[NOISE].
Well you're witnessing there is absolute chaos,
although not unprecedented chaos in the Al-Aqsa mosque
with police officers from Israel storming the mosque and
injuring dozens upon dozens of worshipers.
They fired tear gas, stun grenades, sound grenades as well.
Those sound fun and used rubber coated steel bullets as a small group of
Palestinians hurled rocks reportedly injuring three Israeli officers.
So The Palestinian Red Crescent Emergency Service said that they'd
treated 152 injured.
So The three cops and 152 individuals just for the record.
Many of them have been wounded by rubber coated bullets or
stun grenades or beaten with batons.
One of the guards of the site apparently was shot in the eye with rubber bullet.
Now, all of those sorts of weapons, whether they're used in Israel or here in
the United States are always described as either non lethal or less lethal.
But I want to clear the record on that because I did some looking into
specifically rubber coated bullets, which are bullets.
Many people forget that.
A study by BMJ found that 3% of those shot with rubber bullets in one study,
were killed by those bullets, 15% were permanently injured.
So when you make the choice to storm a holy site, during this incredibly rare
confluence of you've got Easter, Passover and Ramadan, it's happening right now,
it hasn't happened since 1991, you can injure a lot of people and
we're going to have more details for you, but that is what we're seeing.
Francesca, I want to start with you,
we've seen security forces storm even just this particular mosque before.
But what do you make of the most recent events?
>> I just wanted to name that because as I saw this footage, I immediately was like,
wait, this is old.
We've seen, [LAUGH] the Israeli occupation just does this over and over and
over again.
And I think it's really easy to get numb to these kinds of image, Images.
But let's remember how important the Al-Aqsa mosque is to the Muslim faith,
how important this entire site is to people of so many different religions.
Obviously Judaism obviously Islam.
And and to, to desecrate it in this way during Passover and during Ramadan and
on the precipice of Easter again, not all Palestinians are Muslims,
there's a lot of Christian Palestinians as well.
And, and it just, it, it breaks your heart.
And also I hate the way that this is always framed, by mainstream news,
which is always clashes, clashes, this clashes that and it desensitizes us and
makes us think that this is just forever, how it's gonna be.
And it's all about religion.
It's not about religion, it's about land and occupation.
This is as sweeps and raids in the West Bank continue and
at the same time that obviously east Jerusalem and cities,
towns like Sheikh jarrah are under increasing military occupation by,
by Israeli soldiers, where it's like you're saying 152 civilians.
Now of course that anyone who is in this area or anyone who throws a rock,
is immediately labeled by Israel as a, as a combatant, right?
As a terrorist.
And so again we that gets so warped.
So I would just urge us all, to not be desensitized and to understand just how,
just how devastating this is and and always is.
>> You know, I think Francesca hit on a really great point there with the word,
clash because that's what you saw in headlines all throughout the day.
You know, clash, clash, clash.
And as she pointed out, they were throwing a couple of rocks and
in return, they get hit with these rubber bullets.
They get hit with the tear gas, the stun grenades, the sound grenades and
all of this, this, this is not some kind of, you know,
equal sides here, that have engaged in this fighting.
These individuals were attacked at this holy site.
This was not a clash.
It was an attack.
And it is sickening to see the media frame it that way.
And what's even worse is that,
had this been probably anywhere else in the world where this is happening.
The, the, the entirety of the US political elite would be out there condemning these
attacks, they would be talking about, we, we need to work, we need to get this peace
going, just almost crickets throughout the day, as far as what I've seen.
And that is truly disturbing as well because we send weapons,
we send money, we send all of this aid and this is what it is used for.
>> Yes.
>> And that is truly disturbing.
And that's another part of it that we don't get to hammer on enough.
And you didn't see it mentioned as far as I saw in any of the stories that I
was reading throughout the day about this.
So all of the back part here, the backstory just gets totally erased.
Just to say, no this is just a clash at Holy Site 152 people,
things are bad and let's move along to the next story of the day.
