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To read more about Episode 190, visit the main episode page.

Michael Moore [00:01:16] Bibi, this is Rumble. Hi, it’s Michael Moore. Bibi, are you listening? Bibi, Benjamin, can you hear me? It’s Tax Day in the United States. I’m recording this here on Monday night, May 17th. And man, twenty six bucks. What a show I am getting from you. Bibi. $26 dollars. That’s how much I gave you this year as an American. And every other working American who paid taxes, all 155 million of us gave you about four billion dollars. To do that thing that you do. That’s 26 bucks from each of the hundred and fifty five million of us now. What did I get for my $26? Well, I’ve been watching it on TV this week. Crushing it, man, Bibi, you are crushing it, dropping those bombs, shooting those missiles, killing those children. 

Michael Moore [00:02:42] And all it cost me was $26 bucks, because those are my bombs that you’re using. Those are my missiles. Yeah. And in return, I get to watch the slaughter of innocent people. Slaughter of these civilians. Of watching a high rise apartment building crumble like the Twin Towers did on 911. Wow. You’re good at this. You’re really good at it. I know, I know you have a right to defend yourself. Do you? Do you really have a right? I mean, yes, defend yourself, because I mean, that’s we’re all humans. I mean, we all all of us want to live, so if we sense that we’re in some kind of danger, you know, we will do whatever to defend ourselves. But do you have a right? I mean, what would General George Custer say at The Battle of Little Bighorn: We have a right. 

Michael Moore [00:04:04] These Indians are firing arrows at us, we have a right to defend ourselves. The British at Lexington and Concord. Hey, hey, these colonists are rising up. Yes, we shot up, but we have a right to defend ourselves. We’re the British Empire. Did they have a right? Did Custer have a right to defend himself before he fell dead. Did he have a right? Did the apartheid regime in South Africa have a right to defend apartheid? You can go through history here. This will take all night, so we’re not going to do that, but you get my point, right? You do understand who the oppressed are and who the oppressor is. Mike, Mike, you don’t understand. Mike, you don’t understand the context here. You don’t understand the history. Hmm. Yeah, I understand what I’m seeing right now, though. Y. 

Michael Moore [00:05:15] Ou want to talk history, though. OK, here let me I’ll give you some history and let me tell you what I understand. There’s a Palestinian guy from Flint, Michigan that owns the Detroit Pistons. That’s a fact. In fact, we grew up with so many Palestinians and Arab neighbors and friends and and I mean, they were such an integral part of Flint and Detroit and southeastern Michigan. And anybody who grew up in this zone knows that. They would say often that this is the largest population of Arabs and Muslims outside the Arab speaking world. In the southeastern Michigan area. And so, you know, we lived together and worked together. And, you know, anybody from Flint remember going to Hamady’s. That was our grocery store. In fact, it was a chain of grocery stores in the Flint area called Hamady’s. And of course, Hamady’s were Arabic people, Arab-Americans. You remember the Joubrans – Tom and Mike. They had like the best dance club in Flint called The Mighty Mikatam. Anybody remember this? 

Michael Moore [00:06:44] I know you’re listening to this someplace in the middle of Ireland. Mike, what are you talking about? I know this is just the 30 seconds for the people that grew up in Flint and in Detroit. And they helped build a wonderful place called Flint, Michigan. So that’s some of my history. But there were also our Jewish neighbors and the people that we knew and lived with in Flint at one time. I don’t know if it’s still true, but there were four Jewish temples and synagogues in Flint. Flint’s not a big city, I mean, the largest it ever was, maybe 50 years ago, it had close to 200,000 people, it has less than 100,000 now. And they’ve got four Jewish temples and it’s like, Wow, that’s a lot. You know, Jews make up one or two percent of the United States population, but there was a large, you know, for a city the size of Flint number of Jewish families. 

Michael Moore [00:07:48] And why was that? Well, in part it was because and this is the history that we were taught, that it was the Jews from New York who came to Flint and saved us. That the conditions in the factories were so awful back in the 1920s, Jewish men and women, political activists, union organizers from New York decided to move to Flint and Detroit. And other cities to help organize workers into a union. Unions that did not exist at the time in the 1920s. It’s not like they took the train or hitchhiked to Flint to attend a protest rally on some weekend back in 1928. No, they made a decision to leave their homes in New York, move to Flint and get jobs in the factories so that they could organize the workers in those factories. 

