 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Monday, April 4th day. I hope everybody was not fooled. Alright, we are now doing an April 4th day show. Next year we'll have an AI do the April 4th day show. I'm going to at least try to do that if I remember. Let's see. Any announcements? I don't really think so. I think we will just jump at the topic. Yeah, for those of you who don't know, I did the debate yesterday with Saifuddin. It was frustrating like most debates, but I wasn't really intending to... I didn't expect to convince anybody, you know, the people on the debate. So hopefully people who listen to it will gain something. I'm a little skeptical because a lot of people who listen to this are Israel-hating libertarians. But maybe you never know who might hear something and do some research and think about it and change their mind. And anyway, they've got fuel. They've got intellectual fuel, intellectual ammunition. If they want to change their mind, it is available to them. Alright, let's see. So what I thought, since I did a lot of prep for the debate yesterday, and because of the formative debate and the time constrictions and the back and forth and all of that, not a huge amount, even though the debate was, I don't know, over three hours, there's stuff I didn't say and certainly stuff I didn't say. I didn't necessarily say it with the expanse that I would have liked to have said it. So I thought I would take up two issues, two issues that are big whenever the issue of Israel-Palestinians come up. One is the nature of Zionism, what is Zionism? Good, bad, mediocre. And the Nakba, the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, the catastrophe, that's what it means, literally, of the Palestinians. So we'll talk about, was there a Nakba, and if there was a Nakba, whose fault was it, and what do you do about it? What do you do about this catastrophe that obviously happened to the Palestinian people? So we'll talk about that, about the Nakba and Zionism. But really what would make this super valuable, and I don't know if there were eight people here to do this, but what would make this super valuable, is if you guys ask questions about these issues, like if you engage in discussions with people that you know about this issue, what comes up? What are the issues that come up? If you listen to any of the debates about this issue, what questions came up in your mind? What were the challenges in your mind? Again, when you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, war, what are the more challenging things? What are the less understandable things? What are the things that you struggle with? And that would make this show so much more valuable if we had a lot of that kind of content. Questions from you about things that you are interested in, confused about, ignorant about, just don't know how to articulate well, that would be great, right? And Ed's never heard of the Nakba, so great. So I'll educate Ed about the Nakba. At the very least, we'll get that. Let's see, what else? Can I have your sculpture? I love it. No, Raphael, you cannot have my sculpture. God, what's up? It is a great sculpture, right? It is a David, not Michelangelo's of course, but a David, it's an original casting in bronze. It's a 19th century piece, French artist, and it is really gorgeous. And it's even better in real life and in three dimensions, just to make you even more jealous, Raphael. But no, I'm not giving up my sculpture. Maybe when I... Anyway, we're not giving it up. What else do I want to say before we get started? We'll talk about our sponsors in a little while. But I think we're good. I think we're good. All right, so we will start with Zionism and then we'll go to the Nakba. So let's talk about Zionism. And one of the things I have to admit is that I feel like, and you guys can correct me, but I feel like I've said all this stuff before. So I apologize, but it does seem like it needs repeating and it does seem like these issues keep coming up and keep coming up. And Christian, when you hear this, this would be a great one to have a Zionism short video and a Nakba video and just let's put them out there and be done with it, right? And then hopefully don't have to cover this topic again. But, you know, please put this up and put up questions and challenges and issues you're not convinced around and we can discuss them. All right, let's... But of course you can ask about anything. I'm just saying this is a good... This is a good... Luca says, thanks for the debate was safe. I look forward to it. No, you don't. Question for you now. Yes, okay, good question. We'll get to it in a minute. All right, so let's talk about Zionism. Let's talk about Zionism. So let me start by saying Zionism is a package deal. Now, what is a package deal? A package deal is when you have a concept and in the file folder under this concept, in what goes into the concept are legitimate things, valid things, basically good things and invalid things, bad things, illegitimate things. And there was no question that Zionism as a concept is a mixed bag. It has good things, which we will talk about. But it certainly has in there, in this concept, in the way it is used and by the people who use it, some pretty bad things. And there's no question that it's hard or maybe impossible to really disentangle this, particularly given that the Zionists don't seem inclined to want to do that. So let's talk about some of the bad things that are in Zionism. Well, in the concept of Zionism is a certain collectivism. There's something about Jews and about, you know, the Jewish identity and that identity has some real meaning influence significance. And that, you know, being, you know, and there's no definition of Jew, of course. Is it a religion? Is it a nation? Is it a tribe? Is it an ethnicity? And, of course, ethnicity, as Ayn Rain called it, is a package deal as well. It's an anti-concept. It doesn't really represent. It doesn't capture anything. Is it a culture when we talk about Judaism? So it's very difficult to define what it means to say one is Jewish, right? And I will, when we talk about the positives, I will give you my view on this. So Zionism is a movement of Jews, for Jews. Nobody else. And it is a movement that basically says, it is a movement in ideology if you will, that basically says the Jews, and this is again in various iterations of the movement, the movement basically says the Jews must go back to their, you know, the land that they occupied 2,000 years ago. So they were kicked out of this land by the Romans in, I don't know, 70 AD or some years after 70 AD, 70 AD after there was a revolt against the Roman Empire. And that is their home. That's where they should go back to. And they have a right to that land, a collective right to that land because they were there 2,000 years ago. They were there first. And since then, by the way, since the Roman Empire ruled over Palestine, they called it Palestine at the time, there has been no nation state in that territory. It was the Romans, then it was the Byzantines, then it was a variety of different Arab Empires, the Abbasids, the Amniads, the Mamluks, I think. And then it was the Ottomans, and then it was the British. But there was never a state there, never a country belonging to a people. And therefore, we are the last people to have a state there, and therefore it's ours. That is collectivist. That is ancient history. That is irrelevant to anything. But that is part of a big part of Zionism. So this is a Jewish movement to bring Jews together in a land, in the land of their ancestors to form a state. And if that was it, then Zionism would be a bad thing, just in and of itself, if that was all of it. And I can understand why people think of Zionism as an ethnocentric, nationalistic, collectivistic, and for some people, certainly religion-based ideology. And that is, for a lot of, unfortunately, Zionists, that's exactly what it is. But Zionism did not start out like that, and I don't think that the main push of Zionism was really that. There were always elements of collectivism. There were some elements of religion, and there was always elements of this ancient land that belongs to us. But that is not true for the founder of the movement, Herzl. Herzl is the man who founded the Zionist movement in the final decade of the 19th century. And Herzl was a completely secularized and, from his perspective, assimilated Jew who lived in Austria. He thought of himself as an Austrian, as a European, as a man even of the Enlightenment. He was a liberal, liberal in the sense back then. And he was, you know, I don't think he considered himself much of a Jew at all, until he was assigned to France where he was assigned to cover the Dreyfus trial. And Dreyfus was a senior officer in the French Army, a well-respected officer in the French Army. You know, Admyad respected, had done a good job. And then Dreyfus was accused of spying for the Germans. I think the trial started in the 1890s. The whole affair only ended in, I think, 1902, 1903, because there was a retrial and then there was a pardon by the President of France. It was a complicated episode. But in the trial it became evident, it became, you know, obvious, that the reason Dreyfus was being persecuted was not because he was guilty, but the reason he was being persecuted and the reason prosecuted and the reason he was being persecuted and the reason he was found guilty was because he was Jewish. You know how Tucker Carlson said about Ben Shapiro the other day, he's a Jew first and an American second. He's got split alliances. Well, that was accusation made against Dreyfus. We can't trust him as a Frenchman because he's a Jew. And his alliance, first of all, is to the Jews. And he would sell us out to the Germans, in this case, even if it's of the Jewish interest. So Hötzel saw this, saw this, the Dreyfus trial, and he came to the conclusion, and a pretty stunning conclusion at the end of the 19th century, that if France, the most liberal of countries in a sense, or maybe second to England, a country that