A great return for The Daily Show last night by talking about the chaos in the Middle East and having the moderator of Meet The Press, David Gregory, as his guest. What is great about Jon Stewart is that even when he is talking about serious, informative points, he’ll make you laugh. And you know that when he is passionate about a certain issue he doesn’t let it go. He’ll keep trying to get his questions answered or his points understood.
I think he drives home a good point saying that everyone keeps using the analogy that is Hamas kept attacking America with these rockets, how would we retaliate?” but rarely do you hear the other side of that conversation by someone asking what would America do if another country came in and occupied their land and made the American people go through checkpoints while traveling within their own cities.
I inserted a couple of quotes but the two clips below the break are (1) his intro after coming back from break and (2) David Gregory interview and he asks the Israel question around 4:50 in the second clip.
Jon Stewart: Why can’t anyone – this always surprises me – why can’t any American politician criticize Israel in any way for their behavior. I’m watching these shows and there’s not one person going jesus it’s kind of complex. Yeah Hamas is a bad actor – they shouldn’t be throwing missiles, but gosh you know the treatment of the Palestinian people maybe for the past 50 years is not so nice either. But you never hear that side.
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You know you never hear anyone say hey man you know the settlements or that kind of stuff. Is that really the third rail of American politics now?
…David Gregory: You know settlement activity under the Bush administration – you know from 2000 and 20007 settlement activity increased the population 45% in Israel. That doesn’t say anything about illegal outposts. So there is no question this is not an area where the Bush administration was pressuring the Israelis.
David Gregory Interview
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