Dave Smith: Israel, Hamas, Ukraine, Russia, Conspiracies & Antisemitism | Lex Fridman Podcast #464

All the people who sold the war in Iraq,

they lied us into war after a war.

They've bankrupted the country,

damn near destroyed the dollar,

and like no one loses their job.

No one even gets in trouble over any of this.

If you make everybody monsters

and they're not human beings, well, you can't do diplomacy with monsters.

You can't make a deal.

You can't negotiate with monsters,

but you can with humans.

Maybe there are times where you're not.

You shouldn't negotiate or you can't negotiate with humans,

but it's better if you can.

and and we could use a lot more of that thinking.

Donald Trump has put a lot of political

capital chips into the middle of the table that I can end this war,

you know, and he's going to look very, very bad if he can't.

So, he's very highly incentivized

to get this thing done as quick as possible.

You're fighting in a way that produces

more of the thing that you're fighting.

And so, the first step is to stop doing that.

like your your cure is making the patient more sick.

So, stop doing that and then let's see if maybe we could heal.

Where are the tapes?

Why is everyone talking about the flight logs and the files?

Where are the tapes?

This guy was clearly taping people to blackmail them.

Like, why does anything need to be redacted for national security? Like, I'm sorry.

You're telling me there's a pedophile

ring and we can't tell you everything about it for national security?

Why would that be related to national security?

The following is a conversation with Dave Smith,

an outspoken and at times controversial

anti-war libertarian, comedian, and podcast host.

This is the Lex Freedman podcast.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Dave Smith.

You are a longtime libertarian,

uh perhaps an anarco capitalist.

We can talk about that.

Can you uh explain the different

variants, flavors of uh

libertarianism and where you stand among those variants?

Yeah, so there's almost like anything like with left-wing

schools of thought or right-wing schools of thought, there's many different camps

and different thinkers and so

within the kind of broader

theme of libertarianism, there was a lot of influence from uh people like

Rand, Milton Freriedman, Thomas Soul.

Those were, I think, some of the more mainstream figures.

And then there's kind of like the Ron Paul

brand of libertarianism, which is kind of distinct from that other camp where they're

much more of an emphasis on foreign policy.

All of them kind of fall into the um radical

minarchist points of view.

And then there's Rothbartian anarcho capitalist.

Then there's also like uh David Freriedman

who's an anarcho capitalist but from a completely different perspective than Murray Rothbart.

I would probably be

most I'm most closely like with the Rothbart

school which very similar to Ron Paul

um but even maybe a little bit further in that you know the very

little bit of government that Ron Paul might support.

You've been a big fan of Ron Paul.

Can you explain what you admire about him?

A big fan is an understatement.

I think Ron Paul is like the greatest living American hero.

Um, I I I

revere him on the level of

of the founding fathers,

Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.

Number one, I mean,

all of the major issues

that he w he

was correct in his understanding

of them, his diagnosis of what caused these problems and his solutions.

And in hindsight, there's just like

a million different examples

of where almost everybody today would agree, even though his ideas were very controversial

at the time, be like, "Oh my god, if we had just listened to

Ron Paul about that, we'd be so much better off."

But I think there's something

almost deeper than that about

why so why Ron Paul inspires

so much love from so many people is okay.

So number one, the guy

he was a champion of these views

for decades when there was no payoff for it at all where he was

just kind of alone in the woods

being you know they used to call him Dr.

No, because well, he was a medical doctor and then he was he would

be the lone no vote in Congress like all the time like on on

the bills that the entire Congress

bipartisan agreement everything is and there's one vote

against it, you know,

um and that he would be that guy.

He clearly kept doing what he was doing

simply because he believed it was right,

not because there was any benefit for him.

In fact, he dealt with a lot of headaches

for the views that he had.

And then he was just a genuine person of integrity.

you know, he's the only

uh congressman who I've ever heard this about and and like DC insiders,

people on the hill will say this.

He was the only congressman

of my lifetime who the lobbyists simply stopped visiting.

He was the only one who they just stopped going to his office cuz

they were just like, there's just no getting through to this guy.

He was just not playing politics like that.

And he was, you know, you imagine what it must have been like from

like the lobbyist perspective when they first tried to go there, you know, and

they'd be like, "All right, listen.

we really need you to, you know, vote yes on this or that.

And he was like, the Constitution doesn't

authorize us to do that.

And they're like, what?

Like, who who in this town even talks like that, you know?

And so there was just he's also just I've I've met him

uh many times at this point.

And he is just genuinely

he's like one of those guys

who's just from like an older, better generation.

Just he's the sweetest guy,

but he's like uh but he's not a pushover.

like he was a tough guy in in his day and he was an

athlete and he was in the Air Force and is married to the same

woman for I think over 60 years

at this point has like a big beautiful family.

He was a country doctor.

He was a baby doctor who delivered thousands of babies.

like he's just it is

he's like this kind of classic

American figure and um

you know I just think uh you know at the risk of of

falling into like hero worship or something like that.

I do think he's a I think he's a genuinely

great man and I think great men are to be revered.

Yeah, as you said there's integrity there.

Can you speak to the ideas that Ron Paul represents?

Like he says some of the things he's been right about.

Maybe can you speak about the economics, the Fed and maybe war

and being anti-military intervention?

Well, I think it comes it all came from kind of the same

central thesis which is that the highest political

value ought to be liberty.

Um and and that you know the government

by its very nature

is an instrument of force and tyranny

and that therefore the more government you have the less liberty you have.

Um, I think he also

was he was way ahead of his time

in in like really calling out the corruption in DC.

And I think that's one of the things that's kind of that's that it's

a common through line between the Federal Reserve

and um government spending

and of course this crazy war industry

that our country has.

Um there so there there's a a lot of components to that, but

essentially Ron Paul was talking about draining the swamp way before it was like

this dominant mass message.

And I think Ron Paul in many ways

laid down he laid the groundwork

in his 2008 and 2012

presidential campaigns for not not saying that he

leads to Donald Trump, but he laid the groundwork for Donald Trump to be

able to get up at the South Carolina

Republican primary debate and look at Jeb Bush and say, "Your brother lied us into war."

And you know what I mean?

And and and to have the Republicans agree with him.

you know, the same these were a lot of the same people who had

voted for George W.

Bush twice and supported the war and even

mocked their liberal, you know, fellow countrymen

for not being on board with it.

And and a lot of that was the work that Ron Paul did and

people waking up to

um the how how messed up all these wars were.

And I think that

at least from there there were a couple major things for me, okay, at the time.

So I was like a I was a young man

when I first found Ron Paul.

I was I was in uh 2007

was when I first saw him and then started obsessively

reading all of his books.

And so I I was young.

I'm I'm born in ' 83.

So what that mean?

23 24 uh when I first met him.

So I was a young guy.

And at least for me at the time,

there were like kind of two categories

in my, you know, naive mind

where, okay, there were like the liberals

who supported big government at home

but were skeptical about,

you know, big government abroad or skeptical about wars.

