‘Incredibly Disappointing’: Scott Galloway Rages at ‘Abhorrent Bothsidesism’ In U.S. Media On Israel-Hamas War

Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discussed the Israel-Hamas war on the most recent episode of their podcast Pivot. The duo began by discussing why they had shied away initially from weighing in on the conflict and Hamas’s devastating attack on the south of Israel, which has so far left some 1,400 people dead, mostly civilians.

As the conversation got going, however, Galloway offered his take, and after some kind words for President Joe Biden, tore into what he called “abhorrent bothsidesism” in the U.S. media.

“I think Biden gave one of the best, I think when he’s remembered and I think he will be remembered positively, I think the speech he gave on Israel three days ago was really powerful,” Galloway began on Friday, adding:

And you know, what do I think, I have bias here. I have family in Israel. I’m Jewish. My mother, you know, had it not been America didn’t push back on antisemitism. It decided to push back on fascism. But having not done that, you know, you’d be hosting this podcast with Mark Cuban because my mother’s life would have ended with a train ride. And I find the level of bothsidesism around this conflict where people immediately go to, “Yeah, it’s wrong, but we need to be thoughtful about the victims and the ongoing crisis in Gaza.”

And we had a fraction on a per capita basis of the people murdered in 9/11. If they’re proportionate, the number of people in 9/11, what happened in Israel where killed, there would have been about 35,000 people have been killed in the United States.

“And by the way, The New York Times, which is now engaged in what I would call, just abhorrent bothsideism, because of their own guilt, endorsed the invasion of Iraq and a decent proxy for the right side or the wrong side and whenever you are in war, there’s going to be massive victims in it and a humanitarian crisis, but a decent proxy for who’s on the right or the wrong side is to imagine what would happen if each of the sides was in control,” Galloway continued, taking aim at the media.

“And stated in their constitution Since 2007 in a group that has not been reelected but seems to maintain power and maintain a certain level of public support, central to their constitution is the extermination of Jews. And when they have, when they’re in charge for 72 hours, we saw what they did,” he continued, adding:

Now, imagine if the Israelis were in charge. And you don’t need to imagine because the Israelis are in charge. The Israelis could do what pretty much what they wanted. It might enter a quagmire and might turn public sentiment against them, but they are most definitely in charge. And the only thing we know in terms of how this will play out, the only thing we can be certain of is they will be exponentially more humane now that they are in charge than what Hamas decided to do for the 72 hours they were in charge.

This bothsidesism is fundamental to the antisemitism that continues to haunt the world and America, and that is we want to believe that Jews are coconspirators in their own genocide. That somehow, yeah, but aren’t we are Jews somehow to blame for what has happened here? I think the bothsidesism in American media is just incredibly disappointing.

“Well, look, look, let me just I agree with you on everything you said,” replied Swisher, adding:

They have to report what’s happening in Gaza, like what the Israelis are doing as a news event and the total, they have to do that they can’t stop bothsidesism of them to say these all these buildings and show these pictures and what’s happened, the brutality of what Hamas did, who are terrorists, Hamas is ISIS, as far as I can tell, is is a very different thing.

And as they’re beginning to uncover and there’s listen, there’s a lot of controversy over what happened to, but these, Hamas went house to house and killed people and children and parents in front of their children. They kill children. These are people who lived on kibbutzes. It’s never, it just, is it’s brutal. It’s brutality as as upsetting as bombings are. It’s not a stack-ranking thing here. But there is a very clear behavior on the part of Hamas. They did this for a reason and did it in this way. And it it it resembles so much of what happened to the Jewish people over history.

Listen to the full episode here.