1418: Wake Up and Reclaim Your Humanity: Exposing the Hidden Truths of the Israel Palestine Conflict with Author Richard Forer

Robert Plank 0:01 Richard Forer was once an unwavering defender of Israel, until a shattering spiritual awakening revealed he was as much Palestinian and Israeli as much Muslim or Christian as Jew. And that realization transformed fear into compassion and ignited a mission to expose the hidden truths fueling endless conflict. This is some scary, profound stuff. We're going to find out about the Middle East, about Richard's transformation that affected relationships with friends, family and his community. It's uncomfortable, it's ancient, it's powerful, it's spiritual. We're gonna get some facts. We're gonna get our minds changed and learn a lot. Mr. Richard, glad to be speaking with you.

Richard Forer 0:46 It's nice to be with you, Robert, thank you.

Robert Plank 0:48 Happy to have you. So you are the author of this excellent book, wake up and reclaim your humanity, essays on the tragedy of Israel Palestine. So can you tell us just what you discovered, what you're all about, and what I left out when introducing you.

Richard Forer 1:05 Well, your introduction was a very good, concise introduction. I was brought up Jewish. I attended Saturday and Sunday schools at my synagogue. Attended the Jewish Community Center summer camps. As a kid, I had a large Jewish community around me, and I was born not that just a few years after the end of the Holocaust, and every Jewish friend I had, and I had many, all of us, had relatives who had either escaped the Holocaust or who had relatives who had died or escaped the Holocaust. And so I naturally grew up believing that Israel was an innocent nation that was necessary for the safety of the Jewish people because of worldwide anti semitism, Israel was necessary so that Jews could be safe and not be genocided again. And so I believe this all my life, every time as I was getting older as an adult, every criticism I ever heard of Israel I would reject as anti semitism, which is a pretty common response and but I never looked into the criticism. I never invest investigated, and neither did any of my friends. We all just assumed it was true and there was no need to investigate. But what happened was in 2006 in July of 2006 Hezbollah, the Lebanese political military organization, conducted a cross border raid into northern Israel from southern Lebanon, and they killed, I think, three Israeli soldiers and abducted two. And that got me very upset, and it convinced me that it was further proof that the Arab world hated Jews and would not rest until they had wiped us off from the face of the earth. The day after that raid by Hezbollah, Israel invaded Lebanon, and that began the Second Lebanon War, which lasted for three weeks and a couple weeks into the war, well, actually, about a week into the war, I spoke with a couple very, very intelligent, wise friends of mine, neither of whom were Jewish, and both of whom had been critical of Israel in the past. But I thought, Well, this time they'll agree with me. This time they'll agree with me that Israel is constantly facing an existential threat and has to defend itself. But to my great amazement and frustration, they didn't agree with me. They blamed Israel for its disproportionate use of force in Lebanon, for displacing a million Lebanese and killing 1000s of innocent civilians in Lebanon. So this convinced me even more that the world was anti semitic. But then a few days later, maybe a week later, an old Jewish friend of mine, who I'd known all my life, called me up to tell me he was coming out west, which is where I live, and was going to be spending a week with me. And I said, fine. And then I launched into at least a two hour diatribe against the Arab world. Now, I knew my friend had studied the subject for many years of Israel and Palestine in the Arab world, but he never really discussed. He was very low key about it, you know, he was not very vocal, and so he just listened to what I was saying. And occasionally he would say, Well, no, that's not right. And he would give me a gentle response to correct me, and he never challenged really challenged me, though he accepted, he allowed me to just continue with my diatribe without judging me. And at the end of my diatribe, he said, Well, why don't you read a couple books by these well respected Israeli Jewish professors, and he gave me their names, and then when we hung up, I thought, You know what? Maybe there's something I don't know. I mean, Robert ISRAEL PALESTINE is probably the most documented historical event in the history of the world, if they've been documenting it for over 100 years. And here I. Thought I knew everything there was to know. So I thought, well, maybe there's something I don't know. So I went on Amazon and I looked up books on the history of Israel Palestine, by authors, and with the intention that I would only read Jewish authors, because otherwise I might be exposed to anti semitism, I then went to the library, got a few books, and subsequently, I began reading a book by