And then there were the conservatives

who said that they supported small government, limited government at home, but were always

on the side of whatever the next war is.

And at least for me, and I think for a lot of people of my

generation, Ron Paul was the first guy

who came along and said like, "No, I'm for limited government here and abroad."

And it was kind of like a portal

where you could like access a different perspective on the world.

And then once you saw that, you were like, "Wait, that's actually what makes sense.

It makes it it doesn't make sense to like what are what is it

exactly that like um all the Ronald Reagan and George W.

Bush and and even like Milton Friedman and guys like that and Thomas Soul

and the it's like you want a

constitutionally limited world empire

like that's what you guys stand for cuz that doesn't that doesn't fit together at all.

And so why is it that we took we we were taking this as a given.

And then of course the more you you look into it you realize that

like there those two things do make sense together.

And then also that kind of like in the initial wave of like the

original progressives you know

look people like Woodra Wilson or FDR

these were people who were pushing big government at home and big government abroad

and that actually made much more sense as a cohesive worldview.

And to oppose that would be

the Ron Paul worldview.

And then the other thing for me and this was actually this was my

introduction to Ron Paul.

And this too to me was like kind of a portal in a way.

It was it was a way

at least in my naive

not fully functioned brain

or fully developed brain at 24 years old or whatever.

Um it was a way for me to kind of get like like I

tapped into something that was outside the empire.

And I had um

I had heard a lot, you know, I was already against George W.

Bush and I didn't like the war.

I could I I had already figured out, you know, I think this I

think this war in Iraq is bullshit

and I think that we were lied into it.

And so I kind of got that.

And then there were there were liberals

and and left-wingers who I knew.

I grew up in New York City, so I was very familiar with the

left-wing perspective and who were critical of of George W.

Bush and and for

fighting the war and and

you know signing the Patriot Act into law and things like that.

But I had never really heard anybody

break it down the way Ron Paul did

when he was when he basically was like look

there's a reason why these terrorists

hate us and it's not what they're telling you.

They don't hate us for our freedom.

It's not as if I remember the way Pat Buchanan

put it which I always loved was he goes

he said Dick Cheney

makes it sound like Osama bin Laden

stumbled on like in the deserts of Afghanistan

he stumbled onto a copy of our bill of rights somewhere and he was

like oh my god they're free to look at this speedy

trial are you kidding me like this is

like what is going on here they can own guns

and their women can wear miniskirts

and that and that just made people so angry that they were ready to

you know like suicide

bomb themselves are like that makes no sense at all.

And then Ron Paul was just like, "No, look, here's the thing.

If we think we can just go around the world killing people,

propping up dictatorships, putting our military bases in the the

Muslims holy land and not

engender hatred from that, then we do that at our own peril."

And I thought that was it was such an interesting kind of

you know it had always been I I'm an 80s and 90s

kid and to me it was always kind of a given

that like America's number one

we're the force for good in the world and we're and it was like

an introduction to the idea that there are people outside

of that who are dominated

by that who don't care for it very much

and like that that's what 911

was actually about and for me you I was living in New York City

I was 18 I think when 9/11

happened and that was like the moment of my childhood.

It was a huge thing to live through.

I mean, we were attacked.

This seemed like something that could only happen in a history book.

That didn't happen to America in the '9s.

2001 was basically the '9s.

Um and uh and it was just like, oh, finally it clicked.

It was like, that makes sense.

is the first time I had ever heard

like an explanation and an understanding

of this whole thing that we're involved in now from 9/11 to the terror

wars that actually just made perfect sense. Yeah.

We should also say that there's some degree of truth

that the battle is not just

militaristic, it's also cultural.

And then many of those parts of the world don't

want other people's values forced onto them. Right?

But the way that George W.

Bush and Dick Cheney and every right-wing host in America and Sean Hannity and

Bill O'Reilly and like everybody.

What they were saying is that they hate that we're free.

Whereas it was much closer

to saying like they don't like us imposing on them.

Even like all the hardcore neocons,

Brett Stevens, the New York Times,

he wrote this piece on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, so

uh 2023 to cheerlead the war in Iraq.

And he goes through the whole piece and there's not one mention

of the million people who died in the war.

You know, he literally just goes the piece is

just measure life under Saddam Hussein

verse life under the Shiite

parliamentary system that they have now. Which one's better?

And I he's arguing this one's better.

Therefore, it was worth it.

But there's like no mention.

It's like, okay, but what about the 20 plus million people who were displaced?

What about the million people who were killed?

What about all the millions of people who were injured?

What about the tens of thousands of our soldiers who have blown their brains

out in the aftermath of the thing?

Like it's like so so many times this true in with government policy in general.

People talk about like

the end result that they want,

but you're like, "Yeah, but what about the process by which you get there

and how much hatred,

you know, could you I mean, like I you know, it's it's not that

hard for me to like put myself in in other people's shoes."

And like I have two little kids

and a wife and

if anybody were to ever try to argue to me that they have to

be the eggs that get broken to make some bigger omelette.

Like it's it's okay.

Like you know we're ultimately going to impose something on your society that's better

than what you have right there.

It sure does suck that your wife and kids got to be the one

who get taken out.

I mean I'm as I'm just saying this to

myself and this is not real.

This is just a thought experiment I'm making up.

I'm already pretty close to being a terrorist.

Like my next thought is kind of like, well, okay.

Well, I hope you're gonna like it when you watch your family die in

front of you, you know?

Now, I'm not hopefully even if that happened to me.

I wouldn't go kill that guy's family.

Like, maybe I just go after him or something.

But I could understand

and I think most people have kids could understand

go going to a level of like the the

most evil dark place you could imagine

if something ever anyone ever threatened or or actually did something to your kids. Yeah.

We have to remember

the thing that's difficult to measure that you just mentioned which is the hate

that's created by every bomb that's dropped.

It was uh General

Mcristel who you know was the general running

af the war in Afghanistan.

He wasn't like he wasn't Ron Paul, you know what I mean?

Like he was a a sir, yes sir, how do we fight and win this war general?

And he's the one who coined the term insurgent

math that 10 minus 2 equals 20.

you know, it's like the more you the more you keep I was just

reading I was rereading about this the other day

um because of the uh you know Trump's

been bombing uh the Houthies in Yemen

and you know it was like when

when we first I think it was in in

at least in 2009 is when Obama really stepped up the drone campaign with

the then secret drone bombing campaign

and the Yemen was one of the major theaters

and even back then

when it really was just

a it was a war on terrorism.

Like the main targets were always al Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula and their presence in Yemen.

Even then, like so before the Saudis invaded, so like from 2009

through 2015, AQAP just kept growing.

It was doing all these targeted bombing campaigns.

They call them targeted.

96% of the people are innocent who get killed, but they call them targeted drone bombings.

And they and and al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula just kept getting bigger and

bigger because, you know, it's like Yeah.

