 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow. On this Thursday night, I hope everybody's doing well. 8 p.m. here in Puerto Rico. And I know it's probably late in Europe, so I'm not expecting anybody from there to be on the show. But maybe some West Coasters, and maybe some Australians. Who knows? All right. Today, we're going to be talking about genocide, what it is, and what makes it, I guess, why are people so obsessed with it. We'll talk about whether Israel is committing genocide and why it is that it is accused of committing genocide and who is doing the accusing and on what basis they are doing it. So all right, we do have some people in Europe. We've got Robin, 1 a.m. in Europe, all right. So not a pleasant topic, I apologize. It's not a fun topic. I was kind of looking to do something else. But then this video of Joe Rogan popped up, and I figured, yeah, I really need to comment on this. All right, so what is genocide? What is a genocide? So I wasn't saying I had a dictionary definition. So genocide is a, you know, this is according to, yeah. Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where the actor committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national ethic racial or religious group. So there are five categories, supposedly. One is killing members of the group with the intent again, the intent of destroying in whole or in part a national ethic, ethnic, racial or religious group. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to being about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Imposing measures intended to prevent boths within the group, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Now notice a little bit of ambiguity here. Killing members of the group, you might kill members of the group in an act of self-defense. But I think what defines it a genocide, or what should define it as genocide, is the intent. That is the intent is to destroy in whole or in part a nation, an ethnicity, a racial group, or any kind of group. It's to eliminate a group. Rand had an interesting comment to say about genocide. She said, there's no principle where which genocide, a crime against a group of men, can be regarded as morally different from or worse than a crime against an individual. That if it is only quantitative, not moral, it can be easily demonstrated that communism means and requires the extermination, the genocide, if you will, of a particular human species, the men of ability. Oh, anybody objects to the dictator's welling. But we don't call what the communists did a genocide. So this is a special crime, I guess, because the intent is to destroy an entire group identified by some characteristic, nation, ethnicity, race, religion. So that is how it's defined. And if that intent leads to killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, the liberty of inflicting conditions of life that will destroy the group, or imposing measures that tend to prevent births within a group, all with the intent of destroying the group. So that is what genocide is. And we can think of a lot of examples of genocide. The Holocaust was genocide. It was the intention of killing all the Jews and destroying the Jews. However you want to call Jews an ethnic group, a national group, a religious group, whatever you want to call them, they're not exactly any one of those, but it's a group. Maybe it's a national group. And the Nazis intended to destroy the entire group. They intended to kill everybody, at least everybody they could with the intention of destroying them forever. In Rwanda, in 1994, I think it was, the Houtis set out to destroy the Tutsis. Their intention was to kill everybody. They could. They killed half a million people in a matter of weeks, I think four months, they killed half a million people. Unbelievable slaughter, brutal, disastrous. And the only criteria was, you are a Tutsi, therefore you died. Clearly genocide, the intent was to completely destroy and kill. And by the way, they didn't miss an opportunity. That is, every opportunity, whenever they found a Tutsi, whenever they identified a Tutsi, they killed them. In the Holocaust, wherever the Nazis identified Jews off the concentration camps, killed them en masse. The Armenians genocide by the Turks won't admit it was a genocide. The murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians who did not pose a direct threat to Turkey was not an act of self-defense with the intention of wiping out the Armenian people. These are genocides. And the criteria is clear and the action is clear. And now Israel is fighting a war in the Gaza Strip. A lot of Palestinians are dying. Many of them, although not as many as people think, but many of them are civilians, many children. And somehow because many are dying, this is genocide. Now, we'll talk about this and we're gonna appeal this a little bit and we're gonna talk about the history and we'll talk about this a little bit in the UN report about this a little bit. I wanna play you what Joe Rogan said. And the left is very, very good at defining an issue and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Don't worry about facts, don't worry about reality, don't worry about contradictions, just keep saying it. And it enters into the culture and then it's just there. And nobody knows where it came from and nobody challenges it. It's just now the truth. And they are definitely doing it with regard to this concept of genocide to the point where Alex, to the point where Joe Rogan now is joining EOC in blaming Israel for genocide. Now, Joe Rogan is not the smartest guy on the block. This is part of it. But let's watch this and then let's analyze his quote reasoning. And I'm using quotes around reasoning because there's no reasoning here. So let's watch this and see what Joe Rogan said. I'm gonna try, I really am. I'm gonna try to play the whole thing without interrupting and then we'll go back and analyze it and talk about it. Okay, so here is Joe Rogan. Like, look what's going on with Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro. Like, what did she say? I wanna know what she was fired for. Cause was it criticism of Israel? Was it, I mean, did she show that Edward Snowden video that he put up on Twitter that shows them drone bombing those kids that are those men, I should say unarmed people that were walking towards the rubble that clearly weren't causing any danger to anybody. They just bombed them. I have to stop here because otherwise you'll forget. Here's the, you saw the video? This is the video. It's been circulating the last few days. I mean, it's a weird video because here's the video. I'll show it again. The full man. But then he put up on Twitter that shows them drone bombing those kids that are those men, I should say unarmed people that were walking towards the rubble that clearly weren't causing any danger. Clearly not causing any danger. Now, think about this. Four men, Israel assigned a drone to follow them. Wouldn't you ask yourself why? Is Israel just randomly looking for civilians in Gaza and shooting at them? I mean, maybe, but there are a lot bigger clusters of people than these four men. They're all over the place. It could have gone anywhere. It could have shot 20 men, 50 men, crowds. They're crowds in Gaza. You see it on the internet all the time. Why is Israel expending the