Michael Moore [00:08:53] But they had to go onto these God awful assembly lines and work building cars. And they had to commit to doing that for years because it was going to take years to do this organizing. And by 1932, they felt that they had done the work and by that time too, of course, they had connected with the Reuther brothers and others in the Flint and in the Detroit area who were over there already wanting to unionize. But they brought with them from New York, and let’s be honest, the word communist these days means something completely different. Back then, they were all communists. They came from New York because communist meant something else. Then what you know, people grew up with in the Cold War. They were committed to organizing the workers throughout America. And they succeeded to a very, very large extent. And it’s not that the people of Flint couldn’t have done this on their own and maybe they would have, but…I used to each year I would go to the picnic of all the people who were still alive, who took over the General Motors factories that founded the UAW, and the stories they would tell of these wonderful people that came from New York City, and so they had a strike in 1932 and it failed and General Motors crushed them. 

Michael Moore [00:10:23] But they didn’t go running back to New York City. They stayed, they stayed and they said this will take a while now, but we will make this work. It’s the middle of the Great Depression. It’s 1932. They worked for four more years organizing before they did their next sit down strike, and then on the night, on the day before New Year’s Eve, 1936, took over the factory. So 44 days. And brought General Motors to its knees, and thus the UAW was officially baptized and born. And it was in large part to the Jews of New York who came to Flin to help organize this great union. And that story was passed on to us, and we knew that by the time, you know, we were kids and because these Jewish organizers and union people stayed in Flint, they stayed working in the factories, they kept their jobs, and they became a very important part of the community. So important, and so by the time I was say, in my fifth grade in Catholic school, every Passover, they would take us to the Jewish temple and the people at the temple would hold a Seder with us, for us. 

Michael Moore [00:11:53] So that we would learn about the Jewish religion, that we would, you know, they would tell us stories and the nuns before we went to the temple, taught us how to sing Jewish songs and do Jewish dances. I’m serious. So here you have these fifth graders at Catholic school with the nuns going, OK, ready? Hava Nagila, Hava Nagila, Hava. I don’t even know if I’m singing this right? I’m trying to remember something when I was 10 years old, but this is how we lived and in improbably a rare sort of way, as things go in these United States, the idea of bigotry and hatred, anti-Semitism, not that it didn’t exist, but we weren’t raised with it. In fact, we were, you know, the joke I always tell is that the nuns, while in all the other Catholic schools and other cities, were taught that it was the Jews who killed our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we were taught in Flint that it was not the Jews who killed Jesus. It was the Italians. 

Michael Moore [00:13:15] You know, we were all Irish. So, you know, just that it was more fun to look at it that way. So Flint was a town with a lot of people who could speak Arabic and a lot of people of the Jewish faith. And when I say faith, a number of them, especially the organizers and people, were atheists too. But they were also very proud of their Jewish heritage and what that gave them in terms of their caring and concern for those who are living a difficult life in Flint, Michigan, and all the other places, where they suffered in these factories. So that’s a little history when you say, I need to know some history. You want context to how I’m viewing the slaughter that’s taking place this week over in Palestine. I started my own newspaper in Flint, it was called the Flint Voice. I started it back in 1976-77 and I started providing pages in the paper for Arab voices in the area and people that were traveling back and forth from the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza. 

Michael Moore [00:14:43] And I made my paper starting in the 70s, a place where we could talk about this. This paper also, I mean, we did a front page story and an investigation of how the city of Flint at that time in the late 70s, the police were killing more civilians, usually Black ones than any other city per capita in the country. We were the police killing capital, not the police being killed, but the police killing citizens. And so we did story after story after story on this and the police chief decides to run for mayor and he becomes the mayor and we become his target. And one day when he found out that we were writing a story exposing how he was misusing federal money, using essentially federally funded employees to campaign for him, he went and got an order from a judge and sent the Flint police into the printing plant to stop the presses, literally stop the presses and take the printing plates off the presses of our paper, the Flint Voice. 

