 Yes, quickly, let's do a little bit of Gaza history. So Gaza, when Israel was founded in 1948, it was invaded by all these Arab countries and in 1949 there was a ceasefire truce agreement signed. Part of that agreement, Gaza, that green bit that you saw before, was part of Egypt. So that was deemed a part of Egypt and was under Egypt control. Israel occupied Gaza when it took the Sinai desert in 1956 as part of the Sinai operation, you know, coordinated with the French and the British around the Suez Canal. Israel had a reason to invade the Sinai and invade Gaza in those days because there were terrorist attacks. Sound familiar? Coming out of that region and they went in, they cleaned up and they got rid of the terrorists. And then when the U.S. forced Israel and Britain and France to retreat, Israel retreated and again left the Gaza Strip in the hands of the Egyptians. In 1967 and the Six Day War again, and in the final thing, Israel gained control of the Gaza Strip in the Sinai desert. And in the 1970s and the 1980s, there was pretty much what you would call an open border between Gaza and Israel. In those days, Gazans would work in Israel. A million Palestinians every night slept in Israel. They would come in, they would work, they would go home for the weekends. The Palestinians were primarily engaged in productive activity and trying to make their lives and their families' lives better. This is before Yesor Al-Fat came back. This is before they became Islamized. The Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were some of the most secular Arabs in the Middle East. This was, I think, a blown opportunity for Israel and for the Palestinians to actually come to settlement and come to some agreement around what the long-term solution was. Because once you get into the 1980s and certainly the 1990s, what you see is constant radicalization of the Islamists, becoming more religious, but also becoming more nationalist. And once Yesor Al-Fat comes to the West Bank in 1994, it really is all over. But just to give you more on Gaza, in 1979 Israel and Egypt reached a peace agreement. Part of that peace agreement, Israel withdraws from the Sinai Desert and returns the Sinai Desert to Egypt. This is the part of Egypt that Israel captured during the 1967 war. But the Egyptians do not want the Gaza Strip. It's too complicated for them. They're not interested in ruling over it. It's too densely populated and basically they agree to leave it in the hands of Israel, let Israel handle this problem. They see it already that this is going to be too much to handle. This is going to be too big of a problem for them. As I said, during the 1980s, basically the border was open. There was free flow of people in and out of Gaza. Israelis used to go to Gaza. People of Gaza came out. Periodically there would be violence. I don't know much of this history, but during the 1970s at some point there was kind of an uprising in Gaza. Aria Sharon was sent in and shut it down. For the most part, it was fairly peaceful during this period. In 1987, it's the beginning of the end of that relatively peaceful period. In 1987, Palestinians living in the West Bank in Gaza started what is called the first Ittifada against Israel. This is the same time that Hamas was founded in this mid-to-late 1980s. Hamas is basically a spin-off from the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood. I have a course on the Muslim Brotherhood if you look at my course on Islamism. Horrifically enough, but true, therefore we need to deal with it, Israel was instrumental in the founding of Hamas. Israel viewed the Muslim Brotherhood as a potential counter-force to the PLO and to Yasser Al-Fat. They viewed the Muslim Brotherhood as religious and therefore probably peaceful as compared to the nationalist terrorism of Yasser Al-Fat and their more secular Palestinians. Big mistake. Israel was to some extent responsible for the founding, even though it repudiated that very quickly. In 1993, you get peace between Al-Fat and Israel peace in quotes because there was never any intention of peace. Hamas opposed this deal, launched a series of suicide bombings in Israel. Indeed, throughout the 1990s, the more Israel negotiated with the Palestinians about settlement, the more terrorist attacks they were. It was a horrible period. In 2000, there were negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians again at Camp David. The Palestinians were basically offered 90 to 95 percent of everything they wanted. Yasser Al-Fat said no, and when he got back to his headquarters, he launched the second Intifada, which was unbelievably brutal and bloody and horrific. Some of you might remember, buses blowing up, restaurants blowing up, suicide bombings left and right. It was truly a disaster. Both, and this was in Gaza and the West Bank, but in Israel proper, in Israel proper. During the second Intifada, Alec Sharon was the prime minister. In 2005, he decided that Gaza, that there was no point in staying in Gaza. Gaza was too dangerous. There was no way to control it or would be too costly for Israel