 The 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, October 9th. Hope everybody's having a good start to your week, and that you all had a good weekend. Yeah, I mean now we will continue to be talking about Israel over the next few weeks, I fear. This is going to take a while and it's going to be at the top of the news I think for a long time. Updates from yesterday really on the ground, nothing much. The toll that Hamas has taken on Israel is higher, grows every day. We're closer to a thousand casualties at this point, and still an uncertain number of hostages being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Probably some way close to a hundred would be an estimate at this point, but we'll find out more. As the days passed, let's see. Israel is obviously engaged in preparations. All indications are that Israel will be entering by land, entering Gaza in the hours, maybe days to come. There's a massive air campaign right now to take out significant positions of Hamas within the Gaza Strip. So far the West Bank is being relatively quiet, no indications of Iranian involvement out of Syria. There's some skirmishes all day today, some attempts by some Hezbollah fighters to cross into Israel, and they were as far as I know shot and killed. Some helicopters, is the video okay? Let me know if the video is okay or if it's stalled. And some helicopter fighting in the north as well. Again, I'm consuming news as you are, so I don't have any special sources over there. Israeli media is relatively quiet about military operations, as you I think you could understand. They don't want to give anything away. Foreign media is basically focused on the victims and setting this up in terms of the number of people killed and the stories of all the victims and the stories of the disaster stories. Here's my prediction, a week from now they will be telling stories of Palestinians killed and whole Palestinian families killed and everything as a consequence of the Israeli intervention. The media as true of much of the public as true of many of our politicians is triggered by altruism, by a victim mentality, whoever is the victim right now gets most of the attention, positive attention. And then as soon as there's a new victim, they will get the positive attention and the Israelis, everybody will forget what happened and they will be presented as the villain as the murderers and you can expect that I think certainly from CNN but from much of the mainstream media. Politicians are posturing as they always do in these circumstances. Netanyahu gave one of his typical tough guy speeches about the actions of Israel today will be remembered by its enemies for generations to come. Great one-liners, great sounding soundbites. What does it actually mean? What's he actually going to do? We will see, we will see. So as I've said over and over again and I will repeat again, time is of the essence. Israel doesn't have a lot of time. The world will pivot towards the Palestinians and away from Israel, certainly Europe and even America. You can expect that pivot to happen and the sooner Israel has a window of sympathy, a window of time in which you can act without criticism and that window will close very quickly. So I'm hoping, really, really hoping that Israel acts out there, takes on the enemy and thoroughly dismantles it and destroys it and does it ASAP. There's no time to lose. I've given up on a preemptive strike on Hezbollah that's very unlikely to happen. It was always very unlikely to happen. Let's hope Hezbollah doesn't enter just as Israel is starting a campaign in Gaza and then Israel has to fight a two-front war, but it's likely that they will. So that's the reality, I think a reality Israel is preparing for. You can see trails of tanks heading north, trails of tanks heading south towards Gaza and north towards Lebanon in anticipation of the fighting to come. 300,000 reserves have been called up. I think it's the largest call-up of reserves in Israeli history. That is the bulk of the Israeli military. It's people with experience, people with seniority. They will lead this offensive even though, of course, the young 18, 19, 20-year-olds will probably be there, will be with them. So nothing much has changed except we have now more concrete stories of the brutality of the evil that was inflicted and we have some outline of Israel's response but until we actually see it on the ground, it's hard to tell what exactly will happen. I still don't believe Netanyahu and the rest of the politicians. I still don't believe their posturing. I still don't believe their tough talk. At the end of the day, I'll believe it when I see it. I'll believe it when we have indications on the ground. Other things that are happening that I think are interesting vis-à-vis the war demonstrations in Europe and in the United States pro Hamas. That is in spite of the horrors, in spite of the pictures, in spite of the evil that should be pretty blatant and pretty obvious and people are not choosing to stay quiet. People are choosing explicitly to endorse the side of Hamas. And these are not just Arabs. If you look at the demonstrations, if you look and I'll talk about Harvard in a minute, lots of white Americans, lots of people supporting Hamas. I really can't think of more evil than that since America is not in a state of war with Hamas or with anybody really that war terrorism doesn't really exist. There's no basis by which to stop them. There's no basis by which to bake up these demonstrations. But the fact that they exist is pretty horrific and pretty discouraging and depressing about the state of the West and the state of our civilization and its understanding of the world out there. So there is a massive pro Hamas contingency out there. And let me add to that that everybody out there who is claiming moral equivalence, everybody out there saying, is your kind of deserved it? Everybody else is saying, oh, we can't tell who the good guys are, who the bad guys are. They're all on the side of Hamas. That moral equivocation, that so-called neutrality feeds into evil. That is taking the side of evil. That is taking the side of Hamas and the Islamists all over the place. I'll add that all of this, all of this needs to be thought of from the perspective of 9-11, particularly as an American. I see a lot of Americans saying this is not our war. Why do we care? Why are we involved? Well, first, you should care when evil does evil things to basically good people. You should just care. It doesn't mean you have to do anything, but you should at least care. That's to anywhere in the world, but certainly when the barbarians attack civilization, you should care. And you should worry a little bit, maybe those same barbarians will attack you. But in a circumstances where you've already been attacked by the barbarians, where they've already killed thousands of your countrymen, where you are constantly under threat of attack by basically the same barbarians, then you should definitely care. This is America's war. This is America's war because this is just an extension of 9-11. I said that in the aftermath of 9-11. Hamas is just one of the other Islamic totalitarian organizations that are all aligned and all affiliated and all dedicated to the destruction of the West. They won't stop with Israel. Hamas's purpose is not a Palestinian state in Israel. Hamas's purpose is the same as