THIS Is What Michigan's New Radical Senator Believes

Let's do this clip. We're going to roll the clip here. Abdul Al-Sayed with Rush Doshi Rad. Does Palestine ever exist? Does Israel exist? You got to love this guy. Uh, here's the clip and let's react to it. Abdul Al-Sayed, 60 minutes with Rush Dudge Rad. >> [snorts] >> So, what do you make What do you make of the Palestinian people? >> I think the Palestinian people deserve to have a homeland. >> Where? >> In I mean I would say generally, historically, I would support a version of the two-state solution, which creates problems because yes, there's Gaza and there's the West Bank and they're separated. It's not the ideal landscape for a state. >> and the West Bank? >> I think that that I think that I think I think that that >> small pieces of it that have been like now annihilated and the parts that are being encroached upon by by settlers. >> I think that there was a very plausible scenario that would have gotten the Palestinian people >> Every version of this conversation goes back to sometime in history where it could have been. I don't want to go back sometime in history. I want to go into the future. And look, the hard part is this. This is exactly my point. You proved my point perfectly. I want equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike. And the problem with saying, yeah, we're going to just take as fixed the idea of the state as it is implies that you are just taking whatever's carved left and there is no actual real opportunity for self-determination for the Palestinian people. It's like, hey, listen, after I eat, then you can have my seconds. I just don't think that's fair. I think if we're serious about this, we're going to have to bring peoples together and ask, how do we navigate this shared understanding of this space? You You made the point perfectly for me. Is that when I ask you, what about Palestinian self-determination? You're like, I guess we could carve a state out there, maybe. It's not serious. So, I'm just saying, look, right now >> Wow. [snorts] Voila. The gaslighting's insane. Listen to that. Listen to that. It's as if he's having a conversation absent of history, absent reality. You can say whatever you want. You can try to say it with a faux confidence, but you know he's just kind of ducking and weaving. He's like, well okay, that that's exactly my point. That's exactly my point. And he's about to not make a precise point. There's no exactly anything. We need to have a conversation about Palestinian self-determination, and we're not having that, about how to share THE SPACE. THAT'S ALL WE'VE BEEN DOING FOR DECADES AND DECADES and decades. [laughter] Israel was founded The modern state of Israel was founded in 1948 in partition, a state for two peoples, for the self-determination of the Jewish people and the Arab Palestinian Arabs there for two states. That was the conversation from the outset. Oh and we're talking about what, carving up pieces? That's what was being done. When the Ottoman Empire fell in the entire history of the Middle East, it was all about carving up spaces of land for the ethnic groups that existed there in the region and for those that were yes, moving escaping persecution. [snorts] Sorry, I'm touching my nose. Everybody hates that I keep touching my nose. Sometimes it gets itchy when I do the impressions. That's the conversation that's been had. That's the defining feature of the Middle East, carved up pieces of land by imperial powers, by Britain, by France post World War I, post World War II, and figuring out how to live together, and not denying the claims of the Jewish people to Israel and the need for Jewish survival, the last surviving Jews in the entire Middle Eastern region as they were expelled from everywhere else, from Eastern Europe and from the Arab world, while still while still acknowledging the self-determination of Palestinian Arabs to have their own state, which they never really wanted to create to begin with. All they wanted was to make sure a Jewish state did not exist. It's Palestinianism and rejectionism baked into the cake. That is the entire conversation that's been had, and he makes it seem as if we're talking about this for the first time. Uh look here's here's the thing about it, right? We need to actually have a serious conversation. I don't want to think about history. I don't want to think about the past. All you do is steep yourself in historical grievance and resentment and try to delegitimize the state of Israel over and over again. That's obsession with history. While it's claiming you want to focus on the future and focus on a world in which you have equal rights for Jewish Israelis and Arabs. Oh, do the enemies of Israel believe in equal rights for Jews and Arabs? That's the problem. Look at what Israel created. What's the state that Israel created? A state with equal rights for its citizens, Jews, Arabs, Druze, Christians. And what about the nations and entities surrounding Israel? What what kind of societies did they create? Societies that became Judenrein, ethnically cleansed of Jews, of Coptic Christians, of Yazidis. Are we having this conversation in a vacuum inside of a conversation inside of a world that you don't acknowledge exists outside of it? Pretending as if we're like approaching the subject for the first time. We need to actually have a conversation that focus on the future. I'm just so sick of these talking points and slogans. They're meaningless. They're rendered meaningless and obsolete when they're not rooted in any historical reality. We haven't had a real conversation about self-determination for the Palestinians any opportunity. The amount of times they've been offered a state and rejected it because it was on the condition that it lives next to a Jewish state is the story time and time again. They wanted a state that could have had one many many times since Israel's founding, nobody was always rejected because what animates this region is not the desire for Palestinian liberation or statehood. It's the desire for the destruction of Jewish statehood, for the elimination of Jewish sovereignty. It's so obvious. And then he tries to have this conversation. Everybody tries to like approach this as if uh I don't know, there's been no historical context, as if it's never been tried before. As if every single decade we erase the collect the the memory of history. We all have amnesia and start again. Well, what if we tried this? What if we pulled out uh Israeli communities and erased Jewish communities from territory and ceded it to the Palestinian Arabs? What what what what if we tried that? Did we not try that in Gaza in 2005? I mean, as bad as that was, it was a perfect