resources to assign a drone to follow these four men? How do we know they're not a danger to anybody? How do we know that? Now, Rogan says they're not armed because Al-Jazeba said they're not armed. How do we know they're not armed? How do we know what they're holding underneath their jackets? But okay, if they're not armed, maybe they were armed five minutes ago before this video shown and they've stashed their weapons. Maybe they've just come out of a tunnel and they're heading towards whatever. How do we know? Maybe Israel has used its facial recognition software or other intelligence to identify one of these men as a Hamas leader, as a commander. Maybe these men are heading towards a weapons cache and they're about to kill some Israeli soldiers. I mean, I don't know, but how does Joe Rogan know? I mean, naive, no, he's not naive. Come on, Andrew. Oh, am I naive? Maybe I'm naive. He's an idiot. I mean, how do you come to conclusions like this? Where is thinking, thinking, thinking, you know, that? This is not difficult. A war zone, four men are walking. Oh, they don't wear uniforms. They're not wearing uniforms. They must be civilians. I mean, that would be true in a real, you know, war between, I don't know, European countries or something. But we know that Hamas never wears uniforms. At least since October 7th, no Hamas fighter has worn a uniform. They all are in civilians. I know you meant Joe, but I don't think he's naive. I think he's stupid. It's motivated stupidity, but it's stupid. I mean, every single Hamas fighter out there is in civilian clothes. They drop their weapons and they walk into a crowd. They pick up weapons somewhere else and they go fight. Yes, Joe Rogan has 14.9 million subscribers. Everybody sees this, right? And it's Joe Rogan. He's like super smart. He interviews the biggest names, the biggest names in the world. He is the biggest talk show host on the planet right now. Himantaka, I guess. And what's he implying that Israel just killed them? Why? They're not hurting anybody? It's not a danger to anybody? Really, how do we know that? You know, it's just God. Where's, why is he interviewing some Navy SEAL who can explain this to him? It's insane, but this is the attitude. And this is a constant drone and this is, he's concerned about Candice Owen. This is Candice Owen. Why was she fired? Because she's an anti-Semite. And Ben Shapiro and the people at the Daily Wire had enough because she's clearly an anti-Semite. That's why she was fired. Anybody? Yeah, right. They just bombed them. They just bombed them, sure. It's just like for Biden or whoever you like, you're supposed to cover up for them because you're... But the whole thing is like they were always saying they're only targeting Hamas and everybody else is a casualty. Well, if those guys are just unarmed civilians and they're walking alone, that's what they appear to be. Dresden. And how do you know this? They appear to be just people just walking along. Civilians, how does he know this? I mean, really, how does Joe Rogan know this? I mean, does he have any frigging responsibility with 14.9 million subscribers to think before he speaks, to do a little bit of research before he spouts this nonsense? Then... And you just blast them from the sky with robots? Yeah, you blast them with the sky with robots, cost a fortune, these robots. Every one of those missiles, that was one of the guys who escaped from the first bombing, they went after him and killed him. You think they just do that to an arbitrary civilian, drop $150,000 bomb on him? Just because for fun, what do you think they're doing here? I mean, but he says it with no hesitation. No, well, maybe I don't understand. Maybe we can get somebody to explain this. Maybe we can call somebody who knows something about this. This is the tragedy of war. Yeah, this is insane. And no one knows what to think now because if you can't talk about that, if you can't say that's real, then you're saying that genocide is okay as long as we're doing it. Yeah, there it is. Genocide is okay as long as we're doing it. He called it genocide. That is what we're saying. And if you're saying that from a perspective of someone who literally went through the Holocaust or your people, your tribe, went through the fucking Holocaust and now you're willing to do it? I hope the irony is not lost on you. It's so nuts. It's so hard to imagine that someone where a culture, like a country was like officially founded in what, 47? 48. 48, okay, officially founded. So that's so recent. And you guys are willing to do what was done to you that led you to believe that you needed to start your own country. You're willing to do that at least on a small scale in Gaza, like there's nothing left. I mean, what do you do about that? He basically said, Israel's committee genocide. He basically said, Israel's doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews. He equivocated between the two. Israel's doing it on a smaller scale. Only two million people, I guess, versus six. But it's the same thing. There's no difference. 14.1 million people. I don't know how many people have watched that. Many, many, many millions, probably many more than 14.9 because it's making the rounds. This is what Joe Rogan thinks now. Joe Rogan's not exactly a rabid leftist. He's not some crazy person on the left. He is now, I don't know, mainstream center right? Right? I don't know what you make of Joe Rogan. But now whatever Joe Rogan is, yeah, Israel's committee genocide, no question, because they killed four guys and I didn't see any weapons. And I don't see any, like they didn't wear those jackets. You know how the FBI wears jackets and it says FBI? They weren't wearing the Hamas jackets. There was no Hamas jacket on them. They weren't wearing the Hamas hats with the little thing to let the Israelis know where to shoot them. So they're obviously not Hamas members. So Israel's obviously now going around Gaza with $150,000 bombs and killing the Palestinians one by one in an attempt to commit genocide. And I look to see, does anybody criticize this? Not much, not much. Everybody's just silent. I mean, generally I think what's happening right now is that the genocide rhetoric is winning. It's demonstration after demonstration after demonstration in New York and everywhere else, sit-ins at Stanford University and everywhere else. And I think everybody else is fatigued and they're just like, okay, give them the genocide thing and let's go on with our lives. And the victim here is going to be Israel on a grand scale, on a grand scale. The photos, by the way, if you watch the video, I mean, there are not a lot of weird things about this video. This video was released by El Jazeera when asked how they got the video, they claim they got it from a down drone, a drone that was knocked down. But if you know anything about drones, they don't actually store the video on the drone. The video is sent back. And if they do store the video on the drone, it's encrypted. So there's no way they got this video from a drone. My guess is somebody in Israel leaked it. But, you know, the drone follows these four guys, shoots two of them get away and then it goes, finds the other two and shoots them. Why would it do that? Unless these were, for whatever reason, important targets that Israel thought it was necessary to