when I made aliyah typically a process goes through where you get a phone call from the idea for from one of the organizations who are going to onboard you because you are a new immigrant I was 25 when I made aliyah soldiers who are commanders can be 18 and 19 years old and when you have an 18 19 year old israeli commander with a 25 year old american immigrant things can get very bureaucratically confusing and complicated and I was never given like a formal reason but that is that is essentially the guess from the organization that onboarded me to israel as to why I never got that phone call I was kind of preparing for it mentally because it's the convert it's like the not the elephant the room but if you make aliyah you understand that there is also this service that you are giving to the country so it was something I was mentally preparing for at the same time it didn't happen now when conflict knocks on your door sirens war fighting in my friends that I've made throughout the past six seven years there 99.999 who have served our serving or in the reserves when when they get a phone call to like go into a territory or go on a mission or get called back from their family because they're in reserves it's called me the weem and I'm I don't have to do anything it it it felt guilty like it felt like like well that's crazy you know um that catapulted me into wanting to start to enlist myself I call it enlisting myself in my own army service it's the closest thing I could ever get to to being a soldier because I can't put on a uniform and I can't go serve and I can't go protect in the fields um so the survivor's guilt for sure I felt especially on the 7th 8th 9th 10th of October when I was sitting in in Tel Aviv when the country was kind of not on lockdown but in this very like very fear state and I was speaking to friends when they would get wifi if they would they would leave Gaza or something they were they were there in territory in uniform so turns out that I wasn't judged people actually look at people who make alia as like a very courageous thing a very like zionistic thing to do to like leave your life behind where you were in the world and come to this very insane place called Israel a lot of them actually don't understand why we come there because they're like why would you want to come here you know you leave Boston, Massachusetts right so um that has changed a little bit for me because I feel like I am fulfilling something that I was I was supposed to eventually do so at first had a very difficult relationship with it and now not as much so your so this the mission that you're on right now it it's been sort of it's been happening your whole life but ultimately October 7th is when you're like I need to actually put my voice out there yeah and then you're no longer coaching basketball at this point and this is like to put it simply this is when you're like a full-time content creator into into this space um not that early on no not that early on so just to add the because it's it's interesting it definitely didn't happen like that I want to remind the listeners that I started this for personal reasons for feeling guilty that I wasn't able to go help after what unfolded after the 7th and my friends were in Gaza and then actually relatively quickly then deployed up north next to Lebanon that's a b I found out in October that one of my friends was called at the Nova Festival and c the last thing I flew back to the states after the 7th on the 10th I was one of the last flights out of Israel see the last thing that was on my mind was basketball and fitness I had I went through a really scary um my body wasn't sleeping in October so I was sleeping like 90 minutes to 120 minutes a night and for about three weeks and like whether it was related to what happened on the 7th and just everything or whatever it was I started seeing a sleep doctor once I started to figure that out I realized that Israel and the story of what I went through what's going on is too important for me not to not to talk about and I started making YouTube videos in my basement in in in the greater Boston area one two three and then the fourth one I showed you a picture actually of what the production looked like before this podcast the fourth one went relative to the size of my channel at the time viral there was is and I can't say his name for for privacy reasons there's a very big youtuber who operates in a different space who actually found me one day before the war and talk to me about going on YouTube one day and as a result of that conversation I decided this was when I was still making basketball fitness videos so the first like four or five videos on my YouTube channel are me trying to teach like Steph Curry work warm-ups like if you go back I got 200 views and then I had a conversation with him when I was in the States a very heartfelt conversation with him about how do I go from that to talking about this thing that happened in Israel and he helped me identify that this is potentially a calling for me um so fourth video goes out he's helping me think through sort of like post-production stuff just to get an idea that like I didn't figure it out on my own I got hope along the way I told the story but thumbnail and title and like understanding over time November December January now I'm like my YouTube channel is growing and now from YouTube other parts of my life Instagram and TikTok now a discord community is being built and then like the wheel goes so full-time now sitting in front of you yes in the beginning in the beginning in the beginning it was figuring out how to find my voice what does my voice even mean like who am I this basketball fitness guy now talking about Israel Palestine like how does it even work right and I started observing a lot of the people who did choose to begin to chime in and I understood a lot of it was um congested a lot of it was regurgitated and a lot of it didn't feel like it was threading any needle like it's one thing content around the conflict okay the content around the conflict felt that every time I did this it was a new person saying the same thing that I just saw before I swiped so it's 39 ways of saying the same thing and a lot of those 39 really molded into like kind of the same way and that's when I realized if I use basketball and when I say that practically I'm saying go to basketball courts and film videos about the Middle East not sitting in in front of a chair in front of lights and talking about it but like I would go to basketball courts I put on my microphone I would play basketball and I would talk about Israel Palestine or I would go to a basketball court and I would interview somebody who had had an experience to traumatize an experience just trying kind of like hot ones so same idea um then eventually you know this as somebody who finds a cool niche and then they can run with it good things happened from there the brand started to grow and suddenly now like I'm getting opportunities maybe to come and speak here speak there and I've been to six countries I'm going to my seven soon so if I wish it just happened that like I turned on my camera and like suddenly I was like a full-time content creator it's taken a lot and I started making videos on the internet in 2018 I was just making like cool videos back in Boston about my life um I started a series called Barack meets Barack because I wrote him a letter when he got elected and he wrote me one back and I made this like journey about how I'm gonna meet him so like I was doing things like that just for fun that video that went viral what were you speaking about the hit that particular video was a member of Hamas who got captured by the idea who was actually operating inside of a hospital inside of the Gaza Strip and they interviewed him they questioned him about what is happening inside of the hospital with the war and in the video he's speaking Arabic the video is translated to Hebrew and I realized that since I speak fluent Hebrew and a lot of the boots on the ground reality stays in Israel in the middle east a little bit when it comes to Arabic and Hebrew and that doesn't get distributed to people sitting in Miami or people sitting in Canada what a great way to sort of create that boots on the ground reality so I would take these videos in Hebrew that show what is going on I would translate them into English but I would also give the anglers to like what does this mean in terms of why things are happening the video was that it was the interview cut translate and then me giving people access to that in the diaspora who don't have access to that because of the language barrier quick question what's your go-to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout for me it just used to be whatever I could grab which usually meant skipping meals entirely or just grabbing something that left me crashing an hour later because it was just full of garbage that's why I'm partnering with fuel this black edition ready to drink is a complete meal so it has 35 grams of protein six grams of fiber 35 essential vitamins and minerals it is no sugar added gluten free under five bucks I always keep a few of these in my fridge and honestly it's solved the whole back-to-back meetings go go go non-stop no time to eat problem super well and this one's new for me it's fuels daily greens I had the blueberry this morning honestly first impression it was way better than I expected it's developed by registered nutritionists and dieticians there are 42 vitamins minerals and superfoods only 25 calories 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that's net suite dot com slash scott clary that's net suite dot com slash scott clary net suite dot com slash scott clary and then so this is this starts to form your content it does very very well um I like the unique angle of incorporating basketball into it because like you said it bridges the gap if somebody's just a talking head whose Jewish is really whichever I feel like that message is missed I think I don't need to just not like anecdotal I mean I think support for israel's at an all-time low so I don't think that from a PR perspective israel's doing a great job or else support wouldn't be so low yeah and I've seen it bleed into just pure anti-semitism so something from a PR perspective is not working and if you have an opinion or not be my guess I don't know enough about why it's not working or why there's so much hate towards israel and Jews and in general um that's something we can actually bring up because now even stuff that's happening currently like even this week is just arbitrarily being blamed on Jews which is just fucking insane but um without getting too negative I think it's I think the way that you look at bridging a conversation is a beautiful way to do it yeah but you have like actually some more data on how it's working how has it worked more or less yeah like explain like the conversations you have with people like opinions that you have changed like when so many people who try and advocate for israel yeah like again it's just they feed into an echo chamber and their message just falls flat there's so much for me here I'm gonna push back if you don't I'm gonna push back for you you're gonna I think you're gonna like this it's gonna also probably shock the people listening before I get to that I would say that if you look at the story of the Middle East right now just to make things very simple unfortunately we have pro-Israel and pro-Palestine that's that is the us versus them we were talking about a while while ago from the pro-Palestine perspective they have a very beautiful story because it's two words and they all say the same two words and there's really no other slogan it's free Palestine and yes you have globalized the intifada intifada revolution there's only one solution from the river to the sea death to you have you have all of this but free Palestine is simple and it's very effective and a lot of people have easily gotten behind that and I'm not saying by the way that's the only reason they have there's a lot of other nuances you look at pro-Israel by the way I'm again I want to repeat I'm just simplifying it because it's not just anti and pro it's this is the two camps sort of barking at each other pro-Israel you have bring them home you have Amis al-Qaay we have each county in every city has like four slogans you have the internal divide between religious and secular you have the the issues internally in Israel you have for the coalition against the coalition against BB pro BB we have sex in sex with the CT inside of their messaging that we're supposed to have and we're all trying to tell the same story they have done a they see here I'm doing it right now the pro-Palestinian camp has done a very good job at effectively saying two words which is simple and easy and we've had lots of slogans and attempts of throwing darts at the board to try and get what you're saying the international community to to hear our our side our truth now I want to start by saying that the increased amounts of anti-Semitism is scary the experiences that you saw in fold online for Jewish students on campus for Israelis traveling abroad for vandalism for synagogues for the president of a synagogue or the rabbi just trying to remember in Detroit getting killed at her doorstep for the two members at the Israeli embassy getting killed in the name of free Palestine like real real stuff real real real real stuff this is all of these things are the scary violent events that we all saw on the first thing we talked about in this podcast which is the media social media especially right now it is not built that platform those platforms are not built to show us the full picture I'm gonna tell you what I mean by that they're there to show us concentrated events that are meant for you to see because it benefits them but it also incentivizes certain behavior in you our timelines now it's a timeline thing whatever your