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• This week marked more than 600 days since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. In the wake of Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, Palestinian health officials say at least 50,000 people – including thousands of women and children – have died from Israeli airstrikes and bombings in the Gaza Strip. As the war drags on, protesters on both sides are speaking out and demanding that their governments do more to end the conflict. Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, an Israeli academic and host of the ‘History of the Land’ of Israel podcast, talks about the nuances of the protests and what they could mean for a potential end to the war.
• And in headlines: A federal appeals court temporarily reinstated most of President Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. will begin “aggressively” revoking the visas of Chinese college students, and the White House acknowledges errors in the hotly anticipated ‘Make America Healthy Again’ report.

• Check out Shaiel’s podcast – https://tinyurl.com/5n8axdj2
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• What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast

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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, May 30th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that welcomes you to yet another adventure on the wheel of tariffs! The worst game show ever if you’re trying to run a business or look for a job. [music break] On today’s show, the White House acknowledges a couple of whoopsies in the hotly anticipated Make America Healthy Again report, but does not admit to wholesale making shit up. And the tariffs are on, then they’re off, then they’re on again. It’s hard to keep track these days. But let’s start with the war in Gaza. It’s been more than 600 days since Israel’s war in Gaza began, since the horrific terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on October 7th, 2023. Palestinian health officials say at least 50,000 people, including thousands of women and children, have died from Israeli strikes and bombing in the Gaza Strip. Humanitarian experts are also warning of a looming famine in the region after a months-long Israeli aid blockade. It was lifted earlier this month, but United Nations officials say that the food being distributed now is less than a drop in the ocean. Earlier this week, an aid distribution site was overrun by people desperate for food and other goods. We’ve talked a lot about the diplomatic efforts to end the war on this show, but something we haven’t talked about as much are the protests against the war taking place in both Israel and Gaza. Because many Israelis, including the families of the hostages taken on October 7th and people opposed to the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza on humanitarian grounds, are speaking out, demanding that the government do more to get their family members home and end the war with Hamas. Here is the niece of Gadi Mozes, a former Hamas hostage who was released by the group in January of this year after 482 days in captivity. 

[clip of niece of Gadi Mozes] The longer they remain underground, the more danger they face, and this suffering extends beyond them. The people of Gaza are victims too, held hostage by Hamas’ rule and the extended sad war. 

Jane Coaston: And in Gaza itself, Palestinians are protesting against Hamas, despite the real risk of violence and recriminations from Hamas-run security forces. I’m aware that this conflict is horrible and complex, but I’m also aware that many of the people closest to it, people who have suffered so much as a result of it, want the war to end full stop. So I spoke to Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, an Israeli academic. He’s also the host of the Israel-Palestine Report and the History of the Land of Israel podcast. We talked about the protests and what they could mean for a potential end to the war. Shaiel, welcome to What a Day. 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: So this week marked the 600th day of the war between Israel and Hamas. And we saw some big protests in Israel led by the families of some of the people who were still being held hostage in Gaza. How has the protest movement in Israel evolved from the start of the war up until this point? 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Yeah, so at the start of the war, there was complete and total consensus around the justification of this war that that ranged from the extreme left to the extreme right. And that–

Jane Coaston: Kind of a 9/11 rally around the flag moment? 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Yes, yes, but more violent maybe. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Because Americans were kind of shocked after 9/11. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Who are these people? What do they want? In Israel, everyone knows who these people are and they know exactly what they want. So it was much more focused. And um so the the hostage demonstrations were more in sync with the government. Then it became more and more clear, and this starts to happen around May, June, that the government was, to put it mildly, not doing everything it could to get the hostages back. And that’s when a break emerged between the hostage families and their supporters and the government. And that’s only gotten worse. Over the last couple of months, there’s been a further split within the protest movement between those who are still focused on the hostages and only the hostages, and those who as focused or more focused on ending the war and the suffering of the Palestinians. 

Jane Coaston: I was going to ask how the protests that are centered on the hostages are, how are they distinct from some of the other protests we’ve seen in Israel that are more explicitly anti-war? 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Yeah, so I was just in Israel a few months ago, and when I was there and I went to these protests, I went to a bunch of them, because I’m a big supporter of the hostage families, um they were the same protests. The vast majority of the people that were there for the hostages, and you had some people who were there talking about the Palestinians, they were perfectly accepted and everything was fine. What’s changed is that the amount of people who are like that, who are against the war for humanitarian reasons, has increased significantly. They have a lot more pull and they’re getting, and this is probably the most important part, a lot of more media attention. So those protests have started to split. You have when people show up with pictures of dead Palestinian children, they’ve been asked to go elsewhere. And they’ve started to show up elsewhere on their own to separate demonstrations. So they sort of drifted apart. And I think what we’re gonna see probably over the next week or two is gonna see those movements split completely. 

