 So let me go through the highlights of the Israeli-Palestinian history and conflict and what exactly happened. Starting in the late 19th century, small numbers of Jews in Europe, primarily Eastern Europe to begin with, as a consequence of the pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, Jews in Eastern Europe were looking for an ounce and a certain number of them, primarily Jews who were socialists and tended to be on the left, chose to start emigrating to Palestine. Palestine at the time was occupied by the Turks. Let's be very clear here, there's never been a Palestine. The area that is today Israel was part of the Roman Empire. It then became part of the Byzantine Empire, was occupied by the Byzantine and was dominated by Christians during this period. Almost all the wealthy families in this region in the Middle East became Christian as a consequence of the Rome's, Constantine's conversion to Christianity, Rome's embrace of Christianity as its national religion and then most of them converted to Islam when Muslim conquered this area and took it over, you know, started in the, I guess the 7th century. And since then it has been dominated by a variety of different Islamic empires where the, you know, parts of Israel or today's Israel were occupied by the Egyptians. There were periods in which it was occupied by, the first Islamic empire was based in Damascus, I think, and they ruled and then the next Islamic empire was based in Iraq after that the Islamic empires were fragmented. But starting in the, God, I think the 16th century, basically the Turks who had emigrated into this area and occupied, talk about occupation, talk about colonization, I wonder, I wonder why the post, the anti-colonials don't attack Turkey for colonizing, for colonizing the Asia Minor, for colonizing the area that is Turkey. I mean, it was basically a Turkish tribe, Turkish tribe means a tribe from Central Asia, not far from where Mongolia is, where Turkmenistan is today, that's where the Turks are still dominant in Turkmenistan. So, you know, so the Turks moved into this area, dominated this area and ultimately created the Ottoman empire. And again, think about that, think about the fact that the real colonizers of the Middle East were the Turks and nobody talks about Turkey as a colonizing power, a colonizing entity. Why? Because it happened 600 years ago. Is it a matter of when you colonized? If you colonized in a distant past it's okay, but in modern past it's not okay. When do you recognize native populations? When do you discard them? When does everybody become part of the colony? It's all irrational. The whole anti-colonial movement is an irrational movement that can't define itself, right? Anyway, and I'm starting way earlier than I intended to, but the reality is that in the 19th century, for hundreds of years, the territory that is Israel today was a part of the Ottoman empire and the part that is Israel today was always part of an empire. The last state that existed in this area was a Jewish state that it rebelled against the Roman Empire and survived until the Romans crushed it, I think it's 70 AD, destroyed the Jewish temple and basically took all the Jews who lived in this area and spread them around the Roman Empire. This is part of how Rome diffused local ethnic challenges as they took those ethnic communities and separated them from their land and diffused them all over the empire, thus not allowing them to coalesce around an opposition and a rebellion. So the last state that existed in what is today Israel was a Jewish state, again, that resulted from the rebellion against the Romans and that rebellion was crushed in 70 AD. From 70 AD until, and the Jews were not asked to leave. They were forced to leave. If you go to the Arc de Triomphe, the Triumphant Arc, the Roman Arc, where there are arcs like this where they've edged the story, you can find, you can see Jewish slaves, Jewish captives being brought to Rome after the rebellion was crushed in 70 AD and look, that was Rome. So that territory was occupied by empires, there was no state, so there is no such thing as an ancient Palestinian state, there is no such thing as an ancient Arab state, there were never any Arab states, they were always, always, always throughout history, parts of various empires. Maybe that's a reality in much of Europe, a lot of the states that existed in Europe, there were no such states historically, they were always parts of empires. Anyway, Israel in the 19th century was sparsely populated, sparsely populated. It was, there were a lot of swamps, half of Israel to this day is desert and it was not very habitable, it was not very, it was not great land because of the swamps, it was the heat, the humidity, the coast where Tel Aviv is today was just sand, it was very difficult, you couldn't grow anything on it and nobody built anything on it, there was Jaffa was a city, there was Akko a city, there was a small settlement in Haifa, there was a settlement in Haifa, an Arab settlement in Haifa, and inland Jerusalem and others there were larger Arab settlements, but basically the place was very sparsely populated. So in the late 19th century when Jews decided they had to leave Europe, some of them went to America and some of them went, my ancestors went to South Africa, although at least one of my, two of my ancestors went to South Africa through what was then Palestine. Jews started emigrating with the Ottoman Empire's permission because they had to get permission emigrating into Palestine and the only way they could emigrate into Palestine was by buying land, settling that land, cultivating that land, starting to build a small industry and starting to build up the land in small, the first kibbutzim was established during this period of