 There was a clip I wanted to play that I think encapsulates the argument as to why some people believe Israel should do a land invasion in Gaza and why it's necessary for them to do everything possible to eliminate Hamas. The clip I'm going to play is from Ben Shapiro, who I think recently encapsulated the argument. He said they should show basically no restraint in finishing off Hamas, as he puts it, and the US should offer material support. And then he lays out a series of escalating events that isn't all that dissimilar from what you lay out in your article as to how this could spill out into a bigger conflict. Let's roll that clip, and I'd like to get your reaction. So the real risk for Israel in not finishing off Hamas right now is that this is taken as a sign of weakness, as it certainly would be, by Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a far more dangerous terrorist group than Hamas. Hamas is a dangerous terrorist group. They just proved it by killing 1,300 Jews. Hezbollah currently has over 100,000 highly sophisticated rockets aimed directly at the north of Israel. Estimates suggest that were Hezbollah to fire all of those rockets, we wouldn't be talking about 1,300 dead Jews. You would be talking about somewhere between 20 and 30,000 dead Jews. Day one. If Hezbollah gets in, Israel will have no choice but to unleash the air force. If they unleash the air force, they're not going to be worried at that point about civilian casualties at all. They're simply going to have to eviscerate the entire south of Lebanon and topple the regime in Lebanon that supports Hezbollah. If that happens, Iran undoubtedly gets in, and so does Syria. If that happens, and Israel is now faced with a full war in the north, combined with a war in the south because they will not have defeated Hamas, that's the predicate. If Israel is forced to the wall, the possibility of nuclear exchange is extremely high. That is why it is very important that the United States provide the material aid to Israel, and that they also dissuade Hezbollah from getting in. It's why Joe Biden has been warning Hezbollah not to get in. What's your, what do you think of the doomsday scenario that he lays out there, and what is your prescription on how to avoid such a horrific scenario? There's part of the excavation that I agree. Some of the logic there I think is valid. He talks about a nuclear exchange. I don't really understand what that is because it's only Israel that has nuclear weapons. Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Hezbollah does not have nuclear weapons, so I don't know what the exchange there really would be. But the main problem I have with that analysis is the fundamental premise. The idea that if Israel doesn't destroy Hamas and eliminate it, Hezbollah will view that as a sign of weakness. That type of sign of weakness argument is what we're hearing all the time in order to justify completely senseless escalations that have been utterly unsuccessful. The United States went after the Taliban and al-Qaeda rightfully, mindful of al-Qaeda's attacks on the United States on 9-11. But some way somehow that objective of taking out al-Qaeda or punishing it them there in Afghanistan changed into a much larger objective of bringing democracy to Afghanistan and completely ending evil and things of that nature, which led to a 20-year-long unsuccessful, extremely costly occupation of Afghanistan. And guess what? The Taliban are still in charge in Kabul. So for Israel to try to do the same, which it has tried before and failed, seems to me be extremely unwise. And in fact, rather than Hezbollah looking at that as a sign of weakness, if Israel doesn't do so, it will be a sign of actual wisdom of recognizing what is not achievable and pursuing a much more strategically wise strategy of being able to protect Israel without falling into the trap and this fear of looking weak. Only the weak fear-looking weak. If you're actually strong, you're not worried about those things. But then by that logic, what should Israel be doing? What is justified? First of all, killing thousands of Palestinians that don't have anything with Hamas doesn't do anything to punish Hamas. It doesn't do anything to actually add security to Israel. I agree with that, but Hamas puts them in a very difficult position in terms of using human shields, right? Well, it's not a question about human shields. That area is so heavily populated that you can't go and do mass bombings and expect you're going to hit Hamas people and not hit civilians. The larger problem of all of this, and this is very interesting, I had conversations with Israelis just immediately after this happened, is that Israel was under a very false belief that it could sustain an occupation of Gaza indefinitely, that it would bring about small increases of instability, some skirmishes every two or three years, but overall it would be manageable. And as a result, you did not need to resolve Israeli Palestinian conflict because this could be managed. That belief has been completely shattered because Hamas went in and killed more than 1,300 Israelis. That is not a cause that Israel can absorb and find acceptable as part of a broader occupation strategy. It is also incidentally part of the assumption that the United States by thinking that it's going to go for a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia by completely ignoring the Palestinian issue. The world may have forgotten about the Palestinians, the Israelis, the United States, a lot of the Arab elites, very much so, but the Palestinians have not forgotten about the Palestinians and now they have reasserted their relevance in the most, most horrific way. So you actually need to go for an actual solution of this conflict, which does not entail some sort of a military elimination of the other side. Keep in mind, Israel was very much part of funding and bringing about Hamas as part of a strategy back in the 1980s to play Hamas a religious, radical organization