to control. Basically, he announced a withdrawal, a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. Now, this wasn't just troops. During the 1970s and 80s and 90s, towns would be built inside the Gaza Strip, towns of Jewish population. These towns were thriving. They had brought kind of their knowledge of agriculture, of planting in the desert, of building industry, and these settlements or towns were thriving in the Gaza Strip, in among all the Arabs. They were thriving. The Israeli government decided that to protect those towns from the growing menace that was the Palestinians, from the growing threat of violence, was too expensive, was too difficult, was too risky. By the use of force, coercion, they basically went in there and dragged people away from their homes. People did not want to leave. They dragged them away from their homes. They put them on buses. They put them in handcuffs and they drove them out. The entire Israeli military withdrew from Gaza, established the lines of defense and said, okay, it's yours Palestinians. Do with it as you will. Now, a couple of things here that are important. Christian, if you're listening to this, turn this historical section into a video on its own. Whoops, what did I just do? One second, sorry. I just closed the window. I didn't mean to close. A few things that are important here to note about this. At the time, I was outraged. Many people were outraged, but I was outraged, complained about this, and this is what people told me. This is what the excuse was. Look, now it's clean. We've given them, in a sense, their own country. Now, if they attack us, nobody will be able to complain if we go in there and just crush them. Because before, we were occupying them, so we couldn't crush them. People, everybody in the world would complain. But now, they're separate, they're in their own country, we can crush them. So anytime, if they do anything, believe me, we will go in there and crush them. How naive, how ignorant people are. So what is it? 18 years later, it still hasn't happened. And we'll see if it happens this time. It still hasn't happened in spite of all the terrorist attacks, the rocket launchers, everything else. Crushing has not happened. So that's the first thing. What was the second thing I was going to say about that withdrawal? Yes, 2005 is an important period of time. This is a period where the neo-conservatives, where Bush are driving the... We can turn the Middle East into a democratic place. Bring democracy to the Middle East. Forward strategy for freedom, it was called technically. And if you're interested, I have a whole talk and it turned into an essay that is available online, written with, I think this one was written with Ilan Giorno. Forward strategy for freedom, which I gave at the time and criticizing the Bush strategy, criticizing the neo-conservatives, never mind today I'm called a neo-conservative constantly. Criticizing the neo-conservatives. And this whole idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Anyway, and you can find it, so look it up online, forward strategy for freedom, Iran broke and you'll find it. Part of that strategy, the Bush administration insisted before Israel would, was it before or after Israel would drew the troops around the same time, Israel would do its troops in 2005 that the Palestinians have elections. Israel said, okay, we'll allow the Palestinians to have elections. Because this was going to westernize them because you know, you know that the essence of Western civilization is voting. Voting is what makes you Western. This is both the left and the right in America. At least some people in the right believe. And this is what the Bush administration believed. They brought it to Iraq, they brought it everywhere. If you vote, you're civilized. So they held an election. Now Hamas said, okay, you're going to have an election? We're going to run. And Israel said, oh wait a minute, we're not going to allow Hamas to run. They might win. They can't run. You can't have a democratic election where one party literally says in its founding documents and every document says that they're dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. We're not going to allow that. And the Bush administration said, no, no, no, no. If you're going to have democracy, you have to have democracy. You have to allow everybody to vote. You know, and any party can run. You can't limit the, you have to allow Hamas to run. And the Bush administration said, don't worry, the Palestinians are never going to vote for Hamas. Hamas, they're crazy. They're extremists. They're Islamists. They're like al-Qaeda. Nobody's going to vote for them. Imagine allowing al-Qaeda to run for election and make a big deal out of it. They're in the name of democracy. I mean, I got it. I mean, I was out to age then and I've kind of forgotten about that. But I'm now, you know, all my hatred of the Bush administration is coming back to me because you could, you could see the origins of all this right there in that, in the response to 9-11 and then the stupid strategy that emboldened