al-Qaeda and the same as ISIS and the same as Islamic jihad and the same as the Iranian regime. The purpose is an Islamic caliphate over the whole world. And to not understand that, to not see that, to not see the connection. Well, of course, libertarians can't see it because they thought 9-11 was America's fault. They can't think. They can conceive of any evil unless it's an evil perpetrated by America and the West. Only evil players in the world are America and the West. The Islamic barbarians? Oh no, they're the good guys. Or they're just defending themselves. They're just objecting to... I mean, what's the difference between the far left and libertarians? When it comes to these issues, nothing. They're the same. They sound the same. They are the same. Anti-war is not anti-war. Anti-war is like anti-racism. Anti-war is like anti-racism. Anti-war is not about achieving peace. Anti-war is just a code name for moral relativism, for hatred, for wanting to see evil destroy the good, for anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism. That's what anti-war means. It's exactly the same anti-concept as anti-racism. It is racism. And it is anti-war is the recipe for war. They know that. They think Israel and Hamas, yeah, they can achieve peace. All Israel has to do is lay down its arms. Oh, and if the result of laying down its arms is the destruction of Israel, well, it's okay because then there'll be peace. That's the libertarians. All right, so there are significant protests all over the West and all over the Arab world, of course, in support of Hamas. There was a letter published, let me just find this, a letter published, by 31 Harvard student organizations. 31 Harvard student organizations. The opening paragraph of that statement is we, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. So you guys are confused. All that rape, all that, you know, pillage, all the destruction, all the murders, all the hostage taking the blowing people up, the torturing people, all the Israel's fault. The people who actually did it, the Muslims, they're just trying to defend themselves. They're just responding to the evil that is Israel. Signed to this are the African American Resistance Organization, the Amnesty International of Harvard, Amnesty International. I wonder if they're going to kick this chapter out. The Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College. The Harvard Act on a Dream, Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association. Imagine having a dentist or a doctor where you get treatment who believes this stuff. The Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association. The Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine. The Harvard College Pakistani Student Association. Harvard Divinity School of Muslim Association. Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association. Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society. Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine. Harvard Islamic Society and on and on and on it goes. I have expected to see some libertarian organization on there. Luckily, I didn't. Harvard University, training future leaders of America. And I've seen pictures, right? Pictures of people with big signs about the evil of Israel and so on. Even though it might be the associations are named and they all sound Middle East and Islamic and so on. And people holding the signs look completely European to me. So unbelievable, unbelievable that this is a state of America. This is a state of Harvard. This is a state of thinking. Of course, again, if you look at my Twitter feed, you will find all those horrible anti-Semitic, anti-values, anti-life libertarians attacking me. So you don't have to go and none of them are Muslims. So it's not like this is unique to Islam. But it does illustrate something and that is that this war with Islamic totalitarians. This war with Islamism, which started at least America found out about it on 9-11. It started before that has been, you know, is still ongoing. And America continues to bury its head deep in the sand. America continues to pretend there's no problem. America continues to support its enemies. America continues, you know, to create the fertile ground for the next 9-11 in the United States. Real debauchery and real horror coming out of Harvard University. All right, let's see. All right, so one more thing related to Israel, just an angle that I want to bring out. And then we'll talk about some of the stories. And then we'll come back. I see most of the questions in the super chat are related to Israel. Feel free to ask about Israel. Feel free to ask about other things. This is a news roundup, so we're going to cover other stories as well. The whole issue of war crimes, the international tribunal at the Hague that, you know, prosecutes people for war crimes and crimes against humanity or whatever. A court, an international, so-called international court with no enforcement mechanism other than the states that abide by it. An international court that has standards that are unrelated to example for the individual rights and a proper constitution. Now, I wonder how many of the Hamas leadership are going to be in absentia prosecuted for crimes against humanity. I wonder if the Iranian regime and the Iranian leadership is going to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity by this international court. Probably not, but I'll tell you who is going to be. And this is a real threat and a real challenge for Israel. The reality is that as Israel enters the West Bank, many, many civilians, Palestinian civilians are going to die. And as that happens and as generals and commanders need to make decisions about that, one of the many things that's going to be in the back of their head is, if my decision leads to a lot of civilian casualties, I might be prosecuted at the Hague. If I ever travel to Europe, I could be arrested and brought to trial. I mean, think about that. Israelis love to travel. Europe is very close. It's hard indeed to fly out of Israel without landing in a European airport. A lot of these commanders have a real potential, a real potential, are being prosecuted by the Hague, by the International Court of Criminal Justice, supposedly, supposedly justice, for crimes, for war crimes, and then arrested when they show up in Europe. Is that going to hamper how they prosecute the war? I hope not, but one guesses that it will. It's one of the many, many, very many evils of these kind of international organizations dominated by altruism, not by individual rights, not by the rule of law, but by the rule of altruism, by the rule of politics. And Israel will be the villain here. There's no question about that. Israel will end up the villain in after this. The best, I think, people will ultimately say, oh, that's a cycle of violence. Sometimes this, sometimes that. But all the talk right now that you're hearing, all the talk right now that you're hearing in support of Israel, not going to last. Scott has stopped supporting progressives, but he's heavily supporting libertarians who are the brothers in blood of the progressives. They're as anti-life as the progressives. But, you know, libertarians are not left. So Scott doesn't hate them. He only hates people who self-identify as the left. All right. So, you know, this is part of where we are heading, part of the constraints. In the days to