timeline is your feed whatever you want to call it that's essentially your school of thought you open up the timeline of somebody who's in the pro Palestinian camp you open up the timeline on x whatever it is on this side you scroll through that is their school of thought when you download those apps and you press yes you're actually signing off on them having access to your camera your microphone your cookies and your data they're getting access to you they they know you so well so that your feed is it's perfect for who you want what you believe in that's where the divide comes in my biggest issue with the PR efforts inside of the Jewish community inside of Israel is they're very keen on come to Israel and see it for yourself come here enough debating enough contemplating outside in the world on social media let me come show you that it's not an apartheid state let me come show you that Arabs have the same rights let me come show you that they serve in court that they're doctors let me come show let me come show you now the issue with that is because this side of the room already has a pretty negative perception on what Israel is they don't want to come here to begin with it's like inviting somebody to dinner that doesn't even have an appetite it's not going to work and we're seeing like you just said a minute ago if someone like me needs to be doing it and I'm having more results than we have something we need to fucking fix here big time now let me tell you this is where I'm going to push back a little bit that wanted to tee that up for you I have tried to think about reverse engineering that idea of bringing people to Israel and bringing Israel to people if you want to talk about the complexities of the Middle East you have to create a safe space in order to do so and when you just say come to Israel come come we show you we come show you the truth come have humus and all this stuff you you're inviting somebody that already doesn't believe you they don't feel safe with you and you haven't even created a safe space to have these tough conversations if we bring Israel to people Barack who has chosen to do advocacy goes to the US goes to Canada goes to Spain goes to a Muslim country goes to Morocco goes to South Africa in October I'm going to Australia and you speak to Jewish and non-Jewish communities you speak to people in Washington Square Park in one of the hottest hot spots of like where these dialogues these tough dialogues on the internet have gone on when it comes to Israel Palestine where you go to the US Capitol while BB is testifying and there's four of you pro-Israel in thousands of anti-Israel people there where you go to the White House and you try to have this dialogue you begin to find out and I'm saying this as somebody who just came back from Greece all of the anti-Semitism all of the fighting all of the violence all the fear all the intimidation it is all real I'm not dismissing any of it what it does represent however is a very very loud minority if you think deeply about the encampments at these Ivy League institutions the drone footage shows you all of the people at the encampments if you took the controller of the drone and you just flew it up another 200 feet what you would see are the tens of thousands and other people who are just walking back and forth mining their business or the ones where I like what is going on here it's showing you the loud minority it's not showing you the silent majority that's what social media does that's what these events will make you think is that it's everywhere that you go case in point when I was in Spain and I was in Morocco and I was in South Africa and I just came back from Greece offline and I'll say it on this podcast and I've been saying it ever since I actually don't think most people in the world hate Israel I don't think most people in the world are behind the idea of torching it up and wiping it clean for the cause of the liberation movement for Palestinians I don't think most people in the world are endorsing these protests marches and acts of violence and just scapegoating to Jews and Israelis it sure feels like it because you just you know you kind of said it like naturally because that's what we're programmed to do we're very much feels like it sure and there's big voices that seem emboldened yeah take a and this is also frustrating they say like an anti-Israel stance but ultimately it bleeds into anti-Semitism yes very easily and quickly which which we just saw in the Dan Bullsarians and the Candace Owens and the and people that like Dan Bullsarian I mean where did this come from and then now an event happens like what happened right now I like to keep his evergreen we know like Charlie Kirk was just assassinated and murdered and I don't even understand the mental gymnastics as somebody has to go through right after that happens to start saying oh that must have been Israel must have been the Jews must have been the Jews but you see that on X and I'm like I don't remember people being six years ago people having the balls to say that like that is such a wild you know the person's full name he's not anonymous accounts it's not 4chan these are just real people who feel like that's something appropriate to say on social media where you can find out who they are it's almost as crazy as the people that were celebrating his death in my opinion like all of it is just nuts people see like so emboldened and so courageous to say these ridiculous things and the reason why I say that it feels like Israel's losing the PR battle is because you see this stuff pop up and I just and it could just be a bias but I just don't remember it being so out there I agree with you that we are losing the PR battle I don't agree with the majority sentiment within the the pro-Israel camp that most people hate Israel I just don't and I don't because I'm hoping that's true but well well I'm not only hoping it's true but when I go to these countries I can give you I can give you examples in every single country right now with experiences that social media and mainstream will not show you which proves to me behind this this is why I think my voice is very important because when I'm traveling now I'm actually like I'm documenting my experiences in these anti-Semitic hot spots Spain is anti-Semitic Morocco Muslim country South Africa trying to you know put BB in jail for all the war crimes in the beginning of the war like you you go to these places and I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you a quick story in in Morocco this will blow your mind the first day I get there by the way I was in Morocco because after the 7th of October a group of I would say more moderate Muslims from Morocco Pakistan and Dubai came into Israel to bear witness to what happened to learn more let me repeat not all of them were pro-Israel they were just thinking about how can I understand a holistic perspective of this conflict they came to Israel I was invited to go be with them and walk with them through the territories in the south kibbutz beri go to the side of the nova festival I got very close with a few of them who live in Morocco we made some videos in Israel together after they understood a little bit more seeing things firsthand meeting with families the first thing I'll say which I find very telling is after these videos went out on the internet the amount of threats that they received from their people back home in Morocco was insane I saw the messages I saw the people in an assembly line waiting for them essentially just waiting for them to land right because they came to this place called Israel so their own Muslim brothers and sisters were then saying don't even think about coming back here after what you just did these are moderates and they said it's my home I'm going back so they went back to a place their home back in Morocco that they weren't necessarily welcomed back by some of the people there that's the first thing that I find very interesting now I went to Morocco because if you're going to come to my home in bear witness to like what life is like in culture I want to go and learn more about your culture so I was on a 10 day exploration in Morocco I went across the entire country my first night I went to Medina which is the old city in Marrakesh and you walk in and it's this massive massive open flea market there's food there's concessions there's music there's kids on a Friday night and for Friday night for me back in Israel she bought for Friday night there in Morocco it's like celebration and they have these food stalls and these juice stands and one of them is on like a big stair step and they have this tradition where they bring in tourists they bring them up on the stand they give you this nice cool cultural Moroccan hat and they sing to you in front of everyone and I he called me up he just caught eyes with me called me up I come up the first thing he asked me is where are you from and I said Israel and he says ah shaliman ishma which means hey brother how are you doing in Hebrew I'm in Medina I know yeah so I'm like okay I'm excited but all right this is weird yeah we leave and across the street look tens of thousands of people across the street you see like 200 waving Palestinian flags every night they're there and I'm speaking with the people who are taking me around and then there are police officers around the public and the police officers hate them they disrupt peace they disrupt like the the travel and they they make people have to work on on nights and shifts that they don't even want to work the king in Morocco is also very protective of the Jewish communities that still exist in Morocco and he is a friend of Israel and you would think that as an Israeli Jew going into Morocco and you should see the messages I got from people before I got there watch out be careful tucking the necklace I'll talk about my necklace in a moment this is a important necklace like so that's one story by the way that I have in I have South African stories I have stories from Spain and now in Greece that these stories are not covered on mainstream they're not on X they're not on CNN they're not on Fox because I'm showing the optimistic side of things which is really hard to do right now with the current state of the union and boy oh boy Scott let me tell you the pushback that I've received from people in Israel people who have unfollowed me who are pro-Israel who think that I'm completely misrepresenting the like the boots on the ground reality for people when I get on YouTube basically every day of my life and I talk about these things in length sometimes up to 30 or 45 minutes of the anti-Semitism of the negative state I just think it's so important that the language that we use is accurate and I don't think it's accurate right now for us for us as the collective to say the world I hear this every day the world the globe earth everyone hates Israel I make the case it's not true I make the case that there is a very loud minority who makes us feel and think that way which by the way the damage that they do is insane it's insane and it's dangerous and it's bad the kandas always ends the sink you girls the the dan bullsarians and the mahamati jobs and the medihasans and we can keep going down because they have a lot of influence I still on record right now we'll say I just don't think it's the majority I think that a lot of people too have invoiced their opinion a because it doesn't it's not important enough to them like people down in Miami have more things to worry about than like what's happening in Israel Palestine and two they are sensitive to joining a very polarizing conversation because they've actually seen some of the repercussions for what happens if you voice your opinion um which is wild right it is so sorry that was that was a lot yeah don't apologize this is what we're here for um follow up to that I actually don't think that the whole world hates Israel I think that actually most a lot of neighboring Arab states are very very uh much pro in air quotes Israel not that they have to love the country but they don't agree with the destruction they don't agree with the destruction I mean now we have a khabad even though god you know god forbid the rabbi was killed with the khabad in Dubai and and UAE so like the gulf the Emirates like like it so obviously as a as an interviewer you don't you don't want to come across as bias but obviously if you're listening you kind of understand my bias like my dad worked uh for ceases so Canadian security intelligence services which is like a a mishmash of the CIA and the FBI kind of put together they're like a civilian investigation unit in Canada and they do all like you know the counterterrorism stuff and all I remember growing up that was that he worked with shinbet and like israel's like the bastion of democracy in the Middle East and I think that it I think that a lot of these neighboring Arab states not all but they realize that israel is very good to have israel is very good to have because there are groups in the Middle East that if israel was not there the neighboring Arab states would not be having as good a time as they are right now so I actually don't think it's the world for some reason it seems to be the west that was my interpretation yeah and that to me is crazy I don't understand and this is a bigger conversation about a younger generation what they believe and and you can throw in words like woke and liberal and all these different things and influence and influence but for some reason and again you push back but it seems like we lost a PR battle in the west I can't push back on that and I don't understand how that happened and I don't understand how we reconcile from that because that's a PR battle you don't want to lose I can't push back on that because I agree what you what you said about Charlie I think is look um when like pogroms were at its all time high in the late 1800s early 1900s 1890 in Lithuanian Russia all