kill. So, yeah, I mean, but it didn't take me long to do a little bit of research about drones and about the storage and about where El Jazeera got the video or any of that. But why would Joe even do it? I mean, he's only got 14.9 million viewers and they are not particularly care about the facts. So why make the effort to provide them with facts? That's just a waste of time. He's gonna make his $250 million no matter what. All right, so the rhetoric of genocide continues and Israel is accused of it. Let's turn to the United Nations. Oh, by the way, just because we're talking about people claiming Israel's community genocide, Alex Jones, Alex Jones declared, I think today, yesterday, the last few days, that Israel's action and Gaza are equivalent of mass genocide. Mass genocide, that's Alex Jones. He's on the right, yep. Yep, but Scott would have him as my ally. Alex Jones is also mass suicide, AOC. AOC is now a big, you know, on the same side as Alex Jones and Joe Rogan. She too says there is no world in which the forced famine of 1.1 million people cannot be considered genocide. So Israel is causing starvation in Gaza and therefore Israel is committing genocide. One way or the other, all these people across the board committing genocide. And if you look at American polls, if you look at asking people about whose side are they on, who do they think is right? Israel or the Palestinians in this case. So right after October 7th, in the first few weeks after October 7th, the Israeli public was split 50-50, which is pretty shocking. 50 people said Israel was right to do what it was doing. 50% said Israel was wrong to do what it was doing. Today, it's 65-35 against Israel. Only something like one-third of Americans believe Israel is doing what is right. Two-thirds of Americans, Americans, not French, not Spaniards, not Italians, Americans. Only a third of Americans think Israel is doing what is right as Israel works to defend itself and dismantle Hamas. I'm going to talk about Hamas in a minute. All right, I want to show you one more video. This one is of a UN human rights expert, independent human rights expert, Francesca Albs. She's Italian. And she reported on her findings about whether Israel is committing genocide or not to the United Nations. I think it was yesterday. After five months of monitoring and analyzing Israel's onslaught on Gaza, my report finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that Israel is committing the crime of genocide against the Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met. The flagrant and systematic slaughter of Palestinian civilians, the deployment of unlawful weaponry, the utter obliteration of vital civilian infrastructure including the deliberate targeting of all Gaza's hospitals and the man-made starvation of the Palestinian people, transcend the realm of war crimes and crimes against humanities, that had been seen in the occupied Palestinian territory before. All right, that's just one short clip of her testimony. It goes on and on. And she claims Israel is a colony power, a colonial power established there. She gives all the regular stuff. I mean, she is well-known as an anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian actor, and she has been for a very long time. So she's a known actor. Both Germany and France and the United Nations objected to her report and called it biased and called it completely and utterly wrong. And interesting, I don't know another time where both France and Germany agreed on an issue around genocide. Not countries that usually do this. So let's wind back. Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? Is Israel trying to systematically destroy, kill the Palestinian people? Is it trying to annihilate the Palestinians? The answer clearly is no. The answer is no because if they wanted to, if that was their intent, they have the weapons, they have the access, they have the ability to really do it. In four months of war, four months of war, in a highly dense civilian city, urban landscape, with over 2 million people crowded into a small, tiny piece of land that is filled with homes and high-rises, Israel, according to the Palestinians themselves, has killed somewhere between 32,000 to 35,000 people. Of those, about half are Hamas. Now, notice the Palestinians never tell you where they get those numbers. The numbers seem completely arbitrary. They never tell you where they get those numbers. And they certainly never tell you how many of the people killed a Hamas. How many of them are men? Almost all the men killed by Israel are Hamas. So about half are Hamas. That leaves about 15, 16, 17,000 people who have died. Big numbers. But out of a population of 2 million people, have you seen the pictures of Gaza? I mean, Gaza is devastated. The infrastructure completely destroyed. The buildings have been flattened. There really is no residential buildings almost in certain areas of Gaza, even standing. And only 15,000 people have died who are not combatants. That's pretty amazing. That's like a world record in terms of how few civilians have died in war, in comparison to the number of combatants, in an urban setting. That's not genocide. That's barely being tough. So here's a country doing everything that it can to prevent civilian casualties more than I even think they should. More than any other country has ever done in the history of warfare to prevent civilian casualties. And they are the ones being accused of genocide. Why? Well, because the Jews, because they're Western, because they're strong, because people paid Israel. And now the chorus yelling about genocide is only growing. It's international. Ireland today joined the South African petition to the International Court of Justice, advocating for Israel committing genocide, arguing that that's exactly what Israel is doing. Ireland is joining South Africa in that claim. So no country has ever made more of an effort, not to kill civilians. Doesn't matter. In the operation of Shifa Hospital this last week, they went in because Shifa was overrun by Hamas. They killed about 170 Hamas members. They captured somewhere between 4 to 800. Guess how many civilians were killed? Zero. Zero. In a complex operation inside a hospital, inside a hospital complex with many, many civilians around. No, none of these people accusing Hamas or blaming Hamas for, I mean, she mentioned the destruction of infrastructure, for using that infrastructure as military bases, as command and control centers, as places from which they launched rockets. She didn't mention all the rockets had been sending until Israel managed to shut that down. Where is this genocide exactly? Israel has allowed food trucks into Gaza, hundreds of them. Every indication is that that food is being stolen by Hamas, used to feed their fighters, used inside their tunnels, and that they are depriving the food that the international community is sending from the Gaza population. And yet, who is being blamed for the starvation of the Gazans? Not Hamas. Note that none of these people blame Hamas for anything. It's really hard to comprehend just the evil that is involved here, the evil on the part of those who are attacking Israel, the evil of those who are claiming there is genocide going on. The evil of those who evade everything Hamas does and make up stuff that Israel does. If