Bassem Youssef: commitment

Transcript context

…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 actually the suffering itself and the suffering comes from people being displaced. Their homes were taken away. There are 7 million Palestinians in diaspora, seven millions, 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 the right for two years in March of last year, before October 7th, after October 7th, I bought the permanent, right, That book, it’s called the Muslim and the Jew, and it is written by an author called Ronen 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. Hanmi, 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. Hanmi was the hero of that. He’s an Egyptian doctor and that’s why I personally 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 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 a crazy story, and this is not a fiction story. This is actually like a nonfiction. It’s written actually based on the statement, the documents of the Nazis and Gustavo, Dr. Hemi, 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. 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 19 34, 19 35, 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 to Dr. Hanmi when that happened to him, he would go back to the ghetto and he would see the apartments next to him. The Jewish apartments 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 3, 4, 6, 7 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 started to kind of atone for, 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 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 imprisoned with him, a network that saves 300 Jews. You see that kind of story. This is the Jews that were living in the airport. I’m not saying that the Jews living in the airport was living like an incredible life. Of course, as LA kind of 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 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 Israel, 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 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 the world than anybody. They’re safer than the Jews in Israel.…

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