Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Season 11 Episode 18
Aired on July 28, 2024
Main segment: Israeli occupation of the West Bank
Other segment: 2024 United States presidential election
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[Music]
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Last Week Tonight. Thank you so much for joining us. It has been a busy week, dominated by reaction to Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race last Sunday, a decision that caught many off guard, including these local anchors in the middle of their segment called “Gorgeous Grandmas.”
This comes to us from Deborah Batist, who we love her grandmother. Yeah, she showed her there. All right, and then I know we have some news coming in now, so just give us a second here. But for now, I know Lauren‘s favorite photo is Grandma. Let’s go ahead and come back out here. We’re going to put something else on the… I’m not hearing anything in my ear. So, uh, we are getting word into our newsroom that President Joe Biden is dropping out of the race and not running for re-election. Let’s get this statement that he posted to his social media onto the iPad right here. Um, as you get that up, I can go ahead and read it. It’s not working, so let’s just go ahead and read it. Wow, getting that Grandma off the screen was the second time that day when a senior citizen was successfully pushed aside.
And those two were not the only ones caught off guard. People got the news in all sorts of ways, from the Liza Minelli Outlives Twitter account, which solemnly announced, “Liza Minelli has outlived Joe Biden’s race for re-election,” to this post on the Emoji Pastor subreddit: “Ho Biden has dropped his ass out of the 2024 erection because the prey dick is experiencing some freaky health issues, including memory loss and confusion.”
Is our generation’s journalistic equivalent of Walter Cronkite tearfully announcing the death of JFK. But perhaps one of the biggest surprises here was that Democrats managed uncharacteristically to handle this in an organized fashion, almost immediately lining up behind Kamala Harris, whose campaign says it raised $81 million within a day, calling it the largest amount of money raised in a 24-hour span in presidential history.
Meanwhile, the internet filled with Kamala memes, turbocharged by the fact that Charlie XCX tweeted, “Kamala is brat,” which unfortunately set off days of CNN trying to explain to its audience what the hell that means. “Kamala Harris embraces being called ‘brat.’ Why? And our presumptive presidential nominee is ‘brat.’ It’s a good thing, apparently. Okay, here we go, Charlie XCX, who I do know, quote, ‘brat’ refers to just that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, end quote. So it’s the idea that we’re all kind of ‘brat’ and Vice President Harris is ‘brat.'”
“No, Jake. That’s not it at all. We are not all kind of ‘brat.’ You’re either ‘brat’ or you’re not. God damn it, Tapper. Look, I regret to inform everyone, brat summer is canceled. At best, we got 8 to 9 brat business days.”
Republicans spent the week trying to counter the newfound enthusiasm around Harris with criticism, frequently defaulting to outright racism. She was called, among other things, a diversity or DEI hire. And when they weren’t stooping that low, they were reaching for desperate attacks like these: “You know a major liability for Kamala Harris? She wants to ban plastic straws. She wants to ban plastic straws. I love my plastic straw. I hate those paper straws. Kamala can’t have my guns, she can’t have my gasoline engine, and she sure as hell can’t have my steaks and cheeseburgers. She is a radical California leftist.”
That is almost a parody of right-wing fearmongering nonsense. “She’ll take your straws, she’ll take your burgers, and brother, if you like eating your burgers through a straw, say goodbye to your whole life.” For the record, Harris is not a radical California leftist. She was a prosecutor. If Dick Wolf thinks your job is heroic and noble, chances are you’re not leading the revolution. And even if she were, that doesn’t translate to stealing people’s cheeseburgers. That’s the Hamburglar, Ted. You’re thinking of the Hamburglar.
But all in all, it was a pretty good week for the current vice president and a pretty terrible one for Trump’s pick to be his next VP, JD Vance, because he spent the week on the campaign trail where his performance was, to say the least, underwhelming. “Democrats say that it is racist to believe… well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too. But it’s… good. I love you guys. Stop it. Stop it now. It physically hurts me to watch that. The vibe there is less running for vice president and more bombing the bed at an open mic night that makes Jeb’s ‘please clap’ look like Showtime at the Apollo.”