come, we will see a lot of fighting. We will see a lot of bloodshed. We will see Israel progress. Given the way they want to fight this war, my guess is that it's going to be very slow. Slow progress, a lot of casualties. In Israel's side as well, you know, a lot of, they're going to encounter real fierce fighting on the side of Hamas. A lot of booby traps. And as a consequence, a lot of casualties. This is going to be super bloody and will not be quick as I would like it to be. All right. Just something to point out. Europe is kind of in this crazy situation right now. Europe dominated intellectually at least by the left and by kind of leftism more broadly. A kind of pacifist, anti-Western civilization, anti-self-defense kind of attitude. Europe is now facing three crises. It's going to have to take a position. And it's so far taking a position that it feels very uncomfortable for the leftists who I think dominate the intellectual high ground in Europe. They've got a one Ukraine right in their front step, which they've kind of united around, but they're never completely comfortable. It's a war after all. And they're not, they don't like Ukraine that much. They fear Russia, but they also are dependent on Russia and have been in the past and they fear it. And so they don't know exactly what to do. They're supporting Ukraine, but how long will that last? Particularly if the United States doesn't support Ukraine, what's going to happen to Europe? By the way, you can say the same thing about the general left in the United States. They're facing ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan. They don't know exactly what to do with that. They don't know how to think about that. Are the Azeris the good guys? Are the Armenians the good guys? Well, the Azeris kicked out their Armenians. The Armenians must be the good guys and the Azeris are the bad guys. But Azerbaijan is one of the only alternative sources of natural gas for Europe, through pipelines at least. If they piss off the Azeris, do they risk losing their supply of natural gas? They've already lost it for Russia. What do they do? And it's not like the Armenians or their friends, Armenians, so very recently was aligned with Russia. It's shifting alliance now because Russia's basically walked away from them. So what do they do with the Azerbaijani Armenian crisis? There's already a lot of political angst in Europe around it, around Turkey's role in the whole thing, around France is taking Armenia side. Exactly how this plays out, they don't know. And then now they have this challenge with Israel and the Palestinians. At the end of the day, the Europeans have been pro-Palestinian. They have funded the Palestinian Authority to a large extent. They have ultimately in one way or another funded Hamas to a large extent, whether they'll admit it or not. The Europeans are very, very, very entrenched in the Middle East on the side of the Palestinians. But that doesn't seem right right now to them. And what do they do? They've been anti-Israel for so long. Can they switch? Can they really change? Probably the answer on the European left is no. But the reality is that right now there is no European center right. The European center right is fading and what's on the rise is an extreme right. An extreme right that tends to be pro-Russia, anti-Islam, anti-immigration, probably anti-Israel but not clear. So the weakness of the left and the dilemmas the left faces and the hard choices the left has basically are weakening their grip on political forces in Europe. The center right is in no position to pick up the votes because the center right stands for nothing. It stands for nothing, presents nothing and is not a popular alternative in Europe. And therefore what you're seeing in Europe right now is a significant rise in a real right, in an extreme right. In a nationalist xenophobic right that is united by a few things, by hatred of immigration, united by, particularly in Germany, by a suspicion of climate change and climate change policies. But not particularly economically liberal, not particularly economically free, not particularly free on any issue. So what you're seeing is AFD, the extreme right political party in Germany, has just done unbelievably well in western Germany. AFD's base, the far right's base, has always been east in Germany. Now they're doing well even in western Germany. And part of this is this sense of the left is gone, the left is finished, the sense is meaningless, it's moderate, it doesn't stand for anything. The world is turning upside down, there are massive crises everywhere. The existing establishment has failed us. The only people standing are the extreme right. Communism doesn't work. We try communism. Communism's not a solution. What is the solution? Well, a nationalist with a tinge of religion and a little bit of xenophobia goes a long way. And you're seeing that all over Europe. And what you're seeing is a rise of an anti-individualistic right. And so there was just election in two provinces in west Germany. And AFD, which used to get less than 10%, was getting close to 20% or 15% to 20% of the vote. And this is yesterday, I think, or the day before yesterday where the votes would be held. So part of this is a general resentment against immigration. Part of it is an angst because of the one Ukraine and because of what's going on in Israel and everything else. And wanting a strong man to bring stability and peace after all, right? And let's see what else. Yeah, so we're seeing the rise, the significant rise of far-right political parties in Europe. And at this point, I think the greater danger to freedom seems to be a growing nationalistic, crazy right that is sweeping across Europe. It hasn't quite gained majority status. It's still a minority, so we will see. And maybe there'll always be a minority, but they are gaining influence in almost all of Europe. The one thing that is losing influence pretty much everywhere is freedom. Is anybody standing up for actual liberty, for actual freedom? All right, finally, talk about authoritarianism right here at home. New York City earlier this year banned basically almost all forms of Airbnb in New York City. Partially to supposedly combat the rising rates of rent and so on. So they banned Airbnb. So what do you think happens? Well, if you know anything about incentives and the way markets work, what's happened almost instantaneously is the creation of what you would have to call a black market in residential apartment rental. So people don't have the Airbnb app to rent a place and to check on the owners and stuff like that. So people are taking more risk by advertising apartments for rent and advertising needing an apartment on social media. There are all kinds of unofficial networks where rental properties are being rented out for a short period of time like Airbnb. So Airbnb and the demand for Airbnb has not disappeared. It's just the convenience, the safety, the rating system, the value for value win-win relationship and transaction. That has been eviscerated. That has been destroyed in New York City. So you're still getting people renting places. You're just not getting the convenience and again the safety of Airbnb. All right. I need to make one more comment on the war. I need to correct a mistake I made yesterday. So, you know, when people point out that I'm wrong, I actually let you know that