time, but this is a period of time where small groups of Jews are starting to enter and already some of the Arab population embraced this, but some of the Arab population was resisting this and there were some cases of violence and there was a lot of political angst and there were various pressures being brought on the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul about whether to allow the Jews in or not, but generally the Jews were being money, they were buying land, they were cultivating swamps, they were building stuff up, Ottomans were not objecting because this was profitable for everybody involved. In 1897 the first Zionist Congress was held, this was a Congress of Jews in Europe committed to establishing a Jewish state, some of the people there including the leader of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, were committed to establishing a Jewish state wherever that might be and he actually accepted a British offer to do it in Uganda, but the rest of the Congress voted it down, so they basically committed to establishing a Jewish state in Palestine which was again relatively likely populated and you know, so that was in 1897, they lobbied the Ottomans, they lobbied the British to try to find solutions, during World War I it became the Ottoman Empire for those of you who don't know, the Ottoman Empire sided with the Axis powers with basically Germany and as a consequence it became an enemy of the British and enemy of the United States and the British as part of World War I which was not only fought in Europe but it was also fought in the Middle East, basically the British conquered all of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, they ultimately occupied Turkey, they took over Iraq and Saudi Arabia and you know, if you've watched Law and Civil Arabia, you know some of this and they, so they occupied all this territory and they were in constant negotiations with the different families, the different tribes, the different elements, by the way the French were also there, so the French occupied Lebanon and parts of, and much of Syria, so this was kind of an allied occupation, but it was a consequence of a war where Turkey had sided, the Ottoman Empire had sided with the particular elements, again people talk about, ooh the British occupied it, they were colonizing it, no, I mean they fought a war, a war you could argue was started by the Axis, the Turkey made a wrong call by backing the losing side and its empire got occupied by the British but the Turks were occupiers to begin with, you know, they were an empire and the British now had an empire, so the English, the British occupied this, without any intent to stay there, ultimately they left the Middle East completely and again if you take my course on the history of the Middle East you will get a lot more detail on all of this, they gave up Iraq and Syria and they drew up maps and they handed different pieces of the Middle East to different families and that's why the Saud family got Saudi Arabia, the Hussein family got Jordan and other parts of that family got Iraq, Syria and then that didn't work so they moved them to Iraq and then that didn't work either but the British just divvied up the Middle East into different families, different tribes, different peoples and they created modern national entities which never existed, there was never Saudi Arabia, not really, there was certainly never Jordan on Iraq or Syria or Lebanon as the British were divvying it up and in 1917 the British declared that when they fully occupied the Middle East they would actually allow the Jews to form a state in what is today Israel and Jordan. Over the years afterwards as British occupied this territory they said well that's a lot of space and there were a lot of Arabs here, they eliminated Jordan from it and then they said well maybe we need to have two states here because they are Palestinians here. When the British took over from the Ottomans, more Jewish immigrants continued to come in and there were waves of Jewish immigrants. At some point the British became weary of this and made it very difficult for Jews to come in to Palestine. When the Nazis came to power, Jews who were trying to escape the Nazis could no longer go to the United States, the United States starting in the 1920s early 20s was blocked to Jewish immigration or to immigration generally into the United States so many of them tried to come to Palestine. As part of this the Jews created the city of Tel Aviv on those sand dunes they created Tel Aviv and now they were really starting to build factories, utility companies, they were drying vast quantities, swamps, they were going into the desert and ultimately figuring out how to cultivate the desert. They built up a real civilization. In the 1930s in Israel there was a Palestinian, what was called the orchestra of Palestine which was a which was an orchestra in Tel Aviv which had some of the best musicians in the world people who were escaping the Nazis from Europe and coming to was British occupied Palestine and created an orchestra. They created civilization. They respected property rights. They bought up property. I mean the British wouldn't let them just steal property. They bought property. The Roth child from Europe, the rich Jewish banker family spent a lot of money buying land in Israel and giving it to settlers allowing to keep it and see them in other kind of settlements to be formed. Jews settled created Tel Aviv. There was nothing in Tel Aviv. Zero is just sand. But they also settled in Jerusalem, settled in the South, in the desert. They settled in Haifa. They settled in Galilee. They settled all over around the Sea of Galilee. They settled all over the river and everywhere they went. They built, they created, they made. They