a Jewish scholar that was meticulously documented with citations from Human Rights Watch Amnesty International and other world known, highly reputable human rights organizations. And the information he was providing was just damning about Israel, and it showed that all its its history, Israel had pulled the wolves the wool over the eyes of its followers by changing the history and distorting it in order to make it seem like Israel was not the aggressor. So what happened was, while reading one of the books, I had to take a break from this onslaught of information that Israel routinely targeted children and civilians, that Israel bulldozed Palestinian homes, even with people inside, that they were stealing the land, stealing the water, all this horrible stuff. And so I put the book down and closed my eyes. And I don't know how long my eyes were closed, but when I opened them, I felt distinctly free and free of all these emotions I had been going through as I was reading all this horrible stuff, when I was reading and I was getting angry, I was saying, Oh, my God, Israel is doing this to these poor people in my name as a Jew. And then I was embarrassed about myself for for so many years, just ignoring it and claiming it wasn't true all these hostilities that Israel was doing. And so when I came out of this this darkness, this space where I had closed my eyes and noticed that I felt free and and innocent and I couldn't find I tried to search for these emotions in my body, and they were, I couldn't find them. The contrast of this new feeling of freedom and wonderment was so powerful that I actually looked in my room, in the corners of my walls and in my bookcase, looking for the emotions. Where's the anger, where's the shock, where's the shame and the embarrassment? And I couldn't find them. And then I won't go through all the rest of it. But then what happened was I just sat back and relaxed into this state of wonderment and freedom, and the next thing I knew, I couldn't find a separate Jewish identity, and I tried to reanimate that identity by imagining myself in the place of Jewish victims of al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. Remember, this was 2006 so Iraq, the war in Iraq, had been going on, and when I imagined myself in the place of all these people who'd been killed by Iraqi but by terrorists, Islamic terrorists like al Qaeda, I couldn't generate any fear or anger. What what I generated was the realization that no matter how horrible their behavior, even the most bloodthirsty of terrorists have the same right to self determination as do I. And when I had that realization the humanity that I had forfeited that I didn't really know I had forfeited, because I always thought I was right that the Palestinians were just anti Semites. I realized that the humanity that I had forfeited had just been restored, and I had this beautiful feeling of peace pervade my body and and the the environment. And so then I decided I have to share this with everybody. I have to share this realization. And I realized, as you said at the beginning, one of my realizations in this awakening to my true nature was that we are all Israelis, Palestinians and Americans, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Chinese, whatever. Okay, our true identity precedes the the presumption of a separate identity as this or that, as a Jew, an American, prior to all that we are all free and innocent and connected. So I decided to do research, and over the course of many years, I did massive research, and I mainly because I have family who are very, very far right Zionists and who are ultra religious. I knew that in order to convince them of anything, I had to use the most impeccable resources possible. So most of my resources are Israeli Prime Ministers, Israeli Chiefs of Staff, Israeli heads of Mossad, the intelligence agency, Israeli heads of the Shin Bet, which is the security service analogous to the FBI and the Israeli state and central Zionist archives, and they prove without a doubt, everything I read in my book that the Palestinians and the Arab world has tried to make peace with Israel, probably 50 times since 1948 that Israel has never wanted to make peace, that it is a. Wanted to take the land instead, and has been willing to sacrifice its own people, that the 2000 Camp David summit, that so many supporters of Israel claim was a generous offer made by Israel to the Palestinians. That's false. Even Israel's chief negotiator said that if he were Palestinian, he would not have accepted it, that the and that all the other main arguments that people make, they're all either completely false that they make in order to in order to justify what Israel has done, or they are, if there is some truth to these arguments, they are taken out of context in order to demonize the Palestinians and exonerate the Israelis. So that's so that's what my books do. My books explain the thought processes that lead any of us to lose our humanity and to not recognize our common humanity with all people, while also clarifying the history using mostly Israeli sources. Wow.