there is a genocidal intent anywhere here, it is clearly from Hamas. Hamas, in its charter, declares that its goal is the elimination of the state of Israel. It has regular calls for killing Jews, for being Jews. If it could have, on October 7th, it would have not just killed 1,200 people. They would have easily and eagerly killed 1,000, 120,000, 1.2 million. There is no limit to how many people they want to kill. And Hamas clearly doesn't care about civilians versus non-civilians. Their only intention is to kill Jews. Their slogan, a river to the sea, is a genocidal slogan. It means the elimination of the people of Israel and their replacement with Arabs. I mean, there's one party here that is genocidal. There is one party that is intent on killing the other group and wiping it out. And that is Hamas. And they get no flak for that. Nobody seems to care about that. Nobody seems to worry about that. That is fine. Israel defending itself? Israel trying to destroy Hamas? Israel doing its best, worst, depending on how you want to view it to protect civilians? That is unimportant. All right. I mean, I think more than anything, this really shows, both on the left and on the right, the level of hatred of Israel and the level of hatred of Jews that exists out there. But it's deeper than that. What it really is showing us is the extent to which people, Americans, are unthinking. Stupid, evading, just not engaging with the world, not engaging in actual understanding, integration, thinking. I can't think of anything that illustrates really how bad our culture is than this conflict. It's such an easy black-and-white conflict. It really is an easy black-and-white conflict that, to not see it in those terms. To not see it in those terms is, you know, it says a lot about the kind of culture, the kind of thinking, the kind of attitude the culture has. All right. What do we want to do, guys? We have one question from Frank. But other than that, nothing, not up. So if anybody wants to ask a question, how's the time? Otherwise, we'll make this a short show. And we will call it a day. If you have any questions about this or about anything else, please ask them. If you have objections, as some of you do, in the chat, don't put it in the chat. Put it in the super chat and ask a question or make a comment. And I'll respond to it. All right. Frank says, if drafted, would auto-orthodox kids be good soldiers? I mean, I don't know. Nobody's a good soldier before they're trained. They could do a variety of different jobs that did not evolve too much action or too much responsibility. I don't know. But it really is more of a question of, there are a lot of people that are drafted that are not going to make good soldiers and put in appropriate places. Now, I'm against a draft. I told you this already. I don't think there should be a draft. But the idea of excluding people from something because they happen to be religious is absurd and ridiculous. And then subsidizing them, subsidizing them to study the Bible that provides zero benefit is kind of crazy, kind of crazy. All right. Any other questions? If not, we will call this a night. I will, tomorrow, we'll have a regular news roundup in the morning. And then on Saturday, there is a Ask Me Anything. $25 donor supporters can attend live, audio. They can ask questions. Let's see. I do want to remind you that we have a new sponsor, Alex Epstein. So alexepstein.substack.com, where you can get Alex Epstein's energy talking points, and you can get his talking points and his Alex AI, which is an artificial intelligence chat box that actually answers questions based on the way Alex would answer them, as filtered through an AI. That is an AI learning from Alex. Andrew says, do you think altruism is causing the massive vision on this conflict? Yes. I mean, ultimately, it's altruism. But it's more than altruism. We really do think we have, actually, I've got one other question that we should answer today, given that we're running a short show. So we have time for this question. All right. It's not just altruism. It's also the inability of people to think, the inability to think in principle, the inability to think about the facts, to integrate those facts, to study a little bit of history, to, again, think through the issue. What is genocide? Is Israel really committing genocide? Is there anything about what Israel's doing? When they knock on the buildings to let you know that they're dropping a bomb so that people can evacuate the building. Genocide? No. When they drop pamphlets and saying, please evacuate your homes, because we're coming in here to bomb out the tunnels that have been built under your homes, so we could have just bombed you into oblivion while you were still in there. But please evacuate, so when we go in and find the tunnels and get the weapons caches and try to find the hostages, we don't kill you all. That's genocide? That's an intent for genocide? I mean, over and over and over and over again, you see Israel going out of its way, to not inflict unnecessary casualties, going out of its way to evacuate, to warn, even sadly, tragically and immorally at the expense of their own people's lives. The question was altruism. But of course, you know, even all of that, you could argue that the unthinking, the source of the unthinking ultimately, is altruism. I mean, altruism is so destructive. But you know, and look, I know this is not a popular view, but I mean, it really is becoming obvious to me that a lot of this is a consequence of anti-Semitism and a hatred of Jews. So it's not just the altruism, it's not just the unthinking, it's also just blind hatred. How dare these people, I think, is how people hold it in their minds. Let them rot. How dare they defend themselves? They're not supposed to defend themselves, they're supposed to turn over and walk into the ovens and be, you know, be killed without standing up for themselves and fighting back. All right, okay, let's do a couple of these questions and then I've got one, there's somebody emailed me. Hoppe, Steven Hoppe, thank you for the sticker, RDF, thank you for the sticker. Jonathan Honing, Doron Regev, Steven Hoppe, thank you all for the stickers, I appreciate it. All right, Ian says, does ARI have plans to do an Iran chat box? Seems likely it would be a great draw for people. Yeah, I think the plans to do stuff around that, exactly how it's done, what it's done. I don't know, but there are talks about doing something like that. There's even talk about doing one for the Iran book show where the AI would literally basically listen to all my shows that I've ever done and then try to create answers to questions that people have based on that. So we'll see if any of those become a reality. String about, hello, Iran. I find Joe's moral equivalency between Israel and Nazi Germany ridiculous. I don't recall Israel committing an October 7th-like atrocity. Yeah, I mean, ridiculous is too weak. It really is atrocious and horrible that he would drive that, it really is absurd. Piedi, thanks for the sticker. Thanks, really appreciate it. And look, it's not that I'm saying that, I mean, if you think about the origins of the conflict, where does this conflict come from, right? This conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Why did the Palestinians reject Jewish immigration into what