Jane Coaston: This long into the war with reports of tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and warnings of a looming famine in Gaza, you mentioned that the humanitarian position is starting to gain support, but it’s still comparatively fringe. Why do you think opposition to the war on humanitarian grounds is still kind of an more edge position in Israel? 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: The main reason for that is because there is completely wide consensus in Israel, from the right to almost the fringe left, that Hamas needs to be removed and Hamas needs to defeated. Um. I believe that too. And that has meant that people who come out and say the most important thing is Palestinian civilians are seen as aiding and abetting the enemy. And, you know, I I say these things all the time and I get accused of being a traitor and all sorts of things. And of course, in Israel, it’s much worse. It’s not just online, it is also in your personal life and you get outcast. That one of the reasons there’s more people coming out for the anti-war movement and more people worried about the humanitarian situation is because a lot of people in Israel feel that Netanyahu is not fighting this war in order to win it. He’s fighting the war for his own personal survival. If they still felt that he was fighting this War honestly, in order to defeat Hamas, it would still be a completely fringe element because if the choice is, are the Palestinians going to suffer and we’re going to remove Hamas or not, just about every Israeli is going to say, removing Hamas is more important. Unfortunately, Palestinians and Israelis tend to dehumanize each other and the suffering of the other is not a salient political message to run on in any way. 

Jane Coaston: Now, I think something some people may be less aware of, because I don’t think it gets nearly as much coverage as it should, is that there are protests happening in Gaza against Hamas. What are you hearing about those protests? Because, you know, Israelis protesting against the Israeli government is one thing. Palestinians protesting against Hamass is very dangerous, very, very dangerous for them to do. So the fact that that’s happening is that seems to be very telling to me. 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Yes, and I’m so glad you brought that up. It’s not too surprising that this is happening. There’s been social developments in Gaza that have allowed this to happen. So first of all, um very soon into the war, Hamas lost its popularity in Gaza because they brought a calamity on the people in Gaza and because they were hoarding the food for themselves and people were starving and because they were repressing any uh sign of discontent and and so on– 

Jane Coaston: And their leadership seemed very uninterested in hanging out to deal with the actual consequences–

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Yes. 

Jane Coaston: –of their actions. 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Yes, and any leader who had some kind of hold on the people who was seen as charismatic was killed. That’s also an element. And yes, they never cared about the Palestinian people, and that became very apparent during the war. So there was that. But still, they had a reign of terror. So if you, as you alluded, if you go out and demonstrate against them, you’re taking your life into your hands. But two things have changed over time to make that less of an issue. The first thing is that Hamas have lost a lot of their ability to govern. And that means that their reign of terror is less salient. The other, and this is probably even more important, is that most people in Gaza don’t feel like they have anything to lose. Um. You’re gonna die either of a bombing or you’re gonna end up driven out by ethnic cleansing or you’re gonna get killed by Hamas or you’re going to die of starvation. A lot of people, including some people I’ve talked to in Gaza, tell me you know it’s better to stand up for what you believe in and try to do some good if you’re going to die anyway. You might as well die with some honor. 

Jane Coaston: For both Hamas and for Netanyahu specifically, they both have incentives to continue the war. For Netanyahu, it helps him stay in power, he’s very unpopular in Israel, but this is keeping him in power. For Hamas, the war has done a lot of damage to Israel’s international standing and also, you know, you have power over this small but very populous region, and you want to hold on to that. So where does that leave these protest movements and the prospects of an end to this war? 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: That’s a great question. Yeah, I think something that I neglected to mention in my previous answers is that there’s also a sense among the Palestinian population there that Hamas is not gonna stay in power after the war. Um. They view their future in sort of a model not that different from Lebanon where maybe the Palestinian authority plays the role of the government and they try to remain as some kind of armed group, probably in order to pick up the pieces and take over. None of this is out of any kind of altruistic uh elemetn. So, um there’s a hope among regular Palestinians in Gaza that maybe the Hamas leadership will be deported or go in to exile, that maybe Hamas will be less powerful, that maybe actors like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, et cetera, will strengthen the Palestinian authority, bring in some kind of moderate government they can cooperate with to get rid of Hamas. So there is some hope, and a lot of this hope is focused on the image of Trump. Who strangely enough, a lot of people in Gaza and in Israel see as a savior who might come in and help. A lot of it’s out of desperation, right? Israelis want their hostages back. Gazans want their life to go back to normal. Um. That maybe Trump will come in and make all this happen. So there is this sort of tantalizing sliver of a better future that people in Gaza are looking to. I don’t know if they actually believe it’ll happen, but that’s one of the reasons they’re acting as they’re acting. 

