Bassem Youssef: Israel-Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, Middle East, Satire & Fame | Lex Fridman Podcast #424

If I hate you, that's great. But if I have a story to support that hate, that's even better.

One of your favorite words, jihad.

That's my favorite hobbies. It doesn't matter now. Who do you vote into power? They will not listen to you. They would listen to the people who paid them to be there. When the military came in, people were walking to me like, pointing their fingers like, don't speak about cc. Don't speak about the army, huh? We love you now, but don't you, you do it like that. So I called John Stewart just like, I don't know what to do and he said the most interesting thing ever and say, if you're afraid of something, make fun about the fact that you're afraid of it.

The following is a conversation with Bassem Yousef, a legendary Egyptian American comedian, the so called Jon Stewart of the Middle east, who fearlessly satirized those in power even when his job and life were on the line. Basim is a beautiful human being. It was truly a pleasure for me to get to know him and to have this fun, fascinating and challenging conversation. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Bassem Yousef. Your wife is half Palestinian and I've heard you say that you've been trying to kill her, but she keeps using the kids as human shields. So have you considered negotiating a ceasefire?

Well, the thing is, every day, every minute of the day in a married life is a negotiation. Everything can blow up into a full scale war starting from a simple sentence like, good morning, what should we do with the kids today? What should we do with that piece of furniture? Any sentence can lead you to heaven or to hell in the same time.

So you do negotiate with terrorists?

Oh, yeah, yeah, 100%.

You must.

Yeah. And for her, I am her terrorist too.

So it's equal terrorists on both sides. On a more serious note, when you found out about the attacks of October 7, what went through your mind?

If I'm allowed to use a curse word, I was like, as many as possible. I was like, oh, shit. Part of my standup comedy is I describe a situation where I was in a restaurant with producers and there was a bombing two blocks away in Chelsea, New York in 2016. And of course, this is the like, damn, what's going to happen to us now? And there's like two different reactions. There's like the white reaction which is like, oh my God, I hope nobody is hurt. This is terrible. I Hope everybody's okay. And there's the Arab reaction. What's his name? What's his name? What is the name? You know, because you know what's going to come. It's kind of. I was scared what's gonna really happen in that area. And it's like, oh, my God, it's gonna be horrible. And the way that it was reported, I didn't know how to handle this. So I basically, I went into hiding for a few days. Three, four days. And I talked about Piers Morgan team talking to me two times, Three times. I was like, no, I can't. How can you defend that? How can you defend the rape, the decapitated babies and whatever? And then I started kind of looking in the news a little bit, and then I started seeing people, the shows and saying things that I know as an Arab, as a Muslim, as someone from that region, that it's not true. But I didn't know how to. What to say, how to say it. So I said by the third time when they asked me, I said like, fine, put me on. And I went there. It was more of a, figuratively speaking, a suicide mission because it's a lose, lose situation. I can lose stuff in Hollywood. I can. I even. I remember my manager is like, bessem, be careful. I mean, are you sure you want to do it? Are you? My manager was like, please don't do it. Please don't do it. And on the other side, if I don't perform well, whatever well means I'm going to be rejected by my own people. So it was a lose, lose situation. Because whatever I say, it will never be enough, and whatever I say will not be good enough. And I was going into there, and I felt that I was going into a trance for the 33 minutes that I was on the. On that interview for the first time.

You blacked out.

I blacked out. I blacked out. And a lot of people ask me, is the earpiece. Was that a bit. When the earpiece kept falling, it's like, no, it was really falling off and it disconnected. And I had to save it because I cannot see them all. I can hear. I can just hear them. And I could expecting at any time. Okay, bastim. Thank you. I was like, I. I was fighting for every second to say words, to put stuff in there. Yeah.

For people who don't know, this is your conversation interview with Piers Morgan. And you couldn't see.

I couldn't see. I was just like the lens of the camera and I was just like.

It'S a real dream or nightmare.

Yeah. Hello, Weston. I was like, hello, Weston's like, hi.

And it could end at any moment. Your career and everything.

Everything. Yeah, yeah.

So what was the drive that got you to actually do it? To overcome that fear?

Multiple things. First of all, I don't want to say it's just my wife's family, because my wife's family has always been there. But this time was different. The bombing, the attack, they usually one of those people that they're aware of everything, whatever happened in Gaza, they are always in safe places. But this time it seems that there was no place safe. And, and already we heard about like 2, 3 of the, of the cousins and the uncles already lost their home. So this was too much. So I wanted to say something for those people because I know that, you know, one of the jokes that I made about like, oh, you know, it's Hassan, her cousin, he's a loser. He's a doctor. He's a doctor and he, every time a hospital was bombed, we were worried about him. So I wanted to say that because I felt that these are, this is a family that I have never seen in my life. I have never, she, she actually hardly saw an uncle or two because, you know, they cannot leave. But I, I said like, I need to speak. At least I do something for those extended family that I have never known. But also because when, when, when Piers Morgan team called me a couple of times and said, okay, let's, let's see what's going on in the show. And I just watched the stuff and the lies and the one sided reporting that made my blood boil. And then I thought, like, what am I afraid of? I'm afraid of if I say something I can lose my career. It's like, wait a minute. But that was the reason why I left Egypt. I said, wait, I left Egypt, I came to United States, I came to the land of the free, where I can say anything I want and yet I have limitation of what to say. I mean, I thought we left that shit behind. I mean, what's happening? And I understand, I understand the connection of like how sensitive it is when you speak about Israel and all of the ready made accusations. But as an Arab, as a Muslim, I don't react the same when you talk about Saudi Arabia or Iran or Egypt or any of them, it's like, hey, you want to diss some of these countries, I'll do that with you. Because I have strong opinions about what happened and I already been expressing them. But when I talk that's why. And there's a lot of Jewish people who come to my show and they understand that. They understand the separation, but that kind of grouping of blackmailing people and saying. And not saying what they have in their mind, it is that kind of like one of the things that kind of like pushed me to go on the show.

The thing that was bothering you, was it what was being said or how it was being said?

Both, because there are lies, which is usually in the media, but there was the total disregard of humanity. You talk a lot about in your show about human suffering. And I felt that here the human suffering was not equal. I felt that's why I came up with this. Like, what's the exchange rate today? What's the exchange rate today? Of course, it's terrible to see anybody die, but I feel that, like, is it. Isn't our life not worth anything? Yeah.

You had a chart akin to crypto.

Yeah.

From an invest. You analyze it from an investing perspective, of course. In the dark. And you were saying that a certain year was a good year. Yeah, 2014 was a good year for investment purposes. And also to. To refer to the. To a family member that you called a loser. You were saying that you called him, had a conversation with him, and he keeps saying that he's not using anybody for human shields. And you called him a loser.

What do you do?

You can't even give a job.

He's a liar. He lied to us. Because I have to believe this is the one thing it's like. It's also one of the things like how it was said. It was stuff that I've been hearing. I don't know what turned on in my head, but it's stuff that I've been hearing all my life from the media. Israel warns civilians before bombing them. And that's okay, but that's not okay. Israel is trying to minimize the civilians but killing them anyway. And that's okay, but that's not okay. So it is kind of like the indoctrination that we've been hearing, as if it is okay and then suddenly it's not. Yeah.

There's a kind of several layers of bullshit almost sometimes hiding the obvious horror of the situation with kind of politeness and all this kind of stuff. Just the basic value of human life. That said, it's a difficult situation.

It is. It is.

What would you do if you were Israel? BB Called you awesome.

Big fan.

Big fan of your comedy, first of all. Would you hang up right away? Would you hear him out?

No, I'll definitely hear him up. It's like, that was like, wait a minute. That's material. That's material. That's material, man. It's like, so called me. Yeah. I was sitting with my family just like I have on my phone, like, oh, Niti.

Yeah, it just shows up that way. I mean, what would you do? What would you do in this situation?

To answer this question, we need to understand how Israel thinks. There is an incredible speech given by Gideon Levy at a famous Israeli reporter in Herz, and he describes a situation where he was in the west bank and there was a checkpoint. And in that checkpoint there was an ambulance with a Palestinian patient. And it was there sitting for an hour and a half, not moving. And then he went to talk to the soldiers, like, guys, why are you not letting them go? It's like, ah, let them go. And then he told him, imagine if he was your father. And the soldiers stood up like, what? These are pigs. These are not humans. So when you tell me, what would you do if Israel would do it really needs to. We need to ask, how does Israel look at the Palestinians and view the Palestinians? Because they do look at them less than human. And there is an incredible talk by Mihor Meyer. He was a Holocaust survivor, and he said, I learned in Auschwitz when I was there in the concentration camp, that in order for a dominant group of people to dehumanize another group, they need first to dehumanize themselves. And Israel looks at Palestinians as lesser people, as lesser beings, as some people who are dispensable. And the way that they treat them is that they don't really care about, like, that's why that. The exchange rate thing. So for me, if I am Israel, it will be like, what would you do if you're the United States? In the time of the Native Americans, they were killing people with the millions. When you dehumanize a group of people, you really don't care. So if I was Israel, I would do exactly what Israel is doing right now, because there's no one is holding me accountable. There's no one stopping me. And I can get whatever I want throughout my history through violence.

I think a lot of the things you just said are a tiny bit slightly exaggerated. So let me. Let me try. Let's try. So not everybody in Israel. So let's look at several groups. So people in government, idf, soldiers, and citizens that are neither of those, and not everybody of any of those sees Palestinians as less than human. Just some percentage. So what percentage is that in your sense?

It's the people who have the power.

So it's mostly the focus of your commentary. When you say people in Israel, you really mean the people in power.

The people have in power. But as much as like, of course I mean the people in power. Because when I speak about, even when I speak about America, I speak about people in power. When I speak about Egypt, speak the people about power. Because like, you can't really talk about the 100 million people in Egypt or the 11 million people in Israel. Of course not. There are people who go in and they demonstrate against Netanyahu and they want him out of the government. But we have to admit that the Israelite society at a whole have moved quite bit to the right and has been like many extreme. And you know what happens when you go to the right or you go to the most extreme, the other person go to the most extreme. And extremism breeds extremism. So thank you for the clarification. But like, I really meant with the people of power. When people criticize the United States for going in Iraq, of course, I'm not criticizing citizens.

But you made another point, which is an interesting point. And it's very difficult to see in the heart of people. But I wonder if you look at the average Palestinian and the average Israeli and when they look at the other, do they have some hate in their heart? Well, everybody probably has some. What is that amount? You know, when you look at a person that looks different than you, how much hate is there?

It depends on what is the living situation of each person. So in the Berlin Film Festival, just like a few couple of weeks ago, there was an Israeli and a Palestinian receiving an award together. And the Israeli director said, we're going to go back to Israel, he's going to go to the west bank, he will have no rights and I will have full living rights. These people managed to work together and be friends and they have empathy to each other. Now, the average Palestinian, it's a very difficult question because is it the Palestinian in the Diaspora or the Palestinian in Gaza or the Diaspora in the west bank or the one in the citizen as a citizen of Israel, who still have less right than a Roman citizen of Israel as a Jewish? And it really depends if I am. There are people, Arabs in Israel who are having a great life, and there are people, Arabs who are having a miserable life, but definitely people that living in Gaza or in the west bank is kind of like on the lower tier of their living conditions. Now let's talk about the hate. What does that Palestinian see with Whom? The Israeli. The Palestinians see oppression, limitation of movement, limitation of freedom. And then when there's something happens, you see the full force coming in, destroying their home, taking away members of his family. There would be absolutely no reason for him to love the other, the Israeli, because he, you know, he doesn't have the power, but he lives under his government. All he sees is the rockets or whatever. But like, he sees the reaction and he doesn't see what happened to those. And as humans, we are selfish. We see what really affects us as humans. And I cannot even imagine what it would be like to live as a Palestinian. And I'm not even talking about Gaza because everybody talks about Gaza. But let me give you an example. And I'm not going to talk about the 12,000 kids killed in Gaza. Let's talk about just like the four weeks in the West Bank. March 4, Amr Najjar, age 10, sitting next to his father, shot in while he's sitting in a car next to his father by the IDF soldiers. Mohammed Ziyad, 13 years old, marched third, shot in front of a UN school while sitting with his friends. Muhammad Ganim, age 15, marched second. He shot while standing in front of a store front during a night raid. February 23, Sai Jerdal, he was killed by a drone fire. February 22, Fadi Suleiman, killed while standing in front of the top of a Red Cross building. Nihil Ziyad, February 14, Valentine's Day. Killed a shot in the head while leaving school. February 11, Mohammed Khatur, US citizens killed while being in a parked car. And Moayd Sham's, February 9, killed right in front of his home because a military car came reversing back to him and then somebody opened the door, shot him and leave. This is a daily life of people in the West Bank.

What is the justification the IDF provides?

Terrorism?

Terrorism or.

I don't know, I mean, you cannot really say like human shields, but they would say like they were throwing rocks. There was a guy who went on Chris Rock and he said, like his son, a US citizen will kill. And they were throwing rocks. So we killed them. Even when they were throwing rocks, you kill him. But the thing is, you see, this is how easy for them to get rid of Palestinians. I mean, I love, like I had to say, I prepared a little bit for the podcast because you are in tech, so. And I am ignorant in tech. There is a movie called the Lab. It is directed by an Israeli director called Yutam Feldman. And he talks about how the military industry in Israel is Very advanced. And what is really mind boggling is in that movie he shows how the military tests its weapons in the field in urban areas, on Palestinians. It is heartbreaking. As a doctor, there's five stages of trials. There is discovery, pre, clinical, clinical, and then market, and then post market evaluation by the FDA, the FDA approval and then the FDA post market 5 just to take a pill. And you go in and he interviews people as like, where did you test this? They tested in the field. So when you just like when human life is so cheap and it is so indispensable, it made me, it gave me a visceral reaction because, you know, we as human, this has been actually the, the state of humanity. Humanity have lived and survived and thrived by actually killing each other. But there was kind of like a. We were remotely. We were removed from it. People in Greece didn't know what the Alexander the Great was doing. He was killing a pelagic like we call him the Great because he was killing, he was conquering, he was invading Julius Caesar, all of the greats he was doing. But killing was difficult. Killing had to have some sort. You have to be with your enemy. Then you go back catapults, then cannons, then a little bit back. And then you're kind of like surrounding remotely. Now you're killing people behind the screen with a button, with a push of a button. You know, a lot of people say terrorism. They killed you with a knife, killed one person with a knife, shot you. That's terrorism. But if you fly a $64 million F16 and you drop up an A84 bomb that cost $16,000, that's not terrorism. Because it's remote. You're behind the screen. So what happened? What Israel doing it is removing itself. Like America too. Drones. And then when you push someone to be in, they always brag about bombing them to the Stone Ages. What happens when the screens and all of the obstacles that you have been put between you and those people, that you have treated them this way, when this is a breach and you come face to face, you will come face to face with what you have created.

Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things you just said. So one is the methodology of killing. If you want to look at some horrific large scale killing, people often talk about the Holocaust, but that's visceral. You can look at Hollermore by Stalin.

Where the murders through starvation by Churchill in India.

In Churchill in India. And the Great Leap Forward by Mao.

Yep.

So starvation is a thing we don't often think of it as murder because it's quiet, it's slow. And the interesting thing about starvation is that the people don't complain as they're dying because they're exhausted. That's one. And the other is the value of human life. It does seem that every culture has a unequal valuation of human life. So those two things combined create a complicated military landscape of the world.

Yes. But the thing is, is that how we would look at technology as the savior as we talk about how AI disrupt, will disrupt, will disrupt, will disrupt. And now if you go, you talk about like going to the West Bank. The people in the west bank walk and they don't see humans. They see people shouting them from towers or behind the screens or doing. And they have like biometrics that is developed by Basel System, like that's done by HP or Google and Amazon, who are like part of Project Nimbus. And you see Indie vision developing all of this like metric and surveillance and all of that stuff. And then you have like something like the gospel that like people have actually said that the gospel can actually create a target list using AI and give you a green, yellow or a red to go ahead. And now AI is not just disrupting the market, it's disrupting our humanity. And we became so comfortable killing people from afar, killing people with a push of the button. And now it's like dating apps. You know, when you swipe left and right, it's like, oh, right. It becomes so like cheap. It's not like meeting someone, it's like, oh, it's a lot of fish in the sea. Same with AI. Boom. 500 people killed. Boom, they killed. It's so easy. It's so easy. It's so easy. And then it's so far removed from you. So when you put these people in this condition, you have literally put them in a different universe than yours. You are behind in your air conditioned screens, like pushing them, blowing up a university, it's amazing. But then you meet that, what you have done, that you meet the Frankenstein that you have created. And then people are like, oh, look what they did to us.

You just gave me this image of a dating app from hell where leaders are just sitting there and kind of swiping left.

Invade, destroy puppet government.

And then turn off the phone, go to sleep. So I got, you know, I traveled to the west bank and I mentioned to you offline that I really loved the people there. Just, you know, I've met a bunch of people like that in Eastern Europe, where I grew up. Yeah, like the flamboyant, the big personalities, all of that. I also met a person who's in charge of a refugee camp who was shopping IDF soldier. And I'm not sure the words he said are important as the consequences of the thing that you mentioned, which is the deep hate in his eyes that didn't feel repairable at all. It was pain. It was like a foundation of pain. And on top of that a hatred. And it was like, wow, this is what you kill one person, this is what you create.

Because we have kind of like a front row seat to what's happening. We think we're in it, but we can't really grasp it. I mean, people's like, oh, we're just going to go in, get Hamas out and we're going to get them back in. And also when the people get back in, how do you think they would look at you? What have you created? What have you done? My show in Egypt was all about propaganda. It's all about the use of words. Words are very important. The decapitated babies were not chosen randomly because you see, it plants a certain image in your brain. Imagine if we're going in, what a baby can do. It can smile, cry and poop. That's it. It's absolutely no threat. So when you tell people 40 decapitated babies, they are so animalistic, they didn't see the babies, women raped. Of course, he's enamel to do that. And they would go through that and they would. What was very frustrating about the conversation is the gish galloping. The gish galloping, throwing. You see the distractions, you see what happens. Like, it's like, what's the proportionate response? Can Israel defend itself? Do you condemn Hamas? Does Israel has the right to exist? Decapitated babies, raped women. Why don't the Arab countries take them? Why don't the Muslims kill Muslims? Look what happened in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq. Like, see, see how they kind of distract you? They throw little things at you so you don't know what to do or the honor wall, the UNN antisemitic. October 7, October 7, October 7. And then suddenly you are distracted and pulled into discussing all of these little things and you're not discussing what's happening right now. It is basically stalling, giving them time to do what they do.

So there's, there's some degree to the propaganda, the. So the beheaded babies and all this kind of stuff that is so over the top that it shuts down actual conversation about actual wrongs, war crimes on both sides so it's overstating it to where everyone on social media and everywhere in the press and everywhere is arguing almost become desensitized to actual horrors of death, which are more mundane, they're not so dramatic as beheaded bait.

Yeah. Because people, people, a baby is shot, but decapitated babies, there's like a knife blade that goes into the skin, the trachea, the flesh, the spine. Decapitated like you can just like, he's dead. No, you go in, this is the hate. So much hate. And you know, that's why you have.

Made me laugh at the darkest shit. You're such a beautiful person. Your dark humor is just wonderful.

But, but you see, this happened to Jews before. Remember blood libel? Where did the blood libel come from? It comes from these rumors that Jews suck baby's blood. This is what they did to them.

What's in the cup?

That's a very delicious baby.

Delicious baby.

But this is what you do. You tell people something. And it happened with the Native Americans when they were here, when they went in and they wipe a whole tribe. And Jewish people, one of the minorities that were persecuted and had this used against them for a very long time. And it is terrible and it's terrifying. That's been used again.

So I just did a very lengthy debate on Israel and Palestine. And the really painful thing from that to historians, it was deep, it was thorough, it was fascinating. But in constantly asking about sources of hope or solutions, there was none. There was a sense of, like a really dark sense of it's hopeless from both sides. It's hopeless. So you know, I look to you for a source of, for a source of hope. Do you have, is there any hope here? Solutions, short term, long term?

Obama have kind of summarized this beautifully in his book. He said the reason why the Israeli Palestinian conflict is so chronic is one side have so much power and the other side have absolutely no power. And that's what onebody said. He said like you have Israel that basically don't listen to us because they're supported by people who are bigger than the president, bigger than the administration. They know that they can. I mean like you, like Netanyahu was caught on tape many times saying like, he's basically like belittling Americans. Like we control 80% of the population, we don't care. This has kind of like nonchalant, kind of like we have them and there's nothing really that compels Israel to give up anything. Because at the end of the day, what is compromise? Compromise is like I give something you give something, Israel is not giving anything and they project that on you. So for example, how many times have we heard like oh, Palestinians were giving like 4, 5, 6, 7, 15 chances and they said no to them. And yet when you read the history, that's not the case at all. Like for example in the whole idea about Arafat walked away from Oslo, that didn't happen. And there is an incredible video by what's his name, Joe Scorborough with Misha and they were hosting her father Brzezinski, he was the national security advisor. And Joe Scarborough said, well, Arafat left the Oslo accord and the Palestinians left. And then Brzezinski said, this is embarrassingly shallow. It's like, listen, what happened was there was a lot of catches on the Oslo accord. It was very unfair to the Palestinians. So Arafat said like I agree, but I need to take it to the Arab capitals. And they went to Sharm El Sheikh, they came to Egypt and he and hi Barak went to there and then uh, Barak left because there was election and he lost the Iraq. Sharong came and it was destroyed. This is one of the reason why people. It is. It's kind of like facts don't matter as much as what is the narrative that has been controlled.

But what were the biggest barriers to peace there? Do you think it's fundamentally leaders don't want a two state solution or was there nuanced small differences that if solved could have led to a two state solution?

I mean there was a. Maybe there was a certain point when the Israeli leaders were more open to compromise. But I can't say that because each time Israel gives back land, it has to be after some use of Force. The 1973 war, the Intifa, the first and second, the casualties in Gaza, they never give up land willingly. And because of peace, because if I have that much military, I can do whatever I want. Why would I give up anything? I have that much power. Why would America or China give everything if they're so powerful and especially if they have this kind of open check from the United States. So it is really about what can push Israel to give up something. Because you are so much stronger than me, what could compel you to give up something? And this is why the whole thing about equality, trying to equalize Palestinians and the Israeli state and government, it doesn't make any sense.

So what is the source of hope? You know Jon Stewart, who will talk about it from many angles, somebody you admire, a friend, he proposed a two state solution. Look to the comedians for hope.

Yes, well, everybody's talking about the two state collusion, but Israel has said many times on Netanyahu and Ben is like, there's going to be no state solutions. In the past it's like even, even Naftali Bennett, he came in on the, on, on hard talk, it's like, yeah, maybe in the past we wanted to say solutions, but like, look, every time we give them land, they kill us. So no state solutions. And they are openly saying it. That's perhaps rhetoric, rhetoric that is supported by action. Because look at what they're doing in the west bank that you said they are cutting it, illegal settlement, piecemealing it. So how, if you have an intention at all to give them anything, why would you keep doing this?

And you've called it a bunch of little Gazas. Yes, a nice little picture of what's.

Happening, piecemealing it, dum dum dum. Because what happened in the past four months, the Palestinians have been microdosing on it for a very long time. Little by little, little by little. And we would shout every time when it gets too much and then we shut down. And then little by little. But this time it was hard. It was hard to see the blatant oppression and the word said. Maybe the Hamas Ministry of Health are giving us the bad numbers. Maybe it's Jesus, human shields. And I laugh. There's 13,000 babies killed. Does that mean that there are 13,000 military target hiding in their diapers? Because it is so. It doesn't make any sense to kill that. Maybe it's just like, oh, oops, just out of our heads.

It's hard to know what to do with those numbers. I mean one baby is enough.

But you know what happens when you hear so many numbers, Numbers become numbers and you become so desensitized. And this is why there's a difference between saying 13,000 Palestinian kids did it. Like Mila Kohen, an Israeli baby, 10 month old, she was killed in her crib. And this is what we hear from cnn. We never hear a story about a Palestinian kid. That's why. Thank you for giving me the space for saying the news of the Palestinian children that were killed just for four weeks. Because humans needs context, they need depth. They need like a 3D look at what they can look at. But if you just get numbers, they don't mean anything.

Is there some degree to where both leaderships, Hamas, pa, Palestinian Authority, Israel, all want war, like perpetual war to remain in power?

That's an interesting question, but I mean, let's admit something. The Arab regimes in the area have actually used the problem of Palestine in order to stay in power, in order to get excuses like have this enemy and Israel. The Israeli government has used that too, and maybe the Palestinians. But my problem when going into discussion this is that the two sides are not equal. They're not equal in power, they're not equal in influence, and they're not equal in international supports, especially with the United States. So Palestinians can. People who have made changes in history were the people with power, the people who would have the ability to change things, and the Palestinians cannot really change it. What can they change?

Well, is that true, though, with how much support the Palestinian people have? So just like you said, there's a lot of Arab states that are. They will voice their pro Palestinian position in order to distract from the own corruption and abuses of power in their own countries. But you know, I don't think if you look globally, there's a complete asymmetry of power and public opinion here, maybe in the press, in the West. But if you look globally.

But do they have the same kind of weapons that the Israeli have?

So literally power? No, there's a major asymmetry of literal power.

Some money to their leaders. Does that make any difference? I mean, and also when you say Palestinian Authority, which authority are you talking about? Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, who has been kind of a domesticated, kind of like a puppy for the Palestinian who basically had been an informant for the. On their own people? And this is the thing also, that kind of like really pissed me off when I was hearing the thing about these things like Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. Like, we have Netanyahu on tape confessing that he supports it. Hamas gave him money in order to cause factions between the Palestinians. So it's just like, it doesn't make. You just told me this. You just told me this. You just told me, didn't you support Hamas? It's like. But Hamas is like, what?

I mean, to which degree does Netanyahu represent the Israeli people? Is a real question.

To which point does Trump or Biden represent the American people?

And to which degree does Hamas represent the Palestinian people?

Does none of these represent it? But who have the power in order to make the decisions? It really comes down to that.

Well, who does have the power? You're giving a lot of power to Israel. Yeah, but the Arab League.

What should Hamas do? What do you think which Hamas do?

Continue doing what a charter says, which is trying to destroy Israel. And the role of the Palestinian people is to overthrow Hamas and get a more Moderate leadership probably. And the role of the Israeli people is to vote out this right wing government and elect a more moderate leader so that there's a chance at peace with two moderate leaders.

So before Hamas even got to control 2006 Gaza, there was Erel Sharon in 2000 and we all know what happened. And Ariel Sharon kind of like had came up with this amazing policy of breaking people's kids bones in the intifada. So Hil Baraki was also like, I mean, which one is moderate? I mean, I think is Hamas is a product of what happened. I mean we can, if, if there was no apartheid in, in, in South Africa, there would be no nfc, there will be no Nelson Mandela. If there was no Nazis in, in, in Paris, there would be no French resistance. And I'm not saying that. And, and again, I'm not, I, I wouldn't want to be in a, put in a position to defend Hamas or anybody because you know what that entails. But there are, those are like Hamas again, not defending them. They went into October 7th. What was their. What, what they. Why, why did they did that? Like release our hostages, the people in prison. Because if you talk about people who are kidnapped, Israel kidnaps people every single day. And when they had the first exchange in November 4, Israelis, 400 people, three quarters of them were women and children. Why are those people in prison? There's one in four kids that are imprisoned, that stay in solitary confinement, which is by international law a form of torture. And you're putting kids through that.

Is it possible? So first of all, ceasefire.

Yes.

And longer term, is it possible for Arab states and the United States to get together and with power, through diplomacy, enforce a solution?

It's a very, very ideal solution. But you know and I know that Arab states don't really have the power. All of the powers are in the hands of America.

They have the power. See, I would, I think they have the power.

I don't, maybe they don't want to use it.

Because there's a benefit.

Like.

The dark sense I have is that a lot of people win from the suffering that Palestinians are going through because they can point to that and distract from corruption in their own states. And then obviously Iran can benefit also from the same kind of dynamic distracting from the authoritarian nature of their regime.

Definitely. But what is the core of the problem here? Is it the Arab states using the suffering or the. Actually the suffering itself? And the suffering comes from people being displaced, their homes were taken away. There are 7 million Palestinians in diaspora. 7 million. 7 million went out there. And now they're living in Canada and America and Europe. They had homes there. They cannot go back to 1.7 million people of the people in Gaza don't belong in Gaza. They were pushed from other places. The piecemeal thing of people are being in Germany. I'm going to shift gear a little bit. It's going to be a little bit of fun. There is a book that I bought the rights to and I want to turn it into a movie. And I optioned to write for two months, for two years in March of last year, before October 7th. After October 7th I bought the permanent right. That book is called the Muslim and the Jew and it is written by an author called Ronan Steinke. I read an article about this book in 2016 and I chased that book for rights for seven years. I didn't have that much money but I wanted that book. And that book was translated into English called Anna and Dr. Helmi. And that book tells the incredible story under Nazi Germany where Arabs went in droves to Berlin in 1920s after the First World War in the Weimar Republic and they became doctors and engineers and journalists for two reasons. Number one, they're cheap, very cheap because of the inflation. And two, a lot of the Arab nationalists didn't want to send their kids to England or France because they were the occupiers. And Dr. Helmi was the hero of that. He's an Egyptian doctor and that's why I kind of like I personally kind of connected with him. And he went to medical school, didn't find a place to live. So he lived in the Jewish ghetto like many Arabs. He didn't find a school to work at, a hospital to work in. So he worked in a Jewish hospital. So these are. There was a lot of Arabs who lived with the ghetto and actually the first director of the Berlin mosque with a Jewish convert who converted to Islam and he was a gay activist. I'm telling you this is like a crazy story.

