 Welcome to the Reason Stream. I'm Zach Weismuller, joined by my co-host, Liz Wolf, and we're both pleased to welcome Russ Roberts to the show today. He's an economist, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and host of one of my all-time favorite podcasts, Econ Talk. We wanted to talk to him today because he accepted a job offer to be president of Shalem College in Jerusalem in late 2020 and moved to Israel soon thereafter. We want to get his perspective on Hamas' October 7th terrorist attack, what's unfolded since, and to ask him what he thinks of his new life in Israel. Russ Roberts, thank you for talking with us today. Great to be with you. What was it like for you being in Israel on October 7th? I just want to say first, a lot of people tell me both here and back in America, boy, you took that job, this isn't quite what you bargained for, and it's true. It's not quite what we expected when we moved here two-plus years ago. But I will say that being here for reasons I'm sure that we'll get into is deeply meaningful and to be part of history here in this moment. I'm very glad I'm here. October 7th was a tough day. Many people know it was a Saturday, which means that people who keep Jewish laws, I do do not use their phones or watch television. I first found out what was going on that day when I heard a noise. I actually didn't hear it because I was in the background. My daughter-in-law said who was visiting her daughter-in-law and son, and granddaughter were with us for over the weekend, and she said, I think that's a siren. I said, yeah, it is. She said, and then we heard two explosions, and she said, I think that's a bomb. I said, yeah, probably, and she said, I think we should go to the bomb shelter, and I said, yeah, we should. So we bundled up the six of us, had another family member with us at the time, and we went down to around the corner. There's a bomb shelter in a synagogue, and we sat there for a while. And those two explosions we heard were iron dome intercepting rockets from Gaza. We're about 50 miles from Gaza here in Jerusalem. So it takes about 90 seconds for a rocket to arrive, or at least once the siren is sounded to get to safety. So we did that. I didn't think much of it. We didn't know much about it. It happened three or four more times during the day, and we heard a lot of rumors. We heard that one of the saddest moments, my two very sad moments that morning, and one was we'd heard a rumor that five people had been kidnapped. We were just horrified at that thought. Of course, we later found out it was more like 240. The second sad thing was that someone in the synagogue said, I'll be back in a minute to me. And he went downstairs to say goodbye to his son, who was on his way to the front. So that day, thousands of reservists were called up. The army was mobilized. It took a tragically long time to get the army down to the Gaza area where inside Israel, where the attacks took place. And of course, Israelis all over the world streamed back. Over 100% of the requests for people on reserve duty were filled, meaning they demanded and asked for people to come, and many, many more answered the call. And over 100,000 Israelis overseas just came back to face danger. And it's a precious thing about this place, that there's a loyalty and a sense of national pride, that that's the case. You probably also know that before October 7, this country was close to civil war. And I don't use that phrase lightly. There was an extraordinarily divisive issue of judicial reform on the table, which we could talk about if you want, but not so important with respect to October 7. Other than, pilots had refused to train during this time, as time went on, and the judicial reform remained on the table. There were skirmishes and scuffles between people of different viewpoints in counter-protests, protests and counter-protests. And there were a lot of people thinking that Israel was falling apart, that people were going to be at each other's throats, and a lot of people would be leaving, especially people from the high-tech sector, which is the backbone of the economy here. October 7 changed everything in an instant. It's an extraordinary amount of cooperation, love, and unity between left and right, between secular and religious. It's an extraordinary moment in this country's history. October 8, meaning the day after this war, whenever that comes, I think we'll be very challenging again. But for now, the amount of resolve is extraordinary in unity. How much internal rage would you say there is related to Israeli intelligence failures? The fact that this was such a surprise? Yeah, so the prime minister is Benjamin Netanyahu, who's called Bibi here. That's his nickname. He's been a very important figure in Israeli history over the last three decades, everything from economic reforms that he spearheaded, dealing with all kinds of national security threats. But in the months leading up to this event, he is increasingly a polarizing figure for most people here. There are still people who love him very much, but a lot of people dislike him. And I would say dislike him very similarly to the way that people dislike Donald Trump in America, the ones who do. Similarly, in America, people love Donald Trump and hate him. There aren't that many people in between. Bibi is similarly polarizing here. And so there's a lot of anger that, one, we were surprised by the attack. Two, that we were slow to respond, slow meaning hours rather than closer to minutes. And there's a lot of anger that that political issue of judicial reform remained on the table despite the anger and animosity that it generated. There's two sides to that issue. You can argue in favor of it against it, it's a very interesting issue, but clearly the country was divided by it. And there were many, many people from the military and the security world here who said, this is bad for us. We need to stop it and resolve this controversy because we are vulnerable. And so there's a lot of anger about that. I am moved by how little rage there is here or bloodlust for revenge against Hamas. There is a lot of what I call resolve that it has to change. The situation has to change, but people here are surprised, to my view, given what happens, surprisingly calm. Certainly a lot of anger toward Hamas and the monstrosities that were committed, but a lot of shock, despair, mourning, and it's an emotional rollercoaster to summarize it for me living here. There are days where I'm incredibly sad about how hard it's going to be for this to turn out well. And there are days where I'm extremely moved and inspired by the opportunity to be part of the response to this challenge. This country has pulled together in a way that was never visible in America in my lifetime, even in the aftermath of 9-11. Unless you're here, you really can't appreciate how much every single person is doing something to either help the troops or the people who've now are refugees because their