Bassem Youssef: evaluation

Transcript context

…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, the famous Israeli reporter [inaudible 00:10:23]. 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 them, “Imagine if he was your father.” And the soldiers stood up, it was like, “What? These are pigs. These are not humans.” So when you tell me what would you do if Israel would do, we need to ask how does Israel look at the Palestinian and view the Palestinians? Because they do look at them less than human. And there is an incredible talk by [inaudible 00:11:12] 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… That’s why that the exchange rate thing. So for me, if I am Israel, it’ll 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 is 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 try.…

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