had, you know, egalitarianism and that had dismissed religion, that tried to strive towards viewing people and judging people as individuals, if in France anti-Semitism was alive and well, then anti-Semitism was somehow endemic to Europe of the time and probably of the future. Now, just to be clear, at the same time as this was happening, in Russia, in Ukraine, in Lithuania, in Poland, regular pogroms against the Jews, where Jews were killed, you know, on large scale, raped, butchered, looted, what happening? Jews were fleeing the mass migration of Jews to places like the United States during this period. Direct consequences of the pogroms going on in Eastern Europe during this period. So, but that attitude, well, that's Eastern Europe, they're a little barbarian, they're a little barbaric, that doesn't count, right? Even then, Russia was not a great place. But it's France, it's Western Europe, it's the peak of civilization, and anti-Semitism is here as well. This is vile. I mean, there's literally a publication in Paris, a newspaper called The Anti-Semite, that published vile stories about the Jews, the Rothschild, and published, I think, translations of The Elders of Zion, this booklet about the conspiracy of the Jews to take over the world that was created by the Russians in Odessa, actually, today, Ukraine, as, you know, to justify their anti-Semitism and their hatred of the Jews. So it came to the conclusion, look, the Jews need to leave Europe. The Jews need to get out of here. Anti-Semitism is everywhere. It's only going to get worse according to his analysis. I don't think he really foresaw, the Holocaust, but he foresaw something very similar, and he realized that Europe was heading in that direction. And for that, it really is amazing that he managed to see that. And what he said was, in order for Jews to defend themselves, they must come together as a nation, not a religion, he was completely secular, not a religion, not some collectivistic attitude, but a nation, in order to defend themselves, in order to stand up against the world. And he foresaw such a nation as being a nation that was liberal, again, in the classical liberal sense, a free nation, a nation that wherever it was geographically, the native people would be part of this nation. It wouldn't be just Jews. It wouldn't be a nation that discriminated. It would be a free, liberal, not perfect, he believed in public education and government education and government investments and all kinds of mixed economy stuff. But as good as it got in kind of the late 19th century, early 20th century, in terms of perspective on politics. Originally, he was really serious about an idea of doing this in South America. He thought South America was this vast expanse where there was a lot of open space and he thought it was possible to negotiate a deal with Argentina or Brazil or somewhere around there and establish a Jewish state in South America. And a lot of his writings describe this Jewish state that's going to be in South America. And he talked to kind of the wealthy Jews about the potential of, in a sense, bribing a country. You know how in Honduras now they're trying to set up a free, independent city state within Honduras that will have its own laws and all of that. Well, there's a sense in which also wanted to do this in South America, you know, for Jews. And the principle of, Jews can come there, but it's going to be a kind of a European country. It's going to be a civilized, free, liberal country. When South America turned out not to work and he appealed to the British and there was discussions with the British, the British at some point offered Uganda. And Herzl got all excited about Uganda and it actually came to a vote among the Zionists about whether to go to Uganda or not and it was voted down. But Herzl voted for it because he didn't care about where it was. It was the principle was it was vote. It wasn't about the land. It wasn't about the geography. It wasn't about the holy land. But for some in the Zionist movement, it was. This is why it's a mixed bag of good people and bad people. And a movement that doesn't have a clear unequivocal agenda. Finally, it was obvious that the most successful attempt would probably be to go to Palestine. By that point, there were already significant numbers of Eastern European Jews moving to Palestine and trying to create a, to build, start building agricultural institutions and other kind of institutions in Palestine. So Herzl accepted that. He spent a lot of time trying to lobby the Ottoman Empire to allow for expanded Jewish immigration and ultimately to provide some kind of autonomy or sovereignty to a Jewish state in Palestine. That failed and he died very young. So he never actually saw the development of the state of his dream. He never saw it come to reality at all. Indeed, 50 years after he wrote something like, you know, 50 years from now, you know, I will not see this, you know, the Zionist dream become a reality. But I think that 50 years from now, it will be a reality. And exactly 50 years later after he wrote that, pretty much, yes, it was 1948, Israel came into existence. So he was a bit of a prophet, right? He was very observant and had a keen sense of the future, of the future. So that is a positive strand within Zionism. It's secular. It's liberal in the positive sense of liberal, generally pro-freedom, generally pro-individual rights, not consistently, nothing like what we would want. But in that kind of direction, politically free, treating everybody equal before the law, generally respecting property rights, and free speech and other, of course, individual rights. That is the positive aspect of Zionism. And ultimately, that is what got manifested in the creation of the state of Israel. It's that Zionism that is Israel today. I mean, remember when the demonstrations were happening against the legal reform in Israel? I did a show on that and I said, you know, one of the questions is Israel a Jewish state? Or is Israel a state for Jews? And I think this interpretation of Zionism is a state for Jews. And there is a religious, nationalistic, messianic even interpretation of Zionism that is for a Jewish state. And that is definitely a tension within Israel. And the more Israel becomes a Jewish state in the sense of a religious state and nationalistic state, a state where people don't have equal rights. The state that might discriminate against some because of their religion or because of their national origin or whatever. To that extent, it becomes illegitimate. But as long as it stays a fundamentally free state with equality before the law, that it's only its primary way in which it is Jewish is that is committed to defending Jews around the world. And the primary means by which it defends Jews around the world is that allows them to emigrate there. Then to that extent, it is a legitimate project and a praiseworthy state. A praiseworthy state, a moral state because it is fundamentally protective of the rights of the individual. So one other point I want to emphasize because I see so much distortion of this, certainly came out in the debate yesterday, but I see it distorted all over the place. And that is from the beginning, almost all the different branches of Zionism. One of the other dimensions of which Zionism had branches was political in the sense that there was definitely a socialist branch and there was definitely a more, not a purely capitalist branch, but a more capitalist branch. From the beginning, almost every one of these branches recognized one thing. And that is that if they were going to go to Palestine, they were going to be Arabs there. And every single one of them was committed completely, thoroughly to the fact that whatever state was founded, it would be a state that treated the Arabs as equal citizens, that respected their rights. That is true of the kind of the right-wing Zionists, the ones who were more, if you will, nationalistic and maybe even more a little bit capitalist. And it's true of the socialists, secularists. It's true of the religionists. Maybe it's not true of everyone. Maybe some of the wackos didn't accept that. But everybody, everybody accepted the idea that there would be equal rights in the new state. And they keep saying it, they keep repeating it in writing over and over and over again. Now, this is important because in the 19, I think it started in the early 1990s, maybe even in the 1980s, there was a new generation of Israeli historians. And these historians were very anti-Zionist. They called themselves post-Zionists, maybe because they were inspired by post-modernism. And they started writing, misinterpreting, distorting, perverting, changing the history. And one of the main things that they focused on was this idea that the Zionists were willing, eager to share the land and to share the governance of the land and to provide equal rights to all of its citizens. They started often making up, distorting, taking out of context, perverting different descriptions, writing about this and making the argument that, no, the Zionists always wanted to kick the Arabs out. And this will connect to the Nakba in a minute. They always wanted to kick the, they wanted to transfer the Arabs out of Israel. That was their goal. That's what they wanted to do. Now, there were a bunch of these, probably half a dozen of these historians. The most famous of them today is Benny Morris, who today is presented as this great defender and champion of Israel, but really is not, and he's one of these. Benny Morris changed his mind about being a Po-Zionist and became a Zionist during the Second Intifada when he realized the extent of the hatred and the violence that the Palestinians were committing. He suddenly became pro-Israel. But in becoming pro-Israel, he did not change any of his old books. Indeed, he doubled up on some of his claims. I think I mentioned this before, but a historian I like a lot, if I'm Koresh, Kosh, not Koresh, Kosh, wrote this book, Fabricating Israel's Israeli History, the New Historians, is a confrontation