homes were destroyed, burned down, or made uninhabitable by the attacks, or the people have been evacuated from the North out of fear of an attack from Lebanon and Hezbollah. There's tens of thousands of people rooming here in Jerusalem temporarily and there's an army of civil society. The government's missing in action, partly because of disorganization, partly because of speed, partly for a whole bunch of reasons. And the way that the so-called private sector, I don't like that phrase, what I would call civil society, volunteerism and people just solving problems is extraordinarily beautiful. And it's happening with provisioning of the military. We have a staff member who drives three times a week and she cooks hot meals for the soldiers. And I said, well, how many meals do you make? I said about 2,000 a day. What? Where do you get the food? Oh, well, this organization delivers the food an hour before we get there. We never know what it's gonna be. And then we decide what we're gonna make. It's eight people. And she works here. So she delivers with the food, articles by our faculty at Shalem College and asks if they want to lecture. And we've been sending out lectures to give talks on the Middle East and on Islam and on Hezbollah and on David Goliath and everything you can possibly imagine. But I said, why are you doing this? Doesn't the army give our soldiers food? She said, yeah, but sometimes it's just a sandwich. I mean, if you're going into combat, you should have a hot meal. Oh, that's reasonable. Okay. And there's no field kitchen next to Gaza. So this is effectively a field kitchen. And God bless her. And that's happening for again, for the displaced families. It's happening for the refugees and evacuees. And it's really beautiful. There's a weird sort of irony there that the Israel that you're describing before October 7th was highly divided. And now this terrorist attack has unified the unified Israelis. I have to assume that's not a strategic win for Hamas and definitely a strike against the strategy of terrorism putting aside the obvious immorality of it. You mentioned that you are about 50 miles from Gaza, a 90 seconds rocket trip, moving from the United States where you don't live under that constant ticking clock in your mind, like I got 90 seconds. Like what, how does that affect you as a person to move into that situation? Yeah. I'll try to say a couple of things about that. First of all, the woman I mentioned it does the cooking of the 2000 meals. They have 20 seconds there, not 90 because they're closer to Gaza. I wrote a piece about the first day of the war and there are different sirens here. There's a siren that goes off on Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers. And there's a siren that goes off Friday afternoon for the coming of the Sabbath. And there's a siren that goes off for Yom HaShua which is the day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. Those last, the Memorial Day and the Holocaust one they last two minutes. Every Israeli gets out of their car stops in the street and stands in silence, very moving. I know what those sound like. They're a long high tone that blurs and goes for a few minutes. This one wasn't like that. It was an air raid siren. And I've never heard one before, as you said. My life in the United States has never been attacked by a rocket. And, but I've seen enough movies about World War II. So I knew what it sounded like and what's, you know, since that first day where we had three or four, maybe five, none of them did any damage. They were all intercepted by Iron Dome or were left to hit the ground. Iron Dome, our surveillance system tries to project where they're gonna land. And if it's gonna be a field, we just, Iron Dome's very expensive. So we don't shoot things down if we don't think they're gonna hurt anybody. We have other air defense systems here. We have Arrow which shoots down ballistic missiles. We shot down a ballistic missile shot from Yemen the other day. There's work on a laser. But there've only been, since that first day, probably three or so, four maybe sirens over the last month. And so it's pretty peaceful here right now. There was a lot of apprehension in Jerusalem anyway. It's pretty, it's not the case in Tel Aviv outside of Gaza. There's still quite a few rockets being launched every single day. But Jerusalem's fairly quiet. There is some residual anxiety here that Hezbollah would enter the war. It doesn't look like it for a variety of reasons we can talk about, but assuming that they don't, that's really great because they have much bigger rockets that are much more accurate. So, and they have about 150,000 supposedly stockpiled. So that is, and then maybe Iran will get in the war. So the hanging in the back of your mind is some unease. And I think it takes a toll on a person. The other thing I think that's hard is that, you know, every, almost everybody I know has a kid or a relative in the reserves who's now at the front or near the front or at the front of Lebanon. I have a great nephew here, but many people have, my colleague down the hall has a son and her husband are both in uniform and not home. So the anxiety that these people are experiencing and the realization that it is heartbreaking that if they do come home, they will not be the same person because of what they've seen and had to do, which is very sad. It's just, I think it weighs on you in a way you're not aware of. So I find myself, you know, being a little bit short tempered or down. And I'm thinking, why am I down? And it's because there's things to be down about. But as I said, it's a bit of a roller coaster. There are many, many times when I'm just, life's very meaningful here and very purposeful in this time and we're able, fortunately because we're such a small college to mobilize our resources, both for the troops and the refugees and for our students or alumni. We're doing all kinds of programming and we're partnering with organizations to help them provide food and shelter for the refugees, evacuees, medical supplies for the troops they don't have. So it's very meaningful. So I'm mostly up, but sometimes down. This reminds me so much of something you wrote in your book. And I believe Zach has an excerpt, but you say something on the lines of, you initially weren't interested in this role, being the president of this college in Jerusalem and uprooting your life and moving to Israel. And that on, I guess the quote is on narrow utilitarian grounds, this was a no-brainer, only a fool would take the job. But then you talk about the idea of this on many other grounds, bringing you closer to who you want to be. And I'm very curious about how has October 7th played into that? How do you find yourself relating to Jewishness toward your either cultural identity or religious one as a result of not only taking this job and moving to Israel, but specifically after October 7th. How has this changed you? Well, first thing I'd say is how it