 All right, so let's start with the Middle East plan, as you probably know, the White House, I think, has put out their long-awaited peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's a peace plan put together really by Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, and it's, you know, it came out. I don't think it was really, you know, they didn't trumpet it as much as one would expect, I think to a large extent, because they realized that in many respects the peace plan is a non-starter, there's nobody really to negotiate this with. So it's kind of out there, it's being discussed, there have been some press conferences with both Benjamin Netanyahu and the guy running against Netanyahu gets, the former general. They've been, you know, they were both in the White House when this was, when this was unveiled, they both have expressed, you know, some support for the plan, which is pretty easy for them to do, given that it's going nowhere. So let's talk a little bit about this plan. I mean, I've talked about in the past, I had a sense of what the outline would be in the past, I don't think it was a big secret. Let's start maybe with the, with a few of the positives regarding the peace plan, the Middle East peace plan unveiled by Trump. First, it's, you know, as compared to peace plans put together by Carter, even Reagan, Clinton, Bush, certainly Obama, although Obama never had a formal peace plan. It's, it's the most pro-Israel plan. It's a plan that seems to definitely take seriously Israel's security concerns to a point, I would argue that the plan itself contradicts the idea of Israel's security. But it gives a lot of lip service to it. It emphasizes that as a big aspect of the plan. It's clearly geared towards getting support, you know, from the Israelis and it has, and it's geared towards getting support from kind of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, which I think it has as well. At least, at least the kind of the right, right of send a pro-Israel lobby in Washington DC. The plan does kind of place the responsibility for peace to some extent on the Palestinians. But, but I, but not enough. But it, it's, it is, you know, it is somewhat considered by many to be pro-Israel. It does articulate the case for a two-state solution for a, the establishment of a Palestinian state. It actually mentions, I mean, it mentions the, the, the idea of Palestinian state 1,397 times. So 1,397 times in a 180-page document, it says the state of Palestine. It, it is recognized. It's, it's a peace plan that recognizes and endorses the formation of a Palestinian state in, in territory, both if you, you know, a little bit about the map of Israel, both in the West Bank and Gaza, but also in some territory controlled today by Israel and some of God, some of the West Bank is then given to Israel. So there's like a trade of land where Israel gives up some land and the Palestinians give up some land. It involves no dismantling of settlements, no movement of populations, either Palestinian, Palestinians or Israelis. But it is, it is a full-fledged endorsement of a state of Palestine, a Palestinian state, which, you know, George Bush was the first American president to endorse such a plan for a Palestinian state and it's become basically the American foreign policy to do so. It's everything I think good with the plan. It basically tilts a little bit, you know, tilts a little bit towards the, you know, towards, towards Israel. But in everything else, it is, it is a terrible plan. It is a horrible plan. It does not recognize the fundamental reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It evades that. It's a non-starter. It can't go anywhere because, because it gives way, way, way too much credit to the Palestinians. It really suggests that the, that the Palestinians in order to achieve peace just need the right plan. The Palestinians want peace, the Palestinian leadership, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian political parties, the, you know, want peace, and that the only barrier to achieving that peace is having the right plan. Is maybe providing them with the right incentives. I think all of that is bogus. I think all of that is fundamentally wrong. The first and biggest problem with the Trump administration's peace plan is that there is a peace plan. The American administration should butt out. They shouldn't offer any peace plans. Let the Israelis and Palestinians come to terms, on their own terms. The United States cannot impose a peace plan that is lasting, that is successful on the Middle East. It was not. The peace between Israel and Egypt was not a product of the United States. The peace between Israel and Egypt was a product of their courage. The foresight of Sadat, Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt at the time, he unilaterally declared his willingness to engage in peace negotiations with Israel. He flew to Jerusalem. He spoke in front of the Knesset. And then he negotiated. The Americans helped a little bit, brought everybody to neutral territory, you know, crossed the T's, dotted the I's, but it was not an American peace plan. The United States is a peace plan negotiated between the two parties at the initiative of, I think, the party that had to engage in that initiative. They have states that have states that have initiated war against Israel and have been initiating war against Israel since the beginning of the state of Israel, or even really from well before that, since the idea of a state of Israel came into being. The Americans should just butt out. And it should butt out more generally. I mean, many of you will say, oh, but you know you support the Americans supporting Israel. I don't. I don't support. I don't support America supporting Israel financially. I support the United States supporting Israel. And the only thing that really is meaningful, that is supporting it morally. I think it's right to exist. It's right to self defense and supporting the idea that Israel is the mall just party in this conflict. And, and, and for that I encourage you to read Elan Juno's book about the Israeli Palestinian conflict available in Amazon available everybody else. It's a book that'll give you a sense of why I and others think Israel is the just party, why Israel is, you know, should receive moral support, why Israel should not be untwisted into some kind of deal with, with the Palestinians. So the peace plan first as they'll concede because it shouldn't be a peace plan. The only thing the United States could do to help Israel, I mean two things that could one is to assert the justice of Israel's cause