Robert Plank 11:01 What a journey you've been on, mentally and emotionally, to come to these conclusions and figure all this out. So you're saying that you you educated yourself, you open up your mind, and it freed you, and that in order to wake up others, you say, well, it's not just your opinions. Here's all these authoritative figures, and here's all this proof, and we need to accept our humanity and say, Hey, there's these other countries, but you know, we're all people, right? We're all in this together. And so as far as So, you say that, like Israel seems quite militant, right? In their kind of rewriting history and just being very aggressive, their only goal is just to to to expand, and there's no making peace like do you think peace can be achieved like in future years, future generations? How do we get to that point where the fighting stops?

Richard Forer 11:50 The only way peace could possibly be achieved is if the United States does not keep supporting Israel with the billions of dollars of weapons and the political support that it provides at the United Nations, at the International Court of Justice, but the United States is to behold to Israel. Israel has such a hold on American politicians, not just through the money it spends and through the influence it has through so many pro Israel financiers and political organizations, but through blackmail, there are a lot of people are saying, and there's an awful lot of evidence for this, that Jeffrey Epstein worked for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and was blackmailing all of these people. And that seems very, very likely. I've heard long time Israeli intelligence agents say that that was the that that is the case that Epstein was a Mossad agent. His girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell was the daughter of a known Mossad agent, Robert Maxwell, who was also a billionaire newspaper, owner of conglomerates, but he was a Mossad agent. And when he died, Israel gave him a really big funeral where most of the main political and military leaders of Israel attended. But even aside from Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, the United States has to, has to put the hammer down on Israel and not let them continue this. They could have made peace so many times. In fact, Robert on October 7, when Hamas conducted their raid into Israel for for 21 years. Up to that point, there was a a peace proposal from the entire Muslim world. It was known as the Arab Peace Initiative, and that has been on the table since 2002 and every Muslim country, 57 nations on Earth would have, including Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, all of these countries had agreed to fully recognize Israel, restore complete full diplomatic relations with Israel, provide security guarantees for all The states in the region, and give Israel a veto over the right of return of Palestinians to Israel, and then have a peace on the 1967 1948 borderline. In other words, the West Bank and Gaza would have become part of the Palestinian state, and the rest of Israel would remain Israeli. And Israel hasn't even responded to that, had they responded to that, October 7 would have, would not have happened, and now there wouldn't be hundreds of 1000s of dead and maimed and starving Palestinians. So, so it's a really difficult situation. I think, I think it's going to lead to, it could lead to nuclear war. I don't think it's going to lead to a just resolution, and a lot of Israeli analysts are saying it's actually going to lead to the end of Israel, but I don't know that. I don't know if that's the case. It's certainly going to lead to the end of Israel as a democracy. It's never really been, it's been a Jewish democracy, but because so many liberal Jews, the more. More, the more, the less religious and right wing are leaving Israel. It's becoming more and more concentrated by people like Netanyahu, Ben, gvir and Smotrich the ruling coalition, who are all supremacists. Okay, they believe in Jewish power, and they are all ethnic cleansers. They've all devoted their lives to getting rid of the Palestinians by any means necessary. So it's very difficult.

Speaker 1 15:25 It sounds like it, and it's it recontextualizes a lot of what you hear, because you think like, you know, it's been how many decades? Why can't they figure it out? Why can't they make peace? And you're saying that, well, one side wants to, and they keep have tried 50 times, but Israel, they just don't want to budge. And at the moment, we're speaking with Richard Forer, who is the author of wake up and reclaim your humanity, essays on the tragedy of Israel Palestine. And it's been said that this is an astonishing and groundbreaking commentary. It's the first book ever written that explains the root cause of the ISRAEL PALESTINE tragedy, and you've just blown my mind wide open with some of these things that you've been mentioning here, Richard, about Jeffrey Epstein and about the blackmail and everything else. But we only have a few minutes left in our interesting conversation here, and we've only just met, so I'm sure that there is a really good, juicy question, but I should be asking you about your book, but I just don't know it, because we've only just met. So in this conversation we're having, is there a missing, hidden question that I should be asking you I just don't know to ask you