People are getting a look at JD Vance for the first time, and what is becoming clear from polling comparing him to previous VP candidates is that voters are not liking what they’re seeing. “We take a look at the net favorable rating for JD Vance. That’s favorable minus unfavorable. It’s in negative net territory. Look at that: negative 6 points. That is underwater. The average since 2000 is plus 19 points. JD Vance making history in the completely wrong way.”
Yeah, not great. And I realize this isn’t the point, but this feels like the wrong photo to accompany that rating. That’s an expression that screams, “Everything’s going great,” not “I am so unlikable that it made the news.”
Well, some of that negativity might be a response to Vance’s demeanor. It also might be that people are learning what he stands for. He’s argued the last election was stolen from Trump and supported a federal abortion ban while also opposing exceptions for rape and incest. He’s also argued that because Kamala Harris and other Democrats didn’t have children, they didn’t have, quote, “any physical commitment to the future of this country,” an argument he elaborated on to Tucker Carlson. “We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
Oh, fuck all the way off, you potato-headed Build-A-Big. Set aside that Harris has two stepchildren, neither of whom, as far as I can see, are cats. You don’t need kids to care about your fellow human beings. As for the claim that women who don’t have children are miserable with the choices they’ve made, the only person I’m pretty sure is miserable with the choice they’ve made right now is Donald Trump after choosing Great Lakes rumor DeSantis here as a running mate.
JD Vance sucks so much that it says something that for a few days this week, the internet ran wild with a joke tweet that he was the first VP pick to have admitted in a New York Times bestseller to an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions with a citation to a page number from his memoir. And look, let me be clear: that is not true. It is not in his book. But I think the reason it spread so fast might be that a) nobody read that book and b) it was incredibly easy to believe because if you ask me to draw a man that fucks his couch, 10 times out of 10, I’m drawing this guy.
If you ask me to play two truths and a lie with this man, before he even opened his mouth, I shout, “The truth is he fucks his couch,” because I’ve never seen someone with more couch-fucking energy. He looks like he watched the Tom Cruise Oprah interview and was jealous of Tom’s shoes. If you told me that his first celebrity crush was the plastic silverware from Everybody Loves Raymond, I would believe you without question. If you told me the reason you find coins between couch cushions is because JD Vance always leaves a tip, I’d be like, “Yeah, yeah, that sounds right.”
That rumor was so widespread, it yielded the actual Norwegian headline, “Hadde sex med sofa,” which was like a sign they had to put up in Ikea after JD visited too much. It even got to the point the AP felt the need to publish a fact check headlined “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch,” only to then take it down with the link leading to “Page unavailable,” which somehow makes this even funnier. The AP later explained its decision to pull the piece by saying the story did not go through their standard editing process. And no, it didn’t, because there’s an obvious problem with that original headline. And the reason I know that is we care a lot about facts and precise phrasing on this show, so I can tell you, you can’t say JD Vance didn’t have sex with a couch definitively. You can say that he didn’t write about doing that in his book because that is provable, but that’s not the same as asserting he never fucked a couch.
Especially because he hasn’t officially denied it, but we wanted to give him the opportunity to do that. So we contacted the Vance campaign this week, calling one of their spokespeople, and when we asked, and I quote, “Has Senator Vance ever had sex with a couch?” they hung up on us, which is, and this is critical, not a no, is it? We then followed up by both texting and emailing the same question again, as well as asking if he’d had sex with any other furniture or household items, but as of taping, we sadly haven’t heard back. And look, who knows where this is going? The news is moving so fast right now. The RNC was only last week; it was only two weeks ago that Trump was shot. There are so many variables between here and November. We don’t know who Kamala’s VP pick will be, we don’t know which candidate will maintain momentum, the race is impossible to predict. But there are two things that I do know for certain: one, Jake Tapper is not ‘brat’, and until he tells us otherwise, I’m going to assume that JD Vance fucked a couch.
[…]
Now, moving on to our main story tonight. I’d like to talk about Israel and Palestine, a sentence rated number one by Ways to Instantly Ruin Thanksgiving Dinner with Your Family magazine. For months now, global outrage, news reports, and whatever it is that we do here on Squirrel Plus Cake Bear Ass-Eating with John Oliver has been focused on Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of civilians in the wake of Hamas’s brutal attacks on October 7th. But tonight, we’re just going to talk about a different area in the region: the West Bank, which is home to over 3 million Palestinians, the eastern half of Jerusalem, as well as some of the holiest sites for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The West Bank’s been overshadowed by Gaza lately, but it is, to put it mildly, a critical part of the larger struggle between Israelis and Palestinians.