Every time you go in there, it's like, okay, you took out one target

and then you took out three little girls and, you know, a few and

every one of those little girls had brothers and uncles and fathers

and, you know, and and all of them just signed up to join the

fight now cuz, you know, and I Ron Paul was the first one who

really made this click for me.

But it's in a way, and I'm not like I'm not a leftist.

I'm not an egalitarian.

I'm not a cultural relativist.

I'm not saying that all cultures are the same or that we all look

at the world the same way.

There's enormous differences between all of us.

And I personally think some are better than others,

but there are things that unite all of us.

And in a weird way,

it's I I remember one time I was arguing

with a Democrat guy on a SE cup show.

I used to be a contributor on on her show.

And we were arguing and it was after it was after a terrorist attack

here in New York, a fairly minor one.

It was like a guy like I think he hit someone with his car

and then jumped out with a gun and then the cops lit him up and killed him.

Um, this is like back in 2017 I think.

And he he claimed to be ISIS inspired.

I don't I don't remember if there was like a direct connection or not,

but they were at the time they were like, "Doesn't this mean we got

to step up the war in Iraq or in Syria where ISIS's stronghold is?"

And I remember the guy saying to me,

he goes, "Uh, you know, I went off on how these wars have been disastrous."

and he goes, "Yeah, yeah, but Dave, what you're saying here is we're supposed to do nothing.

Like, this just happened and now we're supposed to do nothing."

And so, like, even though this guy had a suit and tie on and

we're in a cable news studio and we're in a first world country, we're

in the United States of America and we're having that the basic thing that

he's saying is like, what do you say?

You're saying we're not going to go kill some motherfuckers, you know?

Like, I mean, he's he was just putting it as like

do something, but what's something?

something is dropping bombs on human beings, you know, when like, yeah, some innocent

people are going to die, but okay, that but it's the same thing.

It's the same after 911

where like we got to go fucking invade some countries right now.

That's the same impulse.

It's like they killed some of our people.

You think we're not going to show them who the real killers are?

You think there's a chance that you could come here and and that is

like the most human instinct ever?

It's like some other tribe

just came in here and killed some people in our tribe.

So, what do you want to do about that?

Well, I don't know.

It's not going to take me too long to figure out.

We're gonna go kill a bunch of people in their tribe.

And I do think that like

that is I think that's the major motivating

factor for both sides of the Israel Palestine conflict.

I think that's the major motivator for both sides of the war on terror conflict.

And it's like that's

it's in a way when you look at it like that there's something even

though it's so dark and tragic, there's something almost beautiful about it where you're

like, "Oh, we're all caught in this same cycle." Yeah. Deeply human.

the the warring between tribes,

but you know, especially

in the recent years,

but more and more through human history,

there's almost like a third party, which is this

military-industrial complex, which is making money from the two tribes.

So, if you just have two tribes,

one I've been reading a lot about Jangghaskhan.

If uh this is why Jenghaskhan

banned this, it was very common in

uh in Mongolia before Djangghaskhan

to steal people's wives

like you're my wife now, right?

And he he realized

that that creates a lot of conflict.

Yeah, it sure does.

That seems natural and human that kind of conflict.

But when whenever you

a third party rolls in and starts making money on the whole thing and

then driving that forward

then the escalation of the

conflict comes with this whole machine

that makes deescalation really difficult. Yeah.

The military-industrial complex in America.

It's so big and it's so

sophisticated and it's so so it's not just that there's you know um

you know there's this there's the intelligence

agencies, there's the weapons

manufacturers, then there's the like

people in the media who

are either directly or indirectly

just paring, you know what I mean, all of their talking points.

And so it's not just that

you can kind of like like you make money when there's a conflict,

but you have this entire

apparatus to like create the conflict

and then create the public sentiment for that.

And then we're and it's interesting we're we're

in in an interesting place cuz we're kind of in this like new frontier

of now where shows like this can happen and and there's a lot of

them and a lot of them are humongous like yours.

Um, but for so

long it this just didn't exist.

And it was just like, oh, like for so long

it was the case that like the New York Times and NBC and CBS

and ABC and the Washington Post and

the the Associated Press, I guess, they could just move the nation.

I mean if they wanted to be like hey there is the the idea

that forget even like after

911 the idea that

in 1990 1991 that there was any

organic movement from the American people going you know we really got to see

about the Saddam Hussein guy

you know uh the uh dictator in Iraq is having a slant drilling dispute

with the uh Amir of Kuwait.

We really got to do something about that.

Like that is not something that organically

came from any that was not like a a few soccer moms hanging out,

you know, watching their kids game being like, I really do think I think

in in a couple years we're going to have to send these boys over to Iraq to go.

Like that's not they just from the top down

were able to create

this feeling that like, hey, there's a new Adolf Hitler on the rise over here in Iraq.

We got to go see about this.

There are these poor people in Kuwait.

We have to do that.

you know, like there's

they were able to

create this desire for war.

Um, that was it's it's really incredible when you think about it because there's

for I think for the most part in human history,

you would have had to

have some type of

plausible threat, some type of plausible

reality to convince people that we actually have to go to war

um in order to deal with this.

whereas like you know the United

the idea that in 1991

the United States of America would feel threatened by

Iraq was just ridiculous

and yet they were able to do it.

Well so to push back a little bit throughout human history there was also

a thing you look at the Roman Empire

where just the cultural values were different where military

conquest was seen as a good thing.

So like we just almost assume in the United

States there would war has been framed in the defensive sense

like where offensive war

we're not doing that anymore.

You make a fair point.

It's certainly true that throughout human history

there's been um there's been like

overt um empire building and wars of conquest and things like that.

But I guess I'm just saying at least even there

you would have some type of cell of like why we're going to go

take these resources and why that will be good for us.

Whereas the idea that

there like Kuwait just needed to be defended

by the Americans seems

so it seems so hard to convince anybody

and yet they were able to do it.

If you read like Neocon

writing in the 90s,

it was very interesting.

Um because they would they would tell the truth a lot more.

Uh and they were

essentially I think there was the Soviet Union had just collapsed.

It was what what Charles Crowhammer

dubbed the unipolar moment.

There was like a lot of there was excitement.

There was a feeling of invincibility.

Um and also the neocons

weren't in power any after '92 really.

I mean, they had a little they were in the George HW Bush administration,

but after '92, they really weren't.

So, they're just writing at these think tanks,

and it just didn't seem as,

you know, like they weren't as guarded.

There weren't like these accusations of you're a war criminal or something like that.

But what he said,

uh, what Jonah Goldberg agreed with

was that every, uh, I think the statement was every 10 years or so,

America's got to find a puny little country and put them up against the

wall just to let the rest of the world know that we mean business.

And that was actually their mentality.

I'm sure there's people that agree with that.

I happen to disagree with that.

But the the drums of war are beating a little bit over Taiwan and China.

More than a little bit. Yeah.

But there I can't even see a justification for a just war.

What is the long-term

benefit to society if you do military intervention?

