In the wake of President Trump’s visit to meet with Xi Jinping, a California mayor just got EXPOSED for being a Chinese spy. Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, admitted to working on behalf of the People’s Republic of China to promote Chinese propaganda in the United States. The Sekulow team discusses the Chinese foreign agent, the threat from China, the need to boost national security, the ACLJ’s legal work – and much more.
SPEAKER 13 :
On today’s show, Senator Chris Murphy returns and makes a shocking claim on Iran’s strength.
SPEAKER 14 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 13 :
Welcome to Sekulow. It’s May 13th. Here we are, Will. We’re back. Once again. Yep. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. I had to check. It’s Wednesday. That’s right. May 13th. And we are going to take your calls. That being said, there’s some fun stuff we can cover. You may be talking about the war in Iran. You may have seen some updates here. President Trump saying, you know, maybe that the ceasefire is a bit on life support. Is it going to happen? Is it going to continue? We’re going to discuss that. We’re also going to be joined later on by Jeff Balaban from ACLJ Jerusalem. He is in Israel right now talking about that report that came out that really. showed in very clear details we’re not going to get into a lot of those details because we know a lot of you’ve read it and honestly we know a lot of you listen with your families and everything uh really shocking and the most disturbing details that came out of the actual events of october 7th what it looked like to be a hostage in captivity we’ll discuss that with jeff balaban as well as that interview that benjamin netanyahu did over the weekend major garrett had a really good interview But in it, kind of admitted to the fact that Israel is losing what I guess you’d call the PR battle, the PR war, the propaganda battle because of social media’s influence and how strong that the other side has been. And again, when they start admitting that, at least we can maybe see some movement from Israel in trying to combat the lies that continue to be portrayed as truth. And look, at this point, you may have issues with the current situations in Israel. And like I’ve said, you may have issues with what’s happening. You may not like the Netanyahu administration, just like a lot of you may not like the Trump administration or the Biden administration. There’s some truth to what is going on there in terms of that propaganda battle that somehow Hamas and by proxies have won. Now, that’s not the main topic today. The main topic today is focusing on this backlash, Will, that happened over an interview with, again, Chris Murphy, senator from Connecticut, you may remember him from just a few weeks ago, saying awesome about the war in Iran.
SPEAKER 03 :
Once again, this is the senator, when he put that up, awesome, he was falling victim to Iranian propaganda. He said it was sarcasm, obviously, but he was believing an Iranian propaganda report that was not true. Now you have him talking about how strong the Iranians are. This is on MS Now with Chris Hayes. And I want you to listen to this because even what he’s saying, the host, Chris Hayes, finds incredulous. Bite three. Let’s play it.
SPEAKER 11 :
Tehran is two to three times more powerful today than they were when this war started. Everyone now has to come to Tehran.
SPEAKER 01 :
Really? You really think that? Two to three times?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I mean, everyone has to come to Tehran today to beg for their ships to be let out of the Gulf. Not small nations, big nations, right? The Chinese, the Indians, the Qataris have to show up to Iran to plead their case as to why their ships should be let through. And that’s probably going to be how things work for the foreseeable future.
SPEAKER 13 :
Even their shock on the face of the MSN, MSNOW host.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. This is, once again, Chris Murphy, a elected president. Senator from Connecticut saying that Iran is two to three times more powerful. We have some other comments from Democrats. It’s shocking because it’s what we talked about yesterday with the president going to China, having this summit. No matter what happens there, they’re going to say the president failed. They’re going to talk down about our country and they’re going to say we’re in a weakened position. It’s absolutely insane that we’re at this point.
SPEAKER 13 :
You may not like the war in Iran and I understand there’s valid concerns with the war in Iran. But if you’re telling me that Iran, the IRGC, is in better shape now, not only better shape, two to three times more powerful now than they were before the war began, you are just completely blind to what’s really happening. Or like Will said, more than likely, you’re just trying to spread your own narrative heading into the midterms. And all it is, again, is politics. We’re going to discuss that more at length when we get back. 1-800-684-3110. How does that make you feel? Do you feel like Iran? I don’t know, after we took out their entire leadership? You feel like they’re two to three more times more powerful now than they were before? Again, you may have to agree with the war in general, but I think there is a fact that no, that is not true. But I’d love to hear from you. Give me a call. Also go to ACLJ.org. Check out all the great content we got there. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Secular. A lot of you are just joining us right now. If you’re watching on YouTube or any of the other kind of social platforms, but YouTube’s a big one, hit that thumbs up for us right now and throw a comment in there. Even just tell me where you’re watching from. We want to make sure this gets into more people’s feeds because when you have this sort of issue where, again, America, even when they have successes, even when it’s successes you may disagree with, you may not be like, I love this war in Iran. But you could be like, but there’s one thing for sure. We went out and we took out the leadership very quickly, and they are in a weakened state. We know that is not propaganda. We know that that is the truth. However, you have United States senators from the state of Connecticut going on to the major mainstream news. It was on Chris Hayes. This is Chris Murphy on Chris Hayes. If you didn’t hear in the first segment, we’re going to play it again. Then we’re going to take some calls and comments about this. Because you may be going, how are we doing in Iran? Clearly, we’ve had some successes there. You may not like the way it’s proceeded. But, you know, how’s Iran doing as a government? This is what Chris Murphy has to say. By three.