Even if you’re not particularly familiar with the history of the region, you’re probably aware that everything concerning the West Bank and Israel’s occupation of it is incredibly contentious, to the point that even small decisions concerning it can cause headlines.
“Ben & Jerry’s facing backlash. The Morton Williams grocery chain is pulling most Ben & Jerry’s products from store shelves and moving what’s left to the bottom of the freezer after the ice cream maker announced it will stop selling ice cream in occupied Palestinian territories. Ben & Jerry’s says doing business in those areas is inconsistent with its values. Critics of the move say it does not move the peace process forward.”
Yeah, Ben & Jerry’s was accused of failing to move the peace process forward, which, to be fair, it doesn’t seem like something an ice cream can really do. How can ice cream solve world peace when it can’t even do a decent SpongeBob? You’d think a yellow square with eyeballs would be easy to pull off, and yet the reviews online for those SpongeBob pops are just a nightmare after nightmare after certifiable nightmare.
A key reason things surrounding the West Bank are so tense concerns the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers living there. And while that tension can be expressed at the international level or by proxy via weird fights over ice cream, it can also be communicated face to face, as in this viral video from a few years ago in which a Palestinian woman confronts an Israeli settler who was living in the family home that she’d been forcibly evicted from.
“Jacob, you know this is not your house.” “Yes, but if I go, you don’t go back. So, what’s the problem?” “What are you dealing with me? I didn’t do this.” “You are stealing my house.” “And if I don’t steal it, someone else is going to steal it.”
“No one, no one is allowed to steal it.”
Yeah, Jacob, it is both ridiculous and tragic that that woman’s only recourse against the man occupying her home in front of her is to try and do the “Swiper, no swiping” chant in real life. But the outing of that woman from her home in East Jerusalem is just a microcosm of the larger issue of Palestinian displacement and Israeli settlements in the West Bank. And what’s happening there is important to understand both because it’s inextricably linked to the fate of any possible peace process and because things there have recently gotten exponentially worse.
So, given that, tonight let’s talk about the West Bank settlements: how they came to be, who’s living there, and what their presence means for everyone in the region.
And before we get to where we are now, let me just give you a way-too-quick summary of how we got to this point. Very basically, Israel was founded in 1948, fulfilling the long-held hopes of the Zionist movement at a time when Jews were reeling from the collective traumas of persecution and genocide in the Holocaust. It was established through what Israel calls the War of Independence and what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or Catastrophe. 700,000 Palestinians suffered their own collective trauma when they fled or were driven out of their homes amid violence and, in some cases, massacres of entire villages. Some ended up in neighboring countries as refugees, while others settled in the parts of Palestine now widely known as Gaza and the West Bank.
For decades, there were significant tensions between Israel and its neighbors, and then came the Six-Day War in 1967, in which Israel fought and defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and in doing so captured vastly more territory, including the West Bank. Almost immediately, it started building settlements there while also annexing East Jerusalem. And to be clear, both those actions constitute violations of international law. When you occupy territory as an outcome of war, you are not allowed to expel people or move your own citizens in. And Israel knew this at the time. Its foreign ministry’s own legal adviser warned in a top-secret memo that civilian settlements would contravene explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. But they built settlements anyway and continued for decades.
Although there was one moment in the ’90s when it seemed that there might be a possible pathway to a peaceful resolution with the Oslo Accords. That historic peace process set up a new framework for the West Bank, dividing it into three distinct areas: Area A gave Palestinians total control over security and government; Area B was designated for Palestinian government control while retaining Israeli security control, meaning the Israeli military remains very present there; Area C remained completely under Israeli military and government control. It’s about 60% of the West Bank.
And that is what the West Bank map looks like today. That is one of the most politically fraught areas on Earth, color-coded in a way that makes it look like what would happen if Shrek exploded into a puddle. And if you’re thinking, “I don’t know, I don’t know if I can quite see that,” how about now? Can you see it now? And in a way, will you ever be able to unsee it now?