was then Palestine? There was no Palestinian country that never has been in all of history. Why did they object under the Ottomans and then under the British? Why did the Palestinians object to Jews coming and buying land, buying land and cultivating that land and turning swamps, drying the swamps, reducing the amount of malaria, reducing the amount of sickness, building hospitals, building industry. Why did the Arabs object to that? Because they didn't want Jews there. Now, part of it is Jew hatred, part of it is hatred of the other, part of it is hatred of Europeans, part of it is hatred of non-Muslims, but it is a reality that from the very beginning, the Arabs did not want others there. The Arabs did not want Jews living amongst them. They did not want, they certainly did not want, and this was made very clear, they did not want a Jewish political entity among them. It's not about land. The Peel Commission in 1939 gave Arabs 80% of the land in Palestine, in what's the finest Palestine. Still didn't want it, because 20% was gonna be under the control of Jews. Say, hated the people, they hated the people for coming there. And again, we're not talking about Jews coming there and stealing land, we're not talking about Jews coming there and mass-screening the local population. Exact opposite, Jews came, they bought the land. Arabs were very, very happy to sell the land to Jews, even the Arabs who hated the Jews because they made a profit and the Jews paid a lot of money for the land, above market prices. They didn't want them living among them. That was irrational, racist, and ultimately self-destructive because it destroyed the Palestinian people. It destroyed them. They were the ones that suffered the most from it. Again, and it wasn't even, they didn't have a country. It wasn't that they had a country. It wasn't even that they wanted a country. Palestinian leadership, before the establishment of state of Israel, considered themselves part of the Pan-Arab world. They wanted one big country that included Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine. That was always the intent. It wasn't to create some Palestinian state within this region, but they were one of part of the Arab world. So their motivation has always been, has always been. So the first riots against the Jews, first organized riots against the Jews in 1921, their intention was to kill the Jews, to get the Jews out of there. And the best way to get them out of there is to kill them. Let's see, Michael says, the internet's shown that there is more ugliness in the world and among the common man than you could have imagined. I mean, yes, definitely. There's no question about that. Before, a lot of it was there, but you didn't really see it. You didn't see it. You weren't exposed to the masses, the way we are today. You weren't exposed to huge numbers of people, the way you are today. So while they were always bad people, always horrible people, you didn't experience quite so viscerally, you didn't experience so personally, and you didn't experience the numbers in a firsthanded way, particularly not in America. And the reality of just the sheer number of people who have ugly views, crazy leftist and crazy people on the right, Joe Rogan, you know, to AOC, that, I mean, you probably would have had a Joe Rogan anyway and an AOC anyway, but everybody who comments on them, anybody who supports them, that you wouldn't really have seen, other than in elections, I guess. Some TV personalities, some radio personalities, but even they, I mean, think about all the big radio personalities, they were pretty, you know, pretty reasonable as compared to the nuts that social media has made celebrities in the world in which we live. Florida Nick, since it is used to get around government, why do you think there hasn't been more pushed to ban VPNs? I mean, they are banned. They're banned in China. Every authoritarian regime has banned them. People still manage to get a hold of them. There is a dark web, there are all kinds of ways to get around the government's restrictions. In the United States, that would clearly be a violation of rights. So I don't think anybody, anybody politician would try it in the US today, one day, maybe, but authoritarian states all banned VPNs. But how can they stop it? You know, I went into China with a VPN and used it. I know lots of Chinese who use VPNs. It's very, very hard to track one person at a time. If they want to go after you and they find a VPN on your phone, that will be one more thing they will try you for. Putin, by the way, today, went after the owner of Telegram, who's Russian, who's left Russia, because he's claiming Telegram is used by terrorists. No, they don't like these. Telegram is an encrypted messaging service, much more anonymous or much easier to, much harder to track than any of the other, any of the other services. By the way, there was a huge difference between not liking Judaism, even hating Judaism or hating religion, or not even liking a particular country like Israel, and anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is hating Jews, not the religion, not being intellectually critical of the religion, but hating people who happen to be of a certain nationality. It's not even a religion. You know, most Jews are secular, most Jews are not religious. So it's a nationality. It's a nation, it's a tribe, it's a group that lost its geographic home and then re-established it. But it's anti-Semitism. I hate them for being that, being it's not even a common genetic thing because Jews come from all over the world and they have all kinds of skin colors and they have all kinds of stuff. So Jews are a nation and they hated for being a part of that nation. That's what anti-Semitism means. It doesn't mean hatred of a religion because Jews are not religious. So many Jews in Israel, something like 45% of Israelis are secular, completely secular. I don't know what that means by man 3000. I have no idea what you're talking about. All right, let's see. Richard says, it doesn't usually Palestinian conflict boiled down to religion where Jews and Muslims claim the same area of land as holy based on the mystic texts. No, no. Most Jews, the founders of Israel never claimed Israel was holy. The founders of Israel, the people who emigrated to Israel in the late 19th century throughout the early part of the 20th century were atheists. They were not religious at all. But they had recognized the fact that staying in Europe was suicide, that anti-Semitism was rising and they were being killed. And they needed somewhere to go. They needed to escape. They needed to get out of Europe. And they went to Israel because Israel is the land from which the great, great, great, great, great, ultimately ancestors come from. And it was a relatively sparsely populated place. It was a place that did not have a nation on it because it had been ruled by empires. And they went there and they built homes and they built industries. It has nothing to do, zero to do with religious texts or holy land or any of that. Again, the first prime minister of Israel was an atheist. The most of the people who came to Israel in the early 20th century to build the country were atheists. Many of them were real socialists, not all of them. There were some capitalists there who built industries, who built