that stuff like at the time the Russians were had done a very good job of convincing a lot of people that the Jews were to blame for a lot of the world's problems this is not the first time not the first time in fact it happened before then fast forward a little bit you get into so pogroms continue Jews looked at as evil dangerous blame for at one time the bonych plague like blame for like things that are insane um and then during the holocaust you have uh al-Juminal Husseini who was like the the one of the leaders at the time um who came into Berlin Palestinian leader if you will came into Berlin to meet with Hitler and talk about how we bring the final solution from Europe to the Middle East and they actually worked on translating mind comp to Arabic to be able to distribute to a lot of communities in the Middle East then you look at like today where a lot of how a lot of people in that region think about Jewish people or Israeli people or people on the internet who have like you said before education influence the people that you're around make it way easier and it always has been very easy it's been so fucking easy to blame Jews for the weather for high fructose corn syrup for what when nothing is going well in your life it's becoming so easy so easy that in 90 minutes after Charlie Kirk gets assassinated the same people who have been you can go and do your due diligence and see if yourself the same people a lot of the same people should I say screaming death to Israel and death to America for almost two years are the same ones who immediately it was the Jews in it was Israel there you know I always like to say and this is why I say I have no pushback for you because the way I look at the situation that Israel has been in when it comes to a PR standpoint is from the tweet or the post that they want to post to the mission that they have to go on in the Middle East to the article that they have to write every decision that Israel makes today is a lose lose it is just a matter of weighing how much do you want to lose today do you want to lose a lot do you want to lose a lot by going into Qatar less than a week ago eliminating leaders of Hamas who from our timeline our perspective my understanding of living in Israel is a massive win from the perspective of those who are screaming death to Israel is another terrorist move so you're going to lose knowing that when you eliminate the leaders of this terrorist group lots of people are just going to point the finger and say you're slaughtering people here you know it's always it's always a lose but how do we get to the point where killing a terrorist is not a good thing not just current Hamas but now you have it was a while ago but people were empathizing with Osama bin Laden like excuse me but what the actual fuck has happened because when I went to school and I went to university like yeah maybe maybe they weren't a hardcore right wing but like terrorists were terrorists and like when you kill innocent people that's always killing innocent people I just don't understand how we shifted so much and I've and nobody can really explain that to me like at what point even if you say that higher education in Ivy League is too liberal at what point did a teacher start to sort of spew this bullshit that was not part of my higher education let me give you an example I'm not going to be able to give you the full answer for two reasons one I don't have it and in two like I don't think it's only related to one thing in 2016 I have a friend in Israel who was studying at Berkeley this is 2016 okay this is nine years ago she told me when she was taking classes at Berkeley in Cali nine years ago one of the professors was already trying to tell students that Israel in the Jews are the reason we have destruction in the Middle East is the reason why we have like a Palestinian cause to fight for this is 2016 now if you look deeply like we have already uncovered evidence of Qatar over a very long period of time we're talking 20 plus years shuffling if not billions hundreds of millions of dollars directly into these liberal arts universities so I think one thing to keep in mind is just first off is education like when you have somebody who's on the joystick who's controlling what book is on the shelf in the library and what curriculum is being taught to the student um especially at far left leaning or or those schools it's inevitably it's going to have a very big impact when the flood gates open and now it's that time for that student to feel like oh it's my time to speak up because I've been learning about this because we've been talking about this because we've been hanging out about what better time when a college student has mom and dad's credit card and they have no real responsibilities besides make sure to get in class on time party on the weekend like you know bills are low maybe they're working at a bar off campus for for some income and it's like let's go to the street I mean like we we've seen college age kids that's when they they're on a high like they feel like they're and so it's actually perfect the the guitar propaganda theory is perfect for that and so I'm not saying that's the only answer it's not the only answer and by the way I don't have it you say no one's been able to explain it to you I don't I don't think there's there's one way to unpack it but I do think a lot of it has to do with look October 7th was was something that was planned from an educational standpoint it needed to be implemented educationally for it to do what it's done the past two years and for us to have this conversation right now it needed to have been planned over a couple decades ago because to pull this off you need to deeply seep into the minds of the next generation which this is where by the way I would say it's hard for me to have any pushback a lot of the college students who are now doing what we're seeing even the ones who are basically blaming Israel and Jews for killing Charlie Kirk these are future leaders of politics and these are future leaders of foreign policy and these are I know that's scary scares me a lot it's also one of the reasons why I left America I just like don't find it here very comfortable not just because I'm a Jew I didn't leave because of anti-semitism but that that to me is is it's it's easy it's easy also to when you're at school and the opinion of most of your classmates who are taking your class with you were a professor whatever whatever was just talking to you about why like oh now I understand like that Israel really does operate an open air prison over there I'm not gonna go that I don't need to go there but like that's my professor that's their profession obviously the school audited this person to get to hire them why would I fact check this that's my professor I didn't fact check my professors I don't know about you I didn't always fact check my professors in marketing class in math class like you know I didn't we're not taught to do that we're not taught to think beyond that um that's my theory by the way it's like one of my theories as to why I think it's been so easy for people to to do that I'm curious what is the prevailing point that somebody leads with when they walk up to you and ask and and want to speak to you about Zionism like what is the thing that they think Israel has done that is so horrific because they throw the word genocide around a lot and you you also said you're the first person to call Israel out when they don't do something right so I'm curious and you can be as scientific or data driven as as you'd like to be since October 7th let's just deal with recent history what has Israel done what have they not done what is the common belief about what they have done when you speak to these people the g-word comes up a lot genocide genocide comes up a lot because the war that is unfolding right now is the first time nine year olds with a wi-fi connection can stream it for free they can open their phones they can open TikTok and they can watch live war unfold this has never happened before when a 9 10 11 16 year old somewhere in the world gets to stream this with repulsive amounts of content repulsive like it is everywhere everywhere direction it's going to build a theory it's going to build a thought it's going to it's going to convince you that there is absolutely a genocide happening one of the main things that comes up now and I would say this is this has been the same early on in the war and now it's still today when somebody shows you a video of a girl who is stuck under a building or a picture of a body bag of somebody that got killed or a woman or a child what are you going to say to that like you've you've you've immediately what you see the picture you know you'd say like why is Israel killing in a sense of villains they they say oh they're not committing genocide you know this is where a lot of the um I don't want to hear what your opinion is I want to see if your opinion is in line with mine that's typically how these that conversation would go because here I am support the Israeli who lives in Israel whose friends are in the idea who has actually spent time on the border here I am trying to explain that what they're seeing with their eyes isn't this thing called genocide now I think I'm gonna give you date we're gonna get to the number like the date in a second to help unpack this because this this is the answer to your question I think that when we use the words genocide in apartheid right now we are completely taking away from the some of the worst horrific things in humanity such as the real genocides in real apartheid that have happened in the world are still happening and are still happy yeah by the way I was in South Africa I went to the apartheid museum I went around the country like I saw the cell where like Muhammad Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were in I saw what apartheid looked like in South Africa and I live in Israel I live my taxi drivers are Muslim in Arab my bus drivers are Muslim Arab like my friends Realtor is in Arab like I know this because I live there it's really hard to open up a conversation with somebody who is emotionally driven by what they're seeing before I explain to you the conversation that I have to have what I started saying very early on in this war when I started talking about this publicly is we have some people aren't gonna like this overly emotional and underly informed people you are driven by emotion the news the feed the blood the war and the violence and like I told you it is the first time and remind me if we've had another one where you and I in this in 10 seconds can get war for free and watch this all day it's clearly gonna drive an overly emotional state now the information around why that is happening isn't being surfaced and also those who are overly emotional don't care about the information and this is exactly where my job gets very difficult because it doesn't matter and you can notice that like since we've been on this conversation I haven't been debunking the genocide claim I haven't been debunking the apartheid or the all this stuff a lot of them don't want to listen to it they don't care because a lot of people have already tuned out because I'm a Jew and I'm Israeli and I'm a Zionist so that's to begin with but a lot of them don't want to hear any rational reason for why this genocide thing maybe isn't a genocide there are people who will be willing to listen a because I didn't serve in the idea which I find fascinating and b because I live in Israel since the beginning of the war it has been reported that roughly in the numbers have fluctuated but roughly 60,000 people have been killed by the IDF there's a few things to take into account before I break this down number one included in that number are members of Hamas there is no differentiation between civilians and Hamas when this number is being reported to the general public which is being reported to by the Gaza Health Ministry which that first video that I made in November 2023 was a manager in the hospital who was an undercover hospital clerk working for Hamas inside of a hospital inside of Hanunis so Hamas is embedded in hospitals and they are embedded in the personnel giving information to the public about the war it's like really important now you know what for the sake of the conversation we'll we'll say it's 60,000 people making me assumption that there's no lying about that number sure making the assumption according to Israel's estimates 25 to 30,000 of them have been members of Hamas let's meet in the middle let's meet in the middle because they're not willing to say that the 60,000 is an accurate and I'm and and they're not going to believe me that when I say yeah but Hamas members are part of that 30,000 people the population of the Gaza Strip is over two million the population of the Gaza Strip in 1948 was 80,000 people the population of Jews living across the Middle East in 1948 was around one million between 1948 and 2025 the population of the Gaza Strip has gone from 80,000 people to 2.1 million people the population of the Jews living in the Middle East between 1948 and 2025 has gone from one million to estimates between five and 10,000 to tell me that there's genocidal intent by the IDF to snipe day in and day out people because they can when 30,000 people have died at all in a war which is horrible and tragic and every single one of them is bad all of them are bad kids are bad women are bad it's it's it's really hard to watch it to be honest with you genocidal intent is not clear in Israel's efforts in waging this war when they take all of the measures and I can go into them and in list them off but I noticed that when people list them off people are already tuned out my friends who show me videos of escorting gozans through humanitarian corridors on their iPhones showing me videos escorting moving them getting them out of the way of when the war is happening so that they don't die