changed others and then I'll bring it back to me. Israel has a wide, very diverse set of views on religion among its citizens. We have the so-called ultra-Orthodox. We have the purely secular and we have every flavor in between, including many, many people who follow Jewish tradition, but without the intensity or precision, say of the ultra-Orthodox, but it's an important part of their life. And before October 7th, as I alluded to in passing, there was quite a bit of tension between the religious right and the secular left. Brought to the surface by this issue of judicial reform because the two groups split very cleanly on that issue. The religious right was much more in favor of it and the secular left was very much against it. And that was part of what was ripping this country apart. Any willingness of non-religious people to be part of the Jewishness of the state rather than just a mere, say, identity was nil. They just didn't want you part of it. Most ultra-Orthodox people here do not serve in the army, are subsidized in various ways. This creates resentment. I think it's a terrible policy. It's driven by the politics and the strange nature of the Israeli political system, but that's reality. And it had created quite a bit of resentment between these two groups. So the war comes and thousands of ultra-Orthodox volunteer unexpectedly, I think to the surprise of the secular part of the society. They volunteer and they've trained for about three weeks. Now they're quote battle ready. I don't know what they're gonna be doing, but their basic training was quite brief, but they are in the army and ready to do something. And that's on that side. The other side is there's been an enormous outpouring of religious feeling on the part of the non-religious. There are no atheists in a foxhole. Obviously at a time of war, people turn to the transcendent, to the spiritual, to the divine for help in either coping with it or getting strength. And the amount of ritual observance that has taken place is just, it's very, very powerful. And it's, I don't know what its long run implications will be, but many people have observed that everything's going to be different here after this war ends, especially our political system, especially our view of ourselves as Jews, and especially our views vis-a-vis the Palestinian people, either in Gaza or the West Bank. And we can talk about any of those if you want, but on the Jewish issue for me, I never planned to live in Israel. I never dreamed, many people do, many Jews dream to move to Israel at some point in their life. I didn't, but when the job came along, as you described in the book, I certainly was excited about the opportunity, not at first as I wrote, but eventually came to embrace it and feel like it was something I was meant to do. Being here at this time, when I took the job, I think I accepted the job around the fall of 2020. And I couldn't come for a while because it was COVID and I couldn't get, there were a whole bunch of things I needed to get taking care of to be able to become an Israeli citizen, FBI background checks, visa issues, birth certificate, all complicated stuff. So I had to wait. And while I was waiting in the spring of 2021, Israel was attacked by Hamas. The October 6th was in the ceasefire that was agreed to the last time Hamas attacked. And I remember feeling, and then it was March, I think of 2021, and I didn't get here until June, but I remember feeling in March or April, whenever it was or May. Gee, I wish I could be there. It's a little scary of course, but it feels like I want to be part of it. Well, I'm here now, I'm part of it now. And I'm really glad to have the chance to be part of this organization, Shalem College, which is working to help both the troops and our alumni in the Army and the evacuees and refugees. It's just, it's a wonderful thing. I'm really proud to be part of it in any way. My Hebrew is not very good. It limits my ability to completely contribute, but it feels like I belong here to be part of this. And I'm very, very glad I am. What you're talking about with, sorry, Zach, I'll let you go in a sec. What you're talking about though, with secular Jews becoming more in touch with Judaism as a religion, it's crazy that you said that because I think that this is also having triple effects in other places with huge Jewish populations like New York, I was literally sitting at a bar before a reason event last night with two friends, one of whom was sort of a secular, has been a secular Jew his entire life. And he was talking very personally about how he feels the need to go to Israel now. He wants to take his fiance to Israel. He feels the sense of, he was asking us because he knows my other friend, host past overs, even though she's not Jewish. And he's just like, can I come? Can I come now? So what you're saying I think is so true, probably most intensely felt in Israel, but it's interesting seeing even all of these ripple effects in Jews all around the world. Yeah, it's a great observation. And I think the other thing that's happening certainly is that when this war broke out, my kids who are not here were all worried about me and my family was worried about me and they would call and I try to call my mom every day, she's in Alabama. I try to just let her know I'm fine and I didn't die. Again, it's very safe here, but she's my mom and she's worried so I understand that. But after a while I started being more worried about them than I think they were about me as we saw a rise in anti-Semitism and actually don't like to call it that. Jew hatred, it's pretty blunt and it's very old and we kind of like to hope and think it's gone away but it is back a day or two after the attacks of October 7th, there was a rally on the steps of the Sydney Opera House where a pro-Palestinian rally ended with a chant of gas the Jews. It's a little bit hard to believe that that happens in 2023 but people have tragically been killed now in the aftermath of October 7th in the Jewish communities around the world. And there's a lot of anger obviously on both sides. I'm very, very apprehensive about the future, especially on college campuses where Jews have been at times afraid for their lives in the presence of rallies and other things, the tearing down of the posters of kidnapped children and kidnapped adults. I don't think that's that big a deal. What is disturbing to me more is the fact that they seem to enjoy it. They get pleasure from tearing them down. I could understand a lot of different reasons you might not want to look at them but to enjoy tearing them down seems very dark. But I think your point Liz that many Jews around the world are suddenly feeling a deep identification with their Judaism and with Israel which really has been on the wane for quite some time. I think among the diaspora, among Jews outside of Israel. The last thing I'll say is that even though this is not a religious state, it's not a theocracy. But Judaism does permeate many