Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s11e18 Episode Script
The West Bank
Welcome to "Last Week
Tonight"! I'm John Oliver,
thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
And one dominated by reactions
to Joe Biden dropping out
of the presidential race last Sunday,
a decision that caught many off-guard,
including these local anchors,
in the middle of their segment called
"Gorgeous Grandmas".
This comes to us from Debora Batiste,
who we love.
She showed her there.
I know we have some news
coming in now
so just give us a second here.
But for now, I know, Lauren,
favorite photo of Grandma.
Let's go ahead
and come back out here.
I'm not hearing anything in my ear.
We are getting word into our newsroom
that President Joe Biden
is dropping out of the race
and not running for reelection.
Let's get this statement that he posted
to his social media
onto the iPad right here.
It's not working. So,
let's just go ahead and read it.
Getting that grandma off the screen
was the second time that day
when a senior citizen was
successfully pushed aside.
And those two weren't the only
ones caught off-guard.
People got the news in all sorts
of ways,
from the "Liza Minnelli Outlives"
Twitter account,
which solemnly announced,
"Liza Minnelli has outlived
Joe Biden's race for re-election"
to this post on the EmojiPasta
subreddit, and as far as I'm concerned,
"Hoe Biden has dropped his ass out
of the 2024 erection
because the presi dick is experiencing
some freaky health issues
including mem-whore-y loss
and cum-fusion"
is our generation's
journalistic equivalent
of Walter Cronkite tearfully
announcing the death of JFK.
But perhaps one of the biggest
surprises here
was that Democrats managed,
uncharacteristically, to handle this
in an organized fashion,
almost immediately lining up
behind Kamala Harris,
whose campaign says it raised
$81 million within a day,
calling it "the largest amount of money
raised in a 24-hour span
in presidential history."
Meanwhile, the internet filled
with Kamala memes,
turbocharged by the fact
that Charli XCX tweeted
"Kamala is brat," which unfortunately
set off days of CNN trying to explain
to its audience what the fuck
that means.
Kamala Harris embraces being
called "brat". Why?
And now, presumptive presidential
nominee is brat.
It's a good thing, apparently.
Okay, here we go. Charli XCX,
who I do know, quote,
"Brat, you're just that girl who
is a little messy and likes to party,
and maybe says some dumb things
sometimes," end quote.
So, is the idea that
we're all kind of brat,
and Vice President Harris is brat?
No, Jake! That's not it at all!
We are not "all kinda brat."
You're either brat or you're not.
God damn it, Tapper!
Look, I regret to inform everyone,
Brat Summer is canceled.
At best, we got eight
to nine brat business days.
Republicans spent the week trying
to counter the newfound enthusiasm
around Harris with criticism frequently
defaulting to outright racism.
She was called, among other things,
a diversity or "DEI hire,"
and when they weren't stooping
that low,
they were reaching
for desperate attacks like these.
A major liability for Kamala Harris,
she wants to ban plastic straws.
She wants to ban plastic straws?
I love my plastic straws.
I hate those paper ones.
Kamala can't have my guns.
She can't have my gasoline engine.
And she sure as hell can't have
my steaks and cheeseburgers.
She is a radical California leftist.
That is almost a parody of right-wing
fearmongering nonsense.
"She'll take your straws,
she'll take your burgers,
and brother, if you like eating
your burgers through a straw,
say goodbye to your whole life."
For the record, Harris is not
a "radical California leftist."
She was a prosecutor.
If Dick Wolf thinks your job
is heroic and noble,
chances are you're not leading
the revolution.
And even if she were, that doesn't
translate to stealing cheeseburgers.
That's the Hamburglar, Ted.
You're thinking of the Hamburglar.
But all in all, it was a pretty
good week for the current vice president
and a pretty terrible one
for Trump's pick to be his next VP,
JD Vance, because he spent
the week on the campaign trail,
where his performance was, to say
the least, underwhelming.
Democrats say that it is racist
They say it's racist to do anything.
I had a Diet Mountain yesterday,
and one today. I'm sure
they're gonna call that racist, too.
It's good.
I love you guys.
Stop it! Stop it now!
It physically hurts me to watch that.
The vibe there is less
"running for vice president"
and more "shitting the bed
at an open mic night."
That makes Jeb's "please clap"
look like "Showtime at the Apollo."
People are getting a look
at JD Vance for the first time,
and what is becoming clear
from polling comparing him
to previous VP candidates
is that voters are not liking
what they're seeing.
We take a look at the net favorable
ratings for JD Vance.
That's favorable minus unfavorable.
It's a negative net territory.
Negative six points.
That is underwater.
The average since 2000
is plus-19 points.
JD Vance making history
in the completely wrong way.
Yeah, not great! And I realize
this isn't the point,
but this feels like the wrong photo
to accompany that rating.
That's an expression that screams,
"everything's going great",
not, "I am so unlikable
that it made the news."
And while some of that negativity might
be a response to Vance's demeanor,
it also might be that people
are learning what he stands for.
He's argued the last election
was stolen from Trump,
and supported a federal
abortion ban,
while also opposing exceptions
for rape and incest.
He's also argued that, because Kamala
Harris and other Democrats
didn't have children,
that they didn't have, quote,
"any physical commitment to the future
of this country",
an argument he elaborated on
to Tucker Carlson.
We're effectively run, in this country,
via the Democrats,
via our corporate oligarchs,
by a bunch of childless cat ladies
who are miserable at their own lives
and the choices that they've made,
and so they want to make the rest
of the country miserable too.
Fuck all the way off,
you potato-headed build-a-bigot.
Set aside that Harris has
two step-children,
neither of whom, as far as I can see,
are cats
you don't need kids to care about
your fellow human beings.
As for the claim that women
who don't have children are
"miserable with the choices
they've made,"
the only person I'm pretty sure
is miserable with a choice
they've made right now
is Donald Trump,
after choosing Great Lakes Ron
DeSantis here as a running mate.
JD Vance sucks so much
that it says something that,
for a few days this week,
the internet ran wild with a joke tweet
that he was "the first VP pick to have
admitted in a New York Times bestseller
to fucking an inside-out latex glove
shoved between two couch cushions,"
with a citation to a page number
from his memoir.
And look, let me be clear, that is not
true. It is not in his book.
But I think the reason it spread
so fast might be that,
A, nobody read that fucking book,
and B, it was incredibly easy
to believe.
Because if you asked me
to draw a man that fucks his couch,
10 times out of 10,
I'm drawing this guy.
If you asked me to play two truths
and a lie with this man,
before he even opened his mouth,
I'd shout,
"The truth is he fucks his couch!"
Because I've never seen someone
with more "couch fucker" energy.
He looks like he watched
the Tom Cruise Oprah interview
and was jealous of Tom's shoes.
If you told me that his first celebrity
crush was the plastic sofa
from "Everybody Loves Raymond,"
I'd believe you without question.
If you told me the reason you find
coins in between couch cushions
is because JD Vance always leaves
a tip,
I'd be like, "Yeah.
Yeah, that sounds right."
That rumor was so widespread,
it yielded the actual Norwegian headline
"Hadde ikke sex med sofa,"
which looks like a sign they had
to put up in IKEA
after JD visited too much.
It even got to the point the AP felt
the need to publish
a fact-check headlined, "No, JD Vance
did not have sex with a couch,"
only to then take it down, with
the link leading to "page unavailable,"
which somehow makes this
even funnier.
The AP later explained its decision
to pull the piece
by saying the story did not go through
their standard editing process.
And no shit it didn't,
because there's an obvious problem
with that original headline.
And the reason I know that is,
we care a lot about facts
and precise phrasing on this show,
so I can tell you
you can't say JD Vance didn't have
sex with a couch, definitively.
You can say that he didn't write
about doing that in his book,
because that is provable.
But that's not the same as asserting
he never fucked a couch.
Especially because
he hasn't officially denied it.
But we wanted to give him
the opportunity to do that,
so we contacted the Vance
campaign this week,
calling one of their spokespeople.
And when we asked, and I quote,
"Has Senator Vance ever
had sex with a couch?",
they, and this is true, hung up on us.
Which is, and this is critical,
not a no, is it?
We then followed up by both texting
and emailing the same question again,
as well as asking if he'd had sex
with any other furniture
or household items.
But as of taping,
we sadly haven't heard back.
And look, who knows
where this is going?
The news is moving so fast right now,
the RNC was only last week.
It was only two weeks ago
that Trump was shot.
And there are so many variables
between here and November,
we don't know who Kamala's VP pick
will be,
we don't know which candidate
will maintain momentum.
The race is impossible to predict,
but there are two things
that I do know for certain.
One, Jake Tapper is not brat,
and, until he tells us otherwise,
I'm going to assume that
JD Vance fucked a couch.
And now, this.
And Now: For No Particular Reason,
Some Home Furnishing Ads.
Even standard back pillows
like this one can be utilized
in a deep configuration.
You just kind of squish them in.
They look great. They look
comfy. They look squishy.
And if that's good with you,
it's good with us.
Maybe it happens to be
downstairs in the man cave.
Wherever it happens to be,
it's not only going to look good,
but feel amazing.
I cannot stop touching this,
it's so soft.
It's 100% polyester. I find it so soft
when I'm touching this.
And if you were to get, like, any spill
or anything on it,
you would just spot clean it.
When you zip the thing off, you reveal
your naked sack underneath,
which is built to the hilt.