I was wrong and correct that I'm going to do it at the beginning of the show and it completely slipped my mind. So I will do it now. It turns out that since I lived in Israel and over the last 40, almost 40 years, Israel has actually disarmed its population. And the reality is that today it is much more difficult for Israelis to have firearms in their homes. It appears that even some of these villages and some of these towns that are border towns that literally are on the border with a known enemy like Hamas. The civilians in these places had very little weapons at their disposal. So I take back what I said yesterday and this is horrific. You talk about the Second Amendment in the United States. But Israel is a country at war. I want to talk about at war in a minute. Remind me if I forget. Israel is a country at war. Israel is a country whose borders are infiltrated on a regular basis by terrorists all over the place, whether it's from the West Bank or Gaza. And where literally terrorists can and did two days ago, yesterday, knocking people's doors and commit mass murder. Israel is a country that faces an enemy that it knows. Israel doesn't live under the delusion that Hamas are not barbarians. They live under the delusion that Hamas could not do what they did the other day. Not because they don't want to, but they didn't have the capacity. You would think as a consequence that Israel would want its citizens armed for self-defense, which I think is the purpose of Second Amendment to arm yourself, to defend yourself. You'd think in particular that Israel would have the citizens who are living along a border with a barbaric regime. I mean, for a whole variety of reasons, be armed, to the teeth, fully armed. I mean, I think this is one of those things that Israel is going to have to, I mean, really think about what they did. What they've done. And note that this disarmament, at least part of it, has happened under right-wing governments. This is BB's legacy, Netanyahu's legacy. He has been Prime Minister for the last, basically the last 15 years, one way or the other. He could have reversed the policy if it was in his, might have been his. I mean, in the old days, pretty much everybody was armed. There were guns in the house that almost everybody had. I don't understand how that shifted. I'll have to do some research on when and how that shifted. But you have to blame BB. Netanyahu, again, Netanyahu, this has to be the end of his political career. It has to be the end of any leadership position for him. He has betrayed this country. He needs to go down for the appeaser that he is. And here's one more indication of that appeasement. This is the issue I said about the war that I had to come back with. Two days ago, the Netanyahu government declared war on Hamas and declared war on Gaza. That's insane. It's simply insane. Israel has been at war with Hamas since the founding of Hamas. Israel has been at war with Hamas certainly since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2005, I think. Israel has been at war with Hamas for a couple of decades, at least. What is this nonsense about we're now declaring war? No, we're now recognizing that we slept while the war was happening. We're now recognizing that we buried our head in the sand for 20 years. We're now recognizing... I don't know what you're recognizing because, I mean, missiles were launched from Gaza almost every year on Israel. Hamas has expressed its interest, willingness, desire, goal of eradicating Israel from the face of the earth from its very founding. Hamas has been at war with Israel since its founding. So what are you admitting by declaring war now? What you're admitting is you've been unappeasing, evading. God, I don't want to swear. That's what you're admitting. That while Hamas has been at war with you for 20 years, you pretended that they don't exist. You've evaded their existence. You've evaded their evil. You've evaded what they represent. You've evaded their capacity to do what they did two years ago. And as a consequence of that, some of that blood is on your hands. Israeli politicians will need to pay the price. And American politicians need to pay the price. They won't. But George Bush needs to pay the price. Then he won't. You talk about impeachment. You want to impeach people about Hunter Biden? You want to impeach people about, I don't know, even what they impeached Trump about? You want to impeach people about something? You want to impeach them about the response to 9-11? Impeach them about the way they treated our soldiers in Afghanistan. Both Trump should have been impeached for signing a peace treaty with Taliban. And Biden should have been impeached for retreating from Afghanistan the way he did. If we're going to impeach them for anti-American behavior, then we should impeach them for what they actually did. I mean, we have had a string of politicians from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden. Maybe four of the worst politicians, four of the worst presidents in all of American history, and suddenly with the worst foreign policy that one could ever imagine, ever imagine. Weakness, compromise, selling out, selling out completely. Why there isn't an inquiry into, why don't Republicans take an opportunity to have an inquiry into the retreat from Afghanistan? Why aren't they having an inquiry over why American troops are still dying in Syria and Iraq? And why, what are we doing there if we're not committed to winning? What about an inquiry over the last 20 years of American involvement in the Middle East and its pathetic results? Those are inquiries worth having. And, you know, it's the failure to recognize the connection between al-Qaeda and ISIS and Hamas and Islamic jihad and khizballah that made the events over the last couple of days possible and made our political leaders over the last 20 years responsible for them because they refused to make the connection. They refused to make the connection. I said Biden. All right, what natural interest does the U.S. have in the Middle East? Well, one, the Middle East have a natural interest in us. They flew airplanes into our buildings. That's a natural interest. They've been killing Americans since 1979 on a regular basis. That's a natural interest. In Iran, they yell and they fund and they practice death to America every Friday. Iran used to have a line item, terrorism in its bill, terrorism against the United States. We have a massive self-defense interest in the Middle East. That is our interest. Now, we also have an interest to secure oil and to secure the export of oil out of the Middle East to the rest of the world but our primary interest in the Middle East is the fact, the reality that they want to kill us. And we need to defend ourselves. So this idea is, oh no, we can just leave the Middle East, leave them alone. If we leave them alone, they'll leave us alone. That's the bizarre, immoral, evasive views of Ron Paul and his libertarian cronies. But that is evasion. That is complete ignorance. Well, not ignorance. Ignorance is too nice. That is evading the true nature of our enemies in the Middle East. It's ignoring what they actually say. It's ignoring what they actually do. In other words, it's ignoring reality, which is what evasion is. So what interest in the United States has? The lives and property of American citizens. That's the interest that we have in