aspects of life here and some are quite a bit of friction. The rabbis here do have control over say marriage and certain issues that are very controversial. There are ways of getting around it and people have found them. But it's resented in many ways and understandably so. Having said that, the Bible, the Hebrew Bible and Jewish practice and tradition permeate all of Israeli culture even when it's not religious. So it's sitting there waiting to be picked up for people who want to embrace it. Traditional Jewish liturgy gets turned into a pop song becomes a great hit even though it's the religiousness of it doesn't speak to people, they still fall in love with it and all kinds of phrases from the Bible or the Talmud are part of Israeli slang and jargon and culture. So what's been interesting when I was trying to give you a feel for which is hard to do without the videos is how many secular Jews here have embraced some taste of that because it's our heritage. Whether it's a religious feeling or not, it is the thousands of year old heritage of this land and everybody who lives here can access it if they want. I mean, just to take an example, you probably know that about 2,000 years ago a bunch of Jewish rebels took a stand on a mountain against the Roman Empire and that place is called Masada and you can go visit it. It's a hilltop plateau like a mesa and it was the last stand of a bunch of Jewish rebels against the Roman state. And according to Josephus, historically, I'm not sure it's true. You know, they fought bravely for a long time and then finally the Roman army circled the place, cut them off from food and water and slowly starved them to death until finally they all committed suicide on mass so that they would not be butchered or abused by the Romans in defeat. And it's probably not 100% true because who survived to tell that story in a hierarchical detail if they all killed themselves but Josephus writes about it in his book that I think the Jewish Wars. So that's interesting and you can go to Masada, you can climb it, it's very hot there, it's in the desert near the Dead Sea, very near to where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and it's an extremely interesting archeological site but it's also the place where the Israeli army swears in many of its units in memory of that fight against Rome. And to have that tradition is, it's very rich and it's, it pervades all kinds of parts of the culture here in ways that you'd have to be heard to fully appreciate. Russ, you mentioned the reactions around the world, the tearing of the posters, this incident at the Sydney Opera House and we have a clip, we've pulled the clip from that incident which as horrible as it is, I do wanna play just to have people absorb it and also because it's sparked a tweet thread of, it partially sparked a tweet thread of yours that I want to discuss with you. So let's roll a little bit of that clip. The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! The Dead Sea! I mean, it is just shocking to see this happening in a place like Australia. And I am curious if seeing these kind of reactions in, you know, English speaking countries has changed your political views at all. You posted this thread on October 25th saying that the beginning of the thread you write that the aftermath of October 7th is a test for the West and for all open societies. Societies that nominally believe in freedom of speech and the press, such societies are now at a crossroads and much must think about the direction they wish to head. What do you do about this kind of Jew hatred? I'll just pose that question back to you here. What do you think an open and free society should do in the face of the kind of hatred and vitriol we see on display in that clip? Well, I call that I eventually wrote an essay on this. I called it the dilemma of the West because I don't think there's an easy answer to it. All my life I've been a very passionate advocate for freedom of speech, freedom of press. And I said nominally respecting freedom of speech and press because obviously over the last five years or so, eight years or so, 10 years in America and elsewhere, freedom of speech has been under attack and that's been deeply disturbing to me. Both freedom of speech, both as a cultural norm and often sometimes as an actual regulation there have been attempts to curtail speech, curtail opinions that made people uncomfortable and certainly culturally using norms and non-governmental methods to reduce honesty on the part of people about what they really think and feel. And I think that's very bad. And a few people still agree with me on that but it's surprising how much in America and in the West that is a controversial opinion. At the same time, do we make any distinction? This is what I was trying to ask in that Twitter thread and in the essay. Do we want to make any distinction between say unpopular political opinions and Jew hatred, racism, exhortations to violence? I would make a distinction between writing and rallying. The thing I find disturbing about the rallying and the thing I find disturbing about the tearing down of the posters is there's an implicit threat of violence behind them. In that clip you just showed my Arabic is not what he used to but I think those are Jihad flags being waived where Jihad is about killing infidels. And what do you do about that? You just say, well, that's their opinion. We don't agree with it. The way that the city of Sydney dealt with that rally is they told Jews to stay away from the city opera house. And if you look at that clip carefully, not carefully, just look at it the second time, you'll see policemen in reflective vests standing on the steps there in the background watching this. I don't know what else one could do besides watch it. I'm not suggesting that they should storm the group for saying what they said. I don't think there's an easy way to deal with this. I use the other example in that essay that at some I think pro-Israel rally there was a group of Jews who conducted an evening prayer service. It was a very small group, maybe 15 people saying the evening prayer service. But nearby was either a pro-Palestinian rally or a response to the pro-Israeli and a police barricade there and there were dozens, maybe hundreds of people shouting free Palestine while these Jews were trying to say their evening prayers. And what do we say about that? Do we say that's just protest? Do we make a distinction between a public space and a private space? So for example, if people want to hold a rally on behalf of either Palestine or Israel in a college campus meeting room, do people have the freedom, should they have the freedom to chant things in response to that? And it really is a tragically beautiful example of how difficult it is to legislate kindness. A lot of what underlies the American culture of trust, of discourse, of searching for the truth, of mutual respect is inherently cultural. It's not legislated. You can't