SPEAKER 11 :
Iran is two to three times more powerful today than they were when this war started. Everyone now has to come to Tehran.
SPEAKER 01 :
Two to three times.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I mean, everyone has to come to Tehran today to beg for their ships to be let out of the Gulf. Not small nations, big nations.
SPEAKER 13 :
It’s really what I wanted you to hear. Two to three times. And even Chris Hayes goes, what? You really think that two to three times more powerful? I don’t know, without the entire leadership from the decades long leadership, by the way? 40 years. Yeah, so I would say that they are not necessarily in the best shape of their careers. Certainly not two to three times more powerful, but this is the problem. Again, you’ve lost who you’re talking to, which again, you went on Friendly Media, you went on MS Now, the former MSNBC. It’s like when people say formerly Twitter, you have to say that. MS Now, formerly MSNBC. Just so people know what you’re talking about. Yeah, exactly, because no one’s ever heard of MS Now. It is wild to hear those kind of claims, but it’s not necessarily that shocking because they perpetuate There are never any wins. There are never any successes. It is all politics. You can’t give any credit to what our United States military has done. You can’t give any credit to certainly not what the administration has done. And then you have people from Connecticut like Tom on line two. We should take Tom who’s got some thoughts on Senator Murphy. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
I said he is an embarrassment to our state. Eastern Connecticut is Republican. Western Connecticut is Democrat. Western Connecticut keeps voting him in. The guy is an idiot.
SPEAKER 03 :
Tom, here’s also the problem as well, beyond what these individuals may or may not be as far as their capacity to perform their duties as U.S. Senator or even a member of Congress. The entire Democrat strategy now has become a zero-sum game. They mock everyone on the right. They mock every policy position of the president. It is never a situation where they can work together for the betterment of the country. And I think that is the biggest contrast between where conservative ideology has moved and the kind of America first ideology of wanting the betterment of the country. The Democrats have created an entire system where it’s a zero sum game. Anything that could benefit their political opponents has to be negative for them. The only way they can advance their agenda is that every single thing that is done by the other side is a failure, no matter what. it means for the rest of the country. And I think when you hear Senator Murphy say these things of him gloating with the awesome that he fell for Iranian propaganda on X a few weeks back, or this, where they’re now two to three times more powerful, they have to say these things because it’s the only thing politically they know how to do anymore. But I want to play this as well. This is a representative from Pennsylvania, Madeline Dean. she was on, I believe, CNN, and she was talking about this entire situation, trying to showcase the world, say the president is weaker now, and what she longs for to get out of this foreign policy with Iran and this war. But this is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This is someone who should be very well versed in foreign policy. And you would also think, to some degree, would maybe… play it a little safer for the men and women in uniform and maybe for the country in general. But here’s what she says. Let’s go ahead and play bite five.
SPEAKER 09 :
Here’s the president. He has wound up someplace else in a weakened position before President Xi with the hopes that maybe somehow the president will help him through the Straits of Hormuz. It’s a very bad position for the United States. In terms of the president’s wish or demand that Iran never get a nuclear weapon, we all think that. We’ve all thought that. If only we had something like the JCPOA. It would be a dream to go back to that agreement at this point, an agreement that the president tore up.
SPEAKER 03 :
So, Logan, two things in this one bite. One, already confirming what I said is that he’s gone to China and they’re already mocking the president, already saying he’s weakened and he’s hoping maybe somehow the president, referring to President Xi Jinping of China, will somehow help him through the Straits of Hormuz. That’s one, mocking the president in this entire summit. Two… She’s saying they long for is something if only we had something like the JCPOA. When Chris Murphy is saying that Iran is two to three times more powerful today than they were. No, the Democrats made Iran infinitely more powerful than they are now. Earlier, by giving them this world, we’re like, yeah, it’s not something we hoped for. They can never have a nuclear weapon. We just can never figure it out. And the best chance we had was the JCPOA. it’s all nonsense we know that the jcpoa put iran on the path to getting so close to the nuclear weapon of in being able to at will enrich and blow past any standards that the iaea would try to monitor as well as developing the ballistic missile technology that we see that could hit europe that they showcased they put on a show for whose fault is that is it president trump’s no It’s President Obama’s and the Jake Sullivan’s of the world, of which I want to talk about something he said a little bit later as well. All of this goes to show it is the failure of the Democrat foreign policy for decades and a lot of Republicans as well that joined in this kumbaya kind of foreign policy that they could get along with Iran and that Iran would play by the rules.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah. And they won’t. I have a lot to go over in the next few segments, but I just got a text from our head of our social media team, and he said, you know what? I’m seeing a lot of clowns show up in the comments right now. So he’s asked me to say to the YouTubers to send in the clowns. Haven’t done this in a while. I don’t do it, but you know what? By request only, send in those clowns. I want to take a phone call. Let’s go to Bill in Wyoming on line one. Bill, go ahead.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to call you back. But the thing that is, is my question on this is the fact that isn’t I, now I want your opinion, because it seems to me that Iran is trying to vote into its next election cycle. by doing this, because they did something like this 46 years ago when they said, tell you what, you elect President Carter for a second time in the White House, and we will go ahead and release the embassy people to you. And then there’s also the business with Obama and Biden administrations giving these leeways to Iran. What’s your opinion on that?