A naked khaki sack is built to last,
because it comes
in this great khaki twill,
which can withstand
nearly any abuse imaginable.
I've been buying rugs today.
I get new chairs.
I go in and out, in and out. I know
a little bit about buying furniture.
You have love handles on the side that
allow you to carry your sack around,
or take it out,
and snaps hidden beneath those
to snap on
your soda-sack drink holder.
Oh, yeah. Fuck that couch.
Moving on.
For our main story tonight,
I'd like to talk about Israel
and Palestine,
a sentence rated number one
by Ways to Instantly Ruin Thanksgiving
Dinner with Your Family Magazine.
For months now, global
outrage, news reports,
and whatever it is that we do here
on "School Plus Cake Bear Ass
Eating with John Oliver,"
has been focused on Israel's war
in Gaza,
which has killed tens
of thousands of civilians
in the wake of Hamas's brutal
attacks on October 7th.
But tonight, we're actually going
to talk about a different area
in the region, the West Bank,
which is home to over three million
Palestinians,
the eastern half of Jerusalem,
as well as some of the holiest
sites for Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
The West Bank's been overshadowed
by Gaza lately,
but it is, to put it mildly, a critical
part of the larger struggle
between Israelis and Palestinians.
Even if you're not particularly familiar
with the history of the region,
you're probably aware that everything
concerning the West Bank,
and Israel's occupation of it,
is incredibly contentious,
to the point that even small decisions
concerning it can cause headlines.
Ben & Jerry's is facing backlash.
The Morton Williams grocery chain
is pulling
most Ben & Jerry's products
from store shelves
and moving what's left
to the bottom of the freezer
after the ice cream maker
announced it will stop selling ice cream
in occupied Palestinian territories.
Ben & Jerry's says doing business
in those areas
is inconsistent with its values.
Critics of the move say it does not
move the peace process forward.
Ben & Jerry's was accused of failing
to move the peace process forward,
which, to be fair, doesn't seem like
something an ice cream can really do.
How can ice cream solve world peace
when it can't even do
a decent SpongeBob?
You'd think a yellow square with
eyeballs would be easy to pull off,
and yet the reviews online
for those SpongeBob pops
are just nightmare after nightmare
after certifiable nightmare.
A key reason things surrounding
the West Bank are so tense
concerns the hundreds of thousands
of Israeli settlers living there.
While that tension can be expressed
at the international level,
or by proxy via weird fights
over ice cream,
it can also be communicated
face-to-face,
as in this viral video from
a few years ago,
in which a Palestinian woman confronts
an Israeli settler
who was living in the family home
that she'd been forcibly evicted from.
Jacob, you know this is not your house!
Yes, but if I go, you don't go back.
So, what's the problem?
Why are you yelling at me?
I didn't do this.
You are stealing my house.
And if I don't steal it,
someone else is gonna steal it.
No one is allowed to steal it, Jacob!
No, Jacob! It is both ridiculous and
tragic that that woman's only recourse
against the man occupying her home
in front of her is to try
and do the "Swiper, no swiping"
chant in real life.
But the ousting of that woman from
her home in East Jerusalem
is just a microcosm of the larger issue
of Palestinian displacement
and Israeli settlements
in the West Bank.
And what's happening there
is important to understand,
both because it's inextricably linked
to the fate of any peace process,
and because things there have
recently gotten exponentially worse.
So, given that, tonight, let's talk
about the West Bank settlements,
how they came to be,
who's living there,
and what their presence means
for everyone in the region.
And before we get
to where we are now,
let me just give you a way-too-quick
summary of how we got to this point.
Very basically,
Israel was founded in 1948,
fulfilling the long-held hopes
of the Zionist movement
at a time when Jews were reeling
from the collective traumas
of persecution and genocide
in the Holocaust.
It was established through what Israel
calls "the War of Independence,"
and what Palestinians refer
to as "the Nakba," or catastrophe.
700,000 Palestinians suffered
their own collective trauma
when they fled or were driven out
of their homes,
amid violence and, in some cases,
massacres of entire villages.
Some ended up in neighboring
countries as refugees,
while others settled in the parts
of Palestine
now widely known as Gaza
and the West Bank.
For decades, there were significant
tensions between Israel
and its neighbors.
And then came the Six
Day War in 1967,
in which Israel fought and defeated
Egypt, Syria, and Jordan,
and in doing so,
captured vastly more territory,
including the West Bank.
Almost immediately, it started
building settlements there,
while also annexing East Jerusalem.
And to be clear: both those
actions constitute violations
of international law.
When you occupy territory
as an outcome of war,
you are not allowed to expel people,
or move your own citizens in.
And Israel knew this at the time.
Its foreign ministry's own legal
advisor warned, in a top-secret memo,
that civilian settlements would
contravene explicit provisions
of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
But they built settlements
anyway and continued for decades.
Although there was
one moment in the '90s
when it seemed like there might
be a possible pathway
to a peaceful resolution
with the Oslo Accords.
That historic peace process set up
a new framework for the West Bank,
dividing it into three distinct areas.
Area A gave Palestinians total control
over security and government.
Area B was designated for
Palestinian government control,
while retaining Israeli
security control,
meaning the Israeli military remains
very present there.
Area C remained completely under
the Israeli military
and government control.
It's about 60% of the West Bank.
Right. And that is what the West Bank
map looks like today.
That is one of the most politically
fraught areas on Earth,
color-coded in a way that makes
it looks like what would happen
if Shrek jizzed into a puddle.
If you're thinking, "I dunno if I can
quite see that," how about now?
Can you see it now? And in a way,
will you ever be able to unsee it?
Now, crucially, this whole setup was
only ever meant to be temporary
while a larger peace deal
was hammered out.
But after Oslo fell apart, for reasons
including, but not limited to,
continued settlement expansion, terror
attacks by Palestinian militants,
and Israeli hardliners assassinating the
prime minister who'd brokered the deal,
Yitzhak Rabin, that temporary
arrangement was frozen in place,
and Israel continued building more
and more and more settlements.
In fact, every single Israeli government
has invested significant resources
in expanding them. And all of
that brings us to where we are today.
Because while there were around
250,000 settlers in the West Bank
when Oslo was signed, there
are currently around 700,000.
And it's worth talking about
the settlers themselves.
Because when you think of them,
you may envision someone
like the blundering guy
you saw earlier,
or hardliners on an ideological mission
to claim the holy land
in the name of the Jewish people.
But that is not the whole picture.
In fact, 70% of those who live
in the West Bank are so-called
"quality of life" settlers.
The way they describe the communities
does make them seem very attractive.
Spend 10 minutes
in a settlement today,
and you sometimes feel that you could
just as easily be
in a New Jersey suburb.
Clean roads, big houses,
quality parks, good schools,
close-by shopping, a university.
You ask people
why they moved out here
and, instead of the original mission
to push forward the Israeli state,
A very good educational system.
Very nice country club.
We wanted to be able to have
a bigger place.
It's a great place to raise kids.
We were looking for
a Jerusalem suburb
that we could afford that
was a manageable commute.
The quality of life is so much better.
It has nothing to do with politics.
Hold on. "It has nothing to do
with politics?"
I'm sorry, but it very much does.
Just because it's a nice place to live
doesn't make it any less illegal
under international law.
It's not like the Geneva Convention
says,
"the occupying power shall not transfer
parts of its own civilian population
into the territory it occupies unless
there's really convenient shopping
and a super manageable commute
to Jerusalem."
Also, part of the reason settlements
can be so pleasant
is because the Israeli government
wants people to move there.
Life is massively subsidized
in the settlements,
with the government
spending more per capita
on things like education
and infrastructure in them
than it does within Israel itself.
In recent years, Israel's Housing
Ministry has even offered
subsidized apartments in the West
Bank through a lottery system.
The whole settlement project
has been massively encouraged
by the Israeli government, to such
a degree that it is hard to argue
that living in one
isn't a political choice.
Building on stolen land
is an inherently political act.
It is also, by the way, copyright
infringement, for what it's worth.
The Israeli government will say
that it doesn't officially support
all settlements.
Its official line is there are two
different kinds, so-called "legal,"
approved settlements, and "outposts,"
created by rogue settlers,
that are illegal under Israeli law.
But for the record, under international
law, both of them are illegal.
And also, Israel frequently offers
all manner of resources
to the so-called "illegal outposts" too,
providing them with military defense,
access to public utilities,
and sometimes even retroactively
legalizing them.
So, as this Israeli critic
of the settlements points out,
the line between the two types
can get pretty blurry.
Settlement and outpost.
What's the difference?
Well, usually, someone refers
to Israeli settlements,
which are officially approved
by the Israeli government.
And the Israeli outposts
are Israeli settlements,
which had been built
also by the Israeli government,
but without official approval.
Right. Settlements and outposts
are nominally different,
but can look strikingly similar.
Kind of like Helvetica and Arial,
or Jessica Chastain
and Bryce Dallas Howard,
or this show and a civics textbook
that someone's drawn
a bunch of penises on.
We're both basically just charts
plus dick jokes.
But some settlers
will insist that none of this matters
because all they're really doing is
building in an area that no one's using.
I actually know for sure
we did not take anybody's land
because I saw that there
was nobody here.
This hill was a hill. Nobody around it,
nobody was using it,
it wasn't bothering anybody.
Okay, but it doesn't matter if anyone
was using it. If it's not your land,
you can't just take it.
And I do know that is hard to take
from someone using this accent.
But there is a clear difference between
property that nobody is using,
and property that nobody owns.