Yeah.

And this is all. This is not a fiction story. This is not. This is actually like a non fiction. It's written actually based on the statement and the documents of the Nazis and Gestapo. Dr. Helmi, he was in this hospital and the Nazis came in and they killed and tortured and beat up the Jewish doctor and they made him the head of his department. Then now he's surrounded by Nazi doctor. They didn't touch him because he was an Arab. There was kind of like a thing between Germany and the Arabs because they wanted to appease to them in order to have kind of a grassroots base in the Arab world where he want to go next. And this is why 1934, 1935, the Racial Laws of Nuremberg, they had a name change. First they were called anti Semitic, then they changed into anti Jewish because also Arabs were Semitic. So they wanted to appease the Arabs. Now what happened, Dr. Helmi, when that happened to him, he would go back to the ghetto and he would see the apartments next to him, the Jewish apartment, become more and more and more flooded with people because they were moving Jews and pushing them and putting them together, pushing them to the side. And each flat, each apartment, instead of one family, it would have three, four, six, seven families. And he was there when at home. And he looked. He was there. This is where the people he grew up with, he lived with. And now he's seeing that kind of discrimination just because he was an Arab. And then he. He started to kind of, like, atone for, like. Because he felt responsible because he wasn't treated the same way. And he started to go and treat Jewish people in their homes because they couldn't go to hospitals. And then one family gave them his daughter. It's like, this is Anna. Save her. He took her, pretended that she's his niece, put a hijab around her, taught her Arabic, called her Nadia, my daughter's name, by the way. And they. And he hid her in plain sight for seven years in front of the Nazis as his nurse. It's an incredible story. And then, not just that he went to prison and then he went out and he formed, with the Arab people that was in prison with him, a network that saves 300 Jews. You see that kind of story. This is the Jews that were living in the Arab world. I'm not saying that the Jews living in the Arab world was living like an incredible life. Of course, as kind of a minority, they did not have the full power of their full advantages of the rule. That's normal. But we had this kind of a relationship before Israel was erected in 1948. And then, of course, everybody looked at Jews at the time as fifth column. And of course, the nationalistic regimes used that. And this is why what Biden said was very dangerous when he said, if there's no Israel, no Jew in the world will feel safe. You are the leader of the free world. You are the president of the United States. Do you mean that you are telling me that the Jews in your country, in the United States of America, are not safe? That is wrong on two levels. Number one, America historically and right now, is More safe to Jews in America, in the world than more than anybody. They are safer than the Jews in Israel. They never had pilgrims or the Holocaust. Like Europe. They live here. A good life, not perfect life, but they are better. Second of all, if you are the president and your telling that a group of people will not feel safe unless there is a different one, you are already feeding into their fifth column. They're like, you're Russian. You come from there. And there is a group of laws in the Russian constitution that says that Russia will protect its citizens everywhere in the world. What happens if the president says, like, oh, you're Russians. You're protected by one country. You don't belong here. This is terrible.

Yeah, you're right. That's actually an indirect threat.

Yes.

You know, even saying Muslims cannot feel safe in America or something like this, that means, like, that's a threat.

What would a Jewish person in Beverly Hills or in Brooklyn feel if he hears that you are already telling people you need to be loyal to Israel? I mean, Israel is a foreign country. I am sorry, but Israel is a foreign country. Israel is a client country that we sponsor, and it should actually be responsible and held accountable for what they do.

You mentioned 1948, the Nakba, but before that, 41, 39, 41 to 45, the Holocaust. What do you do? What do you do with the Holocaust? Like, what. How do you incorporate into the calculus of what's.

Oh, it's terrible.

Of morality that that leads up to the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians from the land? How do you work that?

Well, it is terrible. But like, I mean, what the. The systemic annihilation of Jewish people under the Nazi. That is like. Like a carefully engineered thought for planned. It was terrible. It was like, kind of like the human ingenuity put into, like, something that is very evil. But also it is not just. Not just that happened. We need. We need to remember that Otto Frank, the father of Anna Frank, has his visa, refugee visa, rejected states. There's a lot of people that were rejected by the United States, rejected by other European countries, and then they were pushed into Palestine. So you have to put yourself between, like, under the Arabs. Okay, we're sitting here. Okay, come. And then. All right. You don't have a home or a country anymore. That kills you. I mean, you see, if I'm not an Arab and you give me that kind of piece of, like, terrible human treasure, like, oh, my God, that is terrible. But then I'm an Arab, like, yes, I'm so sorry, but what do I have to do with that. Why is that my fault? The persecution of the Jewish people have started since the 8th and 9th century because they were like, they were first anti Christians. They were like criminal immigrants. They were like conspirators. This is the anti, like people kind of like as if Europe kind of like throw antisemitism on us. You understand that like Henry Ford. Henry Ford is one of the biggest anti. He was the inspiration for Adolf Hitler. This is how anti Semitic Henry Ford was. And you kind of like gloss over that and then suddenly we as Arabs have to pay the price. Why?

Several questions I want to ask there. So. But one, just zooming out. Why do you think hatred of Jews has been such a viral kind of idea throughout human history?

Oh, it's very easy. It all started from Christ. They killed Christ. They killed Christ. They killed Christ. They're the killer of Christ.

That's a very sexy story.

That was so. Yeah, that was. And that stayed for years. That stayed for centuries. I'm sorry, centuries. They're the killer of Christ. And then the Catholic Church did not allow usury, but they would work in usury. So they become rich. Now the people that we hate, that we accuse them of feeling Christ are becoming rich. So that's envy now and that's hatred. I mean, when you talk about ghettos, Ghettos were not just as secluded parts in cities. Sometimes those ghettos were outside the cities. Jews were not even allowed to work a lot of professions. They were not allowed to get into the syndicates of certain professions. So they had to work usually and they got rich. So people hated them more. The First Crusade didn't kill a single Muslim. All they killed were Jews. And when they finally arrived to Jerusalem, all they killed were Jews. They almost annihilated the Jews. Jews. So it was all this. And of course you have the Dark Ages. Who do you need as an enemy? The Jews. Right. They're the killer of Christ. There's nothing bigger than this. And then you fast forward. I mean, one of the things that I found out that was very, very, very, very crazy when Henry Ford imported the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. By the way, in the Arab world, Protocols of the Elder of Zion is so popular and for obvious reasons and for the people who don't know it, it's kind of like a bunch of stories. And basically it's like the Jews saying, we're going to control the world and we're going to do this and we're going to do that and whatever. What people don't know that that is a work of plagiarism. It was plagiarized from a satirical play called Conversation in Hell between Machiavelli and Montezicu. And it is just. And it is kind of like based on one chapter or one scene or something.

It's crazy, but it's crazy how sticky it is.

Yes, that's weird because if I hate you, that's great. But if I have a story to support that hate, that's even better.

But it's one of them, one of the best stories, one of the stickiest stories about hate. It's probably the most effective because, like there, you know, a lot of people's hate other groups of peoples, but that's just like the sexiest story of them all.

Because humans need to concentrate their hate, their insecurities and their shortcomings into one thing that they can practice that, that hate on. If it's a. It's a. It's a person, great. If it's a group, even better.

How do you into this calculus, incorporate that? That group is pretty small. There's 16 million Jews worldwide, and you mentioned. How is that the responsibility of the Arab peoples? You know, everybody should be to blame for not taking in Jews after the, the Holocaust. But you know, the reality of the situation, if we look at the religious slice of this, there's 16, let's say million Jews and there's I don't know how many Muslims, but 1.8 billion.

Yeah.

Do you that difference, that 100x difference, do you incorporate that into the sense that Jews in Israel might feel for, you know, the existential dread that we might, this small group might be destroyed?

Jews in Israel have every right to feel afraid because of everything that they see and everything they've been told, everything. But I would say that the calculus or the numbers doesn't, of course, being small, it is of course a factor, but it is never an excuse in order to take something that's not yours. It's saying like, hey, you have 300 million Americans and we have 52 or 50 susses. Give one state fundraiser. There's too many of them, too many of you. Just give them something. You know, it's like the fact that I have something and you don't and there's too many of me and there is little of you. And then you come in and it's not really Israel against the Arab world or the Muslim world because we have to say we fucked up big time. But it is the Palestinians that are in and they are being subjected to that. So it's not really like the 1.8 billion and this 16 million Jews and the 1.8 billion. If you look at them, some of them don't care. Some of them live into regimes that being oppressed. And those regimes are supported by the United States in order. It's easier for me as an empire to take what I want from this country if I control the dictator and I tell them that his power is linked to my desire to keep him in power. So that's why you have a total disconnect between people in power in the Arab and the Muslim countries and the people themselves.

Can you speak to 1948 because you mentioned taking land that's not yours. Maybe parallels with Native Americans.

Yeah, there was a war.

The Jewish minority fought that war against several Arab states and won that war. How do we incorporate that into the Catholics?

Yeah, well, that's also a misconception, like a misinterpretation of the event. Because it seems that it was like the small. It's kind of like a David and Goliath kind of story. But. And I was always like, how did we. How did we not do that? But in reality, with numbers, I can't pull it up right now, but if you look at the numbers, the number of tanks, the planes, the trained officer, because many of those Jewish fighters came from World War II. They were seasoned fighters, and they actually had more planes, more tanks, more artillery, more pieces of weapon, more of all of the other combined. Because the people that really fought was Egypt. And you have to 1948, many of those Arab countries didn't even have their independence. So they would kind of like send like a cavalry or like a people in horses. But in fact, the whole idea was like, we won against seven nations. The numbers were totally in Israel favor. They were better equipped, they were better trained. They had like more tanks and artillery and airplanes. And they planned better. So yes, they deserve the win because they plan and we did it.

So to you, there was an asymmetry of military power even then. But what do you do with the fact that the war was won? So, like, if you look at the history of the world, there is wars fought over land.

I agree with you. This has been the history of humanity. Humanity was not living peacefully. It's all about like people taking people and killing people, taking their land. But there's two difference here. Mostly usually the conquering power. Like, for example, England, they had England and they conquered you in India. And after the occupation finished, they go back to England, France, Greece, Persia, Egypt. They were like, go in expand and shrink, expand and shrink. It's always been there. What is different here is exactly what happened in Australia and the United States. A group of people came in not just to conquer and take the land, but to completely change, to replace them and get them out or kill them. It was very easy with the Indians because they had smallpox. There was no social media. They did it over 400 years. They had time. The problem is what is happening right now. I agree with you. It might not be that new, but we are there and we're watching it happen.

And so now we have to confront the realities of war and empire and conquering.

And because, you know, what's the problem? We told ourselves we can be better.

Yeah.

After 1948, there was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It means that we are going to be better humans. We're not going to kill and take land, we're not going to displace people, we're not going to take people for that. There's now laws, there's international law, there's international court of justice, and now Israel is giving the middle finger to all of them.

So isn't in some fundamental way this whole thing that we're talking about is us as a civilization on social media, in articles and books, in newspapers, we're just trying to figure out who are we as a people.

I think the shock came from the fact that we thought that we as humanity have evolved and now we are. What have actually changed is that we became more advanced in effectively eradicating a group of people because of the technology that we have. And the fact that we can do that under the eyes and ears of all the world. And we are watching it under our phone. We have a window. We have a window to the war. You know, 1945, people didn't know what was happening in Japan. Well, we hear about it in the radio, like, oh, today our forces came in and they launched. We don't know, we heard it. We maybe we saw pictures after that and it's quite edited, but now we see it, we're into it and it is so much for our, for our psyche and we can't get it. And it's like. And the Arabs say, like, guys, you told us we came to the west because we were told that we were equal. You know, the Universal Declaration of. Right. One of the co authors, his name is Stefan Hassel, he's a Jew, he is a survivor of the Holocaust. And you know what happened to him? He died, by the way, a couple of years ago. But he before he died. He was canceled by so many people and he was called anti Semitic because he joined the BDS movement and he spoke about Palestine. That is the author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we value so much and we think that that would define our humanity. But then we go in and we are shocked. It's like maybe we were sold something. Maybe that was false.

Advertisement you shared a tweet by an account called awesome Jew. It reads Islamo Nazi comedian Basam Yousef comedian on quotes, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, of course. Because I'm not funny.

So Islamo Nazi comedian Basam Yousef is now denying. Dr. I love that you retweet like this like twice. Yeah, I guess, suppose because it's advertising some upcoming dates. He's now denying October 7th massacre. The Muslim radical Basim Youssef is notorious for his radical radical said twice for his radical hatred of Jews in Israel. In a recent clip he claims that the atrocities committed on October 7th are fabricated. We're looking for all information regarding any of his upcoming shows as well as the venues which host the scumbag where Jews feel safe around this. Nazi. Nazi.

Yeah.

I've never. This is my first time interviewing a Nazi.

It's the first time I actually get called a Nazi. First time, first time I have been called so many things in Egypt. So in Egypt I was called a CIA operative, a Mossad spy, secret Muslim Brotherhood, a secret Jew, secret Jew. There was also an article that was published about me in the state run media saying in details how Basim has been recruited by CIA agents using Jon Stewart in order to use satire to bring down the country. I was a freemason, an infidel, a member of the Knights of the Temple, something like that. And there is actually people, the Muslim Brotherhood on their show they would say like he is actually an Israeli and they have forged an Egyptian idea for him to come. So it's kind of like when I get. I said I had, I left all of that behind and I come here, it's like boom. Anti Semitic Nazi. Damn. I mean I really covered everything. I don't know what else. I mean I think I have. It's kind of like I'm collecting PhDs, I'm just like getting like all of these credits.

How do you deal with that? How do you deal with the attacks? I mean this goes back to the decision to do the interview with Piers Morgan. Like how, how do you like psychologically.

Through all of it, these kind of attacks? At the beginning it's fun, but when they evolve into something else. So, for example, I was like laughing of all of the stuff about calling me this, calling me that. But then when people would come and. And thread the theater, because it's not the people who are making those accusations that would come to you. It's the people that will hear and see those accusations and act on it. It. And there's always the fear of, like. I mean, we have in the airborne a lot of things that somebody would hear something about someone else and go kill him and whatever, like anybody else. So there's this. But somehow I want to make fun of it and it is to be called an Islam. It must been the funniest thing ever, because Islam on Nazi. Wow. How did you. How did you and a radical Muslim me? A lot of Islamists hate me. They call me a secular infidel. So it's kind of like, who am I? Maybe I have an identity crisis and I need the people to tell me who I am.