SPEAKER 03 :
I think there’s a couple ways you can look at this. One, yes, they are very well aware of the politics at home in the United States. It’s why they’ve been so effective even at using tools like X to really mess with the ideology of a lot of people that would call themselves even conservatives. You see how well the propaganda from Iran has permeated the mindset of the American people. Even U.S. senators who would respond with awesome to lies that are put out on X, not fact-checking them themselves or his office doing that, but just going along with it because it rings true, as the former CIA director John Brennan would say. That’s the problem, is they know how our politics work, and they are able to play off of the Democrats who are going with this zero-sum game strategy so easily. It’s child’s play to the Iranians. They don’t have to be two to three times stronger to convince the Democrats of this because all they have to do is say something that is Trump bad or Trump looks weak and they will go along with it hook, line, and sinker.
SPEAKER 13 :
It’s a shareable clip that you can use and they can use in perpetuity. and then continue this conversation. When we do get back, and even the next half hour, again, I want to talk about that propaganda war. We’ve been discussing this at length. There are some times I have just thrown up my hands and said I can no longer really get into these debates with friends or with family or with random people that send me messages asking about what’s happening in the Middle East, whether that is the U.S.’ ‘s involvement in Iran, the U.S.’ ‘s involvement with Israel, Israel’s war in Gaza, Israel’s war in Iran. Those kind of conversations happen, and I’ve kind of, Had to just stop because I realized there was nothing you could do. Like we’ve said, there is nothing that you can do to convince someone at this point when they’ve gone so far down a rabbit hole of social media propaganda that they never see the other side. I at least say that I could see the other side from them. I at least see what people are posting on both, but they clearly don’t. And Israel is very, very aware of this. And they’re trying their best to figure out what to do next. And it’s always been an issue with Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu even said so. We’ll play that clip when we get back. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Seculo. We were going to pivot a little bit. We’re going to get back to this topic at hand. It’s sort of the whole propaganda battle that’s happening. But there is an update of what was going on in Virginia, Will, and we wanted to chat about that a bit.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. We talked earlier in the week about how the Attorney General of Virginia was planning to file at the Supreme Court of the United States, taking that appeal out of the state court system after the Virginia Supreme Court decision. said that the redistricting would not go forward as they had voted on. But now it’s been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. We at the ACLJ, I just got word we will be filing a brief tomorrow. in this case, asking the Supreme Court to reject the petition of the Virginia Attorney General, basically saying the state court had settled it. We are not going to weigh into this. And that is the appropriate course of action here. One, because the ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court was based off Virginia state constitutional law. It wasn’t based off of federal law or anything of that election law that they took into it. They said this is a violation of the state constitution. Therefore, the appropriate way for it to be handled is within the state. But two, there’s a lot of talk here as well. And we’ve seen this even from the weird misspellings in some of their filings and also some of the ways that it was formatted. that the attorney general of the state it seems may not really have a good grasp on what is even going on in the state this is someone who once again in this zero-sum game was okay with his political opponents facing violence in order to change their policies but when it comes to the actual work of being attorney general it seems not to have as good of a grasp on this there’s even some people questioning if the relief that this Attorney General is asking from the Supreme Court of the United States would do anything, if he’s not asking for the correct thing from the U.S. Supreme Court because of what he’s asking is the Supreme Court decision of Virginia to be overturned, but that would still leave in place the lower court issue. A lot of questions out of that, but the ACLJ will be representing all of our members as we put forward the brief tomorrow against the Virginia Attorney General at the Supreme Court of the United States to say, listen, this is how the Constitution works. You should not even take this.