It's why we call those big things
outside of stores "parking lots,"
and not "help-yourself car buffets."
But while that argument
is clearly ridiculous,
it also speaks to Israel's
larger strategy in the region.
Because one of the official
means by which Israel takes land there
is by claiming that,
if land hasn't been cultivated
within the prior three years,
it can be declared as state land.
And some of its tactics seem designed
to ensure a lack of cultivation,
as settlers have
driven Palestinians off their land
through violence or intimidation.
Also, it can be hard for Palestinians
in the West Bank to build
or cultivate in the first place, due
to the opaque permit process there,
as this man patiently explains.
Israelis, I've heard, would say, well,
the land is unused anyways.
It's on the top of the hills.
That's a good excuse.
But why it's unused? Because
we are not allowed to use it.
Right. And he's not exaggerating there.
Israel controls building permits
in the West Bank,
and by its own admission,
it rejects over 95%
of Palestinian permit requests.
So, it's not that Palestinians
don't want to use the land,
it's that they're frequently
not allowed to, which is different,
in the same way that it's not that JD
Vance doesn't want to help you move,
it's just that he's not allowed within
50 feet of a three-piece sectional.
It's not his choice
at the end of the day.
Even as Israel has been heavily
incentivizing construction for Israelis
in the West Bank, when it comes
to Palestinian homes,
this is what's been happening
for years.
Authorities have ordered hundreds of
Palestinian homes to be demolished
because they were built
without the proper permits,
which are almost impossible
for Palestinians to get.
They cost thousands of dollars,
can take years to process,
and rarely get approved,
which means Palestinians
often end up building illegally.
Yeah, of course. And that is shocking
even before you get
to the brain-searing hypocrisy
of Palestinians in the West Bank
being told that their homes
are illegal.
It's like getting called a hot mess
by the fucking Hindenburg.
I'm not taking that from you
in particular, you gassy bitch.
But building permits are just the tip
of the iceberg here.
There's also the physical obstacles
placed in the path
of Palestinians' everyday life,
from this massive,
winding separation wall to the endless
maze of checkpoints
and gates Palestinians are forced
to pass through,
which, as this man points out,
can have extreme consequences.
You can't come to my house. The
checkpoint, they close it on the night.
It's only Sunday,
Tuesday, and Thursday,
one hour in the morning
and one hour in the evening,
we're allowed to pass the checkpoint.
No visitors, no ambulances.
No kindergartens, no schools,
no jobs.
If there's an emergency,
what do you do?
Nothing. Die.
Holy shit. Look, in some situations,
all you can do is just sit there
and wait to die,
like if you're stranded
on a desert island
or traveling on a Boeing airplane.
But death shouldn't be
an inevitable outcome
just 'cause you happen to live behind
an Israeli checkpoint.
These checkpoints are a nightmare.
Palestinian women trying to get
to hospital to give birth
have been delayed
at them so many times,
there've been dozens of documented
roadside births,
as well as cases of maternal
and infant deaths.
And these delays and inconveniences
can be deliberate,
as settlements are sometimes
strategically placed
to cut Palestinian communities
off from one another.
One outpost placed in a commercial
hub openly declares
on its Facebook page that the intent
of its location
is to "disrupt contiguity between
three Palestinian villages."
And the way certain Palestinians
are fenced in can get truly absurd.
Gateeb's home sits
on his ancestral land,
surrounded by this imposing
metal fence,
a house within a cage encircled
by Israeli settlements.
His 11-year old son, Sabri,
was detained for six hours
when his football rolled
near the settlements.
Sabri just grins with youthful bravado,
claiming he wasn't scared.
Did you get scared?
"But I was," his sister pipes up.
I bet she was. And everything
about that is bonkers,
from the idea of living in a house
almost completely surrounded
by a military fence, to a childhood
that includes the possibility
that a stray football could
land you in detention for six hours.
And what on Earth is the point of
detaining an 11-year-old for six hours?
What are you really hoping to get out
of questioning him here?
An answer to what Roblox is or are?
Because believe me,
that is all they fucking talk about.
And there's good reason
for that girl to be scared,
because the legal rights
of Palestinians in the West Bank
are tenuous, at best. There
are actually two sets of laws there.
Jewish settlers enjoy
access to civilian law, due process,
and the full protection of civil rights.
But Palestinians live
under Israeli military law.
So, if they're accused of a crime,
they're tried in military courts,
which have, to put it mildly,
significantly fewer protections
and boast a roughly
99% conviction rate.
And that clearly separate and unequal
two tier justice system means
Palestinians also have little recourse
when they're the victims of a crime.
Because, despite both Israeli
and international law saying
"Israeli soldiers have an obligation
to protect Palestinian residents
of the West Bank," in practice,
when it comes to attacks
by settlers on Palestinians,
there's been a history of silence,
avoidance, and abetment
by Israeli officials.
In fact, when
an Israeli human rights group looked
at more than 1,600
cases of settler violence,
it found that just 3% resulted
in a conviction.
And look, I am not a lawyer,
or a statistician,
despite looking like what you would get
if you smashed those two jobs together
with a particle accelerator, but
even I can tell you, 3% is too low.
And for a sense of just
how extreme settlements can get,
take Hebron, a city home
to about 200,000 Palestinians,
and 700 hardline Israeli settlers who've
chosen to live literally above them.
Life in Hebron is full of constant
reminders
about whose safety is prioritized.
Just over a year ago,
a remote-controlled gun,
reportedly for crowd dispersal,
was installed above this checkpoint.
So, it's pointing towards
the Palestinian area?
Palestinian authorities have had
to build an overhead fence
to catch rubbish and projectiles
thrown down by settlers.
So, the Israeli settlers live up here?
And they throw everything down.
12 shops are closed.
The settlers, they attack Palestinians
without any kind of accountability.
How does it make you feel to see this?
I feel very sad. From the most beautiful
market, to closed shops.
An outpost.
For me, it illustrates
the Israeli occupation system.
Someone from the settlement above
has thrown a beer bottle at Issa's head.
You okay, Issa?
- I got the beer, I think.
- Did it cut you?
That is terrible,
and I'm not sure which part
of that situation seems less livable,
saying hello to the barrel of a
remote-controlled turret every day,
or the constant weather forecast
of "cloudy with a chance of tetanus."
And settlers will argue that they live
in constant fear of violence.
And it is true that,
over the last 16 years,
150 Israelis have been killed by
Palestinians in the West Bank.
Though it is worth noting that,
in that same period,
more than 10 times that many
Palestinians were killed by Israelis,
the vast majority directly
by Israeli security forces.
But maybe the clearest illustration
of the impunity some settlers feel
is the practice of so-called "price tag"
attacks on Palestinians,
which are ostensibly acts of revenge
but can be utterly indiscriminate,
as this settler calmly explains.
Can you explain to us what these price
tag attacks are? What they mean?
After Arabs killed Jews,
anything wrong that happened,
we showed that we won't stay in quiet.
It has a price,
called price tag.
It could just be any random Arab,
doesn't matter whether
they were involved or not?
No, it doesn't matter because they sit
here and because they believe it theirs.
They're all involved.
And for you, just being here,
that makes them guilty?
Yeah, that makes them guilty.
It is a little jarring to hear someone
say something so wildly disturbing
in such a sedate manner.
She's advocating for random
violent hate crimes there,
but doing it in the ultra-relaxed tone
of a yoga instructor
on horse tranquilizers.
It is a truly horrendous situation.
And as that Israeli expert
that you saw earlier points out,
there's actually a term
that describes all this.
When there are two groups that live
in the same territory
and they are officially separated
in terms of political, economic,
and legal rights, and the key to this
separation is completely arbitrary,
whether you were born
to an Arab mother or not,
what would you call that?
If it smells like apartheid,
looks like apartheid,
sounds like apartheid,
then it's apartheid.
He's right. Although real quick,
"if it smells like apartheid?"
Does apartheid actually have a smell?
I was pretty sure it'd only
produce the one kind of musk.
But he is not alone
in that assessment.
A former head of Israel's intelligence
agency, Mossad, has said,
in reference to the West Bank,
"There is an apartheid state here,"
and this former IDF general has called
the situation "total apartheid,"
adding the IDF is "standing by, looking
at the settler rioters
and is beginning to be a partner
to war crimes."
And at this point,
we should probably talk
about the U.S.'s role in this whole
situation. Because it is considerable.
America opposes settlements
officially,
but very much soft peddles
its criticism of them,
as both Republican and Democratic
presidents have referred to them
as "illegitimate",
but declined to call them "illegal,"
to avoid the possibility Israel would
face international sanctions.
And some presidents
have gone even further.
Trump was incredibly cozy
with Netanyahu,
as you can tell from the unnervingly
smug look on Bibi's face there.
And his administration not only moved
the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
in 2018, an incredibly provocative
act on its own,
but the next year, it also did this.
In a major change of foreign policy,
the Trump administration said
it no longer considers
Jewish communities built on Palestinian
lands, known as settlements,
to be against international law.
The announcement made by Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo.
Calling the establishment of civilian
settlements inconsistent
with international law hasn't worked.
It hasn't advanced
the cause of peace.
It turns out, Mike Pompeo and I
actually agree on something!
The status quo hasn't worked.
I just think we might disagree
on what to do next.
It's one of the many things
that we seem to disagree on,
along with what he should have
named his book.
Because in my opinion,
"Never Give an Inch" sounds like
the autobiography of a micro-penis.