Let's go to the beginning. Let's go to your childhood. You grew up in Egypt. Cairo, Egypt. Well, let's figure out how you came to be who you are.

How do you become an Islamo Nazi?

Yeah, exactly. A long journey. I do like the swastika tattoo on your ass, which I didn't.

How did you see my.

You know, what you did.

I know I did.

Was very inappropriate. You're also obviously a sexual harasser of me.

Is this is like a me too?

Yes.

This is like 2020. Someone will come off.

It's like, okay, flip it. This is your me too moment. All right, so, Cairo, what's a defining memory, positive or negative, from your childhood?

My memory in general was cool. It was cool. I went to a Catholic school for primary school, elementary. And by the time I'm done, there was kind of like a start of a decline into the public education. And my parents, they're like middle class working officials. My dad was a judge, my mom was a business professor. And they were one of the people. They didn't have that much luxury. My dad drove a regular car, a Fiat, which is the equivalent for the Lada in Russia.

Thank you for speaking to the audience. Would that be a good car?

No, no, it's kind of like. Kind of like the minimum. My dad was not like a man of showing off. Whatever money they would do, they would put it for us Education, give everything to their kids. This is kind of like a very, very typical mentality. And I'm sure it's in many cultures, but like we grew up with this, like Everything that we have is left for kids. So they would put us into education. So middle school, that was the big. 1986 was the beginning of the explosion of, like, international schools, private schools. And these schools were relatively expensive. Of course, now with today's currency, it's ridiculous, but at that time it was very expensive. So I went to that school, and from there was this moment. It was like, you feel less right away. I mean, of course, there's the regular bullying and stuff, but it's not that. It's kind of like you always feel less. You don't have that much of purchasing power that can allow you to go to the same outings or travel with them. And even how you dress, it will be modest compared to them. So I was always an outsider. I was. And I compensated with that by two things, being good at school and being good at sports. So I was not like the typical nerd who was just like that. I was like. I was playing football, basketball, cratering field, and I was like, one of the people would like to have me on their team. So I wasn't like, kind of like, ah, he's a nerd. Get him away. But I never had a girlfriend. I never had any kind of like, was not like, I was not boyfriend material. So that's kind of like it. It leaves remnants in you that you're not good enough.

But psychologically, you're always like. When you're by yourself, you felt like an outsider.

Yes, all the time. And that's why it kind of like, I'm more of a loner. I don't have a lot of what you call friends. I have acquaintances, people that I do stuff with, but I don't have, like, the people that I tell them everything when I went to medical school. Now medical school is a different animal. Medical school is where all of the people from the public schools go. Public schools are very like. They are not. They don't have, like. They don't have English language as, like, a strong partner, but they are brilliant people. So because they would mostly study in Arabic, but they are brilliant and they are very, very, very smart, very sharp. But then I go there. Now I am the sissy boy from the private school that comes into medical school. Now I'm an outsider again, and I go into residency and I pick up salsa. So now I'm a salsa teacher while being a cardiothoracic surgery resident. And I'm an outsider for the third time because in salsa, I'm kind of like the respectful doctor. And in resident, I'm the guy who is just dancing, so. And everything. Of course, as a radical resident, you will mess up a lot.

Yeah.

So they would always like, oh, because you're a dancer. Oh, because you don't care about medicine. You just, like, want to go there and dance with women. Which is true.

Yeah.

But. And so all of my life, I felt that I'm an outsider. I'm not part of the team. I'm not part of the core group. So. And I have a story that you would love. I. Right before my residency, I was so much into salsa, so I had all of the money. And then you saved that. And I was working summers and I was doing extra jobs, and I took that money and I went to Miami in order to. To learn rueda de casino, which is the Cuban kind of like circle salsa kind of thing. And I. And I went there in the summer of 2001, and my return ticket was 9 12, 2001.

The universe has a sense of humor, I gotta tell you.

No, no. Night 9 12. I was supposed to be on a plane coming back to Egypt. What happens? Thank God I ran out of money. Ten days before that. It was like, all right, I changed my ticket and I came back 9 11. I'm kind of like, my mom, wake up, wake up. What? What? It's like. And I see like the 2 Tower 4, and it was like, I'm almost like, oh, you're here, you're here, you're here. That. And I was like, fe. I was like, I should. I could have been in Guantanamo right now. Yeah.

Flying at 912.

And. But by the way, I was in Miami. They were, they. When they went to the, the flying school in Miami. So, I mean, I, I had, I. I had like 911 written all over my face.

You'd be all over the news.

And my wife's like, what? He went there to dance salsa. I didn't know that salsa is like a name for Harris.

Why salsa? Why. Why did that attract you? And what, like, can you explain what salsa is? So I mentioned to you offline that I've been doing a little bit of tango, trying to learn it.

Yeah, like, you know, samba, salsa, meringue. It's kind of like Latin dances. And it's like, you know, I don't know how you describe salsa. Couple dance, one Latin beat. And I did it because I once I. And I talk about that, about my. In my Arabic stand up comedy, not the English. I talk about, like, how I was, you know, I didn't have, like, really, like, A great, like social life. And I, my friends went there one day and then. And I go into a place which go. It was called El Ghetto Negro. No, no, it was called Big Fat Black Pussycat. And then I think they, they, they thought it will be like racist or something though, so it should change it to El get to Negro. Anyway, so.

Great, great. I know, Great decision.

I know. So I went there. Damn music and women and my doctor, a doctor dancing salsa. That is a chick magnet.

Yeah.

100. We know. We do. You know, we do everything for, for that. All of humanity, even power, even money. All the wars.

We've been talking about women, at the.

End of the day, the approval from the other sex. We are, we are babies. We, we are terrible people.

Yeah.

So of course, like, I mean that was like, that was like great. But then I as, as a nerd, I went in so hard and now I became a salsa teacher. Yeah. And I earned more money from salsa more than I did as a doctor.

I didn't know this part of you that's hilarious.

I know. I was, I was making, I was making killing amount of money. Like huge amount of money. And I, I was just like, you know, I would go finish my, my, my shift and I go to the salsa class. And sometimes I would have like 70 people in my salsa class. Oh, wow. I had like the biggest salsa class in Egypt in the beginning of 2000. And it was fantastic. And it was an outlet because you go there and there's the shifts and people dying. Damn. And they go, salsa.

You must have been good.

I was okay. I was cool. I was fun. There were people better than me. But I have a thing about teaching. I like teaching people.

So you mentioned heart surgery. So what, what motivated you to become a doctor?

It was a choice of exclusion. I mean, there's nothing else you can do with these high grades other than doctor in engineering. I hate math. So go be above. This is the Middle East. What do you expect? It's either like in my joke, in my show, I said it can be one of three things in the Middle East. A doctor, an engineer, or a disappointment. That is the choices that you have. So years after, I'm at this point.

You're damn good at it, though. That's a hard path though.

Yeah.

And it's. It's a fascinating one.

Can I tell you something?

Yes.

That actually I was thinking about why did I actually go into medicine and why did I always choose the hardest thing, Although I didn't love it. And I have to tell you, I Had an epiphany only two weeks ago. And I don't know if that's actually related or not. You know, remember when I told you I went to this school and I didn't have that much money, and I didn't have the luxury of time or money to be with those people and do what they do? So by the time I finished school and everybody was going to university, all. Everybody in my school went to the auc, the American University in Cairo, of course, private, like, American education. Party time. Like, I mean, of course they're brilliant and everything, but they have. Yeah, they have a different, you know, social life. And part of me now, I. I kind of, like. I realized that just, like, very, very recently, maybe I went to the hardest school ever. So I don't have space to use other than studying, because if I have that much space, what I'm going to do with it, I don't have that much freedom. I don't have that much money. I'm not. I can't compete with those people going out. So maybe I need a solid excuse that I'm in a place where I don't have that much of a spare time.

Is it also possible. I like how this is a therapy session where we're psychoanalyzing it. Is it also possible that you always just pick the hardest thing you could possibly do? Maybe, but maybe that's the Piers Morgan thing, too. Like what?

Maybe, but, like, when I left Egypt and I came here, I still had the choice to go back to medicine. Sure. But I hated it. I hated medicine. Traumatized me. The amount of, like, you give up. You know, my. My brother in Egypt, he had a daughter. She's a brilliant basketball player. She is in the national team. Amazing. I used to play basketball also in the Egyptian League, but I never. I was kind of like. My favorite position in the court was the bench. And I was not as good as her, but. But she. And then. And then he. It was time for her to go into. Into college. And he. He didn't talk to me for six weeks. I said, tamir, what's happening to Farida? Which college? Like, I didn't want to tell you. She went into medicine. I thought, what medicine? Why did he do. Because he knows how I hated it. I was traumatized. And I said, like, dude, she's a basketball player. Make her go, like, to an easy school. So that's kind of.

I still did it. You still did it?

I still did it. But I don't know, is it because of the difficulty or Because. Because of what I told you, maybe I needed something maybe because I was not very confident in my social life. So I needed a distraction not to be. To have that much of a social life.

Oh, wow.

Okay. You understand?

Yeah. Huh.

It's kind of loud. Because I will always have an excuse. I'm studying, I have something, I have exams and I don't know, I kind of like self sabotaged my own thing because I couldn't compete with, with those people on the outing and the money and whatever. So I need an excuse to be like, oh, he's a doctor, he's studying.

At least in your own mind you couldn't compete.

Yeah, yeah. I always felt as less because I mean, I didn't have any girlfriends in school. I had very late in life and everything to me came to life. So I always felt even stand up comedy, it came very late to me in life. So I always feel that I'm not good enough. I feel that I didn't spend the time to build the foundation that other comedians do. So I always feel that I am too lucky. I always feel that this is a fleeting thing. And when I went, had the height and the fall in Egypt when I was like the top of everything, I was so famous and then everything was taken away from me. That's like, ah, you see, I told you that happens when you don't build foundation, you fall. So I always feel that I, that I am not good enough or if I am in a position where people think I am deep inside, I am not. Do you know that I have a speech impediment that I was not meant to be a TV presenter? I have an. In Arabic it's very obvious. I cannot roll my Rs. I cannot say I cannot roll it. So in Arabic, like Spanish, it's very obvious. So when I did my first video on the Internet that made me famous. And then I got my television deal back there in Egypt, my partner at the time, he took the video and he went to a producer. I said like, are you giving me a guy with a lisp? That's why when I came on television, I was the first ever guy with a lisp. I had two things going for me, the lisp and the big nose. And I was always bullied for these two all the time. So I always felt less.

See, but that's the foundation of like creating a great person.

Yeah. Because if you're pretty, you don't need to do much.

I probably wouldn't recommend it, but it is, it is true that so if.

You are pretty, do some disfigurement.

Find the flaws and, and be extremely self critical about them. So you saw Jon Stewart on TV for the first time in, in 2003, I believe. How did that change your life?

I was in a gym and I was running on the treadmill and at that time CNN was coming out for, on like on cable and I was watching and there is this studio, I don't know what it is. So I put the, the earphones on and I started watching and I was so taken by this that I stopped the treadmill and I just like stood for the 20 minutes like this on the treadmills and then I left and I just like standing there, I didn't know what he was saying. I didn't understand what is Democrats, what is Republicans, what is. What the. Those names that he's saying. What is Fox News? I don't understand. But I was fascinated. There was something, you know, when you don't understand the music but you get the rhythm. It was that.

I wonder what that is that you saw. It's like the timing of the humor. I mean there is. John Stewart is one of a kind. His biting criticism of power, I would say, and also ability to highlight the absurdity of it all.

But you understand. I didn't understand any of that, but I didn't understand any of the references. But it is the, the rhythm. Yeah, the rhythm. You know sometimes when you even see like a comedy that is, that's a language you don't understand, but there's a rhythm. There's something, there's something in the music. There's some. So there's something with the videos and the pictures and he, and the face and people reacting. Yeah, what is this? What is this? Yeah, what is this? And we had the, the global edition. So I went to the YouTube and I just like started to kind of like watch every single episode that I can. I said like do you think we can have this in Egypt? I said ah, never. And then 2011, like I had a, a friend of mine who was also a YouTube partner. It was something new at the time. He said like, let's do something on the Internet. Let's do something. I said like, I want to do John Stewart. It's like do Ray William Johnson. John Stewart will not work. It's like, ah, I want to know John Stella.

So that was in there?

Yeah, it was in there. And, and, and I, and I, and I did it and worked.

Can you talk about 2011? I mean. Yeah, what, what is the Arab Spring, what is it? People here in America, you know, depend.

Depends on which side something happened or what. Depends. Depends which side of, of the equation you are. Because for a lot of people it's a conspiracy. It's American made. It is the Muslim Brotherhood, it's the Islamist, it is Israel. It is everything else other than people. Oh, but it's a pure revolution. It's a pure. I think we put too much weight on conspiracies. I think it is normal human behavior that then get maybe used or abused or taken advantage of by other powers and then the conspiracy starts. But at the time, the Arab Spring didn't start in Egypt, it starts in Tunisia. Bouaziza, a fruit vendor blew like burned himself up like the American soldiers who did that a few days ago. And that kind of sparked protests in Tunisia. And Ben Ali was a dictator in Tunisia for about like 20 years and they removed him. So suddenly it was kind of like a domino effect. So. And then Egypt started and, and it just took 18 days. And you know, people hindsight is 2020 saying, said like, you know, just Mubarak became like a burden on the military because the military are the real rulers of the country. You might have a president that kind of like have certain powers, but at the end of the day, when the military sees that a certain president is like too much of a burden, too much of like a, you know, so like they cut him off.

And Mubarak is the leader of Egypt at the time.

He was there for 30 years.

30 years. By the way, speaking of which, because it was a joke in Mark Twain speech, I got teary eyed just watching that. That was great. You're like, great, like what you did with Mark Twain Awards for Jon Stewart.

It's great.

I mean your comedy is great in general and I wanted to go to your show. I definitely will. But that's a, that's like a little stroll on the complete tangent of just the masterful introduction and celebration of Jon Stewart. Anyway, Mubarak.

Yeah. So I, it's the joke that I say also like, Mubarak had like, was a president for 30 years. Like, oh my God, he had a president for 30. It's like, it's the Middle East. It's a very short first term. It's like, it's like we're still warming up, baby.

Warming up.

And I thought we need to plan ahead. We need to plan our, our, our, our vacations, our careers, our jail time. It's just like we need to, it's great.

So it's true.