primarily of Benny Morris, but not just Benny Morris. There are a number of them. Probably the most vicious of them, who is still vicious. He teaches at the University of Exeter in England. He left Israel out of disgust. Maybe he was kicked out because people, you know, his research was so sloppy or bad or biased. But this is the thing. They don't care about facts, truth, reality. This is true of so much modern history. You really have to be careful because they're post-moderns. There are no facts, truth, history. History is just bias. You're biased, my bias, we're all biased. So there is no real history. There's only the historian's biased history. Now, you don't have to believe me when I say this, but here is the worst of all of these, but maybe the most famous of all of them, except for Benny Morris, who is famous as a pro-Israel. This is maybe the most famous anti-Israeli historian. His name is Elon Poppe, PPE. As I said, he teaches at Exeter universities. His books have been published on Cambridge University Press. And this is what he writes in the introduction to a history of modern Palestine. Quote, My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the truth when reconstructing past realities. I'm going to read that again just so you get the full weight of this, right? My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the truth when reconstructing past reality. And he puts truth in quotes. He doesn't believe there's truth. He doesn't believe there's facts. And you're reconstructing past realities. There's not one reality. There are many realities. This is pure primacy of consciousness. He continues, I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized, not the colonizer, who sympathizes with the occupied, not the occupyers. You can see hints of intersectionality already there. And this was written, I don't know when it was written, but it was written in, I think, the early 2000s. Let me just see when this was written. 2004, so I was right, early 2000s. And incredibly influential, I would call him a non-historian or an anti-historian. Somebody who emotes. If you generally want a good history of this period of the early settlement of Israel and of the Nakaba and the war of independence, it's pretty detailed, but I think it's probably the best book out there about this period. I would recommend another book by Efrain Kosh, K-A-R-S-H. It's called Palestine Betrayed, Palestine Betrayed. All right, so let's talk about the Nakaba. The Nakaba is the catastrophe. It is the term the Palestinians use, and the pro-Palestinians use, to describe the refugee reality that occurred in 1947, 48, primarily 1948, even into 49, where, depending on who you want to read, but probably 600,000, 600,000 Palestinians left or were kicked out or were evicted from their homes and left to neighboring countries. Although some historians today are claiming that it's close to a million people, but that is, as Efrain Kosh shows in his book, that is a complete fabrication. About 600,000, I think is a realistic number. Some say 700 possible, but 600,000, I've been convinced that that is probably the number. The Palestinians argue that they were evicted, they were thrown out. They were intimidated into leaving, that the Jews basically went village by village, throwing them out, stealing their land, demanding that they leave. So let's put this in a historical context, and then talk about whether this happened and to what extent it happened. Again, I'm not going to give you the whole context, but enough to say that Jews would be coming to Palestine from the late 19th century all the way to 1947 had been buying land, settling that land. Jews during this period built agriculture that succeeded enormously. They built factories. This is a really untold story of Israel's founding is the role of the industrialists, the businessmen, the traders, the people who really established Israel as a dynamic, prosperous economy. And this happened. We hear about the kibbutzim and the agricultural phenomena, but that ultimately is not where the wealth came from. That ultimately is not where most people live. Most people live in the cities, in Haifa, but in the new city created out of nothing in Tel Aviv. Those are the people who created a thriving industrial country. And, you know, they built hospitals. They dried swamps. Palestine was a malaria infested cesspool. It was truly horrible. Horrible place to live, sparsely populated. And the Jews came and they civilized it. They modernized it. They brought, again, Western medicine, hospitals, dried swamps, technology, modern farming, and modern industry. Life expectancy among the Arabs skyrocketed. Infant mortality skyrocketed. Cases of malaria plummeted among the Arabs benefited enormously. Before the Jews arrived in the area, people born in what was called Palestine, typically many of them left. There was a significant exodus of people out. Once the Jews settled in Palestine, economic activity was created. Everything, there were more jobs. There was more, you know, again, diseases and all of that decline. People stayed. And indeed, there was some in migration. Population of the Arabs in Palestine skyrocketed. So, up until 1947, the Jews had come. They had said, look, we'd like to form a Jewish state here. We're willing to give equal rights to the Arabs under this state. All we are asking for is open immigration for Jews to come in. Arabs have 22 other countries they can go to. We're asking that in this piece of land, Jews can come in because of everything I said about anti-Semitism and the need to protect ourselves. So, Arabs didn't like that. They don't want these Jews coming in spite of all the benefits they received. Now, that's not exactly true. I shouldn't say that. I'd say the common person, the average Arab and an average village, actually liked having Jewish neighbors and they respected each other and they were peaceful and they acknowledged the benefits they were getting. But the politicians and the intellectuals among the Palestinians and the Arab nationalists in the rest of the Arab world hated the idea of creating a state for the Jews in Palestine. And fought it. And what that meant was fairly regular, violent actions against Jews. And let me just say, I never said what I consider Jews. You know, Jews are either self-identified people who consider themselves Jews or people who the rest of the world considers Jews. People who the anti-Semites consider Jews. For the purpose of Israel, that's what Jews are, at least from my perspective. Anybody who is discriminated against because he's Jewish even if he doesn't consider himself Jewish should be counted as a Jew and should be allowed free immigration into Israel. So in 1947 the British had a mandate over Palestine. They wanted to leave. They'd had enough. Both the Jews and the Arabs were attacking the British. Both the Jews and the Arabs wanted them to leave. The Arabs wanted to establish an Arab state. The Jews wanted to establish a state for the Jews. The Jews were willing to share. That is to establish two states. The Arabs were not willing to share. They wanted just one state and they wanted to kick out all the Jews that had come there since World War I. They wanted to kick them out. So the British went to the UN and said, UN, you deal with us. The UN sent a commission. The commission reported back and they decided to partition the land into two, a Jewish state or a state for Jews and an Arab state. And the Jews celebrated the Arabs said, no way, no way. The next day they already attacks on buses between Jewish communities. People were killed. They continued to be in the weeks and months following. Ultimately, the Jews in Israel, for example, in a place like Haifa, tried to tell the Arab population in Haifa, which was quite large, look, we want to live together. You know, please lay down your arms. You will be equal citizens in this new state. Don't worry about it. The Arabs said, you got to be kidding. They fought back. There was bloodshed on both sides. Ultimately, the Arabs realized they were going to lose and they left. They left. They got in their cars. They got on boats. They got on trains and they left. They went to Lebanon. They went to Syria. They went to Jordan. They went to Egypt. They went to Europe. They left. And they continued leaving. They started leaving right after the partition plan. By April, when the Jews had clearly won the battle for Haifa, most of the population left then, only a small number of Arabs remained in Haifa. Interestingly, even though there was a large, these Arabs were not all Muslim. There was a very large contingency of Christian Arabs. Even they left. They did not want to be there. They did not want to live in a state for Jews, even though they were told over and over and over again that they were welcome and that they would be given equal rights. And indeed, the ones who stayed were granted equal rights. Same thing happened in Haifa, the largest city, Arab city in Palestine at the time. Same thing happened in the villages, in the Galilee, and everywhere else. They initiated the violence. When they lost, they all went away. And then at some point, they just ran away. Now, they ran away for a number of reasons. One, they were scared. Two, they didn't want to live. They were Jewish leadership. Even though they were in Haifa, the mayor was already Jewish because just over half the population was Jewish and there was a Jewish mayor. It could have been an Arab mayor. It was very close in terms of the size of the population. So they left because they were afraid. They left because they didn't want to live under a Jewish rule. They left because they headed the Jews, many of them. And they left because the Arab nations said over and over and over again that they were going to launch a war as soon as the British left Palestine, which was scheduled for May 1948. And as soon as they came in, they said, we want to clear out the civilians so you don't get hurt. And we're going to win pretty quickly. And once we win, you can come back. Now, I'll just note that not a single Arab