But Mike clearly feels differently.
But it's not just government support.
Wealthy American individuals have
funneled hundreds of millions of dollars
into settlements.
And it's worth noting, many of Israel's
strongest advocates
aren't Jewish individuals or groups,
they're actually evangelical Christians.
Like this man, pastor John Hagee,
who has done
more than you might expect.
Pastor Hagee founded Christians
United for Israel, or CUFI,
which is the largest pro-Israel
lobbying organization in America.
Even bigger than AIPAC,
the organization most people assume
dominates the American-Israel lobby
because it's the biggest Jewish one.
What's dicey about CUFI is that
a good deal of their money
for Israel is spent on buildings
and organizations
in the Israeli settlements.
God gave them that land.
They own that land.
Okay, if you told me to picture
a megachurch pastor,
that is exactly who I'm imagining.
Slicked back silver hair,
headset mic,
looking like an elderly Chris Farley
in Easter pimp drag.
That is on-the-nose
casting right there.
And interestingly, the reason many
evangelicals are so invested in Israel
is, they believe Jewish
people being in that region
is one of the prerequisites
for their vision of Armageddon.
When that day comes, the thinking
goes, Christians will be raptured,
and I'll let this man fill you in
on what he thinks happens
to Jews in Israel afterward.
2,000 years of blindness is gonna
come peeling off the Jewish mind.
And those of us that have been caught
up in the rapture
'Cause the Christians
have been raptured out.
All who are born again will
have been raptured.
When Jesus come, we'll be caught up
to meet him in the air.
And then we will come with him
to the mount of olives.
And so, we're gonna be watching
this whole panoramic thing unfold
as the Jewish people turn
to their messiah.
We're gonna be converting people
by the hundreds of thousands
during this time. It's gonna be the
best of times and the worst of times.
Yeah, that makes sense! Apparently,
Evangelicals will grow
Victoria's Secret angel wings,
flap up to Jesus, and sit with him
in his Lisa Frank ball,
and smugly watch as Jews realize
how wrong they've been.
And look, on one hand, I get why
some in Israel might encourage this.
There is a cynical utility
to taking idiots' money.
But someone expressing anticipation
for the day
"2,000 years of blindness
come peeling off my mind"
might make me want to keep
a certain distance from them.
And yet, watch as Hagee,
a few years ago,
introduced a special guest star
to his followers.
Would you please welcome my friend
and prime minister of Israel,
Benjamin Netanyahu?
Thank you, Pastor Hagee.
You are always there for us.
We have no better friends
on earth than you.
"No better friends." You know what,
I guess that makes sense.
Some friends drive you to the airport,
others see your suffering as their
ticket to getting Christblasted
by a flying rapture Jesus.
Friendship does take
so many forms, doesn't it?
And in recent years, everything I've
shown you has only gotten worse.
In 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu,
in order to hold onto power,
formed a governing coalition by allying
with leaders of far-right parties,
creating the most right-wing
government in Israel's history.
He put extremist politicians, some
of whom are settlers themselves,
in major positions of power.
His current finance minister,
Bezalel Smotrich, openly advocates
for Israeli annexation
of the West Bank.
And his minister of national security
is Itmar Ben-Gvir,
who not only lives in Hebron,
the fun place with the flying bottles
and remote-control machine guns,
he's also been convicted of incitement
to racism
and supporting a terrorist organization.
All this was a huge win
for hardline settlers.
Just listen to this Israeli soldier
gloating to Palestinians in Hebron
about what Ben-Gvir's ascent
would mean.
Ben-Gvir is going to fix this place,
order of this whole area.
That's it, you people are done.
No more of what you're doing here.
This whorehouse you have
going on here.
What am I doing?
Am I doing anything illegal?
Everything you do is illegal.
I decide what the law is
and your actions are illegal.
"I decide what the law is
and your actions are illegal."
That is a bold fucking attitude.
It's the sort of thing an American cop
would only be comfortable tattooing
above their sleeve line.
So, things were already getting bad,
and then the appalling attacks
of October 7th happened.
And since then, things have gotten
considerably worse.
Israel imposed even tighter restrictions
on Palestinian movement
in the West Bank, with checkpoints
increasingly closed,
and many work permits canceled,
making it impossible for many
Palestinians there to make a living.
Meanwhile, attacks on Palestinians
have only spiked
from where they were already
at historic highs,
to the point that the UN's found
at least 19 Palestinian communities
have been "displaced as a direct result
of settler violence" since October.
And in the midst of all of this,
Smotrich declared
nearly four square miles of
Palestinian territory to be state land,
the single largest land grab
since the Oslo Accords.
Is it any wonder that Israeli
security chiefs have warned
that the West Bank could be "on the
brink of a major eruption of violence?"
And when you take all of this together,
you do begin to understand
why so many Israelis and Palestinians
have despaired
of ever achieving a two-state solution.
And the thing is, as this settler
pointed out nearly a decade ago,
for many of them, that has basically
been the strategy.
You can basically kiss the two-state
solution goodbye. Not gonna happen.
We're gonna continue to move in there,
and eventually,
we are going to have more
Jewish communities there,
more Israeli electricity, more Israeli
roads, more Israeli taxes.
then, in the end,
it's just going to be Israel.
Right, relentless expansion has made
the idea of peace talks a joke.
And when I say "joke," I don't
mean something that's "funny ha ha,"
I mean something
that is deeply depressing.
You know, a joke in the same way
that this show is a comedy,
which, as this audience that
was excited to be in here
half an hour ago will tell you, is
stretching that term to breaking point.
So, where do we go from here?
Well, at this point,
it does feel presumptuous
to even talk about a peace process,
because we're so far from being
in a position to even start one.
There's actually a moment that I think
sums that up pretty well,
it's the then-mayor of Ramallah,
talking to a German delegation
a few years ago.
They asked if he'd be willing to take
part in some symbolic exchanges
with his Israeli counterparts
to show goodwill
and help facilitate peace,
the standard "meet them
in the middle" rhetoric,
and this is his incredibly
diplomatic response.
When we feel that we are not treated
as slaves, and they are masters,
we are ready to do everything.
But when I have to take off all my
clothes in front of all the people
because a soldier of 16 years old
is asking me to do so
under the threat of his weapon,
then it's about dignity. Yeah?
And when it comes to dignity,
I think it's something not negotiable.
Right?
Right. Human dignity has to be a
prerequisite for negotiating anything.
And Palestinians in the West Ban
have their dignity challenged
hundreds of times a day, from having
beer bottles thrown at their heads,
to being detained
for kicking balls near fences,
to being stopped while crossing
checkpoints in ambulances,
to having their homes stolen,
bulldozed, and far, far worse.
And to be clear, dignity
is the absolute beginning of this.
What's required is justice.
And the call for that is getting
louder. Just last week,
the ICJ issued an opinion
that Israel's settlements
and the regime associated with them
are in violation of international law,
the Israeli presence in the occupied
territories should come to an end
as rapidly as possible,
and that Israel has an obligation
to provide full reparation
for the damage it's caused.
But the U.S. State Department has
already undermined that statement,
saying it's concerned the breadth
of the ICJ's opinion
will complicate efforts
to resolve the conflict.
But I dunno, man. The conflict's
already pretty fucking complicated.
Is the world's highest court
interpreting international law
accurately really going
to make things any worse?
Look, a phrase that gets brought
up a lot with regard to Israel
is "never again",
an antigenocide slogan often invoked
in memory of the Holocaust.
And it's always been open
to two interpretations.
There's the one that means "this must
never again happen to the jews",
and the one that means "this must
never again happen to any people."
And in the West Bank,
as in Gaza right now,
it's pretty clear which one the
Israeli government has favored.
And especially as long
as Netanyahu is in power,
he is clearly gonna do whatever he
and the worst people around him want.
But the U.S. doesn't have to continue
to abet that, or cover for it.
And the thing is, we do have levers
at our disposal here.
We could put conditions on the billions
in military aid we send to Israel.
We could stop vetoing UN Security
Council resolutions
critical of the Israeli government's
actions,
which we've been doing
for decades now.
And we could say
what is plain for everyone to see,
these settlements aren't
just illegitimate or even just illegal,
they're immoral.
And not only should we say that,
we should then act accordingly.
I know the bar here is incredibly low,
but I guess at the very least,
I just want my government
to have the moral backbone
that's been shown
by Ben & fucking Jerry's.
Please, just try not to get
morally outflanked
by the makers
of Impretzively Fudged.
That cannot be too much to ask.
And now, this.
And Now: The Olympics Have Made
Everyone a Little Too Eager
to Speak French.
The countdown to Paris,
Opening Ceremony of the Olympics
just three days away.
NBC's Keir Simmons live in Paris
with all the excitement.
Bonjour!
Bonjour, mon ami.
Bonjour!
Oui, oui. Je m'appelle Amanda.
- Bonjour.
- Oh, I like it. Ooh la la.
Merci beaucoup, mon ami.
I don't know
what the last part of that was.
I said, "my friend."
Bonjour. Bonjour, Craig.
Bonjour, Carson.
Bonjour. Au revoir.
Chat, a la mode.
- Chat is cat.
- Chat is cat? What?
There will be a lot of that
over the next three weeks.
In Paris. Oui, oui. Y'all know
I don't speak French.
Maybe you gotta get some
croissants this morning,
or, as they say in Paris, croissants.
I don't know, I didn't take French.
Thanks so much for watching.