So we had kind of like the shortest, nicest revolution. 18 days. Yeah. And we thought, oh, 18 days. We can change the country in 18 days. So. But of course, we were naive and we had this kind of hope. So Mubarak was removed. There was an interim period by the military took it for one year. Then they did elections. Muslim Brotherhood came to power. They stayed for one year, and then the military removed them. And in these three years, my show started. It started by kind of like a YouTube video.

It became famous overnight.

Overnight, five to six videos, boom, went out. And at that time, I was waiting to get my clearance to go to Cleveland. I was accepted in a fellowship as a pediatric heart surgery in a hospital in Cleveland. And I said, like, all right, I'm just gonna do a couple of videos. Maybe I'm going to put it in the Internet. And maybe after a year or two, after I come back from the fellowship, somebody will come, hey, why don't you write a show that looks like John Stewart? That was my main. Took five weeks. I had my first contract television and overnight, the exposure. And over A the next two, three years, I had 30 to 4 million people watch. 30 to 40 million people watching every episode. A lot of this like, wow, that's too much. That is terrifying. Yeah. Because it means that there are 30 million people who have an opinion about you.

Yeah. You said there's a lot of aspects of that sudden fame that were just toxic.

It's toxic. It's unnatural. It's unnatural. When people started to recognize me in the street and take pictures, I was awkward. It's like, why do you want to have a picture with me? Why? Why? Is it because I didn't feel that I'm worthy enough to be, like, a reward for someone to have a picture? And I didn't understand it. I was actually. I was kind of an ass sometimes because people thought it was arrogance. No, it was confusion. And I remember, like, my director and my producers and people, they always saw me in a very bad mood. It's like, why are you. Why are you not enjoying this? It's like, because this is not natural. This is not natural. This adoration, this love, and this have to end somehow. And it did. Because at a certain point, you are human. And people kind of. The adoration and the fun and the love comes because they see you saying stuff because you do your job. Basically, political satire is basically us making fun of politicians in the media. And a lot of people have a lot of really strong opinions about politicians in the media. So we came that we articulate that and we give it to them and we make them laugh. Laugh. So for them we made a great job. So why don't you do more? But you are limited and at a certain time you can't. And at a certain time you're afraid because we're humans, because you're afraid about like if I continue speaking up, not like something will happen to me, I'm kind of like maybe have some protection because I'm have, I'm vocal. People see me. But what the people around you and we, I've seen that. So that's why at a certain point that's it.

I can, I mean there's a lot of things to say there. But one of the difficult things of fame in your situation is you're not just having fun, you're criticizing power.

Yeah. And, and, and, and it is loved by the people. But it comes with a price. Because at a certain price, if the power is too strong and you're not into a situation or aura or a, or a system that allows that, that gives you that kind of safety.

So what happened?

What happened? I was so when. So the height of my fame, when the Muslim Brothers were Brotherhood was in power. And at that time they had their media and I had one show, I had like one hour per week and they had five channels, 24, seven. And they were like, you know, Jon Stewart said it beautifully. One, it's like we say shit and you say shit and we just say shit better than, than you. This is exactly what Johnston was like. We're just better, we're just better at saying shit back at you. So basically I had one hour and they had like the five things that they were like, you know, they're calling me all kinds of names, not just me, like all their enemies, you know, and then I just had one hour and I would kind of like annihilate them in one hour a week. So at a certain point they would even like kind of be side with the army against the kind of the liberal sectors, whatever you call it. And at a certain point the army kind of like flipped everybody. What do you mean? Like kind of like. Yeah, they removed the Muslim Brotherhood. They came to power and we, I have to say, I admit it, I supported that in the beginning because I had daily threats. I was actually interrogated and arrested under the Muslim Brotherhood. I was in an interrogation for six hours and they were asking me all day my jokes that, and I use that in my stand up comedy describing exactly what happened in six hours. And it is so Funny.

Okay, well, it's hilarious. But what slowed out you were interrogated.

By the, the general prosecutor. The general prosecutor. And it was based because of complaints by the officials in the government, because in order to general prosecutor to do it, it has to have a high up mandate to bring that person to questioning.

So they went to kind of official channels.

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So it's all.

Yeah, it was official. It was legal.

Legal, Very legal.

So I went there and, and, and I, and I asked and it's kind of like a bunch of like insulting Islam, insulting president, spreading false rumors. And I went there and I, and it was funny because I go into the building where there's police officers and their judges and all of them are big fans of the show. And some of them were taking pictures of me. And then I'm sitting there and it was the most ridiculous interview ever because he was asking me about my jokes. It's like, what did you mean by this joke? And it's like, nothing. It was there for six hours.

He's just reading.

He was reading my joke and he's reading the jokes and the junior judge is sitting there like cracking up. It's like, I remember that.

Guys, that's dark.

It's kind of like. And I'm laughing, but in the same time it's like the whole situation is ridiculous. But then at the end I was released on bail. So I went back to my show and I make fun of that. And you have to be honest, the Muslim Brotherhood were in power, but Egypt were like right out of the revolution for there was kind of like an equal spread of power between the people. There was not like someone who would come in and just like the Muslim Brotherhood didn't have that power yet, but they were kind of, people saw that they were moving towards that and then the tension rose and then there was like a kind of a confrontation between them and the army. And then a lot of people were killed in the streets. It was terrible massacre. And then suddenly I am blamed for all of that. It's like you made fun of us so now it made it easier for people to kill us. Like, dude, come on, you're doing that to me too. I just did it better than you. And the fact that you sided with the same people that flipped against you, that's not my fault.

Did you criticize the army at all?

Yeah. So after that show, I did like one episode against the army and I was canceled the next day. And then I went to another channel, did 16 episodes in a different season. And it Was I was walking on eggshells. And then that was canceled again. And then my, the production company that was doing my show that we severed ties because we didn't have the show. They had their offices raided that have people like having death threats. So at the but woke up one day, 11th of November 2014 and my lawyer said leave the country right now. There is this legal case that they kind of like they're coming for you. But I said it was an arbitration case and I lost against the channel that basically canceled me. And I said but there's no jail time in arbitration. It's like, yeah, tell that to the judges. Leave. So I jumped on a plane. The verdict was 12 noon 11th November 5th afternoon I was on a plane left Egypt and I never came back.

Since then was there a worry of non legal things like assassination?

I can tell you something. I was so stressed because of the show, because of everything. I sometimes I would wake up in the morning and I hope that like bullet will come and finish everything because I was so stressed. It's like I would love because I'm too much of a chicken to kill myself. So I would like rather to have someone else do it for me. So I was under so much pressure and I remember the day that my show was canceled indefinitely the second time under the army. And I was like I don't have to worry about what kind of script I have to write next week because this is, you know, remember when you asked me about like that tweet. But like all of those accusations doesn't bother me. Infidel spy, secret Jew, Zionist slam on that. That's what is really, what really leaves a mark is the criticism to your craft and your work. So you're not funny goes deeper.

Yeah. Certain things get you better than others. Especially if you have like a secret suspicion that you are like maybe not.

Funny, maybe I'm not because I was put into that. It's like because that toasts your insecurities. Like I know but you shouldn't say it out loud.

You shouldn't say the truth out loud. But what about the weight of the responsibility of speaking truth to power? So like walking on eggshells, like what did that feel like?

Well after the Muslim Brotherhood were removed, you have to understand like when the military coup happened, it was a very popular coup. Like people loved the army in Egypt the army is more sacred than the religion. People love the army, but the army can go wrong. So me going against the army was. I mean the Muslim Brotherhood was not very popular. They were popular for their own basis, but people accepted the fact that, like, we make fun of them, but Sisi, at that time, he was a God. And I used to go to this high class club called Gizira Club. And this is basically kind of like the kind of upper middle class, upper class kind of people. And during that year of the Muslim Brotherhood, I was the most popular ever. People come? Yeah. When the military came in, people were walking to me, like, pointing their fingers, like, don't speak about cc. Don't speak about the army. We love you now, but don't. You don't like that. So I called John Steers. I was like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. And at that time, all of the channels were closed down, all of the independent. I was the only one left because it was difficult for them to get rid of me very quickly because I was too popular. It was kind of like piecemealing, kind of like. And I remember, like, I don't know what to do. He said, like, you don't have to do anything, just your safety comes first. And said, but I can't. I mean, I've been doing that for two years and I cannot just like say, bye, bye, guys. I have a responsibility, I have a team, I have people working for me. And I also, I cannot just like disappear. And he said the most interesting thing ever and say, if you're afraid of something, make fun of about the fact that you're afraid of it instead of talking about that something. Brilliant. Yeah. So there was like a whole episode that we did not even mention. Cece. We did not even mention it, but the videos did all the thing. And the whole episode was me trying to avoid talking to about him and that, that how the comedy was created. The fact that I don't want to be here. And then, I don't know. So he said, like, if you will be surprised how people can relate to that, because there was a lot of kind of like, oh, we love him, but we feel we cannot speak. So just by doing this simple thing about mirroring the society, that goes a long way. And I kind of tried to do what I can under the military. I mean, they. They came up with a machine that treats AIDS and hepatitis C virus. And basically every single. And I went to town with that because people think it doesn't really have to go in to go to the bigger post. Like, you're an asshole. No, you talk about their propaganda, you talk about what they want people to perceive them at and it's a failure. And for that, that kind of hit them even more. Because what do authoritarian figures do? They work on two things, fear and propaganda. And from that it gets the respect. So when you go into their propaganda and expose them, they have nothing else.

That's brilliant. So, like, you are walking on eggshells, but you're doing it masterfully, that you're revealing sort of the. The flaws in the propaganda, the absurdity of the propaganda in so doing or criticizing them.

And this is why comedy is very specific. Because people say, you were not as hard on him as you were in a Muslim. I was like, yes, because on the Muslim Brotherhood, we were like, just like, saying for each other.

Yeah.

But now the. The ceiling was like here. So it's kind of like, how can you do something from here?

Yeah, exactly. That's the art form.

Yeah.

In the. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, the. A lot of the criticism came from, like, children stories and.

And children's cartoons, double meaning, doubling window stuff that means other stuff. That is the brilliance.

But everyone knows. Everyone knows because you are like putting a mirror. You're marrying the society. It's fascinating.

And that's why I was canceled twice.

And that is a scary one. The army. You see that in Ukraine, everybody supports the army. That's why Zelensky getting ready, getting rid of the head of the army was a big, big deal. It's a really dangerous thing because everyone support and everyone's afraid to say anything negative about the army, especially during war in that case, and in this case, maybe there's civil war, that kind of thing.

But think about it. Actually, an army during peace is much more dangerous, because think about it. I don't really have an enemy to fight, but I have all of this power, all of this tank. Why does this actor have more money than me? Yeah, I'm protecting him. Why does this businessman think that he can get on his private plane and go to Paris? And why I'm here sitting, like, not having all of these things. So. And there's a lot of time on your hand because your job is to go fight when you don't go fight. And we. When you have the lack of. That's why. That's one of the things I love the United States about, is the fact that the army cannot really get power. But they kind of like, the army is. The power is actually in the military industrial complex, which is a different issue. Yeah, it's kind of like a different kind of issue. But if you have all of that power, like, why Am I sitting on around just like playing guard for you guys?

That's why Iran is terrifying, because you have this military that it just becomes a police force that turns against its own people.

Yeah.

So you're, You're. You're a famous guy talking shit in the middle of all that.

Yeah. And I, when I left, I went through a very dark side. Dark. Dark. Because all of the insecurities, all of the stuff that had been like, working on my head now came to life. And now I'm in America and I'm a nobody. I'm a nobody. And now it's like, I have to do something. I have to earn some money. So I started to stand up comedy five years ago, and I sucked because it was my second language and it was new. And now I would go to these comedy clubs with, like, kids on 21, 22 people. And then I'm there with the family to support that. I'm going there to doing it for 15, 20. And I was bad.

You're bombing.

Bombing big time.

Eating.

Eating big time. Dying up there big time. And I would go back home and I would cry. And then what made it worse is sometimes, like, a fan, like, not a fan. A bunch of fans from Egypt. Oh, basic music. They come. That kind of, like, face of adoration.

They.

That goes. And I could see it in the face. I think he's going to drive an Uber in a couple of weeks. That's that kind of pressure. And I would go and I would cry and I. And then the central. Oh, you left. You. You. You gave up. You were a sellout. You're a coward. Why don't you speak from abroad? You're. You're safe now. Like, I don't. I already spoke. I don't want to be. Because I don't want to be an activist. I was doing that for comedy when it was good for everybody. But now they want me to go into YouTube and just like, throw rocks from outside. And, you know, I understand. I have family there. And it was this kind of, like, thing like that I am being attacked for not doing what I should do in their face and attacked for not being funny, not doing good, being. And now I'm a feeling like maybe it was wrong and I was. I didn't know. I really. It was so traumatic that I don't know actually how I went through these years. And I blocked so many details from my brain because I have been using this technique for a while now that I have been erasing a lot of my. There is a lot of memory, gaps in my brain. And I'm trying to suppress it because it was very, very, very traumatic. And a lot of people told me, you have to go to therapy, but I don't know, I'm worried to open the floodgates. And I'm thinking as if, as I'm functional and I'm not killing anybody, I'm okay.

I think. Elon tweeted, never went to therapy. It's going to be on my headstone.

Yeah.

You'Re our best buds. Okay. I mean, that is like, terrifyingly difficult to like, after being a surgeon, after being a superstar, super famous, going to eat at local tiny clubs in the United States. I mean, eating period.

Yeah.

Like, bombing is really, really, really difficult. Really difficult for 20 year olds.

Imagine when you're 45, 46, and then people like, is this his midlife crisis? What is this? I went through a lot of pain and a lot of doubts and it was terrible.

I mean, how did you survive? I know you bought most of it, but what gave you strength through all that?

Because I didn't have any other choice because I started that. And the only reason that I could is to continue. I don't know what else to do. I don't want to go back to medicine. I don't want to go. I don't want to do that. And I don't know. And bit by bit, bit by bit, I started to kind of like, be better, be better, be better. And I was, at a certain time a year ago, a year ago, this is where I started to kind of like, hone the craft and kind of sell more tickets and sometimes even sell out some shows and sometimes sell a theater. So, like, it was going and the money was flowing and it was good. And then I was like, why didn't I. I wanted faster, I wanted more. I want it now. I wanted, I want Netflix deal and whatever. And then the Piers Morgan thing happened and then I blew up and then suddenly I'm selling out everywhere. It's like, ah, if those people came, if that, that the war happened two years ago, I will not be ready. So now they come to the show. And by the way, my show had nothing to do with October 7th. My show is my thing that I've been crafting and working on. You know how difficult it is to do the first hour, the hour that I've been working on for five years. And it's all my personal story, all about, like, what happened to me in Egypt, Me as an immigrant coming here to the United States, finding Trump as A president. Finding myself in the middle of a gun rally. Finding myself in the middle of a bombing. Kind of like, like talking about how I got my citizenship. It's like funny stories about, like my origin story. So they come in and they expect me October 7th and all. She's my personal story. But it's good and it kills and they love it. It's like, if that, if that kind of like blew up in America, happened to me two, three years ago, I would not have people who come and be. So there's a point.