country fought in that war in order to establish a Palestinian state. Every single one of them fought in that war in order to grab a piece of Palestine. Every single one. Now, there were announcements in Haifa. There were people going around in cars with megaphone. Arabs, encouraging Arabs to leave, telling them they should leave, telling them that is what the leadership wanted, where there was Palestinian leadership, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hussaini, who was a Nazi, went to Germany in World War II, hung out with Hitler, talked about the final solution, talked about exterminating the Jews in Palestine. He was a full-fledged on sympathizer to the Nazis. He recruited Muslims to fight with the Nazis, I think, in the Balkans. This was the leadership the Palestinians had. Once the Arab armies invaded, again, Palestinians ran away. Or were told to evacuate. Evacuate because the Arab armies wanted a clear field. They wanted just soldiers on the front. Palestinian civilians getting in the way. Now, there are cases. There are cases in which Israel did evict civilians in population centers. In Ramalle, which is near where the international airport is today, these are two Arab towns that had fought, that had, again, were part of the initiation of force against the Jews, rejected partition, rejected the idea of a state for Jews. When they tried to create, they tried to have a ceasefire, the ceasefire fell apart, violence erupted. And then at the end, the Jewish leadership decided, look, this is a strategic location on the path from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We do not want an enemy behind us. We do not want an enemy in our rear. And the populations there were evicted. They were sent away because they posed a threat, a security threat, to the Israeli army at that point, and its ability to defend itself and fight the invading Arab armies. That happened in Ramalle and in Lod. It also happened in several other villages. But it's about, of all the people who left Palestine, 600,000, let's say, it's maybe 10%, at most 15%, and always for what you have to, what you would see as strategically necessary reasons in terms of, this is an enemy at my back, can't afford to do that. All right, so was there a Nakaba, a catastrophe? Yes, but the catastrophe was of the Arabs making. And indeed in 1949, after the war was over, the Palestinians' complaints were not about the Israelis. The Palestinians' complaints were about other Arabs, their own leadership, the Palestinian leadership, and the leadership of the Arab states who fought Israel, who told them to leave and who didn't win but lost. So here we have the Nakaba, the catastrophe, a catastrophe of leadership, Palestinian leadership, that encouraged them to go fight, that encouraged them to initiate force against Israel, the Arab leadership, that encouraged them to leave, that encouraged them, don't worry, we'll bring you back, we'll let you back in, everything's fine. It's a catastrophe, absolutely, but not one that can be blamed on Israel. If they had never initiated force, then they would have never had to leave. Once they initiated force, if they surrendered, handed over their weapons and said, okay, we're willing to live here in a Jewish state, they would have become equal citizens, they would have maintained their property rights, nobody would have taken anything away from them. But they chose to run away, to leave. And, of course, this is a catastrophe of the Arab leaders who decided to invade Israel in May of 1948 and then went on to lose the war and strand hundreds of thousands of people as refugees. Israel after the war in 1949 made an offer to accept the whole of the Gaza Strip, God, and in it at the time were 100,000 refugees and accept them into Israel and accept the Arab population that was there into Israel as part of a peace deal with the Arab states. The Arab states said, no. Indeed, the catastrophe is the unwillingness of the Arab world to live in peace with Israel. To accept this state, this free, relatively liberal, relatively democratic, democratic in the positive sense of elections, state among them because it was free and they were not. There's no Arab state that is free in any sense and because it was a state dominated by Jews. So the catastrophe is an Arab catastrophe. Its fault is the fault of the Arabs. And the Palestinians, if they have any complaints, it should be to their own leadership and to the leadership of the Arab world. A leadership, by the way, that has rejected peace deal after peace deal after peace deal for a long, long time. Could have solved these problems a long time ago. But will not, cannot, whatever. All right, so that is what I have to say about the Nakba. I know there's a bunch of questions you have about this. Let me quickly, I'm going to scan the questions. Okay, we'll get to that. Okay, I'm going to take this question that came in late. I will do the others in a minute, but in a minute. But let's do this one because it's directly related to the Nakba. Q2 Santos says, the land partitioned by the UN between the Jews and the Palestinians, haven't those lands had ownership before the Israeli state? If it did, what about the property rights of those owners? So good question. So the land, like all states, was divided into two portions. There was land that was owned by private citizens and there was land that was owned by the state. Before the partition plan, it was basically held by the British mandate. Before that, it was the Ottomans. Before that, it was the whatever empire ruled over there. Just like in the United States, 75% of all the land Western than Mississippi is publicly owned publicly, owned by the government, owned in quotation marks. The same is true of the pre-partition land in Palestine. Much of the private land, most of the private land was owned by Arabs. A minority of the private land was owned by Jews. But the idea was that once a state was created, that nobody would lose their private property ownership. That the states, the Jewish state and the case of the Jewish state, the Palestinian state and the state of the Palestinian state, would then own, in quotation marks, the land that was so-called publicly owned. And a private land would be kept private. And that would be true of the Jews who landed up in the Palestinian state because the borders were drawn such that some Jews would be in the Palestinian state. And that would be true of the Arabs in the Jewish state. And just to be clear, the Jews were quite happy with this. They were quite happy with respecting the private property rights of those Arabs who became citizens of the Jewish state. Now, there is a question of what happens to property rights when you initiate force and then you run away. And one can make an argument that you lose those rights. You lose those rights because you initiate force. What about families who never initiated force and who ran away? Well, to the extent that they supported the people who did initiate force, I think they're still guilty and therefore lose their property rights. There is one category though that is of concern. And that is, let's say there was a family who objected to the initiation of force for whatever reason ran away because they were scared because there were issues. Maybe they were thrown out by the Israelis. Then I'd say they have a legitimate case to sue the Israeli government to demand at the very least compensation for the land that they lost. Now, Israel refuses to allow all the refugees to come back. Now, there's a lot of reasons for that among others because there's no definition of who these refugees are. The numbers have grown dramatically. I mean, it's not clear that all of them are actually refugees from Palestine. And it's many generations have gone by. There is a statute of limitations on these things. But also because these people are clearly hostile to Israel and why would you let a massive 5 million to 6 million people today population come into your state who are vehemently, violently opposed to its very existence. So Israel is completely justified in not allowing them back. So basically, Israeli government confiscated all the land that was held before. And unfortunately, most land in Israel today is held in their public trust just like it is in many countries like Singapore and others where almost all the land is, quote, publicly owned or leased. Leased to private owners only a little fraction of it is allowed to be sold. That is something to condemn Israel for. 90% of all the land I think in Israel is owned by the government. That should not happen. All of that land should be auctioned off and sold, all of it. To the highest bidder, including Arabs and Jews, and anybody else who wants to participate. So property rights existed. By the way, the Palestinians said in our state there will be no Jews. And indeed, when the Judean army captured a series of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the civilians they surrendered, they were all executed. They were all killed by the Judean army. Because Jews cannot live in an Arab state. Or at least not in the numbers that they were living by 1948-49. All right. Lots of questions. It's good. We've got $100 questions. So the $100, we'll go to $50. We've got $200 questions. Then we'll go to $50. Then we'll go to $20 questions. And then we'll shift to all the other questions. And we'll see how long all this takes us. All right. We'll start with Hapa Campbell. Oh, before we do that. Before we do that. We have two sponsors for the Iran Book Show. Three sponsors. ExpressVPN. You can get three months extra if you go to ExpressVPN.com. Slash, you're on a book. The link is below. The Iran Institute. The Iran Institute is encouraging serious students of objectivism, whether they're technically students or they just study objectivism. The Iran Institute is encouraging them to apply for scholarships to attend OKON. OKON 2024, the conference is in Anaheim, California. It's a great event. It's from June 13th to 18th. You can meet up with objectivist intellectuals. You can hang out with old friends, make new friends. It's a great little kind of goat's-goat type atmosphere for six days. You can be in university, high school, or just studying ignorance, philosophy on your own. You can be eligible for scholarship including travel expenses. So please apply. Applications are being taken until April 15th at midnight. And you can do that at ironman.org. Slash, start here. We have a new sponsor. And that sponsor is Alex Epstein. Alex is the producer, the creator of Energy Talking Points and of Alex AI, which is a feature of Energy Talking Points. Alex AI is an artificial intelligence bot, what's it called? The chat box that actually is trained on Alex's energy knowledge and conveys that knowledge if you ask it a question as if it's Alex. This is Alex AI today is being used by CEOs and members of Congress, maybe even some governors, I don't know. And yeah, it's a terrific application. And you can get Energy Talking Points for free and you can subscribe to Alex AI. So please go check it out. AlexEpstein.substack.com. AlexEpstein.substack.com. All right. Thank you to the sponsors. All right. Hopper Campbell. Prager University posted civilization declines when men are emasculated. Is there any truth to this or perhaps civilization declines when masculinity is defined as being a warrior? It's not like Hamas was emasculated. They probably think of themselves as macho. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's right, but I also don't think Prager University has any concept of what the concept of masculinity actually means. I mean, think about it. Civilization was rebuilt by the Renaissance. The Renaissance was some of the leading figures in the Renaissance were Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, all three probably gay. Pretty sure about Leonardo. Pretty sure about Michelangelo. Not that sure about Raphael, but likely. Maybe even Donatello, Hotetel. But they weren't exactly what I think Prager University means by masculine. You know, the barbarians who sacked Rome were certainly masculine in the Prager University definition of it. You know, were the Nazis masculine or feminine? You know, the whole thing is stupid, right? History is determined by ideas. History is determined by ideas. Was the Enlightenment a project of masculinity? I mean, there's a sense in which, yes, I think Thomas Jefferson and even Diderot and Voltaire and, you know, John Locke, I think of them as masculine, but I'm not sure Prager University does. They're men of the mind. Are men of the mind considered masculine? I'm not sure how good they were at chopping wood. So, no. I mean, again, what shapes history is ideas. Ideas have an impact on our perspective on masculinity and femininity. And if you have the right perspective on masculinity, then yes, Michelangelo, Leonardo were very masculine. But you have to have the right perspective on it. And I don't think Prager University does. And so their definition of masculinity is anti-civilization and is destructive to civilization because it's a materialist definition of masculinity. It's when men were men and women were women and put it in their plates. But the reality is that man is a rational animal. That is the primary feature. And a masculine man is a man of the mind. Who can act in reality? Michelangelo certainly could act in reality. He could take one of those slabs of marble and turn them into something amazing. So, what Prager and what most of them don't understand is the wall of the mind. Michael. Amazing how many friends I've lost since October 7th. People I had been friendly with for decades just cut ties over my pro-Israel stance. It makes me cynical. Not a shred of decency or an ounce of integrity in most people if they're willing to cut off you off so easily. Well, I wouldn't see it that way. I'd say there's not a shred of integrity or decency in anybody. Anybody who thought... Anybody who spoke Hamas after October 7th. So, good riddance. Good riddance, I would say. They are... They were never your friends. They were never our value. If this is how irrational, this is how nihilistic they really are. So, it's not that they're willing to cut off. You should have been the one to cut them off. I wouldn't be friendly with anybody who, you know, in a sense justified, rationalized, explained away October 7th. So, yeah, but it is pathetic that that is the world in which we live with our people like that. Kellan, I heard a perspective on Nietzsche where in ancient Greece the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. And philosophy, reason, logic, and argument are denigrated concept used by the weak to take power. Thoughts. Yeah, I don't know about ancient Greeks. Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that Nietzsche viewed the strong, can do what they want, the weak suffer what they must. You know, I definitely think that he viewed emotion well as a primary and was not favoredly declined to reason. This is the big disagreement between him. But, I mean, the main source of the disagreement between him and Nain Rand, he didn't present a positive moral theory. He resented Christianity, which is good. He resented altruism, which is good, but had no, nothing as an alternative. Nothing as an alternative. A zero sum world in which some men live by exploiting others. But not a positive moral code that is universal. And no connection of that moral code to reason. That is Nain Rand's great innovation. So I think that is right in terms of viewing philosophy, logic and reason as signs of weakness. But I'm not a Nietzsche expert. So that's as far as I'll go, because I'm not an expert. Thank you, Kellan. $50, that's very, very generous. Adam, was it a mistake to form Israel on this land? Would they have thrived more in South America? Seems driven by religion to be there versus purely for safety from persecution. By now, you would be thinking God would have appinned on whose land it belonged to. Yeah, no kidding. Look, I don't think there would have been any safer anywhere else. Nobody was going to give them land in South America. Africa was not exactly going to embrace them. African culture was not necessarily a culture that would embrace them. If they were in Uganda, they'd be fighting Africans, the Amin or whoever. I don't know that it was anywhere better. I don't think there was anywhere better. I mean, maybe South America, if anybody was willing to give them the land. But nobody was. And only, but even then, I mean, would anti-Semitism not arisen? Would envy not have arisen about this strong, successful Jewish state over there? Would people have emigrated as Jews to South America? I mean, the reality is that one of the reasons it was easy for Jews to emigrate to Israel was because they had some link. I mean, Jews, when they pray, even those who don't pray, know this. At the end of the pray is always, say, next year in Jerusalem. There was always this tie to this particular piece of land. So the particular piece of land made sense. And in comparison to everywhere else, it is a piece of land that was relatively uninhabited, relatively undeveloped, and where Jews could make a big difference. I don't think, at least from the perspective of the Jews, that religion plays a big deal in it, although it's becoming worse because these messianic Jews are playing a big, big role. And for the Arabs, at least in the 47, 48, it wasn't about religion. It was about... I don't know what it was about. Now, Arab nationalism was about being an Arab more than it was about religion. Although there was always, among the Arabs, an element of religion to it. Anything else I wanted to say? No, I mean, I had a thought earlier, but it disappeared. So it's gone. All right, thank you, Adam. That was another $50 question. So Hopper 100, Michael 100, Katelyn 100, Katelyn 50, Adam 50, you guys are great. Really, really appreciate that. And that's a big chunk of... That's half of what we've raised so far, so really appreciate it. All right, Liam, now we're going to do a bunch of $20 questions. Thank you. How do you deal with someone when reason and evidence don't penetrate their mind? I mean, at the end of the day, you disengage unless you have to deal with them. You disengage. There's no point in wasting your time with somebody who, where reason and evidence don't penetrate. What are you doing? What are you doing? What's the point? By the way, if you have questions for me, if you have challenges for me, if you think I'm wrong on something, anything like that, the super chat is available, ask a question, I answer them all. You want to make a comment, make it in the super chat? I am happy to answer all of those things, all of those things. James, is evil only successful early? It can only go as far as a Blitzkrieg or an October 7th. It can never sustain winning campaigns. True, but look, Christianity sustained itself for 2,000 years. So it can sustain itself for a long time, a long time. So yes, in the face of even semi-good, in the face of even a little bit of goodness, evil is not sustained for a very long time. It falls apart, it cannot win. Ian, the one issue that comes up a lot that actually has some validity is the settlement issue and how Israel seems to tolerate bad behavior by Israelis towards Arabs in the West Bank. I think that's right. I think that is a legitimate issue. I think that Israel is way too tolerant of violent behavior by settlers, though when it gets particularly bad, those settlers will go to jail for a very long time. It's not completely acceptable. But there is an issue of settlements and there is too much tolerance. And look, I view there are three types of settlements, three types of settlements in the West Bank. One is Jews have gone, bought land from Arabs and built a community on it. Nothing wrong with that. It's 100% property rights, there's no issues, there's no problems, and the extent to which the Arabs attack them, that's horrible. The problem with that is that if an Arab is known to have sold land to a Jew in the West Bank, they are murdered, they're killed. So very few Arabs are willing to