We'll see you next week, bonne nuit!
Tonight"! I'm John Oliver,
thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
And one dominated by reactions
to Joe Biden dropping out
of the presidential race last Sunday,
a decision that caught many off-guard,
including these local anchors,
in the middle of their segment called
"Gorgeous Grandmas".
This comes to us from Debora Batiste,
who we love.
She showed her there.
I know we have some news
coming in now
so just give us a second here.
But for now, I know, Lauren,
favorite photo of Grandma.
Let's go ahead
and come back out here.
I'm not hearing anything in my ear.
We are getting word into our newsroom
that President Joe Biden
is dropping out of the race
and not running for reelection.
Let's get this statement that he posted
to his social media
onto the iPad right here.
It's not working. So,
let's just go ahead and read it.
Getting that grandma off the screen
was the second time that day
when a senior citizen was
successfully pushed aside.
And those two weren't the only
ones caught off-guard.
People got the news in all sorts
of ways,
from the "Liza Minnelli Outlives"
Twitter account,
which solemnly announced,
"Liza Minnelli has outlived
Joe Biden's race for re-election"
to this post on the EmojiPasta
subreddit, and as far as I'm concerned,
"Hoe Biden has dropped his ass out
of the 2024 erection
because the presi dick is experiencing
some freaky health issues
including mem-whore-y loss
and cum-fusion"
is our generation's
journalistic equivalent
of Walter Cronkite tearfully
announcing the death of JFK.
But perhaps one of the biggest
surprises here
was that Democrats managed,
uncharacteristically, to handle this
in an organized fashion,
almost immediately lining up
behind Kamala Harris,
whose campaign says it raised
$81 million within a day,
calling it "the largest amount of money
raised in a 24-hour span
in presidential history."
Meanwhile, the internet filled
with Kamala memes,
turbocharged by the fact
that Charli XCX tweeted
"Kamala is brat," which unfortunately
set off days of CNN trying to explain
to its audience what the fuck
that means.
Kamala Harris embraces being
called "brat". Why?
And now, presumptive presidential
nominee is brat.
It's a good thing, apparently.
Okay, here we go. Charli XCX,
who I do know, quote,
"Brat, you're just that girl who
is a little messy and likes to party,
and maybe says some dumb things
sometimes," end quote.
So, is the idea that
we're all kind of brat,
and Vice President Harris is brat?
No, Jake! That's not it at all!
We are not "all kinda brat."
You're either brat or you're not.
God damn it, Tapper!
Look, I regret to inform everyone,
Brat Summer is canceled.
At best, we got eight
to nine brat business days.
Republicans spent the week trying
to counter the newfound enthusiasm
around Harris with criticism frequently
defaulting to outright racism.
She was called, among other things,
a diversity or "DEI hire,"
and when they weren't stooping
that low,
they were reaching
for desperate attacks like these.
A major liability for Kamala Harris,
she wants to ban plastic straws.
She wants to ban plastic straws?
I love my plastic straws.
I hate those paper ones.
Kamala can't have my guns.
She can't have my gasoline engine.
And she sure as hell can't have
my steaks and cheeseburgers.
She is a radical California leftist.
That is almost a parody of right-wing
fearmongering nonsense.
"She'll take your straws,
she'll take your burgers,
and brother, if you like eating
your burgers through a straw,
say goodbye to your whole life."
For the record, Harris is not
a "radical California leftist."
She was a prosecutor.
If Dick Wolf thinks your job
is heroic and noble,
chances are you're not leading
the revolution.
And even if she were, that doesn't
translate to stealing cheeseburgers.
That's the Hamburglar, Ted.
You're thinking of the Hamburglar.
But all in all, it was a pretty
good week for the current vice president
and a pretty terrible one
for Trump's pick to be his next VP,
JD Vance, because he spent
the week on the campaign trail,
where his performance was, to say
the least, underwhelming.
Democrats say that it is racist
They say it's racist to do anything.
I had a Diet Mountain yesterday,
and one today. I'm sure
they're gonna call that racist, too.
It's good.
I love you guys.
Stop it! Stop it now!
It physically hurts me to watch that.
The vibe there is less
"running for vice president"
and more "shitting the bed
at an open mic night."
That makes Jeb's "please clap"
look like "Showtime at the Apollo."
People are getting a look
at JD Vance for the first time,
and what is becoming clear
from polling comparing him
to previous VP candidates
is that voters are not liking
what they're seeing.
We take a look at the net favorable
ratings for JD Vance.
That's favorable minus unfavorable.
It's a negative net territory.
Negative six points.
That is underwater.
The average since 2000
is plus-19 points.
JD Vance making history
in the completely wrong way.
Yeah, not great! And I realize
this isn't the point,
but this feels like the wrong photo
to accompany that rating.
That's an expression that screams,
"everything's going great",
not, "I am so unlikable
that it made the news."
And while some of that negativity might
be a response to Vance's demeanor,
it also might be that people
are learning what he stands for.
He's argued the last election
was stolen from Trump,
and supported a federal
abortion ban,
while also opposing exceptions
for rape and incest.
He's also argued that, because Kamala
Harris and other Democrats
didn't have children,
that they didn't have, quote,
"any physical commitment to the future
of this country",
an argument he elaborated on
to Tucker Carlson.
We're effectively run, in this country,
via the Democrats,
via our corporate oligarchs,
by a bunch of childless cat ladies
who are miserable at their own lives
and the choices that they've made,
and so they want to make the rest
of the country miserable too.
Fuck all the way off,
you potato-headed build-a-bigot.
Set aside that Harris has
two step-children,
neither of whom, as far as I can see,
are cats
you don't need kids to care about
your fellow human beings.
As for the claim that women
who don't have children are
"miserable with the choices
they've made,"
the only person I'm pretty sure
is miserable with a choice
they've made right now
is Donald Trump,
after choosing Great Lakes Ron
DeSantis here as a running mate.
JD Vance sucks so much
that it says something that,
for a few days this week,
the internet ran wild with a joke tweet
that he was "the first VP pick to have
admitted in a New York Times bestseller
to fucking an inside-out latex glove
shoved between two couch cushions,"
with a citation to a page number
from his memoir.
And look, let me be clear, that is not
true. It is not in his book.
But I think the reason it spread
so fast might be that,
A, nobody read that fucking book,
and B, it was incredibly easy
to believe.
Because if you asked me
to draw a man that fucks his couch,
10 times out of 10,
I'm drawing this guy.
If you asked me to play two truths
and a lie with this man,
before he even opened his mouth,
I'd shout,
"The truth is he fucks his couch!"
Because I've never seen someone
with more "couch fucker" energy.
He looks like he watched
the Tom Cruise Oprah interview
and was jealous of Tom's shoes.
If you told me that his first celebrity
crush was the plastic sofa
from "Everybody Loves Raymond,"
I'd believe you without question.
If you told me the reason you find
coins in between couch cushions
is because JD Vance always leaves
a tip,
I'd be like, "Yeah.
Yeah, that sounds right."
That rumor was so widespread,
it yielded the actual Norwegian headline
"Hadde ikke sex med sofa,"
which looks like a sign they had
to put up in IKEA
after JD visited too much.
It even got to the point the AP felt
the need to publish
a fact-check headlined, "No, JD Vance
did not have sex with a couch,"
only to then take it down, with
the link leading to "page unavailable,"
which somehow makes this
even funnier.
The AP later explained its decision
to pull the piece
by saying the story did not go through
their standard editing process.
And no shit it didn't,
because there's an obvious problem
with that original headline.
And the reason I know that is,
we care a lot about facts
and precise phrasing on this show,
so I can tell you
you can't say JD Vance didn't have
sex with a couch, definitively.
You can say that he didn't write
about doing that in his book,
because that is provable.
But that's not the same as asserting
he never fucked a couch.
Especially because
he hasn't officially denied it.
But we wanted to give him
the opportunity to do that,
so we contacted the Vance
campaign this week,
calling one of their spokespeople.
And when we asked, and I quote,
"Has Senator Vance ever
had sex with a couch?",
they, and this is true, hung up on us.
Which is, and this is critical,
not a no, is it?
We then followed up by both texting
and emailing the same question again,
as well as asking if he'd had sex
with any other furniture
or household items.
But as of taping,
we sadly haven't heard back.
And look, who knows
where this is going?
The news is moving so fast right now,
the RNC was only last week.
It was only two weeks ago
that Trump was shot.
And there are so many variables
between here and November,
we don't know who Kamala's VP pick
will be,
we don't know which candidate
will maintain momentum.
The race is impossible to predict,
but there are two things
that I do know for certain.
One, Jake Tapper is not brat,
and, until he tells us otherwise,
I'm going to assume that
JD Vance fucked a couch.
And now, this.
And Now: For No Particular Reason,
Some Home Furnishing Ads.
Even standard back pillows
like this one can be utilized
in a deep configuration.
You just kind of squish them in.
They look great. They look
comfy. They look squishy.
And if that's good with you,
it's good with us.
Maybe it happens to be
downstairs in the man cave.
Wherever it happens to be,
it's not only going to look good,
but feel amazing.
I cannot stop touching this,
it's so soft.
It's 100% polyester. I find it so soft
when I'm touching this.
And if you were to get, like, any spill
or anything on it,
you would just spot clean it.
When you zip the thing off, you reveal
your naked sack underneath,
which is built to the hilt.
A naked khaki sack is built to last,
because it comes
in this great khaki twill,
which can withstand
nearly any abuse imaginable.