Hamas. They ran the election. Guess who won? Hamas won. Hamas won. Bush administration was shocked. Israel was shocked. And the consequence of that election was like in all civilized western countries. It was a civil war because the PLO, you know, was not going to let Hamas war and Hamas was not going to give in. They wanted to be the dominant political party. So basically the result of that civil war was Hamas took over Gaza. In Gaza, they got an overwhelming majority. It wasn't even close. And the PLO took over the West Bank, even though PLO would lose the West Bank vote for Hamas today. If there was an action, the PLO manages to not have more elections. No elections since 2005, right? Because you only have an election if you know who's going to win. You don't have an election where the people you don't like win. That's the Bush administration for you. That's Republicans. That's neoconservatism. Placing darkness above right and wrong. And that's why Hamas rules Gaza. So Hamas is the ruling party of Gaza. Now let's talk a little bit about who Hamas is. You know, Hamas is the... Yeah, it turns out the election after Israel left the Gaza Strip. So the election was in January 2006. And Hamas won the parliamentary elections. But the PLO wouldn't give it to them. So there's civil war and Hamas won and seized control in Gaza. They lost basically control in the rest of the West Bank. What is Hamas? Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. It is an Islamic organization. It is an organization dedicated to Sharia law. It is al-Qaeda all over again. There's no real difference. Remember, after 9-11, my view was, identify the enemies of Islamic totalitarianism. Then make a list of all Islamic totalitarian organizations and regimes and eliminate them. That should have been the policy of the Bush administration. Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, those are all enemies of the United States because they're all the declared enemy in 9-11. They were all part of al-Qaeda in one way or another. It's certainly ideological. So Israel... I encourage you at the time, the American administration should have unleashed Israel on Hamas and Hezbollah, dismantled them, destroyed them, shredded them. Of course, none of that. They couldn't even say they were Islamists after 9-11. The massive betrayal of the American people by the Bush administration. All right. Anyway, since then, there have been on and off, on a gun, on again, many wars in the Gaza Strip where they launch rockets, Israel retaliates, Israel actually puts in troops on the ground, then withdraws, and it's just been a disaster because Israel refuses to commit itself to victory, refuses to commit itself to re-establish authority over the Gaza Strip, to re-establish its rule over the Gaza Strip. Israel does not want 2 million Palestinians under its rule. It refuses to dismantle and destroy and eliminate Hamas. They'll kill Hamas leaders, but if you're Hamas leader that's killed, then you want to rise. All of you Trump lovers who thought that when Trump killed Soleimani, this was the greatest thing ever. There's a new Soleimani right now who is the guy who met with them in Beirut who authorized this attack yesterday. You cannot win by chopping off the head of the snake. Israel refuses a snake that can grow new heads all the time. There's no end to how many new snakes you can grow. You've got to kill the entire snake, not just its head. So Israel's killed its leaders, interestingly enough, but not too surprising. Israel refuses to kill, and has refused to kill, Yeah, let me just fix something. This is not working. Israel refuses to kill Hamas's... No, because it's not plugged in. What am I doing? Alright, never plugged that in. Israel refuses to kill the political leadership of Hamas. They only killed the militant. Another huge mistake. And the political leaders live outside of the Gaza Strip. They should be found, they should be assassinated now, today, tomorrow. Whatever means necessary. Israel will not do that, because many of them are in these countries that we have Abraham accords with, and supposedly there's peace with them. If there was peace, then these countries would actually hand Hamas operatives over. Now, most of the main Qatar, which Israel does not have peace with, Fine, tell Qatar that wherever they're living is going to be bombed unless they hand them over. Should be no peace with Qatar. I mean, there's no peace with Qatar, but there's no... Qatar's at war with Israel, fine, let's be at war with Qatar. Go after those people, kill them. Every single one of them should be killed. And if that means, you know, taking down a building, a hotel, an apartment building at Qatar, so be it. If you are hosting my enemy, God help you. Now, in this case, in this case Israel will not do that, unfortunately. All right, so, you know, again, there being war after war after, you know, not war. It has been attack after attack after attack. Israel has done nothing, done nothing to Hamas, nothing to the Palestinian Gaza. And that's what, that's how we got, that's what we got, what we got.