were productive. As a consequence, the economy of this part of the world thrived during this period. And as a consequence of that, there were a lot of jobs available. And as a consequence of that, many Arabs from Lebanon, from Syria, from Jordan, even from Egypt, and maybe from either further away moved into Palestine. A lot of the Palestinians who today call themselves Palestinians. Now, I don't really care about this, but a few generations back were immigrants into this place, which is cool. I'm all for that. I have no problem with that. But it's just historically important to note that the Jews came in and they didn't steal people's property. Both the Ottomans and the British required them to buy property if they were going to live somewhere, or they took over pieces of property that were not being used. They were not owned by anybody. This is, this is, you know, reality nobody out there wants to actually acknowledge. Jews were the productive element here. Now, I'm not saying the Arabs were not. Some Arabs were. Some were not. But many of the Arabs came in and became laborers in the factories, in the fields, small business owners, contractors, because of the economic activity in Israel, drew them in throughout this period under the British occupation, under the British mandate. So Britain was granted a mandate by the League of Nations and then the United Nations to occupy this territory in the Middle East and ultimately to hand it over to the people living there. And, and during this entire period, the English were first committed to a Jewish state, then they said, well, there need to be two states. But ultimately, but oh, so yeah, so during this period, at the same time, there was real growing conflict. The Arabs started attacking Jews. They did so in the teens and the 20s and the 30s. They objected to Jewish migration coming in. They objected to all this economic activity created by the Jews. They objected by the dominance, if you will, of Jews in this area and their expansion and their success and their progress. And they fought it. They stepped in and they used violence to fight it and the Jews defended themselves. During this period, in Israel, three military organizations, you might even argue one of them or two of them were terrorists. Organizations were founded both to protect Jews because they felt like the English were not protecting them, to protect Jews against the Arabs and then to drive the British out. So, there was a huge emphasis starting certainly in the late 30s and then in the 40s, particularly with what was going on in Europe and the Nazis and the Holocaust with getting the British out of this so that the Jews, the Jewish population can form a state. And the intent originally was, right, was to form a one state with Jews and Arabs all there. But obviously, the British didn't believe this was tenable. And ultimately, the British took it to the United Nations and said, you solve this problem. And I think November 1947, the United Nations met, the Security Council of the United Nations met and they decided a two-state solution was the answer. Jordan was already a state and now the idea was to split Israel into two states, a Palestinian state, an Arab state, and a Jewish state. The Jewish state was kind of split into three tiny little corridors connecting it. It was not a particularly viable solution. It was, you know, it was going to mean big population moves. Some Arabs would have to move from the Jewish state to an Arab state. Some Jews would have to move from the Arab state to Jewish state if you wanted to do ethnic cleansing, which I think you unexpected would happen. But the reality of the situation was that in 1947, in November 1947, the people running, you know, all the Jewish organizations and the population were broadly accepted them. They said, yes, we'll take it. We'll take whatever you can give us. We've been waiting for, in a sense, a Jewish state for 2,000 years. We'll take what you give us. And they accepted and literally you can see photos of this dancing in the street the next day. The Arab countries and the Arab Palestinian population in the area said absolutely not. There will never be a Jewish state in this area. We will kill them. We will drive them to sea. We will slaughter every single one of them. That's explicitly what they said. Again, the historical documents are unequivocal. And the next day fighting began. And fighting continued until May of 1948 when the British basically said, you know what? We can't handle the situation. We're losing people. We can't fulfill what the UN wanted. We can't establish two states here. There is a war going on all around us. We're leaving. We're just leaving. And they did. They left in May of 1948. Israel on the day the mandate ended on the day the British left declared the independence of a Jewish state. That same day the armies of seven different Arab countries invaded. Not to establish a Palestinian state. No Arab nation had any intent to establish a Palestinian state. They all wanted a piece of it. Jordan wanted Jerusalem. The Egyptians wanted the Sinai. They wanted the desert areas which were very strategic to them. They wanted control of the entire Red Sea. The Iraqis just sent troops to kill just because they wanted the elimination of Jews from the Middle East. The Syrians wanted northern Israel. They wanted the Galilee. The Lebanese wanted a piece of the Galilee. They basically all wanted a piece. Nobody cared about the Palestinians. Israel fought them off. It fought them off and actually expanded its territory from what the UN had promised. And established a state in that territory. And really you know so this whole thing from beginning and I would say to end was caused by the Palestinians and caused by the Arabs and their