Crucially, this whole setup was only ever meant to be temporary while a larger peace deal was hammered out. But after Oslo fell apart for reasons including but not limited to continued settlement expansion, terror attacks by Palestinian militants, and Israeli hardliners assassinating the Prime Minister who’d brokered the deal, Yitzhak Rabin, that temporary arrangement was basically frozen in place, and Israel continued building more and more and more settlements. In fact, every single Israeli government has invested significant resources in expanding them.
And all of that brings us to where we are today. Because while there were around 250,000 settlers in the West Bank when Oslo was signed, there are currently around 700,000. And it’s worth talking about the settlers themselves because when you think of them, you may envision someone like the blundering guy you saw earlier or hardliners on an ideological mission to claim the Holy Land in the name of the Jewish people. But that is not the whole picture. In fact, 70% of those who live in the West Bank are so-called quality-of-life settlers. And I will say, the way they describe their communities does make them seem very attractive.
“Spend 10 minutes in a settlement today, and you sometimes feel that you could just as easily be in a New Jersey suburb. Clean roads, big houses, quality parks, good schools, close-by shopping, a university. You ask people why they moved out here, and instead of the original mission to push forward the Israeli state, you hear things like, ‘A very good educational system. There is a very nice country club. We wanted to have a bigger place. It’s a great place to raise kids. We were looking for a Jerusalem suburb that we could afford that was a manageable community. The quality of life is so much better. It has nothing to do with politics.'”
Well, hold on. It has nothing to do with politics? I’m sorry, but it very much does. Just because it’s a nice place to live doesn’t make it any less illegal under international law. It’s not like the Geneva Convention says, “The occupying power shall not transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies unless there’s really convenient shopping and a super manageable commute to Jerusalem.”
Also, part of the reason settlements can be so pleasant is because the Israeli government wants people to move there. Life is massively subsidized in the settlements, with the government spending more per capita on things like education and infrastructure there than it does within Israel itself. In recent years, Israel’s Housing Ministry has even offered subsidized apartments in the West Bank through a lottery system. The whole settlement project has been massively encouraged by the Israeli government to such a degree that it is hard to argue that living in one is an apolitical choice. Building on stolen land is an inherently political act. It is also, by the way, copyright infringement for what it’s worth.
Now, the Israeli government will say that it doesn’t officially support all settlements. Its official line is that there are two different kinds: so-called legal, approved settlements and outposts created by rogue settlers that are illegal under Israeli law. But for the record, under international law, both of them are illegal. And also, Israel frequently offers all manner of resources to the so-called illegal outposts too, providing them with military defense, access to public utilities, and sometimes even retroactively legalizing them. So, as this Israeli critic of the settlements points out, the line between the two types can get pretty blurry.
“Settlement and outpost—what’s the difference? Well, usually ‘settlement’ refers to Israeli settlements which are officially approved by the Israeli government, and the ‘outposts’ are Israeli settlements which have been built also by the Israeli government but without official approval.”
Right. Settlements and outposts are nominally different but can look strikingly similar, kind of like Helvetica and Arial, or Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas Howard, or this show and a civics textbook that someone’s drawn a bunch of penises on. We’re both basically just charts plus dick jokes.
But some settlers will insist that none of this matters because all they’re really doing is building in an area that no one’s using.
“I actually know for sure that we came here, we did not take anybody’s land because I saw that there was nobody here. You know, it was a hill—nobody around it, nobody was using it, nobody was… wasn’t bothering anybody.”
Okay, but it doesn’t matter if anyone was using it. If it’s not your land, you can’t just take it. And I do know that is hard to take from someone using this particular accent, but there is a clear difference between property that nobody is using and property that nobody owns. It’s why we call those big things outside of stores “parking lots” and not “help-yourself car buffets.”
But while that argument is clearly ridiculous, it also speaks to Israel’s larger strategy in the region because one of the official means by which Israel takes land there is by claiming that if land hasn’t been cultivated within the prior three years, it can be declared as state land. And some of its tactics seem designed to ensure a lack of cultivation, as settlers have driven Palestinians off their land through violence or intimidation. Also, it can be hard for Palestinians in the West Bank to build or cultivate in the first place due to the opaque permit process there, as this man patiently explains.