SPEAKER 13 :
There’s actually a direct way for you to get involved right now. Sure, we are representing all of you all the time, but there’s actually a way to put your name. involved get involved in this you can do it right now we have a new petition defend election integrity and the constitution specifically related to this because the midterm elections we know they’re coming fast and we see this attacks me obviously tomorrow we are filing that critical brief at the united states supreme court and we need you to be a part of it as well we have won before the supreme court they have listened to us the aclj name carries weight they take us seriously And we also need that because people like you support the work of the ACLJ. And I’m not asking for your financial contribution right now. I’m asking you to just sign the petition. Be a part of it. Get involved right now. Hundreds of you have signed even just today. So be part. Nearly over 42,000 have signed. We’re going to try to hit 50,000. Let’s try 50,000 people sign this petition before tomorrow. That would be great. So go to ACLJ.org right now. Let’s try to take it over the top. ACLJ.org slash sign directly. S-I-G-N.org. or scan the QR code that you see on the screen right now. When you do that, it’s going to take you to a page. You can read the petition, make sure you agree with all what we’re talking about here, and then sign it and be a part of it right now. Again, it’s sort of getting in, being part of the team for election integrity. That’s at aclj.org slash sign. I do also want to take some calls and comments at 1-800- 684-3110 a lot of these conversations are leaning back towards Iran I want to make sure we cover that of course we had that clip earlier from Chris Murphy we can play that again we can talk about what’s going on and then in the next half hour we are also going to go live to Jerusalem to Jeff Balaban, who runs our office in Jerusalem. Remember, the ACLJ has offices around the world, and we think it’s very important to have an office in Jerusalem because it’s important for us to not only be able to tell you how it’s going there, but for us to export our thoughts and feelings from the American side to our friends, to our, maybe some of our not friends, if you will, and we’ll say enemies, but the people who maybe oppose what we do, and share how the American people actually feel. Because we know there’s a large percentage of you that feel like you’re underrepresented in media, you’re underrepresented in podcasts, underrepresented in just the world in general right now, when you have had decades-long support of Israel, and then all of a sudden in the last few years, you have had to not only rethink it, but rethink the way you address Jewish people, the way you address your support of the Jewish people in public, what you can wear, what you can talk, how Jewish people can wear, what they can wear, what you can do in terms of terminologies on your T-shirts, things that have changed so rapidly I mean, it’s almost, it’s unbelievable. I mean, one of the bites we’re going to play later. I only, it’s from Benjamin Netanyahu. I think it’s a very powerful bite. It talks about the war against propaganda that they had. I only saw that bite because someone on the right shared it as a negative and said, look, look what he’s doing. He takes a phone out of a major, they took a phone out of a journalist’s hand. And all he’s saying is, hey, With this phone, I can spread a lie. And if that lie is told over and over again, it becomes the truth to really the American people.
SPEAKER 03 :
This is something that I think we need to explore as we go forward more. You know, we talk about the impact we have here. It’s one of the reasons why we do this long form broadcast. And it’s not just to make sure we get as many views as we can with short clips and things of that nature, because we really do want to talk things out. And explain things, whether it be constitutional issues or even the political issues that we face these days. Because the real problem here, too, is when you start to see people that disagree with you with a political ideology. They seem to be rooting for the enemies of the United States because they can score political points. One, it to me shows that Chris Murphy doesn’t believe that Iran is that much more powerful because if he truly did, I think he would be terrified at the ramifications of that. But instead, he’s fine with just using it as political capital to continue to try and get people to turn against the sitting president of the United States. You see that even with this individual that says, we really wish that Iran would give up their nuclear ambitions, this Democrat from Pennsylvania. But really, we just need something like the JCPOA. or even when they talk about he’s not really going to be able to do anything with China. It shows that they are comfortable in their position that, and to some degree, I think this is the danger, that the United States is just fine and will be fine. That we can mock the leaders of the United States to the benefit of our adversaries. And I think that is where we start to lose our foothold. And it’s a really dangerous, slippery slope.
SPEAKER 13 :
Hey, but let’s remember just a couple months ago what John Brennan had to say. Well, let’s play this. Remember this. It’s just back from March. Bite one.
SPEAKER 02 :
Iran. Like, they are an authoritarian regime who’s known to lie. But, like, I’m confused. What is going on? Help me. Calm me down.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I tend to believe Iran more than I do Donald Trump. That’s crazy. Because he could not acknowledge the truth even when it is, you know, he’s slapped in the face with it repeatedly.
SPEAKER 13 :
John Brennan. Well, I tend to believe Iran more than I do Donald Trump. That is the political rhetoric we’re dealing with right now. And look, we know that that is hyperbole, but it almost doesn’t feel like it anymore. It’s not hyperbole. It’s hyperbole. They know it’s hyperbole, but they’re using it as a weapon.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. And once again, this entirety of their game plan, it does seem, is that as long as we can tear down our political opponents, it doesn’t matter how much stronger we make our real world adversaries seem.
SPEAKER 13 :
All right. We’ll be back. We got a second half hour coming up. Always find the full hour, live, 12 to 1 p.m. Eastern time. That’s on ACLJ.org, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook. However you get your podcasts, we’re there later on. You can find us archived immediately when the show is over on all those platforms. But join us live. Always great to be a part of the conversation. Give us a call at 1-800-684-3110. And that petition is out now. ACLJ.org slash sign.
