Name: Theo and Gabor Maté Discuss the Genocide in Gaza
Uploaded: 2025-04-29T23:24:49.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Theo and Gabor Maté Discuss the Genocide in Gaza' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-29. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Theo and Gabor Maté Discuss the Genocide in Gaza' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-29. Transcript available.

- Shame, which comes out from being cut off from,
it comes from being cut off from human contact
the way we need it, has a kind of protective value.
- Really?
- Because it makes us at least think
that there's something we can do.
- Ah, it almost, it gives us hope in a weird way.
- It gives us hope in a weird way, yeah.
But it just, but here's the thing.
Children are narcissists, young children.
When I say narcissists, I don't mean in a pathological sense.
I mean in a sense they think it's all about them.
- Right, and they don't have any other choice.
They're all they know.
- That's all they know.
So if the parents are happy and connected,
and there's a atmosphere of loving acceptance and so on,
and the child thinks, hey, I must be pretty good.
I must be okay. - Yeah, everything's good.
- Yeah. - I'm okay.
- Yeah, but if the parents are stressed,
depressed, traumatized, racially challenged,
economically challenged, or such terrible things
as the children in Gaza are experiencing right now
with the daily bombings and all this kind of stuff,
what can they think?
That there's something wrong with me.
- Oh, imagine some kid over there in Gaza looking up,
and there's a bomb, and they think, man,
I'm so horrible, I deserve to be bombed.
- Well, you know what?
There was a study done of guys and children.
- Man, that's crazy, I hadn't thought about that.
Imagine that, though.
- There was a study done of children in Palestine
21 years ago, and 95% of those, 95%, this is long before
the current horrors, long before October the 7th,
long before the aftermath of October the 7th.
95% of those, 5% of those kids showed traumatic symptoms.
High percentage with their beds, like you and I did.
They expressed aggression towards their parents.
They had panic attacks, anxiety, fears.
Can you imagine what's gonna happen to that generation?
- Years from now?
- Years from now.
I mean, it just breaks my heart every day
when I think about it.
And I know a lot of my fellow Jews don't agree with me,
but as a Jewish person,
I'm not the only one who feels that way.
It especially breaks my heart.
- Yeah.
Well, when you put it in that sense that a kid,
imagine a kid like, you know?
Yeah, 'cause what are they gonna think?
They don't know.
They just think, man, something's so wrong with me,
they don't deserve to be killed, you know?
Or something, I don't know.
Yeah.
- It depends if the adults are able to hold them
and keep them feeling loved.
But 19,000 kids have been orphaned.
And when I say orphaned,
I don't mean just that their parents have died,
their extended families have been wiped out.
What's gonna be the future of those kids?
You know?
- It's pure trauma.
- It's just a terrible--
- No, it's heartbreaking.
I mean, it feels like a genocide is going on over there
and you don't know what to do, you know?
For me, it's like, you know,
I mean, you can pray, you can speak up about it.
And I know that there's like a more political aspects of it.
And we've had different people come on
and talk about Israel and Palestine on here.
And it was very knowledgeable for a lot of our listeners
'cause you hear about it a lot,
but you don't know the history and everything, but--
- Well, I've been there.
I went there 2 1/2 years ago to work with Palestinian women
tortured in Israeli jails.
- Wow.
- And they had post-traumatic stress disorder.
I've seen it with my own eyes.
And who's the black American writer, Tanahasi Coates?
- Tanahasi Coates.
- Yeah, he's just written a new book.
And he talks about visiting Palestine.
And he says, yeah, Tanahasi Coates.
Yeah.
In his new book, he says, "Once you go there and see it,
you can't unsee it," you know?
And I'm the same way--
- Yeah, our media doesn't cover it super fairly.
- Yeah.
- I feel like our media doesn't cover it super fairly.
That'd be interesting to speak with him then.
Thank you for bringing his name up.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah, I mean, it's heartbreaking anytime
something's happening to a child, you know?
That should be the one thing that we can all figure out
that shouldn't happen.
- No.
It's also the truth that it's also happening to kids in Israel.
There's bombs and rockets and so on.
I don't know if this is the time to go into the politics of it.
It's not a question of valuing or sort of esteeming
one suffering over another.
We don't compare traumas.
But the degree and the scale of suffering in Gaza
is unprecedented, you know?
- Yeah.
- Look--
- It seems like it.
- When my wife walks into a room, I'm 80,
I'm typing away, I'm reading a book,
she walks into the room and I don't hear her,
all of a sudden I hear her, I go like this.
Not this, is the startle response of an infant.
If you take a three-month-old who's sitting there,
he's lying there and you go like this,
it's called the startle reflex.
That's built into me.
'Cause when I was three months of age and throughout my first year,
Budapest was being bombed by the allies.
- Wow.
- Quite apart from the anti-Semitism and the genocide,
there was the war going on.
So I'd be thrown into a laundry basket and they'd rush me down to the basement.
So when I hear a noise, I still go like this.
- Yeah.
- No, this is eight years later.
- Or when you see a load of laundry go by, you know?
- Yeah.
- Man, so we can stay with, so what you're saying is it can stay with you that
long.
- It can stay with you that long.
- It gets locked in you, in your cells really.
- It's actually literally locked into your cells and into your chromosomes.
- Yeah, I mean, it's heartbreaking for those children on both sides of that and
just anywhere,
anytime you think like, and even a kid, when they think like, even in America,
it's like, in America, it's like, we're bombing each other.
Like there's, we can't figure out a way.
There's a huge planet here.
We can't figure out, how can we not figure out a way that we can do, live?
All God is asking us to do is be alive and do it without war.
That seems, it seems unreal that we can't figure that out, man.
- Well that, I mean, the great spiritual teachers have been addressing that
insanity for thousands
of years, you know?
- Yeah, we can't figure it out.
- Yeah, we can't figure it out.
- We can't figure it out.
- Yeah, we can't figure it out.
- Yeah, we can't figure it out.
- Yeah, we can't figure it out.
- Yeah, we can't figure it out.
- Yeah, we can't figure it out.