the Middle East. Your life. It's not like the Barbary privates. It's much worse than the Barbary privates. The Barbary privates were nothing. This is much worse than the Barbary privates. They're much more aggressive and much more desirous of killing Americans. The Barbary privates were just after money. Islam, whether you, the Islamists, whether you will admit it or not are out for world domination, including the crumbling of America. Don't believe me? Don't have to believe me. Read them from Sa'id Qud to bin Laden to the whole string of Islamist thinkers, intellectuals, terrorists. They tell you exactly what they seek. Exactly what they want. Exactly how much they hate you. Exactly how much they want to kill you. Not because you're there, because you exist. Because you're a putiation of their worldview. Because you're free. Because you're a capitalist. Because you dare to be secular. All right. Let's, you know, these shows, last few shows have been really long. And today's show I wanted to be a little shorter. So let us go to your questions. Where do I have them? I have them in the Super Chat Tracker right here. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate, really appreciate the support. Let's see, Rand, thank you. $100. Really, really appreciate it and appreciate the generosity. Rand says, I've often had a chance to watch the show live. I don't often have a chance to watch the show live. I made it today. I just want to say thank you for your honesty and moral courage. There is so little of it to be found anywhere today. Thank you, Rand. I really appreciate that. And look, I don't think of myself as particularly courageous. I'm sitting here, you know, in front of a camera talking. I'm on Twitter fighting with stupid libertarians. The true courage is going to be required by those young men entering the Gaza Strip and actually having to put their lives on the line to destroy Hamas. The true courage is the people living in Israel and holding on to their Western values, holding on to their respect for civilization and their respect for freedom and sticking with it and going out there and fighting for their own liberty and freedom. That's real courage. So I appreciate what you're saying. And the real travesty is, the real travesty is, is there not a thousand voices like mine? It doesn't, it shouldn't require being an objectivist to see this. And the real horror is the number of voices that are the exact opposite of mine and the respect they get and the support they get and the sheer numbers that they have on their side, whether it's on the extreme right, left, or it's the new right, the necforentices of the world, if it's the libertarians. I don't know what you do with that. That's just so discouraging and so bad. There should be a thousand voices like mine. And one way, I'll just say this, one way you can make me sound like a thousand voices is share the content, guys. Share, share, share. Show the courage you need to show by sharing the content and those of you on Twitter and enjoy engaging on Twitter. I can't engage with all these guys. I can't defend every position. It's important that people have a sense that there are many of us that people have a sense that we're willing to fight for what we believe in, that we're willing to stand by it, we're willing to talk about it. Now is a great time to get involved, to go on Twitter, to stand up to these guys. You don't have to spend a lot of time there and you don't have to give long arguments. Just say that's bullshit and walk away. That's fine. That's fine. Just show moral outrage. Show that there's somebody that's calling them on their evasion, their immorality. David Neary, do you believe Kissinger's diplomatic strategy in the Middle East is partially responsible for current state of events? Yes. I mean, there's no question. Look, I mean, you go back far enough. It goes back a long way. I have said often in talking about foreign policy over the many years, I've said that America has had no foreign policy. It's just been a string of pragmatists, just been a string of shooting from the hip and no strategic thinking. I don't think America really has had strategic thinking when it comes to foreign policy since World War II. As a consequence, it's lost. Every significant war it's entered, it has lost since then. And Kissinger is a major force in that line. I mean, he's not the only one, but he's one, and he's a major one, and he's one that a lot of people listen to and a lot of people on the right among conservatives think of him as a hero. Kissinger brought kind of pragmatism to the forefront of America's interest in the Middle East. He never saw a deal he didn't want to make. It was all about deal-making, whether good guys, bad guys didn't matter, as long as the deal was made under his watch to hell with what happened afterwards. I mean, you've heard me say this before, that Kissinger got his Nobel Prize for peace for negotiating the peace between North and South Vietnam, a peace that lasted what, six months, a year, and a peace that ultimately handed South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese. Now, again, I don't believe the US should fought in South Vietnam, but I certainly think the US should have supported the South Vietnamese, given them weapons, whatever they needed in order to fight. I certainly don't think the United States should have put pressure on the North and the South Vietnamese to do peace with the North. This is the peace that Wathbard loved. This is the peace that the libertarians talk about all the time. This is the peace they want, the peace that allows the evil to dominate the good. That's the peace that they want. They want to live in a world in which there's no violence because the authoritarian evil has completely destroyed and dominated the free good. Yeah, good question, David. But yes, I mean, Kissinger instituted a policy of negotiating, compromising a policy of not identifying evil for what it is, a policy of dealing with anybody. And to that extent, yes, his policies have led to this. Not directly, but indirectly, because he wasn't involved in this particular conflict. Michael says, is it mostly horrible people who comment on social media because the good people are too busy living their lives, or is the hard truth that most people are horrible today and social media is reflecting that? You know, I don't know. I think it's mostly horrible people, but I think a lot of good people don't comment on social media. I mean, businessman, successful engineers, startup founders are not generally on social media. But the intellectuals are there, so it's certainly a reflection of the intellectual state of the world. But be careful about social media. You get fed the things that you respond to. In social media, you're often in a bubble. So if you respond to people saying nasty things, you'll get more of that nasty stuff. If they think you are like, quote a libertarian, they'll send you more libertarian stuff. So there's a lot of good. There's, you know, David Deutsch, the guy who wrote The Beginning of Infinity, the Paparian. But David Deutsch has been excellent on this issue. Stephen Pinker has been good on this issue. There have been a number of comment. Tammy Bruce has been good on this issue. Tammy Bruce, who's often on Fox and is a radio personality, she's, I think, retweeted some of my tweets. Even Dave Rubin has been good