and basically tell them it's up to them and how they deal with the situation and leave it up to Israel to do it. Secondly, as part of that moral support, they could convey a clear message to the Palestinians, and the message that the Palestinians should receive is that they are wrong, that they are in the wrong. That if they want peace, they must negotiate with Israel directly. But if they want, but they have to realize that the United States will not come to their assistance will not come to their aid will not give them money. They will not support them until they change their ways dramatically won't support them anyway, but it won't support them morally until they dramatically change their ways. The message that the Palestinians should receive is that they have no hope other than peace. The cause is not just that they cause is now model and that they cause will not receive support from a civilized world, and that they cause should be a cause of despair or failure, and that they better get their act together. Better go to the Israelis with some deal that is acceptable to Israel. The Israelis suffer from the Palestinian Israeli conflict they suffer a lot. But the Palestinians suffer dramatically more. And you know somebody once said and I think I think I mean it's this is a catch it's kind of a silly thing but the fact is that if tomorrow Israel lay down its weapons. The Palestinians would slaughter them. If tomorrow the Palestinians laid down their weapons, they would actually be peace in the Middle East. So the responsibility for the initiative towards peace has to come from the Palestinians, not from the US, not even from the Israelis. It has to come from the Palestinians, and it can only come from the Palestinians. If they recognize internalize completely that they have lost that they have no hope. And that Israel is the solution to their problems, not the cause of their problems. That the only way for them to thrive and succeed is by reaching a deal with the Israelis and that deal could be a one state solution it could be some form of two state solutions. You know who knows what the deal will be and I don't think anybody should pretend to assert what it should be into the future. It's a deal that's going to take a long time and it's a deal that has to come from the Palestinians and has to come at their initiative. Now what does the Trump deal do beyond beyond recognize that the Palestinians should have their own state. The primary section, the primary verbiage in this deal is focused on economics. And this is a long standing fallacy that claims that the Palestinian conflict is fundamentally a conflict that is driven by economics that if only the Palestinians were rich if only the Palestinians thought that a peace deal would make them economically successful. Then they would lay down their weapons and they would shake hands with the Israelis and they would be all become best friends. But there is zero basis for that idea. And yet that is the assumption behind the Trump peace plan. I mean, here's one sentence. If implemented peace to prosperity will empower the Palestinian people to build that society that they have aspired to establish for generations. But is that true? Have Palestinians aspired to establish a society that is prosperous, free, successful? Somebody's already complaining about what I say about Trump. I haven't said anything about Trump. I'm analyzing the plan. So as the Palestinians aspired to this kind of freedom, have they aspired to a marketplace of their spired to economic prosperity? Because if they had aspired to all those things, then why when the Gaza Strip was handed to them by the Israelis, did they destroy all the economic infrastructure that the Israelis have left behind? When they had autonomy and were pretty much left alone, did they not establish a free government with free institutions? Why did they not establish a prosperous trading economic system based on private property? Where is any of that? Where is that in the Gaza Strip? Where is that in the West Bank? Indeed, the Palestinians were most prosperous. Before the First Intifada in 1987, when they were under Israeli rule, where they were integrated into the Israeli economy, and they did relatively well. And yet that is what they rejected. And when they had relative autonomy in the post-1994 kind of post Oslo Accord era, post-1993, they destroyed that prosperity. They didn't take advantage of it. Indeed, the corruption of the Palestinian leadership destroyed any possibility of prosperity for the Palestinians. They could have been prosperous. What prevented them from that prosperity is their own leadership. Did they reject that leadership as a consequence? No, they keep electing the same and choosing the same people to lead them throughout, throughout. So the Palestinians have nobody to blame for their plight but themselves. From 1947 on, they've rejected any possibility of peace with the Israelis. When they've come close to some kind of sediment with the Israelis, come close to any kind of autonomy over their own land, they're proven to be incapable and incompetent of actually creating an even semi-free society that leads to prosperity. And yet Trump's peace plan assumes that they've aspired, they've aspired to prosperity and to freedom and to having a wonderful world. The plan promises to Asha Palestinians into a, quote, prosperous future, unquote, and it says that they will be helped by over 50 billion, 50 billion of new investment over 10 years, including significant American investment. And this, you know, the goal is to cause the Palestinian GDP to double in 10 years, create over a million new jobs, reduce unemployment rate below 10%, reduce poverty rate by 50%. They talk about electricity all over the place, like 116 times. They have electricity mentioned in the plan, three of the three times that prosperity mentioned in the plan. By the way, Daniel Pipes has a good review of the plan in Daniel Pipes.org. Pipes is very good in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They talk about developing tourism in Israel, giving, you know, building tunnels and roads and, yeah, Israel maintaining the security responsibility over all these things, but as if all that's needed for the Palestinians to change their ways and abandon terrorism and abandon the idea of destroying Israel, all it's needed is a few roads and a tunnel and a resort and a casino maybe and a better electricity grid. Maybe we can bring that electricity grid to Puerto Rico where we need it. I mean, I don't understand the reason for putting out this plan other than as a way to try to get kind of secure