I well I also think this and I' I've been saying this for a

while but I do think there is this like um

there there's like this empire

mentality that Americans have

got to shake off

like as if it's even a question

of whether we should allow it or not like are

we in a position to allow or not allow that?

Why do we have it's it's almost like if you were um

you know like I I don't I hope China doesn't invade Taiwan.

I hope Taiwan remains as free as possible.

I hope China becomes free.

I root for freedom and prosperity for everyone, you know, but I also root

for like everybody to have a healthy marriage.

But if you were like if you were talking to me and you were

like, hey, the guy

down the street is cheating on his wife.

Like I don't think we can allow this.

I'd immediately be like, that's really not my place.

And then on top of that, I also have no power.

I have no authority over what they do in their marriage.

Like I have to be concerned with my marriage.

And the idea that like

imagine if there were the

will to uh invade Mexico

like if DC decided we're taking Mexico City

like that's that's going to be part of America now and we're taking it

by force and then China was like

we're not sure if we can allow this.

I think immediately most Americans would be like

allow like how the fuck do you think you're going to stop us

from taking Mexico City?

What are you gonna do, China?

You're gonna send your navy ships over here to fight us

off the coast of Mexico?

Good luck with that.

And and at least from my understanding, in almost all the war games that

they've run, if we did militarily,

even if it doesn't come to nuclear weapons being used, in which case

the whole world gets blown up.

But even if we go to militarily

try to stop China from invading

Taiwan and no one everyone agrees to not use nukes and we just fight

a conventional war, we lose that war every time.

I think what you said applies to a lot of the wars we've been involved in.

But China and Taiwan is a little bit different because

because of TSMC, right?

Because there's an economic dependence.

If that was the concern,

then the response would be we need some type of Manhattan project.

And I'm not supporting a government project here, but there would be we need

some type of Manhattan project to say we're going to make these things here. We can't.

And look, I I was running that experiment before saying like what if we

all pinky promise not to use nuclear weapons or something like that.

But that's not the reality of the situation.

The more reality, look, even in in Ukraine,

everybody the biggest hawks,

the biggest pushers of this policy and Joe Biden and

policy to fund Ukraine,

no one's suggesting we send in the 82nd airborne. No.

which is really the only thing that could repel the Russians right now and

restore, you know, Ukrainian

the the original sovereignty of the Ukrainian borders.

But no one's suggesting we send in the 82nd airborne cuz we all know,

well, we can't have a direct war with Russia.

That's the end of the world.

And same thing with China.

So, you know, I'm not saying microchips

or whatever aren't important,

but there's we can find other ways to the Taiwan is not magical.

Like, we can produce these things in other places. No.

So you have the humility to say that you don't really know much about the situation.

It sounds ridiculous to say, but there's something magical about not Taiwan but DSMC.

It's incredibly difficult to manage the supply chain

and manufacture at such a low cost that they are.

And to add to that, China has been signaling about the one China policy.

But you're absolutely right that you shouldn't be doing the the Washington

thing of beating the drums of war.

That's like the completely the counterproductive thing.

There should you should uh actually try to find partnerships with China.

Build friendships and cooperation like India is doing a good job of this like build friendships.

This the 21st century

conflict this cold war thinking

is going to be destructive to the economy, destructive to humanity, to the flourishing

of the individual nations of the world.

There there's just nothing positive

except making money for the military industry. Well, yeah.

And and it was totally destructive during the original Cold War, too.

um and almost led to nuclear war on a couple of different occasions.

But look, I would just say and I I really

I'm no defender of the Chinese regime.

I hate communism and or fascism, whatever they are.

Some hybrid mix of of the two.

They're paying you, aren't they? Yeah. No, fuck them. I don't care.

By the way, I get a lot of people speculate

online, but I am not I'm not getting any of these checks, man.

And I'd really like them to start coming in.

Um, but there's like even when it's like China, you say China's asserting the

one China policy, but the one China policy is the policy of the United

States of America and has been for

50 years now, right?

So it's not I think what's happening there a lot of times is that

essentially even though officially the one China policy is the policy of the United

States of America all of these American

politicians um and and

you know different figureheads

across powerful centers in America

are are saying that China doesn't have the right to go into Taiwan

and then China's in the position of being like well hey wait a minute

no that's not actually

the policy we maintain this one China policy but we allow them to kind

of do what they want to do.

And you know, the

the most obvious example of this was when

Joe Biden actually said

like, "Oh, we wouldn't allow that and we would militarily

intervene if they went into China."

And then, and this was so bizarre,

then the White House,

whoever that was, came out to correct

the president of the United States

and say, "No, the policy of the White House

is the one China policy."

Which, look, I mean, again, I think the whole point of this

is that the reason why whoever the hell was able to overrule

Joe Biden in his administration,

I I don't know who that is.

Um but the whole point

is that if you say

and and this is why there is some wisdom in America accepting the one

China policy is that if you

tell China that we recognize

uh uh Taiwan's independence

and that they're not a part of China,

that might be the type of thing that would make China invade and say

no, we're not accepting that.

And so at least right now it's like kind of like okay

here's look this is the reality.

It's something that you kind of run up against

with the war in Ukraine

a lot and and with the situation in China and Taiwan

is that there are

um there are constraints

placed on us by reality.

It's not all just how would you like the world to be?

How would you like it to work?

Obviously, I think we would all like that bigger countries don't invade smaller countries

and bigger countries don't bully smaller countries around.

That is not the way of the world.

We are a big country that is the biggest bully in the world.

So we're in no position to let but what we're kind of in the

position is just like you're like hey we'd sure love if you don't do that.

You know you can do it and you can get away with it but

we would sure love it if you don't.

And so the goal would be to do everything we can

to make sure that doesn't happen.

When Vladimir Putin starts talking about like hey if you keep pushing the idea

of Ukraine joining your military alliance

I'm going to invade that country.

the goal there the or the move there would be to be like okay

we'll stop talking about that is there something else that we can agree on

you know like is there is there a way that we you we you

will promise you won't do anything to them and okay and we'll promise we

won't bring them in our military like that's the goal you don't just go

like no fuck you we're doing it anyway

over and over and over again

until they do the thing

I think we got to this discussion from the military-industrial

complex and military intervention and Ron Paul before that if you could like rewind

a little it uh is there any amount

according to you and according to various flavors of libertarianism

is there any amount of

intervention that's justified that's

okay um well I I would say

okay so at least

to me in in terms of like pure

libertarian theory or just in in terms of like what I think is right or

wrong like there is such thing as a just war

um the most obvious

uh example of that

would be like you're invaded

by a military and fighting them off.

Um, so in in that sense also like even if you want to if

you want to kind of isolate

from everything else, uh, from, you know, all of the awful

US policy toward Russia post

Soviet Union to all of the, you know, NATO expansion and color-coded

revolutions and all of these things.

If you want to, you know, Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, I do think the

Ukrainians have a right to fight and and protect their their land.

like there the there's an aggressive

there's an aggressor there and you have a right to defend yourself.