on this issue and retweeted one of my tweets. Got him in trouble with some of his followers on the new right. You know, again, a wide variety of people have been good on this issue. So don't just pay attention to the bad guys and the evil. Notice that there are some intellectuals who are good on this and this should be one of your litmus tests. There's tests for who to follow, who are the good guys, who are the bad guys. Pay attention. And if anything, this issue should illustrate that if there's one group that are not the good guys, that are not our friends, that are not our allies, it's the, I'd say, big L libertarians. Andrew says, Defenders of Palestinians are in epistemological chaos equating the Israeli occupation with a mass mode of innocent civilians, no hierarchy, no context, no capacity to generalize foolishness, resting on altruism, absolutely. And remember, Israel does occupy, but why does it occupy? Because when it leaves, this is what happens. Imagine if Israel has left the West Bank, had given the West Bank to Palestinians and said, you do what you want with it. We're leaving. Then this would have been happening in Tel Aviv. This wouldn't have been happening just a few hundred. This would have been thousands of, tens of thousands of casualties. And there's no way to knock missiles down going from the West Bank into Tel Aviv. It's so close. It's ten minutes, basically. Right. What this should illustrate is that Israel is being too soft. I mean, what did Israel do in Gaza? And this is important. I don't know that I said this completely yesterday. It left. It let Hamas have its own state. It created a Palestinian state in Gaza. And Hamas could have turned that Palestinian state into anything they wanted, a right to respecting Hong Kong. It could have turned it into Singapore. It could have turned it into Switzerland. It could have turned it into an Israel for the Palestinians. But what did the Palestinians do the day after Israel left? They went to all the Jewish settlements that used to be in the Gaza territory. And they smashed and destroyed everything they could find, including technology that they could have used to build a better society in Gaza. They smashed greenhouses that they could have used for agriculture. They smashed everything. Hamas and sadly the Palestinian people do not want peace. Hamas and the Palestinian people do not want freedom. Not freedom as we understand it. Maybe freedom as what's his name in Braveheart understood it. We don't want to be ruled by English king. We want a Scottish king. We don't want to be ruled by an Israeli. We want to be ruled oppressed by a Palestinian. That's what they want. They don't want freedom. What they want is to smash stuff, to break stuff, to destroy. They are anti-civilizational barbarians. And America should have learnt that after 9-11. They should have learnt that by watching videos of ISIS. But we learnt nothing. We learnt nothing. This is a culture that must be destroyed as a culture. This is why multiculturalism is so offensive and so wrong. There is no equality between the culture of the Palestinians, the culture of Hamas and the culture of Israel. The Palestinian culture as it exists today must be smashed, destroyed. And they must realize that it is a loser. And they must realize that they will never defeat Israel. And only then when they are on their knees ready to embrace a new culture is any kind of peaceful resolution possible. But first they have to be completely and thoroughly disillusioned with their own life, with their own culture, with their own world. And for that they need to be thoroughly defeated. Just as the Japanese were after World War II, just as the Germans were after World War II. James says, Can you be evil without being mentally ill in some way? Is Hamas picking deranged people to carry these things out? Like the Nazi-selected people who were little off in concentration camps? No, not at all. The people in concentration camps were not a little off. Hamas does not find mentally ill people. The barbarians who slaughtered Catholics would mean Catholics and Protestants would mean Protestants were not deranged, were not ill. They were normal people. Normal people committed to an ideology, committed to a particular view of life, committed to nihilistic destruction. You know, Jordan Peterson will say there was evil within all of us. Anyone of us could be in a concentration camp, God, in Auschwitz. He's wrong. Not anyone of us. Some of us would not be. But to not be one has to have, and in a culture that dominated by the mentality of a concentration God, one has to be unbelievably strong and have independent values and an independent mind. And sadly, there are not that many people. So if you can control a culture and you can inculcate in that culture self-destructive, horrific, murderous, nihilistic ideas, you'd be surprised how many people will embrace it. A majority. In Germany. How many people embraced it in the Soviet Union? How many people embraced it again in the religious wars in Europe in the 16th century? How many people embraced it throughout all of human history? Rape and pillage and murder were common. So no. It's not that they're mentally ill. It's that we're rational with independent values and therefore we've risen above the kind of perceptual level barbaric mentality that has pervaded the human race for most of its existence. You have to understand what an achievement civilization is. Okay, Jennifer says, could Israel defeat Hamas without international approval? I think they may have to. Images of Palestinian casualties beginning to be dominant reporting already. Such images intended to push the moral equivalency argument. Yes. And they intended to push the altruism, right? Altruism, they will always support the people who are most suffering right now. So the whole intent is to show as many Palestinians suffering as possible, their culture will shift its altruistic sympathy towards the suffering, and they will deny it to Israel. Can Israel defeat Hamas without international approval? Sure. Does it have the moral fortitude to do it? I'm skeptical. Starjet, thank you. You've earned it. Appreciate it. Thanks for the support. No one. I think most of the AFDs rise is because of German economy, as the quickest shrinking economy in Europe. Subsidized immigration and culture are probably big secondary factors. Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably true. You know, the economy has a big part of it, but I think that there's, you know, phobia. The culture, you know, a lot of the economy is being blamed on climate change. The climate change issue, I think they're probably more supportive of Russia and less supportive of Ukraine, so they blame the economy on natural gas. But it's not, look, these are the non-philosophical reasons. They have to be deeper cultural philosophical reasons for why the extreme right is rising all over Europe. And that has to do with people searching for meaning to use Jordan Peterson's terminology. Searching for something that gives meaning, and they find that in nationalism. They find it in hatred of the other, which is what xenophobia is primarily. All right, Jack, have you seen the reports about the Taliban asking Ronnie Rock and Jordan for safe passage to Israel? Yes. Hard to know if to take that seriously. But you know, Iraq has fought against Israel. They've been allowed safe passage to Jordan in the past. I doubt Jordan would supply safe patches, but certainly Syria would. So you could definitely see Iranians crossing through Iraq and cross Syria to the Israeli border to try to fight. So I wouldn't be surprised if you saw the Taliban show up in the Golan Heights on the Syrian Israeli border wanting to fight on the side of Hamas and the Palestinians. Quite possible. It's a holy war and you will get warriors from all over the world wanting to participate in the holy war. Another reason why Israel needs to be quick, fast, decisive. Get this over with quickly. Don't let organized Islam out there get organized and facilitate a what do you call it? A resistance or a holy war. A holy war can be avoided as long as Israel is decisive and quick and ruthless in executing this war. All right. Shah Zabat says please review the song Zombie by the Cranberries. It's in memory of a violent time in the band's home country of Ireland. All right. I'll look at it. Thank you, Shah Zabat. Andrew says in times like this it's hard, but maybe more meaningful to hold Iran's benevolent universe. This quote, this injustice or terror or falsehood or frustration or pain or agony is the exception in life and not the rule and justice matters. I agree completely. I try to hold on to that continuously in spite of my rage and frustration and disappointment. Can you explain how altruism play into this situation on all sides? I have trouble explaining this concept to people. Sure. I mean Israel, what altruism fundamentally does and this is really, really important. What altruism fundamentally does is it weakens your ability to stand up for yourself. It tells you, oh no, you're being selfish. Don't do that. Oh no, you're being self-interested. Don't do that. It tells you how day you have self-confidence. How day you stand up for your own. Altruism is this conscience, what they'll call conscience, right? It's this little thing on your shoulder telling you don't be selfish. Don't be self-interested. Don't be self-confident. Don't have self-esteem. Don't stand up. And that's Israel. So once in a while it gets outrage. Oh wait, we're going to slam into those. And for a few days that voice in your shoulder is quiet. And then, oh yeah, but don't kill too many of them. You can't bomb them. And don't be too ruthless. You know, what about the poor? And what about the suffering? And what about them? And who are you to stand up? Who are you to stand up for good? Who are you to define what good is? Who are you to claim that you're better than anybody else? So don't, don't shoot. Don't defend yourself. Don't fight. That's altruism. That's altruism in action. And that's what drives Israel. On their side, you know, it's again, the altruism is primarily negation of self. I mean, what do they think is going to happen to them? They're just altruistic for, you know, an afterlife. But what do you think is going to happen to them? Are they going to live happy, fulfilling, flourishing lives as a consequence of this raid, of this terrorist act? No, they're all going to die. And their families are going to die. And thousands and thousands and Palestinians, their friends and neighbors are going to die. And they know that. They just don't care. And again, altruism, they're doing it for a higher good. They're doing it for greater purpose. To think about their own lives and their families and their neighbors, that would be selfish. That would be self-interested. So even for them, altruism plays a huge role in why they do what they do. They do what they do because Allah has mandated it. Grant, does Israel has a civilian militia? No, there's no such thing. In the United States, civilian militias can be called on in need, but there's an increased risk of domestic terrorism for such organizations. To what degree can Israelis protect themselves privately? Well, as it turns out, because they've been disarmed, they can't. Historically, Israelis protected themselves privately by having weapons in the home. And because almost everybody in Israeli society served in the army, they all knew how to use those weapons and knew how to defend themselves. Many Israelis don't serve in the military anymore. The percentage of Israelis who serve in the military is relatively low as compared to the past. They're still in conscription, but it's easy to get out of. And I'm not full conscription. I'm for a voluntary army, but I'm just telling you facts. So fewer Israelis serve in the military, fewer Israelis know how to use arms. And because there's been a campaign of the last 20 years to disarm the Israeli citizenship, many of them don't have weapons. So they can't protect themselves privately. The reality is, Israel is so small. You don't need a civilian militia. What you need is the military can handle it if it's well equipped and on alert. And if private citizens are armed, they can at least protect themselves if they're directly attacked. And that's all you really need. All right, I'm Mirkat. I really liked my trip to Rome. Plus, this recent weekend has convinced me that Gaza deserves the Kothegei treatment, flattening and salting the earth. I'll pretend to be Cato the Elder and end my super chats with, oh, and by the way, I think Gaza must be destroyed. Gaza must be destroyed. Will it be? Probably not. Probably not. All right, we've got a bunch of five and $2 questions. I'm going to go over the $10 questions. I'm going to go over these pretty quickly and call it a day. It's really a long show. All right, Michael says, do you think if the technology had existed, the Nazis would have uploaded their atrocities to social media like Hamas? No, but they would have made a for-fledged documentary directed by, I forget her name, the brilliant German Nazi sympathizing director and made into feature films rather than the internet. But probably uploaded onto the... The gods would have uploaded the stuff on the internet as well. James Taylor says, if intellectuals don't become more egoistic over the next few decades, will Israel still be around? Will any of us still be around? Will the civilized world be still be around? I think Israel will exist as long as civilization sustains itself. But I'm not sure about that. Liam, the West doesn't view morality in terms of right versus wrong, but in terms of strong versus weak. Until that changes, victory can only be sustained. I agree. That's altruism, right? Strong versus weak. And we're on the side of the weak, the weak of the good guys. That's altruism. Michael says, why do you think Neftali Bennett didn't last long as Prime Minister? Do you know him personally? I don't know him personally. I was supposed to meet him this last summer, but he couldn't make the meeting. I think he didn't last as Prime Minister because the only thing that united the coalition that he was the head of was that they all hated Bibi Netanyahu, justifiably. So I, too, hated Bibi Netanyahu for a long time. But that's all that united them. They didn't agree on anything else. The coalition consisted of leftists. Neftali Bennett is relatively right-wing, quite right-wing. It consisted of Islamists, literally Islamists, and a whole variety of middle-of-the-world political parties who didn't stand for anything and who didn't agree on anything. And that's why it didn't last. You can't unify around the negation. Daniel says, if Israel took over Gaza and eliminated Hamas, what