Jewish, certain parts of the Jewish vote during the election. It's not going to go anywhere. The Palestinians have already turned it down. It gives them nothing new. We know the Palestinians are not interested in peace. If they were again, they could quite capable of contacting the Israelis and negotiating a deal. But they have done no such thing. They have not been interested. When they did strike a deal in 1993 in Oslo, they used that deal as justification and as leverage to attack Israel more and more and terrorism rose. Every time Israel negotiates, every time Israel compromises with the Palestinians, terrorism increases. It is only through strength that Israel can achieve peace with the Palestinians. And that peace has to come from the Palestinians and from the acceptance of their complete and utter defeat. The acceptance that they will not cannot get rid of Israel militarily through violence, through terrorism. And that they are complete acceptance of the existence of the state of Israel. That is the only, only way peace will come to the Middle East. And that requires a different approach from America. It ultimately requires a different approach from Israel. But that is a whole other issue that we can talk about at some point. Somebody's asking, has there ever been a nation state called Palestine? Historically, Palestine refers to a region, not a country. A Palestinian is nothing more than a collection of Jordanians and Egyptians and Saudis. Well, there's never been such a nation state as Jordan. Indeed, really, there's never been nation states in the Middle East. The Middle East has been occupied by a variety of different empires that have ruled over in a variety of different periods, the latest being the Ottoman Empire. It is only after World War One that the concept and idea of a nation state, you know, came to the Middle East as a dominant idea. There's no such thing as a Jordanian. There's no such thing as a Saudi. I mean, Saudi Arabia is named after the wall family that happened to have conquered a particular area in the Peninsula, in the Arabian Peninsula. And they called the state after the name of the Saud family. If a different family had conquered it, it would be a different state. There's no Iraq. There's never been an Iraq. There's no Syria. There's no real Lebanon. Now, Syria to some extent that term existed because for a long time, I think under the Romans and later on under Ottomans, it was an area that included Jordan and Israel and much of that part of the world. And in Damascus, usually the regional governor ruled from. So the whole concept of a nation state is a European concept. It doesn't exist anywhere else. And it has been exported to the rest of the world. It's a, it's a concept that comes out of the Westphalian, you know, agreements and, you know, really came to dominate Europe in the 19th century with the rise of nationalism and national nationalist movements. So is there such a thing as a Palestinian people? Yes, as much as there is such a thing as the Jordanian people. It's people who live in a particular geographic area now. Historically, many of the Arabs who live in what is today Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza. Many of them came from Syria and Lebanon, Jordan and other places during the era in which the Jews when they came to what was then called Palestine under the British created a huge amount of economic activity and many of these Arabs came in and and bought property and raised families and work there and but that in my mind is as legitimate as if somebody lived there for 2000 years who the hell cares how long you've lived somewhere. So again, I'm not a nationalist in that sense. So, yes, there's such a thing as Palestinians the same extent that there is such a thing as anything else that Arabs who lived in what we have geographically defined as Palestine. The Palestinian national movement came out was created. Hi, I'm Ash. Give me a minute to finish up here and we'll go. Can you hear me say something? I can hear you. Let me just finish up this. We'll go to you. So it's, it came out of the, the, the same intellectual stream that brought nationalism brought the whole idea of an Asian state into the Middle East in the kind of post World War One world in the post World War. Okay, let me just see if there's other questions here related to this particular issue. Did constant influence ever reach Islam in the Middle East. Yes, it did. I don't know how directly it did but it did again in the kind of late 19th century and certainly in the post World War One, in the secular parts of the Middle East, where primarily rich Arabs sent their kids to go study at the best universities in the world and those universities that happened to be in, in Europe and, and they, they learned just like everybody else went to Europe at the time, Kantian ideas or at least Kantian influenced ideas. So yes, the, the, the Kantian ideas, but also ideas around socialism and fascism. All those ideas were imported into the Middle East by students who went to the West, learned their ideas and brought them back to the Middle East. The Palestinians are pressed and manipulated by Hamas. Yeah, but Hamas is the Palestinians, right? In an election, I forget the year now, quite a bit of time ago. The Palestinians elected Hamas as the, as the major political party and, and as a consequence, you know, they, so they elected, they elected Hamas, Hamas was voted in democratically. You can't separate Hamas from the Palestinians and of course they could rid of Hamas, if they really chose to, they could be a revolution. So you can't claim this Hamas and then there's the Palestinians. It's very much intermingled. Hamas is part of a long line of Palestinian leadership that has failed the Palestinian people in significant dramatic ways. And, and it's sad and tragic that the Palestinian people have had leaders that have completely abused them, failed them and not provided them with any kind of realistic approach to their situation and their condition. And of course the Palestinian people have not demanded it so they don't get, you don't get Scott free. To a large extent the leaders you have who are responsible for. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Using the super chat and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you step forward and actually supported the show for the first time so I'll do it again maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity go to Iranbrookshow.com, slash support or go to subscribe star.com Iranbrook show, and, and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this to keep this going.