sell their land to Jews. Right now, nobody does. They used to, but they don't anymore because of threat of violence. Now that is fundamentally immoral and one has to condemn the Arabs for doing that. But if somebody buys land, builds a settlement on that land, it's theirs, there's nothing to complain about. Second case, a lot of the land on the West Bank was part of Jordan. Again, government owned, if you will. And Israel inherited that when Jordan initiated force against Israel in 1967 and Israel conquered the West Bank in a war of self-defense. As such, the Israeli government can do with that land whatever it wants. Now the question is, does the Israeli government treat Arabs and Jews equally in the dispossession of that land? If Arabs want to start a settlement on that land, can they? And it turns out that they can. There was an example that I read recently about a Palestinian in the West Bank who built a new town, a new city. You know, he had to go through the whole bureaucracy of getting permits and getting land and getting all this, but he built it. He created it, and it's there. But some of that land is given to settlements. And again, you can't argue that's illegitimate to the extent that it's transferred from public ownership to private ownership, which is a good thing, not a bad thing. But to the extent that it discriminates in the selling of the land to Jews versus Arabs, that's bad. The third type of settlement is a settlement where the Israeli government steals land, confiscates land from Arabs to form a settlement, and that is illegitimate. It's wrong. The settlement should be disbanded, and Arab owners should be compensated for that land. So in some cases, that's unequivocal. It's also true that some settlements are settled in order to establish certain security barriers along the Jordan River, for example, Jordan Valley, or in certain strategic areas in the West Bank. Others are settled for, I don't know, religious biblical historical reasons. One is good, one is bad. So even with the settlements, one has to be very careful in differentiating what's legitimate and what is illegitimate. I didn't want to say this because it relates to this question about is Israel a religious country. Israel is amazingly secular. Indeed, I couldn't believe how religious America was when I came here, how religious Americans are when I came here, because my experience of Israel was a people who are basically atheists, and all my friends were, the neighborhood, in the school, religion never came up. I mean, it was something you did for tradition's sake, but not out of belief. Not out of belief. Shahzad, how would the average Palestinian-American reactive Hamas completely surrendered? God, I don't even know. I don't know. They'd be depressed. They'd be upset. They'd blame Israel. I don't know. I mean, the average Palestinian-American. I think they'd be relieved at the end of the day, thinking about it. I think they'd basically be relieved. How about a West Bank settlement short video? This is the subject that comes up a lot in discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'm usually told that this is Israel at its worst racist, oppressive, et cetera. I mean, there are many people on the sediments, and maybe Christian can splice together my previous answer on this one. There are many people in the sediments who are some of Israel's worst. They are these messianic Jews. They are all about religion. They are racists. They do discriminate against Arabs. It's also true that they've also experienced some of the most horrific attacks by Arab terrorists than one can imagine, where Arabs have entered people's homes and slit people's throats, including children. You saw what happened on October 7th. People in the West Bank dread that every day. So it's not a clear-cut thing. So the sediments are a mixed bag. But again, at the end of the day, the more responsibility for their existence, really, is on the Palestinians. If they'd agreed that the many attempts to create a Palestinian state in that territory, there would be no sediments there today. If they were peaceful and had not launched a second interfata, there would be a lot less sediments. There would be no wall. There would be no barriers. There would be no checkpoints. All the things that Palestinians complain about constantly are their own making. I mean, when I lived in Israel, Palestinians crossed over into Israel all the time. There were no walls. There were no checkpoints. There were no barriers. They came. They lived in Israel. And they worked, took the money home. They slept in Israel. They came from Gaza. They came from the West Bank. And there was no issue. But once they started blowing up buses and blowing up cafes and doing suicide bombings and killing people discriminately, yeah, you have to isolate them. You have to build walls. You can't let them just come into Israel freely. You have to set up barriers and roadblocks. That's their fault. If they were committed to peace, none of that would exist. None of it. The challenge you always come to is the epistemology of emotionalism. I can cite history and moral arguments, but it's dismissed as supporting genocide. Hard to win an emotional argument using reason of fact. Yeah, so don't argue, right? Walk away. If all they're doing is emoting, then just walk away. Because there's no point. You're wasting your time. You're wasting your energy on people who don't deserve it. And it's not going to have any impact on them. Ian, some people think that designers were given multiple possible places to find a home for the Jews, and they turned them down for religious reasons. I know of one that was turned down. Uganda, are there other real examples? No, there are no other real examples. None whatsoever. I mean, at some point Stalin wanted to do something. And I think he did, even within Russia, but who wanted to live in the Stalin's regime? But no, there were no serious attempts. No serious offers, except for Uganda. And nobody really knows how serious that was. If the designers had said yes, would the British have followed through? They didn't exactly follow through in Palestine, not completely. They kept reneging. They kept changing their minds. So I doubt they would have followed through it in Uganda. Particularly once the Ugandans would have objected. Or whatever tribes were there would have objected. That Durban in New York City, is New York City still the greatest city in the world? Or have you been to more impressive cities? Well, I would have said Hong Kong was more impressive before the Chinese took it over. In some respects, Shanghai is more impressive just because of the bold architecture that they have. But overall, given the state of the world, I'd say it's still New York. I don't think anything really competes with it. The energy, the dynamism, the skyscrapers, the Wall Street, the amount of productive talent, productive ability in one place. I don't think anywhere in the world matches it. I mean, again, Hong Kong used to, but not anymore. Joe, would the world be better off today if Reagan had been a trophy marketer and not forced the plaza cord? It's been argued that Reagan was not a trophy marketer, but an economic nationalist. I mean, I don't think Reagan was a trophy marketer. He was far, far more trophy marketer. He did a lot of bad things. He did a bad things in foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, but he did a lot of bad things domestically. He had auto quotas from the Japanese. So he intervened with trade. He allowed the Justice Department to go nuts in terms of going after Wall Street. His administration was unbelievably anti-Wall Street. Rudolf Gianniani was in the Southern District of New York, but this is federal, right? Not a New York attorney. He was a federal attorney going after Wall Street on federal crimes. It was awful. He didn't deregulate anywhere near enough. Most of the deregulation happened under Jimmy Carter. So Reagan was a wimp when it came to domestic policy and when it came to foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. So yes, things would have been a lot, lot, lot better today if Reagan was a trophy marketer and if he had not handed over the Republican Party to the religious right, which he did. That was better than Reagan. No question. More consistent, more aggressive, more, you know, and did more. Of course, the UK was in much worse shape than America was, but still, she did more. So I wish Reagan had lived up to his rhetoric even a little bit. If he'd lived up to his rhetoric more, the world would be a much better place. Now, in comparison to every politician in the world today, Reagan is a saint, right? So I'd vote of Reagan over anybody in either party like that, right? So, but he was really bad in many respects, many, many respects. Religion was not embedded in the Republican Party before Reagan. Reagan brought the moral majority right into the heart. Indeed, the religious, the evangelicals, the moral majority types, voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. And he betrayed them, they felt, and that's why, and Reagan courted them and brought them straight into the Republican Party. Nixon had started the Southern strategy, which was the beginning of that, but Reagan institutionalized it. Ayn Rand was absolutely right in condemning Reagan for doing that. Richard Witt, please excuse me if I whine and moan, but could we have less microphone and more urine? That thing takes up too much space, carry on. I've been told it looks really cool. It's a professional mic and you can see me, you can't see a piece of my shoulder. I think you'll do okay without my shoulder. I think the microphone is staying. I could lower it a little bit, but everybody tells me it's kind of cool. But if you, you know, I'm curious if others other than Richard agree, if people agree with Richard, let me know. And I, you know, we could definitely lower it and you can, you can see more of the shoulder. Thank you, Richard. I appreciate input. Even when I disagree, I appreciate input. I know you're trying to make the