Uh so certainly in that sense I think um the American Revolution

was a just war.

Uh I think there are you know there there can be just

wars in terms of pure libertarian theory.

I think I would say that

look you you don't you never have a right

to kill innocent people there.

That's never morally okay.

Now there could be a scenario

just like this is true in life in general right like there's lots of

things that you don't have the right to do

but you could come up with some scenario

where you might be in a position where you have to do it because

there were all of these extenduating

circumstances you know like for you know you could think of something where like

you remember the uh the Saw movies

where they used to you know these crazy like horror scenarios

but it's like um okay so there's a person

you know a evil bad guy has

buried a key inside

this person and you have to kill that person in order to get the

key in order to unlock these 20 people to let them out of a cage.

Now look, you still don't have a right to kill people.

It's horrible and wrong and what you did there was still evil.

But if you were taken to trial over it, you could probably explain to

a judge and a jury be like, "I know, but the situation I was

in was either these 20 people were going to die or this one person

was going to die, and under that situation,

I chose to save the 20."

So like in other words,

by perfect theory, no, you never have the right to kill innocent people.

There could be a scenario

where you were like, look, we had to take this military action and some

innocent people did die

and it's so tragic and awful that we had to do this, but we

are certain that many more people would have died

had we not done this.

Now, in that case,

I would look at that as like

um number one, it's

much like killing the one person to save the 20. It's still wrong.

It's still an immoral thing that you were forced into doing. It's not justified.

I would say that the

overwhelming onus should have to be on you

to demonstrate that you absolutely

needed to do that.

And that's how I feel about all these these wars.

you know, it's not like

um you know, I think that like let's just say like if you could

make World War II

like you could reduce it down to the simplest caricature

of what World War II is and say there's no Joseph Stalin.

We're not even partnering with him.

Like there's a good guy in Russia who we were partnering with and there's

and and the British Empire had never done anything wrong.

They were just nothing but good guys.

And of course FDR was nothing but a good guy.

And Hitler was even worse than the real Hitler.

You know what I mean?

And in order to stop them,

we had to go on this bombing campaign.

And we only got Nazis.

We only killed the bad guys.

And we were able to take out the Third Reich.

But one 8-year-old girl died.

And you did this thing that stopped the whole world from falling into subjugation.

So I think almost everybody

would agree, Jesus, man, you have to do that. Okay.

This is um you have to do that because the whole world's going to be subjugated.

There's nothing but good guys here.

The Nazis are so evil.

And there's one I still would say

that every single time World War II came up, we should all just be

somber and we should all just think about that little 8-year-old girl who died

and what a horrible thing it is that we had to do that, you know?

And so the like when there are these campaigns where like,

you know, like where tens of millions of people

are killed, the fact that anybody's

ever like spiking the football

or this kind of like rah rah,

we were the good ones.

And then also when you add in all those other complicated

factors like that this wasn't the scenario at all.

Um but I do so so I guess essentially I'd say

no you don't ever have a right to kill innocent people.

It's never self-defense to be killing innocent people.

I mean short of like

you know some type of scenario where like

you know if you're holding a baby and coming at me shooting and I

shoot back at you and okay I was acting in self-defense and it happened

to kill a baby.

I'm I'm talking about like what

the scenarios where you're dropping bombs on cities.

Um it's never justified

and the overwhelming onus should be on you to demonstrate that you absolutely

have to do it and that that should be the standard because there's so

many other standards that I see thrown out that I just think are make

no moral sense at all.

you know, people will argue about like uh in Gaza, they'll argue about um

the civilian to combatant

ratio, which I like that to me doesn't really

that's not what counts.

That's not the measure that's important.

Um and also no one knows what the numbers are.

They all just kind of like pretend to.

Uh and then the other thing will be

um that people as someone just recently argued with me about they'll say like

uh well Hamas has to go.

That's the starting point.

Hamas has to go.

And I'm like, "No, I don't think you get to say that."

Because the the truth is that

look, you can make an argument that Hamas has to go. Sure.

You can make an argument that the Ludnik have to go.

You can make an argument that Kim Jong-un has to go or that G

has to go or that Putin has to go or that Zillinsky has to go.

Or certainly, I would make an argument that Joe Biden had to go.

But just because a government has to go, that doesn't mean you could just

go kill all their people. Yeah.

That should not be the starting point

like the assumption, the axiom of the discussion. Yeah.

The the question is,

is it is there no other option than doing it this way?

It's like, okay, like October 7th happened.

We can all agree this was like a a horrific

tragedy um and a you know, an indefensible act of terrorism.

Like, okay, can is it guaranteed that another one of those is going to happen tomorrow?

Or was this the biggest security failure in in

you know, Israeli history? Okay.

Well, if it's the biggest security failure,

let's just say, not even going down the inside job rabbit hole or anything

like that, but just saying it's a giant security failure.

Okay, then put a bunch more men at that fence first of all.

And now you got to talk about how can you achieve your goal while

inflicting the minimum amount of

devastation on innocent people.

Let's talk about it.

You brought it up. October 7th.

So, what exactly do you think about the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel?

Um well I mean like what I just said that it it was uh

horrible and you know uh

it's always by the same logic that I'm giving you now.

It's always it's always evil to target innocent civilians.

I don't believe uh you know civilians

can be held responsible for the uh the crimes of their government.

Um this was by the way the Osama bin Laden logic

which I think would also be the logic of like Bill Clinton or George W.

Bush or Barack Obama.

But Osama bin Laden very explicitly

said when he was asked like, "Well, are you just going to target like

US military sites or are you targeting US civilians?"

It was an interview in the '9s before 9/11.

Um, and he goes, "No, civilians are fair game, too,

because you guys have regular elections

and you guys vote for your government and therefore you're responsible for the crimes that they commit."

Now, I think that's the logic of a fanatic

like Osama bin Laden, and that's not the logic that any of us should follow.

It it doesn't make any sense, and it's not true that people are responsible

for the crimes of their government.

Um, I think that that same argument is used quite a bit by people

on the pro-Israeli side when they say like, oh, they they had an election

in 2005 and Hamas won a plurality,

therefore 20 years later, they have no rights.

I think that's insane. So, okay.

So, Hamas had no right to go after um civilians.

Uh, you know, it's horrible.

And you see, you know, the

um these, you know, teenagers

being killed and the people

um you know, you see the images of people uh who were who are

held hostage for all this time.

So, it's like your heart breaks for those people. It's truly tragic.

Um, I I do

think that it was

in many ways an indictment

of so many different things.

You know, like October 7th happening was an indictment

of um the entire

occupation/ siege of of Gaza and the West Bank, you know, for that matter.

Um it was I I think

um should have probably

forever destroyed the legacy of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Um who is you know I I mean this isn't like George W.

Bush you know was I mean he was on the job for almost a

year when 9/11 happened but it was still kind of new

you know like it was still kind of in his first year of being president.