units in the army who study Arabic to be able to make phone calls to Palestinians to call them on the phone by areas of streets to tell them there is a military target where you are we need you to leave the videos of the pamphlets dropping those are real pamphlets it's not stahm it's not fake the real pamphlets drones going above a building in Arabic 60 minutes before a drone comes to take out a military target telling the people in the building to leave these are not the actions of a group of people whose intention it is is to slaughter people in the early 2000s in Sudan in Darfur got slaughtered by the masses by radical militia groups Syria Lebanon currently happening in Syria the al-await Christian community the Jerusalem community in southern in southern Syria northern Israel getting slaughtered as you and I are having this having this conversation right now like intent to kill no phone calls are being made no pamphlets are being dropped no humanitarian corridors are being opened no army who wants to commit this genocide seems to me like it's the right thing to do is to tell the people that they want to go get commit genocide to that we're coming the numbers don't reflect the genocide on intent the proof that I've seen from the people who are apparently committing this genocide do not show genocidal intent am I sitting here defending every soldier in the IDF every action that has been taken absolutely not no way no way anybody who chooses has chosen to just indiscriminately kill I condemn IDF soldiers or videos of them peeing on dead bodies or like making fun of like any wardrobe or you know gauze in like whatever I condemn Israelis getting on you know Ome TV and finding out that the person they're speaking to is anti-Israel and then spitting on the camera and saying like your mother and all that stuff I condemn condemn it because I'm a human I'm willing and able to condemn that as somebody who stands here firmly in defends Israel the so I'm I'd mention all that to you because since the seventh of October and sitting with you now in front of this chair finding a way to have dialogue when somebody goes into a conversation after having seen real after real after real of all of the destruction of a war you get to choose your location of the war you get to choose the time of the war you get to choose where in the war you get to choose the content creator who's filming the war you get to filter by category which part of the war you want to watch that's like so I'm not I'm not sure Barack has the answer for that um especially when I come on and I try to lead with understanding more about the person I'm speaking with I'll never forget and then I want to hear you chime in but like when I went to the capital there were four of us we had no security the group that I was with were wearing one had a shirt that had like an Israeli flag on it one was carrying an Israeli flag one had a piece from his army uniform and I didn't and instead of the army I didn't want to carry a flag I was wearing a cut off Nike t-shirt with converse shoes the same ones I'm wearing here and the reason I did that is because when I was going to go interact with people who are radically against where I am in this conflict I wanted them to see that I was just like a normal dude I wasn't coming in there like antagonizing within Israeli flag and I'll never forget there's a picture I'll send it to you maybe you can throw it up this kid came up to me his head is wrapped in a kefir and we had an hour-long conversation in the middle of the street near the capital it was it was mayhem there's four of us and we had an hour-long conversation back and forth back and forth back and forth and at the end of the conversation he looked at me and he's like you are the first and only Israeli that I've ever respected since I've been a human and he shook my hand and he was he was emotionally driven by all the different things that I just told you about and he showed it to me he's showing it to me and I'm sitting there like what am I gonna say this kid right like at the same time I'll pull up footage of body cam footage from Hamas after what they did on October 7th my friend was one of them but they're already like yeah but you know that it didn't happen in a bubble wasn't it wasn't it didn't happen in a vacuum like this has been happening for a long time but because I didn't choose to antagonize him because I didn't try to make it us versus them me versus you because this kid radically disagrees with me on most things and I radically disagree with him sorry it's like calling a spade a spade we just don't agree with on this whole thing but when he said that to me I realized that leading with first of all I asked him like his name or he's from things that he does to just try and like gets you have to find a little bit of common ground if you want to talk about this stuff a little bit we weren't there to have tea and sip tea and cookies but we were there to just like try and see if we could have a civil conversation I was the only one during that delegation that was able to find a space to be able to talk to people and I'm the only one that didn't serve in the IDF and the only one that like didn't didn't have that that narrative from like being in the in the schtachin we say in the territories so it's really interesting because in the beginning we spoke about this earlier I thought that was going to be a massive liability and it turns out it's a huge plus from it's a huge plus for me to be able to find that common ground because IDF isn't even IDF in America it's IOF it's Israeli occupation forces so is that what that's what they call it um I didn't know that yeah so if you're part of the IOF you're irrelevant to humanity so you you discount their perspective just because of what they what they symbolize who like somebody who is very pro Palestine you discount the perspective of somebody that's serving the IDF simply because of what they've done in their life bingo doesn't matter it doesn't matter if you want a Nobel Peace Prize I'll tell you something that bugs me about this a lot but regardless this is one thing that bugs me which is hopefully people can understand and get behind it seems like there's like a a lack of empathy and critical thinking I don't know why because throughout my entire life if somebody actually brings a compelling point to me I'll always consider it it could even change my perspective I'll always research it I'll fact check it it's just critical thinking due diligence like removing a motion from decision I understand that not everybody in the world is going to be able to do that but I see very intelligent people who I respect immensely seemingly being driven by emotion in this one part of their life when the rest of their life I admire their work and I guess I find that confusing I don't know why this one particular event seems to shut people off cognitively and that's I think probably the biggest thing I've been trying to wrap my mind around Scooter Ron talked about this about people not deploying enough empathy to general conflict with people but also like Israel Palestine because there isn't enough empathy there's actually no empathy I first of all I want to say that like I'm more of a student at this time in my life as I become more later on hopefully a teacher when it comes to trying to see things through a lens that I see possibly be a possibly be a tool to explore what you're saying um whether it's understanding the mechanism behind anti-semitism understanding possibly how to approach anti-semitism possibly understanding how to approach creating empathy for dialogue I asked you before we started I asked you to print off this sheet I'm gonna explain to you what this sheet is and the what I have in front of me is the map of consciousness which is essentially like as humans where we operate in the world from a collective standpoint which I'll show you in a minute and as Scott as Barack as a terrorist as a monk as a Buddhist for the most part right now in the world that we live in as a collective we live in this yellow midrange um in some of the different words that describe what this ranges are we're demanding we have pride we scorn others um a little bit of courage a little bit of affirmation but not so high on what it means to reach ultimate power and happiness but not at the lowest of the lows so this is how we go through life this is how we treat people situations this because I'm looking at the top I'm just gonna read it so it's like God view, life view, level, scale I don't know what the scale means I guess it's like a high vibration versus a low value thing go yeah like we all have different fractals that are in front of us 24-7 that are spising is very low vibration energy emotion process and you're saying that is it like so how you read this chart is it more along the lines just so I understand um if we hover around this middle yellow tier does that mean that it's very likely that if we are indifferent for example we're also demanding and we also have high pride or like is somebody's when somebody sort of looks at themselves can they be wise but also be scornful or is that unlikely of course you yeah so like you can be all over the chart it depending on which category you're in sure it also has to do with you personally in your experiences as a so like for example like a monk and a Buddhist are gonna live up here across the board basically pretty much because they've also done the extreme version of self work what does this work come from the this is from typically well first of all in Kabbalah we well in Kabbalah you have the study of the Zohar like this in everything and so this this comes from like understanding energy levels in consciousness um so real quick just like in Judaism actually like in astrology your astrological chart the work that is done for each individual to understand who they are their experiences their traumas and what is what is contributing to why they are doing what they do and who they are for example a Buddhist and a monk who sit on a mountain or a rock and pure silence for hours and hours and hours and aren't on the internet anything they're getting to the that's like extreme okay I would say anti-Semitism racism and terrorism live at this bottom end okay now as a collective we aren't going to be able as a collective I say like collective is in people in the world we have a you as Scott you have your own map of consciousness and you have your own energy levels and the frequencies that you operate on and the fractals that you're distributing to the world and the what you put out to the world and what it's gonna give back to you I also do every single person does and there's a bajillion factors that contribute to that all of our individual frequencies contribute to the greater frequency of the world which is humanity and where we are and you were saying and we've all been saying that we feel like the world right now is like shaken up and like everything's going wrong everything's bad there's war there's conflict our collective consciousness as people in our vibrations are very low it's very very very low we see it on the internet we see it in person and we see we see an incredible amount of shame we've seen an incredible amount of blame we saw human beings real human beings blame Jews within 90 minutes of Charlie Kirk getting assassinated for what happened like we we we are not we don't have empathy anymore the the reason I brought this up is because we lack empathy um it's also because we don't have teachers at the rate and scale that we need to be able to teach human beings more about energy levels of consciousness and how we as individuals elevate ourselves to shift and change the collective around the world to have a higher frequency I know that this sounds a little bit like um off-grid voodoo kuku or whatever but I'm going to give you two stories and I'm going to tell you right now that shook me and made me understand the importance of learning about energy which leads to learning about empathy which leads to being able to have these conversations when empathy is most needed when we're talking about world conflict the same empathy or critical thinking that you said you were able to deploy with your counterparts when you were a college student that we've completely abandoned that's what doesn't make sense to me why it's gone yeah I was in Los Angeles 2024 in September scooter brawn saw my work followed me we became pen pals kind of like how you and I became pen pals and he invited me out to the LA nova exhibition where he put the exhibition on display they brought in so that the nova exhibition for those who are watching listening they took cars tense things that they could find from the nova festival in kibuts berri from the morning of october 7th where there was a music festival happening where lots of people got murdered and brought daylight by chemo's terrace and they brought a lot of the items they cargo ship them to the states and they've been around cities are on the states now trying to show people what happened at this music festival it's not affiliated by any political means that there's actually seen no Israeli flag when you walk in there like it's not about that it's about what happened at a music festival with people like it reminds me of the holocaust memorial at ashwitz where you see all the shoes the similar they actually have a table that I filmed there which are the items that were found that were not identified so when people come to the exhibition they have a table there that family members who might actually have a piece of item that was from their son of their daughter they can claim it as long as they can prove it that was their son of their daughters so there is actually a table there that they have that sort of reminds you of that um they brought in at the nova exhibition a raky master for those of you who don't know what regional raky is and not really okay raky raky is a form of energy healing