show better, so I appreciate that. Larry, what aspects of Christianity altruism would you especially like to see challenged in fiction today? And can you give us some examples? I don't have any examples. What would I like to see challenged? I'd like to see original sin, original sin, definitely. Every aspect of altruism, but original sin in Christianity, the negative consequences of Christianity towards sex. And then of course, altruism, self-sacrifice, every aspect of self-sacrifice. The idea of sacrifice as a moral ideal, I'd like to see that challenged. And that of course would go both to altruism and to Christianity, because that is the way altruism got it. It's from Christianity. So if you read Augustine, Augustine, Augustine, Augustine. Yeah, everything he wrote about should be challenged, but he's a big original sin predestination, original sin and predestination. Horrible, no free will really in Augustine. And yes, in every aspect of self-sacrifice and altruism. Alright. Nikofo. A speak at my college basically argued international law makes war in Gaza impossible. That is illegal. Can international law be more practical? No, international law is a bogus concept. You can't have a law that cannot be enforced. There is no enforcement mechanism. In other words, there has to be force. There has to be violence. There has to be an entity that can use violence to enforce the law, i.e., the use of retaliatory force. Otherwise, the law is impotent. It's meaningless if there's nothing to stand behind it. So international law is a bogus concept. Wes, thank you for the sticker. Really, really appreciate it. $50. That's amazing. Jack, thank you for the sticker. Let's see how far we can go back. Whoops, I know there were a bunch of you with stickers. Thank you for everybody who did a sticker today. Really appreciate it. Michael, can you not reach what's in front of you until you let go of what's behind you? No, you can do both. No, I don't think that's right. You can both hold on to what's behind you and go for what's next. And indeed, sometimes what's next is based on what you've already done, so what's behind you. Luca, thanks for the debate. Safe. I look forward to it. Question for now. Can you explain the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism? Yes, I mean anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews, all Jews, for the fact that they are Jews. It constitutes all kinds of attitudes. Jews, money, grubbing, they try to control the world. There's a lot of things. You can, I think, legitimately be anti-Zionism. You know, you can say, I don't believe that Jews should have their own state. I think that's collectivistic. I think that's nationalistic. I think that's ethno and ethno state and that's wrong. And therefore I am against Zionism and not be anti-Semitic. However, I think most, or maybe not most, but a lot of anti-Zionists, a lot of people who today expressed anti-Zionist views are indeed anti-Semitic. Are indeed anti-Semitic. You know, I'm not anti-Zionist, but I'm not pro-Zionist. It's just like I don't really consider myself a Jew unless, like, I like what Iron Man says, unless facing anti-Semitism. I don't think myself a Jewish. I don't celebrate a single Jewish holiday. I don't know when the holidays are even on, which is often an embarrassment for my family. I don't do anything Jewish, right? It's in the culture of how I grew up. It's genetically, I'm related to people who are Jews. And in the face of anti-Semitism, yeah, I'll stand up against it, but I'm not Jewish. And I'm not a Zionist, right? I left Israel. And, but I understand why Zionism is necessary in the flawed world in which we live. In a lesbian capitalist, individualistic world, there would be no Zionism. There would be no need for the state of Israel. Those of you who wonder why I talk about Israel so much, I guess there are three reasons. Three reasons. One, it's interesting. I find it interesting. I talk here on this show about things that I find interesting. Two, you find it interesting. You're here. If you didn't find it interesting, you wouldn't be here. I get good viewership on shows that I do about Israel. A lot of people are interested, a lot of people. Three, I think it's important. I think what happens to Israel is a reflection of what's going to happen in the western civilization. I think the battle for Israel is the battle for western civilization. The extent to which Israel, Israel at the forefront of that battle, capitulates. It is the capitulation of western civilization. So your future, whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, is dependent on what happens in Israel and is reflected in what happens in Israel. And it's why you care. It's why you're here all the time. So, yeah, I am here because I care, you care, and it's important. That's why I talk about Israel all the time. And if you don't care, don't listen. It's very simple. I don't know why my audience can't be more egoistic. Why they are so self-sacrificial and like to whip themselves into a frenzy. All right, Clark says, I recently discovered Emmanuel Kant wasn't even German. He was Scottish and just lived in Germany. I didn't know that. Do we hold that against them? Do we hold the forum? Do we care? Does it matter? I don't think so. Hop up. Is the conflict between good and evil or knowledge and ignorance? Oh, definitely good and evil. Good and evil. Who thinks it's knowledge and ignorance? There are people who think that, but I don't think that's true. It's not the case that the precursor to knowledge is reason, rationality. And that's the essence of good. The precursor to ignorance is a particular kind of ignorance is evasion and lack of engagement. And that is evil. It's between the rational and the irrational. It's not about knowledge or lack of knowledge. Because if you're rational, you'll get the knowledge. What do you say to they stole our land? Well, it wasn't stolen. You gave it up. You left. You initiated force. And therefore it was taken. Those who initiate force have no basis on which to argue for rights. Once you initiate force, you've given up any claim you have to property and to rights. Don't initiate force. So there was no land stolen. There was force initiated. There was a war lost and land taken in that context. Simon, recently watched the episode with you and Mark Pellegrino. You mentioned maybe releasing the taped confusion papers with Lena Peacock, have you? No, and I probably will never do that. It's not up to me. It's the Institute and there are other people involved, other people on the tapes. Yeah, I doubt it'll ever happen. It'll be in the archives. Students of Objectivism will be able to. Students in the Inran University might be able to listen to them, but I doubt that they'll ever be actually released. Although I wouldn't mind. If I were released, I think some people would mind. Some people wouldn't want it. Why are Rand's ideas often confused with Nietzsche? Because they both rejected Christianity and its philosophical basis, and mainly because they both rejected altruism, and they both had a certain heroic sense of what human beings were possible, was possible for human beings. But that's it. Beyond that, the differences were pretty dramatic, pretty dramatic. Michael, do you like Noah Tishby? Would you have on for an interview? I just finished a book, actually. I thought it was very good. I mean, there's definitely a nationalist collectivist slant that she has. There's no question about that. But she's smart, she's articulate, and she's good. Yeah, I would have on the show. It's somebody I've considered having on. But again, I'm not going to agree with everything she says. I'm certainly not going to agree with her collectivism. All right, let's see. Are you a fan of Israeli banned subliminal? I don't know anything about the Israeli banned subliminal, so I don't know. Liam, is Islam the largest suicidal death cult ever created? I mean, it's unique in that they commit suicide and kill people. Yeah, probably, but I wouldn't say Islam is the death cult. A certain segment within Islam is the death cult. It's not all of Islam. Most Muslims do not commit suicide. Most Muslims do not engage in violence. Most Muslims do not kill other people. So I wouldn't paint it with such a broad brush. That Duda Bunny says, breaking news, Trump announced Chris Christie will be his choice for VP in his 2024 campaign. I guess it's April Fool's Day. Thank you, Duda Bunny. Matt, which has worst root ideas, Islam or Christianity? I actually think Christianity has worse root ideas. The one good thing about Christianity is that it has been modernized. It accepted the influence of the Enlightenment. It accepted the influence of the Renaissance. It was watered down. It was changed. It adapted. It was flexible. Maybe that's ultimately Christianity's strength is its flexibility. It dogma changes constantly. But at root ideas, I can't think of a worse ideology than Christianity. There are many respects in which Islam is much better. Islam is a religion of self-esteem in a sense of confidence. It's not a self-esteem confidence. It's a confident religion. It's a religion of traders. It's much more sympathetic to wealth. It's much more sympathetic to trade. It's a religion of warriors, successful ones. Christianity became a religion of warriors. It was an attitude. But the root of Christianity is meekness. It's subservient. That's all that's in Islam. At the end of the day, my answer is they're both equally bad. The idea that Muslims, the key to Islam is submission. That they pray on their knees five times a day. There are so many horrible things about Islam. Islam and Christianity both bad. I don't know who's worse. Both bad. And certainly modern Islam is much worse than modern Christianity. It's not even close. Not even close. And the Palestinians in the West Bank say they can be arrested and held for an indeterminate amount of time unlike Jewish settlers. Is that true? If so, why aren't being treated equally? They're not treated equally because they're not citizens. They are under military