I've been buying rugs today.
I get new chairs.
I go in and out, in and out. I know
a little bit about buying furniture.
You have love handles on the side that
allow you to carry your sack around,
or take it out,
and snaps hidden beneath those
to snap on
your soda-sack drink holder.
Oh, yeah. Fuck that couch.
Moving on.
For our main story tonight,
I'd like to talk about Israel
and Palestine,
a sentence rated number one
by Ways to Instantly Ruin Thanksgiving
Dinner with Your Family Magazine.
For months now, global
outrage, news reports,
and whatever it is that we do here
on "School Plus Cake Bear Ass
Eating with John Oliver,"
has been focused on Israel's war
in Gaza,
which has killed tens
of thousands of civilians
in the wake of Hamas's brutal
attacks on October 7th.
But tonight, we're actually going
to talk about a different area
in the region, the West Bank,
which is home to over three million
Palestinians,
the eastern half of Jerusalem,
as well as some of the holiest
sites for Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
The West Bank's been overshadowed
by Gaza lately,
but it is, to put it mildly, a critical
part of the larger struggle
between Israelis and Palestinians.
Even if you're not particularly familiar
with the history of the region,
you're probably aware that everything
concerning the West Bank,
and Israel's occupation of it,
is incredibly contentious,
to the point that even small decisions
concerning it can cause headlines.
Ben & Jerry's is facing backlash.
The Morton Williams grocery chain
is pulling
most Ben & Jerry's products
from store shelves
and moving what's left
to the bottom of the freezer
after the ice cream maker
announced it will stop selling ice cream
in occupied Palestinian territories.
Ben & Jerry's says doing business
in those areas
is inconsistent with its values.
Critics of the move say it does not
move the peace process forward.
Ben & Jerry's was accused of failing
to move the peace process forward,
which, to be fair, doesn't seem like
something an ice cream can really do.
How can ice cream solve world peace
when it can't even do
a decent SpongeBob?
You'd think a yellow square with
eyeballs would be easy to pull off,
and yet the reviews online
for those SpongeBob pops
are just nightmare after nightmare
after certifiable nightmare.
A key reason things surrounding
the West Bank are so tense
concerns the hundreds of thousands
of Israeli settlers living there.
While that tension can be expressed
at the international level,
or by proxy via weird fights
over ice cream,
it can also be communicated
face-to-face,
as in this viral video from
a few years ago,
in which a Palestinian woman confronts
an Israeli settler
who was living in the family home
that she'd been forcibly evicted from.
Jacob, you know this is not your house!
Yes, but if I go, you don't go back.
So, what's the problem?
Why are you yelling at me?
I didn't do this.
You are stealing my house.
And if I don't steal it,
someone else is gonna steal it.
No one is allowed to steal it, Jacob!
No, Jacob! It is both ridiculous and
tragic that that woman's only recourse
against the man occupying her home
in front of her is to try
and do the "Swiper, no swiping"
chant in real life.
But the ousting of that woman from
her home in East Jerusalem
is just a microcosm of the larger issue
of Palestinian displacement
and Israeli settlements
in the West Bank.
And what's happening there
is important to understand,
both because it's inextricably linked
to the fate of any peace process,
and because things there have
recently gotten exponentially worse.
So, given that, tonight, let's talk
about the West Bank settlements,
how they came to be,
who's living there,
and what their presence means
for everyone in the region.
And before we get
to where we are now,
let me just give you a way-too-quick
summary of how we got to this point.
Very basically,
Israel was founded in 1948,
fulfilling the long-held hopes
of the Zionist movement
at a time when Jews were reeling
from the collective traumas
of persecution and genocide
in the Holocaust.
It was established through what Israel
calls "the War of Independence,"
and what Palestinians refer
to as "the Nakba," or catastrophe.
700,000 Palestinians suffered
their own collective trauma
when they fled or were driven out
of their homes,
amid violence and, in some cases,
massacres of entire villages.
Some ended up in neighboring
countries as refugees,
while others settled in the parts
of Palestine
now widely known as Gaza
and the West Bank.
For decades, there were significant
tensions between Israel
and its neighbors.
And then came the Six
Day War in 1967,
in which Israel fought and defeated
Egypt, Syria, and Jordan,
and in doing so,
captured vastly more territory,
including the West Bank.
Almost immediately, it started
building settlements there,
while also annexing East Jerusalem.
And to be clear: both those
actions constitute violations
of international law.
When you occupy territory
as an outcome of war,
you are not allowed to expel people,
or move your own citizens in.
And Israel knew this at the time.
Its foreign ministry's own legal
advisor warned, in a top-secret memo,
that civilian settlements would
contravene explicit provisions
of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
But they built settlements
anyway and continued for decades.
Although there was
one moment in the '90s
when it seemed like there might
be a possible pathway
to a peaceful resolution
with the Oslo Accords.
That historic peace process set up
a new framework for the West Bank,
dividing it into three distinct areas.
Area A gave Palestinians total control
over security and government.
Area B was designated for
Palestinian government control,
while retaining Israeli
security control,
meaning the Israeli military remains
very present there.
Area C remained completely under
the Israeli military
and government control.
It's about 60% of the West Bank.
Right. And that is what the West Bank
map looks like today.
That is one of the most politically
fraught areas on Earth,
color-coded in a way that makes
it looks like what would happen
if Shrek jizzed into a puddle.
If you're thinking, "I dunno if I can
quite see that," how about now?
Can you see it now? And in a way,
will you ever be able to unsee it?
Now, crucially, this whole setup was
only ever meant to be temporary
while a larger peace deal
was hammered out.
But after Oslo fell apart, for reasons
including, but not limited to,
continued settlement expansion, terror
attacks by Palestinian militants,
and Israeli hardliners assassinating the
prime minister who'd brokered the deal,
Yitzhak Rabin, that temporary
arrangement was frozen in place,
and Israel continued building more
and more and more settlements.
In fact, every single Israeli government
has invested significant resources
in expanding them. And all of
that brings us to where we are today.
Because while there were around
250,000 settlers in the West Bank
when Oslo was signed, there
are currently around 700,000.
And it's worth talking about
the settlers themselves.
Because when you think of them,
you may envision someone
like the blundering guy
you saw earlier,
or hardliners on an ideological mission
to claim the holy land
in the name of the Jewish people.
But that is not the whole picture.
In fact, 70% of those who live
in the West Bank are so-called
"quality of life" settlers.
The way they describe the communities
does make them seem very attractive.
Spend 10 minutes
in a settlement today,
and you sometimes feel that you could
just as easily be
in a New Jersey suburb.
Clean roads, big houses,
quality parks, good schools,
close-by shopping, a university.
You ask people
why they moved out here
and, instead of the original mission
to push forward the Israeli state,
A very good educational system.
Very nice country club.
We wanted to be able to have
a bigger place.
It's a great place to raise kids.
We were looking for
a Jerusalem suburb
that we could afford that
was a manageable commute.
The quality of life is so much better.
It has nothing to do with politics.
Hold on. "It has nothing to do
with politics?"
I'm sorry, but it very much does.
Just because it's a nice place to live
doesn't make it any less illegal
under international law.
It's not like the Geneva Convention
says,
"the occupying power shall not transfer
parts of its own civilian population
into the territory it occupies unless
there's really convenient shopping
and a super manageable commute
to Jerusalem."
Also, part of the reason settlements
can be so pleasant
is because the Israeli government
wants people to move there.
Life is massively subsidized
in the settlements,
with the government
spending more per capita
on things like education
and infrastructure in them
than it does within Israel itself.
In recent years, Israel's Housing
Ministry has even offered
subsidized apartments in the West
Bank through a lottery system.
The whole settlement project
has been massively encouraged
by the Israeli government, to such
a degree that it is hard to argue
that living in one
isn't a political choice.
Building on stolen land
is an inherently political act.
It is also, by the way, copyright
infringement, for what it's worth.
The Israeli government will say
that it doesn't officially support
all settlements.
Its official line is there are two
different kinds, so-called "legal,"
approved settlements, and "outposts,"
created by rogue settlers,
that are illegal under Israeli law.
But for the record, under international
law, both of them are illegal.
And also, Israel frequently offers
all manner of resources
to the so-called "illegal outposts" too,
providing them with military defense,
access to public utilities,
and sometimes even retroactively
legalizing them.
So, as this Israeli critic
of the settlements points out,
the line between the two types
can get pretty blurry.
Settlement and outpost.
What's the difference?
Well, usually, someone refers
to Israeli settlements,
which are officially approved
by the Israeli government.
And the Israeli outposts
are Israeli settlements,
which had been built
also by the Israeli government,
but without official approval.
Right. Settlements and outposts
are nominally different,
but can look strikingly similar.
Kind of like Helvetica and Arial,
or Jessica Chastain
and Bryce Dallas Howard,
or this show and a civics textbook
that someone's drawn
a bunch of penises on.
We're both basically just charts
plus dick jokes.
But some settlers
will insist that none of this matters
because all they're really doing is
building in an area that no one's using.
I actually know for sure
we did not take anybody's land
because I saw that there
was nobody here.
This hill was a hill. Nobody around it,
nobody was using it,
it wasn't bothering anybody.
Okay, but it doesn't matter if anyone
was using it. If it's not your land,
you can't just take it.
And I do know that is hard to take
from someone using this accent.
But there is a clear difference between
property that nobody is using,
and property that nobody owns.