legislate it. And when it disappears, attempts to legislate it are not going to work. So I don't think there's a simple attractive magic answer to how do you deal with speech that is violent? How do you deal with a march that has violence around it? And just to leave, I'll finish with talking about the posters. What's depressed me watching it from a distance here in Israel is how many people, when they film the folks tearing down the posters, beg them to stop and beg them to explain themselves. Why are you doing this? They cry out. And that's the tone. It's a begging instead of saying, I don't approve of that and to stand in their way. And many of you watching this, I'm sure, saw the clip of the New York construction worker who's got in the face of someone tearing down the posters and said, this is America. You don't do that and I'm not going to let you. And intimidated the guy very, very unattractively to get him to stop. But what's the alternative? And the current alternative, which I don't particularly like, is of taking photos of these people and identifying them and trying to get them fired. And I don't think somebody should be fired for a moment of emotional response to a kidnapped child that maybe makes them uncomfortable for a thousand reasons. But how do we handle that as a society? It's not an easy question. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to ask you about that is there's the cultural component, which you alluded to there at the end with, should there be social consequences for tearing down a poster of someone who's been abducted or yelling something horrible like gas the Jews at the protest? I would say, certainly the latter, I would not want to employ someone who was in that video. But then there's the question, the very just real, you know, political question of should this be allowed? And is it, is there something insufficient about just the straightforward liberal or libertarian framework of you have to allow the bad speech, particularly in a public space to take place? And you draw the line at actual violence, not really nasty words, you know, we tolerate, for instance, famously here, the Westboro Baptist Church saying horrible things on public grounds outside of funerals. I mean, you can't imagine something much worse than that. And kind of the cultural response has been like these gangs of motorcycle, these motorcycle gangs follow them around and like drown them out with the motorcycle. So there's cultural response, but they're protected in their speeches. Is there something that's not sufficient in that framework for this particular problem, in your opinion? Well, I want to, I want to bring in something I heard from Tom Palmer, who you may know, from Atlas, and who is a longtime friend of mine. I don't remember when this was as decades ago, I got into an argument with Tom about freedom of speech. And I, you know, I said, I don't like that the Nazis marched in Skokie. For example, Skokie is a Jewish neighborhood, suburb of Chicago, and the Nazis marched through the streets of Skokie. And someone recently pointed out to me, yeah, there are about two dozen of them. If there'd been 100,000, maybe you'd feel differently about that march. But I said at the time, they have a right to march. I can never, we can never know what where truth is in a democracy, the whole beauty of freedom of speech is to allow diverse viewpoints to be expressed peacefully. And Tom didn't agree with that. Tom felt very strongly, and I'm sure he still does. And I starting to think he's right, that freedom of speech should not be allowed by people, for people who don't believe in freedom of speech. That is, if you are part of the Nazis, or the communists, and I would put it Hamas in with this also, which is a grotesque, theocratic death cult. It doesn't believe in freedom of speech. I'll just put a footnote here that story came out yesterday that, that there were a bunch of photographers and journalists who went with Hamas on October 7th through the gap in the fence, and chronicled and photographed the atrocities. And that this was an ethical violation. I'm thinking, do you really think there are any journalists in Gaza? Do you really, native journalists, do you really think there are people who live in Gaza, who can report, who can tell the truth, who can say critical things about Hamas? Of course there aren't. Of course, everyone there will at least say that they support Hamas and will act accordingly. They do not hold by the journalistic standards that we like to think other journalists hold by. And their times had a slight challenge on this. They had a journalist there that they used as a stringer who admires Hitler and had posted on on social media how great Hitler was. But the times assured us that he really reported very objectively, as if you could possibly know. So these kind of insane situations where your granting rights and freedoms to people who would be thrilled to either slit your throat or take those freedoms away from you seems a bit strange. And so Tom's view was if the goal of not any individual, because we can't measure it and it's hard to assess and who knows, but organizations that have as their charter, the revolutionary desire to take away freedoms from other people should not be given those freedoms. And although it's hard for me to say that to agree with Tom, I think he's probably right. So any one protester might let them say their say from the river to the sea, even though that means killing me and my friends here and ending the Jewish state. I would probably let them say that or put it in a say in a classroom, but an organization that wants the beliefs in that or the beliefs in in in gassing choose or murdering choose or any other group should probably not be given the same rights to express themselves as other groups. Maybe they shouldn't be a permit to walk on the streets of Skokie. I'm in Florida and the governor here has just attempted to ban student groups that are supportive of Palestine on the pretense that they say that they're in alignment with what happened in Gaza and therefore he's saying they're providing material support to them. I honestly, even though I find that repugnant, I find it I also find it disturbing as a gubernatorial action to and like a very clear example of how once you start saying, well, they are somehow affiliated with a group that is murderous, that they themselves don't have a right to express all these other views on a campus. So that is the heart of my concern with what you're saying even though I acknowledge the very problem. I agree with you. I do not think let me let me be clear about a couple things. Israel makes lots of mistakes, does some horrific things. I'm not proud of them. I'm ashamed of them. Don't want them to continue. We could debate what those might be. I do not think the current ground offensive in Gaza is anything to be ashamed of. I think it's morally appropriate. And although tragically, I'm sure, thousands perhaps