“Israelis I’ve heard would say, ‘Well, the land is unused anyway; it’s on the top of the hills.'”
“Yeah, that’s a good excuse. But why it’s unused? Because we are not allowed to use it.”
Right. And he’s not exaggerating there. Israel controls building permits in the West Bank, and by its own admission, it rejects over 95% of Palestinian permit requests. So, it’s not that Palestinians don’t want to use the land, it’s that they’re frequently not allowed to, which is different. It’s the same way that it’s not that JD Vance doesn’t want to help you move, it’s just that he’s not allowed within 50 feet of a three-piece sectional. It’s not his choice at the end of the day.
And what this means is that even as Israel has been heavily incentivizing construction for Israelis in the West Bank, when it comes to Palestinian homes, this is what’s been happening for years.
“Authorities have ordered hundreds of Palestinian homes to be demolished because they were built without the proper permits, which are almost impossible for Palestinians to get. They cost thousands of dollars, can take years to process, and rarely get approved, which means Palestinians often end up building illegally.”
Yeah, of course. And that is shocking even before you get to the brain-searing hypocrisy of Palestinians in the West Bank being told that their homes are illegal. It’s like getting called a hot mess by the Hindenburg. Hey, I’m not taking that from you in particular, you gassy flameball.
But building permits are just the tip of the iceberg here. There’s also the physical obstacles placed in the path of Palestinians’ everyday life, from this massive winding separation wall to the endless maze of checkpoints and gates Palestinians are forced to pass through, which, as this man points out, can have extreme consequences.
“You can’t come to my house. You know, at the checkpoint, they close it. It’s only Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening we are allowed to pass the checkpoint. No visitors, no ambulances, no kindergartens, no schools, no jobs.”
“If there’s an emergency, what do you do?”
“Nothing. Die.”
Holy shit. Look, in some situations, all you can do is just sit there and wait to die, like if you’re stranded on a desert island or traveling on a Boeing airplane. But death shouldn’t be an inevitable outcome just because you happen to live behind an Israeli checkpoint. These checkpoints are a nightmare. Palestinian women trying to get to hospital to give birth have been delayed at them so many times there have been dozens of documented roadside births as well as cases of maternal and infant deaths. And these delays and inconveniences can be deliberate, as settlements are sometimes strategically placed to cut Palestinian communities off from one another. One outpost placed in a commercial hub openly declares on its Facebook page that the intent of its location is to disrupt contiguity between three Palestinian villages.
And the way certain Palestinians are fenced in can get truly absurd. This man’s home sits on his ancestral land, surrounded by this imposing metal fence—a house within a cage, encircled by Israeli settlements. His 11-year-old son was detained for six hours when his football rolled near the settlements. The boy just grins with youthful bravado, claiming he wasn’t scared. “You get scared, but I was…”
His sister pipes up, “Yeah, I bet you were.”
And everything about that is bonkers, from the idea of living in a house almost completely surrounded by a military fence to a childhood that includes the possibility that a stray football could land you in detention for six hours. And what on Earth is the point of detaining an 11-year-old for six hours? What are you really hoping to get out of questioning him? An answer to what Roblox is or are? Because believe me, that is all they talk about.
And there’s good reason for that girl to be scared because the legal rights of Palestinians in the West Bank are tenuous at best. There are actually two sets of laws there. Jewish settlers enjoy access to civilian law, due process, and the full protection of civil rights. But Palestinians live under Israeli military law, so if they’re accused of a crime, they’re tried in military courts, which have, to put it mildly, significantly fewer protections and boast a roughly 99% conviction rate. And that clearly separate and unequal two-tier justice system means Palestinians also have little recourse when they’re the victims of a crime. Because despite both Israeli and international law saying Israeli soldiers have an obligation to protect Palestinian residents of the West Bank, in practice, when it comes to attacks by settlers on Palestinians, there has been a history of silence, avoidance, and abetment by Israeli officials. In fact, when an Israeli human rights group looked at more than 1,600 cases of settler violence, it found that just 3% resulted in a conviction. And look, I am not a lawyer or a statistician despite looking like what you would get if you smashed those two jobs together with a particle accelerator, but even I can tell you 3% is too low.