utilities, built industries, built infrastructure. Most of them were capitalists, only a few were socialists, but the socialists were the ones that I remembered because they ultimately were the ones who led the government and they were the ones who built the Kibbutzim and everybody, I mean, but a tiny percentage of the population of Israel lived in Kibbutzim. Most of the population lived in cities and did the kind of work everybody does, everywhere. So no, it had nothing to do with religion. It had to do with the need to escape racism, the need to escape anti-Semitism. They escaped from a place that wanted to kill them. And yeah, they wanted to kill them. They were being killed on a daily basis. In Russia, in Ukraine, in Poland, in Lithuania, they escaped and they emigrated. And then they started a country built on the principles of freedom and committed to being an escape, a place where people identified as Jews could always escape to. Now, if that bothers you, if that somehow triggers you, then there's something wrong. There's something wrong with you. But no, Richard, it really isn't about, there's nothing about, you know, Israel, when I grew up, when I came to the United States, what shocked me about the United States is how religious people were. And that how, even the atheists that I met in the US, how obsessed they were with religion, that is to what extent religion played a huge role in the life of Americans. And I can, because I came from Israel, which was much more secular as a culture than America is. It was not about holy books. It was about the kind of country, the kind of place you built. And the Jews, people identified as Jews, built a relatively free, civilized place in the face of Arabs who wanted to kill them and who wanted to build an uncivilized place. Andrew says, what is the cross between libertarians and RFK? You mean what's common between them? I think what's common between them is conspiracy theories. Yeah, I don't know, I have no idea. I mean, hatred of big business, hatred of America. And yeah, conspiracy theories, I think those, that's what's common. Michael, I am stunned by how many ignore that Palestinians where they aggressors of extreme brutality and the strong self-defense is absolutely right and good. Yeah, I mean, and that's throughout history, that's not the first time they ignore the fact that the Arabs were the aggressors in 1947, in 1948, in 1936, in 1929, in 1921, in 1967, in 1973. I mean, every conflict between Israel and the Arab world, the Arabs were the aggressors. So you can go back as long as you want. But the Arabs are always initiated as a force. Israel wants, repeatedly says it wants, to live in peace and that they are rejected, that wish that they have to live in peace is rejected over and over and over again. All right, let's see, here's a question on a different topic. Oh, Michael has a question. All right, so we'll get to the other question later. I had an argument with someone supporting Palestinians. I stated I supported Israel and have a few reasons. A democracy protecting rights. He accused me of being simplistic when I didn't entertain his arbitrary claims. Michael continues. One of the lines was that civilians are separate from Hamas. He said the same about Germans killed in World War II bombing by the U.S., same about Russians today. I counted that they voted for Hamas. Well, they vote for Hamas. They support Hamas in a variety of different ways. They cheered on Hamas when they came back with all those hostages and when they came back from killing Israelis, they were cheered in the streets. They've never rebelled against Hamas. And the fact is that the work that they do is what funds Hamas. Michael goes on. The major point is the civilian deaths of responsibility of Hamas for starting the conflict. It's very clarifying and valuable points I've understood better from you and other AOI thinkers. Absolutely. That is the fundamental is this is all Hamas' fault. This is a conflict created by Hamas. They basically gained this territory, Gaza, in 2005 when Israel left. And they could have established any kind of country they wanted it. They could have established a liberal democracy there. They could have established a lasific capitalist haven. They could have built resorts and beaches. They could have taken over the workshops and the factories and the greenhouses that the Israelis had built and left there. Instead, they destroyed all that and they built a terrorist state. And they've been firing rockets. They've been teaching their children to love the idea of dying for the cause. Love the idea of committing suicide and killing as many Jews as they could. The amount of money flowing into Gaza is billions and billions and billions of dollars. And what did they do with it? They built tunnels. They bought weapons. They didn't invest in their own people. So no, I mean, the civilians are part of this. And the civilians complain, not that we can see. And look, why does nobody blame Egypt? Egypt could have opened up the doors. Egypt could have allowed the Gazans to leave through Egypt. They could have done a lot of things. But Egypt understands what's going on. They don't want the Islamists. They don't want the Hamas in Egypt. And they know that many of the Palestinians, if not most of the Palestinians in Gaza, are Hamas. And they don't want that. James, by the way, Wes, $100, thank you. Really, really appreciate that. Thank you, Wes. James says, why does the UK keep shooting itself in the foot? It is working to tax the wealthy by non-domestic tax charges, higher taxes on high owners. Since 2015, it has lost more than 50,000 non-domiciled residents. Why is it shooting itself in the foot? Because the people running the country incompetent, the people running the country have no clue what they're doing because they fear to do what is necessary, deregulate what they promised after Brexit to deregulate and keep the borders open and keep the flow of goods and capital, they are afraid of all that. They're afraid of freedom. They fear freedom. And so they have to find revenue in order to fund this ever-growing welfare state, regulatory state that they have created. So to do that, they have to tax the people who have the money, which are the rich. So they go after all the rich that moved to England because they gave them low tax rates. Another increase in tax rates gets what's happening. They're leaving. I mean, everybody could have predicted that, except I guess the bureaucrats who, I don't know. It's just astounding. It really is. It really is astounding. I mean, again, this is consistent with my theme of people can't think. They can't think. And this is politicians, this is economists, and this is certainly, if you will, the masses out there. All right, let's see. Michael says, did you see the 47-minutes Hamas unreleased October 7th footage Israel just put out? No, I haven't seen it. I don't intend to see it. I don't see any reason to see it. I get it. I understand what happened. I don't need to see the brutality itself. I encourage you guys to see it, particularly you guys who are not convinced that it happened, or you guys who are not convinced that it's important, or you guys who are not convinced through the good guys and through the bad guys are, you should see it. James, why do countries push out wealthy residents, discourage wealthy people from moving there? The UK has more potential than most places. The policies appear to be destroying them internally. What do you see the UK like in five years? Well, the rate they're going right now, the UK is getting poorer and poorer. And yes, I see declining productivity. Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster. Over the next five years, the Labour Party is going to rule. You're going to see a lot of industries, a lot of, a lot more government spending, a lot more taxes, and a lot more stagnation. Stagnation and decline. That's what I think the UK is in for. Why do they do it? Because, as I said, they don't think, they can't think because, you know, the whole way in which the economics profession thinks about the world, the whole way the economics profession thinks about the world is through the lens of what can the government do? How does the government do? How does the government manipulate? It's all about the government. And so if there's a problem, what does the government do? And the answer is nothing or the answer of less than what they're doing right now, get the government out of their way, is just unpalatable to politicians. They want control. And backing off seems like a loss of control. And it's not something politicians can do usually. It's very rare. And that's the Conservative Party in England. They keep ramping up more controls, more regulations, more taxes. When the real answers are less, less taxes, less regulations, less everything, backing off, they can't bring themselves to actually do it. It's too scary for them. Freedom, as I said earlier, freedom is scary for people. Psychologically, freedom is intimidating and prevents people from actually living good lives and it prevents people from advocating for policies that are pro-freedom. Frank, do you know of Frank Greenberg, a Jew under Troy Tucker's in the late 30s? He approached Babe Booth's home run record for US Jews who was a big deal. See, I'm not that kind of Jew if you wanna call me a Jew. I don't consider myself a Jew. I don't care that whoever has the home run record as a Jew or not a Jew or a Jew just this, a Jew does that. That's irrelevant to me. It doesn't matter what I order to me. The only time being a Jew is as any significance is when I face people who hate Jews for the sake of being Jews. Then I'll fight for them. But other than that, I really don't care. I don't care if my kids marry Jews. I don't care if my friends are Jewish. I don't care if Jews do well in this industry or that industry and baseball or anything like that. It doesn't matter to me. I don't consider myself belonging to that group. That group is irrelevant for me. But the fact is that I know that the world out there, the little Hitler's out there all consider me Jewish whether I wanna be a Jew or not. And 23 and me certainly considers me Jewish. And that is the modern equivalent of Hitler's test of what makes you a Jew or not. If your grandmother and mother were a Jew, if your grandmother was a Jew, you were a Jew. That's it. One generation back. All it takes. And they would do it. They would go through even members of the Nazi party. If your grandmother was Jewish, that's it. Then you out. So it's not an issue of whether you consider yourself a Jew or not. It's 100% an issue of the fact that the world considers you one whether you want to or not. Whether you want to or not. And the reality is that every one of the gene testing labs has a list of whatever you wanna call it. Ethnicities, whatever races or whatever they wanna call it. And they'll tell you what your genetic origin is. From which people, from which nation do you come from? They'll break it down for you. And with me, at least according to 23 and me, like it or not, it's pretty clear. But it doesn't matter to me. That's the thing. The only thing that matters to me is that I worry because I know that my kids are gonna be considered Jews. Even though they know nothing about Judaism, they won't raise with any Jewish, anything. They don't know nothing about Judaism. And when Hitler comes around, they will be rounded up as Jews whether they like it or not. That's what worries me. Brownie, what would you do if you were born in Gaza and became an objectivist at 18? I would get out. I would do everything I could to get out. I would swim. I would get a boat and row to Cyprus. I would do whatever I could to get out of it. By the way, I met a girl. I met a girl in Amsterdam at the Objectivist Conference. Young girl in her 20s, early 20s. Who is from Amala, from the West Bank? She's an objectivist. Super smart, super smart, very articulate, speaks good English. And she works for Intel in Israel, but she's from the West Bank, so very difficult. Very difficult. I'm sure with the family and very difficult with the community she lives in and also very difficult for her to go to work at Intel because checkpoints and all of that for people leaving the West Bank, very, very unpleasant. What's her goal? What is she gonna do? Get out of there. She asked me, what should I do? I said, get out of there. And she said, I'm trying. And one of the evil things about American immigration policies, one of the evil of your close border policies, of keeping people out, is that it's very difficult for her to leave. It's very difficult for her to come to where she'd like to come, which is America. So it's immigration policies that makes it difficult. But yeah, what would I do? I'd get out of there. I'd find a way and she will find a way. She's smart, she's courageous to be an objectivist in that world. She's courageous and she will figure it out and she will get out of there. And if you can't empathize with somebody like that, somebody who's good, productive, smart, able, rational and say, you know what? Somebody like that should be a way to get her in. Then there's something wrong with you. Maximus, Israel's the only one that cares about the Palestinians. Yeah, I mean, clearly, I mean, clearly, I don't know how much Israel cares about the Palestinians, but nobody cares about them. Israel cares about them as much if not more than anybody else. I consider Iran to be Lithuanian, Israeli, American, Puerto Rican. But why do you start with Lithuanian? I mean, my ancestors probably came to Lithuania from somewhere else. You know, maybe they were in Italy for a while and maybe in Spain, maybe in Germany for a while and maybe in, I don't know, in France. And originally, you know, all, if you trace my genes according to 23andMe, all the people, genes like me come from four mothers. They can trace it back for four women. And where were those four women when this line of genetic, whatever started from? Those four women were in Israel, 2000 something years ago. So, but I don't care, I'm American. I'm American who happens to live in Puerto Rico. All right, Michael. Yeah, FD, those are the countries I've identified. Michael says ultimately came down to upholding justice, good and bad sides versus moral greeners. There is no good or bad. You're making a complex issue too simple. Yeah, I mean, they wanna drown you with complexity. It's not complicated at all. It's pretty black and white, pretty straightforward, pretty simple. It doesn't mean everything Israel does is good. It doesn't mean Israel's a perfect state far from it. So, but it is black and white in this