is not to embarrass you publicly, but maine is not exactly the mediterranean of america.estyle? >> he's more spanish than me. >> really? >> yeah. in the first week he was like i don't understand how you can take siesta. week after. >> it's interesting to see how you've made the transition. cheers. >> first off, this. bakalou salad. salt cod, egg, black olives, oranges, tomatoes, dressed in olive oil. remember, this is holy week. maria jose is preparing recipes that go back through the family so far that nobody knows exactly where they even came from. migas, another iconic dish. formally referred to as the shepherd's lunch. born as a way to use old, hard bread and combine all the week's leftovers. i'm told every household in spain has a variation. what changes is what you put on it. today it's sardines, cod, chorizo, melons and peppers. so how often do you eat this well? >> every lunch is like this. every day i'm here. but lunch is big. big lunch, siesta. but you can't -- you know, i used to try to resist siesta. you can't do it here. society will not accept you not taking

>> guest: that means they're from the arab world, jews from the mediterranean as opposed to from germany and russia. and in america, of course, you have lots of both. but my mother's family are from ukraine, from russia. so i've always been fascinated by russia for that reason. and i think that's the origin of hi kind of obsession with russia, with russia and with the soviet period as well. >> host: young stalin. what can we learn about the future dictator stalin from his youth? >> guest: everything. young stalin, it was such fun to write "young stalin." trots key said young stalin had just been a gray blur who missed the revolution. he was a specialist in assassinations and in bank robberies. in his 1907 spank robbery -- bank robbery made the headlines all over the world. he held up a stagecoach. i said it was like butch cassidy, in the capital of georgia. and he killed enormous numbers of people in this bank robbery, 50 people were killed in this bank robbery, and they got away with the equivalent of $20 million to fund eleven in's -- lenin's bolshevik party. and no one had been able to rauf that stalin had organize

of america as captives from the embassy. it stems back to before the establishment of the united states. european settlers came here, came here with the memories of centuries of antagonism with mediterranean muslims and they brought those anti-muslim sentiments in part as a way to distinguish between christianity and islam. they also brought in jewish sentiment as well so that is the reason we have had so many centuries of jewish sentiment in this country. that history has been embraced much better. scholars have paid much more attention to that history and the ways in which that changes and becomes anti-semitism. but we really don't have as good as the national understanding of this history of islamaphobia so we constantly think about it. >> host: you are talking it's not about political things. do you see this primarily theological? i know you were talking about christians understanding you know where their views of anti-semitism come from and you could say and i'm not an expert on this but just that you know to the degree that christianity was building on or innocents rejecting our adding to judaism and islam makes a similar claim and mormonism makes a similar claim. you say it's reall

of every hour. >> here are the headlines at this hour. >> only on al jazeera america. >> several dozen activists including one american boarded fishing boats tots protest israel's restrictions on fishing in the mediterranean sea. israel has imposed a blockade for what it says are security reasons. the israeli government says i am ports are monitored to prevent dangerous materials from entering the territory. gaza fishermen say it hurts the local disney. mick schifrin has more. >> for six years,itsis has controlled these seize. today, activists wanted to take them back. palestinians living in gaza kale sail more than six miles from their cost. israel warships block everything coming in and going out. gazans say that strangled their economy. fishermen and activists head straight for the israeli ships. they are aware of the risks. israel has arrested and attacked fisherman for sailing more than six miles out. >> we are just armed with international law. we can say this is our sea. this is our land. this is our sky. you shouldn't be here. >> these activist knows israel any stop or attack them. with two-thirds of the people in gaza living on less than $2 a day, these people feel like they have nothing to lose.