of civilians have died in Gaza, which is horrible and a tragedy. Israel gave them weeks to leave and Hamas at the point of a gun wouldn't let many of them leave. So I hold Hamas responsible for that. Having said that, Israel's done plenty of horrific things to Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank, and it's perfectly legitimate to be opposed to Israeli policies. It's perfectly legitimate to support a Palestinian state. It's perfectly legitimate to fight for the rights of Palestinians, say to water rights, or to fight for their ability to get better police protection. Or you fell in the blank. There are plenty of things that you can be pro-Palestine about without being anti-Jew. But if you're anti-Jew, it seems to be crossing the line. So groups that are pro-Palestinian should be allowed on college campuses and elsewhere, in my view, as long as it doesn't shade into the celebration of murdering people, which seems like crossing a line. Now, they would disagree, by the way. And to be fair to them, at these pro-Palestine rallies in, say, London, where 100,000 people marched, many of them chanting from the river to the sea, or free Palestine, which does not mean rights for Palestinians. It means the land that Israel's on now should belong to the Palestinians and not to the Jewish state. They also say things like by any means necessary. And of course, they're an underdog, and they don't have a good military. And of course, they're blockaded from getting military weapons, not perfectly successfully. But so perhaps you can make the case that they have to use means that others would not stomach. I guess for me, it's mainly the enjoying of it. That's so disturbing. But the thing that I get into with this, because obviously, I completely agree. I mean, watching this happen, we've seen a lot of this in New York. There's an astonishing odiousness to this action of tearing down the posters of kidnapped children. So many people have tried to make the point that these posters are pointless. These people, it lets the point in spreading images of their faces, and what's the point in spreading their names? If we know where they are, it's not New York. They're not going to be found here. What use is it in having Manhattan commuters see these names as they walk to work? And so there's the parallel drawn between the posters of missing people after 9-11 that were put up, where it's like, those people aren't going to be found. Those people died in 9-11. And it was an expressive act. It's a political statement. When you're going about your mundane everyday life, don't let this fade. Make sure that this remains sort of seared into your memory for a longer time, even than you feel comfortable with. It's an expressive act putting up these posters. But the thing that I'm curious about, because you've referred to it a few times in this conversation and in the thread, is how should we read the tearing down of the posters? Is it a tacit endorsement of Hamas' actions and of the kidnapping of children? Or is it so frequently this unthinking act that is an attempt to distract from the horrors committed? It's hard for me to, when I think about other forms of, excuse my French, but like bullshit campus activism, I think about how so much of this calls to abolish the police, for example, these are unthinking calls frequently. I don't think that there is actually, when you press people on this, they say, oh, well, actually, we don't want to abolish the police. There's a lot of hedging that happens. There's almost this walking back of the claims. Should we actually be interpreting people pulling down these posters of Hamas' kidnapped and victims? Should we actually be interpreting this as a tacit endorsement of this? Or should we be interpreting it as something different? No, I would not. I don't interpret it that way. And that's why I said, I hope I made it clear that I don't think there's anything criminal about tearing it down. I don't even think there's necessarily anything thoughtless or cruel about it or endorsement of the act. But sometimes it is. That's the problem. And that's why one of the reasons I'm so uncomfortable with canceling these people, I don't know what exactly they're thinking. And although sometimes they tell you, they will sometimes say, Hitler was great, in which case I'm going to go with the, I think there it's a tacit approval. But a lot of times I think it could be... That example that you cited of the New York Times was so interesting because the Times also claimed that having uncovered these Hitler praising posts from years ago, that don't worry, they sort of like reeducated this. They had a talking to with him. And it sort of shows the hollowness of like, do you actually think that an HR session is what it takes to get somebody to reverse course on praising Hitler? He went to a workshop. Everything's fine now. But I think you raise a bunch of interesting points about the posters and it forces you... It's all interesting to me. I walk to work every day. And today, about a five minute walk from my house, there was a stroller parked next to a park bench. And the stroller was empty other than a sign of a kidnapped child and a prayer for returning of captives. And then I saw a second one about 25 yards further down the hill. I came to work here on our campus. We share with the Jewish agency, which is an organization that helps people move to Israel and does a bunch of other things. But there's a large courtyard here near my building and that courtyard we use for graduation. It's a place of celebration. I have wonderful memories of that courtyard. And right now there's a table set for 240 in that courtyard with empty seats and posters on each chair. And I don't think that's there to get me to do something to bring them home. I don't think there's anything I can do to bring them home. I think it's there, as you say, to remind us that there are people around us who are grieving, who are having unimaginable pain, that the world is a difficult place. There are many, many things about that kind of expressive art, if you would, that are worth enduring and experiencing. And at the same time, you can't think about it 24 seven. Your heart will break and you won't be able to function. So those who tear them down, I think some of them don't like to look at it. They don't want to be reminded. They don't want to think about it. Others have convinced themselves it didn't happen. It's not true. And they see it as some kind of conspiracy. So I think there are many, many responses that human beings can have to that kind of thing. And I think the power of freedom of speech is that you're supposed to hear all kinds of different views and try to get smarter by hearing what the basis is for those different views. And that's the idea. I'm not sure it's true. You know, this moment, so many people know exactly what the right thing to do and feel is and can't imagine anyone could feel any differently. And the idea that