against the PLO, which Israel at the time saw as a far greater threat. Playing these different games have only cost a lot of people's lives on both sides and it's not bringing about any type of a solution. By now, 50, 60, 70 years into it, we should have understood that. I very much agree with you in terms of mourning the loss of Palestinian life. I mean, the fact that so many innocent civilians, so many children have been caught up in something, have been senselessly killed by IDF forces. It is a completely unacceptable thing and every morning I have a reason roundup which covers this. I think it is important that people start these conversations with mourning this loss of innocent life because Israeli life and Palestinian has been terribly lost. But I do think you're not fully tackling the question head on of what should Israel do given that on October 7th, 1300, mostly innocent people were slaughtered, Holocaust survivors, babies, families all sheltering together. It's not like Israel is realistically going to say, oh, well, now's the time for diplomacy and to really hammer things out. Surely there will be a military response. So what are they justified in doing? I mean, you at the beginning of this conversation also said that activating 350,000, 360,000 reservists is an unacceptable way to respond to this and that that's more manpower than they really need. But I'm curious, from a more concrete place, what should Israel be doing right now? So let me first say something in terms of the loss of life. I agree with you fully on that. And I think at the same time, it is realistic to expect that there will be some sort of a military response after such an attack. Whether those attacks, such a response is within the realm of international law, etc., we can discuss separately. But the expectation that there would have been a response, I think is quite clear. This is unfortunately the way most countries do react to horrific attacks of this kind. But I had this conversation with an Israeli security expert earlier this week. And he insisted to me that, look, the idea of taking at Hamas, that's an impossibility. That's not what this is about. So I asked him, so what this is about then? He said, well, this is about revenge. Israel is filled with rage because of what Hamas has done. And this is about revenge. Okay, if that is what the case is, you asked, you know, what should Israel do? Well, what has Israel already done? There's already more than 4,000 people killed. At what point is the revenge satisfied? And if it is only revenge, then let's also be honest about the fact that it may be an impulse and need to do something because of the rage, but let's not pretend that it's actually adding security. Let's not pretend that it's bringing a solution. So I want to say that in the sense of saying debunking the idea that the other side who's arguing in favor of these military interventions have a solution. They don't. They have a revenge plan. And a revenge plan at the end of the day is going to leave a lot of people killed, but it's not going to bring about a better situation. If you truly want to get to a secure situation, you do have to start negotiations. I understand clearly that this is not the right moment in which anyone on either side is going to be open to it. But the first step is deescalate, get a ceasefire. Hamas is holding more than 200 hostages. Those have to be released. They have no right in taking those hostages. Those have to be released. The United Nations had a resolution in the Security Council yesterday introduced by Brazil, a close U.S. ally. It condemned Hamas. It condemned terrorism in the strongest possible words. It called for the hostages to absolutely be released right away. And it also called for a humanitarian pause. It did not even mention Israel. It didn't single out Israel. The United States under the Biden administration still vetoed that resolution. How can we say that this is a path towards a better future for all of the people in the United States? The vengeance thing is, well, the vengeance thing is one possible theoretical explanation. But what about if we take seriously the idea that wiping out Hamas is actually the goal? Then what types of things are justified? Or is that just an untenable theory to you? It's not that it's not that some people are not saying that it is a goal. They are saying that it is the goal. But I've never seen that goal be able to be successful. Again, we've tried that 20 years in Afghanistan with a group that is not even as close as sophisticated as some of these other groups as Hamas is, for instance. So it's not about whether it is some goal that you can justify it as a result of the horrible thing Hamas has done. It's whether this is actually a realistic thing that ultimately is going to bring about a better situation for all sides, including, of course, for the Israelis. So I can understand the impulse. I can understand the revenge desire, which unfortunately it's part of humanity. But we have played this game many, many times and we're not seeing it leading to a better situation. And at some point, we have to have a conversation because it's not going to be correct for us to constantly do this. And 20 years afterwards, laugh about how, you know, why wasn't the United States more realistic about how to react to the 9-11? What we're having that situation right now? Are we going to learn from that wisdom? Are we going to tell a friend as in Israel about our experience and caution them not to repeat the same thing given the fact that the idea of actually eliminating Hamas is extremely unlikely and the human cost in doing so is not just the thousands of people that have been killed right now, but thousands and thousands more, both on the Israeli and the Palestinian side. Hey, thanks for watching that clip from our conversation with Trita Parsi about whether the US can and should de-escalate things in the Middle East. You can watch another clip right here or the full conversation over here.