Jane Coaston: Shaiel, thank you so much for joining me. 

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: Sure. It’s been a pleasure. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, host of the Israel-Palestine Report and the History of the Land of Israel podcast. We’ll link to his work in our show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines.

[clip of unknown journalist] Is your message to small businesses, to the markets that are watching this news, the back and forth of the on and off again tariffs, the rulings, is that these tariffs are going to go into effect regardless and that the administration will find a way to get it done?

[clip of Peter Navarro] I think that’s a fair assessment. 

Jane Coaston: White House trade adviser Peter Navarro tried to reassure the public that everything is fine after a chaotic day of tariff news that has once again left everyone asking, are we doing this or not? On Thursday, a federal appeals court temporarily reinstated most of President Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs. The ruling comes after the U.S. Court of International Trade unanimously blocked the retaliatory tariffs the day before and said Trump was outside of his legal authority. Basically, they were like, you can’t do that, sir. The International Trade Corps’ decision covered two cases. One was brought by a group of small businesses. The other was brought by a coalition of attorneys general from democratic-led states, challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s trade policy. The three judge panel said what many legal experts have been saying, that the president can’t unilaterally impose sweeping global tariffs. Only Congress has that legal authority. While speaking to reporters, Navarro somehow managed to blame Democrats for all the confusion. 

[clip of Peter Navarro] A lot of this back and forth is the result of the Democrats working with the globalist rhino Wall Street people to try to stop the Trump agenda. 

Jane Coaston: He also said:

[clip of Peter Navarro] I mean, I don’t think any of you can deny that these Trump policies are working to attract trillions of dollars of investment. 

Jane Coaston: I’m denying it, Peter. I’m denying it right now. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the U.S. Will begin, quote, “aggressively revoking the visas of Chinese college students.” Rubio’s statement said it would include people with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in certain critical fields. Rubio also said that department officials will enhance scrutiny on future visa applications from China and Hong Kong. This is a huge deal. There were more than 270,000 Chinese students studying at American colleges in 2024. A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry responded to the news Thursday, calling the policy quote, “politically discriminatory.” Speaking of student visas, a federal judge extended the block on Trump’s effort to ban Harvard University from enrolling international students. The Ivy League school sued the White House last week after the administration revoked its ability to host foreign students on campus. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order allowing Harvard to continue enrolling international students while the lawsuit moves forward. And on Thursday, she extended her order. The ruling is a huge win for Harvard. The school held its annual commencement ceremony during Thursday’s hearing. University President Alan Garber was greeted with a standing ovation when he took the podium to address the graduating class. Garber was met with even more applause from the crowd when he opened his remarks with this. 

[clip of Alan Garber] Members of the class of 2025 from down the street, across the country, and around the world. [cheers and applause] Around the world just as it should be. 

Jane Coaston: As it should be. Damn, Harvard University got me crying in the club. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is standing by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again commission, despite reports of inconsistencies in its MAHA report. 

[clip of unknown journalist 2] A Notice investigation found that the Hallmark Maha Commission report that was released last week cites studies that appear to not exist. 

Jane Coaston: Oh did I say inconsistencies I meant full-on making shit up. 

[clip of unknown journalist 2] We know that because in part we reached out to some of the listed authors who said that they didn’t write the studies cited. So I want to ask, does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted? 

[clip of Karoline Leavitt] Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS. 

Jane Coaston: The report released last week covered a wide range of topics with a focus on chronic disease in children. It cited hundreds of studies and sources, but according to the non-partisan news organization Notice, some of those citations were quote, “rife with errors” from broken links to misstated conclusions. Leavitt didn’t deny the alleged errors during a press briefing Thursday, but she did do her best to downplay them. 

[clip of Karoline Leavitt] I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and the report will be updated, but it does not negate the substance of the report, which as you know is one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government and is backed on good science that has never been recognized by the Federal Government. 