Benjamin Netanyahu was the

longest serving prime minister in Israeli

history and had explicitly

been like, I'm the tough right-winger

who's going to be tough on these Palestinians

who's going to like move away from the idea of coming to a two-state

solution because this is what we need to keep us safe.

Like the justification is like I'm going to be hard on these motherfuckers

cuz that's cuz I know what it takes to keep us safe.

And that culminates in the the

worst massacre in in Israeli history.

Um, and then I mean the other big one is that I mean and

it's not like a I wouldn't even say an open secret at this point.

It's just out in the open.

He had this strategy of propping up Hamas for years.

And so he had this strategy of propping up Hamas

um for a myriad of reasons.

Um, but a major part of it was that

look man, as long as there's terrorists in power there,

there's never going to be any pressure on us to give the Palestinians

a state because look, are you telling me I got to negotiate with them?

He was allowing Qatar money to float.

Insisting that Qatar money float to them.

When the Qatar money dried up, sent the MSAD

in to insist that it gets back to him.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, briefcases, and cash.

And he said in his own words

that the reason for doing this

was to keep to his words were prop up Hamas,

bolster Hamas, to keep them in power so that the West Bank and the

and the Gazins were divided

and that the international

community as well as the liberal Jewish community in Israel

wouldn't be able to put pressure on them to make a deal.

But what are the options?

So, if he doesn't allow the money in,

it also looks really bad for him

because if he's not allowing the money in, that means he's not

allowing the quote unquote aid in

to help the Palestinians. Yeah.

But Lex, I mean, the the

dynamic here, right, is from

to today, Israel's had a full blockade around the country.

They won't let potatoes in.

They won't let sugar in.

They won't they the they and the the

justification is because they're dual use.

You know, they they can be used to make

rockets as well as they can be used to, you know, feed starving children.

So, we can't let that in because it's dual use.

But cash to Hamas,

does that not have dual usage?

Like, is there is there nothing else that they can?

So yeah, it's like yes, when you have a full blockade around the country,

you take on certain responsibilities.

And I think this is, you know, this is the the

essence of really the the whole struggle here,

which is very tough, I think, for the pro-Israel

side to grapple with.

But the bottom line is that

Israel hasn't occupied Palestine

for like a few months after a war or even a couple of years

after a war while they're figuring out what we're going to do with them.

It's been over 60 years.

is the the we're talking about a a one week long war

or a day short of a week long war in 1967.

Israel's had control of them ever since.

And much like in the same

way that like if you kidnap someone and you lock them in your basement

and you don't feed them,

you murdered that person.

So in other words

uh um stated differently,

you're not allowed to kidnap people and lock them in your basement,

but once you do,

you take on a responsibility

to feed those people.

You know what I mean?

Like you can't you're not allowed to keep someone and not feed them.

That is a worse charge

than just keeping them. And so yeah.

Anyway, I guess my point is

the solution to that if if you go like, well, I'm a bad guy

if I fund Tamas.

I'm a bad guy if I don't let the aid in, was to let

the reputable international aid

organizations bring aid in to the people of Gaza.

Don't have uh don't don't pressure the Qataris

to send in briefcases full of cash.

allow internationally recognized, reputable

human rights organizations who are lining up trying to do it, stop turning them

away and let them in.

And and and this is just it's so long past due.

I mean, like it's it's just I'm not like defending uh Arab terrorism.

It's uh I think it's really it's it's a tragedy

that the Arabs embraced terrorism.

Uh I don't think it's unique to them.

And in fact, you know,

I think it was the um the Zionist militias who introduced

terrorism to that part of the world.

But there was also like there

look terrorism persists because it works.

And this is true with state terrorism

and with non-state terrorism.

You know, it's like there

it terrorism has often worked for people.

The I think the

thing like early I think early Yaser Arafat I know was very influenced

by um the Algerians

who you know successfully

kicked the French out

embracing terrorism and it was almost like the

miscalculation of the the

those Palestinian Arabs who did embrace terrorism

was that this isn't the

French this isn't the French hanging out in some colony with their home country

back home where maybe a few acts of violence could work enough to, you

know, your the liberal population back home is like, "Oh, I really didn't like

the response to that terrorism.

We killed so many people. Forget it.

This is too much of a headache.

Let's get out of here."

The Zionist settlers were there to stay.

They weren't going anywhere.

They weren't going back to Eastern Europe.

You know what I mean?

They weren't go They were just that.

And so, it's a tragedy that this whole thing

went the way it did.

But you always whenever you're talking about like a conflict like

this, the person who has the or the the party who has the

power is the one who needs to make concessions,

you know, and the

there it's just indefensible

that the status quo

of the Palestinian people having no

rights, literally no rights,

being ruled by a government that they do not get to vote

uh for or against.

Um, no right to do commerce with the outside world, no freedom of travel,

no freedom of movement, no basic property rights.

You can be kicked out of your home at any time, no right to

a fair trial, uh, no right to a lawyer, no right to a jury of your peers.

I mean, the fact that that has been the status quo

since 1967 is just indefensible.

And if and and then in the context that that has been the status

quo, I guess I'm just not even though I'm against

it, it's kind of like when you're just lecturing

about the way in which they

this, I I think it's very tough to be on a strong

moral footing, you know. Yeah.

You have to you have to really empathize

with the decades of suffering. Yeah. In the region.

I suppose my question was grounded in

um how can the Israeli government, how can the world help the Palestinian people flourish?

So you suggested uh allowing

reputable aid organizations in

but you that's kind of almost uh patching. Yeah.

Just helping humans who are suffering

but that's not how you have a nation flourish.

You have to build up the infrastructure.

You have to build up a culture of

the education system, the

the you know democratic

processes of electing and regular elections and so that the the people are represented

and you have to form partnerships,

friendships, normalization of relations

with the Arab world, with Israel.

you can travel back and forth

um and lessen chokeold

like the security chokeold

you know that you could

say is justified in a militaristic

situation but why is it a military

situation the question is there like where do we go

from from here if we

you know we'll talk about Netanyahu

some more um he is uh

you know he's very criticized inside Israel as well Yeah, for sure.

Maybe less so after October 7th because

the you know again

in the same way you can empathize with the Palestinian

people, you can empathize

Israelis where October 7th

touched just like it did for Americans with 911.

It touched some kind of primal

thing of fear of like Oh yeah.

And like the same the same thing I said before, like I could also

very easily go if my if one of my kids was like at that

rave or something like that and just got gunned down or kidnapped by I

could understand being like level the whole goddamn place.

And I'm sure I would feel that way if that was one of my kids, you know. Um, so yeah.

No, that's that's exactly right.

I mean, there's lots of examples in the world of uh you know,

like France and Germany are right next to each other and Ireland and England

are right next to each other and they're just totally living in harmony right now.

Like there is just no the thought of them going to war

is like inconceivable right now.

Not saying it could never happen in the future, but it seems it seems

pretty hard to imagine.

And that being the case

would have been very hard to imagine for a very long time.

you know, like there I mean there's

some serious levels of brutality

between those two societies.