unwillingness to accept a Jewish state an Israeli state. A state that is not Muslim and not Islamic in the territory that is today Israel. That's it. There was a there was a in a censor an armistice signed in 1949 which did not recognize the existence of the state of Israel between Israel and all those seven Arab armies that during the war during the 1947 and 1948-1948-1949 war many Arabs were displaced from their homes. Most of the Arabs most an overwhelming majority of the Arabs who were displaced left because the Arab armies that were invading Israel told them to leave so that they would have no collateral damage so they could wipe out the Jews and then invite them back in. So many of them left the Lebanon to Jordan to the West Bank to Gaza. They left and when the war ended now I'm not deny that in some cases certain Israeli units massacred Arabs. It happened. These things happen in war. I'm not denying that in certain cases Arabs were you know thrown out of their homes. Some usually justifiably because they were in border areas sometimes unjustifiably but if you want to measure a number of massacres a number of massacres the Muslims competed against Jews far exceeded far far far exceeded any number of massacres that the Jews again massacres and you know you know gratuitous violence is never appropriate never right never just but there's no moral high ground that the Arabs have here even though Israel might have committed certain things that they shouldn't have done. At 1949 the Palestinians were not allowed back. They lost the war. They'd initiated force against the Israelis and they lost the war and they were not invited back to their homes. Israel was not going to invite in an element that would be hostile to its very existence. Israel repeatedly vied for peace you know whether it's the king Hussein of Jordan or the king and then Nasser in Egypt Israel consistently said they wanted to live in peace the Arabs ignored it. During the 1950s out of the Gaza Strip and Egypt these were territories held by Egypt they continued to be terrorist attacks into Israel so when in 1956 the French and the British you know paratroop troops into the Suez Canal Israel joined in in order to eradicate the terrorist threat on its border and occupied the Sinai and went all the way to the Suez Canal ultimately in 1957 it gave back the Sinai gave back the Gaza Strip under a deal where the Egyptian army would be banned from being in in the Sinai and the terrorist attack stopped terrorism continued from all kinds of sources ultimately the Palestinians who well anyway in 1967 the Nasser got rid of the UN in the Sinai desert and brought in Syrian troops he amassed them on the Israeli border Syria started lobbing bombs from the Golan Heights into Israel and amassing troops in the Golan Heights ready for an invasion Israel preempted both Egypt and Syria in June of 1967 at the beginning of the six-day war told it told it begged Jordan not to intervene Jordan decided to launch its own war against Israel as a consequence of that war Israel took the Gaza Strip the Sinai desert and the West Bank over now because it wanted to but because it was forced to as an act of self-defense as a consequence of this it now gained millions of Palestinians who were hostile to its existence now there's no doubt in my mind that between 1967 and 1987 Israel made a number of strategic mistakes that might which have not been made they might have been some way to settle the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis but it was very difficult for Israel to maneuver because the Palestinians were being ruled not by people living in the West Bank in Gaza but by Yassar al-Fad and a variety of different Soviet funded and Soviet backed leftist primarily leftist some Islamist mainly leftist terrorist organizations all over the world and over the Middle East they continued to commit terrorist attacks not so much in Israel but all over the world you remember the Munich attacks the attack against high school kids I remember this because it was kids a little bit older than me and I was listening on the radio to every moment of that the hostage shaking of the kids the murder of those children through the 60s and 1970s in Israel terrorist attack after terrorist attack hijacking of airplanes murder of civilians murder of children over and over and over and over again once in a while there was a little bit of an uprising in Gaza and Israel dealt with it militarily but generally as I said before Palestinians worked inside of Israel they had freedom of movement inside of Israel but there was constant pressure deal deal deal and and and by the way quickly and again you do this history and you never do it justice because there's so many details and you have to go into so many details and I don't know that we have the time but in 1980 in 1970 in 1970 Jordan got fed up with the Palestinian refugees in Jordan they were creating havoc they were committing terrorist attacks they were threatening the Jordanian monarchy they were threatening the rule of law in Jordan and Jordan basically launched a war against the Palestinians inside Jordan and as a consequence of that they kicked all the Palestinians out of Jordan see nobody nobody has wanted these Palestinians certainly none of the Arab countries are one of them those Palestinians moved to Lebanon and they settled primarily in in Beirut but all over Lebanon in refugee camps around Lebanon while in London in Lebanon these Palestinians fomented and ultimately launched a a civil war between Muslims and Christians and Jews inside Lebanon that started in the early 1970s as these refugees were leaving Jordan and moving to Lebanon. Lebanon couldn't kick them out they didn't have the military force to do it they were backed by the Shiites