Richard Forer 16:31 well, rather than the question, my advice would be, don't believe what people tell you. Investigate. Don't, don't believe, especially do not believe what Israel tells you, because Israel is not going to admit to crimes against humanity. They're not going to to admit that they've been lying to the public, especially the Jew. They're Jewish people. They're Jewish supporters for decades, research, find out the truth for yourself. Don't believe what I say. Don't believe what Israel says. Now, the advantage of my book is that it's very well documented, so you can check out the claims that I make in the book, and you can find out if I'm using legitimate sources or not, and if those sources are making legitimate statements of fact. It's very easy to find out. It's just that people are so ingrained with with these ideas in their head that the Muslims are terrorists, the Palestinians just want to throw the Jews into the sea. All these are tropes that Israel has has disseminated and reinforced and repeated over and over and over again for years, including its supporters, including members of my family, they don't check it out. If they don't check it out, they'll never find their common humanity for all people, and they're in their ignorance, they will end up contributing to the suffering of both sides,

Richard Forer 17:49 Israelis as well as Jews, right? So as well as Palestinians, it

Robert Plank 17:54 seems like a little bit of personal pain needs to happen, right? It gets worse before it gets better. We're stuck in this confirmation bias where we've grown up with it, we've heard it. It's been repeated. Our friends, families, peers say it so it feels comfortable, right? We say, Hey, I've got a hand on this. I've got it figured out, and it's simple in our minds, but you're saying that it's contributing to the demise of many people. Many atrocities could lead to world war three, nuclear war end of Israel. We definitely don't want that. We need to get educated. But as you're saying, we don't have to trust you. And it's not just opinions and commentary. You've done your homework, you've done your research through the facts there. So that way you can then pick up these threads and get it all figured out. And so we can get this book, and it's called wake up and reclaim your humanity, essays on the tragedy of ISRAEL PALESTINE by Mr. Richard, for that's last name, F, O, R, E, R, and in our last few minutes here, Mr. Richard, I wanted to make sure that there's time to, like, talk about what happened with your family, because my little understanding is that when you have these new opinions, there's a little bit of, like, drama, conflict, so and and perhaps, if someone reads this and wakes up and changes their mind, they might themselves, kind of, you know, experience a little bit of, you know, drama ruffled feathers. So in these last few minutes, can you tell us, just like, what happened with your friends and family?

Richard Forer 19:20 Yeah, most will not, will not read a book. Most will not look at the possibility that they're wrong. It's too threatening to their identity. Okay? They don't want to believe that what they've invested their life in these beliefs and images of Israel as an innocent nation that would never do what to anyone else, what the Nazis did to the Jews. They don't want to believe that there's a possibility that they're wrong. Now, one of my nieces, who lives in a illegal settlement in the West Bank, did have a big change of heart, and she saw, I mean, she's still there, and she's seen how the Israeli public has gotten more and more right wing over the. Years and how it's gotten much more cruel and murderous in its ideas. And she's she, she told me she had this, that she's had a complete turnaround. She used to be like the rest of my family, rigidly pro Israel, the Palestinians, the Arabs. They just want to kill us. We don't. We hate the Arabs. She's not like that anymore at all. And so that's one big victory, because it's, it can only happen one person at a time.

Speaker 1 20:25 Yes, well, that's a great message that it's, it's overwhelming to think about, how do I change the mind of the whole world? But, but hey, if there's one person that gets rid of the hate and instead goes for logic and facts, that's what we want. We want to wake up and reclaim our humanity. That book is by Richard. For you can find it on Amazon. Before I let you go, Mr. Richard, it's time for the scary part of the podcast where I try to stump you. I try to put you on the spot by asking about a fun quote or lesson that has served you in your travels or perhaps in life. So what comes to mind as far as a fun quote or lesson.

Richard Forer 21:01 I don't know if I would say it's a fun quote, but I would say that the real enemy is not someone or something outside of us. The real enemy is the unexamined mind that unconsciously projects its suffering onto the other and then blames and scapegoats the other for its suffering. This is exactly what is happening, not just in Israel Palestine, but when you look at any conflict, pretty much that's that's kind of a thumbnail description of what is happening.

Speaker 1 21:34 Very powerful, unexamined mind leads to projection of suffering on others. So we don't want that. We need to read this book, wake up and reclaim your humanity, essays on the tragedy of Israel. Palestine, Mr. Richard, for it's been a blast speaking with you. It's a sensitive subject, but I learned a lot. I felt some emotions, and thank you for doing that, being here and helping us

Richard Forer 21:57 out. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure being with you, Robert. You.