It's why we call those big things
outside of stores "parking lots,"
and not "help-yourself car buffets."
But while that argument
is clearly ridiculous,
it also speaks to Israel's
larger strategy in the region.
Because one of the official
means by which Israel takes land there
is by claiming that,
if land hasn't been cultivated
within the prior three years,
it can be declared as state land.
And some of its tactics seem designed
to ensure a lack of cultivation,
as settlers have
driven Palestinians off their land
through violence or intimidation.
Also, it can be hard for Palestinians
in the West Bank to build
or cultivate in the first place, due
to the opaque permit process there,
as this man patiently explains.
Israelis, I've heard, would say, well,
the land is unused anyways.
It's on the top of the hills.
That's a good excuse.
But why it's unused? Because
we are not allowed to use it.
Right. And he's not exaggerating there.
Israel controls building permits
in the West Bank,
and by its own admission,
it rejects over 95%
of Palestinian permit requests.
So, it's not that Palestinians
don't want to use the land,
it's that they're frequently
not allowed to, which is different,
in the same way that it's not that JD
Vance doesn't want to help you move,
it's just that he's not allowed within
50 feet of a three-piece sectional.
It's not his choice
at the end of the day.
Even as Israel has been heavily
incentivizing construction for Israelis
in the West Bank, when it comes
to Palestinian homes,
this is what's been happening
for years.
Authorities have ordered hundreds of
Palestinian homes to be demolished
because they were built
without the proper permits,
which are almost impossible
for Palestinians to get.
They cost thousands of dollars,
can take years to process,
and rarely get approved,
which means Palestinians
often end up building illegally.
Yeah, of course. And that is shocking
even before you get
to the brain-searing hypocrisy
of Palestinians in the West Bank
being told that their homes
are illegal.
It's like getting called a hot mess
by the fucking Hindenburg.
I'm not taking that from you
in particular, you gassy bitch.
But building permits are just the tip
of the iceberg here.
There's also the physical obstacles
placed in the path
of Palestinians' everyday life,
from this massive,
winding separation wall to the endless
maze of checkpoints
and gates Palestinians are forced
to pass through,
which, as this man points out,
can have extreme consequences.
You can't come to my house. The
checkpoint, they close it on the night.
It's only Sunday,
Tuesday, and Thursday,
one hour in the morning
and one hour in the evening,
we're allowed to pass the checkpoint.
No visitors, no ambulances.
No kindergartens, no schools,
no jobs.
If there's an emergency,
what do you do?
Nothing. Die.
Holy shit. Look, in some situations,
all you can do is just sit there
and wait to die,
like if you're stranded
on a desert island
or traveling on a Boeing airplane.
But death shouldn't be
an inevitable outcome
just 'cause you happen to live behind
an Israeli checkpoint.
These checkpoints are a nightmare.
Palestinian women trying to get
to hospital to give birth
have been delayed
at them so many times,
there've been dozens of documented
roadside births,
as well as cases of maternal
and infant deaths.
And these delays and inconveniences
can be deliberate,
as settlements are sometimes
strategically placed
to cut Palestinian communities
off from one another.
One outpost placed in a commercial
hub openly declares
on its Facebook page that the intent
of its location
is to "disrupt contiguity between
three Palestinian villages."
And the way certain Palestinians
are fenced in can get truly absurd.
Gateeb's home sits
on his ancestral land,
surrounded by this imposing
metal fence,
a house within a cage encircled
by Israeli settlements.
His 11-year old son, Sabri,
was detained for six hours
when his football rolled
near the settlements.
Sabri just grins with youthful bravado,
claiming he wasn't scared.
Did you get scared?
"But I was," his sister pipes up.
I bet she was. And everything
about that is bonkers,
from the idea of living in a house
almost completely surrounded
by a military fence, to a childhood
that includes the possibility
that a stray football could
land you in detention for six hours.
And what on Earth is the point of
detaining an 11-year-old for six hours?
What are you really hoping to get out
of questioning him here?
An answer to what Roblox is or are?
Because believe me,
that is all they fucking talk about.
And there's good reason
for that girl to be scared,
because the legal rights
of Palestinians in the West Bank
are tenuous, at best. There
are actually two sets of laws there.
Jewish settlers enjoy
access to civilian law, due process,
and the full protection of civil rights.
But Palestinians live
under Israeli military law.
So, if they're accused of a crime,
they're tried in military courts,
which have, to put it mildly,
significantly fewer protections
and boast a roughly
99% conviction rate.
And that clearly separate and unequal
two tier justice system means
Palestinians also have little recourse
when they're the victims of a crime.
Because, despite both Israeli
and international law saying
"Israeli soldiers have an obligation
to protect Palestinian residents
of the West Bank," in practice,
when it comes to attacks
by settlers on Palestinians,
there's been a history of silence,
avoidance, and abetment
by Israeli officials.
In fact, when
an Israeli human rights group looked
at more than 1,600
cases of settler violence,
it found that just 3% resulted
in a conviction.
And look, I am not a lawyer,
or a statistician,
despite looking like what you would get
if you smashed those two jobs together
with a particle accelerator, but
even I can tell you, 3% is too low.
And for a sense of just
how extreme settlements can get,
take Hebron, a city home
to about 200,000 Palestinians,
and 700 hardline Israeli settlers who've
chosen to live literally above them.
Life in Hebron is full of constant
reminders
about whose safety is prioritized.
Just over a year ago,
a remote-controlled gun,
reportedly for crowd dispersal,
was installed above this checkpoint.
So, it's pointing towards
the Palestinian area?
Palestinian authorities have had
to build an overhead fence
to catch rubbish and projectiles
thrown down by settlers.
So, the Israeli settlers live up here?
And they throw everything down.
12 shops are closed.
The settlers, they attack Palestinians
without any kind of accountability.
How does it make you feel to see this?
I feel very sad. From the most beautiful
market, to closed shops.
An outpost.
For me, it illustrates
the Israeli occupation system.
Someone from the settlement above
has thrown a beer bottle at Issa's head.
You okay, Issa?
- I got the beer, I think.
- Did it cut you?
That is terrible,
and I'm not sure which part
of that situation seems less livable,
saying hello to the barrel of a
remote-controlled turret every day,
or the constant weather forecast
of "cloudy with a chance of tetanus."
And settlers will argue that they live
in constant fear of violence.
And it is true that,
over the last 16 years,
150 Israelis have been killed by
Palestinians in the West Bank.
Though it is worth noting that,
in that same period,
more than 10 times that many
Palestinians were killed by Israelis,
the vast majority directly
by Israeli security forces.
But maybe the clearest illustration
of the impunity some settlers feel
is the practice of so-called "price tag"
attacks on Palestinians,
which are ostensibly acts of revenge
but can be utterly indiscriminate,
as this settler calmly explains.
Can you explain to us what these price
tag attacks are? What they mean?
After Arabs killed Jews,
anything wrong that happened,
we showed that we won't stay in quiet.
It has a price,
called price tag.
It could just be any random Arab,
doesn't matter whether
they were involved or not?
No, it doesn't matter because they sit
here and because they believe it theirs.
They're all involved.
And for you, just being here,
that makes them guilty?
Yeah, that makes them guilty.
It is a little jarring to hear someone
say something so wildly disturbing
in such a sedate manner.
She's advocating for random
violent hate crimes there,
but doing it in the ultra-relaxed tone
of a yoga instructor
on horse tranquilizers.
It is a truly horrendous situation.
And as that Israeli expert
that you saw earlier points out,
there's actually a term
that describes all this.
When there are two groups that live
in the same territory
and they are officially separated
in terms of political, economic,
and legal rights, and the key to this
separation is completely arbitrary,
whether you were born
to an Arab mother or not,
what would you call that?
If it smells like apartheid,
looks like apartheid,
sounds like apartheid,
then it's apartheid.
He's right. Although real quick,
"if it smells like apartheid?"
Does apartheid actually have a smell?
I was pretty sure it'd only
produce the one kind of musk.
But he is not alone
in that assessment.
A former head of Israel's intelligence
agency, Mossad, has said,
in reference to the West Bank,
"There is an apartheid state here,"
and this former IDF general has called
the situation "total apartheid,"
adding the IDF is "standing by, looking
at the settler rioters
and is beginning to be a partner
to war crimes."
And at this point,
we should probably talk
about the U.S.'s role in this whole
situation. Because it is considerable.
America opposes settlements
officially,
but very much soft peddles
its criticism of them,
as both Republican and Democratic
presidents have referred to them
as "illegitimate",
but declined to call them "illegal,"
to avoid the possibility Israel would
face international sanctions.
And some presidents
have gone even further.
Trump was incredibly cozy
with Netanyahu,
as you can tell from the unnervingly
smug look on Bibi's face there.
And his administration not only moved
the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
in 2018, an incredibly provocative
act on its own,
but the next year, it also did this.
In a major change of foreign policy,
the Trump administration said
it no longer considers
Jewish communities built on Palestinian
lands, known as settlements,
to be against international law.
The announcement made by Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo.
Calling the establishment of civilian
settlements inconsistent
with international law hasn't worked.
It hasn't advanced
the cause of peace.
It turns out, Mike Pompeo and I
actually agree on something!
The status quo hasn't worked.
I just think we might disagree
on what to do next.
It's one of the many things
that we seem to disagree on,
along with what he should have
named his book.
Because in my opinion,
"Never Give an Inch" sounds like
the autobiography of a micro-penis.