energy transfer from one human to another or human to pet to heal heal pain heal physical pain heal emotional pain and my parents actually have both been trained and raky since I was a kid so whenever I'd come on from high school and have a headache you essentially the way it works is a couple ways but you can either lay down and the person who's giving you raky can put their hands in the spot that you have pain above a chakra or even like on your head they can be little to no contact or some soft contact and very quickly you'll feel their hands heat up and that body part where they're giving you raky gets gets warm too and that's actually the physical transfer of energy and when I would have headaches in high school I'd come home I'd lay down put my head in my mom's lap and within 10 minutes the headache was gone every single time every single time we had a dog who was also sick and she would give him raky too they brought in a raky master to treat the survivors of the nova festival because one thing raky actually can do is you can extract trauma and stress from another human being through energy transfer and energy extraction and help somebody through a healing process after what many of the survivors went through after the 7th of October my last day at the festival at the at the nova exhibition the her name is Heather she gave me a raky treatment upstairs in her clinic that she built and in one hour she managed to my entire lower limbs went numb I couldn't film my lower limbs and I started crying during the treatment and in the middle she started choking she was literally choking in the middle of the treatment she left the room I came out of my meditative state and I didn't understand what was happening I was about to get off the bed and there's music she has a candle it's very like it really gets you into a deep state and I escape this and right as I was about to get off the table she came back in didn't say anything she finished the treatment after we spoke the details of my treatment are not so important I'm gonna get to this in a second but after we spoke she told me when she's giving raky to somebody who has so much tension and stress built up into their own body um that stress is transferred from the person she's giving raky to into her body and the stress gets caught in her thyroid and she physically starts choking because she's taking stress and trauma out of somebody who she's she's healing and it goes into her so just to give you a practical example of that's what energy transfer can look and feel like when you're doing it to somebody who has a lot of stress now she was doing this to people who survived the Nova the festival Israel had survivors sent to America to speak with people who would go through the exhibition and they would have questions or they'd be in the healing center they didn't want to speak to people who literally were at the festival on October 7th and survived she this is where this comes in I'm not gonna name her name but Heather was giving I can say Heather's name she was giving raky to a girl who survived that morning the girl goes on the table the same room I was in she closes her eyes Heather starts Heather puts her hands on the girl and within 15 20 minutes Heather closes her eyes and she starts to have a vision in her head keep in mind Heather is also an astrologist she studied Kabbalan she converted to Judaism so she's very much tuned into consciousness and energy she closes her eyes and she's giving raky to this girl and she starts to have a vision she sees a um religious figure religious looking man with kind of what looks like a cloak this big beard and he is kind of protecting in a way the girl that she's giving raky to that's the vision that she had in her head when she was giving raky to this girl she had no context about this girl aside from the fact that she survived the the festival when the Hamas terrorists came when she finished the treatment Heather told the girl about this vision that she had when she was giving her raky the girl looked at Heather and said when we were at the Nova festival and the Hamas terrorists breached into the site of the party me and like 40 other people were running and we found a bomb shelter there's actually a very infamous video of a bunch of attendees of the party in this bomb shelter and you see Hamas terrorists taking grenades and they throw them in and then they leave they take their gun and they spray it up and then they leave and you can hear just from the sounds of the video what's going on inside the shelter bodies on top of bodies people screaming whatever she this girl was in the shelter with her five or six friends and the other like 30 or 40 people just piled in there while the Hamas terrorists barricaded them in and when she was inside of the bomb shelter she started saying her great-grandfather's name out loud over and over and over and over and over to protect her and protect her friends and that's all she had control over at that point in time she then took like the body of another person at the festival she put the body on top of her she had no other choice that girl's great-grandfather is a rabbi was a rabbi from Spain with a long beard who had a Talit and when she was saying her great-grandfather's name out loud in the bomb shelter he was protecting her the only six or seven people that survived the bomb shelter that morning were her and her friends she reached a very high level of consciousness in that moment that girl like reached she surrendered and she reached a really high level she gave up she chose faith and she chose love and she chose protection against the lowest possible level of consciousness which are terrorists which are Hamas terrorists in this case these are the two going at each other that's what the seventh of October was especially at the Novifestival so the energy that she carried and was able to transfer for her friends and by the way like when she told that to Heather you know she didn't have that context but that's the vision that she saw I'll give you one other quick story if you don't mind this is one of Heather's jobs was to understand the stories behind how these people survived because it is related to this one girl who was also at the festival I can't I'm not going to say her name there's a famous video unfortunately I say famous but it's like you can't unsee it it's all the a lot of the people at the festival sprinting across this open field where you just see people getting hoes down and sprayed and you hear gunshots they're sprinting they went left they went right they went everywhere this one girl found in the middle of like not a forest but she was way far away from the field she found a tree she hid behind the tree for like six hours by herself at this point probably like going insane talking to herself but at the same time trying to stay as calm as possible seven hours after standing there she spotted a Hamas terrorist with a machine a clutch of a gun in her hand who was scanning and then locked eyes with her and she's next to the tree she's beautiful very beautiful Israeli girl in the middle of the field on October 7th the Hamas terrorists had injected themselves with they were on another level the things that they were trying to accomplish to do to people to women to anybody you can imagine what would happen in that case where here's this girl in the middle of an open field surrounded by no one beside the Hamas terrorist she locks eyes with him he sprints to her she takes two steps away from the tree and she just takes a big inhale at this point he's about 10 to 12 feet away from her he's full on beeline sprint to her and she takes a massive inhale she exhales and she smiles right at him like a real smile like released when she's smiled and he gets to 10 feet away he stutters steps and he stopped and he's confused there's no idea what to do and he slowly slowly back pedals he sprints and he belines and he leaves and she just stood there she also survived the 7th of October to like sit here and tell me that this Hamas terrorist got a phone call heard his name had some other incentive to not do what many of the people know what he was proceeding what he was going to proceed to do to her when the lowest level of consciousness possible meets the highest level of consciousness possible love in bliss empathy all of the things that they achieved a lot of these survivors achieved will always this is why people say love always wins by Scooter Braun always says empathy always wins and one of the things that Heather's job is to do is to work with some of the people who did survive and understand how they achieved these levels of consciousness in a moment where it's probably nearly impossible to do so those two stories are like several of 50 or 60 that she uncovered from that very dark morning and Heather is actually my therapist now she's my healer she's my astrologist she's my guide and this whole space of energy and consciousness is really fascinating to me when I look at it practically when I say practically I'm talking about people who survived maybe the 7th of October um so that was like you know I just like unloaded a lot but it all has to do with what you said about empathy and energy and consciousness and I as I said before I'm more in like the student phase right now where I'm just trying to offer something that I think I see potentially having a big impact that I'm exploring but I do think that if we are able to find a way for people to learn how to do the work it needs on their own to discover what empathy really looks like in their own life to be able to then deploy it to other people the collective consciousness and how we are as human beings on earth where it's not just conflict in war in debate in us versus them and antagonizing and that's basically like the state of the union where we are where I think that is one way we can we can rise as people it doesn't mean that we're on a planet on utopia where like there's nothing bad there's there's bad probably will always be bad but we're not in a good place right now and I think that what we're seeing is the unfolding of all of this by the way as you want to say this um eclipse season lunar eclipse eclipse season is notorious for pretty bad things to happen Charlie just got killed and assassinated during an eclipse um we saw not during the eclipse but it's eclipse season right now you can go and you can look at actual like um uh like tragic things that have happened in the world look at the astrology look at what was happening in the world at that time it's pretty it's really eye opening indeed is a success story partner now if you're hiring indeed is all you need let me give you an example if I needed to hire a new editor for this show I'd go to indeed and be super specific not just can you edit audio I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at least three years gets our style and knows our software someone who's done this before and here's the thing with indeed sponsored jobs I'd get people who fit that description I'm not digging through resumes when people who've edited one youtube video I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what 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negative sentiment and I feel like the issue is that people are trying to change another person's perspective whether or not they feel like they're right or wrong it's coming from a place of low consciousness so even if I am pro-Israel I'm like how can those like like how can those motherfuckers not understand like it's just like a low vibration right it's like an anger I'm trying to convince them through anger versus I empathize with who you are and what you've accomplished and you as a person and your beliefs on one thing are not your beliefs on everything and there's way more there's way more that we agree on than disagree on but I think that the coming full circle I think that even if you are on one side or the other side you're trying to change someone's mind from like an aggressive yes place yes and it's not working not only is it not working Scott when has that worked like never never so she has introduced me to this this is by the way also something that she thinks about when it comes to antisemitism I was going to just mention one more thing I was going to say I would be curious if you doing self work has actually led to more productive conversations with people you realize I've chose right now you realize what you just said is an embodiment of who I've been the past four months of my life what you just said is the formula you can't achieve higher levels of consciousness and you can't achieve excuse me higher levels of vibration if you don't do the work on your own to understand what it is that I have to work through understand who you are understand past traumas understand past experiences letting go of ego and there are practical ways of how you do this by understanding first what energy is doing the inner work to reverse engineer by the way the beginning of this podcast when I told you about six seven and eight years old living in Israel the beginning of inner work begins with the beginning of understanding first the snapshot of time of who you are when you were born what's your needle chart what it's what is the world look like when you were born if you look at astrology by the way and you you're going to have people who are going to comment and say like astrology is not rational it's not practical and that's fine and I'm not here like preaching astrology it's not let's not why I'm in this room with you what I am going to say is if you understand how to increase your frequency of a human as a human being which has a direct effect on the person you speak with at the market the person you debate with on x and the the vote that you cast for why you why or why not you agree with something that could be very polarizing it shifts it shifts the vibrations that we have no one teaches this no one is teaching energy no one is