Michael Moore [00:16:02] And then had them scoop up all the papers that had been printed and they carried them all off in the police vans. So that that issue of the paper would not be seen by anybody in the public. Someday, I’ll do an episode on this and what I learned at an early age about the police state. But I don’t want to get into that today. Suffice it to say, we got lawyers, the ACLU stepped in, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. And we got our issue of the paperback. When the massacres occurred at Sabra and Shatila, Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. A massacre of Palestinians. Overseen by the Israeli army and the Israeli general, Sharon. We devoted our entire cover to it. So this issue, I’ve thought about this for a long time, and I’ve cared about it and I cared about it in the same way that I cared about what the police were doing in Flint. 

Michael Moore [00:17:23] And what was happening? You see, when I hear people say that they support Israel. But then they condone the brutality against the Palestinian people. I say to them, You know, your support of Israel has no integrity or credibility. There’s no honor. If you don’t support the human rights of everyone, then you support the human rights of no one. And that’s kind of how I live with my life. So, you know, I help, I participated in things back in the 70s and 80s when it came to how Arab-Americans are being treated, but how the Palestinians especially were being treated. And also in the 80s. I think it was the early 80s, Reagan was president. And when he decided to go to a Nazi cemetery where Nazis were buried, SS, and lay a wreath at their graves when he was making a visit to Germany. My friend Gary, whose parents both were survivors of Auschwitz, decided why don’t we just get on a plane and fly over there and confront Reagan in the cemetery. Sitting there in Michigan and a couple, friends of ours, Jack and Laurie, made this big banner, spray painted this banner: We came from Michigan to remind you (is what it said). We came from Michigan to remind you they murdered my family. Not mine, Gary’s family. So he and I got on a plane, flew over there. I won’t go into this, I’ll save the story for another time, if you saw my Broadway play, you know the story. Or if you read it in my book, “Here Comes Trouble.”. 

Michael Moore [00:19:17] You know the story. Suffice it to say, we snuck into the cemetery and we were able to confront in our own little way Ronald Reagan for putting a wreath on the graves of SS Nazi soldiers. And I know Gary was very appreciative that I helped organize this and that, you know, I went with him. But that’s just how I was raised and that’s who I am. I would want everybody, anybody, listening to this who’s Jewish to know that. That there’s at least one person and there are more, many more, millions more. But in my case, speaking for myself, there’s one person who will always have your back. Always have your back. Do whatever I can do to never let any harm come to you. There will be no repeat of what happened in the Holocaust. That’s how I’ve always felt, that’s how I felt, even by going and taking this public stand against Reagan. Doing something nice for the Nazis was so insane. But that’s who I am. So that’s 1984, maybe. 

Michael Moore [00:20:44] In 1985, I received a grant, a journalism grant scholarship, so to speak. That allowed me to go on a fact finding tour of the Middle East, just to kind of get a sense of things. And when we got to Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, it was like I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Honest to God. It was so sad and so frightening, and so, it just hit me, it hit me like a ton of bricks. That Israel of all people would be doing, causing this kind of harm to Palestinians, making them live like this. No rights, no say. You know, [you get] the sense that you’re living in a big prison. Wow. Just kind of blew my mind. And two and a half years later, there was an uprising among the Palestinians, kids with stones throwing stones at the soldiers was called the first intifada. 

Michael Moore [00:21:59] And within a month of it starting, I went with some journalist friends over there to cover it again. Just stunning. Getting caught in the middle of Israeli soldiers, firing rubber bullets whizzing by me. I can’t believe none of them hit me. But I look back at it now and I’m thinking, boy, I don’t know if I would take this kind of risk again, that was just crazy. And they were killing these kids that were throwing stones at them. And we went to Gaza. I’ve been to a lot of places in the world, a lot of very poor countries. I’d never seen anything like this. Two million people living on a very narrow strip of land. And with nothing. And surrounded by the Israeli army. Wow. I just couldn’t get over it. You know, once you see something, you can’t unsee it. Something like this. I had just also just begun making my first film, Roger & Me. I came back home to keep working on that and finish it and was still rattled by what I’d seen. 