>> Yeah, things are bad.
But who's to say in what way they're bad or who individually is bad?
Who's to say let's clash, clash.
It reminds me of about a week ago, I think it was NYPD,
were chasing someone and they ran down and killed an unhoused individual.
But the tweet said that the van did it.
And I thought who raised that van, that it went so astray?
Weird. It's almost as if someone's hands must
have been on the steering wheel and you're right.
There's always that, it's so weird that in journalism, like it's sites like this,
there's always going to be journalists on the ground, incredibly brave.
Some journalists actually two were injured, Mohamed Samlin And
Rami al Khatib were among the injured at that particular event.
So some journalists at the event, incredibly brave.
But the farther from the event, they are, the more cowardly they are.
I mean, we're not gonna be there, we're not even going to assert what happened or
who might be at fault.
And I've often noted whenever there's a clash that goes on for
a few weeks, let's say hypothetically that like Hamas fires a bunch of
like rockets at Israel and then Israel does strikes.
You're always going to get to statistics the number of Palestinians who were killed
and the number of like the pieces of ammunition that were fired at Israel.
Because there's no balance otherwise, if you were to talk about the casualties,
I mean it looks really unequal.
So you have to talk about the attempts obviously,
it's the way that the the scales are biased there.
>> Yes, we hear the rockets have been fired.
But yeah, how many people did they actually kill?
What kind of rockets are these?
Again in this instance, it seems like there was a mass convergence to defend
the Al-Aqsa mosque and there was a premeditated attack by the Israeli
military on those, those demonstrators who may have had rocks.
But again, these are rocks going up against stun grenades, going up against
tear gas, going up against a machinery of occupation that once again,
I think for us in the United States,
we gotta keep focusing on that 3 to 4 billion dollars a year.
If you're out there and you don't like the defund the police slogan, okay.
But let's defund the Israeli military, how about that?
Why don't we bring some of that money home and we can decide what to do with it?
Hey, we don't have enough money to like, I don't know,
pass climate change legislation.
Hey, why don't we get some of that money back from Israel?
Because you know what, it doesn't seem like they're doing much good with it.
And like just the other day, I mean, these are moments where like, you know,
you see an older, an elderly woman in the West Bank being killed in the streets,
by the Israeli military who have the goal to call themselves The Defense Fund.
Because everyone is supposedly everyone's Hamas and
an elderly woman in the streets, that is your terrorist right there.
Now, if this were Ukraine, you're gonna have Jake Tapper on the scene, crying them
big tears talking about how much we need to do to like save the Ukrainian people.
And yes, we absolutely should be in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
Where is that solidarity with the Palestinian people?
And it begins with bringing our money back from the Israeli military.
>> Yeah, 100% and at the very least over the past few weeks of the clash,
15 Palestinians have been killed.
The number could well be higher by now, many detained arrested, including
literally hundreds in the aftermath of the video that we've already shown you.
The director of the mosque by the way,
had this to say what happened today is an attack on all peaceful worshippers.
This was a barbaric premeditated attack on worshippers.
And it was a barbaric premeditated,
premeditated attack that as we said earlier, we have seen before.
This is the sort of thing that like it's not lost on them that this is
an incredibly critical time in terms of the some of the most major religions in
the world and they're doing at this particular time.
Really fast just to batch some of the earlier points we're making,
let's jump to this tweet from the Associated Press.
This is how the media presents this sort of thing.
Breaking clashes, clashes between Israeli police and
Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa mosque, a major holy site in Israel have
wounded at least 20 Palestinians of course, much higher than that.
Now, it was not immediately clear what sparked the violence.
I love that.
And we can't make any guesses either.
We can't make anything based on the immediate history, the medium or
long term history there.
Every one of these incredibly repetitive instances is a totally unique flower and
we have no idea what led to any of it.
And Jerusalem now comes thankfully after Israeli Palestinian clashes.
Yes, it was a it was a clash there.