experiment in what can happen if you remove all the Jews. And 20 years later, [snorts] what are you left with? A terroristic society full of full of terrorist tunnels committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. And the same thing would happen in the West Bank. And he acts as if You know, that's why when I'm having this conversation This conversation has been the obsession. This need to strip Israel of its sovereignty, of its security, to delegitimize it. To make it less safe. To demand it gives back more and more territory when the entire Middle East is Arabized and Muslimized and you have one tiny sliver Jewish state. But the obsession of the Western world, of the UN has been Israel. The obsession has been this desire and this illusion of a two-state solution, of a peace process by which only Israel has to make concessions. On the other side, we ignore the ideology, we ignore the culture, we ignore the stated aims and goals so we can have this illusion. That's been the conversation. So it's ridiculously frustrating when you hear I mean, it's not even that. It's like It's just disingenuous. It's the same recycled talking points. There's nothing slick about this to me. Nothing slick about it at all. I don't even see it as like a clever maneuver on his part. So So let me ask you a question. So So What What does it mean to you? Like he's just trying to dominate [snorts] the conversation and steer it. But man, this conversation has been had a thousand times. And the reason a Palestinian state doesn't exist side by side with Israel is not Israel's rejection of it, but the Palestinians' rejection of it. The desire to destroy Israel is greater than the desire to create Palestine. And the day that that changes is the day something changes, but there's no peace process with that mindset. There's no peace process. It doesn't exist on the false presumption that the Palestinians and the Israelis are moral equals, that they have the same values and the same desires. No. They don't. Look at the societies that have been created in Israel and look at the societies that have been created by its neighbors in Gaza. You had 20 years to try it again, to do a reset. There is nothing that prevented Palestinian society in Gaza from creating a prosperous, free society. Nothing. It's always Israel and the Zionists. It's always their fault. No, nothing. Everyone's like, well, Bibi Netanyahu allowed Qatari funds to go into fund Hamas. Okay. Granted. And if he didn't do that, what would you say? You would have said Bibi prevents funds from going in and that's why Gaza was suffering cuz he didn't allow Qatari funds to go in. So it's a lose lose. It's a lose lose argument. If Bibi prevented those funds, you would have blamed him and Israel for the lack of prosperity in Gaza because how dare Bibi prevent funds. If he allows funds, then suddenly he's at fault for all of Hamas's actions. But what about Hamas itself? Hamas. Everyone says, why do you pronounce the kha? Because I speak Hebrew, so it's Hamas. What about their agency? All those funds go in. They didn't have to do use it for terrorist activities and firing rockets continually to Israel well before October 7th. They didn't have to build a network of tunnels to conduct terrorism, kidnapping. They didn't have to do that. It could have They could have kept the greenhouses up instead of burning them down. They didn't have to murder their political opponents. They could have built schools and infrastructure in which they taught pro-Western values. They didn't do that. And that has nothing to do with Israel. That has to do with their ideology, the commitment to rejecting Israel and fighting the Yahud as stated in their charter. Nothing Bibi did or nothing any Israeli politician or policy did, forced their hand into that ideology. The ideology precedes Israel's actions. In fact, it warrants Israel's actions. It's the cause, not the effect. Don't get it backwards. It's not Israel's actions or occupation or military security apparatus that creates this Jihadism. It's the Jihadism that requires Israel's security apparatus, monitoring of goods and Everyone's like, they monitor everything that goes into Gaza, the the air, the water, the sea. They talk about this. Why? Why do they do that? Cuz if Israel doesn't monitor it, what happens? They they find that they smuggle weapons that are used to attack Israel. So don't start the story in the middle. [snorts] Are you mad at the TSA or are you mad at 9/11? I'm not saying the TSA might not even be the best policy. We all have critiques of of, you know, if this is actually effective, does this work, does it create frustration, resentment amongst people who have to go through checkpoints at the airport. Sure. But why do we have them? Don't forget why. What's the impetus that causes such a situation to exist? You can't be more mad at the TSA than 9/11. This is That's the framework. That's the That's the framing and the lens by which you have to view Israel and the situation it finds itself in. Are checkpoints annoying and terrible? Yes. It's annoying. It's It's not ideal. Why do we have them? It's not the checkpoints that cause the terrorism. It's the terrorism that causes the checkpoints, numbnuts. But there's Abdul El-Sayed acting as if or pretending cuz he knows, pretending as if we've never had this conversation. Never talked about it. We've never had this conversation. That's That has been the conversation. It's the only conversation we're having and it's not getting us anywhere. So I call I do. So remember, never care for what they do and never care for what they know. There's kind of an Obama attempt that he's trying to do. Let me Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. Why do you ask me that? [snorts] Why do you ask me that? I mean, this guy is just the master of evasive maneuvers, but he doesn't even do it so cleanly. It's very obvious to see it. Um, he gets frustrated when they bring up Hassan and all these things. Hey, guess what, buddy? You brought him up. You brought him into your campaign. So you can't have the associations and benefit from such associations and then when there's actually a liability to such associations, you discount it. You can't have both. You got to accept the perks of a big Hassan anti-Western, pro-communist audience that you support and align with. And then when you're called uh out for it and forced to confront what he believes, all of a sudden you say, okay, why are you bringing this up? This is a distraction. This is a distraction and this is why we can't get ahead in our politics, in our culture, in our conversation because you keep bringing this up as a distraction. So um can't get away with it. Sorry. >> [music] [music]