Jane Coaston: Kary love love, it is hard to recognize something that is apparently not real, but okay. When asked if AI was used to put the report together, Leavitt deferred to HHS. Notice reported Thursday that there were at least seven sources cited in the report that didn’t seem to exist. One researcher cited as a first author on a study of anxiety in kids told Notice in an email, quote, “The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with.” The New York Times later said it found additional faulty references. But sure, let’s chalk it up to formatting issues. An HHS spokesperson said in a statement the minor errors in the report have been fixed. Here’s a thought, should wealthy folks who love to travel, like, say, guests at the fictional White Lotus hotel chain from the TV series, be taxed to help combat climate change? That’s basically what Hawaii is thinking. And the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Green, signed a law Tuesday that would make that happen. Crooked climate correspondent, Anya Zoledziowski,, says this marks a big change. 

[clip of Anya Zoledziowski] President Donald Trump has dismissed climate change as a scam and is rapidly rolling back federal action. But states are picking up the slack. This week, Hawaii introduced a first-of-its-kind law that puts a tax of less than 1% on hotel rooms and other vacation rentals to pay for wildfire and hurrican preparedness. 

Jane Coaston: Officials estimate that the levee could generate $100 million annually. That’s a lot of money that could go to repairing damage caused by climate-fueled disasters like the 2023 Maui wildfires that the island is still reeling from. The fires killed more than 100 people and devastated the historic town of Lahaina. During Tuesday’s signing ceremony, Green said that Hawaii could use the new tax to build more fire breaks and fund other preventative measures. Green also said that other states and countries will likely have to impose similar frameworks to address climate disasters. He said, quote, “there will be no way to deal with these crises without some forward thinking mechanism.” And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. I wanna talk about audience capture. It’s a phenomenon in which a public figure, a social media influencer, a writer, a journalist, or a politician gets captured or radicalized by the audience that they’re trying to appeal to with often deeply harmful results. I first learned about the concept back in 2022 when I read a piece by a writer who goes by Gerwinder entitled The Perils of Audience Capture. In the piece, he wrote when an influencer looks at online feedback, quote, “they often find that their more outlandish behavior receives the most attention and approval, which leads them to recalibrate their personalities according to far more extreme social cues than those they’d receive in real life. You can probably think of lots of examples of audience capture in your own media life. That heterodox writer who is now super pro-Trump, the Instagram influencer you started following back in 2021 because you liked their recipes but now they’re an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. Yeah, sometimes that’s audience capture. But when I think about audience capture, I think about South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace. Back in 2023, the New York Times highlighted Mace’s efforts to be a quote, “reasonable and reelectable Republican who could demonstrate how to win back voters less into the whole MAGA thing.” Her district had just gotten redrawn and as a result got way more conservative, but she said she was still trying to attract voters who might not be Trump supporters. But that’s not the Nancy Mace we have now. The Nancy Mase of now not only introduced a measure to stop trans folks from using bathrooms and changing rooms at the Capitol, a measure aimed squarely at Delaware Democratic Representative Sarah McBride, the first openly trans member of Congress. Mace then went to Delaware to push for a ban on trans people using restrooms on federal property. And all the while, she kept posting about trans people, like constantly posting about trans people. When Mace used a transphobic slur during a House Oversight Committee meeting back in February, she posted a clip of herself using the slur on Twitter. Hell, she sold T-shirts for $35 each based on her efforts to stop her colleague from using the bathroom at the Capitol. Even conservative outlets like National Review said of her fixation on her colleague, who by the way is just trying to do her fucking job, quote, “Mace has come off as nothing other than a bully and an opportunist.” But it got her tons of attention and played great with her biggest and worst fans online. And that’s the audience that’s captured Nancy Mace. Case in point, this week, Wired Magazine reported that Mace, who is apparently very interested in coding, spent time, quote, “setting up burner accounts on a variety of social media platforms to monitor what people were saying about her and bolster her image.” Former staffers also claimed that she, quote, “requested that staffers make their own burner accounts to defend her online.” Nancy Mace cares a lot about what people say about her on social media platforms, mostly Facebook and Twitter. So do lots of people, I mean, so do I. But Mace, in my view, has been captured by an audience made up of transphobic MAGA enthusiasts, more jazzed to misgender a member of Congress than to ask, hey, what does this actually do for the residents of South Carolina? Audience capture can happen to almost anyone with an audience, but it doesn’t have to happen to you. [music break] 

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, come see us do a live show Saturday night in Seattle and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how you could see me chat with former SNL writer and U.S. Senator Al Franken, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and it’s the Cascade PBS Festival. It’ll be fun! [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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