SPEAKER 14 :
Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever. This is Seculo. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 13 :
I always say that’s a short break. And it is a short break. It’s real short. It’s hard to even have a sip. Couldn’t even catch your breath. I couldn’t. I had to stop there. Welcome back to Sekulow. Second half hour for you. This is Logan Sekulow, Will Haynes in studio. Next segment, we’re headed over to Jerusalem live with ACLJ Jerusalem, Jeff Balaban. So you want to stay tuned for that. If you’ve got a question or comment related to the current situations unfolding in Israel, you can also give us a call at 1-800-684-3110. A lot of you are calling right now about Iran. A lot of you are calling about Virginia. Sort of the combination of both. We’re going to take some calls related to that. Maybe we’ll go ahead and take one real quick off the bat because a lot of you are calling about even that soundbite we played where Chris Murphy said, you know what? I think Iran is two to three times more powerful now than they were before the war. And even the hosts at MS Now, Chris Hayes, had to laugh and say, really? You think that two to three times? And that was a direct quote. We played that bite now so many times. Not going to play it again right now. But, A lot of you got spurred some interest from that. Let’s go ahead and take a call related to this. Let’s go to line one. Amy is calling from California. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, how are you doing today? Great. Yeah, you know, I just can’t believe it. There’s just so many things I want to say, but just real quick on just three real quick points is that, you know, I don’t understand why we can’t be united, you know, in this situation. When we’re putting our president down, you know, our commander-in-chief, when he’s on his way or already in Beijing, you know, To talk to some people that, you know, that could really hurt us and just make him look so weak is make things so difficult, you know, for us to get what we want. I mean, they’re already considering his failure right from the beginning without him even sitting down yet, you know, and it’s frustrating. I believe he saved our butts by pulling us out of that situation. I don’t know what Obama was thinking when he did that joint comprehensive plan of action. I don’t know what they were thinking.
SPEAKER 03 :
And what a lot of the Democrats forget is that by now there was a sunset clause. That deal would already be over. So even that, we would still have to be negotiating with the Iranians again to try and figure something out because the deal that they were repeatedly cheating on, they were also building up an arsenal of ballistic missiles because there were no checks on that, would have to be being renegotiated once again. So to your point, yes, I agree with you on that. It’s a great thing we pulled out of that because we could be stronger with sanctions and things of that nature on Iran. But you also see what they did. The orchestration of October 7th. All of these issues that their power regionally and the impact it had on the world was not stymied under the plans of President Obama and Joe Biden. It was made. They were much more powerful and had much more impact. And to your point about the unity. This quote has always stuck with me because it came from an unlikely source for someone on the political right or the conservative ideological sphere to repeat. But this was from Christopher Hitchens, and he was reportedly famous for when with people giving a toast saying to the Constitution of the United States and to the confusion of all her enemies. And that coming from someone who on the ideological spectrum is so far removed from where we sit as social conservatives, political conservatives, constitutionalists, it just rings true of the unity of, yes, the United States used to at least, even if you disagreed on what the Constitution said, had this bedrock to the Constitution of the United States and all of us, wanted the enemies of the United States to fail and to be confused by the actions of the United States and to not be able to succeed against us. But it’s not like that anymore. You now see Democrats quite saying the opposite of forget the Constitution of the United States and to the confusion of our administration against the enemies of this great nation. It’s ridiculous when you start to think in terms of how they’re playing this game.
SPEAKER 13 :
Phone lines are open for you. We’re going to head to the next segment with Jeff Balaban at ACLJ Jerusalem. Remember, the ACLJ has offices around the world, and one of the ones that we always feature here as much as we can is their ACLJ Jerusalem office. And right now, it could not be more important to have that base. So I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org, support the work if you can, because you are supporting things like ACLJ Jerusalem, the European Center for Law and Justice, and so much more. Some we can talk about, some we can’t. But you’re a part of that team, part of that family, and I know that I really appreciate it. When we get back, we’re headed live to Jerusalem with Jeff Balaban, so stay tuned. Welcome back to Seculo. We are joined by Jeff Balaban at ACLJ Jerusalem. Before we get to Jeff, I want to set this conversation up with a soundbite, a video bite, if you’re watching from Benjamin Netanyahu from just the last couple of days. He was on one of the 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes, having a kind of an in-depth interview. I actually saw this clip. being used as something that was against him, saying it was from one of these right-wing, far-right, or any way you’d even call them at this point, podcasters or broadcasters saying, how dare Benjamin Netanyahu say these things, and he takes the phone out of the hand of Major Garrett, all of these conversation pieces. But, He’s holding a phone and he essentially says, you know, the narrative is controlled here. And he at least admits that Israel has not done necessarily the best job in fighting this battle correctly in terms of the propaganda that comes out of social media. So I want to start with this. This is bite six.
SPEAKER 10 :
The deterioration of support for Israel in the United States. almost, I would say it correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media. And that by itself is not what caused it, and I don’t believe in censoring them or anything, but I’ll tell you what happened. We have several countries that basically manipulated social media, and they do it in a clever way. And that’s something that is hurt us badly.