I gotta say, the timing of October 7th is very suspicious.

Oh, my God, please don't say that.

I'm just asking questions.

I'm telling you. One of the funniest thing, a guy, I was in Dubai and like a TV anchor came to me. Basim Youssef. He flourishes during revolutions and war. It's like, whoa, what, dude, you're making me sound like a bad omen. A very bad omen.

Yeah, you, Hamas and Bibi together orchestrated all of this.

Oh, my God, that's the trilogy.

You guys should go on the road together. Telling you that phone call is coming.

Yeah, but Thomas has to open.

And they would really bomb, right?

That would really bomb.

I love dark humor. You do a show, like you were saying, in English and in Arabic, so. And the story is very different.

Totally different. Two different stories.

I would love to. Just the language difference, because it's. The music of the language is also different. So like, what, what's. How can you convert it into words? But what's. What's the difference in the, in the music of the languages?

I'll tell you, because I thought about that a lot.

All right, all right.

So when I was doing the English first. Yeah, I was. I actually had good jokes, but I was missing the delivery because the cadence and the music and the rhythm is different. The way that an English speaking American member of audience will receive it, it will be different than how I receive it. The energy, everything's different. So when I kind of like got it, I didn't know how to switch back to Arabic.

Oh, wow. Yeah, fascinating.

Because here's the thing with English stand up comedy, English, you have a huge library. You have like a legacy. You have like years and years and years and years of people doing comedy. But in Arabic, it's a very new, very new to us. And most of the Arabic standup comedy, especially in Egypt, is very tamed. This is kind of like imagine the stand up comedy scene in America, 1960s, before Lenny Bruce.

So no swearing, conservative Swearing, nothing conservative.

Everything kind of like. Yeah, it's kind of like very. So I didn't know what to do with Arabic, so I broke the barriers. I became Danny Bruce, I became George Khan. So I went in and I went and I changed the whole thing.

Seven words. You're not allowed to say whatever.

For me, 15 words. Arabic is a very rich language.

Yeah.

So when I did. Here's the difference between the Arabic and the English show. The English show, surprise, surprise, is a unifying language, even for a group of Arabs. So if I give the same exact show to the same 1000 audience members in the same theater, and they're the same people, same makeup of like Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian, Saudis, English will be a unifying language. Arabic is a dividing language because you have 22 dialects and the dialects are vastly different. And like, maybe Egyptians understand a little bit of Lebanese, but not that much. But the references, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, totally different animal that's like a totally different language. Saudi, Emirati, Kuwaiti, totally different people understand the Egyptian dialect because it's the dialect of most of the artwork and the movies. But the reference in the everyday street talk might not be understood by them. So now I have to go in and talk to all of these dialects together. So I formed my big, big part of my show is like, what are you guys expecting of this? This is what this is. We gonna. When I go do profanity and you're gonna like it. This is the problem with the show as a dialect. And I construct all of these sentences formed of so different, different words. For example, an iron in any Arabic dialect is an iron. In Saudi Arabia, it means ass. That's one example. That's one example. So imagine if you can actually construct sentences having all of these things in one sentence. So I would construct a whole section of my show about that.

So it's really very much about self reflective on language and the limits of.

Language that's allowed and the limits of language. And I tell them, part of the show is like, I know what's the problem with me doing Arabic. If this was an English show and I was telling you. And you'll be, ha. But if I do one swear word, all of you will scream.

Yeah. It's like, why is it.

Because we are ashamed. So it's kind of like. It is. It's not just like about swearing. It's about like. There's a lot of philosophical pathways in this. Yeah. There's profanity and we people have fun, whatever. But like, it is about, like, what does. How do we treat our language. And I tell them we speak Arabic as Arabs, but it's not the same Arabic. It's crazy, right?

And you're doing the show in America also, which is another level of absurdity.

Oh, yeah. Actually, the Arab diaspora in America is some of the best audiences I have. They are like wonderful. And they come from. They just. And I did. And I do. And I did it also in the Middle east. And maybe I'll do like an Arab tour in the Middle east in the fall.

Which countries would you go to or not?

I worried it. Jordan, Lebanon. I'm doing uae. I'm doing Kuwait, Egypt, Bahrain, Egypt. I don't think think so. I don't think so.

Is it personal? Is it worry about your safety?

Well, I have the American citizenship right now, so I am relatively safe. There's a block, sure. Honestly, there's a block. There's a person. There is. There is. There's so much that happened and I don't. And I never, I never badmouth Egypt. It is my country. It is some like. It has all of my marriage, 40 years of my life. I live there. But when you get hurt so much, instead of trying to kind of. I don't want to take revenge. I don't want to let that. I just want to avoid. Because Egypt gave me so much fame and so much love and so much hate and so much rejection. It is a very. It was a very tumulous relationship. Very, very difficult. And it's. And a lot of people tell me, well, don't you miss Egypt? And I tell them every time, time, the age of the time is not there anymore. It's not bad or good. It's not worse or better. It's just I'm different and the places are different and the people are different and the circumstances are different. Whatever image you had, you have of what you love is not there anymore. That's why a lot of immigrants, especially Arab immigrants, they live here, but they're there. And then when they go back for a vacation, they get disappointed because they didn't find what they want. And then they come back here and they're disappointed because this is what they want to come back, but it's not there anymore.

Yeah, their view of that place is from a different time. I have that, you know, my parents. But everybody that left the Soviet Union, I mean, it's such a complicated relationship with that. It's sometimes borders on hate, disappointment. In the case of the Soviet Union, perhaps similar to Egypt is the promises sold when you were younger and the, the promise is broken by the possibility.

Of what it was supposed to be.

With the Soviet Union, I'm sure with Egypt is the same. Iran is the same. So they have a very complicated relationship with that.

Yeah. That's why, like for example, people from Iran. You know, I remember, I remember quite well the World cup that was made done in, in the United States and the Iranian team were playing a Rick and there were people, people in the audience all wearing Iranians. They hate the regime, but they have this kind of connection with the country. Yeah. And this is, this is the whole thing. You can actually love the country and you not have to agree with the regime.

Would, Would, would you ever perform in the West Bank?

No. Gaza. Because if I go there, I have to go through the Israeli checkpoints and I don't want to go through this. I don't want to have an Israeli soldier telling me what to do. Yeah.

There's a demeaning aspect to that whole.

Very. Even.

Even in subtle ways.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I have so many Palestinian friends with an American passport, US Passport living here. They are born here. And they talk about the humiliation and the intimidation and the harassment that they go in. It's like, do you want me to try? Yeah.

That little bit of a humiliation.

A little bit.

Well, sometimes it's major. But I know, I noticed that, you know, even a little bit is.

Has a.

After a lifetime of that, it can turn to. It can turn to hate towards the other.

Yeah. And resentment.

Resentment. And then how do you do anything with that resentment?

I have a friend of mine, he is from Palestine, from lowest back. He's American here, he's born here. And we talk about, you know, we have of course, all of this discussion about what happened. And he tells me, you know, in October 11th in the west bank and there was a village called Khosra. And on that village, like the settlers went in around the village and they sent a message on Facebook as like, you rats going get out of your sewers and we're going to be waiting for you. Intimidation through technology. And then they went Kosra have like another settlement next to it called Eshkodesh, Ash Kodesh. They have people there who were training something called Meshmeret Isha, which is basically the guardians of Isha. And it's like a paramilitary group that trains other settlers on military combat, give them weapons and do like military drills. And they went there like militarized and went there. And it was actually co. Founded by a Jew from Brooklyn. Not even. And like An Israeli. And he is like one of the disciples of Meir Kahana. I'm sure that you know who Meher Khanna is, who's the Jewish defense lead. The people who assassinated Alex Awda here in the United States. And they were there with their weapons outside intimidating people. Now, this story carries everything that is wrong with the situation. You have people from Brooklyn, from outside, just because they're Jewish, they can't come and they can claim the land from the people there. Anybody from Poland, just because he's Jewish, he can come and take the land from other people. They're using technology to intimidate Palestinians. They have unchecked military power. These are not IDF soldiers, These are settlers. And they have free reign in order to intimidate and to kill the people. And you understand this is the daily life of Palestinians. Not in Gaza, in the West Bank.

What do you do from your. What do we do? What do people do to nudge this towards peace, towards flourishing?

Here's the thing. I want to talk to the people of Israel. What is Israel doing right now is not just unfair to the Palestinians, it's unfair to the Jewish people in Israel. No, it is unfair to the Jewish people around the world. Because the way that Israel links itself to the Jew, to Judaism at a certain point, you know, remember like ISIS and Qaeda and when everybody hated Muslims. You know, sometimes human, humans are simple. They cannot have the nuances to separate. So anybody who, with a Muslim name, with a Muslim face, with a beard, who looks Muslim, he would do it because of that actions of those atrocities. You have the power as a person to separate yourself from an abusive power, a horrible power, and be yourself. I am really worried because the rise of anti Semitism and the rise of hate against Jews is not because of the Jews, it's because of the actions of a government. Jews do not have to be on the side of apartheid. Ronnie Kestrels, he is a Jewish South African and he fought shoulder to shoulder next to Nelson Mandela. He was part of the African National Conference, anc and he had an article saying like, I know what apartheid is and I saw Israel and this is what they have have. And the thing is Israel, that Israeli government should listen to other people. You cannot call anybody who, who criticize you either an anti Semite or if they're already Jewish, you call them like self hating Jew. You cannot do that. You cannot continue doing that because we did that. When I would go in and criticize the Islamist, it was like, oh, you're self hating Muslim, you're not really Muslim. You're an infidel, you're a secret, you're a secular or whatever. We have the power in order to reform the course by holding people in power accountable. And the thing is, it is very stupid to actually call this anti Semitism. My idol is Jon Stewart. I voted for Bernie Sanders. Sarah Texler, the one who did this amazing documentary about me tickling giants. She's a Jew. She is married to an Israeli Jew. We have a good ratio because we know what the right is. They don't have to associate themselves with the action of the Israeli government.

One of your favorite words, Jihad.

That's my favorite hobbies.

It's his favorite hobby.

It's my show. It's like, what's your favorite? I talk about, like, how when a white shooter does something, he talks about all of his family. And I was hobbyist. Like, what if we took this, like, for Arab. For. For Arab terrorists. What are his hobbies? Jihad. You see, you should be a comedian.

Yeah, sure. Wow, you're making me feel good.

Okay.

Sam Harris has done several episodes on jihad, and people should go listen to it, even if you disagree with it. But the basic idea that he's proposing is that this idea of jihad, in the negative connotation of it, of martyrdom, is the thing that gets. Is counterproductive, is destructive to the possible future flourishing of Palestinian people. What do you think of that?

There's just the idea of modernism. I totally agree. But people don't wake up in the morning and say, like, I wanted the clergy hat think about it. Why would anybody choose to end his life by taking other people with him and end that life? His life must be miserable. He must be pushed into that. Nobody chooses death over life willingly. One of the first suicide bombers in the Palestinian resistance were Christians. We don't talk about that.

I think he would say that the presence of a story that you can tell yourself when you're in a really shitty place, that you can go to a much better place by sacrificing your own life. Just the fact that the presence of that story is there is harmful, of course.

But here's my problem with Sam Harris. And usually people, they have free range talking about the Islamic faith and nitpicking the stuff that makes it put in a bad light. I can go and nitpick every single religion. There are Jews there, like Ben Gaffir, who openly say spitting on Christians is not a hate speech. All right, they are. I mean, you can bring me, like, all kind of videos of Islamic jihadists saying horrible things on YouTube. And I can bring you Jews who live there. So, like, we're going to have the whole world enslaved for us, and everybody would love to be slaves for the Jews. You know, I can use the Talmudic argument that if you tie a man to a tree and he dies of thirst and hunger, you didn't kill that man. And this is kind of the same arguments like, ah, we're not killing Palestinians. It's just like killing. They were dying by themselves, you know, so it is the nitpicking of a certain narrative, religious narrative, that is separate from the political context and what's happening right now. It's very, very unfair because I can read. If you want to have a deep dive into religious texts, nobody will be happy. And I can bring stuff from that Talmud and the Torah and stuff that is horrible. But, like, you know, this is a way, again, of, like, distraction.

I dare you to talk about Buddhism and Jainism, though.

Well, you know, the people who killed the Muslims in Myanmar were there. Weren't they Buddhists?

Yeah. Well, let's go, Jin.

Okay. I'll find the religion.

I'll get to get back to you. I'll have to find.

Yeah, the. The. The. The. The flying monster. The. The. The Church of the Flying Monsters by a spaghetti.

As a person who tries not to eat carbs, I'm deeply offended by that.

I mean, they're Scientologists. All they do is actually buy real estate.

I think there's a few books written about the fact that they do other stuff as well. So even there, Mormons, sometimes. There's some of the nicest people I've ever met, but I'm sure there's also darkness there too. Oh, boy. Religion.

There's soaking in Mormons.

There's what?

Soaking.

What's soaking?

Okay, so I don't know how much so soaking. Basically, like you. If. If you get into the woman and you don't move, that's not adultery.

That's not like, oh, interesting.

So, yeah, you go. You go in and you just say there's a loophole. The loophole. That's the thing.

Religion has a loophole.

Yes. And Muslims, we do that the whole time. We. We pick and choose our. Our sins, the stuff that we enjoy. It's just. We're human.

72 virgins waiting for all of us.

Maybe if I converted you as a Jew, I'll get you 80. I don't know. You know, like, you can negotiate, but.

I also have questions about whether you're.

A very good deal. I'll Give you. And maybe I'll throw there a Camry.

I have to be up. It's pretty good. What year? I don't know.

1998.

All right.

Best year ever.

Well, they last a long time, so I'm not sure I want 70. 72.

I'll throw five in the mix and see how we feel. Yeah, can we. If you want to upgrade.

Yeah, can we. Can we do a trial period? But in general, if you just zoom out. Do you think religion is. In what way is it good for the world? In what way is it harmful?

If there was no religion, humans would have invented religion. Because think about. Think of. Think of like the early humanity, like you're like a caveman or whatever. And then like you see your family members killed. And then you say, like, what I'm going to be like the sheeta or the gazelle that just like ends in perish. I need to have. I am more important.

I think.

