'Israel is actually harmful to the Jewish people. It makes people think that Israel's actions are the actions of all Jews.' [Transcript]

Lee Camp is the former host and head writer of Redacted Tonight, the host of the podcast Moment of Clarity, and The Lee Camp Show as well as co-host of Government Secrets with Graham Elwood, and Common Censored with Eleanor Goldfield. Camp is the author of titles such as Moment of Clarity, Bullet Points and Punch Lines, and most recently Dangerous Ideas. He co-manages the news platform RadIndieMedia.com, and his newest show America Inc. with Lee Camp is on Breakthrough News. Camp had a wide-ranging conversation with Plea for the Fifth, that will be published in four parts. The second in our series focuses on the Palestinian genocide, anti-Zionism, and anti-semitism. Watch the video of this segment here, and the rest in our series with Lee Camp here.

Sean Ghazala: You mentioned The Lancet Journal. So, we'll use that as a pivot point to talk about day 285 of this genocide in Palestine. As you likely know, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be visiting Washington D.C. next week, and is expected to speak to a joint session of Congress for the fourth time - more than any other foreign leader, including Winston Churchill. So, we can presume he's coming to rally more support, more funding, more weaponry for this genocide against Palestinians. But, a silver lining is there are buses being arranged from across this country, including from Staten Island, to go down to DC and surround the Capitol and intervene in this craziness that's happening.

But locally on Staten Island, we have had city council people visit Israel in the last nine months, express sympathy for Israelis killed on October Seventh, and then returned to their district and ghost Arab, Muslim and Palestinian constituents that are experiencing incredible sorrow and begging for facetime. So, let's talk about how you see this genocide impacting Americans if you think it is, because from my vantage point, I see Zionists returning to the same talking points, day after day after day. But I see anti-Zionists, anti-imperialists and others becoming increasingly radicalized by what they're seeing. So how are you seeing all of this?

Lee Camp: Yeah, great question. And just to go back to the Lancet Medical Journal, I just want to let people know the reason you said that's a segue is because they recently came out with the article showing that likely 186,000 have been killed in Gaza by Israel since October 7, it is not the number 40,000 or close to it. 40,000 is not counting those killed by disease, and lack of medical systems, and lack of food. So ,it is likely nearing 200,000 which is just so horrific.

But yeah, getting to your point about Zionists, I think time will tell. I am not sure as to how this is changing the paradigm in the United States, both for activists and for non-activists. I do know a lot of people are upset about this. I mean, a very large percentage of people have kind of been woken up to just how disgusting and aggressive the State of Israel is. And a lot of people had no idea what was going on, had no idea that Gazans are not allowed to come and go as they see fit, are not allowed to get the food and water they need. I'm talking even pre-October 7. And so, it is waking just tons of people up, you know, maybe especially people under 30 are waking up to this.

And, you know, another fact I hope a lot of people are starting to wake up to is that Zionist does not mean Jew, I am Jewish, and I'm an anti-Zionist. I've been to Israel multiple times when I was younger, back when I supported Israel because I didn't know better. I hadn't studied it really or anything. And there are millions of anti-Zionist Jews across this country. There's actually a group [Neturei Karta] in New York City, I think in Brooklyn or Queens, that's very anti-Zionist. And they are Orthodox Jews, that know that Israel is actually harmful to the Jewish people because it makes people anti-semitic. It makes people think that Israel's actions are the actions of all Jews, which is not true. And there are also more Christian Zionists across America than there are Jews in the world. Christian Zionists are the number one Zionists across America, millions and millions of them. And a lot of people do not understand these things, but they're important factors. And so it's very important that people not conflate being Zionist with being Jewish. But it's the reason people do conflate it, is because Israel has tried to create that. Israel has created loads of propaganda that says, if you criticize Israel, if you criticize Zionism, you are anti-semitic, you are criticizing Jews. So, they have done everything they can to conflate, to confuse people millions and billions of people around the world into thinking that Israel equals all Jews, or Jews in general. So yeah, I put that that blame squarely on Israel. But another point in terms of people waking up around the world, I read something recently that one out of every three people globally, are boycotting one corporation or another due to their connection to Israel. And that's an amazing number, because it means that at minimum, one out of every three people understand that Israel is committing genocide right now. And it's obviously probably a lot more than that, because those one out of three are the activists, those are the ones who have said, I'm going to at least stop buying these products because they connect to Israel. So I do think there's a large awakening growing up. And I think that in a lot of ways Israel, at least in its current manifestation of an oppressive apartheid regime that will just murder children at whim, et cetera. I think the writing's on the wall like Israel has written their own ending by committing this genocide and by defining themselves as this. As opposed to being an actual equal state with equality and justice and allowing all people, all rights. You know, that is the way things need to go and Israel, I think, this oppressive apartheid regime is just writing their own ending.