Michael Moore [00:23:26] And when the film came out and, you know, it got a very favorable reaction from a lot of people in this country, I got an invitation from the Jerusalem Film Festival to come and show the film. And because of these curfews and for the intifada that was still essentially going on. I just asked the festival. I said, Well, I’m honored. Thank you. I’d love to come. Will Arab people be able to watch my movie? They explained, well, you know, we have these curfews, and if they live in Bethlehem, no, they can’t. Bethlehem is like, you know, less than five miles outside of Jerusalem.  They won’t be able to see it, so I said, Well, then that’s a segregated situation. I can’t participate in that. There’s nothing we can do about it. I mean, this is the government, we don’t agree with this. And I had to make a decision and I decided and I just said, Look, I can’t. 

Michael Moore [00:24:35] This is like an apartheid situation here. I can’t do this. I can’t, you know, they’re the majority, certainly in the West Bank and Gaza, clearly, and yet, how many screenings of this film will take place in these occupied territories? None. OK, well, at least, look, if I don’t come, you’re going to have subtitles on it, right? Yes, there will be Hebrew and French subtitles. And I said French? What’s that got to do with anything? The people who live there are Jewish-Israelis and Arab-Israelis or Arab Palestinians who live in the occupied territories. Why don’t you have Hebrew and Arabic on the screen? Well, it’s just the way we do it. I said, Oh I can’t participate in this. Show the film fine, but you know, I can’t come. They were really bummed out. And in fact, by that time, I had already sold the film to Warner Brothers, so I couldn’t pull the film because Warners had already said yes. And anyway, oh man, it was in all the papers that I refused to come because Arab citizens, Arab residents, Arabs under occupation could not come to the theater and watch the movie. 

Michael Moore [00:26:16] And even if they could, their language would not be the subtitles on the screen. And so because I made a point about this, I was pilloried and most not all of the Israeli press, they were very, you know, or at least at the time, had a very strong left wing in Israel and in their press. and some were very, very supportive of me. But anyway, I didn’t go. The jury and usually these festivals have kind of an international jury. The jury picked Roger & Me, my film, as the best film of the festival. Came at the top prize, and of course, I’m not there to accept it. So that’s another whole round of stories in the press about how I wasn’t, you know, they’re so generous, they gave me the top prize and then I wasn’t there, but I won. I will not participate in anything like that that segregation, that’s essentially based on racism and an apartheid situation. And I just stuck to that. 

Michael Moore [00:27:35] I took a lot of crap for it. But it’s OK. You know, next year, I’m at the Toronto Film Festival. And I see the woman who is the head of the Jerusalem Film Festival, and she’s coming toward me and I’m like getting really nervous. No, I don’t want it to deal with this. She’s going to be so mad. She came up to me and gave me this huge hug. And I’m like, Oh, what’s going on? And then she sort of, you know, held me there by my shoulders and she said, Thank you. Thank you for taking that stand. I know you had to suffer for it, but you said the right thing, you did the right thing. And as a result, we have made changes this year at the festival. First of all, the subtitles on the films will not be Hebrew and French, it will be Hebrew and Arabic. Number two, if we find ourselves in a situation that we can’t control because of the army and the police and the right-wing government, we will find a way so that the Arab citizens and residents and occupied people will be able to see the films. They are participants in Jerusalem. 

Michael Moore [00:29:04] By that time, Israel was claiming the whole city was theirs, even though east Jerusalem is essentially at that time, all Arabic. But of course, they have been kicking the Palestinians out over many years since then. This is 1989, so we’re talking over 30 years ago. And that’s what triggered this thing that happened here in the last couple of weeks because they were kicking people out of their homes again. They wanted the apartments, they wanted the homes in Jerusalem. Which is supposedly now the capital of Israel. And if you live in Jerusalem, you’re supposed to be a citizen, but not quite. If you’re a Palestinian, you have a little different form of identity card. You’re color coded if you’re an Arab in Israel or the West Bank or Gaza or Jerusalem. Another another whole thing I’m not going to get into, but it’s one of these things you see in in an apartheid regime. 