SPEAKER 13 :
Hurt us badly. And then later on, progressively says, and sorry, the soundbite actually cut out a little earlier than I was hoping, says essentially, Jeff, that we know we have been struggling with propaganda and the battle against it. Israel certainly could be doing a better job. And we know that that has been a issue that Israel has had for a number of years, which is when you have a, not only in social media, but even in mainstream media, against you for so long, it’s easy for the American people to get swayed against them.
SPEAKER 12 :
Absolutely. You know, Israel, I’m often asked, well, you know, Israel seems strong. Israel knows it has to protect its own, its very existence from massive enemies. So Israel’s certainly going to get the job done, right? And I always feel like Israel will get the job done, but somehow there’s a problem. And that is that Israel and the Israelis, and I think Jews in general, have a hard time really understanding the depths of the depravity of its own enemies. I think that Israel, for example, was shocked by what happened on October 7th when they shouldn’t have been. They should know that’s what the nature of their enemies has always been. Raising generations to think that mass rape and murder, you know, murdering little children is a fine thing. And they also overestimate the goodness of the world when it comes to how they view the Jews. And Israel, no matter how much you want to slice it, is just viewed as the Jew in the room at the UN. So yeah, it’s a problem that now these lies are propagated not just by social media, but now we have, and I think we’re going to talk about this, now we have what’s always called the paper of record in the New York Times, which just came out with an absolute bloodline, an absolute absurd set of reports about, you know, with terrible, no real documentation, just relying on basically Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist type operatives. uh alleging crazy crimes by the israelis including everyone’s favorite that the israelis have trained dogs to rape palestinians something which is actually turns out to be physically impossible dogs dogs won’t rape humans but it doesn’t matter the new york times is publishing this and even if the new york times publishes a correction which it may or may not do it’s out there and the echo chamber of this ubiquitous social media will now turn this into a fact all over the globe
SPEAKER 03 :
And to that point even as well, Jeff, the truth sometimes is even harder to get out because when you even use the terminology of the crimes that Hamas committed, there’s this new report called Silence No More. I encourage people to be very clear. If you go read this, it is devastating. Yeah, it’ll stick with you. About the terror and the untold atrocities that Hamas committed against… victims during the attack and during the holding of these hostages. It is one of the most devastating things. This is a 300-page report. I have not read the entire thing, but when you do read it, it sticks with you. You cannot read all of it. And humans should not be consuming this kind of thoughts, knowing that this is out there. But it’s no surprise that this report of what Hamas was actually doing by this independent civil commission on October 7th crimes by Hamas against women and children at the very same time this drops. And if you can, it is something you should at least get a highlight of a read an article explaining it because you need to know how evil this that the things and the terror that goes beyond just killing people, it’s devastating. But at the same time, the New York Times, as you mentioned, could not let this be the only thing in the room. It had to report lies at the same time to combat this. They are falling victim to the terrorists’ propaganda once again. And it’s hard to get the truth out because you will if you’re reading these things, saying these things on social media. You’ll see your platform censored. But those that are evil and do not care will bombard social media with the lies and get away with it, Jeff.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, listen, the perpetrators of these atrocities on October 7th, they proudly videotape themselves. They proudly put it up in social media. They called home to boast to their parents about the numbers of women and children they were raping, mutilating, abusing. By the way, again, we’re all being careful about this because it’s so horrific that we really don’t want to talk about it explicitly. And everything we’re saying is just the barest glimpse… You should be aware of it. I agree with you, Will. People should look at this, but you don’t want to have to read the whole thing. It’s beyond horrifying. And the point is that knowing this report was about to come out, this report, by the way, which is hundreds and hundreds, I think was close to 2,000 hours of testimony, was endless reviews of video and hundreds of people being interviewed, hundreds of survivors. And this was done at the highest levels of scrutiny and care. And here the New York Times drops this. The day before this report comes out, the New York Times drops this piece with Nicholas Kristof, which is absurd from beginning to end, and all the attention is on that. And so the victims are once again being blamed for what is being done to them. It is this horrible cycle of evil that we’re going down and down and down into, and the world reacts this way. Listen, charges of genocide against Israel, charges of starvation against Israel, charges of targeting churches, all of these were made. All of these are believed. All of these cause people to attack Jews around the world. And none of them were true. They just dissipate as if they don’t matter a couple of months later. Except for the attacks against Jews.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, and that’s true. And I feel like those get very little attention, especially here in the States. I mean, again, I told Will, it’s not that I’ve given up trying to talk to some of my, I would say, friends who may be on the other side of this issue. But I’ve noticed, and this is where Netanyahu mentions that they have lost the propaganda war. Propaganda may be seen as a dirty word, and I understand that, but I don’t understand what he means, which is it’s not even getting to them. And then when I share something, it’s like, oh, well, yeah, that’s kind of bad that people are getting stabbed. uh in in the uk in a jewish neighborhood just because they’re jewish as we understand that’s not great but it’s treated very offhandedly you know we have something like eurovision which you know hits uh this weekend it became a big it become completely politicized something that was grab your family get around the tv and watch and see how these countries all battling out for a pop song now you have israel qualifying for uh you know the the finals ringing with chants of free Palestine, chants of stop the genocide, as the hosts try to cover for what’s going on here. I mean, it’s wild that this has become just the regular.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and to that point as well, Jeff, the difference between the Israelis and their enemies are that the Israelis care about the humanity of the victims. And that was the big debate right after October 7th, because we knew the world would turn. But is this footage released? Is it released? And there was reports of lawmakers, members of the Knesset in Israel, that got physically ill, would throw up watching the footage from October 7th. And there was the big debate, should more footage be released so the world can see what these monsters did? And Israel, except for very, very minimal amounts of footage, protected the dignity and the humanity of the victims. Because, unfortunately, Israel has had to, and the Jewish people have had to go through regimes that dehumanize victims. And so, with history and context and all this, and Jeff, I want to see if you can stay on in the next segment as well, as we round out this show. Because it’s an important, difficult conversation. Israel chose humanity and dignity when their monsters that attacked them did not. And in the long run against the propaganda is the choice that ends up probably hurting them on the world stage longer.