teaching inner work I'm going to um reference scooter again just because he has actually talked about a lot lately his evolution of doing this like doing inner work like doing the really hard digging into one's own life scooter also has an extremely public platform so a lot of people have access to his life but doing a lot of the digging that is required to raise what you just said and so the reason I got chills is because I'm actually doing that right now most people don't do that this is why you have it's called like the midlife crisis something crazy happens um and you have like a moment of life like what even at what do I do and this could be a divorce it could be a breakup this could be something tragic whatever it is you lost your job that's actually when a lot of people maybe begin to think about doing therapy or work on themselves just imagine what would happen in a world where this is taught as a teen empathy empathy this the last 20 30 minutes go back to what you said before which I think is I would argue one of the more important things that like we could ever talk about which is this idea of empathy lack thereof that exists today um so how do you by the way the formula for injecting empathy into social media is one that I'm probably not on earth to be able to crack because that that seems nearly impossible how do you inject empathy into the um town hall of X you know like no I don't know I don't know given everything that we discussed from me personally growing up with basketball splitting my life and my time between Israel and the States trying to find myself a little bit where I am now today on this like grassroots mission there is one other thing that I want to talk about and actually involve something I brought here if we have a moment um I I live in Israel and like it would be hard for me to talk about places in the world or a place in the world to the depth that I do if I didn't live there or have never been for example I just came back from a trip from Spain Morocco in South Africa I spent a lot of time in South Africa I went across the entire country from Johannesburg to Kruger I went through the Kuru desert region all the way down to south the southern part of South Africa through the garden route up to Cape Town by myself with a car in about a month I met with people in urban places suburban places today I'm not an expert on South Africa I don't know everything about the country I feel comfortable talking about some of the landscape there because I took my two fucking feet and I went there and I went to go interact this is where I see the line that needs to be drawn when I speak to people who really talk firmly about their conviction of Israel their that their stance is rooted in such truth without actually haven't not having been there um there's a very there's a clip between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith speaking to each other on Joe Rogan about month or two ago Joe Rogan brought both of them in to talk about Israel Dave Smith is for the most part not supportive of Israel's actions the IDF in the current state of the Union Douglas Murray non-Jew from the UK very much a leader in the space author a leader advocate for Israel um who has been to Gaza, Hanyunis Israel several times since the beginning of the war he also quickly after things began with Russia and Ukraine he's a journalist he's a writer he went into Ukraine into Kiev like he went to go see it for himself so that when he speaks and when he writes about it he's coming from a place of and there's a very um uh replayed clip between Dave and Joe that's our Dave and uh Douglas on Joe Rogan where Douglas asked him almost the last time like you were in the region in Middle East and Dave said I've never been and Douglas was like you've never been and it was like five or six seconds of a silent pause and then Dave was like oh what because they've never been then you're going to say I don't have the authority to talk about it what you've never been to Nazi Germany yet you talk about it and Douglas was like no you can't time travel but you can travel and I think that there's a lot of merit to that he got obviously because of the core of Joe's audience and the fact that Dave as Douglas has an unpopular opinion for Joe's audience that he's there to defend Israel um I think I feel the same way I feel the same way when 99.9% of the people that I'm interacting with are deeply rooted into a narrative that is not based on personal experience being able to justify the things that they're claiming it's not just the war is bad you can claim the war is bad but when you say that my friends who are currently now there at 130 a.m. as you are sitting here in Miami in Gaza to say that my friends are committing a genocide like that's where I'm going to draw the line right and that's what Douglas's point was was like Dave repeatedly publicly always talks about this genocide Israel's committing and he hasn't even been there so when we talk about being boots on the ground I um I have with me uh a piece of um rocket shrapnel that I found with my own two hands here uh in Israel I'm going to give this to you in a second Scott but the reason that I brought this and that I bringing this around uh when I was in northern Israel about six months ago I went to a city called Matula which if you look on the map of Israel it's the furthest northern city in Israel it's on the border of Lebanon on the border of Syria you can see it from like it's very high up in the mountains you can see Lebanon you can see Syria you can see the border fence you could throw a baseball as hard as you can to Syrians that would be on the other side if they were allowed down there um now obviously because of the way they can't that's how close this city is to the north after the 7th of october khazbullah which is a completely different proxy within the middle east who has repeatedly been trying to destroy Israel they started firing rockets their missile capabilities and uh uh technology that they have are far deeper than what Khamas has Khazbullah has had rockets that could precision missiles that could reach a specific building like mine in Tel Aviv so they started firing and Matula got just absolutely eradicated hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens had to evacuate and leave their homes in the north they got relocated across the country because of how close they were in perimeter um to to the to the north when they started firing um in Israel we have a system that when there's a rocket that has been um um fired from an enemy whether it's Yemen whether it's Khamas in the Gaza Strip whether it's khazbullah in Lebanon whether it's Iran we have a system uh a technology technological system that actually alerts citizens of the rocket so we have when you are on an Israeli SIM card or I think at this point any SIM card because the cellular towers have your location if the rocket is projected to come to where you are geographically in the country you get an alert depending on where your city is in the country that's the specific amount of time that you have allotted to get to a safe space before the rocket could penetrate where you are I live in Tel Aviv so if a rocket is fired from the Gaza Strip towards my area when I receive the alert it when my phone it's called the red alert app or home front command when you receive it I am allotted 90 seconds to get to a shelter because I'm about 69 70 kilometers away from the Gaza Strip just to put into perspective 90 seconds is a lot of time 90 seconds is enough time to be in the shower get the alert this is I'm speaking to personal experience get the alert turn off the water grab your towel go downstairs to the bomb shelter and be downstairs with your residents and your neighbors it's a lot of time in speaking in Israel time communities in southern Israel like Sederot in Beri in Tivassara in Nakhal Oz these villages when a rocket is fired from Gaza they have about 15 to 17 seconds so if you're in the shower or if you are a mother or father of three kids at three I am when you have to in 15 seconds not 90 get your three children make sure that they're awake get them out being the safer because of the border you well you can't you can't that's the point the point is is that what is 15 seconds when you're when you have three kids Matula is so close to Lebanon that they don't have a system that gives you there's no such thing as time to go to the shelter so when you're in Matula and maybe you can clip like pictures but I actually have some for when I was there you can see if you have a set of binoculars or if you really look specifically you can actually see some of the compounds where chasbola sits that's how close they are so when the siren goes off and it's a sound that every Israeli knows in Matula you can't really do much you just pray because you can go to a shelter but by the time you take the steps to get there the rocket fell somewhere so that was the that that it's being reconstructed but that's what Matula was when I went there six months ago now on our way out we stopped at this basketball court that's out it's an outdoor basketball court it's caged on the top of Matula you look behind the court you see Lebanon you see Syria and this outdoor court and when I went there it was we had to get some permission to go and see the destruction in me with some of the families some of them actually refused to leave they're like no listen my home will not go anywhere for rocket hits or rockets hits and when I went to the basketball court that it was covered with rocket shrapnel because the the IDF and the government they hadn't had gone then gone there yet they had gone there to clean up they hadn't gone there because there's so many houses that need to be rebuilt there's so many things have to be done so you just see shrapnel laying around this was the biggest piece of shrapnel that I found I'm gonna give it to you in a second the reason this piece is really important for me is because for the people that made it this far on the podcast that's amazing and for the people that tuned out in the first three minutes when they saw that here's some guy talking about the i word israel the piece that they don't understand is the the threat the constant threat 1 a.m. or 1 p.m. summer or winter fall it doesn't matter the constant threat that israel is under from basically every front besides its western front because that's just the Mediterranean Sea is this this in my hand is supposed to free Palestine and this in my hand is supposed to rid the region of dirty Zionists who are the same five six and seven eight year old children in matula who after school want to get some shots up or play four square or shoot the same way I was when I was a middle school student at recess getting shots up at the water towel middle school I'd I would play at these kids don't have 40 seconds 20 seconds to run into a shelter when they look across the hill and see chasbola firing visit them this is the size of my palm I'm going to give it to you once you take that you can see how dense and how heavy it is from the size of just the palm and now to give you some perspective the pipes and the size of these okay is from the length of the room that we're sitting in one rocket is about twice the size of the length from this wall to this wall yes so that is the size of my palm which it's it's heavy it's very very dense yeah but this alone this tiny fragment could kill somebody that tiny fragment has killed somebody like that's that's what we live under that is every single time I get a comment that says free Palestine every single time I get demonized as an Israeli and people get permission to other people to say oh Barack that Zionist he's also worthy of being cleansed from the river to the sea what you're holding is from the river to the sea what you're holding is globalized the intifada and what you're holding is death to Israel and death to America and death to Jews and death to Christians and death to ethnic minorities that's that's what you're holding the six seven and eight-year-old children who play basketball at that court that's what's coming for them and and this is this is that didn't buy this off of Etsy or eBay fucking pick that up with my own two hands and I bring this around um to show people I want to Canada I think you'll appreciate this I went to Canada last year and I spoke at a Hebrew academy 50 day school orthodox Jewish students and I told the academy please bring in a non-Jewish group of basketball players so that I can merge the two into a gym together and talk to them about Israel this is actually how I do advocacy because I have a strength and conditioning background in Israel training Makabi Tel Aviv Nessyona a lot of high caliber players I look at basketball as a tool to open up a safe space to then talk about Israel so what I'll do is I'll do like 45-minute strength conditioning sessions with people I won't even really mention Israel and once I create that rapport between like player and coach they see me as this mentor then I sit with them on the the floor on the at half court in a big circle I talked to him about Israel and I bring this with me and I pass it around and when I did a clinic at the Hebrew Academy they brought in a basketball team called Liberty for Youth so about 10 kids in their teens who have all been arrested before police brutality gun violence all non-Jews not really none of them had really ever met a Jew before and they've never met in Israeli so here was their first time coming into a Jewish academy I told the academy bring them I made those players on that team be the captain of all the teams that I made with the academy so that I could integrate them and make them feel safe and then we sat in a big semicircle and I talked to him about Israel and I passed that around you should have seen the faces of the players when that piece of shrapnel reached them the players were speechless when they realized that the kids