By Ivan Kesic
After an Israeli settler-soldier accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee was lionized on prime-time Israeli television shows, now Israeli podcasters have jumped on the bandwagon.
One of these podcasts is named “Two Nice Jewish Boys” in which two hate-mongering Israeli settlers openly and brazenly call for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The podcast, which has been doing rounds on social media in recent days, provides a glimpse into the mindset of ordinary Zionist settlers who have been raised on hate for Palestinians.
Last week, clips from the podcast went viral online, featuring hosts Naor Meningher and Eytan Weinstein discussing their solutions to the Palestinian issue with laughter, jokes and profanity.
"Two Nice Jewish Boys," active since 2016, is the longest-running Israeli podcast in English, that publishes weekly episodes on Israeli topics and is followed by thousands of people.
After the wider world public found out about them in the last few days, only their attempt to whitewash themselves on X (formerly Twitter) was seen by more than five million people.
Monstrous statements
In one of the last episodes, Weinstein delivered a monologue on the topic of the genocidal war against Gaza, where he said that if he could, he would destroy Gaza and the Palestinians with the push of a button and that the majority of Israelis would do the same:
[...] In Gaza maybe there's mass destruction, but there's no massive death. Or deportation. Anyway, so when you sit on your high horse, and... I don't mean the worldwide listeners, we love you guys, but... if you're listening to our words and asking how could they be advocating the massive bombing and indiscriminate bombing, how could they talk about killing children... we're not advocating the target children, but forgive us if we don't give a s***. If everybody there dies.
It's just the way we feel, it's just the way Israelis feel. [...] So I would, if you gave me a button to just erase Gaza, every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow, I would press it in a second. It's just the way, I think, most Israelis would agree. Even if it's like right now, I would press it right now. I would press it right now. No choice. [...] Yeah, I would press it right now, give me that button. I would press it right now. [Laughs]
And I think most Israelis would. They wouldn't post [online], they wouldn't talk about it like that, they wouldn't say 'I'll press it' but they would press it. If they were in the closet alone, they wouldn't even hesitate. If someone comes to them, saying: 'If you press this, all Palestinians are gone. No one would know.' You'll be like... [hits the table]. Is there another one [button]? [Laughs]
Meningher interjected briefly on this, adding that the same with the push of a button applies to "the [Palestinian] territories," i.e. the occupied West Bank and that other Israeli settlers are not as brave as Weinstein to say publicly that they would do the same.
In one of the episodes, Weinstein referred to the terrible suffering of Palestinian children amid the spread of poliovirus for the first time in decades, claiming that he and all other Israeli settlers do not care about what happens to Palestinian children:
Zero people in Israel, if you go to them like: 'Do you care if this baby in Gaza gets polio?' There would be like 'I don't care'. OK, there would be like 20 people who care. [...] Like, f*** them. [Laughs] Seriously, nobody would give a s***. They'd be like 'Leave me alone man.' [...] Like, 'f*** off, I don't care about this Gazan baby polio.'
Meningher added that he and other Israelis are glad that they can live normal lives and enjoy even in times of war and genocide, knowing that Palestinians are suffering in refugee tents:
Also, as long they're in Nakhba state in their tents... and we're living still like, you know... if you put aside the news, day to day is OK. Yesterday we went to a concert, [...] we had lots of fun, me and my girlfriend, [...] and we danced, and it was amazing. [...] And it's nice to know that you're dancing at a concert, while hundreds of thousands of Gazans are, you know, homeless, like sitting in tents.
Weinstein nodded and playfully said the Palestinian suffering should be put on the concert screen, and that he is not an extremist, as most of the Israelis he knows think the same way:
Yeah, makes it even better. A more enjoyable concert. If only they put a screen, the live footage of Gaza. [Laughs] But seriously, that's what people don't understand. Look, I know you guys may be appalled with all of this, some of the listeners, but seriously, this is how Israelis feel. [...] You may think I'm extreme, but I had conversations with lots of people, coworkers, friends... people enjoy knowing that they are suffering.
In the August 20 episode, the duo addressed the subject of the retaliation truck bombing in southern Tel Aviv’s Lehi Road, which resulted in a high-intensity explosion and casualties.
Referring to reports that the perpetrator was a Palestinian from "Judea and Samaria," as the duo in an irredentist fashion refer to the internationally recognized Palestinian-occupied West Bank, Meningher said:
If he comes from the cities of Judea and Samaria, we both know what has to be done it won't be done. And what has to be done is... Razing that village to the ground and deporting all the citizens, all the people who live there. Because we are not interested in having terrorist nests next to our villages and cities. [...] The whole system is deterred from doing anything in Judea and Samaria.
Meningher clearly and unequivocally called for collective punishment, destruction of infrastructure and ethnic cleansing, additionally complaining that the Israeli regime is too soft on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank.
In another episode, Weinstein said the Israeli regime should stop trying to get international acceptance and instill sovereignty over and annex the occupied West Bank as well as Gaza, adding that Israel’s 50-year plan should involve conquering Lebanon.
Weinstein also defended prison guards who rape inmates, arguing that the molestation with barbed wire is only a fraction of what those people deserve.