And for a sense of just how extreme settlements can get, take Hebron, a city home to about 200,000 Palestinians and 700 hardline Israeli settlers who have chosen to live literally above them. Life in Hebron is full of constant reminders about whose safety is prioritized. Just over a year ago, a remote-controlled gun reportedly for crowd dispersal was installed above this checkpoint.
“So it’s pointing towards the Palestinian population?” “Yes.” “Palestinian authorities have had to build an overhead fence to catch rubbish and projectiles thrown down by settlers.” “So the Israeli settlers live up here?” “Yeah, they live here, and they throw everything down.” “Twelve shops are closed. The settlers, they attack Palestinians without any kind of accountability.” “How does it make you feel to see this?” “I feel very sad. From the most beautiful market to closed shops and outpost… and it, for me, it illustrates the Israeli apartheid system.”
At that moment, someone from the settlement above has thrown a beer bottle at Isa’s head.
“Are you okay?” “Yeah, I got the beer, I think, or maybe did it cut you?”
That is terrible. And I’m not sure which part of that situation seems less livable: saying hello to the barrel of a remote-control turret every day or the constant weather forecast of cloudy with a chance of hepatitis.
And settlers will argue that they live in constant fear of violence. And it is true that over the last 16 years, 150 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank. Though it is worth noting that in that same period, more than 10 times that many Palestinians were killed by Israelis, the vast majority directly by Israeli security forces.
But maybe the clearest illustration of the impunity some settlers feel is the practice of so-called price tag attacks on Palestinians, which are ostensibly acts of revenge but can be utterly indiscriminate, as this settler calmly explains:
“Can you explain to us what these price tag attacks are, what they mean?” “After Arabs kill Jews, and anything wrong that happens, we show that we won’t stay quiet. It has a price, and it’s called price tag.” “And it could just be any random Arab, it doesn’t matter whether they were involved or not?” “No, it doesn’t matter because they sit here and because they believe it’s theirs. They’re all involved.” “And for you, that’s guilty enough, just being here, that makes them guilty?” “Yeah, that makes them guilty.”
Wow. It is a little jarring to hear someone say something so wildly disturbing in such a sedate manner. She’s advocating for random violent hate crimes there but doing it in the ultra-relaxed tone of a yoga instructor on horse tranquilizers.
It is a truly horrendous situation. As that Israeli expert that you saw earlier points out, there’s actually a term that describes all this:
“There are two groups that live in the same territory and they are officially separated in terms of political, economic, and legal rights. And the key to this separation is completely arbitrary—whether you were born to an Arab mother or not. What would you call that?” “If it smells like apartheid, looks like apartheid, sounds like apartheid, then it’s apartheid.”
He’s right. Although, real quick, if it smells like apartheid, does apartheid actually have a smell? Because I’ll be honest, until now I was pretty sure it had only produced the one kind of musk. But he is not alone in that assessment. A former head of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad has said in reference to the West Bank, “There is an apartheid state here,” and this former IDF general has called the situation “total apartheid,” adding, “The IDF is standing by, looking at the settler rioters and is beginning to be a partner to war crimes.”
And at this point, we should probably talk about the U.S.’s role in this whole situation because it is considerable. America opposes settlements officially but very much soft-pedals its criticism of them, as both Republican and Democratic presidents have referred to them as illegitimate but declined to call them illegal to avoid the possibility Israel would face international sanctions. And some presidents have gone even further. Trump was incredibly cozy with Netanyahu, as you can tell from the unnervingly smug look on Bibi’s face there, and his administration not only moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, an incredibly provocative act on its own, but the next year it also did this:
“In a major change of foreign policy, the Trump administration said it no longer considers Jewish communities built on Palestinian lands, known as settlements, to be against international law. The announcement made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: ‘Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law hasn’t worked. It hasn’t advanced the cause of peace.’”
You know what? It turns out Mike Pompeo and I actually agree on something. The status quo hasn’t worked. I just think we might disagree on what to do next. It’s one of the many things that we seem to disagree on, along with what he should have named his book. Because in my opinion, Never Give an Inch sounds like the autobiography of a micropenis. But Mike clearly feels differently.