I think with the development of consciousness, humans, like thought that they are much more precious and important than the other animals because they have now intelligence. So my life will not end like that. My death will be even more important. There's consequences for that. There's consequences for what I do. And then the early man was like, there in the desert and all of these, like, natural phenomena, they didn't know what to do. They were afraid. So they need to have refuge. They need to have something to take care of. They need to have a reason for everything. Because if there's no reason, it's chaos. It's chaos.

It's terrifying.

It's terrifying. There's nothing. There has to be a reason. There has to be a reason. There has to be a purpose. Has to be like a cause, something. It's. It's just. I'm not just gonna be like, die like a cockroach being stepped on. And that's kind of like part of this ego.

The whole world rotates around you in a way.

It's the ego. So religion actually got a lot of it from humanity itself. Like me, like us being humans. And there's. And many. Religion is a collection of stories and those stories based on things that humans did themselves and they attributed it to gods.

And there's an aspect to religion where you humble yourself before a thing that is much greater than you. So that has a. I would say a very positive effect of humbling.

It will be great if it stopped there. But here's the thing. If you humble in order that your ego kicks in and feel that you are better than Someone else who's not humbled in front of the same God. That means that I will have all of that train that I can. Can use that. Because now, what does it mean being humble? I'm divine.

Yeah, but I'm way more humble than you.

Ah, but you're not. So you see how they kind of like the oxymoron. I'm humble and I'm surrendering, but in the same time, I am better than you and I'm more entitled. Isn't it crazy?

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's crazy.

I mean, look at. Look. Look at like. Like the Muslim Christians and Jews and every. Like. It's like, all right, Muslims, we surrendered. I mean, I'm talking about the extreme ones. I mean, like, people. Like, people extreme. So I surrender to God. Good, keep it that way. Yeah. Like, if you go there, I surrender to God. That means that I am closer to God than you. Then you should die. Okay, Christians, Christ is love and he loves me, and we gonna be together. But you don't get into his kingdom and you die. You see, it's the same thing.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just if you.

Stop it.

Stop there. Stop where? You are humble and you feel that you're a piece of. And you are worthless human being and you are there. Yeah, stop there. Yeah, but once you says, like, oh, that makes me a better person than you, and it makes me more with God than you, so that would give me the entitlement to kick your ass.

Yeah, we always ruin a good thing, don't we? That ego. You've been outspoken, you know, with Piers Morgan, but just on this topic, and you talked about the Superman story, which I would love it if you were in a Superman movie, but have you lost job opportunities because of this?

There was other. A couple of things that were going on, but they stopped again. I don't know if. October 7th.

Tell the Superman stories yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

What role were you?

Okay.

What did you audition for?

Yeah, it's okay. Okay. So in June, I was traveling to Dubai, and Right. An hour before I get into the car and go there, my manager is like, bessem, we're going to send you a script. Read it. It's for Superman. It's like, oh, Superman. I'm not really good in auditions. I'm not an assistant actor. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to do it. Send the tape. I do the tape. I send it. I go to the airport and I read. And I think I can talk about it now because they said they Changed the script. So basically, what I found it interesting in that new script is that. But there is, like, a dictator in a country that invades another country, and Superman interferes politically. That's the first time we ever see Superman interferes politically. So basically, it was like Russia and Ukraine. But because of me, it was like, it couldn't be Russia and Ukraine, so it had to be something kind of like, with a flavor. So I read the role as if as a mixture of Trump and Mubarak. I did this mix like, you know, like, kind of the Middle east, but also, like, kind of like. Like the essence of Trump into it. I went to the airport. It's like an hour. It's like, James Gunn saw it. He loves you. It's like, what? I never had an audition that fast. I mean, I had a few roles, but not that fast. Not like that. And then I said, well, the strike starts tomorrow, and we need to be on the phone. But after the strike, we cannot talk. The SAG after strike, like, we're the writers and the actors strike. So, like, I'm gonna be on a plane right now. It's like, once you land, you can have a Zoom call with James Gunn. I have a call with James Gunn. He's. I am a huge fan of him. The guy took, like, something like Guardians of the Galaxy. Nobody knew about it. Made amazing trilogy. And he is, like, a really cool guy. I like what he did, and it was, like, really nice. And. And he started to talk to me about the movie. And, you know, like, I talked to people before casting them, so I know that everybody is on set, have a good chemistry. It was amazing. So in your mind, if you're an actor, what does that mean? You got the part? And he told me, you got the part. Month goes by strike, goes by October 7th happens. I do Piers Morgan 1 and 2. And then I go to my Australian tour. My manager called me, asked him, the circle's over. It's like, you don't have the part anymore. I was sad, very sad, but for three days, and said, I need to stand up for this. I'm actually doing very well. Alhamdulillah. And then when I went to Chris Como after I finished the show, he told me, did you lose any opportunities? And that was off record. After the show was like. We concluded, and I said, I talked about Superman, and I found myself when I was talking, I was angry, I was bitter, and I went home. It's like, why was I angry? Why was I bitter? It wasn't meant to be. And I'm living a good life now. I don't need to. So when I was asked again the next day in two different interviews, the BBC and the other. And another one was alone with my friend Dinah, with Allah, I said the story in a different way. I said, I don't have any anger. As a matter of fact, maybe if I was Warner Brothers, I didn't talk about Jim's gun. I thought it was the studio. You. If I was Warner Brothers and I'm a Muslim, I wouldn't have like a Zionist or pro Israeli in my movie. But I want to tell them that, like, when I criticize Israel, I am not a threat to you as a Jew, and we can actually have more in common. That was more of a kind of empathic. So when I said that, the Internet went crazy and, you know, Jim's gonna have haters because, you know, the. The Snyderverse and all of this, that. It's just. It's a word that I don't understand. And James Gunn had all of these attacks on him. And I was pissed of how it was handled. I wasn't angry at James Gunn, but I thought it was handled. So my publicist, I'm just like, bessem, stay calm. Don't speak. It's better to not talk about it. I said, okay. So as there's nothing wrong about me, but I see the heat is rising against James Gunn. And that is a guy that I had a personal connection with, even through zoom. And I didn't like what was happening. And then he called me and he explained to me and said, basim, you know, I actually use, like, have camera tests before people before. Finally, I didn't know that. And then we changed the script and it was the strike. So I didn't call. And also I thought to myself, I'm small. I'm a small actor. I'm not that important for him to call me to say, we're going to change the script. So I still think that, like, the timing sucks and everything. But then I went and I did a video explaining exactly what I'm telling you. Because I didn't want to be famous for the wrong reasons. Yeah, because that would be unfair. Because that was already people were. And I was having, like, interviews. Can you come about the summer? It's like, guys, that's it. I'm not going to talk about. Because this is a non issue. And I did. I didn't. And I. When I talked to James on the phone, I felt how sincere he was. So I didn't want Someone to, because of me will have that kind of attack because I know what it means to be on the other side of that kind of attack. It's terrible. And it ruins your life and it ruins your day and nobody deserves to be doing that. And I don't want to be the reason for someone else to go through that pain.

And you also said that you don't want to be a victim.

Yeah, I don't want to be. I'm doing a great, I'm doing great. I'm selling out everywhere. I'm having a wonderful, loyal audience is coming to me. Why I would be angry about the role of. It's Superman. Yes, it's great to be in a superhero movies, but so what?

You know, but you know, there's, there's a wisdom in that. Even if you weren't doing great, that's a choice a lot of people can come to which is like, do I play victim here or not?

It's greed. It's greed. It. They want more attention. They want to be more into the thing. They want more and more. And there is so much to go around to be enough for all of us. But it is greed. It is ego, ego, ego, ego. I need to be in the center. I need to victimize. I need to. I need to be. People feel sorry for me and love me. And it is not the right way. It is not because it is fake. It is fake. It is made up. And I did not victimize myself when I left for Egypt. I mean in the time that I was. Now I speak about it now. But in that dark times, I was detained in airports. I didn't have my American passport yet. I was still traveling with my Egyptian passport. And I was detained in an Arab airport and I was going to be delivered to the Egyptians. I had shows when I was still starting. I had hecklers being sent to me by the Egyptian embassy at the Egyptian consulate in New York and in London to curse me and to take videos of that and then send it to state run media in Egypt. And I didn't speak about that because I felt that if I speak about that I feel about what was going on to me, I would be victimizing myself. It's like if I'm going to be good, I'm going to be good because of what I do, not because of what people's perception of what I'm going through. Yeah.

And that becomes a slippery slope and somehow victimizing yourself goes to more victimizing. Yeah.

And then you cannot leave that habit. You can only exist and Thrive if people feel sorry for you.

Yeah, I mean, Israel and Palestine currently both have that temptation.

I would always push back when you do the comparison because one of them is not really in the same kind of power. I mean, yeah, for sure it's very easy to say why Palestinians will victimize themselves, but Israel, with all of that military might, man, it's too much. What Israel is doing is that they're victimizing the Jewish experience. And I don't think a lot of, and I don't think it is fair for a lot of Jews. I don't think that they should use the Holocaust and the persecution that happened to Jewish people all through history in order to push an equally oppressive agenda. That is not fair and it's not good for the Jewish people living. And it is basically a disrespect to the memory of the Holocaust. I told you I want to make a movie about the Holocaust. I, I do. Because what happened was that kind of engineer torture should never happen again and it should not be happening now.

So to you, what Israel is doing is leading to more anti Semitism in the world.

100%. And I think, and you know, can I be a conspiracy theorist for a second, please?

The earth is flat.

We all know this part of me thinking maybe they are doing that intentionally because if there's a rise of anti seditivism in Jews, there will always like points like, see, they hate us. So we can do whatever we want because if, if, because, because you see, if we let go of our might and our strength, we're going to go back to the concentration camps because you see how the world hates you.

And again, when you say they are people in power.

Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. Listen, it's always the people in power. I believe that humans are easily corruptible and easily repairable. But the corrupt, corrupt part is much easier. But people could change. But power, people in power are very dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Especially if you have religion, which is power by itself. Military might, political support and money. Dude, that's the, that's a very, very.

Very dangerous recipe that, you know, all that said, I, I do believe in the power of the little guy, the individual, to overthrow the government. You know, I don't know if you heard, but the Arab Spring, you know.

Happens, but, but, but okay, here we.

Are, we are here just among friends.

We're Americans. Right? We're Americans. Allegedly, we're Americans. And.

How funny is that? Like, just given our two backgrounds.

We'Re Americans. It's like we're American. There's one thing about, like the power of the little guy that I am very sad about because, you see, I'm. I love America, by the way. I, I consider it my new home and I want my kids to grow up here. I have, I'm very grateful for the opportunity that I have in the United States. And I criticize the United States politics and I criticize it out of love, the same way that I was criticizing what's happening with Egypt, out of love. What is worrying for me is how the power of the little man is diminishing. It doesn't matter. Now who do you vote into power? They will not listen to you. They would listen to the people who paid them to be there. And it is very concerning because I can see the American democracies turning, not even slowly, very rapidly into an oligarchy. I'm sure that all of the millions of people who are voting, they don't vote for the nra, they don't vote for aipac, they don't vote for the pharmaceutical companies, they don't vote for the military industry complex. And yet the people in power, they come in, they take your vote and my vote, and they are loyal to those people, not to us. And it is very, very, very concerning, Very concerning. And this is the danger on the American policies, American politics and American democracies. It is dangerous because basically the vote becomes just like a ceremony that someone with the more like funding will get to power and then he's not loyal to you.

Still the fire. I mean, we are in Texas. Everybody, everybody's armed to the teeth here.

Yeah, but like, what are these arms going to do in front of tanks?

Well, you said the, the American military is unique in this way. I know, but for now, for now, the tanks are. First of all, I believe Russia has more tanks than the United States tanks.

I don't know.

You know, I'm not an expert in military strategic deployment of arms, but the United States uses different kinds of weapons.

It's. They have drones and they have the lasers and they have, they're sitting comfortably behind the screens. It's kind of like. It turns like a big Xbox game. Yeah.

And they, they sell a lot of those things to everybody.

It's crazy because the, the defense budget is 68% of American military. It's like almost $850 billion each year. And most of that weapons, we don't even need it. We just do it because of the contracts. There was like an incredible 60 minutes. I'm sure that you saw it, the one about like the gouging of the prices of the Department of Justice. It was one of the most fascinating things that I've ever seen. They say like a valve, a safety, safety oil valve that used to be sold for $329, now it is sold for $9,000. Why? Because there is only five weapon companies and they can control the prices. And in 2006 the whole Apache fleet over the American army in Iraq was grounded because there is one valve that they were like gouging the price and didn't want to give them. The Stinger missile. There's just like the missile, the one that you carry and it's like the anti air aircraft. It used to be sold for $25,000, now it's sold for $400,000. And nobody is doing that. Why is because the DOD has fired 130,000 people, including engineers and negotiators. So now in order to cut expenses, now we're paying more money. And the thing is we do not have a say in this. We do not have a say in how my tax money and your tax money is being spent. Because I'm sure you don't want your money to be sent to Israel like that. That I'm sure. Even if you Jews. I'm sure. I'm sure that like I don't want my money to be given to some Muslim countries who kill other Muslims. I'm sure. But it is. It is not. Here's the thing. What kind of power do we have other than speaking? So what is left for us is free speech. And now when you speak, they call you anti Semitic. You see why I'm angry?

But still, I mean, America's holding pretty strong despite the criticisms on the free speech front. But if you look at the freedom of the press, freedom of the speech index, America is not at the top.

It is not. And this is why, for example, it is very disheartening for me to see that the Western media, Western press, that used to be the beacon of freedom, are now using as mouthpieces. And it is funny how the New York Times, Nixon got angry in the New York Times in 1971 when they found leaks about Tim lying about the Vietnam War since the beginning. And now he hired the plumbers, you know, the special unit, in order to go in and find the leaks. This was Watergate, basically because he was angry to see who leaked that instead of fixing the problem. Now the New York Times have published this story about the rape that was a hoax that was written by Anna Schwartz, who's someone who have no experience and now when it was leaked, instead of them correcting themselves, they went in and they had their own investigation to see who leaked. The New York Times in 2003 became the mouthpiece of George W. Bush of the WMD. And now as an American, I see that the New York Times becoming a mouthpiece of a foreign country. Why do you do that?

One of the things that's really difficult to know is where to find the truth. It does seem that both sides use propaganda and both sides lie a lot.

Both sides, as in both Israel and Palestine.

Pro Palestine, pro Israel. There's a lot of lies.

I know, but I think you're. It's a lot of inequality, man. Are you like, there's like a lot of people on the Internet, but, like, who have the mainstream media siding with.

Yeah, but, you know, thanks.

And I'm talking about. Yes, thank God for social media because now it's individuals. There are people. Yes, there are people. You're. You're comparing BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, White Wall Street Journal with just people with a Tick Tock account.

Yeah, you get more power in your.