SPEAKER 12 :
I actually am going to disagree. And here’s my thesis. And because while they were making this decision, obviously, we’re here in Jerusalem to help try to explain the world to the Israelis, America, but also the rest of the world for ECLJ, at least Europe. And some of the members within the government and in the parliament asked me what I thought about letting out that video for the public. And my argument was, you think that it will engender… You think it’ll engender sympathy, and the truth is it will engender some sympathy, maybe among some people. But for most of the world who decided a long time ago they’re just going to hate Jews and therefore they’re going to hate Israel, they’re actually going to use it as an excuse to say, if these evil things were done to Israelis, they must have deserved it. They must have been doing even worse things. And that’s exactly the kind of mindset that produces this kind of New York Times libel.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, we’re going to keep this conversation going with Jeff. Stay tuned. If you want to call in, you can. 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Secula. We are going to take some calls potentially in this last segment of the show today, 1-800-684-3110. We are still joined by Jeff Balaban, who is in Jerusalem, part of ACLJ Jerusalem. Again, a very important office that we think is… Right now, I mean, when we see this sort of chaos breaking out, we see this propaganda battle that’s happening and we see that Israel sometimes loses that battle, as Benjamin Netanyahu said. And look, I’ve been saying that for years and years and years, way before October 7th, way before any of this saying if there is one thing for some reason, you know, when they start throwing out. All the conspiracy theories that the Jewish people control the media, control the entertainment industry. One thing can be true. If that’s the case, we do a very, very poor job at this one big portion, which is really the worldwide PR campaigns. To where it connects. Look, some of it is a little bit lost in translation, if you will. Not necessarily between English and other languages, but just in culture, as you said. Sometimes it is being a little bit more respectful for what’s happening. And as Jeff even said, a generation of even Israelis growing up to be, and rightfully so. I mean, I’m very happy that sense of growing up to be respectful people who are respectful to all the nations that even surround them. Even the ones…
SPEAKER 03 :
that want to kill them. Well, and here is a continuation of that from Benjamin Netanyahu with Major Garrett. Let’s play Byte 9 really quickly, and then we’ll go back to Jeff.
SPEAKER 08 :
Do you believe, Mr. Prime Minister, that nothing that Israel has done, tactically or strategically, has made no mistakes, either in Gaza or the West Bank, that have in their own way contributed to this negative impression of Israel, whether it’s on social media or someplace else? No, of course. Look, it’s war.
SPEAKER 10 :
armies sometimes miss and civilians die. And these are mistakes, these are not deliberate things that happen. Israel is besieged on the media front, on the propaganda front, and we’ve not done well on the propaganda war.
SPEAKER 03 :
Jeff, when you also go back to this one, even the phrasing of Major Garrett’s question there shows that there’s that implicit bias. So even having this conversation. But when we go back to this report of the atrocities of Hamas and we talk about the New York Times report, just to show how insidious. The U.S. media is against Israel, which, you know, the crazies on the right will say is controlled by the Jews. The U.S. media is obviously controlled by Israel and the Jews. But the report that they drop from Nicholas Kristof, they also do it as an opinion piece. It goes to show how they even try to hedge themselves from any sort of real consequence for reporting this type stuff. And that’s how they use Nicholas Kristof. I followed his work for decades. They use him for these kind of geopolitical hit pieces, especially against Israel. Because they do it through their opinion columns at the New York Times. They don’t have enough reporters to thoroughly vet a story and go through their legal department. They have to run it through Nicholas Kristof in the opinion section to try and combat what this NGO put forward of the atrocities of Hamas. It shows the entire playbook when you look at it as well.