Michael Moore [00:30:05] But she was so grateful that I had done that and it helped them make some of these changes that they needed to make. And I was so grateful that she told me that. And it just felt better. All the heat I had to take. You know, for taking that stand. Back in 1989. But overall, things did not get better in these thirty two years since I won the prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival that I refused to attend. It has just gotten worse and worse and worse. Even right to the point where this past week, Mark Ruffalo takes his own stand. Uses the word apartheid in describing the regime and the Netanyahu forces. And man, people came down on him. They started boycotts on Mark Ruffalo. And Mark Ruffalo’s like the sweetest guy. The biggest heart. A fighter for so many things in this country. And he will be there. He shows up. The middle of winter. On the Indian reservation, where they are trying to stop the pipeline. There’s Mark Ruffalo. Flint, Michigan. Water, no water. There’s Mark Ruffalo, I mean, literally. I don’t know if you know this about Mark, he’s more than just the Hulk. 

Michael Moore [00:31:56] You know, plus he’s just a great actor, too. If you’ve seen him in all the other wonderful things that he’s been in. And yet he is being pilloried this week because he dared to speak up for the Palestinian people. And I thought to myself, Wow, thirty two years later, the same kind of propaganda, the same kind of trying to whip it up against somebody who’s saying the truth. And trying to shut him down. See, that’s the good news. It’s that, well, sadly, things have not gotten better for the Palestinians. The young people of this country and in Palestine and young Israelis and young people around the world have had enough. They’ve seen enough. They know the truth. And Bibi Netanyahu, you know, you ain’t going to work anymore. You overplayed your hand. You overstayed your welcome. And now the young people around the world are not going to support you. Are not going to tolerate this any longer. 

Michael Moore [00:33:15] The young people of the United States who have led these movements from the Women’s March to the March For Our Lives with the Parkland high school kids to the last election here and getting out the vote and then taking over the streets last year after the murder of George Floyd. Young people, young teenagers, adults said enough is enough. And the treatment of George Floyd in their eyes correctly and mine and many of you listening to this, the treatment of George Floyd times that by five million, seven million. And there you have the situation in Palestine and Israel. Or even an Arab citizen who has full citizenship in Israel is still treated differently. Because he’s there, she’s there. This will not continue. No one’s listening, Bibi. We have a right to defend ourselves. Yes. Thank you, General Custer. Yes, you do, actually, because you are human and you want to live. It’s complex. You don’t know the history. No, but I know what my own eyes saw last night. I saw them pulling the four year old girl out of the rubble. 

Michael Moore [00:35:01] The rubble that you created. I saw how you used the press, your PR guy held a press conference to say that you were sending in the ground troops into Gaza, which scared people in Gaza. And so they went to hide in their makeshift bomb shelters. These tunnels that they’ve got and you somehow, you’re so good at this. Bibi, you remember…You know how to kill, you’re great killers. You did it, Bibi. You used the press as you wanted Hamas and the Palestinians and everybody to hear that you were crossing the border and coming into Gaza with the tanks and the soldiers. And so everybody ran to the tunnels to hide, to try to hide from the troops. You got The New York Times and all the Israeli press and everybody to report that this invasion had started. They made it up because they knew they would scare the Palestinians into the tunnels, the tunnels that they were going to send these bombs into. To asphyxiate and to kill. God knows how many people, we don’t know these numbers yet, we will know this eventually. How many hundreds? Eventually, how many thousands? 

Michael Moore [00:36:30] God forbid, please, no, that were killed because you used and you and the press are so easily duped, because if the Israeli spokesman is saying it then it’s got to be true. It sounds so believable. And the Palestinians believed it. And they went into the tunnels, and that’s why they died. And then, of course, a couple of days later, your PR guy, your press person, whoever that is, had to apologize for the little ruse that they created so they could smoke them out. And then we watch those apartment buildings crumble in the exact same way that the twin towers crumbled. And it sent a chill down my spine to look at that. This is not the way I was raised to believe things about Israel. And I’ve tried to make a separation in my head because I know so many very, very good Israelis. I mean, the Israeli human rights group, and I’m probably going to mispronounce the name, but it’s B’Tselem. It’s the only Israeli human rights organization that has called the Netanyahu regime an apartheid government. It has turned Israel into an apartheid country. 

