Haha, as soon as I saw that "Nazis with the added bonus of going to heaven" line I though, “Ah, I know who this guy is getting his opinions from.”
To be fair, for, uh...people like yourself, Sam is an excellent choice to mindlessly absorb opinions from. I have a lot of respect for him, he was a major influence in my starting a meditation practice many years ago now, he is an excellent thinker and communicator on many topics. We even agree about the untenability and "obscenity" (his word, not mine) of a "Jewish state." (if you actually read the article I just linked, try to pay attention to the "notes” in which he justifies the phrasing he uses. It's an interesting set of Freudian slips that give an insight into his biases.)
But because Sam is a human being, he isn't right (or even honest) about everything. You can't just "side” with him and assume, because he's smart, you don't have to think for yourself. I know, scary, right?
By pure coincidence, just yesterday, I relistened to his, “5 Myths about Israel and the War in Gaza” podcast, recorded in January. I'll probably write an article based on it at some point. Literally nothing he says about Israel holds up well given what we know today (or what anybody taking a clear-eyed look at Israeli policy knew back then). Not only that, but the sheer amount of time he devotes to talking about atrocities commit by Boko Haram and the Ayatollah's regime forty years ago, and then awkwardly trying to tie that back to Hamas today is astonishing considering that they have nothing to do with Hamas. It would be like me spending twenty minutes listing historical atrocities committed by Christians to try to condemn a different Christian group.
It's also astonishing that Sam has never, as far as I'm aware, acknowledged that Netanyahu literally and figuratively created Hamas. Netanyahu funnelled money to them while they were launching attacks on Israeli civilians. And, by all available evidence, tried blind eye to the October 7th attack even though he knew about it as much as a year in advance. But Sam never acknowledges any of this or the obvious implications about WHY this is true and what it say about the thinking in Israel.
He glides over huge topics like the occupation and the settlers, never really acknowledging them other than to say that famous phrase, "Israel hasn't been perfect…but." He never shows the slightest interest in why the Palestinians might have genuine animosity towards Israel.
He said nothing about the reports of rape and torture of Palestinan prisoners. Nothing about the fact that the IDF killed Israeli civilians on Oct 7th. He repeats, endlessly, the argument that Hamas uses human shields, but never mentions that Israel does too (even going so far as to build their military infrastructire in densely populated civilian areas). And, of course, you uncritically swallow all of this because you haven't engaged with the topic on your own.
So as much as I like and respect Sam, I've found him to be shockingly and uncharacteristically dishonest on this topic. Which is why, when I publish a simple list of verbatim quotes from prominent Zionist and Israeli leaders, I get people like yourself losing their minds because you're encountering the other side of the story for the first time.