that they were looking at in that gym who were just a few years older than the same ones who played at that basketball court that this is what they're running away from and this is in their backyard and after the clinic the coach came up to me and was like as a result of your visit today and you speaking and bringing pieces from this conflict to us you've completely shifted our perspective on the conflict that's I think the power in what Douglas was saying to Dave Smith which is like do you know what a six-year-olds life is like in Israel? Do you know what a concentration camp was in Auschwitz and what the Gaza Strip is? because these are the things that people say Gaza Strip is a concentration camp Israel's genociding people we can go out all these claims and there's never opportunity for people to hold, feel, touch, tangible proof of this isn't just October 7th that this is the constant threat of the state of Israel that they're under which is never in conversations for people to contextualize actually what is the date of the day I could pull out my phone right now and show the camera the app that I get that we get you know if I was sitting with you on this pod it's happened before I've been on podcasts and my watch will go off because I'm sitting here right now in America and back in Israel I just I have it on because I need to know and I've been in coffee shops before where I'm traveling and you you see another Israeli in the room because you can tell that when you both get the other you both look at the phone at the same time like you know and so I just I wanted to bring it to you I know you've never actually even been to Israel but it's just I don't know to think of this like hurtling at someone's head jugular jugular there's so much evil that goes into making this it's just like it has one purpose right no I know it just feels evil I don't know how to describe it it's like heavy and metallic and cold and dark and you just think about like when it's being made because when you think about the person who made this and the use as to why it was being made I guess you could say the same thing for a lot of stuff that's military stuff but like when you're a terrorist organization you're not making it to defend a country and you're also not making it to preserve the innocent life of the country that you're attacking no you're just like okay so somebody is knowingly and willingly crafting this knowing it's a good chance that it could kill somebody who is like you know like hasn't even like gone through adulthood let alone done something to deserve it like that's what I don't get you can make a lot of arguments for the US is too militaristic or you know Israel is killed people that but like when you put when I don't know I'm probably going to get shit on for this but when the US creates you know arms and weapons like there is a cohort of innocent people they're protecting who is Hezbollah protecting the people that are killing innocent people why weren't the six-year-olds at that basketball court why were they not receiving a phone call or text message from Hezbollah saying that this is coming why is Hamas not dropping pamphlets on Kibbutz Berri and Nakhaloz in Hebrew telling them that they're going to come in tomorrow morning at 629 because they don't want people to live just like very obvious I think it's like it's it's it's and this is I mean people are going to say that it's not I'm going to say it right now it's pretty simple it is very simple this is this is where I this is heavy it's in it's insane man like why is this so heavy it's like not even that big it's not that big it's like okay so for context if I threw this at somebody's head it would most likely kill them I think so like like that's how and that's a person throwing it that's a person not a rocket being launched out of like no this is just like a fucking I mean even you saw when I handed it to you like I'm I'm careful about how I hand it to somebody right because it's it's also I haven't don't it's been sitting in this bag and that's because I kind of just want it as it is and how I found it um it's like very jagged it's all rusty the other thing that I have here which is just for me is this is a piece of the basketball court and that white line is part of the free throw line where I found this piece of rocket because like the basketball court for me has been a sanctuary in temple to foster the best relationships that I've had the best friendships that I've had the hardest dialogue I've had to create and the biggest bridges I've ever been able to build and any basketball court that I go to when step on to that court I find deep connection in meaning to something in the world it sounds it's very like highly spiritual concept for me but the intersection which I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation of basketball and Israel advocacy is led through empathy it's led through empathy I talk about the severity of the war I talk about the tragedy of the war I talk about the fact that my best friend from high school was Muslim who invited me to his cousin's wedding at his mosque who I've broken Ramadan with at his house who has been at my house for Passover who has been at my house for Shabbat who comes from a very religious family originally from Pakistan to those two years living in Israel building a medical facility for Arab children to my three non-Jewish best friends from all over the world African-Americans who have invited me to understand their cultures like if there's anybody that is built to be able to have the resume to open dialogue I feel like I'm one of those people I am not radical on any spectrum you can see I haven't really brought up politics since we've had this conversation because I think politics simply chooses to divide people not bridge them politics has its place in the world I have political beliefs in ideologies but this conflict actually has very much just become like who did you vote for in the States oh okay so you're either pro anti-Israel who are you going to vote for who you endorsing right you're for Kamala your anti-Israel your for Trump your pro-Israel like that's what it's somehow been boiled down to what it was boiled down to at one point um and that's not how I look at the world that's how I look at things and I think what I want to leave off with here is like there's an incredible amount of antagonization happening in this conflict to both sides you mentioned empathy before I'm so happy you mentioned empathy it just it also shows me a lot about who you are and your emotional intelligence and understanding like what can really drive these conversations a lot of people watching observing contributing don't have that that understanding and my model of using basketball as just a gateway in a vehicle just to try and open meaningful dialogue I am hoping and this is sort of one of my aims as I'm doing this is to create a model for other people to reflect on in their own lives what is it that basketball is to them like maybe it's cooking maybe it's art maybe it's fashion maybe it's music maybe it's dancing maybe it's travel the culture itself is where we find commonality with people you have basketball players in China who will save their allowance every week for seven years just to buy a plane ticket and a NBA ticket to go watch James Hardin when they're in their mid 20s it took them 11 years to save and you have James Hardin impacting some kid in China through culture through basketball the same kids who are waiting outside of a footlocker from Friday night to Sunday morning to camp out to buy a pair of Jordans culture like people who save up for a year to buy Taylor Swift tickets culture I think that that's how we need to be leaning a little bit more into empathy and advocacy finding the things that sort of our our commonalities versus the one small part of somebody's life that's that you believe so radically different than yours yeah because if you think about you think about the totality of someone's life right all the things they enjoy the hobbies they have the work they do in politics and war it's a very small piece of it but it has it takes up the most mental space that's so true like how often how often do you vote how often do you go to a movie how often do you play sport often do you travel more than you vote sex yet people's whole identity is wrapped up in politics and conflict that's wild why is that I don't know why why when you have an opinion about Palestine or is or or any other conflict for that matter why is that what I diminish you to when we like the same food same movies same ways to spend weekends with our kids I don't know it's a really good question like that and that fascinates me imagine if we had a better understanding of that because that's a cheat code to understand like what is it that's gonna because what you're saying right now after like hearing you say like that it's really true the non-negotiable for people has become conflict especially people that aren't like so you can make an argument that politics and war are a greater part of of somebody who's living in Gaza right now it's more than say 2% of their life but in the US where people are so opinionated it's not more than that that is so true I think there's edge cases where you have parents that live there you have a cousin lives there the most the the majority have zero ties to that peculiar region of that is so true man which is it doesn't make any sense to me but that's what you're doing the work that you do yeah to make people wake up and remember that the person that they're fighting with on X is much more than just one particular political point and you don't you don't you don't get access to that on the internet no you just don't period well somebody says one thing and that's who they are that's it that's it that's our entirety totality it's not saw this three days two days ago not only one thing in particular that Charlie said but obviously yeah yeah you know before I flew yesterday what two days ago because the time difference is a little bit it flew in like Wednesday night no or Thursday so I technically flew in yesterday but I was basically getting ready Wednesday night Israel time to go to the airport I was going to close my eyes for like two hours before my flight and my friend tall who's also a very big youtuber the traveling clash out of tall he really also helped me get into this space he texted me and all he said was bro they shot Charlie Kirk and I did not know I was going to close my eyes I had on sleep focus on my phones I wasn't getting notifications um he proceeded to tell he he I'm trying to frame this in a way so that I'm not Charlie Kirk I'm not as big as Charlie Kirk and none of them I'm here but he was the first person throughout that night that was like you just want to think about potentially going to the States right now you know like and my whole spiel online is not doing that not tucking in your necklace not hiding your Jewish identity I'm the opposite like if you go to my contouring on Instagram it's really pushing this narrative of the higher level of frequency which is working for me and then the same person I told you about earlier in this conversation who called me one day about YouTube called me and was like rethink that US visit if I were you not because of Barack but because of like apparently well you by the way also kind of do the same type of content I do as what he does this is true yeah just on a much smaller scale right um so just I'm just mentioning that to you because if I choose not to say anything if I choose not to not to share how I feel not to not to speak the truth my truth um I'm succumbing to what essentially all of the others who I'm trying to reach want me to do which is never speak a word from my story this is exactly they want someone like me people want me to tuck in my necklace to not talk about Israel to delete my account to hide that's what they want us to do and throughout Jewish history especially when those are the things that we choose to do things get worse things get way worse and I'm trying to be a beacon of light in a time that is like fucking believe me bro seems like one of the more contradictory things to to do to do like because everything does feel just kind of like how you describe this piece right now cold dark heavy um and it's a little bit insane to think that like I'm going to come out here publicly and always talk about yes addressing the dark but trying to still find that that optimistic lens which I think also comes from um a this concept of tikkun alam we have in Judaism of repairing the world tikkun to repair alam in the world and be inheriting that from my my parents and it started at that Bedouin village when I was six like they gifted me they gave me this invisible platter of like take this shit here understand what it means and then give as much of it back to the world in as many ways as possible while you're alive and able and that's like really what this feels like to me um because as I said in the beginning of this I did not start talking about Israel because I saw an opportunity to monetize social media platforms I did not talk about Israel because it was trending on the news I talked about Israel in the middle east and like my narrative because it is too important for me to not say anything and for reasons that were very personal of losing a friend and not being in the army and contributing and I think that like those reasons have a lot to do with what's anchored me and being able to still almost two years into this whole thing have still have these conversations a lot of people aren't having these conversations is much anymore and um that's why I know I'm in it for the right reasons how are you still optimistic after everything we spoken about today because everything we spoken about and I know you are optimistic but everything that we spoken about whether or not it's um mostly to do with the west the fact that people like Charlie Kirk were