Michael Moore [00:38:04] That’s the Israelis saying that, and then, of course, Human Rights Watch, the international organization, put out a 200 page report this year outlining every aspect of how Israeli apartheid works. It’s not South Africa. It’s a 21st century version. It’s the smart way to do apartheid. And it’s a stunning document, you can look it up online. I’ll put a link, a couple links here on the site so you can read this. So many people want this to end. But let’s stop with the false equivalency here. And whatever mistakes Palestinians have made. Palestinian leaders have made. You know, I’m a pacifist, so not I would I would not be firing rockets. That’s just me. But I understand why. I understand why the Indians fired their bows and arrows at General Custer and any of the cavalry that was coming. Because that’s what people do when they’re put in that situation. 

Michael Moore [00:39:30] And it’s amazing that people in Palestine can even think clearly. Because when you’ve been under this sort of attack since 1948, when you’ve been put in a prison and then the people running the prison call it a democracy. Wow. You don’t know which way is up. Biden, pull the plug. Joe, you got to pull the plug on Netanyahu. You got to say, We’re not sending you any more money. Stop this right now. They just announced yesterday a $735 million arms deal, we’re sending the Israelis $735 million dollars worth of new weapons. Who are we? Look, Joe, I know it takes a while, of course you’re not Bernie, but that’s OK. You’ve done some great things here and now you need to listen to Bernie about this. 

Michael Moore [00:40:55] He’s written about it. I’m sure he’s talked to you about it, you know, and you’re a good Catholic. Back when I visited, the first time I visited Palestine, it was pointed out to me that somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of Palestinians are Catholics. Catholics or Christians. Most people aren’t aware of that. Most people aren’t aware that the Muslim Bible, which is called the Quran, has a whole chapter in there devoted to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Because they worship her, they honor her merit. We don’t. In the Christian Bible, there’s no book called Mary. But it’s in the Quran. We are so ignorant and removed. And this is why we get into all this trouble, and we let our government do things in our name and with our money. We never should do it. And right now, when you see this suffering, you’re causing it, my friends who are Americans (who are listening to this). And I’m causing it, I’m paying for it. I paid $26 for it today and I get a whole year’s worth of oppressing the Palestinians for that. That is quite the deal, isn’t it? 

Michael Moore [00:42:21] Most of you know I’m being sarcastic, right? Yeah, it sickens me. I’ve been sick here for a week watching this, so there’s so many other things we need to talk about and deal with, we’re not going to have time to do that today. But I do have to be very clear about what I think we need to do and what President Biden needs to do. And we need to put Bibi, Benjamin Netanyahu on notice. That his time is up. The days are over. The world won’t tolerate this anymore. The Palestinian people are not going to stop, they’re not going to tolerate it anymore. So we have to find a different way. And one of the things we’re going to do is we’re going to take away, we’re not going to be the bank anymore for you. Twenty percent of the Israeli military budget is funded by us. One fifth of it is just covered by us that doesn’t even count all the other things that we send them. Do you realize that it’s three fifths of all military aid that we give to other countries in the world? Three fifths of it goes to one country, Israel. Come on, everybody. This has to end. 

Michael Moore [00:43:44] I went there nearly 40 years ago. I had to live with what I saw and what I experienced. I’ve been writing about this for almost 50 years. And I’m done, I’m tired of it. I’m sick of it. And I know that the same power that brought all of us out into the streets this past year has to do with the same thing now. And there are demonstrations taking place all across America this coming weekend. And just go online locally, you know what to type in, you’ll find you’ll find it. This is not a highly coordinated effort right now, but it’s happening. And we need to make our voices heard because we are the funders of this oppression. We are the funders of this slaughter. We are the funders of this theft. Of kicking people out of their apartments, bulldozing their homes. We, you and me. 