And even more directly,

it involved uh you know, Egypt

and Israel went to war

four times in in a couple decades.

they went to war

and then in the late 70s they made a land for peace deal

and they haven't been to war since

you know and like I do

at least try to hold out that like

that is you know it's not like Egypt is you're not going to say they

don't have an issue with radical Islam in Egypt

you know what I mean like there's that's not the answer it's just that

they made a land for peace deal

and once there wasn't

you know once that wasn't the that was solved it was kind of easier

to avoid the war and I do like to think that

there there could be a solution

to the the Israel Palestine

question, but that it's going to have to

it's going to have to involve Israel taking their boot off of the Palestinians neck.

And I know that that's scary and I understand that there are like legitimate concerns about that.

There's um was a the great

uh Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery

which was um we we have the wolf by the tail

and we can neither afford to hold on to him nor risk letting him go.

um which is like you could see where that would have been like a

real concern of people

like right toward the end of slavery

or or you know whatever in the early 1800s

or the first half of the 19th century

where you'd be like okay okay we recognize this is wrong

now but we've had these millions of people enslaved for all these years if

we let them go they're going to fucking kill us and what are you

saying they're citizens now meaning the second amendment applies to them meaning that the

guy who I now can get a gun. You know what?

And and so, okay, there are the But I think in hindsight, looking back

at it, we would all just

go, "Yeah, but you can't enslave people."

So, like, whatever risks come with the next phase of this,

unfortunately, you know, like you're going to have to just deal with that and and move.

You have to start with abolishing slavery.

And it is good to also remember

in the hopeful message you send like at any day you can make a deal.

That's one of the frustrating things I had with I hosted a debate on Israel.

It's like it just felt hopeless

and a lot of people I talked to it feels hopeless.

But like I have a lot of I I I maybe naively see a

lot of possibilities of peace there.

I see for example normalization

of relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel and then Saudi Arabia taking some ownership over Gaza. Something like that.

some interesting uh where a big major player in that region

takes ownership and steps as the middleman.

Yeah, I like I I agree with you and you're 100%

right that and even before October 7th, I think many steps had been taken

away from you know the peace process and the feeling of that.

I mean really I think since the second antifada

uh is when like the the appetite

for peace I think in Israel was greatly diminished. um there.

But to your point,

I mean, it's going to take really painful

concessions on all sides

in in order to get there.

Um, and I think that the

the personally I think and I don't know if I say this for the

not necessarily like the Arab

world um, but at least the nation states

like the their governments

I think are are

pretty much there like like Saudi Arabia and UAE

and Jordan and Egypt

like if the Israelis

they're almost like look these are American sock puppets

you know for the most part right

and So their their thing is that like

okay 100% of my

population is completely opposed to what Israel is doing to Palestine

right now and they just hate that Israel that the nation was created at

all that all the the Arabs were kicked out of what is you know

very important land to them religiously

and um and so the governments there are like look we want to continue

to have US tax dollars

flooding in here and we'd love to make a deal with Israel but like

you got to stop doing this to the Palestinians

so my own people don't

you know rise up against me.

So I think as long as the Israelis were like fine we'll do a

two-state solution or something like that.

I think Saudi Arabia couldn't wait

to broker in fact they proposed a two-state

solution just a few years ago.

I mean they're they would love to be a part of that and normalize

relations um amongst the

Palestinians like which again I think this I think this had been accepted multiple

times at least by their leadership.

It's like yeah you're going to have to accept that like you lost in 48.

You know you're going to have to accept that you lost in 47.

You're going to have to accept that the state of Israel does exist.

And you're going to have to accept that like the right of return is

not going to literally mean

that everybody can go back

to where they were.

And what Israel is going to have to concede

is that it was awfully fucked up that they kicked a lot of people

out of their land.

And that the whole

um a land for people

for a people without land was never true.

That was just a slogan that made that felt good to avoid what you guys actually did.

and the fact that you it was inexcusable

that you guys occupied these people for 60 years and that has to end immediately.

I interviewed Douglas Murray recently.

He just wrote a book on Israel and Hamas called on democracies and death cults.

He makes what I think is a strong pro-Israel

case focusing on Hamas

as a an evil

organization, you know, evil for its corrupt leadership

who's essentially stealing money

uh from the Palestinian

people and allocating the money that is there

towards terrorist militaristic operations

versus like building up um Gaza.

Uh can you steel man the case

for and then against this perspective sort of centering?

We've been talking about

people about uh centering around Hamas

which is like this extremist religious organization.

Uh the perspective being like they need to be as you mentioned before eliminated

before any progress can be made. Um, okay.

So, if I were So, a steelman

Douglas Murray's case, um,

I would say, well, I guess the case is, right?

Look, Hamas is a

fanatical death cult essentially,

which I do think is a fair

uh, description of them.

There is no question

that they have pursued

they have they have pursued a path

that was just devastating

to their own people

and there's no question they have not

spent the resources they have

on their priority has not been uplifting their own people.

Their priority has been I I think essentially

antagonizing Israel into this overreaction

so that they can turn world opinion against Israel.

I think they've been very effective at doing that.

Um, and and okay, again, I think the argument would come back to something

like and the people kind of voted for this in 2005

and the people sure do we sure do see a lot of people cheering

when Hamas is doing some pretty horrific stuff.

And so, hey, you got that on one side and you have a

kind of a a country that's much more similar to

Western societies on the other side.

If we can just like linger on that, Steelman,

what do you what do you make of the celebrations

in in uh Gaza after October 7th?

I think it's sickening and incredibly disturbing.

Um I just I guess the way I look at it, I always

and maybe there is a degree of like naive

to this or perhaps it's just that

I just don't want to allow myself to go down

a certain path because I think it leads to such dark outcomes.

But I just always

I I always try to be kind of like against the government for the

people, against the powerful,

sympathetic to the powerless.

Um I think that

look, it's it's sickening.

You see big crowds cheering on, you know, people who have been, you know,

that with these people who have been in captivity for for

uh I think some of them for

over a year and a

Um, I also thought when

Nikki Haley and other Israeli politicians are signing the bombs before they're launched into

Gaza, I found that sickening.

Um, I think there's all types I think like mission

accomplished banners and flying on jet.

I mean, I think all of the I think having Bob Hope specials at

the end of the Persian Gulf War was sickening.

I just think all of it is like horrific.

Um, I just I look at it

and I try to say to myself,

okay, we had one

9/11 in this country

and we all like collectively

we lost our minds

as a society, you know.

Um, we were ready to go bomb whoever the hell our politicians told us

to bomb and we didn't care how many people it killed and we killed

a lot more than than

a lot more than Israel or Hamas

has killed doing it.

Um, and try to I try to think to myself, okay, imagine

being trapped in what is it?

You know, people can call it whatever they want to.

I do think Pat Buchanan and these guys were right to call it a concentration camp.

You're trapped in a fivemile

by 25 mile area

where you cannot leave.

You are stuck there.