conflict. All right, James, do you know the history of Malaysia and Singapore? The story's astounding because Singapore had no resources. Have you ever been to both places? I've been to Singapore, I'll never go to Malaysia, but I've been to Singapore. And Singapore is amazing. It's stunning, it's truly beautiful. It's clean, it's friendly. The architecture mostly is nice. There's a beautiful park, they're great restaurants. I ate at two phenomenal restaurants. Yeah, I really enjoyed Singapore. I gave a talk, one talk, two talks. So yeah, it was good. And yeah, the difference is British law, protection of property rights and contract law. And authoritarian that respected that. That respected that. All right, Troy just came in. Thank you, Troy. Troy says, thank you, Yaron, for calling out the garbage spewed on both sides of the political divide. I know it's sad. And my wife would be sighing as I was prepping for the show and she said, all right, what's the show gonna be about? Is it that bad? It's like, this is no fun. It's no fun. And much of the new shows are no fun because there's so much bad news, although I do need to emphasize more of the good news that does come out. But when I do the good news, like, if I dare to say something like, yeah, motorways are down in the United States, everybody jumps down my throat because that's not politically correct to say. You're supposed to say, no, no, no, there's carnage in the streets of America. Thank you, Troy. Thanks for the support, consistent support, love it, really, really appreciate it. And I really hope to come to Australia. I mean, I think I'm overdue. My plan is either late 2024 or sometime in 2025 to come down to Australia, do a speaking tour in Australia. That is definitely a goal that I'm setting for myself. And that'd be great to meet. It'd be great to meet up in Australia. Let me know, guys, if there are people listening in Australia to this, if there's people out there, Troy, others who can or are interested in organizing talks for me in Australia, let me know because I definitely want to come down there. All right, James, did you consider living in Hawaii? No. It has a climate similar to Puerto Rico. Did you like Maui, Oahu, any other island you consider living on? I mean, yeah, Hawaii is very beautiful. It's very pretty. The weather's great. But no, I mean, Hawaii is high taxes, very high taxes. And it's actually further away. It's like, what is it, four hours from the West Coast? I mean, the nice thing here is I'm close to Miami. I'm close to New York. East Coast is very close. I'm also got a direct flight from here to Madrid. So Europe is close. Hawaii's close to Asia. But I don't go to Asia that often. Asia's kind of far. But yeah, no, I never considered moving to Hawaii. It was never, never a consideration. I would have stayed in California. Taxes are the same. All right, OK, so here's the question. When a government reduces its debt, an awful lot of money it previously spent on citizen services becomes shoulded by those citizens. And many become personally indebted in order to cover the shortfall. So what is the net benefit to society when the aggregate debt of its citizens replaces the debt of its government? It seems to me that government can negotiate better interest rates than the citizenry. And in case of public debt, the pain is spread among many, many taxpayers. All right, so let's try and unpack this. First of all, reducing the debt doesn't always necessarily mean that it's cutting government services, I wish. That was the case. It usually means it's raised taxes in order to have more money to pay back that debt. That's usually how governments pay back debt. Cutting government spending is very, very rare, particularly in the United States. So it's very, very unusual to have government cut, actually cut spending. OK, but let's say government provides citizens with services like what? Retirement plans. Well, let's say you cut Social Security in the United States, but you give people their money back in a sense. Then could you get a better return than what you get on Social Security? Just by buying a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds in a market place? Yeah, you do much better. Much, much, much better. And if you cut back on the debt and you cut spending, but you didn't cut taxes, let's say, you just cut it, then you're freeing up capital in the private economy. And now that capital is going to get invested. Invested in more production. Invested in more technology. Invested in raising the productivity level of people. That means people are going to make more money. They're going to earn more. They're going to have more disposable income. And they might be able to afford the services you're now not providing without taking on debt. People can also then decide whether they want the services or not. There might be some services they want and other services they don't want. And they now get to choose. They get to decide how to spend their money. They get to decide whether they should go into debt or not. Whereas the government goes into debt is basically placing the entire country in debt, which means taxes are going to have to be raised in the future to pay off the debt, which means they're putting you into debt. You didn't decide that. So it gives you the choice of which services to use and which not. It also creates productive companies providing those services. You do away with the bureaucracy providing the services. That competition will drive down prices. And again, you freed up capital because you're taking out, you're sucking out less capital. Right, what is debt? Debt is you give people a piece of paper and you take their money. Well, their money doesn't go into buying a government piece of paper. Now that money goes into actually building and creating businesses, investing in technology, making the economy more productive. So now all these services are provided at a much lower price. People are making more money and everybody aggregately has less debt. So hopefully that explains it. I'm happy to go in a more depth and do an example. This is a question by David. So just let me know. I might be seeing you, David, in Argentina so we can follow up there. All right, thank you, David. All right, Steven, sanctioned Ivan, whom I posted about recently, has sold his Cadillac SUV in left Russia with his girlfriend and cats for Thailand. He will try to get a US talent visa. I hope he's successful, but good for him, good for him for getting out, good for him to making it to Thailand. And there was places in the world to be stuck than Thailand, at least beautiful beaches and relatively low cost of living. And yeah, incredibly friendly people and amazing, amazing food, some of the best food in the world. All right, glad to see people escaping the authoritarian hell holes. All right, everybody, I will see you all tomorrow. Thank you. We went from $20 to over $700 pretty quickly there. So really appreciate everybody stepping in. Thank you. Troy, really appreciate that. Thank you, Wes, for doing $100 sticker. I appreciate that. Thank you to all Michael who asked like $5, $20 questions, Michael Fusco, Michael Sanders, who always asks a lot of questions, and then Richard and everybody else. So I appreciate the support. Thank you, guys. I'll see you all in the morning. Bye, everybody.