killed Charlie Kirk was killed excuse me like people who have loud voices are either yelling into an echo chamber or canceled and we already established that there's two outcomes there's either war and destruction or ultimately a happier more cohesive more human-centric society it's really only two outcomes with all the conflict in the world and it doesn't seem like there's less conflict than ever before I think people are just I think the only reason why I think the only reason why there is less quote-unquote war even though you can make the argument that there isn't but people are not explicitly bombing each other the way they use to in like you know end of world war two is because I think people are all afraid that like that would be the end of humanity like if Russia really wanted to destroy Ukraine if Israel really wanted to destroy Gaza like it would be over in a second but I don't think that anybody wants to make that move but we're all kind of like flirting with destruction so what makes you optimistic two-part answer the first part is if you look at the world right now we are in you just said it yourself a minute ago it feels like we've had more conflict lately than we have had in a very long time and I actually am going to agree with you because that's exactly what it feels like that's what's happening it's what's happened not just Israel Palestine not just Russia Ukraine COVID in terms of just like mayhem and chaos riots in LA I mean we can we can go down the list here right um the reason I'm the first reason I'm optimistic is because the current state of the world right now is a reflection of people in the world who have raised their hand and said I've fucking had enough of the systems and governments and processes that are put in place in societies it's not working for people the way governments and the way people are our societies are built now you can see bottom-up people are like this is not working for us we've reached such a low of humiliation in fear and anxiety what did COVID do it thrusted us into that bottom part of that chart into questioning into not trusting sources into not trusting the news into not trusting the media which today is it's the whole landscape the whole landscape is is is not trusting so much so that um people are not getting assassinated for saying something that they don't agree with it don't trust the um I'm smiling because I know people are gonna it's they have a hard time with it especially I'm trying to do my best to sort of Trojan horse this idea of energy and astrology because I think it needs to be delicate it the astrology does show and say that 2025 and into 2026 we are gonna have a pretty significant amount of increased conflict bloodshed and war um and I think we're gonna still see a lot of it over the next year so when this starts to decline we are going over the next 20 to 30 40 years like do you remember when um not you like remember like when the internet was created wouldn't you agree with me that that was classified as like a new earth like shifted earth in almost every capacity that we could we could break down earth in general in a very positive way in a very positive way when the internet came out there was in the beginning initial phases a lot of the anxiety fear and increased tension that you're seeing now with AI coming into the world it's not coming actually started it's already been here and the this this part of it being very scary with bots and automated machines doing things like sending death threats doing things like DMing me which I get every day all these things I look at AI as it's going to absolutely positively impact earth right now it definitely doesn't feel that way right now there's a lot of cases to be made why it's dangerous why it's bad it's gonna take jobs all this stuff I'm going somewhere with this the internet then evolved into what you just said absolutely it was earth version beta whatever it is verse 2.03.4.0 what we're going through right now not just with AI but we're going through right now with the destruction of systems is the morphing of the new version that we're going to see I think governments are gonna look different politics are gonna look different I think people are gonna slowly wake up and understand how we are gonna learn what empathy is how we are going to learn to achieve a higher frequency as individuals and then collectively contribute to Jewish Christian Jewish Muslim black and white the whole thing I'm not trying to paint a picture where we're gonna live in utopia that's not I said in the beginning it's I think nearly impossible but I'm optimistic because I think we're living through the evolution of a new earth I genuinely think that you and I and definitely my kids you're whatever if you're planning on having kids I'm also planning on having them we'll be experiencing the beginning stages after being stages of what this new earth looks like I really do mean that I don't disagree with you by the way I was just hoping that I think that like if you think about things that change the earth right like the printing press and then well you could literally go through the industrial the various industrial revolution yeah and I just hope that the evolution of earth the next level the scary thing about change is that the most successful changes in history have come on the other side of a very brutally bloody conflict so how bad is that conflict have to get I don't have the answer to that but you're asking the right question no revolution which is ultimately led to hopefully a more positive environment I think that if we look at our current you know people take people I guess it's very very invoked to hate capitalism for some segments of the population but if we look at capitalism and and democracy in the US and I mean like it's never it's never no one ever says it's the perfect system but it's way better than we've had in the past so what's the next version I don't know what the next version is but I do know that even with democracy it only came to be after a lot of people died so hopefully which is awful it is but that's every revolution I saw a video today right before I came here a real this this kid real his name's Kevin I think Olivero he just popped up on my feet I have no idea where this person is he talked for 30 seconds he said I didn't know Charlie Kirk personally I've never met him but I weirdly feel that I just lost somebody very close to me he said my friends too like we all feel like we just lost a really close person in our in our life and he's a Christian and he was saying I've seen Charlie on TikTok I've seen him debate I was very impressed with his knowledge of the Bible the Gospels but he then said there is a reason that Charlie got killed and this is hopefully going to bring a lot of people in the world closer to not just God love and faith and empathy I know this sounds crazy when I'm saying this right now because of somebody who just got assassinated but I also think there is absolutely going to be a massive learning positive learning opportunity and it's sickening that I have to say that like it's coming from the assassination of someone like Charlie Kirk for people it's tragic and it's bad and it's awful and I don't have the answer neither do you but for that real to come on to my feed today and listen to him it's like I also I think we all kind of felt it and there's a lot of I think there's a lot of meaning behind that if you've seen you know you've seen the comments and I've seen the comments of people who were quick to celebrate and quick to be like it was the Jews of Israel but like boy oh boy there's a flood a massive like downpour of people across the world who a lot of them didn't even agree with a lot of the politics of him Candace Owens Dave Smith yesterday his his bite on his podcast was profound who are torn at what happened and I think unfortunately this is this is a time right now where I just talked about the the astrology about it but you're right like how much of death and how much violence how much bloodshed is it going to take for us to be like yo yeah enough you know I just hope we get to that point sooner than later I do too I just it's not that I just hope it I'm more than hoping I'm I know it will and I just think that I'm a voice who is convinced it will and that's why I'm so bullish on this you know like Scott there's a lot of people who have been talking about Israel Palestine on the internet the past two years and it's like super obvious when you like turn it on like they're there to talk to the host and the hosts audience to try and get them on board with their perspective like that's the agenda going into the room which is a very delusional agenda if like you're having somebody if if your perspective is if it's not for the audience that already exists it's a very delusional agenda right if it's for the audience that exists great you're going to make them feel even better than they did before they left echo chamber that's all it is yeah yeah and I've seen people come on to podcasts where like their audience isn't necessarily in the same camp of thinking and I don't think that's the right approach and that's not my approach that's definitely like what you were saying before is like there might be people who turn this on within reading the description they didn't even get to press play because they saw who I am that's fine but that's not the group I'm really going for right now eventually I'll get to them when emotions go down an ability to be a little bit more logical goes up like again the overly emotional under the informed state is so high right now it's kind of like the stock market when things are very volatile and people make emotional decisions based on their financial portfolios they think rationally less high conflict high war high tension high divide people think rationally less we need to see the next X amount of years 2 5 10 where emotions are driven down a little bit because listen it's going to happen you can't just keep the town hall of X the way it is right now you can't just keep the state of politics the way it is I mean otherwise and we're gone let's be real and I as much as it's really hard to say this because of the how people feel I do have enough faith in human beings to pull it together the only you can't not I don't know what the alternative is and I'm not going to sit here and say like the world's ending like that's not not who I am so no I think that's the only way you have to have faith yeah where can people connect with you if they want to consume more of your content learn a little bit more about um like what you teach and what you speak about where's the best place for them to go I am other baroque OTHER B-A-R-A-K on every platform other baroque calm youtube instagram tiktok x discord other baroque is the name that I came up with after exchanging letters with baroque obama so the other baroque I'm just the other one yeah um what are you working on like so if people like consume I mean like I know you from youtube and instagram yeah but you're also building out a couple of other things yeah so what can people sort of explore in your universe if they want to I'm now actually trying to scale and build what I'm doing to create a model a model for advocacy to even go to the length of like to the state of israel of like here's a kid from Boston who now lives in israel if you want to tell your story to the people outside of israel maybe leverage the people who aren't from israel to tell that story to the ones that they grew up with and I'm trying to really hone in on that publicly out of all the things that you've learned experienced um and even taught across your entire career in life you have to pick one lesson or one idea that you in this thought experiment this is the only lesson that you can teach over to your kids so the most important idea or lesson and you think that this will help their life the most what would that idea be and why the lesson that my email and my abba my mom and my dad taught to me that I a didn't realize it was a lesson at the time and b don't think that they realized it was necessary the lesson that I would I would take at six years old pulling haystacks through carts for Arab children in the middle of these really desert the lesson to completely look at the person you're looking at in the eye regardless of this the color of their skin and the language that they speak at their house and the god that they believe in and pray to that if you look at them as the human that they are and the human that you are and don't judge remove judgment remove preconceived notion and take them for the same organs that they share with you which the heart and the brain and the human soul um that if you treat others that way throughout your life and that's what you want or reciprocated that is who you will evolve to be there's there's nothing in the world that's more important than being a good person doing the right thing is always the right thing to do I got that from Gary V and my my kids are going to be raised in a way whether it's six years old whether it's four years old that because that's how I see the world because that's how I want other people to be it is a responsibility and duty of mind so that my kids have the same perspective that my parents gave me without even realizing it in the middle of a war zone and I think that that lesson has a massive correlation to why I'm sitting in front of you because I attribute a lot of the lens and perspective we were talking about this offline of how I see the world to the way that my parents and my brother raised me to literally love other people around you love other people around you deploy love this is why the Judaism and being Jewish is a very big part of my life because there's a lot of the love that I extract from being a good person repairing the world doing goods respecting others I would want them I'd want to give them a variation of the same lesson I got when I was that six-year-old