which today have become Hezbollah and that civil war erupted at the same time the Palestinian Liberation Army organization was building an army in southern Lebanon they were recruiting people they were getting weapons again from the Soviet Union from other Arab countries and they were literally building an army in the south of Israel in 1978 I think Israel invaded southern Lebanon after they had artillery shells they'd been bombarded the Palestinians the PLO had kidnapped Israeli troops and again I might get the exact details of this wrong but after significant harassment i.e. the initiation of force by the Palestinians Israel invaded southern Lebanon and retreated from it the Palestinians just came right back and this time they built several times a bigger force thousands of troops heavy weapons systems and at the same time Syria in the name of helping to stop the civil war in Lebanon entered the Barqa Valley which is in the southeast of Lebanon and had troops there and in 1982 after again border conflicts and missiles and bombs and shelling and the murder of Israelis Israel decided to invade southern Lebanon to get rid of the PLO it did it invaded it it destroyed the capacity to wage war it occupied all of southern Lebanon all the way to Beirut and it was about to invade western Beirut and kill Yasser Al-Fad and the 6,000 remaining troops that he had when the United States Ronald Reagan stepped in and said no gave Yasser Al-Fad and his troops safe patches out now this turned to be a massive strategic mistake by the United States Yasser Al-Fad then stayed the lead of the Palestinian movement from 1982 on and ultimately Israel negotiated a deal with Yasser Al-Fad called the Oslo Accords which gave which brought him back to the West Bank gave him basically policing power gave him some semblance of autonomy and continued to negotiate a deal with him those negotiations went from 1993 to 2000 without much resolution there was a famous meeting in 2000 where Huud Barak and Yasser Al-Fad negotiated Barak put a deal on the table that basically gave Yasser Al-Fad 90 percent of what he wanted 92 percent of the land he wanted and many of the other things that he wanted Yasser Al-Fad said no Israel said where's your counter Yasser Al-Fad refused to counter presented no counter offer the Carter administration tried to negotiate something nothing worked Yasser Al-Fad went back home after getting 92 percent of what he wanted said the Jews must go they must be eliminated and that was a launch of the Second Intifada which lasted like four years thousands of Israelis killed in the most horrific nature bombing of buses bombing of restaurants indiscriminately children civilians almost all civilians soldiers were kidnapped and murdered and tortured just horror like Sharon was with prime minister at that time he got tough on occasion but mostly was pretty weak the bush administration kept restraining Israel and stopping it from doing what was necessary but generally Israel was super weak during this time by the way the First Intifada was launched in 1987 it was mainly rock throwing it wasn't a lot of terrorism things really deteriorated the real deterioration the real rise in terrorism inside Israel was a consequence of the Oslo Court I remember I was on the phone with my parents after the Oslo Court was signed and I said Israel will pay a heavy heavy heavy price for what they have just done you cannot appease evil you cannot negotiate evil there is no peace with evil and sadly I was right sadly I was right I wish I'd recorded that phone call because it would have been interesting they were like no no it's peace this is great yeah um yes in the 90s it was both Clinton and Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter it was the was a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1978 I think so the eight or nine um and that's you know since then there being several wars in Gaza under Bibi Netanyahu as prime minister that Israel's bomb gone in a little bit done nothing they re-armed themselves same thing in Lebanon there was a big war in 2006 they've been other skirmishers since then nothing substantive has been done to eliminate Hamas or Hezbollah and what we're experiencing today is that now this is not a story about tit for tat this is not a story about evil occupiers this is not a story about well the Palestinians have something there this is overwhelmingly a story and and I know this sounds polyanish but this is overwhelmingly a story about Jews coming settling civilizing building industrializing creating making a country making a state they made a state they created a state by building it by creating by being productive and by making it democratic and making it relatively free relatively free relatively right-respecting in in the same sense as any any um government in the west is right-respecting and a population a native population that partially is needed because they came because of all the economic activity and native population that is murderous hostile resentful refuses to accept the Jews can live in this place who's you refuses to accept what they built and what created and since then yeah again Israel's done things wrong primarily missed opportunities and primarily being too weak not being tough enough with the Palestinians Israel's being war with it at war with the Palestinians since 1987 but certainly since the 2nd Intifada it refuses to win that war it refuses to bring the Palestinians to their knees or to defeat and as a consequence the Palestinians keep rising back and and the latest thing from Hamas the latest horror from Hamas is just them rising up again expecting a meek shallow response in the Israelis and everything will go back to normal and then they'll rise up again and and it just continues like that