View now it is actually very, very fascinating to see the little man having that power over the media and.

Because disproportionately so, like, hey, like, this is my.

But that's not. But you cannot call people with TikTok propagandists while people being paid to casually give you the. The news and they deliberately lie to you.

Well, yes, I can. They're both propagandists.

Yes, yes. But like, but the mechanism and the intentions are different because. Because here's the thing.

I'd rather have the Tick tock guy than the.

If like the Tick Tock is a tick Tock guy. All right, but if you have the New York Times being told that they're being exposed to be lying and then they get this like UN report which is like a disgrace and you just put the title and you don't talk about like, I'm fine with CNN and Jake Tapper and all of those people, like, spreading the rape allegations for years. They didn't. I don't even want them to refute them. I want them to bring the Israeli reports saying that it didn't happen. The Israeli media themselves, they didn't even bother. Not once. Is that balanced. That's not. So that's why people in TikTok because they have to take matters in their own hands.

Yeah, but the problem with the people in Tick Tock is the drug. The, the dopamine rush of getting a lot of Likes. So instead of talking about the death of civilians, they'll talk about beheaded babies or the equivalent. Oh yeah, they're, they're going to actually make up stories because the make made up stories are going to be more viral. And so now we're just in the sea in this muck of lies.

And there's a lot of people who actually expose those lies on TikTok. So you have both, you have both and it's kind of like the democracy of the social media as we always call it. But if you have the street run media, that is the legacy media scene and BBC, New York Times, Fox News, all of those people, and they are like spreading lies and they're not even doing their journalistic job in order to at least bring the other side. Yeah, that's problematic.

And that's, that's worse. You're supposed to be journalists.

Yes, it's supposed to be reported. Report, you know, record.

Yeah. But you know, I see that this is like a catalyst, an inspiration for the citizen journalists to, to rise up.

This is what you're doing.

Oh, this.

Yeah, this is what you're doing. No, this is what you're doing because you go into a deep dive. This is like, like a no filter thing. There's no spin.

The long form. Long form is going to save us.

I see why you hate the TikToks. Like a dopamine Russian over there. Stupid.

Take time.

Five hours later, I saw the resentment and you, your face.

I can't, can't look away for like.

Like those, like 30 seconds. I do four hours.

I mean both have a place, both are exciting and you know, but I, I can't. It is very dangerous. Like you can't look away. And I almost never. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I almost never feel better ever after having used Tik Tok Mix.

Two of us. I can't, I cannot, I cannot. I have a team, by the way. I give my, my, my, my password to like a team. I don't even go there because I went. I once in a dark night, very late at night, I went tick tock and it was like two hours. What? Yeah, what? I said, no, no, no, this is dangerous. I'm, I'm already like an Instagram and Facebook guy. I don't need that. And I barely get out of Twitter. I mean like X. I don't, I can't. X is a cesspool X. It's just like to the concentrated. Hating X is too much. It's too much.

I can't so you. You don't check it at all. You try not to check it at all. It is very intense.

I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I can't. I can't. I just, like, I post something, and I run.

Post and ghost. So you're. You're doing comedy here in the United States right now?

Yes.

Joe Rogan has the. The Comedy Mothership, which is an incredible club. Have you considered doing that? Club?

I would love to. I mean, I.

Do you know Joe?

Of course. No. Who doesn't know Joe?

I feel like it's a small world of comedy. That's why I.

No, I. I think, like, Joe. Joe's story was, like, what he did and stuff that he did in the UFC and his podcast, and it just. It's. It's very impressive. The fact that he is there and he's bringing all of those people, whether they're in comedy or his podcast, is very impressive. And this is what. This is. What is the media is all about, what is, like, the Internet is all about to give you the experiences of stuff that you might never experience. And that is very important. I mean, you do it with people with, like, you go into their brains. He goes, take people, and they take their experiences and their life and their stories. It is very interesting. And this is the beauty of that art form, because you have all of these experiences at the tips of your hands, and it is there for you to learn from, you know, and what he's doing. Like, when he moved to Texas and we did the Comedy Mothership, anybody who would, like, push comedy forward, that is the most difficult art form and the most demanding, and the fact that you do that, and he might not even be making money out of it, but he's doing that because of his passion. That is enough.

Yeah. He really believes in creating this, like, place where comedians can be really free. And one of the cool things about the Comedy Mothership is, like, comedian is king there.

Yeah.

Like, they're. We have to, like. You have to bow down to the.

Because, you know, the comedian who came there came after, like, eating.

Yeah.

Out there, everywhere else. If you. You have. Basically, you're a saint.

I have eaten for many years.

Now. I'm gonna give you sh.

Ah, it's great. You already told me what you think about the state of politics in the United States, but now tell me what you really think. What do you think of the choice of Trump versus Biden? How do we end up here?

I don't know, man. I Mean, like the fact that, like, you have two people over the age of 90. Yeah, it is.

I think it's over 100, but that's all right.

It's all combined, like, 170. It is so sad. It is so sad that this is what we can produce as. As a society. Like a demagogue and a sleepy. Joe. He's too. He's not there, man. He's gone. He's gone. I mean, he could, you know, like, when old people could be, like, a danger for themselves. He's a danger for the whole world. I mean, like, the whole world. Like, if an old person would die, he would, like, you know, have, like, a hip replacement. We can need a new planet because of one decision. But it's not just that. It's not that. It's what are. When I came here, listen, I'm a Democrat. I always like. And I told you I vote for Bernie Sanders. I supported him 2016, but I couldn't vote then. And of course, a huge fan of Obama. And one of my jokes is like, he's the first Muslim president, but he killed Muslims. That's things Muslims do. But anyways, I love that line. And it just. I think the whole idea, like, my shock is I taught you about what Biden said about, like, I'm a Zionist. Okay, we are Zionist. But then, like, Jews are not safe in anywhere other than Israel. It's like, dude, what the hell are you saying? And if you don't care about me and you don't care about my misery, why would I care about you winning or losing? And I have a joke that I told people. Why would even Biden listen to us? He just raised $145 million in California alone from pro Israeli groups. I mean, what can we Arabs working in the vape business do to him? It's like, we cannot compete with that. That. I mean, like, practically. I mean, it's like life is like, life is unfair. The guy is a politician. He needs bills to pay. He needs a campaign to run. He needs money. He will go to the people who give him money. Joe Biden is the highest paid politician from Israel. Lobbies $4.6 million over the years.

Yeah, but I also believe in great leaders that go against all of that. But unfortunately, you know, Bernie Sanders was like that. Bernie Sanders, yes, but also age. I don't want to be age.

Of course. No, no.

But even with, like. Because I remember listening to Bernie Sanders 20 years ago on Tom Hartman show, and I don't want to say anything against Bernie but like he was sharper then. Of course, there's a thing with age.

Of course. No, I think I'm a huge fan about like putting the limits on your working years because you don't want to have like a Mitch McConnell moment every now. Because now the whole thing got like, like, what is this? It's not like a house by scare home. It is unfair. It is unfair. And that the whole idea that you have like unlimited, like you have a limit for the president, but you don't have limit for congress people and senators. What do you mean? This is basically you can go in and be in governance forever. And you know, the longer that you can get, the more corrupt you will get.

Yes.

And that is very concerning for America. Americans.

Everybody, everybody becomes corrupt after. I mean, that's why two terms is a good limit for everybody. Yeah. And you know, maybe half a term for, for Egyptian leaders.

Well, you know, our half term is.

15 years, quarter term. You should come back and run for, for office there.

Oh, my God, no, no. There's a curse in Egyptian presidency. Nobody comes there like dead or in jail.

Yeah.

It's not the most appealing job.

They might make a statue of you though.

Make you look good after my death. I look very good, dad. In a statue. Yeah.

When you look at what happened with Navalny, since you kind of really thought about this in Egypt, what happened with Navalny in Russia, what do you think about that?

Yeah, but what happened in Navalny in Russia is not something new in Russia. I mean, Putin have like this whole history of poisoning and killing people and it's kind of like pretty much. I would have to side credit Putin. He's like bringing us the essence of the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages. It's like, you know, we know like basically Putin is like, like is the living example of what happens if Game of Thrones was reality. It's like death by poison, like a blow up a plane. It's like mysteriously disappears. It is so. It is, it is very dark, but it's like, wow. It's like a, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a television show.

Maybe that's what attracts us to that part of the world, is that it's so much on display, this game of power, of geopolitics, of war.

No, but the same happens in the West. But I'm behind closed doors. It's not that open. It's not that pronounced. You know, it's like, ooh, oops, Epstein. It's like, oh, we just Like I think because of the west is more advanced, like in movies and cinemas we kind of direct it better.

Yeah.

I think, I think the outcomes like the way that you kind of like set the scenes like scene and scene.

That's why people are about like landing on the moon. They're like, I get it. But you know, we haven't gone back.

There's the flat.

All right. If we zoom out, do you think there will always be war in the world? Always be suffering? Yes.

Yeah. But here's the thing. I don't think for long, I don't think that will happen for them.

Wait a minute. Yeah, yeah.

Because here's the thing. Humanity is destined to, to have war especially it will have war. But that something happened in the last 50 years we have had, now we have much more lethal weapons. The problem is the beginning. It's like swords against swords, horses, cavalry, like cannons, catapults, minimus sized, cheeky chicky chicky. But now we're like a press of a button. You can annihilate the whole planet. And this is the problem. Wars will all continue. The problem is when is going to be the tipping point where we are actually going to destroy ourselves. And it is so easy now to destroy ourselves. The amount of weapons and the quality of weapons that we have, it is designed to kill more effectively, more. It is crazy. It's like we can create our own destruction on ourself and I think we're not that far away from, from it.

Just looking at nuclear weapons, the fascinating thing about nuclear weapons, as I've gotten to learn recently, just how few people are involved in a full on nuclear war that kills, basically kills everybody.

Yeah.

Well, three plus billion people right away.

And the consequences of the nuclear winter, it's unlivable.

But all it takes is, I mean one president can do it. So it could be even a false.

Alarm misunderstanding like what happened in the Cuba missile crisis.

But again, and now there's more nations are prepared and ready to launch.

Yeah. And you have a media and a 24 hours kind of like thing that makes you like at edge the whole time. That's, that's crazy.

There's a dark perspective on this where there's certain members of the media that would kind of enjoy the prospect of nuclear war like a little bit. Just, just let's get as close to it as possible.

You have another factor that will contribute to that religion. And remember how like the radical Islamists talk about like the end of time and whatever. But like most of the Islamicans don't have that much power. Power problem is with Christian Zionist now being on the top of the world with America. They have been pushing for that kind of conflict to kind of escalate. Escalate. Listen to Sarah Palins. Like God wants us here. Like Carl drove all of the new cons. The dispensationalist Reagan. There's an incredible book called like Forcing the hands of Gods. Oh, beautiful book. I read it like it's published 1998. But it still matters today. The whole idea about like, like especially the Zionist Christians who love Israel, but they hate the Jews. They're anti Semite, but they love Israel because of its role. This is all basically formed because of the interpretation of the Bible of Scofield and how they talk about the end of time, then Armageddon and then the late great planet Earth and then left behind Sirius and all of that. It's all about like we're heading to Armageddon. And the problem is Islam has the people that believe that the end of time. And then we have the Christians that believe in the end of time. And then you have Israel happy that those people are using it for the end of time. And then the whole idea about them pushing as many weapons and troops and people in the Middle east to be there for the nuclear holocaust. And John Hagee, one of the pastors talk about that, about the brimstones. And it's not gonna be a nuclear holocaust. All of that people. It's crazy how people are so despising life that they are wanting death. So now you all would have these revelations. But these revelations mean nothing if you don't have an effective weapon in order to make. Make it happen. And this is the crazy thing. And I'm worried that the end is going to be by someone that wants to meet God a little bit earlier.

Somebody who's really in a hurry. Well, I have good news for you. Maybe we'll become a multi planetary species.

Maybe Elon Musk will lead us the.

Way to get out in space.

One of them secret lizard.

I asked you offline to not me mention the lizard people. They are.

There's like a whole people that believe in the lizard people. It's crazy.

I actually have to be honest. I haven't fully looked into the lizard people. I probably should.

You should.

Yeah. Well, maybe I'm afraid of the truth.

Then. Then, then. Then removing.

I mean what. So let's say. Let's say you're wrong about the end of the world.

I hope so.

And we. It all turns out great. And Humanity flourishes. Why would that happen?

What.

What gives you hope for that trajectory for humanity?

Younger people, the people of TikTok that, you know, I. Yeah, there is a lot of, like, there, you know, after.

Saying this, people just keep sending you tik Tok videos. These younger people.

This woman showing her boobs, that. That woman that's gonna save us all.

Right, awesome. Thank you.

No, there's, like, I think there is a wealth of, you know, remember like, the joke that said, like, we thought that, like, when we have Internet, we're gonna have, like, be more, you know, more informed. And now we're watching twerking videos. And that is true. But on the other side, the fact that you have the availability of information, I'm. I'm learning a lot. And there's people who are using that platform from that. It's not the majority because, you know, it's not very interesting and exciting, but I think there's. There might be a tipping point where there's enough people that will be aware and maybe they would collectively do something in order to bring back the power to the small man. And maybe it sounds very naive. Maybe. But we don't know. We don't know because we. You have already seen the legacy media and the legacy politicians shaking in the past few months.

They're getting nervous.

They're getting nervous because people are calling them out. And those people were, like, hiding behind their desk, behind in their offices, and not like, not holding accounts for that, but like, people now are calling them out, out. And it is not going to happen, like, this year or next year, but I think it's something.

What advice would you give to those young folks?

I will never give advice to those people.

Get off Tik Tok.

I will never. Because, like, their input is different than mine. Yeah. But, like, there's. There's one thing I learned when people told me, did the revolution fail in Egypt? Did people let the people. It's like, listen, the revolution is not an event. It's not like, hey, we go in with. Topple the government. It's not under revolution. A revolution is a process. It's a very long process. And maybe that process, I mean, as much as we don't like what happened in the Arab world, but the people there, the awareness that happened and the discussions that have been opened that you didn't even imagine would happen in the Middle east is happening, and maybe the beginning of any. Any hope of change is that people start talking, speaking out, talking about stuff they were not allowed to speak about. Like, for example, Israel.

The revolution continues.

Yes.

Basim, you're a beautiful human being. It's truly a pleasure and honor to meet you. I could just feel the love radiating from you. I hope I get to see you perform live. I hope to get to see you many more times. Thank you for being who you are.

Thank you so much. And I would love to invite you for my new special, the Islamu Nazi Bezimi.

That should be the title of your autobiography.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, brother. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Bassem Yousef. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Jon Stewart. The press can hold this magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected, dangerous flaming ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next.