SPEAKER 12 :
It’s a very insightful point. And you know that obviously I’ve come out of broadcast journalism. I worked at, we just had Major Garrett, I worked at CBS for a number of years. And, you know, that notion of trying to get deniability, plausible deniability, printing something which is so absurd on its face, so libelous on its face, but they know at the New York Times, they know that they’re still giving this message the imprimatur of the New York Times. And that is devastating. It’s evil. But look, the New York Times, for those who don’t know, has just an atrocious track record. And the New York Times is essentially in the business of Holocaust denial throughout most of the Holocaust’s existence. So this is not a new thing. The New York Times, again, a paper that, in particular, people who hate Jews love to claim is controlled by the Jews for some, you know, incidious… Just because it says New York in the headline, I think, in the title, yeah. Right, right. Seems to also be one of the papers of record against the Jewish people and against the state of Israel for as long as I know. And yes, they do that to give this the imprimatur of the times, and it is very scurrilous to do it in the way you’re doing it, which is hiding behind the fact that it’s an opinion piece as though it’s not them putting their stamp of approval on it.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, it’s really just a very odd time to be trying to have this conversation with people. Because like as Will said, you can’t get anywhere. If I played that clip for someone and said, yes, look, they’re admitting. Sometimes mistakes happen. You’re in war. That’s not a good enough answer. No answer is good enough. No answer can be, even if it’s the most honest, it cannot be good enough. So even admitting, you’re not out there and being Putin or something kind of glossing over it. Well, no, we do no problem. Nothing ever happens. No mistakes happen. He’s out there saying specifically. This is war, armies sometimes miss, and civilians dies. These are mistakes, these aren’t deliberate things. And look, I had fought back against some of these claims with someone online, and I was like, look, and a lot of them even came into being the anti-Christian sort of messaging that’s getting out there right now, which is saying, if you’ve ever been to Israel, you know how Christians are treated, and yadda yadda yadda, and being this attack. And I’m like, I’ve been there so many times, I’ve practically lived there, spent months there, and they’ll go, well, they showed you a version of Israel,
SPEAKER 03 :
you know they hid everything yes all of the residents all of the citizens all all created some ruse for when we showed up to a restaurant they served us well you know and jeff we’ve only got a couple minutes left here but this is something we actually because of the gravity of this weren’t even going to get into today but even the fact that you know this is the eve of jerusalem day and talking about the difference pre-israel as a state and how christians were treated And where they were allowed to go as of now, even that, you can’t combat all the lies. You don’t have enough time. But once again, another lie that’s making its rounds when in reality, quite the opposite is true when it was the Jordanians that were in control of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER 12 :
I think this is a great pivot at the end of this show to something more positive, which is, you know, 59 years ago tomorrow, although it’s actually Thursday night, Friday, but they moved it up to Thursday because Friday’s the day off going right into the Sabbath here. So tomorrow they’re celebrating the 59th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, the 67th uh but people should know that from 1948 to 1967 in 1948 the arab legion uh invaded the nation state of israel tried to wipe it out obviously was unsuccessful they’ve been trying to complete the job ever since but during those 19 years that the jordanians occupied the old city of jerusalem not only did they destroy every single synagogue they could find they turn it into latrines and building materials, disgusting what they did. They didn’t allow any Christians, meaning the people now claim they have sympathy for Palestinians, right? They weren’t even called Palestinians then, but the Arab Christians were not allowed to come in to pray at their holy sites, which are among the holiest sites in all of Christianity. Obviously, this is the birthplace and the home of Jesus, not the birthplace of Jesus in the old city, but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, his final resting place before resurrection. I don’t want to get into Christian theology, but you know what I’m saying? It’s… Those holy places in Christendom, and Christians were not allowed to come at all. No one raised any alarm about it. Nobody raised any outcry about it. Since the Israelis have had control, there is total and complete access. And when the Israelis try to protect the Christians against violence that might be, you know, by the Iranians, then sometimes you get people complaining, oh my gosh, they stopped their services. Yes, literally to protect their lives. But the Israelis have nothing but to make sure there’s openness to Christians in every denomination here to worship in the holy city. And that is also being celebrated tomorrow.
SPEAKER 13 :
Jeff, thank you so much for joining us, giving us a little more extended time today. I know you’re spending the last few days there for a little bit, and it’s always good to have our team in Jerusalem to really give you a full report on everything that’s happening. So thank you, Jeff. With that being said, I want you to get involved with the ACLJ today. We only have 40 seconds left. There’s a lot of different ways you could do it. If you’re watching right now, maybe you’re on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. If you’ve already done that, go sign the petition at ACLJ.org. If you’ve already done that, go share this with a friend. We do this show each and every day, 12 to 1 p.m. Eastern time. So even if you’re hearing this later on, know that’s when we do it. You can join us live. You can join us live on ACLJ.org, the ACLJ app, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, and on the Salem News Channel. So do that today. Be a part of the show. And of course, many terrestrial radio stations and serious satellite radio. But we are available in all those sources, always on demand at ACLJ.org. Talk to you tomorrow.