occupation. And the rules for people under military occupation are very different than rules for citizens. The settlers are citizens of the state of Israel and they have full rights as citizens. The Arabs in the West Bank, the Arabs in Israel are treated as citizens. They have full rights. But the Arabs in the West Bank are not citizens. And again, they're under military occupation and the rules under military occupation are much more stringent. If Israel annexed the West Bank, they would all become citizens and then Israel would have to treat them under that law. But they don't want to because they need, if you will, special emergency because of the extent of violence and the extent of terrorism that comes out of the West Bank. Israel in a sense is still in a state of war with the West Bank. You can view it that way. Mines fan, what do you think about the idea of Judaism being an ethno-religion? I don't know what that even means. I mean, I don't think Judaism is an ethno-religion. It's not a religion per se. It's not a ethnicity because if this doesn't really exist, it's not a race. Maybe it's a nationality. It's some genetic relation. But essentially, I think Judaism is a belonging to the same nation, to the same historical tribe. That's what it means. And that's how the world views it. Again, most Jews, the secular, the closest majority of Jews are atheists. They're not religious. Stav, when will the scholarship decisions for Ocon be released? I don't know. I have no idea. You have to ask somebody at the institute. Andrew, thanks for fighting the good fight. What were the key takeaways or insights from the debate yesterday? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Anarchists are hopeless. Libertarians are hopeless. We've got a long, long, long, long fight and battle ahead of us. So it's just very, very difficult to deal with people who are dogmatic and refuse to think. And you see that throughout the libertarian movement. It's just pathetic how bad the libertarian movement is. Really is. Paulo-Zuze, how's your back? I've seen a Facebook show by T-Bison. My back's okay. Comes and goes, but it's okay. It's much better than it used to be. So I'm in much better shape than I was. That Dutubani thoughts on Rabbi Schmurli. He's a clown. I don't know much about him, but he just seems unserious and clownish and ridiculous, and I'm not sure what the point is. Andy, somewhere related, how do rights apply to indigenous tribes that have no conception of property rights, i.e., they have no way to sell land, they don't understand trade? Does that matter? I mean, there's a sense in which you have to treat them like children, because they are, conceptually. And so, yeah, I mean, you cannot, you can't treat them as animals. You can't treat them with, you know, you can't just use arbitrary force upon them. But there's a sense in which you have to educate them about these concepts and try to get them to understand these concepts and try to bring them around to that and facilitate that. It's very hard, as the experience with the indigenous people has been all around the world. But I think that's what you need to do. You don't want to just come in with violence. What does that make you? And just take it from them. You can. You have the superior force. You want to at least find ways for them to understand these ideas and brace them and engage with them. Now, we live in a world where there are no indigenous people anymore, so it's less of an issue today, more of an issue of just reflecting back on history. Why isn't, this is Raphael, why isn't mutual aid societies a big topic in objectivism? Is this a good alternative to welfare state? Or should we win selfishness argument without focusing on helping others to avoid contradictions? No, I have no problem with focusing on it. I don't think, I think it's not a big deal because it's not clear if there would be mutual aid societies today. It's not clear what would happen in an advanced rich society like ours. Would there be mutual aid societies? Would there be charity? Would there be insurance? Would we all just be so rich it wouldn't matter? So I don't think that particular thing, it's interesting in the sense of showing that in the 19th century a solution to the problem of poverty evolved. But you're not going to win the argument based on that. Your argument has to be a moral argument. And the particulars of how exactly the issue of poverty is solved in the future are not the same as they were in the past. And I don't think we should get stuck on any particular way in which it was solved. Let the market solve it. You know, people would voluntarily figure out how to do it. All right, let's see. Shabbat, if the Abrahamic religions originally claimed that they God lived on the moon instead of another dimension, would they have dissolved after Neil Armstrong said there's nobody here when he landed on the moon? No, of course not. They would have said God just moved to somewhere else and he lived somewhere else. I mean, you're not going to diffuse religion that easily. Shabbat, as you know. Maximus, should IDF soldiers be making satirical TikTok videos? Won't it look bad for them from an international community? Should there be consequences? They probably should not. It is a big down in discipline, but it's also very hard to enforce discipline in conditions like that. They all have iPhones. And Israeli army is not a particularly rigorous disciplinarian. And I like it that way and I think it's success as a result of that. Let them enjoy their TikTok videos. And if the world doesn't get it, if the world is upset by it, then the right attitude is it's the world's problem. I'm not a fan of these TikTok videos that the soldiers are making. But I also don't think it's the end of the world and I don't think we should apologize for them. Andy, is there any secular pro-individual rights groups within Islam among Arabs? I thought the young Turks in the Ottoman Empire were such a group. Have they gone extinct? I mean, there's a secular movement within Turkey that's anti-Islamist. They may not call themselves the young Turks, but they're there. They won quite a few elections this weekend. So they are strong in Turkey. The secular political party there. And there are other groups in various parts of the Arab world and have been. Pro-individual rights is a big leap. Most of the secular groups, unfortunately, in the past in the Arab world, were fascist. And even the young Turks weren't exactly pro-individual rights far from consistently. Outside the Arab world, in the Western world, there are Muslims who are trying to reform Islam and secularize it. I think that's the most you get. Harper Campbell, the context of that is on Twitter threads. I engage in arguments as practice for finding my understanding and persuasion and to win the onlookers. I disengage, but that's challenging when advocating. Yeah, I agree. I'm not saying don't engage, but if you're engaging, then know why you're engaging. Know what the purpose is and move on when it's time to move on. Andy, have you seen American conspiracy? Refers to October surprise Iran contra any comments? No, but the Iran contra is a real thing. And a lot of what happened around then, around the embassy, around the hostages, around alms to Iran and all of that was real and bad. I don't think I've seen American conspiracy. If I had, it was a long time ago, but there certainly was a conspiracy. No question about that. Matt says, why was Judaism being typically better than Christianity and Islam? I think because two things. One, it was always more this worldly than Christianity and less submissive than Islam. And then because it was more this worldly, it was more open to the influence of Aristotle, primarily through Mamanides, but even in the Talmud and in the, and so the other books that Jewish scholars wrote. There's definitely an influence of the Greeks and the Romans and of kind of Greek philosophy and in Mamanides, a huge influence of Aristotle. Whereas Christianity was Neoplatonic, was influenced by Plato from the beginning. It was very, very Platonist. Judaism was more Aristotelian and more this worldly as a consequence. But even the Old Testament, the Old Testament is just more real, more this worldly, more about human life and happiness on this world than is Christianity, which has always been about the rejection of knowledge, about rejection of this world. I think that's why. There's no afterlife, for example, in Judaism. So there's no altruism with the motivation to all, but you'll get rewarded in afterlife. There's just that doesn't exist. It's this world. This is it. This is all you have, which is a huge advantage from a life perspective. All right, guys. Thank you. We made our target. We exceeded it. That's fantastic. We exceeded by quite a bit. So we really, really appreciate that. Let's see. I will be flying tomorrow. So no shows tomorrow. I will definitely try to do a show on Wednesday from Sa Paolo in Brazil. I'm giving a talk in the evening. So I'll probably do it during the day. I'll do a show. You know, the gods of the internet willing, the gods of Wi-Fi at my hotel is willing. And then I will try to do shows from Buenos Aires. I'll fill you in on what happens with Mele and what happens with some of the other stuff. But I will be in Brazil tomorrow and then in Argentina on Thursday. There's a conference Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Mele is coming on Saturday. And then I'll be in Santiago, Chile. And so I'll try to do a show from Santiago, Chile. So that is the plan. I hope to be able to do shows from there. Fill you in on everything that's going on in Latin America and all the exciting activities and the conferences and all of that. So yeah, I have a 6 a.m. tomorrow morning flight, which I hate. It means I have to wake up at 4, which I hate. But so be it. It's going to be a good trip. I will see you all probably while I'm on the road. Certainly when I get back. Thank you for all the supporters. Thank you for everything and have a great night and a great week. Bye everybody.