should they do with military-age males? Well, they should strip them of all weapons and all ability. If they can show them having been involved with Hamas, they should put them in prison. If they can show them having been in some of the celebrations of Hamas' victories, they should put them in some kind of prison, some kind of isolation. They should make them suffer for their involvement in Hamas' horrific crimes. But the exact nature of what do you do with Gaza afterwards? I don't know. It's not easy to think through, and I haven't given a thought yet. Right now I'm more focused on when the frigging thing. Then we can figure out what to do exactly. Frank said, the white Protestants, you see are DSA students, socialists. Some of them, yeah. Maybe most of them, I don't know. Harper Campbell, do you think most Israelis feel like we've survived before we'll get through this? I can tell you that most Israelis right now think this is the worst they've ever had it. Clearly, right now, the feeling in Israel is they've never had it worse. This is the worst single day, certainly, the worst terrorist attack, the worst existential threat Israel has ever faced. You know, you could argue Yom Kippur was worse, but not in terms of bloodshed and horror and just an undermining of the confidence of everything that Israel believes in. So, no, I think Israelis are shocked and terrified right now. I can tell you that's certainly how my family feels. Catherine says, heartbroken, thank you Catherine. Kazan Dapp says, a liberal Jewish lawyer will hire Harvard adults. Everybody would hire Harvard adults. Liam says, Israel brought human rights, reason, and science to part of the world that has disdain for those things, absolutely. What did they expect would happen? Was it a mistake to create a Jewish state there? I'm not sure what the alternative was. And the fact is that if a strong Israeli committed, Israel committed to its own self-defense, would be doing fine right now. Would be doing fine. It's Israel's weakness. It's Israel's, you know, acceptance of altruism that is the cause of this, not where it is in the world. And if Israel was strong, morally confident, morally assertive, the Middle East might change. Israel would be a model by which it would change. It's its weakness that prevents that from happening. Stobos, in Kibbutz al-Lumot, 15 armed inhabitants stopped the terrorist. Perhaps you were wrong yesterday about guns, big fan, by the way. Yes, and I said I was wrong about guns yesterday. I was wrong about the existence of guns, the existence of guns yesterday. But I don't know that I'm wrong about what I said about America. I mean, again, 15 armed inhabitants, these are well trained. Particularly the Kibbutz guys, they typically, they're all in combat units, many of them special forces. These are well trained people who know how to use guns. But yes, my mistake yesterday. How on earth can Iran be prevented from spending the 8 billion they acquired on Hamas or terrorism? Their regime can be annihilated. Wouldn't take much. And therefore, maybe somebody else can spend the money, but not this regime. This regime needs to be ended. Should have been ended a long time ago. Jakovic, what's the standard we should use for judging something as a war crime? For example, if Israel launches strikes unknowingly poor intelligence and it results in many civilian deaths, would that be a war crime? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. A war crime would be gratuitous. And first of all, there's no such thing as a war crime from an international perspective. There's no such thing as a war crime from the outside. Israel should have standards for war crimes by its own soldiers. So its own soldiers gratuitously for absolutely no reason killing civilians, raping and pillaging like Hamas did. They should be tried under Israeli law, under Israeli military law, for war crimes. But it's none of America's business. It's none of Europe's business. It's none of anybody else's business. And the same with regard to American troops. You know, Americans, again, gratuitously, not killing civilians, but gratuitously killing civilians, might be a war crime, depending on the circumstances. But that needs to be brought in front of a court in the country that committed the crime. Not some external who has no legitimacy. So war crimes is about gratuitous, not about killing civilians, it's irrelevant. I mean, gratuitously killing enemy combatants, you know, prisoners of war, whatever. But it has to be the gratuitousness of it is what matters. If there's a purpose to it, a legitimate purpose to killing civilians, then it's not a war crime. And all the debt, all the debt on the side, on both sides, is the responsibility of those who initiated it for us. By the way, I have an essay on these kind of issues called, I think it's called, Something with Just War Theory. So if you put in Google, Just War Theory, you run Brooke. I think it's available online for free and you can read it. I wrote it with Alex Epstein. A long, long time ago. Colt, I'm 100% behind Israel in the efforts with the hypocrisy of some on the right being anti-Ikrain, but pro-Israel is not lost on me. Team Freedom, I agree with you Colt. I'm with you completely. Colt also says, although I guess it's better than they were wrong on both sides, a little bit, a little bit better. How long will they stay on the side of Israel? Why are they even on the side of Israel? For irrational reasons. Interesting how, this is thought criminal, interesting how they switched from socialist nationalism to mindless mystics in the Middle East. Yeah, but the mindless mysticism was always an undertone there and has been a force in the Middle East forever. Daniel Duffy says, remember Bibi did read John Lewis's book, some of the rhetoric from the general has been good, but sadly and pessimistic. Yes, he read my book. He read my essay on Israel. Bibi knows. He's read out of the shrug. Bibi wrote an excellent book on terrorism. He just never has practiced it. Never practiced it. Just on Bibi. Proper. One reason social media seems pro-Palestine is because pro-Israel stuff is getting taken down. My Reddit post got removed from being hate speech. That's just horrible. Just horrible. All right. Thank you all. Really, really appreciate the support. Thanks to everybody. I will be back on tomorrow. So I'll keep you updated as the week progresses. I probably won't be able to do a show but I'll try to do some days. Definitely be on a Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in the weekend and I think Monday. And then I'm off to Europe so we'll see what happens. Oh, I got two quick questions here. Oops, what did I do? Something happened there. I think at all, I answered that. All right. The system here is all messed up once that. But Amirka did post something. Oh, where is it? Maybe not. Jack says, have you seen reports about... Yeah, I answered that way. And I got to review. Did I miss something? No. Okay, the software is just going over. All right, I will see you all tomorrow. Thanks a lot. Thanks for the support. Really, really appreciate it in these hard times. It means a lot to me to see so many of you here. It means a lot to me to see how much money you guys are supporting the show with. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you. And I will see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.