Michael Moore [00:44:51] Something to think about on Tax Day, and you can say, Well, hey, Mike. I mean, I only gave twenty six dollars to all this madness. I mean, you know, how much real harm did I cause with my tax dollars? Well, quite a bit, my friend. $26 from 155 million of us went to this collectively over $4 billion. No, not another dime. Let’s call it what the Israeli human rights organization called it – apartheid. This is an evil regime run by Benjamin Netanyahu. No more. And we’re not going to believe the lies anymore. None of the propaganda, all the stuff we’re told. What we had to blow up the building that The Associated Press was in because Hamas was using them as cover because they were militants in the building? Oh, come on. First of all, if you’re Palestinian, it’s redundant to call you a militant. Your people have had your land and your homes stolen from you. 

Michael Moore [00:46:03] And you’ve been part of a great erasure over the last 50-60 years. So, of course, there are militants everywhere. There’s militants in my apartment building, you know, don’t use that as an excuse, Bibi, to bomb the building here. But I’m just saying, don’t believe any of this stuff you’re being told this week in the press that, especially the American media, has been so hoodwinked by this stuff for now…They’re firing rockets into Israel from that building. And so, let’s kill 40 people in the building. You know, but were rockets being fired from there? I don’t believe any of it in the same way, I don’t believe the Minneapolis police press spokesperson on the night of George Floyd’s murder. You know I’m talking about that press release they sent out saying how he had a medical condition and died. Let’s remember that they’re liars. They’re all professional liars. 

Michael Moore [00:47:07] It’s not just in Israel, it’s this country. It’s around the world. And if they’re police and if they’re military, you know, again, we need to go back to the old adage of: everything that they’re telling you is a lie. Nothing, they say, should be believed unless it’s proven that they are telling the truth. But you have to first accept and begin with accepting that what you’re being told is not the truth. Make them prove to you it is the truth. They can have a very hard time doing that. So don’t fall for any of the stuff that you’re hearing this week. As I’m recording this now, 10 Israelis have died and I think close to 300 Palestinians. It’s a false equivalency there. And let me tell you something, though, every single one of those 10 Israeli lives matter deeply. It’s not a numbers game. But to hear the Israeli government and Netanyahu talk about it like it’s some even steven thing. Are you kidding me? 

Michael Moore [00:48:10] One is a nuclear power and the other side has bows and arrows. And there’s a reason they’re firing those arrows. It’s complicated, Mike. Mm hmm. Yeah. It’s complicated only in the sense that we have to figure out how we are going to stop funding this insanity. Make your voice heard to your Senators, your members of Congress and to Joe Biden, who for some reason has taken down the phone. Now you have to go to the White House website and there’s a form you can fill out with your complaint to the president. So I’ll do that. But get on social media, I’ll post a couple of things here on my social media, I’ll try to post a couple of things here on my page. You should hear Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib from Detroit. Her nine minute statement in Congress here today, Oh wow. Powerful stuff, my friends. Let’s put an end to this. 

Michael Moore [00:49:24] President Biden or anybody who’s working for him that is listening to me: You do not have our support. And we speak for millions and millions of Americans. The same millions, actually, who would give their lives to make sure that there never will be another Holocaust again, who will stand for anybody who’s Jewish and who’s being attacked because they’re Jewish and who is suffering any form of bigotry. We’re the same people. And the reason our position has integrity is that what we would do to defend the Jewish people on this planet, if we don’t do that for the Palestinians, for others, especially those who are being harmed by the formerly oppressed people, then we have no integrity. So, if you support Israel, then you will support the end of this slaughter. 

Michael Moore [00:50:32] And the end of them living in a prison called Palestine. And I’m just going to throw this out there, and we’ll do an episode on it someday. We used to talk about a two state solution. It’s clear now that that’s never going to work. So what we need is one democracy. We need everybody to live together on that land. The Jewish residents are not going anywhere. My friends, we are way past 1948 at this point. They are staying and the Palestinian people are staying in their homes, what’s left of them. They should be able to come back, those who’ve had to flee, come back and live there and have one big democracy, one big country. You cannot have a democracy that’s called a religious state. If you call it a religious state, it automatically isn’t a democracy, it’s for the members of that religion. And we all know that that is not democracy. 