It's like, I mean like,
like a demolition ball going through a wall technically is a clash.
It gets dusty as it goes through.
It's just this bizarre feigned objectivity, I find it's so annoying.
Faron, what do you think?
>> Well it's like framing January 6th as,
these Maga rioters clashed with Capitol windows.
They clashed with doors that had been barricaded, that the media is always so
quick to try to not seem like they're taking sides,
that they end up coming across as plain old stupid.
And that is what most of the media today has become.
Just straight up stupid.
And I think we just need to call it what it is,
because they're not giving us the full story.
They're they're so desperate for this balance,
that they can't even tell a story anymore.
And that's what's happened for far too long,
especially in that area of the world where most people have no idea,
as Joe pointed out earlier talking about, the rockets were fired.
But then what happened, something happens after a rockets fired.
And if it was, total widespread devastation,
don't you think you'd include that in your story?
Well, you don't, because we all know, well, we don't all know, and
that's the problem.
We don't all know the end of that story.
People just see the first half of it think, my God,
you've got these terrorists out there.
>> Mh-mm.
>> Terrifying these, these poor Israelis that are clearly the victims based on
these headlines that I skimmed over and didn't bother to click on anything.
But even if I had, they weren't gonna tell me the story anyway because the media is
just straight up stupid.
>> Yeah.
And look like I, I always give the caveats when we talk about Ukraine and Russia,
which we're going to a little bit.
I don't I don't want the rockets to be fired,
let alone to ever hit anyone as they rarely, but sometimes do,
I don't want the police, I don't want the Israeli security forces to get injured.
I think a great way to not get injured is to not be there attacking yet
another mosque.
I I don't want any anybody on either side.
And same as in Ukraine and Russia.
But right now at least all we can do is comment on this.
All our government can do is pretty much what Joe Biden is doing on pretty much
everything.
Now I understand that in terms of foreign policy,
his eyes are on Ukraine and Russia.
I get that that's going to be a big focus and everything.
But what has the approach been from the administration when it comes to this
situation?
Because we had the experience of Obama who came in sort
of implying slash promising that there would be changes to the relationship.
That didn't happen.
It was tested by the Israeli side and Barack Obama largely just went along with
whatever it was that they wanted to do and then of course Trump came in and
just moved the embassy, gave them whatever they wanted.
He wasn't gonna challenge it.
And now we have Biden, who, has he said anything?
Has he?
I have no idea what he makes of,
of this violence about the last time that it happened.
I have no idea what he thinks or if he thinks anything at all.
I certainly haven't heard anything from him.
>> Yeah and it shows the hypocrisy of which governments we do support,
in which governments we don't.
Israel is always seen as in the United States ally,
no matter who's in government, no matter how far right wing,
no matter Naftali Bennett's insanely retrograde views, some of them even worse
than his predecessor, Bibi Netanyahu's views about the Palestinian people,
doesn't matter the ethnic cleansing, they are allies.
Same goes with Saudi Arabia, right?
These are countries that are authoritarian,
they are participating occupation.
But and again, this is not to say what about ism?
It's just to say, let's have principles when we apply them to our allies or
our foes abroad, right?
You're gonna condemn Putin, you're gonna condemn Bashar al-Assad,
I would agree with that.
You're gonna also need to turn that spotlight against people like
Ben Salman and, and Naftali Bennett here in Israel.
>> [INAUDIBLE].
>> No, I, I think Francesca just nailed it absolutely on the head right there.
We look the other way when these atrocities are committed by our so
called allies and of course the reason for that is as big money over there, right?
They're gonna buy our weapons, we're gonna sell them millions and millions or
even billions of dollars worth of stuff that they then use of course to to go kill
people.
And in some cases it's used to kill Americans, but
we don't care because we get lots of money from them.
So we overlook all of the atrocities they commit.
We overlook,
the fact that they are committing these horrendous crimes against innocent people.
Bombing school busses, were cool with that because you're gonna buy a lot of our
weapons and that's gonna make us a lot of money.