You don't have an airport cuz the Israelis bombed it.

You don't have a seapport cuz they won't allow you.

You have no access to trade with the outside world and you're not suffering through a 911.

You're suffering through a thousand 911s.

Your whole life has been the people the the

people in Gaza are

their entire life has been being refugees.

You know what I mean?

Their entire there's generations

of of people have been in this status now.

And so, you know, if my society lost its mind after one 911,

I just have a tough

time like judging the people

who who came up in this environment.

But there's no question it is.

I mean, it's, you know, profoundly disturbing.

But I wonder how much of the indoctrination

is really made uh the software of their

mind permanently anti- peace. Yeah.

like extreify them and that,

you know, it doesn't justify anything,

but it's more uh concerning for the prospects of peace.

Well, I'd say I get your point.

I guess it's an interesting question that I I don't know if any of

us know exactly the answer to, but I would say that like

um you know even after

what was it 80 years of the Soviet Union,

you know, it's like and there there were real debates back then about like

the new communist man

and whether the minds had been so warped of people that they would never

even want they would never even care about these things like

liberty or national identity or independence

and and then yet at the and it was all still there, you know,

it was it was very repressed

and it went underground

and people weren't allowed to talk about it, but they all still had it.

Um, and in fact, I was just listening the other day to this Murray

Rothbard uh speech from like the early '9s,

and he was talking about how

there was something where there was like a like a a camera crew interviewed

like a Chinese family

under uh um like uh real deal Chinese communism.

Um, I believe it was before Ma

Tong died and they were like, uh, they were just saying all these this

crazy shit to the camera.

Like they were like, "Would you rather,

you know, your your sons are like

healthy and live good lives or would you rather they suffer but be loyal

obedience to the state?"

And they were like, "We would rather they be obedient to the state and blah

blah blah and all these things."

And Murray Rothburn was saying he saw this interview

and he uh he he was talking to his friend.

He was, "Oh my god, this is horrible. Like, it's hopeless.

These people's minds have been warped."

And then he was talking to his friend who's like a China expert who

had been there a lot and he was like, "No, they're not."

That's what they say when the cameras are around.

Soon as the cameras go like they're So anyway, I'm just making the point

there that like there

there is like look, even in the situation with Israel and Gaza, specifically Gaza,

not even the West Bank.

Um when you could look at it, when the peace talks were going on,

support for Hamas plummeted.

When the peace talks fell apart,

support for Hamas went way back up.

you know, every time there's an aggressive military campaign,

support for Hamas goes back up.

So, I just think that

like I'm more hopeful than not that like you could get to a place

where like but it it requires

like you you have to like if you do

understand the Ron Paul point about blowback,

the General Mcristel point about insurgent math.

You just realize that it's like you're you're like

you're you're fighting in a way that produces more of the thing that you're fighting.

And so the first step is to stop doing that.

Like your your cure is making the patient more sick.

So stop doing that and then let's see if maybe we could heal.

What about the case against

the the the Douglas Murray case of the death

cults and that a fundamental part of this process Hamas needs to be eliminated.

Well, I mean, first of all, I would just say that and I'm not

I'm not saying this as a fan of democracy.

Um I'm not like a big believer in democracy.

I believe in liberty and I think uh

democracy is often um

uh not in line with liberty.

The Chinese government paid you to say that as well or they that was

that's literally all I had to get out.

But I get to say that what I want the rest of the podcast

but just that I had to No, I'm Well, I don't Well, no.

I mean, my beef with the Chinese government would not be that they don't hold regular elections.

My beef with them would be that they silent

speech, that they that they put people in camps and things like that, the surveillance, that stuff.

Um, I think look,

when you call Israel a democracy,

which I guess is right in the title of his book,

um, and I, you know, full disclosure, I haven't read the book, but I

have I have listened to some

of of his thoughts on this stuff.

I think you run up against a real problem,

which is that the creation of the state of Israel,

even though he tried to walk away from those comments, as Norm Finkelestein

called out Benny Morris

uh for writing in his book 1948,

which is a great book,

his words were, "The Zionist Project always

knew it was going to involve transfer."

That was Benny Morris's words.

Now, when when Finkelestein

was grilling him on this on your podcast,

he kind of said like, "Yeah, but that doesn't mean ethnic cleansing.

That could be voluntary transfer.

or that you know what I mean like but the point is

the Zionist settlers and they all they spoke about this openly

they all knew they had a major problem

which is like well you can't create a Jewish state if it's like

50/50 which is and and in all of Israel it was much less than

50/50 but even in like the the

Israeli portion of the partition recommendation

it was very close to 50/50

now you can't really have a Jewish state with a 50/50

voter base because now you're just kind of in a breeding war for the

next generation and or you know like or like who who turns out the

vote any more than we could hope it it it would be the prospect

right now of making

America an official Republican

state or an official Democrat state.

Well, how are you going to do that, man?

It's like 50/50 between the two.

And so I think what Benny Morris was saying was that they always knew

some of these Arabs are going to have to get moved out of here

so that we could have more of something which ultimately where they got to

like an 8020 which is pretty much what Israel's maintained

uh the whole time.

Now Benny Morris could quarrel about whether that necessarily

meant voluntary but when it happened it wasn't voluntary. Okay.

So like when it actually happened in effect

it involved a massive amount something somewhere between 700 and 800,000

Arabs being forcefully evicted

out of this area.

Now, that's one thing.

You know, a lot of nations are started on some things like that.

I suppose if you just did that

and then you were left with your 8020 split and you go, "But we

have elections from here on out."

I guess you could claim it's a democracy.

Still seems like kind of gaming the Democratic

system a little bit.

You know what I mean?

Like like if I just if I just deported

80% of Democrats and then say, "Look, Republicans win every election."

You might be like, "Yeah, dude, but you didn't exactly get there Democratically.

You got there through force, but forget that.

I'll let that one go

and just say I'll call you a democracy if you just kept being a

democracy like that moving forward.

The real problem is the occupation that starts in

1967 because what look when you've occupied

an area 1967 you can't even really call it an occupation anymore. It's an annexation.

You know, you took these lands.

You have control that you are what the definition

of the government is.

And you could call Hamas the government all you want to, but they're not the sovereigns.

They're not the final decision makers.

Israel is the final decision maker.

Hamas does not meaningfully

in any way decide

the biggest questions about Gaza.

I'm talking before this war, not not even, you know, pre-occtober 7th.

And so the problem Israel has in order to call themselves

a democracy is that there's somewhere

between five and six million people,

less now because they've killed a lot of them, but there's somewhere between five

and six million people who live under Israeli

control who do not have voting rights.

And I just by

any other like reasonable

commonly held standard of democracy,

we would not call that a democracy.

I mean, like, I'm not, again, I'm not even saying this to try to

be inflammatory or try to pick on the Israelis.

There's things about Israeli society I like.

I don't hate the people there. I'm Jewish.

I love Jewish people.

It's not But the fact

is that that's not a democracy.

That's an apartheid state.