someone on the other side from us could feel equally strongly, equally righteous and equally moral is unimaginable. And yet, that's the way they feel. Now, they're welcome to feel that way. Sometimes your life's at stake or your safety, and it's a luxury to give them the benefit of the doubt. But that's the reality we're in on, you know, on social media right now is that there are many decent, there are a lot of wicked people on social media, but there's a lot of decent people on both sides who are suddenly very sure of themselves. And that would include me. I feel it, you know, all the time. How can that person not see that phone the blank? And it's a good lesson to be aware that you might be wrong. You mentioned a little bit of doubt about, I guess, the concept of the marketplace of ideas and whether, you know, that people really will arrive at something approximating truth by them going head to head. But, you know, one concept within that framework is the chilling effect, like if there is, if there are too much, whether they're political consequences or just social consequences for engaging in certain kinds of discourse that there will be a chilling effect and like legit, you know, the legitimate issues that that you alluded to that palace that Palestinians might have could get could get buried. You know, one of one of the high profile examples that I wanted to get your thoughts on was what happened with representative Rashida Taib. She became the 26th member in congressional history to be censured in part for, well, in part for a tweet she made that was jumping to the conclusion that Israel bombed a hospital when in fact it was a rocket that Hamas misfired. And then she didn't really make any effort whatsoever to correct that. The rocket was technically not fired by Hamas, but an allied group with Hamas. Yeah, the Islamic shihad, I think, but yeah. Thank you for that clarification. And Taib released the statement on October 8th, the day after the attack, kind of tellingly titled on ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine, where she says, I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today and every day I am determined as ever to fight for a just future where everyone can live in peace. The past of that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance. And her characterizing this action as resistance was cited as a reason to censure her, does that statement strike you as beyond the pale and worthy of censure? Well, first of all, it's an offensive statement. It offends because it implies that what happened on October 7th was justified. It was the inevitable result of the behavior of Israel and how it treats the Palestinians. I don't like the use of the word apartheid. There were two million Arabs who live in Israel who have free healthcare college can vote. It's not free totally, but it's free healthcare. But they have the same healthcare that every Israeli has. They have the same educational system as every Israeli. They have equal rights. So calling this an apartheid situation, I find offensive, just as I find offensive, the phrase genocide, the population in West Bank and Gaza has risen fivefold over the last, I think, five or six decades. If this is genocide, we're not very good at it. The phrase allows the comparison of Israel to the Nazis. Just I don't find that helpful or honest. Having said that, I don't have any problem with that statement. I would not have censured her. I don't think it's good for the Jews that we censured her. I'm not sure it's good for Israel. And I wanted to say one other thing. Before you say that, could you tell me why you say that about why is it not good for the Jews or Israel to censure her? The idea that we're so powerful, we can get a member of Congress censured because she said something that we don't like. That's the way it's easily interpreted. I'm sure if there were no Jews in Congress and no Jews in America, it's possible she would have been censured either way. But I don't think it looks so good for us. To be clear, there were Jewish members of Congress who voted to censure her and to not censure her, so there's not really too much there, substantively. But I understand. It's the same reason. I don't think it's good for Jews that we get these people fired or tear down the posters. It makes people angry at the Jews who already don't like them. We have to stand up for ourselves. I try to stand up and block the poster ripper than to use the legal system or other things to punish them in ways they can't anticipate, which is also, I think, unjust. But I want to say something I think is important about, say, congressional speech. It's a perfectly legitimate opinion to oppose American military aid to Israel on the grounds that Israel treats the Palestinians poorly. I don't agree with the justification, but I'm not sure American aid is always good for Israel. So strategically, and in terms of making the world a better place, it's a complicated question, but it certainly should be protected by free speech to say that American support for Israel is wrong. Fundamentally, it would be grotesque to censure people who didn't want to stand by Israel in this particular moment and who feel that the Palestinian cause has been inaccurately presented or distorted or anything. So I want to be clear. I don't think Israel is entitled or Jews are entitled to any special treatment in this moment because of the horrific nature or savage and barbaric nature of October 7th. I just think we should get the same treatment as everybody else. But that in general, I remain a fan of free speech, but I do think exhorting people of violence might fall into a different category. I do think it's also worth sort of bringing into the conversation that like censuring a member of Congress doesn't actually do anything. It is essentially a formalized means of slapping somebody on the wrist. Yeah, absolutely. And much of what we're talking about here is virtue signaling of various kinds that I find unhealthy for democracy. I would much rather she get voted out of office if her constituents find her offensive or disagree with her. And that's the way a democracy should handle this. The hospital thing, the hospital thing is a little tricky because in the moment, I could understand that someone would blame Israel for that bombing. When that story broke, it was Israel destroys hospital with 500 people dead. Turned out hospital wasn't destroyed near times, ran a photograph of a destroyed building. It wasn't the hospital. Turns out the parking lot of the hospital was struck. A lot of cars were burned. I don't know if anybody died, maybe a few people would very sad, but it probably wasn't by Israel. So in the first half hour, hour, five hours, you could maybe have leapt to the wrong conclusion. When it came pretty clear that it wasn't the case, forget who did it, forget whether Israel did it or whether it was Islamic Shihad, a missile that did it. It wasn't 500 people. It wasn't a hospital