Michael Moore [00:51:50] If we say we believe in democracy, then let’s have a democratic country. Arabs and Jews and Christians and everybody, whoever lives there. One person, one vote. And whoever the majority ends up being, there will be a respect and a guarantee of the rights for the minority. I know I’m proposing something that we can’t even do here in our own country. So, you know, if you live over there, you can maybe just take this with a grain of salt because we are no example for the way that you should be living. All I know is I want my tax dollars back, Joe Biden. Send it to me. I can’t have this on my conscience that I helped pay for the slaughter. And all the other slaughter that happened before this. That’s what I wanted to say. 

Michael Moore [00:54:19] Before we end, the mask mandates that are being lifted, the confusing statements from the CDC that you don’t need to wear masks anymore, I join with the largest nurses union in this country. I join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. I join with those Democrats in the Congress and others who have decried this stupid statement from the CDC that if you’re fully vaccinated, you don’t need to wear a mask indoors anymore. Well, yes, that’s probably true if everybody else wears and if you’ve also been fully vaccinated and it’s been three weeks since your second shot. But only a third of the country is vaccinated. They keep talking about this. You know, how many got one shot? Well, that’s not vaccinated. That’s one shot. Look, folks, we’ve suffered through this for a good 15 months and we’ve gone through a lot. Why just toss it all away when we might be so close to getting, you know, 60, 70, 80 percent of this country vaccinated. 

Michael Moore [00:56:46] Why can’t we just wait a few more months, then we can talk about taking the masks off? I’m going to continue wearing my mask, and I hope the rest of you do, too. And don’t be bullied by anybody about it. The CDC needs to rethink this. The White House needs to get some clarity on this. I know politicians want to make people happy. And what would make us all happy is if we didn’t have to wear a mask anymore. I get that. I’m one of those people. I don’t want to wear them, but I don’t need politicians trying to make me happy right now. I need politicians guaranteeing that we’re not going to suffer through another year or two of this coronavirus. They’ve got to restate this. Rethink this. This caught everybody by surprise. 

Michael Moore [00:57:31] The doctors I’ve had on my podcast here, everybody is just like, what, this is not right, and it’s too soon. Only a third of the country is vaccinated. If we don’t get to the point where the masks are no longer on us, the virus is looking for a host, we’re vaccinated, so we’re not going to be the host. Who’s it? What’s it going to look for our kids, for the babies to 11 years old who are not being vaccinated now? Is that something we want to see happen? Please, my friends, keep your mask on. Write, call, text. Get on social media and tell the CDC to go back to the same way of doing this. Don’t be bullied by these militias. And the others who think that the whole virus is a hoax to begin with. 

Michael Moore [00:58:39] Don’t play into their hands. And finally, just before we started recording today, it came out that the Supreme Court will hear this abortion case from Mississippi starting in the fall. The one that that supposed to bring down Roe v. Wade and abortion in America. I felt like I was watching an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale here a few hours ago with our conservative christian Supreme Court. And they basically want a country where all women, any woman who gets pregnant, is forced to go through nine months and deliver a baby. Has no choice. The government says you shall deliver that baby. I don’t have any word yet on whether or not Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Barrett have offered to hold down any of these women during childbirth to make sure that that baby comes out. 

Michael Moore [00:59:52] But this is creepy, fascistic and we’re going to have to let the Supreme Court know we will not tolerate the government controlling women’s reproductive organs, that’s come on, friends, this is 2021. No way we’re going to let this happen, where the government is run mostly by men. The minority gender. 51 percent of the country are female and their essential rights of their bodies are going to be taken from them by the Supreme Court next year. I know we’ve got a lot of work to do. 

Michael Moore [01:00:37] Thank you for listening today and please make your voice heard about our good friends, the Palestinian people in Palestine, in Israel. And if you love Israel, this would be the best thing you could do for Israel. Let’s pull the plug. Thanks to our executive producer, Basel Hamdan, our editor and sound engineer, Nick Kwas, and to everybody who had anything to do with helping me put this together and reaching out to the millions of you who have been downloading this now for the last, almost 17 months. Wow. I’m going to run out of the post office and drop off my taxes. Take care, everybody. This is Michael Moore, and this has been a special Rumble episode.