But Mike clearly feels differently.
But it's not just government support.
Wealthy American individuals have
funneled hundreds of millions of dollars
into settlements.
And it's worth noting, many of Israel's
strongest advocates
aren't Jewish individuals or groups,
they're actually evangelical Christians.
Like this man, pastor John Hagee,
who has done
more than you might expect.
Pastor Hagee founded Christians
United for Israel, or CUFI,
which is the largest pro-Israel
lobbying organization in America.
Even bigger than AIPAC,
the organization most people assume
dominates the American-Israel lobby
because it's the biggest Jewish one.
What's dicey about CUFI is that
a good deal of their money
for Israel is spent on buildings
and organizations
in the Israeli settlements.
God gave them that land.
They own that land.
Okay, if you told me to picture
a megachurch pastor,
that is exactly who I'm imagining.
Slicked back silver hair,
headset mic,
looking like an elderly Chris Farley
in Easter pimp drag.
That is on-the-nose
casting right there.
And interestingly, the reason many
evangelicals are so invested in Israel
is, they believe Jewish
people being in that region
is one of the prerequisites
for their vision of Armageddon.
When that day comes, the thinking
goes, Christians will be raptured,
and I'll let this man fill you in
on what he thinks happens
to Jews in Israel afterward.
2,000 years of blindness is gonna
come peeling off the Jewish mind.
And those of us that have been caught
up in the rapture
'Cause the Christians
have been raptured out.
All who are born again will
have been raptured.
When Jesus come, we'll be caught up
to meet him in the air.
And then we will come with him
to the mount of olives.
And so, we're gonna be watching
this whole panoramic thing unfold
as the Jewish people turn
to their messiah.
We're gonna be converting people
by the hundreds of thousands
during this time. It's gonna be the
best of times and the worst of times.
Yeah, that makes sense! Apparently,
Evangelicals will grow
Victoria's Secret angel wings,
flap up to Jesus, and sit with him
in his Lisa Frank ball,
and smugly watch as Jews realize
how wrong they've been.
And look, on one hand, I get why
some in Israel might encourage this.
There is a cynical utility
to taking idiots' money.
But someone expressing anticipation
for the day
"2,000 years of blindness
come peeling off my mind"
might make me want to keep
a certain distance from them.
And yet, watch as Hagee,
a few years ago,
introduced a special guest star
to his followers.
Would you please welcome my friend
and prime minister of Israel,
Benjamin Netanyahu?
Thank you, Pastor Hagee.
You are always there for us.
We have no better friends
on earth than you.
"No better friends." You know what,
I guess that makes sense.
Some friends drive you to the airport,
others see your suffering as their
ticket to getting Christblasted
by a flying rapture Jesus.
Friendship does take
so many forms, doesn't it?
And in recent years, everything I've
shown you has only gotten worse.
In 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu,
in order to hold onto power,
formed a governing coalition by allying
with leaders of far-right parties,
creating the most right-wing
government in Israel's history.
He put extremist politicians, some
of whom are settlers themselves,
in major positions of power.
His current finance minister,
Bezalel Smotrich, openly advocates
for Israeli annexation
of the West Bank.
And his minister of national security
is Itmar Ben-Gvir,
who not only lives in Hebron,
the fun place with the flying bottles
and remote-control machine guns,
he's also been convicted of incitement
to racism
and supporting a terrorist organization.
All this was a huge win
for hardline settlers.
Just listen to this Israeli soldier
gloating to Palestinians in Hebron
about what Ben-Gvir's ascent
would mean.
Ben-Gvir is going to fix this place,
order of this whole area.
That's it, you people are done.
No more of what you're doing here.
This whorehouse you have
going on here.
What am I doing?
Am I doing anything illegal?
Everything you do is illegal.
I decide what the law is
and your actions are illegal.
"I decide what the law is
and your actions are illegal."
That is a bold fucking attitude.
It's the sort of thing an American cop
would only be comfortable tattooing
above their sleeve line.
So, things were already getting bad,
and then the appalling attacks
of October 7th happened.
And since then, things have gotten
considerably worse.
Israel imposed even tighter restrictions
on Palestinian movement
in the West Bank, with checkpoints
increasingly closed,
and many work permits canceled,
making it impossible for many
Palestinians there to make a living.
Meanwhile, attacks on Palestinians
have only spiked
from where they were already
at historic highs,
to the point that the UN's found
at least 19 Palestinian communities
have been "displaced as a direct result
of settler violence" since October.
And in the midst of all of this,
Smotrich declared
nearly four square miles of
Palestinian territory to be state land,
the single largest land grab
since the Oslo Accords.
Is it any wonder that Israeli
security chiefs have warned
that the West Bank could be "on the
brink of a major eruption of violence?"
And when you take all of this together,
you do begin to understand
why so many Israelis and Palestinians
have despaired
of ever achieving a two-state solution.
And the thing is, as this settler
pointed out nearly a decade ago,
for many of them, that has basically
been the strategy.
You can basically kiss the two-state
solution goodbye. Not gonna happen.
We're gonna continue to move in there,
and eventually,
we are going to have more
Jewish communities there,
more Israeli electricity, more Israeli
roads, more Israeli taxes.
then, in the end,
it's just going to be Israel.
Right, relentless expansion has made
the idea of peace talks a joke.
And when I say "joke," I don't
mean something that's "funny ha ha,"
I mean something
that is deeply depressing.
You know, a joke in the same way
that this show is a comedy,
which, as this audience that
was excited to be in here
half an hour ago will tell you, is
stretching that term to breaking point.
So, where do we go from here?
Well, at this point,
it does feel presumptuous
to even talk about a peace process,
because we're so far from being
in a position to even start one.
There's actually a moment that I think
sums that up pretty well,
it's the then-mayor of Ramallah,
talking to a German delegation
a few years ago.
They asked if he'd be willing to take
part in some symbolic exchanges
with his Israeli counterparts
to show goodwill
and help facilitate peace,
the standard "meet them
in the middle" rhetoric,
and this is his incredibly
diplomatic response.
When we feel that we are not treated
as slaves, and they are masters,
we are ready to do everything.
But when I have to take off all my
clothes in front of all the people
because a soldier of 16 years old
is asking me to do so
under the threat of his weapon,
then it's about dignity. Yeah?
And when it comes to dignity,
I think it's something not negotiable.
Right?
Right. Human dignity has to be a
prerequisite for negotiating anything.
And Palestinians in the West Ban
have their dignity challenged
hundreds of times a day, from having
beer bottles thrown at their heads,
to being detained
for kicking balls near fences,
to being stopped while crossing
checkpoints in ambulances,
to having their homes stolen,
bulldozed, and far, far worse.
And to be clear, dignity
is the absolute beginning of this.
What's required is justice.
And the call for that is getting
louder. Just last week,
the ICJ issued an opinion
that Israel's settlements
and the regime associated with them
are in violation of international law,
the Israeli presence in the occupied
territories should come to an end
as rapidly as possible,
and that Israel has an obligation
to provide full reparation
for the damage it's caused.
But the U.S. State Department has
already undermined that statement,
saying it's concerned the breadth
of the ICJ's opinion
will complicate efforts
to resolve the conflict.
But I dunno, man. The conflict's
already pretty fucking complicated.
Is the world's highest court
interpreting international law
accurately really going
to make things any worse?
Look, a phrase that gets brought
up a lot with regard to Israel
is "never again",
an antigenocide slogan often invoked
in memory of the Holocaust.
And it's always been open
to two interpretations.
There's the one that means "this must
never again happen to the jews",
and the one that means "this must
never again happen to any people."
And in the West Bank,
as in Gaza right now,
it's pretty clear which one the
Israeli government has favored.
And especially as long
as Netanyahu is in power,
he is clearly gonna do whatever he
and the worst people around him want.
But the U.S. doesn't have to continue
to abet that, or cover for it.
And the thing is, we do have levers
at our disposal here.
We could put conditions on the billions
in military aid we send to Israel.
We could stop vetoing UN Security
Council resolutions
critical of the Israeli government's
actions,
which we've been doing
for decades now.
And we could say
what is plain for everyone to see,
these settlements aren't
just illegitimate or even just illegal,
they're immoral.
And not only should we say that,
we should then act accordingly.
I know the bar here is incredibly low,
but I guess at the very least,
I just want my government
to have the moral backbone
that's been shown
by Ben & fucking Jerry's.
Please, just try not to get
morally outflanked
by the makers
of Impretzively Fudged.
That cannot be too much to ask.
And now, this.
And Now: The Olympics Have Made
Everyone a Little Too Eager
to Speak French.
The countdown to Paris,
Opening Ceremony of the Olympics
just three days away.
NBC's Keir Simmons live in Paris
with all the excitement.
Bonjour!
Bonjour, mon ami.
Bonjour!
Oui, oui. Je m'appelle Amanda.
- Bonjour.
- Oh, I like it. Ooh la la.
Merci beaucoup, mon ami.
I don't know
what the last part of that was.
I said, "my friend."
Bonjour. Bonjour, Craig.
Bonjour, Carson.
Bonjour. Au revoir.
Chat, a la mode.
- Chat is cat.
- Chat is cat? What?
There will be a lot of that
over the next three weeks.
In Paris. Oui, oui. Y'all know
I don't speak French.
Maybe you gotta get some
croissants this morning,
or, as they say in Paris, croissants.
I don't know, I didn't take French.
Thanks so much for watching.
We'll see you next week, bonne nuit!