But it’s not just government support. Wealthy American individuals have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into settlements. And it’s worth noting, many of Israel’s strongest advocates aren’t Jewish individuals or groups. They’re actually evangelical Christians, like this man, Pastor John Hagee, who has done more than you might expect. Pastor Hagee founded Christians United for Israel, or CUFI, which is the largest pro-Israel lobbying organization in America, even bigger than AIPAC, the organization most people assume dominates the American Israel lobby because it’s the biggest Jewish one. What’s dicey about CUFI is that a good deal of their money for Israel is spent on buildings and organizations in the Israeli settlements.
“God gave them that land. They own that land.”
Okay, if you told me to picture a megachurch pastor, that is exactly who I’m imagining. Slicked-back silver hair, headset mic, looking like an elderly Chris Farley in Easter pimp drag. That is on-the-nose casting right there. And interestingly, the reason many evangelicals are so invested in Israel is they believe Jewish people being in that region is one of the prerequisites for their vision of Armageddon. When that day comes, the thinking goes, Christians will be raptured. And I’ll let this man fill you in on what he thinks happens to Jews in Israel afterward:
“Two thousand years of blindness is going to come peeling off the Jewish mind, and those of us that have been caught up in the rapture and come with Jesus here to Earth—” “Oh, because the Christians have been raptured out.” “All who are born again will have been raptured when Jesus comes. We’ll be caught up to meet him in the air.” “Yeah.” “And then we will come with him to the Mount of Olives, and so we’re going to be watching this whole panoramic thing unfold as the Jewish people turn to their Messiah. We’re going to be converting people by the hundreds of thousands during this time. It’s going to be the best of times and the worst of times.”
Yeah, that makes sense. Apparently, evangelicals will grow Victoria’s Secret angel wings, flap up to Jesus, and sit with him in his Lisa Frank cloud and smugly watch as Jews realize how wrong they’ve been. And look, on one hand, I get why some in Israel might encourage this. There is a cynical utility to taking idiots’ money. But someone expressing anticipation for the day “two thousand years of blindness come peeling off my mind” might make me want to keep a certain distance from them. And yet, watch as Hagee, a few years ago, introduced a special guest star to his followers:
“Would you please welcome my friend and Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.” “Thank you, Pastor Hagee. You are always there for us. We have no better friends on Earth than you.”
“No better friends.” You know what? I guess that makes sense. Some friends drive you to the airport; others see your suffering as their ticket to getting Christ-blasted by a flying Rapture Jesus. Friendship does take so many forms, doesn’t it?
And in recent years, everything I’ve shown you has only gotten worse. In 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu, in order to hold on to power, formed a governing coalition by allying with leaders of far-right parties, creating the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. He put extremist politicians, some of whom are settlers themselves, in major positions of power. His current Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, openly advocates for Israeli annexation of the West Bank. And his Minister of National Security is Itamar Ben-Gvir, who not only lives in Hebron—you know, the fun place with the flying bottles and remote-controlled machine guns—he’s also been convicted of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization.
All this was a huge win for hardline settlers. Just listen to this Israeli soldier gloating to Palestinians in Hebron about what Ben-Gvir’s ascent would mean:
“I am the law. And for you, nothing is forbidden. You do what I tell you to do. Ben-Gvir is going to sort things out here.”
“I decide what the law is, and your actions are illegal.” That is a bold attitude. It’s the sort of thing an American cop would only be comfortable tattooing above their sleeve line.
So things were already getting bad. And then the appalling attacks of October 7th happened. And since then, things have gotten considerably worse. Israel imposed even tighter restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank, with checkpoints increasingly closed and many work permits canceled, making it impossible for many Palestinians there to make a living. Meanwhile, attacks on Palestinians have only spiked from where they were already at historic highs, to the point that the UN’s found at least 19 entire Palestinian communities have been displaced as a direct result of settler violence since October. And in the midst of all of this, Smotrich declared nearly four square miles of Palestinian territory to be state land, the single largest land grab since the Oslo Accords.
Is it any wonder that Israeli security chiefs have warned that the West Bank could be on the brink of a major eruption of violence? And when you take all of this together, you do begin to understand why so many Israelis and Palestinians have despaired of ever achieving a two-state solution. And the thing is, as this settler pointed out nearly a decade ago, for many of them, that has basically been the whole strategy:
“You can basically kiss the two-state solution goodbye. It’s not going to happen. We’re going to continue to move in there, and eventually, we are going to have more Jewish communities there, more Israeli electricity, more Israeli roads, more Israeli taxes. And then, in the end, it’s just going to be Israel.”