He has often used dehumanizing terms for the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah and their allies, and his co-host Meningher has also opposed UN humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Lukewarm denial attempts
Meningher and Weinstein's statements about the Palestinians and Gaza provoked fierce online condemnations, and even pro-Israel activists distanced themselves from them.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, called on Apple, YouTube and other media platforms to drop their podcast "Two Nice Jewish Boys."
Immediately after the controversy erupted, Meningher in a state of panic shut down his personal website (naormenin.com), and the duo subsequently issued a press release on the X platform where they justified their actions and dismissed the claim that they were misinterpreted.
Their key argument was that the statements were allegedly "taken out of context" and that they were entertaining a hypothetical situation in which the Israeli regime removes "the imminent threat posed by Palestinian enemies."
They went on to write that the Hamas resistance movement should be destroyed and all their worldwide supporters killed, and further they repeatedly stated that the majority of Palestinians support Hamas, indirectly implying that civilians in Gaza should also be annihilated.
By checking the full recordings and the context, it becomes clear that the claim that they "did not call for genocide," as before for ethnic cleansing or mass destruction, is simply false.
On why Palestinians should be exterminated, in the press release they offered a clichéd myth from the rooted victimhood in Zionist ideology, claiming that "they want to exterminate them."
It is simply a repetition of Weinstein's arguments from the episodes in which he justified calls for the destruction of the Palestinians with the words: "Because that’s the reality we live in, it’s us or them, and it has to be them."
The same goes for claims from the press release that "they were making a larger point that most Jewish Israelis don't care about Palestinian civilian casualties," a reiteration of Weinstein's words that he's "not an extremist because most Israelis think like that."
As proof that the “enemy” allegedly wants to “exterminate” them, in the press release they repeated the already debunked Israeli regime propaganda about the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, claiming that "civilians were burned and babies killed," and that their goal was to "kill everyone."
Duo's political connections
Realizing that it's futile to defend the indefensible, the reaction of pro-Israel activists was that Meningher and Weinstein were politically irrelevant nobodies who were given too much attention.
For example, the Israeli advocacy website IsraellyCool claimed that no one had ever heard of them in the Zionist entity, that they had a small number of subscribers and a small number of video views, lashing out at "Jew haters" and the media that talked about them.
The reality is quite different because the duo and their podcast have been covered in the mainstream Israeli media and they happen to be close to political circles that lead all the way to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Articles about the duo have previously appeared in many Zionist media outlets, including the Jerusalem Post, the Israel Today, the Israel National News (Arutz Sheva), the Jewish Journal, the Australian Jewish News, etc.
Their appearance in the Jerusalem Post in 2017, after a year of podcast activity when they had a small number of followers, was evidence of their high-profile political connections.
Weinstein is a native American from Birmingham, Alabama, who moved to the occupied Palestinian territories as an 18-year-old and met Meningher at Tel Aviv University’s film school but eventually dropped out.
Meningher graduated and previously worked as a digital manager and video creator for the political campaigns of Einat Kalisch-Rotem, the current mayor of the occupied city of Haifa.
After that, Meningher began several years of work for Likud and Netanyahu, where he specialized in social media, including cross-platform marketing, new media management, creative strategy, and innovative viral video creation.
On his own website, he boasted that he had worked for Netanyahu's political campaigns, including in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, doing chatbots, digital data projects and viral video creation.
One of his main projects during the campaigns was Netanyahu's Facebook and Telegram chatbots, which he initiated and managed, and he was also responsible for managing all the digital channels during Netanyahu's prime ministerial terms.
Amid the latest controversy generated by his podcast, Meningher's website has been shut down, or rather put under "maintenance" in the last two days, as our investigation reveals.
However, information from the website is stored on the Internet archives, where there is also a photo gallery with joint activities, recordings of Netanyahu's speeches, checking of materials, and even private meetings with Netanyahu and his spouse.
Everything points to the fact that it was Meningher who was the main creator of Netanyahu's propaganda two-minute speeches and rants, widely publicized on social media networks.
Netanyahu’s claims that Christianity is banned in Iran, that Tehran's parks were unsafe of children, and that Israelis should teach Iranians about the water supply – these were the figments of Meningher’s imagination.
Meningher and Weinstein are also close associates of Hananya Naftali, another Likudnik propagandist active on social media platforms and in anti-Iranian campaigns around the world.
In addition to political-activist ties, the three are also close friends in private life, evident from Naftali's Facebook videos of him making a pizza dinner together with Meningher.
The choice of guests on the "Two Nice Jewish Boys" podcast also testifies that the hosts are connected to the most extreme political circles of the Zionist regime, often a settler movement that advocates additional settlements in Palestinian-occupied territories and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
One such guest is Itamar Marcus, a settler in Efrat in the occupied West Bank, founder and director of the notorious propaganda watchdog Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), whose materials have been used for international Islamophobic propaganda, such as the films Obsession and Fitna.
Like the hosting duo, Marcus is close to Netanyahu and has worked as his adviser, and is also known for working closely with American neoconservatives such as David Horowitz.
Other guests include former Israeli Ambassador to the US and Zionist lobbyist Michael Oren, right-wing activist and former Knesset member Simcha Rothman, Naftali Bennett's political campaign manager Senia Waldberg, etc.
Meningher and Weinstein also host The Melting Podcast in English, which entertainingly encourages Zionist Jews around the world to move to the occupied Palestinian territories.
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