destroyed. Why wouldn't you fix that? And she stood up at a rally the next day and said some things are probably not true. It's embarrassing for her. Again, let her constituents put her out of office and if they agree with her or like what she says anyway, it's hard to disagree. They can let them do what they do. One thing that you alluded to earlier is this question of what the U.S. relationship with Israel ought to look like. And this is something I think about a lot because sometimes I get frustrated with our fellow traveler libertarians for, I think, sometimes seeming a little unrealistic on matters of foreign policy. I think there is frequently a sense of what the U.S. should do aspirationally, but then there also needs to be a sense of what the U.S. should do in order to taper off an existing relationship, recognizing that cutting off ties or cutting off any sort of funding of Israel is not something that can realistically happen overnight and that there would be massive second order consequences that would stem from that if that did happen. How do you look at this relationship between the U.S. and Israel and this U.S. support for Israel? How do you look at it aspirationally in terms of what that relationship ought to be like, but also more practically? It's a tricky question. I know it's a big question and you're not a foreign policy expert, but I'm just curious about how your views on this have evolved over time. I'm not an expert, but I often play one on TV, so I'll do the best I can. The United States gives about $3 billion, I think, dollars a year to Israel. You have a similar amount to Egypt, at least until recently, maybe. That is not free money. It is credits. It's $3 billion of credits that Israel has to use in the U.S. military grocery store, meaning it's for purchasing U.S. weapons, aircraft, etc. It is a subsidy both to Israel and the U.S. defense industry. Historically, I've never been in favor of that aid. I've always opposed it. I don't think it's good for Israel particularly. We're now a very rich country. When it was first started, we were a pretty poor country. Israel has a pretty high standard of living. We can pay for our own equipment if we want. I hope the U.S. will continue to sell it to us. I think the trickier part of the relationship is what's happening right now. Right now, there are two aircraft carriers in the eastern side of the Mediterranean and a nuclear submarine. They're there mainly to threaten Iran and Iran's friend, Hezbollah, and to say, don't think about opening up a second front against Israel or we'll punish you. That's been really helpful to us, more or less here in Israel. It's not clear whether we do have a nuclear weapon here. That carries a lot of weight, but it's a threat you never want to carry out. I don't know what this would look like right now if the U.S. had not made that implicit threat. I'm sure they made some explicit threats behind the scenes that we don't know about. That's very helpful to Israel. Having said that, I think it's a legitimate question for Americans to ask whether that serves the interests of the United States. There are many Jews, evangelical Christians, and others who see Israel in a very special light different from many other countries, but whether the average American taxpayer should be funding the ability of the United States to still act as something of the world's policeman, I think, is a complicated question. If Israel had to stand on its own, it would have to devote a lot more of its resources to its own military, which it devotes a significant amount already, but it would have to devote more. It would set in motion a whole bunch of things. Some of them would be good for Israel and some not so good. A lot of people would argue that this moment has taught us that Israel cannot defend itself alone, that it needs the United States to be a counterweight to Iran, and that may be true. I think it's going to be very interesting to see how this evolves over the next few years, and whether any president, Biden, whoever wins the next election, would carry out threats like that are being applied against Iran and risk a world war with Russia, which is Iran's ally and the rest of the Middle East. It's pretty challenging. Yeah, you know, what concerns me about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, it's not an unconditional support, but it is a very substantial, like, we've got your back kind of thing, and I'm morally supportive of the right of Israel's government to defend its people against this kind of atrocity and to seek justice and rescue the hostages and dismantle Hamas to the extent that can be done. What I've been uncomfortable with and become increasingly so is any U.S. aid in that project because Israel's military is having to make really difficult moral calculations and trade-offs about how many soldiers they're willing to sacrifice in ground operations versus how many civilian casualties to accept with other types of aerial bombings, and they're not easy calls, and frankly, they're not always calls that I agree with, and the more the U.S. has culpability in that with its funding, you know, the worst all around on all sides, that is, in my view, it's Israel's fight, and the government of Israel seems capable of prosecuting it, and I wonder, when you're talking about, you know, the difference in Israel's interests and America's interests, do you think America is in some sense tying Israel's hands in ways that makes it harder to defend itself? Well, it cuts both ways, right? I think America's embrace of Israel, the government's embrace, the military's embrace of Israel is, has costs for the United States. Those costs may be worth bearing for other benefits. They may be worth bearing for moral reasons. It's not an easy question to answer. I would just add that a friend of mine said the other day that the embrace of the United States of Israel is more like a bear hug. It doesn't just show love and affection. It also constrains Israel a great deal. Many of those constraints we would impose on ourselves here, certainly with respect to civilian casualties, but historically, often Israel has gone along with what the United States wanted because there's a feeling here that we need the United States. So we couldn't rely on that. We would behave differently and that would be both good and bad, I suspect. Russ Roberts, thank you so much for talking to reason. I'm pretty sure most of our viewers and listeners already know where they can find you, but in case they don't, where can people find you and read more of your thoughts and hear more of them as well? My sub-stack on my experiences here in Israel is called Listening to the Sirens. You can find that a sub-stack. I archive all my work at RussRoberts.info, and of course my podcast is Econ Talk, which you can find at any place where good podcasts are sold, although ours is given away, so enjoy it without charge. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.