Right. Relentless expansion has made the idea of peace talks a joke. And when I say joke, I don’t mean something that’s funny-ha-ha; I mean something that is deeply depressing. You know, a joke in the same way that this show is a comedy, which, as this audience that was excited to be in here half an hour ago will tell you, is stretching that term to breaking point. So, where do we go from here? Well, at this point, it does feel presumptuous to even talk about a peace process because we’re so far from being in a position to even start one.
There’s actually a moment that I think sums that up pretty well. It’s the then-mayor of Ramallah talking to a German delegation a few years ago. They asked him if he’d be willing to take part in some symbolic exchanges with his Israeli counterparts to show goodwill and help facilitate peace. You know, the standard meet-them-in-the-middle rhetoric, and this is his incredibly diplomatic response:
“When we feel that we are not treated as slaves and they are masters, we are ready to do everything. But when I have to take off all my clothes in front of all the people because a soldier of 16 years old is asking me to do so under the threat of his weapon, then it’s about dignity.”
“Okay, yeah.”
“And when it comes to dignity, I think it’s something not negotiable.”
Right. Human dignity has to be a prerequisite for negotiating anything. And Palestinians in the West Bank have their dignity challenged hundreds of times a day, from having beer bottles thrown over their heads, to being detained for kicking balls near fences, to being stopped while crossing checkpoints in ambulances, to having their homes stolen, bulldozed, and far, far worse.
And to be clear, dignity is the absolute beginning of this. What’s required is justice, and the call for that is getting louder. Just last week, the ICJ issued an opinion that Israel’s settlements and the regime associated with them are in violation of international law. The Israeli presence in the occupied territory should come to an end as rapidly as possible, and Israel has an obligation to provide full reparation for the damage it’s caused. But the U.S. State Department has already undermined that statement, saying it’s concerned the breadth of the ICJ’s opinion will complicate efforts to resolve the conflict. But I don’t know, man. The conflict’s already pretty complicated. Is the world’s highest court interpreting international law accurately really going to make things any worse?
Look, a phrase that gets brought up a lot with regard to Israel is “never again,” an anti-genocide slogan often invoked in memory of the Holocaust. And it’s always been open to two interpretations: there’s the one that means this must never again happen to the Jewish people, and the one that means this must never again happen to any people anywhere. And in the West Bank, as in Gaza right now, it’s pretty clear which one the Israeli government has favored. And especially as long as Netanyahu is in power, he is clearly going to do whatever he and the worst people around him want. But the U.S. doesn’t have to continue to abet that or cover for it.
And the thing is, we do have levers at our disposal here. We could put conditions on the billions in military aid we send to Israel. We could stop vetoing UN Security Council resolutions critical of the Israeli government’s actions, which we’ve been doing for decades now. And we could say what is plainly for everyone to see: these settlements aren’t just illegitimate or even just illegal, they’re immoral. And not only should we say that, we should then act accordingly. And I know the bar here is incredibly low, but I guess at the very least, I just want my government to have the moral backbone that’s been shown by Ben & Jerry’s. Please, just try not to get morally outflanked by the makers of Impressively Fudgy. That cannot be too much to ask.
And now this…
And now, the Olympics have made everyone a little too eager to speak French.
“The countdown to Paris’ opening ceremony of the Olympics is just three days away. NBC’s Keir Simmons live in Paris with all the excitement.”
“Bonjour, je m’appelle Amanda.” “Bonjour.” “Ooh, I like it. Ooh la la.”
“Wow, I don’t know what the last part of that was, my friend.”
“Mon ami.” “My friend.” “Bon. Bonjour, Carson.” “Bonjour, Craig.” “C’est chaud, ça.” “C’est chaud, ça. It’s hot, that.” “What?”
“There will be a lot of that over the next three weeks in Paris.” “Oui, oui. You all know how to speak French. Maybe you’ve got to get some croissants this morning. Or as they say in Paris, croissants.” “I don’t know. I didn’t take French.”
That’s our show. Thanks so much for watching. We’ll see you next week. Bon nuit.
[Music]
That couch.
